The Father Heart of God: Restoring Masculinity and Purpose with Jonathan Lewis

Transcript

Welcome to the Shameless Podcast, where I help Christian men kill shame, stand strong, and live on mission. I'm your host, Ken P, and I'm bringing you real stories, practical insights, and biblical truths that equip you to break free from your sin, shame, and live a life of purpose. Let's step out of the shadows together and into the light of Christ. Have you ever felt the weight of fatherlessness not just in your life but in your soul? Have you ever seen the devastation of fatherlessness around your society or community?

Do you struggle with shame, addiction, or sense of disconnection from your role as a man, husband, or father? And what if the key to healing isn't found in striving harder, but embracing the father heart of? Today, we're joined by Jonathan Lewis, founder of Fathers for Fathers. Jonathan's journey from personal loss to founding a ministry that empowers men is a testament to the transformative power of God's love. So stay tuned as we delve into his story and discover how embracing our identity as sons can lead to true freedom and purpose.

Jonathan, thanks for joining us today. Man, I'm so glad for you to be here. Uh, I know for some people who do not know you, tell us where do you currently live and a little bit of your story, like what was it about your life and background that led you to start Fathers for Fathers? Yeah, thanks, Ken. Ken, it's it's good to be here and I've really appreciated uh getting to know you obviously outside of uh our um combined hearts for men and uh yeah, Fathers for Fathers.

Um gosh, it was birthed um 34 years ago. I just didn't know it 34 years ago. So, I I had a dad who grew up with a very abusive father. He was a World War II vet. Uh he fought in North Africa, Italy, Europe uh uh with the British under Montgomery, the the British primadana to match Patton. American listeners, um he came back pretty damaged and like a lot of the vets back then coped with alcohol which then led to a lot of uh anger in the home and a lot of destructive behavior that my dad grew up with.

So my dad never drank, swore he would never drink, and he didn't drink, but he still uh carried a lot of that over. His goal was to be a cycle breaker, and I would I would definitely give him a passing grade, but he still had some issues. And and then uh uh I grew up really trying to live up to uh his expectations. You know, he was notorious for celebrating my successes by uh reminding me that second was first in a long line of losers. And if you weren't first, you weren't anything.

And I knew that I know now that that was really uh what he received uh both from his dad but also even the culture of that day. Um a lot of pressure on men. Uh and then in a tragic accident was actually the week after Father's Day. My mom, my youngest sister, and my dad and I were out um in Nova Scotia where I grew up. Uh by then the days are getting warm. The ocean's still frigidly cold, but not for Nova Scotians. And uh so we we were out scuba diving and spearfishing Flounder and my mom had um decided not to do a second dive, but I went out skin diving with my dad and and we got into trouble and I um ended up dragging my dad to the beach, but was not successful in saving him.

And so I was immediately faced with fatherlessness just after my 15th birthday, but also the guilt uh and the shame and the burden of knowing that it was my fault or certainly believing that it was my fault that my dad drowned and that I was not able to save him. Uh and then of course the echoing vestigages of well if you're not successful you're a failure. And so I went into my latter teen years very despondent, you know, without any kind of sense of direction, healthy male role model in my life.

And then I was thrust into adulthood where I was now expected to be a husband, leader, and um I was absolutely illquipped, unequipped to do any of those things. Um um you know, it's funny. I was thinking about our chat today, Ken, and I thought with Fathers for Fathers, I'm talking to a lot of guys that struggle with anger. Yeah. And I can't pinpoint why or where it's coming from. And um I'm sure we'll unpack that a little bit today. But fast forward 34 years later, I'm 49 years old now, which other than looking in a mirror, I don't feel like I'm 49.

And then I look in a mirror and I'm like, who is that guy looking at me? But thankfully, I can still keep up with all these young bucks. uh you know with Fathers for Fathers and a lot of the ministry we do like the hiking and climbing and stuff but I've had a lot of time to to mature uh I've had a lot of mistakes a lot of failures divorce uh struggles in fatherhood and parenting and and really had time to look back and say that's why I was angry that's why I was struggling with despondency and lack of purpose and purpose and a clear direction.

And I didn't get saved or come to know Jesus and who he was and what he did on the cross really internalized and understand it until I was about 32 33 years. So I went almost uh in this fog of life with no clear sense of purpose, hope or vision. And uh the book of Habaca, which is a book in the Old Testament, a small prophet, he says, "Where there's no vision, the people will perish." And I think with men, we need vision and we need purpose.

And until we know what our purpose is and we have a clear vision, um we can engage in a lot of self-destructive behavior. And you and I have talked about that whether it's pornography or any kind of addiction, alcohol, drugs, um you know, even being a playboy in of itself is destructive behavior, uh where you're really putting on a mask or as John Eldridge calls it, you know, it's the poser. So that's really where fathers for fathers was birthed was recognizing the carnage of my own pilgrimage trying to understand this and then becoming very clear that there is a clear vision and purpose for my life and um just seeing how it's transformed my life like the Bible also says in uh Romans 12:2 be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And I I started to realize like my whole world view, my mind, my spiritual and mental health was being rejuvenated as I got clear on what my actual purpose is. And it's not to just engage in repetitive self-destructive behavior and this vortex of anger and frustration that I can't pinpoint. Okay. So once you started to figure out your purpose, I think something that I want to address that you hit on really at the beginning was that there was this fog that you had to lift first.

Yeah. And I'm curious for you, how did that fog affect you? I mean, I'm just trying to sit here and envision, and forgive me if I paint the picture too grim, but you tried really hard to save your dad. And I'm sure the the emotions, adrenaline rush, the chaos of that moment of you're like, I'm doing everything I can and I couldn't do it and now you have to carry that weight. How did that affect you during that season? And then how did that affect your relationship with God?

Yeah. So, let me speak to the guys who have had trauma. You could be military um or just a guy who maybe grew up in a gang in one of the inner cities or whatever, but the trauma is there and it just creates this dispondency. Like it's almost like it's surreal and it didn't happen to you and it was like a dream but it did happen to you and it literally shapes every facet of your life and you don't want it to. It almost makes you angry that it is shaping every facet of your life.

like you you you're angry at the fact that you're held hostage by it and yet it's there. It's it's it's what creates all the fog and despondency. And so for me, I mean, the first thing I've learned because I've gone through um EMDR and trauma therapy, unfortunately, much later in life, not until my early 30s, but what I discovered was that the body keeps a score. And there's all kinds of literature on that. But part of the way the body keeps the score is it blocks out the trauma.

So we actually aren't even keenly aware of just how bad it was and how much we've been hijacked by it. Which then allows us to uh create agreements uh with ourselves where it's like no that's not going to govern me or I'm never going to be in that position again or I'll never trust or I'll never allow a woman or I'll I'll never be submitted to creates a lot of narcissistic behavior and men call it toxic masculinity. I don't believe there's toxic masculinity. I think there's just broken people, whether it's a man or a woman.

And we got to get to the root of what is it. And so for me, that fog, that despondency was I couldn't change what had happened. I was there. I dragged my dad to the beach. I should have drowned with him. My mom thought we were both gone until um I came dragging my dad up out of the ocean. And um the first two or three years after that, I was just in shock. You know, my mom was a stay-at-home mom. My dad was a very successful business guy with three businesses, not without its struggles.

He was definitely a workaholic. You know, his his value in his world was his ability to provide for us economically. you know, he grew up in a generation where social and spiritual um value ads as a father weren't as big a priority. So, he thought he was loving us by providing for us. And and so, you know, I basically went out of my late teens where I was couch surfing. My mom had remarried. I didn't feel like I belonged at home. I was actually told that I didn't belong there and I didn't know where I belonged.

And I would even argue today at 49, there's still an element of that for me where in this world I feel like I don't belong. I don't feel like I belong in America or Canada. Um um I have wonder definitely not Canada. Yeah. I always want to travel, but what I can say is I definitely know my identity. Uh Romans 8, Paul points us to that. Galatians points us to it. I know my father. I actually have seen that I've actually been given a great gift by not having an earthly father who's flawed getting in the way of a perfect heavenly father.

So the fog lifted when again as the Bible says in Ezekiel the scales were lifted from my eyes. I actually saw that I was flawed, that uh I was always going to in my flesh, in my own strength, try and fix myself and I was never going to be able to fix myself. So, I was always going to be frustrated and angry and that loop of frustration would just continue. And I think as you get older, it gets more and more self-destructive because you become despondent and you almost give up.

And I see it in men my age in their late 40s, early 50s who they've literally spent the better part of their adult decades in agreement with whatever it is that has them in their brokenness and they don't even know it anymore. Like it's like, well, this is the only way. and those guys. It's not the only way. There is a better way, but it takes a lot of work and uh discipline and most importantly humility. And uh so yeah, the fog for me went on all through my 20s and the carnage that it left in its wake uh in my life and those that I loved was not good.

And um and it really like King David came to a head for me in my early 30s with divorce um and a spouse who chose to be in another relationship and I really can't blame her. Um, I was angry and I I didn't know how to deal with it and I wasn't physically abusive or anything, but I was just angry. Like I wasn't I wasn't a a fun person to be around, you know. And you know, it's funny. My wife Sarah, we've been together now for 14 years and and yesterday we had a bit of a day off here and um just spent some time together and this morning, you know, she was getting coffee as I was getting ready to start my workday and she said, "Yesterday was so much fun.

You're so much fun." And like I don't think she realized the the absolute blessing that she was pouring into me as my spouse saying that to me because the opposite of you're fun and I enjoyed my day with you was you're angry and you need to get that sorted out from a spouse. Yeah. And I'm sure that feeling of like I've been there where I was always angry and you're like I don't want to be angry but this is the only emotion I know how to cope with life and yeah it's really born out of a frustration.

Yeah. That it's like an itch you can't reach and you know it's rooted in a deep pain. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And that's where I found like, you know, from biblical counseling things that I had training on that like many times anger for men comes from the injustice that they know they can't solve. That's right. And we need a savior. Right. This is why Jesus came. It's just like we see this injustice and we see this emotion that God has given us, anger, but we don't know how to rightly articulate or rightly handle it.

So, it gets sinful. I call it a spiritual itch that only God can scratch. Sarah and I, we rescue dogs. Uh if you had told me I was going to rescue dogs years ago, it would have been like my parents bred and showed uh purebreds um Shetlands. So the fact that now we have mongrels uh and they're not just mongrels, but uh we've had two three leagers in a row from Thailand and we have this little guy Belinga that we adore. I've never we've never in my entire life, my parents or Sarah and I, we've never let an animal a dog up on the furniture, the couch, you know, recall and discipline has always been a big thing.

This little guy's got us wrapped. I mean, he literally crawls in between us in bed. I don't know how I ever let this happen, but because he's got three legs, the poor little guy, whenever he's itchy on his left side, he can't scratch. His little stump just wiggles and he's turning his head. And it's funny when I look at him, I think, okay, that's a physical scratch. He can't itch. That we we get to itch for him and he loves us for it. And it's like he does his little stump thing and then we we reach in and scratch where he wants us to.

I believe that men have a spiritual itch from injury, wounds, brokenness that we try so desperately with our broken little stump to itch our whole lives, which then leads to anger, frustration, and bitterness because we can never quite get it. We don't even know where where to itch. And then when we finally just give up and surrender to God, he just reaches down and itches it. And it's like the best back scratch ever. And you know, if there's any guys listening to this, Ken, I mean, my encouragement would be get around other guys who have gotten over the hurdle and can really encourage you and speak wisdom into your life that can draw you to a place of humility where you drop the act, you drop the pose or the mask as Eldridge puts it.

you surrender God's authority over not just your life but all of creation. I mean, you look out the window behind me here, these red cedars are spectacular. And um he created that. And if he created all of creation and he says, "Not a sparrow will drop from the ground. Look at the liies of the field how beautifully they're adorned." Then uh of course he cares for you and your wound and your brokenness and he wants you to be a good dad and a good husband and a good member of society.

He wants you to have a deep sense of justice. But you're not going to be able to scratch that itch on your own. You have to submit like all of creation to your creator. Yeah. What what causes men to not want to surrender? Cuz I know a lot of guys who are afraid like deep down inside they want the result that you talked about but the process to get there is really difficult cuz we have been trained to be like figure it out by yourself you know pick yourself up by your bootstraps.

Let's make it happen. No man knows how to deal with this. Yeah. I think you've got to it's like I said be not conformed to this world. The world is lying to us. It's telling us that real men are islands. I mean, you know, you look at Paul Simon, I am a rock, I'm an island with garunkle. What a pile of garbage. Men are not rocks. We are not islands. We were meant to work with other men in particular. We were meant to be a part of community.

It's in our DNA to want to be a part of a community. I mean, even broken men join biker gangs and gangs. Why? Well, because we're social creatures and we want to be in community. Even in prisons, maximum security prisons, what's the first thing everybody does, right? They find their community. They find their buddies, their safety net. So, so the first thing is is drop the act. You're not you're not an island. Not even the toughest of the toughest men are islands. Okay? As a matter of fact, the strongest, toughest, and most courageous men I've ever met had really strong community.

They had four or five guys around them that they could trust and lean on. and that they admired. They had mentors that they looked up to and that they um modeled their lives after. And I can't think of anybody better than uh the guy who created you in his own image and you are armor bearer for him whether you want to be or not. And Bob Dylan in 1979 said, "You got to serve somebody. It's either the devil or the Lord, but you got to serve somebody." We have it in our mindset, oh that's that's not true.

I'll serve myself. Well, if you're serving yourself, you're serving the devil, right? You're either rebelling against God or you're pursuing God. You're either humbly pursuing him or in your pride and arrogance walking away from him. This is an age-old battle, right? We're the prize. Hell was never created for men. It was created for Satan and a third of the angels in heaven who rebelled against God. That's what it was created for. any men who go to hell is because we've chosen to follow suit and also rebel.

But it was never meant for us. Like Jesus said, not that not one would perish. He doesn't want a single man, woman or child to go to hell. We want justice and God is the great judge and also has to have justice. And so when I look at Easter, which we just celebrated, um Jesus literally came as a substitute to serve the justice that was required for our rebellion, our pride, our arrogance, our hottiness. I can do it myself. So my encouragement to guys would be I said this to a guy in the UK last week, um uh someone I have a professional relationship with.

He's an FX trader, so a currency, a hedge guy. And, you know, he's talking to me about his girlfriend and just his woes of, you know, retreating from Canada back to the UK in the wake of a bad business deal. And I was just listening to him and I just I could tell the spirit was saying, "This has got nothing to do with business. I want you to I want you to pour into him." And uh he asked me about my faith and I was like, "Okay." Open door.

It's like an easy layup. This was an easy layup for me, not for him. Yeah. And I just said, "Look, man, you're a smart guy. Guy's got two PhDs in economics, right?" I said, "You owe it to yourself to answer u an age-old question." And that question is simply, who was Jesus? Right. 2,000 years ago, this guy was either a liar, I mean, a liar. Yeah. To the nth degree. because he carried the lie all the way to his death and it was a gruesome, brutal death.

He was either crazy, which is actually more likely because how do you actually go through that unless you literally are crazy enough to believe you are who you say you are, which because he said, "I'm the son of God to the point of death." Or you were who you said you were. And the fact that the 12 men that followed you closely were all willing to die horrible deaths as well would suggest to me that there's real validity. I mean, if we were in a court of law today and you brought in three or 4 hundred witnesses who said, "Yeah, we heard him speak.

The guy was alive. He didn't die. He rose." And these 12 guys that followed him, I mean, let's be honest, these guys left to their own devices would have kicked puppy dogs and slapped kids. I mean, they were not the 12 I would have picked. Yeah. Right. To carry my message. Uh and yet they're all transformed to the point where they're willing to die for what they say they experienced, witnessed, and saw. So to the guys out there, I would say that the most important question you have to answer in your life is who is Jesus Christ?

And what does that mean for me? And how am I going to respond to the answer? And I think you need to in your masculinity say, "Am I actually prepared to go down this path answer this question?" And then if the question is he was who he said he was, am I actually going to have the guts to follow through with what that requires of me in response? I think that the biggest thing that keeps people from answering the question is is I think in their heart of hearts, they don't want to have to respond to the answer when they get to the final conclusion.

And so I think the biggest thing that keeps men from God is pride, arrogance, and the lack of willingness to answer the question of who is Jesus and what does that mean and how am I going to respond? Uh, I am beyond thankful that at 32, 33, 34 years of age, I uttered, I think probably the most important words of my life, although I didn't know it at the time. And that was, "God, if you're there, if you're real, would you reveal yourself to me? Because everybody wants to be me except me.

and I'm miserable and I'm broken and there's something wrong with me. There's something really wrong with me and I don't want to live in this bondage anymore. And I did that on a Sunday morning on a kabota in my field. And when your heart is authentically postured in a place of humility and it cries out for its creator, let me tell you boys, he shows up, right? Um David wrote a psalm, Psalm 51, and the second last verse psalm, he says, "I would offer burnt offerings, but what's the point?" Because the real offering to you is a contrite and broken heart.

And I think if we humble ourselves and we're willing to be vulnerable and we approach God with reverence and respect, he will show up in a magnificent way and transform your life, which by the way obviously includes setting you free from your anger, your bondage, whatever it was that ailed you and broke you. That's a foregone conclusion, guys. So what seemed like the impossible mountain becomes a molehill, a bunny hill on a ski hill uh at the start of a magnificent uh transformational journey. Yeah. You know, Jonathan, one thing that I I thought about as you were talking is that men, we love to do hard things.

Like we love a challenge. Totally. And this is hard. This is hard. This is really hard. Yeah. Yeah. But that's where I was like, "Oh, we love to do hard things, but sometimes we're afraid to do the hardest thing, and that's to surrender all of our will to God and say, "Okay, I'm going to trust you fully." I was listening to uh I know you and I both uh you know, listen to Matt Chandler. I was listening to Matt Allen. He was talking about this. He's like, "Hey, if you were at a scale 1 to 10, 10 fully trusting God and you said you're an eight or you're like, that's only 80%.

That means you're trusting in yourself 20% and it's never going to work." Yeah. And it's like 100. You got to give 100% to God. And that's really hard. But the benefits of doing that outweighs you holding on to that 20%. And I I would even argue in our flesh, we can't even give 100%. He has to take us there. Our heart can want to be 100%. But I think that last 1%, 5%, I don't know what it is, man. But the last two years, my prayer has been take me all the way and make me the kind of man that actually is of use to you.

And it scared me to pray that prayer because I inherently knew from my understanding of the Bible that that probably meant um a lot more time on the potter's wheel than I would have liked and probably a lot more pain by way of some difficulties that would require the shaping of my character to get me to be that kind of man. And you know I think about Job 13:15. Job says, "Though you slay me, yet will I trust you. Job cursed the day he was born, but he never cursed God.

And uh the very end of Job 42:5, he I think it's just an amazing statement of fact that he only could have come to having gone through the trials, the James 1 verse two trials. And it was, "My uh ears had heard of you, but now my eyes see you." And uh I'm not even convinced that I'm 100%. But here's what I do know. It's okay if I'm not because God will carry me the distance. And frankly, that's what it's all about. Um, I mean, I I went through a very difficult time and am going through a very difficult time with our two teenage daughters.

And two years ago, I got on my knees and I was having like an Elijah moment. I'm like, God, just let me die. Like, I can I've done everything, but this I cannot bear. Um, these girls are going far far a drift. um this is crushing. I feel like I've done everything you've asked me to do. And I think I had a transactional mindset where I was like, well, I do all this stuff, you know, like the proverb, you know, raise them in his ways and they won't depart from it.

So, where's my transactional? I did what you wanted and now my daughter should be perfect, you know, young women who are sold out for Jesus. And and God had to reveal to me two things. One, they're not my kids. They're his. And he loves them more than I do. That was a tough pill to swallow. that he is pursuing them even when I can't. But the real reveal, the real difficult pill was when I felt the spirit after a period of fasting. He said, "Jonathan, do you trust me with the girls?" And I've gone through this with my business.

Yep. Uh my marriage, you got it. Friendships, no problem. Church dynamics, no problem. Ministry, cash flow. But it was funny when he said, "Do you trust me with the girls?" There was like a millisecond pause in my spirit where the answer was not an emphatic yes and it surprised because I thought the answer was yes until I felt the spirit putting the question to me and then I started to weep tears of contrition because I realized that I didn't fully trust him. And guys, our heavenly father knows us better than we know ourselves.

like he will do heart surgery and draw us into a deeper and deeper place of trust and surrender to him even when we thought we've arrived. Um, you know, I look at Peter and go and Jesus's interactions with Peter and I would have loved to have been able to witness the rest of Peter's life prior to saying, "Crucify me upside down because I'm not worthy to even die the way he died." I mean, Peter went from being a pretty cocky, self- assured, aggressive guy who was arguably a tax cheat and, you know, literally lived by the words if it's meant to be, it's up to me to humble.

You can see it in his writing in first, second, and third Peter. It's a completely different guy. And he's like, I can't even I'm not even worthy to die the way he died. I'm not like it wasn't like he was uh trying to showboat. He literally was like I I don't want to die the way Christ died. I just think wow like what a pilgrimage um God took him on to transform him prior to him coming into eternity where and that's the thing also guys you're never ever ever going to fill this void here like Augustine said that that there's a hole in our in our human hearts that can only be filled by God.

So you can you can be like a duck on water and just paddle paddle paddle paddle vigorously and you can even look like you got it all together on the surface, but sooner or later um you're going to just get exhausted trying to do it in your own steam. Yeah. And Jonathan, you and I both know a lot of guys who have burned out cuz they were trying to do it on their own. And that's where in some ways fathers for fathers was birth of like you're seeing all this tragedy and we know where there are no men society start to crumble homes start to fall and you were like hey I'm going to take the initiative and something that I believe you and I both believe that God put on your heart to do right has called you to do and you've started it but you're like I'm going to try to reverse this trajectory.

So walk us through a little bit of like practically what does fathers for fathers do for those men who are listening to you and they're like man this story resonates. I'm I have been angry or I am angry and I am alone and I am struggling and I'm I need something different cuz what I'm doing is not working. Sure. So, I would say Fathers for Fathers actually isn't even targeted at men as much as it is at churches that need um structure um men's groups. So, the vision that God put on me this time two years ago was to build a parurch uh that really doubles as an ambulatory or stretcher bearer type of service for men.

So on the one hand, yes, we're about men and that we want to find them and get them to the church, but the church is the hospital. We don't want to be their church. We want to be the ambulatory service that gets to where they are in their brokenness. Like if they're on Pornhub, like my my best outcome is that Fathers for Fathers is advertising on Pornhub. I don't even know if that's possible. Um, you know, um, I hate to say it, but Canada, one of our biggest exports is gambling.

Our two biggest exports is not oil. It's, uh, gambling and pornography, which is pretty sad. Both of which come predominantly out of uh, Montreal. I'd love to see Fathers for Fathers have a head office in the same building on the same floor as Pornhub someday. Um, I'd like to see all those guys get saved. But either way, in Canada, we don't have super churches. I know you're in uh Franklin, Tennessee or in Nashville. And you know, I've spent some time in Charleston, and there's a church every 5t.

And it's not just a church, but like a 500 people, 2,000 people, 3,000 people. Yeah, we can do a whole another podcast on legalism and cultural Christianity and how many people are actually like chasing our father. But outside of the Bible belt, uh, Christianity is under duress. Um, it's under attack. Uh, in Canada, you know, I live in a city with 550,000 people and there's probably eight evangelical churches that are expository teaching the word and none of them are have more than four or 500 people.

Wow. So these churches don't have a lot of money and because they don't have a lot of money, they got to choose where they can do the most damage with the the least amount of resources. So men's ministry is extremely time consuming because men are not easy to break and it costs a lot of money. And so I really feel like God put it on my heart to build a turnkey men's ministry for churches that uh can't afford it. So we're partnering with churches in that context.

We have our immersive study which is going to print here in the next couple weeks. It's like a 8 to 10 week study where we take men from kind of like Eldridge, the wound, the brokenness, but yeah, it's it's a full pilgrimage on uh the journey of sanctification, what it means to really live and walk in the spirit, know God, know his word, know your identity and walk with authority and be free of the bondage, the anger, the traps that have ens snared you. But we also do um you know these hikes.

I think we're doing 10 of them this year. Eight are on the books now. Uh we take guys that maybe they're divorced, single parenting, don't have a lot of money. And uh we've got uh uh supporters that will finance the cost of some gear and even the cost of getting them there and we take them for a four or five day hike in the mountains and really allow them to have community with men. And if I've learned anything about men and my time in the military, when men have a shared experience where they don't have their phones, they don't have any distractions and they can really open up around a campfire, open and honest, it's transformative.

And we did one a couple weeks ago where we had guys baptized. We even had a Navy Seal who is a hard hard nut and the last day he opened up and sure enough talked about uh his anger and just trying to understand where it comes from and it was just so good. And so Fathers for Fathers is really meant to be a a parurch or a stretcher bearer for the main body and it's to challenge and rally men. And so, for example, Father's Day is coming up and we are um uh very aggressively working to rally churches to do something around Father's Day, which we did last year and in our first year it went coast to coast in Canada and we had several states in the US join us and I know this year it'll be even more.

That's awesome, Jonathan. For those people who are like, "Hey, I want to get my church plugged into this or they want to just get to know you more." What's the best way to get a hold of you? Well, you can well, there's several ways. You can text me. My cell number is everywhere on all my socials. So, feel free and I will respond. You can message us uh at Fathers for Fathers. Our website, I'm sure you're going to put down below, but it's just ww.fathers4fathers.org. Uh it's in the US and Canada.

You know, I've got guys who will send me a message on one of our posts on uh Facebook. Obviously, my marketing team is doing that, but I'm still monitoring it. One guy said, "Hey, I want to come on one of these hikes." I'm like, "No problem. I'll throw the QR code in here when we have the next one up for sign up, but can't wait to meet you." So, you know, we're not I don't want to ever get so big that we forget that we're we're still um doing this one guy at a time.

Uh and by one guy at a time, like I mean literally, you know, relationships. Um, obviously the goal is to hand them off to good pastoral leadership where they can get disciplehip in community, but I also realize there has to be a trust factor at the beginning. And so we work hard on that with the guys. Yeah, I love that. And for those of you who are wondering, would Jonathan really respond to his text messages? Absolutely. I mean, Jonathan, we've been texting each other back and forth for quite some time now.

And I was like, you know, Jonathan didn't get into all the details of what he does and in some ways very well off. like you're very successful in the world's eyes and I'm like, man, he's texting me faster than my parents do sometimes. You know, what drives me nuts is when you text someone and they don't get back to you. Like, so yeah. No, like as a matter of fact, if you text me because obviously text like, you know, can stack up on you or you open it and you think I'll respond later and then you I'm so glad I use Max you can blue dot it so I can remember to go back.

Oh yeah. But I I would literally have anxiety about did I forget anybody today? Like my wife knows before I go to bed, I pray, but the thing I do before I pray is I go through my text one last time for the day to make sure I haven't forgotten anybody. And I take it seriously partially because I'm in a service industry, but also for Fathers for Fathers. Well, that's what I'm trying to do is serve guys. And often these are guys in desperate situations. I mean, I can remember flying to Toronto and meeting a guy in a parking lot who was just suicidal and spending an hour and a half with him and u and I'm so happy to say that we've got him plugged into community and although the storm is still raging, he's got a support system now, right?

He's coming to one of our hikes in Virginia in August. Um, and it'll only be the second time I've ever met this guy, but I pray for him all the time and his kids. So, yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Jonathan, I love what you're doing. I love you as a brother. You know, I remember the first time we had a conversation, I told you, Jonathan, I think we're going to become great friends because of what the Lord has done in your heart and my heart. And uh I I want to see Fathers for Fathers grow tremendously and still be very relational.

So, thank you so much for being on the podcast, man. I I really appreciate that. And uh for those of you who are interested, I want you guys to go check out Fathers for Fathers. Go text Jonathan sincerely. He's there to help you. If you are in that desperate situation where you're like, I have lived in a life where I've been fatherless. You heard Jonathan. He lost his father. You're not fatherless. There is someone there. And it's the best father. He is. He really is. Like I I I would actually say losing my dad was actually one of the best things that ever happened in my life.

And I don't say that lightly. Um because um I have a perfect heavenly father who has literally been a father to the fatherless as Psalm 68 says. And yeah, Father's Day, you know, if you want to check out what we're doing on our website for Father's Day, can I invite you and your church to join us? But we're just asking guys to fast, whether it's from food or their devices the day before Father's Day, get up early and join other guys from their church to pray and either walk to church, walk around their church.

Um, last year we had guys walking to a lake doing baptisms and walking back to church. But join us in getting real about Father's Day and making a covenant with our father uh to really lean in, step up, and own our responsibility in this. I love it. I love it. All right, for all of you men, go check out Fathers for Fathers. See if your church could get uh plugged in for Father's Day uh with the campaign and the initiative that you guys are doing. Jonathan, thank you once again for being on the show.

Uh, and for all of you men who are listening, remember to keep killing shame, standing strong, and be on mission. Our perfect father loves you and he's got you, and he's always going to be with you. Hope you guys have a great day and God bless. Thanks for joining us today. If you found this episode helpful, make sure to subscribe and leave a review. Remember, killing shame isn't just about breaking free from the past. It's about walking boldly into the future God has for you.