Distraction After Hours

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This is the Truth Network. Coming to you from an entrenched barricade deep in the heart of central North Carolina, Masculine Journey After Hours, a time to go deeper and be more transparent on the topic covered on this week's broadcast. So sit back and join us on this adventure. The Masculine Journey After Hours starts here now. Welcome to The Masculine Journey. And I have to say, Robby, I haven't listened to our intro in a little while, you know, but I feel like all of 2020 and so far in 2021, I've been in an entrenched barricade.

You have? It really feels that way, and I'm not enjoying that as much. At the time we did it, it was a really cool thing. It sounded like, oh, we're going to entrench, you know, and fight the fight. Entrenching just feels so different now. Yeah, after it, you know, war is hell.

Yeah, it is. You know, I was telling somebody the other day, I feel they're talking about, so what do you do? And I said, I kind of just live Groundhog Day. I work, I come home. You see the shadow? Yeah, I work, I come home. I feel like I'm Bill Murray, you know, living in Groundhog Day.

That's why you forgot putting your mask on. Oh yeah, yeah. Funny you mentioned Bill Murray because I was thinking of a different movie he was in, and I was thinking, you know, an entrenched barricade would be a good way to catch a gopher. It would. It would.

And then blow him up. Yeah. Sorry. I know that movie.

Squirrel. No, that's great. Well, we need a distraction once in a while, and hopefully we're, and hopefully we're providing a healthy distraction from life's kind of down moments that we've been all living over the last year, year and a half, whatever it's been. It seems so much longer. It's been right out of year, I guess. Yeah. It's Groundhog Day last year to Groundhog Day since, or gopher day, you know. Yeah. Well, I had a pop-up this week on my phone.

Squirrel. My boys and I were at the Eagles concert last year this week, and it was within like a couple of weeks. They canceled all their concerts, you know, you know, and we're thinking, well, you know, a few months and then they'll be back, and everything's just kind of changed. I know we've all been living it, and it feels like we could need the distraction, right? And I think we do, and hopefully we're providing, like I said a minute ago, a good healthy distraction, something that gets your heart in a much better place. Robby reminded me a while ago of a distraction at home when I retired and was home. I made the mistake of noticing how my sweetheart loaded up the dishwasher, and being the nerd that I am, things have to be aligned properly or else there's a problem.

Well, I had spent nearly 44 years as a problem solver in computer analysis and stuff, so I decided to solve the problem. I was very successful in distracting my sweetheart from the way I love her to making her angry over the fact that I was telling her she didn't know how to load the dishwasher, and I had not thought of that as a distraction before this show, but that's exactly what it was. I threw a squirrel out there and she chased it. Yeah, it probably didn't end well for you. I mean, eventually it ended well.

You guys are still together, but yeah, you can do that if you really want to, but it's not gonna work out for you. Yeah, isn't it funny how that kind of comes around all the time? Yeah, it does. So we're talking about this topic of distraction, and I'm gonna go ahead and play a clip. This is the after hours. I probably could have left the beep out of it, but anyway, this is from Happy Gilmore, and if you haven't seen Happy Gilmore, it's an old classic, so I don't feel bad ruining it for you, but yeah, Happy wants to be an NHL hockey player, and he's really not good, and so his mom, his grandma's house gets taken due to taxes, and he's got so much time to earn money, and he realizes he can hit the golf ball a really long way, so he goes on the golf tour, and he's actually doing pretty well, and the people that's part of that tour really don't like the fact that somebody that's not, doesn't belong in their circle should be there, and so they've hired somebody to distract him, and the whole thing is they're hoping that he'll blow up because they know if he blows up one more time, he's going to get kicked out of the professional golf tour, and so we're going to listen to a professional distractor trying to distract Happy Gilmore. Hey Gilmore, you suck, you jack. Why don't you shut up? Jack. Whoa, the club went further than the ball.

You're going to need a blanket and suntan lotion, because you're never going to get off that beach, just the way you never got into the NHL, you jack. It ends up being okay, you know, you can watch the rest of the movie, Happy does okay, but it works for a while, this distraction works for a while, because he's hitting him right where it hurts, right? He's hitting him with a little bit of truth and a whole lot of lie, and that's what our enemy loves to do, he likes to hit us with a lot of truth, and he likes to call us names, and he doesn't beep them out, they come straight forward, right? And so as we were talking about distractions, I'm going to do the first part of this particular show is talk about how's the enemy tried to distract you, or how does he try to distract you, and then also talk about how God's enticed you, you know, when he's taking you off point, we'll do that the second part of the show, but beginning with how does the enemy try to distract you? You know, for me, honestly, sometimes it's unhealthy, right? He'll try to distract me to fall into old habits, to battle against pornography, right? You know, I'll hear the little thing saying, you know, wouldn't it be good to go do this, or you'll feel better, or whatever, and I won't, and I know that, but it doesn't stop him from trying that. And so sometimes it's those types of distractions, other times it's not necessarily bad distractions, but they're not the best thing I could be doing. He'll distract me with other good things that keep me away from doing probably what God really wants me to be doing. You know, instead of spending time talking with my son, I'll be doing something in the garage, organizing, and making it, you know, more usable, which is just going to get trashed again, you know, over the next, you know, two or three months. You know, I'd be better off spending the time talking with my son, right?

And I'm not consciously making the choice. I'm just like, well, I'll do that later, right? But it's distractions. Just even sitting down to try to do something, there's five other things that come to my mind and say, well, I could go do these. And again, not necessarily are any of those necessarily bad, but I have to constantly say, what's the best thing I could be using my time for?

Because I'm only going to have this time once. And so it's a constant exercise for me to say, okay, what is the best use of my time? And honestly, sometimes that's just relaxing. Because the other thing I can do is I can stay so busy with all these distractions that I wear myself down. And when I wear myself down, I'm more susceptible to the other distractions he's trying to get me to fall for that aren't healthy for my heart, that aren't healthy for me as a person or in my walk.

And so he hits me on lots of different levels. And it's hard just sometimes to sort out the squirrels. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you have to go listen to the past show, but to sort out the squirrels from what's really important.

You know, but walking with God through the midst of it will help you do that. I was thinking about my grandmother used to go to her house. She lived like a quarter mile away and you walk in and she would just be sitting on the couch by herself, no TV on, sitting. And it used to just wreak havoc in my mental process because I'm thinking, don't you need to be reading a book or something? Because my brain always had to be doing something. And that was the distractions. And the older I get, the more I see the value in just sitting.

Sometimes I just like to sit, but it's only like maybe five minutes. And then the squirrels are running. But you know, sometimes to mix up the topic, I'm going to play with it like Jim did. The same things are going on. There's an enticement from God to stay on track.

And yet the enemy is running around like a squirrel trying to get you. I know when we were doing ministry in Asheboro, we had a ministry track and things we wanted to do with men as discipleship. And some things came along and some of them were distractions and others were enticement. And it was tough to distinguish. And I can remember, and I always reference this, my wife helped me one time with, I was working for Sears.

I'm an appliance technician. And we had a laptop and I would open up the laptop and I would see all the service calls I had for the day. There would be 10 to 14 of them at times. And my brain would just go off the charts. So I'd be thinking about four or five, I'm probably going to need this and that's going to be this long.

And that's driving all over there. And my wife says, why don't you just open up the first one and concentrate on that and don't look at them. And it was helpful to be enticed, to focus on what's in front of me, yet being aware that there is other things going on.

That's really good. I was thinking about, as you were talking, Robby, I know you have something you want to say. The first few times I did boot camps, if something went wrong with the microphone, if something went wrong with the video, it would take me out. Right?

Because I had practiced, and honestly, when I look back, it's because I was trusting my effort more than I was trusting God's direction. Right? But I would let that distraction completely take me out of trying to do the talk at boot camp. How hard is it sometimes, Robby, now, even though we have better technology, we have better stuff, we kind of learned to expect the distractions. Right? And to say, you know what, we're just going to push through them. Right? Because God's bigger than whether that clip works or God's bigger than whether the audio is just right. You know, we're just going to have to learn to push through those distractions is another way to say, I'm just not going to let them inhibit me from doing what I feel like I'm called to go do.

Yeah. And anybody that works in technology or radio, like, I remember a couple times when I was first in this, like, the headphones wouldn't work. And I wouldn't even know if I was on the air and the producers pointing at me like, talk, talk, talk. And when you can't hear yourself, you're trying to talk. It's pretty distracting, just saying, you know that. And there were all these different things that happened to me in those first couple of years that were horribly distracting. However, they taught me that like, wow, the show must go on. I mean, it's a great line because it's amazing how many of the things like that God is teaching us to be able to block out and go, okay, well, this is what I was here for. But when Danny talked about his, you know, trying to pick out the one thing that you got to do, it reminded me of a couple of hunting incidents.

Right? So you're going to go, if you've ever done it, you can go quail hunting, right? And when you flush a covey of quail, your immediate thing is, well, I'll just shoot into that bunch of birds. Something's bound to die.

No, no. And anybody that hunts quail will tell you, you have to pick out a bird and you have to follow through on that bird and you have to make sure you shot that bird. And then you can try to catch another bird if you got time or even a third, if you're, but you got to really focus on the one.

And by the fact that there's birds flying all over the place and away they go. And one time when I was a lot younger, this is a funny story from my perspective is we, I, this was the second time I ever went deer hunting in my life and it was pouring rain. I mean, it wasn't like raining a little bit. It was pouring, pouring, pouring rain.

Now, in these days, I was a car salesman. I smoked right. And about the last thing you want to do in the deer woods is smoke a cigarette because, you know, they have tremendous sense of smell like, you know, but I've, it's pouring rain so hard. I've given up on the idea of seeing any deer, right?

Because it's just, I mean, literally pouring. So I light up the cigarette and I'm sitting back and I look out and there isn't one deer. There has to be, I sincerely, at least, I sincerely at least 60 deer in this field. I mean, it was just full of deer and, you know, every line that I could see, there were deer everywhere. Well, so you know what I did, right?

I just shot out in amongst. I mean, it's because you're so distracted by something that just caught you like, Oh my goodness. But it just goes back to what you said that when you, when you've got multiple targets, you know, you, you got to focus on the target that you feel like is the, is a significant one in the midst of it. And it really is a great lesson. We've used that word a lot in previous show and you just used it again, focus.

And that to me is the solution to what's the topic again, distraction. That's it. I had to get one in too.

Everybody else has it. Uh, you were asking about ours are so hot. I got so many. I can't think of them because as I said, I'm easily distracted, but I just decided to go with today. This morning I had decided I'm doing the Bible, uh, in a year.

Uh, and it's about a 20 to 30 minute deal. And I listened to a recording and, and love that. I turned that on. I said, well today I'm going to catch up because I'm almost a week behind and we're only in two months at this, not even two months yet. So I said, today I'm going to catch up and do two or three days. And I listened to the recording and the coffee pot went off. I said, Oh, I'll get my coffee. I'll come back and read. And I got my coffee, went back, sat down at the computer, which is where I was reading.

And ended up in galactic civilization without even thinking about it. And so I killed aliens for half an hour and blew my chance at catching up. And, and that is not an unusual day. And then today I was off.

And so whenever I'm off, I have a good friend who I put to work on fixing my house and, uh, rental property. And we worked on both today and put a new water heater in my house. And I cut myself two or three times doing that. And then we went over and dove into sewage issue at the other place. And I only, I didn't, I actually cut myself four times there, including punching a wall, which is the only one that really dove into a sewage issue. Yeah, I dove into, I literally got, well, it was more of taking a shower and a sewage issue, but opening it up, we expected it to not be full of stuff. And it was, and, uh, and after I was digging at it for a while, he said, you want me to spell you for a while?

So I had no reason for both of us to get this icky, but we got that fixed and it mostly worked. It was still gurgling, but it was running. And, uh, headed home. Um, and this was my day off. So the phone rang and I said, well, you know, I'm not working today. And that's probably a church number.

Cause I can usually tell by looking at it. I said, well, I'm driving. I don't have anything else to do. So I'll grab this distraction, distraction and save somebody else from getting the call. And it was a huge blessing for me. Uh, God spoke to the young woman that called me.

It was having some terrible things going on in her life. So I think that's more of the enticement from God. So I had both today. You did.

You did. Andy, you got a distraction to share or should we move into enticement? Okay, go ahead. So, um, you know, this is common. Everybody's talked about it in their quiet time, but I mean, I don't know about you guys, but, uh, prayer is one thing. And I'll talk a little bit about that, but reading the word or reading the book, has anybody here read the same paragraph, like three times, four times?

Oh yeah. You know, cause of a wandering mind, you know, again, it's the symptoms of a busy mind where it really should be, be still and know that he is God, be still and know that he is God, but we're, you know, fixing problems and all this. And we're doing our best effort to be spiritual or feed our spirit in some way or, or just enjoy a book.

And you just, your mind keeps going. And the same thing with prayer. You know, there's, if you have something to do and you're in your tend to forget the best thing to do is pray, because it will definitely come to you while you're praying.

Right. And you've heard a lot of, you've heard people say, you know, the best thing to do with that is, is that isn't, that is the interruption a lot of times from the enemy, but take a notebook with you, write those things down, get them, get them. So you'll remember them later and, you know, press on in your prayers, but, you know, distractions are all over the place and they can be good or bad. I mean, so, you know, Jim mentioned about Jesus and the distractions he saw. I mean, most of us would probably look at what Jesus, when he was walking along and he needed a minister to somebody that would be a distraction to me at times, you know, because I've, I've got my list of things I'm going to do with Jesus. It was just an opportunity to extend the kingdom of God, but, you know, it depends on how you look at it. And we really need to look at those opportunities that God gives us.

Like Jim was talking about those distractions is really opportunities for him to bless us or to bless the other person for us to be used for the kingdom. But, um, probably the biggest thing though, in the enticement area, and you guys heard me talk about this quite a bit and I always go back to it because it's, to me, it's the foundation of where I really feel like I came into really an understanding God as father and at a deeper place in that I'd been separated from my wife for some time. I was working a lot and I'd been working the same place for myself and I'd become very, um, jaded, frustrated, kind of, uh, cold, even though I was still pursuing God, I was just not in the place I wanted to be changed jobs.

And that job opened up travel for me. And I began to go on these adventures with God. I felt like in retrospect, I used to think that I was kind of dragging God along, but actually I believe he was enticing me, leading the end of these things and made these opportunities available. And I just connected with God at a much deeper level. And that was technically probably distraction or, um, I don't know, uh, distraction is the best word from, from the monotony that I had in, in my life. And then he was like, so let's go out here and do this adventure together and go deeper. And I'll never forget that those are always, I mean, with COVID, I haven't been able to do that, uh, from a travel perspective, but I still feel like he's still pulling me into these adventures of things, even though I'm not traveling, it's just, God wants to get that. And really what, what that is, is that it's an opportunity for him to get the focus on him.

You don't have all these other things going on. You're out, you know, in nature or whatever, and you, he's got your attention, but yeah, that's, I guess that's the enticement that I've experienced. It's really blessed my life.

Thanks, Andy. I, um, on the topic of enticement before the show, we were talking about it, um, before we came in here and I was thinking about, uh, you know, my wife and I, um, lived in Indiana for a number of years and, uh, we both grew up there, had moved away for a while, had moved back there and had pretty much decided we were going to stay there the rest of our life. That's where we're gonna live. And so we bought an old farmhouse and we were renovating it and setting it up to be a bed and breakfast after the, uh, kids got out of the house. You know, um, as we remodeled, you know, the closets had plumbing underneath the floor and behind the walls so they could become bathrooms. We made our, our, the closets and the kids' rooms five foot by eight foot, cause that's the smallest you can make a bathroom.

That's a full bathroom, right? And so, you know, did all that stuff in my, use my construction background. And the company I was with was expanding into a second location, uh, in North Carolina from Indiana.

They'd already been in Charlotte and they were going to come to the Triad. And my boss had asked me to come down and look at an opportunity to come down here. And I was like, well, this is just a complete waste of time.

I'm, I, you know, there's no point in me coming down to do that, you know? And he said, no, I'd like for you to go visit. So I said, okay, well, so I took my, my, uh, wife and my daughter and, uh, youngest daughter and we came down here and, uh, boy, it was just beautiful. And everywhere we turned, we found things that we liked and went back and, uh, we decided not to really talk about it together, her and I, but to pray individually for a period of time for a period of time about what we thought we should do. And so we prayed for the set amount of time.

We fasted, uh, for a day and did some other things. And then we came together and we both said, I think we should be moving down there, you know, and it was the furthest from my mind to ever do that. And moving down here, you know, the company I was with closed their doors a couple of years later within a few days of those closing their doors.

I didn't doubt that we should leave. I just knew that we were supposed to be here. A gentleman called me, uh, became a good friend and he and Jim and I, uh, not Gemini, Jim Graham and I, you know, met and we started the ministry, you know, way back years ago.

Right. And that became the boot camps and the radio show and all that other stuff. And everybody else has a journey they've been on to come here, but that was my journey. But it began with an enticement to go to a place I never thought I'd want to live. To be honest, Harold, and you probably won't like this about me, but when I lived in California, I worked with a guy from North Carolina and I made fun of him all the time from being from North Carolina.

I teased him relentlessly from being North Carolina. And in God's sovereignty, he puts me here and I love it. You know, you know, he makes me eat my words yet again and puts me here and love it. But it was an enticement that really brought me to this close group of friends that saved my life in so many ways that would not have been there if I would have stayed in Indiana and not followed the enticement. And so, yeah, I could look at that as a distraction to what we had planned, but, oh my gosh, it gave me life, which is so much more valuable.

That's all I got. Well, in my case, as far as enticement, you know, Tammy was the original enticement, like if you're going to marry me, you've got to go to church. And so that was not sounding like fun to a car salesman on his only day off to go to church of all places. But I went to this church and heard this sermon by Dr. Redhead at the First Presbyterian Church in Greensboro. And he talked about this crazy prayer where you listened instead of talked. And he said, if, you know, God's really God, he knows what you have to say.

You know, you've got two ears and one mouth, it's better to listen than to talk. And he said, went through this whole program of how you do this and then you just sit there expecting Jesus to tell you something. So it wasn't maybe two months later, my son ran away, my stepson, Leslie, and he ran away and he was gone and he was gone and hours went by and it's like three in the morning. And I've searched everywhere I know to search, called everywhere I knew to call. I was terrified, I really was.

You know, it was way past, you know, anything that would seem reasonable to me. So after I had extended everything I knew to think, I was like, well, I'll try that crazy prayer. And I'll never ever, ever, ever forget that I'm sitting there praying, listening, listening, listening, not saying anything. And all of a sudden I hear this, I got it covered, you're gonna be fine. And I ran in the living room, Tammy is in there, I said, well, I just talked to God, he told me he's got it covered, everything's gonna be fine.

She looked at me like I was one of those aliens you shot a little while ago. So, well, sure enough, about 10 minutes later, it's like whatever it was, 3.30 in the morning, here comes this police cruiser up in the driveway and Leslie's in the car and he says, you know, I saw this little boy and a part of the Greensboro, he really shouldn't be walking around this time of night. And I looked and I found him and that incident had such an enticement into me coming after Jesus because I realized that not only was he God, but I had access to actually listen to what he had to say and it really impacted my faith, you know, amazingly.

Well, thank you, Robby. Well, I guess what I'll leave you with is there's distractions out there that are good for our heart, there's distractions that are bad for our heart. Sometimes it's obvious and sometimes we know the difference, sometimes we don't, but I will tell you like we talk about every week, walk with Jesus, say, Jesus, help me see the truth in the midst of this situation. Announcer 1 This is the Truth Network. Announcer 2 One of our generous sponsors here at the Truth Network has come under fire, fire from the enemy, fire for standing up for family values.

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