Fred Stoeker - Hero: Becoming the Man She Desires

Will the real men please stand up? These two brothers of mine, father and son, are standing up in purity, courage, and God-honoring strength. I am proud to know them! Read their story and be encouraged by encountering these modern-day heroes.

R EBECCA S T. J AMES , singer, songwriter, musician

This story is real. Fred and Jasen are indeed heroes in our time. And through God's grace, you can be too!

D R. G ARY R OSBERG , founder and CEO, America's Family Coaches, author of Secrets to a Lasting Love, and co-founder with wife, Barb, of TheGreatMarriageExperience.com

Hero is my favorite of Fred's books by far. Its keen biblical insights and practical applications are exactly what we need today. I can't stop going through it again and again! I have read many books on dating, but Hero easily tops them all. I urge you to read Hero. This book is that good. Fred and Jasen, thanks for being the kind of men many of us want to be.

H EATH A DAMSON , youth evangelist, The Seven Project

Hero is not just another book about dating or purity. As I finished Hero, I came to the realization that this book is truly a message from God's heart to ours. I couldn't put it down. I was deeply challenged and inspired by Jasen's words, but most of all, I felt hopeful. As you read this book, I know you'll be changed forever.

M ICHAEL OB RIEN , former lead singer of Newsong

God has sounded the battle cry for the hearts of men. Do you hear it? Will you experience the powerful thrill of what it means to be a real man? She needs a hero. Let Fred and Jasen challenge you to become the hero she needs you to be.

M ATT M ARKINS , director of the D6 Conference

In a culture nearly devoid of genuine heroes, I've had the honor to witness a few. Fred and Jason Stoeker are such men. Every man on planet Earth needs to read and apply the biblical lessons in this book.

C LAY A LLEN , pastor, president, and founder of AVENUE Resource and author of Operation Destiny

Inspiring. Captivating. Thoroughly biblical. Fred and Jasen Stoeker cry out to the men and women of our generation and challenge them to joy-filled holiness. Hero invites us into the God-centered romance I long to see play out again and again.

P AUL S ABINO , family pastor, Cornerstone Church, Ames, Iowa

I love Hero ! As I began reading this thought-provoking book, tears filled my eyes and hope captured my soul. Hero delivers some jarring reality reading, living proof that whatever the enemy means for harm, God uses for good. Anyone reading these pages will be thoroughly challenged to become a true hero.

J AMES A. M ONTERA , president of Mercy Seat Ministries Midwest, Inc. and founder of Refuge School of Ministry

From Fred:

You may already know my story. At one point, one year after graduating from Stanford University, I was sleeping with three different girls and essentially engaged to marry two of them. Suffice it to say, I wasn't leaving girls better off for having known me.

Although I eventually straightened things out and made some incredibly important changes, my testimony is one of failure and redemption. However, I can honestly say that the first person I've known who has left every girl better off for having known him is my oldest son, Jasen. Considering his bloodline, this has been a victory of almost unthinkable proportionscertainly beyond anything I could confidently hope for in my early days of fatherhood. But Jasen has been victorious, and that's the primary reason I've asked him to share his story with you in this book.

Given his incredible story, you'd think this would have been a pretty obvious idea for me, but it wasn't. I didn't get the idea to team up with Jasen until after I got a call from the beautiful Glen Eyrie conference center in Colorado Springs, asking me to do five sessions on sexual purity for a father-son weekend.

As I pondered what to share with the men, I suddenly realized it would be great for Jasen to share his story. The sons in the audience would love to hear from him, I mused. After all, he's not much older than most of them, and he just made it through eight years of public high school and a state universityexactly where many of them are currently struggling. Who knows more about the practical matters of true heroic purity in today's culture than him?

Glen Eyrie was game, though their enthusiasm became a little guarded when I told the conference leader on the phone that Jasen had never spoken in public about this before. His first talk was scheduled on the Saturday morning of the conference, and as he stepped up to the podium and looked out over the expectant faces of the fathers and their sons around the room, I honestly had no idea what Jasen was planning to say or how he might do as a speaker.

I needn't have been concerned. He hit one out of the park, sharing gripping, courageous accounts from his own battle for purity that even I'd never heard beforestories that left me as awed and speechless as the other guys in the room.

I was an involved father who knew his son well, but even I had no idea what God had in store for all of us through Jasen's words that morning. Sure, I knew what I had taught him along the way, and I know those things gave him a leg up in the battle. But as he spoke on that brisk morning in the shadow of the majestic Pikes Peak, it became abundantly clear to me that Jasen had developed his own burning passion for purity, a passion so real and affecting that it hatched its own personal bevy of tools and creative tactics to keep him winning in his battle for puritythings he hadn't learned from me! I'd had no idea just how heroic he had been along the way in school, and as I sat there transfixed, listening to him nail his message home, I shook my head and thought, What a hero. What a man!

That morning I became convinced that Jasen, then twenty-three years old and in his first year of marriage, would be the perfect one to join me in writing Hero, the book that would complete my trilogy for single guys. Every Man's Battle told my story. Hero tells the rest of the story, through Jasen. Here's how I first introduced Jasen to my readers in Every Man's Battle:

My sixteen-year-old son, Jasen, is now a handsome, strapping, six-foot adolescent with an easy smile and friendly ways. Not long ago Jasen was with friends who had some pornography. He walked away. My son walked away. You don't understand what that means to me!