Podcast Episode 44. Ground Zero with Jim Cress

Transcript

Season 4 Episode 8: Ground Zero with Jim Cress

Craig Robertson: Welcome to season four of the Robertson and Easterling podcast. This is Craig Robertson.

Matt Easterling: And I’m Matt Easterling. We want to thank everyone who has listened to our podcast so far. If you haven’t already subscribed, please do so on iTunes, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Craig and I are having lots of fun producing this show and we hope that you’re enjoying it as much as we are. It’s really hard to believe we are already on season four.

Craig Robertson: That’s right, Matt, we’ve really enjoyed sharing the life stories of some great people. And we have even more in store for you for season four. As you know, by now we are board certified family law specialists with one of the most successful boutique law firms in Mississippi as creative problem solvers, we take a holistic approach to the individual needs of our clients.

Matt Easterling: Joining us again this season are licensed professional counselors, Eva and Roane Hunter from LifeWorks counseling. We’re excited to continue our partnership with Eva and Roane. They provide a unique perspective as we help hurt. [00:01:00] People with the healing process.

Craig Robertson: We’re also excited to introduce two new sponsors for season four, Christie Tidwell and Kelly Engelman. Christie is a certified financial planner and the founder of new path planning Christie’s own wall through divorce. Coupled with 20 years of experience, make her a perfect advocate for others on a similar path. And Kelly is the founder of enhanced wellness living. Mississippi’s leading functional medicine clinic. Her team’s food first approached to healing along with a variety of lifestyle and regenerative treatment options sets you on a journey. Control of your health and live life well.

Matt Easterling: So now that we’ve told you what to expect this season, sit back, relax, take a deep breath. Everything’s going to be okay. You found us. And what you’re about to hear is going to help.

Eva Hunter: Hey, this is Eva Hunter from Lifework counseling at LifeWorks. Our counselors seek to integrate healthy faith-based principles with sound clinical skills. Whether you’re struggling in a relationship or have feelings that hinder your ability to be all you are created to be one of our trained counselors can help. We seek to partner with you as our client to find the freedom to live the life God intended for you. We offer our experience strength and hope to promote healthy relationships built on intimacy and trust. Life works, counseling the science and soul of connection.

Christy Tidwell: Divorce is the largest financial transaction in most people’s lives. Unfortunately, the decisions surrounding divorce are having to be made when emotions are highest making choices about assets can feel intimidating, especially when you’re not in the best frame of mind. Make sure you know, how, what you do today will affect your financial future. My name is Christy Tidwell and I’m with new path planning. I’ll use my 20 years of financial planning experience to help educate and advise you during every stage of the divorce process, visit new path planning for more information.

Craig Robertson: Hey, welcome back everybody to the Robertson and Easterling podcast. I’m so glad that you joined us today. We’ve got a great show for you. And first of course, I need to introduce my partner in crime, the white hat to my black hat. That’s my friend Christian counselor, Roane Hunter.

Roane Hunter: Thanks, bro. It is always good to just be riding shotgun with you in the good seat, as opposed to the dark seat.

Craig Robertson: I am Darth Vader to your Luke Skywalker, but that’s okay. I’m comfortable in my role there. Roane, tell our listeners about who will be talking to today.

Roane Hunter: Man. I am so excited just to have as our guest today. My good brother, my friend, mentor guy, I love dearly. Jim Cress is with us today and Jim’s going to talk about just the work that he does. He’s a licensed professional counselor, sex therapist, and we actually do work together in our couples’ intensives. And Jim was gracious enough to write the forward to our book, Sex God, and the Chaos of Betrayal – The Couple’s Roadmap of Hope and Healing: Recovery from Infidelity, Affairs, Pornography and Sexual Addiction. I think Jim’s forward may be the best part of the whole book.

Craig Robertson: Well, either that or the cover Sex, God and Chaos. I mean, you could sell books just with the word sex on the yellow cover. So, Jim, man, thanks for being with us today.

Jim Cress: Craig, good to be with you and Roane, love you guys. I get to come down to your neck of the woods from Charlotte, North Carolina, it’s been about once or twice a year for a number of years and love hanging out with you guys. Great to be here on the podcast. If you’re Darth Vader and he is, Luke Skywalker, can I be Yoda?

Craig Robertson: Yes!

Roane Hunter: You are!

Craig Robertson: You are.

Roane Hunter: No doubt.

Craig Robertson: Absolutely.

Jim Cress: I just, I mean, I just got to pick a role here. Just we’re all playing roles here. I’ll do the Yoda role.

Roane Hunter: I don’t know, Jim. You might be a Wookie

Jim Cress: And a few other things. Yeah.

Craig Robertson: Jim, we’re a story driven podcast and believe it or not, our jobs are not that dissimilar. Roane and I talk about this frequently. I meet with people in transition in life, just like you and Roane do. And I don’t think that we can talk about the work you do without talking about your foundation and your story. So, give our listeners a little bit about your background and tell us your story.

Jim Cress: So, I grew up in Southern Ohio in a rural community and fifth of six kids, mom and dad, more dad than mom wanted two kids. What’s that mean in your story when you were number five? So, dad grew up for part of his life in an orphanage than adopted by an older couple. Only child there. Mom was the baby of eight kids in a coal mining town in Virginia. And so, she was the baby of her family and in my story, I say, she became really the baby of our family, kind of a victim martyr at some level. And she got some things right too. I call this naming, not blaming. Just tell ’em a story, but mom didn’t want six kids. Dad did. He created the tribe, the family never. Nonetheless we all have the right to be chosen as a kid. Like, I want to choose you. And so always encourage people I work with. What was the mill you were born into the environment where you wanted, you know, a hole in the condom or something? The jokes are made and it’s like, okay, but were you really chosen? So, fifth of six kids chosen more by dad probably than mom. My brother had 15 years older than me, my older brother. And then a sister five years after that. And he was just out of gas when he got to, 15 years later, to me and my three sisters in the middle older brother. And then to me and my younger brother, and he was out of gas in classic story of, you know, not throwing a ball with me or not doing anything. Involved at times, you know, if I got out of line. It wasn’t that much, but whipping me with a belt, you know, and then high level of rigid religiosity, which is a great foundation for a porn problem, porn addiction, whatever you want to call it later. So, in our independent Baptist faith, I never am pejorative about people’s denomination because I was born into even a religious story. She had all these externals and we focused on the externals. Men don’t do this. Women don’t do that. And living that external whitewashed life, but not much on the internal life. I had to young, figure things out on my own. At age four, I was sexually abused by some older boys, as they coached me into an event. And I thought, well, this must be what you do, you know, to be accepted. That’s going to awaken something in a four-year-old. And then about age 11 or 12, an older boy said, “Have you looked at porn?” No. “You ought to look at porn,” talked about masturbation. “This is how you do it. You could do this.” I was like, okay, it sounds interesting. I heard guys seriously I said, think guys either go blind or get zits if they do this that’s. So, I told him, so what I had always heard and I said, you know, Christian home. He said, but your mom has those catalogs, what I call poor man’s pornography. So, there was a Sears catalog, you know, to get 1, 2, 3, 4 a year. And that became my really my early even addiction to that in living a I was what we called on fire for God. I love Jesus memorized all the scripture, my independent Baptist faith, but then had this secret life that I never felt like I was sinister at hiding it. I just would feel grieved over it, but I began to grow with the secret life of really a pornography addiction. At age 16, moved out from home of doing my sister to be on my own. It’s kind of like, I just thought I got to get out of this small rural town. I was on my own, hated my parents. I kept looking for an external solution to an internal problem.

So, I went off to an independent, fundamental Baptist college in Tennessee and I thought if I could, , I was a music major singer, quietly leader, you know, if I could meet the piano player and I did who I’ve been married to for 37 years now, and I thought that would do it. And then if I could get married there and if I could have sex, that would be live Playboy channel, I can have sex and that’ll cure the problem. And it did. It solved all my sexual problems of lust and all that by getting married for about three months. Yeah. And the first time she literally said no to sex, I was back taping squiggly lying cable. Do y’all even know what that is? I mean, the cable beat.

Roane Hunter: I’ve had people tell me about that, Jim. I don’t know anything about it. It might be while I have neck trouble today. Because you got to move your head.

Jim Cress: Yeah, and the audio track would come in and I’m a 35-year Christian radio broadcaster, right. That was the analog age where the digital age, but back then scenes would come in and you could snack as I call it on porn and to jump just ahead. Um, my wife and I got with a therapist in Dallas, Texas for eight years. We worked with, and, and there were some things there that were not even addressed that I had to address later. And then, I got with a man named Larry ___ in heaven. Now he really got me into recovery by saying, I know part of you wants to act out to porn was that what’s deepest to you.

But I said, no, what, what I really want is I want to be that man of integrity. I don’t want to do that. And then did a lot of my own work and have been sober for 16 years from pornography and masturbation. Yeah. And God’s really enrolled even to a lot of this really redeemed our story and my life verse and my ministry verse for my business.

My PLLCs called Integrity Redeemed from Psalm 26:11 David said, “but as for me, I will walk. I will not sit and think I will walk in my integrity, redeem me and be gracious to me”, and Jessica and I get to see if she’s getting her coaching certification and that’s my story.

Roane Hunter: Yeah, Jessica’s just, yeah, certainly much better therapist than Jim is actually

Jim Cress: there’s no surprise about that. That’s not breaking news,

Craig Robertson: Jim, you said the word integrity. Break that down a little bit more. You mentioned the life first upon which that’s based but talk about that. Being a man of integrity.

Jim Cress: Yeah, Craig, what I do with that is, and what I, if you people can look at the entomology of the word, just Google it is. I see integrity as wholeness, Dr. Brene Brown’s written a lot, a lot about. Wholeheartedness and being wholeheartedness have living in a wholehearted way. So, for me, when I see the word integrity, I want everything to line up, congruency, my outside matches by inside. I don’t want to be the man behind the curtain in the wizard of Oz or Jekel and Hyde. So, integrity is going back to the Imago deo in Genesis, the image of God that it is a level of being as close as I can redeemed and restored to who God originally made me to be and he has the design for me. So, it’s my wholeness redeemed Genesis 50:20, right. What someone meant for harm. And those boys I think, didn’t mean to harm me sexually. What someone meant for harm, God meant for good. One act in the Hebrew, you mean to harm me, but God means it for good. So that part is integrity is lining up in wholeness, emotionally, spiritually, relationally, sexually, physically, all of that lining up, not perfection, but as close as I can get in wholeness becoming whole

Craig Robertson: Jim, you were telling us that even today that you’re doing a marriage intensive and obviously I am, I am in the, the business of when marriages go badly. And not everybody that comes into my office and sits with me, ends up divorced. Many find the path to restoration of their marriage, but I’m very interested and I think our listener would be interested in what takes place in a marriage intensive.

Jim Cress: Yeah. Well, there’s two versions of it. At least one, when I have the privilege of going down to work with Roane and Eva and we have a couples intensive and we’ll have three days of people, I like to say in their life story.And I certainly do that here individually with a couple, you collect the dots, that’s getting their life story out. They try to do marriage and I don’t even know your life. Now, if I know the facts, I don’t know the impact, always going to do fact and impact fact this happened impact what did it do to me? So, with couples, we’re going to do that in front of other couples, which has a wonderful to benefit individually. What I do here with a couple in my office in Charlotte is we’re going to do a thing called a trauma egg. It’s a real step. All it is, is your life story. In pictures, you make a little movie collect the dots that would connect the dots. And I worked to correct the dots and say, well, everybody in their lives, when you married someone, you landed your life story on the runway, built by your spouse’s life story. And so that piece is to come going down to ground zero, the casting crown song broken together. I played all my intensives. We just need to go to ground zero. Literally. I have a hard hat back here with a red American flag on where I went to ground zero, right after the towers came down with a small group of therapists and I point to, we’ve got to go here. and say, what, what really happened? I’ve never done one yet ever, never done an intensive yet ever with a couple that they did not learn a fact from their childhood and go, I didn’t know that people are usually down on what they’re not up on.

Why are you reacting that way now? I know better. And if they did know the facts, they hardly ever know the impact. What did that do to a seven-year-old boy? A 13-year-old girl? Yeah. I don’t know. We need to explore that. So, we go in, we take it down to ground zero. See, who really entered that marriage rose. You know, we do that in your workshops. We have him walk a trauma timer with three by five card, just spread on the floor and say, this was who got married that day. Not who you thought. Imagine the PowerPoint, Craig and Roane up there and standing up in front of her when you’re marrying someone, this is who’s really standing here that day.

Craig Robertson: And it’s so impactful you using the analogy of ground zero because my recollection of ground zero was broken concrete and tangled metal

Roane Hunter: devastation,

Craig Robertson: just a mess.

Roane Hunter: Yeah.

Craig Robertson: And so, in a lot of ways that analogy works for folks who find themselves 10 years into a marriage, 15 years into a marriage, 30 years into a marriage. So, talk about how you put it back together

Jim Cress: Well into your work that you do so brilliantly. And so does Roane and what he does. So brilliantly period, here’s the deal. I work with all kinds of lawyers, and I have to mainly run divorce and they’re like, is there a marriage here to be saved? I do a thing with cards on the table. I put three by five cards that put out on a table. I call the MRI stands for where the marriage really is an assessment. So, we’re doing that is, and lawyers often do that too. So, we’re there in ground zero when I went there, I mean, the biggest thing I remembered was the smell I had watched CNN and all the news, and I couldn’t smell it on TV. Everything was burned, so I have to go and go to ground zero and they did. They’re at ground zero. Right. They said, you know, we’re going to do search and rescue. What can be, what can be saved from this? Secondly, do we rebuild, or do we make this as a massive cemetery? Then they had the two, I took my sons up five years later, two gray holes in the ground and they said, we don’t know we’re going to do anything with this or not. Then they said, you know what, we’re going to make a Memorial watch over her, 2016 went to the top of this. We’ll build one freedom tower, but it took time to get there to say, is there, I never assume a marriage can be rebuilt. I hope it can, but the assessment of going some people they’re just, I’ve seen women run as too said, I just found that one time looking at porn, I’m divorcing him. Some women have said there’s been 12 affairs and I’ll stay with him. Everybody’s different assessment is key.

Roane Hunter: You know, Jim, we had a guy on our podcast one of the episodes and he had gone to onsite. And one of the things that he talked about was the power of the group work, right? And how he was able to see through the work being done by the other people in his cohort of like the awareness that came and certainly we talk about that in our couple’s intensives, where so many couples when you’re sitting there watching these others do their work, boy, the awareness that comes just by observing other people, talk about, do the assessment, go back and understand in the collecting and connecting dots process. That’s such a powerful piece, I think, in the work that you do and the work we do together.

Craig Robertson: Welcome back everybody to the Robertson and Easterling podcast. We are here with marriage therapist, rockstar, Yoda, Jim Cress, man, Jim, you have been talking about the MRI, finding out what the marriage really is and how the analogy that you’re painting with regard to ground zero and anybody who’s old enough to remember that morning when the planes hit the tower and then the scenes that unfolded over the days and weeks that followed. And you talked about not only the pictures, because we could see the pictures on TV, but when you stood there, the smell, the burning smell. You use that to talk about the assessment that takes place regarding marriages in crisis.

Jim Cress: Yeah, because if, if you know the journey of a thousand miles begins with the red offices, you are here, we all know that from the road map or we see it in the mall, or we certainly have it on our GPS and our phones and we’re diving into stuff like, well, where are we?

And then where have we been. The history, the Bible of the whole Testament, all this history, looking back at, even Nehemiah, right when he says, I want to go back to the city of my father’s grave. When you talk about rebuilding the walls, I use Nehemiah every morning in my sessions of my intensives. And so that idea is like, where have we been? Who is really sitting here in this room? Cause this data is, you know, people are data with a soul that’s who they are, but data is there, this is a human and what’s their story.

Craig Robertson: Jim, when you were telling us your story, you talked about your family of origin and your dad and I lost my dad gosh, many years ago now. And I, this time of year, I’m always reflecting on, on his life and what he meant to me. Talk about the modern man and the role the father plays in his life and how he carries that into these marital dynamics that we’ve been talking about.

Jim Cress: Well, I think so many, and Roane and I’ve seen this so often as Craig, I think you have so many men are carrying, women too, but are really carrying a father wound. And if it’s true that maybe we view God as a heavily version of our earthly father, We’ll kind of transfer that stuff up and, and that’s why a lot of people, I think will have a struggle with God. Paul Young in the shack talks about anecdotally, not necessarily in the book, but as I’ve been with him in conversation of having to just unmask and unmask and unmask and mini mask that he put on God before he could even see God. So that’s a very important point of I’ve done, you know, a simple thing anybody can do put an empty chair out in front of. And say, all right, I want you to get three by five cards and anything you want to say, write all the attributes of your dad. Doesn’t matter. Just whatever you want to put down there. Put another chair down and say, this is God’s chair for a moment. Let’s put all those three by five cards, like tape them over on God’s chair. Maybe that’s how you view and then to kind of say, who is God to you? Especially if he’s God, the father, and start to take the three by five cards away and say, you know, I guess I’ve kind of transferred or projected my dad’s stuff over there and dad abandoned me, or dad abused me, or I could never measure up. I have to hustle for my worthiness with dad and, and that’s just a simple experiential exercise that most people will gravitate toward and go, wow, that’s this is how I’ve labeled God. And plus, I tell people, you know, Roane and Craig that G O D, God, doesn’t stand for God on demand. I want what I want. Now give it to me and God doesn’t apply the way I want. So, I look through the lens of a father and naming, not blaming when I hear a parent bash. And say, what would happen if God was a, a mirror of your heavenly father, and that can be a starting place for guys to get into their story. And then just to look at learning, remember CS Lewis, we’re far too easily satisfied. what did you long for, from your dad? Why even go there? Dad was never going to do it. What did you long for? Some people there are boys out there. There are men today that their dad died when they were young. Some people like my, my dad was there up till he was 75. So, there was no external abandonment by divorce or death, but my dad was as unavailable and maybe worse than the guy whose dad died when he was young cause I could see him. He was there, no involvement. I mean I’m like, but what, what is this relationship, always want to explore that father hunger? And I’ve said a lot of guys and we both know this all three of us do I say to guys heal the boy and the man will appear. Cause you’ve got a little boy down. As Paul said in the love chapter, you want to love? I put away child stance. That’s a big part of my work with guys.

Craig Robertson: Jim, talk about that. You use lots of great words, father wound, father hunger, God on demand, parent bash first, starting with this idea of father hunger. Give some descriptive terms around that.

Jim Cress: Well, God has said eternity in our hearts. He has said a longing for him in our hearts that we cry out uniquely to father. We want to have someone and Jesus, of course, is talking with those people and they say, ah, don’t call me father. We only have one father. So, the best our dad could do super dad, dad was the greatest or the worst our dad could do either way.

Nobody’s going to get it enough to fill that father hunger, that weight I find out my hunger is really for the heavenly father. And so, some people say, you know, they come in and I don’t know if you feel this wrong, but I say I had no trauma story. Dad was the best and all that. And I’m going, you know, if dad didn’t bankrupt you a little bit, I don’t know why you’d ever need to give heaven any thought. So, I think that’s that father hunger at various levels to go, but it’s all calling and echoing too. My desire to be with my heavenly father,

Craig Robertson: But the father wound, because the dad’s, they never, they never seem to measure up and is that what you mean when you say father wound talk to our people who maybe aren’t in the counseling world and I mean, I know what the word wound means, and I know what the word father means, of course, but, but put that together in a way that our listener can resonate.

Jim Cress: Well, I’ll get real, real practical about it. One time in Colorado were sitting with three kids, little family meeting. My oldest son teenage at the time just went out like Yoda, like Zoro and began to point out. And here’s what I see about you, mom and dad, where mommy and daddy, where you fell here, fell here. We used to take them to counseling. They would sit in the next room for eight years and we didn’t hide that. And I thought, oh boy, he’s got us. yep. I was a kind of a father wound because I failed my kids miserably, especially when you’re an active sex addict. My wife leaned forward. Roane met her and she and exactly right son, you are bumping into your parents’ brokenness. You know, my son, he just totally collapsed. Lean back in the chair. He had nothing to say, father wound to say, oh yeah, son, I have failed you. I have failed you even because I am a picture of heavenly father. No surprise here. So, if you, if God would’ve written as the ultimate and first father had he written a parenting book and put it on Amazon with his first two kids who would read it, you’re going to write about parenting and the first grandson murdered. The second we’re off to a bad start. So even with that early on, Adam and eve felt like God, you are not enough. And that’s Jeremiah 2:13, by the way, life changing verse, God says all y’all down there. It’s okay. But you’ve all committed two sins, one you’ve forsaken me. The father you’ve forsaken me. The fountain of living water. You say, God, you’re not enough bad. Daddy says it. Second sin is you get a shovel and dig out a broken sister and looking for something to fill that father void that God void a broken sister that can hold no water. Oswald chamber said, you got to come to terms that sin is the suspicion that God is not good. So, there’s that deep and even deeper spiritual thing where I know you see it all the time. There’s a guy just being mad at God, and he won’t go admit it.

Roane Hunter: Yeah. I often say, you know, there’s all kind of dads in the world today. You know, there’s divorced dad and worker dad, provider dad, drunk dad, gone dad, but there’s just very few fathers and so much of our work and just our men’s coaching weekends. Our men’s Deer Camp. All those things we do is so much of it is centered around this idea of the father hunger and the father wound and helping guys figure out, as you say, Jim, even the best of dads are they are broken and at some point. The father has to turn the man over the boy over to the tribe. And that’s so much of what we work with is like helping guys understand those things that you did not get are available to you certainly through God, the father and Jesus with skin on those men in your life that will father mentor and guide you in the things that you did not get that you need.

Jim Cress: Let me say this really quick. And this is in a book where Dr. Michael… he wrote The Wonder of Boys and I got to have lunch with him and talk with him, powerful. His research shows, and I totally believe it, that men…now don’t, don’t touch that dial for a minute. Guys. Listen, men do not need therapy. Proven in all this research, crazy men need coaching and mentoring and… the best place often to get the coaching and mentoring is in therapy. But we are sitting on the couch, which, I mean, we kind of have to do that. We’re sitting, we got to be walking with our men clients and talking, not our hearts burden within us as we walked along the way with Jesus. So, men need coaching and mentoring. And then one of the greatest ways to do that is through the mill.

The pathway of therapy. That’s what we do with these guys. We need we’re re-fathering and Roane, we know that. We’re not hiding that at all.

Roane Hunter: A hundred percent.

Craig Robertson: I’m interested. You told the story about your son and how your wife wisely said that he was bumping into the brokenness of his parents. And you also used the phrase earlier in our conversation about that we’re not here to parent bash but talk about the way to go in and do that work around one’s father wound and some of the brokenness from their childhood and not carry forward resentment and bitter feelings about their dad.

Jim Cress: Well, let’s go to many places, but at least a couple times in scripture where it says Undoubtedly the sins of the fathers, I would think mothers do, but the sins of the fathers are visited on third and fourth generation. So, there’s crap. There is sin. There is behavior there’s addiction there is Unhealthy living that God didn’t hide, flows down generations. Okay. We now know in the trauma field Roane, and I range so much that we now have researched that the trauma is flowing down there, guys in their twenties who are Jewish. And I’ve worked with who absolutely mimic as though they have lived through the Holocaust, and they didn’t. So now we see science catching over the word of God that trauma is passed out on the cellular level. So, there are people, guy let’s say for a moment, they’ve never even looked back. Nehemiah says, as he’s going to the cave, he says, I confess the sin. My sins, the people, Israel sins, and listen, he says, I confess the sins of my father’s. Then he adds, we have acted very corruptly against you.He’s not blaming anybody. I call it naming, not blaming. So, I have guys come in and say, and you walk inside your story. All of it, what we tend to do is orphan off parts of our story. I’m not telling you that, no orphaning off parts of my story. You walk inside all your story and own all of it, or you’ll spend your life walking outside of your story and hustle for your worthiness. Maybe this’ll get dad’s approval or mom’s approval or somebody or my wife’s approval, whatever. So, I get start as you guys started this podcast with story work to say, I need to get in. And I need to get your story out soon on the table. I begin to listen to themes, think in categories. I hear the big echoes of a father wound there. I hear maybe some anger towards father. We’ve seen this a lot Roane. I see the same thing of a father. A guy’s got a lot of energy to tell you how good that is. He thinks that does protest too much. There’s a lot of energy. There I go. Hey, we’re not going to parent bash. You think I’m going to come? Because all therapists do it. You get in, they going to go after your mom and your daddy. I’m not doing that low hanging fruit. I’m going to say just to start with the story, I’ll honor your mom and dad. That’s what we’ll do. And then once they get the story out and they relax, they start putting and rolling, you talk about the baseball card thing at deer camp and all that. Once they start getting the story out, they’ll be putting data out left and right and they’re vulnerable and they’ll say, yeah so how did it feel fact impact when dad did do this or didn’t do that? Or he said that, or didn’t say that what did, what happened? And then in conclusion to this point, think of Jesus with his father at the baptism, every man. There is a boy inside every man, or you’ve never watched professional sports or never been in rush hour traffic in a metropolitan city. It’s another four-year-old there. Jesus, his father and God the father did something in public that every boy wants. He says, give us the template Biblically baptism. He says attention. Hello? Can you hear me? This is my boy. This is my son and I love him whom I love, and I am so proud of him and whom I am well pleased. And later, of course, in the gospels, he said, listen to my boy. He’s got something to say. Every boy, there’s the template. That’s what we, our sons want to hear from our dad. We don’t get it there. There are other men, Timothy and Paul. There are other father figures that come in and say, I will speak to that.

Craig Robertson: Wow. Jim,I feel like that I need to listen back to this three or four times. It’s been so rich and so informative and so, insightful. Jim, man, thanks for carving out time and your, and you’re really busy schedule. But before we go tell our listener, if they’re in marriage crisis and they want to connect to you and your ministry, how would they do that?

Jim Cress: Thank you, Craig. Just, if they go to an email, send an email to Jim@jimcress.com. I’ll get back about one of my three-day intensives I do for individual men, women and couples, and not all my work is in sex addiction and porn. Some days I like a break from that. To be honest, I like to have people come in. I do story work. Help people get in their stories and see God do healing.

Roane Hunter: Amen

Craig Robertson: Man, Jim, thanks again.

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