Unknown Speaker 0:02
eye contact with the camera.
Speaker 1 0:04
Yeah, yeah, no, that's that's fine. Yeah, that's great. We we don't do anything with the video right now but we're just starting talking like we're
Unknown Speaker 0:12
doing we're only doing voice Awesome. Well,
Speaker 1 0:14
yeah, I would say voice is the main focus. We're we're gonna start messing with some AI tools to see what it can produce from some of these video recordings. But it's a it's a distant second priority. The big priorities is audio.
Unknown Speaker 0:29
Do you do YouTube?
Unknown Speaker 0:31
Not right now. No.
Speaker 2 0:33
Okay. Yeah, just from the very beginning, Sathiya, I just said I'm just going to do it all at one shot. Now it's just just duplicate it's not like my YouTube has taken off like crazy, but that produces all the content for IG and everything else. So it all starts with that for me.
Speaker 1 0:48
Okay, cool. Yeah, very cool. Yeah. Amazing. Okay, let me jump in. I think I think I have a bio for you. Right. Well, we'll do the bio separate. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Yes. So I'll read the bio separately.
Speaker 2 1:01
And obviously, we're not live so if we want to retake something or whatever, we can do that. And it's not a problem.
Speaker 1 1:07
Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yep. Perfect. Well, I'm here with my new friend Josh cash at Cata. Dorian and you come in so highly regarded. I've been so impressed by your stuff and I really am honored to have you on the show today. Welcome man.
Speaker 2 1:20
So Thea, I've been really excited to get to get on this episode to talk to you talk to your audience and to get to know you more the work you're doing is incredible. It's so important. It's so needed right now that I just want to honor you for the sacrifice the commitment you made to step through your testimony, and share what you've went through so you can set other men free. So it's so important. Thank you for what you're doing. And thank you for having me on today.
Speaker 1 1:46
Oh, thanks. That's very, very kind and I feel the same way but what you're doing so necessary. You You've really found a way I think to speak to men in a way that men get it and you and I both know that's actually pretty difficult to do. And you're so captivating. We were talking before we hit record here and and I feel like everything you share, like there's just there's so much depth to it. Maybe as a starting point, Josh Can you just tell us a little bit about why you become so passionate about helping Kingdom men?
Speaker 2 2:12
Absolutely. So when it comes to the role of a man in the world, you know, if we go back if we just start at Genesis, there's a mandate on all of our lives as men. You know, God calls us forward, he creates us in His image. And he gives us this mandate to take dominion to take dominion in life. First, it starts with taking dominion over the earth, and we have this beautiful picture of partnership with God. And obviously a lot of your listeners are probably going to be familiar with the Genesis story, but man messes up right we we trespass, we fall into sin, we disobey God, and that sets off a cataclysmic chain of events where we're now separated from God. And we see that all throughout the Old Testament. But if I start at that original starting points that the we see that we were destined for dominion, that man was created to rule and to reign in God's economy in God's kingdom here on the earth, and that was forfeited and that's, that's the effect of sin. That's the effect of what we see with sin in the world. And that leads to broken families in present day that leads to men being taken out of their leadership position that leads to what you've been through in your life, men falling into vices, and sedating themselves and medicating themselves to get away from their current reality because they're not being the leaders in life. But God still has that original plan. Over a man there's still a mandate on men to step forward into their leadership role. And there's many men that are Christian and non Christians that have abandoned that place. They've abandoned that role of leadership. And that's what I'm passionate about. That's what I'm called to do is to call men back into their rightful position, and that starts with a relationship with the Creator and then expanding your territory first, taking dominion over yourself. So you can start to take dominion over your world and start to influence within your sphere of influence.
Speaker 1 4:02
That's so good and so good. So you have the framework that I least want to start with is the standard 59 I think it's so brilliant the way you've crafted it, and what it's offering but before I get their guess, I guess I'm just curious, when you were growing up, did you have a lot of positive male figures in your life to kind of model this or is this something you had to kind of figure out from scratch?
Speaker 2 4:23
That's a great a great question. Because, you know, I talked about this in the book, the standard, I know we'll probably we'll get into that but we do have this crisis, right of like, where are our fathers? And I was fortunate to grow up and in a great family. So my parents are together, they were together the whole time, and they're still together. So I've always had a believing a praying mother is also part of my testimony why I'm talking to you today. And I've also had a father who's a believer as a strong faith. But growing up it was really my mother who led me into the deeper things of the Lord who you know, did the flannel Bible stories on the flannel board with my brother got us in VBS and my dad is a solid figure in my life and growing up so my dad was present, but he was working a lot. So there's a period of time where my dad my dad's a very hard worker, he's got a phenomenal work ethic. That's what I pick up from my dad the values, integrity and character, but there were seasons in my life where he was working. So much, but the Lord was so gracious because the Lord would bring in a youth group leader who was acting like a big brother to me. So there were some times where if my dad was working a lot, it seemed to be there was another older man that the Lord brought into our life that would take us out somewhere. I had camp counselors that I'm still like a camp counselor from when I was a kid, I went to a Christian camp. One of those counselors is still my best friend today, one of my best friends and he drove to spend time from Connecticut to New York, three hour drive two and a half hour drive to take my brother and I out to ice cream when we were young. So we've always had strong influences, and then I would say even one step further, you know, growing up in church and being a part of a couple different churches. I was fortunate to be around strong pastors and strong men that were modeling biblical manhood, and had strong men's ministries that I was able to sit under, and also glean so it's become part of my DNA to see strong men in different sectors and the way they walk out their call.
Speaker 1 6:22
That's so cool. Yeah, and an amazing it's amazing how God brought those different people into your life. And I chose for many of the men you become in the work that you're doing. You and I both have a conviction, which is that all men are leaders. But not necessarily all men actually lead and I kind of got the feeling that that's what at least is undergirding some of your desire to get your message out there, certainly with the standard and all the work you're doing there. Why do you think it is that men are struggling to lead in our day and age because I kind of feel like, I'm sure I'm sure it's been an age old issue to one extent, like you said, that whole, not taking dominion. But I do feel like in our society today with, you know, the toxic masculinity stuff, and sometimes a very effeminate Jesus that's presented in the church and it feels like men are either not leading or we're kind of warping the whole definition of what leadership looks like. And sometimes it's biblical, in my opinion, sometimes it's not. I don't know, what's your take on that? Maybe I'm off on this, but what's been your perception of it and why do you think men are struggling to lead a little bit more in this day and age?
Speaker 2 7:27
Yeah, it's a super deep question and it probably depends exactly on who we're talking about. We're talking about a Christian man and normal man, because we're all products of our environment. Right. So let's, let's start with let's start with a guy who grew up in church and this will apply to a lot of people, even if you don't have a super deep faith and you're listening to this. Maybe you just grew up in church and you saw some things we haven't always had strongest models of manhood within church. And that goes back to the industrial age and kind of what happened with that pattern. And without getting into a history lesson here. Let's just say that and left to go to work and when they went to go to work, they left the gap in the church. And more women filled it, and everything started catering to more of a feminized experience, which I think is going away for the most part, but it's still there. In some churches, you can still find that so it repels guys or there's still this. You know, this idea that if I walk into the church, I gotta change who I am or I can't be myself. Or you know, there might be some feminine language or songs or you know, floral arrangements everywhere where you're like, This is strange, you know, okay, and that maybe you don't connect with the pastor maybe he's you know, not your your cup of tea so to speak. So you end up with this, you know, this weird view of like Christians, right and I think when we think of most when most people think of Christians, I think they think of nice guys. Oh, they're nice guys, right? Like they don't rock the boat. They go along with things and depending again, from your stream stereotypes where you're at. So what's that leave a Leave, leave us to do it? We go to the other side, and we're like, Okay, well, who's gonna be my model? Like, what should I look at if I'm trying to form leadership? And for guys like you and I, for guys that are listening to this podcast, you're you're listening. I already know a couple things about you. You're into your development. You want to get better in life, you're focused on growth and so if that's you, you're what I call driven. And if you're driven, you're gonna start looking at well, what's another model, maybe there's another voice I can find or there's someone else I can follow. And then that can lead us into weird territory as well because the world has taken leadership and they've taken some masculine elements, but sometimes they take them too far. You know, I started off our conversation talking about dominion, but Dominion if it's not, if it's not in its proper order can very quickly turn into domination. And when I say that I'm not talking about dominating other people stepping on people to get ahead or anything like that. So then masculinity can get a bad rap and it can be totally distorted if you don't have the right model. So what I've been focusing on and where I take men is what is the model for true masculinity? You know, growing up, I was in the Arnold movies and Stallone movies and like, that was my thing. I guess the, you know, newer, newer, I guess my kids are gonna grow up looking at the rock and stuff like that. But you got your action heroes and you got all that stuff. So what is the true model? So that's where the book the standard comes in. That's where my message about pointing men to Jesus as the standard for our masculinity.
Speaker 1 10:27
Wow, okay, got it. So So tell us more tell us what what does that mean? What what specifically about the life of Jesus is pointing towards that?
Speaker 2 10:36
Well, any people when you think of Jesus, if we were to ask most people, and I just said, Hey, give me a couple of descriptors. What do you think about what do you think about Jesus when you think of him again, depending on your background, someone might say I'm stained glass picture, someone else might say, like, a hippie wearing Birkenstocks. I don't know I saw a movie once and I thought that's what it was. Or maybe now people are thinking more the chosen which is a cooler Jesus. But most people would say like Son of God, like King of Kings, right? Lord of lords. And we put Jesus in this place of Lord which he absolutely is. But in doing that, sometimes we bypass and I found that many men are bypassing that he was also completely human 100% God and 100% man at the same time, so he limits his divinity as he steps into humanity. And his favorite self descriptor actually, if you look through all the Gospels, it's mentioned over 80 times is he's referred to as the Son of man, so he doesn't take the title Son of God. He takes the title Son of Man where he's identifying with us in our humanity. So we take that a little bit further, and we can start to see that and I really love this that the is that we can look at his life which is really interesting. From his birth to his baptism. Those are kind of last years we don't have a lot of documentation there. But when you think about it, is this went to work? If Jesus had to punch the clock for 30 years, he was in a season of obscurity. 30 years, you know, from the time of his birth and then working a normal job, a blue collar job, developing himself there, getting ready for the timing of his father when he would say now's the time to step into your mission. And then working with with roughneck guys like guys from the fishing industry, some white collar guy, some blue collar guys. So all sorts of different walks of life where he can identify he can relate to the human condition on every level except he never sins
Speaker 1 12:33
Right. Right. Okay. So that the is that what the standard is or what tell us a little bit about the the framework you've created here? Is that the standard itself?
Speaker 2 12:43
Sure, yeah. So you know, at the beginning of the book, what I'll do is I'll set that up in a little bit more detail. We'll talk about some of the present issues we talked about, you know, where are we as a society right? We've been missing fathers, even if they are present, many are checked out. They're on their phones right now, or they're watching the game. Then we have the whole you know, the whole idea of church and guys can always connect with that because of some of the past issues. So what I do in the standard is I take a deep dive into six dimensions in the life of Jesus that I believe every man has to have present in their life. And it goes back to your original question because you asked me about leadership. And the first place we start is we start with self leadership, which I call self mastery that Jesus learned to lead himself as a man and he was doing this for all the time leading up before he steps into ministry and then also while he's in ministry. So we see this theme that Jesus is disciplined. Jesus lives a life of restraint. Jesus knows how to control his spirit. He knows how to submit to the will of his Father. He knows how to wait. He knows how to exhibit diligence. And we break these down. It's very short chapters, because really gives you a sense of accomplishment when you read it. So we got these six books within these books, but really short chapters. So if I get into it, it might be Hey, today, I'm reading Jesus's amount of discipline. And then there's a little coaching section after that, where we'll talk about what's that What's that look like for you? How can you apply this into your life and model what Jesus is modeling for us?
Speaker 1 14:11
That's really good. It really, really good and it is amazing. If you do actually look at the story of Jesus and look beyond just the teachings of the word he's words he's saying, but the actual character he possesses in some of these stories, they're remarkable treasures like this like like the self master. I think that's such a cool example. Can you tell us what some of the other dimensions are?
Speaker 2 14:32
Yeah, yeah. And I want to You said something really important to Thea, which I want to touch on because the reason and kind of the catalyst for this book, I told you a little bit of my background, but for those of you that don't know You know, my what I do for a living, I actually work in the real world. I have I have a job in corporate I work for a fortune 500 company. I've been blessed to hold six different positions, ascending leadership, coaching, hiring, developing high performers, running sales teams. So I've had that whole backdrop for the past 18 years or so when I sat down, I started reading the gospels. Back in 2016. I was taking a fresh look, I was just reading with a fresh lens. And this time, Sathiya, it was different because of my experience in life. Wasn't just reading the words of Jesus, although they're really important and powerful. We're starting to see the background. Why was Jesus doing what he was doing? Why did he say it that way? Look at the way he's leading his team. Wow, look at the type of leader he is. He's building his the way he's built his team. And I'm looking at all these methods, not just what he's saying. I'm looking at the context and where we are in history and looking at the story. And that's really what birth the standard is pointing out the methods of Jesus more than just the words and the words are in the book as well. But looking at why does he do what he does? And so that leads us from self leadership where that's a lot of observation, right? He's not always sitting down. He's giving a John Maxwell leadership seminar, but he's modeling servant leadership, and he's showing you what that looks like. Against the backdrop of what century century one leadership would have looked like which is lording over people and occupation with a military edge quite different than the way Jesus shows up. So we do go into self mastery. First, we start with their how to lead yourself what those qualities what those characteristics look like. And then from there, the second part of the book, we get into leadership the way Jesus built, builds his team, the way he builds leadership and others. And He cultivates those qualities and those that follow him because he's going to take 12 Guys from obscurity. And then he's going to pour into them. He's going to be organizational with the way he sends them out the way he trains them, mentors them, disciples them, and then these 12 men are going to change the world, actually, 11 Right. And that's gonna go in and we see all sorts of leadership models from like, an inner circle of three to his core team of 12 to an extended team of 70. And eventually it will get to 120 at the day of Pentecost.
Speaker 1 17:02
Hmm, that's so good. It's so good. So Self Mastery leadership, and I know you I know, there's a bunch of we'll make sure that people have a link to access the book because I think these frameworks are going to be super helpful. I did see and I don't know if this is part of the book, or maybe it's just more part of your messaging, but, but I noticed that there are four areas in particular where you really believe that men in this day and age are called to raise their standard. I think his faith fitness family, and finance, I think is the fourth one. And I wonder if you can comment a little bit about that. For maybe a guy who is hearing this and saying, you know, Josh, I know that there are areas of my life that are suffering and I'm not living up to the standards that I know Jesus has set for me, whether it's in self mastery and leadership, or maybe it's more some of these these areas that I mentioned right now. Can you talk a little bit about them and maybe give some advice for someone who needs to start elevating their standard?
Speaker 2 17:54
Sure. Yeah. It's a great question. Sathiya, thank you for it. You know, everything for me starts with faith because we're really talking about the call on your life right now, if you're listening is that God has a mandate over your life. He has a calling for you. A specific assignment is a sphere of influence that you have right now as you're listening to this. And God wants that to grow and he wants you to become the man that he called you to be. So think about it this way. You have this enormous amount of potential. But just because an object or person or something carries potential doesn't mean that potential gets released until it meets its purpose and until there's an action you know, I can take a rock to the top of the hill like right back to I don't know what it is fifth grade, fifth grade science right but until I let go of it and let it go down the hill, it's not going to really equal any kind of energy or force or momentum. So that's how many men are right now. Maybe you feel like you're listening to this and you're like, I feel like I have a call on my life. I feel like there's something over me for more but I'm just not sure what it is. Well, you need to learn how to step into your potential and that always starts in the spiritual realm. So the core message first and foremost will always be what's it look like to follow Jesus? You know, when he called men in Century one, he said, Follow me. And that's not the same as following someone on social media. That meant they would walk the same path as him right? They would, there was actually saying that they would eat the dust of the rabbi like they'd walk so close. They could like they would walk in his dust. So what does that look like? And that's really where we get into that depth in the book, the standards. So if you want to go deeper in your faith, you want to make it practical. You want to find out how to walk this out. That's definitely for you. In terms of family, you know, it's all encompassing and leadership because there's different levels to leadership. Everyone wants to be a leader, right? But leadership first starts with always learning how to lead yourself. So it always starts with self leadership. When you can lead yourself which is what you're doing and you're equipping men to do Sofia, when you can take dominion over yourself, then you're qualified to start to go into the next sphere of influence, which is leading your family. Now, if you're single and you're listening to this, you should be preparing for leadership. Now how am I going to be that man when I have the family, and then as you start these things? Well, you know, everything in the kingdom of God comes in seed form. So we stored it, which is basically we manage, we manage it well and as we manage it and multiplies, and then that expands our territory. And then how are you showing up at work? How are you showing up in your profession? How are you showing up in your career, with your colleagues, with your friends in your circle? And that's the next level of leadership where you start to exert influence on those around you. So it's always self leadership first, then it's leading your family and then it's leading where you are?
Speaker 1 20:38
Yeah, that's really good. So faith, obviously the centerpiece of all this family. I mean, mission critical. And we know obviously, as we move further in this life, family becomes more and more important. I think those are two things that our audience would hear a lot of. I'd love for you to comment on fitness and finances if you don't mind. Fitness is something that I've been trying to get some more people on talking in the podcast, but I would love to hear kind of your take on it and what it looks like for a man who is really elevating his standard in this area and the finance piece as well. We'd love to hear your input there.
Speaker 2 21:10
Yeah, absolutely. So from a fitness perspective, you know, we have many scriptures for this. We can actually see you know, there's there's, there's verses in Romans were talks about to offer our body as a living sacrifice. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. So you know, I grew up in fitness, so I grew up I competed in bodybuilding when I was young, you know, just turned 20 When I did my first show, so I just kind of grew up in the gym because I was very insecure. I was very thin, right? Like most people who start and I wanted to put on sighs because I thought it would make me feel better about myself. And so a lot of guys that are deep in the fitness have a similar pathway like a similar origin story, but somewhere along the way, what I find and why I think fitness is so important. Number one, if you want to accomplish anything in life, it's all about your energy management. But you will not fulfill your call. You will not function at a high level in your family, for yourself for others in your career. If you don't learn how to manage your energy and right now, you know we live in a day and age like our food and for the most part is really junk. We're surrounded by chemicals and there's so many environmental factors we're fighting with, you know, and endocrine disrupting chemicals and EMF and all the stuff that's in the atmosphere that it's more important. Now to steward your health. So that's a command in Bible in the Bible to honor your temple number one, um, number two guys, you need an outlet. You need to find something that you put your energy into where you're developing yourself. So I have a lot of reasons why I like the gym. Now when I talk about fitness, you don't have to work out I have guys that I work with. They're their marathon runners or their ultra marathon guys or they're tough monitors or they do a different style of workout than me but they're doing something I have. I have some friends that are CrossFitters I'm not a crossfitter but find what works for you to develop yourself and it is going to boost your esteem and it gives you these lessons because every lesson you need to walk in, you know I'm gonna use the gym for myself, but to go after fitness to go after having a goal and then delaying gratification to get it developing the discipline to go in. You feel like it to also show up and develop discipline on the days you don't. So I'm at a really cool stage of life right now Sathiya because my son just he's 12 he turned 12 this year and the gym rules at my gym is that once you're 12 you can come on to the gym floor. So we actually had a workout this morning so I'm teaching him at a young age. You know the benefits and also the discipline that's involved showing up when you don't want to go so far. He's super pumped and he's excited to be there every day with me. Yeah, but there's gonna be a day where you don't feel like going and like, that's part of the method. That's what we do. So I like fitness for so many reasons. But the main one would be if I had one takeaway that you need to stored your body, it's a command but you also need to manage your energy level.
Speaker 1 24:07
That's so good and stewardship obviously plays into the finance piece as well. And I wonder if you can talk about that because I think you and I are both in like very charismatic extremes where there can be a little bit of a propensity to like I say, some of the teachings around finances are not great in our circles. And I think some of them are absolutely amazing. They've been life changing for me. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit about you know, that what stewardship looks like in that arena.
Speaker 2 24:30
Yeah, so we have Yeah, and I think that's, that's the answer, right? It's stewardship. What's that look like? So let's just let's call out the elephant in the room when you make that comment, right? There's some path theology. So I call it like, you know, there's definitely number one, there is a poverty mentality. A lot of us walk around with limiting beliefs. There's stuff attached to Christianity. There's weird stigmas that are supposed to take a vow of poverty or I'm supposed to be poor, or you know, Jesus didn't own anything. And there's obviously a biblical perspective that's more solid than that. So a lot of people get weird and Christian circles about money. So let's call out that that one first. But then what happens is the pendulum swings from one side all the way to the other. Yeah, what you have on the other side is you go from a poverty mentality to what I call a lottery mentality. That, you know, if God wants to break me through, he's just gonna send me that mailbox money. Like I'm just gonna walk out one day, and like, there's gonna be an envelope or I'm gonna get a phone call and like, I just got some inheritance that like just showed up somewhere. Let me say, I'm not opposed to that. I believe in the supernatural. And I know, there's phenomenal, amazing stories, but those are usually the exception, not the rule. If we look off through the book of Proverbs, and we look at the commands for men, it's to work it's to do your own work. It's to show up, it's to be diligent. It's what Jesus model right going back to self leadership. It's what he did from the time he was most likely 13 into the time he was 30. You know, a builder a blue collar guy punching the clock, clock producing excellent product and offering awesome customer service. I'm Daisy didn't feel like it. Right and his humanity is getting tired, getting frustrated because it's the same customer again, complaining about the same thing, whatever that might be. So So somewhere in the middle, we have to find what's the truth here. And the truth is that God does want to prosper us. That's not the central focus. It first starts in the soul realm, that he wants to prosper you and your spirit. And we're called into this abundant life but as an overflow of that. Call the take territory in life. We're called to be successful when when the Lord tells Joshua to go in and take the land. He said, everywhere your foot treads, I want you to take the land. And when you do this, and he gives him a list of things to do, you will have success. And so we can see that God's plan for us and if we look through, if you read the Bible with that lens, you'll see that the Bible is a plan. Where the Lord gives us the rules for operating on the earth, so we can be successful so we can be established. That doesn't mean like I don't want to, you know, that doesn't mean you got to follow you the the most recent televangelists with the craziest things out there that turned people off, but you need wealth for what you're called to do. So I think the best definition I've ever heard of, you know, what is once prosperity define it isn't a number is it? Like what what can I have? What can I have? What's that look like? And this is a definition from a friend of mine. It's the best one I've ever heard where it's enough for everything you need to do. It's provisioned for your vision and that's going to be different for each man. If you have a bigger vision, if you're called to something bigger, you're going to need more and let's just not make it so spiritual. God wants you to enjoy yourself as well. You can take your family on vacation, you can have a vehicle you can have your home you can you know you it says in Proverbs that a good man leaves an inheritance to his children's children's children. Yeah, so that's someone who walks in a level of wealth. And that comes through diligence and that comes through through stewardship. So, I believe guys, you should be the best at what you do, regardless of where you find yourself right now. So I know we live in a day and age Sathiya of like social media and all these promises and online marketers and like always looking and comparing ourselves to other people. Yeah, but there is no shortcut. You have to start everything in the kingdom start small. So my challenge for anyone listening right now is where are you in life right now? How can you serve better? How can you be more diligent, more excellent. And let that be your promotion? And as you follow those principles of following the Lord with where you are, you'll see yourself unlocking promotion at least that's what happened in my life. I showed up and I did the best work I could. I honor the Lord with my work. And as I did, started getting into the next door and the next door open and then before you know it, people start coming to you and saying, Okay, we want you to apply for this, or we think you'd be a good fit for this role. And I started to experience the promotion of the Lord, but it was because I exhibited the right behaviors. And the right skill sets. And in that equalled really good performance and that and that opened up the door for promotion.
Speaker 1 29:11
Yeah, that's it's so good. And that's a story that I think we need to hear again and again, especially in our kinda microwave instant gratification, culture, just the importance of that process. And how it often does take take time before you see that ROI or before you really see the fruit of your work. On the flip side, how does somebody know Josh, if they're there on a dead end path, because I know sometimes we've seen this even in people do our program where they're very loyal to solutions of the past things that they've done, because someone they really trust is doing it or whatever. And I think sometimes peel people feel torn like do you know Josh, I've been faithful. I know everything starts as a seed, like you're saying, it's not really bearing fruit, but I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to stay down this path or I don't want to quit this path. And then if it turned out like, I was actually supposed to stay on it, and I missed out on a great opportunity. How do people know like, did you ever experience that in your own journey along the way, and how did you How do you know when you should quit and change course and when you need to actually stay there?
Speaker 2 30:14
Yeah, that's that's a great question. And deserves it deserves an answer that kind of takes it from a few different different perspectives. Because the the quick answer could be, hey, if it's not working for you, you need to stick with it and follow the process, right? Follow the process all the way through so that we have that side of the coin. And the other side is like, hey, if it's not working for you, like go find something that does so the answer for us if we're really if we're if we're committed to following the Lord is, where's the Lord leading us? And that's going to take that you need to have a level of a prayer life. See where you feel peace, and where you should go and where you should stay. So when Jesus says, Follow me, we really do want to follow him. Where is he leading? Us? So I would start there first, because I don't you know, God uses a process in our lives and part of that process is to refine us. It's it's a period of surrender at times. It's a period of letting something go. And when you're in the process, you don't want to leave it. He's telling you to stay there. So it depends. However, as a couple general rules, if we're talking if we're talking about principles, if it's not working, you do need to reevaluate something, right? So if someone's following in your industry and with what you do, if someone's trying to white knuckle it and they can't get free, and they're trying to break this habit in their life, which is devastating, and they tried everything and it's not working, and they just think they have to try harder. That's crazy. Get a coach, right? Find someone who's been there, you know, find the grace they have on their life and hook up with their system, their testimony, so you can collapse time and save yourself a lot of pain and take the shortest path. Right? So that would be the answer for someone there. If you find yourself in your profession, and you're like, you're getting squeezed and it's uncomfortable, you need to find out like, Lord, am I supposed to stay here? Or can I leave? And let me give you one thing that I think could set people in a level of freedom. A lot of times we think of the will of God, because this is really what we're getting to like, what's the will of God for my life, like what's the will of God for my job? What's the will of God for this next move? And we can really spend ourselves out of control there. There's three levels of will, right there's the there's the acceptable will of God, the good will of God and the perfect will of God. We see that in Scripture. And we always want the perfect which I do too, but sometimes God's Will I want to reframe it for everyone. One of my mentors has taught me this that we think of God's will is this one specific parking spot, like I need to get there. And if I'm not there, I'm outside of the will. And hopefully this will set you free. Instead of that. Think about the will of God as a parking lot. Parking Lot has boundaries, but there's multiple spots in it. And some things you know God made you with the ability of free will and to have a choice. Sophia I have a favorite color. I have many preferences of what kind of food I like and where I like to go and and all these different preferences that we carry, right. And sometimes I believe God really cares about what you like. So he might say, Do you want to do that? Is that what you want? You know, when he shows up to Solomon, he says, Ask me for what you want. He doesn't tell him what to ask for. He says what do you want? So that's a question where we get to with the Lord where he asked you What do you want to do? And when we're walking with Him, we know that He gives us the desires of our heart so he puts those desires within your heart. So if you feel calling or you feel a desire to go after a certain industry, just check your motivation. Just make sure that you're submitted and you're not pushing too hard. I mean, every man will know here. I mean, Sathiya, you probably know this. You've probably experienced it. I definitely have. Have you ever been in a place where you feel like you're just pushing and grinding and striving for something like out of season? Yeah.
Unknown Speaker 34:11
I've done that before for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2 34:13
Yeah. And you're just like, you know, I think I'm pushing too hard or this this door is not opening or I just don't think the timings now there's no grace on this. And you kind of you know, that should be something you pay attention to you realize you're trying to get something out of season. Let me say one more thing about coaches. Is that I believe that every man should have a mentor, a board of advisors, people that they can go to to help them make decisions. When I was younger, Sathiya, I remember I was like, you know, early college. There's a gentleman in my church. I really respected him for multiple reasons, and I chased him down, said I want to take you out to lunch. And I bought him lunch and I said, Listen, you have something that I want. And I asked him formally, will you mentor me? I want to meet with you weekly. lunches on me. I want to pray with you. I want to learn from you. And I still have that relationship to this day. They don't all have to be lifelong relationships. But you need to have someone in your life that you can go to to submit your plans to so whenever I make a big decision, where I'm going to move one job, I'm going to take something that's going to have some major impact in my life. Sometimes the smaller ones but definitely the bigger ones. I'm going to my personal board of advisors because proverbs again, King Solomon tells us in His wisdom, that there's wisdom in a multitude of counselors. Yeah. So I want to tap into the wisdom and the experience of others that have different perspectives other than mine, besides trying to find people that are just going to tell me what I want to hear and say, Yeah, go for it when they're like, you know, be cautious about this or be careful with this.
Speaker 1 35:46
Yeah, for sure. I'm wonder if you can put on your prophetic lens for a minute. And when you look to the future, Josh, you know, the next five to 10 years, what do you think are going to be some of the biggest challenges that men face to elevate their standards and to really achieve in some of the areas that we've been discussing?
Speaker 2 36:08
The deep question, you know, this is the this is this is the way I look at it, Sofia, we can take it from from I'll answer it this way. First, number one we look at the pattern of men throughout history. Very, very similar. So I would say on one side of the coin, humans are still humans, men are still going to behave like men. You know, in some of my research for the standard and just writing I have this I have this one chapter right talk it's pretty interesting but I I explain how Jesus has a sense of humor. Well, mainline might not see that but when you really get into the parables and the stories he tells he sees that and then in the coaching section after I talk about, be careful guys, because we've all been there. It's a thin line from having a good time to all of a sudden crossing that line. We just got into, you know, an area of humor that was a little darker and went out of bounds and we're like, oh, we took it too far right? And same thing is happening in Century one. The same thing in the Bible. You know, Paul's telling people you know, Watch out guys and there's specific examples of don't take it too far and watch your language and be careful. Of course, just thing is what it would say in the original language there. So we see these patterns like men are still men, right? And even with what you do when men are in pain, they look for an outlet of pleasure. Even the children of Israel when they're walking in bondage, right? They're in bondage in Egypt. And what happens in Egypt, they multiply. They have tons of children, because they're in bondage. So they're seeking sexual pleasure. They're seeking outlets, of how am I going to escape this and they're just finding their own way to medicate in their own way to take care of themselves, whatever that looks like. So the patterns are always the same, like human desires the same so we always have to be careful and exhibit our self leadership and have our boundaries in place to govern ourselves. But I think in this day and age, with technology with everything happening in the current environment, and we look at the next five years, what's happening in the government, what's happening with, you know, in where you are in Canada, what's happening here in the US, a crunch on freedom, more religious persecution more, being tamped down to not raise your voice around certain issues. We're seeing that culture war happening. So I would tell any man listening that now's the time, if you've been straddling the fence or you've been thinking like, I know there's a couple areas of my life I need to tighten up or I really need to recommit to the Lord or I need to surrender. Now's the time. Today's the day because we're about to go into a season where I believe we're going to see the light getting brighter. I'm not forecasting a doom and gloom here. But as the light gets brighter, the darkness gets darker. So there's gonna be pockets. There's gonna be places where God pours out His Spirit where he's moving and there's going to be amazing things happening against the backdrop of probably some of the darkest times we've ever seen. So it's not a time to be on the fence. It's not a time to be dabbling with the world or playing around with something. If anyone here is dancing, with any kind of indecision on their commitment, the way they're living their life. Get it right right now, because we live in an urgent our, and there's work to be done, and God has a calling on your life and it's time for us to raise up so we can lead our family, lead society in the church and change the culture around us.
Speaker 1 39:30
Oh man, so well. So Josh, really appreciate it. I want to respect your time here, but this has been amazing. We'll put a link in the show notes to the book and then I know you so you had a is it an email challenge? Or can you just tell tell people just I guess other ways that they can get in touch with you if they want to find out what you're up to? Yeah, awesome.
Speaker 2 39:47
Thank you for the opportunity. So anyone who's who wants to hear more about this message, you can check out the book. It's called the standard discovering the standard discovering Jesus as the standard for masculinity. That's where we'll go into will go into self mastery, leadership, communication, EQ, empathy, confrontation. And lastly, wrap up with Jesus's look at his life and how he exhibits love and everything he does. So that's the book so that's there. We have a free Bible plan on the YouVersion app if you want to check that out. So the books on Amazon I will drop the link. The best way to find out what I'm doing is you can just go to standard 50 nine.com that standard five nine.com You can get the links to the book. You can follow me on social media at Kingdom athlete is my is my handle. And the last thing you mentioned, Sophia, is I'm running a free challenge completely free. It's called the unfair advantage challenge because I believe every man in the kingdom has been given an unfair advantage in life that's that call that grace on your life, to promote it to experience success to be established in life. But many men don't know how to connect with this. And there is something you must there's someone you must be and there's also things you must do to fully unlock that unfair advantage that Jesus puts on your life. So that's what that challenge is about. It's 11 days you get an email every day. Totally free. You can check that out if you're interested. And I just want to honor you. Thank you so much for having me on. It's been it's been an honor to be here to talk to your guys see what you're doing and you're doing great work. So I just want to encourage you to keep it up because what you're doing so needed if any man is listening to this, and you're on the fence or you're struggling with something, reach out to Sathiya, he's the real deal. He's got an awesome background, and you don't have to struggle alone. It's time for us to link up connect with other people not stay isolated. Find our tribe so we can be set free and fulfill what God calls us to do
Speaker 1 41:39
that. Come on. Thank you so much, Josh. That's really kind of the man will put links in the show notes to all all the stuff that you mentioned. And we'll make sure that guys go check it out. In the meantime, man, we're cheering you on. Thanks. So much for your time today. Some Thank you
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
