Ep 9 - Warrior Love
Scott Beyer: In the winter of 1777, the Continental Army's main body commanded by General George Washington, spent its days wintering in Valley Forge. Pennsylvania. It was a hard winter after some hard defeats. The British, it seemed were winning, and now they were hunkered down for a long winter, but it wasn't going to be rest.
Washington himself described the scene this way. The men. He said, to see men without clothes to cover their nakedness without blankets to lie on without shoes by which their marches might be traced by the blood from their feet, is a mark of patience and obedience, which in my opinion, can scarce be paralleled.
The horses died from starvation or exposure. Men got sick. The place was a stench filled mess, and Washington never forgot it. In the history of the Revolutionary War, George Washington stands as a legendary icon. He was a man who saw things, dark things, and yet through all of that, he stood by his men. It was an unbelievable show of force that he didn't go back to Mount Vernon.
He remained there in Valley Forge with them and he remained with them while they continued to drill. That's right. Because an army even in the winter, has to continue to drill. They have to know how to form columns and then move to line formations and then go back to the columns because. In those days, the way in Army won was by men learning how to stay calm and at attention while a Cannon Ball took out the guy right next to you.
Valley Forge is a good example of what life was like for the Continental Army as it battled the British. In the Revolutionary War, it was eight years, and during those eight years, most of the time it looked like they weren't winning. And yet George Washington and the Army continued to drill to March to fight, even though oftentimes they went years.
Yeah, you heard me years without being paid. To make matters worse the entire time all of this is going on. The state governments, you know, the states. Where asking the army to fight are critical of them, even while the war was still raging on the critics in Congress and the state governments consistently conjured up troubling comparisons between the continental army and the Roman legions of Julius Caesar, basically before they'd even won the battle.
They were accusing George Washington and the army of saying, when we win, we're just gonna take over and be the next British rulers and we'll be just as bad as what we are beating right now. It was infuriating. And then one day the unthinkable happened. They won. after eight years of more losses than wins.
At the Battle of Yorktown, they laid siege to the city and the British left and they didn't come back. The US became the US, or at least they were no longer the British colonies. They were purely the American colon. And at that moment, George Washington had a decision and that decision, that's what I want to talk about.
I'm Scott Beyer and this is the Love Better Podcast, where we explore the truths and the lies about love. And more importantly, how to turn love into a skill, something we can get better at and hone along the way. I'm fascinated by Warriors soldiers that through the testing of war, become hardened into a special breed of mankind, and I don't think I'm alone.
There's a reason we thank servicemen and service women for their service Instinctively, I think most of us recognize that military life is a special sort of existence, unlike civilian life. And because of that, there are some special lessons to be learned from men like George Washington. There are lots of things to be fascinated with about George Washington.
George Washington the soldier is an impressive thing, but I'm most impressed by George Washington who stops being the soldier. You see, when the war was over, All of a sudden there's one army in the entire continental United States, and he's the head of it. And at this point in time, everybody that he's been protecting has not been taking care of him.
They've not been paying his soldiers, they've not been watching over them. They've been critical of how he's handled the war, and they've been critical of what he would do afterwards. On top of that, they had basically already said, Hey, you know, those promises, we said that if we win the war, we'll take care of the soldiers and pay 'em and, and watch over them for the duration of their lives.
Yeah, we don't have any money for that. So there would've been a very real temptation for George Washington to one, want to take care of his men by staying in charge two. See. Foolishness. That was often the case in that early Congress of the Confederation and say, I could do a better job. And on top of it, he was surrounded by men who, you know, what their favorite term for him was.
In fact, it was their only term for him. His Excellency, the opportunity for George Washington to have kingship pop into his mind, and in fact, take over is amazingly high. It's so high in fact that George iii, the guy who he just beat, said, if Washington could banish from his mind the idea of being king and resist the monarchical man.
And retire. Instead, George II said he would be the greatest man in the world. He would've resisted what Napoleon Lennon, Mao, and Castro did not do. He would've said, I'm gonna do what I ought. Not what I want, and that is what makes George Washington special. His sense of duty and moral fiber. In Jor George Washington understood the power of the word ought.
He knew he ought not to become king, and so he simply didn't. He knew what he ought to do, and. He did it O it's a word of moral imperative and is often attached to the word love in the Bible because biblical love is not that tare stuff of romance novels. Biblical love is strong and virtuous and infused with honor and moral fiber.
It is warrior love. Look at a couple of verses with me, first John, chapter four, verse 11. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Ephesians 5 28. So husbands ought also to love their own wives as their own bodies. He loves his own wife, loves himself. One. John three, verse 16. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren, I am convinced that the problem in life is rarely that we don't know what we should do.
It is whether or not we will have the will to do what we know we ought. Aught. It's a fascinating word. Do you know where it comes from? It used to be the past tense for the word O. We would say, I owed Greg 10 bucks for lunch. But if you went back a couple of hundred years, you would've said, I aught Greg.
10 bucks for lunch. To say I ought is to confess that something is owed. There is a debt. To love something that is owed in the process of loving others. I made a vow to my wife. I owe her the same care and concern that I have for myself. God loves us. I owe others that kind of love too. Jesus. Died for people, specifically his church.
I owe. I ought to lay down my life for the brethren. Two. In this context, love is a Warrior's call. It is a debt owed a duty vowed a mission accepted. and nobody, I mean, nobody embodies the strength of Warrior's. Love like Caleb, the son of Jauna. Quick side note before we get into Caleb, he is my favorite Bible hero.
Perhaps I shouldn't have favorites. Perhaps I should just love. All of the Bible heroes equally, but I don't, so that is just the way it is. Caleb. Caleb is my favorite. We are first introduced to Caleb in numbers 13. He's one of the 12 spies that is picked out to spy out the land. He is a warrior of the tribe of Judah.
And Caleb, he's one of those warriors who came back from spying out the land and while everybody else said, no, we can't do it, the cities are too big, the people are too scary, we will lose. Caleb says otherwise. In numbers 13 verse 30, it says, Caleb quieted the people before Moses and said We should, by all means, go up and take possession of it for we will surely overcome.
In numbers chapter 14, when God is rebuking the nation, because they were a bunch of cowards and weaklings, he instead turns and says of Caleb, but my servant Caleb, because he has had a different spirit and has followed me fully. I will bring into the land which he entered, and his descendants shall take possession of it.
Caleb is the epitome of aught. In fact, this guy is so committed to duty and what he should do that the Bible records it at. 85 years old. He's given the option of what choice of land he wants now that they've actually made it into the promised land. And you know what he chooses? He chooses he where the Ana come, you know, Goliath, great-grandparents.
He chooses where they live because God said we can take all the land and those fortified cities look like land that needs taking. Hebron became his inheritance because he followed the Lord. Caleb didn't choose the easy path. He chose the hard one, but he also chose the one he ought to. Caleb proves that to love has absolutely nothing to do with feelings.
We have become so deeply enamored with this idea that if I feel love, then it must be right. But the truth is, Caleb is not a touchy feel a guy at all. Caleb is a guy who says, let's go and take it. Why? Because we ought to love like Caleb. says, I don't feel like it, but I'll do it anyways. I don't feel like getting up off the couch, but I will anyways.
I don't feel like helping my neighbor, but I'm going to anyways. I don't feel loving towards my spouse, but I'm going to act that way anyways. Caleb's love. Is love in motion, warrior love does what ought to be done. There are two ways to approach life. You can look at it from the standpoint of what is owed me, or you can stand and ask yourself, what do I owe life?
There is a debt owed for life here on Earth. Your time. It's a gift from God and the relationships we have with humans, they're a gift from God too. And there are things that we ought to do if we're paying attention to Matthew 25. We ought to give God a good return for the talents he has entrusted us with.
Or if you read the words of Luke 18, you realize we ought to pray and not lose. John 4 24 tells us we ought to worship and we ought to do it in spirit and in truth, we ought to wash each other's feet, lead as servants and not think of ourselves, our time, our opinions, or our preferences as being more valuable than others.
If we have warrior love, we ought to keep our word. We ought to find the answers to the things we don't understand, and we ought to do what we do. Understand. We ought to apologize when we sin against each other and we ought to stop sinning and we ought to stop making excuses. We ought to love our wives or love our husbands and love our children.
we ought to watch our tongues and be careful with what we say. We ought to start taking ownership of our decisions and we ought to stop complaining and start giving thanks. And above all, if we really love, we ought to start redeeming the time and stop talking about what we ought to do and start actually doing.
If we're gonna be people of duty, people of honor, people like Caleb, we ought to love better. We ought to love like warriors, love like Caleb. Do what you ought. If you've listened this far, hopefully we've done something to help make your life a little bit better. Would you mind returning the favor and helping us by subscribing to the podcast through your favorite platform?
By sharing with others or leaving a review On Apple Podcast, you help us reach more people. Also, if you want more information about the work I'm doing at Eastland, visit us at Eastland Christians dot. Or my personal Bible site, bible grad.com, where you can sign up for daily Bible devotionals called Bible Bites, and receive them in your email each morning, take online Bible classes or find videos that will help you study through the Bible throughout the year.
And until next time, remember, you are loved, so go love better.
