This is the Truth Network Welcome to Masculine Journey. We're glad that you're with us today and if you've been a loyal listener to us on WTRU, we want to thank you for that. This is actually our last episode that's going to be airing live here in Winston-Salem area. So if you've been listening here, we're not going off the air, we're just switching to a different location.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so if you are listening to us on podcasts, thank you. We appreciate that. And so today's topic, we are talking about what lures does the enemy use on you in the season right now that you're in? I know we did this topic not too long ago.
It seems like we just did it probably four or five months ago, because I think I brought the topic to the team then as well. But you know, the thing is the enemy is constantly on us. Right? Do you know anyone that can honestly say the enemy is not always trying to get after them?
Nobody admits it, but I can't imagine somebody saying he's not. Yeah, yeah, it's not a matter of whether you're godly, it's not a matter of whether you follow God closely, the enemy still comes after you. And that for our first clip is going to talk a little bit about that. The first clip is from a movie called nefarious. Now, to be fair, I haven't seen it. It's called a Christian horror movie, which I didn't know they made such a thing.
I think this was one of the first ones they did. And the in the scene, what you have is you have an atheist doctor, who has went to death row to meet with somebody that's scheduled for an execution. And he's trying to figure out whether he's mentally stable, or not.
Is he crazy? Or is he does he know what he's doing? And so he goes to meet with this. And he's explaining why the enemy comes after mankind. And so right before this, the enemy, the the inmates talking about the demons talking about, you know, before man appeared, it was just God and the angels.
And then in Revelation will tell you in Revelation 12, that there was a an attempt to overthrow God in Scripture. Right. And so it didn't work out very well in Lucifer, who was later to be called Satan was cast down to the earth.
Which is where he is today. Right. And he's our tormentor, along with all the third of the angels that got cast down with him, which would be considered demons. And so when we pick up this clip, he's saying, you know, everything was kind of in its place until you were created. And so that's where we pick up the scene where he's talking about mankind coming on board. And so he'll talk about his master, which is Satan. Right. And he'll talk about the enemy, which is God to help you kind of keep in mind who he's talking about. Keep in mind which context it's coming from. Disobey.
Then his fate would mirror ours. And you didn't disappoint. Then came the tears among the wheat. In that moment, spirit became matter. Flesh became a vessel. Self will and self seeking began a lusting after sin and impurity. And man, created to be king over nature, became its slave. A master conquered and fettered and sin brought him and his descendants to us. And we began our forever mission to destroy you.
He made you in his image, but we remade you in ours. So that's it? That's your entire plan? Not to make something of your own, just to destroy us?
No. Our plan is to hurt him, to punish him. And we do that by destroying what he loves, which is you. You're nothing but a means to an end.
Pretty blunt, but pretty on point, at least from what I can gather from hearing things, reading things, watching other people talk about this topic. The enemy doesn't really care about you or me. It has nothing to do with us.
He doesn't like us, doesn't care for us, hates us, whatever. It's about getting back at God. Keeping in mind, he tried to overthrow God.
He couldn't overthrow God. And so the only way he could hurt God is to hurt the ones that he loves, like the demon was saying in the clip there, which is you and I. And so when he can convince us to take a bite on one of these lures and to chase after the temptation and to go with him wherever he's trying to take us, he knows that that's going to hurt God's heart.
And so that's what he's trying to do. And so I had something I was planning on talking about. I don't even remember what it was. It was something I was going to talk about. And as soon as I sent out the text string saying, hey, this is what the topic's going to be, from that point on it was, like my friend Robby says, unlike Donkey Kong. And the battle was against lust, literally within probably two minutes after sending it out. I wasn't even watching TV because right now I'm watching my daughter's dogs and one of them kind of loses its mind when the TV's on. And so I don't really have the TV on much.
Anyway, that's another story. But it's just this whole – the whole weekend, the last four or five days since I sent out the topic has just been a battle every day against it. And it's not something that I've really battled with for quite a while. And I think that's part of the challenge is when we think that we're past something is when we're most vulnerable. You know, when we really think that we've conquered something without God's – now God's help helped me get past it, but I've got to continually lean into him. Because if I don't continually lean into him, I'm going to succumb to whatever the enemy's pulling me in that direction.
Right? You know, because you're going to serve one master. You're either going to serve God or you're going to serve the enemy. You can't kind of be in the middle ground. There is no Switzerland or whatever – Sweden, whichever one's neutral. I don't remember.
Do you guys know which one's neutral? Switzerland. Okay, thank you. Is Sweden, like, real aggressive? No.
Okay. They had those army knives. Oh, that's true. They did make the army knives. That's a good point there, Robby. Sweden was also neutral in World War II. Oh, okay.
Yeah, that's probably why I get them confused, not knowing which one is which. But anyway, that's kind of what my battle has been like for the last few days is just saying, okay, all right, God, here we are again. I need to just kind of lean into you and get past this. And honestly, I was successful.
I was successful not giving in to the temptations. You know, as a matter of fact, I did start to watch some TV after the dogs were in bed and I had something on the TV and I'm like, yeah, I can't really watch this. So I had to just turn it off because I was like, this is not good for my heart. It's going to take me in a direction. I was starting a new series that I heard was really pretty good on TV and it got really dark really quick from the standpoint of very much things that I didn't need to think about or see. And I just said, no, I don't care how good the series is. I'm just going to shut it off and let my heart go there.
Because, you know, the enemy is just looking for some type of fertile ground, you know, that he could till and continue to produce fruit there of his kind. Yeah. Anyway, Pink Panther. Okay. Yeah. And that's one of the things that it's really hard sometimes in that moment to make the right decision. Because you're sitting there, you're watching something, you're just, oh, no, it's just what I do. And it's like, no, there's more on to it.
But that's where if you're thinking about God, talking about God, around God, and you're doing things, it helps you remember and recall some of that. It's like, oh, I can't go there. Right now, I'm in a bad place.
If I do it later, maybe I can. But right now, I just know. Yeah. I mean, it's not anything that I couldn't have watched, you know, last week and had an issue with it. But I could just feel my heart. And I'm like, oh, no, something, no, this isn't good. Right?
Where I'm at right now in my vulnerability, this is not a good place for me to be watching TV. Right. And so I put it on something silly like The Big Bang Theory or something. I don't know what it was.
Or just something that was meaningless and had nothing to it just so that my mind would not want to go there. Yep. But anyway, we do have a boot camp coming up. When is it, Rodney? I have no idea. The weekend before Thanksgiving.
You didn't know that? No. Okay. It's the 20th through the 23rd of November. Yeah.
Yeah. The weekend before Thanksgiving. Danny, when is it? The weekend before Thanksgiving.
The 20th through the 23rd. That's what I heard anyway. Where can they register at?
At masculinejourney.org. Okay. That's good. I don't think we say that enough on the air that people wouldn't know how to register for our boot camp unless we really just told them again and again and again. Yeah.
That's very true. Yeah. Well, we've got about a minute left until we go to break.
Does anything you guys would like to add on this topic before we go? Robby? Well, you know, this is a wonderful place to practice humility in that I've known several people, including Sam, that trusted me to get a text to say, hey, this weekend I'm struggling with this. Can you pray for me? You know, and it's amazing to me sometimes I can remember going to friends with similar situations saying, you know, man, I'm right in it right now. Can you? And it's almost like the second you put the light on it and somebody else starts and you tell a friend this is what I'm struggling with, the light comes on, boom, it's gone. And because you've resisted it and you stand firm and he says, well, this is a losing opportunity and he just backs off.
Yeah. Until he regroups and comes again. It takes unbelievable humility to send out that text or to tell that friend, you know, that you need help. Well, we'll talk with you after the break. It is a tight bond of men. Everybody's the same. And each and every time that I've come to boot camp, I've learned something different. And not one man has ever been there neglecting not to take time out to talk or to share. It's serious business and you need to come one time to break bread with the men and fellowship, fill the atmosphere, hear the people pray and get down to earth about what's going on in life and get real.
Register today at MasculineJourney.org. Welcome back to Masculine Journey and oh yeah, Temptation. That's right. The reason I wanted to play that bump, it's from a lady named Diana Krall and it's not really a good song. It was a great song from the standpoint of the jazz music. It was really good and her voice was good and I only heard a few lyrics and a couple choruses and that's the choruses put together. Because it goes on to say that basically she says, yeah, I just give in to it every time. So that's not really what we're trying to do.
That's not the whole outcome. But the reason I wanted to play that was she makes Temptation sound so good with the way she sings. And she's just singing it. And that's what the enemy does. He makes it alluring. He makes us want to chase after it.
It makes the fake look so real that we know it's not real and we don't care. It's just something that we feel like we have to chase after. If it was something that was undesirable, it didn't touch something in us that we desired somehow. And I'm not saying it's a healthy desire, but I said it's something we desire.
If it didn't touch something there, it wouldn't work. Or if it wasn't attractive to us in some way, it wouldn't work. He just knows that he's got to make that happen. And when you know the history of the enemy, when he was Lucifer and he was in heaven, he was the most adorned angel. When you look back in Scripture and they talk about him, it talks about how he was a thing of beauty. And so he knows how to lure people is through beauty of one sort or another.
Or to speak to them. And Harold, you're a jazz kind of person, right? And so you've probably heard of that singer before. Oh, yeah. In fact, I made a big mistake in our pre-show when he came up with that. I'm sitting there and I'm listening to it. And this is a singer named Diana Krall. I made the serious mistake of saying, oh, yeah.
Did you like that? And the reason that it listed that, oh, yeah, is I have at least two of her CDs. She's a very attractive young woman and a very good singer, piano player.
And I really react to her music in a positive way. But I got teased about it. But it did bring up the idea that I'm almost 84 years old. When I was a young guy, I was really troubled a lot with what you were talking about, Sam, was the idea of lust and so forth. And I can remember thinking, boy, when I get old, I won't have this issue.
But, wrong answer. He can come after you even though you're old. And he finds different ways of presenting your weakness to you. And while things are not the same as when you're young, you don't get a free ride just by getting old.
You still got to fight it. Because he knows what kind of lure to use and he knows where to place that lure. You guys talk about fly fishing and how you have to get the right fly and present it in the right way. He's good. He's good.
Yeah. He's been around a lot longer than you have, so he knows your story probably better than you do, honestly. Yeah, older than Harold even.
It was a young Lucifer back in those days. But he knows mankind's story and he knows what works on mankind. And so he may not know exactly. He can't read our minds. I want to make sure we're clear.
He doesn't have the power that God has at all. But he's observant and he knows our story and he knows where we've been wounded and he knows where we've sought comfort in the past to try to medicate those wounds. And that's really what happens with a lot of that stuff is we've been wounded and we try to find a salve or something that's going to make us feel better. And so we look towards something of comfort, whether that is lust, overeating, just make the list.
It could be anything that you go to for comfort and the enemy will throw that at you in an unhealthy way. Yeah, if you go back to your teenage years and just start thinking about, well, what did you think about most days? What went on?
What happened? And you look, oh, all my buddies, everybody is thinking and doing a lot of the same things. It doesn't take long to figure us out. No. No, it doesn't. So Robby, you actually have this next clip and so I want to have you talk a little bit about that.
All right. Well, this is one of my favorite movies, actually. It's the movie Aladdin.
It's animated. The original one was Robin Williams, which to me he played this part masterfully as the genie in Aladdin's Lamp. And so in this particular scene, as we pick it up, Aladdin wanted to go after Jasmine, but the girl that had come into the market because she was trying to be normal. And so she kind of was infatuated with Aladdin because he was a normal guy, not because he had anything going for him, but Aladdin thought he needed to be a prince. And so when he found the genie, one of his wishes that he got of his three wishes was to be a prince so that he could go after Jasmine. And in this particular scene, genie, who you can hear is a bee, he's made himself a bee in order to kind of help Aladdin through this to try to win Jasmine. And he's trying to give him instructions along the way. And I think the clip speaks for itself when you figure out what's kind of going on that Aladdin is trying to pose to be something he's not.
The hair, the eyes, anything, pick a feature. Princess Jasmine, you're very... Wonderful, magnificent, glorious, punctual. Punctual? Beautiful.
Nice recovery. I'm rich too, you know. Yeah. The daughter of a sultan. I know. A fine prize for any prince to marry.
Right, right. A prince like me. Right, a prince like you.
And every other stuffed shirt swaggering peacock I've met. Maybe, maybe! Just go jump off a balcony. Stop her! Stop her!
Want me to sting her? Okay, fine. But remember, be yourself. Yeah, right. You're right. You're right. You aren't just some prize to be won.
You should be free to make your own choice. I'll go now. What? What?
How are you doing that? It's a magic carpet. It's lovely. You don't want to go for a ride, do you?
We could get out of the palace, see the world. Is it safe? Sure. Do you trust me? What? Do you trust me?
Yes. Yeah, as he offers her his hand and says, do you trust me? You know, there's the scene where she recalls when he was in the market and trying to get her to jump over off her roof. And he holds out his hand like that and says, do you trust me? And she immediately recognizes him as Aladdin. And, of course, she already liked Aladdin.
She just didn't like the poser that he was trying to present himself as, which you just find that whole thing fascinating. And it boils down to some level of trust, right? Do you trust that God made you the way that you should be and that God would allow you to be yourself in the situation, even especially with Jeannie telling you to be yourself?
I love that part of it. You know, recently, the lure that's come after me is candidating for another church, and I'm preaching sermons to people that will be voting on me in the next, you know, week or so. And so you have this real tendency as God asks you to say something or tell a particular story. And those people who know me well know I can go out there pretty well and stretch your faith as to whether Robby is pulling your leg. You know, in other words, I have some stories that are out there.
And this week, he wanted me to go out about as far as I go out, and I was like, man, that, you know, and he's like, be yourself. And it was a real temptation to do that. And it was just fun to walk through that, and it really ended up to be do you trust me, you know?
And then really cool, I was studying Ephesians 6 this week. I was still looking at that word stand in Hebrew. And the fascinating idea of that is whenever you're standing, when you are going to be in battle, the first thing you've got to do is stand. You've got to stand your ground.
You've got to stand against the enemy. It says that obviously throughout the Scriptures, but the opposite of that is bowing. And are you going to bow down to the world? Are you going to bow down to the enemy? Are you going to bow down to not trusting God? Or are you going to stand for the truth?
And are you going to see what that is? And that's the very first thing that he instructs us to do is to put on the belt of truth, which is, you know, you know the Scripture has this to say, you know, this is what you can really hold on to. It's a real opportunity because that battle is on you, whether you're trusted or not. And so when it says girt on, it's when you put on the belt of righteousness, like Elijah wore that leather belt, it's literally to go to battle. Like it's like, you know, put on this armor because there is a battle at hand and open war is on you, whether you trust it or not.
And if you wake up in the morning, it's a real good idea to girt up because it's coming. Oh yeah, it doesn't, even, I think a lot of times we think because we're getting tempted so much, it's because we've done something wrong. I mean, honestly, the more you try to walk with God, the more the enemy is going to just raise his game. He's going to come at you more. The more you'll fight anger, the more you'll fight lust, the more you'll fight whatever your flavor that the enemy comes after you with, right? Whatever your particular thing is, he'll come at you. And as Harold said, in many different ways, you know, he may not try the approach that's worked on you before, but he'll come around the corner and try it again.
But it'll be the same approach just at the core. Right, it's just like when you're fishing, you know, and you've been throwing spinners all day and they quit biting the spinners, you know. It's time to put on a worm. It's time to put on a minnow or something.
And one of his greatest tricks is to convince you he doesn't exist and warfare isn't a real thing. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, if you've been listening to us on WTRU for a while, we want to thank you for doing that. You can still pick us up at any of the podcast locations. Just look up Masculine Journey Radio.
Let me say that clearly this time, Masculine Journey Radio. You can look that up at Spotify, Apple, any podcast place, YouTube, Facebook, we're on Facebook. You can listen to our show there. You can also go to masculinejourney.org, listen to our show and register for a bootcamp while you're there. You can do two for one bootcamp, November 20th through 23rd. We'd love to have you there. It's been great talking with you. We'll see you next time.
