The Military as Missionaries

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Hunter Beless
So my name is Hunter Beless. I am so glad to get to be with you guys today. My husband was in the US Army for eight years, and he departed, so we’re no longer military now. I’m a civilian, so I feel a little bit like a poser being up here.

Megan Brown
She is the first one of us to get some representation in the crowd.

Hunter Beless
Well, my first TGC W was in 2018 and I came as a military spouse, and so it’s really wonderful to get to see an event that’s here that hopefully will get to be an encouragement to you. But I definitely want you to hear from my friend Megan here, who has taken the baton, and tell them about where you’re coming from and how long you’ve been in.

Megan Brown
So my husband is in the Air Force, and we are so close to retirement, I’m praying that the light at the end of the tunnel is not a train. But we’ve been married almost 20 years. We have four children. They’re teenage down to like my 1614, 12 and nine. We’ve lived in 13 different houses. We’ve been all over the place, and military life is really a unique lifestyle. It’s it requires a shared sacrifice and a suffering that almost all of us in this room understand very keenly. And I love that we’re having some conversations today about what it looks like to build actual intimate connection community and learn to participate in the great commission together. Today is really a milestone of there are things happening in the community that I’m we’re seeing on the ground, the evangelical efforts, the the catalyst of revival that we’re seeing. And I am just really encouraged to share more about what that looks like and what we’re seeing on we’re seeing on the ground with you guys today. I’m really, really

Hunter Beless
excited. Well, tell us how you met your husband and how long you guys have been in.

Megan Brown
So in the early 2000s Right? Like I was capital W wild. I mean, I had purple hair and tattoos well before it was, like a cool thing, right? So my husband, he’s not here to defend himself, bless his baby heart. So I had my vibrant hair color and all of my tattoos, and he had a little white Oxford that was tucked into his little Jeep with a little belt buckle and a little Bible. I was a militant atheist family. I was very shocked that this very nice young man from Somerville, Ohio, wanted me to go to dinner with him. I was like, Oh, I appreciate you. I’m not really the dating kind Thank you. But no, thank you. I’ll pass but he was persistent. And I don’t know if anybody remembers the early 2000s Air Force battle dress uniform, but that black T shirt. Man, it won. I was like, yes, yes. Take me to Chili’s, gorgeous man in the black T shirt. I am a fan, so we went on our first date, and he was like, Look, the Lord is really putting it on my heart. I think we’re going to get married. And I audibly laughed. I was like, first, does that work for you? That is the strangest pickup line in the history of pickup lines. I don’t know. Do girls named Whitney, like that. I don’t know This is weird. This is weird to me and but four months later, we were married as one day again, black T shirt, guys, the black T shirt was real. The struggle, the sun’s out, guns out, season got us all. Yeah, yeah. So we’ve been married about six months, and he woke me up on a Sunday morning, and I was coming in after having a really great time on Saturday night. And he was like, Hey, we’re going to church this morning. And I was like, correction, you are going to church this morning. I am going to go to sleep. Did you see what time I got in? Dude? Like, it was late. He’s like, No, I really, really want you to join me at church. It’s kind of important to me. And I thought, all right, how about this? You go to church. You can carry me to Chili’s, like, I could totally do some Tex Mex after church, but I don’t church. And he was like, No, seriously. Like, I’ll be really disappointed if you don’t try. And I was like, fine. So he didn’t tell me the rules. Guys, like, this was the early 2000s I know we can casual at church today, but I put on the clothes I had worn the night out before, with flip flops, and I had, like, marble menthol lights rolled into my sleeve. Yeah, it was not a good look. I’m sure the deacons at this church thought I needed financial assistance, so I roll up, no makeup, flip flops, and look in all nine ways of wrong at this very nice church that looked like the inside of a cruise ship. And you know that Bible they give you at graduation, it was like a New International Version at burgundy with like the gold foil and the red letters. Sounds familiar, uh huh. I was using it as a doorstop. It was still in the wrapping in my apartment. And so I was like, I think I need this big book. So we went to this little church, and this very stately gentleman with a white comb over and a three piece tweed suit waddled his way to the pulpit. And I remember like I grew up in the 318, so I have a very different southern accent. His was that real sweet one. I. Yeah. And he’s like, all right, beloved, I want everybody to open their Bibles to the book of Ephesians. Like, what’s that? You gonna throw me a page number Tony? And I’m like, All right. Mental note, it’s in the back half of this ridiculously big book. Okay, cool. So I’m thumbing my way through there, and what I now know is exposition. This guy started expositing Ephesians, one predestined to sonship, adopted, picked from the foundation of the world. Like, I mean, I waited tables in college. I knew I was going to the hot place, because I like to have a good time. I knew that I knew those words, but nobody had ever said these words to me, and it was like bullet fire, fam, I was undone. So we’re walking back to our little Hyundai after this church service, and I’m like, snot crying all over this burgundy Bible. And I’m like, No, for real. Legit. Nobody told me, is this for real? Like, for real, for real. And he was like, Yeah, babe, you want to go to Chili’s. I’ll tell you all about it. And I was like, dude, Jesus Fauci is same day, same cool. So I mean, my testimony started out I was 20. I came from a completely different background, but the thing that we’re here to talk about today, and really it’s a cornerstone of my own testimony. I got into the church when I was 20, and I really didn’t fit in church spaces, right? Like, I wear way too much black eyeliner, and they didn’t like my favorite four letter word, and I was really excitable, and I don’t think they knew what to do with me. They were they were kind, and they tolerated me, but they didn’t teach me. I wasn’t discipled well, and most of the things that they did tell me, it was all about how I should dress and what I should say and not say. And so six years went by, and we moved to a new location, and we had a couple of children, like military families are want to do. We had them every five seconds. So, I mean, like I was 20 when we got married, 2224 26 and we had three children, right? And now we’re remote away from an installation. And guess who got deployed out of cycle to Afghanistan. So I’m on my own remote and halfway through this deployment where he’s driving convoys with no comm channels, right? It was mid 2000s that we didn’t have Skype yet, no Wi Fi. I hear the doorbell, and for those of us in the community, like no one uses doorbells, we don’t like those. That’s I like to leave my windows open. I know who’s coming up. My Drive doorbell is official business. So I opened the door, and there’s a postal worker, and she’s got all of his foot lockers, and there’s been no communication for a month. And I was like, just a moment, Madam, why are these here? And why do you have them? Do you have a telegram? Do you have news? Is there news? She’s like, I don’t know, and she starts tearing up. I’m like, Deborah, focus Megan needs answers. Can you tell me how you came by these foot lockers and why they’re on my doorstep? She’s like, I don’t so I closed my door after dragging them in my house. And I don’t know what the past sense of freak out. I froze. There was a freak out session. I looked across the hall, and there’s my Bible on the shelf where I put it from the Sunday that I put it back and I didn’t pick it up until the next Sunday, right? And I was like, All right, I’m panicking. I read something about a plan. This plan’s terrible. I like this plan. And I was like, some dude said, You talk magic book. Is this like a magic eight ball situation? Am I going to flop you open on my coffee table and you’re going to say, Outlook, good husband comes home. I threw my Bible on the table. And guys terrible study scripture by the by but it was in Thessalonians. And I’m like, what’s alonian? This is unhelpful to me. It’s mad in that moment, I had no way to get to the faith I proclaimed to have in Christ. I knew his name, but not really a lot else. And I would like to say that that, you know, things went great for the next few days, but they did not. I did not know how to read the Bible. I did not know how to pray. I did not have anyone to call. And so for three days and nights, I don’t think I slept, spoke. I think I tried praying. It was mostly sobbing, and there was no answer. And every black car that passed my house sent me into a panic attack, and I was just waiting on that second door slam. And I share all of that to say the reason we’re talking about this today is because on that third day, you know, I’m going to age myself here, the landline was ringing in my kitchen, and I’m pole vaulting over my couch to get to the phone, and it’s that weird South Carolina number, and you’re like, that’s news. And I pick it up, and I hear him, Hey, babe, I’m breathing. I’m like, Hey, Hi. How you doing? He’s like, I’m safe. Everything’s great. Like, they moved us. We didn’t have time to call Hey. Did my stuff make it home? Yeah, okay, guys, listen all the joy and the relief that was in the room in that moment was gone, and it was deep and inviting rage. I’m like, I love you. I’m gonna kill you. I’m gonna kill I’m plotting your demise. You didn’t think to write, I’m alive in the dirt, like on the box, like nothing. Your commander did not have a post it note. You did not think smoke signals. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. I’m going to harm you when you return. I know

Megan Brown
I say that in a little bit of a joking manner. I was relieved, yes, but the thing I remember most about that day was the crushing weight of my own convictions that I profess to be a believer. I was at a church, but I wasn’t at a church, these women didn’t know me. They knew me as that lady whose children are coming in with one shoe on, like ravaging the donut table. Yeah, you know, you’re one of us. But I knew what I would do if I got the knock on the door. I didn’t want nothing. I will sit, I will cry, I will ask big questions that no one knew the answer to and I remember having a conversation with the Lord after that, like you’re not going to catch me here again. I would love to know what’s in this book. And again, from the 318, we don’t have oxen or must seed there. So I had a dictionary and a Children’s Bible. And it wouldn’t be until he came home and we moved again that like if you asked me 10 years ago, if that’s when I became a military missionary, I don’t know if I would have said then, but when we got to Keesler Air Force Base, and I thought to myself, there’s a million of us. There’s 1.8 million military spouses, 93% of us are female. We’re all waiting on the knock we don’t want we’re all waiting on news we don’t want to get. We’re all dealing with the orders we don’t like, or the commander that makes life hard. We’re also grieving the last seven things we lost before we’re asked to give up another and all of us need answers, and so I inadvertently became a Bible teacher, and so that’s kind of how I got here today. But we’re going to talk a lot about what it looks like to be in this community. And for those of you that are joining, that are in the local church, we’d love to equip you with how to care for us, because it’s hard, and I think that there’s a need for it that we don’t know how to ask for. And so I’m just really glad that we can be here today together, you know, yeah, 100%

Hunter Beless
you know, like I said, my husband was in Special Operations for our time during the military, so he deployed annually. And you know, before we met, I had the privilege of actually going on my very first date with him the day after he signed his paperwork to join the US Army.

Megan Brown
The uniform got you too, girl.

Hunter Beless
So I did not ever anticipate being in a military lifestyle, like many of you did. Many of you expect to be in the lifestyle that you found yourself in right now. I was very unfamiliar with it, and I had always wanted to be in a different culture, to be sharing the gospel in a different context, to be speaking a different language, but I never envisioned that happening in the heart of the US. So I’d always wanted to be a missionary, but I did not see myself as doing that in the context of the military. And so fast forward, after we’d been married, I was walking the streets of Fort Hood, Texas, and I felt like, man, maybe I’d made a mistake. Maybe I’d missed God’s calling on my life. I didn’t have a high view of the sovereignty of God, but through careful study of the Word, as I went to the word with all of these questions and submitted them to the Lord, I began to really come to understand what Paul talks about in Second Corinthians 520 where he says, We’re ambassadors for Christ. And an ambassador is one who has been sent with a message on behalf of another. And so we have this wonderful opportunity as believers who are in the context of the military to take the message of reconciliation the gospel, be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, whom he has sent to, wherever it is that the Lord sends us via the military. And so that’s really what we want to encourage you all with today, that we want to see everyone in this room, whether civilian, military service member, military spouse, to be to deploy to participate in the Great Commission to the glory of God. And I think Megan has a really helpful way of thinking through this. So do you want to share with them? Kind of the three

Megan Brown
C’s, yeah. I think sometimes we over complicate what it should look like to participate in the Great Commission. We get all antsy, and we’re like, oh man, like, I need to do this one thing, or that, or this program at a program approach, or there’s meet for coffee, do all these things, I think we should simplify it, right, like so when we moved to Keesler, I realized I wasn’t the only one that had hard questions, and I did not know anything about Scripture guys like I have to reiterate, I was not a qualified Bible teacher when I did this. So I posted on. East Falcons website, like our facebook page. Hey, the church I’m in, we’re going through the Gospel of Luke, and you can kick my couch laundry out of the way and bring your feral children. I have hot coffee and a copy of the Bible like just come by. And it was me and my weird neighbor, who is now my best friend. By the way, she loves that she’s known as the weird neighbor in all of my stories, she was my weird neighbor. And a handful of women from the street, there was a 27 year old rocket scientist, a 22 year old military spouse, a commander spouse. I mean, it was a really bad three women walk into a bar joke. I mean, it was real bad. It was a weird group of people. There were six of us, and then the next week, there were 17. And I was like, Where’d y’all come from? And they were like, someone said, you’re teaching a Bible study. They lied. I’m just reading my sermon notes, fam. Like, we’re reading about this dude named Luke, and he was traveling with his buddy Paul, and they were kicking it in like, Thessalonica, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I was literally just reading the sermon notes from the previous Sunday. Had no idea what I was doing, and by the third week, there were 25 women. And I’m looking out of my front room and there’s a woman dragging a lawn chair to get into my living room. And I’m like, This is so ghetto up in here. And I was like, Lord, if I’m your Bible teacher, you have a serious HR problem. Where are the people that know how to do this? I’m going to embarrass us. It’s so simple. What the Lord wanted us to do. He wanted us to come together in the Word, to connect to God and each other. He wanted us to be part of a faith community we all planted in at a local church, and ultimately, he wanted us all to be part of the Great Commission. And I didn’t know then what he was doing, but years later, I was getting calls from Ellsworth, South Dakota, Hawaii, Massawa, Korea, hey, there’s still six of us in a Bible. We’re still doing it. What do we teach? And I was like, Oh, you asked good questions. So essentially how I ended up a missionary that launches missionaries is that I saw that the Lord was calling the military community to redemptively participate in the Great Commission, because we’re already mobilized. And so the whole focus of today is it’s actually really simple. You get connected, connect to God and each other. You build faith community within the context of a local church, and then the local church comes alongside of you to commission you into the service of the Lord, to participate as ambassadors for Christ, when and where you go. I mean, we literally go all day, like it’s time, and I’m going to quote lead, it’s our job is to stay with the stuff and make sure it gets the next place. Like, what if we leverage these opportunities? What if we leveraged how mobilized we are, and we carried the gospel with us when we go, think of the amazing opportunity for evangelism there. I truly believe, in my heart of hearts, that equipping the military community to carry the gospel is one of the greatest evangelical works of our day. And so as we spend this time together, that’s what I want our hearts to be focused on, is carrying the gospel with us. Yeah,

Hunter Beless
100% and I think in order to carry the gospel with us, we have to know the gospel. And that’s one of the encouragements that we wanted to offer to you guys today. Like, in order to be a missionary in the military, you actually have to follow Jesus. And I think, as people who are part of a community that is so service oriented, right, so many needs within the context of the military. You have the needs of your own children when your husband is down range. You also have the needs of your neighbor and all of the women in your FRG, or whatever your respective Family Readiness Group looks like in whatever branch you’re in, and in order to serve others, we have to receive the ultimate service that Christ extends to us on the cross. And we also need to be regularly sitting under the word. And so I think we need to remember that that it is absolutely of utmost importance that we are in the word and that we continually Nestle our stories and the story of what God’s doing in our lives, in this moment, in the context of the big story of how he’s been working redemption throughout all of history. So that’s one of our encouragements, is that in order to serve others, and in order to be a missionary in the military, you actually have to know Jesus, and that was a really significant part of your story. And I’d love for you to share

Megan Brown
anything. I mean, the biggest thing that I can continue to say like getting connected in at a local community, all of us know what it’s like to start the dreaded church. When you’re in a big house full of boxes and you’re looking around and it really hits you right in the soul that you know no person here, and that your children are probably going to take out one of these boxes while you’re trying to unpack them and roll it down the stairs, and there’s probably an ER visit waiting for you. And it’s the most isolating feeling the first day, when you realize that the boxes are still packed. That. You’re in a new place, and there’s no one to call in that moment, I want to encourage you, military, family, community, my friends, that is where we connect to the Lord first, because, man, there’s comfort there that you’re never alone, you’re never isolated, you’re never really by yourself. And then the second thing I hope that happens is that you have a deep and abiding desire to connect with other Christians in the military community. And the joke I usually tell is that military spouses are wonderful, but we’re also triple dipped in the crazy. And we all laughed because we’re all thinking of that one girl. We’re like, oh yeah, she was nuts. But friendships are not always built on a solid foundation. In the military community, it’s usually preferential. You like what I like. You don’t like what I like. You had a hard thing happen. I had a hard thing happen. I mean, and we could spend all day talking about like ye olde trauma bonds, but, but what I do want to focus on is that there’s an opportunity to connect in with a local church, and that my constant prayer is that local churches that find themselves in and around installations would ask the Lord to change their hearts toward us. We are not perpetual visitors. It’s not a hindrance that we’re only going to be there a year. Get to know our names, know our faces, learn about our children, learn how you can step in alongside. Many of us are unmothered. Many of us have a lot of support needs that we don’t have the community built yet to do that for. And you guys have the power of the local church and the community of a congregation. And I think that when we talk about what it means to get connected, it means that military spouses, and we know this, we don’t always have the bandwidth to build it when you get to and I’m a little older than I look family like a hat hides a multitude of sin and gray hair by the sixth PCs move, I no longer want to Do the things that we’re told to do with a smile, to volunteer and to serve and to be outgoing. It’s like I’m so tired I think I’m going to die. I would like someone else to bring coffee and say hi to me. I can’t today. I think it’s important to know what you need to get connected. And so as we’re on this connection, getting connected to the Lord looks like knowing you need him and knowing that in Jesus you have him. And I think secondarily, it means being brave enough and relying on the sufficiency of the Lord Himself to show up at a local church knowing that they might not get you. They’re not going to get you. They’re not really going to understand, and they’re going to say things like, my husband goes on business trips too, and you’re going to have to control your

Hunter Beless
face. Yeah, you know, I think we can remember the gospel even in that as we’re moving towards a local church context. And I’m so, I’m so grateful that Megan and I both share this desire to see military women really convictionally pursuing membership in the local church context, because we do have so many parachurch opportunities, so many para churches that have seen the deficit, maybe in local churches, and the need wanting to come alongside and strengthen the hands of the local church. But I think oftentimes, because of the ease of the parachurch context, we can reach for the parachurch and neglect the local church. And I just want to encourage you guys that because of the work that Jesus did for us in the gospel, we get to step into gospel community in the local church, like Megan said, there’s this idea of building community, but that community was actually something that God was experiencing before humanity even existed within himself, in the persons of the Godhead, they were experiencing fellowship with one another, right? And when Adam and Eve were welcomed into that fellowship when he created them, that fellowship was broken because they chose to do their things their way, instead of God’s way. But when we are in Christ, we are once again welcomed into fellowship with God, and we are also welcomed into community with those who belong to Christ, wherever it is that we go, and so I just want to capture this idea and the opportunity that we have within the local church context to step into the community and the fellowship that we have as Christians. So you cannot neglect to do that, because you need fellowship with those who belong to the Lord, and it can be really hard when you’re in such a transient context, but truly family, there is no other way for us to do this life, and so we want to encourage you to plug into that local church and to seek out discipleship in the local church context. And Megan and I were talking before the breakout started. Just about the significance of Titus two mentoring in a local church context, especially for those of us who are military. And I think there are really unique challenges that come with our lifestyle and the transiency. And I think it’s really difficult for those who are in the local church that are civilians to see the opportunity that they have, even with the short time that we might have to build those kind of relationships. So do you want to share anything about that you have your Titus two mentor? Here I do. I

Megan Brown
am so excited that one of our mentors has come on the road with us, Lita Norsworthy, her husband, was in the 82nd he was a ranger. She gets our life, she managed to maintain a military marriage, a ministry and a love for the Lord over a lifetime. And that’s wisdom I value, and I pray the military community will value. I don’t know if I think we always have the best understanding of what wisdom actually does, and wisdom in the local church context, we were talking about this too, like we end up getting siloed off to the side in a program that might just be specifically for us, or there’s this or that, or there’s this, there’s offerings on post or on base, which is great, but when we think about the plan a that God had for the gospel to travel, it was the church. The church is Plan A, and we have resources, like we’ve got chaplains and we have programs and those things are resources. But I don’t think that it’s it’s an unsafe thing to say that we have bigger needs than a sidelined Bible study or the support that we can get in limited capacity can purchase. There’s nothing that can rival a community of believers that understand who we are and what we’re like and how they can champion the gospel efforts in our lives. Because when we go we go, we’re everywhere. We’re in Asia, we’re in the middle of oceans, we’re in we’re all over the continental US and abroad. And we go on Uncle Sam’s dollar. And if the local church understood their capacity for sending, I would even argue that championing military families is an evangelical mission strategy. It fits in with your missions pastor. It fits in with your evangelical pastor. It fits in all those places and so like when we talk about community, there needs to be a context of community that is firmly rooted in a local body that goes with you everywhere. My membership is at bag Bay church, Ocean Springs and our pastor, I love you, Adam Bennett. He’s a Mississippi Bubba that has no connection to the military. He’s going to love that I described him that way. He didn’t get it, but he believed us. When I sat down with him and I’m like, it’s bad, boss, they need us. Will you help? He was like, yes. What do I do? He didn’t have to get it. Your congregations don’t have to get it. They probably won’t unless they’re heavy contextualized with a military group, but they all believe you.

Hunter Beless
Yeah, I think that’s so significant just to voice those needs. And I think that can be something that’s really challenging for those of us who everybody around us has so many needs, and I love that you mentioned looping the leadership in at your local church, and I know that that’s something that I’ve done in places where we’ve been stationed in the past, just going to the elders and expressing some of the unique discipling challenges that I was even experiencing with other women. And you guys all know what I’m talking about, the conversations that most civilians are just not even having to consider due to their being separated from their spouse for extended periods of time, or very unique challenges to the lifestyle. And so my encouragement is to go to the older people in your congregation, yes, Titus, two older women, and also the elders of your local church, and to express some of the challenges that you’re experiencing, so that they might be able to help creatively, brainstorm how they can come alongside you in the in that context. And

Megan Brown
I think it goes without saying that there’s grief here every local church. It’s like, what do we do? What do we do? And there’s always a desire for, like, a long list. If I were to say simplistically, absolutely, there is so much grief, grief over the orders we didn’t want, grief over the last thing we lost. And grief doesn’t expire, and this life, it costs us, and sometimes it costs us everything. I know. I can look out and I can tell that there are people in here that are wearing remembrance braces. We know what it means. There’s a community of Gold Star families that have paid and I wish that the local church could sit in that pain, that they could do it well. And I really think it’s important for us to acknowledge that even in this space, when there’s a bunch of us who are together, who love. Hard. We know what the ultimate sacrifice is. We know all of us know someone. I don’t know about you guys, but like we don’t come out of a house on Memorial Day. We know names on walls. We just try to breathe through it all day. And I think about what could happen if the local church knew to call us on important days. May 1 is burned into my brain when my best friends or husband didn’t come home, I would say to the local church to just listen to the stories that live in this space. And for you that are in here, this is a charge, right? This was not on the script, but there’s a charge here, if you’re in this room and you have paid good money to be equipped to communicate the gospel, to teach the Bible, to minister to people in pain, which I think all of us come to conferences like that, to do those three things very well. I would say that you may have not considered that you might be your local herald of these stories, you might be the person in your local church that can communicate what it’s like, that can mobilize a congregation that can say things like, listen, the loss is immense, and we have opportunity, because if you learn how to sit in loss, and you can learn to sit With the people who pay big prices, you can also champion them, empower them, encourage them to do hard things for the Lord. And I think that’s the opportunity that we’re really talking about today, is championing one another for the Lord Absolutely.

Hunter Beless
You know, I thought I just wanted to encourage you guys that, like Megan said, sometimes I think we over complicate it, but when we’re talking about Titus two mentoring in the context of the local church, context in the local church, we really all it is, is just fellowship around the word. And so I think that’s one encouragement that I have, is on the other side of a military lifestyle, the time spent in the word with other women does not return void, and we can feel so overwhelmed by some of the unique challenges that happen within our community. And yet the word really is all we need with the spirit helping us apply its truths to those unique challenges. And so as you’re seeking to develop these kind of relationships with older women, and as you’re seeking to pour into other women who have such incredible needs like Megan was describing, just hold fast to the word and remember you really only need one book. And I, you know, put

Megan Brown
that on like a cross stitch pillow. For me, you only need one book that’s your greatest,

Hunter Beless
yeah, you know, and I know it can be really challenging to get into the local church community and to be reaching for the word whenever you can, however you can, when you have such a demanding lifestyle and very little support due to being in A different, you know, context in your family and moving so much and so do you have any tips that you would encourage them with? I love Megan’s practical example of just bringing the kids, allowing them to play together, grabbing some coffee and just reading through the sermon notes like that’s such a practical thing that all of us can do. Are there other ways that you have, you know, carved out time to be in the word even with the demands of the military lifestyle?

Megan Brown
So we should have known I had ADHD a lot longer than we did guys like I was like 36 when we were diagnosed, and like me and my daughter were diagnosed at the same time. Me, there’s two of us. I’m not referring to me as we so my daughter and I were diagnosed, and my husband came home one day and our entire dining table was covered like 17 commentaries, gummy worms, a Rubik’s Cube, like markers and a notepad, like it was a full contact sport. And I thought to myself, I’m discovering the secrets of the universe. I was not discipled books were my disciples, right? Like I joked that I was discipled by old, dead guys, like I was just, like, it was a ratchet family. I’m like, shuffling through Half Price Books on dollar day looking for J i packer, yeah, yeah. Like we were just fishing. There were a handful of us that were ravenous because we were in the church, but no one would disciple us, no one would teach us. And so we would get the video based Bible studies, and we were consuming them. I mean, we would do a six week Bible study in six days. And I mean, we would just turn that DVD player on. And I mean, we would lose hours. It was me and my weird neighbor, and she would walk over, we’d put our kids on the bus, and then from eight to two, it was it was a full sprint. And I think the first year of our friendship, we did, like 36 week Bible studies. It was wild, like it was guys. We were obsessed, like it was unhealthy. We were a little unhinged guys. But here’s what I learned. I. There wasn’t a formula to it. We just wanted the word. That’s all we wanted. And so if you’re finding yourself like, how do I make this a practical thing? Just prioritize it. Like, prioritize it make, make ways to get to where the gospel lives. And that’s usually in really sound, expositional Bible studies. It’s good. You don’t always have to have a person. It’s ideal. Hear me say that, like, if it was between a book and a person, person all day. But sometimes you just can’t and and that doesn’t get you off the hook. Let the Holy Spirit do it. That’s That’s like my practical advice, like, how many other things are we patching through family? Like, how much of our lives are held together by duct tape? And, you know, a couple of really choice words, we’re mad about it, it’s okay. Find a way to get before the Lord in any way you can, in any way that makes sense, because you need him, and you’re not gonna make it out without him. And I think sometimes we just have to figure out, like, look, I want the Lord’s word in my brain. I want to be able to recall it. I want to know what he’s like, what he wants me to be like, and really specifically who he wants me to be like, and if I need to learn how to be like Jesus, I better read about him in this book I’ve got and so practical advice. You don’t what’s the saying? You don’t always get the house, the command, the location and the community you want. You’re lucky if you get one. And guys, let’s be honest, most of the time we get none. But if there’s a way for you to get your hands on some solid Bible teaching. Trust the Lord with your discipleship, because he understands your circumstance. He’s already in tomorrow. He knew, he knew that Minot, North Dakota isn’t gonna be your favorite. Oh, we got Minot in the house. Listen, I just came from Robbins Air Force Base, and I was like, Lord, is this where you say things are god forsaken? This is for hood, for sure. I’m very tired, so I think the thing to know is like he already knows your circumstances. He wrote them sorry about sovereignty, like you can trust him with your discipleship, even it doesn’t look like what you want

Hunter Beless
it to. Yeah. And I think what Megan is talking about is that’s how we go about the Great Commission. We want to be welcoming other women to join us in our study of the Word and in knowing and loving God through His Word. And I have seen that to be so fruitful in the context of the military. You know, I think often we can lament that we have only two years in a place, and yet I don’t know anybody better than the military community when it comes to really making the most of the time, as Ephesians five says, and capitalizing on those two years and going deep. And our encouragement is to go deep in the word with other women, even those who do not yet know Jesus. And that for me, has been one of the most effective evangelism tools. When I was a military spouse. You know, God has given me this precious gift this last year, of getting to see the fruit of having shared the gospel with women over five years ago in a cul de sac when we lived at Fort Campbell in Kentucky, and I had no idea I was just being obedient and sowing seeds of the gospel as Mark chapter four encourages us to do in faith. And I have just been so encouraged hearing from these ladies. One was former LDS, and another was a 12 year old who served as my mother’s helper. We lived in the same duplex together, just to get to see those seeds of the gospel really take root in their life, and the Lord give growth. So sow seeds of the gospel liberally. You have such a wonderful opportunity to do that with so many different people as you continue moving in such a transient lifestyle like what a great opportunity to do that, and as you go about this joyful task, we want to encourage you, just as a great commission does that Jesus is with you even to the end of the age, So you are not alone in that work. And again, that’s our encouragement, just to link arms with other women who are like minded, who love Jesus, and you’ve done that so well, Megan, I

Megan Brown
think you know there are a handful of moments that just kind of live in the Rolodex in my brain of why I do what we do. I usually describe it this way, we are fighting a war on three fronts, right in the military community, specifically when it comes to church stuff. On the right, we’ve got legalism and moralism, which really is hard for our community to fit into. On the left, we’ve got literal paganism. I mean, like the waves of paganism that are like infiltrate. In military communities right now is, I’ve never seen anything like it. And then in the middle, we have gospel centric churches who genuinely want to help, who don’t really know how. And so our community is trying to figure out where we fit. And by and large, like I know missiologists are arguing with me about this. I would call the military community a people group. We have our own language, a culture. You’re not the same ethnicity anymore. First, you’re camouflaged. First, everything is gone, and now the first identifier is you wear the uniform your brother or sister in arms, and everything else comes after that. So when you get into this community, you definitely don’t come out unchanged any military spouse, if you were in five years to whatever it’ll matter like, if someone says, like, Do you know what the military is like and like, you’re automatically right back there. You’re like, oh yes, we remember, right? So I say all that to say there are moments the generation of women in my military spouse community, we joked that we thought we were the wild ones, and like I’m older than I look guys like I got married in the early 2000s the kids that have come behind us are so disconnected from the local church, from anything resembling truth that when they Get it when you see it across their face, it will change the way you look at being a disciple maker. We were in a living room in East Falcon there was about 15 women. One of the women from that study is here with us too, and we’re all sitting on the floor, on chairs, mismatched stuff from the kitchen. And we were talking about the Gospel of Luke and what it means to praise. And I was doing a presentation on, like, the word DOCSIS like to praise. And that’s, I was like, well, that’s where we get the doxology. And this little baby military spouse looks up at me, and she said, The what we’re like, the doxology baby. And she’s like, what is that? And there were three of us that knew it. And I looked around and I’m like, Look, guys, I can’t carry a tune in a bucket. Are we about to sing this thing? And they’re like, yes, we are. And I was like, may the Lord be with us, because I’m gonna hurt someone’s feelings. We sang the doxology in a military living room, and this young military spouse is on the floor in a puddle sobbing. She’s like, I’ve never heard anything like that. Wow. She’s like, that’s the best, beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. We’re all sobbing, crying. We’re like, Yeah, we sang, it kind of good. Oh. There are women in your communities to the right and to your left who do not know the name of the Lord. They legit, don’t know they don’t know the creation story. They don’t know that they belong. They don’t know that anyone is coming to get them. They don’t know if you’re here because you’re like, Man, I want this for the military community. I want these women, these men, to know.

Megan Brown
Like, we’ve got an obligation to tell them there was a colonel in the 70s. He’s like, Those who run towards harm’s way. Should probably get the gospel first.

Megan Brown
Yeah, he was a bad name of Jim. I like that guy, Colonel Jack fame. He’s quotable. I agree. I married someone who runs toward things. And I mean I had enlisted, right? Like I had enlisted, I was in the debt. And I mean, this good looking dude in a black T shirt talked me out of a uniform and into a wedding ring 20 years and four children, no regrets, right? But I was also someone who wanted to run toward things, and it makes me a sharp missionary, because I think the warrior class us, the men and women in this room, I think that we understand what it means to live on orders we didn’t make. We understand what it means to suffer and sacrifice long for something we believe in. We understand that we have to do it all the time, every day, every day is another choice to do it at at the point where we’re retiring, right? Like, and this is just for those of you who are like, close if you sit down at the end of it and you’re like, was the job worth it? Was the job worth the cost? I would say no, my husband has clinic chronic PTSD, right? He was in eight weeks of treatment last year. This is one of the biggest This is the first time I’ve been out of my house in almost a year, and all four of our children have secondary trauma responses. You know what I mean? Right? You’re at the birthday party in a civilian community, and some kid pops a balloon, and all of you are like, whoa, No, we’re fine. We’re fine, you’re fine. Dad’s fine. Kids are fine. We don’t like sudden movements or loud noises. Is the job worth it? No, I don’t want. That my children have serious separation anxiety. However, if you looked me in my eye and said, was the work Jesus called you to do worth it? Bet all day, every day, I’d do it again. I’d do it again, knowing the cost. My husband would do it again. We would do it again, knowing what it would cost us. The military community uniquely is positioned for this. You are perfectly positioned to serve God as missionaries. You are master community builders. You know how to do this. And so our encouragement really, like we talked about this a lot, our encouragement is for you to look at your lives, look at the opportunities, look at the suffering. Look at the sacrifice. Because guys, we could talk about it all day. The Sacrifice is humongous. Look at it and give it to the Lord. And we all know this. He doesn’t prevent pain, but he redeems it every time. And your greatest pain point is probably something someone else in this room or otherwise is struggling with, and it makes you a sharp communicator for the gospel. It actually makes you stronger as a gospel communicator, to be able to be an indigenous leader and a person who understands the sacrifice someone who paid it to say to someone else, the Lord is good, even this, yeah, even now, yeah,

Hunter Beless
that’s exactly what my encouragement would be, is to consider how the gospel applies to your life, and to consider the unique hardships that you’re facing as a military spouse, and to really think through, how does the gospel offer hope? So you know, when nothing works out the way we planned, which we all know, it’s like Murphy’s Law in the military. It never does. We can affirm with fellow spouses in the military, you are actually right. Things are bad, but we have a good savior who is coming to make all things right. You know, when service members are faced with the brevity of life, as they are signing a living will far earlier than they ever expected. We can remind them that eternal life can be found in Christ. We can help prepare dependence for those unexpected knocks on the door like Megan experienced by helping them ground themselves in the unending, never fading, unchanging Word of God, and in the midst of constant moves, we can remind military families that here we have no lasting city, as it says in Hebrews, but we seek the city that is to come. And so consider the unique hardships that you face in the military, and use those as gospel preaching opportunities in the conversations that we all know we share at every single one of those military functions, and embrace this opportunity to preach the gospel, not only to the woman sitting next to you, but to your very own heart as you navigate the respective challenges that you’re facing. What resources as we close. Do you have Megan that you would recommend that might be a help to the women in this room as they go about this task? We’ve already mentioned scripture. So in addition to that, do you have anything else you’d recommend? So

Megan Brown
there’s a handful of things that I love, right? Like I love a good expository study. And when we were figuring out what to teach. We had our time because, like, the girls were calling me and they’re like, man, these Bible studies ain’t for us. Like, date my husband to a do I call and tell the terrorists to, like, stop their mortar fire so I can have my Zoom date while I scream at our children to go to sleep. Sounds romantic? There are so many studies that we discovered that they did a really good job of teaching about the aspects around our life, maybe not to be exact, stories, but Erica Wiggin horn wrote a series of studies, unexplainable Jesus, unexplainable life, unexplainable church. It was the Gospel of Luke and the in the story of Acts, the birth of Jesus, the birth of the church. And I feel like those are books that we use leadership development. Because, I mean, man, you better know Jesus, and you better know how he mobilizes people. And a friend of mine, Gary Sanders, says it this way when he reads acts like acts one eight, you will be my witnesses to the ends of the earth, right? The Roman military carried the gospel everywhere. Since the gospel was the gospel, the military community has been riding tight. We’ve been here the whole time, fam. And I would say that if we understood our role in the church, could understand it, could understand how they could support it, I think that the landscape of heaven will look very different. And when I think about Revelation seven, right? It says every tribe, nation tongue, so I’ll be discernible in heaven as an Asian woman. Like, hopefully I get to keep my flat Bill hat. That’ll be fun. But, like, I would love to see the warrior class. I want to see some camo in the throne room. Like, I want our crew up there, palm leaves in. All. And so I think resources would be any resource that makes you a great gospel communicator, any resource that makes you a sharp biblical expositor, and any resource that makes you more compassionate and more empathetic toward the need of the lost, like there’s a I brought my favorite book, The Valley of vision, that that’s a great one, one of my Banner of Truth. It’s in Old English, guys. So my southern accent hangs out real bad. But there’s a prayer in there called the broken heart. And I think, like, as we close, like we have seven minutes. Do you know that we are think we actually only have two. Do we have two at 125

Hunter Beless
I thought it was at 130 they have their next session at 130 so they need time to get there. Oh, that was in 145 is it 145 okay,

Megan Brown
okay, that never happens for me. I know everyone’s so proud. I practice my timing. Guys. Megan Brown, half hours, 45 minutes. So one of my favorite resources is the Valley of vision, but it talks about having a broken heart for those who do not know the Lord, like asking the Lord to keep me perpetually broken hearted for those who do not have him, I think there’s a handful of resources, and I’ve totally lost a whole hour in that Expo over there so many fun books. I wrote a book called Know what you signed up for, how to follow Jesus, love people and live on mission. I love that. My publisher let me keep my very salty title because I show didn’t know what I was signing up for. There’s another book A good friend of mine wrote called Never Alone. A look at Ruth, the modern military spouse and the God who goes with us. Great book on isolation and loneliness, and they’re short. Know what you signed up for, how to follow Jesus, love people and live on mission and then never alone. Look at Ruth, the modern military spouse, and the God who goes with us. They’re at the moody table in there. I think the last resource that I would highlight find, I’m trying to say this. Well, any Bible study that builds a solid theology around perseverance and suffering, because the call today is perseverance. The mission is the gospel, but the call to action is for us to persevere in disciple making, while chronically overtired, misunderstood, longing for more. And as we wrap, like with the last five minutes, what do you think about a Q and A? I mean, do we want to open this up? I mean, we’ve got a lot of nodding heads in here.

Hunter Beless
If you have a question, we’d be happy to take it if you if anybody does, yeah, that sounds good. Also, I’d love to throw in a couple of more resources. Oh, yes, please. Sorry, I got excited at journey women. You know, almost everybody on our team is military affiliated, and so a lot of the resources that we produce at journey women are honestly done through that lens. We have some discipleship guides that are available for free, and you can use those if you’re seeking to make disciples in the context of the local church. I would also encourage you to check out nine marks of a healthy church as you are trying to move from station duty station to duty station, just trying to find a healthy church. One of the things that I’ve done is even listening to sermons and checking out their statements of faith and looking at those church networks, like on the gospel coalition’s website prior to moving to your new duty station, so that you can just make the most of the time and already kind of have an idea of the landscape of churches in a city before you move there. That would be a wonderful resource, I think, and a help to you. And then what else a place to belong by Megan Hill, that she’s another gospel coalition speaker, and that will just help give you a really great biblical understanding of the significance and the value of the local church. So those are my resources. We

Megan Brown
we were talking before this breakout about how excited we were to see this here. I don’t know how many of these events that I had gone to, that you had gone to, that were just like, Man, I think I’m the only one here. How beautiful is this room that this is a room that is pretty full of our community. We’re showing up guys, we’re here

Hunter Beless
well. And I also see a lot of more mature women in the room, and so definitely leverage this opportunity. And I’d love just to pray for them and give them the opportunity to exchange information with one another, because that has been one of the beautiful things of being in the military, is you know. You never know when you’re going to circle back to the same duty station. And other women have been such an encouragement to me, even if we’re not stationed in the same place, and so seek out one another. You have a few more days to kind of cultivate friendship with each other, and even if you don’t have somebody in your local context who can be an encouragement to you, I think maybe one of the women in this room can do that. So Megan, do you want to pray as we close and then give them a chance to do that together? I

Megan Brown
would love that. Okay, so. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to try and find it, because it’s marked in my giant book here. So there’s this is what my book looks like. It’s no longer a book. I’m pretty sure it’s just a pamphlet. But my copy of the valley of vision goes with me everywhere, because I really love to just listen to the words of people that have come before us in faith, like it’s a very encouraging thing to know that Jesus is with us and that there’s been a road, there’s a road that’s been paved by brave brothers and sisters before us, and I’m just gonna read the broken heart over us. And if it sounds like I’m stumbling, it’s because I’m putting this in modern day English. I cannot read in the King’s English. So these and thous, you would get lost because my accent is thick, but I want to read this over us, so that we will just leave this room with a fresh joy around our own salvation and also a very heavy awareness that not everyone has it. Let’s go to the Lord Father, God, no day of our life has passed that hasn’t proved us guilty. Prayers have been uttered from Prayerless hearts. Often our praise has been praiseless sound. Even the best things we offer are just rags. Jesus, I pray that we would find covert in your wounds, that we would realize that even though our sins rise heavens, your merit soars high above them, though unrighteousness weighs us all down. Your righteousness exalts us to your throne. All things internally call for my rejection, but all things in you plead for our acceptance. We appeal to you from the throne, the throne of perfect justice, to the throne of your boundless grace. I pray that you would grant us to hear your voice, assuring us that by your stripes we are healed, that you were bruised for our iniquities, that you have been made sin for us, that we might be righteous in you that our sins, our grievous sins, mantled sins, they are all forgiven, and that they’ve been buried in the ocean of your concealing blood, that while we are guilty, we’re pardoned, lost, we are saved, wandering but found continually sinning, but Always cleansed, God we pray that You would give us a perpetual brokenheartedness to keep us always clinging to the cross, that you would flood us every moment with descending grace, that you would open to us the divine springs of knowledge, and that they would be our guide through the wilderness of this life. God, we are so grateful for the gift of Jesus, that you have opened this way for us, that we have this access. God, I pray for the military community that you would continue to pursue us, to champion us, to send us, that you continue to raise up workers in your harvest. God, I pray for the local church, that they would see us, that they would change their minds about who we are and what we’re like. Ultimately, Father, I pray that you would renew the families that serve, that support their service member, that the most beautiful evangelical tool that we have is our marriages and our families. We pray for the safety, for the security and for the salvation for this community and we love that you’ve given this to us. We love you. We worship you. It’s in Jesus’ name. We pray Amen.