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. I think you may have caught us talking there a little bit.
We start at the same time every week, and then we start talking and forget to look at the clock. Anyway, if you did, we were talking about Harold like we always do. And so we'll probably do more of it today. We don't just do it for the show. He's our favorite thing to joke about because he's our favorite person in here.
And so we love to tease him and make fun of him. And so you may have caught a little bit of that. If you didn't, I'm sure you'll get other opportunities as we go through. Harold, you want to add anything to that? I'm just a good target.
I resemble that. Yeah.
Well, usually a bi a target a good target would be bigger. Yeah.
Yeah.
Anyway. We are talking about the, yeah, exactly, the larger story. And that was what you guys were talking about last week. And a quote we often use at the larger story at Boot Camp is something I was feeling this week approaching this radio show was I felt like I came into a movie 58 minutes late, which is technically or 56 minutes or whatever it is, because I didn't get to listen to either show last week. I had every intention of listening to it, but you know what they say about good intentions, right?
I just didn't get around to doing it. And so I came in here very lost. And so we compare that a lot of times to our life. You know, when we're talking about, doesn't life feel like a movie you you arrive 45 minutes late?
Something important seems to be going on. There's good guys, there's bad guys, and maybe I need to be doing something. I don't know what that is. Right, you just feel constantly confused and lost. Maybe not in every aspect of your life, but in some.
You know, you might know what you're doing at work pretty well, but boy, that home life can be confusing. Right. Or vice versa. Yeah.
Right. And and how often do you hear, well, if I could just get both sides of my life all together at once? You know, usually something's always going wrong, either it's g on the home front or it's it's in the work fr uh arena, something in those those lines. And so that that's constantly how we're feeling. Yeah, and since we have a visual clip That we don't uh yeah, I'm kind of low.
Um Since I'm just going to talk about it real quick while we're here though, it's always part of boot camp. And this is like a teaser to get you to boot camp. It's a really crazy movie. It's called Brazil. And there's this scene where this guy's got his head in a refrigerator.
And these guys come out of nowhere. And he's on the phone with them. And they actually come up behind him. And they're like military guys. And they're like making arrests of him.
It totally makes no sense. And that's the way we feel sometimes. We don't really know where we're at in God's story. We're totally lost. That's the point.
And we're hoping talking about the larger story, you're not lost. You get your head out of the refrigerator. Exactly.
Now, if that doesn't make you want to come to boot camp, I don't know what will. But I will tell you, do not go rent or watch or download Brazil. I have tried to watch every boot camp movie. I could not make it through that movie. Dewey Hilton and myself, I think, are the only two out of this group that has actually watched the movie from start to finish.
And we've discussed it many times. We still have no earthly idea what was happening. Yeah, and so it was an hour and a half worth of feeling lost instead of just. It would have been better to have my head in a refrigerator. Yeah, maybe that's the correlation.
So if you guys would catch us up a little bit about last week's show, now we don't want to do the whole thing or we wouldn't have time. And plus, you can go back and listen to last week's show, unlike me. You can go do that, which I'll go do, and get some more context. But if you guys could kind of just give us the whatever it's called, the what they used to call that in. in school the Cliff Notes.
The Cliff Notes. Yeah.
Well, Darren's notes are never as short as the first notes. That's one of the big issues. Darren is not Cliff. No one's ever called me Cliff.
Well, we did talk about the fact that, you know, The story of your life can best be summed up by saying that you live. in a love story set in the midst of a great battle. and that there's this long and sustained assault upon your heart. the one who knows. What you could be and fears you rising up to become that man because he's ancient and he's seen thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people just like you with the same stimuli, the same wounds, the same all everything, right?
And he knows that there's a few of those people that have overcome all of that, and he doesn't want you to be the next one.
So there's this sustained pursuit of your heart. He's trying to assault you. But then there's the opposite of that: there's God. Who also has a sustained pursuit of your heart because he's wanting to set your heart free to live. in this larger story.
And most of us live in a very small story where it's all about us or all about our marriage or all about our job or all about whatever that we've chosen to make it about today. And yet God is always saying, There's so much more going on behind the scenes than you recognize. The good news is, he's willing to show you that and call you up into that story along with him. And that's what he's done for every one of us here, or we wouldn't be here. Absolutely.
Granted. And God made it so we can make our own choice. That's right. We have free will, right? That's part of why he chose to be.
That was last week. That was last week. And so last week you were setting up the larger story in this series of acts, like a movie would be. And so you talked about Act One. And so give us a refresher on what Act One was.
So Act One is eternal glory, right? Eternal love. Before man comes on the scene, before angels come on the scene, there is the Trinity, there's God, and there's Jesus, and there's the Holy Spirit, and there is so much love, and there is so much community. And then everything that we experience is born Out of that community, right?
So he's called us into that part of the story.
Well, Then along comes Act II, which is Satan, who is also part of that original story. but chooses according to Ezekiel 28, chooses to rebel against God. He was a beautiful creature, and yet He thought his beauty was more important than God's glory, and so he. And he took out a third of the angels, and he was cast down To earth, where we find ourselves now. And so now we are living in Act III, which is our life.
the the act of Jesus coming to rescue us. out of this broken part of the story, transfer us into the kingdom of light, the the unbroken part of the story, and then ultimately there will be Act four, which is the restoration of all things. that will be much different Than just us sitting in church pews in heaven and singing Amazing Grace for a thousand years. I love Amazing Grace, I love to sing. But I'm hoping there's more.
Yeah, I don't think I could have it more than about three times on repeat. You know, I wouldn't imagine thousands and thousands of years for eternity. of singing it. But uh e even all the versions, you know, I mean not just the first two verses, you know, like all four verses. Even all that, it would get old.
Uh so we have a clip that kinda we keep using the word story 'cause we're in the middle of a story. Our life's about stories. If you ever wonder if that's the truth, when you talk to a friend after a weekend, you always ask him, How's your weekend? You want to know what the story is? Life is about a story, and we've got a clip.
From the Lord of Rings, Andy, that talks about stories, correct? Or Darren or Andy or Darren? It's Sam and Frodo towards the very end of The Two Towers, where they've gone through a lot of big battles and there's been dark things and there's been good things, but they're having a conversation as the movie is wrapping up. And it's Sam basically asking Frodo, About The stories that they've fallen into, that they found themselves in. And the conversation takes a little bit of a turn in that.
Sam figures it out. And he says, you know, there were lots of opportunities for people to turn back. But they didn't. And so that's where we find ourselves now. Life could be hard, we could turn back.
Mm-hmm. But hopefully we'll see enough of the larger story that we won't. Here we go. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Fruitle.
The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back?
back to the way it was with the school watchman. Had it happened. What in the end? It's only a pass. Thank you.
This shadow. Even darkness must be. A new day will come. And when the sun shines, it'll shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you.
That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand. and wine. But I think Mr. Furrell I do understand.
I know now. Folk in those stories. Had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
What are we holding on? too sad. There's some good in this world, Mr. Furhole. And it's worth fighting for.
Absolutely. So, Andy, I got a question for you. Um and no, I did you didn't know I was going to ask you this. But uh Larger story has been something personally important to you. You spent time with ancestry and some of that stuff, really kind of looking up your larger story, so to speak.
Why is that important to you?
Well it It started out more with, um Just the idea about identity. I got my new name and we'll talk about that. That'll be one of the th topics and With that, about that same time I was on this business trip And I had three occurrences. This one guy that was a veteran that had just met a long-lost sister, I believe it was, that was telling me about all that. And I was like, wow, this is just random.
And he was a Christian, and we were talking about the relevance of all that. And then there were two other things on that trip. I can't remember exactly what they were. It was like God hit me upside the head and said, How important go back and. Find out about your ancestry.
And I think that larger story is there's a story God's telling, and it's not just with you as an individual. It's with the family you're in, surprisingly. There's I I began to see that there was good and bad in my family, just like there's good and bad in the story that the the Bible tells. You know, there's a lot of sin in all those people of the Bible, those holy people of the Bible. And it began to help me realize that life is not random.
It says in Acts 17 about we're here for an appointed time. God puts us here, and the enemy wants us to feel like everything is random, that we're not in a story, that there's not some. purpose that in this story.
So that's kind of how I put it together and how this links in. Usually I think about it as identity, but certainly it's draw it this whole idea of story. My family has a story, I have a story as an individual. It all plays in together. Absolutely.
Thank you, Andy. When we come back, we're going to talk more. Finish up Act Two, moving into Act Three. Go to masculinejourney.org for a boot camp coming up. November 20th through 23rd in Royston, Georgia.
You could go register today at this break if you'd like. MasculineJourney.org. If you have financial trouble getting there, let us know. We'll help you get there. 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. The first one, I had no clue what I was walking into. And then realizing that other people are in the same boat and how open everybody was to share their struggle.
It was a great group, and a lot of hacking 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 bread 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.
God is in this soul. God is in the details. Even in the broken parts, He holds my heart. He never fails. When I'm at my weakest, I will trust in Jesus.
Always in the highest. He knows the one who goes before me. God is in his stars. Welcome back to Masculine Journey. Andy, another good bump.
You have to tell us who that is and what's the name of that song. Thank God for that. I was up on the parkway. Imagine that. Yeah, you on the parkway?
Yeah, surprise, surprise. Yeah, that doesn't happen. Different place on the parkway, actually. But that came on. I don't listen to radio that much, and that came on.
And I've heard that song, but I was like, you know, my ears perked up. Story. And I began to hear the words, and God is in this story, He's in the details.
So again, it goes back to that idea of feeling like there's randomness to this, that he's not in the story. Whenever we feel like he's not in the story, it's when we're living in a smaller story. That's what the smaller story to me is, is we just take God out of it. Take any of these purposes, any of this thing bigger than what's sitting right here before me.
So, anyway, yeah, I thought it was a good one. It was Katie Nicole and Big Daddy Weave.
Okay. And what was the name of the song? God is in This Story. Oh, well, you said that, I guess. I just didn't catch it and all that other stuff.
Something about story. There's a story about a story of a story of that, I think. That's like being present. Indeed. Indeed.
Darren, you were making a point where we're at at the break. If you'd like to touch on that a little bit.
Well This idea of the larger story was really huge in grabbing my interest and kind of pulling me into this understanding of God's doing so much more. into the masculine journey, into the battle that we are called to fight, the beauty in the world that we're called to rescue, the adventure that we're called to live, all of those things are part of that larger story. And what I discovered once I finally got to a boot camp. Was that my story was very, very small, or at least I thought it was, to Andy's point. God's been doing so much more for so long, generations, in fact, often.
And I thought my story was tiny. I thought it was all about me, and I thought I was the only one. That was as dumb as I am. I was the only one as broken as I am. I'm the only one that had a sexual addiction.
I'm the only one that couldn't pull it off in a marriage. I was the only one, you name it, I was the only one. That was my story. And it wasn't until I got to a boot camp With a few hundred of my closest friends who I had never met before, because I went by myself with no friends when I went, and I suggest that's the best way to go.
However, it wasn't until then that I met some guys. Um and found out oh Uh I'm not the only one that struggles with that. I'm not the only one who's blown it here. I'm not the only one who doubts my place in the story. And that's the power of a boot camp.
That's the power of getting together with some other guys. And we'll have guys at our boot camp. We'll have everybody, we've always said this, from pastors to parolees, literally. We'll have guys that have just had a broken marriage or they're struggling with addiction or they're struggling with anger or they've been fired from their 13th job like me or whatever. And so that sort of thing is The kind of thing that draws you out of that small story because you begin to realize, oh.
This assault that Satan has been waging against me. He's been waging it against a lot of other people too, and we are in a much larger story than we once believed. Yeah, th there was one category of the people that we'll find at boot camp. That you didn't mention. And it's the one that, well, I really think this was for other people until they get there.
Yeah.
And then God hits them between the eyes and says, oh no. There's something here that I need you to know. Yeah.
I wish Sam was here. He really needed that. Yeah, exactly. It rocks their world when they let it happen. And it's all God's work at a boot camp.
We're just there to. Do what we can do, and he does all the heavy lifting and coordinates all of it. And so, if this is not a boot camp you can come to this time, come to the next one. Right, 'cause God'll have you there when you're supposed to be there, but if you're feeling called to be there, You need to be there. He's got something in store for you.
It's not listening to us. It's listening to him. And he's the power of the weekend. We'll just help facilitate some of that and help it along the way. Andy, we're gonna be finishing up Are you going to talk about a clip or anything to go back to Darren?
This is on the pick. I'm the point guard. I tell Sam where the throw. You kept dishing it. I wasn't sure.
So I thought I just said that. I had to think a minute, though. No, this was on the actual. I think I'm next up. This is just a clip from The Lord of the Ring when.
When you know, I think you're mid in the story or whatever, but Frodo's ended up with the ring and he doesn't really know why he's got it and all this stuff. And Gandalf goes back and tells him the story, and it's like it's like we know about Jesus coming and him coming to the cross and all the salvation comes from the you know, the cr crucifixion and resurrection. But it's like God saying, no, you got to go back to Genesis 1 and John 1.
Well, John 1 would be Act 1. Genesis 1 would tell you more about, and then other parts of the Bible, but it tells you the second part of the story about how the angels came on the scene, how the enemy came on the scene, and then how man fell. And there's so much in the man falling of really what happens in that story that we dig into the deeper parts of boot camp. I mentioned it last week, how man becomes opposer and has a wound and all that stuff. But the Act 2 is where that comes out of, and this is what this clip's about.
So here we go. There are markings. It's some form of elvish. I can't read it. There are few who can.
The language is that of Mordor. Aldo. In the common tongue it says one ring To rule them all. One ring to find them. One ring to bring them all.
And in the darkness, bite them. This is the one ring. Forged by the Dark Lord Sauron in the the fires of Mount Dune. taken by Sildor from The hand of Sauron himself. Uber found it.
In Gollum's cave. For sixty years, the ring lay quiet in Bulbo's keeping, prolonging his life, delaying old age. But no longer, Frodo. Evil is still. During Morridor.
The ring has awoken. It's heard its master's call. But he was destroyed. Sauron was destroyed. No.
The spirit of Sauron endured his life for Is bound into the ring, and the ring survived. Sauron has returned. His orcs are multiplied. His fortress of Barador is rebuilt in the Saurum needs only this ring. to cover all the lands in a sickened darkness.
He is seeking it. Seeking it all. His thought is bent on it. The ring yearns above all else to return to the hand of its master. They are one.
It's uh, as I think more about the Lord of the Rings. You know, it it really is a detail of the larger story. Mm-hmm. You know, as you go from just the the three original uh Lord of the Rings movies, you know, you go from Everything's good in the shire, you know, to the return of the king. Right.
And everything's made right in the end. And that's, again, the person that wrote that is a Christian, and he was paralleling that intentionally and doing it in a way that people would find entertaining, in a way that would reach people in a different way, similar to C.S. Lewis did in his writings. Great. A little bit difference about our enemy.
Darren, you'd mentioned in Ezekiel, it talks about his original design. You know, he was the the the guardian of God's glory, correct? Which you equated that to the worship leader. Yeah.
I mean he he very much was Pretty much the guy that was singing God's praises all the time, right? And guarding the glory of God and leading others in that.
So that's, you know, kind of where. I come up with that idea that And yet that person Who among anybody other than the Trinity? Probably knew more about the glory of God, experienced more about the glory of God, experienced more love. um than anybody still fell. Right.
That's a Harold knew him before he fell. Yeah, he was a pretty good looking guy, wasn't he, Harold? No. I was thinking about Harold as we were listening to the story of the ring, thinking he must have a ring because he's kind of ageless. I'm not participating in the sabotage, okay?
Just make record. Yeah, he will later. But yeah. What is I I was thinking through that, you you do have The enemy who In some theologians would say, was other than the Trinity, was kind of at the right hand of God as far as the angels go. He was one of the key empowered people.
And it says very clearly in Ezekiel 28 that he was made blameless. Mm-hmm. Until evil was found in him. You know, and there's a lot of speculation. Was that jealousy of God's power, of his love?
The people loved him, other angels loved him, was it was it, what was it, envy? Very similar kind of thing. Pride was founded. Pride's mentioned. If Robby was here, I'm sure he could get into the original meaning, which would help a lot, honestly.
I'm not poking fun at him this time. But it you know, it would help a lot to know just this time. Greed. Greed. Greed, right?
But something was found in him. And so. The difference between the thing chronicled in The Lord of the Rings, Satan knows he's defeated. He knows that his time is limited. He knows he can't win this war.
Right, his whole goal is to take as many people with him as he can. Right. And to hurt God's heart that Jim talked about last week. Right, and so that's his whole mission now is to say, How many can I take? I mean, Job is just a picture of that.
You see Satan trying to take everything Job had. Surely he's going to turn his back on you, God, and when. When Job didn't, That brought glory to God. That honored God. And God was able to say, No, look at this.
But that's what it is. It's over the human heart. It's taking stuff away from men, going to cause them to depart. Then they probably really weren't really connected to you. But I think that's a great story to keep in perspective.
It truly is over the person's heart. It's a competition, essentially. Yeah.
Yeah.
Satan does not have any power in your life over you. that you don't give him. Yeah.
Yeah.
He is a powerful being. Don't make a mistake. He can wield lots of power because we allow him to do it. But he was powerless as we walk in God. And so we're finishing up Act II.
In the after hours, we're going to go into Act 3 and 4 and finish this story out.
So if you listen to us on the radio and you want to hear how the story ends, two things, get a Bible. Or if you want to hear it in a shorter session, but you still need to read the Bible, go to any podcast location and listen to Masculine Journey After Hours, and we will pick it up. If you'd like to go to a boot camp and you can't afford it, please reach out to us. We would love to help you get there. We will help you physically get there if at all possible by escorting you there, taking you there, or helping you there financially.
We would love to have you there if God's calling you there. We'll talk with you next week. Love somebody well this week.
Okay.
