God’s Word For Warriors exists to help veterans and their families heal from the moral and spiritual wounds associated with service-related hardships. We are a program of healing.
God’s Word for Warrior’s is a book and the title of classes taught at Lipscomb University Nashville, TN by Dr. Tom Seals, Professor of Bible and Chaplain to Veterans. This course has now expanded and is being taught all across the USA in churches and other venues, by trained church leaders who are veterans, in an effort to reach out to veterans from all walks of life and from every era, WWII through Iraq and Afghanistan.
“There is a great need for a faith-based course focusing on spiritual development while addressing physical, mental and moral experiences that many veterans have faced,” says Seals. “So, we developed this course designed specifically for veterans, addressing situations that our veteran men and women face in their goals of achieving normalcy in their post-deployment futures.” The course addresses many issues, such as PTSD, anger management, survivor’s guilt, depression, and suicide.
Statistics reveal that veterans wrestle with these issues at alarming rates. Through the God’s Word for Warriors efforts a significant impact is being made in the lives of veterans. If you are interested in gaining more insight on this effort and how you and your community can make such impact in veterans’ lives. Contact God’s Word for Warriors at contactus@godswordforwarriors.com or 615.964.7450.
Course Purpose and Rationale:
This course of study, “God’s Word for Warriors,” resolves to address several situations that our America soldiers face in their goal of normalcy in their post-deployment future. In seeking to assist our veterans in “reconnecting” with our culture, this course begins with the principle that the first “reconnect” must contain a spiritual or faith component. With this course of study, we hope to address many of the issues the returning veterans face. This will include how the Word of God addresses many of these post-deployment issues. The designed goal will be the establishment of a growing and deepening relationship with God and fellow-believers. This course will strive to bring a wholeness of life to each of these veteran-students – spiritually, socially and physically – a life which our Lord desires for all (John 10:10).
This course begins with the question, “What do the scriptures say about war?” in order to set aside any feelings of guilt and misunderstanding pertaining to a Christian’s involvement with the deep concerns of military response to the “enemy.” This subject matter will be followed over a series of weeks in addressing personal issues that affect the conscientious warrior, issues brought about by the tragedies of war.
Retired US Army Captain Maryann Tackett attended Dr. Seals course at Lipscomb University had wrote the following comments after the course.
“Imagine a world where your community courageously rose up and reached out to meet their very own veterans’ spiritual needs.
How would that make you feel?
If you said “Great!”, then you might have remembered meeting Dr. Seals from David Lipscomb University at our Veteran Boot Camp. And you must keep reading…
What I’m sharing today is arguably the most stunning approach in history for communities, institutions, churches, etc. to actively reach out to veterans’ specific spiritual needs……a discovery that astounded us at Vet to Vet Tennessee.
For a long time professionals assumed that veterans would return to their home congregations, use the VA hospital services or other counseling services as they transitioned and all would be well…
…and that rarely works because these require the veteran to reach out and ask for the help usually…
…and the TRUTH is it is hard to transition as a veteran and it is hard to reach out for what you need. Also, it may hard to be around a large crowd or to know how to admit a need for spiritual nurturing. The TRUTH is that our communities need to rise up and reach out.