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This is and Daunton Life, a man's podcast.
0:51
I'm your host Kyle Thompson.
0:52
Let's get into it.
0:53
Hi guys.
0:54
Today we have a special guest coming on the podcast.
0:55
His name is Justin Camp.
0:57
So Justin Camp is an author, a speaker.
0:59
He has done a lot of different things in kind of the men's ministry space, but he's got
1:03
a new book out called Odyssey, encounter the God of Heaven and escape the surly bonds of
1:08
this world.
1:09
And so we spend a lot of time talking about this book on this podcast, but I do want to
1:12
read the short description here of his book to kind of give you an idea of what we're
1:16
going to be getting into today.
1:17
So here we go.
1:18
Modern men are experiencing unprecedented levels of angst and anxiety.
1:22
We're frustrated, stressed, burned out, and bored.
1:24
We turn to work and wealth, busyness and distraction, alcohol and drugs and pornography.
1:29
But none of it works because only one thing will bring us the joy, peace, purpose, and
1:34
significance we desire, a relationship with the God of the Heaven, an intimate relationship,
1:39
one that is real and true.
1:41
But for that kind of relationship, we must embark on a journey to encounter him personally.
1:46
In his new book, Odyssey, Justin Camp offers a practical scriptural field guide for men
1:50
who are ready to walk this ancient path.
1:53
The book is built around six short biographies, real life stories of great American astronauts.
1:58
These nano histories will engage readers curiosity and inspire them to undertake epic quests of
2:03
their own.
2:04
This book is for scouts and prospectors, for explorers and pilgrims.
2:07
It is for men who want to experience more and a better life than any of us ever thought
2:12
possible.
2:13
So guys, this was a great book.
2:15
He sent me an advanced copy of it and I'm so glad that he did.
2:17
I spent some time digging into it because the thing is, for most of us, we don't really
2:20
know a whole lot about our great U.S. astronauts.
2:23
We know about the big ones.
2:24
You know, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and those types of things.
2:26
You know, maybe we've watched Apollo 13 or whatever the situation may be.
2:30
But that's just one part of the book that's really good because this guy gives you a very
2:33
different perspective and kind of a different voice in terms of how things pertain to men's
2:37
ministry and those types of things.
2:38
You know, if any of you are on Instagram, you've probably seen Wire for Men.
2:43
That's Wire for Men W-I-R-E.
2:45
He's got a lot of stuff on Instagram.
2:47
He's released some other books.
2:48
There's these devotionals that he sends out.
2:51
It's just an incredible amount of content, but it's specifically geared towards guys.
2:55
It's specifically geared to folks like you that need to be in the Word, that need to
2:59
have that little whisper in your ear that, hey, you need to be paying attention to things
3:04
that are maybe just not right there in front of you, right?
3:07
And that's one thing that this book does a great job of doing and just Justin Camp does
3:11
a great job of doing this book is explained to you that, yes, there is the real world,
3:14
but then there's the world outside of the physical world.
3:17
There's this spiritual realm that most of us miss out on.
3:20
And so we go into a lot of detail in this podcast.
3:22
I really enjoyed having Justin on.
3:24
So guys, without further ado, let's get into it.
3:27
Justin Camp, welcome to Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
3:30
Hey, Kyle, thanks for having me.
3:32
I've been a fan of Undaunted for a while on Instagram, and so it's fun to connect live
3:36
here.
3:37
Well, it's always good to hear that we got fans out there.
3:39
There's at least one so we can, I can call my mom and tell her that we got one fan.
3:44
So I really appreciate it.
3:45
That's right.
3:46
Let's go ahead and launch right in, man, because obviously one of the big things that you do,
3:49
you do a lot of writing, you've done a lot of writing and you continue to do.
3:52
So that's part of the big reason why you're here today.
3:54
So how did you even get into writing?
3:57
And I guess more specifically, why does most of your writing kind of lean towards Christian
4:02
men?
4:03
Yeah.
4:04
So I did not start out a writer.
4:05
Well, maybe I did.
4:06
I don't know.
4:07
Maybe I did.
4:08
And I didn't know it.
4:09
You know, I grew up here in Silicon Valley, I went to Los Angeles for undergrad.
4:16
I think I gravitated towards subjects that were writing intensive, so social science
4:21
type stuff.
4:22
And then I went to law school back in Philadelphia and law school is all about writing.
4:28
And so I think I was writing for a long time and just didn't consider myself a writer.
4:33
So during the time I was in graduate school, I actually partnered with a professor at the
4:39
business school that was on the same campus as the law school that I was attending.
4:43
And we collaborated on a book.
4:44
And I wrote most of it and he sort of advised the process and the project.
4:52
And I sort of put it away.
4:54
And just through serendipity, through crazy circumstances, I got connected with some publishers
5:00
in New York.
5:01
And we were at a dinner and they said, hey, let me see what you've written.
5:07
And I said, OK, you know, not expecting them to publish it.
5:10
This is John Wiley and Sons.
5:11
And they went ahead and published it.
5:12
And so that was a book on venture capital.
5:14
So that was purely focused on teaching men and women who are graduating from business
5:23
school about the venture capital business.
5:26
And I loved that process.
5:28
I did.
5:29
I just loved putting together words and sentences and paragraphs and just sort of the craft
5:34
of writing.
5:35
But also an argument and that's one thing that you learn a lot about in law school is
5:40
putting together an argument that makes sense and is very clear, you know, plain language
5:45
type stuff.
5:46
And so I published that book and it's still being used in a bunch of graduate business
5:53
schools.
5:54
But I got, you know, like a lot of men do.
5:57
I got real responsible in air quotes, got real responsible and got married and put away
6:03
writing.
6:04
I did it for, you know, more than a decade, I put it away.
6:08
And that was one of the toughest times of my life.
6:11
It was tough for a lot of reasons.
6:13
We had young kids, Jennifer and I were figuring out marriage and we hadn't, you know, we hadn't
6:19
surrendered enough of our hearts to, you know, to sort of have the transformation that needs
6:26
to happen to, you know, be a loving father and a loving husband in the way that we're
6:31
meant to be.
6:32
So that was a tough time.
6:35
It was, you know, it's a period that every man goes through.
6:38
But one of the contributing factors definitely was the fact that I wasn't being creative
6:42
at all.
6:43
So I went to New York and worked as a lawyer on Wall Street for a period of time.
6:47
And then I came back to my home in Silicon Valley.
6:50
This was, you know, 99, 2000.
6:52
It was party time in Silicon Valley, the dot show boom.
6:56
And I started investing in high tech companies.
6:59
My father was an entrepreneur, serial entrepreneur, and around that time he and I cooked up the
7:05
crazy idea of starting a small venture capital firm and a series and we raised a series of
7:11
funds.
7:12
And so I spent 15 years investing in high tech companies.
7:14
And, you know, ever since that first time I started working in New York, I noticed something.
7:20
I didn't, I didn't notice this ever when I was in school, but I did when I was working
7:24
in New York.
7:25
That was this kind of sadness in the morning, especially on a Monday morning, when I was
7:30
having to, you know, leave home, leave Jennifer, who's my wife, and head off to work.
7:36
And I think I didn't know what it was.
7:38
I just thought that all men face that, you know, everyone hates their job and you just
7:43
man up and grind.
7:46
But looking back, I can see that that was God speaking to me through my discontent that
7:53
he had made me for something else.
7:55
And while that time, you know, I am grateful for it because it prepared me for what I do.
8:00
Now it absolutely prepared me for it.
8:02
Now, I, you know, I wasn't super happy.
8:07
And it started small.
8:08
It was very exciting working on Wall Street is super exciting, you know, front page of
8:11
the Wall Street Journal type stuff, every deal that I was working on.
8:13
I mean, I was a really junior lawyer, but, but to just be part of that machine was, was
8:18
pretty, pretty exciting.
8:21
But that discontent started building slowly, incrementally, day by day.
8:26
And so I moved back to California, you know, like I said around 99, 2000, right before
8:31
the internet bubble exploded or imploded, and which was a lot of fun, you know, being
8:36
a venture investor during that time.
8:39
But I noticed almost immediately that that sadness was there.
8:42
It was a little different.
8:43
I was working on work that I, that I very much enjoyed, and I was super grateful for, you
8:49
know, you get to work with teams that are just, you know, so excited about what they're
8:54
doing.
8:55
They're, they're passionate.
8:56
They're putting everything into these dreams of starting these companies.
8:59
And they're all kind of working for the right reasons.
9:01
They're working, you know, because of, well, maybe, you know, it's, I shouldn't say that.
9:08
They're fairly pure reasons, you know, from a secular perspective, it's not, you, you,
9:13
with these small companies, you really don't get into the political and bureaucratic stuff
9:18
of a larger company.
9:19
They're small companies, everyone's excited and everyone's very, you know, they're dedicated
9:26
to what's going on.
9:27
Very dedicated.
9:28
Yeah.
9:29
And just excited about life.
9:30
And so, so I enjoyed it.
9:31
I did it for 15 years, but over that 15 years that incremental increase in discontent started
9:39
becoming very noticeable in the beginning.
9:41
It wasn't super noticeable after five years, I started going, wow, this is, I'm, why am
9:46
I having to will myself out of bed on a Monday morning, you know, by 10 years, I was drowning
9:52
in it.
9:53
And so, like I said, that was a tough time.
9:55
It was a time when I wasn't writing, Jennifer and I were struggling through figuring out
9:59
how to be a married couple and how to have three young kids.
10:02
And I had some friends who, and we were involved in church stuff, you know, we were leading
10:06
mission trips.
10:07
We were, you know, leading couples groups and everything, but I had a group of friends
10:11
who said, come join our men's group.
10:13
And they were probably about 10 guys in that group and I knew like three of them or something.
10:17
And I said, you know, one more thing right now, I'm not going to do that.
10:20
And so for about a year, I said, no.
10:22
And then when on one cold, you know, kind of dark January evening, I finally dragged
10:29
myself over to where they were meeting in this conference room at a, at a kind of a tech
10:35
company that wasn't too far away from my house.
10:38
And I walked in, sat down, you know, sit high and there was just sort of this easy banter
10:42
around the room.
10:43
And then things got rolling and immediately I was like, this is something different.
10:47
These guys are talking about stuff that nobody talks about.
10:50
I don't know.
10:51
I just got lucky.
10:52
These guys were just bold, brave, sold out men, you know, and they were confessing, you
10:58
know, struggles with pornography struggles with alcohol struggles and marriage, you know.
11:04
And just the worst things you could possibly talk about and they, and but there was something
11:08
so inviting about the whole thing because they were, they knew they were sons.
11:12
They knew they were sons of God.
11:13
They knew they were loved.
11:14
They knew they were flawed, but they knew they were loved.
11:17
And so I just said, okay, look, this is just to myself, this is, this scares the living
11:23
daylights out of me, you know, because if I stay, I'm going to have to do either I'm
11:28
going to come there and every time be a liar, you know, and hide, which, which isn't an
11:33
option.
11:34
So I can either never come back or I can come back and do what these guys are doing.
11:38
And there was so much life in it, you know, that was like I said, it was a, that was a
11:41
tough time.
11:42
It was isolated.
11:43
I had friends and acquaintances, but no one really knew me very well.
11:47
And so I haven't been out of community since.
11:50
And so that was just an enormous blessing.
11:52
This guy started speaking identity into me.
11:55
You know, I had been, I had been listening to the, to the whispers of culture about who
12:01
I should be, you know, going to make, get a job, make a lot of money and buy a house
12:05
and get a right, the right title and have the right vacations or anything.
12:08
I'd been doing that long enough to know that it was breaking my heart, you know.
12:14
And so these guys started helping me ask the same questions, but of God, who did you make
12:18
me to be and what did you make me to do?
12:21
And you know, like God, he started answering, but not with the answers I expected and certainly
12:28
not with the timing that I wanted.
12:30
But he did start answering in surprising ways through, you know, through a, you know, passage
12:35
and scripture or a movie or a conversation with my wife or, you know, a sermon that I
12:40
heard.
12:41
And I was just, it was just identity pouring into my life over a period of about a year.
12:48
The other thing they started doing was kind of introducing me to God for the first time.
12:51
I'd grown up in the church, but my experience with God was always hearing stories of him,
12:58
you know, everything that I held of God.
13:00
And I did have an intellectual relationship of sorts with him, but it was all based on
13:06
second hand and third hand, you know, evidence of him rather than first hand relationship
13:13
with him.
13:14
And so this guy started introducing me to things like, you know, worship and listening
13:18
prayer and things where I come into contact or I come into his presence, where it's just
13:22
me and just him, you know, silence, that things like that.
13:25
And that was just fantastic.
13:26
And so it was such a blessing on my life, oh, and oh, and I got to say, part of the identity
13:31
thing was the writing, you know, I had a couple of those guys, two different circumstances
13:36
where those guys just said, look, man, the way you talk about writing, you, you have
13:40
to be writing somehow.
13:42
And you know, it's probably 2011, 2010, 2011, something like that, where I had come up against
13:50
a point in my career where I was going to either have to raise another venture fund
13:56
or because we had invested the prior one and or do something else.
14:04
And so I so I hijacked the men's group one night and just said, hey, guys, like, I know
14:08
this is, you know, it feels weird for me to do, but I'd really am struggling with something
14:12
I don't know what to do here.
14:13
And so I went for about 45 minutes and explained everything.
14:16
I said, you know, here are my options.
14:17
I think as I see them, I could raise another fund, but my heart, you know, remember the
14:21
discontent is up to my eyeballs, you know, at this point, my heart isn't in that I could
14:27
start a company.
14:28
You know, we had helped about 40 companies get started at that point and I had a lot
14:31
of opinions about how to do it.
14:32
I don't know if I would have been any good at it, but I thought I, you know, I thought
14:36
I could at least try that or the third thing was lead a ministry.
14:40
And at that point, I had no idea what I was talking about.
14:42
I was thinking like, you know, we had done some mission trips at that point.
14:47
I was thinking about an orphanage in Mexico or something.
14:51
And two of the men there that night looked at each other and then looked at me and said,
14:54
well, whatever you do, whatever choice here you make, you have to be writing.
14:58
And I immediately said, well, I know enough about the publishing world to know that you
15:02
can't, you know, make a living, certainly not for a family of five and Silicon Valley
15:07
where the cost of living is exorbitant on a writer's salary, like not even close, you
15:12
know, not even in a neighborhood.
15:15
And so one of them looked me straight in the eye, a very good friend of mine, and he
15:20
said, I think you need to not worry about that.
15:23
And I just felt like it was the Holy Spirit speaking right to my heart, my kind of wounded
15:27
heart, you know, and so I said, okay.
15:30
And came home to my wife and Jennifer was took some time to get used to that idea, you
15:34
know, and so she'd been writing some to she was, you know, there was a period of time
15:40
around that time where blogging, Christian blogging was really big and it was dominated
15:44
by women and they were doing some really amazing things on these blogs.
15:48
And Jen was a part of that community.
15:50
And so she had been doing some blogging and so it wasn't out of completely out of left
15:55
field when I said, you know, hey, I think I'm going to do this.
15:59
But we kind of joined forces and have been working together ever since.
16:04
And why I started, you know, writing about men's, you know, kind of discipleship for men
16:09
specifically is just because I felt like it was such a blessing to me, those men that
16:14
kind of, you know, who, you know, a great analogy is kind of a hand out of the darkness.
16:20
Like I was, I was just, you know, at a place where my heart was broken.
16:23
All these promises of the world were just coming up empty.
16:27
And I didn't know what to do.
16:28
I was sitting there going, well, I've poured so much of my life into this achievement thing,
16:32
you know, what do I do now?
16:34
And these men kind of reached out of hand to me and pulled me into, you know, into something
16:39
that was way better and is never going to break my heart.
16:42
And so, you know, when I was hearing from God that, you know, you have a place and a position
16:51
in the kingdom, and that's around writing.
16:55
I was like, well, I'm not going to write about anything else other than what these men taught
16:58
me.
16:59
And so it's, you know, it's discipleship for men.
17:01
It's teaching men how to live in the kingdom and how to receive the goodness and love of
17:04
God and live that out, let that pour back out of them.
17:09
So that's a really long-winded answer to your question about why, why I became a writer.
17:15
I think I always was, but I just didn't know it.
17:17
Well, that's the thing is I don't really care how long the answers are as long as we get
17:20
good context.
17:21
So I think you've definitely delivered that for us.
17:23
But that, you know, having that inspiration, having that direction has led you to do some
17:27
pretty incredible things.
17:28
If anybody on this podcast would recognize your name, it's because of wire for men falling
17:34
down on Instagram or getting those daily devotionals.
17:36
But then also here recently you've released a new book.
17:39
And so if you're listening to this on time, this book came out this month, so you can
17:43
definitely check it out.
17:44
We'll have it in the show notes, but it's called Odyssey Encounter the God of Heaven and
17:47
escape the surly bonds of this world.
17:49
And so anytime I talk to an author about their particular book, I'm always curious about
17:54
the same thing, which is basically what is the impetus for writing this particular book?
17:59
And then in your own words, the author's words, what is kind of, you know, just a brief overview
18:03
of the basic theme of Odyssey?
18:05
Yeah, so Odyssey is the second book in something called the Wire Series for Men.
18:10
So it's a series of books written specifically for the men of wire, the men of wire on Instagram
18:15
and the men of wire on Facebook and then the men of wire on our email list.
18:20
And it's a thing that I, you know, partnered with David C. Cook to create and kind of handcraft
18:26
for those men.
18:27
So the first book was called Invention.
18:29
It's all about identity because that's the first phase of, that's the first season that
18:34
I went through when I started this new relationship with God.
18:39
The second book, Odyssey is all about moving from like I, you know, like I was describing,
18:46
moving from knowing of God to knowing him, you know.
18:50
And you know, the next book, there's going to be a third book, which I'm writing right
18:54
now about community.
18:55
And those were sort of, it's my story, but it's universal.
18:59
And so I think, you know, the impetus is always God.
19:02
He taps me on the shoulder and says, Hey, this is what we're going to write about.
19:05
It's, it's, you know, because it's meant to do type stuff made to do type stuff, this
19:10
writing for me, it's very much co-laboring with my father, you know, with my heavenly
19:15
dad.
19:16
And so he works beside me.
19:18
I mean, there are thoughts that come into my mind and connections that are made as I'm
19:21
writing.
19:22
And there are things that happen that are just that cannot be explained in any other
19:26
way.
19:27
So, so what is Odyssey?
19:29
So Odyssey is so well, I'll take a step back and tell you one unique thing about the wire
19:37
series for men.
19:38
So I made a kind of a bet.
19:40
And that bet was we can write a book that guys love to read.
19:44
And so there are a lot of, there's a lot of Christian nonfiction out there.
19:48
Most of it's written by pastors and my shelves are filled with it and I love it.
19:53
But I didn't want to write something like that.
19:55
You know, I'm not a pastor.
19:56
I don't, my voice is not a pastor's voice.
19:59
My voice is, you know, of somebody who's worked in the business world for a long time.
20:03
When I first started talking to publishers about this, this idea, there was pushback
20:08
because they said, you know, a few things.
20:10
They said men are really Christian men are very hard to reach from a marketing perspective.
20:15
Number one, they don't read a lot of books.
20:18
Number two, and then number three, when they do read books, they don't often finish them.
20:23
And I thought, well, maybe that's all true.
20:27
Maybe it's not true.
20:28
I don't know.
20:29
I don't have the data like they have, but why are you doing pretty well reaching men?
20:34
You know, men need the gospel just as much as anybody else.
20:37
And if you put it in a, in a form that speaks to them, speaks in their language, speaks
20:42
to them the way that they're used to being spoken to as men in the marketplace.
20:47
Mostly is who I write to, professional men, tech savvy men, they eat it up because they
20:53
need it.
20:54
You know, they're out there in the world and it's like a, that's why I called it wire.
20:57
It's kind of like a, you know, an old male plane or a telegraph wire reaching deep into
21:03
the wilderness, you know, to, you know, with messages of God's goodness and love.
21:07
Guys need it just as much as anybody.
21:09
So I don't know about the marketing side, but the, but the, you know, the two comments
21:13
about men don't, Christian men don't read a ton of books and don't finish them.
21:16
I was like, well, I really want to create something that counters those tendencies as
21:21
best I can, you know, everyone starts out with, you know, those intentions when they're
21:25
writing a book.
21:26
But because that was kind of, the gauntlet was thrown down by publishers.
21:29
I thought, well, let's see what we can do.
21:31
And so the idea behind these books is to make them a little bit more fun.
21:36
And so they include both of these books and the third one will as well what I call nano
21:42
histories.
21:43
And so the idea is there's a historical profile at the beginning of each chapter that's very
21:49
relevant to the subject matter of the underlying chapter.
21:53
So for invention, which was on identity, there were seven chapters with profiles of industrial
22:00
revolution era inventors.
22:02
And so for like the, the chapter on being able to hear God's voice, that was, you know,
22:08
the profile was of Guillermo Marconi, who invented the, you know, the first radio that
22:13
was based on, you know, electromagnetic waves.
22:16
And so the idea that, you know, it was really a great analogy and very helpful, I think,
22:21
to a lot of men, at least I've heard that, that's a really great analogy of something
22:25
we can't see, but we can test by its effect.
22:28
And so, so it was really fun to write that chapter and bring in all the, then the analogy
22:33
of electromagnetic radiation in this inventor.
22:37
And that, so that, that, you know, those, each, each chapter is kind of like that.
22:42
And for Odyssey, because the way that we develop a relationship with, with God that is close
22:49
and personal and conversational is to meet him somewhere, to encounter him, to begin to
22:54
experience him one on one.
22:56
And the way that we do that, you know, according to the Bible, and according to 2000 years
23:00
of human history, as we go into the wilderness, you know, we hit the road, we get out of our
23:04
home where, you know, we, there's kind of a gravitational pull towards building structures
23:10
and routines and things that kind of help us get through the day, you know, watching Netflix
23:15
and drinking coffee and drinking a beer in the evening, and all those kinds of things
23:19
that kind of dull our senses to the supernatural and the spiritual.
23:24
So, but once we hit the road, once we get out into the wilderness alone, all those interruptions
23:30
and intermediaries are gone and it's just us and God and our senses are keen.
23:36
We're able to be aware and see God.
23:38
And when we do that, when we begin listening and looking, you know, he shows up, again,
23:43
not in the ways we expect and not with the timing that we, you know, would, would like,
23:47
but he shows up.
23:48
And so this book is about adventure.
23:51
It's about pilgrimage.
23:52
It's about journey.
23:53
It's about the spiritual practice of going into the wilderness, like Jesus did, you know,
23:56
like Moses did, like David did, like Abraham did, you know, throughout the Bible.
24:03
There is there teaching us how to encounter the God of heaven now, you know, not just
24:08
after we die, but now.
24:10
And so I wanted to use an analogy that the guys would, you know, again, have fun reading
24:15
and would be really tightly connected with this idea of the greatest adventure we can
24:19
ever take, encountering our father in heaven.
24:22
And so I chose the, you know, the greatest physical journey any humans have taken and
24:26
that is to go into space and to go to the moon.
24:30
And so, so that's what I did. I picked, you know, guys from the mid century, you know,
24:35
kind of height of the space age, the golden age of NASA, you know, so the Mercury Gemini
24:40
and Apollo programs.
24:42
There are six men that I profile, all believers, these are men who trusted science, you know,
24:48
so much so that they were willing to risk, you know, death at, you know, supersonic speed.
24:53
And you know, once they got into orbit, it was like massively supersonic speed, 175, you're
25:00
172 or something like that miles per hour, you know, they're going when they're in orbit
25:03
and even faster than that when they're going to the moon.
25:07
But these men were, you know, just like us, which makes them great, like the disciples,
25:11
you know, the 12 disciples were just a bunch of guys just like us.
25:14
Well, these astronauts were too, they were, you know, fascinating, but frail, you know,
25:20
just like all of us just broken, broken guys, you know, sons of God who don't have it all
25:25
together.
25:27
But these six had a heart for God, they loved God, they trusted God, they trusted science,
25:31
but they trusted something deeper.
25:33
And that is, you know, their faith.
25:35
And so there's some great stories in there.
25:38
It starts with John Glenn.
25:40
That's kind of the chapter on, you know, asking the question is, is there more, is there something
25:46
more going on here?
25:48
You know, more than, because the culture teaches us to keep focused on what we can see and
25:52
hear and touch and really focus, builds within us a strong bias towards the physical world.
26:00
You know, I mean, think about, you know, I think about how I spend my day and it's in
26:04
my email inbox and it's, you know, it's on my computer.
26:07
It's things that I really, I can, it's, I have, even though I have this real heart to
26:12
connect with God spiritually, I have such an intense bias towards the physical, towards,
26:17
you know, things that are, things that are right in front of my face, my phone buzzing,
26:21
you know, that kind of thing.
26:23
And so that chapter, you know, John Glenn was just a man who would always look at the
26:28
world, but he would always try to look through the world towards what God was doing, towards
26:32
the supernatural.
26:33
And so it's, he's a great one for the first kind of chapter.
26:36
But then we profile Ed White, who was the first man who, you know, first American to
26:40
walk in space to actually, you know, pop open the capsule and step out into the, you know,
26:45
unknown of outer space and, you know, the, um, leave the safety of, of the, of the spaceship.
26:51
Um, and then we profile Gordon Cooper, who went to space both with, um, he was the last
26:55
of the mercury astronauts and he also went to space as part of the Gemini program.
27:01
And then, um, we do, uh, uh, Frank Borman, who was the commander of the Apollo eight mission,
27:06
which was the first mission to actually go to the moon.
27:08
They didn't land on the moon, but they orbited about 10 times and then returned and set the
27:12
stage for Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to actually set foot on the, on the moon.
27:17
But there's is a great one because, I mean, it was the first time anybody had left earth,
27:23
you know, left earth orbit and left the gravity of earth is the first time, you know, some
27:27
human being didn't experience sunrise and sunset, you know, they were, they were in a,
27:33
you know, they went to a place where the gravity of the moon was greater than the gravity of
27:37
the earth, it was really, um, you know, a, a tremendous adventure, um, into perhaps death,
27:45
you know, the folks at NASA gave them about a 50, 50 shot of returning.
27:48
Um, so that's an awesome one.
27:50
And then, and then two men, um, who were really fascinating towards the end of the Apollo
27:53
program, Jim Irwin, who, uh, is sure, well, he, he passed away, but he, he was sure that
27:58
he encountered, uh, God on the moon.
28:01
I mean, he just felt his presence from the moment they landed to the moment they left.
28:05
And then, um, Charlie Duke is the last one.
28:07
He was a part of Apollo 16, the second to last Apollo mission.
28:11
And he didn't find God on the moon at all.
28:14
He wasn't, he was a nominal Christian believer, um, until he returned and went through some
28:18
really, really tough stuff in his marriage and in his professional life and then found
28:23
God in the front seat of his car in New Braunfels, Texas.
28:27
Um, so great stories, great men, fascinating, and I think really accessible because they're
28:32
just guys like us at the end of the day.
28:34
Yeah, reading through the book and reading through those stories, it's names that you
28:37
might recognize for the most of us that aren't into aeronautics or, or astronauts or any
28:41
of those types of stories.
28:42
There's going to be a lot of names you haven't heard of before, but very, very interesting
28:45
anecdotes from these people's lives.
28:47
But I want to dig into several quotes throughout the book and kind of get a little bit more
28:50
context and we'll obviously, we'll just start here with chapter one.
28:53
So there's a quote here that I'd like to get you to, to tell us a little bit more about
28:56
and this is it from chapter one.
28:58
I confess until recently I couldn't relate.
29:00
And I know most church going men in our modern world won't connect with these words either.
29:05
We'll nod our heads about God's love generally or theoretically, but we don't know much about
29:10
the scale of God's love for each of us specifically, personally, something isn't connecting.
29:16
And as soon as I read that quote, the first thing that, uh, that occurred to me and the
29:20
first thing that I wrote down is like, well, the church has, has a lot of blame on this
29:24
one.
29:25
I feel like the church has done a really, really poor job of encouraging men, uh, just in general,
29:30
but specifically about things in the spiritual realm and the spiritual world.
29:34
So do you agree with my assessment that the church should wear a lot of the blame for
29:38
that?
29:39
I do.
29:40
I do.
29:41
I, you know, I was, I attended a lot of churches, you know, I grew up in a, in one church here
29:47
in Silicon Valley and then I attended church kind of by myself, um, you know, down, down
29:51
in L.A. when I was going to school there and then in Philadelphia, then in New York and
29:54
then back here and I didn't get that message.
29:58
I didn't.
29:59
I didn't get that message of God's true heart of his outrageous love.
30:02
You know, scripture says that he sings over us and he dances about us and dances because
30:07
of us and he thinks us about us all the time.
30:09
We can't even fathom the number of thoughts about us in his head.
30:13
You know, it says that he said us as the focus of his love when he was setting the foundations
30:17
of the earth and he knit us together with such care.
30:21
This is a God who loves outrageously and I didn't hear that.
30:26
I heard a lot about a God who wanted me to follow, follow rules and a God who was disappointed
30:33
and maybe disgusted with me sometimes because, you know, true confession here.
30:37
My struggle was with pornography and it was easy to think that God might be disgusted
30:43
and certainly, you know, disappointed in me.
30:46
And so I do think that the churches aren't great at that.
30:51
I don't know if I would go so far as laying blame at their feet.
30:56
I think these pastors who are leading these churches are doing it for the right reasons
31:00
and a lot of them just don't know God that way and so they just don't know.
31:05
And so I can't sit there and point the finger at them and say it's your fault.
31:10
We are all broken people, all trying to figure this stuff out and, you know, search in the
31:17
Bible and searching, you know, relationships and searching for God in a lot of places.
31:24
And we just get confused sometimes and, you know, and we're all in a separate journey,
31:30
you know, and that journey has different timing.
31:33
And so I just think a lot of those pastors who are up there in the pulpit doing the best
31:37
they can just don't yet know him like that, you know.
31:41
So yes and no, but a big yes.
31:45
Okay, fair enough, and that's just kind of one of the things that that's just the first
31:48
thing that popped into my mind while I was reading that, that there might be some of
31:51
an issue there.
31:52
Another quote from chapter one that I want to go over and this was subtle and I might
31:56
be reading a little more into the text and what you wanted to put in there, but it's
32:00
this quote here.
32:01
They implied in you talked about this a little bit as well.
32:04
They implied in no one certain terms that he wanted me to do better at following the
32:07
rules.
32:08
I will, I promise.
32:10
They taught me that I needed to be a better person.
32:12
This time I'm going to be.
32:13
They taught me that I just needed to man up.
32:16
I will try my best.
32:18
So whenever I read that, when you got to that, that last in those three, when you talked
32:22
about them just needing you to man up, it seemed like there was a little bit of bitterness
32:27
in, in your mentioning of someone telling you that you need to man up because it's just
32:31
like, well, hey, I'll try my best.
32:33
Is there any bitterness there when you do hear?
32:35
Because obviously that's a common refrain for, for men in the church, like on Mother's
32:38
Day, you know, all the moms are leaving their floating and after on Father's Day, you know,
32:43
all the guys leave the church like, man, I would not be too disappointed if I never showed
32:47
back up here again, because we just get, you know, drug through the thorn bushes.
32:50
So do you, was there some bitterness there whenever you kind of were going through that
32:54
particular section of writing?
32:55
Yeah.
32:56
I mean, absolutely.
32:57
I feel like, you know, I don't know where that bitterness is directed.
33:01
It's directed a lot at the enemy.
33:03
I think, you know, the enemy works through culture to, to, to twist the gospel.
33:08
And the way he twisted is the God wants a relationship with you when you get yourself
33:13
fixed up, when you get your act together, when you man up, and then he wants a relationship
33:17
with you, and then he'll delight in you.
33:20
But that's not what the gospel says at all.
33:22
That's a, that's a perversion of the gospel.
33:24
That's a twisted gospel.
33:26
The gospel says, come to me, come to me in your sin, in your weariness, in your brokenness,
33:34
and let's get better together, because what we need and don't have is grace.
33:39
Grace by definition, you know, Dallas Willard taught us all this, the great grace by definition
33:44
is what we can't do on our own.
33:46
And what we can't do on our own is fix ourselves.
33:50
Like we try all the time, right?
33:52
That's the man up thing.
33:53
Oh man, I'm just going to white knuckle it here.
33:55
I'm going to get better on my, myself, I'm going to stop yelling at my kids.
33:58
I'm going to treat my wife with a, you know, loving in every moment.
34:01
I'm going to, you know, stop drinking, I'm going to stop doing, you know, looking for
34:05
self-comfort through food or through pornography or whatever, I'm going to do it.
34:09
This time I'm really going to do it, and we can't.
34:12
We need God.
34:13
We need God either through community, being in, you know, community with guys who are
34:17
struggling with the same stuff, or we need God directly through prayer and silence and
34:22
Scripture, you know, and then grace flows into our lives.
34:28
And then we are able to do what we can't on our own.
34:31
So the trick is, the hard part, obviously, of that is showing up and encountering God,
34:35
whether it's in church or in silence or it's, you know, sitting and reading Scripture or
34:39
it's in a community of men or, you know, however it looks, showing up there, feeling pretty
34:45
darn ashamed of yourself, you know, having blown it one more time.
34:49
When you try it, you vowed to everybody, you were going to get it right this time, mostly
34:53
to yourself, mostly to God, you know, maybe to your wife, if she knows what's going on,
34:58
you know.
34:59
And you've blown it one more time, and you've got to, you know, be coming into the presence
35:03
of God means kind of looking him in the eye and saying, hey, I'm here again.
35:08
And you know, throughout Scripture, when people did that, when John did it, you know, everybody,
35:15
you know, when Peter gets, you know, realizes there's a miraculous catch, and Peter realizes
35:20
that he's standing next to Jesus, the Son of God, that there's something that this is
35:24
different.
35:25
John says, I'm not worthy, I have to go away from you, you know, Peter said, I have to
35:29
depart from you, I'm not worthy.
35:31
We all have that experience, like, it's hard when you feel very ashamed of yourself to
35:35
look God in the eyes and not ever break gaze, but that's what we need to do.
35:39
We need to not break gaze.
35:40
We need to sit there and go, I'm broken, and I'm your son, and you love me, and you're
35:44
going to help me, and you don't love me less because I blow it, you know.
35:49
And so I understand how most men are feeling that way.
35:56
I feel that way a lot still, you know, but I have encountered him, and I know it intellectually.
36:04
My heart knows it a little bit, it knows it more and more every day.
36:07
My head knows it pretty well, who he is, but my heart is just getting to know him.
36:12
And that's what this book is all about.
36:14
It's really based on a heart journey that I took, it started in a Tuesday evening, a
36:22
prayer up in McMinnville, Oregon, the Willamette Valley up in Oregon, my wife and I were visiting
36:27
a pastor up there, and we were praying with him, and he had me ask in prayer, are there
36:32
any lies that I believe about myself or about, I'm speaking to God at the moment, so about
36:39
you God, and the first thing I popped in my head was this vow that I made, or this agreement
36:44
that I made, or this conclusion that I drew when I was 12 years old, it was right after
36:49
my mom was diagnosed with leukemia, and I just saw myself in that moment when I was
36:53
in McMinnville at age, whatever, 43 or something.
36:57
I saw myself at age 12 saying, wow, God loves me less, kind of the world loves me less,
37:02
but I think it was more of God loves me less.
37:06
And so this journey that I write about in the book and really was the basis for this
37:10
book was all about God destroying that lie.
37:13
I mean, he left a big smoking hole in the ground where that lie used to sit.
37:20
He just taught me through a series of, so this journey was a figurative journey, and a lot
37:27
of them are, they're sort of journeys that we take at our homes, journey into scripture
37:34
for a season, or into community, or into leading something, or starting something, or creating
37:40
something, but some of them are physical journeys, and this was kind of a hybrid, this six month
37:45
kind of journey that was the basis for the book.
37:47
So it was a journey that I took at home learning how much God loves me personally, not just
37:52
kind of human beings, but me, Justin, it's true of every human being, but I was learning
37:57
it for myself, and it was punctuated by some trips.
38:01
It started in McMinnville, there was a hunting trip, which opens the book in Montana.
38:06
There was a fly fishing trip up in Northern California, a little bit north of, I live
38:10
in Northern California, but further north up in the Cascades, and then it ended on a,
38:16
with a retreat in the mountains of Colorado with some friends, and man, when I got back
38:22
from that trip, I was like, we got to write a book about this, because this was the most
38:26
phenomenal thing that I've experienced, so I've experienced that, but I still struggle
38:30
with what I'm talking about.
38:31
I still struggle with that twisted gospel.
38:33
I still want to get myself fixed up and then go into God's presence, because I feel worthy
38:38
at that point.
38:39
Well, and there was something that I also, I feel like I read into the subtleties in
38:43
chapter one, more than just about anything, because there was another subtle thing in
38:46
chapter one that I read that I think kind of plays into what you're talking about here,
38:50
and it's just one sentence, and it was this, I never doubted I was a beloved son, my moms.
38:56
And so you kind of talked about where you were, but my curiosity here is why no mention
39:01
of dad.
39:02
Yeah, so that is a great question.
39:04
So he comes up in a lot in the first book, so he, you know, so the first book invention
39:10
is all an identity, and it, you know, kind of looks at very practically, how do we start
39:18
asking the questions of who we are, who am I God, who did you make me to be, and what
39:23
did you make me to do, and my dad figures very, very heavily in that book.
39:27
But around this book of love, my experience of unconditional love, I felt very loved by
39:32
my dad, but not in the way that I was loved by my mom.
39:36
My mom's love was just, you know, the love of a mom is just different, you know, you
39:42
see the love, you know, the love of a mother talked about in scripture a lot, and it's
39:47
just a, it's a very pure reflection of God's love, it's just a different thing.
39:50
So I thought that it was my mom doing it, you know, until much later, and I enjoyed
39:56
it very much.
39:57
I mean, she and I were very close.
39:58
She was diagnosed with leukemia when I was 12, and she passed away when I was 21.
40:02
So it was a, it was just a brutal time on my heart.
40:06
You know, I loved her, and we were very close.
40:08
And to see, you know, her decline, you know, it was one of these things where there were
40:14
so many waiting rooms, and, you know, two bone marrow transplants, and good, you know,
40:19
with leukemia, it's all about blood counts.
40:20
And so good counts, bad counts, good tests, bad tests, you know, it's just up and down
40:24
for nine years.
40:27
But through that, through that, all of that, and, and, and through ages, you know, zero
40:31
to nine as well, she was just the picture of, of unconditional love.
40:36
You know, my dad, a little bit different, he was a dad's love, you know, which is very
40:40
important.
40:41
You know, and he was, he was, you know, I mean, he was, he's a very good dude.
40:43
He's one of my best friends today.
40:46
But, you know, he's a dad, and he was, he was a dad of that generation.
40:49
He was working very hard.
40:50
He was spending a lot of time, you know, at the office.
40:53
He was a, at that point during those years, he was working on big satellite telecommunication
40:59
systems.
41:00
And, you know, when he wasn't working on that, he was working on finances for the family
41:04
at home.
41:05
And so he was around, and he was very involved in my life, but not like my mom was.
41:09
And so she was the, she was the natural one to, to highlight in this book, which is all
41:13
about the outrageous love of God.
41:15
He was the one to highlight in the first book about identity because he taught me, he taught
41:20
me so much and has walked with me so much through those years of, of, of asking the question
41:25
of who am I.
41:26
And sometimes I was asking them in the early years of my life, I was asking the wrong,
41:29
I was asking the right question, but to the wrong things, I was asking culture and he
41:33
was involved in that.
41:36
And, and then later on, I was learning to ask my father and he was involved, you know, my
41:40
father, God, and he was my dad was involved in that as well.
41:44
So, I thought it was my fear to, to, to, to highlight my mom as well.
41:48
Well, that's good.
41:49
So that shame on me for not having read the first book before I read the second book.
41:52
It's like the guy going to the sequel of the movie before watching the, the foundation.
41:56
So I'll take it out on myself later for doing that.
41:59
But I thought that that was interesting how you mentioned it.
42:02
But one thing that I did want to get into is beginning in chapter three, but certainly
42:07
you, this is throughout the book, but in chapter three, you introduce a theme that kind of
42:12
flows through the rest of the book.
42:13
And that's this, it's what God wants most is a personal relationship with us individually.
42:20
And that you're very clear on your language that that's what he wants most.
42:24
And so, at one point, you even say, and you mentioned it earlier, that God is so crazy
42:28
in love with us that he sings over us, he dances because of us.
42:31
And I guess this is where I would have a thematic disagreement with you, because I feel like
42:36
that view is, it's very me centric point of view.
42:39
It's a very modern Christian kind of me centric point of view, and it'll take me just a second
42:44
to kind of tease this out, but I promise there'll be a great question at the end of this rainbow.
42:47
But I first started thinking about this because there was a sermon delivered by Matt Chandler
42:52
who we love here on this podcast back in 2012.
42:55
It was at Elevation Church's Code Orange Revival.
42:58
And it was called God is for God.
43:00
And so let's just say that this didn't go any way that Stephen Furtick had planned or
43:04
maybe it did, but and if you want kind of a deeper dive for anyone listening to this
43:07
episode 22 of this podcast, I do a very, very deep dive into the sermon that he delivered.
43:12
But essentially, Matt Chandler's point was God's motivation in everything is himself.
43:19
That God is not for us like we've been taught, you know, culture tells us that we're intrinsically
43:24
valuable, he tells us that we deserve so much.
43:28
It's basically taught us that we're the center of the universe, but that God is about his
43:32
glory and unfortunately, that's just not really being talked about a lot in modern Christian
43:36
them.
43:38
And the good news is about that is is the Bible isn't about us either, but a lot of
43:41
us apply biblical stories to us.
43:44
We put ourselves in biblical stories when we really shouldn't, but I guess the best reason
43:48
that he gives for why God is for God is that number one, he's not after our begrudging submission.
43:54
He's ferociously about our joy.
43:56
And the second thing was that we're essentially not the center of the universe and that should
43:59
be really, really great news and one other quick quote before I get your reaction, we
44:03
get to the point in my question here.
44:05
There was a guy that we had on the podcast recently, Greg Cocoa.
44:08
He's written a lot of great books, but one of them is the story of reality.
44:11
And there's a quote from kind of the middle point of that book and it's this, there is
44:14
a saying that has been helpful in some ways, but I think it is misleading in this regard.
44:19
The saying goes, God has a wonderful plan for your life.
44:23
From what I understand now, that perspective is in the wrong order.
44:27
The story is not so much about God's plan for your life as it is about your life for
44:32
God's plan.
44:33
Let that sink in.
44:35
God's purposes are central, not yours.
44:38
Once you are completely clear on this fact, many things are going to change for you.
44:41
So there's my, my turn to, to be a long winded, but here, here's the question is so in light
44:46
of that, in light of, you know, what Greg Cocoa said and Matt Chandler said, would it
44:50
not be more accurate to say that what God wants most above everything else is his own
44:56
glory?
44:57
Yeah, and I think it's funny, I think that everyone is sort of saying the same thing
45:03
actually.
45:04
I mean, there are nuances here and when you're talking about a particular topic, you can
45:08
focus, like if you're talking to a man who's hurting, that man needs to know the love of
45:14
God.
45:15
And scripture says very clearly that God loves us.
45:18
I mean, I think he created us so that he would have someone to love, lots of some ones.
45:24
You know, I say that in the book.
45:26
And so the love of God is a thing.
45:29
He is love.
45:30
You know, John says that very clearly that God is love.
45:33
And in fact, what you're saying, I think is absolutely true, that it's all about love.
45:39
It's all about, you know, bringing us together into unity with him, to what, with what he
45:44
is doing.
45:45
In fact, so much so that he puts him inside of us so that he can love us, you know.
45:52
And so it's all this sort of, you know, Paul talks about this a lot of it's all about unity
45:57
with Jesus.
45:58
And so by putting the spirit of Jesus inside us, we get to be a part of this love triangle
46:03
between the father, the son and the Holy Spirit.
46:06
And now we are invited into this community of love.
46:09
And so yes, absolutely about him, absolutely about what he is up to because he knows a
46:14
lot better than we do about what we should be up to and what what's going to fill our
46:19
lives with joy and peace and and significance and purpose and meaning and all the things
46:24
that we search for everywhere else in life and try to ring out of jobs and titles and
46:30
insurance and 401ks and all the things that we put, you know, right now out of, you know,
46:35
hoarding food.
46:38
So absolutely, I think that that we're all, we're all kind of saying the same things.
46:45
And I talk about this a lot in invention.
46:47
So what calling is there's a chapter on calling the inventor that I talk about the beginning
46:53
of that is Alexander Graham Bell, because he invented the, you know, the telephone is
47:00
sort of, you know, not sending dots and dashes over over wires, but actually sending voice,
47:05
the human voice over wires.
47:07
He did that because he his heart was breaking for for people who are deaf.
47:13
His wife was deaf.
47:14
His mother was deaf.
47:15
She had this real heart for for folks who are struggling with hearing.
47:19
And so he was trying to create the first hearing aid and in the in the process, he created
47:24
the telephone, but he felt a calling on his life.
47:27
He was a Christian and he he, you know, he did it for other people.
47:33
And that's really the point here is like, it's what's God's doing to rescue the world,
47:38
to redeem the world.
47:39
The world broke when sin sin entered the world and Jesus comes along, you know, a thousand
47:44
years later and tries to, you know, tries to kicks off a massive rebuilding project, you
47:52
know, to redeem the world, to right every wrong, every, every wrong word, every wrong
47:56
act redeemed completely forever.
47:58
That's what Jesus is up to and he vites us into that.
48:01
And that's what calling is.
48:03
And everyone gets invited into, into this amazing project in a different way.
48:08
But it's not our, it's like you're saying, it's not what we want to do.
48:12
It's not what our hearts want to do until they're transformed and then it absolutely
48:15
is what our hearts want to do.
48:17
And when the Holy Spirit is working in, in us, we start wanting it a lot more and we
48:22
start finding what we always were looking for in other places.
48:28
But we get invited into this massive project of rebuilding this world and making all things
48:34
new.
48:35
And, you know, that's a really, that's a really amazing good news, right?
48:39
I mean, that's these, these two books really deliver the good news to men who, you know,
48:45
who I think, you know, have been hearing things out of churches that aren't so great, you
48:49
know, that, you know, you're disappointing to God or the way you live out your calling
48:56
is to be an usher on Sunday mornings.
48:58
And that's kind of the, the peak of, you know, calling.
49:01
That's how you live out your faith.
49:02
I mean, none of that's super good news and it certainly wasn't for me.
49:06
But once I started realizing that I could be with him, that I could be united with him
49:11
more and more every day, that's when the good news started flowing into my life.
49:16
And that's when I started realizing that his ways are above my ways.
49:21
And that his ways are better than my ways.
49:24
And that I could, you know, be a part of what he's doing rather than trying to build my
49:28
own kingdom.
49:29
Look, I, that discontent that I'm talking about from, you know, starting in, in New York
49:34
City and continuing in Silicon Valley, that was because I was doing my own thing and there
49:40
was no love in that, you know, I was trying to love myself and not doing it, doing it
49:44
very well and not understanding that we're built to have the love of God and the grace
49:49
of God, God flowing into us and then back out of us, into the world and none of that
49:55
was going on with me.
49:56
And so no wonder, no wonder I was discontented and sad and angry and, you know, all the,
50:02
you know, the things that I was back then.
50:05
So I don't know if I could answer to your question, but
50:08
Well, the thing is, is we could have spent the entire our entire time here just talking
50:13
about that one part, because obviously, you know, I put a dichotomy or people into opposing
50:18
sides with Matt Chandler and Stephen Furtick.
50:20
And those two guys obviously have very different approaches, then you start getting into the
50:24
arguments with Calvinists and Armenianists and, you know, I that's not a really terribly
50:29
interesting topic for me, but it is kind of interesting for me to read things or listen
50:34
to even worship music through the lens of man, it is God all about me.
50:39
Because I feel like God is about him.
50:40
I feel like he's about his creation, but we can move on from that point so we don't belabor
50:44
it any further because I want to get to chapter five of your book because guys chapter five
50:49
is worth the price of this book, but specifically the question section from from chapter five.
50:55
And you talk about so many naturalists that kind of want a physical evidence of God.
51:01
And they're essentially subjecting God to the scientific method and how really that's
51:05
a wrong way to approach it.
51:07
And I love this quote from chapter five exists.
51:09
All we've proved is that we have once again, tried to use improper instruments and employ
51:15
wrong methods.
51:17
Like if we tried to use a ruler to measure love or a scale to weigh joy.
51:21
And that quote really stuck with me because when I've had conversations with atheists,
51:25
there's one in particular, you know, he's got a wife that he's been with for a very long
51:29
time.
51:30
He clearly loves her.
51:31
But I told him proved to me that you love your wife and he's like, well, I don't understand
51:35
what you mean.
51:36
I'm like, no, no, no.
51:37
It's like you're telling me that we live in a physical world and there's nothing outside
51:40
of the physical world of what we can basically glean with our senses.
51:44
So here, here, here's a beaker, here's a Bunsen burner.
51:47
Here's a ruler.
51:48
Here's a pen and a pen and a piece of paper proved to me that you love your spouse.
51:53
And I mean, he just he couldn't get anywhere with that question.
51:55
So talk about how God has given us an instrument to discover him and you know, spoiler alert,
52:02
it's the human heart.
52:03
That's what you talk about.
52:04
And he's been the next several pages going over the human heart.
52:06
But can you flow on that a little bit for us about how the right instrument to use is
52:11
the human heart?
52:12
Yeah.
52:13
So like I said earlier, you know, the culture of this world, we're in a golden age.
52:18
Of discovery, of science and technology.
52:22
And there's a great quote in there by a person who's an atomic physicist that he talks about.
52:31
That's the natural character of any golden age.
52:35
It's that we get so focused on one part of reality that we ignore everything else.
52:39
And so during this period that we're in right now and have been for a couple hundred years,
52:43
we've been just intensely focused on the physical world, the natural world and looking
52:49
for it to explain everything.
52:52
And so that's not the way we are designed.
52:56
We were designed, you know, if you go back to Genesis, we were designed by God taking
53:00
some of the physical world, taking dust from the ground, but then breathing into that his
53:04
spirit, his life, his breath.
53:06
And that at that moment, we became a human being.
53:10
And so we have a physical side, there's no question, and it's an important thing, but
53:14
we have a physical, we have a spiritual side as well that can access him and can access
53:19
the supernatural.
53:21
And actually, it's how we access relationship, like you're talking about love.
53:26
I know things with my head.
53:27
I understand history and math and physics and that kind of thing with my head.
53:32
But I know another human being with my heart, you know, I love my wife and my kids with
53:36
my heart, and God put that in in us so that we could know and love him as well.
53:43
You know, there there's so much mystery in all of this, Kyle.
53:46
I mean, I just I feel like, you know, you know, we are built so that there's always
53:52
going to be more mystery.
53:54
The more we discover, the more is to discover.
53:56
So there's no certainty that I'm coming and saying, this is the way it is.
54:00
I'm more of like the blind man who was blind since birth and Jesus, you know, heals him
54:04
and the Pharisees want to know like what happened, and he's like, I don't know, I was a blind
54:08
and now I see and they're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, and he's like, dude, I was
54:12
blind and now I see that's not that's that's sort of who I am in this whole thing is I'm
54:16
saying I didn't know about God in this way.
54:20
And now I do.
54:21
That's all I know.
54:22
How the mechanics of all this will never know, you know, not even the greatest theologian
54:26
of all time is ever going to know this with the certainty that we all want.
54:32
But I have experienced him with my heart.
54:34
I have, you know, and you know, Dallas Willard talks about this in his book here in God.
54:39
He talks about how the instrument and and AW Tozer talks about this as well.
54:43
The instrument that we use to actually hear him is our heart.
54:47
So when a man's goes into the wilderness, you know, we talked before we got on about
54:53
John Eldridge is a good friend and a mentor and been a mentor to me for a few years.
54:58
He always talks about going into the wilderness and listening for a new name, you know, who
55:01
do you who am I to you God asking that question and the way that we hear that, you know, men
55:05
struggle with that men go in there and they try to hear with their physical, you know,
55:08
with their ears with their with with the physical and we don't hear God that way.
55:14
Could we?
55:15
Yes.
55:16
Absolutely.
55:17
I mean, could God, you know, do anything?
55:18
He could do anything.
55:19
But most often he speaks in the still small voice.
55:23
And what that is is a whisper to our hearts.
55:25
And so this getting getting an understanding that this is the instrument by which we encounter
55:34
him that we feel him in community, you know, when we're in a community of men and it's
55:39
a it's and it's one of those evenings or one of those mornings where we just know that
55:44
God's present, there's mercy and love and compassion and breakthrough.
55:48
The way we feel that is not in our head, but in our heart, you know, when scripture jumps
55:53
out at us, that's our heart reacting, you know, to God and the truth of God.
55:58
When we're when we're listening to some, you know, incredible sermon that's bringing
56:02
us to the brink of, you know, joy or tears or whatever, that's our heart responding,
56:07
I believe.
56:09
And so, so yes, when, you know, when's, you know, and gosh, Christians, many Christian
56:15
men are guilty of this as I was in prior seasons of my life, we all, you know, try to
56:26
use the wrong, the wrong method.
56:28
We want certainty.
56:29
And so we, you know, we, we, we don't want to listen with our heart.
56:33
We want some proof, but certainly atheists are doing that as well.
56:37
Like I want to, you know, I want to, you know, like I say in the book, I want to use a mass
56:41
spectrometer or, or a, you know, gas chromatograph to try to, you know, put God under under under
56:47
the microscope and try to figure him out, we're never going to do that.
56:51
And in fact, I think that's one thing that brings just a ton of richness to life is the
56:58
mystery and embracing the mystery of God that's something tremendously bigger than us.
57:05
We're being invited into like you said, it's all about God, we get to invite, we are invited
57:09
into what he is doing into relationship with him, what he's doing in the world.
57:13
It's a much bigger story than our small stories.
57:16
And it's a tremendous gift.
57:17
If we go around trying to figure everything out and demand to figure everything out ahead
57:22
of time before we engage in something, we just miss out on the adventure of life.
57:25
We miss out on the richness of life.
57:28
So I think that's a really important thing for men and hopefully a takeaway from guys
57:31
reading this book that the mystery is really important and something we're built for, you
57:37
know, scripture says it's the, you know, the character of God to conceal things and the
57:41
character of kings to search things out.
57:43
I think that's absolutely true.
57:44
It's this, it's this paradigm that God has offered, built us for and offered to us.
57:50
And we, we instead, you know, just spend all of our time, you know, ignoring the mystery,
57:56
trying to crush the mystery, getting frustrated because we can't crush it, you know, and saying,
58:01
well, there must not be any God because because I can't crush it rather than just relenting
58:06
and saying, you know, he may, you may be able to know him without being able to measure
58:12
him.
58:13
You may be able to know him and love him without actually being able to weigh him.
58:17
And, you know, well, that's, that's one thing that you mentioned, you talked about mystery.
58:21
We live in a world where there cannot be any mystery.
58:23
I mean, just think about a political candidate.
58:26
You can't not know their, their opinion on a particular social issue.
58:31
And they can't be in the process of figuring out that social issue, right?
58:35
Like you can't talk to someone running for national office and then say, you know, I
58:39
haven't really fully formed my opinion on abortion yet.
58:41
Yeah, I don't really know how I feel about, you know, immigration, like you can't have
58:46
that because people can't get behind a mystery.
58:49
And so we live in this world where these people are trying desperately to prove everything.
58:53
And the easiest way to prove something in a physical world is with physical tools.
58:57
And so I think that was a very subtle, but great apologetic tactic that you gave to all
59:03
the readers of this book, which is when you're, you know, locked horns with an atheist and
59:07
having a hopefully productive discussion with them, it is not incumbent upon you to prove
59:12
everything, but it is incumbent upon you to just respond with some questions to get them
59:17
to evaluate their own points of view.
59:20
Because if someone says the physical world is all there is, but they can't prove love
59:25
with the physical world, you have to say using your logic, love doesn't exist.
59:29
Yes.
59:30
And so I think that was a great thing you said there, but what were you going to say?
59:33
Yeah, I was just going to say, you know, in that circumstance, you know, when, what are
59:38
we called upon to do as Christians, we're not called upon to win every argument, though
59:44
I do, I do believe that there are people who are called to be apologists and to be out
59:48
there in the, in the world pushing, you know, representing, you know, a different side and
59:55
in these debates, Dallas Willard was, you know, a philosopher who had a seat at the table
59:59
with a lot of great philosophers, and was fearless, you know, and sat at that table and
1:00:04
had great debates.
1:00:05
And I think there are people who are called to do that, but what, but what we as Christians,
1:00:09
all of us, every one of us, we don't have to be a philosopher for this.
1:00:13
What we're all called to is deliver our testimony, you know, in Revelation, scripture says that
1:00:17
the blood that the, the dragon Satan has defeated, the dragon is thrown down by the blood of
1:00:22
the lamb.
1:00:23
That's obviously Jesus on the cross, which we celebrated, you know, recently here.
1:00:28
And the word of our testimony, those two things, nothing more.
1:00:32
It's not having the right argument.
1:00:33
It's the word of our testimony.
1:00:34
So telling people, I don't know about all that.
1:00:38
I don't know, I coming with a posture of I'm not sure, but here's what God means to me.
1:00:44
That's what changes heart.
1:00:46
That's what defeats the, the enemy.
1:00:48
That's what's going to win in the end is those two things, the blood of the lamb and the word
1:00:51
of our testimony.
1:00:52
And so nobody can argue with your testimony.
1:00:54
This is what happened to me.
1:00:55
This is what I believe happened to me.
1:00:57
This is my interpretation of my experience, you know, who's going to argue with that who
1:01:02
could, you know, so that's the most powerful thing we can do as, as Christian men is talk,
1:01:08
talk about what's happened to us.
1:01:09
Yeah.
1:01:10
And there are a lot of great apologists that, that will say the same thing.
1:01:13
These are guys that basically have the answers and they know how to work a conversation in
1:01:17
the direction of an ends that they would like to get to, but that's not really the point.
1:01:23
And for a lot of us, that's what stops us from sharing our faith is because, Oh my gosh,
1:01:26
they're going to ask me about dinosaurs.
1:01:28
Oh my gosh, they're going to ask me about whether or not a man could live in the belly
1:01:30
of a well.
1:01:31
Like they're going to ask me those things and it stops you from just asking your waitress,
1:01:34
Hey, we're about to pray over our meals or anything that I can pray for you specifically
1:01:38
about.
1:01:39
And those things are just not equitable in any way, shape or form.
1:01:42
I do want to move on to, to chapter six, in chapter six, you go through a description
1:01:46
of the different journeys you can go on with God and you've, you've alluded to it earlier
1:01:51
in our conversation and I want guys to go out and pick up the book.
1:01:54
So don't really give us the full-throated explanation of all these, but give us a couple
1:01:57
of teasers because you throw out three different ways that we can go on journeys with God.
1:02:02
The first is a physical and spiritual journey.
1:02:05
The second is a spiritual only journey.
1:02:08
And the third is a hybrid journey.
1:02:10
Can you give us a little bit more detail on that?
1:02:11
Yeah, it's a great question as we're all sheltering in place right now.
1:02:15
Yeah, right.
1:02:16
We may not be hopefully when this airs, but we are right now.
1:02:19
So it's crazy to be launching this book where I'm encouraging people to go on, you know,
1:02:23
during the middle of when we can't.
1:02:25
Yeah, of course.
1:02:26
In the summer, we all can and it'll be a big celebration.
1:02:28
So yes, okay, so like I talked about home, home is a place of security.
1:02:36
Home is a place of routine.
1:02:37
Home is a place of, you know, comfort.
1:02:41
And it's not super conducive to coming face to face with God.
1:02:46
In fact, a lot of the defense mechanisms that we use to protect ourselves from the world
1:02:51
and cope and get through the day actually can, like I said, numb our senses and make
1:02:56
us less able to sense the supernatural.
1:02:59
But tap into that other side of reality, right, that we were talking about earlier, that other
1:03:02
side of reality that we try to ignore and opt out of, which is the spiritual side.
1:03:07
And in fact, you know, just real quick, like this other reality, this deeper unseen reality,
1:03:12
which is, which is talked about so much through the Bible, it's bigger and better.
1:03:18
And actually, if we can even think about it this way when you're talking about eternity,
1:03:21
it actually predated the scene world, the physical world.
1:03:25
You know, scripture says that the scene sprang from the unseen and that the physical world
1:03:29
is dependent on this on this greater, deeper, unseen reality.
1:03:35
So when we hit the road, when we go into the wilderness, we're able to connect with it
1:03:39
better.
1:03:40
It's easier.
1:03:41
Can we do it at home?
1:03:42
We absolutely can do it at home.
1:03:43
So when you take the first one, the physical plus spiritual journey, you know, your God's
1:03:49
showing you something, we don't know ahead of time, but we can, you know, it's usually
1:03:52
around some theme about, you know, that he wants to teach us about himself or about
1:03:56
us or, you know, just mature us in some way and teach us something.
1:04:00
And so is it easier to do on the road?
1:04:03
It tends to be.
1:04:04
It tends to be better just to pick up and go.
1:04:07
And you know, like, you know, men and women have been doing for 2000 years, you know, going
1:04:13
on these pilgrimage to see God, you know, and they're great stories in the book where
1:04:16
I touch on, you know, some of those stories like walking the Camino to Santiago or, you
1:04:21
know, you know, getting in a boat or, you know, I mean, like people, people have been
1:04:25
doing for in scripture and then for 2000 years.
1:04:29
But can we do it at home because we all live in a real world with, you know, kids and mortgages
1:04:34
and jobs?
1:04:35
Yes, absolutely.
1:04:36
And I've been invited on both of those kinds.
1:04:39
Some where I picked up and went somewhere and somewhere I went through tremendously amazing
1:04:44
journeys right at home.
1:04:45
I'm actually going through a year of spiritual direction right now.
1:04:48
And it's a fantastic journey and it's all accomplished at home.
1:04:53
And then there's a there's a third kind that's that is kind of near and dear to my heart
1:04:57
because I've engaged in that a lot as well is the hybrid journey.
1:05:01
So, you know, you know, and that's actually the journey that, like I said, is the basis
1:05:06
of this book.
1:05:07
It was about six months and it was about four physical journeys that were punctuating this
1:05:13
six month spiritual journey that that I mostly accomplished at home, but, you know, got out
1:05:18
into the wilderness in in Montana and the wilderness in Colorado and had some really
1:05:26
amazing encounters with God and with other men of God.
1:05:31
So those are kind of the three kinds.
1:05:33
They encompass everything.
1:05:34
I mean, on one side, you have physical and spiritual on the other end of the spectrum,
1:05:37
you have spiritual only and then hybrids kind of, you know, anything in the middle.
1:05:41
So the the the takeaway from the book is that we just need to dial down as much as we can.
1:05:48
It's why Jesus says travel light to the disciples, you know, when he's sending them out.
1:05:53
We need to put down the things of the world a little bit so that those things that, you
1:05:57
know, protect us and capture our attention, protect us from boredom, protect us from danger.
1:06:02
Those things can also protect us from God and we don't want that.
1:06:06
So the book is very practical in sort of trying to, you know, lead men into how to do that
1:06:11
in their daily lives, you know, even when kids are screaming and, you know, crying and,
1:06:16
you know, and, you know, there's, you know, dinner has to be made and work has to be done
1:06:21
and the mortgage has to be paid.
1:06:24
Can we do it then?
1:06:25
Absolutely.
1:06:26
Absolutely.
1:06:27
And men do it all the time and women do it all the time.
1:06:30
And that's what I that's my heart for the book is hopefully leading some men into that
1:06:35
so that their lives can be transformed and they can actually come face to face.
1:06:38
You know, like scripture teaches us, you know, come face to face with a father and, you
1:06:43
know, and obviously, again, tons of mystery and how that happens looks different and is
1:06:48
going to surprise us.
1:06:49
But, you know, people who have come away saying I did experience something.
1:06:54
Can I describe it very well now?
1:06:57
But I experienced something very real, as real as anything else I've ever experienced.
1:07:01
When I think you said something there that is really applicable to what I want to talk
1:07:04
about next, which is how practical the book can be and some of the things that you suggest
1:07:09
in the book.
1:07:10
And you give people a lot of takeaways like if you leave the book having not learned anything,
1:07:13
that's your fault.
1:07:14
That's not, that's not Justin Camp's fault.
1:07:16
And so with that in mind, kind of the last thing I wanted to cover from the book before
1:07:19
we move on to the last section of the podcast here is tell us more about the concept that
1:07:24
you introduce in the book about how God uses the laces.
1:07:28
Yes.
1:07:29
Okay.
1:07:30
So that's that's great.
1:07:31
So, you know, I think a lot of men listening, a lot of men that I talk to and me too.
1:07:40
It was like great.
1:07:41
That's awesome.
1:07:42
I love what you're saying.
1:07:43
But how do I do it?
1:07:44
What do I do right now, you know?
1:07:47
And so, yeah, the stuff at the end of each chapter is meant to, you know, kind of give
1:07:51
a gift to guys of practical stuff like we're going to lead you into this.
1:07:55
And if you do this, you're going to experience something.
1:07:59
But another question I get is like, I want to walk with God.
1:08:03
How do I do it?
1:08:04
What do I do?
1:08:05
You know, I hear sermons all the time about walking with God.
1:08:08
And, you know, that's what we're all supposed to do.
1:08:10
And men, some men talk about it, but they have a hard time giving words to it.
1:08:15
So that's my attempt to give words to it.
1:08:16
So the idea of trailblazing, you know, it's, it's making a mark somewhere on an unmarked
1:08:21
trail, yet unmarked trail, creating a trail with markers.
1:08:25
So, you know, you know, some people do it and I talk about a guy that I was fishing with
1:08:30
one time who was a Mono Indian, Native American.
1:08:34
And he would make a mark on a tree with an axe as we were on horseback going through
1:08:39
the high Sierra.
1:08:40
And it was so we could find our way back.
1:08:42
He was blazing a trail.
1:08:43
Now we do it with chalk.
1:08:45
We do it with, you know, reflective markers that you can kind of tack into a tree.
1:08:50
People will put flagging tape and tie it around a branch, that kind of thing.
1:08:53
The whole idea is that it gives us a path back or the person following us can follow in our
1:09:02
footsteps and find the safe way through the wilderness.
1:09:05
And so I think God, in my experience, he operates in exactly the same way.
1:09:09
So the idea of the blaze is that, you know, what makes for a good blaze?
1:09:13
Well, from the last one, you can see the next one somewhere off in the distance.
1:09:18
If you can't see it, you've lost your way.
1:09:20
But there's always one that you can see, and then you go to that one, and from that one
1:09:24
you can see the next one.
1:09:25
And, you know, like I talk about in the book, a lot of times they're, you know, placed fairly
1:09:29
high so you can see them easily, especially in places that are going to get some snow.
1:09:33
And so God operates in the same kind of way, kind of on a need to know basis.
1:09:39
And why?
1:09:40
I think the why is because he likes to keep us close to him.
1:09:45
You know, he says we're his sons, like real adopted sons.
1:09:49
And what does a father want to do?
1:09:50
What do I want to do with my boys?
1:09:52
Keeping close.
1:09:53
And so he operates with this need to know basis or this blaze thing.
1:09:58
So when we go and do what he's asking us to do, inviting us into offering, you know,
1:10:05
maybe it's an adventure, maybe it's a confession, maybe it's a, you know, sometime in scripture,
1:10:10
maybe it's entering, you know, like for me, that time of community, which I'm still in
1:10:14
with other men.
1:10:15
But if we go do it, then he's going to put another blaze out there.
1:10:18
If we go to that one and do whatever he's asking us to do or inviting us into with that
1:10:24
one, then he's going to give us the next one.
1:10:25
And before we know it, we're walking with him and we're getting to know him.
1:10:28
We're experiencing him.
1:10:29
We're getting to know his character, not what someone else told us he's like, but what
1:10:34
he's really like, you know, like the, like the, you know, that song.
1:10:38
I think it's maybe good, good father, but where they say, you know, I've heard a thousand
1:10:42
stories of what you're like, you know, but until you actually hear his voice and hear
1:10:47
him and experience him and understand who he is to you, that I just don't think, you
1:10:53
know, you can really know him and kind of fall in love with him like you can until you experience
1:10:58
him.
1:10:59
So this idea, the blaze is really important.
1:11:00
It's how you walk with God.
1:11:02
You do what he does.
1:11:03
You do what he asks you to, you do what he does.
1:11:05
You follow in his footsteps and before long you're walking with him and you're getting
1:11:10
to know him.
1:11:11
Well, I really appreciate that.
1:11:12
And that's something that for a lot of you guys out that do any type of orienteering
1:11:15
or you're out in the wilderness at all, those are things that you look for.
1:11:18
And I know for my group of guys and we've gone camping, you're looking for, you know,
1:11:22
what they call Karen's.
1:11:23
And so these are groups of rocks that didn't naturally stack up on their own, but they
1:11:27
kind of let you know, hey, buddy, you're going on the right path.
1:11:29
And so it's not just looking behind you.
1:11:31
You're also looking ahead of you.
1:11:33
Because the thing is, is when you're looking at one Karen where that's going to be different
1:11:36
from a blaze is you probably can't see the next Karen because you're in the middle of
1:11:41
the woods, like everything's, you know, maybe up on a different ridge or something like that,
1:11:45
but you head in a generalized direction and you'll be able to see it to know that you're
1:11:49
still on the right path.
1:11:50
And if you've gone a long ways for a long time and not seen a Karen, it's perhaps you're
1:11:55
on the right or you're not on the right track anymore.
1:11:58
So, but before we let you go, Justin, I wanted to do something with you that I like to do
1:12:01
with some of my guests because I like to get people snap judgments on certain things just
1:12:05
so I can maybe set them up to get in trouble later.
1:12:07
So I can like use their quotes and use them completely out of context.
1:12:11
So it's great fun.
1:12:12
Yeah.
1:12:13
It's great fun for me.
1:12:14
But this is called, what would you say to someone that said, and then I'm just going
1:12:18
to fill in the blanks.
1:12:19
And the thing is, is we got rules here.
1:12:21
You can't answer or your answer can't go over 60 seconds.
1:12:25
Right.
1:12:26
So you just got to get right in, get to the meat of the issue and you just got to give
1:12:30
me a response to what I said, you down for it for 60 seconds is that no, no, no, that
1:12:35
would be super awkward because what'll happen is I will answer for you at that point and
1:12:40
it'll be way worse than if you just answered yourself.
1:12:43
Okay.
1:12:44
Fair.
1:12:45
Well, at least I have a plan B now.
1:12:46
Okay.
1:12:47
Go ahead.
1:12:48
Okay.
1:12:49
That's your plan B. All right.
1:12:50
Here we go.
1:12:51
First one.
1:12:52
What would you say to someone that said the last thing mid need is another guy telling
1:12:53
them to man up.
1:12:54
Oh, I agree 100% you know, it's not about what we do.
1:12:59
It's about what he's doing.
1:13:00
You said it.
1:13:01
Absolutely.
1:13:02
And so we need his grace in our lives to do what we can't do.
1:13:05
So manning up it like there is some truth to it.
1:13:09
There is you know, being a man of integrity, being obedient to God, you know, it's an important
1:13:14
thing, but we can only go so it can only take us so far and it's not very far.
1:13:19
It's really not very far.
1:13:21
We need him working in our lives.
1:13:23
So absolutely.
1:13:24
I think I think that's the last thing we need is another person telling us to man up.
1:13:29
All right.
1:13:30
Next one here.
1:13:31
What would you say to someone that said man has never set foot on the moon?
1:13:34
It's a conspiracy.
1:13:35
I had to get that in.
1:13:38
I got conspiracy.
1:13:39
There's a list in this podcast.
1:13:40
So I had to do it, but go ahead.
1:13:42
Oh my gosh, I think there's plenty of proof.
1:13:45
I think there is plenty of proof that we actually did it.
1:13:47
So I think I think it's fun to have conspiracy theories, but I think there is plenty of proof.
1:13:52
I've talked to men who who, you know, okay, so how would we, you know, the Soviet Jung
1:13:57
and spent as an example, spent, you know, decades trying to pull the wool over the eyes
1:14:02
of their, of, of the people of the world and, and their own people and they don't get away
1:14:06
with it.
1:14:07
Everyone knows when the lie unravels, you know, this one has an unraveled.
1:14:11
It's, it's absolutely true, in my opinion.
1:14:13
Well, it's on the same.
1:14:15
When people say that the US is behind 9/11, just to use the NASA stuff and the Apollo
1:14:20
missions as an example, we're talking about hundreds of thousands of people that would
1:14:25
have to be complicit in it.
1:14:27
And for 50 years, no one has said a word.
1:14:29
I'm sorry.
1:14:30
I've got a conspiracy out there that's going to be pulled off that well.
1:14:32
And you can't also say that the government is highly inept, but they can pull off a conspiracy
1:14:36
like that.
1:14:37
But anyway, I will get off my soapbox.
1:14:39
I'm ruining my own segment.
1:14:40
Here we go.
1:14:41
Next one.
1:14:42
What would you say to someone that said, why read a book when you can listen to one?
1:14:47
Oh, I agree.
1:14:48
I think the audiobook.
1:14:49
So I did the audiobook right before the shelter in place thing came down.
1:14:54
So it's out there and actually it's part of the preorder.
1:14:56
So if men preorder before May 1st, they get a copy of the audiobook for free, but I love
1:15:02
audiobooks.
1:15:03
I just churned through audiobooks.
1:15:04
I probably read 10 times the books in a year, read in air quotes that I would otherwise if
1:15:09
I wasn't listening to audiobooks.
1:15:10
So this one I read myself, which I'm proud of, I had a lot of guys saying, why didn't
1:15:14
you read invention?
1:15:16
And I think I'm actually going to go back and record that.
1:15:18
I had a fantastic guy who did, but it's not the author.
1:15:21
And so I think I'm going to go back and redo that one.
1:15:23
But I agree.
1:15:24
I love audiobooks.
1:15:25
All right, what would you say to someone that said, I don't need to read the Bible.
1:15:30
God has my back.
1:15:31
That's good enough.
1:15:33
Well, it's not good enough.
1:15:37
I mean, the hearts of men, the hearts of women were made to desire him, to want him.
1:15:44
And he gave us one great way to seek him that will always work.
1:15:50
You know, when we go into silence, we don't know if we're going to sense his presence
1:15:53
or not, or whether our mind's going to be moving so quickly that we don't actually slow
1:15:57
down enough to hear him or sense him, or maybe he's not speaking in that moment, but we can
1:16:03
always open up scripture and experience him.
1:16:05
It's the one sure place that we can.
1:16:07
I think the other one that comes close to it is community, you know, like a community
1:16:10
of men who really love God.
1:16:13
That's an amazing one.
1:16:14
You know, Jesus says he's uniquely present when two are more gathered and I've experienced
1:16:18
that so much in my life.
1:16:19
I just think those are two non-negotiables, you know, for me at least.
1:16:23
All right.
1:16:24
Next one here.
1:16:25
What would you say to someone that said, "Pastors don't need to talk about the lion
1:16:28
of Judah.
1:16:29
The lamb of God is just fine."
1:16:32
Oh, that's funny.
1:16:37
Yeah.
1:16:38
I mean, no, I mean, that's not the full story.
1:16:40
Jesus defeated sin and death.
1:16:42
You know, he did come with him with a masculinity and with a strength that was a deeper strength.
1:16:48
You know, I love in, you know, C.S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles, they talk about a deeper
1:16:53
magic that only, that only Azlon knew, you know, and I do believe there's something really
1:16:59
powerful in the way that Jesus brings his power.
1:17:03
And I see it in my own life, you know, mercy and forgiveness are incredibly powerful.
1:17:09
But at the same time, he was fighting, you know, the biggest force of evil in the world
1:17:13
and he defeated it.
1:17:14
So that's not the full story, it's just the lamb.
1:17:17
I certainly agree, this next one's going to be good for our kind of our modern age that
1:17:21
we are in socially.
1:17:22
But what would you say to someone that said, "There is no difference between men and women?"
1:17:27
Oh, gosh, that's, yeah, I don't know how to respond to that.
1:17:33
Well, you're losing time, you only got like 50 seconds left.
1:17:38
I mean, gosh, you know, like, identity is so important, you know, how God created us,
1:17:44
who He created us to be, and He created us with different, you know, roles in the kingdom.
1:17:49
And if we ignore that, if we try to ignore that, you know, we set ourselves up for great
1:17:54
pain and that includes gender type stuff.
1:17:56
And so, yeah, I don't, I think we always need to be going back to God and saying, "Who
1:18:00
did you create me to be?" and asking that question and listening for whatever He says.
1:18:04
He's the one who decides, He's the maker, you know, He's the inventor and worthy invention.
1:18:08
That's the whole, that's the whole point of, if you had to boil down my first book invention,
1:18:13
you know, that's the thing is we need to ask Him, He's the one who decides, not us.
1:18:17
All right, just a couple more here.
1:18:19
What would you say to someone that said, "Why in the world should I read, I'm done with
1:18:23
school?"
1:18:26
These are things that I've heard, these are things that I've heard.
1:18:29
So that's why I'm asking.
1:18:30
Awesome.
1:18:31
I mean, you know, gosh, I can't imagine shutting myself off from the richness of, you know,
1:18:37
the conversations that are happening in the world, a lot through books, you know, I mean,
1:18:41
the great, great issues are debated in books, you know, and so I'm an avid reader.
1:18:47
I always have been.
1:18:48
So I can't imagine like, you know, when John Eldridge's new book came out, you know, get
1:18:52
your life back.
1:18:53
I can't imagine not being a part of that and reading that and bringing that wisdom into
1:18:57
my life.
1:18:58
We're meant to do life together, you know, and you know, I want to be able to learn from
1:19:03
great men and women and they're thinking about, you know, about the world and about God and
1:19:08
about all subjects.
1:19:09
So I think that's crazy to not read.
1:19:12
All right, Justin, last question of the day.
1:19:15
Here we go.
1:19:16
What would you say to someone that said, we should not be encouraging men to be masculine.
1:19:21
Masculinity is toxic.
1:19:23
So I do believe there is toxic masculinity out there.
1:19:26
I think it's something that's perpetuated by the enemy through our culture, though I
1:19:30
don't think it's something that God ever intended.
1:19:33
God intended masculinity, his masculinity is just a, it's a different kind and it actually
1:19:38
takes a lot more courage and a lot more bravery to be a man who's after Jesus and following
1:19:43
Jesus than it does to be a man who's hiding.
1:19:45
You know, the stoic, quiet, you know, a man who's, you know, losing, you know, who's hiding
1:19:53
behind, you know, sexual conquests or alcohol or something like that is just cowardice at
1:20:00
the end of the day.
1:20:01
No, no, I gotta, I gotta be super, you know, there's, there are addictions out there that
1:20:05
I want to be super, you know, kind about the guys are stuck in addictions.
1:20:09
But that is not a picture of masculinity.
1:20:11
That's not something we aspire to.
1:20:13
That's something we aspire to get free from.
1:20:15
We aspire to be Jesus's brand of masculine, which means being vulnerable and being willing
1:20:21
to confess our sins and live in a way that is, that is very scary, but very dangerous.
1:20:26
That's the kind of thing that changes families and changes neighborhoods and changes businesses
1:20:31
and changes the world.
1:20:33
So absolutely we need masculinity, but I'm not advocating for toxic masculinity either,
1:20:38
but that's not, that's not what Jesus is talking about.
1:20:40
It's not what the church should be advocating for you.
1:20:42
Absolutely.
1:20:43
Well, man, we went everywhere in this conversation.
1:20:45
We covered quite a bit of ground spend a lot of time on your new book, which was awesome,
1:20:48
but that is all for me.
1:20:49
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:20:52
So one thing that I just wanted to throw out there, I talked about some, some of the pre-order
1:20:55
items for this book, you know, you get a copy of invention, you get a copy of the audio
1:20:59
book for Odyssey if you pre-order.
1:21:01
But we also are doing a four-part limited series podcast where I talk about the book
1:21:07
in a little more detail.
1:21:08
My wife asked me some questions about it, and we go deeper into some of the themes.
1:21:12
And then I also read out of the book.
1:21:14
So guys are already enjoying that.
1:21:16
The, you know, I'm getting a lot of good feedback from that.
1:21:19
And so just, you know, look for that as well.
1:21:21
It's just like the name of the book is Odyssey and it's by Justin Camp and it's easy to find.
1:21:26
Everywhere where podcasts are listened to.
1:21:28
So that's the only thing I'd throw out there.
1:21:31
Well, excellent.
1:21:32
We'll make sure that all those links are in the show notes and we'll just get it out
1:21:35
to the guys that way.
1:21:36
But aside from that, Justin Camp, thanks for coming on Daunted Life, a man's podcast.
1:21:40
Thank you, Kyle.
1:21:41
I really appreciate it.
1:21:44
There you go, guys.
1:21:47
Thanks so much for tuning in to the entirety of this interview.
1:21:49
We really appreciated everything that Justin had to say.
1:21:52
We're glad to get that information out to you.
1:21:53
All right, guys.
1:21:54
Before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost.
1:21:56
As you know, by now we are men's ministry and our mission is cultivating manly resilience.
1:22:00
Specifically, we do that by providing content like this podcast that forges spiritual, mental
1:22:04
and physical toughness.
1:22:05
So for today, I've got the links for you to the Odyssey book website.
1:22:09
And then I've also got the Odyssey podcast episodes that he had mentioned there at the
1:22:12
end of the podcast.
1:22:13
I've got where you can go and order his book, the new book off of Amazon and his other books
1:22:17
off of Amazon.
1:22:18
Then we've got his website, the Wire for Men website.
1:22:20
So make sure you go in there, get signed up for the devotionals that he puts out.
1:22:23
It's fantastic.
1:22:24
And also I've got a link for the Wire for Men Instagram.
1:22:27
Thank you so much for listening to the podcast, guys.
1:22:28
We really do appreciate it.
1:22:29
If you would, please subscribe on Apple podcasts, iTunes, Spotify, Google podcasts or Stitcher
1:22:34
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1:22:37
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1:22:40
know why you like the content, because that is how this is going to continue to grow and
1:22:43
get out to more guys like you.
1:22:45
I'm currently booking speaking engagements for the entirety of 2020 and the beginning
1:22:48
of 2021.
1:22:49
So if you want me to come speak on your podcast at your men's event, at your company, hit
1:22:52
me up info@undaunted.life again, that's i-n-f-o @undaunted.life.
1:22:57
My website is www.undaunted.life.
1:23:00
You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter @undauntedlife or Facebook.com/undauntedlife.
1:23:05
Check out our free devotionals on the U-version Bible app.
1:23:07
Just search "undaunted life" under plans.
1:23:09
And as always, we want to thank the band August Burns Read for allowing us to use their entire
1:23:12
music library for our content.
1:23:14
The intro I'll to track on this podcast is our song Defender, which is off their latest
1:23:17
record entitled Guardians.
1:23:19
The links to all of this are in the description.
1:23:21
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:23:23
Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual, mental, and physical
1:23:28
toughness, keep seeking the Lion of Judah.
1:23:51
[Music]