Military Wellness Collective
Military Wellness Collective is made up of four friends — two retired Marines (Joshua and Brian) turned church planters and their wives (Brittany and Kelli)— who have lived life both in uniform and on the home front. Together, we share real stories, hard-earned wisdom, and practical, biblical encouragement to help military members, and their families thrive in every season. Whether you’re navigating deployments, adjusting to life in a new town, or simply seeking hope in the middle of your military journey, our mission is to equip you with truth from God’s Word and tools for a healthy, resilient life.
Military Wellness Collective
From Lost to Found: Military Families Share Their Path to Christ
Four spiritual journeys collide in this raw, honest exploration of what it means to discover authentic faith within military life. What happens when childhood religion meets adult reality? When intellectual barriers stand between a person and belief? When family dysfunction creates a hunger for something more?
Through the lens of Ephesians 2:1-10, we hear Kelly describe growing up in a Christian home yet only truly understanding her need for Christ during her college years. Brian candidly shares his twenty-year journey as a "fake Christian" before an unexpected awakening in the church he'd attended his whole life. Joshua and Brittany, coming from non-religious backgrounds, reveal how their desire for a healthy marriage led them to church, where their lives were transformed in dramatically different ways.
Their testimonies weave together powerful common threads – the impact of hearing Scripture taught, the influence of seeing faith lived out authentically, and the mysterious ways God pursues people across vastly different circumstances. As military families, their stories highlight how faith provides foundation and purpose amid the unique challenges of service life.
Whether you're questioning faith, exploring Christianity, or simply appreciate hearing authentic stories of transformation, this episode offers both intellectual and emotional resonance. The conversation concludes with practical recommendations for anyone wanting to explore faith further, emphasizing that the gospel engages both heart and mind.
Ready to reflect on your own spiritual journey? This episode might just help you see it through fresh eyes. Join the conversation about what it means to move from being "dead in sin" to "alive in Christ."
SHOW NOTES:
1. The Bible, books to read from- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Ephesians 1 and 1st John
http://instagram.com/militarywellnesscollective
Welcome back, everybody to another episode. We're jumping in. My name's Joshua and my wife Brittany here just decided to smack my arm for some reason to say hi, so that's what you just heard.
Speaker 3:Wait, stop. Yeah, we got to start over. Oh no, that was great, we're not starting over. We're jumping in, okay, well, just keep going, just keep going going.
Speaker 1:So I'm joined here. I'm hosting this episode. We're going to be diving into the gospel and doing some testimony time today. I'm joined here with Brian and Kelly.
Speaker 4:Hello, hi. Brittany's the one that assaulted us. Brittany's the one causing problems over here.
Speaker 1:Too much coffee this morning, I think, but we're just having a good time diving into the gospel this morning and we're also going to be talking about our own personal testimonies and what that looks like for our, what that means for our time in the military as well. So I want to start with some scripture. If, brian, you could jump in and read Ephesians 2 for us, 1 through 10. And then we're going to talk about that a little bit before we dive into our testimony.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think a lot of times when we're not careful, we just, you know, we try to explain the gospel in a way that's not from the scripture, but the scripture writers actually give us some good paragraphs about the gospel. So Ephesians 2, 1 through 10 really explains how someone becomes a follower of Jesus Christ, how someone is saved. And so it says and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us. In Christ Jesus, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And if I may, joshua, please do A couple big. Like who we are before Christ, dead in our trespasses and sins, but it's active. We're following the course of the world, we're following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, satan. We are following our own flesh, our own minds.
Speaker 4:That's the first three verses. And then we get this massive shift in verse four. But God, but God right. And then talks about how we're saved. God made us alive together with Christ, and it talks about that for a while. And it's all by grace, it's a gift. He says multiple ways the same thing. You didn't do this, god did this. And then in verse 10, we get that as a Christian, we're His new creation, we're His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works. And so God has things, good works, for us to be doing as Christians. So he doesn't save us to put us on a shelf somewhere he saves us to do things and to do good works.
Speaker 1:So, before what happened, and then as a Christian, yeah, and that's a good breakdown of how we're gonna actually talk through our testimonies, like what was our life like before Christ? Right, and how were we dead in our trespasses, how were we dead in our sin? And then what happened? God came and he did something miraculous in us and then what has he been doing through us since? Yeah, so that's yeah. The way Ephesians 2, 1 through 10 breaks that down. And I just have to point out because I have to point it out every time that the amazing doubling down that God explains here multiple times in different ways that it is not you doing it. You were dead and this is a gift and he's the one who made you alive. And then he even says so that we can't boast, we can't fall into our own prideful oh hey, check me out, I'm a Christian and I did this and I have a part in this, and so, yeah, it's pretty amazing and pretty wonderful. Any other thoughts? Ephesians 2, before we roll into our testimonies.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and the like he's going to show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness. Kind of back to your point, joshua, of like this isn't to show, like we can't come away from the true gospel thinking we're awesome. Like the requirement is that we are desperate, we are poor and needy, not that we figured it all out, and that's how we became a Christian.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's good. Well, kelly, why don't you? Start us off and just tell us a little bit about how God's been working in you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I am thankful that I grew up with Christian parents, christian grandparents. I, as a young child, I felt like I overheard gospel conversations, was always able to ask questions. Our family had devotionals when I was a kid that, you know, at the time felt like just something we do. But I definitely, as a young child, remember just feeling like the Lord was stirring my heart and a lot of like services, and my great-grandfather was a preacher so I would hear him, and my grandmother just had a genuine faith that I—she lived across the street, so we saw that all the time, and so I was saved.
Speaker 2:At a young age I remember, six years old, I went forward and said that I wanted to follow Christ for the rest of my life and I believed what His Word said life, and I believed what his word said. And so that is different than y'all's testimonies, but I feel like, too, just at six years old, you don't really understand. You know repentance, your own sin. It's like I knew a lot, and so, as I grew into a teenager, I felt like just the Lord showing me. I just started to follow the course of the world, you know, and I knew that it was wrong, like I knew that I was running from the Lord, but I also was just trying to figure out my faith, and it wasn't until college that I think I fell flat on my face just with running away from the Lord.
Speaker 2:Until college that I think I fell flat on my face just with running away from the Lord and I saw my sin for what it was and saw that I was dead in my trespasses and I needed a Savior. And I think, growing up in a Christian home and going to church all the time, I was kind of like I don't know, just sheltered from that in a way, and so, living on my own in college, I really felt the weight of my own sin. And so it was in college when I really started to read the Bible consistently on my own and I was just amazed by it, what God has done for me. And so I think as a young adult, that's when I started really experiencing the freedom that I had from that, like it's not anything that I've done, it's not because I grew up in a Christian home and like just seeing my sin, like I am a, I'm a wretch and I need a savior.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, I want to highlight so. You said you were a Christian at like six years old and then you were. You described yourself following the course of the world when you got into your teenage young, you know, high school, college years, and so it's just. It's good and helpful to realize that, even as a Christian, it's so easy to fall back into our former ways and it's so easy to follow the course of the world. So, even as a Christian, it's not like this. You know, scales fell off from my eyes and I was awoken Like there's a lot of truth in that, there's a lot of truth in that, but on the ground, in actuality, so often, man, we just fall right back into looking like Ephesians 2, 1 through 3, when really the reality is we should be living in Ephesians 2, 10.
Speaker 3:Yeah no-transcript real, but I just love that in your testimony. Like I knew I was running and you knew he was chasing you, so I think that's really cool.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you pointed that out, because there's a lot of people that have a similar testimony and they struggle with differentiating and figuring out when they actually got saved, Like was it later in life. And that's a good point, brittany, that you brought up is okay. So was I saved young? And then you know I was falling into sin and struggling through that and then God kind of awoken me back up of this issues and problems I was falling into or was it a false profession? And later on in life is when you realize.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's something a lot of people struggle with especially coming from Christian homes working through that, I would just say, well then, take the next step and be faithful. But yeah, Brian, if you want to, your guys' testimonies eventually blend together, so why don't you jump in here and give us your testimony and then walk into? I'm sure that blends with where Kelly's at.
Speaker 4:Yeah, kelly and I met in college right as she was kind of coming back to the Lord and right as I was coming to the Lord. But the first 20 years of my life I would classify myself as a fake Christian. I also grew up in a Christian home. My parents just really good examples of Christian faith, not perfect, but just really good examples. I was part of a relatively healthy local church and really thankful for that. My grandparents saved I mean just like lots of that. I wrestled with eternity when I was, you know, five or six years old as well. I remember wrestling with that. I remember thinking like, yeah, this sounds good. But I also remember thinking it was all a con to get me to behave right. I felt like they're all, all the adults in my life are in this together to try to get me to act right and I was a pretty like shy, obedient kid, which is kind of interesting to look back on.
Speaker 4:Until high school. I just started to like, follow the course of the world, follow my own flesh, follow my own mind, and it seems like, in retrospect, what I was doing was proving to everyone else that I was not a Christian. So, all those adults in my life as I, you know, my second half of high school into the first part of college, it seems like my goal was to just prove that I wasn't a Christian. The hard part was I was probably the last one to figure that out. It was the week of my 20th birthday. I was sitting in the back of the church that I had grown up in, really just to keep up appearances that I was acting like a Christian, because I was kind of living two different lives and not kind of I was living two different lives, living two different lives and not kind of I was living two different lives, and so I would go to church when I would visit my parents and just to keep up the appearances of things. However, I was listening to the sermon and I don't know what the sermon was about, but I was looking around at the men in the church that I had known my whole life, that I had known my whole life and I was like deluding myself, saying I'm gonna be a great Christian husband like that guy. I'm gonna be an awesome Christian father like that guy. I might even be a preacher one day.
Speaker 4:And the Holy Spirit just gave me the clearest statement. He said you're a joke, you're not even a Christian. And that is what he used to awaken me. And so I don't even think there was an altar call. But during a song I went up like sermon it was Sunday night, so you know it was pretty informal and so there was a song and I went up like sermon it was Sunday night, so you know it was pretty informal and so there was a song and I went forward and I sat down on the front row and my pastor again my pastor my whole life and my dad sat next to me and I loved my pastor because I had done lots of altar calls. I probably did 10 altar calls growing up. I just like I was the altar call guy.
Speaker 4:But this one I sat down and again, I don't think there was an altar call. And my pastor asked he's like, hey, what's going on? And I said I need to be a Christian, but like for real this time. And he did something that was so wise. I love pastor Sam. He said, cool, let's get breakfast on Tuesday, because a altar call had never lasted till the next day. And so he was like, cool, let's get breakfast on Tuesday. And so we got breakfast on Tuesday and talk through, okay, what's really going on in your life now that whatever happened like the emotions of it are over and let's talk about what next steps are.
Speaker 4:And so this ties into my military service very heavily, because that year, so that happened I'll age myself for those that are doing math, but that happened in June of 2001. Myself, for those that are doing math, but that happened in June of 2001. September 11th happened three months later, and God used the events of September 11th 2001 to get me into the military, and so I joined in the wake of all of that and I met Kelly, you know, in March of the all that happened in the same year of I was raising my right hand, joining the military, meeting Kelly, going to officer candidate school and marrying Kelly.
Speaker 4:like all that, all those dominoes started to fall really, really fast and man, life's been a ride ever since.
Speaker 1:Man, that is awesome. That is really cool. So us as pastors, we get to talk to people about their testimonies often. Yeah, we ask to hear people's testimonies before they join the church. Yeah, and it is such a blessing to hear how God works in everybody's lives. Yeah, same salvation, same God, same Jesus, same Holy Spirit, but in each circumstances different very different.
Speaker 1:And as you were talking, I was thinking about my own testimony and I was just like, wow, man, I grew up very differently than you did. I grew up in a non-practicing we would have called ourselves Catholic home. And so, as I was growing up, I didn't. I was in public school. I heard about evolution and I was just like, oh yeah, that's probably it, and then didn't think about it much anymore. But I've heard it year after year in my schooling and in my teenage years, turned 18, joined the marine corps, was completely dead in my sin, like there wasn't even a like, hey, is this sin or is this not? It was very much. So just, oh, yeah, I was, just, I was just wallowing in it, right, and so wallowing, yeah. And so after I joined the marine corps, moved out, went to a totally different state. So God did some weird stuff. I was in a suburb of Minneapolis, minnesota, in a relatively nice area, and it took me breaking away from there and going all the way to Southern California for God to like waken me up.
Speaker 1:So Brittany and I's story blends together prior to our salvation testimonies because we were, we've known each other since the seventh grade.
Speaker 1:We got together and we're dating in our senior year of high school and then we got married. Within the first year of me being in the Marine Corps, she moves out to Southern California and her background she had gone to a couple churches that actually preached the gospel earlier on in her life. And so we were young married, southern California, not knowing what like life as a normal married couple look like. We knew what we didn't want and we didn't want to have a broken family. We didn't want to end up getting divorced. We didn't want to have a bunch of the issues and problems. So I think part of Our draw to going to church for the first time was just, at least in my mind. I don't know if this is for you, but it was like, yeah, they teach good morals, like everything I saw on TV of Christian families. They seemed happy, maybe they know something we don't, so let's go do that. And Brittany was like, yeah, this is, if we're going to start a family, we should go to church, just because that's what adults do, good people.
Speaker 3:That's what quote-unquote good people do. We want to be good people.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and it's interesting. So you're saying that just not wanting to have the dysfunction wasn't enough. You're like, okay, we don't want the dysfunction, but we also don't know what to do instead. We don't want the dysfunction, but we also don't know what to do instead. And you were somehow had the impression that Christians were happy, joyful and had it all together, which what a cool thing. God used man I, just for the Christians out there.
Speaker 1:can we be joy-filled and, you know, in some ways have it together, but also acknowledge that the only reason we have it together is because we're trying to follow the book, that's good, yeah, I never really thought about it that way, but, yeah, that definitely was a draw for me, whereas other people who have had other experiences with quote unquote Christians, maybe it has drawn them away from the faith.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that's a, that's a good, good, good plug there. But anyway, so we were in Southern California, newly married, not knowing up or down or left or right, just kind of walking through life, and we got invited to church. Down by the Oceanside Pier People were passing out these little tracks and we grabbed one, we put it in our purse. Eventually we found it a couple of weeks later, and this was before GPS.
Speaker 1:So we were now dating ourselves a little bit, and so we went to go try to find the church and we eventually found out. Long story short, we eventually found out we started attending there. It was a little bit more of a legalistic style church, but we were hearing the preached word for the first time and we tried several other churches prior to this and the thing that made us keep going back here and this is going to be shocking to some of you out there the pastor opened the Bible, he read from it and then he explained what it said and I was like, wow, that's different than all the other places we had been going to up to this point. We can actually learn the Bible here.
Speaker 4:So that's a good church search. I know we did that a couple episodes ago, but let's not skip over it. And this one find a church where they open the Bible and read it and try to explain what it means. That's good, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:It seems like such a low bar right.
Speaker 2:But it's not normal.
Speaker 1:So we kept going there. I was hearing the preach word and I was hearing the gospel presented there over and over and over again. But what got me was, since I was evolution-minded, it required for me I needed to get over some hurdles, some like academic hurdles. And so, as I was talking to some of the people there, they started giving me some resources to get me over some of those hurdles of oh okay, so evolution's not, it actually has a lot of big holes in it, in the theory. And then those holes just kept getting bigger and bigger as I started saying, oh wait, there actually needs to be a God for all of this to have happened. A fine-tuning theory, all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:And so I dove into that heavy and eventually all the barriers were gone and I had nothing else to keep me from my eyes just being open. And God just came in, changed my heart from stone to flesh, opened my spiritual eyes, and it was on a I think it was on a Sunday morning, and I did do the altar call, walk down and just started crying and and it was just a real, a release of all of the worry and care and just trust and faith and in god. And so, and from then on, so since then, I've stayed in the military for the rest of the you know 19 years I guess from then. So I got saved in the military and did a bunch of years after that. But yeah, with that, with that I'll turn it over to Brittany and she can see how hers fit in with mine. But it was, it was. It's amazing what God did.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it is very interesting. So Joshua and I, like you mentioned, both grew up in non-believing homes. My family was a little bit of mix of my dad grew up Catholic they're Italian and Roman Catholic and my mom grew up Lutheran. So I'd heard the name of Jesus, like at a Christmas service, or when I was really little went to a Lutheran church in Washington state with my grandparents, and then, when my parents got divorced, my dad started going to this non-denominational Christian church and so I had heard them talk about Jesus, but we didn't stay there long and anyway. So I knew the name of Jesus and I probably would have said, yeah, like I believe I never bought the evolutionary theory, but I didn't really know what belief in Jesus meant. Similar to Joshua, I just swallowed in my sin. I couldn't, I wasn't really know what belief in Jesus meant. Similar to Joshua, I just swallowed in my sin. I wasn't really convicted of it or didn't have any grounds really to know that I was wrong in that Definitely lived a very worldly lifestyle.
Speaker 3:When we got married at 19 and moved away, my home was very dysfunctional. When I was 13, my parents divorced, my mom left my dad for a woman and there was just a lot of turmoil and chaos and all the things that come from dysfunction. And so we move to California and, like Joshua mentioned, we knew we wanted something different. We just didn't know how to find it. And so when he mentions we tried lots of different churches, for two kids that had relative Catholic knowledge, some churches we went into were really scary Things we had never seen before. That seemed real out of the norm to us, and so that little church in Southern California was really influential in our lives.
Speaker 3:I remember it was a Wednesday night service and they were giving testimonies, just like we are here, and this guy named I won't give his name, but we'll call him G he stood up and he gave his testimony and he had grown up Catholic and he started sharing what the gospel was and how it impacted his life. And at this point we had been sitting under the preached word for a couple months and I remember looking at him and saying that's me Like I knew the name of Jesus. I probably would have told you I believed in Jesus, and I remember my initial reaction to him giving his testimony was I am angry, and I am angry at the priests and I am angry at every pastor that I ever knew that never told me this, like if I died I'd go to hell. That was my reaction to the confrontation with the Holy Spirit. So I didn't know much of what to do. But I had heard the altar calls and them doing this, and they didn't do one that night. But I remember going and talking to him after and asking him to tell me more, and he did.
Speaker 3:And we got in the car and drove home and at this point Joshua was not a believer, but it was raining very hard and in Southern California when it rains it's scary because the roads are slick from all the oil and stuff on them. And I was crying we're 19. So just imagine I'm crying and Joshua is like what's wrong with you? And I'm sobbing you have to drive careful, if we get in a car accident I'm going to hell. And he's like you're a little whack, I don't know what's happening. You're a little whack, I don't know what's happening. And so we got home and I went in the upstairs bathroom and just fell on my face and cried out to the Lord. I see now looking back, he was drawing me, he opened my eyes to who he was and I knew, if I didn't surrender that I was going to live separated from him. So I surrendered and nothing was the same After that.
Speaker 3:We continued to go faithfully to church. I began praying for Joshua's salvation. I didn't know what it looked like to be a Christian wife, but I had a very good friend in the church who loved us even in our lost brokenness. They really took us in and ministered to us and they were our friends and so we trusted them when they shared the gospel with us. But she led me to 1 Peter and to pray for Joshua through that, to try to be the example of a Christian wife and try to teach me how to live that way before him.
Speaker 3:And I just began praying. We wanted to start a family. This is part of our testimony at a young age. This is part of our testimony at a young age. And I began praying that God would not give us children unless Joshua truly came to know him, because Josh was all about the moral aspect of the Christian faith at that point. And what's really cool is the morning after Joshua gave his life to Christ, we actually did find out that I was pregnant with Tatum, and then he left for Iraq 10 days later for his first deployment. So just God's faithfulness in prayer and timing and his providence and sovereignty, like anyway. I just think that's a cool part of our testimony, wow.
Speaker 4:Just so many things I'm hearing as I listen to all four of us and we've never done this. Shame on us for never doing this until we hit record on something.
Speaker 4:We've gotten pieces of each other's story for sure, but to hear all of them, just the power of testimony that every one of us mentioned people whether it was parents and grandparents or faithful pastors or husband or wife or whatever like just the power of testimony and seeing people who know Jesus telling about what Jesus has done in their life. The power of testimony and seeing people who know Jesus telling about what Jesus has done in their life, the power of God's word, just either interact with God's word on our own or sitting under the preaching of God's word and that is how God saves us. And the power of prayer that you're really the first one to mention it, but I think for all of us, there were people praying for us. There were Christians who desperately wanted us to be saved, and you were praying for Joshua to be saved in a really specific way and God answered that in a really specific way. And so all of those things like how is somebody saved?
Speaker 4:God does it? Short answer how does he do it? Like, what are the means he uses? He uses his word, he uses the testimony of other Christians and he uses the prayers of other Christians, and there's probably a host of other things. Actually, he also uses fear of death. You were scared of slick roads in Southern California when you deployed to Iraq. I bet you and others around you are fearing imminent death.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there's so many different ways we can go this, but we're going to. We're going to try to. We're going to try to like, turn this and and and maybe, if there's people out there that would like some other resources, some other things to read about, or maybe some things that helped us come to faith, or after we read it afterwards, we're like, yes, this is what I needed. Let's go around and just, kelly, I'm gonna start with you. If you have any resources that you want to give to anybody, even if it's just, you know, dive into the Bible. So we're just gonna go around and give a couple book recommendations, if you have some book recommendations or scripture passages, and then we'll wrap this up because we're hitting our time.
Speaker 2:I would just say read the Bible for yourself. I mean that's what I started doing. I had heard it a lot, read it a little bit, but not consistently. And so when I started reading, especially the gospels, like my eyes were just open to like, wow, this is what I believe. But there's so much more, and God continuously shows me that as I read it.
Speaker 4:So if I was opening up the Bible for the first time and looking at the table of contents, there's nothing that says the gospels.
Speaker 2:What are those books? Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.
Speaker 4:Matthew, mark, luke and John in the New Testament.
Speaker 1:Great place to start. And can I add to that of just saying, if you're listening to this and you're like, oh yeah, I'm going to dedicate myself and do a Bible reading plan, I'm going to read the Bible, I would actually recommend doing one of the New Testament Bible reading plans first if you're diving into it for the first time, because a lot of people start in Genesis and by the time they get to like numbers, they fall by the wayside.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I've got a series of articles on my personal blog that is like how to read the Bible for yourself, and it's I don't know five or six articles like just how to read the Bible for yourself. I include some like introductory Bible reading plans. If you've never, if you just don't, if you're opening the Bible for the first time, here's kind of where you would go. So we'll link that in the show notes.
Speaker 1:What other?
Speaker 4:resources were you, yeah, in addition. So Ephesians is great. We're going to spend some episodes talking through Ephesians and how it plays out on our lives as well. Ephesians is like who we are in Christ and then how that affects our actual lives. Another one if you're out there and you're hearing our testimony and you've always kind of called yourself a Christian but the Holy Spirit is showing you like maybe I don't fully understand it. 1 John is a great little book. It is given to Christians so they can be confident in their salvation and it gives some tests. For what does it look like to be an actual Christian? And so 1 John, I think, would be really helpful.
Speaker 1:So not the Gospel of John, but 1 John I didn't say not the Gospel of John.
Speaker 4:You should read that too.
Speaker 1:But that same guy wrote a short one. Yeah, the short one Is 1 John. Yeah, okay, yeah, I love the Gospel Pr.
Speaker 3:But the short one is one John.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, brittany, what about you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I love the Gospel Primer. It's very small and it takes you through like what the gospel is very clearly. Gospel Treason is also another fantastic book and it looks about how maybe we in the West have distorted the gospel. So maybe you're listening and you've heard the gospel and maybe are confused by it or haven't really taken a look at what that means. It's a fantastic read. And then I do love visual theology because it gives a very clear articulation of the gospel and if you're a visual learner, there's pictures and things and it's not just the gospel of salvation but it's also how the gospel impacts the rest of your life and goes through theology and the study of God with visual aid. So it's really solid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good For me. It was getting over some of these hurdles of this academic and not understanding the spiritual world. So for me, looking back, what would have been really helpful is books like it Couldn't Just Happen, or Cold Case Christianity that kind of proves it from a detective side of things, or A Case for Christ, I think it was Lee.
Speaker 1:Strobel, that did that there was also a movie about that, but anyway, but, yeah, great resources that I think would be helpful for anybody trying to get over some hurdles of understanding what the gospel is and some of our own personal upbringings that are keeping us from understanding what the gospel truly says and is. Can I hit on something you said?
Speaker 3:it twice. You said it once in your testimony and now here about the academic side, how you were just very academically driven and I believe that sometimes we don't recognize that the gospel confronts our mind and we're not asked to leave our mind behind. The gospel engages our mind and God confronts us there and I think that's really cool that you recommended those books, because they're all confronting it from an academic, logical standpoint. Like this does make logical sense and actually other things do not, and I know we're not just saved by logic or what we know, but God does engage our mind and I think that's really cool that you emphasized that.
Speaker 3:You thought one way and he engaged your mind in a different way, so I just want to point that out. If there's anybody out there that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you're being compelled to read those things or if you have questions about those things, that's not just your mind doing it, that's God calling you to himself and he'll renew your mind and give you the best way to think yes, amen. Well, guys, we got to wrap this up. I appreciate you guys being vulnerable and telling your testimonies in this episode and hopefully it was helpful for all of you out there. So go ahead and check out Military Wellness Collective, and we love y'all.