Hey fam, welcome back to another men’s minisode on the Heart of Dating podcast!!! This season is so FUN. We’re hearing from so many intelligent and wise men. We hope it’s blessing you as much as it’s blessing us! If you’d admit that you and emotions don’t get along great, this is an episode for you to grow and learn. This episode will make you a better man and if you get married one day, a better husband. 

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Jeff is a Seahaws fan, he’s married to Jayne for 31 years in March. They have 3 kids, 2 in college and the youngest is a junior in high school. 

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Gospel fluency is a lot about applying the Gospel to all areas of your life. A lot of times people will only apply the gospel to the forgiveness of their sins or life after death but it’s truly for your whole life. Jeff personally went through a whole journey of waking up to his emotional world, getting his heart back. His journey led him back to realizing that he had shut his emotions down at a very young age. He didn’t know how to attend to his needs. Therefore he wasn’t bringing the true Jeff to Jesus. He was bringing a Jeff that didn’t need as much. So feeling your way back to Jesus came about when he realized that the more aware of my needs the more I become aware of my need for Jesus. This looks like… if you don’t feel sadness you won’t mourn, if you don’t mourn you won’t realize you need a comfortor, so you’ll never know Jesus as your comfortor. You’ll only ever know Jesus as comforter if you feel sadness, mourn, and need comfort. He realized he wasn’t really going to Jesus because he didn’t need Jesus to be his healer, comforter, protector, all the things he is. So really he was going to Jesus to be his forgiver because he did feel guilt. Now he’s realizing, man I get to go to Jesus for everything, and he’s actually able to meet every need I have. We get to the gospel through our heart, but we do it by feeling our way to Jesus. 

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When you’re born the part of your brain that feels is 95% developed. Which is why when a baby is born it cries. It’s feeling all the emotions in that moment. It’s scared, lonely, hungry, all these experiences the baby is having and we see the evidence of that through crying. The only way a baby can make his or her needs known is through crying because they have no words yet. Their feelings get expressed through crying and parents who are attuned know which cry is which need. Then the parent effectively meets that need according to the cry. Overtime the baby develops a voice and the job of the parent is now to help the baby get words to each feeling and need. I’m sad, I need comfort. I’m scared, I need protection. As they get a voice now they get a voice to what they need, because they already know how to feel their needs. The idea of being fluent now, is now we know how to make our needs known and go to the one who can meet our needs, which is Jesus. 

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The downside is that most people were told not to have feelings. Yet they’re told you need to have thoughts and think and be rational here. BUT the problem is that for men, their rational part of their brain doesn’t get fully developed until about 25-28 years old and for women it’s 23-24. So we’re telling boys, “big boys don’t cry,” “sticks and stones may break my bones but words never hurt you.” You were told all these catchpharses essentially saying, “don’t you dare feel.” The problem is if I don’t get to feel and make my needs known through my feelings, I don’t have anything else to make them known through because my brain doesn’t fully work yet. So we have this zone from around 5 years old to 28 where I don’t know how to make my needs known. You have all these feelings given to you by God on purpose so you could be in relationship. Feelings and needs push us to relationship. So being told to shut all of that down is another way of saying, “go be by yourself and stay isolated.” 

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