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, and I'm Danny, your host.
I was born for this, Andy, because they told me how to face radio. After Hours is where we take topic we did on a regular show and go a little deeper. So with that, Jim, will you set up our topic one more time? This is about the paradoxes that we find in the Bible. The paradox is something that, if you look at it logically, doesn't make sense, but it is true.
And we're also going to check on oxymorons with one of our wonderful guests today, Sam, who's not behind the controls. I think that bothers you. I think that bothers you.
No, it doesn't at all. Actually, something that hit me in the last show, but we ran out of time. But it's something I heard, and I kind of stole the idea. But it's something of a paradox, and I feel like I sort of made this up. So this is Jim talking.
It certainly was Jim thinking too much. And it is that the most dangerous place you'll ever be safe is the middle of God's will. That would be something of a paradox. Jesus Christ is a paradox. He is fully God and fully man.
How does that happen? Well, Paul would have been a paradox because he wrote most of the New Testament. And he had to have been in the center of God's will, but yet he was in prison for most of it and beaten and almost killed several times. And snake bit. Yeah. Shipwrecked. So there's something to that. And when you think you're having a rough life, think of Paul. Yeah, no doubt. Well, Sam, you have the first clip of this show.
What do I do? No, I'm just kidding. It just made sense. It just made sense. Well, this is not what a paradox is. I think a lot of times we look at a paradox, and it's something where you have two concepts that are put together that you're like, okay, in my submission I gain strength. And that doesn't make any sense because you would equate the two to being opposites. But I think a lot of times we can get it confused with what an oxymoron is. And so we're going to listen to what an oxymoron is and talk about the differences when we come back.
Okay. Today we're talking about oxymorons. Oxymorons are two words that you usually say together. But when you pull them apart, you notice that those two words are in fact opposites. Here are some of my favorite oxymorons. Yeah, I'm putting some shrimp on the barbie. Jumbo shrimp, too. I've just been told this story, and it's a bit bittersweet.
I love wearing my clothes inside out. Just can't seem to find it. I'm just looking for an original copy. Yeah, yeah, that's old news. Oh, dear, it's gone all freezer burn. Yeah, that was a much longer clip. I had to pare down to that. Man, it was like Robby being back in the studio with all those puns. Yeah, it was. It was. But I think that sometimes if we're not careful, we don't really fully understand that to try to accept God's paradoxes, it takes an element of faith.
Right? You don't need faith for an oxymoron. Jumbo shrimp is jumbo shrimp, right? I mean, inside out is inside out. It's not the same kind of thing. And I think that you have to look at there's faith involved in anything God calls us to do, right, in everything that he calls us to do requires an element of faith of trusting in him and walking in him.
And in the last show, you played a clip from the shack. But it applied to all of us from the standpoint of we're not going to get freedom without giving forgiveness, that when we don't give forgiveness, it just holds us prisoner. But conceptually, that's hard to grasp. And it feels like you're letting that other person off the hook. But you're not when you really understand that that's for my heart and for my good. You know, and that's where that whole faith in God has to be there of, God, I don't understand why you're calling me to do this.
It sounds the opposite of what I need to do. But I need to trust in you that it's for the betterment of my heart, my soul, my mind, all those kinds of things. Darrell Bock Everybody's looking at me. I guess I'm supposed to talk.
Andy will. Darrell Bock Well, I was just thinking, you know, technically, if you think about it, the biggest paradox is repentance. You were going one way, and now you're going the other way. It's a change of mind and a change of thought. It's core to the Gospel, too.
Just a thought. Gary Barnes One of the things about the paradoxes in the Bible is they point out a truth, but you really have to work at getting to it. It's more of an exercise in faith, as you pointed out, but also in digging deeper. On the surface, it doesn't make sense.
Darrell Bock Yeah, there's an element of discipline and determination, you know, and having to look for that and go for that. Gary Barnes Well, it generally challenges everything that you think you believe, and diving into it in that clip. I heard something in that Shaq clip I'd never heard before, because he says something about forgiveness doesn't constitute a relationship. In other words, you're not going to be best friends, per se. I mean, maybe.
Who knows? But you're not saying, hey, I forgive you. Come on over to dinner. I got a steak for you to hold on yours. You're not letting them off the hook, so to speak.
Darrell Bock Yeah, I'm just thinking, in preparation for this – okay, sorry. In preparation for this, I was – there's a statement. We talked about giving up your life to find it.
And it always prompts me to think about Jim Elliott, who made the statement, he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. In doing so, I was just watching the Gates of Splendor. It's a documentary on his life, and not just his life, there was like five missionaries and their families went to Ecuador to this unreached Indian tribe. And when they did, they were made contact, and shortly thereafter, several of them got killed. The wives and family members went back years and stayed in contact, and many of those people came to know the Lord. But it was – talking about forgiveness and the love that they had for them, it was truly a paradox. It is an example of loving somebody who – there's no reason you should love for somebody that took out your family like that, but their purpose was there to get the gospel. And that forgiveness is actually, I think, just the trigger that the Indian tribe began to see the love of God in action. They knew that they had done something wrong and responded to it. So I don't know if – some of you have probably seen – heard that story.
It's just a powerful story of a paradox. Darrell Bock I know that every time that I've dug in and not done what God's wanted me to do, and I kind of knew it, I just said – I don't even set it stagnant. I continue to go in the wrong direction, right, because I'm being disobedient of God. And I remember trying to forgive my sister. We hadn't had a relationship in that point for almost probably 20 years. God kept waking me up, trying to call me to pray for her and forgive her, and I just wouldn't do it. I'm like, no, she doesn't deserve it. I don't have a relationship with her.
I don't want a relationship with her. And finally, until he broke me down, and I did it in the middle of the night, and I've shared that on the air before, but what happened in my heart was worth all of that, because she no longer had a power over me. There was no longer a anger. There was no longer a hurt.
All that kind of stuff was just taken away. And so it's walking in that element of faith and saying, God, I know that you have the right thing for me, but also going past the things that you feel like you've earned or you deserve. And whenever you hear those words, you deserve, yeah, it's probably not from God. Darrell Bock No. McDonald's, maybe.
But God. It's probably a lawyer commercial. We'll get you what you deserve. David tes. Yeah.
Or you deserve a break today, as Andy was pointing out, yeah. Darrell Bock Well, whose clip shall we play next? So Harold, we're going to kind of ask you how – this is a clip from Evan Almighty, which is like a modern-day Noah story. So since you were there at the first one, you've got to confirm whether it was right or not.
I mean, I've got to give you a hard time. Robby's not here. David tes. Here we go again. Well, I was grabbing for the mic, because I wanted to say that the greatest paradox of all is God Himself. He talks about He wants His followers to be one, as He is one, and yet He is three. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
What greater paradox could there be? David tes. It's true. I always think about what my buddy, Dr. J.L. Williams, would say. If you understood the Trinity, you'd be the fourth member. So – David tes. Then it wouldn't be the Trinity. David tes. It would not be the Trinity. David tes. It would be the four-turner. David tes.
You'd be Ringo out of that group. David tes. Oh, yeah. So Andy?
David tes. Yeah. So back to Evan Almighty, it is a modern-day flood story. It's more of a local flood.
Evan, at this time, he doesn't really know. He just knows there's going to be a flood, and God has told him that. He actually has been a congressman, and he's grown a beard and looks like Noah and all that. But they're going to this House hearing about some bill about protecting this land, and basically all the animals start showing up. And the dialogue is back and forth on who he believes is telling him that this flood is coming. And it's one of those hard-to-believe stories, just like it was for Noah back in the day. And nobody knew what rain was when he said it's about to rain, right? And so it's counter to what they knew. It's drought season.
They're like, what are you talking about? There's going to be a flood. Here you go. Ladies and gentlemen, please, please, Congressman Baxter has a tendency to embrace the theatrical and the support of this bill. Congressman, let me warn you, you are approximately 10 seconds away from committee censure. Oh, no.
Hey, would anyone mind if I closed the window? Ladies and gentlemen, please, these animals are trained. I've seen this circus act before.
Congressman, I'm sure St. Francis would be envious. We, however, are not. You have five seconds. You march yourself and your little animal troop out of here now or you will be forcibly removed. I'm afraid I can't do that, sir. Congressman.
These animals are not trained. Congressman, I think they want me to save them. Save them from what, Congressman?
Saving the animals. OK. All right. I can roll with that.
That's a good idea. The flood. A flood? Rolling out. The flood. It's been the hottest dry summer on record. You say we're going to have a flood. When might we expect this?
September 22nd, midday. That's what I was told. Might I ask who told you? Not in front of all those people. Don't say it. Don't say it. God. God? You talk to God? Yes. And God is talking back? Yeah.
We hung out a little. Well, time to update the resume. Congressman, your name is being removed from this bill. Obviously, the stresses of this office have proven too much for you. Please have the Congressman removed. No, please.
You don't understand. God commanded me to build a park house. It's going to rain. It's going to be a flood.
Please. Remove him now. It's just counter to what anything anybody could believe. That was his wife watching at home from TV, and she's like, no, don't go there. You know, it was a hard to believe event, obviously. But to Sam's point, anything really – any of these paradoxes, they're not naturally – the natural thing is to go with the common wisdom, common belief. And to counter that, it takes an amount of faith. That's what all the stories in the Bible are examples of. People said, no, I'm going to believe God.
It doesn't look right, doesn't look good, but I'm going to stick in here and believe God. And you know, there's things that God gives us direction to, again, that's counter to what men say, the way the world lives, and Jesus brought a lot of that. But then when you think about it, as a whole, the Bible is a paradox. It's counter to whatever the culture is of that time, of what the belief is of the time of whether you're going to believe God and trust him or whether you're going to believe the world's way.
Yeah. You know, Michelle and I, when Jim threw this topic out, I always usually show them to Michelle so she can interpret some stuff, because she's a teacher, she's educated. But we talked about our own relationship, because we remember the wisdom of us getting married because we both had been married before, and the modern-day wisdom was that second marriages, third marriages, whatever, are doomed to fail. But we knew we loved each other, and we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt God had put us together because of some different stuff that happened and that kind of thing. But the whole thing was when we decided we would give over to what we felt like we were supposed to do, not like what we felt like we should do, because we both tried to run. And here we are almost 23 years later, just still happy and giggling, like schoolchildren sometimes, and all the kids are gone. If you're getting remarried, you are probably doomed to make the same mistakes, but you don't have to bear the same consequences, and if you can get over being selfish, anybody can make any marriage work. Getting over being selfish is the tough part.
Yeah, we always said we had enough baggage to fill two airports when we come rolling into this one, but God has unpacked bunches and bunches of them, so that's been neat. I think the times that I've stepped out and said, okay, God, I'm going to trust in you, and I can't always say it was willingly. And again, I've shared this on the air, but he reminded me of when I had to tell my mom about being molested as a kid. I was a grown adult.
I had children that were adults, a couple of them were adults at this point. By the time I'm telling my mom, and some of them are younger, and I really don't want to tell her, because I just know there's really no point in it. And that's why I kept telling God, God, there's no point in telling her this. And so he worked on me for a while, and then he put me in a position where I had to tell her, because I thought my brothers were coming to boot camp, and I was supposed to do the wound talk, and I was going to talk about that event. And I knew if I talked about it, at some point it would get back to my mom, and it would break her heart that I wasn't the one that told her.
And so I'm like, okay, God, I got to do it, I get it. And so I went down and I told her about it, and when I did, of course it did break her heart. It would break any parent's heart to hear that. But what happened after that was it gave me a chance to go after her heart in a way that I never thought I could, and just love on her and speak words of encouragement and affirmation to her, and again, just love on her, and how much closer we became out of that. It really was a unifying thing in the long run. I knew it hurt my mom's heart, but I knew God had it intended for good.
And the funny thing is my brothers never did come to boot camp. It was just God wanting me to do what he had asked me to do. Darrell Bock You tripped right into that trap, didn't you? Scott Horrell Yeah, but I think that it forever changed my mom and I's relationship. We had a great relationship, but it made it more deep and more authentic and more real in a lot of ways.
And so I'm very grateful for that time, especially now that she's been gone for a number of years, that I would have hated to have not told her, and God asked me to. Darrell Bock Yeah, I think in these paradoxes, these words that we get, like you're saying, mine personally, after me and my wife separated, I stayed in a state of anger and frustration for quite a while. And I got tired of doing that, and God has to give that word of paradox to you that's counter to what you're believing. You're going to be stuck there. It has to be a counter idea.
It has to go against what traditional wisdom is, and we would all be stuck. So I'd have to say that not only we see them in Scripture, we get them individually. They're pretty much aligned, like what you were talking about, which you lost your life kind of in a way that you took risk with your mom, and then you found life in that.
Scott Horrell Yeah. You know, another story. I've got another one, God's laying on my heart, you know, and again, I've probably shared it on the air many times, so if you've heard it, sorry. When I lost my job in the beginning of 2009, you know, when my company closed down, I had to make the decision, you know, I was married at the time, and my wife and I went off to fast and pray, you know, just for a day. It wasn't like a long time, but, you know, we did and came back, and we both knew that we should stay here instead of moving back to Indiana, although moving back to Indiana made the most sense because we had a house there, we could move back into it, we had a lot of support there, family, friends, you know, we were from there.
It didn't make a lot of sense to stay here. You know, yeah, we had a house here, but it would have been a lot easier to sell the house here because the economy was better down here than it was up in Indiana, and against what would be common sense, we stayed, and it wasn't a few days later that I got a call from Darren saying, hey, would you like to do a boot camp? You know, and from that, this whole ministry, you know, sprung through free, and the freedom and the hope and all the stuff that I've gained in my heart over the years of being a part of this ministry and the impact it's had on my family, you know, my boys that's been to boot camp, and that may not have ever happened had I not just said, okay, God, even though it doesn't make sense, I'm going to step out and walk with you. And everybody in this room is the better for that happening, as well as folks listening to us now. Well, yeah, I mean, the last five years, basically five years of our marriage, that, you know, when I came first boot camp or whatever, you know, all this journey has gotten much better, and man, we've been able to unpack a whole lot of stuff, and, you know, there's not a night that goes by, we're not watching some sort of TV, and Michelle goes, there's you a clip. So, you know, it impacts and it's kind of neat.
Well, Sam got another clip. So, yeah, it's a song from Riley Clemons, you know, I've been listening to a lot of her songs, and so I've been using it in here because it's been very, very motivating for me. And she's just really good, at least at where I'm at in my life right now, it really speaks to my heart most days. And this is a song called Fear Not. And basically, it's about a lot of stuff we've been talking about when common sense would say to do one thing, but you're finding yourself in a position where you have to do another. It's just, are you going to trust in God when it seems like he can't come through?
And so I'm going to go ahead and let you play it. It is going to be kind of hard to hear what she's saying, but I'll read that to you when we come back. Fear not the fire, the flames start to rise When there's heat on your skin and smoke in your head Fear not the lion, when you're in the den Fear not, fear not, you've been facing nothing stronger than the power of God So fear not, fear not If he's with us, tell me why should we be afraid? If he's for us, who could ever stand in our way? Yes, what she's singing there is, Fear not the fire, the flames start to rise There's heat on your skin and smoke in your eyes They saw three walk in, but four made it through Fear not the fire, because he's in it with you And then it goes on, and I kind of put this song together, it's a couple different verses that I put together because there was a chorus in between that. But then it comes back with, Fear not the lion, when you're in the den You might hear the roar, but his teeth won't sink in Because the Lord shuts his mouth with his mighty hand Fear not the lion, for it fears the lamb And then as she sings, fear not, fear not, you've been facing nothing stronger than the power of God And then she finishes that part with, If he is with us, tell me why should we be afraid? If he is for us, who could even stand in our way?
Right, and I think it's something that we need to remember about that. I thought it was kind of interesting about the lion's den, as the enemy's referred to as the lion. You know, and God's referred to as the lamb, and so the enemy prowls around like a roaring lion. But when we're walking in God, and we're in the middle of him, the enemy's toothless. You know, he may roar, and he may be loud, and it may be trying to get us to be afraid, but he has no teeth for it to sink in, and it's just having that faith and walking with him when everything would say, I need to do something different than what I'm doing.
It's just trusting in the Lord and saying, God, Heavenly Father, I know you have me, and I'm going to walk with you through it. A question for Sam. Yeah. If you have, the lamb of God is the lion of Judah, is that a oxymoron or a paradox?
It's a paradox. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Because I don't think there's any oxymorons with God. Nope. No. There are plenty of us morons with him, but that's not the way he rolls. A couple of us named Oxy.
That could be. So anyway, anybody else got anything they want to share before we close this thing out? One thing, and this is paraphrasing Jesus at the end of Matthew 5, which we heard at the beginning of Matthew 5, but he basically says, you know, if you love those that love you, big deal, everybody does that. I want you to love those that hate you and spitefully use you.
And that's a paradox of rather extreme measure, and I believe we have our wisest and eldest finishing again. Well, I'm going to James 1-13. Don't blame God when you're tempted. God cannot be tempted by evil, and he doesn't use evil to tempt others. And then pair that with 2 Corinthians 5-21.
Christ never sinned, but God treated him as a sinner so Christ could make us acceptable to God. I think that's a paradox. Amen. All right. Well, as we wind down here, you can check us out on masculinejourney.org on the web page. We're on Facebook, and you can find this podcast on any platform that have podcasts. And don't forget to register for Boot Camp November 20-23, and talk to you next week. This is the Truth Network.
