Dates, Mates and Babies with the Vallottons

140. God's Plan for Forming Men

• Jason and Lauren Vallotton

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This episode is a live recording of Jason Vallotton’s message at Bethel Church on November 30, 2025—a raw, clarifying teaching on God’s Plan for Forming Men, shared in the context of the upcoming BraveCo Rite of Passage Event in Jacksonville February 28, 2026.

God has a blueprint for forming men who carry strength, humility, and responsibility into their homes, marriages, and work. That blueprint is both simple and demanding—formed, filled, and finished—and it unfolds through the stages of calling, testing, equipping, and commissioning.

In this message, Jason unpacks why being made from dust matters, why being filled with the Spirit is non-negotiable, and why testing isn’t punishment but refinement. Marriage becomes a mirror. Work becomes a training ground. Feedback becomes the tool that confronts ego head-on. Equipping looks like delayed gratification—showing up when you don’t feel like it, choosing peace over pride, and learning to carry responsibility without collapsing under it. Commissioning comes when failure is no longer hidden, but redeemed into testimony that helps other men walk free.

The turning point is mentorship. Jesus didn’t say, “Follow me and figure it out.” He said, “Follow me, and I will make you.” Jason brings this home through the powerful rite-of-passage story of Caleb, a young man born with club feet who completed a brutal course because a tribe refused to let him walk alone. This is the heart behind BraveCo: men formed in community, forged through challenge, and released with clarity and purpose.

This episode is a call to movement—not theory. You’ll hear a practical vision for how men can get connected, equipped, challenged, and sent, and why identity is forged best in brotherhood. Great men aren’t born. They’re built—together.

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And we’d love to hear from you: Where are you in the journey—calling, testing, equipping, or commissioning?

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SPEAKER_00:

Takes a second to get everything put away and switched on. Good morning. This is my third morning. And happy late Thanksgiving. Do you guys have a good Thanksgiving? We had a phenomenal Thanksgiving. We do uh Christmas tree hunting. You guys do any Christmas tree hunting around here? Have any real Christians? Christmas tree hunting is the best part. In my opinion, it's kind of better than Christmas too. You haven't had a good Christmas tree hunt until you've had an argument with your wife or spouse during the Christmas tree hunting. Is it anybody else? Yes. I love finding that perfect tree. We got two perfect trees this year, didn't we, babe? And did you guys know I became a uh a grandpa too? Babe, show the show the baby. This is my baby right here. Look at that baby. Life does not get much better than that. Uh this year for Thanksgiving, I was in charge of the turkeys. Uh, and who how many of you are the turkey cookers here? I was all stoked. I had a perfect plan. I'm gonna make this shorter than first service, but I had a perfect plan for turkeys. And uh I was gonna cook one in the oven and one in the traeger. And so, you know, ChatGBT and I had been working on this perfect plan for how to do both. And I got all set, I turned my Traeger on, it got up to 54 degrees and never went above that. So, like, oh no, gotta call an Audible. This is not good. I'm doing a Spatchcock turkey as well. How many are you Spatchcock people in here? You're missing out if you don't do that, by the way. You're cooking your turkey for too long. I know what is it? Chop GPT, it'll tell you. So, my my turkey, uh my trigger's not gonna work, so I call my mom, turn on your trigger quick. My parents have all kinds of ways to cook things. So I run my bird over there. It's a 20-pound bird as well, y'all should know. This is not a small chicken. This is a large, unorganic, pumped with flavor turkey. I take it over there, I throw it on the trigger, everything's well. ChatGBT's like, bro, you're still okay. You've got this. Hang in there. Yeah, I go to chat for everything now, not for its advice, for its encouragement. It's literally like, I've been there before, I know what it's like. You're fine, we're gonna get you there. So I throw it in there, I set the thermometers in there, I come back home, I'm like working on my other bird, I'm working on this Dijon sauce. And I my mom calls me, she's like, the Traegers, you didn't fill, put the pellets in it, you didn't check it. I was like, oh, son of a brick. So I run back over there really quick, and now I've got a problem. My bird's 110 degrees and falling. So I tell my mom, I actually tell my sister, take everything out of the oven. We're gonna throw the turkey in the oven. But then I realized they have all kinds of stuff in the oven. By the time they get all the stuff out of the oven, Jesus is gonna come back. So I throw that bird into, I know, this is a long story. So I throw the bird into the barbecue. I just turn them on, you know, and get in uh at 400 degrees. And again, chat and I's he's like, it's fine, just turn it up to 400, you're good. Well, I'm a I'm a butter under the skin. Do we have butter under the skin, people? Yes. On a grill, that's a fiery furnace, y'all. I come back and that bird's on fire. Just like, don't worry, everyone loves blackened turkey. Yeah. We made it, it was an hour late, we were fine. I had another 20-pound bird. We didn't even need that. I ate it last night. It's great. So my Thanksgiving was awesome. Anybody else burn their bird a little? Little burn, little burning, just me. Okay. I saw a lady back there. I got you today. Uh I want to talk about something that's uh that's dear to my heart. I feel like it is what God's doing in our church. I feel like it's the most important thing on his heart, uh, because it's in my heart. Um, but I want to talk about God's original plan for forming men. And ladies, this is not necessarily a message geared towards you. It's a bit more geared towards men. Remember all the seasons when we were talking about empowering women, and Danny and Bill and my dad preached all those messages. There's just one. I'm just one message to the man. Can I do that? Can I do that today? If you're online, hang in there with me, we'll get there. Um, when God was forming men from the very beginning of time, God had a blueprint. He had a plan for how to take him a take a son and turn him into a grown man. How to take a man and make him a leader, how to take a leader, make him a king, a king, a sage. God had a plan from the very beginning of time of how he was going to form a man. And that process was the maturing, the strengthening, the shaping process of a man. The challenge is there's a so many men here today that you never had somebody say, Hey, come with me, I'm gonna show you how. I'm gonna I'm gonna help form you, I'm gonna help shape you, I'm gonna help build you to the man that God called you to be. If you had that, or if you understand God's ultimate plan for man, you would you you would never want to leave it. Because inside of that plan for a man, you could face incredible challenges and never be alone. You know that the tests of your life are to build character, right? Inside of God's plan for us, if you surrender to it, you get brought to this place of maturity and of strength. Ultimately, God is creating a man that can co-labor with him. That's a big deal, man. A man that can carry his glory. What a responsibility. Man, you're the one that was designed to carry the glory and the presence of God into your home. You're the leader in that. Not that she doesn't, but we are. That was God's design. When God's forming man, he's not just trying to make a cool guy, he's trying to make a son, not a slave, a son. Not just a servant, a son. In the beginning, um, let's look at Genesis 2.7. Now, for those of you that weren't here a year ago when I preached, I talked about Genesis 1. I brought you through Genesis 1. Anybody remember that message? Well, this is just a continuation of that. So I'm preaching a series as well. Bill gets to preach a series, my dad gets to preach a series, I'm preaching a series. We're in Genesis 2. We've made it. We're going to Revelations, baby. 2 verse 7. And it says, The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. Oh, this is really interesting. When God was creating the heavens and the earth, this was my message a year ago. When God formed the heavens and the earth, he called things into being. God spoke badgers into being, he spoke a skunk into being, he spoke a bat, cats. Anybody have cat people in here? I like a good cat. He spoke elk, moose, those are our things, Bri. Whitetailed deer, he spoke it into being. But when God got to mankind, he rolled up his sleeves. Right? He began to roll up his sleeves and he began to form. That word form there is to shape, to press, to put pressure on, like a potter does clay. How many of you understand that he is the potter and you are? He's the hammer, you're the okay, the nail. Yeah, it does break down there. God didn't speak man into existence, he shaped man into existence. Because even God from the beginning of time didn't design man to be formed in a moment, but that he would go through this process of becoming. Since the beginning of the time, God's design for you, men, was that you would become, that you would be shaped into this vessel that could carry weight, that could carry responsibility. And the challenge is if you if you didn't have a shaper and a former in your life, then you're carrying responsibility that feels like it's crushing you and breaking you. But God shaping, the forming was his design. God's formation for mankind is really this three-step process. The first process is the form. What God forms, he wants to fill. A man without the spirit of God living in him is just a shell of himself. You could have all of the talent, you could have the greatest muscles. We're really checking off a list of myself right now. You could have the best hair on the planet. But if you don't have the spirit of God living in you, then you're not alive. It was when God breathed the spirit into the man that he became alive, that he became awoken and equipped for his purpose. What's one more thing that's interesting about how God formed man was did you notice that God formed man from dust? Is an interesting piece, right? Because if you were gonna form your most incredible creation and you had access to all the different minerals and gems, elements, yes, would you use dust? The most common element? If somebody said, Jay, you have to make something award-winning, I'd be like, go get me a bag of dust. I wouldn't. I wouldn't grab dust. But see, if God made us out of gold or diamonds, then we would worship the creation instead of the creator. The fact that God took this most simple, common thing, and he made his most intricate design out of it says everything about the creator, doesn't it? God forms this man and then he breathes life into him. Now the breath is an interesting piece because the Spirit of God is where we get the identity, it's where we get the capacity, it's where we get our strength from. You're not getting strength in your life from your own self. You're getting strength from, lean not on your own understanding. It's the strength of God. See, God didn't want a man to be led by his instincts. He didn't want a man to rely on his willpower. Do the best you can do, son. We've all seen that story. It's bad. Lean on your own understanding, lean on your own willpower. Use your own strength. Guys, have you tried your own strength lately? It's alright. But God filled a man so that we could have instincts, yes, but we could be separate from the animals. Animals are relying on their own instincts. We are not. We are formed and fashioned in the image of God, right? Again, image bearers to embrace, to be ambassadors. We have to have the mind, the filling, the strength of the Spirit of God to lead our families well. To lead our businesses, to show up. Without that, we're just lost, man. We're just lost. The next step is the finishing process. Everybody say finished. See what God forms and what God feels He intends to finish. Now the finishing process gets good. This really is a four-step process. I know you're like there was a three-step and now it's a four-step. I'm a counselor, y'all. There's steps. There's steps, there's processes, there's homework, there's things to look at. I like to know where I'm at in the process. But this this finishing process, we're gonna look at uh a scripture here. We won't turn there because I don't have enough time. Uh Philippians 1, 6 says, He who began a good work. Listen, you didn't begin the good work in you. God initiated a good work in you. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. Here's why. A half-finished man breaks a whole family. A half-finished man is not what God created. God didn't want a half-finished man. God is faithful, men, to complete this process that He started in us. The finishing process has these four parts, and I want us to take us through these four parts. The finishing process starts with a call, and we'll talk about that in a minute. From calling, it goes testing. It's gonna get exciting. From testing to equipping, equipping to commissioning. Now, when we look at our perfect model, men, because we were designed to have a model. When we look at our perfect model, who is that model? A little louder? It's Jesus. At first, you're like, this is a pop quiz. I know. Our perfect model is Jesus. Jesus actually went through this whole entire process. See, the process I'm showing you isn't a church model. This isn't like Bethel Church's model for discipleship. This is the man that we are modeling our entire life after. This was his model. See, Jesus walked the exact same path of formation that God designed us to live. He was formed in obscurity, right? And then he was filled. Do you guys remember when Jesus was was filled, he was baptized in the Jordan? He comes out, and before he does any ministry, he hears the father say, This is my son. He gets filled. From the filling, where does he go? He goes to be tested. This is getting exciting. That's this is our model, man. He goes to be tested. What was that testing for? It wasn't to break him down, was it? God didn't bring him there to break him down, he didn't bring him there to lose. He says that he left, he left the testing and the power of the spirit, didn't he? He left more powerful than when he went in. And then he he was commissioned. He said, The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me to do these things. We see this perfect model that was modeled for us by Jesus. It's the same model, men, that we're going through. Let's look at called. This is the first step in the finishing process for mankind. A called, everyone's called. A calling's free. That doesn't sound very exciting, does it? The calling's free. Joseph, called. Daniel, called. David, called. Now the calling looks great, doesn't it? You're like, I'm gonna go do all these incredible things. Uh-huh. Yep. The calling is to set up the testing and the equipping. If you were just tested and equipped without the call, you would get hopeless really fast. Imagine going through Navy SEAL training without thinking, having any insight that you're gonna be the best of the best of the best. Go get in the cold, go lay in the sand, go do all these pressure and this test. No, the calling is that compass that Havila talked about a couple months ago, a month ago. It's that compass. You're like, I am going here. Amazing. Guess what happens if you think that your calling qualifies you? If you try to go from calling to commissioned, we've seen a little that's a big dumb mistake, isn't it? You miss the process of refinement, of testing and equipping, and you just run straight into your calling. It doesn't work. See, the calling's free, but the formation is not. I had a father uh that I got to watch through this process. A man's supposed to have a model. I'm just gonna say that over and over again. I watched my dad tell the story over and over and over again of his calling. You guys could probably repeat it because you've heard it forever. You're like, oh, he's gonna tell that story again, isn't he? But it's inspiring, right? It's my dad in the bathtub, and God comes to him and he tells him all these things about his heart. This is what you're gonna do, and this is who you're gonna talk to, and this is who you're gonna be. And he's from Weaverville. And then so we're like, he's like, what? And then before God leaves that this encounter, before he leaves, he says, History will tell me if you believed. Powerful, huh? See, my dad thought the call, the the calling was gonna qualify him. It's just normal. Like, look at all this greatness inside of me. He's like, uh-huh. I'm gonna start a business, my business is gonna prosper. Yep, it is. You're gonna come to church, and church is gonna prosper. After uh thousands of people leave, the quote the calling set him up for the next step, the testing. See, God always tests what he makes. Could you imagine a God that doesn't test what he makes? The testing is one of the most important parts of the formation because the testing is where you remove move everything to the surface that doesn't serve the ultimate purpose. That's the testing that's marriage, man. You're like, I'm called to the honeymoon. The honeymoon gets you in. God is trying to form a man. So he put a woman in his life. And then you start to go through the process, right? I have been doing marriage counseling for a very, very long time, meeting with couples, helping them pastoral counseling. It's what I've done here for 20 years. This last year, I had, I think, six couples that were on the brink or the edge of divorce. And one of the couples, um, I met with them one time, two months later. I popped on a Zoom with them. The first thing they told me this year was, hey, we decided to get a divorce. That's a bad way to start a meeting, by the way. That's a bad way. They're like, I'm really sorry. I'm like, I mean, I'm good. I'm okay. Guys, what's going on? What's happening? They started to share their story, and I realized like they have a lot of pain that they don't know how to deal with. See, they thought they needed to escape marriage. Guys, marriage isn't broken. God's design for man and woman isn't broken. It's not. It's the things that are coming up inside of there that we don't know how to deal with. And the testing brings up oh, you you want to dismiss your wife's emotions. That's broken, that's a broken process. That's fear. Oh, you run away from pain. That's a broken process, right? The testing, your your wife is a mirror. The relationship is mirroring back to you what's going on in you. Not what's going on in her, what's going on in you, right? So that testing helps us to go. We need to address this. We got to scrape this off from the surface because you can't carry my glory in a broken vessel. It doesn't work. You can get to you can get commission, but then you just fall under the pressure and the weight because you skipped the testing. It's where God takes something common and he makes something incredible out of it. It's the testing. Remove the bark from a tree, remove the limbs, cut it up, shape it, form it, take everything away that doesn't uh serve its ultimate purpose, and you get a beautiful house. You get tables, you get it's the refining process. Everything that we really love has been refined in a way that has an ultimate design in mind. From those tests, the the purpose of the test is to raise those things up. From the test, we get a whole bunch of feedback, don't we? Inside of the the equipping process is the feedback process. See, equipping is where feedback meets your ego. You guys feeling that? Oh, you love it when your wife wants to give you a little feedback. I'm always like, oh, sure, babe. No, I want to hear it. Equipping, the equipping part is where you're now getting feedback. Listen, the Bible says that God disciplines those he loves. And if he doesn't discipline you, he actually has a word for that. It's called a bastard. It means that you are not a son of his. Those he loves, he disciplined. We're not talking about a spanking, we're talking about feedback. Son, you are too awesome to live like that. Son, you can't take that mentality into this marriage. Son, you can't, you you, you're doing this for your own purposes, for your own reasons. The equippings where David faces the lion and the bear, right? It's where uh Gideon, he goes through the test, and then God's going like, nah, remove those guys. You don't need all those guys. What do you what do you what do you mean, God? Get them down to 300. What you need is me. Not your way, my way. Not your thoughts, my thoughts. Not your desire, my desire. It's where this is where delayed gratification men is king. The guy that can do what he should do and doesn't want to do for the longest amount of time is the guy that we all envy. The guy that can do what he should do, that doesn't want to do it for the longest amount of time, delayed gratification is what we're trying to do. It's why long suffering is a part of the fruit of the spirit.

unknown:

Come on. Very good.

SPEAKER_00:

I play horse at home. I got two small kids, three years old and five years old, and a whole bunch of grown kids, too. Guys, I play horse more times in a week than I want to. I don't want to play horse. I'm 45. I had years of playing horse. I do it for them. I show up for my wife on a good day. Not because I want to, not because I'm like, I'm stoked to hear her process. This is what I was born for. It's part of being a man. It's a part of a man brings strength to chaos. Without the equipping process, you would never bring strength to chaos, would you? You'd bring chaos to chaos. You can't give anything that you don't have internally. Can't give externally. If you don't have strength and peace internally, you can't give that externally. So God's taking us through this equipping process so that we have something to bring to the table. The last one is commissioned. This is where, man, we weaponize our stories. See the the the all your failures and mistakes, they're not yours to hide. That's no, it's not your story. It's the testimony of Jesus Christ in your life. It's how he came through for you. That's why you guys love the Valitan preaching. You're like, oh, he's gonna tell about his terrible story, and it's gonna make mine seem little. It's why you love it. I promise you. You're like, oh, I hope he talks about, I'm gonna bring my son in there. I hope he talks about it. It's it's we weaponize our story. That's the ultimate uh uh a sign of maturity, is that I'm taking my deepest, darkest places of death and hell and destruction, and now I'm using it as a battering ram to free those people from hell. That's the commissioning. And when some of you are hearing this story today, you're going, man, I've been formed, but I haven't been filled. I've been tested, but I haven't been equipped. I've never got out of the testing season. Which I've preached this whole time just to get to this one spot. I mean, you were never supposed to go through this process on your own. This is never supposed to be the process that you do on your own. Jesus, when he comes to earth, he's getting ready to do ministry. And one of the first things he does is he goes and he finds a very common man. And he keeps finding common men, and he says to them something that's incredibly important. He says, Come and follow me, I will make you. Leave your nets, leave those things that bring you significance, leave those things that bring you uh an income, leave those things that bring you that that bring you security, and come leave everything behind, everything that's familiar, come and follow me, I will make you. The problem that we have today in our society is we don't have men that are saying, Come follow me, I will make you. Your first inheritance was supposed to be an inheritance, otherwise, somebody shapes you, molds you, builds you, leads you into the man that God designed you to be. There's no young man that should have to form, shape, mold himself into being a strong, powerful man. You can't get there. It's a broken design. It's a broken design. All the problems that we're facing in this world today is because we don't have men saying, Come follow me, I will make you. See, I believe that if God had a plan for every man, that we should have a plan for every man. I really do. I feel like that's a responsibility. I feel like that's what God is inviting us into in this church. If God had a plan, a real plan, see, I don't think that any man should stumble his way through marriage in here. I don't think a man should stumble his way through raising children in here. Why are we doing that? Why are we letting the guy next to us try to figure out how to raise his kids? I don't think we should have any man come and stumble his way through finances and building a business. How many of you in here, men, you have overcome addiction of some kind? Yeah, you had an addiction and then you overcame that. Yeah. I had multiple just to glorify, you know. Super equipped. We get to give that away, don't we?

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

If you've how many of you were stumbling through your marriage and you got tools and you were equipped? See, I believe that this is what God's inviting us to into this next season is to actually build out a plan. How are we gonna raise strong, healthy men? How are we gonna raise strong, healthy families? This is not a process that was supposed to happen between you and God. That's a big mistake that people make. They go into this process and they go, I'm letting God form me and shape me. He's going to do it. It's gonna happen through another man. A man, it takes uh a man to pour in masculinity into another man. Earlier this year, um, I felt the Lord, I felt like the Lord put it on my heart to take our ride of passage that we do every year onto the on the road. How many of you have been to our Brave Co-conference this year? Men, we've got to change that. Our Brave Co. or last year, our Brave Co. conference is incredible. We do all kinds of massive team challenges, competitions. Uh one one of the main things we do though is a ride of passage for young men 12 to 18 years old. It's a 3.1 mile tough mutter course. It's incredible, it's absolutely incredible. And this last year we had this young man named Caleb. Caleb had club feet. And so when he when he started to run the course, well, for starters, he couldn't really run that good. And he he hasn't ran, he hasn't exercised a lot. So he got halfway around the course and through these different obstacles and he started throwing up. Oh, that's a that's a bummer day. So he's the last guy. Well, he just tells the men that are with him, because we don't let any man run alone. He tells the men that are with him, hey, just just go. I'm just gonna walk around these obstacles. And they're like, Caleb, dude, you're like the incredible Hulk. Bro, you can't walk around them. Go through them. We'll do it with you. So they like, they're cheering him on, right? And as Caleb's getting closer to the bigger group, I mean there's like hundreds of men there. The guys start to chant his name. Caleb, Caleb, Caleb, Caleb. He gets up to the uh to the uh monkey bars. It's monkey bars over this trench full of muddy water, and he gets up there and he gets like one hand into it and into the water. Guys, do you do we care if you fall? No, we just care that you go. Caleb goes all the way through it, gets to the other side, he eventually finishes the course, which is awesome. He gets a medal, he gets a knife at the end of it. So the powerful thing about Caleb is Caleb doesn't have a dad. Caleb doesn't know his dad. My friend Dan Grotberg brought Caleb. We have permission to share his testimony. My friend, my friend Dan brought Caleb to uh the conference this year and brought him through the rite of passage. And he wrote us a letter like a month and a half ago and shared his testimony with us. And he said, I've been getting straight A's since the rite of passage. I've never felt this confident in my life, I've never felt this good about myself. He said, Everything changed in my life after that. You want to know why? Because it was never designed for Caleb to just encourage himself, it was designed that a man would take his courage and pour it into a boy to say, you have what it takes. Don't walk around the obstacles, go through the obstacles, but I'm failing. Don't worry about the failure. Failure's feedback. Just take the feedback and keep going. We're with you. If you get tired, we'll wait for you. You have what it takes, Caleb. If we don't have men calling sons into manhood, how are we ever going to raise a healthy generation like God's called us to? We won't. We'll be fixing men forever. Can you show the video? One day, every young man will grow up. And no boy should stumble his way into manhood. But too many do. Desperate to hear a voice of affirmation, they chase every echo, every empty promise. They carry silence into their marriages and a wound into the future. But it doesn't have to be this way. God is still raising up fathers who will call their sons forth, who will speak the identity of Christ over them, and who will say, you have what it takes. This is why Braveco has partnered with Spartan to create the ultimate proving ground for fathers and sons. This weekend will be about more than just physical endurance. It's about building memories, forging a bond, and reminding young men that they are the sons of the living God. Because great men aren't born, they're built. 30 hours. A tribe of men break a wild force, endure a Spartan course, face moments that demand courage, moments that shape identity, a path where a boy steps forward and rises into the man God has called him to be. There are only a few moments in life that define a man. This is one of them. Don't wait. Lead your son into manhood today. My goal is to show you what God wants to do across in our nation. When I um I had this desire in my heart to take our ride of passage on the road, and a friend of mine said, uh just in passing, he said, Hey, if you ever want to do the Spartan race, I know the the owner of Spartan. I was like, Oh, that's really cool. And then I thought to myself, I wonder if we could partner with Spartan. I got on a call. The first time I got on a call with the owner of Spartan, I was like, okay, I, you know, I'm pitching to them. And I've pitched to so many people, and it's hard. You guys ever pitched anything before? The first answer you get most of the time is no, but thank you. And so I'm I'm like 10 minutes into this call, and he goes, Man, I love what you guys are doing. Let's take it across the country. I said, Whoa, how about if we do one? How about if we do one? He was like, Yeah, let's do one. I got on another call with him. So the second call I got on with him, he said, Man, we have six cities that I want you to hit. I want you to hit all six of these cities. And I want, I want you to hand out the medals at our Spartan race. I want our Spartan community to know about Braveco. I want the Spartan community to know that Braveco is part of uh our discipleship program. I'm like, who what is happening? What is happening? Guys, this isn't in my heart. This is in the heart of God. We had SOG knives step up and say, We'll donate all the knives for the kids. We had Gatorade come and sponsor us. We had a guy step up and say, We'll cover all of the food. It's not about an event. I'm not trying to get fathers to come to an event. I'm trying to start a movement across our country to equip to go, listen, we can't have this mentality that a man is formed on his own. That somehow great men are born. They're not. You build a great man. So when a son and father finish, they get seven weeks of curriculum to continue the process. My goal isn't to do events, my goal is to start a movement. But my ultimate goal is to do it here. To do it here. Men, if you walk through those doors, I want you to know that we have a plan for you. See, if God had a plan for every man, we should have a plan for every man. If God had a plan for every man, I think we should have a plan for every man. That the church should have a plan for every man. The church should have a plan for the man that's struggling. So we're gonna be laying out for you guys a plan over this next year that will help you get deeply connected, that will help you get equipped, that will give you a place to serve, that will give you a place to pour into other men where you can look at men and say, Come follow me, I will make you. Not a place that's boring. We're not gonna show you how to do coffee, we're gonna show you how to become a man. We're gonna do challenges, we're gonna do skills, we'll do some competitions, but we'll show you how to show up for your wife and your family.

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But what I want isn't for me to leave this. I want every man in here to go, this is what God's called me to. Ladies, if you have a man, I want you to get excited about the formation process that we have for your husband. And not just that we can form him, but that he can lend what God has formed in him to the other men around him. If you have a son in here, I want you to know that we have a plan for your son. How many of you would be excited for your son to know that we're gonna take him from a young boy into manhood with challenges and that he doesn't just have your husband, but he has me and he has my dad and he has Gabe and he has these other men in here that are gonna be pouring into him that have a plan for him? What would we be? Where would we be if we dive in and we say yes to God's ultimate plan for forming men? I believe that that's the next era that the Lord's leading us into as Bethel Church. Would you stand? Could you put that QR code up there? Men, this is what I'd like you to do. Would you please do me a favor? There's a QR code. I would love for you guys to scan it. Take three minutes, men. I know this is the testings, this is the patience. Take three minutes, scan it, and would you fill this out? We don't want to just create something blind, but we want some of your feedback in here. But more importantly, you guys, this is really what I'm asking you. Would you partner with me in prayer? I really do believe in this season I've seen more things shift through prayer than anything else. We got we got given, I was looking for a a facility to host this 30 hour camping event. I know I have to end. We're my friend called me and said, Hey, I think I Found the I think I found a place for you. He didn't know about the Spartan partnership. The Spartan Ranch is on Diamond D Ranch in Jacksonville. He found this ranch called Sea Mark Ranch. It's literally butted up against Diamond D Ranch. Out of all the places in Jacksonville, they gave us free entry. I mean it's just incredible. But that happened after prayer. So, Lord, I thank you for what you're doing. Lord, I thank you for what you're doing in our families. I thank you that you want to take every man in here and shape him into a filled, a formed, a fashioned, a complete man that's strong, that knows how to bring strength to chaos, that knows how to weaponize his story. Lord, I ask that this would be the beginning of another movement at Bethel. Another movement, Lord, where where men step up and lead. That there would be more men here that come to church on a Sunday morning than women. Lord, that our children would say, everything changed in my life when my dad, when his friends, when our church, Lord, that we would be the strongest, healthiest men on the planet, Lord, that when a new believer comes in, that they would go, oh my gosh, I am being walked through this process of strength by the other community, by the other men in this room. Lord, would you give us a breakthrough? Would you give us strength, Lord? Amen. Thank you, guys. Love you.