Truth

This is the Truth Network. 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. Welcome to Masco and Journey. We're glad you're with us this week, and we have a rare treat.

Jim, it's your topic this week. I've actually done that twice this year. I know. And both of them this last month.

Well, that.

Well, to be fair. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, to be fair, a lot of times you're not here.

So, you know, percentage-wise, you probably have a high percentage of topic versus times here. It is true. Yeah. And. I was told right before we started the show, I had to boil it down to three or four words.

And if I remember correctly, it's truth through life. But what I was looking at is how our perception changes on in this case, truth. as we grow from itty bitty to Um way up there where Some of us stay a little bitty. What was that? I said, some of us stay a little bitty.

Uh and the stature of time. stands well above all of us.

Well, maybe not that well, but Pre-star. Yeah. Well, so the truth And so to paraphrase that again. Basically Does it change over time for you? Is that what you're saying?

Or are you saying The well. My perception of it. There you go. That's what I wanted to get to. I wanted to get to that word.

I think at one point I had a wonderful title, but it was way more than three or four words. Yeah, it was probably a small paragraph. I guess they were big words. It was at least a paraphrases, as you just sort of said. Exactly.

Very unique. Yeah. Very unique truth. There we go. We should live with that one.

Let me read. I'll tell you about the Canadian guy I ran into that agreed with me on that. No. He was a tour guide but also an English teacher.

Okay. No, you can't qualify unique. It's unique or it's not. That's one out of kids. It's a unique, very unique perspective.

Anyway, Jim, so who did you decide has the first clip? The first clip will be Danny. Danny? It is probably the most humorous and certainly the oldest clip of the bunch.

Well Thank you, Jim. This is for my buddy Andy, who said that I had lost my Andy Griffith touch somewhere along the way.

So.

So, to Andy Thomas, this is Andy Griffiths.

So, you'd be his Barney? Yeah, probably. Best I could do. Otis at one point. That's true.

Yeah, that's before recovery. That was before recovery. This episode is where Andy has written a ticket for. He's a big editor of some newspaper up in Raleigh. And the guy tries to weasel his way out of it and and Andy just kind of holds the letter of the law, told me how to show up in court.

Well, Andy sends one of his female reporters down as a college student doing a kind of a ruse and she gets Barney all wound up and you know how Barney gets so exaggerated. And he tells her a bunch of stuff and he exaggerates the truth quite a bit. And they turn it on Andy.

So Andy's being held on trial here in this clip for. Malfeases in the in the share spot. because of some of the statements that were made. And so, but they've got Barney on the stand, and Barney makes the case of what's really going on. And so, we played a clip and talk about it afterwards.

Well, I will, but, Jim, malfeasance, is that like inappropriate behavior? Because we need our dictionary to respond.

Okay, thank you. Used a word I was not quite sure I understood the definition. Woo-hoo! I know, I know, it does happen. We've been sitting together for a long time, so I must be rubbing off.

Yeah, it could be. All right, so on to the Andy Griffith clip. You may step down. Andy? I said you may step down.

You can say that all you want to, but I ain't stepping down. This is a hearing, ain't it?

Well, it seems to me you ought to hear everything, not just a bunch of yeses. Very well. You may speak if you wish to. Thank you. Sure, I said all them things.

But the truth is sometimes I get carried away with myself. I was talking with a young lady there.

Well, I got to bragging a little bit. I guess that's one of my faults. But I sure didn't think it was going to backfire and be used against Andy.

Well, and he's the best friend I got in the whole world. And as far as I'm concerned, he's the best sheriff, too. All them things I said. For example, his using the squad car for personal reasons. Sure, he was delivering groceries to Emma Watson because she was too sick to get down to the market.

And that's just one example of the things Andy's done for the folks in this town. I could give you a lot more. You've got to understand, this is a small town. A sheriff is more than just a sheriff. He's a friend.

And the people in this town, they ain't got a better friend than Andy Taylor. As far as Andy knowing his job, I'd just like for you to take a look in the record book, mister Jackson. You know there ain't been a major crime committed in this town thanks to Sheriff Taylor. The only ruckus you'd ever have in Mayberry is if you tried to remove him from office. Then he'd have a riot.

You asked me if Andy runs a taut ship, Mr. Milton. Oh, no, he doesn't. Mm-hmm. But that's because of something that he's been trying to teach me.

ever since I started working for him. And that is that when you're a lawman and you're dealing with people, You do a whole lot better if you go not so much by the book. But by the heart. I guess maybe that's Kind of hard for some of you to understand. I don't know.

That's all I got to say. You know, so often we lay facts out and, you know, the things that Barney said If we went back and played them, the things that he said. were somewhat factual. Yeah, the squad car use. And there were some other things.

But the the truth w behind it was that Andy was doing things good for other people. And it wasn't really as it appeared to be. You know, the enemy loves to take us down the fact trail. But he avoids the truth a lot of times. He even did it to Jesus.

You know, he quoted scripture to him. He left a piece of it out. But what he said was fact. But it wasn't. complete truth.

And you know, so many times I've run that rabbit trail with him, and you know, you see things and you hear things about what people have said, what people have done, and the facts are there. Yes, they did this, yes, it appeared it was this way, and yes, that way. But when you boil it all down and you ask Jesus to reveal the truth to you. you find out it's a much different picture. Usually I do.

Because, you know, they say that sometimes the people who hurt you the most are the people closest to you. And sometimes it's because we're looking at facts and we're not looking at the truth behind who's really doing it.

So, just kind of where I was going with that. Maybe a story later. Yeah, no, that's good. I think that. If you haven't just completely put yourself out of ever hearing anything on the news, you would realize that the elements of truth are hard to find, right?

You can listen to one broadcast and hear what they say is truth. You can hear another station's broadcast, and hear what they say is truth. Even when you talk with individuals over a situation, you hear one side of the story. And then you hear another side of the story. Right?

And they say truth's found somewhere in the middle in those types of situations.

So, truth's something that we struggle with trying to find. The real truth in situations. You know, and that's where, as we're talking throughout this, we're going to learn more about the person called the truth. One of the things that really got me with this. the difference between factual information and yeah.

A lot of times what you in fact, when I first hear a news story, I almost immediately dismiss it as, well, they don't know what's going on yet. When it's a breaking news, the news is almost certainly broken. But I many years ago in the This was in the sevent late seventies. When I was a police officer, I saw a report in the newspaper on A report that I wrote and that was the only source they had, and they took what was an armed robbery and turned it into a purse taken from the car. Yeah.

The guy said, I have a gun, give me your purse as she was getting into her car. How they did that, I don't know, but from that point on, I never really believed much I hear in the news. And you'll often hear the numbers change. constantly when they're reporting things. But This really struck home, and what this came from.

was a total redefinition in my life of what Truth is, I used to be a a dabbler in and I I think they call it spinning these days. I don't think it had that word. But I was good at I could tell you something that was factually accurate that was not the truth. And the example I used was talking to my wife. I'd stay up till five in the morning, playing a computer game.

Back in the early days of computers. And she said, What time did you come to bed? 'Cause she knew I was up late. I said, Oh, it was after one.

Well, it was actually five thirty. But That was factually accurate, but did not relay the truth to her. And gas don't Take this to heart and decide, oh, I can do that too. Bad idea. Because those things do come back to bite you.

But my clip Is I actually heard this from Henry Blackabee. Yeah, we'll get to it after the break. Yeah, we won't have time to get it in before the break more than likely.

Okay, well, you're the one that knows that stuff. Yeah. Usually I just have seconds, so that was. Yeah. I figured we had a few seconds.

Well, no, you would have not enough time to get your clip in, I don't think.

Okay. So you can tell where the clip comes from. Yeah, this is actually Richard Blackabee, Henry's son, who's. Uh did the Experiencing God, which there are millions of copies out there, and if you're a Christian, there and definitely if you're a Baptist, you've probably heard of it, if not done it. But it was what in my life changed me from Being A church goer.

with a religion to having a relationship with Jesus Christ.

So I'm eternally, literally grateful for that change. And that did come out of studying with Andrea and that's when I figured out I was Saved. Before that, people asked me if I was saved. I'd say I was never lost. And later I figured out I was right when I was saying that, but it wasn't true at the time I was saying it.

Right. Right. Well, the one truth that you can have that you can hold true to is God's got something in store for you at boot camp if you come. He's going to have something there, especially for you. It really is the truth.

And every boot camp we've all been to, God's had something amazing there for you. Go register, we'll talk to you after the break. What we have at our boot camp is something that makes you stronger and 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. I think sometimes, as men, we feel like we're on our own and we've got to do everything ourselves, and the weight of the world is on our shoulders, and it's our job to fix everything and make everything right and have all the answers.

And I think when you come here, you just get really honed back in and reminded that God really is for us. That a good father helps you, and a good father makes sure you have all the tools you need, and a good father comes through for you when you need him and you just feel less alone. Register today at masculinejourney.org. Then you're a king. choose to say I am, I look for truth.

I get damned. But what is truth? Truth I'm changing long. We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?

What do you mean? You're justified, okay? And that is from Jesus Christ Superstar, which once upon a time I haven't tried in a decade or three, but I could sing the whole thing. Knew the words, loved it. Won't you do that before you come back next week?

Sing the whole thing? Yeah, just try. But uh This was the dock between Jesus. And Patches pilot. And hi he Puts out a good statement: Is my truth the same as yours?

And that was the main reason I cut that, and the fact that I love JC Superstar. The I mean, in communication, truth is almost. Mm-hmm. Unheard of, especially if we're texting or writing emails. Mm-hmm.

If you don't have a person's eyes looking at you and you're looking at theirs and you're listening, you don't have much of a chance of communicating. And Truth is that way. You know, a hide. Know exactly what if I had a big battle with a friend and we were pretty much done a few weeks ago. over a text I sent, 'cause I was upset at a decision he made, and the way I put it.

Yeah. First of all, I thought he was accusing me of stealing, and I all but said that. And he said, How could you think that of me? Once we got together, it was okay. But.

Communication stinks and the truth generally is not something you can rely on being in that.

Okay. Ready for your club? This is almost like the gym show here. We had talked about it before the break, but this is Pontcha's Pilot. No.

No, that's what we did. This is the black of the side. This is A talk that from his father changed my life on truth.

Okay, here we go. Truth is a person. Luke 8, verses 24 and 25. They came and woke him up, saying, Master, Master, we're going to die. Then he got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves.

So they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, Where is your faith? Truth is a person, not a concept. Jesus said he was the truth. John 14, verse 6.

That means that you can never know the truth of your circumstances unless you have first heard from Jesus. The disciples thought they were perishing in the storm. They were fishermen who knew the sea and knew what their condition was. They had allowed their circumstances to convince them that the truth was their imminent death. But they were wrong.

Truth was asleep in the back of their boat. Since some of the disciples were fishermen, they trusted in their own expertise and wisdom rather than recognizing that only Jesus knew the truth of the situation. At times, our human knowledge in certain areas of life can blind us to our desperate need to hear a word from truth. When Jesus spoke, the disciples saw the real truth of their situation. There was absolute calm.

The disciples had seen Jesus perform other miracles, but they had not yet witnessed his power over nature in such a dimension. Often we are like the disciples. God may have recently demonstrated his power to us in a mighty way. We may have experienced many spiritual victories in the past. Yet when a new and frightening situation comes upon us, we too panic and say, Lord, save me, I'm perishing.

God will remind us of his provision, saying, I can handle this situation too, and ye will know more of me because of it. Have you become fearful instead of faithful? If you have, prepare for the rebuke, for it will come. Yeah. And uh The That concept of You don't know the truth until you've heard from Jesus.

was a major changing point in my life and one that if you hadn't found that yet, he is the only one that can give you the complete truth. And he does it all the time. Oh my god. Can't possibly reveal everything to us. We couldn't handle it.

But he'll reveal what we need when we need it. And I'm in a situation now that with a very dear loved one that is struggling with recognizing the truth. Has all her life. But is now not even you know, sure about her own relationship with God.

So it's We go into those times of fear. And the last sentence there, you know, if you're being fearful instead of trusting God, there will be a rebuke. There will be a correction. Rebuke's a little bit harsh word, and I don't like harsh words, but rebuke is hot, normally will come. I heard years ago taught that truth is revealed, it's not learned.

And I always held on to that because Truth is a person. Jesus is revealing himself to us little by little, and yeah, we can't handle all of him. But yeah, we see it in when he was here on earth, and we see it further on. that he reveals himself to us in different situations. Because You don't really know who he is till you have to lean on him.

and he reveals who he is, what he can do. you know, similar situations in my own life right now, so Yeah, when you brought this topic up a few days back, last week, at the end of last week, I think it was, you know, right away my thoughts didn't go to Jesus. I mean, it should have, right? Because he says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. But when you think of, and I'll do my clip in the after-hours segment.

If you're not sure what after-hours is, you can go download that after you listen to this. If you listen to it on the air in Greenville, Spartanburg, we also have a podcast called After Hours. You can go download at any podcast location. But anyway, I didn't really think about Jesus, but my perception of Jesus has changed tremendously. over the years and To your point, Danny, as he reveals more of himself to me and my walk becomes more intimate.

With him, I see different aspects of I don't want to say his character, but who he is, you know, that I didn't know before, I didn't realize before. And it's really kind of cool to see that in a different way and in a deeper way. uh as we kind of walk through life. I was actually thinking about your other clip. Mm-hmm.

Throwing that in there. The short one? Yeah, the short one. I can get it in there. We can do and then chat about that because that brings up a few thoughts on.

What's truth?

Okay, if you want to find a movie clip with the word truth in it, you're invariably going to get this one as the first hit. This is from the movie A Few Good Men. And so we're just going to listen to it. And it's a m major or general, whatever, major, whatever he is. He's a colonel.

A colonel. He's a colonel and he's on trial and he's being Not interviewed. What are they going to do on trial?

Well, he's being interrogated is pretty close because that's what he's going into, and he could be in serious trouble if this truth doesn't happen. Cross-examined out. Thank you. Thank you. Crossword, but just cross-examined.

Here we go. He's a mere lieutenant, and then going after a colonel is a bad idea. All right. That was longer than our whole clip, is what they just did there. Here we go.

Colonel Justin, keep it! You ordered the co-brain! You don't have to answer that question. I'll answer the question. You want answers?

I think I'm entitled. You want answers! I want the truth! You can't handle the truth! And Often we can't.

And that was what I wanted to throw in that, especially when you consider it's Jesus. Have you ever tried to manipulate Jesus? You haven't?

Well, I have. It didn't work. It didn't work. Yeah, I mean, I tried, but I've never been successful at it. And that was sort of what I wanted to.

Put in there. We often can't recognize the truth, and when we do, we may not be able to handle the truth. But he will. And you pointed out when we were talking before. the show that And my brain just shut down.

So, what did you point out? I have no clue. Because I don't remember before the show either. But the one in it, you're absolutely right about this clip, but another way it can be used is the enemy will use it. to let you believe you can't handle The truth that God has for you, right?

That it's going to be something awful. That He's going to say things that the world's told you about yourself, things that you felt are the deepest things about you, right? And the enemy spends that in a way to say, I don't even want to pursue the truth because I don't think I can handle it. And so He's the master of being able to switch and go in any direction with any of this stuff and really deceive us. They don't call him the deceiver for nothing.

And that was what I was trying to remember: it's the lie that God won't give you more than you can handle, is not true.

Sounds good. Yeah. But he will almost always give you something that you can't handle by yourself, was the point you made. I think Robby made it, but that's okay. I appreciate you giving it me the perspective.

Well, I knew it was somebody intelligent, so I didn't immediately think of Robby. Oh, yeah.

Well, he doesn't have a microphone now, so that's fair. I'm sure in the after hours he will re you know, whatever he's going to do. I can't I don't have words today. I have no words for anything. I can't think of cross-examination.

It's just a wordless day.

So anyway, what I do have words for is we have a boot camp coming up. And does anyone know here when the boot camp is? November 20th through the 23rd. This year? Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Well, don't be so surprised. It is this year, yes. It is this year.

So we still have time to register. And how would they register, Jim? Go online.

Well, masculine, I'd mess it up. Masculine Journey Radio isn't it? No, it's Masculine Journey. MasculineJourney.org. Yeah, so thank you.

That helped me make the population. I've only heard that 5,000 times in the last five years. And that's the truth. That is the truth. It's masculinejourney.org.

And so as we close out this part of the show, I just want to throw a question out there. What's some truth God's helped you find at a boot camp? For me, it's identity, my identity in him. Anyone? Viewer?

If you were.

Okay, I'll go.

Okay, this is my own. But I think when it comes to what he's revealed to you, I think just truth and understanding about who I am. Mm-hmm. Our relationship Um Who I am meant to be tomorrow, not just today, who I have been, but. You gotta grow and change.

You can't just. Be the same person that you were when you walked into this boot camp. You can't just be the same when you walk out. You have to change and you have to actually work at it. There's going to have to be some thought and some things that you put into it that's going to change how you see and think about those things that are.

Right in front of you every day that you think you're solid on, you think you're dead, but you have to keep changing.

Well, thank you, Rodney, and we'll touch on that some more in the after hours. Go to masconejourney.org to register for the upcoming boot camp November 20th through 23rd. If you have a question for us, just reach out to any of us, our first name at masconejourney.org. That's our email. And like I said, every week, let God love on you this week and then turn around and love on somebody well.

We'll talk with you next week. you This is the Truth Network. Yeah.