00:00:02 Speaker 1: Life audio in fourteen combat deployments to Iraq in Afghanistan. If you add all of the firefights up, they don't equate to the kind of killing that we saw for eighteen hours in Somalia. When you get in this firefight, it's you and your individual weapons system and your ranger buddy, and that's it. For all of those eighteen hours, I didn't think I was going to die. I knew I was going to die. It was like tactically, I know how to fight, and there is no outcome for this fight except I die. Part of my testimony is to say when I was one hundred percent sure I was going to die, I had no fear about it whatsoever. And it was because I know where I'm going to spend eternity that was settled for me at thirteen years old. 00:00:48 Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the Marcher Dye Show today. Glad to have you joining. This is the show where we do our best, and all I can promise is that we'll do our best every single episode to give you both principles and perspectives to more when it would be easier to stay where you are and die. My name is Jeremy Solniker. I am your host, and I am solo today. No Sean, but we're gonna get Sewan back on before too long. But super excited about our guest today. This is someone that I have looked forward to talking to you for a very long time, and I'm glad we finally connected. Our guest is Jeff Struker. If you're not familiar with Jeff, he is a lot of things and has been a lot of things over a lot of years. United States Army ranger served in several different conflicts, probably most well known for his time in Mogadishu, Somalia, transitioned from special operations as a ranger to a chaplain, which we're going to talk about that transition, and certainly interested in what that looked like. Now serving as a senior pastor. He's also an author, speaker, again, a lot of other things. But man, very good to be able to connect with you finally, and hopefully Lord willing four or five, I guess longer than that, six or seven months, we'll be together in Texas as well. But Jeff, thanks for joining, really really appreciate it. 00:02:08 Speaker 1: It's great to be with you, and I'm looking forward to me being with you in person in Texas. 00:02:12 Speaker 2: Yes, sir, we got our big, big gala every year, and I had a list of speakers, and you're at the top of the list. You're traveling, and you're traveling, you're doing some other things, and so I'm like, man, it's not gonna work out. We'll figure something else out. And man, it worked worked out. So excited about it. 00:02:29 Speaker 1: We made it work out. Yeah. 00:02:31 Speaker 2: Man, It's hard to know exactly where to start, but I'll start with this your faith story. I'd love to begin there and then kind of transition through some of the other things that you've done, and then specifically talk about how to find peace in the midst of battle, how to march when it would be easier to stay where you are and die. That's what we talk about a lot here. But let's just start with your faith journey. How did you become a Christian? And you know wherever you want to take it from there, I know obviously that's that's who you are. 00:03:00 Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, And by the way, thanks for starting out with what's most important. If you think about it, everything else in life is secondary to this one. If you really believe that after your heart stops beating, it's not all the way over that there's something much more and much better waiting for you. So I'll give you the short version, and I'd be happy to answer some more questions or fill the audience in on any details that you want. But bottom line is Jesus reached down at thirteen years old and found a kid that was farthest from him on planet Earth and decided to radically change my life. And I use this language really intentionally furthest from him because when I grew up, I grew up in a home that was totally devoid of faith. I tell people, it's not necessarily that my family were atheists. It's not that they hated God. They just basically lived like he didn't matter. So nobody went to church, nobody prayed, nobody talked about God. When I was growing up, and I had really deep questions, deep questions that went all the way back to early childhood, like elementary school. I was wrestling with life and death and heaven and hell, but no one in my life was even able to answer. I had questions that I woke them up in the middle of the night asking, but nobody could answer them. And that's why I refer to myself as as far away from Jesus as a man could get, because not only did I not know him, but nobody around me knew him. And quite literally, one day we moved to an apartment compact complex and we were living on the first floor, and directly across the hall from us was a young married couple. I didn't know it, didn't even know what this meant, but they were Christians, and after a few weeks they were inviting me over, wanted to play games, one of to do stuff together. And then a month or two end of this relationship, they came across the hall and sat down and talked to me about Jesus and explained to me the gospel. And I'll just say to your audience, that night it hit me like a lightning bolt, And that night Jesus stepped in and radically did something in my life. And it has never been the same since. And there has not been a day of my life that I didn't know. What happened to me at thirteen years old was real and powerful. So I say that because I had a very deep, very profound faith long before I joined the army and went off and did a bunch of stuff that you just described. It a moment. 00:05:41 Speaker 2: Ago, or was that couple responsible for you know, we use the word discipling, but mentoring you or equipping you to walk that faith out. 00:05:51 Speaker 1: Yeah, I wish they were. Honestly, I moved many many times before finishing high school. I averaged moving two or three times a school year. And I moved just matter of a few weeks after this conversion or after Jesus saved me. And I don't even remember the couple's names. Literally don't know who they are. I think I remember his first name, don't even remember her first name or last name. But I moved around so many more times that after this. Every time I moved, I got up wherever I was living and walked to the closest church. And I was the kid who sat in the back of the church and didn't have the clothes to dress the way that I was supposed to, didn't have money for the offering plate, so people looked down their noses when it came by. But I just got up and walked to whatever the closest church was, and kept doing that until I was in the army, and really until I was a sergeant in the army and had a vehicle and had some freedom. It wasn't until then that I actually got discipled. I'm putting air quotes around disciples. Yeah, because it's the first time in my life I got connected to a church that took this seriously, and the pastor took me under his wing and started showing me what walking with Jesus looks like. And I wish to God that would have happened for me at thirteen, but the truth is it didn't happen until I was about twenty one, twenty two, and I feel like, man, there's some years of my life that I could have been a lot more effective if somebody would have helped me figure out what it looks like to be a disciple, a disciple making disciple. 00:07:31 Speaker 2: Lit it that that way I've been. So my story is different. I was raised in a pastor's home, and I remember telling my dad when I was fourteen that I wanted to and listen to the Marine Corps. And I always joked by man, I always joked that my dad said, there's no way God wants you to listen to the Marine Corps. But he said, hey, if that's what you think God wants you to do, we'll hope you get there. But we want you to go to college first, and so I ended up going through commissioning program and that's my story. But part of it for me was I grew up in a very strong house of faith, a very strong Christian family. My dad started at church. I watched all that happen, and so I never felt like I was running from God, but I definitely knew that was not what I wanted to do. I didn't want to be involved in ministry, and I wanted to go a very different direction than my parents had. And again not because of Christianity or them or anything else. I just at the time didn't feel like that was the call or the bent of my life. God brought me back into or brought me into ministry, and so I ended up pastoring and doing all of those things too. But at that time, so I was on a different end of it. But because of where I came from and then where I ended up in the Marine Corps, people have asked me, you know, probably hundreds of times over the years, was there a conflict between your faith and going into the military. Did you ever feel that there was? You know, you're living these two world two worlds in fact, when we twenty three years ago, we deployed to Kuwait and then went into Iraq as part of the invasion force into Iraq. And I remember an AP reporter before we made that movement asked me, all right, you're a Christian. People know you're a Christian, and you don't know what you're gonna end up doing over there? You are you struggling with that? Is that a problem for you? And I've walked through that a lot, you know, many times with people. For you having faith and being very committed and devoted to what you understood of that walk and then making the decision to go into the army. Was there a was there any friction in your heart between what you believed and what you were getting ready to do? What was that journey like and how did how did you sync up those pieces? 00:09:39 Speaker 1: Yeah? I got lots more to say about this. I'm gonna give you a one word answer, and then I am fascinated by you, Jeremy. So I got a question for you before I give you a little bit. But no, I never struggled with this, and I can unpack for you in just a minute why that is or how that is? But a fascinat by you, because I didn't really get disciples. So for me, you know, the military was kind of a moral you know, and it didn't pose a biblical challenge for me. And even while I was in the army, you know, I was already in it before I started to really understand the scriptures really start to walk out my faith. I loved Jesus and I was following him the best I could, but just nobody was guiding me along the path. So in your case, you're about the extreme opposite of me. Sure, I would love to know for you how you made that first decision to join the Core and serve the country, because in your case, it was probably the opposite side of my spectrum. 00:10:41 Speaker 2: Well, so, you know, again, I didn't feel like I was running from God or anything like that. I really believed at fourteen years old that's what God wanted me to do. We had had some influences in my life and some of those things and I couldn't even explain why necessarily, but I believe that's what God wanted. And I came from a home where both of my parents really elevated service. They loved our country, they loved the idea of serving our country, and the ideals and all those things, and so there was never a conflict in our home about that kind of service. When I became or when I was old enough to start having the conversation for real, like I'm seventeen, eighteen years old. We had a family friend who was a Marine officer and a Christian, and one day I remember the conversation. I asked him that exact same conversation. People are telling me Christian shit and go in the Marine corps's a very dark place. What do you think about that? And he made this statement to me, or something similar to this statement. This is how I remember it. He said, it is a dark place, but if you take all of the light out, then you have nothing left. And as a Christian he was talking about himself, I have an opportunity to be a testimony. And so for me that was kind of confirmation that this is what I should do next. I thought I'd be there forever. God used that period of time in my life to lead me somewhere else. But yeah, man, and I think for me and for a lot of Christian people. I get asked this by Christian parents a lot. If your son's eighteen years old, your daughter's eighteen years old and they're thinking about going into the militaries. Now is not the time to start preparing them for that as a Christian right. And my parents were preparing me when I was six, seven, eight, ten, thirteen, you know, fifteen to go out into the world and do something. Yeah, so I felt, you know, we used were discipled. I felt discipled. I felt prepared to deal with whatever would come. So it's kind of the short short answer. 00:12:36 Speaker 1: I guess, well, man, listen, thank you for serving the country. Thanks for what you did for us in the core and overseas. And I tend to agree with every word that you just said. But for me, I kind of stumbled my way into it. Nobody was guiding me into it. I didn't see any theological problems or biblical challenges with serving in the military. Although, oh, I think I've got you beat by a long shot, man, because I lost count, and I think I lost count at about number three thousand, where people in uniform and out of uniform have asked me, Jeff, I don't get how you can be a Christian with faith this strong and go to war and kill people. Because I was a combat arms guy, you know, and listened dude in the range of regiment kicking indoors and an operator on target, and they were like, I don't understand how you can do both of those things. And I'm like, ah, I've never struggled with both of those things for me personally, So believe it or not, I have been asked this question for thirty five years, thousands of times. I have answered this question more times than any other question that I've ever been asked. And my answer is, to some degree, what that Marine Corps officer told you. Listen, Yeah, the military is dark, but then again, so is medicine, so is sports, so is business. Find me a industry on the planet that's not dark, and even the even ministry, unfortunately, can be really dark at times. And what happens if all of the light runs? And in fact, what I see Jesus saying is light pushes back darkness, Light repels darkness. He's calling us to go into dark places. So for me, this might be the extremest in me, but bring on the darkness, and the darker that it is, the more my light has a chance to shine. So why should I avoid that? I think for a lot of people, their struggle is they're asking out loud, Jeff, help me work through taking a human life and being a believer. And I'm like, Okay, that's a really really important question. Sounds like you want a fifteen second sound bite answer to that question. There isn't one. There is. So I'll unpack that question for you, and I'm going to take you on a journey and it's going to take us a while to get but I can give you an answer to that question. 00:15:03 Speaker 2: That's interesting. It's funny you say you get asked that so much. I did a video with a friend, it's been several months ago now for our YouTube channel for this podcast, and it was can a Christian go into the military? And so we just try to unpack some of that. I gotta I got a comment today today. 00:15:23 Speaker 1: All right that it was a little bit wrong, right, yeah. 00:15:26 Speaker 2: If if you go into the military, you are not a Christian? It was that was the comment, and then in parentheses there were several verses and whatever. I'm like, man, it's crazy how people kind of fall with very little thought. And I don't think they're actually processing processing, But it's funny. 00:15:43 Speaker 1: If you don't mind, can I can I deal with this question or this comment? You just got today. Please whoever this moron is, and I don't know them because I didn't see your YouTube channel to see this comment, I would say, do you read your Bible? Because if you read your Bible, you would know that Abraham leads about three hundred men into battle at night against five kings. You would know that Moses marches the armies of God off to war to not just defeat, but annihilate entire nations. And you would also know that David is probably the single greatest warrior that's ever walked on planet Earth. Nobody took more human lives as far as I can tell in the history books than David. And I will remind you that the Bible calls Abraham a friend of God. The Bible calls Moses a man who speaks with God face to face. The Bible calls David a man after God's own heart. So are you telling me that Abraham, Moses, and David are not Christians? Because it sounds like that's what you're saying to me. Don't even get me started about the New Testament examples of Cornelius and many more. But I won't even go there. 00:17:01 Speaker 2: So I'm going to just post this clip right to the comment I was going to. 00:17:04 Speaker 1: Say, I could go for hours on this one, because I get that flippant language too, and I'm like, oh, really, it's on now. If you want to go there, let's go there. 00:17:12 Speaker 2: Let's talk about it. And one of the things that I push back, you know, strongly on people like that, is, Hey, you are not someone who's been in combat, never been shot at, or like that. Yeah, you haven't experienced that. And and I know that because if it weren't for my faith. During the invasion of Iraq, we were in the Battle of Baghdad on April tenth, the anniversary that's coming up. That was our battalion, And if I hadn't been a Christian at that time, there's no way I would have been able to even contextualize what happened and move on with my life. And I think so much of so many of the struggles that we addressed through our organization that you know, people like you and I talk about that. I'm sure you spend a lot of time as a chaplain dealing with the trauma issues and trying to understand things like moral injury and the rest of it. You can't effectively address those if you don't have an understanding of, you know, a transcendent God and a personal relationship with Jesus. And so to say that you can't be a Christian to do that, I would argue the other end of that, I don't know how you can do it if you're not a Christian. 00:18:20 Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree. Yeah. And by the way, when you were in Baghdad slugging it out, I was already in Afghanistan and was supposed to be home in May. But because you guys rolled into Afghanistan or Iraq when you did this, deployment for that ended in May ended up ending in October. 00:18:41 Speaker 2: Yeah, sorry, because it was No, it wasn't your fault. 00:18:44 Speaker 1: It was just because every unit that was supposed to replace us got diverted over to Iraq. And now it's another week. Now, it's another month. Now, it's another six months. We'll see you when we see. 00:18:53 Speaker 2: You, right, I've got friends right now that are encountering that exact situation. They've been deployed and they're waiting to come home. We'll see. I can't talk to you on a podcast without at least briefly talking about Somalia and Mogadishu. And the question I'll ask is as a Christian, as a believer, because I want to get to the point where you transition into the chaplaincy. But you go through, you know, arguably one of the most well known, at least modern battles in history. You're very prominent in that and and people know the story there. But how did your faith guide you through that? And then on the other side of that, and were there conversations with other people? Was that something that you held on to personally? You know what? What did your your I keep saying faith, but your your relationship with Christ What did that do for you in and around those moments? 00:19:52 Speaker 1: Yeah, if I'm going to be honest with this answer, I don't think I can answer that question adequately. And I'm being fair intentional with my language. Now. The better question would be how didn't it impact me? Because I don't think I can list two or three three things about that fight that weren't radically impacted by. 00:20:14 Speaker 2: My relationship with Crincheston. 00:20:17 Speaker 1: Now, just to paint the tactical scenario for your listeners, and I'll be very brief with this. I don't want to bore them with black Hawk down you know, fun facts. But I had already been to combat two times before deploying to Somalia, had already taken part in the invasion of Panama in eighty nine, already been to desert storm both of them with the range of Regiment in ninety one. And by the time I got to Somalia, I'd already been in firefights, I'd already moved body bags, I'd already been around the killing. But not like Somalia. In fourteen combat deployments to Iraq in Afghanistan, if you add all of the firefights up, they don't equate to the kind of killing that we saw for eighteen hours in Somalia. And part of that was just the extra ordinary circumstances. And by extraordinary I don't mean great, I just mean unusual circumstances, so very extremely restricted rules of engagement, which means no close air support, no naval gunfire, no artillery, no armor, no friendly forces, you know, besides the un people that are actually on the ground there, and there's no marines that are waiting off the coast for us. When you get in this firefight, it's you and your individual weapons system and your ranger buddy and that's it. And the firefight ended up being US outnumbered. And I'm going to be careful with this ratio by at least one hundred to one, which means, when you're in those kinds of circumstances, the math is going to turn out the same way every time. There's no way without using all of our assets over our head that we didn't have, without using all of the US military behind you, we didn't have any of that, didn't even have gunships over our head. Without any of that, you're going to get the same results, which was basically half of our force killed or wounded, and we wounded or killed more than a thousand Samalis, about two hundred of us in the city streets. I went in on the initial invasion. I stayed out there and drove people back, drove the dead and the wounded back multiple times. When helicopters started getting shot down, the mission fundamentally became get to the crash sites, recover the crew, bring them back, and eventually I stay out there all night long and remain there until nine o'clock the next morning. And Jeremy, you'll get this. A lot of your listeners will get this, but the average audience member won't. For all of those eighteen hours, I didn't think I was going to die. I knew I was going to die just because of the kind of killing that was happening around me and the sheer numbers of enemy. It was tactically. I know how to fight, and there is no outcome for this fight except I die. There's no possible scenario where I don't die. Tonight and throughout the firefight, and I mean every second of it, I had supernatural peace. Part of my testimony is to say when I was one hundred percent sure I was going to die, I had no fear about it whatsoever. And it was because I know where I'm going to spend eternity that was settled for me at thirteen years old. So, like you, I believe in a sovereign God. He's going to decide what happens next. I'm going to go out there, I'm going to pull the trigger. I'm going to do my job to the best of my ability, and some people are going to live, some people are going to die. I'm probably going to be one of them. But I have nothing to worry about. It's in God's hands. And the second question that you asked flows naturally from the first listen. My faith was so powerful that when I came back the next morning, and I mean, I'm the last guy to make it back into the base on the humbies that are shot flat underneath me. This is impressive. Like three of the four tires are shot flat, and they all had run flat, which means you have to put a lot of bullets through those tires to get them to go flat. 00:24:21 Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. 00:24:23 Speaker 1: When I got back, rangers were waiting for me, and they started asking me, like literally as soon as I got back, started asking me questions about Jesus. Wow, questions like, Jeff, I watched you in the city streets and we have the same training and we have the same experiences, but you obviously have something that I don't have. Or Sergeant, I heard your voice over the radio on the command net. Everybody all the way up and down the chain of command is totally freaking out and your voice is calm, and I don't even understand how that's possible, but it must have something to do with your faith. So I need you to tell me right now about your faith. And that was so powerful man for me, the most powerful, one of the most powerful moments of my life was not the middle of the fight, but it was after the fight was over with, because these dudes were asking me questions that they had never asked anybody in their life. And it was like, right now, I need you to tell me about Jesus, Sergeanta, And that was hands down my call the ministry, like. 00:25:30 Speaker 2: Let me ask you a question real quick. Sure, okay, you don't get to that moment without the fight, for sure, but you don't get to that moment where people are waiting for you and saying your faith obviously impacted this tell us about it without a lot of groundwork before the fight. 00:25:47 Speaker 1: Sure. Well, by the way, thank you for pointing that out, because I tried regularly to share my faith. I mean, that's something that all Christians are supposed to be doing, right, And like you and I said, man, the military can be a really dark environment. So I'm just doing my best to try to let my light shine so that people will see my good deeds and give God credit for it. Right, And they blew me off again and again, like Jeff, Jesus, I don't need them. I'm tough, I'm strong, I'm smart, I'm fast. And then when dudes are dying to their left and on their right. All of a sudden, it's a wake up call. And that's when the groundwork, as you called it, starts to really pay off, because then they're like, Okay, right now, I need to talk to Jeff. But I should say and I didn't do anything special. I didn't do anything that deserves to be singled out. I had an advantage having been to combat a couple of times, and almost nobody that was with me had any real combat experience, excuse me. So I had an idea of how to handle myself in a firefight, and my faith took over in the middle of it as well. So I had two advantages that most guys didn't have. And Jesus used it, and I mean he used it in a really power way. So for me, one of the clearest moments of my life in my walk with Jesus has been immediately after the battle is over with I'm standing on this airfield, just got back. The fight just literally just got over, and I feel the Holy Spirit of God tugging in my heart. Like, Jeff, the reason why you could fight the way you did last night is because you've already nailed down eternity, but your buddies, those rangers haven't. And I want you to spend the rest of your life reaching those men and women and pour an end to them. And I still live outside of Fort Benning, Georgia, and still spend all of my free time working with the US military trying to get warriors ready to go off to combat, knowing where they're going to spend eternity. Because from that moment forward, there has never been a moment where I question what I'm supposed to do with the rest of my life. And by the way, I never saw this one coming. Man. I love being an Army ranger. I thought I was just going to do that forever, and this was totally out of left field. It was a curve ball that I never even saw coming. 00:28:08 Speaker 2: Yeah, man, it's incredible. What what did that transition from you know, army ranger to chaplain? What did that look like? How did people respond to you? Anything? 00:28:20 Speaker 1: That was? Man? That was harder than I ever anticipated. So I enlisted in the Army while I was still in high school, which means I didn't have any college. Came back from Somalia and I went straight to my pastor and my unit chaplain, and I asked both of them the exact same question, how do you know if you're being called into ministry? And both of them were floored by it, and they said, Jeff, if you think that's what the Lord is calling you to, well you need to go get some education. And they were right. So I stayed in the Ranger Regiment as an enlisted guy and did an undergraduate degree. And then at some point I knew I have to go get a theological training. But how do you do that with a wife and your third baby on the way, single income family, I'm the only bread winner. How do you pay the bills? And God just worked out all of the details, and honestly, he did it all in one phone call in forty five minutes one day when I was really freaking out about this, and He provided the perfect job where I could go teach on a college campus, teach ROTC at a college campus so that I could go across town to a school and do my education. I ended up having to get out of the military and finish my education before coming back on active duty. But when I showed back up on active duty, it was before September eleventh, and I was serving as a unit chaplain in the eighty second Airport Division at the time, and honestly, I thought, man, this is going to be easy. It's going to be aimless. I know the military, I've got tons of time and service. I kind of have an idea. I've been following Jesus for longer than I've been in the military. This is going to be super easy. And what I'm trying to tell you in your audience is it wasn't. It was anything but easy, because for me, there was a major philosophical shift that needed to happen inside my heart, and I didn't have any ideas. There were people far smarter than me that realized how big that shift was. So I'll never forget it. You might laugh at what I'm going to say next, but I'm a chaplain in the basic course, which is most people have. This is their first couple of days in the army, right still trying to figure out how to lace up their boots, trying to figure out how to march information. And I've been in the military for thirteen years and in special operations for almost all of it, and I'm like, man, I got this stuff figured out, and then we go do this maneuver under live fire range. Did you guys do this in the core. 00:31:05 Speaker 2: Not under like this? Okay, so this is very basic training now, yeah, so this is. 00:31:09 Speaker 1: A basic training requirement for everybody in the army. You have to know how to individually move under direct fire. So they're gonna shoot machine guns over your head and you've got to figure out how to maneuver underneath it. Right. So I'm with a bunch of chaplains and we're at this live fire range and it's night and the bullets start going over our heads. And I'm not exaggerating when I tell you people curl up in the fetal position. There's grown men weeping uncontrollably, and I just take off like a bullet yea, heading straight in the direction of the enemy fire. Because I've been under enemy fire for a lot, I know exactly what to do. Listen, you can drop an artillery round right next to me, and I know exactly how to handle myself. But Jeremy, for me, I had an existential, almost an odd of body experience when I got all the way up to those machine guns, and then it occurred to me, oh, no, I don't have a weapon. I don't know the first thing about how to be a chaplain on the battlefield. Now, if I have a rifle in my hands, I know exactly how to kill the enemy, but I don't know how to be a chaplain. And then I had this really traumatic moment where I'm like, what the heck am I doing right now? I've got a bible in my cargo pocket, I don't have a rifle in my hands. How am I supposed to How? How do I bring value to the battlefield? Is literally what I started asking myself. And I had to unlearn why it was so hard for me because I had to unlearn a lot of what I learned. I'm really really good with the rifle in my hands in a firefight. I had to unlearn all of that and learn. And the chaplain course to Touch taught me this that my focus is no longer the enemy. My focus is now Americans and warriors on the battlefield and their souls and man. That to this day has been a very painful, very difficult transition. I had no idea how hard that transition was going to be. 00:33:11 Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny. I tell the story when I came back from Iraq. So we're in Iraq, and thirty days later I was out of the Marine Corps working on a church staff and the statement. 00:33:24 Speaker 1: I love to see you your first or second day on that church staff. 00:33:29 Speaker 2: For a while, it was a mess for a while. And I always tell people I've done ministry and I've done combat, and combat was way easier than ministry, Like it's it's. 00:33:39 Speaker 1: Here's me, I know what to do next, right. 00:33:41 Speaker 2: And this this ministry thing is is wild. 00:33:45 Speaker 1: Ye. 00:33:46 Speaker 2: So in that process of transition, I just laughed because I know, man, it took me a long time to like and I wasn't a chaplain, but just through pastoral ministry, it took a long time to finally go, oh, yeah, this is different than that. How long did it take you to get your feet under you? How long did it take you to really engage? And then what was the response from the soldiers that you're ministering to. You're not the normal chaplain that shows up and just trying to figure this thing out? 00:34:14 Speaker 1: Well, true story. So I go straight out of the chaplain course to the eighty second Airport Division. Again, this is before September eleventh, so we're basically in a peacetime military and I go, I get sent to a filled artillery battalion, and I'm like, man, are you kidding me right now? Why would you send me to a field I don't know field artillery. I know infantry stuff. Yeah, I know how to close with and destroy the enemy. And the I think there was somebody really smart, and I'm talking about God in heaven as well as the you know, the people at the top guiding this decision. Because I show up to a field artillery battalion. I don't know the first thing about this job on the bout. I didn't even know what these things were until the day I showed up there, and I had to I had to learn the value of the rest of the toys and the tools on the battlefield. Like for me, all that stuff was miles behind me, and I never saw any of that. It came over my head, but I didn't see the guys and gals shooting it. So first time I went to the woods with them, I'm sitting there and I'm camouflaged up to perfection. You know, I'm ready to go. If the enemy was two feet away from me, they wouldn't know that I was there. And these are guys out there in the middle of this big open area. They're eating Dorito's chips and they're firing these howitzers and I'm like, guys, don't you think you ought to put a little camouflage on? And They're like, Chaplin, We're in the middle of a giant open area. I'm shooting a gun that you can hear from a mile away. If we get attacked by the enemy right now, my little camouflage face is not going to change the factory that they can see me and hear me from a mile away. And I'm like, yeah, you know what, good point, guys. I'm gonna keep my camouflage on though it's just so you know, but you guys do your thing. I say that because man, I learned, I had mad respect for these guys. And not long into this September eleventh happened, Gee what happened. I get deployed with that unit to go over to Afghanistan, and I really really loved the chance to work with that side of the force that I had never had a chance to serve with before, and realized how good the entire US military is. I had only been around one part of the military for my entire career, and that's when I got a chance to see a much bigger picture, and I consider it an honor to have been able to go with those guys overseas and to be able to just stand in their midst If I didn't go to an artillery battalion first, I would have ended up being a really bad chaplain. And I'm saying this honestly, because I was the one guy in the unit that knew how to navigate through the desert. I was the one guy in the unit that could remind somebody, Hey, do you realize that you're putting those links and rounds for that caliber machine gun in upside down? You might want to flip them over the other way. They work better the other way, But nobody wants their chaplain telling them that. So I had to learn how to keep my mouth shut. And I was a really bad chaplain for the first few weeks in that unit, until I learned to keep my mouth shut and focus on people's souls and not so much on the tactical scenario, and to be honest, for the rest of my entire career. I had to continue to remind myself of that, because I would have been a really bad chaplain had I not learned that lesson early on, and maybe by making a mistake or two early on. 00:37:39 Speaker 2: And the timing that was great because the natural thought I would have had, you know, would be, well, this guy has experience with the Rangers, so let's send him to a Ranger unit or whatever. But man, there's a lot of wisdom in not doing that. Yeah, yeah, incredible. 00:37:56 Speaker 1: Man. 00:37:56 Speaker 2: There's a lot of other things I'd love to talk about. We will talk about them point in the future, I'm sure over dinner or coffee or maybe we'll do another podcast. But let me end with this question, because this is kind of the overarching premise of this podcast. All of us find ourselves in those moments where, you know, figuratively hopefully, but some it's literal. The bullets are flying your direction, things are going from bad to worse, the mortar rounds are falling at your feet, and in those moments we have to make a decision. We can stay where we are. This is march or die, right. You can stay where you are and die. That's just throwing the white flag up and giving up. Because if you're not moving forward, you're dead. You can make that decision if you want to, or you can march, you can get to a place where you can better affect the enemy and continue to do what God's called you to do. And we all find ourselves in those moments. Some of it's overwhelmed because we've been fighting for a long time. Some of it's the unexpected, whatever it is. We have these moments where traumas and obstacles and difficult these and these unexpected relationship issues and finances whatever pop up in our lives and we're faced with the decision, are we going to stay where we are and die or will we march from combat? Experience, experience, counseling and working with others, pastoring your life, experience, your personal decision. You know, inflection points when someone's at that moment where they have to make the decision, how would you tell them? Every situation is different, but how would you tell them or how would you counsel them encourage them to take that next step instead of staying where they are and just giving up. 00:39:37 Speaker 1: Yeah, great question. And by the way, I love the title of your podcast because I can't tell you how many long road marches I've been on for my entire career, and I felt like there's no way I could take another step. But you know what, I'm either going to march or I'm going to die tonight. And yeah, one of these days, at some point this road march will be over with and I'll cross the finish line or I'll drop dead, but I will I will not quit, right, which gets to the essence of the question you're asking. Listen, if I'm real with people, everybody goes through tough stuff. Everybody's life experiences are different than somebody else's, so I can't possibly know what you're going through. You can't know what I've gone through, but I do know this. When the real crisis moments, and if we're honest, those only happen a few times in a manner of Wound's life. When those crisis moments happen, you have two choices. I can freeze and stay where I'm at and let life dictate the results. Or I can get up and I can face what's happening to me. And although I'm terrified and I just want to get real, the fact that it's a crisis itself means that it must be terrifying, and I don't know how it's going to turn out, and it looks really scary or it might look like this is going to be really really bad. But I do know this. If I do nothing, then life dictates the results. If I get up and I move forward, and maybe it's just one step forward. But if I get up and move forward, I don't know how it's going to turn out. It might be terrible, but then again it might not. But I do know this. When it's all said and done, I can look back and say, well, I gave it my all. Maybe it all blew up in my face and it turned out terrible anyway, Maybe it didn't. Maybe in the long run, I ended up marching one more step and finally crossing the line and things got better for me. Maybe you didn't. Don't know, but I do know this. At the end of my life, I want to be able to look back and say I held nothing back, I gave it my all. And if I can be theological with you for a second, not only that, but when I stand before Jesus, I want him to say the same thing about me. I want him to say, Jeff, I watched you, and it was hard, and you wanted to throw in the towel. You wanted to quit, you wanted to freeze and die. I know you did because I could see inside your soul. But you got up and you can walking, man, And now I want to reward you for getting up and keeping walking. And this, I hope is where every single one of your listeners, your audience is right now. The ultimate reward is to hear the King of King say well done, good and faithful servant. You wanted to freeze, You wanted to die, but you didn't. You got up and marched anyway. And now I want you to enter into the rest that I prepared for you. Now it's time for you to enjoy the reward of getting up and marching when you really wanted to die. So for me, hearing Jesus say well done. And I'm not marching to earn his or earn his approval. I already have his approval want to. I just want to honor him with whatever days I have on this earth. So I'm going to march as hard as I can, for as far as I can, and quite literally, I hope I drop over dead doing something for him. But when I stand before him, I want him to say, I know you wanted to die. I know you wanted to freeze, but you didn't all done, good and faithful servant. Now intern to the rest that I've prepared for you. 00:43:05 Speaker 2: That's awesome, Dan, Jeff, thank you so much. Where can people learn more about it? You put out a lot of great content. You have tons of content actually available for people. Where can they fin sure? 00:43:15 Speaker 1: The easiest way to do that is go to Jeffstruper dot com or follow me on social media. But if you don't mind, I'm going to make a little shameless blog. This is entirely free. I don't make anything off of this, but just a week ago I started dropping a six part mini series. It's one hundred percent free, and it's online on my website, and it is my definitive answer to the question can you be a Christian? And can you kill the enemy and still honor God? At the same time, I want to ask everybody in your audience go check this thing out. It's one hundred percent free and all you have to do is just go to Jeffstruper dot com to start watching it. It's called a Warrior's Soul. 00:43:54 Speaker 2: Awesome, Jeff. That's wonderful for those that are listening. October. I forget the date I should have looked at it before. It's right in the middle of October. If you follow the Mighty Oaks Foundation, we'll send you more information about it than you want. You'll you'll be spammed about our gaia in October. But Jeff is. 00:44:11 Speaker 1: Gonna really stop telling me about this. 00:44:14 Speaker 2: Jeff is going to be with us and we'll be our keynote that night. We have a great time. So it's a great event. And that's the event really every year where we focus on what God's done and and what God is doing and excited to have Jeff. So you can when that comes out, probably the next month or so, we'll start putting information out for those that are listening. 00:44:31 Speaker 1: I just want to tell people real quickly. I have been a huge fan of Mighty Oaks for a long long time, and I'm thrilled that my schedule finally worked out that we could do this together. 00:44:39 Speaker 2: Man, it was great. I think it was God. That's the only the only reason that it worked out. But that's awesome. Man. For those of you who are listening watching, thank you. This this episode special episode to me and to people that you know listen. We're in a moment right now where a lot of people are asking some of the questions we just talked about, and and we've got loved one ones who are deploying, who. 00:45:02 Speaker 1: We're sitting on a boat right now, want or if they're about to invade Iran yep. 00:45:06 Speaker 2: And they need to know the answer to some of these questions. And so this is an episode you need to forward to them, and of course, anything we can do as an organization to help, we want to do that. But thank you for listening, thank you for watching, and we will talk to you next time.