Brave Men S2E34: John Eldredge - Inside the Mind of Wild at Heart

I read the book Journey of Desire and I thought, man, this guy has captured something very deep within his heart and shared it with us. His name was John Eldridge. He wasn't well known at the time. And then a little while later, he wrote a book called Wild at Heart and Brian Wild at Heart just exploded. What's amazing about it, and I wanted to get into it with John and meet him and talk to him about this. But he wrote Wild at Heart as a reflection or as a out of honor for the man who was his best friend with whom he had written Journey of Desire. And so Wild at Heart was actually something he said, you know, I lost a friend and then we talked Brian about about his friend he just lost a few years ago and a 30-year gap between two, these two men leaving and how do you handle that? It's really a fascinating. I think we hit on some things. I asked John, I said, do you mind if I talk to you about that? He goes, no. I said, do you talk about it very often? He goes, no, it's not really something people ask me about, but he walked into how to deal with grief. I think for all of us right now is something we all need to know and be able to minister to others. Well, yeah, grief is, I mean, we've, during this, as we record this, we're still in a little quarantine and we all have, I know I do, I'm sure you do have friends either for one degree or two degrees away that have been lost due to the virus. Yeah. And we have a dear friend who's a nurse who's right now in New York City as we speak, literally losing patients every day. Yeah. And so that's something. That really is. And you know, plus the other thing we talk about that's so, I mean, first of all, this guy was focused on the family staff, family counselor. John has background. He wasn't just, he's not just a writer who came over the cool idea. He actually has a background in all of this, clinical background. And what he also spoke to was, you know, when we talk about quarantine, we talk about pressure. We talked about what does a man need to do? And this is so good. I've repeated a number of times. He said, every man, and this is coming up, you'll, you'll hear this in this interview in a minute with John Elders, but Brian, he said to me, he said, every man needs a trash can lid in a baseball bat. Uh oh. And I'm like, I didn't get it. I said, the what? He said, every man needs a trash can lid in a baseball bat. So he can take the trash can lid in the baseball bat, go out back in the alley or his backyard, whatever he's got. Take the baseball bat and just beat the hell out of the trash can lid. Oh man. And then go back in and hug his children and tell his wife he's sorry for what he just said to her. You know, you've, you've, you've had a couple great interviews recently where you've been able to get your guests to give you some, some top level secret stuff. I remember the, uh, John Tess interview podcast. And if you have, if you haven't heard the John Tess podcast, uh, it's a few episodes back. It's, you'll see it there in your podcast player, which I'm going to use. But you got him to talk about a tattoo. I got him. Yeah, I said, do you ever notice? He goes, no, he's got Mark 1123 tattooed on his left arm. And you've got to, if you, if somebody hasn't listened to this, if you haven't listened, bro, you got to list John Tess. This is an incredible, uh, time. And his whole family is there too. So John Eldridge, we did get him to talk about his dealing with grief. And what he said, Brian, about dealing with the grief when he was young and now as he's older and God spoke to him in the middle of the night and gave him a way to deal with grief. You're going to hear it today on Brave Men. It's Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole, wisdom and courage for the journey. I'm here with John Eldridge and John Eldridge. Most of us would know through the book Wild at Heart. And, uh, but he also has an incredible ministry of which I'm on the email list and a bunch of other stuff called ransom heart ministries. And, uh, John has been in the forefront of helping restore the hearts of men. And so John, your work, you and your wife, now your sons, uh, where's this thing start? Where's the genesis for this? Tell me, tell me where this kind of thing started. You know, I think if I'm honest, it started on my grandfather's ranch. Wow. I'm a young kid being raised in LA and the suburbs in an alcoholic family. Wow. Every summer, I get a rescue. I get sent off to my grandfather's cattle ranch in eastern Oregon. And it was, uh, it was masculine initiation. It was boyhood as it was meant to be. It was fishing and baby guns and tractors and just all that. And, um, I started private practice as a counselor, you know, 30 years ago. And the guys start filing into my office and it's, you know, it's gambling addictions or it's pornography or it's a divorce or depression or, you know, and I listen to their hearts and I go, no, it's all the same thing. It's all, it's all the same thing. They've lost heart. Hmm. They've lost heart. They don't, they don't know who they are and they've never been initiated as a man. And so I'm sitting in my, I'm sitting in my counseling office. I'm thinking about my boyhood on the ranch. I'm listening to these guys and I go, wow. Like this is universal. So I, I wrote while at heart, um, really just to answer the questions of the men that were my clients. And, um, because I knew it was universal. I knew this is, this is every guy. Yeah. This is, this is every man. You know, I think it was, um, it was one of the philosophers played over somebody who said, uh, most men live unexamined lives. And, and I think that the world we live in, man, you hit it so right is I think we live overly examined lives by and large with the digital media and all that. But men are living un-initiated lives. Yep. And I think that's exactly it. Never been, Stephen Mansfield, my friend Stephen wrote this little thing, this little treatise on brotherhood and he talked about, uh, being an Afghanistan on a roof of this building with these guys and these guys dancing and drinking together and singing together. And it was like, he felt like he was being initiated in the manhood, even though he was already a follower of Christ, already a dad. And he said, something remarkable happened that night as these men held each other in dance. And there's something about that, John, that that we don't do. And the church is, it's almost like that stuff, initiation things, pieces missing or gone, or maybe it was just considered too dangerous. Totally gone, uh, gone with the industrial era, certainly gone with the modern era. Dad left home and the son never worked alongside of his dad anymore. He wasn't with his uncle in the shop. He wasn't with the men, you know, in the mill. And so the context of masculine initiation for thousands of years was lost. And dad became a figure that came home for dinner, right? And then depending on what mood he came home in, you know, that was either a good thing or a bad thing, but there was no context for it anymore. We lost, we lost true masculine culture and with it, the boy lost initiation. Wow. Now, how do you go from, okay, so you grew up in L.A. area. What where was that? Yeah, I sang a real valley, like Pasadena, Arcadia. I grew up in, I lived four years in Temple City. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. That's it. But, you know, what it was is my dad was an evangelist in the world in which he was in the preacher world and the national world. You were an evangelist when you were between churches. Yeah. So, uh, so you did that for four years. I live in Temple City. I mean, it was, uh, it was crazy, but I grew up in Santa Cruz, California, on the beaches, really. But this whole, how do you go from, um, you know, this initiation you're talking about on the ranch and all that. And that sounds fantastic. How do I do that in a practical way in an urban setting? Oh, because the court issues are always the same. There is courage. Courage. What initiation? See, every, every boy and every man has basically one question. And it's, do I have what it takes? Yeah. And do I have what it takes to be a dad? Do I have what it takes to start a business? Do I have what it takes to get my PhD? Do I have what it takes to be a follower of Christ in a pretty hostile country? Do you know, do I have what it takes? And the boy needs to go through a bunch of experiences in his life, hopefully mentor, guide it so that he discovers I do. I do have what it takes. And then he will have the courage and the internal fortitude to move into, you know, starting that company or taking that promotion or, you know, quitting the, the private sector and going into academy or whatever. You can form that courage in any setting because we're constantly faced with, I don't know if I can handle this. Yeah. I don't, you know, and that's, that's every man's every day, right? It's new situations. I don't know if I can handle this. And that's where the initiation is taking place. And you know, it takes place at six, but it takes place at 60, right? Like that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's, it's one of the things my dad wrote through Maximized Manhood is, maturity isn't measured by age, but by the acceptance of responsibility. So, so we have, what was it? What was the guy, what was Mark Driscoll that used to talk about boys with beards? You know, we have all these older guys in a sense been given permission by culture to just stay in mature. Yeah. And it's not their fault, by the way. Yeah. How, why aren't they initiated? Yeah. Where was what's missing in their story? Where's the man? Where's dad? Where's grandfather's uncle? Where's a coach? Where's a teacher? What happened? Where's the youth pastor? Where's the guy? Where's the guy? Why aren't they initiated? And then, but that is, Paul, that is the crisis. That is the crisis is, we have boys walking around in men's bodies. And, and they get men's responsibilities and it crushes them. And they, they either blow up their world, right, through an affair and addiction or something. So I'm sort of self-medication. Right. Or they check out. They, they go silent. They're the, they're, they may be still married, still fathering, but they're not present. They're gone, you know. Wow. Wow. So my, my, the research I've seen from Pew and Barna and those guys are so approximately 93% of the churches in the United States. And now we've got friends around the world. And as you do, but 93% of the churches in America have no navigational path in which they can mentor or disciple men. So tell me, you know, you're passionate for that. You're, you're hard for that. Or, or what's the solution on that, John? My gosh, Jesus. Well, there's a couple of this for years. Yeah, yeah, we've been talking about for years. There's, there's a couple of reasons. And by the way, that's changing. There, there is, well, look at your movement. Yeah. I mean, there, there is a phenomenal, God is at work, raising other men. Yeah. He really is. That so things are changing. But what happened was the church, the church made spirituality, something very soft and, and, and, and very uninviting to men. There's no battle. There's no adventure. No beauty to win. What am I here for? Right? Like it's, well, the message is be a good boy. You know, that's, that's our, that's our discipleship programs. You know, don't masturbate. Don't look at porn. Don't yell at your wife. You know, like big, big, be good. And, and that is not enough to either capture the attention of men, but it's also, that's not enough to initiate them. Yes. But it's, it's, it's inadequate. So, that was then, but I think things are changing. I really do. I, I think that if the church isn't doing it, there's a ton of great stuff going on right on the fringes of the church. I mean, guys, guys are getting together. Guys are doing things. Guys are looking out for each other. They really are. There's, there's a new culture of masculinity. And we're kind of providing for one another what we didn't get. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's, that's phenomenal. Now, you had, I did a talk with a very close friend, Nancy Houston, and this current crisis we're in the COVID-19 and all this. She said something I thought was really profound. I hadn't thought of this. And of course, she's got same background as your family counselor, psychologist. She deals with sexual dysfunction. So, Nancy said one of the things that that's happening for us and in this remarkable crazy close down, she says we're experiencing grief, experiencing grief in that we're processing it in those same waves that you process grief, denial, rage, you know, those kinds of things. I mean, the, the trauma centers for women in America are packed. France is just now opening up 20 new pop up trauma centers for women abuses up. I think they said a 36%. The other thing is fascinating is the, the, the people reporting abuse, the abuse reports for children in America have gone down 75% since the lockdown. Okay. And which tells us, well, we know the abuse is going up because the trauma centers are packed, which tells us the first line of defense for most of these kids when we send them home and close the schools. We send a whole millions of kids back into areas of like hell. Yeah. So, how do you process this, this grief thing that's caused a lot of people to move into anger and rage? And how do we process that, John? How do we process that as men? Well, I'm going to add, okay, I'm going to give my answer and then I'm going to need to explain it. Yes. With a baseball bat and a trash can. Okay. That's my answer. Okay. Seriously, guys, you, you got to go way along something and it's not your kids. Oh, wow. You need, you need a baseball bat and a trash can. It's been one of the best grief tools I've ever had in my life. Now, close the garage door so the neighbors don't freak out. But you need to go way along something and if it's not that, get a PVC tube and go, you know, a sofa cushion and just destroy the sofa cushion, you know, because here's the other thing that's going on. Paul is that it's distinctly masculine, okay, because because your audience, so let me just, yeah, men are warriors. Men are warriors. And men are made to intervene. And we are, we are being told to do something that is so, but we know, we know this is wrong. We know it in the core of our being that should not be happening. People should be losing jobs. We shouldn't be shutting down economies. We shouldn't be locking down people into isolation. Everything in us knows it's wrong. And here's what we're being told to do. Nothing. Bam. And that is so brutal on the masculine soul. You can't take it. You can't take it. And that's why I, you know, my first answer is baseball bat and a trash can. My second answer is you do need to go to war. And you're going to need to go to war in a couple ways. You're going to really need to fight for your heart in this. Or you'll get taken out. Yeah. You're going to have to fight for your heart. Wow. You got to fight the discouragement, the depression, the fear. You got to fight that stuff, right? You, the warrior in you needs to rise up. Or you will be taken out by this. It's horrible. And I would say because you've got a spiritual audience listening, you need to go to war in prayer. Yeah, you really do. You got to the fear in the world right now is so demonic. The enemy is loving it. Absolutely. He is loving having millions of people in fear. It's the biggest virus. It's worse. Yeah. It's worse than the physical. And so you got to fight that and fight it in prayer. Come on. Yeah. You got to stand against this stuff like a warrior because everything in you is made for it and knows it. And the world's telling you to wash your hands and cough in your elbow. It's just not enough. Come on, man. Shoot. You know, we were made for times like these. Jesus was born in the middle of terrorist occupation. You know, Daniel 600 years before Christ puts in the motion a bunch of guys who show up with golden frankincense and murder to help, to help his dad, you know, take his family to Egypt on the run and give them the money to start a business. So, you know, God's got a strategy in this stuff. But we got to rise up. Joel three nine says, wake up the mighty men. Prepare for battle. Yep. And and I see that, John. And I see this stirring thing, you know, and and that's why I so appreciate. And I mentioned to you off just before we started that I know what it takes to do what you've done and to write what you've done and to put yourself in the crosshairs of the snake people and the snake. And and for for you to write these things and do this stuff. So I want to say thank you for on behalf of all of us who have read from sacred romance to and by the way, I do want to mention this also. How did you, you know, you lost a really close friend just recently. Tell me about him and how did you process that? We'll be right back with more of Paul's interview with John Eldridge. And for more information about Christian men's network, we invite you to visit cmn.men that's cmn.men. And right along the top, we've got links to all of the cmn resources, including books by Paul's father, Evan Lewis Cole, maximize manhood. If if you've never read that, you've you've got to check it out. That made an impact on me when I was a young man. And that's available as well as some all of Paul's books and some links to some streaming resources that you can consume consume. You can watch or listen to anywhere on your on your phone or iPad or whatever. Also, as a reminder, we do this every time. Please, you can drop Paul an email, Paul at cmn.men. And he'll get back to you. So just drop, drop Paul an email. Let know what you think about the podcast. An episode ago or two, we had a little giveaway that happened. So you'll want to drop them an email and you never know what might happen. Hey, let's get back to more of Paul's interview with John Eldridge. So, right. I wrote, I wrote a cigarette romance with Brent Curtis and he was my mentor in counseling. He was a therapist as well and lost him before I wrote while at heart. Right. In a climbing accident, we were leading a small group of guys on a retreat. And part of the retreat was climbing and there was a freak accident and Brent was killed. That was brutal. And it's very interesting for the guys listening. God came to me very quickly in my grief and he said, I will not let you walk alone. Because he knew my tendency is a lone ranger. And I'm going to isolate. I'm going to withdraw. I'm going to give the world the finger. Yeah. And so that was a pretty big rescue. Wow. And so when we started ransom heart, we started doing the work that we're doing with man and with women. I built a team. And one of the guys that I asked to come be on that team was my best friend for 40 years. Craig McConnell. We met back in L.A. Backpacking in the 70s. Wow. And he got leukemia. Yeah. I heard Craig a number of times on your podcasts. Yeah. He's a beautiful man. Yeah. He's just a beautiful guy. Yeah. Got leukemia. Five years ago, died three years ago to other things. And leukemia morphed into another kind of cancer. And how do I process it? The reason I told that story is very differently now than I did then. They were almost like two different events. Wow. And the reason why is my worldview had been so honed over the years that the restoration of all things that Jesus talks about in Matthew 18 that Peter preaches and acts three that John sees in Revelation 21. Isaiah talks about. And most guys don't, they don't understand that God is actually not going to destroy the world and take us all up to the eternal church service in the sky. That's not going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank God. Well, if that's your worldview, you don't, you have no hope. No. Because you can't hope for anything. This is CS Lewis. You can't hope for anything you don't desire. And so all these weird, these weird, over spiritual pictures of heaven. I don't even like the word heaven anymore because it's just been so, it's been made filled with such creepy stuff, you know. Yeah. So by the time we got to Craig three years ago, my imagination, my convictions are this that very soon Jesus Christ will return. And in his return, he literally restores the world. He restores the world. And, and with it, everything we love, every, every place on the planet that's ever been special to you, it gets restored. It doesn't get obliterated. He restores us as followers. And so I'll tell you, this is a fascinating story, Paul. So I, I am grieving. I'm grieving Craig. You need to grieve loss. And when I, we were up at our ranch and I, I took a shotgun and a box of shells and I went in the wood. I told Stacy, you're going to hear some shooting and some yelling. Yeah. Don't worry about it. I go in the woods and I just started blasting tree stumps. And you know, you got to get the anger out, the griefs behind the anger. And then I sat down the log. And I was just quiet. And Jesus speaks. And, and, and, and you know, sometimes he speaks in ways that you can't quite put words to, but he's ministering to your soul. He's coming alongside you. And the conversation kind of, if I could put words to it now, the conversation kind of went like this. He said, John, he said, you know what's true. Craig is not dead. He's not dead. He said, he's gone away. What if he was in China right now on a secret mission and he couldn't use his cell phone? But you knew that in a few years, you guys would get back together and swap the stories. How differently would you feel about all this? Wow. Wow. And I'm like, completely differently. And it's like, you know, that's true. You know, that is the reality. He's not dead. He's very much alive. And, and you know that in a very short period of time, you will be reunited in a real world doing real things, right? Jesus at the last supper. It will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until I drink you in the kingdom, right? So, you know, you drink, you eat, you play, you know, you have adventures, you build things. It's all real. It's all absolutely real. And that between Brent and Craig in those almost 30 years, total different. Wow. Totally different. Yeah. You know, when I had, I was blessed to have a few moments have dinner with Paul Young and talk about his book, The Shack. And in the thing that I appreciated about it, you would appreciate this. It was really funny because I had a close friend in Nashville that introduced us and we all went to dinner. So I turned to him and he'd really been getting hammered by the theologian crowd or whatever. But quasi theologian crowd, let me put that one. And so I turned to him and I just said, had just before we eat, I just wanted to say one thing, just just a little theological thing. He just went like, oh, no, dude, I'm just messing with you, man. I'm just messing with you. It was really funny. But I love the fact that he built this picture, this texture of the, the thinness of the veil. Yeah. How thin that is between here and there. Yeah. But here that there is not actually there. It's actually here. Here's here and there is here. But it's that close. Yeah. And I love that. And I love the way you've pictured that. And what you did just then is you gave us a picture that's portable. And man, I appreciate that. The thing that no one my dad passed away, there were, and there's still this because my dad did some amazing things. And so guys have written things to me and said, your dad would be really proud of you because he's looking down from heaven right now at you. And I think that's creepy, frankly. Yep. It's also bad theology. I would rather have MP and China on a secret mission. Right. You know, I mean, just so thank you for that picture. That's fantastic. Yeah. And that is the truth. And it's a, it's a quick time. And you know, at the age you're at now, you've got, you've got your fourth grandchild coming. So now you've got this whole different look, worldview perspective. And you're looking at it, which is why a little while ago when we talked about young men, this is why you've got to have older men in your life. Yep. Because they've got a perspective in a way of looking at things. The issue I call it the viagra syndrome, which is the problem now is you've got the, you know, the big phenomenon in our culture right now is 30-year marriages that are busting up. They've married 30, 35 years. You guys 55, 50, 55, it's got some discretionary income. Marriage breaks up. And I call it the viagra syndrome because it's a false syndrome because he still thinks he's a player. Yep. But it's all chemicals. And my friend, Dwayne Pickett and Jackson, Mississippi, pastors of church area said the problem in our neighborhood, he says there's no grandpa's on the front porch is anymore. You know? Yep. And it was, it's what you and your son talked about in that book about the older lions. Yep. What they would teach the young ones. So really it's up to us to actually pick this thing up. We can't just look at the next generation and just go, yeah, they're all screwed up, we're all messed up, they're this or that. No, no, that's, that's on us, right, John? Yep. Who are you fathering? Is a really good question. That's who are you currently fathering? Yeah. Okay. We pick a couple guys. They might be 50 years old. They might be 15. They might be five, but pick a few guys that you are fathering. Mm-hmm. That's really strong, man. Now, I want to, I want to pick a little different path and you're, you've got all this family counseling, psychologists, you've studied how men act and you've got a theological, deep theological basis. And so I, I pose this question, this is a leading question. How do I find God's plan for my life and how screwed up do I get if I can't find it? Oh, that it, we're that easy. Let me, let me give guys a real relief. The reason that God has not given you the plan for your life is that you would go do it. Wow. Without him. Yeah. Men are doers and we want the plan. If God gave you the plan, you wouldn't seek him anymore. You just go do it and you would check in in 20 years. Yeah. To God wants something else. He wants a deep intimate life with us. We still need initiating each one of us. There's a lot of unformed, we are unfinished men. And there is a lot of initiating that still needs to go on. Well, you need a pretty close walk with God to get that initiation. What do I do with this? What are you doing in that? What are you raising in my soul right now? What do I do with the fear I'm feeling right now around the pandemic? Yeah. Why do I feel eight years old inside? Right? Like that's all gold. That's gold, man. And, and so instead of asking for the plan, what you should be looking for is the intimacy. Wow. Intimacy with God that allows you to receive the fathering you still need. Yeah. There were two things that built the strength of David's life, intimacy and adversity. Intimacy, when he showed up at Saul's place and Goliath is throwing curses at Saul and the children of Israel, those curses weren't F-bops. They were morning and night. They were curses that said, you guys don't measure up. You're not good enough. You're not, you can't make it. This will never happen. It's all the things that we hear. And when David showed up, what he had that Saul didn't have, Saul had faced adversity, but he didn't have an intimacy with God. Yep. And David had that combination of intimacy and adversity. I mean, this guy, I mean, I love David because he could like kill a bunch of guys and then write a song about it. And for me, that's part of what you stirred up and continued to stir up because I read your, I get your emails and the R-H, I've got the R, where's my phone? I got the R-H app. You know? Right on. Yeah. We just launched an app actually. It's called C-M-N radio. Christmas Network Radio. And you can go to your Alexa and go Alexa, open Christmas Network and on will come RT Kindle or somebody else that's spoken for us. So that's kind of fun, you know? Yeah, that's great. Yeah, but I've had the, and by the way, you haven't said far out yet. And it, there's maybe one of your boys wrote your bio, but he says far out way too often. I say it a ton. Yeah, we're right on. Yeah, right on now. The ride on's okay. It was kind of funny reading. I thought his, one of his sons edited that bio. But anyway, the app, and I love all the stuff you've done. And so, so give me the website again for the ministry, John. Yeah, so it's ransomed, ransomedheart.com, or you could just Google John Eldridge, and that would get you there. Yeah. Yeah. Google, you know, Googling John Eldridge because you've written so many books and articles and pin so many places. It's about 48 pages of stuff. So, uh, ransomedheart. ransomedheart.com. Yeah, I mean, that's the key. And that also puts you into places where you can go to some of your classes where you can sign up for things, get the podcast, all that. So I just want everybody to know that because I want everybody to go to it and get that in order to get their heart unlocked, you know, multitude of counselors, right? And we've got so many, so many negativity hitting us from so many different directions. And it just absolutely is overwhelming if we're not, if we're not careful, what are you speaking right now? You know, and let me just finish with this and thank you for all the time you've given to us John. What are you speaking to men right now in the middle of this period? And you've got personal guys you're doing Zoom calls with. You've got you know, you're thinking, you're writing, you're sending things out. What is it that what's the tip of the spear right now in your heart? Well, let me shoot straight guys. The war on the earth is pretty intense right now. And the enemy is having a heyday with this thing. You are going to have to do serious battle with fear every day. I mean, like I reject fear in the name of my Lord Jesus Christ. God has not given me a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and of sound mind. Like you quote the scripture, you renounce the fear. Okay, Romans 8, he has not given us a spirit leading us to be slaves to fear again, but a spirit of sonship by which we cry out, father, father. So you're going to need to do serious combat with fear and also with death. I don't just mean physical death. What's behind this whole thing? The enemy is trying to bring about this doom of things are over. I'll never get my job back. We'll never get that trip back. I'll never recover my retirement. You know, it's it's this it's over thing. Okay, that's death. And it's just as real as physical death, but it's worse because it's the death of your soul, your heart, your hopes, your faith. You are going to have to fight death. Okay, like this, Romans 8, too, the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death. I reject this. I'm not going to make agreements with it's over. I'm not going to surrender my dreams. I'm not going to surrender my future. You can't have my soul like that. You will have to fight this fear and death right now, probably daily. Yeah, do it. Now lawyer, do it. Hey, man, you know, Jeremiah 29 verse 11, we like to quote God's will for you. He says, I know the thoughts for you. They don't know that to give you enough of your destruction of future and hope, but the first few verses of Jeremiah 29, which was written to people in crisis, Daniel and his friends that have been captured, taken the Babylon. The first part of that, he doesn't tell him, hey, get out of there, escape. He says in the middle of the crisis, he says, build buildings, plant crops. In other words, do what you know to do to be excellent. In fact, he says multiply, which to me, John, means don't stop your dreams. Yep. You know the whole that whole John 10, 10 thing. Thief comes still killing destroy. Too often, we almost put that in a different little spiritual world. I can snap part of our world, but part of our world, what he's trying to do is rip off our dreams. Absolutely. Rip off our heart. Yep. That's about the heart, man. So John, thanks you for this time. Oh, this was great stuff. It's remarkable things you're doing. And I'm sure you're working on two or three books. Did I at any one time? No, actually, I'm not. I'm taking a break right now. I'm being kind, being kind of my soul. I tell you what I am building is I am building a fly fishing wrap. Come on, man. That's how I'm handling cabin fever right now. I can't get to the river, but I'm planning on it. That's great. Yeah. And you've got some great, you've got some great streams around where you live. And you guys, you probably get some Brookies, some like natives occasionally. Yeah. From what I know, good friend of mine, Steve Brantz, where fish is up in your area. I'm up, I fished up at this park in the fished Wyoming. I love fishing, man. It's my, it's my release. Oh, right on. Yeah. So I fished Alaska fish far out off in places and I'm going to northern somewhere called back or something this August. We know this COVID thing. I already told those guys. We already talked to each other. I'll go like this. Are you clean? Yeah, I'm clean. You're clean. I'm clean too. Okay. We're just going to go. Yes. I mean, we're not going to flout the law. Let me put it that way. But at the same time, there's there's certain things you got to fight with, man. We have to fight this stuff. And I love on your spirit. And I pray blessings over you and Stacy and your three sons and their wives and your grandchildren. And I pray on that every place you put your feet will be holy ground. And everything you put your hands to will prosper. And that the Lord will give you the year of his favor, the year of his favor. In Jesus name, thanks, John. God bless you, man. Amen. Thank you. Yeah, man. Great talking to you. Good talking to you. We'll see you. Okay. Yep. So Paul, I great interview, but I think we need to warn future interviewees that you get them to say things that they don't want to say. And they tell stories that wasn't on their docket. But you know, the thing is, I'm fascinated by, I'm just fascinated by people. And guys like John Eldridge, you know, was such depth and background. You know, I really had 20 other things. I'd love to ask them, but it was, you know, maybe overstep in kind of like a few weeks ago, when I talked to Stephen Mansfield, I was like, yeah, I could ask more questions. But, you know, and the beauty of that is a lot of what he believes and is and who he is or is in his books. And so with Christmas network, we are allies with with John on this. And that's why we do what we do. That's why it's cmn.man. You've got the resources. You know, the 24-7, you know, cmn radio is absolutely amazing. So yeah, so all these podcasts will end up cycling through that at different times, plus speakers from the global summit, special messages that people have. It's on the, you see, what is it? Apple app store and then the Apple and Google Play. Yeah, just go to Apple Apple Store or Google Play and search for cmn radio. And also, if you're person like me that's kind of geeky that has an Alexa device, all you have to do is activate the Christian Mans network skill in Alexa. And then you can have Alexa play cmn radio live right there in your kitchen. Yeah, you can just ask for it. We do it all the time. I'm so happy. You had a friend of mine hit me up the other day and he said he was working in his yard on a Saturday and he just was feeling down because of all this stuff going on in culture and whatever. He said he grabbed his phone, pulled up his app and it's got an app. It's got an actual little little little things, you know, and he punched it and up came cmn radio and it was RT Kindle speaking about the life of David. And he goes, man, my whole life world changed. You know, just his life that day, his world view, just kind of pivoted. It was like, this is awesome. I feel better, you know. He's still not working in his yard. But, you know, no, it's, I mean, what does that say that we have enough content here at Christian Mans Network to fill up a whole radio station? 24 seven. 24 seven. That's just crazy. Yeah, and, uh, the same 10 minutes playing over and over. No, it's, I know that first hand, we spent a lot of time working as a team programming that. Yeah, you've worked very hard on it. You've done a great job on it, Brian. Thank you. Yeah, it's really cool. It's a neat, you know, it's a really, here's the thing between the podcasts, your, your resources, even in going back to your father's resources. We've got years of, of, of Evergreen timeless information for men. And, um, there's really no excuse for where we can listen to it from current technologies, like podcasts, streaming radio. And so, I'm going to bust you up on a word though. Yeah, it's not just information. It's revelation. There you go. Yeah, it's not just information. You know, because the information is like, you know, everybody's got information, but not everybody has revelation. And, and that's like, it's talking to John today. Goodness, been some of his revel, some of his, some of his, uh, you know, what do you want to call him? Mike drops, needle drop, uh, you know, uh, fantastic. And so this is the kind of thing you share with somebody. You subscribe to the channel and you share with other guys and you go, you know, you need to be listening to Brave Men because twice a week, Brian, we're dropping stuff like this. Right. Well, thank you for listening to our, uh, this edition of the Brave Men podcast. Again, drop, drop Paul an email. Um, he will, he will read it, right Paul? Yeah, I'll read it. I may not respond, but no, I'll respond. At some point, at some point, we'll see what happens. Yeah, it sends me a pretty bad one. I'll, well, no, you know what, I'll respond to that one too. I will. I mean, I like it, but I'll respond to it. There you go. I'm getting trouble. But, okay, so the bottom line is, we will respond to every Paul at semen.man that we get. Paul at semen.man. Yeah. Thanks for joining us this week for the Brave Men podcast. We'll see you next time right here. You've just experienced Brave Men with Paul Lewis Cole. Paul is president of the Christian Men's Network. Connect with Paul at semen.man or write to him at Paul at semen.man.