USA (MNN) — Veterans Day is tomorrow. While most of us set aside a day each year to appreciate veterans and honor their service, Warriors Set Free seeks to minister to these men and women year-round.
Warriors Set Free is part of Set Free Ministries, which introduces people to the freedom they can have in Christ, provides biblical guidance, and encourages discipleship. Warriors Set Free provides this same counsel and guidance specifically to veterans. Their director, founder, and volunteers are all veterans. Steve Prince explains this is key for the ministry to be successful.
“With myself being a veteran of about 25 years [of service], I connect with veterans the way a veteran can talk to a veteran. I will sit down with a vet either over lunch or over zoom and just listen to their story. I can relate to a lot of them even among different generations or different branches. I was in the Army, but we connect with Marines and Navy and Air Force because we all have a similar experience of leaving home to go defend freedom,” he says.
(Photo courtesy of Eric Ward via Unsplash)
“I use my military background to connect with them so they can start to understand that someone else understands. That allows them to open up and start to tell me what they’ve been through.”
Guided by Truth
Once the conversation gets going, Prince is then able to offer veterans biblical truth.
“If a veteran isn’t living his or her life to the full, we can help him or her see what they’re doing [isn’t] in alignment with Scripture,” he says.
“We refer to Scripture as truth because it is similar to a military manual. We have technical manuals and field manuals in the military that tell us how to do our jobs and how to accomplish tasks. Scripture is very much the same, so we start discipleship processes with many veterans and then encourage them to continue that through their church, through another ministry, or with us long term.”
On Veterans Day tomorrow, Prince encourages everyone to think about how they can best honor veterans, both in interactions on Veterans Day and the rest of the year.
(Photo courtesy of Caleb Fisher via Unsplash)
“As a society, we want to talk too much, and Scripture says to be slow to speak quick to listen. It’s a very important skill just to be able to listen and ask gentle questions,” Prince says.
“I don’t recommend saying thank you for your service because it’s become very hollow since that’s what everybody says. If you walk up to that veteran and say, ‘Look, I know you’re in the military, and I want to thank you on behalf of my family,’ or change it up at all. That means a lot more to me personally than thank you for your service.”
Prince asks for prayers for veterans both on the holiday tomorrow and all year. To learn more about how you can connect veterans to Warriors Set Free and pray for those they’re already ministering to, visit their website here.
Header image courtesy of Aaron Burden via Unsplash
