欢迎大家 I wanna welcome you.
我希望这会是你的一次伟大探险 To what, I hope，will be, for your, a great great Adventure.
因为我们会去调查，探索，发现 For we are going to be probing and exploring and uncovering…
对有些人甚至是揭示 and for some of you guys, we are going to be unraveling…
男人是什么 what a man is,
男人能什么样 what a man can be,
男人应该什么样 what a man should be,
在一些情况下，男人必须做什么 what a man must be on certain occasions
如果他真的想从心里觉得自己是个男子汉的话 if he is going to feel a sense of real masculinity within himself.
他自己 Himself.
你知道有很多人不这么想 You Know There are a lot of guys that don't feel that way.
有很多人内心觉得自己在漂泊 There are a lot of guys that inside they just feel like they're drifting.
一件让我非常激动的事情 And One of the things that's been so exciting
是我有机会在过去十年里 about this particular uh opportunity that i've had to be with men over the last 10 years
和男人们在一起 看到他们找到了生活的中心 is to see guys find a center
不是在外面 而是在自己的内心 not out here, but inside themselves
开始找一个地方让他们能更坚定 更清楚 更确定自己是谁 begin to find a place that they can stand a lot firmer and clear and sure about who they are as men
你知道当一个人发现这个中心的时候 会发生一些美妙的事情 And You Know Something wonderful happens when a guy finds that
他成了一股不可忽视的力量 he becomes a force to be reckoned with.
当他清楚自己是谁 清楚自己要去哪里 When he's clear about who he is and clear about where he's going
我们今年要讲的 what we're going to be talking about this year
是作为男人 我们要去向哪里 Where we're going is men
我们称之为伟大的冒险 we're calling it the great adventure
你准备好迎接伟大的冒险了吗 And are you ready for the great adventure
我希望你准备好了 I hope you are
比尔要求你们举手来告诉大家 You Know I bill was asking for show of hands
谁参加过男人天空一 二 三 for some of you've been to men's paternity one minutes 32, and so on
Just for a moment, I would like to see a show of hands.
How many guys have never been through men's fraternity
I just want to see this is your first time
No
Is this your first time to go through men's fraternity
All right, just keep your hand up
Gosh That's just incredible that you're starting out with us
And I think for the rest of us
I think we ought to give you a round of applause for joining with us
You Know A number of years ago
I stumbled into this because the men came into me and they just said
you know we just feel like we need to get together
We feel disconnected
And So I asked them why they felt that way. And uh
there was a lot of kind of different comments
but nothing real clear on
One of the guys in the group said
you know I just would like to get to get with some other guys to be real
you know kind of like we did when we were back in the fraternity.
Well I was in a fraternity in college
and I'm not sure I want to go back there
Uh But But I think what he was trying to tell me
was that you know you you finish college and you get out in the work world
And
there are all these forces that work there
And slowly, though
you have a lot of superficial relationships
Uh Somehow you'd find yourself one day in a place where you're alone
with your feelings and your thoughts,
and your dreams and your ambitions and your fears.
And somehow the world
has caused you to put this mask on where you can talk about golf
And you can talk about the razorbacks
And you can talk about business deals
but you can't talk about you.
So Where can you go to do that?
And I think that is really what
started the success of this particular um ministry opportunity that we've had in the community
Because we started with
you know about 50 guys over on markham at the razorback jim years ago,
just talking about different subjects. And then
we eventually got to this issue of what it means to be a man
And all of a sudden
more and more men every year started coming first
couple hundred and 300 and 400
and a couple of years ago, 700.
Is that not amazing
But let me tell you as amazing that it is
as it says something
It makes a statement about the state of masculinity in our country.
It says that men are hungry to get together and talk about what it means to be a man
It means that men need some sense of direction
They need to explore their masculinity and who they are and what they are
and where they're going. And that's what we're gonna do
this year
Fact, I want to tell you that mince fraternity basically will do three things for you
Here's the first one
The first thing it's gonna do
it's gonna be a place where you can talk openly
And I want to say openly and safely
about what it means
to be a man.
It's really important that we have a place where we can talk openly and safely
You Know Every year
When we finish men's fraternity
we kind of take a survey of
what the guys experience when they went through this year together.
And One of the things that comes out of every year that I think is so important as men will tell me this
They'll say
I discovered I'm not alone.
I'm not alone in my feelings, in my fears,
in my sense of what I'm dealing with
you know I thought I was all alone
Everybody else look like they're doing great
I ask joe how he's doing
He said, fine
Everybody says fine.
But there are things in me that
are not so necessarily fine on things
I don't really even understand
So mince fraternity
As I listen to other guys talking my small group
they help me understand
I'm not alone
They were all dealing with the same things
And I want you to know we all are
We're all deal with the same issues in life
and we all need encouragement
We all need guys to cheer for us
We all need a sense of of of companionship where we can talk openly
with one another
Guys desperately need that
I need that
Secondly, it's a place where I think over the course of the year
if you'll hang with us through the course of the year
you'll be a finisher
Then what it's gonna do
Is It's gonna allow you to personally process your own masculinity
And I think every guy needs that. A lot of us grew up with distant dads,
disconnected dad. So we lost something in that.
And So we're still in the process maybe of recovering that. Maybe you are.
But even if you had a a dad who is a a strong nurture and leader guys still come to a place where they get cast out in the world on their own and they're having to process their masculinity now alone
So they need a place where they can go and connect with other guys to begin that process
I want you know that's here,
that's here in a small group that's here in the lectures that's here
just in the friendships that will be formed over the course
of this year.
And it's also a place if you've been through men's paternity
you guys know it's a place where we can come and laugh at ourselves a little bit
It's good to laugh
It's good for the soul
And probably nobody does that better for me
And if you've been on mister attorney one and two
then dave berry
and I thought i'd start off men's paternity three by just reading a little selection
So we could laugh a little bit of ourselves where we go on
into the rest of the session here today.
In this particular thing that I found
he's just talking about the differences in men and women
in regards to uh their values around the home in cleanliness.
Here's what he says.
Women guys have profoundly different concepts of clean.
When a woman cleans a bathroom
she will go in there with numerous specialized products and implements
for cleansing, scouring
shining, and deodorize ing the glass
the porcelain that i'll
she'll spend even hours on the grout.
She will eradicate dirt on a molecular level
She will track down and destroy each individual
Mill, do spore
she can actually hear the germs and she can make them scream,
okay,
wears the guy
If instructed to clean the bathroom
we'll go in there with a single paper towel
And the first spray bottle he finds
it might be wind x or it could even be raid
He will pay no attention to whether or not he's actually getting the bathroom cleaner
because he really believes
that when fungal growth reaches a certain size and aggressiveness level
it's time to find a new place to live
Okay,
yeah.
And then there's laundry.
Let's consider this excerpt from the following letter
Dear day, my husband announced one morning that he had discovered the previous night on the eve of a 2 day business trip that he was out of underwear
Why? He told me, I don't know. I never tell him when I'm out of underwear.
Yeah,
it's true. And the guys
anyway decided to remedy the situation in true guy fashion by washing exactly three sets of underwear
thus disregarding the bulging hamper full of the rest of his underwear
which, presumably he thought would wash itself
signed. Allison shuler from albuquerque.
Dave then says
this is a perfect example of the kind of hurtful
stereotypical blanket statement about guys
that women as a group we're always making.
Just because missus shoulders husband doesn't do the laundry doesn't mean that there aren't millions upon millions of males who do do their laundry and then hang it out to dry
under the three sons of the planet, zou ma.
Uh
good.
where they obviously live.
I will admit
however, that most guys here on earth do not do more laundry than they absolutely have to
Why is this
or guys simply worthless? Irresponsible scum?
Yes.
But a woman wouldn't let a guy do her laundry anyway
unless he underwent years of training
Because she assumed he'd screw it up and cause her garments to shrink down
to cute little tinker bell clothes
or trans materialize in a drier summer similar to what happened to that unfortunate man in the movie the fly
So she'd wind up
for example with the Brazil that had pant legs
I'm not defending guys here
I'm just saying that a lot of us have developed a powerful laundry phobia and will continue to suffer from it
as long as women roll their eyes and shove us away from the washing machine
When we're about to do
for example, wash our delicate silks and the same load as our boat cover
Yeah,
yes, we guys have a problem in these areas
but it's not our fault
We're talking about nature here
It's a lot like tape worms.
Tape worms tend to have a negative public image
because there are repulsive organisms that get inside people's intestines and eat people's food and grow to links of 60 feet
But is it is it their fault?
No,
it's their nature.
And We guys are no different
In fact, guys are exactly like tape worms
except in one area
tape, worms are more likely to help with the dishes.
Well
we wanna laugh over the course of the years. Well We wanna talk about
things that make us guys
But most importantly
we want to talk about what makes us men
And I thought maybe just to start us out, we'd do a big picture overview
of men's fraternity by giving you just a simply just a a diagram of orientation
It's there on your outline
and we'll put it up here on the screen
But I want to give you a sense of what men's fraternity is
because it's really a 3 year curriculum
Uh And over that course of three years
we're building in a direction
Now, for those of you who are here for the very first time
I want you to know you're in the 3rd year
And this is a whole new men's fraternity this year
Next year we'll start men's paternity one again and go one, two, and three.
But to give you an overview to give everybody know if you'd kind of bring us up uh to speed
let's just kind of walk through what the name of minced attorney one
two and three is
Name of men's fraternity one was called the quest for authentic manhood
It's kind of a foundation, a level
concerning manhood. Men's fraternity to was
a man at work and at home
focused on kind of two specific areas
that predominantly are central to a man's life, his career,
and his family,
Then now here in minster turn a t 3
We're talking about a man in his world
It's It's It's what's out beyond that
And it's what's in his future? It's called a man in his great adventure
You Know Where the first one was kind of a ground floor minced attorney two were kind of the walls
And now we're putting the roof on the house
of masculinity.
The focus of mince fraternity one was a man's core identity
It deals with identity issues
uh just basic kind of concepts
whereas men's fraternity to dealt with a man's responsibilities
his chief responsibilities
and then minster attorney three. What you're herein is a man's destiny.
Yeah,
the chief elements in men's fraternity one
was a man's wounds. It's looking back into his past
and looking at the things that maybe miss shaped part of his masculinity
So we do a lot of probing in a man's past
in minster attorney one
And we give a definition of man at a place where guys can finally stand
and do what I think most men in America still can't do
And that is if they were asked the question
what is a man
Okay,
if you were asked the question
you guys who are here for the very first time
what is a man
Could you give us a succinct
passionate definition of it that you say
That's what I'm living to be
See, most guys can't.
Most guys just draw a blank at that point
So minced attorney one
we give this definition of manhood and we overview some basic manhood issues
Then immense fraternity to the chief elements are how a joy a man enjoys and engages his work in a whole new way
And then secondly, how he successfully relates
to a woman,
which is a big part of a man's life
And then finally
in this one mins fraternity three
what we're gonna be doing is rediscovering some of the adventure of life
And we'll talk about why we need to do that here in a moment
But its understanding also who I am,
Uh What What What are the uniqueness is that I have as a man
so we're gonna be talking about design issues
how men are designed
and how you uniquely are designed
and then discovering what I call a satisfying life focus
The major Challenge if you were with us and minced attorney one was this call that we made
the boy must die
Now if you were in mister attorney one you know what that means
But there comes a place where a man has got to put away childish things.
He's got to move on in his life to what I call real masculine real manhood issues
So the boy in you must die in men's fraternity one and men's fraternity too
It's more of the man in you must step forward
step forward into those areas that
are most central to your life
Step forward in the workplace with conviction
A whole different
uh conviction that goes beyond just making a paycheck
It's being a force in the workplace
And then also stepping forward in your home as the leader of your home and how you relate to your wife and your children
the responsibilities you have there
And then in this particular men's fraternity
what we're doing is the adventure
We're talking about the adventure and you must live.
Because somewhere along life's path
a lot of guys lose the adventure of life
It just becomes hard.
The passion of men's fraternity one was seizing your manhood.
The passion of men's fraternity too was establishing
your manhood
and the passion of this men's fraternity
Men's paternity three is maximizing
your manhood.
In fact, if you look in those that last one on passion
For those of you you guys who know the definition of manhood
uh I really see the real
central part of men's fraternity one is rejecting passivity
You remember that that's really what mince for terry one is it's it's it's finally stepping up and saying hey I'm gonna I'm gonna be a man mister attorney to is
uh accepting responsibility those chief responsibilities minster attorney three is now leading courageously
not your family and not in the workplace
leading you courageously in this great adventure so that you might receive all that god's heads for you
in this life
And that's why the directive of the three
i'd put them just simply this way
Mister 31 is go men's paternity to is fight and men's paternity three is when go fight and win
in life as a man.
Um,
now let's just go back as you see this diagram where it says rediscovering into the chief elements
rediscovering adventure of life and understanding my design on establishing
a satisfying life focus
While that diagram stays up there just for a moment
I I just want to stop there and say, you know
why did we focus there
Y y y is the the the chief elements about rediscovering an adventure in life
What does that mean
Well I want to do a little inventory and see if if if if you have some of the need
that mince fraternity three seeks to address
And I want to do that by just taking a personal inventory with you for a moment
by asking you some questions. And you just sit there and reflect on this.
Do you like where you are
as a man? Do you like where you are right now?
When you think of yourself as a man? Is the future exciting to you?
I mean we're talking about going on and doing more of the same
Is that exciting to you
Or is that something you're saying? No, I I I kind of want to escape
for some of you guys who start out so strong in your twenties
and maybe even into your thirties
And as you went on
and even as you succeeded
and as you succeeded
life just kept saying ok you're doing good
And what it kept loading on your pack is just more responsibility
Have you gotten to a place kind of in your mid years
where doing more of what you're doing feels burdensome rather than exciting
You Know There are a lot of guys that get there.
That's been the constant refrain
As we'll see in a moment in human history
Guys get tired midway through life
I like what ed sice man says in this statement
He said, men past 40
get up at night
look out at city lights and wonder
where they made the wrong turn.
and why life is so long?
Does that strike a chord in you?
For some of you guys in midlife?
Do you know why you're here?
That's a metaphysical question.
You Know Why you're here in life.
Do you know what you're here for? Is there a sense of calling on your life?
Is there a sense of destiny
to your life about where you're going
Is there a cause in your life that you're excited about
That's bigger than you?
Uh
do you have a growing sense
that something is dying in you,
but you don't know what it is.
You can feel it,
but you can't express it.
But there's just this growing sense that maybe something is missing.
Do you know what makes you come alive as a man?
Do you know the places where if you go into those swim into those streams
It's like life becomes exciting again
as opposed to deadening
Do you know what those areas are
And finally, are you having fun in life
You Know It seems that guys
after a while
they don't have any fun anymore
They They They're still doing some of the same recreation
but it just doesn't have the thrill
The thrill is gone
We want to explore what makes a man come alive
What brings adventure to his life
What gives him a sense of destiny
And calling
That's what mince paternity three is all about
You Know I love the verse in psalm 90. It says this
teach us to number our days
It's kind of a big picture verse
It's one of those fly buys
We're also you can see all of life just for a moment
And averse
teach us to number our days that we and I will put we as men
might present to you got a heart of wisdom
that when we look over our life where the room where twenties or thirties or forties
there's kind of a heart of wisdom there
Uh We're glad we we get past our twenties and look back and go
I'm glad I did that
We get past our thirties and look back on our 30 and go
I'm glad I did that
And all the way to you
Finally get to the end of your life
and you look back and you go
I'm glad I live that way
Teach us to number our days,
all of them
to live with the big picture in mind that we may present to the heart of wisdom
And then he says oh satisfies that we may sing for joy
And I love the last line because it's so important
And that we we as men in this case that we might be glad all our days.
Yeah,
I tell you, when I read a verse like ego, that's what I want for my life.
So let me tell you out of that
Here's the goal that we have in mind for this year
The goal of this year's men's paternity is just simply this
to help you and for use younger guys is to help stretch you to think out long term in your life
For those of us who are a little bit older
it's to help us rethink kind of where we are and maybe reinvent ourselves a little bit
But it's to help each of us
finish this life with personal satisfaction.
An inner as we'll talk about later
the next life with confidence
maybe even thought about the next life
We're gonna think about it
If we're a real adventure
we're headed for somewhere
and we're going to finish it sometime. And
if your philosophy is that when you're finished
you're done
That's one thing I'm going to encourage you to think even beyond that
to enter the next life
with confidence.
Let me give you some assumptions that I'm going to be making
give you four assumptions that i'll be making as we go through this time together
Here's the first one
I believe, odds our creator desires for us to live a meaningful adventure.
Our creator desires for us to live a meaningful adventure
Now, how do I get to that
Well You Know Open the pages of scripture
If you open up a bible and reading genesis
one of the first things you read is what god said to adam
the first man
he said, adam
I want you to be fruitful and multiply
And I want you to do the earth
and just think about that for a moment.
Here's the first man and how did he start?
He didn't start by god stand out
You Know I've got this little plot of ground
I want you to till it this little garden
He said to the first man, I want you to subdue the earth.
Now let me say that's quite a that's quite a pill to swallow there.
Now that's an adventure
that's global.
When jesus was with his disciples
right before he left
he turned to his disciples and he said
go into all the world
Now for some guys who had never been much further than
the sea of galilee,
going into all the world was an incredible adventure.
Yeah.
And then you've got jesus himself saying to us,
as men, i've come that you might have life and have it. What tell me
abundantly more abundantly.
Now, in all of those little snapshots
at least from a spiritual perspective
the word i'd like to extract from that is the word adventure
It Was An Adventure For adam
It was an adventure for those fishermen that tax gather
who first followed around the son of god
It's an adventure that jesus is inviting people into
And what I want to say
I believe that that comes from heaven to any man
The shout down to us is I want you to have an adventure
in your life.
Secondly, many men, I think often miss the spirit of adventure.
And they miss it sometimes totally in their life
But I think more often others lose it
Somewhere along life's journey
Life doesn't become an adventure anymore.
My father in law several years ago gave me his library
He was a history professor
One of the things he gave me were the harvard classics
50 volumes of the great works of western civilization
And I just begin to thumb through some of those books and reading some of the English poets
And one of the things that kept standing out in the English poets
was
the the guys always seemed blue to me.
They always were talking about the glories of youth.
But there was never any sense of glory
in midlife or old age.
It's kind of like we're pining away for Friday night football or the baseball diamond or what it was like in the fraternity
or were kids running around with
you know our friends and stuff like that making
you know forts and things like that
But But life now at twenty five thirty five just feels like responsibility
So We always look back.
That's what they were doing.
And You Know What i've found i've found is I read a lot of philosophers
they say the same thing
They continually give this warning to men
that it's like
uh manhood is a half life.
And Then You just brood the second half away,
For instance. Here's some quotes.
Here's thoreau. You've heard this million times on you.
The
the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.
That is so discouraging.
Or how about this quote from albert sweitzer?
The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man,
even as he lives.
Or how about this quote from dante?
In the middle of the road of my life, I awoke in a dark wood
in the middle of my life. I kind of woke up and I was
in a dark wood and I was wholly lost.
Evidently that is
an experience that men have
as they navigate through their lives
But somehow when they get to the mid portion of their life
they begin to
it's like, i've kind of made a life
But I mean i've made a living
but I had made a life
You Know I was a big beatles fan when I grew up in the sixties. And
my daughter uh gave me for Christmas, the beatles one album, the
re make of all their number one hits.
And I thought you know even those guys kind of sound the alarm a little bit
because as you follow their little journey along
as you listen to their records
you hear them start out
You Know I wanna hold your hand kind of express experience of
kind of the vitality of you know virulent young masculinity
But then as they go on, they get
they get depressed.
And then you've got this song I was driving on the other day
And I I was just listening the song
Nowhere, man
Remember nowhere, man!
He's a real nowhere man
living in his nowhere land,
making all his nowhere plans for nobody
doesn't have a point of view,
knows not where he's going to.
Isn't he a bit like
you and me?
He's as blind as he can be,
knows not what he wants to be.
Nowhere. Man,
can you still see at all
a lot of men live just that way.
And if you're a young man
sometimes if you're not clear about where you're going
where you're going to find yourself is at the end of an alley
with a big giant brick wall.
Men lose their spirit of adventure somewhere a long life.
Thirdly, here's my assumption
Men need ongoing adventure
They need ongoing adventure
Just ask Michael Jordan.
I mean look at what's happened to Michael
You Know He finished in such a grand style
Would you not have wanted to finish your basketball career with that last shot
But you know what sitting around a desk
in a corporate office with no vision for your life is not a place for a guy like Michael Jordan is not a place for you either
If you don't know where you're going with it.
And So what are we gonna do
What do men do when they don't know where they're going
They do exactly what Michael Jordan is doing
You wanna go where
back
back.
That's where the adventure was. It's not going to be there,
but he's gonna try to squeeze one more drop of a little bit bigger
because men were built for adventure
Uh
some of us make an opposite mistake
We go out into life
and it is an adventure at the beginning
And we try to control it
And after a while
when we tame life
when we get it all tamed
we've we've got the mortgage under control and the kids under control and the life under control
All of a sudden we look up and we go,
this is no fun,
right?
I played it safe so long
that life's no fun anymore.
Men need ongoing adventure
And finally, I believe an adventuresome man often lives differently
than others who will applaud blindly on word.
But for him to do that, he will have to make some courageous choices.
And He will have to take some courageous chances.
And At times. He's gonna have to break with conformity.
You Know What i'd love to do in the course of this year with the guys were in this room
there are going to be different ones if you'll have this experience
but it would be great to give some of you men permission to take a chance
to recapture the dream that's within you
or a desire that's within you
And go for it
rather than just keep pressing down thinking
Someday i'll get there
But the more you press on that
the debtor it feels inside the interior of your soul,
some of you need permission to change a job
because you were never meant for that job
Some of you need permission to jump out and try something brand new to take on a new adventure for yourself
Whether it's a hobby or
an adventure of some kind
you need to be able to do that are are come up with a cause that you can live for
That's bigger than you
You've got this world mastered
But
this is not why you're in this world just to master this,
you were called into a world to contribute
What is that that would excite you so that when you think about it
you get tangles
See, I would hope we could give permission to go far
Try it, risk it
step out there
That's what masculinity was made for.
So those are the assumptions
Our creator desires us to live this meaningful adventure men's
Oftentimes me dit miss it
Men desperately need it
But to get there
you're gonna have to take some chances
Some courageous chances you're gonna have to lead courageously as we talked about back in min's for 31
not others, but yourself
yourself.
Now some promises and we'll be finished and you can get in your groups
Let me just give you seven promises I think I can make and deliver on
Yeah,
first, I think you're gonna have some great opportunities to do something men often times don't do
And that is think deeply about who you are and where you're going while making some significant personal discoveries in the process
to think deeply
about who you are and where you're going. And in that process,
make some personal discoveries. Now I wanna give you a warning.
It's hard to do that.
We're gonna be real simple here, because I'm simple,
but it's hard to think deeply about who you are
Most of us would rather do what young men do
And Here's the way young men can't go into life
You Know After they finished college, or they finished high school.
Here's Here's Here's the mode that we go into.
Yeah,
and we keep going just like that until we hit a wall.
And All I'm saying is is that what we wanna do for you guys who are young starting out and you guys old who are trying to rethink is we want to get you to go
and look up
and look around
and ask some
deep philosophical questions about who you are and what you are and where you really should be going in life and then to do it
So we're gonna give you that opportunity
Ephesians five puts it this way
Therefore, be careful how you walk or how you live your life
not as unwise men
but as wise
making. And this is the key phrase making the most of your time,
because you've only got a short period of time.
It'll be over before you know it,
because it says the days are evil
And what does it mean by the days of evil
It's evil because it will steal away that abundant life that we just mentioned a minute ago
These days are meant to take life from you
to bring you to those dead ends. They're evil in that sense.
But manhood is more than a half life
Manhood is a full life
but where is it
That's what we want to to probe.
Secondly, you will have opportunities to interact with other men who can help you think
more clearly and objectively about your life
The proverb say that's a good thing
Proverbs
2077 just says as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
That's what we need we need to rub up with other guys who are going through the same experience we are and learn from them and listen to them
and let them hear us and reflect back to us
what they're hearing from us to help us begin to
to bring that dream back out
That adventure back out and learn how we can recapture it for life are embellish it
In some cases some of you guys feel like you're on adventure
you just need to embellish it a little more polish it
That's why we have small groups
And when bill comes up here in just a moment breaks us up
Some of you guys aren't going to be in a small group
You're gonna need to come down and talk to him about how to get into a small group
The rest of us will break into small groups and answer the questions that are there at the very bottom of your outline
But I want to tell you this and we've heard it
And we bill every year
the small group experience
i'll try to do a good job every week
But the small group experience will be the most valuable moment of the whole morning
and you don't want to miss that.
Thirdly, you will learn how to focus your life using a life focus chart
It's a little tool that I'm gonna give you
later on in the year
That will help you
It's something you keep in your wallet
but will help you rethink your life all the time
It'll give something before you'll be
It's the simplest thing I can give you
It's the only thing
by the way
I'm gonna ask you to do all year
Yeah,
but I'm gonna tell you it's gonna be it's gonna be a real Challenge for you to do it
And if you have that
if you can begin to craft that
you can begin to put real flesh on your adventure and you can review it anytime
Just a very simple little too
But I'm gonna give you that and have you work on it and work with the group on it
So you have something that when you get up in the morning
you could look at that and go, man
that's what I'm gonna do.
That's where I'm going. And I'm excited about it.
Fourthly, you'll develop a personal mission statement
that I think helps you define the purpose of your life
And that's quite a Challenge in and of itself
You Know
there have been times where you may have heard this
but you'll walk through a graveyard and you look at these grave stones and you'll see people's names there on those little grave heads where it'll say such and such and will give his birth
and they'll give his death. And there his whole life is what?
Just a dash
and there's nothing there.
And you're going what was there?
And i've thought about that you know because I i've been thinking about my life
even preparing this
I thought, you know
when somebody walks by by a grave plate
they look down
what do I want them to see
So I wrote it out
Here's what I wanted to look at
Robert lewis, 1949 to thousand
whatever it's gonna be
But in over that dash mission accomplished
that.
And I want to say, well what is that mission accomplished?
I
I want them to know
that as a man
before god,
I believe that I could figure out my life
and where I'm going
And I could live it in such a way that it would be an adventure
And I would do what I believe my creator call me to do as well as how he designed me to be
And it was exciting from start to finish
And let me take it has been
I can offer that with passion.
But at the end
I want to be able to look back and say
i've accomplished what I was here for
It's not just a negative sign,
it's mission accomplished.
And I'm leaving this life with satisfaction
And I'm moving onto the next life
with confidence.
Next, you'll gain a better understanding of your unique design
And what makes you come alive
in January. Bill wellons is
gonna help us walk through a little tool on discovering your design.
And we're gonna help you
go through a process
where you discover through what he's going to offer you
what excites you about life
You'll be able to finally bring it out
An objective five
And you go
when I'm in these places doing these kind of things
this is me.
So we're going to help you get to that
and help use that to help you formulate even better how to find places in this world where you can go
be that in those places in the world
whatever that means
Let me tell you that would be exciting, wouldn't it?
To know what really excites you to have that objective fighting to use that in those places
And then finally, you'll have the opportunity in many ways
to choose your future.
Life is a choice guys.
Did you know that?
Tom patterson writes
The greatest tragedy of all is for a man to be managed by circumstances
and live a half dead life.
Yeah,
I don't want to be managed by circumstances
I want to be managed by my choices
You Know Even the scriptures appeal to us that life is a choice
When god spoke to the nation
Israel, he said
you see i've set before you life and death
the blessing and the curse
And then he says
so choose life
that you may live
life is a choice.
You can choose your future to some degree
You can't do it fully
but to some degree
in in some many large degrees
you can choose the type of life you're gonna have and the adventure you're gonna have
and the excitement that's gonna be there
But there's a process that you have to go through
to discover that.
And So I want you men to be able to choose life and know that you're choosing life and excited about that
And For some of you young men
for instance, I want you to have a jump start on an exciting first half of life
And If you're between the ages of 20 and 40
I'm going to call you a young man
All right,
and give you that jump
start
Yeah There you go
You can clap for yourselves
You sorry, group
Uh
yeah
oh,
because young guys
are Warriors
and they're busy. And a lot of times they have blond ambition.
And if they're not careful, they become over time the dark warrior
who does a lot of hurt
to themselves and to others. And so it's really good to figure out
what do I need to do. Not only to bring my life
into orbit with these responsibilities i've been given
but also to do more than just make a living
And that's what I really wanna call you young guys to more than just making a living making a life
and don't do what so many other men do is make a living and then try to figure out life in their mid forties and fifties
Yeah,
you can start doing that
Now
We want to help you do that
And then for us older men
40 and up
I want to help you retool
Yeah,
for an exciting second half adventure,
because you guys are established
and you've at least mastered or survived the first half of life
I mean you've got the car in the house and the dog and the kids
and responsibilities and eat and a lot of other things.
And what I don't want you to do is be crushed under that
But I want you to retool so you can have
an exciting life, because out there is an adventure
that can thrill
you can encourage
you can motivate you
because I want you to be like abraham
you know what it says of abraham and
genesis 25
Here's this old old man makes this one line at the end of his life
It says, and abraham died
and then it adds a statement
satisfied with life.
Would you like to be abraham at that moment
What an adventure he had as a young guy in her big businessman
successful
And then god calls him to his design
He says, abraham
leave all this
and go to a land that i'll tell you about later when you're on the journey,
and it took courage,
but it started abraham
on an adventure that was more than just making a living.
It started him on an adventure that made a life.
And it was rugged and it was challenging
And there were times he failed
But at the end of his life
he could look back over and say
I'm satisfied.
I covered that for every guy here
that you would be thrilled
with your life
Choosing your future is what we want to explore and probe and grapple with
in the year
That's ahead of us
We want you to have an adventure
Let me close with
a statement from um John eldridge in the book
wild at heart
that we gave away
He says this
adventure, with all its requisite danger and wildness
is a deeply spiritual longing
written into the soul of man
The masculine heart needs a place where nothing is prefabricated
modular, nonfat, zip lock, franchised online or microwavable,
where there are no deadlines, cell phones, or committee meetings,
just simply where there is room for the soul,
where finally the geography around us corresponds to the geography of our heart
Deep in a man's harder
Some fundamental questions that simply cannot be answered at the kitchen table
Who am I
what am I made of?
What am I destined for?
It is fear that keeps a man at home where things are neat and orderly and under his control
But the answers to his deepest questions are not to be found on television,
are to ball game or in the refrigerator.
These answers require a courageous adventure
whose quest is nothing less
than the best of life.
This is what men's paternity three, it's gonna be all about.