S1E8 - The Battlefield of the Heart: Finding Purpose with Ray Jones

In this episode, Capt Ray Jones shares his profound journey from a troubled childhood to a successful military career, ultimately finding faith in Christ. He discusses the internal battles we face, the importance of unity and community, and how serving others can lead to personal growth. Ray emphasizes the significance of forgiveness, the power of faith in navigating life's challenges, and the call to share that faith with others. His story is a testament to the transformative power of faith and the importance of living a life of purpose and service.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
He said, I'm interested in training parents hand-to-hand combat to fight on the world'ssmallest battlefield.
A child's heart.
And I started snotting.
I started tearing.
I started realizing that the war that we fight is not restricted to geographic boundaries.
It's not in time zones.
It's not in any part of the world.

(00:21):
It's operated by an enemy that will infiltrate every corner of the world.
and into the battlefield here.
It doesn't follow any rules of engagement, doesn't follow any law of armed conflict,doesn't have any morals, doesn't have any ethics.
It will seek the objectives to kill, steal, and destroy anything that it can.

(00:42):
And it will actually use whatever you're combating against you, like your self-worth orsuicidal ideations, to try to tempt you towards its objective, which is hopelessness.
So what I've realized is...
We live in such a blessed country that we don't see what we see in other foreigncountries.
In conventional warfare, of where children can't pick up toys on the sides of the roadbecause their arms might get blown off.

(01:07):
Or how children get abducted and are used as instruments of war.
you
Welcome to Faith in the Line of Duty, a podcast where real people in uniform show howtheir faith in Christ has carried them through the toughest moments.
I'm Daniel Johnson, husband, father, and currently active duty in the United States AirForce.

(01:30):
Each episode I sit down with military members and first responders to talk about the powerof the gospel, the strength of community, and how faith transforms lives, even in the line
of duty.
The views expressed in this podcast are those of the host and do not constituteendorsement by the Department of Defense, Department of the Air Force, or the U.S.
government.

(01:50):
Now here's your host, Daniel Johnson.
Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Faith in the Line of Duty.
Today I have the honor of introducing Ray Jones.
He's a member of the United States Air Force and we're just going to hear his story today.
But before we start, we're just going to start with a word of prayer.

(02:16):
Lord, we just thank you that we're able to do this today.
There's countries around the world that have to go on hiding with their faith, Lord.
Just pray that you would allow your Holy Spirit to lead and guide this time, Lord.
I just pray that you would make it about you and uh not about us, Lord.
Just pray that this message and the story that Ray's gonna share would just help the menand women of the military.

(02:45):
I just thank you so much.
In the name we pray, amen.
So welcome to the show.
Thank you.
Usually I like to just start off by just hearing about your childhood and we'll just gothroughout, you know, kind of your story and how you came to know Jesus.
Yeah, so I'd say uh Ray Jones uh raised about 200 nautical miles west of here in a towncalled Salana, Kansas.

(03:09):
uh Single kid, mom and dad divorced when I was young.
Mom was raised from a pretty, pretty wealthy family.
My dad was a blue collar worker from Oklahoma.
um Pretty normal childhood.
was it was different in some cases, though, because of my mom's side of the family.
They had a grain business that was it was profitable.

(03:31):
and got to travel in their private plane quite a bit and go on ski trips.
So it was abnormal from the lens of how I viewed normal.
And then my dad's side of the family, I mean, they were ah just kind of lower class, butthey loved everybody, always had forgiveness.
I wasn't raised in the church necessarily, but I was in church every Sunday for the mostpart with my grandparents and uh kind of understood.

(03:58):
God and understood things in my life as far as the right and wrong morals and ethics andconscience.
ah But I got in trouble like most kids do, learned some lessons the hard way.
ah My mom and dad remarried, so I've got several brothers and sisters.
And kind of had that interesting relationship of I'd see them on the weekends or have somelive with me here and there.

(04:21):
So we had family, but we were a blended family.
So there was unique.
uh
holidays and Christmases and things where some family would go away, some family wouldcome and visit.
But again, normal, nothing I would say is uh too strange.
And as I began to uh go through junior high and high school, my dad moved out to uhCalifornia for little bit due to some change in work.

(04:45):
And as I was getting out of high school, I was in that age of trying to figure out where Iwas, like a lot of high school students of identity.
and went to do some general construction work with my uncle.
Got in trouble with the law.
Got my first and only time that I was arrested and put into jail.
Just one of those adolescent decisions.

(05:07):
Woke me up though, which is what the correctional system is for is the wake up call.
So that one night in jail and the things that I learned put me on the vector of I want todo something better with my life.
I want to live a life where I can feel proud of who I am and not make really dumbdecisions.
But that led to one of the worst decisions I'd made as far as an accident.

(05:29):
I went back on a rafting incident back in March 6th of 2004 and our boat capsized and mybest friend drowned.
And I watched him drown.
And then I spent three days in the hospital in a coma and that was my wake up call to thefragility of life.
And I remember that was the first time when I was going to church where I felt, and it wasa congregation of several hundred, I wouldn't say a thousand, but you know, four or 500

(05:53):
people.
And I thought every single time that the pastor was talking, that he was talking to me.
My heart was pierced.
I could feel it.
And in hindsight, looking back, I felt like that was the calling of the Holy Spiritopening my eyes at that grounding effect of hitting rock bottom and finally looking up and
I could see Jesus.
And then three months later, my cousin took his own life.

(06:17):
something strange happened after that.
My mom's side of the family had accused me of it and not just accused me of it.
To this day, they still accuse me of it.
I don't know what differences there were.
There was never any evidence, nothing.
um I have ideas, but none of it's factual.
But it's heartbreaking because of the division that that caused in our family.

(06:41):
And we'll talk later about the difference between external force and internal force as itrelates to unity in Christ.
But that was a moment when I realized if that was what going to church was about, becauseI'd shared
my whole life going to church with these family members, then I wanted nothing to do withthe church.
But I found that I wanted to prove to my family and prove to everyone who knew me that Iwas not that person.

(07:02):
So I joined the military and I wanted to prove that I was somebody capable of much morethan the image that I overheard people say that I was or my character.
So my goal in the military was to be the best at everything, to be the number one, to bethe hard charger to lead everything.
And I'd say for the most part,
A lot of that had happened on our graduate right out of boot camp.

(07:25):
um I was promoted early for below the zone on my first enlisted side.
I had all the awards, all the accolades, all the big awards, but I was in a career fieldthat I didn't quite directly choose.
Our crew did a great job, except they had me sign for a job.
said, just in case you can't get special operations, sign for a job.
So I signed for comm thinking I'd never get it, and I got it.

(07:48):
But I spent three years.
just chipping away at everything I could do so I could cross train into something more tipof the spear, more operations.
And I could tell stories on that, but oh what it was doing was it was forging this pathwayof, and the military, of this progressive way of achieving rank, achieving position,

(08:12):
achieving responsibility, achieving leadership, learning followership, and climbing thatproverbial ladder.
And then it got to where I ended up commissioning flying combat operation missions evenfrom when I was enlisted.
And then the Lord got my attention, and that's where am today.
So that's a real quick summary of my childhood and why I joined the military.

(08:34):
um But then we'll talk deeper with other questions you'll probably have as far as my walkwith Christ and some of the things connected to that.
So how did you make the switch from like communications uh to commissioning?
So the commissioning source was, let me back up.
So when I was joining, I tried to be a seer guy because I love camping and outdoors.

(08:55):
And I figured if something ever happened in the world, I could at least know to make afire and survive off the land.
I just figured it was a great way to live.
But with Calm, I was a maintainer in Calm, but I still wasn't in the battlefields andthings like I wanted to be.
But I deployed to Iraq, I volunteered to extend, spent nearly a year in Iraq, gotmedevaced, worked a hundred and think seventy something medevac missions voluntarily on my

(09:18):
own.
The patriotism piece was just coursing throughout my veins and what it meant to presentmyself as a living sacrifice because there's no greater love than a brother that's willing
to die for their friend.
Like these virtues that I was feeling in my heart but I could not connect with.
Now I know that they're in the Bible, but I couldn't understand them, but I felt them morereal than anything in my life.

(09:43):
And I wanted that more because I'd finally found purpose that was selfless and the abilityto give to others.
And it was almost like a drug, honestly, of just, couldn't get enough of serving,deploying, and helping the most that I could.
So from communications, because I had a knee injury and SpecOps wouldn't take me anymore,I found a new...

(10:05):
that was coming online at the time called the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, so UAVs, drones.
uh They like being called remotely piloted aircraft these days.
um So I got in that and that was almost surreal.
You were operating aircraft at the tip of the spear and then going home at end of the day.

(10:28):
It was so much that by the time I was combat certified, after all my training, all thepipeline, everything to get ready for my first combat sortie, I realized that sitting in
like, if this was the sensor operator seat, well about three feet over here is the pilotseat.
And I realized I wanted that job because that was the seat that made the decisions.
And I wanted to be the one to save people.

(10:50):
I wanted to save lives.
So I went through my time of being enlisted as a sensor operator, commissioned in 2016 to
be the pilot flying remotely piloted aircraft and was given that opportunity my second dayon the job.
And there were several more after that, but what I'd realized was these talents, theseskills, these abilities that I'd had, something was still missing.

(11:14):
And it was getting to the point that it was impacting my personal life.
It was impacting my friendships.
It was impacting my marriage.
And I couldn't understand it.
But all I knew is things were getting more out of control and I couldn't.
get my fingers on what I couldn't understand, but my heart felt more real than anythingelse.
And that led me to where I found Christ.

(11:36):
That has to be tough to navigate.
how old were you during this time that you were a sensor operator?
Oh, wow.
So I'm 40 now.
It's been a minute.
I'm approaching that 20-year mark.
So I joined in 2006, cross-trained in 2010, and spent from 2010 through 2016 as enlistedand then commissioned.

(12:03):
And then I flew my first combat sortie as a pilot in 2018.
Right in middle of the GWAT.
yeah, was a busy time for us, specifically for where I was working.
It was very busy with troop overwatch and helping our guys directly on the ground.

(12:25):
So how was it, how were you able to turn that switch off from flying halfway across theworld and then, I don't know if you had kids at the time, but just coming home and being
dad, how were you able to do that?
I think sometimes it was just an autopilot sense, but there were days that I couldn't.
And with full transparency, that's something I'm just now coming to terms with recently.

(12:49):
I've started seeking at the behest of my lovely wife and members of our church.
They've asked just because they can see the man I am and the love I have for Jesus, butalso whenever I share testimony or whenever it comes to.
that feeling here.
um What we used to do.

(13:12):
It's tough.
And I'm uh seeking counseling right now through licensed providers to help me address thethings that I packed away the fancy words called compartmentalization.
But I argue that the profession that I was in, it's not the most difficult because there'sothers that I haven't been a part of that are probably harder.

(13:32):
But I would say it's one of the most because
For me, it was challenging to support guys on the ground who may be sleeping and you arethe eyes on them.
Or maybe they were involved in some sort of a troops in contact or some sort of afirefight.
Maybe they just lost some of their buddies in an op the week before, whatever it was.

(13:52):
And at the end of your shift, you were going home to your bed, your air conditioner, yourwhite fence out here, your green grass lawn.
um
the 24-7 conveniences we have here in the United States, but our guys on the groundwouldn't.
So for me, and for many others that I've spoken with since, there was a challenge ofunderstanding that relationship of switching your hat, almost like that locker room

(14:18):
feeling where the coach would turn the lights off and you'd listen to music real loud andthen you'd get ready to storm the field and rush the field.
There was this preparation you would have before you would go into work.
And some guys didn't have to.
They just didn't have that need.
That was one of the challenges I had in that career field.
And so em if you feel comfortable for someone that hasn't been in those shoes, like inthat job, what's some unseen things that people don't see?

(14:48):
Wow, that's a deep question.
uh before we get too much further, I think it's important that the audience knows that Iam full follower of Christ.
uh There's a difference between believing and following.
James 2.19 says that even the demons believe and they shudder.
And I can think of it simply, you know, and we talked earlier about, we can talk all theChristian needs we want, but how do we do this?

(15:10):
What's the life application piece?
So think of it this way.
A stop sign says stop.
But when we're honest with ourselves, getting up to the stop sign, what do most of us do?
We do the Cali roll because we know that the law says stop.
We believe that it says stop, but we don't follow it.
And we just do it anyway.
So there's a difference between believing and following Jesus.

(15:31):
And I'm a follower of Christ.
Does that make me perfect?
100 % not.
I've learned that we'll never live a sinless life, but we learn how to live a life wherewe sin less.
It's like Joe being blameless.
So for some of the difficulties that I've learned in that career field, circling back tothat now, there's something that's called the fog and friction of war.

(15:56):
And I've learned in some of the academics that I teach that even military don't know whatthe fog and friction is.
So what that is is it's the same thing as when you try something new, you don't know whatit is until you actually try it, like new food.
You can smell it, you can see it, you can maybe feel it, but until you taste it, you haveno idea what the experience is like and maybe the aroma deceived you and wow, that tasted

(16:20):
horrible.
But the fog and friction of combat operations and what we witnessed was challengingbecause I won't get into some of the very graphic details of the things that I've
witnessed because one that would probably be too hard for me to tell right now.

(16:40):
But I can put it this way, that there would be times we would be supporting a mission andthe objective that we were supporting required that we could not leave.
Even if there was our guys on the ground who were troops in contact and needed help, wecould not be released to go help them because the individual that we were looking for

(17:01):
could be the one planning everything that's happening.
And if we don't get him out, then the other attacks in the area would continue.
It was challenging knowing that there were times that we could help, but we couldn't.
Other times that fog and friction would expose us to things that you knew you were seeing,but sometimes it was just you couldn't believe what you were seeing.

(17:27):
I'll keep it probably just there for now.
Thank you.
I really appreciate you sharing that.
know it takes a lot.
Yeah, I appreciate it.
So let's talk a little bit about the point where you surrendered your life to Christ.
there a key moment or was it just the Lord tugging on your heart?
There was a lot of tugs.

(17:49):
So the backstory is I found Jesus, if you will, after my best friend had passed away inthe drowning and went to church for three months.
And then one of my family made their accusations.
And I thought, if that's what church is, don't want it.
And I turned away.
That was in June of 2004.
In November of 2018, I was beginning to

(18:16):
unravel internally.
was fighting all of these things that I could not understand.
And on the physical conventional battlefields of war, we train to a myriad of doctrines.
In fact, the military is known for their jargon and all the acronyms that we have.
But we train so not if when we are called to stand and fight or protect, we can act almostautonomously.

(18:42):
There's no hesitation.
There's no wavering.
There's no thinking.
We have trained so much that it's become like inoculation.
We just react.
So I was at the level where I could perform that way on my job, but in my heart, Icouldn't understand these adversaries that were attacking me.
It was everything from self-worth, isolation, anxiety, depression, anger, just things thatI felt, but I couldn't.

(19:10):
do anything with them.
didn't have the right tools.
I didn't know how to, as we learned in 2 Corinthians 10.5, to take captive thoughts.
regardless if you follow Jesus or not, I would challenge you, how do you take thoughtscaptive?
How do you take thoughts that are controlling you to where you feel like you need towithdraw or you feel like you're in a rocking chair and can't stop rocking?

(19:32):
How do you take control of those to where they don't grip you or feel like they'restrangling you sometimes?
My way of getting through these things was like many people, I tried to do it by myself.
Didn't want to tell anybody what I was struggling with.
Kind of just said, figure it out later.
Kept packing stuff under the proverbial bed until the point that it got to where Icouldn't sleep.

(19:56):
I was angry.
And I started making very simple mistakes on my job.
Nothing that was bad, but things that I knew that I shouldn't be making mistakes on.
And then I got to the point to where
my physiological health, my physical health got so bad that I was getting headaches.
I had a hernia came up out of nowhere and.

(20:20):
The way that I think about it now is I think that's where the Lord said, everything thatI've given you, these talents, these skills, these abilities, the things that, the path I
have created for you, the plans I have for you of Jeremiah 29 and 11, the plans I have foryou, you're still not doing them and I need you over here.
And I kind of felt like he took his big finger and went and flicked me off.

(20:42):
Because that's where my life crashed, if you will.
And when I looked up, ah I found Jesus.
And then it was this new pathway of kind of like where Isaiah says in 6.8 of, here I am,Lord, send me.
I don't know what I'm getting into, but all I know is it's real.
I feel it.
Your spirit's moving in me.
I've accepted your son into my heart.

(21:04):
I'll do whatever it takes.
Of course, those who follow Jesus knows that's a heavy thing to say and you've got to meanit and abide by it.
So what was it like after you decided to follow him?
What was it like after that?
How did your relationships change?
How did your heart change?
Like anything else, it was a large, tough transition period because most everybody whoknew me, like anybody else, like Jesus says, you can't be a prophet in your own town,

(21:34):
people knew me for who I was.
They knew my attitude, they knew my behavior, they knew my mannerisms.
So the things I started doing, like many, didn't make sense.
There was things I was doing, but people couldn't understand it because it wasn't mynormal behavior.
ah
And one of the things that I've shared many testimonies was something I did in my marriagebecause in my life I love guns, you I love them.

(22:03):
And I didn't love Christ because I didn't follow Christ at the time.
And I would go and make purchases at every store we went to, whether it's groceries or gasor convenient markets or whatever.
And I would do like the 10 % rule.
And I kept skimming cash off on the side for my own hobbies.
And my wife knew this whole time and she just was waiting for me to be honest about it.
And then...
after, I don't know, 10 or $12,000 of money I had skimmed on the side.

(22:27):
And then I'd crash in my walk and realize I'd found Jesus.
I'd realized, wait a minute, that was something I put before seeking the cross and beforemy marriage.
And I sold them all because that was something that was distracting me.
So I've learned that our focus is much more in tune whenever we wake up first thing in themorning.

(22:49):
And like Psalm 5.3 says of when you will rise,
and you just go to the cross and you, and one translation says, you order your prayer, youdemand your prayer, and then you kind of do that little mic drop and step back and wait
for the Lord to show you what he can do for you.
That's really encouraging to hear how he took you from that place and helped you along theway.

(23:12):
So there's another, so that Psalm 5-3, there's a pretty, I wanna say popular story, someguys have heard it, some haven't, but there's the story uh of a young boy and a dad who
are going into like a little convenient mart.
And as they're checking out, you know, the boy might be six, seven years old.
And as they're checking out, the young boy sees this giant glass jar, I mean, full ofcandy.

(23:35):
And the clerk behind the register says, hey son, you can help yourself.
And boy doesn't move.
keeps on checking out, the clerk and the dad keep talking.
And they get about halfway through and the clerk sees the boy just staring at that jar,just looking at it eyes wide.
says, son, he takes the top off, says, son, you can help yourself.
And the boy still doesn't move.

(23:55):
So they finished checking out, the baggage are there, puts them in the cart and they'reabout to leave.
And the clerk realizes the boy's still standing there looking at the candy and hasn'ttaken it yet.
And then finally, he just grabs the jar with the lid already off and hands it to the boyand says, son, you can help yourself get a handful, but the boy doesn't move.
So the dad just says, I'll get it.
Hold on.
So he puts his hand in the jar, gets a big old thing of candy out, puts it in the bag, andthen they get to the car.

(24:18):
They finished getting the groceries in, they're getting in and getting the seat belts on,getting to drive.
And before the dad puts it in the drive, he stops and puts it back in the park and looksat his son and says, I love this story.
He says,
Son, why didn't you grab candy when the clerk offered?
He offered several times.
Why didn't you grab?
And the boy very simply looks at his dad and says, well, your hands are bigger.

(24:44):
And I love the idea of when we're tempted in life to go swipe a credit card, go dosomething irrational, and just go grab something because we want it, especially as
followers of Christ, if we don't reach into the jar of life and we wait,
just imagine how much bigger the blessings can be from the Father's hands, because Hishands are bigger.

(25:06):
And that's something I reflect on quite regularly when I'm trying to, ah like that book wewere talking about, of how badly I want to put my hand in the jar and just pull that out
and just be like, here it is.
But the Lord's humbled me enough, and He's still doing that.
I'm by no means humbled to the point I've been humbled.
He's continuously working on my heart to realize that

(25:28):
like we shared in John 3.30 of, we must decrease so the Spirit increases in us.
And the more we submit ourselves in faith, these things we call coincidences around usbegin to become so overwhelming that we start realizing they're not coincidences, they're
just divinely orchestrated divine appointments.
So that's powerful.

(25:49):
I love that story.
uh how did you transition out of the role of a RPA pilot?
That was a tough transition and um one that was very challenging, but ah as I transitionedout, I was looking for uh anything I could do in ministry.

(26:12):
So there was the opportunity for chaplaincy and I could have pursued that and startedgoing to seminary.
But because of my time in service, that wasn't very feasible, staying active duty to thenswitch over and uh
do reserves and it didn't line out for us.
So I asked, well, what's the career field closest to people?

(26:33):
Where can I be closest to people to just be a light?
And my mentors had said, well, be a personalist, be in the admin world because that's allthey do is deal with people.
I said, okay, put me there.
So that's where I'm at now.
And admittingly, I'm not a personalist, I'm not an admin airman.

(26:53):
I don't enjoy sitting at the desk.
I enjoy being with people, but what I've realized is, it's just like Paul says inColossians 3.23, whatever work we're doing, we're hardly unto the Lord.
And as we're submitting ourselves to just being a willing vessel, just willing to say yes,the Lord can use us.
And as much as I've not enjoyed it, I wouldn't change anything.

(27:17):
ah I think of it this way.
I think anybody hearing this would agree that...
When you order packages, you might get USPS, UPS, FedEx.
And when you go to buy a package, let's say it's UPS.
You buy from UPS, and the package is late.
It's damaged, dented, it's ripped.

(27:39):
It might be stained.
And you're a little upset.
That's your package.
It's what you paid for.
So the likelihood of you returning to that carrier is probably not very likely.
So you'll probably say, what does FedEx got?
See, try FedEx.
And by the way, I'm not making any endorsements for anything.
I'm just giving an example.
So you go to FedEx.
And they're a little better.
They're still late every so often.

(28:01):
Packages are little damaged.
But they're better.
So you try them.
they're just not there.
And you think, man, what about USPS?
Let's try them.
So you go to USPS.
The packages are on time.
Sometimes they're early.
They're not damaged.
They're not stained.
The tape's always in place.
The packages arrive the way that it was asked to be sent and shipped.
So the likelihood of you returning to that carrier is more likely because they'rereliable.

(28:26):
And what I've realized in my studies and my faith with Jesus is when Paul talks aboutbeing a vessel for good use, it's the same thing as being a carrier when God puts
something on your heart that maybe you don't wanna do.
But by saying yes to the Lord and doing that, you become a reliable carrier.
And the Lord says, now that you've been faithful with little, I'm going to give you more.

(28:50):
And now you're given bigger proverbial boxes because what I've also learned is that ofevery resource in this world, the number one resource is people and of every commodity we
have in this world, the best commodity is time.
And when you invest time into people, the return of investment is priceless and everybodycan relate to that.

(29:11):
So this is where I've tried to make myself
Just like you have here on your time off to do this, this is an example of being a willingvessel to do the Lord's work.
When there's probably 10 other things you could probably fill your calendar with of goingout to eat and being with friends, whatever the case would be, and they could all be good.
But what the Lord's placed on your heart is doing this.

(29:34):
And this is where we are.
So one of my, I've got a lot of favorite verses and they center on family.
I would say,
uh as a man, right?
Because I do a lot of men's ministry.
There is one verse that, of all the notes and scribbles that I have in the front of myBible, that is the only double highlighted, bold, ink, biggest one that I have, and it's 1

(30:00):
Timothy 3, 4, 5.
And it says, use are you to my kingdom if you can't minister unto your own family?
And one thing that I've realized with my wife and our kids is that we're still a
A young family in Christ.
ah I was given the wonderful privilege of baptizing my wife here last year.
That was.

(30:22):
I can't even measure this, the beauty of that.
But.
You know, it says in Matthew 1820 when two or three come together, I'm with them.
So I'm thinking of my wife and it's just beautiful watching our walk because we'recurrently going through some pretty heavy tests from the Father, not us, but just family

(30:42):
and things around us.
And it's the dross effect of being in the forge and all the things that help us pullthings away to have the Father increase more in us.
one of my favorite verses in the Bible of many is in Philippians 2, verses 1 through 2.
And uh

(31:29):
common sharing in the spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy completeby being like-minded, having the same love, being one spirit of one mind.
Other translations call it being united with spirit with humility of mind.
But when you look at it in this English, that word if is that third conditional clausemeaning sense.

(31:50):
since you have encouragement, since you have comfort from His love, since you have thecommon sharing of the spirit and since you have the tenderness and compassion.
And I love that from a husband and wife perspective of the first ministry that we have isto our family.
And that's something that I've struggled with in my ministry when I found Christ, becauseas soon as I found Jesus, it was, I want to go to the top of the mountain with my bullhorn

(32:14):
and tell everyone about the mightiest of all commanders.
It's Jesus.
And I overlooked the ministry at my home, and I've since pulled that back, and the Lord'sworking through us.
But as a married couple, it's like that...
You know, that oxygen mask on a plane, you the reason that it drops down for you to getfirst is the, when you seek God, it's that upward, inward and outward relationship.

(32:36):
So you seek the Father first and that's the oxygen mask you pull down.
And once you have that, your arms go out and the first people touching are those people inyour sphere of influence immediately.
And as a married individual, it's gonna be your husband or wife and then your kids.
And then it has to go from there.
Now there's things that the Lord calls us to and there's things inside of our workplacesand wherever we go.

(32:57):
um We're still being a witness for Jesus, but the ministry has to start in the home and becontinued every day in the home.
Wow, that's really good.
I think it's important to, and I've learned that throughout marriages, you have to begoing towards God.

(33:19):
Even your wife is not designed to fulfill the needs that you have.
You can't lean on your wife or your husband for that.
So uh let's talk a little bit about your ministry and the things that you're a part ofright now.
So this has been something developing for my entire walk with Christ.

(33:44):
It's actually, that I realized I have my hats on.
This is a hat I all the time.
It was a gift from a chaplain friend of mine.
So I'm not a chaplain, even though it looks like this.
There's a reason I wear this.
It's got the military theme because before I walked with Christ, sometimes I felt likethere were curses in my life.
I didn't really know what that was.
But I've realized that with

(34:05):
When you're following Jesus, it's not, they're not curses, they're blessings.
We just have to understand them.
And the more that we, like Romans 12.2 says about transforming our mind and renewing ourmind to understand these things, I've began to understand that when I stepped down from
combat aviation, I was honestly upset and angry.

(34:27):
Like I said, Father, here I am, me, but I'm like, I'm giving up everything that I enjoyed.
I spent from 2010 to 2016,
gaining my degree with that, you know, called a five-year plan, right?
It was more like an eight-year plan, to commission, be a combat pilot, do those things.
And then I finally did, I did it in 2018, I was done flying in 19.

(34:48):
I was like, there's no way this is the end of this travel.
There's no way this journey ends right here.
I thought all my training was for nothing.
All of my weapons school academic stuff was for nothing.
I didn't understand it.
But as I had began traversing this new battlefield,
I had realized this is what the Lord has been training me for because it's all that I canthink about and it's how I see things now.

(35:14):
So I see things as a battlefield everywhere I go.
So the reason I pointed this hat is because when I used to fly, like many pilots, we hadcall signs.
My call sign was recoil because, you what are you feeling to shoot a gun?
ah So I won't get into that testimony because that's, I didn't see.

(35:35):
I didn't see our targets as people.
I saw them as targets.
And I'm still understanding and going through the lawful military orders of deontology andunderstanding that, you know, was permissible in laws of war, but it was still taking
human life that I didn't see it like that at the time.
So that's something very new for me to unpack that I'm seeking counseling for to help meunderstand that.

(35:57):
But my buddy, my chaplain buddy, gave me a new call sign because in combat operations, inorder to get weapons on the ground, it's a joint
Terminal attack controller.
This is the guy on the ground in the fight next to the enemy Usually probably taking fireand they're the ones calling in an airstrike So my new call sign is JTAC, but it's not

(36:17):
that it's a Jesus to all confessor.
So Very clever.
I'm very happy.
That's that's what's on the hat.
I think you see that or not, but it's JTAC and it's got the cross here So again, I'm not achaplain, but I'm still a follower of Jesus and it's it's a ministry
that the Lord's called me to of what I call the battlefield of the heart.

(36:39):
So the ministry that I'm putting together is called JTAC Ministries.
It's something I'm forming.
It's something that...
I don't sit still very well.
I'm a tactile person, but the Lord had me sit down for the last year or so and put all ofmy thoughts into writing.

(36:59):
And they came out in a way that initially was just for that healthy coping mechanism of Ineeded something to do that wasn't going to be, not that I was tempted by drugs or alcohol
or porn or nothing, but just the stuff that would have pulled me away.
I needed something to help me understand in my heart what I was dealing with because earlyin my seminary studies,

(37:21):
There was this book by, I his name is Ted Tripp called Shepherding a Child's Heart.
So remember, this is shepherding a child's heart.
Had my computer, my books, everything laid out.
And I think it was on, don't quote me, it's like six or seven or page eight, somethingearly in the book.
And it wasn't even the most prominent point of the book, but this is what catapulted myministry.

(37:42):
He said, I'm interested in training parents hand to hand combat to fight on the world'ssmallest battlefield, a child's heart.
And I started snotting.
I started tearing.
I started realizing that the war that we fight is not restricted to geographic boundaries.
It's not in time zones.
It's not in any part of the world.

(38:05):
It's operated by an enemy that will infiltrate every corner of the world and into thebattlefield here.
It doesn't follow any rules of engagement.
It doesn't follow any law of armed conflict.
It doesn't have any morals.
It doesn't have any ethics.
It will...
Seek the objectives to kill, steal, and destroy anything that it can.

(38:25):
And it will actually use whatever you're combating against you, like your self-worth orsuicidal ideations, to try to tempt you towards its objective, which is hopelessness.
So what I've realized is we live in such a blessed country that we don't see what we seein other foreign countries in conventional warfare of where children can't pick up toys on

(38:46):
the sides of the road because their arms might get blown off or
how children get abducted and are used as instruments of war.
We don't see those things here, but we still have feelings of our self-worth, of anxiety,of depression, of loneliness, of debt, of interpersonal relationships, of addictions.
And all of those things continue to circle to where we start questioning our self-worth.

(39:10):
And then if that rabbit hole starts, then we start questioning if we should even be here.
And then it gets into suicidal ideations.
And then once we start feeling hopeless,
then we feel like we're, like in combat operations, we are trapped, pinned down, cut off,and we need help.
And that's what we did in combat operations.
When our guys would get to that point, they would call in what's called close air support,so CAS, because they were troops in contact, which is a tick.

(39:38):
And they needed help.
And sometimes the fighting got so intense that for us to put weapons on the ground,
our weapons might be too close to our friendlies, that we could actually hurt them.
So then it was in a new category called danger close.
And what that means is our weapons could actually hurt or kill our friendlies, but we needto break contact and break the fight.

(39:59):
And a lot of times when we're dealing with anxiety or moral injuries or invisible woundsor those things, we may not be danger close, but we're definitely troops in contact.
We get up every single morning, we make our hair look good, make our clothes look great.
We walk down the hall and says, hey, how's it going?
And you might respond with, hey, how's it going?

(40:20):
Both of you asked the question.
None of you answered and kept walking the opposite directions.
And I teach a lesson on why that's false because we're just trying to acknowledge ahuman's existence and we want to be more personal.
So we just say, hey, how's it going?
As an invitation into their life, but we really don't mean it because we keep walking theother direction.
But there's things going on in our heart that we just don't want to talk about because wejust want to figure it out on our own.

(40:43):
And what I've realized is if you fight a battle on your own and conventional warfare,you're giving the enemy an easy target because you're by yourself.
And that's why in Proverbs 27, 17, Hobby Lobby and Walmart even sell these things.
It's iron sharpens iron, right?
And in James 5, 16, it says, are to confess our sins to our brothers so that they can prayfor us because a prayer of a believing individual is powerful for everything.

(41:07):
That's when we start fighting together.
It's where Paul says in Romans 15, 1 and 2 about
The strong help the weak.
We take a knee and help those who need the help.
So my ministry is focused on what author Tripp revealed to me of the battlefield of theheart.
And it's coming away where it's now been put into a book that's not published yet, butwe're in the editing phases of finishing this book.

(41:34):
And it's like a devotional style.
So it's got an introduction.
It's got the devotionals and it's got the conclusion.
but it walks through a very militaristic tone that anybody can read and understand becausewe're all afoot the same battlefield against the same adversaries.
And yeah, you shared a couple pages from that book, and what I love about it is itspractical wisdom.

(41:59):
You you share, you know, the gospel and what it says in the Word and the truth.
I think that's really important for people in the military because that's how we operate.
You know, the verbiage is the same.
So I'm very excited uh for that book to be published.
What would you say would be the one thing that you want people to gain from the book?

(42:21):
that Jesus is the mightiest of all commanders.
It's something I don't know where I heard that from, but we have a myriad, so in themilitary specifically, we have a myriad of commanders that we serve, but when we serve
Jesus, he's the mightiest of them all.
It says in Deuteronomy 31, eight that he goes ahead of us and Deuteronomy 24 that he'swith us.

(42:42):
uh It tells us he's a strong tower, that he's a shield.
He goes about for us.
He fights our battles for us.
He tells us in second Corinthians that
We don't need to fight this battle.
He's going to do it for us.
So my goal, and this is where another mentor of mine saw my passion for fighting and said,let's reel this back in and not make it so military focused so other people can see this.

(43:03):
And very early in the book, in one page at the very bottom, it just says that this book'sdedicated to you, whoever's reading the book.
Because it's not about being dedicated to any one specific person, because as we talkedabout earlier, Paul says, I am the chief sinner.
the foremost of whom I know because I'm the worst sinner I know.
So the good news is for everybody.

(43:23):
It's not just for you, it's not just for me, it's for anybody who says, need help andJesus is the answer.
But it comes off in a way that ah for folks that don't have the military feel, I get it,it's not gonna be a book for them.
ah But I would argue that they pick it up and read it only for the simple fact that.

(43:43):
they're still going to feel anxiety.
They're still going to feel the self-worth.
They're still going to feel invisible wounds and moral injuries, which is a whole othertopic, which is in the book that the Lord gave that to me to put in there.
It talks about suicidal ideations um and to make it practical, right?
Because I know some people that might be watching this, they haven't read the Bible, theydon't go to church.
Maybe they have.
There's all many different kinds of walks out there.

(44:04):
And when it comes to scriptures, I think I alluded to it earlier, there's this idea ofChristianese, you know, like I've been doing it here.
I'm referencing scripture.
I'm trying to read up scripture.
But at the end of the day, how do I use this?
How do I take what's been given to me to use?
How do I use this?
Well, the book does that.
But one of the ways that we use this is a combination of head knowledge and heartknowledge.

(44:29):
And one of my favorite of many verses in the Bible is Proverbs 3.3, because it says, takethese things and write them down on the tablet of your heart.
Because there's things we know in our heads, because we have the head knowledge, the booksmarts to do things.
but we don't have it in our heart knowledge to know how to use it.
So when we have the discernment, which is where wisdom comes from, we use what's here andbring them together.

(44:53):
And then as followers of Christ, when the Spirit guides us, these, what the world wouldcall coincidences happen because we've been called to do something like the example of a
carrier in our message earlier, the vessel will happen.
And when it comes to words, this is where I've realized, oh
There's a reason there's a cage around our mouth because most of the time when we get indisagreements, even if they're not foul words, they're still harsh and sharp words.

(45:20):
So it's something that the Lord gave to me in terms of like an AR-15 uh semi-automaticrifle for those that don't know what that is.
There's a safety switch on the side of those guns.
So in the military, it'll go like single, burst, and auto.
So whenever we have those disagreements with people, even with our spouses,
This is what I call the automatic tongue fire, the ATF, right?

(45:44):
Give it a fun acronym.
Because whenever we get upset, we just want to start arguing and start having ourviewpoints heard and start defending ourselves and start doing all these things to justify
why I'm right and you're wrong or whatever the case is.
But we go to single mode and we start saying some harsh words.
And then we start getting in disagreements.
And we got a burst bow and start bringing up things in the past that don't even matter.
And then we go to full auto.

(46:05):
We just start arguing about everything.
And by the end of it,
We don't even know what we're arguing about anymore because we spent the last hour, two,three hours, weekend in disagreements that don't really matter because we never got to the
core of the issue.
And that'll get into something we'll talk about here in a little bit, because I want toshare it for your audience to understand that unity is vital.

(46:25):
We talked about it in Philippians 2.2 of being united in spirit with humility of mind.
And when we have this sense of humility,
There's something so powerful, it's meekness.
People don't understand what the word meek is.
They think it rhymes with weak and it's weak.
No.
ah Meekness is bridled horsepower.
So think about like a Ford Focus.

(46:46):
I think most people what a Ford Focus is, right?
Think about a Ford Focus that would have a very large engine under the hood with asupercharger and a blower and turbos and all this stuff that as you'd see the stoplight,
you wouldn't notice it.
But as you pulled up next to it, you might notice it doing that little hop-up hop-up.
It's doing something different.
You're like, there's something different about that focus.
And then the lights go green.

(47:06):
They floor.
It just roars down the street, right?
It's horsepower in reserve for when they need it.
And that's what we have with Jesus.
When we submit ourselves to serving Him, we're given these spiritual tools of bridledhorsepower, of being able to, in a chaotic or tense situation, maybe be the voice of

(47:27):
reason, maybe be the vision of calm.
So when things are going on and chaotic, we can stand there and objectively observe andmake more rational decisions and not let our emotions, remember the emotions and the head
knowledge and heart knowledge, we start pulling that together for more discernment on howwe can either step or maybe do a tactical pause and just hold for a minute, hold fast and

(47:50):
not do anything.
So that's a quick summary of my ministry and my goal, but it all points to Jesus.
So how would someone in the military right now, whether you're an Airman Basic uh or acommander, how can someone share their faith?

(48:10):
That's a fun way to do it.
so I've actually incorporated this into some lessons that I teach.
And the way that I'll put it in my presentation that I give is it's a point in thebriefing where people have been sitting for a little bit.
And I'll say, all right, there's a picture on the back and it's a picture of a rockingchair.
And I'll say, all right, everyone stand up for a second, stretch, get a move, move around,they'll do that.

(48:31):
And I'll give it about a good 15, 20 seconds.
And then I'll say, and sit, and they'll sit.
And I'll look at them, I'll say, that was faith.
Faith is not a religious word.
You can have faith in your guns, can have faith in your car, you can have faith in yourcoffee maker.
But when the gun jams or fails, when the car breaks down, when the coffee machine oh getsto where it doesn't want to produce any more water and you're sitting there trying to keep

(49:00):
turning it on and off like most cure eggs do after a while, people don't know what to dobecause it's calcified.
When things fail because your faith was in that.
What's below that of the flat tire on the side of the road, the faith that you had in yourphone to call for your AAA?
When we go through life with faith that is not anchored in Christ, there will be a moment.

(49:23):
It's not a matter of if, it's when.
We're gonna lose loved ones.
We're gonna get bad news.
We're gonna get medical diagnoses or medical diagnoses of people that we know.
We might know people that in our family fired from jobs.
We might witness somebody having a heinous crime committed against them.
It's not a matter of if we see or interact with these things, it's when.
And when we are confronted with those, we need to have faith that can withstand thosestorms.

(49:47):
And the Bible talks about that with, you know, the house that's built on the sand or therock.
And the rock is Jesus.
And when your faith is in Jesus, you have this ability to where the psalmist says that,you know, the angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and that there is a
shield about you to protect you.
And there's something so divinely amazing that only the Spirit can do when we get to thosemoments that we don't understand what's going on, but we walk by faith.

(50:19):
And it's a faith that, m it's as simple as the adage of, can lead a horse to water, butyou can't make it drink.
It's something that everybody has to do on their own.
They have to take that step in faith and say, Jesus, I trust you.
You're my Lord and Savior.
You died on the cross for my sins.
You arose on the third day.
and you are made anew.
But what's amazing is as people start questioning, and maybe they're questioning now, theysee people around them who are behaving this way.

(50:46):
Or maybe they know someone who they say is a Christian and they see their behavior.
And they can start seeing that, I don't understand, but their life is just good.
There's good things happening.
And it's in our humanness to want that too, because we all crave love.
We all crave affection.
We all crave ah unity.

(51:07):
So faith is something that anyone can have, but unless it's in Jesus, it might be 50years, it might be 20 years, it might be your entire life, but you'll deal with things
that you don't have an answer for and you can't understand, and you're gonna try tograpple and wrestle and do all these things to get an answer for something that you most

(51:28):
likely will never have.
And there are still answers as a Christian that we'll never have following Jesus.
We don't know how big the universe is.
Like the James Webb Space Telescope just gave us a real good picture of how big it is.
And there's just questions we don't know.
But that's OK.
Those kinds of questions aren't going to change my day-to-day walk.
My day-to-day walk is resources and commodities, people and time, and my faith in Jesusand being as much of a light onto them, a light onto my family, and a messenger for any

(52:00):
hope that I can carry.
That's the goal.
I love what you said because that applies to anybody, using that framework, whateverposition you're in.
So I know we've talked about it a little bit, but can you give us the analogy aboutinformation versus information?
Yeah.
So something I learned in my military time was we worked with intelligence and in order todo, to prosecute missions, we needed vetted information, which is intelligence.

(52:29):
needs to be real, needs to be actionable, something we can do something with.
And the way that I learned this was in a phrase that's all intelligence is information,not all information is intelligence.
And what does that even mean?
It means fact check.
It means trust but verify.
And
Like we mentioned, we talked about earlier, um you know, and anybody listening, who's everdoctor Googled themselves.

(52:52):
I mean, I have several times and it's uh uncomfortable because the results are varying.
They're not all the same.
And some say you should probably go to the ER right now and check yourself in.
And it's just all that stuff out there.
You know, it's just, it goes into another blessing we have in this time of humanity of thetechnological sophistication we have.
mean, like where we're sitting right now, having this set up here.

(53:15):
but we're so technologically advanced that ah we're living in a world starving for truth,but we're drowning in information.
And that goes back to the Dr.
Google thing.
If you Google something or look on a search engine, you might get 600,000 results in 0.3seconds or 2.5 million in 0.5 seconds, whatever it is.
There's so much information out there because we're looking for truth.

(53:39):
And it's not a matter of finding the right source because you will.
But there's one source that is always truthful, never fails, and has stood the test oftime, and that's the Bible.
And the Word of God is something, when you go back to that Proverbs 3.3 of keeping on thetablet of your heart, when we get attacked by anxiety or depression or self-worth and
those things, when it's written on your heart and then the Spirit comes in to help you,there is a supernatural remedy that just fills you with that indwelling.

(54:10):
It's the difference between joy and happiness.
And everyone's probably felt this before, like winning the lottery is happiness.
Getting a promotion at a job is happiness.
But that's not joy.
Because happiness in the root, it's hap, the etymology is like, it's rooted incircumstances, like winning the lottery.
So I'm not gonna be happy when somebody in my family passes away.

(54:31):
I'm not gonna be happy if I get medical news.
But I can have joy focusing on Jesus to know that what it's going to do is force me to
look inward, trust in my Savior, have my time of bereavement.
It's okay to be sad.
The Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes, there's a time for everything.
Have bereavement, have sadness, have that moment of getting the human emotions out to feelthose.

(54:54):
But like that emotional radar thing we talked about with like air traffic control, ouremotions are not meant to make decisions on those knee-jerk reactions.
So the analogy of the air traffic control we talked about earlier.
So think about this, and everyone listening can relate to this as well.
Think of your heart being like an air traffic controller and everything going on aroundyou in your life from your bills to your loved ones to your car to your job to your

(55:18):
groceries to your rent, everything we think about through fleeting times of the day andthe stability of that.
When that stability has something go wrong like in an air traffic control pattern becausethe job of an air traffic controller is aircraft flying around in the safety of them.
When an aircraft has an emergency, it takes priority and the air pattern just goes.
And that one aircraft gets priority to land safely.

(55:41):
the traffic pattern gets kind of skewed for a little bit.
So when you get a flat tire, when you get bad news from something, our day shifts.
And it focuses on that one thing.
And sometimes it's easy for us to make emotional decisions in circumstances that we don'tneed to make emotional decisions on.
A good one would be if we get into a disagreement with our spouse or a friend, then we'relike, I'm just going to go drink this away.

(56:05):
I'm going to go drink alcohol.
That's an emotional-based decision because it's not going to solve the problem.
It's not going to numb anything.
It's just literally going to numb your neurological endings to not really feel that wellbecause you haven't solved the problem.
The problem is still there when you wake up with a splitting headache in the next morning.
So our emotions are like a radar ping.
When the radar is circling in the air traffic control tower, goes beep, anger, beep,jealousy, beep, whatever.

(56:31):
And then we can recognize it and then maybe not understand it.
but then not let it take control of us.
And that goes back to what we talked about earlier about how do we take thoughts captive?
Like 2 Corinthians 10-5 says, take thoughts captive and make them obedient to Christ,which is truth.
We don't know what's going on here.
We don't understand that, but we know God's Word is truth.

(56:52):
So we hold fast to that with our confession of hope.
Yeah, I just love the way you explain things, just your analogies you use.
That's really good.
I mean, they work for me.
I hope they work for other people.
Something else I was going to put on, I was looking at my notes when we were having ourbreak.
There's something that I've also learned that I think resonates with folks really well.

(57:16):
And it's this idea that we get up every day and sometimes we're like, oh, I have to go towork.
Oh, I have to get the bills.
Oh, I have to get Gersh's.
I have to do fill in the blank.
But what I realized in my own walk is that there were times I would come home as a husbandand dad.
when I was like, I have to clean up after the kids.
Oh, I have to change diapers.
Oh, I have to cook.
And it was just grumbling in my heart.

(57:38):
And then I realized after some mentorship and some love from the church and just someprayer and just the things helped me understand this, that there's this new mindset shift
that we have to understand.
And it's not that I have to.
I get to.
And when you shift your mind to whatever you're in, whatever it is, even if you don't wantto do it because

(58:00):
You're the short straw that says, I'm cleaning the toilets for cleaning duty today,whatever it is, you get to.
And there's something beautiful about someone who is willing to take on the tasks that noone else is willing to do, because they might joke about it.
They might laugh about it like, you're cleaning the bathroom.
But when the chips are down and life's hit hard, they know someone who will take thelowliest of jobs and they'll own it.

(58:22):
Not because they have to, because they get to.
By no means am I an expert on this.
I'm still a human like everybody else, and I've got moments where I grumble in my heart.
And for those who are listening that do follow scripture, I will get a little deep on oneverse.
It's Philippians 2.14, where it says, do all things without grumbling or disputing.

(58:44):
And for any human being, that's virtually impossible.
How many times you get stuck at a red light or get stuck with something or someone in adoor at the grocery store, something, and you grumble under your breath or grumble out
loud, someone cuts you off in traffic.
What I realized is at its core, when we grumble or dispute with anything, what we're doingis expressing our discontent with what God's doing in our life.

(59:07):
He deliberately did something that tested us, like Him standing there with His gradebookgoing, okay, I'm going to test you on how you react right now, and you just cuss at your
kids, you get an F, you know?
So, He stands there with a report card of how we're going to respond.
And when we can grip that, again, taking captive those thoughts and those actions and that
trap door around our mouth and not saying harsh words, that automatic tongue fire thatcomes out instead of yelling at our kids or having disagreement should be sometimes

(59:33):
nothing or if anything, apologies or words of affirmation, uh good clean words, words thatare supportive and encouraging or compassionate rather than the words that only fuel the
fire of our uh disunity, discord and distrust.
And this is where I've really challenged myself.
in the season that my wife and I are going through now, not us personally, but the thingsaround our family, is it's testing our human emotions on how to ah not have emotional

(01:00:03):
reactions because they don't solve anything.
It's when we come together in prayer and allow the Lord to keep working on us to be, Iguess in a more practical sense of putting it, just a decent human being, a good human
being.
Let's shift gears a little bit.
I think we should talk a little bit more about what you discussed earlier about Unity andwhat that means.

(01:00:26):
Unity.
So earlier we talked about Philippians 2, 2, 2, says to be united in spirit with humilityof mind.
And this is important.
And I'm glad you brought that up because that was probably one of the key messages Iwanted to share today is we need people.
We are surrounded by things, especially here in the United States, where it may not feellike we need people.

(01:00:47):
But I would argue that it probably took 500 people to build your home.
It probably took
5,000 people to build your computer and your smartphone and the technology.
Like, we are surrounded by the needs of others more so now in this culture than anywhereelse in the world because of everything we have.
But at a very simple, practical level, we still need our spouses, our kids, the peoplearound us that we work with.

(01:01:11):
We still need those people closest to us.
And there will be differences.
They like different flavors of food.
They like different colors.
They like different music.
That's fine.
But we have to find a way to
Agree to disagree right and there has to be a loving way to do that So when it comes tounity I like to think of it this way and I heard this somewhere in my studies and I've
just adopted it since So I'm gonna try to be as slow as I can to describe this because Iforgot to bring the objective demonstration of the the balls and the bags But you'll make

(01:01:40):
sense so imagine right now that I'm holding a mesh bag of balls So you can see the ballsand it's this mesh kind of netting like a fish netting kind of thing, right?
So they're held together.
I can move them around
I can tip it upside down, they're together.
I can even kind of separate them in the bag, but they're still held together.
But they're held together by an external force.

(01:02:00):
The only thing holding them together is the bag.
So for the military folks, it's your orders, you're stationed here.
If it's your job where you work, if it's the house that you live in, wherever you're at,that's an external force holding you there.
And the people that you're with, you're very close to them.
You'll probably spend more time with them every day than your own family at home becauseof just the 8 to 10, 12 hours that you're working.

(01:02:25):
But then there's these things that happen in our relationships where we disagree withthings, where we offend somebody, deliberately or not.
And there's that little cut.
Think of a cut.
We cut the relationship.
So now I don't want to talk to you because you backed into my car, or you took $5 off mydesk, or you took my tool, or...
You ate my food or you took my time at the break table, fill in the blank of whatever itwas that hurt the relationship so there's that tear.

(01:02:51):
So now I'm holding this bag and this is where I would take out my knife if I had it and Iwould click it open and I would cut the bag.
And now these balls, they all fall to the floor.
They're no longer united.
They're all over the place and being bouncy balls, they go all over the place.
So how do we get them back together?
Well, we help them, we encourage them, but now it's gonna take a lot more to hold themtogether because

(01:03:13):
that bag's gone and we can fix the bag but it takes more, there's a lot more work thatgoes into getting them back together.
But when they're back together, they're still being held together by an external force.
So this is the proposition.
Then I pull out a different bag and this one looks different but similar.
It's another mesh bag.
It's got balls inside but they don't move as freely.

(01:03:35):
In fact, when they do move, they kind of clink.
They kind of clink, clink, clink.
And people start realizing very quickly that those aren't bouncy balls.
You can't just pull them apart because they're magnetic spheres.
They're magnets.
There's something else besides the external force that's holding them together.
So now there's a difference.
Let's say over here at this desk, let's say, right here, you left five bucks and on breakwe went away and I took the five bucks, right?

(01:03:59):
And then you come back.
You say, Ray, why'd you take my five bucks?
Because now there's a cut, right?
The bag, we cut.
The balls fall on the table, but now they're still together.
Why are they together?
Because there's an internal force holding them together.
And rather than jump to conclusions because of that automatic tongue fire we talked aboutearlier and your wisdom of not doing that, you don't jump to accusations.

(01:04:23):
You want to understand, Ray, why did you take my five bucks?
man, I'm sorry.
just we're in a hard time right now.
My in-laws are staying with us.
Bills are tight right now.
I needed the money.
I'm sorry.
Can you please forgive me?
Yeah, I can.
mean, sure.
mean, all.
borrow five bucks, I've got five more, do you want five more?" Right?
That internal force is keeping us together, and it's the threat of Christ.

(01:04:46):
It's the Spirit weaving through us all.
But that doesn't always mean that because we're Christians, or we can give forgiveness,that we'll be united because the proportional amplitude, so if it goes higher and drops
harder, it's like, slept with your wife.
I wrecked your car.
Right?
We can have divisions that will actually separate us, but we're not going to continue tohave that division.

(01:05:13):
We can still come together closer and closer.
And this is where the balls will get closer because what happens when magnets get closeenough together, what happens?
They automatically snap back together.
And that's the power of forgiveness because the spirit in you and the spirit in me isdrawing itself to itself to bring us back together.
That doesn't always mean we'll have relationships if I slept with your wife or whateverthe case would be, because maybe we need to have healthy boundaries for a while.

(01:05:41):
But we can start forgiveness in our heart to not have malice, to where if I see you, I'mstill going to wave at you.
Because I'm the worst sinner that I know, like we talked about in Paul's letter toTimothy.
So I'm not going to treat anybody with any ill-content.
But that's the power of unity in the simple day-to-day relationships that we have.
if someone closes a door on us, if someone parks in our parking spot, whatever it is, fillin the blank, if we can give grace, which is defined as undeserving favor to everybody,

(01:06:13):
people begin to see how we have that.
And one of the ways that I've encouraged people to build self-discipline, and I've donethis before, is, well, how do I build self-discipline?
How do I do this?
Take time away from yourself to do it.
Time and resource, right?
People and time.
So one of the simplest ways I'll do this is I'll tell people, next time you go to thegrocery store, you and you get a grocery cart, grab one from outside the parking lot,

(01:06:36):
first of all, because that's just one less cart for the guy or gal to bring in.
Do your shopping.
But also before you let me back up, when you park your car, park 10 or 15 stalls back.
Don't find the nearest one.
Give grace to somebody else who might need that.
give it to somebody else.
And arguably you'll probably walk further in the store anyway than the five stalls you tryto save space on, right?

(01:06:58):
So just park 10, 15 back, grab the cart on the way and do your shopping, walk it out toyour car.
When you're done loading groceries in your car, walk the cart all the way back in.
No one's gonna notice, maybe the cart person will notice, but you're not doing it foranybody else.
You're doing it for yourself because you're building the self-discipline of the time ofI'm going to help.

(01:07:21):
one other person, even if it's just the cart person to know.
And I've had that happen to me before.
said, did you just walk that all the way back in?
And I said, yeah.
And they asked me why.
And I said, just to help you out.
And they just looked at me with a weird look and said, well, thank you.
And I walked back out to my car.
But that's not why you're doing that.
You're doing it to help serve somebody else and to build that self-discipline of when lifehappens, not if.

(01:07:44):
And you get pressed, you can have a better heart posture of where to put your focus into.
And it's not going to be self-serving.
It's going to be self-seeking to help somebody else.
It's amazing, I love that.
So that's the power of unity.
And that goes back to, again, I enjoy the operative tactician mindset.

(01:08:05):
And one of the questions that I'll ask folks at the end of the lessons that I'll teach isI'll ask them, what is the most vital weapon change agent and tactician that we have in
our entire inventory from the F-35, the F-18, the Nuke sub, the B-2, every weapon in ourarsenal?
What is the most vital weapon change agent and tactician?
It's you.

(01:08:25):
It's what our tier one guys call the human weapon system.
And the more that you can train your mind and heart to think like a Navy SEAL tactician,if you will, when you get the bad news of a medical diagnosis, when your wife comes home
because Johnny fell off the playground and broke his arm and there's some hysteria, you'renot gonna respond with the emotions.

(01:08:49):
You're gonna have the head knowledge and the heart knowledge to...
Maybe take that tactical pause and just breathe for a second and get the information tocome in to become intelligence and then make an informed decision.
And this is just that daily grind of life that we have every single day for every singleperson, uh which I think goes right into the lead in you're asking about with why should

(01:09:12):
people follow Jesus?
It's simple, He is the truth, He is the way, He is the life.
There's not something.
It is everything.
He is everything for the fiber of why we're here.
The healer of healers, the king of all kings, the lord of all lords, the commander of allcommanders is what I say.
But when you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ...

(01:09:35):
It doesn't make life easier, which sounds weird.
It makes it where you can navigate it with faith of that when the chair falls, okay, youstand back up.
When the car stops working, okay, well, let's call AAA.
AAA doesn't show up.
You find another way.
It's when life keeps throwing these things at you, you continue to grow and you continueto have this resolve, this grit, this ability to persevere with resilience, the buzzwords

(01:10:03):
that we're all familiar with.
It's this way of, like this isn't gold.
I don't know if your audience can see this, but it's a ring.
the way we get gold from any setting, I'll make this the first century setting so it makesmore sense biblically, is when you get gold from the earth, it has like iron or copper,
magnesium, other stuff in it that you really can't do anything with.

(01:10:25):
So the way that you separate that out is you put it in a kiln.
and you heat it up, I think, to like 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, 2200 degrees Fahrenheit forthe highest quality.
Well, as the impurities separate from the gold, they then float to the top.
And then that dross is what it's called.
It's removed.
So it's just the gold.
Well, the gold has cooled down.

(01:10:46):
But that's not enough.
It's got to get heated back up to extreme temperatures again.
More stuff comes out.
The heating and cooling keep going until the Smith was looking for one thing, and this isin the first century time frame, of his reflection.
When he could see his reflection in the gold, he knew that it had reached purity.
It was purified and ready for use.

(01:11:07):
So there's two points I want to make with this.
One, those are things we feel every single day in our life when the heat of life hits us,when the pressure of life gets so heavy that it feels intense with heat and the things
that aren't physically hot, but get our emotions and get us worked up and get us angstyand angry and anxious and all these things.

(01:11:27):
because there's something in us that hasn't let go to trust Jesus.
And the more that we do this to trust that the Father can do this for us and take thesebattles on for us, the more that we're purified.
Because going back to when the Smith was looking for his reflection in the metal, you arethe metal.
And what God is looking for when he looks in you is to see the reflection of his Son.

(01:11:51):
And that's when he knows you're reaching that purification level, when he can see Jesus inyou.
And other people can see it too, because it's what Ephesians 4.2 says, to walk in a mannerworthy of your calling.
When people can see, yeah, I've known him for a while.
He doesn't drink, he doesn't go to the bars, he doesn't cuss.
He'll go to places with us, but he's not looking at the other women like the other guysare and making the cat calls.

(01:12:16):
They can just see all these little data points of who you are.
You're just a good person.
And that's all they can say, he's just a good person.
So yeah, they might make fun of you every so often for being the DD.
Yeah, they might make fun of you because you don't cuss and you say, gosh darn it, or geewillikers, or whatever word you say that comes out that's not a harsh profanity.
But they can see that you have that self-control and that self-discipline.

(01:12:39):
And everybody wants that.
Everybody wants to be that virtuous person who can be counted on when the chips are down.
So following Jesus, that's just the tip of the spear for it.
you begin to learn the pathway that you were created for to walk.
And that's why Jeremiah 29-13 is one of my favorite scriptures of many I've said so far.
But it's, when you seek me, you will find me.

(01:13:01):
When you seek me with all your heart.
And that comes after the very well-known verse 11 from 29, which is that the pathway isbeing made known to you, right?
So when you seek Jesus with all your heart, and there's no like, okay, I'm gonna seek younow because I need this, X, Y, Z, you're seeking him to have the relationship with him.
It's like a dad with their son walking down the sidewalk over here, the kid just wants tohold his dad's hand, just to be with dad.

(01:13:28):
And dad says, thank you for inviting me in.
Hey, let me show you something cool.
And then dad goes over and shows you something cool.
That's what God does for us.
That's why we should follow Jesus.
And so if there's anybody listening right now, how can they do that?
How can they follow?
love that you asked it.
So for anybody listening and this is just pulling on your heart and you're thinking I justI'm ready to give my life to Christ.

(01:13:54):
What do I got to do?
It's easy.
Actually, you want to do with me here?
If you're listening, just follow along with me and we'll do this together.
Just fact, I'll tell you what I'll give you a second if you need to get to a quiet spot.
Find a quiet spot.
Just get to where you can you can focus and what we're going to do is I want you to closeyour eyes.
I want you just to feel the love, feel your heart in your chest, feel the things.

(01:14:16):
And I've got my eyes closed too.
And we're gonna pray together.
I say, Father, thank you for this blessed day.
Thank you for your son Jesus.
Thank you for revealing him to my life.
Thank you for this feeling I have in my chest and knowing that you're calling me by nameas Isaiah 43 one says that you have called me by name for I am fearfully and wonderfully

(01:14:39):
made.
Thank you for showing me my sin.
Thank you for showing me that I need your son Jesus in my life.
Lord, I accept that I'm a sinner saved only by the grace of your Son and by my faith.
Lord, I'm asking that you accept me.
I ask that I be welcomed with your grace and your love.
I confess that Jesus died for my sins.

(01:15:02):
I confess that he is my Lord and my Savior, that he arose from the cross, and he isfighting my battles for me.
I ask for your grace, I ask for your mercy, and I just ask for your loving hand, yourloving kindness to be on my life, and that I continue to serve you with all of my heart.
And I pray this in your son's name, Christ Jesus, amen.

(01:15:22):
Amen.
And that's it.
So if you've followed in that prayer and you meant that from your heart, welcome to thefamily.
You are now new creation of 2 Corinthians 5.17, a new creation in Christ.
And if this is something new that
isn't quite resonating well yet.
Just keep it, keep it as I say, in the hip pocket.

(01:15:43):
There are many instances in life that the Lord will try to get a hold of you and get yourattention.
And He did for me.
And it took nearly three decades of my life for the Lord to really get me grounded.
And in hindsight, I kind of wish that I'd have been followed earlier or been followingearlier, but that's just, we can't live in the rear view mirror.
So I'll look at it this way.

(01:16:04):
In Matthew 6.33, it says to seek the kingdom of God first.
and this will be added to you.
And then in Philippians 3, 13 and 14, it says, you know, I forget looking behind, then Ipress on towards the upward call of Christ.
Again, okay, for those listening, there's the Christianese.
How do we do this?
Right, let's do this, right?
You're in your car.
Think about driving your car.
When you're driving and you've got this big windshield right here, your focus is on theroad in front of you.

(01:16:27):
So seeking the kingdom of God first and these things are being added to you means thepothole that's in front of you, the exit you're supposed to take, the car that cuts you
off, pay attention to right here.
Don't worry about 10 years down the road.
Yes, you can make plans, but you need to focus right now on what's in front of you.
The same thing is why are your rear view mirrors small?
Because we're not made to living in them, focusing on them.

(01:16:50):
We're meant to reflect on them and get back on the road.
So whatever the hurts, habits, hangups are on your life, the things you can't let go of,the things that maybe cause you to get angry, maybe cause you to feel you've got a grudge
against somebody.
First of all, for those who maybe made that prayer with us, pray that the Lord take thatfrom you and help you get through that, to pray for forgiveness, even for yourself or

(01:17:11):
maybe the things that you've got unforgiveness in your heart.
But when you look at how to apply this, when we go throughout our life every single day,we can't live in the rear view mirror.
We can't live so far off in the future that we're missing what's right in front of us heretoday.
And when we start to live for this day that the Lord has made for us to rejoice and beglad in it, which is Psalm 118, 24,

(01:17:32):
There's this joy that abounds in our heart, a peace that surpasses all understanding,which is Philippians 4.7.
It's a way that the Lord begins to just, not so, He deliberately reveals the path that Hehas for you.
And it's inexplicable.
It's times that I've been just so captivated where it says in the psalm somewhere, it'sabout like a trap door being slammed on your mouth, you can't even talk.

(01:17:58):
And one of my favorite letters in the Bible is the letter O.
It sounds weird, but when you look into Psalms and David has it like, oh, with anexplanation mark, and he's like, oh, my Lord, he's so speechless that the only thing he
says, oh, because the Lord is so magnificent and so grand.
So it's just and I want to touch on the forgiveness thing and the forgetting thing realquick.

(01:18:21):
And Isaiah, I can't remember exactly where it is.
It's like forty five or forty three, forty three, fifteen.
Maybe it says that the Lord forgets.
And I want to point that out to people that are listening because.
It's challenging for us to forget because we're not supposed to.
When we ask for the Lord and forgiveness and we pray, which by the way, in 1 John 5, itsays when we pray, He hears us and He listens to us in accordance with His will.

(01:18:44):
But when we ask for forgiveness and we come in tears and Father, here I am again, Isinned, please forgive me, we're forgiven and He forgets.
And I know that's hard for us to understand because we need to remember.
The prayer shouldn't be, Father,
I pray that Jesus be with them.
I pray that the Spirit be with them.

(01:19:06):
No, we should be praying that we be with Jesus.
He's already gone to the cross for us.
He's already taken all the punishment.
We need to be pursuing the cross because we're told to carry our cross daily, to die toour sins daily, to die to ourself.
So we need to pray that we keep pursuing Him because He's the forerunner.
He's done everything for us.

(01:19:26):
We need to keep pursuing Him.
And the more that we...
keep our hand on the cross right here.
We don't have our hand back here for our family and friends, because they need to be righthere with us.
And that's something I've struggled with in the past.
I told you in my ministry, sometimes I felt like I was looking back at my family saying,are you coming with me?
And that's not the way it should be.
They should be right there with me saying, are you enjoying this with me?

(01:19:49):
Most of the time it's that way, but yeah.
Well, I am a little sad that this is coming to an end, but I just can't thank you enough.
You've been such a blessing um to the people around you and just for the people listeningto this.
And I just really appreciate you coming on.
Well, thank you.
And for the folks that um are watching this, uh I just want to give a shout out to Danielhere that um this is his personal time.

(01:20:15):
He's on leave.
And this is what it takes to be invested in the kingdom.
And it's a beautiful example of that time and the resource piece of what we talked about,resource being people and time being commodity of the time that you've taken to invest in
the kingdom with people.

(01:20:36):
not just me because there's other people you've interviewed as well, but this is one ofthose not balancing acts.
And then once we're finished here, we'll conclude, because I just want to give you theshout out here that, and in life we tend to think it's a balancing act, like I've got to
balance this and balance this and this is on the back burner and whatever analogy you wantto throw at it.
I like to think of it about it like a seven way teeter totter, you know?

(01:20:59):
And there's bases I've seen in places that have the four way teeter totters, right?
But what I mean by that is harmony.
When we have harmony in our life, we go away from balancing.
So think of a teeter totter, a two-way teeter totter.
There's a fulcrum in the middle.
And the only way that those are balanced is when everything is perfectly on each side andnothing's heavier or lighter on each.
Life is seldom ever that way.

(01:21:20):
Usually it's a juggling act, right?
Another way you can explain it.
But when we harmonize things, like you're doing now, your family, your loved ones, yourconnected family, whatever that is, all the people around you.
you're harmonizing these elements and attributes of your life to invest in the kingdom.
So I want to first say thank you for that.

(01:21:42):
Thank you for this time.
And then for the folks watching, this is just another practical example of how we can takethe 24 hours in that account that everybody has, because bank accounts vary, but there's
one bank account that we all have this the same, and it's time.
So thank you for your time today.
And I just thank you for the kingdom work that you're doing with your ministry.

(01:22:03):
Thank you so much.
You bet.
Thanks again for listening to another episode of Faith in the Line of Duty.
If you're a first responder or in the military and have a story you'd like to share, emailme at faithinthelineofdutyatgmail.com.
You could be a guest on a future episode.
To continue the conversation, visit my Facebook and Instagram page.
Thanks again for tuning in.

(01:22:24):
And join me next time for another encouraging story of Faith in the Line of Duty.