Stand Courageous conference challenges men to live out the truths of God’s Word

Liberty University’s Standing For Freedom Center hosted hundreds of men, including several Liberty students, for Saturday’s Stand Courageous conference held in the Center for Music and the Worship Arts Concert Hall.

The all-day conference, a ministry outreach of the Family Research Council (FRC), included speakers such as Ret. U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, FRC’s executive vice president; Liberty Campus Pastor and Thomas Road Bible Church Senior Pastor Jonathan Falwell; Bishop Larry Jackson; Dr. Stu Weber; and Pastor Charles Flowers.

The conference featured powerful worship music from Charles Billingsley and several breakout sessions led by FRC staff members in DeMoss Hall and the Montview Alumni Ballroom.

Liberty alumnus Tony Perkins (’92), a former U.S. Marine and police officer who has served as FRC President since 2003, headed up the conference and spoke on the man’s role as chaplain. Perkins is an innovative pro-life and pro-family policy and political leader and ordained minister who completed two terms in the Louisiana state legislature from 1996-2002, passing the nation’s first Covenant Marriage law in 1997. In 2018, he was appointed to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom before being reappointed to a second term in 2020.

“Our focus is on public policy from a biblical perspective,” Perkins said of the FRC. “We’re unapologetically a Christian organization. We believe that a nation that could be founded on the Word of God is a nation that can be guided and directed by the Word of God still today.”

He said he gained that spiritual foundation and sense of civic responsibility through political activism as a student at Liberty.

“Dr. Jerry Falwell (Liberty’s founder) was a mentor of mine, and I am so grateful for his vision,” Perkins said. “Every time I walk on this campus, I see it getting fulfilled more and more. He was a man of vision and a man of purpose. Each of us has a purpose. God has a purpose for our lives.”

Perkins, who also serves as host of the daily, nationally syndicated radio show “Washington Watch,” also thanked the Standing for Freedom Center.

“I appreciate the vision that Liberty University has in being a voice to our country and literally to the world,” he said.

Perkins is also the author of “No Fear: Real Stories of a Courageous New Generation Standing for Truth.” But his primary passion is equipping men as leaders of their families and homes and pastors and civil servants as governors of their communities. He has built a network of pastors and churches, encouraging them to impact the culture by thinking nationally while acting locally.

“I came to the realization as the Lord showed me that if we could strengthen the role of men and help them become the men that God has designed them to be, then we could solve about 80 percent of our public policy issues in this nation,” Perkins said. “As men, we need to be leading our families into the presence of God.”

Falwell said the hope of the world is not found in Washington, D.C., but in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

“It is not found in a state house or the White House or the Supreme Court. It is found in God’s house, the Church,” he said. “Jesus said, ‘I will build my Church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it. So we must stand together, walk together, serve together, pray together, lead together, and change the world together, and that’s what we are here to talk about today. We hope it is an empowering day, an encouraging day for you.”

At the outset of the conference, Perkins declared that it would be a politically incorrect zone.

“We’re here to speak truth, even if it’s uncomfortable, because we don’t have time to waste,” he said. “Our nation is in a crisis. It is time for the men of God to be the men that God has created them to be.”

Falwell said the culture is in a downward spiral and warned that the problems we as a society are dealing with will not improve unless Christians get involved and show the world through their lives of integrity how to rightly live and lead.

“The world has gone mad and … the Bible says in the last days, it will get worse and worse,” Falwell said. “So if it’s not going to get better, then we’d better get serious and recognize our duties and responsibilities that we must instruct, we must teach, we must be an example and a model of the presence and the power of God.”

Perkins told of the downward slide that begins when the spiritual leader of the household follows the ways of the world instead of standing strong upon the truths of God’s Word.

“Compromise in the home leads to a corruption in the culture which has consequences for an entire nation,” he said. “We need to challenge our children to commit to serve the Lord. As a chaplain, as a spiritual leader in the home, a man is to educate, he is to exhort, to encourage, but he is also to be an example. This is where the rubber meets the road.”

One of the most powerful testimonies of the conference was shared by Ret. Lt. Gen. Boykin. He detailed his 36-year military year, highlighted by 13 years spent in the Delta Force when he was involved in the 1980 Iran hostage rescue attempt, the 1989 invasion of Panama to apprehend Manuel Noriega, the 1992 hunt for Pablo Escobar in Colombia, and the 1993 operation portrayed in the movie “Black Hawk Down” in Mogadishu, Somalia, that left 18 U.S. soldiers dead and 73 injured.

In his autobiography, “Never Surrender: A Soldier’s Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom,” Boykin tells how he trusted in God as he endured such perilous trials on the battlefield. During the incident in Somalia, he asked, “Where were you, God? You could have stopped this.” He heard the voice of the Lord say, “If there is no God, there is no hope.” At that moment, his heart was broken and he repented for what he said, was forgiven, and received the assurance that he would see the glory of God when he met those soldiers in Heaven.

Injured by mortar fire in that skirmish, Boykin was taken to the same medical tent as his medic, Dr. Rob Marsh, who was more severely injured. Boykin reached over and grabbed his hand and prayed, “God, save him. Lord, don’t let him die.’ A nurse told him to let him go as Marsh was declared dead, but Boykin kept praying for him. Marsh survived and now runs a medical clinic in Middlebrook, Va., in the Shenandoah Valley. In 2014, he was named the USA’s Country Doctor of the Year.

“If you’ve been praying for somebody, in your family, somebody around you, somebody you know, somebody you care about … and you don’t feel like the Lord is hearing your prayers because you don’t see anything, you keep praying,” Boykin said. “See, as long as you can pray, God can move.”

Falwell echoed that charge in his final instructions.

“Guys, remember this: you are not done teaching until you are done breathing,” he said. “So till the day you die, you want to breathe for Christ.”