Beating the Blues

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This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Man Talk, brought to you by TAWCMN, talking and walking Christian men's ministry, where they're devoted to breaking down the walls of race and denomination and challenging men to take their God-assigned role. Here's our hosts, Will Hardy and Roy Jones Jr., a black guy and a white guy. You know, Robbie does such a great job when he says, a black guy and a white guy. So my name is Roy Jones and I'm the white guy. And I'm Will Hardy, I'm that other guy. Yeah, and he is that other guy, trust me. We're honored to have Pastor Ken Cline join us again this week from Christ Western Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. I am the blackest white guy you will ever know.

I would have to say probably the second. Hey, but it's such a good, good to see both of you guys. And thank you so much for taking time with us today. You know, Ken, one of the things we were talking about before the program began was about men are afraid to get in touch with our inner self, if you will, or maybe communicate how they're really feeling on the inside. And so what we want to talk to you about today as folks is, and we're gonna have a conversation around this, the things that the men are dealing with, you know, the depression, the anxiety, all those different things, and what's happening with our men as a result of that, and how most are not handling it properly. And we want to talk about the best way to handle it.

Mm hmm. Yeah, I was I was just been thinking more and more lately, but we're in the middle of a pandemic. Obviously, we're dealing with that as a nation. But there are other micro pandemics, if you if you want to call that or even epidemics international in our nation with depression, anxiety, despondency. And I mentioned to you, Roy, I have probably in the last four months have had more counseling sessions at my church and coffee shops and other spaces, third spaces, gyms and everywhere else with men who are feeling things they've never felt before. Anxiety, depression, and they're they're worried about it. I've never felt like I'm feeling right now. We know there are reasons for that, with all the unknowns and the we've talked about things that are happening to the church, things that are happening with finances, with jobs and all these things.

We've never really been here like we've been in many, many years anyway. And so I'm finding that men are really I'm starting to deal with depression, but men really struggle with. I don't want to air my dirty laundry. You know, I don't want to talk to everybody about that, that I can't get a handle on this or that I'm stressed out. And but there comes a time when you got to say, I'm not OK. And what do I do with that?

And so they're starting to reach out. And we hope that through maybe this talk that we're getting ready to have, more guys will be willing to say, hey, I'm not OK and I'm not showing up right at home. And so let's, you know, let's talk because a real man, a real man would just fess up.

And he would come and he'd say, I'm doing this for the sake of my family. I'm not just doing this, you know, to air out what everything that I'm I'm going through because I can know everything you do and everything you say is going to have an effect on someone. You know, so so if you don't move forward and let the Holy Spirit deal with you as the head of that household to say, this thing is bothering me. If it continues to bother me, it's going to deal with my family.

It's going to affect my friends and other relationships that I have. And we don't really know the outcome of what those things will be, but we do know it's going to have an adverse effect going forward. It already has.

It really has. And one of the things that as you guys were talking about, well, it's going to escalate. Let's say that it's it'll come out as something, whether it's it's a it's a crime or heinous act of some sort, it will come out right. And it will manifest itself in some way. You know, what's what we want to tell you here, though, is that the storm that you're going through, like we played on last week's show, the storm that you're going through may very well be the thing that shapes your children for their future, because your children are watching how you're handling this and they're watching how their mother's handling it. And if you're if you're the right role model and hey, it's OK not to have all the answers and it's OK to say, hey, I need help. And those are all things that show a strong leader, a strong husband, strong father says, hey, I can't do this alone.

I've got to have God first and I got to have my brothers to walk this journey out with me. Yeah, you're setting the stage for what your children are going to expect in their lifetime. Exactly. They see if they see you give up or quit or go lock yourself away or sit in front of the TV for endless hours. And then they're going to that's what they're going to deem as the acceptable response to going through the storm. And that's not an acceptable response.

My fear is and it's playing out is, well, let me say it this way. Keith Drury wrote a book many years ago called Holiness for Ordinary People. And I don't remember every detail and all the chapters and everything. What I remember is the dedication page. He said, I dedicate this book to my father who lived holiness in the home, the hardest place to live.

And I thought about that. No, that's not true. That's not the hardest place to live. But the truth is, as I've discovered over the last 27 years, it actually is the place that men are showing up. And we put out our game face because we're shown how to do that in society. We have to go to work in order to keep our job.

We have to have the right attitude and have the right work ethic. And we show up at church and we smile and we do all these things. But when we come home, we think it's okay to be ourselves.

Okay. If I'm prone to depression, then I'm going to be depressed at home. Yeah, I'll put my game face on when I get in my car and go to work. But this is my home and I can be who I am.

But that's just the opposite. That's where we need to show up the most with our best, our A game, with our attitude. If you have to sit in your car for two or three minutes and get your act together and pray and shake it off. Me too, right. You've got to walk in that door with your A game for your kids and for your wife.

Amen. And not go in and say, I hate my life. I hate what's going on in the world. I'm just going to sit in this chair. I'm going to watch TV. I'm going to go into the bedroom. I'm going to shut the door. I'm going to go in my man cave.

I'm going to go in my garage and tune out the world. And your husband, your father gets the worst of you. I'm seeing that more and more and more and have actually lived that out in portions of my life until I finally reached out and got help. And you know clinical psychologists will tell you that the complications as a result of not dealing with anxiety and depression. And I jotted a few down here before we came on is suicidal feelings, weight gain, just physical and mental pain, self-mutilation. So people will actually go out and hurt themselves, you know, and then anxiety and deep disappointment was the other one that I had down here. And so this is what happens. Yeah. They sleep when they're not supposed to sleep and they don't sleep when they're supposed to. So if I'm listening to this program and most of what you described I'm experiencing, what does a person do?

So I guess that's, you know, what is the preventive medicine here, the preventive maintenance, if you will, to avoid this or to get correction in our course? I'm rereading an older book that I've had from Max Locato and I love it. It's Facing Your Giants, one of his classic books.

But I love the main theme of the book is this. If you focus on your giants, you stumble. If you focus on your God, your giants tumble. And so I guess the big starting point is I've got to look to my God. You can read Psalm 91, you know. You've got to come underneath the lordship of your God, under the shelter of the Almighty, El Shaddai. And so I think probably one of the biggest starting points, and we can talk about a number of them because we really want to give you some true how-tos, is start with God.

Get back in the Word. It says, seek his face, seek his strength. It says, seek the Lord in his strength, seek his face continually. Psalm 105, 4.

Let me say it again. Seek the Lord in his strength, seek his face not for five minutes a day, not for two minutes a day, seek his face continually. It'd be a great starting point to help get you out of the funk. Right, and we know that men are terrible about reading and praying, reading the Bible and praying. We know that's the two weakest areas, and most men's walk. And you know, men, when you're not functioning like you normally would if the pandemic wasn't present, if we didn't have to deal with it. You know how you would function. So any detour or deviation from whatever that norm was for you, then you need to start looking at that now. So, Roy, you were talking about what men, see, I would even say before they do what Ken talked about is seeking God is just recognizing that I am off course. Yeah, I'm not okay.

I'm not. Let's talk about that, Will. So if you're fatigued, let's talk about some of the common things that would be going on here. If you're fatigued, if you're having trouble getting out of bed in the mornings, your motivation's lacking, your sexual desire, let's call it, is down. It's typically a result of depression or anxiety. Weight gain or loss. Weight gain or loss, yep, severe, and you're constantly worried about things, then those are some of the signals.

You probably should go to see your physician and reach out to your pastor if you've got a pastor in your life and share this or an accountability partner with a brother. And that is not a weakness. It's not. In fact, it's a greater strength. Absolutely. Weakness is a strength when you rise up and you say, I'm going to get help because I'm not going to stay in this place. And again, that's what a real man would do.

A real man would say, I am not going to shelter or hide anything that I know that is not normal for me to be functioning in at this time. And one of the topics we just covered a few weeks ago, the collateral damage. Let's look at it this way. You're avoiding collateral damage by making those steps. Because if you don't do it, the collateral damage is going to be the impact on your children, the impact on your wife, the impact on you personally, in your health, maybe even your life. Because if Satan gets a hook in you with this depression, then he'll jump all over that.

And that's the other thing. Then the lies will start sounding like truth because you're so far down in the valley, you've lost touch with where you need to be. How many pastors, I would wonder, are afraid of reaching out for counseling because they are the shepherd, they're the counselor. In our minds, it's a sign of weakness.

And I don't want anybody to think that I'm not strong enough because they've always thought of me as the leader or a good guy or a strong guy. And all of a sudden, I'm struggling. And that's a lie of the enemy. I'm so glad you brought that up.

It is. And all of us are sitting here in that role and you're active and both of you guys have got churches. Pastors, if you're listening, we want to encourage you that the numbers don't indicate success and we know you're struggling right now because you're dealing with the physical, F-I-C-A-L, responsibility of your church.

You're dealing with the physical in terms of numbers that are there. And all these things are coming against you. And folks, if you're listening and you're in the flock of a particular church, you need to go up and encourage your pastor.

Let him know how much you love him or her and say, hey, we're so glad you're here and what you're doing and we're here with you. And encourage them. And pastors, if you're listening, we also want to say find that person that you can talk to, that you can trust, that will listen to you and be your sounding board without judgment or anything else. And they exist and it has to be somebody outside of your church.

Seek them out. We know that you're just like us. You're just at a higher calling in your role in the kingdom. So folks, we're going to take a break here in just a few seconds.

But Will, you look like you got something on your mind before we go into our break. I just want to say, speaking from the pastor's perspective, even a counselor needs a counselor. Yes. Amen. Amen. So folks, what we're trying to leave you with is do not walk this journey by yourself.

You need somebody with you. And God will provide that right person to pray about it. And that person will step right in when you least expect it. And God will provide that right person to pray about it. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Welcome back to ManTalk Radio.

We're visiting with Pastor Ken Cline from Greensboro, North Carolina. We're talking about just the funk that men tend to get into and then don't know where to go. And for lack of a better term, we want to give you some positive things and give you some guidance here on the second half of the show about how to deal with it and the things to watch out for. So Ken, during break you had a couple of things you were starting to talk about.

I think they're really going to help folks. This trash in, trash out thing and the timing of all that. So let's talk a little bit about that as well. Our society right now at this point in time, there are a lot of negatives. There are a lot of things.

All you need to do to prove that would be to watch the first 15 minutes of any newscast tonight on any channel because they're going to show you the stabbings, the shootings, the unrest, political mess, all these different things. And if that's the last thing you do in your day is watch the news before you go to bed, then that's going to be a negative. And that stuff, when you're around negative long enough, it's going to bring you down. And so for somebody that I would say that's finding themselves in a negative spirit, they're being negative about stuff. And I've got a great story about that I'll share with you guys in a minute.

That collateral damage that you mentioned, it's going to mount and get bigger and bigger. I would say one of the things you have to do is remove yourself from the negatives. Stop having negative conversations on break, at work, at the water cooler, outside, at the church. I went out on the front porch of our church Sunday and there were negative conversations going on about life. And I could tell that the guys that were out there were just struggling. I mean, they were angry. And that stuff just flowed into church.

It came right on in with them. I noticed that all through my church Sunday morning. And there was negative like I'd never seen before, and it was alarming. And I talked to my wife about it. So that story I was going to tell you real quick. I woke up with that negative feeling on Monday morning. And so my wife and I, we always have our devotions together in the living room.

We were both sitting there. And she mentioned to me, hey, make sure you pray for so-and-so. They got that interview. They said, well, good luck with that.

They're going to hate that even worse. And the first three things she said to me, I gave a very negative response. And she looked at me and she said, you are in a negative way. And I went into my journal notes and I looked and I noticed nothing that I had really written or really had talked about, nothing was really positive.

That was the day that I went out to my garage. I took 10 sheets of paper, 10 small cards. I wrote on 10 things Goliath was yelling out.

10 of my issues, some of them were big things, the COVID issue and the defunding the church that we talked about in the last week's thing. And just some of my stuff, some of my family stuff. I took those. I folded them twice. I put them in a little box.

I put duct tape around the box, opened the drawer out in the garage, stuffed it in the drawer and shut the drawer and just said shut up. There you go. I don't want to hear it. I'm not going to focus on it and it's not part of me. Then I wrote down 10 of my greatest blessings in life and I wrapped those around my wrist literally with sports tape and had them written on there with a Sharpie marker and several people during the day said, dude, what's up with your wrist? I said, oh, it's my reminders of the day. I wanted the voices of my praises to be louder than the voices of my Goliaths.

So that's one of those howsies. It has to be intentional. You have to make a strong effort to say I will not listen to the voices of the negative. I'm going to focus on the blessings.

I'm going to focus. It's interesting that if you looked at the 1 Samuel 17, we all know the David and Goliath story. David says something nine times.

I mean, I'm sorry, 11 times in that story. Two times he mentions Goliath, one about the Philistine foreskins and one other time he's asking questions about the giant, the Goliath. The other nine conversations were talking about the God of the armies of Israel and he's focused on God, his God and those armies. Nine times about God, two times about Goliath. Four times more focused on God than they were on the enemy.

And David showed me this young warrior, are you focused more on your God than you are on your Goliath in that story? So I think one of the big how-tos in this is what are you listening to? What are you focused on? Is it intentional? Is it daily? Is it often?

Are you hearing the voice of God more than you're hearing the voice of all the others? And what are you looking at? Yes. That's the other thing.

What are you looking at? Exactly. You know, as you were saying that, it just reminded me that we as God's people, if you're born again and you're walking in the truth, what you're going through is not easy. It's not easy.

And we're not saying it's easy. But God has given you all of the tools that you need in your toolbox to be able to offset any giant that the enemy throw at us. That's right.

Any fiery dart, any arrow. See, we have to come back to that. Jesus said in John 17, 17, he said, sanctify them in the word, in thy truth. Thy word is truth. And then he said, just as you sent me out into the world, I send you.

And that hasn't stopped. We're still, the message of Christ still has to go out, even in the midst of what we're going through now. Absolutely. So if you are sanctified in the word, then you are set apart to do something that will not only put, that you would store treasures up in heaven, but it would also benefit the people who you're talking to down here on earth. And see, we want to do those, do the edifying. We want to empowering, you know. We want to emphasize what God is showing us as men that we need to do so that we can have an impact on the earth. And I think about 12 men, 12 men had an impact on the entire earth, 12 men. And I'm saying now we got millions of born again believers. So our impact should be astronomical. Yeah, multipliers.

Yes. You were speaking Christianese there from that day. You said sanctified in the word, which is a great term. What does it mean that we need to be sanctified in the word?

Sanctified in the word, it means that when you get into the scripture, you set yourself apart unto God. He in turn will set you apart from the world because you can't set your own self apart. And that's number one. And number two, the seed have to be planted in you so you know what to do. And you can only do that in the word of God.

Yeah, and that key goes back to what we were just talking about a little bit ago. Most men are not doing what? They're not sitting in the word of God. They're not talking to God and they're not in the word of God. So if you're not in the word of God, you can't be sanctified, right?

That's right. And neither are they taking what they are learning from the house of God, the messages that the pastor are preaching and the Bible, and talking these things out with their family. So if men are listening and we're talking about being in the word of God, where would you tell if a man's been a born-again Christian for a long time and just never spent much time in the word, then you say, well, where do you start if the man's sitting out there? Where does he start?

Where do you put him? And you know what I'm going to say, Roy, because I am a lover. I am a lover of the small group.

And if you have heard this show, you've heard me say that like 15 million times. Get in the small group. The small group will help you tremendously. So that's where I would point the man. I would point the man into the small group. Find a small group within your church. Ask around. Do what is necessary, but get yourself in the small group. Well, that's a geographic place they should be positioned.

I totally agree with that. A tool to use would be like living the D life. The D life study thing would be a fantastic way to get them in a regular routine of reading their Bible, Scripture study, and meditation.

That's what I'm asking. Where do they start in the Bible? And I've always said when you read Scripture, the best thing you can do before you read it is to pray about it. Because I need a spirit. I need the Holy Spirit to lead me and guide me in the truth. Because I don't understand half of what I read until I pray and say, God, show me.

Hey, answer, fill in the rest of this old course for me, you guys, tonight. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. And the things of earth, when you're looking in the face of Jesus, when you're in the Word, when you're reading Scripture, when you're in the Father, you're abiding him. When you draw close to him, it says, you know, when you draw close to me, I'll draw close to you.

I love that course. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. And what? And the things of earth grow strangely dim.

The pandemics, the unrest, the stress, and everything else. I love, you know, when Patch Adams did the four finger thing in his movie years ago, he kept saying, you know, how many fingers, and everybody said, you're holding up four fingers. And I think it was Walt in the movie. And he said, you got to look past the problem to get to the answer. And when he looked in Walt's face past the four fingers, what happened to the fingers? They blurred. And he said, I see eight, Walt. And Walt said, that's a good answer.

Because he was looking in the face beyond the fingers. We need to do that as men. We need to look past the things of earth.

That's good. And the stuff that's going on. Look into an almighty, sovereign God. And draw close to him and get into the word.

Get in with your brothers. Whatever that takes. And the things of earth. These problems, these things that are causing the depression will grow strangely dim. That's where your joy. We talked in our last session too about we have to serve. Because when you refresh others, what happens? You get refreshed.

You too are refreshed. If you want to get out of the funk, go out and be a blessing to somebody. Start helping and serving other people. And that's modeling what Christ did, right?

He was serving others at all times. And if you need a place to start, men, reading the Bible, start at first John. First John, read first, second, third John, and then go to the Gospel of John.

And that's where you start reading. Will, we appreciate the guidance. Ken, it's been so, so, so good to have you again, Wes. Absolutely.

It's been great to be with you. Yeah. So we need to do this more often. So it's always good to have another bald headed guy sitting in the studio with us. Do I put my mask back on now?

Yeah, we've got to exercise proper caution so you've had your mask and your physical distance away from me. Will's... But tell them how to be born again, Roy. Well, the Father loved you so much that he sent his son Jesus Christ to die for you. If you recognize him as your personal Savior, admit being a sinner, repent from being a sinner, ask him into your heart, and then get into a body of fellowship and start serving him from this day forward. You too will be born again.

We'll see you on the other side of eternity. Your son's precious name. Amen. Amen.

Amen. As we wrap up today's show, be assured that TAWCMM, Talking and Walking Christian Men's Ministry, is building a community of men that are Christ followers with the desire to be servant leaders in their homes, communities, churches, and work environments. Check out our website for upcoming events and regularly scheduled meetings. Drop us a note for topics that you would like to have us visit in the future. Thank you for joining us on Man Talk today. Visit us at www.tawcmm.com. Men walking the talk.