Hearing from God
Normally, daily distractions force me to dedicate prayer time to make a connection and hold a discussion with our Creator. My daily prayer time is a period of no activity other than focusing completely on God.
During the week I spent in Tampa, Florida, scoring over 1,200 Advanced Placement essays, I had an unusual listening session with God. Because there were no other daily distractions, He never stopped talking to me for the eight hours I spent each scoring day. I was getting information downloads to the point where, in the evenings, I had to write down as much as I could remember hearing during the business-day scoring hours.
A few things God told me were easy to remember, particularly the primary spiritual gifts He had given me. The primary gifts are teaching, leading, and encouraging, which I have long understood about myself. Having God reinforce this solidified my understanding of my gifts. I wrote down what He wanted me to do with those gifts. In a nutshell, God told me to use those gifts for the Discipled Warrior Ministry. My evening sessions of writing down what I remembered hearing was the genesis of the ministry.
The ministry’s name, Discipled Warriors, came early. I have long thought one of the problems the big “C” Church has is the inability to effectively disciple people who accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior, leaving them as milk drinkers rather than the meat eaters they should develop into (1 Corinthians 3:1-3). The Church that I am familiar with needs to teach and train people who grow up in the Church and those who are new believers.
The second word in the ministry title, Warriors, is a natural fit for me. Before I worked exclusively in a university setting as a professor and administrator, I retired from the U.S. Army. I entered the military as an Infantry Private, earned the rank of Staff Sergeant, became a commissioned officer, and ultimately retired as a Major. My career included roles in Special Forces, Ranger, and Infantry units. I deployed to named warzones three times and participated in other non-warzone activities several different times. My military experience reinforced at least this one fact: a warrior ethos is necessary to win on the battlefield. The Army has a stated Warrior Ethos, and the four statements that comprise the Ethos roughly match my interpretation of being a warrior.
Along with the ministry’s name, I have witnessed men in our society abdicating their responsibilities as husbands, fathers, and community members. There are many reasons for their abdication, but the umbrella reason is the spiritual warfare our society is experiencing.
In attempting to capture the details, I wrote down over twenty pages of notes. The details God downloaded on me during my week in Tampa focused on teaching and training men to survive, thrive, and triumph in spiritual warfare. The details and my spiritual gifts led to the ministry’s mission statement: “Discipled Warriors teaches men about and trains them for spiritual leadership one congregation at a time.”
When I returned from Tampa, I submitted a letter of resignation to my university so I could begin building the Discipled Warriors Ministry. My superiors and colleagues alike expressed contentment and joy that I was being called into ministry. In July 2023, I transitioned from university professor and administrator to begin building the Discipled Warriors Ministry. To read more on How Discipled Warriors Got Started, see Part 3, Building the Ministry.