Heartstone Journey Blog | Heartstone Journey

What Can The Guards At Tomb Of The Unknowns Teach Us?

We are half way through our ten week Stepping Up series with our church men’s group and the finish line is slowly coming into focus. This weeks topic was about men ‘stranding firm’ and it really hit home for me. The video that kick started the session led with a byopic of the the guards that have chosen to take on the duty of guarding the Tomb Of The Unknowns.

The Tomb of the Unknowns is a monument dedicated to American service members who have died without their remains being identified. It is also known as the Tomb Of The Unknowns, but it has never been officially named. It is located in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, United States of America. The World War I “Unknown” is a recipient of the Medal of Honor, the Victoria Cross, and several other foreign nations’ highest service awards. The U.S. Unknowns who were interred are also recipients of the Medal of Honor, presented by U.S. Presidents who presided over their funerals.ⁱ

Even if you already know this, its worth repeating — these soldiers have NEVER left the tomb unguarded for any reason. Pause and take that in for a minute!

Why the example of the Tomb Of The Unknowns? And, why is this so important in God calling a man to step up?

Lets unpack it a bit.

David Murrow

Banish the word facilitator from your vocabulary. Men follow leaders, not facilitators. Jesus led, and so must we.

4 Characteristics Of Authentic Manhood

We are in our third week of week of the Stepping Up series with our church men’s group. Today we journeyed through defining what is authentic manhood?

Defining authentic manhood is tough, because we don’t see it much in our modern progressive culture. In today’s world view the very idea of manhood has been emasculated and masculinity is under attack. The dominant narrative throws out labels such as clueless, knucklehead, bumbling idiot, fill in the blank ________.

Voddie Baucham, pastor at Grace Family Baptist Church in Spring Texas shares that if you could package up todays definition of “manhood” it would the three B’s: billfold, ball-field and bedroom. Being a man in today’s standards is about how much you make, what do you do (focus on athletes) and how are with the ladies. Wow, does today s culture have it wrong!

Heartstone Journey starts the conversation around authentic manhood with Jesus Christ as the model. Why? Because He is the model!

Unfortunately, most of us men don’t follow this model. We follow the Adam model and here’s why.

Fathers, Are You Making This 1 Huge Mistake?

Another powerful snow storm with blizzard conditions was hammering us in New Hampshire this past weekend. This was another in a series of storms that have been delivering heavy snow, wicked winds and significant snow accumulations on top of an already 2+ feet of snow.

We hunkered down in the family room around the warmth of the wood burning stove and decided to rent a movie. Ready to give up on the vast listing of non-interesting moves we came across ‘The Judge’ with Robert Downey Jr. and Robert Duvall.

Quick synopsis. Robert Downey Jr. plays Hank Palmer, a successful defense attorney in Chicago, who finds himself returning to his childhood hometown to attend his mothers funeral. Early on we see the stress fractures of his “picture perfect” life played out in a bitter divorce narrative as he walks out the door to head home.

If you go online and visit the common places for movie reviews you might skip over this movie because it got beaten up a bit by the movie critics. What do the critics know, right? I thought the movie was engaging and deeply moving and it hit a really BIG chord with me.

What chord was that?

Courage Robbers: The Top 10 Things Men Fear Most

I am amped up to be one of the group leaders for a 10 week series our Men’s Ministry group is spearheading at our church called, “Stepping Up”. I was encouraged to see 80+ men decide to take this journey with us to step up into Biblical manhood, despite the crazy snow storm that was raging on outside.

“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.” -1 Corinthians 16:13-14

After watching the inspiring session one video, which highlighted the courageous story of Red Erwin an airman of the Los Angeles B-29 Super-fortress, I met the five men assigned to my group who will be taking this journey with me. Great bunch of guys with diverse backgrounds and a ton of baggage that most men carry with them, including me. As I was going through the weekly exercises I paused at the section called ‘Courage Robbers’ because so many of us men just get paralyzed by courage robbers.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

—Anais Nin

Here is an excerpt from my book Heartstone where I share a snippet of dealing with some of my own courage robbers:

What Can The Guards At Tomb Of The Unknowns Teach Us?

David Murrow

4 Characteristics Of Authentic Manhood

Fathers, Are You Making This 1 Huge Mistake?

Courage Robbers: The Top 10 Things Men Fear Most

Favorite Quotes

Cool Scripture

Never Out Of The Fight!

Resources