457 | Neil Dyer on Meekness, Strength Under Control, and Fighting for Your Family

Identity & Living as Sons of GodBrotherhood & MentorshipFamily Vision
Written By Jeff Zaugg

Episode Description

For most of his Navy SEAL career, Neil Dyer thought meek meant weak, and he wanted nothing to do with it. Then God grabbed his heart through the adoption of his nephew, and he had to pull the trident off his chest and burn the idol of his career to take up the higher calling of being a father. In this episode, Neil shares what the war horse teaches us about strength under control, why your home is a battlefield where the armor of God never comes off, and how foundation, structure, and clear limits give your kids exactly what they are hungry for.

  • Neil Dyer served about two decades in the Navy SEAL teams, with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and finished his career as a first phase BUD/S instructor. After the loss of his brother, Neil and his wife adopted his eight month old nephew, and Neil gave his life to Christ shortly after. Today he leads Warriors Rise, a ministry he and his family started two years ago to pour into the next generation of young men and women with a how to think, not what to think approach. Neil and his wife live in northern Idaho with their six kids and a seventh on the way.

    • Meek does not mean weak. The Greek word describes a war horse: full strength, under the control of the rider. Strength under control is what your sons need to see in you and what your daughters need to marry into.

    • Comfort is the crisis. The first step toward meekness is doing something outside your comfort zone, and it is nearly impossible alone. Find your battle buddies and do hard things together. Bleed, sweat, cry, and laugh with the same men and you get a brotherhood that lasts.

    • Your family needs a foundation, a structure, and left and right limits. The word no gets used often in Neil's home, and his kids know where the lines are. As they get older, give them controlled failure points. Treat them like men and women who are just a lot shorter, because lions don't grow up to be bunnies.

    • The armor of God never comes off. The spiritual battle raging at home is the same battle you face at work, so lead your family with a warrior's mindset, delivered with grace and love.

    • Be present, not just well intended. Keep a phone room instead of a phone in your pocket, get rid of the TVs, and clean the house together on Fridays before movie night. Quality time is a myth. It is just time, and your kids need it.

  • Transcript lightly edited for readability. Timestamps are approximate.

    Cold open (00:01): Being a great father takes a massive amount of courage. Instead of being an amazing leader and a decent dad, I want to be an amazing dad and a decent leader. The God of the universe gave you this assignment, which means you must be ready for it. As a dad, I get on my knees and I fight for my kids. Let us be those dads who stop the generational pass down of trauma. I want encounters with God where He teaches me what to do with my kids. I know I'm going to be an awesome dad because I'm going to give it my heart.

    Neil (00:39): I got saved shortly after the adoption, and I had to pull that trident off my chest and throw it in the fire. I had to burn that idol of my life and realize the higher stake, the higher calling of my life. And it wasn't the job. It wasn't the glamour, the glory, the whatever in life that people are pursuing. It's being a father.

    Jeff (01:03): Gentlemen, welcome back to DadAwesome. Today is episode 457. I have Neil Dyer joining me, and we recorded this conversation when we were both in Minnesota. He's actually in northern Idaho with his wife and their seven kids. He runs a ministry called Warriors Rise, and he served for about two decades in the Navy SEALs, with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and then he was a BUD/S instructor. He took a massive pivot toward family when he adopted his nephew and God grabbed a hold of his heart. Now he's taking those two decades of special forces experience and going after the hearts of the next generation, young men and young daughters, doing amazing ministry with Warriors Rise. I can't wait to share more about it in the conversation. Neil is about my exact same height, six foot seven. We got a chance to train together for about 90 minutes in a mixed martial arts room in Minnesota with no air conditioning. That's how our friendship started, training together, and now we jump into this conversation on hard level fatherhood. Welcome to the conversation. This is episode 457 with Neil Dyer.

    Jeff (02:38): Two days ago I didn't know who you were at all, Neil. That's part of the fun of this. Friends of friends. I flew into Minnesota, you're not from Minnesota, you're here as well, and because of our mutual friend Tyler, all of a sudden we find ourselves in a mixed martial arts space, a training gym, a boxing gym. What would you describe it as? The place we met.

    Neil (03:02): It was a dungeon.

    Jeff (03:06): It was the hottest room I've been in in Minnesota. There was no air conditioning for sure.

    Neil (03:10): Hottest room in the last few months.

    Jeff (03:13): It was a 90 minute training session with 20 other friends.

    Neil (03:20): I think the intent was a beat down. Just feel it. We got there a little early, talking, and Tyler's like, let's just go for a quick beat down. Roger that.

    Jeff (03:32): And you were the speaker that night. That's the fun of it. You gave everything, and we got paired up because we're the two tallest guys in the room. Tyler has been a guest on the podcast before. These Man Maker events: scripture, men, do something hard, unforgettable, and then bring it to God's Word. You talked about meekness that night, and I actually paused when you said it. Meek. I know it's positive. I know it's a good thing. But it generally felt like it was more on the soft, gentle side. And then you unpacked the wild stallion approach to meekness. Would you share a little bit of your heart around that?

    Neil (04:12): My heart and my conviction around meekness started when I was just starting my career in the SEAL teams. I literally had a guy telling us, a batch of new guys, don't be a meek little so and so. That was it. Roger that, I will not be meek. Meek is not what I want. That's obviously weakness. And that's how I bring it up to so many guys, and that's been the conviction. What does the world equate meekness to? Nine times out of ten, unless you've got a believer in the room, they say weakness. Okay, let's go with that. Well, what does meek mean? They can't give an actual definition of it when it's completely opposite of weakness. And that's what the enemy does. That's what Satan wants, to pervert and completely flip the truth on its backside. I just feel so silly and ignorant running most of my career thinking that meek was weak.

    Jeff (05:17): Wrong definition.

    Neil (05:21): I put that on Christians and believers in my platoon. I wanted nothing to do with them. I didn't get saved until 2015. That's three quarters of the way through my career that I ran around harassing and giving guff to believers. I don't want nice guys. I can't have nice guys. What am I going to tell my wife? What am I going to tell my kids? Because you're too weak, you're too meek to follow me through a door. I was the idiot in the room right there. That's the walk I think God's put me on, to have that conviction to repurpose the actual definition of what meekness is, which is just strength under control. That's it. Power under control. It's a war horse. Meekness comes from praus, the Greek word, that the Romans gave to their horses that went through a course of battle training. BUD/S training for a horse. Basic underwater demolition SEAL training for a horse.

    Jeff (06:25): Horses that were the strongest, most courageous, weaponized. Beast mode. And at the end of the training they described them as meeked. Under the control and trust of the rider, the warrior. But they actually amplified the strength of the warrior because they were more powerful than the warrior, going under his control into the unknown. So you, as a dad, a husband, a leader, founder of a ministry, a warrior, 20 plus years of special forces as a Navy SEAL, you would now describe yourself as wanting more of that strength under control.

    Neil (07:11): I need it. That's my prayer, that my humility and my pride be checked on a regular basis. That's a prayer throughout my everyday life. Growth in meekness. Absolutely. And I need my boys to see that. I need my girls to see that. As a father, we are the patriarch. We are the example of what our young men are to grow into and what our daughters are to marry into. We are the first example of what a man is.

    Jeff (07:47): Giving them a template.

    Neil (07:50): We're leading. And we're either going to do that well or terribly, or maybe somewhere in between. But regardless, as men in this world, as fathers, in our schools, in our jobs, all of it, we're leading. In one way or another.

    Jeff (08:02): The horse, the wild stallion, did not necessarily have an option. He was corralled in, pulled in, wasn't given an option to be meeked. We as men have free will. God has given it to us. So the idea is, am I a man who is in training? Heart, soul, mind, strength. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your strength, all your soul, your mind. We get to choose if we're going to be on the path of giving over control to God, who knows best, keeping and amplifying our strength. We're not getting weaker. We're getting stronger through giving up control. But training, the crucible, is essential to becoming stronger. It's funny, we're recording and sitting on really comfortable chairs. Next to a campfire would probably be a better job. We can choose comfort and ease and tasty food and sleeping in, or we can choose to be a man who enters the crucible, trains himself, goes to a gym like we met at a couple days ago, and gives it. What's your word to me? Start with me. Don't worry about the other dads listening. What do you want to tell me about being a man who enters training purposefully?

    Neil (09:29): Well done. The first thing we started talking about the other night was, I am so out of my comfort zone. Right there. That's the first step, in my opinion, to meekness. I'm not comfortable here, and I'm going. Because we're living in a comfort crisis. I think they wrote a book about it. Pretty secular, but it's very true. You start taking away people's comforts and conveniences and look how society crumbled. Look what it did to men, then the families, then the kids, schools, all of it. It all just started collapsing. So as long as guys are actually pushing into their convictions of doing something out of their comfort zone, that's step one. Because as men, as we were created by our Creator, when we start pushing into that, we begin to get hungrier for it. And as society makes things easier and more comfortable for us, that's a temptation. And our God doesn't tempt. We know who does. So I would highly encourage, and that's why we do what we do with Warriors Rise, encouraging men to step out of that comfort zone and get a taste for what that feels like. But man, it sucks doing it alone. Where's your battle buddy? Where are the guys that you are fellowshipping with, the guys that are bearing burdens with you and you with them, so you can actually go out and do hard things together? I'm a big believer in mending fences. You can get a lot of good gold out of mending a fence with a group of guys. You need to bleed, you need to sweat, you need to cry, you need to laugh. You mix those four ingredients together and you've got a camaraderie of some amazing stuff.

    Jeff (11:25): That's good. Someone described, I think it was C.S. Lewis, that hell is like no constraints whatsoever. You can have as much for self as possible. And that's absolute hell. We taste it every day because our culture, our society, the riptide, is pulling us toward me, me, me, me. And strength under control, meekness, men who train, are going against that current. We're going in the direction of, I'm going to do what my body doesn't want to do, what my mind doesn't want to do. I've found that without brotherhood, without guys like you're talking about, like the fence, I will show up the third day to work on the fence by myself.

    Neil (12:11): Yeah. No, I've got better ideas. I need to do this instead.

    Jeff (12:14): For me it's three days a week. It's on the sand. Our group is called Pursuit, and we get after it. But it's because they're counting on me showing up. I set two alarms, three days a week, because I don't want to let them down.

    Neil (12:58): But the world is supplying it in the secular manner. It comes through that self indulgence, and they try and give you that little spiked high, and the enemy sees it and capitalizes on it.

    Jeff (13:11): Let's talk about what's at stake here. You have a seventh baby on the way. Am I right? Six kids with a seventh on the way. Your wife, your marriage, your kids. Let's just clarify what's at stake. Being a warrior, being someone who trains, being someone who is strength under control. Because if there's no battle to fight or person to protect, then why train horses and rush into the fray? Why, if there's nothing at stake? Anyone listening has something at stake. They're dads who want to grow. What's your kids' age range?

    Neil (13:47): My oldest is going to be fourteen next week, and my newest is going to be born in about two weeks.

    Jeff (13:54): And you're that close, and your wife let you come on this trip.

    Neil (13:57): Yes. It's amazing. There have been contingency plans put in order. So if I just drop the mic and bail, that's why.

    Jeff (14:07): I love it. So before we talk about the ministry, Warriors Rise, do I have the name right? So you are raising warriors that are rising to God's call for their life. Not entering a world to coast through. So now we have the stakes, the backdrop. With that heart, what do you find absolutely critical for the next five years of fatherhood for your family? You know it's going to be good because you've put these things in place. These are transferable. Whatever you share right now, I can take, because I want the next five years to be better than the last five. I want to move into training, into growing, into leading my family. What are some of the things where you say, these are important to me as a dad?

    Neil (14:55): Foundation. Foundation, and then a structure, and then left and right limitations. The fact that people actually train their kids, and they wouldn't call it training, but they do. We don't say no in our home. Whoa, why not? It's terrible. So my kids hear no a lot.

    Jeff (15:14): What will that lead to? Not saying no.

    Neil (15:23): We learned the foundation and the structure with our first child, which we could go two or three more episodes into, but I'll just throw it out there and move on. My brother ended up committing suicide right after my last deployment to Afghanistan. He had just had a baby, eight months old by the time I met him, and so we gave some options to the birth mother on what we could do. We ended up adopting him shortly thereafter. So we learned very quickly. We went from zero to parents overnight. It was hard and fast. We had to learn on the fly, and the foundation and the structure was the most important. And the biggest thing that kept that was husband and wife together doing it. Patriarchs having their helpmates and doing it together. We had that, and we gave left and right limitations. We toed the line on what was right and what was wrong, with the foundation of Christ being in the home. That was it. I wasn't a believer when we adopted him. My wife went to a Christian school, but she walked away. I wouldn't have married her if she was still a Christian. And so now, with this crazy change in our lives, I was about to go to DEVGRU, which is Team Six. I had the orders, I was going, and that was boom, I'm career focused. That was my idol, the trident. And now I've got a son. I've got to figure something out. I got saved shortly after the adoption of our first son, and I had to pull that trident off my chest and throw it in the fire. I had to burn that idol of my life and realize the higher stake, the higher calling of my life. And it wasn't the job. It wasn't the glamour, the glory, the whatever in life that people are pursuing. It's being a father.

    Neil (17:45): And it's relational. That's what I truly believe we are created to do and be: relational. It starts with the cleaving of a husband and a wife, making that unity and having offspring. I know some people aren't blessed to have offspring, and I know some people aren't called to it. Paul was not called to have kids and raise a family. God had other plans, and He was very clear with Paul on what he was to do, and he did it. He was a creature doing creature drills, exactly what the Creator created him to do. I was not. I was created to be a husband and a father, and He just gave me a bunch of other things to do. I consider everything up until the moment I got baptized a long college experience. Learning. On the job training. Rinse, repeat. So for guys, if they can take something away from this session: the foundation. You need to be there, and you need to be intentional, you need to be deliberate, you need to be disciplined in your time with your kids and your spouse. You need to be present. Put the phone down. Have a phone room. That's where you go to check. If you need to check messages, go to the phone room and do it. Get rid of your TVs. Do not allow the iPads. Screen time, let it go. If you're going to do it, and this is just a practice we do, we clean the house every Friday and then we have movie night. We make popcorn, we do it together. We're intentional about our time, that we are together and we are present for it. Because it's not about quality time versus any time. Throw that out the window. The quality time thing, it's just time. I can't bring all six of my kids on the trips I go on. I'm trying to do one at a time, and I can't even promise that. I don't make any promises to my kids because I know I will break them. I tell them straight up. I treat my kids like they are adults, because lions don't grow up to be bunnies.

    Neil (20:06): And I'm not going to treat them like bunnies. They're men and women. They're just a lot shorter. They don't really understand everything, but the more I talk to them like they're adults, I have an expectation for them and they know it. I don't cut the words down. Do you understand what I just said to you? Not really. What part? This big word you just used. And then I'll explain it to them. I give them the intentional time to let them learn. They're sponges as kids. They're learning so much. Why are we treating them like babies until they move out? Then they don't know how to live. They don't know how to be adults. We're treating them like kids in so many avenues, and it's kind of ridiculous.

    Jeff (20:49): Wow. Something you just said sparked a conversation about being a protector and thinking about our home as a space that we protect. You mentioned this a couple nights ago when we were together. This responsibility we have to think through scenarios that could bring those we're called to protect into harm's way. I know this will be the smallest sample of what you could share. You said you could teach three full days of training on this. But how would you plant a few seeds of thinking with a different lens around being a protector for our family?

    Neil (21:27): It's really easy for me, in my faith and being a father, because I spent my adult life in the SEAL teams. I grew up in the military. I was a child when I joined the military at eighteen, retired at thirty nine, and I just understand the military. So when it came to my salvation, really studying and learning, it made sense. There's a rank and structure in all of this. You have to see it from a military stance. That's the best way I can put it, because it translates over. A guy I highly admire and respect, Brad Geary, goes through this a lot. He talks about doing great at the job as a military commander and failing at home. He's getting pulled, and now he's newly retired and starting to talk about it. This is stuff I started going through when I first got out. It's the same battle, the battlefield and home. Because as we're told to put on the armor of God, it never says to take it off. The spiritual warfare is constantly raging all around us all the time. So if you don't have a military mindset and you don't understand military rank and structure, you don't understand that the enemy is still fighting you at home, at work. You don't have to be in the military to have that mindset. You just need to understand the practice and the tactics of warfare. So the leadership that I went through in the teams, I transfer directly over to my family. It's not like "ten hut, let's go." I understand how to lead men, and I directly translate that over to my family in a graceful and loving way. So I don't have "call me sir" or "Chief Dyer" or anything like that. It's Dad, and you call my friends Mister so and so. It's that foundation, that structure, and the left and right limitations. No is used in my house quite often. You will not do that. No. It's kind of simple.

    Jeff (24:01): They want clarity. They need it.

    Neil (24:04): But then as they get older, it's, well, what do you think? Give them failure points, controlled failure points. And it's not the end of the world. I'm always telling my kids and a lot of other people, are you currently getting shot at? No? Then it's not a big deal. It's all perspective.

    Jeff (24:25): Perspective. So your family started Warriors Rise how many years ago?

    Neil (24:35): We started Warriors Rise two years ago.

    Jeff (24:37): And what is the heartbeat? What's the big prayer behind that mission?

    Neil (24:43): That we can grow this next generation as far and wide as possible in a how to think, not what to think, mentality. In a nutshell.

    Jeff (25:00): And you're taking your life experience from those decades when you weren't serving God, and what you learned and experienced, and you're layering that onto an experience for training warriors.

    Neil (25:16): Yeah. A lot of what not to do, but things I've learned. And honestly, being a father has been the learning curve. Put all the experiences of being in the military aside. Being a father has been the crux of my ability to pour into, mostly, these young men that have been flooding into our house, that are having dinner with us, that are staying in our cabin, that are allowing me to beat them down physically and mentally to grow. So I'm using that. And on the flip side, I'm using what I learned in the military to raise my family. My last duty station when I was in the Navy was first phase BUD/S instructor. Basic underwater demolition SEAL training. As a first phase instructor, that's typically the gauntlet, not only for the students but for the cadre as well. I learned a lot there. And it's funny how God works, because that would be considered my twilight tour, my last tour of my career. Typically it's an easy desk job or something fun and chill, just to slide your way out. I had picked combatives. I was going to go to the fight gym and teach fighting. It was going to be super chill and great. And then right before I was leaving Iraq, they said, hey, sorry, your orders changed, can you take this one? Lord, what are you doing? That's a terrible idea. Do you not know this is going to be so hard on me? I use more from what I learned in BUD/S as an instructor training students than I have from anything else. I'm using it like crazy with my kids. It's not that I'm making my kids do log PT, but I do have a few tactics under my belt.

    Jeff (27:24): We use sandbags on the beach, and I've thought about the frontier of what is possible, what God has created the human body to endure. We're so far removed from any absolute limit. You've gotten a lot closer to those levels. How many weeks is the BUD/S process?

    Neil (27:41): First phase is six weeks, and Hell Week is one of those weeks. So you've got three weeks of first phase of just getting kicked in the pants, then Hell Week, and then the rest of it.

    Jeff (27:53): The frontier. But you said beat down, body and mind. That's part of it. That's actually how we grow. You get beaten down, and then it's, what can God teach me from that place? The war horse, the meek, is beaten down.

    Neil (28:10): Boot camp model. Absolutely. Beat yourself down. God's going to beat you down if you are not listening. If you are not disciplined enough to get in the Word and have time with Him, He's going to prune you. He's going to kick you in the pants and put you down on your knees. That breakdown, once you give up on yourself and give it all to Him, that's where He starts building you back up.

    Jeff (28:39): I think even if you're going after God with your whole heart, we're still going to experience a life of valleys that will feel like a beat down.

    Neil (28:47): It's not unicorns and lollipops, man.

    Jeff (28:50): What do you have to teach me here, God? Grow me. I want to be trained.

    Neil (28:56): Be careful what you wish for.

    Jeff (28:58): But to be on mission, charging into the fight. War horse, send me. That's where I'd ask you to land. Would you say a short prayer over all the dads?

    Neil (29:09): Absolutely. Heavenly Father, as we come before You, You are the commander of angel armies. You are Creator and sovereign over all things, and we thank You for the opportunities that You put before us in all of our endeavors. We ask You for eyes to see, ears to hear, and we pray for a blessing of Your Spirit upon all of us as men that are listening to this and seeking to be righteous men and kingdom builders. Help us see it, help us hear it, and put a burning desire in our hearts to fight for You, fight for Your glory, and carry Your flag, the flag that represents the kingdom of light, Your kingdom and not of this world. Lord, we lift that up to You, to all the fathers and the husbands out there, to lead as the patriarchs of their families, because we can do it right and we can do it wrong. So help us to do it right, the way You see it and the way You created it to be, Lord. Help us to be kicking in the gates of hell instead of sandbagging our homes and our own kingdoms, Lord. It's all Yours, and we lift it all up to You. In Yeshua, Christ Jesus the Nazarene's name, we pray these things. Amen.

    Jeff (30:28): Thank you so much for joining us for episode 457 with Neil Dyer. The link to his website and more information about the ministry Warriors Rise is in the show notes at dadawesome.org/podcast. Also, I want to encourage you guys, let's not just listen and move to the next thing. Check out the show notes in your podcast app, whatever app you're listening on. Look for the top takeaways and top quotes. This is going to help spur on a next step. Let's dive in a level deeper. We're also continuing to welcome ratings and reviews on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. These help more dads experience the ministry of DadAwesome. We did a huge blitz a couple years ago, and I just haven't asked for a while. So if you guys could leave a rating and review, that would be very helpful. Guys, thank you for being DadAwesome. I'm praying for you. I'm cheering for you. Have a great week.

    1. "I had to pull that trident off my chest and throw it in the fire. I had to burn that idol of my life and realize the higher calling of my life. And it wasn't the job. It wasn't the glamour, the glory. It's being a father." (Neil Dyer, 0:39)

    2. "Meekness is just strength under control. That's it. Power under control. It's a war horse." (Neil Dyer, 6:00)

    3. "We are the example of what our young men are to grow into and what our daughters are to marry into. We are the first example of what a man is." (Neil Dyer, 7:34)

    4. "I treat my kids like they are adults. Because lions don't grow up to be bunnies. They're men and women. They're just a lot shorter." (Neil Dyer, 20:00)

    5. "Help us to be kicking in the gates of hell instead of sandbagging our homes and our own kingdoms, Lord. It's all yours." (Neil Dyer, closing prayer, 30:12)

 

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Jeff Zaugg
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