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Manhood often feels like navigating through uncharted territory, but you don't have to walk alone. Join us as we guide a conversation about how to live intentionally so that we can join God in reclaiming the masculine restorative presence he designed us to live out. Laugh, cry, and wonder with us as we explore the ins and outs of manhood together.
Advent Part 4: The Food You Know Not Of
00:00
Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Restorative Man podcast by Restoration Project. I'm Jesse French and I'm excited to be joined by my co-host who is... Hey, this is Chris Brino. Hi Chris. It's good to be with you today. Yeah, you too. Well, I wanted to start this conversation off with a topic that you know well, unfortunately, because we've been friends for a long time. We've worked together for a long time. So you've like seen me in just, you know, the highs and the lows.
00:29
And in all your glory, Jesse. All of the glory and also all of the not glory. And so one of those spaces that you've experienced me in is the state of mind and state of body that happens when my caloric intake kind of reaches below a necessary level, you know, lots of people use the term hangry, which I love that word, right? When you start getting hungry and you're not fun to be around. But that happens for me. And the affectionate term that.
00:59
I used to describe that as I'm bunking. Like I need food and my ability to rally and have some sort of kind of like adult response to the situation at hand feels limited. So what that looks like is I get quite quiet and, you know, just kind of like shrink to the edge of the action and just get super, super quiet, which is all of the blaring red signals that says something is not right. Something is up. Yeah. And so you've seen this several times. And.
01:28
I'm sorry. And such is the joys of friendship and relationship. Right. And so for anybody who doesn't know Jesse French, Jesse's metabolism is like that of a, you're not 14 years old, but that of a 14 year old boy. I feel like you could eat like 16 pizzas and 10 hamburgers and still just like just churn churn churn churn. So it is a gift that many of us do not have. So.
01:58
There is that and it does lead you to bonking. That's true. So, and we have co-opted that word in so many other ways. We have, there's food bonking, there's heat bonking. That's what it's. It's your flavor of choice, right? That's I heat bonk a lot. I people bonk when there's too many people around or too many things going on. Yes. I noise bonk this weekend I was with.
02:24
my kids who are young adults and I was noise bonking in one of the places that we went, like I couldn't operate. So bonking has been affectionately co-opted into our vernacular on a regular basis. Glad that could be helpful. And I'm pretty sure Powerbar was the marketing people who came up with the phrase. So I co-opted it from them. So, okay. Well, I wanted to start with that random intro because hopefully the dots will connect. We are in the middle of an Advent series.
02:51
as we do find ourselves in the season, in the liturgical calendar of Advent and hearing just some continued thoughts from you around what it looks like to enter into this time with some curiosity and some anticipation of presence of Jesus in some ways. And today, I thought that we would start where we did with food and calories and bonking because our scripture is one from John where Jesus engages this concept of sustenance and
03:21
about the fitting on ramp for where we're headed today. Okay, yes. Well, thanks for that on ramp and intro, Jesse. Let me take us to John chapter four. I'm gonna read various portions of John chapter four, not the whole thing. Now, John chapter four is the most famous for the interchange that Jesus has with the woman at the well, the Samaritan woman. But I'm not going to focus on that conversation because there is another situation that arises in John chapter four.
03:51
that I think is really helpful. So I'm gonna start John 4 verse 1, and then skip around in the chapter to just a couple of places here because not all of it is relevant for the conversation. Now, when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples, he left Judea and departed again for Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar.
04:20
near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. And Jesus said to her, give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Pause there, and skip down to when his disciples come back. Verse 27.
04:50
Just then, his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, what do you seek or why are you talking with her? So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and were coming to him. Meanwhile, this is where I really want to camp. Meanwhile.
05:18
The disciples were urging him, saying, Rabbi, eat. Remember they went into town to get him something to eat. Rabbi, eat. But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about. So the disciples said to one another, has anyone brought him anything to eat? Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say there are four months then comes the harvest? Look, I tell you.
05:46
Lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest. I love this interchange that happens here between Jesus and the disciples. So first of all, okay, they go across the sea, they land, Jesus is tired, he sits down by the well. He's like, hey guys, go into town, get some takeout, bring it back, we'll eat lunch. Right. So all of the disciples leave and they go into town, leaving Jesus alone with this woman.
06:12
Okay, or Jesus alone at the well. And then this woman comes along and he has this conversation with the woman. Then the disciples come back after this, they come back, the woman goes in to town and they bring food and they're offering him, Hey, Jesus, you know, you should have some lunch. And his response is like, I'm not actually hungry because I have food. You don't know anything about, and the disciples are so, so confused. They're like, they're thinking totally just in the physical. They can't even imagine something spiritual.
06:42
They're thinking like, who brought him food? Is there somebody else? Like, you know, did you have leftovers? Like, were there leftovers in his pouch that he pulled those out? Or, you know, did an angel show up with loaves of bread and give him food? Like, what is actually going on here? And I love Jesus's response here. And that is basically like, my soul is being fed in a way that my body also can find sustenance. My soul is being fed by myself.
07:12
The fullness of who I am, the fullness of who God designed me to be, to accomplish His purposes, that is filling me more than just my stomach. That is filling me. Now, I don't know if you've ever heard somebody say like, how are you doing? Like I am full of the goodness of God. Like I am just filled to the brim of goodness. So does that mean that their stomach is no longer hungry? No. But it means that the goodness of God has filled them to a degree.
07:41
that their hunger, their physical hunger is no longer even on their mind. Oh, how confused the disciples are. I know. Right? Like talk about the disruption, obliteration of like concepts and paradigms here of like, what, what? Your soul, like you said, is being nourished that bleeds over to your body. Like this was not in the onboarding binder that you gave us when we, like, please expand more. Yeah.
08:09
And all they had was the focus on the physical. And Jesus, as he is talking with this woman, which is a whole other conversation that we could have about the actual interchange and the story behind the story that I think is actually going on with this woman and the goodness of again, meeting another daughter of God on the well there and how he treated her and how their exchange was one of love and compassion and not judgment or condemnation. That is a whole other conversation.
08:38
But I say that because that is the food he's talking about, the food of being and fulfilling his calling of who God designed him to be. And I hear in this, Jesse, I hear, especially as we're in this conversation about the restorative man, I hear that the more that we become that restorative man, the more we are filled in our purpose and presence and design, the more that we are filled and partnering with God
09:08
desires for the earth, then, then we focus on our hunger. And I just wonder like, what would happen in our world, in our lives and ourselves. If we started to focus more on, on what we have on how we have been filled and less on our lack and less on our hunger and our desperation to be fed, what would happen if we changed, like switched that over to be thinking more about what we have versus what we don't. Yeah.
09:38
Yeah. And how God has fed us versus how we still need to be fed. I know you have more thoughts, but I'm going to interrupt you for just a second. Give some more unpack a little bit around this idea of being filled in our greater sense, right? Than just like the physical sustenance from food. But like you said, we do hear people use that language of, Hey, I feel really full. Maybe just give some more thinking around as we would reflect around our days and our weeks around what that could look like. Yeah.
10:07
Just to put some more, no pun intended, but keep in the bone, right? One of the ways that I often refer to this passage and this concept is in the realm of fathering. And so many of us, men and women both, but especially in this realm of talking with men, there's this whole concept of father-hungry, where we are hungry for our father. That there's something inside of us that longs for him, for his words, for his presence, for his face.
10:37
for His blessing that we are constantly hungry for Him and for that to be coming from Him. And there are so many of us that have a significant lack in that hunger being fed, where He's not offering those things. He's not offering His face. He's not offering His presence, or He didn't and hasn't, right? And so we live in this space of perpetual hunger for our Father. The reality is that when we do more of this work and we step into the spaces,
11:06
that Restoration Project is calling us into in the context of brotherhood, the context of actual connected masculine friendships and relationships, that it is in that space that some of that father hunger can be fed by men who are not my father, that I can be fathered by other men, that I can be fathered by God through other men, and that some of that father hunger can be fed.
11:36
Because I will even say like there is a reason that you have fathered hunger. And there is fathering that your father knows nothing about. That God, the father is fathering you in other ways and filling you, filling your hunger, meeting your needs potentially through other places and other ways that the natural inclination or that needs to come from my dad.
12:05
Right? We don't assume that we don't have an understanding that can come from somewhere else. That, and even for me is I engage with my father, right? I have fathering that he knows nothing about and that's relieving. And that's actually what I mean by like focusing on like, what do I have versus what don't. How am I being filled by God in ways that rather than how am I not? Yeah. It's helpful.
12:33
And it's a blessing to begin to think like that. It's a encouraging thought. I have to go like, what, how is he meeting my needs in ways that the natural I would not see. Which then, right, invites hopefully a greater leaning into this place of sonship, right? I was like, Hey, God the father is providing for my needs in these wonderful, surprising different avenues. Like.
13:00
I can rest in the place of his son, right? Like, yeah, it feels helpful there. Yes, and it's so like, how do I wanna put this? It's surprising, and it's also like so good. Like here he is doing the work of God, living into who he is, meeting this woman in all the ways and all the gentleness and kindness and generosity of who he is, and you would think that he's giving out. You would think that there's some- Yeah.
13:30
cost that who Jesus is in that moment is feeding someone else. But the beautiful part of this interchange is that he's actually getting fed as well. Yeah. Yeah. The reciprocity of that space and of that word. It's beautiful and wonderful. And so I love this passage because I often wonder like what food might God actually have for you that others may know nothing about. Right.
13:58
Like what might happen if you were to slow yourself down and sit by the proverbial well and kind of just allow for the feeding of God to meet you in the midst of your rest? Rather than this constant like movement action, go, I got to feed myself, feed myself, feed myself. What actually might happen if you slowed yourself down long enough to sit by the well and rest? What food might show up for you to eat? Another way to put that is...
14:26
What food are you missing from God because you're in such a hurry to get to that. Yeah. Which then again, like once again, it feels fitting for this time of Advent, right? This the Messiah coming, right? Just tremendous, wonderful, huge gift, right? I'm sitting in this form that's like, what? Excuse me? It's this baby boy, right? That is incredibly vulnerable. All of the different forms, right? The stable, like the vehicle of the delivery of that good news, right? Incredibly.
14:56
surprising and unexpected. Yeah. How the father came through a boy. Shocking. Yeah. I also just love in this passage, Jesse, I also just love the absolute humanity of the disciples. They're like, I like that you love that. Well, I love it. I love it for so many reasons. One of them is because like I'm a human.
15:24
And when I start to have reactions like that or whatever, like when I don't get it spiritually, then it's like, Oh, they didn't either. And that's okay. There's something, there's something really human about that. I would have shown up and I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? Right? If there's, what are you talking about? There's what food are you eating? We just spent all our money on food in the village and that was a long walk. And now you don't want it. Like what? Yeah. Why are we here? Yeah. As you think about.
15:54
people who might be listening to this conversation right now in the midst of the December month and hearing some of this curiosity around this unexpected goodness and provision, like what questions might you invite us to consider as we think about, think about where we are here today. Yeah. Well, you know, I mentioned one already, like what might it look like when you slow your life down enough, what kind of food is available for you in that space?
16:20
And I think this Advent season is a great time to ask that question and slow down, even though the craziness of all the kids programs and church programs and all that is ramping up. Like, this is what I'm saying. Like what happens when we slow down to find the food instead of hurry up to try to find more food. So that would be one. I think another would be what has it meant for you to actually recognize the fullness of goodness within you, goodness other than food, right?
16:50
have food at Thanksgiving and Christmas and all the holiday things and all that, you're gonna eat plenty, I'm sure. And what is it like to actually sit around those dinner tables and sit around that Christmas tree, sit around in those family gatherings and just be quiet and eat the food of goodness that is there? What food is actually there? And maybe especially emanating from within you outwards, just like it was when Jesus was
17:18
being with this woman, it was food he was giving her, but he was then also fed. Like is there that reciprocity of food available for you in that space as well? And I just wanna invite us to like, have a little meta thinking. Step out of your body in the living room for a moment and just look at what's happening. Look at what is available. Look at the food that might be there. And it might not be the best of moments, right? If you're in any kind of extended family gathering,
17:48
likelihood is that it's gonna be screwed up in some way. Yeah. So even then, where can you kind of zoom out and wonder where is the food? Because the reality is that God is constantly looking to feed your soul, even in the midst of these crazy situations. So the fact that you're in a extended family situation that you might not wanna be in, is the food that you have a home to go home to. Yeah.
18:16
Is the food that you get to see the smile on your son's face? Like where is the. Chris, thank you again. Good to be with you, Jesse. Yeah. Thanks for your thoughts.