Ken Tada on Men, Adventure and Loving Joni.

and so i was a daily listener to johnny and friends way back when i don't know i was probably 25 26 years old at that time and so was very familiar with her story well last year you came walking down the aisle here at the nrb and one of our good friends russ our station manager out in salt lake city grabbed hold of you and like he knew you forever and i don't know whether he did or didn't but he said hey ken i want to introduce you to my friend darren and you looked at my shirt that said masculine journey radio and you said masculine journey radio that's interesting let me tell you about what i do and i had no clue what it was that you were talking about at the time and then you began to talk to us about in fact i think your first question out of your mouth was have you ever read wild at heart and uh and i had to laugh and my best friend sam was standing there next to me and we're partners in this ministry and as well as mark varner and todd clark and a bunch of other guys that help us but i said yeah as a matter of fact i have read wild at heart and you started telling me about the boot camps that you guys have done or the fly fishing adventures you guys don't necessarily call them a boot camp i think we've had the the mutual admiration society of john's books and how jesus has worked through well at heart right into the lives of men and you know unbeknownst to myself um i was given that book in the early 2000s i was too i put off reading it for about three or four and i read it i wasn't all that keen about it i i thought it was a great book but yeah you know it didn't really you know didn't really resonate for me right and um this friend of mine kept on asking me hey you know why don't you come fly fishing with me because he had he just brought bought a ranch up in montana and i said uh you know i don't wanna i did a lot of ocean fishing and and it was my wife it was johnny who said you know maybe you ought to go and so i said well okay he said great i called him up he said great re-read that book because we're going to use that for our time of discussion this was 2003 and when i went up there jan had invited eight guys and the ninth guy was john eldridge he took us through that book yeah it made all the sense in the world yeah an adventure to live a beauty to rescue and a battle to fight i mean you know when i asked john he says well it's all based on the gospel and he went and took us through it and and it was that year that i was retiring so it meant a lot more as he took us through it that the realization for me that there really is a battle going on right and when you talk to the guys at ransom heart which is john's ministry and you say well can you narrow this down a little bit can you tell us what this is all about said sure there's a battle going on the battle's for your heart more than likely you've taken a wound to the heart and more than likely that wound has come from your father and you know i have to tell you darren it changed my whole life and johnny saw a different person coming back realized that this was a real positive change right and she's been a big support in me doing this from all those years back from the early 2000s till now well last year when johnny got up on stage on tuesday night and began to speak and begin to talk about your story together and and referencing the book johnny and ken an untold love story which i'm sure every man in the world is running out to buy that book you know because they want to read all about the love story right well she began talking about that and i had just met you the day before and she began to talk about some of the difficulties in your marriage and and some of the the dark places that you two had been together and survived but as she began to talk about the days leading into her battle with breast cancer your battle with breast cancer that johnny had and the way that your heart rose to the occasion sam and i sat there literally in tears i think we might have been the only guys at our table that were sitting there crying but we both knew exactly what had happened we because we've walked that journey as well and we knew what was going on in your heart in your mind and and the joy that johnny was experiencing as a man was rising up and here's the deal ken todd is not a passive guy you weren't a passive guy really you know before you read wild at heart you're a football coach a high school football coach you're a man's man i taught high school for 32 years and i coach football and and you know i love the out of doors um you know i've got to tell you this story though darren it goes along with with our wild at heart adventures when john took us through for the first time that uh that week he said you know just just go out this afternoon when you're going fly fishing and just see if you can have a conversation with god hear what god has to say to your heart well i got to tell you i came back i mean i went out i didn't hear a thing i came back i told john i'm so embarrassed but i didn't hear a thing yeah and he laughed and he said oh yeah you know and um we kind of left it at that and then a couple years later when jan and i were leading a group of guys jan gave us the same exercise he said go on out this afternoon and listen to see what god has to say to your heart and i can tell you exactly where i was i was up on this dam and there was a a rock i sat on and i heard god clearly say to me johnny's the most important gift i've given you you take care of her you know i um i thought where's this coming from yeah you know it just was so so clear and yet it was so so out of the blue right and uh 2010 as you pointed out johnny was diagnosed with cancer breast cancer and i realized for the first time i i may lose my best friend we didn't know how bad this was going to be fortunately she's three years in remission of the cancer but i remembered what god had told me and it and i kind of all came together because i realized that god had given me the responsibility of taking care of my wife and what an awesome privilege well it is and i have been reading the book i've not finished it yet but i've read they're about halfway through it and i i want to ask you you know one of the things you talked about at one of these wild at heart adventures was the concept of the new name and that you had walked most of your life not really realizing perhaps the way god saw you your your truest identity in christ if you will and talk about that if you don't mind how that came about for you well again it was kind of unusual for me to think about what what was my name i knew my name was ken tada you know and um i after one of these trips i came home and we had some friends who were here for some time from china and the gentleman asked me you know he he said well do you have a japanese name and i thought to myself yeah i do i'm you know my my japanese name is takeshi and and it's funny because i haven't used that for years and years i was embarrassed by it because the the literal translation for takeshi in japanese is warrior it's samurai yes and my my last name tada in japanese or in english translation is fields rice fields so the kids were merciless when i was growing up when they found out what my name was and what it stood for they used to call me brave knight of the rice fields oh and so as a little child you know i just kind of put it in the back shelf and i never even thought about it then you know when he asked that question i realized all that week prior you know they were talking about what's your name that i've always had my name and the name that god has given me is warrior and i would i just want to finish well and be a warrior for for god so isn't it amazing how the enemy though was assaulting that identity assaulting that name even from i mean we talk to guys all the time i'm sure you and jan do as well that you know the enemy starts his assault very early in life on especially on masculinity and on your identity in christ and and that this new name is probably not something new about you it's actually probably something old about you it's it's the original intent of god in cantata and so isn't it amazing how the the enemy comes at you though with the warfare that made you think that name was not a good name oh yeah you know john talks in wild at heart about the way the enemy will come at you with the three different ways and he'll make a deal with you and he'll you know you'll try to cover these things yeah exactly darren i think that oftentimes you know we just need to stop and realize the enemy is very shrewd and if he's shrewd and he and we got a battle going on he's out there trying to trying to get to you in different ways so uh recognizing it is is a good part of the battle or at least a a good defensive measure in fighting off what what the enemy has intended for us so if you could talk to guys right now which obviously you you are actually we probably have more women listeners than men but they always go home and tell their husband hey you need to go listen to this show or you need to go download these podcasts or you need to go to that boot camp they're doing um that's odd oddly enough that's what we hear from a lot of men hey how'd you hear about it you know something yeah i'd like to attend your boot camp we would love for you to come if you want to commit to coming right now i'll i'll buy the plane ticket we would love for you to come we've got one coming up march 28th through the 30th of this year and and and it's a really cool little place are you familiar with jack dempsey i know you're a history buff i i'm familiar with jack jack dempsey the boxer sure you know well he built a uh training facility in providence north carolina built a gym and had a speakeasy underneath it because back in the days that's kind of the way those things happened and those two cultures ran side by side we do our boot camps at jack dempsey's original training gym and it still looks very rustic the way uh you know it's a whole christian camp there but the place where we meet there's a nicer place to meet we meet in jack dempsey's gym because there's a feel to it that guys walk in and they go this is a man's place this is a guy's place to be and we do it there and you can still kind of feel the the past there if you will the exposed beams and just rustic manly man type of place do you find darren even in north carolina and the jack dempsey gym that guys are wanting to talk to each other they just don't have an avenue to be able to do that yeah and that's when the poser comes out obviously is is hey you know this is my job this is who i am and you know 2.2 kids and a wife and and i did this for a career and all those things and and that's fine but yeah guys are they want intimacy they're craving intimacy and that's why they're finding it on the internet with some lady that's not their wife or sometimes they find it you know on the golf course or or out on a fishing boat or whatever and and god wants that for us and but what we also find out is that so many men are willing to kind of talk around the water cooler hey ken you know i'm struggling with this idea with my wife and what do you think about that and that's great and and what we do obviously helps that happen more right but the one thing they seldom do is go out in the woods and say god i know what all my buddies have said about this but what do you say about this exactly what do you think about me what when you call ken tada when you say to the angels in heaven hey i need you to go help ken and johnny today what do you refer to me as is it cantata or is it something else and and uh we seldom do that in our society we don't make the time for it and so that's a really important part of the boot camps obviously is giving guys the time and do you find too darren that i mean you gotta take guys out of their comfort zone yes i mean you said out in the woods i mean montana if we try to do this in a hotel in southern california i don't think it would have the same impact you gotta get guys into an area where you can you know experience god's creation you can look around and and the one thing we actually have two rules up in montana only two rules one is whatever we say here stays here right and the other one is we're not trying to change anybody so you know it's so easy to hear somebody's story across the table and say hmm i know what that guy needs and then go up and say hey listen i i heard your story and this is what you should do no no no we don't try to do that right you know we try to avoid and and and actually tell other guys you know that's not a something we do here and we do the same thing we talk to guys we we set the groundwork right away look you have to unplug you know put your cell phone in the trunk lock it up do whatever you got to do unplug from the world don't try to give advice to everybody else and and you have our permission to reject the advice of someone if you want to you know if they offer it to you what we're looking for is is what god thinks and what we have found is that when we get up and are vulnerable about our story i was married for 23 years i pastored three churches i had an addiction to pornography through a good part of that and my wife handled that sort of rejection by having multiple affairs well guess what my wound is yeah it's rejection and and uh shame and abandonment and i lived a life that created that in ultimate and so when i get up and i talk about that and be real about the healing not just life is bad oh boy you know well you know tough it out suck it up come on you can do this but yes life has hurt there are wounds um you you allude to some father wounds in the book but you don't go super deep into that i asked john about that once um and fortunately you know we've had a chance to an opportunity over the years to spend a little time with him and i've asked about wounds and and father wounds and yes most more than likely guys have taken the father wound but there are all kinds of wounds right you can take a mother wound and you know one of the things i discovered early on is yes i can attribute some of the wounds that i have to my father um you know one of the things was uh validation i always sought validation through my dad or my mom my parents you know it's a cultural thing with the japanese especially the years that i grew up was after the war and you know one of the things we were taught as japanese children was to make your families proud right so what i would do is i i would try to do better than the next person you know playing football or being a student body officer or you know excelling in academics or whatever it may be that validation was more or less focused on my parents and then of course don talks about our validation through eve but i think where i came you know around full circle was realizing that my true validation my real validation comes through god and when i finally got to that point it was like wow it gave me peace about a lot of other things and that whole thing about getting peace from our wound or finding out what our wounds are and being able to identify them so we can move on it's it's it's absolutely 100 true and other men can help lead you to that place but they can't heal it for you and they can't ultimately take you all the way there you we can walk together on the journey but god's got to be the one to take us to that healing place um jan and i have said often up in montana all we're trying to do is set the table for the rest of these guys right but unless god comes and visits us yes it doesn't go anywhere yeah it's just another retreat and usually the second or the third day is when we see this kind of this turnaround one of the things that john says in his book is you don't know a man until you know his story yes so we give each guy unfortunately you know time is is everything because we have to time things but right we give each guy at least a half an hour to tell their story and they they go through and we try to relate it to the book but they get that half hour and it's amazing how much you don't know about the guy sitting across the table from you having dinner until you actually hear a story and then you go yes i understand what he's going through right now and that's been a huge huge part of of what we do up in montana being able to hear guys stories for the first time for some of them to be able to share their stories and not to feel intimidated that like somebody's going to you know give them advice or or look down upon them and i have seen as you probably have too darren in in your ministry guys live completely changed oh yeah so we we have men here at the nrb who were separated from their wives when we met them um life was falling apart and uh after going to a boot camp after understanding some of these principles and walking alongside of us for a while those marriages are restored we've seen marriages saved in our own ministry organization you know no marriage is is uh uh off limits to satan and uh you know we live life too and we have wounds and um the one of the things that uh i want to recommend to our listeners is a men go get the book johnny and ken an untold love story you're gonna love it as a man because it's it's as i'm reading it i am i'm you know getting to know more about johnny's story that i didn't know johnny is so authentic first of all and and shares her heart shares a woman's heart um in such an authentic way that i think every man can benefit from that but then listening to how god moved through you with you in spite of you at times in spite of johnny at times that's just an amazing story and i want to i want to recommend to guys to do that if if a guy wants to go to montana you guys have a list of you know like seven miles long right the waiting list or what there's uh there are nine uh camps or nine of these that we do during the summer and um the easiest way to find out which ones are still available is to go to our website twa dot us okay so it's twa dot us and there's some videos there's some testimonials there's some other things there uh good stuff and and uh if they they can't get that you know they're they're certainly welcome to call me okay and um well we'll put that on our website as well and we'll just we'll list you guys as an ally of ours and and uh we would love to have you back on masculine journey as often as you're willing to uh call in we'll let you call in we don't have to meet in nashville to do that but uh well darren i feel like there's a mutual admiration society going on right here and and i love you guys well we love what you guys are doing and in all the best ways and i i would pray that that that god would work through your ministry and touch the lives of guys out here because you know what we don't have a uh exclusive on touching men's lives we need this ministry yeah and so you know our prayers are going to be with you and for all the things that you guys do thank you thank you very much ken i love you guys i really do love you and johnny both and it's just so exciting to know that our stories parallel in a lot of ways and uh to know that your heart jan's heart others john's heart is is for these things and uh to know there are other people around the world it's kind of like peter said to his disciples you know know that your brothers and sisters around the kingdom are going through these same things and this is the time i believe that the father is restoring the hearts of men and so i think we're playing a critical time in in the kingdom amen i definitely want to be on board for that and on the front lines as much as possible thank you thank you darren god bless you

Channel: Darrin Koone

Views: 12,432

Keywords: Wild at Heart, Dangerous Heart Boot Camp, Wild Adventure, Ken Tada, John Eldredge, Masculine Journey Radio, Truth Network, Joni and Friends, Joni Eareckson Tada (Author)

Id: BPQYIoKxdKo

Length: 22min 30sec (1350 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 14 2014