Stop Arguing Doctrine And Start Doing The Mission

A miracle can still be followed by a mistake, and that’s what makes discernment so urgent. We dig into 1 Kings 13, where a man of God delivers a bold word at Bethel, watches God confirm it with power, then gets pulled off course by an older voice claiming “an angel told me.” The story is blunt: spiritual authority can be faked, pressure can sound holy, and disobedience can carry a real cost.

From there we connect the Bible to real church life and spiritual warfare. We talk about people who cannot let go of control but still want a seat at the table, even if it kills what God is doing. We also share how God can warn you with something as simple as a clear internal “No,” and why learning how God speaks to you matters when you’re being “invited” into someone else’s agenda.

The second half turns practical with military leadership lessons: knowing the mission statement, avoiding micromanagement that makes a unit combat ineffective, and building a culture of mentoring instead of ego. We close by challenging the church to stop acting like Jesus needs lawyers and start living the mission in the places closest to us, our jobs, our neighborhoods, our families, and the needs right in front of us.

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Transcript

Recap And Combat Effectiveness

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everybody, it's the C Dub for the Woe Fo Yo podcast. In our last episode, Bones and I were talking about a passage from 1 Samuel as well as 1 Chronicles where it talked about that David used the wilderness as a stronghold for protection from Saul. And we realized that the wilderness season was actually a time of protection from certain things that God was using as well. And then we also talked about the dangers of bickering and not being unified and appreciating one another and realizing that as part of the body, we are necessary for one another. And then and we concluded that episode with Bones telling a story about how not being willing to let go, and this is pertinent to the body, caused them to mess up a field problem they had because it rendered them combat ineffective. And on the subject of being combat effective, we're gonna go ahead with this episode. Wofo yours.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

We're just common and effective because we won't uh because we've misplaced our faith. Just not gonna let it go.

Wilderness Protection And Letting Go

The Man Of God At Bethel

SPEAKER_00 1:23

We gotta hold on to it. Speaking of things, not letting things go, uh that goes right into a story we've talked about it several times because we lived this, and this was a warning the Lord gave me and you uh when when someone's approaching us and and we're getting called out to the wilderness, and he's trying to call us off into basically his sphere. And basic, basically, what it is is what the that ain't what the Lord said. He he was calling us into an area of protection. Now, I think we would have been very vulnerable uh had we acquiesced. Yeah. First Kings 13. Behold, a man of God came out of Judah by the word of the Lord to Bethel. Jeroboam, so this is the first king of Israel after the civil war where they split Israel and Judah. So Jeroboam was standing by the altar, this altar of a calf, to make offerings, and the man cried against the altar by the word of the Lord and said, O altar, O altar, thus said the Lord, Behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name. He shall sacrifice on you the priest of the high places who make offerings on you, and human bones shall be burned on you. And he gave a sign the same day, saying, This is the sign that the Lord has spoken. Behold, the altar shall be torn down, and the ashes that are on it shall be poured out. And when the king heard the saying of the man of God, which he cried out against the altar at Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar, saying, Seize him, and his hand, which he stretched out against him, dried up, so that he cannot draw it back to himself. Verse 5 The altar was also torn down, and the ashes poured out from the altar according to the sign that the man of God had given by the word of the Lord. And the king said to the man of God, Entreat now the favor of the Lord your God, and pray for me that my hand may be restored. And the man of God entreated the Lord, and the king's hand was restored to him and became as it was before. Great, miraculous ministry. Right? Obedience, going out in the wilderness, doing it. And here's where not letting go of things can get you hemmed up. And the king said to the man of God, Come home with me and refresh yourself, and I will give you a reward. And the man of God said to the king, If you give me half your house, I will not go in with you, and I will not eat bread or drink water in this place, for so it was commanded me by the word of the Lord, saying, You shall neither eat bread nor drink water, nor return by the way that you came. So he went another way and did not return by the way that he came to Bethel. Verse eleven. Now an old prophet lived in Bethel, and his sons came and told him all that the man of God had done that day in Bethel. So here it is. You know, they they got this altar over there. You got this old prophet. He ain't spoke out against the altar. He's just been tolerating what's going on. Same with his sons, some to consider. They also told to their father the words that he had spoken to the king. And their father said to them, Which way did he go? And his son showed him the way that the man of God who came from Judah had gone. And he said to his son, Saddle the donkey for me. So he saddled the donkey for him, and he mounted it, and he went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak. And he said to him, Are you the man of God who came from Judah? And he said, I am. Then he said to him, Come home with me and eat bread. I'm going to pick something out that I've just noticed just now. So this is an older prophet from Bethel over in Israel, you know, talking about territory. This prophet that got sent was an outsider now, even though they were one, you know, not too long ago. He gets sent from Judah. So, you know what Dr. Heiser was talking about, spiritual warfare. You're entering a different territory that they were trying to set up a high place, and you're proclaiming God's will.

unknown 5:54

Yep.

The Cost Of Disobeying Clear Orders

Spotting Control Disguised As Calling

SPEAKER_00 5:55

That's spiritual warfare. And now the establishment's getting ready to try and hem them up. You don't come into our territory and did this. Then he said to him, Come home with me and eat bread. And he said, I may not return with you or go in with you, neither will I eat bread nor drink water with you in this place. For it was said to me by the word of the Lord, You shall neither eat bread nor drink water there, nor return by the way that you came. And he said to him, I am also a prophet as you are. And an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, Bring him back with you in your house that he may eat bread and drink water. But he lied to him. So he went back with him and ate bread in the house and drank water. And as they sat at the table, the word of the Lord came to the prophet who had brought him back. And he cried to the man of God who came from Judah, Thus saith the Lord, because you have disobeyed the word of the Lord and have not kept the command that the Lord your God commanded you, but have come back and eaten bread and drunk water in the place where he said to you, Eat no bread and drink no water, your body shall not come to the tomb of your fathers. After he had eaten bread and drunk, he saddled his donkey for the prophet, whom he had brought back, and then he went away. A lion met him on the road and killed him. His body was thrown in the road, and the donkey stood beside it, and the lion also, and behold, the men passed by and saw the body in the road, and the lion standing by the body, and they came and told it to the city where the old prophet lived. And when the prophet who had brought him back from the way heard it, he said, It is the man of God who disobeyed the word of the Lord. Now, therefore, the Lord has given him to the lion which has torn him and killed him, according to the word the Lord has spoken to him. And he said to his sons, Saddle the donkey for me. And they saddled it, and he went and found his body thrown in the road, and the donkey and the lion standing beside the body, and the lion had not eaten the body, nor torn the donkey. And the prophet took up the body of the man of God and laid it on the donkey and brought it back to the city to mourn and bury him. And he laid the body in his own grave, and they mourned over him, saying, Alas, my brethren, after he had buried him, he said to his sons, When I die, bury me in the grave in which the man of God is buried, lay my bones beside his bones, for the saying that he called out by the word of the Lord against the altar in Bethel, against all the houses of the high places that are in the cities of Samaria shall surely come to pass. Also, when the I believe it's over in Hebrews when he's talking about the hall of faith, dead men's bones bringing men back to life, that's this prophet. That's the young prophet. But what what can happen is though those people that are unable to let go, even when they recognize God is doing something, they want to be part of it, even if it means killing what God's doing. Yeah. Been there, seen it, had them try and pull me and you aside, and it was like the Lord, like, no, I'm like, Lord, I don't know why. You show me. And basically what it happened is somebody said, Well, these two young men, back when we were young men, kind of.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

Back in the day.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

So these two young men, uh, you know, uh, they've got prophetic gifting, and it's oh, yes, I'm a I'm a prophet too. And so, look, we we we should have a prophetic round table for our area. And of course, it was going to be a round table with him at the head, was what the Lord showed me. And uh anyway, I just Lord, I don't know what's up. Show me what's up, and opened, flipped open the Bible, and there just that story right there. I'm like, okay, that's what I need to know. Uh, this is probably not a very theologically sound method. However, I must say, it's been amazing how often that has worked.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Uh yeah, you you gotta you gotta figure out how God speaks to you.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Oh man, you know, the casting lots ain't the best way to pick pick the successor to Judas, but there's an old army saying, man, it ain't stupid if it works. That's right, man. It works for me more often than not.

SPEAKER_01 10:30

I remember when when that fella uh asked me about it, you know, well man, maybe we need to do this and it'd be like this, and yada yada. And I heard that voice in the back of my head go, No.

unknown 10:44

Yeah.

The Mission Statement Problem

SPEAKER_01 10:45

All right, cool, I didn't have to think about it no more. I didn't, that was that was it. That was good for me. I thought, okay, Lord, I know that's you. When we were training up out there at Fort Smith, Arkansas, our OCs, or their OCs or ours, the OCs would walk around and some of the questions they asked were were good questions. You know, what's your mission? You know, what's the mission statement? And you know, if private could answer that, yeah, that was that was good. That was good on private and good on leadership. And some of the questions, you know, were like, you know, what's your general, what's your first general order? You know, silly stuff like that. Uh stuff that every soldier should know, but it really didn't pertain to the mission, you know, the mission. And so I think sometimes that sometimes spiritual warfare goes like that as as we're preparing and and as we're going into things. There's a lot of stuff that we that we're proud that we know that don't amount to hill of beans. Uh, but yet when we get asked the mission statement, we can't even spit that off. Um, we had a lot of privates that knew their uh their three general orders. But when it comes down to the mission statement, uh they didn't know what the hell we was doing out there. Other than that, we're gonna go jump. Uh, I don't know. That's it. That's a bad place to be. That is a that's a hard place to be. Um, because what that here's what it did for the for the private out there. It made a long 30 days for that private. Because all he was doing is walking around, is humping that shit, humping that heavy rucksack, following, just going everywhere that you point the finger to go. And that's the way it feels. If you're a Christian and you don't know the the mission statement, you don't know what you're supposed to be doing, you'll just be walking around out wherever you're walking, whether it's in the wilderness, whether it's in the church setting, you'll be walking around wherever you're walking, going, Wow, what what are we doing here?

SPEAKER_00 12:40

You'll be saying you'll be saying that you love the Lord, but you'll be hating life and questioning the Lord. Yes. Going what's up? And and you look at that, you know, I I started flashing back to Oh man, them road marches, guy. Yeah. They do serve a purpose, but if you don't know what it is, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:59

Love the Lord and hating life.

Leaders, Managers, And Micromanagement

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Yeah. I like I like that. But we got people going to church, they don't know the mission, they don't know why there's they don't know why God called them into that body, if God called them into that body. But the there's some times that I knew I was thought I knew I was called into a body, but it wasn't until I found out why that all of a sudden things click. Okay. And I remember one time, and you know, people that I know and love and disagree with on a great many of things, but they're good Christian people. Yeah. Good people, pray for them. Thank God for their willingness to impart in my life. My own experience and and my walk with the Lord goes, uh, that teaching was bogus, and that was bogus, and that was bogus, and you know, but still love them. Yeah, yeah. But I remember being frustrated because I joined this church. I was like, Lord, you know, I I I don't get it. Why did you call me here? Because I don't know when I'm frustrated. Why did you call me to join this church? And he goes, I didn't. You just did it. Just did. And those are legitimate questions to ask God too. Absolutely. Yeah. I didn't know that you could, but I got frustrated and asked him. He was willing to answer instantly, but he said, he said, I didn't. You joined on your own, but you're not going to leave on your own. You're not going to leave because you because you gave your word. He said, and you're going to honor that, and you're going to you're going to be a team player until I call you out. And you'll know that when I'm like, okay, well, when you call me out, Lord, you'll know that when I do it. And man, there was a series of events I just hired on at the job and had a dude named Lloyd Jordan. Big, big, powerful man that had worked in my career field and just retired. And he prayed a prayer over me. And less than two weeks later, my schedule got to where I could not attend that church. There you go. So, you know, you're talking about combat ineffective. Um, I I remember my army experience, I went from thoroughly enjoying my unit and being ready to re-enlist to they had people that took over the within about a six-month period, there was a total change of leadership in our battalion. A lot of lessons learned when you see a change of leadership. Right. Um, uh what one of the big lessons is there's a difference between a manager and a leader. And we went from having leaders and people that are very combat effective and mission effective to people that wanted to micromanage you. And they had the idea that the soldier's not doing anything, the taxpayer money's being wasted. So you got to be doing this and got to be so we went from a unit that had a in our little engineer world, we had a good name. And we had a reputation of somebody that went in and got the work done, got it done above standard, and disappeared. And that's what we did. And all of a sudden, oh, you need to be doing this, and you need to be doing this, and you need to be doing this, and to the point where we got combat ineffective, and finally, what happened? We went out on a field problem, you know, like you're talking about. And this captain that had been a first lieutenant, and she came in, she wrote the task op. She wanted to make sure we did every little bit by the task op that she was so proud that she wrote as a first lieutenant. And you talk about just bogging down everything to the point we went and just pulled up and went back like this. That takes some doing.

SPEAKER_03 17:13

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:15

This field problem is a wash. We're going back out in two weeks. So we did some training, but while while they were doing the training, some of the NCOs had a word. I go, ma'am, with all due respect, the right NCOs, because one of the other lessons was probably one of the best platoon sergeants I'd ever seen, was one of the weakest first sergeants I'd ever seen. Oh, you'll have that. Sometimes you can promote above your ability. I'm very conscious of that in my job now. The NCOs took her aside, and ma'am, your job as a captain is to do this. Let us do our jobs. You know, however that was said, however, I know it was a lot more tactic tactically said than that, but we went out, and the next thing you know, boom. Right back on to being what we were good at. Because we weren't overburdened with a whole bunch of unnecessary things to focus on.

SPEAKER_01 18:28

Right. If you can if you can see through all that uh if you can see through all that smoke, all that smoke and mirror stuff, and and once again knowing the mission helps you to do that and and focus on what's what's pertinent to mission. And you can you can cut a lot of that stuff out. Um we had a uh lieutenant, first lieutenant recognizing the 101st. And he was a squared-away lieutenant. Uh fresh out of ranger school when we got him. I'm sorry, second lieutenant, but fresh out of ranger school when we got him. Uh we were his first platoon. Uh so he had never led anybody before other than his uh West Point uh class and whatnot. But everything that he wanted to do was was just over the top. And everything's everything started with uh in Ranger School. In Ranger School. We did this in Ranger School. We did it like this in Ranger School. But everything that he was expecting us to do, whether it was uh whether we were doing an ambush or we're doing a rack contact, or we're doing search and destroyer, any any type of mission, um, he wanted to do all these just all this stuff, but so many so many moving parts in it. Stuff that just we didn't need to do. Uh but you could do it uh when you were in ranger school and you've got you know 40 people in a platoon. Uh but now you and real realistically now you're in a real uh a real platoon and you don't have near me that many. Um so couldn't streamline it. You've got to you gotta start cutting down. And so uh the squad leaders had come to the point where you know what ain't nobody gonna know we're we're struggling unless we just start doing what he's what he's telling us to do. Because what we were doing, we'd say Roger that sir, and then we would just make stuff happen. You know, that was just the easiest way to do it. But it got to the point where what what was happening is our jobs were becoming increasingly harder because we were having to listen to this guy do it his way in front of him and then do it our way behind his back, to and and most of that stuff behind his back was correcting what we'd just done. So we got to a point where squad leader said, you know what, we're just gonna do it exactly the way he says it. And when it falls flat and we get into the AR, uh, we're gonna make it known that, well, you know, according to the PL's op order, according to the PL's op order, according to the PL's instructions, you know, the platoon leader, platoon leader's instructions, that's what we did. And finally the company commander came to us and said, uh, let me get the squad leaders over here for a second. And uh I'll never forget his name, Captain Jennings, squared away, squared away, football player there at West Point. He was he took his hat off.

SPEAKER_03 21:32

He was hey guys, what's going on?

SPEAKER_01 21:37

He's like, What do you mean, sir? He goes, uh-uh. What's going on? And we laid it out in front of him. He said, Well, this is what's going on with Lieutenant So and so. He's a good guy, but we're trying to help him this and do that and show him and yada yada yada. He says, He says, Yada, I said, I I'll take care of that. And He did. He did exactly what he told us he'd do. He took care of it, squared that little uh platoon leader away, and that platoon leader started listening to what we're listening to our input, and our missions became a lot more successful. Um But the issue there was his ego. Um his ego, his ego and his desperation to be right on everything. Um he was he was turning his back on decades of experience. When us four squad leaders had a an average of probably seven to ten years in a piece, and then a platoon sergeant on top of that, um, and he would turn he was turning his back on all that all that experience and relying on his well ranger school. That's all they had. Because he's a second lieutenant, he ain't got nothing. Second lieutenants don't have shit. But but I was more impressed by our company commander who recognized what was happening and was able to pull us squad leaders aside and listen to what we were saying, did it very tactfully, you know, uh, without outing out that lieutenant, because that's not what an officer's gonna do. That's not what officers should do. And without stepping on our toes, either, without causing that lieutenant to bring retribution upon us, either.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

But yeah. So it sounded like he didn't really step on his toes, but he had a heart to talk, had a hard talk.

Mentoring And Hard Conversations

SPEAKER_01 23:32

He had a heart-to-heart talk with him, probably at uh one of their their uh officer development functions where they go to the O club and do whatever they do. Um I see stuff like that that needs to happen inside the church. Um and it's no different with NCO development, too, where uh you'd see first sergeants uh bringing, you know, bring young NCOs aside and and uh give them a little a little guidance. Um there I see a bunch of need for that inside the church. Uh just what we talk about all the time, it's mentoring is what it is. Uh the ability to pull someone aside and basically get them to see their shortfalls without letting them know that you're getting them to see their shortfalls.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:24

That's that takes some skill. Takes at well, that takes some takes some maturity and wisdom.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

I'll I'll say it like this. It's very effective when the Lord does that to me. You know, I would jokingly say, hey dummy. And he doesn't say hey dummy, but he's like, come here. You know, it's a very direct set of instructions. However, right, that doesn't mean I'm supposed to be doing that with others that I mentor. Now, every now and then, situationally, you got to. Because time and uh especially if it's a work situation, time and uh potential for bad things to happen in the immediate require it to be addressed in the immediate and as directly as possible. You gotta have the wisdom to to know the difference between them stuff. Yeah, yeah, but that is definitely not the that is definitely not the normal way that I'm gonna do things. I'm like, hey, take care of what you need to and uh come back see me.

SPEAKER_01 25:33

So so so what does that look like in the body? Because it's easy to talk about examples, but one way, one of the way that I envision or I see that happening in the body is instead of arguing points of doctrine, uh if two people can can have a civil conversation and and lay out what why they you know why do you see it this way? Help me understand this. We we've let me I want to I want to see what you say, you know, and get that person to lay his point of view out, and well what about this over here? You know, start having those conversations because we're not doing that in the body. No, all we're doing is well, this verse says this and this verse says that. And if you can't see it that way, then you're you're wrong. Um but we've got to be able to have those civil conversations, and usually those conversations can't happen in front of God and everybody else.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

I mean, it you gotta have a and so social media is the worst place to have it.

SPEAKER_01 26:42

Bingo, bingo. Uh you gotta have those things. Those are those are good good discussions to have over a cup of coffee somewhere, man. Uh, you know, or a cigar somewhere. Um, and next thing you know, two people are engaged in a thought process and don't even realize that that's what they're doing. They're just they're they're fleshing it out, is all they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

And and recognize that when you get there, quite often that's going to be two people that are called to do something. And if you can understand one another without touting your own ego, you might have a greater appreciation of maybe how to help one another, even though you're going to do things differently. Right. And you might at least to stay out of each other's way, if nothing else. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

You might even find out that uh the both of you were looking at the same truth from two different sides, which isn't is not a bad thing.

SPEAKER_00 27:45

We know in part, we prophesy in part.

The Mission Field Is Your Backyard

SPEAKER_01 27:48

Exactly. Exactly. But um nothing's ever gonna happen if all we're doing is trying to be right in our uh in our conversations. Uh and once again, it's a whole lot easier to fight for a principle than it is to live it out. And the fact is, Jesus don't need a bunch of lawyers working for him. You know, he needs folks out there on the mission field, on the battlefield, uh, you know, taking the gospel into the dark places. But uh we can't do that if we can't even get out of the damn locker room.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

He needs folks to recognize what the mission field actually is. Yep. Because there's a lot of oh, the mission field's over in Africa sometimes. But sometimes what about at your job? Yeah. What about at your job? What about your in in your neighborhood? What about in your family?

SPEAKER_01 28:41

About in your family, yeah. Yeah. We'll uh we'll we'll spend uh a crap ton of money to spend two weeks overseas and come back and high-five each other by how how good a job we did, but we left uh things undone in our own backyard. Uh look look at homelessness right here in the United States. Look at homelessness in your own town, uh, and and and see what you can do. Um there's uh there's always there's always a war to fight. There's always a war to fight. Yeah. And for the for the church, that means there's always a battle. Spiritually, there's always a battle. Uh there's we should never be uh we should never be kicked back relaxing. There's there's always something to do. And and you've gotta be uh you've got to be ready for it, you've got to be looking for that, uh, or else you'll go you'll go you'll go chasing after stuff that just don't matter.

SPEAKER_03 29:41

It don't matter to hill beans.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

You'll uh you'll buy that new sound system instead of picking up the kids that ain't got nobody to take them to church.

SPEAKER_01 29:53

Yeah. Yeah. Just uh doing the right thing is the right thing, you know, that's the right thing to do. It's the easiest thing in the world to do. Um but if we're too worried about uh perception, what somebody might think. Uh I wanted to stop and help that young lady with that flat tire on the side of the road, but I didn't want anybody to think. You know what people think of uh you know uh uh somebody saw a young man helping a young woman with no supervision, no no chaperone, no, nobody else here. Who cares?

SPEAKER_00 30:26

Well, what'd they think when Jesus talked to that woman over in Samaria?

SPEAKER_01 30:30

Yeah, the woman at the well. Um what would people think to see you just drive by and don't do anything? Um if we can just get past what people think and start caring a little bit more what Jesus thinks, probably be a little bit better off.

Where To Listen Next

SPEAKER_00 30:48

Yep. Amen. Hey everybody, thanks for listening. We hope this challenges you and causes you to grow. You can always check us out at woefoyo.org or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Audible, or even check us out on YouTube. Remember, folks, if you're going to grow, you've got a woe foyo. Get in the word for yourself.