Faith in Real Life Ep. 015 - Faith on the Field: Coach Ron Brown’s Journey of Identity, Coaching, and Revival

Faith on the Field: Coach Ron Brown’s Journey of Identity, Coaching, and Revival

Episode Description:

In this episode of the Faith in Real Life podcast, host Dan Coke sits down with Coach Ron Brown, a man who sees coaching as more than a career—it’s a mission field. Ron shares how his faith, identity in Christ, and marriage have shaped his coaching journey, allowing him to navigate adversity and prosperity with unwavering trust in God.

From helping athletes wrestle with their identity in sports to witnessing a revival of faith in athletics, Ron emphasizes the need for authenticity in ministry, staying grounded in biblical truth, and serving others while sharing the gospel. This conversation will challenge you to see your career, relationships, and struggles through the lens of faith and purpose.

🔥 Key Takeaways:
✅ Faith isn’t just personal—it’s a mission
✅ Marriage is a covenant that reflects God’s love
✅ Identity struggles are common in sports—and in life
✅ Adversity and prosperity both test our faith
✅ The truth of God’s Word is unchanging
✅ Revival is happening in sports and beyond

🎧 Listen now and be encouraged in your faith!

Hashtags:

#FaithInRealLife #CoachRonBrown #FaithAndSports #IdentityInChrist #MissionMindset #CoachingWithPurpose #RevivalInSports #ChristianCoaching #TrustGod #AthleteFaith #AdversityAndProsperity #MarriageAndFaith #GodsTruth

Transcript

Daniel Coke (00:01)
Welcome to the Faith in Real Life podcast. I am your host, Nathaniel Crawford. Actually, I'm not Nat Crawford. Nat is gone. He had some business to take care of. I don't know how I feel about this. It's Valentine's Day and my partner in crime has left me at the podcast by myself. actually, I'm not by myself. We actually have a great show planned for you today. I am joined by a friend.

A legend, a faith hero, certainly all of those things to me because of his example of faith. That is Coach Ron Brown of the University of Nebraska Cornhuskers. Again, so I'm Dan Cope, coach, being joined by Coach Ron Brown. As you guys can tell, I'm not the one that usually does the intro. It's usually not, he's much smoother at it. But on that note, Coach Ron Brown, would you introduce yourself to our audience here?

Ron Brown (00:40)
Okay.

Well, maybe the best way to introduce myself is that I'm a recipient of the grace and the loving kindness, first of all, of our Lord Jesus Christ, but also of my brother right here, Pastor Dan Cote, who's a fellow minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

a former player yourself, and had an opportunity to do some ministry with you, and you've ministered to some of our players over the years. So I'm very thankful and praise the Lord for it.

Daniel Coke (01:33)
Amen, amen, amen. So coach, you have been involved at the University of Nebraska. You've been coaching here for what, 30 some years?

Ron Brown (01:46)
32 years, yeah.

Daniel Coke (01:48)
32 years and God's done an amazing work in and through your life, through your family during this time and we certainly want to get into some of that. I mean, we want to hear a little bit of your heart, how you came to know Christ, what drew you into the profession of college coaching and just some of the highlights for you. I mean, I know that's a lot. So maybe you could just start with, know, where are from?

how you came to Nebraska, how you got involved with coaching, especially highlighting what God has done, how he encountered you in that process in bringing you here.

Ron Brown (02:29)
Sure, sure, Pastor Dan. I kind of start off as an unwanted child. My mother was from Tennessee. My father was from overseas, from another nation. She was married to someone else.

They got together, went outside of their marriage, and I was produced, and I was in an orphanage in New York City, and was taken as a foster child way back in the late 1950s, and was raised in Massachusetts with a couple that were old enough to be grandparents for me, and they adopted me. I grew up in a community where kids from the inner cities of the northeast part of the country

were kind of together and I grew up in an athletic environment. But these two people raised me in a religious home, not a Christian home. But I ended up having an opportunity to play college football in the Ivy League, a place called Brown University.

I felt very led, even though I wasn't a Christian, I felt like there was a push for me to go there. While I was there, my senior year in college, I ended up being led to Christ through the example of one of our players, who was the only probably Christian on the team. I ended up coming out. It was the day in the NFL draft that I actually gave my life to Jesus Christ, recognized all he had done, paid.

Daniel Coke (03:55)
Mm.

Ron Brown (04:10)
the payment for my sin on the cross rose from the dead, proving He was God. And for a while, it was tugging at me, and I was going to church and trying to figure it out. People were trying to minister to me. But the example of this football player, my fellow teammate at Brown, was a thing that probably really kicked in. And I ended up giving my life to Christ that day. I signed with the Dallas Cowboys. I bounced around. mean, my pro football time was

Daniel Coke (04:30)
Hmm.

Ron Brown (04:40)
ugly and not very good, but I was around some Christian coaches, some Christian players, a few Bible studies. I was growing in my faith and was getting a master's degree. I, somebody, my former college football coach who I played for in college, he offered me the head freshman job at Brown University. It was 1983, so it was about four years after I graduated from playing for him.

Daniel Coke (05:04)
Mm.

Ron Brown (05:09)
So as a young 25, 26 year old or whatever I was, I became a college football coach. Um, and the next year they made me the defensive backfield coach. Um,

Daniel Coke (05:22)
Mm.

Ron Brown (05:23)
and I coached there for three years and then lo and behold, out of nowhere, I got a call from coach Osborne here at Nebraska in 1987 to come and coach here. Um,

until I ended up, I was married at the time, my wife and I came to Nebraska and off and on for 32 years, that's where I've been. I've been through eight different head coaches now here at Nebraska and nobody can get rid of me. But I feel like it's, you know, I guess, you know, Dan, sometimes I think we think of life and sports particularly as careers, but this is really, I'm a missionary.

Daniel Coke (05:47)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Ron Brown (06:04)
I'm a missionary to Nebraska and missionaries come in all phases. They come as dentists and doctors or businessmen or what have you. I just happened to come as a football coach. And so I believe that we all have an assignment. You're on assignment right now. I'm on assignment here in the state of Nebraska. had numerous opportunities to leave

and I just never felt led to really leave. And I could have advanced my career and did this, that and the other.

NFL offers and other college offers, and everybody told me, gotta go, you gotta leave, you gotta advance your career. But each time I prayed about it, Dan, I went back to Colossians chapter four, verse 17, where the apostle Paul says, hey, remind our kippus to fulfill the ministry that God has started in them. And I remember when Coach Dungey for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers,

Daniel Coke (06:46)
Hmm.

Ron Brown (06:59)
Coach Dungy had just gotten the Tampa Bay job, Tony Dungy, and he and I had been friends because of our faith in Christ. And I know he wanted me to come with him. He offered me the job and I said, I need a week to think about it. And I prayed about it. That verse hit me right there. And I knew that God was not done with me in Nebraska. I had to turn down a really great offer to stay here in Nebraska. So that's why I call myself a missionary. When you're on mission,

Daniel Coke (07:15)
Hmm.

Ron Brown (07:26)
You don't just pick up and leave whenever it is that you want or for a, better job. You're listening to the Lord and you're operating out of that paradigm.

Daniel Coke (07:34)
Wow, thank you so much for sharing that, Coach. That's what I love about you. mean, just the heart for the Lord. You are God's man first before you are, you know, any other role or position that you have in life. That has always struck me about you, that your desire is to honor and to serve the Lord, to be faithful to Him. And on that note...

Right? This is Valentine's Day. My wife and I, we made an agreement a long time ago. We don't do the Valentine's like gifts exchange, whatever, but we are recording here on Valentine's Day. And because faith and family is important, tell us a little bit about, you know, how long have you been married, your family, and how God's worked in that area as well.

Ron Brown (08:23)
Yeah, my bride, Molvina, we've been married 40 years now. And we got married in 1984 out in San Diego, California, which is where she's from. And we actually met at a Super Bowl party of all things, you know. And it's the only Super Bowl game that I've never watched because I had my eyes on her.

Daniel Coke (08:28)
Mm.

Hahaha!

Ron Brown (08:46)
And I have vowed at that point I'm never going to another Super Bowl party again. I go home watch the game. I want to see it I don't want to be paying attention to anything or anybody else, but the one time I did I struck gold, bro, so My wife has been with me for 40 years. I praise the Lord for we have two daughters and we waited a while before we had children but I two daughters in their late 20s and I just praise God for

Daniel Coke (08:52)
Yeah

Praise God.

Ron Brown (09:15)
for that, the institution, is obviously very sacred covenant. And, you know, my background was such that, you know, and lot of the kids that I came up with, where it'd be very easy not to believe in that institution because of all the foul play and all the craziness that went on. But the two people who adopted me, they were together for like 50 years before they passed. And,

And they became Christians too. That's exciting. But you know, Dan, I believed in the Institute of Marriage even before I read the Bible because I saw two people who weren't Christians, but they were focused and they were, you know what, it was non-negotiable. And they were playing to win. know, there's two ways of playing a game. You can play to keep from losing or you can play to win.

Daniel Coke (10:07)
Hmm.

Ron Brown (10:11)
And my mom and dad were playing to win, that was a great, at least a pre-instructive to me before I even got to the Bible, to understand the true reality of marriage. So I was blessed for that.

Daniel Coke (10:26)
Amen. Thank you for sharing that. I want to pick up on something you said earlier when you were sharing your story. There was some examples at Brown University that really stood out to you, men who were serving the Lord. Can you talk about that a little bit more? Can you flesh that out a little bit more for us? What exactly was it that you saw about their lives that drew you to the Lord?

Ron Brown (10:51)
Well, first of all, it's very ironic that these Ivy League schools were founded as Christian schools. Back in the 1700s, Harvard and Yale and Princeton and Brown and Columbia and all those schools were Christian schools. They were like Liberty, know, or some of the Christian schools that we know today. you look at those schools now, they have gone way off. They've closed the book that we are so precious to us, the Word of God, the Bible. They've closed that book up.

man for man, woman for woman, institution by institution, the student body by student body, they began to shut the doors to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so the schools are no longer like that. And my wife went to Stanford, and Stanford was the same way. Leland Stanford and his wife had put together a school where they wanted the gospel reality and a biblical worldview on philosophy and astronomy and biology and all the sciences and law and philosophy, all those things.

Daniel Coke (11:33)
Mm.

Mm.

Hmm.

Ron Brown (11:51)
And look at that school now. If you name the name of Jesus Christ at a lot of these places, they're ready to throw you out. yeah, they have Bible study and they have remnants there, but it's no longer the place where you can really enjoy the reality of the Gospel. The biblical message is really kind of looked down upon at a lot of these places. And, Pastor Dan, a lot of Christian schools are even kind of turning their back.

slowly but surely on the Gospel. So to be at Brown University and to understand that, wow, God set me up with an example like Harry Waltz, a fellow football player who had the audacity to live out his faith in Jesus Christ boldly. Now, never forced it on us, but he was a guy that was non-negotiable. He was a circumstance-free guy.

Daniel Coke (12:23)
Hmm.

Ron Brown (12:46)
He was very faithful to the gospel. He started a Bible study there on our team with some of the fraternity guys. I never went, but this man's faith, and today, Harry Walls is a pastor, one of the gifted teachers in America of Bible studies. He was at the Master's University for a number of years, serving John MacArthur. So this guy, God was taking him places, but along the way,

Daniel Coke (12:51)
Hmm.

Mmm.

Ron Brown (13:15)
He was revealing, being faithful and revealing the life of Jesus through his life, through the game of football. And so I had the privilege of being able to see that and take that in, and eventually the Lord led me to himself. And then I was able to get back into contact with Harry. So when I look back at those schools, I just go, well, they told me that if I snap my finger, what a degree from these schools.

As soon as I snap my finger, tens of thousands of people will start moving real fast. But I started to realize that really I was being taught to bring self-glory to myself. I was being taught that existentialism and all these wayward philosophies and Freudianism and all these things, were it. Maslow and all of that, particularly in the humanities. And when I came to know Jesus Christ,

Daniel Coke (13:49)
Hmm. Hmm.

Hmm.

Ron Brown (14:12)
God began to put to death the deeds of the flesh through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. I just want to keep growing and I would want to encourage any young man or woman who are going to those places now, not necessarily not to go, but go with an evangelical mindset to be able to turn the friction into traction.

Daniel Coke (14:33)
That's a good word. That's definitely a good word, especially having been a student athlete as well on the college campus and dealing with the humanities courses. The book of Colossians has a lot to say about that, right? And talking about, you know, the philosophies of this world and things of that nature. So really interesting story how the transformation of one man, God working and your

Ron Brown (14:45)
Mm. Mm.

Daniel Coke (14:59)
former teammate, he's a pastor now, Harry, I believe that's what you said his name was, Harry Walz, how God, doing a work in his life, caught your attention and led you, God drew you through the work that he was doing in someone else's life. How many times has that happened, you know, among family, among friends, among people in our church, where they are totally unaware of the fact that God is at work in this person's life. God's changing, transforming them, but

Ron Brown (15:02)
Harry Walsh.

Mm-hmm.

Daniel Coke (15:29)
they recognize something is different and they begin to stare a little bit closer and wonder and they don't know that that's God drawing them. the love and kindness of God drawing them and he shows them his glory through the gospel, his holiness, they're convicted of sin and they experience life change as well. I would say I saw God working that way when I was a young college student back, you know.

Ron Brown (15:40)
.

You.

Daniel Coke (15:59)
couple decades ago now at the University of Kansas. So you and Movena have been married 40 years, to raise two daughters, two adult daughters that you have now. So you've been coaching for 30 some years, close to 30 some years. So you have seen a lot of parents, athletes, coaches, all.

Ron Brown (16:01)
Mm-hmm.

Yes, sir.

Mm-hmm.

Daniel Coke (16:29)
wrestling with their identity and trying to either take their identity from what they do and then having even Christian kids and parents and athletes struggling with how to have an identity that is firm in Christ from their perspective. From God's perspective, if you belong to him, you belong to him. He's not doubting wrestling with that, but from our perspective, fighting against sin and...

Ron Brown (16:32)
Hmm.

Right.

Daniel Coke (16:58)
and the devil, at times we can get caught up in the snares of this world and struggle with our identity. So can you talk about that a little bit, how you've seen that, what's some of your counsel and encouragement to parents and athletes and even coaches that may be wrestling with an identity? Yeah, can you speak to that some?

Ron Brown (17:24)
Absolutely.

Well, I'm an expert. Not an expert of the good. I'm an expert of the bad, man. I struggle every day.

I don't know about y'all out there, but I struggle every day. It's supposed to be a struggle. We're in a war. We're not on a cruise ship, we're on a battleship. And you don't just wake up to sunny skies and a big breakfast and, wonder what a good today's gonna bring. Well, I think we're optimistic that way, but we are in a context of war. so I've had to learn how to do battle. Pastor Coke, I've...

Daniel Coke (17:34)
Mm.

Mmm.

Ron Brown (18:01)
So one of the things that I realized that had to change was my thinking. See, this is where we start with all kinds of ridiculous nonsense. Our thinking's bad. So in other words, not only do I want to be a bad boy, like there's a lot of people on this call right, I mean, we're listening right now, who want to be bad boys and bad girls. It's not only that. We want to take the throne from God.

Daniel Coke (18:26)
Hmm.

Ron Brown (18:31)
We literally want to push God off the throne and say, I want to sit there. Now, we disguise all that with, know, I love the Lord, blah, blah. But our response to ups and downs in life, whether it be prosperity or adversity, we're to the two major tests in life, how you handle those two. We're either going to handle prosperity too often with pride, or we're going to handle adversity with bitterness. And so...

Daniel Coke (18:31)
Mm.

Ron Brown (18:58)
And we accuse God, we point a finger at Him. When it's adversity, we say, you don't love me. You caused this. This is your problem. And when it's pride, it's like, hey, thank you, Lord. And by the way, could you move over a little bit on that throne? Because I'd like to sit there with you. And at some point, I'm going try to throw you off. That's what the human flesh does. And until I think we recognize that and we try to think, well, on our own, I can handle it.

Daniel Coke (19:03)
Okay.

Mm. Mm.

Ron Brown (19:27)
either adversity or prosperity, I think we're ourselves. And I think, like in the coaching profession that I've been in, those scenarios happen all the time. One week it's adversity, the next week it's prosperity, and you're up and down all over the place. And if you don't think about your thinking, if you don't take every thought captive under the obedience of Christ, you will be, for every wave that comes along, you'll ride the wave. And we're called to be

Daniel Coke (19:52)
Mm.

Ron Brown (19:57)
to have the consistency of Christ. Remember what Jesus said in Hebrews, I believe it is 13, 8, he says, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. I can always count on him, know, Pastor, and so anyhow, yeah, that's, if I had to give a general comment, it's that I've got to think about my thinking. I've got to put to death the deeds of the flesh. You know, there's a lot of talk today in the political world about immigration should,

Immigrants come across the border, border control, all of that. Well, put it this way, man. You know, when I was living in New York City, in a really tough neighborhood, it was like bombs over Baghdad every day. There were sirens going off. There were people shooting guns, people screaming. And I had six locks on my door. Six locks. And this was my thinking. My thinking was this. Look, these fools out here, they may be running around, acting crazy, doing all this and that.

Daniel Coke (20:29)
Mm-hmm

Well.

Ron Brown (20:56)
But in my space up in here, I don't have to do that. I don't have to live like that. And that is true with my brain. I don't have to let thoughts come into my brain that don't belong, that do not have the credentials to be in my brain. And I believe that's what the scripture's talking about. That look, man, you may knock on the door and I may identify, that's fear knocking on the door. I don't have to let you in.

Daniel Coke (21:10)
Thank

Ron Brown (21:23)
If I unlock that door and allow you to come in and entertain you, well now you've got entry into my home. And there's going to be times when you'll slip in through the back door because you've learned a whole lot about me. Satan has got a scotland report on us. I'm not to negotiate with him. I am to be looking at the Lord Jesus Christ. If there's any one thing I've had to learn in sports, out of sports, my life, my life with my wife, my kids, and myself when I'm all alone.

Daniel Coke (21:51)
Mm.

Ron Brown (21:53)
It's

my thinking. My thinking has got to be right, and it's only going to be tenderized and right as I'm diving into the Word of God.

Daniel Coke (22:02)
Amen to that. I love the analogy that you gave of feeling the safety, the security of being in your own home back when you were younger, back in New York. And that certainly brings up, you know, the 2 Corinthians 10 verse, you referenced that earlier about taking every thought captive. But he also says in that verse talking about the weapons of our warfare. And you talk about that. We're not on a cruise ship. We're on a battleship, right?

Ron Brown (22:25)
Hmm

Mm-hmm.

Daniel Coke (22:29)
And so

the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. And I think when you look at the construction of this whole passage there, 2 Corinthians 10 verses one through six, there's this idea of like partitions and things being torn down. And then the kind that we need to actually have up, right? You need a fortress that you...

Ron Brown (22:51)
Mm. Mm-hmm.

Daniel Coke (22:58)
are you're surrounded by but you also need to be able to destroy the enemy's fortress. You don't want the enemy to to lay siege around you and so I love how you were describing that. So thinking about this right and you you've got a young man you got two you got two types of athletes that might fall into this predicament of prosperity he's succeeding and then also when there is failure and disappointment right you've got two types of athletes that

that might be more susceptible to those problems. The one who's really, really good, gifted by God to excel at what he is doing. And then the other one who has some ability, but it's a real struggle. And even the one that's gifted can go through time periods of not being very successful at what he does. But let's say you got the guy who's really excelling, and then you got the guy who's really...

really struggling to just make the team. And those guys in that moment, how do you encourage them that, for the guy who's struggling, that God's not a crutch, right? God's not a crutch that you just rely on him here. How do you make God your everything? And then for the guy who is being very, very successful to...

Ron Brown (24:08)
Mm.

Daniel Coke (24:21)
how to encourage him not to lose a sense of reverence so that God's not just a lucky rabbit's foot. That when you speak of him, that you're actually not just throwing out some empty token expressions, but that you really mean it. That if you took all these things away, that he's still a good and faithful God. And so...

Ron Brown (24:40)
Yeah.

Daniel Coke (24:47)
Just kind of talking through that, just thinking

about that. I feel like I can relate to some of that, both of those experiences. And I'm just curious what you would say to a young man in a situation.

Ron Brown (24:56)
That's great question and I that question. know, I was reminded again as I was going through the book of Job recently that Satan accused Job of being circumcised based. In other words, he basically said, you know what, only reason your man, he's talking to the Lord, Satan said, the only reason your man Job, as good a man as he is, an upright man, the only reason he's really faithful to you is because you blessed him with a lot of stuff.

Daniel Coke (25:10)
Mmm.

Ron Brown (25:25)
In other words, you've given him nothing but prosperity, so that's the only reason why he's doing it. He's very circumstance-based. And God said, I'll show you. I'll show you that he's not circumstance-based. And he says, go ahead and take stuff away. Take his family. Take his health. Even his wife turned on Job. And in the end, Job had questions, and it was difficult. And his own friends turned on him. And they all thought Job was circumstance-based.

Daniel Coke (25:36)
Mm hmm.

Ron Brown (25:54)
At the end of the day, God proved that Job, when he was really relying on him and really even going back to him and asking him questions about things he couldn't even explain in his own life, like what God created and all those kinds of things, he came back to realize that, yes, God truly loved me. And he was an integrist man through it, even though it was difficult. And you know what?

We have to trust God to allow him to coach us like that. You know, we used have a sign up here in our coaching office, I think when you were playing at Kansas. We up here under the Polini regime, we had a sign up here that said, whatever you see on film is either coached or allowed. And it means that, listen, as a coach, you're not only coaching kids to operate to the...

Daniel Coke (26:27)
Mm.

Ron Brown (26:53)
to the highest level of the maximization that God can take them to, but you're also in the business of not allowing junk to come in. And so

Daniel Coke (27:01)
Hmm Hmm

Ron Brown (27:04)
the coaching proactive, because a lot of times a coach will say, well, I didn't coach that kid to do that. No, but you allowed it, coach. You allowed it because you didn't go over things that he needed to know that would have helped prevent him from those types of things. And I really believe that that's how God trains us.

Daniel Coke (27:13)
.

Ron Brown (27:23)
He trains us by coaching us, but he also trains us with the idea that, you know what, I'm gonna get you ready for anything so I don't allow for you to have an excuse that I didn't coach you. And at the end of the day, when you fall, you have to point to yourself and say, I'm the one that's wrong. So are we well-prepared? We absolutely are. And so that's really how, for me personally, as I've gone through the...

and continue to go through the Word of God, I go through, I want to be thoroughly, thoroughly convinced, because this is the most important thing, I think. I'm thoroughly convinced that God truly loves me. In fact, we always say, I gotta love God more, I gotta love God more. Well.

Daniel Coke (28:09)
Mm.

Ron Brown (28:16)
1 John 4 18 says, perfect love casts out fear because fear has torment. And then it goes on in the next verse to say, we love him because he first loved us. It all starts with the love of God. If there's any button that we have to push to trigger off the coaching, the allowance, the maximization of our talent is the fact. Job had to go through it.

Daniel Coke (28:31)
Mm.

Ron Brown (28:45)
You have to go through it. I have to go through it. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, it is the love of Christ. That's the initiate of love. If you get that one wrong, you're going to be all over the place, If you get that one right

Daniel Coke (28:52)
Mm. Mm.

Ron Brown (29:00)
and you live that out, you're going to enjoy, you're going to be able to handle the adversity and the prosperity that God wants to use as your training regime to make you more and more like Christ.

Daniel Coke (29:13)
Amen, amen. I love that. We're not gonna be circumstantial. We're gonna be driven by and motivated by the love of Christ. We're gonna be anchored in that love.

Ron Brown (29:23)
So, Pastor, think about this. And you know from being a pastor, and I know from just living a long time, I'm 68 years old, I'm old. I'm old as dirt. here's the thing. Think about this. How many people do we know that are really mad with God? They're mad at God, man. And that's just not unbelievers. It's believers, too. It's us believers. I get mad at God. You're mad at Him all the time. Why?

Daniel Coke (29:33)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Ron Brown (29:53)
Why? We don't trust that he loves us. So that's, is there one thing that we can improve on today? One thing that we can really help our situation today? Let's get closer and closer and closer to the reality of how much the Lord Jesus loves us. And he's paid that price and what he continues to do to love us.

Daniel Coke (30:11)
Amen.

Amen, amen. What a good word. Well, let me ask you this. Being on mission here in Nebraska and starting out some 30 years ago, you know, reaching a young athlete back then, and then the way the environment has changed, the way the circumstances and things have changed, has it, has your mission in some ways changed?

Ron Brown (30:32)
Mm.

Daniel Coke (30:43)
Do you have to deal with the athletes differently? Is there a different kind of approach? I'm curious from your perspective. I genuinely want to try to understand this with two young men who aspire someday to Lord willing, you know, be in a situation like this. And so I'm curious, you know, as you have seen the mission over these years, has it changed much? Do you need to...

Ron Brown (31:02)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel Coke (31:12)
Are there certain points of emphasis and focus that you need to drive home with the young athlete and helping them to understand the truth? And how is that different from when you first started? I'm just curious.

Ron Brown (31:26)
Another great question. you know, one thing is when you're trying to figure out life over different eras, like I've been in college football for a lot of years and I've lived enough decades now to see major league changes, major swings in our country.

Not only about how we communicate with phones and technology and internet and all that stuff, but also, you know, I've seen all the social, the demographic stuff, the racial scene, the gender scene. There's a lot of things that we didn't really have a problem believing at one point. Now it's just kind of frazzled all over the place. So I think we always have to keep coming back to foundation. So I go back to that verse that I shared with you earlier.

Daniel Coke (31:59)
Mm-hmm.

Ron Brown (32:13)
on the podcast, Hebrews 13, 8, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So that's a good thing to know. I'm glad that, I mean, I'm a changeable guy, and you're probably a little bit of a changeable guy, but Jesus is not. He doesn't change his moods and all that kind of stuff. But here's a saying that I've come up with in the last number of years, and that is, let's be heavy on the truth and light on our feet.

Daniel Coke (32:16)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-mm.

Mm-hmm.

Ron Brown (32:42)
Heavy on the truth, light on our feet. We're not gonna negotiate the non-negotiable. The foundation, the principles of Jesus Christ are the 780,000 words that we're responsible for in God's Word, the Bible, where Jesus said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Nothing has changed. Sins are still sins. Doing right is still right.

Daniel Coke (33:06)
Mm-hmm.

Ron Brown (33:12)
in the eyes of the Lord. There are different, you know, Jesus used different scenarios to teach parables and different things. He was very selective in how he brought about his truths in the different growing, moving times of the places that he went. And I believe that we probably need that same type of ability to be able to, you know, all right.

I'm going to use a different analogy here, a different parable. I'm going to teach it from a different angle here based on where I'm going with the culture. But the truth has got to be the truth. It's not a moving go pulse. It is stationary. so that really, the foundation has to be rock solid. So that's where I'll always start. You know what I mean?

Daniel Coke (33:58)
Amen.

Yeah, yeah. Amen to that. not negotiating on the truth, the foundation, the truth, the same in each era for each human because we're all born under sin, right? And need to be born again under the last Adam, right? Jesus Christ. And so I think that's really, really, really crucial to understand when you're you're discipling these young men. So

let's say maybe early 90s, you take a young man who's coming from, whether it be Western Nebraska or Eastern Nebraska, some different challenges, right? Now today with, you you got young men making a lot of money coming in, you got the distractions that are numerous.

Ron Brown (34:53)
Mm-hmm.

Daniel Coke (34:55)
Does it seem like the ability to really connect with young people, has that been a hurdle at all? Has that been difficult with the constant need for some type of social engagement by young people today? How's that dynamic working out for you?

Ron Brown (35:15)
That's

another great question. This is kind of how I'm viewing it. No matter how many things come at a young person, and there's a ton of young things, the money and the...

and the transferring when it gets really tough, I just go somewhere else and maybe I can land footing there and the grass is greener somewhere else and we don't have to be married anymore and all the social change and the gender stuff that's out there and the pronouns and the confusion. With all of that, I still go back to the only way

that that really can get in and create confusion is if you take the locks off the door. In other words, when you open the door to the enemy, when you open the door to the enemy, he's gonna come in. so, listen, the idea is that my space is always filled up with Jesus Christ, so there's no more room for that, that, and that. so, constantly, so maybe you have, it's like these old

Canadian Royal Mounties, know, they had one time lots of people were trying to bring in counterfeit money into Canada, you know? And those Canadian Royal Mounties were lined up there at the border and they weren't checking all the counterfeits because there's thousands of them of currency, thousands of them. If you had to learn all the different things, you'd be confused. What they focused on, what's the real coin look like?

what's the real dollar look like? And anything that's a little bit off of that is counterfeit. And so again, focusing on the truth. The truth is the truth is the truth. It's always been the same. So now, if your truth is right, if the locks on your doors are right, if the proclamation of what comes out of you is right because it's founded on right principles,

All these things that we read about in 2 Corinthians 10, you know, about the strongholds and the forts and all that, listen, you have to cast out strongholds. You do it with the foundation that you have. It's a block of foundational truth. And that's always, always the mechanism that you live by and that you play offense with it and you play defense with it. You keep people away and you embrace people in with that foundation.

So I don't care how many things have been added in the last 40 years, because there's been tons of them. It only matters it's the same old truth. I ain't got to look at all the little things. I may have to hear about that little bit of counterfeit. I may have to... And if you're a wise man, you'll always draw a spoke. You'll always draw a spoke from the foundational truth to that particular thing. And to be able to gun it down, shoot it down. Because why? Because the truth will always prevail.

Daniel Coke (37:51)
haha

Mm.

Ron Brown (38:16)
And the truth will set you free. It will constantly set you free. That's what I can count on from God's Word.

Daniel Coke (38:17)
And, bye.

Amen, amen, amen. Ron, a couple more questions here and I'll let you move forward in your day and take care of all of the responsibilities you have going on. I'm so thankful for your time. One of the questions, just real quick, is did you have any thoughts on, seemed like a bit of a revival in football among...

Football players, college and professionally, we saw during the bowl series playoffs for college football. We saw in the playoffs for the NFL as well as approaching the Super Bowl. Any thoughts on that? Any comments on that?

Ron Brown (39:10)
You know, I think there have been, over the centuries, have been uprisings, have been noticeable public type things that spout up and out and so forth. So yeah, I've seen, you know, I've listened to a number of the games this year, particularly in college football, where lots of guys were having something to say about Jesus Christ. And it wasn't just after a win. Sometimes it was...

Like that Notre Dame quarterback had something to say about the Lord after they got beat by Ohio State in the national championship. So I'm not saying that any of that was false thinking or just showboating or anything else. There seems to have been something that's going on that's maybe very authentic and real. We just don't always know.

Daniel Coke (39:43)
Mm-hmm.

Ron Brown (40:03)
You know, for all of the public things that come out in situations like this, there's also a silencing around the world. And so I don't know that, you know, there's places and portions of the world where we're not hearing anything. And yet, there may be incredibly vibrant ministry going on, where people are coming to know Christ.

Daniel Coke (40:12)
Mmm. Mmm.

Ron Brown (40:27)
So, and you know, the light's gonna shine on all the dark places and it's all gonna be revealed one day. We are called to be faithful. And so I'm always enjoying when I hear guys being faithful and using the platform that they have. But I also would love to see that in all kinds of areas of life. In other words, the professions of life where they don't have national cameras and you're not playing for a championship game.

Is the guy on his job, is the pastor in his church being willing to speak out the truth that needs to be spoken and not afraid of losing, you know, not living like he's going to lose his job. He may lose his job, but are we living with the boldness and the courage? Remember, again, 1 John 4.18, for God, you know, He's talking about perfect love casting out fear. And it's fear that

Daniel Coke (41:12)
Mm.

Ron Brown (41:27)
really, probably grips us so much, pastor, that it affects the way we play, it affects our proclamation, it just smothers us and puts us in a state of mind where we don't even think straight. I mean, some of the stupidest things that I've ever done in my life, honestly, have come out of me being afraid of something, even for a moment, even for a moment. So to have that driven out of my life,

Daniel Coke (41:47)
Wow.

Ron Brown (41:55)
so that when it's time to speak up in the public, I speak up. When it's time to be quiet, I'm quiet. When it's time to make a decision or to play a game unafraid of what anybody else thinks, unafraid of my opponent. The fearlessness that comes to an athlete or any one of us because of our love for Jesus Christ, which trumps that, is especially exciting to watch.

Daniel Coke (42:24)
And.

Ron Brown (42:25)
I, the

one thing that I would caution on all of our parts, and I've talked to our players about it, is make sure when you go out there and you kneel in front of, you know, like a lot of teams like to go out there and kneel, you know, or they kneel after the game and pray, and I'm a part of all of that. I'm saying, let's make sure our motivation is right. We're not going out there for show. We're going out there in a real, a very,

Daniel Coke (42:44)
Hmm.

Ron Brown (42:52)
servant attitude, a very humble attitude before the Lord Jesus Christ. And let's not make a big show out of this thing. Let's be authentic in our worship. That's the only thing that I've really asked us to do, which comes from, again, continual dying to ourselves.

Daniel Coke (43:10)
Amen to that. Amen to that. Definitely. So Ron, final question. Tell us about what you have going on outside of coaching. You got some ministries going. Why don't you tell our audience about that? How they can support you, how they can follow the things that you have going on for those listening here in Nebraska and those outside of Nebraska, how they can be following along.

and supporting the Lord's work through your missionary endeavors.

Ron Brown (43:45)
Well, thank you. Yeah, in addition to coaching football, I'll take a number of our players out across the state in the spring, summertime, and we'll put on camps for kids. And in fact, you've been to a couple of those yourself, and we'll share the gospel. We'll coach. The Bible says to do our work hardly as unto the Lord and not unto men. Colossians chapter three, verse 23. And so we...

Daniel Coke (44:03)
Mm-hmm.

Ron Brown (44:15)
We talk through a lot of the training techniques that we have and whether it's building speed or strength and how we incorporate that as a ministry to the Lord. In other words, we're serving the Lord while we're doing pushups. We're serving the Lord while we're running drills and throwing passes and we're exercising a fearlessness when we're coming across the middle to make a catch, you know, that our sports should reflect the Bible studies that we've been coming out of. It should be right out there in the field. So we do a lot of that.

Daniel Coke (44:19)
.

Ron Brown (44:44)
We also, I'm involved in some

radio shows. So I've been doing a lot of Kingdom Sports Minutes. You can get those on kingdomsports.online. We've done hundreds of them where they come out each week. I do some tapings each week. And so it's about using athletics as a modern day parable for the gospel of Jesus Christ. So it's played in a lot of places, different parts of the world. And then we have a

Daniel Coke (44:48)
Mm.

Ron Brown (45:14)
a 30 minute radio station that I'm involved with, a guy named Mike Bliss called Alive and Active. It comes on three times a week in the Nebraska area. So we've been really trying to take men through the life of David and Solomon. And then some other things that we use sports as a parable and a variety of different things that we think men would be attracted to.

Daniel Coke (45:20)
Mm.

Ron Brown (45:43)
Yeah, just trying to be faithful with the opportunities that God gives. So yeah, we'd love to have people listen, support. Things do cost money to stay on, so that's always helpful. starting off first, just are we preaching the truth and is it digestible for a hungry audience?

Daniel Coke (46:08)
That's so awesome and so Kingdom Sports, right and so YouTube and on

I believe X now right formerly known as Twitter

Ron Brown (46:20)
There's other people who know a lot more about that than I do. think so. Yeah, kingdomsports.online, though, you can download them and they're played for a lot of ministries and that kind of thing. They're called Kingdom Sports Minutes. They're one-minute pieces. And sometimes Bot Radio will play them on different commercials and so forth. And so they'll fill in a minute spot and throw one on.

Daniel Coke (46:24)
Yeah, I believe so. I believe so.

Ron Brown (46:46)
Yeah, so Gordon Thiessen, who's the director of Kingdom Sports has done a really good job putting together a number of resources that we've used and I think you know of Gordon as well.

Daniel Coke (47:02)
Gordon's a good man. Hi Gordon. Well Ron, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for the wisdom that you shared. Thank you for your faithfulness, laboring to invest in young men in the next generation, pointing them to Christ. Thank you so much for that. Say hello to Movena for me. And I just want to close with reading this verse from 1st John. You've been quoting 1st John.

Ron Brown (47:04)
Yeah, he is.

Daniel Coke (47:28)
I even quote in Colossians, so I had decided to pick which one, and I went with 1 John. So 1 John 3.1 says, see what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called children of God. Now, the verse continues on. I just wanna stop there. I wanna hang out there just for a moment as we bring this podcast to a close. This idea that we should be called the children of God because of the great love that God has for us is first revealed to us.

Ron Brown (47:40)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Daniel Coke (47:58)
in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ and his great sacrifice on the cross, him offering himself to pay for our sins, to ransom us from the wrath of God that we might be restored in loving fellowship with God and know for certain that before the sacrifice of Christ and before we come to this knowledge of Christ and what he has done for us, that the wrath of God was.

Ron Brown (48:09)
Hmph.

Daniel Coke (48:25)
It is real towards us until the time of our redemption. And when that time comes, the love is also very, very real. That we should be called children of God. So if you do not know Christ, if you are kind of playing around with Christianity and not certain whether or not you should be all in with God, know for certain that the wrath of God is real.

Ron Brown (48:26)
Hmm.

Hmm.

Daniel Coke (48:54)
but also know for certain that the love of God is real for us in Christ Jesus. You simply must repent and believe this good news. Amen. Amen. Well, for those of you who regularly tune in to this podcast, remember, give us some good reviews, share it with your friends. We love you, we thank you for what you are doing to make sure that we...

Ron Brown (48:54)
Hmm.

Amen. Amen. Thank you, All right.

Daniel Coke (49:24)
Get this message out there to help others learn how to apply to faith in real life to very real circumstances. Amen. Go and be blessed.

Ron Brown (49:32)
Amen.

Daniel Coke (49:36)
All right, thank you so much, Ron. All right. Yeah, that's good, thank you. I hope you enjoyed it. I enjoyed the conversation, so yeah. Yeah, we'll.

Ron Brown (49:39)
Hey, buddy. Hope that's what you wanted. Thank you for having me on.

of it. Loved it. Yeah. Thank you. That's a good way to spend

an hour,

Daniel Coke (49:53)
Good man. All

right, well we should spend an hour in a different way, know, sometime here in the near future, grab coffee or lunch or something on me. So.

Ron Brown (50:00)
Let's do it.

Alright man, I would love that. Alright pastor, God bless you. Thanks for having me on man. See you now, bye bye.

Daniel Coke (50:06)
All right, all right, I'll see you. God bless you too. All right, take care, Ron. See you, bye.