S04 Ep 43 Roy Returns,Hardware failures, and Mind over Matter.

Welcome to Man Talk, a ministry sponsored by TAWCMM, talking and walking Christian men's ministry, where we're devoted to breaking down the walls of race and denomination and to point men to their God-assigned roles.

Now here's your hosts, Will Hardy and Roy Jones Jr. Welcome back to Man Talk Radio. Will, it seems like six months since I've been here. I tell you, I need to take a picture to see what you look like still, Roy, I tell you. Well, I'm still ugly as ever, so that's a good news. Not that much hasn't changed, so it's so good to be back with you, Will.

And Johnny, it's good to see you again. Will, you know, we were talking earlier in the day about what we were going to chat about this on the session, and one of the things that came to mind, based on the sermon, I watched, was the battle of the mind, or battle in the mind, and just want to kind of open that up, because I think that's where men struggle the most, right, is in their mind. Well, everybody struggles in their mind. Everything goes through the mind, and you know, we talked about this on a Man Talk, when we was talking about the whole body, soul, and spirit, 1 Thessalonians 5 and 23, you know, that each and every one of us, as we see things, you know, with our five senses, and hear things, because those are the two primary senses that, you know, actually affect how we respond from an external stimuli type of way, things we see and things we hear, and they also drive an emotional response. So with men, you know, if they see, like, a woman walking by who looks real nice, that's going to drive an emotional response.

And so, and likewise with women. But what happens is, if we let those things that we see and hear start dictating to us whether or not we're going to respond in an emotional way, and when we respond in an emotional way, then that's emotions driving the decisions we make, and we're not letting Christ drive those decisions. Yeah, that's a good analogy, Will, and one of the things that you mentioned was the stimuli that causes either emotion or visual stimuli or a reaction, you know, with men especially, you know, which we always talk about what's going on with men, and as you said, everybody, but the mind, those thought processes going on in the mind, sometimes just idle time, those things start to turn, right?

Because you start thinking about stuff that is either going on in your life, something that's happened to you in your past, or even looking towards the future. If things don't seem optimistic, we'll call it, then it's easy to go down a valley, right, in your thought process. Oh, absolutely, you know, there's rabbit holes everywhere, and I think what men have to do is we have to condition ourselves just like we condition ourselves to do things that we want to do, and some of them that we shouldn't be doing, we condition ourselves, we need to condition ourselves to also do those things that we should be doing. Exactly, so, you know, just like an athlete, absolutely, you got to train your mind, and you got to train your thought process, and you got to train your, the disciplines that you need to be into on a daily basis.

You got to go to the weight room, you know, you got to eat right, you know, you got to get enough sleep, get enough fluids, and things like that in you, depending on when you're training, so it's just like, yeah, we train the body, we train the mind. Right, right, so let's bring up the scripture that Adrian was talking through in that sermon you and I referenced, was 2 Corinthians 10, 3 through 5, for though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world, on the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments in every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ. And see, every time, again, going back to what we see and what we hear, you know, there's a lot of things we see that we shouldn't be looking at. There's a lot of things we hear we should avoid, and of course, we use this analogy and example all the time when we're talking about hearing and seeing. We use this during the breakfast when we're talking to the men, and that is when, if you're sitting on a jury in a courtroom and a lawyer knows that he's going to have an objection against the other lawyer, his meaning is to plant the seed, even though he knows he's going to be objected for the thing that he's about to say. Right, right.

So, and now all of a sudden you hear the judge say something like, ah, jury, disregard everything you just heard. Now, how can you do that, Roy? Yeah, you can't.

You can't. That's my point. My point is he wanted to simply plant the seed, even though he knew he was going to get an objection.

And see, that's the same way with men. What's happening is when we allow things to enter into the conscious mind through our awareness, and then they're deposited into our subconscious mind, and once they're in there, then your spirit have to do something with that. So that's why when he says here we're not warring with weapons of the flesh, we're not warring against things we can see, those things that are tangible. We're not warring against that. We're warring against the invisible. But again, when we allow the visible to override those things that are invisible, now we get in trouble because we start yielding to those things. Right. And then some of the things that are invisible, too, are not good as well, right?

Oh, absolutely. That's where Satan's coming after you in those seed plants, some thought processes, or whatever's going on, right? It takes you down a path of an unhealthy line of thinking, as we've talked about before. And see, those things and thoughts, once that seed is planted, it's going to grow and manifest itself if we continue to give attention to it. If we still focus on that thing that is unhealthy for us spiritually, it's going to begin to grow. Well, one of the things that we talked about, Will, in the past, and we'll bring this back up again on this show, is that the number of thoughts going through a person's mind, 50,000 to 70,000 conscious thoughts, as Johnny and I had talked about earlier, versus those subconscious thoughts.

So 50,000 to 70,000 a day. And if you get in the wrong channel or down the wrong path, let's just call it negative thoughts, right? Just whatever it may be.

It could be sinful thoughts, it could be depressional type thoughts, it could be oppressive type thoughts. If you get in that channel, it's easy to stay in that channel and it just feeds on itself, right? So all of a sudden that becomes part of your life, part of that moment, part of that hour, part of that day. And then the next thing you know, you've strung a week of that together, two weeks, a month, and you end up in depression, end up in a place of dissatisfaction. And then who jumps in in the middle of that? Enemy jumps in right in the middle of it, because he's probably even started it, and now you're right where he wants you to be. And if you're in the middle of these things, you're not being productive for the kingdom. You're not being your total self.

You're not being God's image in yourself because you're doing things and you're thinking about things and you're going down a path that God didn't intend you to be a part of. And this is why the scripture called that a stronghold. Yeah. So when it's a stronghold, because what it's doing literally, and when I think of strongholds, the picture that I get in my mind is when you have two wrestlers wrestling. And so you have one guy who puts another guy in a headlock, so to speak. And so now he's a stronghold against him because he's got him in a headlock. And so now he becomes immobile, and then when the guy's trying to get out, of course, he applies more pressure. This is what the enemy attempts to do. As we attempt to withdraw from the very same thing that's tempting us, now he applies pressure to say, you know, this is good for you. You know, you want to look, you know, you want to hear X, Y, Z.

And so now we start drifting into that area. But see, the verse here says, but we are mighty through God. The only way you can be mighty through God is that you have the God kind of mind. So Philippians 2 and 5, let this mind be in you, which is also in Christ Jesus. So I have to have the mind of God of Christ. I have to let that mind be dominant. So how does a person get that mind of Christ, Will?

If you think about back to the earlier conversation about the training and the disciplines and how do you get the mind of God? Well, see, and I think for most men, let me say this first before we talk about the specifics is they want a quick fix. You see, give me a quick fix and just give me a quick answer and let me just go with that. So they don't have to really do any work. Right.

They want the monster drink version. Exactly. But you have to work at it. You have to work at being faithful to God.

You do. You know, and part of that, as we stressed on the show before, is that you have to continuously have a mind of prayer. You have to have that communication with God on a daily basis. And reading on a daily basis. And you have to get into the word and read. But see, not only read, but you have to read to comprehend. So reading is fine. And the enemy say, well, go ahead and read, but don't remember and apply what you've read.

Right. So the application and understanding of what you read is just as important as actually doing the reading. So let's recap real quick, because you're fighting the battle in the mind, right?

This is the battle of the mind. So in order to win this battle, you need to be disciplined. You need to train your mind up. You need to be in the word.

You need to be in prayer each day. Absolutely good. And what I think with those things is when you have a mindset of the Lord, the Lord indeed will give you the thoughts, just like the enemy gives you the thoughts.

The Lord will give you the thoughts that you need in order to overcome those strongholds. Great. Good show, Will. Brief one on this particular time slot. But we need to apologize for last week, because we missed you.

Because we had basically an equipment failure and a technical difficulty weren't able to record. But we're going to try a new format with you folks. We're going to do a few short bursts in our podcast. And I believe we're about ready to wrap this one up.

And one last thing. We'll let you edit all this out, Johnny. We want to tell you about the cookout coming up December 3rd in Madison, North Carolina at Persimmon Acres. If you'd like to join us, drop an email out to us at info at talkum.com. And we'll give you details.

It'll be from 12 to 230. If you happen to be in the North Carolina area in the central part of the state, we'd love for you to come join us. Folks, have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much for joining us. And we will be back to you soon.

God bless. As we conclude today's show, TAWCMM, Talking and Walking Christian Men's Ministry, are building a community of men to be servant leaders in their home, communities, churches, and work environment. Check us out at our website for upcoming events and regular scheduled meetings. Don't forget to send us an email for topics that you would like us to visit in the future. Thank you for joining us today on Man Talk. Visit us at TAWCMM.com.