Johnny Hunt - Unspoken: What Men Wont Talk About and Why

D EMOLISHING S TRONGHOLDS

E ver wonder how to be a man of God in the trenches of lifein the day-to-day trials and temptations that hound you? Its not impossible! Gods promises and strength are real, and you can claim them today.

Whether you feel beaten down by your past failures or trapped in a corner by your current struggles, let hope lift you up. Pastor Johnny Hunt offers the biblical encouragement and guidance that will help you

navigate the dangers and discouragements of daily life

take practical steps toward taming your negative habits

use your blessings to influence others for Gods glory

Its time to learn how to break spiritual strongholds so you can move forward in Gods will and become the kind of man youve always wanted to be.

W e met at a restaurant. As he sat in the booth with his wife at his side, he got ready to tell me his story. He began by saying that he wished he had spoken with me months before at our annual Southern Baptist Convention.

I believe that if I had told you then about my struggle, he declared, and about what my heart was entertaining, you would have thrown me a life preserver.

And then, in a voice filled with both sadness and regret, he described his adulterous relationship with his secretary. His ministry was over, he said, and his heart was broken. No one had to tell me that his marriage was clearly struggling. It looked as though his wife, who remained mostly quiet throughout our meeting, had to exercise every bit of strength just to keep from rushing out of that restaurant.

I listened as this wounded man poured out his pain and remorsebut by then, I couldnt do much to help. Had he spoken to me months before, we might have been able to avoid this whole tear-filled scene. But hed kept all this hidden deep within.

Why do so many men refuse to speak about the sensitive areas of their lives? It seems that whenever anyone gets too near to an area that feels especially close to home, many men shut down the conversation in an attempt to keep that area of life private or hidden. That was my friends problem.

I would love to tell you that his story had a good ending, but I cant. The truth is, he did not offer a totally honest confession that day. Im sure his tears were real, as was his regret and remorse. He felt truly guilty for what he had done, and he wished hed never started down that path.

But is that enough? No, its not, and not by a long shot. In a short time, this sorry-but-unrepentant friend returned to the waiting arms of his former secretary.

LISTEN CAREFULLY, SPEAK HONESTLY

For the last twenty years I have been deeply involved in mentoring young men preparing for ministry. After all these years, I have noted that one of the single greatest traits of successful young pastoral candidates is what Id call teachability . An unteachable spirit and a refusal to take advice from others usually reveals a great deal of pride and arrogance, which almost always signals a flameout in the making.

A big part of teachability includes the desire to listen carefully and to engage in honest dialogueand really, that commitment has to go both ways. Both the mentor and the student need to make a commitment to listen to each other respectfully and to interact with one another honestly. Without that kind of mutual commitment, not much genuine mentoring can take place.

The more I think about it, the more I doubt that any man can get very far in his life or in his walk with God if he lacks a teachable spirit. Scripture overflows with exhortations for us to listen, and it frequently urges us to have conversations with one another designed to encourage mutual spiritual growth. Along these lines, James wrote, So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty ( James 2:12).

When we neglect either careful listening or honest speaking, bad things always happen. Love grows cold, and our hearts grow hard. We begin to lose the ability to celebrate the success of others, and bitter conflict erupts. If were not careful, we lose all spiritual sensitivity and we quickly move into spiritual apathy, which results in all sorts of heartache. So the stakes are high!

Even so, we men often make light of our unwillingness to talk about issues that make us uneasy. We jest about our silence and almost celebrate our refusal to talk. We enjoy telling jokes like these:

Women like silent men; they actually think theyre listening.

A man had a reputation among his friends as brief and to the point. He seldom said much. One day, a saleswoman selling cosmetics knocked on his door and asked to see his wife. The man told her his wife wasnt home. Well, she replied, could I please wait for her? The man directed her to the kitchen and left her there for more than three hours.

Eventually the worried saleswoman called out to the man, May I know where your wife is?

She went to the cemetery, he replied.

And when is she returning?

I dont really know, he said. Shes been there eleven years now.

REASONS FOR OUR SILENCE

Not all the reasons for our silence can be traced to sin, as easy as that would be for a pastor to claim and as predictable as you might expect it to be. I can identify at least three sources for our reticence to talk that have little, if anything, to do with a natural male inclination toward evil:

biology

fathers example

cultural norms

Lets briefly consider each one in turn.

Biology

Two daughters were born into the family of a friend of mine within nineteen months of each other. Eight years later, my friend and his wife welcomed a surprise son into their home. These parents are learning what countless others have learned before them: Boys are different from girls.

Their son, now almost three years old, has a motor that just doesnt stop. Ever. My friend says that his boy is perpetually five seconds from destruction.

You literally cant take your eyes off of him for more than five seconds, he says, or hell get into something its not safe for him to get into, take apart something thats supposed to stay together, break something hes not supposed to touch, stack something high that needs to stay by itself on the ground. Its exhausting.

His daughters, by contrast, could play quietly by themselves for long periods without blowing up the kitchen or seeing if the cat liked taking showers. Raising daughters presents different challenges (the teen years loom on the horizon for him) than rearing sons, and because he never thought hed have a son, he cant say he and his wife were fully prepared for the change. Theyd read about the differences and spoken with friends about them, but its a very different thing to actually experience those unique challenges.

Just a couple decades ago it was fashionable to claim that most behavioral differences between girls and boys were a function of culture and upbringing, not biology. Today the claim is harder to make, since many studies have shown how male and female physiology, from the very beginning, create significant differences in behavior.

In his book Raising Boys by Design , Dr. Gregory Jantz describes dozens of key differences between the male and female brains that contribute to significant behavioral differences between the sexes. In fact, researchers have already discovered about one hundred gender differences in the brain, all of which contribute in some way to the distinct ways males and females tend to interact with the world. Scientists have divided these many differences into four general categories: Processing, chemistry, structure, and activity. We cant go into depth here, but I do want you to see how male physiology contributes to the common perception that females talk more (and want to) than do males.