The Man You Were Made To Be | Anthony Delaney

So however we get lost and however society might take us further and further away from the father's love and the father's home and house, he's waiting to bring us closer and only he can put us back together again and build us into the men he knows we're made to be. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller "The 5 Love Languages" . Well, society says to men, show us what you're made of.

But God says, I know what I made you for. You'll hear more about that today as Dr. Chapman welcomes author and pastor Anthony Delaney. We've had Anthony on the program talking about the best marriage. That's a book that helped a lot of couples. But today this former police officer will talk to men about becoming the man you were made to be.

Part of the title of our featured resource today, subtitled Nothing to Prove, Nothing to Hide, Everything to Live For. Find out more at moodybooks.org. And Gary, with all the upheaval in the culture about toxic masculinity, I'm looking forward to what Anthony has to say today. Well, so am I, Chris. I remember our last conversation when we talked with him about his book on marriage.

So I think this is going to be very helpful to our listeners and I'm excited about our time together. Well, let me reintroduce Anthony Delaney. He served as a police officer in inner city Manchester, England, for 10 years before going into church leadership. He now leads Ivy Church, a church planting movement. He founded LAUNCH, Church Multiplication Catalyst, a global community drawing together hundreds of church and network leaders to be inspired and commissioned to multiply disciples, leaders, churches and movements. He's an author. He speaks and teaches throughout Europe and Africa. He's married to Zoe.

They have three adult children and six grandchildren. Our featured resource is the book The Man You Were Made to Be. You can find out more at moodybooks.org. Well, Anthony, welcome back to Building Relationships. Hey, Dr. Gary, thank you for the invitation.

It's great to connect with you and Chris again. Thank you. Now, you were a police officer in Manchester, United Kingdom, and now you write and broadcast and lead churches in that city. How did you go from police officer to pastor? Well, long story.

I'll try and cut it short. I wasn't really brought up with a Christian faith specifically, just a general, you know, feeling like it was a Christian country. I had an encounter, met Jesus Christ when I was 21 years of age, having got interested in the girl that I have now married. She was a Christian and she gave me a Bible and I just started to read that. And sometime later, it really just seemed like Jesus walked off the pages of scripture and presented himself as the savior of the world and as my personal savior. And after that, I said, Lord, I'll do whatever you want.

I'll go wherever you want. And that's a dangerous kind of prayer to pray because a few years later, I still remember going into the bedroom of our new home and just really becoming conscious of a sense of the presence of God filling the room. And I just knelt by the side of the bed and prayed and felt like God was going to speak to me. And right by the side of the bed, there's a book by Billy Graham I'd been reading called Approaching Hoofbeats and completely out of context. It's a terrible way to get guidance, but I just knew I had picked that book up. I opened the book and on a page that he just opened to it said he was to devote himself to the study of God's word. Then God would show him what he wanted him to do.

And that was it. That was just the Lord speaking to me and saying, I don't want you to carry on studying to be a police inspector or superintendent or any of that. I want you to devote yourself like you would study the law. I want you to study the gospel. And so I said I would do that.

And within three or four years, I'd left the police and went to Bible school and ministry, full time ministry opened up. Well, we're certainly glad that God directed you because the world, many people in the world are being touched by your ministry. So God's plans are always better than our plans.

And so we're delighted that you are where you are. Now, it seems to me that men are living in a difficult time or it's a hard time to be men today. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I think in some ways we end up feeling a little bit apologetic a lot of the time. There's a particular picture of a man and it seems to change all of the time in terms of what a good man looks like or what being a good man actually is. And there's all kinds of stereotypes and none of them perhaps seem to fit us or we might try and fit ourselves into those stereotypes.

But I'm not sure anybody ever manages to do that. And you just you can feel like you're always letting yourself down here. If you don't have a kind of internal compass of where it is that you're supposed to be heading in life. And as a man, I don't think our culture is going to give you anything like a clue as to what that could look like.

That isn't just going to be shifting sand. And that's one of the reasons why I think we need to come to the one who made us. And as Jesus said, start to build our lives on something more substantial and the foundation of his word. We come to him as the one who made us and without knowing whose we are, we're never going to know who we are. And that's really a major focus of this book for men to help them to be able to look at who God made them and to become the man that God made you to be, which is perhaps not like anybody else. Each one of us is unique.

I don't think there's a particular pattern or stereotype that's going to fit everybody. Yeah. Well, in the UK and I think also in the US, there's a lot of skepticism about God and what relevance faith plays in a man's life. Talk about that.

Yeah. Well, I mean, here in the UK, a recent survey suggested that 54% of men consider themselves atheist or agnostic about the existence of God. Nearly 50% of men under 30 left the church in the last 25 years.

And that was even before COVID. I think that many men have written off church, but I'm not so sure that they've necessarily written off Jesus Christ. And I think that as we represent him as the the one perfect man, the man who is God and I meet the guys who are still interested in Jesus Christ. And and as we reintroduce them to him, I think that we're starting to see that there are people now, you know, everybody's been through seismic changes in these recent years and people what we thought was we could rely upon for the future would look like.

It has just kept on changing. And I think as a result of that, people are reevaluating life, the universe and the meaning of everything. And it's a great opportunity for us to be able to come with some truths from scripture and to be able to help people to know that male or female. And we can live life in all of its fullness only through connecting with Jesus Christ.

Yeah. Well, let's face it. It's hard to deny the life of Jesus Christ. And even those who may say, well, I don't believe in God.

Jesus came as a man. And so it can't be ignored. Right. And we began to explore that and study that God. He came to reveal God. And he does when we began to study it. Right.

Absolutely. And he called a group of men specifically, first and foremost, just to be with him. And yeah, there were women that he also relied upon and did ministry to and with. But at the end of it, Jesus came and he chose some men and he said, come and follow me. And we're going to become fishers of men together. I'm going to help you to be what you could not be without relationship to me.

And as they spent time in his presence, they were changed more and more to be like him, which is what discipleship is all about for anybody. This is Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, New York Times best selling author of "The 5 Love Languages" . If you'd like to take a free assessment of your love language, go to our Web site, five love languages dot com. There you'll find more ways to strengthen relationships.

Again, go to five love languages dot com. Anthony Delaney is with us, author of the book The Man You Were Made to Be. Nothing to prove, nothing to hide, everything to live for.

You can find out more about it at moodybooks.org. Anthony, in the book, a central metaphor you use is the diamond and how we can either be crushed or formed by life's pressures. Talk about that. Well, you know, you pick up a piece of coal, you're going to see it's made of carbon and you put it under heat and pressure.

It looks pretty tough, but it's soon going to crumble or just be burnt up, whereas diamonds are formed by heat and pressure deep underground. And as a result of that, they shine. And so my question to men is, are we going to just be burnt up and do it? And, you know, everything that we do just so quickly, we can lose everything. You hear stories of so many men and they get pushed in an area of their life.

Maybe it's finances, perhaps it's family, but these different pressures. And if I was to push you in those areas, would you shine or would you just crumble and unfold? And so we look at each one of these facets of a man's life and we say that actually, how can we have that internal strength? I believe that only comes through having God at the center and rather than trying to chip away and make ourselves look presentable and on the outside. What are the internal changes that will change us in all of those different areas or facets of life so that we don't crumble, but we actually shine?

What do you think are the biggest problems and challenges that men are facing today and how do we best face those? Well, I spent a lot of time thinking about this in terms of the different facets and again, there's details of them in the book. But I think there's right now in and out of church, there's two kinds of people who were just feeling pretty lost. And both of these tie in well with that famous story that Jesus told in Luke chapter 15. And there was one guy who went off and got lost in the world. And before long, he ends up coming up empty. And that's what happens when we go away from the father and we try and live lives of our own and all about us. And, you know, he basically says to his father, I wish you were dead. He disappears and he squanders everything and he loses everything. In the end, he's living with pigs. And then he decides, I'm going to come back to the father. And he takes that walk home. And when he gets there, the father is waiting not to judge him, not to tell him off, but to embrace him, to caress him even. And then he says, you know, quick, celebrate. Let's have a party because this son of mine was lost and now he's found. He was dead and now he's alive. And the father gives what men need when they are lost in the world.

Maybe there's somebody listening right now and you realize, you know, you're just feeling lost and that the things of the world are not satisfying. But you come to the father and he tells you again that you're his son and he embraces you. The father God does this. This is why Jesus told the story. And he wants to give you what that prodigal son got. He received a ring, a robe and sandals. And the ring, for me, denotes authority.

And the robe is all about identity. It said that he was part of the family and the sandals were destiny. That from now on he's got places to go and things to do for again and with the father. Our father in heaven is one who welcomes those who wander away. And no matter how we've blown it or where we've blown it, he welcomes us. There's also some people who are lost in the house.

When I was a police officer, if you went to go to a report of a missing from home person, there was a space on the form that said, have you searched the house? And I think there's people in churches who still feel pretty lost and they're like the eldest son and they don't relate to the father either. And so there could be a man listening now and you, you know, for you like the oldest son, he got angry because for him he said, I have all these years I've been slaving for you and you never even gave me a young goat to celebrate.

I think there's there's men who can end up feeling bitter and kind of twisted in church circles. And they end up needing to know what the father's got for them. And it's something different because he said to the father, said to him, my son, which is identity, you are always with me, which is belonging.

And everything I have is yours, which is permission. So however we get lost and however society might help, might take us further and further away from the father's love and the father's home and house, he's waiting to bring us closer and only he can put us back together again and build us into the men he knows we're made to be. Now, you said earlier there are six facets of a man and all of them begin with the letter F. So let's go through these six. The first is fitness. Why is being healthy one of the keys to being the man you were made to be?

Well, for me, it was something to know, isn't it? You know, why don't you go straight into the spiritual book? The fact is, God made us physical beings and then breathe life into us.

So you read that that's how he created Adam. And so we don't want to be body worshippers as a result of that. But at the same time, we don't want to be people who are neglectful of our bodies.

And I think there's a way that we want to honor God with our body and in doing so we made the way he's made us in the systems of our bodies. You know, I know that when when I got COVID and my body was, you know, was not reacting well to that. I felt low emotionally and spiritually. It was hard for me to relate well to other people around me.

It just brought me down. And so whatever we can do at different stages in our lives to be able to look after the body that God gave us is going to affect all of those different aspects. So for me, you know, right now this morning I spent some time just went out for a fairly long walk with the dog out in the in the beauty of creation and reconnected. And at the same time got the steps in to be able to to feel fit. Fitness means ready. That basically means I'm ready for life and for the opportunities and challenges of life that God gives me because I'm trying my best to look after my body.

Well, let me jump in here, Anthony. And for every guy who's listening, tell me your regimen. Do you have something that you do and that you reveal in the book, the things that you do other than walking with the dog in nature? Well, yeah, I joined the gym and I regularly go to the gym and I will at different times in different seasons, you know, I'm not doing the same fitness regime as I did when I was 20 and now in my 50s.

And I will go to the gym and I'll do some body weight exercises. Mostly I've recently discovered the Stairmaster, which is like torture body in a good kind of way that enables me now to be able to to get up mountains. I've recently in the last couple of years taken up climbing up mountains in Great Britain. I just recently went to various mountains in Scotland. And it's again, it's awful to struggle all the way up there.

But when you get at the top, there's views that you would not believe. And and as a result of that, I've lost weight. I'm feeling fitter and stronger about to push myself a little bit, but in doing so, it enables me to be able to handle the pressures of life. And so, yeah, I will, you know, I have to pack my bag in the morning to enable me to be able to be ready to go. I get things ready.

I put the things in my diary. This is what I'm going to do at this time. I'm going to I'm going to go to the gym so I have everything ready to be able to do that.

If I have to book a class, I'll make sure I do that. I make commitments to myself. Sometimes I'll go with a training partner so that I've got somebody else along with me to spur me on and to help me to be able to do it. And in all these ways, whether it's it's going for a reasonably gentle run or for a long walk or to use the weights in the gym. There's even in the gym that I go to some there's like a boxing circuit training thing.

I'll sometimes go and do that. And in all those ways, I love to do something just for 30 to 40 minutes that raise my heart rate up and get my muscles strong again. And in doing so, it just keeps me it's a lot easier to stay fit than to get fit. But once you get to that point of view and to that point that you get the endorphins, you get the rush that you only get, I think, from looking after your body and exercising well. Well, you say you're in your 50s and you're still at it.

That sounds good to me. Now, why is it that some men actually move away from the fitness as they get older? I think, again, maybe this is to do with something in society where we've had these kind of idolized bodies of, you know, guys in their 20s who've got the completely flat six pack and all.

And that's like the standard. And I don't think men are immune to that kind of pressure in the same way as women have these unrealistic expectations imposed upon them by magazines and media and all of those kind of things. And so, you know, I'm not aiming for that.

I'm aiming to be the best I can be and to do the best I can with what God has given me. And I think everybody can do that. Some years ago, I remember the place where I lived, there was a lot of guys who were veterans, who'd been in the army and had various disabilities. They'd been blown up. They'd been shot at.

And yeah, I'd see them in the local pool, you know, and some of these guys didn't have legs and they would be going up and down the pool. And I just realized, I've got no excuse. I'm going to do something. And so, yeah, I think we can do that. Now, the second facet you deal with is finances. You're hitting on some really hard issues here.

So let's jump into that section. Why is this so important? Well, again, I think like with fitness, this is all about stewardship. It's recognizing that everything that I've got has been given to me by God and one day I'm going to be accountable for it. So I might as well right now do my best to honor him with what he's given me, whether, you know, and also to recognize from my perspective, I've been troubled a bit to some very poor nations around the world to recognize that in world terms, the fact I'm talking to you now on a computer and we're able to do this means I've actually already won the lottery in world terms.

You know, we're living in one of the richest nations in the world. And I think I want to be able to be somebody who takes what God has given me and to be content and to be grateful. And from that comes generosity and and less worry about about money and it doesn't actually take as much as we might think to be able to be happy.

It's a choice that we make and actually Jesus said it's more blessed to give than to receive. So I talk in the book about ways that we can achieve financial balance and to have some aims for our money that go beyond. And just that minor financial aims are that one day I'll have enough to retire or, you know, I'll have a certain amount of money in the bank.

But instead, you know, what's the to make the aim? I want to honor God with what he's given me by doing what he says. And for me, you know, people talk about prosperity. Well, prosperity for me means that I can do what God wants me to do with what he's given me to do it. And I find that the world of the generous gets larger and larger. I've been very impacted by ministries even from over your side of the pond, Dave Ramsey, etc. Helping me to be able to avoid debt to be able to, you know, back away from those kind of things and to pay those things off to save some money to tithe and and then go over and above that to be able to be generous on an occasion as guided by the Lord.

And as Jesus said, it's way better to give than to receive and I'm just proved that in my life over and over again that I love to be able to be a giver. But the only way we can do that is if we can get well, I'm going to say we get control of our finances. Now, if we let the Lord have control of our finances and recognize I am a steward, he's the master, whatever I need. There's plenty more where that came from.

I can trust him and he'll enable me to be able to do the things that he calls me to do. Yeah. Why do you think some men actually base their worth on how much money they have? Well, maybe this is to do with phrases that are common parlance. People talk about being a self made man.

There's no such thing. You know, David, I remember that in Scripture when he looked at everything that God had given him in his life. And yes, he'd gone for being a shepherd to be in the king of Israel and he'd, you know, had all these conquests. And yet he just said to the Lord, you know, everything I have comes from you and I'm only giving back when he gave what you gave to me. And I think that the reason that we end up basing our worth or comparing worth with other people, etc.

based upon income and why so many people get caught up in the rat race of that comparison is again lack of contentment. But a lot of it really too is trying to fill the empty hole inside with more and more possessions or to try and impress other people. And really a lot of it comes down to that lost son thing that we talked about before. A lot of men, I think, are lost sons one way or the other. And it's forgetting who your father is.

If you don't know who your dad is, you're not going to know who you are. And ultimately we're going to try and prove our worth when we feel worthless. Whereas if we know I am eternally loved, I am completely accepted by my Heavenly Father.

And that he wants to let me know that I don't have to worry about anything because he looks after the birds of the air, he's going to look after me. Then we can have that mindset and that heart change on the inside that enables us to live more like Jesus, who himself never wanted for anything. And yet gave and expected miraculous provision and saw it happen all around him.

So yeah, it's living like Jesus. Does God really care about how we use our money? Well, yeah, because Jesus said where your treasure is, that's where your heart's going to be.

And so if I don't put any kind of treasure into the things of God, into the things of kingdom, into helping other people, my life is going to be a very small little life that just revolves around me. And so to the extent that I can demonstrate what really matters to me most by looking through the bank statement, and it's really a good clear indicator of what is really important to me and going on in my life. Thanks for joining us today for Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller, "The 5 Love Languages" . You can find out more about your love language by going to fivelovelanguages.com. You can listen to the stream or download the podcast right there and discover more ways to strengthen relationships.

Go to fivelovelanguages.com. Our guest is Anthony Delaney, author of The Man You Were Made To Be. Nothing to prove, nothing to hide, everything to live for. You can find out more about it at moodybooks.org.

That's moodybooks.org. Well, Anthony, we've talked about fitness and finances, and the third facet is family. A lot of men push this aspect of their lives down and you write about nearly losing your family. Tell us about that.

Yeah, I think this is something new. The family situation is different for everybody and some people have got, you know, they may not know who one parent was or the other. They may be in a blended family of some description, etc. The word, the concept family is one which is, you know, is quite difficult for us to be able to just quantify these days. But we know that scripture says that God is the father from whom every family on earth derives its name.

And so we're only going to be able to, it says we come into his family and as we are re-fathered by him with Jesus as our older brother, from that we can find our place, we can know that we're accepted and loved. But in the meantime, I've got to live with people and then, you know, whatever situation that is that people are listening in right now, as I said, I'm all, you know, so many blessings that have come through my life have come through my marriage to Zoe, which I've written about in my previous book, The Best Marriage, and through the family. I'm blessed to have the strong connection with my children and we see the grandchildren regularly and all those things I just count as blessings from God. But I'm also aware of the danger that can be in my life. I'm a bit of an overachiever if I'm not careful and I think some of that can want to come from proving myself, maybe even to myself. And there's been various times in my life when that drive to be the best I can be, outside of just receiving that approval and acceptance from God, has led me to too many late nights, too much hard work, too much work at the expense of and neglect of my family at different points.

And I'm so grateful that I've married a patient woman and at times we've ended up having to go into marriage counseling to be able to sit in that room and to look at those things. And then it's in those times I realize so many men, and I've seen this time and time again, put all of their best on the wrong altar. And maybe you feel like I'm not really succeeding well at home. So I'm going to try and succeed at work again, and it just makes that vicious circle get worse and worse because you want to be the provider.

And maybe that's what you saw is what your father did. And in some way you want to try and be the best that you can be. And then you can't understand why your wife isn't happy with that. So you go and try harder at what isn't working. And then all the frustration that comes with that. But I think, first of all, you know, I just want to accept family is God's way.

One of God's chief ways to get his blessings through to us and whatever I invest in that is going to multiply and make such a huge difference coming back to me in every way. And at the end of the day, you know, I'm not going to be remembered very much for the work I've put into all those different kinds of things. But what matters is to me is what do my what my grandchildren going to say about me? What are they going to know about me?

What's my wife going to think about me? Because when we get that kind of perspective, we can live differently. Yeah. Now you tell stories about men in the book. Tell us about someone you know who made a real turnaround with their family. Well, I'm grateful I keep getting stories from men even now who are contacting me that are saying that the book has really helped them.

You know, in various times I've had even people in who have like serving in the armed forces or people in prison of hearing from those kind of things. But a most recent one for us would be a guy here in my church called Gavin. We we put out a lot of devotionals on our Facebook page and every day we put something out and this guy Gavin wouldn't mind me sharing this story. He recently shared the story himself as somebody who he'd been a Christian when he was a young boy, but then he'd walked away. He talked about how his life he had a broken relationship with a previous marriage that all fell flat and then he ended up depressed.

He went into hospital with that depression psychiatric problems then came out and tried to rebuild his life. But he during covid he was in a worse position than ever and then something just told him one day and he said he's really sure how he even heard it. But somebody said just look at Ivy Church, which is our church and he looked at online and found it and then you found these faithless and he started to watch them one after the other after they're only short 15-20 minutes.

But he spent all morning watching them one after the other and then he came on the site and then he looked at checked out some other teaching. And his wife just thought he's gone upstairs and he's up there just miserable. I don't know what do to help him and then he came downstairs and he parceled up all of his he said a lot of his life was spent in that room just vaping, you know smoking one of these vape things and he parceled up all of his vaping equipment and everything that he did for life put it all in a bag and took it all out through in the trash and his wife said what you're doing and he said I'm done with that now. I'm going to live for God and she said well, you can't just say I'm going to finish with that and he said no, I'm not doing this. The Holy Spirit is going to help me and then since then Gavin did found at our church. He came along on the Sunday that same Sunday. He redevoted his life to the Lord now his wife and his son have come to faith in Jesus Christ to he recently gave a testimony about how how that's happened. Who during the worst possible time as he was in that hard place during covid and feeling isolated was was actually the time that the Lord met him and turned him around and now he's he's looking to potentially do a different role in life. He's also looking to potentially study theology and go Bible school and it's it's just wonderful to see that change in him.

When we turn our lives over to God, it's bound to affect the way we treat our families, right? Absolutely. Yeah, and it's made such a difference in Gavin and his wife and his son.

Yeah. Now the next facet you discuss is failure. Now that must have been a hard chapter to write. Well, ironically, when I first submitted the manuscripts, I realized that I'd put the failure chapter in the wrong order in the book.

So that really proved how badly you can get it wrong given that the chapter was put in the wrong place. But yeah, I think that the the issues are pertinent to everybody because nobody has a perfect record certainly not myself and we all make mistakes. We are the scripture even says that in the book of James and we all make many mistakes and and you know, we have to recognize that but we don't have to be defined by our failures. You say in the book that failure is an event, not a person.

Yeah. What do you mean by that? Yeah, I mean, failure is what we do is what I do, but it isn't who I am. Somebody could say, oh, I did this now. I'm a failure.

No, I did this. I failed and I can learn from that failure. There's something here, you know, while you're down there, pick something up and move on to the next thing. So nobody's got a perfect track record. We just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other. And the glorious thing I think is when somebody as we all do messes up that we and we go to God and it gives us the grace to be able to do it time and time again.

There's been times when I failed and the person who who is referenced in that chapter in scripture in the book is from scripture is the Apostle Peter who whose life is one a catalog of failures in many ways. And here he keeps on making big promises. Lord, I'm going to do this.

Lord, I'm going to do that. You know, he even says, yeah, I'll step out. I'll walk on the water and then he sunk. We're all sunk without Jesus. But then the Lord reaches out and lifts him back up again and and says, you know, keep your eyes on me. And every time Peter takes his eyes off Jesus, then he fails. But whenever he looks again to Jesus, who's the author and perfector of our faith, he's able to to keep on going and walk on water. And in the end, he realizes that the one constant in his life has not been his own perfection, but as being the love of Jesus Christ and I'd say that's so true of me. I'm certainly again not the perfect man. I'm not writing this book of somebody who says be like me but but I want to fix my eyes on Jesus and know that every time I fall he's there and he meets me in the failure, but doesn't leave me there and that he's come to to lift us up and encourage us to keep on going. So those failures don't define us, but they can refine us.

They can help us again as that diamond is shaped and cut to be the man we were made to be. Do you have an example in your own life where you failed but through that failure you really learned something? Well, I suppose I could go back to those times in the marriage counseling sessions, which again, I'm not in any way ashamed to admit them.

I think that if anything rather than waiting for marriages to crash down is good now. I wish what I wanted to do is have more regular sessions that help us to keep talking and to get third-party advice and helping that from the Christian counselor is so good rather than waiting until it all comes crashing down. But you know in those times again very often I just found that it was things like not listening to my wife and giving her lots of advice and not hearing her heart and and just to be able to learn that actually the best thing I can do very often is just to be there for her. And you know repeat back some of the things that are on her heart and to ask her about what's really going on and ask that second question and nobody prepared me for how to be a husband in that sense. Nobody you know, there wasn't really any any any lessons for that. I had to learn those things the hard way by making those mistakes and by by failing and again, I'm grateful for her forgiveness and patience with me to to help to shape me. I certainly couldn't be the man that God made me to be without Zoe is my partner.

But I think that yeah, those have been the failures. I mean the one time I remember is now you talk about the love languages and I I made a very extravagant gift one day one anniversary. We I actually hired an aeroplane that we would fly around in and did like a flying lesson for an hour because I thought well, I'll do the gifts but I've now realized gifts is not her love language at all. And she just said all the time we were doing it. She was saying how much is this costing easily we could have easily gone for a walk and her love language is quality time and she would have she would have loved that way better save myself a ton of money.

And yeah, so there you go. I could identify with that in my own marriage. I'm sure I would never have gone into counseling if we hadn't struggled in the early years of our own marriage. This is Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller "The 5 Love Languages" . We're talking about the facets of a man with Anthony Delaney, the author of our featured resource titled The Man You Were Made to Be. Nothing to prove, nothing to hide, everything to live for.

Find out more at moodybooks.org. Well, Anthony, the fifth facet is friends. But there are so many men who have no friends.

Address that issue. I think that when I was a police officer, you realize that you build friendships by what you go through with people and going into some dangerous situations. You know, going through a door and you don't know what's on the other side of it, forged some strong friendships with me. So I'd say my best friend right now, well, just throughout most of my life is a guy called John. We both became Christians around the same time, worked to the same beat, as we would say as police officers. He's in my church now and he's the guy who knows everything there is to know about me and still loves me. And he's my, you know, they call it a 2 a.m., 3 a.m. friend. He would be there if I was arrested in a Mexican prison.

He would come and find me and somehow come and get me out. But the question is not so much about, well, how do I get a friend like that? Very often the best question is, how can I be a friend like that? And if we can find somebody and befriend that person, be a friend to that person, then I think that's the way that it is going to work.

We have to go and not to just try and get something out of a relationship. We have to go through hard times with other people. And if you help somebody in their hard time, if you're there when they're in the Mexican prison at 2 a.m., I tell you, you've got a friend for life.

And so often we're looking for something that actually other people are looking for too. So my question would be, if you're looking for a friend like that, who are you being a friend like that to? Yeah, the Scriptures actually say, he that would have friends must show himself friendly.

That's a good word. Well, the last of the six facets is a father. Father, what do you talk about in that section? Well, I recognize that for many men, the whole idea of father is one that puts them off God, perhaps because their own father was abusive or absent or angry. And so when you when Jesus comes along and says, when you pray, say, our father in heaven, they just see a bigger version of the father that they don't want anything to do with.

And that can be problematic. And so I think what we've got to do is recognize that our view of the father has to come from Scripture, as has been revealed to us, not just from our own pictures or even from a good father. If somebody had a great dad, like I had a great dad who loved me unconditionally and was there for me through tough times. But, you know, Jesus even said to a whole group of fathers one day, you know, you're imperfect fathers, every one of them. And he knew that. And he said, but you know how to give good gifts to your children. And then he was saying that to say, you have a heavenly father. Everybody, every man, woman and child listening to this right now has a heavenly father who loves them. And it's when we come to Scripture, we get to see who our father really is and everything changes when that happens. You talk about Jesus and how he embodies what you're talking about in this book. Yeah. Isn't he great?

Absolutely. You know, I think sometimes people may even listen into a show like this and kind of think of Jesus as a concept or as, you know, that Christianity is a list of rules and regulations and things to do and not to do. But in the end, it all comes down to the truth that we could never work out how good God is. We could never get our heads around how much he loves us.

So he stepped from eternity into town a time. And in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ revealed to us who God is and he's he's better than we could ever imagine. And he's greater and more loving and more kind and more forgiving than we deserve.

And so, yeah, I think there's only ever been one perfect man and his name is Jesus Christ. And he wasn't, you know, he was tough without being rude without being toxic. He was kind without being a pushover and he, you know, he knew what it was to be angry, but to be able to be angry at the right things.

He knew what it was to demonstrate love to speak love to be love to be compassionate to be tender and at the same time to be able to confront evil and to be able to stand against injustice and ultimately to be self-sacrificing to not think about himself, but to lay down his life for us and in all those ways, you know that I could talk about of how much we admire the Lord Jesus. I'm only ever going to scratch the surface. So everything I try and do is just a point to him.

Yeah. Anthony, when you share that, it brings to mind my favorite hymn, which says, I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene and wonder that he could love me a sinner condemned unclean. So you're exactly right. God loves us. Now there's a story in the New Testament about Zacchaeus and Jesus encounter with him. Zacchaeus was a tax collector. Why do you think Jesus chose him? I think he was the last man in town.

He was the last guy in town that anybody might think that would be. We were interested in Jesus or Jesus will be interested in him. And yet Jesus sought him out personally. He knew all about him anyway. He called him by name and then he just loved him and accepted him as he was. And that love and acceptance when he said to Zacchaeus, I'm going to come to your house, changed Zacchaeus because that love and acceptance did want no pointing out from anybody else.

No shaming would do. And I think for many men, it's the same. We try and keep God at a distance, perhaps like Zacchaeus did when he climbed up a tree and he was trying to observe Jesus from a distance. And he wouldn't have any of that and anybody listening right now.

You might be checking out God and checking out Jesus that can keep you distance. But listen, he knows your name. He knows where you live. And he says, I want to come to your house. And when he comes to your house, it's not to judge.

It's not to point out the things that are wrong is to is to love you and to listen to you. But something happened in Zacchaeus when he received that love and acceptance. And when he saw who God really is, he said, you know, right now I'm going to change. I'm going to change the way I might spend my money.

I'm going to change the way I treat people. And all those changes that maybe he'd wanted to make all his life, he couldn't make on his own. But when Jesus came and came into his life, everything changed from the inside out. And that to me is why he's just one of my favorite characters in scripture.

Yeah. Well, Anthony, as we come to the end of our time together today, what's your hope for men who are listening today or men who will read this book? I think that they will come to Jesus. First of all, and because Jesus said, I am the way and the truth and the life. So there's no other way you're going to figure out who you are and who you were made to be unless you come to him.

But then he's going to say to you this. I'm the way and the truth and the life and nobody comes to the father, but by me and whatever your experience of father was the hope of the world is for us to come to God as our father. And to be changed by him to be all that he called us to be and do everything that he calls us to do, no matter what mistakes and failures we've all made along the way. When you come to him, you're going to find because of Jesus Christ, acceptance and love and forgiveness and purpose and direction. You're going to have hope where you have hopelessness and peace that the world cannot give. That will be my hope for you that you will become everything God made you to be that you cannot be outside of that relationship with him. And that you'll enjoy that relationship because it really is the best way to live. Well, Anthony, that's certainly our hope. And I just want to thank you for being with us today. And I pray that God will use this book to touch the lives of many men. So thanks again for being with us.

What an opportunity. Thank you so much. If you want to find out more about this excellent resource, go to moodybooks.org. Click the radio microphone right there. The title is The Man You Were Made To Be.

Nothing to prove, nothing to hide, everything to live for. Just go to moodybooks.org. And next week, we open the phone lines for your questions and comments about the love languages or your relationship struggles. Our September Dear Gary is coming up in one week. A big thank you to our production team, Steve Wick and Janice Bakke. Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman is a production of Moody Radio in association with Moody Publishers, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute. Thanks for listening.