Pandemic Pause Part 2

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This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Man Talk, brought to you by TAWCMN, talking and walking Christian men's ministry, where they're devoted to breaking down the walls of race and denomination and challenging men to take their God-assigned role. Here's our hosts Will Hardy and Roy Jones Jr., a black guy and a white guy. Well, welcome back to Man Talk Radio.

This is Roy Jones. I'm the white guy, and I've got my guest with me, Dwayne Kennedy, sitting in today. And Ken Kline's back on the phone with us. So we had him last week in last week's show. So we're picking back up in some of the conversation.

And I really appreciate you guys joining us again. And one of the things we were talking about just before we went live on the mic today is that, you know, I think we're oftentimes trying to make the world or the church fit into the world, not the world, bring the world to the church. And I think that's part of what Ken's experiencing now, you know, that he mentioned in last week's show. And Dwayne, like you and I were just talking about, you know, the Word of God, you either believe it is the Word of God or you don't. So if you're a follower of Christ, that's got to be one of your foundational principles. Agreed? Yes. Oh, yes.

Yep. So therefore, let's start with that. And then we'll loop back around into the as God just leads us down this path. How do you see that manifesting itself, Dwayne, in your work? And, you know, of course, you do the Christian rap on a lot on Saturdays as part of your talk show and the music you play and the different opportunities to witness to people.

How do you see that playing out in the public marketplace? Well, I will say this. What's been going on, I have seen a lot of a great deal of people get fired up for the Lord. You know, so whatever's going on in the spiritual realm, I've also seen some saints get fired up for the Lord. I've seen some people start new ministries. I see, you know, new ministries was birthed.

I've seen Christians getting closer to the Lord conversation on a conversation is about Christ. See, so I see the positive side of that, too, even though we're going through a lot of, like I said, what we was talking about last week is weapons of mass distractions. We have so many weapons of mass distractions, our cell phones, the media, church phone. You know, there's so many distractions. That's why we have to put everything that we have in our relationship with Christ.

To me, that's what's most important, variable one. You know, the first two commandments, love the Lord our God with all your heart, mind, body, soul, and the others unto that, the love your neighbor as yourself. So if we're not loving our neighbor as ourself, we're not completely following the will of God. Ooh, that's deep. Amen.

Ken, how about you? How other ways that you're seeing this thing play out in a positive sense? Yeah, I agree a lot with what Dwayne's saying, too. But for everyone that's pushing themselves away from the table, there's others that are drawing closer. And they're the ones leading the charge saying, this may be our greatest hour. And they have basically said, we've got need all around us. What are we going to do about it? And I'm trying to figure out what to do to keep the church rocking along. And my leaders are sitting at a table going, what are we going to do about all the hurting people in our community? Aren't we supposed to be loving them and serving them and showing up for them and providing help and hope? And I'm like, yeah, I guess we are.

And so I love the fact that leaders are leading the charge on that. And I've got some good ones. Amen. So if you're listening to the show today, and you're thinking about, OK, where am I? Are you lukewarm? We've talked about this.

And we know how God feels about lukewarmness. Or you're sitting there thinking, you know, I really have not been as active as I should have been over the last 12 months. Because folks, you know, this life is very short, doesn't matter what age you are.

It's clipping off quick. And this pandemic has certainly made it more obvious. And Ken and I were talking about that today. And, you know, it's just it, you wake up on Monday, and it seems like the next morning you wake up, it's Friday, especially if you're a work from home person that's as a result of the pandemic. And, and I'm in that boat right now working from home, approaching a year.

And as we've talked about from my personality type, that's very challenging. And so, but the time is clipping off, folks. So you've got to, you got to put a line, draw a line and say and put a stake in the ground. You know, Christ needs you as one of his warriors. He needs you to serve him, he needs you to be sharing the gospel. He needs you to take care of those that are in need, as we just talked about. And I think we really, we just need to call for revival amongst those that are listening today, and say, Look, it's okay, you don't have to have the answers. You don't have to know where you've got to go, you just have got to start stepping. And we talk about this on the show quite often, if you'll step in the natural, God's going to come along in the supernatural, and guide your past and direct your past Proverbs three, five, and six, right.

So you just need to start walking, and let him pick up the tempo and tell you where you need to be. And so let's talk about some of the positive things we've seen. I, you know, I've had an opportunity to see some things like you guys to people's to rise up.

This I've had friends that have been in some very difficult times who've never asked for prayer that have asked for prayer. And so those kind of things are to your point, Dwayne and Ken are some of the positive signals that people are coming to the table. And you know, it's okay if those people that lost the seat at the table because they chose not to stay engaged.

It's not okay. From standpoint, we don't want anybody to leave the kingdom or walk away from the Father. But it may be the wake up call that they need because they may have been too comfortable where they were at. Yep. I agree with that.

In fact, I believe that we are, we're in a time period, when the Lord is really looking for the ones that's going to worship him in spirit and in truth. You know, it's a bunch of scriptures before that. I mean, that's the one that we quote a lot. But yeah, he, you know, it starts out with the relationship piece. Go ahead.

I'm sorry, Ken. That is so cool that you said that Dwayne, because that's, you know, John 4 when Jesus talked to a woman at the well. And he says, he's talking about the true worshippers, the kind that the Father seeks. And it tells me in that scripture, there's different kinds of worshipers. But there is a true worshipper.

And this is, this is, I think, what we're talking about a little bit, the one that shows up, has a true compassion, becomes the skin and bones of Jesus. And, sit on the sidelines, and we'll make a difference. And that's good, man.

That's good stuff right there. And the question is, are you making a difference? If you're listening to the, and that's for all three of us as well.

And for our producer, Keith, are we making a difference? And if you're not making a difference, then it's time to pause. And maybe you're just distracted.

Maybe it's a subconscious thing that you're being taken away and don't realize it from the work. And, you know, and I would encourage you to pray about it. And as I say, encourage you to pray about it. Let me also come to this other point that no one shall come to the Father except through the Son. So if you haven't asked Jesus in the heart, your prayers are null and void.

Right? He's just not hearing them because you've not accepted Christ as your Savior. So that's the first step. But if you've done that, and you've got, you've got the communication channel open, then I would encourage you just to step back, pray to the Father and say, Father, what is it that you need me to be doing? Maybe even in your home, maybe even under your own roof, with your kids and your wife to learn how to actually pray.

You cannot imagine how many men I've asked, and pastors I've asked, do you have a daily time that you pray with your wife? And they just stare at me. And I already know the answer by their silence.

Foreign, very foreign to them, you can tell. Yeah, that's a topic that I addressed last week on the Men's Summit, is that prayer thing. So that very thing is about praying with your spouse, with your children, and alone as well. And you're so true, Pastor, that it is a deer in the headlight look that you get nine out of ten times. And you know, I think that goes back to men have been charged with, they're supposed to have all the answers.

They're supposed to be able to fix it if it's broken. So I think that requires a certain amount of humility to sit down and start praying with your wife and, and transparency and, and with your girlfriend and, or your children. And you know, the funny thing about that, a lot of people can't because how they live in front of them, you know?

So yeah, I mean, you know, what's that old, it's that old gospel hymn, get right church and let's go home. But that's, that's what it's about. So you made the statement there, Dwayne, how they live in front of them. So meaning that face that they see is different than the one they see on Sunday. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, men, if you're listening, you're better off just to be the bad person all the time, than you are to make a facade or be hypocritical and be one way on Sunday than to be, and then look totally different Monday through Saturday. Well, that's Bible.

Yep. So God needs you all the time the same way so he can work through you. He doesn't need a chameleon.

He does not need a chameleon. So, and I think that to, to encourage every other listeners, you know, God is, God is there. He's, he's, he's waiting. And, you know, the Bible says that we have a great crowd of witnesses that are cheering us on, you know, so, so we have people that are, are, are rooting for us. What, every time a soul comes into heaven, the angels rejoices, a party in heaven, you know?

So, so I, and I say that to say that, listen, no matter where you are or where you were, you can always make the best step forward. And that's really just reaching out to Christ and say, hey, you know, to worship in spirit and truth is, it's like this, be truthful with God. Come as you are truthfully. Lord, I can't do this. Lord, I need help. Lord, help me out of this. Lord, you see my situation. Lord, help me and worship him in the process of being truthful with him. He already knows. Yes, he does.

That's right. Well, in fact, Ken's, Ken's got a great testimony about that because, you know, he's the way God has seasoned him, much like you, Duane, and me through different seasons of our life that he can speak to that very thing. You know, when it seems the worst and at the very bottom, it's, it wasn't the worst, the very bottom. It was putting him in the best position. He needed to be in to take care of some, to do some soul winning and some caretaking.

I always refer to that as my corrective lenses. Oh, I needed this. I needed a season in the desert.

I needed to, I needed a season in the desert to get my corrective lenses and get, get back to where, get back to where I was called and what I was supposed to be doing. So it's an amazing thing to think about, you know, heavenly father loved us that much that, you know, he, he came to die for us. And, uh, and that personal relationship, Ken, that you were talking about when we, right before we lost you, that living relationship in last week's show, that living relationship. And why, Ken, why don't you just for the listeners and, uh, why don't you take a moment, if you don't mind, and just share a little bit more about what that living relationship is about. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, I, I talk about it a lot of, and Deb and I both, it's probably the heartbeat of our ministry. Uh, it, it, you know, I refer to it a lot as intimate relationship. Um, and, uh, maybe we can come back right after the break and talk about what an intimate relationship actually looks like. That would be, that would be great pastor that, uh, because I know a lot of people wanting to hear about that and I'm looking forward to it as well, that get a little bit deeper dive with my brothers. So folks, we'll be right back with you.

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Call 336-885-1987. Welcome back to ManTalk Radio. Right before the break, we were getting ready to lead off into a conversation with Ken. That's the good part about live radio and getting cut up and laugh a little bit. So I think we caught our producer off guard there.

He caught me off guard. So Ken, we were talking about what that living relationship, that intimate relationship looks like. We were asking what that looks like. So why don't you just take over here, Ken, and give us a little bit of a script, a description, if you will, of what that looks like.

Sure. You know, it's interesting because when I use the word intimate, I think if there's a man listening, he's probably thinking immediately, sexy lingerie. Because intimate is always intimate.

It's go time, you know, it's good stuff. But intimate is not necessarily a sexual thing. And that's where I think a lot of men really struggle to have an intimate, deep relationship with a living God.

It means you're walking day to day. If I told a dude, you know, somebody that I've known for a while and said, dude, are you walking in an intimate relationship with me? They would be taken back by that question.

What are you talking about? But I think one of the things we don't understand is that if I did life with you, like every day, and I celebrated your victories, I was there in the holidays, and we just did life together on a regular basis, we would come to love each other as brothers. And we would really know each other. And that's what God wants from us.

He wants to do life with us at that level. But that means we've got to talk to him every day about everything. And not just five minutes in the morning, on the drive to work or listening to Christian radio for a song or two. But I mean, I'm talking throughout the day, through the ups and through the downs. And, you know, I don't read a little devotional read once a day. I read three or four, and I love to journal, I love to write. And I write down my thoughts, I write down my ideas, I write down my feelings.

And I'm in a relationship. And so one of the things I feel my need is to really teach men, specifically men, how to be in a relationship with a living, a very real, a very personal, a very active, a very present God, not a distant, far off, universal concept God, but a very present one. If we can get that rolling along on a daily basis, maybe it takes a year or two, we can get some guys to drive closer and make people much more useful for the kingdom. That's great, Ken. And Ken often when he and I talk one on one, and we spend quite a bit of time together, he's been a brother in Christ for a long time.

He talks about being a hero maker, not anything about him, but investing in other men to bring them along. And who knows which of those men that Ken's investing into is going to be the next great evangelist or the next great men's leader or the next pastor. And Ken, in fact, is a byproduct of that type of mentoring and building into and me as well. Both of us were mentored by a pastor named Keith Carroll and from down in Mount Zion and Thomasville many years ago at a different church and Ken came out of the marketplace, became a pastor.

And within my life, God birthed the desire to do men's ministry. So that's the kind of investment Ken's talking about, the intimate relationship with Christ and that real day-to-day talk, hourly talk. If we think about that, Ken, when Jesus modeled it for us, he didn't do anything while he didn't go talk to the Father first. And even though he knew what the outcome was, he was still talking to the Father right up till the end, right? And that should be reassuring to every person listening out there that God cares about every thought that you have and every worry that you have.

And he's just sitting there waiting on you to talk to him. It's so cool because we've just circled all the way back around where we started with about the pandemic and what's going on in the church and we've just come back to what we started with and that's Jesus was one man who spent three years discipling 12 guys. He ministered to thousands but he discipled 12 and I think a lot of pastors, a lot of people feel like, well, greatness is if I can reach thousands of people and disciple thousands of people. That's never going to happen.

It never has happened. But we all have an opportunity, every one of us, to take on that role as a disciple maker and not only to be involved in it but to become a discipler. And Jesus lost one of them and I'm sure it was hard knowing that one of his 12 were going to betray him. And so it's not perfect but our role really is, in the days ahead, we should be focused a lot more not on hazers and lasers for our church to see how it could become cooler and more attractive and seeker friendly and we need to become a lot more focused on the 12 or the 10 or the 5 or the 3 or the people living under our roof. That'd be a good place to start. Well that's a great point, Ken, is it needs to start at home. I mean that's the first place.

That is your first chapel. That is your first, as a man and a husband and a father, that is your first line of responsibility is right there. And if you're having trouble in that area, that's when you need to grab hold of a mentor or a man to come alongside of, as General Boykin refers to as a battle buddy.

And we need to talk about that real quickly. It's so important having accountability, partner or group of men that you can surround yourself with and so who can, you know, multiple things. Be praying for you, be there in a family emergency, you know, they can ask the tough questions and especially if you're struggling with something or, you know, there's strongholds in your life that need to be broken, that group can be there to help you through that. And, you know, back to the comment, this circles right back to Jesus and the 12. He had the 12 later to become 11, but that was his circle, you know, of larger influence than the smaller circle and which tells you if we're modeling our life after him, we need a community of men around us and to be a part of a community of men. And, you know, years back, just a quick example that years ago, one of my best friends back in 2008, you know, he was part of our men's ministry and died suddenly of a massive heart attack. You remember, again, Brian St. Clair and just loved the Lord, was a servant's heart, was a giant of a man, six, eight, three, 85, 390, and just had a heart the same size that he was.

And when he died, it was just amazing to watch the men that were part of his life come around and support and watch after his family for the next five or six years to us, to us through some difficult times for his family, left a wife and a daughter. And but just that's what life's doing. Life is about.

It's doing life together. And it's a man we know we struggle for having those intimate relationships, but we're here to encourage you about that. And you got three brothers here talking to you that are all experiencing and understand the importance of it.

Yes, indeed. So, Ken, you know, we got a few more minutes here today. Let's how can we pray for you as a pastor and how can the listening audience pray for you as a pastor and a man? And Dwayne, I'll ask you the same thing. And, and, and let's just let's just be transparent.

Yeah, I appreciate that, man. That's a great question. I would love the players of direction and guidance of the Spirit. I know he lives within me. I know he's got a plan. I know we're going to be okay. But it's just you're heading into it's like the great adventure.

You don't necessarily know the path before you. You know, I had just a couple hours ago, my worship leader called and said, we have no worship team for Sunday. It's our first Sunday back. We've been gone. We've been out for eight weeks, nine weeks, I guess. And she said, What should we do?

We don't have any musicians. And that's kind of the stage, you know, we're moving forward into a new area. We're going to be okay. Yeah, let's just get there. We'll figure it out.

It never stopped Jesus from teaching and preaching. And so I have to be positive. And I have to be a thermostat. And not a thermometer. You know, I don't reflect the temperature around me.

I have to be a thermostat. But it looks good. And, and that's my challenge. And so that would read my prayers to say, don't keep me just, you know, in for the other pastors that may be listening that are needed that same thing is I need some some direction guidance, strength, courage moving forward. And just that what I said earlier, it's one thing to say it where we talk about while walking the talk. Yeah, it's one thing to say it, but we got to live it. And so, you know, if I if I say that the best way to stay positive is to look at what you have, not what you don't have.

I need to live that every day. Moving forward with faith. And people are watching. They're very tuned in right now.

Yes, they are. What the pastor is doing, thinking, saying that if you move forward, negative and down, it's gonna it's gonna get worse. Yeah, good point.

That would be be by response to your question. That's great. Dwayne. Well, you know, hey, I have so many prayer requests. But but the main thing is just pray that the Lord keeps his hands on Dwayne Kennedy, because with that alone, everything else is going to work out.

Amen. You know, so that's that's that's my prayer request. I always even when I pray, I said, Lord, place me in the center of your will, that I may be ever pleasing to you. And that's been in my prayer life for 30 years. You know, I always incorporate that in there.

So yeah, just pray that the Lord keep his hands upon Dwayne Kennedy. And I'll be all good. That's great doing good. Well, I think, can you pegged on something earlier, you're the you're the thermostat, not the thermometer, which is really good, which means you control the temperature. So you control, you know, with God's leading, you control if it's going down, or if it's going up. So that's that's really good. And folks, you know, that has a parallel to to you as a man in your home, you control the temperature in your home, you are the thermostat in your home. So whatever tone and temperature you set will be what your family follows. So we just encourage you, man, if you're, you're sitting on the sidelines, it's time to get off the sidelines, time to start leading your family, start praying with them, loving on them in a spiritual way, like you've never done before. And hey, it's okay not to have all the answers. God will come alongside and provide everything you need.

Just you got to start stepping and doing the right things. And if you haven't decided to follow Jesus, all you got to do is admit being a sinner, know that he died on the cross for you, you're covered by the blood, recognize that he rose on the third day, which is the sign of our eternal life, went to be with the Father, and just ask him to take hold of your life and guide you and get in the body of fellowship. We encourage you to make that decision today if you have not made that decision. We thank you for joining us. Dwayne, it's always good to see you and love your smiling face. Ken, great to have you back with us, brother.

I love you guys. And I wish you all the best in 2021. As we wrap up today's show, be assured that TAWCMM, Talking and Walking Christian Men's Ministry is building a community of men that are Christ followers with the desire to be servant leaders in their homes, communities, churches, and work environments. Check out our website for upcoming events and regularly scheduled meetings. Drop us a note for topics that you would like to have us visit in the future. Thank you for joining us on Man Talk today. Visit us at www.tawcmm.com.

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