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 and 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 are questing today without Sam. Yeah.
Where Sam lives in Seattle, a place you never want to be when you happen to be talking about foundations and today's foundation. is very Sam foundational.
So, you know. That's our opportunity. Unfortunately, Sam's out under the weather. We miss him a lot. But this particular uh subject matter, Sam Uh has gleaned so much in his life out of and helps uh uh us all interpret You know, I God gives us An interpretation that's a lot different than the world would.
And this particular area of our lives It's really helpful to have a little bit different look on this. And so, Andy, we're doing these foundations. And so, this was your brain, child.
So foundations um to me usually is just the contents of the Wild at Heart book. But there's a lot to Wild Heart uh team offers up. And this is one that something that came from the Restoration of the Heart, I believe it is. I think it's it was like a conference that they did. And if you listen to them, you'll hear him talk about things, but there's um an idea that for spiritual growth.
Sometimes God has to burn some things down in us. He has to disrupt us and dismantle us. And then it goes on to heal. Yeah, wait, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, going ahead today is disrupting and dismantling. We're not next week, Sam hopefully will be with us to get the second part of this particular foundation.
And again, the idea of the foundations obviously all come out of the B-I-B-L-E because Jesus is the rock, and it's on his solid ground we stand.
So I want you to think about a passage that maybe you hadn't thought about in this light. Clearly, Jesus. talked about Being pruned, right? You might remember this thing about we are the branches, and he has his clippers, and maybe you've had a chance to get a good clipping at one time or another in your life. I know I sure have.
And Danny, you certainly, even recently. Right? Yeah. It's called 2025. Yeah.
It is 2025 being the year. But there may be a passage in the Old Testament you hadn't thought about in this angle. It's really, really beautiful as you begin to think about that in Isaiah 11 is a fascinating, unbelievably wonderful holy ground passage that you might say out of this branch will come Right. from the root of Jesse. That will be, right, anointed with the seven spirits of God, wisdom, understanding, counsel, might giving you this picture of the Messiah.
It's beautiful. Isaiah chapter 11. But it leads up to Isaiah chapter 12. It just works like that. I don't know.
But. When you read the first verse of Isaiah chapter 12, it says this. And in that day you shall say, O Lord, I will praise you. That thou wast angry. with me.
I will leave that there for y'all to go look at Isaiah 12 and think about what? What you're talking about, Will is I will praise you. that you are angry with me And of course if you think about that From your salvation point of view, right? Or just, you know, getting back to the basic of basics, had God not. poured his wrath upon his son, Coming out of Isaiah 11 into Isaiah 12, if he had not been angry on his son, and then none of us would have.
the blood of Christ. But nonetheless, like all scripture, it's on levels.
So there's a level of that that, yes, that's the messianic picture. But it's also. a picture of what we're talking about today. Which is Get the rug pulled out from underneath you. And so I'm going to.
Uh Go with Darren's clip because Darren. Real quick, I wanted to add something. No, you're not allowed. I said, No, I'm just kidding. You've been disrupted.
I wanted to make a point there that. Robby kind of disrupted me there. Is that I was making reference, and I do make a reference to a wild at heart a lot of times because there's things in the Bible. That they do a good job of making clear than I did in my own unlearned self, ignorant self. And it is to get it you look at those deeper story elements of the Bible, what the Bible is truly saying.
And so this idea, though, if you look at disruption and dismantling, you see it any time God did anything With one of his people, he did this. If you look at Moses when he got put on the backside of the desert, whenever he disobeyed, and when you see it with Joseph and you know, going in Potiphar's house and doing all that stuff in the Long time that he had to wait. He was disrupted for sure when he got thrown into the, you know, into the hole or whatever. But I just wanted to make that point. Obviously, all this goes back to the Bible.
Just sometimes good teachers, good teaching helps pull this out. And then, whenever you get it, when you're like, oh, you get revelation on it, then you want to share that. But that's what we're doing here is with this idea. Right, right. And, Mandy, you said it well.
Yes. That foundationally, this ministry was birthed out of Wild at Heart and the book Wild at Heart, which is. Fundamentally, absolutely, all script. John Eldridge has one of the most amazing relationships with Christ you will ever experience. And so we don't, I just don't want.
And you don't want anybody to see that no, we're not We're dreaming this stuff up. We're not. You know, it's very scriptural-based. But along those lines, Darren. Go for it.
Well, this first clip we're going to hear is from the movie McFarlane, and it's a true story. Of a guy who's an amazing coach, by all accounts, a pretty good dad and a pretty good husband, but He gets sideways with some players' parents, he gets sideways with a school board member, he gets sideways again, and he ends up getting fired from three different jobs in a fairly short period of time. And again, it's a true story. He finds himself in East LA. at McFarlane High School.
And He is pretty much out of options. And he is finding himself and his wife, um. Kind of pushing him towards this, taking a job that is much, much underneath what his qualifications are. But it's the beginning of him beginning to grasp: I need to humble myself and submit to whatever it is that's going on here. And You'll kind of get the introduction to that.
Jim Wake. Proto Mo Camelo. How are you? Decaffeinated. Come on.
I'm supposed to bleed a rock with a budget, handle the kids in their petty vendettas, and quit smoking. Who am I, Superman? What happened? Oh, some kid called his little sister a Well, I'm not gonna repeat what he said. But it explains why she's pregnant.
Sit down. Welcome to McFarland. You know, I was surprised that a man like you would want to come here. But then I read your file. Up in St.
Paul, you were fired for verbally abusing your plays. I don't use profanity. I was just trying to motivate some boys who didn't know the value of hard work. And uh Fact with the chairman of the school board. Difference of opinion.
And this latest incident. You want to tell me about that? I lost my temper should never have happened. What are the chances of it happening again? It's not going to happen again.
Pleased to hear it. Because you're running out of options, Mr. White. Come in, coach. Coach White, Coach Jenks, this is your new overqualified assistant.
They're right. The name's white. Yeah. Oh wow.
So I I'm probably the only one here that's ever found themselves in that situation of taking a job that was seemingly less than What? I felt qualified to do, or something like that. And I say that facetiously because I know these guys in this room. And I know Bookus.
Well, Educated. good hearted Pastors. who could preach circles around most other pastors. And yet find themselves on the outs. And find themselves Having to figure out what's God doing.
There's some disruption here that we didn't ask for. And, you know, Harold earlier, and he'll talk about it a little bit later, said there's been a couple of times in his life he's been disrupted. And it's hard for me to believe that in the 127 years that he's been alive. But. God has disrupted me at least.
A million times. I jokingly said I call that Tuesday. And it's fairly regularly. And I'm thankful that it's fairly regularly, but I do get tired of it.
So you would think one would learn. but that disruption happens because he's got to stop our agenda. That's the reality, right? Adam had an agenda, Satan had an agenda, everybody Nebuchadnezzar had an agenda. All of these people have had agendas along the way, and God comes in and disrupts that agenda.
because he has a better agenda, but we don't want that. We just want what we have, and we want to keep going on the track we were going on. And so God comes in to do some disrupting. And then once we've submitted to that disruption, then the second half of the equation, the dismantling begins to happen, where he's beginning to dismantle the false self that we've been living under, that the poser that we've been living under. And he's getting to the root.
of how we ended up on this. straight agenda to begin with. Right. In the case of McFarlane, that's Before he ever met this principal, he had been disrupted. Fired, fired, fired.
And and now he's kinda getting taken apart. Mm-hmm. Because to be an assistant To this other coach is like, and the other coach is a piece of work, I'm telling you. Yeah, he is, and they battle back and forth a lot. But, you know, Coach Jinx.
figures out very quickly. I'm just going to need to submit to this. Whatever's happening, And let it play out. And it does, and it plays out beautifully, but not without major disruptions and more dismantling along the way. Yeah, Danny?
Yeah. You think there's one minute left before the break is why you're saying I thought you had something you wanted to say. I've got that on the information. He was trying to disrupt you, but I thought he was saying he was number one. No, well, you're more spiritual than that.
You were just pointing to God. That's right. I like that. I know we don't have time to get into all of your story Harold, but we can set up the cliffhanger, so go ahead. We know you said this has happened many times in your 250 years.
Okay, so Yeah.
Well, the first time it happened is I had been sailing along as a kid in high school and uh going on into college. with the idea that I was going to be a pilot in the Navy. And I even passed the written exam for Aviation Officer Candidate School. And two weeks later, A guy that has to. We got to go to a break.
We're going to have to bring it all back when he comes back. 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. I listened to her more. Morgan Snyder's book, Driving to Work Last.
year and that was a very Profound experience.
So, this kind of culminated into it. I'd have been invited to it several times and just it never worked out. And God really had it set up that I came last time.
So, coming into this one, I knew this one went deeper, and I really wanted it. It's a break for me to get outside of things I've got going on, and I just needed a break from it and needed to reconnect. And it's been absolutely bad, this process. The covenant of silence, silent prayer, those are some of my favorite parts that this is real connection with the Lord. You can hear them speak, you can get direction, guidance, anything you're missing is there.
You always learn something new. It's fun experiencing it with other men. It's fun standing for them. They're going through. We're all different and unique, but we're all going through the same struggles.
And when you hear somebody else went through it, too, it kind of gives you an encouragement that, hey, you can make it through this. And God's got you, and He's going to hold you up through it, and He's going to carry you to the next level. Register today at masculinejourney.org. When you don't move the mountains, I'm needing you to move. When you don't part the waters, I wish I could walk through.
When you don't give the answers, as I cry out to you, I will trust, I will trust, I will trust in you.
So we left our hero Harold. He was trusting. That he someday could take on the Red Baron himself with his... Ha ha ha ha ha.
Sop with camel. You were going to be a fighter pilot, you know, and getting those machine guns through the propeller like that always amazed me. I'm just saying. How did they not shoot off the propeller? Good engineering.
So anyway It would be credible. Back to me. Yeah. Just ignore everybody, Harold. You just have to move on.
So I was sailing along, and all of a sudden, this fellow that ate at the boarding house where I worked. uh tricked me into a blind date with his sister. Within six weeks we're engaged to be married and I'm told that, uh, she cannot be married to a Pilot in the Navy.
So I'd drop out of school. I join the Air National Guard and go off to basic training. Scared to death of what I'm going to try to do to earn a living, because I'm no longer going to be a pilot in the Navy. I got to compete for a job, and up to that point in my school career, I had not cared much about grades.
so my grades were passable, but nothing to get excited about. And uh A lot of the guys graduating in my curriculum went into career fields that I couldn't see me being happy doing. But as luck would have it and as God provided, when I got back to school in the fall after basic training. I had a class in computer programming. And just like the first time I saw Jan, when I saw a computer programming it's like, Oh yeah Yeah, that's me.
It's more of a Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And uh I mean let's so I had a I had a career that didn't involve any jet planes, but I was flying computers. Yeah.
So that was the first major disruption. We moved to Columbus, Mississippi, and I was working there for like eight years. I expected that I would be in Columbus, Mississippi, as long as I was living. But uh God saw fit to disrupt that. and consequently I ended up in Moxville, North Carolina.
great, great change in my life. It didn't seem so when it when the opportunity first presented itself. But, looking back in hindsight, It's great. Had that not happened, I wouldn't be here with you guys. That's right.
When he came to Moxville, he said Yeah, Oh, yeah. Just think about how many jokes we'd be missing if Harold weren't a part of this. Oh, it would be.
So uh moving along. Uh uh uh just a spectacular clip, I think. Oh, everybody has great ones. But Andy, yours. Um It's not necessarily a place that most guys are very comfortable.
Within our families, we are often disrupted in our places of Mm. comfort. Yep.
So this uh clip is from Trouble with the curve, and you got Gus and Mickey. Gus is an old crotchety baseball scout that has done that for many years. Clint Eastwood, by the way. Clint Eastwood, yeah, you'll definitely hear that. And Amy Adams is Mickey, and it's his daughter who's kind of gotten abandoned through his career.
And there's reasons for it. She doesn't understand it, and I'll talk about that after we play the clip. But you just see here a lot of hurt. She's been going to therapy, and it has to do with this idea of. a couple of different things.
One of them, she was abandoned by hi uh him. He tried to keep her out of the field and the roughness of baseball and all of that. But then also they really haven't even Even at the time that she's around him again, they haven't connected emotionally. And so let's play the clip and we'll talk about it when we get back. What therapy.
I've been going. Since college, it's a long time. Just needed to Talk to someone to help me deal with why you left me. Did I say something wrong here? needed to um understand why after mom died you took a six-year-old.
to live with an uncle that she barely knew and you left her there. for a year and you didn't even call, not once. We came here to watch baseball. We didn't come here to talk, I know. Everything is okay as long as we don't talk, but there's.
There's no T V and there's no game on, so. It's just you and me, so I- I need to check here. And then you did it again. I had you until I was 13 until you sent me away to boarding school and then nothing. And you were gone.
middle school, high school, college, nothing. And for a long time, I thought that I had done something wrong. And that's why you left. But then I figured out that's just how you wanted it and so I acted like it was okay because I didn't want you to know how bad it hurt Okay. There's never a time or place.
What are you doing anyway? Why did you start all this? You're amazing. That's not what I wanted for my kid.
Well, I guess what I wanted didn't matter. You don't even like baseball. I love baseball. You know I love it. I never even wanted to be a lawyer.
I did that for you so that you would be happy with me and that you would approve of me and then maybe you'd keep me around. I did what I thought was right. I just didn't want you to have life in the cheap seats. Spending every waking moment with my dad watching baseball, eating food that was no good for me, playing pool, staying up too late, those were the best seats in the house.
Well, so Um Just that story, I mean, it There's some of my story that's actually in that. Not all of it, but you know. Why he did, why he kind of abandoned her. No, you can't get into the dismantling. I mean, to the next two weeks.
No, we won't. We won't. Don't do it. I'm not.
Okay. I'm not.
But. What what was happening there was, um She just you know, she was communicating her heart and and that was very disrupting to him. But he did she didn't know the full story either in the fact that he had done all this stuff to protect her. While she was at the baseball field, there was a man about to abuse her, and he came up on him and he took care of business and he sent her away. And that was very just to interrupt you because it's kind of fun.
Yeah. You're doing a good job. I see Sam do it all the time. I'm like, okay, let me know I'm this fun. No, no, I think that that.
that the obvious thing we all do. Everybody's in pain over that scene. If you're sitting here, you're in pain. If you have a daughter, I assure you, you're in pain over that scene. I mean, there's tears in my eyes.
I don't know of anybody else.
So what do you want to do? You want to get everybody out of pain.
So you want to tell them that it all gets... There's more to the story. No, no, right now, there's no more to the story. Right. So right now.
Right this very second. The pain is there to point you. Right, that is the disruptor for sure. If not, you would not be disrupted. Right.
It's got to be uncomfortable. These disruptions we talk about to even get to dismantling. You have to be, there has to be some pain associated with it, or you're not going to change your behavior. And it was painful. He was hearing her, all her complaints, and he just wanted to move on.
He just kind of like, I wanted to move on there. You just kind of want to move on from that because it is painful. But it was. And again, part of the story was she didn't fully understand, and it helped her understand a bit more. But still, he needed to be disrupted, and he was trying to avoid it everything he could.
Let's not talk about it. You know, you didn't even like baseball anyway. A total trying to deflect. No, I really did like baseball. I like being with you.
And that just pushed in more to that disruption, to where he was like, oh. Maybe she really did want more. And then that's where he has to go and kind of deflect or kind of say, well, this is the reason. The point is, though. It only positions you to go on to the other stages, but you really have to be in these, as you said, these painful moments to be disrupted to where you're.
You evaluate what you did, you evaluate your actions, you evaluate the choices that you've made that have impacted other people. And it is hurtful. I mean, it was hurtful whenever. You know, I'd have my wife telling me about my daughter and how I wasn't connecting with her emotionally when she was in college, and she was living with me, so I was physically there. My situation, I didn't have my dad in my adolescence and stuff, and that hurt a lot.
And I wanted to make sure I was there, and I was physically, but I had struggled emotionally to be there for her, to be able to connect and have that conversation. That's why I was saying it was part of my story in there. But it was very disrupting whenever that began to happen because we were, we grew up, Ty, it was like that whole thing about as a kid around the baseball field. I'd take her with me, whether she liked it or not. I say, I told the guys, I watched enough baseball to be a baseball scout, you know, and we would go and we would go to the major league games and just had a blast doing it.
But, you know, there was a time and a season for that. And then as kids mature, they're not the same. They're the same person, but they're going through their experiences. And sometimes you. You don't know how to connect, but again, she took the time or Felt it need to be, and it was disrupting.
And again, when I first heard it, I wanted to avoid it. I didn't want to take responsibility. But I wasn't getting anywhere, and I'll probably stay there probably a year at least. And then I began to see it. And then God, in His and how He fathered me, He began to show me kind of my dad and not being there.
And as He fathered me through that back to Him, it allowed me to be. him to open me up to that disruption to where I was able to go on. And take those next steps. But there was disruption and dismantling in the middle of the state. Yeah, and often.
Yeah For me personally with my own daughters. Yeah. You know, I have to come to the place. where I see that I really did not want that. Yeah.
I didn't Want the I mean, that's my own inner cesspool. I'm getting a good whiff of it and it stinks.
Okay, if I'd wanted it bad enough, I'd have done something about it. And the truth is... That the painful thing is Sin is really in there. And it's really in me. And and ha having that mirror held up is beautiful, Darren.
No, it's just uh I totally agree with U2 and Have dealt with that with my daughter Danisha and you guys know her. She's you know, helped you out of boot camp, right? Um It's hard though, even at, you know, Years later, it's hard. And you have to be willing to Submit to that. And so it will be hard if you come to a boot camp.
It will be, but it will be it may feel like Groundhog Day where you're disrupted repetitively, you know? But you gotta come. It's it's right there at go to masculinejourney.org coming up November 20th. through the 23rd. Oh, we would love to see there.
It will be worth it, we hope. That God will disrupt us and dismantle us because it says, I was glad you were angry with me, so that I could get some stuff straight. Pretty cool. Isaiah 12, take a look.
