God's Gift of Creation

Hello, this is Matt Slick from the Matt Slick Live Podcast, where I defend the Christian faith and lay out our foundations of the truth of God's Word. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. The heart of every man craves a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus speaks of narrow gates and wide roads, but the masculine journey is filled with many twists and turns.

So how do we keep from losing heart while trying to find the good way when life feels more like a losing battle than something worth dying for? Grab your gear and come on a quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides in what we call the masculine journey. The masculine journey starts here now. Welcome to Masculine Journey.

We're glad you're with us today. And we have a really, really cool topic. I think, like most topics, we're going to go in many different directions.

That's just kind of how God works with us. But Art, this is your topic. So do you want to tell us a little bit about it? And whether you want to or not, we'd like for you to. Yeah, well, I'd like to tell how it came about. I got this idea from just listening to my brothers here on the show before the recording and after the recording last week.

We talk about all kinds of things with each other. And before the recording, we have a guest. His name is Joe, and Kenny brought him. He's a guest at Kenny's. And he's from out west somewhere. He said he's from a little bit of everywhere, Wyoming, Oregon somewhere. And he was telling us about how the earth was so beautiful and God created a beautiful earth.

And out there in large places, the land is just kind of ruined by large, huge mines. And he was going on telling about that, telling us about that. And then Robby, he asked me, he said, you haven't come up with a topic in a while.

Have you got anything for a topic? And I was thinking about that. And then Danny started talking about his chickens and hatching biddies and eating eggs and raising the biddies, the tiny ones.

And it all came together for me. This is all God's creation. Why don't we talk about that, the earth and the nature and the animals?

And why don't we do a show about that? Darrell Bock Yeah, and our connection to them. Randy Thompson And yes, definitely. Darrell Bock Well, it's a great topic. It had me thinking quite a bit, just about my connection with it.

And so actually, the first clip just happens to be mine. Go ahead, Rodney. I know you're going to say something.

Yeah. Randy Thompson It's my fault. Darrell Bock Yeah, it's Harold's fault. Harold at masculinejourney.org.

Just go ahead and send in the hate email now. But no, my clips first. And it's from a movie from the Wild at Heart team. It's called A Story to Live.

And it's a movie they put out at Christmas a handful years back, I don't know, they blend in probably six, seven years ago, eight years, whenever it was. And so we all went and watched it. And this particular segment on the topic of beauty really spoke to me, you know, about what does beauty do for our heart, for our souls.

And so I'm gonna go ahead and play the clip. But it's from John Eldridge and the Wild at Heart team. And it's about a minute and a half of little segments of him talking about beauty. John Eldridge Our hearts are drawn to beauty, captured by beauty. When everything else in the world seems to make no sense, there is beauty. It speaks of a larger story. All those small stories people get trapped in, the most addictive ones are the stories that maximize our experience of beauty. And if the world was only filled with beauty, we wouldn't find it so hard to believe a good and kind hand was behind all this.

But then there is affliction. This is where we really get confused about our own stories. You see, it's the pain and fear in our lives that cause us to stay in small stories, safe stories that give us just a taste of what we were meant for.

We look for a taste of beauty and adventure. But underneath, there's a lot of pain. Whatever your interpretation of the world is, whatever story you think explains it all, it has to reconcile beauty and suffering, love and loss. The real question isn't, why is there so much suffering in the world?

The real question is, why is there so much beauty? There's a lot of little segments in there. And so each one of those, I could stop and probably talk a little bit about each one of them, but I won't. So you're welcome. Sure.

No, I won't. But you could almost interchange that word beauty for creation very easily. Well, that's what he's talking about is the beauty of creation. Right.

He's talking about the beauty of creation. And in this particular video, they go on an adventure. They all learn to ride these large motorcycles that are meant for on the road and off road, and very, very heavy. And none of them had ridden before. And so they all trained. And they took this trip just all around Colorado, about a seven or eight day trip, I think it was, just to different parts of Colorado, and just the diversity just in Colorado alone.

And the beauty of it is amazing. But the reason that really spoke to my heart, for years, I grew up in a household where we didn't have any money. And so we made one vacation the whole time. I remember as a kid, two, maybe two, one to Florida, and one to Texas, when we had to drop off a trailer, my dad had a job taking a trailer down there and drop it off. So we made it into a vacation. If you could say that we drove down there and drove back. But, you know, we didn't get to see parts of the country. But something in me came alive because I had always been in the same little small area of Indiana. You know, and if you're not in Indiana, it's it's corn and soybeans, and it's flat. That pretty much describes man, some trees once in a while where there's not a farm.

That pretty much describes Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, you know, a lot of that area in there. But as I started to travel a little bit as I after I got married, we traveled a little bit. And then the last probably several years, I've been traveling a lot more with my sons. When I went through my divorce, I decided that we weren't going to buy each other Christmas presents, we'd celebrate Christmas for the holiday. But none of us needed anything. The boys and I, none of us, the three of us didn't need anything. And I set it up by asking them, hey, what I get you last year for Christmas.

And they couldn't tell me. And I said, I don't know what you got me either. And so that just proves we don't need anything. What we need is time together and memories. And so we've tried we've saved every year. And we take a trip every year. And we've been out to several national parks. We've done it for about eight years now. And we've been to Mount Rushmore, the Badlands Grand Canyon, we've been to the bayous of Louisiana.

We granted the cash with Niagara Falls. Last year, you know, we've just been to lots of really cool places. And what it is about the beauty is there's something in it. There's something in my heart that only can be found in the midst of that beauty. You know, I can't be out there and feel like I'm in a bad mood. You know, yes, I can get angry. You know, I can get angry all the time. You know, that's not an issue.

You know, I have anger issues, go figure. But no, it's unresolved healing. Let's just call it that.

That's what we'll opt to call that is unresolved healing. But when you're out there, it just makes sense. For me, I can't be out there and say, how's there not a creator? Mm hmm. I can't look at something that beautiful and say this just happened by chance. Right?

There's got to be a creator involved. And just look at the US alone. The diversity in the US from the eastern, like up in the main area, which I've not been to yet, I've been to New Hampshire, not quite to Maine. The beauty of the area up there versus the southern, we're right down here in North Carolina, Georgia, South Carolina. What a big diversity difference just in the whole eastern seaboard. Now you throw in the West Coast, right in the Midwest, and the deep south.

Wow, you know, just amazing part of our country. And, and I just love the thought of traveling. And that's what I plan to do when I retire, you know, God willing, as my friend Kenny always says, Good Lord willing, you know, I'm making plans, and God will decide whether he's going to honor those plans. And, but I'm making plans that when I retire, I'm going to take two years, sell my house, get a camper.

And I'm traveling for two years, just two years. And I've got it all mapped out, I've got a map in my wall, I got all this stuff mapped out every place I'm going to go. And I'm gonna see every national park in the US that I can see, you know, I'm gonna start with those. And if I get bored of those, I'll go somewhere else. But I have a feeling I'm not going to get bored. I've yet to be to a national park and go, wow, I really don't like it here.

You know, there's some I prefer more than others. You know, Mount Rushmore, for what it was, was amazing. It was beautiful. But for me, there was nothing to do around there. You drive four hours, and you get up there and you see it.

And you're like, Okay, now what you can go to the gift shop. That was pretty much all there was in that immediate area. Now you get out of there, and the Black Hills are gorgeous. You know, the area surrounding that is just amazing.

You know, and then you get a little bit further and you get into the Badlands up in South Dakota, and it's a totally different area. And I know I keep talking about it, but just my heart comes alive in the midst of God's creation, in a way that nothing else does. I can be having a terrible day. And all of a sudden, I see the beautiful sunset and colors that are indescribable that won't come out in a picture. You can take pictures of them all day long, and it will not do it justice. Right.

Right. Or, you know, a cardinal fly by and God has a little joke with me and Cardinals. I talk about a lot that when I'm in a really bad mood, and God always knows that a cardinal will always fly right in front of me.

Whether I'm setting out on the porch or driving, it'll fly right in front of me. And it's God saying, I got this. You know, and it's a little joke, but those things for me, just make my heart come alive. And what John was talking about in there, but how do I reconcile that with the affliction, the woundedness, the things that happened in my life that, that tear us down and try to drive us away from God. Right. And the enemy uses that to drive you away, you know, and so finding a balance. And I would encourage if you have not been out in nature, even if it's something that doesn't bring your heart alive, give it a chance to bring your heart alive. Yeah. And then even there, you think about like the birds singing and all the beautiful things and sounds that same thing with like the arts, just music and things of that nature, just lift you up and you read about all the Psalms and David and it, and all those stories of how music sues the soul and you have, that's what nature does.

And it sings to you. Yeah. I've been working. I finally finished my walking stick that I've been working on since last bootcamp, you know, and I didn't want to use any, I ended up using a drill was the only mechanical tool I used on it. Everything else was just hand tools, you know, and was working on it, but I would alternate setting out on the deck in the shade on the back of my house. I'm listening to music sometimes, or sometimes just shutting off the music and listening to the birds, hearing the birds sing, hearing the owls, you know, and just all this stuff. And you're just like, man, this is just so amazing, but life is so busy. And that's the enemy's goal is to keep us busy all the time with the next meeting, the next thing going on, the next thing I got to do.

Right. And that busyness distracts us from hearing those beautiful sounds or seeing the beautiful scenery, you know, but God's got it there. And the way John finished that clip, and I talked about the whole time, I get it. John finished that clip is the real question is, why is there so much beauty? There's so much beauty because he knows our heart needs it. Right.

He knows what it does for our heart. That's why he created it that way. Very intentional.

It was not an accident by any stretch. The old expression beauty is in the eye of the beholder is factual. That's one of the reasons why there's so many different forms of beauty.

Yeah. And of course, we talked about our ladies, and one of my favorite female singers is Eva Cassidy. But we'll pick that up when we come back.

Go to masculinejourney.org. We'll talk to you after the break. Bootcamp coming up in November. It don't get no better than that. And then you're given time to spend time with God, and he will talk to you with the brothers, friends, the things that you're taught and the things that you think about. Just amazing experience all the way around. What we have in our boot camp is something that makes you stronger and gives you the strength to go on your regular walk with God. It's something that will make you be bigger than you were when you got there. I think sometimes as men, we feel like we're on our own, and we've got to do everything ourselves, and the way of the world is on our shoulders, and it's our job to fix everything and make everything right and have all the answers.

And I think when you come here, you just get really honed back in and reminded that God really is for us, that a good Father helps you, and a good Father makes you have all the tools you need, and a good Father comes through for you when you need him, and you just feel less alone. Register today at masculinejourney.org. Darrell Bock Welcome back to Masculine Journey. I could have just sat and listened to that. That was my bump, go figure. America the Beautiful, I was just talking about that.

That was obviously what came to mind when we didn't have another bump to come back into, but it was a real joy actually finding the bump. I knew what song I wanted to use, but I didn't know what rendition, what version. And I settled on Whitney Houston, because man, she just had such an amazing voice and such range and depth and all the things that was really cool. But I listened to Ray Charles. I listened to just a lot of different versions of it.

Chris Stapleton had a version, I think, this last Super Bowl, where he sang it. And just hearing all the different takes on that song was pretty cool too. But just again, back to what we talked about. The last thing I'll share, and I want to get back to Harold's story, is I've taken pictures just with my phone. I don't have a big fancy camera or anything. I've just been taking pictures with my phone of the places I've traveled with the boys. And so I worked on a project over the last few months, I've been thinking about for about eight or nine months, of taking all those pictures and putting them on, either framed in barn wood that I had gotten from a barn and ripped down and made into picture frames, and putting some on logs, pieces of logs.

I cut out pieces from a tree, like a two inch thick piece and mounting them on the wall. But the reason I did that one, it's in a room that is my travel slash game room, I call it. We play games in there, the kids and I play cards and stuff in there. But walking through there every day lifts my spirits. Because I look around, I see the beauty of creation, which is really cool. But I also have the memory of doing that with my daughter, or my daughter-in-law and my sons, or with other friends and family members. And so you have memories on top of the beauty, on top of the, and oh my gosh, it makes my heart come alive.

When the world's beating me down, it's a nice little refresher. And so anyway, back to your story, Harold, you were telling us before we went to break, I apologize, can you remind us what we were talking about? Well, I had brought up the fact that one of my favorite female singers was a lady named, and I have to use the was, I'll finish that story. Her name is Eva Cassidy. I stumbled into hearing her on YouTube when I was looking at a different artist and the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow. And I heard her version and it was just so much better than any that I had ever heard before.

But the reason that I bring that up is because at the Y today, when I was on the treadmill, I was listening to her singing. And she had a song, You Take My Breath Away. And I thought about, yeah, that's what happened when I first saw my sweetheart 62 years ago.

Well, here 62 years later, it still happens. And beauty is in the eye of the beholder. She wouldn't be as pretty to you as she is to me. But the other thing about Eva Cassidy is that she was a young lady, but she had cancer. And just not more than a few hours, I guess, before she actually passed away.

She was singing before a group. And the song that she sang was What a Wonderful World. And that just really struck me when I read it. So when we look at our world, we need to be sure that we don't make the mistake that I was guilty of making. When I first went out to New Mexico, where my oldest son had chosen to go live, I thought, I thought it was horrible.

I thought, what a waste. I went back out again, after having realized what I had done, and I said, You fool, you're not looking at it for what it is. You're looking at it for what it's not. My life had been spent in the southeast USA.

Well, the far west is not the southeast USA. So I changed my attitude. And so my encouragement to people now is, look at something for what it is.

God created it different for a reason. Absolutely. And if I had made the statement to our boys, when they were little, and it was essentially revolving around the racial segregation and stuff, but my statement to them is that what God loves, I have no right to hate. And so when I look out at creation, and I see the symbiotic relationship between so many different organisms, there is no way, I don't care how many billions of years you give it, it ain't gonna work.

So for me, when I look out at creation, I see God everywhere. Absolutely. Thank you, Harold. Danny, you actually have the next clip, because you're going to take it in a totally different direction. I am going to take it in a totally different direction, but somewhat. Well, it's still creation. It is still creation.

But it's a different area of creation. It is. My clip is from Secondhand Lions, and if you hadn't seen the movie, I highly recommend it. These two crazy old guys that are millionaires have adopted their uncle. Their nephew adopted them.

One or the other. Something happened. There was a family conjunction there. Anyway, and in the course of all this, he doesn't want to be there, they don't really want him there, but they kind of bond together.

But in the course of this, they're looking for adventure all the time, even in however old they are. And so they buy a lion. And so this lion shows up and they claim that she's defective because she lays in the crate.

She's kind of old. Anyway, this boy begins to take care of her. Walter begins to take care of her. And so they bond together. You know, this wild creature and this boy. And so the clip picks up where his mom and her boyfriend come back.

They're trying to steal the fortunes away from the uncles. And so the man chases Walter after him and has him down on the ground beating on him. And the clip speaks for itself, but the lion comes to rescue.

We play the clip and talk about it afterwards. Where is it? Where's the money? Where is it? Tell me where it is.

Tell me where it is. Jasmine? Oh my goodness.

Oh my goodness. She's dead. Dad's dead. No, he'll live. I'm talking about the lion.

You have to get him to the hospital. Yeah. May you get your car. Oh, I can't get it.

May your car get it. Okay. Okay. Let's get this lion off.

Okay. This man's gonna need some stitches. Yeah, a lot of them. What happened to her? Looks like her heart gave out in all the excitement. Yeah. She was plenty old, you know. Look, I think she's smiling. Yeah. I guess she died happy. She died with the boots on. That's the main thing.

We're taking her cup. The, uh, you know, growing up, I used to draw a lot and I've been trying to get back into that some, but I used to draw big cats like lions and cougars and panthers and stuff like that. And I also drew birds of prey. I love birds of prey. But, you know, Walter's connection with his lion is, you know, even though it's a wild creature, he's fed it and you bond with creatures. And, you know, Art talks about his dogs a lot and, uh, you know, Bella and Max are cool dogs.

And, uh, Bella is particularly, you have to kind of tread lightly around Bella, but she loves me. I know she does, but, uh, you know, we've got dogs at the house and we've got chickens and we have one particular chicken that I didn't want my wife to get chickens because chickens are just chickens. They're just chickens.

You know, the only way I wanted them at the house, if they were fried or grilled or, you know, something like that. And so try to name them, try to name them nugget and stuff like that. Anyway, we have one named Agnes and Agnes is pretty much pet. She she'll come in the house if you leave the door open long enough, but she'll stay there and let you pick her up.

And it was like, we're out there. And she actually jumps on my wife's chair right up on the arm and sits there and jumps up in her lap and just kind of is talking. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, we have a pet chicken. But with my love for birds of prey, I was talking to God this morning.

Cause we have a dilemma at our house. We've lost two chickens and I'm pretty sure it's a Hawk getting them. So I love Hawks, but the Hawks that live across the road out in the field, we saw them and moved there. And usually like you would the Cardinal, if there's something going on in my life, I will hear or see a Hawk.

And when we moved in today, we moved into that house. I heard the Hawk. So you hear him whistling and everything.

And we're sitting in the living room and we have two big windows right there. And I see a Hawk come across the field and he's, you know, not very high. And when he gets to the yard, he is window high coming right at, as swoops right up at the window. He goes over the house and so, but now he's swooping over the house and getting my chicken. So I'm at a dilemma, but he probably named him nugget. Yeah, he did.

He made one of them into nuggets. But, but you know, the reality of it is, is that, you know, we are connected to creation, you know, that kind of thing and not getting all new age, but you know, even I was looking at Romans eight when I was looking at this topic and, uh, the, it says for creation eagerly awaits with anticipation for God's son to be revealed sons to be revealed. So creation is actually waiting on us in a sense.

So there is that connection. And, and, you know, I've been trying to walk some in the morning and, you know, this country is a great country. This state is a beautiful state, but I get up in the morning and go walk into one of the local parks and the birds and, you know, usually get there right for daylight and then the birds start waking up. And it is amazing how loud it gets all of a sudden that all these birds and they're flying everywhere. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get beamed by one sooner later, but, uh, you know, that's the reality of, and your heart comes alive when you see that and you experience those kinds of things. So I want you to read Romans eight again, that, that, that verse for the creation eagerly awaits eagerly waits with anticipation for God's sons to be revealed God's sons to be revealed. Yeah.

Jesus is one of them, but so are we, right? And it's, he made creation for our hearts. So let's go live in it. Let's go spend some time in it with him this week. Love somebody. Well, love yourself. Well, spend some time in nature this week, even if it's out on your deck, even it's out somewhere, just listen to the birds, go spend some time and let God love on you as you love on others. We'll talk with you next week. This is the truth network.