Hope

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.

We're just excited to have you guys join in on this. What this is, is a band of brothers. And the band of brothers that we have today, we've got a pair of terries.

A pair of terries we've got. Big Jim, the original, very unique individual that he is. We have Grant, and we have Rodney, and I am Robby Dilmore, the host of The Christian Car Guy Show. I didn't say Andy. I already mentioned him, though, when I went to him. So it's the Andy.

The one and only Andy. Usually the host is Sam Main, and unfortunately, a lot of times people come up with a topic and then they don't show up that way. But Sam had some stuff come up at work so he couldn't be with us today, so I'm getting a chance to host. And you may be wondering why you tuned into this show. Well, we're going to talk about where is your hope.

Greensboro, Spartanburg, Northern Georgia area. But anyway, we have a podcast, too, that you'll want to link up to. We've got this radio show that we started doing years ago, and then when podcasts came out, we do two shows. So look for us, Masculine Journey on Spotify or Apple or whatever site.

Actually, there's three. There's a Joyride, which is absolutely fun, that is on our podcast platform. It's an excerpt from the shows. As well as the regular radio show, and then there's After Hours. I hate to interrupt Robby, but I did want to get that in. I wanted to make sure that they know about our podcast.

Where is it that you feel like you can really come up against this? Well, I realize that the Sunday School answer is Jesus. Okay, I get that.

Sure sounds like a squirrel, though. That's an old joke. Jim hasn't told you the rest of it. What we do in this show is we use movie clips to kind of illustrate our point. Usually Sam would choose his clip first, so in Sam's honor, I'm going to do that. I don't know if any of you have seen The House of David.

I highly recommend it. It's a beautiful artistic view of what happened in David's life, especially in the early years, actually before he took on Goliath and then when he took on Goliath. But what you're going to hear in this clip is David's go-to, right? Here he was, this big giant was standing out in front of all Israel and taunting them. Unfortunately, there was no champion. Nobody would stand up against him, the whole army, until David shows up just to bring his big brother some food.

And he makes this choice. And what you'll hear in this short excerpt of parts of the scenes from the movie, from The House of David from the TV series, is that David is talking actually to, I guess her name is Mikkel, the wife that he would get from Saul's daughter, about Saul's armor that doesn't fit him quite right, and he's got to take it off. Well, if you read that actual verse in 1 Samuel chapter 17, you're going to find that he says, I haven't proven this armor. He had Saul, which was a great big tall guy, and David wasn't that tall, and he didn't have a king-size body to go with that king-size armor. Because at this point in time, he was still a boy to some extent, but I love what he says, I haven't proved it.

Well, therein is the point. Is what part of your armor, when you think about the belt of truth or the blessed plate of righteousness and all these different things that are mentioned in Ephesians 6, what have you proved? What do you know is your go-to when all of a sudden this particular thing happens? And then you can hear David's, right? Because what he asks for after he takes off the armor is, I need a stream.

That's a fascinating idea, right? I need a stream. And the reason he needed a stream, for those of us who know the story, know he needed a stone. And then when he gets to the stream, he meets up with Jonathan. And Jonathan, you may know from the Bible, was David's best friend. They loved one another, but at this point in time, they weren't like that. This is when they were first getting to know each other. And Jonathan is challenging him like, dude. And you're going to love that. The next thing you're going to hear in this clip, which I think is absolutely beautiful, is Samuel the prophet's prayer, which again, this is not out of the Bible because we don't know what Samuel prayed, but it's a beautiful thing. And what he asked for, and I'm going to tell you to just spoil the clip a little bit for you, he asked for David to have the courage of Moses, which is a phenomenal thing, to have that kind of courage and the strength of Samson.

He might need that. Then you're going to hear the actual result, which, you know, it's just kind of a dramatic way of listening to what may have been like if you'd been standing there on that scene with everybody shivering in their boots, when all of a sudden this rock gets thrown across the field. Whoa, that's interesting. I apologize. I hit the wrong button. I must go as I am.

And I need to find a stream. Am I the only one who believes the old stories? Who this beast has defied? It's not about the greatness of the giant.

It is about the greatness of God. I feel God is not with us. He is not with us. Here, where we cower. He is with us there when we choose to face our fears.

How will you do this? You have no armor, no training. Will you be filled with the courage of Moses? Yes, with the strength of Samson. Yeah, it's an amazing thing to me, that whole picture of what David said there, is you can hear that God is not with us when we cower. And I don't know if you had that experience, but it's fascinating. It's here when we face the giant, when we face our fears, so to speak, that God can be with you. And so there's a level of faith there that's unbelievable that he would take the field that day. But that faith was not found in a vacuum. It wasn't found in just a young boy that showed up at the battle scene that day. He had fought a lion. He had fought a bear. And he knew that, and it shows this beautifully, by the way, in the series, that after that lion had come and took his sheep, and he had to go into the lion's den in order to get that sheep back, he'd been down this road before, and he'd seen how God could come through for that, and how he could have the courage to face the lion, and how he could see what God would do when he faced his fears. And so his go-to was based on a number of things. It was obviously his testimony of his own experience of what he'd seen God do.

It was also his own prayer life, which clearly David had an amazing prayer life, but it was also the prayers of Samson, the prayers of others. So it's a fascinating thing that if you're in the masculine journey, you would be part of the masculine journey women group. That's when all the guys start talking all the time amongst each other on their chat.

My wife says it's the ladies, but don't talk to him. I've got to get that finished in the two minutes. Okay, so when people have prayer needs, they share those, right? And sometimes they call a broken arrow, which means that we need air support, like you need to pray right now I got a serious problem. And so one of the places that I clearly in my own life, I can't tell you the times, even this week, when I felt the prayers of other people that I'd had the humility to say I need your help, you know, I'm going through this. And Danny, one of the guys that's with us right now, is going through this battle with cancer and to be honored with his prayer needs by the hour is a great honor. But it's a beautiful thing that, you know, but in your own life, you know, there's the question, if you're listening today, and I'm so grateful that you are, is in your own life, what is it that you're going to have that kind of faith to face that giant?

And who is coming alongside you like Jonathan and like Samuel and Mikel and this, you know, because it's not a thing that's just you on your own. And again, we want to be part of that. If you could join us at the next bootcamp that's coming up, obviously, as we talked about in November the week before Thanksgiving, we hope you'll go to masculinejourney.org.

There you're going to find links to all the podcasts and the broadcasts and what we're about. Yeah, the bootcamp, the whole deal. So what do you think, Andy, about this topic?

Yeah. Yeah, I think we were talking earlier, you have these testings these times God can only be glorified in the testing, I believe, and if you just can handle everything on your own, and I think a lot of times it takes that, that test to prove for allow you to prove your armor in God. And, you know, I think all of us have a testimony where we tried to do this all independently from, we tried to put, we tried Saul's armor.

Saul's armor didn't work, you know, so we're, this is our whole process. This is our story. You'll hear a lot about our stories on these shows, and it'll tie to the clips, but hopefully you'll get a perspective on how God's come into our lives as men and our unique desires and all and how we're walking out our faith with him. All right, well, Jim's got comments for about our ladies group. Go ahead, Jim, if you want to. I started the group, remember?

I'm a North Carolina girl. What we have in our bootcamp is something that makes you stronger and it 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. What brings you here this weekend? So I met Rob, he invited me to come to the bootcamp and there was just so many doors that were closed before I was able to come here, but God allowed these things to happen. And I said, you know, God, I'm going to, I'm going to ultimately acknowledge what's going on for all these doors to be open for me to come to this camp.

I just want to see you. So throughout that time, since I've been here, you know, just the, the illumination of God speaking to me through my heart and through my mind and through my soul is just, it's went to a whole nother level since I've been here at the bootcamp. The covenant of silence after the talks and being able to go out and just submit myself to being able to hear from God and what we've been working on. And it's just been transparent in my life, the level of the sanctification process, the discipleship process, and coming here, I feel like this is exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Register today at masculinejourney.org. So that's Looking for Heaven in the Real World by Steven Curtis Chapman. Just some of us, if you didn't hear the, I think you could hear them pretty good, but the, the lyrics from that cries from the heart to find the missing part. Where's the hope? Where's the peace that will make this life complete? And that's what we're looking for is that, you know, a lot of times we try to, we're looking for love in all the wrong places and it ends up impacting our lives. So we're looking for hope in all the right places. Go ahead, Grant. You want the true truth.

That's hope. The true truth. And right before the break, Jim was explaining the ladies.

I didn't want anybody to miss out on. And my wife frequently comments on, you guys are worse than women when she hears my ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. I said, Lord, would you, I mean, Carolyn, well, I guess she's my Lord too. She is explaining that those dings are just prayers and going up will sometimes keep her from commenting on us sounding like women. So there's a question, right?

So in your own life, when, when you're thinking about it, where, where do you go when you are in that situation where you're trying to find that peace, that hope that we're talking about? And so next up we got Rodney and Rodney has a clip actually from a previous Masculine Journey show years ago. If you want to set that up a little bit. Well, I really don't know the clip since somebody else actually put this in for the show. So go right ahead and set it up, Robby.

Good return. Well, this clip is actually Vinny Menino, which was very dear friend of mine for many, many, many years. And Vinny had been through some horrible things. I mean, one of the worst, I'm sure if he were here, he would tell you was that he was in Korea when he was a very young man, you know, probably about the age of David when he took on Goliath.

And he would tell you about how the North Koreans would send over their children fitted with bombs and all these kinds of things in order to try to wipe you out. And he, he told me that, you know, one time he was shooting children until the barrel of his gun melted. And it was something that he had to live with for the rest of his life. And, you know, it still broke him the last time I talked to him about it. I mean, it was one of those things that like, man, it's something that God, you know, somehow or another allowed into your life and how do you put things around that. So I just wanted to give you a little bit of the backstory of the man that's speaking now. So it's not like he doesn't have any experience with this. I mean, he had quite of an experience growing up in Long Island, affiliated with the mafia actually for a period of time, and then finding grace through his Lord Jesus Christ.

And I always called him the Catholicist because he started out Catholic, ended up Methodist. And so here's Vinny. He left a note. There is no more hope for me. You know, but I, you know, the way I see things, there's always hope. The thing of it is, is that you got to grab it and hang on to it.

And it's given to you. And if you don't use it, you'll be elusive because you don't have hope. And it's so easy to live life without hope. We want hope. We think about hope.

But everything we do every single day is so much things that are other than hope. We try to put faith in the wrong places. We try to think about doing the right thing but do it the wrong way or do the wrong thing in the right way. It's hard for us as a human to really get things aligned in God's format and his surroundings. It's just not a simple thing. We mess it up all the time when saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing in different places. It's nothing that you need to look at as, oh, I have to be perfect. You just have to be in God's will, which is not the easiest thing to do because then you're like, well, what is that?

We ask too many questions. It's not always as difficult as we make it to be. It can be a lot easier to just pray and ask for his guidance and then walk out in that the best you can do. Read his Word. Get into his Word. Understand what he says to us in so many different situations because, again, all we have today is something that is built up upon what the Word was written about. You can go back to the source code, the Bible, and get about any answer you ever want to get. I've never found anything that you couldn't pare back down into what the Word says.

Doesn't it just come from you and for you? Darrell Bock So in your own life, like, you've got some challenges. Scott Horner Sure.

Darrell Bock And where are you going right now with all that? Scott Horner Well, right now, like with the divorce happening and things like that, it's not the – I don't live in that moment. I'm past it. My wife, you know, made it very clear that she didn't want to be with me.

And I was like, wow, okay. If you don't want to be in the marriage, I'm not going to sit there and fight you over all this stuff. I've said what I've said, and you're not happy with this. So I've got to move on. Well, where do I move on to?

Where do I go? I've got wonderful men here. I've got wonderful people at the church. I've got great believers that I'm surrounded with.

I've got the ones at work that I know. It's a great surrounding to be with people you can communicate with, clearly. I mean, any subject that comes up, you can go and take a biblical concept to it. You can apply God's Word to it. I listen to people do it every day with me. And I'm like, oh, man, that's great.

I wish I'd have thought of that, you know, because it's a great place to be. Darrell Bock So what of all those verses, or what part of God's Word right now are you hanging on to? Dr. John Anker Well, right now I'm actually reading through Acts. So I started, you know, a few years ago just reading a few chapters, verses, and everything in a context where in probably a little over three years I'll get through the New Testament.

And that's just something to do. And I still read the Old Testament. We've got things that we're into at church that we go through there, reading those books.

But it's just, I would never say that, oh, I'm just in here right now. But right now I love reading something that I've never read before. And I'm getting pretty close to the end where I can get into Romans, because that's what I'm going to actually end with. But right now in Acts just reading through all the things that happened with all the different disciples and watching them build on each other is quite amazing. I mean, their lives are, you think they're just simple, and it's like, no, they're about to be killed, and then they get saved. And that's going to end here.

And the next one, because I'm about the last five chapters, I'll go read through those. And I just think that's a great story to think about your own life. Yeah, he's going to let you live. He'll save you from something, but it's only for a while. It's not forever. Darrell Bock But then you get to live forever. So that's part of the deal. Mark Bailey Yes, you do.

But it's not in this life. Darrell Bock Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Mark Bailey Right?

Much better life. Darrell Bock My opinion is, like what you said, I want to repeat. Mark Bailey Yeah, you want to repeat. So Terry, how about you? I'll take this, Terry, whichever Terry.

Terry 1. Darrell Bock Well, when you know you have Jesus, like Rodney said, you don't have to be perfect, because he's perfect. And you lift it up into prayer. You have your brothers lift all these things up to prayer and put it in his hands and know that all things work together for those who love God. Mark Bailey So in your own experience, right now in your life, Terry, you've got this situation, and this situation, that situation. Have you got a scripture you're hanging on to? What piece of the armor have you proved?

Where you know that you can find some peace? Darrell Bock Rest it in Jesus. He's got everything. And so as a human, there's nothing I can do about it.

But I can put it in his hands. And he's going to take care of it one way or another. Mark Bailey So essentially, are you saying prayer? Darrell Bock Yeah, yeah, prayer. Mark Bailey And knowing Terry as I do, he has a phenomenal prayer life. And he's quiet, as you might tell, didn't just jump at that mic in order to be able to talk.

But you know, there's no doubt that prayer is a go-to. How about you, Terry? Are there Terry Two? Darrell Bock Terry Two. Mark Bailey Actually, it was Terry One, but Terry Two, however you want to do it. Darrell Bock I'll be Two today. Mark Bailey Okay.

Darrell Bock Okay. You know, as we talk about hope, and I was looking at the seven pieces of armor, and I got stuck on the shoes of peace. And I said that because there's a journey in my life where God is leading me in this journey. And as I shared earlier with you guys about the confidence in this trip that I'm taking with God, you know, so I think the shoes, if I had to pick a piece of armor, it would be the shoes that I have to put on and travel in peace because I can't be combative in this thing.

I can't have my way. You know, I have to trust his way and believe those shoes, tie them on tight, and just start moving and so far, you know, so far, traveling in that direction with those shoes, and I've been able to do things that I would not have been able to do had it not been for him. Darrell Bock You know, it's a really cool thing. Later on, actually, in 2 Samuel, David's son Absalom is killed, and there's this really cool passage where two runners are sent out. Now, these runners, in those days, that's how they got their news, either good news, which is the feet fitted with the gospel of good news, right?

And so it's that idea of good news that you could tell by the way somebody ran if they had good news. And when I think about Terry, when you see him coming, if you know him, am I right? When you see Terry coming, he runs like he has good news, and so your feet are fitted, from my standpoint, with the gospel of peace, because when you see him coming, I'm like, yeah, that's it.

That's it. It's a beautiful thing because, you know, there's other scripture that says beautiful are the feet of the one who bring good news, and they're exactly what Paul was referring to, beautiful stuff. How about you? A beautiful thing in Saint Patrick's Breastplate, I don't know if you've ever prayed it, but it says, Christ in the heart of every man that speaks of me.

Christ in the heart of every man that thinks of me. When they think of you, do they think of Jesus? Well, it'd be fun to think they would, and I would like to think that way of you, but in order for that to happen, I got to meet you. You got to come to the boot camp. It's coming up in Royston, Georgia, the week before Thanksgiving. Go to masculinejourney.org, register for it today, please. I want to meet you. This is the Truth Network.