Every Man’s Battle Podcast

Announcer: Welcome to the Every Man’s Battle Podcast brought to you by New Life Ministries. In this podcast, you’ll hear honest conversations and encouragement for living a life of sexual integrity. In every episode, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist JJ West and Licensed Professional Counselor Doug Barnes break the silence around sexual integrity struggles that millions of men face but rarely discuss openly. Each episode offers practical strategies and genuine hope to dissolve the shame and isolation that keeps men trapped in destructive cycles. Let's get to today’s episode.

JJ West: Welcome back to the Every Man’s Battle Podcast, season three. I am JJ West and I'm with, as always, my good friend Doug Barnes. Hey, Doug.

Doug Barnes: Hey, JJ. How are you doing?

JJ West: I’m doing really good. We are getting ready to do another Every Man’s Battle Intensive here in Dallas. We’re set up in a different location, a different environment than where we normally do these shows, but we have a topic we want to tackle today that's maybe a little bit different, but still within the bell curve of what we do. Today we’re going to be talking about Finding What Matters.

Really, what it boils down to is learning how to be mentored and to mentor young men. This was birthed out of a podcast I was listening to where the husband and wife were telling their story—how they met and got together. It was interesting because when they first met, neither one was interested in the other. The husband was saying the reason he wasn’t interested in her at the time is because his values and what he was going after were askew.

He said one of the main reasons was because he didn’t have any good mentors in his life. He was in his early 20s when they first met. At this point, they're in their mid-to-late 30s. He was talking about how as a young man, he just didn’t have good mentorship. It got me thinking about how there really is this lack of mentoring.

Doug Barnes: Big gap.

JJ West: There's a big gap. There's this tremendous need for mentoring, and yet there’s also this command to mentor. There’s a model and a command in scripture. Jesus had his disciples and certainly mentored them. Paul mentored Silas and Timothy. In Titus, we’re instructed that the older men should instruct the younger men, and the older women should instruct the younger women.

It’s all through scripture that this should be happening, yet there’s a lack of mentoring. I thought about even my own story and how early on in my Christian walk, I was really messed up. I had a lot of bad ideas. I became a Christian at 16, and I had some pretty jacked-up ideas. I didn’t have a strong leader or a strong mentor teaching me until much later. It got me thinking. There are younger guys in the audience listening to the podcast, and maybe they’re in that same boat.

Doug Barnes: I hope they’re in the same boat. People come to Christ in all different places. I grew up in the church, so I didn't know what it was like not to go to church. It was such a part of my life that I went every time the doors were open. That was my family. But there are people who come at 16, people who come at 46, or whatever.

Most of us don’t understand the concept of walking in community. I certainly didn’t. I had great friends and we did all kinds of great stuff, like the camps and the trips, but we didn’t actively sit down as young men and talk about the hard struggles we were having. We talked about the Bible stories we were learning and the concepts of walking the Christian walk, but we didn’t talk about each other and how we can help each other. I thought I was supposed to get this on my own, and we know where that leads.

JJ West: There also needs to be a guide who's a little bit further down the path who can give us some wisdom. It’s good that iron sharpens iron and we sharpen one another as fellow brothers sharing our lives together. That’s important. But if that’s all we're doing and all the chuckleheads are sharing each other's wisdom, there’s a bit of a feedback loop or an echo chamber there. There’s a time and a place for that, but not for what we're talking about here.

What we're talking about here is: how do I know what to look for in a relationship? How do I know what to do in the early stages? How do I know to walk this out in a godly fashion so I’m not in the dark making decisions? My best decisions got me here. It’s important to bounce those off of other godly men who can be a step or two further down the path.

They don’t have to be a long way away. They can be just a step or two ahead—five years, 10 years, two years, it doesn't matter. It’s more of a maturity level than it is an age factor. Age does count, and I think maturity plays a huge role. My wife would probably say I’m still not mature, but I’m more mature than I was. I want to finish well, which is an important point because we have two audiences today. We have the younger men we want to share some wisdom with, but we also have the older men we need to call on to step up and be a mentor.

It’s time to pour into the lives of these younger men so there isn’t this gap we talked about earlier. So many times, guys who are older, especially if they’ve made some pretty heroic mistakes, feel like they're disqualified. They think they don't have anything to offer, or they have to get their life all squeaky clean before they can be a mentor. No. Wisdom comes from saying, "Here are the mistakes I made. Here is the hard-earned wisdom I have because of the learning that came along with making those mistakes and their consequences." That’s what is really valuable to share with others.

Doug Barnes: Before any of you hear this and say, "Those guys are old. They don't know what they're talking about. I know what I'm doing," we both said the same exact thing when we were your age. I promise you. I said the same exact thing and look where I ended up. From a wisdom perspective, I did not honor the real wisdom that was all around me.

I go back to being bulletproof and thinking I could leap tall buildings in a single bound. I was invincible—or so I thought. Had I had some men step up in a formal fashion and say, "This is what it’s like to live as a teenager, a young adult, or as a young married man," and provide that wisdom at the appropriate maturity level, I might not have made all the mistakes I made. We're still going to make some, but maybe it would have shielded us from some of the bigger mistakes and the pain we went through. That's really what we're hoping we can offer the younger guys—to say you don't have to go down the same painful paths we did.

JJ West: Another interesting aspect of this is, for much of my adult life, I kept looking around and wondering when the adults were going to come in and take care of this. I'd ask, "Who’s in charge here? When are you guys going to get in here?" Then all of a sudden, I look in the mirror and there’s an old man staring back at me. I realized that’s my role now.

Part of my mind still thinks I’m just a young kid and I can go out and do stupid things, but I have to step into that role. We have grown up now, and it’s time for us to step into that place. We've laid the groundwork that there’s a biblical framework for mentoring younger men. A lot of guys are kind of doing life solo, trying to find answers to big questions like what to look for in a spouse or what to base a relationship on.

They might be getting answers from friends who are just as lost as they are or from social media. Is that the best blueprint for love that lasts? What is feeding my lust, my hormones, and my desires versus what is God’s design? Are we really teaching that in our churches?

Doug Barnes: That’s not a knock on any church. I'm just saying, are we really teaching that? Are we getting alongside social media and saying, "This is what your influencers are saying, but is that the appetite you want that's the healthiest for you?" I can eat Cheetos and brownies all day long, but it’s not healthy. It will sustain me, but it’s not healthy.

We have agency. Everyone watching or listening has the ability to make that decision. Do I want to live healthy or not? We get the choice. I made wrong choices when I was younger. We're hoping to offer a compass to help make some of those better choices.

JJ West: Let's start with that agency. If you are a younger man who doesn’t have wise men in your life to mentor you and you're just trying to figure it out from TikTok or Instagram, start small. What would that look like to start small?

Doug Barnes: I would start with someone I trust or admire. It could be in my social setting, at church, or even a family acquaintance like an uncle or a neighbor. I'm going to go to them and ask for their input. If I have my eye on someone, I might ask, "Do you know him? Do you know what he represents, his walk with Christ, and how he lives his life?"

You can get some input on whether there needs to be a redirection. It’s about starting with one person who can guide you or steer you toward those possibilities. That’s what I would do.

JJ West: Sometimes that's going to be your pastor, the youth group leader, or someone at church. You can go to them and say, "I’m really looking for someone to mentor me. Do you have a recommendation?" You may also know somebody you think would be a good fit. You could even just go directly to him and ask to grab some coffee or talk for a bit because you want to learn from him.

I guarantee the vast majority of the older men in your circles would want to share if you asked them. Very rarely is a guy going to say he doesn't want to do that. There are lots of guys out there wanting to give back and help the next generation learn from their mistakes. I tell my sons all the time, "I’m telling you this not to give you an impression of me, but to help you avoid these things because they will get you in a very bad place. It hurts, and you really don't want to experience that kind of pain."

Just asking is the start. The flip side for the older guys is to go and offer. Don’t sit on the sideline waiting to be asked. Go and start mentoring. You could go to the pastor or the youth leader and say you want to be a mentor and ask what that would look like. Maybe there's a nephew or a kid in your neighborhood or small group you want to pour into. Go grab some donuts and spend some time together just talking about your lives.

Doug Barnes: Another idea is to talk to the leaders in your community or church about starting a mentoring program with a structure for how to teach mentors to be mentors. That program could really take off because there is such a need and a desire. Sometimes the fear of what people will think—that you're weak or can't make it on your own—holds people back. But it’s about having the courage to step up and say you would like some help in a certain area.

This is how the first church got started and how it spread. We're just recreating that for the hunger that’s really there. A fear held me back, but I’ll own it.

JJ West: Let's model what that might look like. When I was a young man and a brand new Christian, I had several superficial ideas about what I was looking for in a relationship. I remember walking along the beach with my friend Trey, talking about what we were looking for in a relationship. My stuff was all about appearance. I think I even said I wanted her to be able to sing. I don't know why that was important to me at the time.

I was believing myths, like the idea that attraction equals compatibility. I was "compatible" with a lot of girls then. They weren't so much compatible with me, but I was attracted to a lot of them.

Doug Barnes: Huge attraction, but little compatibility. That really rings true to me about where my heart was. I was not following God's design. Scripture talks about what happens with outward appearance. After being married as long as we have, we get that on both sides. What can the real attraction be?

When my boys were growing up, that was one of the things I tried to talk through, especially in high school. When they were interested in someone, my first question was always, "Do you know who she really is? Do you know her heart? Is she a follower of Christ?" If she’s not, you're asking for trouble. I was trying to steer them away from my own mistakes because that was me, too. You can know her favorite color or her favorite band, but if you want something that’s going to last, you have to go deeper than that.

JJ West: If you don’t go deeper, you miss the more important things. I think about the last girl I dated before I met my wife. I wish someone had pulled me aside and asked what drew me into that relationship. If I was honest, it was all physical. We never really got to the place of looking at similar life goals or even whether we wanted to live in the same area. It was all about physical attraction, and that’s empty.

Doug Barnes: It certainly leads that way over time. If I ask my peers, they're just going to agree with me and say she's beautiful. That’s not what I needed. I needed someone to ask what was going to last in the relationship after all that goes away.

JJ West: At the time, I thought it was never going to go away. I thought we would always be in love the way we were then. I had to shift from the idea that if I’m attracted, we must be compatible. I thought if we were both into each other, it would last forever. But it doesn't.

That brings up the next myth: that love always feels exciting. People think if they have butterflies in their stomach and all these warm fuzzies, that must be love. But deeper love lasts through the trials, the disappointments, and the disagreements. Conflict and confrontation are not exciting. We sometimes mistake them as bad when they're actually an opportunity for intimacy.

Doug Barnes: We don’t talk about that. Nobody talks through middle school and high school about how to work through restoring relationships when people view things differently. Communication is always an opportunity for intimacy—not sex, but truly understanding each other.

JJ West: A third myth we fall into is thinking it's our job to fix or rescue a woman like a damsel in distress. We think we're going to ride in and save the day.

Doug Barnes: That goes back to the idea of rescuing the beauty, which is in every fairy tale we read. I was looking for the beauty and then for the evil in her life that I was going to conquer. I wanted to be that knight in shining armor. But it’s not real. It’s part of a fantasy.

There’s nothing wrong with offering strength in service to someone, but there is something wrong with thinking I can save or rescue someone else. Rescuing only leads to bitterness and resentment over the long haul because, ultimately, they didn't need rescuing by us. Sometimes it leads to bitterness, and then sometimes it leads to pride. Thinking the other person would be nowhere without you. That’s not love; it’s manipulation and control.

JJ West: When I do premarital counseling, I tell couples that a man or a woman can make a pretty decent spouse if they work really hard, but no matter how hard they work, they make a lousy savior. You cannot be the other person's savior.

Before we wrap up, I'm curious how we each met our spouses. How did those relationships cultivate?

Doug Barnes: My wife and I went to the same church. We were a few years apart, so we weren't on each other's radars. When I came back from college, I wanted to get back involved in church and try things God's way. We had a similar love of music. During a group performance, we happened to sit beside each other and just got to talking. I asked if she wanted to go talk outside.

That started more conversations. We had both led similar lives, walking away from God, our faith, our purity, and our integrity. We slowly began to get honest about that and share our lives. There was a moment where I dumped all my stuff because I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, but I needed her to know certain things first. There was a long silence, and I thought I had ruined it. But she said she needed me to hear some things, too, and she did the same thing. After that, we both knew we could do this. That started a year and a half of courtship.

JJ West: I love how there was that commitment to vulnerability so early on in the relationship.

Doug Barnes: Vulnerability was not on my radar. I just didn't want to ruin another person's life. I had done that for so long, and I wanted to give her an out if she chose to take it. Here we are, almost 34 years later.

JJ West: My wife and I were both serving on an inner-city summer mission trip in 1995. There was a rule that you weren't allowed to date on the project, which was a really good rule. We were assigned to the same team and worked together every single day. Because of the rule, the pressure was off. I wasn't trying to perform to get her to like me, and she wasn't doing the same.

We got to spend all this time together building a friendship. It was the first time I’d ever experienced that. This was a deep relationship of respect, but because there was no dating, we weren't trying to do that. Near the end of the project, I had to go away for a weekend. When I got home, there was a note that "Ann" had called. My wife’s legal name is Ann. It turned out it was a note for my roommate, not for me. But as I was hanging up the phone, I realized a part of me was really excited that she might have been checking in on me.

We didn't talk about dating until the project was over. After we went roller skating, she rode in the truck with me, and I gave a 20-minute preamble before finally saying I liked her. She said she liked me, too. We were able to build on an authentic friendship that started without the pressure of putting on masks.

We're just getting started. This is part one of two for "Finding What Matters." Scripture says a man who finds a wife finds a good thing. We’re trying to find what matters and what is important.

Who in your life could you either mentor or look to as a mentor? Just begin to contemplate that question. Second, are your values for a romantic relationship worldly or are they biblical? Are they worldly and confused, or are they based on what scripture teaches?

Finally, which of the three myths have you been believing? Attraction equals compatibility, love always needs to be exciting, or it’s your job to rescue someone. Where do you need to repent?

Be in prayer for the continued conversation. If you’ve never been to the Every Man’s Battle Intensive, we implore you to go. This is where you can actually build some of these kind of mentoring relationships in small groups. If you're a listener of the podcast, you can use the code EMBPOD for $100 off your registration. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, let's continue to walk in integrity.

Announcer: Thank you for listening. This podcast is one of many ways we can encourage and help you. If you’re looking for more help, visit us at newlife.com or call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. To receive bonus content exclusive to EMB Podcast email subscribers, send an email to embpodcast@newlife.com with the words "bonus content" in the subject line. If you have a comment about this podcast, we'd love to hear from you. Drop us a line at embpodcast@newlife.com. And please remember to review, like, and share the podcast as it helps others find us. See you next time.