00:00:02 Speaker 1: Life Audio. 00:00:03 Speaker 2: Build Different is a production of the American Association of Christian Counselors. To support this podcast and learn how you can help us to promote all our biblical content, spread the Gospel, and provide mental health resources and training to people everywhere, just go to aaccfoundation dot org. Again, that's Aaccfoundation dot org. Welcome to Built Different. I'm Zach Clinton, your host, and each week I come to you exclusively on the Life Audio podcast Network. I'm proud to partner with Life Audio and bring you entertaining, life changing, family friendly podcasts for a new generation. 00:00:38 Speaker 3: I Built Different. 00:00:39 Speaker 2: Our mission is to provide encouragement, hope and challenge to help push you past your limits and reach goals you never thought possible. Colossians two, verse six says, So then, just as you received Christ Jesus's Lord, continue to live your lives in Him, rooted and built up in Him. 00:00:53 Speaker 3: Amen. Now let's roll. 00:01:01 Speaker 2: Hello everybody, Welcome back into the Build Different podcast is always I'll be your host today, doctor Zach Clinton, joined by my Dad, President of the American Association of Christian Counselor's Director of the Global Center for Human Flourishing. Right here on the campus of Liberty University, doctor Tim Clinton. Dad, thanks for joining me. 00:01:16 Speaker 3: Always fun to be in the house. Fantastic guest today, Zach. I can't wait to hear what's going to happen. Yes, we do. 00:01:20 Speaker 2: We're actually backstage at our Nitment's Impact Week in our twenty twenty six night event here at Thomas Ord Baptist Church, Lynchburg, Virginia. Sold out crowd forty five hundred men gathering to come and worship and deepen their relationship with God, but also strengthen and develop their relationship with other men. I tell you what, God always falls all over this place, and. 00:01:39 Speaker 3: We have an unbelievable lineup. 00:01:41 Speaker 2: One of our guests, very special guests that's going to be partaking in our Hero panel today, is with us today on the podcast, Brad Yuri. Something that you need to know about Brad upfront, though, is that he is one of the leadership experts that I believe God is uniquely positioned for such a time as this to speak into today's generations of men. As are tactical troop commander of Seal Team six, also a commanding officer and other opportunities and Seal Teams one was under sea one was with Buds the training program. This is a man who gets leadership, guys, get sacrifice, and gets what it means to live the biblically masculine life. Brad, our friend, thank you so much for joining us today, so. 00:02:18 Speaker 1: Much, both of you. 00:02:19 Speaker 3: Super excited Brad and that you'd come. And man, we're looking forward to a great weekend here at Acknight. 00:02:24 Speaker 1: Yeah, fantastic. 00:02:26 Speaker 3: It's something happens, Brad when the boys get together. 00:02:29 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:02:30 Speaker 3: I don't know what I'll subscribe it. Yeah, but when they come in and they let that stuff kind of like come down and open up to receive and get in the presence of God. It's it's life changing, It really is. 00:02:43 Speaker 1: It is. 00:02:43 Speaker 4: The it's I mean, the aroma is pleasing to God, right, And I like to joke with dude, it's like, oh give me that man, muscl Like, let's get in there, bro, hug. And it's exciting when dudes get together, good things can happen, for sure. 00:02:55 Speaker 3: Yes, Brad. 00:02:56 Speaker 2: As we begin, our theme for this event is forged through the Yeah. So the Book of Job, chapter twenty three, Verse ten. Job is literally seeking for God, he can't seem to find him. It goes before him, behind him, beside him, right to the left, and he just can't find God. But then he declaratively states, but he knows the way that I take. I can't see him, but he sees me, and when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. When you think about stepping into a room of forty five hundred men, I'm just interested. What is the message that God is massaging in your heart? 00:03:27 Speaker 3: Man? 00:03:27 Speaker 1: It's a great question, Zach. It's consistent with that. 00:03:32 Speaker 4: It's always different now when every time I come to one of these kind of events, always praying like, hey, Spirit, you lead the way, you take my voice and convict me of what the men in this room need to hear tonight. 00:03:45 Speaker 1: It's not my message, it's his message. 00:03:47 Speaker 4: And one thing consistent with that theme that He has worked in our lives was a deep and relevant understanding of suffering in this world and why God allows it a lot of people these days, well, I guess that's nothing new on the son you said that earlier today. For as long as we've existed, mankind of said, well, if there is a God, and if he's good, why does he allow suffering in this world? And it's a really relevant and valid question, but it's the wrong question. This world has fallen because of us, because of our sin. He created it to be perfect, and we messed that up because of that formula. Now, suffering is in many ways, as far as I can tell, And I've been kind of nerding out on the topic lately through some real life experiences, through scripture and then just looking around and trying to observe the patterns and the metaphors that God lays out of nature. 00:04:35 Speaker 1: But what I've. 00:04:36 Speaker 4: Come away with is that suffering is almost as immutable as the law of gravity. It is a requirement in this world for anything of value to come out of it. 00:04:46 Speaker 1: When you look at you mentioned precious metals. 00:04:49 Speaker 4: It takes fire and heat to purify gold and silver seven times over. Scripture tells us as they remove the dross from the precious metal until it's refined through that fire and that painful process. The same thing with deal. It's bent, folded, heated, smashed, refolded, smashed again, drawn out, cooled, heated again. We know from scripture iron sharpens iron. That's unpleasant metal scraping against metal, but that's what sharpens us. I think I mentioned the other day to you I've even found this in the trees. It's everywhere in nature, this idea that suffering is required for us to grow stronger. We do it physically. We break down our muscles, we build them back stronger. 00:05:27 Speaker 1: We do it. 00:05:28 Speaker 4: That's right, that's right, And it takes the pain and to break down. It's a breakdown of your muscles to become stronger and better and faster. Cognitally, the same thing. That's why we go to institutions like liberty, so we explore higher learning. And the same thing is true spiritually as well. We see it everywhere around us. God gives us all these winks and these metaphors his parables in scripture to give us insights into his character and insights into why things are the way they are. And while we can never truly know the mind of God, like Job says, we can trust that these hints and these metaphors and these indications and these fingerprints of His plans for our lives means something. And when he tells us, lean not on your own understanding. When he tells us, I mean this for your good. In those valleys of darkness and despair where you don't necessarily feel him, sometimes where we don't necessarily understand why we're going through it. Well, let's choose to trust him who's shown himself to be trustworthy, and understand that he's got the big picture here, and he's taken us somewhere good. Through this suffering. You will get stronger because of it. You will get driven deeper into his refuge. I think a lot of churches out there these days have abused the verse where it talks about He'll never allow you to be tempted beyond your. 00:06:37 Speaker 1: Ability to resist. Well, if we've abused that. 00:06:39 Speaker 4: And people will say, well, he'll never give you more than you can handle, I don't think that's in scripture. 00:06:44 Speaker 1: Nope, And in fact it's quite the opposite. 00:06:47 Speaker 4: He deliberately gives us more than we can handle to drive us to our knees finally submit that I'm not strong enough on my own, Lord, I need you. 00:06:55 Speaker 1: It drives us into his refuge. 00:06:57 Speaker 4: And we know from Psalms O taste and say that the Lord is good, blessed is the man. It takes refuge in him, when we take refuge in him, his strength is manifested through our weakness, as Paul says, And then all of a sudden race is sufficient. 00:07:11 Speaker 1: It's sufficient. It's like sufficient. 00:07:13 Speaker 3: There's something about power, there's something about powerlessness. Yes, that God really thrives in the midst of but when we come to the end of ourselves, it's the beginning of him, right, and we can find our strength, our hope in him. The old Puritans used to call it the valley of visions. Yeah, you know, when you got into those dark places, you began to see differently. 00:07:33 Speaker 1: Yes, you know. 00:07:33 Speaker 3: I remember when I was a kid. We go back to Kane, Pennsylvania. Back in those days, they'd wake you up early in the morning, you have devotions together. We got in this morning devotional, went out there and this group leader, our camp counselor at the time, was sharing out of the Book of the James and he shared this verse about count of all joy when you fall into trials and tribulations. And I'm like, dude, why are we studying that. I'm thirteen, fourteen years old. You know, I want to play Paul. I want to wait where the girls at. Okay, here we are kind of all And I was like, I hate that verse. I don't like it anyway, you know what I'm saying. But boy, oh, boy, as you quote begin the journey of life. It wasn't too long after that my kid's sister was involved in a car accident where she suffered a traumatic brain injury, and it began to change the trajectory of everything about how I thought about life and the course I was on, and I began to see life and pain a lot differently. You know that, And you're right, there's a forging that does go on. You begin suffering, challenge, push, and I know, I want to talk a little bit about some of the stuff that you you put the I call them the bad guys. I really mean the good guys who are the bad dudes get things done? You know that, who actually get in and do missions way beyond their real capability in terms of just naturally speaking, you know that people don't just do these things. But that forging stuff, I know it's not fun. I know it's not easy, but I know this. It builds depth and character. Yeah, strength, it's necessary. 00:09:10 Speaker 1: I like that. 00:09:12 Speaker 4: John Piper wrote Suffering in the Sovereignty of God and I read that years ago, and in it he talks about the time where he had cancer and his tagline was, don't waste your cancer and I took that, borrowed it, plagiarized it, and came up with don't waste your suffering. 00:09:27 Speaker 1: I know that it's doing something for you. 00:09:29 Speaker 4: And to your point, we used to tell that to our candidates before they went into the hell week on the seal side and the tour on the Swick side, same idea, but we'd tell them, hey, don't waste this opportunity. This isn't happening to you. It's happening for you. And in order to building you what we need and what our nation needs to go do the things that you just referenced, we have to suffer first to get there because we know that that's the formula to produce the end state that we need. So don't waste this opportunity. Don't don't don't spiral and self pity. 00:09:57 Speaker 1: Oh woe is me? This is so miserable. No, no, dude, how blessed and privilege are? 00:10:01 Speaker 4: You just gone through this so that you know what's going to come out the other side is going to be awesome. 00:10:05 Speaker 2: I'm going to stop this right there and jump in to say you're listening to build different I'm Zach Clinton. We need to break for a brief message from our sponsors. I'll be back with our guests to keep the conversation flowing. Right after this. You're listening to Life Audio exactly, and I think that's that's what James Chapter one is all about. Don't consider a joy because of the trial, but because of what the trial can produce it and through you allow God to let it. As I'm looking at you and I just think about the leadership, the communication ability, the team ability that you talked about to the Libery University football team just this past Monday, which again, thank you for doing that favor. You absolutely crushed the guys walk away. 00:10:43 Speaker 3: It was amazing. But let me ask you, I wanted to go in there and just start bumping on people. 00:10:48 Speaker 1: Man, let's run to some brick walls. 00:10:50 Speaker 2: That's right, Brad. I got to ask where where was this deposited? 00:10:55 Speaker 3: In the man? Brad Geary like growing up? 00:10:57 Speaker 2: I'd love to hear your story, your back background, your test stimony, because when I look at you and the leadership qualities, I'm like, where did this begin? 00:11:04 Speaker 1: Yeah? With my dad. I think, like most of us want out of our dads. Right. He came from a very very broken family. 00:11:14 Speaker 4: It's hard to even talk about, because there was such brokenness, from a broken marriage, to abuse, to sexual abuse, a history of just absolute utter darkness, and somewhere in that in his teenage years he met Jesus on a mountain top and yeah, and so he. 00:11:35 Speaker 1: Gave his life to Christ. And sorry, it's weird. 00:11:39 Speaker 4: It doesn't normally choke me up, but it's interesting how the spirit sometimes does that. 00:11:43 Speaker 1: But he didn't know what he was doing. 00:11:45 Speaker 4: He had no father figure, he had no one as an example other than the look to Jesus on how do I do this? Once he got married and starts raising his kids, and he just did his best through that his phone. Like all of us, he's a man, he makes his mistakes, but he committed to raising us in a accordance with scripture in the Lord, and the Lord has rewarded that, I think. 00:12:06 Speaker 1: And all three of his kids are not believers. 00:12:08 Speaker 4: My wife and her sisters are all believers, our kids are believers, and we have this incredible fam jam of just love for Jesus and love for each other. 00:12:16 Speaker 1: But it all started with dad. And I say my dad. 00:12:18 Speaker 4: Obviously Jesus did all that, but he was the one that said I'm going to start pointing people to him instead of to me, and he put us on that path and broke generational sin. 00:12:29 Speaker 1: And it's just a testament to the power of Jesus. And that was really it. 00:12:33 Speaker 4: I came to Jesus at a very young age, got baptized at Delaney Street Baptist Church downtown Orlando, one of the classic Baptist church ones with the tank behind the police, you know, was just a classic cliched, you know, nineteen nineties Baptist Church. 00:12:48 Speaker 1: Great experience. 00:12:49 Speaker 4: But then, like us all too, I had my seasons where I kept God in an arms distance, especially in the sealed teams, as God led me toward that path. 00:13:01 Speaker 1: And I straight I strayed in my own ways. 00:13:05 Speaker 4: We have a tendency to do that as men and I know, and I've talked about this at a couple different events, but that culminated with me as I was losing teammates over the years and in our largest loss of life with Extortion one seven in twenty eleven, when we lost thirty one thirty one Americans and seven Afghans and one helicopter shootdown, that was the time where I was really diving into rage and anger and I was keeping God at a distance. I was running from him in a lot of ways, but he kept pursuing me. And it's part of what I'm writing about in my book right now. Actually, I'm at the section where I'm talking about how that was when I feel like Jesus left the ninety nine and came back to find me. 00:13:43 Speaker 1: Wow, because I had. 00:13:44 Speaker 4: Strayed in so many ways there, Yeah, and he brought me back. He used my wife to do it, but he brought me back into the fold and reminded me of how good he is. 00:13:56 Speaker 1: And I'm just blessed. Man. 00:13:57 Speaker 4: I'm thankful. I'm thankful because it wasn't due to any thing I did. It was all him. And so then that was a defining moment in my career as a seal because I look at my career as pre that event and post that event, because it was a completely different mindset I started approaching my career with. 00:14:14 Speaker 1: And God has blessed us because of it. 00:14:16 Speaker 2: And I asked a question just following up with that testimony, because clearly I can speak to having a father that has hardwired these attributes and these values of masculinity into me from a biblical perspective, but we can easily talk about resilience and all these things, but when you talk about the Lord used your wife to help draw you back to him, I'd love to hear more about that. 00:14:39 Speaker 1: Man. 00:14:41 Speaker 4: It's combat is tough because we do very dark work. I think there's nobility in it, and there's virtue and it I think it's biblically justifiable. I'm actually going on Chad Wright's podcast and about a month that we're talking about this very topic. How can you reconcile being both a believer in Jesus and being a war fi war war just war three? Right, Saint Augustine. Yeah, so great topic. Obviously, it has been sold by by philosophers way smarter than us. But we're going to talk about it from a practical perspective. But the dark work takes a dark toll over time. It is really really difficult when day in day out, you're hunting and you're seeing, and you're being exposed to the darkest depths of mankind's evil, and I think it was just wearing on my soul. And the devil we know is the best liar out there, and so he uses lies to start to twist our perspective, and I was at the point where I was now so enthralled with the warrior ethos and what I thought was my duty as a man, that I was sacrificing my family incrementally, bit by bit, my role as a husband, my role as a father. Amy's role in that was incredible prayer, warrior first off, and patience as she tried to help pull me out of that anger, and she just I mean, it was a painstaking process, but she was committed to not leaving my side. She'll tell you now if she was sitting here telling you, there was one night where she said, I. 00:16:03 Speaker 1: Thought our marriage was over. I thought it was over. Now. 00:16:06 Speaker 4: I never said the word divorced, and I don't know if we ever have gotten there, but she said, the way we were, the way you were angry, the way you were closed off, and you were just holding it all inside, I thought our marriage was over, that was it. You were going to leave us. And yet she stuck with it, and she just kept poking and prodding all the right ways. She likes to say, I'm your biggest fan, Brad, but I'm your biggest critic. 00:16:28 Speaker 1: And she will never accept me. 00:16:32 Speaker 4: Living in that rage, living in that sin without slowly pulling me back, impatiently doing it, and she did it over time. It helped me learn to communicate more effectively about what was going on inside my heart instead of just burying it deep down inside it and really helped pull me out. If we're supposed to be cleaved, if we're supposed to be the two shall become one. She's like, you can't hide those emotions as raw as they are from me. 00:16:55 Speaker 1: I'm owed that. 00:16:57 Speaker 4: And that was one of the problems I had, was when you experienced deep, deep grief downrange, there's this there was this lie that grabbed hold of me. And when I'd come home and my mom and dad or Amy would ask me, Hey. 00:17:10 Speaker 1: Walk me through what's going on? What happened? Can you talk about it? In my mind, I would think you haven't earned. 00:17:16 Speaker 4: The right for me to be vulnerable with you and share with you what it was like to be downrange. 00:17:22 Speaker 1: Well, that's a lie because she's cleaved to me. 00:17:25 Speaker 4: And by the way, like, she's the one who went to the thirty one funerals over the next month while I was downrange still doing my duty. 00:17:31 Speaker 1: So if anyone's earned the right, it's her. 00:17:33 Speaker 4: But that was the lie I was telling myself, so I'd close myself off, and over time she was able to pull me out of it and teach me, no, no, no, I have a right to know, and in fact, not just a rite. There's a need. There's a need for us to have these conversations. And through those conversations I was able to start opening up more and more and then recognize the source of my anger wasn't her. It wasn't the question she asked, And it wasn't the kids who were being too rambunctious in the back of the minivan as I have and two wherever that I'd lash out in anger and yell at the source of my anger was something entirely different. 00:18:05 Speaker 1: So stop taking that out of them. 00:18:07 Speaker 4: Stop stop getting triggered by them, and then them the ones you love, the ones we hurt the most because it's easy to hurt them. 00:18:14 Speaker 1: Don't lash out at them. 00:18:15 Speaker 4: Let's let's break down the emotion, deconstructed, figure out where it came from, give it a name, and then attack it spiritually through through prayer, through worship, through spiritual warfare. The twenty second hug. Have you ever done this? 00:18:27 Speaker 1: Yes? Oh my gosh, My wife taught me that it's incredible. It's incredible, it doesn't matter how bad. Oh even better, even better. 00:18:36 Speaker 3: Yeah, at the end of the day, Brad, then you're thinking about trust. Uh, you train war fighters, I mean the elite, the elite trust, Yes, they have they have to trust implicity. 00:18:52 Speaker 1: Trust is everything. 00:18:52 Speaker 3: It's everything, same thing in relationships at every level. Sure, which, by the way, means you've got to feel and I'll use this work carefully safe in order for you to accept influence, because the whollmark of a healthy relationship is whether or not you can accept influence from each other. The only way you can accept influence is if you quote believe they have your best interests at heart. Same thing in a relationship with God, You're not really going to go there with God until you really believe that's what faith is all about. You can accept influence from him that he has your best interest at art. Going into those places that's tough because a lot of the training that you do is you teach warfighters to what be strong and independent. You got to function. They have to trust, But then they've got to what They've got to believe with everything they've got that they have the power within to do whatever's necessary in that moment. You have to You can't waiver. You got to go there. How did you how did you command? That's a really really challenging to be in. 00:20:00 Speaker 4: Yeah, i'd offer it's a little even I'll take it from their level. Yes, there's that, there's that element of individual like I have to be able to do this. And yet what do we see manifest all the time, Like when you heard these stories about like a mother lifts a car off of her child who's pinned right, there are these superhuman feats of strength, but they're very rarely on their own behalf. It's on behalf of a loved one that all of a sudden they find this this resolve. I think in one of your guys that the team asked, you know which special operations that I look at, and I gave them all like the nod, like they're all great. I truly believe culturally the Seal teams is different and a little bit better because of this element of the team ability piece, because there's an element of brotherly love that we double down on. And I talked about this from day one. We get under the boat, we get under the log. It's not about the individual and in fact, the people that come to the seal teams thinking this is it's. 00:20:54 Speaker 1: About It's all about the team coming there. 00:20:57 Speaker 4: I got selflessness, selflessness coming as a team. There's nothing that we can't accomplish together. And by the way, we all recognize because Buds and the Swix School, both of them, they're designed to provoke failure for very specific reason. We give you so much, you will fail, and I want to see how you deal with failure individually. Be I want to see when you fail, did your team rally around you and carry you through that failure. Because if you've invested in them and shown that you're selfless because we need each other, because we need each other, then they're gonna trust you. And then you've earned them to pick you up when you stumble, when you fall. That's the beauty of what naval special warfare does that no one else does as good as us, I think. 00:21:36 Speaker 3: And there's a cause above and beyond all this. Yeah, that you're committed to. 00:21:40 Speaker 4: Yeah, and I will do more for the man I love downrange than I would ever do for myself. And so all of a sudden, the seal teams aren't these like superhuman like with in America. 00:21:51 Speaker 3: So then it makes sense that you would come back to your team, yeah, your wife, your family, yes, and say, oh my goodness, yes, that's my team. 00:21:57 Speaker 1: This is my team. 00:21:58 Speaker 3: What am I doing? 00:21:59 Speaker 4: I used to joke about enter table, though I wish I was half as good of a father and husband as I was a CEL officer downrange. But you're right, there's so many parallels between leadership in whatever work environment you're in and your family. 00:22:11 Speaker 2: So many parallels, so many parallels I was just thinking about. I was just chatting with a woman named Jen Portius who was just up here, and we were talking about building things. Men love to build empires, they love to build training programs, They love to build naturally when it comes comes to a purpose in a calling. But oftentimes we neglect building the things that matter most, are those that matter most that seme at home. Yes, I would love for you to share is we're talking about resilience here for a moment, because this is really what this is team ability. Resilience is rooted in relationship. I've done a lot of research on resilience. You can teach resilience. It can literally become a learned characteristic or a learned strait a part of your DNA. I have read every academic literature in the space. I wrote a dissertation on this, worked with high performing individuals and the big thing there's no concrete definition, but the common theme is positive adaptation in the presence of adversity. So adversity will come, but being able to positively adapt have the team ability. You talk about suffer well, yes, talk about how to reframe our suffering to make it for our good, not just something happening to us, but something happening for us. 00:23:14 Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's such a good question. We can. We can. 00:23:21 Speaker 4: We can sit at the dinner table and we can read the Bible to our kids. We can make them do a Bible study with us. They learn so much more when they are watching us what they're always doing. How does mom and dad? How do mom and dad behave when that adversity comes? Are we living what we're preaching as a family Again, We're all gonna fall short, We're gonna make mistakes. I think that's the most impact we can have in building that resiliency in our families, because our kids are looking toward us, and as you know, when they're little, you protect them from the horrors of life sometimes, but we have to incriminally give them some of that weight engine show them that we're going to carry it with them. The best example I can think of where we did this as a family practically was actually on Emerson's birthday out in Hawaii. Here's a uh we had this scare. You probably remember when we thought the nuclear missiles were coming from North Korea. 00:24:07 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, so we were there when we lived there when that happened. 00:24:10 Speaker 4: And now it's funny, like, oh yeah, the guy pushed the wrong button and the alarms went off, right, It's funny. It's it makes for a great story. It didn't feel funny in the moment. And and we very much. My son came in and woke us up that morning showing us the phones. They're all going off real alerts. Everyone's iPhones hijacked, and it's telling us this is happening. I'm thinking, this is a mistake. There's no way, there's no way. The alarms start going off on the base. We lived on Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, so like the epicenter of probably what they would be aiming to strike at. 00:24:36 Speaker 3: And we we and there's a little history there, Yeah, you go back. 00:24:42 Speaker 1: So we really thought this is this might be it. And then we're like, okay, do we drive up to the mountains? Do we get in the car? Do we what do we do? 00:24:48 Speaker 4: And I'm and I'm I'm going through the math in my mind. I'm like the missiles. If the timing is right, we only have a couple more minutes. There's no time to run. And by the way, there's crazy people who are panicking on the road anyway. And so we sat there and I looked at Amy and I'm like, no, we're staying. Here's what we're gonna do. We texted all of our family and said this might be our last text to you. We love you, turn off the phones, and as a family, the six of us melter on our leather autumn and said, hey, guys, we might all get to go see Jesus in the same moment. Let's pray our way there, and we just started praying. 00:25:21 Speaker 1: Dude. 00:25:22 Speaker 4: It was probably one of the most it was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. And then nothing really happened. Nothing really happened, and we realized maybe this might be a fluke. And then funny enough, I was a little disappointed that we weren't seeing Jesus in that moment, because like, how much pain and suffering would we have been spared as a family if we all got to go at the same moment. It would have been incredible. So once we the whole thing then exploded on social media. 00:25:47 Speaker 1: It's all fake. The guy hit the wrong button. Ah, okay, But here's what was great. 00:25:52 Speaker 4: So many people were jammed into psych's offices over the next few months in Hawaii seeking counseling and care, and they were so traumatized by the fear that just griped their souls in that moment. 00:26:04 Speaker 1: What did we do. 00:26:05 Speaker 4: We went and swam with the dolphins that afternoon at the local water park. And my kids are like, okay, I think because we showed them Jesus in that moment. And this is how you deal with adversity, This is how you deal with fear. Don't fear a man who can kill the body. 00:26:18 Speaker 3: We have hope. 00:26:19 Speaker 1: We have hope, no matter what, no matter what, no matter what. 00:26:22 Speaker 3: It's this idea that there are no atheists in foxholes. 00:26:25 Speaker 1: That's right. 00:26:26 Speaker 2: I want to chat with you a little bit about that because I want to know like where faith is at in terms of the military, and just you've been with troops, you've been a leader in that space. Just how have you seen men that are far away from God, not living a biblical masculine life whatsoever, don't even have a personal relationship with God? But how have you seen them cry out to the heart of God and some of their most deep, dark and dire moments of need. 00:26:50 Speaker 4: It's everywhere, and I think there's it's because a couple of things. One, you learn to love, and we know from Jesus greater love has no one than this. They lays on his life for his friends. Well, that's our's are the business we're in and so inevitably, whether you an atheist or not, in the military, you're living a life that is a a a an echo of scriptural truths. And I think God uses that to provoke a lot of men's hearts toward him, which is why you have those those those sayings, and it's why I think we see revivals, especially after periods of combat. We're seeing a massive revival on the seal teams. It's super interesting. When I joined the. 00:27:28 Speaker 3: Team, unbelievable, Yeah, like faith, Yeah, Oh, it's amazing. He's just coming like people are bolder today. 00:27:37 Speaker 4: I've never heard more politicians talking about Jesus, and I've never heard more pastors talking about politics, and I think those are both good things. So yeah, we're seeing it. I've seen it down range. I'm seeing it in dudes. He just went out the other night with with a dude who was probably one of like the the dudes. 00:27:54 Speaker 1: I would never suspect. We come to the faith like just total heathen. 00:27:58 Speaker 4: And we went out to celebrate something and we're at a bar and I said, let's get some drinks and he said, all right, I'm gonna get a Seltzer water with a lime. I'm like, what's going on with you, dude? Like, and he goes, oh, yeah, I found Jesus and I stopped drinking. And not that you need to stop drinking, but that was his idol and so he felt convicted for finding just to give it up. And I'm like, wait, wait, hang on a minute, what like, backup, tell us the story? 00:28:20 Speaker 1: And he tells. 00:28:20 Speaker 4: My wife and I are just jaws on the floor because God is just provoking the hearts of a lot of his war fighters and his men, and we're seeing this especially within the men of the church. 00:28:30 Speaker 1: This revival. 00:28:32 Speaker 4: I feel like when I look back at my life and I think of all the churches we went to growing up, and then through my time in the military, so many men were pacified through culture, and I think through some lives, even at the pulpit, where we were told to be a nice guy, don't make waves, don't offend people, just be nice, you know, and go to work and be nice and then come to church on Sundays. And it's like, dude, I don't think that's I don't think that's accurate scripture. 00:28:58 Speaker 1: I don't think that's what Jesus calls us to be. 00:29:00 Speaker 4: We're supposed to embrace masculinity as a mago day, as made in God's image, and there's some incredible masculine qualities that God gives us. Seats everywhere, right, just got to read and they're like, oh, let's just export that into twenty twenty six, and then I think that's the way we should be. I mean, even David said, my God is a God of war. Okay, doesn't mean we should be flipping about war, but he's a God is a warrior. He's a warrior and spiritual warfare is real, and. 00:29:28 Speaker 3: We so often just pretended something about Moses looking at Joshua saying, hey, listen, we just got through Red Sea. Yeah, and here we are and there's a guy down there, and I'm like, he's gonna kill us, and you need to go fight him. 00:29:47 Speaker 1: Yeah, you better. 00:29:48 Speaker 3: Get down there. And while you're down there, I'm gonna get air in to her beside me. And I'm a whole mom. Yeah, and hey, so we can prevail in the ballot because again, let me say something, he's going to kill us, and you've got to fight him. There's Joshua down there getting after it. I'll talk to you about discipline for a moment. The scripture says that we're discipline ourselves to righteousness. They got a lot of people out there who who want change in their life. But they and I know there are a lot of factors to change, but the heart of discipline the ability to I'll use the word self denial for a moment. Okay, that piece talk to us about how significant that is in training fighters, if you will, and why it's critical, and how can we build discipline in our own lives because a lot of people just can't go there it's a. 00:30:47 Speaker 1: Really good question. 00:30:48 Speaker 4: There's a lot of seals that will talk a lot about self discipline. 00:30:51 Speaker 1: Right, there's the Goggins out there. 00:30:52 Speaker 4: Oh yeah, like love it, get out and run fible marathons this month, you know, like, oh my god, Jocko get up four to. 00:31:00 Speaker 1: Thirty in the morning every day. It's like, dude, I love about those dudes. By the way, they're great. 00:31:04 Speaker 4: They're great, but it's not realistic. And I think to your point, like like, Okay, we all have lives well. 00:31:10 Speaker 1: As seasons of life. 00:31:12 Speaker 4: And the way I like to talk about my kids is you have your physical health, you have your mental health. 00:31:16 Speaker 1: And you have your spiritual health. It's way more complex. 00:31:18 Speaker 4: I don't mean to overly simplify, but it's helpful to think about it that way. Well, yeah, I can be super, super disciplined in all three on a perfect day where I'm dedicating time and investing in myself in all three. But chances are most days, with our jobs, with our kids, with our wives, there's sacrifice. 00:31:35 Speaker 1: Involved and there's compromise, and so. 00:31:37 Speaker 4: At any given day, all right, maybe one day I can only focus on two to the three. Maybe some days I'm so overwhelmed. I can only focus on one. So what I'd offer and what I learned The most important part about my last three years in the Navy, where we were fighting the Navy. The most important discipline you can ever have as the man is start with your spiritual health. Start every morning getting up and you're just craving the Word of God and getting in there and listening to Him in your prayer. 00:32:02 Speaker 1: In some mornings, you A're gonna have time for the fifteen minutes. Great. 00:32:05 Speaker 4: Other mornings, dude, get upset, no agenda, Go out back, find a path, go into nature, and just pray and meditate on the Word. And if you're focusing on your spiritual discipline as a man, the rest will start to phone into place. Prioritize the other two Accordingly, some days you'll have a great workout session. 00:32:21 Speaker 1: Other days you're going to read a book. Somebodys you read booth. You're can do both. It's gonna be eight excellent. 00:32:26 Speaker 4: But never ever, ever do you compromise the spiritual discipline and the spiritual health that you're pursuing for the other two. And I think that's the most critical part, because again this is all temporal. It's a blink of the eye. So yeah, focus on it's important. Paul says, this is important, but eh, mildly. 00:32:46 Speaker 3: I love what you're saying about anchoring yourself spiritually. You got to get on that plane quick, Yes, you do. It's like working out. You need to get after it no matter what. And once you get going. 00:32:57 Speaker 1: You're good. Yeah. Yeah. 00:32:58 Speaker 3: What's that video on on online with that that that general I think it was saying, hey, you want to have success, you want to be a millionaire, get up and make your bed in the morning. 00:33:10 Speaker 1: I love it that went viral, right. 00:33:12 Speaker 3: Because because one simple act sets the tone for the morning. 00:33:18 Speaker 1: When the moments, when the moments start with these small wins. Yeah, start with the small wins. 00:33:22 Speaker 2: When I think about seals here for a moment, a lot of people are going to naturally gravitate towards the ideas of grit, resilience, mental toughness, discipline. But you shared something at the end of the talk with the Liberty football team that kind of blew my mind, and I think this is where faith and you know, it's so fun resilience being rooted in relationship, like with God. When you have a relationship with God, even it allows you to see things a little bit differently. But that study, I want you to take us into the study and showing that levity and humor was the most common trait among steals. 00:33:53 Speaker 1: It's great. This good friend of mine who's a seal who later went becoming. 00:33:57 Speaker 4: They became a psychologist, and so aw, he's like merged these two worlds, which is really fascinating. And he did the study where he looked at every one of our graduates of our program for a couple of years, did huge interview psych. 00:34:08 Speaker 1: Profiles on him and built out their attributes. 00:34:10 Speaker 4: And then he looked at all the data and tried to line up which attributes. 00:34:14 Speaker 1: Are consistent across all of you. What is it? What is the key factor? 00:34:18 Speaker 4: They've spent probably billions over the years studying us to try to figure out what determined success. 00:34:23 Speaker 1: It's a single way. 00:34:23 Speaker 4: Because if you can figure that out, back that code and cut and paste it, like yeah, we'll make a lot of seals out there. He said, the only single attribute he could find consistent with every one of our successful graduates was this sense of levity, sense of humor. It's and I and at first, I'm like, what that makes no sense? At all that I thought about it. Excuse me. It makes total sense because if we're designed to produce a product that has only forged through the fires of suffering, which we know well, levity is a coping mechanism for suffering. And we know that too from all the years of gallows humor that we talk about and hear about going on in war. 00:35:00 Speaker 1: And it's absolutely true, Like some. 00:35:02 Speaker 4: Of my darkest moments came and then someone would crack the right joke or I should say the wrong joke at the right. 00:35:10 Speaker 3: Time, and all of a sudden, we're laughing about the mood change. 00:35:14 Speaker 1: The mood changed. 00:35:16 Speaker 4: And once I learned that, when I was commanding Oscar there, I started looking for it. And when I would find it, as I told you guys, i'd see one of the boats running by and they're just they're losing, they're they're miserable, they're wet, they're sandy, they're like the most miserable people on the planet, chafing everywhere, pus coming out of open wounds, and. 00:35:33 Speaker 1: You just see him so beat down. 00:35:35 Speaker 4: And just you're starting to dive into that self pity. And one of those dudes would tell a joke and all of a sudden, they're all laughing. Shoulders go back, heads come up. You see a little bit of energy surge into the team. And I'd always walk over and I would see it and I'd grab that dude, and I'm like, hey, man, you're the most important guy in this boat crew. You're more important even than the leader of the boat crew, whoever the oster is. Right now, he has his role. You have your role, talked about why your role is important. You are clearly you have the emotional intelligence to know how to do it. 00:36:05 Speaker 1: Because it's an art. We all know those people that it's do it right, you. 00:36:08 Speaker 3: Know, laughing in the face of adversity. 00:36:11 Speaker 1: Everything is that it's right, it's right. 00:36:14 Speaker 4: And I would tell him, I keep doing what you're doing, like, find the way to make dudes laugh. It is a critical part of our survivals an organization, and I love it. I love that about us, and I think that's insightful to human nature and our need to laugh. 00:36:27 Speaker 1: God is a great sense of humor. Yes, it is. So it's like, yeah, of course he wants us to laugh at things. Of course, yeah, of course. 00:36:33 Speaker 2: You know, as I'm looking at you, Brad, I also am thinking about a dear friend of ours, Garrett uncle Back, who's been involved with some of the things that we've done in Ignite, come to some of our events, our boot camps in the past and he talks about this idea of greatness. As I'm thinking about kind of wrapping up our conversation. How he defines greatness is really through a biblical lens. He thinks greatness is acquiring all that God has for us. A lot of people settle for less. A lot of people say battle for mediocrity, They settle for just not everything that they could potentially quench. 00:37:04 Speaker 3: Out of life. 00:37:05 Speaker 2: But it's this idea, I think that greatness is reserved for those who refuse to give up when you gave standard, that that that really is there that we should be aspired. 00:37:14 Speaker 4: Yeah, and I've I'm minded of the quote from C. S. Lewis, but I'll mess it up because theyn't remember that. But the idea that we're so content playing with mud pies and I can't remember there, it is there. 00:37:26 Speaker 1: It is, thank you, Yeah exactly. 00:37:30 Speaker 3: Man. 00:37:30 Speaker 4: If we know that God in all things works for our good according to his purposes, well then that means that there's something good out there. That he wants us for and and we're selling ourselves short. I think to your point, if we're if we're not tapping into his plan, if we're not taking those steps in faith, if we're not declaring his goodness when it's hard to when it doesn't feel good to us, we're missing. 00:37:56 Speaker 1: Out on that opportunity that relationship. I mean my adult life. 00:38:01 Speaker 4: The last three years of our battle, which drove us into the deepest, darkest despair, I got the closest with God ever, and I remember at one point looking at him and telling him, Hey, if you could have laid this out in a formula for me and said this plus this plus this equals this relationship with me, and he has He's told us about it, but but I didn't know yet that it was real. 00:38:22 Speaker 1: I didn't know yet that this was. 00:38:24 Speaker 4: Even possible, the levels of our relationship and the riches that are just there for us. And I was like, Lord, now that I know what this is like, being this close to you, if you asked me, would go back and do it all again, one hundred percent. Bring it, Bring the suffering if it's going to drive me into your refuge. And I have this relationship that I've never experienced. 00:38:44 Speaker 1: To this level. 00:38:46 Speaker 4: And so yeah, but what do we do? We run from these things? We we it's in our nature. I think I think we want to bring us back to the state of the garden before the fall of man. 00:38:56 Speaker 1: Like we'd intrinsically want these things. So what do we do as men? We try to provide. 00:38:59 Speaker 4: We try to you know, get a property, build layers of security, get a fence, getting alarms us and get a dog that we protect our families and we insulate ourselves from suffering and we reduce it as much as possible, and we increase comfort, and we resist when God brings us suffering. I'm not saying you should chase it necessarily, but but again, we need to think through this as men, and we're missing out if we're insulating ourselves from the suffering that God ordains that is necessary for us to be closer to him. 00:39:28 Speaker 3: Saving Private Ryan there at the end, Yeah, tell me, And I was a good man. Oh yeah, there's a there's a piece in us. I remember basic an a I t forts Sill, Oklahoma and the graduation ceremony and we walked differently that day, you know, just just kids, no, no, no, but we walked different that day, you know. And I think about this life and what does God require of the pretty good standards there? But ultimately it's to be found faithful. It's somewhere when you look over the troops, it's boys. 00:40:15 Speaker 1: Well done, m. 00:40:17 Speaker 3: Mission accomplished, good and faithful servant. And are now you hear what I'm saying? 00:40:23 Speaker 1: Absolutely? 00:40:24 Speaker 3: And I can't imagine as a commander, a leader looking over troops. I remember General Jerry Boorkin. I interviewed General with us about what happened over and Small Yet and Mogadishu when he lost those those soldiers of his and what it did to him, killed him, you know that? And he said it made me look at life and uh, each one of them differently put a bow tie on this thing. About what's it looked like to finish? Well? What what what's in the heart? What do you think? What's in the heart of God as he looks at us? Because hey, when I think of you, but I hear, I mean you you're pretty bold about faith stuff now, I mean like you like it's throwdown stuff. I get it now. When you look at the platoon stuff, when you look at your team stuff, and you begin to see all this. It's like God, God's team, and either he is or he isn't. And if he is, then this is throwdown. This is serious. This isn't play. Yeah, you know we're we're coming. You hear what I'm saying. And we're gonna bring a whole bunch with us too. 00:41:31 Speaker 1: Yeah. 00:41:32 Speaker 2: And let me add you even just this idea of being found, faithful, finishing well as you step into new seasons of life ministry opportunities, I'm interested just what is God pruning in your heart about what does it mean for Bradley Geary to finish well? 00:41:47 Speaker 1: Like, Yeah, it's it's great. I think it's it's simple testify. You know. 00:41:55 Speaker 4: I've told the story multiple times about the dream God gave me as as I was wrestling with him and I had turned my seal tried into my idol. But the backstory behind that one was that I was taking a course in how to transition out of the military, and part of it was how to tell some stories. They were giving us some tips and tricks on the psychology and storytelling, and it had to culminate and you had to stand up in front of a group of about forty or fifty of our peers and tell a story. And my coach at the time said, hey, keep it sterile, no religion, no emotion. This is the business world we're getting into. So I put one together, we rehearsed, it was great. And then that night before my soul was uneasy and I couldn't figure out why I was so uneasy. So I was just started praying about it, and I felt the Lord tell me, well, I want you to tell the story that I gave you in your dream the other morning, and it's a real Jesus story. And I'll close with that story here in a second. But so I said, Lord, are you sure that's really in your face? Jesus, I've never quite been that bold publicly about my faith. And I heard him tell me in my mind, if you're unwilling to glorify my name in front of a group of your peers, why in the world would. 00:42:57 Speaker 1: I give you a larger platform to glorify my name. 00:43:01 Speaker 4: Yeah, that's kind of biblical, like the talents, right, And he who was faithful with a little had be given more. So said I want to please you, Lord, I want to unite more. 00:43:08 Speaker 1: I want to draw closer to you. So I've got to testify about your goodness. So I told that dreamed of the class. 00:43:14 Speaker 4: It was really awkward, incredibly awkward, very difficult, but I got through it, and I felt convicted and at peace because I had been faithful in this small thing, and I felt like bad I'd honored what God asked. 00:43:24 Speaker 1: Me to do. 00:43:25 Speaker 4: It was really only like three weeks later that Sean Ryan called me on a Saturday and today, let's talk. I want to get you on the show as fast as possible and yeah, And so I was like, oh Lord, I was faithful with a little and now you're giving me a bigger platform to testify to your name. 00:43:39 Speaker 1: So I know I had to tell the story on his show. 00:43:42 Speaker 4: And the story I'm telling about is over this twenty five year career, this seal tried in which I began to love it so much. I started, I think I know to love the gift more than the giver. And this has become my idol. And so this dream this morning that he gave me was I was out in a remote value of Afghanistan. I could it tells Afghanistan. I'm seeing myself in the third person, and I'm climbing this mountain by myself, and I hear the sounds of war all around me, but. 00:44:06 Speaker 1: It's just me. But I know I'm in war, and I know I'm in Afghanistan. 00:44:09 Speaker 4: I'm climbing this mountain, giant boulders, hand over hand, just crawling up this thing. And it was one of those nights where nothing's going well. My knees are banging the rocks, my gun's dangling weirdess, it's slamming into my knee. My nods are foggy, night vision, foggy helmets, canted gears just rubbing me wrong. That the bel crows scratching my neck. Everything's a struggle. But I'm climbing, and all of a sudden, I'm over at a funeral and I'm snapshot it in my blues. And if you don't know it, in the Seal teams, when we bury one of our brothers, we take off our trident and we pound it in their wood casket and we put them in the ground. 00:44:39 Speaker 1: So a piece of us is going with them, and we'll be with them forever. 00:44:43 Speaker 4: So is at a funeral, And as soon as I pound it, I'm back on the mountain and I'm climbing. 00:44:47 Speaker 1: But it's heavier. 00:44:48 Speaker 4: I'm not carrying the weight of my memory of my brother. And then I'm back to another funeral, another casket, back on the mountain, back and forth. This goes tried and after tried, and that I'm pounding in all these caskets. I finally get to the top of this mountain and I'm so bone weary, fatigued, i can't even stand. I'm just I'm hunched over, heaving my lungs like my ribs feel like they're cracking. I'm breathing so hard, and I'm leaning on this wood post, just holding my weight up as I'm watching the sweat just pour off my face to the ground. And I finally have the strength and I lift my head and I realize I see Jesus' feet on the cross at my head level. And I'm standing at the foot of the cross, and I hear how beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of him who brings good news. And I couldn't even bring myself to look up to his face. I could only look at his feet. They're a bloody pulp, but I'm kissing them and I'm sobbing, and I'm rubbing my face on his feet, and I knew what he wanted me to do, and so I pulled off my last seal tried and there on this mountain, and I put it under the cross and I pounded it into the foot of the cross, and I knew he wanted me to give him that idol. So the follow up there is I wake up like, well that was weird, Like I don't I'm not the no one that no one remembers dreams. So I was like, this is different. But I started doubting, and I started talking doubt into myself. And so I'm out on the patio not doing my quiet time with the Lord, and I was like, Lord, I just need to be Gideon for a moment. Give me one more sign that this is what you're asking me to do, to give you my idol, because I really trying to convince him that this wasn't my idol, Like I don't. 00:46:16 Speaker 1: Need to give it you because it's not really my idol. 00:46:17 Speaker 4: Right, And as I swipe, now my prayer app to the next verse that comes across my verse totally arbitrary but not coincidental. 00:46:26 Speaker 1: Exodus chapter twenty, verse three. 00:46:28 Speaker 4: It's Moses coming off the mountain giving the ten Commandments, and the first thing he says is, you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourselves images of the beasts of the air, beasts of the ground, or beasts of the sea, sea, air, and land. That's the seal trident. So here's this verse where Moses is saying, don't carve for yourself idols of the beasts of the sea, air, and land. And that's exactly what the seal treadent stands for. And it's exactly what I just pulled off of my dream and Hammond of the Cross. So I knew in that moment, I'm like, Okay, back to God, have a sense of humor. 00:47:01 Speaker 1: I was belly laughing. 00:47:02 Speaker 4: Because he had answered this prayer that I need one more sign from you, God, and he gives it in this moment, and so so I was like, Okay, I'm giving you my idols. I'm giving you everything, everything because I love you so much more than anything that you might give me in this temporal earth. So that's all I'm doing now, is I'm just testifying of his goodness. I'm testifying about him who is trustworthy, and we're going to see where he takes us. 00:47:24 Speaker 1: With that, and exactly to your point. 00:47:27 Speaker 4: All I really want is like David, to spend the days of my life in his kingdom, in his throne room, glorifying him. 00:47:33 Speaker 1: And I want to hear well done, good and faithful servant. 00:47:36 Speaker 3: For Stesssalonians four eleven to twelve. 00:47:38 Speaker 2: They say, make it your aim or ambition to live a quiet life, minding your own business, working with your hands, just as you've been instructed, so that way you might win the respect of outsiders and not grow dependent upon anybody. My prayer for you, I know my dad's as well, and all of us here at Ignite in aacc is that you would continue to testify of His goodness, of his grace, that you would continue to say serve, that you would continue to surrender, that you would continue to sacrifice on his behalf. My friend, God is doing something special in you, Bradley Berea. 00:48:08 Speaker 3: Hey, precious, are those whose feet are shod with the preparation of the Gospel? Tell you what? 00:48:14 Speaker 1: Hey? What a calling? Yah? 00:48:16 Speaker 3: What a called privilege? 00:48:17 Speaker 2: Oh? 00:48:17 Speaker 1: What a privilege? 00:48:18 Speaker 3: Soldiers? Again? 00:48:19 Speaker 4: Yes, in a grander and eternal war, right, the spiritual war is raging. 00:48:25 Speaker 2: And I might chest bump you before we get do it, Brad, let me ask this, where can our audience go to find out more about you? If they're listening to you for the first time, I'll know about them. I would want to know everything there is to know, and I'd want to watch every video possible. 00:48:39 Speaker 1: Thanks man. We've been on a few podcasts out there. 00:48:42 Speaker 4: Yes, Sean Ryan have been on there twice, The Resilience Show which had Robshaw have been on there. Apology at Church. I'm wearing one of their shirts right now. They interviewed me and my wife and I'll tell you so grateful. They were the first person to give her a voice, and she has a voice that a lot of the women of the church I think need to hear. 00:49:00 Speaker 1: So those are out there. We're writing a book right now. 00:49:02 Speaker 4: We're submitting to God on that one, but Amy's voices in that book as well. 00:49:06 Speaker 1: It'll be a it's. 00:49:07 Speaker 4: Our story, but it's a memoir on leadership, faith and suffering, and so stand by for that. Go to www dot hardmindsoft heart dot com. That's going to be the title of our book and you'll see announcements and as we get closer and closer to the release date, but we're excited to see where God's taking that. 00:49:25 Speaker 2: Brad, this has been a delight, my friend. Thank you for pouring into us. 00:49:28 Speaker 1: Thank you. 00:49:29 Speaker 3: I don't know about you, Dad, but I enjoyed this one. 00:49:31 Speaker 1: I appreciate you guys. 00:49:32 Speaker 2: Look for I'm going to go look for a brick wall, pera do it hey to our audience that built it. I just wanted to say thank you so much for joining us. As Brad reminded us, suffering doesn't just happen to you, It happens for you. Continue to press into that team ability, continue to suffer well, and remember the words of Joe twenty three to ten. Our theme here forged through the fire. But he knows the way that you take. And when he has tested you, when he's refined you, and he's purified you in the midst of the fire, you too will come forth as goal. 00:50:00 Speaker 3: Thank you for joining us. We love being a part of your life.