How to Live Out Biblical Masculinity

In this episode, Brody and Carter explore what biblical masculinity really looks like—not as culture defines it, but as Scripture does. They talk about strength, leadership, grace, discipline, mentorship, and why real manhood is marked by both courage and love. Whether you're wrestling with purpose, faith, or what it means to follow Christ as a man, this conversation offers practical, biblical encouragement.

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Transcript

Welcome And Why Masculinity Matters

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome to No Sanity Required from the Ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible, culture, and stories from around the globe.

SPEAKER_02 0:18

What I want to do in this episode is I've asked Carter just to sit down and I want to have a conversation about um just biblical masculinity. This is something we've talked about a lot here on NSR, especially I feel like in our in our earlier seasons, it was it was something we talked about uh pretty frequently. It's something that we feel strongly enough about getting this right that we do uh two events each year at Snowbird that are dedicated to helping men just just do and be what God's called them to do and be. And then we also emphasize this within our institute, with the young men in our institute, and then we emphasize it in our summer program. And so it's uh it's uh, I think a very important conversation to always be having and to not get comfortable in in our manhood, but to be saying, hey, what what more does God have for me? What what where are the areas, maybe the blind spots are the areas that I need to be growing in, and even areas that I am growing in, I need to be continually growing in. Um I think it's important. So I'm excited to get into it.

A SEAL Conversation About Eternity

SPEAKER_02 1:30

I will say, as a as a maybe a setup, I had a conversation um this past week with a guy. He is, I don't know why the Lord's done this. You know, the Lord will give you opportunities and um you just want to make the most of them. For some reason, God's given me a lot of interaction with the veteran community, and I have no prior military service. None. I don't I've learned sort of some of the nomenclature, like I understand some of the ranking system, and but I don't, I don't know it real well, and and I have no experience. My dad was not in the military. Um, none of like my brother was not, my cousins weren't. I have a my my both of my grandfathers were, but I mean that's a huge generational jump. So it's not even that it hits that close personally to home. Uh I would say that I'm I'm uh appreciative and patriotic of the sacrifices that have been made for us to uh to to live in what I think is the the freest country in in in all of history. But some of my closest friends are veterans and we've had veterans on here. We're gonna have several veterans on uh in the months ahead. I just have a a heart for men that have that have uh served in the military, especially those that have been in combat. So I'm having this conversation in the last week. I've had two conversations actually. One with a guy that I talked to weekly who I'm kind of disciplined.

SPEAKER_04 3:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

And uh he's he's my age and had a long career in a very elite uh he was in development group, if people know what that is. Uh was a master chief, which is I mean, it's like ranking and the tip of the spear unit. And then I was talking to another guy uh that I've known him since he was a little boy, used to run around camp with Tuck, and now he's in the SEAL teams and talking to him about his spiritual situation, I guess you would say, because he's not a professing believer. He grew up coming to some stuff at camp and and uh and and I had this conversation with him. He swung anytime he comes to town, when he's on leave, he'll swing by, we'll have coffee and talk for an hour. And he's leaving, and I said I said, Hey man, the most important thing here is not your military training or your situational uh readiness. Most important thing is your spiritual readiness. What I'm concerned about is are you ready to meet the Lord? Um, you're driving back to Virginia Beach today. You're not promised that you're gonna get there. Are you ready to meet the Lord? That started the conversation. And he said something that was interesting. He said, He said, Man, we've just been in another country training an indigenous force. That was his most recent deployment, and he said, He said, I know that I'm gonna have to answer to God for taking human life, and I I want to be able to know I'm not gonna go to hell for that. That's heavy. Yeah. And I thought, but it was a great opportunity for me to say, hey man, a person doesn't go to heaven or hell based on your eternity is not based on your performance in your job or or your worst moral failure or your greatest righteous victory. You know what I mean? So we talked about grace, and I just was explaining grace to him again, and we're done. And I said, I want to pray with you before you leave. He still hasn't made a profession of faith, but man, he just hugged me, told me he loved me and thanked me. And I thought biblical masculinity uh is important for that guy, but probably in a in a different way than it's important for my I have a I have a kid who's got a teacher who's in a same-sex relationship, it's important for that guy. And that's very two very contrasted arenas. You know what I mean? Sure.

SPEAKER_04 5:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

So we're you know, I just what are the principles that we need to be teaching young men when it comes to striving to know the Lord, to prepare themselves for marriage, to be, you know, ready to enter into business or the military or ministry. And that's kind of so I'd mentioned to Carter uh one day last week. I was like, I think I'd come into the office, the media office, and we're just all chopping it up. It's just a group of dudes. Like, we need to talk about this. Like, what is what's it look like in your generation to be a godly dude? Doesn't have to do with the truck you drive, you know, for sure. Doesn't have to do with if you like latte. You know what I mean? Like you got these cult do you like guns? Are you a SIG guy, Glock guy, or uh you know, or do you hunt, do you play fantasy football? Just let's push all that aside. None of that really is what we're talking about, you know. Um what are the principles that if I'm talking to

Grace Versus Performance In Godliness

SPEAKER_02 6:20

a young man in East Africa or in America, if I'm in the fifteenth century or I modern times, or we're going back to the time of Jesus in the first century, what are the things that as men we need to be striving for?

SPEAKER_04 6:34

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

So I want to have and and then the last thing I'll say that kind of has has triggered my mind to be thinking about this is there was there have been several guys that have sent me a clip from a recent men's conference and the guy that's the keynote speaker, you know, he's I think he's probably on TRT.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

Just a yoked guy.

SPEAKER_02 6:53

Yoked with his knuckle tats and and and big rings on all of his fingers and a big beard. But then I knew this guy six years ago coming out of seminary, and it's not what he looked like. And I'm like, okay, this guy trying too hard. You know, I I don't want to be critical. I mean, if he wants to pump iron and take TRT, that's his business. But does that give him is so should we listen more to him at this men's conference? You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Yeah, and and that's interesting too, because one of the things as I was thinking about this episode, that I was I was trying to think of where people in my generation are looking to for examples of masculinity. And to be honest, I think that most guys, um, even Christian guys my age are not thinking about how can I be the man that God wants me to be? How can I be, you know, a leader, protector, all those things. Um, they're just kind of living life, doing their best. I mean, granted, but they're not even really asking themselves these questions. And then once something in life comes up, like a big situation where they actually need to exercise um some characteristic of that masculinity, then they realize, oh, like I'm not being a leader in this situation, or I'm not, and they feel unprepared at that time because they haven't even thought about it up to that point. But they've like, to your point about the the main speaker at that conference being this big yoked guy with all the the tats and stuff. Um I've noticed there's a whole category of like influencers on social media that's coming out. And I think a lot of guys my age and in their early 20s, late teens, are looking to these guys as an example. And, you know, they're bodybuilders and they might even, you know, have podcasts or whatever, and they're talking about discipline and all that stuff. But all these dudes are still in their early to mid-20s, still, these influencers that they're looking, um, looking to. And I mean, you have a handful of older guys too, like in their 40s, 50s. Um, but most of the examples of masculinity that people in my age are looking to, I think, are they these younger guys that just know how to work the platforms. And it's really interesting to me, um, especially just given what you said again about that main speaker, like it's this physical presentation that's like, oh yeah, that's a man. Um, and I guess a question that I would ask you is if there's these surface level things um that are easy to look to and think that's a man, um, if those things are not what we should be looking to, like what should we be looking to?

SPEAKER_02 9:26

I think uh we we always the source of our authority is always going to be obviously the scripture. So we want to go to the scripture, we want to go to the word of God and say, what what does this tell me? I,

Social Media Masculinity And Image

SPEAKER_02 9:40

you know, what am I striving for according to scripture to be the man that God wants me to be? I think the first picture that we see is in God's original design where he gave a few commands to Adam. He said, Uh, you're to take dominion over creation. So it's uh, but he but he said that in the sense of stewardship and being a representative of of God over creation. Adam, we know, failed at that. And I think it's interesting that that the scripture speaks to Jesus restoring dominion. Um so in the fall, um, what Adam did is he not only didn't take dominion, but he failed to do the next two things that I think God told him to do, which is uh to be a provider and a protector. So in uh Genesis 2, 15 uh and 16 it says, um, the Lord God took the man, he put him in the garden to work and keep the garden. That word work insinuates cultivate, provide, and I think there's layers to that. So when I think of cultivation, I th and and provision, I think, well uh in an agrarian society like like would have been back then, it's it's work the ground, provide food, you know, create opportunity, but also cultivate relationships, cultivate conversation. Most, you know, a lot of men I think are not good at communicating, you know. That takes cultivation. It's like work to communicate, learn how to communicate, learn how to say what you need to say in the most loving and clear way. Um, then I think so it said work and then and then uh keep. The the second thing that he says is keep. So work and keep. And that word keep implies protection. So there's got to be a like a fighter mentality. And where I think guys can can get a little derailed here is is they get like in the social media world right now, so many of those influencers that you're talking about, there's also a ton of like uh the the uh combat veteran community. Yep. So like, you know, what's your fitness regimen and what's your gun you carry?

SPEAKER_00 11:57

And yep, that's like Jocko and all those guys.

SPEAKER_02 12:00

Yeah, yeah. That like those guys have the loudest voice right now.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

Oh, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

And you realize, oh yeah, men are hungry for this, but I don't, I mean, most of that that I've listened to, uh, and I know there's exceptions, but most of it is not informed by scripture. And so the idea of being a protector, I like to take that uh again, when we talk about working and cultivating, we're not just talking about physical work, physical cultivation, we're talking about emotional, relational, communicative. As a protector, I need to be emotionally protecting myself and the people that I'm responsible for and to. Um, as a protector, I need uh when it comes to my communication, I need to be protecting in the way that I communicate. So my words aren't harsh, but sometimes they may need to be instructive or firm, you know, like learning how to communicate. And so I think in in God's original design for the man, there's this, there's this sense of shepherding and protecting and providing and working, being willing to fight, but not looking for a fight, you know. Sure, yep. And then when we when we jump over to, and then you can look throughout scripture, there's a ton of scripture that really is, I think, geared towards men and specifically young men, the proverbs over and over. It's like speaking to a young man. Um, and then I and then we have examples of this, and you know, David, the warrior poet, the king and warrior and poet, um, worship leader. Um, when you read the Psalms, you see sort of the complexities of this guy who we know his failures, we know his weaknesses, but we also know his strengths. And then you get to um the sort of the flagship verse for most men's conferences is this 1 Corinthians 16, 13. Be strong, act like men, let everything that you do be done in love. And so I think for a man, being the man God's called me to be starts with being motivated by love, a love for the Lord and a love for others. And if I'm motivated by that love, that love is always going to be, if it's a Christ-like love, it's always going to be a self-sacrificial love. Okay, I think the way you cultivate that love is it's

Genesis Blueprint Work And Keep

SPEAKER_02 14:20

gonna sound when when we around here we constantly point back to the gospel and to scripture. So scripture, every episode almost here at NSR, we talk about the importance of the word of God in my life. And so uh in Ephesians 5, that's the passage where um men are told to love their wives as Christ loved the church. And then he says, and and uh with the washing of the word. And I think about uh in my life, now when I've if I speak to personal experience, my love is more full. The way the way I love my wife and my children, the way I love you guys and the people at Snowbird, that love is going to be most self-sacrificial when I'm in the in in surrender to the word of God. I think the gospel at work in a person's life, the ultimate picture of sacrificial love is what Jesus did for us at the cross. And so I think what cultivates that is submitting to the word. Now, I think when I come to the word of God, um, there's a couple of little sayings that I like to use that help me. One is when I open the word of God, I need to recognize that the word of God is opening me. And then the other thing is when I come to the scripture, I want to come under it, not at it or over it. And I think that's an important distinctive because I know like when I was growing up, a lot of men in the church, and I grew up in a in what would be known as more like a fundamentalist upbringing, and most of our listeners are familiar with with that sort of side of my story. The word of God was used more as a uh an enforcer. You know, like you can't listen to this music or you shouldn't wear these clothes or you shouldn't drink alcohol, or you should it was more about what you're not allowed to do. Sure. It was real rules heavy. And which kind of goes back to that story about that I shared about that young seal, that team guy that I was talking to, is like, have I done the wrong things or am I gonna be held accountable? Am I gonna go to hell because I, you know, whatever it is, I didn't do the right thing. And so um, when I approach the scripture in submission to it, the love of God is gonna grow in me. The the thing that I think is so powerful about the love of God growing in a man's heart is the more it grows, the more it's gonna pour out and it becomes an outworking. So the the men that I know that are the that are the most loving examples of godly manhood, they're they they show love and express love to others. That's an outworking of the Lord in their lives. And so I think the way you cultivate it is by submitting to the scripture every day, expressing my love for the Lord, to the Lord, um, expressing my love to the people in my life that um that God's put around me and in in my day-to-day interactions, both within my, for me, within my home, my family, but then also within that next circle, which is the snowboard community, and just expressing it, you know, and I think that's important. It seems simple.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Yeah. That's a it's it's something that I think the Lord has taught me over the years is because I grew up not in, I wouldn't say fundamentalist or even legalistic. Um, but I just remember what always stuck out to me from church and sermons that I sat in on was um these are all the things that, you know, you should be living this way, you should be doing this, don't be doing this. And it was never for a concern of my own salvation. Like I never heard that and thought, oh, if I don't do these things, I'm not saved. But I think somewhere along the line, I started thinking that if I don't do these things, if I don't live right, then you know, I don't have like the Lord has no favor for me. He has no, like, not that I'm not loved, but it's like I had to earn it. Like I had my salvation, but I had to earn more from him. And then at a certain point 10 years ago or so, he started helping me see like I love you already, and helping me rest in that love. And at that point, that unlocked a whole nother level of being able to love other people because it was like I'm resting in this. Um, and he already he's already dumping it on me. I just have to receive it, and then that overflows around me. And again, I think like that totally makes sense. That comes from actually being in scripture. You don't love somebody if you don't know them. And if you know want to know God, you have to be in the scripture. Um back to two things that you said. Uh it's actually it's that that Corinthians verse. Um, be strong and be motivated out of love. Those are, I feel like two kind of in my mind when it comes to masculinity, two different sides of it. Because oftentimes you'll see guys who are like really strong, really disciplined, stuff like that. And then you'll see guys over here who might come off too soft, you know, they're um too emotional or they feel too emotional and stuff like that. Um do you think that I mean, do you see that too? Do you ever see like an an imbalance, I guess, there?

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, I'm I'd be lying if I said there aren't times where I've kind of I wouldn't say cast judgment on somebody, but kind of evaluating, is this guy just way soft, you know, or is this guy just like overly hard? You know what I mean? Like, um, and a lot of times it's important to get to know somebody. Miss misrepresentation, misconceptions are are, you know, common. People miss, I think people misread me all the time. Like I don't, there's probably very few people that get misunderstood at the level that I do. But for, you know, for whatever reason, I think just my maybe my projection or my disposition, most people think I'm a lot more aggressive than I think I am. Yeah. They think I'm a lot harder than I probably am. Um, I think I'm actually a pretty sensitive dude, which is usually shocking to people. Um and and I think part of that comes from raising daughters, you know, and um, but I also I I I think it's important, yeah, I do see that. I I think I see guys that are overly passive because they don't want to seem uh overly like they're they're scared of being perceived as toxically masculine or whatever. Sure, sure. And then you see guys that are striving to to check the box. So you're talking about these these influencers, they want to, they want to look like that or be like that. And I think one of the things that life in Christ does is it brings a balance to your life, you know. God wired you the way you He wired you. I think the reason that some people are perceived the way they're perceived as really strong and masculine, sometimes that's just God wired that dude that way.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

You know? Um, but then sometimes the guy's trying to be that. Sure. And there's a difference.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

How so we've talked about how to cultivate that love, how to be motivated by love for people. What about because I think I land in this camp where I have been more of the um love focused and not so much the strength focused. So if you're speaking to somebody who finds themselves in that position and they want to, it's like, okay, I need to be stronger, I need to be more courageous, I need to uh be more disciplined. Cause I think that's one of the reasons that these influencers are having like a hook into my generation, is because guys, they see a jacked dude and they're like, oh, he's disciplined. Like they see the value in discipline, they see the value in hard work, they see the value in that. Um, it's just it can be incomplete because it's just that's the physical side and it doesn't always correspond to um emotional. Emotional, mental, spiritual. So how would you encourage or talk about how to develop more of that strength side?

SPEAKER_02 22:09

More of like um like like becoming a strong, a stronger man as an individual. Yeah. Um a couple thoughts on that. One, I think for a for your generation, what a lot of guys need to realize, and this is where I think my generation, the wool is not over our eyes on it. I would say nine out of ten of those influencers are on steroids. They're on, you know, it's not authentic.

SPEAKER_04 22:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Um you watch, you watch a lot of that and you're going, okay, this doesn't pass the sniff test.

SPEAKER_04 22:41

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

You know, but young guys are so impressionable and they're starved for strong, masculine, dis, like you said, disciplined examples. Um, but that that's not always true. There's some of those dudes are are are not, they they wouldn't fall into that quite category. I think, I think that just simple and practical, there's some things that I think every guy ought to do. I think every every man should be the strongest version of himself. I'm talking about physical strength, just physical strength. He should be the strongest version of himself. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean he needs to pump iron and and go to the gym. I mean, we all know that the strongest guys, physically strongest guys, are usually blue-collar manual labor guys, right? Yep. And one of the strongest men I've ever known in my life, I worked in a brake, tire and brake shop. When we started Snowbird, um, I worked a couple days a week uh doing like um changing brakes, tire rotations, just in a you know, blue-collar job. There was a guy I worked in there with, and at that time, I was like, I was about your age. I was like mid to late 20s, and I mean I was deadlifting an enormous amount of weight, squatting an enormous amount of weight. I was benching 400. And me and this dude, I remember we were picking up a transmission one day, and I couldn't keep up with this guy. He's just a Bubba. He had a belly, you know, thick wrists and hands. And I was like, I was like, John, have you ever lifted weights? And he's like, huh? You know, he's like, what are you talking about? You know, and so there's a physical strength that comes from uh just blue-collar labor. So um I think to I think to answer that question, every guy should be the strongest version of himself, but don't expect that that to just come from going to the gym. You know, sure. It's it's do hard things. Like I I take um I take my 13-year-old son, and we keep a property up for a widow lady. And a couple of Saturdays ago, we cut a cord and a half of firewood off that property, split it, hand split it, stacked it, weedied at her creek bank, you know, cleaned up her yard from the winter. Um that kind of stuff is good, you know. Like as and so I would challenge young men, most most guys my age are doing that stuff. It's just you're taking care of your place or whatever. I would challenge young men to um to do hard, uncomfortable things, you know, and there's a lot of emphasis right now on doing things like getting in cold water. And it's funny because I started doing, I started doing cold plunge when it wasn't called that and it was no health benefit known. We started Snowbird and me and Little were living in that old cabin, and I took a creek bath every morning. I would get in the creek at the beginning of the day and the end of the day, and and then I found out later that's actually really good for you, apparently. Um, and so I think being being uh the strongest version of yourself, I think that is a manly thing. I think that's something God designed us to do. You know, I think um when you go back or again to that original design, God put Adam in the garden to work. And I think there's a misconception that comes with the fall where people think um when when sin came into the world, that then manual labor became a thing. It did not. What became a thing, I think there's a couple of effects to the fall. God had already told Adam to work. He was already working in that garden. He was already cultivating, he was already working. The two things that I think came about as a result of the fall, one is now a man struggles to find his identity and his worth in his work. Adam, prior to the fall, was stewarding what God had given him. God was kind of bringing him into the work that God had given him, and it gave him great value, but it was not where his value was found.

SPEAKER_04 26:32

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

You know, um, and so he worked and there was joy in that work because he was doing what God built him for and he was doing it with the

Strength Plus Love Without Legalism

SPEAKER_02 26:40

Lord. After the fall, we've all experienced in in our own lives as men, but then a lot of us, our dads were like this, or maybe, you know, maybe you you know men like this, where we our identity is sort of wrapped up in our work. Yep. And then the second result of the fall is I think laziness, because the ground is going to push back with thorns and thistles, and by the sweat of your brow, you're not gonna work. And so guys become lazy, not and and a lot of times that laziness is manifested in our relationships, in our walk with the Lord. Like, like I know a lot of guys that are really hard workers in their vocation or their field, whether that's white collar or blue collar, they work really hard, but then they don't work at relationships. They don't work at, you know, um cultivating in in the relationships God's given them. So I think for Amanda, the the way that a man needs to be honoring the Lord and growing in strength is I think we need to be growing to be the strongest version of ourselves we can be. I got a friend who a lot of our listeners will know. His name's Daniel Ritchie. He worked at Snowbird, he's born with no arms. Um he travels and speaks a lot now on like in the pro-life circle. Um he's a Southeastern Seminary guy, and um, and he's he's spoken on a lot of really big platforms. He's been on like Fox News type CNN, like he's been brought on to speak from the the pro-life side. And Daniel uh goes and trains at a gym. He's got no arms. And I've seen videos of him like doing these really creative exercises. And I asked him one time, I was like, what's up with that? And he's like, Man, I want to be the strongest version of myself I can be. So, you know, some people are very limited in what they can do, but I think so. I think that be the strongest version of yourself. Um and and that doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna go lift weights, but split a load of firewood, run a weed eater, do some push-ups. You know, I think there's value in that. Paul even says, there's some value in that. Now he he's making a distinction there. It's not the most important thing, but he says there's value in that. You should do it, you know. And then he uses all these analogies of physical strength, boxing, fighting, wrestling, running, plowing, you know, you've got these really manly pictures of the Christian life that he that he lays out sometimes. So I think, yeah, do hard things as simple as get up and do some hard stuff every day. Do some things that make you uncomfortable. We are married to comfort as humans. That's not just in our culture. Sure. That's not just in our day and age. It's like that's always been the case. If you said to me, hey, you got to go dig a hole, it's got to be three feet deep by three feet wide, three feet square. And you said, Here's your choices of tools. You can use a spoon, a shovel, or an excavator. I would say, give me the keys to the excavator. I'm looking for the easiest way to do this, you know? And so that's that's not that's not a problem as long as I'm doing that to be more efficient. But if I gotta be careful I don't become lazy, you know. And so I think doing hard things um physically are important. And I think there's value in that for a man, and I think it's biblical.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Sure. Um how um, and I think you've you spoke to as well, like how to develop those um strong characteristics. Um, it's also through scripture, and then it's married to actually doing hard things physically too. Um I want to get your thoughts on uh mentorship, because obviously we need to look to scripture for examples of masculinity. Um, but what do you think about um just as especially as young guys finding older guys to pour into your life?

SPEAKER_02 30:27

I think that's important. Here's what I would say about that. I think when it comes to mentorship, the burden of of that relationship should be placed on the younger guy. In other words, he should pursue that. Don't wait around for an older guy to invest in you. That's the first thing. The second thing is maybe be careful what picture you paint of that in your own mind. So don't, it's probably an older guy that's got something worth sharing with you is probably a very busy dude. Yeah. Right? The guy you want to learn from is probably running a business in leadership, you know, lay leadership at his church, raising a family. He's probably a super busy guy, you know. So it may not be realistic to say to that guy, hey, I want you to mentor me. And uh what I'd like to do is meet once a week. You know, I what I would encourage young dudes to do is look to cultivate, initiate and cultivate relationships with older guys and just learn from them. It may not be that you sit down and have coffee once a week. It may be that you're just observant and you're engaging that guy in relationship. And even like I've I've often like when I'm traveling, if I'm gonna be on the road and I'm traveling somewhere, I'm always, it's always a yes if a young dude says, Can I ride along? I think some of the most meaningful investment I've made in guys just a 10-hour road trip, you know. And and so those kinds of that kind of investment a lot of times is pretty like organic or grassroots or casual, you know, just talking about life. And so stories come up, you tell stories, things you learned from those stories. I don't do good if I'm trying to invest in a younger dude or younger group of dudes, I don't, I don't prefer to like go through a program or a series of life lessons I want to teach. It's well, let's just share in life. And I learned that from my own experience. I was 23 years old. I met a guy who was 33 years old. He's exactly one stage of life ahead of me. He he he and his wife had two kids. Both those kids, by the way, eventually worked at Snowbird. Nice. Um, so this is before I was at Snowbird, and I met this guy. I'm 23, he's 33, and we just started to like we he uh he had cows, I had cows, we would put up hay together, we would help each other around our two respective properties. Um we I I would we would go over a little and I would go over and have meals at their house. And I talked to that guy two weeks ago, and he's now in his mid-sixties, you know, and so for over three decades, he's a guy that I just learned from. I just watch and learn. And you'll see that in scripture, like to pay attention to your conduct, or when Paul says, Imitate me as I imitate, you know. I think most of Paul's discipleship to the younger dudes happened just in the flow of day-to-day life because they're traveling, they're doing stuff together. So I would say to young men, seek that, but also you'll learn a lot more from getting to know a guy and just observing his life than you will from reading a book. You know, the the books, the books have a place.

SPEAKER_04 33:44

Sure.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

I'm not downplaying that. But gosh, man, it's do doing day-to-day things with a guy.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

It's a very relational approach.

SPEAKER_02 33:52

Yeah, it really is.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

I wonder if there's because that feel part of that is scary, I think, for somebody in my generation. One, because I think we've gotten less relational. And I think you could point to a million things that probably cause that. Um, but so it's it's one, just nerve-wracking to be like, oh, I'm gonna spend a lot of time with this person and like get really close to them, and I'm gonna have to converse with them, which conversation has gotten more difficult for our generation too. Um, but it's um it's also like this is just more work. This is more work than okay, we're gonna have a scheduled time every week, we're gonna sit down, we're gonna have coffee, we're gonna talk for an hour, okay, and then I'm gonna go head do my own thing, you do your own thing, we meet up next week. Um, but there's this ebb and flow with the relational side of things. It's like, all right, we're gonna go split wood, or hey, taking my family to the zoo, you want to come along, stuff like that. Um and I think for my generation, that's just a hurdle on itself because it's it's a bigger commitment than it's like I want to get in, get the information, and then get out, sort of thing.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

Yep, that's a good point. That's a very good point. Uh when I was um I was about 22 years old, 23 years old, same time frame as that last story. And I wanted to learn, I was trying to learn as many trades as I could. My thought was I want to always be able to make a living. And I was working uh at the Master's Inn and we had 20 horses, 80 head of cattle. Basically it's like a little dude ranch for teenagers. And so every, I think every six or eight, maybe every eight weeks, the farrier would come around, the guy that put that did the horse shoeing. So all 20 of those horses had to have shoes put on their feet. I mean, it was like we had him on a rotation, but if he would come out, it would take him all day to do half the horses. And it's I mean, it's back breaking blue-collar work. And then we pay him, this was in the early 90s, mid-90s, we're paying him like 50 bucks a horse. And so about, you know, every eight weeks we're spending a lot of money, you know, a thousand bucks on this. And so I was like, man, I just need to learn how to do this. And I can take care of my own stuff, save this ministry money, and then I can make money on the side. So I ended up. It took me a while to find a guy that would do it, but I paid a guy a thousand dollars, he was a farrier, to let me ride with him for two weeks. And so uh I I took, I I went to my my supervisor, my the boss, the director, the the guy that owned and ran that that camp, and I said, Hey, can I have a couple of weeks here to be away? It was in a time of the year where it was kind of a downtime. Can I go and do this? And so I I like for two weeks, I would get up at this dude get up at 4 30 in the morning. I was staying in a bunkhouse in his barn, I was sleeping on a little cot. We would get up at 4 30, I would jump in the truck with him, and he was a high-level guy, so he might ride three hours, go to a big show horse barn, and we would we would shoe all these horses. And and I learned it, but then I also I found out the guy was Mormon. It took me a few days to kind of figure him out, and I'm like, and I was a pretty new Christian. This guy's Mormon. I don't know. First Mormon I'd ever met, you know. That's an interesting dynamic. And uh, yeah. And so we're riding around me and and like 23-year-old me is I mean, is that dude was a character, you know? And so I'm riding around with this crotchety old 50-year-old. This guy was about five, six and was bent. He had been doing this for 40 years since he was at like 12 years old or something. You know, he's bent at the back. And but I remember riding around for two weeks. I paid him a thousand dollars. At the end of that two weeks, I had learned to trade enough to go do it. And I mean, I I supported myself doing that when we first started Snowbird. That was one of the jobs I would do. Tell that story to say, you got to be willing to pay into it. Now, I'm you're not gonna pay money. I'm not saying, you know, the the analogy is what are you willing to invest? The burden of responsibility is on you to grow and learn. And God is gonna sometimes, and I would say to older men listening to this, and I challenge older men with this all the time, that master chief that I was talking about earlier, um, who's my age, and I said, Hey man, you've been walking with the Lord for a little while now, been discipling you, you're growing. It's time to start investing in some younger guys. And so I would I would encourage older brothers, you need to be investing in younger dudes. And that could be as simple as hire some guys to come do some work with you at your place. I'm getting ready to do a construction project on my house. I'm gonna hire a couple dudes probably. Okay, let's let's it'll take us two days. We'll knock this out. Um, and just that time is meaningful and valuable. And I think to what you're saying, most guys in your generation, in the younger generation, um, they would rather just learn from influencers by using their phone and just watch the next video. Or, you know, there's I mean, I found

Build Real Strength Through Hard Things

SPEAKER_02 39:10

so I was recently trying to, I needed to buy a new wood splitting axe and I wanted to get a good one. And I've I I I've bought cheap axes and I split, I I hand split all my firewood. Um, I don't use a gas splitter, and it's just a choice that it's good exercise.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

It's good exercise, it's good, it's very therapeutic, too. Very therapeutic. I love splitting wood.

SPEAKER_02 39:31

Yeah, I love it. And um heat my house with wood and I need to get a new axe. So I was like, I'll do a little research, see if there's anything new out and I found there's like two or three guys that have whole YouTube channels. These guys are like, what's like splitting wood, and they're one of them's like a fitness kind of influencer who splits wood, and I'm like, it's just crazy. And I and I think a lot of young dudes, they'll go watch a guy like that, like what you're saying. Um, and I think that's the danger of your generation now, is just just learning from people with a degree of separation. It's not a relational, there's not a relational component. You learn so much from interacting with people relationally. You learn people so much better.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

I'm not, I can't, I'm not gonna jump on the dogging AI train here because I'm I use Chat GPT all the time because I think there's some really good applications for it. But I've had to catch myself uh because when I first started using it, I was like, whenever I ran into something that I couldn't figure out, I'd go straight to that and be like, this is awesome. This is like a professional in any area, and I have them at the you know tips of my fingers. Um but it starts, especially hanging out here and talking to Zach and people like that who have a very strong opinion on AI, it's gotten me thinking, where it's to the point now if I have something that I'm trying to figure out, whether it's a car thing or whatever, I have to stop myself. I'll open Chat GPT and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna put my phone down for five minutes. I'm gonna try to figure this out. Um, and it's again, it's that connection of there's the immediate connection to the information and just getting the information for the sake of getting it. And then there's an actual way of like, actually, no, I'm having car trouble. I'm gonna call Jeff. I'm gonna call somebody that I know who can walk me through this. And I mean, if you boil it down, it's like I can maybe fix this car issue in five minutes by myself and chat GPT, or I can hang out with a friend for the afternoon and we're troubleshooting this thing together. And it does, it seems like there's a lot more value in the relational side for sure.

SPEAKER_02 41:34

Yeah, I think so. Even this morning, I was I'm preparing, I'm I'm speaking uh May 10th, May 3rd and May 10th, back-to-back Sundays at Red Oak. We're going through 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. So I'm looking at my text for those two Sundays. And my my sermon prep process is I write out basically my own commentary. So I just slowly, I just slowly work through the text and I and I write myself, what Alistair Begg calls, I write myself empty. I just exhaust, I write all I can write, pages and pages maybe. And then I use Chat GPT as a research assistant. And I think there's a fine line there. I I'm not gonna have it write a sermon outline for me. I'm not gonna have it do the work for me. But after me, I wrote through this thing and I got to a verse, well, I don't have access to, there's a there's three different commentaries that I know on that book that I'd like to know what they said. I don't have access to it. It was like go into Chat GPT and say, on this verse, I gave the reference, what is the perspective that John Piper, RC Sproul, and and the Stott, Stot, Sproul, and Piper, I'd like to, could you mash up their perspective on this verse and give me the main point, main idea? And it was cool because it spits it out and I had written the, I'd gotten it right. Like, I don't want to say I'd gotten it right, but it synced up with what I had sort of processed in in my own exegetical work. Sure. It's a research assistant, right? There's nothing wrong with that. Now, if I sit down and I go, open my Bible to 2 Thessalonians 1, take out my phone, go to the app, go to the app and say, give me a three-point sermon, you know, or whatever, and then I go preach that. Now we got a problem, right? Right. It's all things in moderation. For sure. And when it comes to this topic, this idea of men investing in younger men and younger men being discipled and mentored by older men, um, I'm not saying you shouldn't read books or watch an influencer. Nothing wrong with that. I think we should use as many resources as we can. There is something God has wired into us for relationship. We're built for community, we're built for relationship. That's the reason that on a normal work day, I show up at y'all's office and I just plop down in a chair. I'm not bringing anything to the table except me.

unknown 43:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:59

You know, it may Maybe there's some conversation that's helpful. Maybe that I'm in and I'm out, you know, but it's like being accessible, being available. I do the same thing to the guys on the hill at the bathhouse. I do the same thing to the front office. It's just being available and accessible to people. I would challenge older dudes to do that. And I would challenge younger men to pursue that and and be gracious with people, you know. Um, I want to I want to learn from this guy, but I know he's got four kids and he works two jobs, and that's a guy I could really learn from because he's he seems to be getting it right, you know?

SPEAKER_00 44:31

Sure. I've also noticed um, this is again just back to the influencer bit, because there's the influencers on the one side that are very physically, it's like, oh, they're they look like a man, but there's also this other batch of influencers, and sometimes there's crossover between these two categories. Um, but they're very heady, theological, philosophical. Like these are guys that are spending a lot of time, again, they're in their 20s, maybe their 30s, but they're spending a ton of time reading a lot, getting very um, I can't think of another word other than heady, but uh, they're getting very knowledgeable about this stuff. And that's also, I think, really attractive to guys in my generation. I think that's one of the reasons that we're seeing a little bit of a resurgence of younger guys not only going to church, but there's guys becoming orthodox and Catholics too, because we were talking about this in our church history class with Zach, which is fascinating to hear him talk about. Um, he was talking about how his theory to it is um guys in my generation and people in general, they sense that there should be this uh reverence for God, and there should be. And you walk into so I'm from South Bend, Indiana, uh, where the University of Notre Dame is, and I was just back for spring break, and we were walking around Notre Dame, the campus, and we walked into the um the cathedral and there was mass going on, and we stood in the back for a minute, and you walk in, and it's this beautiful cathedral, painted ceilings, gold everywhere. Um it's it's very reverent. You get this reverent feeling walking in there. And after we walked out, I'm like, I understand. I get why people are switching, switching to this. So I think there's there's this attraction not only to uh the physical strength that you see in this one group of influencers, but there's also this attraction to um knowledge and theology and reverence. Um, can you speak into that at all?

SPEAKER_02 46:33

Yeah, I I I appreciate you bringing that up. It it is interesting. Uh when we had John Pollack on last year, yeah, um there's you're you're adhering to something that is sacred. You know, like if you go into a super contemporary church, I'm not being critical at all, okay, but just an observation. A lot of times it does not feel sacred, it feels casual. And when you look at okay, I've I think of it this way. You look at the description of creation and imagine the Garden of Eden, the creation, it's like a cathedral. You know, the scripture even uses terminology the sky above is this firmament, right? It's this cathedral terminology. They're communing with God in his creation. And so when you get when you go downstream in history to the wilderness tabernacle in the Exodus, that would that would become the foreshadowing or the the prototype of what the permanent temple would be. I think it mirrors the creation in the garden. You've got sort of the sanctuary of the Lord, the most holy place. There's a lot of imagery. And I my my thought on that is we are created in in the image of God. And so I think there's a there's a desire for that in the heart of man, that which is sacred and sanctimonious. And I think a lot of churches, um, again, I'm not being critical, have moved to such a casual place. And I'm not talking about, to be clear, what I'm talking about here doesn't have to do with like dress code at church. Sure. I mean, I'm not talking about you got to put on a suit, right? I'm talking about the worship experience has become in a lot of circles, people look for a church where do I like the music? Are they singing newest, the newest stuff? There's something beautiful about singing old, ancient hymns, you know, that are rich in biblical truth. I had a conversation, we had a conversation with our family the other day where it's like it's important to remember and sing those things. And um, but I think there's a desire for the sacred and the sanctimonious that a lot of churches, you don't feel that when you go there. And I know a lot of people don't feel that at Red Oak because it feels casual. But if you think if you zoom out for a minute and think about a worship service at Red Oak, there's corporate prayer, there's corporate reading of scripture, there's there's you could even say there's a liturgical component almost. We don't do liturgy often, occasionally we will, but there's not a consistent liturgical thing every week. But there's the public reading of scripture, there's the corporate reading of scripture. What we're trying to do is find that balance of how do we tap into the sacred, you know? And so I think what people, people are in your generation, young men are turning to that because nothing is sacred in their in their life. Like everything is casual. Sex is casual, relationships are casual, social media is casual, and there's and so then church has become casual, you know, where there's uh an over-emphasis on contextualizing, like let's look like the world, sing music that's appealing to, you know, people that are not haven't been raised in church or whatever. And I think there's something powerful about going into a worship service where um it feels sacred. So I think that's what's driving that, you know, and it's the sacred, the sacred nature of communing with God among his people. I think people desire that. And so I think now the answer to

Mentorship That Happens In Real Life

SPEAKER_02 50:30

how do you how do you feel that needs so let's say you've got a young dude who is becoming like like I think that is the word heady, and he's and he's and he's gaining a lot of informational doctrinal knowledge, and he's maybe he's reading Calvin's Institutes, maybe he's studying Worldview Apologetics, and he's reading guys like Van Till, and it's this deep heady stuff. Um I think you gotta where that slope can get very slippery is one of the things Jesus did is he, he, he spoke to loving the Lord with your mind, but also loving him with your heart. And I think when I'm loving the Lord with my mind and I'm and I'm reading good commentaries and I'm studying, um, you know, I'm studying at a deep level, doctrinal truth, I've gotta, I've gotta make sure that I'm loving the Lord with my heart and with all of my strength so that it doesn't just become intellectual and academic. And so we always I always like to think of it as, you know, there's that old, there's a popular saying, orthodoxy drives orthopraxy. In other words, what I study and believe should motivate my actions. Yeah. And I think with those young dudes you're talking about, you know, you hear guys call it like the cage stage. Like dear, I've heard that a lot where that that guy, that 22, 24, 26-year-old guy that's consuming theology and doctrine, but he seems to be sharp and unloving, he needs to get in the cage, let somebody lock it, leave him in there with the with the word of God for a while until God softens him, you know, and then come out of that cage. And life experience will will shape you, you know, you becoming a father, getting married, falling in love with a woman, like those things soften you, you know, and and so I think um what I believe and study has got to drive the way I live my life. And that has to be tempered with love. Um, and it goes back to the first Corinthians 16. Let everything that you do be done in love. So is this loving is like I I hold a high view of the sovereignty of God. I take a fairly reformed position when it comes to theology, soteriology, but I also love people and want them to know Jesus. And so I gotta make sure a lot of reformed people are not very loving. They tend to almost be hateful, you know, and I'm like, I don't want to be associated with that guy, you know. And so I think uh care choosing to care about people is as important as choosing to see the worship experience as sacred. Um, and so it's it's gotta be both. Because the flip side of that is people that are like, it's all about love, man. Just gotta love people, meet them where they're at. Yeah, but also Jesus would Jesus would meet people where they're at, and then he would say, I'll go and sin no more. And you know, and he'd talk about growing in their understanding of of who he is. Yeah. Yeah, I think uh the the resurgence and or I mean it is it is crazy how much you're seeing Orthodox this, Orthodox that. Um the the Catholic Church is growing again, you know, and and at least in the West. Um and I would just encourage people uh read the scripture, love the Lord your God with all your heart, heart, soul. You know, back to the analogy we used about physical strength. You should grow in physical strength, be the strongest version of yourself, be the strongest that you can be physically, be able to walk from here to Murphy and back. You should be able to do that if if you have the physical capability to to because you're utilizing what God's given you. You should also be the most doctrinally grounded version of yourself that you can be. So for the guy that can't go to seminary and he's a truck driver, he can he can redeem that time listening to good content, you know, sermons by godly men. And but then um also we've all got to be committed to learning what God teaches us in his word and being able to give. I I I had a uh I was talking to a guy who's who's an he's an influencer, and I don't know, his dude's got a million followers on TikTok and Instagram, and I was talking to this guy, and he said, and he he he will talk about spiritual things and he's a Christian, and he said, you know, I'm no theologian. And he's and I heard him say that seven or eight times when he's when he's speaking to something other than a geopolitical his his world is geopolitical stuff. That's what he's he's he's he speaks into politics and and military and stuff like that. And he will say, and I'm no theologian, but and he'd give a perspective on the scripture and finally I just called him and I said, Hey man, I'dn't I'd like for you to stop saying I'm not a theologian. Like I think what you're saying is I'm not a professional, you know, seminary professor or theologian, I'm not a vocational pastor, but every man alive is a theologian. And uh, whether you like it or not, you have a view about who God is. That's what theology is. It's the study of God. You have a view about that. And and and so if if you've been given this platform where a million people care what you have to say, you better be a theologian. You better use that platform in the best way you can, and you better speak biblical truth because you're gonna give an account for it. And something else that's come up that recently, you know, we just did this eschatology series, and and my study of second first and second Thessalonians, there's a lot of references to the end and judgment and Christ's return. Your eschatology determines how you live your life. What I think about how it's all gonna end, that's gonna control and dictate and inform how I live my life. If I think I'm gonna stand before God one day, if I think that Christ's return is imminent, if I think that I could give an account for my life, then it's gonna, it's gonna drive the way I live my life. And so when I'm studying the doctrines of grace or I'm studying um any other, you know, part of theology or doctrine, I need to be studying it in the context of knowing I'm living in a day and an age where I have an opportunity to to impact the world with the gospel. And one day I'm gonna give an account for that. My eschatology, what I believe about how everything's gonna end, that's really gonna inform and motivate how I live my life.

SPEAKER_00 56:56

Yeah, yeah. Um, that's one of the reasons when I decided to apply to come work at Snowbird. Um, that's one of the things that pulled me a level deeper of like this is a really cool opportunity because it was those doctrinal questions. Because what is it? Is it 14 we have to answer for application? Fair enough. I think it is. Yeah, I think it's 14 doctrinal questions, and like you need to spend some time sinking into those. And as I'm doing that, I'm like, this is this is like fits right into the next step that I want to do. I want to grow doctrinally, I want to grow theologically. Um, so I uh this is a you can't zoom past it if you're a young guy and you want to grow in these things, you should come work at Snowbird. Yeah, I can't I can't not speed past that opportunity for a plug, and then you should intern because the classes are dope too.

SPEAKER_02 57:45

But yeah, because you're learning you're it it what I love about the snowbird situation is you're learning the doctrinal piece, but then you're loving people well. Yep. You're you're living in community, you're ministering to people on a weekly basis. Um, and it really it I think uh a year spent at Snowbird, I think it literally charts the course for your life to love the word of God, love doctrine, but love people and care about people. Yeah, I appreciate the plug.

SPEAKER_04 58:16

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 58:17

Um, you want to hear how that application came to be? Yeah. So um when we started Snowbird, um early on, we I mean the application was like a joke. You know, it was like one page questionnaire.

SPEAKER_00 58:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:37

And we had some folks come and work because

Phones AI And Learning By Proximity

SPEAKER_02 58:40

they wanted to learn to be a river guide, or it'll be fun, or that sounds awesome. And I was like, man, and so we had some bad experiences early on with some staff situations. Where I don't even know if that guy's a believer, or um, you know people are sneaking off and doing things they shouldn't be doing, and I'm like, you know, we're having to send people home, and now we're running with a skeleton crew, and so I I I had some conversations with some people who they were really derogatory towards parachurch camp type ministry, and their criticism was it's it's shallow. And um so I sat down and I and I mapped out the original, the first like like that application as it is now is about 14 questions. The original was about twice that long.

unknown 59:33

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_02 59:34

Like it there was one section, and I mean we had to scale it way back. Yeah, but for probably 10 years, that's how it was. Like there was one section where it would ask a question, and it would say, answer each of these following eight questions, and it would ask, it would say, give them, like give your answer and speak from the perspective of like like I want it to be a Trinitarian answer. So how do we see God the Father at work in this? How do we see God the Son? And how do we see the work of the Holy Spirit? So like eight questions, but it was really 24 answers, and each one was a paragraph or two, you know? And it would be, I remember, I so I used to do 100% of the staff selection. So I'd get 50 or 60 applications. My admin at the time was a gal named Steph Gatton, uh, who's still super connected to Snowbird, but her and her husband, her family live in Montana now. And Steph would, she would compile all the applications. Everything was uh paper back then.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:29

This was in the early 2000s through. I stopped doing it about 2014 or 15. So until 2015, I I handled all the applications. So I would have these three-ring binders with all the applications and I would just work through them. It would take hours and hours and hours. My whole late winter, my whole winter into early spring was just spent, I mean, it consumed all of my time. I would work all day at camp because I would do I was like back then, we the the small group of us that were here, like go back 2006. I was building, we were building a cabin on a deadline to get it ready for summer. We're working six days a week trying to get this cabin done because we had to have it for the summer. And then I'm working three hours in the evening trying to process these applications and call people and have conversations. It was a crazy time. And and and I never thought I should probably shorten this application, but it was killing me, you know. And then finally we gotta have some help doing this. And so we built a team that now handles it. And then eventually, the team, you know, eventually we're like, we could probably accomplish the same thing with a shorter application. So if you apply to work here and you see the application, you're like, dang, that's a lot. It's it's it's not too much, I promise. It used to be probably too much, but yeah. But it it it uh the what we were trying to achieve, it worked. We quitn't we quit getting people applying because they wanted to be a river guide, you know.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:07

That's the goal.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:07

Yeah, that was the goal. And then we got people here who we know coming in there's some sort of a doctrinal foundation, even if they didn't have it before they applied. Now there's a baseline. So that was another reason we did it, is everyone's coming in with at least a baseline for doctrinal orthodoxy, you know, and we can work from there. Uh but you're right, man. The the thing you said about young guys that are heady and doctrinal and theological, man, I've seen that. So I went through it. For me, I went through it a little later because I was raised in just a dispensational upbringing, and I started studying the scripture in 1996 or seven. I heard a John Popper lecture where he talked about it. The title of it was Martin Luther at Study. And it was like an hour and 10-minute lecture at his pastor's conference where he talked about the study practices of Martin Luther and how that really that sort of cooked off the Reformation. It was just his personal study, you know. And I was like, uh, and I remember he in that in that lecture, he talked about how pastors didn't have any business being pastors if they didn't have, if they didn't study Greek. Like you need to be a student of the Greek, you know. Now that was a 96 lecture that I listened to in like 2000. But I remember I went and bought a Zodiac's keyword Greek study Bible. And you're talking about I got zero seminary, no Bible college, not like nothing. I went to a Christian university, but I wasn't in a ministry department.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:41

And so my, you know, what I'd gone to school for had nothing to do with ministry or Bible study or anything like that. And so I'm like, I need to, okay, okay, I need to study. So what I did was I I memorized the Greek alphabet. I was like, I'm not gonna learn Greek. I bought Bill Mounts' basics to biblical Greek textbook and I went through it and I bought, but nobody's teaching me. Right. You can't learn that without somebody teaching you. You know, you can pick up some tidbits. But I remember thinking, okay, if I can, I got a reader's New Testament, which is just a New Testament that is all it's just Greek. It's just written in Greek. I was like, I want to be able to read it phonetically, even if I don't know what I'm reading. And then I want to start to study words and the the reader's New Testament, it gives you like it, it gives you the text. And then if a word is mentioned less than a certain amount of times in scripture, down in the bottom it gives you a definition of that word and some contextual understanding. Sure. So I had a Zodiati study Bible, a strong and Zodiotti's study Bible is if you're not familiar with that, there's one up there. See that keyword study Bible?

SPEAKER_04 1:04:52

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:53

So what it is, it's it's just the it's just the the Bible, and then the back half of that is Strong's concordance. So you get to a word, it'll be italicized with a number over it, and you go look it up in Strong's. And so so all I was trying to do is I'm like, I'm not gonna learn, I'm not gonna go to seminary, I'm building snowbird right now. Like this is what God's called me to. Literally, there's no way I can do that. Um, but I can become a student of the word. So I started, and I remember in that lecture, he said that Luther spent six years translating Romans and Galatians. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna study Romans and Galatians. So I got my reader's New Testament, I got a Zodiate study Bible, and I and I memorized the alphabet where I could look at a word in Greek and I could transliterate it phonetically into English. And then I would go look that up in Strong's and learn it. Now, I I didn't get to a point where I would say, as a preacher teacher, now in the Greek, but for my personal scholarship and study, it really should. Shaped the way I viewed scripture. I will say that it really impacted me because it required pause, focus, dig. And it wasn't just a doctrinal study. I was just studying the scripture. During that six or eight year period of my life, I don't think I looked at a commentary or a reference book.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:17

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:18

But I learned so much. And it shaped and informed my theology and it made me ask questions. And so to this day, I've not been to seminary. I don't have an MDiv, an MAR, I don't have a Bible college degree. But that's not an excuse to not be a theologian and a student of the word, you know. So that's that's a challenge to young dudes and to always be teachable and pliable. Know what you don't know.

Sacred Worship Doctrinal Hunger And Next Steps

SPEAKER_02 1:06:40

That sounds oxymoronic, but just know there's a lot you don't know. So quit flexing what you do, you know. That's fair. Yeah. So anyway, thanks, man. Yeah. For coming on and doing this. I I appreciate your perspective. Is there anything before we wrap up or as we wrap up, is there anything that you think like might a guy like me or my generation, I always want to be learning. I want to be, I pray that when I'm gone, I'll be known for being a humble guy. But I don't think that's typically the first impression people have of guys in my generation. But I always want to be asking and learning and like, is there something you think that the younger generation could teach my generation of men? Is there something I know that's I'm putting you on the spot, and if we need to take a minute and think about it, what's something you wish my generation did better, that we could learn better, um, that would be helpful for young dudes? And it might go back to that mentorship piece. I don't know. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:40

I don't know. I think that um if there is anything, I think this is this is not as big now. Um, I think I saw it more 10 or 15 years ago. Um, but and I think this is probably true with every generational changeover. Um just the older generation looking at the newer generation and pointing out you know the flaws in it and not taking the time to try to understand um the tools that we use or um the vices that we have. Um, but really a lot of the you know, our sin struggles are very similar, they just look different. Um and I see I do see more of that now. I saw some some more impatience in the older generation and my generation. Um, but I I've seen more of a shift and I've seen more of a a desire to understand. Um because there's this is a I've only been around for one generational changeover, so I can't I can't tell you how extreme they've been in the past, but this one feels like a pretty extreme one just with the explosion of technology and the internet and all that stuff. Um, so I think and I think some of it was justified too, um, even looking at the work ethic. Um, because especially I think Gen Z uh failed to, I think they were just very lazy in a lot of ways. I noticed that uh working some of my first couple jobs. Like I worked at a movie theater when I was 17, 18. I worked at a supermarket after that. Um, and I was homeschooled and I always kind of had a chip on my shoulder of like, oh, I'm not as good as all these other kids. So I always felt like I had to work harder. Um, but I I still noticed I'm like, they're not trying, they're not, they're not doing as as good as they could, even though none of us want to be here right now, like you should still work hard. But um, I I have seen even a shift from Gen Z to Gen Elf, a little bit of like there's a little bit more of that harder workingness. But all that to say, um I think maybe just like look at this generation and really desire to understand how how they work, what's you know, the things that they're struggling with. Um and I realize that's a very broad answer too, but I think it's it's very valuable, um, especially because a lot of people you just want to you want to be heard, you want to be understood. And I know for me personally, if somebody takes the time to ask me questions and actually understand where I'm coming from, I'm far more likely to take their advice than if they don't.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:20

Um that's good. I think that's good. Remember, uh, I was pulling on the back entrance to camp. This was about 10 years ago. And uh there was a guy sitting on one of those rocks down there along the road. He's just sitting there. He's uh this guy's an intern. I mean, he's in the institute, he's working, he's one of the first institute classes. Sitting there, and I stopped and I was like, Hey man, what are you doing? And he said, huh? It's like during the workday. And he had been given a task and he had finished it. So he just sat down and got on his phone. And I remember it dawned on me, okay, when when when I do a reference, a work reference for somebody, and they ask me, does this person take initiative? I've always thought that's a dumb question. Everybody takes initiative, and I realized, oh no, this guy is waiting to be told what to do next. If he's told what to do, he'd go do it with zeal. You know, but it was tell me what to do. And there was a shift early in the institute where we really started to emphasize, hey man, see something needs to be done, just do it. And um, I think that a lot of times uh the older I appreciate what you said about understanding because that's the first time I ever remember not just blowing up and going, good gosh, what is wrong with this dude, but going, okay. That was a monumental moment for me because I stopped, I got out of the truck, and I said, No, tell me why you're just sitting here. And we had a conversation. And I said, Okay, I want to, I want to help you understand as a man, you should never be just sitting still during the workday, you know. And we had a cool conversation. Ended up being, me and that guy developed a really strong relationship. He ended up mentoring, sort of discipling my son. That's awesome. It was his small group leader. We pulled him in. He ended up being in the the earliest Roy youth group uh at our church, is called Roy Red Oak Youth. He was the first guy, one of the first guy discipleship leaders. This was probably 15 years ago. Um, for sure, 10 years ago. And uh to this day, he invests in my son. Like my son's 22 years old. This dude's probably 30. And uh he invests in him and and is flourishing and doing well. Um, I think Andrew probably knows him, but um, yeah, I just remember asking him, it's the first time I was like, okay, let me ask this guy what's going on.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:41

Because I wanted to just yell, what the heck are you doing? Get off your butt and go do something. Now, three years later, if I'd have seen him doing that, I'd have said, get off your butt and go do something. But he needed to be taught with patience.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:52

Yeah. And I think too, that's uh they it may not have even crossed his mind that, oh, I should be doing, like, I should never be sitting still. I should always be doing something. And so asking those questions, it can kind of help them start to think that way. Because they may have never asked their that question before. It's like, why am I just sitting here on my phone? Why am I spending three hours a night playing video games instead of hanging out with friends? And then that can help. I think you can even guide them from that, their answers to those questions, be like, okay, maybe you're doing this because this, and help them understand there's a deeper root issue, and then they can address it. Um, also, I think something that just popped into my mind as you're saying that, like you were direct and you told them like you shouldn't be sitting on your butt. I think something, and I I don't see this as a need in you, but other people in the older generation. I think there's the the questions and understanding, but there's also the need for direct hard truth conversations, too. I've seen more of that recently, especially with friends who are struggling with anxiety, depression, stuff like that. That honestly, it could probably be avoidable if they had somebody speaking hard truth into their life. But instead, there's kind of this more soft approach of too much of just the understanding and like, oh, I'm sorry, and like the support for it. And there's not, there needs to be that, but there also needs to be a follow-up of if there's hard truth that needs to be spoken, it needs to be spoken. Um, I think my generation needs a kick in the pants every now and then.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:32

Man, that's good to hear. I mean, if I'm listening to everything you've said summed up, it's like notice who they're looking looking to as influencers, these buff muscle heads, you know, like, or these military, you know, accomplished the jocos of the world. Looking at that. They're they're gravitating towards orthodox Christianity and liturgical sacred worship, and then they need to be motivated to do hard things and and they need some tough love. I think that's good because um we can do that. We can provide that in love. And that goes back to where we started this conversation. That's 1 Corinthians 16, 13. Be strong, act like a man, and then let everything you do be done in love. You know, and I love uh the that illustration in the the father hunger book where he's like it's like a velvet covered brick, it's hard and strong, but it's soft to the touch in that sense. And and uh I I've always liked that. The picture in my mind of what a man ought to be uh in in context of 1 Corinthians 16, 13, is this picture I saw one time, and it was this this guy in it, it was like it looked like they're in Afghanistan, middle of the war on terror. This guy is down on a knee, he's bloody. You can tell he hasn't, he's been whatever operation he's on, he's been in the field for days, he's got his rifle slung around behind him, and he's got a little Afghan kid kind of sitting on his knee, and he's giving him the dessert out of his MRE, and this kid's just beaming, and I'm like, a war fighter who's showing kindness and compassion to a child. I think that's a cool picture to me of you know what a man ought to be. It's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:15

Yeah, I'm gonna try to find that picture. That's not cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:17

Cool picture. Yeah, very cool picture. Awesome. Thanks, man. We'll do more of this and uh appreciate it. See y'all next time.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:25

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