In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of surrounding oneself with good company in order to become a better person. He uses the analogy of basketball players to illustrate the idea that if one wants to excel in a certain area, they should spend time with those who are already successful in that field. The speaker also highlights the power of movies and how they can influence and shape our lives. He shares a personal story of how a movie called "Chariots of Fire" had a profound impact on his son's life, leading him to pursue his dreams and find a fulfilling marriage. The sermon concludes by addressing the current societal challenges faced by the family and the concept of masculinity and femininity. The speaker urges Christians to recognize and address these issues.

This message was given at the Building Strong Families Conference held in Dallas, Texas, March 20th through the 22nd of 2000. This conference was sponsored by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and Family Life Ministries. Following the message, there will be information on how to order additional materials on building a strong family. When I was in the, I was a sophomore in high school, and I'd heard with my buddies that there was an eighth grade girls softball game going on down the road. And I wanted to see the girls more than I did the softball, as did all my cronies. And so we went down to watch the softball game, and this really hot grounder went down the third baseline. And this little gal playing third base stepped in front of the ball and took all the velocity off of it, just like you're supposed to, and right out of the crouch pegged it to first base with no roundness in the trajectory. It just went pop into the first baseman's glove. And I said, you know, I'd love to spend my life with a woman like that. So this is Lindy back here waving to you. Yeah, she's a delight. And as Steve mentioned, God's given us three boys. We absolutely love them all. I get emotional even thinking about having three boys. We deserve none of them. The grace of God has been strong and good in our home, and he has salvaged them in spite of me and us. And I have learned as much from my sons or more than they have learned from me along the way. And much of that is because of the woman who has stood beside me, not being a man, not being masculine. She has helped me read the hearts where I couldn't see them right away. So I'm here speaking on the topic that if we can raise masculine sons, anybody can. And there is hope for all of us. And let me just ask this. How many of you in this room are either pastors or pastor's wives? Could I see you? Oh, we're largely pastors or pastor's wives. And therefore, I assume you have some boys probably. May I just, I almost felt when Robert was speaking, like we should close in prayer and go home because it was so well done. It was so choice. The principles were so real. The need was so obvious. The cause was so compelling. And really what we're talking about here is more of the same. I want to work on some things with you a little bit about this raising masculine sons. But before we get there, I'd like to walk through a bit of a long driveway, if you will allow me. Because I really want to not only affirm everything that Robert said this morning, but affirm everything that Dr. Grudem said last evening. Especially his last point about how huge this gender thing is. You and I understand that to one degree or another, or we wouldn't be at this conference. But let me just share with you a few things that will hopefully be the driveway that will get us to how to raise masculine sons. Some years ago, actually, I was staring out the front window of our home. Steve mentioned we live in Oregon. It's always gray, wet, drab, and depressing on the western side of the state. That's where I live. So I was looking out the window, gray, drab, and depressed. And Linda said to me, what is it with you? You have been sort of that way lately and it's not like you. What's happening for you? And I found myself saying words like this. I said, you know, honey, I was a soldier a long time ago when it wasn't cool to be a soldier. In fact, you couldn't wear your uniform in public. That was hard on me. I'm a pastor in a day and in an area where it is not cool to be a pastor. We're about 150 years behind in terms of community respect, at least in the northwest. And you may feel that in other places. I mean, all the anarchists in the world live in Oregon where we are. And we have, you know, our only contribution to our culture as a nation is Tanya Harding, you know, who will break your kneecaps if you skate against her. So it really is kind of a dark area, you know, 49th and 50th, Washington and Oregon, and church attendance per capita. But that wasn't what was bothering me. What was bothering me were the things Robert was talking about last hour. I was a soldier when it wasn't cool. I'm a pastor way behind in terms of community respect. And the one that really hurts me the most in our culture is I'm a man when it's politically incorrect to be masculine. Robert was right on when he said it's time that we get together, lock arms with one another, enjoy the calling of God in our lives, and know that it's not only okay to be a man, it's critical that we be a man. I was working on a little deal. Let me just reaffirm what he said about the need for men in your churches. It's just overwhelming, and you'll be pleasantly shocked and wonderfully surprised with how men will respond to your leadership when you're talking about manhood. Denny Devaney, one of my cohorts on the pastoral staff, is here with me today. Denny is the pastor of our counseling ministry. He will tell you that men will respond immediately when you're working on manhood. Some years ago, we were doing a series on the family. I'm not a very creative guy, so I thought, well, let's see, family. We've got a man, we've got a woman, we've got some kids. I'll start with the man. And so we did a little message on manhood. And we did a second message and a third message, and you could feel it in the auditorium. Remember that, Denny, back about 1991 or so? Just you could feel it. There was connection. But you can't talk on men forever when you're talking about the family, so I just said as an aside during a message one time. I'm not nearly as organized as Robert. He knows details. I'm not sure if I saw one what it would look like. So I just said as an aside in the message, guys, we've got to kind of move on next week to the ladies. But if you'd like to talk about this, what it is to be a man, I'll be here at the church Saturday morning at 9 o'clock, and we can talk. I figured 6, 8, 10, 12 guys might show up on the basis of an aside. Several hundred showed up on a simple aside from a sermon. The need is there, and you can do this. The computer spellcheck worked out fine, ran it through the grammar check, and the computer alarms went off, and up on the screen popped these words. Masculine, which was the word he'd used in the text of the question. Too gender specific. Try to use another word such as, and then it threw things in like courage and bravery. No, we wanted to talk about masculine. See, there was a virus in the computer. It was a feminist virus that started somewhere in the software back then, and it said it's not OK to talk about being masculine. It's the PC bully that Robert was talking to about it. Garrison Keillor said some time ago, Manhood, once an opportunity for achievement, now seems more like an obstacle to be overcome. Have you ever felt that, guys? Feel it all the time. That's what he was saying. Our guys, we need a noble, compelling vision to call ourselves and our sons to their biblical manhood. And it's so glorious when it happens, when you can see it coming. It's just beautiful. I'm 54 years old, pushing 55. I never thought I'd live to be that old. People that old were really, really old in my mind. And now I are one. But in my little 54 years, some things have happened in our culture. And I just want to share a little bit of my story because our sons don't know this. Our sons have grown up in a completely different world than some of us who are 50 years old grew up in. I'm 54. I grew up in a little coal mining town in central Washington, Cle Elum, Washington. Little bunch of coal miners. We had a bunch of funny names in town. My friends' names were Klobuchar and Gullivick and Osmanovich and Katalinich and Spansky and Imani and Aragoni and Capaletti. We were all little European enclaves that ended up smart enough to learn how to dig holes in the ground to get coal out of them. And we ended up in this little coal mining town. It was a beautiful little town. It was kind of October sky, although it was on the west coast. The dads went off to work in the morning. And moms were moms. And everybody kind of knew what a man was and a woman was, at least in terms of taking care of each other and watching out for each other. And it was a small town and divorce wasn't rampant. And everybody knew everything which had its advantages and disadvantages. But we had dinner together around the table at night. We knew each other. Television wasn't constantly pulsating and throbbing in our temple. For one, there wasn't television very much in those days. My kids asked me when you were growing up, Dad, did they have electricity? Yeah, we had electricity, but we only had TVs every so often in the neighborhood. And Dad would let us go on Tuesday night down to the barber's to watch Victory at Sea because that meant something to him. And he would let us every once in a while, if Ed Sullivan would behave himself consistently, watch a little bit of the variety show on Sunday night. But that was it. The rest of the time, we were pretty much together in our homes. And when we went out of the doors of our homes, what we learned in school and what we saw in the culture reinforced what we were learning in our home. That's the way I grew up. I didn't know any other way. I thought that's the way it was. Every little boy knew what every little boy wanted to be. And every little girl knew what every little girl wanted to be. And we understood distinctions. And it was OK. It was all right. All of us who were little boys were raised by Walt Disney when the televisions became a little more popular, you remember? And they gave us Davy Crockett hats. Do you remember those? Some of you guys old enough? We all had little Davy Crockett hats. He said, be very sure and go ahead. Isn't that what we heard last hour? There was something to that. We learned from Davy Crockett that a man probably should be willing to go a long way from home at his own expense, maybe even the cost of his life, to help the little people in the world that were getting the slaps kicked out of their lives by the totalitarianism of their day. That's the way we grew up. We didn't know. We thought that there was a place for strength and a warrior spirit in a man when we were growing up. And so along came a young president when we were in junior high by the name of John Kennedy. And he said, you know, let the world know there's another generation grown up of Americans who are willing to go any distance and bear any burden and pay any price in the cause of liberty. And, of course, you know about Vietnam and that sort of thing. And some of us went and some of us didn't. My own cousin went to Canada. He's still there. But I went. A few years ago when I was working through these things about a soldier when it wasn't cool and a pastor with no respect and a man when it's politically incorrect, I came across a book that began to touch my soul. It was written by a guy named Hal Moore, who was a battalion commander in the 1st Cav in Vietnam. It's called We Were Soldiers Once and Young. And I read this little paragraph to you because of the point at the end of what's happened to our culture. It's not about Vietnam. It's about America. OK. Health as we were children of the 1950s and Kennedy's young stalwarts of the 1960s. We went to war in Vietnam because our country ordered us to go because our president ordered us to go. But more importantly, because we thought it is our duty to go as soldiers. We held each other's lives in our hands. We learned to share our fears, our hopes and our dreams as readily as we shared what little else good came our way. We were the down payment on John Kennedy's costly contract. But the man who signed it wasn't there when we fulfilled his promise. He waited for us on a hill in Arlington National Cemetery. The class of 1965 came out of the old America, a nation that disappeared in the smoke that billowed off the jungle battlegrounds where we fought and bled. The country that sent us off to war. This is what I want you to hear. The country that sent us off to war was not there to welcome us home. It no longer existed. When I read that statement at midnight in my home, I had been developing some emotional awareness in the few years prior, like standing at the back of a Veterans Day ceremony and leaving because I needed to suppress my emotions. Germans don't show them, especially in public. But this was working on me. And when I read that paragraph, it was at midnight in my home. We were in bed. Linda was asleep beside me and I read the country that sent us off to war was not there to welcome us home because it no longer existed. The profundity of that statement penetrated my chest and I began to cry. I began to weep. The weeping became sobbing and my chest was heaving so dramatically that it shook the bed that woke Linda up. And when you wake your wife up at midnight, it means you will talk. You know what I'm saying? We began to work through some things. But I want to just help us for a moment as we talk about raising masculine sons, help us realize we're not raising them in the same world in which we grew up. The world is changing like this all around us and it's the foundations that are being destroyed in our day. Those 1960s, the days of our high school and college, my high school and college, those days were unbelievable. Horowitz and Collier, a couple of leftist radicals from those days that were with the Black Panthers in San Francisco, now converted to a more conservative political posture. They wrote a book called The Destructive Generation about the 1960s. They said some strong things. They said it's the only decade to last about a half century. That's really true. The 60s was a far-reaching American Revolution. There was an American Revolution in the 1960s that was far more far-reaching than the great American Revolution of the 1770s. That's the one we tend to look to because that's our origin, that's our heritage. But in fact, that basically changed, it changed some things, but it by and large changed where we sent our tax checks every spring. But the revolution of the 1960s changed everything. There was a whirlpool of cultural confusion in the 60s. The Vietnam War was not what it was about. It was just a convenient vortex for rallying around. And when the war was over, people didn't know what to do because there was no cause anymore. But the war really wasn't what it was about. It was about, may I say it, our sexuality. Yes, there were civil rights struggles. Yes, the Black Panthers were real. Yes, drugs were real. Homosexuality was emerging. Yes, there was a race issue. And there were gender issues and the Vietnam War. There were all these issues in the whirlpool. I think the bottom line issue is what we call the sexual revolution, which has everything to do with our personal identity, who we are. Gender issues are at the core of who we are. The 1960s, yeah, the things changed like our clothing and our music, to be sure, but so much more changed. The way people relate to one another changed. The legal system changed. The workplace changed. The media changed. The way we raise children changed. The educational system changed. The textbook changed. The military changed. The language changed. And today we're even thinking about changing the nature of the Trinity. All related to our personal identity and who we are as it relates very close to sexuality and gender issues. They're foundational. How have we been doing since the revolution of the 60s? How have we been progressing in our evolution as a race? Well, not particularly well in this country. You know that since the class of 65 graduated, the SATs are down about 100 points, so much so that we've recalibrated the way we score the test, so there's no direct correlations there. You know that kids on welfare have tripled, that eating disorders have soared. We never heard of them in the little town where I live. The only thing is we knew we had to eat. We didn't know anything more than that. Kids are killing regularly kids in schools today, it seems. Illegitimate births have quintupled since the class of 65 graduated. And that in a society which regards itself as so sexually sophisticated with not only abortion available, but all kinds of contraceptive devices. It's an unbelievable revolution, and we haven't accomplished a thing, even in terms of sociological factors like illegitimate births, up five times. Juvenile violent crime is up six times, and these statistics were all compiled long before any of the school shootings began to develop. Erica Young was one of the radical feminist leaders of the 60s gender and sexual revolution. She turned 50 here a year or two ago. USA Today had an interview with her and quoted her in the newspaper. Here's what she said. We were always feeling we were in the wrong, always struggling to make sense of our lives. Each of us felt alone with one foot in the past and another in the future. We hobbled through love and parenthood and marriage and divorce and careers, never knowing what or who we were supposed to be. We never had an idea of what a woman was or what a man was. We thought whatever they were, they were the same, and we never had an idea of what we were supposed to be. Consequently, here's what she says at 50 in her supposed maturity. We're now staking out new emotional territory at every turn still, and at age 50, the anger of midlife is a ferocious anger. All of that to say the revolution of the 60s didn't do anything except hurt us by and large, never knowing what or who we were supposed to be. And the young sons and daughters of today, they don't know any of this. They don't know anything different. They didn't grow up like I grew up as an old man of 54 years of age today. I'm really concerned about the gap, not in the generation, but in the understanding of time and space and history and truth. Carl Sandburg said, when a society or a civilization perishes, one condition can always be found. They forgot where they came from. That's our country today. Did you know that 86% of Americans alive today are too young to remember the end of World War II? 86%. 73% of Americans are too young to remember the Russians launching Sputnik. My kids don't get it when they watch October Sky. What are they all looking up at? Oh, now it comes to it. Did you know that the kids today going to college last fall have never lived when there wasn't blue M&Ms? That's how our culture is changing. It's just rapid, and you and I need to help them understand where we are and when the foundations are being destroyed. And at the heart of the foundations being destroyed is our toying with the image of God and its maleness and femaleness. So, I want you to understand that these issues we're talking about today, particularly in raising masculine sons, feminine daughters too, but particularly in masculine sons, because that's where the pressure is coming today. It's the heart of the battlefield. It's the scrimmage line of spiritual warfare. It's so critical. Let me read you a statement from Richard Halverson, the former chaplain of the U.S. Senate who is now with the Lord. He said this, Where could the enemy attack God most strategically? How could he most effectively destroy God's relationship with mankind? Satan's masterpiece is to deface the image of God. Image is indispensable in our Madison Avenue Hollywood culture. It's the stock and trade of the public relations firm. Selling image is big business. Billions of dollars worth bad image in our day is extremely costly, which is therefore precisely the point at which Satan makes his most strategic attack. I believe that's true. God created man male and female as his image in history. Anything the devil can do to destroy the male female union will mark God's image. Anything that will alienate man from woman contributes to the destruction of a high view of God. Can I say that again? Anything that will alienate man from woman contributes to the destruction of the high view of God. The enemy has a multitude of tactics, premarital sex, extramarital sex, sexual deviation, divorce, male chauvinism, feminism as an end in itself, and on and on and on. Satan's effectiveness in destroying God's image through male female alienation, by whatever means, has been incredibly costly to the human race. So raising masculine sons in our day is critical because we have this gender free androgynous culture, which actually takes the image of God, defaces it, mars it, reduces the value of masculinity and femininity by making the same. Destroys the uniqueness that God intended there to be. Chuck Colson, some years ago, was watching the Clarence Thomas hearings, and he was watching a man being tried for alleged accusations that related to his harassing a woman. Chuck was watching this program while he was in a men's prison, and while he was watching a man having his life more or less dismantled in public for the use of a few words, allegedly, he was standing in a male prison watching a female guard walk into the toilet block with no barriers and order a male prisoner to stand from the toilet and report to the cell block immediately. He said, something's wrong with this picture. What's happening here? Here's his summary. A fundamental pillar of our society, the family, has been under assault, and its crumbling has long been a vital concern to Christians. But don't miss the progression. The artillery are escalating against something even more fundamental than family. The very notion of what it is to be a man, the very notion of what it means to be a woman. That's where the battle is, and if you and I are not faithfully professing Christ at that point, said Martin Luther, we're not professing Christ at all. For it's where the battle rages that the soldier proves his mettle. So you and I need to be alert, and that's why you're here. I'm just trying to help us understand that these gender issues are not primarily political or social or economic or sexual. They're primarily spiritual and theological, and you and I need to help our people understand these things. Gender is primarily theological. It's there at the heart of creation. It's tied directly to the image of God. It's somehow central to the glory of God. It's really where we live and where the battles are. So let's work with that. Now, let me transition to raising masculine sons a little bit with that long driveway. This is from The Crisis of Manliness by Waller Newell. He says, In the recent Gen X novel by Chuck Palahniuk. Do you think I'd be able to pronounce it being from Klielem? Yes. Speak louder? I'll speak louder. Or turn it up or whatever. I don't know where it turns up, but maybe, Jeff, you can work on that. Thank you. I'll try to talk louder. It's not usually a problem. In the recent Gen X novel by this gentleman who must have been from Klielem. Makes me think of the old eye charts. You remember the rumor had it when the guy came to third grade and said, Cover your right eye. And can you read that bottom line, son? And the kid said, Read it. I know the guy. He lives just two houses down. Well, Chuck's last name looks like the bottom line of the eye chart. But he wrote a Gen X novel called Fight Club. A group of men in their 20s stuck in their jobs as office temps and couriers relieved their boredom by meeting in the basement of a bar after hours and beating one another senseless. Sometimes they show up for work with black eyes and stitches as a warrior's badge of honor. Aside from their jobs, white collar, but holding out no clear career prospect. What these young men have in common is that they are under fathered the product of divorce and of fathers who had no time for them. I'm a 30 year old boy, says the novel's protagonist. I knew my dad for about six years, but I don't remember anything. What you see at Fight Club is a generation of men raised by women. That's a pretty profound statement from a secularist, as far as I know. Let me just share about the women in my life for a moment. Linda, whom you met a moment ago, was raised by a single mom. Her dad, in his case, so unmasculine, so unmanly, it was probably good news for the family when he abandoned the family. My first born son's wife, Carolyn, a magnificent woman, was not raised by her father. My second son's wife, Jamie, is the only one whose father was at home throughout her life. And my youngest son's wife, Jessica, was raised by her mom alone. And that's just in my family. Three of the four women that I know and love didn't have a dad at home. That's what's happening in our culture. I'm going to run by some of that, but let me just read to you another statement that he made. The gurus of sensitivity have tried to convince men to become open, fluid, genderless beings who are unafraid to cry. But little boys still want to play war and shoot up the living room with plastic howitzers. And we can't give every one of them Ritalin, he said. We have a little lady in our church, Donna Chaney, who is a wonderful woman. And she had a little son named Ryan, and she said, I don't know what to do. I've taken all the plastic guns, everything we've ever thought about. We've never had them in our home. They're not allowed. And he came out of the room the other day shooting the legs of his teddy bear. Psychologists have begun to express concern about our educational institution's readiness to pathologize what once would have been regarded as boyish high spirits, rough housing, things like disliking girls and locker room ambience and to treat ordinary immaturity with powerful drugs. Now, let me say this. I am a boy. I grew up as a boy. I became a man. I hope so anyway. And I remember with three sons in our home, how many times did I have to encourage my Lindy? She would say, we're raising juvenile delinquents. And we would have to say, no, they're just boys. Now, we would stop arrogance in its tracks. We would stop disrespect in its track. We would stop dishonesty in its track. But roughhousing and wrestling around and having a good time and pulling each other's ears. That was just part of growing up as boys. You know what I mean? So, how to raise masculine sons. Robert Lewis has a wonderful book. I'd recommend it to you. Raising a Modern Day Knight. He's going to do a seminar on it later on. This talks about three things that are essential to raising masculine sons. He talks about a definition. He mentioned that last hour. He talks about a process. And he talks about a ceremony. If we were doing that in the military, we would say, you need a target, you need the training, and you need a tab. Army Ranger school is that way. Here's the target. We want to build this kind of a soldier in nine weeks. Here is the training process that we will go through in those nine weeks. And of the 287 guys that started in my particular class, at the end of it all, about 90 got the Ranger tab pinned on their shoulders at the end of it. A target, the training, and the tab. Or a definition, or a clear vision, and the process in the company of other men, and then finally the ceremony. I'm going to kind of work on the clear vision, kind of work on what we're shooting for, because that helps me more than anything else. I'm not always really good at remembering 45 things. But I can remember three or four. And if I have a picture of those three or four things in my mind, then I can help my boys grow. And we can help each other grow up. So what I'd like to work on is the target, primarily in this hour. And let me just say this. What we'll work on is primarily out of this book, Four Pillars of a Man's Heart, for the target. And the training is primarily out of this book, Locking Arms. We probably won't get to a lot of that this hour. These two books are available back there for five bucks a piece. Or two for ten dollars. That's less than I paid for some of them. But you guys, and they're not the greatest books in the world. But they'll help, because we're just about out of time. So let's work on the target a little bit. I want to read from what I consider to be a passage that is a target passage for masculinity. As Wayne mentioned last night, the elements of manhood or masculinity are whispered in some passages. And they're shouted in others. And they're reinforced, they're echoed throughout scripture. But let me just read to you some of the whispers that I see. This is in Genesis chapter two. The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And man became a living being. The Lord God planted a garden toward the east in Eden. And there he placed the man, definite article of specificity, whom he had formed. One guy. We know his name to be Adam. Verse 15 says, Then the Lord God took the man, still the definite article of specificity, and put him singular into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it. I think there is something of a provisionary pillar in every chest of every man. These are, of course, generalizations. And they're not absolutely exclusive to gender. But I think there is an emphasis in masculinity about providing for those that are his own, who are near and dear to him. I call that the king pillar, for want of a better term. Robert talked about a noble vision, a noble picture to drive toward. I think of pillars that way in my son's life. We're right now protected by these pillars. These pillars are magnificent because they're in balance and they're standing straight and they're holding weight. We tried to teach our boys. God made you to bear weight. You don't have to go down with it. You can bear weight. But I'll tell you what. If you lean in your character one way or the other, you won't hold anything up. In fact, if you lean, you don't protect anybody. You don't care for them. If you what are pillars good for when they lean? Absolutely nothing. All they do is crush the people around them. So we've got to keep our pillars straight, guys. So the first pillar I see is the king pillar. Let's read a little further. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, from any tree of the garden you may freely, but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. There is whispered. There's something about a man's responsibility to teach or to communicate the way life operates. I like to call that the mentor pillar. There's something of a mentor in every man's chest. It expresses itself differently by gifting and wiring and personality and temperament. But that pillar stands strong. A responsibility to communicate life wisdom. OK. And then we read a little further. For in the day that you eat from it, you shall surely die. I think there is a whisper there of the warrior pillar that's in every man's chest. He's saying, Adam, you need to know that there is a vulnerability here. There is a threat here. You could get killed here in this garden. You need to be alert to it. And I want you to know that there is something in you as a man that should be protective. There is a king pillar to provide. There is a warrior pillar to protect. There is a mentor pillar to teach. And then finally, this passage. Then the Lord God said, it's not good for the man to be alone in any context. Really, Robert was talking about that last hour. And of course, the Zenith, the Zenith of fighting aloneness is the magnificence of marriage and the magnificent connection interpersonally between two human beings made in God's image as male and female. But I like to think of that pillar. It's usually in the Jungian culture called the lover pillar, and it's always prostituted by eroticism and those kinds of things. So I like to call it the friend pillar. There is sun in your chest. God made a friend in there to connect. Your best friend will be your life partner, and you need to learn to connect with her and with all those who are near and dear to you emotionally. That doesn't come naturally. That's part of the reason that God created, I think, the relational genius of the human race, the feminine half. They're much quicker and more adept at relationships, generally speaking, than the male half of the race. So we've got a king, a warrior, a mentor, and a friend. So throughout the process of growing together, we try to take this picture in our little home and develop balance pillars in our boys. Now, the tendency is to think of them as primarily physical traits, providing how to handle money. And you want to teach your boys how to do that. I asked my son the other day, my youngest son, I said, Are you ever going to get a new truck? He's still driving the old truck that we bought when he was seven years old, which we had sold him for a dollar. I said, Are you ever going to get a new truck? He said, Nope, I'm building capital. So he's begun to understand some things about money and provision that way. His wife is a nurse and a very effective one. They don't spend a nickel of her salary. They're putting it away for some critical elements that they want to see in their future. It's a very strong thing, physical provision. But the physical side of it is the least important side. It's the little side. It's the most basic side. We all understand some of that. But what a king is, is not. We're not talking here about Caesar. We're not talking about King Tut. We're not talking about ordering people around. We're not talking about field grapes and palm branches. Gimme, gimme, gimme. We're talking about King Jesus, who was always looking out for those who were in his realm, to the place that he was willing to die for them as the ultimate warrior to take the blow, to shed his blood so that others didn't have to experience that kind of death forever. So, the king pillar is the servant king that is exemplified in Jesus. There's no strutting here. There's no pride here. There is humble provision, not only physically, but also spiritually. The key is providing spiritually for your masculine sons. Now, you can decide what all those goals are. You want certain things to happen for them. You want them to come to Jesus Christ. You want them to understand and love the feminine half of the race. You want them to develop a good work ethic. You want them to understand integrity. Let me tell you about a king in my life, my grandpa. He was a coal miner. I was playing Parcheesi one time with my grandpa and grandma. I was six years old, and he was a king. He never heard the word. He would have thought himself as a king. He was a coal miner, for God's sake, you know. But I can remember when I was playing Parcheesi, I didn't want to lose to my grandma, so I cheated. And I can still see grandpa. This is very vivid in my mind. His glasses went down like this. I'll be doing this very shortly. We just had our first grandson five weeks ago, and our first granddaughter five months ago. So I'm working on this. He put his glasses down, and he said, Stu, you're a Weber boy, and Weber boys don't lie or cheat or steal. See, the king was providing. He was being visionary. He was being pro-visionary. He was looking way down the pike for my little soul and saying, You're not just part of the human herd, son. You have an identity, and that identity at its core is one of integrity. That's part of raising masculine sons, imparting those things. You're not just part of the human herd. That's why our kids are killing each other in school. They're just so much primordial math. My grandpa didn't know that. I thank God for that. He said, You don't lie, cheat, or steal. I can remember in the Republic of Vietnam on one assignment, the last couple months I was a CO of a particular detachment that had a lot of CIA money coming through it and a lot of unaccountable money in normal military channels, and the group commander, 5th Special Forces Group, well, it came down on his name, he sent down the comptroller with a briefcase full of affidavits that I was supposed to sign in my last month in country. And I wouldn't do it. As I sat down to sign them, I realized they're all false. I didn't do any of this. I didn't spend any of this money, and I told the comptroller I won't do it. In the back of my mind, in Vietnam, was a little grandpa who was a king, who looked way ahead, and he said, Son, you're a Weber boy, and you don't lie. So I didn't do it. I thought, I'm going to get killed now. Got my helmet, black jacket on, rolled into the corner, because you didn't cross the group commander. Mike Healy, Iron Mike, they called him. He was dead. I saw him relieve a lieutenant colonel 20 years in career. He wasn't even in the room. He just got rid of him. He was a bad man in that respect, but a delightful man in terms of leading men, because he didn't compromise on certain principles. I thought I was going to get killed because I didn't sign those affidavits. He called me into his office two weeks later as I'm rotating home, and he said, I want to thank you. I said, I don't know how that all happened. I don't know how it all came about, but that's the reason I sent you down there as a young, inexperienced. You didn't know what you were doing, but I knew you wouldn't get us in trouble. And I said, Thanks, Grandpa, and I walked out of the room. See, giving a picture of identity. This is who you are provisionarily looking ahead. Something of a king. For their soul. Let me share the warrior one quickly. I'm grateful that was the second hand. I thought we were 15 minutes over there for a minute. Let's talk about the warrior pillar. There is something in a man. There's something in a boy that wants to protect. Go ahead and use that. Nurture that. Grow that up. Now, sure, there's a place for the physical. The warrior biblically is defined as the man of the in-between. Son, you stand between trouble and what would harm your near and dear one. And your near and dear ones will be your wife. They will be your children. They'll be your friends. They'll be your community. You stand between them and that which would which would harm them. I remember a freshman football, for example, one of my dearest friends. Our two sons were playing together on the freshman team. And freshmen don't know anything. You know that. That's why they call them freshmen. And these two freshmen were standing there holding a little can of Coke after practice. And one of the seniors who was rough, gruff, mean, and just everything about him said, Give me that. Well, my son didn't know enough to do it. It was his Coke. The senior said, Give me that. And he said, Well, no, give me that. I said, And then a little scuffle developed. Long story. We don't have time to tell the whole thing. But John and I talked with our two sons afterwards. We said, You know, if you have a friend who is unjustly and wrongly being attacked, step in, step in. One time, the boys and I were going to pay less drugstore, and we're working on the warrior in the background, you know, kind of talking about it at different times. And lo and behold, as we're getting ready to drive away on a camping trip, the clerk comes running out the front door behind this guy that's got a package under his arm, and he is going. And she's saying, Stop that thief. That's a thief. And the boys looked at me, and I looked at them, and we took off in the truck. I said, You guys stay in the truck, and we stopped the guy. And then the police arrived, and everything was cool. One of the things we're losing desperately in our culture is the warrior spirit. We have become very passive about everything, and we won't stand up, and we won't stand in between. David walked out to the Valley of Elah, and he said, What's going on here? The champion of Philistia is down there every day. The champion of Israel isn't going down. Who will be the man of the in between? I'll go down. So Jesus says, I'm the son of David. I will be the man of the in between. I will stand between my dear ones, my near ones, and all that would destroy them. I will absorb the blows. I'll take the wounds. I'll shed the blood. We're losing that in our culture. I'm greatly appreciative of our police forces. We have a banquet that just honor them, say, Thanks for standing between us and all that would harm us. But I don't understand what was happening at Columbine. I don't understand how armed men in protective gear can listen to the gunshot and not run to the gun. Because our training has been stand back and contain. Don't intervene. There needs to be in a masculine boy as he's growing, not a vicious, imbalanced aggressiveness, but a healthy aggressiveness. Because you see when those pillars lean, they're no good. But if they lean toward passivity, they hurt people just as much as if they lean toward brutishness. So that warrior pillar can't lean toward the brute and it can't lean toward the coward. It's got to walk like this. That king pillar can't lean, like Wayne said, toward tyranny. And that king pillar can't lean toward abdication either. The pillar has to remain balanced. So we need to help a little bit in that area. And may I say this? When you're developing pillars in these little boys, this is just my experience. I don't know if it's just my personal taste, but I think in raising masculine sons, you need a good dose of the out of doors. Now, I don't mean you have to be a hunter or a fisherman or any of those kinds of things, but you do need to spend some time outdoors. There's something about cold and wet and wind in your face that is good for masculine sons. There's just something good about adversity. We grow in adversity. My brethren, count it as joy when many winds and rains blow in your face. And you can learn that while you're camping. Just go for a hike and watch what happens. How many times we would go into the Eagle Cap Wilderness and Ryan was four years old and he couldn't wait to go with the family, but he was just four and we can't carry him for seven or eight miles into the wilderness. So he had to stay back his first year and his second year and his third year. And he was so ready by the fourth year that nothing was going to stop him from going. And we had a little rehearsal, right? It's seven miles, man. And you're four years old. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. He didn't understand all. He just wanted to go. We say you got to carry a pack. Now, all he carried was saltine crackers in it, but he carried a little pack because all of his brothers had packs, you know, and that little trooper. He walked all the way in and he walked all the way out. And my heart was breaking because I wanted to carry. He didn't even look up. I thought of getting on his back a couple of times because he was gone. And I remember another time in that we look at wilderness. We're just laying there in the evening, enjoying the magnificence. And then from behind the ridgeline wound, the front comes in and the clouds pour over and the downpour occurs. And the little meadow with Minam River rowing through it actually overfilled its banks and flowed through the tent. And we had to, in the middle of the night, move the tent up on the hillside, sleep on a slope like that in wet sleeping bag. We didn't sleep at all, but we had a glorious night of learning to face adversity together because we were outdoors. So I'd encourage you. You don't have to be macho man and it doesn't matter where your interests are. Do something that helps them face adversity together to develop the king, the warrior, and then there's the mentor pillar. This is this is the pillar of life wisdom. You want to teach your masculine son's wisdom and and how to impart it, not by lecturing or sermonizing all the time, though there's a place for that. But in the fraternity, like Robert was saying last hour to us men, giving them friends and giving them a dad that will sit down and talk through these things to develop a mentor pillar where life wisdom is developed. Well, let me just say this. If the mentor pillar leans this way, you've got to know it all. And everybody hates to live with a know it all. Dad, mom, you can't know it all. And you need to tell them that they think, you know, everything. I mean, you've ever noticed that you're supposed to know everything. You're supposed to know why the lawnmower broke down. I don't know the first thing about an internal combustion engine. I don't know why it broke down. It's OK to say that. Let's just go out and tear it apart and try to figure it out. Maybe if we clean a few things, good things happen when you clean boys. So let's go see, you know, you're supposed to know why the dogs barking. You have no idea why the dogs barking, but you're supposed to know. Well, if that's true in those little things, how much more is it true in the areas where life counts and matters the most? This is where my dad was so good. Now, my dad is a passive man. He's a gentle man. He is a quiet man. He is a German man. He's a man. I say noncommunicative man in that respect. My mother deserves a crown and she will have one. And you know what? So does my dad, because she's not all that easy to live with either. And they would both say the same thing. We kids sit around today and we watch him pick on each other. It's kind of like Golden Pond sometimes, you know, your poop. But what a what a mentor. And you know how he mentored it wasn't by leading family devotions because he never did that successfully. Took such pressure off me when my hero, my father said, you know, I'm not really good at this. He didn't lead them very well. He was a family devotion. Every time he turned around, he was doing it right. My picture of my father is over in the dining room on the dining room table with books spread out. Now, in his early years, he was a coal miner. And in his later years, he was a city fireman. What does a coal miner or a fireman need to be studying theology for? He would have the Bible open and he'd say, you know, you guys ought to turn that TV off. You look at this. And when I would look at it, it looked like a whole bunch of little tiny print. And he would say, this is the plan of the ages. The whole world is going to come together like this. And he would stay there at that table, this little quiet German father. I so wanted to be like that. Even in all of my antsy boyish adolescent ways, I never said that. Did anybody ever tell you that you were supposed to be like your dad? Even if your dad was not a good dad, you wanted to be like him in some respects. I remember seeing those little deals in National Geographic, the little tribal scars on some of my black brothers in Africa. And I remember thinking, man, I wish we had tribal scars. And the first time I smelled my dad's body odor, I thought, I wonder if that's our tribal symbol. You know, nobody had to tell me I want to be like my dad. I just did. And, you know, he spent every nickel on a book on theology. My mother didn't know the Lord in the early years. She thought Byron had gone and got another lover. Jesus was his name, but he was so infatuated. He was so taken. It was not alcoholism, but he spent every nickel on another book about theology, old gravel voice, Mr. Dahan. He had all those little pamphlets because he said, the man reads the Bible. He says, this is what the Bible means. And this is how you do it. We would open our front door closet and books would cascade off the shelves and kill people because there were so many they couldn't fit in there. And he was a coal miner and a fireman, but he was understanding life to this day. I go over to my almost 80 year old dad's place and he said, Hey, would you like this? You probably need this. And he hands me a book. He studied life. He understood life. The key is knowing the Bible. C.S. Lewis is a small mind for you. He says this. I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstair indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises of gurgling cisterns and pipes and the noise of wind under the tiles and also of endless books. Also of endless books. My father bought all the books he read and he never got rid of any of them. There were books in the study books in the drawing room books in the cloakroom books too deep in the bookcase on the landing books in the bedroom book piles as high as my shoulder in the cistern attic books of all kinds reflecting every transient stage of my parents interest in the seemingly endless rainy afternoons. I took volume after volume from the shelves. I had always the same certainty of finding a book that was new to me as a man who walks into a field has a finding a new blade of grass. Read, read, read, read. And if you don't read, get tapes, but have them around for the kids. Get the beginner's Bible. You know, get the Chronicles of Narnia. Read, read, read. We still have in a very special place, the little David C. Cook picture Bibles that our kids learned on the pages are torn to pieces and they still remember those pictures in the 30, 28 and 24. Become a mentor. Know the Bible. Know the family. Understand your history. My grandpa was an orphan. We go as far as my grandpa. We don't have what you call a long lineage, but you know what? That little orphan boy started a heritage. He was the pivotal generation in our family. And so we try to remember my boys didn't know him. But when this little grandson was born just five weeks ago, his middle name is after his great, great grandfather, because the guy was a king. He mined coal, but he said, You're a Weber boy. And Weber boys are like this. Now he never had any idea what a Weber boy was in a home because he never grew up in a home, but he started the chain. And today his son, my dad walks with Jesus Christ and all of my dad's kids walk with the Lord and all of my dad's grandchildren walk with the Lord. And now the great grandchildren have started because there is this lineage. I am one of the fortunate few. Our family was far from perfect, but they stayed when it was tough. Could I suggest another mentoring technique? Good movies. This may be anathema in some parts of the country and Christian circles, but obviously be discreet, be discriminating when it comes to the movies you choose. But let me just tell you about one movie. We would watch movies and then we would sit down in the fraternity and we would talk about them and analyze them and critique them and get mad about certain things and honor certain things and appreciate them. One of the movies we watched years ago when the boys were young was a movie called Chariots of Fire. You've seen it. That movie. I had no idea how potent it would become in my son's life, but that movie determined in many ways the course of his life. Movies are really powerful. Watch which ones you watch. But that son became so stricken with England and the United Kingdom that he said, I'm going to go there. He graduated from college. He went to England. He met a woman at Oxford. He led her to Christ. They have the most magnificent marriage in the world today. And it started with a movie when he was a little boy. I'm going to England. It started with Chariots of Fire, and now he will be raising children that relate directly to a movie. So don't be afraid of them. Criticize them, talk to them, choose them wisely, but develop the mentor in them. And then may I say just before we jump to some questions, something about the friend pillar, the king to provide, the warrior to protect, the mentor to teach and the friend to connect. This is the one that's most difficult for little boys. It's the most difficult for grown men. Because you see, kings and warriors, the strong side of the equation, tend to lean a little strongly on the tender side. We're not talking soft. We're talking tender. But we know how to rise as men to these lofty things like kings and warriors, and we somehow warriors don't like vulnerability. They don't like a chink in their armor. They don't want a place where the knife could go in and it could hurt. And so men don't tend to share. Robert was talking about that. The cloak of secrecy that is so destructive to us as men. We need to learn to deal with our own chests and our own hearts and our own emotions. I mentioned how it began to come home for me. I didn't grow up in a in an emotional home. I didn't grow up in what we would call a kissy poo huggy face kind of outfit. You know, my dad shook hands when we did good. And if it was real emotional, the second hand would go on the elbow, you know, but he didn't hug, you know, where I learned to hug from my boys. My youngest son taught me tender. He taught me to deal with my heart. And I was 30 years old when he was born. I should have known far earlier. I would tell the firstborn son, eat your peas camp felt like that. It's kind of where coal miners do it. And he did his piece mission accomplished. Along comes Blake. I said, eat your peas, Blake. My brother did it. Mission accomplished. Brian came along and I said, eat your peas, right? And he'd look up and his eyes would glaze over and he'd turn his head. He said, Dad, why did you have to say it like that? I thought something was wrong with my son. And you shouldn't have the wrong impression. He's six, three to 20, extremely vigorous, extremely competitive, very capable athletically. He's a good student. He's a delightful human being. But God took that third born son to teach me how to be tender. And it was such a wonderful thing. We have tuck in time. That's the best time for mentoring tuck in time. And, and we would go up to his room and, and I don't, I always went to the boys rooms and we, we hung out for all the four pillars at night, his mentoring situation. And, and Ryan would always, he would get a hold of me when I'd lean down to hug him in bed and he wouldn't let go. And I, at first it was uncomfortable. And then, you know what he said, this little kid, he said, dad, bear hugs are the best he taught me. And he taught me so potently. I decided I'm going to teach my dad. So I went to the old German. The first time I hooked my dad in a situation trying to raise masculine sons, clean the garage really effective. My son came home from his freshman year. He was out of order. He was out of straight. He wasn't himself. He'd never had a bad day. He was a jovial, happy, go lucky, sweethearted kid. And he came home depressed and down and he wasn't himself. And I didn't know what to do. So we cleaned the garage and I said, right, what's happening there. He put down the box. I can still see his muscles rippling in his back. And he turned around and very uncharacteristically in manner. He said, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know anything. Not unlike Robert's description of his eighth grade son. This was a college freshman. I said, what do you mean you don't know? He said, dad, I go to school with guys that have known since they were four years old. They were going to be pediatricians or rocket scientists or something. I don't even know what I'm going to major in, let alone what class I'm going to take next term. I don't know anything. And for a third born who orders his life from the inside out, it was totally disorienting. And, you know, I heard myself speaking and sometimes the best moments are the ones you could never rehearse. They usually are. And I heard my own voice speaking and saying, well, I don't know either. But I know this. I will be his head tilted again like it only can do. And he came to me and he hugged me in the garage and we squeezed and I felt his warm tears on my neck and he felt my warm tears on his neck. We connected emotionally. We'll never be the same for those moments. Thinking about writing a new book called Locking Beards, because that's kind of what we do. So there's a king to provide, a warrior to protect, a mentor to teach and a friend to connect. Now, what's the process? The process is in the company of men. If you want to be a great basketball player, you've got to hang out with great basketball players. If you want to be a good man, you've got to hang out with good men. That's what Locking Arms is all about. So Four Pillars is the target. Locking Arms is about the training. There's a process there. Now, we have 12 minutes by my watch and I want to be faithful to the opportunity for questions and answers. Can you hear me? Now you can hear me. You want me back over here because this is the one that works. I'm slow, but I get it after a while. Do you have any questions? We may not have any answers, but that's legal. The picture I tried to share in Four Pillars, let me read to you a passage. I love this. I think this is pristine masculinity. Genesis chapter 18. For I have chosen him in order that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice. Genesis 18, 19. It's an instruction of the Lord to the father of nations. And fatherhood, I believe, is just kind of a one-word description of applied masculinity. So it's leading or providing. It's protecting, teaching, connecting. Could you hear the question in blended families? Do you encourage the birth father to bear the mantle or the new father, the stepfather in the home? Basically, that's a tough question, but you know what these principles, I believe, are universal and applicable to both situations, and I don't think we need to take it as an either or. The Christian man lives by the Christian book, and it so resonates with truth that eventually, I believe, in most cases, it has a wonderful opportunity of winning. Have you ever noticed the power God places in a father? That power need not be wasted, and if it is wasted by one individual, it can be picked up by another. I have a dear friend who is a major general in the military, broke his heart when his wife left him, just destroyed him. He didn't know if he was going to keep his brain around him for a couple of years, but he found a mentoring reality in a young man that didn't have a dad, and that relationship became a need-meeting one in both of their lives, and they became healthy and happy together. There was a remarriage to the mother of the young boy, and both of those families today enjoy magnificent mentoring because when a man gives himself away to kids wherever, I don't think we even have to do it with our own sons. I mean, Denny helps me raise my kids masculine, and the four or five guys that I have around me that are my closest friends, they all help mentor my sons to manhood, and that's what you'll find in Robert Lewis's seminar coming up. That's one of the main themes is in the company of other fathers, so it's healthy. I think Robert had the answer this morning through those men's ministries. We started one at Good Shepherd when that happened those years ago, and those guys showed up on Saturday morning, and you can take the young boys, you can take the adolescent boys, they can come too. We're learning this manhood thing together, son. We can do this together. Our guys meet on Sunday morning, and on Tuesday morning there's 150 about, 120 about each at both of those meetings, and they work in table groups at Becoming Men Together. One of the guys in that group was an old woods boss. He was the consummate Oregonian stereotype. You wore suspenders and overalls, and he was a woods boss and a logger. He said the first time, one time we prayed around the table. He was 65 years old, and I put my arm on his shoulder like this, and we prayed together around the table. He wrote me a note that I swear was tear-stained. He said, It's the first time in my life a man ever touched me with respect and love. He's 65. Will he miss men's fraternity? Will he miss high ground? He won't miss at all. He's there every time as a 65-year-old learning about being a man, and when there's a 21-year-old or a 17-year-old next to him, they learn together. So Robert was right. Start with the men, call to their manhood, and watch what happens. I grew up in a single mom home, and I have a little brother who didn't have a dad at home. My mother made sure that there were people in his life that were men, and so there were various gentlemen along the way who did take Bruce under his wing to just do things with him and do things for him. When he turned 16, somebody gave him an old car, and this one gentleman showed him how to fix it and how to take it apart. Along the way, there were a lot of different men, and so the women needed to be encouraged to help them find a mentor. It's not an easy thing, but they do need men in their lives, and God will provide. And Bruce is a pastor today, having never had a father in his home at all. My mother was a single mom, and her two girls are married to pastors, and her son is a pastor. And all of the many grandchildren are walking with the Lord in a strong way. Even though there was hardship and not the way that God would have had it to be, God is a God of grace and can overcome hard circumstances, and our family is the testimony to that. I would like to add one thing about the woman's touch to the masculine, since I had three sons to raise, and I was the only woman in the house. One thing that I think is helpful for helping your young men is to help them understand the honoring of the woman. If they see and feel that their mother is to be honored, then they appreciate their mother, and to the extent that a young man will appreciate his mother, he will go into life respecting the relationships with the women that come along in his life. So they can expect better marriage relationships, better relationships with all kinds of people when they've had a healthy relationship and appreciation of the woman as the mother in their life. Can I add to that? And then I'm going to come. I promise green shirt. Let me let me read you a letter. This is from. I know it's in here. This is from our daughter-in-law who married our oldest son. She didn't know Christ when they first met at Oxford. She didn't have a father. He abandoned the family. There were some memories there, and and she she was going on and on in a conversation with our son about men. This is a woman who's very intelligent, very capable. Oxford's had four female deans of colleges in their 1200 year history, and she was a dean at St. Peter's when she was 25. She's very capable woman, and she was kind of going on and on about men. And and I didn't know we didn't know this till a couple of weeks ago. We were having breakfast with a tell us tell us more about your meeting, and she said, you know, I was kind of haranguing here and can't raise his hand. He said, Carolyn, you need to stop. Men aren't like that. Every man isn't that way. I'm not that way. My dad's not that way. My brothers are not that way. And the men I know and love are not that way. She said that made me angry because I knew he was right. And then she wrote this letter. I think I can get through this. She said, When I was little, I used to believe with all my heart. This is the dearest mom and dad. That's what she calls it. Now, can you believe this? It's just wonderful. When I was little, I used to believe with all my heart and white knights on great steeds and good princes with hearts of gold and dragon slayers and strong, righteous things. As I grew older, I didn't become so cynical that I lost complete side of this. But I did bury such dreams away. They were too dangerous to believe in because such heroes could not truly exist. But they do in all caps, I've learned so many things and learning about my faith among them. Just what a reflection the relationships in our lives are of his love for us. The ultimate of these all of all these, of course, is marriage. Your eldest son is a hero. Now listen to this and hear it theologically in terms of bride and groom. He saved me from myself. He saved me from the world, and he continues to save me constantly through the giving of himself through his incarnation into what it is like to be me, to assume my burdens and to relieve my worries. My relationship with God is like anyone else is ultimately a personal one. But Kent has translated it for me into the dynamics of living it, of seeing it in action. Most of all, I want to serve him. Now, this is a woman who will complete her defill at Oxford this year. Most of all, I want to serve him. I just want to do all I can to glorify him. I truly believe that the best way I can live my life to God's glory is to live it in glorifying Kent Webber. Is this a lucky man or what? He says it may sound silly. She says it may sound silly, but I mean it with every fiber of my being. When I say it gives me more honor to iron a single shirt of his than to teach at a million Oxford. I'm not immaturely or as they say, blindly in love for I see boy do I see and the vision centers on my Superman. She calls him Clark Kent. I admit it selfish for me to do him. He gives me easy, gives me ease to make him happy, makes he makes me happy. He's everything to me and I am him. You have raised a hero. You have raised lovingly someone I barely dared to believe existed. Bless you always for that. And I know that you have my and know that you have my undying respect and love. She goes on to say my greatest honor in life comes from bearing his name. Not the initials of a degree of bearing his children, not producing an article or holding a position. The only position I want is the one by his side from his side. Your son is a treasure. Any true intelligence I may own is precisely because I know his worth of all the things that Oxford gave me and could have given me. It brought to me Kent Webber life for me began there because a little kid who was a highly competitive firstborn learned to love a mother who cared for him. I got to go over here and then we'll be right back. That's why cleaning the garage became a hobby. I understand that. I totally understand that. Not only six days a week but seven days a week. We just worked constantly at being there. We actually changed elders meeting schedules when the boys had events that we needed to be at. We worked hard. We have a very gracious group of men surrounding us that would do that. I guess. I guess I never wanted my voice to think they were. Could I say that in this group. I wanted them to be normal boy. And so we worked at all the normal boy things. And there were some times when I couldn't be there. And there was a lot of those times. But you know what? What they remember is the times I was there and they work hard at remembering it and they love it. And it's six twice as long as the times I may have not been there. The key was not a hobby for us. It was just hanging out. And for us it was cleaning the garage. I don't know anything mechanical either. I can't fix a thing. There's no connection between my hands and my brain. But there is between my heart and my boy's heart. And you know we always said we always said that we will never do it perfectly around here. Guaranteed. But we will always do it together. You will never be able to do anything bad enough to not be our boys. We accept you for who you are. And we do affirm like Robert said. And that when you when you love the boys till they feel it. And you live out your values. I believe the chances are are fairly good that they'll come home wagging their tails. One more practical thing along that line. Whenever you do have those good times together with them I'd say photograph it so that you have something as a memory to make it last longer in their mind and yours. There are there are studies done people have received their PhDs to back that up. One more and then we'll go. It's in my book actually. I have there's a book Mommy Incredible and there's a book Woman of Splendor and it's in the second one. All the good stuff in her book. I think we need to come to a close. So let me lead us in prayer and then let's go and raise men. Shall we. Father thank you for life in your image. Thank you for the genius of maleness and femaleness. Thank you for the joy of seeing it come together in our own lives and in the lives of our children. Father we pray for all those here in this room who are in the seasons of trial and adversity and struggle and disappointment and pain. We have all been there. It's common to all of us. We pray father to the great lord of redemption that you would by your grace give us the grace to extend ourselves to these your children in a way that could be redemptive. And I pray father for all the ones in our homes that they might experience the taste of the pleasure of their masculinity and femininity and find it fulfilled to the hilt because they know and love you who've made them in their image. I pray that you would bless every pastor and every pastor's wife and every person in this room with a great sense of calling and blessing in family. We pray these things in Christ's name. Amen. And could I make one more commendation. Thank you. Family Life Conference which is sponsoring this one has a family life parenting conference in numbers of the cities not all of them. If you can ever break away to go to that one it will be well worth your time for the two of you as parents coming together to work on the little tribe. Okay. at 847-573-8210 or Family Life Ministries at 800-FL-TODAY that's 800-358-6329