SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey guys, Pastor Brian here, and uh have the privilege of sharing our time together with Pastor Daryl Sharp. And we're just gonna take you on a journey over a course of three episodes leading into Father's Day to try to help your heart start getting engaged in some really relevant topics to men and fathers ahead of Father's Day to make Father's Day a more meaningful experience and hopefully the rest of your life a more meaningful experience. If you need a little um context, this is episode one. We're gonna do three. Um, and there's gonna be an arc here that kind of follows uh three um episode arc that really unpacks fatherhood following some parameters by um John Eldridge in Fathered by God. Some of you have read that, and this is a deep talk about manhood. Uh, not not necessarily you being a father, yes, but what it means for you to be fathered by God. If you haven't read the book, I really encourage you to pick it up. It's a great value add. We're gonna be walking through some of that using it as a a framework. It's my privilege today to be sitting here with Pastor Darrell. Pastor Daryl's 84 years young. Um I'm 52, uh, so he's kind of like a spiritual father. It was a prisoner that I met and moved when he retired from ministry to the Dallas area. I quickly realized there was such a wealth of wisdom that I'm like, can you come out of retirement and join our team? And he did become a great friend and a father figure in our life. Uh, not when I say our my life, my boys' lives, my kids, my daughter, all of us, but also the staff. And everybody kind of uh sees Pastor Darrell as our Moses. So uh I'm really excited to share this with you. Uh obviously, you got roots in counseling, uh, being connected to a counseling ministry, pastoring. So I'd love your insight as I process some of this out loud, okay? Um let me just start with this, and then I want to get your insight on this because I've been trying to figure this out. Um, you know, Eldridge makes this premise in the book, I believe it's true, that you're not born into masculinity. It's something that has to be bestowed on you. Women can't bestow it on you, church can't bestow it on you. It has to be bestowed on you by other men. It's bestowed on you by God Himself. So, what it really means in a biblical definition to be a man, masculinity. Um, and because that didn't happen right for a lot of us, for me included, um, I think I was aware, no doubt, of uh what is known now as a father wound. I can tell you I have one, but I had no idea how much my adult life was being impacted by that, whether it be the trauma of sexual abuse of my childhood or the abandonment of my own biological father. Um I would have I would have thought I did really well uh, you know, navigating life with all of that. And then it was not until I was in my 40s that I actually started realizing, oh wow, I I am my adult life is being impacted by my fatherlessness, the way some challenges in my marriage, the way I interact with my kids, the way I feel inhibited of showing up in my kids' lives is being impacted by that. And I'm I'm curious if you have why is that? Like, why do you like why does it take us getting to our 40s and 50s until we actually acknowledge, yeah, my childhood trauma, my fatherlessness. That really did impact me. I don't know if it's I thought I was too tough, I was outrunning it. Maybe it caught up with me, but I would say it was impacting me then. I just didn't acknowledge it.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

Well, I think you're right, and I think for me it was very much the same thing. Um my father was in my life, but distant in my life. And uh another thing that you didn't mention that I just took, I think we uh often are shaped by culture. This is what the culture expects. He's a man, so he's gonna live like a man, and so we kind of live to the culture as well as these other influences in our life. And uh and and we uh for me, I think was reaching for some sense of success. So I had to get there and and rather than just uh living in a way that I'd I was not good at looking inward. In my era, that was not a big thing for me. It's become much more of a norm, much more accepted, and uh, I think it's helping us bring men to the realization of need and looking for ways to see how they've been impacted, going back and reviewing their lives, and now admitting there is something that's needed in my life.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

I think you said something that it doesn't matter what generation you come from, we're all striving for something. And the less involved our fathers were in our life, or they may have been present in our life, or actually there, they showed up but weren't emotionally engaged in a sense that was intentional about discipling and fathering and creating that sense of worth and security that we all needed, that our hearts were craving for. Because, like Eldred says, we have this father-shaped hole in our heart. And um that's where that father wound comes from, when our dads didn't or weren't there or didn't know how. But there's that striving, and the the more absent that father was, or the less that need was met, the more striving we're going to fall into. So we tell ourselves this lie if I achieve enough, if I perform enough, if I fix enough, I'll finally be a man. And which is an unhealthy way to live, but sadly that's the way most men live their lives, and we're doing, we're trying to earn what can only be bestowed. Um and other cultures have been so much better at this. Like when you study history, and I think we sit back and look at it, ancients, whether, I mean, I don't care if you go back as recent as Native American uh moving from boyhood into what it meant to be a warrior, uh, these boys were raised with the women of the tribe, and then at somewhere around 10, 11, 12 years old, they went into the wilderness with the other men. They went through these rites of passages, and that boy came back as a warrior in the tribe. It was a marked rite of passage. And you go to every culture in days past, there were structured rites of passages that brought a boy into manhood. We don't have those anymore. Um we have lost that rite of passage because we've not been intentional. We don't feel equipped uh as men today to take our sons through that. Thank God there are people that have written about it. I took some of those materials and walked through it trying to walk my own boys through what didn't happen in my life. But because of those things, the term Eldridge uses in other books and in this one is we are unfinished men. Like we have grown men's bodies, we have grown men's responsibilities, but there's so much in us that are still boys. We are boys in grown men's bodies. And that's why we're in the mess we're in in the world, politically, uh in every other way, in the church, because we have people perceive us as men, but we're stunned in our growth uh because nobody's ever shown us how to do it. And I think that's why these conversations are healthy. Somebody has to step into that role. And that's I think Eldridge is saying it can happen through other men, but ultimately God has to be the one to fill that role. Because even the greatest father in the world isn't sufficient because God is the father that fills that whole. And and I just want to say thank you, Pastor Darrell, because um, you know, I said in the beginning, I hinted you filled that role for me. A lot of men have come along. It's been a collection of men who have stepped in in one way or another and shown me, um uh have helped fill that, revealed God to me as a father in that role. And I just want to publicly say thank you for that.

SPEAKER_00 8:27

What a what a kindness and what an honor for you to say that. Uh I've had men uh over my decades step into that role. Sad to say, but most of them are not on this earth anymore. Sure. But they've left a mark on me and changed my perceptions of life, my perceptions of being a father and the perceptions of being a man of God.

SPEAKER_01 8:52

Yeah. And and I I would say, and just those of us that are older listening to this, recognizing, maybe thinking for the first time deeply about how much we are impacted by that father wound or that fatherlessness in our own life, need to realize the young men around us in our own families, they're dealing with the same things we dealt with. We've got to get whole and we don't have to get to the place of perfection, but figure out how are we gonna help not repeat that cycle. We can't we can't keep repeating that cycle. Um and and as we heal, we need to bring them along on the journey and speak life due for them. You know, uh one of the things I made some decisions that I would not be my father. My father was absent, so he was completely gone. He left when I was young and had very little contact with my life. We reconnected later in life and had a great relationship by the time he passed away, but he was absent in the formative years of my life, and I said, I will not be that guy. So I vowed to show up. Like I'm gonna be at everything, I'm gonna be there, and I was. My kids will tell you. There were times I was on business trips. I can remember one time I flew out of town, I was on a business trip. Haley texted me and said, Tomorrow at Gavin School is donuts with dads. And I was 10 hours away. And it was like I had just landed. Uh I went back to the counter, bought a ticket back to Dallas, flew all the way home. I got home at midnight, slipped back in bed, got up, took him to donuts, because I could I knew what it was to not have a dad at that stuff. So I went in, I took him to donuts with dads at school, and then went back to the airport, got on a plane, and flew back to where I was supposed to be. Um, so I did the stuff that my dad didn't do. I was there. But what I want to say to dads, and I don't know if you have any thoughts on this, but I I've learned, like, again, as I unpack this, I corrected a mistake, but but I wasn't being there wasn't enough. It was it was honorable because it's what I wanted, but I wish, now that they're grown, I would have known they didn't just need me there, they needed me emotionally available while I was there. Because that's the part of me that was stunted is my emotional intimacy, my emotional availability. Um, I've not known how in my life to open that part of me up because it was a survival mechanism because of the trauma and the wounds. I'm a survivor and I just kind of compartmentalized that. So by God, I'm gonna be there for you because my dad wasn't. But more than just being physically present, they needed me there, emotionally available. And I and I and I'm a grandpa now, trying to figure out what it looks like to be emotionally available? How do I open my chest and be intimate with my children uh because that's something I worked very hard my whole life not to be with anybody as a survival mechanism? I mean, I don't know. What are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Well, I identify because uh I think I've alluded already that my father was not emotionally available. I had a trauma in my life. I flew home to tell him that trauma he never responded to my sharing that deep hurt in my life. Uh so that was what I what I knew, what I lived with. And um thank God he put a lady in my life who would call me out. And it took years for me to begin to see that I needed some change, that I needed to become and I mean you're talking about Luis.

SPEAKER_01 12:43

Yes, your wife is now in heaven, yeah, but she you even said to me in another conversation that wasn't recorded that this deal that we don't realize how much we've been impacted by all that, but she called that out in you, right? You said that like she was saying, Daryl, you're you're still being impacted by those things back there, even when you didn't recognize it.

SPEAKER_00 13:02

Well, I heard more than once, you're just like your dad. And it was hard for me to hear because I love my dad. Yeah, you know, and I thought, and he was a godly man. I mean, uh he was known for his prayer life, and so you know, I'd hear him praying for me or whatever. But and so it was hard for me to hear that. Uh, but as I began to hear it, then I could begin to see myself and began to work at changing. And uh so it's still something I struggle with. And so I I uh I I don't know how to say that we can really bring the change in men earlier in life, but somewhere I think there needs to be something that God stirring us, God speaking us, God breaking us in some way that we sense the hole and we begin to work to fill the hole.

SPEAKER_01 13:58

Awareness is key, and then it has to start there. And I think that's part of maybe a problem that I want to call out. My dad wasn't there, your dad was, but he was not emotionally available, and because he was such a godly man, it was hard to criticize anything. And and and and what you're saying now, you're not criticizing just it wasn't he wasn't perfect. And there are dads out there, you bring your kids to church, you're better than average, but I don't want you to think that there's not room in your life to improve because there are things missing in your kids' lives if you assume I got it all together. You can't compare yourself to the fatherhood in our culture because the bar is so low. You have to figure out what is it like for me to be fathered by God? If I started becoming aware of my own brokenness and allowed God into that hole in my own heart and allowed God to father me, the ripple effect, the impact, because I'm I'm just I'm just now trying to figure out what how much different will it be from my life, my kids' lives, my wife, my grandkids, if I learn how to show up. I'm not just be there by God because my dad wasn't, but be there and have my chest open and be emotionally available and have deep, meaningful conversations in an intimate way where I don't clam up or shut down or just rush to a try to bite it off and and like end the conversation because it gets uncomfortable for me. I'm I'm trying to figure that out. And I'm just challenging the dads listening to us. Um you may be like, they may be like your dad, a godly man doing everything right by their own, but stop and ask the question. It what what could change in me to help me break this cycle so my kids don't wake up at 40 and 50 and realize their marriage has been negatively impacted, their relationship with their kids have been negatively impacted because of us, because we weren't self-aware enough. So the value of these kinds of conversations is being open to the possibility that I need to be fathered by God in a deeper way. Um you know, when Eldred says it takes somebody to father us, I uh completely different book, but uh I grew up in a poor uh context, and and the it's the framework for understanding poverty is a sociological book, and it says in there the only way somebody gets out of poverty and stays out is they have to have a mentor that actually shows them the way to break that cycle. Uh they're always going to be driven by a poverty mindset. I think the same thing is true in when on this journey of masculinity, there has to be other men, a group of men, a brotherhood, um, older fathers that are spiritual, maybe not biological, that show us the way. I referenced you, but uh there was a guy named Jack Pruitt uh when I moved, Jack, uh Pastor Jack was uh made his fortune in real estate, but he was also a uh uh a uh a public relations manager or communications director for some of the largest mega ministries in the U.S. back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and and uh he latched onto me one day at a conference I spoke at before I ever moved to Dallas, and and he uh he was very instrumental in me moving to Dallas. Well, when I got here, he's like, all right, we I'm not saying we need to get the piney woods out of you, but we got to figure out how to take this boy from the piney woods so he can pastor the suburbanites and and the and the business community of Dallas. So he asked me to go to dinner with him, and I did. Well, he set it up, I didn't know, walked across the restaurant, introduced me to Roger Straubach and his family, and and and he introduced me as Dr. Jarrett. And I'm like, Jack, we walked off, I'm like, I'm not a doctor yet, but you will be. And and and so we went to another table of these very wealthy business people, and and he said, Hey, this is Dr. Jarrett. Uh, he has just recently become a pastor in the Dallas area, and he is going to you just look, mark my words, in 20 years, it'll be one of the influential churches in America and a staple in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. And I we walk off from the tables like, again, Dak, I'm not a doctor, and I wouldn't say I pastor an influential church. He said, Brian, those hundreds are gonna turn into thousands. Mark my words. I said, I don't, I don't know that I believe that. He said, but I do, because I believe in you, and I believe, and so though that was early in my time in Dallas, and I just I kind of thought Jack had lost his mind. But in those conversations, he spoke blessings over my life. He would teach me into going into those meetings. We would sit in the car, he would say, All right, son, from the piney woods. When you walk in, don't use this fork. You start on the out, you and he literally taught me what fork to use, how to present myself. I mean, he's like, he would say, All right, don't wear that, wear this, and make sure your car is clean before you show up in the next meeting with me. And there would be people that would look at that and say, Jack was that like, I don't want to deal with that in my life. Jack, it's it's like missiology. Jack knew his tribe, and he knew I want to reach everybody.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 19:04

And he was like, if you want to reach my tribe, this is how you get in. And this is how you earn credibility. And he was trying to teach me how to show up things I didn't know. And it was, he, he, he was my mentor that broke poverty mentality off of me. He taught me how to engage with that demographic of people. He believed in me when I didn't believe in myself. I wish he was alive today to see what he said is true. I'm a doctor, the church runs thousands. Um, and and and he said it, he believed in me when I didn't believe in myself. And I look back on when Eldridge says, without those kind of people in our life, we'll never become all that God. And I'm like, I want to be that for somebody. You know, all these young pastors on our staff, I want to be for them what Jack was for me, you know. And I just, for the guys that are listening, um, be Jack for somebody.

SPEAKER_00 20:04

And let Jack be Jack in your life. Yes, open your heart for that. You've got to receive that. You've got to hear that. You can you can he placed vision in you. And he placed uh the contemporary way to be a part of what was happening, but he put a heart in you to expect, and and he began to fill that hole. He was a part of the filling of that hole that's going on in your life.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

And one of the greatest honors of my life was when the his family, his own children and wife, asked me to preach his funeral.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

And uh I don't know, it's just he made such an impact on my life and mentored me in so many ways, but he's just one of the many that God used to fill that that fatherlessness. We we have just a little time. A couple things I wanted to bring up here that relate to the beginning of being fathered by God. I'm often um uh accused of being a survivor, which is a great thing. I survived childhood sexual abuse, I've survived poverty, uh I mean survived so many things uh in my life, and and a survivor, I've wore that badge proudly. Matter of fact, one of the greatest compliments I've ever been given in my life, a very a very influential man, his wife, we were at a meeting one day, looked at me and said, Brian, we could throw you butt naked into New York City and three days later you'd come out in a money suit and an alligator skin briefcase. And uh I'm like, I I've never forgotten that. I'm like, I guess that's a good thing. Um, but that that was her way of saying I'm a survivor. But here's the problem if you're wired like me and you've had to survive, um the negative there is always a negative side of that. Because I am a survivor, I don't lean into the help around me. I'm a lone ranger, I don't know how to delegate that well because I don't trust. I grew up as a survivor, you don't trust. You just make in your own way, and it can make you very Lonely. And so for men who weren't fathered well like me, who had to become a survivor, and our culture celebrates that, I would challenge you to stop and look and say, how has it negatively affected me? Because I'm old enough now to realize it's not all been good. And it's negatively affected me. And my my I'm a loner. I'd rather do it myself when it could have been done ten times faster and ten times better if I'd have delegated and trusted a lot of other people. That's the problem with us survivors. We don't believe in team as much as we should because we don't trust. So I just wanted to, part of me being fathered by God right now is learning to take risk with people and let people in family, staff, kids. Um and uh that's kind of one of the areas I'm growing in right now.

unknown 22:52

Great.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

That's great. That's good insight, Pastor.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

Um, one of the questions here, just for reflection before we sign off, where do you feel like a boy waiting to be told you're a man? And um for me, it would be I'm I'm a man in every way. Uh, but you know, from the things I do, uh adventure-wise, like uh I run a ranch, I'm a pastor, I've earned doctory, like people that see me as a man, but there's a part of me emotionally that never grew up. Uh there's still an eight-year-old boy here that that I'm I'm having to learn everything is a man, but there's a there's an eight-year-old boy that was stunned in here, and when certain things happen, I don't act like a man. I emotionally act like an eight-year-old boy. And so we have to figure out how to allow that that that part of us to heal.

SPEAKER_00 23:46

For me, that would have been just becoming quiet, going inward, not talking, not connecting. That's where I was, that's what was expected of me. And uh I've been forced now and enjoy more having conversations that help me see me.

SPEAKER_01 24:05

And I think that's so good to hear because I have to do the same thing, is um Haley and I made a commitment last year. We are gonna get outside our bubble and we're gonna intentionally build relationships. We're gonna inconvenience ourselves and meet new people and build relationships because the older you get, the more internal you become. And I would challenge the guys listening to us now to take those steps. You need a brotherhood, and that's why we're gonna be doing this so many weeks. We're gonna invite other brothers into this conversation, pastors, elders from our church to carry us on. The next episode is about the six stages of manhood, and it's really incredible how Eldridge unpacks what it means to go from a boy through four more stages until you become a sage. I think you're a sage, Daryl. And I want to be a sage. But it's these six stages of manhood. They're incredible. Episode two is going to unpack that. We want to invite you guys back.