You're Not A Boy Anymore | Travis Waltner

Here's the problem for a lot of us men and this might be one of the most important things that I say. If you are feeling stuck, if you are not coming alive, if your marriage is struggling, if work feels empty, if your spiritual life feels like a wreck, maybe it's because you've surrounded yourself with a bunch of sponges. Here's the truth. No man gets better alone and no man gets better surrounded by sponges. We need some iron in our lives. Thank you so much for joining us today, worshiping with us. My name is Travis. I'm one of the pastors here. Once again, we are so glad to have you. We have been in a series called Be A Man, where we have been looking at what it means to be a man, but really more than that we've been looking at what does it look like for us as men to come alive and it's been honestly crazy for us. We've gotten, especially Adam's got so much feedback, positive feedback about the series. And so we are super glad that the series has been beneficial to you. But as thinking about the series, I decided I would ask my wife a question. My wife does not live with one man, but she lives with five men. She's blessed beyond measure. So this past week, I asked my wife a simple question. I said, what's the most annoying thing about living with five men? And I thought it might take her a little while. She'd have to pray about it, you know, she'd have to like,

you know, meditate and sleep on it. She wouldn't be able to see through all the ways that were this blessing in her lives, though she responded immediately and she said, the mess around the toilet, number one. I probably don't need to go in details, but the little boys in the house have pistols, but they don't always shoot straight if you know what I'm saying. Any other ladies? Raise of hand, any campuses, struggle? You're not doing it too high, but I know there's a lot of you. But she quickly followed it up with this. Also, men can't find anything. Now listen, this is a real thing. I am fully aware of this. Like my wife asked me to find stuff and I know that I can't find it. So I will go to the pantry. I'll go where it is and she'll tell me where something is and I will look up and down, left and right, and not find it. I will turn around, then I will come back, up, down, left, right, still can't find it. It is right in front of my face. I don't know how I miss it. Just a couple weeks ago, we had event at the church and I was working with Kylie Breams, who is our communication director. She's on our strategy team and Kylie said, hey Travis, could you go out into the entryway and get me the box of books? That's an easy enough task. I go out to the entryway. I'm looking around.

There is only empty boxes out there. It is empty boxes. I looked five times. I go back to Kylie, completely convinced that she is wrong. I said, Kylie, there's only empty boxes out there. She's like, let's go look together. We all get looked at. It's right there. It was right there, right where she said it. I completely missed it. Ladies, we are trying. We are just incompetent. Like, our brains don't work. I don't know what the deal is. Actually, I do know what the deal is. I looked it up this week. There's a scientific reason for this. Men's brains developed to hunt. So, we see things that are right in the center of our eyesight and not on the peripheral. We struggle to see stuff on the peripheral. So, next time you are mad at the man in your life because he can't find something. No, he was made to hunt bears, not find the ketchup. Okay, that was his purpose. So, throughout this series, we've been talking about what it looks like to be a man. And one of the main verses we've been looking at is found in Genesis chapter 2, verse 7. And it says this, then the Lord God formed a man from the

dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils, the breath of life, and the man became a living being. So, God takes the dust of the earth. He makes it into a man and the man does not come alive until God breathes his breath into it. And that is really our hope for this series. That meant that God would breathe into you and you would come alive again. If you came in here today feeling like dust on the ground that God would form you up, breathe into you and you would come alive again. You know, if you don't feel like, you just feel like you're the dust on the ground, we do pray that you would come alive again, that you would come alive in such a great way. Okay, we've covered a lot of ground in this series. We've looked at eight different truths that will help us come alive as men. And to be clear, all these truths, they're as important for women as they are men. We've talked about like taking risks, doing hard things, owning our stuff, leading spiritually. And today we're gonna talk about the final three. The first truth I wanna look at today, the first way that you as men can come alive is this, you need to grow up. You need to grow up. Now, out of all the truths that we've shared, this one can kind of sound the harshest. I can't tell you how many times I've told my boys when they're being little punks,

like, you need to grow up. So this one sounds a little harsh, but man, if we're being honest, it is so true. And I've seen this so many times in my life and so many times in the lives of other men, just seeing times where grown men are acting like little boys. I love what Paul says in 1 Corinthians. These are powerful words. He says, when I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. Paul is saying, when I was a child, I acted like a child. And that was normal. Children act like children. But when I grew up and became a man, I had to put all that childish stuff behind me. What Paul is saying is there needs to be a shift. There needs to be a shift between being a boy and a man. And that shift has very little to do with puberty, right? Paul doesn't say, I was a child, then I got armpit hair, and now I'm a man. That's not what he says. Oftentimes, that's what we think, our culture thinks. It's like, as soon as a boy moves out of a house, they're a man. But Paul's talking about something so much deeper. There needs to be a shift in the way we think. There needs to be a shift in the way we act.

There needs to be a shift in the heart between a boy and a man. So this got me thinking, what are some things that are normal for boys to do, but they're not normal for men? Well, first, boys are dependent, right? They depend on their parents for everything, money, clothing, food, housing. They depend on mom and dad to provide what they need. That's normal for a boy, but that's not normal for men. You know, men, they provide. They provide for themselves. They earn their own money. They pay their own bills. They don't live with their parents. They don't rely on other people for what they need. Men provide. How about this? Boys have emotional outbursts, right? They get angry when they get a toy taken away. They lose a game, they melt down. They get defensive when they're corrected. They pout when they lose or don't get their way. Their emotions control them. It's true of boys. Not for men. Men have control over their emotions. Men, sure, they get angry, they get frustrated, but they don't let it take them over. They don't rage, they don't pout,

they don't have temper tantrums. They don't let their emotions control them. They control their emotions. Boys have short-term thinking. They want instant gratification. What feels good now? They buy stuff they can't afford. They don't think much about the future. They don't think about how their decisions today affect who they will be in the future. Men, on the other hand, they think long-term. They live in the present, but they're always thinking about the future. They're planning, they're saving. They're thinking about how their decisions today can make them a better man in the future. Lastly, boys are often selfish, right? They are the center of their worlds. They only think about themselves. They do what makes them happy with little regard for others. Men, on the other hand, are different. They realize they're not the center of the world. They understand that their purpose is to give their lives to others, to their wives, to their families, to their kids, to their communities. We could go on and on, but the main point I want to say is this. Baby, some things we expect from boys

are unacceptable for men. Some things we expect. from boys, but they're unacceptable for men. So question, are you living as a boy? Are you living as a man? So how do you grow up? What do you do? Honestly, just do those four things, like provide for yourself, control your emotions, start thinking to the future, stop being selfish. If you would do those four things, you would see your life start to move from being a boy to a man. Ask God for the strength and start taking intentional steps in each one of those areas. Another idea is this, I'm not sure if you know this, but there is a book in the Bible written to take boys into manhood. It's called the Proverbs. Listen to this, the first couple verses of Proverbs, these are the Proverbs of Solomon. These Proverbs will give insight to the simple and knowledge and discernment to the young. If you're wondering how to grow up, read the Proverbs, ask God for his strength, and then do what it says. So that's the first truth, you have to grow up. The second truth is this, if you want to be a man who has come fully alive, you need to have great friends. Honestly, this was an area that I was a lot better with younger in life, like when I was a kid and in college, I was constantly surrounded by other men and in community. But as I got older, I got a job, I got married, I had kids, I slowly distanced myself from other guys. Honestly, even a few years ago, I probably didn't have a lot of great guys in my life. I heard something amazing, though, from this Harvard professor named Arthur Brooks. He said that when a husband dies, the wife is usually fine. I'm so glad we mean so much to you, by the way. But when the wife dies, the husband often struggles a lot. And the reason he thought is there was the study done. The study was 60% of men in their 60s say their wife is their best friend. But only 30% of women in their 60s say their husband is their best friend. So women in marriage, they have all these great relationships with other women outside their marriage, but men usually rely solely on their wives for emotional support. You know, most of us men, we are terrible at building real relationships with other guys. Sure, we'll watch football with them, we'll go to the bar, get a drink with some guys, but we don't have any real men in our lives that will sharpen us, that will make us better, that will point us to Jesus. You maybe heard this before, but they say that you are the average of the five closest people around you. You're the average of the five closest people around you. So you know

what that means? The person you become is less dependent on the decisions you make and more dependent on the people you surround yourself with. That's crazy. Proverbs says this, Solomon, who wrote the Proverbs, he says this, as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. So right here, this is a big piece of iron, right? And this is a sponge, right? So I could sit here and try to sharpen this piece of iron on this sponge all day long. I could do it for a decade, and guess what would happen? Nothing. I could sit here for 10 years trying to sharpen this sponge on this piece of iron and nothing would happen. It would not get sharper, one bit sharper than it was day one. Here's the problem for a lot of us men, and this might be one of the most important things that I say. If you are feeling stuck, if you are not coming alive, if your marriage is struggling, if work feels empty, if your spiritual life feels like a wreck, maybe it's because you've surrounded yourself with a bunch of sponges. A bunch of guys who aren't making you better, a bunch of guys who don't have great marriages, a bunch of guys who hate their jobs, a bunch of guys who aren't taking risks for God, a bunch of guys who aren't sharpening you. Maybe it's even worse than that. You have no hope. no one. You don't even have a sponge to talk with. You have no one. Here's the truth. No man gets better alone and no man gets better surrounded by sponges. We need some iron in our lives. Well, I talked about this in a previous message, but about a year and a half ago, I joined this workout group. I thought I was just going to like work out with them, but soon it became evident that this was more about the guys in this group than it was the workouts. To this day, I still go, but I go more for the guys and I even do the workouts. One of the guys in the group. His name is Milkman. Yes, we give ourselves cheesy nicknames because we're cool like

that, but he is one of the motivators in the group. Like every guy's group has this. Like he gets everyone pumped up. He's super excited all the time. He's always yelling at us. Work harder. We're like, shut up, Milkman. Like, so he's that kind of guy. Well, he comes to the workout one day and he's completely quiet, completely silent, doesn't say anything the whole workout. At the end of the workout, he gets in his vehicle and he leaves. Later on, he texted out the group and he said, hey guys, sorry, I was off today, but I'll be better tomorrow. So the next day, I saw him and I started talking to him and he shared something that blew my mind. After that workout, 11 guys texted him to see if he was okay. 11 guys texted him to see if he's okay. That's not normal. 11 guys, pieces of iron said, hey, we're not going to let you go dull. 11 guys said, hey, we want to sharpen you. We want to make sure you're okay. And I don't know how much money you have. I don't know how successful you are. If you have 11 guys who will text you to see if you are doing okay, you're the richest man in the world. You're one of the richest man in the world. And honestly, it hurts my heart a little bit now because I know so many of your men and women have nobody. You have nobody who would reach out to you if you were going

through a hard time. So I want to challenge you. We have to take the first step. I want to challenge you to step out and find some iron in your life. Step out and surround yourself with some godly men who will point you towards Jesus. You know, if you want to join us as 515 AM, you're always welcome to come. Just let me know. We'd love to have you. But embrace, we have a bunch of men's groups that we'd love to plug you into. Honestly, if you're here and you have no one, you have to join one of those groups. You have to get in a group with some other guys who will sharpen you and make you better. One of our goals over the next year is to have a men's group every single morning at every single campus, which would just be incredible. So man, if you want to take that step or you know you need to take that step, you can go to this website. I'm embrace.com slash men. There's a form on there that you can fill out. We'll get you more information and there's a spotlight with some other groups, but I can't encourage you enough, man. If you don't have good godly people in your life to sharpen you, you have to take, this is an optional, you have to take the step. Lastly, last point. If you want to come alive as a man, and honestly, I believe

this, if you want to understand one of the reasons why you were created men, it's this, honoring women. You need to honor women. One of my favorite verses from this comes from 1 Corinthians where Paul is talking about how we are equal as men, but we have different roles. And this is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians. He says, husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. I love this verse. I love how men have this special calling to love their wives like Christ loved the church. How did Christ love the church? He gave up his life so that she might live. That is our calling, men, to honor the women around. I know it's talking about marriage. I think this applies to all men, all men, whether you're old or young, single or married, you are called to honor and protect the women in your life. It's one of the reasons we are here. And this is not about being macho or the male ego. This is not about women needing men. This is simply. about men understanding that they are called to value, love, and protect the women around them, their grandmothers, their mothers, their wives, their girlfriends, their sisters, their daughters, their co-workers, any woman that is around you, you're called to honor them with your life. I think scripture gives us one of the clearest examples of how men are meant to treat women. And it's with two different men who

treat women two different ways. The first man is Adam, not our pastor, Adam, but the first man, Adam. Maybe you know the story, but God creates the world, he puts Adam and Eve in a garden, and he tells them, hey, eat from all the fruit, but don't eat of this one tree. Well, the snake deceives Eve, she eats the fruit, she gives them to Adam, Adam eats as well. And then God confronts Adam, and he said, hey, why did you eat of this fruit? Listen to what Adam says, the woman, the woman you put here with me, she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it. What's Adam doing? He's blaming Eve, he's throwing Eve under the bus. Now contrast this with another man, this man is Jesus. There's a woman caught in adultery and a bunch of religious leaders, a bunch of religious men, mind you, they take this woman, they throw her at the feet of Jesus, and they tell Jesus, she deserves to die for what she has done. Listen to what Jesus says to these men, let any of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone. And these religious men, they don't know what to do, so they leave. And Jesus bends down next to this woman and says this, woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one, sir, she said. Then neither do I. That is mind blowing. Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared the Son of God, neither do I condemn you. Go now, leave your life of sin. Do you see the difference, the difference between Adam and Jesus and how they treated women? Adam dishonored, he shamed, he abandoned, he accused, he distanced himself. Jesus honored, he protected, he restored, he defended, and he drew near. Adam, that first man, he threw Eve under the bus, and Jesus picked her up off the ground. Jesus didn't do this just with this one woman, he did this with all women, his mother Mary, the Samaritan woman that

met him at the well, Mary and Martha when their brother died, Mary Magdalene when she was oppressed by demons, the woman who poured perfume on his feet, even the woman who was sick and touched his cloak. Even cooler yet, Jesus, when he was resurrected from dead, the very first people that he met were women. And this is the main challenge, the main calling of our lives, I really believe, to honor and protect the women. This is what grown up godly men do. Just think about this. We talk about how rough shape the world is in. Can you imagine how much better the world would be if this was true of every single man in this world? That every single man felt it was their calling to love and honor the women around them. It would change the entire world. And honestly, men, I think you know this, right? Deep down in your heart, when you objectify, you treat poorly, you don't love and protect and honor the women in your life, you know, deep down, that's wrong. There's something wrong about, there's something that goes against the way God has created you. So I just want to encourage you to be different. If you want to come alive, be like Jesus. Honor the women around you. So in order to come alive as a man, you need to grow up, you need to have great friends, and you need to honor women. Back in my sophomore year of college, I went to this Christian camp for the summer. To this day, I spent all summer there. It was one of the greatest experiences of life. To this day, I've never grown more in my relationship with God than I did that summer. But on Wednesday nights, all the guys at the camp, they would get together and they would have a men's night where they would talk about stuff like this, challenging each other to be

godly men. And at the end of the summer, they did this like manhood initiation. I promise it wasn't a cult. It was really cool. They did this manhood initiation, and they had this pathway with coals, burning coals on the side, and we walked to the front. And then my mentor for the summer, who was an older guy than me, he poured into me. He blessed me. And he encouraged me. I'll never forget that night. But the point of the night was very, very simple. An older man looked me in the eyes and he said, you have what it takes. This mentor of mine, he looked me in the eyes and said, you have what it takes to be a godly man. So today, I want to do something similar for you guys. I don't have any burning coals. But anybody that can hear my voice, any of the men that can hear my voice, I want you to know that you have what it takes. You have what it takes to be a godly man in this world. Now, I know some of you beat down. You've made a ton of mistakes. Some of you have never had a positive role model of manhood in your life. But this is what I believe. And I believe this with everything in me. The Spirit of God is in your heart. The breath of God is in your lungs. The fire of God is in your bones. You are not an accident, man. You were created with the hands of God. He formed you to do great things in this world. God does not make mistakes. Even though you've made some, he can still use you to do great things in this world. You have what it takes. But you have to believe that. Some of you don't believe it anymore. You maybe believed it when you're seven. You maybe believed it when you're 15, but you lost it. Let me tell you, you have what it takes to do good in this world, to be a godly man in this world. But you have to believe this. You have to believe that the Spirit of God rests in your life, and you

have to surround yourself with other men that believe the exact same thing. If you do that, I truly believe you will become a man that's come alive. Right now, I want to, I want to invite, we've done this each week, but I want to invite, if you are a man and you are 50 years or older, I want to invite you to stand up. If you're 50 years older and you're a man, don't be shy. Stand up, please. Can we give it up for these men right here? You got to stay standing. Sorry, no, you can't sit. Sorry, you got to stay standing. I just want to say thank you for, I'm 44, so I'm almost in this groove, but thank you for going before us. You have so much wisdom. I know some of you made mistakes. You still have so much wisdom, so much experience that you can pour into the next generation. And my great hope for every single one of you is that the second half of your life would be even more dynamic than the first. You are not old news. God can use you in amazing ways going forward. And if you're 20, 30, 40 here and you have no older man pouring in your life, look around the room. If you know any of these men, reach out. If you know any of these men, ask them, man, would you grab coffee with me? Would you pour into me? As we close in prayer, I just want to ask you, would you, would you lift your hands forward to these men? If you have one next to you, put your hand on them, lift your hands forward. Let's pray a blessing over their lives. Father, I just thank you for every man that is standing right now, 50 or older. Thank you for the story of where you have brought them. And I fully well know that the next 40, 30, 20, 10 years can be more dynamic than the previous ones. God, would you, your spirit, just come into their lives. Would you fill their lungs with your spirit

and the fire in your bones and let them know you have a purpose for them today. Would they honor women? God, would they surround themselves with great friends and do your great work? God, and I pray if there's any 20s and 30 years old that they would reach out to one of these men, that they would ask them to go to coffee, that they would form relationships with them. God, but for all of us are men, would you fill us with your Holy Spirit? Would you help us to be the person that you want us to be, godly men in this world? God, fill us with the fire in your bones to do your work in this world. God, we love you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Hey, would you guys all stand? Let's continue singing together. Hey friends, it's Adam from Embrace. If today's message encouraged you, be sure to hit the subscribe button to our YouTube channel to see all new messages as they drop. Also feel free to click here and check out more of our videos. Thanks so much for watching.