When my own world was shaking, anger at God became an unwanted companion. Today, we're tearing down the facade that often masks the turmoil within, especially for men enduring life's crueller chapters. Jeff Scott Wilson, once a Navy officer and combat surgeon, now a best-selling author and filmmaker, joins us to illuminate this shadowed journey. With raw honesty, we dive into the maelly of a faith crisis, sharing how our personal upheavals—mine laced with anger and Jeff's with the transition from military to civilian life—challenged and ultimately reshaped our understanding of God's role amidst suffering and loss.
The notion of free will can be as much of a conundrum as it is a gift. In this heartfelt conversation, we grapple with reconciling the existence of a loving deity with the world's injustices, and how this struggle often leads to an emotional standoff with the divine. We open up about the sense of abandonment that can envelope us when tragedy strikes, and the delicate journey toward finding companionship with God through the darkest of times. Tapping into our vulnerabilities, Jeff and I navigate the complexities of maintaining faith in the face of life's relentless barrage, be it on the battlefield or in the silent battles we fight within.
This episode transcends the personal, touching upon the universal quest for purpose that often intensifies with professional success. I reflect on the Christian action thriller series 'Dark Intercept,' born out of my own confrontations with good and evil, and how crafting these stories echoes the need for action in our spiritual lives. For anyone questioning their path or seeking solidarity in their trials, we offer a message of hope, underlining the power of faith and the courage to seek support within and beyond faith-based communities. Jeff's and my stories stand as a beacon to guide you through the fog of doubt and onto firmer ground.
Key moments: 07:07 Navigating the Complexities of Faith and Fairness 18:50 The Power of Community in Overcoming Crisis 22:17 Common Triggers and Personal Battles 26:45 Shifting Perspectives: From 'Why' to 'What' 29:06 Embracing a Mission Beyond Ourselves 34:23 Leveraging Success for a Greater Purpose 38:37 A Final Message: Community and Vulnerability
Thanks for listening to the Revolutionary Man Podcast. If you want more information about our programs use the links below to check us out. It could be the step that changes your life.
When my own world was shaking, anger at God became an unwanted companion. Today, we're tearing down the facade that often masks the turmoil within, especially for men enduring life's crueller chapters. Jeff Scott Wilson, once a Navy officer and combat surgeon, now a best-selling author and filmmaker, joins us to illuminate this shadowed journey. With raw honesty, we dive into the maelly of a faith crisis, sharing how our personal upheavals—mine laced with anger and Jeff's with the transition from military to civilian life—challenged and ultimately reshaped our understanding of God's role amidst suffering and loss.
The notion of free will can be as much of a conundrum as it is a gift. In this heartfelt conversation, we grapple with reconciling the existence of a loving deity with the world's injustices, and how this struggle often leads to an emotional standoff with the divine. We open up about the sense of abandonment that can envelope us when tragedy strikes, and the delicate journey toward finding companionship with God through the darkest of times. Tapping into our vulnerabilities, Jeff and I navigate the complexities of maintaining faith in the face of life's relentless barrage, be it on the battlefield or in the silent battles we fight within.
This episode transcends the personal, touching upon the universal quest for purpose that often intensifies with professional success. I reflect on the Christian action thriller series 'Dark Intercept,' born out of my own confrontations with good and evil, and how crafting these stories echoes the need for action in our spiritual lives. For anyone questioning their path or seeking solidarity in their trials, we offer a message of hope, underlining the power of faith and the courage to seek support within and beyond faith-based communities. Jeff's and my stories stand as a beacon to guide you through the fog of doubt and onto firmer ground.
Key moments: 07:07 Navigating the Complexities of Faith and Fairness 18:50 The Power of Community in Overcoming Crisis 22:17 Common Triggers and Personal Battles 26:45 Shifting Perspectives: From 'Why' to 'What' 29:06 Embracing a Mission Beyond Ourselves 34:23 Leveraging Success for a Greater Purpose 38:37 A Final Message: Community and Vulnerability
Thanks for listening to the Revolutionary Man Podcast. If you want more information about our programs use the links below to check us out. It could be the step that changes your life.
You know what in life we're going to be tested, and it's going to be during these tests that we're going to discover who we are and what we're made of. We may like the answers, and then again we might not. You know, if the latter is happening to you, then I'm going to ask what is it about you that you didn't care for during or coming out of that experience? You know, for many of us we're going to struggle with the understanding that it could have been because we had a crisis of faith and man. I can relate to that, and so can today's guest, and I'm sure he's going to tell his story about his moments Now, before we're going to get into all that.
Speaker 1:
It has never been more difficult than it is today for us to be a man, and this, it can be very painful. For many of us it's a pain of loneliness and it's a pain of unworthworthiness, and it's masked by our anger and our resentment. And it's all because we are uncertain and we are afraid to take that next step in our life. So if you're afraid and fed up of where your life is at, then I'm going to encourage you to start your hero's quest. It's an opportunity for you to become more, accomplish more and live more than ever before. Just go to memberstheawakenedmannet and start your quest today, and with that let's get on with today's episode.
Speaker 2:
The average man today is sleepwalking through life, many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs and values that no longer serve him. It's time to align yourself for greatness. It's time to become a revolutionary man. Stay strong, my brother.
Speaker 1:
Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary man Podcast. I'm the founder of the Awakened man Movement and your host, Alan DeMonso. Let me ask you a couple of questions before we get started here. Do you recall a time in your life when you had a crisis of faith? How did that crisis shape you and define you? You know, when we travel through life, we become forged in the fire of our crisis, don't we? It's how we handle it, and what we learn from is what sets the foundation for something that can be built upon or destroyed and then rebuilt. And there's no doubt about it we either rise up from the ashes or we burn in the pit. And so today my guest shares his incredible story of his crisis of faith and how he turned that into becoming a multi-time best-selling author and an actor. So allow me to introduce my guest.
Speaker 1:
Jeff Scott Wilson is a former Navy officer who served as a combat surgeon with a special missions unit with the SEAL team. Today, he's an international best-selling author and filmmaker who had first come to terms with the crisis in faith that he suffered as a result of his military combat service. Recognizing this is highly common among the military veterans. Jeff now leads a men's military ministry for a large church in Florida. Welcome to the show, Jeff. How are things, brother?
Speaker 3:
Things are great, my friend. Thanks so much for having me, man. I'm looking forward to chatting with you.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, right on Me too. When your story came across my desk, I was really excited to be able to get this opportunity to speak with you, especially being a veteran and looking at the books that you and your partner are writing Just phenomenal. And so, as you know, when we start our interviews here at the Revolutionary Manor, I always want to talk about your hero's quest and that time in your life when you had that crisis of faith, and tell us how did that experience shape you and how did it do, how did it lead to the work that you're doing today?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to share it. It's, it's. It's not always something easy to share, is it and it's? I think that that's. The biggest problem is that we we spend a lot of times, especially guys that have spent time in the military. There's almost a stigma at being vulnerable. My good friend, don Bentley, who writes the Jack Ryan Jr series and now is writing the Mitch Rapp series, he's an Army veteran and helicopter pilot and literally this morning he just posted something very touching about how difficult he found it to allow himself to be vulnerable enough to put some realism into his characters about crisis. And it really struck me because I knew I was going to be speaking to you like in 20 minutes and I saw him post that and reached out to him.
Speaker 3:
We find it so hard to talk about these things and I don't really even yet understand why that is. You know, now, many years later, as I lead this ministry for a large church, I still see that every single day in these men, this, this, you know, this attitude of well, you know it's no big deal, but like this trivialization of of these crises and it makes it so much harder for us to deal with and I don't know why we're like that, but we but we definitely are. It's been, it's been bred into us. So you know, I don't know how you want to approach this, but my story is a long arc that goes all the way back to childhood, because I'm one of those guys that didn't find my faith in a crisis. I came to God very early in life. In high school, ninth grade. I gave my life to God and I was one of those guys that was and still am. I guess. I'm all in in anything I do Right. I'm that 110 percent guy Right. I'm all in in anything I do right. I'm that 110% guy right. So if I'm going to fly an airplane, I'm going to fly a jet. If I'm going to be in the Navy, I'm going to go with a JSOC SEAL team. I'm just that guy, but the same with faith.
Speaker 3:
And so early on I was all in. Like the moment I came to God I was leading in youth group and I was in young life and I was like part of a fellowship of Christian athletes, all those things like just 110%. And that's, I think, why the crisis that I suffered later was so significant in my life, because I was an all-in guy. So it wasn't like I could even look and say, well, if I just embraced more, if I had been more all-in, look, I was all-in, embraced more. If I had been more all in, look, I was all in.
Speaker 3:
And you know we call it I love the term you're using a crisis in faith, because for me that's what it was. It was never a crisis of faith. For me, it was never. Oh, there's no God, right, and I think it's common, would you agree, alan? It's much more common for people to less common for people to say, okay, because of this experience, I don't think there's a God anymore. What they do is they say I don't think I understand what I know about God, I think what I believed about God might be not true, I think that my relationship with God might be not what I thought it was.
Speaker 3:
And when you're in military service and that happens there's a tendency and this is what happened to me to say, okay, I've got these really big questions, these big burning questions, but I don't have time for it right now, and you put it in a little box and you stick it on your shelf and you say later, you know, after this deployment, okay, well, after I leave this unit, okay, well, after I leave the military someday I'm going to deal with these things, and so instead, what you do is you separate yourself from your faith entirely. It's there in the back of your mind. It doesn't necessarily change who you are or how you're acting, but there's no relationship left. And so that's sort of the story for me, and it was at multiple points. You know, when I left high school, before I went to college, I was a firefighter and paramedic, and that was the first time that I saw some things that didn't jive with what I thought I knew about God. You know I had the.
Speaker 3:
So Romans 8, 28,. Let's just dive into that. That's always been my favorite verse. All things work together for good for those that love the Lord and are called according to his purpose. But when you're 16, that means sunshine and rainbows and unicorns, and right like you, you so misinterpret that verse as wow, because I, because I made this big decision, everything's going to be good now.
Speaker 3:
And it's not until you have that first crisis that you look at that verse again. You're like, oh, wait, a minute, that's, that's not what it says at all. And now I have to rectify what I'm seeing, and so early in my life when I started seeing things, I think it's a fairness issue. So the example I use in the ministry with guys is none of us have a problem with the blessing and curse of free will when it's our responsibility. Right, guy gets drunk, crashes his car, gets badly injured or killed, you're like, hey, tragic, but choices have consequences. And so it's different, though, when that same guy gets drunk, gets in his car and kills a six-year-old on a bike, now you're like, wait a minute, that's not fair, like, what did she do? And that's where the struggle comes, is where that fairness doesn't seem to match.
Speaker 3:
And so in military service and combat service you see a lot of things and I know you have too you see things downrange. You see real evil for the first time in your life. You thought you knew what that meant. But when you see what evil inside a man can make him do to another human, to children, to families, beheading people, like just, I don't want to, you know what I mean, the horrible things, you see, you're like well, why would God let that happen? Like, and that, why? Question just dissolves everything you thought you knew. And that's sort of where I found myself, I think early in this journey.
Speaker 1:
Man, what an incredible way to start off our show today and I just had made a couple of notes. You talked about how we tend to trivialize I can't speak today, you know trivialize how we feel about things or minimize that, and I think it's because we, you know, my, my take on it is that we just didn't learn how to do that and so it was just easier. And you talked about, you know, putting it over there somewhere. That really is, men were really good at car I can't speak at all today put thing in its own little box and you and maybe maybe look at it, try not to too much, and when we don't and when we don't look at it and we don't do that, we talk. We talk about that in our work, a little bit about doing shadow work, you know, really looking at the parts of us that we're not comfortable with and understanding how that came to be and being able to work through that. And the other thing you talked about was just being, you know, being that person, that person to be all in.
Speaker 1:
And when you're eight and when you are, when you do live from that edge, you know, from that edge of life where you get an opportunity to experience, and I don't think many of us are built that way, at least not until we have.
Speaker 1:
We're challenged to live in, you know, with your examples and you know with military service, and that you are going to get a totally different perspective. That's why I don't. That's why I think it's so good to go back and reread the bible, right our perspectives. The moment that life hit, gives us something, a curveball, something happens. That passage that you thought meant one thing totally now means something different or bring, opens you up to pick up a new message. And I think that was the intention of why we have such powerful work like that, and I so grateful to hear that you know that you've transitioned from the military service to doing military, doing service for those men in your ministry. We're going to talk about that a little bit later, but I really wanted to stay on this topic a bit more, about this crisis in faith, and ask you if you'd mind trying to help us get a definition of what that means to you and how that works in the work that you're doing.
Speaker 3:
Yeah for sure, and I'll tell you exactly what it meant to me. We'll just go ahead and throw it all out there. Before I do, though, something you said resonated with me this idea of crisis in faith and living out on the edge of stuff. That's definitely true, but I don't want anyone to think that this doesn't apply to every single man on the planet, no matter what they do. Whether you're an accountant or you're working in an auto store, whatever you're doing, the crisis is either behind you, you're in it, or it's ahead of you, and if you're not prepared for that, then you're going to struggle, and so this is not unique to military service. This is, you know, whether it's the illness of a parent, the death of a child, a cancer diagnosis, the job that you're so good at getting taken away from you, we all have our crisis, and I think that everything we're going to talk about, alan, is very broadly applicable to men of all walks, and that's important. I think that we start with that, and then we'll talk later about how you prepare yourself for that, because I think that's the most important message for the people that are not in this now. It's coming, and so let's get you ready so that you don't have to learn from my mistakes, right? You don't have to go through it the way I did.
Speaker 3:
So crisis and faith the reason that we call it that instead of a crisis of faith, I've already alluded to a little bit, but what did that look like for me? For me, it looked like changing perception of who I thought God was, but, more importantly, what I thought his relationship was with me Not just me, but with mankind, right, and so in that young age, maybe immature view of what my relationship with God was, I put it into very human characteristics of fairness and all that I spoke just a moment ago about, this idea of a blessing and curse, that free will, I think, is something that we don't, fully wrap our heads around. So God loved us enough to let us choose to be in a relationship with him or choose not to be. Let us choose to be in a relationship with him or choose not to be, and that is such unconditional love and it is such a blessing for us. But the curse that comes with that is this all the fairness is then removed. So if all of mankind are God's children, then the example I gave with the drunk driver, I think resonates with this broader picture.
Speaker 3:
If I am going to be allowed to make my own decisions and sometimes suffer the consequences, I have to accept that there are others that will suffer the consequences of my actions and that's not fair. And in combat we see that we see real suffering, real, real bloody suffering, and we see it because of decisions that others made, and that lack of fairness just doesn't resonate with us. We're a black and white kind of people. Right, it's like right or wrong, and so we don't understand. Well, god, we know God could intervene, we know he could lift out his hand and grab the helicopter of extortion 17 and land it safely on the earth and save all my teammates. Right, we know he could do that, but he doesn't. And and it makes us mad. And so I I struggled with anger.
Speaker 3:
More than anything, I was angry at God, and let me just throw this out there If you're angry at God, it's okay, he can take it, don't. Don't then compound that with the guilt of being angry at God. That's a conversation for another day. But the whole, all the guilt that goes with that, if you're angry at God, just tell him you're angry, he can handle it. But so I was very angry because it didn't fit into my conception. I'm going to do the next right thing every time in every situation, and so then things should work out for me, and when they don't, it's confusing and it's angering and that's where the crisis came.
Speaker 3:
So my crisis in faith came from losing teammates. Seeing all of these teammates who now have children without a dad you know, 35 kids without a dad after extortion 1-7, all of these kinds of things I was like you know what? I just I don't get it. I clearly don't get it. I know there's a God I intellectually can't accept anything else, but I don't think that he's that loving God that we thought. So you know, remember the picture, the oil painting we all remember from our youth and Jesus has the perm and he's right, he's petting the lamb. Yeah, I didn't see that Jesus in Iraq and Afghanistan and some of the other places I went. Where was that? You know, let me rescue you. So there was no rescuing, that was going on. So there was no rescuing, that was going on and that separated me from God and I think that the separation, the divide, got larger because I was asking the wrong questions.
Speaker 3:
I said earlier, you know why would you let this happen? Why didn't you do this that? Why question? That is how the enemy gets inside your head and takes that little tiny riff and makes it into the Grand Canyon. Right, he's in there whispering yeah, if God loves you so much, then why wouldn't he do this? You know, did God not love Lou as much as he loves you? Because you know he let him die in that helicopter? Why God didn't love those little kids that got executed in front of their like? Where is that loving God? Are you sure you understand? And that voice in your head just gets you more and more angry and causes more and more division, and so the crisis in faith is really nothing more than separation from God. We allow ourselves to be pulled farther away, and the comfort that can come from being in his presence and being in his relationship with him disappears from our life. And now we're alone, and now we're mad that we're alone and we're mad at God. But God didn't do that, we did it, and it. Then it just gets. It's a snowball and it gets worse and worse and worse, and for some men this can become dangerous. This is, you know, we, whatever the number is, the skewed numbers from the VA. It's somewhere between 17 and 30 veterans are killing themselves a day. They're doing that because of the hopelessness and the loneliness and the isolation that they feel, and that is not what God wants for us.
Speaker 3:
When we come back to Romans 828, after the healing, after we realize that the why question isn't the right question and we start asking the right questions again, we realize what 828 really means. What it really means is that everything is going to be good, but maybe not for you. It doesn't mean nothing bad is going to happen. It means it's even more powerful. It means, no matter what garbage you do go through, if you can walk through it with God, if you can surrender it to God, he can make something good out of the crisis, out of the disaster, out of the sin, out of the violence and the evil that you've walked through. And isn't that even more powerful, right? That's way better than rainbows and unicorns, wow. No matter how bad it gets, if I'm walking through it with God, good will happen.
Speaker 3:
But here's the hard part, the hardest part for me to come to terms with. Until I fully understood it was that because we're so egocentric, right is I didn't understand. The good might not be for me personally, right. It doesn't mean that at the end you're going to have wealth and health and a beautiful. What it might just mean is that your struggle might affect one of your brothers that you walk through that with. They're like you know.
Speaker 3:
You think about Jeff Strucker's story, right, about those troopers coming up to him after Mogadishu and saying, jeff, dude, like I don't understand how you were you able to go back outside the wire? And he said because I knew I was going home. Either way, I was either going home to my wife and the child I hadn't met yet, or I was going home to Christ and all these people gave their life to God. Did that make the horror that he suffered in Mogadishu less? It didn't. The good wasn't for Jeff, the good was for the people that were with him. And that's hard. That is hard to realize those two things One, that the good might not be for you personally, it might just be for the kingdom. And two, that God loves those people that are messing up just as much as he loves you. Imagine that God loves that terrorist that did that horrible thing Just as much as he loves you. He's his child and he's sad that he's not doing the right thing, leaving the 99 to find the one.
Speaker 3:
These are heady issues that really really require a team to go through. So in the military, we are all about team before self, right. In special warfare, especially when we talk about team and mission before self, if you're going to try to attack these things that we're talking about by yourself, you are doomed. You've got to be part of a team. You've got to be in a community of other men to be able to walk through this fire, this fire of doubt and the crisis, in faith. And if you're not doing that, I encourage you right now. You've got to find your tribe. You've got to find if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably on that journey already, right? Because you're listening to Alan. You're at least curious about that. I beg you to find a team of men. They don't all have to be well. You don't have to find people that are going to teach you men. They don't all have to be well. You'd have to find people are going to teach you, find people in the same crisis and walk through it together, just like you did when you were in Iraq, just like you did when you were in Afghanistan, and you're going to be better for it and you can find those answers.
Speaker 3:
So that for me, that's what the crisis looked like. It was isolation, it was loneliness, it was confusion and it was a lot of anger, alan. It was a lot of anger at the situation, which is pointless, but at God, because I didn't understand. And when I was able to come back to him and really start to answer these questions and we can talk about how I did that in a minute but I just felt such a release. It was like being reborn for the third time in my case right, because I was technically born again in ninth grade. But it was a powerful moment when I realized stop asking the stupid, pointless questions and start tackling the real questions that can change your life and the life of others today, and that was the healing for me Outstanding.
Speaker 1:
Just love that, jeff. I was writing a bunch of notes here. You know you, you said something there that I hadn't really understood. I and and I've had the conversations with men and and others about this, about the topic about having this free will, and when we get, and because we were given free will, I your the perspective, you put them on. Well, that means fairness is gone and connecting those. I hadn't made that connection until you said that today, and I thank you so much for that, because you know, as a father of an who struggles.
Speaker 1:
And then you talked about how God still, you know, loves that. You know that terrorist or that that individual as well, and that's how I feel about my son. Right, I'm not, I don't agree with the life choices that he's making, but how can I have, how can I close my heart to him? And I have to. So you know, when you talked about you don't have to be a military service to have a crisis in faith, you're absolutely right. You know, then, our work.
Speaker 1:
Men come to us because their relationship, their marriages, are on the brink of divorce. You know. They know they don't want it to end, but they don't know what to do. They come to us because you know they're dealing with stuff similar to what, what I had to deal with, with dealing with with my son or or the death of a loved one, and they just don't know what to do. That crisis in faith can come from anywhere and if we just will allow ourselves to be just a little bit vulnerable, you know just a little bit like I had, I had a call yesterday from one of our local hospitals and I have an ad in the local newspaper here running about our group mentorship program and the individual called and wanted to get information and and she was just I've never heard of this before. Like we, like I, have so many people I can send to you and cause there's they obviously in the work that she's doing there through hospice.
Speaker 1:
I guess is the is the challenge that men are facing, and I think when you talked about it's that separation from God is really what that crisis ultimately becomes, helps us have an understanding and a framework for what we can, the steps to move forward and that's really where I wanted to go next really was because of your experience with this and and and and everything that you've dealt with in your life. There must've been some common triggers or experiences that you've and you touched on a little bit, but in your ministry work especially, people start to question and doubt. Are there some common triggers that that you go okay, I know what's happening and I can maybe help see it. Have this individual see that.
Speaker 3:
I think that there's yeah, there's some commonality, but I think that you also you limit yourself. If you're, if you're in a position now where you're working with other men or women that are struggling, one thing you want to avoid, I think, is to expect it to always be the same, Like there. There are some commonalities and there's some things, you see, but if you're waiting for that flag to come up, the enemy is way smarter than that, right? So they're going to, it's going to be different for everybody and they're all going to have their own triggers. The other thing that we see this is a common thing we see in the ministry that we're running now is this idea of well, my thing is so little that I don't want to talk about it, because you know, that guy has like no legs and his face got burned, and you, I'm fine, I just have this thing, my thing is little, I'm going to deal without my little thing on my I'm embarrassed to even bring it up in this group, and so we have to, every single week in this, in these meetings, tell people your stuff, and we don't always use the word stuff, but your stuff is your stuff, and there's no comparison, and that's the enemy too. That's the enemy saying oh, you're suffering because of this little thing, dude, oh so you lost a friend, whatever. This guy lost his whole platoon, and so don't let yourself fall into that trap as you walk through your crisis. But, as a leader, don't let yourself fall into that trap either of looking for the flag that says this guy is in this situation because it looks so different for everybody, that says this guy is in this situation because it looks so different for everybody.
Speaker 3:
One thing that I will say is very common this part is actually unique to military service, I think, and it was my story, just like so many others is that when you're still in it, there are things that are going to be a crisis for you, that are not a crisis for you in the moment. So let me explain what I mean. So some of the things that I struggle with, even today, are things that happened in 2005 through 2007. Well, I continued to serve all the way through 12. And then I did some other stuff and I would think about those things. They wouldn't bother me at all, they were no big deal, and it's a very common theme that we see in the military, where you don't struggle with your issues until you're done. There's the.
Speaker 3:
The human brain and the human psyche and soul has an amazing capacity to forge ahead when they when it needs to. And so the psychologists at the va and out of the va will tell you that this is very common, that that your struggles begin after, and that could be a decade For a guy who went into service in 2002 and struggled in 2004 through 2000 and retired in 23, his problems are going to be in 23. And it doesn't make sense Like you'd think. Well, you'd be struggling with this all the time. So when I completely stopped doing the crazy stuff I was doing that very next year I can remember having nightmares and and waking up in the middle of the night or just being obsessively thinking about this and I'm like it happened like 10 years ago, like I've thought about it a hundred times. It never bothers me why all of a sudden. So that is one very, very common thing that you see in PTS and the and those things that we struggle with in military service that you need to be aware of. You know, you can't just assume that the guy who is retiring as a command sergeant major is going to be struggling with things that happened last year. You might have to go all the way back to when he was, you know, an E3. And that's when that moment happened, because we really are good at compartmentalizing those things and saving them for later. But I will say that the common theme in getting people past that is to help them see the things that we've been talking about.
Speaker 3:
Alan, the idea that fairness isn't really in Scripture. There's a lot about justice. There's a lot about love and compassion and forgiveness and grace and mercy. The word fairness doesn't play in there very much. So if you're looking for it to be fair, I'm sorry you don't get that. That's not going to happen. But there is justice and there is redemption and there is mercy and there is grace, and those are far more powerful than fairness.
Speaker 3:
You know one of the things I like to talk about, hebrews 11 when I speak, because when we become Christians, we all love the first half of Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11 is the one that says it talks about those that are in the journey, those that are in Christ, and they're going to be healed and they're going to be doing these amazing miracles, and so there's like two paragraphs of all these amazing things, but it's so analogous of most people's Christian walk. We like to stop in the middle of that because the second two paragraphs say however, some of you are going to be sawed in half and you're going to be crucified and you're going to be burdened and you're going to be living in the caves and burlap sacks for me. And we like to think that our journey will be that first half but that we are somehow, amazingly, gonna be spared the second half. And so that sort of ties into that idea of asking the wrong question Instead of asking why, why would you let this happen?
Speaker 3:
Why did you not stop this? Where were you when I needed you? The answer is God was right there with you and you should be asking what, what? The why is simple. We live in a fallen world and God gave us free free will and that means bad things are going to happen. And and it's not like he didn't tell us, it's throughout the scripture.
Speaker 3:
Jesus said it in the if you open your Bible, there's a lot of stuff in red. That stuff, jesus said personally if you open your Bible, there's a lot of stuff in red. That stuff. Jesus said personally right, and he himself said look, you're going to suffer for me. You're going to, you're going to be go through crisis because of your faith in me, but he has the but. But if you can surrender to me, I will walk beside you, I will carry your burdens, all of these things.
Speaker 3:
And so, instead of asking those why questions? You need to ask the what you need to ask. Okay, not why did you spare me, but take my brother, you say what do you want me to do because I'm still here? What can I do with the gift of the life that I have left? What can I do to further the kingdom? Maybe for you it's what can I do to help others who are suffering like me and teach them the lessons that I have learned? It's a what question, not not a why.
Speaker 3:
And the moment you get to that point, the healing will begin, when you can start to say okay, what do I do next, instead of dwelling in the past and blaming God for the fallen world that we created.
Speaker 3:
Then, and only then, will you start to really move forward to healing but, more importantly, to the purpose that God has for you. Because Pastor Craig Altman is the lead pastor of our church. He's an amazing human being and one of my favorite things he's ever said from the pulpit is look, it was just about you and your salvation. You'd ask Christ into your life. There'd be a puff of smoke and you'd be gone. If you're still here, you have work to do. You haven't joined a special club where you get privilege. You've joined a team of workers who are trying to do something important, and that is bring even just one more person into the kingdom of God before the end. That's your mission. That's why you're here. Stop asking why, start asking what, and the healing will begin for you, but also for those around you, and so that's the biggest part of the message of of the journey that I went through.
Speaker 1:
Man just love that. And what a great way to to reframe that as well, right, moving away from the the blame and the victim piece and actually taking ownership and responsibility for the parts that we can. And and that's asking for what can I do? And then taking action. I I always say a spiritual. You know, our spirituality in us lives doesn't live in our butts but lives in our feet. It means we need to move and do something about it. And sitting around and and not the prayer. The prayer is a fantastic, but I don't know how much we can get accomplished if we sit and pray all day and not actually do something and move our lives forward. So thanks for bringing that out here for us. Now you have a writing partner, brian Andrews. You guys have a series of amazing covert ops books. You know they're action oriented. Now, as I said in the intro, they're bestsellers. But can you share some key themes or messages from your books and why do you believe that these particular series are resonating so much with our readers?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, we've been. We've been greatly successful and that's been such a blessing something we've been thanking God for. I think that. And then I want to talk briefly about the second half of that, which is well, what am I doing for you, god? So, but anyway, I think the reason our stuff resonates.
Speaker 3:
First of all, you know this is an exciting time to be a thriller reader. Those of you out there if you read thrillers, you grew up on Clancy and LaCarre and stuff like that. There's never been a better time to read this kind of work because there's so many people that have been there, done that, writing them now. So Brian and I are both military veterans, don Bentley is a military veteran, josh Hood is a military veteran, mark Cameron is a like. There's so many people now writing in the space that bring authenticity, and so I think that's why thrillers are really exploding now in our society.
Speaker 3:
But the reason I think ours resonate particularly well is because we do something a little different. It's a little uncommon. There's a little bit of craft stuff here that might be boring, but we talk about plot-driven stories and character-driven stories and by and large, thrillers fall into the plot driven stories. What if the Dr Evil has a nuclear bomb and he's going to drop it right and that drives the story. And you have to have elements of that in a thriller. But because of our experiences and because of the men and women that we've served with, that we want to honor, we write very character and relationship driven stories. And so while the tier one series and the Sons of Valor series let me just promise you there's some good ass kicking stuff in there Okay, there's some Navy SEAL stuff. It's they're exciting thrill ride stories but we really develop the characters and try to have them drive the story so that people can see and appreciate the impact and the sacrifice that's required to operate at that level. So we try to write with a lot of authenticity not just about weapons and plot and geopolitics, but about the people that put themselves out there at the pointy tip of the spear for the rest of us and the impact that has on them, their relationships with one another, their relationships with their loved ones at home. And I think that that has really, really resonated with people because it sort of brings the characters to life.
Speaker 3:
We get emails from fans talking about how mad they are that this happened to Elizabeth Grimes or that poor Dempsey had to go through. What are you doing? Like? You know, we made him up. You know that right, not real. And so that's really flattering when you hear that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:
And I think that, as you know, we're going to be writing the Clancy books now, the Jack Ryan series for the Clancy estate, and we're excited for that for that same reason, because you know Clancy was incredible. We'll never match what Clancy did. That's not what I'm implying, but Clancy never served he. He was a master at research and forming relationships with people out there on the pointy tip, and that's why he could write with such authenticity. We're the first people in our book Act of Defiance that comes out next May that's our first Clancy book and it falls on the 40th anniversary of Hunt Hunt for the Red October and it's a submarine book. And in that book we were able, because of our background and because of our connections and the Navy supporting us in such an amazing way. They took us out on the Ford and we went to sea on a submarine on the Indiana. We got to go on the Blackfish we flew with. We did all kinds of things, but what we're able to do is go back to that Clancy formula of this is about honoring the amazing military service. This is showcasing what our men and women do every day to keep us safe in the backdrop of a fun story. So we were able to bring all that stuff we did in tier one and sons of valor back to the Clancy franchise and we're like wicked excited about that. It's going to be super fun.
Speaker 3:
But the other thing, that all that's great, but throughout our success, I found myself praying all the time. God, thank you so much for the financial blessing and the success and doing what I love, and I'm doing it with my best friend. I'm with my family more than ever and thank you. But what am I doing for the kingdom? Like what? How can I be using this for you? And part of it was the answer was this ministry that I'm involved in and that's been a blessing. But I'm like, how can I use these gifts? And I kept getting that same. You know, just, trust my timing. Trust my timing, alan, are you better at that than me? Because I learned that lesson 400 times. I still haven't learned it. But so I'm in prayer and I wrote a book called War Corn, which is part of the ministry, which is more of a, you know, more of a ministerial book. It's fiction but it's designed to tie into the ministry. But I want to do something big and out of the blue I mean literally out falling from heaven.
Speaker 3:
I get this call one day from our friend, josh Hood. Josh is an Army veteran, a former SWAT team sniper. He writes the Treadstone series. He just he's got a great book. I'm going to plug him for a second. The Guardian great book just came out from Blackstone, and good friend. And he calls me up and he says hey, jeff, listen, I was just on airplane. I want to tell you this story. I sit next to this lady. You can tell he's from Memphis, tennessee. He's a redneck like me and he's he's a guy. I have to meet this lady and she's like it turns out she's an editor at Tyndale house, which is to grow action thrillers in the Christian space. And he said I told her, no, I just write about killing terrorists and stuff like that. But I got a buddy who's been telling me about a story because Brian and I had this idea for a book. And he says so she's going to call you. I was like okay, josh, and I hung up and I'm like that lady ain't going to call me. What are you talking about? Some lady you met on an airplane. The next day our agent calls and says hey, I just got a call from the head of fiction at Tyndale saying that she wants to call with you because of something that you guys were talking about. I was like what? So we get on, and Tyndale house is looking to grow their male readership by writing stuff. And so, and long story short, we get on this call. We told him look, we write gritty, realistic things. You sure you want us? They said yes, we do. And so we started a series.
Speaker 3:
This series here, dark Intercept, is the first book. These are Christian action thriller books that talk about everything you and I just talked about Alan. They talk about good and evil. It talks about crisis and faith. We have this broken character here who is, you know, instead of John Dempsey in tier one or Chunk Redmond in Sons of Valor, these operators at the peak of their game. We meet him when he's broken spiritually, emotionally, physically. He's being medically retired from an injury. He hasn't known God for 15 years. He was going to be a pastor in his youth but something happened where he saw real evil and it made him run the other direction. And then he gets this call from his old friend who is sort of living the life he'd imagined and says my daughter's been kidnapped. Can you help me find her? He's like I'm a Navy SEAL, like what am I going to do for you? And that begins this journey where we see that the good and the evil in the world are driven by spiritual forces. The good and the evil in the world are driven by spiritual forces. And so there's this group called the Shepherds that have been around for hundreds of years fighting in the spiritual warfare space. There are former SEALs and Green Berets and Rangers and AFSOC guys who now have faith and are working with this special covert ops team that fights against the true evil, which is the enemy and what he's trying to do to keep people from the kingdom of God and man.
Speaker 3:
What an exciting rush it has been to write those books. Three books out. The fourth one comes out in the fall. It's been optioned for television. So timing, your timing sucks. Wait, god has it, he's going to figure it out for you. So what a rush to be able to write those kinds of books and be able to write all that faith the first time we wrote a chapter break and we got to put scripture in. We're like man, we've arrived right. That's not something we do much in tier one and sons of valor and stuff like that. So it's been a really exciting career so far and we've just been richly blessed. We hope we're using some of it to give back to God.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely, you sure are, and you know, I know we're getting tight on time and I'd love to have you come back on the show. But my closing, my closing question for you today is you know, of everything that we've spoke about, maybe there was something we didn't get a chance to touch on.
Speaker 3:
What would be the one. Something I'd like to reemphasize I know that there are people listening that are still where I was. I know that you're in crisis. I know that you're not sure, but you want to get right. You're not going to do it alone. Please, please, please, reach out to Alan. They have resources that they can plug you into. He's running his own stuff that he can plug you into. Uh, if not him, there's the Mighty Oaks Foundation run by Chad Robichaud Amazing, Good friend of mine, Amazing organization. Pts Foundation is another faith-based organization helping military veterans deal with things and their crisis in faith.
Speaker 3:
My point is you have to be in community. If you're not in community, if you're doing this by yourself and thinking, once I get right, then I'll re-engage, You're never going to get right by yourself. You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable. You have to allow yourself to be in community. Please, please, please. Reach out through your church, reach out through your friends, your community. Reach out to Alan, find somebody. Reach out to me. Our website andrews-wilsoncom. There's a way for you to engage with us. You'll see partner pages All Secure Foundation, Seal, Legacy Foundation. We've got all kinds of organizations we partner with.
Speaker 1:
Please don't do it alone Outstanding, I want to make sure, jeff, all that information, your socials, everything is at the bottom of the footnotes of this episode. Once again, thank you so much. I really appreciated the time today and would love to have you back on and continue this conversation.
Speaker 3:
I'll come back anytime. This has been one of the one of the most enjoyable interviews I've ever done. Thank you so much for your time and thank you for all you're doing, my friend, Really. I mean that Right on. Thanks.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for listening to the revolutionary man podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny? Thank you for listening to the Revolutionary man podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny, to become more the man you are destined to be? Join the brotherhood that is the Awakened man at theawakenedmannet and start forging a new destiny today.
