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.
Well, welcome to the Masculine Journey. We are very glad to have you with us. We are at the the weekend before boot camp.
Next weekend is boot camp. And so you have just a few more days that you could sign up. Actually, you really need to kind of sign up today. We need to know who's coming to make sure we can get enough food. And trust me, we'll have enough food.
There's stakes involved. I mean, high stakes. Yes, yes. Very good stakes. All sorts of stakes.
You know, I got to count them out. Like, how many am I going to buy? It depends on whether or not you have registered, right? Oh, yeah. You won't get better food at a weekend than what you're going to get.
I would even say it competes against a family reunion because you're not going to have that weird ants jello that you have to eat. I'm just saying. The green one? The green one. Yeah, with the mighty cat food, you know, stolen from Christmas vacation.
You know, but there's always that thing you're like, hmm, what was in that? I'm really not too sure. You're not going to have that this weekend, I can promise you that. You have to age mystery one to get the right color green. Yeah.
It's exactly it. You know, so it's an amazing weekend. And if you're having trouble financially getting there, Don't let that hold you back. We'll help you with that. We'll find a way to help you get there.
If God's calling you to be there, then you need to be there, and we'll help you get a way to do that. And so just reach out to any of us at our first name at maskonjourney.org. Start with Andy, because he'd be the first to respond. You could reach out to any of us. But we didn't intend for this to become a series.
But it has become a series, and that's what happens from time to time. I'm not talking about the masculine journey. No, we didn't intend for that to become a series either. No. But God had a use for it.
But this particular topic, when we started a couple weeks ago with the Open My Eyes, from the song from Paul Balacci: Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord. And so we've continued on that. And so so far we've done warfare, we've done, I don't remember what else. Just generally open our eyes. Yeah, yeah.
That was the first one. And then to Sonship, it was last week. Oh, that's right.
So this is our fourth week of opening our eyes. And what we come to realize is that really is our prayer all the time. God, open my eyes. Open our eyes to this. Open our eyes to that.
Open our eyes to you. May we see you more clearly. Right. We should have used a clip from meet the parents. Yeah, sure.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, if we do it this topic another week, we'll have to take that. I'm fairly certain. In fact, I am certain. The second verse in the gimmel section of the 119th Psalm is, Open my eyes to behold wondrous things out of your law. One of my favorite verses, actually.
You say the Kimmel section? Gimel. Gimel. The Gimli section. Gimli section.
Gimli. G-I-M-E-L. Gimel. My bad. It's the third letter in the Hebrew alphabet, not unlike your C.
But it is, it's open our eyes to behold wondrous things out of your law. I mean, how cool is that? Because that's pretty much. Yeah. Jesus is the word, and so we get a chance to see that, and hopefully, we'll do that song today.
Yeah, absolutely. We're going to continue talking about it, but this week we're taking a boot camp flavor to it. And how has God opened your eyes at a boot camp through preparing for a boot camp? Anything to do with boot camp, how has God opened your eyes? And so, we're going to talk about that.
And Andy, you have the first clip.
So this clip we haven't used in a bit and it's from the City Slickers.
So you have these guys that go to this dude ranch to try to. They're all kind of going through a midlife crisis and trying to figure out life in their. At middle age, and that's kind of, you know, I can't went to my first boot camp after a broken marriage. I think I was like 44 or something like that. And uh not 1944.
No, no, no. I was 44.
Okay. And, you know, right at that time, and life wasn't working, my relationships weren't working. My job wasn't really working. My rel rel um, I'll say relationships. Even those relationships, so you're really into those, yeah.
Not a whole lot worth working. How are your relationships? And I was really caught up. This clip really, I think, was played in the, and I don't know if it was the first boot camp or whatever, but God opened my eyes up through a. through time.
of understanding this clip a bit more, it's talking about Your calling is used in that of kind of where you get this midlife crisis. You're trying to find your identity and really who you are. But I was thinking when I first saw it, it was a calling about what he wants me to do. But I began to realize I'll tell you what, I'll talk about more of my perspective on it. Let's just listen to it, but you have these guys on the dude rancher take any.
A ride, a horse ride with Curly, and he's just kind of talking to him about life. Kind of, he asks him some questions about their life and kind of. you know, gets it gets them to thinking about really why they're there. And he kind of explains to him what his impression is of why they're there and what they're looking for. And then I'll talk about it when we get back.
Okay. I'm not hearing anything. Funny. You city folk, you worry about a lot, my wife basically told me she doesn't want me around. She read it.
I'm just saying. How old are you? Thirty-eight. 39. Yeah.
We all come off here about the same age, same problems. Spend about 50 weeks a year getting knots in your rope and then... Then you think two weeks up here will end time for you. None of you get it. Do you know what the secret of life is?
No, what? This Your finger? One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that, and everything else doesn't mean that's great, but.
What's the one thing?
Okay. That's what you gotta figure out.
So the visual in that picture is curly when he holds up his finger. It's not a stray finger. It's a dog leg right. Yeah, it's a dog leg right. It's probably been broken a few times.
doing uh ranch activities or whatever. But, you know, that whole thing, what's the secret to life? And you know that one thing, and you've got to figure it out. You know, as I look back at boot camp, what I figured out that one thing was, it wasn't. You know, to be involved in this ministry.
It wasn't to have a good family life. It wasn't. To do a lot of things, what it was, that one thing to me became, became, Realizing who I am as an individual and living in the truth of that. Huh? Everything else will flow out of that.
To be designed by a creator who loves me, who has a plan for me. The best thing I can do to honor him is to live truthfully the way he created me. And you get mixed up in this false self of who you think you are, who you're trying to impress, all that stuff. And that's what these guys were. They were lost in all of that.
They were lost in their relationships and their identity through work and all that. And, you know, that fuels everything else to me. And I don't always do it. But I know that that's what is in my heart to do is to live truthfully to who he created me. Yeah, and what is that identity for you, Andy?
First and foremost, what would you say your identity is? A son. That's right. I knew that. Yeah, gotta go there.
I wasn't gonna use that as the option. Not an orphan. We just came off that last week. It would have been too redundant to say that right out of the box. But essentially, that's it.
It's a son.
Well, I wanted you to say it. I wasn't poking fun at you this time. At the core, when you understand that. It changes everything. It does.
It does. You're born again. born into who that father is. And The more opportunity you have to actually walk with him in an authentic way. Which.
You can't just do every place. But at a boot camp you get a chance to see something you don't really see. Um you know, men that are actually vulnerable Available Yeah. Yeah, when opportunities can come. We've got it's awesome, for sure.
Well, when you think about the the things we cover at a boot camp, the different topics. Every one of them is designed to attack your identity and your union with God. It's not designed to attack. You're Identity and God. I mean, yeah, sorry, I didn't say that.
We're giving you weapons to fight that attack. Every talk we do is how the enemy decides to be attacked. How do we attack God's word? No, it's not that. Thank you.
I didn't say that. It was correct in my head, it didn't come out correctly. But no, everything that we talk about at a boot camp opens your eyes to how you've been attacked, how your relationship. Good word. Yeah, how you've been, your relationship with God's been attacked.
And so we do warfare, our woundedness, our opposing, opposing. Our vision of who God is, what the world's told us God is, what our hearts' desires really were meant to be that we're good. All those things build on it, and there's much, much more. You know, how the beauty's confused it along the way, right? And our our how we see the beauty has confused it, is really the real part of it.
And so all that, Andy, is core at that question. And I loved what um He had to say there, Curley had to say there, it's really true. You know, we spend 50 weeks a year getting knots in our tail, yeah, knots in our rope, and think two weeks is going to unwind them. And that's part of the key of that wisdom that Curly had there is you got to continually unwind that. Not let it get knotted up.
A boot camp, you're not going to get them all unwound, but you're going to get some clarity on how they're wound. And you'll begin, you'll come out of a boot camp with some tools of how to. How to move forward and get you know untong untangle them those guys, right? They're pursuing it, and they're at least taking one of their weeks or two of their weeks. In our case, we do it twice a year, coincidentally.
But at least. Pursuing the idea that man, something's not the way it ought to be. That's right. You get illumination, you get understanding more of it. I say this many times.
You know, I felt like I had a certain knowledge of God. I know Him much deeper, but what I also know is myself much better. The brokenness in myself, but the trueness of who I am. And when you put all that together, it's just a different You you just have a different walk. Mm-hmm.
Yeah, and as you've been doing these for a while, attending them, being a part of them, you realize that every one of these dovetail into the other. Oh, yeah. Right. What's been my we do a talk on warfare. Which we've talked about many times.
We did just a couple weeks ago. On that warfare, but it's warfare in my woundedness, it's warfare in. My relationships, it's warfare here. In my relationship with God, where's that been attacked? And so all these themes kind of continue to go through, and you do walk away with some tools, but what you walk away with, more importantly, as a person to walk through with you, is God in a closer intimacy.
Yeah, I didn't mean to say that you just come out with things, prayers to pray, or that it's much more than that. You come all. You have a guide in this guy, you know, obviously, but you have more understanding and you have a way to fight.
Well, definitely the tools make a difference. It's what questions do I take to God? What's it look like to talk with God? Those kinds of things. Go to masconjourney.org to register for the upcoming boot camp.
It's November, not November, that's our next one. It's March 12th through 15th. We'll talk to you after the break.
Next week. Yeah. What we have at our boot camp is something that makes you stronger and gives you the strength to go on your regular walk with God. It's something that will make you be bigger than you were when you got there. I listened to Morgan Snyder's book, Driving to Work last year, and that was a very profound experience.
So this kind of culminated into it. I've 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. This is real connection with the Lord. You hear him 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 and what they're going through. 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. Show me. Your beloved Send down your presence and want to see your face show me. Majesty shines. About you, and I can't go on without you, Lord.
Welcome back to Masculine Journey. That was third day. A little bit of history with me in third day.
Okay, I didn't necessarily like third day, it wasn't their message, it's just This lead singer always reminded me of another lead singer of another group that I didn't really care for that much. Right. Yeah, it was a different genre altogether, you know. And I'm like, eh, that's. Who would that be?
Oh, it was Travis Tritt. I just didn't get him. I didn't like him. And when I'd hear Mac Watt's face sing, Mac Powell. Yeah.
Mac, hear this. Yeah, please don't call into the channel. I'm not trying to be disrespectful, right? I just was like, hmm. You know, it kind of reminds me of this guy.
I don't, and I've learned it, almost liked Travis Tritt a little bit. I don't have anything against him personally. I don't know him. How about Max Watson? Yeah, Mac Watson's face.
And so, no, but I made the statement: I don't really care for their music. And it was after a boot camp in Colorado. I was riding down with a friend of mine, and he was playing some songs, and this song came on. And it just absolutely floored me. 'Cause I'd just been at a boot camp and I had God had revealed A lot of his glory to me in very small chunks because that's all I could even try to grasp.
You know, all my heart could handle, or my mind could handle at the time. And ever since then, I've really appreciated their group, and I absolutely love this song. You know, and it o it brings me to tears every time I listen to the whole thing because it's such an intimate Memory. Of that time with God. And when we're talking about opening your eyes, You know, we're really saying, God, show me you.
Right, and both those songs are very common in that. It's like, Show me who you are. You know, and and show me who I am to you. Right? Yeah.
So you experience some third-day repentance, right? I am. I am. I feel like I got to write a letter. Not that you at least call him by his real name.
Yeah, yeah. I'll get his last name down. I think at this point it's Mr. Powell. Probably is.
Dear Travis. I mean, Mac. Yeah, yeah. But You know, that idea that you just described of You know, show me your glory. Is so much of what we actually say in the very first talk.
We say, this is going to be a treasure hunt after the heart of God. And when you start looking around in there, that's glorious, unbelievably glorious. But fascinatingly, we were made in his image.
So, as you get a look into the heart of God. Right? You begin to see, oh my goodness, I have that heart because he you know, has that heart. And so I know this clip is coming up, this fascinating movie called The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which I honestly had never heard anything. I began to study the movie as I saw this clip because this clip is so outstanding.
That Now I got to see the movie because it's very compelling. If you've been to many boot camps, you hear this story often. There's the hero of this story, Charlie. uh was sexually abused by an aunt. And that led to, especially when he got to that puberty age, some gigantic anxiety and things in his life that made him not want to be seen, which is that idea of the perks of being a wallflower is nobody knows you're there.
And of course, he was covered in shame and all these things that a lot of us feel, whether we want to admit it or not. And we want to sink into the. Uh would work. and not get out of our chair and those kind of things. Uh Now this clip Is this young man who's been awakened to the fact that he can be engaged, and what awakens him.
is friends. A community that gathers around him that he realizes that he's seen, he's appreciated, he's loved. He's got a band of brothers and Better than that. In his case, he's got a sister.
So it doesn't mean he's got a girl that he's falling in love with. I don't, you know, how it all works together. Um. But I love the last line in this clip, and I got a little more to say after we play the clip. I found the tunnel saw.
Let's drive. Ow! I don't know if I will have the time to write any more letters because I might be too busy trying to participate.
So, if this does end up being the last letter, I just want you to know that I was in a bad place before I started high school. And you help me? Even if you didn't know what I was talking about, or know someone who's gone through it. You made me not feel alone. Because I know there are people who say all these things don't happen.
There are people who forget what it's like to be 16 when they turn 17. I know these will all be stories someday, and our pictures will become old photographs. Wall becomes somebody's mom or dad. But right now These moments are not stories. This is happening.
I am here. And I am looking at her. And she is so beautiful. I can see it. This one moment when you know you're not a sad story.
You are alive. And you stand up and see the lights on the buildings, and everything that makes you wonder. And you're listening to that song and that drive with the people you love most in this world. And in this moment, I swear. We are infinite.
Really? Yes, we are. We are infinite, and we've lost.
So much. that he talks about that's so precious. And Wouldn't you like to get back that feeling of the first girl that you. Saw that light in and just absolutely delighted in that moment. And wouldn't you like to get back?
Um That feeling of adventure and some of those things that you, when you were 15 or 16. You're not willing to stand up in the back of the pickup truck as he is in this particular case. And there's a part of us that we left behind. And it's God's glory, and it's part of our identity that Andy talked about in my own experience through boot camp. You know, I had attempted suicide, not like Charlie.
There was some real shenanigans that had gone on in my life that I was not at all aware of. Um Until God started to press in on him. And he can't press in on them unless you take the time. to go someplace And get into a covenant of silence and ask God some deep questions, like you were talking about, Sam. And in asking those questions, I came to realize that, oh my goodness, I had been assaulted.
Oh my goodness. That that I had attempted suicide, and there was a reason that I had attempted suicide, and all those things I'd left behind. Uh was my heart. And it gave me the opportunity for Okay. to get the forgiveness that I needed.
for the people that were involved in all those shenanigans But more importantly than that, Because God had already forgiven me, I had never forgiven myself. And to get that forgiveness takes work. and commitment and you could go through some pain to get there. But to get your eyes opened up and to have that big, huge piece of your heart back so you can offer that back to the people that you love today, your family, your wife, that she can get a wholehearted person and all that, it's priceless. And I loved his his last word.
Because holiness has to do with proximity to God. The closer you are to God, the closer you are to holiness. And As you get close to God, not only do you feel the fire and all the things that we're describing there. But God lives. in infinity.
And so when you get close to him, all of a sudden time Is immaterial, and you are it simultaneously the person that you were at three years old, the person that you were at 15 years old. and the person that you are today. And all that is glorious when you get a chance to taste it and see it. But also, it requires people like Charlie had around him that allow you to be yourself. and love you unconditionally and you know, that environment isn't so easy to find either.
No, it's not. And Robby, you bring up a point, you know, a lot of times people even if they can remember what happened to em in the past. They live with this disbelief, this lie that, well, it's in the past, I can't do anything about it anyway.
Well, no, you can't. That is the correct in it, but God can and does and will. And once you experience Him taking you back into a painful time when you were younger. at a younger age, and you get that piece of you back. It's so precious.
You know, it it doesn't make me so excited to run through it again because it's a painful process, but I'm I'm looking forward to coming out on the other side of that and I'm willing to go wherever God wants to take me on it. But it's such a wonderful thing because God is absent of time. He's not He's not uh held restricted by it. Right? And so he can take you back to these places that you didn't even remember.
As you said, and help you remember those things and help you heal from those things. Yeah, and it's fascinating. You're opening the eyes of your own heart to your own story. I mean, it's kind of crazy to think about, but it's absolutely available. And it's mind-blowing.
You think about the way he does that usually is to take us back to that point, right? And Sam, you made. Mention of that, that you don't like going there. And there's a reason you don't like going there because it hurts.
However, You know, we we read these little fairy tales as as a little kid about, you know, the the lion with the thorn in his paw.
Well that's who we are, right? We're we're this lion who's angry or upset or sad or hurt or wants to be a wallflower because of these thorns that arrows, if you will, that's what the Scriptures call them, as arrows in our heart from the enemy. And it's one thing for God to go, hey, Andy, you're healed to that. It's totally another thing for God to take you back to that place and say, Yeah, here's here's what happened. Here's what didn't happen.
And yes, I'm healing you from that. And to get that relief at that point I mean, I can talk about surgeries that I had. I can talk about, you know, broken things. I can talk about days laying in bed, not. you know, knowing when finally a day was going to happen where I could get up and walk again and that sort of without pain.
And yet That gradually happens. And it's not nearly as vivid and it's not nearly as joyful of a Memory As going back there. and then getting that healing. We're scared of that. But the healing is so much more powerful when God does that when we let him.
Yeah, we we talk about the healing and that is a powerful part of the weekend. Right, but there's so much more to that. If you have questions about who you are, you have questions about who God is, things you can't even articulate, questions about what your calling might be. It's time for you to come to a boot camp. Go to masconjourney.org to register.
Again, if you're having trouble getting there financially, don't let that hold you up. We will help you find a way to get there. Just reach out to us. But register this week. We'd love to see you next weekend.
And thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.
