Blowing Up Rocks

Hey, this is Jim Graham from the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we explore relationship instead of religion every week. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Man Talk, brought to you by TAWCMM, 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. Welcome listening audience to Man Talk Radio Podcast, and it is a beautiful time to be alive and thankful to God that he is doing great work in the ministry, Roy.

Amen, Will Hardy. It's good to see you, sir. And I started to say bah humbug just based on the start of our show. I know that's you, that's you.

Busting my chops again. But we got a great show in store for you listeners today. We got Joseph Warren joining us today. And Joseph, you are like life coach, business entrepreneur, dad, counselor.

You're just the all around guy. So welcome to Man Talk and we want to know, our listeners want to know who is Joseph Warren and what do you do and how did you get involved in what you're doing? Will and Roy, thanks for having me on the show. Look forward to contributing value to each of your listeners.

But mostly, I'm looking to speak to the one man listening right now who's ready to receive what God wants to give him and to take that step that he's been avoiding, whether it be in his marriage, his business, or his parenting. So a little bit about me. I'm a boring, ordinary guy from up north, New England. I got the silly accent.

You know, I, a lot of people may not take me seriously, depending on where you were raised. And, you know, I was raised on Long Island, so in New York, for all the people that don't know. And I was raised in a family of six kids, right? Three boys, three girls, very Brady Bunch.

I'm dating myself a little there. And, you know, my father is a Marine. And as a young man, you know, he went off to war, Vietnam War, if you recall that. And that war didn't turn out the way America thought it would.

We thought it would be a one and done, shorter than it was, and it turned into a, really a bloodbath of, you know, American soldiers overseas. And my father came home very angry on the inside. And he didn't know how to process all that anger. Because, you know, he felt out of control. He couldn't control his friends dying in front of him. He couldn't stop it.

He couldn't control it at the end of the war, when he had to fly in on the double helo helicopters into enemy territory, and, you know, open gunfire, slide down the ropes to retrieve the dog tags off of his fallen friend, just so that he could bring that one piece of back to their families of them, you know, for the families to remember them by him. You could just imagine all the anger and inner rage burning inside of my dad. He was a good man.

But back then, they didn't teach how to process that anger. What does a man do with that? That trauma, that PTSD, the tinnitus ringing in his ears for the rest of his life. So he came back and he had good intentions. He wanted to start a family and raise, you know, kids and he knew he was called to be a father and a husband. So he married my mother. She was right off the boat from Greece. He met her in New York City.

And she's authentic Greek, just like the olive oil. And, you know, they hit it off. And six kids later, you know, life was good. I grew up in a loving home.

And the reason why I'm going so far back and telling this story because I think it provides contact very much. Yeah, you asked who I am. Well, a lot of us find out who we are based on where we come from. Right. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So this I was born in this loving home with a father who had his anger pressed deep down on the inside.

Well, as we know, that's not sustainable long term. And eventually, you know, as kids, we started to come of age and test our boundaries and disobey and disrespect, you know, normal things that kids do. And my dad didn't know how to process that out of control feeling again, the loss of control in his own home, not that we were unruly by any means, we were raised like little military soldiers by a marine. But he would explode very often, just emotional outbursts, anger and rage, and just far more than what the situation is called for. So early on, I got to see a volatile image of masculinity, I got to see masculinity that was out of control.

A good man a good man with a tender heart, but didn't know how to process the other negative emotions. And then on top of that, in both of you know this already, your listeners know this already, how we see our human father. And how that relationship and experience goes, as children is typically how we project is what we project the image of our human father onto our Heavenly Father. So if we had a father who is explosive and judgmental and highly critical, well, guess how I saw God.

I saw him through the same lens, and he was a God to be feared. He was a tyrant, he was a dictator, run from him when I messed up. So as I became a young man and made poor choices, as some of us do, not all of us, but some of us, I was the prodigal son. I wasn't the older brother, I was the prodigal son. And I made those decisions and choices, and I felt guilt and shame and anger, and I wanted to run from God, and I did.

And I left God behind, and I went out into the business world because I wanted nothing to do with that kind of God. And I applied all that inner anger, and I left out a key part of the story here. At eight and a half years old, my mother couldn't take the outburst and the rage and the control and the anger and all that from my father, so she asked for a divorce. And our loving home turned into a war zone for two years, custody battles. And back then, it was very dysfunctional how they did in the court systems. I don't know if you remember this, but the attorneys would show up, and the kids, I was eight and a half years old, and I didn't understand what was going on. I thought my parents loved each other, they loved me, and all of a sudden they hated each other, and I wasn't sure if they loved me anymore. And they started to pit the children against the other parent, one parent, right? And it was back then you got to choose your parent. Who are you going to spend the rest of your life, your childhood, with Joseph?

Who do you pick? JOSEPH, how old were you when that happened? Eight and a half. Oh my goodness. And you were in the middle of your sibling group? Exactly correct.

Yeah, I was the fourth from the top, third from the bottom, right? So as a young boy, I didn't know how to process that. Are you kidding me? What do you mean you're not in love? Why not? Well, Joseph, it's adult things. You don't understand. I'm like, it's simple.

Just love each other, work it out. But, you know, here they were. And unfortunately my mom read a lot of feminism books back then, and she took it too far, and all of a sudden the enemies entered our home, darkness entered the home, and, you know, things were coming out of her mouth that no woman should ever say to her one flesh. Wow.

About his masculinity and just terrible, derogatory things about his identity. So you remember that well at such a young age? Oh yeah, I remember some of the language too, you know.

Yeah, for sure. So I remember, and this is not to discredit neither parent, right? Because I must honor my parents, and I love them both, and I've forgiven both for all the things that happened. They did the best they could with what they had, but there was real consequences to those choices that happened in our lives that set us back as children. And, you know, unfortunately, my mother, you know, she just wasn't in a good place.

I don't blame her. The enemy took over. He took over, right?

She created an axis. He came in, and the darkness spread, and he spoke through her. And over and over again, I had whispered in my ear at eight and a half years old, your father never loved you. It was all a lie.

He's been pretending your whole childhood. Pick me. Wow. Oh, that's terrible.

Will, yeah, Will and Roy, I mean, what do you do with that? You're a boy, right? And it was said so repeatedly and convincingly that it started to feel true over time.

This was over two years, right? You know, I thought to myself, I just felt betrayal. I think the first time I was introduced to that emotion of betrayal, and it was like, well, if my mother is right, and my dad's been lying to me and pretending he loves me, but he actually doesn't, well, then I feel betrayed by him. And I didn't know what to do with that. So I pressed it down. And if my mother was lying to me, and my father did love me, and she was making that up, what kind of sick thing would a parent say that?

How would they say that to their children if they actually loved them? Now, now, Joseph, during that pressing down point, did did eventually you have an explosive moment yourself? You know, I didn't have an explosive moment out towards the world. I had it internal.

No, okay. And I made an internal command to myself, probably in the subconscious. And I made a decision. And I didn't know back then it wasn't a conscious decision. But years later, after looking back and reflecting and sitting with God in silence, and him showing me, what was revealed to me was that at eight and a half years old, when I felt that kind of betrayal from both the two closest people in the world to me, my heroes, I didn't know how to process it. So I made an unconscious command to myself that I would close off my heart, and I would never let anyone hurt me like that.

Again, I would never let anyone in to that place. I would never love in that way again, and put my heart out there. Because I never wanted to feel that pain again, that betrayal.

So I made an unconscious decision never to love again, anyone. At such a young age, too. That's what's so so sad. It is, you know, an undeveloped mind, right? I'm still forming as a young boy. And many of your listeners can share and resonate with my story. I mean, it was a little different, but they had some traumatic event in their childhood, and they didn't know how to process it, because their minds not fully developed.

So what do they do, they create a meaning, their own meaning, like I did, to what sometimes is meaningless event. And, you know, they say, my dad doesn't love me or whatever, or my nobody wants to hear me or listen to me. I remember one time when my dad came, I came home from school, and I won the art award for the entire school. I had some talent God gave me, you know, for drawing, and I did pen and ink, and I was so proud. And I came home, dad, dad, look, look, I won. And my dad turned, and he was on a phone call, and that didn't stop me. So I was like, dad, dad, look, see what I did, see what I did? And unfortunately, he was like, son, I'm busy, I'm busy, can't you see I'm busy? Can't you see I'm busy? And I just persisted, and he kind of just pushed me away, and I'm right there.

I mean, I give a meaning that nobody, nothing I ever say anybody wants to hear. Joseph, can you hold that right now? We're getting ready to get to a break. TAWCMM would love to have you join their community of men for breakfast every first, third, and fifth Friday of every month. They have Bible discussions and fellowship after the best breakfast in town. The meeting location is at their gracious Host Church, First Christian Church in Kernersville, 1130 North Main Street in Kernersville. It all starts at 630, and they have a hard stop at eight o'clock. First time visitors eat for free.

Join your hosts, Will Hardy and Roy Jones Jr., a black guy and a white guy. Well, listeners, if you have joined us in the first half of the show, I hope and trust that you have really listened to Joseph's words. And as he stated, many of you listening perhaps could reflect and resonate on some of the things that he was sharing in his, you know, while he was a boy growing up at home.

So, we want to pick it up. Yeah, Joseph, I think you were just talking about when your dad was on the phone. You were trying to share your award that you'd just won for the drawing that you had done, and he was busy. And I didn't quite pick up, I don't think you had a chance to share what the tone was when he said, can't you see I'm on the phone or I'm busy.

Yes, exactly. And I'll just wrap up that story real quick. Just as an example of how, as children with undeveloped minds, we give meaning to meaningless events.

And typically back then we choose a very negative meetings that are very constraining or condemning to ourselves. So, you know, I walked in, I'm proud, I showed the art award, but my dad was on a very important call. I had no idea how important it was.

So when he just brushed me off and said, I'm busy, can't you see, right? I took it as a personal dig of what I have to say isn't important. As a matter of fact, nothing I say is ever important.

Nobody wants to hear what I have to say. And right there, I created a meaning, a limiting belief that really fed into my adult life, just from that one insignificant, meaningless event. My dad's on a phone call and I interrupted, right?

I didn't have the timing right. But that's just one example, right? So when you stack all these little examples that your listeners have in your lives, you know, this builds up in us as men. And I had all this anger and rage and I would press it down one after another, press it down into my soil. And I eventually, you know, at 19 years old, I started my own business. I built a seven-figure business and I took all that inner rage and anger and I pointed it into business. And anger is actually a very powerful fuel in business. You become like a sniper towards your target and your destination, but it's also destructive in your personal life, right?

So that's a very important distinction. So I built this seven-figure business with the money I had to pay for it. With a fuel of anger at age 19. And then I lost it all four and a half years later.

Well, actually, that's not accurate. I did it for four and a half years. I was a workaholic. I worked 110 hours a week. I had no social life.

Built it, made the fortune. Sent me retired at, I think I was 24 and a half. And then I retired for five years in Scottsdale, Arizona. And I partied it all away. Lost it all. My fortune, my fulfillment, and my faith for that matter. I left God.

Wanted nothing to do with my family. You know, moved out of state, all of that. And then started over from scratch, but I never regained my confidence. And I felt like a fraud and imposter. Like my earliest success was just a fluke.

So when was it that you had that turning point in your life to realize that the things that you were amassing without God, you know, literally has no meaning? Yeah. Yeah.

Great question. Thank you. And, you know, it definitely wasn't, it wasn't at that point, even when I lost it all, I just felt, you know, terrible. I felt like I had no reason to live. All my friends left when the money ran out. My girlfriend dumped me.

One dumped me on my birthday. It was just like, it was really bad. And I found myself alone in a foreign land with no money.

It was a very probable son. And before I could come back to my senses, I still needed to fall further. Joseph, if I may interrupt you right there, where were you at in your relationship with Christ during this journey? Or had you developed a relationship at that point? Were you still running on the secular side?

Yeah, good question. So when I left home and went into the business, I left God behind and became agnostic, pretty much atheist. And I worshiped three new gods, the God of money, success, and pleasure. And I achieved all three.

I am. And I achieved all three. I achieved all three. And I started using porn, sex and anger to deal with chronic disappointments for multiple failed businesses. After that, after that one early success, I had 10 failed businesses in a row.

And that just stacked. And eventually I became addicted, especially to the sex. And I had total loss of control in that area of my life. And no matter how much I tried, I couldn't, I couldn't quit.

And what age were you during that time period? Yeah, so you know, I'm skipping ahead here, okay? Because life never goes in a straight line. It never does. Right?

Big squiggly. And so this was, you know, after I had lost everything, bottomed out, wanted to take my own life. God gave me a fresh start in Tampa, Florida, moved in with my sister, started from rock bottom, and then it was 10 years of 10 failed businesses climbing back. And, you know, eventually, you know, that turning point, going back to your original question, was when I felt this prompting from the Holy Spirit inside, saying, Come spend time with me, come spend time with me. And I wanted nothing to do with God.

At that point, nothing at all. I actually blamed him for all the mess that, you know, in my life, even though I was the one that created it with my own decisions, but I didn't want to take responsibility because that looked like work to me. And, you know, I ended up the top thing just nag them and come spend time with me. And eventually I said one of my most honest prayers, Will and Roy. I looked up to heaven and I was like, What?

What do you want? And you see, I'm busy trying to rebuild my life. I don't have time to spend with you. And the prompting just persisted and I kept resisting. And eventually it got so bad that I was like, Fine, you want me to come spend time with you, God? I'll tell you what, here's the deal. Here's all my bills. Provide me enough money to pay off all my bills, and I'll come spend time with you.

Until then, I don't want to hear from you. And I was arrogant and obnoxious. And God met me right there in that place of darkness. Just like the prodigal father. If you take one step towards him, as soon as he sees you, he runs open arms. And right there, he ran to me and two weeks later, two of my successful friends, one an attorney, one a plastic surgeon, both hired me for life coaching, which I had never done before. And I was so taken back. My life's a wreck.

Why would you want me to coach you? But they saw in one area of my life in connection and relationships with girls. I was fairly successful and they were not. They had the money, they had the cars, the houses, but they had no real connection with other humans. They went home by themselves, ate dinner by themselves, watched TV, and then went back to work every day.

And they had no one to share life with. And they're like, can you coach us? And I was like, well, I'll tell you what, do you want me to coach you? It's going to be this amount of money. And they're like, wow, that's a lot of money. And I'm like, wow, those are big goals.

So either you want this or you don't, don't waste my time. And they said, we're in. And they both wrote me big checks. And with those two checks and the little savings I had, I was able to take off for eight months and pay off all my bills. Wow.

Two weeks after. Your prayer was answered. My prayer was answered. And a big lesson I want to convey to all the listeners, all the men, is God is not looking for perfect words when you pray. He's looking for an honest heart. He wants to hear the honesty, even if it shows up raw and real and ugly.

That's what he wants. Remember King David prayed ugly prayers to God. He also prayed incredibly eloquent prayers to God. But man, when he felt God wasn't keeping his end of the deal, he was in his face about it.

And what did God say about him? Here's a man after my own heart. Absolutely. What a beautiful thing, right? So as men, so many times we don't get real, we don't get raw, we don't get honest with God. And we just hide the rocks in our hearts that block us.

We keep stumbling over them. This is why we don't have connection with them. Real connection, right? Because we never stay what's really standing in between us. Yeah, we don't get real real with each other is another part of the problem. Men are just... Absolutely. If we can't get real with our maker, how do we get real with our wife and our kids and our peers, right?

As men. So, you know, eventually my buddy called me out because I went in, I started partying the money and renting all these big homes and stuff. And I wasn't keeping my end of the deal at the bottom line. And my buddy, godly friend, said, hey, Joseph, you remember that prayer you told me about? I was like, yeah. Well, it looks like God delivered his end of the bargain.

How you doing with yours? It was a punch in the throat. I still had a conscience, you know? And I was like, all right. So I canceled my next trip. And I showed up at the church, my church right down the street from me. And there was a little quiet chapel. And I sat on one of the wood benches and I was like, God, I'm here. I'll commit to an hour a day, every day for the next two weeks. I'll show up right here. If you want to talk, let me know.

Otherwise I'll sit here bored and pissed off. And God met me there. Wow. Because he's merciful. And over the next few weeks he started to put men in my life that were godly men. And they started to teach me, you know, how to pray differently. These were my Southern Baptist brothers, really good men. And they taught me what it looked like to have a real relationship with God and to experience him as a father, not a tyrant and a dictator.

Not that his justice is not there, but his mercy and compassion always come first. And man, I sat there an hour a day for two weeks and the two weeks became eight months, an hour a day, every day for eight months. I showed up at that church and I sat with God and he healed all the wounds from my dad, my childhood, my mom, my daddy wounds. I had mommy wounds. I had God the father wounds. I had broken relationship wounds. I had addiction, rocks, like all these rocks.

Rocks are head trash, right? All those things we spoke about. All the rocks I was carrying, God just started demolishing one after another. And it was effortless. I just had to sit there and be still and know that he was God and let him do the demolition. Well, what an amazing story, Joseph. And we're going to pick this conversation up next week with part two. But Joseph, as we roll into the end here, we've got just about 35, 40 seconds. I want to thank you for taking time with us and sharing your heart and your story. I want to learn a little bit more in our next program about the relationship with Christ, when that really became real, as you spent these eight months with God, when that really became the connector.

And I maybe made that decision early in life before you walked away, when everything went away. But we look forward to talking more in next week's show. And we've got Joseph coming back. We do want to thank you so much for joining us. Absolutely, Joseph. And we also want to talk about, too, how do you direct that anger?

How do you redirect it? So, we'll be back. 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.