35 - Your Hero Journey

Every (good) story has an protagonist. In other words, a hero: the person at the center of the whole thing who is transformed and comes through. The unique thing about your hero journey, however, is that in this story, as should all other of his disciples, you as Christ's follower point to him at the real Hero of the real Story. That becomes your "sacrifice" - to defer your glory and final resolution to him for others. 

Email me at mike@menrestored.com if you'd like more information about my 90-day Exodus Freedom Journey pathway and cohort. It's built for men in ministry, just like you and also the Christ-follower still feeling enslaved by pornography. 

Together, let's reclaim your freedom! 

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Hi everyone, I'm not sure if you're a man in ministry, but I want to invite you, if you are, and this is a problem for you, pornography. I want to invite you to this cohort that I have. It's safe and it's confidential, and you need that. You need a place to go to talk about this and to get some deep learning and brotherhood to fight together with other men. That's what I want to offer to you. Stay tuned at the end of the episode to find out how to be in touch with me so that you can learn more about this cohort. I don't want you to have to ever live in isolation like I was living for so many years as a young pastor. I want you to know that you don't have to be alone in this anymore. So I'll see you on the other side. Listen in and let's get into the episode. You are a man seeking freedom from pornography. You know what's at stake if you don't break free. Your marriage, your family, and your faith. Welcome to the Exodus Freedom Journey Podcast. Here you'll discover insights and tools to help you find lasting freedom, starting in as little as 40 days. You are worth the fight. Your marriage is worth the fight. Your family is worth the fight. Together with God's mighty hand, let's reclaim your freedom. Okay, now with this episode, welcome by the way. With this episode and this teaching, it starts to get a little more personal. So we're going to be going further into how important it is for you to own your own story. All right, not just that God has that story for you. And um I will confess that I'm still learning this. I've been at this Christian journey now for 30 plus years, and I'm still learning this. And I think it's part of the actual growth of the Christian to figure out and to learn how to balance between God, show me this, tell me this, direct me this way, or God is essentially saying, Hey, I'm going to give you wisdom. Here's the direction you're going to go, and I'm going to give you wisdom to make the right choices. I'm just telling you the direction. And when I uh you you remember in previous teachings I talked, or a teaching, I talked about this daily declaration and prayer that I do. And part of that is where I say, um something to the effect I say this every day, I should know it. God, you've given me, you've pointed me in a direction, but I am capable of more than I know. In other words, you know, God points me in a direction, and yes, I can in that sense write my own story. But the balance is I learn how to let God also write that story as well. He never takes away my freedom of choice, but God, in his amazing, mysterious, wonderful, infinite wisdom, can um incorporate my choices into his story for me. Hope that makes sense. So that's where we're gonna be going and how we're gonna land this whole thing is I want you to continue to learn how to own your story and then be able to share your story. So that's what we're gonna be going into over the next uh number of episodes. But this is like, as you'll hear, a second part to what we're talking about. So we'll catch you on the other side. Enjoy. Hello again, and welcome to now part two, or in other words, session five of the hero. It's not exactly going to be like last session, but I'm talking about a story and a plan that Jesus lived into. And I'm gonna make the case with this session, I believe, I hope, that says that God has a plan for you. God has a plan for you to live in, God has a story for you to live in. I know I've talked about owning your story. Your story really is God's story for your life. How do you own that? How do you take possession of what God has for you to move forward? The title of this session is Your Hero Journey. It's really important that you see you are the hero of your story. You determine the direction of the story, you determine how the story ends. Now, there's one common piece to everybody's story, and that is that all of us will come to an end. We will end our life on this earth. So let me paint for you this picture. You're in a room, and there are crowds of people in this room. They're gathered in little handfuls of people talking to one another in hushed tones. They're quiet, and you're walking from crowd to crowd, person to person, and you hear bits and pieces of what sounds familiar to you. And at the front of this room, you notice that there is a box. And you walk up and get closer to this box, and you realize it's not just any other box. This box happens to be your casket, and you're seeing yourself in this casket. Now, as you've made your way through the room, nobody can hear you or see you walking through. They don't know you're there, you don't know you're there, obviously. You're at your own funeral. Now, hang with me on this. This is not morbid. In fact, I got this little picture exercise out of a book called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. And the title of the chapter is Start with the End in Mind. In other words, he is suggesting you look all the way out to the end of your life. And as you're walking among all these people and you're hearing them talk about you, perhaps, most likely, perhaps, what are they saying? What are they saying about the man that's in that casket? What story are they telling about you? I almost entitled this session, Your Story as Told by Others. Same thing. The idea is that they are telling a story or perhaps some stories about you that you have absolutely no control over in that sense, right? Once you're gone, you cannot control that. In fact, even now, you can't exactly control what people say or think about you. However, the point here is that I believe we can control a lot of, not all of, but a lot of our story and what people will see in us once we're gone. In other words, what kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? My wife's favorite song right now is by Tim McGraw, and I have to admit it's a good song. Standing room only. And the lines in the song are about living this life where you're not just all about material things, for instance, you're about relationships and you're about how do you help and serve other people around you. What is the life that you want to leave behind? So the story in the song is about standing in room only at my funeral. You know, there's so many people at my funeral that they're standing in room only. Because so many people wanted to be there to remember you, to share and express their feelings and tell their stories about you and who you were. I am suggesting, I'm telling you right now, straight up, you do have some control over that. Your story has an ending, but how it ends is up to you. Now, last session we talked about how I believe there is a plan that Jesus lived into, an eternal plan, a plan of redemption, a story of redemption that Jesus lived into right around the age of 12 when he was in the temple, and he told his parents, don't you know I must be about my father's business? How did he know he was about his father's business? He started to see unfold in front of him this life plan that the father had for him that they both devised in eternity, I believe. I do believe that. And then in his earthly life, Jesus had to live that out one day at a time. So I believe we have the same thing. I believe God has for us the same thing. There is a story in this book, if you will. There is this story that God wants us to live out. He has a plan for our lives. How does that get unfolded in our daily living? Now, I'm gonna fully admit to you, things come into this light that are complete shock to us, that are complete surprise to us, that are traumatic for us. We weren't expecting things. That doesn't mean God wasn't expecting it. That doesn't mean that that's not somehow in God's story for your life. I'm not gonna be here to defend why does a good God allow evil? I'm not gonna defend that and go into that argument right now. I can say though, I do believe that because there's a larger picture unfolding, a larger plan of salvation that had a beginning and hasn't gonna have an ending, that our role is in that. Our part is in that whole thing. If we saw that larger picture more often, or if we saw that at all, we might be able to see that our story, the ups and the downs, the traumas and the grief, the good times, of course, the celebrations, the joy, the wonders of our living, are all part of God's story for us. Somehow that takes faith, doesn't it? It to believe that. I do believe that fully, though. I'm gonna show it to you from scripture right now. Let's go to Psalm 139. Go to Psalm 139 and look at verse 16. Now, if this isn't proof that God has a written plan for us or some kind of plan for us, I don't know what is. Listen to this. Your eyes saw me when I was formless. All my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began. I believe Jesus took that true for himself. I believe we need to take that as true for ourselves. God has a plan written out for us in his book. It's a metaphorical book, I'm guessing, not a literal book. God doesn't need books. I believe God has something for us, though. There's a quote by C.S. Lewis that I'm gonna butcher, and it goes something like God is a playwright, and we're on the stage. The stage has boundaries. We can't go off the stage where this play is being played out, the play of our lives, the script of our lives. We can't go off that stage. That's where we live, that's our life. People come into our life, and every single person has their own stage, and stages overlap, don't they? You get a husband and a wife, and they're on the same stage, or their stages overlap. Maybe one dies earlier than the other, and so the stages get separate again. Who knows? Or they separate or divorce. I don't know. Hopefully that doesn't happen. But the point is, God has given us a stage to be on. So I like what C.S. Lewis also says, I think, in that quote, is we have room to improvise. We can improvise our lives in that sense, but we can't go beyond that border. We have to be on that stage that is our story. And so God has given us a script, if you will, to live with, a screenplay, if you want to kind of use the movie term, right? It's all within the boundaries, though, of that stage, andor in that movie, if you want, or that story, I like that too. You could even say it like this our story is on these pages, right? But there are ends. There's a beginning and an end, right? So our story is in that book, but it must happen somewhere between the beginning and the end. So that's the boundary. If we submit to God in that sense where we believe God is writing something out for us that we must live into, well, then that is, I think, the best place we can be, the best source of our peace. Yes, things happen to us. Yes, things come along that we were not expecting, that are not easy to go through. But I believe just knowing that God has his hand on our lives will bring that peace. You've been brought to this place, my brother. You've been brought here to this curriculum for me telling parts of my story to you now incorporating some of this into your life and your story that I believe you will have places you can go, things that you can do, people you can touch and serve out in that world out there that you don't even see yet. Now, thinking back to the session when I asked you the question or the question is asked, why is story so powerful? Why do good stories stick with us? Why do we find ourselves in a story that captures us? Like when we get caught up with the hero or the protagonist, as it's technically called, in a story, why do we get caught up with that person, that character? Because we get emotionally attached. We want to see them win. I need you to get emotionally attached in this sense. There's other senses where I need you to stay a little bit detached, but right now I want you to say, I want to be emotionally attached to my story. I want to be emotionally attached to this hero journey that I'm on. So why do we get attached to these stories? Why do we get attached to a hero having to go on this journey so that he can become the man or the woman to fulfill this mission? Now, think about all the stories that have caught our attention. And we know that there is a beginning and there's a definite end. There's a definite resolution end to that story that the whole arc is pointing to. So Luke needed to become a Jedi. After becoming a Jedi, or at least starting the training, he needed to do what? And that's how the movie ended, right? He needed to help destroy the Death Star. Ultimately, he's the one that did it. Now think about, say, Frodo, and he was told at the very beginning that what needed to happen was this ring needed to be what? Destroyed. And then you have a whole long movie and a whole long book that's this thick over here on my bookshelf of uh that whole thing playing out. And you've got so many other characters that are all moving toward this one final resolution. We know the story is done when that ring is destroyed. We know that the world is going to be a better place when the hero has come through. And that journey, that hero journey of Frodo is a wonderful demonstration of a hero doubting himself, becoming a different person, different being. He's a hobbit, not a man, but a different person throughout that whole story. That's what God is inviting you into. That transformation to become not just the beloved son, as we've talked about, but the benevolent king. You have power, you have authority, and you do it all in love, and you wield all that power and authority from God into your kingdom. So when it comes to the hero's journey, there are, I'm not a, by the way, expert at all of this. I've read a few things and I'm very interested in the story for the reasons I've already told you. I believe there are at least three things that a hero must go through in a story. He is invited into something bigger than himself. There's some kind of incident. This is the first one, the inciting incident. It's like he's being revealed into this much bigger world. And the perfect cases are what I just described to you. Luke and Frodo, they're being invited into this much bigger story because something happened to them. So that's the first part. What about you? What incited you to want to go on this journey, to become this hero? Now you're being invited into this. Maybe you haven't felt like that up till now. Maybe this curriculum has been that invitation all along. You can become the man that God has called you to be, as his beloved son, unconditionally loved, to become that benevolent king, to get transformed into that person, that man that God needs you to be for his new creation to get started in your life, in your heart. Now, in a typical story, though, we know that how that story is supposed to end. Now, think of all the Mission Impossible movies and all those stories. At the beginning, you have this. Your mission, if you should choose to take it, or should you choose to take it, is to what? Fill in the blank. So from that moment on in that story, you now have the exact mission of what he is supposed to go through. Ethan, I forgot his name, is supposed to go through to end the story for the resolution to happen. So that hero becomes involved in making this happen, or he's the catalyst to make it happen. All along it's opposed, right? There's a villain, and there are multiple villains. And then there is the last part that's sort of this obstacle. You've got the enemy, the villain, the antagonist, the technical term there in story craft, always trying to oppose in one form or another, different characters. And then a third obstacle, though, for this to happen, or it's it's an obstacle, but remember how we treat obstacles. This could be an obstacle, but it shouldn't be, and it isn't if you look at it differently. The hero needs to be transformed. The hero goes from can I make this happen, answering the question, and we talked about this too, do I have what it takes? Can I make it through? The hero is discovering if he can. The classic one for this is the Harry Potter series. You watch this whole development of this little kid from 11-year-old adolescence through his adult teen life, discovering whether he's strong enough to handle that ultra-villain Voldemort, right? Same with Luke and Darth Vader, Frodo with all of the orcs and the various, like the spider, and you don't know if Schmeagol is an enemy or a friend. The classic one in The Lord of the Rings is Aragorn, though. That's my favorite. He is finally becoming the king. That's the title of the last story, right? The return of the king. So I love that. And I love it because you get this transformation from low confidence to some confidence to more confidence because he's been guided along the way by a mentor. And that's what my role is for you, by the way. I'm your guide, your mentor through this process. I've had my guides and mentors through my process. Kirk was one of those for me. And I've had some other people in my life. And I hope that all of us men get that in our lives because the hero needs that. Obviously, though, the best guide, the best mentor, capital G, capital M, is Jesus. It's God. He's the one guiding us. Our Father, he should be the one guiding us the best. We know that we have an end to our story. We know that we can control it, but we can't. We can control how we live out our story. That's plain and true. And I need you to know that very clearly. You can control your story, okay? You can't control other people. You can't control the other people, the other characters, if you will, on another stage of their life. You can control your story and how they interact, how you interact. But here's the thing: you don't know how it ends because God is the one in control. We don't know when our life ends. The only mission that we have is to get through today. Jesus is very clear on this. But we're also told to be pointed in a direction. I believe that very much. I believe that because there was an experience I had where I was doing an exercise with other men at a retreat, and I had my eyes closed, and I was being guided to see Jesus in my mind. I did see Jesus. I don't know if I was being guided to see Jesus explicitly, but I saw Jesus in my mind very clearly. What I saw in my mind was Jesus way out at the end of my life. I didn't know when that was, and then it wasn't clear. I just saw him way out there, and where he was was the end of my life. But between him and me, I saw a crowd of people. I'm no artist. There was one time when I was able to put this on paper to be able to express this, and that's what this is. So you got the crowds, and this is my perspective, and there's Jesus. I believe that's my life's mission is to get to that point, the end of my life, and between now and then is to reach men like you. You're part of that, you're part of the fulfillment of that. This picture, this vision, if you will, happened going on six years ago for me now. And so this has never left my mind. I'm not saying you have to have that same picture, but I'm saying God points you in a direction. God moves you in a direction. And in my declaration in prayer, one of the lines I have, I gave you this last module, it says in there that God, I believe you've pointed me in a direction, but you've left most of the details up to me. Now, it's not to say God doesn't give details. He does. But most of the time, my experience has been God's like, you're going in the right direction, but I'm not gonna give you detail. I'm gonna let you figure it out with your wisdom. On your stage, you can improvise. You can go to the right, to the left, you can improvise. But God is more in the business of saying, let me put you on the right path and let me move you forward. So the hero journey in this sense is that way. You know your destination. You know you're going in the right direction. Part of this curriculum's limitations, however, is I can't tell you how to get that. You have to spend time with God on your own to do it. Now, one last piece, though, that I want to just point out the true, real, true hero in the hero journey is this. This is different than most. You are the hero of your story, right? But what does a true hero do, generally speaking, at the end of that huge movie? Phenomenon that was the MCU of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The main hero did what? He sacrificed himself. He died in the end. Tony Stark. I hope I'm not spoiling this for you. Tony Stark dies at the end of Endgame. Right? A true hero is willing to sacrifice. What does that mean for us in this sense? Well, it does mean sacrifice. It means that we can sacrifice our pride. Freedom isn't free, my brothers. We have to sacrifice our pride to be able to give our story away. But here's the thing we point to the true hero, Jesus. He is the one. He is speaking through me to you right now. My role as the hero in my story is not so that you can look to me. My role is to point you to him. That's my role. I need you to know that more fully than you can even imagine. And you need to know that so that you can point people in the same direction. John the Baptist is the best example. He must increase, I must decrease. It's all about Jesus and He must take things over. We spend more time thinking about Him and not our anxieties and not the future and not trying to fight off this temptation here and there. We spend more time looking to Him, and the things of the world will grow strangely dim, as the old hymn says. It's beautiful. The things of the world that entangle us will not be the end of us. Know that. Trust that God is with you on your hero journey. In another piece, real quick to this is great storytelling does this too. It paints a picture of the enemy that he is strong, that the hero must try to overcome this antagonist. How does he do it? Now the great thing about and the beautiful thing about this particular hero journey, just as I was talking about, we point to Christ. He is the one, he is infinitely bigger than any enemy we will ever face. Remember to keep that perspective. We talked about that last module when it comes to obstacles. Ask God to show you his perspective. It will always be bigger than over the top of the enemy out there. But here's what's interesting the enemy is out there. You've got an enemy who hates you, he hates Jesus, and he doesn't want you to win. But the enemy takes advantage of the biggest enemy of them all, and that enemy is yourself. The inner transformation of the hero must be that sanctification, that discipleship process where you are learning to depend on Jesus, to depend on the Holy Spirit to get you through this day, to get you through temptation, to make a plan for your life, so that he can live that plan through you that he has for you. God bless. I mean, all of obviously our lives will have all the detail of our everyday living. And those lives, our lives, will consist of what God wants for us, what God has for us. I can say from experience that that is not often actually perceived until after the fact. Sometimes you're in the middle of things and you realize uh God's in this. God is in this. And to me, uh I can tell you from also experience that is one of the most joyful, joyful, peaceful experiences you'll ever have. So uh just just know that. Always the hero of this story, anyway. We are pointing to the true hero, capital H, big H hero, Jesus. And as long as we're doing that on a regular basis, we're not taking all the glory for ourselves, we're not taking the full credit for ourselves all the time. You know, we're deferring to others, we're seeing others as better than ourselves. You know, that to me is the best hero journey out there. So don't want to go too long here. Now, remember, if you're a pastor or you're a man in ministry and you're somebody who is struggling with this and you want to change your story, and you're struggling with this temptation, pornography is still a problem, whatever it might be. This is why I want to help you. This is I it's part of my story. I've told you this so many times. It's part of my own journey. And so I feel like I'm a safe person to talk to. And that's what I think men in ministry I can't say this enough. You need a safe place to talk about this, this thing, and to just journey and tell your story and to heal your story and let God heal your story. You can't heal other people's stories if your own story isn't on a healing journey as well. And that's why I believe the the great title of a great book by Henry Now and The Wounded Healer is a great way to go. So reach out to me, Mike at Menrestore.com, and let's have a conversation. And we will uh see you in the next episode, the next teaching. God bless. Thank you for listening to the Exodus Freedom Journey podcast. Together with God's mighty hand, let's reclaim your freedom.