The Bold Journey of a Spiritual Warrior with Stephen Prouse

00:00 - Speaker 1
What does that mean? Armor was meant for a warrior class, not just to sit there and take hits. You're not an armchair jockey Like you need to go out and actually get thrown around. Tension and this is the other part of contending with God. Why do we think that we get to pass how many of the big milestone events in your life that you had to go to the mat with with God? That tension refined you. It refined your faith, because not only I love prayer, it changes. I used to say two things, really three things. Either it changes the condition, you or both. That's what prayer does. How many people still fight and contend until one of those two or all three change?

00:40 - Speaker 2
Hi, I'm Paul Louis Cole and this is the Brave Men Podcast. I'm fired up. You're here. It's going to be a great time. Got a new friend. That's on Stephen. Stephen Prouse is the fifth horseman, fourth watch.

00:54
You've seen him, possibly in social media, other things. You've seen that he's fired up about being a follower of Jesus Christ spiritual warfare. He wrote an article called Comfort is a Killer and the Church has to Wake Up and Take a Stand. And it's a great conversation. You're going to get into this. It's going to poke you a little bit.

01:14
There's an old adage that says that what God's called us to do is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and Stephen is a man to do that and he's all about that. In fact, I asked him. I said are you an angry man? You'll hear his answer. I'm not going to give it away. Wouldn't that be like a spoiler thing? Like a spoiler, it's like reading a revelation of Jesus Christ or Daniel and then going back to some stuff and going, okay, hang on. And spoiler alert Jesus comes back, jesus wins, hope is alive and I get fired up about all that.

01:53
But you and I, right now, as we walk through this, have issues that you and I face in our culture and I thank God for men who stand up and speak with a loud, prophetic voice. Our culture and I thank God for men who stand up and speak with a loud, prophetic voice he reminds me, stephen reminds me of this is a throwback of a young man died too early plane crash named Keith Green. Keith Green was a singer but speaker, wrote music, but what he really was was a prophetic voice in his generation calling people to repentance. And he did it without equivocation, without embarrassment and without it, without backing off at all, and it was so. That's where that's kind of where I put Stephen's voice and this conversation that we have. He walks through issues and things he's made up. He has spent, I mean hours walking through the Word, getting it into his heart and spirit, being mentored by great men like Baylis Conley. You know men who have spoken into his life. David Englehart, a friend of his others, who have spoken into his life. David Englehart, a friend of his others who have spoken into his life. And out of that comes this richness and depth and passion. And you'll hear it and he's passionate. We need to turn the nation around. I believe you and I agree. And whether your nation right now, where you're listening to this, is Uganda or Indonesia or India or wherever it may be, I think the same case is true no matter where we go in the world.

03:32
I was on with a podcast, unleash the man, with Sethia Sam, and he asked me. He said how do you talk to men in every country about things when everybody faces different things? I said well, at the foundation of it, at the center of it, is the pride of life, the lust of the flesh and lust of the eye. We deal with the same things that Adam and Eve dealt with and that every man has dealt with. So, when you come down to the center and the core of it, we need a savior. Jesus didn't come to lower the bar of masculinity. He raised the bar so that we would know we need a savior.

04:17
Hey, speaking of masculinity and personal identity, we have a new book that's out called Identity. With that book is 40 affirmations, 40 days of affirmations, and you'll be blessed by that. It just came out. You should be able to go online, cmnmen, where we have the resources for men, and of course, that falls back on Romans 12, too. Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world falls back on Romans 12 too. Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think, how we think, the thoughts that we hold on to you know the things that refocus us. Remember, focus isn't about greater intensity, it's about greater intentionality, and the issue is, when we focus on the wrong things, we'll end up going the direction that we focus. So what do we focus on? Identity, the story you tell yourself about yourself. So it just came out. Great resource, cmnmen. And then also pray for us as we go into Cairo, egypt, a couple of the other places that we're headed into in Indonesia, some of the islands, bogota, colombia, new events happening there, great, great things to see in what's happening in Brazil. We'll post some of these things.

05:41
And if you're not getting the motivational email, it's Brave Men, motivational email. It comes out three times a week. Go on, cmnmen, sign up for that. Hey, this is a great conversation with Stephen Prowse. He is passionate about Jesus, passionate about life, passionate about where God's directing him, and it comes through. I really I thoroughly enjoyed being with him. He's a new friend and I believe you're going to be, your heart's going to be engaged and you're going to be poked a few places, a couple of things.

06:14
It's like you know, it's that comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable. It's like we get comfortable really easy. I mean, how many times you've walked home and you've gotten home and somebody moved something? You go, hey, wait a minute, where's that? It's supposed to be right here. Somebody moves something at work. You go ah, it's supposed to be over there. We just get comfortable. It happens real fast. You walk into church, you go to your seat that you normally sit in, somebody sat there and we get comfortable. And I thank God for Stephen Prowse and men like that who kind of pull us up, adjust us, do a chiropractic spiritually on us. Here's Stephen Prowse. Okay, fourth watch. I get that. It's like three in the morning, right. Fourth watch Jesus came walking on the water. Fourth watch. I get that. It's like three in the morning, right. Fourth watch Jesus came walking on the water. Fourth watch. So you've got this Instagram thing going. Fifth horseman, fourth watch. Tell me what's behind all that?

07:15 - Speaker 1
Fourth watch started out as a Bible study, august 2020, an attorney friend's house where I was out there to project, manage, building a 60,000 square foot food bank, a warehouse, on this rural property 200 acres and go before the township and township is like you're trying to do this on your own without an attorney.

07:33
We're like, yeah, and they give the name, give a few names. We talked this one guy and him and I talked on the phone for like an hour, ends up um, a couple months, after we, you know, first talked, he said, hey, would you mind coming to my backyard and speaking to a few people about spiritual warfare? I'm like, ok, and it just wasn't my thing. And so, because of Charlie, you know, they kept asking, saying we need to have something that's kind of organized, a place to direct people, because we keep trying to talk to them about spiritual warfare and we keep saying the same thing over and over again. You say it better. And so I actually sat down, made the website I haven't changed it much at all, I probably should do that and what it was was just listen, it's spiritual warfare for the masses.

08:16
It's trying to normalize the conversation on this is this isn't just real, it's raging, it's prevalent, it's it's way more relevant in people's life than they want to give it credit. And you have an opportunity of stepping into that, should you choose to, but do so informed. And and that started that way. And then all of a sudden we started to go some distance and some people that were part of the group, some higher net worth people, a little bit of a profile they said hey to Charlie, which is a smart move. They're like hey, steve's kind of stretching his legs, a little bit Steve's kind of saying some things. We don't know if we can really be a part of this.

08:47
And so Charlie and I were talking. He's like keep in mind, we're meeting in dive bars, we're holding Bible studies in dive bars and like shady, you know seedy restaurants A few of the ones that his clients so he was like his big land use attorney, so his clients are billionaires. You know real estate developers and they've also got these little project. You know restaurants and pubs, and so we're holding Bible study like Tuesdays and Thursday nights inside these places. And so the fact that these people kind of took a little offense, it was fine, and so I said you know, so then I got to create a second account. I'm just going to say what I need to say without a filter, and that's how the Fifth Horseman was born.

09:21 - Speaker 2
OK, yeah, was born, okay, yeah. Well, if anybody's been on it and I'm sure, uh, a number of our guys have, and if they haven't, they will now, uh, fifth horseman, you do speak without a filter, but you do edit. We have to. You do edit, you know. You. You make sure that that. What do you do? Like an hour of stuff and then go lord. What is the best part or no, it all depends minutes.

09:43 - Speaker 1
Sometimes it'll be a quick six, seven minutes, three minutes, yeah, like in New York. For some reason, god's like I need a minute, I need 60 second clips. I'm like oh God, okay, well, that's New York, which, which I'm laughing. Like okay. So we've, got this set up in New York. A lot of things changed because I upgraded the camera, everything, but for the most part, just me with my iPhone walking around. Wow, there's still 60 or 70 days worth of recordings I haven't even put out there, yeah.

10:09 - Speaker 2
You know, I remember okay. So we actually have become we know each other based on friendships now, yeah, mutual friendships, and with the Bollingers. That wasn't there when I first started following you. Okay, right, so I'm watching you and in fact I'll tell you this one so one day you go off, man, Like you go off on a church, like you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

10:37 - Speaker 1
Which one Wait which one, I don't know which one.

10:39 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I'm like I don't remember which one it was like. So it was like something about you know what the church does and how they don't face reality. And I'm at lunch with with Glenn and I go. Man, I was watching this thing. This morning. This guy went off on that deal. You know who's this guy is. He goes I don't know who that guy is. I've never seen it. He's not much on that. You know, watching that Instagram stuff, guys, I've never seen it. He's not much on that. You know, watching that instagram stuff. And I go, yeah, I don't know. I'm gonna keep watching this guy. It's intriguing, though. And then the next one is like I'm walking around the vatican right. Like I'm walking around the vatican, I'm like who is this guy right? Which is, I think, was what, how you met frank sontag oh, I met him 2020 because he's following your stuff, though.

11:26 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and I've done a couple of KMGs two or three of them, right, yeah, and he's like who is this guy?

11:30 - Speaker 2
Pretty much, yeah, it's kind of a podcasting Sunday. It's kids before you were born. But who are those guys? So that was like who is this guy? So then later on, glenn goes, you know that guy, you know that guy you talked about. I go, yeah, yeah, he goes. He and my daughter are dating. Get out of here. What are the odds? It's almost impossible, yeah, it's totally impossible. So, but my thing is and I want to go back to some background on this, yeah, but my thing was there's something compelling about it. Like we don't always agree with each other on everything. The beauty of following Christ is this multifaceted, beautiful mystery, if you will right. But there was something compelling about it and it was like this guy, this guy really is following Christ and that really stood out. Stephen, that's awesome. I love that. Yeah, but you're real passionate, like, like some people probably think you're angry. Is that true that some people take that?

12:35 - Speaker 1
Some people take it like you're too intense, too angry. You know it's. And I'm laughing like inside I'm like this, like this fat kid that just wants to eat things. It's like this inner fat kid that's just like happy-go-lucky wants to be a veterinarian, play with animals. But that's the whole point of listen. If you're dead to self, how much of you do you want to carry forward? Like, how much ego, how much pride, how much I want to look a certain way, like I wear the same thing all the time. Pride, how much I want to look a certain way, like I wear the same thing all the time. Like even even being, you know, in the Bollinger family. It's like I love them because you know Lacey's, you know dialed in all the time and and I'm like I literally have 10 pairs of the exact same pants I probably wear like the same fifth horseman, you know.

13:17 - Speaker 2
Steve Jobs did okay with that.

13:21 - Speaker 1
The cool part is this, though, is that I hope that people see that there's room for intensity within faith, there's room for passion, there's room for come as you are. You can't stay as you are, but you can come wherever, and there's an entry point into all these different things. And what's been cool about what God's done is churches for a lot of people. Praise God for the church, praise God. It's gotten people this far. But there's also a bunch of people on the outside who are like you speak of power, yet you have none. So where is this? How do we reconcile this thing? And so there are billions of ways to Jesus, one way to God. And so if I become someone's avatar right, someone's like entry point into it and I just redirect them back to the word and back to Christ, praise God. Then they become someone's avatar for someone else in their circle.

14:06
But all this means is that, like, there's room for everything, but there isn't room for passivity, At no point. The moment you become passive, you become a feckless paper, you know, a paper tiger, and then you, then you become the worst part, you become a form of godness, but no, no power. You become, you know, the perception of a thing without the reality of being that thing, and so there are so many people disenfranchised with the church. It's not to belabor the church, but at some point you have to take ownership and be like we are the church. We have to say this yeah, this is who we are, we are the church. We will still engage the church, but we must become the church worthy of a King's return.

14:40 - Speaker 2
Strong. We're not that church, no, no, no, you know it's uh. I I shared with some men the other day. I said, uh, you know a lot of people are praying. You know, come Lord quickly. You know it's okay, it's cool, and uh, man, lord needs to come back, or or the the world is coming to an end and Jesus is coming back. And I'm like, dude, I'm not ready for that, because I think there's a whole lot of neighbors that don't know Jesus yet. And so you want to be selfish enough. Do you want Jesus to come back because you're in? It's like no, let's deal with some stuff, you know, because I believe Jesus Christ comes back for a church that's robust, strong, not just hanging on help waving a white flag. We're strong and we've taken ground. And he comes back for a bride that's proved herself worthy of her groom and he's like bam, redemption of the earth. But you're passionate about these things, so you must've like, grown up Christian high school, went to Bible college, all that kind of stuff.

15:39 - Speaker 1
I didn't go to cemetery school, I stayed on the outside. I'm more like and, honestly, I always felt like, in a way, I was, you know, god's monster. I'm five years old, I stayed on the outside. I'm more like and, honestly, I always felt like, in a way, I was, you know, god's monster. I'm five years old. I have all these dreams of war, of destruction. Really, what we could seem is apocalyptic. Now I'm like you know, first time I saw GI Joe cartoons. I'm like seven, eight years old. I'm like I've seen this before and I go to my dad, my dad's like you haven't seen that. That's demonic. You know we had to get the demons out. I'm like I don't think I got demons. I'm pretty sure I've seen this before and so I've, almost in a weird way and this is kind of outing myself I thought, if I could avoid any path that God called me on, I could stave off what was inevitable, the sense I had, this ominous sense that what I saw in my dreams was absolutely coming to pass.

16:22
I've had deja vu my whole life. I can't tell you how many times I'd be sitting there, since I was a kid. I would hear you know, in my head. Something would say doorbell. And all of a sudden look at the door, doorbell would ring. Something say door knock. You know phone, like all these small things. And so it's not like look at me, I'm psychic. It's like, no, that the Lord gives you the bread of adversity, the water of affliction, yet your teachers won't be hidden from you anymore. I don't know. And if you look at that term, that teacher is like an archer that's pulling back an arrow ready to release and send. And I'm looking at this like this has to be weird, but it feels completely real. And so if I avoid walking this, out with God, that's why I say I avoided the front row like the plague. If I can avoid this, that out with God, that's why I say I avoided the front row like the plague. If I can avoid this.

17:08
that means I can help everyone else avoid this. It's not going to happen, and so, um, at a certain point, you know, the Holy Spirit had a funny minute with me. I'm sitting front row next to Bayless uh Cottonwood church in.

17:18
California. Yeah, and it was so funny, cause I'm sitting there and I just remember the Holy Spirit audibly saying where are you sitting right now? And I'm like oh God, all right, it's a good one, that's a good one, I see it, I get it. And for years before that, the Holy Spirit was saying stop hiding, stop hiding, stop hiding. I'm like no like.

17:35 - Speaker 2
So your, you see your passion where you're at now. Stephen really came out of a lot of trauma.

17:42 - Speaker 1
Toil. I wouldn't even say it's trauma, I would say it's more. I mean, listen, sin is fun. If you're doing it right, sin's a lot of fun. So sin kept me out of that path as well, but the trauma wasn't so much. I'm traumatized, therefore, this is my condition. It was more like I'm toiling with things. There's a contention within life and things.

18:02
I'm seeing things for what they are. I'm not holding. There's no internal conflict. There's a spiritual conflict happening, and God's given me a front row seat to it, and so within that, I'm like I'm gonna avoid this. As long as I avoid this, everyone else can avoid it too. It's almost a cheesy way of thinking about it.

18:21 - Speaker 2
I don't think, no, I don't think the word's cheesy, because I think that that, uh, if you're real about it, there's emotion tied to those things. There's there's depth that you're revealing. Uh, your father was a minister, yeah, pentecostal pastor. Pentecostal pastor, yeah, and uh played music. You play music, you're a musician, and he's amazing. He's like he's, he's like a world-class guy.

18:44 - Speaker 1
Tickles the ivories sings velvet voice. My sister has a velvet voice, same thing. But my thing was like give me a guitar. I think I traded like a leather jacket. My sister got for me in T1. It smelled like pee, right. I traded that for some other electric guitar and I think I borrowed one of my dad's amps at the time and I played that thing for eight hours a day and then grunge music came out. I'm like I've arrived, I'm in, I can play power chords, all of them.

19:12 - Speaker 2
Yeah, that's right, because that's what Seattle was.

19:14 - Speaker 1
That's all it was.

19:16 - Speaker 2
Yeah, power chords, and so now you're in music and those things. But growing up, I saw something you shared at a maybe it was KMG meeting or something else and I saw a video in which you talked about no, it was an interview with Lucid and you did an interview and you talked about how your father was a minister, but you didn't feel like you'd been mentored.

19:41 - Speaker 1
Oh yeah, not at all. No, I've been, I've been told, I've been talked to, spoken to, but there was never a two-way conversation. And, of all things, as much as I've learned about spiritual warfare, it was bootstrapped. It was, you know, holy Spirit teaching me on the fly. Nothing was told to me. Even when I see that that demon possessed woman, there was no explanation given, there was no context, there was no, there was no like hey, what'd you experience, what'd you feel? Like you know, let's talk about it.

20:06 - Speaker 2
Here's the basis for it, here's what we do, here's who we are. So you had a problem. Did you have a problem with identity then?

20:13 - Speaker 1
No, I was just again. I was happy, it was oblivious, I was. I was in love with encyclopedias and dictionaries and Legos and and my mom at the time, so at the time that that happened with my dad, it was one of the times he kind of jailbroke me, so from parents divorced when I was four, and so mom kind of had me first with babysitter next door. Then that got weird. Just the babysitter was, you know, kind of picking on me type of thing as a bigger brother there, and so I'm like I don't really like staying there and so can I just stay at home. And first she struggled with it and she's like, yeah, just stay home. And so from there, um, I was, I was happy, we had government cheese shipped to us in cardboard boxes. I I've, at a certain point I stopped with the quesadillas and the grilled cheese and I just I just stuck to butters, you know tortillas with butter.

20:58
I was like there's a whole segment of my life that's like my comfort food.

21:02 - Speaker 2
Still it is like this is really fresh. You know, when I was in college, I I couldn't afford the food. So my, my roommate and I, we we bought these, uh, from the food bank, five gallon things of honey and we'd buy the three-day-old bread. And then we we had a toaster we'd somebody gave us and we would toast the bread, put honey on it and, if we were really lucky, have some peanut butter. That's all we ate, and and we were playing sports and uh, but I can't eat that stuff.

21:29 - Speaker 1
Now it's like it was too much of that.

21:32 - Speaker 2
I can't do that now. So, uh, tell me about this thing you alluded to this, uh, about the demon possessed woman. What was this you just get? In other words, you're in the middle of this pentecostal experience you know at as a home.

21:46 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and mom. Mom wasn't religious, like honestly, at a certain point you know she was, so she was just rolled over by the divorce and she was kind of emotionally just vacuous. She just wasn't there and so, um, so was she working? No-transcript, rape you and your kids. And and she's like I'm not letting my, my kids out. My sister was older, so she was able to get out, but I was under lock and key. At least she thought there was a, there was a window. So your mom was a police. Yeah, 22, 23 years. Wow, yeah, she ended up running jails. She taught at the training facility. Yeah, you would never know. You would never know A little five foot three Mexican lady. You would have no idea.

22:34 - Speaker 2
Wow. So you have this amazing dichotomy. And then your dad's basically full-time Pentecostal minister. A divorce when you're four. Divorce when I'm four, but you're still hanging out together.

22:43 - Speaker 1
I still, I stay with mom. Dad was hardly there. He was gone Like for like, for like, probably two, two or three years. He only showed up, maybe four or five times a year, if that. And then, like, he started to show up more and then, like, by the time I'm nine, nine years old, 10 years old, it was much more, and that's where the whole like tbn thing came in. But in one of those little jailbreak times I think I was seven, could have been eight, but he's leading a women's bible study at a y ywca and he took you with him, took me with him and you know he's doing this thing.

23:15
I'm helping him set up I'm I'm a giant kid, so like I can haul speakers and you know, so you were big as a kid.

23:20 - Speaker 2
I mean, you're what? Six, six, six, five. It ends up being up there. But the funny part was there was this.

23:25 - Speaker 1
There's this picture of my first grade. Picture is me with with my armor on Mrs Shane and like all these little kids in front of us and I'll remember. You know, I thought I'm normal and you're in that class. I'm in that class and I, I don't think parents saying like is he okay? Is he held back, is he?

23:47 - Speaker 2
special. Oh yeah, is he like is he 13?

23:50 - Speaker 1
Lenny from Mice and Men, but he's in the eight year old class, which I'm like, again, completely oblivious. So now you go to this women's Bible study. I'm there and you know we're barely 15, 20 minutes in. You know, my dad's still doing worship and this woman kind of came in late, sits at the front and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, she starts yelling violently, she's cussing, she's convulsing, it's a foaming at the mouth, it's a falling on the ground. My dad's like I rebuke you. You're saying all the right things, right, in the name of Jesus. I rebuke you. Cast it down, still convulsing it's. It's like a spectacle at this point and I'm like I don't know what's happening right now. And at a certain point he's holding her head down, there's some women, like two women, on each side holding her arms, and her feet are still flailing around. And so my dad says, son, grab her feet.

24:37
I mean, you're eight years old yeah, son, grab her feet and and think about it. Like I've been sequestered inside our little duplex in riverside the whole time I play with legos and like, like yeah, because your mom's trying to keep you safe.

24:52 - Speaker 2
Totally, you're locked in. Yeah, now you're in the midst of this.

24:55 - Speaker 1
Ywca to lady welcome to spiritual warfare. You know cage match. Here you are, one woman versus 10 people in a room and a eight-year-old kid and and I, I didn't think anything of it, I just again, I'm kind of mesmerized. I have no bearing on what's happening.

25:09 - Speaker 2
There's no friend.

25:10 - Speaker 1
And so I'm like okay, so I kneel down and I put my hands on top of her feet, just like grabbing her ankles, and all this electricity shoots up my arms and and I just I'm like I have no idea what's happening. I'm kind of stiff and I'm looking across the way and she's got some foam in her mouth. She's trying to break out of it and she just lifts her head forward and her eyes. I see her eyes rolling forward. I saw the whites, the bottom of the whites. I see her eyes roll forward. She just looks at me. He takes a deep breath you and just growls it out. And I just stay there, I'm stuck. That was it. I'm like I had nothing. What do you say? There's nothing to say. And so that ended. You know, it took a while for her to calm down and then they, some security came in, some other people came in from the facility and service was over At the time, you wouldn't know it, but when you look back, how did that mark you?

25:59
I mean, it's just, god was always trying to tell me this was real, always trying to tell me this.

26:02
I was real Basically saying listen, I bore you into condition that should probably educate you and should know better. But they don't know better, or at least they're not speaking about it. And again, hindsight, looking back, I've talked to my dad about it. He knew about spiritual warfare but he had no idea back then. He wasn't in the applied, faithful position of warring against it, at the very least even responding from a foundation of where his lifestyle was Exactly.

26:27 - Speaker 2
Yeah, so because that's got to be part of it. It's like when the sons of Sceva when they tried to do the same stuff. They get chased away because they have no foundation of faith in Christ. They have no foundation from which they're able to speak Totally. They can say the words you think that's where the church is today. We can say all the words, but we don't necessarily have a foundation from which to make this thing happen.

26:49 - Speaker 1
So you look at the verse right Love God with all your mind, heart, soul and strength. Okay, beautiful. So mental strength or intellectual, or I should say mental or intellectual faith, emotional faith, philosophical faith, but not spiritual faith. So you're supposed to have facets of all of that. Some people will kind of rise up and have strengths in certain positions, right. But when you just have these high and lofty people who can conceptualize and theorize all these amazing faithful positions, you have a philosophical faith right and then all of a sudden you know all the words in the scripture.

27:20
congratulations, you have an intellectual faith Great, you can say the words. Even Satan knows the Bible better than most people. So all of a sudden you look at this, you're like what's left? It's a final frontier, especially for men. It's spiritual faith. That's terrifying, because again you have to believe in things that you can't see.

27:37
when the whole world wants to cater the whole worldly condition is oh no, you just believe in things that you see and you'll be fine. Sorry, there's a point where rubber meets the road, where faith and reason part company. And how many people are just relishing in the fact like, oh no, we have reason, we're good and God's like I don't think you're that good.

27:55 - Speaker 2
And it requires giving up yourself, surrender.

27:58 - Speaker 1
Surrender, and I use this phrase often. You have to get to the end of yourself before you get to the beginning of God. And so many people like how many times can you be offensed, how angry are you at the current administration? And how much do you not realize every time that you receive a piece of media or content that you allow into your eyes and you're left with facts, information, truth, but no way of alleviating that. So you allowed someone to speak gossip into your life because you have no, there's no action item and most people don't know they're supposed to pray about this stuff. So you allow gossip in and then strife, discord, enmity, anger, murder.

28:36
How many other spiritual conditions are you allowing in and you're not praying your way through that, saying God, I surrendered myself to my thoughts. I'm not going to carry this because you didn't give this to me. I gave this to myself, I walked myself through this content and so when I, when we think about the church and where it is, yeah, it knows all. It has all the emotional songs, it says all the right messages to the women, it speaks to people like this level three or four faith, and then, what's right, holy Spirit gifts it's up to a level 10. And then Jesus drops the hammer. All these things and more. Yeah, how much imagination do you have?

29:07 - Speaker 2
Yeah, no, I like the little thing you threw in there. It's like it says all the right things to the women. Oh God.

29:16 - Speaker 1
God bless him. If it wasn't for women, if it wasn't for the moms and grandmothers holding families together in faith, we would have already been done.

29:24 - Speaker 2
Well, that's true, and if it wasn't for Lydia, we wouldn't have the gospel of Luke. So you know, in that sense, the beauty of being a follower of Christ and the beauty of what Jesus did for women is Christianity was the first faith that set women free to become who they are in Christ, even to speak truth. Join heirs, yeah, to be the ones at the grave, at the tomb, at the tomb.

29:47 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and then you got these guys who are on this trip around, like I don't, like the Bible says women can't be teachers. It's like listen, homie, the moment you're ready to die to self completely and lead your family by example, where they want to be your friend, not just your child, but your friend. Like awesome, teach, lead, do speak. Oh, but you don't want pray, you don't want to do those things because you just pray quietly. You're a child, yet you walk around like a grown man and you think all these childish things and you think like, just because you're physically capable sorry, like that's a rubber meets the road.

30:21 - Speaker 2
Yeah, maturity doesn't come with age. It comes with the acceptance of responsibility, and that responsibility is to become a man, and maturity is to be able to make the right decision at the moment you're in, regardless of the emotions or context. Totally Right, based on truth. So most men are basically.

30:42 - Speaker 1
I think it was Driscoll said, boys with beards yeah, pretty much. Well, I say horrible things, right Like I. Just I say, like your little Christian boy, balls need to drop at some point, Dude.

30:49 - Speaker 2
Yeah, we talk about that a lot. We do need, we do need that we have, you know. And you, you hit one the other day, and this is funny, my father, who you hadn't heard of him, Dr Cole. He used to have a bunch of guys from USC travel with him. This was back in the Rodney Peete era, back in those days. And so there was one guy, Tom Sarotnick. He was a defensive lineman.

31:12 - Speaker 1
That name sounds mostly familiar.

31:15 - Speaker 2
Yeah, big Tommy. And so he'd get Big Tommy up and he'd have him read Deuteronomy 23.1.

31:23 - Speaker 1
A man who is emasculated cannot sit in the assembly of the Lord.

31:27 - Speaker 2
Yeah, a man with crushed balls. That's what it says. And he'd go, tommy. What's that mean? And you got to understand. This is like 35 years ago, that's amazing you didn't do that stuff.

31:37
I love that, yeah, and people would go like and and you got to understand, this was like 35 years ago. That's amazing, you didn't do that stuff. I love that. Yeah, and people would go like and he'd go well, tommy, what does that mean? That means, dr Cole, a man without balls can't be a follower of Christ man. It takes balls to be a Christian and everybody's like yeah, you know it was that whole, and I just said it at Angelus Temple.

31:55 - Speaker 1
You know what was it February last year and I told Frank Sontag ahead of time I'm like, listen man, I'm ready, I'm sure he's like you ready. What are you coming out with? I said Deuteronomy 23.1. They're not ready for this and Frank's like oh crap, oh God.

32:11 - Speaker 2
He's like are you sure you know that's where my dad met Christ Angelus Temple. That's awesome. My grandmother was one of the first graduates of that Bible class.

32:19 - Speaker 1
What class? Because my great aunt, Flora Prowse, was the class of 41, the reaper class.

32:26 - Speaker 2
Oh no, well, no, my grandmother would have been right before that. That's awesome. She started three churches Florence Cole, florence Goodrum was her maiden name, florence Cole and she went out there. It's a long story, but she went out there because her sister had gotten saved, wrote letters, so she took her two kids and headed out. Her husband was in the oil fields. She left a note, gone West yeah, cause they were living in Texas moved to California, you know here's, you know, see my sister. So anyway, she goes to Amos, someone who meets Christ. So for me that's a, that's like a little marking point for us, your family, for our family. Yeah, angelus Temple man.

33:08 - Speaker 1
And so you're there, speaking, doing a men's thing speaking on the same stuff, man, and that's how I opened it up.

33:17 - Speaker 2
I'm like dude yeah, Isn't that funny. Every generation has to have the same Something has to pull on the short hairs man.

33:23 - Speaker 1
It has to be there, right, because there's catalyzers, right. Something has to almost like kick you where you don't want to be kicked, into uncomfortable territory. And if you're unwilling to go there within yourself, how is it God's going to let you inherit anything? Right? Psalm 2, ask of me and I'll give you the nations, your inheritance. The ends of the earth is your possession, like okay. So I ask that on a daily basis on behalf of Christ. And it seems weird, but I'm telling you. It's like mindset is everything, and if you can't traverse that territory within you, how can you receive anything? Psalm 110, right, it's.

33:59
Jesus lifts up the beheaded head of Kings that he just had. And I asked Christians all the time I said oh, so you're a Christ follower. He's like oh, yeah, I said Christ, when he came in the first time or when he's coming back. They're like what do you mean? I'm like they're not the same. They're the same, but they're not the same. Which do you follow? And they're like well, both. I said do you know that? And it's. It's one of those things where it's like listen, count the cost. Even Jesus said consider the cost before you go through. And what you're saying. Most people were never taught Psalm 110. Sit on my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool, which means we do the dirty work first, and then Christ gets coming and clean it up you look at Numbers 32.

34:38
It's when the three tribes said we're going to stay on that side of the Jordan. And then Moses said if you do right, if you do all those things, you still have to help your other brethren. They said we will. And then Moses gives a warning. It's the coolest part of Numbers. He says if you do this thing, if you prepare yourself before the Lord for the war, and you, you went to the battle, and you and you go forward until the Lord has driven out all of his enemies from before him.

35:03
Think about that. If you choose to dress up for battle before the Lord and do so until he has driven out his enemies wait a second you just tied human effort to God, taking credit and taking all the recognition for it. How many other places in the Bible where God does a thing and people think, oh, that's just something God does? We don't do that? Oh, god's just going to sprinkle, you know, a little angel powder and pixie dust everywhere. But we don't have to get our hands dirty. Because, because, because you know Gideon. Gideon still killed, gideon still went to war. Gideon actually even turned on his own people when he went back to the men of Penuel, I think in Judges 8 and 9,.

35:45
It's crazy. His verse says I will come back in peace and destroy this tower. Was he not doing God's will? Because I wait a second, like the angel just favored him. I'm saying that because at some point we have to realize God's calling on not all of us, but some of us. Right, we're all the loving hands and feet of Christ. Some of us are going to have to pick up a sword and use it Well.

36:00 - Speaker 2
God is love but he's killed some people.

36:03 - Speaker 1
Yeah, but God is also Lord, and again, that balance in the Bible. So there's that, yeah, and this is the human condition. As a result of a dignified society. We're not a warrior based based, nomadic based, right, we're not a, we're not even a respect based society, we're dignity. What do you mean by that?

36:19
Okay, so look at the cycles of history, right, nomads, nomads, nomadic style. Then into a warrior based society where it's like the strongest, the fittest, that's your king, those are the ones that protect and kill and father kills. And then you go into this respect based society where we respect the exploits and the accomplishments of previous generations, and then, all of a sudden, that weakens down to where, like, wait a second, but if you're alive, you deserve dignity. So we'll become a dignified based society. And then, after we've given everyone all the dignity, people want more. So it becomes a victim based society.

36:48
And then, as we've given the victim credit and capital and all of a sudden, this currency within our culture, the Uber victims arrive, they rise up and now they get to even start to out-victimize the other victims. And, amazing, guess what happens? Reset, yeah, yeah, reset, reset. And so the warrior-based class, the warrior class of society, is in the shadows. Right now, I can't even begin to tell you how many military age military you know, professional soldiers are like say when, say when, and I pray to God we reach more of them and they wait for the Holy Spirit to actually respond back. Well, that's what needs to happen.

37:27 - Speaker 2
You know Isaiah, chapter three, verses one and two. God says he's correcting Israel. Israel says we're good, we don't need any help. And you know the scripture. But it says god says through isaiah's prophet he says I'm going to take from you think you're good, you think you're strong, you think you can do this because we begin to really trust in our institutions.

37:48
Yep, the problem is, the role of an institution is to protect the institution, right. So that's where we get totally off with quote unquote, the church, if you will, and culture, even though we know that that's not. We can't generalize that. And God says I'm going to take from you here's, here's what I'll do. I'll take from you security, your bread, supply of bread and supply of water, which means his presence, father, son and Holy Spirit. And then he says I'm going to take two people out of your culture. When I take these two people, the culture will begin to tip over. It's like taking.

38:18
We got construction going on out here and so if I take these two bricks out of the bottom of this wall, the wall begins to topple because it's the. It's that foundational point. He says I'll take two people out. He says I'll take out the hero and the warrior. Every great culture is built on the character of its heroes and the courage of its warriors, and so it's internal and external. So what happens is, as men, we want to be warriors, but we haven't developed the character. And so you've seen it in athletics, we've seen it in music, your background in music, we've seen it in every area of culture. Where a man's talent, that warrior side, can take him beyond his character you also His character can't sustain him.

39:01 - Speaker 1
But within that story arc of each of those groups, you also have this season where you suck and you toil and you have to then suck less and less and less until you actually start being kind of good, yeah. And then you're like, cause, even then, even while you're sucking, you're like, ah, I'm actually better than how I used to suck.

39:15
And then it's like you suck less, it's like just suck less, and but that's like a white belt versus you know you start to belt up and you start to get the recognition of other people, but again it's like if you're only seeking the recognition of yourself in the mirror or your peers at the lowest possible level. How many people strive to be judged and criticized by higher levels? Most people like people that. What are those singing competitions on TV like the Voice and all this. Yeah, the Voice, yeah.

39:41
You subject yourself to a panel of industry professionals because you think you got the sauce. Yeah, and maybe maybe you do, maybe you stun people, maybe you're the sleeper, but the reality is we don't have a cultural conditioning and a respect for time under tension. Think about what we've done with, even like music software digital audio, you know workstation, the daw software you can auto-tune everything you can you can align up, you can line up the timing.

40:08
Yeah, that's true. How important is syncopation between a bass player and a drummer? And now you're just like I can just click tracks and so high five, we're so accomplished. We suck even harder because the moment you have to pick up this stuff and come together in unison without that, and actually do it as musicians.

40:25 - Speaker 2
So so you're relating that to being a follower of christ, being a man of war, if you will, walking into spiritual warfare. And because we've auto-tuned it, because we've auto-tuned it, because we've got these like one, two, three, when it's outside of that, we're lost.

40:43 - Speaker 1
We've memorized my God, ephesians 6,. If I hear one more time I put on the armor of God every day I'm like who told you to take it off?

40:57 - Speaker 3
You just want to hear you want to regurgitate some. It's a biblical truth.

41:02 - Speaker 1
That has been so domesticated and it's obviously domesticated. I like that word because you're like wait a second like what does that mean?

41:09
armor was meant for a warrior class, not just to sit there and take hits. You're not an armchair jockey like you need to go out and actually get thrown around. The tension and this is the other part of contending with God why do we think that we get to pass how many of the big milestone events in your life that you had to go to the mat with with God? That tension refined you. It refined your faith, because not only I love prayer, it changes. I used to say two things, really three things. Either it changes the condition, you or both. That's what prayer does. How many people still fight and contend until one of those two or all three change? No one. They don't even know because we're not taught that. This is part of the Christian ethos and our value system and it's not to be a Christian warrior.

41:53
I'm not a Christian warrior, I'm a Christ follower. One day I might feed homeless people. Another day I might like talk to elderly people in the hospital that are dying. Other people I might be praying for. Kids or families are sick. Other people I might be, you know, giving my shirt up. Whatever it is, maybe, maybe in physical form. God will give you the opportunity to rise to the occasion that he's led me to. But until then I also get to warn the spirit continually. But I have to be exactly what the Holy spirit wants me to be. I'm not like funnel vision, like I'm a Christian warrior and I get to like pump my chest, it's like why would I ever?

42:24 - Speaker 2
It's not about machoism. It's about following Christ.

42:27 - Speaker 1
And it's what it's. Also, the foundation of this is humility, which means I'm nothing Like I, my time is not my own, and so the longer I go forward and say, like I'm a this, I'm a that, I'm not.

42:37 - Speaker 2
The power of the life of Christ was humility, because he said everything I do, I only do what the father shows me to do. How more humble is that.

42:47 - Speaker 1
But then here's a cool, here's the juxtaposition John 6, I think it's like 37, 38 says everything that the father has given me will come to me. This is Jesus talking Right. Everything that the Father has given me will come to me because I intend to do the will of the Father and of all the things that he has given me, I will lose nothing because I intend to pour it out at the end. So think on humility on one side, like I am nothing, I have nothing. I'm only yours. I only do what the Father. Everything that the Father has given me will come to me. We can be both. Yes, but but. But again, that's that's the spiritual condition that goes against and directly in the face of the cultural condition. The cultural condition is wait, how can you be on your knees in humility, right Contrite before the Lord, yet standing boldly at the same time? Why don't we teach that?

43:34 - Speaker 2
Yeah, that hits me sort of like uh, it's like Abraham when he had the covenant, and it's in Genesis 15. And he receives this covenant and he receives a covenant from God and he's going to cut covenant. So he receives a promise, he's going to cut covenant. And the scripture that always hits me is that is that Abram has the animals. He cuts covenant and it says there's vultures in the trees, right, vultures in the trees. Now, this is where, when we talk about spiritual gonads and we talk about pulling it up and we talk about being a warrior, this is that. This is that two sided. This is that prayer and faith and covenant, and then faith and works. Because at that point it says there's vultures in the trees and it says the vultures swoop down. Because every time you receive a promise, the enemy tries to steal it. He has to. That's his role, that's his function, that's his job. Sinner's sin is their job. And it says that when the vultures came down, abram didn't go looking for somebody, he didn't go. Well, you know, it's the will of God. He didn't victimize the thing. It says he chased the vultures away. And we have to have a group of men who are willing to rise up and chase the vultures, and so that's why I appreciate what you're doing.

44:44
I want to go back on something you did MMA. I trained for it, you trained for martial, but I guess it's kind of a catchphrase for martial arts because you talk about the belts. There's a white one's the first one, and then the brown levels up yeah, different disciplines, yeah, and so different disciplines, and so when you got into that, was that part of retraining. Your life was a part of rebellion against the things you'd grown up around. Well, where was that journey of that whole thing? I was a late teens, early 20s.

45:14 - Speaker 1
I was a, I was a doorman at. I was a doorman when I was 19. Some friends, um, that were seniors when I was a freshman in huntington beach, um, they didn't know I wasn't a senior, I was bigger than them and so they, of course, left the school. I'm still there for three years when I get out. Um, you know, floundered for a year actually, I blew out my knee senior year, gained a ton of weight, lost it all because of training and so I'm a doorman and, um, you know, I didn't have much discipline and but I had my physicality back and so it was when I got punched in the, in the, in the face, and this guy that was three days out of some sort of I think it was san quentin.

45:50
He shows up with his prison id and the owner at the time was like yep, good to go. I'm like we were, listen, we were a dive punk bar. So I kind of expected him like, not this, like I'm okay with everything else, not this. And the dude is just this five foot three, yoked out Mexican dude, and I'm half Mexican people don't believe me because I'm like the biggest half Mexican most people have seen and so I'm like hey, bro, you're not coming in tonight, coming in tonight. And then the guy comes up. He's like, yeah, let him in. Within 10 minutes he punches off the paper towel dispenser in the men's room and then the women's room. Within 15 minutes the dude close fist, punches a girl on the dance floor while they're just playing and all of a sudden I just hear this steve, steve, see, like like 15 people are yelling my name like oh god, I.

46:34
I knew, I knew, I already knew I'm wrestling with this guy. Um to like I'm trying to lock in his arms because he's trying to swing and he's got these short, you know stocky little arms. And so, long story short, I go through this. His buddy drops an oak table one of our bar tables on top of my head. Another buddy comes in, we pick him up, run his head into the door and then kick him out. And but I say that because it's like brawling, like there's no precision to it. I'm like probably would have been a lot cooler if I actually knew what I like, if I put my giant frame into you. So at that point, like I was fit, you know, I was training a ton of strength training, and so I'm like I could probably-.

47:07 - Speaker 2
Strength training, but you weren't fight training. No, oh, okay.

47:15 - Speaker 1
And so at that point I said tonight's my resignation from the door. I'll show up tomorrow behind the bar. That's it he's like, okay.

47:23 - Speaker 2
This is in Huntington Beach.

47:24 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it's a dive bar on PCH and Warner.

47:26 - Speaker 2
No, I know exactly where that is.

47:28 - Speaker 1
So let's look at this, though, if God's not in it. How many people are artificially keeping churches and ministries on life support? Oh, yeah.

47:37
Okay, so then? So then, if God says tear it down, who are we to keep propping something up? See, most people think God wouldn't say that yeah, but he did. Most people, most people thought Jesus, jesus, literally in the Bible, four times it says God is love, Over 400 it says God is Lord, right. So is God going to, he's going to love his church. Judgment comes to the house of God first. The house usually comes under indictment because of the blood of the prophets Right, and today, our cultural sense is because of the character assassination of the people of a prophetic nature where the church falls under.

48:17
I'm not one of those people. I'm not being like, look at me. I'm like I, I've, I've got people in my circle love them to death who are like, you know, I just I feel like I have an anointing of this. I'm like I'm just kind of God's monster, like when people ask like what do you do? I'm like whatever he says, unfiltered. I don't, yeah, I'm not trying to be so, I don't, I'm not trying to be anything. If I could have my way, I'd just be in the woods training, shooting right, loading ammo waiting for the party to pop off.

48:48
I don't have permission to do that, like at a certain point.

48:50 - Speaker 2
God's like I mean, hey, okay, and there are, but there are wilderness times and there are seasons of training and all of that. But I think most of us would rather do that. It's easy to be disengaged. It's hard to be engaged, it's hard work. You know, we talk about Abraham chasing the vultures.

49:15 - Speaker 1
Dude, that's not an easy thing, that's hard stuff I also don't know if anyone modeled that for him. That's the other part, it doesn't you know what he did.

49:26 - Speaker 2
You know he was just a man. He was an actual man, like dude. No, no, this is not going to happen on my watch, right. This is not going to happen.

49:36 - Speaker 1
And and but again, the direct course of action. Now you have the cultural condition that says no, you can't do that.

49:42 - Speaker 2
I think that's the key for me, stephen, is there is a, there has always been a cadre you think of of, of Gideon's 300 men out of what was 33,000. So you got 300 men, that group. If you go back and just recently in culture, let's say the last 150 years, you look at the communist uprisings of the early 1900s, I one to 3% of that culture took over the whole culture, just changed everything. When you talk about homosexuals, you're talking about 2%. It was female, two and a half so, but female under 2%, right. So now what we're talking about, we're talking about small groups can take over culture.

50:36
That's why I have such amazing hope for the future of the Church of Jesus Christ and for the next 5,000 years, because I have this hope that there's men like you and like my son, bryce and Brandon and Niles and Branson and everybody else who are like you know what? There's going to be? A group of men who are fired up about following Jesus Christ in reality, with passion, and we're going to go do the stuff, and so maybe it's 10% of the churches. So when you talk about the church, yeah, there's a lot of stuff, it's amazing to me. I mean really and we'll go back on this martial arts thing, because when you started working into it, um, it's amazing to me that you came up pentecostal background, uh, you came up around melodyland stuff I know some of those the history of that charismatic renewal which was, uh, the herald brothers is that what they called it?

51:30
yeah, charismatic renewal. Pentecostal became charismatic because it was a whole different move. And so all of these different things that happened and you came through the church and yet you still love Jesus.

51:44 - Speaker 1
Like when you see the dark underbelly of the business end of church. Right, it's because I never accepted the condition around me. I always looked around like I don't know what your people are doing, but if you call it church, I guess it's church and I was like I want nothing to do with it, but that doing. But if you call it church, I guess it's church and I was like I want nothing to do with it. But that's why I still went, like I think I first time I went and saw Bayless I was 14 years old and it was cool because it was a first time that God used a man to tie a thread all the things I'd heard since I was a kid but it just it didn't feel contrived or forced. It felt, it felt genuine. And I think probably like second or third time I'm there, I'm sitting on the far right side, he's walking by at the end of service and just puts his shoulder into me as he's going by.

52:24 - Speaker 2
Really, yeah, it's pretty funny really, yeah, hey, listen to that.

52:26 - Speaker 1
Yeah, what a great guy man, love him, love him to death, that's. And the funny part was, you know, I think I'd finally gone to the membership class, like 20 years after going there, and of course you know it's I'm 30, 33 or 34. I've been going there the whole time, you know. And and joe walker, the head of security, comes up and just sees me, just stares me, shakes my hand and I start to let it go and he just grips it, death grips it, and he's staring me. He's like I need a wall. And I'm like, oh god, I'm like I can be your wall. Yeah. He's like, no, but I need a wall. I'm like, okay, I'll be a wall. It still took me two years to get on the security team but you were doing security before this.

53:07 - Speaker 2
So, 19 years old, you're like, hey, I don't want to get killed the next time I get in a brawl. So you go into martial arts right now. You also start hanging around with some unsavory characters if you will.

53:18 - Speaker 1
I've been doing that my whole life. Yeah, well, okay, so did.

53:20 - Speaker 2
Jesus, yeah, but it's okay. Okay. But I do think that the difference in Christ because I do have guys who will tell me oh yeah, I'm hanging around a bar all the time because that's what Jesus said, I go. No, he went there and then he left with his guys it's a big difference, huge difference. That wasn't his context. So uh, but you, but you, uh, so you get into security, you start doing martial arts. Right, did you go to college for a while?

53:47 - Speaker 1
started taking junior college courses when I was in high school. I failed out of math. Okay, I couldn't do algebra to save my life, yeah, and so I started taking, and you never needed it since then, anyway, no, yeah, no, but it's cool, though. I actually started taking and you never needed it since then, anyway, no, yeah, no, but it's cool, though. I actually started taking like law classes, theology classes- Did you?

54:02
really, yeah, like that stuff I loved. So I always say I've probably lived enough for five lifetimes. But there was a portion of my scholastic endeavor and then my own personal endeavor where I'm like I'm just going to take the bar, I'm just going to study and take the bar, like there's no. I looked at the requirements for it and I learned all these things.

54:18
And when I was a kid again I'm five years old, I'm locked inside that duplex my mom, we had this massive Webster's dictionary, like the old school one had this broken encyclopedia set and had this weird book called the maxims of law and it was written around the same vernacular and language as the King James Bible. I'm like, oh, I know this. I don't know how to read this. I'm like I don't like it but I can process it. And so I'm bored. I'm like let's read it.

54:41
And so the law always fascinated me, just the fact that you can win an argument. And then, taking poli-sci classes, I went once I befriended the teacher I kept going back to was in, because I made it very difficult for them to actually and listen. I I don't love tension, but when you, when you realize the value of it and you realize, like how much you can glean from it and realize this is even a way of empathizing with another side or possibly seeing another side. Until you've championed the other side and I even looked like spiritual warfare until you understand what the enemy's perspective is, what his job, role and function is and how they attack, how else will you know what your enemy's doing?

55:26 - Speaker 2
Is that something you learned? Martial arts kind of equip you for that? Nope, no.

55:30 - Speaker 1
Dreams.

55:31
Dreams in the Holy Spirit. Wow, and it's honestly, you can almost look like everything, like I found out, when you go to pray violently right Matthew 11, 12, since days John the Baptist, kingdom of heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force. Didn't say Jesus didn't say it shouldn't happen, didn't say it couldn't happen, didn't say he didn't want it to happen. Didn't say God hates it, god doesn't bless it, just says it happens. Okay. So who's taking it by force? None of the Christian dudes I know, not my father Like, like everyone, just kind of go through the motions because they're very alive to self and they love the fact that they can play church without actually having to be the church. Like, they love that because it requires nothing of them. And so you look at that and all of a sudden you realize you go up and you pray violently against the enemy. You start making declarations rebuking and of course a lot of people are like, oh, we don't rebuke the enemy. Like maybe you don't, but as for me and my house, we'll serve the.

56:23
Lord, and so it's it's. It's crazy the corners that we've cut, but when doing that you cannot be disingenuous. If you at all have not gone to God and you are hiding sin, you are living in a way like and like you. Then you try and go up against the enemy Like you're going to get your butt handed to you, fast, hard. And we've done prayer walks where we've had some people that were actually in like a mental, physical, emotional stupor for days because they went correct.

56:49
And it reminds me, though, second Corinthians 11, it's it's, it's Paul's, he's talking about communion and he says don't do this in a hasty manner, right, with wrong intentions, lest you come together, right. There's three curses that happen if you come with wrong intentions you are sick, weak and asleep. And then verse 36 says something like lest you come together for judgment. What is the church in America right now? One could argue it is sick, weak and asleep. What are the odds that we've come taken of the wine and the bread, taken of the body of Christ, and yet we have not yet processed the weight of it, we have not done the work behind it that God requires that we do, we have not surrendered what we're supposed to surrender or changed, and so you look at this like from a corporate perspective, not just an individual perspective. The body of Christ is still responsible to the body of Christ, not just an individual perspective.

57:39 - Speaker 2
The body of Christ is still responsible to the body of Christ. That's why there has to be a group of men, like the guys you hang out with, like what we're, what we're discipling and developing with Christian Men's Network who actually say hey, we are going to be that remnant, we're going to be those guys who stand up, fight for our families, fight for the next generation, who stand up for what's truth in culture and also. So not every church is.

58:02 - Speaker 1
Not every church is supposed to be, not every guy is supposed to be, but also who can withstand the vitriol and the vilification from the church?

58:09 - Speaker 2
So everybody has a different role. Is that what you're saying? Okay, and then so a little background you go through martial arts, start studying Somewhere. In that process, somewhere in your early twenties, you have a child, 24. Yeah, 24 years old, you have a son Out of wedlock, yes, yeah so, aiden, right, yep, so, and you guys are still in relationship today, thick as thieves, really. Yeah, so that's, that's quite a journey then. Oh, so that's quite a journey then all that whole thing through there.

58:39 - Speaker 1
Yep and I always knew abuse was happening in the home, but he was pretty horribly sexually abused, assaulted from six to 12-ish, growing up with his mom, yep, in his mom's house by an older stepbrother and he just recently he managed things for a long time and of course I covered him in prayer. Interesting part, right, I'm walking out every morning, three to six o'clock in the morning. I'm walking in my doors six 615. And my son's in the hallway puking, and at the time I'd moved my, my, my parents in. We're living together and it was so funny because my mom was losing her mind, like he needs to see a doctor. He needs to. I'm like no, he doesn't. This is he's getting physically, you know, attacked. And she's like, well, you have to do something. I'm like he has to do something. I've warned him. He's heard all these things. I love my son to death.

59:30
It's funny if you, if you talk to him, which at some point you probably will, he'll be down here. Um, poor thing, had to hear like me talking online. Now he had to hear that for years before before and I probably a handful of times. He was like, can you please just go tell this to other people and not me, can you just do that? And so he knows.

59:49
And so right, it's that tension between fathers and sons. It's healthy because it refines you. But you know he was on the verge of suicide and death door for years and he told other people the only reason why he didn't do it was because of me. Meanwhile I'm the villain in my own family because they're like you. You can't treat him this hard. I'm like listen, god didn't give the son to you, gave him to me and God told me exactly what he wanted and instructed, said you're not raising a son, you're raising a King. Yeah, you get told that audibly. You can't really navigate that and meander away. And so, and all these things right, between uhending the security, the training, working, I worked at the Playboy Mansion for five years. So I started when I was 21, started off doing catering and there was like a hybrid plainclothes security as catering and, like my horns, held up my halo. But through this whole time, you know God was always part of the conversation.

01:00:44 - Speaker 2
It's fascinating. You mentioned it to somebody recently. You said you'd, you'd, uh, you'd get done with work and security and all that sort of stuff at five in the morning and be at church at eight in the morning. So there was always that sense of so. So through that whole journey, steven, your dad not being mentored, but but your mom with the things she was trying to close you in In all of this, the context was Christ loved you and you knew it. It was something.

01:01:13 - Speaker 1
I couldn't even articulate it, I just knew that and then I knew it was Jesus. But hindsight's, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit never left me alone. I love that Ever. I couldn't articulate that, right, I just knew the name Jesus. Didn't even understand what God was or who God was at the time, but I just knew, like I knew the name of Jesus and so would would would say, his name. And I joke around like we kind of lived out like a buddy cop movie, like crazy stuff has happened and it's like I'm talking to this imaginary figure, it's like that's pretty crazy, right, but I'm I'm hearing things audibly back and it sounds like I was a crazy kid, but like I just have the sense of we are on an adventure and we might be the only ones going on that adventure, and then, you know, all these kinds of characters get placed into our life and we navigate it. But the whole thing with going to church was God was always real. It was never a question of, like you know, whether or not he wasn't there.

01:02:05
When I was 17, I think I had one of these 17, 18, I'm taking religious studies or theology at Golden West College and I get pissed at God. I'm like, because I'm studying all these other religions, I'm like I need to backtrack. I'm nine or 10 years old at my mom's work at the training center and I find the Riverside County Sheriff's book on the occult. They had a few books in a binder and I start going through the pictures. I'm like what are these people doing? And I see these pictures of drawings. I'm like, wait a second.

01:02:31
And I was super pissed off at God. I'm like you never told me there was another side. And I go to my dad like you didn't tell me that there were other people working against us. All I was told was we don't talk about those people, we don't think about that. What do you mean? They're real. They're doing real things to other real people, to animals. Like you see all these crime scene photos, probably some things I probably shouldn't have seen. But at that point I'm like why can't you deal with this in reality? And there was no reality to it. And I saw that as a sense of like this is weak. This is not the God that I know.

01:03:01 - Speaker 2
Yeah, and you saw the exploitation of the people as you grew up and you were doing security and all that sort of stuff. So go to when you were 17. I'm 17.

01:03:10 - Speaker 1
I'm studying all these religions, right, I'm starting everything from you know Islam to you know Hinduism, buddhism, zoroastrianism, right, going back 5,000 years, and I'm like it's demons. And I'm like how did? How do we not know? And so I basically had like a yell out session with God. But I had gone to so many temples, mosques, I'm like I need to know.

01:03:35
And the worst ones, the weakest ones, were the Catholics, and God bless them if they still want to call themselves a Catholic. I don't want to call myself in anything If I follow Christ. I follow Christ, all the cultural attachments to it. And I go to the Vatican it's a quick side note and I keep hearing like, oh, it's the church that you know, built on Peter. It's built on Peter. I'm like, just because you have a dead guy buried in the basement doesn't like it shouldn't literally mean that. But I'm like, just tell the people the truth.

01:03:58
It's like week into Bernie's institutional religion edition. And so I go through all these things. God is always there and we have just a knockout, yell out conversation. I threw my Bible. I'm like, I'm done. I'm done, like this is weak. All the things I'm seeing are weak. All the noise, the lies, and I'm like what's real? And of course you know, in God fashion he shows himself in the way that I was able to receive it and process and at that point it's like all right, we had a different conversation, but that was an ongoing, it wasn't just a one and done. That probably happened at least like five or six times. At that point I had complete autonomy, I had money, I was working, I had a truck, yeah, which is basically you're good.

01:04:39 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I'm good to go. Yeah, I'm good, I I got a truck, I'm working and.

01:04:42 - Speaker 1
I'm more independent than the average bear. Yeah, and so at that point, you know, I fast forward. My father was always trying to be fatherly, but he wasn't fatherly.

01:04:53
He was kind of still too self-consumed and I think I was maybe 12 years ago, 10 years ago. We're sitting at the table and he's talking to me about something and I'm you know, I'm kind of raising my eyebrows and at some point I said, like you know, you're not my pastor, right, and I didn't do it to cut him. I didn't do it to chop him down. I'm just like you don't have to talk to me like this, like you're not my guy, like Bayless is my guy. Like like I appreciate you, I know you're trying, that's how you show love.

01:05:23
He didn't talk to me for like three days, like he just almost tried to disown me. I'm like, how can you take that person? Like, after all these years, I'm like, what advice of yours have I actually taken? I'm like you're barely able to manage yourself, let alone other things. And so God showed himself and was so present, in a way, that I was always connected to him.

01:05:45
And now was I trying to avoid him Absolutely? Was I trying to, you know, have have my life go on as long as I could? Absolutely. But with everyone, rent comes due. Like, how much longer can we, even as a church, exhaust the fire hose of grace wide open throttle before we have to address things.

01:06:03
And that's why I think, like in 2020, I think that the church age ended. I don't think the kingdom age started right away, but there's a transitionary period in the Bible between all these different major figures, major moves of God. And if you look at that like March 2020, first time since Christ was here that all the churches shut down everywhere at the exact same time for at least a week, if not two weeks, if not three weeks, if not six months and then in America, how many churches got paid to do so? How many got a government check based off size and occupancy, and how many cashed it? I can't tell you how many pastors I was close to were like, did you cash a check? And they're like ah, I knew you were going to ask this question.

01:06:40 - Speaker 3
I'm like I just want to know did you cash a check Like you.

01:06:42 - Speaker 1
just it is what it is. And then, all of a sudden, the justifications. I only knew of a couple that returned the checks. Hibbs was one of them and I'm, and I wasn't. I still don't talk to Hibbs, at least not on a personal level.

01:06:54
But I look at this like listen, how many families had to suffer because the church shut down? That's blood money, yeah. And like, yeah, of course the church has bills, but you're also supposed to steward these things. And even now, how many men have a sense of preparing and storing away for a coming hardship? Why isn't the church preparing? Why isn't the church? So if the body of Christ has a sense of something coming, we need to be prepared for it. And I'm not saying it's their mandate, but at the very least, if you are of, you are of God's people, you know shepherding God's people when the people have to shepherd themselves in that way. And I only say that because history, historically speaking, the church was always a place of refuge for women, children and elderly in times of war. Yeah, it's supposed to be. We're staring down the barrel right now.

01:07:40 - Speaker 2
Yeah, bear Bryant. Bear Bryant's famous quote. You know, the will to win is not as important as the will to prepare to win. And that's the key Amen. You know, preparation. So what were the key things you've taught?

01:07:55 - Speaker 1
your son. What are the key things you've taught yourself? Because now he's in his 20s, he's in his making his decisions. As a man, first and foremost is loyalty. Um, there was a time, I think it was 17. We're sitting on the dock in the backyard and we're having. I did also teach my son proper scotch, like we enjoy, you know, 18 years and up, old enough to vote, and so he doesn't like the cheap stuff, um, but we're talking back there and hanging out. Sometimes we didn't talk much and he asked a question and it just it gutted me and he says why haven't you left all of us behind at the time? You know? When I got full custody.

01:08:35
He's like 14 going to 15.

01:08:37
We had locked horns on everything like we were fighting over the smallest things and he knew what he was doing. He was doing attention like that was his survival mechanism. That was his survival mechanism. He didn't want to be loved, didn't want to be nurtured, pushing you yeah, my family. It's a ton of betrayal there, right, a ton of like giving and pouring into them and just like this long string of, like you know, interesting things in it. It's you know, I love them and I look after them as best as I can. But it's also like this is where you learn, like healthy distance is a thing, like certain environments like God still calls you to honor. But there's a certain line in the sand where it's like honor but not die on other people's altars, and that's, that's a big thing. That also the church has a weird way of of teaching and not teaching. But when my son asked me that, I simply responded with leaving isn't something that we do, it's not like you're in this for the long haul and so you never know what sticks, right, you never know what sticks, and so you hope to God that all the right things stick. And my thing with God has been like listen, you told me, and I pray to God all the time when I've.

01:09:41
When I lost that custody hearing situation with him, I walked out and I get this part in Genesis when he was 13. Yeah, I think it's Genesis 22, where Abraham is going out with his son and his workers say where are you going? He says the lad and I are going to worship. At that point you equate worship with sacrifice. And if that doesn't nail you to your own cross about you just thinking, you can just go sing some songs and raise your hands for 30 minutes and that's worship. And so I looked at him like son or father. I sacrificed my son to you. You've brought me this far. I can do nothing else until he's under my roof.

01:10:18
Seven months to the day that I made that prayer, I had full custody. Wow, his mom and stepfather were fighting. They, I had full custody. Wow, his mom and stepfather were fighting. They were going through the beginning of like a divorce proceeding and it got so toxic that he comes over. I'm like what's going on? His phone's blowing up. My phone starts blowing up with this crazy text and I'm like what's happening? He fills me in. I'm like well, congratulations, you're not going home.

01:10:40
Like this is your home now. Wow. And from that point on I had full custody. So all these things with my son and teaching about spiritual warfare, taking him over to Israel to go renovate bomb shelters with us and go tour that's the first time I'd also learned that God was talking to my son and giving him dreams and giving him visions. It was the funniest thing.

01:10:59
I'm preparing up for my second trip it's like 2017. And my son says I offered if he wanted to go. And he says I, I can't go with you. I'm like what do you mean? Can't go? What? What don't you want to go back? He's like I do. I just I'm trying to, I'm trying to wrestle with something. I'm like what's up? He's like well, I always had these dreams that I'm in a desert place and I'm going to meet you somewhere and I jump in the back of a pickup truck with a bunch of other dudes that look Mexican and they're all armed. And you know, we know we're going to fight somewhere. I said that's interesting. And he's like when I got to Israel, I realized they weren't Mexicans.

01:11:40
I started laughing. I said okay, so you're not ready for that dream? He's like I'm not ready for that dream to come true. Yet I'm like, okay, fair enough, done. And so kind of, let him do his thing.

01:11:48
But I was laughing at that moment. I praise God because, again, like the best thing we can do at a certain point, our kids don't want our words. We're leading by example. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, and so, so good, and so our, our, my prayer was like God, I just pray that you love me and lead me perfectly to love and lead him the way that you need him to be. That was it, cause I didn't have it Like, I didn't go through the trauma he went through.

01:12:11
I didn't know the extent of the sexual abuse and everything, but I knew that there was abuse. So I'm like I don't have a dog in this fight. I can't break him out of these cycles. I can't. You know, I knew he was vaping and sneaking away drinks. I start laughing just because again, he's puking, he's physically attacked by demonic forces.

01:12:27
Every time I walk in the house after I'm doing my thing and I'm walking in, like you know, footloose and fancy free, I'm on top of the mountain and I'm just like, oh, when you're ready to not deal with that, let me know. And so I can't tell you things other than what God had led me to do, and just some of it was playing it fast and loose, but the intentionality was loyalty. Loyalty is everything. Without loyalty, none of this matters in every sense, in the familial sense, in relation to God and Christ and the Holy Spirit. And the problem is we only go so far for certain things, and even for marriage. Right, we're supposed to die for our bride, as Christ did for the church. How many guys out there are still completely honoring themselves and thinking they can?

01:13:10 - Speaker 2
get away and manage themselves. One of my needs taken care of.

01:13:14 - Speaker 1
It's not how this works. Yeah, but no one tells them that's antichrist. Not a single pastor out there says you have the spirit of antichrist. Why? Because you're alive to self when you've taken on the responsibility in the mantle, of fathering, of husbanding, like like. If you never have that conversation and you never repent, father, show me how much has this antichrist spirit, you know, afflicted and been woven into my family. Then look at rebellion. Where's rebellion come from? How much, how many aspects of witchcraft are we allowing in? And so if you never address these things in the spiritual sense and never give room to the fact that you could be operating with the spirit of Antichrist, but you still go to church and you still do life with other people who call themselves Christians, and so no one checks you, church will never check you.

01:13:58 - Speaker 2
No, we don't get checked you know there's no accountability basically, and most men want authority without accountability.

01:14:05 - Speaker 1
Which is childish. Yeah, it's also tyrannical.

01:14:09 - Speaker 2
Yeah, well, that's what ends up happening, because we end up operating out of the flesh. So the flesh only knows how to demand and, you know, order somebody be a dictator? So we think sometimes hey, I'm going to be the head of my house, we tell everybody what's going on, but really we're called to serve. Jesus said I came to serve.

01:14:33 - Speaker 1
I think if anything I taught my son, I exemplified that. You know, the easiest way of saying is I became like a missionary junkie. Right, like I'm like, let's go to disaster relief, let's do this, do that. And you know, for a season I was, I was paying for missionaries to go and then God said I don't want your money, I want your time. And you know it was weird because it almost happened around the same time I got full custody of my son. I was financially in a position to do it, but I was just kind of looking at God like this is quite the adventure right now and I don't know exactly what's in store. But that's kind of.

01:15:06
The point is that you were not given all the answers. We're given a trajectory, and a pastor buddy of mine I love him to death. He gave me this phrase dream in years, plan in months, work in weeks. That's where he ended. But I realized on the day-to-day, like your days belong to the Lord. So if you can dream in years, plan in months, work in weeks and, god willing, your wife's on the same page, yeah, all of a sudden there's supposed to be liberty and freedom in moving about the cabin. Yeah, and all of a sudden, if you're boxed in like, oh, it's this day and that day, it's like that sounds mortifying.

01:15:40 - Speaker 2
Well, it's to me.

01:15:42
One of my, my professor, leonard Sweet, wrote a book, well-played Life, and then it basically was his apology for having been so legalistic in his previous books, and he said he basically said this he said that that God doesn't have a plan for your life.

01:15:58
He has a plan for mankind, a wonderful purpose for your life, and your purpose is to fit in his plan for redemption of the earth, which means, then, that we have this amazing creative ability to color in the things that God's given us, to go after the passion of our heart, and I see that in you. I want to finish up with one thing, and I think it's one of these deals where, particularly if I have my sons here, because you guys are all the same age, basically uh, we could talk about this for a long time, but two things. One, we referenced the bollingers early in our conversation, which close, close friends of, uh, glenn and debbie and judy and I just so cool let me just and then and then I'm following this guy on social media, which I'm like who the hell is this guy?

01:16:44
and then all of a sudden he's he's dating, you know, my best friend's daughter. It's like, okay, well, this is interesting.

01:16:53 - Speaker 1
And that all even came oh.

01:16:55 - Speaker 2
God thing man.

01:16:56 - Speaker 1
Oh, and I'm sitting there and when you get told these things, depending upon where you're at, with God's different stories, so audibly June, june, 2020, I hear this phrase bookend and at the same time, two people that didn't know each other gave me the same word, said listen, you've left your home, your family, all these things like God's going to bless you a hundred fold. And these are two guys that don't speak like this.

01:17:17
So I'm like all right, god confirmation. And then all of a sudden I'm out there on the property and I hear bookend and I get this vision of like an equal that God created. And so I'm like that's beautiful. I'm like please don't make her like a, like a six, five, 200 pound female, cause I was, I don't want to marry a linebacker, like just. And so again, like even even with Lacey, like had no idea I was didn't want Leah and so all of a sudden it goes. Yeah, exactly.

01:17:45
And it goes forward and God's saying like you have not, because you asked not, and I don't pray for myself and I haven't until I met her, she's completely changed even the things in the scope of which I've been praying for. And because when you see, when you start praying for others and intercede on behalf of others, and you start seeing the just the massive change in their life and their family's life and their condition, their spiritual, physical, financial condition, you almost become like like what else can we do? What else can we pray for? And so it's been so cool because that's been a completely new change and it's almost like rectified some things.

01:18:18 - Speaker 2
Yeah, You've met the love of your life. And uh, I actually watched her play basketball at Birdville high school in her sophomore or junior year. I think she was all league.

01:18:26 - Speaker 1
Oh, she was great.

01:18:27 - Speaker 2
Yeah, she was.

01:18:27 - Speaker 1
she was telling me she was a basketball player.

01:18:29 - Speaker 2
That's awesome, yeah, so it's. Uh, and my, my boys, were basketball players, and and so they all kind of all grew up together and it's amazing to see this, steven, so it's awesome.

01:18:38 - Speaker 1
What's crazy, too, is if they hadn't have come to Jesus and beers that morning.

01:18:49 - Speaker 2
I don't think we'd be here. Wait a minute, what do you mean? Jesus and beers, yeah, okay, that's that other podcast you guys were doing, yeah, and it started off.

01:18:52 - Speaker 1
You know, eight years ago I'm in the desert with another security guy and a pastor buddy. We had drank, we went through like I don't know how many balls of scotch, a bunch of ammo. We're shooting everything right into our bikes and we had cut the fat and we had talked openly and honestly about major things, you know, theoretical things, theological things, like we're going through this gamut and it was so, you know, it was cathartic, and so the sense I had, my, my spirit, was God wanted more of that, and so I had a couple more dinners at my house to where I had, you know, other people that will remain nameless, for because of what we did.

01:19:26
But again it's like going through my Scotch collection and a bunch of meat and five, six hours of conversation and everyone is blessed and edified. And then I'm like, okay, this needs to happen. I'm out in Pennsylvania, I go to a church and the pastor is like what can we do to get the men? I said easy, jesus and beers. Like God even gave him the name for it. And he's like, yes, we, we have to do that.

01:19:46 - Speaker 4
And, of course, like we were like we're going back and forth.

01:19:48 - Speaker 1
We're all stoked, and then it gets to his wife and his wife's like we're not doing that, we're not doing it. We've worked too hard. We've worked too hard to build this in tandem. Like that's the humility of the part of like, yes, your time, your effort, your sacrifice your blood, your tears, all these things.

01:20:08
But, yes, God, holy spirit, jesus, favor, and the moment that you say the, I I'll give you the example it's, it's and it's self deprecating a previous girl that I dated, that I thought was the one that got away and she wasn't, but I thought she was for a moment. Uh, her mom sang at church choir and I hadn't seen her. And I'm working security and I'm doing my thing. It's a father's day event. I forgot what year this was. It's almost 10 years ago, no, eight years ago something.

01:20:38
And all of a sudden, um, I'm sitting in the front row across from PB and I, I see the father and the mom who I'm still friends with. I see them and they're sitting there and I don't see the rest of the family. I said, oh, hey, you know good to see you guys. Anyways, I get up at the end and I you know everyone's kind of talking and I walk over, and I start walking over and dad's is like, no, don't come. And I'm like, oh, okay, and then I see my ex and some dude that was with her and I was just like, oh my gosh, what, what, why, why would she bring him to my house? And the Holy Spirit checked me like oh, it's your house, is it? Like a pretty hard check.

01:21:16
And I'm like.

01:21:17
I'm like oh my gosh, forgive me, I'm wrong Like, but it helped me hit reset on the perspective of her like all these things, and so the reason why I say that and I respect why my pastor's wife at the time I respect why she said it, but he was heartbroken and even fast forward to last year, I had some lesson things in the basement of their home and a week before I say, hey, I'm going to come out and I'll grab it, he's like cool. And then I sent him the link for the Jesus and beers that I posted because I had recorded this in August 2022. And all of a sudden I get a text very next day. He said actually, um, we threw all your things out and we're going to mail you an envelope with some pictures and so I don't, since I had. It was that he felt that burned, that I went ahead and did the event almost as if he had tried to earmark it, Like maybe my wife will let me have him. Like sorry, bro, Like I'm on God's calendar, not yours, but in that event, it, you know it. I honored the Holy Spirit. I called it what I did One of my best friends, Byron Rogers.

01:22:19
He came out. David Englehart didn't even know him at the time. I just sent him a message and said, hey, I said I have no money to pay you, but I'm doing this thing. It's going to be pretty cool. If you want to come, you know, cover your expenses, and so you know he did. He didn't want to, he did.

01:22:33 - Speaker 2
So how did this connect in with Lacey and all that?

01:22:39 - Speaker 1
So the first event was in Seattle in August 2020. And then I just posted up the episodes at least two of the three are posted on YouTube and that was last December. And so at the same time, god said I need you to plan the next one. I'm like, okay, where, dallas? Okay, when, now, soon. I'm like okay, so I have friends that live here kind of went to the range and scoped it out. And so, as I met Lacey, I said, hey, like you know your parents, you know you and your parents. Like it'd be cool, you know, if they want to come, they can come check it out. Like we can.

01:23:09
Still it's a men's gathering, we can still have women in the room and, of course, you know, two camera crews had quit at the time and so God has me drive through Denver. I buy cameras I didn't have the money for and God had a purpose for it. If I didn't have them we wouldn't have recorded it. But they end up showing up and they leave kind of halfway through, and then I'm with the guys that night in the Airbnb and the next night they said, hey, come over for dinner. And then I'm there and I ended up staying for eight days and it's pretty much like courting the whole family at the same time. I don't know. In fact, I can almost guarantee she can attest that wouldn't have happened if they wouldn't have come to Jesus and Beers Because they saw me in a stressful situation where the camera crews quit. We're bootstrapping everything, we're trying to set up camera angles and positions and lighting, and it was just Saw you under pressure, totally yeah.

01:24:00 - Speaker 2
So you see who you are.

01:24:01 - Speaker 1
And then saw me leading the guys and leading the discussion, and so it was Englehart and Byron again. This time we added Rudy Reyes, who is a force recon sniper. He's in Fallujah, he's on the Fox TV show Special Forces now Like he's, and he was totally honest. He's like I just started reading the Bible two weeks ago and so.

01:24:20 - Speaker 2
But again, again, like but he's being real about it and and so. But again again like but he's being real about it and the idea, the premise.

01:24:26 - Speaker 1
The premise was fatherhood. Yeah, it's like, how do you define all these people and this is why these men's ministries it's big deals like define masculinity. It's fatherhood, it's always been fatherhood, biblical masculinity is. And even if you don't have kids, do you have the heart of the father? Can you look at society like wayward kids that need to be loved and corrected back into position? It's such a huge opportunity and so I like and he had just been reunited with his one of his sons, and so I'm like you know, so then I'm going to throw him in the mix. I need guys in his position and station with his background.

01:24:58
I need them to see like there's still a jumping off point where you start to approach this thing and you start to look at things and it was great, he was a great speaker, and then the next one, we might do a different event, but they'd come and again. Jesus and beers. It's not to be salacious, it's not to be like.

01:25:13
I'm not trying to rub people the wrong way, and I love people that have reverence for the name of Christ and say you can't put Jesus in the name. I'm like I had to do whatever God tells me to do. It's not my name.

01:25:23 - Speaker 2
Well, it's your frame and your reference and your filter. You know it's who you are and so what you have is you have respect for everybody who has a different filter, right, and that's what we have to do. So that's why, for me, with the ministry to men, we've got a number of different guys in a cohort. We get together and talk about these things, but there's different guys with different styles, and I'm just, I'm just, I'm all good with it. It's all about Jesus Christ, it's all about following him, it's all about changing the hearts of men, it's all about raising up fathers, raising up, and so that's why I appreciate, you know, your push on it, your, if you will, your push on it, your, if you will, your take on it, because you're doing something that I wouldn't do. That show you know, and and and I know other guys who would be like they'll do something else you wouldn't do what they do Totally Right. So what do we have to do? We have to have that, because if you're going to have, if you're going to have, an armed force, you're going to have a whole bunch of people specialize in a whole lot of different things. Right, and all of it comes together in order to win the victory.

01:26:29
So, uh, I'm going to hit one last thing and it's Jeremiah 28 and 29. And, uh, you hit something I thought was great on a recent deal where you hit Jeremiah. So walk me through Jeremiah Hanani, right, jeremiah 28. Yeah, and I want to add a little insert in that. Oh, this is the okay. This is the one now, remember, in the kids room. This is the one in the kids room, yeah, yeah, and you got the ukulele. You said this is not a, this is actually a real normal size guitar.

01:26:56
It's a normal size guitar. I'm just a large person, it's awesome.

01:27:00 - Speaker 1
I gotta have fun with this stuff too, like it's yeah, life's too short.

01:27:03 - Speaker 2
What was beautiful about that was I thought here's what I, here's what I actually thought. I looked at that on on your post and I thought, uh, wow, there's a like like maybe he's uh met somebody who's beginning to sort of balance his life, because it was like he's gone from like railing against the Vatican to a ukulele in a children's room. Now, same message. You understand what I'm saying, but it was like ah, he's met a lady.

01:27:34 - Speaker 1
We were having fun with it, and that's like she had so much joy in my life. Well, there you go.

01:27:38 - Speaker 2
Yeah, there you go Exactly, Totally Like it's awesome, man, but you hit Jeremiah 28 and 29. And Totally Like it's it's awesome, man, but you hit Jeremiah 28 and 29 and the message you had you had, uh, three parts on it and uh, if you can remember, if you can recall this, in Jeremiah 28 and 29 and three parts cause, where you went off on was Jeremiah 29, 11, which we always take out of context. In fact, we most often reference Jeremiah 29, 11 as a new Testament scripture, most often reference Jeremiah 29, 11 as a New Testament scripture. Right, you know the plant that I know. In fact, God says I know the thoughts I have for you, not for your destruction, to give you a future and a hope, whatever, whatever translation use. But basically, you took that and dialed it back into Jeremiah 28.

01:28:23 - Speaker 1
You have to add the context, took that and dialed it back into Jeremiah 28. You have to add the context and what. What I believe in barbecuing sacred cows, all of them. Because, again, what happens is if you hold on to a nugget and a perspective, the odds are when Christ returns he's going to offend you when you hold on to something that a mindset of he's just here to bless and keep and love and and secure us and make us safe. And he didn't come to bring peace but a sword right. I'm okay with people being offended at me. Let's hash things out together in order for you to not be offended at Christ. Praise God, I can fall on the sword.

01:28:55
In that sense it's a big grenade, but when you looked at it, hananiah was trying to tell people what they wanted to hear. There's a cultural relation to that. In our day and age, jeremiah comes in and Hanani speaks with authority and he says all the right things, the word of the Lord, you know. He says all the things, but what he, what he was dealing with, was first, god says, because you've taught the people lies. Then says that you've led them into rebellion and that says into your captivity.

01:29:25
How many lies have people accepted? Cultural, spiritual, religious? How many have truths? How much are they? One foot here and one foot there, right, lukewarm, yet no one checks them, no one tells them, and then that leads to the rebellion. How much rebellion have you laid up in your heart that you have not addressed and you don't even recognize, is there? Okay, then captivity you are captive to sin, slavery. Within that sin, the bondage of sin, and Isaiah 58, 59, the perfect fast of the Lord is chosen. But so you look at this and just to declare that, and even within the scope of 29, 11, you still have 12, 13, and 14, which means you have to seek him, you have to find him, you have to with all your heart. And then people are like no, I just got to sprinkle this little verse, this is sprinkles, it's on a poster.

01:30:10 - Speaker 2
Yeah.

01:30:12 - Speaker 1
Lacey had that little printout on her mirror in her room.

01:30:18 - Speaker 2
As you're doing this deal. Well, here's my thing on that, stephen, and we'll close with this and wrap it up, but what a great conversation, man. Thanks for taking the time.

01:30:26 - Speaker 1
No thank you.

01:30:28 - Speaker 2
Really really cool. But my deal is Jeremiah 29 is to captives and it's to people in Babylon, and what it says right at the front part of Jeremiah 29, before it says 29, 11, my thoughts for you freedom, not for your destruction is. It says the land that you're in captivity, because most of them say, hey, get us out, get us out, get us out. He says no, no. He says I want you to build houses, I want you to plant vineyards. It's meant to bless you, yeah, and he says that your blessing, as you bless that city, is going to be a blessing to you.

01:31:03
I mean, this goes totally against so much of our cultural Christianity where God wants you, you know, just out there and free and unencumbered. We are in a battle and and we're in the midst of cultural chaos and the world's in captivity, and what are we supposed to do, we out of here? See, that's the thing that ticks me off is, yeah, I want to be out. No, no, no, you're supposed to be in here. You're supposed to be planting vineyards, you're supposed to be doing stuff, you're supposed to get things done, and that's why I appreciate your word, man, on that whole deal.

01:31:35 - Speaker 1
Well, and here's the check, here's the loving check. If we look at the cameras, you give a coward Revelation 21,. The first group of people mentioned that do not inherit heaven are the cowards. And if you refuse to look at the condition that we're in, without a mindset and a spiritual posture and a fiber within it, that Jesus didn't come here for us to be raptured out and get a hall pass out. He came to do the work. He went to war. If we're ready for all things, which is because, listen, loving people is war. When you're told to love your enemies and pray for your enemies, that's war. When you're told to love your family, it's war. To die to self, it's a war. So the war goes on. But until you change your footing and your mindset, you don't realize that there's so much blessing in the time, place and age that he's brought us to. And it's time that the body of Christ sees that for what it is. It's time for men to see that, for what it is.

01:32:29 - Speaker 2
Joel says wake up the mighty men, prepare for battle. Amen, and that's what we need to do Wake up the mighty men.

01:32:35 - Speaker 1
I'm going to leave it with my favorite verse, though. Got to end it. Go for it. Psalm, like a mighty man who shouts from too much wine and he beat back his enemies to a perpetual reproach. It's there. It's there. I love it, man.

01:32:51 - Speaker 2
Hope is alive. Hope has a name. Hope's name is Jesus Come on.

01:32:55 - Speaker 3
Good stuff, bro, appreciate it. 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 cmnmen. That's cmnmen. 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 you find podcasts or download it. Thanks for hanging with us today. We'll see you next time on Brave Men.