Living Inside Out with John Peek
Welcome to Living Inside Out with John Peek!
Living Inside Out with John Peek
Alive And Ready: Faith Meets Training
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What if your best decisions could survive your worst moments? We explore how living truth becomes trained reflex, mapping Hebrews 4:12 to the realities of adrenaline, tunnel vision, and split‑second choices. I share why Spurgeon called scripture a “living voice,” then translate that idea into threat response “software” you install long before the test. The heart of the show is readiness over reaction—how daily drills turn belief into action when fear, anger, or chaos tries to take the wheel.
We break down the armor of God as preloaded readiness, not poetry. The belt stabilizes your thinking, the breastplate guards your heart, the helmet shapes decisions, the shield absorbs impact, and the sword engages the threat. That same sequence drives our Defend Fit methodology: look and assess first, manage distance, use cover, move with purpose, and apply the right level of force. You’ll hear practical frameworks—stress inoculation that scales to your fitness, malfunction clearing under pressure, third‑party protection, and the “concepts of threes” for before‑during‑after, ranges, and use of force. We also tackle the psychology of performance: how auditory exclusion and narrowed vision hijack you, and how repetition, memory, and simple rules keep you dependable.
On the spiritual side, we make the case that scripture you rehearse becomes reflex. Prayer practiced is better than prayer improvised. Convictions settled ahead of time beat last‑minute bargaining. I share stories from the mat and the shoot house, plus a moment where memorized verses steadied me in an MRI tube—proof that what you plant in quiet grows when pressure mounts. If you’re seeking confidence that won’t collapse, this is your blueprint: precision over bravado, timing over speed, humility over hype, and a daily stack of habits that make you trustworthy when it counts.
Listen, share, and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If the message helped you, leave a review and tell us: what single habit will you install this week to strengthen your readiness?
The Word Is Alive
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the Living Inside Out Radio Show with John Peake.
Faith And Threat Response Software
Spiritual Armor As Preloaded Readiness
Stress Inoculation And Shooter Drills
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to Living Inside Out Radio. I'm your host, John Peake. I also own Defend Fit, where we train in firearms, tactical firearms training and hand-to-hand combat and functional fitness. Thank you for joining us today. We got a great show. We've got a couple guests today that are going to share some personal testimony and how that correlates to their life, like putting in the spirit, mental, emotional, and physical aspects and how those tie together. So today I'm going to be bouncing back and forth between the word of God is alive and training keeps us alive. So welcome back to Living Inside Out, where we train from the inside first. So what comes out under pressure is disciplined, decisive, and strong. I'm your host today, and we're talking about a truth that shapes both faith and readiness. The word of God is alive. One of the greatest preachers who ever lived, Charles Spurgeon, said, The Bible is not dead ink on paper. It breathes, it speaks, it works. Drawing from Hebrews 4.12, he said, The Word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and bone and marrow, and is the the and is a revealer of the intents of the heart. Man, that is powerful. Spurgeon describes scripture as a living seed, not information, not motivation. A seed carries life within itself. When planted, it produces fruit automatically. That's not metaphorical, that's functional. Now let me put that into FinFit language. In firearm training, I'm not just giving people advice, I'm installing software, threat response software. Because under pressure, you don't rise to the occasion, you default to what's already installed. Your muscle memory program driven by your mind. Spurgeon said the word of God is alive because it does things, it convicts, it comforts, it converts, it sustains. Dead books don't do that. The word doesn't wait for permission, it activates when needed. And Spurgeon went further. He said, When we read Scripture, it is Christ Himself speaking because Jesus is the Word made flesh, which means if Christ is alive, then his word cannot be dead. If the Word of God is alive, the next question is simple What does it produce in a prepared believer? And Paul answers that in Ephesians chapter six, where he tells us to put on the whole armor of God. And now notice he doesn't start with the sword, he starts with readiness, the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the feet fitted with readiness of the gospel, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and finally the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. But that's not poetry, that's preloaded response. In firearm training and in hand-to-hand combat, readiness means we decide before the threat appears. We train, shooting to neutralize, moving while engaging, fighting to create space, malfunction clearing, multiple threats, third-party protection, working from cover. You don't figure it out in the moment, but without a foundation, you execute what's already installed. Then you'll learn to adapt and overcome. Paul says our struggle isn't against flesh and blood, but about principalities and principles of darkness. So that doesn't mean physical threats aren't real. It means that there's always a deeper battle behind them. That's why living inside out trains both spiritual discernment and physical preparedness. Skill without grounding is reckless, and faith without readiness is vulnerable. The word is the sword, but only if you can draw it. The truth you haven't trained with won't protect you. Scripture you haven't internalized won't surface under stress. So discipline drills and daily readiness. Here's the final question. What does daily readiness look like? The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, he says, I discipline my body in bringing it into subjection. That is training language. Emotion is unreliable under pressure. Discipline is dependable, and that's why we drill again and again and again. Not to be perfect, but it does lead to excellence. But to be predictable under pressure. Spiritually, the same rules apply. But the word doesn't just need to be read, it needs to be rehearsed. Daily readiness looks like scripture stored in our memory, not just skimmed over. Prayer practice, not improvised. Convictions settled before temptation. That's how the word becomes reflex. And here's the truth most people avoid. You don't rise in crisis, you reveal your preparedness. Firearm readiness isn't built in the quiet, or is built in the quiet, just like spiritual strength is built in the quiet times. Early mornings, boring reps, faithfulness when no one's watching. So whether you're handling scripture or handling responsibility, train now, decide now, prepare now. The word is alive, the word of God is alive, and what's alive in you will come out of you. This is living inside out. So let's dig a little deeper. Let's think of living inside out as from the inside first, your mind, your spirit, mind, and your discipline. So what comes out under pressure is strong, clear, and decisive. So today I want to start with the truth that changes everything. And this is that concept of the word of God is not dead ink on a page. It's alive. And if you misunderstand that, you'll misunderstand both faith and training. Spurgeons, for a reason, picked that scripture 412, Hebrews 412, for the word of God is alive and powerful. And he said it's a living seed, not information, but inspiration. It needs to be installed in your mind so it's ready whenever you need it. A seed carries life within itself, and when it's planted, it doesn't ask permission to grow. It just does what it was designed to do. The word of God is a living software. Now let me put this in DefenFit training language. When I train someone in firearm defense or hand-to-hand combat, I'm not just giving them tips. I'm actually installing software, threat response software. Because when pressure hits you, you don't rise to the occasion, you default to what's installed. The same is true spiritually. Spurgeon said the word of God is alive because it convicts, comforts, converts, and sustains you. Like he said, dead books don't do that. So when we train under pressure, we develop skills that will come out under pressure. So we have a process I call stress inoculation that gradually, as we get more information, we also do it when we're under physical duress, like we might do some burpees or push-ups or sprints or squats, whatever we need to do to get your heart rate up, and we can scale that to your physical ability. So we install responses so that we can shoot to neutralize the threat and confirm if necessary. If distance is collapsing on us, we shoot and move, or we move and shoot. If you're being overtaken, you may have to shoot and fight or fight and shoot. If you can't draw your gun, you're absolutely going to have to fight to create space and then you engage. We run all kinds of drills, progressively getting more pressure and multiple problems back to back. Why? So the brain doesn't panic, so the body doesn't freeze. So the response is already there. And that's exactly how the Word of God works when it's truly alive in you. So you could think of this training the shooter to think and the thinker to shoot, or training the fighter to think and the thinker to fight. Or even think about spiritually, training the believer to think and the thinker to believe. So they're both interactive. We don't disconnect our mind, but we build our mind so strong that things come out as if we're not thinking. Pre-programmed response. Spurgeon said the Word of God is a living voice, not stuck in the past, not God used to say, but God is saying. When Scripture is installed in you, it speaks in the moment, when temptation hits, when fear rushes in, when anger flares, when chaos breaks loose. You don't flip pages, you simply respond to what's already in your mind. There's actually scripture that said, let this mind be in you that's also in Christ Jesus. Christ is the living word, and Spurgeon went even further. He said, When we read Scripture, it is Christ Himself speaking, because Jesus is the word made flesh. So if Christ is alive and he is, then his word cannot be dead. Which means this biblical literacy without spiritual insulation is absolutely useless. Training without repetition fails under stress, and faith without internalization collapses under pressure. So in the next segment, we're going to talk about why the word cuts before it heals, and why both spiritual warriors and physical defenders must be willing to let truth confront them before it can protect them. Because whether it's scripture or self-defense, what's alive in you will come out of you. When we talk about the physical aspects of learning a firearm, we talk about learning the fundamentals. So the fundamentals from my perspective in learning to be a defender with the firearm is a lot more than just going to the range and shooting paper targets. Because you can have a chance to load up slow, get your gear ready, put your firearm in the right position, pull it as slow as you'd like, chamber around if you haven't already, shoot at whatever speed you like from whatever distance you'd like. No other threats or lines of fire to be dealt with. And there's no repercussions if you miss. But in real life, there's certainly repercussions if you miss because you could get killed, or you could kill somebody else on accident. And that's really not just an accident because you're going to be held accountable for that. Negligence is what they call that. So fundamentals of firearm training covers getting ready by preparing your gun in a dry fire environment where you take the barrel out, put a barrel plug in, reassemble the gun, go through a safety clearing procedure again with the partner, and then have your gun on you in a holster covered with a magazine and covered so you can go through all the things it takes to start learning how to process neutralizing threats in real time. We also have shoot house walls, we have reciprocating slides where we use cool-fire trainer so that you actually get to feel recoil, you get to feel trigger reset. There's a laser on the front of the gun so you can actually see where you're hitting. You'll do magazine changes, jam fixes, you'll do clearing, jam two, what I call jam two, where you take the magazine out right twice, magazine in and recharge. You will shoot from cover, you'll shoot uh multiple threats, you'll use cover to look around and stay behind cover, then you'll actually use cover to shoot from. You'll actually teach you how to enter a room from an unsecured position one slice at a time. You'll learn how to do things fast and aggressive, you'll learn how to do things very slow and methodical. You'll learn how to make decisions under pressure like you maybe you've never done before. And this is all in a dry fire environment, meaning there's no bullets, there's no repercussion for mistakes, and so we'll make all our mistakes in the training environment at the school on El Dorado Boulevard and Webster, right around the corner from NASA. And so we like to have an environment that replicates as close as possible and is interactive with other people. So we'll create scenarios to make that happen. Now you're making not just decisions around the firearm and shooting, you're making decisions in real time where there's other human beings around. So, for example, the fundamental is when there's a threat, the threat response is look and assess first, not just pull your gun. Because it's very strange how our brain works. For example, if I just say threat and we're in gun class, everybody's just going to pull their gun. And many times they won't look around. They won't look towards the threat that I give them. They'll just pull their gun first. And if you do that in the real world and the bad guys see you, he can certainly shoot you before you shoot him. And then if the good guy has his gun out, like you're pulling a gun when a police officer is responding, and he could have to shoot you. You could force a good person to do uh, you know, neutralize you because he perceives you as a threat. So there's a lot to think about in the training environment that we get to address up front. So we also do post-engagement as well. So what do you do after you've used your weapon? So the first thing I think about is there are other threats? So I'm thinking I will have to fight again. And then if I'm going to move, which I'm likely going to move to a position of safety, then I have to avoid fixed objects. If I'm trying to get out of there to get to safety, I've got to make sure I pick up anything I may have dropped, especially my keys, wallet, phone. And sometimes you will walk with you know things in your hands, keys in your hand, and so you don't want to leave those things behind. And then you also want to think about not leaving behind your family members or people that need to be you know protected. So there's a lot to think about, and we haven't even touched on the legal aspects. That what happens when the police show up? What do you say? What if you need to call 911 yourself and have your gun in your hand? So we cover all these things and more. So come join us at uh Defend Fit and experience the Living Inside Out, covering all seven on the radio here, but we focus on the two, the martial arts and muscle, with a great culture of safety and care for you. So Living Inside Out is going to be a blessing to you, even if you don't want the rest of the mentoring, you're gonna get the mentoring that you came here for. So stay tuned. We got some great stuff coming up with a special guest, and we'll be right back with Living Inside Out Radio.
SPEAKER_00Are you ready to get stronger and safer? At Defend Fit Self-Defense and Fitness, it's more than just a workout. It's real world protection and total body strength. Imagine a 60-minute high-energy class that blends 80% functional fitness, strength, endurance, agility, with 20% real self-defense skills from Krav Maga. You'll torch calories, build muscle, and gain the confidence to defend yourself in real life. Whether you're joining our ladies-only sessions or grabbing a spot in our co-ed class, you'll learn how to move, protect yourself, and stay ready for anything life throws your way. No experience needed, just determination. Come train with top instructors who help you become faster, fitter, and more confident in every situation. Defend fit, where fitness meets life-saving self-defense. Visit Israeliselfdefense.net or call 713-252-5836. That's 713-252-5836. And request more information today. Defend Fit. Be strong. Be ready.
Post‑Engagement And Legal Mindset
Class Offer And Ad Read
Girding Up: Mind, Body, Spirit
Psychology Of Stress And Performance
Concepts Of Threes And Attributes
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to Living Inside Out Radio. I'm your host, John Peake. Thank you for joining us today on the show. We've been talking about girding up, putting on the full armor, and we do that mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. But we correlated a lot of what we do here with the training to our mental capacity for transformation. It's not just all physical. In fact, it's short-sighted to just consider the physical. Dave Grossman's got a great book out called On Combat, and he deals with the psychological and physiological effects of a type of engagement that would put you under a great deal of stress. Everything from just a simple argument to full-on, you know, special forces doing an operation. And he covers everything in between, meaning all kinds of different scenarios, from civilian things, from police officers and law enforcement to military, teachers and educators, home homemakers and husbands and wives and domestic stuff. And he talks about what happens to your body during, you know, a high stress engagement, especially, you know, the physical nature. There's such a mental uh connection here that we need to prepare for because when you get an adrenaline dump, you get you tend to get tunnel vision. Some police officers had described the tunnel vision like in a gunfight, so tight they say it's like looking through a straw as they fire their weapon at the bad guy firing their weapon back at them. And so there's also an auditory exclusion where you you actually can't hear very well, sometimes not at all. People talk about not being able to hear, not being able to remember, not being able to process, and and so they have a fight for flight or freeze response. Your bronchial tubes can constrict, your blood vessels can constrict, and other things uh with bodily functions happen uh at times as well. And so in order to deal with all that's going on there, physically and psychologically, you need to train and prepare. So at DefendFit, we help you to prepare by training you with knowledge and education, run you through lots of muscle memory routines and uh creating an understanding of a procedure for thinking. In other words, when we introduce a particular threat, we show you exactly what how to identify that primary threat, the first thing about the threat that's important, and then how to process solving the problem as you go through by neutralizing that primary threat and then striking and clenching. You can think of it as a form of wrestling sometimes. Sometimes there's very little holding and hitting, sometimes there's more. And then looking to move through that with overlapping strikes so you can finish the technique and finish and neutralize the threat. And we teach you how to control that use of force so you do what you need to do, no less and no more that's needed. And so it's really important to learn how your body's gonna react, how your brain's gonna react, and how the emotions tie into that as well. Many of us have had all kinds of trauma that's happened when we were younger or even recently. And so that can interrupt your ability to solve the problem, it can interrupt your confidence, it can make you do too little or too much. And so we make these adjustments along the way through educating our mind and our body. And then w I like to not f leave out the spiritual side, especially when I'm teaching now on the radio and in workshops, I don't cover a lot of the spiritual stuff on the mat because that's not the time, and you didn't necessarily come here for that, but I do small groups and larger groups and individual stuff where I can do that as well. Counsel on the bring it all together, spirit, mind, and body. So let's talk about a little bit about being armored from the inside out. So if the word of God is alive, and it is, Hebrews 4 12 says that very thing, then the next question is this What does a living word produce in a living man or woman? The Apostle Paul answers that in Ephesians 6 when he tells us to put on the whole armor of God. Now notice something critical here. Paul doesn't start with the sword, he starts with readiness. In other words, armor is pre-installed readiness. Paul says, and he lists these put on the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, feet fitted with readiness of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and finally the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God. That's poetic language. I mean, I'm sorry, that's not just poetic language, that's preloaded response. So just like our firearm training and our self-defense at Defend Fit, we don't wait until chaos starts to decide what to do. We decide before the threat shows up. And I have a whole teaching around what I call the concept of threes, like timing before, and then right in the middle of the battle, during, and then after the post-engagement protocol. So when we talk about before, the word of God says we're supposed to put all these attributes into our mind, understanding with great discernment, not to lean just on our own understanding, but put that understanding into our minds from the Word of God. And now we can transfer that to all kinds of things that we do in life that are responsibilities or our desires. And in training, we start to put that in. So, for example, managing the distance is to be aware. It now means maybe managing the distance and then choosing the timing, possibly using the other attributes that I like to talk about, which are the four attributes for solving this engagement issue, and it comes from the special forces teaching of a mindset of using precision, speed, aggression, and deception. And when I talk about precision, I'm talking about good biomechanics. I'm talking about the right distance at the right time in the right place, reacting appropriately. You're talking about accuracy, power, speed. Um and I have a saying about the you know, the combination of accuracy, power, speed. It says this that accuracy beats power and timing beats speed. So this is how a smaller, intelligent person can beat a bigger, stronger person. If all things are created equal on knowledge and experience, the bigger, stronger person will win. But if you have just one thing different, for example, anticipation, prize, then you could effectively beat a bigger, stronger person. And so we teach you how to do that, and as well as multiple threats and multiple uh defenses, empty hand knife and gun, uh eat even stick, and pistols and rifles. Um you have the opportunity also to think about the other concept of threes, which are not just before, during and after, but in in terms of level, high, medium, and low, in terms of distance, long range techniques, medium range techniques, and short range techniques. Uh you're thinking about position, like moving over, under, or around. And then even the use of force has three that I like to subdivide it out, and that is restraint, incapacitate, and terminate. So we will teach you how to use minimum and maximum force, and you're gonna spend a lot of time in that middle zone of incapacitation. But you do have the other choices to apply whatever you think's needed to apply in that situation. So let's talk about readiness beats reaction. Let me say it plainly a gun or self defense without training and wisdom and discernment is dangerous. Training without repetition is unreasonable. Reliable and repetition without mindset fails under stress. That's why our training at DefendFit, the readiness includes, for example, on the firearm side, understanding how to safely handle a gun, how to hold it, how to prepare it, how to clear a malfunction when it doesn't fire, a failure to fire, a failure to eject. And we call those jam one, jam two, and jam three. And so we have a very specific way of saying what's wrong with the gun, for example, jam one, and a verbal solution, and that is instant jam correction, which means to simply slap the bottom of the magazine with the palm of your hand and rack a new round in. And if it failed to fire because you didn't have a bullet, well, you're putting a bullet in. If it failed to fire because the bullet was bad, well, it'll eject the old button and put the new bullet in. If it failed to fire because the magazine wasn't in all the way, well, you're going to slap the bottom of the magazine and rack now you got a bullet in. If it failed to fire because maybe you were in a hurry and you used your right thumb on a magazine change and it's locked open, so you realize you're out of bullets, you change the magazine, but it you use the right thumb on your slide release and you released early, right just a hair second before you got the magazine in. And so the gun closed because you're under a lot of stress and you're trying to do it fast, and you created your own Jam one by releasing the slide lock before you got the magazine in. Now I know there's a lot of details here, but that's the whole point to teach you how to recognize these details in a calm, safe, educational manner, and then in class, in other words, and then leveling up on your speed and stress aspect as we go through the class over time. And you'll be shocked at how fast you start learning how to recognize a jam one. The gun's closed, it didn't fire, you slap rack, it you don't even have to think about all those reasons for the gun not firing. If it's closed, you simply slap rack, you do an instant jam correction. And so let me give you an example of some of the other things we do in class. We teach you how to use cover from a distance or close up. We teach you uh how to deal with multiple threats, or for example, using that cover to enter unsecured areas. We teach you how to use movement under pressure, how to protect other family members or other people, so we call that third-party protection. So it's really useful and fundamental. What I call my fundamentals would be very much an advanced class for most people. So you don't figure it out in the moment, you execute what's already installed. And so on the spiritual side, Paul is teaching the exact same principle spiritually. The word of God is a sword, but only if you can draw it. Paul calls the word of God the sword of the spirit, and the famous preacher Spur Charles Spurgeon reminded us that the word is alive. But here's the hard truth of it. A sword you don't practice with might as well stay in the sheath. Spiritually speaking, the truth you haven't internalized won't protect you. Scripture you haven't trained with won't come out under pressure. And faith that lives only on Sundays won't hold up in combat. The enemy doesn't announce his timing, neither neither do real threats. So it's super important that you train spirit, mind, and body, in my opinion. Now, if you just choose to train on the physical, mental side here at the FinFit, that's fine. Over time, perhaps you will see the value of blending all three. We're three-dimensional creatures, just like in life, things around us are three-dimensional. So it's important that you like maybe take an inventory of your strength and weaknesses and figure out exactly where you're at. And then come in and do a free trial class. And you know, just take it all in. You don't have we're not you're not here to prove anything. It's really about your own journey. And I'm gonna help you with that journey, and our great instructors are gonna help you as well. You can uh there's a lot of classes you can take here as well. So, like on Monday and Wednesday, I have people that come in six o'clock to our Krav Haganah class. You might know it as Kravaga. The evolution is my system called Krav Haganah, which means combat defense. And I cover 20 empty hand threats, 11 knife, and 11 gun, and then teach you fundamental fighting skills as well. Right after that class, we do a dry fire firearm class, and that class also has reconfigurable shoot house walls. And you have the opportunity to buy a cool fire trainer, which is actually a barrel replacement, which is like a little CO2 air tank. And every time you pull that trigger, the gun recoils, not quite like a real gun, but certainly moves, and then it reciprocates the slide and it resets the trigger, and you're gonna you're able to re-fire again, and there's a laser on the front, and you can see where you're shooting. So it just totally transforms simulation training. And we also have interaction with other people and shoot or no shoot, you know, magazine changes, jam fixes. So, man, it's just a really great class to level up your firearm knowledge in terms of gun fighting. And then we will do uh live fire classes as well, and those are just next level stuff. But I like you to do the dry fire so you understand the safety and all the terminology and procedures, so you're you're coming in safe and knowledgeable when you do live fire. So firearm readiness mirrors spiritual warfare. Again, back to the spiritual side. Paul says our struggle isn't against flesh and blood, and that doesn't mean flesh and blood threats don't exist. It means there's always something deeper deeper driving the conflict. That's why living inside out trains both. Spiritual discernment, what's really happening, and then physical readiness, what must be done now. So thanks for joining us this segment of Living Inside Out. Stay with us. We got more coming and some more great knowledge and understanding around our Defend Fit programs. And I'm gonna tell you some of the other classes we offer and why I think those are something you should take a look at. And we're also gonna talk about the spiritual, mental, emotional connection as well. I'm excited to bring the show to you. If you like the show, please share it with other people. Get on to Spotify Podcast or Apple Podcasts and uh find that that up and share the link with other people. If you know somebody that operates a business that would like to advertise on our show, I'd love to promote them and help them to build their business as well. So stay with us. We'll be right back for living in with Living Inside Out Radio.
SPEAKER_00Life doesn't wait for perfect timing, and danger doesn't announce itself. That's why at Defend Fit Self-Defense and Fitness, we train you with real techniques for real situations. From Krav Maga to knife defense, from stick fighting to firearms awareness, our system is built on real-world defense, not rules or forms. Our Defend Fit classes combine intense functional fitness with practical self-defense so you get stronger and safer all in one session. Whether you want to protect yourself, your loved ones, or your community. We've got you covered. Beginners welcome. All fitness levels invited. This is empowerment you feel on the street and in your life. Visit Israeliselfdefense.net or call 713-252-5836. That's 713-252-5836 now. Defend fit, where your confidence becomes your strongest defense.
Malfunctions, Cover, And Movement
Program Options And Dry Fire Tools
Deeper Than Flesh And Blood
Daily Readiness Over Emotion
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to Living Inside Out Radio. We're talking about the three-dimensional aspect of living. And I think of that as you know, our mental capacity for understanding and perception and discernment and wisdom. We correlate that to our physical ability to take care of things, whether it's our body or you know, our grooming or our ability to be a warrior. And having those correlate together is just simply smart, you know, and then the spiritual aspect being the foundation that has the ability to increase, improve, transform, and really supercharge your ability to use these all the gifts that God's given you your brain, your body, your time, treasure talent to um, you know, improve yourself, your family, the world around you. So I appreciate you being here today, putting up with us and and hopefully leveling up in all the right ways. So we were talking about when we got off in our last segment, we were talking about a defender uh and the preparedness and readiness, and so and how that correlates to the spiritual side of readiness. So a defender who is spiritually grounded but physically underprepared is vulnerable. A defender who is physically skilled but spiritually hollow is unstable. Paul's armor requires both belief and practice. And so, inside out training, you know, that's the whole model of the show is living inside out. So here's the connection most people miss. The belt of truth that we get from the armor of God in Ephesians chapter six is stabilizes your thinking because we're living in the truth. The breastplate guards your heart, the helmet protects your decision making, the shield absorbs impact, and the sword engages the threat. That's mindset, which leads to posture, to movement, to response. And that's firearm training, that's spiritual training, that's living inside out. So whether you're opening scripture or stepping into a defensive scenario, the principle is the same. What's alive in you determines how you respond under pressure. The training matters. And I like to say it like this we're a family of warriors training with purpose. You keep it simple, smart, but not too simple. You don't want to leave yourself wanting and lacking knowledge and understanding. The word of God actually says, My people perish for a lack of understanding. Let that not be us. The word of God doesn't just inform, it arms us. It readiness spiritually and physically. Now, let's repeat that. The word of God doesn't just inform, it arms. And readiness, spiritual and physical, is never accidental. In this next segment, we'll talk about why discipline, not emotion, determines survival and why warriors of faith must train when it's quiet, not just when it's chaotic. So I really appreciate you being here. We're going to talk now about discipline, drills, and daily readiness. So I talked about this earlier. If the word of God is alive, and it is, if we are armored from the inside out, then here's the question that separates talkers from warriors. What does daily readiness actually look like? Because readiness is not a feeling alone. Readiness is discipline, practiced in advance. And then the feeling you walk around with is completely different. And you can see it in people that are prepared mentally, emotionally, and physically. If they truly have skills at pretty high levels in each category, they're different. They're different, and sometimes, depending on how that manifests in the flesh, you know, in human forms, it could make them arrogant and cocky and obnoxious. But if we balance it, truly balance it in the right way, it should make us humble but confident, willing to step in and give our thoughts, our opinions, take a stand for somebody to help in the right way at the right time. And that's not so easy to do. It takes time, it takes life experience, it takes failure and correction, it takes constantly growing and uh being a mentor and mentoring others. But I'll say this discipline beats emotion every time. But I am so thankful for emotions as well. Because my emotions are the root of why I wanted change to begin with. Right? I don't want to eliminate emotion. I want to use emotions as a catalyst for change and uh transformation. So I'll tell you a story that's common between three athletes that I think were some of the greatest. Larry Byrd for the Boston Celtics, basketball player, Michael Jordan, also a basketball player, and Tom Brady, football player. And all three of them used a personal feeling, emotion that they picked up on the field to get mad at somebody, to show somebody, to, you know, they were disrespected. Oh, now you think, okay, here it's on now. You know, and that feeling and that emotion used in that way to make you better is can be very powerful, right? It just had to be controlled and channeled the right way. So the Apostle Paul says something sobering in 1 Corinthians 9. He says, I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest I myself should be disqualified. And that's not poetry again, that's training language. Paul understood what every serious defender understands. Motion is unreliable under pressure, discipline is dependable. One of my instructors says, Be a machine. His name is Garrett Machine, and he taught me a ton of stuff. And he's an Israeli com commando that spent seven years in DuVon Unit. And we were working out in CrossFit one time and we're scoring our scores, and he goes, You know, I got a secret weapon, right? I said, What's that? And he got real close to my face and he says, Be a machine. So that's programming, man. That's training language. You don't wait until fear shows up to decide who you are. You decide long before the threat appears. And this is why we drill. For example, I've been through some stress inoculation at these higher levels as I'm progressing up, earning black belts, second, third degree, and you're put into the fire. And we would do all kinds of things, man. One thing we did that always mess with people's minds, and that is called the gauntlet. You have to run this gauntlet. The gauntlet is basically a row of people standing shoulder shoulder to shoulder across from each other. So say you have 20 people or 30 people, you got 10 or 15 on each side, and they might have boxing gloves on, or they may have a shield, a kick pad shield. And you're gonna have to hit this pad as you go through that gauntlet. So the pad holders walking backwards very slowly, keeping you in the fire of the gauntlet while the people on both sides to your right and left are taking shots at you, or they're slamming you with that kick pad, bouncing you back and forth like a pinball through that tunnel of people. And it's you know brain racking. And your mission is just to stay focused on hitting the pad and ignoring any other stimulus to get through that drill. And man, it is intense. I've had it where we've done something similar instead of a row, like you're going through a tunnel of the gauntlet, we'll circle up and you're fighting one guy with boxing gloves while everybody around you is making your life miserable. So we have various ways to do that. In class, a lot of times I'll do um stress drills where you have to do push-ups or you ground and pound or heavy bag work. And after, you know, you I've reviewed some techniques on stress week, which is every fourth week, you may do three or four different things, defenses against empty hand knife or gun, after you're out of breath. And it's a lot different, let me tell you. And that's just a basic form of stress inoculation. Do a physical uh exercise to get you out of breath, get your heart rate up, and now you've lost your fine motor skills, and now it's about gross motor skills and your knowledge. And it gets a little sloppy. Everybody acknowledges, man, everything tends to fall apart at first. But little by little, man, through that stress inoculation, putting yourself in the fire a little bit at a time, you don't have to get overwhelmed. We're not gonna rock you where you're like, oh man, I'm not gonna, this isn't good. No, you're gonna go through these drills at the right level for you, and you're gonna come out of the each drill going, wow, that was awesome. I feel so much more powerful now. You're gonna be shocked because we're we're catering to to help you be successful. So why why do we drill? In Defend Fit firearm training, we drill because the body hesitates under stress, the mind shortcuts when overwhelmed. And this was self-defense of any type, any type of fighting. Fine motor skills degrade, decision making narrows, so we train anyway. For example, in the firearm, we clear malfunctions under stress. We shoot while moving. We understand how to move when we shoot because it's very easy to miss when you're shooting and moving. In fact, we have a saying that says this always shooting or always moving, never neither, never both. And then I just said we shoot and move. Well, maybe you shoot, you stop shooting, you run full blast, you stop, stop, which is almost like an ABS brakes in your car, then you re-engage and shoot. Or there is a big boy rule where I can teach you how to walk very precisely, step by step, and shoot on a cadence that matches your rhythm of walking. We engage with multiple threats. We're fighting to create space. We cover and concealment in different angles. We're protecting others and not just ourselves, not just once, not occasionally, but repeatedly. Because drills don't make you perfect, they make you predictable under pressure. And then when you're not perfect, when you haven't executed with quite as much precision, you just simply adapt and overcome. Spiritual drills matter too. Mental emotional drills matter as well. The same rules apply. As far as the Word of God, it doesn't just need to be read, it needs to be rehearsed. One of the most powerful studies I ever did was called the Mind of Christ Bible study, and it had us correlating the chapters that we're covering and reading to scripture memory verses, and it had these perforated cards in the back, and you tear that card out and you carry it around with you, and you go through it all during the day and refer back to it. Romans 12, 2, for example. Be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you can prove what is that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God. Powerful stuff, man. I've used it, even being put into an MRI machine. You know, I wanted to bail out of that machine, man, because I was getting this claustrophobic closing in on me, but I couldn't stop it. I mean, I could hit the mercy button, and you know, in fact, I did one time, the very first time I ever got put in one, I asked the guy, hit that button, pull me out of here. It's just like just too tight. And so he comes back in the room. He says, Oh, Mr. Peak, you okay? I said, Well, I got claustrophobic started hitting me, man. He goes, Well, listen, we have a plan for that. We can give you some volume and then set you another appointment. You bring somebody to drive you in, uh, you know, under the influence of that value, we'll be much calmer, and then we'll do our MRI, you'll be fine, and then you'll go home and sleep it off and that kind of thing. I said, you know, I could do that, but you know what? Let me just go through my head. I'm gonna do my secret weapon. I'm gonna go through my scripture memory verses from the Bible. And I asked him, I said, You a believer in Jesus? He goes, I am. I said, Well, let's see how good the word of God is. Put me back in. We know it's alive and powerful, and sharpened into the two-edged sword. This is the time to use it. And so, man, you know, that's what it's like to rehearse the word of God. And daily reading looks like scripture stored, not just skimmed, you know, prayer practiced, not improvised, conviction settled before temptation, obedience trained before the conflict. That's how the word of war of God becomes reflex instead of reference. That's how the sword clears the sheath without delay. This is how we train at defend fit. This is how we train at living inside out. And this is how we need to train mentally and emotionally when we're dealing with family, coworkers, traffic. I mean, can you imagine if we couldn't manage our anger in all these different situations? And sometimes we don't manage them very well. And we have to apologize, we have to repair some men freak and they'll hit walls, windshields, they'll be, you know, domestic abuse. This is the biggest part of the problem in society today is men and women are not trained in this, what I call living inside out, the seven most important areas of life. Ministry, getting a spiritual context to be alive in your mind, marriage, and that's all relationships. We don't have the relationship intelligence we should. We should train from a young age on managing relationships. Mentoring, have a mentor, be a mentor, giving and receiving, media, guarding, truly guarding what goes into our eyes and ears, because we take in stuff that we shouldn't, and we don't take in things we should. And then uh martial arts and muscle, similar, and we need to gird up in our readiness, put on the full armor physically and spiritually, and then we also need to gain, you know, structural strength and agility and speed, and that helps our organ function. That helps our fat-to-weight ratio, uh muscle to fat ratio, uh, that helps organ function and bone density, and ultimately longevity and our ability, our ability to carry on and take care of our business. And then money. Same thing with money, man, powerful tool. And we need to use it responsibly, have enough of it so that we're able to take care of ourselves and our families and to help others. So this is the re the Living Inside Out principle of girding up and being prepared. Come see us at DefendFit. We're at 17317, El Comino Real, Webster, Texas, right around the corner from Johnson Space Center. Come train with us and girt up and uh transform your life. So happy that you listen to our program today. Come back and visit us next week, a Saturday, 12 o'clock on 9 20 a.m. or anytime on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Thanks and have a great weekend.
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