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Hello and welcome to restoring the soul, a podcast dedicated to helping you close the gap between what you believe and what you actually experience. I'm your producer Brian Beatty. Thank you for listening. Today on the podcast we conclude Michael's conversation with Mark Vesper and Steve Sargent of foxhole symphony, which is a podcast about the transformational value of men in authentic Christian community. Mark and Steve spoke with Michael a few weeks ago, and were kind enough to lend us the recording to feature on this week and last week's episodes, visit our archives page for a link to hear the first half of their conversation. And we've also included a link in the show notes. If you'd like to discover more about foxhole symphony. Today, Michael unpacks, the five W's of human brokenness, as well as the role authentic transformational community plays in the Christian life. So Now without any further delay, here's your host, Michael, John Cusack, along with Mark Vesper. And Steve Sargent. Searching for God, I talked about brokenness as for double use, but I didn't present it as such. Then I wrote a chapter called your brain on God. And I thought after the book came out, oh, that's the fifth w. So here are the five W's I'm going to walk through them really quickly. And the five of these together in some our brokenness, our human brokenness, the first one is wickedness. The second one is weakness. The third one is woundedness. Fourth one is warfare. fifth one is wiring, so wickedness, weakness, woundedness, warfare and wiring. And each of these are components to our humanity. Every single person that's ever lived, has had these five W's Jesus did not have the wickedness part, but he was weak, he was vulnerable. He was a victim of warfare, and he had wiring so I'll walk through these, the first one is wickedness. And any Christian will know Romans 323, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. But wickedness in the Bible is not really, really bad Christians. It's this idea of our proclivity to be autonomous, and independent. And that is that we are bad, that we are unlovable that we are unworthy that we are despicable, and kind of that God is disgusted with us, all capitals, but Jesus died on the cross for us, as my friend Paul, Paul Young says, who wrote the book, The Shack, he says, My version of that was that I'm a piece of crap. And God sprinkled powdered sugar on the end Jesus. And so we basically become the sweet and white piece of crap, but it's still a piece of crap. And that is utterly unbiblical. Even the idea of Jeremiah seven, nine, because I know some of your listeners are going, but wait a minute, aren't our hearts desperately wicked? No, not if you're a believer, if you're a believer in Jesus, and you are in Christ, your heart of stone has been turned to a heart of flesh, and he's sprinkled you with clean water in your clean, and we are new creations, and we've been crucified with Christ. And we don't know who that is, but the life of Christ lives in us. So our hearts have literally been transformed. And I wrote a chapter in my book called The good heart, which I thought would be very controversial, but people have really received it because I think it resonates with men spirits. So wickedness is not Osama bin Laden and Hitler, but not me. It's this. I have this bent in me to be independent from God, and to not trust in His goodness. So that's wickedness. And most of the times when we talk about any kind of habitual sin, sexual sin compulsion, even if you guys were to say So Michael, what's behind anxiety? The average person would say, oh, sin, that's easy. But that is not only a incomplete answer, it's it's not a very integrated answer with our human, our humanity, because we're so much more than that. So if so, first, W is wickedness. The second one is weakness. And I've already alluded to this, but our weakness is our vulnerability and our limitation as human beings. So if I say Jesus was weak, you know, people say, Well, no, he's one. No, no, he's not. He was like Bible man. You know, he had a super cape and he was the superhero of all time. Well, Jesus had to go to the bathroom. He probably had calluses on his feet at certain times. If he was learning carpentry from Joseph and he cut himself, he would bleed. He had to sleep. When he was in guest 70. He had to talk to his three friends and said, Hey, stay awake and pray for him. So he was vulnerable and the whole idea of Philippians two God becoming man. And that key Gnosis passage of emptying himself is saying, I am choosing vulnerability. And in fact, I'm choosing humiliation to show my love because we forget this because of modern art. But before the 15th century, there was a lot of art that was, quote, Christian art that showed Jesus on the cross naked and not covered in the in the common cloth that we see today in most instances. And so here was God stripped naked. And I've actually meditated on that thought, and the thought of me hanging, exposed, like even from a chin up bar, just hanging there naked, by my hands, and people walking by, like, I get shivers in my spine, like God, I hope that never happens. And here was God stripped naked, beaten, crucified, and in that way, humiliated. So that's his vulnerability, his limitations is that he chose to self limit himself. And every human being since then has been vulnerable like that. Another word for this is dependent, right? interdependent. But here's the thing in our world, vulnerability is talked about more and more, because people like Brene, brown and other authors, and we have to talk about this because vulnerability, we've learned is not a good thing. Oh, avoid vulnerability. God helps those who help themselves and be a self made man. But when God made Adam and Eve, vulnerability was a glory. vulnerability was something that allowed them to deeply be known and understood, and to know the other to see into the depths of their heart and their soul. Their vulnerability was what gave God joy, and made Adam and Eve free in that childlike sense of a child being vulnerable, because they might not be able to cook their own food, dress themselves, bathe themselves, cross the street. But if they are loved, and well parented, they're carefree. They're joyful, to the point where Jesus said, If you want the kingdom of heaven, you have to become like a little child. So that weakness is something that we're not meant to overcome. It's something that we're meant to steward. And therefore, my sexual abuse was weakness. And I didn't know at the time that it was abuse, and I didn't know it was weakness, because it was something I had to stuff away. And I know there's a Men's Ministry that you guys have been part of called Markman for Christ, and they're not the first ones. To use this analogy, it goes all the way back to the psychologist Carl Jung. But this idea of holding a left hand and a right hand, and our weakness in one and our strength in the other, that those two can be side by side. And more often than not, what we do is we take our talents, or abilities, or strengths or gifts, all the things that are likable and winning about us. And we present those in front of us and both of our hands, that people go, Wow, that's neat. But then we take our vulnerabilities or limitations or humanity, the things we might be ashamed about, not even sins, but just things that they're ashamed about. People could see me, they could see something about me, they could see something about my body, my character, my behavior, my performance, maybe I stutter, when I talk, and they will go, ooh, that's not good. And what I believe will happen, and this has been happening ever since Genesis three is that I will be left I will either be rejected or abandoned, because if you see what's really inside me, you will not love me. And that's because since Genesis three, when Adam and Eve covered themselves with fig leaves based on those lies that the, the serpent told, shame always creates distance. And there's there's distance between people, but there's also distance within myself. Psychologists call this interpersonal distance or intra personal, and the intra is within myself, we disconnect from our own heart. And we generally when our shame is there over this vulnerability, or what we perceive to be a flaw, we either dial down and say, I'm too much. Because when I step out, and when I, in 10th grade, I signed up for the theater project at my school and the play, I chickened out because I thought people heard me sing. Or if I think I'm funny, they're gonna think I'm not funny. And one of my buddies in high school signed up with me on that same day, we made a pack. He went on to move to Hollywood, and he's been in a Nickelodeon cartoon for the last 15 years. Wow. And so, you know, I don't know exactly at what point our stories diverge, but it was really shaped I've got to dial down. The other side is I've got a dial up. I've got to be bigger than I actually am. This is where narcissism comes from. This is where the poser the imposter comes from Have you know I've got to wear a Rolex GMT cue on my wrist, and then you'll think I'm successful. You'll think I'm a real man. I collect watches. I don't have that watch. But my fantasy has always been, man, when I get this watch, then I'll be a badass. And then guys in this circle will think something of me. And that's all driven by shame, shame that says I am not enough. So I know I'm only on the second W. But I want to just pause guys and say, as, as I'm talking, these are the things that lurk beneath the surface of a struggle with lust, and porn and sexual sin. The problems with sexual sin are not about sex anymore. The problems with overeating are about m&ms or pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving. The problem is about something different. And fundamentally, the problem is about our brokenness, specifically how we mishandle our pain, not trusting God, but taking our own tack and way of managing our pain. And then the problem is about shame. So back to we've got wickedness, we've got weakness, which is that vulnerability, then we have woundedness. And I know you guys talk about this, and you've done a lot of work around this. But in short, there's wounds of presence, things that were never meant to happen, but they did physical, sexual, emotional abuse, it could be name calling on the playground, it could be violence from a parent or growing up in an alcoholic home. On the other side of wounds, you have wounds of absence. And these are the things that should have happened, and that we actually needed for survival, and for to become whole, emotionally, spiritually relationally. And mentally, but we needed these things, and we didn't get them. And those are wounds of absence. More often than not, it's men that are successful, driven and ambitious, they have a harder time recovering from the wounds of absence than they do from the wounds of presence. You give me a guy who said the crap out of him when he's little, versus a guy that grows up in a really great home and he's successful, who's gonna have a harder time changing? The guy who has everything together because he's compensated his whole life, right, but he still has a false self. He still lives out of this impostor belief. So that's our wounds. The fourth one is warfare. We have an enemy first Peter tells us that he prowls around like a roaring lion, to devour us. And it's really important that to say that there is such a thing as personal evil, many ways. The idea of evil has fallen out of vogue, even among Christian circles. But there's personal evil that comes against us and evil hates our soul, because we have the capacity to be like God in the world and to shine his light. And the fundamental way that warfare comes against a man with sexual sin is not by bringing porn websites in front of a guy or by a flirtatious woman. At work. It's through deception. Bill Struthers is a professor at Wheaton College, a professor of neuroscience and psychology. He said that it's not the shouting of the lie that lures men into sexual sin. It's the whisper, the whisper of pornography that says this will make you a real man. This is what can give you real comfort. This is what will soothe you without that vulnerability. And without that risk that real intimacy engages sin. And so with the wickedness, weakness, woundedness and warfare, the warfare think of an arrow in Ephesians, six, it says that the shield of faith is there to extinguish the flaming arrows. And think of the arrow where does it land, it lands in the wound, it lands in the place where we're already hurting, where we're thinking, I can't trust love, I can't trust being vulnerable, because I will be hurt, I'll be abandoned. And so it always lands there. And then our wounds and the weaknesses that we don't surrender, they become a kind of launching pad for our sin and a landing pad for the enemy. And this is how the for the start to work together. With this, the W is simply wiring. And by that I mean we are physical beings comprised of electrons, neutrons, carbon, and hydrogen and oxygen and a bunch of other stuff that God took the dust and created Adam and he says in Psalm 139, that we're fearfully and wonderfully made. He created us in our mother's womb, but we're biological beings. And the historic Hebrew idea of the word soul means body, mind, emotions, will and spirit, all of those things integrated together, not just a part of us. It's like a cloud that is always kind of floating inside of us when we die, it goes to heaven. So our body our wiring, is actually part of what it means to be a soul. We don't have souls, we are souls, they represent our being. So all five of these w's together are our brokenness and the interrelationship is that our sin, which is the first one can be thought of as the tip of the iceberg. And that tip of the iceberg is there, but underneath it is this massive constellation of our neural pathways. So when I was four and I began to be sexually abused when I was living in an alcoholic home, my neural pathways went into hell. I alert where I was always hyper vigilant or where at times I had to go numb. So I've lived my whole life going from numbness to wound up and driven numbness to wound up and driven, which is basically depression, and anxiety. And then on a warfare level, these lies that I am shameful, that I am disgusting that I am dirty. I walked around through elementary school and through junior high in the first part of my high school years, literally feeling the sense of I'm a man, I'm a boy with a penis in my mouth. And No girl would want anything to do with me. And I wasn't gay. I didn't have relational desires for men, but I just saw myself as that dirty and disgusting. And that was the lie. That was the warfare against me. The Lie of women will think you're funny and want to be your friend, but they would never ever want to be a romantic partner or a girlfriend, anything like that. That was the lie, all essentially messages of shame. And where did those land, they landed in the wounds. And so I remember in high school, there was this incident, and I thought I died and went to heaven. There was this girl that wanted to make out with me. And she was like, really forward to this girl that smoked. And I was like, Oh, this is this is awesome. And I've been looking at pornography already. This is through the 70s in the very early 80s. And as as we were making out, and this is just a weird story to tell, but I'm gonna tell it anyway. I remember literally shivering and quaking on the inside. And I thought that I was like cold. But I wasn't cold. We were in somebody's house. And what was happening was I was basically having a panic attack inside that any kind of proximity of intimacy. real intimacy was overwhelming to me. And it felt unsafe. And it might as well have been that that one of the Taliban was standing there with a with an AK 47 to my head, that none of that was conscious. But I remember all of these incidences. I remember, I became Christian at age 16, through young life. And our Young Life leader did this what I now believe was a very kind of forward thinking exercise. The book I'm okay, you're okay. Was out then by it was a book on this transactional analysis that basically involves you looking into each other's eyes. So he lines up all of us high school kids, which I don't even know if I would do today, because it's so weird. With men maybe but so we're looking each other sides. And there's this girl that I had a crush on. And she's white, the reason I went to young life, and we're sitting there about a foot apart, looking into each other's eyes, and I could not look in her eyes. I just had to keep looking down and I had to close my eyes. Then I started to laugh, I finally kind of faked my way because she was taking a serious and wanted to look in my eyes. And I felt like oh my gosh, this is heaven, this moment. But I'm absolutely terrified about what she's going to see she's going to see the shame that I feel. And many years later, we had some correspondence. And my wife knew about this, it was really something intentional, and therapeutic that I that I was doing. And I wrote her. I told her my story. And I gave her a copy of a talk I'd given on my testimony about my abuse, my addiction. And she said I remember that moment, young life, where we're supposed to look into each other's eyes. And you were shaking. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I thought I thought it covered that pretty well. So but my point is, is there was the warfare, the error that gone right into my wounds. And instead of having that vulnerability and saying God, here it is, I had no model, no language, and no lens, to think about my Christian faith as God wanting anything to do with that weakness, that vulnerability or my wounds. And in fact, tragically, I went to one of the people that was discipling. Me and I said, and this was one of the most horrible things I've ever done at the time. And I said, you know, I feel like I'm really good with my spiritual disciplines and quiet time and all that. But I think I need to tell you this. And I said, I was sexually abused when I was a kid because I then had that language. And this well intentioned, good man said, Oh, Second Corinthians 517, you're you're a new creation in Christ. You don't have to worry about that. Just put it behind you. And in me, something died at that moment, because I knew that as far as ceaseless driving went that I was in the 99th percentile. And that if I couldn't do it, then oh my gosh, I'm just stuck in my brokenness. And then I concluded, This is as good as it gets. This is the Christian life took me another 10 years guys to stand in church singing a worship song. And everyone's singing and allegedly joyful and lifting their hands or whatever. I was actually a Presbyterian. So my hands were in my pocket because you can't lift them higher than that, but foul, and I said, I said, God, if this is all there is to being a Christian I don't think I want to be a Christian. And if I could put words in God's mouth, I believe that what he said in my heart was, once again, thank you. Now we can talk. Now we can wait. Yeah, I've been waiting for you to tell me that because this is not the Christian life. Like Willard said, Is there something more than ceaseless driving and brokenness? And the answer to that is, yes, freedom. Yeah. And I'll stop and pause. But I want to come back and talk about freedom a little bit, because that then relates to what is wholeness, brokenness, are all of those components, which God does not want us to get rid of our wickedness. That's why Jesus died on the cross. We don't have to get rid of it. He did. And then as it comes back, we learn to integrate that into who we are saying that God loves us. We trust him more we experience His faithfulness, His provision, the ways that he sees us, suits us, gives us a sense of security, oh, my body starts to internalize that my mind starts to align with my body. And suddenly, I don't need to eat that third bag of m&ms. Suddenly, I don't need to have that second, third or fourth donut, suddenly, I don't need to take that shot of tequila in my basement during the first week of quarantine. And I just went Chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug, chug. They hadn't had a drink in over a decade. And why? Because I felt dead inside, and I had no energy. Now, I love God. But that was the season. That was time. It was COVID. It was a lot of things where I wasn't tending well to my brokenness. So how do we become whole, and so he's going to take a pause, but I want to finish this thought. Our brokenness is on the left hand, if you will, yeah. And on the right hand, is who we actually are in the middle of all that, because in the middle of, if you think of an archery target, like a bullseye, where the outermost circle is our wickedness, and then our weakness, wound is all the way in in the middle of that target. There is our true self. And that true self is the me and the you that God said is fearfully and wonderfully made. And it's no small point to say that that was David pre Jesus dying on the cross, saying that God said, You are fearfully and wonderfully made. God didn't say, well, actually, David, you think you're fearfully and wonderfully made, but your heart is deceitful and wicked, and you can't be trusted. He said, You are fearfully and wonderfully made the same, true self, the true the true real image of God within us, that He said, I formed you and I knew you before it, you informed me and I set that apart. That's what that is that our deep core. That's where there is life and vitality, and the part of us that wants to align with God. And so wholeness is not just being put back together, like, Oh, I was abused, and I had addictions. I grew up in an alcoholic, dysfunctional family. So God's kind of putting me back together, like Humpty Dumpty. That's part of it. But wholeness is allowing the darkness and the light to be there together. So my left hand I've got wickedness, weakness, wounded, this warfare and all of my wiring, and then my right hand, I have God's love, and the true me. So now can I hold the left and the right intention together. And in the, in the Gospel reality in the gospel truth that life comes from death. There's this ancient idea of paradox. A paradox is where were two things that seem to contradict, can actually be held side by side, in in the holding them side by side, there's a third thing that emerges. And the Bible is full of threes, not the least of which is Father, Son, Holy Spirit, but in holding the broken part of me, the sinful part of me, the vulnerable part of me, and then this other part of me that God loves, and God is holding my brokenness, and God is holding me. And there's something more to me than my brokenness. Because I hold those side by side, what happens is the left and the right hands start to come together. And I don't have to be just one I can be both. And then those hands are united. Like I'm folding my hands. And now I don't see two hands, I see hands held together. And that's what wholeness is, and I think a lot of people are mistaken with wholeness is, I get rid of all of my junk. And when I stopped singing, stop masturbating, stop lusting. Prove to my wife, you know that I'm a good enough dad bringing enough income, etc. That's when I pull when the struggle is gone. But the reason I talked about freedom earlier is that brokenness is the bridge to wholeness. And the path to wholeness is freedom. The freedom is, is that we do not have to change in order for God to move toward us to embrace to us or to even like us, but we can't get that deep down inside of us where it's internalized. So God has to use the brokenness in our life. Now we eventually can get to a place where there's freedom. But freedom is not just freedom from something, freedom is much more so about moving toward something. So the easiest freedom for me was actually getting free from my sexual addiction. But then I've had to spend almost 30 years moving into what it means to live out of wholeness, what it means to live out of my heart, where God made me as a man, what it means to love my wife, as Christ loved the church. What love actually is to learn if love can be trusted. And that's the hard part is the journey of becoming. Yeah. Man, that that is a an incredibly robust depiction of the journey from broken to Hall, right, I mean, these these five words, and you just put a yeah, just an incredibly comprehensive, you know, summary to that journey, that path to freedom. You know, as you know, that our podcast, you know, what Mark and I are so passionate about and what we've experienced together the last 15 years is the the transformational value of being an authentic community. And so I'm so curious to know, what your perspective is on the significance or even the role that authentic community plays in that journey. Because a lot of what you're taught or even in your own story, and you know, a lot of what you're talking about, sounds so isolating it sounds so, you know, individual and, you know, my brokenness and my, you know, my journey, of course, toward toward toward God, right, being drawn toward him. But what what role does authentic community play in that journey? Well, in my life, it played 100%. And I'm a pretty insightful, I'd like to think of a self aware person, because I'm a psychotherapist, I do a lot of reflection, journaling, etc. But I cannot change myself. And of course, Christians will say, No, only God can. But what I mean by that is that we can only change in relationship, we're wounded in relationship, and we heal in relationship. And I absolutely love your emphasis on transformational community, and particularly authentic community, that's what transformational community is. But transformational community is not like, you've had dinner at a really nice restaurant, and you'd ordered off a menu, and then the server comes in brings you the dessert menu, and they bring the desserts on tray, and okay, I'll have a little transformational community. Now, transformational community is actually the main course, for humanity. That's why That's why babies are born inside of a mother's womb. Everything about our human design is somehow to mirror life with God, or the very nature of God within the Trinity, this, this inter relational pyrokinesis is this word of, of transformational pouring out, but without, without losing oneself. And so in community, as we get together, whether it's the first community, like a marriage with Adam and Eve, are a men's group, like what you guys do, or if I go out with my buddy for Buffalo wings, like I did on Saturday, that, whether you're talking about football, or whether you're talking about deep spiritual things, that when two people are together, when they are living out of their true self, something is created. But on a relational level, we get together for breakfast, we get together for men's group, and there's a potentiality and meet to come to that meeting. And to share Man, I'm really struggling, or to say, I see that you're really struggling and out of that, that relationship and the connection, that something is born that looks like God that has energy to it. And that is bringing forth something like a garden where colors and petals and, and fruit and vegetables are growing. That's what's meant to happen in relationship. Certainly, there's things like simple joy, and laughter and being together sitting around a fire. But relationship and community at its best is always it's always bearing fruit, and not the kind of fruit like Oh, I'm leading people to Jesus, but you're together with great friends. And you go out to dinner and then you you you go to a coffee shop and you drink coffee or you have guests over at your house and you're playing a board game and you're laughing and then you look at the clock it's 11 o'clock and you're just sad that that night is ending because it's been so rich and so good. That's because something has been generated, and that there's fruit and there's life there. And that's what porn gets in the way of porn can never bear fruit. That's again, why it's sinful. A person can't bear fruit through masturbation, you can't. If you're by yourself, you can't masturbate and have somebody become pregnant. But pregnancy, and having a baby is the physiological human measure of fruit. But there's a fruit that's far, far beyond that. And so it's community is fundamentally about that. And then the other huge category, is it really still our sexuality? Is it's where we're known. Right? God could have just created Adam, and said, Okay, we're good. Now all the animals have a name. And I'll make him a really fast picker of fruit and that kind of thing. And we didn't need another person. But he said, It's not good for him to be alone. Not because, oh, he's lonely, and I want him to stop hurting. Of course, God is compassionate. But it's not good for him to be alone, because he cannot reflect what the Father Son the Holy Spirit, or like, the father would have said, he cannot do what we do. Yeah. And that is to do this relationship thing where there's generativity where there's life that comes out of that. So then Satan says, I know what, we'll get a picture of the woman. And we'll paint it on a cave wall. And you know, the curvy part here will make that really prominent. And so, you know, the first pornography happened on cave walls, then you have a man pouring out his strength and his energy, that part of him that would move toward a woman to to bring forth strength, where the two of them together would become something greater than the sum of their parts. And there again, is wholeness. Not a perfect man and perfect woman, but a broken man and woman who joined together and there's a homeless third that reflects something of the picture of God. I love what you said, Michael, I made a note here of relationship and community at its best is always bearing fruit. That's, it's awesome. Yeah. That is awesome. Powerful. Love that. And let me let me just qualify that one more time, because I'm glad you came back to that. And I know that you're going to have a percentage of listeners that say, yeah, that my relationships are supposed to be productive. But what if one of our modern myths that we come to believe is that fruitfulness is productivity? So my most fruitful days, in the last year, were in play. One of the most fruitful weekend's I've ever had is I went with Peters around to see Bruce Springsteen on Broadway last August. So one of the most transcendent moments of my life. And he and I were together. It was a really, really sweet moment. And I would say that was fruitful because something was confirmed in my heart. Something grew in my heart that I left that evening. And I thought, I'm a better person for having experienced this, and I won't even get into it. It was it was like, three hours of preaching the gospel, especially if you grew up in Cleveland with Springsteen. Are you still paying off the loan for the tickets though? Yeah, no, Z? Yes, I am. Yeah, those were those were, that was a bucket list kind of thing. I sold a kidney X. Who needs to know and the other thing that was fruitful was I've got a friend that I could see that often. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia, and we flew to Salt Lake. And we spent three days in a river fly fishing. And here's one of the reasons that was fruitful for me. I'm terrified as a man to go into the outdoors, where I am dependent, and where I didn't grow up, hiking, and camping, and I pretty much got kicked out of Boy Scouts. And a lot of my abuse happened outdoors and in the woods. And so I don't, I don't want to go there. And I had this really expensive pocket knife. That was cool. And when I opened it, I couldn't close it. This was like three years ago. So I had this expensive like outdoorsmen pocket knife open in my desk drawer. I just don't know how to close it. Screw it. I'll just leave it there. And I was on a podcast one day with Morgan Schneider, who had written a book called Becoming a king. Great book. And he has a chapter in there called the case for owning a pocket knife. And I just skipped over that part. And I went, That's stupid. You know, I don't need to be one of those kinds of he-man guys. So I'm getting ready for the podcast with Morgan and I go and I think this is the Holy Spirit. Michael, go look at that knife. You can close it. And there was the warfare. You don't know anything that real men know you. You're worse. I mean, come on your next door neighbor. Look at all the hunting gear and everything he's got in his garage and you can't even close that frickin pocket. So walk to a reopen the direct took up the pocket knife and I'm like, oh, there's this little button in between in between the edges and if you press that it closes. So I'm doing fist pumps. I'm going Yes, yes, I did it. And then I go On the program, and I tell Morgan that story. And I love that part of his book. So I think totally unrelated, if you want to, if you want to get over porn by a pocket knife, there you go. Now we'd have the title of this podcast, that was a long way to get to practical application. And that's a, that's a good example, though, of how the five W's come together, right? Is that there was the lie, there was the wound, and my body was reacting. And so Hey, man, I don't want to go into the woods. I don't want to go fly fishing in Santa River, because I don't know how to tie the knots and blah, blah, blah. So we hired a guide. And it was absolutely magical. And I caught a whole bunch of fish. I didn't have to learn everything about fly fishing. And I was with this buddy, and I don't drink, he had some beers. I had some Diet Coke. We laughed a bit by mosquitoes. And it was just magical. And it was completely unproductive. But it was 1,000% fruitful. So we must learn the difference between fruitfulness and productivity. And fruitfulness is a posture of our heart that's open and receptive at the same time. And productivity is a posture of our heart like a fist that's closed, trying to hold on to something to to preserve it, or trying to make something happen. It's the difference between fruitfulness is opening a faucet, the spigot on the side of a building, and something flows, because there's a reservoir versus standing at one of those pumps on a farm. Well pump and 2030 times pumping the well before water comes out. One is productive, the other is fruitful. And that's a mark of freedom in our lives. And we can't try to overcome our sexual sin by staying and pumping the well. Trying to produce a result. Yeah, I love it. You have a weekend, called restoring the soul. Real quick, you know, who is it for? And we know what people gain from it, because you just described it, you just explained it. But you know, who is the restoring the soul weekend for it's a 66 hour experiential weekend called restoring the soul weekend. That's separate from the intensive counseling that we do in Denver. And this is at a bed and breakfast that we take over between Denver and Colorado Springs 30 participants, where we do large group experiential work and small group experiential work every group as a licensed therapist and a lay leader. And we take men through the process of looking at their trauma, and the shame and the lies that they believe. And it's really for men that are tired of the ceaseless striving and tired of just living in their brokenness, and many of the men that come are hopeless, they've given up any sense of hope that their lives could be different, that they could actually be free. And not just sober or in this lather, rinse repeat cycle with lust and pornography. But about three years ago, more men started coming, who they didn't have a significant or primary issue with pornography or sexual sin or infidelity in their marriage. They were coming because they had sexual abuse, or because they had other kinds of trauma or because they just didn't know how to be friends with other guys. And it's still a very transformational experience where from Thursday night till 12, at noon, we see men coming in, you know, heavy and worn down by life, and pain and something really significant and substantial shifts, so that when they leave on Sunday, and then start our club week aftercare program, that there's there's a whole new way of doing life, we like to talk about it as an invitation to do life differently. And I think that's a good definition of repentance. Repentance is not God, I'm really, really, really, really sorry. And I promise I'm never going to do this again. Repentance is, hey, what I've been doing isn't working. And so I'm going to do like different and follow you down a different path of trust. I love it. Thank you. That's cool. And we've known, you know, we know a handful of men that have been on the weekend. And we've seen it I mean, we've seen and heard and, you know, the the just the transformational value of what you're what you you guys are doing there and so well thank you for that. I'll do an unapologetic plug for Michael that he didn't ask for. And that is if you want to understand the value of an RTS weekend. Listen to episode nine right of ours with John Missoura. Yep, Mazz on there. Everything you need to know. Yeah, yeah, I listened to that. And John is John is one of our biggest fans because his personality is just so big. Yeah, like I mentioned if he likes chocolate chip cookies everybody else around him is gonna like this is not, not him. Between on anything, no, this is a guy who's not a salesman either as a SWAT team member, that's just raw. Michael, last question. So wrap up and this one's for the listeners more than anything is ask, what are a couple of resources you'd recommend as essential for men in this battle? Well, you know, from broken nests to wholeness, we use the foxhole metaphor, as you know, you're in there together back to back and you got each other's back. It's, there's a battle going on here. What would you say that one or two resources men could use? That would be helpful. Yeah. Thank you for framing it that way. Because I love the foxhole metaphor, that we are in a battle. And I'll go back to the weekend. And if you were to talk to John mez, he'd probably say this. Most men think the battle is against porn, against sin against whatever it is that they don't want to be doing. And that's the number one mistake. So in the foxhole, we're not fighting against something. We're fighting for something. And so people say, you know, oh, thank you. You spent the last 10 years and with your book, you're really fighting against porn. I'm like, No, I'm not. I don't have any desire to fight against porn, I'll lose period. But what I can do, and what I think I'm actually pretty good at and God has called me to do is to fight for men's hearts. And to fight that men don't just give up and allow the heroes of the enemy to take them out, to fight for men's hearts to be whole. And to give men a language and a lens way of understanding themselves of oh, I'm not a fill in the blank, a dick an asshole, a disgusting person. I'm not this horrible, Christian, I'm broken. I'm broken. I'm not bad. And that is how Jesus sees us. That is how Jesus sees us. And that's what fills his heart with such compassion, because the very heart of God, in the very heart of the Trinity, Trinity is shalom, wholeness, well being in a way that we can't humanly understand. That's really what wholeness is. That's what integrity is. integer is a whole number. And integrity is a sense of wholeness. So, regarding sex, I was certainly refer people to my book, but I love to pass on other resources as well. And if your listeners have not heard of the book, unwanted by Jay Stringer, I've said over the last couple of years that if I were to write a sequel to surfing for God, it would be the material in this book, Jay is a licensed therapist with a Master of Divinity. He's a professor at the Seattle school of psychology and theology. And he did research with 1000s of men online, where he did actual surveys. But then what he did was he looked at the same idea that there's deeper roots in our sexual sin in our addictions and compulsions. And his take was he went and talked about attachment, and how we're looking for unhealthy attachments where we can be seen to safe and secure and how we need to deal with those very earliest experiences that shaped what, what, and how we do intimacy in our life. So the book is unwanted by Jay Stringer, STR ing er, and it is with Neff press. And then my book is surfing for God, discovering the divine desire for any sexual struggle, and that is with Thomas Nelson publishing. Awesome. Got him both. Awesome. That's really helpful. And we are incredibly thankful for like, not only your candor, but the depth, your you know, your knowledge, your wisdom on the topic, and what men will be able to do with what you've shared is just rich doesn't even cover it. This is gold, as far as I'm concerned. So thank you from the bottom of my heart. Oh, I'm so glad. And I think we talked about this, when we were talking to kind of prepare for this conversation. But Sarge, I know that when you were on staff at a church, I came to that church and spoke up in your neck of the woods. So love to have me back there sometime. Go see Bruce Springsteen. That'd be awesome. That will be awesome. Brother. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for what you do. We pray God's continued blessings over you and all that you do. And listeners, thank you for joining us and check out restoring the soul. Check out the podcast, Michaels got just tons and tons of great content, incredible guests. And so, Michael, I hope to have you on again another time. And maybe we'll we'll shift topics a little bit, but thank you for being with us. Oh, you're so welcome. I'm really delighted I would come back in a heartbeat. So thank you for listening to another episode of restoring the soul. We want you to know that restoring the soul is so much more than a podcast. What we're all about is help When couples and individuals get unstuck You know how some people go to counseling or marriage therapy for months or even years and never really get anywhere. Our intensive programs help clients get unstuck in as little as two weeks. To learn more visit restoring the soul.com That's restoring the soul.com