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This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast.
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I'm your host Kyle Thompson, let's get into it.
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All right guys, we've got a very special return guest in the show and that is John
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Eldridge.
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So he is a Christian author, counselor, and lecturer and he is the New York Times bestselling
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author of a large number of books, workbooks, and group studies.
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But guys, he has written the seminal work in all of men's ministry and that is the book
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wild at heart.
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And he has a new book out right now called Experience, Jesus, really it's this book right
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here.
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You guys can check that out in the show notes and we're going to be spending a lot of time
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talking specifically about this book today.
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But also you may be familiar with some of his other works, Beautiful Outlaw, Waking the
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Dead, Father by God, resilient and some other books and he has been on this podcast four
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other times.
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Okay, so this is his fifth appearance.
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He's been on podcast 141, 193, 272, and 317.
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But this was a very different conversation from any one of those because the contents
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of his new book were very different, but we didn't start quite with the book.
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We waited about 15 or 20 minutes.
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But at the very beginning, we talked about something that we talked about off air and
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we talked about before.
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It's this kind of misunderstanding of what it means to be a warrior poet, like what exactly
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does that mean?
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And then that kind of dovetailed into our conversation about his new encouragement of
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helping men learn how to become Christian mystics.
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And as soon as you hear something like mystics or mysticism, it's like, wait a minute, wait
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a minute, wait a minute, what exactly were you talking about here?
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So we had to be kind of carefully work through some definitions and kind of know exactly what
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we're talking about.
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But we were talking about specifically how men don't look to find refuge, right?
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They don't look to find refuge in the Lord or refuge in God.
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We're trying to find refuge in ourselves and our own power and our own accomplishments.
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And we don't really like prayer and we don't really like the quiet.
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So we really, really dig into a lot of that.
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We dig into how we are kind of living downstream of the enlightenment and we're disciples of
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the internet and how is that affecting us as it pertains to trying to seek truth.
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But then specifically we got into trauma, like what exactly is God able to do and how
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can he actually heal us using our trauma?
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Then we got into the Decreation of Truth.
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We talked about how Satan's using the Decreation of Truth specifically in the gender revolution
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to really affect with us and mess with us.
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And then we get into a discussion about our essential problem.
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In modernity, we talk about whether or not he thinks we're on the precipice of a true
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capital A awakening and some of the stuff that he's been working on and working on in
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the future.
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So guys don't need to do much more of an intro.
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You know who John is.
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So let's go ahead and get right into it guys.
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Welcome John Eldridge for his fifth appearance back to the podcast without further ado.
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Let's get into it.
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John Eldridge, I would do my normal welcome, which is John Eldridge.
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Welcome back to Endowment Life of Man's podcast and you'd say, oh man, great to be here.
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That's always great.
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So you kind of all that kind of stuff.
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But we've got big news.
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We've got breaking news as of right now.
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This is your fifth appearance on Undaunted Life of Man's podcast.
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I'm pretty sure that's the record aside from, you know, Joby Martin who comes on every month
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and Mark Wayne Moana comes on once a month, but in terms of just normal guests.
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And I don't know if you knew this or not, but your punch card, right?
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To where you get like a free sixth interview just got filled, son, like we don't even have
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to finish this.
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I just punched your fifth ticket.
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How do you feel about that, buddy?
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I'm honored and like it's been so cool to track with you over the years and watch this
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grow and watching you grow Kyle.
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I'm I'm super proud of you, man.
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You're doing great.
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Well, I appreciate you saying that.
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I appreciate getting into all that and we're going to keep the good times rolling, but you
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said something off air and you said something in a previous conversation that you and I had
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and you mentioned like a term or a phrase warrior poet.
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And I've seen that kind of bandied about I've seen people say that the one of the funniest
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things is you got these super aggro guys that will mention something about warrior poet.
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And I think they're just saying it to sound nuanced and sound deep and sound like they've
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got something more than just beef jerky and dip and muddle in their tires.
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But for you, it's it's kind of a different thing, especially talking to my audience because
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there's a lot of cauliflower in my audience, a lot of guys with dirty jiu-jitsu geese in
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the backs of their trucks in my audience.
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And so sometimes we lose the thread on what even what warrior poet even means.
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What does that even attach itself to how we could even try to be that.
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And we'll have some through points in our conversation today when we get to the new book,
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but let's just start there.
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What are your thoughts?
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Yeah, man, this goes way back to my own martial arts training.
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So like the development of the warrior heart is essential in masculine formation is just
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essential, like the courage to push through, you know, hard conversation with your 16 year
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old daughter, right?
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Or the career change, or you just got sacked, you know, that the warrior is what enables
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a man to finish college.
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It's what enables a man to show up, right?
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That's a huge, huge part, but you guys cover that in spades, like that don't, that's your
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guys, that's your vibe.
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What I'm, what I'm aware of right now in the world is there's this, there's this emerging
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masculine movement that is leaving out half of the masculine soul.
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Okay.
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And because you're not just a warrior, right?
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We're not just warriors.
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We're not just adventurers, a George Gilder, the famous sociologist has got a great line.
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He's like, if women didn't show up, we would all be naked nomads.
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Right.
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We, yeah, cause like you get guys, just guys alone, you know, and let's go out and blow
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stuff up and let's go figure out what's on the other side of that mountain and you know,
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that sort of thing.
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But you, you're more than that as a man.
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You have a lover's side, you have a right brain, let's just call it left brain, right
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brain, right?
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And there's the left brain, critical analysis, critical reasoning, give me the content.
6:13
Tell me what to do.
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I'll do it.
6:15
You know, but the right brain is more nuanced than that, and the right brain is intuitive.
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It's instinctive.
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It picks up more subtle messages and a conversation or, or in a situation that I just wanted to
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bring this up early in the show, cause I think this will really help guys with what we want
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to talk about today.
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But I think as we're thinking about becoming more fully developed men, what does that look
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like?
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Well, yeah, you can go out with your, you know, your eight year old son and ride dirt bikes,
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but you also need to be able to take your eight year old daughter out for dinner, right?
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And pursue her heart.
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You got to have a tender side fellas.
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So let me actually dig into that just a little bit more because as I've said, and it's kind
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of like, you know, colloquialism, at least in my world, most, most men's ministries are
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just women's ministries that have been repackaged for men, right?
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That's kind of like, you know, a thing that I say, because we just like force men into
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these naturally feminine circumstances and say, do it, be good at it too.
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And like, and then we, you know, castigate them when they don't do a good job.
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And so we've got the one problem of the default masculine guy that's not really in touch with
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his emotions or the right side of his brain.
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And we kind of need to bring him more to the tender warrior side of things.
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But then at least culturally we see, and certainly in the church, we see a whole lot
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of the default feminine guys that, man, they really enjoy the music, right?
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Cause it's in a key they can sing and it's lyrical content that doesn't really bother
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them, right?
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Because it's, it's okay.
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They love singing about Jesus as like their lover and it's just, and for those guys like,
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they need jujitsu, like they need to be pulled over and it's like, look, killing an animal
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and spreading his blood across your forehead doesn't make you a man, but it's like, there's
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just something different.
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Like, and I mean, that's wild at heart.
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Gosh, we've been talking about this for a quarter of a century at this point.
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And so for the guy, I guess talk to both sides, to the guy that has shut off from the right
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side or to the guy that is just right side, like tell them kind of what needs to happen.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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This is really good.
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Another way to think about it is where is your frontier fellows?
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What's your frontier?
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It's not what you're great at.
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You've got that wired, okay?
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So if you're doing great at, you know, masculine stuff and you feel like you've got the courage
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going and you've, you know, you've got the war you're going, then your frontier is the
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lover.
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And the, yeah, poet, meaning you can also appreciate a mountain lake, like, you know,
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when you're out there, you can also appreciate a sunrise while you're waiting for that bull
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elk to come in.
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I mean, I love my time in the field.
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I love it partly for the adventure, but man, I love the solace of nature, right?
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The wind and the grass, that kind of thing.
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You've got to be a guy who can take that in because that is nourishment.
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That's nourishment for the soul.
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That's his frontier, right?
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If he's only waiting for the bull elk, if he's not happy, if he doesn't get the elk,
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right?
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That's a problem.
9:19
You've got to be able to enjoy the whole experience because hunting's like that, right?
9:24
Yeah.
9:25
Okay.
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But for the guy, what the guy who's been raised in a feminine environment, he's been raised
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in the public education system, let's just call it, okay?
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His frontier is the warrior.
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He's got to develop the warrior in him and part of what we've told man, and this is what
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you guys have been pushing back against beautifully, is for about 40 years now, we've been telling
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men aggression is wrong.
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Just period as a category, it's wrong.
9:58
And so this guy doesn't understand that that anger that shows up in him sometimes at unrighteous
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stuff, the crazy things going on in the news, that thing in him that he's like, yeah, man,
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that's good.
10:12
That is the emerging warrior in you.
10:15
So for him, frontier, right, it is to, yeah, maybe he doesn't need to go to a dogeo.
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Maybe he just needs to go down to the Y and play hoops with some guys because you get
10:27
in a little game, right?
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And that warrior is going to come out, the competitive part of him, right?
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Or I'm going to start a company, I'm going to finally do it, I'm going to start my own
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thing.
10:37
That's the warrior.
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So we're just saying, where's your frontier fellas?
10:41
I think that's a good way of looking at it because as soon as you couch it that way, guys
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automatically know, like they don't need the deep dive, they don't need a shrink to walk
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them through.
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They know what their frontier is.
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They've just been avoiding it.
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And so speaking of avoiding things, let me bring up something that I've been avoiding.
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So I'm pretty certain I haven't mentioned this on the show.
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I mean, I've done over 700 of these.
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So perhaps it's slipped out of my mouth at some point, but in general, this goes back
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to something that you just said about being able to appreciate, you know, a mountain stream
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or appreciate the hunt, like even if you don't get the animal, I am terrified of silence,
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like terrified of it.
11:20
And I use that non hyperbolicly.
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And I think guys understand what I'm saying because when things are silent, right, I don't
11:27
like what goes on in my head.
11:29
I've talked about me having kind of like a sometimes my stream of consciousness can be
11:33
pretty rough, but like my internal dialogue is really bad.
11:37
Like I tried to explain this to a buddy of mine who's a licensed family therapist and
11:40
counselor because he was trying to make a point and he goes, Kyle, you don't walk into
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a jiu-jitsu tournament and expect to lose every match.
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Do you?
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And I go, yeah, yeah, that's precisely what I think.
11:49
I think I'm going to be choked unconscious and dropped in front of my weeping mother.
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That's what I think is going to happen.
11:55
But I train like a madman to prevent the ultimate stick, right?
12:00
I'm not really cared.
12:01
I'm way more on the stick side.
12:03
And so when things get quiet for me, right before I fall asleep or when you're on that
12:07
hunt and all that, I don't like the stuff that's going on.
12:10
So I've got these, you know, what's in my ears right now, my air pods and I'm constantly
12:14
consuming content because that's part of my job, right?
12:16
So I can obviously, you know, quantify it and I do all these different things.
12:21
But I think there are a lot of guys that are in my role.
12:23
Some guys just like the peace and quiet.
12:25
And for the other guys, when it's quiet, there is no peace.
12:27
So talk to me a little bit about that.
12:29
Yeah, so guys, you live in a world that is savage on the human soul.
12:36
It's just savage, the exposure to the content, the constant assault on your values, your
12:46
concern for your kids, what they're learning in school, all of that like this, guys, this
12:50
is a savage hour on the human soul.
12:55
And you have got to take that seriously, so this is the poet's side, okay, it's warrior
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poet.
13:01
The care of your soul matters.
13:05
You can't just live on adrenaline, right?
13:08
And we all fear the quiet and it's not just the quiet, we fear it's the aloneness, right?
13:15
Because if you're sitting with another guy in a duck blind, you're actually going to
13:19
be okay, right?
13:20
If you're just dead silent, you're still going to be okay, right?
13:24
If you're sitting in that duck blind alone, that's the scary stuff, okay.
13:30
Because your soul needs care, there's fear down in there, there's self-hatred down in
13:38
there.
13:39
And you can't, okay, this is the exact thing.
13:41
So why am I wearing a jacket this morning?
13:43
Everybody's going, why is town sitting in it?
13:46
Three layers in his home office, because I cold plunge this morning and I can't get
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warm, I can't get warm.
13:56
Why do we cold plunge, right?
13:58
It's to push our bodies, it's to push, you know, our brain, it's to develop that part
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of us that says choosing to do hard things is good for you, right?
14:10
Like it develops resilience, which is one of your favorite words.
14:15
Okay, the same holds true with pushing into your inner unhealed places.
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It's the exact same courage, it's the exact same choice.
14:27
You're like, I don't want to do this.
14:29
I don't want to head there, but like this is my frontier, man, I got to finally face
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my rage.
14:36
I got to finally face my fears, you know, because a fascinating thing, like I've counseled
14:43
a lot of dudes over the years, right?
14:45
I've had a career as a therapist from 40 years now, and I sat with fighter pilots.
14:52
I sat with seal team guys who are scared of their wives and you're like, you are a man's
15:02
man, like you have seen things I have not seen.
15:06
What do you mean?
15:07
Well, that's his frontier because down in there are these unhealed places.
15:14
And guys, this isn't soft woo woo stuff, right?
15:17
This isn't just therapeutic culture kind of thing.
15:20
If your soul is not well, you're going to blow up at your kids, right?
15:26
You're going to take a long lingering look at your personal assistant and think, hey,
15:31
you know, maybe maybe a little bit of something that would be good.
15:34
You're going to blow your life up fellas.
15:36
This is bottom line is this.
15:38
So we call plunge, right?
15:41
We get out in the woods.
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We ride our bikes.
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We do the things we do.
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We work out.
15:45
It's the exact same courage to go, okay?
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Time to face my inner dialogue.
15:55
So with that, I've learned about the interior mid-singula cortex.
15:59
That's the part of your brain that atrophies if you give in to your wimpy desires, which
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is to not do the hard thing.
16:06
And so it's like, but there's a delineation.
16:09
So the anterior mid-singula cortex will not grow if you're doing something hard that you
16:13
want to do.
16:14
So some of you love deadlifting.
16:16
It's like your favorite.
16:17
It's really, really hard, but you love it.
16:19
Your anterior mid-singula cortex isn't going to grow because you want to do it.
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Not more.
16:24
It was growing in the beginning.
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Right.
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Right.
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It was growing in the beginning when you were learning form, when you were sore all the
16:29
time before you had your grips figured out and before all that.
16:32
Cold plunge is one of those things that pretty much no matter how often you do it, every
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time you look at the cold water, you're like, "I hate you when you don't want to do it."
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But then when you get in, that part of your brain will grow and develop.
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But I want to take that thread just a little bit further.
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And hopefully this is okay.
16:47
We'll certainly get into the new book.
16:48
I think all this is super relatable.
16:50
It's not just that I'm scared of what I'm going to think in the dark.
16:56
I'm getting real honest with everybody here, okay?
16:58
So John's pulling it out of me, so if you don't like it, blame John.
17:03
It's not just that I'm afraid of what's going on in the silence and what's going on in between
17:07
my ears.
17:08
I am actually, I think, terrified of what God's going to tell me.
17:12
Like I think I'm terrified of God saying, "Hey, you know you got to do this," right?
17:17
Because I feel like God talks to me as a matter of fact.
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It's not like, "My son, I am calling you to this thing."
17:23
It's just like, "Hey, man, hey, you know you got to do this," right?
17:27
So how that works out in my life though, I will have times where, so last night's perfect
17:32
example.
17:33
It takes me a while to set up, but I want guys to really understand this so that they
17:36
know they're not crazy.
17:37
So I'm walking through the bedroom.
17:40
My wife's kind of chilled out for the night, but I got a lot more stuff to do because we
17:43
got some things coming up and I got some boxes that need to be checked.
17:46
But I heard it like a clarion call.
17:49
I heard, "Go ahead and get some of her fancy foot lotion and, you know, rubber feet."
17:55
Just real quick.
17:56
It's like a two or three minute thing.
17:58
And so I go over and I grab, you know, the fancy, whatever, you know, stuff for, you
18:02
know, Ryan Oster's feet or whatever these women are buying.
18:05
And then I just put some on my hands and I rubber feet for a second and it was just
18:08
a nice moment.
18:09
So I feel like the Holy Spirit will just tell me something and I know I need to do it.
18:13
And so I've just gotten in this habit of like, "All right, cool.
18:15
Like I'll just do it."
18:16
And so I feel like, I don't feel like God is just waiting to smite me, like whenever
18:21
I finally get quiet enough for him to say something, but I think there are a lot of guys
18:25
out there.
18:26
People struggle with prayer.
18:27
They're terrified of what that looks like.
18:28
It's not because they don't have time, John, right?
18:31
They can drive down the truck, you know, without turning on the pot or drive down the road
18:34
and their truck without turning on the podcast or the music or something like that.
18:37
And they can just talk to God like he's in the pastor's seat, but we don't do it.
18:40
I think that's an element of it.
18:41
We're terrified of what he's going to say.
18:43
Yeah.
18:44
Yeah.
18:45
And I want to say that gentle nudging, that's a great story because if you ignore that gentle
18:50
nudging over and over again, you grow numb to it fellas.
18:54
And you do not want to grow numb to it.
18:57
God does not like to shout guys.
18:59
And he doesn't like to cause, you know, people talk about, oh, the Lord just has to hit me
19:04
over the head with a two by four fellas.
19:07
That's horrible.
19:09
You do not want to be the guy that he has to clobber to get your attention.
19:14
And so this is the same warrior point thing, the cultivating the subtleness of your awareness,
19:23
right, to those small nudges, builds your ability to hear them next time and next time
19:33
and next time.
19:34
If you keep shutting that stuff down, you know, and you just look at this is all, yeah, guys,
19:40
the spiritual life is every man's frontier, but you're not alone in that.
19:47
You are not alone in that.
19:48
You read the stories of the Old Testament, the New Testament, Paul's life, man.
19:52
It's crazy three shipwrecks, you know, stoned in a city thought he was dead.
19:57
They got to let him down in another story out the window by a rope.
20:01
He's like, I was in danger in the countryside.
20:03
I was in danger in the city.
20:04
I was in danger from my own people and in danger from the Gentiles like life with God
20:10
is wild fellas.
20:13
And yeah, we fear that.
20:15
And here's why.
20:16
In line, what we're talking about is men like control because we feel strong, okay?
20:23
So when I'm in control of my finances, I feel good, right?
20:26
When I've got my truck running right, I feel so good.
20:30
When we got control of the situation, we love it.
20:33
We know we can't control God.
20:37
So this is this is every man's experience.
20:39
This is every man's frontier.
20:41
It's okay, you're not a screw up because that's true for you.
20:47
But just like you want to push into, you know, if you're, you know, you're benching and you
20:52
want to up, you know, how much you can live, like every man needs to push into his spiritual
20:59
frontier as well.
21:02
That's all we're saying.
21:03
Hey guys, real quick, a consistent question that I am asked is Kyle, what is your diet?
21:08
I don't want to know if I'm tracking macros or if I'm doing keto or something like that,
21:12
but I track one thing.
21:13
I try to get one gram of high quality protein for every pound of body weight.
21:18
And so for me, I eat red meat every single day, pretty much for lunch.
21:22
I eat a pound of red meat every single day to get over a hundred grams of high quality
21:26
protein.
21:27
And guys, I want you to be able to get the same thing for you and your diet.
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22:47
And I think men can wrap their heads around, I want a bigger bench number.
22:53
And so here's what I need to get there.
22:54
And I even, you know, I've talked to guys about, okay, they've got a.
22:59
So during COVID, I did all my one rep maxes and my one set max is just to see, because
23:04
everyone's bored.
23:05
I got a home gym.
23:06
And so it's like, how many pool is going to do once and how many pushups?
23:08
Like my one rep squad, one rep bench.
23:10
And so my one rep deadlift was 450.
23:13
And I was like, but 500 is a cooler number than 450.
23:16
And then I started doing a little bit of research at what it would take to get from 450
23:21
to 500.
23:22
Yeah.
23:23
And what it would have taken is a complete shift in how I approach fitness and really
23:28
overall health.
23:29
And I was like, that's not worth it.
23:32
Adding another 50 pounds to my dad, John, I work out alone.
23:34
I don't do lifting competitions.
23:36
I don't, I'm not looking, lifting to show off to Jim bros or a Jim crush or something
23:40
like that.
23:41
I lift alone, like in my garage, do you know who will be excited by that number, a grand
23:45
total of no one other than me.
23:47
And it was like, man, the juice and squeeze ratio is just way, way off here.
23:52
And I think all this really does dovetail into the new book, because when you, when you
23:56
pitched me the new book, I was like, John, like help me out here.
24:00
Like, you know, you do kind of realize my audience and all that because if you don't
24:04
know, it is out now, guys, you can check it out.
24:06
It's in the show notes.
24:07
It's called experience.
24:08
Jesus.
24:09
Paul's really finding refuge, strength and wonder through every day encounters with God.
24:15
Now normally I would ask you, you know, why this book, why now, why you, but it's what
24:19
you wanted to call this book that you chose not to, that kind of piqued my interest and
24:24
kind of hurt, gave me a, not a little bit of pause.
24:27
I was going to read it regardless, but it just kind of caught me a scant, if you will.
24:31
So let's start there.
24:32
Yeah.
24:33
I wanted to call it ordinary mystics.
24:34
Yeah.
24:35
And I mean, to anyone in our audience, they're just like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
24:39
What's happened to John?
24:40
Yeah.
24:41
And I knew, I knew that people would just freak out at that.
24:45
And I don't want to lose the conversation till it, you know, before it even gets started.
24:49
But so the thing is, this is like really, really basic stuff.
24:53
You just, again, you go back through this remarkable record, Old Testament, New Testament
24:57
down through the history.
24:58
When God gets ahold of men, he almost always takes them into adventure.
25:03
It's always frontier.
25:04
It's like, Hey, Abraham, I knew you got this really comfortable thing going on and her,
25:09
but you're leaving tomorrow, right?
25:12
For a place you never even been before.
25:14
And then he'll do that with a guy and say, I know you love, you know, your PhD and I
25:17
know you love what you're doing in physics right now.
25:20
Time to go.
25:21
You're going to change jobs.
25:22
I'm going to have you do something brand new.
25:23
Okay.
25:24
He always does this.
25:25
He, he invites men into adventure.
25:28
What's missing in the current cultural moment, oh my gosh, we just have this massive left
25:35
brain approach to spirituality.
25:39
And it's just content.
25:41
Give me the great content.
25:42
Show me the cool video.
25:43
I need to hear the who's got the killer sermon this week.
25:46
And that's all good.
25:48
And I listened to those guys and I love that.
25:50
But it's not the same thing as encounter experience.
25:56
Okay.
25:57
So here's a story.
25:58
So we're both hunting elk a couple of years ago in a canyon that I know pretty well.
26:03
So I kind of know the terrain.
26:04
I know how the elk behave and it's late afternoon, but it's not time for anything to start happening,
26:09
right?
26:10
The magic's not going to happen yet.
26:12
And I'm laying in the field in the sun, just like kind of napping, but also listening.
26:16
So I'm laying there and God says to me, get up.
26:19
I'm like, what?
26:20
He's like, get up and get over there now.
26:23
And what I do is I position myself right on the edge of the canyon and listen for the
26:27
movement.
26:28
And now, okay.
26:29
So I hear the herd bull gets the whole herd up and he moves them out of the canyon.
26:36
That was not the plan.
26:37
I'm in the meadow.
26:38
They're supposed to come up and feed him, right?
26:40
So I'm in the ambush spot.
26:42
They're gone.
26:43
And here's what God says.
26:44
He says, get in the woods.
26:47
I'm like, look, I love you and I trust you.
26:51
But did you notice the woods are empty now?
26:54
Like they're gone, Papa, you know, he's like, get in the woods.
26:58
And I just learned, okay, right?
27:01
Follow the nudge.
27:02
So I go down and get in the woods, getting up in an ambush position.
27:06
The entire herd turns around and comes back into the woods and I nail, I nail it out.
27:14
Okay.
27:15
Like, encounter, right?
27:18
Like if guys begin to have actual experience of God, it changes the whole playing field.
27:25
He's not just a theory anymore.
27:27
He's not just like get your morals together, you know, quit masturbating or whatever.
27:32
You're like, oh, no, no, like I'm beginning to know God, like I know what he's like and
27:36
no one he's around.
27:37
I know when he's urging me to do something.
27:41
A lot of times the urging is joy fellas, like that was a joy to go kill that elk, you
27:46
know?
27:47
And I was just following an encounter with God.
27:51
And that's really a big theme of the first chapters where you talk about, hey, we need
27:54
daily encounters with Jesus, but to back up just a hair before we dig in even further,
27:59
when people hear the word mystic, we don't know what that means, but we don't like it,
28:04
right?
28:05
It's kind of one of those words.
28:06
You know, he's very, very cautious about putting the word Christian in front of a weird word.
28:11
So like I'm a Christian, whatever.
28:13
And so insert, you know, weird word here.
28:15
But in the book, you do try to make a delineating point between, okay, this is what a mystic
28:19
is.
28:20
This is what we generally understand is mystic.
28:23
And here's what a Christian mystic is because some people will hear that John and be like,
28:28
wait, are you saying be a Christian Buddhist?
28:30
Are you saying being Christian new age?
28:32
Are you saying being Christian, anyagram lover?
28:35
Like what they're going to be like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, there's
28:38
some, there's some issues here.
28:39
So let's, let's just define some terms here so that we can move forward.
28:42
Yeah.
28:43
No, no, no, Kyle, I'm doing it for exactly that reaction.
28:46
I'm doing it for the wait, what?
28:48
Because this is all white noise now.
28:50
Come on, guys, we are, if you live in the developed world and you're, you know, doing
28:54
anything in faith or church like you, you are, you are about white noise of Christian content.
29:01
And it's all pretty much the same, say your prayers, don't cheat on your wife, kind of
29:07
come help us out at church, you know, it's white noise for most guys now.
29:11
You throw a word in there like mystics and they're like, whoa, wait a second.
29:15
But fellas, just so you know, you go back into the history of the church and of men and
29:22
women who walk with God, there's this whole line of people from Martin Luther to Thomas
29:28
Aquinas to, you know, St. John across all these guys all the way back to St. Anthony.
29:34
St. Anthony's life is wild, you guys, he was the first desert father.
29:38
He leaves, you know, he goes out in the wilderness and he lives in this abandoned castle.
29:44
His life is crazy stories with God.
29:47
Other people called them mystics.
29:50
And it was a term of reverence at one point, you just substitute really deep person who
29:58
knows God.
30:00
You substitute saint, like somebody who's like, come in, their life is just so awesome.
30:08
And their character is awesome.
30:10
That's what mystics used to mean.
30:11
Now it means woo-woo, right?
30:13
It's like, let's go in the woods and, you know, do some ayahuasca or something like that
30:17
and, you know, trip out and find spirituality.
30:20
I'm trying to take the word back because what mystic invites us into is the poet side of
30:28
the warrior poet.
30:30
That's what I'm after, right?
30:31
I'm after a more fully developed man and a more fully developed experience of God.
30:39
And so one of the lines you draw as a straight line is like, okay, when you unlock being
30:45
a mystic and I want to be careful not mysticism, but when you unlock becoming a mystic, okay?
30:50
It does lead you to the opportunity to find refuge.
30:56
If there was one word that I would use, actually, John, to really define what this book is,
31:00
I wouldn't use mystic, I would use refuge, okay, because that comes up a whole lot in
31:05
the book.
31:06
In chapter three, you talk about, well, you had a buddy that you brought up in the book
31:10
and this buddy, you know, you're kind of saying some of the things that you've said right now,
31:14
but he's like me.
31:15
He's highly conscientious.
31:17
He's also highly open.
31:18
He's a get it done or we don't just get it done, John.
31:20
We get it done early and it's fantastic, right?
31:23
That that's kind of who we are.
31:24
And that guy's like, great, great, John.
31:26
So practically speaking, just how do I do that?
31:29
Like just tell me, give me the steps, give me the 12 steps to the, to the whatever end
31:33
that I need.
31:34
You just tell me how I need to love God, like let's make it really pragmatic.
31:38
How do I take refuge in him in three easy steps?
31:40
I think part of the reason is personality.
31:43
Part of the reason is we've been marinating in this culture of self help and self help
31:46
has to have steps to the end because if you're on step three and there's seven steps, well,
31:50
we got to keep going, right?
31:51
And also modern TED talkie preachers.
31:54
It's not expositorly going one verse, you know, at a time through the Bible.
31:59
It's live your best life now.
32:01
And here's five ways to do it.
32:02
Here's our new series.
32:03
It's five weeks long.
32:04
We're going to teach you how to be a, you know, whatever superstar, Christian superstar
32:07
or something like that.
32:08
And so we're just, we're being marinated in, in this type of ideology and it leads to
32:13
the issue.
32:14
Talk to me about how that, you know, kind of tapping in more with the mystic side that
32:18
that could help you gain the refuge that we so desperately need.
32:21
Yeah.
32:22
Yeah.
32:23
I chose refuge.
32:24
Refuge was going to be the original title of the book, even before ordinary mystics.
32:27
Okay.
32:28
Because it is a lot about, um, you remember as a boy, how much you loved forts.
32:34
Sure.
32:35
Yeah.
32:36
Oh, yeah, man.
32:37
We dig holes.
32:38
We build tree houses or you just get out in the woods and I still run into these all
32:41
the time when I'm in the woods near our house.
32:43
Um, some group of little boys have built a teepee, you know, some little group of boys
32:47
have built a little blind that the idea is every human soul needs to have that place
32:54
that they go where it's not constant war, right?
32:58
Where it's not just on hyper vigilance, you know, everything's up to me.
33:03
Where do you go to experience soul 91?
33:07
He who dwells in the shelter, the fort of the most high will rest in the shadow of the
33:17
almighty.
33:19
Every human soul needs that.
33:20
And I mean, every guy will tell you, this is the, okay, I'm going to go off on the workout
33:24
thing.
33:25
So what you learned about lifting and everything else physically is that recovery is more important
33:33
than training.
33:34
Yeah.
33:35
It's like steroids.
33:36
That's what recovery is.
33:37
It's steroids.
33:38
Yeah.
33:39
Exactly.
33:40
If you don't recover, if you don't sleep, eat, rest and not workout, then you won't, you
33:45
won't, you won't, you'll start actually losing the amount that you can, you can vent.
33:49
Okay.
33:50
The soul is the same.
33:51
The soul needs a place of refuge.
33:55
And for centuries, you guys like David, who is a major warrior poet, says God, I have learned
34:03
to experience your presence as a kind of refuge, a kind of fortress around me.
34:11
When I get into that actual experience of your presence, my hyper vigilance comes down
34:18
and I just get to breathe and I get to recover again.
34:23
Well, you don't get there with this high left brain, give me the four steps thing, right?
34:30
You get there with the spiritual frontier.
34:32
You are talking about, I've got to go into the silence.
34:36
I've got to go into the quiet.
34:38
I've got to practice brother Lawrence, that famous Carmelite monk.
34:43
He said, learn to practice the presence of God.
34:48
Okay.
34:49
Now, let me tell you a little bit about brother Lawrence because he's a fascinating guy.
34:51
He was injured in war.
34:53
He was not a monk and not even into his adult life.
34:56
He was injured in battle.
34:58
He had a limp for the rest of his life, took out part of his foot and his leg.
35:03
And then coming out of the trauma, see, this is so huge, Kyle, because he comes out of
35:09
trauma and he says, no, it can't just be war.
35:14
I have to find a refuge.
35:17
So he balances his life and he learns to practice the presence of God.
35:25
Okay.
35:26
That's what we're after.
35:27
That refuge means it's the shelter of God's presence and guys, this is five minutes in
35:32
a quiet morning.
35:33
We're not talking about, leave your job, leave your world, go be a monk.
35:38
There is a way of shutting down the noise and just learning to, well, listen to the
35:45
little nudge that you were talking about.
35:48
You listen to the little nudge and the little nudge is going to invite you into shelter
35:54
in God.
35:56
And so I think part of our struggle, John, is obviously we're living in this post enlightenment
36:01
world where we can't take the writings of people 2,000 years ago that we're in an oral
36:07
culture.
36:08
We can't take those seriously.
36:09
It's chronological snobbery.
36:10
C.S.
36:11
Lewis talked about it.
36:12
But also you talk about early in the book about we're disciples of the internet and so
36:15
that causes its own myriad of issues in terms of distractions, in terms of how we're, we
36:19
don't just want the information.
36:20
We don't just want to earn it.
36:21
We want it right now.
36:22
And we want to just like ask, you know, Siri on our phone to do it.
36:25
You brought up the word trauma.
36:26
So later in the book, chapter 11, you get into trauma a little bit.
36:30
I want to read a quote from chapter 11 here, "I've made intentional references to trauma
36:35
throughout the preceding chapters because I do believe that humanity's deepest need is
36:39
to find how union with God can address even our trauma."
36:45
This is the epicenter of the book.
36:48
So here we are 11 chapters into the book.
36:51
Sorry.
36:52
Excuse me.
36:53
We're talking like, hey, guys, it's almost like your coach moment, like, hey, guys,
36:57
come in here.
36:58
If you only hear one thing about what we need to do in this next play, like shut everything
37:02
else out.
37:03
Listen to this.
37:04
Why is trauma the epicenter?
37:05
Why is that point the epicenter?
37:06
Okay.
37:07
So you've got a lot of first responders that listen to you.
37:11
You've got a lot of guys who either in or coming out of military careers.
37:15
They know exactly what I'm talking about.
37:19
When you see stuff, when you experience stuff, when somebody breaks in your house, yeah,
37:25
you may handle the moment, but afterwards it lingers in the soul and then the neuroscience.
37:34
It literally fragments, right, the hemispheres of the brain.
37:37
Your brain stops talking to it, so trauma is the major issue in the world today.
37:45
Kyle, did you know that when after 9/11, they did a survey of PTSD and they discovered
37:55
that men and women who watched it live on screen had the same PTSD as those who were
38:02
there in New York and you're like, what?
38:05
That's Jack.
38:06
No, no, no, guys.
38:07
When you get on the news every day and you're exposed to all this horrible stuff and this
38:11
stuff that just infuriates you, that affects you.
38:16
Okay, so I'm so glad you brought up the trauma piece because this is the really, really simple
38:22
part of it all.
38:24
The soul is healed through union with God.
38:30
You are half of being.
38:32
You are literally created to be an union, like an ontological, existential, actual union
38:41
with the soul of God, his soul, your soul, his heart, your heart, his mind, your mind,
38:46
that that union heals trauma.
38:52
And this is really good news because I mean, not every dude's got $10,000 in two years
38:57
and a famous New York therapist, right?
39:00
Like you can't just tell people, get a bunch of money and get to an expert and maybe you'll
39:05
get better, right?
39:06
That's horrible, right?
39:08
The gospel, the good news is that as you cultivate union with God, your father, your son, Holy
39:18
Spirit, Jesus, Holy Spirit, he is able to heal trauma.
39:25
So if you go back and listen to my story, best man in my wedding, dead, first business
39:31
partner, dead, best friend for 40 years dead, all of the close men in my life have been killed.
39:44
That's trauma.
39:46
And if you don't address that, and again, all your guys who have seen it, been there, experienced
39:52
it, know exactly the thing is, you will start drinking.
39:56
You'll use fentanyl, you'll start having affairs, you'll be deep, deep, deep in the porn because
40:02
the soul can't just hold this stuff.
40:06
If you don't address the care of the soul, fellas, you're going to blow your life up.
40:12
You're going to go medicating and then the medicating is going to take you down.
40:17
So sometimes my inbox can be a little terrifying because I have no idea what type of a message
40:25
I'm about to read and some of the stuff that I've been burdened with and I don't guys keep
40:31
sending them to me.
40:32
I'm not saying stop it.
40:33
But when I look at my email inbox or my DM, sometimes just like, Oh my gosh, like what
40:38
when the world's going on, I got a terrifying message from a woman that she knows that her
40:44
husband has, you know, access to me and she's like, here's some of the things my husband
40:48
is saying to me and here's some of the things he's doing to me in my sleep.
40:52
And I'm like, Oh my, oh my gosh.
40:54
And like, you know, you bring your own wife into it to say, Hey, you know, and there's
40:59
all these burdens.
41:01
And what I, what I naturally default to John is, okay, here's what you need to do.
41:06
It's not, here's the rest you need to find in the Lord.
41:09
Here's the refuge.
41:10
You need to find you to do whatever.
41:13
Cause a lot of guys are like, you know, again, I just railed against this a second ago, but
41:16
guys aren't coming to me to vent necessarily.
41:19
They're coming to me for help.
41:21
And I'm a helper.
41:22
Right.
41:23
So if you fought your wheelchair, I'm not going to give you an anecdote about the importance
41:25
of getting back up.
41:26
I'm going to help you get back in your wheelchair.
41:28
You know what I mean?
41:29
And so at risk of violating something that you said early in your book to the man that
41:34
is about to blow their life up, maybe they're even thinking about it.
41:39
They're thinking about getting back into porn, even though they got a licked, they're thinking,
41:42
you know, terrible pun intended, non, no pun intended to their, or they're thinking about
41:46
blowing up their life within a fair blown up their life with some sort of substance abuse
41:49
or something like that.
41:52
What do they need to do in that moment?
41:54
Because you're saying, Hey, they need to address it.
41:56
They need to address it.
41:57
We're all in agreement.
41:58
How?
41:59
Okay.
42:00
Revelation, Jesus gives this amazing invitation.
42:04
He says, I'm knocking open the door of your soul.
42:09
I'll commit.
42:10
What we mistake is he's knocking through the pain.
42:14
He's not knocking through the gentle worship song.
42:16
He's now knocking through the lovely service.
42:19
He's knocking through your rage that's out of control.
42:23
He is using the crisis to say, let me in to that particular part of your soul.
42:30
Because what a doodle do, you know, we all do this.
42:33
We're like, yeah, God, I'm in.
42:34
I'm in.
42:35
I want to be a good man.
42:36
I want to be a good father.
42:38
But there are pockets, places, rooms, memories that we have not given him access to.
42:45
We're like, Oh, no way, not that.
42:46
I'm not.
42:47
No way.
42:48
And he's like, Yeah, well, that's what you're going to that'll blow up your life, right?
42:52
So he's knocking through the pain, the fear, the addiction.
42:57
He's knocking through all your medicating and he's saying, give me access to that part
43:04
of your unhealed soul.
43:05
All right.
43:06
And this is that we're talking frontier courage risk.
43:10
This is it man.
43:11
This is the scary stuff on the planet.
43:13
And all it takes fellas is you go, I'm desperate, God, absolutely.
43:18
I opened this door to you.
43:19
Please come into my rage.
43:21
Please come into my sexuality.
43:24
Please come into my trauma and fellas.
43:29
This is why we're talking about being mystics.
43:31
This isn't principles and tips and techniques, the living God will walk into your soul.
43:39
He will.
43:40
And when he's in there, the healing can really get done.
43:45
And in all of that as well, John, there has to be a seeking of capital T truth, not my
43:52
truth, not whatever my lived experience has told me, but a capital T truth.
43:57
And so let's just park in chapter 11, a chapter 11 is probably worth the price of admission
44:01
for a lot of these guys, because you talk about the de creation of truth.
44:05
So let me read a decent size quote here, Satan unmakes or de creates the truth when he tells
44:10
a lie.
44:11
This is how the entire spiral of de creation began for when Adam and Eve believed the lie
44:15
and followed it, all creation was plunged into de creation.
44:19
I could be wrong, but it appears to me that this process of the unmaking of God's beautiful
44:23
creation was intensified and accelerated in this hour.
44:27
Mental health services are out an all time high.
44:29
However, before have so many resources been available and yet are nowhere near catching
44:33
up to the global need, or we could point to the deconstructing so many young people have
44:38
done with their faith.
44:39
The problem is if you have gone on to reconstruct it, they are wandering outside the refuge refuge
44:46
again of God in the twilight of unbelief and despair.
44:51
John, we've had people in this show that have talked about the deconstruction movement.
44:54
You're exactly right, we're always encouraged to deconstruct, to really get to bedrock with
44:59
the intentions of building things back up, but then we just end up having a destroyed
45:03
house and no shelter at the end of all this rainbow.
45:06
So talk to me about kind of the nefarious ends of kind of this de creation movement that
45:12
we've all been experiencing.
45:13
Oh, yeah.
45:14
Look what's happening to gender.
45:15
Come on, you know, the gender dysphoria thing that so many young people are in.
45:20
And for them guys, it's full on real, like it, you know, they're actually questioning
45:25
literally like their creation, their created nature, okay.
45:33
You were talking about truth and refuge.
45:36
So you listen, well, you go back to Psalm 91 and you listen to David in all of his refuge
45:42
psalms.
45:43
He did not write Psalm 91, we don't know who wrote it, but they say things like this.
45:49
I will say of the Lord, you are my refuge of my fortress.
45:54
You are my refuge in my fortress because the therapeutic culture has taught us that your
46:00
feelings determine your reality, okay.
46:04
So if, if you feel like you want to have sex with that woman that you're not married to,
46:08
you go, Oh my gosh, I must want that.
46:11
That may be the enemy, man, in trying to tempt you to blow your life up.
46:15
Okay, feeling safe and being safe for not necessarily same thing, right?
46:21
I mean, I have friends who have fear of heights.
46:24
And I forget that when we're hiking and I'll walk over to the edge of something and look
46:27
down and they're like, dude, dude, dude, you know, back up, okay, he's perfectly safe.
46:33
He's 15 feet back from the edge, but he doesn't feel safe.
46:37
Well, that's is where truth comes in.
46:40
You may not feel loved by God.
46:42
You may not feel forgiven, but you have to start with the truth.
46:46
If you're going to make any headway here, you go, no, you are loved.
46:50
You are forgiven.
46:52
That's not negotiable, okay?
46:54
You are loved.
46:55
You are forgiven and that's taking refuge in the truth.
47:00
You begin to let it build your reality around you so that your feelings don't just keep
47:06
taking you on the roller coaster ride.
47:09
I think you're absolutely right because we live in this moment where your feelings,
47:13
especially if you scream them, have to be justified because why would you otherwise scream?
47:17
You know, that's just kind of this thing.
47:18
It's like your level of outrage is supposed to somehow equal your level of rightness,
47:22
which obviously if you're intellectually honest, it's not something that you can do, but I'm
47:25
going to go even a little bit deeper into the attack on truth.
47:28
Again, I'll go back to a quote from chapter 11.
47:31
This is a tender subject for many, sometimes heartbreaking, but it's important that we look
47:34
at the unmaking of gender because gender is named in Genesis as essential to human dignity.
47:40
It is core to how we bear the image of God.
47:42
So God created mankind in his own image in the image of God.
47:45
He created them, male and female.
47:47
He created them, Genesis 127.
47:49
When we see so many young people questioning their gender, when we beholden the gender
47:53
to encourage the dismantling of gender, we see a kind of unmaking here as well, the dismantling
47:59
of the image of God in humanity, the creation has reached the epicenter.
48:03
So I forget whose quote it is, it may be a Chesterton or somebody.
48:07
But it was like, when people stop believing in God, it's not that they believe in nothing,
48:11
it's that they'll believe anything.
48:13
So if you're going to attack truth, there is no more fundamental truth.
48:18
So let's take a currently secular, very, very popular clinical psychologist, Jordan Peterson.
48:23
And again, this kind of goes against young earth and all that, but that's not really
48:26
the point.
48:27
Like gender, like the dimorphism of animals, specifically mammals is older than old.
48:35
It's older than anything because we don't have the propagation of any species unless
48:40
you have male gametes and female gametes.
48:42
Like that's, that's just kind of technical.
48:44
So if you can destroy that thought process in the mind of a human being, there is nothing
48:52
that you won't be able to convince them.
48:54
If you can convince them that a little boy actually is a little girl because here's the
48:58
other thing that they don't want to explain.
49:00
Well, if they just are a little girl, there's no need for the hormones are there.
49:04
There's no need for the scalpels are there because in that moment, they don't need to
49:09
have breast tissue put into them or taken off of their body.
49:13
They just are what they are.
49:15
Okay.
49:16
Same reason.
49:17
If I tell you I'm a ficus, that just means you need to water me.
49:20
If I tell you I'm a couch, that just means you need to sit on me whenever you're tired,
49:23
right?
49:24
But that's not the world that we live in.
49:26
And so that's probably one of the most nefarious things.
49:28
Alyssa Childers asked me on her show a couple of years back if Jesus were alive today, which
49:32
tables would he overturn?
49:34
And I said the transgenderism thing because it's a, it's a fundamental attack on what
49:40
truth is and where truth comes from.
49:42
So save me from my own sermon.
49:44
Ready?
49:45
Well, he's messing with their heads, he's messing with their heads and he's messing with their
49:50
feelings.
49:51
Fellas, you have got to come to terms with the fact that you have an enemy and he's tearing
49:56
the world apart.
49:58
If you don't take the kingdom of darkness seriously, you're going to think every thought
50:01
that goes through your head is yours.
50:03
Okay.
50:04
Yep.
50:05
This is really good news, fellas.
50:06
Not every thought that goes through your head is yours.
50:08
So here you got these poor vulnerable kids and it's usually, oh my gosh, you can get
50:12
into their trauma and single-parent homes and all this stuff that adds to this, right?
50:18
They're vulnerable to him getting in their heads and getting in their feelings, him,
50:25
the enemy, Satan, the evil one, King, you know, Prince of Darkness and tearing their
50:30
humanity apart.
50:32
Okay.
50:33
This is going on all over the world, right?
50:35
That, oh my gosh, it's just madness.
50:37
Now you've got the movement of AI-assisted friends for young people.
50:44
So now they're talking to, yeah, they're talking to a machine about their feelings and that
50:50
sort of thing.
50:51
Guys, like the whole move of the enemy on the planet right now is tear humanity to pieces,
50:58
tear it apart.
51:00
Do you think you're exempt from this, guys?
51:04
That same assault on your thoughts, on who you are, on your identity, right?
51:11
And you were talking about if you shout, it feels true.
51:14
Well, here's the other thing.
51:16
The core messages of your life were delivered with pain.
51:21
That's why they feel true, you know, so your dad walked out one day and said, you're such
51:27
a piece of, you know, I'm not even, you're not even worth staying here for, I'm gone.
51:31
When you live for the rest of your life with, I'm basically a piece of, you know, that the
51:36
message was delivered with pain, you think it's true.
51:39
How are you going to get out of that?
51:42
Only with the truth.
51:43
Only with the truth.
51:44
You can't wait till your feelings change, right?
51:48
You start with, no, no, no, no, you're a son of God.
51:51
You're absolutely chosen.
51:53
He adores you, your father adores you, and you're not on your own to figure life out.
51:59
You're not on your own, you have to start with these things to get out of the deep creation.
52:06
And it goes even further than that because, okay, so we're seeking out truth.
52:10
What is truth?
52:11
Because there are, there are things that people will say typically very fundamentalists are
52:15
like, whatever answer you need is in the Bible.
52:16
I'm like, okay, who is the 14th president of the United States?
52:19
They don't really like that response.
52:20
It's like, look, the Bible is not a, you know, it's not a history textbook.
52:24
It's not like a taxonomy textbook.
52:25
It's not all those things.
52:27
It contains the most important truth.
52:29
And so another quote from chapter 11 here, all this to say to be a human being in this
52:33
hour is to be stained glass, beautiful, still in our brokenness, but fragment and nonetheless,
52:40
how we heal human fragmentation is one of the critical questions of this moment.
52:43
Maybe the question now for the shining brilliance of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
52:50
And so above every historical factoid or every trivial pursuit question or something
52:55
like that, or you understanding trivia and your whatever selected area of expertise,
53:00
the gospel of Jesus Christ ultimately stands above everything in terms of what capital
53:05
T truth means and where it's taking us, right?
53:08
Is the ultimate answer to origin, meaning morality destiny?
53:11
Where did we come from?
53:13
Why are we here?
53:14
How can we tell the difference to be good and evil and where do we go when we die?
53:17
So John, give us the gospel of Jesus Christ.
53:20
Yeah, and what most people don't know, when Jesus steps in and look for it's his first
53:27
public moment, he's in the synagogue, they hand him the scroll of Isaiah.
53:31
He chooses a particular passage to announce his mission.
53:36
He says, "Today this has been fulfilled in your hearing."
53:39
Well, what does he read?
53:40
He reads Isaiah 61, "I am here to heal the broken and set the captives free."
53:46
The fundamental work of God is to get back to Eden.
53:52
He wants to restore your humanity.
53:54
He wants to restore the earth and the new creation.
53:59
He wants to restore your marriage, your career, your calling, your mission, all of that, that
54:04
most people don't understand that the gospel is good news because it's not just behave
54:12
yourself.
54:13
That's the Old Testament.
54:15
The gospel is the soul is healed through union with Christ.
54:20
That as Christ begins to literally recreate you, he's the integrating center of all things.
54:26
That's what's so freaking cool, man.
54:28
Like Colossians 1, it says, "He made all things, threw him all things were made, threw him,
54:33
and he holds everything together."
54:35
Well, guys and gals need to begin to experience that in their humanity and in their stained
54:42
glass that he is literally the reintegrating power of the universe.
54:46
He's going to do it first with human beings, and then he's going to do it with the earth.
54:53
And for anybody listening to this, if you've never put your faith in the gospel because
54:57
it's one thing to understand the gospel, it's one thing to read it, it's another thing to
54:59
put your faith in it.
55:01
That's what we're talking about with Jordan Peterson.
55:02
This is a man who has publicly said he believes that Jesus isn't God and he believes that
55:06
Jesus was resurrected from the dead, but he has not put his faith in that for himself
55:10
yet.
55:11
He's not pushed to it.
55:12
He has not transferred his faith from himself into the reality of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
55:18
And so if you're listening to this right now and you're feeling that pool, that is God
55:20
talking to you directly and he's calling you home.
55:24
Take refuge, guys.
55:26
Take refuge in that.
55:27
Reach out to either one of us.
55:29
We can obviously help get you plugged in, you know, help get you to the discipleship that
55:33
you'll need along this journey, but take God's free gift of grace, take the offer.
55:37
As we wrap up the book, I do want to get into chapter 18 because you're talking about our
55:41
essential problems.
55:42
So let me read the quote here.
55:44
Our essential problem is this.
55:46
We want two things that are in fundamental conflict with one another.
55:50
We truly do want Jesus.
55:52
We do.
55:53
We also want a good life.
55:54
It pulls on us every moment and then a little bit later, the church in the West has assured
55:59
folks that they can live two lives.
56:01
You can have Jesus and you can have a wonderful life.
56:04
In fact, this is God's will for you.
56:06
It is not true.
56:08
Now, John, I've been reliably informed that all I do is accept Jesus like I just compelled
56:13
people to do.
56:14
And then all of a sudden, my life is going to be rainbows and unicorns.
56:17
All of a sudden, I'm going to, you know, I have to give money to a fancy preacher first,
56:20
but then I will receive a bunch of money and there's stuff out there that I can just start
56:23
naming and claiming and that things are going to be awesome.
56:25
Now, it doesn't really drive with a reading of any of the New Testament folks because if
56:29
you read these people's lives, it's kind of rough.
56:31
A lot of these people met some pretty bad ends because of their faith in Christ.
56:35
So for your sake or for what you're trying to say, why is it not true?
56:40
So I'm literally in a prayer meeting this week and it's quiet and we're praying and
56:46
I'm thinking about the vacation I want to take next month.
56:50
Yeah, the pull towards relief and just give me a break and can I just buy that new thing
56:57
and that pull is constant on the soul.
57:01
If you don't address that and hook that up to Jesus as part of your life, you hook it
57:06
up to your heavenly father, fellas, he loves you.
57:10
Of course, he wants to bless you.
57:12
It doesn't mean you're going to get a bulk every year.
57:14
It doesn't mean you're going to get a six by six every year, right?
57:17
It doesn't mean that it's always going to be great sex with your wife.
57:21
It's just not how it rolls down.
57:23
You are currently living in a war.
57:27
You live in a love story.
57:29
Okay, God loves you, but you live in a world at war and until Jesus comes in and finishes
57:36
the total wipeout of evil, we're going to be living in this tension of absolutely God
57:41
wants to bless you.
57:42
He does.
57:43
He does.
57:44
And he told me to get in the woods and I got an elk.
57:46
I could tell you a lot of empty tags too.
57:49
I got a lot of disappointment out there and I've arrowed elk that we haven't recovered.
57:55
That's heartbreaking, right, it's both sides of this right now.
58:00
And if we are primarily committed to good life, right, just make it sweet, make it great.
58:09
You're going to miss out on the best story of he's got a much better story for you, man.
58:15
You are needed in this fight.
58:18
You have a critical role in the story and it's not the latest thing you're buying from
58:24
Amazon.
58:26
That's right.
58:27
Well, guys, the name of the book is ordinary mystics.
58:29
Just kidding.
58:30
It's called experience.
58:31
Jesus really guys, you can check it out there in the show notes, but a couple of things
58:33
before we go, I've asked a lot of people recently about this because, you know, a couple of
58:38
years back, we had the asbury revival, which felt really artificial to me.
58:41
It felt like they just tried to extend out a worship service and then it just kind of took
58:45
off and took off, you know, I had a mind of its own, right?
58:47
Again, that's a skeptic in me, but if it's really a revival, you don't have to move it
58:51
offsite and offer people Chick-fil-A sandwiches to make sure we can keep the worship set going.
58:56
But it feels like there's a ground swell happening right now.
59:00
You have Wes Huff going on the Joe Rogan experience.
59:02
So it's the biggest gospel conversation in the history of media.
59:06
Okay.
59:07
You've got Ion Hercioli becoming a Christian.
59:08
You have Russell Brand becoming a Christian.
59:10
You have, you know, atheists, right that are out like, you know, a Douglas Murray or a trying
59:16
to think of some other examples of Richard Dawkins saying that he's at least a cultural
59:20
Christian.
59:21
Yeah.
59:22
Bible sales that are exploding.
59:23
You have young people, especially young men coming back to the Bible and coming back
59:27
to church because they found the meanderings of the four horsemen of New Atheism wanting.
59:33
It's like it works when it's on the sheet of paper, but it doesn't work when you try to
59:36
apply it in real life.
59:38
And so I want to be carefully using a word like this, but it feels like there is a capital
59:42
A awakening that is coming and I don't mean because America special or anything like that.
59:47
I'm talking about just in general, across humanity.
59:49
You have Christianity exploding in sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia.
59:53
You have people in the Middle East in droves that are having Jesus visit them and their
59:56
sleep and they're becoming Christians in Iran and Iraq and Syria and all these different
1:00:00
places.
1:00:01
And so it's either, Hey, we're, we're so close to the end, in times and you know, he's calling
1:00:06
his church and he's getting us ready or we're just, we're in for an awakening.
1:00:10
That's what it feels like to me.
1:00:11
It's your read.
1:00:12
Yeah.
1:00:13
And the guys, if you're not seeing it yet, it's because it's hitting the West last.
1:00:18
Okay.
1:00:19
There was an iron curtain that fell over the West that really shut out the spiritual life,
1:00:24
but this is exploding.
1:00:25
What Kyle's describing is exploding all over the world.
1:00:30
Here's what's taking place.
1:00:32
Both spiritual realms are exploding all over the world.
1:00:36
Wicca is one of the fastest growing religions in America.
1:00:39
Okay, people are, you know, doing ayahuasca and all this other stuff as well.
1:00:42
They're hot yoga, they're meditation.
1:00:44
The spiritual is breaking out is what we're seeing all around the world.
1:00:52
You better choose the good side.
1:00:55
Get on the good side because when this dark stuff breaks out, man, it is gnarly.
1:01:00
Yeah, you got to make sure you're on the right side of the ledger.
1:01:04
And again, when people are like, I love it, when they say I'm spiritual and not religious,
1:01:08
it's like, yeah, well, demons are spirits too.
1:01:10
So can you be more specific?
1:01:12
And so we got to make sure that people really drill down to bedrock and we kind of get them
1:01:15
to answer.
1:01:16
But you also know the drill.
1:01:17
Last question of the day.
1:01:18
It's not what have you done for me lately.
1:01:19
It's what are you going to do for me now?
1:01:21
So we got this book.
1:01:22
What else is coming from John Eldridge, you know, what's coming from wild to hard next
1:01:26
book coming up?
1:01:27
What are you working on?
1:01:28
What are you excited about?
1:01:29
Oh, guys, if you haven't seen it, we released a film series on YouTube right towards the end
1:01:34
of the year last year that are these 50 minute exquisite films of the stories of men's lives
1:01:41
who are becoming whole, right, and it's blown up marriages and messed up sexuality, and
1:01:47
it's all that stuff, fear, anxiety, depression, but we're showing stories.
1:01:52
So I get on YouTube, I Google wild at heart series, watch those films.
1:01:57
You're just going to love it.
1:02:01
So guys, check that out on the wild at heart YouTube channel, but John, that's all for
1:02:05
me.
1:02:06
Is there anything else you want to get off your chest?
1:02:07
So good to see you.
1:02:08
So good to be back.
1:02:09
Thanks for having me back.
1:02:10
You're very, very generous.
1:02:11
Keep writing books.
1:02:12
We'll keep having you on.
1:02:13
All right.
1:02:14
We'll talk soon, John.
1:02:15
Okay.
1:02:16
All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed John's fifth appearance on the show.
1:02:17
But before we let you go, we are going to do a quick resilience boost at undaunted life
1:02:20
permission is equipping men to push back darkness with content that forges spiritual mental
1:02:24
and physical resilience.
1:02:25
So I've got a link to his Amazon page where you can buy experience Jesus really and a link
1:02:29
to the wild at heart website.
1:02:32
Thank you for listening to this podcast.
1:02:33
Wherever you're listening to this, please subscribe, rate and leave us a positive five
1:02:36
star review.
1:02:37
If you want me to come speak live at your event or on your podcast, shoot me an email
1:02:40
to info at undaunted.life.
1:02:42
That's I N F O at undaunted.life.
1:02:45
Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook and check out our website for everything else,
1:02:48
including how to donate to keep more content like this coming your way.
1:02:51
Just go to www dot undaunted.life.
1:02:53
And as always, we want to thank the band Holy Name for allowing us to use their music for
1:02:57
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1:02:58
Music on this podcast is our song Perpetua, which is off their self titled debut album
1:03:02
on Face Down Records.
1:03:03
The links are in the description.
1:03:04
I'm your host, Kyle Thompson.
1:03:07
Remember, keep pushing back darkness, keep forging spiritual, mental and physical resilience.
1:03:13
Keep seeking the lion of Judah.