Courage and Healing: Confronting Generational Cycles of Mental Struggles with Toby Slough

00:00 - Speaker 1 Harvard came out with a study at the end of 2021 that said this the number one indicator of a child's mental health is the mental health of their parents. 00:09 - Speaker 2 Yeah. 00:10 - Speaker 1 And I had this aha moment. Hey, I can reach my audience men, christian men, christian women. I can reach them by reaching their kids and we put together a workshop, that is a two hour workshop for parents, where I guarantee them that I will give them five practical ways that they can begin to spend five minutes a day, five days a week, connecting God's power to their kids issues, and that they will see progress. 00:42 - Speaker 3 Hi, this is Paul Lewis Cole. You're listening to Brave Men. This is probably one of the most vulnerable interviews I've ever done with anyone. Toby Slough is a remarkable man, and with me now is our producer Bryce, who worked with Pastor Toby for many years at Cross Timmers Church in Argyle, Texas. Leading worship, Leading worship right. Yeah, he's a remarkable man. He was a. I'll never be able to thank him enough for what he meant to you and your life through a time of healing Right, Because that's kind of what he's about. 01:16 - Speaker 2 Right, yeah, it's interesting, he you know when. So my meeting Toby was after my wife had passed away. Yeah, and I had never heard of the guy, didn't know him, and in fact the only reason I had gone to be at the church was because I had a friend working there and the relationship just developed into me coming on staff there. But the reason I came on staff was not because I loved the church but because I loved Toby's message. 01:48 And I said hey, I can follow that guy because, like you just said, vulnerable is what he was, and I at that time I didn't need someone who would tell me every great thing that is going to be better about my life going forward he told me that it's that it's okay to not be okay. You know that it was just wild hearing a pastor not tell me that it was just automatically the silver lining. He didn't just put the silver lining on, he said hey, yeah, there's a lot of great cloud. 02:20 - Speaker 3 And it wasn't just that and in like a staff meeting or a hallway catch up. It's from the platform Right, Right, he was, and you can go online and find Toby Slough S-L-O-U-G-H. We'll go through more of that and his book. That actually has become kind of what he does now, now that he's passed off. The church founded a great church. I remember Pastor Toby. I remember Toby. I don't even know if we talked much about this, but I remember him being part of a prayer group in South Lake, Texas and he was praying and I was there and he was praying about starting this church up in Argo. That's interesting. Yeah, he has something. Yeah, I was there. It was Dave Whittington and some other guys. 03:08 - Speaker 2 And because well, because he was a church of Christ. Yeah, pastor, and what happened with him is that he got radically fully anointed, yeah, and filling the Holy Spirit. And got bumped out of the church he was at. Dude got fully bumped. He tells the story about how it happened. And he was picking his kid up from summer camp, that his kid just went on with the church that he was on staff at and found out that day and picked up his kid and they never went back, just crying, you know. 03:40 - Speaker 3 Wow, yeah. And now in this interview he talks about his dealing with mental health. So he wrote this book for children. That actually was his own journey. It's called Be a Gobi. In fact there's a be a Gobi G-O-B-Y. You'll hear about it in the interview Be a Gobicom. And this is the kind of man I like hanging with because he's real, he's enjoyable, he's always like he's upbeat, but he's real, like hey, how are you doing? Yeah, you know been a little. You know tell you what his day was, but, you know, man full of hope, full of life, full of Jesus. And Toby Slaus is a great one. And, by the way, let me just add this also Bryce has been producing season five of the Brave man podcast. I'm fired up about it. We're just a few shows into it. 04:33 - Speaker 2 I don't know how many people we want to tell that just yet. 04:37 - Speaker 3 You know, we'll let. 04:38 - Speaker 2 If it's good, then I did it, it's you. If it wasn't, you know PC, Then this conversation never, happened. Yeah, we're going to lose this. 04:47 - Speaker 1 Well, you'll be able to erase it, that's right. 04:50 - Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, we'll wipe this from the interwebs. The. 04:53 - Speaker 3 Be a Gobi. Actually is this incredible book and series of books and videos for mental health for children, but it really relates his own journey to confidence, courage and compassion. And how do you do that in a child? How do you help a child who's lonely which is four out of 10 children say they feel lonely, and this is amazing. 05:18 - Speaker 2 That's staggering. 05:19 - Speaker 3 Yeah, and then Mark Matlock told me recently he said he said every day in the United States 500 children are admitted into some sort of care because of anxiety or stress disorder. I mean, think about that. So now, if we access things like what Toby's done here and listening to this interview, you know I go through the whole thing of how to get a hold of them and all that. But if you access that and actually help, like if you're a grandparent, what a thing to get for your children to, you know, for their grandchildren, for your grandchildren. And if you're a parent, I mean really in one sense, if you're just a dude, you know to watch some of Toby's videos and go. You know what I can relate to that. 06:05 And, like you said, it's not like one, two, three salt. One, two, three salt. Yeah, it's a journey. Yeah, it's a journey. Yeah, absolutely. And he talks he's very vulnerable about when some stuff tipped over and so fired up about brave men in season five and Toby Slough, and we've got so many great guests. We've already had a couple of great ones with Robbie and and you know the other guys that have been on, you know with car crazy and yeah that guy got some other good ones coming up. 06:37 Yeah, we got some good ones coming up. 06:39 - Speaker 2 Stay tuned to this space. Don't go away. 06:42 - Speaker 3 In fact, what do we need to do? We need to go on there, we need to subscribe. 06:46 - Speaker 2 Yeah, like and follow, like, that's right. Follow and Spotify and subscribe Apple podcast, so we're on all the platforms now, which is really exciting. 06:54 - Speaker 3 Thank you, brian Boyd. Yeah, alexa, like the other day, I got this Alexa thing right. 06:59 - Speaker 2 Alexa Play Brave Men Probably in the background, yeah. 07:07 - Speaker 3 I didn't know you had one here in the studio. I didn't realize that. 07:11 - Speaker 2 For those of you who didn't hear that we just had Alexa Started to play brave. 07:16 - Speaker 3 So, hey, Christian Men's Network, cmnmen and this is a production of the Christian Men's Network Brave Men is. I'm really thrilled you're along for the ride. Do subscribe to it because that helps put us on more places. All the algorithms that will expand it, put it in front of more people. Right, YouTube as well, YouTube, all that. So we got some video stuff coming up. We're doing anyway. Yeah, Fantastic stuff. Nancy Houston, Larry Ross, on and on. Yeah, but this is Toby Slough and Toby. What a remarkable man You're going to enjoy this time on Brave Men, with Toby Slough Talking with Toby Slough and Toby. You wrote a book called Be a Gobi and then that became like a be a gobicom thing and all of a sudden this thing blew up. But it's a children's book, but it seems like you're having incredible effect on men and women parents. 08:13 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it's crazy, it really is. 08:15 I originally wrote a book called Not Yet and it was a book for adults and it was all the things I had learned in my 20 plus year journey after being diagnosed with an anxiety and panic disorder. 08:28 And as I wrote the last chapter, I wrote about this little fish called a gobi fish that swims upstream off the big island of Hawaii and as it gets toward the waterfalls, in the middle of that swim, its bottom jaw grows out. And you know when the Bible, you know this. When the Bible says the heavens declare the glory of God, it's much more than hey, look how big God is. If you want to see how His kingdom works, that you cannot see. Look at the kingdom he created. You can. And I felt like that story, that gobi, was a story in my life, that the very thing that I had run from for so long, was the very thing that shaped me. So I told the story of at the end of the book and as I released the book, I literally went on to YouTube it's crazy and learned how to draw a cartoon fish by watching YouTube. No, you did not I did. 09:21 Yeah, that's awesome. So I get up on the stage with five big board you know poster boards and I tell the story of this little fish. I name him Toby because rhymes would go be sound like Jesus to me. And the story really was hey, you can do hard things because God is with you. I think we're our kids, are victims. I think that there's no resilience because we're removing the resistance and we're either telling them hey, it's not hard, or hey, let me do it for you because it's too hard. Instead of you can do hard things because God is with you, but you have to keep your eyes on the sun. Number two and number three help others along the way, and that's how you're going to get healed. And so COVID hit. 10:03 A month later, we decided during COVID that we would. You know, paul. We said, hey, let's, let's write a book. My daughter-in-law is an illustrator. She's very gifted and done work for major companies around the country. And so we wrote the book and it went crazy. And because during COVID, as you know, the stats say that among our kids that anxiety, depression, generally feeling overwhelmed by life, they're all time highs. And the book exploded and I fought it because I was like no, I'm not a kid's book guy. I wrote an adult book. I put things for parents. 10:41 - Speaker 3 Wait a minute. I'm a pastor, I'm, I've got all these degrees, we've got all this stuff. I've been in, spoken all these conferences and I'm going to be known for writing a children's book. 10:49 - Speaker 1 Exactly, that was not my plan until Harvard came out with a study at the end of 2021 that said this the number one indicator of a child's mental health is the mental health of their parents. 11:03 - Speaker 2 Yeah. 11:05 - Speaker 1 And I had this aha moment. Hey, I can reach my audience men, christian men, christian women. I can reach them by reaching their kids and we put together a workshop, that is a two hour workshop for parents, where I guarantee them that I will give them five practical ways that they can begin to spend five minutes a day, five days a week, connecting God's power to their kids issues, and that they will see progress, wow. 11:36 - Speaker 3 I think that's okay and I want to get into this a little bit. It's fascinating to me because in the book not yet you describe that the Gobi thing happened. Because in the book not yet you describe one of your greatest fears is drowning. 11:55 - Speaker 1 Yes, yes. I grew up 15 minutes from the beach and when I was seven years old, a family friend drowned at the beach and I found out right before I went to bed and I had. I was an overthinker Still am and I laid there and started thinking about what it would feel like to drown. And as we were watching this happen in culture, you know, the more you consider something to be a possibility, more in your heart it becomes a reality. 12:20 Yeah, and I went to sleep that night I asked, crying, asking God to help me not drown. Please help me Lord, please don't let me drown. Have you no idea that when I was, you know, 20, maybe for the next 50 years of my life, it'd be the number one prayer I'd pray? Wow. Almost 30 years ago, I was diagnosed with anxiety panic disorder the best way I know to describe it. The people who've never experienced that is you feel like you're drowning and you have no control. Wow, and so. 12:48 - Speaker 3 I had to learn I had. 12:49 - Speaker 1 I had to learn personally, you know, here's the deal. I think that we have to remember. Paul is like when I was struggling I didn't need a sermon, I needed a strategy. Come on Right, I didn't need to be exhorted, I needed to go. Okay, how do I get through tomorrow? 13:07 - Speaker 3 Yeah, this, this is good. Okay, so Job. Chapter three, Job says you know, the thing that I most feared is overtaking me. 13:16 - Speaker 1 Yes. 13:17 - Speaker 3 So, in other words, the thing I focused on right, right and so focus is is, uh, focus is derived out of it, out of cutting away the things don't, that don't belong. So that's how you focus, in a positive way, but in a negative way what it means is you've basically put things that are healthy for you off to a sidebar and let this thing take over. And yet, uh, friends of mine who deal with panic attack and things like that will tell me it wasn't something. You know, I didn't want to do this, right, that's something I wanted to do. I wasn't trying to think about it, right, when did how did this happen? I'm talking with Toby Slough and, uh, books not yet, uh, normal I am which is a journal for health, and then, uh, be a gobycom is the, and that's GOBY, what GOBY, what Be a goby Dot com. But where did this happen? 14:13 Now, you've been married 39 years. Yes, you've. You're the legacy pastor of cross timbers, uh, great church in Argyle, texas, multi-campus church. Uh, you, you actually went through this remarkable transition in life, coming out of a previous denomination, moving into a whole different type of fullness ministry. So, uh, in the midst of all this you get, did anxiety happen, or did you just discover? Did you know what I mean? Or is it like somebody finally identified what you've been dealing with your whole life? 14:51 - Speaker 1 Yeah, think about it, paul's like 28, 29 years ago, uh, when I set up in my bed in the middle of one night and I was breathing hard, my hands were shaking, I was sweating. There was no what what they would call in today's were precipitating event. There was no reason I was leading the church that had quadrupled in growth I had my marriage was great. I had two young kids. I I had never heard the word anxiety, depression. I didn't know anybody who'd ever seen a counselor. The only word I'd ever heard was nervous breakdown. 15:27 - Speaker 3 Yeah, nervous breakdown, or as, or as they say in in Texas, where, where you live and where I live now. Uh, suck it up buttercup. 15:35 - Speaker 1 Yeah, and that was what I had grown up with. And so I sit up in the bed and I feel like I'm having a heart attack, wow. And I get them start walking the hall of my house just trying to walk it off. Yeah, and what? And for 17 days after my wife went to sleep, I would wake up and walk the hall of my house until six AM. Oh, trying to wear myself out and get back in bed before six so that she wouldn't know that I was struggling. 16:04 - Speaker 3 Wow. So this was a, this was a secret battle you were doing at this point. 16:09 - Speaker 1 Well, sure, because, again, as a little boy, when I convinced myself I was going to drown, I had a thought pattern, a way I thought, and as I walked the hall I convinced myself she would leave me, the church would fire me, wow, I mean, the worst thing that could happen was anybody know what I was going through. 16:28 - Speaker 3 Yeah. 16:29 - Speaker 1 And so the panic attacks had nothing to do with what I was thinking, but the thinking that came after the panic attack is what started to get me. Wow. You see we don't understand. In today's world, we talk about depression and anxiety. Hey, there's chemical issues, there's family of origin issues. There's excuse me, just the way that God wired you issues that make you susceptible. It's not the issue, it's what you begin to believe and focus on when the issue comes is what takes us out. 17:03 - Speaker 3 Yeah, so let's just say, for instance, I've got a problem, and it may be. Let's say, as a business guy, you know we've got a lot of men listening right now and you've got to make decision about an employee and man. You're going to have to separate this employee from your workplace. He's no longer going to work for you. That's as an employer. That's a tough thing to do because you're thinking about this stuff. Now I could think about it in a real rational way and apply myself to that and just look at the reality and then that's just it. But if I'm susceptible to the anxiety thing, then all of a sudden I'm thinking what happens next? What happens out of that? Then I start connecting dots to dots that don't even exist. Correct, and I don't mean to do it right, no, it's part of the way I'm wired, yeah. 18:06 - Speaker 1 There's lots of folks who come to me and say, hey, I have a problem, I'm anxious, and I say, well, tell me what's going on. Well, my wife got a bad diagnosis from the doctor and there's a possibility I'm going to get laid off. And my answer is you ought to be anxious, like, don't apologize for being human. The question is what are you going to do with the anxiety that's coming? 18:30 - Speaker 3 That is so normative, that is really good. 18:33 - Speaker 1 Well, the fact of the matter is, paul, I grew up in a tradition where I received. Here's what I received I received that bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people, and I was never said, but it's what I assumed, and so I thought I was being punished. Right, I thought my anxiety was a punishment. And here's how smart the devil is. The devil knows that my only source of hope in the middle of that is Jesus Christ. If he can cut me off from Jesus Christ, if he can get me to move away from the power of Jesus because I feel shame and condemnation, he's got me. He's got me completely where he wants me, because he has eliminated any chance for me to get better, any chance for me to renew my mind, any chance for me to confess my struggle to someone, to tell someone where I am, not where I should be. And so in that isolation, what happens to these thoughts? In isolation, they get bigger and bigger and bigger, and they get more and more power. And that's where I was living. 19:45 - Speaker 3 No, this is a men's podcast, so I think I can share this, but it reminds me of the truck driver. Once A few years ago, when I first got married, I worked in construction and I had a truck driver pull some stuff up and I said to him I said, hey, when's the next truck coming? And he said I don't know, man, just call me a mushroom. So what do you mean? He says well, they keep me in the dark and cover me with crap. Yeah, exactly. 20:09 Exactly, and that's what that feels like and that's exactly what you're describing. 20:14 - Speaker 1 Yep. 20:15 - Speaker 3 That's. And so how did you so? You're walking around for 17 days. Where did where did this thing tip? Did you tell a friend? Did you tell your wife? How did you navigate this? This is because you're still pastoring. Yes, successful. Yes, stuff's happening. 20:34 - Speaker 1 Yes, for immerse software and CD's. Please feel free to rescue a想. That's a crazy part of the journey, but the the the. The tipping point for me was what? What do you do if you're a pastor who is convinced that you're going to lose your job, your family? 20:49 and that it's your fault, what do you do? And so I was got in my pickup truck and was driving toward Fort Worth here in the Metroplex on I 35 and decided I'm going to run into a bridge abutment and take my life and no one will know. I did it on purpose, wow and uh. So at the last moment, I feel like the Lord showed me, gave me a picture. It was as clear a pictures I've ever seen. It was my wife telling my seven year old little girl that daddy wasn't coming home, and it made me swerve. I just said I, I literally I can't do this. And I swerved. And that moment scared me so badly that I went home and did the very thing that men need to do, which is the thing they don't want to do, which is tell the truth. And I told my wife about the struggle and this secret that I'd held for 17 days and told her that I didn't know if I was going to make it. 21:46 And that was the day that everything, nothing changed. And everything started changing for me is what I like to say Found a Christian counselor, began to work through some of these thought patterns and ways that I looked at the world, uh, and that began me on my quest to, to discover a power beyond myself. It's where I really met the Holy spirit. I mean God. He used it to. You know, knowledge isn't going to get you through that. You're going to need some power greater than you. 22:18 - Speaker 3 Yeah, so now, as a pastor, that had to have added such a large dimension. And of course, I've been to cross timbers. You know, my son, bryce, was a music minister there for a number of years four years and, uh, incredible time for him as he healed and you were amazing to be, you and your, your team and wife were so incredible to him as he healed from the death of his wife and, uh, the passing to the arms of Jesus, but she's not here. You know it's, and so that was amazing. That had to have started adding a dimension. 22:55 But how do you, how do you practically? Okay, let me just fast forward. Okay, so that's 28, 29 years ago. Yes, we talk about stuff now. We didn't talk about it 29 years ago, we did not. Okay, so now you and other brave men and women have, if you will, made the conversation normative to where I can go to someone and say, hey, I'm dealing with these things. Uh, and let me sidebar this just a bit I read a stat that 67% of the high school students in America could be clinically diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. 23:42 - Speaker 1 Yes, Uh. The AMA came out and said for the first time in our history, mental health challenges surpassed physical health challenges for adolescent male and females in our country today. Wow, and that's huge, so 500 students a day, 500 are being admitted to the hospital for mental health. 24:06 - Speaker 3 Again, I stepped on that. Say it again what was it? 500? 24:09 - Speaker 1 kids a day are being admitted not seeking treatment not I need some help admitted into the hospitals for mental health issues today in our country in the United States, yes, and I would have to say that that, uh, we've got a lot of friends listening all over the world. 24:26 - Speaker 3 I would have to say it's got to be parallel in most particularly Western nations. Oh, 100%. 24:32 - Speaker 1 And you know, I, I, uh, we released this book in Spanish and and I've released it in Costa Rica, and the stats there mirror the stats of the United States, and it's true around the world. 24:44 - Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah, it's true. And and we deal with the same issues. You know, fatherlessness leading indicator of poverty, uh, in every culture of the world, and it's also one of the core issues of mental health and stability for children. 25:00 - Speaker 1 Yep, for sure. I mean dads, unhealed dads, have neither the the the neither the uh equipping. They haven't been equipped to break some of that generational pattern in their life. And they're your kids, as you know. I mean my father will be 90 this next year. I am becoming him. It's in my DNA, for good and for bad. I am becoming my father and our kids are becoming their fathers, because they never dealt with any of the father wound issues and any of their emotional issues growing up, because we grew up in the don't be a baby generation. 25:38 - Speaker 3 Yeah, well, you, you know, we deal with that thing. John 20, where Jesus said you know those sins that you released, or released, those sins you retain or retained. John 20, 21, 22 and 23. And, and the for me, that speaks of the wounds, the unforgiveness, the places of bitterness, whatever it may be, in particular with father, wounds that are undoubted with. We retain them. And so you want the people always say well, how did you know? Why does the son of an alcoholic become an alcoholic when he hated it so much? Well, it's because it became the center of his heart. 26:19 And, and Proverbs 4 says guard your heart, because out of your heart comes your life. We become those things we hold in our heart. And I, you know, our sharing with men, with Christian men's network, is always that your hands will end up doing what you put in your heart. Yes, religion changes your hands hoping to touch your heart. Government changes you, tries to modify your hands to touch your heart. Yes, but it's only Christ and what you said a few moments ago when you talked about this healing journey, that you went on finding Christ in the midst of crisis. So it is what we put on our Psalm 119, verse 11,. Your word I've hidden in my heart that I might not send. 27:02 We can go right on down the line of the pictures, over and over and over, where the word of God talks about a man's heart. Jesus said out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks so. So it comes back to that. So how do I? You know I've got, we've got friends listening right now, how do I take a step in the right direction? This is an amazing story. I want to get back to a couple of things about the interaction between you and your wife. But but right now I'm listening, I'm working out, wherever I'm, whatever I'm doing right now, how do I take the first step, toby, towards the healing place that I know I want to be, but I'm I I'm afraid to touch it, you know. I mean, how do I do? 27:49 - Speaker 1 That's that place where you know you have to tell the truth to someone else. Okay, that's the thing we're the most terrified of. Yeah, see, we were designed to be fully loved and we're terrified about being fully known, but the message of the gospel is you can't be fully loved until you're fully known. Wow. And so you, you, you have to tell the truth about where you are, not where you want to be, to someone else. And people say all the time to me well, I'm, I'm, I'm. I'm terrified that if I do that, this person will reject me or shame me and I will say they might, but it's, I can tell you. What's worse is holding on to that secret, because it will keep you sick. You cannot, you'll never find free, the freedom Jesus offers which, by the way, is not what we think it is. Freedom is not the absence of anxiety. Freedom is finding Jesus in the middle of anxiety. Wow, there you go. 28:51 - Speaker 3 So, because you wrote, you've written about peace and coming to a place of peace, which is one of the things about Gobi. So peace is not the absence of conflict, but Christ in the middle of the conflict. Exactly Peace is if you look at Jesus when it says he's the Prince of Peace and he came to bring peace. 29:09 - Speaker 1 There's all kinds of great. I mean there's the things that where he goes in the middle of anxiety, all kinds of great. I mean there's the things that where he goes and what happens around him we would not consider in human terms peaceful. I mean all hell and all heaven broke out where he went. 29:28 But the reason he, the peace he brought, was the assurance that God was for him, working for him on his behalf, that he was loved. That's where peace comes from. Peace does not come from having the answers Peace comes from. I don't get this, but I know God loves me and I know he's trying to do good in my life, even if I don't like it. 29:50 - Speaker 3 This is so good. You're listening to. Toby Slough, my friend, who has his legacy. Pastor of Cross Timbers built a. You and your wife and team built a tremendous church. It's a healing church. It is that kind of place. And now you're working on helping. 30:06 I noticed you were on Sam Chan's podcast, you've been on with Greg Sarat, a number of different people, and you're just getting the message out of healing. And be a goby is your website, be a goby G-O-B-Y-B-A-G-O-B-E dot com, which for kids and children and families and healing place. And then you've got the book, the journal Towards Healing called I Am, which is available on Amazon and Kindle and all that stuff. And so my thing is okay, let's go back to this You've got to tell somebody I think that's huge this is why we talk about brotherhood all the time with Christian men's network is that you've got to have someone you can just say hey, bro, I'm dealing with this thing, you know. So that's the first thing. Right, you've got to get to that, and then. So basically, what you're saying is self-help. The self-help section of the bookstore is not going to work. 31:10 - Speaker 1 It is not going to work. Trust me, I've tried it. It will not work. Here's the thing about change that nobody wants to hear. Yeah, it's harder than you think and it takes longer than you think. And Jesus is still walking into our world and saying do you want to be well? Will you pay the price to be well? Will you tell the truth and will you develop new ways of, according to Paul, renewing your mind? Paul was neuroplasticity before anybody knew the word. Oh yeah, that's true. Romans 12 too, right. And so Jesus is teaching us how to think. 31:50 And at its core I mean I want to run off on a tangent here, paul but at its core you name me an issue that our culture faces and I will tell you at its core, it's an identity issue. It's about identity. It's about how I feel in the moment. I don't feel like a conqueror, but yet my position in the kingdom, according to God, is he made me a conqueror. I have hundreds of men, hundreds of men who stand in lines at the end of these services when I'm signing books, and they say this to me in some form or fashion. You know, my dad told me I was a loser. My dad told me I'd never amount to anything, and I've never gotten past it, and I'll tell every one of them the same thing hey, I'm sorry that happened, but your dad was wrong and he doesn't have the right to define you. The only one that can define you is the one that created you. You are who he says that you are, not who your father says that you were, and so I think that the journey is about building muscle memory around your identity. 32:58 It was for me, it was taking 40 statements that said here's who I am seeing today's world. Here's what's happening to our kids. Our kids are being told that if they have a position in the kingdom if they are they can do all things to Christ. That strengthens them, that they are more than a conqueror, but they don't feel it at the moment. What culture is saying is lower your position to match your condition, which makes you sicker. When Jesus says, no, raise your. How you raise your condition is you step into your position in the kingdom, and so I'm trying to do everything I can for men and for to help men and help their kids begin to build muscle memory around the concept of here are 40 things that God said about me that are true whether I feel them or not. 33:53 - Speaker 3 Yeah, now that's at the end of the book on Beogobie. You've got that on the website. And you've got tools. You've got identity cards. Tell me about those. 34:02 - Speaker 1 Yeah, these are the four, these 40 statements, and I wrote them in kind of modern language for kids and for adults, honestly, and they're the 40 statements from the Bible about who God says that they are. And we've built these tools where parents and kids can talk about them together. They can pick one for the week, they can put them on their mirror in their bathroom, they can write them on. You know, if they're high school kids and parents, we're going to write the same one on a sticky note and we're going to every day we're going to say it and then once a week we'll get together and talk about why that's hard to believe or how that's helped us, and so it's just building muscle memory in our kids about who God says that they are. But you know the the covert, what I'm trying to do. I say it's an agenda. It's not hidden but it's. I'm trying to get this dad to build his identity. 34:50 Yeah, yeah, because a kid is not looking for a principal man. He's looking for a picture, pictures of what changes kids. And when dads begin to read these with their kids, guess what? They start believing that they are who God says that they are. And now we're going to now, here. Now we're talking Paul generational change. This is how things get broken off and kids get set free because they see their dads getting set free. 35:18 - Speaker 3 Yeah, Come on, man, that is so good. You know the. You know you talked about Harvard maybe that was off just before we got on and you talked about the Harvard study that had talked about mental health. Yes, Right, which would said what? 35:34 - Speaker 1 Which said that the number one indicator of a child's mental wellness or mental health is a mental health of their parent or primary caregiver. And that's when the light went off that, hey, I'm going to. I'm going to, you know, when I have an event. I had an event a few weeks ago, you know, we traveled about 80% of the time, yeah, and I had an event where there were 500 parents there for this event, this, this workshop, and I looked around the room and I said to them I my guess is 50 of you would have been here if it was, if it was a workshop for you, About 50 of you was showed up, but for your kids, 500 of you have shown up because you know that fidget spinners and weighted blankets are getting it done with your kids and that that's how we're reaching moms and dads is by you know, I don't. I want to help kids, Paul, I really do. But my differentiating factor, I feel like, is I'm equipping parents. 36:33 - Speaker 3 Yeah, I want to get back to doing this work. Yeah, we're right on that. We're right on that thing. I love that little line. What's? What's that thing called the fidget, what is it? 36:43 - Speaker 1 A fidget spinner and a weighted blanket. That's what everybody's using and they're going guess what it doesn't work. 36:49 - Speaker 3 It doesn't work Bottom line. And so you change the heart of a man, you change the picture a child sees, and I love that whole piece because we don't think in hieroglyphics, we think in images. Yes, and and I believe that when God says that we're made in His image and he's our Father, that that identity piece is what every father is supposed to do for his children. Yes, but if he doesn't have that centered in himself, that's why we talk about fluidity. 37:26 - Speaker 1 Yes. Or even if he is disengaged because he is distant or distracted. I have dads tell me, not I'm, take the other side of it, oh, my kid's going to be fine. You know, I was fine, my kid's going to be fine. Well, the problem is, sir, is that everybody is trying to tell your kid what makes him valuable. Everybody's trying to tell your child what his worth is and who he is. If, like God, gave you this kid for you to let him know, yeah, yeah, If you don't help shape him somebody at the world. 38:01 - Speaker 3 Somebody is shaping him right now, how did you, how did you walk that through with your wife 28 years ago as this thing sort of now you're starting to see these little pieces and you told her got a Christian counselor. How did, how did you guys walk that through to create this atmosphere of? 38:23 - Speaker 1 health. You know it was hard, and the hard part was I had been, you know, the stereotypical family of hey, I'm supposed to be the strong one. And I look back now and say the marking moment of my marriage, of my marriage of 39 years, was for a year I needed her strength more than she needed mine, and it drove her to her knees. She would say if she was here today, people ask her all the time how did you help him? And she said I got on my knees and I was desperate for God to give me power beyond myself, and so God used that for her. For me, it was learning that that meant leaning upon her, that like she was, that we were together in this thing we were, and that I needed her as much as I needed my, as she needed me, was a good part of our marriage. And so all the tools that we use, the 40 IMS and all that was stuff that I built or we built together through the years. 39:27 - Speaker 3 So, rather than tearing things apart, which is the fear that all of us would have in terms of exposure, yes, because, as men, you know, we cover our private parts. Yes, and we do that physically and, you know, mentally, emotionally. So so, in that, as you, as you became real and authentic and open, it didn't make the marriage weaker, it didn't drive you apart, it actually made it stronger. 39:58 - Speaker 1 Yes, it made it stronger. And guess what? My greatest fear beyond my marriage were my kids. Like my own children and both of my kids work for me and Gobi today when my daughter began to struggle, the first person she called was me not the one. Like our kids, think more of us, not less of us when we had an appropriate age level share and asked them to pray for it. You know how many times my kids put their hands on me and prayed for me, as in high school kids, because I was having. I was struggling. You know I was, I was battling some of this and my it was actually the opposite. My marriage was stronger. It was harder but it was stronger, and my kids relationship is better because I did not hide this and tried to be open with them about the journey I was on. 40:54 - Speaker 3 You got to do the hard work. Tell me what identity is. What's identity then? How do we define that Gobi? 41:01 - Speaker 1 Identity is defined by who did God create you to be? Okay, Not. What am I? What am I current? Not, what am I currently experiencing? Definitely not. What am I feeling right now? Right, it is based upon who. Does God clearly in scripture say that I am and I have? That's how I let what I know control how I'm feeling, instead of letting what I'm feeling control what I'm knowing Come on, so it's a constant. 41:32 Going back to that, I've done research on muscle memory and how you build muscle memory. And muscle memory gets built lasting muscle memory in small intervals, done consistently over time. That's how you build muscle memory. So that's why, for me, there's not a day goes by that I don't have one of those cards. We now, if you go to our website, be a Gobicom, we'll give them to you free, the digital, a digital version, because it's on my phone. If you looked at my phone right now, it says this I have more strength than I think I have Because I need to remember it every day. And so every day I'm going to build that muscle memory and it's going to feel like when I, when you begin, guys, it's going to feel like nothing's happening. It's just, it's right. It's going to feel like it's going to be like the first time you went to the gym and you're like that was harder than I thought and nothing happened. 42:32 - Speaker 3 Hey, you know, and frankly, I grew up in church and did you grow up in church, Toby? 42:39 - Speaker 1 Yes, grew up in a very conservative denomination where we were three time a weekers man. 42:49 - Speaker 3 Yeah, three time a weekers. I was a three time a week, or whether I wanted to or not Exactly, and but what I kind of got taught was okay, god's the answer to everything. Jesus is the answer, boom pray done, boom pray done. And if it's not boom pray done, then you just didn't have faith, right, man? How do we counter that? 43:17 - Speaker 1 Well, it takes, it takes, no, it takes no faith to boom pray done. What it takes faith to do is boom pray and in gain an inch yeah because God's not more. No, it's it's. You know, when Paul talks about running with perseverance, the race marked out for us. It's putting sometime. I used to run marathons. The secret to running a marathon is putting one foot in front of the other, again and again, and again. 43:43 - Speaker 3 Wow. 43:44 - Speaker 1 So you have to trust that. You know sound like Shosheski in basketball, but you have to trust the process. Yeah, it's like is this spiritual principle true or not? It is true, but I would rather have something that I know to be true written by God in my life than the latest fad that's out there. You know that not going to bring me. You know, ultimately, what I'm looking for. 44:08 - Speaker 3 I'll tell you in our Instagram world, man, everything's instant. Like there's so many coaches that, like I can get you to this, I can do this, I can do that, and it's a bunch of BS, you know. You mentioned Shosheski. Trust the process. Think of the new trust. 44:24 - Speaker 1 the process is Dion oh yeah, yeah, bruce, yeah, he may have got me. Hey, he definitely has a platform. 44:33 - Speaker 3 I'm telling you, man, I like that guy and I like coaches like him. This guy with Washington, now University of Washington, yeah, and some of these other coaches in his little sidebar thing. I think, if my belief, toby, is that if the church, speaking in general, if the church raised up sports coaches, like if we raised up 600,000 men who were coaching, literally and Pop Warner and seventh grade football and all that stuff, we could heal a bunch of the stuff that's happening in our country right there. 45:12 - Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, because we would, we had more influence. 45:15 - Speaker 3 You know when that's who kids are watching, that's who kids are watching. 45:18 - Speaker 1 Yeah, when Crosshambers started really growing, I had these young church planners would come in like a year three and four and they'd seen our growth and say what's the secret? Tell me one thing to do and I would say go coach youth sports. Wow. Go be a coach in youth sports. That's what I did and I met more people and gained more influence and was able to share more of the gospel without saying a word about the gospel, by just loving on their kids and teaching their kids things. 45:48 - Speaker 3 My son Brandon, who pastors C-3, fort Worth, just finished, I think, his fourth season of coaching baseball and of course he'd want me to say they went 10-0, but there's just something about it. I did the same thing. What's interesting is he's actually coaching with men that I coached, that friends of mine and I coached in the same in Colleyville baseball the same fields. They're nicer now. Yeah, we used to have to rake in ourselves and pick up rocks and all that stuff, and anyway, you know, here's a. Here's another thing. You mentioned this and I know Brené Brown has popularized it in some ways and other people have spoken to it. Really well, and I think it's something that hits us as men so deeply is that guilt is knowing I made a mistake, but shame isn't just my definition, toby. Guilt is knowing you made a mistake, but shame is believing you are the mistake. Yes, yes, how do you deal with shame? How do I get past that? To take the first step, to even make this the call, the talk. 46:57 - Speaker 1 Yeah, again, shame is, is this core issue that drives us into this deeper place? And so the first thing I would say is you have, you have to recognize the voices in your life. You have to learn to recognize the voices in your life, and you cannot do that in isolation. It's impossible, almost impossible to do it in isolation. It has to be like when you say, man, I need God to encourage me, when I pray for God to encourage me, it's always another believing man that speaks an encouraging word to me right. 47:32 Yeah, it's true so the thing is, I've got to get around some people that are speaking life. I've got to say to them hey, I'm struggling, and when I struggle, here's the lie I believe about myself, which, by the way, is debilitating. It was debilitating for me to look at a man and say, man, I just don't think I deserve good things Wow. But when you tell the truth about where you are, not where you ought to be, now, I have men who say, hey, you need to enjoy this. Remember, god created your life for you to enjoy your life and you need to quit self-sabotage Because, remember, you were created for good things. You have a seat at the table and as men start speaking this over other men, shame begins to come off of you. And shame comes off of me, because I am fully known and fully loved. Wow, that's where I find relief of shame. 48:23 - Speaker 3 You know to me, toby, in your church planter and with Christian Men's Network, our goal is to build healthy men and strong churches, and so I don't know any other place a man can go to find what you're talking about right now than a local church. I even and I'm really into some of the online counseling. I've done some stuff. I've done it for others. I love all that, but there's this piece of touch that only happens within the matrix of a local church. That, to me, toby, is, I mean, somebody listening right now. That's where you need to start, and you can start that with your pastor. He might lead you to one of the other men in the church. 49:14 And now this conversation because of the courage of men like yourself, toby, who've spoken out of this for the last couple of decades, we're now able to have a normative conversation, if you will, with somebody. Yes. So I think that's where it starts. Make that call Pastor, I need to get with you. Or, if you're in a larger church, it might be a minister that speaks into emotional health for people, a community pastor, that kind of thing and find that guy. If you're in a healthy church, you probably have one or two men you can call and have coffee with and go, hey, dealing with this thing. And then it seems to me that the trained counselors, therapists, people who know how to ask the right questions and help navigate you and guide you, is a very worthwhile investment for a man to make. 50:08 - Speaker 1 Yeah, I think it's one of the most courageous mainly things we can do is to find help to be as emotionally healthy as possible. I have spent money I did not have as a young man investing in counselors and looking back at some of the greatest investment I ever made in my life and thank God that in our culture that it is shifting in Christian culture from that being like a sign of weakness seeing a counselor and it's shifting to, hey, this is a sign of strength, but men still battle the whole. None of us like to go to a doctor. 50:52 We're going to get over it, and the fact of the matter is, we don't go until it's too late most of the time, and I would say finding a godly Christian counselor to help you navigate some of these issues that you're going through could be the most courageous, life-altering decision of your life. 51:13 - Speaker 3 Yeah, it's the phrase that we've often said, which is, men, don't change until the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. So we have a tendency not to do that. I would say to my friend who's listening right now brother, make the call, do the next thing you know is the right thing to do. It might be getting with your wife, and it's like anything else, toby, when we talk about emotional health and EQ and all these different things, I believe the atmosphere is important. I wouldn't just call your wife in the middle of while you're driving from one project to another. Go, hey, by the way, I got this thing. Go to go. You know, I think there has to be the right atmosphere. You don't mold dry clay. I think you have to set it up and say, hey, after the kids go to sleep if you've got children in the house, or it might be, you know, you bring home dinner, if you're married and bring home dinner and you just say, hey, I wanted to just sit and talk about something you know, and you actually put your phone in your pocket or the other room. It's Mike Pence just wrote a book called Go Home for Dinner. I think that's what it is. Go Home for Dinner. Go Home for Dinner is one of those. It's just the whole concept of how do you build something healthy. 52:39 You know you have those conversations and you talk about Harvard. This is fascinating. You know it's a longer story. I'll truncate it, but Harvard has no accreditation. Harvard's an unaccredited school, and the reason that it can be unaccredited because all these colleges have accredited associations is that Harvard is Harvard, so they don't need accreditation. So their accreditation is who comes out the other side? They had a it's a longer story, it's fascinating. Leonard Sweet told me this and so they started taking people in based on test scores and so forth and so on, without any looking at their character, and what they found was what was coming out the other side wasn't good. What they discovered in all their underlying things is healthier emotionally and, if you will, predicated towards success. On the other side was a child that, in their formative years, had at least two meals a week with their family. 53:42 - Speaker 1 Yes, yes, I was doing during, as in Uval in Uvaldy, the school year beginning back. I was doing the circuit on these morning talk shows in some of our major cities because they all wanted to talk about how do we help our kids get ready to go to school. And in the very first one, out of the blue, this lady asked me well, what's the one thing? If you could only give me one thing, what would it be? And I said we need to recapture the power of the dinner table. And it just came out and I started talking about. It doesn't matter if it's Domino's Pizza, taco Bell, that matter, but a sanctified time where phones are in the basket, tvs are off and we're going to have a conversation. 54:26 And the conversation is what's the best thing going on in your life and what's keeping you up at night, in whatever age appropriate. You do that and families begin to connect together and there's a, there's this atmosphere created where this is a safe place for me to talk about where I'm struggling. I can talk about what keeps me up at night just as much as I can talk about what I'm the most excited about. And and all of a sudden, you create this atmosphere in your home, and it's why so many dads are struggling. You know, men are struggling talking to their wives because they've never seen it, it was never created, and what I'm saying is you can begin to create this start with your wife. 55:11 Like you said, paul, it's a, it's a conversation in due season, in the right moment, but it's a hey. I just want you. I just want you to know, because I care about you so much. I want you to know that this is hard for me and ask you to pray for me, and I'm going to tell you something I believe that can be a seed that is planted, that that that brings some great blessing into your life in every aspect of your marriage for the next 20 years. You got to do it on purpose. 55:42 - Speaker 3 You got to do it on purpose, bro. Yeah, right now you're listening to me and Toby talking to Toby Slough, s-l-o-u-g-h, so that if you're looking them up on Amazon for books, that's, you know how to get a Toby T-O-B-Y, s-l-o-u-g-h, toby Slough, and. But as Toby and I are talking right now, you're thinking about this. What you have to do is make a decision and then follow through, do it. This is not always the easiest. You know what's easy it's not doing anything. You know what the result of that is? There's nothing. In fact, it's going to be debilitating. 56:19 - Speaker 1 Yeah, the hard truth is for that guy that's listening to me right now you have everything you need to be everything. God called you to be everything. However, if you continue to do things the same way you've done them, expecting it to be different, that's insanity, that's crazy. Yeah, if you're waiting on God to do something, I'm telling you God is waiting on you. He will meet you in the middle and do more than you can ask or imagine. But you got to do the hard thing and sometimes, look, man, I get it. Paul, like my at the door with my hand on the handle. 56:59 - Speaker 2 Wow. 57:00 - Speaker 1 My heart beating fast, not because of anxiety, but because I was scared to death to tell my wife the truth. Yeah, Like that was the moment for me. Wow, and it's going to be hard, but you can do hard things. God's with you. 57:12 - Speaker 3 You can do hard things. 57:14 You know, it's Romans 12, too. If you want to change your life, you change the way you think. It's a phrase I put in a book on identity is your system of thinking is perfectly designed to achieve the results you're now getting. 100%. That is the result of yesterday's thinking. So you want to change tomorrow, change today. Toby Slous, who I've been talking with on Brave Men, Christian Men's Network podcast, and dude we have to do this again, bro, because I want to take this. I want to get some other tools from you. Yeah, be a Gobi G-O-B-Y, b-a-gobi G-O-B-Y dot com. Your children are working with you. You're traveling and speaking. All your contact info is on that website. 58:01 - Speaker 1 Yeah, it's all there. All of our stuff's on the website there. You know, paul let me say this, for I know we got to wrap up, but I'm sure Bryce told you a little bit you know that was a painful journey out of my role as the lead pastor, as a founding pastor, because I love the local church so much and what I have discovered is I'm having more fun helping local churches Because if I can equip pastors to equip their families number one we're watching people come to Christ. Because this is the Chicago Fire of this generation and when we give practical ways to help, I love helping local pastors, I love it. It's why I love and appreciate what you guys do so much. The local church, it's still the hope of the world. It's the hope of the world, there's no question. 58:54 - Speaker 3 Yeah, toby, I had this guy. I'm on this social media stuff and whatever, and this guy's blown up real bigs on Instagram and he's just railing on the church and I'm like, bro, you do realize you're talking about somebody's bride, right? Like, would you let somebody talk about your wife, like that? I don't think so. I think you're on dangerous ground and I think the church, in that sense, is really easy, because we mess up all the time. Man, we're just so human, right. 59:31 - Speaker 1 Yeah we are human, but I'm just man. I want to just get that in. Just man, how much I believe in local church pastors and man. I'm dream of the day that we get back to where the first place people go is to the local church. Come on, man, and if we'll get down the mud and do the hard work which this is hard work and help equip our families in this area, starting with our men, we're going to see a great harvest of it. 01:00:01 - Speaker 3 Yeah, you change the heart of a man, you change the soul of a nation. I often say this at church, as I say I'd love to see this church, so men of this church, so on fire that everybody in this town says you want your daughter to have a great husband? Right, you know, send that daughter to C3, send that daughter to Crosstimbers. Send that daughter, you know, because we're raising up these strong men. 01:00:25 Toby Slough, thank you. Thank you for taking the time in investing in us and walking bravely and courageously through the journey that you walk through, you and your wife, to help us where we're at today. And I'd like to do this. We don't always do this, but I think there are probably a couple of friends listening right now who are just trying to make that little pivot, like I'm going to do that. I'm going to talk to my wife or I'm going to call this friend of mine you could be 18 years old, single and and you need to talk to the minister of youth or whoever maybe, but right now you're listening to this and we just want to pray bravery and courage over you right now. Toby, would you do that for our friend? 01:01:14 - Speaker 1 Yes, lord, I just thank you that you have given these men everything they need to be, everything you've called them to be, and so, in this moment, I would ask for a supernatural, overflowing power of your Holy Spirit to exhibit itself as courage and a step of faith, believing, lord, that you're going to honor it, and I thank you in advance for how you're going to use these men to break generational patterns and curses and ways of thinking in their family for years to come. It's in Jesus' name I pray, amen. 01:01:47 - Speaker 3 Amen, and we trust Jesus. Yes. 01:01:50 - Speaker 2 Yes, we do. Brave Men is a production of Christian Men's Network, a global movement of men committed to passionately following Jesus on the ground in over 100 nations worldwide. You can receive the Brave Men motivational email, find books and resources for discipleship and parenting at cmnmen. Your host has been Paul Lewis Cole, president of Christian Men's Network, and if you haven't yet, please make sure you subscribe to the Brave Men podcast, wherever your fine podcast or downloaded. Thanks for hanging with us today. We'll see you next time on Brave Men.