Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
Men today are in a battle without bullets or bombs, but a battle all the same. It's a fight for our families and our future. Facing the battles of life demands courage, and courage is the ability to do the hard thing in every circumstance, despite the cost.
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Take Courage Guest: Dennis RaineyFrom the series: Stepping Up (Day 1 of 5) Bob: Dennis Rainey says there is a call going out to men all over the world—a call to be men—to be courageous. Dennis: A call to courageous manhood is all about calling men to pound their chest and say, “You know what—I refuse to do nothing about the evil that is destroying my marriage, my children, my family, and my grandchildren. I want to do something as a man.” Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Monday, March 7th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey; and I'm Bob Lepine. Today we are looking at what the Bible has to say about what God has in mind for men being men. And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Monday edition. Is it okay for women to listen to what we are going to talk about? Dennis: Oh, absolutely. Oh, sure. In fact, Barbara gives a message to women called “Helping Your Man Step Up to Real Manhood.” Bob: I know, but you are going to be talking to the guys for the most part this week. This is kind of man-to-man, from-your-heart, kind of stuff. It is alright for the women to listen? Dennis: Kind of? [laughter] I think it is going to be very instructive to single women, married women, moms who are raising boys, grandmothers, and obviously to single men, husbands, dads, and grandfathers as well. We are just going to talk heart-to-heart for the need for courageous manhood today and for men to step up and really take on the mantel of true godly male leadership. Bob: This is something you have been chewing on for quite some time. Dennis: That is a nice way to put it, Bob. [laughter] Chewing on it. I have tried to write this book four times in the last ten years—actually 12 years. I have run across notes that I have had that are like fossilized relics. [laughter] I have been interrupted by health issues in our family; family crises when one of our children wasn't doing well; Barbara had a health issue; and, of course, the recession back in 2008 and 2009—that took me off the book as I really scrambled here at FamilyLife to make sure we operated in the black, which by the grace of God we did. All o f those things took me off task, Bob; but I am glad in a way because I believe what we have come up with here will be a tool that we place in the hands of men and women, for that matter, that is going to help them be more effective in taking on the mantel of male leadership. Bob: This is your new book called Stepping Up. I think it is interesting—when you look at what the Bible has to say about being a man, there is a link to the idea of courage. That is what you have tapped into in this book. Dennis: Right, Bob. I believe, as never before, men are under attack today. More than 60 percent of college students today are women. I don't think it is safe to be a man on many occasions. There was an article back last January in the Wall Street Journal. It was entitled, “Eek! A Male!” It was an article that talked about a man in Massachusetts who saw some smoke coming from a van. He rushed in; and as he was rescuing two small children before the van went up in smoke, the grandmother almost punched his lights out because she thought he was going to kidnap the kids. It is assumed almost that men are predators. We assume the worst about them. The article went on to say that a guy in England didn't stop and pick up a toddler beside the road because he was afraid he would be accused of being a child molester or a kidnapper of the child. He drove on, and the toddler ended up walking off into a pond and drowned. Bob: Certainly there are men in the culture who are predatory and who do commit the kind of acts that raise the concern, but what I hear you saying is that that has had a chilling effect on men being what God has called men to be. Dennis: Right. I think for men to step up and truly lead today, it takes courage as never before. Last night, Barbara and I were watching a series. In fact, you loaned us this series about John Adams, the second president of the United States. Barbara has already read the book by David McCullough. I just look at the sheer size of that book, and it frightens me. Bob: You say, “I'll watch the TV series.” Dennis: I'll watch the series! [laughter] At the end of the first session, I turned to Barbara and I was just commenting on John Adams and his courage. I told her, “You know what, we know very little today as men about that kind of courage that our Founding Fathers had in establishing this nation. They put their lives on the line to gain America's freedom.” I think we need a fresh vision of what it means to be a man and to step up and protect our wives, our families, our communities, our culture, and our nation from the evil that preys upon them. I think today—I think it is going to call upon that kind of courage that our Founding Fathers had more than 250 years ago. Bob: Do you think men today are inhibited culturally? They back off from courage because the culture doesn't reward it? Do you think it is their passivity that is kicking in? Why aren't men stepping up to courageous manhood? Dennis: If you look at Joshua 1, God commanded through Joshua, He commanded the nation of Israel, and specifically the men. He said, “Be courageous. Don't be afraid.” He said it four times. You kind of wonder if the nation of Israel needed courage in the face of fear. Why would God command it four times? I think there is something within all of us which tends toward cowardice—toward passivity—toward backing away from confronting our fears and moving through them and doing something about them. For instance, the other day, Barbara and I were in New York City. We were doing some shopping in a French store, which was an unusual store. It has all kinds of gadgets for the kitchen and for families. It really had some fun stuff for $10, $20. We were looking in it, and there were two books that had an obscene word on the cover of the book. It is, in my opinion, the most vulgar term you could put on the cover of a book. There were two books there. I am going, “What is with that in this classy store?” I thought, “Nah, don't do it. Don't even go there. Why mess with it? Just walk on out.” We were going to buy a couple of bibs for our twin grandchildren. Barbara came up with them; and I said, “Nah, put them back. We will just leave.” We started to leave, and I looked over at the cash register. I thought, “That guy is probably the owner. Nah, I don't want to talk to him!” I walked on out. There was a guy standing by the door. I said, “Is the owner here?” He said, “Yes. That is him over by the cash register.” I thought, “I got to go say something.” I walked back over; and I said, “Hi, I'm Dennis. I almost purchased a couple of things here. I really like your store; but I have to tell you, those two books you have over there—that you have at eye-level for little kids to take a look at—I just watched a young mom take a look at it and turn away in disgust—those two books have no place in a classy store like this.” He said, “I am really glad you said something. There has been a debate among all the people who work here—our sales force—about those books. Some of them say they should be here, and some of them say they shouldn't.” I said, “You know, I just want you to know it seems like our culture continues to spin out of control. The easiest thing for me to have done would have been to have said nothing. I just want to tell you, I am offended by it. I think you have a better store than that.” I shook his hand, thanked him, and left. I think in those situations, Bob, the easiest thing for us to do is assume we are not going to make a difference. What is it going to matter that I push back against an owner of a French store in Grand Central Station, of all places in the world—Manhattan? What difference is it going to make? You know what, if enough of us think that way—enough men assume that our actions are meaningless against pushing back against evil mean nothing, then what happens to a nation? It gets overrun by the evil that we were designed by God to conquer. I believe the theme of this book, Stepping Up: A Call to Courageous Manhood, is all about calling men to pound their chest and to say, “You know what—I refuse to do nothing about the evil that is destroying my marriage, my children, my family, and my grandchildren. I going to do something as a man.” Frankly, Bob, this is not a book that is designed to beat up men. There are enough of those out there already. This is a book that is designed to call men up—to encourage them to step up—to encourage them at a point to kneel down—to kneel down before the cross and ask God to help them be the man that they need to be in all the realms and all the responsibilities they have in life. Bob: Give me a definition of courage. Can you do that? How do I understand what courage looks like biblically? Dennis: Courage is doing your duty in the face of fear. It doesn't mean you don't have fear. In fact, one of my favorite questions to ask at a dinner table—I think you have probably been at a few meals... Bob: I have been the victim of this question before, yes. Dennis: You get at a table that is a round table that has four or five couples at it or ten people at your table. You hate to bore one another with yourselves. Life is too short. Let's cut to the chase. Let's talk about some stuff with meaning, you know? I like to ask the question, “What is the most courageous thing you have ever done in all of your life?” It has been interesting in how people have answered it. People have talked about a decision at work—to push back against deceptive practices where it could have cost them their jobs—maybe stepping away from their existing job and pursuing a dream. Others have protected unborn life and placed a child with adoptive parents. I have heard young men answer this question, talking about stepping up and away from pornography; but the most frequent answer to the question, “What is the most courageous thing you have ever done?” usually involves the person's father—where they stepped up and took another job and didn't work for the family company. Recently, I was at a dinner table; and a man said, “It was my decision to not go to work for my father but to go to college. I was the first person in our family to go to college.” There is something about our parents. Standing up to our parents and taking a stand for what we believe God wants us to do—that calls upon bedrock of courage from a man's life. Bob: And to not do that disrespectfully—to do it in the context of honor. There is something about declaring yourself a grownup. When you stand up to your mom or your dad and say, “This is where I am going.” You are really saying, “I can navigate life apart from your guiding me.” Dennis: I actually think it is a form of a rite of passage, as you have said, to adulthood where we take a stand and we go, “You know what, I am my own person. God has a plan for me. I am fulfilling that plan. I will honor you, but I am going to be obedient to the God who has called me to do this thing.” Bob: I was, I think, in the room when you first took on this subject. I don't know if you had given a message calling men to step up before, but I was there one day when you had a heart-to-heart with men and called them to engage. Dennis: There were a group of men, Bob, and you remember the meeting—good men behaving, not badly, but pitifully. They just weren't being men. I kind of pulled off to the side and did a little study of the Scripture and put together a message where I talked about how every man must step up through five steps. He first becomes a boy—that is the first step. Out of boyhood he steps up to adolescence and he begins to assume responsibility. Then, at the point he turns his back on childhood and childish things, he steps up to manhood and he assumes responsibility before God to protect other people—perhaps take on a wife, be a father, moving on through life—assuming responsibility to be a courageous man. I went on to talk about the other two steps of being a mentor and the final step of that of a patriarch. It just so happened that as I was giving this message—you remember—you were there—behind me was a platform and a stage that had five steps up to the stage. I really hadn't thought about calling men to step up; but as I gave the message and talked about stepping from boyhood to adolescence, from adolescence to manhood, to mentor and then to patriarch, I literally gave the message standing on each of those five steps. I called those men to step up and away from boyhood and adolescence and turn their backs on irresponsibility and to be courageous men—courageous followers of Christ and not just behave pitifully. [laughter] Bob: What I remember, is you standing with one foot on the second step and another foot on the third step—straddling and saying, “Too many of us have a foot in adolescence and a foot in manhood. We keep going back and forth, and we never fully step up and say, ‘Goodbye' to childish things as 1 Corinthians 13 instructs us to do.”Dennis: That is right. We are facing sideways on the steps rather than turning around and turning away from the childish things—facing upward to the steps of, not merely manhood, but standing on that step of manhood and facing up to being a mentor and a patriarch. As a result, I think what happens is—I think men are losing their direction today. They don't know what is next. They don't know what God has for them. That has been part of the fun in putting this book together. It is really thinking about how to craft this in such a way to equip men to be better men, to be effective mentors, and then that last step of being a patriarch. I am telling you, it is really interesting when you talk to a group of men. They come alive when you start talking about—that instead of old age sapping our lives and taking life away from us—instead, God has a magnificent noble step for every man to stand on at the end of his life, if God gives him length of days, to make an impact, not only on his family, but also his community. I think, for a few select men who are national leaders, upon our nation. Bob: It is interesting to see the lines converge, too; because as you are coming out with this book, our friends at Sherwood Baptist Church, Alex and Stephen Kendrick and the team there, are putting the finishing touches on the film that will come out in the fall called Courageous. It really touches on many of the same themes—calling men to be godly men—to step up. Dennis: I think God is up to something. I think He is bringing the theme of courage to the entire church, but I think specifically to men today because this culture—I am going to tell you something—it is going to demand that men look fear in the eyes and say, “You know what, you are not going to rob me of being a man. I am going to protect my own integrity, my marriage, my family, my grandchildren, and my community against evil. I am going to step up and I am going to push back.” It is going to demand courage at a whole new level. Daniel 11:32 says, “The people who know their God shall stand firm and take action.” I think it is a picture of what courage is all about. I think courage is built as we know who God is and we know that we represent Him. Secondly, as we take action—as we refuse to do nothing—as we step out in faith and make a difference. Back after 9-11, Peggy Noonan wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal. It described masculinity in fresh terms. I want to remind our listeners of those days. Also, capture a picture that she is talking about as she is talking about real manhood. She writes, “A certain style of manliness is once again being honored and celebrated in our country since 9/11. I am speaking of masculine men, men who push things and pull things, and haul things and build things, men who charge up the stairs in 100-pounds of gear and tell everyone else where to go to be safe. Men who are welders and who do construction. Men who are cops and firemen. They are, all of them, one way or another, the men who put the fire out. The men who are digging the rubble out and the men who will build whatever takes its place. Their style is back in style. “We are experiencing a new respect for their old-fashioned masculinity. A new respect for physical courage, for strength, and for the willingness to use both for the good of others. You didn't have to be a fireman to be one of those manly men on September 11. Those businessmen on Flight 93—you know, the one that was supposed to hit Washington—the businessmen who didn't live by their hands or by their backs but who found out what was happening to their country, said, ‘Goodbye' to the people they loved, snapped their cell phones shut, and said, ‘Let's roll.' These were tough men, the men who forced that plane down in Pennsylvania. They were tough, brave guys.” Bob, today, what is needed is for men to take on, I think, a new form of self-denial—of abandonment to self and serving their God and in submitting to Him—to say to their loved ones, “My life for yours. My life for the next generation.” If we don't, I fear what is supposed to be the Christian family, what is supposed to be the Christian community of faith—the church—both will be rendered ineffective because men have not been men. It is a call for men to step up and give their lives. I love what Elisabeth Elliot writes. She says, “A man's willingness to offer up his life for his wife or for anybody else who happens to need him is not the end of everything. It is only the end of himself. He who is fully a man has relinquished his right to himself.” I think that is the call of the cross. If you want to step up, you have to kneel down before the cross of Christ and ask God to make you “the man. Bob: I think in what we have talked about here today and what you talk about in this book—I think you are tapping into something that is stamped on the soul of every man. It resonates in his heart when he hears it, but the flesh rebels against it. The culture doesn't promote it, and so men often shrink back. That is one of the reasons we are so excited that the book is now available and hoping a lot of men will read it. In fact, this week, we are making this book available to any of our listeners who would like to get a copy. We are just asking you to make a donation to help support the ministry of FamilyLife Today. When you do, we want you to feel free to request a copy of Dennis' new book called Stepping Up: A Call to Courageous Manhood. You can go online and make a donation at FamilyLifeToday.com. When you do, type the word, “STEPUP”—altogether as one word. Type that in the key code box on the online donation form, or call 1-800-FLTODAY. You can make a donation over the phone. Again, it is 1-800-“F” as in Family; “L” as in Life; and then the word “TODAY.” When you make your donation, just ask for a copy of the book, Stepping Up: A Call to Courageous Manhood. I should probably let folks know that right now the book is only available here at FamilyLife. It is not in bookstores, or on Amazon, or really anywhere else. If you want to get a copy, either go online at FamilyLifeToday.com or call 1-800-“F” as in Family; “L” as in Life; and then the word, “TODAY.” Make a donation to support the ministry and request a copy and we will get it sent to you. Now tomorrow we want to talk about the first step on the road to manhood. We are going to talk about what we can do to help boys get pointed in the right direction, even in the years when they are boys so they can grow up to be godly, courageous men. We will talk about that tomorrow. Hope you can be with us for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today. FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow. We are so happy to provide these transcripts. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?2011 Copyright © FamilyLife. All rights reserved. www.FamilyLife.com
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Guiding Your Son Through Boyhood Guest: Dennis RaineyFrom the series: Stepping Up (day 2 of 5) Dennis: You ever been lost? Really lost in the woods? Well, you know what? I got lost, and there were no markers. The land was flat, it was cold, and the sun was going down. I didn't have a GPS on me. I didn't have a compass. I had no way to tell where to go or how to get out of there. I admit that I was on the verge of panic. That sense of being lost is what a boy can feel growing up today without a father guiding him. Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Tuesday, March 8th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We're going to talk about what we can do to help boys get pointed on the right path and pointed in the right direction as they step up to manhood. Welcome to FamilyLife Today; thanks for joining us on the Tuesday edition. Just wondering what's in the water there at the Rainey house? Your wife writes this devotional for families around courage. Now, you've got this book for men on courageous manhood. Are they spiking you with something out there? Dennis: You know it is in the country. There is no telling. I do think Barbara and I have been preaching to one another. Do you think? Bob: I just sense a little bit of this passion in your souls to see men, women, and children kind of step up and be courageous. Dennis: Bob, I think this culture is robbing us of our courage. I think it is discouraging us. I think many are losing heart in well-doing as a result. If there has ever been a time when, frankly, men needed to be encouraged, I believe it's today. Bob: Well, now, this is a theme that has been simmering in your heart for almost a decade, maybe longer than a decade, as you've been in a number of settings challenging men to step up to courageous manhood. Now, you've written a book that's called Stepping Up: A Call to Courageous Manhood. You break the book down—this is interesting—into six sections to help orient guys to the progression that you're calling them to. Dennis: We do. The first section is just all about courage. Then, each of the following five sections are about the steps: stepping up to boyhood, adolescents, manhood, mentor, and patriarch. Each of those six sections of the book begin with a story of courage. Bob: Let me ask you about boys stepping up to boyhood. It seems like boyhood is something that just kind of happens to you. It's not something that as a boy you're all that intentional about. In fact, you're just kind of going through life, and the question is are you heeding direction or are you just following your own impulses? Dennis: I clipped a cartoon out of a magazine that had a picture of a five year old boy barefoot and no shirt in cutoff jeans walking down a dusty, dirty road. He had two cats that he was carrying, whose tails were tied together. He was carrying them, you know, where the tails kind of were caught in the crook of his arm. The caption on the cartoon read, “And he was bound to acquire experience rapidly.” That's what boyhood is all about. He's growing up through the childish years getting all this experience, but what has to happen? He has to have an older man in his life directing that experience. So, that as he grows from boyhood into adolescence, there is character there; there's the wisdom to know the right from wrong and enough of a conscience that he can begin to turn away from evil and make right choices. Boyhood does just seem like a time when life does happen to him, but it's a time when every boy needs a father. Bob: Tragically, we live a culture where there are a lot of boys who don't have fathers. If a boy doesn't have a father or someone stepping in to provide direction, to say, “Here's where manhood is, come on follow me. Come this direction,” then, the carnal impulses take over and what you have is masculinity gone amok. Dennis: Yes. Newsweek, a few years back, ran an article called “The Trouble with Boys.” They said in that article that one of the most reliable predictors of whether a boy will succeed or fail in high school rests upon a single question, one question: does he have a man in his life to look up to? Unfortunately, in many cases, the answer is no. I ran across this quote. I've not been able to find out who said it, but it has a pound of wisdom in it. It says, “A boy without a father is like an explorer without a map.” That's what a boy is. He's starting out life, and it's uncharted. He doesn't have the experience to know how to deal with it. Who is he going to look to, to gain the experience he needs to know how to navigate the valleys, the danger spots, the mountains? There is a lot of life that just happens to us, but as we know, there is a lot of evil that can occur in a boy and for that matter a teenager's life before they make it to manhood. Bob: I don't think when I became a father for the first time that I understood the responsibility of calling sons to manhood. I don't know that I understood that mantle being put on my shoulders. Did your dad assume that responsibility in your life? Did he understand what it was that God had called him to do, do you think? Dennis: This is one of the more fascinating stories of my life, Bob. My dad had a profound impact on my life, but I have no idea where he got the training to do it because his dad deserted him as a boy. He was in his early teenage years when his dad basically abandoned the family of eight children and kind of went his own way. I grew up in a town of thirteen hundred people—I like to say I had a big dad in a small town. My dad was big in my life because he was involved in my life. He coached my little league team. The first game we got beat twenty-two to nothing to the Early Birds. Three years later we played them for the semi-finals. If we'd won, we'd gone on to the championship of our age group. They beat us again, but it was only three to two. Now, isn't it interesting that I can remember that? Well, the reason I remember that is I had a dad. I've still got this picture of all of us: scruffy, little, little league baseball players. I had a dad who was standing right in the middle of the picture. Not that the focus was on him. He was on the back row, but he was the coach. He knew how to coach us in the fundamentals. He taught me more than just the fundamentals of baseball; he taught me the fundamentals of life, of obedience to God, of having a character that has integrity. He modeled it. His life was granite solid. It was amazing as I became a father like you're talking about, Bob, how many times I would go back to pictures of my father who was steady, who didn't leave, who didn't abandon me. I know as I say this there are a bunch of our listeners who didn't have something like that. They've had to pick up that mentoring of an older man in their life from another man, but every boy today needs a dad who sees that young lad as his responsibility. I have no question that my dad loved me and that my dad was doing his best with what he'd been given to train me to be ready for life. Bob: When I was a kid, I remember going to the dentist office. The only thing I liked about the dentist office is they had a subscription to Highlights magazine. Do you remember Highlights for kids? Dennis: Oh, yes. Bob: It had puzzles— Dennis: Right. Bob: And games and cartoons. In every Highlights magazine, there was a cartoon series called Goofus and Gallant. It was two boys. One, Goofus, was always making foolish decisions; and Gallant was making wise decisions. It was really a cartoon instructing in character. I've thought about that since. I've thought young boys growing up need to be pointed in the direction of character because their natural inclinations aren't going to lead them in that direction. That is part of the responsibility a dad has. For a boy to step into wise boyhood, they need to say, “I'm going to listen to the wisdom of a father or of older men and follow in their footsteps.” Dennis: Bob, the book of Proverbs is all about that. It is all about an older, wiser father speaking into the life of a boy calling his son to step up. Now, it doesn't say in the Proverbs step up to manhood, but it is all over the pages. Calling him away from foolishness to—was that Goofus? Bob: Yes. Right. Dennis: To step up to wisdom, to Gallant. Bob: Gallant. Right. Dennis: To Gallant. If he's going to do that, he needs an older man whose arm is around him. You know I can still remember watching the game of the week with my dad on Saturday afternoon. My dad worked hard. He worked five days a week and a half a day on Saturday. Some days he would work all day on Saturday. I would go to sleep with him there in the living room on that couch with his arm around me. I can still remember the hairs on his hand and his arm kind of touching my boyish face. You know there is something about that that builds security, stability, direction. As we grow up, it's what we call upon as we face our own challenges in life. I'll never forget going deer hunting a number of years ago. I used to laugh at people who would get lost in the woods. Have you ever been lost by the way? Really lost in the woods? Bob: I've never been that deep into the woods. I don't think. Dennis: You stayed away from the woods. Well, you know what? That's a good way not to be lost. Well, I got lost, Bob. I went in circles because I began to notice where I had been. There were no markers. The land was flat, it was cold, and the sun was going down. I remember praying and going, “Lord, I'm lost. I need help. I need to get out of here.” I admit that I was on the verge of panic. Now, this was like—I don't know—twenty, twenty-five years ago. When I finally stumbled out onto a logging road where I knew where I was, I was thrilled. I didn't have a GPS on me. I didn't have a compass. I had no way to tell where to go or how to get out of there. Well, you know what? That sense of being lost is what a boy can feel growing up today without a father guiding him. I want to give dads just real quickly four points of direction to guide their sons. Let's just call them compass points. Bob: Okay. Dennis: Compass point number one, character: train your son in what is wise and also what is foolish. We just talked about the book of Proverbs. That is what it is about. Wisdom is skill in everyday living as God designed it. Bob: I think as a dad you have to keep in mind that your son is naturally going to be drawn to foolishness. “Foolishness is bound up,” Proverbs says, “in the heart of a child.” As a dad, you're going to have to use up a variety of means to call him away from foolishness and to godly character. He is not going to be naturally inclined in that direction. Dennis: I'll never forget going to my dad's place of work. If he said this to me one time, he said it a hundred times, “Son, these people are working. Do not bother them.” I think I just had a blast walking through the office talking to everybody because my dad owned the little company, you know. “Son, I want you to know they're at work. Don't bother—” Bob: Leave them alone. Dennis: “—the people.” That's a very minor foolishness; but nonetheless, it's is foolishness. A second point for our compasses are relationships: how do I love others? The first one talks about our character: people being able to trust us that what we say is good. Bob: What kind of person am I? Dennis: Right. Bob: Yes. Dennis: How we love other people is how we relate to them, care for them; how we're gentle with them, kind with them, forgive them, resolving conflicts with them.Bob: So, what you're saying is that a father has a responsibility to help a son understand how to have healthy relationships with other people: with women, with siblings, with friends. Just understand how to relate to people. Dennis: Your family is a laboratory, and you're training your son how to live life and how to love other people. Some of the lessons you are going to pass on to your sons are going to be out of your mistakes. When you make a mistake and you have to ask your wife to forgive you in front of your kids, as I have done on more than one occasion. On those occasions, some of them I would turn to the kids. I would say, “You know, you're not going to remember your dad was perfect; but I do hope what you remember about him is that when he made a mistake and hurt another person, he was enough of a man that he could admit it and ask that other person to forgive him.” Identity is the third one. That answers the question, who am I? There are multiple areas today where that's got to be addressed with a boy. One is “Who is he in relationship with God?” because it is only as he determines who God is in the Scriptures in his relationship to Jesus Christ that he is going to have a proper identity of who he is. There's also the issue of sexual identity and what does it mean to be a boy and not a girl? What does it mean to be a man and not a woman? He is getting his first cues from his father as to how comfortable his father is in his own sexuality and how he treats his wife in terms of courtesies, in terms of serving her, in terms of her distinct femininity as a woman. It is really those snapshots that a boy catches growing up in his home where he gets his first picture of what is a man and how does a man relate comfortably with a woman. Bob: So, identity revolves around sexual identity; but you also said spiritual identity, understanding that your nature is prone to sin and that you are in need of a Savior and understanding who God is and the fact that life is to be lived for Him. What is the last point on the compass? Dennis: Well, it has to do with our mission and why am I here. What is my purpose? Ephesians 2:10 talks about “We're His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works that He prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.” I'll never forget a boy that my sons used to have over to the house, and I'll call him Mark. His mom had, had four husbands. Mark had not known a man in his life to be there consistently. I don't know what prompted me one day, but I looked him in the eye; and I said, “Mark, God has a plan for you being here. He has got something very, very powerful for you to do with your life if you'll but walk with Him and know Him and set Christ apart in your heart as Savior and Lord.” It was interesting that was early in my adolescent sons' lives. Mark continued to track with our kids all the way until his senior year, and he did some pretty dumb things. Our paths crossed again. I had to kind of pull our sons away and say, “You know I don't think it would be wise to continue to spend time with Mark.” It was interesting Mark ran into me at school one day; and he said, “Mr. Rainey, I noticed that your sons are no longer running around with me. I thought you believed that God had a plan for my life.” Now, Bob, this is four years later. Words to a young lad, especially a young lad growing up in the confusing years of adolescence, can be used in that boy's life to really center him and begin to set him on a course where maybe he begins to think about his life as something other than just on the human level; maybe he is created in the image of God; and there are spiritual purposes to his life that he needs to fulfill. A father, I believe, can have an enormous impact in his son's life reminding him of the truth about himself: that God has a plan for him. Bob: We're really back to the map illustration that you used earlier. If a young child, if a young son, doesn't have compass points—doesn't have a map to point him in a direction, he will wander aimlessly and often wind up in a place that is not a good place. It is a dad's responsibility to point him in the right direction and to give him those compass points; so, that where he winds up is a good place. Dennis: Yes. What a dad needs to understand is he possesses the DNA of life. If you as a father are walking with Jesus Christ and you're in the Book, the Bible, you possess that DNA to pass on to your sons to show them how to live. I love a poem that was written by General Douglas MacArthur because, as you might imagine as a general, he had a goal in mind especially for his son. Let me just share this poem that I include in the book: Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory. Build me a son whose wishbone will not be where his backbone should be; a son who will know Thee—and that to know himself is the foundation stone of knowledge. Lead him, I pray, not in the path of ease and comfort, but under the stress and the spur of difficulties and challenge. Here, let him learn to stand up in the storm; here, let him learn compassion for those who fail. Build me a son whose heart will be clear, whose goal will be high; a son who will master himself before he seeks to master other men; one who will learn to laugh, yet never forget how to weep; one who will reach into the future, yet never forget the past. And after all these things are his, add, I pray, enough of a sense of humor, so that he may always be serious, yet never take himself too seriously. Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, the meekness of true strength. Now, listen to how this general concludes this prayer and his poem: Then, I, his father, will dare to whisper, “I have not lived in vain.” There isn't a dad listening to us right now who doesn't understand the heart of that general because you want to impart the DNA of life and a sense of direction to our boys; so, they aren't caught off guard, but they live effective lives for Jesus Christ. Bob: I think one of the things that causes dads to shrink back sometimes is that they lack confidence in their own direction. They're not sure they are pointing in the right direction. That is one of the reasons, I think, your book is going to be so helpful for so many of us because it gives us a clear picture of what the path to manhood looks like, what authentic, biblical manhood is. Then, it takes us passed that to see that just being God's man is not where things stop, but God has a design for us even beyond that. I want to encourage our listeners. This week we are making your book available to those who can help support the ministry with a donation. All you have to do is go online to FamilyLifeToday.com. Make an online donation or call 1-800-FL-TODAY. When you do, you can request a copy of Dennis's new book, Stepping Up: A Call to Courageous Manhood. Right now, the book is not available in stores or on Amazon; so, the only place you can get a copy is from us here at FamilyLife Today. Again, go online at FamilyLifeToday.com. Make an online donation. When you do, type the word “STEPUP,” all as one word in the key code box on the online donation form. Or call 1-800-FL-TODAY and make a donation over the phone. Just ask for a copy of the book, Stepping Up: A Call to Courageous Manhood, by Dennis Rainey; and we'll get it sent out to you. If you're interested in multiple copies of the book, either for a men's group study or for whatever other reason you're interested in ordering additional copies, you can find the details for how to purchase additional copies online at FamilyLifeToday.com. Now, tomorrow we're going to talk about the transitional phase of adolescence that phase in between boyhood and manhood. Just how long should a young man stay in that phase? What does that look like to pass through it? We'll talk about that tomorrow. I hope you can tune in. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today. FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow. We are so happy to provide these transcripts. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. 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FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Approaching Adolescence Guest: Dennis RaineyFrom the series: Stepping Up (day 3 of 5) Bob: One of the key steps a young man will take as he progresses toward courageous, authentic, biblical masculinity is the step where he begins to assume more responsibility. Here's Dennis Rainey. Dennis: You know what? As a young man, get used to stepping up. Get used to taking on more responsibility because it is the stuff of manhood. It's why God created you. Back in Genesis, chapter one, you were designed to reign over the creation and make a living by the sweat of your brow and be a part of God's redemptive work on the planet. Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, March 9th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We're going to explore today what has to happen for a young man to move through adolescence and to embrace authentic masculinity. Welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Wednesday edition. We're going to have to start with some definition, maybe, or some discussion here at the beginning. You've just finished a book that you call Stepping Up, a Call to Courageous Manhood. You're challenging men to step up. One of the things you address in this book is the idea that men go through a middle phase, from boyhood to manhood, the phase of adolescence. You know there are people in the culture today who push back on that whole idea of adolescence and say that's an artificial construct. Back a hundred years ago there was no such thing as an adolescent. You just went from boyhood to manhood. So what do you say to that, huh? Dennis: Well, they're right. It wasn't even in the dictionary at the turn of the twentieth century. In the early nineteen hundreds there were two steps, boyhood and manhood. There wasn't anything in between. You stepped up from boyhood to manhood and probably did so at a much earlier age back then than we do today. Bob: So you'd have teenagers, young men, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old getting married, taking jobs…Dennis: Oh, yeah! Right. Bob: …taking responsibilities for families. The idea that there would be an extended period where you would learn and study and grow and just kind of enjoy life before you got down to the duties and responsibilities of adulthood? That just didn't exist. Dennis: It didn't. In fact there's a guy who wrote a book, Dr. Michael Kimmel, called Guyland. In it he describes a world where young men live. He said it's a stage of life, an undefined timespan between adolescence and adulthood that can stretch out for a decade or more. It's a bunch of places where guys gather to be guys with each other, unhassled by the demands of parents, girlfriends, jobs, kids and other nuisances of adult life. What he's saying is he actually wants to add another step between adolescence and manhood, one that can go on into the late twenties. In fact, it's happening! Bob: Guyhood? Dennis: Guyland, I guess. I don't know. Bob: You get your video game controller and you work a job where you can go home and sit down with the dudes and crack some beers and get out the videogames and have a blast. Dennis: Yeah. In fact, listen to this statement that Dr. Kimmel concludes with. He says, “In this topsy turvy Peter Pan mindset, young men shirk the responsibilities of adulthood and remain fixated on the trappings of boyhood while the boys they still are struggle heroically to prove that they are real men, despite all the evidence to the contrary.” Bob: Well, he's really just saying that adolescence has been extended in our culture and there's kind of this state of perpetual adolescence. In fact, again as you've addressed in this book and you've spoken to men, you're calling all of us to step out of what is that inertia that pulls us back into the irresponsibility of adolescence and say “Step up to the responsibility of manhood.” Dennis: I don't think it's wrong that adolescence ultimately emerged. I think what has become a trap, however, is when young men are allowed to stay in some in-between world, in between boyhood and manhood for an extended period of time where no one in the culture, no one in their family, no one in their lives, is stepping into their lives and saying, “It's time to grow up. It's time to assume responsibilities.” I have to say it's interesting in this culture to watch a bunch of single people, for that matter single men, moving into their thirties delaying marriage with one foot in boyhood, one foot in adolescence. I think they need some older men in their lives who are on the steps above, looking down at them, and not in an arrogant fashion, but reaching down to them, saying, “Come on up.” It may be frightening. It may feel like it is more responsibility, because it is but you need to get out of childhood. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 11, “When I was a boy I acted like a boy. I behaved like a boy. I spoke like a boy. But when I grew up I put away childish things.” We need a generation of young men putting away childish things. Bob: But you know the messages they're getting in the culture, the messages on TV, from their peer group, the messages in the movies, and even the message of their own flesh, it's not calling them to put away childish things. It's saying, “This is a time for fun. Enjoy it!” Dennis: Well, you were a teenage young man one time. Bob: I was! I remember! Dennis: Do you remember it? I mean, it was totally confusing and life was a lot simpler back then. But what's happening today I fear, is the older men in the lives of these young men, instead of reaching out with their hand and calling them to step up, they're not challenging them to much of anything. They've forgotten what it was like. Let me just read to you what I wrote in the book in terms of what teenage boys are facing today. “A teenage boy's body is changing in strange and foreign ways.” Think about it! I mean, hair growing in some unusual places! What's he supposed to do? He's starting to think about things he's never thought about before. All of a sudden, sexual allurement and the mystery of sex becomes powerful. If you've never been spoken to about this, what's a boy, a young man, going to do with all that? Secondly, he's bombarded with bewildering thoughts and choices about sex and morality. In other words, when can he have sex? Now he's thinking about it. What is appropriate? If you watch what's on TV, there are no boundaries. Barbara and I sat at the movies back around Christmas watching previews and there was, and I forget the name of the movie and I'm glad I'm forgetting it here, because I don't want to give it any advertising, but it was all about having sex. That was the theme of the entire movie. It was like all these single people were just born for this purpose, to just figure out how to ultimately make out and get in bed with one another. There was no restraint on passion. So here are teenage boys coming to a movie like that. What are they supposed to do with those images? Third, he faces relentless, unbelievable peer pressure, friends encouraging, enticing him to go along with, frankly, barbaric ways. I mean teenage boys left to go their own route are going to be little barbarians. Next, he battles an emotional upheaval of anger, sometimes rage that he has no idea where it's coming from. I watched out sons going through this. Without a strong daddy in their lives, they can be punitive upon a mom. Bob: They're getting some hormones squirted into their systems that haven't been squirted there before and aggression is a part of what comes with that. It's got to be directed and it's got to be channeled. Dennis: Yes. And in this culture, in addition to all that, he's also has to deal with other people's expectations. I mean, with all the expectations around the tests they're taking, the college they go to, how well their grades are, it's pressure on pressure on pressure. The last one is he feels this strong gravitational pull toward independence. He wants to spin out and away from the family orbit and establish his own authority away from his parent's authority all on his own. Bob: And that's a good thing, isn't it? Dennis: It is. Bob: …that he wants to do that? Dennis: It is. But it is if he's trustworthy, if he's been trained, if he understands how to begin to exercise his own authority. Bob: If he wants to kind of be in charge of his own universe simply so he can indulge his own fleshy desires then that's a recipe for trouble. Dennis: It is. Bob: But if he wants to be out on his own so that he can subdue the earth and fulfill it as the biblical mandate calls him to do, then that's a good thing. Dennis: Yes. But just pull back for a second and think as a parent. Here's a young man that you're observing that has this wash of chemicals and hormones surging through his system, all these outside forces impacting him. He's spinning off to his own orbit and two things can happen with parents. One, I call the push back and the other is what I call the pull out. The push back is when a young man begins to push back against his parents, specifically his father, and the father lets him. He lets him push him back and push him out of his life so that the father is not in there helping him navigate uncharted waters. The second area is the pull out. Some parents just get busy and it's a hassle to engage your teenagers. The easiest thing to do, again, is nothing. So a dad can pull out of his son's life, in my opinion, at one of the most dangerous, most important times, when a young man needs an older man, in his entire life. Bob: So ideally, as I hear you describing all of this, I'm thinking to myself ideally you want to get a son from boyhood to manhood kind of as quickly as possible, get him through the adolescent rapids as quickly as you can? Dennis: Well, you know, you really understand why back at the turn of the twentieth century, why they got married and started their own families. These young men had to step up and had to assume the responsibilities of a man. They were given no other choices. The problem is we've built an entertainment culture appealing to these teenagers, enticing them to stay in this phase well into their twenties. Bob: A lot of the young men at the turn of the century weren't in school after the seventh or the eighth grade. Now they're in school to college and beyond and their only responsibility is to study. There's no job. There's no work. All of a sudden you've got all this free time. I mean, I remember when I was a student thinking, “Boy, I've got no free time.” Well, I'd go back and trade, you know? Dennis: No doubt. Bob: …because you've got all kinds of time. If there's no direct responsibility attached to that, that's a recipe for mischief. Dennis: You know, Bob, my boys at this point would cringe because they know exactly what I'm about to say. When they entered that phase I would look at them and I said, “You have the least amount of responsibility you will have for the rest of your life.” But the idea there is that, you know what, as a young man, get used to stepping up. Get used to taking on more responsibility because it is the stuff of manhood. It is why God created you. Back in Genesis, chapter 1, you were designed by God to rule. You were designed to reign over the creation and make a living by the sweat of your brow and be a part of God's redemptive work on the planet. Probably the best illustration I have of what the teenage years look like and the assignment of a father during those years, used to occur as I completed my sixth grade Sunday school class. Now this was a class I used to teach. I had seventy, seventy-five young people in that class so it wasn't just to the boys. But I would always use a boy to illustrate the last principle. Bob: Now this was seventy twelve year olds? Dennis: Yes, eleven and twelve year olds. Bob: Oh my goodness. Alright… Dennis: What I did in that class was I used to call it the traps of adolescence. So I had a bear trap that represented sexual immorality. I had smaller traps that represented drugs and alcohol and pornography, other traps that represented peer pressure. I had a dozen traps that were illustrated. For the last session I had all the traps set on the floor. It's a miracle, Bob, that in all the years I taught this I never once caught a kid. They never once stepped in any of those traps! I was relieved! Bob: It was a miracle that the Fish and Game people didn't come in and shut down your Sunday school class! Dennis: No doubt about it. But I had all these traps and kids knew what those traps stood for. So I took a young man on the other side of the traps, on the other side of the rooms, and he could see the traps in front of him, and I blindfolded him. Then I said, “I want you to take off your shoes.” And on the other side of the room, with the traps in between us and the young lad, was his father. I instructed the father in what they were supposed to do. I would say to the young man, “On the count of three I want you to come to your father and to me. It's representing going through adolescence all the way to adulthood.” Bob: So come barefoot through the traps with blindfolds on? Dennis: Right! Exactly! And I would say, “One. Two.” And the father would interrupt me every time and say, “Hold it son. Don't' take a step!” He would walk over, around the traps, would go over and whisper to his son, “I want you to stick your hands on the back of my shoulders and I want you to scoot along and follow me very closely because we are going in between these traps. So the father would begin scooting through those traps, all of this taking place in front of seventy-five young people about to encounter these traps and the parents who were about to raise them. They were in the room too because this was graduation. The father and the young man, closely behind him, would make it through to the other side and the class always began to applaud and clap and cheer as they finished it and the young man took his blindfold off and gave his father a hug. That's a picture of what adolescence was meant to look like--a father in the midst of doing life with his son, in the midst of the traps. First and foremost, staying out of the traps himself. Bob: Right. Dennis: And then calling his son to step up and away from the traps and to step with him toward manhood. What is missing today are the fathers walking around the traps and then sticking with it all the way through the next five, six, seven years. It's not a matter of having one birds and bees conversation with a thirteen year old boy. It's a matter of talking with him as you're watching a football game and a commercial comes on and you tell him to look away. It's a matter of talking about the movies he goes to and having boundaries in his life. It's a matter of training him to know how to deal with the opposite sex and honor a young ladies' femininity by keeping his hands off of her body. Young men today, more than ever, need a daddy, a daddy who is on the manhood step facing upwards, who knows who he is as a man, who's not dabbling in pornography himself, so he can reach down to his son and say, “Let's go. Come on. Follow me as I follow Jesus Christ.” Bob: The dads who are there and who can't reach back because they're got one foot still stuck in adolescence themselves? How do they get unstuck? Dennis: As we've talked here Bob, we've created a picture of five steps, a step going upwards from boyhood to adolescence, from adolescence to manhood, manhood to mentor, and, the ultimate step and most noble call for a man, that of being a patriarch. We also created an image that a man can find himself with one foot on the manhood step and one foot on the lower step of adolescence, standing sideways. When a man finds himself standing sideways, he has to realize a couple of things. Number one, his own life is in peril. Number two, the kind of model he is leaving for his son, and for that matter the rest of his family, is not a good one. And third, he needs to realize that from time to time all of us make foolish decisions. All of us step down and we have to turn our back, that's call repentance in the Bible, we have to turn our back on selfishness and on sin and turn away from it and turn upward toward Jesus Christ and the scriptures and being obedient to what God has called him to do. So I wish it was a simple matter of just turning away from evil one time and stepping up. But it's never just that. I mean, it occurs as we walk in the middle of an airport and you look over in the magazine stand. I don't ask to see those pictures. I don't ask to have those magazines faced outward to me, thirty feet away, not even going into the book store that's in the airport. But they're there and they can be a temptation and they can call a man away from what he knows is right to becoming a doorway through which sin can gain entrance, not only to his own life, but also to his son's. There's a warning in scripture that the sin of one generation will be passed down to four generations. To me that's a frightening thought, that my life would be used to pass on sin rather than righteousness to my descendants. Bob: If a dad is going to lead his son through the phase of adolescence to manhood, the dad's got to have a pretty secure standing on the manhood step himself. Dennis: He'd better keep short accounts with God. All of us make mistakes. I've shared many of them here on FamilyLife Today. I run into listeners all around the country who says, “You know what? We appreciate the no baloney approach to the Christian faith and to real life as we all live it.” I've shared about cutting down trees in front of my own son. And I've shared to repenting of cutting down a tree that wasn't on my property and calling the owner of that tree and confessing my sin and offering to pay restitution in front of my son. Now that's no fun. But you know what? It's a part of showing our sons where to find life. Proverbs 4:23 says, “Guard your heart for from it flow the wellsprings of life.” My heart is a precious thing for life in terms of it beating right now. It's also a precious thing, if I understand the scriptures, spiritually, for me to continue to guard my heart so that I might be a source of life, that my life might be a spring that would come from my life to my wife, to my sons, to my daughters, and to those that I impact and influence. That's a great picture for any man standing on the manhood step. There needs to be a stream of water influencing all those around him. Bob: I think it's helpful, and this is one of the things you do so well in the book, men need to see that the essence of authentic manhood involves sacrifice, involves laying down your life, giving your life away for others. It's not about being a man for yourself. It's about being a man for others and dying to self. That's what's at the heart of authentic manhood. I want to encourage listeners to get a copy of this new book. Again, it's called Stepping Up—A Call to Courageous Manhood. This week we want to send it to you. All we're asking you is that you make a donation to help support the ministry. When you do, we're happy to send you a copy of Dennis's brand new book. If you're donating on line at FamilyLifeToday.com, when you open up the donation form there's a key code box there. Just type “STEPUP” in the key code box and we'll know to send you a copy of Dennis's book. Or call 1-800-FLToday and make a donation over the phone. Again, just ask for a copy of Dennis' book when you do. Right now the only place the book is available is here at FamilyLife so, if you want to get a copy, go online or call us and make a donation. If you're interested in multiple copies of the book, those are available for purchase as well. I know there are a lot of men's groups that are going to look at doing a book like this for a men's study. So if you want to get multiple copies, contact us, again, online at FamilyLifeToday.com or when you call 1-800-“F” as in family, “L” as in life, and then the word “Today.” Now tomorrow we're going to talk about what authentic, mature masculinity looks like. What are some of the characteristics of someone who has stepped up to manhood? We'll talk about that tomorrow. I hope you can be with us for that. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We will see you back tomorrow for another edition of FamilyLife Today. FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow. We are so happy to provide these transcripts. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider f to help defray the costs?2011 Copyright © FamilyLife. All rights reserved. www.FamilyLife.com
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. Manhood and Spiritual Leadership Guest: Dennis RaineyFrom the series: Stepping Up (day 4 of 5) Bob: Being a man involves taking some risks: stepping up, being courageous, leading, initiating. Here is Dennis Rainey: Dennis: What if I failed every time I've initiated? Well, the easiest thing to do is nothing and to stop initiating. The reason we fail to initiate is we may have trained our wives to just jump in and do it for us because we haven't stepped up and taken responsibility for our finances, for the spiritual well-being of our family, for the direction we're headed as a couple. All of these demand initiative from a man who knows where he's going. Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, March 10th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We're going to begin today to unpack some of the essentials that make up biblical manhood. Welcome to FamilyLife Today; thanks for joining us on the Thursday edition. Do you think men know what it is they're looking for, they're aiming for? I mean, do you think they understand what manhood looks like? Dennis: No. I don't. In fact, I think there is so much taking place in our culture today it is like real manhood, as God designed a man to be, is an elusive goal at best. For most, they have no—they haven't even got the foggiest idea what that looks like. Bob: Well, I remember—this will date me a little bit, but I remember trying to figure it out myself and thinking, “So, as a real man the tough John Wayne, Rambo, you don't share your feelings; you just go out and get it done.” Is that a real man? Dennis: Don't eat quiche. Bob: Yes. Or is a real man a sensitive, caring, kind of person who is tender and who is kind and who pays attention and listens to the heart of his wife? Is that a real man? We get such mixed messages in the culture that I think that a lot of guys are looking around going, “I want to be a man. I'm just not exactly sure what that means.” Dennis: Well, I don't often quote from advertisers, especially advertisers that advertise jeans, as an authority; but I ran across an advertisement for Dockers jeans where I just felt like they nailed it. In fact— Bob: Now hang on. I'm wearing Dockers right now.Dennis: Are you? Bob: Okay. Yes. Dennis: Well, this is a good ad for Dockers jeans, but I want you to listen to this because this appeared in an advertisement for their jeans. You tell me if you don't feel like they nailed it. Once upon a time, men wore the pants and wore them well. Women rarely had to open doors, and little old ladies never had to cross the street alone. Men took charge because that is what they did, but somewhere along the way the world decided it no longer needed men. Disco by disco, latte by foamy non-fat latte, men were stripped of their khakis and left stranded on the road between boyhood and androgyny; but today, there are questions are genderless society has no answers for. Now, I'm going to finish this, Bob, but can you believe this is for jeans? Now I know Dockers makes other things too— Bob: Right. Dennis: But this is advertising their jeans. They continue: The world sets idly by as cities crumble, children misbehave, and those little old ladies remain on one side of the street. For the first time since bad guys, we need heroes. We need grown-ups. We need men to put down the plastic forks, step away from the salad bar, and untie the world from the tracks of complacency. It is time for you to get your hands dirty. It is time to answer the call of manhood. It is time to wear the pants. Talk about politically incorrect. Bob: They've been reading your book haven't they? Dennis: Here's what they are saying, and again, an advertisement is not my authority. I'm about to go to Scripture, but they are picking up on the theme of Scripture that there is a lot about manhood that is all about a man taking initiative. Manhood is about initiative. 1 Corinthians 16:13-14 talks about standing firm in the faith, acting like men. Be a man, it says. 1 Kings 2 David is about to die. He charges his son, Solomon. He says, “Show yourself a man and keep the charge of the Lord your God walking in His ways, keeping His statutes, His commandments, His rules, His testimonies.” I mean, he's calling his son up: be a man; step up, son; don't fritter away your manhood on lesser callings. Yet, this culture is sending messages to boys that make the waters incredibly murky. If there is someone that needs to be clarifying what it means to be a real man today, it ought to be followers of Jesus Christ who are tethered to the Scripture. Bob: So, you would say that the Scriptures give us a clear picture of what mature manhood is? Dennis: Right. Bob: Okay. So, unpack it for us. Dennis: Well, first of all, let me tell you what it isn't: it's not passivity. It has been suggested in the Garden in Genesis chapter 3, that when the serpent came to Eve that Adam was standing there. Adam was present, but he did nothing. It has been suggested that perhaps the first sin of man was passivity. If you think about it, if initiative is the essence of manhood, could it be that the sin of arrogance and pride of doing nothing and just standing back watching may be the opposite? I think there are three reasons—actually I'm going to give you a bonus reason. Four reasons why men are passive today, they don't take the initiative. First of all, taking the initiative is hard work, and I'm tired. It is the end of the day. I don't feel like leading my family in a devotion at the dinner table. I don't feel like putting the kids to bed and serving my wife by helping the kids be tucked in and praying with them. The easiest thing for me to do is to sit in my easy chair and become a giant amoeba and just do nothing. It is hard work to lead. Being a man calls us out of our passivity, out of doing nothing into engagement, into serving, into helping others and shouldering the burden with them. Bob: It is not just the end of the day when it is hard work. I mean the beginning of the day, just heading off to work. There are a lot of guys who are checked out of manhood at the very beginning of the day because, frankly, as you've said it is taking initiative. That means you've got to step up, you've got to take some responsibility, you've got to go to work— Dennis: Right. Bob: A lot of guys are going, “Who wants to do that?” Dennis: If you want to be a man, it is going to include pain because I promise you, to deny yourself and to abandon yourself to serve others will involve self denial and that does involve pain. No, I don't like pain. My flesh doesn't like not getting its own way, but that is a part of being a man. Remember Mark 10:35-45, the disciples came to Jesus and asked how to be great. He basically said, “The Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” I think that's the essence of manhood: serving others, giving up your life for another. Another way men fail to take the initiative is they say, “I don't know how. I don't know what it means to initiate. I didn't have a father who did.” The slate is blank, and so, they use that as an excuse. I would say to a man who didn't have a father, either present or who didn't have a father who demonstrated this, “Find a man who does.” Go and find a man who'll practically illustrate and coach you in what that looks like, like interviewing your daughter's dates. You've never perhaps thought about interviewing your daughter's dates. Well, you know what? There are men who can train you in how to do that. There are books that are written in how to do that to show you how to be a man and how to initiate and how to step into a fearful place and be the man. A third reason why men don't take the initiative is it means I might fail. What if I failed ever time I've initiated or my wife has made me feel like a failure every time I've initiated? The easiest thing to do is nothing and stop initiating. That really leads me to the fourth one: our wives can do it for us. The reason we fail to initiate is we may have trained our wives to just jump in and do it for us because we haven't stepped up and taken responsibility for our finances, for the spiritual well-being of our family, for the direction we're heading as a couple. All of these demand initiative from a man who knows where he's going. Bob: We back off. We don't assume responsibility. A wife who looks around and says, “The job's not getting done,” and starts to feel fear, she'll step in and do it. That's what you're saying? Dennis: That's right. So, the opposite is also true, Bob. Instead of being passive, we initiate. What is one of the things we can initiate as a real man? Well, we've taken surveys of more than a hundred thousand people in local churches around the country, and one of the top issues women are looking to their husbands to provide is spiritual leadership of their marriages and their families. One of the ways a man can assume responsibility and take initiative for leading his wife spiritually is to begin to pray with her every day. We've talked about this on FamilyLife Today numerous times. I feel like it's one of my life messages. Barbara and I prayed together last night. It was a short pray. We were both exhausted because of travel. In our case, we have seventeen grandchildren now. We just had the birth of a new little one, Alice Pearl. So, Barbara and I prayed for her last night as we went to bed. This morning I read in John 4 about Jesus' interaction with the woman at the well. He made a phenomenal claim. He said I want to give you water, that's living water. If you take a drink from me, out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water— Bob: You'll never thirst again. Dennis: Never thirst again. The woman was astounded by this man who told her about her past and seemed to love her and speak genuinely kind to her. At one point, she talked about the Messiah; and he said, “I, who speak to you, am He.” Well, you know what? Praying together is all about coming to the Messiah, Jesus Christ, coming to Him over and over and over again to get a drink of the living water. If you drink from Jesus Christ, out of your life will flow rivers, it says, of living water. If you picture a husband leading his wife spiritually, that means that stream can be rich and deep and crystal clear and pure. It means a man can truly love his wife in a whole new level. Bob, I think a lot of men don't love and lead their wives spiritually because they don't know how. They've never had anyone challenge them to do it, and it is as if right now I'm on these steps of manhood and I'm reaching down to a guy who may be straddling manhood and adolescents. Bob: At least in the area of this kind of spiritual leadership you're talking about. Dennis: Right. May not be taking the initiative. I'm reaching down and saying, “Come on. Turn your back on adolescents. Turn your life away from excuses. Step up and become the man God made you to be: loving and leading your wife spiritually.” Bob: Don't you think, though, that there are men who are intimidated in this area because they know their own spiritual nature. I mean they think if you're going to lead somebody spiritually you have to be—well, you've got to be ahead of them. A lot of guys look at their wives, and they go, “You know what? Spiritually, she's ahead of me. I mean she's got time to go to Bible study fellowship or precept classes. She's doing more quiet time. I mean, how do I lead her when she's the one who is farther down the path than I am?” Dennis: Well, if you are not involved—I'm speaking now to this man not to you, Bob. If you're this guy that Bob is talking about, you've got to find a Bible study with a group of men that are absolutely being ruthlessly honest about their own lives and digging into the Scriptures to find out how to really become all that God created you to be. There's a lot of guys today who are not engaged in any kind of a Bible study. I was with a man here recently, and I looked him in the eye. I said, “Tell me what's going on in your life spiritually.” And it was a blank look. Every area of his life is full with business, family, other issues with his life, recreation. Spiritually speaking, there is no food. Bob: There's just no margin for that. He says if I'm going to keep the business going and the family demands, I just—I mean I hear you saying get in a Bible study with other guys. I've been in a couple of those, and it kind of you know—it didn't feel great. I just don't have the margin for it. Dennis: Well, you've got to create the margin for it because if you don't—this is the margin you create to live. It is back to the illustration of Jesus being the one who claimed to be the living waters. If you don't have time to study about Him and His claims about life and how you as a man ought to live, then how are you going to know how to live as a man? How are you going to know what God expects of you? It is instructive to me that as David as dying when he turns to his son, Solomon, it is primarily focused upon the Scripture. He is charging Solomon: follow the law, obey the Scriptures, do all that God has commanded you to do today. Why? Because he said you are going to find life. He didn't say you'll find you'll find the living water, but it might as well be written there. That's what he's talking about. So, the question for men today is “Where you going to find out about life?” If you're just punching the clock and doing your forty, fifty, sixty hours a week of work and not taking time to grow spiritually, there are some warnings in the Bible about the man who is not into the meat of the Word. He's not digging into the Scriptures and finding out how it applies to where he is today, to the choices he's making, and to his responsibilities as a man, husband, father. Maybe a single guy needs to find out what does God expect from me today. By the way, Bob, there is nothing magical, mystical, or spiritual that is going to automatically make you a man of God when you get married to all of the sudden start leading your wife spiritually. In other words, now is the day to begin tracking with other men and growing spiritually with them as a single young man. If you want to know how to love, lead, care for, provide, and nurture your wife and cherish her and provide protection for your family, you need to get busy today as a single man practicing those spiritual disciplines of getting in a Bible study of daily prayer, of growing spiritually as a young man. Marriage will not make you— Bob: Right. Dennis: A man. Bob: Okay. So, the guy who says, “Alright, I'm in a Bible study. I am growing. I'm reading my Bible. I'm having a quiet time, but I still feel intimidated with the thought of coming to my wife and saying, ‘Let's read this together' or ‘Let's pray.' I think part of the intimidation is she knows the real me. She has seen my feet of clay. For me to come and say, ‘Well, let's pray together.' She's going to think, ‘Oh, how come you're all of the sudden so spiritual. You, who I just saw being carnal thirty minutes ago?'” Dennis: Yelling at our kids. Bob: Yes. Dennis: Okay. So, we fail. Who doesn't fail? We're not all living out this perfect, cookie-cutter lifestyle of being these perfect, little Christians. If we're speaking to a wife here who tends to be focused on what her husband does wrong, why don't you try catching him doing what's right? Why don't you, the next time he does something to attempt to lead your family spiritually, say, “Sweetheart, that was fantastic.” It may have only been prayer at the dinner table, but you know what? He stepped up and stepped out and provided some spiritual leadership of his family. So, rather than doing it for him as a wife, instead catch him doing it right and cheer him on and don't always be focusing on where he has failed. Bob: You think this issue of a man providing spiritual leadership is central to being fully on that manhood step to really embracing what God's called us to be as men? Dennis: I do, Bob. The reason is as men who are standing on this manhood step looking down to our sons who are at various stages of growth, stepping up themselves. They're locked onto our lives like little radar units: picking up what we're about, what our values are, what our priorities are. Who we are as men, what we're attempting to be, and how we're attempting to lead is caught by our sons. One of my favorite poems that was shared here on FamilyLife Today a number of years ago by Coach John Wooden, was actually a poem that was given to Coach Wooden. It just reminds us of how powerful a man's model can be to his family. Coach Wooden [recorded message]: Well, the poem you're thinking of was given to me when my son was born in 1936. I finished a project for Harcourt, Brace, and Company. They sent me a picture with a man walking along the seashore and his little son is trying to step in his foot stamps just behind him before the wind brushes them away. There were some lines along the side that said: A careful man I must always be, A little fellow follows me. I know I dare not go astray, For fear he'll go the self same way. I cannot once escape his eyes. What err he sees me do, he tries.Like me, he says he's going to be, This little chap who follows me. He thinks that I am good and fine.Believes in every word of mine.The base in me he must not see, This little chap who follows me. I must be careful as I goThrough summer's sun and winter's snowBecause I am building for the years to be This little chap who follows me. Dennis: Bob, as men, it is better for us to fail in an attempt of leading our wives spiritually than doing nothing. Perhaps the greatest and most courageous thing a man who is listening to this broadcast will ever do, will be to take his wife's hand and say, “I want to lead you in prayer” or “I want us to pray together as a couple.” These are not minor deals. When a couple bows before Almighty God, their souls can be knit together by the One who made them. It is worth it, just like David's charge to Solomon: be the man, show yourself strong, obey God. Bob: Yes. I think a lot of guys miss the fact that our walk with God and our spiritual leadership is central to stepping up. You know they look at kind of the machismo of the culture, and they say, “Well, okay, being a man is all about physical strength. It's all about daring, courage, or heroism.” We would agree with a lot of those things; but at the core, you've got to be God's man. Dennis: Right. Bob: You've got to be a man who is in pursuit of a right relationship with God in Christ and who is leading others in that direction. Otherwise, it is all about self. I am hopeful that many of our listeners are going to call us this week or go online at FamilyLifeToday.com to get a copy of your new book. It is called Stepping Up—A Call to Courageous Manhood. You can request a copy this week if you help with a donation to support FamilyLife Today. We are listener supported. Those donations are what keep us on this station and on our network of stations all across the country. So, this week if you make a donation, we want you to feel free to request a copy of the new book, Stepping Up, by Dennis Rainey. The book is not currently available in stores or on Amazon. So, if you are interested in a copy, you'll need to contact us. If you're interested in multiple copies for a men's study or a group's study, you can contact us; and we can let you know how you can purchase additional copies. If you make a donation this week online at FamilyLifeToday.com, just type the word “STEPUP” into the online key code box. When we see that, we'll know to send you a copy of Dennis' new book. Or call 1-800-FL-Today, 1-800-358-6329. It's 1-800- F as in “family”, L as in “life”, then the word “TODAY”. When you make a donation, just ask for a copy of Dennis' new book, Stepping Up; and we'll send it out to you. Now, tomorrow, when we come back, we're going to talk more about the characteristics of authentic, biblical masculinity. That is coming up tomorrow. I hope you can be here. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today. FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow. We are so happy to provide these transcripts. However, there is a cost to produce them for our website. If you've benefited from the broadcast transcripts, would you consider donating today to help defray the costs?2011 Copyright © FamilyLife. All rights reserved. www.FamilyLife.com
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript References to conferences, resources, or other special promotions may be obsolete. A Call to Manhood Guest: Dennis Rainey From the series: Stepping Up (day 5 of 5) Bob: As a husband and as a dad, Dennis Rainey has not always done it right. He remembers times when he embraced his role to lead courageously. Dennis: I remember one time when our daughters came downstairs ready for church, and one of our daughters was wearing a dress that was immodest. Instead of telling her to go change I was wimpy. I didn't engage her because I didn't want to experience the pain of the conflict, and so I was a good man who did nothing. All of us make mistakes that we can look back on and have some regrets about, but the key is, as we look forward, how are you going to protect your family today? How are you as a man going to take responsibility and not give evil a chance to triumph in your family? Bob: This is FamilyLifeToday for Friday, March 11th. Our host is the President of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We'll talk today about what it means for a man to be on the alert, to stand firm in the faith, to act like a man and to be strong, to let all that he does be done in love. And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us. You think those who have been with us all this week have been kind of feeling the – smelling the testosterone as we've been talking about what authentic manhood ought to look like? Dennis: Calling men to step up. In fact, a call to courageous manhood is what we have been talking about. You know, here's the thing, Bob: We watch TV. We watch a sporting event. We watch the golfers, the football players, the baseball players, basketball, doesn't matter what season it is, and you hear somebody say, “He stepped up his game.” Bob: Yes. Dennis: We're used to using this phrase, stepping up. It is used all the time. Now I know I am sensitive to those two words because that's the name of a book that I just finished, that I've been working on for more than 10 years. But I do feel like men today need someone in their lives calling them to step up and out of boyhood and adolescence and step fully into manhood and to be the man God made them to be. Bob: Well, and we've already acknowledged this week that this is a theme that God seems to be stirring in our culture today. We talked about the movie that's coming out in the fall that the folks at Sherwood Baptist have put together called Courageous. It's around the same theme. Dennis: It is. In fact it's interesting that so many different Christian organizations, groups, and churches are all raising the same issue. The guys at Sherwood seem to have their fingers on a pulse that I believe is something God wants to do in the church. I think this movie is going to stir individual Christians, and I hope men to step up and be courageous in their most fundamental callings in life. Bob: Give me a definition of courage. Can you do that? I mean, how do I understand what courage looks like biblically? Dennis: Well, courage is doing your duty in the face of fear. Doesn't mean you don't have fear. In fact, one of my favorite questions to ask at a dinner table – I think you've probably been at a few meals – Bob: I've been the victim of this question before, yes. Dennis: You get at a table that's a round table and has four or five couples at it, or ten people at your table. You hate to bore one another with yourselves, you know. Life is too short. Let's cut to the chase; let's talk about some stuff of meaning, you know? So I like to ask the question, “What is the most courageous thing you've ever done in all your life?” It's been interesting to look at how people have answered it. People have talked about a decision at work to push back against deceptive business practices where it could have cost them their jobs, maybe stepping away from their existing job and pursuing a dream. Others have protected an unborn life. I've heard young men answer this question talking about stepping up and away from pornography. But the most frequent answer to the question, “What's the most courageous thing you've ever done?” usually involves the person's father, where they stepped up and either took another job and didn't go to work for the family company – recently I was at a dinner table and a man said “It was my decision to not go to work for my father but go to college. I was the first person in our family to go to college.” There's something about our parents, standing up to our parents and taking a stand for what we believe God wants us to do that calls upon a bedrock of courage from a man's life. Bob: And not to do that disrespectfully; to do it in the context of honor, but there is something about declaring, “I can navigate life apart from your guiding me.” Dennis: I actually think it is a form of a rite of passage, as you've said, to adulthood, where we take a stand and we go, “You know what? I'm my own person. God has a plan for me. I'm fulfilling that plan, and I will honor you, but I am going to be obedient to the God who has called me to do this thing.” Bob: What you've done in the book is kind of chart the trajectory a man follows from boyhood, which dads can help make more intentional for their sons by pointing them in the right direction and calling them onto the right path, and then adolescence, which is full of all kinds of traps that a young man needs to be navigated through so that he can get to mature manhood. Dennis: And one that every man needs to understand that his son desperately needs him to engage him during this period of time and not just kind of wipe his hands and say, “It's done. He's a teenager now; he's 16, 17, 18 years old. My influence is over.” No it's not. There will come a time when your influence will be lessened substantially, but until that time we're charging men to reach down to those young men in adolescence and call them fully up to the manhood step. Step on up to what it means to be a man, and step away from, well, the lure of childishness and acting like a boy and prolonging youthfulness too long. Bob: Well, if a guy is going to call younger man to step fully up onto the platform of manhood, he's got to be there himself, and to be there he's got to know what it looks like. And as we've already said, a lot of guys just don't know what it looks like. You've said it looks like taking initiative rather than just drifting into passivity, and one of the places where that initiative starts is in the area of spiritual initiative: being a spiritual leader in a marriage relationship and in a home, in a community. A single man can still be a spiritual leader in his community, whether he's exercising that in a home setting or not. But it goes beyond spiritual initiative, doesn't it? Dennis: It does. It goes to the area of protecting, protecting your own life, your own heart; protecting your wife; and protecting your children and your family. I believe, for a number of men today, Bob, I believe they are being called to protect their community. They are being called to make a difference where they live, in their church, in their neighborhood, perhaps in a larger span of control in their community or state. But I believe men are called to protect others who could be preyed upon by evil. One quick quote here: it's a familiar quote by Edmund Burke. He said, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.” I actually spent a good bit of time in one of the chapters of the book talking about how good men, really good men, can easily do nothing. In fact, from my own life I wrote about some of the things that I wish I had pushed back against. As a single man, I didn't push back against peer pressure, and I went with the flow. I'm ashamed of the evil that I encouraged and participated in. As a married man, early in our marriage I didn't protect my wife when we had six kids in ten years, for example -- all the demands and expectations of others who had no idea of the load she was carrying. I should have protected her. I remember one time when our daughters came downstairs ready for church, and one of our daughters was wearing a dress that was immodest. Instead of telling her to go change I was wimpy. I didn't engage her because I didn't want to experience the pain of the conflict, and so I was a good man who did nothing. And then there was a time when a teacher at school really wasn't being very fair or kind to one of our children, and I allowed it to go on too long. I finally did step up, but I should have stepped up sooner. All of us make mistakes that we can look back on and have some regrets about, but the key is, as we look forward, how are you going to protect your family today? How are you as a man going to take responsibility and not give evil a chance to triumph in your family? Bob: You know, I'll never forget hearing an essay on the radio. This was more than a decade ago. The essayist is a woman named Frederica Mathewes-Green. She was talking about her daughter working at a pizza restaurant, and her daughter was a delivery driver for the pizza restaurant. And she said, “My daughter told me that one night at work an order came in and they read it out. She was the next one to take out pizzas, and they read out, ‘Okay, here's your order. It does to –‘and they read out the address.” She said, “The guy standing next to me grabbed it out of my arms and he said, ‘I'll take that. You're not going to that part of town.' “ And Frederica Mathewes-Green said, “You know, we live in a culture that talks about gender equality and gender neutrality, but,” she said, “everybody can resonate with the idea that there are parts of town that you don't let young women go to by themselves. They go accompanied by someone who will protect them.” This idea of men being the protectors, I think goes bone-deep. I think it resonates in the hearts of men and in the hearts of women. Dennis: It does, and I'll give you an illustration from our own marriage and family recently. We just had our 17th grandbaby born, a little girl, Alice Pearl, six pounds, four ounces. We're excited to welcome Alice Pearl to the family. The question was, was Barbara going to go visit our daughter and son-in-law and celebrate the birth of the baby, and was she going to do it alone, or was she going to do it with me? My schedule was such that I had a good excuse not to go, and yet, as I stepped back, I was actually thinking along the lines of the story you just told, about the wrong part of town. I just don't like the idea of my wife traveling by herself, and if I can travel with her and get the car and get the bags and get the hotel room and get there safely, that just seems more prudent, rather than allowing my wife to go by herself. She's gone by herself on occasion. This particular occasion I could have stayed home. But I chose to go with her because I wanted to see my granddaughter for one thing, and my daughter, but I also wanted to protect my wife. There are a number of principles that I write about in the book Stepping Up: A Call to Courageous Manhood that I just want to list here, Bob, just in terms of coaching men on how to protect their wives and their families. The first one is protecting your marriage. I don't meet with women alone for lunch. I don't have lunch with any other woman other than my wife. I don't travel alone in a car with a woman other than my wife. I don't meet with women in my office unless the door is open, or there's a window there, clearly evident, where everybody can see what's taking place in there. As a man, you have ways that you communicate to your wife that you're protecting and preserving your marriage and your relationship. Some of these things might seem like small matters, but to our wives it builds thirty-foot thick walls that are a hundred feet high around your marriage relationship, and it lets her know that you're the man, you're taking responsibility for her, and you're going to protect your relationship. Bob: So as men we need to take initiative to establish concrete ways that we protect our marriage. What else does protecting look like for a man? Dennis: Well, there's one more way, too, that I forgot about, Bob. We have date nights, a standing date night on Sunday night during the child-bearing and child-rearing years of our marriage. Now we're empty nesters, so we can have a date any night. But we took the time to preserve and protect our marriage in the midst of raising kids. A lot of our listeners are in the midst of some of the most challenging days they'll ever experience as couples. I just encourage the dads listening; find a way to discover a babysitter. If you want to give your wife a great gift some of your wives would – they'll go crazy. They'll say, “You found a babysitter so we could get away, so we could talk, so we could have some time together?” That's really important in terms of protecting your marriage. When it comes to protecting your family and your children, one of the most exciting ways that we've come up with here at FamilyLife is Passport to Purity. There are a number of families that are taking their 11-, 12-, 13-year-olds through a weekend getaway called Passport to Purity. There's nothing better than a dad getting away with his son and listening to those CDs and talking about issues of peer pressure, of self-esteem, of who God is in the young man's life, of moral boundaries, and also talking about sex and how far you're going to go with a girl prior to marriage, and helping that young man establish spiritual and moral boundaries in his life. A boy at the age of 10, 11, 12, 13 really needs a daddy to talk with him honestly and frankly about this, and doesn't need him to back out of his life and allow the world to educate him. Bob: Well, and you're up against some pretty stiff competition as a dad, because – Dennis: Tell me about it. Bob: -- the peer group, the culture, the impulses of your child's heart and life. Dennis: The media that has access to your child's life. If there has ever, ever been a time for men, and I'm going to use an old, agricultural term here – I know that, but the imagery is good – Jesus used it. If there's ever been a time for a man to have both hands on the plow, looking straight ahead, knowing where he's going and how he's doing, it's today, especially with his marriage and with his children. Helping your sons grow up to be young men who understand the sex drive and what's about to happen to their bodies before it happens, so they're not caught off guard. Bob: Right. You've got to be alert, you've got to be in the game, you have to know what's coming, and you have to be involved. And that's not just during the pre-adolescent years. That's all through adolescence. Dennis: Yes. And Passport to Purity will give you a great weekend with your son. It also is a great weekend for a mother-daughter. But what it does, is it will establish a foundation of knowledge and experience with your son so that, from that point, as you go through 13, 14, 15 years of age, all the way through adolescence, you'll be able to revisit those themes with your son. And you'll be able talk with them about a simple illustration of how close to the edge of the cliff are you going to go with the opposite sex, son? Bob: Right. Right. Dennis: So when you say that, instantly he knows exactly what you're talking about, and you can re-engage with him. Our sons need us to engage with them, and especially around issues like pornography, not asking if they've seen anything, but what have they seen? If you have a child who is 13, I'm sorry to report to you, but more than likely they have been exposed to some kind of pornography. I would much rather my son, at the age of 13, 14, or 15 share that he had seen it and what he had seen and talk with me about it, than bury it and screw the lid down tight and hide it and be confused by it, and never talk to me as a father or his mom about it. I would much rather that he talk with me and have the conversation and get it out in the open so we can talk about it. And we can talk about the enticement, and we can have a discussion like you find in Proverbs chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7, where the older father is advising and admonishing the young man about the harlot, the prostitute, the one who entices with her dress, her look, and her invitations. Bob: What does it look like for a dad to be protecting his daughter through the adolescent years and beyond? Dennis: Well, I think I mentioned this earlier, but I think a Dad needs to interview his daughter's dates. I said plural, didn't I? They will have multiple dates, more than likely. Many of our listeners have heard me talk about this, how I interviewed, I don't know, somewhere around 30, 35 young men. I actually wished I'd had a t-shirt made that said, “I survived Mr. Rainey's interview.” (laughter) But, you know, Bob, young men today really need dads to engage them and expect them to treat their daughters with dignity and nobility. I got an email from a dad who had ready my book, Interviewing Your Daughter's Date, and he had interviewed a young man, and he talked about what he wanted to be when he finished growing up and was in adulthood. The young man said, “I might like to be a fireman.” And the father said, “That's good. That's good.” They finished their conversation, and evidently the young man passed muster because he allowed his daughter to go on a date with this young man. And when the young man arrived at the door to pick up the father's daughter, the father stepped forward with the daughter, and also with something unusual in his hands; he had a fire extinguisher. (laughter) He sent the fire extinguisher with his daughter and the young man -- Bob: You want to be a firefighter, here's a tool, son. Dennis: -- on the date! That's a true story. Happened to one of our listeners and they wrote us to tell us about it. Here's the point: As dads, we need to engage life where it's happening with our kids. One of the big areas is a relationship with the opposite sex. I haven't written this book, because I haven't finished interviewing all the guys yet that I have to interview, but I also think that dads need to have some heart-to-heart conversations with the young men who come to ask for their daughter's hand in marriage. I've told the young men who have come to me asking for my daughters' hands in marriage that they could ask for the hand, but they couldn't have it until they meet with me and have four conversations around issues I know they're going to face after they get married. Now here's the point, Bob: After they get married, these conversations are off limits unless the young man invites you in to have these conversations. But until he gets the prize, as a father – Bob: The door is wide open. Dennis: -- I'm telling you, it's not only open, it is our responsibility as daddies to protect our daughters before these young men get the prize, because after they get the prize, they may not be quite as teachable from you as a father as they currently are. Bob: Well, and of course we've got copies of your book, Interviewing Your Daughter's Date in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center. And then Voddie Baucham wrote a book that's like the one you're talking about writing; he wrote a book called What He Must Be. . . If He Wants to Marry My Daughter, and we've got that in our FamilyLife Today Resource Center as well, so if our listeners are interested they can go online and get copies of those books. But I think the big point you're making here is that there's a role that men play as protectors, and it's a part of what authentic, courageous, mature masculinity looks like. And you cover that in the book that you've written called Stepping Up—A Call to Courageous Manhood, and I want to encourage our listeners to get a copy of that book this week. In fact, if they can help us with a donation this week to support the ministry of FamilyLife Today, we'll send the book to them as a thank you gift. All you have to do is go online at FamilyLifeToday.com and made a donation. When you do, type the words “STEP UP” into the key code box on the online donation form, and we'll send a copy of Dennis' brand new book, Stepping Up—A Call to Courageous Manhood. We'll send that out to you as a thank you gift for your donation. Or, call 1-800-FLTODAY, make a donation over the phone, and again, ask for a copy of the book, Stepping Up, and we'll send it to you. If you'd like to order multiple copies, those are available for sale. You can find out more online or when you call us, but we want to make the book available this week to any of you who will help support the ministry. We appreciate your financial support. We are listener supported; without your donations we could not continue on this station and on our network of stations all across the country. So thanks in advance for whatever you are able to do in supporting FamilyLife Today. And with that, we're going to wrap things up. Hope you have a great weekend. Hope you and your family are able to worship together this weekend. And I hope you can join us on Monday. Kay Arthur is going to be here, and we're going to talk about the problem of pain and about what the Bible has to say about it. She has just written a new book called When the Hurt Runs Deep, and we'll visit with her on Monday. Hope you can be here as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, and our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our host, Dennis Rainey, I'm Bob Lepine. We will see you back next time for another edition of FamilyLife Today. FamilyLife Today is a production of FamilyLife of Little Rock, Arkansas. 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