
Manhood Tribes
Become the man God created you to be. Manhood Tribes is all about creating groups of extraordinary men who follow Jesus at every stage of life. Join host Don Ross as we discuss how to tackle the major challenges in men's lives, and how to build a group of men around you to help you be the best man you can be.
Manhood Tribes
Masculine Faith: The Union
In this episode of The Manhood Tribes Show, Don explores the true purpose and impact of following Jesus beyond just the promise of heaven.
He challenges the traditional view that being a Christian is solely about salvation and going to heaven, arguing that it’s more about creating a union with God.
He discusses the importance of sacred spaces in the scriptures and how men can live out their faith in a way that resonates deeply with them.
Don also shares practical steps, including daily reunions and spiritual disciplines, to help men connect their hearts to God and live out their faith meaningfully.
00:00 Introduction: The Purpose of Following Jesus
01:01 Manhood Tribe Show: Resources for Men
01:35 Series Overview: The Way of the King
01:54 Challenges of Modern Christian Men
03:13 Defining a Masculine Faith
03:43 The Epic Story of Faith
04:12 Purpose and Resilience in Faith
08:41 The Role of Sacred Spaces
13:26 Jesus as the New Temple
16:30 Union with God: Theosis
20:34 Practical Steps for Daily Reunion
28:55 Spiritual Disciplines for Engagement
30:45 Spiritual Disciplines for Disengagement
36:18 Conclusion: Building a Daily Reunion
Want to know how you measure up as a man? Take our free quiz, called How Manly Are You? and learn how you can get better at being a man. Download for free at manhoodtribes.com/manly.
What do you think that following Jesus should do to a person? Or maybe said another way. What's the point of being a Christian? Now for many of you, you might be tempted to answer that question with a phrase that you've probably heard a lot. If you've been around the church at all, which is that. It should allow us to be saved so that we can go to heaven when we die. And that that's kind of the whole point. And while that's not exactly wrong. It's not altogether, right. Either. It's time for us to take a little bit better, have a look at what exactly is the point. Uh, following Jesus and what it should do to us. Let's talk about that today on the manhood tribe show. Guys want to know how you measure up as a man? I've got a great resource for you. It's called how manly are you? And it's a free quiz that you can take to figure out how you stack up against what it means to be a man. And when you take the quiz, you'll also get some free resources to help you figure out how you can get better as a man in the areas where you would like to grow. So go to manhoodtribes.com/manly to download your free. How manly are you quiz today? That's manhoodtribes.com/manly.
Men welcome to the manhood tribe show. My name is Don. I'm your host. And today we are continuing our series that I'm calling the way of the king, because this series is really all about learning to follow Jesus in a way that works for us as men. Because I think if we men are really kind of honest, especially those of us who are here in America or more broadly in the west. And maybe have grown up around the church or been around the church for some part of our lives. Or even just kind of been exposed to people in the church and kind of have an impression of it. A lot of us would say. I'm not really sure that this whole Christian thing works for me. Like I just see the way that Christians act, the things that they prioritize, the choices that they make. I'm not really sure that there's a whole lot to it that interests me. Or if I'm honest, I'm not sure that there's a whole lot to it. That's actually different than the way that anybody else lives. So, you know, what's the point. Or maybe you're somebody who has been around the church for a long time and just kind of felt like. Ah, I show up to this church, but it's like, Nothing about it ever really feels like it's relevant to my life. I kind of just go because I'm supposed to, or because my wife or my kids want me to, or I feel like I should for their sake, but when it comes to being a man, like nothing about this whole Christian thing really seems to have any relevance to the rest of my life. So I'm not really sure why I'm there other than it's probably good for me in some way, but. I'm having a hard time connecting the dots. So I am trying to, in this series, help us as men to be able to figure out what a masculine faith would really look like. And a masculine faith doesn't mean that it's exclusively for men. It just means that it's a faith that actually is relevant to and resonates with men. As men that it's something that we can kind of go, yeah, this, this, this makes me feel like a man. This makes me believe that I am a man. And as a man, I feel good about living out my faith in these ways. And I've said that there's really three things that need to be true of a masculine faith. The first is that it needs to be epic. It needs to be part of a big story and a grand adventure. Men love grand epic stories. Those are the kinds of movies that we love to go see. We love being caught up in tales that feel like they're a big adventure. And so we need the story of our faith to feel like it is a big adventure that we are not the center piece of the story, but there's really more to it than just our day-to-day lives. But our faith, if it's a masculine, faith does need to feel purposeful. It needs to feel like we as men have a part to play in that story. And it's not just the role of being a nice guy. It needs to feel like it's a manly part to play. We need to feel like we have something to offer as men going back to our five marks of manhood that we have talked about here on this show all the time, we need to be able to offer things like strength and courage in the way that we live out. Our faith. That will help us as men to feel like we have a purpose in whatever our masculine faith looks like. And then lastly, it needs to feel resilient. So epic, purposeful, and resilient and resilient just means that it needs to stand up to the hard things in life. Our faith needs to be something that doesn't just get knocked down when difficulties come along, or maybe only addresses some part of our life, but doesn't address the rest. And so we're kind of left to figure out things for ourselves in some areas. It needs to really have some resilience to it that it can address all the things in our lives. Especially the difficult things and really hold up to questioning and suffering. And you know, it can take a beating to say the least. So we want to really figure out how can we pursue a faith that actually does look like those things. The past couple episodes, we've really kind of explored the idea of the whole story of our faith and especially the idea that Jesus is the centerpiece of that faith as king, that the story of our faith is really focused on this idea of Jesus becoming king of the whole creation and that we are meant to give our allegiance to him. There is an epicness to that story. There is a purpose for us as we choose to follow this king. And today I want to talk about how it's meant to have a little bit more resilience to it. I asked the question at the top of the show. What's really the point of being a Christian or what should following Jesus actually do to a person. Now a lot of us in the American west have been kind of fed the story that, uh, being a Christian means that you will have your sins forgiven so that you will be saved and go to heaven when you die. Now. Those are good things and they're not terribly inaccurate. And the way that they communicate some truths about the Christian message. But they are unfortunately woefully incomplete. They really aren't the whole story of what it really means to be a Christian and especially not the story of what's the point of being a Christian? What should it do to you? If all that, the story is, is about making it so that we go to heaven when we die. There's no resilience to that. What does, what does that have to say to the whole rest of our lives in the here and now, you know, great that maybe I've given my allegiance to Jesus, but between now and when I die and get to be with him, like what happens then? And what does my faith have to say to any of that? I think that's the question that a lot of men end up with is what's the point of doing something like going to church. If I kind of checked the box on this whole Jesus thing, and I know I'm going to heaven, like, why do I need to do or be all these other things that we get talked to about in church? That's a great question. And I think the fact that we don't have a good answer to that question really kind of shows that we're actually trying to like, go about it the wrong way that it doesn't have enough resilience to say that our faith is just about. Going to heaven when we die, there is a bigger point to being a Christian and it should impact us all in very different ways than just our eternal destination. Now, let me say, and I've hinted at before. We're going to talk a whole lot more about that eternal destination thing a little bit later on in the series, but for now, let me just say there's more to that story and we're going to get there. But today, I want to talk a little bit about the kind of in the present. What does a faith in Jesus and allegiance to Jesus actually have to do with my present day, with my nine to five with my Monday through Friday 24 7. You know, apart from the Sunday morning church hour, like what is being Allegiant to Jesus actually have to do with everything else. And that is really where we get to the question of what does being a Christian actually meant to do to a person. To answer that question. I want to try to begin by talking about the idea of sacred space in the scriptures. Now that may seem like a little bit of a detour, but just follow along with me. I trust, trust me. We're going to get there. In the scriptures, we get some very clear pictures of what would be considered sacred space. And by that, I mean, those are the places in the scriptures where heaven and earth kind of intersect. Right. We've talked about that heaven is really kind of the spiritual realm. It is a place where God dwells. But all the other spiritual beings dwell there as well. God created the spiritual realm. And he also created the physical realm, what we call earth, which is where humans are meant to live and to rule on God's behalf. But there are a few places where God allows those two realms to overlap and his presence comes to be part of our realm. And those places are called sacred spaces. Now that's not really a biblical term necessarily, but it's appropriate for us to call it that. We see the first sacred space in the very beginning pages of the scriptures. When we see the picture of the garden of Eden, that this is a place where God dwells with man, and it is a sacred space. Our relationship is special. It's unique. We get to spend time physically and intimately with God in this place called Eden. Heaven and earth literally overlap. In the garden of Eden, and this is our first picture of a sacred space. And this one in particular is really important because it becomes something of an archetype for every other sacred space in the scriptures. Every other way of understanding what it looks like for God to be with men in a physical location. Has something to do with the picture of the garden of Eden. We see it later on in the scriptures. When we get the idea of the tabernacle, the tabernacle was a tent that the people of Israel would put up in their days of wandering and God would come and meet with the people there within the tent. He would dwell literally in the tent. And whether it was Moses or the high priest or some, you know, appointed people within Israel would come and meet with God there. But the whole people would be able to visibly see that God's presence was dwelling there within this tint known as the tabernacle. Now when the people of Israel moved into the actual land of Israel into the promised land, and later on built a temple, a physical temple that didn't move around, like the tabernacle did. The temple became the place where heaven and earth overlapped. And the presence of God actually dwelt in the center of the temple, a place called the holy of Holies. It was the most sacred space. And that was where God's presence. Resided. And everyone in Israel knew that this is where God chose to be and to meet with his people. Again, the high priest. Could go once a year into the holy of Holies. And would meet with God and atone for the sins of the people of Israel. But at one point after many, many years of rebellion and disobedience on the part of the people of Israel. God's presence actually left the temple. We read about this in a book of the Bible called Where we see that. Uh, God had chosen for his people to go into exile and he left the presence of the temple before that exile actually happened. Now the people of Israel actually come back to their land at one point in time after the Israel, uh, after the exile. And when they do that, they actually go about rebuilding the temple. But an interesting things happens. The presence of God does not come back to the temple. So there's something about saying that the temple is not really just the place that God forever is meant to dwell. We're getting after that picture of Eden that happened in the very beginning pages of the Bible. Now the temple was built in a lot of ways to look like the garden of Eden. You see depictions of trees and all these just kind of beautiful sort of garden imageries. You see spiritual angelic beings that are. Ah, carved into and built into the walls and the fabrics of the temple design in the same way that there were spiritual beings. In the garden of Eden, the temple was meant to look like and reflect this idea of Eden. But it wasn't Eden. It was something different and God's presence did not return there. God's presence actually did not return to earth until we get to the new Testament and we see the person of Jesus. And this is where we get our first picture of God. Uniting with humanity. In the form of one person, this man, Jesus. And we see that his presence is actually dwelling in this one, man, that God's presence has now become an innocence. The temple has now become Jesus. Jesus was coming as a man to be able to show us what it looked like for the presence of God to be that closely United with man. Now Jesus lived his life demonstrating for us what it looked like to live as a man who was perfectly in allegiance to God who was able to fulfill that calling of ruling on God's behalf, here on earth, and to demonstrate for us what that was really meant to look like. He had power over rogue, spiritual beings. He had power over creation and was able to give commands to the winds and the waters. But he was full of compassion for people as well. And out of that compassion, he did great miracles driving out sickness and even death. He was Lord over everything. And that's really what we were meant to be. And he was showing us how to be able to do it. Then through his death, his resurrection and his Ascension to go back to the father, he opened up the gates of the kingdom. And for those of us who choose to give our allegiance to him and to come into his kingdom, a very cool thing happens. The holy spirit actually comes to reside in us. And it is through him that the presence of Christ is in us. And so now we, the new Testament, the kind of latter part of the Bible that's comes after the story of Jesus. We those who follow Jesus become the new temple. And so the place where heaven and earth overlaps. He is now in the hearts of every man and woman who chooses to follow Jesus. We are the new temple. We are the new garden of Eden. But what is happening there is that God is moving ever closer to uniting himself to humanity. And that is the picture that we get of what will happen. When the new age comes when Jesus, his kingdom is fully realized and death and sin are fully defeated and our spiritual enemies are cast out in this new age to come. Humanity will actually be fully United with God. That is our destination. And that is what being a Christian is meant to do to a person. It is meant to create a union. Between a man and God. Now that might sound really different than anything that you've ever heard before, but this is actually something that's been a part of church history for forever. And the Orthodox church, they actually have a term for it. It's called theosis. And it means the idea of mankind becoming one with God. Now that is something different than mankind becoming God. And that's not what the scriptures teach. But they do teach that we, for those of us who follow Jesus will become one with God. So there is something really, really cool about our destiny. That includes more than just going to heaven when we die. It actually includes being fully United with God, being one with him and heart and body and mind and soul so that we know everything that we can about him and the way that he desires for us to rule this world on his bath. We will be one with him and enjoying every good thing that there is to enjoy by being a part of his creation and being United to him and enjoying it. But what does that have to do with the here and now? Like why. Uh, great. That that's our eternal destiny and okay. That sounds really cool. Maybe a little hard to grasp, but what does it mean right now? Well, it means that right now we are meant to be working on that union. We are meant to be working at becoming more one with God, even now. We are working at trying to get more of his presence. In our lives in a way that it showcases itself, that the presence of God flows through us and out of us into the world, instead of just living, according to the best designs of the world around us, we are meant to live out of that union with God. But now to do that, isn't necessarily the easiest thing. We don't have a whole lot of, you know, teaching on what it looks like to be United with God that's just easily accessible to us. And so we have to really kind of work at figuring out how we do that. The scriptures do tell us a lot, but we've got a lot of examples from other men and women throughout the history of church who have pursued this as well. And we can look to them to learn, what does it look like? To live in union with God and to pursue that. So I want to try to give you some ideas. Of what it can look like to develop that union with God. How do you go about becoming the kind of man who is full of the presence of God, who is able to. Who is able to deeply live out his purpose because he is so closely connected. To his God. How do we do that? Well, the first step as we talked about last week, if it's not something that you've done already is that you need to give your allegiance to Jesus. Union with God is only open to those who are a part of Jesus's kingdom. Now it, that is available to everyone. So there's nothing exclusive about this. No one is inherently excluded from the offer to become part of Jesus's kingdom and to become one with God. It is a free gift offered to everyone. We just have to respond to it by giving our allegiance to Jesus. By surrendering ourselves wholeheartedly saying that he is our king. And if that is not a choice that you have made, I would encourage you to go back and watch the previous video, where I talked about the gospel to get an understanding of what that choice is really all about and why you might choose to make Jesus your king. But if that is true of you already, if you have chosen for Jesus to be your king, and you're trying to figure out how do I become more of a Kings man? How do I become more like him and the way that I live so that I can live out the purpose that he has given me? How do I pursue more of this union with him? What I want to say to you is that it's going to take some time, but there are some specific things that you can do over time to help you practice becoming more like Jesus. So I want to say that one of the first things that you want to develop is what I would call a daily reunion. Uh, daily reunion. It's just a simple time. Usually at the beginning of your day, it can be 15 minutes. It can be an hour. It can be however long you really have to be able to give to it. Probably the more time, the better, but start with something simple. But the point of this time is to like any good relationship, reconnect you to the person you're trying to relate to. Think of it almost kind of like going on a date with God. You're trying to reconnect your heart. To his heart. In the same way that you would, if you're married, you might go on a date with your wife because you want to spend good time with her. You just want an opportunity to enjoy her apart from the busy-ness and the craziness and the hecticness of everyday life. You want some time that's carved out for just making her feel special and making that relationship a priority. You need the same thing with God. And that's what I call a daily reunion. You need some time every day to reconnect your heart to the heart of God. So, how do you do that? What does a daily reunion look like? Well, honestly, it can look like just about anything. Here's the freedom. Many of you probably have been told that you need to do something called a quiet time or a daily devotional or something like that. And usually what that amounts to is spending some time reading some scripture and then praying some prayers and going about your day. Now, look, there's nothing bad about that. In fact, that can be very, very good. I definitely recommend that scripture reading and prayer should be a regular part of your daily reunion, but it doesn't necessarily have to be an everyday part of your daily reunion. The point is not to just do specific behaviors. The point is to connect your heart to the heart of God. And in many ways. Prayer and scripture reading should help you do that. But at times it might not. And for some men it might help more than it does for other men. And that's totally okay. You are in a relationship with Jesus. It is your relationship. It is personal to you and to him. And so in that regard, you need the freedom to be able to say, I need to do whatever it's going to take to connect my heart to the heart of Jesus. Now. Ways to be able to do that can include all kinds of things. Scripture reading and prayer are a great foundation, but there's anything and everything possible that you can imagine. That you would enjoy. That's going to help you connect to him. Now, if you don't know much about Jesus, I do recommend starting out by reading the scriptures. You need to get familiar with the story that I talked about in the first episode of this series. Just being able to say, what is the story of our faith? What do I know about the Bible? What does it teach me about Jesus? How can I come to understand the story that I'm living in and the part that I'm meant to play, you do need to learn all of those things. But you're not just trying to learn them for the sake of knowledge. You're trying to learn them for the sake of understanding who is Jesus, who is this God that I'm connected to? Who am I actually in union with? How do I get to know him better and enjoy him and love him so that I actually look forward to spending time with him. And then you might want some time in prayer as well, but it is prayer that is meant to be shared between your heart and the heart of God. How do the two of you together, pray through the things that matter to you, but also that matter to him. How do you prioritize the things that are important to him? And ask him to prioritize the things that are important to you. That's what connecting your heart to the heart of God can look like. But it might look like some other things as well. You might want to spend some time listening to music that helps you think about and conjure up high images of who God is, so that you better know him and love him. You might want to take some time walking, outdoors, or just spending time in nature so that you can connect to God through all the amazing things that he has done in his creation to be able to see him in a waterfall or a cricket or a flower bud or anything else that you can imagine in creation, learning to be able to acknowledge that God is Lord and creator of all, that is an amazing way to help you connect to his heart. It also can just be through things that you love. Maybe you really love working on cars and you want to, for one of your daily reunion times, invite God to work with you on. Repairing a car. It's a really fun thing to do, and I'm sure that he would enjoy doing it because he enjoys you and he would enjoy spending time with you. If you can imagine him being present with you as you are going about doing your thing, that's a great way to spend time with Jesus and to connect to his heart because you're inviting him to connect to your heart as well. Okay. So all of these are really great things. I want to give you as well. Just some additional things that you might be able to think about as ways that will help you connect your heart to the heart of God. Some of these things might be things that you would do on a daily basis. Some of these things might be things you would do on a entirely different basis. Maybe you do them weekly. Maybe you do them every quarter, or maybe you just do them, not on a schedule at all, but just as you find Mead for them, Again, the point is about your heart. The point is to be connected to Jesus. You are United to him now because of his death, resurrection and Ascension. And so in that union, you want to be building up that relationship. So do whatever it takes. There are some things that have historically within the church been called spiritual disciplines. And these disciplines have just been ways that people who follow Jesus have found helpful in being able to stay connected to him. They have been things that have been good practices, ways to be able to, uh, get to know Jesus, to prioritize him in our daily lives, to be able to engage with him or maybe to help us disengage from the world so that we can better pay attention to God. There's all kinds of different practices that can be used. But as I give you these practices, what I want to really draw attention to. Is that the goal is not the practices. In the same way that you might learn a skill like playing the piano or trying to be a really good basketball player. You're going to learn some fundamentals, like playing your scales on the instrument or learning how to dribble effectively so that you can get down the court or learning how to shoot a free throw so that when time comes for you to do that in a game, you can do it reliably. These are all things that we might call fundamentals and they're really important, but the point is not the fundamentals. The point is to be able to be excellent at the skill, but you need to develop the fundamentals in order to be excellent. It's kind of the same thing with these spiritual disciplines. The point is not to be good at the disciplines. The point is to connect with Jesus and the disciplines might be ways that would help you be able to connect with Jesus. And to the extent that they are keep doing them, get better at them, make them a regular part of your life. To the extent that they aren't helpful, or maybe they aren't helpful at the moment. Feel the freedom to set them aside. The discipline is of no value other than in the way that it connects you to Jesus. So don't feel the pressure to have to be good at or to, you know, be an, be an expert or somebody who is just really like mastered at doing some of these things or feels good about the fact that you do them regularly and consistency. There's no benefit to that. Jesus, isn't looking for somebody who just fasts all the time for the sake of fasting or somebody who gives generously for the sake of just being able to say that they gave a lot of money. He's looking for people who do those things, because we love him and we want to use those things to help us connect to him. Okay. I think I've made the point. Let me try to name some of these disciplines that will help you. Let me talk about a few things that would be called disciplines of engagement. These are things that we would actively do. Uh, to help us engage with the heart of God. Some things that are really important for just being able to kind of directly connect to him. And we've talked about some of them already, things like reading and studying the scriptures, things like prayer. Things like worship. All of those are really good examples of disciplines of engagement. But there are some other disciplines like that as well. That can be equally helpful. One of them might be what we would sometimes call communion, or depending on your tradition, you might call it the Lord's supper or the Eucharist. This is an important discipline for helping us be able to regularly take part. In a meal or a feast. Or some kind of partaking of bread and wine. That helps us remember Jesus and his sacrifice for us. And to connect to his heart. For the sacrifice that he made for the forgiveness of our sins and for the new life that we would be able to have in him. Now, depending on your church tradition, you might celebrate that every day, every week, every month, every so often. It's hard to know. But look to your church to help you be able to find out when are the best times to be able to celebrate communion and how can it help you to connect with the heart of God? Related to communion is the idea of community. Community is a great way of engaging, not only with the Lord, but with others as well, being in a spiritual community where you are talking about the things of God and the way that God is at work in your life is an incredible way to build each other up and to build yourself up, you can't help, but come away, loving Jesus more and being connected to his heart. These are fantastic ways of being able to engage with the heart of God. Now, there are also some disciplines of disengagement and these are ways of being able to kind of. Step back from all of the craziness of life. From the things that are distractions and hurries from the things that are temptations and vices from even the people who might be just a normal and a good part of your life, but at times can hold you back from connecting with God, because you've got so many obligations to being with them and doing things for them. So disciplines of disengagement might be things like solitude and silence. How can you get away and just be on your own with Jesus. I recommend that your daily reunion time try to be a time of solitude as often as it can, even to the point that you don't do it in places like coffee shops or bookstores or anywhere that you would have to put headphones in in order to be able to be alone. Try to actually be in a place where you are alone, where you're away from the noise and the distraction where you're not alone in a crowd, but actually alone. Be alone and be with God. Solitude is a great way of being able to help yourself, let go of all the other distractions. Silence is another one that comes with that. How can you just reduce the noise in your life? Can you go a whole day without noise? Ha. That's really hard to do. in our world, it will probably require you to get away from your normal, normal, daily routine to be able to do that. But some time without all the noise of modern living can actually help you find a quiet place in your heart to be able to connect with the Lord. The scriptures are full of examples of how quiet is necessary for hearing the voice of God. And so being able to do that is going to be really important for disengaging from the world to connect your heart to God. Another really important discipline of disengagement is called fasting. Fasting is just a season where you give up something for the sake of being able to better connect with God in the absence of that thing. Now the thing that you're giving up, typically isn't going to be something that's sinful, right? If there's something sinful in your life, you need to give it up. Period. But often there are, you know, things that are not sinful that can just take up space in our lives in a way that becomes inappropriate or just simply distracting. They are things that can just draw us away from God, because they force us to pay attention to them. Traditionally fasting has been about food. Food is a good thing. We, as humans are dependent on food and we need it. But it is also something that can get a place in our lives that is bigger and more important than it really should be. And so there might be times when you need to give up food altogether for a short season, or you might need to give up things like dessert or snacks or alcohol or any kind of other thing that you just sort of over consume, or that becomes a real temptation for you for consuming. You might need a season where you give that up for a while. As a way of being able to say, I want my love to be for God and not for this other thing, that can be a source of comfort and distraction for me. A huge one in our world today is anything related to digital technology. For most of us, that's our smartphones, but it can be any other form of technology as well. Maybe it's binge TV or maybe it's video games, or maybe it's just social media in whatever form you consume it. All of those things are major distractions. So I do regularly recommend for all people who are following Jesus. That you take a fast from digital media on a regular basis, maybe for a day, probably longer than that has a way of just disconnecting from the craziness of the digital world. And hopes of being able to help your heart kind of come up for air and find a space to be able to connect with Jesus. All of those are good examples of fasting of just taking something that has occupied more space in your life than it really is meant to and surrendering for a time so that you can better connect to God during that season. There are other disciplines as well. And like I mentioned, all kinds of things can be helpful. You might want a discipline, like journaling that helps you be able to remember all the ways that God is at work in your life, or you might want a discipline, like Sabbath that helps you do a better job of resting and finding peace and time to recover from the craziness of your world. Whatever it is, the disciplines are mint again, to help your heart be able to connect with the heart of God. They are meant to help you come more close into the union. That you have with Jesus. You are meant to be United with God fully and completely, but until that day, It is our job to keep working at growing that union in this time. To get as much of God into us as we possibly can. Jesus modeled the way he became like us so that we might become like him. And in this season and this era that we're in right now as being men who are Allegiant to him, but not yet completely United to him. We want to continue to try to become as much like him as we possibly can. And I hope that all of this has given you some ideas on how best to do that in a way that both feels masculine and like it can actually be effective and something that you would want to do. So I want to challenge you with that. As I leave off on this episode, I want to challenge you to think about how you can put a daily reunion into practice with one or two disciplines that will really help you connect to the heart of God. What are the things that you think would most help you be able to do that based on what you have heard in this episode? If you're watching this in a space where you can leave a comment, put a comment down that says, here's what I think I'm going to do. Or if you're just listening to it, feel free to send me an email@infoatmanhoodtribes.com to let me know how you're processing this and what you're thinking about doing for your daily reunion time. I hope that it helps you be able to connect better to the heart of God. I look forward to talking to you next time here on the manhood drive show. We'll see you then.