Becoming the Man You Were Designed to Be | Tim and Mark Shoemaker

Across Africa, millions of Christians are suffering a Bible famine. They hunger for God's Word, but there simply aren't enough Bibles. Today, Timothy Project is close to launching Africa's first Bible web press. To help complete this project, visit timothyproject.info. How do you become the man you were designed to be?

If we don't actually put into practice what the word says, we're so vulnerable, and and those storms of life are going to come, and we're going to go down. We're not going to be prepared for that. I think this is the battle right now. It's a fight to be formed in good ways in the midst of a cultural stream that can so easily take you in the opposite direction that you really want to go. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr.

Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller "The 5 Love Languages" . Today, a father and son team join us to talk about how to navigate manhood in today's culture. Tim and Mark Shoemaker tackle 72 questions men are asking these days, and their answers might be a big encouragement to you. Our featured resource at buildingrelationships.us is their book, "Seventy Two Questions and Answers About Life and Becoming the Man God Designed You to Be." Just go to buildingrelationships.us. And Gary, I know your dad had a big influence on you as you grew up, but were there other men in your life who helped answer some of the questions you were facing as a young man?

Yeah, there was a guy named Elmer Phipps. He led a group that was called Royal Ambassadors. It was a group of young men, and we had all kinds of questions. But the one thing I remember most is he told us, "Don't ever forget, you are here to serve God. We're not here to make a name for ourselves.

We're not here to get a lot of possessions. You are here to serve God." Well, that made a big impression on me. And I still feel that way. I still that still rings in my heart and mind.

So, yeah. Aren't you glad for Elmer Phipps? Thanks for sharing that today, Gary. And let's meet our guests, Tim and Mark Shoemaker. Tim's the dad of this dynamic duo.

He's been married to his wife Cheryl more than forty-five years. He's a trusted speaker, the author of more than twenty-five books, and he's the dad of three grown sons, one of which is with us today. His co-author, Mark Shoemaker. Mark serves as the next-gen pastor at the Bridge Community Church in Illinois. He and his wife.

Sarah been married more than fifteen years. They have three children. Mark's a graduate of Moody Bible Institute, Moody Theological Seminary. The book they've written together is our featured resource. Just go to buildingrelationships.us.

You will see seventy-two questions and answers about life and becoming the man God designed you to be. Find out more: buildingrelationships.us.

Well, Tim and Mark, welcome to Building Relationships. Ah, it's good to be here, Gary. Definitely, thank you so much.

So, Mark, what are young men up against in today's world? You work with young men, so what are what are they facing today? Yeah, it's it really is a unique time right now. They have they're growing up with Busy, packed schedules and pressures that they hear about—that kind of come with that full schedule. Pressures of college and.

Scholarships and academics and sports and all these things—days consumed with that—but then at the same time, growing media influence and technology, and that has a way of cultivating sure distractions that are there, but also some addictions that can come from that. Not to mention the doors that it opens for temptation as well.

So, this sort of environment has a way of forming us. And in a lot of cases, it can be forming us to comfort and selfish thinking and comparison, and of course, that's not every situation. But I think this is the battle right now. It's a fight to be formed in good ways in the midst of a cultural stream that can so easily take you in the opposite direction that you really want to go. Well, I think our audience can identify with those things, and I'm looking forward to our discussing some of those today.

Tim, I love the story that you open with the book with about the young man stuck in a ditch. Tell us what happened and why that story illustrates your message. Oh, we were coming home from church, and we were taking the exit ramp off of I-90, and here I see this. F one fifty down in the ditch. It's still on all four, but it's way down there.

Had to be 120 feet down, and somebody was in it, and they were trying to climb back out. And so we stopped the car, and I ran down there, and it was just this young guy. I mean, he was, you know, 17, 18, and his buddy, their family had been going to the airport, and so his buddy's dad said, "Hey, take my pickup, drive us to the airport. You can just put it right back in the garage when we get back." Well, on the way home. From Stabeno here, he had ended up.

Down in the ditch, and and and the the ground was just hash marked, you know, with all these ruts where he'd been trying to get out, and he was just making the situation worse and worse. And I'm thinking, this is a F one hundred and fifty. I think he can get out of here. And so, you know, I went, you know, to him, and he rolled down his window, and you could just see it. I mean, his eyes were just haunted.

He was scared, and there was a part of me that. Thought you know what I think I can get in here and just drive it out, but that wouldn't have been a good idea. And I, you know, you don't know how much he trusts you. I says, hey, how about if I stand alongside your window, keep your window down, and give you some instructions? I think you can get out of here.

So, you know, first he had to back up a little bit because he was at such a bad angle, and then just walking alongside. Hey, you're doing good. This is great. Yep, a little bit.

Okay. Hit the brakes. All right, now we're gonna ease on that gas, and not aim here, but I want you to aim way over there. See that mile marker? That's where we're gonna aim.

You were going too steep, and so we're going through this, and he starts to pick up speed, and I'm walking alongside. No, I'm running alongside, and finally, it was keep going, keep going. Don't stop till you get up on that shoulder, and he did, and I'm I'm trotting up the hill, and he just. Flies out of that pickup and runs back to meet me, and he was so grateful. He's like, "You know, how did you know how to do this, man?

You know all this." And the thing of it was, it's like, well, just a little bit more experience, and that's and that's really the heartbeat of the book. Is yeah. You know, we've seen more, we've experienced more, we've been in a ditch ourselves, or we've seen others that have been in the ditch, and we've got some ideas of how to get out, and we want to help them get on the way and be on that road to whatever God has for them. Yeah, I like that. I like that illustration.

I can I can imagine how that young man felt and how grateful he was. Definitely.

Now there's a section before the 72 questions where you highlight what you call the foundational five. Tell us more about those foundational traits and why are they essential to authentic manhood? Yeah.

So my dad and I, before we really even started writing the book, we're just Talking about manhood and talking about what it looks like to become the man of God that God designs us to be, and we started talking through these themes that we see consistent within and and developed out in mature men of God, and there's a lot of similarities that we are seeing, and and these became things to like aim at and strengthen over the course of a lifetime.

So the five things are knowing God has a purpose for you. Second thing is Holy Spirit control. Then there's self control, abiding in Christ, and then applying God's word. And so, seeing these five things as as a foundation to build on, you're never done with any one of them. You're always growing those things and maturing those things through a lifetime.

But kind of thinking about it like a fundamental in a sport, like I played basketball growing up, so you you want to get better at passing and dribbling and shooting and footwork, and it doesn't matter how advanced you are in the sport, you keep coming back to those fundamentals. You keep working and strengthening on those. It's the same with these foundational five. If if these young men can commit now. To focusing on these things and really developing and strengthening themselves in these things, it's actually going to apply a ton to the questions that they have about life and faith and what it means to live this life for God.

This is Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller * "The 5 Love Languages" *. We're hearing great advice for men today from a father and son team, Tim and Mark Shoemaker, our featured resource. It's their book *Seventy Two Questions and Answers About Life and Becoming the Man God Designed You to Be*. You can find out more at BuildingRelationships.us.

Tim, when Mark was talking, he mentioned five you know fundamental issues, and one of them was self control. How can developing stronger self control change the course of a young man's life? Oh, it's such a key one. You know, there's a great verse in Proverbs. It's Proverbs twenty five twenty eight, and it says something like this: A man who lacks self control is like a city.

With broken down walls, and you think about that, especially in ancient times, a guy living in a city there that had no walls, they couldn't really protect themselves, and they couldn't protect the ones that they love, and and that's the way it is with self control. We're dangerous if we don't learn self control. Learning self control is going to help us make wise choices, and that will change a man's life and those he loves. Yeah.

Yeah, it makes sense. One more thing on self control, I'm I'm just thinking about too, is like how opposite that is to develop that in the context and the culture that we're in right now. I mean, self control is the ability to say no to ourselves for the sake of doing what's right, and so much of our world chases comfort. And whatever feels good to you in the moment, we gotta click this one button, and it'll show up to your doorstep tomorrow. Like there's so much that is trying to capitalize on impulse buys and and chasing comfort, which really works against self-control.

So yeah, this is a hard one to develop in our culture, but so important to work on. Yeah, I can certainly see that. You describe two types of men that we see in the church today: those who simply hear biblical teaching week after week, and then those who actually apply what they've heard. How does that distinction shape whether a man becomes who God designed him to be?

Well, this comes right from Matthew seven. You know, at the end of the Sermon of the Mount, verses like twenty four to twenty seven or twenty eight. You know, Jesus is is talking about the wise and foolish builders, right, and. They both hear God's words. They both hear Jesus' words, but only one puts them into practice.

And that one that puts into practice, he describes them as being so wise that they're building on a rock. And the one who doesn't build on it, doesn't put into practice those words of Jesus. They're so foolish. It's like building on the sand with a you know a Category Five storm rolling in, and the point of it being is that if we don't actually put into practice what the word says, we're so vulnerable, and and those storms of life are going to come, and we're going to go down. We're not going to be prepared for that.

So we want to encourage these young men to be the type that when they read something in the word. They start working and putting into practice, and often they're going to have to use that foundational five to do that. Makes me think about last night. I was at at the gym with my son. I'm a assistant coach for his basketball team, and it's a bunch of third and fourth graders out there running around, and so we're trying to do some drills, trying to.

Trying to get some games going, and I'll oftentimes try to pull pull one aside and show them something different. Hey, try this; you're going to get a better shot if you do this, or try doing this when you're dribbling, or this and that. And it's interesting because some of them they hear it and they try it, even if it feels awkward. And then what I'll say is, hey, keep trying it; it'll get less awkward, and you're going to see yourself get better. Then there's some.

It feels weird. It feels awkward. Or they just like doing it their own way, and they'll dismiss it, and they'll go on and you know, kind of think, ah, I don't really know that.

Well, I've been with these kids for two years now. I can see the ones that take the coaches' advice; they're better. And it's the same thing in our Christian walk. We can't be surprised when we don't see our faith growing, and if we keep falling to the same temptation, and when we're not. Applying what God is telling us, which should be strengthening us in our faith, it's really the same practice.

There, we gotta we gotta hear what God says. He's our coach in it, in all things, and and apply that into our life. Yeah, I hope people who work with young young men heard what you just said because some of them are coaches in different areas of life as well, and that's that's a good illustration.

Now, you call the book a push start, not a pep talk.

So, what makes this book more action oriented as opposed to just motivational? Yeah, some of that I think goes back to the opening story with the truck. Is my dad didn't just give a pep talk in that moment, but it was really like, "Hey, let me show you a little bit how to do this, and and you're going to feel this push start and momentum of how to do this and how to practically get onto the road and where you want to go." So that's kind of the visual for that. But Dad, what would you say for maybe some of the action-oriented stuff?

Well, I would just agree with you. That's so much what it is. I mean, you know, sometimes we'll we'll go to a men's conference or something. There's almost you know, hey, we're men and we do hard things, and you know, whatever. You know, it's not that type of thing.

It's not that kind of a pep talk. It's not just telling people what to do. It's about showing them, hey, here's what I've done. Here's what I found to work, or here's what.

Somebody else has found to work. You know, try this. Like Mark, you were talking about with the talking about coaching those kids. Hey, try this. Try this.

This is what the word says to do. And yeah, that can feel awkward, but if we do forgive.

Somebody who's wronged us, instead of holding that grudge, you know that's going to benefit us. And so we want to show them how to do that, and maybe a different way to think about things, so they can get to those those points of actually putting the word into practice. Yeah, so I think about with that like all the conversations, Dad, we had about time with God and how to grow that habit of time with God, because that's something I so often as I'm talking to high school, college, young adult men, that's the first thing that they're like, "Man, I just I can't really get that going." And so my dad and I sitting there talking through, "Okay, Dad, what did you do to develop? Dad, you're one of the most disciplined men I know. Like, really, what did you do?" And there was some very Practical, specific things that you would do, even down to the time of the day, and and and so we try to help you make a plan for that, that has worked for us and with other people, that will come through.

So very, very much that you could read, go to go to a question that you're wrestling with, read it, and then be able to try stuff that day that'll apply to it. Yeah.

So in the book, you deal with seventy-two questions that young men are asking. What major themes or categories do these seventy-two questions fall into? Oh man, there's there's dating. For example, that's a big one. You know, you think about a lot of men's books.

They're going to talk about being a dad or a or a husband in the context of being a man. No, we want to get them before that. Let's talk about dating and and making decisions, hard emotions that they'd have, questions about manhood, or friends, or church. Questions about God and Mark, you were mentioning about technology and and our spiritual life. You know, those are part of it.

Leadership, I know Mark was talking about culture earlier. That that'd be another one, or or work, or parents as we're getting older. How do we do that? Issues of pornography. I I think I've hit a bunch of those categories.

Pride.

So many of these types of things that we have these broad topics, and then we want to break it down into different questions. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about one of those—the section you have on dating. You're both proponents of dating with the purpose of finding the woman that you're going to marry someday. How does that perspective reshape what dating should look like?

Well, in some cases, I think it's going to. Keep people from dating, because I think their motivation is other things. It's maybe, especially in high school or maybe college, there's there's a little bit of status to it, or it's fun, or for the experience of it. When you orient yourself and calibrate your your goal towards the purpose of marriage, it adds a seriousness to it, and it adds. An end goal of like, hey, this—the reason I would get into this relationship is not to experience something else, but I'm going to test out and see if this is a relationship that God would have me enter into the covenant of marriage.

And so that takes time and a seriousness and a soberness to jumping into it. That I think for a lot of young adult men, they're honest; they got a lot of other motives. Heading into that relationship and reasons for why they want to jump into it, you know, it comes down to that that whole issue. If if this girl isn't somebody who I would think would make a great wife, you know, don't even go out on a date. You know, a great Christian wife.

It's just too easy to fall in love and to get blinded and make a really really bad mistake. Not that. You know, dating shouldn't be about fun and thrills. It should be thrilling as you're starting to get to know the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. But that's not what I'm getting into it for.

I want to see is this person going to be this great Christian wife, and that that that sorts a lot of things out. There's a lot of people I don't need to go out on a date with because I know they'd already been ruled out.

So, decision making—that's a huge area for young men these days.

So, how do you help them make wise decisions?

So, for this section, we start with actually looking at how their time with God has been. A lot of our decision making is impacted by by that time with God. There's a Psalm in Psalm 37 that says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He'll give you the desires of your heart." And so that doesn't mean he gives us everything that we want, but he should be shaping our desires. The more that we're spending time with him, we want more of what he wants, and our will is conform more to what his will is, which is a really good thing in decision making. We don't want to go rogue in that.

And so, a lot of times, if someone has a really big decision that they're making, I'll ask them that: "Of how's your time with God been?" But then we we also do address a little bit some of the people that just are maybe stuck and and Dad I think you got really good things to say on this but kind of stalled out and and not making some of the difficult choices that are right in front of them and and chasing after those things and trying to trying to light a fire there and hey back to the foundational five God has purpose for you. And you can run after that, even if, even if step two, three, four, and five isn't clear. Step one often is, even if it's scary. And so, in faith, you step into that and trust God to show you what's next after it. Yeah, I love that, Mark.

The fact that you talked about that step thing because, you know. We can ask God to lead us. We can be searching the Word. We get input from wise, godly people, but it comes to trusting what we've gotten there and actually moving. And so, yeah, we want to encourage them to take that first step.

You know, we see that in the Bible, different Bible greats who didn't see the whole picture, but the next step was pretty clear. And in our Culture. We just want to see the whole thing laid out. Put it on a spreadsheet for me, and then I'll make my decision. No, often God is calling us to.

Hey, if you know the next step, the next right step, take it. And it's not until you take that that I'm going to reveal the next one.

So, yeah, I love that you brought that up, Mark. Yeah, I think poor decisions on the part of young men. Send them down roads that they never really wanted to go down, but that decision you know made the first step in the wrong direction.

So yeah, I really agree on the the importance of time with God in the process of making decisions for sure.

So you note that many men focus on looking good instead of doing the hard inner work of character.

So, how does this surface-level approach to life end up hurting them? We were just on a flight last weekend, and my four-year-old stopped by the cockpit to talk to the pilot, and the pilot gave him. That pin the wings, you know, and and officially made him his co pilot or whatever. And man, my four year old went back with a little bit different of a confidence and a little bit different thought about what this flight was gonna be, and so um. He took it seriously, and he pretended like he was flying the entire flight.

He took that job very seriously because he had the external, he had the wings. If if he were to actually have been given a seat up there to fly, of course he's not ready. He's four years old. He's never taken a class. It doesn't matter that he has the wings, and it doesn't matter that he has the external.

But that's so often what we do is we focus so much on looking the part. And having the externals thinking that that's going to give us access to authority to drive our life somewhere worthwhile, and the and the reality is is we're not ready. Just because we look the part, we can look confident, we can look like we have the credentials, it doesn't mean the inner work of forming us and being more like Jesus and strengthening and maturing us in those ways doesn't mean that that's ready. For some of the responsibility that God really might want to give us, right now or a year from now, yeah, I think the word tells us what's in our heart is going to come out.

So if we if we're just focused on looking good and creating a good impression, all that, we can lose some of the things that are the most important to us because our heart isn't right, and what's in our heart is going to come out. Mark, you you talked once in with you coaching, you know about the basketball uniform. You know about that versus building the skills. Talk about that for a second. Yeah, it was a little bit ago.

So if there's anything to fill in from it, but I think it was, I think it was, I would think it was talking about like, what if we never had any practices ever? We just gave these third graders a uniform and showed up at the court, but never ran through the plays, never worked on the fundamentals, never worked on any of that. It's like. They're not a team. They they have the uniform.

They they look like they belong, but really beyond that, there's not skill that is there. And I think that that's important for us to know that there's there is this skill for us to develop. And it's one of the things that I really loved about meeting with my dad and talking through this book. Is we had talked about a lot of this stuff as I was growing up, and now I'm a little bit older, and to revisit some of these things, and to be like, yeah, how did how did you get better in that? And like for me, some of the things are similar with my dad because he's my dad, and and some of the ways that he could encourage me in that.

And so it's it's stuff probably easy to avoid because it's it's hard work and inner work of really. Letting God search our heart, I think that Psalm one thirty nine, "Search my heart, let me know if there's anything grievous in me," and really wanting to root that out, and so we're more like God. That's that's the real work that is going to form us. Yeah.

I love the way you two interact as father and son, and that's spilling over on us today. This is the Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman podcast. For more simple ways to strengthen your relationships, go to FiveLoveLanguages dot com. Our featured resource today is the book by Tim and Mark Shoemaker, "Seventy Two Questions and Answers About Life and Becoming the Man God Designed You to Be." You can find out more at BuildingRelationships dot us.

Or go to fivelovelanguages dot com, and remember, you can call and ask Gary a question for our dear Gary broadcast that's coming up. Call one eight six six four two four Gary right now one eight six six four two four four two seven nine. We'd love to hear from you.

Well, Tim, before we broke, you were talking about you mentioned the whole issue of how important it is to have the right heart. And that everything flows out of that, so also in the book you warn about the dangers of developing a hard heart.

So how can men recognize the signs of a hardening heart, and what practical steps can keep them alert and keep it soft?

Well, you know, the Bible talks about a hard heart in a number of places. One of the big, famous ones we remember is, of course, Pharaoh. You know his heart was hard, and he made some really bad decisions.

So sometimes in our life, if if we see a pattern where we're making decisions that seem to hurt us or hurt others, that make people cry instead of cry tears of joy, maybe we've got a hard heart there. Or Jesus talked about. Hard hearts being the root of divorce.

So, think about the closest relationships you've got. If you're having stress or problems there, hard hearts affect those. One of the most interesting ones, and what we don't think about is is in Mark chapter six, verses fifty one and fifty two. There's this crazy thing that we read about after the feeding of the five thousand, and then Jesus, you know, is seen walking on the water.

Okay, and they're terrified. The disciples are terrified, and but catch this verse here. After Jesus got in the boat, it says he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased, and they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened. Here's the crazy thing. This great miracle that we all see and we all appreciate, the disciples had missed a major part of that significance, and now they were terrified and such.

Later, and they didn't realize, hey, Jesus is God here. You know what he had done. They missed it, and what would happen in our life if we don't seem to see God working around us? We don't see him doing great things. We actually kind of feel in kind of a void here.

Wow, that's actually where the disciples were. It's a sign of a hard heart. And so, if we see any of these hard heart signs, boy, we want to take. You know, pay attention to that, and I would say, you know, a great starting point is just to confess and ask God to soften our heart, and that comes back to some of that foundational five, that Holy Spirit control. Just, you know, Lord, show me, break my heart for the things that break yours, right?

I've noticed that in today's culture, a lot of young men are dealing with anxiety and fear.

So, how do you help them navigate those emotions? Yeah, it's interesting. Our our culture talks a lot about anxiety, and it's interesting when they talk about it. You'll hear a lot of talk about managing our anxiety or coping with it. And in some places, it's just like suffering through it.

Or in some circles, it's kind of a joke of just like, yeah, everyone's got anxiety, and we all just kind of suffer through it, and that's just what life is. But you'll notice in every option, it's just an attempt to reduce anxiety at best, without really offering a way to truly be free from it. As we look at God's word, there is hope beyond coping. Beyond wrestling with it, there is a solution. Jesus, and Matthew six twenty five, he says, "Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life." Which seems far too simplistic, you know.

And and maybe, maybe that just makes people feel more anxious, just to be like, "Oh, Jesus just told me not to be anxious." I just feel more anxious about it. But really, as you keep reading, you see why. He tells us to look at the birds and and look at look at how God cares for them. The point in it is we can see this truth, and we got to remember this truth in the midst of our anxiety. That if God takes care of the birds, He's going to take care of us.

God has a really, really good track record of provision, of protection, of of being a helper of. Victory and strength, and and turning things into good, he's a perfect track record. And so, I think the key is in the midst of our anxiety to take our attention off of what we're trying to control, and what we keep cycling through, and trying to cope with and manage, and and turn our attention to God and His character and His track record and who He is. And what he's trying to do in our life, and and what we're going to see is that we can trust him, and that's that's the step to take in in anxiety, and and so we talk about that, and talk about how to pray through it, and praying through our anxiety because it'll come back. There will be times that I'm.

I'm wrestling through anxiety, and I get I get to a good spot with it, and trusting God with it. And three hours later, I find myself in the same spot, thinking about it, and cycling through it again. And I got to go back to the praying in it. And so, what we want to give young men is true north of of what really is our goal with anxiety, and it's not the narrative that we hear around us. Is what Jesus says in Matthew.

Yeah.

That's a strong point. I think just bringing to realize God's faithfulness through the years, not only to us but even to the animals. Oh boy! You know, and you think about it, David, King David wrestled with fear. He wrestled with anxiety so many times.

When we read in the Psalms, he's pouring his heart out in the beginning. He's very focused on what's happening, but then you see this transition as he starts to. Remember that God is God. Remember what God has done, what God has done for him, and he gets stronger and stronger until, by the end of that psalm, he's able to praise God, even though his situation hasn't changed.

So, we'll do that in the book too. Talk about how to strengthen ourselves in the Lord, like David demonstrated so many times. Yeah, yeah, you are right.

So now, there is a section in the book on pornography. What do you think porn is doing to this generation of young men? Oh man, it's doing so much more than what they think. One of the verses in Proverbs talks about the house of the adulterous woman. It talks about her house goes down to the chambers of death, and I think often guys don't realize just how deadly this stuff can be.

But it doesn't always mean physical death. It can be, you know, death of dreams, death of God's plan for our life, death of self-respect, or or of the respect others who love us. Respect for us dies. It can be death of relationships that are closest, the ones we care about the most, and those die.

So it's it's scary just how deadly it can be. And a lot of our our guys, they need to understand that because they're they're not realizing what it's really doing, how toxic it really is. It's definitely training men and how they think about women. Just throughout the day, you know, it's it's it's it's training them how they think about women. It's also affecting their expectations for what their wife will look like, or what their intimacy and their relationship will one day be, which are expectations that are impossible to live up to.

And so, it's it's so harmful. This incredible. Gift that God has given us between man and woman, husband and wife. Only one relationship do we ever experience this here—an incredible gift with an incredible purpose, and the most important earthly relationship that we have of sexual intimacy. Yeah, it's no wonder that our enemy would attack that.

And so, I think we really have to know what's at stake. And what our enemy is trying to do through this, and and the access to it right now, is is really adding to addiction, and the frequency of it, and and all that. Yeah, I could probably talk too long about this one, but there's a lot there.

Well, it's a huge area of importance in our culture. No question about that. You know, because it's taking young men into an unreal world, which you which you were describing. And and Gary, you know, one one last thought on that is we're going to show them in the book how to break free. This is one of those areas where it's not a pep talk, right?

It's it's not just hey, this is wrong, guys. Here's what it'll do. That's just the start. It's now. How do you break free?

How do you get free? Jesus sets prisoners free. Yeah.

So, you know, how do we do that?

So, yeah. So, sorry for jumping in there, but just wanted to mention that. Yeah.

Well, that one section of the book would be worth the price of the book because that is such a huge problem in our culture today.

Well, another topic is honoring our parents. The Bible is very clear about that. We're to honor our parents. But but how do you honor a parent when when you're struggling even to have any respect for them simply because of the way they've treated you or whatever?

Well, there's there's a number of things that come to my mind. Forgive them, for one. There's things we can hold against a parent. You know what? We're called to forgive, so we've got to do that and and and work at breaking this pattern of failure.

Sometimes we see things in a parent that we feel negatively affected us so much. Break that pattern with God's help. Don't. Do that as you move forward, and and but but there's other times we can show great respect to a parent just by going to them for help. Even if we don't respect them, there's things we can go to them for.

You know, what's your what's your dad's or your mom's you know area of expertise? Ask them about that instead of checking Google, things like that. And and you know, a big one, I think, is who you become. If somebody is commenting about us, they might say, "Wow, you know, he's a great guy. That that that's John's boy, isn't it?

You know, it brings honor to a parent if we if we grow up to be that man God designed us to be." This is Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller * "The 5 Love Languages" *. Tim and Mark Shoemaker are joining us today to talk about their hope-filled message for men. Our featured resource at BuildingRelationships.us is the book *Seventy Two Questions and Answers About Life and Becoming the Man God Designed You to Be*. Just go to BuildingRelationships.us.

Well, as we begin our last session, let me ask this: How does God's purpose for manhood differ from our culture's idea of manhood? Yeah, I love that God's purpose for manhood has everything to do with His glory instead of ours and His good plans. And culture is a lot of building ourself up for our name. And and our brand and our purpose and our legacy and all those things and God's God's purpose is so much bigger than that. It's His kingdom and what He's doing and His glory and all of it.

Yeah, I love I love that Mark. You know, it's it's that when you talked about that image, right? God's more more interested in our character and our integrity, how we use our time, how we use that power that we have. It's it's not about that outward image that we present, but that inward. But yeah, that's great.

That's kind of how we began the program, Gary, when you talked about Elmer Fips and what he said. You know, this is may you decrease and. May Christ increase, right? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Chris. And we also know that love, loving others, you know, is a core value of the Christian faith and of Christian lifestyle.

But ask this: Does that mean that you treat everyone's viewpoint as equally valid? Yeah, there's kind of within our culture a little bit of. You hear a lot about acceptance or tolerance, and and that is being equated as love, and and the waters get kind of muddy. and And I'll talk to a lot of young adult guys and girls who are like, "Man, it just feels unloving to disagree with someone." How do I? And so for that, it's it's important to get our definition of love right.

And love is defined in First John four that God is love. He's love. He's the perfect representation of what love is. If we want to know what love is, we just look at Him. And in love, John three sixteen, He sent His Son Jesus to Earth.

And Jesus didn't come to Earth and say, "Hey, you be you. You live your best life. Find your truth. Be the best version of yourself." Like it was. John three with Nicodemus, it's hey you got to be reborn.

He's calling us into a newness of life, change everything about you for the sake of following Him, and it's this new way of living. And so, that ultimately is love, first of all, because that's who God is. But also we see it practically, like we know that God's way is better than our own flesh and our own desires.

So if I'm gonna Call that out in someone else, or help them understand God's way. That is ultimately love, for me to point them to truth, because that leads to life, and that leads to God and His ways, which are which are better than ours. Yeah, and we do it in a kind and loving way. You know, I think that's a big thing too. Is that some people can say, "Well, I'm all about truth," and yeah, they're ready to hit people with the truth.

But no, Jesus did it in a kind and loving way. But you know, he he didn't accept people where they were at. He met them where they were at. It was a starting point, and I think we have to have that that mentality. Yeah, absolutely.

What what do you say to the young man who says that he doesn't need a church in order to follow God? I would tell him first of all, the Bible says he needs to go there.

So if he's following God, he's got to do that anyway. But you know, one time I had, well, it was my youngest son. We went on a little camping trip, and we had a I brought a couple of squirt guns. We had that campfire, and we took one little log out of the campfire, and he says, "Okay, Luke, let's put that fire out in this little log." We set it aside, and it took us forty seconds to, you know, just bring it to smoldering. There was no open flames, and so then we put it back in the fire, and and we filled the squirt guns.

Now it was in the fire, and it was all burning again. He says, "Okay, Luke, there's that log." Let's take forty seconds. Let's put it out, and of course we couldn't. We couldn't dent it. And and that's kind of a picture of the church.

When we're by ourselves, we are easy targets. We're easy to extinguish, and that's one of the reasons why he has us at church because that'll keep us going. That keeps us reignited. We help others stay burning bright for God too. There, that community is such an important thing.

So that'd be a starting point. I'd start them with anyway. Yeah, I'd be curious what what example they're looking at. For why, you know, who who are you holding up in history, or even now, that gives you that as an example, and I I would just want to hear what they have to say about that, and then from hearing with with they're holding up is why it works for the other person, we can slowly start to help teach them and maybe fill in some of the blanks of what they're missing of what church really is. Church isn't just a sermon.

And so we might need to help them understand that that church is a body. It's a people. It's a group. It's not just for what I get from it. It's about what other people are getting and and your gifts.

You know, we're called a body, and so we're to serve. And you have a benefit if you're not there. Actually, other people are missing out on it. And so as you hear, kind of. A lot of times, what you'll hear is like, "Oh, I just listen to the podcast, or I watch it online, or whatever." And it's like, "Okay, well, that that's really about you, but you're missing so many things about what church is." Well, you know, as we come to the end of the program here, talk a bit about technology.

Give us some wise words for men about the internet. We need a lot of boundaries on technology. I think a good amount of accountability on it. I really like talking about it in in the way of like how it forms us. The algorithm, sure, some of that is forming what we see and what we care about and what we talk about, what we think about, all that stuff.

We got to take a really good inventory. Of the impact and influence that it has on our life, and so, very practically speaking, it's it's something within my accountability group that we always check in on every two weeks. We talk about our use of technology. It's something within my family that my wife and I talk about. Where do we not want phones to be available at all?

What are some dead zones we can create in our life so it's not even impacting us? And for that too, like even the the use of it at night. I know that that's something that a lot of parents are talking about with their kids of like not having phones in kids' rooms. And there's research coming out about not just the poor sleep that they get from that, but the temptation that is there as well. And so I think that those really great software and resources that are out there, but we gotta to help limit some of the things we can view on our phones and stuff like that.

But beyond that, us being really strict with ourselves about how much we're allowing access to it, I think is so important. Self control, you know. That's that's what we have to build. That right? I Mark said something in the book, and it always stuck with me.

Something like, if I'm letting the phone. Into every crevice of my life, there's there's no there's no time to abide. There's no time for the Holy Spirit to be convicted me about things. And we've got that constant input.

So, yeah, that's a good reason right there why we want to work at self control in that area.

Well, Tim and Mark, thank you for being with us today. This book is going to be really, really helpful, and of course, it's kind of geared to young men from 17 to 24. A great book to give them at graduation from high school when they are entering into this whole phase of life.

So, thanks again for being with us, and thanks for the time you invested in writing this book. We love to be here. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for having us today. Again, the title is "Seventy Two Questions and Answers About Life and Becoming the Man God Designed You to Be," written by Tim and Mark Shoemaker.

You can find out more about it at our website, BuildingRelationships.us. And next week, how do you know God has heard your prayers when you are asking for healing, but He doesn't heal you? Glenna Marshall has encouragement for us all in one week. And remember, our dear Gary broadcast is coming up. Call our listener line, leave a question for Doctor Chapman now at one eight six six four two four Gary eight six six four two four four two seven nine.

Thanks to Janice Backing and Steve Wick for their work behind the scenes Building Relationships with Doctor Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.