Paul Horrocks and Tough Guys of the Bible (Part 1)

John Farrell: Could you please tell me a little bit about your book, Tough Guys of the Bible?

Paul Horrocks: Tough Guys of the Bible is a story of these courageous men from the Bible and the characteristics they have. It’s really comparing those men to more recent men who also have courage. So, what we’re doing with the book is we’re trying to show you that these men in the Bible had courage in these incredible situations that were high profile. They called down fire from heaven, they went and challenged kings, they rebuilt cities, but honestly, most Christian men are probably not going to be faced with those particular situations, right? We’re not going to be asked to call down fire from heaven. So, what we did is we compared that to more recent men who were in much more common situations that also require courage, they may just not be as high profile.

I really wanted to show the readers, get your inspiration from the Bible, but take a look at the practical with these more recent men. Many of the men are from my father’s ministry. My father was a pastor for more than 30 years in a small church in New Jersey. And so many of these men are just incredible stories that he was part of along the way as a pastor in this ministry.

JF: What is the overall message you hope people take from reading your book?

Paul: The overall message is that it takes a lot of courage to truly be a Christian. I think there is this media portrayal of a Christian man as weak or stupid or incompetent, but the truth is the men who follow God the most are incredibly impressive. It takes so much courage to follow God when you have the pressure of the world telling you not to. And it takes a lot of competence to do that well.

I think what’s going on, in my view, is that so often the media portrays the people who follow God the least and who are the weakest Christians, and tries to say, “This is an example of what it means to be a Christian.” And what we’re saying in the book is no, look to the strongest Christians. Look to the men who followed God the most as an example. I think men both inside and outside the church, when they look at those examples, they would say, “Yeah, I want to be like those guys. I want to be like those men who had the courage to follow God when it was difficult and endure difficult success circumstances” rather than this portrayal that the media has.

JF: Why is that message so important today?

Paul: Because there are so many men leaving the church right now. Certainly, you see women leaving the church as well, but it’s much worse among men. You walk into any church and the women greatly outnumber the men. There have been many books written about why this is, but I think one of the things we need to do is give men this different view of what it means to be a Christian and inspire them and stop telling them that it’s easy. One of my observations is that there is a movement in churches to be what you would call “seeker-friendly.” I understand the point of it is to try to draw people into the church; however, what that means is that people who do come into the church don’t get discipled and don’t get challenged because the message is always about the popular parts of the Bible and you never get to the difficult parts of the Bible.

I think we need to challenge men, and when we challenge men, they are much more likely to respond. If you say to men, “Hey, it’s easy to be a Christian.” That’s not really that exciting to them. But if you say to them, “It’s actually really hard to be a Christian and quite frankly, I don’t know if you can do it.” Most men will respond to that much more positively than the former approach of telling them that it’s easy. That’s really one of the reasons I think it’s so important that we need to challenge men to say, “This is really hard. Why don’t you step up and do it?”

JF: What is the one thing that every Christian man should know if they want to be great like the Tough Guys of the Bible?

Paul: You have to fear God more than men. When you look at the characteristics of these tough guys, that is an overriding principle. When it came time to decide, do I follow God, or do I follow the world, they chose to follow God. That’s incredibly difficult. Sometimes it’s in little things and sometimes it’s in really big things, but if you follow God in the little things when the cost is not so high, you’re really building up that muscle so that you’re ready to follow God in the really hard things.

Paul and His ‘Never-Give-Up’ Attitude

JF: In your opinion, who is the toughest guy from the Bible?

Paul: There’s a lot of incredibly tough guys in the Bible. Let me talk about one. Let me talk about the Apostle Paul. We think of him as this incredible evangelist, and he was an incredible evangelist. However, what he endured to continue is just incredible. He was beaten, he was shipwrecked, he was imprisoned, he was even stoned to the point where people thought he was dead and somehow he revived. And I often think, “Hey, the first time I was beaten, would I have continued to evangelize? The second time I was beaten, would I have continued? The third time I was beaten, would I have continued?” This guy just kept going. No matter what happened to him, he stayed on mission, and he said, “I’m going to tell people about Jesus. I’m going to proclaim the truth. No matter what they do to me, I’m going to do it until my last breath.” There are a lot of tough guys, but his story is really impressive.

JF: How does what Paul had to endure correlate with today’s world?

Paul: I think today we’re not asked to endure physical risk as much as we read about in the Bible. There’s a little bit of that going on certainly. Outside of our country, there’s actually a lot of people who are Christians who endure lots of physical risks. If you’re from another country where you’re heavily persecuted as Christians, absolutely you’re enduring physical risks to continue to be a Christian.

In our country, I think it’s much more about social risks and economic risks. People are trying to take away your job if you follow the principles of the Bible. They’re trying to ostracize you from society and we have to be willing to stand up against that and take that risk and stay on mission and say, “I’m going to follow God even if it’s going to cost me economically, or even if it’s going to cost me socially.”

Gideon and Overcoming Great Odds

JF: In the book you also talk about Gideon. What about his story is so courageous?

Paul: When you look at the story of Gideon, God asks him to go fight the Midianites and Amalekites, and there are 135,000 of them. Initially, he raises an army of 32,000 and God says, “That’s too many for me.” So they cut it down to 10,000, and God says, “That’s still too many for me.” So they cut it down to 300. God asked Gideon to go fight 135,000 men with 300.

What’s so impressive about his story is that he went and not just he went, these 300 men went with him. They must all have thought, “This is a suicide mission. We’re going to get creamed.” Yet they trusted God and followed Him when the odds were impossible. Of course, God delivered them. He put the enemy army into confusion. They turned on themselves. And ultimately this group of 300 men defeated this group of 135,000 because God was with them.

It’s just incredible if you think about that. How many times are we in a circumstance, as men in our country, and we’re outnumbered just in a conversation and we back down from our Christian beliefs because there are five or six guys in the room who disagree with us? Yet here you have this example of not backing down from 135,000 when there were only 300 of them.

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Order your copy of Tough Guys of the Bible: Learn the Traits of Courageous Men Who Truly Follow God by Paul Horrocks and David Horrocks