Transcript Wild At Heart Chapter 3

Wild At Heart
Chapter 3
• The question that Haunts Every Man
• “The Tragedy of Life is what dies inside a
man while he lives.”
Albert Schweitzer
• “He begins to die, that quits his desires.”
George Herbert
Panthera Leo- King of the
Beasts (page 40-41)
• Zoo Lion Story. How did it make you feel?
Thoughts?
• “After years of living in a cage, a lion no
longer believes it is a lion…. And a man
no longer believes he’s a man”
Thoughts?
The Lion of Judah? (Pages 41-44)
• “If man is the image of the Lion of Judah, how
come there are so many lonely women, so many
fatherless children, so few men around?”
• Story of TV sports father
• Story of “James Dean” neighbor
• Have you known men like this?
• We are caricatures of masculinity
• Couch potatoes
• Distant, disengaged fathers and
husbands
• Macho men
• “How come when men look into their hearts
they don’t discover something valiant and
dangerous, but instead find anger, lust, and
fear?”
• “The Mass of Men lead lives of quiet
desperation.”
Henry David Thoreau
• “All men die, few men ever live.”
William Wallace- Braveheart
• “The real life of the average man seems a
universe away from the desires of his
heart.”
• There is no battle to fight, unless it is:
• Traffic and meetings
• Hassles and bills
• The swords and castles of our boyhood have
long been replaced with pencils and
cubicles, the six shooters and cowboy hats
laid aside for minivans and mortgages
• Why are many men so “angry”
• Airplane story
• Toy shop story
• Stop light story
• What are some of your stories? What makes
you angry?
• Men are angry and really don’t know why
How come there are so many
“sports widows”?
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TV sports, news, etc.
Our hobbies, golf, on-line trading, etc.
Our careers
Why?
• It’s the biggest adventure many of
them ever taste. There is excitement
and adventure and risk in a world of
chores and tedious routine.
• So many guys have been told to put that
adventurous spirit behind them and “be
responsible” meaning live only for duty.
• If a man does not find those things for
which his heart is made, if he is never even
invited to live for them from his deep heart,
he will look for them in some other way.
• Why do some men fall into the trap of
affairs?
• Not for love
• Not even for sex
• But for “adventure”
• Why is pornography the number one snare of
men? What makes it so addictive?
• “It makes him feel like a man without
requiring something of him. The less a
man feels like a real man the more
vulnerable he is to porn.”
• Every man knows something’s happened,
something's gone wrong, we just don’t
know what it is.
Our Fear (page 44-48)
• John’s acting story
• Could you relate to this in some way?
• Our fear: To be exposed, found out,
discovered as an impostor, not really a
man.
• A man knows he is made to come
through but this question haunts us:
• Do I have what it takes?
• Can I come through?
• Will I?
• Again and again?
• Every man feels that the world is
asking him to be something he doubts
very much he has it in him to be.
• How do you see yourself as a man?
• Are words like strong, passionate, and
dangerous words you would chose?
• Do you have the courage to ask those
in your life what they think of you as a
man?
• What words do you feel they would
chose?
• Do you se yourself as William Wallace
or Robert the Bruce?
Useful things I can Do
• Be nice
• Make a bed
• Dig a hole
• Write books
• Sing alto or bass
• Read a map
• Drive a car
Useful things I can’t do
• Chop down big trees and cut them into lumber or
firewood
• Handle a horse, train a dog, or tend a her of
animals
• Handle a boat without panicking others
• Throw a fastball, curve, or slider
• Load shoot, and clean a gun or bow and arrow. Or
use either of them, or a spear, net, snare,
boomerang, or blowgun to obtain meat.
• Defend myself with my bare hands
• “Maybe it’s an okay report card for a
person, but I don’t know any persons…
for a guy, it’s not good.”
Garrison Keillor
• John’s Alaska story, thoughts?
• How do most men feel about their
readiness to fight, to live with risk, to
capture the beauty?
• Like we have a whistle
• Why don’t we act like the men we are
called to be?
– We doubt we have any strength to offer
– We think if we did offer what strength we
do have, it wouldn’t be enough
• What went wrong?
– The fall of man
– Our own story
A look at Adam (pages 48-51)
• Why did God create Adam?
• If you know what something is designed to
do then you know it’s purpose in life. You
know what it is made for.
• Retriver- loves the water
• Lion loves to hunt
• a hawk loves to soar
• Desire reveals design, and design, reveals
destiny.
• Our design is revealed by our desires.
• What was man made for? Let’s look at our
desires.
• Adventure
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God created us to subdue the earth
Find the equator, climb Mt. Everest
Cross the oceans, conquer the jungle
discover the molecule, something new
Paint, write, compose
• We were made to explore, build, conquer –
not just pass the time as many men think.
• Young boys know this is their purpose,
many men hesitate at the level of risk God
calls us to.
• A battle to fight
• We were created to fight a battle
• Adam was created in a world at war, not a
sitcom. He had an enemy.
• Satan had already fallen
• A beauty to rescue
• Eve was not present when Adam was
warned by God about the tree.
• God knew Adam and Even would be
attacked.
• Why didn’t God warn Adam about the
temptation? God believed in Adam and
trusted him to fight.
• Where was Adam when Eve was being
deceived by the serpent?
• What does Adam do?
• Nothing- he does not say a word, does not
lift a finger,he does not fight, he does not
rescue Eve. The first real man remains
passive and paralyzed.
• Every man repeats the sin of Adam,
everyday, we won’t risk, we won’t fight, we
won’t rescue Eve. We are a chip off the old
block.
Adam’s Failure
• Didn’t fight for Eve
• Denied his nature
• Went passive
• Let Eve try to fight it herself
• We follow his failure
A look at Eve
• Adam’s ezer kengdo- helper-lifesaver
• Life giver, Adam’s ally
• Believed the serpent and did not trust the
heart of God
• “Eve was convinced that God was
withholding something from her. Not even
the extravagance of Eden could convince
her that God’s heart was good.” Jan Meyers
The Allure of Hope
• “When Eve was deceived, the artistry of
being a woman took a fateful dive into the
barren places of control and loneliness.”
• Now every daughter of Eve wants to control
her surroundings, her relationship and her
God. No longer is she vulnerable, now she
will be grasping, no longer does she simply
want to share the adventure, she wants to
control it.”
• As for her beauty, she either hides it in fear
and anger, or uses it to secure her place in
the world.
• “In our fear that no one will speak on our
behalf or protect us or fight for us, we start
to recreate our surroundings so we don’t
feel defenseless.”
• Daughters of Eve usually become rigid or
clingy.
• She is no longer simply inviting
• She is either hiding in busyness or
demanding Adam come through for her;
usually an odd combination of both.
Eve’s failure
• She was created as Adam’s ally. Meant
to share adventure, help him fight
• Eve was deceived very easily
• Did not trust God’s heart
• Tried to control her world
Posers
• Adam blows it and knows that
something has gone wrong within him.
He is no longer what he was meant to
be.
• What does he do?
• He hides
• “I was afraid, because I was naked; so I
hid” Genesis 3:10
• Where do men today hide:
–In gym
–At office
–In the garage
–In the garden
–Behind the newspaper
–Behind our personality
• Most of what you encounter when you
meet a man is a façade, an elaborate fig
leaf, a Brilliant disguise.
• Friend’s nightmare story, thoughts?
• We feel like imposters We are faking our
way through life feeling as though “any day
now I will be found out”
• We pick only
* Battles we know we can win
* Adventures we know we can handle
* Beauties we know we can rescue
• Mechanic story- thoughts?
• Board room story -thoughts?
• Sports coach story –thoughts
• “It was the biggest bunch of poser I have
ever met…outside the church”
• Church story (page 54-55)
• Thoughts?
Strength Gone Bad
• We become either violent or passive
• We are covering up for our weakness and
insecurity
• Violent
• Physical- Cain kills Abel, Physical abuse
• Verbal abuse- Christian men wives and
children and Pastor e-mail examples
• Civil war story- thoughts?
• Achievers (socially acceptable forms of
violent men) casualties tend to be their
marriages, their families and their health.
• Passive
• Abraham is a good man, a friend of God,
but he is also a coward.
• Abraham said that Sarah was his sister, not
once but twice.
• Isaac- Abraham’s son repeated the same lie
about his wife Rebekah.
• Other passive men
• Men who won’t commit to the woman they
have been with for years
• Men that won’t stand up for what they think
• Men that hide behind a fig leaf of niceness
and spirituality
• Men that hide behind the newspaper or in
front of the TV or computer and disengage
from our families.
• John’s story of day after the wedding and
the theater-thoughts?
• The Evidence is clear: Adam and Eve’s fall
sent a tremor through the human race. A
fatal flaw entered their lives and has been
passed down to every son and daughter.
• Every little boy and every little girl comes
into this world set up for a loss of heart
• Even if he can’t quite put it to words, every
man is haunted by the question
• “Am I really a man? Have I got what it
takes… when it counts?
• What follows this is a story that is much
more personal and that we are much more
familiar with.
• Next time Chapter 4 “The Wound”