REAL Men Start Here: Dave & Ann Wilson

You are a real man. Why are you laughing?

That was your start? We're going to be talking about that today. I thought you were joking.

I was totally serious. I'm complimenting you. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at familylifetoday.com or on our Family Life app. This is Family Life Today. Here's my question.

When you say real man, what does that mean? Well, I've heard you preach this for so many years, and we just talked about it yesterday. Who cares about preaching?

Well, that's the thing. I've heard you preach it, and if you didn't live it, we would not be talking about this today because I've watched you live it. We've been married 41 years, and I've watched you struggle with it at the beginning, and I've watched you live it out in front of our sons. Not perfectly, but as a husband, as a dad, as a man of God, this would probably be my biggest goal in life is to live out what we're calling the four pillars of manhood. That's what I'm called to be. I can't wait to hear you talk about the four pillars of womanhood later this week.

You know, yesterday we started with, again, just a review. You know, I said to men at our church for 30 years, what's it mean to be a real man? And I thought, well, if we're going to talk real man, let's use that word real as an acrostic, R-E-A-L, and it leads to four pillars. That really first generated in a book called Raising a Modern Day Night by Robert Lewis. Actually, a lot of this is now in a book by John Tyson, who we interviewed earlier this year called The Intentional Father. He didn't talk about four pillars, but all the same concepts. So we took the word real, and yesterday we talked about a real man rejects passivity and engages with God. And again, those are huge pillars.

Number one, because there's a bend in all men to be passive, and a boy is passive, but a man steps up and says the right thing, does the right thing. I'll never forget the first time I taught this at a men's retreat at our church, we did one pillar per talk. And I remember one of my buddies, John, called me the next week and says, hey, man, so I went into the gas station a mile from our house. We lived in the same neighborhood in our high school where our kids were going to school a mile from this gas station. I go, yeah, so what happened? He goes, I went in there, man, they're selling porn in the gas station.

Now, this was years ago when this was magazines, right? And I go, yeah. He goes, I went up to the manager of the store and I said, hey, I'm raising my family like a mile from here.

The high school's a mile from here. And he had five sons. Yeah, he had five boys. And he's like, I'm asking you, that porn is bad. We don't want that in our neighborhood. And the guy looks at him, I guess, and says, dude, that's not my decision and it's no big deal.

No, I'm not going to remove that just because you don't want it. And John said, he said to me, he goes, dude, I told the guy, I'm coming back with some guys. Are you in? And I'm like, am I in for what? He goes, you want to go back with me with a few guys and let's ask him to remove that porn?

I'm like, I'm in. Now, passivity would have been, well, you can do it if you want, but I'm not. But I thought, I agree with him 100%. So we went back in there with like five or six of us. We weren't jerks. We weren't idiots. You asked.

Could you please? He firmly said, we're asking you as dads and men in this community, we want to protect our community. Our sons and daughters live here.

The high school's right here. We're asking you to remove that. And they did. And I thought, look what happens when men reject passivity. And that was the first hour. The second one was, you know, the most important one, I think, is a real man engages with God.

In other words, pursues God, has a real relationship with God. I remember one time being out of football camp as a football coach, talking to this other high school football coach from another high school. I'd never met him.

And we're talking football. I'll never forget. He looks at me and he says, so, hey, man, so like you are a full time teacher at that school. Is this what you do full time?

I go, no, no, no. I'm just, I'm a volunteer coach. I'm actually a dad. And because I'm a football guy, they asked me to coach. So I just help out. And he goes, well, what's your real job?

And what do you do for a living? I go, I'm a pastor. I'll never forget. When I said I'm a pastor, he stepped back from me like I was some freak. And he looked at me like, no way. He thought you were cool until that moment?

Yeah. I mean, I knew the second I said that, he went from, I respect you as a football guy, football guys are tough and you're strong and you're a pastor, you're a wimp and you're weak. That's what he thought.

I knew he thought that because I think that's what our culture thinks. Spiritual men are weak men that need a crutch. The truth is spiritual men are strong men because they find their strength in Christ. And when you engage with God as a man, there's a strength found in Christ that meets us in our weakness. The apostle Paul said, you know, I am weak, but in Christ I am strong. And so when a man finds real strength by engaging with God, it gives him the strength to reject passivity. And here's what I found being married 41 years, and we've been doing marriage conferences and speaking on marriage and helping couples in marriage for a long time, almost as long as we've been married.

Here's what I found, because you've taught me this, is you said that men deep down are insecure. Oh yeah. I'm like, what? And you were like, yeah, we wonder, do we have what it takes?

Can we do it? And so as a woman listening, if you're a wife, if you're a mom, if you're a grandmother, if you're a sister, the men around us need us to encourage them. And so as you listen today, as you listened yesterday, don't think this is a time like, oh, I'm going to badger them because this is what they need to do and this is who they need to be.

No, this is our opportunity to remind them of who they are and what God has for them and catch them, and I said this yesterday, catch them doing things that are right. Or when you hear these principles, think back and pray, Jesus, help me see and say when they're doing things right. Yeah, all I know is when you speak life to me, when you see me living out these pillars, and I don't live them out every second and I don't live them out perfectly.

But when you see even a glimpse of manhood, godly manhood in me, and you speak affirmation, I like run to be even better. Well, I remember because I badgered you when our boys were maybe elementary age years. I would try to motivate you by comparing you to our other friends. That never worked. You know, Steve's reading the Bible every night to his kids, or Mark's doing this cool devotional out in the woods, and I had no idea that that wasn't motivating you. It demoralized me.

That's terrible. And so, I remember thinking, I need to stop comparing you to other men, even in my mind, and I need to catch you doing things that are right. And so, this one night, I'll never forget, you're just reading the Bible, I think you're reading a devotional to the kids at bed, and they're all in one bed, and they're surrounding you, laying on this bed, and you're holding this devotional, and you're asking them questions, and it had a Bible verse. And I'll never forget, it makes me teary thinking about it, I'll never forget watching you do that. And they were glued to every word that you said. Now, in the past, I would have thought, well, see if he would do this every night.

You know, our kids would know something about the Bible. But instead of doing that, I just remember watching you. And when you came out of the room, I just said to you, like, I'm so jealous of that power you have over our boys. Like, when you're reading to them, when you're talking to them about Jesus, they listen.

To me, they're squirming about and they're hitting each other, but man, they listen to every word you say. And that's all I said to you. What did you feel? I know I ran up there the next night. It was motivating.

It's like, I had no idea. I was having that kind of impact, so yeah, I mean, positive words literally shape your man to be a better man. Again, I know there's hard truths that need to be spoken at times. But when you speak life into your man, it motivates us to be a better man. So let's get into the A, because we've hit the R of a real man rejects passivity. The E is a real man engages with God.

What's the A? The A is a real man accepts responsibility. And it's really what you were just talking about, the responsibility to be the husband that God calls us to be, to be the dad, to be the worker, to be a man of character. It's just literally no excuses. Quit making excuses, you know, for I'm not the man I should be. Because I mean, I could have easily said this. I didn't have a dad, so I don't know what a dad does or how a dad looks.

And I said that for, you know, a few years at the beginning. It's like, no, no, no, it's my responsibility as a man to find out what does a godly husband look like and do. What does a godly father look like and do? Again, that goes back to engaging with God.

It's like open the Word of God and find out. Sit down with other men. I sat with older fathers of me, many breakfasts and many lunches that I paid for and said, teach me what a godly man looks like. Teach me what a godly husband and dad, what do we do?

How do we lead our family? That was me accepting responsibility. It's not my wife's job. Not saying that you don't have that role. You have that huge role in, you know, leading our family spiritually. But it was like, no, I got to step up, accept responsibility, don't make excuses about my past or be a victim.

But to say it is my job to accept responsibility to be the man, the husband, the dad, the worker, the Christian man that I'm called to be. And again, you know, we talked yesterday about a great example of a man was a teenage boy named David in his battle with Goliath. You know, again, all the trained warrior men are running away in fear.

They're passive. They don't really know God. So they don't know God can deliver. David comes. First of all, he rejects passivity and goes to the king and says, well, I'll fight the guy. When he's asked why, he said, because the God who delivered me with the sheep will deliver me here. So he knows God, he's engaging with God and out of that is going to come victory in this situation. Then he accepts responsibility and says, okay, I'm going. And when Saul gives him a warrior's armor to put on, he says, I don't need this armor.

It doesn't fit. All I'm going to do is take a slingshot, you know, with five stones. And he accepts responsibility when all these men who are really boys shirk their responsibility. Men step up and accept responsibility. It's so crazy, too, because to take on what David said he would do, like I'm going to go fight Goliath, meant that he would either win or possibly die. And the only reason other guys weren't out there is because they thought we're going to die because Goliath is huge. So accepting that was like he could have died. Yeah.

And again, I think it's what we said yesterday. He accepted it because he knew God. The engaging with God is so pivotal because when you engage with God, you see how big and holy and majestic God is. And that takes away fear. You step into situations where you're going to be passive because you're afraid.

You're like, no, no, no. I know who God is. I met with him this morning. You know, we shared this here before the night that you said to me that you wished the man who led our church lived in this home, which was your way of saying the way I lead and accept responsibility to lead and cast vision and pray at our church, I'm not bringing home. That was a moment for me to go, I need to step up in our home. I totally felt that because, and I think other women do, too. I think that men could say this to wives as well. But I talked to a lot of women and I felt this when I said that, which wasn't very nice of me to say. But I just saw you and I thought, yeah, you're amazing. And I've had other women say, when my husband's at work, he is killing it, man. He is great at this.

And then he comes home and he's just watching TV all night or he's just on his phone all night. And I want that amazing man who I know that he is and can be to live here. And so I don't even know how do we encourage wives to get that to happen? I spoke hard truth to you and you accepted it. And the fact... No, I didn't accept it immediately.

Remember? Oh, yeah, you got mad at me. I said, I know what other husbands are like and you get the best husband you can imagine. I mean, I was just terrible.

I was like, what are you talking about? You know, I don't lead here and I don't pray here like I do at church. I did not receive it well.

I didn't say it very well either. But the next morning, when I met with God, I felt like he said, yeah, you bring it all to lead at church, to lead at work. You are lazy at home.

You're passive at home. That's what I felt like I was hearing. And so it was a moment where I had to say, okay, a boy is going to show up in public and not show up in private.

A man's going to be both the same in private and public. So it was a moment for me just to get on my knees before God and say, okay, I got to accept responsibility. I got every excuse. Well, I'm tired. I lead here.

I'm in meetings. I just need a place to, you know, home's a place to rest. And God was like, no, home's a place where you need to accept responsibility more than anywhere. I remember you asked me later, what would it look like to you, like you asked me, and what would it look like for me to take on more responsibility at home, spiritually speaking? Just you asking the question was one of the greatest gifts that you could have given me.

And what did you say? I just said, I think it means that I don't want to be the one that's always initiating prayer. You know, I don't want to be the one that's thinking about, okay, how are our kids growing spiritually? And I know you thought about it, but I wanted you to talk to me about it. I want to talk through our goals as parents and even spiritually speaking discipleship.

What's that looking like? So I know I'm talking a lot of spiritual things, but just even how to become men. For you to say, how can I help you, I have some things in mind. Just to have the discussion made me want to be with you, drew me toward you instead of always comparing. And that was super frustrating for you. What do you mean?

In what part? When I wasn't doing that. Yeah, I just felt like I'm doing it alone.

I mean, you're being real nice right now, but you were frustrated that I wasn't, that I was passive in that area. And I remember thinking I got a separate responsibility. One of them was creating a rite of passage for my boys become men, take them on trips, which we did.

I'm not saying it was perfect or anything, but all three boys went on a trip, talked about these four pillars, talked about the transition through the teenage years from boyhood to manhood. There's so many areas that a guy needs to step up. And I'm just telling you, I got off my knees that day and it was two words, step up.

Step up and be the guy, be the husband, be the dad that you deserve, my boys need. It's that simple. It's like, okay, I can be lazy, I can be passive, or I can drive home from work and put on the mantle of husband, dad, man, and walk in that home and accept responsibility and reject passivity. In some ways it was that simple. It's like, you know what, I've only got a window of time with these boys in this house and now they're gone and we have grandkids and that window closed very quickly. It's like today is the day to accept responsibility. You know, I mentioned John Tyson and when we had him in here on Family Life Today, he mentioned a story of his son going on a trip and coming back a man.

I think it's exactly what we're talking about. My son had a few character flaws, like nagging character flaws, I could not get out of him. I just couldn't get out of him.

The process of formation, it starts in your mind, then your attitude changes, then you do it and then it becomes a culture. I could never get it past his mind and attitude. He always liked it and agreed with it but never would do it. Well, you throw him in a group of people that he's living in super proximate engagements with for a year and two weeks in, he's like, Dad, you're completely right, I'm getting that stuff out of my life.

I do not want to be that guy in the group. And my son, the number one thing, like Nate, I don't think he would mind me sharing this. He was a complainer, he was a whiner. When everything was going great, it was great but when it wasn't going good, he just wouldn't whine. He left my house a whiner and he came back from that trip and he's like fundamentally a different person.

My son almost never complains. He just handles it. I'm like, what happened? He goes, I watched myself almost out of my body be the whiner and was like, you are not going out like that. And so now he just handles stuff. He's like, let me just load that on my back and get it done. I don't want to be that guy that complains.

Wow, that is perfect. That's another difference between boys and men. Boys whine, men handle it. I mean, John said it so well and I think that's a big pillar of manhood is when you step from being a victim and a whiner. So I'm going to step up and accept responsibility and get it done.

So let's talk about the last one. A real man rejects passivity. A real man engages with God. A real man accepts responsibility. And the last one, a real man leads courageously.

Yeah, that's good. What does that mean? I mean, courageously means I'm afraid. It doesn't mean I don't have fear.

I could be scared to death. Courage means I step into the middle of my fear and I do the right thing. I reject passivity out of my engagement with God. I accept responsibility. I say, okay, I need to lead. We said it earlier. It could be, let's pray. That's leadership. Let's open the Word of God. Let's ask God what we should do in this situation. It could be, son, I need to talk to you about this.

Daughter, what do you need from me right now? There's a thousand ways to lead. It's just taking the initiative, taking a step. And you can tell me, does a wife want her man to lead? Yeah, when you define leadership like that, of course.

When we as women hear like, oh, he's going to lead in a domineering way that diminishes me as a woman, no. But yes, we long for a man to lead like that, to lead courageously. And I think all throughout Scripture, you see that God calls men to lead.

And I'm not saying that women don't lead and aren't leaders. You have an amazing leadership gift. But there's a unique call that God puts on men in the home, in the church, in different situations to step up and initiate. You know, start something. Call people to something great.

Cast vision, literally step forward and go where God is calling you to go. And I would say, too, for the moms that are listening, you have so much power in how you speak to your sons, to your daughters as well. But I'm just thinking back, as I saw the gifts in our boys, I felt like God was saying to me, like, fan that flame, Ann.

You see the things that I put in them, fan the flame of who I made them to be. And when one of our sons was getting ready to go to college, this kid man, he's just a leader. He didn't see it in himself, but I would see it. I could tell because even when he was eight years old, all of his friends would be out on the trampoline. And somebody would come in and he'd say, Mrs. Wilson, your son wanted me to come in and get him a drink.

And, hey, Mrs. Wilson, I need a sweatshirt for your son. And I said, why isn't he coming in? And they said, because he told me to do it. And I know that some of you can think, well, that's just a bossy kid. But I saw that, like, oh, he's a leader. He can influence people to do things. I know that he was selfish.

He's doing them for himself. But I would see that. I said, man, you're such a leader. Like, you have influence. And when you talk, people hear you.

And they do. You're motivating. And so this one night, his senior year, he was getting ready for bed. And he came in to say good night. And I just said all these things that I saw in him. Man, you're a great leader. Can't wait to see what you do in college because you're just an influencer, man. Where you go, people want to follow you.

And when you follow Jesus, you're like a magnet to the kingdom of God. And, you know, he's like, whatever, Mom, you say that stuff all the time. And then he goes to bed.

But he came back a few minutes later with tears coming down his face. And he just said, I am not that guy you always say I am. You know, and I'm like, yes, you are. You're totally that guy. He goes, Mom, I'm not. I just got wasted last weekend, Mom. That's who I am.

You don't even know it. That's who I am. I just said to him, that may be what you did last weekend, but that's not who you are. That's not who God designed you to be. You are a leader.

You are an influencer. And so our kids doubt themselves all the time. The world is crushing them.

Our culture is wanting to make them feel defeated. So for us as parents to speak into our kids what we see and what God put into them, that is life-giving. And, Dave, so for you, when I see you, when you call men to lead courageously, there's something in men that's ignited that they want to step into that.

Yeah, I think it's innate in us. God has called us. He's called men to say, I'm putting you in a situation that requires a man, not a boy.

And a man rejects passivity, engages with God, accepts responsibility, and then says, okay, God, here we go. I'm going to lead even though I'm scared. I mean, we've been talking about David and Goliath. I can't imagine when he stood in front of Goliath, this nine-foot giant who the entire army is scared of, and he stands there with a slingshot. You're not telling me he wasn't scared.

He had to be scared. But what did he say? I'll read it to you.

It's 1 Samuel 1745. He said, you come against me with a sword and a spear and a javelin, but I come against you in the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hands. I mean, that's leading courageously. You know, a boy who's a man says, God needs this taken down, and I'm the guy to reject passivity, engage with God, accept responsibility, and here we go. And, you know, we know the rest of the story. But what's really interesting is when you talk about leadership, I never knew when I heard that story in Sunday school as a kid, even as a young man, I never knew the details of when he shows up for the actual battle.

He says those words, and then what's it say next? It says he ran toward the Philistine. I always had this vision in my head that he sort of was behind a rock, you know, a big boulder, and he stuck his head out, and he flung this little stone, and he got down, you know, like he was still scared, like I'm going to try.

No, he ran to the battle. That's leading courageously. And I think there's so many giants in our life, and there's so many moments in our, even in our family, in our marriage, where we're just, we're sort of hiding behind a rock, and we're like, okay, God, I'm going to throw a little prayer up. No, no, leading courageously means I'm going to step into this with everything I've got, and I'm going to trust the Almighty God to deliver.

And again, often God does. You know, when a man is a man, he uses that man to change legacies. You're listening to Davin A. Wilson on Family Life Today. Dave's got one more word of encouragement for men in just a minute, and women, feel free to eavesdrop on that. First, if you want to talk about a place where legacies are changed, Family Life's weekend to remember is a place where marriages, families, and legacies are restored.

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Just head over to familylifetoday.com. All right, here's Dave with a final word of encouragement for men to be real men and what that can mean for your family. Music I mean, the amazing thing at the end of that story as he defeats the Goliath and cuts off his head, what do all the boys do? The army that was hanging out back there scared to death, who has run away, sees this boy, who's a man, David, take down Goliath, what do they do?

They charge into battle now. And it's a great picture of one man who's a real man, rejecting passivity, engaging with God, accepting responsibility, leading courageously, can ignite a life-changing legacy. So, it takes one dad, one husband, doesn't need 50. You just need one man to say, okay, God, I know you're calling me to do this.

I need to say this or do this. I'm scared to death, but I'm going to lead courageously. It can change history. And I believe there's a man listening that's realizing you're that man. You want to change the legacy of your family? God did that in the Wilson name. You know, we started yesterday talking about a dad who was a womanizing alcoholic, and God gave us the power, gave me the power to say the Wilson name going forward is a name that's connected to godliness and changing that legacy from an ungodly legacy to a godly legacy. You're that man.

You can change it. It starts today. Be a real man. Now, since we've chatted about how men are supposed to act, you're probably wondering, well, what about the women? Okay, things are about to get real tomorrow on Family Life Today with David Ann Wilson. They're going to show us what real looks like, I promise. Join us tomorrow. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.