Wounds

Pastor Randy Emerson

Wild at Heart • Sermon • Submitted a year ago • Presented a year ago

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INTRO

As we continue from last week, Pastor Randy delivered a great teaching on Posers.

A FEW THINGS WE LEARNED:

Most men are faking their way through life because we think that if they know who we really are, they will not like us.

In doing this we then tend to:

Fight battles that we know we can win.

Take adventures that we know we can handle.

Some of us punish our wives because we’re too afraid to deal with the bigger issue.

We also lead out of fear:

Because we don’t want to fail, we become over achievers.

When we do this, everything else take a backseat:

Relationship with God/ Jesus

Relationship with our wife

Relationship with our kids

Being effective in your ministry

Relationship with brothers in Christ

Relationship with Pastor/ Leadership

Your true identity

We have become passive.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN MEN FAIL?

Failure never hurts just one person, it ripples and cause tremors that are felt throughout your generations to come.

Where there is a lack of strong Christian men, it will generate a storm of chaos.

We can have all differently types of “affairs” because we’re not man enough to say that we’re having a hard time with things.

CHANGE TAKE COURAGE!!!!

THE WOUND (CH. 4)

QUOTES

“Wounds cannot be healed until they are revealed and sins cannot be forgiven until they are confessed.”

Martin Luther

“It is with a true penitent as with a wounded man. He comes to the surgeon and shows him all his wounds.”

Thomas Watson

ADAM’S FALL

The story of Adam’s fall is every man’s story.

Every man comes into this world set up to fail.

When we look at the story of Adam, it almost seems simplistic in nature.

When we look at our own story however, it is far more complex and detailed.

There seem to be more characters involved.

More plots and twists, more villains, more cliff hangers.

Though our story seems far different than Adam, the direct result is the same: a wound in the soil.

Every boy as he becomes a man, takes an arrow in the center of his heart, in the place of his strength.

Because the wound is rarely ever discussed and rarely healed, every man carries a wound.

And the wound is nearly always given by his father.

A MAN’S DEEPEST QUESTION

Stories

Rock climbing story in the book (Garden of the gods)

Writer was rock climbing with his sons.

He was supervising his sons as the climbed. His son, Sam, got to a difficult overhang and was unable to get over it.

He began to get more and more scared the longer he hung there; tears were soon to follow.

So with gentle reassurance I told him to head back down, that we didn’t need to climb this rock today, that I knew of another one that might be more fun.

“No,” he said, “I want to do this.” I understood. There comes a time when we simply have to face the challenges in our lives and stop backing down.

He received a boot from his dad and with some encouragement he started getting confident again.

Talk about rope climbing in Jungle Warfare Training, Okinawa Japan

From quick mud to habu and mamushi snakes, climbing all mud hill (Hamburger Hill)

Had to cross a river.

Talk about Old Smokey aka Mount MF that we had to climb during boot camp.

Some of the shelves were so steep that you can touch the ground while you’re walking!

We called it the “Death March”.

I was forced to be apart of some great adventures.

Through the tears, cramps, vomit, sweat, and heat exhaustion, I got to see some spectacular sights.

Through all of these stories there was a common theme: we met obstacles, we struggled, we almost gave up, we got encouraged, and we pushed through.

It’s funny when you realize that every part of any male sport, there is a kind of “shop talk” .

Shop talk is our way of affirming each other without looking like we’re affirming each other.

You would never see a man directly praise another man as women do:

“Ted, I absolutely love your shorts!!

“You look terrific today, Sam!”

We praise indirectly, by way of our accomplishments:

“Whoa, nice shot, Ted!” “You’ve got a wicked swing today”

“Dang Doug! That behind the back pass ridiculous!

As we get into those tight spots in our lives those words of indirect encouragement goes a long way.

We get hyped and we begin to believe what is being said to us.

The Writer’s son ends up flying through the rest of the course and the writer shouts out to his son, “Way to go Sam. You’re a wild man!”.

As the writer began coaching his other son, Sam snuck beside him and asked softly, “Dad…did you really think I was a wild man up there?”

It’s not a question but THE QUESTION- Its the question, the one every boy and man is longing to ask:

“Do I have what it takes?”

Am I powerful?”

Until a man knows that he’s a man, he will forever be trying to prove he is one, while at the same time shrinking from anything that will reveal he is not.

WHERE DOES MASCULINITY COME FROM?

In order to understand how a man receives a wound, you must understand the central truth of a boy’s journey to manhood: masculinity is bestowed.

be-sto': The seven Hebrew words rendered by this term variously mean "to put" or "place," "to give"; "do," "deposit,"

The boy learns who he is and what he’s got from a man, or the company of men. He cannot learn it any other place.

He cannot learn it from other boys, and he cannot learn it from the world of women.

The plan from the beginning of time was that his father would lay the foundation for a young boy’s heart, and pass on to him that essential knowledge and confidence in his strength.

Dad would be the first man in his life, and forever the most important man. Above all, he would answer the question for his son and give him his name.

Throughout the history of man given to us in Scripture, it is the father who give the blessing and thereby “names” the son.

WHAT’S MY NAME?

Adam receives his name from God, and also the power of naming.

He names Eve, and I believe it is therefore safe to say he also names their sons.

We know Abraham names Isaac, and though Isaac’s sons Jacob and Esau are apparently named by their mother, they desperately crave the blessing that can only come from their father’s hand.

Jacob gets the blessing, and nearly a century later, leaning on his staff, he passes it on to his sons—he gives them a name and an identity.

“You are a lion’s cub, O Judah . . .

Issachar is a rawboned donkey . . .

Dan will be a serpent . . .

Gad will be attacked by a band of raiders, but he will attack them at their heels . . .

Joseph is a fruitful vine . . . his bow remained steady” (Gen. 49:9, 14, 17, 19, 22, 24).

The Baptist’s father names him John, even though the rest of the family was going to name him after his father, Zechariah.

Even Jesus needed to hear those words of affirmation from his Father. After he is baptized in the Jordan, before the brutal attack on his identity in the wilderness, his Father speaks: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).

In other words, “Jesus, I am deeply proud of you; you have what it takes.”

My name “Varick” means “A leader who defends”. The name is actually a German name which means “Honorable Defender”.

It’s no wonder why I became a Marine. I didn’t find out the meaning of my name until I was in Japan.

One father-naming story in particular intrigues me. It centers around Benjamin, the last son born to Jacob.

Rachel gives birth to the boy, but she will die as a result.

English Standard Version Chapter 35

And as her soul was departing (for she was dying), she called his name Ben-oni; but his father called him Benjamin.

With her last breath she names him Ben-Oni, which means “son of my sorrow.”

But Jacob intervenes and names him Benjamin—“Son of my right hand” (Gen. 35:18).

This is the critical move, when a boy draws his identity no longer from the mother, but from the father.

Notice that it took an active intervention by the man; it always does.

MOTHERS AND SONS

THE BEGINNING YEARS

A boy is brought into the world by his mother, and she is the center of his universe in those first tender months and years.

She suckles him, nurtures him, protects him; she sings to him, reads to him, watches over him, as the old saying goes, “like a mother hen.”

She often names him as well, tender names like “my little lamb,” or “Mama’s little sweetheart,” or even “my little boyfriend.”

JUST LIKE DAD

But a boy cannot grow to manhood with a name like that, let alone a name like “son of my sorrow,” and there comes a time for the shift when he begins to seek out his father’s affection and attention.

He wants to play catch with Dad, and wrestle with him, spend time outside together, or in his workshop.

If Dad works outside the home, as most do, then his return in the evening becomes the biggest event of the boy’s day.

This is a very hard time in a mother’s life, when the father replaces her as the sun of the boy’s universe.

It is part of Eve’s sorrow, this letting go, this being replaced.

Few mothers do it willingly; very few do it well.

Many women ask their sons to fill a void in their soul that their husband has left.

But the boy has a question that needs an answer, and he cannot get the answer from his mother.

Femininity can never bestow masculinity.

My mother would often call me “sweetheart,” but my father called me “tiger.” Which direction do you think a boy would want to head?

He will still turn to his mother for comfort (who does he run to when he skins his knee?), but he turns to Dad for adventure, for the chance to test his strength, and most of all, to get the answer to his question.

A classic example of these dueling roles: Parents in car when kid ask his parents what type of car that they should get when they get grow up.

Father responds, “Humvee”.

Mom responds, “A safe one”.

The mom’s natural, so understandable.

After all, she is the incarnation of God’s tenderness.

But if a mother will not allow her son to become dangerous, if she does not let the father take him away, she will emasculate him.

EMASCULATING

There is a story of a mother, divorced from her husband, who was furious that he wanted to take the boy hunting.

She tried to get a restraining order to prevent him from teaching the boy about guns. That is emasculation.

“My mom wouldn’t let me play with G. I. Joe,” a young man told me. Another said, “We lived back east, near an amusement park.

It had a roller coaster—the old wooden kind. But my mom would never let me go.”

That is emasculation, and the boy needs to be rescued from it by the active intervention of the father, or another man.

This kind of intervention is powerfully portrayed in the movie A Perfect World. Kevin Costner plays an escaped convict who takes a young boy hostage and heads for the state line.

But as the story unfolds, we see that what looks like the boy’s ruin is actually his redemption.

The boy is in his underpants when Costner abducts him. That is where many mothers want to keep their sons, albeit unconsciously.

She wants her little lamb close by.

Over the days that follow, days “together on the road” I might add, Costner and the boy—who has no father—grow close.

When he learns that the boy’s mother has never allowed him to ride a roller coaster, Costner is outraged.

The next scene is the boy, arms high in the air, rolling up and down country roads on the roof of the station wagon.

That’s the invitation into a man’s world, a world involving danger.

Implicit in the invitation is the affirmation, “You can handle it; you belong here.”

There comes a moment when Costner buys the boy a pair of pants (the symbolism in the film is amazing), but the boy won’t change in front of him. He is a shy, timid boy who has yet to even smile in the story.

Costner senses something is up. “What’s the matter—you don’t want me to see your pecker?” “It’s . . . puny.” “What?” “It’s puny.” “Who told you that?”1 The boy, Phillip, is silent.

It is the silence of emasculation and shame.

The absence of the father’s voice is loud and clear. Costner tells him he’s right where he needs to be as a boy.

A smile breaks out on his face, like the sun coming up, and you know a major threshold has been crossed for him.