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. No. Welcome to Masculine Journey. This is uh This is Andy.
I'm filling in. I've not been here. in a while. Uh so I've enjoyed the first session and hopefully I can keep things going. But Sam.
bailed on us after suggesting the topic and yeah, we're going to keep hitting you on it, Sam. We're gonna save some. We're gonna we're not this is The larger story we're talking about, part of our foundations. This is an important part of. our lives, it's become a big part of what we talk about in in in the Wild at Heart um boot camps that we do in the ministry there.
And it's just brought so much perspective and understanding I think understanding for me. Um just insight into this spiritual life that we walk. Um The larger story to me just Uh There's a lot to it, but to me, it's just a great love story set in a world at war. That's how John Eldridge puts it. And we usually get the part, we know it's a love story Jesus came and gave his life for us, and we know the sacrifice he did, but we kind of lose it there about the spiritual war that we're now in, that the whole New Testament talks about.
Paul's constantly talking about it, and we know that, and we hear that. But what does that look like? And then and in that larger story, C am I just gonna passively sit by and just kind of wait out until Act Four when You know, we all go to heaven, or am I going to be actively involved in God's mission? Am I gonna live sacrificially? I'm gonna live with a purpose.
that he created me. Am I going to help rescue this world he died for, or I'm just going to let them sit there and and you know, suffer without him. Right. Sam Sam helped us with this with this. Yeah.
and do it the different way. Yeah, hopefully I stay on track a little bit.
Well, so we said that this is a time to go deeper and more transparent. That's right.
So in being more transparent, I'll start. You guys can You can be transparent in a minute, so you got time to think about it. But the transparency for me was that. Mm. I grew up Pretty much in a pretty legalistic church environment.
I mean, I went to church every Sunday, every Sunday night, every Wednesday night. I learned a lot. in spite of trying not to. But as I got older and and decided, okay, There's something and and you know, we we heard that clip in the first Hour that there's the splinter in your mind that's just gnawing at you, that you know there's something more, but you don't know what it is. And you're almost fearful of understanding what it is.
And so that happened for me. When I was, I don't know, twenty five years old, I had some people come to me. I was doing a lot of ministry at that time on a volunteer basis. I didn't know come here from Sikkim about the gospel or, you know, anything else really. But I I knew I loved Jesus and I I loved the church and I loved People and I was doing a lot of cool stuff, and people came to me and said, You know what?
You need to go to seminary. That's what you need to do. You need to go to seminary. And you need to devote your life to ministry. And while that's very flattering, It's still kind of all about me.
And so I go to seminary and I'm thinking, okay, I'm you know, I'm getting what I need so that I can go out and help the world and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And in seminary, that's when it really started unraveling. Because I found out that the guys in seminary were just as broken as I was. They cheated on tests just like everybody else, you know, in regular college did. And it began to shatter my world because I went into it with this utopian idea of what things were going to be.
And before. I graduated seminary. I actually was so frustrated and so aggravated with things, and was just. I was the thorn. In the side of my seminary, into the fact that finally they just said, you know, Darren.
we think you would learn more outside of here rather than inside of here. Ouch. And and nicely asked me to leave. And and that was when my world began to figure out, oh, Okay. It's not about what I want.
I mean I can't have everything the way I would like it. I can't have, you know, the professors that I want and them to teach the way I want.
So there's a good, good alternative. Yeah, a good alternative is learning that you're very, very broken. And so that was kind of the beginning point for me figuring out: okay, there's something way bigger out here, and I don't have a clue what it is yet, but it's not me. The uh I'm sort of reversed to the process. People tried to tell you don't go to seminary?
Oh, no. Nobody thought there was any chance that in a certain hot place that I would ever end up at seminary. But yeah, I ended up there. And that's actually the story I was going to jump into. When I was Sixteen, I was dating a Southern Baptist girl, went to church.
And I grew up with God is love, and that's pretty much what I boiled it all down to. And I had a good grasp of that and this fella's telling what I considered kids, they were junior high school kids. But he was saying, you know, your mother may be going to hell. I can say hell, right? Your father may be going to hell.
It's a real place. And you have to decide right now that you're not going to hell. And I've walked out of there. Angry, and I s literally swore to God I'd never step foot in another Southern Baptist church. And thirty years later, God had me in a Southern Baptist seminary.
So. Don't tell God what you're not going to do, but it isn't about us. It's his story. And that's actually a word, history. But it is God's story and we get to be included in it as extras in his play.
Indeed, I think sometimes we don't wanna You know, we don't want to be called into it. And other times we want to get called into it, and it feels like. It feels like we're presuming it on God almost. We're not ready. We don't have the character.
We want to go do something for God, as Jim likes to frown upon, instead of doing something with God and being called up in this story with him. And I think we get a lot. We could probably each one go through Ideas where we, Jesus said, John, I think 8:32, and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. And we don't have a lot of truth in this story. that he's telling.
And this is what we're talking about: getting deeper into the story. The more you have insight into the story, you become you, you learn of what your part to play is. He works with you, he says, Okay, now you've been entrusted, you understand this a little bit better.
Now, this is what I want you to go and do, and I think. That is so rewarding and that's where your heart comes alive. To me, it's like going back to the Matrix. There was that splinter in my mind that I knew there was something more because I had walked with God to a degree. as much as I do.
I mean uh the truth that I had at the time But it was still broken. I still had a broken marriage. I still had. have a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. that lot of addictions.
And the more that I understood the larger story, the more I was called up into it. And got away.
Now, we all live in a small story. It's impossible not to live in a small story. But the more I live in the larger story, The more my heart comes alive and the more I'm sensing my purpose, and really it opens you up to just a greater connection with God. In a group. One of the things you said sort of triggered the That again in me, it's a oh, this is what I do.
Well, what we do. really isn't that important. God, who we are. And that we are His and His beloved is, you know, we can't do anything for God that He can't do better Himself. No, but He chooses to, and I think that's what we do.
He does include us in His work. That's wonderful.
Well, Jesus became a man because. God knew that we as men would understand A man. Mm-hmm. Who is walking by faith. In that way, better than we would understand anything else.
So he comes so that he can not only recognize our own infirmities, but that we can recognize and go, okay, well.
Okay, so he does get it. He does understand some of this. And Is that why Jesus didn't come as a woman? 'Cause we would never understand. Jim.
Here we are. He could. He's back in the smaller story again. Send your emails to Jim at masculinejourney. One of these days I'll actually get those.
Yeah, but it's It is This idea that Um To me, even being a part of this larger story was still somewhat about me. It was, oh, I'm getting called into God's larger story as you were talking about, Jim. And what happens is when we start getting our validation. From, oh, God's including me. He's going to let me play this role or that role or the other role.
Um. As we begin to do that, we start falling out of the Larger story. But in the bump music, In the first Yeah. You played our rescue story. And so the larger story, honestly, is Our rescue story.
I mean, that's it. It rescues me on a regular basis from that small story mindset. If I'm upset with my wife because she keeps putting short things on the tall shelf in the refrigerator. You know, everybody ought to know you don't put short things in the tall shelf on the refrigerator. But there's a tall shelf?
There's a tall shelf in the refrigerator for only tall things, Jim.
So you would go on that shelf, Jim. Oh, I would. And so, no, I mean, it's, it's, you know, when you're starting to lose your mind, so to speak, with your friends. Yes. And you stack things in the tall if they're short.
That sort of thing. Knowing okay, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not about A refrigerator. This is not about a car. This is not about a house.
This is not about a mortgage. This is about something much greater than me.
Now, all those little things may play into it some way, somehow. But having a concept that God is doing something, one of the phrases that I heard from. Eldridge one time. that was Pretty insightful. Um was that We all have an orbit.
About us.
So that when you meet a man, when you meet Darren Kuhn, you're meeting my fig leaf, so to speak, right? And so there's this orbit going on around me. And so, what you have to do, if you really want to love that person, you have to go, okay, what am I not seeing? What's beyond the fig leaf? What else is going on in his story?
Even though he's only showing me this part of the story. And so as we think in. That's why the larger story is important. It goes into every one of our tiny relationships, it goes into our big relationships. And.
It goes into ministry, it goes into everything that you want to do. The larger story. is that God has been doing something long before we ever came on the scene. He's continuing to do that, and he is on his way to restoring all that has been lost. And that includes everything that we had before, everything that He had before.
We think of God's restoring everything I lost.
Well what did he lose? Yeah. He lost a lot more than I did. He did. And he's in the business of restoring all of that, too.
Yeah. He lost his whole creation. It wasn't just humanity, it was everything that was affected by it. All of creation is under the burden of sin.
So, going on, we're going to get into the acts. We're going to break this story down a little bit now. You know, just getting the context, and we'll even revisit this next week because we got other guys coming back, and I want to hear what they have to say. About the general idea of larger story. But I'm so important to get all that out there.
That's why we spent a show and a half on it or thereabouts. But now we get into the acts and Aaron was talking about just relationships in the community.
Well, the foundation of all this stuff. We seem to think that it's just about God and us. But before God and us, it was God and God. It was it was the Trinity. And one of the best things Robby would be proud of me.
I mean, you can't hardly do the Um You can't do the act one without. You could have played act one, Last of the Mohicans, and Jim could have narrated. I love that. That's what I use, but this is an audio program and not a video. But River Runs Through It is really good.
You have the father and his two sons, and they're just out fishing. And, you know, whenever you see. In, I think it's John 14, when we do the sonship talk, Morgan talks about how Jesus and the Father are so connected.
Well, the Trinity was connected, and that was before everything. That's what it says in John 1.1, that in the beginning was the Word and was with God and was God. And the Trinity, I mean, the Holy Spirit was there, obviously, with them as well. The Holy Spirit hovered over the water before the earth was formed.
So you've got all of them entering into the story before we did. And this just gives you an idea of just you hear the joy and the communion of the Father and the two sons. All right. Oh me, oh my Look at that fist Unbelievable at that moment. I knew.
surely and clearly. that I was witnessing perfection. You You are a fine fisherman. Only need three more years before I can think like a fish. They're already thinking like a dead stone fly from the next year.
Oh, there's pictures. Hurry up. One. Ha ha ha ha. Two.
My brother stood before us, not on a bank of the big Blackfoot River, but suspended above the earth. free from all its laws, like a work of art. Yeah. Three. You know, just the description and the beauty of it makes you.
Just What what will we see that? Will we get to see what it was like in the very beginning? Yes. I hope. I think we will as well.
Yeah, I hope it's going to be kind of like going to the Forest Service films where they show you all the stuff that went on before. Or maybe like the Creation Museum. I hope that God's going to show us those things. I really do. But.
I love that clip. I mean, because it's just, it's three men. They love each other. They love where they're at. They love what they're doing.
The joy is just exuding from them. And you can kind of see that. On the Mount of Transfiguration, when God says, Hey, this is my Son. Listen to him. from you know I'm p I'm pleased with this guy.
And Jesus' baptism even. He says the same thing in just that the dove comes down and the Father speaks.
So you got the Trinity right there. I had a really weird thought. I know that's unusual for you. No, not you fair. But I could hear God creating a fish, and look at that fish from the Holy Spirit and Jesus.
Yeah, right. Or everything else that he created. Yeah. Bet you can't catch that, Jesus. Watch this, man.
Uh yeah, I yes, very much so. I I love watching This is gonna sound really stupid. I probably A lot of things I say do. We just said that about Jim.
Well, Jim and I are cut from the same cloth. This is the theologian side of the room. Yeah, it is. What about me? We're the really dumb ones.
So I love watching things like America's Got Talent. Or the voice, or different things like that.
Now, I don't like every act. Obviously, some of them are stupid, and some of them are, you know, less than stupid. Staring at masculine dirty. That's exactly right. But the reason I do is because you get a glimpse.
of the glory of God every now and then. You get to see, and that's what you were witnessing in that clip, right? They were seeing the glory of God in the brother and the son. In he was Born to fish, he was gifted at it, and he is being an image-bearer. Enjoy in all of those things better in that moment than he ever had been.
And that's where the, you know, he was hovering above the earth kind of thing.
Well, that's what I see often. When I see Uh I mean, you know, w Andy, when I see you do a talk at boot camp, for instance, knowing that for a long time you struggled with, you know, do I have anything to say, kind of, and And and watching you do that. It'll bring a tear to my eye and a joy in my heart because I will see: okay, there's the image. There it is. It's poking out now.
We can all see it. And it's the same thing when you see your daughter leading worship at church, or you see your son, or your friend, or it's all of those things. And what you love about that moment. Is you are getting as close as you can possibly get, probably on this earth to seeing the glory of God. born out in a human being.
than you ever will. And that Is the larger story. The larger story is: we are here to be image. Barriers. And yet.
One thing we're not talking about it tonight, but one of the things that we talk about at boot camp and at different times is. We're afraid of our glory. We're afraid to show our glory. I'm afraid to sometimes. Just be one hundred percent daring all in in the image of God.
Why?
Well, maybe that's scary. Maybe it feels like it's too much. Maybe it feels like, uh-oh, if I let them see that I've got it. Maybe that's now the new standard, and I'm going to have to live up to it. I don't know.
What if they don't receive it? What if they don't receive it? Do you want to reject me? Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so much that goes into this, but that's the larger story.
We're here to bear the image of God. Jesus says. If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.
So, what's our mission? Lifting up Jesus. How do we do that? by showing his image as best we possibly can. The image he created us individually in, not somebody else's image.
We always want to. See somebody else.
Well, that's a good image to live in, and that's dangerous. Yeah, but you bear. God's image in a uniquely different way than right. And I was just. Yeah, you're the best Andy there is.
And Jim bears his image in a way that I could never dream of. And art and Grant and Everybody here on any weekly basis.
Well, Harold was with God in the beginning when John 1-1, last. Yeah, Harold actually wrote John 1-1. And so That's you know, when you get to see that, when you get to spot that, You know it. You know, you might not explain what it is, but I'm telling you, that's what it is. And I believe that wholeheartedly.
I think God says how good it is for men to dwell together in unity. And that's, I believe, their. Their unity and glory, and I think that's a picture when we're unified in Him. It looks like what it looked like in John 1:1. Again, if you have image bearers, it's the people version of that.
With the Lord. With the Lord. So you had a scripture you wanted to share. Do you want to share it? Yes.
So Gr uh Grant wanted to s share this scripture and you know it's it's not something that we'd typically use, but it was on his heart and it matches From that aspect, And I read a few for class here.
Okay, yeah. Private routine. Three Five and six. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. And they nod.
On your own understanding. In your old ways. Submit To him. And he will make your Pass through it. And as he was reading that, I'm sitting there thinking, you know, how does he?
My speech is getting better. You're doing great. You're doing great. But w that w It says, lean not to your own understanding, and that's a big part of what we're talking about. Our understanding was not the larger story, understanding.
No, I was leaning on my own understanding. Exactly, yeah. And I thought. That Um people were here for me in whatever use I had for them. Evil or good.
But people were here for me. Things were here for me. And, you know, some of that comes naturally because you were a baby and your mama did hold you close and love you and pat you and tell you you were special and lie to you and things like that. But And so you grow up thinking that same thing, right? And then we live our life that way.
But that's leaning on our understanding of things, not looking at it from God's perspective. Yep. And then it it goes on to the path the path, you know. That path is the story. You're part of the larger story.
We call it the masculine journey where you stand across roads and you look to see where the good road is. He sounds like he can commentate that. I may or may not have written that. I think you did, River. And Ernie did an excellent job of reading that.
Andy did it. Ernie did a great job of voicing that. Uh one of the things that Gets me in this, and that is so easy to miss about it not being about us. Look at the commandments. Jesus gave us.
Love God. love others.
Now That those can be some of the most fulfilling things for yourself, but you're not the object. And That, the closer I can get to that, The more fulfilled I am. And it's not about me ultimately, but it comes back to being helpful to me.
So, what you're talking about is motive. Why do I love God? Why do I love others? It's Am I loving them because of of what I'm gonna get back from it?
Well Maybe, sometimes. But that's not supposed to be the mission. No. Were you going to say something, Jim? No, you took breathing deeply.
So I had to stop and I. We hope you enjoyed the show. I've enjoyed delving into the larger story. Hopefully you live out the larger story. Come back next week and get the rest of the larger story.
And come to boot camp, Royston, Georgia, November 20th through 23rd. We'd love to have you. Love to get into this deeper, talk about your identity, sonship, all kinds of things. All the cool kids will be there. All the cool kids will be there.
And some of us not so cool kids. And it's at a very cool place. Yeah, we will have theologians there, but we won't let them talk to us. That's right.
I will do it.
