The Four Roles You Were Made to Master | Crossroads Church

So glad to see you here on "Pando." My name is Miko, and I serve as the prison director with Crossroads Church. Right now, taking a look at some topics and themes that have hit hard and hit home for our church. This week, I seen your pastor, Brian Ton, is talking to us about raw purpose. No matter what stage of life you're in, God created you. He created you with a specific purpose and responsibility that's already with you. When you step into them, you experience the purpose and fulfill me what you were made for, jump into it. Now, for purposes of just expediency, I've got a-- this is a talk that I've given before. This is a different version I'm going to give right now. It's also books I've had in process for quite some time. They'll come out someday. And the basic title is this. The four core callings of a man. Four core callings of a man. Now, now, let me tell you a secret. And actually, these were women, too. These things actually work for women, too. But for expediency's sake and just sort of rawness, raw punch, it's helpful for me to just think about kind of one pronoun, he, today. So most of myself is going to be around that. But ladies, this is for you. And you're in these four core callings as well.

Let's pray before I go any further and get into them, all right? God, I thank you for giving us a space to detach from the rest of our world, detach from our other pressures, or maybe bring our pressures into here, because maybe we're going to speak to our pressures this morning. And I pray that that's what happens, that you are going to equip us. You're going to give us a fresh touch of yourself, or the first touch of yourself, ever. And we would sense your love and your empowerment. And I pray that you would help me do that and honor you in the process. And I pray this thing, these things, according to the character, identity of Jesus. Amen. My opinion, the two most important people in the Old Testament, and then in the New Testament, and the Old Testament, of all the people, there's a lot of great heroes. My personal opinion, I think David, King David, is the most important person in the Old Testament. He has the classic story that everybody knows. You know, if you're an atheist and you're picked up a Bible of David and Goliath, he's penned more of the Old Testament than probably anybody else. than probably anybody else. You look, take a look at all the Psalms that he wrote. He's just an amazing figure. And then his great, great, great, great, great, great,

great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, the life of every man or should run through life of every man, truth be told they don't run through life every man and that's why men's lives don't work. These are core callings, core callings that every man and every woman actually has. Now let's talk about the foundation for just a moment because Kyle did a great job with this last week. The foundation, before you get into the calling or your purpose, the foundation is that you are a treasured child of the Most High God. David was constantly pelted with doubts about his parents and how much they loved him. Jesus had an earthly father whose name was Joseph and people constantly pelted Jesus, at least the religious enemies that he had, pelted him with doubts over whether or not he was a legitimate child, he was accused of being a bastard. Both of these people had to be secure in their identities of being children of God and this is where you and I start. We start with that idea that we are treasured children of the Most High God, that anybody who's received Jesus comes into his family. In the book of John chapter 1, it puts it this way, notice this language which is really, really important, it says this, but to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, the right. There's very few times in the Bible you have a right. Most of the time we have a right to suffer.

We have a right to obey. This is the right to become a child of God who were not born, not of blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but born of God. It's really important that you have to understand this, that when you come in relation with God, That's profound, and I'd love to spend a whole series on that, but I just have to say this about that. These four callings that I'm gonna get into. You do not earn your way into relationship with God through these four callings. Some people try to do these things to press God doesn't work that way. Some try to people do these things in order to get themselves to heaven and doesn't work that way. These are the things that you do when you're in the child and in the family of God. They're core callings. You ready for them? You ready? Here we go, don't tell you this right now. Just getting ready for it. One of these is gonna tag you. I don't know which one it is, but one of these four is gonna hit you right between the eyes and how you heard this talk two years ago, it probably would have been a different one because there's different things that God works with us in different seasons. So let's go. The very first one, these are not numerical order,

just, well, they are numerical order, but not numerical order of importance. Number one, which would, I guess, be a numerical order. Number one, I have one, friend, friend. Every man has to learn how to be a friend. Every man has to learn how to have a friend. Every man has to learn how to operate as a friend. I believe friendship is the most important spiritual discipline for a man, period. I know someone said, oh man, preach a man, stand that, don't you believe in the Bible? Yes, I believe in the Bible, yes, I do. And until the printing press was invented for 1,500 years, godly men grew with Christ before they ever read a paper Bible or a digital Bible. Friends are the ways that Jesus extended his kingdom and extended his ministry. His friends became his disciples. And then he was at 12, and then he had 72, and then he kept expanding from there. David, it was his friends that enabled him to have the potency of his life. Here's a crazy verse, get a load of this one. Second Samuel 126, we see David's best friend is Jonathan, and here's what he says about him. "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan. "Very pleasant have you been to me. "Your love to me was extraordinary, "surpassing the love of women." Now this is a verse that some people look at and say,

well, David and Jonathan were some combination of gay or bisexual. And I've heard this increasingly over the years. I mean, let me say, if you read verses like this and you see sex in this, two things. One, you're too sexually fixated. And two, you know nothing about friendship. There is a kind of love that a male friend can give me that my wife can't give me. Last year I had one of my closest friends sitting right down here. It was like there was a friend, there's a kind of love that law can give me, that Lib can't give me. Because he understands organizations and things I do at the Lib doesn't in here, but he understands kind of unique temptations of men. My wife for Libby is far beyond, far beyond him, but there's a kind of love. You have a calling as a man to have people around you to make them better, and those people are gonna make you better. And if you think you could do it alone, you cannot do it alone, you'll never achieve the redemptive potential God has for your life. Jesus said to his friends, he says this, I no longer call you servants, because a servant doesn't know his master's business, but I call you friends. 'Cause everything I've learned from the Father, I've made known to you.

God actually calls, God actually calls his friends, not servants, he calls them friends. It's a sad thing, our culture is hurting male friends. This is written about very, very heavily. Men are lonely, more lonely than ever. And why is that? It's because men are doing fewer things than ever. We go to work, and then we stream. And I stream a lot. I stream a lot, I stream a lot, I stream a lot. I'm not cracking on streaming, but I'm saying that when you stream, you have no chance of building any friendships, because men build friendships when we do things with each other, women the same way, but I think not as commonly, we're gonna be a bit different this year, but men, we do things together, and that's how friendships form. So if we're not doing anything with any other men, how are we gonna have friendships? Books, read books, great, awesome. Get in a book club. If you get in a book club and you talk about these things, then you might have a friendship. I don't care what it is. For me, it's hunting. I'll talk about that today a bit. It's me, it's hunting, or other things like that. Maybe it's dungeon dragons for you. Maybe it's cooking for you.

Maybe it's being in a chorus for you. I don't know what it is, but you have to find people and things that understand your world and wanna be in it. Now, David, his... doesn't sound very churchy, but his passion, his passion was killing things. That was his passion. He was a warrior. He killed Goliath, God anointed him to do a lot of stuff. He killed wild animals that were coming on his dad's flocks. And guess who? He attracted to him. He attracted to him, people who wanted to kill things, people who were into adventures. He had this whole band of people known as the mighty men. These are people who had a proclivity for adventure and just doing extreme things. One of my favorite stories that shows the depth of his friendships and how David was more into God than his friends comes from 2 Samuel 23, 15. David is on the run from Saul, who's the king of Israel, who's searching out David to kill him 'cause he's threatened by him. And David leaves the Israel confines and he acts basically goes to where the arch enemy of Israel is, the Philistines, and he's hiding out in their territory. And he just starts musing out loud with his friends who are these mighty men.

And here's what happens. And David said longingly, oh, that someone would give me water to drink from the well of Bethlehem that is by the gate. He's just processed, he's a verbal processor here. Now, then the three mighty men broke through the camp of the Philistines and drew water out of the well of Bethlehem that was by the gate and carried it and brought it to Bethlehem. And when David had this water, he poured it out and said, this is only worthy of the Lord and poured it out. These mighty men, the people around are like, oh, that sounds like a challenge. Go behind enemy lines and carry the heaviest thing you can, which is water, they didn't know about mercury back. And I think mercury is heavier than water, right? We have stupid people here. God, I'm one of you, I am one of you, I am one of you. I'll look at one of my friends, female friends, one to MIT, is mercury heavier than water? She doesn't know. (indistinct chatter) Okay, let's move on, it's nothing to do with this. But anyway, they go on and it's hard to carry like water when you're an enemy territory. You might get killed, they come to David and he goes, dude, you shouldn't, I was just verbally processing. 'Cause he takes the water and he pours it. She goes, this is an offering only worthy of God. I'm not worthy of this.

And all his friends, you just have to imagine his friends go, and that's why you're my guy. That's because you're about God. You're not about your kingdom or anything else, you're about God. When you find people who are about God and have interests that you have, you can have the start of a potent, potent friendship life. This is raw, we're in this series called raw. So the raw thing I can talk about is I weave throughout the rest of my time today. It is my recent trip to Alaska to hunt moose. I don't know if you've been to Alaska, but Alaska is the largest state by far in the country. It's the longest distance to get to. You get to Anchorage, it's like three X, the amount of distance from Cincinnati to Key West. And as you're getting there, every time you get there, every successive flight, the plane gets smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller. Until finally, the last landing strip I was in and my friends were in, we got planes that were one seat. That's one seat per guy and those big tires just land in the frozen tundra of Alaska. And we went out, there was nothing, there was nothing. Like there's no roads, there's no power lines. Like you break your leg, I don't know what happens, but it's not good. And here's the friends and my son who went with me

on this trip, we're all there and it was amazing. And we're there because we have a special interest. I would never try to recruit someone to a trip like this. Like hey, you should try hunting someday. No, that'd be a horrible trip for you. Horrible, it was the most uncomfortable, uncomfortable two weeks of my life and I liked the camp. It was very uncomfortable. But what made it was the friendship bonding. We were doing something together. David had his warriors, that's the second core calling of a man, of being a warrior, being a warrior. That's what his friends were into. Now my friends, none of us have served in the military. By the way, if you served in the military, male or female, would you raise your hand right now in all of our sites right now? Let's thank these people. (audience applauding) You see, now see all of you, all of you, yeah, you've been literal warriors. Whatever your thing was, like I never had the privilege or honor of serving the military. I never did that. I wish I did 'cause I felt I should have earlier in life, but I never have. So maybe that's the draw of hunting for me. But, I don't know, maybe there's something

that draws me to it, but David had his friends where operating with who he was, he is a warrior. Men, you may have zero interest in guns, that's fine. Men, you may have zero, ladies, you may have zero interest in hunting, that's fine. Zero interest in MMA, great, fine, no, no, no. But, but here's what this means. There are things, men, that you're going to have to fight for. There are things that you will only have if you exert energy and you exert yourself to make those happen. Boys wait for somebody else to take care of their fight. Boys wait for the government to swoop in and take it. Boys wait for somebody else to do it. Boys play the blame game. Boys wait for the CEOs to take care of them. But men, we say, hey, there's a thing that I have to do, it's going to be hard, and by golly, I'm going to do it. And it's a fight, and it's difficult, and it's back-breaking, maybe not fizzly back-breaking. But man, it can be emotionally back-breaking. It can be spiritually back-breaking. God says of himself in Exodus 15, 3, the Lord is a man of war. The Lord is his name. And when it says the Lord is named, it means he's the owner of battalions and companies of angelic warriors and soldiers. It says right there. It said right there, the Lord is a man of war.

It doesn't say the Lord sifts around petting kittens. God is on purpose. God is on mission. There is a cosmic battle that God is enlisted in, and God wants you in the fight. He wants you to take advantage of the opportunities before you, and push back against the realms of darkness that are in all of our lives. This is where this classic story that everybody in America knows. You've never been to church. You've never read the Bible, and you're an atheist. Everyone knows the story of David in life. David is a warrior. By the way, Jesus is a warrior. We don't have any record of Jesus picking up a weapon. He never picks up a weapon. But he is at war. He's a war against demons. He's at war against powers and principalities, and there's a shuddering and a quaking in the spiritual realm, and there is conflict there. Now, David is more the classic physical warrior. He's killed lines and tigers and bears while they've been coming on to his dad's sheep, and then he goes to take lunch to his brothers who were in the army, who were the sort of literal warriors. He goes to take lunch to them, and he's shocked that for 40 days, a giant has been taunting the nation of Israel.

40 days, interesting. 40 days has happened, and Jesus had 40 days in the wilderness where he was being taunted by the evil one. It's the valley of Ila. It's behind me here. I've been there. It's this place where the armies of Felicia and Israel are up on these hills crest and down below. No one wants to charge, 'cause then you can throw spears down and get them easily. So no one wants to make themselves loose. So Glaz comes out, Glaz comes out, and he's like, "101, mano, Imano, giant, giant." And here's what scholars are pretty united on. As the 40 days is happening, there's coming out, banging his shield, taunting the nation of Israel. Come on, send me a man. Is there no man wants to fight? Is there no man? He's a warrior? Every day, he would step closer. Every day, he would step closer and taunt. And here's the spiritual principle for you and I, men and women. Every day, you don't warrior up against your problems. They get bigger. Every day, you sit back and you assume it's gonna take care of itself. The problem only gets bigger. You have to understand this is a core identity of yours.

This is a core to who, you are this. But no one may look at you and think of traditional warrior, but no, this is who you are. This is, if you are in the lineage of Jesus, if you're in the lineage of David, you have this in you. You have the ability to be a friend, and you have the ability to get into a fight. Whatever that fight might be, you have the ability to get into a financial fight. I'll tell you, give you an example, man. I know I don't wanna get personal here. I just wanna give us examples here. Man, when Liv and I were in massive credit card debt, my gosh, that was a fight. We first married massive, massive, massive fight. If you're in deep credit card debt, consumer debt, deep school loans, you're not sure what to do about 'em, you know, you're in bondage. And so, there's tons, you know, I'm not going to get the mail today, I'm gonna get bummed out and get depressed. Guess what happens? The longer you put off going to the mailbox, the worse things get. You have to look at this not as well, it's a financial discipline thing. This is a financial war that you're in. You're in a fight and you need to fight for your freedom. You need to war your up. You have this in you.

Well, how would you war your up with this? Well, how many streaming services you have? You have one? It's too many. If you're in credit card debt, one's too many streaming services. Like, change that money, like, well, how many times you eat out? Stop eating out. In fact, I know people have gone on oatmeal for a year. Put all that money, they've wired up, put all that money, so I gotta get out of this. I'm not saying you have to do any of these things. I'm not saying you're a bad person if you have a monthly balance and you have Netflix. Someone says, I'm just trying to say, hey, hey friends, if you want something different, you gotta war your something different. You gotta say it's personal, and I gotta read something inside, but Jesus has given me. I will get personal, more relevant. I still have the same sex drive I had when I was younger. For the most part, that's been good, but it wasn't good for Lib. You know, if you're in a marriage with somebody else, and like, you're in different places sexually, you have a battle. That doesn't mean you're supposed to fight each other over it. It means like, you've gotta do some really vulnerable

conversation and problem solving of like, what do we do about this to get to the same place and have this happy connection on me. Wait, what is it? Because if you don't, it's a problem that's only gonna get bigger. And if you don't solve it, it's very possible. Someone is gonna create a real, real big problem in your marriage. I can go on and on and on and on. I gotta breeze behind this one, but I'll just say, hey man, some of us, it's okay to be stressed and be in a fight. You're created for this. You're a warrior. It's who you are. Now, when I was hunting in Alaska, this is so trite. I hate to say it, it's just metaphor, you know. I'm basically going to war with moose. Trying to find moose. And they are big, they are massive. It's the most massive thing in North American. If you've seen one in Canada, it's nothing compared to all the ones in Alaska. Interesting enough, the further north you get, from like, you take a deer in Florida, they're like guinea pigs. The further north you get all the way through Canada, every species gets larger and larger and larger and larger.

It's like these species need the harsh elements to wean out the weak and only the big and powerful survive. So when you get to Alaska, like we saw this black bear, most massive black where ever saw, if you ever seen him down in Gatlinburg. No, no, there's not black bear. Had a grizzly bear stand up 50 yards away from me as the one time I didn't have a gun with me and he's 50 yards away, but he would take me down and about, I mean, he would run that distance in a second and take me down. So I just backed away, backed away and whew, whew. So we're hunting and this guy pops up. This guy pops up and I called this guy old Hank 'cause what we decided to call him. Now, for the sense of sight, a full gross moose in Alaska, like I wanna be somewhat graphic here, this is called raw. If you took his finger, wanna put your finger in his butt hole, it would be this. So they have laws in Alaska about how big the moose has to be before you take it down. It has to be a 50-inch spread. I looked at what we call an old Hank, he looked real old to me, but I thought, eh, I don't know, it's 50 inches. I don't wanna get penalized and so we passed on him. We went back, my son pulled out that picture. We looked at picture and studied it and said, oh man, he was 50 inches, darn it. I thought, well, that could be my shot.

You never know how often it's gonna come by and came this way and kind of blew it. So I thought, the next day, we had another shot at it, which I'll finish that story in a little bit. But I'm saying, I was drawing that with the friends 'cause we're kind of, we're doing something. We're trying to solve a problem. We're trying to accomplish something. And we want to do this when we could. David, in the book of 1st Samuel 1748, he wanted to do something when he could. It says this, the Philistine arose and came and drew near to me, David. And David ran, ran quickly towards the battle line. Friends, run, run to the problem. Run to the problem. Run to your mailbox. Run to cancel subscriptions. Run to a conversation with your wife. Run to a conversation with your husband. Run to your teacher, your kid's teacher who doesn't seem to be helping them in school. Run to them. No, they're not. Run to it. Run to it. Run to the HOA president who's dysfunctional and making everybody's life hell. Run, run, run, run. And say we're adults here, whatever it is.

I'm giving all kinds of things. Again, this is who you are, just like you have the capacity to be a friend. By the way, speaking of this talk in "Man Camp," this is a verse that I think is especially appropriate. Psalm 1441, "Blessed be the Lord, my God, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle." This is maybe the most popular song we do at "Man Camp." By the way, love to have you at "Man Camp." You have one week to sign up. And you might find great friends there. You're like, oh, no, I don't know anybody. I don't have gear. We'll handle you. We'll help you. We have people designed to help you and forward you in. So please check that out. It could be the most important weekend of your life. It's the most important weekend of I do every single year, no second place. That's it. I'd love to have you there and see you there. Number three. Number three. Third core calling of a man is to be a king. A king. When I say a king, I'm not talking about being an elected official in the United States. I'm not talking about being a mega church pastor. I'm not talking about being a CEO.

I'm not talking about leading a nonprofit. I'm not talking about being an HOA president. Any of those things may happen. But when I say a king or a queen, I am saying there is territory that God has given you. There is territory that you are meant to oversee. When I was living my parents' house, that territory was my room. And my room was always smelly, disgusting, and destroyed and messy, always was. So my parents would just keep the door shut. They wanted to ignore it. Not a bad idea. Walked by it. Didn't bother me at all. Because I was a boy. I wasn't a man. I wasn't operating in the four core callings of a man. And one of them is to be a king. And what do kings do? Kings do two things. Queens do two things. One, they bring order. They bring order. I hate messes now. Can't stand it. One of my favorite places to be in the world is in my garage. And I'm not going in there until I have two hours to clean the thing. Because it distresses me freaking out.

I got screwdrivers. It's just not good. I need to bring order to it. When there's not order, I just go, that's what kings do. They bring order. You bring order to your marriage. You bring order to your family. You bring order to your business. You bring order to your finances. You bring order to your apartment. You bring a catch what kings do. The kings come in and bring order. The second thing the kings do is the kings bring expansion. Kings expand. Kings are always wanting to expand their territory. By the way, David becomes king at age 30. What time, when does Jesus become king Jesus and start doing ministry? Age 30. Age 30. This is the way it is with men. By 30, you gotta be well on your way. You can do it way, way before then. But this is very, very important. Jesus has a kingdom. He is a king and a kingdom. And he is ever expanding his kingdom. He's bringing order and he's bringing expansion to his kingdom. That's why he says to his friends.

The very end of the book of Matthew and also in the book of Acts. Go into all the earth. Baptize and making disciples. Baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. In other words, hey, we haven't just had a good thing, it was good for us. I want to expand. I want people to be blessed. I want people to be helped. And this is what the church has always done. The healthy New Testament churches has always done this. David has a downfall and his downfall is when he stops kinging. David, his work is worst thing that he does is the next four core calling. All of us are gonna have probably one of these that we're never gonna be great at. The one that David was the worst at was the next one I'm gonna get into. But it started with him being a bad king. He was a good king until he wasn't. His worst mistake, in my opinion, wasn't that he had an adulterous affair with Bathsheba who was a wife of one of his best friends who was one of his mighty men. That's horrible in and of itself. That's heartbreaking, really, really bad. But really his problem started before that.

In 2 Samuel 11.1, it says, in the time of year when kings go out to war, David stayed at home. David stayed in Jerusalem, David stayed in his castle. What does that mean the time when kings go out to war? During the springtime, the ground thaw. territory. That's what kings do. And Dave was really good at that when he was on point, really good at that. Because he was a warrior. So he understood might and he could do it. But he thought he just got tired. He's like, "Yeah." He said, "I'm tired of the expansion thing. I'm tired of order. I'm just going to stay home and just stream." You know, I'd rather watch Linus. That's what I'd rather do. Which is an awesome stream, by the way. Not as good as 1923, which is the best love story I've ever seen. Yeah, I was. Or what was I? Stay at home, stay at home. Sorry. I told you I had to stream. I do a lot of streaming. Now I talk to my friends about it. You're all my friends. So he stays back. He gets off point. Mine eyes wander, mine wanders. And the rest of his life is not the same. It starts because he stops kinging. There is territory that God wants you to oversee. He wants you to bring order to it. And he wants you to expand it. 1 Corinthians 6, 3 says this. Check this first out. I've never heard this before. Do you not know you that is children of God, daughters and sons of God? Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more than matters pertaining to this life? You understand that you are more important to God than an angel? You understand that God loves you more than he loves an angel? And angel is just a tool for him. They are not created in his image. That's mind blowing. We are so fixated on the spiritual and things we don't understand. We lose sight of the fact that the most crazy thing is that you and I are creating the image of God and he loves you and you are more important than any angel. In fact, you are more potent than an angel because at some point we are going to judge them. No, I have no idea what that means. No idea. Judge Mahal didn't hit that C-sharp on your trumpet right. It's a mystery of the Bible I don't know. I don't understand how that's going to play out. All I'm saying is God has that in your future and my future. So therefore, you have the ability to rule a territory. He's given you rights now. Start bringing into order the things that you're responsible for. Start expanding things that you're responsible for. When I was across the

start, Lib and I were just spazzed and freaked and burnt out. So we put off having our third kid and then our crossroads about five years old or something like this, something like that, or four years old and things where I was getting ourselves, "Oh, should we have a third kid?" I'm sure of whether to do that or not. I went to a conference and I was looking at this book table where there were these different books and I saw one who was called Point Man. Same guy had a book called Anchorman and Finishing Strong. I saw the guy in the picture in the back, and I went, "Huh, Steve Frarr, interesting. Yeah, interesting guy." Well, I didn't have anyone to have lunch with that day and right out of my corner of my vision, I saw that's the guy I just saw in the back of the book. I used to do this thing in high school just to have fun and used to end college. You see a crowded group of people. You just start calling out, "Bill, Gene, Barney, you know, you keep calling out names." Someone started going, "What? Hey, good to see you again." I go, "Yeah, remember, we had coffee. Well, you know, fun things you have to figure out to do when you're not abusing alcohol when you're Christian before 21." So it was, it was fun stuff to do. So I did that with Steve. Steve's walk away. I went, "Steve, turn around, look around." I said, "Hey, you want to have lunch?" I went, "Sure." We went lunch, and I told him about my kid thing, and he said, "Absolutely, you should have another child." I said, "Really?" I said, "Why?" I said, "It's the only thing you're going to have that's ever going to outlast you." And he didn't use these exact words, but it was some of the effects that you need to expand your territory. Expand your territory. So glad we have Mariah. Massive, massive, massive blessing. I would say as if you're, if you're a parent and you're not, "Should we have another lunch? Should we not have another lunch?" If you're not sure, have another one. Expand your territory, expand your influence. And most of us who have adult children, we didn't feel this way when they were six maybe, but when their adult children were like, "Darn, I kind of wish I had another one." It's the long game, and it's a fight, by the way. It's a fight, but that's what kings are up for. We're up for things that are hard because we're responsible for it. You have this in you. Number four, the final one is that of father. Father, a core calling of being a father or of being a man. That's it being a father. You take responsibility for another life. Denny Patton wasn't my physical father,

but he took responsibility for me. When I was in high school, he took responsibility for me spiritually, and that's why I'm here today and who I am, 'cause someone took responsibility for me. People who are being fathered and mothered in kids' club by people who are not their own mothers and fathers, but they're developing the spirits, they're taking responsibility for that life. There's a cap that will be to your spiritual development that very few people will ever be able to push past who aren't literal parents. I don't talk this to us much, but let's go here. There are exceptions, there are exceptions, but there's very few exceptions. There is a sacrifice barrier. There is a maturity barrier that can only be broken through when you have kids. Because when you have a kid, you have to say no to yourself. You don't wanna do a lot of things. You don't wanna do a poopy diaper, and you do a poopy diaper. You don't wanna get up in the middle of the night and you get up in the middle of the night. You don't wanna pay for that, and you pay for that. You don't wanna go see a stupid four-year-old play soccer. That's one of the most ridiculous things. It should be outlawed. Come on, I'm not anti-soccer,

I'm anti-four-year-old playing soccer and wasting my Saturday afternoon pretending it's fun. No, it's not fun, it's stupid. Do I get it, amen? - Amen. - Geez. All the soccer coaches in here are gonna... But that's my kingdom, that's my kingdom, I don't... (audience cheering) (audience clapping) But it's a life of constant sacrifice. This was the area that David was the weekend. He was a horrible father. I don't wanna go into all this stuff, but it was failure after failure. He tried to pull it together, the end of his life gave his son Solomon a little charge, and he did his best, but he was very, very weak in this area. Jesus was never a physical father, but there was God the father, he and father won, but he took responsibility for people. I'm not saying he enabled them, but he nurtured them, he honored them, he was with them. This is the thing that's most important in my journey, and a little bit here, I'm gonna have you stand up if you want a blessing in each one of these four areas, the area that you, you feel like God is calling you to take new territory in. This was the one for me. My son was on the Alaska trip with me, this is a picture of him when he was a little kid

and his sisters. This is about the age he was when he told me a story of several years ago I had actually forgotten about, and my memory of it is formed by his memory of telling the story. We were in a discussion, he was with some of my friends and we were talking about early childhood memories, and he said my most profound memory was I was at the beach with my dad, and I said to him, said to me, let's take a race, a race near the water. And apparently I said, I said, okay, you go first, you get started, I said no, we gotta start at the same time, I said no, you go first. So he said, I was tearing off my little legs as fast as I could, and I was looking back, looking back, and I hadn't even gotten up yet, he's like, oh, I'm gonna beat dad, I'm gonna beat dad. He said, all of a sudden, I'll get a little emotional just because I gotta finish the story in about two minutes, okay? So all of a sudden, there was this force, this like super human force that came out of nowhere behind me, swept me up, swept me off my feet and tore with amazing speed I've never experienced before and dove into the water, he said, I was my dad. Just a little kid, and it was like, at the moment I was like, I was like a, you know, it's like Superman with them, you know, but eventually Superman dies.

For all our parents, eventually Superman dies. I don't know when exactly I docked my kids when I wasn't God anymore, but I had a Superman moment, it was a beautiful moment, a really beautiful moment on this hunt. So the next day after he passed on Hanks that we're not gonna do it, the next day Hanks present himself and I took Hanks down, 217 yards and he dropped. It was a good shot. Here we are, everyone gathers around the team, all the friends, we're like, okay, all right, let's start taking his skin off and all that stuff. So we worked until nearly one o'clock in the morning, taking his skin off, taking his quarters off. all the meat off, hung it in bags. It was too late and just too heavy and we're too tired to take it back. So we're gonna come back the next morning. Came back the next morning. Fortunately, wolves and bears hadn't gotten to it. We got it, got it. Every man had a quarter. I had a rear quarter, which I'm gonna guess was about 150 pounds in my backpack going uphill because the plane's gonna land on the top of this flat thing. It wasn't long, but it was brutal, it was really hard. We all got up there like, "Ooh, great." The last thing you do when you do this is the cape. That is the thing you're gonna have a trophy with.

The antlers, the head, the skin. It's actually a Laskan law to do that. It's actually hunter code no matter what state you're in because you honor the life of the animal first and you honor the life of the animal by making sure that protein extends the life of other entities that are you and I. So that goes out first and then if you have energy and time, then you go get the trophy. So I'm looking for this, I go down. This thing is, it's big, it's heavy. And so I get down, I get down, you gotta lie down just like this, put on your backpack and then get a hand, get the sitting position and unlike the previous load, which takes us a half hour to try to figure out how to get up. I just, we're not, I can't figure it out. I go under my, all fours, I think I have a picture of it. Don't I hear? One picture. I eventually do get up. (audience cheering) All right, we'll wait for it, wait a minute. So I'm sitting there, I can't get up. So finally, finally we figure the way to do it is, my son is a beefcake, he's a muscle head. And he stands above me and he basically curls and I do a chin up at the same time, holding onto, holding onto his forms. So he curls, I use all my my, I do a pull up and I get up and I go about, I don't know, 30 yards, here I am.

Here's the picture, now, there he goes. Go about, I start going and not long after this picture, I stopped, it's too much, it's too much. Couldn't do it, I couldn't do it, couldn't do it. I mean, I probably could've gone longer but I went, I already tweaked my knee on the first run. If I keep going on this uneven tundra and bushes and creeks, I could really jack myself up and then I can't get out of here. So it was the first thing in my life I ever wanted to do I couldn't do. I've been primarily a warrior and the first thing, physically, I want, I could not do. Now, you're in the weight room and you can't do a wrap or two, yeah, the weight room is. But I mean, in the real world, the first thing I wanted to do, so I had to tap out. And the tears are over, it wasn't like, oh, I couldn't do it, I was like, I had somebody who could. My son, he was here. So Jake took the weight. (audience applauding) Jake took the weight, he was honorable, he walked behind me as I did that there was two other bags of meat, we get the top and then here's the last part I'll show you up the top of the mountain, here's what happened. (audience laughing) Oh, hardest thing I ever did, hardest thing. Now, the successful was good, it was a great,

great, great memory, but I sure that to say that's raw and here's the thing, these four things, they're hard. They're hard, they're hard, they're difficult, which is why the weeny boys don't wanna do them. Keep trying to have excuses why I'm not gonna do it. Oh, I'm fine, I don't need other people, I'm a lone wolf. Oh, no, no, it's okay, someone else don't handle it. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, kid, family, no, put that off, no, I don't need to be a father, ah, no, no, no, I'm not responsible for this, I'm not, someone else's responsibility. These are hard things, they're really hard things. Which is why there's very few men in our culture anymore who wanna do the hard things. This is something God has for you because it comes out of his character, it comes out of his identity. So here we go, we're gonna enter a service of this. If you know, man, God's tapped my chest on friend. I want you to stand in all of our sites right now, right here, just stand right now. Friends here, wherever you go, God has something to be in friend, that's my next run, just stand right now. Men and women, stand right now, and we're gonna do something for you. Okay, here we go. So this is a sacred moment between you and God. I want you to say something, I'm gonna pray something over you. I want you to say this, God, I will beat you. Lord I pray that you would put a blessing on these folks, they want to be like you.

They want to be like you, they want to be like your son, they want to be like David. Bring the right people in their life and give them the right conversations to have with the right people at the right time. I pray for this blessing in the name of Jesus. Amen. All right. Go ahead and sit down. Those of you who go like, man, I was here today because I need to, I need a warrior up. That's like the next run for me. I'm dealing with something that's a war. I got to fight for stuff. The warriors, where the warriors stand up, oh, men and women warriors, okay. Good. All of our sights. Good. Okay. Here's what I want you to say. God, train my hands for war. Lord, there are things that are not right around these people's lives and you've put them there to fight and I'm asking that you would bless their hands to push on the things they should push on, to listen to the things they should listen to, to love the things they should love, to spend themselves and money on the things that you spend money on. Help them get in the fight and do it well. Amen. Thanks for spending a few minutes with us today. My encouragement is simple. Don't just hear God's words today. Take one step because of it. Maybe that's open in your Bible. Maybe it's spending a few quiet minutes in prayer.

Maybe it's forgiving someone or asking for forgiveness or simply saying yes to whatever God has put in front of you today. Whatever that next step is, take it. And if this message incurs you, we love to hear from you. Send us a video ground or write tours at [email protected] from your tablets. Our team reads every letter. We love to walk alongside you. Until next time, keep pursuing Jesus, keep opening his word, keep saying yes to him one day at a time. I'll see you soon.