Layers

Hi, this is Roy Jones with ManTalk Radio Podcast.

Our mission is to break down the walls of race and denomination. Your chosen Truth Radio broadcast will be starting in just a few seconds. Thank you.

Welcome to The Masculine Journey. We are glad that you're with us today, and I'm very glad to be back with my brothers here. It's great to be back with you.

I know you're not as excited about it as I am, but I'm very happy to see you. All right. Thank you, Andy. I appreciate that. No, no, no. No, I got that.

Thank you. No, I'm trying to find out if everything stayed in Vegas or if you got anything to bring back to us. Nothing I want to share.

Of course not. On the air, but not with you. Tell us about Zion. Zion was beautiful.

You can't go through something like a national park and not say, how can anyone not believe in God? It's just the beauty. It's amazing. And I did have one thing that I got in Vegas.

Wow. Yeah, we'll talk about that later. You can't go through a national park without seeing the signs put up by the government that make you know that the devil is out there, too. Don't step on the rocks.

You might damage them and stuff like that. Oh, no habla. Sorry.

Yeah, no, but here's a weird thing. All right, so Robby's not with us today. All right, and so I just want to do a quick poll. How many of you guys did he tell he was going out of town?

Anybody? Normally we have this whole process of, hey, I'm not going to be there this week. I'm going to be at NRB. He'll tell us that.

He'll tell us something, and then just all of a sudden, nothing. Yeah, Jim and I found out on Saturday when he had us in for Kingdom Pursuits because he was advertising for the boot camp. Yeah. So it's like, oh, by the way, guys, I'm not going to be there. I got this and this and this and this.

I'm going to be gone. I'm like, now you're telling us after you give us a topic? Mm-hmm. Typical. Yeah, yeah.

He started with the topic, and then, of course, he's not there, and the only way I found out is I was bringing him something to the show, and he's like, oh, I'm not going to be there. Uh-huh. He was kind of sheepish when he was telling us. Yeah. That's what we're calling him, sheepish. Yeah.

That'll be it. Sheepish. Sheepish, Robby. Sort of like Seamus.

He's being bad. Different. Anyway, onto the topic. Before we get to the topic, Jim, you have an important thing you're filling in for Robby. How many Eves do we have?

We have sat in both of his chairs tonight, and I thought I could bring some class to the show where he fails. But for those sitting around this table, it is the Eeveeve, Eeveeve, and for those that are coming to be with us, it is the Eeveeve, Eeveeve. Yeah, and we get there day early to set up stuff, and so that's awesome.

It's close. I'm excited. I think that's what you hear in our voice, all this excitement, you know, because boot camp's coming. It's going to be fun. So anyone want to set up this week's topic, or you guys just want me to set it up? Rodney, you want to set it up?

Fine, I'll do it. Andy, he's just sitting with hands in his pocket just trying to be quiet. No, he's trying to stay awake.

Yeah, it's hard for him. But this topic is something that we talk about a lot. The opening clip that I'm sure you're probably going to start with is going to explain an awful lot, but Shrek is one of our favorite movies, and one of the favorite clips that we use is Donkey and Shrek, and Shrek always tries to explain to Donkey what ogres are. And they're like onions, they have layers, and Donkey goes off on a tangent like Donkey does, but it is true that, you know, as well as ogres, us humans have layers. And if you start thinking about how many things you get layers in, because one of the things I did for this topic was, okay, well, yeah, layers, what would I talk about?

Where would it be? And I started thinking about it. I'm like, next thing I concluded was layers are about in everything we do. You get things, you learn things in layers, you lose things in layers, you forget things in layers, you get wounded in layers, you pose in layers. About everything you do, spiritual wounding and warfare is all around layers, and you just never, just like, oh, I got it, I got it all, I got it now. It's never like that.

It's always in parts and pieces and, well, let's just say it's complicated. Right, and so we'll go ahead and play the clip from Shrek, and we'll come back and talk about it. I thought he did set it up well for you, Sam.

He did. Good job. Okay, let me get this straight. You're going to go fight a dragon and rescue a princess just so Farquaad will give you back a swamp, which you only don't have because he filled it full of freaks in the first place.

Is that about right? You know what? Maybe there's a good reason donkeys shouldn't talk. I don't get it, Shrek. Why don't you just pull some of that ogre stuff on him, you know, throttle him, lay siege to his fortress, grind his bones to make you bread, you know, the whole ogre trip. Oh, I know what. Maybe I could have decapitated an entire village and put their heads on a pike, gotten a knife, cut open their spleen and drink their fluids.

Does that sound good to you? Uh, no, not really, no. For your information, there's a lot more to ogres than people think. Example?

Example? Okay, um, ogres are like onions. They stink? Yes, no. Oh, they make you cry? No! Oh, you leave them out in the sun, they get all brown, start sprouting little white hairs.

No! Layers! Onions have layers. Ogres have layers. Onions have layers.

You get it. We both have layers. Oh, you both have layers.

Oh. You know, not everybody like onions. Cake! Everybody loves cakes. Cakes have layers.

I don't care what everyone likes. Ogres are not like cakes. You know what else everybody like? Parfaits. Have you ever met a person and you say, hey, let's get some parfaits. They say, hell no, I don't like no parfaits.

Parfaits are delicious. No! You dense, irritating, miniature beast of burden.

Ogres are like onions. End of story. Bye-bye.

See you later. Parfaits may be the most delicious thing on the whole planet. You know, I think I preferred your humming. Do you have a tissue or something? Because I'm making a mess. Just the word parfait made me start slopping. That's one of those clips, no matter how many times you listen to it, it makes you laugh.

It is just so funny, right? A couple of things I was thinking about as we talked about this topic of layers. Two things for me that really has been enlightening, and you guys probably all caught it a lot quicker than I did, you know, because I'm not always the sharpest knife in the drawer. But the two concepts of layers, as Rodney very well described, you know, everything in our life happens in layers. You know, relationships get deeper in layers or they get worse in layers.

And it's not usually one big thing. You know, our warfare against us, as you talked about, the enemy stacking things on, our wounding, all those kinds of things, intimacy with God comes in layers. It's deeper and deeper, right? And so the whole concept of layers, and the other one was just seasons. You know, when I began to think of things in seasons, it was very helpful for me. You know, I just have to make it through whatever the season is, this financial season, this whatever.

And it came to pass. Right. And it will pass at some point, you know, and I'll be on to the next season. Because we tend to want to think that things are always going to be the same way. And the only thing in life that is certain is nothing stays the same.

That's the only certainty. God stays the same. You should say that.

But our relationship with God does not stay the same. Right? We grow in that.

Right? You guys are all shaking your head, but they can't hear that on the radio. So if you want to say something, you've got to talk through a mic. I was going to say death and taxes, but taxes are going to get worse or better. And I'm sure you have to pay them after you die. But we're all going to die. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay. On to the next topic. Yeah.

I'm sure that we probably pay them after we die. Anyone else? Bueller?

No. The layer thing, I want to go ahead and open it up. Because there's so many things we can talk about. Where has God dealt with you in layers?

Right? You can pick your healing. Where has the enemy dealt with you in layers? Anyone have an answer they'd like to throw out there? If not, I'll throw one out. Harold's got one. Go ahead, Harold.

The one that I have is, for me, a scary one. And that is that I want to have my outside layer be more like the inside layer that God can see. If I put up a front, I may fool you guys, and I may get away with it for a long time. You don't get away with it with God, because we may think we've got layers, but he's got X-ray vision. Superman ain't in his league.

Yeah. And the good thing to know is the enemy does not have that X-ray vision. The enemy has other tools that he uses against us, right? But one of those is not, he can't see inside our heart. He can't read our mind. He can't do the things God does. He's not God. It doesn't make him unimpactful, right?

But he doesn't have that same power, so we don't have to worry about that with him. You know, there's sometimes that I just choose to not pray out loud, because I really just don't want the enemy to hear it. That's what even God and I, you know? And it's not out of fear. It's just like, yeah, you don't need to know this.

What's going on? I had a weird inspiration from Harold there. We do have an opaque layer that God gave us. We don't deserve it, but God sees us as his perfect children, because of the layer that Jesus Christ has provided.

That's one layer I want to hang on to. Cross-covered glasses, colored glasses, maybe? Yeah, I think John Lynch is probably one of the best to talk about that. The two roads talk is when he talks about Jesus and him, or Jesus and the person he's talking about, looking at the sin, the person's sin, and Jesus is like, my, my, my, that's a lot of sin, but I got you covered, and we'll tackle it together. And God's love, God sees us in ways that we're unable to see ourself. He sees us the way he intended us to be. And part of it's aging, part of it is God's grace, but he peels off the layers of sin that we have developed over the years, till we're getting a little closer to that white inner onion.

Yeah, if we're not willing to peel them off, he'll assist. And it hurts. It does hurt.

But it hurts good. All right, I would say for me, you know, before we go into break, one of the things is, you know, some of the wounds, especially the wounds you have as a child, you know, that stick with you for your whole life until you deal with them with God. You don't realize how just entwined they are in everything that you do.

You know, they have bitter roots that run in lots of directions, right, and a lot of that had to do with the things I've talked about on the show with my sister, you know, telling me I don't have a whole lot to say, or no one wants to listen to you, shut up on her mouth, all those things. I didn't realize how incredibly entwined that was in my life. You know, it affected me at work. It affected me with my children. It affected me with my wife.

It affected me with all the different things with my friends. You know, and God had to peel back each one of those layers, right. You know, he peeled back a big layer, which helped me deal with it, but then he peels back the smaller layers as he digs out those other roots. The interesting thing I've found with those layers is he doesn't pull it off in the order that you think he ought to a lot of times. Or those around you think that he ought to be pulling them off.

That's a really frustrating piece. Especially wives. Yeah, yeah.

God does what God wants to do, and he does what he knows we need. Right. You still have time to go to the bootcamp, masculinejourney.org.

Go register during the break, make it quick, or register after the show. We want to see you there. God wants to see you there. One of my favorite things about boot camp, well, the favorite thing about boot camp is every time I go, I encounter God. And as anyone that has encountered God knows, generally speaking, it's nothing we expect. Real encounter with God out of the blue.

He knew what I needed, I knew what I wanted, and those two were rarely the same thing. Register today at masculinejourney.org. One of the things that's been a true joy to me is having my sons go with me to boot camps and watching them get an understanding that I wished I would have had at their age. It took me several years, and I'm still probably learning it a little bit as we go, but watching them get a good foothold into manhood and understanding what's important, what their role is, and how to stay away from the enemy.

To receive healing and restoration in a way that you love on others. Register today at masculinejourney.org. Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me, I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed.

She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb in the shape of an L on her forehead. Now, Andy, welcome back, not just you, everybody, welcome back to the masculinejourney show. But I was just pointing to you, you're very welcome back, Andy.

No, actually I was gonna say, that's your bump, coming back in. Also your topic, yeah, you were too lazy to get it, so I did. I think it was Robby's topic, we'll blame him. Okay. Well, I mean, I know you had the Shrek.

And he was too lazy to be here. So anyway, go ahead. Yeah, just tied the theme to Shrek, but you know, she's talking about, or the song talks about how she's saying that he's a loser or whatever, and all that stuff is why he felt like an ogre. He felt like a loser because of the, you know, the wounds that get accumulated over time being an ogre. See, I never really understood why they used that song until you did that, so thank you.

Sure. I just thought it was a popular song at the time, but you know, I wonder now if that song is more known for Shrek or on its own. Right, yeah. I'm thinking probably Shrek. Shrek. Yeah, because it plays all the time. It's on... Rockstar, right? It's on Netflix right now. You can watch Shrek 1 and Shrek 2, so if you haven't seen it, go watch them. So Andy, you have actually the next clip, so if you want to go ahead and talk about that as much as you want to set that up.

Not very much. This clip was probably about four minutes, and I cut it to a minute in, you know, being merciful to the audience because it gets kind of repetitive, but we've had a lot of repetitive stuff lately. I listened to last week's show on the way down here, and so it's just more of repetition, but you'll get the point when I explain it at the end. Now, this is from a 70s TV show. It's a 70s TV show, and a lot of people, for the Gen Zs and the millennials and stuff, you probably have no idea.

Just look up Samford and Son. Here's dummy. You big dummy. You big dummy. You big dummy. You big cold-blooded dummy. You big dummy.

See what you did? Oh, no. You big dummy.

Oh, no. You big dummy. You dummy. Bigger dummy than my dummy. Dummy. Dummy. Get lost, dummy. Look here, you big dummy. I got a dummy for a son.

You asleep? No, dummy. Okay, dummy. Before this game, you were just a plain dummy, but after the night, you'd be a broke dummy. What kind of life do you think it is being the father of a young dummy?

For every man, there's a woman. And for every dummy, there's a dummy. See, for dummy, you catch your own fast. I'm proud of you, dummy.

Up until the time that I was six years old, I thought my name was Dummy Samford. Listen, dummy. Didn't you hear me call you a dummy? You think I'm dumb?

You know how to get mad when I call you a dummy. This hearing that, that brings back a lot of memories, but yeah, what does that have to do with layers? So my quick story is, so as I started down this journey, this mass healing journey, I started asking God, what's my father wounded? You know, I didn't want to go there with my dad because my dad was a good dad.

I knew he loved me, but I've told on the show many times, dad got into some, he had to leave the state in my adolescence, had an affair and had to leave the state to find work. And when he did, I didn't realize the impact that it had on us. You know, it really affected me in my, you know, 20s, 30s, you know, young wife trying to understand things, not feeling like I had been validated or had what it took. So that was a big part of it and I got that healed and it was awesome, but this had always been on my heart as well, but it wasn't the wound that I would think.

And this is just how things tie into layers and how they're connected. So coming out of that, coming out of having a feeling like an orphan spirit and I had a father connected to me then, it was like, well, what was the message sent? And that just, it was my stepfather that this came from. He was a, I don't want to dishonor the guy. He really did a lot for me in my life, but he also wounded me quite a bit with words like this. I had a lot of names and it wasn't just a dummy and it impacted me and it just goes to show that, you know, the enemy will do everything he can to try to take you out in different ways. If the message isn't, you know, you've got a father who loves you, but he's not present, there's a wound there, he's going to say, well, you've got this guy over here that's present, but he really doesn't love you.

He doesn't have your heart and, you know, as a priority. So you know, it was, you know, in that clip though, I pointed out to the guys before we went on the show was that, you know, there was one point in there that the father that was really calling his son dummy all the time said, hey dummy, I'm proud of you. There was one time in my life when most of the time everything I did was wrong, but there was one time I helped my dad or stepdad do this job, landscaping and stuff, hard work, spent a whole Saturday out there. He came back and just talked me up to my mother and I felt so proud, you know, because I had validation from my father and it meant a lot. And that just goes to show you that there's layers, you know, within positive and there's layers and negative, but that's my story.

Darrell Bock Would you mind if I jump in real quick? Knowing your story, right, looking at both of those things, and Wayne, if you were going to go there, God has continued to peel back layers on both of those. You know, one of the things you like to do with your father, your natural father, right, was to go on adventures, and so God's continually taking you on adventures. And he's reminded you pretty consistently that although your stepdad didn't make you a priority, he does.

Wayne Binns Right, he does, yeah, absolutely. And that was something, like on these adventures, I feel like road trips, I mean, dad took me on a road trip right before he left the state, made a big impact on me, he went to three places, he didn't have hardly any money to do it. He knew that he wasn't going to see me for a long time, that made a big impact. And when I started going on these road trips, I didn't think anything about it, and God really showed up as a father, that's where I really came to know him as a father. And when I did, I was preparing for the sonship talk to speak it out, and he began to bring these things to my mind, and he was like, you know what, it was like, there was this one trip I took, he gave me like three gifts of natural experiences being out in nature, and my father had took me to three different places, and it was like it kind of aligned, and it was, I wouldn't have came up with that, but anyway, it's just, that's layers of how he brings us, you know, healing in layers. What I was noticing, and I didn't see it until he was playing the clip, and as Andy was talking, you know, same thing, you know, same, a lot of the same dad issues, you know, told I was, had a lot of other names, I was just dumbing.

But you know, hurt people hurt people, right? You know, and thinking about even into the generational layers, you know, our fathers, you know, why were they the way they were, because of their fathers, et cetera, you know, really wish we would have had that Raymond clip, that would have been a great clip for generationally, but ultimately, as we draw closer to the father, we don't want to be like our fathers, and they didn't want to be like their fathers, and it kind of continues on, so we tend to, in most cases, go towards the better, so father seems to always be pulling things away. And I think it's interesting that both of you that experienced being called that, unfortunately, are both in a profession where it's highly specialized, that not a lot of people understand what you do, you know, I mean, I don't think that's any accident either that you do things that a very small percentage of people could probably tackle. And it plays a part in that, I mean, in the job that I just took, you know, I can't tell you the number of times I was panicking, like, I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this, and I get on a call with a customer, and I've got them fixed in an hour, and something that they've been working on all week, and they're like, wow, I mean, it's, and my wife, you know, she's one of my greatest champions, I'm sitting here doing this thing, right, and she's like, you can do anything, what are you afraid of? God has gifted you in all these things, like, what are you afraid of? There's another layer.

There's another one. I have a different story about fathers, and I have a generational layer that has meant a lot, and my grandfather was James E. Graham, didn't call him Senior, because he was the first, but my grandmother really drove into me that what I did had an impact on the name in all the previous generations, and so I was, and my father was a wonderful father, and like I said last week, I always wanted to be told I was just like my father and like my grandfather, and you'll hear more about them if you come to the boot camp, so do it, and those, and pictures, but those layers have been a very positive thing in my life, and that has kept me from problems that I might have had had I not had that layer of generational support. Yeah, and you're talking about layers and wounds, like there, you big dummy, you know, you get that, some of the wounding that you get is that just the exact same layer pounded on you over and over and over. Others are all around it as you try to get away from that wound, and you start to think, man, I'm not that person anymore, and then something's gonna happen that's gonna take you right back to that, because there's something in that core that you are, and for me, it was, I didn't know this, this took about two, maybe three years for me to get to the point where it's like, oh, my big wounding is that my dad didn't think I mattered, or at least that's how I pictured things, because several people have talked about how their dad doesn't show up for things. Well, he would show up for some things, but it was the small things, just being at home. You know, he had other places to go do, things to go be, and I would, you know, growing up you're trying to figure out and learn things, because you learn things in layers, and you're trying to go through that, and when you're a young, pre-teen, young teen, there's a lot of questions you have in life, and if you're not getting an answer, where do you go with that? You know, if you don't have someone to go ask, if your dad's not teaching you and talking to you about those things, it was just never a priority, and God revealed that to me so slowly over those years of just, he reminded me of certain times, but I would never put the connection with my emotion and feeling and how I perceived it. I just was like, yeah, there were things that happened, but there's also good things, and then there's, yeah, there's these bad things, well, there's these good things, and I was when he actually finally got to the point where it's like, how do you really think your dad perceived you, and it finally, you know, came to me as like, oh, well, if he's not around with me, he must not think I matter, and that's what it was, and understanding that gave me a lot of freedom in being able to go forward in my life. Well, absolutely. You know, the enemy's constantly wanting to heap evidence on top of it, and God's wanting to strip that back. It's not true evidence, but it feels true, you know, because you accepted that wound, and so he keeps coming after that, and God has to continually peel it back. We didn't get to hear from Danny this time, so Danny's gonna have something to say probably in the after hours, and for the first time ever, I think we had to edit a clip for the after hours, which we usually don't have to be real cautious, but Rodney brought us a clip we had to edit, so download and listen to that. We'll talk to you next week. You're welcome. This is the Truth Network.