Welcome to the Daily Blade. The Word of God is described as the sword of the spirit, the primary

spiritual weapon in the Christian's armor against the forces of evil. Your hosts are Joby Martin and

Kyle Thompson, and they stand ready to equip men for the fight. Let's sharpen up. Morning men. This is Pastor Matt Chandler from the village church in the Dallas-Fort Worth area,

and I'll be walking with you this week. In 2018, the American Psychological Association,

it released its first guidelines for counseling boys and young men. The APA denounced

what they called traditional masculine ideology as psychologically harmful. This is the birth of the

phrase toxic masculinity, and it's been injected into the bloodstream of the American imagination.

It's like a catch-all phrase for any kind of male aggression.

Now, I don't think anybody's claiming that there isn't something like toxic masculinity,

but the problem is this is kind of blanketedly laid across anything that would be

even biblically masculine. And so what ends up happening, brothers, is we can hear this message

so often, especially young men, they can hear it so often that they start to believe there's

something inherently defective in male character. And this is what the data is showing,

brothers. All the sociological data is showing that men feel discouraged, devalued, demoralized.

And I just want to kick off the week just asking, does any of that resonate with you? Like,

do you feel lonely like few people know and

or understand the pressure you are feeling and walking in during the season of your life?

Do you have a low level of frustration that's like always simmering beneath the surface?

Do you find that sometimes it boils over and you don't even understand why then you're filled with

regret and shame? Are you tired in your bones with the weight of the responsibility you shoulder

and then the pressure that goes along with that? Like you just feel like you just can't screw up

this whole thing. Are you fighting with everything in you to not maybe be like your dad?

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