Introduction to The Daily Blade

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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 .

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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 .

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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 this 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 ? But then , if you're honest , you're kind of walking in the very same patterns . Well , what I want to do this week is I want to encourage your soul . I want to level set what it means to be a man . I'm not trying to answer the question what does it mean to be male ? I think that's simple . A male has XY chromosome and a penis , but just because he's male doesn't make him a man . There are certain things that God puts on us , the scriptures put on us . That helps us kind of measure . Am I playing the man or am I just a boy who can shave ? And so that's my hope this week , to just encourage you .

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In Genesis 2 , starting in verse 7 , it says this then the Lord , god , took the man , or formed the man , out of the dust , from the ground and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils and the man became a living being , the Lord . God planted a garden in Eden and in the east . There he placed the man he had formed . Now this is significant because God biologically made men unique and different than women .

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Because of testosterone , men are typically larger and stronger and faster than women . In general , we're more physical , more competitive , more risk-taking . Now , that's not always true Like my wife is scarily competitive but by and large , men tend to be more physical and competitive , more risk-taking . Men have thicker skin about 25% thicker skin than women . They also have higher densities of the protein collagen . Our skin is literally thicker . The difference in density actually goes beyond skin . We also have stronger bones , stronger tendons and stronger ligaments than women . On average , men typically have far more muscle mass than women and those skeletal muscles are faster and more powerful . Now it's interesting that women's muscles they actually resist fatigue and recover faster , but they're not as strong or as pliable as ours are .

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Then there are differences in the way our brains are structured , how we process information and interact with chemical signals . So let me give you a couple of examples there . Men have more information containing gray matter , but women have more white matter , which connects to different parts of the brain . Like women , also have bigger memory centers than men , and maybe that helps make sense of some of the arguments you get in with your wife . And then , lastly , men are less sensitive to cold temperatures . Now I'm starting this week out just by highlighting the unique strength that God put in you as a man in creation . This is not how he put women together . We'll get into that later . He gave us a unique strength , and so the question we have to answer is why did God give us this unique strength ? Why is our skin thicker ? Why do our brains process different ? Why are we more aggressive ? And so we'll be back next week or tomorrow to answer that question . The question's easily answered in the book of Genesis , so we'll see you tomorrow morning .

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Thank you for listening to today's episode Before you go . If you want to help equip other men for the fight , share this podcast around and leave us a five-star rating and review . Stay sharp .