{"id":407,"date":"2026-06-13T07:11:41","date_gmt":"2026-06-13T12:11:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/?p=407"},"modified":"2026-06-13T07:12:45","modified_gmt":"2026-06-13T12:12:45","slug":"the-silent-soldier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/2026\/06\/13\/the-silent-soldier\/","title":{"rendered":"The Silent Soldier"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- POST TITLE: The Silent Soldier -->\n<!-- CATEGORY: Get Up and Walk \/ Week 5 \/ Made Strong \/ Series Finale -->\n<style>@import url('https:\/\/fonts.googleapis.com\/css2?family=Oswald:wght@400;500;700&family=Lora:ital,wght@0,400;0,500;1,400&display=swap');\n.guaw{font-family:'Lora',Georgia,serif;color:#2c2c2c;background:#f5f5f0;max-width:720px;margin:2em auto;padding:2.5em 2em;line-height:1.7;font-size:1.05em}\n.guaw .eyebrow{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.85em;letter-spacing:.18em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#8B6F47;font-weight:500;margin:0 0 .4em}\n.guaw h1{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:2.2em;letter-spacing:.02em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#2c2c2c;margin:0 0 .5em;line-height:1.1}\n.guaw h2{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.3em;letter-spacing:.08em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#8B6F47;margin:2em 0 .7em;border-bottom:1px solid #D4A574;padding-bottom:.3em}\n.guaw .verse{font-family:'Lora',Georgia,serif;font-style:italic;font-size:1.08em;line-height:1.6;background:#fff;border-left:4px solid #D4A574;padding:1.1em 1.4em;margin:1.4em 0;color:#2c2c2c}\n.guaw .verse-cite{display:block;font-style:normal;font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.82em;letter-spacing:.1em;color:#8B6F47;margin-top:.6em;text-transform:uppercase}\n.guaw .divider{border:none;border-top:1px solid #D4A574;margin:2em auto;width:80px}\n.guaw p{margin:0 0 1.1em}\n.guaw .pull{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.15em;letter-spacing:.04em;color:#2c2c2c;border-top:1px solid #D4A574;border-bottom:1px solid #D4A574;padding:1em 0;margin:1.6em 0;text-align:center;line-height:1.4}<\/style>\n<div class=\"guaw\">\n<p class=\"eyebrow\">Get Up and Walk \u00b7 Week 5 \u00b7 Saturday Recap \u00b7 Series Finale<\/p>\n<h1>The Silent Soldier<\/h1>\n<p>Five weeks ago we started this series with five men the world would have counted out, and one promise running underneath all of them: that God specializes in telling counted-out men to get up and walk.<\/p>\n<h2>Five Men<\/h2>\n<p>We started with <strong>Mephibosheth<\/strong>. Crippled in both feet, hiding in a town called Lo-debar, certain he was a dead man when the king sent for him. And he learned that his seat at David&#8217;s table had nothing to do with what he could do and everything to do with whose son he was. That was Identity.<\/p>\n<p>Then <strong>Ehud<\/strong>, the left-handed man from the tribe of the right hand, whose so-called defect was the exact instrument God had been preparing all along. That was Calling. The thing they called your defect is the thing God will use.<\/p>\n<p>Then <strong>John Mark<\/strong>, who quit his first mission, blew up a partnership, got written off by the apostle Paul himself, and turned out so useful that the same Paul sent for him at the end. The failure was not the final word. That was Second Chances.<\/p>\n<p>Then <strong>Onesimus<\/strong>, the runaway who had to pick up a letter and walk back into the household he had robbed, toward the man he had wronged, with no guarantee of mercy. The walk back is the work. That was Reconciliation.<\/p>\n<p>And this week <strong>Nicodemus<\/strong>, who came to Jesus by night because he had too much to lose, and ended up carrying seventy-five pounds of spices into broad daylight to bury a condemned man in front of the whole city. That was Public Faith.<\/p>\n<p class=\"pull\">Identity. Calling. Second chances. Reconciliation. Public faith.<\/p>\n<p>Five men, five ways of saying the same sentence. Get up and walk.<\/p>\n<h2>The Quietest Getting Up<\/h2>\n<p>This week we spent on the quietest kind of getting up of all. The silent soldiers. The ones fighting the spiritual war for their families without ever raising their voices. The grandmother on her knees for forty years for a grandson who was running the other way. The father blessing kids who roll their eyes. The husband who finally stopped trying to manage his wife&#8217;s soul and started praying over her while she slept. The man at work whose patience, year after year, turned out to be the only sermon anyone needed to hear.<\/p>\n<p>None of them argued anyone into the kingdom. They had all learned the same hard thing Jesus told Nicodemus in the dark: the wind blows where it wishes. You cannot aim it. You cannot force the new birth into the people you love most, no matter how badly you want it, no matter how right you are.<\/p>\n<h2>What I Keep Landing On<\/h2>\n<p>I will be honest with you, the way I have tried to be honest with you every Saturday of this series.<\/p>\n<p>I have four sons. I want them walking with God more than I want anything else on this earth. It is the prayer underneath all my other prayers. And the single hardest lesson of my life as their father has been this one: I cannot make it happen. I cannot argue them into it. I cannot guilt them into it or schedule it or force the wind to blow through my own kitchen on my own timeline.<\/p>\n<p>What I can do is get up. Every morning. Read, pray, put my hand on each of them, and bless them out loud whether it lands or not. I can let them catch me believing it when I think no one is watching. I can refuse to push, and let the refusing to push be its own kind of faith. Because the patience is the faith. The restraint not to force it, held for years out of love, is not me being passive. It is the truest thing I believe, made visible to the people I would die for.<\/p>\n<p>That is the war. It does not look like a war. It looks like a man in a quiet kitchen at dawn with an open Bible and a cup of coffee, fighting on his knees for kids who do not yet know there is a battle. It is fought in the open, where they can see it, and won by the God who does the drawing.<\/p>\n<p>The same God who pulled Mephibosheth out of hiding and to the table. Who armed Ehud&#8217;s bound hand. Who sent for John Mark. Who walked Onesimus home. Who drew Nicodemus out of the dark and into the daylight. That God is not done. Not with your family. Not with mine.<\/p>\n<p>So get up. And walk.<\/p>\n<p>Live it in the open; God does the drawing.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"divider\" \/>\n<p class=\"eyebrow\">Get Up and Walk \u00b7 The Complete Series \u00b7 Thank you for walking it with us<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Get Up and Walk \u00b7 Week 5 \u00b7 Saturday Recap \u00b7 Series Finale The Silent Soldier Five weeks ago we started this series with five men the world would have counted out, and one promise running underneath all of them:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[12,16,14,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-made-strong","category-public-faith","category-second-chances","category-self-reflection"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/SU_20260613_BLOG.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":408,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions\/408"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}