This is the Truth Network. Coming to you from an entrenched barricade deep in the heart of central North Carolina, Masculine Journey After Hours.
A time to go deeper and be more transparent on the topic covered on this week's broadcast. So sit back and join us on this adventure. The Masculine Journey After Hours starts here now.
Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. We're glad that you're with us today, and we are talking about the topic of myths about God, or we say God myths. Not that God has myths, but myths about – I can't say myths very well. It feels like – Myth.
Yeah, yeah. It feels like you're saying myths incorrectly. Myth. Myth. Yeah, yeah. There is a myth coming this way when you say that. Yeah, I know.
I'm spraying you guys. It's like a Gallagher concert back in the days, back in – you know, the old comedy. Yeah, I went to one for Out Row, too. Yeah, I walked out with some watermelon on you, I'm pretty sure. That's right. That was a myth. Yeah, well, God myth.
I'll put up a shield. Myths. I can't even say it. But, you know, myths about – I can't say it now. Somebody say it for me.
We have our guest host of Mike Tyson. Untrue things about God. Thank you.
Things that we consider to be true that aren't true. They sound very true. Thank you, Jim. That helps, because I was going to stumble through that for the next, like, 30 minutes, and we'd be going, thanks for listening to us this week.
We'll talk to you next week. But, no, we were talking about those and how they sound very nice. You know, things like, well, you know, it's probably just God's will. Well, that's not always true.
That's most often not true, right, in a lot of situations. And that's one of them. Another one we unpacked last show was, you know, God won't give you more than you can handle. And we're going to dig into those a little bit deeper in this show, but we have one more myth to take on. I can say it if it's singular.
My problem is when it's plural. So, yeah, one more myth to take on. And, Andy, you're going to tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so, when Sam put it to this topic, I was just going to ride with the two that he gave, but then I got to thinking, I've heard this a lot. God helps those who help themselves. And the origin of that I get, just reading up on it a little bit, came from Aesop Fables, but Benjamin Franklin repeated it, and it really sounds good. I mean, and there's some scripture that you could say, you know, if a man doesn't work, he shouldn't eat, or something like that, which we do have a responsibility in this. But really, it reorders the priority. It's, you know, it's God first.
He made the first move. You know, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. But this makes it like dependent, like God's not going to do anything unless we help ourselves. So, anyway, my clip comes from Forrest Gump, Sam's favorite, if you don't know this.
Oh, yeah, yeah. But it's Lieutenant Dan who Forrest saves. And Lieutenant Dan's not happy about that because he's got this idea of he's, you know, invincible and he's honored to die, which it was all about him, right? It wasn't about God's plan or anything else.
This is the way I was supposed to go. And then he gets into, there's two parts of this clip. On the second part of the clip, Lieutenant Dan's telling him the experience to Forrest of how the church or people have tried to, you know, talk to him about Jesus. And he resists that, and even people tell him that he has to help himself by receiving Jesus, which is actually true. That's how we help ourselves is surrender.
But he doesn't take it well, and he wants to make things on his own term. And then, again, it's him helping himself and expecting God's help. There's a lot of other stuff, if you've seen Forrest Gump, where he really challenges the sovereignty of God and didn't really believe God is for him.
But this, you know, this scripture, I mean, this clip kind of just makes the point. You'll see it. Now, if you haven't seen Forrest Gump, like the three people out there that's probably not seen it, right? So there's a war going on. Dan gets injured, right? He can't walk, so Forrest carries him out. Thank you, Sam, yep.
No, I mean, I was thinking, well, if I hadn't seen him, what's going on? So he carries him out, and Dan's family, his history of his family, his father, his grandfather, it all died in battle, right? And that was the honorable way to go in his mind, and that's where we pick it up.
And then everything else Andy said. So here we go. You listen to me. We all have a destiny.
Nothing just happens. It's all part of a plan. I should have died out there with my men, but now I'm nothing but a cripple, a legless freak. Look, look, look at me. You see that?
Do you know what it's like not to be able to use your legs? Yes, sir, I do. Did you hear what I said? You cheated me. I had a destiny. I was supposed to die in the field with honor. That was my destiny, and you cheated me out of it. Do you understand what I'm saying, Gump? This wasn't supposed to happen.
Not to me. I had a destiny. I was Lieutenant Dan Taylor. You're still Lieutenant Dan.
Look at me. What am I going to do now? Have you found Jesus yet, Gump? I didn't know I was supposed to be looking for him, sir.
That's all these cripples down at the VA. That's all they ever talk about. Jesus this and Jesus that. Have I found Jesus? They even had a priest come and talk to me. He said, God is listening, but I have to help myself. Now if I accept Jesus into my heart, I'll get to walk beside him in the kingdom of heaven.
Did you hear what I said? Walk beside him in the kingdom of heaven. Well, God is listening. I'm going to heaven, Lieutenant Dan.
So you hear that. He's lost his legs. He's bitter, but his whole life is centered on himself, and that's what Satan wants with most of his myths. He wants the attention from God, but he really doesn't have to have it on himself like Satan worshiped, but if he can get humanity to look at themselves for their own security, connection, love, they can look to themselves or some other human and not God, he's succeeded, and that's what he's trying to do here with Lieutenant Dan is really to get his focus off of there's somebody out there. He mentions a plan. Well, who was controlling that plan that Lieutenant Dan was talking about? It was all something in his mind that was honorable and great, but it all centered on him and not God. Yeah, and Andy, you said it well that the enemy's goal is just to divide us from our life source, from God, from our Father, from the one that's going to give us those things that we need, the ones that's trying to give us those things that we need.
In the last show, we played as the bump, open the eyes of my heart. We just don't have the eyes to see what God's doing. God's constantly trying to work in our life. I don't know what you're facing right now. You may be in the middle of terrible suffering. You may be in the middle of something horrible that's happened to you. God is trying to work in your life. He's trying to help it get better. We just have to have the eyes to see it and trust that he's there.
Hopefully, eventually, Dan does get to do that in Forrest Gump, but if you haven't seen it, you have to find out. I just had a thought as you were saying that. You might be in a position where everything's going your way and life's wonderful, and that might be more dangerous than the places where things are rough.
Yeah, because why would you need anything outside of what your current circumstances are? There's a lot of people trapped in that, for sure, believing that myth. I'm good. I've got everything I need. We're going to go back and unpack one of the myths we talked about last show, which was everything is within God's will. We're going to do that through a couple different clips from the same movie. Jim and I actually clipped the same movie, not the same clip.
A couple of us have done that before, but the same movie. This is from Bruce Almighty. What's happened before my clip, and I'm going to play it first because sequentially it does come first in the story, is Bruce has been at work. He's a newscaster.
He's wanting to get a promotion, and he ends up getting in trouble and getting fired, and someone else gets a promotion. So he comes home, and he's talking to his girlfriend at their place, Grace. He's talking to her, and she makes the comment, thank God that you're okay, and it sets him off. So we're going to listen to that because Bruce is living with the paradigm that everything that's happened to him is within God's will.
That's the danger of listening to that myth and living in it is what it does to your heart and what it does to your heart towards God. So let's listen to how Bruce reacts to that and how he also, in turn, hurts Grace's heart tremendously. Thank God you're all right. God, yeah, let's thank God, shall we? For his blessings are raining down upon me.
Wait, that's not rain! Bruce, please don't do that, honey. You know that everything happens for a reason. That I don't need. That is a cliché.
That is not helpful to me. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I have no bird.
I have no bush. God has taken my bird in my bush. Oh, I see. So God is picking on you? Is that what you're saying? No, he's ignoring me completely.
He's far too busy giving Evan everything he wants. Oh, that's great, Sam. But you missed your target.
I'm over here! Don't get mad at the dog. It's not the dog's fault.
No, it's God's fault. I gave him the wrong coordinates. You know what? Enough, all right? Will you just stop being such a martyr? I am not being a martyr.
I'm a victim. God is a mean kid sitting on an anthill with a magnifying glass and I'm the ant. He could fix my life in five minutes if he wanted to, but he'd rather burn off my feelers and watch me squirm. All right, sweetheart, I know that you're mad.
It's completely understandable what Evan did is slimy and wrong. But this day could have been so much worse. I'm just glad you're okay. Okay?
Newsflash! I'm not okay. I'm not okay with a mediocre job. I'm not okay with a mediocre apartment. I'm not okay with a mediocre life! I'm fine!
So is that what you think that we have? A mediocre life? Don't make this about you. About me? How can I make this about me? It's about you! It's always about you! Perfect! Perfect!
I'll have the worst day of my life with a side order of guilt, please! One thing that Bruce actually got right in that clip as I was listening back to it is she started to say something. She didn't say it the same way.
She said everything happens for a reason. And again, that's kind of on that borderline of, well, that's probably God's will in the midst of this. And Bruce says no. He actually stops that and he goes on his tirade. God can work within anything, as we talked about in the last show. He can come in and work inside any situation. And he's trying to work inside every situation. It's just whether we let him do that. My analogy that works best for understanding God is if you've never played chess, you've got 32 pieces, you control half of them. And are trying to win the game.
Well, God is the ultimate chess master, except he's got 8.2 billion pieces. Some of them are his. Some are not. Many others are just sort of random. Yet, he's going to win the game.
And how we get there depends upon the movement of all the pieces. So often what happens to us isn't our fault. It's somebody else's free will has done us wrong. The guy that drives drunk decided to drive home when he shouldn't have and kills a child. Well, is that the child's fault?
Is it the parent's fault of the child for letting him be in a place where he could get hit? We don't get to control circumstances. And God has given us free will.
So he doesn't really control cause and effect other than setting it up to begin with. Yeah. And I think you guys, I know you guys well. I can only speak for me.
That's why I have to speak for me. I know there's a lot of times that I find myself in a place I don't want to be in. But if I go back and I unpack it and I go, oh, I heard a voice that told me not to go that way.
I heard in my heart something that said, oh, you probably don't want to go this route or you probably don't want to do this. You know, and God tries to intercede lots of times, you know, in certain situations. But we just either don't have the ears to hear. We choose not to listen and we keep moving forward. And then we're surprised by the outcome. Or it's a case like a mentor of mine used to say years ago, he said, if that bartender would have cashed that check at that moment, it wouldn't have bounced. You know, it's kind of that one thing led to another kind of thing.
So we create our own chaos at a lot of points. Yep. Well, Jim, you want to continue with this story of Bruce Almighty?
I do. And actually, I think it falls close to our both of our clips. But you said, you know, God give me a sign. Well, God gives him a few of them that are obvious to us and it's really funny, but he doesn't see them.
And when we do that, we go a different route. Bruce has had a really bad day and we saw that well illustrated in Sam's clip. And he is praying and he's trying to get God to do what he wants God to do, which can't happen.
And no, I don't need my notes that bad, but thanks, Rodney. But he's praying and at the opening of this clip, you're going to hear a splash. That's him taking his prayer beads and flinging them out into the water. And you'll also hear, and this is an old movie, you'll hear a lot of beeping. He is getting beeped on his beeper and we're going through the first little bit. It happens when he asks God to speak to him. He ignores it. He wakes up the next morning with the beeper going off and he and the dog have a little altercation, we'll call it.
And then you'll hear a lot of beeping and smashing and he has thrown the beeper out in the street and a car has run over it or some of the sounds you'll get here. Let her rip. We'll talk after it.
Fine! The gloves are off, pal! Come on, let me see a little wrath. Smite me, almighty smiter! You're the one who should be fired!
The only one around here not doing his job is you! Answer me! Sorry, I don't know you. I didn't call you if I did.
Hello, 5550123. Oh, no! Damn, this has got to stop! All right, now get it straight out. That's the house, this is the bathroom. House, bathroom, bathroom, house, house, bathroom, bathroom, house! What's the point?
5550123. Denied that promotion at work? Is life unfair?
Is there someone less talented than you reaping all the benefits? Is your name Bruce? Then do we have the job for you!
We're located at 77256 23rd Street, so come on down or we'll just keep beeping you! I love the way this movie and others, many others, treat God as, well, as a person. But it's in a way that can be funny, it can be irreverent, but quite often it is more accurate than some of the things we pick up in church. And one of the things, and Sam you kind of brought it up, this is God's will. In training for chaplaincy in the hospital, and Danny this is comforting to you, so listen up. So often we heard pastors come in to folks in the ER that had just had a kid killed in an accident, or all kinds of different situations, all of them bad, and they would say that. And that to me was, and we were trained, that's not what you say when you're in these situations. And saying anything sometimes is a bad idea.
Listening almost always works. Job, pretty good model of that. But one of the things that as humans we want to do is fix things. And we can't. That's up to God. And we have that, you know, go in and help these people.
Well, help is something that we got to go to God to find out what's helpful, because what helps Sam isn't going to help Andy. And that is the real key. We're not in control of anything. It is an illusion, and that's a wonderful expression in that one clip. Control is an illusion.
The last thing I kind of wanted to say that I do remember is I saw this idea a number of years ago. I didn't like the way they worded it, so I fixed it. But that's me being prideful.
Sorry. But it is the most dangerous place you'll ever be safe is the middle of God's will. And you don't get to know God's will without Him being willing to tell you, and He'll tell you when you need to know it. And not early, never late, but He'll let you know what you need to know, sort of like the urging you were feeling at that point, at the best time to know it.
And in those dry seasons, that's what's best for you, because He loves you, and He's going to give you His best. So He's not an on-call, fix-this-for-me God. That is often the perception, and it was certainly Bruce's, and most of us slide into that from time to time. Yeah, we think He's a vending machine. We just ask and push a button, and we get what we want there.
So, what other thoughts does anybody have on the topic, or what's some things you would add? Harold, do you have something? Well, going back to what Jim said earlier, I think one of the dumbest things we ever say to somebody is, I know exactly how you feel. No, you don't. You may have experienced a similar thing, but your background and your experiences are totally different than theirs. You don't know how they feel. That's true. Yeah, there's so many things that go on in this world that we are – we want to be close to them. Oh, I know what that is.
You know a little piece. We all know a little piece of something we try to reach into, we try to speak about, we try to teach others, train others, do other kinds of things, but honestly, there is so much that we don't know and understand. And the more you get into God's Word, the more comfortable I know I personally get is that it's okay. It's okay not to know all these things that you're either asked or that are brought up or the situation.
If you don't know, tell them what you do know and just talk about it, because the Lord will let into the conversation with whoever you're with that this is what you need to know about this situation. He's there for you. Like with my memory that's went out, it's still not really coming back. It's not like, oh, I'm getting better. It's just one of those things that's like, huh, I'm without that. I don't know if I'm going to go more and more without my memory or if it's going to get better or what it's going to do. And really, it doesn't – I know what I would like, but I'm okay with whatever happens, because I'm like, okay, Lord, you've got this.
You're in control. Make things happen. But as we go forward, we have to be thinking about what is it – and if you're not going to even study the Word, that's a whole other situation. You need to be into studying the Word, reading it, understanding it better.
You don't have to know the whole thing. There's people that spend their whole lives and just do a great job with that. Just keep working.
As long as you're going forward, you're doing a great job, and just stay with Him. Danny? Jim reminded me of a story that – Michelle and I had been married too long, and she was pregnant. She got pregnant, and she lost a baby. And so we had just started going to the church we were going to, and so just started a friendship with a dear pastor friend of mine who just passed away a couple months ago. But Pastor Wayne Ehler was just a phenomenal guy. He was our associate pastor, and so we called him and left a message on his answering machine at home. This was before cell phones or whatever. It may have been pagers.
I don't know. It probably was pagers. But we left a message for him, and so it was getting kind of late. And so when they got home, him and his wife, Glenda, got home. They got the message, and he calls me, and he says, Danny, we'll be right over. Now, he lived on the other side of town. It was about 15 minutes to come over.
So they drove over, and he came in and just loved on us. And he said, well, let's pray. And his prayer was, Lord, I don't know what to pray. I don't know what to say. But, Lord, you do, and I know you'll take care of this. And at first I'm like, here's a pastor who don't know what to say and don't know what to pray. Can I get a refund on this? But the reality of it was he was exactly right.
He didn't know, but he knew God knew. And that has stuck with me for 20-some years now. Is that, you know what, I don't have to go in and fix everything. And I'm one of those guys that want to go in and fix everything. You know, Michelle, later on in life, she was talking about something, and I'm already in fix-it mode. And she goes, I don't want you to fix it. I just want you to listen.
And I thought, what good is that? But it's that reality that we don't know. You guys said it well, we don't know. We don't know exactly where somebody's at. But all we really need to be is they want our presence there, not necessarily our wisdom all the time.
Yeah, and there's nothing we need to explain to them about God. No. That we can just love on them to the best of our ability. You're such a guy, Danny. That is a guy thing.
We all want to fix it. It's not about the nail. Nope. Anybody that didn't hear Harold, he said it's not about the nail, that if you haven't seen that video.
Go on YouTube and look it up. It's not about the nail. It is hilarious, and it is true. Just to head back over to my chess analogy, because I think it was, I don't know who said it. But someone mentioned that we've got, we're all different.
Oh, it was Harold. And we take things differently. God has 8.2 billion different pieces to work with, and none of us move the same way. So remember that in dealing with other people. Yeah, and our history is different, all the things that Harold had talked about. And the thing is, it's key just to walk with God and don't try to explain God. Don't try to speak for God. Just the pastor friend that you had, it was really key on what he had to say there.
And if we could just only do that, that would be more than most people do. Just listen and just say an honest prayer like that. Go to masculinejourney.org to register for the upcoming boot camp. It's coming up November 20th through 23rd. Again, that's masculinejourney.org. If you'd like to talk to any of us via email, you can reach us at our first name at masculinejourney.org. This is the Truth Network.
