Motivated to Serve, Empowered to Lead

00:07 - Speaker 1 Hey, thank you for being with us today on Brave Men. I'm Paul Louis Cole. I've got a great friend in the studio, the West Callahan Studios here in the Fort Worth area and Walt Landers. Great to have you here on Brave Men. 00:19 - Speaker 2 Hey, it's great to be with you and everyone else that is listening in. 00:23 - Speaker 1 Yeah, hey, and you've got a bunch of titles, a bunch of roles, I do, I mean, you're one of those guys. There's a chapter in Maximize Manhood called the man With Many Hats. 00:36 - Speaker 2 I tend to be that guy. 00:37 - Speaker 1 I think you're that guy. What was funny was when our friends were translating it in Latvia. They were trying to figure out what does it mean when a man has many hats. The only thing he could come up with well, he must be a wealthy man because he has many hats. They could not figure it out and the fact is you've got many roles that the Lord has given you. You're an entrepreneur, you're a pastor, you're a leader of men, you're a father in the faith to many, and you were probably that when you were younger. You know. I mean, father in the faith isn't just, it's positional, not just age right, right Well, and always had some sense of leadership. 01:20 - Speaker 2 You know, grew up, you know Well, and always had some sense of leadership. You know, grew up, you know I was the oldest in my family. You know my siblings and my mom, you know, leaned on me pretty heavy and just the, you know, having our own business, yeah. And so responsibility and work ethic and all of those things came very young. And where was that? 01:46 - Speaker 1 That was in West Texas there in San Angelo, okay, in San Angelo, that region, that area, yeah. And so you grew up doing construction. 01:54 - Speaker 2 I did, and we ranched and had rental properties. We did that stuff. We did. So just kind of that entrepreneurial spirit was there at a young age and leading others, developing others, and that was part of the systems that we even had in place in the construction company. You always grow your own and so raising up and making sure that you had the workers that you needed, that had the skills that they needed to be able to get the work done. 02:26 - Speaker 1 So you build them, you train them, absolutely, yeah, and so ranching all that West Texas stuff. 02:32 - Speaker 2 All of that West Texas stuff. 02:34 - Speaker 1 Trucks and the boys the little boys. But it is a great place to grow up. 02:39 - Speaker 2 It is. It has got just such a great culture out there in West Texas and such great hospitality, and you know, you just see it. Well, you learn brotherhood. 02:54 - Speaker 1 You know somebody's got a problem over at his place, you go help. 02:58 - Speaker 2 Right, right, and we're seeing a lot of that right now with all the flood relief. 03:03 - Speaker 1 Yeah, you've had some terrible floods. You had that terrible Texas floods that people heard about. 03:08 - Speaker 2 We were impacted differently than Kerrville was, but all those counties through there and for us in San Angelo we had about 12,000 properties affected and 6,000 homes. 03:22 - Speaker 1 Wow, just in your area. 03:24 - Speaker 2 Just in Tom Green, wow. And that doesn't count the surrounding counties around that. We're also trying to help. 03:31 - Speaker 1 This is going to take a couple of years to recover? 03:33 - Speaker 2 Oh, absolutely yeah. Talking to some of the organizations, they're probably talking years you pastor the Life Church. 03:39 - Speaker 1 Significant church here in St Angelo. Multi-campus yes Campuses in other cities. Church here in St Angelo multi-campus. 03:43 - Speaker 2 Yes, our church has been there a long time and so I've been pastor nearly as senior pastor nearly 30 years again, wow. And second time being there I was their youth pastor in the late 80s, early 90s, and those years should have counted double, as youth pastor but being senior pastor since 1997. So they sent you out. You went to Lockhart, I went to Central Texas, was in Lockhart and planted two other works out of that and then came back in 97. 04:14 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and have grown it and established it. And then you're also, you've got the Texas Leadership Public Schools. 04:22 - Speaker 2 Correct. So we had a little private school. It had always been pretty much a part of the church. It's part of who they were as a church, having education. It was written in their bylaws and so for me, when I felt like that I was given the responsibility of the private school, I tried to give it away initially and get rid of it, and when I realized it was part of my mission. I converted it to a charter school and I felt like that I could impact more. 04:53 - Speaker 1 God's blessed that. 04:55 - Speaker 2 Man we're year 17 now, and over 4,000. Over 4,000 students Over 4,000 students in five cities In five cities, yeah, all through Texas. You know,000 students in five cities In five cities, yeah All through Texas. 05:07 - Speaker 1 You know when I say God's blessed it, in some ways God has blessed it, but he's blessed it because he gave you a mission and you went after it. Okay, and the thing is it took work. So I remember Phil Pringle was walking my pastor, was walking some people through his facilities there in Oxford Falls, north of Sydney, Australia, of their main church, their main campus, and the man turned to him and says man, God really done a great work here, you know, looking at the buildings, and Phil said, looked at the man. He said, well, you should have seen it when God had it by himself, exactly. 05:46 - Speaker 2 So it's what James said the brother of Jesus, God, does his side, his part, the work, but we have our work to do. 05:52 - Speaker 1 It's faith and works. Absolutely, it's both together, and God gave you wisdom, God gave you acumen, God gave you the ability to lead. God put these things inside of you and then, at a very young age I say young age, you were in your 20s, I think when you had a vision from the Lord that led you to Christ. 06:10 - Speaker 2 How old were you when that happened? 23. I got saved in my bedroom and just crying out to Jesus and I actually didn't know the Lord. I didn't have any paradigm for that. I saw a sign one time that said Jesus saves, and I thought he saves what? And so that's how foreign it was to me. But over about a week of journey of really seeking God at night and reading my Bible and praying and crying out to God, I had multiple encounters. But that last transformative night was when I read John 14, 6. And it was like the light switch finally came on and it was Jesus saying I am the way, the truth and the life. 06:50 I prayed the most simplistic prayer in that moment and the power of God completely transformed me, delivered me, set me free, cleansed me. I was born again. 07:00 - Speaker 1 When you say set you free, it was from you, were a good guy. 07:05 - Speaker 2 No, well, what I'm saying is you showed up at work. You got stuff done? Oh yeah, no, I still showed up at work. I was high, but I still showed up at work, you know. 07:14 - Speaker 1 Yeah, okay, but you were just a good old boy, you were a good guy. You showed up, I did, you helped up, I did I had gone off the rail, some was living a real party life, you know and all of that you know doing that stuff. 07:29 - Speaker 2 So it's still, still take care of my responsibilities, doing what I needed to do and yeah yeah, it showed up twice a year at church and I didn't do that. 07:37 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I didn't do that, but okay but once. 07:40 - Speaker 2 Once that experience and that transformation happened, immediately I went to work for God. It just shifted and pivoted. 07:53 - Speaker 1 It's like Paul on Damascus Road. 07:55 - Speaker 2 It is, and fortunately I had some good people that came in around me in those early years. 08:03 - Speaker 1 What happened? First and foremost my grandmother. 08:04 - Speaker 2 She had been praying for me. Wow, people that came in around me in those in those early years. So what happened? I had you know, first and foremost, my grandmother you know, she had been praying for me. Wow, and the only way she ever witnessed to me. You know the best she knew how to do. You know she was raised in pentecost, you know, and, and so she was like cry out to God, he's close as your next breath. And uh, so I did. I did get that from her yeah and uh once. 08:23 Once I had that encounter, I thought, okay, the only person I really know that would maybe be able to help me understand what happened to me was her. 08:33 - Speaker 3 Wow. 08:33 - Speaker 2 And so I went to her, took me to church, man, the rest is history. So I showed up at First Assembly of God there in San Angelo, texas, and just, yeah, some good people got around me and just helped me. I had had some military guys that were were there and they're like hey we're going street preaching. We'll pick you up friday night and I'm like man, I just got off the streets what are you talking? 08:56 about streets. So, but, but with that, yeah, so in finding purpose, and you know, I heard recently that nearly 70% of Americans aren't fulfilled in what they do, and so, and there's just a lack of sense of fulfillment and real purpose in what they're doing, and so I think that's a problem. 09:25 Yeah, and real purpose in what they're doing, and so I think that's a problem, yeah, and I think it's got to come back to, ultimately, our work, honoring God. Yeah, and you know, because about 40, over 40% of our day is about work, and going to work. 09:41 - Speaker 1 Right. 09:41 - Speaker 2 And it's got to be more than earning a paycheck. 09:43 - Speaker 1 No, it has to be and pay the bills. 09:46 - Speaker 2 And so I've been on this kind of on this message. On this journey We've been doing lots of work. 09:51 - Speaker 1 Well, yeah, you guys have been mucking houses. 09:53 - Speaker 2 Yeah, mucking houses, you know helping people in dire straits and impacted by trauma of flooding. 10:01 - Speaker 1 It's amazing because the partnerships, you know, I think of Doug Stringer with Somebody Cares in there. I think of the amazing work that the Samaritan's Purse is down in Franklin Graham. Yeah, we've got so many others. 10:17 - Speaker 2 Terry Henshaw with CityServe and 180 Disaster Relief and lots of other churches coming in Convoy of Hope. Convoy of. Hope did swing by a parking lot and dropped some stuff off, yeah and uh, but we've got some others that are boots on the ground, that are really there. 10:31 - Speaker 1 They're still there, and then the men others that are coming, dream center in phoenix, got got those guys that have been a huge blessing those are guys all went through maximized manhood absolutely so I'm still still on track bam, and they, they brought a whole van load out there. You know the the thing Walt that uh and you're. When we talk about the charter schools, charter public schools, uh, you're the uh founder and executive director, is that right? 10:57 - Speaker 2 yeah, yeah, I'm the founder and ceo ceo and you've got a great team. 11:01 - Speaker 1 How many people are actually teaching in those different? 11:04 - Speaker 2 schools. We're nearly at. You know, this year we'll be over $48 million in our budget and about nearly 700. 11:13 - Speaker 1 700 teachers. 11:14 - Speaker 2 And that's total staff. That's huge Because it takes a lot more than just teachers to run that thing. 11:20 - Speaker 1 So when we talk about these things and you're also an entrepreneur in your personal life when we talk about these things, one of the things that tends to happen particularly in my background of an expressive church place is that, well, we just trust God to do it. Well, we're just trusting God to do it. Well, we're just trusting God to do it. Well, we're just going to pray. We're going to just trust God to do it. And I want to get into this, because there is a place of trusting God, but there's also a place of moving. You got to and getting something done right. And I'll never forget. My grandmother was a minister and there's a church in San Angelo it's still there Faith Assembly. She planted back in the late 50s or early 60s and my grandmother told this story about a lady. It's probably an apocryphal story, but she had a friend come over and for years she'd been looking out her front window of her apartment and looking at this bar across the street and she would pray over it every night. Just pray over it, dear God, close that bar down. Dear God, stop this thing, all those people ruining their lives. And she's praying over this and she had a friend come stay with her and the friend came in and she said would you pray with me tonight? And the woman and the friend said well, sure, I'll pray with you. And what are you praying over? We're praying over that bar across there. So they begin to pray and they prayed, God shut that down. And the friend the woman said I've been praying over this bar for 20 years. And the friend said oh really. 12:58 So the next day they prayed. They prayed again over that bar that night, looking at it and stuff, and about the middle of that night that bar caught on fire. And the woman said you've got to wake up, wake up. And the friend said what happened? She says well, that bar has caught on fire. We've been praying for I've been praying for years. You show up and the second day you pray with me, that bar burns down. She said that's amazing. Her friend turned to her and she says well, hon, when I pray, I put feats to my prayers. Oh, no, I put feats to my prayers. In other words, there has to be a place where we trust God and we pray and then do something. Right, right, that's what Paul told Timothy. 13:46 - Speaker 2 Well, Paul lived that Well exactly. You know, when we think about Paul being a tent maker, which was really a leather worker, that's what that? Was. You know, if you look at Acts 18, you know, with Aquila and Priscilla yeah, let's unpack all that stuff. 14:00 Paul, they, you know, they were leather makers, leather makers. So they took canvas from leather, from hides, and made a canvas that covered them and they call that a tent. It's not a tent like we think about in Western culture, right, but it was all forms of leather. So they made everything from their little pouches that they used to carry their stuff in, all the way to the shields having a pocket that they'd slide their shield into. 14:34 - Speaker 1 It was all kinds. 14:36 - Speaker 2 It's hard work, and so much so that by the time you hit Acts 19, and this is such a powerful thing in verse 11 it talks about how God worked, and we know God works, but so do we work. It said God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul. So God's working, Paul's working, and by these miracles it says so that even handkerchiefs and aprons were brought from his body to the sick and the diseased, and diseases left them and evil spirits went out of them. Wow. But when we think about handkerchiefs and aprons, we're not thinking what that looked like in Middle Eastern culture in that time frame 2,000 years ago. 15:27 Yeah, and so whenever I really dove into that, you begin to see that basically, Paul, they took his sweatband and his undergarment, his T-shirt, and used it. Because if you think about, if you've watched any of the, the movies, you know, like the chosen, and some it was, it was that that that headband, head wrap, head wrap because of the sweat, sweat and because they didn't have ac. 15:58 They didn't have, you know, and you think it. You've been over there. It's hot, yeah, and he's doing hard labor and from that labor with the headband that's capturing sweat, as well as his undergarment, that T-shirt from under his outer garment, and they took that to lay upon people to bring healing and deliverance. So there's a transferable anointing in work and what we do and I think that there's a message even in that that when we show up at work, something ought to happen. And from the work of our hands, if we're doing it as unto him and he created us for that, he designed us for work. But first thing, work should come out of our identity, not for identity. 16:52 - Speaker 1 Okay, hit that again. That's really good. 16:58 - Speaker 2 Well, I think this is throughout the world, but definitely rooted Western culture. I mean, think about it. Most of the time we're asking somebody well, so what do you do for a living? 17:06 - Speaker 1 Yeah, Well, it starts with hey man, where are you from? 17:10 - Speaker 2 Yeah, what do you do? What do you do Rather than who are you becoming? 17:15 - Speaker 1 Yeah, the identity is tied to the hands. 17:18 - Speaker 2 It's so tied in what we do and that translates over so much and we're looking at okay, am I fulfilled in this? Am I successful? Does my life have meaning? Is there significance? And if we're not careful, it's more about what we do rather than who we are. And yet Rob Carmen always said this that God created us to be human beings, not human doings. And as a human being, it's about our becoming, and I've always believed that somehow that God was more interested in who I was becoming than what I'll ever do. And so it's first about that identity of knowing that I'm working. I'm his workmanship is what Ephesians 2 says. 18:02 - Speaker 1 Ephesians 2.10. I'm his workmanship is. 18:03 - Speaker 2 What Ephesians 2 says is that we're his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. Wow, so there's work involved in this, yeah, and so we've got to, I think, have the right value in the work that we do, but yet know that God's at work in this, in me, to create me for this. 18:29 - Speaker 1 This is really good, Paul, the work of his hands, the tin maker, you know, leather worker, okay, and he had people working for him and he was very comfortable in the marketplace. Because of that Very much. He just wasn't just a church boy, oh no no, no, no no. 18:49 - Speaker 2 He definitely was studied. And there was theology, because if you think about, okay, if there's a transferable anointing, it's obvious that he was very connected spiritually. But there's something that was much more than that. That's why I love the Nehemiahs of the Bible, the Joshua's of the Bible. Nehemiah, when you think about, here's a man who birthed out a prayer to go back to his hometown to rebuild and he shows up and it's about rebuilding the walls right. And then it also connected to being a warrior, fighting for what was he was called to do. 19:34 - Speaker 1 Well, he told him and he said, uh, you've got, you're gonna have a shovel in one hand and a sword in the other trial in a sword. Here's how this is gonna work, that's how it's gonna go, and and so, man, isn't that a picture? 19:46 - Speaker 2 When you think about that and what Paul was doing, there was obviously something that could be transferred, in that anointing for that sweat to be in those garments and then to be given. To be able to transfer that anointing to bring healing, deliverance. That's the power of God. Okay, to be able to transfer that anointing to bring healing, deliverance. 20:05 That's the power of God and it's tangible. There's something in that and that's why I think the other part of that is not only working from identity, not for identity, but also work should be an act of worship, not just a job. And so work if it's an act of worship, because you think about Abraham. The first time worship is even mentioned was Abraham gathering up sticks, loading up this donkey, taking his son and heading up that mountain. That's work. 20:37 - Speaker 1 That's the first time. 20:39 - Speaker 2 Sacrifice. That's when worship is first mentioned. But it's work, and so worship in and of itself. It should be from this place that we're doing this. From this place, like Paul wrote in Colossians 3, that whatever we do, work with all your heart, working as unto the Lord. 21:05 - Speaker 1 Man. That's a hard thing to do, you know. In a sense, Walt, because we have a tendency to feel like, if I was, you know we have. I remember a young man, still a good friend of mine, and he was dealing with I don't know, I have to supposed to go in the ministry, or I'm supposed to have a job, or you know, and he was, it was a. For him it was a dichotomy, it was two separate things. 21:28 - Speaker 2 So we're and and I basically said well, because preachers never do anything right. 21:32 - Speaker 1 Well, you only work an hour and a half every sunday come on right. So so the thing is, is that, uh, I said well, what are you good at? You know what's your gifting? And he ended up going into sales. He's been tremendous at it and then, out of that, has a ministry in his local church. That's fantastic. 21:54 - Speaker 2 Well, see, one of the great pictures that I saw in this that I've kind of started doing. This I was thinking about we're rolling back into football, right, and you've got some that really honor God with even that platform that they've been given as an athlete, like a Pat Mahomes that when he takes the field, goes down to the end zone and kneels down in praise on his knee giving honor to the Lord. And I just thought I just grabbed a picture, you know, a while back, and I just started doing this. Even going to their sanctuary before I am going to take the platform, I'm kneeling Really, oh yeah, it's like why? 22:35 not what if every man or woman showed up and before they started their day, they knelt in their office and took a knee and said God, today I'm honoring you with what I'm going to do today. 22:52 - Speaker 1 Take a knee by your welding truck, absolutely. You know your truck's got the welding gear on it. You just grab a knee and go. Lord bless this. I honor you in everything I do with my hands, absolutely. 23:02 Absolutely. See, that's man. That is so good, Walt, because we live in such a performative culture, right, that we look at this guy, well, he's doing that on TV, or he's doing this thing and he's going to some other country, and well, that's ministry. Well, ministry is everything we touch, Absolutely, right, absolutely, as men and women of God. Everything we touch has the anointing of God on it, and that's basically what you're seeing in these scriptures. God gave Paul the power to perform unusual miracles. So it's not just the things that touch our skin, it's the things that come off of us. 23:38 - Speaker 2 It comes off of us, and that's why it's important also that not only is it from this place of identity, not only is it truly an act of worship in our work, but also work should be from His grace. Explain that so. In other words, I think that too many people experience burnout because they're outside of the grace. They're doing it in their own strength, they're trying to achieve something. 24:08 - Speaker 3 They're chasing rainbows. 24:10 - Speaker 2 Noah never was a rainbow chaser. 24:14 - Speaker 1 He was a covenant maker. 24:15 - Speaker 2 The rainbow came, the promise came, the fulfillment came because of the work that he did, being obedient to God. Hebrews, chapter 11. All of those great men and women of God that did all the extraordinary things were ordinary individuals that obeyed, and so they did it out of this place of grace, not in their own strength, but in full surrender to the Lordship of what here's what I was being asked to do. And so there is a courage in that. You mentioned that earlier when we think about trust, because if you look at the New Testament, you see faith, faith, faith, faith. Old Testament, you don't really see faith other than the just shall live by faith, but you see the word trust, and so a lot of your teachers have always connected that faith. In the Old Testament is translated trust, but I believe it's more than trust. What you'll see is is there trust? Yes, but what did God tell? What did Moses tell Joshua? Be courageous. Somewhere there's got to be some courage to step out. 25:22 - Speaker 1 Well, somewhere you've got to. The Bible says to gird up your loins. Yeah, I mean, sometimes you just got to suck it up, man. 25:30 - Speaker 3 Yeah. 25:31 - Speaker 1 You got to say, hey, I'm going to have some cojones, I got to go after this thing. 25:34 - Speaker 2 But in that I think, if you're doing it because this is what God told me to do now, there's a grace. That's what I always said when I felt like it was a total mandate from God to start that charter school. Yeah, and I have a lot of other pastors. Hey, help me do this. I want to do one and I'm like you better get a word from God on it. I mean, I worked hard in construction as pastoring and doing all that, and you want to take on education, especially in public ed. You better be called. You better be called. 26:05 - Speaker 1 You better be called yeah because it's public school and you've got rules and regulations. 26:09 - Speaker 3 It is, I know it is. 26:11 - Speaker 1 I'll talk to you. You've been on the road, so where are you going? Well, I'm going to an educational meeting or I'm coming back from one. 26:19 - Speaker 2 I'm dealing with legislators, you know all of that sort of thing. It's the whole political side. And so that's why, when Jesus said, come to me, because I'm going to give you rest, because my yoke is easy and my burden is light, that's a real indication. Now, is it work, absolutely? Is it a yoke? Yes. Is it a burden? Yes, but it's different because there's a grace on it, because we're doing what God called us to do. 26:46 - Speaker 1 The empowered grace, the empowering presence to fulfill your destiny. 26:49 - Speaker 2 Absolutely. 26:50 And in that purpose when you know that I'm doing this not out of my own strength, not because I just chose it, and I'm just chasing rainbows. I'm looking for the treasure at the end of the road. I'm not in that world. I am doing what God has asked me to do. I'm not in that world. I am doing what God has asked me to do. And so I've always tried to purpose to just give God my yes and serve God in that place, and that'll take on all kinds of forms. When this flood happened on that Friday, july 4th and on Saturday morning, I knew that I had church members and folks in my community that were hurting and I just called our men's ministry. That I knew man. I got a church full of commissioned men We've been doing this for years and I called them and said, hey, rally, some of the men, anybody wants to meet me? We're going to go muck houses. And I showed up rubber boots, old clothes and we went to mucking houses. 27:45 - Speaker 1 Yeah, you did. 27:46 - Speaker 2 And just helping people. 27:47 - Speaker 1 Yeah. 27:48 - Speaker 2 And it's work, but it's sweat. It's sweat, but all the miracles, the stories that I could tell from the transformed lives and already how many are coming into the church have come to Christ were at the point of suicide that had given up hope that we went in and through our sweat we have seen miracles. 28:14 - Speaker 1 And you've seen it grow all the churches in the area, life-giving churches. 28:20 - Speaker 2 I think that people in tragedy become more open, and it's sad that sometimes that's what happens, but with tragedy, with trauma, as we would go into those homes and start praying with people, and it wasn't just prayer, it wasn't just spiritual, it was that physical work. Right, you're getting stuff done. Getting stuff done and you restore hope. They feel like, wow, somebody did care. Yeah, they showed up. You're big on that. Yeah, just, man, man show up, just keep showing up. And so when you show up in that way, but what we found in our church, even in our volunteers that were showing up in that, even in our volunteers that were showing up, in that, the camaraderie, the life-giving experience of living outside yourself and helping others is powerful and that which really, ultimately, all those things you've got to leave it to God. What do those results look like? And you just do your part and you leave those to Him and ultimately, that's really what I think work when you think about living out our days and giving God our yes and what that is. Those we have to trust. 29:45 - Speaker 1 You know you're in Acts 19 on this and uh, it says Paul went to the synagogue, preached boldly for three months, Then he got kicked out. Yeah, Was that success. Then he went to a lecture hall. I know that wouldn't have been on the front page of some Christian magazine or something. Hey, we got kicked out, but the fact is that he stayed after it. 30:17 - Speaker 2 He did this for two years and then came the miraculous Well, staying faithful. When we work from a place of being faithful and not for, okay, what's the results? And we try to, sometimes the way we measure things is completely wrong from how God measures things. What God determines is success is many times different than how we would determine success, and I think about so many that have gone before us in that, that have lived that. But the Bible teaches that let us not grow weary in doing good, because why, in due season, we'll reap if we don't faint. And so when I think about the William Careys- yeah, tell that story. 31:06 - Speaker 1 I don't know if everybody knows that, if everybody listening to this right now. Yeah, again one of my heroes. 31:11 - Speaker 2 You know whenever I think about a guy that had to just stay faithful. You know, you know, in 1793, he has this calling to go to India, and he goes to India From the UK, yeah, and so he's there in India and he starts laboring among the Hindus. 31:30 - Speaker 3 Wow. 31:33 - Speaker 2 And the persecution. And he had it hard. I mean the poverty he experienced, his wife battling mental illness Wow, he lost one of his sons, young son, to disease and everything he was doing and experiencing in the battles that he was fighting. But he was staying faithful. He knew God had called him to go to India to give his life there. And so he starts in 1793. And in late 1800, about eight years, they say he finally had his first convert. What? Eight years later he gets his first convert. Now can you imagine? At year seven somebody says well, how's your church growing? 32:16 - Speaker 1 Yeah, how's it going? 32:18 - Speaker 2 You know How's your business doing. Well, I mean, come on, If we don't have a like and a comment on a post, you know we're feeling defeated you know it's like there's no endorphins here. You know we're looking for something, and yet William Carey staying faithful. But in 1800, he got his first convert and from that place, all of a sudden, it just started. You know how that happens. You know sometimes that once it tips Power of. God. 32:49 And so he's working faithfully, not frantically, but faithfully, and once that tips, once that happens, all of a sudden he goes into. He has parts of the Bible translated in over 40 languages and dialects. He founds a Bible college. He actually it's accredited to him fighting through the government in over 40 languages and dialects. He founds a Bible college. He actually it's accredited to him fighting through the government to stop widow burning. Explain that. So widow burning Sushi. It was a form of Hindu practice where when the husband would die and they would burn his body, the widow was required to throw herself into the fire and burn herself alive. 33:36 And finally, in 1829, he had lobbied and worked so hard in the government to shift that, to get that outlawed, and began to actually work, to see that the whole women began to take a different place overall in society and were valued. And so he worked spiritually, physically. You think about what he did there and the impact and setting something in legacy. When you start translating into other languages, you form a Bible school that you're producing disciples and what lives on after you legacy, that thing you set in motion Right. But also even politically, you look at his involvement Wow, Because that was something that was worth giving yourself to. Yeah, it changed everything. And out of that faithfulness, you look at what was produced. Yeah, it was hard work, hard work, sweat, equity, absolutely. And so there's a value. I call it holy sweat, holy sweat. Paul had holy sweat. 34:46 - Speaker 1 And God wants us to have holy sweat. Paul had holy sweat and God wants us to have holy sweat. It's this, is this whole uh, miracle, the unusual miracles, the handkerchiefs and the aprons, what the way it's translated in a lot of our things. Um, so those, those that sweat equity, that holy sweat, that that's not something necessarily that be that is, we're supposed to do that, yeah, but it comes out of the. Basically, it's a metaphor or a picture of working hard to see something happen. 35:17 - Speaker 2 Sometimes we think it's effortless, but it's not, it's applied pressure, and so what we should do absolutely is work. It is sweat. Think about the farmer and that farmer, what he's doing, preparing the ground, putting the seed in the ground, doing his part, but trusting God and allowing God to bring the rain the things that he can't control but out of that there's a harvest. 35:52 - Speaker 1 Yeah. 35:52 - Speaker 2 In the same way, I think that if we're willing to just give God our yes, take on his assignment, if you're looking for significance, that's coming from that place of really connecting to God's purpose, and that's a big part of what we do as a ministry. That's my passion, whether it's with our students, whether it's with our members that come in to the Life Church and we're in that discipleship pathways church and we're in that discipleship pathways. It's okay. What has God called you to? And trying to help them understand that and connect to that and fulfill that so that when we do stand before him, you know because ultimately, what's tried in the fire, our works. I used to say there was only one thing going to heaven was people. I changed it. There's only one thing going to heaven was people. I changed it. There's only two things going to heaven people and our works. 36:52 - Speaker 1 And our works, what we got done. 36:54 - Speaker 2 What we got done and ultimately, he wants to know, once the fire comes, the judgment seat of Christ, wood, hay or stubble, precious stone, silver or gold. What is refined in the fire is what we did for him. 37:10 - Speaker 1 Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, he said preach the word, whether the time is right or not, whether people listen or not, whether it's difficult or effortless. And then he said this, and this is in the NFTE 2 Timothy 4, 5 says this. It says but as for you, keep your balance in everything Put up with suffering, do the work of an evangelist, complete the mission, complete the assignment that you have. So his balance of life was endure hardship, keep working, keep preaching and fulfill the mission Absolutely. That was his balance. You know, we are. So you know, when we talk about a non-contact sport, like you're talking about football, that's a full-contact sport and I think Christianity is a full-contact sport. 38:04 - Speaker 2 Right, absolutely no. You know, there's battles, there's hurdles, there's obstacles. There's devils, there's obstacles, my friend. 38:12 - Speaker 1 Tommy Sarodnik, who defensive co-captain of USC football years ago. I remember him preaching one time speaking. He's since passed away. I remember Tommy saying if you're on the path of life and there are no obstacles, you're on the wrong path. That's right. It's just like you're not trying to get something done. 38:37 - Speaker 2 So there's sweat involved. 38:39 - Speaker 1 So let's bring this back to this thing of you're talking about sweat, you're talking about work and we're talking about and I want to come back to my illustration a guy who's a welder. Take a knee, Lord, this is for you, that's it. And yet we're still working. But out of that work comes the fulfillment. 38:57 - Speaker 2 Absolutely, if you begin to recognize everything that we do, we're doing as unto him, in our witness, in our sphere of influence. 39:07 - Speaker 1 Wherever we're at, people are watching, people are looking, they want to experience that anointing that is so huge right there, because if you're a follower of Christ, you should be the best guy at your job, Absolutely. You should be the guy that shows up. You should be the guy that doesn't slack off. That's it. 39:29 I've got a friend of mine who's working with a really large company. One of the men they're working on a billion-dollar project. One of the men. He said hey, I think we need to change this, the way we're doing this. It'll make it more efficient. And the guy next to him says hey, man, just do your work, don't change that, we'll come back. The change order will make us hundreds of thousands of dollars. Wow, in other words, don't try to be. In other words, just kind of go along with it, don't say anything. And then what they don't know is we're going to have to come back and there's going to be a change order, and the change order is going to make us another few hundred thousand dollars for the company. And he goes well, what's right about that? Right, we need to be those guys. We need to be the men who do the right thing. 40:24 - Speaker 2 We need the men who speak truth. 40:27 - Speaker 1 And truth is like a knife that can either bring death or can bring healing. We need to be those men who have healing right in our lives, and so the work of our hands will produce out of our lives. When we're talking about this metaphor, this picture of Paul, with the sweat, the things that came out of his life, healed others. The way you conduct your business, if you're working and you're in sales and you conduct your business as a follower of Christ, it's going to bring healing to somebody else's business right If you're a welder again that thing. 41:05 you've finished the mission. You know, if you see a part Plumber secretary. Come on right. 41:11 - Speaker 2 You just keep going through that. And I think there's this other aspect of how we work is many times, many times I think, determined in the season of life you're in as well, right, because the bible talks about that. You know from young to the to the. You know we're even in sonship. I love going to israel and seeing bar mitzvahs and where they're at. 41:36 But then, you understand, in jew roots, you know, at the age when they took over their father's business and they began to do that and brought relief to the father and all of that Jewish heritage and how that was laid out. Because there's different seasons and many times I think, as men we struggle with those and we sometimes we struggle with those and we sometimes we're trying to live out something that we're carrying way too far, you know, before we're passing things on, before we're raising up next generation, before we're moving through different seasons, and you know, in certain seasons are we spending the time we're needed with our sons, with our daughters, with our children? And so trying to determine that and look at that, and I thank God that somewhere in that I recognize the value that it meant, as hard as I worked, but I still tried to make family time, I still tried to do things with my kids. 42:38 I got involved in their world. There was still those other aspects of family and moving through those different seasons and yet still giving God my yes, but not sacrificing my family, not sacrificing a marriage, not sacrificing and there was times I was outside of boundaries and it's it's. It's costly when that happens and, uh, sometimes there's hard lessons in that. And to to keep that in a and I don't really I don't necessarily like the word balance. You know I'm not that guy. You know I'm, I'm a top a. 43:12 - Speaker 1 you know, get it done If I, if I'm, I'm going to play hard, work, work hard. Keep your balance, was it's it? 43:22 - Speaker 3 started with endure hardship and keep working. Yeah, I look at it more of a rhythm it's was do. 43:26 - Speaker 2 Do what your identity is right, and so I look at at life more from a place of what is your rhythm? Yeah, and how do you, how do you, how? 43:34 - Speaker 1 do you? 43:35 - Speaker 2 practice that rhythm and in that that rhythm you're able to maybe be able to look at okay in this season that we're in right now. Oh man, our rhythms have all been jacked, with my whole staff and a lot of our church, because we're in emergency mode. Yeah, you're in emergency because of the floods in Texas. 44:01 We're having to do something that's outside the norm, that we don't normally do. This season will pass, but from that, even with that, we've had to check our lives and go okay, what day are you taking off? What is happening in your life? What do you need to be able to still spend time with your kids? Yeah, there's seasons, and each staff member, even we're having to look at what their responsibilities are and what their needs are based on that, and their rhythm has got to make room for that, and so I don't expect the rest of my team to work like I work, because I'm just, I'm wired different From the time I was a kid. I was a kid that I always thought sleep was a waste of time. I was up with, I'd go stay the night with one of my buddies and I'd be up with the parents. They're drinking coffee, and I'm up early and waiting on my buddy to finally wake up. 45:02 - Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. 45:04 - Speaker 2 And let's go do something. You know, and so I was always wired that way and yet, and so I know that not everybody's wired that way and that took me some time to learn that, you know, after I crashed and burned a few of my staff members, you know because I couldn't keep up and it's like, well, I can't expect them to do like and run at the pace that I run at. 45:25 And there's some wisdom that has to get involved in that too. And what has God called you to do? What is your bandwidth? What is your width of your shoulders, of what you can carry, because not everybody's wired the same? 45:38 - Speaker 1 Well, it looks to me and we've been in Acts 19,. It looks to me, Walt, like Paul, worked hard at this. There was some effort there. We see unusual miracles, but it came out of the effort. It wasn't effortless, right. 45:57 - Speaker 2 No, it wasn't effortless, by no means. But is there something when you think about? You know like even Paul and Barnabas got in that dispute in that fight, right, yeah. And it was because someone couldn't keep up. 46:15 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it was because Mark. Yeah, john Mark. 46:17 - Speaker 2 And so John Mark ends up leaving. But later what happens? Paul's like hey, bring John Mark, because he's going to be help, Mm-hmm. And so Paul may have been that little bit of that hard-butt guy that was going hard. Yeah, he did, and maybe Barnabas saw something that he didn't, and eventually John Mark did get it Right. 46:45 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm sure Barnabas had something to do with that. Yeah, you know. So that's where it takes the whole body. It takes all of us, doesn't it? Yeah, it takes all of us to do this sort of thing. 46:55 - Speaker 2 God needed a Paul that pioneered that broke through that was willing to do the hard stuff. 47:00 - Speaker 1 Yeah the William. 47:01 - Speaker 2 Carey, absolutely Right. And those guys, you got to have those guys. 47:06 - Speaker 1 The Francis Asbury, absolutely who traveled on horseback during the American Revolution and preached. Was it 30,000 sermons or something like that, some crazy number? 47:18 - Speaker 2 Oh, all those guys were yeah, the Wesleys and yeah. 47:21 - Speaker 1 And well, he came out of Wesley's ministry right and George Washington wrote in his journal later, after the Revolutionary War was won against Great Britain. Washington wrote in his journal if it weren't for the preaching of Francis Asbury, we wouldn't be a nation. I'm actually reading a trilogy on the Revolutionary War. What's fascinating about it? Because I know some of this background on Asbury and some of the others and many of the ones that you've read about and followed. What's amazing about this trilogy? It's huge books by Atkinson and it's a trilogy on the Revolutionary War. Books by Atkinson and it's a trilogy on the Revolutionary War. None of it, none of it. It's all based on war and generals and many of the occasions that I know that there were churches involved and pastors and guys getting saved and things happening. It's not quite in this. It hasn't made it in, but we know the underlying predication was there were people praying over this. It was faith and works. Oh yeah strong, absolutely. 48:27 - Speaker 2 And then and that's the other part of this is, um, when you think about that other prayer element because there's work in that, yeah, and there's, there's people that feel so much more called to that, you know, when you think about charles finney and having a, a father nash, you know that would go in weeks in advance laying the groundwork in prayer. 48:53 You know, when you think, you know I forget who it was with billy, billy Graham and a lot of those crusades and they would go in and they'd lay the groundwork with prayer. And so there's all the different aspects of how we can work and how we should work and what that looks like. I've got an individual on my team that spends hours in prayer team that spends hours in prayer. And when you, when you, all of a sudden you start thinking about, well, the value of your team, well, he may not be in the seat in the office like you thought or like some would think that he should be, but he's spending that time praying. Oh, he's putting, he's praying things through. He's hearing God, hearing God, he's bringing, then he brings that into our, into our meetings, and it's amazing the impact and, um, so we have a team that has, has really shifted to where you begin to value that and and it's not, it's not the old we have to value that. 49:54 - Speaker 1 That's the, that's the uh, the early church's the early church. 49:58 - Speaker 2 That's what exploded. Everything, absolutely. 50:00 - Speaker 1 They gave themselves to prayer and the study of the word and the sharing in the synagogues. That's what made this stuff happen. You know, if we just look at it in terms of oh, they created, Paul created a great system. 50:16 - Speaker 2 Right, were any of those early apostles? And what they did, if you look at the end of their life and where they died, yeah, oh no, they went. Yeah, that was that initial setting and what it took to birth something and to launch something and to undergird and send them. Yeah, oh man. 50:37 - Speaker 1 Yeah. 50:38 - Speaker 2 This is great. 50:39 - Speaker 1 So let's go back, let's recap Acts 19. Yeah, okay, just give me a little recap there. Walt, I know you've got some notes on it. 50:47 - Speaker 2 Yeah, well, again, I think the idea is that for us it's about finding that place of significance, in understanding that what we do, we're doing as unto him. 51:00 - Speaker 1 Okay. So it starts with our identity. Our identity is not our work. 51:04 - Speaker 2 Paul understood even what he was doing in that labor, even physically. Just as a quote, a tent maker, leather maker, was translating something that carried an anointing. I mean, I just I remember when I discovered this, I was like you know, because I've been in this a long time now and I read my Bible regular and I study and I love still finding these nuggets, I know. 51:36 - Speaker 1 And I just stumbled onto this and it's like this thing just lit up. I read this a hundred times. 51:41 - Speaker 2 Never saw that God worked Paul worked and that translated to an anointing. That miracles took place, yeah, that these things were able to be accomplished through sweat, through holy sweat holy because of what pa was doing, and I think that is from a place, not from again this working from frenzy or from anxiety or from stress. 52:11 - Speaker 1 Well, you had a great word here. You talked about rhythm. 52:15 - Speaker 2 Yes. 52:16 - Speaker 1 Right, and rhythm there is always is always because we live in, if you will, a random world. There's always going to be urgencies, things that happen to just a flood right and now all of a sudden, there's an urgency, so you got a rhythm and you can't say, well, sorry, we can't help you, it's not in our rhythm right now. 52:37 - Speaker 2 Exactly no. Saturday morning came and it's like well, it's my day off and I got to preach tomorrow. No people were in need. I loaded up the shovels and the wheelbarrow and the brooms and the sheetrock knives. And here we go, and let's go help some people. 52:55 - Speaker 1 So the fact is, is that that is our rhythm? Our rhythm is our calling right and Jesus rested, he got away absolutely he said man, you don't understand that. That's meat. To me it's like like the woman at the well, like hey, what? What happened? He said no, I'm full, man, I'm just full. This is awesome. Oh, somebody gave you something to eat. No, no, no. He said getting this done, that filled my heart, man, filled that whole thing. 53:22 - Speaker 2 And so, for me, one of the things that I had to learn is, in that rhythm is to, because if we're not careful, God worked those six days, and then there is a Sabbath, there is a day of rest, right? If God did that, why wouldn't he ask us to do that? And if we're not careful, that's the one commandment that it's easy for us to just go eh. 53:52 - Speaker 3 I don't need that and we just ignore that one yeah. 53:57 - Speaker 2 And we just ignore that one. But we're not going to ignore, to not covet or take your neighbor's wife or take the Lord's name in vain or any of the rest of them. 54:09 - Speaker 1 Yeah, you can't hold those and not hold the other. 54:12 - Speaker 2 And yet that one right there. So we need to honor it and we need that. But yet, at the same time, it was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, and so understanding that, that you keep it in right perspective and what it was created for. And we do need that rest. And for me, what I found is daily for me, of a morning in my devotion time, instead of having a checkbox, of honestly coming down early, going into the place of just in a dark room and having that beginning time where I'm spending time in his presence, hearing his voice, letting him speak to my heart and my life, and out of that place, then there's refreshing, there's something that is filling so that I'm ready for the day. 55:16 - Speaker 1 So the balance of work and life is the. The balance is it's all about Jesus, it's all about him and it's all about life. So the balance of work and life is that work isn't your definition, your definition's in Christ, definition's your life. So your work, okay, if you will. The guy that's a salesman, you know, the guy that's working with ups, whatever that thing is, we do it as under the Lord, that's it, but it doesn't define us right, well, I used to scare the church early on and I and I learned to to not not say this and but, uh, you know because? 55:55 - Speaker 2 because I I wanted them to know that it wasn't about you know what I did. 56:02 - Speaker 3 Yeah. 56:05 - Speaker 2 That it was about being a son, yeah, and so I'd pop off from time to time. I'm like, hey, you know what, if God tells me to go back to you know, digging ditches, you know, and doing construction, ies, you know and doing construction, I'm gone, I'm out of here. I'm out of here. 56:21 - Speaker 1 it's not about the preaching and the platform and all the stuff you know there was always that one guy in the back that went well, thank God, yeah, and and that'd make them nervous. 56:33 - Speaker 2 You know yeah and uh, you know because. Because there was a time I was like I made a lot more money doing that than this. 56:40 - Speaker 1 It was about money. The fact is, it's not your definition, so we do this work as unto the Lord. 56:45 - Speaker 2 Absolutely Give God our yes. 56:48 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I've been talking with my friend Walt Landers, who pastors the Life Church in San Angelo, texas, and then with multi-campuses. And then you've got a number of cities that have the Texas Leadership Public Schools and brilliant charter schools over 4,000 students. God's blessed you. You worked hard at it, but the return is in the lives of young men and women who are being turned out of your schools and doing extremely well in life. 57:18 - Speaker 2 So many first-generation graduates. 57:20 - Speaker 1 Wow, that's huge right there. Absolutely, yeah, it's awesome. Hey, thanks for being on, brave Men. Hey, thank you for having me. 57:27 - Speaker 3 Brave Men is a production of Christian Men's Network, a global movement of men committed to passionately following Jesus on the ground in over 100 nations worldwide. You can receive the Brave Men motivational email, find books and resources for discipleship and parenting at cmn.men. That's cmn.men. Your host has been Paul Louis Cole, president of Christian Men's Network, and if you haven't yet, please make sure you subscribe to the Brave Men podcast wherever your fine podcasts are downloaded. Thanks for hanging with us today. We'll see you next time on Brave Men.