I remember going off to college and into the Army ROTC program. I went to Baptist Bible College which as you can figure out from the name was a Christian and ministry training school. I went on a scholarship to be a chaplain but once I was on my own and started to live for myself it became just that, for myself. Even though I was at a Bible college and even though I was studying to be a chaplain my life was about me and not for God.
That would eventually lead to me starting to go down the path of alcoholism and doing drugs. As I traveled down the path of pleasing myself it led to a predictable end, I was asked to leave my college and lost my ROTC scholarship. God taught me a very important lesson, be humble or get humbled.
I spent the next year and a half humbly seeking the Lord and learning His ways. I repented of my sin and started doing homeless ministry. The Lord, not me turned my life around and sent me off in the right direction. I was in His word and doing His good work.
I would go back to the very college that gave me the boot and finish my degree along with being the captain of the wrestling and baseball teams. I was a changed man because of the work that the Lord had done in my heart. He had brought me down low so that He may build me up into the man He needed for the mission at hand.
After college I would enlist in the Infantry and be sent to Fort Benning for Basic Training. Here would be another test of faith as no one was keeping tabs on me to ensure I was following God, but I had been tested and continued to serve Him. His grace toward me fueled me to desire to live for Him.
The struggle would continue when I would be the only open Christian in my platoon at my first unit. When people would find out I was a Christian all the weird questions in life would follow, what a blessing! Even though it came with great opportunities, it also came with hardship.
I would be smoked (forced to do exercises like push-ups) because of my unwillingness to have sex before I married my wife. I would do sprints till I puked because during a test I would not lie to my Squad Leader. I was looked down upon because I tried not to take part in the drunken parties around me. This was part of being different.
I failed at numerous points. I would fall into the temptation to get drunk while partying and not live up to God’s righteous standard. I started to justify it as, “well this is the way of the Infantry.” Which to the untrained eye, is true but the more I studied the word, the more I realized that God has called men to be warriors, and he does not excuse their life of filth. Rather, He calls them to a righteous life of wielding the sword.
So many Christians fall into the trap of walking away from their faith once they enter the military or change any circumstance in their life. All the accountability they once had is gone and now they need to own it, and a lot of them fail. A lot of Christians who enter the combat arena walk away for “a time” because they feel as if they cannot be a man of faith and deal death. That is a lie that the enemy wants you to believe.
Our first mission here at Godly Grunts is to train Soldiers to be better Christians. When you are at the judgement seat of Christ you will not impress Him with your Ranger tab to excuse all of your sin while you were a soldier. You are still held to the righteous standard that all of us are. The fact that your job is dangerous, does not mitigate God’s expectation for His children.
Many of us have not been brought up to see that the police and the military are actually ministries of God. When you hear ministry you think of the Pastor, Sunday school teachers, worship leader, missionary, and all the workings of the church. But an often-neglected ministry of God is the ministry of the sword. Romans 13: 3-4, “For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.”
When we start to understand that our service in the infantry or whatever job you carry a weapon is for God and his ministry, it should change your perspective. Our mission at Godly Grunts is to give you that theological training both before and during your ministry of the Sword, wherever it may be.
We do not call for the defunding of police, just like we would not call for the defunding of a pastor. Rather we hope to give the men and woman on the front lines of combat abroad and at home the spiritual and theological training to execute their ministry to the glory of God.
We will discuss the common problems we face like depression, suicide, alcoholism, adultery, and many more. I promise that we will not shy away from the things we see and strive to give you all you need to equip you to live a godly life while serving.
When I got to the 10th Mountain Division, I started to attend Parkside Bible Church right outside of Fort Drum, NY. It is a great Church and my wife and I started to become involved. One Sunday I would meet the man who I am launching this endeavor with, Bron Nix.
Bron was greeting and I looked at his wrist and saw a black KIA bracelet. I stopped in the hallway, pointed to him and said, “Infantry?” He smiled and replied, “Is there any other way?” I would show him mine for a brother I had lost, and we clicked instantly.
As our friendship grew, we would start to reach out to soldiers together and do the work of our Lord. In our conversations we both noticed a lack of grit and fire in a lot of the Christians we knew. We figured it was just our personality from both being in the Infantry. But as we discussed it more and more it felt like many around us forgot that we are at war with the world.
As Christians we sometimes forget that we are at war with the culture around us. If the year 2020 taught us anything it is that the peace time between the United States of America and the Church was over. We had all seen the attacks on our culture due to the sexual, homosexual, and transexual “revolutions” and figured it would eventually come to the church. But the culture used the Covid-19 virus to launch their attack.
Churches across America were shut down and told they had to operate online or in limited capacity. The virus trumped all civil liberties that God had given us, and that the Constitution secured for us. But then the hypocrisy came. While churches were labeled as “super spreaders”; the Black Lives Matter riots and private parties were somehow immune to the virus. Pastors in Canada and other countries were being arrested for holding services because it was their conviction that the scripture mandated they met in person, not online. The world had made their move.
If there was any question whether, “Friendship with the world is enmity with God” (James 4:4) it is no longer hidden from us. Churches and Christians bowed to the talking points of the world because that is how we “love our neighbor” without realizing that God has given us His definition of love, and it is very different from the world’s.
The peace time Christian leaders in this country have been at the helm for to long. They were okay with a “comfortable” Christianity that would never confront sin and not fight for the faith. As happens in every war, the military finds the “break glass in case of war” leaders and goes on to fight the enemy.
We at Godly Grunts strive to take the lessons we have learned from the front lines and show Christians some ways to fight this war with the world. We are not encouraging taking up arms by any means. 2 Corinthians 10:4 shows us that the weapons of our warfare are not of this world. Rather they are in the spiritual realm.
There is a lot that can be learned about spiritual warfare from our experience in actual war. We have seen how when you apply the language, strategies, and techniques of the grunt life into your faith it will help you become a more aggressive fighter. Dig your foxhole and fight for Him!
Our mission at Godly Grunts ministry is simply put. We strive to make Soldiers better Christians and Christians better soldiers.
By, John Cooper
Godly Grunt 6
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