Vulnerability With God

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Welcome to Masculine Journey. We are very glad that you're with us this week and glad that you listen to us each week. And if it's your first week, welcome. I think you'll find that it's a refreshing show.

It's just pretty much a talk format with a group of friends just talking on a topic. And this week we're going to be talking about being vulnerable with God and what gets in the way. Last week we talked about being vulnerable with others and what gets in the way. And we learned that Jim couldn't say vulnerable last week. He kept saying intimacy, but that one works as well.

But welcome. And we are, Robby, this is a topic that seems like it shouldn't be that hard to kind of deal with. I mean, it's God after all. We should be able to be vulnerable with Him, shouldn't we? Well, it's almost like are we vulnerable with ourselves? Like, are we really willing to check the dipstick, you know?

Just being the Christian car guy. Am I willing to take a look to see how I'm actually, how am I actually feeling? Am I really doing okay or am I just, you know, manning my way through my life without actually getting vulnerable with myself? And yeah, I'm fine. Everybody's fine.

Everything's fine. But you've got to, you know, check the dipstick to find out if you're actually... How about gauges? Can we check the gauges and stuff?

We're back at dude camp. I don't know. I just feel more comfortable checking the gauges, you know? Okay, how about idiot lights, okay? We can have idiot lights.

You know, if your lights are flashing, you know, you've got to pay attention. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I do.

I do. We probably better go to a clip because we're... Yeah, that'd be good. So Danny, this is your clip that you want to tell us about.

So will you tell us a little bit about it and then we'll go ahead and play it? This is from the Andy Griffith Show and it's a scene where Opie's coming back into the office after he's been in training with Barney to win this foot race and he didn't win. Matter of fact, he finished dead last. So he's all angry about it and there's some interchanges beforehand, but he comes into Andy's office very vulnerable. So Andy told him to be a good sport or something.

Be a good sport. And, you know, his opening line kind of says it all. I don't want you to be disappointed in me.

And his vulnerability and he's really feeling like he's separated from his father. And the scene is awesome. So I don't want you to be disappointed in me. Well, you thought about what we were talking about, did you?

Yes. I understand. I understand some of it, I guess. But I don't understand why you're supposed to be happy about losing. You don't have to be happy about it.

None of us are. I've lost a whole lot of times and I've been just as unhappy about it as I could be. You see, as you grow older, you're going to be doing an awful lot of different kinds of things. And sometimes you'll win at them, sometimes you'll lose at them. Now when you win, that ain't going to be any problem to you, is it? See, we all know how to win.

We grin a lot, don't we? Just grin and grin and grin. But when you lose, see that's the hard part.

That's when you have to take yourself in hand, show it ain't getting you down, and that you're a good sport about it, and that you're going to try again. And when you do that, you'll be on the road to becoming a mature human being. Understand that? Uh-huh.

I got to try to win that race again next year. But I don't understand the part about being a mature human being. Well, don't you worry about that. When you are one, you will know. And I sure am proud of you. Thanks, Paul. You know, as I listen to that clip, the one thing I wonder about is when I'm going to realize what a mature human being is, because I still haven't really realized that yet. Maybe I'm only behind the curve, not really. Just check your gauges.

Just check the gauges, dipstick, whatever you feel comfortable with that day. This morning, I was spending a lot of time with God. And for some reason, he put an old hymn I hadn't even thought about in years on my heart. It's Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence. And I think I now know why that was on my heart, so I could have offered that to you guys a little earlier.

Well, thank you. The words, though, really do kind of go towards the topic of being vulnerable to God. Let all mortal flesh keep silence, and with fear and trembling stand. Ponder nothing earthly-minded, for with blessing in his hand. Christ our God to earth ascendeth.

Our full homage, homage, depends upon where you're from, to man. But that really hit, I mean, I didn't know why that was on my brain all morning. But that hit me.

That's why we don't want to be vulnerable to God, because he demands everything. And now that I squashed all the – That was good. That was good. Thank you. That was good. It was good. Thank you, Jim. That was good. Danny, on the clip that you just played, I think it's important that it's a son coming to a father, a child coming to a father, not understanding something that's going on, not understanding something that's being asked of them, correct?

Yeah. And it took me back to 1994, when my life was – Opie was bad about race. I was down and out about the race of life. In October 1994, I was very suicidal, very – my rope had come to an end because of addictions, because of choices, because of lots of different things, and I just could not figure out this thing called life. And I found myself in a very vulnerable spot and actually found myself believing that God wanted nothing to do with me. And I've obviously found out since then that I was very wrong. But I ended up kind of coming into the office, dad's office, if you will, and going, okay, explain this to me, in a sense. And that's been 20-some years now.

And I don't know anything about that mature human being part of that clip either. But that's the reality of it, is my life began to unfold and unpack in a much different way from November of 1994 till now. And having let God do some things and not skipped happily all the way through, because there are those times in my life where I don't understand what's going on and my stubbornness shuts down my vulnerability, or my pride shuts down my vulnerability.

I don't understand what's going on, but I should be able to figure this out. And I have a printed prayer behind my desk in my office that was on my grandmother's refrigerator. Said, Lord, I haven't offended anybody today. I hadn't done anything bad, but I'm about to get out of bed. So could you please help? And that's kind of the way I try to live life is, Lord, I'm about to get out of bed. So help me.

Go ahead, Harold. You had something to add? Yeah, there are different ways of looking at the word mature. Take a look at me. I'm very mature in one sense. And yet if you talk to my sweetheart, she'll tell you that I'm very immature in other ways. Or just a far side away.

So chronologically, I'm very mature. Yeah, that's true. There's different ways. One question, you know, logically, you know, we can think, okay, he's God, he knows everything. Right? So why not just be vulnerable with him? I mean, you're not really hiding anything from him.

It's not like he doesn't already know more about you than you know. Right? So what keeps us from being vulnerable with God until we're at a point like you describe sometimes, Danny, you know, where we've tried everything else. Right. But even in just daily things, what keeps us from being as vulnerable as we need to be?

You say that into the microphone? I think pride is the answer. Yeah, no, pride is a big one. That's part of it.

Right? That's an answer. You're right that you talked about being able, you know, I should be able to figure this out.

I shouldn't have to have help. Yeah. And that was my answer when we were talking about vulnerability with others last week was pride. Because I think there's that pride that keeps us from sharing, you know, with our peers or whatever people we know. But I think also when you're dealing with God, a lot of it is fear, too. But, you know, part of it, if you take the time, I think a lot of times when you're, quote, hiding things from God, when you're Adam and you're, you know, you're putting the fig leaf on, you're doing whatever, is we really think that that for whatever reason works. Or, you know, I can't be honest with God. This is probably what I used to think is if I'm really honest with God, I mean, I'm busted. You know, I mean, there's nothing, and it's not, it doesn't change anything.

I'm busted whether I tell him or not, you know. Yeah, we're honestly kind of like an ostrich. Stick our head in the sand and the world doesn't exist.

Right, exactly. You know, in a clip, Opie's opening line is, I don't want you to be disappointed in me. And I know I've thought so many times in my life, well, God's disappointed in me, and I really don't want to engage in the conversation. Yeah, well, there's lots of things that can get in the way as we expand some of our thinking on it that part of it could be the way that you're brought up, the way that you're taught as a youngster to view God. If God is that judgmental guy that's throwing down lightning bolts at you and he's causing all this havoc in your life, okay, do I want to be vulnerable with that guy?

Is he a safe guy to be vulnerable with? And so that may be part of the equation. Part of it may be that whole pride thing. Part of it may be fear. I don't know what it looks like to step into that vulnerability and what will be required from me on the other side of it.

Those all can kind of get in the way. Jim? I'm going to go back to my hymn again.

Go ahead, please. It's about fear and trembling. And this kind of threw me when I actually looked at the words. It's fear and trembling stand. When you hide in the garden and try to duck out on God, it does no good because he knows where you are and he's going to come to you. But if you are trembling before him and you're standing before him that you are in his presence and you're okay with it, we need to be fearful because none of us really want to go through what can be very embarrassing, very scary times when we are following his will. But if we don't, then we're not being who we're supposed to be. And I think that those times you have to go through them to get to the freedom that you want to have on the other side.

Absolutely. It's worth what you have to go through to get there, but it's still so painful sometimes to go through it. We have a boot camp coming up November 18th through 21st. Go to masculinejourney.org to register. Again, that's November 18th through the 21st. That's going to be Thursday evening through Sunday at about noon. We'd love to see you there.

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Kernersville, North Carolina, 27285. Welcome back to the Masculine Journey. That bump, a little bit of the story on that is I was trying to find a bump that fit with the topic.

We all try to do that, right? And so I was thinking through different things and I was thinking, okay, you know, the Father speaking, you've got me, right? And so I just put that in and I came up with a couple of songs and this was one of them and this was one segment that I liked and I thought that was going to be the end of the story.

I don't even remember the lady's name who sings it. It's somewhere. Olivia, somebody. Olivia, somebody. But, you know, we'll get it here in a second. But, Danny, you took it further and she has a really cool story. She does have a really cool story. I played the full song because I don't like parts of songs. So you're assuming I didn't.

Well, you'd be right. From your comments, yes. And I found another song by her called Woman at the Whale and I clicked on that to play the song and she tells her testimony and she went to college, she grew up in church, went to college and pretty much became an atheist, got into trying to get into acting and that kind of thing and that didn't work out or something so she ended up in Nashville as a songwriter and singer and went on tour and began to lose her voice and found herself very vulnerable before God because she was about to lose her livelihood and she has this incredible encounter with Jesus in her living room which is incredible. It just changed her life and then she began songwriting gospel songs and all this happened between 2017 and 2020 and thus we have the songs we have now. Olivia Lane. Olivia Lane. Yeah. Just one. I should have never got the mic. I should have not been vulnerable but I was. That's pretty good.

I like Olivia Lane. So Robby, you have a clip. Sorry about that.

You were vulnerable, Andy. Thank you. Yeah, you got me.

You got me. So this is an incredible movie especially if you're an Adam Sandler fan but even if you're not an Adam Sandler fan it would be one that I would recommend because it has such a message for men especially. The setup is that through the miracle of movies he's given a remote control like men love to have and with that kind of control he can fast forward through his life and he is like the parts where his wife's talking, he pushes fast forward, you see her lips moving really fast and the stuff that he doesn't think is important he just flies through and he's doing this through his life and then all of a sudden the bad news is you can't engage in stuff that you didn't do.

You can go back and watch it again because you got a remote control but that doesn't mean you can go back and do anything about it. Well, his father dies and he realizes that he can't go to his father's deathbed because he wasn't there. And so the only thing he can do is go back to the last moment that he saw him and the point being that the reason I'm not vulnerable to God the most in me is I'm fast forwarding through my life. I've got so many things like the parable of the soils that have got me going. I've got a path that I always go down so I'm too hard hearted on that part of my life or I've got weeds that are choking me or I'm too shallow.

All these things that are going on in my life are allowing me to fast forward through it. So as you hear Adam Sandler it's a little hard to follow because part of it is chastising himself like when you hear him say listen to the man. This is the Adam Sandler who's figured out he's a schmuck. And he is trying to tell himself you're blowing it, you're missing it. Here's an opportunity you had to go with your son and your father on this adventure and you wouldn't pay any attention.

This would have been the last time you ever could have spent time with your father and you blew it. And as I think about that we'll listen to the clip. The only thing I would add is at the end of the clip you hear something clicking. Right and he's rerunning the last thing his father said to him which was I love you son. And he's just through your head there's beep, beep.

And what he's doing is he's rerunning it so he can hear his father's words again. How was that? No I'm just kidding. Surprise. Hey grandpa.

When did you get so handsome? So Michael I had a wonderful idea. Your mother's playing canasta with her friends tonight. I thought oh what a great opportunity you, me and Ben should go and have a boys night out. Can't.

What do you mean you can't? You have to eat sometime we could go we could whistle at pretty girls. I'm down for that. See he's down I don't know what it means but he's down. Hey please. Don't give me that finger. I'll make you deal. If you come I'll show you the quarter trick. Will you look at the man? I'll tell you the secret. No dad. Don't you want to know.

How do you do the stupid trick? I've always known. Can you let me do my work? You've always known.

You're pathetic. I'm so sorry I botched it. I love you son. See you later grandpa I love you. Dad. Bob.

Bob. I love you son. I love you son. I love you son. I love you too dad.

I'll miss you. So it's a it's a hard lesson. Yeah it is. And it's a hard lesson for earthly father. But actually when we begin to look at our life. You know I recently told my son. In fact just last Sunday. I told my Sunday school class this. I told my son this this morning. The best advice I ever got in my entire life. Was get up an hour early every morning.

An hour earlier. And spend time with your father. And that doesn't guarantee that you're going to be vulnerable. But if you do do that. It gives you the opportunity to at least begin to dig in. You know begin to see is there something here. That I'm feeling you know. And I love a lot of the clips that we're going to do throughout the rest of the show.

And the After Hours show. So I hope you'll stay tuned for it. Because it's deeper than just okay I want to get there.

Right. You got to open up Pandora's box. And once you begin to be vulnerable with God.

And we're going to be telling stories along these lines. Then he opens up opportunities for you to really grow. That you you know may not necessarily.

I don't know I signed up for all this. That's kind of the deal. And sometimes you get some context of the. You often get context of the craziness that's going on in your life.

You know maybe that there's something behind that more than what you really realize. I know that this particular clip hit hard for me when. I was first a father I didn't really know. What to do at home to be successful. But I knew what to do at work to be successful. And so I justified staying at work.

Lots of hours. I always made my kids games and things like that. But there was lots of the rest of their life I missed out on.

Right. And a lot of it honestly was I was just fast forwarding because I knew what to do there. I knew how to play the game at work. You know I didn't know how to play the game with an infant at home or with a wife that needed me really there. And so you know a lot of until my daughter really got in and was leaving the home after high school. When it really hit me is how much I'd fast forward through her life. And unfortunately unfortunately for her and I was relationship. It's hard to go back and recoup that time. We can have additional time. But for my other kids it definitely set in mode a way to do things differently.

You know to make sure that I did shut off on the weekends and make sure I was. Emotionally available as well as physically there. Right. You know because we can do that as men especially we can fast forward through life and not really check in at any point.

Yeah. The Adam Sandler clip got me thinking OK where was I not. Engaged with my dad at times. And Andy your little story too is the same thing as we may really maybe think about that were. You know I felt Adam Sandler basically is in his own way and what keeps me from God isn't anybody else it isn't really anything other than me it's.

I won't go there. There's a certain times and certain things in my life. And I'm so much closer now I can think about is. Why didn't I just do this so much earlier. There's just so much pain and suffering and other things you go through that you're like well it just can't be any other way it's just got to be this way. Things that I really wanted in my life.

I didn't go after and I was just thinking of a story that. When I was young. I remember riding my bike out to go across town because I live in a town it's not even a full square mile. But it's a busy highway that ran down the central Illinois. I'm going to go over there to go across that I'm going to go over to my dad's shop. And I'm going to work on the engine that we took apart.

And we're going to rebuild it. And he's like yeah just come on out when you get off school come on over whatever I'm just like. OK. For some reason. I don't cross the road because all I can think about is. Well he's busy. He doesn't have time for me. You know he's probably going to get in trouble if I go across there and I'm over there spending time.

He's supposed to be working but he's going to be helping me and this and that. I never ever even rebuilt that engine. Because I. For some reason just shut down I just realized that there are so many things in my life where. I don't go after it that I really want.

I'm like why not. Why why don't I go there. So that's one of the things yet and trying to be vulnerable is trying to really go into that place where God take me in there. Help me to understand what it is about me that even though I really want something I don't seem to want to go fight for it. That I always take either the easy path or I don't go after things or the things that are. I don't really care about.

Oh I'll fight for that because I don't care if I lose maybe I don't know. But it's just tough. Maybe it's a big risk and something you mentioned in there is agreements can get in the way. Yeah. Of our vulnerability. God's too busy.

Right. God's got too much going on. We got so much more on this topic in the after hours. We're going to give you some answers hopefully to what it looks like to be vulnerable with God and the outcomes of that. We'd love for you to be at the next boot camp. God's got some amazing things he wants to do with you there. It is November 18th through the 21st back at Carolina Bible Camp. What a tremendous place to go to. Go to masculinejourney.org to register for that. If you have anything you'd like to reach out to us go to our website and send us a message.