Adventure To Live

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 Masculine Journey. We are glad that you're with us as we continue our foundation series.

If you didn't listen to us last week, why not? It was a really good show, I think. We have started this series on the foundations of the masculine journey. What are these things that we really draw from all the time? You know, God's always given us topics along the way, but he gave Andy this little vision a little while back, didn't he?

Andy, you could pull the microphone towards you. It'd be easier to talk. I thought Robby was starting up, but okay.

Well, I changed my mind. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I just thought, you know, with us going to a new audience, a new radio audience in the Greenville-Spartanburg area, that you know, you get this new show on, and you know, it's about men's stuff and all, but what is the foundation of how the ministry started? I think we'll get to that. But really, what do we believe?

Why do we do what we do? And that's just kind of how this started. Yeah, this is a foundation series. When Darren and I can both be in the room at the same time, we'll do the in the beginning. In the beginning, yeah, in the beginning.

You know, I've heard there's. When we start that, and we had a little bit of an adventure before the show started, didn't we, Robby? No, we did. Yeah, yeah. Art made us have a heart attack, is what Andy was calling it.

Yeah, he had a heart attack. Yeah, he decided to, for whatever reason, play the intro to our show on his phone, and we all scrambled thinking that the show was starting. He's oblivious sitting over there, can't figure out why we're all just moving around frantically. And so we're turning knobs and doing all this stuff, and nothing's playing. Yeah, so it was quite an adventure, which is only appropriate.

Because the second foundation we're talking about, last week we banned the core desires with a battle to fight. You know, and there's three core desires: a battle to fight, adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. And Robby, we're talking about adventure to live this week, right? Right. Cool thing is that You know, John Eldridge's book, Wild at Heart, he describes how the enemy, meaning Satan, and you know, is trying to take away true masculinity, you know, and has been robbing it from the picture mostly of Jesus.

If we could get a good look at Jesus, we would certainly, you know, see what a real man would look like. And this being the masculine journey kind of makes perfect sense. And so when you look at Jesus, you can see that he certainly falls. Fought some battles. In fact, the battle for all our salvation on the cross, one of the greatest ever fought, but clearing the temple, other things that were clearly battle to fight.

But also, you will note throughout the Bible that one of the things God always does is take people on adventures. And so, another one of the core desires of a man's heart. It's in you, like Prego's spaghetti sauce, believe me, is you want an adventure to live. I haven't heard that expression in probably three or four months, and that's weird.

So if you. Like, look at any little boy, right? And you give them a bicycle. Oh, yeah, they'll learn how to ride it, but it won't be long. And they're going to try to figure out how to jump it.

They're going to figure out, you know, how fast it can go. You know, all these things that are in every little boy's heart because God has them in His heart. And it's a beautiful thing to understand that a lot of the stuff that makes you, you know, want to go out and drive a motorcycle or whatever your situation may be, you know, different adventures are because God made it that way. And it's a way for us to understand risk. And understand that we have what it takes and begin to build a foundation in our masculinity is by going on real adventures, not somebody else's adventure on the T V or a movie, but real adventures that help prove that.

So again, tonight's topic being the core desire of an adventure to live, you know, we've got lots of different angles on that nugget, which to me is absolutely foundational. Yeah, and so we'll start with you, Jim. You have the first clip of the show here.

So if you want to. And the first adventure was you deciding the beginning of the show was going to be the three masters of verbosity trying to do things quickly. I got no idea what you said.

So anyone can send that to Sam at masteringserney.org. I would appreciate that. The three longest-winded people are starting this show. Oh, if you wanted me to do it quick.

Okay, all right. That helps. That makes sense, now. Yeah, it does. This clip is one you will see at boot camp if you haven't already seen it at boot camp.

And if you've gone, it was there. But it's not. You don't actually see it here. No. You won't see it on the radio.

That uh sometimes our verbosity is stating the obvious as you just witnessed. But uh in this you've got the geeky science guy going to Alaska to study wolves and he meets uh real man who happens to be his pilot, and they have a wonderful conversation that scares the What's the word we can use in the first show? The bejeebies. I like that one. That's a good one.

The bejeebies. Yeah, it's a very 40s. Yes. I actually knew that word. I did too.

Or you could say the tools. Scared the tools out of it.

Well, a tool was involved, but that was used to bang on a. Phil Darrell, a uh Fuel pump, I think. No, it was a fuel line that was frozen. Ah, fuel line. But this is in a plane, and I'm going to talk about that and how this relates to my adventure.

Afterwards.

Okay, here we go. Go for it. How do you, um uh I don't worry about a thing. I feel my way through these mountains blindfolded all the time. Tell me, Tyler.

What's in the Valley of the Blackstone? What is it, manganese? Cabby oil. The goal? It's kind of hard to say.

Ah, you're a smart man, Tyler. Keep your own counsel. We're all of us prospectors up here, right, Tyler? Hehehe Scratching for that So then one crack in the ground. I'll never have to scratch again.

I'll let you in on a little secret, Tyler. The gold's not in the ground. Gold's not anywhere up here. The real goal is south of 60. Sitting in living rooms.

Stuck. Facing the boob to bore to death. Bored to death, Tyler. What was that? Oh, Lord.

What's wrong? Take the stick. What's wrong? Boredom, Panic. Boredom, that's what's wrong.

How do you feed boredom, Tyler? Adventure. Benson pattern. Where are you going? Mosie!

Mosie, what are you doing? I can't fly this thing. What do I do? I catch the aircraft fish. That one, uh.

As always. hit me right at home because My ear some of my earliest adventures, and these were with my dad, he loved flying. And he would take me flying, and by the time I was 12, I'd done everything but land the plane. I never got to do that because. That was too dead.

Two. dangerous for a twelve-year-old, but He showed me adventure at a very early age, and I had. Gobs of them when I was younger. And the last two years. Two months have been Boredom, Tyler.

Boredom. Have not been able to be here much because I couldn't drive, and my wife is struggling and does not. Want to drive, so we've been sort of stuck at home for a while. And I'm finally free again as of a week ago, Friday. But it it is fitting for me to have that one because our adventure coming up.

And Saturday, we are leaving for Banff in Canada, and then going to ride a train over to Vancouver and sail up to Alaska. And the greatest adventure of our lives together has been No. Three months, well, longer than that, four months that we. I'll get it in a minute. Seven months that we lived in Alaska.

Numbers are just confusing.

Well, the days were so long, it's hard to know. Actually, they were not because we were there in the winter. We got there in August and left in February.

So somebody else could do the math and come up with however many months that was. But we got back in March, but it was an adventure of a lifetime, and we really thought we were going there for life because it was a call from God. And that is the greatest adventure. is when God calls you to do something and nobody believes God would have anything to do with What you've heard, but we both did, and we grew through it, and it was. Uh the Great adventure that I'd like to at least we're we're going on the twenty second anniversary of that adventure and are on the same ship that took us up there initially.

So this is One. That's very cool. Thank you, Jim. You know, as we're going to be going to break here pretty soon, I was thinking about when I went to my first boot camp, one of the things that God gave me when I came back was my oldest son at the time was six. And so he really laid it on my heart to take him on adventures.

You know, and so I would do this little thing where I would stick a note under his dinner plate and then I'd make him clean up after dinner, you know, which he would kind of fight with me for a little bit to do. And then he would pick it up and there'd be a note. And all it would ever say is, We're going on an adventure. You know, and so he'd get all excited, and sometimes I'd have pictures on there for him to try to figure out. Never enough that he could really know for sure, but enough to get excited.

And this was always on a Friday night, typically, and we'd go on Saturday on the adventure. And so we did that with my oldest son, and then when my youngest son came along, we did that as well. And what's really been kind of cool is it's continued as we still do adventures as they're both adults now. We do a yearly adventure where we go someplace together. And I think what God was helping me say to show them is like adventures are good, you know, because we'd always go and we'd look at something beautiful.

You know, for most of those trips, we'd go to something, we'd go canoeing, or we'd go do something that really made their heart come alive, and then we'd have time to talk about it, you know, and just help them say, okay, adventure is good. It's not pointless. It's not frivolous. There's something in that that your heart really needs.

Now, we can do frivolous adventures, and we can do a lot of that stuff, but if we just adventure for adventure's sake, that's for nothing, right? But if we do it with an intent to learn and to grow and to lean into God, man, the possibilities are limitless. And so it's just been kind of cool to see that play out over the last few years and looking forward to an adventure with them sometime this year as well. As they're now 25 and 21.

So now they can pay for more of it. But anyway, we'll be coming back after the break to talk more about adventure. Go to masculinejourney.org to register for the upcoming boot camp. It's coming up November 20th through 23rd down in Royston, Georgia. MasculineJourney.org.

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 road. Regular walk with God. It's something that will make you be bigger than you were when you got there.

So, first of all, I had no clue what I was walking into, and then realizing that other people are in the same boat and you know how open everybody was to share their struggle is a great group, and a lot of packing was to be done. It is a tight bond of men, everybody's the same. And each and every time that I've come to food camp, I've learned something different. And not one man that's ever been there neglects not to take time out to talk or to share. It's serious business, and you need to come one time to break break with the men and fellowship, feel 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. That is Stefan Wolf, and that is. Born to be Wild. If you're going to go on an adventure, man, you might as well make it a good one, right?

And so you can't listen to that song, Jim, without wanting to sing along, which you did very good about not singing along. I did sort of promise. You did kind of promise. Yeah, and I kind of put you in a bad spot, so you'd have to promise. But still.

But you can't listen to that and not be excited about going on an adventure. Right. Yes. Or hit the accelerator if you're driving. That's true.

That's true. Now, Harold, do you have a special memory of that song? Loved that song. I used to ride a motorcycle. And if I heard that, I had to go get on it.

Okay. Head out on the highway. Head out on the highway. Yep.

Well, we are back and we are talking about adventure, and that's why that clip was the bump in was it was about adventure. And and Danny, you're gonna uh have a clip and talk a little bit about adventure as well, right? Yep.

I actually uh switched clips in pre-show, which was kind of interesting. But yeah, I felt like that's what God wanted me to do. Not the clip I chose, but it's the chip the clip that chose me, I think.

So uh and it's from, ironically, Lord of the Rings, which I have bittersweet adventures with this movie, like staying awake for the whole thing. And last Wednesday, I took the day off, just was tired from the chemo, tired from everything. And I decided during the course of the day, home alone, I would watch Lord of the Rings.

Well, there's still about two 30-minute gaps in the movie that I don't understand because I don't know what happened. I know they're still looking for Frodo, and eventually they'll find him somewhere in one of these series. Frodo will be found. Anyway.

So I attempted to watch the movie, and then you threw this clip in the folder, and you said, Well, you know, if anybody wants to use it, and immediately I felt like God said, You do. I'm like, ah. Yeah. The clip is where Frodo's going to take the ring back. And all of his.

Comrades are gathered around him, and the clip will explain itself a little, and we'll talk about it afterwards. All right, here we go. Uh I will take the ring to Moldor. Though I do not know the way. I will help you bear this burden.

Yeah. As long as it is yours to bear. Yeah. If by my life or death, I can protect you. I will you have my sword.

And you have my birthday. And my axe. Carry the fees up as all little one. If this is indeed the will of the Council. Thank God.

Here! Mr. Furlough's not going anywhere without me. No, indeed, it is hardly possible to separate you, even when he is summoned to a secret council and you are not. Hey, we're coming too.

Have to send us home tied up in a sack to stop us. Anyway, you need people of intelligence on this sort of Matching. Twist. Thank you.

Well that rules you out. Believe it. You shall be the fellowship of the ring. Right. Where do we go?

Yeah, ironically in life, sometimes you choose adventures, Sam, to go on, but a lot of times adventures choose you. And it's your choice as to whether or not you accept them, I think. And, you know, I've been talking a little bit and shared some about our journey currently with this appendix cancer, which obviously I didn't choose appendix cancer. But you know, God has been so gracious in the people that He's put around us. I mean, just droves of people praying, droves of people checking in, you know, and that kind of thing.

And but what I found, and this is no reflection on anybody negatively, but as the journey goes on, And the intensity goes on. You see that there are people who are in it to win it with you, and they're with you no matter what. And they're intense and intentional about it. And that's kind of what God has been showing me because, you know, watching this movie or part of this movie and everything in this scene, you know, always catches my attention because, you know, you have my bow, you have my sword, and you have all the things. And it has fascinated me that the love of God poured out through people in this adventure who say, I'm going with you.

You know, if I need to be here, there are people who have dropped everything they're doing just to come help. There are people who have taken me to different appointments. There are people who say, hey, if you need a ride, you need anything. And then, you know, a couple of guys at church are going, Do you really need to be mowing the yard? I'm like That's like my time.

You know, I guard my yard like anyway. But they would, at the drop of a hat, I say, hey man, I can't do it. They'd be over there, you know, and it's fascinating to me, just the overwhelming love that's poured out that way. And that's what I saw in this clip, or not saw, we heard, we've already clarified that, but I've seen the clip too, is that. In in an adventure You've got to have people around you.

You know, and and Ultimately, sometimes it's not the destination, it's not so much what you'll see, but it's the relationships that are forged in adventure. You know, because I mean, we've been on some adventures. I happen to think about our first entrenchment, and we all survived a hurricane together. It was an adventure to live, no doubt. And, you know, we went to Ohio and we outrun a hurricane.

Yeah, we don't do anything out of state unless it's a hurricane coming through.

So, what's going on this weekend? Yeah, or something like that. We're staying in the state this weekend, so that's good. But that's the thing that you know, the relationships that were there. you know, people that are close to you are forged a little deeper.

And you find out about people, and you find out more of their stories and that kind of thing. And that's. Part of the whole, I think, the desire of the heart of God that that falls into All these core desires is that the people around you, because God's all about relationship. You know, He's all about. The camaraderie and don't forsake the gathering together and all that stuff.

And you know, there's a host of witnesses around you, which means you're not in this life alone. No matter what you're going through, you may feel like it, but you're not alone. And I am the most. I have been the loneliest guy on planet Earth at times. But right now.

I would have to laugh at Satan when he comes and says, You're alone. I'm like, Yeah, what about these 40 people? You know, and they got a thing. But dude, that's my heart with this, I think. You know, Danny, that when we do this talk, you know, one of the things that I like to highlight is every boy loves an adventure, but they want it with dad.

Yeah. They want that advent they may not get it with dad, which, you know, hopefully God will bring them a dad, but you want the adventure, but you really want it with dad. And so, you know, that's the the thing I c certainly see in your life, and I know everybody sitting here can see it in your life, that that you're experiencing this, but you're experiencing it with dad. And and seeing his hand in it is is Truly amazing. It is phenomenal.

I mean, just the things that show up. And, you know, on vacation this year, we went to Santee Cooper fishing because one of my great adventures with my dad was went down there fishing. And I had spent years thinking I need to go back down there and go fishing. And when I got to go, My son was with me. And so it was kind of a As Hank Williams Jr.

would say, a family tradition, if you will. But, you know, so yeah, you want it with those close around you. But yeah, ultimately, you want it with God the Father. Because there's no adventure like an adventure with God the Father. Yeah, if you think about when People sit around and they tell stories.

They tell stories. about adventure. Right, they tell this one time when we fill in the blank, right? It's always about adventure. That's what draws us in, the stories of adventure, the stories of the Bible, in the Bible of adventure.

Draw us in. Oh, yeah. Think of the adventures he took on. Paul, on some crazy ones, Jesus himself. But you even start with Abraham, you know, being asked to go to another country.

And you can just go down the list. Certainly, David's adventures with the bear and the lion, etc., were all proving to these guys they had what it took for the moment, you know, that God had a Four. Oh, yeah. Then you had Moses, who the last place he went to go was where he was called back to. Right.

Right. You know, and threw up his own objections. And through that, God said, Oh, no. We're going to do this together, right? Gideon, I mean, just adventure after adventure after adventure.

When we first got back from Alaska, we had a pastor that, on three different occasions in our first three months, said, Well, you know, God's going to call you and He's going to take you somewhere. He's not going to call you to Alaska. My wife and I would just die like it. Or he might. And it was the greatest adventure, like I said earlier, of our life.

But he'll call you to where you're going to. See the most out of him. Yeah, when you see those men called quite often, and certainly was the case with Moses. I'm not going unless you're coming with me. Right.

Right. Yeah, it's kind of like Steve Martin with the jerk. I need this ashtray. You know, he's like, I'm taking my brother. God, you got to be there too.

You know, I mean, there's like a list of things he's going to pack and take with him. Yeah, well, it's just like the clip that Danny just played, right? Right. I mean, it just wouldn't have been a movie without Gandalf and then Aragon and all those guys. It just, you know, and certainly your favorite.

Yeah. My arks. That guy. Yeah, I love that guy. Gimli.

He's my favorite. Is there something significant about being my size? And my favorite two characters in that are The Hobbit and the Dwarf. One of The Hobbits. Yeah.

Sam Wise. Yeah. And Gimli. Mine was always a dwarf because I was shaped like him, so I could really, you know, you have a camera here, so you guys know that that's the case. But we don't have time to play another clip in this.

Episode. We will be playing some more in the after hours. And so, if you don't know what the after hours is, that means you listen to us on the radio.

So, we continue this conversation. Andy, do you want to tell us about the after hours, what we do on that?

So, the after hours is a continuation show. I mean, we originally record the radio show. That's our first podcast. And the after hours is just a podcast that we put out that's where we get deeper into our stories.

Sometimes it looks exactly like the first show or, you know, in format or whatever, but most of the time we're talking and we're taking things a little bit deeper because we have a little bit more time. Yeah, we take things a little bit deeper. We continue in the path that we're going down, just let God continue to work in it. And you can get that where a rabbi, they can get it pretty much anywhere, can't they? Yeah, on any podcast provider, but certainly iTunes, Spotify, those places.

Yeah, and at masculinejourney.org. You can listen to it right there on the player we have there. Absolutely. Right. And that's where you can register for a boot camp.

And a boot camp's coming up when, Jim, do you remember when the boot camp is? I didn't think you would. November 20th through 23rd, go to masculinejourney.org to register. We'll talk with you next week. But this week, let God love on you and then turn around and love on others.

This is the Truth Network. Yeah.