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. Welcome to Masculine Journey. We are glad to have you with us today.
We're glad to just be alive today. According to Darren, a few of us didn't make it last week. We got rolled over by some type of rock or something. Yeah. Yeah, a foundation stone like killed like three of us.
Well isn't the corner stone supposed to Crush So There's a connection there somewhere. If I knew the Bible, I could tell you exactly what I was trying to say. Yeah, well, you'll get there. We are not continuing the Foundation series today, and we may actually be done with the Foundation series. We just don't know yet.
So we're praying about that and seeing what God says. He might go, Yeah, you're done. Or we might have another one next week. But we are talking when the Foundation Series is things that's foundational to our ministry, you know, things we believe as a ministry mascot journey. Today's topic is foundational to all Christians.
And so, Jim, you had the topic for this week, if you want to tell us about it. And uh at the time since we Our humans in communication sometimes leave something to be desired. I was thinking of foundations and I didn't know about it was of the ministry for how many months we went. Yeah. But I wasn't the only one that had some communication fun this week.
Earth, what is it? Earth, what major time, or whatever I say. Is that going to be our bump? It could be. Yeah.
The uh What came to me as a topic, and this was sort of, it came out of a conversation, but. On any and on any given day, if you ask me, my favorite. chapter in the Bible. It's first 1 Corinthians 13. Um sometimes it's something else.
Isaiah fifty three, I can't get through without crying, so that's a favorite too for some reason. But the there are many that and it's sort of like having a favorite child. We probably shouldn't, but I do. And I won't say I have it with my children because there's a long shot chance when I'm listening. But anyway, well, if they are, it's them for sure, right?
Yeah, they're the ones if they're listening.
Okay. But the final The close of that chapter is faith Hope Love. Or if you got a King Jimmy. charity, which isn't a very good Word for English, but faith, hope, love, these three. The greatest of these is love.
And That just hit me as foundational. And at any level that is our foundation. And The I I want to start just by going over the English. Because We misuse faith, hope, and love, especially the latter in the English language all the time. Um are you a person of faith?
Well. I try to be. But that does it. Really mean anything if you're not discussing what you have faith in. And a lot of people say, oh, I'm a person of faith.
but they might have faith in their pocketbook. Um hope. I hope uh Well, I don't care about sports, so I'm not going to use that as an example, but I hope I can start eating ice cream again soon, because I love ice cream. Yeah, is that really what we're talking about it with hope in First Corinthians. No.
And love, probably the most misunderstood of all. I've got the prize on this one. Every time A little girl, and I mean that all the way back to kindergarten paid attention to me. I was in love.
Well, in love.
Okay. Infatuation, crushes, those sort of things are not what we're talking about with love. And this is, and the word in the Greek, in the New Testament, is agape, and that's the love God has for us.
So the Bottom line was This to me is foundational. for everything in life and you said it well Sam.
So the First clip happens to be Sam. Yeah. Because we like to have Sam first 'cause that makes the most sense.
Well, it's when I'm paying the most attention. One thing I want to add to what you're saying, if you look back about how the enemy attacks you, I promise you it's at one of those three levels most of the time. Or he's going after those three levels. Right. 'Cause if you can steal your faith you don't have hope.
Right? Because we're going to hope in. If he can steal your hope, he'll question your faith. And so he's constantly after trying to break us down from these three. positive strongholds it should be in our life.
And so I have the first one because I chose a clip on Faith. This was originally about a four-minute clip, broken down into two minutes.
So you're going to hear some starts and stops along the way. There's some things you can edit and some things you can't, but just listen to the words. And it's from the movie Castaway, and it's nothing to do with when he's on the island because it's really, really long during that part of the movie. Yeah, like you could take a nap and wake up and he's still on the island. And quiet.
And quiet, yeah. But anyway, this is when he gets back to his home in Memphis and he's talking with one of his friends about how he started to believe certain things on the island. And let's just see where it goes. Because I was never going to get off that island. I was gonna die there.
Totally alone. You know it's gonna get sick or it's gonna get injured or something. The only choice I had. The only thing I could control. This wind Now.
and where that was gonna happen.
So I made a rope and I went up to the summit to hang myself. Yeah. I had to test it, you know. Of course. You know me.
and the weight of the log. snapped the limb. Of the tree. Uh I couldn't even kill myself the way I wanted to. I had power over nothing.
That's when this feeling came over me like a warm blanket. I know.
Somehow that I had to stay alive.
Somehow. I had to keep breathing. Even though there was no reason to hope, and all my logic said that I would never see this place again.
So that's what I did. They stayed alive. I kept breathing. And then one day that logic was proven all wrong because Ty... Canada.
Gave me a sale. And now I ran out. talking to you like I have ice in my glass. Yeah, I wanted to leave that last little part just because the things that you wouldn't realize you would miss. Right.
And so during the whole time he's looking at this ice in his glasses, he's talking to his friends. And so I think it's pretty cool. Faith was the one I picked for a lot of reasons, but this clip, the reason I chose it was I remember a time, and I've shared about it on the air before, I just don't remember the last time I did, but I Um When I was in in college my my dad died and uh When I went to the funeral, well-meaning family and all that would say things like, Well, you're the man now, and all those kinds of things. And I had to be strong for this sister, be strong for that person. And so I just shoved all my emotions down.
I didn't do anything to deal with them. And they just kind of sat there waiting to come out.
Well, not too long down the road, um my best friend Bob's dad passed away. And so I Didn't really want to go to the funeral because I knew I'd have to probably deal with some stuff. I wasn't sure, but I just but I had to go for my friend. He's my best friend since since college. And so I went and when I'm there the emotions start coming up and It's everything I can do to sit there.
And I don't openly remember praying. But I just remember thinking, I can't do this, I can't be here. And I heard God say, It'll be okay. And what Tom Hanks described there is, I really felt like a warm blanket. It was just like, you know, back in the day when you used to watch Nickelodeon and they had the ooze or whatever it was, it just started in my head.
I had the kids of that age, right? But it was just flowing down my body. And just as it went, it was just peace. Right. And that thing, along with other things later, was huge for my faith.
'Cause I wasn't really even asking for anything. But God still gave it to me. And when I listened to Tom Hanks there, he said some things that you have to think about. He said, even when there's no hope. even when logically it doesn't make sense.
That's what you talk about when you talk about faith. You don't und understand it, you believe it.
Well, I was just going to say, faith, the short version of the definition of that is trusting God. If you have faith in your children, okay, that's trusting your children. But at that level, if you know he's there and you trust him, you can go through hell. And Make it. And hope does become critical, which I guess would be a pretty good segue into not quite yet.
We'll do that after the break. Thanks. You can sit over here next week. Yeah. No.
I can, but that's all I'd be doing is sitting. No, I appreciate you trying to tee that up, but we'll go to there after the break. But when you think back at those Bible stories, though, that you have Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, the way they said it originally, you know, wasn't their names, I get that. But, you know, they had faith. You know, I had Daniel in the lion's den.
Right, they had faith. Logic would tell them You're not in a good place. This isn't going to end well. Yeah, I'm sure.
So what else did they hold on to but their faith that God would either rescue him or he wouldn't, but it would be okay. Even if he doesn't. Yeah. Even if. Yeah, exactly.
I can't hear you at all, Andy. No? No, I don't think your microphone's working. You might want to pull Harold over. All right.
No, there it is. Yeah, just don't touch it. Don't move. Yeah. And you actually said something good there.
I mean it and it didn't pick up. You'll have to turn up your volume and go back and listen to it. Anyway. Any other thoughts on faith before we head into break? Anything that comes to mind, guys, why that's an important thing for you?
It's foundational afterwards.
Well, it is. And maybe that's why everyone's stunned to silence right now. And we do have Robby on the bench, and so he doesn't have a microphone, and you can always count on him having a good word to say. But not today. The going back to what faith is.
It is something that is in the moment you are trusting God. And what we're going to go to more with hope is that's trusting him with something down the road in the future. But it's not, you know, I hope the Braves win. Hopefully, they're not playing anymore. But anyway, it's that sort of thing.
It's not that. It is knowing that God is going to take care of something in the future. All right, you're meddling in my stuff now, Jim. Braves. Let's go.
MasculineJourney.org. Go to masculinejourney.org. 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 wall was gone. It's something that will make you be bigger than you were when you were.
When you got there, you know, I think I was 13 maybe in my first camp. I'm now 28. You know, these look a lot different from when they looked back then. Back then, it was a lot more finding direction, and it's still finding direction, but it's also being reminded of what that direction was and where did you lose it along the way. Let's reclaim that and take it into your next step.
You know, talking about being fathered, I had a good dad, I had a great dad, and a lot of things were great. And, you know, you had your faults like anyone else, but I think I always told myself I don't necessarily need God's love because I'm okay. And that's what God's been working on with me for this camp: hey, yeah, you do. You're not going to make it without me. And He's really just shown that He delights in me, and I am the apple of His eye.
And just really being able to feel that this camp has been a lot different from anything I felt before. Register today at mascularjourney.org. Little more faith. Faith that keeps believing The mountain moves a little more hope. Hope that's always knowing you'll get us through.
A little more love. Love that keeps on falling for life, gets tough. Lord, you know we could all use a little more of faith, hope, and love. Andy, that was you singing that.
Well, good job, dude. Hitting those high notes was awesome. Yeah. Yeah, that was from High Road, and I just found that, I mean, obviously, just search faith, hope, and love, that's only. Thing that really I thought really hit everything, but it was a good definition.
I mean, I really liked it, I thought it was good tuned.
So that's two of us that have taken away your definition of time. Yeah, that's right. Apostle Paul would have been proud. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm assuming because he wrote Corinthians is why you're saying that. Yeah, okay. Yeah, exactly. He was the originator.
I didn't know if he was a singer. I didn't remember saying that in the Bible. I knew he was a tent maker. Not Peter, Paul, and Mary.
Okay, I just wasn't quite sure where that reference was coming from. Anyway, you have the next clip, and you've been accused of picking this clip because it has your name in it. Yeah, maybe. Maybe. It's always easy.
It's all well, there's other times I've done that for sure.
So. Um so this is this clip is from Shaw Shank Redemption. Um Shout out to Darren who threw out some ideas on on you know, clips that The wood. Tap into this, and hope was really the word I kind of focused in on, and this is. kind of why um before I get to the clip is To me, you hear, and I've heard John Eldridge talk about this a lot.
Mm-hmm. If the enemy gets your hope. Everything else kind of goes down. And it's kind of a, it's kind of like not the most talked about of the three, really. It's kinda but it I feel like kinda kind of holds everything together.
Because if you lose your hope, you don't really care about Any individual receiving promises from God or seeing that through or trusting in Him, and you really don't really feel like loving about people because you've lost your hope. And it's just important. You know, the Bible says faith is the substance of things hoped for, of evidence, things not seen. Hope is. Really?
tides their faith. obviously, but um I don't know. My my perspective on it is, um I've talked to some people recently, and I've heard people, and you hear at times when people have lost their hope, they're ready to give up.
Some people are ready to take their life.
Some people are ready to just give up on Christianity.
Some people are ready to give up on their faith in Jesus because He didn't do exactly what they wanted to. They're ready to give up on their spouse or whatever. And that's that, it's because things aren't happening the way I think they should. Which is, you know, there's some maturity to get there, but also. Um I just I believe that the enemy does everything he possibly can to take our hope from us.
And so, in the Shawshank Redemption clip, Andy, who is like kind of the. He's like their motivator of the whole prison. He's really a leader, and he's just trying to get these guys to see a positive thing. And he talks about hope whenever they're all stuck there. He's kind of giving a speech to the group.
But then later on, he refers back to that when he gets out. kind of escapes. rightfully so, actually, 'cause he wasn't really guilty. But um then you've got Red, his friend, and he sends him a letter and he's talking about this hope. Short clip, thirty thirty seconds, but it's just it talks about the power of hope and that it's good.
It's good. Good. There's something. Inside. If they can't get to the They can't touch.
It's yours. We'll talk about it. Remember Red. Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things.
And no good thing ever dies. I will be hoping that this letter finds you. and finds you well. Your friend. Handy.
Um Yeah, I mean, he and that's what held him in there. I mean, he really had some bad. He got thrown in the hole after he played the music over the whole prison when he wasn't supposed to, took control of. the warden's office or whatever and You know, the guy was always looking at things positive, and it was the hope, I believe, that really drove him to be the man he did. And he really impacted His environment, and I think hope's going to do that if it resides in us.
Absolutely. Harold, do you have something you wanted to add about the topic of hope? Yeah, I I've shared my definition. Uh before. But I have a an algebraic expression for For hope.
equals desire plus expectation. If you take either one of those away, you don't have hope. I may desire to be six feet three inches tall. I have zero expectation of that. Therefore, I have no hope of being more than like 5'6.
Oh. And, you know, I have no desire. to have a dump truck run over me.
So there's no hoping for that either. Uh I think hope plays a very important role in our lives. because it motivates us to seek other things that might seem to be beyond our reach. But with hope we can reach out and and grab a lot of those things. Yeah, I like the point about desire.
I had thought about that earlier and you you I didn't even really 'cause di you're right, desire is not it. I mean, it's desire is a part of it, but how you explain that equation. Makes a lot more sense, but it does play into it. If you have no desire towards anything, it's hard to hope. I mean, it's kind of the fuel.
We all desire, God created us to desire, and a lot of times we think all we do is they're supposed to suppress those desires, but Not so, we just are supposed to surrender those to him, but Mm. You call. Yeah, hope for me i is well, faith is obviously the most important because of my faith. Everything comes from that, but Hope is the most attacked for me above anything else because he attacks. my hope in love.
He attacks my hope in this, in that. You know, for the longest time I was trying to kind of get to a better place in my finances, and every time I thought I got over the hill, The next thing happened, the car broke down, or this happened, or the air conditioning went out, or whatever it was, and it was just time after time after time. And I had to just keep telling myself to not lose hope. Because that's what the enemy's after. If you can get you to lose hope, you'll just go shrink away in a corner.
You won't impact anyone else in your life, positively, anyway. You'll probably impact them negatively. And then you may just say, What good am I to anybody? And that's where he gets them. And like you said, with suicides, that's usually what leads to it: there's hopelessness in the midst of it.
Yeah, I'll tell you. Job is the best story in the Bible to kind of make this point because He had all kinds of stuff hit him at the same time. And I think that's what the enemy was trying to do: prove to God. that he's gonna take his faith and his hope and And at times Job did not sound like he had any hope. But he did keep faith, and that's what got him through that.
Although, as you said, it's there's times that One carries the other. And love always needs to be part of that. I had a weird thought, which nobody's going to expect that from me. But but Harold, if the dump truck did run over you, you might get to be six foot three. That's true.
So sometimes hope and it could lead to desire to come together. And wasn't Bugsy Mogues about five, six? Yeah, I think he was. Yeah. Yeah, he could dunk a basketball.
Yeah. I don't remember Muggs who've done it. Spud Webb, yeah, absolutely. He was right in that that range. Yeah, and the reason I make fun of your height is the older I get, the closer I get to 5.6, because I've been shrinking for the last like three years.
And so I'm going to be there by this rate by about five more years. I'll be right there. I I won't live long enough to break under six, but I've gone from almost six nine to I'm lucky if I'm six, six.
Now you're probably six foot on your knees. You're very tall. I do have a lot of torso. You do, you do. All right, so we have a few more minutes.
Any thoughts on faith or hope that you want to leave people with on on our regular show here? My only thought is if you really want to get to the meat, of uh and we're gonna Okay. go a lot to Darren for his uh Thought-provoking question, which somebody thought was the topic. But uh come back. for love and for discussing how they work together.
That question was one that I threw out to the whole team that was basically. If you're listening right now, think about this: the faith, hope, and the love. What happens if you remove any of those, right? We've said they're kind of a tripod, right?
So you don't stand on two legs very well unless you're human. But The question I asked was: Which one of those is the most critical to you personally? If we removed, you know, one. How would that affect the other two? And it's different for each one of us.
I mean, there's no arguing with scripture, it says love is the most important, right?
However, I'm talking about you, right, you know, in this position, in this point in your life. And so ask yourself if. If you didn't have love in your life, would you be able to live out of faith or hope? If you didn't have hope, would you, you know, and so. How is that specifically playing out in your circumstance your life right now.
And what would that look like if all three of those came together? What would it look like if one of them. A key one was missing. Yeah, it um Like I said before, that's where I get attacked with hope because I know the enemy realizes if I can get there, and Andy articulated this really well. I'm not very loving when I don't have any hope.
You know, I just you kind of get to what's the point, right? It doesn't really matter. Everything's meaningless. And so you just kind of sit there, and then eventually it erodes the faith because then what he'll do when you don't have hope, the enemy will go, where was God in this? Right.
See, God left you abandoned. He wasn't there for you when you needed him. It's just a ploy. And it's different for me than it is for you or for Jim or for Darren or Harold or any of us, right? The enemy knows what works with you.
Good place for the orphaned spirit to kick into. Yeah, we had to get that reference in. It's been like a minute. He has a hard time not getting that reference in. He's very good at it.
Yeah. So, faith. What do you believe in? What's the faith that you have? Ask yourself this week just to say, hey, What are those things I truly have faith in?
And don't just ask yourself, write them down. Try to say, okay, God, when I am really, really honest with myself, not the Sunday school church answer Jesus, you know, I mean, yeah, that should be the answer, but is that your answer? Right? And just take an inventory. What are the things that I hope for in my life?
What are the things I'm afraid to hope for? In my life, because I'm afraid it'll be taken from me. You know, you talk about suppressing it. That's just another play of the enemy saying, hey, you can't. You can't even desire to hope.
Right, yep. Right, because you just get hurt. Go to masculinejourney.org, register for the upcoming boot camp. It's an advanced camp, so you have to have gone to a previous camp somewhere else or with one of us. Again, that's masculinejourney.org, and that boot camp is the weekend before Thanksgiving.
