This week, I’m thrilled to welcome my good friend Paul George to the show. Paul is not just an incredible author and speaker; he’s a man dedicated to helping others discover the joy of living a life rooted in faith.

In this episode, we get into the nitty-gritty of what it means to live as a man of God, facing our wounds and seeking true healing. We talk about everything from Paul’s latest book, Holy Grit, to his work with The Art of Living — a nonprofit that serves not just churches and parishes, but a wide range of organizations dedicated to making a difference.

But it’s not all serious talk—we also share some laughs as Paul brings a little piece of Louisiana up to Memphis, surprising me with some authentic boudin and cracklins. We chat about everything from the best Cajun food to our mutual love for the show Swamp People. If you’ve ever wondered how alligator hunting connects to a man’s spiritual journey, you’re in for a treat!

We also dive into some exciting news about our upcoming Restored Men’s Healing Conference, happening this November 14-16 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. If you’ve been feeling the call to deepen your faith, heal old wounds, or just need a weekend of fellowship with other men, this event is for you. We’ll be teaming up with the JPII Healing Center to offer talks, prayer, and plenty of opportunities to connect with God and other men on the same journey.

Register for the Restored Men’s Healing Conference here

 

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✈️ Join us on one of our 2025 pilgrimages:

March 10-15: Visit the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico with Father Zachary, a fantastic priest and friend. This affordable trip is perfectly timed for most school spring breaks.

May 12-23: Join Father Larry and me on a spiritual journey to the Holy Land. Walk in the footsteps of Christ and experience an unforgettable pilgrimage.

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Welcome back to the pew, everybody. I’m your host, John Edwards. I’m excited for all of you to come back.

To this week’s show, because I have a special guest joining me. If you’ve been following us for a while, you know that from time to time, we have a friend come through a fellow evangelist or a priest or whoever it may be. And this week’s no different. Paul George, a good friend of mine is here in studio with me here.

This week I will bring him up in just a second, but first I want to tell you a little bit about him. So Paul founded the art of living, which is a nonprofit that serves not Churches and parishes and all those things but also other nonprofits. He is an author. He’s written Holy Grit This is his newest book through Ave Maria Press that came out about a year ago You can grab it anywhere on Amazon and all kind of sites out there with Ave Maria and everything else.

He also wrote Rethinking Happiness which was his first book, which was also a great book to read guys. If you’re out there looking for something that’s going to lead you to be happier, to be a better man, to get you in the right place get you more focused on virtue and holy living. These are books you should check out.

Paul also speaks. He travels the country and does public speaking. Parish missions. He speaks a lot about marriage, speaks to men, and does a lot of things out there for the church. He’s a guy I’ve admired from a distance for quite a while now. And as God would have it, he’s brought us together to work on a project for the JP2 Healing Center.

Paul’s been on their board there for a number of years. I know many of you are familiar with the JP2 Healing Center. I talk about them constantly on here because of the relationship I have with Dr. Bob and Sister and Bart and everybody else over there. And I’ve been leaking out a little bit and teasing that I was going to be doing these men’s healing conferences.

Alongside someone and that someone is Paul. So Paul’s up here this week. He’s helping me and we’re looking at this conference and kind of getting everything ready for our first one. That’s going to take place in November in Ann Arbor, Michigan. We’re going to talk about that more in a second, but without further ado, I wanted to bring up my good friend, Paul George.

Paul, thanks for being here, bud. Yeah, man. Great to be with you and great to be in the studio. I’ve seen it, online. Yeah. So it’s good to be here in Memphis. Yeah. I drove up from Louisiana. I know you did straight up through the SIP. And I picked up some food for you on the way. Yeah. Okay. Now, what did I bring you?

You brought me boot and you got it. Did I get it right? Yeah, we practiced that. We practiced it. Yeah. We messed up the show the first time. So I had to re say it again, but Buddha and crackling. Yeah. Cracklins. That’s like a, one of the famous. Staples in Louisiana. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. How was it? It was awesome, man It was good. Like I didn’t want to come in here and do this show I want to sit there eat that whole box man, but I know you want barbecue. So I’m trying to yeah, it’s a switch It’s a trade off. That’s right, if I’m gonna be a Memphis we’re gonna do barbecue, but I’m gonna bring you Louisiana food Yeah I appreciate that and if I ever come down there and I’m with you then you Folks in Louisiana better stock up before I get there because I will eat every crawfish or anything else you have down there.

I love Cajun food. Memphis has been blessed to have some people opening up like a couple of different Cajun restaurants and trucks and man, I can’t get enough of it. My wife and kids are like, can we please not eat crawfish for breakfast, lunch and dinner for the next six weeks? So dude, I’m, I am indebted for you for that great food and thank you for bringing it.

Besides the accent. Yes. guys. guys. You’re an honorary Louisianian now. There you go. Okay, there you go. An honorary Kenyan. I’ll give you one of them. Yay. Seriously. And I’m a big fan of Swamp People, man. I love that show. My, my son and I have watched alligator hunting forever. It just, even though the same thing happens every time, I can’t stop watching it.

It’s real. Yeah. It’s real. I couldn’t imagine doing that, man. And the thing that gets me and you probably are like, this is probably a big deal to you either, but some of those episodes, they’d be like, we got to go over here in this little area where people are swimming. Cause there’s like a 14 foot alligator.

And I’m thinking, see, like I would have a pool, like I wouldn’t be in the swamp swimming, right? I just, if there’s something, same thing with the ocean, I’m six foot eight, I’m not venturing that far out there. Because you only need two or three feet of water for something to take a big bite out of you So I don’t get it man kids.

I guess it’s just part of growing up down there. You’re part of growing up You just swim where there’s water. Yeah, and you just assume that the alligators will we’ll Leave you alone. Yeah, they’ll leave you alone. You’re a big guy. I don’t know man I might look like a big chicken wing or something to him.

I don’t know That’s right, they just you knows man, so I’m gonna leave them alone man. I’m gonna leave them alone But man, I’m glad you’re here. So I talked about a little bit of here in the beginning. You’ve done so many great things for men out there. You’ve been working with men in marriages and stuff for so long.

You and I met for the first time a few years ago and I was still running virtual Catholic conference as one of the partners. And my job was the speaker concierge. So I chased down speakers, got videos, asked people to help us, that kind of stuff. And you were the one of the ones, one of the ones on our men’s conference and you give a great video and you and I got to talk a little bit then I remember you were like, Hey man, so what do you do?

And, I said I do this and I do this just got in the pew thing. And it was in its early stages. And we talked about cool, man. Maybe we can get up to Memphis sometime, or I can come to your parish. And we were talking about those different things and So yeah, here we are a few years later, you were up in Memphis a couple of years ago at Father Robbie’s parish.

And so man, I never thought that you’d be sitting here in the studio and we’d be on the verge of doing some great work together, but it’s the way God works, right? It’s crazy. If you would’ve, told me then that we would be working together and particularly on this project, I would’ve been like, I don’t, I don’t know I don’t even know if I’m ready for this project five years ago.

And if you would’ve thought five years ago, like where. The pew ministry would be where you would be working with men all over the country and how your story would take off and the journey that you’ve been on in your own life and what God has prepared you for, five years ago, whatever it was, I was in Memphis.

It was the last event I did before the shutdown for COVID right before COVID hit. Yeah. And I didn’t know and got home and everything just got canceled, not long after that. You guys launched this online conference. We met on the phone, but we really never met in person No, we just heard about each other and whatnot And so it never crossed my mind that we would be working together and particularly on something so cool as this.

Yeah. And even just a couple of years, what, last year we were both in Atlanta doing separate events and we got what that, that thunderstorm rolled through there and you and I were sitting in a restaurant for four hours together. That was right after Bob had said, Hey, like individually to us, separately, I want to bring back men’s healing conferences through the John Paul II Healing Center.

If folks want to know more about their work, you can go to jp2healingcenter. org and find all they offer. They offer marriage stuff and Undone for Women, which is the complimentary conference to what we’re going to be putting on for men. They have priest things. They do all kinds of stuff.

Even for religious leaders, superiors and things now, they’re doing tremendous work. But you and I were sitting there and it was a beautiful Atlanta day. Sun was out. We’re both like, man, we’re going to be home at six 30 tonight. It’s going to be awesome. And then I don’t know, it was like a scene from the 10 commandments or something like the clouds, like just the sky clouded up, it got dark.

All the planes were grounded, but here we were in this massive airport and the chances of us being in the same city at the same time. And we got to kick this around a little bit and had a meeting with Bob after that and said, all right, Bob, let’s hear it. And so here we are now. And I’m so excited because obviously Bob is, it’s been, he really has been very trusting of us.

He may be rethinking that after this episode. I don’t know, but because I know we’ll listen to it when he sees us on here, but but yeah, he was, he’s just been very trusting. He’s allowed us to just, he’s given us some guidelines and said, I want it to be your heart and your, what God’s, calling you to and your special gifts and where he works in your heart.

And that’s been very freeing. And so that’s what we’re doing here this week, here in my house in the studio is just praying together and see what the Lord wants to do and where we’re going to go. So we both thought let’s jump on the show while you’re here and let’s talk about it a little bit.

Share with men, like what’s, what we’re thinking and just what men need right now. We need healing and men. Sometimes that’s like a little, get away from me, kind of word for men because we don’t want to be vulnerable. We don’t want to admit that there’s something wrong with us.

Cause that means there’s a chink in our armor and we’re not one man armies that we’re told we’re supposed to be. But that’s also why we find ourselves in so many things that we don’t need to be involved in. Healings where we, The Lord wants to heal all of our lives, and that’s what He came for.

I know we want to talk about that a little bit today, so I’m excited to jump in that with you. Yeah. We’ve been meeting a lot on the phone or over zoom. Yeah. We finally just said let’s just get in the same room, hash out, some of this talk, pray together bring some crackling, bring some boot in crackling, and hurry, this conference, the first one will be in November and we really want to pray into this and prepare for it.

You would have told me five years ago when we met that, yeah. I would be doing a conference on healing. I’d have been like, I’m not ready for that. But God has led each of us in our own journeys and stories in our own healing journey to offer men some hope in healing. Like we’re still on the healing journey.

I, I’ve, I experienced Christ over 30 years ago and I’ve been in this ongoing conversion and healing in my life. And I still am. It was funny. It’s not long ago, I just felt like I just, hit a wall. So I call Dr. Bob. He’s a friend of mine. And here I am year, like at my age, I’m having a conversation with him and we’re praying on the phone about something that God wants to heal me with.

Or in and for and I’m like, and the first thought I had is I cannot believe I’m still dealing with healing stuff in my life at this age. And then my next thought is, man, thank God. Yeah. I’m still dealing with this, that God loves me so much that he wants to set me free. Yeah. Even at my age, he cares that much about me.

Yeah. You don’t feel that way. No, I do, man. I do. It’s dude I constantly step on rakes in my life. That’s probably a good way to say it. I’m like, man, I’m feeling really good. I’m healed. Like this stuff’s working. Thanks Bob. Thanks for the one prayer session. I’m all better, and then something happens and I just completely Revert to a man I used to be in the former life not in the doing drugs and stuff But just in the way I speak to my wife sometimes and places when things bother me like something I’ll just see a guy and I’m like, I don’t like him and I’ve never even talked to him or met him in my life there’s places of brokenness.

We all have yeah and unforgiveness, you know Sometimes I still have conversations with my dad where I leave Wounded, where I’m hurting some and I’m like, man, I thought Bob and I worked through that. We prayed through that and we, I forgave my dad and I thought that was, I was completely healed.

And yeah, I was healed in a couple of things that we worked on, but there’s so much in us. And I’ll tell people like one guy told me one day, he goes, I don’t understand. He goes, I’ve got, I’ve lost 30 friends in the last year. He sent me an email, said that, and he goes, what’s wrong with them. That’s what it said in the email.

I said, man, thank you for emailing. This probably is not going to be something you want to hear, but there’s one common denominator in those 30 people in relationships and it’s you. And maybe the Lord is calling you to look interiorly at things that may be, wounds or stuff like that. And I got an email back, there’s an all caps like blankety blank you and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I was like, all right, man the Lord be with you. Peace be with you. But a couple of months later I got another email and he said, Hey, I just want to say I’m sorry for the way that I spoke to you or typed to you, whatever. And he said I started to really pray and think about what you said.

And he goes, I have never had a good relationship with my father. And I thought that I never could make him happy. I was always seeking affirmation. And so what I, where the Lord took me in those prayers was. He took me back through all these broken relationships and where I lost them was in the beginning.

A lot of people liked me, but then I started getting intimidated by the things they could do better than me or the, the gifts they had that I didn’t. And so I got very arrogant and I had to be the best at everything and I had to have the best stories and I had to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he said, And then I realized that’s when I push people away, because people are like, dude, I can’t, I’m like, I don’t want to be around somebody that’s going to one up me all the time or, and so we never know, we go through life and a lot of times we can think what’s wrong with everybody else.

But the real question is what needs to be worked on in me? And that’s the hard thing. A lot of guys, and I’m sure you’ll agree with this, I hope you do. A lot of guys will say like, all right, what can we do out there to fix things? And they’ll pick up a broadsword and they’ll go out there and start whacking stuff in the world because it’s easier when you actually have to fight the battle of your own heart.

That’s the hard stuff, man, when you really got to look and say this arguing with my wife. It’s not just my wife, it’s me. The reason my kids don’t get along with me is not because something’s wrong with my kids. It’s most of the time because something is not right in me. And there’s places that men, we’ve been told we can’t go there.

We’ve been told that nope, nope, men don’t do that. You just figure it out or you shove it down and then we wonder why. Suicides at a higher rate than it’s ever been. Divorces at a higher rate than it’s ever been. Alcoholism, opioid abuse is higher than it’s ever been because shoving it down and trying to one man army it yourself is not the way the Lord wanted it done.

And it’s certainly not a way it’s going to fix anything. Yeah. We were talking about it as we were just talking through the notes from this conference and looking at it, one of the, one of the main questions in the heart of every man is. This question of, am I adequate? Yeah. Am I enough?

Yeah. Do I have what it takes? Am I enough? And am I adequate in my marriage, in my fatherhood, in my work? Am I enough? Yeah. And it is this question, like I, there is not one. Man out there who’s void of that question. There’s not one man who looks in the mirror, flips his hair back.

Every morning is I’m the best. I have it all. I’m awesome. I’m awesome. I have no weaknesses. That’s just not the truth, right? Yeah, but there is this core question in our heart. Do we have what it takes? And the only way we can get to the real answer of that is. to come to know the truth of who God says we are.

Amen. And when we talk about healing. We’re basically talking about what are the obstacles from that question to believing who God is. And those obstacles in between that are really the things that we need healing in our own life. Where are we broken? It’s all different for all of us based on our stories and our background and our mistakes and our sins and the trauma we’ve dealt with or whatever the case may be, right?

The solution is the same is that God loves us more than anything else. Yeah And he wants to speak that truth into those areas of our lives that have been hurt or wounded or broken and so that when you know when you talk about healing you’re like guys are like, ah, no, Like God wants to set us free in the areas that were broken.

That’s what healing is. Yeah, and that’s I mean who doesn’t want that? Yeah, no everybody and that’s why I love Isaiah 61 Like where the where Jesus is just I mean it’s about Jesus the prophecy and he talks about he comes to Comfort those who mourn to free those in prison to break the chains that bind.

It’s just Every time I read that, I just, my heart soars because that’s the gospel. A lot of people think the gospel is there’s some guy that everybody thought was really holy and the son of God. And he wants to come and make your life difficult because he wants you to do all these hard things that are impossible for people.

And that’s not the gospel. Like the Lord wants, he knows that you heard, he knows that you’re broken. And because of the fall and things we’re going to talk about in this conference and the repercussions of those things, which a lot of men don’t even think about, like, why am I the way I am? And they think it’s just like something that they’ve done wrong.

But in fact, it’s. We’re all descendants of parents that fell to sin and now we all suffer consequences because of it. And there’s a truth to that there, there was a divine intimacy and a friendship that was lost in that moment. And that’s what we’re searching for in our heart. A lot of guys feel like Jesus is just coming to basically overlord me, right?

To nope, that’s bad, nope, that’s good, I can’t do anything fun anymore, it’s all that. And it’s a really immature way to look at Christianity because what Christ wants, says it over and over again, I’ve come, I no longer call you slaves, I call you friends, like this language he speaks to us is all about healing.

And he went up to people and said, do you want to be healed? What do you want from me? And these aren’t things where the Lord is saying, this is what I demand of you. Now, yes, there are demands to Christianity. You have to change your life and live the way that you’re called to live. But the Lord shows up and he’s always inviting.

Not with a, with a. Not trying to bust down the door with a battering ram, but asking inviting us to open the door to him and letting him come into these places that quite honestly, Paul, we’re ashamed of, we’re hurt, we’re embarrassed of, we’re, we’ve made bad decisions and guess who gets in those?

It’s not the Lord, it’s the evil one. And that’s how so many guys wind up believing there’s no hope and that they’re a piece of garbage and they’ll never be any better than they are. But the Lord has that small whisper where he’s always in our hearts and he’s always trying to call us back to these different things to the moments of no, I want to free you.

I want to heal you. There’s not pain and torture and loss, but with coming with me there’s hope and peace and joy and mercy and grace. And that’s what he wants to give to us. So this idea that we have as men that healing is some torture. It’s look, it can be painful, right? It’s not like you’re going, all right, Lord, heal me.

Good. I’m gone. It’s not a finger prick. It’s a lot of times it’s a, it’s an incision, right? And it’s going deep and sometimes we need a lot of anesthesia to get into that place. But those are a lot of healing references, medical references I’m throwing in for whatever reason, but.

But at the day, the Lord wants to come and redeem us and restore us. And that’s what this whole thing is about. Yeah. A hundred percent. The four main things that we’re going to flow through for the conferences, we’re going to start with the God created us whole. Like in union with him, he created us good, we’ll go through just the story of salvation, salvation, history, wholeness, brokenness, redemption, and restoration.

Yeah. And we were talking about that as we’re still on that journey. Just cause you’re like, understand God’s forgiveness and you’ve been redeemed doesn’t mean that you don’t still struggle with being broken and God doesn’t continue to move you on that journey.

Like I was saying, like just recently I’m on the phone dealing with something, right? Like we’re constantly on this journey, it’s important for us to understand that. God created us good. Yeah, like he really did, you know that’s really hard for me to accept Because I look at my life and I’m like man, I don’t know if I’m that good, yeah, but God created us good and you’re right like we’re descendants of fault people who fell who were tempted to By the enemy and they fell for it.

Yeah, and we inherited that sin, right? But that’s not the end of the story. That’s the beauty of it I think a lot of times, at least for me when I’m living in my biggest lie, I’m living in the lie that I am Not redeemed like I’m still broken and there’s no hope for me like And when we’re hopeless the enemy’s got us yeah, like you’re no good you’ll never get through this there’s no hope for you.

Like you’re always gonna be this way You’re not good enough. You’re not adequate for the task you’re gonna go home tonight with your wife and your kids and you’re gonna feel like You can’t go to toe with them. You’re just, you don’t add up, then you go to bed at night, you lay down and you’re like, man, what am I doing with my life?

Yeah. Why don’t I have this? These people have that I should be further along in my life. And that’s what he does. He jumps in there. And he continues to just get into those places and that’s I don’t know about you paul But I mean i’ll tell people all the time like there’s times where i’m out here doing work and we’ll help some people or something will go well And then all of a sudden the doubt will come in my mind and do 15 20 minutes later Like I feel physically ill because i’m sitting there and i’m like it’s just the enemy comes to rob steal and destroy And that’s what he does constantly is like trying to tear you down to the point where you give up right where you’re just because Why?

Because if you look at it, the way God chose to show his love to the world, it’s through the family. And the family is an image of the Holy Trinity, right? So God loves the son so much that there’s a third in the Holy Spirit. Man loves woman so much there’s a, third, fourth of your Catholic, twelfth, whatever, kid or whatever.

But he knows that. And so everything in our world today is aimed at destroying. The family. You look at same sex attraction, gender dysphoria divorce, pornography, all these things are an attack on that. And so at the head of that family is man is men, right? And this is the place that God put us.

Now in our world today, there’s a lot of men that aren’t living in that place. And why is it right back to what you’re saying? I don’t think I’m good enough. I don’t deserve it. I don’t belong. God possibly can’t love me. You don’t know what I’ve done. He couldn’t forgive me. And what I would say here is, it’s just a little preview of the conference that, that speaks to my heart, that helps me come out of that, is you met my son Jacob a minute ago, man.

He’s my only son. He’s an apple in my eye. I love that boy. He does a lot of stupid stuff sometimes that disappoints me dude, why in the heck did you do that? Why did you think it was okay to leave that football stadium and to walk two and a half miles to somewhere we didn’t know where you were going?

And not tell us and we had to find it, anything that’s probably the least of what a lot of kids have done and what I did in my life. But there’s a lot of things that he does. It’s just dude, but he’s not stupid. He made a bad decision. And that’s why we always have to be careful in our language when we talk to our kids.

But I think about that. And no matter what he’s done, take the worst thing he’s ever done. And if I look at that, there was never a moment where I said, I don’t love Jacob. Like I hate that kid and I don’t want him in my life. Never a moment. But that’s exactly what the devil will tell you. God says about you, right?

And we believe it. But if you look at it like there’s nothing Jacob could ever do, I don’t care if he murdered somebody in his life, I would still love him and I would still be there for him. And that’s the way the Lord is to us. But it’s so hard to see when you’re in these places. And then you don’t even know why you’re in those places.

I hurt. It’s like going to the doctor and saying, I hurt, but I don’t know why. When we need healing, a lot of times there’s bones sticking out. Like you break your arm and there’s a bone sticking out. It’s pretty obvious for somebody to go. That’s why you hurt. Yeah. But with it, with interior healing, that’s not always the case.

You know why most men die before women is because. We’ll have pain all over our body. We will not go to the doctor. When did you start feeling like you’re we’re having pain in your chest is like a year ago.

And so there’s something in a guy that’s like adverse to pain, physical pain, emotional pain, admitting it. I can walk around just with pain is ah, I just hurt, but I’m not going to go see a doctor. I just don’t have time. It’ll stop on its own. It’ll stop on its own.

The same thing is with our own spiritual and emotional pain. Like it is there, it lays there and it comes out in various forms and behaviors or thoughts or patterns or whatever the case may be. And we just say, Oh, that’ll go away. Or that’s not a big deal. And there are tons of Catholic men who go to Church, they go to mass.

They even go to confession who. Who are living in this lie of the enemy that God can’t set you totally free from this bondage, right? From believing that you don’t have to live this way your whole life, right? So we can also believe that Jesus came and died for us and our behaviors never change because there’s something in us that we’re not allowing, the divine physician to come in and do surgery on.

Because it was like, Oh, I don’t have time for that. Or how do I do that? Where do I go for that? Sure. We have all the excuses and some of them are good excuses. I get it because I’ve made them, but at the end of the day yeah, like God wants to actually, like, heal us, fix us, in areas that we don’t want to be in.

We don’t think we, we can be, what would our life look like if we actually just let him, take us under the knife, I was thinking about when you were saying that, that image, I’m sure we’re all familiar with where Jesus is at the door. And there’s not a door handle on the outside, the door handle’s on the inside.

He’s never going to force his way in and that’s the thing we have to understand. Why doesn’t Jesus just come in and just fix everything? Because one, he’s not a magician, he’s not a, it’s not a magic trick. And second of all, he’s not going to come where he’s not invited. That’s the thing. Like why is that?

Because we, everything was perfect in the beginning, right? We had this divine friendship. Everything was good. And we made the wrong choice, right? And for sin and death to come into the world then that was the repercussion of that choice. But with choice, there has to be two sides. There can’t be good without evil, and so we have to have free will. Now we have free will. That’s basically what we received. And when we bit the bit into the fruit, the apple there, And now in that free will, God’s not going to force himself on us, right? It’s cause that’s not love, when I know I’m coming in there and I’m going to have my way with you is not love, right?

That’s not love. He waits to be invited in. And unfortunately, so many men, because of the way the world has told us what it means to be a man is so dead wrong. Like it just do it by yourself. Be a one man army. Don’t have feelings and emotions. Don’t have pains. Totally. And then we go, why are so many guys drunk all the time?

Why are so many guys like on drugs all the time? Why are dudes so stuck in porn? Yeah. Why is it an epidemic? And even video games now, like there’s guys sitting in their basement at 48 years old playing video games in their underwear. Why? Because they’re trying to save the girl.

They’re trying to be the hero. All these things our hearts long for, but they’re putting it in the wrong place. The latest statistic is that loneliness. Is the third major killer of men. Yeah. It’s an epidemic. Loneliness. Yeah. Okay. You don’t become lonely because you’re doing good. Someone has convinced you to be isolated.

Yeah. You’ve convinced yourself the enemy is taking you along, this long ride of just isolation. So it’s all these things that. Pile upon men, we’re trying to go after the issue in a good way because we’re walking through it. So it’s not like we’re sitting here and be like, Hey guys, follow us.

We, we got it all together. Here’s our 12 step plan. Like this whole conference is we’re going to be sharing like our own stories, our own heart, our own healing. I remember, done ministry and spoken, like you all over and years ago, I wake up in the morning.

I can have, I could say my prayer and I could get in my truck and I could go to work without thinking twice about it and be like, I got it today. And I remember that same day pulling into my driveway and before I opened the garage thinking, I don’t know if I can handle what’s inside. Yeah, man, I’ve been there.

Like I can handle what’s out here, but I don’t know if I can handle what’s in there. Like I don’t know if I have what it takes to go inside that house. And be the husband and father and deal with the chaos and the crying or the feelings, or I don’t know if I could do that. And I remember I would sit in my driveway and I’d pray and I’d take a deep breath, it was almost like a firefighter running into a fire and the whole time I’m thinking, I don’t know what I’m doing.

I don’t know how to do this. I don’t have what it takes, and I’m thinking, Lord, how can I, like, how can you move me into a place where I can walk into that house the same way I can walk into work? Yeah. Totally just feeling like you have my back. Like I have what it takes. I’m adequate for this, even though like I don’t have the blueprint, that healing journey.

Like now I can drive up at home and I don’t worry. I don’t think twice about walking in that door, no matter how my wife’s doing or my kids are doing what’s going on. Like I, so that’s. God can take you from here to there and it may take a long time. It’s okay. Sure. But there’s freedom.

There really is. There’s there’s real freedom on the other end of this, that ability to like rest. Yeah. Yeah, and that’s the thing, man, like it’s, there’s somebody who wants you not to have that and there’s somebody that wants you to have it. And that’s why when temptation comes around or things like that, there’s somebody in your ear whispering, Oh, what, you can always go get mercy.

You can always whatever, just do what you want to do and you’ll be happy if you just do those things. Then there’s the Lord saying quietly don’t there’s a better way and you’re happy. That’s not real happiness. That’s he’s seeking to rob and steal and destroy. The only thing that’s going to bring you happiness is to learn to love well, to learn to be self sacrificing, to learn to put others first in your life.

Everything that we learn in the gospel and As men, we think man, that sounds really jacked up. If I don’t get what I want, I’m going to be happy. That doesn’t sound right. If I, and so we keep putting up these obstacles, but the Lord’s saying no, when you continue to walk down that path, then you’re going the wrong way and you’re never going to be the man you want.

And so honestly, our choices we make when we listen to the wrong voice fuel our inadequacy even more. Because we move further away from Christ and the only reason you’re able to love your wife and your kids and deal with the crying and the noise and everything else is because you’re allowing Christ to live through you.

That’s what it’s all guys are like man, if I give my life to the Lord, dude, I’m going to lose everything, and it’s like, why do we? Continually count the cost instead of looking towards the reward, right? There’s things I cannot do on my own that my heart is screaming to be want to be able to do to love My wife man, and not so she’ll go to bed with me, but because it’s what I want to do, right?

It’s what she deserves. It’s what God would want his daughter to have from me, right? And how do I do that on my own you don’t? You don’t you can’t there’s no way to possibly love people the way that you’re called to love without the lord being at the Center of your life. How do you get them in there?

Your heart if you just you know, we’re talking about healing It takes place in the heart you know the lord comes and he’s trying to get into your room and You’ve got so much baggage from all the things you think Wrongly about yourself or the mistakes you’ve made and the shame you’ve carried and the lord’s trying to get in But you’ve become a hoarder in your life you’re never forgiving yourself. You’re never letting yourself off the hook. You have every mistake you’ve ever made in that life in a box, in that apartment of your heart. And the Lord’s trying to push that door open and he can’t get in. And what do you have to do? You basically have to start opening the window and throwing those boxes out the window.

So you can make room for the Lord to come in and he can rearrange the floor plan of your heart. Where he can get rid of all this junk. And that’s what Isaiah 61 means. It’s he knows what it’s like to be human. Now. He didn’t he doesn’t know what it’s like to send he was perfect But he knows more than we will ever know what it’s like to be human And he knows the baggage that comes along we see him suffer in the garden in this thing that was asked of him.

It was so hard and he knows what it’s like So he comes in and he understands our burdens, right? You go tell Jesus what it’s like to suffer. I dare you, because he can tell you 5, 000 times more what it’s like to suffer physically the way he did here, but also the suffering he feels when he sees his children are torment the way that we are with the devil tormenting us all the time.

And so what he wants to do is to free us from these things. And. And sometimes as guys, we can think, Oh, that’s women’s stuff, right? All that healing junks for women. Yeah. And that’s one of the reasons why women, a lot of times are more stronger than men because they’re willing to go to those places.

And they’re willing like, Lord, have your way with me. And this is the place that we want to try to help men get to too is look, the Lord is not coming to hurt. He’s not coming to harm. He’s not coming to shackle you and tell you that you’ve got to follow him in this way of life with no choice and no options.

He’s bringing you a new way of life, and he wants to really embody this Isaiah 61, right? The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me. I’m here to heal. I’m here to free the brokenhearted. And that’s the source of what we need, to be the men we’re called to be the men the church needs. And all these men that are out there saying, Like, when’s the culture going to change?

When’s something going to happen? When are we going to be the ones to do it? Because we’re his hands and feet, and we can’t, we’re sitting on the sidelines until we do the work we need to do in our hearts and in our lives to be what he’s called us to be. Yeah, you mentioned, the family earlier.

Yeah. And the reality is that God, created the family to glorify him, like to show his love to the world. If you were to ask me what is the whole point of marriage? It’s not just to have a companion or to be happy. It’s to get to heaven together, to be holy. But the sacrament of marriage is to be.

Yeah. A reflection of God’s love to the world. Okay. So you look at your marriage and be like we have an imperfect marriage. Everyone does. Yeah. But in our imperfection, we have committed to love each other so much through it, through the, through, through the brokenness that we actually show God’s love to each other and to others, to our children and those around us.

Okay. You look at the landscape of marriages and the family and we see it but statistically majority of marriages that are still married, 40 percent of those still say that they’re unhappy. Yeah. Okay. So when I say to men, it’s probably the same thing you say to men, because the same thing that I need to hear myself, do I want to be a good husband?

Yes or no. No guy’s going to be like, nah, I don’t want to do, I want to be a good father. No man’s nah, I just don’t want to be, I want to be a terrible dad. I want to be a terrible dad. Do I want to be a good son? No, no guy’s going to be like, I want to be a horrible son. No, no guy’s going to answer no to those, so how do we get there? Those are our identities, right? Like son, husband, father, And a brother. Yeah. I do. I want to be a good friend or a bad friend to you. Yeah. I want to be a horrible friend, like that’s right. We wouldn’t say that. Yeah. But we can look at all those identities for us as men.

And we can think about failures as a son, as a brother, as a husband, as a father and the enemy will take those. And his words are so powerful. He would convince us that we can only be mediocre in those areas or bad in those areas, but not good, not free, not whole. And that’s the lie that we actually believe and we don’t even know we believe it.

Yeah. And we were talking about that earlier from the fall, there in the garden, speak about that a lot in some of our talks with our missions and things like that. And it really hit me one day in my own struggles in my healing journey. I was like, man, the times I’m really down and it really is Ignatian spirituality.

Like the time that I’m, that I really feel horrible about myself is when I’ve been listening to the wrong voice. I’m listening to this. And there was a book I read when I got out of Outta rehab. And it’s not a good book. It’s written by like eastern, thought. And the person in the drug rehab facility was like, oh, you should read this book.

And the guy was a famous like yogi or something, but you’re like, I’ll read anything right now. Yeah. I was like, I just need it. I want my wife and kids to love me and I wanna be better and all that stuff. So I was reading that and the first part of the book, I’ll never forget it, he was in college in Gainesville, and he was sitting there, he was like a economics major and he was sitting there on the couch.

Play in a video game or something. And all of a sudden he said, he looked next to him and he just said, shut up. And there was nobody there. He was in the apartment by himself and he had just been sitting there on that couch, like you’re not good enough. You’re not this, you’re not that. And he said, if the way that.

If somebody physically was in the room speaking me to the way that I was allowing myself to speak to myself or Someone else to speak to me in my mind. I would have punched him in the face and it’s out of two seconds Like that’s how ugly and violent it can get And you’re in the way you talk to yourself and in the fall like I started thinking about them Like where does that come from?

And why is this so persistent? Like this voice that’s just, you’re terrible, you suck, you’re no good, you’re, and it’s one, the enemy knows you’re dangerous and he comes to destroy, as we’ve said multiple times on here. But if you look at like with Adam and Eve, what happened, he shows up and it literally in Genesis three, he’d ask a question, right?

Why don’t you eat of that tree? And Eve goes, Oh, we can’t eat of that tree. I’m paraphrasing, but I can’t, we can’t eat of that tree, we’ll die. And he was the first thing that was mouth. You surely will not die. You eat of that tree and you will be like gods who know the difference between good and evil.

You’ll be like God. So if you read that and then you go along further. He says one or two other things. And then she goes, it looked good to eat. It was good for food and good to the eyes and look good to make one wise, boom, the fall. But what did the devil do? He showed up and he started to break apart and build these identity lies, right?

He tried to drive a wedge. If you’ve ever tried cutting wood and you’re trying to get a tree to fall and you can’t with a chainsaw, you knock a wedge in there until it splits the two breaks them in half. That’s what he was trying to do with God and humanity in that moment. And he succeeded, right?

He convinced her because what was must’ve been going through her mind. This is the stuff I like to reflect on. So folks, if you’re looking for this in the actual Bible, you’re not going to find these words, but it’s, revealed to us as you pray with these things. I just feel like the devil was saying to her God’s not really a good father.

And he doesn’t love you the way he did. Who would give everybody everything except for one thing? That’s not a good person. A good person would say you can have anything you want, not everything but one thing. He’s withholding something from you. And if he’s withholding something from you, then you aren’t worth what he says you are to him.

He doesn’t really love you and you should do what you want and be your own gods. And that’s exactly what the devil does to us on our life each and every day. And we believe we’re not good enough. So what comes out of that, Paul, that we’ll talk about in the conference at a greater depth is two wounds, right?

The father wound, God isn’t who I think he is. And how many times, because we have bad parents or we have somebody who wasn’t loved well, like I feel awful sometimes the way I’ve talked about my father, because it is truth. The things that are our relationship, but it wasn’t his fault. His parents didn’t get along.

They didn’t love each other and he wasn’t given. I love yous and I’m proud of yous. And so my dad did the best he could do to give what he could. But I grew up looking at God as someone that sounded like my father. You need to work harder. That’s not good enough. You don’t need anybody. Why did you do that?

That was stupid. That’s the way I heard it And this is what the devil does to us as he starts to break these things in We start to distrust god and then we push him further out of our lives Then he comes back and he goes. All right. Look what else god did He kicked you out of the garden when in truth when you read scripture What does it say?

God is speaking to the Trinity which is proof that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were around at the beginning, right? And he says, let us remove them from the garden, lest they eat from the tree of life and death and basically are forever in sin. So it’s an act of a good father, but what does the devil do again?

He twists it. Look, he kicked you out. He pushed you out. It says he was cast out into the wilderness, which is also why Jesus is cast out in the wilderness and the new Adam repairs what the original Adam couldn’t do for us. But in that moment, there’s this birth of a father wound, right? God isn’t who he says he is.

And I’m not who he says I am either. And anything else, anybody else that says there’s a lie and guess what? If I’m not good enough for him, then I’m inadequate. And that’s the root wound for all men is inadequacy. And not only that, I’m going to, I’m going to look to people, humans to be my God. Yeah. So Adam and Eve look to each other.

Oh yeah. Phil, what? God abandoned them and they failed each other. Sure. Adam failed immediately. And ever since then, like we’ve been looking to humans to fulfill our needs of a father, a mother, a friend. And the reality is that every human is imperfect. Yeah.

There’s no human out there that can fulfill My needs, my heart, not one, my life, my wife, as much as she loves me can love me better than anyone, but she can’t love me perfectly. She never will be able to, it is impossible. And vice versa with her, but God can love me. Perfectly right. He can restore what was lost.

What I think is a lie. What I have believed to be a lie where other people in my life have hurt me and hurt you. Yeah. I can restore those lies to what truth to believe the truth about him. Yeah. That he is not a father that abandoned us, that he withheld for their safety. Imagine like when your kids became teenagers or 12, right.

Yeah. You just. Gave them a car drive around, do what you want, no GPS, do whatever you want. Like here’s a beer. Yeah. Here’s right. No, you protect them for their safety. Yeah. Because you love them more than anything else. Now, can they choose to be like, nah, I’m going to do whatever I want.

Because of free will. Yeah. But it doesn’t change the fact that you as a father have put certain Parameters around them to protect them. Sure, right? Yeah Now that’s what you do. And that’s that’s the whole goal of this you talked about How do we move from you know where we are and our brokenness and our shame into restoration?

And it’s this reorienting of our identity and how does that happen? Through trust and through healing like that’s the only way I mean I used to look to everybody to make me feel good if I just get this award then I’ll finally mean something If I can just be the guy with the highest percentage of quota and the biggest paycheck then people will finally go like that guy’s The man like all these things that every time I got those it was never enough, right?

I’ve got a, I’ve got a closet full of stacked up salesman of the year plaques that probably have six inches of dust on them because they don’t mean anything. They won’t mean anything. Were they good things? Is it good to work hard and to achieve things? Yes. But when it becomes a God in your life, as you say, and you’re looking to it to fulfill you, you’re always going to wind up empty.

And what happens? You get angry. You get irritated. Even this didn’t work. I worked so hard and I got this and it still didn’t work. What’s wrong with me? Then again, what’s wrong with me? Why is this never enough? Why? When am I ever going to be okay with something? When will I ever find joy? I had a guy back in Indiana.

This was when I first started speaking and somebody was listening to show. They wanted to start a men’s group. And I was like, okay, I can tell you what we do, but I don’t really know anything beyond that wind developed. Everything that the Lord gave us to develop beyond that. And I went up, there’s a cornfield in Indiana.

I was like, there’s no way there’s a Catholic parish around here anywhere. And boom, I took a right turn and there’s a St. Philip’s in the middle of a cornfield. But I go in and it’s like this beer and barbecue thing, like 250 guys. Bush light everywhere, overalls and 60 year old men. And so I’m up there, I give him a witness and there’s nobody looks like to have any emotions at all.

They’re staring at me like, who brought this weirdo in here? Like I’m crying in front of just a bunch of hard men, and so I was like, all right, exit stage left, and they came up to me and said, we want to do a Q and a, and I thought, okay, great. You’re literally waiting for them to kill me, but I’m sitting there and this young man pops up on the left.

I’ll never forget. And he was redhead. He was 31 years old. And he said, I have a question. And I said, okay. And he goes, I didn’t have some crazy heroin story. And I said, okay that’s not a question. That’s a statement. What’s your question? And he said, I said, what’s your question? And he looked down after he got through life and he looked back up and he said, my name is Sean.

I’m 31 years old. And he said, I’ve got I’ve got two kids. I’m married. He goes every day. I wake up and I throw my kids in the car and I wish they’d be quiet because they’re getting on my nerves. He said, I dropped them off. I can’t wait to drop them off at school. I get to my job that I hate. I’m an accountant.

I sit in a cubicle. I hate with people I don’t like and a boss I can’t stand. He said, I sit there for eight and a half hours of hell. I come home, maybe I have some makeshift dinner with my family, but more often my kids are doing their thing. My wife’s busy and I’m still stuck on my phone or my laptop.

And I either work until they’re in bed till midnight or whatever, or I’ll sit down and pour four or five stiff drinks and watch a ball game and lose myself in Netflix. I said, okay, what’s your question? And he said, what’s the purpose of my life? And I went, Oh man, really? Like 250, like I thought you were going to ask like what my favorite color was or like how many kids I had or whatever.

I just prayed and I was like, Lord, what do you want me to say? And the Lord just prompted me after a few minutes of awkward, silent prayer in front of 250 people to say, who are you? And I said, who are you? And he goes, I told you, my name’s Sean. I said, okay who are you? As I told you, I’m a dad and I got kids and I’m married.

And I said, yep, that’s close answer. I said, but who are you? I told you I’m an accountant. Who are you? Who are you? Who are you? Finally, he goes, I don’t know what you want from me, man. I don’t know what you want. And he sat down, he threw his hands up in the air and he started to cry. And I was like, man. Look, I’m not trying to upset you, but if you can’t tell me within a shadow of a doubt when I ask you who you are, I’m a beloved son of God and really believe that in your heart.

No wonder you don’t know what the purpose of life is. No wonder you struggle. And he just fell apart and all these men that had been unemotional, just their heads went down. And you could see that every one of these men that had. Spent their life being these big tough farmers who just made things happen when the rains didn’t come and the crops were dry and all these things that you just man up, you could just see this release in all of them.

And Paul, that’s the question that we all ask is what is the purpose of my life? It seems like there’s pain and there’s loss and there’s torture and where’s something good and if there is something good, it’s taken away and all this stuff. And when we have the mindset of living in our wounds and living in our pain, that’s our outcome of life.

That’s the goggles we have on. But the Lord is wanting to come into that place and go you’re my son. Yeah. You’re my boy. And that ultimately, like if you were to sum up healing, so men can maybe frame it or understand it or not be afraid of it is allowing the Lord to speak truth into your life where you’ve believed lies.

Amen. And when you can hear the truth. Around those lies, it begins to set you free. And we need God to speak that truth to us. Yeah. Like 10 years into my marriage my wife and I were I was traveling a lot and we, there was just some unresolved conversations that were just like every now and then these same arguments would come up and we just couldn’t resolve.

It was like, she would say one thing and I’d say another, we would hear totally different things. Yeah. So the priest who married us, Bishop Sam Jacobs. We called him and said, Hey, can you come over mediate this conversation for us? So I remember he came over and he’s a really great friend and we trust him a lot.

Like we’ve shared everything with him, and he came in our house and he made us sit on the couch together and he sat in between us as a mediator. Yeah. And he would say, okay tell Gretchen your feelings. And so I would say something and he would look at her and say what did he say?

And she would say, he said this, he said, that’s not actually what he said. Yeah. And then she would say what she said and he would say what did she say? And I’d say, she said this, he’s that’s not what she said. Yeah, she said this and he began to mediate all the lies that we were receiving and hearing and living out of yeah and living out of and Transforming those into true statements so that we can hear them in a way that we couldn’t hear from each other Sure.

Because there was this gap, right? Yeah. And I remember we walked away from that conversation with such resolution and truth, and it set us on a path in our marriage of just real deep resolution of hearing and allowing God to speak truth. I say all that because Jesus is that mediator. Yeah. Who has come to set us free, to Speak truth to us in the ways that we’ve believed over the course of our life, some lie, and we mightn’t even know it’s a lie.

Sure. Until we start to think about it. Yeah. That’s not true. Yeah. That’s off, and ultimately getting to what you were talking about, understanding without a shadow of a doubt that no matter what I do or accomplish or where I work, no matter what success or failure that at the end of the day, I’m a son of God.

Yeah. And that’s what matters. And that’s all that matters. And that’s where everything comes from. That’s where my identity, that is my identity. That’s where everything I do, you live out of that because that’s how you start to combat the lies of the enemy. When he shows up, you’re not good enough. Yeah.

But he thinks I am. You’re not this, you’re not that. It doesn’t matter what you think. It doesn’t matter what you think. And I’m, and you start to get wise to these things and it’s like this, the word I talk about vulnerability all the time and that’s a word men don’t like, right?

Oh, that means you’re weak. Cause the world will tell you that. If you’re vulnerable to attack, then you’re susceptible to attack. You’re weak. You’re, you could be flanked, all that kind of stuff in military terms. But really what vulnerability is the strongest thing that a man could be as a vulnerable man Because what it means is I have the strength to admit where I need help I have the strength to admit the places where I’m broken have the strength to admit that I’m not perfect and What happens in that there’s a humility and what does God ask it for each and every one of us?

He wants humility and surrender and the only way you surrender is to be humble enough To know that I can’t fix myself that i’m broken and I cannot fix myself and people here on this earth Whether they’ve got phds or whatever, they’re not ever going to make me completely whole. That’s why bob started the jp2 healing center He saw that all his studying and his Psychologists and psychiatry and all those things that he’d done.

He could only heal so much of a person He can only help them so much without the lord being involved in it. That’s healing the whole person That’s why he calls it that but you come to this place where? You Where you realize that being vulnerable is not is the fear of being vulnerable is what keeps us captive Right.

I’ll tell people that all the time like people say how do you get up here? And just tell people what a scumbag you were all the time Does it just get numb like you just realized you were scumbag and it doesn’t hurt anymore to talk about yourself like that I’m, like no it hurts every single time, but my solace is i’m not that person anymore It really is galatians 220.

Like I no longer live at christ lives in me And that’s where we’re all trying to get to because I may have had all these things like I was in a prison cell of four, a four walls and rebar and concrete and all these things. Every one of us, whether we realize it or not, we’re walking around in a virtual prison cell and the walls are made of our own mistakes and failures and shame and lies that we believe about ourselves.

And all of these things, disorder, disoriented disorder, what am I trying to say, disordered, desires, all these things. And we try to open the door and walk out and what happens? The devil meets us there and he goes to poke and prod. He sticks his finger in your chest over here, your pornography problem.

What if they find out about your porn? And so you step back. What if they find out about the way you really talk to your wife? What about they find out about this? What about the fact that you stole something when you were 10? Or whatever. And he picks his, he sticks his fingers in there.

And what happens? We become our own jailers. We grab the door, we lock ourselves in and he convinces us that all that’s out there is pain and torture and loss. But when you have the courage to become vulnerable and just a lot of times for people, for me, it was rock bottom. Like I have nowhere else to go.

I’m going to six by six or eight by eight or whatever it was room and I’m not getting out until somebody says I can. I can’t run anymore. Like I have broken and messed up my life and the only person that can fix it is God. And when you get to that place and you start to open up and you start to share and you let him in It hurts and it’s scary But man, if you can stick with him and you have the courage to believe what he says You come out completely different It’s like mary magdalene says in the chosen that year that first season when nicodemus is saying How long after the transformation when I came to cast your demons out?

She says it wasn’t you And he goes well, was it sanhedrin or who else was it? She goes It was a man and he goes, would you know her him again? And she said all I can tell you is this I was one way and And now I’m completely different and the only thing that happened in between was him and so I will know him for the rest of my Life, that’s my story.

That’s so many people’s story that when you met Jesus and that’s what He wants an encounter and that encounter is not to so he can field a an army of slaves That just serve him for no purpose. It’s so that he can heal you and you can come fully into the mission that he’s called every single one of us to, which is to bring people to that.

It’s like when we, it’s what I tell people then when they’ve experienced the Lord. If they really experience him and they really start to live the way he calls to you can’t help but go out like the woman at the Right and tell everybody and that’s the response and that’s where the joy comes from that all of us are looking for Is not that we made our life better or we did something Jesus healed us and we have an opportunity to partake in that healing and bring other people to it Yeah, and there’s no doubt that we’ve all locked ourselves into an emotional cell Eight by eight, you know and I tell men all the time, even myself, I label it the four Bs.

I’m like, you can go out on the ball field. Into the bedroom into the boardroom into your billfold and find your identity or try to yeah But if I ask you like to be vulnerable to share your feelings, where do you hurt the most? Yeah, what do you fear the most? Where have you Been hurt or traumatized or where your greatest wounds you would just shut down immediately.

Yeah. I could place myself on a ball field and I’d be adequate to the task or whatever the case may be. The greatest threat to vulnerability is risk. Yep. Amen. It’s risk. It’s just risking. And God’s grace is enough to take us By the hand out of that cell and sort of the images I love in the new testament is when the apostles would get put in prison Yeah, and like an angel would come and just let him out.

Let him out Like how’d you get out? Yeah, like I don’t know like We were praying, we were singing praises to God and we were cool and yeah. And an angel just came and roll us out of here. Or even Paul that went back and stayed there. The guy was like, Oh gosh, I’m going to get killed. And Paul’s we’re still in here.

Like we didn’t leave, right? Like the Lord’s going to yeah, like we, we’re not the ones to force that door open. Yeah. Like we always just let us out. Yeah. The Lord’s So gracious, but we do have to risk there is a certain risk and I say this as men We’re willing to risk in so many areas of our life.

Yeah financial risk. Oh do whatever you risk? Yeah, you physical risk. Yeah, I’ll dare you to do something like oh, Yeah, like we’re willing to risk in so many areas of our life. What about with our own heart? Yeah on emotion and I remember being in that emotional Prison cell, my own marriage, my own kids, not risking vulnerability, not opening up all the way because I had believed a lie that if I do, I would get hurt.

They would step on my heart, all these lies are out there. Or I’m going to shatter the image to my children or that I’m perfect or whatever. If I open up, it’s bad, man. Yeah. It’s, yeah. Yeah, no, it’s, it is. And it’s something that we all struggle with, man. But this is the thing, like I got to tell you, I was, I spent 17 years of my life hiding addictions and all I wanted when I was sitting on the couch at two in the morning, I knew how to problem.

And I wanted to stop so badly, but I was afraid of how and who would find out. And if I told Angela, she would leave me and all of those things. And at the end of the day, I allowed myself to sit in that torture for way longer than I ever had to, because all Jesus wanted to do was free me. Now I was hardheaded enough to where I had to hit a pretty bad wall.

And it was like, you keep doing this and you’re dying or you’re losing everything and all those things. But I’ll tell you something, the worst part. Was not vulnerability. Vulnerability was what set me free when I was in that jail cell and I hit my knees and I said, Lord, how did I get here? And he said, it’s the day you walked away from me.

And I started crying and I realized how inadequate I was to try to think that I could fix myself, that I could right the wrongs, that I could have a an amazing life I built for myself. The Lord just brought it all before me and said, you asked the question, here’s the answer. You’ve tried to do it on your own and look at where it’s happened.

And in that moment it just hit me and I started bawling and I started crying in the middle of that jail. So when people yelling at me and screaming at me about all these things are going to do and blah, blah, blah. And I’m just sitting there going, Lord, I have cussed you. I have hated you. I have this, I have that.

And instead I just I hit my knees and I said, I’m sorry and I’ve been such a fool and I have listened to the wrong voice in my life and I have chosen wrongly. And I’ve literally become my own jailer and I’ve punished myself all these years because I listened to the wrong person and I didn’t trust that you were good.

And in that moment, I said, if you’ll give me a chance to be better, if you’ll give me a chance to my wife and kids, or at least if you’re not going to give me a chance with them, give them somebody that’s better than me. I’ll give you my life and I’ll do it. And it was the scariest thing I did in my life.

But after that moment, all I’ve ever found in my life is peace and joy. Yeah, I have bad days. I have struggles. I’m not perfect, but the Lord has met me in those places and he’s done nothing but do what he said he was going to do to give me a better life and to leave me a place where it didn’t matter what anybody thinks.

And I’ll tell men that a lot, like if you’re worried about opinions, there’s only one that matters. So start worrying about that one. Cause when you’re dead and you’re standing in, there’s one person you’re standing in front of and it’s not your best friend or your boss or even your wife it’s Jesus, right?

And that’s the one who wants to bring you this healing. And Paul, that’s what we’re going on this mission for. This is why we’ve said yes to Bob, because we’ve experienced this in our lives and it is, it’s like Mary Magdalene and like any other person that’s ever been touched by the Lord. You just.

There has been something done for you that you could not do for yourself. And when you’ve experienced that healing and that love and that joy, and that just mercy, all you want to do is go share that with other people, because you can see it’s like the Lord gives you, It’s night vision to see into people’s souls and see that people are hurting and that they’re struggling and that the answer is right there.

And so that’s why we’re doing this because it’s nonsense to believe that men need to go through life without dealing with the things in their heart. You’re going to wind up being lonely and alone and in addictions. There’s two ways to handle things. You either bury them and shove them down and you find them.

You’re looking at the bottom of a bottle for an answer you’ll never find there or choosing other things to go down other viceful paths. Or you eventually look at God and say, I’ve had enough and I can’t control my own life and I can’t fix anything and I need you. And that’s when transformation happens.

And that’s why we’re doing this conference is to set aside the fears that men have that you and I have had in our lives. If I let go, what’s that going to cost me? If I let Jesus in, what’s that going to do to my life? I’m going to have to face those things. I was molested when I was little and I don’t talk about that much.

I don’t even know if I’ve ever mentioned it on this show. And that’s a place I never wanted the Lord to go. And I went there with father Malachy and Martin Doman and I am, and it was one of the most freeing things that I’d ever done in my life because I felt so shamed. And I wondered I wondered about my sexuality and all those things because it was one of my male friends.

And it was not my fault, but it was something I spent a whole lot of my life wondering things that I never should have had to wonder and hiding those things and letting them control me and letting the devil get in those things. And it was just recently three or four years ago that I admitted that and we prayed and man I screamed in that prayer and that pain came out.

But the Lord was there. He walked me right through it and he walked me out the other side and then he shut the door To that room where it happened. He said we don’t have to go there anymore. And that’s what healing is. Yeah, and that’s what we want to offer on behalf of the Lord through our meager gifts and through our experiences And through bob’s expertise and all these things when we come to these places to is to offer freedom for people And to not allow them to be their own jailers To give them an option, the best option we have in the world, which is our Lord, to be the person that sets us free and to let him be the good shepherd he wants to be, man, that’s what he wants to do more than anything is to show us how much he loves us and to set us free from the things that they convince us that he doesn’t.

Yeah. That’s why we’re calling it restored. Yeah. Just this reality that the Lord wants to restore us to who he calls us to be as men, his sons. We will. We want to allow the Lord to restore us into that identity. Yeah. And if that can happen for every man at that conference, then that’s the greatest thing that could happen.

Yeah. And what at the end of the day, it’s just so many of us have longed for a hug from a father that was distant or from someone to tell us that we’re good enough and all those things. And The thing that I really want to help people to see man is that God is every bit of that the prodigal son is real all of those things are real the lord wants to rush out to meet you He wants to embrace you and the thing is there is nothing you can ever do That would disappoint him.

Yes, he gets disappointed, but would ever make him turn away. Like when we do things wrong, I’m sure there’s some heartbreak there, right? Man, I wish you had chose differently, but there’s nothing that’s ever going to make him disgusted with us or turn from us. And if you can even let that have an inkling of hope in your life.

Then there’s an embrace. There is a, there’s an affirmation. There is a worth and all these things that’s waiting for you. And that’s what we’re going to dive into. You’ve talked about the four things. I can’t wait to do this with you. For those that want to know more about the conference, we’re going to have, these are going to be in the mold of healing the whole person, and so we’ll have a Thursday, Friday, Saturday Paul and I are going to rotate nights we’re going to, we’re going to dust off our MC skills some nights when he’s.

Okay. Given the teaching and the talk, I’ll be emceeing and trying to do my best to give justice to what he’s doing or the Lord’s doing through him. When I’m given teaching, Paul’s going to be doing that. We’re going to have plenty of time for prayer. This isn’t just a healing conference in name.

Like we’re going to talk about these things and we’re going to invite all of you into experiences to, to go into like, where’s the place where you feel the Lord needs to come most in your life? Where do you feel the most shame? And the most disgust with yourself. And we’re going to pray for the Lord to come in those places.

We’re going to have time for confession. We’re going to have fun stuff. We’re going to have a tailgate or something one night. And now there won’t be any drinking and until after or whatever, like we don’t need drinking before we start all this, but we’re going to have things where we’re just getting together as men and doing stuff and we invite all of you.

This is the first one. Paul, we’re going to be in Ann Arbor, Michigan at Christ the King Parish. It’s a, a pretty famous parish. Guys like Ralph Martin and Peter Herbeck and Pete Barak and a lot of folks like that go there. There’s got a great contingent of men there and in the St.

Michael’s men and stuff like that. They’re the Knights of Columbus, but we want everybody, if you’re anywhere near Michigan, come and be a part of this. It’s a big place. It can hold a lot of people. If you follow this show, if you’re a fan of Paul’s and follow his work, travel and be with us. Now, this is the first one, right?

We need everybody to show up. So Bob thinks we’re doing a good job and we can do more of them, but like, All right. But we need everybody there. It’s going to take place on November 14th through the 16th. And again, it’s going to start on a Thursday evening and it’ll conclude about midday Saturday.

But we’re going to spend a lot of time together doing the real work of the gospel, which is inviting the Lord into our hearts, doing, forming our own crucifix in the moment, like opening our arms and saying, Lord, here’s everything. Now that’s going to be hard for some. Some will have to, put some come alongs or something, maybe to open up those arms, but the Lord does that and he does it gently.

We’re just asking you to join us and have an open heart and an open mind to what the Lord wants to do. Cause Paul, I don’t know about you, but there were times in my life where I was just sick of being sick and tired and the only person that can do anything about it is you like the Lord wants to help you, but you have to be the one that, that takes the first step and lets them in.

And yeah, and maybe that risk. It’s just coming to the conference and let God take it from there, just saying yes to coming and just trust that the Lord will meet you where you’re at right now. And that’s it, and he’ll begin the journey with you, and you don’t have to have some Great tragedy in your life to come to the conference.

You just may be living a life where you don’t feel like you have much of a mission or a purpose or It just feels mediocre or your marriage is just okay, and you don’t know why god wants more for you God wants to release some truth into your life so that you Can live with a sense of mission and purpose every day, right?

Yeah, and that your identity is not in anything in the world, but in who you are as his son Yeah, all so it really is for all men, fathers and sons and grandfathers And hopefully we’ll do more of them. But the first one’s gonna be Yeah. And I would just say too, just one final thing there is don’t put expectations on God.

Just come with an open heart. Lord, you’re calling me here. I feel you’re calling me here. I’m going to show up, bring other guys with you because people may tell you they’re fine. We all have the disease of I’m fine, but none of us are fine. We’re all broken and we all know we are, and we act like we’re not.

So like instead of spending the energy acting like you’re fine when you’re not use it to actually. Be healed and be happy and joyful and purposeful in your life. So yeah, we mentioned that it will take place. It’s called the restored men’s healing conference put on by the JP two healing center.

If you want to find out more information, registration opened up on August the 12th. Or opens up on August the 12th. So you can go to JP two healing center. com. That is JP I not the number two, but the letter I healing center. org. You’ll go right to the page, the events page. You can find the restored event.

That’s the only one that’s there. So you’ve got 100 percent chance of getting the right one and you can click it and register. There is a fee associated with it, but I promise you, if you choose to spend that money to invest in yourself, you’re going to be glad that you did. And so will your family.

And so will everybody else around you. So Paul, any final words you want to say here about what we’re doing or tell us about where they can find out more about your work and what you’re doing. I’m excited that we’re going to keep working on this papers and we’re diving in. I think that was the whole point of us getting together in person.

It’s let’s just pray together and dive into this together and not just show up and speak at a conference. Yeah. This is a real mission and a journey, so I just want to encourage men to just to jump into that with us. This is a movement of, Just restoring men to who God created us to be, that’s what we want to do.

So it’s easy to find me paulgeorge.la and that’ll link to my ministry website, the art of living, things like that. But ultimately this is all about Jesus. Amen. Amen. That’s who it’s about guys. Please pray for us as we prepare, we are going to spend the next day and a half and this will be coming out in the next day or so.

So you could pray for us and just know that Paul and I are committed to praying for y’all. Praying that those of you who know they’re going to go come with an open heart. Those of you don’t even know you’re going yet that will wind up being there. We’re praying for all of it. We’re all going to work together and I look forward to the work that God’s going to do and Paul in my heart’s to right there alongside of you.

So again, JP two healing center. org. You can find Paul through all of his websites and everything else. He’s got books out there. Holy grit. And what was the other one again? Rethinking happiness. Go get those, do what you can to read those things, put that work into your life and prepare to meet us in November, on November 14th and 16th guys.

Until then, we’ll be praying for you. We love you. And Thanks for listening. God bless.