This is the Truth Network. 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're glad that you're with us today.
You know, I was listening to our intro, and I want to make sure something's clear. It says, losing heart, not losing art. You know, because we always have, where art thou, right? And so, art's not missing. We know where he's at most of the time.
So, I just want to clarify that in case someone got confused. Anyway, the topic for today, Darren, is yours if you want to bring it up and talk about it with everybody.
Well, it's 12 topics. We don't know how many it's going to be. But it's basically the start of a series on kind of what the end result is going to be what kind of drives us to look for comforters to a certain extent. But that's not the way that it came to me. The way that it came to me was I had an overwhelming sense of wanting justice and began praying and just saying, God, you know, my sense of justice is really, really heightened right now.
And I can imagine this is not necessarily great, but it feels like it would be good if I could get some justice. And so about that time, God kind of revealed some things to me about that, namely his sense of justice is way stronger than mine. and then began reminding me that, you know, his sense of anger is way stronger than mine, and his sense of grace is way stronger than mine, and mercy and peace and all of those different things. And then it kind of brought me around to the question of, why do I want justice? Why was it that I wanted justice?
Was it just John Wayne? You know, I mean, we grew up in a John Wayne culture. I've seen all of his movies. I've seen all of Clint Eastwood's movies. I've seen all of Mel Gibson's movies, I think.
And so, I mean, justice always wins in the end, except it doesn't. I mean, you know, gladiator, hero dies. Jesus, hero dies, comes back to life. And so it's not always justice as I see it or as we see it. And so I had to begin to ask myself, why is it that I'm seeking that justice?
And what I came back to was I think it would make me feel better, which is probably more what it sounded like to me than I'm seeking to be comforted. But then I started going to all of those other places that when justice is understood correctly, when righteousness, when truth, when grace, when peace, when mercy, when all of those things are understood correctly, I have a much better chance at comfort. But there are all sorts of adulterated versions of those things, I guess is the best way to put it. That often take us out. We have a lot of lies that are told to us about what those things should be.
And so we need truth to come in and root out those lies and begin to set us free.
So this topic kind of started out as God versus man. God versus Darren was really what it was, is my sense versus his sense of all these different aspects. And so that's kind of where we've taken it. Yeah, I think I stole it then and said, and made it a different topic. I don't think you made it a different topic.
I think you honed it in on the fact that all of those wrong assumptions lead us towards false comforters. It's not wrong to seek comfort. It's perfectly righteous to seek comfort. It's where are we going for the comfort? Yeah, outside of God.
Yeah. Absolutely. Robby you have the first clip of this show Yeah so you know here in the Holy Grail Monty Python's version of the Holy Grail they were seeking comfort because you know they clearly they knew their whole problem you know was that they needed justice on this witch and so they found a witch and they are convinced that if they can burn her that this is the answer to their struggles and it's a visual kind of thing to see it I want to point out a couple things that the woman that they've offered up as the witch, they've dressed her up pretty much with this very witch-looking hat, and they've put a really long nose on her that's strapped to the back of her head quite obviously. And so you have to see that part of the visual to fully get the idea of what's going on here. But clearly these townspeople are trying to find some justice right here.
A witch! A witch! A witch! We have found the witch. May we burn her?
Burn her! Burn her! Burn her! Burn her! Who do you know she is a witch?
She looks like her! Yeah, yeah, yeah! Bring her forward. I'm not a witch! I'm not a witch!
But you are dressed as one. They dressed me up like this. We did. We did. And this isn't my nose.
It's a false one.
Well?
Well, we did do the nose. The nose and the hat. But she's a witch! Yes! Did you dress her up like this?
No! No! No! Yes. Yes.
A bit. A bit. A bit. A bit. She has got a wart.
What makes you think she's a witch?
Well, she turned me into a newt. A newt. I got better. Burn her Eddie Burn her So You know they really scary As funny as that is and I find it absolutely hilarious is I'm sure that's how God has felt many times as he watched Robby trying to find the witch that I could put my finger on that's the reason for all my problems, and if I can only burn her, you know, but, you know, the whole thing is utterly ridiculous from a standpoint of how we go on a witch hunt, right? And that's exactly what I've done so many times in my life.
It's unbelievable. But the beauty of the clip from my perspective is that just like Darren mentioned, those ideas are all in the 85th Psalm. And if you look in the 85th Psalm, it talks about that love or chesed is going to touch truth. and justice or righteousness is going to kiss peace. And so here's four gigantic principles that come together that so when I can get some truth into my witch hunt, right, I can begin to feel the peace, which is the comfort.
You know, it's the shalom is the idea of being complete. But also, you know, fascinatingly, Darren, is you did that study on justice. People that get justice don't necessarily – in other words, if these guys got in their witch burned, were they going to feel better? Would they have been comforted? Yeah, so secularly, just looking into this and studying the issue, the people that find the most comfort are those who choose to forgive while the perpetrator is still alive.
Oftentimes when the perpetrator dies, while in the act of committing the crime or whatever, that justice still isn't there. Or they get executed or they get put in prison forever or whatever. That is never the same amount of comfort that someone gets who is a believer, obviously, at some level, and says, no, I'm not going to let this rule over me. I'm going to forgive. I love your clip, Robby, and that you claim it is very impressive too.
We laugh at that, but who doesn't see what they're looking for in situations and other people? If you think this person's really ugly because somebody told, not ugly in the physical sense, but got a nasty person, and you don't want anything to do with them, you're going to see it in them whether it's really there or not. And we do create the illusions and what we think are the truths. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it becomes a predetermined thing when you see it. We have clients at work, and so we have touch points with the clients, and so I'm really hesitant to read about the previous touch points because it's going to give me an opinion, and I want to have my own opinion, right, and figure it out from there.
But, yeah, I think it was interesting. When we're talking about false comforters, I think it's important that people kind of realize what that is. We assume everybody knows what that is, right? But it's things like turning to food for comfort, turning to lust for comfort, turning to a relationship for comfort outside of God, right? Turning to shopaholic.
You get retail therapy. You know, and the question is, do those last? Is it a lasting comfort? And the answer is always no, right? And often it'll lead us into some really bad places, right?
Maybe we have big credit card debt. Maybe we have, you know, an addiction now because of what I've turned to for comfort. And so that's what we're talking about is what do you look to to give you that little bit of peace that you feel like is going to help you just get through life today. All right. It's fascinating to me.
In the very first chapter of Haggai, there's all this list of things that you plant this, you do this, you do this, and do you feel better? And then you go do this, this, and this. Do you feel better? And he's saying that. But at the end of that, where it gets to about chapter four, in Haggai 1, it says, go to the mountain and bring your wood and build me a house.
In other words, what we're looking for is a sanctuary. But we don't get it unless we build it. And I don't know if you ever thought about this, but Jesus took his own wood to the top of the mountain. And, you know, Haggai kind of predicted that as Isaac took his own wood to the top of the mountain. And so there's a bit of sacrifice that apparently is involved in building your sanctuary.
It's something to think about as you read that in Haggai that he was saying these things, you're going to spin your wheels with all these false comforters. But that's not what I have in mind for you. is I want to be in your sanctuary with you. And that relationship is beyond cool when you think about it. Absolutely.
So just a question for you. If you're sitting out there and you're saying, well, you know, I really don't do that. I would say, can you just be honest with yourself? Because obviously we all do that. I'm always honest with myself.
Stop it. We all do it, right? And so then you have to say, okay, where does it come from? What are those things that cause me to want to do that? which we'll get into after the break.
But you have those kinds of things, and then there's things even deeper under there, right? And it's that exploration you have to take with Jesus. Part of building your house in a different way is I've got to peel back those layers and get to the truth of the situation so Jesus can help me there. Yep. All right.
So go to masculinejourney.org to look for anything we have coming up. Right now we have nothing scheduled. We'll talk to you after the break. What we have at our boot camp is something that makes you stronger. and it 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. What brings you here this weekend?
So I met Robby and he invited me to come to the boot camp and there was just so many doors that were closed before I was able to come here but God allowed these things to happen And I said you know God I going to ultimately acknowledge what going on for all these doors to be open for me to come to this camp I just want to seek you So throughout that time since I been here you know just the illumination of God speaking to me through my heart, through my mind, through my soul was just, it's went to a whole nother level since I've been here at the boot camp. The COVID of silence after the talks and being able to go out and just submit myself to being able to hear from God and what we've been working on. And it's just been transparent in my life. the level of the sanctification process, the discipleship process, and coming here, I feel like this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. Register today at masculinejourney.org.
You comfort me when I am mourning. You hold my soul when I am torn. Your arms surround me through the sorrow. Your love will rise with every dawn. I may be weeping in the midnight, The joy is coming with the morning.
You comfort me. Oh, Lord, you comfort me. Welcome back to Masculine Journey. That is a group called Risen Tunes. Don't know who that is.
Don't know where it came from. And the song is Comfort Me. And so I was just looking in a search engine to say, okay, what kind of songs could we use for that bump? And I stumbled across this one. And that's kind of what we're talking about is how do we learn to take all of these things to God instead of to the other things we think are going to give us life or give us relief or give us some type of break from what we're dealing with?
Yeah. And I mean, to me, where I started was if I can get justice, I'll have a little comfort. and then realized pretty quickly, no, that's probably not true. If I can get a little justice, maybe it'll help somebody else feel better.
Well, probably not true. But the ultimate reality for me was when any of these things, justice, truth, grace, mercy, love, any of these things are out of kilter, there is no comfort. I mean, there might be false comforters, to your point, you know, that last for a day or maybe a few minutes, but it's not going to last. And so we're going to go back seeking again and again and again, and we get wound up in that instead of wound up in sitting with God and saying, okay, God, I trust you that you're going to get justice far better than I will. And I don't like that.
I mean, let's just be real. I don't like that. But when I think about it, I can go many places. One of those is, yeah, I kind of like that God might get justice, you know, that's way better than mine. But when you start considering that, then you have to realize, well, yeah, but God's mercy is also better than mine.
And so God may very well have mercy on that person. He's ultimately trying to get that person to experience mercy and grace and love and all of those things. And maybe I get to play a role in that.
Well, I'm not necessarily excited about that either. You know, I mean, there's all these dichotomies that keep happening. And so it became, you know, a point of wrestling. And I think all of us are kind of wrestling a little bit with that right now. You bring up a point that I hadn't really thought about, but talking about God's judgment and all.
God was ready. He was done with the Israelites. And Moses stood in. And did he have more mercy than God? actually the Bible suggests that but I think it was pleasing to God that he had raised a son that would have that position because they were partnering together and it brought the salvation of Israel.
I think Harold was there. He's got a comment. Yep. What did they say there? I was just going to ask do we really see our Jonah side?
Yeah. That's true. Absolutely. Well Jim we have your clip up next. And I went straight to number four as peace.
And all four of them, including justice, come out of God's love. But where I've sought comfort both in the wrong direction and with God is primarily in the peace area. And I think I've shared a few times, but I am called to be a peacemaker this year. That's my word of the year. And I've always sought peace.
This clip is Desmond Doss, who reminds me of me in that I was a, I would not get in fights, which when you're in junior high school 50, 60 years ago, okay, 60 years ago. By avoiding fights, I attracted people that wanted to beat up the big guy. and I had learned pretty early that I'm the big guy. If I beat the little guy, then I'm the villain. If I get beat by the little guy, I'm the laughingstock.
So I was pretty much a complete pacifist as a kid. You could get me to fight, and I did a few times. I did a lot of times, but I would walk away from him if I had any opportunity. Desmond Doss is in World War II. If you have not seen Hart, wrong one, Hacksaw Ridge, do see it.
This is a true story of an incredible man. And he was, well, I'm not going to say any more. We're going to listen to him. But he has been charged with disobeying a direct order from a superior officer, which is pretty serious stuff. And this is his defense.
There is only one question that any military court need ask of the accused. Do you deny disobeying Colonel Sangston's direct orders?
Well, do you private? No, sir, I don't. Why are you contesting it then Why is it so important to you giving your refusers to even touch a weapon to serve in a combat unit Because when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor I took it personal Everyone I knew was on fire to join up, including me. There were two men in my hometown. Declared 4F unfit.
They killed themselves because they couldn't serve. I had a job in a defense plan. I could have taken a deferment, but that ain't right. It isn't right that other men should fight and die, that I would just be sitting at home safe. I need to serve.
I got the energy and the passion to serve as a medic. Right in the middle with the other guys, no less danger, just while everybody else is taking life, I'm going to be saving it. with the world so set on tearing itself apart doesn't seem like such a bad thing to me to want to put a little bit of it back together i uh as i kind of pointed out up front i identify with that and the only time i ever started a fight and i wish i'd done it more often but it was going into battle for someone that was getting picked on. I had a heart to bully bullies, but no one else. And I was bullied quite a bit during those rough formative years back when that wasn't a capital crime and you were put away if you were a bully.
But it really, Doss's statement hit the heart of the reality that we are in the midst of war. And he was going to war, but he was going to war with the heart for peace. And when you're doing that with God, then that is the, for me, that's the most important of the four. And yeah, I need grace and mercy. I wouldn't be his without it.
and justice scares me because I know what justice would mean in my life. But that is something I'd like to see others receive. I don't really want justice. But ultimately, peace is my place to go where I get complete comfort from God. If not, then I'm the little kid who's running away from the fight and not wanting to get hurt.
And that sometimes can be a bigger hurt than what damage you'll take in the battle. Absolutely. I was sitting down the other day trying to think as this topic came up, you know, what kind of things lead me to seek comfort, right? And I'll play a clip in the after hours that kind of names some of these, but there's a whole host of them. When you really start to sit down and think about it that boredom you know you think of david when he was bored and that's when he discovered basheba right when he was no longer going to war i'd never had anything that eloquent but you know it was like i have my own boredom you know but loneliness anger hurt fear shame feeling misunderstood or not listened to having the spirit of entitlement being tired feeling like you have no control which we none of us have control to be quite honest but it's that feeling of no control and and when i let the enemy take those things and spin them in a direction that takes me out of control when i join him on the journey you know i end up in places i don't want to be i end up you know staying up late eating lots of food i shouldn't be eating you know that kind of thing or that's when the pull towards pornography is worse right is when I'm in the midst of all that.
And so it's just those things to say, okay, God, I need to learn quicker before I look in the refrigerator to look to you and say, okay, how can you help me here? God, what do I need? How are you trying to help me? And I don't have the eyes to see it. Yeah, that's, you know, interesting.
Jim said a minute ago, it would be okay if I see other people see justice, but I'm not so sure about me. and it made my heart go search something and I was like, wait a minute. Justice, when you look at it on a Hebrew level, as you might imagine, I would think about it, that it has to do with a right relationship with God that's phenomenal and it's a closer relationship as a result. In other words, Jesus suffered on the cross for the right relationship for me. And so fascinatingly is if what we really want for that other person is to have real live, honest to goodness justice.
That's an amazing gift. It's an amazing gift. In a way that I hadn't thought about it, Jim, I'm just saying, you challenged me to think about it and I was like, huh, that's fascinating. But it really is. I went and looked at it and I'm like, oh, look at this.
That would be pretty good. But I think I could really use the right relationship with God, and I could certainly use to be a whole lot closer with him.
Well, Jim, you've been bringing a lot of fascinating things to us tonight.
Some we can't talk about on here. Or anywhere else. Or anywhere else. Fascinating. That's a good point.
If you missed the pre-show, you might want to look sometime, because we actually talk about some things there, the post-show. But anyway, ask yourself on this topic. Just be genuine. And say, God, what are those things that I'm putting in front of you? And it won't take long to start making a list to say, OK, you know, what are those things that I look to to give me this piece that I feel like I'm going to get?
You know, I have a really, really good friend that is retail. The person likes retail therapy and they wonder why they continue to get in credit card debt. Right. When the stuff no longer makes them happy. you know and they have they have like a bunch of different storage units to keep the stuff they don't need that they thought was going to make them happy you know and more bills and it's just how that compounds on each one of us I'm not judging that person I'm saying I got my own version of that and so I'm just asking you to ask God what is my version of that we'll talk with you next week let God love on you and in turn love on others well
