What Is An Entrenchment After Hours

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But most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. How cool. You've heard this in the introduction to the After Hours for years of right deep from an entrenched barricade. Well, if you wonder where the word entrenchment came from originally, whose idea was that?

Ah, it was mine. And I was taking it from that whole idea of the entrenched barricade so that people that would actually get a chance to peek inside the entrenched barricade at their church. And so the idea of this show is to give people a little bit of an idea of what could go on at their church and hopefully what their appetites to ask us to come and do this kind of thing at their church. That's what we actually love to do. And there's been much fruit as a result of seeing guys get their hearts back and actually enter into bands of brothers and those kind of things.

And so we're excited to be able to do that today. And I know we're missing Sam because, you know, there is an entrenchment involved. But as one of the Marines at the last entrenchment, we pointed out, he said, those guys are digging a trench, sure enough.

But is that for a latrine or is that for... So anyway, moving along. Andy, it's your turn.

It's my turn. So this is from the show, the HBO docuseries or whatever, Band of Brothers. It's on Easy Company during World War II. They paratroop in and they take it all the way from Normandy to the Eagle's Nest where Hitler was in Austria, his private bunker or whatever. He was entrenched.

He was very entrenched. Yeah. But they stopped along the way.

You probably heard of the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest. And this clip comes from there. It's when they kind of got hung up there and it was in the winter, very cold. And you've got this Easy Company and they've got guys coming in and going out because you have replacements. But this is one of the guys that had been hurt and he's coming back to the group. He'd been gone for a few days at, you know, just kind of getting at the medical tent or whatever. And he's coming back and one of the guys asked who he is.

Well, he's a replacement. And it's the banner between them. But then they get into each one of the guys in the Easy Company. A couple of different guys start talking about the wounds of the others, which we talk a lot about wounds. But really it's guys that have been entrenched literally in the Ardennes Forest that they know each other's story. They've been together. They've fought together. They've ate together. They've done all this stuff together. They know each other's story. And we're hoping, you know, when we come in, there's a lot that we bring as far as the story about the man's heart, getting his heart back. But we feel like to move that on to the next level, you have to have a band of brothers to walk it out together.

So here's a clip. What are you doing here? I want to head back to the line, sir. Joe, you don't have to do that. Get yourself back to the aid station.

Heal up. How do you like to head back with the fellas, sir? All right, then go. Thank you, sir. Joe Toy had been at the aid station for three days, and everybody was glad to have him back, especially Bill Garnier. Hey, Joe. Hey, Bill. Good to see you, pal.

You too. What the hell are you doing back here? I had to make sure you were on top of things. On top of things? Tied me on boots once last week.

All by myself. Hey, fellas. Look who I found. Hey, Joe Toy. Hey, Rick. How are you? Come on. How are you, Joe?

Yeah, I'm pretty good. Escape from the aid station. Where'd you get hit? What's that? Huh, it's Webb. Placement.

Really? Thought of some guy I've known for two years and I forgot his face. Joe got hit in the arm. New Year's Eve gift.

From the Luftwaffe. Jesus. A lot of you guys have been injured? It's called wounded, peanut. Injured's when you fall out of a tree or something. Don't worry. There's enough crap flying around here, you're bound to get dinged sometime. Almost every single one of these guys have been hit at least once.

Except for Allie. He's a two-timer. He landed on broken glass in Normandy and got peppered by a potato masher in Holland. You'll find out, son.

A bull? He got a piece of exploding tank in Holland. Now, George Luz here has never been hit. You're one lucky bit. Takes one to know one, Skip.

Eh, consider us blessed. Now, he got a skinny little guy. He got pinged to the neck in Holland.

And right next to him, that other skinny little guy, that's Popeye. He got shot in his car in his little butt in Normandy. And, uh, Buck got shot in his rather large butt in Holland. Yeah, kind of an easy company tradition, getting shot in the soul. Hey, even First Sergeant Lipton over there. He got a couple pieces of a tank shell burst in Carentan. One chunk in the face, another chunk almost took out his nuts.

What are those nuts like? Doing fine, Bill. Nice of you to ask.

Doing fine, Bill. Well, you know, again, I think that you get the picture there. And I think that's the way it is.

I know every one of these guys. I mean, some more than others, but I know every one of their stories. And you just get that from doing life together, from being entrenched with one another. And I think it's the way God is intent. Sometimes we maybe talk about that a little bit too much. Obviously, God, Jesus, the Father, they're the ones that brings the healing. But it talks about how we're, and I've talked about it at Nauseum, I say it every time. But, you know, how if we confess our faults, one another will be healed. And we pray for each other, we'll be healed. And I think there's a lot of power in that. But God is all in it. God loves it when we get together and we have camaraderie, we love one another. That's what heaven looks like to me. And I think that we get a little bit of that down here. And you don't see it.

You just don't see guys open up to one another. And that's what my hope has always been with the entrenchments. That's what I felt like God had put on my heart years ago. Because we can do like two boot camps a year with the time we have and all.

And to go into the churches and be able to speak it. You know, sometimes guys got their groups together and they're doing well or whatever. But it's not like we're coming in and paratrooping in and just like, oh, we know everything. We're just sharing our story and hopefully it's an encouragement to other guys to get their heart back, to let God heal them up.

And then walk in life with their band of brothers that God's given them there at that church. Yeah, it's a wake-up call. You know, to some extent that, you know, for me, I know that when I went to my first event of the masculine journey, you know, I had a paradigm as Rodney pointed out in the first show that, you know, this is what Christianity looked like. And when it came to a men's event, you know, the guys, you know, huddled up. And honestly, there was no, you know, I guess vulnerability. Nobody telling what they were really struggling with. You know, everybody, I'm fine, you're fine.

There was a lot of fineness going around. Lack of authenticity, too. Right. And so because people aren't needy out loud, right, and they're not sharing where they're at, then you really rob your brothers of the honor of entering into your battle, of locking arms with you. And, you know, where two or more are gathered, you obviously realize you have more firepower in that whole situation. And so, you know, for me, you know, one of the great honors of this ministry is when we do an event like this, we hand out these prayer cards. And those prayer cards, we ask guys to write down what they really wanted, you know, what they're really hoping for, what their real struggles are, those kind of things. And quite often, Danny, they get super vulnerable.

Yeah, they do. And can you describe what it's like to sit amongst a band of brothers praying over those prayer cards? Oh, man, it's something because you do see some terrible handwriting at times, but that's just us.

That's not what I was expecting you to do. But no, you do see somebody pouring their heart out and they may write something on that card that they won't say out loud. But in a sense, that's a way into, you know, letting us have the privilege of praying over these things and entering into a relationship maybe with these guys. And, you know, the cool thing about it for me is to sit around and one of us have thrown a card in.

And, you know, and so Lord knows the fruit that has come out of that in my own life. And then, you know, everybody sits around these microphones every week that, you know, and we enter into life. And like Andy said really well, we do life together. You know, I mean, I talk or text to one of you guys about three or four times a week. Even, you know, we meet once a week anyway.

And that's just so cool. That's what the life is for me for, you know, entrenchment or, you know, this whole genre of ministry is that I finally found a band of brothers who are doing life together around a common cause. And that is the hope of an entrenchment, I think, is that, you know, if you've got a band of brothers, rally around something that's going to bring you life, not it's going to give you something else to do. And, you know, maybe you've heard this, I think it's a great saying.

It's kind of pithy, but, you know, it'll stick out to you. You're as sick as your secrets. And I was really sick. Aren't we all? I mean, like right this minute, you know, there's things about my life that I don't share that I should have. Right.

And what I have discovered in walking with a bunch of very authentic men is quite often where we're the sickest or where our hearts are the brokenest is in our own families. Right. And, you know, going after our kids and all that kind of stuff.

But how neat is it? Right. I mean, how neat is it when you have the honor of praying for somebody you dearly love, man, and you know how much they love God and whatever, but you know what the... I mean, you can see their heart ripped out like certain members of this group I could talk about right now. They're going through desperate things in their families, you know, but we're all in, we're all entered in. And because, you know, these guys are not, they're not hiding the fact because a lot of the sin we're talking about is not stuff that you will hear in the Sunday School. I mean, it is not coming out that way, you know, because people are thinking that they're going to be judged. You know, you must be some kind of bad dad or whatever, you know, you got that going on.

Yeah, I can't believe he said that. And I get that, and part of me was there was a part of me as I was going through my struggles that wanted nothing more than... I wanted, I didn't never, I didn't want anybody to find out, but yet my heart screamed to be authentic and true and vulnerable. And it's like a catch-22 because you don't know that you can trust somebody until you get in a group like this.

But once, that's one of the things the guys see that come to boot camp and entrenchments is that we're pretty authentic and share the good, bad, and ugly of our lives. And that breaks them free. I don't know how many I hear that say, when I heard it from the stage, that freed me up to be able to share it with somebody else. Well, that could be that somebody in a church that they never would have shared it before because they trust that person, but they never thought that they could trust that person enough to be able to share that, whatever it was. Right, which gets back to the author of the whole deal who said, you know, is it setting the captives free, right? Is it binding up the brokenhearted? That's what the gospel does. It does it for unbelievers. I understand they've got to come to Christ, but the real freedom in Christ in the abundant life is getting into all those places that he really wants to get at to heal your heart so that you can be in a position to share how God's come for you in these things, right? And what's been really cool in my own life here is that, you know, I've been part of men's ministries for years, have been a director of one, but to come in here and to share, I mean, I've shared some pretty nasty stuff at times, and not once did anybody look at me with disdain, except Sam's only got one look, and it always looks like disdain, but it's not, if you know it's heart. But nobody said, oh man, I can't believe you've done that.

Most of the time it's, yeah, when I was where you're at. But that's the beauty of what we're talking about is that's what brings life is that, you know, because Jesus never come at anybody caught in something harshly. He lovingly bound up their broken heart. He, you know, he set the captive free somehow or another. And, you know, of course he was Jesus, but that's what I see in the band of brothers. And you saw it in this Bagger clip.

I did. So, land on us. Well, the clip is from the Legend of Bagger Vance, and it's a locker room scene where Juna and Bagger are having a discussion, and Juna is locked into, and I'm going to read the definition of entrenchment. I kind of took it this thing at a different angle, which we've all known from previous shows. My different angles gets me in a lot of trouble around here sometimes. Thus, I got the last clip. So, you know, flattery will get you nowhere with Robby, obviously. Anyway, Sam, come back, please.

Entrenchment is the process or fact of an attitude, habit or belief becoming so firmly established that change is very difficult or unlikely. And what we find in men's lives, and Juna is locked into this is the way life is, this is how it goes, and it's sad. And Bagger's coming after his heart because he sees something in Juna, but the way he does it is so beautiful, and it's classic. So we can talk about it after the clip.

The Lord. I pulled a Sam. Excuse me, I started the clip in the middle. Now you're going to miss my clip. I don't care if I'm 12 strokes back. I just don't. You don't even want to win? It's just a game, Bagger. Ah, yes, sir. You done said it yourself now.

That's a game. So maybe, just maybe, there's something else that's riling you. Maybe you thought you was just going to sashay out onto that green, and the old hero of Savannah just reappeared all by itself. Don't work that way is all. The Juna you was, you ain't never going to be again.

Ever. That's all I'm saying. You don't know a thing about me. Well, I know one thing for sure.

You don't look pretty foolish tromping out there with two different shoes on your feet. Oh, Jesus. You got an answer for everything, don't you, Bagger?

Let me tell you something. There's no difference between winning and losing and anything in between. What's lost is lost. A man lives, a man dies. And in the end, it all turns out the same.

You're alone. And that's all you ever going to be. Matter of fact, alone. So a soul is born with everything that the Lord can give it, and things don't go its way, so it just gives up, and the good Lord just takes everything back? That's right. And then the soul dies alone. Well, that's pretty much what you said. That's right. That's a sad story, Mr. Jenner.

Yes, it is. And that's about the dumbest thing I heard any fool say ever. You got yourself a hard eye there, Mr. Jenner. The soul is born with everything, don't look, dies, and the good Lord. You're a funny man, Mr. Jenner. You know, the humor in that is incredible, but, you know, so often we're like Juna. We're locked into, this is just the way life is, and I'm not going to ever be able to change. And then you come along and you dive into this thing called wild at heart and the masculine journey, and all of a sudden there's some hope. There's a reality of it, and you see men who have walked on the journey a little before you. And the freedom that they found in all the things that we've talked about, you know, the exposing the agreements and stuff like that, but the covenant of silence is where God comes in and goes, hey, you're not alone, and I'm aware of where you're at. I've been aware for a long time and brings life back into you. And, you know, you find freedom in that. And identity. I mean, I love, I didn't see over there, Rodney, you're locked and loaded over here.

You're good, go. You know, just as I get a chance to hear these guys do these talks, right, that, you know, after you've done enough boot camps and you've got new guys coming up and they're getting, you know, the message to the point they're teaching it, and then you can hear what a difference it made in their life when God spoke into them their own identity, and all of a sudden they began to walk in the identity that God gave them, you know, through covenant of silence, through a boot camp experience, and you see fruit like you've never seen. Like, you know, that is the gospel, right? That you see people coming alive, people becoming wholehearted, people all in, right? They don't just show up for a boot camp maybe. No, they get their, you know, like corn, right? He's going to show up there a day early, and when he's there you better believe he's going to be, right, all in every minute that, you know, that's the deal.

Yeah, corn's about as wholehearted as you can get. But I love your clip, Danny, because then, like I said, we pre-show when we go over other people's clips, we start to see something in them that we didn't see before and others have in them, and I love it because I'm thinking about strength and, well, whose strength is Juna trying to live in? His own, because his past is, I went off to war with all my buddies and I'm the only one that came back. So it's kind of like survivor's remorse.

So what's he do? He doubles down on his own strength and now he's got this opportunity in this golf tournament to go back to his previous life and everything's weighing me down because he can't do it by himself. And in the scene then later on when they're out there in that last round and he's about to pick up that ball and this is the precursor to that scene that says Bagger's like, I'm right here with you, right here with you. When he does that, it just starts to snap. It's like, you can either stop or you can start and that's start, where am I going? It's like you're going someplace where you can't go on your own and then after that whole scene, he hits this great shot and he's like, all of a sudden, he's got a bounce in his step and he's lively.

He's like, boy Bagger, you're a great caddy. And it's just like everything's changed. It's like that moment of salvation for him, right? And I love it when Paul in 2 Corinthians 12 is like, I boast in my weakness. That's the same thing as saying, I boast in the Lord's strength.

It's not me anymore. And that switch, that change, that repentance that I'm gonna turn from my own strength and go to his is just huge and I love that in that scene in that whole movie. And I'm surprised that Andy hasn't jumped all over it because it's clearly an orphan spirit that he's talking about there, right? Yeah, he said he's been right there with you, with him all along.

But Juna sure didn't feel that way and truly is the orphan spirit. He had taken on this independence, self-determination like you like to say and he was living like an orphan and what Danny pointed out in that clip that he had, or it was in it as, I didn't realize there was a spiritual aspect. I thought he was just kind of like some angel to no tie but he was actually talking about, you know, you feel like the good Lord giveth and he taketh away and that's all there is to it and you're left alone. And then he goes on later to tell him, I've been right here with you all along.

It's just really a cool, you know, like we like to say, it's not about golf, that movie. It's about the masculine journey, really. No, but I don't know a single man when you really see them as they begin to walk in their true identity that won't admit that at some point in their life, you know, there was a realization that I'm not alone, right? Because I'm gonna do it on my own. You know, that there is a point in every man's life that where they said, I hope if it's gonna happen, it's gonna be up to me because, you know, everybody's betrayed me.

My dad didn't turn out to be what, you know, this person, that person. And so, you know, Satan's attack on men in general is to create this self-determination. Like you said, you know, if this is gonna happen, you know, I'm gonna be the one that does it rather than it being in fellowship with the Father.

And even if you're a Christian, essentially, it's a godless way to live. Oh, yeah. You're independent. You're really your own God at that point.

Well, you know, I mean, I was that guy. I mean, that, you know, two failed marriages and, you know, there's gotta be, it's either hopeless or it's nothing. And then, you know, we had a big wedding in the family this weekend, and I think we're Greek. I mean, just this big, large, loving family. I'm no longer alone, but the biggest part of it was Jesus enter into that.

And, you know, one of the greatest things that has happened so far in this journey with me is studying and diving into the humanity of Christ and who he, well, he does understand. He does engage just like Bagger. He's in the locker room. He's telling me I got two different shoes on, you know, because I'm very capable of it. I'm pretty sure he told me once or twice that's the dumbest thing I ever heard.

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Well, Kenny, no. Chuck, I know you got something over there. I can see you're loaded up. You're ready to go, so we, you know. Oh, just what I get from this is just really taking the time to listen to God's voice, you know, and the way we do that is just diving into his word. And you keep diving into his word. You get around the band of brothers that they're pouring out his word. They're also diving into his word, and you just see that excitement.

Like you said, it comes to life, you know, and through that, it's a process, and it kind of builds on each other. When you begin to recognize God's voice, you also begin to recognize the enemy's voice in Satan, and you can start distinguishing between those two and start pushing Satan's voice aside and say, no, this is what God is saying to me. You know, God's always working on us to pull us out of the world's religion, its works, and really get us into walking with God, you know. If you look back how Jesus, he commanded, follow me. The only one person really refusing was the rich man.

The rich but unruly. So what must I do to inherit internal life? And he said, keep all the commandments. He said, I've done that. He was posing.

He was posing. Yes. Oh, he probably thought he... Yeah. In his religion.

It's what's bad is when you believe your own press. Yeah. Yes. We've all been there, haven't we? Yes.

Yes. But you've got to come out of that. You've got to take the walls down. Don't take the walls down.

That's that paradigm, yeah. How does God get in if you filled up with something else? Or he got your walls up.

He won't open the door. And who does Paul say in Ephesians that our battle's against? It's not against flesh and blood, right? Powers, rulers, authorities. It's something bigger and greater than us. Yes. Yeah. And we have to have a lot of help in that realm because we can't even see it.

It all goes back to, again, what we're hoping the fruit of the entrenchment would be. That is, you hear the opportunity for these things in your church and your men's group and all those kind of things. Wow. Reach out, right? Because there's nothing like somebody that loves you that sees your pose, okay? That knows that you—Robby, that sounds a whole like an agreement that you've got right there that you're struggling with, that can say that lovingly to you in a way that you receive.

And that comes from some work. And that work means that you've got to reach out to masculinejourney.org and Sam at Masculine Journey or Robby at Masculine Journey or Andy, you know, Danny, whoever you choose. You know, we would love to hear from you again, masculinejourney.org. The whole idea is we want to come have fun with you guys. This is the Truth Network.