Week 3 | Wild at Heart
Weather | 65° F | Humidity 97% | Wind: none
7 Pax continued the book study at Adventure Park at 6:15 for the third week of Wild at Heart. Thank you to all the HIM that posted. All Pax are invited to attend. Even if you don’t have the book, just show up to fellowship and grow spiritually with us.
The reading assignment was Chapter 3 – The Question That Haunts Every Man.
We began by watching this video: Wild Life with John Eldredge – Part 1
Discussion
- What are some moments in your life where you felt like you were living well as a man?
- What is your fig leaf?
The lion trapped in cage for years no longer believes he’s a Lion. He loses himself. Trapped in a cage, a man no longer believes he’s a man.
The Lion of Judah
- If a man is truly the image of the Lion of Judah, how come there are so many lonely and bored women, fatherless children?
- “All men die; few men ever really live.”
- Without a great battle, the fierce nature of man goes into hibernation.
- What things cause you to snap? Traffic? Rude people? Why are men so angry?
- Many men fall into affairs, not because of love or sex, because they desire adventure.
Why is pornography the number one snare for men? He longs for beauty, but without a fierce and passionate heart, he cannot find her, win her, or keep her. Men find women mostly a mystery they cannot solve and turn to imitation. Pornography makes a man feel like a man, without requiring a thing. The less a guy feels like a man in front of a woman, the more vulnerable he is to porn.
Our Fear
- Every man’s deepest fear: to be exposed, found out, an imposter. Author’s example is a recurring dream of being an actor in the theater, and he forgot all his lines.
- Men feel like the world is asking them and expecting them to be something that they doubt they have in them.
- That’s how most men feel about their readiness to fight, to live with risk, to capture the beauty. They have a whistle.
Jesus was not a man to tiptoe around the issues. He confronted the evil in the hypocrites and called them out on it in front of all the crowd.
What is a Man For?
- If you know what something is designed to do, you know its purpose. Design is revealed by desires: Retrievers love water, Lions love to hunt, Hawks love to soar.
- Adam: Rule, subdue, multiply. Here is earth, your kingdom, cultivate it and care for it.
- Adam was still in Eden. NOTHING has been explored on the earth yet. He was not made to just sit around Eden, killing time. He was made to explore and care for the earth.
- Man was born into a world at war (Good and Evil, God and Lucifer) Saving Private Ryan, not Home Improvement.
- Adam’s first battle, for Eve, God does not warn Adam about her temptation, God designed Adam to pull through, its already there, in his heart. Adam fails God, humanity.
- Every man now repeats the sin of Adam, we won’t risk, fight, rescue Eve from evil. We are truly a chip off the old block. The design is still in our hearts though.
- Eve fails her design too. She is given to man as his helper (translated lifesaver). She failed man. She fails to help who she was designed to help
Posers
- Adam hid, because he was afraid, naked. “Any day now, I will be found out” is a common fear amongst men.
- Men try and blend in with others, talking like their mechanic, acting like baseball players, happy faces at church. “I’m doing Great! [furious with wife]”
- Men pretend to care about each other, “I’ll be praying for you [never prays]. Take Care”
Strength Gone Bad
- After the fall of Adam, things get violent. Physically. Men can also be violent with their words. How about this? Men can be violent with their silence. Cold silence.
- Fist-fighting bullies make cowardly soldiers.
- Achievers are a socially acceptable form of violent men. Their casualties? Marriage, family.
- Then there are passive men, hiding when things get tough. Men who won’t stand up. Men who hide behind the newscasters, celebrities, television, sports.
- Adam and Eves fall sent a tremor through the human race. Fatal flaw that is passed on to every generation.
Every man is haunted with the question: “Am I really a man? Have I got what it takes, when it counts?”
“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
Homework | Read Chapter Four: The Wound
Thoughts for the week:
What is masculinity? Every man carries a wound, how have you been wounded? In what ways have you wounded others?