This is the Truth Network. 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 now. Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. We are continuing our foundation series in a little bit different manner. We're not talking about the foundational beliefs of the ministry.
At the foundational beliefs of the people in the ministry, where do we have our foundational beliefs in the Father? What are those things that draw us close to Him or the things that we hold dearest to? And so we're talking about that as individuals, but there's a lot of things that we have in commonality as well as we talk through this, that God's touched us all in these same different ways, but each one is unique. And so speaking of unique, speaking of unique, we'll go to you, Jim. Actually, every one of us is unique, but I'm more unique.
I don't think that works either than some. More. Yeah, we you wear it. We get in trouble for saying very and then you go around go there and say more unique.
So what what's that? That's a further outlier in the statistical spread of humanity.
Now using words I don't understand. Carry on. Um Speaking of words we don't understand, we were discussing Atticus, so that's who we're going to listen to now. This is from To Kill a Mockingbird. I will admit, I did not.
See the movie that I recall And I didn't really read the book. There were these neat things back in the 60s called cliff notes. And when there was a big book, and this one wasn't that big, but I just didn't feel like reading it, so I got the Cliff Dutt version.
Now I gotta go at least watch the movie, if not read the book, after finding this clip. But my connection to God is family, but the biggest part of that is my father. And I almost have a survival guilt when I hear some of the stories of fathers that uh were not fathering their sons well. Because I had Atticus is a pretty good example of who my father was, except my mother was still alive. He's not A fairly quiet man, but he was strong.
He had incredible integrity. He loved his children. He taught them more from Example and illustration than just telling them, you know, you do this, you do that. And that's a pretty good example of my father, and we'll listen to this story and see if I can still talk at the end of it. Scout, what in the world has got into you?
No, no. Yeah.
Well, because I'm not going back to school anymore. Ah, Scout, it's just the first day.
Well, I don't care. Everything went wrong. Teacher got mad as a dull at me and said you were teaching me to read all wrong. And just stop it. Then acted like a fool and tried to give Walter Cunningham a quarter when everybody knows Cunninghams won't take nothing from nobody.
Any folk could have told her that.
Well Maybe she's just nervous after all. It's her first day too, teaching school and being new here. Oh, that'll kill me.
Now, wait a minute. Yeah.
You just learn a single trick, Scout. You get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. This uh Till you climb inside of his skin. Walk around in it.
But if I keep going to school, we can't ever read anymore. Yeah.
You know what a compromise is? Sure. Been in the law? Yeah.
Uh No, it's an agreement reached by mutual consent.
Well here's the way it works. Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Do you concede the necessity of going to school? We'll keep right on reading the same every night.
Just as we always have. Atticus was a busy lawyer, and the biggest part of the book was about the. man that he was defending, but I'm old cut it off at there were a lot of parallels between him and my father, other than the ones I shared before. And one of those is my father uh treated everyone Well He everyone, I mean, he was we had money, he was a dentist, and he loved he had passions that were outside of his. family and his god, both of which he was passionate about, but he loved golf.
And he loved Uh flying. And he included me in the flying. He tried to include me in the golf, but I was terrible and he was exceptional. And what you said earlier, you really were. Talking about me, I would love to be in the best compliment I ever hear is you're like your father.
And that can be all of us. You just have to capitalize the F. And my father taught me a lot. He was very busy, very active in the community. Yeah.
worked. He sang in the choir. He was a elder. and a deacon in the Presbyterian church at different times. He was Busy.
But I never really felt like he didn't have time. for me. My sister has told me that He didn't at times, but uh I think they were jealous because I was his namesake and he did spend a lot of time with me. And That is very similar to my relationship with the Heavenly Father. And I'll share one story and then I probably won't be able to talk any more for a while.
But at a boot camp, an advanced boot camp in Colorado, Uh We had the father wound talk, which I always struggled with that. And I had a few things that I said, okay, this is sort of a wound. but there was nothing negative that really stuck with me. about my dad. And in 99, it's been a little while.
Three weeks before my daughter was married. he died suddenly. And he was seventy seven, so he had a good long Run and Possibly, in fact, I'm going to believe it until he tells me otherwise, because he'll tell me the truth. that he shot his age the day before he died. And uh he ha he died.
Two, maybe three weeks after I had prayed, I was working uh with a lot of very sick people. At the uh in a program That my brain just shut down. Anyway, it was at the VA Hospital in OT, which is near Asheville. And I was watching people die miserably. And I asked God that when it was time for my parents, please.
take them quickly. And about two weeks later my di dad died suddenly. And now we'll leap back forward to this. About six years later, I was at the boot camp where I went back and Said, okay, God, I've got to do this father wound thing again. What you got for me?
And I clearly heard him say, I mean, this was... if not audible, it was so in my head that it could have been a loudspeaker. He said, Why are you angry with us? And I broke down weeping in that literally in a closet behind the stage. And knew exactly what God was saying.
I was mad at my dad for dying and mad at God for taking it, even though it was an answer to my prayer. And I had not realized it until that point.
So I pretty much uh That ended up being my biggest father wound was losing him. Thank you, Joe. Andy, I wanted to switch over to you for your clip.
So this clip is from Field of Dreams, and you have Ray that you hear, it's Kevin Costner. And I'll try not to set this up in detail. The movie's been out there for some time, but basically. Yeah.
Ray's father, they um was a baseball player growing up, didn't get to fully become a baseball player, I believe. But Ray and him had, they had some brokenness, and this mysterious.
Sound, voice comes in, God, I guess. comes into Ray's life about kind of leading him down this path. of going on this road trip to kind of do something to Go and help the father heal, but the son heals as part of this process. What you hear is this author, Terrence Mann, who I can't even remember exactly the significance, but he has a connection to the family from the past. And it's just a series of events on a road trip.
that these guys are going on. And I'll speak more about the significance of a road trip after the clip. But basically, you just hear this back and forth, and it's really this mystery. of God the Father pulling people in together to be healed. of a father-son relationship.
I'll just leave it as that as kind of the setup.
So what do you want? I want them to stop looking to me for answers, begging me to speak again, write again, be a leader. I want them to start thinking for themselves. And what my privacy? No, I meant.
What do you want? Oh. Dog and a beard. Two. Seven buckets.
Okay, I understand. You Should be entitled to as much privacy as you want, but why stop writing? I haven't published a word in 17 years, and still I have to endure lunatics like you. What do you think would happen if I suddenly came out with a new book that beat me dry? Go the distance.
Go the distance. What's the matter? You didn't see that? See what? I'm sorry I guess you didn't have to be here.
What? Oh. Whenever you want to go, we can go. Fine, let's go. Uh What is it you're not telling me?
I've already taken up too much of your time. I wish I had your passion, Ray. Misdirected though it might be, it is still a passion. I used to feel that way about things, but You got another message, didn't you? You think I'm crazy.
I already think you're crazy. What did it say? Said the man's done enough. Leave him alone. Moonlight Graham.
Yeah.
So what? Yeah.
Shot. New York Giants, 1922, who played one game, never got to bet. You saw it. What did I see, Ray? Sucholm, Minnesota.
God damn it, man. We were the only ones who saw it. Did you hear the voice too? It's all right to admit it. It's what told me to find you.
Did you. Did you hear it? Go the distance. Yes. Do you know what it means?
Yes. What? It means we're going to Minnesota to find Moonlight Graham.
So I love that. I know that. probably hard to keep up with if you're listening. Yeah.
Um The you hear three different messages. The first message that Ray got before the go the distance was build it and he will come and it was talking about building a ball field in Iowa. Which he does when he starts all this out, and then he gets led on this road trip.
Next thing is go the distance, and it's. That next distance, it's like a game of clue or whatever, where he keeps going along. And the final thing is heal his pain, is the message that he gets, which he's talking about his father. And he's putting all this stuff together as he goes. And the point I want to make is.
So My story has a lot to do with road trips. My dad, and I've told this story many times, but maybe there's a bit more depth. to it this time is that As I look back at what God did for me when He really became my father, where I can really identify when He came after me was whenever I got a new job and I got an opportunity to travel, and I had to spend some time on the road, and I got an opportunity to go to some national parks and stuff. And I had been really pressing in. There was a lot of stuff through both Wild at Heart and our Ministry Masculine Journey was really focused at the time, or at least that's what I was hearing, was connecting with the Father, which I always thought I saw God properly as the Father.
Um But I never really had thought about it in depth. And when I began to hear some of Morgan's testimony and stuff, I was like, well, maybe there's more to this than I've thought. But on this specific trip to Yosemite, Well, let me back up. My dad, whenever he left, I mean, he and mom divorced. He had to go out of the state.
That was pretty devastating to me, but I didn't realize it. As a kid, you know, you just rub some dirt on it and move on, right? It was. No big deal. But I didn't realize you don't know what you don't know.
And you don't know what how much you know, you miss your dad, and that my family blew up at the time. It was pretty devastating. But you just, you just, like I said, rub some dirt on it and move on. But dad, before he left on that trip, or before he left the state, he knew he wouldn't see me in a good while. He took me on a trip that we first went to Grandfather Mountain, then we went to Brevard.
and went to some places that were really You know, that he had kind of scouted out that were related to our ancestors that was from that area, and then we went to. to uh the Battleship Wilmington. Um or and And then that you just I just remembered those three things. And he made an effort. He knew.
what was going on.
Now I was thinking about a girl this whole time and I probably didn't appreciate it for what it was. But then years later when I go to Yosemite, God does things, I think, symmetrically.
So he he gives me like three natural Phenomena that to me blew my mind because they were like things that just happened out of nowhere that looked like it was like centered around me. And I come back, I've talked at boot camp about it many times. God was like saying, I'm really adopting you as my son. I'm stepping in where your dad left off. He was trying to do the right thing.
But that was a very difficult time. And that's what I believe God does. He wants to come back into the very place that you were wounded the most. And he became so real to me at that point as my father. And some people are like, Oh, it's God you just go buddy up with him and that's all.
No, that was the beginning of the process. That was starting me out of boyhood. And, you know, the process has been to where it gets more difficult. He begins to. You know change some things in you, require more out of you, call you into a variety of things.
But just hanging out with him, having him what I feel like and again, some people think I'm crazy, all I know is what I felt deep in my spirit. Um In that trip, and it just solidified to me. It was a foundation of where I base my relationship with the father now, was at that point. I mean, it's grown in more depth.
Sometimes I I tell the guys many times I felt like an orphan because I lived without a f a father in my life. For a good while, and that causes you to feel like you have to do everything yourself, everything is up to you. Orphan Spirit, I think. Orphan Spirit. I wasn't going to be following you.
But But uh it just um I don't know. He just came and rescued me at the very place that I needed to. And I didn't appreciate it enough, I don't think. Or I did. I did appreciate it, but I didn't understand the depth of it, I feel like.
There's a clip in City Slickers where Ed's talking about how his dad was rough on the family and all. And Ed stood up to him for one time, and then the dad leaves. And he was like, it was the best day of my life and the worst day of my life. I'm not doing it exactly how it transpired, but essentially that was what he was saying. And that trip with dad to me was the best week of my life.
And in retrospect, I didn't know it then, but it was the worst week because that was when he departed, you know. And I don't know. I just know that God... There's so much more available. When you hear Heavenly Father, when you hear these things, I mean, when he says in the Lord's Prayer, Our Father, he's asking us, well, I personalize that when I pray.
the Lord's Prayer. My Father It it just makes it much more real than some distant father that operates remotely. And um he's just he's He's just very close and very foundational to my life. Absolutely. Thank you, Andy.
I mean, we're all actually on a road trip with God. We call it adventure, you call it whatever you want, my journey, my walk. You can call it what you want. You can call it a procedure. It's still a surgery, right?
You can call it anything you want, but you're still on a journey with God in it. I was hoping I could do a James Earl Jones voice, but there's no way. But when you said, we'll think you're crazy, we already know you're crazy, it's okay. And we appreciate that. For me, crazy has always been a compliment.
Yeah.
Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Jim. That was good too, Jim. That was interesting too, Jim. No, wish I could do Rodney Dedger fellow, but that's what it works.
We'll see you at Thanksgiving. Yeah.
All right, so we're off on to my clip. My clip is one we've we've used clips from the movie before, and we've actually used this clip uh a few times before, but it's from Bruce Almighty. And at the beginning of Bruce Almighty, Bruce has a vision of who God is. You know, and I would have liked to have captured that and put this at the beginning of it, but essentially he says, God's a mean-spirited thing that just likes to take out his anger on me. You know, in other words, is how he said it.
And that's not how I grew up seeing God. But I grew up in a church that often preached about fearing God. And didn't often preach about the love of God, and so I had a big fear. Of God, that you know, if I did something wrong, He was going to strike me down, He was going to smite me, O smiter of smiters, or whatever that mighty smiter of smiters, that Bruce Almighty says. And it's kind of how I saw him.
And when you have that, Along with, you know, I knew he loved me, but he didn't. Go not gonna be there for me. Right, and if he was, he'd see how much I messed up and he'd smack me down, and so I just. As much as I wanted a relationship, I didn't know how to have a relationship with a God that looked like that. It wasn't, it was a God to me, it wasn't a father.
You know, and over time, he's had to come and break those things from me to break that habit and break the way I saw him. And it's not just with one event, it's over a series of events. These really came after my heart. And Jim and I have talked about most often it's with humor. You know, I'll talk a little bit more about that in a second.
But when you hear Bruce here with God, it's towards the end of the movie. Bruce has been trying, he's been given God's powers, and he's failed with them, and they talk a little bit about that. He parts the soup at dinner one time, you know, because he thinks it's going to prove that he's got all this magical power. Morgan Freeman, the God character, will refer to that. But I want to listen to how they talk about this and the relationship they have.
There we are. It's good. It's a wonderful thing. Uh No matter how filthy something gets. You can always clean it right up.
There are so many. I just gave them all what they wanted. Yeah.
But since when does anyone have a clue about what they want?
So do I do? Potting a soup is not a miracle, Bruce, as a magic trick. A single mom who's working two jobs and still finds time to take her kid to soccer practice, that's a miracle. A teenager who says no to drugs and yes to an education. That's a miracle.
People want me to do everything for them when what they don't realize is they have the power. Uh You want to see a miracle, son? Be the miracle. I did want to clarify something from that clip. I'm not saying that we can do anything absent of God.
That's not what the clip's saying either, that we have an active role. and what God's doing in our life. I can be an addict of something and want to break the habit. God's not going to break it for me. He's going to help me.
He's going to lead me. He's going to guide me. He's going to give me strength to get through it. I still got to do my part. I can't go back into that life or whatever that may look like.
I can't do it in the absence of God, but I have a role to play in it. I think a lot about when we talk about the suffering talk that we do sometimes at advanced boot camp, and there's two different types of suffering: there's avoidable and unavoidable. Most of the time I've turned to God and prayed for His to come in the middle of it is things that I did to myself. I put myself in a situation Right? And so what God continually does with me is He gives me perspective.
You know, he'll say something that makes me laugh or makes me think, and it helps me understand things from a different view. You know, and that really helps me. He fathers me a lot in dealing with other people. Because people just irritate me sometimes, you know? God has been working on me on saying, Hey, To your point, Jim, spend some time in their shoes.
At least try to understand where they're coming from. I had some issues with my dad growing up. in in lots of ways that he wasn't there for me or chose not to be. But really the breakthrough came when God helped me see through his eyes. you know, and help me understand what my dad went through.
And I've talked about on here that when you understand what they've went through, you can realize, okay. He was probably doing the best that he could do, you know, when you look at it from that perspective. And so, again, for me, God just fathering me through perspective and making me think deeper and beyond my emotions. and into deeper places. most special part of my relationship with him.
Right, because I know on myself I'm so limited. Yeah, and that's another point I wanted to make about Um my dad was good and I knew he loved me, he just wasn't present during that time. And we saw each other. It's like not like he disappeared forever, but for the most critical time he wasn't there. I mean we were close and I mean we were really close even when he He passed away.
But there there was a time still, it it doesn't take uh away from the Absolutely blowing up my life, you know, by him making the mistakes that he did and causing that. And so, there, but there is a lot more grace. I began to dig into a bit of how he grew up. and f and found out he didn't have a hi his father present his whole life and his grandfather was a alcoholic and A horrible guy to be around. And, uh, And and his dad ended up Committing suicide, he but he hardly ever knew him, and uh, so all those things add up, and I'm like, well, darn, you know.
have some grace. You know, you can always find some good in in somebody that's been involved in your life even when you're you're hurt by them. But and I think that God, that's all part of the process. But I think it's also God's showing, well, he was never intended to be the end-all-be-all anyway. I'm who.
You know, I'm who Jesus came to lead you to. You know, I went over the journey from not wanting to involve God in things because I had my own strength to do it, and I've talked about it on the air here a lot. My most common prayer is, God, father me in this, whatever this is, right? Father me in this. And He does, and it helps me to understand as much as I can what's going on and how to love others well.
You know, I'm newly married, and a lot of it is, God, help me love her well. 'Cause I know on my own I'm gonna fail. Right, so go to masculinejourney.org to reach out to us to learn about what we got going on. We'll talk to you next week.
