 Welcome, welcome, welcome. This is the day the Lord has made and we will rejoice and be glad in it. Welcome to Hope Today. This is a place where we are inspired to bring you hope and I'm so excited that you have tuned in. It's gonna be a great day. I'm J. Anthony Guild. I'm here with Tom Hollis and Corey Langford. And you know what? It's gonna be a great day today because we've got a phenomenal subject to discuss, don't we Tom? We do, I wanna know where the women are. Okay, I got these guys sitting here, they're fine. Pretty ladies, I mean, we got these men here. It's gonna be a man's show actually. That's why we're all guys up here today. We're in desperate need of strong men in society today. Strong masculinity, you know what? It's rapidly disappearing and that doesn't really speak too well for the future of our society. Well Owen's strong, but he'll be with us in just a minute to talk about God's design for men and what true masculinity is and how the women in our lives can help us in shaping and empowering the men in their lives. It's gonna be a great conversation, Corey. Absolutely, and this is very important for people to understand because in society there is an expectation of what man is supposed to be and then there's the expectation according to the word. And so there is a dichotomy that is happening a lot, especially when it comes to finances in men, when it comes to physical attractiveness in men, when it comes to the intuitiveness of how a man should think in his family, in business. And I think it's causing depression in men and they are also repressing because that's one thing about us as men is that we won't speak about it but we'll repress deep inside of us that causes us to become depressed because we don't express because we don't think we have the right to express that kind of vulnerability. So I hope we talk about vulnerability today because that's a big topic for men. That really is and I'm so glad that you all are tuning in because it's gonna be a phenomenal topic of discussion. Listen, I want you to contact some men. Listen, this airs at different times throughout the day at 1 p.m. It'll air again at 8 p.m. tonight. I want to encourage you to get as many men and women. This is gonna be a phenomenal subject. We are in a day and an hour where men are being emasculated, Tom. Like we've never seen before. We're seeing men being stripped of their ability to lead. They're being stripped of their ability to be men. And it's actually considered being toxic nowadays. And I think there's a war. And I'm so glad that we've got a great guest that's gonna help us with this today. I think there is a thing that is toxic. There is a toxic version of masculinity but what about the biblical version of masculinity? And that's what we're gonna be talking about in just a minute. But Corey, we've got something else coming up in a little bit. Listen, listen, as you know, it's the holidays and so there are wonderful experiences and movies coming. Listen, later on we're gonna show the trailer for the journey to Bethlehem, which is a phenomenal movie that is coming out about the story of Jesus like you've never seen before. So we're excited to show that to you pretty soon. That's right. Well, hey, there's no doubt that today's society is in desperate need of strong, courageous men of God. That's right, men of God. Unfortunately, the current view on men has been rapidly declining and it's not only affecting men, but it's affecting the women in our lives as well. Owen Straughn is our next guest and he's the author of the book, The War On Men, Why Society Hates Them and Why We Need Them. Owen, it's great to have you with us on Hope Today. Thank you, man. It's great to be with you today. Well, let's talk about that. Let's dive right in. What is the war on men? What are you seeing? How is society attacking manhood? Yeah, fundamentally, I think we've got to recognize that men are in the penalty box today and our woke society tells men that they're bad because men have historically been leaders and they've had influential roles. And so we're really in a kind of leveling moment where 40 or 50 years of feminism eroding our culture and reaching into all aspects of entertainment, politics of the church and more has caused many men to be tentative and halting about their roles. So many men want to be strong, boys are wired to want to be strong by God, but instead, men are encouraged to lean back today and to be passive and they're told that if they act in a strong or aggressive or assertive way that they're toxic. What I wanna say very clearly is that we're all sinners. We need the grace of Jesus Christ every single day we live. Every man does, every woman does. We need the cross of Christ to wash us clean of our sins. But fundamentally, manhood isn't toxic. The American Psychological Association literally released a 2019 report that labeled risk-taking behavior, assertive behavior, aggressive behavior as toxic. And you've gotta recognize, of course, those dimensions can go bad in a man, right? You've gotta either be channeled for good or you're gonna be channeled for bad. But fundamentally, it's not toxic for a man to be assertive or aggressive. Men have to step up and be leaders in the home, in the church and in society, but all that is under fire today. Well, what's the results then? What's the results of men not being willing to do that for fear of being labeled toxic? What's the result of weak leadership? Great question. The result is a society in flames. We've got a crisis everywhere you turn. You look at education right now. For every woman who drops out of university or college, seven young men drop out. For every one young woman who commits suicide in those 20-something years, six young men commit suicide. Boys are doing terribly in terms of physical fitness. Men are entrapped in pornography. Men aren't going to church. Women are now vastly outnumbering men in church. You look at one metric after another, Tom, and men are doing badly in it. And you survey all those metrics together and you just have to recognize, as I say in this book, we're in a crisis right now and we see it, but very few people are speaking up about it and building into young men with the gospel of divine grace and trying to reach out to them and help them. Our culture is actually still telling them they don't really have the same value as a girl. We don't really want them in positions of leadership. If they act up, they're toxic, they're bad, they're evil, and we have to say something very differently. We have to go to a text like First Kings 2,2, where David says to his son Solomon on his deathbed, be strong and show yourself a man. Be strong and show yourself a man. Then he defines that strength as primarily spiritual strength in God. We've got to give young men that foundation today or things are only going to get worse and worse. Well, and you're not just saying this as just something you made up in the book. There's a lot of examples you give about where this very thing is being promoted as just general masculinity is being promoted as bad. Yeah, you've got this kind of language all over the place. I mean, you think about how a Canadian university a few years back set up a confession booth for toxic masculinity. There's no confession booth for toxic femininity. So again, the message that boys and young men get over and over is that if they are aggressive, if they break something, if they want to play contact sports at recess or whatever, then they're bad. That's something bad in them. And so society really isn't set up for the flourishing of young men anymore. And we have a lot of work to do in the church because we've just got to recognize our boys are in peril, our boys are in trouble. A lot of young men, they don't have a strong father. That's what boys and young men need desperately. But instead of a strong father in the home across all sectors of society, across all classes too often today, you've got a harried mother, a mother who may not even have the man still in the house. And then you got this boy who doesn't have a shepherding instinct or shepherding presence in his life. And then that boy goes to the doctor because the mother doesn't know what to do and the teachers don't know what to do with all these boys. And they end up on medication and then they're not doing well and they're not wired well. And then they end up suicidal a good amount of them. And what we've got to say as Christians is we know what boys need. Boys need a father and a mother. They need a husband and a wife in the home. They need shepherding. They need training. They need discipling. They need a lot of love. I mean, I think back to how my own father, he wasn't a man of many words like I am, but he would take me out, when I was getting a little hot under the collar some of those evenings and he would say, all right, it's time to play some catch. Nothing fancy, but if a boy doesn't have that, he's in peril. He's in a not good place. Well, listen, I'm excited that I was just getting ready to ask you a question about fatherhood and you went right into that. Let's talk about that when men don't have that identity of a father in their home, they're reaching for something. How can you speak to men who may have to step in as fathers for boys and for men, even older men who haven't had fathers and don't understand what it means to be a man like many who have had fathers to show them? Yeah, I loved what you said a few minutes ago about vulnerability. So the strength of biblical manhood, the authentic man in your life, you need an authentic man in your life who models an appropriate conviction. He's like, here's where we're going. I'm gonna lead this family. I'm gonna crack open the Bible. We're gonna pray at mealtimes. You need that strength in that sense, right? When there's a threat against the family, you need a man who says, all right, I got this, I'm on this, but then you also need a man who says, hey son, dad doesn't get everything right. Dad spoke too strongly to you there. I'm sorry, would you forgive me? And so you need that balance. If you don't have that though to your question more specifically, if you don't have a father in the home, oof, that's a tough situation. What's gotta happen then is that there's gotta be a church and there have to be other institutions that step up and that fill that place of that dad. So you need a strong pastor, you need elders, you need coaches, you need teachers to help. And that's what we desperately need today. Oh, and let's talk about the definition, the proper definition, the biblical definition of masculinity, what is that? And how does that differ from society's definition? Yeah, I think being a man is being strong for the good and strong against evil. Strong for the good, strong against evil. And I'm trying to work biblically, as you said, that's based off of 1 Kings 2, 2, be strong, show yourself a man. That's based off of 1 Corinthians 16, 13, where the apostle Paul says, act like men. So you gotta recognize the Bible thinks there is a way to be manly. Our culture hates that. You say that even in a church context today, you get laughed at, you say the word manly, people laugh at you now. There's nothing funny about that word. But we need to recognize that that strength against evil and for good, it's all grounded in the gospel. So what men most need is not fitness tips. What men most need is not how to spit game at a girl, what men most need is not ice baths in the morning or something like this. You can do different things, you can do different practices as a man, but what men most need is the gospel of divine grace. We need to be forgiven. And there's just a lot of lack of that in our world today. And so you've got a lot of young men going to the internet, for example, and they watch videos of Andrew Tate, the former kickboxer. You know, he's coiled, he's muscled, he's got a Bugatti behind him and his Instagram slo-mo videos. And boys and young men want that. They want to be strong, they want to be impressive, but we've got to be very clear. Men, you're never stronger than when you're repenting of your sin and you're trusting Jesus and then you're striving in all areas of your life to lead out as a man. And you're not seeing your strength, honestly, is a bad thing. You're seeing it as a gift that has to be stewarded for the good of others. I think of my dad going to work, just going to work every day, just consistently, consistently, consistently going to work. And he didn't have a Bugatti. He would have probably liked one. And it was just that thing of him going, talk to us a little bit about, we've talked about fathers, talk about the role of the Christian husband. Frankly, and I've said this already, I'll say it again, Christian men have been not always the best even, and men in society, but Christian men have had difficulty in many areas that have hurt their wives, porn or other things that have hurt their wives. How is a Christian husband the proper role? How's that defined? Yeah, we want to be a husband like Jesus Christ, his husband to his church, Ephesians 5, 22 to 33. We want to be a Christ-like husband. And that means laying down our life for our wife. Now, that doesn't mean anything your wife says she wants, you do, you have to lead her, you have to shepherd her. You're the authority in the home. Dad, you're not supposed to be on your phone. You're not supposed to be watching sports all the time. You're not supposed to be at golf with the boys all the time, and you never have time left over for your wife and your kids. You're exactly right, Tom. There are plenty of ways that we husbands have been married for almost 18 years myself. There are plenty of ways we fail. We stumble, we falter, and our culture encourages that. A culture that wants men to be fat and on devices and on porn and drop out and leave work. That culture is affecting all of us, that pulls at all of us, but there's a higher call. And that's the call of Jesus Christ. And the call of Jesus Christ is for us as men to die to ourselves. You think of 1 Peter 3 to live with our wife in an understanding way. So a godly man is like Christ in that he's tough against evil, but he's tender with his wife. He's tender with his children. He's the kind of man, you saw a picture of this in Afghanistan with the withdrawal over a year ago where there was this stone cold killer who had his machine gun propped up beside him on the wall, but then he had a baby in the crook of his arm. And you could tell this guy was a dad the way he was holding the child. That's who we have to be. We have to pick up the machine gun against the devil and his demons that want to take us down. But then we got to lay it down when we go home. We're not shooting at home. We're coming in and we're tender and we're on the floor with a tea party with our daughter and we're wrestling with our son in a loving way. And man, we got a lot of work to do in the house, but we love to do it. We love to do it. Wow, and I love that you started talking about this specifically with men and even being romantic. I can't stop thinking about David, how David was a man of war, but he was also a man of worship. And there's that, we don't hear that a lot. Some men, be strong, be strong. But here is David being a man who's saying, creating me a clean heart and a new right spirit within me, but he would go kill about 400 men in a second. So understanding this as well, the significance of men being able to tap into the heart of God and be vulnerable and sensitive to God that when they may not have had that opportunity to be sensitive to God, how would you coach men in learning to see their worship also as strength in their families? Yeah, there's a sense with worship, with men that it's not a manly activity. And we've got to just reframe that for men and we've got to say, sure, there's activities that men might like and all men are not the same. All men are not an athlete. All men are not a public speaker. There's men who are gifted at music. There's men who are gifted at being a chef. So we don't want to say being a man means one vocation, for example, every man works with his hands or something like this. But we do want to say that being a man is fundamentally about knowing God. You're made to know God. So I've seen football coaches even recently, one prominent football coach out there who put a prayer up of him praying to God. And it was one of the strangest moments I've seen recently in my little Instagram perusal of my reels. You just don't see, what I'm trying to say, Corey, is you don't see men praying anymore commonly, like cool men. It's like seeing a unicorn walk across the highway. Like what, a cool man praying? A guy with a chain and with swag and he's praying and we just want to restore that. I can't hit a button and change all our society and our culture. What I can do in my little corner of things is I can model to my son, hey son, I'm striving to be a strong man by the grace of God. I'm trying to pray. I'm trying to read this Bible. I'm trying to love your mother. I'm trying to repent of my sins and I'm trying to follow the Lord. And that's what God wants. That's how God has set the home up so that manhood isn't just son, do this. No manhood is modeled and it's developed and it's lived out day by day. Well, I know at least three cool guys that pray. Okay, I mean, they're all sitting at four, four. I know four, okay? Let me just ask you, we only have a minute or two left here but I wanted to touch on this subject of the whole subject of gender confusion and the kind of the gender roles being all skewed all over the place in our society today. Just what is the biblical place we need to be with all of that? No, my word. Wow, talk about confusion. Talk about madness. Talk about a culture that lives in lies and denies reality. That's where we are. And what we as men, that's the strength part. That's where we are stepping back into that public square and we are drawing a line in the sand and we are saying no further. And we are saying to, you know, disturbed young men who wanna enter the restroom of our daughter or whatever it may be, we are saying absolutely not. You are not coming in here. Brothers, we have lost fathers in the society. We have lost strong men who speak up and say, no, you can't do this. Don't you see this all around you? You see crazy behavior, full behavior and there's no dads left who not who would smack somebody and knock them out but who would say, you can't do that. You're not coming in here. And so we've gotta say there's only two sexes. There's men and women. They're made by God. You can't make up your identity. You can't change your sex. You can't change your gender. You're made who you are by God. And we've gotta stand for that. And we've gotta help our boys and girls understand they're growing up into manhood and womanhood. Owen, thank you so much. Owen Strawn, the book is called The War on Men, Why Society Hates Them and Why We Need Them. And I recommend this book. There's a lot in there that is positive towards building biblical manhood. Owen, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you man, appreciate you very much. Wow, guys, that is, I mean, first of all, there are three here who are manly people who like to pray. But Jay, that's such an important subject that is getting so skewed in society today. Yeah, it really is. You know, there's something about the men standing up to lead. That's just why you go to a lot of churches and see a lot of women that are in church because the devil recognizes the authority starts with the man. You know, gentlemen, men are initiators, women are responders, so a woman multiplies whatever a man initiates. So if I am the devil, I'm coming after the man because the man is the seed bearer. If I can pervert the seed, I can destroy the harvest. So if he can break down the man, he can also break down the family and then ultimately the gospel of Jesus Christ can't go out. So that's why all the confusion is coming. This is the devil's direct attack to destroy the family and destroy the gospel of Jesus Christ. Wow. And also the man is able to handle a level of pressure that God built us to handle. And sometimes when a man gives that pressure over to his woman, you'll find how she's just filled with anxiety because it really wasn't for her to carry. It was for us to carry. Listen, Christmas season is just around the corner and there's a fantastic new movie coming out about the birth of Jesus. Check out this new trailer for the film Journey to Bethlehem. Your father has always known you're special. Nothing will change that, Mary. Tell Mary, we are ready. The music, play. You're getting married. It's about to be the best day of your life. I'm Joseph. I feel like we're already friends, no? God has chosen you to have a son. The king of all kings. This wasn't a dream. An angel came to me. It's hard to have faith. It's hard to believe. Look at the star. The future holds more. This is it. Let's go. There are too many. But divine king is to be born in your land. It's a mountain to hide a... Hell, fine. A new king in my kingdom. When you put it that way. Perhaps we should go. What is the exit? It's going to be the worst. My crown! I won't let mother found me. Herod must know of the prophecy. He wants my child. Joseph! I'm not the only one who's chosen for this. You have a choice. You can say you believe me. And that you love me. Will you still marry me, Joseph? I do. I will. Yes, of course, yes. You truly believe that this child is the chosen one. What is his name? Jesus. I think even Fig is beginning to tolerate you. This is something for everyone. Journey to Bethlehem hits theaters nationwide beginning tomorrow, November 10th. Go to JourneyToBethlehemMovie.com for tickets and showtimes. Listen, this has been a powerful conversation. And we just want to talk about this a little bit more. Specifically about that attack on men and how the enemy gets in to separate us, to shrink us, to just cause confusion within the man because he understands that when a man is out of position, the entire home, the family, the city, the nation, and the world gets out of order. I feel like, Pastor Jay, you have something that you want to share about that attack on men. Go ahead and just let the Lord use you. Well, you know what? I believe there's some men there watching right now. And even some ladies, it's very important ladies that we're going to be real right now. Nothing encourages us more than when you build us up. Man is so much like God, not that he is God, but he's so much like God that if you begin to praise him, he'll start flexing his muscles. Even if your husband's built like olive oil, just tell him how sexy he is. Tell him how strong he is. Build him up and it will encourage him to lead. Don't be a nagger. Be a person that praises that man and speaks into his life. And man, it is time for us to rise up. You are going to get hit with titles if you lead like a man in this generation. But you have to be strong. I love what Dr. Owen said, Tom. He talked about the importance of David telling his son, go and be a man. There's ever been a time that we need men to rise up to pray, to love, to be tender, but still to be strong. It's today in this hour. I think David is a great example of that. I mean, here's someone who was strong, was a warring leader, was a leader of a nation, but stumbled and fell and repented and repented and realized that God is the one that he's accountable to, that it's not just whatever he wants to do. It's that God has called each of us to a place of authority in our homes, in our churches, in what we do. And he's called us to be that godly person right there. You know, just wherever you find yourself, be that man of God right there. Ladies, wherever your husband is, build him up into the man of God that he is going to succeed in that place because God's called him to be there. Listen, I know one thing that women, you can do specifically for men is be intercessors for them. There's more you can do in prayer than can be done sometimes in talking. Cause I'm gonna tell you, as a man, we're stubborn. We could be stubborn. And sometimes we have a way of how we see things going and say, you know what, baby? This is how it needs to be. And then that's what it is. And I'm the man and I'm speaking all that and that could cause a lot of tension. But let me tell you something. There is nobody that can speak to the heart of a man like the spirit of God. And that prayer, that time, if you feel like this man has a stronghold, whether it's addiction, pornography, pride, ego, whatever it is in his life, he's dealing with need for affirmation, not having a father, trying to compensate it with money, trying to compensate with muscles, trying to compensate with achievements, speak to God fast and lay down before the Lord. And I'm telling you, the presence of God has a unique way of getting into the heart of a man and almost like the in Troy, there was the gift that came. But in the middle of the night, all of these warriors came out. God will come out into that heart and spew his word all over that man and his mindset, his attitude will begin to change. Pastor Jay, go ahead and just share what I feel like the Holy Spirit is sharing with you right now. Well, I believe right now it's time for men and women to come together. There's ever been a time that we need men to rise up its right now. You may be battling in some way. Just pick up that phone, dial 888-665-4483. There are prayer partners that are standing by that want to pray for you. And maybe you're a lady that's struggling with submitting and loving your husband the way that you should. Go ahead and pick up that phone as well. This is the time there is an attack on men. If men rise up and become the best version of themselves that God has called them to be, there'll be nothing impossible for any family to overcome. So let's rise up, let's defeat this war on men and let's go forward in Jesus name.