Artwork for podcast The Will Spencer Podcast
JARED SPARKS | A Vision for Christian Men: Worship, Work, and the Pursuit of Purpose
Episode 189 • 26th July 2024 • The Will Spencer Podcast • Will Spencer
00:00:00 01:54:14

Share Episode

Shownotes

The conversation between Will Spencer and Jared Sparks dives deep into the essence of masculinity and the role of faith in shaping a man's identity. Sparks, a pastor and mentor, reflects on his experiences working with other men in ministry, emphasizing the critical need for accountability, discipline, and genuine connection in a world where many men feel lost or aimless. The discussion touches upon the various challenges men face today, including societal expectations and the struggle for self-worth, while offering a biblical perspective on how to navigate these issues with courage and integrity.

One of the core themes of the episode revolves around the framework of biblical manhood, which Sparks outlines as worship, work, protection, provision, leadership, and love. Each aspect is explored in depth, revealing how these principles guide men in their responsibilities as husbands, fathers, and leaders within their communities. Sparks stresses the importance of community and mentorship, encouraging men to seek out relationships that foster growth and accountability, ultimately leading to a more fulfilling and purpose-driven life.

As the conversation unfolds, listeners are invited to reflect on their own journeys and consider how they can embrace the challenges of masculinity while remaining grounded in their faith. The dialogue culminates in a powerful call to action for men to take ownership of their roles and live authentically, not merely conforming to external standards but being shaped by their relationship with Christ. This episode serves as both an encouragement and a challenge to men everywhere, reminding them that they are not alone in their struggles and that true strength comes from vulnerability and community.

Takeaways:

  • The journey to masculinity involves understanding one's identity as a worshiper and leader.
  • Men must actively pursue strength and resilience through physical and spiritual disciplines.
  • Anxiety and fear are often rooted in sin and require biblical repentance and trust in God.
  • A healthy community of men helps each other grow through shared experiences and challenges.
  • The importance of a rite of passage for boys is essential in their development.
  • Women need a clear biblical understanding of their roles and responsibilities to thrive.

CONNECT WITH JARED

MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

🌟 The Will Spencer Podcast was formerly known as "The Renaissance of Men."

FOLLOW US FOR MORE

Buy Me a Coffee

FREE Men's Chastity Guide

Communications Powered by PaxMail

The Will Spencer Podcast is a weekly interview show featuring extended discussions with authors, leaders, and influencers who can help us make sense of our changing world today. I release new episodes every week on Friday.

ADVERTISERS

Mentioned in this episode:

Puritan Treasures

Reformation Heritage Books offers 15 Puritan classics in modern language with new introductions for today’s readers. Use code SPENCER for 10% off.

https://heritagebooks.org/

Sean O'Brien Training

Sean O'Brien, an NASM-certified trainer and Kingdom builder, helps men and women worldwide reach their fitness goals. Mention my name for an exclusive 15% OFF any training package.

https://obrienfitnesslifestyle.com

Transcripts

Will Spencer:

My name is Will Spencer, and you're listening to the renaissance of Men podcast.

Will Spencer:

My guest this week is a husband, father, pastor, and the host of the Shepherd's Crook podcast.

Will Spencer:

Please welcome Jared Sparks.

Jared Sparks:

You are the renaissance.

Will Spencer:

ted the renaissance of men in:

Will Spencer:

That was a goal that I had for many years.

Will Spencer:

ce was because back in August:

Will Spencer:

I had been part of the mythopoetic men's movement and sat in weekly men's groups.

Will Spencer:

I personally watched dozens or even hundreds of men have their lives changed by discovering their inner capacity and depth, plus their ability to connect with each other.

Will Spencer:

I wanted to facilitate that for more men.

Will Spencer:

around the world adventure in:

Will Spencer:

Thats also why I went to Burning man that fateful year, which is a story youve heard.

Will Spencer:

But even when I left on that trip, I still intended to return to America and become a psychotherapist to help men, albeit with a few more tattoos and trophies.

Will Spencer:

In fact, my idea was that in my therapist's office on the wall behind me, I display photos of me climbing mountains and sailing oceans.

Will Spencer:

Put that together with a pair of tattooed arms, and I felt that I could sit across from the most hardened construction worker or truck driver and say to him, we may be very different men, but we have a lot in common.

Will Spencer:

Nonetheless.

Will Spencer:

I thought perhaps even an outdoor man could see himself reflected in the life and journey of an indoor kidde.

Will Spencer:

urned to the United States in:

Will Spencer:

Everything shut down, schools included.

Will Spencer:

And my experience in many men's group chats and online forums indicated to me that even though I couldn't be a psychotherapist, I could still reach men if I called myself a coach.

Will Spencer:

Besides, I've since come to believe that most men don't actually need psychotherapy, not at the deepest level.

Will Spencer:

They need basic things that men throughout history have needed, a vision for their lives, noble work, a family to fight for, and sometimes the opportunity to grieve.

Will Spencer:

I felt that I could offer that as a coach without needing a degree.

Will Spencer:

I dont even think thats wrong either.

Will Spencer:

But then a funny thing happened.

Will Spencer:

I became a Christian, and the once clear picture became not so clear.

Will Spencer:

After all, in the secular world, there are plenty of examples of men who are their own authority.

Will Spencer:

But as Christians, thats the one thing we cannot do.

Will Spencer:

I cant simply say I am an authority in Christ unto myself.

Will Spencer:

That would be bad, including and especially because if we were to do that, we run the risk of providing false doctrine, which is significant.

Will Spencer:

We wouldnt be impacting his job or his life fulfillment.

Will Spencer:

Instead, literal souls are at stake, eternal destinies.

Will Spencer:

Thats one reason why James, chapter three, verse one, says, not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

Will Spencer:

And so my life plans that id had for almost a decade got interrupted.

Will Spencer:

Christ has a tendency to do that.

Will Spencer:

Ive heard but for a minute there, it was a major crisis that has gone on quietly behind the scenes this year, thanks to the men who supported me through that, who are too numerous to name.

Will Spencer:

That's why you haven't heard me advertise the mentorships recently, because I folded that business up.

Will Spencer:

I had to.

Will Spencer:

For the good of my clients.

Will Spencer:

I set out to help men.

Will Spencer:

And if there's even the slightest chance that I could harm them out of my own ignorance, then it's not worth it.

Will Spencer:

It's also one of the many reasons why I'm ending the renaissance of men as a brand name.

Will Spencer:

I'll have more to say about this in the coming months, but the project is all but completed.

Will Spencer:

When the brand finally falls away, which I anticipate it will do in the next two to three months, I will have learned what I needed to, saw what I needed to, accomplished what I needed to.

Will Spencer:

The vehicle is no longer necessary for me to get where I'm going.

Will Spencer:

In fact, in some ways, the wheels fell off of it a couple months ago, and I've been proceeding on foot.

Will Spencer:

Perhaps you can feel it, but this has left me with a problem, which I can hear you thinking.

Will Spencer:

But will, there's still so much work left to do with men.

Will Spencer:

The job isn't done, not by a long shot.

Will Spencer:

Yes, more men have stood up to try and be better men, and for that I'm grateful.

Will Spencer:

But many of those men have begun to model themselves in the form of Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson.

Will Spencer:

Is that really an improvement from the vision of family, fatherhood, and virtue that I tried to promote with the renaissance of men?

Will Spencer:

No, it's not.

Will Spencer:

Something is better than nothing, for sure, but it falls far short of the ideal.

Will Spencer:

So the question for me has been, to whom can I entrust the needs of men?

Will Spencer:

Yes, of course, there's Christ.

Will Spencer:

I get that.

Will Spencer:

But the christian faith was never meant to be me alone with my Bible attitudes like that lead directly to the worst slanders of the protestant faith.

Will Spencer:

And if you as a man think being alone with your Bible is enough to grow as a man, you're at great risk of being very wrong and its entirely likely that you will be, especially if all you read is the red letters and skip the Old Testament which is very common.

Will Spencer:

So where can I send christian men to become better christian men when many fathers have failed them and pastors arent far behind in their cowardice to confront real issues of masculinity?

Will Spencer:

Well, I would want to send them to men who are further down the path than I am.

Will Spencer:

Men who are husbands, fathers and established business owners.

Will Spencer:

Men with a few failures under their belt that taught them grit and resourcefulness.

Will Spencer:

Men who are educated in the faith, articulate, passionate, courageous, and even fearless in their promotion of the manly vision of the christian faith and the blessings that it represents to women.

Will Spencer:

Remember, I'm giving up a life vision I've had for over a decade.

Will Spencer:

There were moments in my life that I had nothing else than this vision, the promise of the man that I could be for my brothers.

Will Spencer:

I can give it to God, sure, but I'd like to entrust it to godly men as well.

Will Spencer:

And praise God.

Will Spencer:

Just in time.

Will Spencer:

He answered my prayers again.

Will Spencer:

Which brings me to my guest this week.

Will Spencer:

His name is Jared Sparks and he's a husband, father, and the host of the Shepherd's Crook podcast, which ministers to pastors.

Will Spencer:

All of which I knew about and are no small feat in themselves.

Will Spencer:

But it turns out Jared is much more than that.

Will Spencer:

He also has the best and most concise vision for biblical masculinity that I've ever heard, and you'll hear about it in this show.

Will Spencer:

He runs retreats, which I've heard nothing but good things about from close friends and brothers.

Will Spencer:

And he's beginning a rite of passage for his sons, who he also hosts a podcast with called Sons and Slaves.

Will Spencer:

Plus, for the ladies I know are listening, Jared's wife Jordan hosts a popular podcast called fruitful and fearless, covering topics of biblical femininity.

Will Spencer:

Putting all these pieces together, I hope you can see that it would be a relief to my heart to have spoken to Jared on this show, because his work means I can say to men, go talk to that guy.

Will Spencer:

Listen to what he has to say.

Will Spencer:

Follow his model, sit under his preaching.

Will Spencer:

Let him point you the way to Christ and God's design for men, not just with his personal experience and wisdom, but with his biblical fidelity as a pastor as well.

Will Spencer:

Now, naturally, Jared is not alone in this.

Will Spencer:

Now there are many faithful models, from Michael Foster to Nate Spearing to Matt Reynolds and Brandon Lansdowne, Eric Kahn, Brian Sauve and the Ogden crew, Doug Wilson and the Moscow crew, et cetera.

Will Spencer:

So it's not all on our good friend Mister Sparks, nor would either of us want it to be.

Will Spencer:

However, as I prepare to step back from the only post on the only wall I've ever wanted in favor of a better post that only I can man on a wall that I wouldn't have dreamed of a decade ago, I'm grateful to know that there are far more talented and capable soldiers there to take my place, and Jared is about to show you what that means.

Will Spencer:

In our conversation, Jared and I discussed the reality of pastors moral failings, the intention of the christian life, how petition comes before submission, trusting the Lord with your talents, gravitas, and knowing who you are.

Will Spencer:

Worship, work, protect, provide lead and love, and finally, calling women out of fear and anxiety.

Will Spencer:

If you enjoy the renaissance of men podcast, thank you.

Will Spencer:

Please give us a five star rating on Spotify and a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts.

Will Spencer:

If this is your first time here, welcome.

Will Spencer:

I release new episodes about the christian counterculture, masculine virtue, and the family every week.

Will Spencer:

Just a reminder that many things about this podcast will be changing very soon.

Will Spencer:

As you've heard me say, this podcast will soon become the Will Spencer podcast.

Will Spencer:

New brand, new topics, new guests, same format you love.

Will Spencer:

And I hope you won't remind these regular reminders to make sure we all come along together.

Will Spencer:

Also, just a quick moment to remind you of the new podcast sub stack that's becoming our community home.

Will Spencer:

Naturally, I'll be posting free content on the site, but the biggest benefits will go to paid subscribers who'll get a number of perks, including early access to ad, free interviews, previews of my new book, and lifetime access to my christian men's discord server.

Will Spencer:

You can visit Willspence Pod dot substack.com and be a part of it now.

Will Spencer:

And please welcome this week's guest from the Shepherd's Crook and Sons and Slaves podcast, Jared Sparks.

Jared Sparks:

Jared, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Guest:

Hey, I'm glad to be here.

Guest:

It's an honor.

Jared Sparks:

So I've been a big fan of the work that you're doing with Shepherd's crook.

Jared Sparks:

I know that you do a lot of ministry work to pastors, and this has been something that I've been kind of exploring lately because we're in some very strange times for the christian faith.

Jared Sparks:

And I actually believe that it's going to get stranger.

Jared Sparks:

And so there are many men that I know, of course, who are working with everyday believers or converts such as myself.

Jared Sparks:

But working with pastors seems like such a unique ministry, and calling that's, I mean, it couldn't be more important right now.

Guest:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Guest:

When I first got into ministry, I really needed some mentors, and I sought out some mentors because I remember sitting in my office and thinking, what now?

Guest:

What am I supposed to be doing?

Guest:

I knew I was needing to be prepared to preach on Sunday morning.

Guest:

I knew I was supposed to meet with people here and there and disciple some people, but I didn't really have a clear direction of what to do.

Guest:

I was fresh out of college.

Guest:

And then through the years in ministry, I started to kind of find my bearings and get some answers to just some, some of the questions about ministry.

Guest:

But then I kind of looked up and realized that there's a lot of pastors that just aren't well, they are doing the work of ministry.

Guest:

And I've talked to so many pastors who said they thought their ministry was, was firefighting, just putting out fires here and there.

Guest:

What I realized was that so many pastors were just unwell.

Guest:

And so what I've wanted to do is just come alongside of them and say, hey, there's a healthy way to live.

Guest:

You've to be a good and godly pastor.

Guest:

You have to be a good and godly man in the household first, and then everything flows out from that.

Guest:

And so, really, well, what I've tried to do is just work with pastors and help them be godly men, because most pastoral failures just break down in the simple things like spiritual disciplines, not being alone with women, basic things in life that just have to do with just healthy, godly manhood.

Guest:

And I saw pastor after pastor after pastor fail.

Guest:

And so naturally I just kind of wanted to help some guys out, and it's kind of developed from there, but that's kind of how I got into this work.

Jared Sparks:

So this is all very revealing to hear it said so specifically because these things seem kind of obvious to me, but it seems strange that pastors wouldn't know some of these things like your pastors.

Jared Sparks:

I know that shepherds need a shepherd, but I never quite thought it would be like that.

Guest:

Yeah, right.

Guest:

Well, it's interesting.

Guest:

good book that was written in:

Guest:

It was kind of the front end of the nineties men's ministry.

Guest:

It was called, let's see by Steve Farrar.

Guest:

And it was called Point man.

Guest:

to:

Guest:

,:

Guest:

There was kind of a big run with promise keepers and all of that.

Guest:

But one of the books that Steve Farrar, who was the best of the best of those guys, wrote was a book called finishing well or finishing strong, something like that.

Guest:

But it was interesting because what he did was he wrote the book based on the study of a DT's seminary professor named Howard Hendricks.

Guest:

And so what he did, Howard Hendricks had traced down like 300 and something guys that were pastors that had a moral failure over the last decade.

Guest:

And so what he did was, I mean, it was a huge case study of all these guys.

Guest:

And he wanted to see, like, what are these common denominators?

Guest:

And, brother, it was astonishing.

Guest:

There were four big common denominators.

Guest:

Number one was a neglect of spiritual disciplines.

Guest:

So this is like all these guys, there's like 380, something of them.

Guest:

Number one, neglect of spiritual disciplines.

Guest:

Number two was spending time with women that were not their wives.

Guest:

Number three was no accountability.

Guest:

So it was really popular to say pastors can't have friends kind of thing.

Guest:

So you don't have real friendship, you don't really have accountability.

Guest:

And then number four, it escapes me now, I can't remember number four, but it was like four basic things.

Guest:

And what he did was trace every single one of these cases and said, these are the four common denominators.

Guest:

And it seems so simple.

Guest:

And then in the lives of guys that I knew, it's like, man, these are the things they're struggling with, too.

Guest:

It's like, man, just, they're not happy, they're overweight, they don't have real friends.

Guest:

They don't have any hobbies at all.

Guest:

Their household's a wreck, and they're not finishing well.

Guest:

And that's what that whole book was about.

Guest:

And so, you know, I first started working with just pastors, and it's kind of developed into just working with men in general and then trying to equip the church at large as well.

Guest:

But it's the same patterns that keep getting repeated over and over again.

Guest:

We just had these high profile Tony Evans had a moral failure, sin failure down in Texas.

Guest:

And then a guy that was on Driscoll's council named Robert Morris, I think another Texas pastor was fooling around with, like, you know, abusing some, sadly, little girl for years.

Guest:

And it's just this common theme of men that don't know how to be men, and yet they're shepherding churches.

Guest:

And it's not rocket science.

Guest:

It's just, hey, dude, be a healthy mandeh.

Guest:

And then everything else flows from that.

Guest:

And that's the problem with a lot of the pastorate today, is they don't know how to be healthy men.

Jared Sparks:

Is it?

Jared Sparks:

It seems to me that this stuff should be taught in seminary or Bible college, but I know that it isn't.

Jared Sparks:

I know, I know that they preach many, like, head centric disciplines, but if you look at the state of the american pastor, you can actually see, you know, the 300 pound pastor on stage.

Jared Sparks:

It's like, that's a moral failing, right?

Jared Sparks:

That's a moral failing that you're walking around carrying on your body.

Jared Sparks:

And whether or not our society is set up to confront you about that, there is a sin issue that we can all see, and it's not addressed by anyone along the way.

Jared Sparks:

I think that's really, it's surprising in one way, but also, I suppose, not surprising in another way.

Guest:

Yeah, well, I mean, that would be like a visible demonstration of a lack of discipline in a particular area that's visible for everybody to see.

Guest:

When it comes to, when it comes to food, the behind the scene things, when it comes to ministry, pastors have to govern themselves.

Guest:

They have to have self control.

Guest:

I mean, they're, they're largely in control of their schedule because most pastors are pastoring churches of 70 to 80 people, many of them pastoring churches smaller than that.

Guest:

And so they're governing their own time.

Guest:

And Eugene Peterson, who was liberal pastor, but had a lot of really good things to say about pastoral ministry, I really, look, he's like my guilty pleasure pastor that I writer, that I like to read and learn from.

Guest:

It's kind of like enjoying saved by the bell or something.

Guest:

But Eugene Peterson had a book called working the Angles, and what he talked about in that is that there's all these things behind the scenes when it comes to the pastor's devotional life.

Guest:

When it comes, you can, you can upfront look like you're doing really well in ministry, but then behind the scenes that require self discipline, you're a train wreck.

Guest:

So you can be publicly successful, but privately a failure.

Guest:

And that can be hidden by so many pastors because they have their front and center ministry is on display every single week or Wednesday night or whatever it may be.

Guest:

But then through the week.

Guest:

Their life is not monitored largely by even a deacon, board or anybody else.

Guest:

So it requires self discipline, and a lot of pastors just fail at that.

Guest:

And so I think there are classes, certainly on spiritual disciplines that I took when I was in college and did undergraduate graduate work.

Guest:

My program was youth ministry.

Guest:

There were classes that emphasized spiritual disciplines, but it was almost a given where what you really needed is specialized training in the problems of youth today.

Guest:

And in reality, what we needed was more, you know, robust development on the personal side of what it means to be a godly man.

Guest:

And I think Eric, you know, a mutual friend of ours, he did a really good show a few years ago talking about the softening of the american pastor.

Guest:

And I've listened to that episode several times, and every time I do, it's like a hearty amen, because there's so much about pastoral training today.

Guest:

That is exactly what you're saying.

Guest:

It's head.

Guest:

It's a man who's knowledgeable in the visible world and things that require him to be at a funeral or do counseling, accession with couples that are struggling in their home, but the rest of their life, that's that private world.

Guest:

They don't have a private world that's ordered according to God's word, and they can easily hide because their public ministry is on display.

Guest:

And they do those things well.

Guest:

And so there is this massive disconnect between public and private life, I think is so common, and sadly, it is common in pastoral ministry.

Jared Sparks:

I'm glad you mentioned the:

Jared Sparks:

So John Eldridge sort of embodied some of the myth of poetic men's stuff, but he adapted it for a christian audience.

Jared Sparks:

So I came from the secular side.

Jared Sparks:

One of the things that I remember most about participating in that world is that on Fridays, when everyone would show up for the retreats, you would have the Mendez drive up in Mercedes with expensive watches.

Jared Sparks:

It's clear that they had all the success markers.

Jared Sparks:

And ultimately, during the process of these retreats, their belongings would be stripped from them.

Jared Sparks:

They get them back, obviously, and you would just have to walk into this experience as the man that you are and nothing that you have going on outside in your outside life matters.

Jared Sparks:

Who are you in your heart?

Jared Sparks:

And getting to see men who had all this visible signs of success from their clothes to the car, et cetera, to see the mess that they were, in many cases, behind the scenes, that was very powerful for me to see.

Jared Sparks:

And it sounds like that's very prevalent.

Jared Sparks:

It makes sense that that would be part of the, I guess, the christian version of that movement as well.

Jared Sparks:

I think with Steve Ferrar, I think you said it seems like that's very prevalent, probably.

Guest:

Yeah, absolutely.

Guest:

And I think that's represented in really a lot of fields in life when guys are trained to do whatever they're doing.

Guest:

You know, it's long been a criticism from pastors and churches like, you know, don't live a compartmentalized life.

Guest:

Be the same man you are everywhere.

Guest:

And there's a degree of truth in that.

Guest:

You want to be consistent with the way you live your life and the way you conduct your affairs in the world.

Guest:

And from just basic questions of ethics, you want to be the same man everywhere you go.

Guest:

But also there is a level of compartmentalization that is required to be a man when it comes to being out there in the work world, in the workforce, and then being at home.

Guest:

You're the same man, but you're doing different things.

Guest:

And I think with the nineties men's ministry, it was the questions of who you are and what a man does that weren't paired together.

Guest:

So who is a man?

Guest:

And guys will seek questions about, okay, what does it mean?

Guest:

Who am I?

Guest:

What's my identity?

Guest:

That kind of thing.

Guest:

But then what am I supposed to do?

Guest:

And in the same way that there's ditches always, it seems like, and I don't think we're doomed to walk in one ditch or the other for the rest of our life.

Guest:

I think we actually can walk the middle way in a lot of areas of life, but it requires both.

Guest:

And I think those guys were malnourished in understanding who a man is and what a man does.

Guest:

So it was evidenced by getting some right diagnoses of problems within the church or within manhood in general, but then having feminine answers for masculine problems, not really having a good idea of then, okay, what?

Guest:

Now, here's the problem, but what do we do?

Guest:

And I think the same thing that you experienced, you know, I listened to the recent episode that you did with referencing Eric here, but Eldridge was basically the Christian Robert Bly.

Guest:

I mean, he applied those principles, and it was psychologizing everything.

Guest:

And so I think a lot of the questions that were raised to the surface were legitimate questions in that era.

Guest:

And then the answers given were less than sufficient, less than biblical, but were certainly pragmatic, but were less than helpful.

Guest:

And so I think from that point forward, theres just problems that rear their ugly head when it comes to manhood, and that is demonstrated clearly in pastoral ministry.

Guest:

And, I mean, so, like, the criteria that I've put for myself will to be a successful pastor, say, if I get to formal retirement age, and I can say just basically four or five things are true about me, then I would consider this a success.

Guest:

And I don't know.

Guest:

I know one pastor at this point that meets this criteria.

Guest:

It's an old mentor of mine.

Guest:

So, number one, if I can get to formal retirement age, and I love Jesus and I know I'm loved by him, okay, that's a huge win.

Guest:

So I've not, like, apostatized or ran from, from the Lord or anything like that, so praise God.

Guest:

I know, right?

Guest:

Like, if I can get the formal retirement age and.

Guest:

Okay, secondly, does my wife still like me?

Guest:

I'm not talking about just we stuck it out for, you know, 50 years or 40 years through ministry, but does she still enjoy being around me and do we like each other?

Guest:

That.

Guest:

That's it.

Guest:

That's a critical piece.

Guest:

Yeah, we love each other.

Guest:

Yes, we're committed to one another, but do we actually like being in the same room together?

Guest:

Number three, do my kids love the Lord and respect me?

Guest:

And I can't determine whether or not they're going to be a Christian or not, but I want them to certainly honor the Lord, walk with him humbly before God and others, and respect me.

Guest:

If I get to formal retirement age and I've got the respect of a congregation but my children don't respect me, then that's not a win.

Guest:

And then fourth, if I haven't had any hidden moral failures, a man can recover and still finish well if he's been open and repentant about his sins and failures.

Guest:

But if he hides them, you cannot finish well.

Guest:

And if you cover your sin and cover your tracks, it's impossible.

Guest:

And God knows.

Guest:

And in time, what's whispered in the dark will be made public.

Guest:

And so if there's no hidden moral failures.

Guest:

And then the fifth piece is, am I making disciples still?

Guest:

Do I still have a passion about being discipled by somebody?

Guest:

Am I a man that's still a learner at 65, formal retirement age, am I a man that's still a learner?

Guest:

And then am I committed to discipling others still?

Guest:

So am I still pouring my life into my children, my grandchildren and the broader church?

Guest:

And so those are simple low bars, you know, for this is success.

Guest:

It has nothing to do with numbers.

Guest:

It has nothing to do.

Guest:

It's just these basic things that I want to be true of me.

Guest:

And if I can get to that age and look back and say these things are true, then it's like, man, this is a success.

Guest:

And here's the deal.

Guest:

I know one pastor like that.

Guest:

That's it.

Guest:

And I've worked with a lot of men, and they cannot say those things.

Guest:

And that's what I want to see happen and replicated in the lives of men where there's an army of guys my age that can get to that formal age and say those things are true about them.

Jared Sparks:

You know, I hear you say those, and it's one thing to think that those should apply to.

Jared Sparks:

Just realistically, they should apply to every man, right?

Jared Sparks:

That these are not.

Jared Sparks:

I mean, these are.

Jared Sparks:

These are things that you want to be, that every man should want to be able to say, and.

Jared Sparks:

But that this is the bar now for pastors is a real sign of something.

Jared Sparks:

Like you would think that every man in America would say, like, yeah, you know, I want to love the Lord, not have any secret failings that have come to light.

Jared Sparks:

My kids are.

Jared Sparks:

My kids are faithful, love my kids, love my wife.

Jared Sparks:

Like, that used to be, I think, where most men wanted to finish, but now it's an aspirational goal, like, and it's an aspirational goal for the men that are leading other.

Jared Sparks:

Mendez.

Guest:

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Jared Sparks:

Yeah, yeah.

Guest:

Well, I mean, so somebody I used to look up to, and you.

Guest:

You may have heard this name or, you know, maybe not, but his name was Darren patrick, and Darren was.

Guest:

He is from my hometown, and he was a very early member of acts 29.

Guest:

He was the.

Guest:

He was the vice president of acts 29, friends with driscoll, friends with Chandler, and we all looked up to him.

Guest:

He was revered in our hometown, and he had this gravitas that I cannot explain.

Guest:

It's unlike anybody I've ever met.

Guest:

I mean, it is.

Guest:

You know, when you read Cr Wiley's book man of the house, and you hear this concept of the gravity of a man or gravitas, and this is exactly what Darren had.

Guest:

Every room he walked into, it doesn't matter what level of people are in that room.

Guest:

They looked to him, and they wanted to be around him.

Guest:

They wanted to be friends with Darren.

Guest:

He ended up being the chaplain of the St.

Guest:

Louis Cardinals.

Guest:

And all these men that were just.

Guest:

Just powerful, just leader men, incredible baseball players, incredible talent.

Guest:

They wanted to be around this guy.

Guest:

Well, Darren ended up having a couple inappropriate relationships with women, and then he ended up committing suicide.

Guest:

He killed himself.

Guest:

And it was about four years ago now.

Guest:

I remember from a buddy of mine that was an elder at his church, and he messaged me and he's like, dude, I got to call you.

Guest:

And it was such a blow.

Guest:

I mean, now I drive around town and there's a d.

Guest:

Patrick, a car dealership, and you see these, these decals on cars.

Guest:

And every time I see that, I still have his number in my phone because it's like, it's a memory.

Guest:

And he was a guy that everybody looked up to and he was a guy that men wanted to be like.

Guest:

And yet this is what, this is what happens.

Guest:

So there is a times when you see all these moral failings.

Guest:

It's like, is it inevitable that I have to live the life that I end up running really hard and I've got to be this visionary leader that everybody says I'm supposed to be as a pastor?

Guest:

And I got to have all these plans and goals for the church for the next five years and ten years?

Guest:

And is it inevitable that I burn out and maybe I don't kill myself, but is it inevitable that I end up being miserable and destroying people by being domineering or something?

Guest:

And I think a lot of guys kind of get black filled into that in ministry.

Guest:

To think it's almost inevitable.

Guest:

I'm going to run really, really hard and then I'm going to burn out.

Guest:

And it doesn't have to be that way.

Guest:

You don't have to run like a chicken with your head cut off or like your hair's on fire.

Guest:

You can actually live a healthy pace that is filled with ambition.

Guest:

But you can enjoy your life and you can enjoy pastoring and you can enjoy your family.

Guest:

There is a way to live.

Guest:

And I understand guys, you know, struggle with certain things in life that make it more difficult for them than maybe it is for me.

Guest:

But, man, I'm having a lot of fun.

Guest:

I want people to have fun and enjoy their life.

Guest:

And you really can.

Guest:

And that's the life.

Guest:

You know, the christian life is intended to be.

Guest:

The modus operandi of the Christian is one of joy.

Guest:

And you will have seasons of sorrow, but it's not a life of sorrow with seasons of joy.

Guest:

The intent of our life is to be joyful.

Guest:

And so I think guys need to get encouraged.

Guest:

That's why, honestly, my ministry has kind of shifted into almost like a pastor courage ministry.

Guest:

It's like, hey, bro, get your head up.

Guest:

You don't have to be.

Guest:

Don't whine and complain.

Guest:

You've got it pretty good.

Guest:

Everybody else has got it difficult in your church too.

Guest:

Just enjoy your life.

Guest:

And, you know, I think people generally have responded pretty well to that.

Jared Sparks:

So where did I think I know the answer?

Jared Sparks:

This is very interesting to me because when I spoke about masculinity more, this was the flip side of a lot of the men that I would talk to.

Jared Sparks:

So there's a, the ditch on one side of the road is the hyper motivated pastor who drives, rides hard and burns himself out and then drives into that side of the ditch, which can be you, you know, burnout, inappropriate relationships, addictions, et cetera, all the things that high performing men are tempted to.

Jared Sparks:

But then the ditch on the other side of the road is inaction, is passivity.

Jared Sparks:

And so a lot of the men that I would work with, it's about getting them up out of that ditch onto the road and moving and moving forward at a sustainable pace.

Jared Sparks:

It's interesting and less so dealing with men that have just pushed themselves into 6th gear and blown out the engine.

Jared Sparks:

But I mean, I think both of these are, I look at these as two different symptoms of masculinity today, meaning like the past 70 or so years that men on both sides don't really know how to be a man.

Jared Sparks:

Like, you have to be able to, you have to be able to motivate yourself out of the ditch, but you also have to not drive yourself into the ditch on the other side of the road.

Jared Sparks:

You have to understand, like, okay, I'm getting too close to the sun and.

Jared Sparks:

But I think we see that, like, we almost celebrate that as a culture now, like the classic burnout.

Jared Sparks:

But there's a moral component to the christian side that gives it a gravity that the secular world doesn't quite have.

Guest:

Yeah, man, that's helpful in thinking through that because you're right on one side.

Guest:

It's almost like godliness is lacking ambition.

Guest:

So it is a surrender or submission to the will of God.

Guest:

And, you know, I think that a lot of the, if, you know, some trends that have happened theologically and especially with the young, restless and reformed movement and the opposite of prosperity gospel would have been the poverty gospel and almost a fear of ambition because you have your desires and passions and I need to lay all these down.

Guest:

And it almost became a really good thing for pastors just to say, hey, listen, it's almost like in prayer, we don't lay our requests out to the Lord in accordance with his commands because we want to surrender to his will.

Guest:

And yet even in Jesus, in his prayer, Jesus, it was request before submission.

Guest:

It was petition before submission.

Guest:

It was let this cup pass for me and not my will, but your will be done.

Guest:

And if we immediately go to submission, we're actually not praying according to the words of Christ or the commands of God.

Guest:

We're commanded to pray for the healing of the sick before we submit to the will of our heavenly Father.

Guest:

So it's petition before submission and a lot of pastoral life or just life and as men in general, it's almost like there's that one ditch of just submitting to the will of God.

Guest:

I'm not going to have godly ambition because that could be not rightly ordered by God and his word.

Guest:

So I'm on one side.

Guest:

The other side is like, I've really learned a lot from Cameron Haynes and David Goggins and a lot of these hustle guys that are, I really, I get motivated by that kind of thing and I think what keeps me from going into that ditch is this man.

Guest:

I want to be catechized by the vision that Jesus gives me.

Guest:

And, you know, when you are familiar with the ways of the world, there's always going to be a twisted version of reality.

Guest:

When you're familiar with God's word, you're able to rightly assess what's wrong with the world in ditch one and ditch two.

Guest:

So, for instance, in pastoral ministry, there's been an idea for a couple decades, you know, maybe 30 years now, that the pastor is the visionary leader.

Guest:

That's just a repackaged idea of the pastor is a prophet, the pastor is Moses, and everybody gets behind his vision.

Guest:

So you get your unique vision given by the Holy Spirit to you for your particular congregation, and then you gather a group of people around you who will implement this vision and recognize that yes, this is indeed the vision of God.

Guest:

And the problem with that is massive, but it really feeds the ego of pastors.

Guest:

And for men, if they have this idea that I get to set the vision of my family and it's going to be a unique vision, certainly God's going to use certain men and certain pastors in unique ways.

Guest:

But here's the deal.

Guest:

Jesus is our visionary.

Guest:

He has given us our vision, he's given us our mission.

Guest:

Every church has the exact same vision and mission.

Guest:

And the pastor who thinks it's his job to get everybody on his bus is missing the point that he's on Jesus's bus.

Guest:

And every church has this exact same mission.

Guest:

And I think what can lead to healthy ambition and walking in the middle of the road is recognizing that Jesus is the pastor of the church, I am vigorously following after him.

Guest:

And like Paul, I'm saying, follow me as I follow Christ.

Guest:

I have proper ambition here.

Guest:

The Holy Spirit has empowered me to use the power that God has given me for good and not for harm, not for ill.

Guest:

And I want you to jump in on that power and run with me towards Christ.

Guest:

And it's the same thing with manhood when it comes to a household.

Guest:

I'm not trying to give to my wife and children my vision for our household.

Guest:

I have a vision given to me by God to raise my children in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord, to obey and honor him in all things, to lead my wife, to lead my family.

Guest:

And so it's a lot easier to say, hey, follow the vision God has given us in this family than it is to say, follow my vision that I'm giving us in this family.

Guest:

So I think that problem is pervasive.

Guest:

And because men have an ego problem and easily can have an ego problem, the ditch becomes really deep, and we run in it, all the while saying, I'm the leader.

Guest:

I've got the vision.

Guest:

Follow me.

Guest:

And we've missed the point, especially in ministry.

Guest:

Jesus has the vision.

Guest:

Follow him.

Guest:

And so I think that's where we can have that proper ambition, that vigor, that.

Guest:

That joy, without, you know, running ourselves ragged.

Jared Sparks:

And it has to be.

Jared Sparks:

And this is, this is another way.

Jared Sparks:

This is how I think of what you just said is, like, it has to be not about you.

Jared Sparks:

As soon as.

Jared Sparks:

As soon as the vision for your family or for your company or for your church or whatever, it becomes about you.

Jared Sparks:

Like, the plot gets lost.

Jared Sparks:

Like, it's gotta be something.

Jared Sparks:

You have to be pointing beyond yourself somehow, right?

Jared Sparks:

Otherwise, if it becomes all about you, that's a pressure that no Mandez can handle.

Jared Sparks:

And I think hustle culture, and I think elite theory, great man theory, that's kind of floating around in some of these circles, like, looking at men like Alexander the great or whatever.

Jared Sparks:

It's like men fancy.

Jared Sparks:

You even watch, like, a James Bond film or these singular mythic hero kind of tales that the men put the weight of the vision all on themselves.

Jared Sparks:

And of course, that's great to watch for two and a half hours on a tv screen like dune, but when it actually becomes your life, like, look, you're not Paul Atreides.

Jared Sparks:

Like, it has to not be about you because you can't carry that.

Jared Sparks:

He's a fictional character.

Jared Sparks:

You are not.

Jared Sparks:

But I think so many men get very caught up in the success culture and the hustle culture.

Jared Sparks:

It's great to listen to Jocko Willink and David Goggins and all those guys, but I don't know that I would call David Goggins a healthy man, right?

Guest:

No, definitely not.

Jared Sparks:

And people, men mistake if they start mistaking themselves for the image of unhealthy men rather than looking at the healthy mandehead.

Jared Sparks:

Jesus.

Jared Sparks:

And I guess, yeah, that's the real challenge in many ways.

Guest:

Yeah, absolutely.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

They certainly would not be healthy men.

Guest:

You know, David Goggins certainly is not a healthy man.

Guest:

And I think that most guys have discipline in some areas of their life.

Guest:

They're really disciplined in some areas, but they don't have well ordered discipline in a manner, to use kind of a leftist term here, in a holistic manner.

Guest:

There's not, there isn't, you know, kind of a renaissance if you have discipline in all areas or spheres of their life.

Guest:

And so they're really disciplined and motivated in one area.

Guest:

And that's, that's what the hustle culture dives into is discipline in a particular area.

Guest:

But these other areas of their life are malnourished.

Guest:

Their families are a wreck.

Guest:

They've been married two or three times.

Guest:

They don't have proper discipline.

Guest:

They all, they always talk about discipline, but it's actually not well ordered discipline.

Guest:

And so, you know, I think that's just, I mean, it's critical in all of, all of our lives, for sure.

Guest:

But, yeah, I think our desire should not just be to hustle, but it should be to be godly, which is, you know, which is a big difference.

Jared Sparks:

So let's talk about well ordered discipline, because we hear the word discipline as this, you know, single factor thing, like, there must be discipline, right?

Jared Sparks:

That's the jocko Willink.

Guest:

Right.

Jared Sparks:

But a well ordered discipline is a much more multifaceted kind of thing.

Jared Sparks:

So let's, let's talk about that and sort of make it practical for men and women, I suppose, who are listening.

Guest:

Yeah, absolutely.

Guest:

Well, I think if you look at your life, you can recognize that your ambition goes somewhere.

Guest:

You're giving the best of yourself to something.

Guest:

So every person is disciplined in some area, even the lazy man, he's just really disciplined at being lazy.

Guest:

So if you look at your life and recognize that you are extremely motivated in some areas, and it doesn't mean that you have to be amazing at everything, but then there's going to be some areas of your life where you recognize, why can't I put my motivation or discipline to that particular area?

Guest:

Because a lot of times, the areas that we lack discipline can be hurtful to the people that we love the most.

Guest:

You know, the classic example in marriage is that I can have a disciplined body.

Guest:

I can control my intake of food, or I can go out and get strong.

Guest:

And I've.

Guest:

You know, something's clicked in me, and I don't want to be overweight anymore.

Guest:

I'm now I want to go out and.

Guest:

And be really strong.

Guest:

But the yard looks terrible.

Guest:

Or inside of your home, your office.

Guest:

This perpetual struggle for me is, why is it that I care about the kitchen being cleaned?

Guest:

And I will come alongside of my wife, who stays at home, works really hard.

Guest:

She works one day a week outside of the home.

Guest:

We have four children.

Guest:

But the kitchen really, really matters to me to be clean.

Guest:

And I'll even join in on that and do everything I can to keep that clean.

Guest:

But my office, which is my space downstairs, it's like, why is my desk like, brother, look at this.

Guest:

I'm going to take this right now to.

Guest:

You can't.

Guest:

If you're on the audio, like, okay, there's books right there.

Guest:

There's clutter right there.

Guest:

So in this particular area, it's.

Guest:

It's.

Guest:

It's.

Guest:

My goodness.

Guest:

Why is it that that particular area of discipline is hard for me?

Guest:

And I'm habit stacking.

Guest:

I'm reading atomic habits by, by James clear and doing all this stuff.

Guest:

So when I'm talking about this, this is something.

Guest:

I mean, I'm in the same boat, but lacking discipline in areas that matter, ends up hurting people.

Guest:

And this is just kind of a silly example, but I think for all of us, we got to ask that question.

Guest:

It's not really a win if we're really disciplined in one particular area, but all these other areas, we're really either hurting the people around us or we're just really malnourished.

Guest:

And so I think it's really easy to say, where am I crushing it and where am I struggling?

Guest:

And then I need to take a little bit, learn from that ambition I have over here in this area, that I'm crushing it and then apply it in these areas that I really need it over here.

Jared Sparks:

And I think that there's also a component of recognizing that.

Jared Sparks:

So hustle culture is all about focusing your discipline into, like, a very narrow jet.

Jared Sparks:

Like.

Jared Sparks:

Like a.

Jared Sparks:

Like, your discipline is a fire hose.

Jared Sparks:

And you put your thumb over the fire hose and you get this.

Jared Sparks:

You get this really fine spray.

Jared Sparks:

You know what I mean?

Jared Sparks:

But if you take your thumb off it just kind of pours out.

Jared Sparks:

But the more that you focus the energy in one direction, the less anything else can get.

Jared Sparks:

And if you take care of, you know, if we were all really to clean our environments as well as we would, like every single day, we wouldn't have the time and energy to do other things.

Jared Sparks:

We only have so much to do.

Jared Sparks:

And so I think that that extremely focused discipline, while it can be very good for achieving high levels of, say, material success, it comes at the cost of other things in life.

Jared Sparks:

And I think that's a trade off that some men don't know how to make.

Jared Sparks:

It's like they're so focused on taking the hill that they don't understand that they don't understand what they're leaving behind, I suppose.

Guest:

Well, there's two different ideas of legacy.

Guest:

There's the kind of legacy that some men want to want to leave.

Guest:

When it comes to the hustle culture, there's a kind of legacy that people want to leave that is, I was excellent at one thing.

Guest:

Yeah, okay.

Guest:

This would be the lie of the enemy.

Guest:

It's like, hey, you be the best you can, and you be the best you can at one thing.

Guest:

You devote your entire life to this one thing, and then behind you is the inevitable wake of damage.

Guest:

Okay?

Guest:

If your legacy is a good thing, you should want to do everything you can to, you know?

Guest:

And ecclesiastes is true that, you know, a generation comes, a generation goes, and there is a time where your name is going to be forgotten.

Guest:

But what God does through you is you're living in light of your great grandchildren and trying to make decisions in light of the generations that come, whether you have grandchildren or not.

Guest:

But you're living thinking about the future.

Guest:

You do want to be remembered for being the guy that, I ran a three hour marathon once a month for eight years and devoted my life to that.

Guest:

Okay, that's great.

Guest:

But your kids and grandkids don't want to be around you at all.

Guest:

You may have legacy that reached the magazines, the runner's World magazine.

Guest:

Okay.

Guest:

You ran the 300 miles desert run that I think started two or three years ago.

Guest:

That's amazing.

Guest:

You're an incredible endurance athlete.

Guest:

Great.

Guest:

But then over here, you have a guy that's actually devoted his life living a rightly ordered life according to God's word.

Guest:

And there is tremendous legacy, the kind of legacy you see in Jonathan Edwards life down through the generations, or what you see even in modern day with Doug Wilson through his family lineage.

Guest:

And what God is doing currently that we're getting to watch what so many of us younger guys are saying.

Guest:

God, may that be me.

Guest:

We're praying in the mornings and praying before we go to bed.

Guest:

God, may we see our children and children's children humbly walk before God and others.

Guest:

And so I think there's going to be a legacy that's left and the hustle culture gets and earns some kind of legacy.

Guest:

What does it matter if everybody outside of your household praises you, if your family doesn't?

Guest:

And I think that's a cost that some guys are saying, yeah, that's fine, I want that.

Guest:

I'm okay with that.

Guest:

But the christian man is not okay with getting the praise of the world at the expense of his family.

Guest:

And so I think that has to be rightly ordered as well.

Jared Sparks:

That's a really good point, because this is something that I see.

Jared Sparks:

I would call it the christian manosphere.

Jared Sparks:

I suppose as I've watched, I came in through the manosphere of the men's dialogue is how I entered into the christian faith.

Jared Sparks:

And then I watched many men in my space become christian, and then I watched the dialogue around masculinity kind of Christianize.

Jared Sparks:

And there's been so much focus on that.

Jared Sparks:

It's not strictly worldly.

Jared Sparks:

I think it's okay to have a godly ambition.

Jared Sparks:

I think it's okay to have a vision for your family and to want to want to create prosperity.

Jared Sparks:

And I think that's what we're meant to do.

Jared Sparks:

I'm not a believer in the poverty gospel, and I think every man has innate capacities that he should cultivate to the benefit of what we might neutrally call profit.

Jared Sparks:

Like, if you're good at something, you should get to the point where you can charge money for it.

Jared Sparks:

I think these are all good and godly things, and there's a way in which that can become so much of a focus that men begin comparing each other and themselves based on their material success as opposed to actually being brothers in Christ.

Jared Sparks:

Right.

Jared Sparks:

As opposed to like.

Jared Sparks:

And I think, and I think one of the things that men struggle with in the christian faith is that they want to be a successful.

Jared Sparks:

I'm going to try and talk my way through this.

Jared Sparks:

They want to be a successful and well respected and we might say powerful man, a man of status.

Jared Sparks:

And I think that's a godly desiree.

Jared Sparks:

However, it seems to me that the christian faith says that you work hard and the results belong to the Lord, so you might not get that.

Jared Sparks:

And so there's the real temptation that a lot of men experience today, especially on social media, to try and do it in their own strength, which they can do, but that comes at the expense of godliness.

Jared Sparks:

And so there's this uneasy tension, like, well, I want to go get that thing God's not giving to me, so I'll go get it on my own.

Jared Sparks:

And things get rightly.

Jared Sparks:

They get misordered, I think.

Guest:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Guest:

So the Tower of Babel demonstrates that mankind can do some really amazing things.

Guest:

And Jesus, I mean, God literally comes down and says nothing that they put their minds to.

Guest:

Will they not be able to do?

Guest:

So their language was, and the peoples were dispersed, but they were doing something that was, that was powerful.

Guest:

And through the strength of their own hands, obviously through God's common grace, not saying that that was disconnected from God and his, his giving them the ability to think through those sorts of, those sorts of things, but people can do amazing things.

Guest:

It's just, it's unbelievable what people can do.

Guest:

And God's amazing.

Guest:

I mean, God's common grace that he's distributed to people and he's distributed that in an uneven way.

Guest:

But you're exactly right.

Guest:

When it comes to, when it comes to certain men have been given two talents, and that's okay.

Guest:

Every man should, whether they get two talents or ten talents or five talents, should run to every single.

Guest:

Oh, it looks like we got disconnected.

Guest:

Are we together here?

Jared Sparks:

I'm still here.

Guest:

Okay.

Guest:

Every man should run to every little bit of responsibility that God has entrusted to him.

Guest:

Run to power, run to authority, because christian men have been uniquely given the gift through the power of the Holy Spirit to handle power and not misuse it.

Guest:

So they should run to it.

Guest:

But then you're exactly right.

Guest:

What God does with that.

Guest:

God's going to give some people, God's not egalitarian in anything.

Guest:

He's going to give some people more power and some guys more what looks like visible fruit than another guy.

Guest:

And we just got to be comfortable enough in the way that God has made us to be okay with that.

Guest:

And not just be okay with that, but celebrate when a brother that's doing something very similar to us is succeeding and outpacing because God is blessing it.

Guest:

And then look at what God is doing through our life and say, God, thank you for what you're doing in my life and their life.

Guest:

Little men struggle when other men succeed.

Guest:

Godly men celebrate when other men succeed, and they thank God for it.

Guest:

They recognize that it's okay that God has given me two talents.

Guest:

And by golly I'm going to do everything I possibly can with those two talents to see those multiplied and see God work through it.

Guest:

So there just has to be an ability to trust in God's sovereignty when it comes to our lives that he's not going to use us all in the exact same way.

Guest:

And in that hustle culture, it's like if you don't climb to the top, trust the Lord and just you can climb as far as God allows you to and then trust the Lord with all those results.

Guest:

It's the same thing with ministry, man.

Guest:

You get into past, you know, pastors conferences and the schmoozing that's going on between pastors.

Guest:

Just trying to get somebody to ask how many people go to your church or just trying to get people, it's like you're fishing for compliments.

Guest:

It's like, please, please, please, I want to tell you what's going on in our church.

Guest:

So please, I'll ask a few leading questions so I can hear what's going on and I'll tell you what's going on in our church so I can prove myself to you.

Guest:

And I think honestly, there's just freedom in being able to lay that down.

Guest:

Going back to just talking about what it means to be a healthy man, to say God's going to, I'm going to be ambitious.

Guest:

I'm going to run to power and authority.

Guest:

I'm going to run to responsibility and then do the best I can and then trust God with what he's going to do in my life, and that's going to be unique in my life.

Guest:

It's not going to be the same as what God does with somebody else.

Jared Sparks:

I appreciate you saying that.

Jared Sparks:

To hear that, it triggers an emotional response in my heart because I've met a lot of men like that.

Jared Sparks:

And the way that there's an acceptance seeking, the way that there's approving themselves seeking, as if, like if I tell you how many men are in my church and what's going on, that you'll like me or something.

Jared Sparks:

That's a very natural thing.

Jared Sparks:

And yet at the same time, we're not supposed to derive our identity as men from the status that other others give us based on their perception of our accomplishments.

Jared Sparks:

Right?

Jared Sparks:

You mentioned Cr Wiley and a man's gravity.

Jared Sparks:

And Michael Foster has talked about gravitas.

Jared Sparks:

Like gravitas from a man comes in knowing who you are, and that doesn't come from the outside world because the outside world can give you things and then it can take them away.

Jared Sparks:

I'm reading the book of Job right now.

Jared Sparks:

I can just go away.

Jared Sparks:

And it's very powerful to read the dialogue that job is having with his friends, you know, quote unquote friends, where he knows who he is.

Jared Sparks:

Right.

Jared Sparks:

It's not looking pretty good on the outside, but he knows who he is.

Jared Sparks:

And the assault that he's coming under from everyone else's perceptions of him and that he's bearing up under that.

Jared Sparks:

And to see that get flipped around from pastors like, I've seen it in so many other places, not just in the christian world, it's in the secular world as well.

Jared Sparks:

It's like, no, our identity is supposed to come from someplace much deeper than that of.

Jared Sparks:

And yet it's still very familiar.

Jared Sparks:

It's very common men things.

Guest:

Yeah, absolutely.

Guest:

And I think every man who knows men in their life, who know who they are and what they're intended for, and they're not trying to impress anybody, and they really don't care what you think.

Guest:

And it's not a kind of personality that.

Guest:

Well, I don't care what you think, because they actually do care what you think.

Guest:

You know, it's not this Persona that's being.

Guest:

But men know the guys that are like that are just really secure in who they are in Christ and what God's called them to do, and they're doing the right things.

Guest:

And there is that.

Guest:

There's that gravitas there towards that.

Guest:

And there's just a lot of little men in the world that don't know what God's called them to do that are trying to live large, and they have no idea because they don't have a vision of manhood.

Guest:

And we're so confused today on what that is.

Guest:

And I know that's what so much of renaissance of man is about, and I've learned so much from.

Guest:

From you and and the people that you've had on.

Guest:

But, man, it is, uh.

Guest:

It is.

Guest:

It's pervasive, uh, insecure men who don't really have a grasp on who a man is and what a man does.

Guest:

And it's demonstrated in bragging and, you know, their Persona on Instagram or their Persona on Facebook or Twitter or wherever, and everybody can see it.

Guest:

But then the man who is secure, everybody can see that as well.

Guest:

And other men want to be like that guy.

Jared Sparks:

I was talking with.

Jared Sparks:

I think it was Michael Foster about how celebrity culture that we live in today with movie stars and rock stars and stuff, began.

Jared Sparks:

I think he said, during one of the great awakenings with pastors, that pastors were the first celebrities.

Jared Sparks:

And that was like a mind blowing kind of thought.

Jared Sparks:

And I think it can be very understandable that a man with a gift for the ministry, the gift for speaking and preaching and leading, can, you know, with a genuine gift, can look at that gift and he can see celebrity culture in America Day that focuses on entrepreneurs and visionary leaders and TEd talk givers and decide that he can shift his gifts to move more in that direction, which is more a worldly direction than preaching the gospel, even if it means that you're not going to have the big superstar stage life by ministering faithfully to a faithful church of 70 or 80 people.

Jared Sparks:

That's not a glamorous life, but it's a godly life, and it has its own rewards.

Jared Sparks:

And I can see how success culture would now have bled into the ministry.

Jared Sparks:

I've heard about this, I've observed it in other ways, but now it makes a whole lot of sense why that's the case.

Jared Sparks:

It's just tragically common in terms of the modern, the way things work today.

Guest:

Yeah, well, I've been in ministry now.

Guest:

I've been a pastor for 16 years and had four different.

Guest:

So I was at a church for two and a half years.

Guest:

We planted, and then our church merged with another church, and I became a campus pastor at that church.

Guest:

Then we, we shifted.

Guest:

Two and a half years later, I was associate pastor at kind of a mom and pop church from this mega church to a smaller, just literally pastor and his wife, just a lot smaller church.

Guest:

And then now we've been at our church for the last eight years.

Guest:

And lord willing, we're going to be there for the long haul.

Guest:

And there is this.

Guest:

When I first got into ministry, that's what I wanted.

Guest:

And I'd never thought about that.

Guest:

The first celebrities and that whole culture being tied into because you think, first great awakening, you have George Whitfield, you have John Wesley, you have all these masses of people, you have Edwards.

Guest:

at were preaching then in the:

Guest:

So that is an interesting concept.

Guest:

But that's what I wanted.

Guest:

I mean, I got into ministry.

Guest:

I wanted to pastor a large church, and I think that's what every guy my age, we wanted to start a movement, and especially with acts 29.

Guest:

in:

Guest:

We didn't end up doing that, but that was my goal was to pastor a huge church.

Guest:

And if somebody would have told me at 24 that I'd be pastoring a church that was not a huge church, that is a medium sized to a little bit larger than medium sized church, there would have been a little bit of disappointment in me.

Guest:

Like, really.

Guest:

And the things I said, I believed as a young man in ministry, practically, I didn't believe it because I thought I would have been.

Guest:

It would have been like, is this somewhat of a failure?

Guest:

And then as I look back, if I would have got what I wanted but didn't what I have now, didn't have what I have now.

Guest:

It's just everybody's story is like, man, God has something so much better, really than you have for yourself.

Guest:

And it doesn't necessarily come with the accolades you thought you would get.

Guest:

he, I'm pastoring a church of:

Guest:

I thought my aptitude was at this level.

Guest:

And, you know, as you live life a little bit, you kind of get a healthy self assessment where you kind of get cut down to size a little bit where you realize I may be, you know, I'm not.

Guest:

I'm not as.

Guest:

I'm not as great as I thought I was ten years ago, you know.

Jared Sparks:

And I've never, ever felt that I'm not right.

Guest:

I mean, I'm not as good a communicator.

Guest:

I'm not as good of a preacher.

Guest:

I'm not as good at, you know, filling the blanket, all this stuff.

Guest:

And there's just something happens with age.

Guest:

I'm in my four, I'm 40 now where there is a, it's not a self loathing, but it's almost, it's like a comforting humility to realize I am what I am by the grace of God, whatever that is.

Guest:

And there's a freedom there where it's like, you know, if our church never blows up the way I wanted it to when I was 25 year old man.

Guest:

And certainly God can do whatever he wants and would want to honor him in that.

Guest:

But there's just freedom in that.

Guest:

There's just freedom to say, God, I trust you.

Guest:

And that doesn't mean, I know, referencing back to what we were talking about before, that you lack ambition by just saying, God, I trust you.

Guest:

Like God, I want to see great things happen.

Guest:

I want to see revival.

Guest:

I want to see you bless the preaching that comes every week on Sunday mornings or when I do podcast, you know, talks or whatever it may be.

Guest:

But, you know, I'm having a pretty good time being a husband and a father and pastoring.

Guest:

I got really good friends.

Guest:

I get to do fun things.

Guest:

Life's pretty stinking awesome.

Guest:

And I'm having more fun than I thought I ever could.

Guest:

And it's not doing what I thought I was going to be doing.

Jared Sparks:

Yeah, I can relate to that.

Jared Sparks:

When I started the renaissance of men, I thought it was just going to be a documentary.

Jared Sparks:

That was the big project behind the scenes.

Jared Sparks:

That was all just to highlight other men who had been doing the work for much longer than me.

Jared Sparks:

I showed up, I had some cameras.

Jared Sparks:

Let's tell the story of these other men.

Jared Sparks:

And I didn't want to be in front of the camera.

Jared Sparks:

I just wanted to work one on one with men and help them change their lives in the way that my own life had been changed by some of the wisdom that I had accumulated from my experiences.

Jared Sparks:

I never thought I would be the in front of camera guy, and I've had to move away from that one on one kind of work.

Jared Sparks:

But it's like trusting that, okay, this isn't what I wanted for myself.

Jared Sparks:

It's something that's very edgy for me.

Jared Sparks:

Like, I'm not naturally the guy to be on the microphone, believe it or not, in front of the camera, but this is where God has put me.

Jared Sparks:

And so, okay, like, praise God for that.

Jared Sparks:

And that it has its own responsibilities.

Jared Sparks:

And on the other side, a man who's going in the direction of.

Jared Sparks:

Who's heading in that direction for the bright lights and all that stuff can actually find satisfaction in something far more humble and modest.

Jared Sparks:

And these two are not.

Jared Sparks:

They're not in any conflict.

Jared Sparks:

Right?

Jared Sparks:

It's different men doing different things in different seasons of their lives.

Jared Sparks:

And I think that's the really important thing, is to not think that any moment in itself is like an arrival.

Jared Sparks:

And I'm going to be here forever because opportunity could knock on your door tomorrow, right.

Jared Sparks:

And to trust the way that we'll never actually overcome God's plan for us.

Jared Sparks:

We'll walk backwards into it if we have to.

Jared Sparks:

Right?

Jared Sparks:

It's like, wow, it's actually pretty good to be right here.

Jared Sparks:

And who knows what it's setting you up for in the future, right?

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

I mean, it sounds like you're having a pretty good time.

Guest:

I mean, God's faithful, and there's a lot of joy in following him.

Guest:

But isn't it neat?

Guest:

Because you kind of look back and you're like, how did I get here?

Guest:

And this really wasn't some grand plan and design here.

Guest:

It's like, man, God piece these things together and I just get caught up in what he's doing.

Guest:

You know, it's like I get, I get dragged along and, you know, it's like God just brings you and puts you where he wants you.

Guest:

He really does.

Guest:

And, you know, he is our heavenly father.

Guest:

We have a heavenly father.

Guest:

He takes care of us and he leads us and guides us in the, he knows how to give good gifts to his children.

Guest:

I mean, I'm preaching through Luke right now, just talking about this.

Guest:

And he even clothes like the lily in the field and I was just preaching this in Luke twelve.

Guest:

It's like we have, oh, you have little faith.

Guest:

He knows how to clothe even the one of little faith with beauty far beyond the lily in the field.

Guest:

And he takes care of us.

Guest:

And it's not because we've got this massive faith or anything like that.

Guest:

It's just, man, we get caught up in what he's doing in our lives and it's just a lot of fun.

Guest:

If you not saying that there's obviously, man, there's some christians and christian men, obviously, we know this, that this is part of what you're doing, that they're really struggling.

Guest:

They're not enjoying life, they're miserable or they're struggling to find out what they're supposed to.

Guest:

And things haven't yet fallen in place and they're not yet caught up and they don't feel like they're caught up yet.

Guest:

And they're not able to look back over the last ten years and say, oh, my goodness, look at all the things that God has done.

Guest:

And they're really, really struggling.

Guest:

But through submission to God and his word and taking one day at a time and just obey and honor the Lord, do the best you can, you will look back, repent of sin, trust in Christ and the finished work of God.

Guest:

I mean, Christianity is the only religion in the world that proclaims justification on the front end.

Guest:

You can know right now you're right with God.

Guest:

You don't have to wait, you don't have to try to get there.

Guest:

You can know right now.

Guest:

And in light of that, it's like, man, there's a lot of joy here.

Guest:

Just one day at a time, trust the Lord.

Guest:

And then eventually you're going to look back and you're going to say, mandy, look what God's done.

Guest:

This is amazing and it's a whole lot better than my plan for me.

Jared Sparks:

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Jared Sparks:

The plan, my plan for myself was not a good plan.

Jared Sparks:

One of the kindest things God ever did was take my plan for me and give me a better one.

Jared Sparks:

Throw that out.

Jared Sparks:

I didn't need it to begin with.

Jared Sparks:

And I think that, I guess what I want to put together for men is if there's a man who's listening, who's like, well, my plan fell apart, and God doesn't seem to have given me a plan just yet.

Jared Sparks:

Maybe he's in an in between state or he's waiting, or he started climbing out of his own mistakes that he's made and he doesn't yet know what he's for, because it's all well and good for a pastor and a couple podcast hosts to be talking about all this stuff from the other end of our own ditches that we've climbed to.

Jared Sparks:

At least in my case, it's something else entirely.

Jared Sparks:

To be like, okay.

Jared Sparks:

For a man listening, to be like, okay, what has that got to do with me?

Jared Sparks:

Because I'm not on the microphone, right?

Jared Sparks:

I'm listening.

Jared Sparks:

What does this mean for me?

Jared Sparks:

So maybe we can put it together for that man.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

So I'm going to really make a pitch for what I've been working on for the last few years here and try to hammer this home, because I'm raising my sons.

Guest:

I've got three sons and one little girl.

Guest:

And in proverbs, chapter 40, I mean, excuse me, job, chapter 40, oldest book of the Bible, God calls out to job and he says, dress for action like a man.

Guest:

You've heard your friend speak.

Guest:

You just referenced job.

Guest:

You've heard your friend speak.

Guest:

Elihu has some good things to say, but now I'm going to speak and I want you to dress for action like a man.

Guest:

Action like a man.

Guest:

Okay.

Guest:

A man has to know who he is and what he's for.

Guest:

You're exactly right.

Guest:

I'm getting ready.

Guest:

My son next month is going to start his eight year mission quest through six rites of passage.

Guest:

Who is a man?

Guest:

Ultimately, a man is a worshipper.

Guest:

Okay?

Guest:

A man is called to worship.

Guest:

And what we've put together and I've tried to say, we got to have who a man is, we got to define that.

Guest:

And then what a man does and the six actions of man that I can take a biblical survey.

Guest:

A man is called to worship, work, protect, provide lead and love.

Guest:

Now, these are all themes that are recognized even through natural law and throughout civilizations around the world and down throughout history.

Guest:

What is a man?

Guest:

A man protects and a man provides.

Guest:

These are common themes that are just witnessed and observable in nature itself.

Guest:

Worship work, help, provide lead, or worship, work, protect, provide lead, love for the ladies side of that we're going to take our daughter through is worship, work, help, submit, fear nothing, love.

Guest:

So these are, these are actions that God has called women to and that we're going to walk her through as she's being trained up by my wife and as I'm coming alongside and leading her in that as well, but for my son.

Guest:

So the idea is every man is a worshiper.

Guest:

You're either suppressing the truth and worshiping creation, or you're embracing the truth and worshiping creator.

Guest:

And God has creator rights over his creation, and he's dictated to us what it means to be a man.

Guest:

So as a worshiper, we submit to King Jesus and we lift up our head and you say, well, I don't know what to do today.

Guest:

I have no direction in life, no vision in life.

Guest:

Okay, well, you're a worshiper.

Guest:

Don't worship creation.

Guest:

Worship creator.

Guest:

And then recognize that God has created you to work, worship, work.

Guest:

What work do you have in your life?

Guest:

Okay, get to work.

Guest:

Put your hands to the plow.

Guest:

Get some calloused hands, spiritually and physically.

Guest:

I'm talking about get some calloused hands.

Guest:

If you don't have good work to do, go join a landscaping crew somewhere.

Guest:

Go out and mow your yard.

Guest:

Go out and do something that's going to get you some calloused hands.

Guest:

Where you.

Guest:

I'm not talking about work for remuneration.

Guest:

I'm talking about just work as a way of life.

Guest:

Inside your home, outside your home, everywhere you go.

Guest:

Six days, you shall work, worship, work, protect.

Guest:

Well, you don't have a family to protect yet.

Guest:

Okay, we'll work on it.

Guest:

Go to the gym.

Guest:

Get in jiu jitsu before you have to protect with a firearm, you protect with your body.

Guest:

Get strong and be ready to be able to protect those that are around you and have some self respect.

Guest:

Godly self respect.

Guest:

Be able to protect yourself.

Guest:

Provide.

Guest:

Be able to provide.

Guest:

Do what you can to learn investing now, learn how to turn some money, and you're either going to be poor through paying interest or you're going to get wealthy through earning interest.

Guest:

So figure out money and finances and all that kind of stuff, because you're going to be a provider the rest of your life for yourself and others.

Guest:

And then leadership.

Guest:

Figure out what, who can you lead?

Guest:

Okay?

Guest:

It starts with taking responsibility.

Guest:

Clean your truck out, be a leader, and show people what it looks like to have a clean truck.

Guest:

You know, Peterson is on to something when he says, clean your room.

Guest:

Okay.

Guest:

There's simple steps here saying, take responsibility and ownership.

Guest:

Take dominion and run towards the responsibilities you have right now.

Guest:

Get some direction, man.

Guest:

Let's go.

Guest:

Head up, move forward, lead.

Guest:

And then finally, love.

Guest:

Love is all.

Guest:

Love is sacrificial and it encompasses, you know, these kind of the bookends of this whole thing that I.

Guest:

That I've tried to give direction to guys about is worship and love.

Guest:

The bookends here, you're never not going to be a worshiper, and you're never not going to need love.

Guest:

You're going to have to love God and others.

Guest:

That's going to be the way your life advances the rest of your life.

Guest:

And so for the guy that's, like, directionless, like, here's some who you are.

Guest:

You're a worshiper.

Guest:

What am I called to do?

Guest:

Hey, do that today, work today.

Guest:

Do something.

Guest:

Lift your head and do what God's called you to do.

Guest:

And so for me, will, it's like, man, I've been passionate about trying to piece this together, this biblical survey of manhood and womanhood, because it's just not going anywhere.

Guest:

Sanctification requires being a Christ like man or a Christ like woman.

Guest:

We cannot grow in Christ apart from our manhood or womanhood.

Guest:

And so I think guys can have direction.

Guest:

They've just got to get some handles and then get after it.

Jared Sparks:

That's fantastic.

Jared Sparks:

Worship, work, protect, provide, lead, love.

Guest:

Exactly.

Jared Sparks:

That's great.

Jared Sparks:

That's great.

Jared Sparks:

That is the most complete framework I've heard, because there's prophet, priest, and king, protect, provide, preside.

Jared Sparks:

These are the general three, but it's always felt that that's always left something uncovered.

Jared Sparks:

And so that framework is excellent because that covers all of the bases and it covers them in a systemic order where if you're not rightly worshiping, obviously it starts with worship that orders everything that follows.

Jared Sparks:

But if you're not working, then you won't ever get to a place where you can actually love.

Jared Sparks:

Right?

Jared Sparks:

And you have to do them in this order, because if you work and you love before you protect and provide, then the whole thing kind of falls apart.

Jared Sparks:

It's a structure that fits in a particular way.

Jared Sparks:

Are you doing, is this work that you're doing just with pastors?

Jared Sparks:

Is this something that you talk about on your website, or where does this take root in men's lives and the work that you do?

Jared Sparks:

Or just your sons, perhaps?

Guest:

Yeah, well, I mean, the most potent answer to that is right with my sons.

Guest:

So I'm working through reading material.

Guest:

I'm putting together basically a canon of literature that they're going to be reading for the next eight year process.

Guest:

And so they're going to get the best of me and the best of my efforts when it comes to walking through these things.

Guest:

And it's on the front end.

Guest:

So I don't have, like the proof is in the pudding kind of thing here to say, now look at my sons.

Guest:

They're all godly men and they're raised and, you know, crushed it in the world and their family and all that.

Guest:

I don't have that.

Guest:

I'm trying to do this on the front end and getting some direction and wanting to be as intentional as I can with that.

Guest:

But I have put it out on the podcast.

Guest:

I've worked through that and worked through even rites of passages tied to that and then work through the worship work, help, submit, fear nothing and love, which is on the women's side of things.

Guest:

And I've done some writing on it and made some videos as well and going to continue to develop that over the years.

Guest:

But I mean, my family's getting the best of that.

Guest:

And I've worked with the guys at our church, like, they know these terms and trying to make some things that are malleable that people can take and apply these to their own situations, or they can modify it a little bit and then say, okay, here's what this looks like.

Guest:

I don't like the word, you know, I like preside better than lead, you know?

Guest:

Okay, well, that's fine then, you know, make it your own.

Guest:

But yeah, online, website, podcast.

Guest:

And that's really where I've been hammering these things out.

Jared Sparks:

That's great.

Jared Sparks:

And then you also have a retreat as well.

Jared Sparks:

I know my friends Brandon and Matt went and they had, they had great things to say about it.

Jared Sparks:

Unfortunately, I couldn't make it that weekend.

Guest:

Yeah, yeah, it started about six years ago.

Guest:

I wanted to do something that, well, I wanted to do something I wanted to do.

Guest:

Like, I've been at conferences like crazy and I thought, well, what do I want to do?

Guest:

And then maybe some other guys would want to do that, too.

Guest:

So I thought, well, I want to go to the river.

Guest:

I want to go float down a river because it's just fun and it's in the wilderness and there aren't houses everywhere and it's beautiful.

Guest:

And then I thought, well, I want to invite some guys to come and I want to make it difficult.

Guest:

So you leave this trip sore.

Guest:

I mean, it's, it's, it is dangerous.

Guest:

We've had some life threatening situations even this last year.

Guest:

And in every year that we've gone, the exception of a couple, we've had some really dicey situations.

Guest:

So I've always told people, you know, like it's called the intensive for the reason, you know, you might die.

Guest:

So please come.

Guest:

But yeah, this last year we had ad Robles come in.

Guest:

Next year we got Andrew Isker that's going to be speaking, and Matt Reynolds spoke this year as well.

Guest:

Matt, you mentioned Matt and Brandon.

Guest:

Those guys have been a part of this for the last few years.

Guest:

So we have a really just, it's a high quality group of men that come to this event.

Guest:

And I do that once a year in May, the second weekend in May.

Guest:

And, you know, if guys want to come, it's a really good time.

Guest:

I'm hoping to get 70, I'm hoping eventually to get 100 plus men that come to this thing.

Guest:

But, you know, it's just slowly grown over the last few years and we have great time and it ends up being a really good, you know, mixture of content and fun and challenge and camaraderie, which is all things I think men need.

Jared Sparks:

That was what, that was the one thing that the mythopoetics, at least the mankind project anyway, that they got right.

Jared Sparks:

It was a good mix of physical activity, although not really risky because they wanted to do an initiation that any man could accomplish regardless of age or ability.

Jared Sparks:

But there was, there was intensive work.

Jared Sparks:

It was, it was risky in its own way.

Jared Sparks:

Like men were taking risks and there was, of course, plenty of content.

Jared Sparks:

And it was, it wasn't just all like men just sitting around for 48 hours talking.

Jared Sparks:

And it wasnt men pushing themselves and challenging themselves and each other.

Jared Sparks:

It was a good and well structured mix of both.

Jared Sparks:

And thats hard for men to find.

Jared Sparks:

Like a conference is a bunch of sitting or standing around and talking.

Jared Sparks:

Nothing wrong with that.

Jared Sparks:

But ultimately, if youre going to get a bunch of men together, you need to do something more than just that because thats what men naturally want to do.

Jared Sparks:

So what collective activity are we all going to do?

Jared Sparks:

That's a challenge that we actually put our, put our backs to the plow a little bit and that's, that's really rare.

Jared Sparks:

That's really rare to find.

Jared Sparks:

Are you hunting bears or something like that?

Jared Sparks:

Like what kind of, what kind of, I mean, I mean, if it's, if it's the secret sauce, you don't have to share, but, like, what sort of situations are men getting into?

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

Well, if I told you, I'd have to kill you, will, that's the seriousness of this.

Jared Sparks:

If.

Jared Sparks:

So, if you look down on your keyboard, there's the red button.

Jared Sparks:

If you push that, it explodes.

Jared Sparks:

My microphone explodes.

Jared Sparks:

So no one's ever pushed?

Guest:

No, I mean, there's no secret sauce here.

Guest:

I mean, you know, we're not hunting bear.

Guest:

I would actually, I have done that before.

Guest:

I.

Guest:

We've, I got a bear rug right in front of my office here of being able to kill and eat a bear, which is pretty fun.

Guest:

But we, we get together, we do a river trip, so we float about almost 40 miles.

Guest:

And then this year we had a strongman competition where we had intermediate beginner, intermediate, and then kind of the not pro level, but like, whatever's advanced situation.

Guest:

So I got a strongman buddy of mine, and Matt Reynolds, you know, has been in the strongman world for years and still a monster.

Guest:

He's actually training me.

Guest:

Shout out to Barbara logic.

Guest:

I've been working with him for a while.

Guest:

Behind the scenes, I've always been skinny, but I've always been, like, skinny and weak.

Guest:

So I thought, well, I'd really be skinny and strong.

Guest:

So over the last year and a half, you know, I've tried to, what I'm wanting to do is like, man, I want to hit Max genetic strength that I can possibly get my max genetic potential and then stay there as long as I can is the idea.

Guest:

So I've always been able to run 5 miles, but it's like, well, I'd rather.

Guest:

So he's getting me strong.

Guest:

It's funny.

Guest:

I can actually bench press more than I can squat.

Guest:

I'm like the classic, like, you know, chicken legs.

Guest:

You know, those.

Guest:

Your legs are, you're riding a chicken kind of guy.

Guest:

And so trying to get strong, and so they do those kind of things there.

Guest:

So we got the strongman competition, and we had, the young boys were doing an arm wrestling competition.

Guest:

So it's just fun stuff.

Guest:

It's just stuff that, you know, guys don't typically get to do.

Guest:

But if you come on this trip, you're not going to get a pile of books, but you are going to get some good, good content around a fire.

Guest:

You're going to get to float on the river and, you know, legitimately, it is a challenge that you're going to walk away from soar.

Guest:

And, you know, one year, out of the 17 guys that went, there were 13 guys that were in legitimate life or death situations.

Guest:

So the water was raging, and fortunately, by God's grace, we all survived.

Guest:

But that year, I realized, like, man, it's like, for real serious.

Guest:

And that was the one year I had everybody sign a death waiver as a joke.

Guest:

And then we end up in these situations that are crazy.

Guest:

So, yeah, here's the pitch.

Guest:

If you want to come, would love for you to come.

Guest:

And I tell you what, Will, if you end up coming next year, I'll give you.

Guest:

You can definitely talk to us, but it's a good time and risk.

Guest:

Next year.

Guest:

I'm thinking about making the theme about power and the pursuit, the godly pursuit of power, as opposed to the ungodly pursuit of power and what that looks like in life.

Guest:

But it's a great trip.

Guest:

Would love for you guys to come.

Guest:

It's always.

Guest:

It's like the second weekend of May.

Guest:

I forget the dates.

Guest:

It's already up on the website and everything.

Guest:

If I can send you the link to that, maybe you can put that in the show notes or something.

Jared Sparks:

I'd love to be there.

Jared Sparks:

I mean, Brandon and Matt told me about it.

Jared Sparks:

There was something else I was doing that weekend this year that was important that I do.

Jared Sparks:

So it was fine that I wasn't able to be there, but I would love to be there next year.

Jared Sparks:

And that's actually, I've had some.

Jared Sparks:

Some.

Jared Sparks:

I don't know that I would call them near death experiences.

Jared Sparks:

Like, I would.

Jared Sparks:

I would call them encounters with non negotiable reality.

Jared Sparks:

Like when you encounter nature.

Jared Sparks:

And this is a situation that if it goes sideways, life could be at risk.

Jared Sparks:

Like, that's a.

Jared Sparks:

That's a thing that I'm to say that I'm grateful to have experienced is probably, in a sense, true, and in a sense, doesn't quite capture it, but it's something that I think men need.

Jared Sparks:

Like when you actually are forced into a situation where you have no ability to negotiate with nature.

Jared Sparks:

That's why barbell training is so powerful.

Jared Sparks:

Like, you can't negotiate with a barbell, right.

Jared Sparks:

But when you're facing down something so much bigger than you, right.

Jared Sparks:

Whether it be an animal or whether it be a river or whether it be an ocean or a storm or whatever, you know, you can't negotiate with it.

Jared Sparks:

You have to adapt yourself to it.

Jared Sparks:

And most men, for millennia, that's what men dealt with in terms of their lives, situations that were far outside of their control, natural elements, forces that they could not negotiate with.

Jared Sparks:

And they had to learn to adapt and overcome.

Jared Sparks:

And today, everything in our modern world basically is negotiable.

Jared Sparks:

Right.

Jared Sparks:

Except perhaps taxes in some sense.

Jared Sparks:

Right?

Jared Sparks:

Death and taxes is the joke.

Jared Sparks:

But to have those experiences where it's like, okay, we really have to be so focused and so present right now to do the best we can to make sure that if things do go sideways, we give ourselves the best chance.

Jared Sparks:

That focuses a man's attention in a way that he never forgets.

Jared Sparks:

And I don't want more men to experience that because it could go south for reasons that are out of his control and men could legitimately get hurt.

Jared Sparks:

And I think that experience is very.

Jared Sparks:

Is very powerful for a man to have.

Jared Sparks:

It certainly has been unforgettable when it's happened to me.

Guest:

Yeah, well, I think that's why the experiences you mentioned in the retreats and the different things that you've been on before.

Guest:

When a man is pushed to what seems like his limit, I guess your physical limit is being pushed so far until you die or like, right before death.

Guest:

But most men have not been in a situation where they've been.

Guest:

So their physical exertion is so.

Guest:

I can't do another push up.

Guest:

I'm vomiting on myself.

Guest:

I can't go another inch.

Guest:

You know, most guys have never got that far.

Guest:

There's a reason why guys that have gone through war together don't see each other for 40 years, and then they come together for their 40 year reunion since they.

Guest:

The last time they saw each other.

Guest:

And it's like they haven't missed a beat because they have these shared experiences, and they're incredibly powerful because it's shared experiences and misery.

Guest:

And I don't know how you.

Guest:

You replicate that in a way that is somewhat safe.

Guest:

I don't.

Guest:

I guess you can't do that in a way that's safe.

Guest:

But you have to get away to push men to their limits or to get them in situations where 30 years from now you can remember it.

Guest:

And you don't remember things from 30 years ago that weren't either dangerous or weren't crazy or that you didn't break your leg.

Guest:

But what you do remember from 30 years ago was that crazy situation that you can't believe that you survived.

Guest:

And a part of the trip that I'm trying to do is maybe not walk that line.

Guest:

I really don't want guys to get hurt.

Guest:

In fact, it's a father son trip.

Guest:

We have sons like my son with this last year.

Guest:

So I want people to.

Guest:

I don't want people to be hurt or anything.

Guest:

But I do want people to walk away thinking that, you know, that was hard.

Guest:

And I'm really sore, and I'm glad I did that, but I'm really glad we're back at camp.

Guest:

And it just barely scratches the surface of being pushed physically.

Guest:

And I mean, with Barbell training or anything, I think for guys, most guys have just never been so physically exhausted that they feel like they can't get up and do anything else again.

Guest:

They're just.

Guest:

And that is so good for guys.

Guest:

And I've had experiences like that.

Guest:

I mean, even in college, the things that I went through, even with a fraternity, I mean, we had a weekend with a fraternity where we were physically pushed to our limit for 48 hours, where I couldn't do a single push up.

Guest:

Well, it wasn't as hard as boot camp, but when I get together, those guys tap 81, man.

Guest:

Like, it's silly college stuff, but we have stories where we literally were vomiting all over ourselves.

Guest:

And there's something powerful about that.

Guest:

When you connect lessons to the suck, when you connect lessons to those, especially when they're biblical, then it has a way of sticking with you the rest of your life.

Jared Sparks:

Do you think that we talked about men running themselves into a ditch with pursuing success?

Jared Sparks:

Do you think that part of it is that same instinct of men, of trying to push themselves into, we'll call it a fight or flight situation, where they really want to see how hard they can go.

Jared Sparks:

Maybe they're not vomiting all over themselves physically, but they're seeking that thrill of pushing themselves beyond their own limitations.

Jared Sparks:

Do you think that's part of it also?

Guest:

Yeah, I think so.

Guest:

I think think everybody, you know, back to Goggins or Cameron Haynes, I don't know if you're familiar with Cameron Haynes or not.

Guest:

I listen to more of Cameron Haynes than I do of goggins.

Guest:

There is in.

Guest:

Huberman talks about this, too.

Guest:

Andrew Huberman talks about how there's something that elite athletes or elite endurance athletes can tap into, and it's embracing pain, it's embracing physical pain.

Guest:

And then at the other side of that, where you just take another step and another step and another step there, there's a way that you can train your brain.

Guest:

You know, you're moving literally to the point of where some of these people that are such endurance, endurance athletes, the only way they're going to stop is literally going to drop dead.

Guest:

I mean, that's because they're able to mentally control that.

Guest:

I think there is an attraction to that to guys, but also of being able to tap into, especially the guys that are in that ditch of performance.

Guest:

They want that.

Guest:

But then the guys that are on the other side wish that they could, and I don't know what it is.

Guest:

Maybe, you know, the key to this.

Guest:

I don't know what, snaps people out of that to where they're.

Guest:

They're snapped out of that other side ditch, and now they're extremely motivated.

Guest:

There's all these non christian conversion stories of guys that were on the couch and realized I was gonna die if I didn't do something.

Guest:

And then they're extremely motivated and had nothing to do with a testimony about how Jesus saved their soul.

Guest:

It was just, I couldn't live like this anymore, and something just snapped in me.

Guest:

So I think guys are extremely like that.

Guest:

But then there's the whole key.

Guest:

I mean, it's.

Guest:

This whole thing we're talking about here is we don't have to be in one ditch or the other, you know, the guys that you don't have to fall in that ditch.

Guest:

It's not inevitable that the rest of our life we run headlong one side of the wrong side of the road, then turn and say, oh, you know, crap, I'm on the wrong side, and I got to run this way the rest of my life.

Guest:

You can be a healthy man.

Guest:

You really can.

Guest:

And you can have proper ambition.

Guest:

You can have proper drive.

Guest:

And it can be, you know, a drive that's a whole lot bigger than another man's drive.

Guest:

And another man's drive is the best he's got in with that two talents.

Guest:

But you just don't have to walk on one ditch or the other.

Guest:

You can really walk the middle of the road.

Jared Sparks:

I think.

Jared Sparks:

I think there's also a feeling of men chasing their own edge.

Jared Sparks:

Like, what.

Jared Sparks:

What motivates a mandev to want to do that?

Jared Sparks:

So there's the guy on the couch who.

Jared Sparks:

Who says, I can't live like this anymore.

Jared Sparks:

And then he does, you know, he loses 300 pounds.

Jared Sparks:

Like, there's a.

Jared Sparks:

There's an actor.

Jared Sparks:

So there was a man who.

Jared Sparks:

I can't remember his name.

Jared Sparks:

He was just massively obese, and he.

Guest:

Decided to go, oh, I know who you're talking about.

Jared Sparks:

Right.

Jared Sparks:

Yeah.

Jared Sparks:

And he's.

Jared Sparks:

He's.

Jared Sparks:

I mean, obviously he's got Ethan.

Guest:

Was it Ethan?

Guest:

Ethan something?

Jared Sparks:

I think.

Jared Sparks:

So that.

Jared Sparks:

That's one.

Jared Sparks:

That's the actor guy.

Jared Sparks:

And then.

Jared Sparks:

Yeah, then there's the other guy.

Jared Sparks:

I don't know that he was an actor, but he has all these folds of skin hanging off of him now.

Jared Sparks:

Like, it's massive surgery to get that all fixed.

Jared Sparks:

I mean, that's a real side effect.

Jared Sparks:

But there's a moment where a man wakes up and decides he's going to chase something and maybe his life depends on it.

Jared Sparks:

And that's, unfortunately how a lot of men are.

Jared Sparks:

There's only two things that ever really motivate somebody properly outside of Christianity.

Jared Sparks:

It's either fear, love.

Jared Sparks:

Like, either you're going towards something that you're pursuing passionately, or you're afraid of something that's chasing you.

Jared Sparks:

It's one of those.

Jared Sparks:

It's one of those two things.

Jared Sparks:

And so most men will wait until something starts chasing them before they start making real changes.

Jared Sparks:

And that can be very effective.

Jared Sparks:

But one of the big questions that I think everyone asks is, okay, so you don't have anything objectively chasing you, but you need to get up and you need to run in that direction as fast as you can.

Jared Sparks:

No, I'll do it tomorrow.

Jared Sparks:

How do you light that fire inside somebody?

Jared Sparks:

And I think that's what men are wanting when they push themselves into dangerous situations.

Jared Sparks:

Like young men obviously have more testosterone, so it's easier to light that spark.

Jared Sparks:

But once men start getting in their twenties and their thirties, they still have that longing to chase something, but they don't have the ability to overcome themselves.

Jared Sparks:

I think that's the inspiration of David Goggins, but he's insane.

Jared Sparks:

So how does a normal, healthy Christian Mandez sort of tap into that?

Jared Sparks:

I don't have any good answers.

Jared Sparks:

It seems to be one of those things that God just gives to a man at some day.

Jared Sparks:

But I would like it to be something other than that.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

ems almost like a first world:

Guest:

Okay, so, but before that, when everybody was agrarian and working on the farm kind of thing.

Guest:

But today I think you have to.

Guest:

I mean, the strenuous life has been popular for a long time.

Guest:

The teddy Roosevelt way not wouldn't be a huge fan of his politics, but I.

Guest:

The pursuit of physical pain has its place.

Guest:

I've disciplined my body.

Guest:

I'm pursuing something.

Guest:

And in today's world, the man has to pursue some sort of physical labor, even if he's a white collar worker.

Guest:

And one of the things I've tried to talk to pastors about is like, man, you got to view yourself as a blue collar worker, not an office worker, not carrying a briefcase.

Guest:

You've got a shepherd's crook and you have a weapon and you're pulling people in.

Guest:

Okay?

Guest:

So that's the whole thing is you're pulling people back in and you're fighting like crazy.

Guest:

You're a blue collar worker and you gotta have calloused hands.

Guest:

So I've encouraged pastors and just men in general, you've got to pursue.

Guest:

And I think that's why Barbell training or anything like that, it's been, it's been great for me.

Guest:

If men, if men don't pursue what you're talking about, we live in a world that won't give it to them.

Guest:

We live in a world that will make men soft and keep men soft and want men to be soft.

Guest:

And they want men to literally live as our first father, Adam, standing by passively and cheer on Eve as she goes out and pursues everything that we're called to pursue.

Guest:

And so we have to.

Guest:

We have to live the strenuous life.

Guest:

We have to pursue this.

Guest:

We have to discipline our body as we discipline our soul and discipline our life.

Guest:

And that means pursuing.

Guest:

That means waking up today and say, okay, I am going to get a gym membership or I'm going to run to the stop sign today and back.

Guest:

It really matters because in 24, 24, we're not going to get that.

Guest:

We had to pursue it.

Jared Sparks:

This is fantastic.

Jared Sparks:

I haven't had a conversation about these aspects of masculinity in a long time.

Jared Sparks:

And this is very refreshing.

Jared Sparks:

Okay.

Jared Sparks:

So I think on the farm, like, even when we were in a pre industrial era, we were still, as men, forced to encounter non negotiable reality.

Jared Sparks:

So I read this book recently called Lonesome Dove.

Jared Sparks:

It's called, the people call it the greatest western novel of all time.

Jared Sparks:

It's like 900 pages.

Jared Sparks:

And I think it was written in the early eighties, so it doesn't have any of the wokeness that we really see today.

Jared Sparks:

But one of the things that struck me about that book, it's about a cattle drive from, I believe it's like East Texas up to Montana.

Jared Sparks:

So it's sort of through the American Midwest as the civil war has ended and the frontier is being settled.

Jared Sparks:

So it's like a portrait of what America was like, say, 150 years ago.

Jared Sparks:

And one of the things that struck me about reading that book is all the misfortune that this team of men driving these cattle northwards encounter.

Jared Sparks:

So whether it be environmental in terms of weather, whether it be natives who are Native Americans who are at the very end of their era of dominance in the west, who are still attacking the white men, whether it be illness and all kinds of terrible things, but the men throughout this book are constantly in this very particular era.

Jared Sparks:

It's just in America, it's just after the industrial revolution had started, but it hadn't spread westward yet.

Jared Sparks:

So the men in this era are constantly forced to overcome circumstances that are larger than them.

Jared Sparks:

And so in our modern era, now that we have all this affluence, we're not forced to do that anymore.

Jared Sparks:

And so I think you said very rightly that the modern era is trying to soften us.

Jared Sparks:

Right, it's trying to soften us and there's no apparent ability to cultivate that edge because there's no risk anymore.

Jared Sparks:

Right, so like we're not going to be.

Jared Sparks:

It gets 120 degrees here in Phoenix, big deal.

Jared Sparks:

I go inside, air conditioning turns on, no problem.

Jared Sparks:

I don't have to negotiate that.

Jared Sparks:

I'm very grateful and.

Jared Sparks:

Right, so I guess the challenge then is how can we create, is it even practical or possible to create life or death edge sharpening situations for men to help them break out of their own passivity?

Jared Sparks:

Because I think we'd agree that passivity is the ditch on one side of the road.

Jared Sparks:

But then you also don't want to make embracing the pain your identity like a David Goggins does.

Jared Sparks:

That's the ditch on the other side of the road.

Jared Sparks:

What's the right dose for this that we can give to the average man?

Jared Sparks:

And how can we get him to a point where he's dosing himself rather than God saying, you're 300 pounds and your doctor just gave you a bad diagnosis, you better fix this.

Jared Sparks:

How do men dose themselves with the right amount of this motivation to begin cultivating themselves?

Jared Sparks:

Because I think you're right, it is very much a modern problem.

Jared Sparks:

It's:

Guest:

Yeah, well, I think for men that are doing well, you have to consider helping and bringing other men along and saying, hey, let's do this together.

Guest:

I've got a buddy of mine, Pastor buddy of mine that's in one town over.

Guest:

My buddy Mark.

Guest:

Mark Goldman is I think, 43 years old, 44 years old, something like that.

Guest:

And he's got a group of young guys that are around him and he signed up for Brett McKay's strenuous life, their program that they do or whatever, I forget exactly.

Guest:

I think it's just called the strenuous life.

Guest:

And he was doing one of the challenges, was walking 50 miles in one day.

Guest:

So he got a buddy of his at his church.

Guest:

Whoa.

Guest:

And he had been doing some training and stuff, but he hadn't walked.

Guest:

I mean, he hadn't walked anything close to that ever.

Guest:

He was.

Guest:

He's not a runner.

Guest:

He works out.

Guest:

He's in shape, but he's.

Guest:

I mean, he's not training for anything like that.

Guest:

I mean, how do you train for a 50 miles walk?

Guest:

Well, they did it.

Guest:

They walked for 50 miles.

Guest:

They ended with their joints sore.

Guest:

It took days to recover.

Guest:

And you look at that and you think, like, in some.

Guest:

You know, for a lot of people, they think that's really.

Guest:

That's silly.

Guest:

What.

Guest:

What's the point?

Guest:

Why would you even do that?

Guest:

But in:

Guest:

And for those two guys that did that, they're going to remember that the rest of their life.

Guest:

But it's also.

Guest:

There's something in them.

Guest:

It's like, I.

Guest:

I was built to be strong.

Guest:

I was built to handle and be able to handle difficulty and pain and challenge and to work through these things.

Guest:

And I'm going to.

Guest:

From mind atrophy to body atrophy, if I don't make myself strong, if I don't do things that require my mind to make my body keep going, then I'm going to be weak in all areas of life and at least in many more areas of life than I currently am.

Guest:

So there's something profound about that and bringing somebody else along.

Guest:

And so, for me, what I've tried to do with the guys that I disciple is instead of just meeting with coffee, coffee's fine.

Guest:

There's nothing wrong with coffee and face to face stuff, but I try to give them experiences that are enjoyable but also a physical challenge.

Guest:

So, with one guy, we're running, we run together, and he did my friend Ben.

Guest:

Ben, you're getting outed here.

Guest:

He puked, we're running.

Guest:

And he just literally is like, dude, I can't do this.

Guest:

And he just puked.

Guest:

And that's good.

Guest:

That's a good thing.

Guest:

And so I think it requires bringing other guys along, you know, the guys that are struggling your life.

Guest:

Okay?

Guest:

Recognize that.

Guest:

And then for yourself, no matter where you're at in life, you got to be the kind of man that recognizes there's going to be some guys that challenge me, and I want to be around them.

Guest:

They're going to challenge me to be bigger.

Guest:

They're going to be trying to be stronger.

Guest:

They're going to be challenging me to be more godly, and I need that.

Guest:

And then I'm going to be that for somebody else.

Jared Sparks:

Is this something that you do with all the men in your church, or is it just, is it something that you take particular interest or they have to approach you?

Jared Sparks:

Because this seems to me to be a modern development of what pastors and brothers in Christ do.

Jared Sparks:

We can no longer rely on our fathers to get us to a place where we're all able to operate as a team.

Jared Sparks:

And this is a generational problem.

Jared Sparks:

I think it'll be fixed in a couple generations.

Jared Sparks:

But now men are looking to each other like, hey, we don't know how to do this man thing.

Jared Sparks:

What do we do?

Jared Sparks:

We'll just all figure it out together.

Jared Sparks:

And so they're also turning to pastors in some way to help show them that also.

Jared Sparks:

And so I see that men are being gravitating towards churches with strong, masculine pastors who can guide them in these things.

Jared Sparks:

But maybe pastors don't necessarily know they're supposed to be teaching these things because, as you said, they have to learn them themselves in many cases.

Jared Sparks:

So some of these things, like these things that you do for the men in your church or that you encourage them in as well?

Guest:

Yeah, definitely.

Guest:

I mean, last year we did a.

Guest:

, meeting for Memorial day of:

Guest:

I think we're like 58 minutes or something like that, me and a few other guys, but we had.

Guest:

We had a group that was doing 50 push ups a day.

Guest:

We moved it up to 100 push ups a day.

Guest:

And we were all texting each other and all this kind of stuff.

Guest:

That was last year.

Guest:

But no, for me, I just drew a line in the sand.

Guest:

When it comes to discipleship, I can either work with guys in an office, drinking coffee, going over a book, or I can actually do something that I enjoy and that they're going to enjoy.

Guest:

And most guys don't have friends in their twenties and thirties.

Guest:

They struggle with that.

Guest:

So I'm not saying that with every guy that I meet with, we're doing physically demanding things, because with a lot of guys that I meet with, we go fishing.

Guest:

I meet with him at my house.

Guest:

My home office is here.

Guest:

We go down to a pond that's right down the road from me.

Guest:

And we fish together.

Guest:

So there.

Guest:

There are many different things that I do.

Guest:

Or we shoot a bow together, so we get our bows out and we shoot a bow together.

Guest:

And I'm always wanting to do something with these guys beyond besides just sitting down and drinking coffee, but I'm always wanting to be discipling a group of.

Guest:

A group of, you know, three to four guys at a time, and then that rotates.

Guest:

One guy gets a job and has to move, or another guy leaves from college and goes back home or something like that.

Guest:

But, you know, we want to always be discipling some guys in our church and then, you know, have somebody that's discipling us.

Guest:

And so, for me, it's just worked best.

Guest:

Let's do something we enjoy to do, or let's run together, and instead of drinking the coffee and going through the book, we'll just do something we enjoy, and we'll still go through the book.

Guest:

We'll talk about it.

Guest:

But for us, that's been.

Guest:

Well, if anything else, it's been a lot of fun.

Guest:

And guys enjoy doing that a whole lot more than they just enjoy sitting down and drinking coffee.

Jared Sparks:

Have you seen benefits to this in men's spiritual lives?

Guest:

Oh, definitely.

Guest:

I mean, like, so if I just think about our church, we've got issues.

Guest:

We just actually went through a season of challenge in eight years.

Guest:

This has probably been the biggest challenge we faced in the last two or three months.

Guest:

And God's faithful.

Guest:

He got us through it.

Guest:

We've got our head held high.

Guest:

But as I.

Guest:

So we've got our issues.

Guest:

But when I think about that, when I think about the overall health of the men in our church, they're doing family worship.

Guest:

They are driven men.

Guest:

They love their families.

Guest:

They have good marriages.

Guest:

They're working hard and advancing in careers, and their businesses are growing.

Guest:

So as I just look at what's happening, there's been a lot of fruit.

Guest:

I mean, there's a lot of really great things happening with these guys.

Guest:

They are not depressed dudes that are sitting on the couch.

Guest:

They're guys that are motivated, and they're doing some great things.

Guest:

And God's bringing a lot of blessing and fruit.

Guest:

So, I don't know.

Guest:

It's a really sweet season.

Guest:

There may be seasons of the future where it's not the case.

Guest:

We don't have a ton of young men.

Guest:

In fact, we have some young women right now that we need some more young men to be around because we've like, hey, there's some great marriage eligible women here.

Guest:

That are godly, that are real women, that would be great for some young men to marry.

Guest:

But the guys that we do have, which in our church, we do probably have more overall men than women, but there's a disproportionate young women to young men when it comes to late teens, early twenties.

Guest:

But the guys are doing great, man, and it's a neat thing to be a part of.

Guest:

So there does seem to be some immediate fruit from real discipleship, and these guys are real dudes that love the Lord and love their families.

Jared Sparks:

So you mentioned the young women you gave the worship work, protect, provide lead and love.

Jared Sparks:

Did I get all those for your.

Jared Sparks:

So for women, you said worship, work, help, submit, fear nothing, love.

Jared Sparks:

Can you walk through those really quickly?

Jared Sparks:

That was awesome.

Guest:

Well, so there's some things that overlap, but they overlap in masculine and feminine ways.

Guest:

So we say worship women are created by God.

Guest:

They're either going to be worshiping creation or creator.

Guest:

God has creator rights over her.

Guest:

So she's going to be a worshiper as a woman, and she's going to be living as God has called her to live as a woman.

Guest:

So worship work, there's a difference between masculine and feminine work.

Guest:

Again, there's some overlap, but a lady's work is always going to be primarily from the home out.

Guest:

So there's the way I've always talked about it is primary, secondary.

Guest:

Anything that she does outside of the home is going to be an overflow of what happens from the gifts, skills, aptitudes, abilities that she has been given by God inside the home.

Guest:

And so you see that priority of primary secondary in proverbs 31, where the proverbs 31, woman takes care of her household.

Guest:

She's not scared of the winter.

Guest:

She recognizes that her, what she's making for her household is valuable, but doesn't do anything with it until later on in the chapter after her family is provided for.

Guest:

So then afterwards, you even see these merchant ships are taking her products far away.

Guest:

So this is a literally an international business that she's a.

Guest:

She's.

Guest:

It's just amazing.

Guest:

But it's all coming from the household order and the principle of primary, secondary.

Guest:

So work and then help.

Guest:

So all ladies are helpers, married or not, they're created to help.

Guest:

And we're already training our little girl providence.

Guest:

Providence girls are helpers.

Guest:

So she wants to help with whatever the mission is in front of her.

Guest:

She wants to be a helper with that and help it succeed and to be better and to see it grow.

Guest:

And all of those things submit.

Guest:

Submission is a uniquely given gift to women.

Guest:

Where men are called to submit to God, there's a glorious gift of a lady getting to submit to her husband.

Guest:

And not only that, she gets to submit to a body of elders at a church as well, in a uniquely different way.

Guest:

But submission is a glorious gift.

Guest:

And that's what I've tried to encourage men and women with will, is that every man should love the commission God has given him, the prohibitions God has given him, and the limitations God has given him.

Guest:

And every woman should love the commissioning God has given her, the prohibitions God has given her, and the limitations God has given her.

Guest:

So when we think about the word submit, every woman should love it.

Guest:

They should hear it and think, yes, I get to submit to a husband and then fear nothing is in following in the way of Sarah.

Guest:

She didn't fear anything that was frightening.

Guest:

Even calling her husband lord, she didn't understand, she didn't fear hierarchy.

Guest:

She didn't fear anything that was frightening.

Guest:

And there's a lot of frightening things in the world.

Guest:

And we need women who are not scared of anything but God.

Guest:

They fear God.

Guest:

They don't fear man.

Guest:

And so this is an action.

Guest:

Women need to be called out of fear and anxiety, and they need to be called to be like Sarah and to be fearless, and then, so worship, work, help, submit, fear nothing, and then love.

Guest:

And so women are trained to what we think is very natural, to love their husbands and children.

Guest:

This is older women teaching the younger women to do this.

Guest:

That means it needs to be trained.

Guest:

They need training in this.

Guest:

So her call is forever a pursuit of proper love in a domestic way, husband and children.

Guest:

And so that's what we're going to be working through with our daughter and, you know, developing that.

Guest:

We're actually doing a series right now on Jordan's, my wife's podcast, fruitful and fearless.

Guest:

We're actually working through these right now as we speak.

Guest:

We just went through, let's see, the last released episode was on help, but I think ladies as well, we're always talking about rites of passage for men.

Guest:

And the default is, well, ladies have a rite of passage built into her body for moving from womanhood or from girlhood to womanhood.

Guest:

But I think a lot of ladies are just as confused as the men are about what womanhood is.

Guest:

And she starts her period, but that doesn't make her a woman.

Guest:

And yet people think that's built into what womanhood is, but it also is required for her to be trained by these older women what being a woman is.

Guest:

And pastors are under this great obligation of teaching biblical womanhood, even though they're not women.

Guest:

I don't have to be a woman to teach biblical womanhood because the Bible is authoritative about who a woman is and what a woman does.

Guest:

And so I have this obligation for our church, but also I'm working with my wife as we train our daughter up in this.

Guest:

And so I think it's critical for boys, for men, and we have three sons.

Guest:

So I've been thinking about this for years with them, but now with a daughter, it's like, well, they really need.

Guest:

If I'm going to raise my children in the discipline and the instruction of the Lord, then that means I have to raise boys as boys and girls as girls.

Guest:

And we need to give this positive vision, a biblical vision of what that is.

Guest:

And so that's what we're doing with the ladies as well.

Jared Sparks:

Sorry, what did you say your wife's podcast is called?

Guest:

It's fruitful and fearless.

Guest:

So that started with Brian's wife, Lexi Jordan.

Guest:

And Lexi did a podcast, Brian Sovey's wife, Lexi Jordan, and her did about 100 something episodes together.

Guest:

And then Lexi started bright hearth with Brian, and Jordan's continued to do that with her and I, and then also some other ladies as well.

Guest:

So that's called fruitful and fearless.

Guest:

And she does a great job.

Guest:

It's been, been going for a few years now, and it's a lot of fun.

Jared Sparks:

Praise God, brother.

Jared Sparks:

I'm so happy to hear that.

Jared Sparks:

I was just at the Ogden conference, the new Christendom conference, and it was an awesome time.

Jared Sparks:

A thousand people there.

Jared Sparks:

And one of the things that struck me being in the auditorium, they filled up the Ogden high school auditorium, was how many women were there?

Jared Sparks:

And, you know, you would think that the refuge guys, you know, stuff for masculinity.

Jared Sparks:

Now, of course, a lot of those women were wives and a lot of children as well.

Jared Sparks:

But then I remember the bright hearth and how popular bright hearth is, and just how many, like all the men, we're talking about haunted cosmos or King's hall women were all talking about breit hearth.

Jared Sparks:

I'm like, there's something very profoundly healthy happening here that we can all, that we can all meet and discuss this.

Jared Sparks:

Of course, Moscow has their own version of it going on and has been for a while.

Jared Sparks:

So I've been greatly encouraged to hear how enthusiastic women are for high quality content about godly femininity.

Jared Sparks:

Because as men are learning what it means to be men, we don't need to learn what it means to be a woman in quite the same way.

Jared Sparks:

But it's surprising to find out, oh, yeah, women need to learn what it means to be a woman today.

Jared Sparks:

That's how inverted and flipped around everything has become.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

Yes.

Guest:

An amen to all of that.

Guest:

I mean, a hearty amen to all of that.

Guest:

I think, ladies.

Guest:

And the weird thing about egalitarianism or soft complementarianism is they actually have the devalued and low view of women because they really believe that women can't handle what God has told them.

Guest:

And it's those in the biblical patriarchy camp or just the biblical camp that say women are called to fear nothing.

Guest:

That's frightening.

Guest:

And one of the things that's not burdensome and frightening, the commands of God, our father, to his children, and what God has called, called women to do and to be is glorious and good.

Guest:

And we should expect that our women, when they hear prohibitions from God, should say, okay, amen.

Guest:

Or when they hear a commission from God, should say, yeah, okay, God.

Guest:

Thank you.

Guest:

And so I think that those that are speaking clearly about what God has said to men and women without apology are getting a listening ear because ladies are like, yes, finally, please tell me.

Guest:

I mean, my husband, I should expect my husband to want to do what God's called him to do.

Guest:

So I want to do what God's called me to do.

Guest:

And those that are saying, okay, here's the path that it's going to look a little bit differently, maybe with you and how this is applied.

Guest:

But those that are speaking clearly to that, I think are getting a massive following because nobody else has been and everybody else has been apologizing or tiptoeing.

Guest:

So those that are just saying, here's what God says that aren't stuttering and saying, or aren't apologizing, are getting an audience.

Guest:

And I think that's a very good thing.

Jared Sparks:

Amen.

Jared Sparks:

Well, I have to get ready for a dentist appointment, so my own life and death experience today, but I do have just one more quick question for you.

Jared Sparks:

You mentioned fear nothing.

Jared Sparks:

And so one of the things that I've been focusing on a lot lately, and sort of my research and the content that I've been developing is around a lot of new age healing modalities that seem to speak specifically to women's anxieties.

Jared Sparks:

That seems to be the hook for a lot of it.

Jared Sparks:

And I've gotten some of it on my stories as well.

Jared Sparks:

And I have a lot more to say about this.

Jared Sparks:

So it seems like the dialogue that the biblical patriarchy or just the biblical camp has gotten to the point and the dialogue that they've gotten to is, okay, they've gotten through the work, the worship part for women.

Jared Sparks:

They've gotten to the work part.

Jared Sparks:

Yes, proverbs 31 all day.

Jared Sparks:

And then they've gotten to the help part, like, okay, we can get down with that.

Jared Sparks:

And then there's a submit thing, and that's still kind of uncomfortable, but there's a step past that, which is women's innate anxiety.

Jared Sparks:

Fear.

Jared Sparks:

Right.

Jared Sparks:

And that spot seems to be the most sensitive that no one really wants to speak into.

Jared Sparks:

And it sounds like that's something that you and your wife have some experience with.

Jared Sparks:

So maybe you can help disciple some of the women listening and perhaps even some of the men listening for how to speak into that anxious part of that exists in many women today, and that may just be part of femininity in general.

Guest:

Yeah, well, the good thing is, is that Jesus speaks directly to this.

Guest:

And we have so psychologized anxiety that we have missed the plain teaching of Jesus.

Guest:

So there's a funny Bob Newhart Saturday Night live skit from years ago where he's a psychiatrist, and this lady comes in wanting help.

Guest:

She's scared to die in a box.

Guest:

She's claustrophobic.

Guest:

And he responds back with two words, stop it.

Guest:

And he just keeps saying, stop it.

Guest:

And it's really, he's like, stop it.

Guest:

This is what I want to tell you.

Guest:

And Jesus is like that, but a million times better, where there's those that face anxiety, and Jesus has no fear.

Guest:

Talking to people who have anxieties, fears and worries, and saying, don't be anxious about anything, stop it.

Guest:

Don't be anxious.

Guest:

And most anxiety, most anxiety is sin that needs to be repented of.

Guest:

It's sin for which that Jesus died.

Guest:

For most anxiety, some anxiety is in the category.

Guest:

It's unexplained.

Guest:

Our physiology is very unique.

Guest:

And I deal with a father that deals with mental illness, has for years been in and out of prison or in and out of jail, not prison, but has dealt with mental problems.

Guest:

And I understand mental health and have been working around that for years and years.

Guest:

And I understand that there's a legitimate struggles that people face, and still most anxieties and worries are in the category of sin.

Guest:

And so what Jesus does to people who, when they talk about their anxiety, they get more anxious.

Guest:

When they talk about worry, they get more afraid or more fear, fearful.

Guest:

And Jesus just says, don't be anxious.

Guest:

Stop.

Guest:

Quit it.

Guest:

And if it's a command, then to do it is a violation of that command.

Guest:

And so I think what people need to hear and what ladies need to hear is stop being anxious.

Guest:

Repent and turn to Jesus.

Guest:

Trust him.

Guest:

You're in his hand.

Guest:

And when you worry again, when you're concerned again, when it comes back again, and it comes back fiercely, you need to stop, and you need to pray right now.

Guest:

Okay, I'm going to stop this.

Guest:

I'm going to do whatever it takes.

Guest:

I'm going to ask for God's help, but I'm going to repent of this.

Guest:

And then in the small minority of folks that are dealing with physiological problems that are unexplained, they're not just chemical imbalances or anything, but there's so much there between body and soul that's working together that's hard to understand.

Guest:

Then you can pray through and get counsel from your husband, get counsel from the church of what to do and what kind of help to get.

Guest:

But most, most anxiety is in the area of sin, and Jesus speaks directly to it and just says, don't be anxious.

Jared Sparks:

Can I push on this for just a second?

Guest:

Absolutely.

Guest:

Go for it.

Jared Sparks:

Okay.

Jared Sparks:

So I encounter the same subject in a bunch of different ways in the work that I do.

Jared Sparks:

And when it comes to calling women to repentance for their sin, which leads to anxiety, the response that I get from many men, from many women and men is, well, it's just her father failed her somehow.

Jared Sparks:

As if to blunt, as if that changes something, like, okay, yes, I understand.

Jared Sparks:

Perhaps her father failed her in all kinds of ways that fathers do.

Jared Sparks:

But the fact that your father failed you is not an excuse for the anxiety and the sin for itself.

Jared Sparks:

Do you encounter this?

Jared Sparks:

I deal with this all the time.

Jared Sparks:

And yesterday, it was a whole big part of my day yesterday.

Jared Sparks:

It can be very frustrating to deal with both of these things being true, equally true at the same time.

Guest:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Guest:

And this is something that you have spoken to before.

Guest:

There is an expectation, a societal expectation, that men take ownership and responsibility over everything they can possibly take responsibility and ownership for if they try to cast the blame.

Guest:

And certainly there are people that do that.

Guest:

But with ladies, there's always an excuse, or there's always a reason why.

Guest:

There's never just the take responsibility, posture, attitude.

Guest:

And certainly the woman is a weaker vessel, and you have to speak to her in that manner.

Guest:

There has to be a kindness and a gentleness when it comes to speaking, but that doesn't mean kindness and gentleness, doesn't mean being indirect with ladies or with women.

Guest:

And so I think there is a humble directness that's required.

Guest:

And this is what Jesus does, because when he says, don't be anxious, he's speaking to men and women.

Guest:

There are certain things in the scriptures that are commands to men and only men, and then there are certain commands that are to women and only women.

Guest:

And then there's a whole lot of commands that are just to mankind as a whole.

Guest:

And that would be in the category of Jesus speaking to disciples and the broader listening crowd.

Guest:

Do not be anxious or fear not.

Guest:

Do not be afraid.

Guest:

And ladies are to be like Sarah and not fear anything that's frightening.

Guest:

And I think that that would be.

Guest:

If a woman could just imagine that, what would be.

Guest:

What would my life be like without anxiety and fear?

Guest:

I think she would.

Guest:

And for the guys that deal with that, they'd be like, oh, my gosh, this would be.

Guest:

I don't know what I mean.

Guest:

I would just.

Guest:

It would be amazing.

Guest:

And so maybe, just maybe, you can say, okay, maybe there's outside forces.

Guest:

Maybe my dad was a bad dad.

Guest:

But maybe I just need to consider today that.

Guest:

I need to push pause and say, God, I'm sorry for being so fearful, and I'm.

Guest:

I'm repenting to you for my anxiety, and.

Guest:

And then I'm going to come back to you in about 15 minutes, and I'm going to do the same thing when it comes back.

Guest:

And you take that seriously as.

Guest:

As.

Guest:

As serious as it is.

Guest:

And then slowly, like with any particular sin, you look back over time, and you might not feel that there's progress in a week, and there might be regress in a week.

Guest:

But over time, people who used to struggle with worry, anxieties, and fears to a paralyzing degree.

Guest:

There are people in your church right now who can say, look what God's done.

Guest:

They've come a long way, and they're able to say, you know what?

Guest:

Like, if I could go back and counsel myself ten years ago, I would just say, chill out, trust the Lord, and you can be that person, too.

Guest:

And it just starts with one day at a time.

Jared Sparks:

Yeah.

Jared Sparks:

One of the things I haven't spoken about much on the podcast is, up until a few months ago, I struggled with insomnia, and it got really bad about a year ago.

Jared Sparks:

For about six months, just real anxiety popping up in the middle of the night.

Jared Sparks:

I wake up in the middle of the night anxious, and I didn't know what to do about that.

Jared Sparks:

The only framework that I had in my mind was a psychological one.

Jared Sparks:

And so having come from years of psychotherapy and all that stuff, I knew that I couldn't go back to that.

Jared Sparks:

So I didn't know, like, what do I do with this?

Jared Sparks:

What's actually going on?

Jared Sparks:

I was actually talking to a biblical counselor that helped me understand exactly what you're saying, that behind this, there's a sin issue in here.

Jared Sparks:

You have to bring it to God, and you, you can do that.

Jared Sparks:

I'm like, oh, I can do that.

Jared Sparks:

And so that, I mean, it's not unusual that I wouldn't know that, but it seems like that's something that a lot of pastors don't know how to counsel people in the, in the rush to psychologize things and medicate it, perhaps, or actually treat it with secular kind of means versus like, no, there's a sin issue in here.

Jared Sparks:

There is a not trusting God issue in here, that we do have to bring it before the Lord.

Jared Sparks:

And that's the true healing.

Guest:

Yeah.

Guest:

Yes, yes.

Guest:

And amen.

Guest:

Most pastoral counselor counseling these days, right now, christian psychology has taken over the pastorate instead of biblical counseling.

Guest:

And I think, you know, the difference in the distinction there.

Guest:

But biblical counseling is the way, there's caricatures of it.

Guest:

And if you don't recognize physiological issues that are going on in the human body ever, well, then that's a problem, too.

Guest:

But biblical counseling is the way and many of our ills that we're facing today, because the body and soul, we are not just material.

Guest:

We're not just spiritual.

Guest:

There are things that are connected in ways that we don't yet understand and maybe probably never will.

Guest:

But repentance is the way in all of life, every day.

Guest:

That's what all the christian life is, is what Martin Luther said.

Guest:

And so, you know, pray, trust the Lord, and watch God work.

Jared Sparks:

Amen.

Jared Sparks:

Amen.

Jared Sparks:

Well, thank you so much, brother.

Jared Sparks:

This has been of great encouragement to me.

Jared Sparks:

I'm so happy to hear you talking about these issues.

Jared Sparks:

And with the clarity and concise speech that you're using, it's a great encouragement to know that there are men that are speaking into these issues for both men and women today.

Guest:

Amen, thanks so much.

Guest:

And keep doing what you're doing, man.

Guest:

You're doing a great job and God's using you and blessing your work.

Guest:

So keep it up.

Guest:

Trust the Lord.

Guest:

It's awesome stuff.

Jared Sparks:

Amen.

Jared Sparks:

Thank you, brother.

Jared Sparks:

And where would you like to send people to find out more about what you and your wife also do.

Guest:

Yeah, Shepherdskrook dot co for the website.

Guest:

Just look Shepherd's crook or my name.

Guest:

You can find the podcast on any kind of podcast platform and then fruitful and fearless for Jordan and her show.

Guest:

She does a great job.

Guest:

And then also the Sons and Slaves podcast is me and my sons working through this book boyhood and beyond.

Guest:

And I just talked chapter by chapter with my boys ransom and valor.

Guest:

Now Oak is not old enough yet but were going chapter by chapter through this.

Guest:

Were in 20 episode 23 or 24.

Guest:

Weve been doing this for about a year and a half so we dont get, we need to be more regular on that.

Guest:

But thats me and my nine year old son and my six year old son having a blast and its a lot of fun.

Guest:

So thats called the sons and Slaves podcast.

Guest:

So we have that going on as well.

Jared Sparks:

And all those will be linked to the show.

Jared Sparks:

Notes that sounds amazing that I would like to listen to.

Guest:

It's fun.

Guest:

It's a lot of fun.

Guest:

It's my favorite thing to do.

Jared Sparks:

Excellent.

Jared Sparks:

Well, I look forward to checking that out.

Jared Sparks:

Thank you so much.

Guest:

Thank you.

Guest:

Will appreciate it.

Jared Sparks:

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Renaissance of Men podcast.

Jared Sparks:

Visit us on the web@renofmen.com or on your favorite social media platform at Ren of men.

Jared Sparks:

This is the renaissance of men.

Jared Sparks:

You are the Renaissance.

Follow

Chapters

Video

More from YouTube