The thing that is missing in a lot of young men's lives is positive mentorship. Hey, welcome to the Stand Up Dude podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Stewart White, along with our host Tim. Tim, I just want to jump right into this because I feel like this is something on my heart that I want to talk about. And it is the power of mentorship.
Some in the Christian circles will know it as discipleship, but as the world would understand it in a way that they can understand, we're talking about it as mentorship. And I feel like right now in the world, the thing that is missing in a lot of young men's lives is positive mentorship. Most men are being mentored, but they're just being mentored in a way that is not steering them toward Christ.
It's not steering them toward truth, and it's not pointing them toward something bigger than their own pleasure, their own satisfaction and living for themselves. So I want to dig into that a little bit because I think that many guys out there, many who are watching now on YouTube and have your watching us on YouTube, welcome. This is our new thing. We are doing the video. We're really excited about it. We jumped all in.
We said, you know what, we're not just satisfied with you listening to our voices. We want to see our beautiful faces. The connection that happens right here, man, we love you guys. Thank you for tuning in here. It's really, really cool to have you. What I want to do is if we could pull up and Titus chapter 2, we see this model that Paul gives us and to Titus.
He talks about mentorship, really, discipleship, that we're to have both older women influencing younger women, we're to have older men influencing and training up younger men. As I've been thinking about this, I think culturally, the big shift has been that, and I would say we saw this in probably what would be the baby boom era on with the hippie era and everything. It was sort of a loss of respect for those who are older than you. Interesting.
Instead of viewing it as, hey, that guy is where I want to be. We talked about this on an earlier episode with Jason Cruz. You haven't listened or watched that episode. Go back and watch it. Yeah. He's awesome. We've lost the reverence and respect for the experience that someone who is ahead of us in life has. And it's just this weird arrogance that we had.
In Titus, we see that Paul is telling him, hey, make sure that the young men are being trained up by the older men and the older women are training up the younger women. They're teaching them not just like life skills, but actual spiritual maturity and godliness. I think a good way to illustrate this. I'm going to be talking a lot here. I love it. If you don't want me to talk, just leave a comment below. You got a computer please. Tell me I got a shut up.
So my own experience with mentorship in my life was from people who, I don't even think they were fully aware that they were mentoring me. And I shared this a bit with Jason when he was here. But I had a couple in my life who I looked to as a couple whose marriage I wanted to emulate. And it wasn't because they were perfect. It wasn't because they never fought, but I observed the way they fought. You said they fought differently. They fought differently. They weren't in it for their own.
I want to beat you and I want to win. It was winning. It was, there was a humility in it. And it's not to say I never saw them like sin in some way, but what I really saw was just this grace in the way that they lived their lives. And I was like, you know what? That looks like a lot more fun than what other things I've seen in other marriages modeled, which was battle, battle all the time. It was your will versus my will and I'm going to get my way.
And usually one person always comes out the victor and that was not attractive. In their case, it was. And then they ended up also demonstrating just this love of Christ and everything that they did. So for my young 13-ish-year-old perspective that I had at the time, I said, I'm going to just watch them. I don't know why. I feel like I'd put that on my heart. I'm going to watch them. So little did they know they were mentoring me. Yeah, you're watching. And I was watching them. But I so cool.
I wonder had I not had that, I think, God-given moment of clarity to think, oh, I want to be a husband and I want to be a father someday. Well, I want to be a good husband and a good father and an effective husband. So I started to go, well, who can I see that's doing that? And they were a couple and that man, his name's Doug. Doug, if you're watching or listening, hey, thanks, Doug. No, really? He had a huge impact on me.
And I think what we see now today is this like, shunning of being impacted by anyone older than you. If you're older, you're dumb. If you're an elderly person or even a father figure in someone's life, you're a, you know, you're so cool. I am. You're a square. Yeah. Nobody uses that term, but hey, I just don't know how old I am. It's something that I've seen as well and I love that you're thrown a net out there with that thought that I've had because I'm like, gosh, you're so right.
That thing is there. And as soon as you mention it, I'm like, do I do that? Yes, sometimes. But overall, if I really just be honest, just I'm assessing it, it has gotten worse over time. Yeah. Usually when you're, you know, 18, 28, you don't know what you don't know yet. You're watching other men and thinking, oh, they're kind of, they don't, what got it going on right? You know, this and that.
But man, those thoughts were minimal compared to when you saw a man that was modeling grace and humility and honor. You started to notice and you wanted to get to know them. You wanted to be around them. That happened to a pretty good amount. Yeah. But one little quick point because I want to hear you, man, absolutely. But when I moved here from Houston, I did not realize I was surrounded in Houston where my dad was the pastor at first bed, his church by so many amazing men.
And then I moved here to pastor a much, much, much smaller church. And I realized that those men were not in my life anymore and how greatly I miss them and what a, what a privilege that I had. And I didn't even know it by the men that I was surrounded with in Houston. So just a quick challenge to you guys. You may be surrounded by more godly, wonderful men than you might know.
We'll go with what Stuart's getting right to say is you probably want to surround yourself and to begin to what he used watch. Well, so what we know is there is this huge gap right now, I think, in our culture. And it's somewhat of what I described. It's in our churches too. It's so funny because just earlier today while I was preparing for the podcast, I listened to two different podcasts.
One was Owen Strand and he was talking about raising masculine boys and feminine girls and from a biblical perspective. And it was so good, so well handled. He made these great distinctions and things in it. And then I came across this Paul Washer sermon where he's in a loving, gentle yet very firm way. He's more of a reformed guy if you don't know what reform theology is, don't worry about it.
But he's speaking to a group of people and in the reformed church community, and a lot of them now, it's become popular to say, oh, we don't do youth group. We don't do children's church. We just have them all in the service. And get what they're saying with that. But he is like, hey, hold on. He was like, hey, but what are they doing in that time? Because he said, most of your sermons, I hear you guys preaching. The adults don't understand what you're saying.
So how much do you think the kids are getting out of that? And his point wasn't that you shouldn't have them in the church. Right. But that you need to have an intentional way of communicating to a younger generation in a way they can understand. And really, it's like you wouldn't go to Africa or to some African country. And let's say you gone to or somewhere and try to go out and speak to the tribes in English, if they don't speak English, right? You would learn the language. Learn language.
Learn how to speak to them. Well, in the same way, I think even though we're speaking the same language, although if you hear a lot of kids today, there's, there is slang that I'm just like what is going on. Yeah, I got it. I'm old. I got a 22 and a 25 year old. And I love, I love learning the, the new thing. Yeah, just little things. It makes it so crazy. We had a 17 year old foster daughter a few years ago. Still she calls us mom and dad to this day. She just had a baby.
And she introduced us to all kinds of slang where I was like, what, what are you saying? Bet what, what does that, what do you mean? I love it. I love that kind of stuff. But to bring it back around here, we have this gap in the churches in young and old people. We have a need for mentors and we have a need for mentees. And that can be both in a like official kind of way and that could also be in a way where you just happen to be hanging out with people.
So I think the big thing is, first of all, knowing the characteristics to look for. If you're a young person and you're like, hey, I want to be mentored, you can go right up to somebody and ask them. A lot of older guys are probably going to go, I don't know. I know for me personally, I had a discipleship thing when I was in my mid 20s that this mom asked me to disciple her teenage son. I had no idea what I was doing. I was, I was a moron. But you tried. Oh, but I tried. Yeah. Exactly.
And the thing was, is like, I had not had necessarily the best official discipleship model for me. So I didn't know what I was doing. Now I feel like it'd be a big difference in the way things go. So I think though that we need to know how to look for a good mentor or how to be a good mentor. And if you're a man of an age that is older and further along in life than a younger man, be looking for those opportunities for that guy who you're like, you know, I feel drawn in my heart. Yeah, man.
You out. Yeah, it's super cool. I feel a heart for where you are because I wish someone had come along for me. And maybe that's really the indicator. How do you know that you're supposed to mentor somebody? Yeah. And knowing that you see in them something that you wish you had had at that point, it isn't that like I thought when I was 25 that, oh, I have to have arrived at some spiritual and emotional maturity level in order to be able to do this. And then there's the truth to that.
But I wanted to just then start something here about this that if you have it in your heart, maybe God's brought something to your mind of a young man that you're like, you know, I got a connection at you, man, I don't exactly understand it, but I feel like I'm supposed to reach out and see how I can help him. Dude, boom, solid. Just that's good enough.
Please don't let the enemy come in and steal that beautiful whisper that God has put in your heart because you think you're not wise enough, not spiritual enough, not good enough because the losses may speak louder than the wins because so often these young men don't hear about the losses directly from the person that lost. It's just all in the rumors, but to hear that honesty and that vulnerability of here's what happened, man, and here's what I learned.
And if I could do it again, this is exactly how it would be different. That's a great message to a young man. You look at Proverbs and most of it is Solomon, right? And he's writing and it's writing to his son and a lot of it. He's like, my son, don't do this, do this. Yeah. He's like, I love that. Learn from me. Look at Ecclesiastes. He says, I tried everything. I did it all. He probably was the most experimental person in his entire life on his life than anyone he's ever lived.
I mean, that's saying a lot, you know? I love what you just said, by the way, don't do this, but yet do this because we grow up in church about, don't do this, this, this, this, this, and this. And I love it when don't do this. Instead, do this. I love that. The scripture is full of beautiful stories and examples of that. That wisdom literature is so powerful. We talked a little bit about what to look for in a mentor. How to be a good mentee, too.
I think the biggest thing I think for that is humility. I know what it's like to think, no, no, no, I got this. I got this. I, we've talked about my seven year old son, who I love to death. He's my only son. And I always tell him he's my favorite son. Yes. He's amazing. He's so funny. He was telling me how to bold the other night. Yeah. And I don't know if he's ever bold, but he was telling me the statistics of how this should happen. And exactly what he did. He's just making it up on the spot.
Oh, but it was very convincing. Yeah. He was going to do a lot. He's very, if we just hone those facts. What did you say he's very convincing, very convincing, very persuasive. No, he's confident. Confidence. Oh my gosh. This boy is not like confidence in a good way. Yeah. I like it. But what I've seen is sometimes he'll come to me and he'll be like, Dad, no, no, no, I, you're doing it wrong. I know, I know dad way and he doesn't know.
It's my job as his father and ultimately mentor and disciple or to go son. I know you think you know, but you're wrong, but dude in a loving way. Correct. That's beautiful. I saw you do that on Friday night about. It's confident. He was explaining drunkenness and you're like, he was making a joke about drinking and I was like, you know, it's really not, it's not funny, right? And a lot of people can't and he was like, oh, he just thinks it's funny.
Yeah. And he's seven, you know, so, but he, he receives it well, even in his confidence, he will be like, okay, oh, yeah, okay, dad. And so what I can say is as a person who needs a meant to be the mentee, you need to be humble enough to receive correction and to receive, improve and guidance. So those are the things in that mentor, you know, looking for that mentor, there's that saying when the student is ready, the master will appear. Very cool.
You know, it's like a eastern type of wisdom or whatever. But I think the greater idea behind it is you'll, you'll be amazed at how soon when you're ready to learn that there's somebody ready to teach you. Super cool. So be looking for that. Be looking for people in your life or that you come into contact with who we said it in the last interview that we did with Jason, you said in AA, you go, I want to exhibit that character.
Yeah. When you're looking for a sponsor in this, in this setting, a mentor in AA, when you're looking for a sponsor, when you first come in, they tell you to look for someone that has something that you want. And that can be character, that can be truthfulness, that can be stability, that can be just that he's calm with his words and succinct and beautiful like man, I want that.
Yeah. I think a big thing is recognizing Jesus exhibited discipleship, the ultimate form of mentorship truly, because it's not just like you can have a mentor or like someone who teaches you to play guitar or something. But to have someone who teaches you how to live skillfully, how to live successfully, how to love well, how to repent.
You know, those are the things that you need as a man growing up in this world and there aren't always the greatest examples around, especially in our culture, but finding places to find mentors and to be a mentor, I would say your local church. That is something find a good, solid Bible teaching Christ following church. Yeah. There's a, you, we got a good link on the stand up dude website as well. Yeah. There's amazing resources there.
But even your workplace, be looking for people because what is really wild is when you as a believer have influence on people who are not and you may not realize it. Just like I didn't realize that Doug, or that Doug rather didn't realize that he was influencing me in tremendous ways. You may not realize that the people you're working with look at you and go, there's something different. That happened to me in my past career working in tech.
I had people tell me later on and I'm like, I barely knew this person. But they're like, yeah, there's just something different about you. I was like, praise the Lord because I, some days I didn't feel like there was anything different about me. Oh, yeah, there's days like that for sure. But so other things that you can be doing, just looking in your community as you're going out as you're bumping into people. I would say use wisdom.
Don't, it just in the same way you wouldn't go out and marry someone or call them your best friend day one usually. Don't just go right up to the first person you meet at the park and say, hey, be my mentor. And if you're that guy who's going around doing that, you're probably not a great mentor. If you're the one saying, hey, I'm going to mentor you. It's probably maybe rushing. Yeah, it's interesting.
I might die always just to say the people that he would ask to be deacons in his church where the people that weren't seeking to be deacons. Yeah. Yeah. There's something very, I totally understand that. There's something about when somebody is seeking that that it's like, uh, uh, yeah, it gives you that you keep feeling. But we're not talking about you if you're wanting to be mentor now that's, that's a different, totally different, very different.
So a few things to keep in mind, there's time constraints. You know, people have jobs, they have lives, they have families. So when you're doing this, both sides, be aware of the time constraints. And also, I understand people are going to have. They're going to have a year and vulnerability in things. And you need to recognize when they're comfortable, when it's appropriate to push and when it's necessary to restrain yourself and give it time.
And a lot of us are talking about mentoring or being a mentoring. Both sides of that, I would say as the mentor, it may be your job to push in a little bit, but just like a doctor checking your appendix or something, they're still doing it in a way that's delicate enough. It's like, okay, I found it, but I'm not going to just keep pushing on that and make it worse. That's good. So be aware of that.
But as a person who's being mentored or the mentee, also be aware that sometimes what's uncomfortable, what somebody is doing when they're pushing is not to hurt you, it's to help you. So you do have to operate in discernment there and understand that. So I want to wrap all this up and just say, if you are looking for that person, let us know because we have the resources at standupdo.com. Absolutely, man.
And we also may know of people in your area, churches and ministries that are going on that would be amazing and help you a ton. As a matter of fact, if any of those leaders are out there that are interested in us meeting and getting to know you as we can recommend you, please reach out. The email is podcast@standupdo.com. Yep, we'd love that. Okay. Because we'd love to have references all over the country to send mentees. All right.
Well, so Tim, would you close us in prayer and just invite anybody listening who's maybe not aware of how the root problem, the root source of discipleship, where that comes from is in being a disciple of Jesus. Yeah. So we want you to know Jesus, we want you to meet Him, to be changed and transformed and have that exchange that happens when you come to Him. You give Him all of your sin He takes and gives you all of His righteousness. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.
As you know, we've spoken of being a mentor. Our greatest mentor that we have, there's a couple that are the greatest. The Holy Spirit is your guide, your protector, the voice of truth in your heart and your life. He will give you the eyes to see as situations that you can also see truth from. So the Holy Spirit will guide you and be your mentor. Number two is God's Word. Equally. It's hard to put one at the top, but equally is God's Word. His Word is truth. It's inspired.
It's right from A to Z. And for you to know that you're being mentored without being in the Word is a bit of a miss. So you want to also be able to run through your mentors wisdom and check it also with God's Word. If you're out of character with God's Word, then it's not good advice. So you need to have that balance. So the Holy Spirit again will give you that. So I'm going to pray with you.
If you don't know Jesus, what happens when you invite Jesus into your life is you also receive the Holy Spirit. And because we've spoken so much of the Holy Spirit, it's a miss to leave this podcast without knowing Jesus. You can have that ultimate mentor in your life. So let's pray. Lord Jesus, I would ask Father that the young man, the middle aged man, the older man, Lord that don't know you would humble their hearts, Lord. And just say your favorite words, Jesus. I need you.
Then if you know that you need Jesus, just tell him that now that position of the humility of your heart, you can thank him for dying on the cross for you before you were forgiven. But now you can ask him to forgive you again, the spirit of humility to please forgive me, say, dear Jesus, please forgive me of the sins that I've done against you. I put those at the foot of the cross, Jesus. And I look to you and I say thank you. I humbly receive you as the boss, the guide, the God of my life.
And Jesus, thank you for not just staying on the cross, but for dying for me. And for rising again, and I accept your new life into me right now. Father, I would ask Jesus you would fill them with the beautifulness of your Holy Spirit by the presence of Jesus in their life. They would be their mentor. They would draw them to your Word. They would draw them to your heart. They would draw them to the Father heart of God.
She would fill them Jesus with your Holy Spirit that their walk would completely change from this day forward. That you give them an insatiable desire for your Word and for truth and to be the man that you have created them to be. In Jesus name, I pray, amen. Amen. Thank you, Tim. I really appreciate that. And if you prayed that prayer, we would love to hear from you podcast at standupdo.com. You can email us there. You can also go on our website at the podcast page.
If you click that link, when you're on the page on the right hand side, you'll see a little pop up orange icon thing. You can click that and you can leave us a voice message. We would love to hear from you. If it's something that you are comfortable, you can let us know. We may actually feature you on a future episode of standupdo.com and discuss that. You can also find us on all the social media, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok now. We love it.
And we are going to just keep on growing this thing and doing our thing. So, but thank you guys so much for watching, for listening, and tuning next time to stand up to. Love you guys. [Music]