Battle Ready: Bootcamp Basics
About this sermon
In “Battle Ready: Bootcamp Basics,” Pastor Dianne Towns compares marriage in the last days to military boot camp: time is short, training must become intentional, and couples must learn next-level love, forgiveness, and spiritual resistance. John 3:16 supplies her model of love—God gave sacrificially—and 1 Corinthians 13 shows that biblical love suffers long, remains kind, seeks not its own, and endures. Marriage therefore requires dying to self and keeping covenant beyond comfort or emotion.
Chronological teaching outline
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Towns opens by comparing the present season to new military territory. Regardless of how long a couple has been married, she says the last days require more intensive training: next-level love, next-level forgiveness, and a next-level fight. Boot camp separates weakness from strength, and marriage must now be treated with equal seriousness.
John 3:16 becomes the foundation for marital love. God proved His love by giving His Son, so saying “I love you” must mean more than affection within one’s comfort zone. Towns challenges spouses to give what the other person truly needs and to die to fleshly self-interest rather than make comfort the boundary of love.
Towns works through 1 Corinthians 13, emphasizing that agape is selfless and unconditional. Biblical love is patient and kind while suffering; it does not seek its own way, keep a record of evil, or fail under pressure. Christ’s command is to love one another according to His own sacrificial pattern.
Many prepare intensely for a wedding day but scarcely consider the lifelong vows that follow. Towns calls couples to revisit promises made “for better or for worse” and to understand that Scripture supplies profitable doctrine, correction, and training for marriage. Couples who do not become grounded together in the Word are left unprepared for spiritual attack.
Christ gives His people authority over the enemy, which Towns says must become settled conviction if a marriage is to withstand demonic pressure. She begins her Air Force story: at nineteen she enlisted quickly, surprised her parents, and left home knowing that once she had sworn in, the decision required wholehearted commitment.
Arrival at Lackland Air Force Base shattered every expectation of a warm welcome. Recruits were yelled at, packed into formation, and required to follow unfamiliar commands precisely. Towns uses the scene to stress that covenant is not a casual experiment: vows have already been made, and survival requires learning to follow the Commander’s instructions without inventing a different path.
When an instructor tried to break her through humiliation, Towns remembered her father’s assurance that the instructors could use words but could not truly destroy her. Once fear lost its grip on her mind, the intimidation lost much of its power. She applies the lesson to marriage: the enemy first tries to seize the mind, so believers must know what God has said and refuse panic.
During the final qualifying run, severe knee pain and a fallen recruit sent Towns crashing onto the pavement. The very instructor she believed opposed her shouted for her to get up and ran with her across the finish line. The episode becomes a marriage appeal: a stumbling block need not become permanent defeat, and God can use unexpected people to help a wounded believer finish.
The sermon explicitly names the struggle as spiritual rather than merely interpersonal. Towns then recalls her father’s rule for building: read the instructions, identify the parts, and count the pieces. Couples should likewise study Scripture, understand the responsibilities of husband and wife, and stop trying to assemble a marriage by guesswork.
Christ must be the third strand in the marriage; without Him, human effort is too easily broken. Towns closes by repeating the boot-camp urgency: there is no time to nurse grudges or remain on the ground. She urges spouses to forgive, sacrifice, and help one another finish, while acknowledging that not every situation is salvageable and Scripture gives limited grounds for divorce.
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- 0:00:05
Well, not in the past a choice, but with some and all of my material. I don't have much to say. But I was not a camera. Thank you. Yeah, I want to give you just a second to pray. My Father, in the name of Jesus, I just bless you Lord, and I praise you and I thank you for Lord for using me as your vessel today. Lord, I thank you for speaking to me and speaking through me. Lord, I pray with you, no matter what I have on these pages, that you would use me for your glory today, Lord, and that you would allow me to speak on your heart and that your people need to hear. And I just give you all in praise and thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright, you guys. So let's have a look at this message and who can face it so you can see on your paper there. And, you know, when I first came up with that title, it was basically because of what Pastor Dancy had sent us that already married, boot camp. The first thing I thought about was my military experience. And I started thinking about, first of all, we're in the last days. We all know that, right? So no matter where you have been in your marriage, up until now, if you think about where we are and how close we are to the end, even though we've been married, most of us, for a lot of years, this is new territory. It's absolutely new territory. None of us have been where we are. I don't care how long we've been married. This is brand new territory. And we have to treat it for what it is. And so with that being said, it's time for us to take things to the next level, okay? I'm not trying to put a plug in for our names for you guys, but it is time to take things to the next level. And what I mean by that is it's time for next level love, next level forgiveness, and it's a next level fight that we're in, okay? It's a next level fight. And when I was looking up some definitions of words, I started with boot camp, and boot camp basically is a training station for recruits, okay? I don't know how many military folks are in here, but some of you guys couldn't identify with that. But what is a recruiter? A recruiter is a person newly enlisted in the armed forces. So like I said, no matter how long you have been married, you are now newly enlisted in the last days of your marriage, okay? And it's also a short, intensive, and rigorous course of training. That's what boot camp is. And our time is short. So it's time to intensify the things that we do in our marriages with our spouses, because this is where it all counts. And the purpose of boot camp also is to separate the week from the strong, okay?
- 0:03:09
And so here we are today. And I want to, when I was thinking about this, y'all want to put all these notes on this paper and everything, and I thought I was going to just go down this outline, and it was just going to be real easy until Pastor Troy Catterman spoke. And I realized this morning, when I was praying about this, and I said, Lord, I don't want to just stick to this. Well, I'll go down. I want you to use me for your purpose. What is the most important thing? What is the most important point that I need to get across to everybody in this room, including myself? And God took me, right? I'm not surprised that Pastor Troy is expressing my own love, because he said, whereas it's been said, you got hurtness, you got so many times, love, or no, sorry, live each day as if it's your last, all right? We hear that all the time. Live each day as if it's your last. And most people think of that as they got a buck of this. They got all these things they want to do before they die, right? You have your little buck of this and whatever. But when I was praying about this, God said not to live each day as if it's your last, but to love each day as if it's your last. And you can start with that person sitting right next to you. Okay? And for those of you whose spouses did not make it, you can still carry this, which when you go home, to love each day as if it's your last. And I'm going to start, you guys, with John 3 16. And I'm going to say this. Everybody can recite John 3 16. I don't care if you say, not say, in the world. I mean, you could be a celebrity on TV. Everybody knows John 3 16. Okay? You can ask anybody. They can recite it without even looking at the word. But I'm going to read it because I'm going to put some emphasis on some things here that we probably think about sometimes, but I don't want to be really, really dig deep. So, for God so loved the world that He gave. Y'all, I can stop right there. Okay? I can stop right there. For He so loved the world that He gave. Not only did He give, but He gave the best. He gave the one thing that we needed that's going to save us if we will receive it, if we will accept it. And I don't know anybody in this room who has children who would actually sacrifice one of your children, especially if it's your last or your only. But I'm just saying, would you really sacrifice your children or your child so that other people might be saved? Think about, you guys are holding your babies here right now. All of us know the story. We know it's not just that He sacrificed. We all know the story. We all have read the story. We all know what Jesus suffered for us, right? But because God so loved us, He paid the ultimate price. And it says that whosoever believes in Him should not perish,
- 0:06:11
but have everlasting lives. Verse 17 says, for God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. The way I look at this and the way it translates in my mind is God proved His love for every single one of us by sacrificing. Sacrificing His Son, His most prized position, the thing that He loved the most. And so all of us in this room, I want to say this to you guys, we claim that we love each other. Every one of us in this room who has a spouse or who's planning to get married, we've all sent these words out of our minds at least one time, and I love you. We've all said that we really weigh it as for what it really costs, what it really means. I don't know if any of us really have, because do you really sacrifice for your spouse? And some of us will sit here and lie, because, hey, we're in a marriage conference, of course you want to shake your head, of course I love my spouse, but do you really understand what it means? Because if you're not willing to love outside of your comfort zone, that's not love. Most of us love within the confines of what makes us comfortable, not hate a person. We don't really do what that other person needs. We do what we want, and we do what makes us feel like we're doing a good thing. But for God so loved the world, he gave his son up to be tortured, to be beaten, to be crucified. Do you guys think about that? There is no greater price. There is no greater way to express or to prove love than to die. But the only way we have to do is die in our flesh, and that's hard for us to do. We don't have to really die a physical death. We don't have to shed every drop of card blood for ourselves. Some of us probably would. But ultimately, the only thing we're required to do is to die to this question, and we find that difficult to do, okay? But Jesus paid it all. He paid it up front, so we don't have to wonder what we get. We know what we got. We got one who literally paid the price for all of us. We might, right? So let me just say this. I know Pastor Troy touched on this a little bit. If you're holding anything against your spouse, if there's any anger, if there's any unforgiveness, all that is is an open door for any to get in. Now, we are in the last days. There is no time. Not as if we had time anyway to play around. There is no time to play around with yesterday, what happened yesterday. Because I'm going to tell you what, if you know Jesus is coming tomorrow,
- 0:09:12
is it going to matter today what happened yesterday? So we're living and loving each day as if it's our last. Does yesterday even matter anymore? It doesn't matter what they said to you. It doesn't matter what they did to you. It doesn't matter because right now we're all, we're battle ready. When I was in the Air Force, there was something called the Buddy System. Everybody know what the Buddy System is? When you're responsible, they assign somebody to you and assign you to somebody, and you're responsible for that person's well-being. You don't even have to know them, but you've got to learn them, and you are responsible for making sure that that person does not fall, that person does not fail, and if they do, guess what's wrong with these? It's yours. It's yours, okay? It's funny how a lot of things you hear in the world, they get a lot of stuff from the Bible. They get a lot of stuff about the Buddy System and all that. That's really, that's got less to do with them figuring out a way to have you take care of somebody who's going to be about us loving each other the way Christ said it to, okay? So Pastor Troy already sold 1 Corinthians 13. I'm going to talk about it a little bit more, you guys, because obviously we substitute the word charity with love, right? Love, in the way that it is intended in this word, it's a copy of it. It's selfless and it's unconditional, right? But what intrigues me about 1 Corinthians 13, starting in verse 4, it says, charity would love sufferers. It suffers, not only does it suffer, but it suffers long. Now, if you think about the word love, why does love require suffering? Love sounds like a beautiful thing. It doesn't sound like you should be suffering because you love it, but that's exactly what love is because it's long suffering, it's patient, it's kind. It endures all things, it holds all things. We know, and I'm going to finish reading the scripture, but I'm just saying, you guys, if you think about love for what it is, it's painful. It's painful to give out something without expecting anything in return. You just give and give and pour out and pour out and pour out because that's what love is and that's what love does, right? But not only does it suffer long, it's also kind. And it says love suffers long and is kind. So while it is suffering, it's also being kind. Y'all understand that? While you're suffering, while you're going through the things that you're going through, if you really have the love of God in you, you're still going to treat that person with the love of God. Love is patient and it is kind. Love suffers long and it's kind. Charity in me is not. It boasts not or vaunted not itself.
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