Operational Experiences for Military: Finding God's Way, Truth, and Life. - John 14:6

As a military member or veteran, you are trained in the field. Jesus trains His disciples (You and I) in this same way!

As the founder of Operation Outcast, I pray the following article challenges you to take deeper dives into God's Word as a man, a leader of a family, and a soldier! It is written by a fine military veteran who is finishing Seminary training next year and what he has to say comes from some valuable operational field experience instructing men.

The Need to Challenge Men

“Men don’t do homework.”

Several years ago, I was preparing to start a small group study for men at my church. I had noticed that many men did not know how to lead their families in studying the Bible, so my aim was to help develop that skill among the circle of men I knew.

Before getting started, I met with a mentor who had been involved with men’s ministry for longer than I had been alive. I started talking to him about my plans, going through sample studies with him I had found online. At this point, he gave me a frank warning: “You can’t choose a study that requires the men to do work during the week between studies. Men don’t do homework.”

My church at the time had several weekly studies for women, all of which required varying levels of work to be completed between each session. Yet here I was being told that men, who should be the spiritual leaders in the home, do not do homework. There was no point in assigning it, according to my mentor, because it would not get done.

There is an epidemic of men checking out from church. When I led my church’s ministry for young families, I noticed that most women would come to church even if their husbands were sick, traveling, or absent for some other reason. But there were only a couple men who would come without their wives.

At some point, we as a collective have looked at the problem of men not being involved in church and decided the reason they do not get involved is because it is too hard. So, we made it easier. In an effort to get men plugged in, we have told them how little work it takes to follow God. “Just read the Bible 15 minutes a day.” “That’s too much? Just do 5 minutes.” “Just show up to church during the football offseason.” “Just come to the retreat for the fun events; you don’t have to participate in the study portion if you don’t want to.”

There are two significant problems with this approach. First, we get out of our relationship with God what we put into it, and if we are putting little in, we get little in return (Mark 4:24). Second, it ignores the fact that men are not attracted to easy solutions: deep down they want to be challenged.

Men are Wired to Desire a Challenge

President John F. Kennedy famously said, “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” In the same way, men are naturally attracted to challenges, not in spite of being hard but because they are hard.

This past summer, my six year old son has been learning to swim. He continually pushes the limit. If he can swim in the shallow end, he wants to learn to swim in the deep. If he can dive down and grab a sinking toy on the pool floor, he wants to push it deeper. I never taught him this; his natural bent is to do things that challenge him.

The secular world knows this. Social media is full of men challenging others to plank for two minutes a day, or to only eat whole foods for a month. The ads for Spartan Races are all about how hard it is – and people pay money to do it.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the military. Men often join in the first place because they want to be challenged and push themselves. Once in the military, they compete to go to specialty schools, not because the experience will be easy, but because they will be excruciatingly hard.

Yet in the church, we avoid challenging men, afraid that if we do so they will stop coming. What if the real reason they do not come is because it is too easy?

During a course I took on Christian Formation, the professor told my class that he reads five Psalms a day, in addition to his other daily prayer and Scripture reading. At that rate, one goes through the entire book of Psalms every month. The professor spaced the five Psalms throughout the day: one upon waking, one at breakfast, one at lunch, one at dinner, and one before bed. This way, the messages of the Psalms were constantly on his mind. He then challenged the class to do the same.

This seemed impossible to me. I had a hard enough time doing daily quiet time, there was no way I could add five Psalms every single day to that. But, that was what intrigued me the most. It seemed so impossible that I could not get it out of my head. I wanted to try it.

The Bible Challenges Men

Nowhere in the Bible does it say that following God is easy and only takes 15 minutes a day. The Bible tell us to take up our cross and follow Jesus, completely dying to our own desires (Matthew 16:24). The Bible tells us to love our wives as ourselves (Ephesians 5:25). These are challenges. These are impossibly hard. Yet the Bible commands us to do it.

What if we truly challenged men in our ministries? Instead of telling men to memorize one Bible verse a week (and then giving them a pass when they do not), what if we challenged the men in our ministry to memorize an entire book of the Bible? How many men in your study could memorize a book of the Bible in a week? Probably none. It would take months of effort. Some would give up, but not all.

Challenging Men Forces them to Rely on God

During the early days of my time in the Army, a leader told me that the Army will always give you more than you can handle, because that is the only way for you to accomplish more than you thought you could accomplish.

In II Corinthians 12:9, Paul tells us that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness. When we are able to do things that we could not do on our own, that is evidence of God working through us. But how will we ever do that if we only do the things we are already able to do? We cannot learn to rely on God’s strength if we only do things we can do with our own.

It is key to remember that God is the goal of our pursuit, and provides the strength for us to pursue Him, and even provides our motivation to do so. In some examples I mentioned earlier, men take on challenges with the motivation of looking good in front of others. The bent of the natural man is to run away from God, so when man desires to pursue God, that itself is evidence of God working in them. Men who desire God are ready to be challenged, not to be told they should be content in the shallow end of the pool.

After taking that Christian Formation class, I decided to try the professor’s recommendation of reading five Psalms a day. I tend to skim things when I read, so I also committed to reading them out loud to force myself to read each word. That habit, which I continue to this day, changed my life. I had never been a fan of the Psalms because I had trouble understanding and applying them, but the more time I spent in them, the more I saw how rich they are. Reading them time and time again, I internalized them. Also, reading Scripture throughout the day kept God on the forefront of my mind. My anger, which had been one of my greatest struggles, started to come under control. Not because I was specifically reading Psalms about anger, but because I was constantly in the Word throughout the day.

Was it challenging? You bet. I would frequently forget to do the lunch Psalm and have to do two at dinner. Some days I would miss entirely and then have 10 Psalms for the next day. I came to dread dinner on the 24th, since that is the day I would do Psalm 119 (which, for the record, only takes about 20 minutes – not the two hours you would expect). I daresay that in the years I have now done this, there is not a single month when I have done it perfectly, and many months I fail to finish all 150 by the end.

But that is the point of a challenge.

Do men do homework? I cannot say for sure, but I can definitively say that they will not do homework if none is assigned. And they will not grow if we do not challenge them to.

JMB is pursuing his Master of Divinity at SWBTS and expects to graduate in December 2025. His counseling focus includes veterans and caregivers. He can be reached at jmbbiblicalcounseling@gmail.com.