Love God with all your heart, mind and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself. [MUSIC] >> Well, hello and welcome to the Stand Up Dude podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Stewart White, along with Tim Bisagno. >> Yes, sorry. >> Tim, we have a-- >> I'm doing great. >> I'm really good, how are you? >> It's good to know. >> Yeah. I would like to hand off to you this part, but we have a guest today. >> Yes. >> His name is Kenneth Heroff.
>> Oh, yeah. >> He's a friend of yours. >> Yes, he is. >> I will let you handle the intro, the bio for him. We're really excited to have him. We want to welcome him to the show. And you guys are going to get a lot out of this. So I hand that off to you. >> All right. Welcome Kenneth. Great to have you, brother. >> Thank you. I'm honored to be here. Thank you, Stewart, Tim. >> Straight up from Longview, Texas. Oh, central. All right, East Texas, that is.
You, sir. So great to have you, man. For those that don't know Kenneth and I are friends. He is a coach of men encouraging them to be exactly who God created them to be. What a perfect match. I just love Kenneth. You'll see that he has a beautiful ability to be succinct and firm. And yet he's also quite a gentle spirit. Sounds like Jesus to me. And I'm not putting you up on the quite that pedestal, sir. But I love you and I'm thanking God that you're here with us, man.
>> Thank you, Tim. And as I love you, you mentioned some of my parts, but not all of my parts. >> Okay, sir. >> All of their good and bad parts to every man. So, yes. >> Yes, sir. >> So thank you for that. Yes, I have been a men's life coach for approximately five years. I've coached thousands of men of all different faith backgrounds. And believe me, Christian men need coaching and mentoring as much as anyone else.
And we have the greatest role model on the planet for men's work, for men's coaching and mentorship. And that's Jesus Christ, the most masculine man that ever walked the planet. He did it perfectly. >> It's a controversial statement a bit because a lot of people don't look at Jesus as being that manly, right? He's sort of portrayed as like, you know, a little bit soft, but kid glove, when kind of guy. >> He was a very vulnerable, emotional, beautiful, loving man.
And he also knew how to make a whip and turn over tables and run people out of his house. So he had a strength to him that didn't require violence. He had a strength to him that didn't require force because he was powerful. That's what we're talking about, the difference between men being truly congruent with their masculinity and men who pretend to be something else, whether it be too soft or the toxic masculinity that the society tends to lean towards when you use the word masculine.
>> Kenneth, you're five years of running with men and hearing their stories. I've been there with you on many of them to say that their intense would be an understatement. And you've mentioned to me there's two or three things that men come in there wanting. What are those? What do you usually see? >> Whether we're conscious of it or not, men are looking for challenge. They're looking for support and they're looking for accountability. And we find this in a lot of different ways.
For a man that kind of, I want to say they do it part way. In the world of technology today, there's 2,600 million apps. I can get a Bible app where I can read my scripture every day and check off that I read my scripture. So I have an app that tracks me. That doesn't replace having a spiritual director in my life. Somebody that then is on that walk with me challenging me to live what I'm reading. The only accountable of the things that I know that I have to do.
Again, challenging accountability and supporter key for men in this day and age. Because we will rise with challenge. Any man will rise if he's challenged by another man. And when we're left to our own which again in this day and age, we know that the latest studies show that there's some 30% of men that can't say they have one friend.
The loneliness that men are experiencing today is beyond anything that we've seen in history because we've been separated and told you should be able to do this on your own. Just Google it. You can get directions from the maps or just don't ask for directions that'll joke. You don't even stop and ask for directions. So we have men that are afraid to ask for help because they think it's weak. The opposite is true. It takes a lot of courage for a man to stand up and ask for help.
Yeah. There's a statement, I believe I've heard you say, about vulnerability. It's the opposite of what we normally think of weakness but in a man it's considered what a superpower. It is our core power. It is our superpower. And again, if we go back to our mentor, the most masculine man that walked the planet, Jesus was incredibly vulnerable. Wow, he sure was. He went down and was drawing in a sand as people around him were picking up rocks. I mean, how vulnerable can you be?
How vulnerable can you be? He put himself in many, many, many situations in which is completely open and vulnerable. And that was his power. Wow. I just love the words he put together there. Jesus was incredibly vulnerable and just the image of him leaning, talking to the prostitute, first of all, talking to a woman in the middle of the day. Secondly, kneeling down, getting on her level, thirdly.
And while other people were picking up rocks to probably have his head down and shoulders geared towards showing love and presence to a woman that was committing adultery and had, I don't know, gotten the very act. Got in the very act. Where was the man, by the way, in this story? Very peculiar situation, wasn't it? He's hiding. Man is so good at hiding. Yeah, that was a man that needs challenge, support and accountability. He needed to be pulled out into the street and made a count of two.
And the other men around there obviously weren't doing that. We're challenged today with finding men to surround ourselves with that are willing to do things that may not be liked. What other challenge do most men come to you with? Not only if I've done thousands of one-on-one phone calls, Tim knows this. I do a lot of group coaching. I'm in charge of groups. Through that, I've seen and heard thousands of other men. We like to think that we're different.
We like to think that my situation is weird or strange. We like to think that, oh, you can't help me because I'm too bad. I'm too far gone. I'm too far down. In reality, on the inside, we're all identical. The same thing keeps coming up over and over and over again for every man. If you talk to a man long enough and ask him enough questions, you will find out that deep down inside, he has those feelings of not being good enough, of being unworthy and being unlovable.
And those subconsciously drive a lot of our behaviors, our addictions, pot and alcohol and gaming and all these things that we do to run from and not feel pain. It's the pain of those feelings we don't want to feel. So feeling not good enough, unworthy and unlovable, I know that you teach and have encouraged me to not get rid of but get with those feelings of not being good enough, not being worthy of love or just being unlovable. How do you get with those things?
It's very unintuitive in the Christian world that I have been a part of and still am, of course, if Stu said his left shoulder hurt, I'm going to say, Jesus asked you to take away this pain of stew that you'd heal it. Jesus name, thank you, we believe you and trust you. Amen. Okay. We go straight to the get rid of. Nothing wrong with it. People are healed all day long. Praise God. Right. More of that, please. And it's a good thing and there's a power and prayer.
And then the other side of that is God may not heal his shoulder because there's something that he's supposed to be learning from that ailment and he's going to have that ailment until he learns to listen. Oh, maybe God's telling me I need to slow down. Maybe God's trying to tell me to stop overworking. There's a message that his body is giving him through God that he's not paying attention to. And so why would God just take it the pain away when he needs it? He needs to learn that.
We have Bible passages that disciples would have ailments through their entire life that I'm sure they prayed for. They were healing others, but they couldn't heal themselves because God wanted them to have that pain in the side because they needed to be reminded. They needed that. So we need to be reminded that we have these feelings and I'll use a simple emotion of that everyone experiences. We all experience all emotions, but sadness when you lose a loved one, they're the sadness.
You can run from it. You can pretend it's not there, but until you actually feel it and go through that grieving process, it's not going away.
I love that in the Jewish tradition, they have, I think, the word is sub-off, where it means to sit with somebody that's grieving, not to take their pain away, not to put your arm around them, not to pray that their pain goes away, but just to actually be in their space while they're feeling the emotion, while they're grieving and not to interfere with it. And at times we do interfere with each other's emotions when we stand back and let somebody feel what they need to feel.
Kenneth, my dad, as you know, was a pastor and we would make hospital visits and he told me, Tim, the people that I visit will never remember what I told them, but they'll never forget that I came to the hospital and the sharing in that grief, just sitting with in a sub-bot, that's getting with, isn't it? I was just getting with feeling that emotion. This is common, I wasn't going to bring this up, we're talking about emotions.
There's a wide variety of emotions, if you look at an emotional wheel, they make these emotional wheels, they're like 230-animations or some great number. And most people can name five or ten. We don't think about our experience, a wide range of emotions, most of us.
And then we avoid the ones that we quote and quote say, "I don't want to feel sad, I don't want to feel down, I don't want to feel lonely, I don't want to feel not good enough, I don't want to feel unlovable, I want to feel joy, I want to feel happy, I want to feel peace, so I want these emotions, but not those emotions." Wow, who created emotions? God, God make anything that's bad, no, all emotions are good.
We wouldn't be alive or feel alive if we had no emotions, we're all robots, if we would literally be a machine without emotions. I now literally love having sadness when it happens, I love when I'm feeling something anything, I don't put them in categories anymore, it's not good or bad emotions or all just emotions and they help me feel alive. I like that you put it that way because it's a bit like my wife just took her kids to see inside out too.
And I love the first one I haven't gotten to see the second, I heard it was amazing, but what we treated is if they're good emotions and they're bad ones and if we want to be happy, get rid of the bad ones, only have the good ones all the time.
And the movie, in a very simplistic way, but a clever way, puts it out there that it's like, no, without sadness, you can't truly have joy, you can't truly experience love and other things because you realize that those things allow you to process what's going on. I've heard it said, emotions make terrible leaders, but they're great followers, they should follow the truth. They should follow what the reality is and it's a bit like a check engine like coming on in your car.
If you just tape over that thing and you don't ever go, hey, I wonder what that was about, you're going to constantly have problems, but instead it's telling you, hey, there's something inside your heart that's telling you your emotions are the symptom, telling you something's going on here, you should look into this. Right. And there's also emotions, energy and motion. Look, if I didn't have fear, I want to get out of the way of the train coming. There are absolutely reasons for emotion.
Love. If I didn't have love, why would I stay with the same woman all my life? Man, she bothers me and she yells at me sometimes. And if we didn't have this emotion of love, which is also an action, why would people stay together? Yeah. Why would you put up with that kid that constantly gets in trouble? As a parent of six kids without love, I know that none of them would be like today. Yes, sir. None of them would be alive.
I get emotions are so beautiful when experienced and not far, not battled with, trying to get rid of, like Tim was mentioning, trying to get rid of him is just causing you more pain. So we've been taught suffering is from the avoidance of suffering. Just described by our friend and your boss, I guess, your co-leader, David, as the exquisiteness repeat that. It's something like the exquisiteness of suffering and how he would never give that up now.
I'm going to put it in a different context, David, but however, and this is a man that teaches many things. Tim and I can go on and on about what David teaches. The one thing that David says if he could teach the world, only one thing would be how to suffer. If every person in the world does knew how to suffer, we would have less suffering because again, a lot of suffering is created by people trying to get away from their suffering.
But then we'd also learn from what it is that's trying to teach us because I don't have to go very far in a group of Christians, but to point to the cross. Again, suffering. We are called to suffer as Christians. There's a part of our journey that will include some suffering. Jesus isn't avoided. He didn't try to go around it. He didn't try to circumvent it. He didn't get drunk first. He didn't get high on something first to try to not feel it.
Like he went in full force and felt everything that he needed to feel. Three days later, he rose again. Yes, he did. I have to do the suffering to rise again. I have to do the suffering to get to the other side where all the joy is and all the triumph is and where life is. I have to go through the suffering. I can't go around it. I can't avoid it. I can't pretend it's not there. These are things that we do. We all do it. We all do these things. So we get with.
We go through instead of avoid and push away. The joy is found underneath. Until we get with, until we accept and even embrace the suffering, we end up never finding the joy underneath and the payoff, if you will. The lesson learned, the joy that comes from embracing that suffering is a gift. Again, the suffering comes from the avoidance of suffering and we spend so much time and so much energy to avoid the suffering. And money, we keep mine.
We live in a world today that says if you're suffering in some way, there's a pill for it. Oh, you don't feel good enough about yourself by the new $75,000 pickup truck. If everything's not going well at home, grab your wife and kids and add to Disneyland, we live in a world today that says spend, spend, spend, buy, buy, buy. There is something that's going to make you feel better. It doesn't exist.
I've studied marketing things and marketing tactics and marketing itself is always you expose and press into the pain point. They offer a solution that usually isn't really a solution. It's usually like, are you terrible at such and such? Take this pill or you'll be happy again. It's like, that didn't really solve the problem, but I forgot I had a problem in the first place. I love that you put it in terms of the cross because I have a friend. She wrote a song.
She's a Christian recording artist and she wrote a song and the lyric was, the cross is on the way to joy. Every now and then that line will pop into my head when things are kind of difficult and I go, how about I press through? It's not run around, circumvent, bypass. It's no, you have to go through this in order to get to the other side. We occasionally in our bench group, we talk about the buffalo. The buffalo is the only animal on the planet that runs into the storm.
All the other animals are trying to get away from it. They're out trying to outrun it and storms don't go away. They're obviously going to get clobbered by it at some point. But the buffalo are smart enough to know if you run towards the storm, you get to the other side of it much quicker. They go right through the middle of it and then they're on the other side where there's no rain, there's no wind, there's no tornado. They get to the other side much quicker than the rest of the animals.
I think they're pretty smart. Thank you for that visual. I've always heard the way of the buffalo to know that they're running towards it, to get to the other side because that's where the calm and the sunshine is contained. You had mentioned in the context of the things that we're talking about that I think will be very applicable to men trying and working towards, not trying, walking towards being the men that God has created and to be.
There's a couple of scriptures that you love that should be very helpful if you're loving them, considering what you do. What are those? In my coaching, especially when I'm coaching Christian men, in the beginning, I love to bring up the scripture. There's a Pharisee that's questioning Jesus. What are the main commandments? Jesus says, "All of the law are in these two." Love God with all your heart, mind and soul. Love your neighbor as yourself.
If you ask a man, if you don't love yourself, is your neighbor going to feel loved? The answer would be no. The journey here for us men are to truly love ourselves. It's right there in scripture. If you look up that particular scripture, love your neighbor yourself. I don't remember. It's 13 or 14 times, founded in the Bible, in the scripture, starting in the Old Testament. I think it's important. And Jesus repeats it. I think it's even more important to look at the scripture.
Now unfortunately, I've been to church most of my life. I've heard a lot of sermons on the scripture, but they usually stop at loving your neighbor and what that's all about and how to love God. And they kind of drop off that last part as yourself. That's a little pet peeve of mine about the church and pastors. And generally, we don't talk about this self-care enough. We don't talk about how important it is to love yourself because here's the other part. You ask a man.
I'll ask him, "Do you love God?" Yes. Did God create you? Yes, sir. Why wouldn't you love his creation? Yes, sir. This will separate you from God. If you don't love his creation, there's a disconnect. You don't love his creation. You're not going to have that fully plugged in power of the Holy Spirit. If you don't love yourself, how are you going to be a part of the body of Christ? Because as a body, we move. As a body, there's a huge power in that.
But I'm going to disconnect myself from the body. If I don't love myself, I'm no longer part of what God created, which is all of us creating his image. Here again, I might say something that might sound really easy, but it's really hard. It is really hard for men today to seek out help, to reach their hand out, to strond themselves with other men. They're willing to challenge them, support them, hold them accountable, to help them see who they really are, to live more congruently.
Because every man's an individual, I'll never be Tim. Tim's never going to be me. We're all beautifully made as an individual. We need to find out who that is, who did God create me to be? What are my gifts and my giving notes to the world in a manner which pleases God? And it's all connected, but it's all going to come right back to that. All the big funnels, all the problems we can have, all the addictions that we have, the funnel, the funnel, funnel. I don't believe I'm good enough.
I don't feel I'm lovable and then I don't love myself. That's at the core of it. And why in the world of men's work or men's coaching, as long as you're focused on the man, and helping him see who he is at a much, much deeper level and heal from a lot of past traumas and wounds that we all carry around, starting with our parents. We all have mommy and daddy things that go on in our lives. Bringing forth that man into mature, vulnerable, masculine leadership.
And men at the time would change the face of the earth. Yes, sir. And it's always time for that. It's always been time for that. It just seems to have been elevated that it is an absolute time and necessity that we do that now. And Hebrews, it talks about the now season is to step through a window or an opening with
power. And in this window is open right now where the country needs us, women need us, our sisters needs, our mothers need us, our wife needs us, our daughters need us to operate in the responsibility that God has put upon us and in us to be the man that we're created to be, to be the masculine. It's not chest beaten. It's not hear me roar. Although sometimes that will possibly call for you on some days.
The majority of the time is to show up present, to speak in love and graciousness and yet truth. Truth brings freedom in your household. It brings freedom in your body. It brings freedom right here and right now. We're speaking truth and a wonderful power of freedom to encourage young men to be the men that they're created to be right now in this time, in this day, and to stand up to rise into your biblical masculine.
It's actually our responsibility to not believe the lies that because you are masculine, you are toxic, unbelievably untrue. There are numerous ways to entrain this. There's opportunities even on the website to help you. That's what we're here for. There is no charge for what we do. Our charge is to remind you who you are and who you're created to be and who you're created right now to represent.
That's the power and the presence that God has put on you, the giftings, the leadership to wear that. Not as an ill-fit coat that's been tailored by culture. But to just live into the masculine leader that you are. Kenneth, if you take it from here, what we've done is we've always and we'll always encourage young men to start the journey. If they're going to be the man that created to be understand, to know, to love, and to accept Jesus because he is their creator.
How in the world are we going to know what we're created to do without knowing our creator? Will you take that from here and help young men understand what that means today for them right now? Being created in God's image just that it's important and to understand who is God and who is the creator. We're all called as men to be the priest of our homes. And that can be as a single man. It can be as a father and husband. It can be in any form of fashion.
We're called to be priests as men, not just in a religious context where you're serving of the parish of your church, where you're ministering and teaching, but just for a couple of visuals, the man at home at 10 o'clock at night, after he put his kids to bed, on his knees praying for his family, that is powerful. That's power. That's enough power to change the world. And then there are men.
One of my favorite scenes that I've seen is that over in Greece, this was probably 10 years ago, there are huge riots. And on one side of the street there's a lot of thousands of rioters. And on the other side of the street are several hundred police officers in battle gear ready to go beat on these people. And then the medal is one Greek Orthodox priest standing in between these two groups. And it brings tears to my eyes because that is masculinity. That is love. That's vulnerability.
He was being Jesus in that moment. But for a moment, whatever that was, he brought peace to that scene. And things stopped. It was mind blowing. It was absolutely mind blowing. And we're not all here to save millions or whatever it is. We might be called just to say that one person next to us. I love mother trees or for that. How am I supposed to help all these people? You're not. You're supposed to just help the person that's closest to you.
But really, really, really simple just to reach your hand out and help the person that's closest to you. And how that would change the world. I don't want to get lost in who God is for everyone. I know that I'm created in my God's image, my creator's image in a way that I'm meant here to be of service. I'm here to help my fellow man. There's a ripple effect. And they go out and they help somebody. And then they help somebody. It doesn't take millions and millions of people doing it.
It just takes a handful to change the world, which I believe that you two men are doing. So thank you for the work that you're doing. Yes, sir. And it's thank you for doing what you do, brother. Stuart, your presence here, your help with what is going on here, your friendship, your consistency, and your calmness has always been a blessing to me. It helps me a lot. Thank you for that.
As Kenneth has said, it's one person at a time reaching out and helping one person at a time, beautiful story unfolds from there when you take that particular responsibility. What about the people that have never decided to be that person? They've maybe never met Jesus. What would you tell that guy? Well, I would tell him the great thing is the gospel. You said it the season of now and right now is the time. Peter talks about it today is the day of salvation.
The things that you've done in the past were enough. Your season of sin, your season of chaos and all that is over. It can stop now and you are invited right now into the kingdom and that it's not you working your way and earning something, but that it's a ticket that has been paid in a price that has been purchased by the blood of Jesus. If his blood covers you and you have your faith in that, then his resurrection also gives you that new life that he promises. That is something I would say.
It's like you can pray that right now. You can ask Christ to redeem you right now, put your faith in what he has done. Stop living for yourself. You can't redeem yourself, but Christ can begin to make you the moment you receive a new creation. That is that power, that everything being made in God's image, all of this is possible because of the blood of the Lamb. It says, we overcome because of that. That is what I would say to that person. Beautiful.
If there are young men out there that would like to take that step, it's a simple prayer. It's humbling yourself, dropping your pride that is just a self-protection of your ego. That's the first thing that gets to go right now is your pride. If you'd like to drop your pride and say, God's favorite words, Jesus loves these words, these three words, God, I need you. Those four words, I need you. I need you. For those men that are willing to admit they need God, you can ask them right now.
You say, dear Jesus, I see you would step out of heaven and into my heart. Thank you for dying on the cross for me. Thank you for suffering. Thank you Jesus that you did that before I even knew you, before I even knew I needed you. Thank you for coming to life again after you died in my place and I give you my heart and my life and my will. In Jesus' name, I will serve you for the rest of my life. Please use me to help others. Please use me to do your will. I hand you the pen.
You're the new author, the new boss of my life. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Amen. You guys, if you prayed that prayer with us, just go to the very bottom of standupdo.com site and you'll say a button called Be More and that's where some tools are there. A growth path to help you become the man that God has made you to be. Thank you for being here, Kenneth. You are an inspiration to us. Thank you for being the man that you are.
Thank you for caring and having the heart that is doing that one man at a time. It's not easy. I see that. I know that. I hear it. Brother, you're standing in that gap. You're that guy in that middle of that street going, it's okay. Let me hold presence for you. That's what that man did and that's what you do for men all day long. That is huge, brother. I hope I never get used to that. So thank you, everybody. [Music] [Music]