FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  

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Defining Manhood for Your Son

Guest:                         Byron Yawn             

From the series:       What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him 

Bob:  As a dad, how much time do you spend correcting your boys versus the time you spend affirming and encouraging them?  Here’s pastor and author Byron Yawn:

Byron:  I tell my sons all of the time – I observe these things in them – I’ll tell them, “Son, you’re so gifted in this area.”  I will dialog with them about it and I’ll help them see it.  It encourages them along.  In doing that, I’m helping him to have self-awareness:  where he’s deficient, where he’s good, where he needs to grow, where there are struggles in his soul that he’s going to deal with for the rest of his life, just to have an awareness of these things.

Bob:  This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, May 30th.  Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine.    Every son is longing to hear words of affirmation from his father.  Are you generous with that or stingy?  We’re going to talk more about it today.  

Welcome to FamilyLife Today.  Thank you for joining us.  If I were to scan your iPod – do you have any music on your iPod?

Dennis:  What’s it to you?

Bob:  I just want to know what you would have been listening to.  

Dennis:  It’s personal.  What?

Bob:  What might you have been listening to in recent days?  Here’s my real question . . . 

Dennis:  Andrew – Andrew Peterson.

Bob:  OK.  Alright.  That’s good.  You get a high five from me for that.

Dennis:  It might not be on my iPad, but it is – what’s it on?  

Bob:  It’s on a cassette!  Do you have a cassette?

Dennis:  No, no, it’s not on a cassette!

OK, if you want to do that - would you share with our listeners what you did; what you tweeted?  You want to tell them what you tweeted?

Bob:  What?  

Dennis:  If you want to play this game, you know what?  I know the Bible says not to give insult for insult, but this is just having some good times and fun.  We’ve got a pretty good crowd out in the outer area of our studio.  This is a good eye-witness.

Bob:  This actually involves our guest.  Did you know that?

Dennis:  Does it really?

Bob:  Yes, I was on my way to Nashville, and I was going to try to hook up with our guest who is a pastor in Nashville.  Can I introduce him?

Dennis:  You can.

Bob:  Byron Yawn joins us on FamilyLife Today.  Byron, welcome.

Byron:  Huge privilege to be here, guys!  Thank you.

Bob:  Byron is the pastor of Community Bible Church in Nashville.  He’s an author and a speaker.  I was trying to send a direct message to Byron.  I was trying to send him a direct message to say, “Hey, give me a call on my cell phone so we can figure out where we’re going to have lunch!”  (Laughter)

But it didn’t go as a direct message.  It went to the whole twittersphere.  It was my phone number.

Dennis:  He tweeted his cell phone number.

Bob:  Have we had enough of this?

Dennis:  We have, we have!

Byron Yawn has written a book called What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him.

Bob:  The reason I was asking you about your iPod was because he’s got a list in here of what he calls Man Laws, right?

Byron:  Man Laws, right.  You may never refer to clothing as an “outfit.”

Bob:  On you!  You can call your wife’s clothing an outfit, right?  Can’t you say, “That’s a nice outfit” for her?

Byron:  Technically, yes, but you could also use other terms if you just wanted to be safe.

You can’t ever say “outfit.”

If you have something on your shoe . . .

Bob:  On the heel.

Byron:  On the heel, and somebody says, “Hey, you’ve got something on your shoe back there,” you can’t do the pirouette thing and look back.  There’s no way to look masculine doing that.

Bob:  Where you look over your shoulder?

Byron:  No.  See, that’s just – it gives me the willies.

Bob:  That I even pretended like I was doing it.  (Laughter)

Byron:  You’ve got to pick your heel up in front of you.  (Bob demonstrates)

There you go, that’s how you do it!

Dennis:  The one before it was good, too:  “You must be able to locate at all times the duct tape in your house when asked.”

Bob:  You have to know exactly where it is and be able to lay your hands on it in about five seconds.

Dennis:  That’s a man-tool; that’s a man-tool.

Well, your book is about manhood and real identity of manhood.  If you were asked to really give us the essence of what true manhood is all about, what real masculinity is all about, how would you answer the question?

Byron:  The question really isn’t what is manhood as much as what does manhood look like when Christ is in it?  I think that one of the observations that I’ve made in my own life is that when I come across books on Biblical manhood or being a man, you know as a Christian – being a Christian father and Christian husband – that we point to all kinds of examples.  Some are biblical - Moses and otherwise, and some are historic, but rarely do I find a chapter on Jesus. 

I think, without a doubt, that Jesus is the definition of what it means to be a Christian man, a biblical man.

Bob:  Okay, but you know that there are women who are listening who are saying, “So is ...