Building a Legacy: Faith, Family, and Leadership with Mark Osborne

The Valiant Forge Mission For Men

Icebreaker: Legacy For Grandkids

Hello everyone, thank you again for joining me on another episode of the Dorsey Us show. Today's episode is sponsored by the O'Doe Audio Group with inspires and uplifts through discussions, testimonies and teachings, equipping listeners for meaningful conversations. Today, my guest is Mark Osborne. Mark is the heart and voice behind the Valiant Forg podcast, a powerful space created specifically for Christian men who are serious about leaving a legacy that outlasts them. As a husband, father, grandfather, and servant leader, Mark hosts raw, real conversations on faith, fatherhood, failure, forgiveness, and everything in between. The show is literally a fork where personal scars become hard earned wisdom and men are sharpened and strengthened to lead their families and step forwardly into God's kingdom. Mark, welcome to the show.

Dorsey, thank you for having me. You've been on my show before, and it was a pleasure and a delight, and you sharpened men. Happy to hopefully do the same for you.

Thank you. Well, I always like to open up with a icebreaker question. Today's icebreaker question is as a husband, father, and now grandfather who's built the valiant forg around the ideas when turned guys into wisdom for the next generation. What's one small everyday moment with your grandkids that reminded you why this mission matters so much to you?

From Casual Christian To Crisis

Wow, that's a great question. So I don't know if it's an everyday moment, but so I have three grandchildren now. Actually, I'll have four soon. This is a I don't think I've announced this on my podcast yet, but uh I have a fourth one coming in August. So I'll have four grandchildren. My oldest grandchild is fourteen. She just she just got a boyfriend. So what to answer your question is, you know, what makes me need to do the Valiant Forge for my grandchildren. One of the things that, you know, when I was debating about starting a podcast, one of my friends said to me, He's like, if nothing else, if no one listens and nothing else happens, your grandchildren will at least have something to see, the legacy that you're leaving behind, because all the words that you share in your podcast, your grandchildren may see it, and their kids and great-grandchildren and great-great grandchildren, hey, your grandfather was a podcaster, and these are the things that he talked about, and these are the people that he helped. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that's kind of what I feel.

Yeah. What what sparked the idea and what started the movement for the Ryan Fog podcast with a specific moment or series of ordinary places that God used?

Fitness, Ego, And Marriage On The Line

So I have to go back to kind of what started with me. I 40 plus years, I went to church and I went to church, but I was the there's a verse in Matthew, and probably should look up where it is, but there's a verse in Matthew where Jesus says, Many will say, Lord, Lord, did we not cast out demons in your name? Did we not do all these great things in your name? And he will say, Depart from me, I never knew you. I was that guy for 40 plus years. I went to church, I served in ministries, I went on mission trips, I led a youth group, but I was never really connected to Jesus. I was just doing the Christian thing because it was the right thing to do. And then at the age of 48, my youngest daughter moved out and I became an empty nester. And I felt like my purpose in life was to raise my girls to be godly girls. And they did. They grew up, they're both Christians, they both serve in church, they both love Jesus. But now it was like, well, now what do I do? At 48, so I I started young. At 48 years old, I feel like I still have a lot of life life left, but what do I do? And where I didn't have a true relationship with God, the thing that came to my brain, because I wasn't in great shape, was to start getting in shape and going on a fitness journey. Well, I'm 5'3 and I was 205 pounds. And that that that wasn't muscle or anything, it was just all fat. Well, I just and I had a heart attack six months prior to that. So I just went all in in this fitness journey. And all the while, because I was a Christian going to church, I used God as my reference for why I'm doing this. But it wasn't about God, it was about me. I got self-consumed during that journey of fitness and getting self-consumed, and I always had a low self-esteem where no I always felt like nobody really liked me. But then now I'm posting on Instagram and social media and inspiring people, and people are eating it up, and my ego is just loving it. So I'm already getting my confidence is growing because I'm looking better and people are liking me, but they were liking me. They weren't liking Jesus. What was happening during that time? I was trying to start a fitness business on Instagram. That was what I was saying I was trying to do, but what I was really was doing was eating up attention. And that attention turned into DMs from women who I shouldn't have been talking to. I was married, you know, lovely wife. And I didn't take it far, but there was some flirting going on. My wife found some of those DMs and we had to have a serious talk. And it was, are you going to continue down this road of chasing yourself and your ego and flirting with other women? Or are you going to truly give your life to God and we can rebuild our marriage from where we're at? At that point, I was 35 years into marriage. So there was no way I was going to throw that all away for something that I didn't even know what was going to happen. So we prayed, we started some marriage counseling, and I seriously had a moment in my car where I repented to God for all that I was doing of my whole 40 plus years of being a casual Christian, not serving him, but not really knowing him. And I promised him from that moment, like I will talk to you every day. Because to build a relationship, you have to talk to a person all the time. You have to be connected with them. And I, you know, once I started doing that, I started connecting more with my wife. I still continued a fitness journey, but I learned to balance it out. During that fitness journey, I started getting into self-development. So that man who was 48 years old was depressed, discouraged, discontented, and started on this journey, which led to getting a true relationship with God. What I learned during all of that was how to really become a better man. And so after I started getting closer to God, I started getting all these revelations from the Bible, which, you know, 40 plus years as a Christian, I never really got anything. I never really read the Bible or studied it. I started studying it and I was led to the story of Gideon. This is what my podcast is called, The Valiant Forge, because Gideon was called a valiant warrior. And when God called him a valiant warrior, Gideon said, No, I'm not a valiant warrior. I'm from the weakest clan, and I'm the weakest in my clan. Gideon had this really low self-esteem. And that self-esteem is what was his identity. But God said, No, you are a mighty warrior because I am with you. So my thinking was if I went through all of this, there has to be other men who are dealing with this. And I know there are self-development podcasts out there. There's other Christian podcasts out there, but they all kind of have this frame of, you know, just get up and do it. There's nobody really out there encouraging, encouraging, and uplifting other brothers. And something told me, a guy who was usually pretty quiet and didn't really like to talk a whole lot, to start a podcast. I it's like, no, not me. I literally was to Gideon said, no, I'm not the one who can start a podcast. You know, Gideon says, I am the weakest in my clan, and my clan is the weakest clan. I said, nope. I am scared to talk on a mic. I'm scared to even get in front of people. But God said, I will be with you. My pastor came to me and said, How do you feel about starting a podcast? That was my confirmation. And then he sent me this microphone and said, You better start a podcast. So that's how it all started.

As a father and a husband, how have your your family keeped the podcast, the vaccine and hobby and so on?

Repentance, Renewal, And Daily Prayer

As a as a husband, my wife loves it. Because she sees, you know, I used to come in from work every day and I would watch TV or sit on the couch and, you know, scroll on my phone, doom scroll. Even, you know, even after I found God, the true God, and started building my relationship, I still kind of had didn't have a sense of purpose for a while. And now I come in from the evening and I'm doing research on a guest, or I'm going to be interviewing a guest, or I'm going to go on a show. I'm always doing something. I'm spending an hour or two almost every evening doing something for the podcast. And then, you know, something that's really important and what I encourage other men to do. If you get into something, because you know, this is my purpose now. You get into something with purpose, and you got God as your center, you still have to maintain the things that are important, which is which is your family, your wife, your relationship with your wife. God says, Christ, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church. Just like I talked about earlier when spending time with Jesus, a husband needs to spend time with his wife. So doing the podcast and things like that, I still have to make sure I'm maintaining my relationship with my wife. My kids, they think it's great. They're like, oh, my dad's a podcaster now. And my my grandkids, they don't understand podcasting as much as they do YouTube, because I do have a YouTube channel. So they call me a YouTuber. Personally, I don't I don't really get it. But my kids think they all think it's cool. So, you know, I love that.

So what do you hope to to when you do your podcast and you interview you in do you interview people as well, or do you just speak? And what do you hope your listeners get out get out of the episodes?

Why Gideon Shapes The Forge

It's kind of developing still right now. So when I first started, I was doing some solo episodes, and I wasn't very consistent with them until I joined PodMatch. And once I joined PodMatch, I started getting interviews like crazy. You know, you were one of my guests. So lately I've been doing mostly interviews. I've done a couple of solo episodes, but down the line, I'm going to start doing a few more solo episodes. But, you know, what I what I try to do when I share, and I do the I do a lot more of this on YouTube, and not specifically just on the podcast. So if you go on my YouTube channel, you'll see videos that you won't see or hear on a podcast. Even when I interview men, I always try to bring it back to the message of encouraging and uplifting. I don't really like to have the it is important for a man to step up and do what he needs to do. You know, there is a discipline where a man needs to have, you know, get up and pray every morning, but and also fitness and be a good steward and all that, all that is important. But what I want, the vision that I had when the name The Valiant Forge came to me, I literally saw a cobblestone street and like uh just a sign waving under like an old village and it said the valiant forge. So like the the the valiant forge is a blacksmith's shop because warriors go out to fight and their weapons get dull, and you come into the blacksmith's shop and you sharpen your weapon. So when the all the conversations that I try to share on my podcast, I want them to sharpen and encourage other brothers.

What made you decide to say, hey, I need to get deeper and get into a stronger personal relationship with Christ? And what that what'd that look like?

Family Reactions And Guardrails

Well, that's you know, that's what happened when my marriage got in trouble from me DMing women on Instagram and you know, these flirty messages. It was either step away from my marriage or stay with my marriage. And my wife, you know, it's a cliche and it's not really a Bible scripture, but it's true. Behind every good man is a good woman. My wife was not going to go away from God. She didn't want to have that life where we didn't love God and we didn't serve God. So one of the things that we talked about, you know, when we're rebuilding our marriage is this has to be God-centered. And that's, you know, I had that drive in my car after one of our sessions, and I I prayed to God. I'm like, I'm sorry. I I give it all back to you, and I want to start serving you and loving you, and you know, having this relationship with you. And there was a moment that kind of kind of threw me. We were at a Bible study, so this was after all this happened. We would go to Bible studies, and our church would have our Bible studies were very discussion-oriented, and I don't I don't even remember what was being shared at the moment, but I turned and looked at my wife and she had tears in her eyes. I kind of just left it alone in the moment, but when we were driving home, I said, What what were you crying about? She said, God told me to watch and see what I'm going to do with this man. You know, I was uh fifty-four, I think, at that point, fifty-four years old, and had never really done anything significant for God. I had, like I said, I'd been on some mission trips and served in the church, but just to hear that like it wasn't too late. All that time that I saw as wasted years, God could still use it and do something with it, no matter how old I was in life.

Interviews, Solo Episodes, And Vision

You interviewed a lot of men who have hit rock bottom and found redemption. Can you tell us about one of those stories um of those men that you interviewed and what happened with that with with that man and w with that with his life?

Well, there's there's one that I interviewed from my church. He he didn't grow up with a Christian setting in any way, and he dealt with high anxiety for a lot of years, and he had suicidal thoughts often. And even, you know, he started going to our church, and he was feeling better, but he still had that anxiety and some of those suicidal thoughts. And we were at a men's retreat and we were all praying together, and we we have pictures of this. This guy was, you know, he interviewed this on our podcast. This was his rock bottom. Like he was having so much anxiety in that moment because he was a little introverted, but he also had a lot of childhood abuse and a lot of things that happened to him in his life, and where he had he was kind of a rough and tough kind of guy. And if you pushed him the wrong way, you know, he was he was gonna fight you back and probably take you out. He was just that kind of guy. But him telling this story of how God touched him in this moment. So we were at this retreat and it was outside and we have pictures, and one guy put his hand on his shoulder, and you can see in the picture, the guy's head went down. He didn't he was keeping his head up and he felt his head go down. He said he thought someone pushed his head down, and when his head went down like that, like a sudden sense of peace just overwhelmed him. And he, when he was on the podcast at the time, he said I had not had a suicidal thought or any kind of anxiety since that moment. And when we look back at the pictures, there was a guy that had his hand on his shoulder, but no one touched his head, and his head went down, and he had this overwhelming sense of peace. And now this man, who I still see weakly, is a prominent member of our church, and he's encouraging other men. You know.

Sharpening Brothers Over Shouting At Them

For men today, especially those grinding through family work and faith, what's the biggest lie they're believing Excuse me, what's the biggest lie they're believing that they're valuing for calling out?

God At Work: A Man Freed From Anxiety

That they're that they are more than they think they are. Most men struggle with identity. They put their identity into video games because they feel like they're not enough. They feel like, you know, I'm not a good husband. I'm not a good father. So instead of trying to fix that and try to make it better, they just dive into the video games because the video games kind of help suppress it. You know, it's a dopamine hit. The biggest lie that they they they face is they they follow these dopamine hits to try to make themselves feel better when all they really need to do is just turn it over to God, start praying, reading, and start applying some of the things that they're reading and learning and knowing that God has designed them to be valiant warriors because when the men get better, everyone else gets better. I myself, for the longest time, and I I remember telling a pastor this, a pastor asked me to be a deacon for a church, and I was like, you know, if everybody was a leader, then there would be no followers, and I'm not called to be a leader. I'm called to be a follower. That was a lie I told myself. Every man, regardless of who you are, is called to be a leader. Now it may not be a leader of a great organization, it may not be a leader of a podcast, it may not be a leader of anything, but you're called to lead someone to somewhere. It could be a child, it could be a person in your life that you're maybe mentoring and you don't even really know it because a lot of times, and you know, just to be too cliche, but sometimes you are the only Bible that some people will ever read. So how you live your life and how you act and what you do, you're leading someone else, whether you know it or not. So the biggest lie that men believe about themselves is that they're not enough and they're not leading. You are leading, and the question you have to ask yourself, am I leading someone to a good place or a bad place?

What advice we could give dad in the trenches of parenting who feel like they're family.

The Biggest Lie Men Believe

Advice to give dads who are struggling with parenting. Just repent. Repent. Ask God to help you. And something that's very prevalent that I talk about on my podcast is community. The Bible says to bear one another's burdens. Iron sharpens iron. So if you're a dad and you're struggling and you feel like you're not enough, find another brother. Find another man. If you don't know where to find them, go to a church and just you have to you have to step out a little bit and say, hey, brother, I find another dad who probably has the same struggle. Now you have to be careful because if you get two men who just feel like they're failures, well you're just both gonna wind up in your own misery puddle. But if you got one man that's doing a little bit better than another man, have him grab you by the hand, pull you along, and help you up. And you will find that as you do that, you will probably have things to help that man, and together you can become better. So my advice to anybody with whatever they're struggling with, if you're a husband and you feel like you're not being a good husband, find another man to help you redo along the way. And for sure, you know, I have at least three at this point mentors in my life who have been there and done that. And you know, when I'm struggling with something, because I talk about this all the time, I am not perfect, I'm still figuring this out. I ask my mentors, and the way to find a good mentor is if you know they're giving you biblical instruction, then they're teaching you the right way. Amen.

Do you have anybody your past guest reach out to you after having you on the on your show? And what are the what what you know what what's the conversation like?

I haven't had a lot of past guests reach out to me. I do I do have one guy who is actually a disciple of mine from my church. We talk all the time. So I guess I wouldn't really answer your question. There have been a few conversations so there are people on PodMatch who I keep in contact with. One person that I'm actually talking to pretty regularly now is uh James Moffitt. James Moffitt, I've had him as a guest on my podcast, and now we are doing a collaboration thing on YouTube that's called it's kind of like a front porch with podcasters. So it's like podcasters after we turn off the mic. We have had a lot of conversations about faith and politics and family. So yeah, that's it. I don't know if that answers your question, but there are a few.

Yeah. Where do you see the valiant for going next?

I'm working on building a community. I actually created a community, but I've not set it up yet. What I want to do is try to bring men together. So there's a there is a question I ask on in every one of my podcasts about the cave of a duel, and these are where David's mighty men gathered. But when they first gathered there, they weren't David's mighty men. They stayed under David's leader leadership and became mighty men. So what I want to do is I want to find these men, and I the way I present the question is these men were disgruntled, disheartened, and discouraged. I want to find these men who are disheartened, disgruntled, and discouraged, and I want to bring them to my community so that together we can all sharpen, uplift each other, and the ultimate goal is to advance the kingdom of God.

Amen. What one word of encouragement or word of knowledge that you would like to give to my audience?

Help For Dads In The Trenches

Well, my word of encouragement that no matter who you are, no matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, God still loves you. And because he loves you, no matter what age you are, no matter who you are in this moment, if you're out there. Right now, and you just happen to pawn this podcast, and you're like, Man, I'm struggling with life so much. Life is so hard right now, I don't know what I'm gonna do next. Turn it over to God, ask him to help you, and it isn't like a magic wand, but God will help you and lead you through it. When you truly believe in him and you know he's with you at your side, you'll have the power, the courage, and the strength to overcome whatever battle you are facing.

Amen. Well, Mark, thank you so much for coming on the show today. We greatly appreciate having you.

Dorsey, thank you so much for having me.

Guys and girls, thank you so much for coming on and for listening again. Please go and check out Mark's podcast. I'll have these link in the show notes, and please go and follow Audery Audio Group on Spotify and Apple Podcast, share with you and reach out at infody audio.org. And please go and check out my past episodes and future episodes at www.dorcyroshow.com. And until next time, God bless. Bye bye.