Hey everyone and Rashad here. So glad you could make it. It’s not, it’s not as cold as it has been. It’s still pretty cold. Yeah. So today we wanted to just jump right into some exciting Edmond Christian Counseling opportunities for men. We’ve got four reasons why men fail or fail to initiate and how to help. So we wanted to start with something that happened to me yesterday. I was taking a walk. Hey mark. Yeah, go ahead and tell us where you’re from. Check in, say hi. And is that right? He got a lot of roles. Oh he does. He have brothers all over the world. He’s big time. So I was at this place called Lake Catherine yesterday and we’re going to put videos online later. And Man, I was walking and I saw, I looked down there and it looked like a sea of crystals. Just waves washing over me.
You can hear the sounds of like crystals coming together, but it was ice, but the refraction off of the water, it was amazing. All these colors thena pictures. Yeah. You saw Vinci’s it? No, the picture doesn’t do it justice, but it gives you an idea of how nice it is. I also took some pictures of some sunsets by my house. I take got some of the most beautiful sunsets that you could imagine. It’s really incredible the work that, so we’re going to put those up there because we have been suffering really cold weather without any snow. And so we wanted to share that even in those times, even in those kinds of weathers that we can still enjoy the presence of God if we just look for them in different places. All right, so let’s jump in. You know, I wanted to start with a quote because so so many times we, I don’t know about you, but I was raised by a single mom and I really was never taught how to be a man.
I didn’t see it modeled out for me. I didn’t see how men and women are supposed to interact by God’s design. And so this helps me to really tune in to what God, his design is. So I wanted to start though by reading a quote. Now, this is a quote by advertising by well-known clothing company. Now, this isn’t a current quote, but it’s a quote that they used at one point for advertisement. They said once upon a time when more men or the pants and they wore them, well, women really had to open doors and little old ladies. They never had to cross the street alone. Men took charge because that’s what they did, but somewhere along the way, the world decided it no longer needed real men disco by Disco Latte by Foamy Latte nonfat of course, 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 for the first time the world sits idly by as our cities crumble, children misbehave and those little old ladies stay stranded on the other side of the street for the first time. Since bad guys, we need to real heroes. We need grownups. We need men to put down the plastic fork, step away from the salad bar and untie the world from the tracks of complacency. It’s time to get your hands dirty. It’s time to be the man. It’s time to answer the call of authentic manhood. It’s time to where the paint, oh, I’m to where the pain now that is raw. Listen, that’s an advertisement from dockers jeans. Really? That’s pretty awesome and so guys, it’s a call to living in a way where you are part of the story where you don’t sit idly by and let women take the hard shots.
They don’t let women just suffer and raise the kids without your help. It’s stepping up and initiated. One factor I think that’s led to the declination of manhood is that we don’t know of are, we don’t know what our role is. When I go to watch the thunder, it’s a basketball team. We have in Oklahoma City, I’m a spectator. I buy, you know, I buy food and I take my kids and when you sit down and seats and I don’t sweat unless it’s the playoffs and we’re losing that, I might sweat, I cheer or I criticized. You know, everybody criticizes the Ref at sometime, right fingers. But I’m on the sidelines in a chair watching a game perform. I’m not playing. I’ve never hit a shot. I’ve never bounced a ball down there and I’ve never made a layup. I’ve never scored any points for the thunder, although I feel like I’m a part.
Wow. And I think that’s a great analogy to what we’ve been taught as men. We’ve been taught to be spectators. Yeah. Instead of players, we’ve been taught to sit on the sidelines point fingers. Hi Lena. Instead of getting in the game, actually playing and enjoying what God gave us to do with this is the gift of being a man. Now, women, the women that are watching. I just encourage you to just enjoy this because I’m calling men to really step into their identity of who they’ve been created by God to be. Now for all of us, that may look a little bit different, but, but we really have to get our roles correct. You know, we really are the ones that are called to help the little old ladies across the street. We’re the ones that are called to help people on the side of the road to go out when it’s below zero weather and, and help somebody that’s in need. So be the hero. We’re called to be the heroes. Gosh, there’s so many kids. There’s so many people in our society and around the world that desperately need men to live in that role that God gave him. Wow. What do you think? I think that’s awesome. I have to look at the life of Jesus. Have servants all,
even a in places that were tough to hear in tough, uh, you know, to do things. He was always like attentative to what was best for them. You’d also, I think that’s so cool. If us, me, it can be bold in bold is righteous eye. I look in Proverbs, it says the righteous are bold. As lions, we can be bold enough to just step into our manhood or identity. It changes everything.
And Jesus sent them out two by two and then you send them out that, you know, 12 and they changed the world. They became part of the story. There were ordinary men to their ordinary man. He’s crazy. That’s awesome. I love it. So spectators, they, they, there were taught as men to be spectators. Video Games appeal to men. We like to become part of a story. So they have world of Warcraft, they have call of duty. All these ones that co come alongside and they challenge us to jump into somebody else’s story. And it’s not even real. It’s a video game. Yeah. And guys will play for hours. I had a guy tell me that his nephew was, was one of the most phenomenal athletes he ever seen, the most phenomenal athlete he’d ever seen at seven years old. Wow. But their parents divorced and he fell on hard times and he got into video games.
Hi Cindy. And instead of staying in sports and staying active, he would lock himself up in a room. So much so that he’d said he, he rewire his brain. This kid that was an extrovert, he became an introvert and he became a social recluse, started failing in school. And he would, I mean, he barely made it in the college and he, this, this whole kid’s personality literally changed because he allowed himself to become part of a fake story and video games nine part of the real story. Hello it. Video Games aren’t bad. They’re not what I’m saying. But there they have their place but just not at the forefront of our den. Exactly. Know what I mean? So it could be entertainment and for fun, but just not replace who we are.
Wow, that’s really good. That’s, I can’t believe that story. Like
I just heard it yesterday. And so another thing is people that are spectators, they make excuses and they don’t take responsibility. So much of their time is spent failing and criticizing. The failures are not even trying, so they don’t fail. But criticizing the failures and mistakes of others instead of assuming responsibility. So if I was on the floor playing with a thunder, playing basketball and shooting the ball with Kevin, not Kevin Duran, he left us, but shooting the ball with Russell and Oh Paula, George, man, I would be practicing every day. I would find out ways that I could improve my game. Oh, it’d be diligent more how I eat, how I sleep, how I exercise. I mean I would surround myself with greatness because that’s where I would want to go. So, so when I started to take responsibility, the way I think, my actions, they all start to line up in different ways than if I just see myself as a spectator.
Wow. Does that make it so, so, you know, like we shouldn’t see ourselves as spectators contribute, be apart a gist of what even God’s doing around us. And all the time there’s a scripture that says be sober-minded and like, you know, uh, you know, uh, what is it? Ah, I forgot it. Meet us really good morning. Cause where you guys wrote the snakes. What is innocent as doves? You liked that scarcer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s cool man. We gotta be on the look. He got to be tentative. We do. Yeah. So we have to be aware of what God’s called us to do in our roles. You know, a disengaged man. One that is not engaged in his life or the life of his family has low expectations and we’ll always have low achievements. Never happens in different way. Wow. Never happens a different way.
So there are three, there are three different, uh, that the first one is misunderstanding your role. That’s one of the reasons men fail to initiate. Another one is, is that, um, we don’t know how we don’t, we’ve never been taught, you know, I was raised by a single mom and I was never taught how to initiate leading my family. I was never taught how to initiate being a great guy or how do I initiate this? Now I’ve seen some people modeling here and there and thank God for books because no matter where you’re at, you can read a book and somebody can mentor you. The Bible, God meant it for mentors to us from the Bible, but other people like James Dobson and mentored me. So look at what you don’t know how to do. And that’s man, that’s intimidating. Not knowing how to do something true.
I remember just growing up with a single mom that was really hard, not knowing where my dad was, not knowing what it looks like to be a man trying to fit in, but then I stepped into becoming a dad and there was a season of life where I was sick and I was struggling and I just didn’t tune out all the way, but we watch. If you knew me, you’d know this is a big deal. We watched an entire, all the seasons of the cartoon Avengers with my kids because going to stand of engaging, I just, man, I would come home and I would try, but I’ll be tired and not feeling good and we just went and watched an Avengers cartoon together every day. We watched them several times. We did wait watch and managers cartoons and I had all the action figures, little slab or captain America.
I still like them by the way. Those are heroes. They are heroes. I wanted it to be here, but I didn’t play video games, cartoons. I went back to a time in my life when I was struggling. That really resonated man. Cartoons, things are better in a lot of ways, not as much pressure felt healthier. So, so I know we all, we all find different ways to start checking out when life gets. Yeah. Another thing to consider is um, I don’t know how to uh, another one is, um, it’s hard work to initiate. Yeah. It’s really hard work to initiate. You have to make ever, you’ve got to try and if you don’t do that then you never get better. Your family never follows you. But I know when I come home from work I have a lot of times I’m mentally drained because I have a Christian counseling practice and yeah, I just give out so much of who I am to people all day that when I come home, man, I’ve got to really switch ears and ask God for grace to give that to my family as well.
At times I’ll even think that’s even deep as being a pastor if not deeper cause you were dealing with real all day issues. See Yeah. Yeah. Missile. I commend to you and what you do bro. Cause I know you’re very well. People lives in me no more than hard. Yeah. And you know, and as a guy it’s easy to say, you know, and I’ll take care of the guard work, I’ll go and mow the lawn, I’ll weed the garden, cut trees down and just do that for not tuning into the family or take care of some project that needs to be done over here but not connects with the Edmond Christian Counseling family. So it’s, it’s pretty tough really to think about how we’re going to succeed when we’ve never been taught or when we’re exhausted. And I know this, I know that there are things that you can do with eating, with um, taking some time.
Like I, I went, I didn’t come straight home yesterday because my family’s got the flu and it’s been tough. I went straight down and I took a walk around the lake and I just needed that 30 minutes to kind of process and pray and, and, and navigate through some things. That’s why you guys got some pictures of a sunset cause because I did that two nights. If you have, if you guys haven’t seen the sunset picture, all of the New Vision page honest suggests Highland suggest she goes, look at it cause it’s right down the street from my house. I woke up and just seeing that when I was seeing that, I was like, come on Jesus. You know, I remember one of the, one of the hard things for me to initiate was the birds and the bees conversation. Oh man, you talk about awkward.
But God gave me the grace to get in there with the book and show pictures. My wife felt so awkward, she wouldn’t even be in the room I in. She sat on the other side of the living room while I went over to the birds and the bees and ends up, my kids are laughing because looks like Iti and just crazy stuff. So the, the fourth one is we don’t initiate as men because there’s imminent failure. When we make effort on any level, we will fail. Wow. There’s never a different way it happens. If you play a sport, you won’t win. Every time I coach my son’s team, hey, we’re undefeated. We were wanting to know second day, second games today. So I’ll let you know next week if we win. If not, I might forget. So if you try, you’re going to fail at some point. And so part of your growth is accepting that process of growing and moving forward and loving life. How boring would life be if we never failed? We’ve never learned any. Nothing. Who would never let her is I praise God for my past failures. It’s hard to phrase yacht in the middle of the picture, but he’s a holy man.
Stops. They just said, I’m thankful that I was afflicted, but that was a pass. Like he means it’s in the past year. I Adimey that’s happening now. So guys, I want to say failure doesn’t have to define us. Failure doesn’t have to preclude us from pressing into God and moving forward with his love in his life that he’s got for you. So, so, so look, I wonder where for reasons why men failed to initiate. Look, men failed to initiate. And that’s part of why our society has declined and every societies around the world, because we’re not stepping into our roles, we’re not carrying the mantle of taking the hard things of life and being the first one running out of the gate, trying to save lives. Being the first one to take the bullet being the first one. The layer lives down for our family, for our wives that are job saying no to more work and yes to more family.
It’s hard. It’s hard. I know I suffer. I struggle through, let it be known that Mcguire’s are have lots of issues. The one thing that we do is we get knocked down, get back up again. That’s all we got to live. A righteous man falls seven times. Give him, ah, hey, look it. There’s nothing that comes to a passive man except failure. There’s nothing that comes to a passive man except failure. So I’m going to give you some reasons. It’s some really powerful things to do. The first one is men. Instead of time tonight to spend with your family, call it a family devotion to family meeting time, whatever you need to do, and sit down and talk to your wife if you’re married, if not, talk to God or friends three to four, three to seven times a week. Do this. Make it part of your family DNA to do this.
And if you can do this nightly at some level with your wife too, that’s great, but at least pray together. The other one is I’m going to give you 10 questions that I’ve put down that I want you to ask 10 questions. Now Look, you can ask him one question a week. Anybody can ask for one any question or weak right now. Really ambitious guy might sit down and take his wife out for a weekend and ask all 10 big a notebook and some Aleve cause your head my blow up. But you know a real man can do that. But look, you can do a one one a day for 10 days. You can really seriously one a week for 10 weeks. Anybody can do that. All right. So the first question is, what could I do to make you feel more love? And we’re going to put these on the web.
You’re going to type them out, right? And put them on there so you guys will have him. What can I do to make you feel more love to? What can I do to make you feel more respected? Three, what could I do to make you feel more understood? What could I do to make you feel more understood? Women, can you imagine if your husband, boyfriend asked you about these things? Tell them how that makes you feel. And by the way, invite them, support them to be part of this to help you out. Because I mean, it’s really hard for us men to initiate because I know for me, my wife’s an exceptional leader and she’s lives in tune and it feels like with the kids, I’m gone cause I have to go to work every day, but she lives in tune with the kids and so it’s really easy for me to let her just move naturally and for her to lead because she’s so good at it.
Even grew. Yeah. Help us. Help us, man. You’re getting out of the scope. Help us, man, to, to lead in our families. We need all the pats on the back. Good job. It’s true. We just need that. We just need to make your bicep is even before love a lot of the time. Even if a wife, my wife can disrespect me, makes me feel so much better about myself and just, hey man, just start a relationship or a marriage. So number four is what could I do to make you feel more secure? What could I do to make you feel more secure? Five. What could I do to make you feel more confident in our future direction? What could I do to make you feel more confident in our future direction together? These are big questions. So why? I said 10 weeks. Six what attribute?
Let’s get like me to develop. Boy, that might be 10 months for one right attribute. Especially if it’s me. Patients. How about a hundred years? How about eternity, right? You’ve heard of the, so what attributes? Seven. What attribute would you like me to help you develop? Eight. What achievement in my life would bring you the greatest joy? What achievement in my life would bring you the greatest joy? And then nine, what would indicate to you that I really desire to be more Christ? Like what would that indicate to you? That I desire to be more Christ’s light. And then 10 what mutual goal would you like to see us accomplish together? What mutual goals? What’d you like to see us accomplish together? And these would be great. Hey anniversary questions. These would be great anytime of the year. But even just reading these again, I’m thinking, man, these are scary questions because they all require something of us.
Every one of these requires something of us. So with the answer that they give the men, so what should we, what should we do from there? Where should we go from there? Should run it, soak that in and write it or dry it down. Okay. You know, take notes and then make a plan of how you’re going to, that’s why I said once a week is fine, ask one, one of these questions a week and then just process it over the week of how you’re doing. Look, I would rather see you guys be successful at one thing over time. Then no things at anytime. God so, so just take one and be successful with that one thing and start moving into that one thing. Look, some of you may be saying, no way are you crazy maybe, but all of us have been empowered by God to be demand and I’ve defined a little bit of what godly man had.
Looks like. I’ve exposed some of the areas that I know personally I’m limited in and I’ve got to really be conscious of realizing I’m not a spectator, I’m a player. I made me a player, good player. Wow. In this game of life that he put together for us to live for him. I’ve got to realize that I have a heart. You know my job, I give my heart and not come home tired and realize that’s just part of the deal that I need to find ways to navigate through so I can give my best, not my last true. I’m getting convicted now as I’m talking because my family’s been sick and I’ve just been drained and they’ve not been getting my best. So I’m getting convicted now. Hopefully you guys will take that conviction and move forward. And then the third one is not knowing how to initiate.
We’ve got, we’ve got books. You can find mentors, people to come alongside of you and then come alongside side. Me and my wife were all sold out for you. That’s right. Completely transform all life. Hey Man. Hey man, love it. And then the fourth one is there’s imminent failure. So just accept that as part of this journey, you’re going to fall, you’re going to fail. You’re, your wife’s going to give you a dirty look. Someone’s going to make fun of the way you pray. They’re going to, the kids are going to scream. You know, there is a season of our life as in our entire kids’ entire childhood that I thought that, but I thought that it wasn’t a proper family devotional without somebody screaming or somebody’s crying. Somebody’s getting in trouble because they’re acting crazy. You know when my dog, when we first got him, he ran around like a wild maniac.
We had to, we had to cast some demons out of Merseyside. He needed Jesus to come cause they would just go boom every time. So look, that’s part of the journey. Don’t let any adversity deter you from pressing in. If you read the Bible, you’ll discover that adversity is part of our human condition and why God sent Jesus and the Holy Spirit to empower us to be successful in loving others, loving him, and most importantly, really accepting that love for ourselves first. That’s really good because we need it. We need to know that we’re allowed, like men are men. Men maybe have big biceps. They may have beards and look tough. Look, we are not tough. We heard some of the week, look, we don’t have babies and God knew that we would die if we had babies. You know, women are able, you give guys are able to do so much. Even now I’m reminded of how amazing women are because my, I’m telling you, my wife has been in bad, taken out my kids by the flu. I think almost every day I’ve woken up somebody screaming or needing something and I am so appreciative of how much she does to serve me, to serve our family, how much sacrifice she lays in the line and it validates it. I am not called to be a stay at home mom.
I’ve had a lot of zeal to go to work this week. Zealand’s as more visual. You guys be the man. Women help encourage men to step into this God given role. So much. I could say about this, but how so? If you want help walking down this road, how can people get Ahold of us? Hey,
oh no, get up. Go ahead and got a new vision counseling. It should be right up there in the caption. Hit follow if you’re already following new visions. So thankful for you and guys, we’re looking forward to doing more videos and encourage you, you loving you, and it’ll be awesome. It
help if you need somebody to partner along with you in a more consistent one. On one way, I’ve got a team at New Vision counseling of counselors that love Jesus and are dedicated to your healing. You helping you find what better looks like and your unique story. That’s so New Vision counseling.org you envisioned calcium.org go there. Reach out, let us serve you in any way, but have a great day. We’re going to be hitting you up again this week. We’re going to, we’re going to shoot for Wednesday evening after our community group. We’ll post an another update for you guys. We might do before, but it’ll be in the evening, six or later. True. Yeah. Uh, to jump in and when we get nail it down, it’d be either six or it might be eight 45 we’re not sure. We’ll let you, there might be Edmond Christian Counseling people in the background that stay a little bit longer length, right?
Yeah. I get to enjoy what we talked about. Hey, God bless everyone. Have a amazing Saturday. If you think about it, pray for my family to get well. Yeah, Bass, my poor son was, uh, I think we’ve got two out of two of our toilets are stepped up because there’s so sick and just build them up and know nothing about flushing. So pray for our family. God’s been good. I’ve stayed, he’s kept me healthy, so I’ve been able to work and continue to serve. It is amazing. I feel like all this stuff, I feel like I live in the bubonic plague. It’s all around me, but I’ve got this covering. Yeah. Prays that. God’s just keeping me. Sure. So be the man. Bless you guys. Cintra prayer requests.