Jeff Struecker Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the

Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her

King. Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. My name is

Mike Abendroth, and I'm your host. We have a theme here, and here's the theme. Always biblical, always provocative, always in that order.

And we want to talk about issues that are biblical and issues that have to do with the gospel, the good news that Christ Jesus bore the sins of sinners on the cross and was raised from the dead.

And of course, I don't want to compromise as I do it, although we realize that there's only one man who never compromised, and that is the

Lord God Almighty, Christ incarnate, and he's the one that never compromised. And so in light of that, we have the show.

And so today on No Compromise Radio ministry, since it's a Wednesday, I like to have an author. And when

I have an author on, I like that author to promote Christ Jesus and to promote the gospel and the good news.

And that's exactly what we'll do today. We have Jeff Strucker on today. Jeff, welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry.

Great to be with you, Mike. Well, Jeff, what some people don't know and some people probably do know is that you served our

United States military and are in the United States military as a reserve, I believe. Give us a background because I think once you start telling us your story, the lights will go on and maybe they'll be surprised like I was surprised that God has his

Christian men in all different places, including the United States military.

Yeah, thanks for asking. Okay, so I just recently retired from the army. I served on active duty for almost 23 years and I did my first 13 years in the army.

Although as a believer long before I joined the army, when I was a teenager, I came to faith in Christ. My first 13 years in the army,

I served as an enlisted soldier in the army's Ranger Regiment for most of those years. And as a sergeant and an infantryman going all over the world,

I deployed to combat three times with them to the invasion of Panama, to Operation Desert Storm in Kuwait, and then ultimately to Somalia, the stuff that was in Black Hawk Down.

And the last 10 years of my career, I served as an active duty army chaplain, most of those to the same

Rangers that I was once serving with as an enlisted guy. Well, Jeff, I'm glad to have you on the radio today and the show so our friends listening can get to know you and then we'll talk about the book,

The Road to Unafraid soon. My background, I was never in the military, but my father served in Korea and so I've always had a fascination of the military in terms of World War II especially, and when

I would travel to Germany and other places, the kids always knew, daddy's gonna try to find a place that relates to World War II and a place that relates to Luther.

Do we have to go to another place regarding Martin Luther or World War II today? And so what

I'm most interested in is, Jeff, you have a double education, that is to say, educated and trained by the

United States Army and also trained at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and that's where I've got my deem in as well.

And so I'm glad to be able to get some of your insight since you're both theologically trained and you could probably kill me with your wrist.

Yeah, so I consider one of the greatest opportunities God's ever opened up to me, the chance to study at Southern Seminary, especially during the years that I was there, 97 to 2000.

Considered to be a world -class faculty at the time, still is actually. But clearly some of the best, some of the most intense training

I've ever gone through in my life was in the U .S. Army Ranger School and multiple kind of combat -oriented training opportunities that I had in the

Army. Well, Jeff, when we look at life and death, I'd like to ask you some questions about how do you see death as a military man and then also as a

Christian theologian? When my mother was dying, it seemed to me that the scriptures were even more true in my heart.

They're always just as true. But to me personally, I thought absent from the body, present with the

Lord, I really believed to live as Christ and to die as gain. And in your book, when you said, if I survive this night,

I eventually would get to go home to Dawn and our new baby. If I died,

I'd go home to be with Jesus in heaven. Either way, I'd be a winner. So maybe I needed to stop being afraid of the upcoming battle after all.

Just walk us through that in terms of what you believed to determine what you did and thought during those days in Somalia and other engagements.

Yeah, Mike, you hit the nail on the head the way that you described it. Somalia was for me a turning point.

But as I said, just a few minutes ago, I already had a strong faith in Jesus Christ. He was real to me long before I joined the

Army and before I went to war, before I became a Ranger, before I went to war. But what became overwhelmingly clear to me when the chips were down in Somalia, and I'll try to paint the picture for your listeners very briefly.

I was a Sergeant in Somalia. I was the guy who led the Humvees through the city streets on all of the missions that Task Force Ranger did in Somalia.

And I was there when the Blackhawks were getting shot down. And ultimately I went back and forth in and out of the city streets three times and spent the whole night there in the

Battle of Mogadishu. And the book in the movie, Blackhawk Down, didn't describe what

I did in Mogadishu. There was a point when I was early into the battle on October 3rd, 1993, when

I was driving some casualties back and in the midst of an intense firefight, and the guy sitting right behind me was shot and killed instantly.

And a lot of my guys were getting wounded. Now, I was a leader and I was in charge of these guys. And I was absolutely certain

I'm gonna die in the next few minutes. By the grace of God, I made it back to my base long enough to drop off casualties, to have some of the people that were killed in the vehicle behind me taken off of my vehicle.

And I was overwhelmed by just what I'd been through. When my boss came up to me and said,

Jeff, the Blackhawk helicopter's shot down. I need your men to go back out there and see if there are any survivors. And I have a chance on occasion to tell audiences that is the most terrifying moments of my life.

Because I've been to combat before this, I've been shot at before, and I knew what

I was about to do in the next few minutes is certain death. This was a suicide mission.

And as a leader, I was thinking I'm gonna get all of my men killed in the next few minutes. And I was totally terrified of driving back out into the city streets.

But I had sworn my life to protect and to serve with those men in my unit and to not let them down.

And I knew it was my life now in exchange for theirs. So as I was getting ready to go back out into the city streets,

I started to pray and I was asking God for help. And I wasn't saying, God, get me out of this thing. God, I know

I'm gonna die in the next few minutes. And I don't, you know, this isn't fair. That's not what was going through my mind.

What was going through my mind is, God, I know I'm gonna die in the next few minutes. I'm gonna leave my wife as a widow.

We got a new baby on the way who's never gonna meet their dad. But don't let me let down my country. I don't wanna let down the men that are dependent on me.

I don't wanna do something that's gonna cause my men to get killed unnecessarily. And basically I was saying, God, I need courage.

I need courage to face my death. We're talking, let's go ahead, keep going, Jeff, please. Well, I was just gonna say, as I was sitting there thinking about that,

I was praying, God, give me the courage to go back out into those city streets and do what I know I need to do.

And I know it's gonna cost me my life. And it was at those moments, what you just described a couple of moments ago, when my faith started to take over, when

I was reminded, Jeff, your life is in God's hands. Trust him with it. But also, hey, if you die, the worst thing that can happen to you on planet earth, if you die, you inherit all the riches of heaven.

You have an eternity waiting for you with the Father in heaven. And the worst thing that can happen to me on earth is the greatest thing that can happen to me in eternity.

And when I started to think about that, when it really sank in that way, from that moment on, I knew no more fear about what was gonna happen to me for the rest of the night.

I was ready to die because I was ready to meet my maker. I just didn't wanna mess up and cause my men to die unnecessarily.

Jeff, I don't know if you address it in the book, The Road to Unafraid on Thomas Nelson. I read the book and loved it.

I don't know if you addressed it. Did some of the men that you served with there, did they notice that?

Did they talk to you afterwards? What was the response of having a man steeled by his faith, not in faith, but steeled by his faith in Christ Jesus, a faith that technically and theologically

God gave you? What did the other, how did the other men respond in a crisis situation like that?

Michael, let me tell you what I refer to as my call to ministry. Because the day after this firefight was over with, and I had been trying to share my faith with Rangers.

I've been telling them about Christ, telling them the difference that he made for me, but most of those guys were saying, Jeff, that's cool with you.

You can have Jesus, but I don't need him. Because I'm strong and I'm fast and I'm smart and I've got where I'm at all on my own.

And most of them would just be like, I don't wanna hear it again, Jeff. The day after this big firefight was over with, these exact same guys, the few of us that survived, and almost half of us were killed or wounded in this firefight.

The few of us that survived, those guys were walking up to me saying, Jeff, I gotta know what happened to my best friend last night.

Jeff, what happens to me if I get on a helicopter or a Humvee and I die? And many of them said,

Jeff, there was something different about you last night than there was about me. I could hear it in your voice on the radio. I could see it in your eyes.

And they could tell there's something different. And I could almost feel the spirit of God working on me right there in Somalia the day after this firefight, showing me that he had something different in store for me than kicking in doors and then fighting with enemies of our country.

Now, a quick aside. When they were getting ready to produce the movie Black Hawk Down, there's an actor,

Brian Van Halt, who plays me in the movie. And Brian was training with a bunch of Rangers on Fort Benning in Georgia before he left to go film this movie in the country of Morocco in Africa.

And I had a chance to meet Brian right before he left for just a couple of hours before he left to film the movie.

And Brian said, I've got one question for you. Everybody that I've talked to who was with you in Somalia all said the same thing.

You were totally calm and completely under control when everybody else around you was freaking out.

How did that happen? And I said, Brian, it's real easy. Man, I was ready to die. And I was prepared that I'm gonna die in the next few minutes but I know where I'm gonna spend an eternity.

And that made the difference for me. And it allowed me to function with courage but also it cleared my way of thinking.

It helped me focus real clearly. And I actually shared the gospel with Brian Van Holt at that moment.

He wasn't ready to accept Christ, but I told him because my eternity was secure, it determined how

I did my thing that day. And it was when really God started to show me he was calling me into the ministry.

We're talking to Jeff Strucker. The Road to Afraid is his book on Thomas Nelson. I'd encourage you to get it.

You can go to Amazon or any of the other places to get those books. Jeff, as you were describing that, I was thinking to myself that the paradigm

I try to teach my folks, theology, and then it leads to methodology, which leads to doxology, what we believe affects what we do.

And certainly whether that's a mom at home with the kids or someone out on the front lines, what we believe about God, as Tozer would say, is the most important thing about us.

And I was remembering Richard Baxter. He was on his deathbed, an English Puritan. And they said, Dr. Baxter, how are you?

And he's about ready to die. And he said, almost well. I'm almost well.

And so you, steeled by the word of God, I think really the way I would describe it,

Jeff, is Psalm 1. It says, blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, and it goes on.

But he's a man who meditates on God's law day and night. The word blessed, sometimes we just think of as happy.

But the Hebrew word can also mean, it's got a tinge of being, people envy.

People say, do you know what? I wish I had a God like that. My God of money, our sex, our power, our my

God of self. It yields no good results. Kind of like the Boston Red Sox pretty much annually.

But this God, this God Yahweh, the God of the Jews, He is a God, and if I could only be tucked underneath His Lordship, I would do well.

And so that's exactly what I was thinking about when you were talking. Jeff, looking back in your life and how

God has used you, many people want to say, well, how is

God gonna lead me in the future? And there's many charismatics that kind of look for that and other evangelicals. But I think you can see the providence of God when you look backwards in your life.

And so as you look back in your life, how God has given you the mother He did, raised you, all these different things.

Give our listeners just a little snapshot about how God does everything well and how

He providentially made you into the person He's made you. Yeah, wow, Mike, you summarized that very well.

I think many, many Christians, even many people that are not Christians are looking at what they're going through right now in life and saying,

I don't get it. God, show me what the future holds for me. Help me figure out what to do next.

And oftentimes, I think God shows Himself most clearly in what

He's brought you through in the past. In my life, I can see it. My mom and dad divorced when

I was young. I lived with my mom. She remarried and redivorced four more times. And we moved almost 20 times, more than 20 times before I turned 18 and joined the

Army. So by the time I joined the Army, I'd known picking up and moving on a whim kind of thing.

And the Army life was actually very easy for me because of that, getting up and going to a new culture, a new experience, new way of living kind of thing wasn't really that difficult for me.

But I also learned very early on how to take care of myself, how to trust the people around me, how to lean heavily on Christ instead of on circumstances when

I was growing up. And so by the time, again, I became a Christian when I was 13 years old, and I was solid in my faith when

I joined the Army and was comfortable being an infantryman, joining the special operations, going to war and fighting for our country.

Those two things didn't, I didn't see a contradiction, didn't have a problem with that. And what

I noticed in Somalia is that many of the guys that were with me, they'd been career soldiers, but they didn't have the theological framework to process what they had been through after this firefight was over with.

The guys that survived, a lot of them were really shaken to their core by what they had just seen.

And for me, I never lost a night's sleep over it, never had the nightmares, didn't have the cold sweats about what

I did and what I saw people do in Somalia because my theology informed what

I did. I saw that the sovereign hand of God in everything that was happening to me and around me when

I was in Somalia. And now looking back, by the way, as a chaplain on active duty, when

I served with those Rangers, I deployed nine times to Iraq or to Afghanistan and five times to Iraq.

And often when I was in a dangerous situation and looked like I may die in the next few minutes in Iraq or Afghanistan, I looked back on Somalia and thought the same

God that brought me through Somalia, if his sovereign plan wills it, will bring me through this and I am not gonna worry about what's waiting around the corner for me.

We're talking to Jeff Strucker here, The Road to Afraid is the book that you need to pick up. Jeff, I'm encouraged to hear your testimony about God's grace.

Tell me the most interesting or the wildest place that you've ever gotten to speak at because of what

God has done in the movie and that stuff. Give me a weird place that you've been able to preach at. You know,

I've been invited all over the country. I've had a lot of invitations around the world, actually, but not been able to take most of those because I've been in the army all the way up until January of this year when

I recently retired. But one of the real blessings of this is a lot of people that hear my story, they basically hear

Jeff Strucker, a guy from Black Hawk Down, and a lot of audiences that are not church -related are interested in hearing me talk about, well,

I go not to tell what happened in Somalia, I go to tell them about Christ. So I've had a chance to go to a lot of public schools, a lot of men's events that are not at all religious events and when

I'm there, I'm there to share the gospel with them. And I've even had people like principals and school board leaders who say, we never invite ministers to come.

We normally wouldn't ever ask you to do this, but we would tell you not to do this. But if you wanna share your faith a little bit, as long as you tell us what happened in Somalia, we're okay with that.

And they've kind of given me the open door to share the gospel in public schools, in state legislatures, even up to Congress.

And the US Congress asked me to open a congressional session in prayer, and oftentimes they'll say, hey, we expect you to pray a nonsectarian prayer, but in my case, they were kind of like, hey, it's up to you, you do what, you know, we just wanna hear what's on your heart.

Now, this is no Compromise Radio, Jeff, so I have to ask you, did you say in Jesus' name at the end of the prayer? You know, in almost every case that I do,

I don't every time, but I can count probably on less than one hand the amount of times that I didn't end a prayer in Jesus' name, and it is often, if I think this is gonna close the door forever for some guy to come in and follow me who also is a believer, then

I'm not gonna abuse the situation, but almost every time I do pray in Jesus' name. How about celebrity issues?

We know theologically, I know you've been trained at Southern Seminary, that we are worshipers and we don't wanna become the worshipped.

What do you do in the privacy of your own heart and devotions and prayer life and maybe other ways, pastoral encouragement from the senior pastor, how do you guard against being a celebrity and believing the press that's written about you after Army's Top Ranger, ESPN, CNN, et cetera?

Yeah, great question, Mike. There are two things that always keep me grounded. One is my family.

To them, I'm just dad, I'm just a husband. No more or no less dad and a husband than anybody else.

They all know my story and of course, they've seen me in the crowds and how crowds respond sometimes, but to them,

I'm just dad and that's really all I wanna be, is just dad, a husband and a regular guy. But the second thing is,

I know how dark and how wicked and how sinful my own heart is and it never escapes me that apart from the grace of God, I would be one of the worst sinners on earth and so in the back of my mind,

I always remember what John the Baptist said in John 3 .30, that Christ must increase in everything that I do and I must decrease.

Talking to Jeff Strucker, how to become a Christian is one of the links on your website and I was encouraged to find

Jeff that you've got Christ's perfect life, substitutionary death. You said and took your place dying on a cross so that you can have your sins forgiven and then you're talking about the resurrection as well.

Credited with the perfect sinless life that Christ lived. I like military men who are theologians.

Good job, Jeff. I can tell you there are a lot of guys who are right now offering cheap grace and the grace that saved me from my sins was anything but cheap, both for Christ our

Savior and for our God. Jeff, this is a different question but a pastoral question to you.

I have young men and ladies in the congregation that I serve and some of them want to go into the military and I guess there are two different options that you could kind of work through.

Well, maybe if your faith is strong enough, it's a very ungodly place and the other one is, well, you've got a strong faith and so go there.

We need good godly Christian soldiers. What advice would you give to parents or to those listening who are younger saying,

I'm a Christian and should I go into the military? And you've just described the two options very well.

The U .S. military, not just the U .S. military, but frankly, many, many walks of life in our country are very godly, very secular, and very dangerous for somebody who doesn't have their faith grounded well.

So before you start this profession, whatever it is, you better be solid in your walk with Christ, especially if this profession is going to war and facing the enemies of our country and being surrounded by young men and women who have left home and are out of control sometimes because they've never had this kind of freedom in their life.

So your faith has to be strong. If it's not strong enough, don't do this. This would be a disaster for your soul.

But secondly, there is nothing that our country needs more than men and women who are firmly committed to Jesus Christ, who are on the battlefield making life or death decisions and executing our country's foreign policy.

It would be a disaster for us to allow people who have no faith to make those kind of decisions.

And so those people who have the strength in their walk with Christ and who feel called to this kind of vocation, my recommendation is go for it and be the best

Marine, Airman, Soldier, Sailor that you can possibly be. Great advice, Jeff. Thank you.

I think you've got another new book coming out. Tell us about the book. Is it Fallen Angel? Is that right? Yeah, it is.

Fallen Angel just came out in July. It is the third in a series of fiction books. This fiction book series describes a special operations team that goes all over the world, gets in dangerous situations.

One of the things I love most about this series is almost everybody in this series are unbelievers.

They're the average guy that you would run into in the military. But one guy in this series named JJ, he loves

God and loves guns. And he is the spiritual influence oftentimes on what's happening to the rest of the guys on this team.

And I'm very proud of the way this series is shaping up. It's called Fallen Angel, just came out in July.

We've already worked with, and Al Gansky, the co -author, and I have already kind of turned in the follow -up to this, which hopefully will be out in about a year.

Are you JJ in the book, anything? Do you love God and love guns? There's a lot of JJ in me.

It sounds like almost a country radio, country song or something.

I love God and I love guns. All right, we've got about one minute left.

Jeff, thank you for being on No Compromise Radio. And if President Obama asked you, should we,

Jeff, leave Iraq in the next year, what would you tell him in 30 seconds? Yeah, not

Iraq so much, Afghanistan. Iraq, I think it's pretty much over. Oh yes, excuse me, you're right. In Afghanistan, I would say this not just to our president, but to our entire nation, be very, very careful.

It is probably more important how we leave Afghanistan than how we got in it. There's no question that we need to pull out at some point, but we need to pull out at the point that Afghanistan is stable, that there are not, we didn't create more terrorists by being there than we've killed terrorists with our presence there.

And also that we help stabilize the region and work against the subtle spiritual influence that is raising up millions of men who just want to blow themselves up to kill

Americans. So I think, I'm not sure that we're there yet, but my prayer is that we get there soon.

Good, thank you, Jeff, for being on No Compromise Radio, The Road to Unafraid, Jeff Strucker with Dean Merrill.

It's on Thomas Nelson. Publishers, God bless you, Jeff. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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