Defending The Fatherless Requires Courage

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Hey everybody, this is Zach. I'm one of the elders from Apologia Church, and we just want to say hey from hot and muggy

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Phoenix, Arizona right now. We hope you're all doing well, and we just want to say thank you so much for letting us be a part of this event.

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We're humbled. We're honored. I love OSA. I think I've known Rusty for a couple years now, but we love you, and I know many of you have fought in this battle in child murder for decades, and so it makes us very humbled and very honored at the same time to be able to address you tonight.

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I'm the lead -off batter, and right after me, Pastor Luke, and then after him, Pastor Jeff is going to speak.

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But we hope that what we have to share with you tonight is going to be a challenging encouragement to you.

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That's what we're praying would happen. Just to fill you in a little bit on what's going on here in Phoenix, on Tuesday, Rusty talked about the fact that every church needs to have a ministry at the abortion mill.

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We need to be salt and light. We need to be the people of God at the abortion mill trying to rescue babies, bringing the gospel in confrontation with the culture of death.

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He also said that we need to have a ministry to our magistrates. We need to inform them.

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We need to have a politically -minded ministry to be politically effective. So that's exactly what we're trying to accomplish here in Arizona, kind of day in, day out.

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If you're not aware, we have an organization called End Abortion Now. It consists of about 500 different churches, and it's all about and under the banner of the local church.

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What we try to do with this ministry is equip and help the local church get out there, preach the gospel, love their pre -born neighbor, and because of that,

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God has done some amazing stuff. We've seen many, many, many, many babies saved. So that's kind of the prophetic arm, the gospel -centered arm of our ministry,

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End Abortion Now. We just started an organization called Red State Reform, and that's basically a political lobbying organization to work to end abortion in Arizona.

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That's what we want to accomplish. So during Arizona's next legislative session,

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Representative Walt Blackman is going to introduce a no -compromise bill of abolition that would immediately abolish all abortion in Arizona.

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So what we're going to do is we're going to help politicians who will support this bill, and we're going to try to remove politicians who won't.

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So that's us. That's what we're doing, and that's what we're hoping for God and praying that he would help us accomplish these ends.

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So I'm going to go ahead and pray. I know we're limited on time, so I'm going to pray and move quickly so the other guys can follow after me.

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Father, I thank you for this opportunity to speak to these people. Lord, I am unworthy to do it.

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I thank you for Rusty and all the leadership of OSA and all of the sacrifice all of the time.

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Lord, all the years, all the blood, sweat that they've poured into serving you, all for your glory.

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Lord, I thank you that you've given them strength to continue on, and I pray that you continue to bless this ministry.

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Bless this night as we share your word. Again, it's not for our namesake. It's not for the elevation of the promotion of any man.

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It's all for you, Christ. So I pray that you bless our minds, and you bless our hearts as we hear this tonight.

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Exodus 22 .22 says this, You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child.

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Deuteronomy 24 .17 says, You shall not pervert justice due to the stranger or the fatherless, nor take a widow's garment as a pledge.

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Deuteronomy 27 .19 says, Cursed is the one who perverts the justice due the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.

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And all the people shall say, Amen. And here's the big command that I think coincides with really what

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God has been saying within this conference. Psalm 82 .3, Defend the poor and fatherless.

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Do justice to the afflicted and the needy. And I think we all know that babies being butchered daily at abortion mills are the fatherless children among us, as well as other segments of society, but they are the most needy segment that needs our attention.

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So what I want to do within the next couple minutes, just to kind of set the tone before the other guys come and speak, is to kind of dissect this statement a little bit.

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The statement goes like this, Defending the fatherless will never be accomplished by cowards.

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It takes true men to accomplish the command. And of course, women for that matter.

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But tonight I kind of want to laser focus in on men and young men. I'm going to say it again. Defending the fatherless, which is synonymous with rescuing pre -born babies from death and abolishing abortion, will never be accomplished by cowards.

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It will take true men to accomplish this task that the Lord has given us.

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One of my favorite quotes, it says this, True men did not work to legalize abortion, but true men will end it.

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Again, true men did not work to legalize abortion, but true men will end it. Pastor Jason Storm said that.

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They were males who unleashed this scourge upon the earth, but they were not true men.

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They were cowards. And if you do just a cursory study of history, especially church history, you'll see that God, when he tramples underfoot his enemies, which of course child murder is his enemy, he uses his men to accomplish this.

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He uses his men, and he will use his men to accomplish this abominable holocaust.

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It's going to happen. It's just a matter of time, prayer, effort, obedience, and sacrifice.

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It will happen. I wish we would see it tomorrow, believe me. Everybody who goes out to the abortion mill clinics day after day and week after week, you get to a point where you get sick of what's been going on.

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But thank God we can find our rest, we can find our hope in the fact that he will destroy this enemy.

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It's only a matter of time, prayer, effort, obedience, and sacrifice. This is pretty important here.

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God never ever uses cowards to defeat his enemies. It's just not the way he works.

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It's not the way he's ever worked. He will never ever use cowardly men to do this.

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If God's men at any point in history choose cowardice, and have failed to repent, the fatherless and every other oppressed people group will continue to be oppressed.

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That is what has happened in history, and that's what will continue to happen. Cowardice only augments the oppression of people who are being oppressed.

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If we are to go about the task of defending the fatherless, we've got to repent of cowardice.

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God's men have to repent of cowardice, and we have to bear the fruit of this repentance by just simply being the men that God commands us to be.

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If cowardice augments or enlarges oppression, then courage will defeat it.

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Courageous, godly men are going to defeat it. I've only got a couple minutes here, so the remaining amount of time that I have,

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I just want to unpack or dissect this. Putting off cowardice and putting on true manhood.

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We have to put off cowardice and put on true manhood. 1 Kings 2 .2 says this,

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Be strong, therefore, and show yourself a man. Be strong, therefore, and show yourself a man.

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God commands we put off any and all cowardice and put on true manhood. So I guess the question is this, what is cowardice?

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The simple biblical definition is that cowardice is the opposite of true biblical manhood.

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Cowards are the opposite of how God designed men to be upon his planet. A coward is everything that a true man isn't.

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I kind of learned this back in 8th grade. I went to a school in San Diego called Parkway Middle School.

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I was in physical education time, and I was in the locker room, and there was the quintessential bully of the school.

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His name was Romero. He would just victimize kids all the time. Every day, he'd just pick somebody else to victimize.

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This day in the boys' locker room was my day to be victimized. I'm over 40 now, so I can't remember anything, but I can remember this guy's face in my face.

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He was spitting, and he was challenging me to a fight. It's clear as day,

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I can see his face. I can see the folks right in front of me. He was saying, let's go, let's fight.

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What I did at that moment is I put my head down, and I said I didn't want to fight.

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At that moment, I played the coward. I can tell you, I don't know if you've ever experienced this, but I was immediately just engulfed with shame, just down to my bones, just shame down to the level of the deepest part of me.

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All the men just walked out and shook their heads. I kind of experienced this quote right here.

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It says, a coward dies a thousand deaths, the valiant face death but once.

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That just rang so true to me, especially in that moment in eighth grade, because I felt like dying.

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I felt like going and crawling up underneath a rock. But looking back now, I know the Lord was teaching me some important truths.

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Number one, choosing cowardice at any time of life, under any circumstance, it's the opposite of what a true man does.

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It's the opposite. Two, true men confront oppressors and oppressive bullies, and they don't allow them to hurt people.

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And number three, I was not to back down in the face of an oppressor as he went about victimizing people.

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Painful lesson that I was taught at that moment, but I think hugely important and definitely set the tone of the rest of my life.

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This bully Romero, he just ended up, which a lot of bullies do, he ended up barking up the wrong tree to some older guys who were a lot much bigger than him.

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I think he got a couple of his teeth knocked out. And what I did from that moment is I confronted every single bully that came my way because I had gone through such a shameful experience.

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And what you learn is as you confront an oppressor, you confront a bully, they will back down because bullies are cowards.

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I did talk to Romero a couple years later and confronted him. I think I wasn't too nice. I actually challenged him to a fight.

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But he got his butt beat so many times by so many different men. It humbled him. And he actually asked for forgiveness.

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We became friends after that. And I think the hope lies in the fact that a coward doesn't have to remain a coward.

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There is true repentance and true change. So again, a coward is the opposite of what it means to be a true man.

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Cowardice is antithetical to biblical manhood. A coward lacks bravery and courage.

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The coward chooses the couch over the cross, being comfortable over duty to Christ and self -denial.

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The coward takes the path of least resistance. The coward turns his head away when his neighbor is in need.

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The coward lives by the us for and no more mentality while the world goes to hell and his neighbors suffer.

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And that's a great problem we have, especially in America. I'm really only going to focus on my family and everything that's going on around me can pretty much continue because that's my primary duty.

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Yeah, the family is your primary duty but that's not to the exclusion of our duty to love our neighbor and lay down our lives for those who are in need.

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The coward twists scripture in order to alleviate himself of his God -given duties. The coward's mantra is sinners are going to sin, let's just preach the gospel.

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The coward allows bullies and enemy oppressors to have their way without standing nose -to -nose and contesting and confronting them.

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The coward is selfish, self -serving, self -preserving, disobedient and unfaithful.

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That's who they are. Why are men cowards? I think number one, we learn it from our father Adam. He failed to protect his wife from the oppressor in the garden.

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He failed to take responsibility of his actions and blamed his God for his own decisions.

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Blamed his wife and his God. And of course our sinful flesh has a disposition towards cowardice rather than courage.

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So we learn it from Adam, just being in Adam. Number two, we learn it from our fathers. Just as you look through the kings.

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The bad kings learned it from the bad kings. The bad kings learned it from their dads. So we learn how to be cowards from our dads and the primary male examples in our lives.

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And it's just this vicious circle that continues on and on. Cowards give birth to cowards, show them how to be cowards.

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They grow up to be cowards and give birth to cowards. It's got to stop. So we learn it from Adam, we learn it from our fathers who are primary male influences.

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And we also learn it from our pastors as well. The problem really lies primarily in the pulpit.

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When a pastor fails to contest and battle against God's enemies, it makes cowards of men under his charge.

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Ultimately, the destination for an unrepentant coward is right here in Revelation 21a.

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It says, But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone which is the second death.

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And just my thoughts as I've been thinking and studying through the Scriptures, maybe it's because the coward is everything and true man isn't, that he heads that list.

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Maybe because cowardice, it really epitomizes the corruption and the distortion of God's image in man.

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So, we're to put off cowardice and put on true manhood. So I guess the next question is this, what is true manhood?

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Simply, and I think biblically, a true man is a courageous man. A biblical man will be defined by his courage.

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Courage, really, it's the essence of manhood. Or maybe manhood 101, where we start off as being men, is courage.

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As being courageous men. First Corinthians, First Corinthians 16, 13 says this, Be on the alert stand firm in the faith act like men and be strong.

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And that term right there kind of couched within those phrases act like men it's a

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Greek phrase and it's only found in the New Testament in this instance. And it just simply means this, to conduct yourself with courage.

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So when it's saying right there, when Paul is saying act like a man he's saying being courageous. Biblical manhood is synonymous with courageous manhood.

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Or maybe say it this way a little bit, you can't exemplify true manhood apart from courage.

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And the next question follows, what is courage? What is courage biblically? Courage just whittled down to its simplest explanation is simple faithfulness and obedience to God's commands.

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That's what it means to be a courageous man. A courageous man, we have such a distorted perception of what a courageous man is.

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And I think it's because we watch movies or we have so many influences or male influences that determine what courage is and they're askew.

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They really don't align up with the biblical definition of it. I mean, we watch movies of a guy walking into a room of 100 people and he somehow kills all these people with a 16 round magazine without reloading.

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And this is kind of our definition of a courageous man. That's not a courageous man. That's an absolute idiot that would do that.

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And you see it in the lives of our young men. They're riveted to these things and they're riveted to video games.

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I'm not hating on cool movies or hating on video games necessarily. But what they're trying to do is they're trying to live out their lives vicariously through these men that they think are courageous.

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And they end up kind of trying to virtually live out a courageous life but they end up accomplishing nothing at all because this type of men, this type of man that the world would define as courageous does not exist.

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You think about these guys in these movies. They're fake. There's no way that we could possibly achieve it.

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It's an absolutely abhorrent or virtual or synthetic definition of what it means to be a man.

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But really when you get down to it, and I don't have a lot of time to break this apart, which I wish I would, which

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I wish I could, but a courageous man is just simply a faithful man, consistent man.

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A man that gets up every day and he says, Lord, let your will be done. A man that says, you know what, this is what you've called me to do.

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You say I'm to go out and rescue those who are being delivered to death, those who stumble towards the slaughter. If you said that this is what

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I need to do and what you command me to do, then I'm going to do it. That is the courageous man.

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There's so much courage going on in the Christian church under the radar. It's nothing that's celebritized, but it's these simple men who are going about obeying

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God's commands. That's what it means to be, that's what it means to be courageous. That is the antithesis of cowardice.

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And so I think the prescription for us, if we're going to truly go about the task of continuing to defend the fatherless, the prescription is that we, what our young men need to see and what our men need to see is true men living their lives in faithful obedience.

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It's a definition of courage. That's the way the work is going to get done. And just as I mentioned before that God will never use cowards to defeat his enemies, when

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God's men choose to be true men, they put off cowardice, they really truly repent, not just up here, not just wish they could be courageous or wish they could walk away from cowardice, when they truly put it to death, then

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God uses that type of man to accomplish his purposes and put his enemies under his feet.

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So what I would have to say for you is repent with me. I confess

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I've been a coward in so many parts of my life that I can't even explain or can't even express and it's not the way we're called to live.

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It's not the way that God gets his work done on this planet. These babies need to be saved, this abominable scourge, this holocaust needs to end and it's only going to happen if we, if me and you men, decide to repent.