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. Yeah. Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours, and I am hosting you today, and you should be happy about that.
Now, if you're just listening to the last show, I'm just trying to mix it up. I'm trying to start the show new.
Now, we're grateful that you're here. We're always grateful you take time to listen with us. And we just sit around and share our hearts of what God's doing in our life, you know, and it's such a joy. To be able to come in and do that, that we just hope you feel some of that joy and that God moves you to a place where you're closer to Him. That's the only thing we ask is that we pray constantly that people are being moved closer to their Father.
And so that's what we hope for you today as we talk about. Our vision, and continue to talk about our vision of God's greatest hits at this moment in our life. Right? Because it's different all over the pl at different times of your life. You just said it.
I did. I did. I have the um I have the clip for this this show, and this is from the movie Soul Surfer. And if you're not familiar with it, it's a true sto based on a true story of Bethany Hamilton. who was a Christian surfer.
She was on the Pro Circuit and she got her arm bit off by a shark. Right, and then for a long time she didn't surf You know, she was afraid to go in the water, all these things that you would expect. and then God gets a hold of her. and changes some of that. And uh so when she refers to something in this clip, uh something being missing, she's talking about her arm.
You obviously can't see what's going on. But what's happened in her life is she's poured herself into trying to do some work for God's people. And so her and her mom go to um the what did I say? Thailand. Thailand.
Thailand. Sorry, I all of a sudden I got the wrong place. Thailand, uh, after the tsunami and they're sitting around at a beach and they've been feeding people and things like that. But it's a beautiful day and the waves are nice and they're small and all these kids are looking at the water terrified. And so that's where she comes in, and she starts talking with one little kid.
And what you miss in the middle is all visual, so I couldn't really leave it in the clip. It's her. Convincing him to come out into the water just by her having joy of being in the water. and how it changes not only everyone around her but her. And so we're going to listen to that.
How comes no one's in the water? We brought all these boards. Still petrified. Is it safe? Yeah.
Something's missing, yeah? He said he wound it up a few days after the tsunami. What's his name? Um they don't know He hasn't said a word, he won't even smile. Do you want to go to the water?
You wanna go out to the ocean and go swimming? No. Hey, can I borrow more? Yeah. Uh Yeah.
Thank you. They say the Lord works in mysterious ways. I say that's an understatement. Who would have thought that teaching a kid to surf would teach me that surfing isn't the most important thing in the world? And that's something else's.
Last. bigger than any tidal wave. more powerful than any fear. I really like what she had to say there at the end. I wasn't sure what story I wanted to share.
Uh yeah on this. I should say that the thing I'm most grateful for Right now is my wife. We just got married not long ago, and I am grateful for that. But above all that... It wouldn't have been possible without God's healing in my life.
Right. And uh when her and I first started dating, I was a pretty broken guy. um had been hurt by others, you know, felt like the world I had nothing to offer the world that was good. There was a lot of brokenness in me in relationships. God had already done a lot of healing in other areas for me, but in that area, I kind of just.
held to myself. Right. And in my wrap it up, what it really was was fear. this fear of getting hurt again. I wasn't going to let anyone close enough to to hurt me.
And as I started To ask God, God, why is it that I really like to watch those romantic comedies when people fall in love? I mean, I know that's a a chick-flick, but why does that speak to my heart in ways I can't describe it? You know, he'd say, Well, I have that for you. That's what you really want. And so I had to start asking him some questions, Because I did want that.
and over the next few years God really worked on peeling back layer after layer of things that I was just fearful for. Right, and I am so grateful for my marriage. I'm so grateful for my wife and the relationship that we have already and we're starting to have even more so. But it would not have been the same if God had not done that healing. And so, when I look at every relationship in my life, it goes back to God's healing.
Right, 'cause I am a different dad than I was years ago. Part of that's just getting older, and I call people Papa when I'm a grandpa, you know, that kind of thing, calling back to the last show. I wasn't going to say anything when you said Taiwan. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I must have the memory issues, but no, it's just all those things come back that I'm such a better person, but it all comes back to God's healing in my life.
It's because he had healed me of things that were At the time bigger? than that had a longer hold on me for a longer time. that gave me the confidence and the belief to step out in faith, Say, God, I know I don't really want to risk again, but I got to trust that you have something for me. that I have no way to fathom. And so anyway, that's that's my story.
Yeah that um I'm sorry. That idea is in 1 John, a perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. And that verse became gigantic in my life. Absolutely huge because I lived most of my life in tremendous fear. Of being around almost anybody, but you know, just one of the examples when I first became aware of the verse.
was And you may have heard me tell this story before, I was afraid of the dark, terrified. Like... You know, crying and like Tammy, you need to get up and listen to that noise, kind of terrify the dark. And so She went to Pennsylvania to visit some friends one weekend, and I was staying in this creepy house over by the university in Winston-Salem. Thunder, lightning, you know, everything.
It's like psychos, you know, in my bedroom. And I am You know, almost to the point of screaming in my bed. I can't think about sleeping and all this stuff. And all of a sudden, you know, something comes over me that says You know this is sin. And I'm white.
Okay, so this is sin on top of everything else. I'm terrified and I'm full of sin.
Okay, I'm scared. I get it. It's horrible. And so I start to just, okay, God, Somehow I'm told I'm supposed to give this to you. I have no clue what that means, how in the world that what's the transaction, but here you go.
And about that time I hear that still small voice. It says, You know, Robby, what are you so afraid of? And I said, have you not seen Straitjacket? Have you not seen those movies? Like the person with the knife, like, you know, and I'm, and I am like.
telling God this is something to be afraid of. And he says to me these words that will forever change everything. is Robby What would be so bad about that? And I went, Oh. Mm.
Threatening me with heaven, eh? Like, oh. Oh. And the miraculous part of that particular little moment of love. But I yeah wasn't like all of a sudden I became totally healed from that.
However, it began the journey that over the next several years I got to the part where I'm not even in the least bit afraid of the dark, but almost more importantly, within. a year of that event. I was diagnosed with what they said was killer cell lymphoma, and it looked like I was being threatened with heaven. And because of the incidence with the fear of the dark, I had some context. For Why I shouldn't be in a state of terror.
And the love that didn't have to do with punishment. Like wait a minute, he loves me. And no matter what happens, right?
So you were sanctified in your fear of the dark? Hey. Jesus healed the blind in different ways. Yeah. I mean, we were talking about sanctification in the break, right?
And it was a really, really good conversation. And Sam, being the hostess with the mostest, is saying, hey, guys, we should be talking about this on the show. And so, I mean, The idea is, yeah, God started where you were. which Danny talked about during the break of, you know, you you forget that God loves you where you're at. And we read about sanctification, or we hear sermons about sanctification, and we think, oh, I just need to be sanctified.
I just need to be more sanctified.
Well, how does that happen exactly?
Well, It's a process, and as I was saying. That you know, I am this far from I mean, I could not be like farther from the east to the west from the point of sanctification. And by the time I die, I might have moved an eighth of an inch.
Okay. But if I hadn't moved that one thirty-second. Then I was still robbing everybody of the difference that that would make in my life. Mm-hmm.
Okay. Well yeah, and that's what we were talking about when we were notified we should be on the air with it, is that Yeah, I think most of us, um I know in my case. You knew God had saved me. But the messages I was hearing because my receptors were broke for the most part. was that I needed to be in a certain condition before God would have anything to do with me.
And all of a sudden yeah I have to you know, when mercy breaks through and you realize that, wait a minute, God is with me. Yeah, he loves me where I'm at, Darren. but he's also there where I'm at, and he's willing to walk with me every step, every inch of the way, or every eighth of an inch, however far I go. with me and he loves me in spite of me. And that that's what's so awesome about you know, you you guys made me think of Story When you know, th thirty two years ago, you know, when I was coming out of addiction.
I sat in a chair and there was a psychiatrist sitting across the desk, and I won't ever forget it because. After going through some of the stuff I had done, chemicals and that thing, he was looking at me like I needed one of those jackets that you hug yourself with. And that's what I felt like I was going to end up. And but my thought there was, you know, man, you can't help me. You don't know anything about me or where I'm at.
because I suffered from something I've learned to call terminal uniqueness. Nobody knows the trouble I've seen.
Well, terminal very uniqueness. Very uniqueness.
Well what I've learned and that in God's mercy and his greatest hits to to kind of pound on the topic a little bit. Is God put people in my life that knew exactly where I was at because they had been there? Mm-hmm.
And he took that excuse away from me. And that little bit of sanctification. of letting me know, hey, I love you enough to put people in your way. to keep you from falling all over yourself. Which kind of goes back to the point of your story before the show, Sam.
Yeah. Do you remember that far back? I do. It was right before you said something about the Eagles had a bunch of great essays. Robby just said something about what it was.
Yeah. Most people forget what Robby has to say very quickly. Is that tonight? It was tonight, I think. Yeah, it was.
May have been last week. No, I I was talking about, you know, my first boot camp when I had to do the not had to. I chose to. I got I chose to do the talk on the wound. It scared me.
to talk about it because I was going to talk about publicly for the first time something I had swore that no one would ever know about and it was when I was molested as a kid from a family member. And you know, I'd lived with that and tried to It was so far deep, buried I actually kind of forgot about it. Yeah. You know, till God brought it up, and then I was mad. You know, God brought it up, and then, you know, like, no, God, that can't be it.
But no, He. I prompted me to share it and I was really scared because I was afraid of what other people would think of me and how they would see me. And I did that talk the first time. And it was hard. It was very hard to get through.
God gave me some strength, we got through it. But after that particular talk at that particular camp at Camp Caraway at the time, quite a few people came up to me and shared and said that's that's a part of my story. And thank you for sharing that because that gives me hope. You know, and That's what I just look at and say, God, thank you so much, because that healing, you chose to let that impact others. Right?
That's something that was such a horrible thing in my life. You know, it no longer holds me in any way right now. You know, it doesn't. I've been given, I've given it all to God. And there's power in that, but then there's also an opportunity to share with people saying, You can have that too.
God's got that in store for you.
Well, it's one of the reasons we're on the mics, honestly. I mean, you know, Robby does a great job of just confessing a total life, right, out there to sometimes we're in the studio going, ah, you know, where's he taking us next? Um, But As we've all done that, right, at boot camps, talking to churches, talking to one-on-one with guys over, you know, coffee. The power is less and less and less of that old hold. That's.
Sanctification. That is the process of sanctifying. A uh not just my sin? but sanctifying my woundedness, sanctifying You know, Jesus didn't come just to take care of your sin. He came to tell me.
take on the same stripes that you have, the same wounds that you have to To put your heart back together. And you talked about the fact that not many, not as many people have come up to you and talked to you about that. After that time, and that you were amazed that it was that time because you probably thought, man, I did a horrible job of delivering that talk or whatever. But no, it was the strength in the vulnerability and letting God. do what God wanted to do through you that day.
that made a huge difference. The reason we can do this on the air and talk about Mm. Our sin, our, I was molested as a child, just like you were. Yeah. And Danny as well.
I mean, we are the land of misfit toys. I mean, literally, if you want to look at a group of guys and go, man. If that group of knuckleheads could pull something off that would bless people Anybody could. Because we are definitely on the island of you know misfit toys but god using that island to reach other people But again, We're saying before that. We went to the second show that this, the ministry, um Dangerous heart slash masculine journey slash good heart ministries, whatever it is, and wild at heart, all those, you know, kind of this combined thing, has been an opportunity.
to see healing in action, And when I saw Sam get healing or I saw Darren get healing or I've seen Danny get healing, it gives me hope. Oh. Like, I don't have to be stuck in this addiction to pornography. Or, oh, I don't have to be stuck because, believe me, I would have told anybody there's no way you can beat that. That's impossible.
Or Mm-hmm. Other fears or dreads, but even lately, like today, like this morning. You know, I was. of discovering new ways to Um Actually become more wholehearted through integration of different aspects of You know, really cool stuff. Like, you know, Jesus was.
a many faceted diamond. He was the way. He was the truth. He is the life. He is all these things.
All those are in their own way a very unique color, a very unique shape. And I have that too. And if those were integrated the way they should be, they would all be walking with Jesus. But since some of my pieces don't choose to want to hang out with him you know, because they're too predicted Too busy protecting me from death from their perspective. They're trying to keep Robby from being dead.
Well, they haven't figured out yet that they've been saved. And You know, and that's different than a wound. You know, that's different than healing a wound, or that's different than understanding the larger story, or that's different than finding your place in the story, and some of the other information. In other words, The beauty of this is as other people, Morgan and John and you guys, as they provide me hope with. Oh, and there's more.
Oh, there's so much more. Yeah, it it it's amazing. you know, people could ask us, you know Why do you keep doing these boot camps? I mean, you've been to how many of them? God shows up at every one of them in a different way, and He has a different nugget.
even if we do the same exact talks that we've done and all that, when we prepare, it's something new for us. There's hidden manna that God's got for us, right? And so it's just a constant connection with Him That you know, we hope that people get stuff out of the boot camp, but we know we do because he does it when we're preparing for it. And we hear from what we ask two questions when people leave boot camp: How can we pray for you? And how did God come after you?
And to hear the way God showed up for the men is always just so. amazing to see him at work on things we had no idea about. It's the greatest hit. It is. It is the greatest hit.
Went to pass on the joy. Not the sorrow. Mm-hmm.
You know, Robby, you were talking about being scared of the dark. Every Every pastor I've ever known was scared of the dark. They were so scared of it. That they Refuse to tell anybody about the darkness. that existed.
Um not just But the darkness that Existed inside of themselves. And when I was a you know, a pastor. Um I couldn't I couldn't tell people that somehow or another I had Yeah. started getting haunted by this Old wound of being sexually molested and all the other sins that I had committed trying to. React to that, if you will, and to heal that in a very non-sanctifying way.
I was always living in fear of, and the entire time that I lived in that fear, the deeper. The addiction to pornography or anger or posing or any of those things, the deeper it becomes. Mm-hmm.
Mm. Because you can't let people see you. And it's sad. It's very sad. I get it.
Your livelihood.
Well, you know, I make $50,000 a year and it pays my insurance and my wife, you know, she's going to divorce me. And, you know, I mean, a thousand different things, right? All of that is fear of the darkness, every bit of it. And Um We have learned that you can overcome that darkness. and that the world does not give up on you.
But more than that... that God has called us as a group of men to create a place. A fellowship, if you will. where others who are struggling with that sort of thing Can reach out to us. And I know all of us have had other, not just pastors, but you know, but different people, um but often pastors.
Um for me personally. Yeah. be willing to confess that to me. Because they knew Yeah. They heard enough of my story, heard enough of my heart to know I was not going to throw them to the wolves, that I wasn't going to run out and.
And Now. Am I going to try to hold him accountable? Yes. Am I going to try to get him help? Yes.
Am I going to tell him If you're not willing, you need to step away. Yes. I mean, all of those things. But. Um While we live in the darkness there and hide it.
The more you hide it, the more power it has. The more you expose it, the less power it has. Yeah, absolutely. You guys are talking about our our group. And I think And I mean this lovingly.
We hate it when he says that.
Well, I could say it the other way, towards me as well. I do mean it lovingly, that when I see God do something in your life, and I know how much of a screw-up you are, He gives me hope that even I can be helped. Yeah. You know, because we do start to know each other's stories. We do spend a lot of time together.
We know some of our hot buttons and all those kinds of things, right? We just know each other well. And that gives you the ability to say, okay, God, I see you actively working in that person's life. And I I gotta believe that you want to work in mine just as bad. I was thinking as Robby and Darren were talking, I can't remember which each one of them said, but the writer of Hebrews said I've always found this fascinating, he says.
laying aside the sin and the weight that so easily besets us.
So everything that weighs me down It's not seeing. There are things that people have done. There are things that I carry. And part of that sanctification process, I think, Darren, you may correct me later, off air, hopefully, but the that. There are weights that I carry that have to be set down in order for me to climb on up the hill.
Yeah. Maybe it's not a sin, maybe it's not something that I purposely dove into. but it's there, and I may not even be aware of it being there. And then all of a sudden God says, hey, Let's talk about this. And most time I'm like, no.
I don't want to talk about that. But or why are we talking about this? This doesn't make any sense to me. But going back to, you know, first show and that kinda thing, you know, And then I I think that it speaks to the what you both are saying, or all three of you, that This is such a sate. It's not easy to lay that stuff down if it's not a safe place.
Okay. when you're around a bunch of people who are open with their brokenness. and you know to be knuckleheads. Right. And Unfortunately You know, I feel like I've erred horribly dirty beha you know you know anger frustration things like that.
Yeah, we don't just know about each other's sin. We've experienced each other's sin. That's what you're trying to say. That's what I'm saying. And I'm talking about, you know, I know you guys have seen when I just lost my cool over something completely stupid.
Or you can see me in my worst point of frustration and stuff and still smile at me, just kind of look at me like. And it's okay. Yeah. And you still love me, just and I don't see, I don't get any sense of anything but mercy. And love and those kind of things.
And then eventually we give you grief about it. Yeah, after the healings, you kind of have room to take hold. Grief, we call it love. Yeah, yeah. We talked a little bit about it at dinner.
But, Danny, what you guys were saying is so correct. We see the weight of our own sins sometimes, but we carry the weight of other people's sins against us. Right, because it came with a message. Right, and that's what God goes after in those times: to get that message and break it away and get to the truth underneath. Go to masculinejourney.org.
We'll talk to you next week.
Okay. Mm-hmm.
