Hey everyone, John and Shawn, your marriage counselor Edmond, here. So glad you could make it. It’s not as, it’s not as cold as it has been. It’s still ou still pretty cold. Yeah. So today, every one of them to just jump right into some exciting opportunities for men. We’ve got four reasons why men fail or failed 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. Checking in, say hi and is that right? He got a lot of brothers. Oh, he got those young brothers all over the world. He’s big time. So I was at this place called Lake Heffernan 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 with 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 [inaudible] picture. Yeah, you solve it. You know, 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 tell you, oh girl who’s got some of the most beautiful sunsets that you could imagine. It’s really incredible. 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. Yeah. Even in those kinds of weathers that we can still enjoy the presence of God if we just look for them in different places. Yes. All right, so let’s jump in. You know, I wanted to start with a quote because so so many times we 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 a well known clothing company. Now, this isn’t a current quote, but it’s a quote that they used at one point for advertisement, not for a marriage counselor Edmond, but 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 then draw Jenny.
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 a real heroes. We need grownups. We need men to put down the plastic forks, step away from the salad bar and untie the world from the tracks of complacency. It’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 wear the pants to where the pain now that is from. Listen, that’s an advertisement from doctors. Jeans. Really? Yeah, I did not know. 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 initiate. One factor I think that’s led to the Declan nation 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 yet 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 point fingers, but I’m on the sidelines in a chair watching a game before him. I’m not playing, I’ve never hit a shot. I’ve never bounced a ball down there and I’ve never made a lay up. I’ve never scored any points for the thunder, although I feel like I’m a part, even though I’m only a marriage counselor Edmond.
Wow. And I think that’s a great analogy to what we’ve been taught as men. We’ve been taught to be spectators instead of control. Yeah. Instead of players, we’ve been taught to sit on the sidelines point fingers. Hi Lena. Instead of getting in the game and actually playing and enjoying what God gave us to do with, this is a gift to me in 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. Yeah. We’re called to be the heroes. 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. What do you think? I think that’s awesome. I even look at the life of Jesus, a servant to all,
even in places that were tough to hear in tough, uh, you know, to do things. He was always like attentive to what was best for them, you know? So I think that’s so cool. It busted me. It can be bold in bold is righteous. Lion’s eye. I’ll 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. Then he sent him out that, you know, of 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. And so, so spectators, they, they, there were taught as men to be spectators. Video Games appeal to men and the occasional marriage counselor Edmond. Yeah. We like to become part of a story. So they have world of Warcraft, they have called duty. All these ones that come alongside and they challenge us to jump into somebody else’s story. And, and it’s not even real. It’s a video game. 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 said he, he rewire his brain. This kid got, 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 in video games. Nine part of the real story. Hello, video games are bad. They’re not what I’m saying. Yeah. But there they have their place, but just not at the forefront of our identity. Exactly. You know what I mean? So it can be entertainment 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. Like that. 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 then shooting the ball with Kevin, not Kevin Duran, he left us, he left. How do JV loved, but shooting the ball with Russell and, oh, Paul, George, man, I would be practicing every day. I would find out ways that I can improve my game. That’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 when I start 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, as a marriage counselor Edmond.
Wow. Is that what you, so, so you know, like we should see ourselves as spectators contribute, be apart a gist of what even God’s doing around us at all times. What’s, there’s a scripture that says be sober minded and like, you know, uh, you know, uh, what is it? Ah, I forgot it. What is, what made us really good morning. Tell us where you guys are from. The snakes. What is innocent as doves? You’re like that scarcer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s cool man. We gotta be on the look. You know, you gotta 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.
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 to 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, 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.
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 get him, and then I step into becoming a dad and there was a season of life where I was sick and I was struggling and, and I, 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. As soon as 10 of engaging, I just, man, I would come home and I would try, but I’d be tired and not feeling good and we just went and watched an Avengers cartoon together every day, man. We watched them several times. We did. We watch a vendors cartoons and had all the action figures, little staffing or captain America or, I still like them by the way, I, those are heroes.
You are heroes. I wanted it to be a hero, but I didn’t play video games. I watch cartoon. I went back to a time in my life when I was struggling. That really resonated man. Cartoons, things are better and 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. You need to find a marriage counselor Edmond. Did your family never follows you? But I know when I come home from work, a lot of times I am 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 gears and ask God for grace to give that to my family as well at times.
I even think that’s even deep as being a pastor if not be for cause you were dealing with real all day court issues. See, yeah. Yeah, man. So I commend you and what you do bro. Cause I know you’re very well people lives and we know morning hard. Yeah. And you know, and as a guy it’s easy to say, you know what, I’ll take care of the yard work, I’ll go mow the lawn or weed the garden, cut trees down and just do that. But not tuned into the family or, or take care of some project that needs to be done over here but not connect with the 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, I didn’t come straight home yesterday cause 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 navigate through some things. That’s why you guys got some pictures of a sunset is because I did that two nights hazing. If you have, if you guys haven’t seen the sunset picture, all of the New Vision page, honestly, Jess highly suggest she goes look at it cause it’s right down the street from my house. I woke up half being existing in that when I’ll see that. And 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. Tam, my wife felt so awkward. She wouldn’t even be in the room. I can bet she sat on the other side of the living room while I went over to the birds and the bees and the ends up, my kids are laughing and pink. It looks like Iti. Just crazy stuff. So the, the fourth one is we don’t initiate his men because there’s imminent failure. Uh, 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 or want to know second day, second games today, so I’ll let you know next week if we win. If not, I might forget. So. 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 fail? We’ve never learned any. Nothing. We would never let praise. He’s paid this out. I praise God for my past failures. It’s hard to phrase yacht in the middle of the future. He, but he’s a holy man. He’s a lot further than [inaudible].
He’s like, stop, stop, stop. [inaudible] said, I’m thankful that I was afflicted, but that was the past like, yeah, yeah. See he means it’s in the past year. It’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 went over 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. That layer lives down for our family, for our wives and our job, saying no to more working. This is good advice from a marriage counselor Edmond to you.
Yes to more family. It’s hard. It’s hard. I know I suffer. I struggle through, let it be known in the McGuire’s are have lots of issues. One thing that we do is we get knocked down and we get back up again. Definitely. 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 and some, 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, the 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 five, 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 levels, 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 could ask him one question a week. Anybody can ask one question a week, right? I mean, hey, anybody now really ambitious guy, you might sit down and take his wife out for a weekend and ask all 10 bring a notebook, bring a notebook and some Aleve cause you’re hit my blow up. But, but uh, 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. Alright, so the first 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, how would that tell them how that makes you feel? You may want to seek out a marriage counselor Edmond afterwards. 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. 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 leave because she’s so good at it. Yeah. Yeah. 10 so women even group. 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. [inaudible]
I think that factor even before a love, a lot of the times, even if a wife won’t, wife can disrespect Pixie feel so much better about myself and just our relationship or marriage. So number four is what can I do to make you feel more secure? What could I do to make you feel more secure? Five, what can 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? He’s their big questions. So I said 10 weeks. Six what attributes would you like me to develop? Boy, that might be 10 months for one right? Attributes, especially if it’s me patients. How about a hundred years? How about eternity, right? You turn it to be, so what attributes? Seven, what attributes 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 I indicate to you and I desire to be more Christ like and then 10 what mutual goal was you like to see us accomplish together? What do you want your goals? What’d you like to see us accomplish together? And these would be great 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 we slide 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, uh, ask one, one of these questions a week and then just processed 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 any time. 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 the man and I have to find 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. I’ve got to really be conscious of realizing I’m not a spectator, I’m a player, got made me a player, good player and a good marriage counselor Edmond.
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’d give my heart and not come home tired and realize that’s just part of the deal and I need to find ways to navigate through so I could give my best at my last, I’m getting convicted now as I’m talking because my family’s been sick and I’ve just been trained 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 gotten books. You can find mentors. People would come alongside of you and then that’s like you become alongside of me and my life or else I may have to go out for you.
That’s right. Clearly 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. Somebody who’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. But I’ve thought that, but I thought that it wasn’t a proper family devotion on without somebody screaming or somebody’s crying. Somebody’s getting in trouble because they’re acting crazy. You know when we, for my dog, when we first got him, he ran around like a wild maniac. We had to, we had a cast the demons out of her son. He needed Jesus to come him David’s cause they would just go boom.
Every time we pray. 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, loving others, loving him, and most importantly, he really accepting that love for ourselves first. That’s really good because we need it. We need to know that we’re alive. Like men are men, men, navy 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 baby. You know, women are able, you get 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 bed, taken out my kids by the flu.
I think almost every day I’ve woken up somebody screaming or needed something and I’m 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 that I am not called to be a stay at home mom. I’d say what? I’ve had a lot of zeal to go to work this way and a lot of sealants test for the initial, any. So 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, you’re go to get up. Go ahead and go to New Vision counseling, talk to a marriage counselor Edmond. It should be right up there in the caption. Hit follow. Uh, if you’re already following new visions, so thankful for you guys. We looking forward to doing more videos and encouraging you, loving you, and it’s gonna be awesome. And if you need 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 the, your healing to helping you find what better looks like and your unique story. New Vision counseling.org you envisioned calcium got orgy. 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 big and we’re going to, we’re going to shoot for Wednesday evening after our community group. We’ll post another update for you guys. We might do before, but it’ll be in the evening, six or later. True. Yeah. Uh, to, to jump in and when we get nail hell it down. It’d be there six or it might be eight 45 we’re not sure. We’ll let you, there might be people in the background that stay a little bit longer leg.
Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll get to enjoy what we talk about. Hey, God bless everyone. Have a amazing Saturday. If you think about it, pray for my family to get well fast. My poor son was, uh, I think we’ve got two out of two of our toilets are stuffed up because there’s so sick and just fill 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, it didn’t feel like I live in the bubonic plague. It’s all around me, but I’ve got this covering. Yeah. Praise the gods. Just keeping me true. Be the man. Bless you guys. Send your prayer requests.