Wild At Heart Chapter 5

1. Wild At Heart Chapter 5 • The Battle for a Man’s Heart • “Now you’re out there God knows where You’re one of the walking wounded” Jan Krist “Walking Wounded” • “To give a man his heart back is the hardest mission on earth” “Michael”

2. Blaine’s Bully story • You can not teach a boy to use his strength by stripping him of it • A Man is not wounded once, but many, many times in the course of his life. • Nearly every blow ends up falling in the same place: against his strength. • The assault continues long after the wound has been given. • Life takes a man’s strength one vertebra at a time,until in the end he has no spine at all.

3. Finishing Him Off (80-83) • Baby boy surgery story • “It’s a bad time to be a boy in America” Christina Hoff Sommers “The war against boys” • Columbine story • “The boys in Littleton are the tip of the iceberg. And the iceberg is all boys” William Pollack • Director of the Center for Men Mclean Hospital • The education system’s treatment of boys • ADD story page 81

4. Is the church different? • Church basketball story • The church may have a masculine exterior, but its soul has turned feminine • What about many marriages? Page 82 • Why do we put man in a cage? • He is dangerous • Some thing is wrong with the masculine soul, but to try too emasculate men is no the answer. • “We know that our society produces a plentiful supply of boys, but seems to produce fewer and fewer men” Robert Bly

5. Why? • We don’t know how to initiate boys into men • We are not really sure that we want to. • “The energy, competitiveness, and corporal daring of normal, decent males is responsible for much of what is right in the world” Sommers • Columbine revisited • Our strength is what makes heroes • Our neighbor hoods • Slavery • Nazis • Apartheid

6. Titanic • The Man nailed to Calvary’s cross • Women can be heroic too, but God made men the way they are because we desperately need them to be that way. • A man is a dangerous thing • But so is a scalpel, it can wound or it can save your life. You don’t make it safe by making it dull; you put it in the hands of someone who knows what he’s doing. • Stallion vs Gelding story • A stallion is a dangerous , but if you want the life he offers, you have to take the danger too, they go together.

7. What’s really going on here anyway? 84 • D-day story • Look around you what do you observe 84-85 • What do you see in the lives of the men you work with, live by, go to church with? • Are they full of passionate freedom? • Do they fight well? • Are their women deeply grateful for how well their men have loved them? • Are their children radiant with affirmation?

8. Scattered across the neighborhood lie the shattered lives of men (and women) who have died at the soul level from the wounds they have taken. • “he’s a shell of a man” They have lost heart • Others are alive but badly wounded • Still others are captives in prison’s of despair, addiction, idleness, boredom. • The place looks like a battlefield, the Omaha Beach of the soul. • We are in the a long and vicious war against the human heart. • It is unfolding all around us…against us

9. Many people feel abandoned or betrayed by God. • They thought that becoming a Christian would somehow end their troubles, or at least reduce them considerably. No one ever told them they were being moved to the front lines, and they seem genuinely shocked at the fact they have been shot at? • “Dutch” Cota story 86 • Have you forgotten?.... We were born into a world at war. • Our wounds were not random accidents, but came with deadly accuracy, they hit dead center

10. Wound stories revisited 87 • Our wound was too well aimed to be accidental • Why has there been such an intentional assault, the attempt to take you out, to destroy your strength? • The Enemy fears you • You are dangerous big time • If you ever really got your heart back, lived from it with courage, YOU would be a huge problem to him. You would do a lot of damage on the side of good. You were created to God’s ally!

11. The failure of many fathers, the emasculating culture, and the passive church have left men without clear direction as a result…. • Most men have never been initiated into manhood or how to fight for their heart • You can get your heart back • You can have your wound(s) healed • You can have your true name • But you will have to fight for it. • How do you feel about this? 88

12. Our search for an answer 88 • We need to know who we are and if we have what it takes. • Where do we go to find the answer? • What have you done with your question? • Where have you taken it? • A man’s core question does not go away. He may try for years to shove it out of his awareness, but it does not go away • It is a hunger so essential to our souls that it drives everything we do.

13. Peter’s story 88-89 • No matter how much you make, no matter how far in life you go, that will never heal your wound or tell you who you are. • How many men buy into this one? • Men take their soul’s search for validation in all sorts of directions. • Brad’s story 89 • Where does a man go for a sense of validation? • To what he owns? To who pays attention to him? • How much money he makes? Hos good he is in sports?

14. The world cheers you on… • The deadliest place a man ever takes his search, the place every man seems to wind up no matter what trail he has followed, is the woman.

15. Taking it to Eve 90 • John’s “first” love- Debbie • “If I have found Juliet, then I must be Romeo”- “Searching for the woman that will make me a man” • Golden Haired woman- Robert Bly 91 • Why is Pornography the most addictive • Men are visually wired • But the deeper reason is because that seductive beauty reaches down inside and touches your desperate hunger for validation as a man you didn’t even know you had. Touches it like nothing else most men have ever experienced.

16. This is deeper than legs and breasts and good sex. • Look at the lengths men will go to find her • They have fought duels and wars over her beauty • Every man remembers Eve • Many men rate themselves by their sexual prowess/ability. Their question is hardwired to their penis. • If he can feel like a hero sexually then he must be a hero. • Later in life a man’s worst fear is often impotence. • He feels if he can’t get an erection, then he hasn’t got what it takes.

17. Pornography is so seductive because it makes a wounded, famished man think that there are literally hundreds of beauties willing to give themselves to him. • Look at media • Movies- James Bond • Music “Secret Garden” page 92 • Our answer is not with Eve • Femininity can arouse masculinity 93 • But femininity can never bestow masculinity • When a man takes his question to the woman what happens is either addiction or emasculation Usually both

18. This is why so many men secretly fear their wives. • She sees him as none else does • Sleeps with him • Knows what he is made of • If he has given her the power to validate him as a man then he has also given her the power to invalidate him too. Pastor -Richard’s stories 94 • Why all of this on our search for validation and the answer to our question? • Because we cannot hear the real answer until we see we’ve got a false one. • So long as we chase the illusion, how can we face reality?

19. If you take your question to Eve, it will break your heart. You can’t get your answer there. • You can’t get your answer from any of the things men chase after to find there sense of self. • There is only one source for the answer to your question • No matter where you have taken your question, you have got to take it back. You have to walk away. • That is the beginning of your journey • Next week chapter 6 “The Father’s Voice”