0:00
(upbeat music)
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LinkedIn is great at connecting you
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with the world's largest professional network,
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but it can't connect you with motivation
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on a Monday morning.
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LinkedIn can help you get insights
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from your professional community,
0:12
but it can't give you any insight
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into why Dave's is still talking on mute.
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And while it can't stop your boss
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from bringing tuna for lunch,
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LinkedIn can help bring your career to the next level.
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LinkedIn is the network that works for you.
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Visit LinkedIn.com to learn more.
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(upbeat music)
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Hey, what's up guys?
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This is Undaunted Life of Man's Podcast.
0:45
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:46
Let's get into it.
0:47
So really, this is our first podcast.
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We're really excited to get into this.
0:50
Some of you that have been following us for a while.
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You've wanted us to do a podcast.
0:54
You've wanted us to do a lot of other different things.
0:56
And so we thought between a blog and a podcast,
0:58
this would be something that you all would like more.
1:00
So this is the first one.
1:02
And really, I don't want to assume
1:04
that all of you out there know who Undaunted Life is,
1:06
why we're here.
1:07
So that's the point of this episode
1:09
is to introduce you all to Undaunted Life
1:12
to tell you why we're here and why we do what we do.
1:14
So we are a men's ministry
1:16
that's based out of the Oklahoma City area.
1:18
And our mission is cultivating manly resilience.
1:22
And so our vision that goes along with our mission
1:24
is content that forges spiritual, mental,
1:28
and physical toughness.
1:29
So when we say content, rather,
1:32
we mean that to mean a lot of different things.
1:34
So that could be podcasts, blogs, lists that we put out,
1:37
devotionals, videos, they could be live speaking,
1:41
excursions, a lot of different things.
1:42
It's basically we're going to go
1:44
wherever our target audience wants us to be.
1:47
And so specifically, our target audience is obviously men,
1:50
but more specifically, it's non-church guys
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or I guess a better way to say it would maybe even be
1:56
just not your typical church guy.
1:58
So as many of you know,
2:00
and maybe many of you listening to this,
2:02
most churches aren't really the best places for manly men.
2:06
The modern day church has done quite a bit
2:08
to kind of stamp out modern manly men,
2:11
any shows of or displays on testosterone
2:15
or aggression or any of those types of things.
2:16
You can definitely see that in sermon content.
2:19
Again, we hear a lot about the Lamb of God,
2:21
but we almost never hear about the Lion of Judah.
2:24
And if we do hear about the Lion of Judah,
2:26
it's kind of this declawed house cat version
2:28
of the Lion of Judah and even the worship content
2:32
and kind of the style of worship.
2:33
It's not really an emotive experience
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for these types of guys.
2:37
So you got to see most guys walk into churches like this
2:40
where the content is what it is and the music is what it is.
2:43
And they feel like there's just nothing but man repellent
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being sprayed everywhere around them.
2:47
Guys that are attracted to those types of things,
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just maybe your MMA fighter, your former military
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or police officer, any of these people
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that may have a little bit of a rougher exterior
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or have a little bit more rough around the edges,
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sometimes these guys don't really integrate
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into most modern day churches.
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And so that's the type of guy that we're going after
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because we know that that's a guy
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that has been underutilized.
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Most men's ministries go after that typical church guy
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'cause that typical church guy is safe, he's predictable
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and there's nothing wrong with that guy either.
3:20
I'm not trying to say that there's something wrong
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with that guy, I'm saying that that guy is well served.
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There's not a ton of stuff in the men's ministry space
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when compared to women's ministries,
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but there is quite a few things there
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and quite a few options for them.
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And so for us, we're gonna focus on things
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that are gonna go after that non-typical church guy
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that maybe doesn't feel as if they're welcome
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in a lot of different ministries
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or in a lot of different churches.
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And so for us, we see that there are three elements
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to what we call an undaunted life
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and that is spiritual, mental and physical.
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So why those three?
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There's a lot of other different areas of life
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that we can focus on, but for us,
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if you're crushing it spiritually, mentally and physically,
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you're really doing a pretty bang up job at life.
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So you're gonna be better engaged as a parent,
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you're gonna be better engaged with the community,
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things around, you're gonna be flourishing.
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But what we've noticed and what you know to be true,
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even if you think about it,
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most guys are not crushing it in all three of those areas.
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And most guys are being honest with themselves,
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they would really be looking at it in terms of,
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gosh, I don't even know if I'm crushing
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in any of those categories.
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So most guys that we talk to and that we experience,
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there's usually one out of those three
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they tend to be doing really well at,
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but they're just not very well rounded.
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And so, and you know how this goes, right?
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So you'll have that guy that is super brainiac,
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very, very smart, but if they needed to run
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to the end of the block at full speed to save their life,
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they would not be physically capable of doing that.
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But on the same token, you may have a guy
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that's like super yoked up, Jim Broke,
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can bench all the plates on the rack,
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you know, that type of guy.
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But if you asked him a very in-depth spiritual question,
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he would just look at you and be completely lost.
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So again, we don't see that as being acceptable
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for a modern Christian man that you're not spiritually,
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mentally or physically resilient.
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So those are really the three things
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that we're gonna harp on a lot.
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And you'll notice throughout our podcast,
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we're gonna have different episodes
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that may have more of a spiritual bend,
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more of a mental bend and more of physical bend.
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And again, we really focus on the concept of resilience
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because most people have spiritual, mental
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and physical aspects of their lives,
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but it's your ability to bounce back
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and your ability to be resilient
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that is really gonna carry you through
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and develop you even more as a person.
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So I wanna kind of back up to the beginning
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and some of you might be curious, you know,
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why I personally wanted to start a ministry like this,
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how it even led to doing a podcast
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or doing all the other different cool things
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that we're doing.
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So if y'all follow me along a little bit,
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this was maybe about seven or eight years ago,
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maybe a little bit longer ago.
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Well, I'm not one of those guys normally
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that feels like God is just talking to me,
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like the clouds part and I'm having a conversation
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with the guy.
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I know several people that that is the relationship
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they feel like they have with God,
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but that's just not really the one I feel for myself.
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But about eight years ago or so,
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I honestly felt like God was speaking to me directly.
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I was running or something in my neighborhood
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and I felt like God was telling me
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that there was gonna be a really, really big need
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for men's ministry.
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And my initial thought is like,
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that's kind of crazy 'cause there seems to be
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a lot of men's ministry things out there.
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Every church kind of pretends like men are important
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and that type of thing.
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But as I thought about that more as the days and weeks
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and even years that came to pass,
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I did see that there was a gap,
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that there is a need out there
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and there's a gap that needs to be filled.
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And so one thing that I've done
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is I've helped other ministries.
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I've helped start other ministries.
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But with a lot of these other ministries,
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they all felt like and kind of ended up being
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like women's ministries, but for men.
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I mean, I don't know if that really makes sense to you,
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but if you've ever gone to one and had that feeling,
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know that you're not alone.
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That it's like, man, this whole thing,
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all they want us to do is to get around in a circle
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and talk to each other about what we're feeling
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and what we're going through
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when all I really wanna do is be shoulder to shoulder
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with a guy.
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They don't really understand that.
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So in helping other ministries,
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I saw that there was a philosophy within men's ministry
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that is just, let's try to make this as safe
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and easy as possible.
7:28
So it's like, hey, let's almost challenge guys,
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but not really that much.
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And so that's really why I've kind of developed
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a philosophy about men's ministry that I have.
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And you'll hear a lot more about that philosophy
7:40
as we go on, as we do more things
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and as we do more podcasts.
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And so in terms of the name Undaunted Life,
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I mean, Undaunted really isn't a word
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that's used in normal vernacular,
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but really it just means being fearless.
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It means looking down the face of a struggle
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or some type of an opponent,
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whether that's in your life or like an actual opponent,
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just not being filled with a spirit of fear, rather.
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It's just not looking at that person
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or that situation and being crumbled by it.
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And so we really want to invigorate men
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to have a life that is fully filled
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with tremendous amounts of strength and passion
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for whatever it is that you want to have strength
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and passion for, but specifically as a spiritual warrior
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for Christ, for your family,
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interceding for those that can't interced themselves.
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And so those are the things that we're gonna be pushing through.
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So really the first thing that we did as Undaunted Life
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to really get into any space
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to kind of put our philosophy out there
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about spiritual, mental and physical resilience,
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maybe even just men's ministry overall,
8:43
was a U-version devotional.
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So some of you may have heard about Undaunted Life
8:48
because you found our U-version devotional,
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it's a 21-day men's devotional,
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but the story goes that I actually attended a church
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during the time that is the church
8:58
that started the U-version app.
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So I think the app at this point has been downloaded
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almost half a billion times or something like that,
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something ridiculous.
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But I went to this pastor that was at this church
9:08
and I had started to read some of the men's devotionals
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that I saw in U-version
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and I was really disappointed by him.
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They were just, they were goofy and corny and just like,
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kind of like I said a little bit earlier,
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it felt like I was reading a women's devotional
9:23
but it just had the word man in there a bunch.
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And so I told this pastor what I thought about the devotionals
9:28
and he kind of agreed with me and then he just goes,
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well, why don't you write one?
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It was just kind of him throwing down the gauntlet a little bit
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and I was like, you know, you can do that
9:36
and he's like, yeah, absolutely, you can do that.
9:38
Just write it, submit it.
9:39
And if U-version likes it, they'll publish it.
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So, you know, I took the challenge and, you know,
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for me, if I was gonna do anything,
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I wasn't gonna do like a three-day devotional,
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like that just didn't seem like it would make a lot of sense.
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So what I did is I dedicated seven days
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to each one of the elements of an Undaunted Life.
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So it was seven days on spiritual resilience,
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seven days on mental resilience
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and seven days on physical resilience.
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And so I started writing and I wanted to write in a way
10:05
that made sense for guys that it was gonna be stories
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that they could relate to or stories
10:10
that they were even familiar with.
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And so that's what I did.
10:13
And it took me a while to do it.
10:14
And it was kind of one of those deals where I submitted it
10:17
to U-version halfway, expecting them not to accept it,
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but they ended up accepting it, which was awesome.
10:22
That was kind of a cool feeling to know
10:24
that they put that out there on their app
10:25
that's being read by people all over the world.
10:27
But at the same time,
10:29
I didn't think anybody would actually read it.
10:31
I didn't think people were actually gonna be seeking this out
10:33
and biking the material.
10:35
So, but here we are about a year later
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and there's close to 20,000 people who have actually started
10:42
and completed the devotional.
10:44
I've had men reach out to us to let us know
10:46
that that's what they do for their men's ministry,
10:48
that they are just going through our devotional.
10:51
They have men's Sunday schools
10:53
or men's groups through their church
10:55
or men's group outside their church.
10:56
And they'll use the stuff that Undaunted Life is doing,
10:59
specifically so that they can continue
11:01
to cultivate those things
11:03
and they really do like the material.
11:04
Let's transition right now to talk a little bit
11:06
about this podcast.
11:07
For me personally, I'm a podcast junkie.
11:10
I listen to probably 40 or 45 podcasts a week.
11:13
I listen to most of them at two times speed
11:15
just so I can get more in.
11:17
And if you don't do that already,
11:18
that would be something I would highly, highly recommend.
11:21
'Cause most people talk at a fairly easy tone
11:25
or speed rather, they don't really go super, super fast.
11:28
So bump it up to two times speed,
11:30
it'll take a little bit of getting used to
11:31
but three or four podcasts in,
11:32
you'll just love the fact
11:34
that you can take more information in that you ever did.
11:36
So really, we're gonna focus a lot
11:39
on a lot of different topics.
11:40
Really a myriad of different topics
11:42
we're gonna speak about on this podcast.
11:43
So obviously, we're gonna have physical,
11:45
mental and spiritual bins to different podcasts
11:47
as I mentioned earlier.
11:50
We're gonna do current events.
11:51
We're gonna talk about politics,
11:53
church issues, cultural issues, men's issues.
11:56
I mean, sports, philosophy, books.
11:58
I mean, we're just gonna talk about
11:59
all kinds of different things.
12:00
And so there's not gonna be,
12:02
I want this podcast to be relevant in real time.
12:06
So if you're listening to this on a Thursday,
12:08
we want to make sure that we mentioned something
12:11
that happened that was huge the day before.
12:14
And so that's one thing that we want you
12:15
to be able to come to this podcast,
12:17
expecting that we're gonna go into those areas
12:19
and that we're gonna go into a lot of subjects
12:21
that are of interest to you guys.
12:22
But we're also gonna hit topics that men need to know about
12:26
and just that men need to know is really important
12:28
that maybe you wouldn't have heard about anywhere else.
12:31
So again, with this podcast,
12:33
the tone is gonna be a little bit different.
12:36
It's gonna be not what you would maybe expect
12:38
from a quote unquote ministry,
12:41
but we're not gonna go all the way to the other side.
12:42
We know there are some podcasts out there
12:44
in the podcast world that claim to be spiritual,
12:47
but are fairly, I don't know,
12:50
the language is a little bit ridiculous
12:52
and they're not really focusing
12:54
on any type of gospel center worldview.
12:56
So we're not gonna go that far,
12:57
but we are gonna be bold.
12:59
We're gonna be straightforward
13:00
and we're going to say things that are unpalatable
13:03
to many people and that's gonna be outside
13:06
and inside the church.
13:07
So we're excited about getting this ready to go for you guys.
13:10
We're so thankful that you all thought enough
13:12
about what we do as a ministry to see us
13:15
through the process of getting a podcast going.
13:17
So, and one thing I wanted to mention here
13:19
is this will be a weekly podcast.
13:21
So, we are gonna post one every single week
13:24
until you guys tell us you don't want it that often,
13:27
but that's gonna be a good way for us to kind of look at
13:30
what we're seeing in the world
13:31
and see what we can give it to you
13:33
in terms of kind of a bite-size way
13:35
of looking at whatever the story is.
13:37
This is also gonna be a little bit of a short
13:39
kind of session podcast.
13:40
So, this isn't gonna be a Joe Rogan or a Jaco Willing
13:44
type of podcast.
13:45
We're not gonna be here for two and three hours.
13:47
There's not gonna be any interviews.
13:48
It's just gonna be me in here chatting
13:50
about whatever it is, whatever subject matter
13:52
we need to be talking about at that time.
13:54
So, look for it to be more like, I don't know,
13:57
in the 20 to 25 minute range.
13:59
If these later ones don't hold to that standard,
14:01
don't blame me too much for saying that in the first one,
14:03
but that's really what we're shooting for.
14:05
And we're gonna put something together for you all.
14:07
That's gonna be worth your time
14:08
and worth your friend's time as well.
14:10
So, thank you so much for listening in
14:13
on this first podcast.
14:14
If you would, please subscribe.
14:16
Whether you're listening to this on iTunes
14:18
or SoundCloud or something else, please subscribe.
14:20
Refer this to your friends so they can listen
14:22
and also share on social media.
14:23
If we deserve a five star review, please leave one.
14:26
Our website is www.undaunted.life.
14:30
Again, www.undaunted.life.
14:33
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter @undauntedlife
14:36
and facebook.com/undauntedlife.
14:38
We also wanna thank the band August Burns Red
14:41
for allowing us to use their music library for our content.
14:44
The intro outro track on this podcast
14:46
is their song "King of Sorrow"
14:47
which is off their latest record entitled
14:49
"Phantom Anthem," links are in the description.
14:52
Again, I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
14:54
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience,
14:56
keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical toughness.
14:59
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.
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