Legacy Vol. 2 After Hours

This is Stu Epperson from the Truth Talk Podcast, connecting current events, pop culture, and theology, and we're so grateful for you that you've chosen the Truth Podcast Network.

It's about to start in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, and please share it around with all your friends. Thanks for listening, and thanks for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. 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. So yeah, we were just sitting here talking about some things and talking about legacy and some different stuff. But you know, I listened to our intro, but you know, I don't always hear the words. I would have swore it said that we were from a bunker, not a barricade. We're in a barricade. Entrenched. Entrenched barricade. Which keeps all of the moles out when you entrench your barricade. Okay. Or moles.

And gophers. I got nothing. I can't argue the point. I've never been in a trench barricade until now. And so anyway, we've been talking about legacy and we've been talking about the topic for the last couple of weeks.

And we started in the show right before this talking about the legacy left us. Now, Robby, that kind of came to you if you could reset it up through some prayer, you know, which things often come to you through prayer. You're one of the guys that do pray.

I may try that sometime. God came to you this morning on that actually. You want to set that back up and we'll play your clip actually. That would be good.

Yeah. So I was asking God where we were going today and he said, well, let's just think about legacy biblically. And as I thought about that, I was like, well, let's see if I can find it in the Bible.

It's not there. And I said, okay, so I got to figure out what the word is biblically and came to me that it would be, I went and looked it up legacy, by the way, in the dictionary. And it says an inheritance. And I went, oh, ding, ding, ding, ding, a lot of inheritance in the Bible. So I went and looked up that word in Hebrew. And again, it's a faith in life that's expressed.

If I could use the three letters and just express them that way. So I thought, wow, how cool is that? Because it really spoke to me about my dad because his faith in so many different ways brought life to me and it was the expression of his life. And clearly Jesus, you know, set that legacy upon us life itself in faith, because if, you know, through faith, you know, you can have life. But I hadn't really looked at the aspect of my dad having faith in me, but you can clearly see it at Jesus's baptism. No, excuse me, at the Mount of Transfiguration where God calls down and says, this is my beloved son to, you know, Peter, James and John. And then he adds beyond what it says to the baptism, listen to him. And what that's saying is dad is telling the boys Jesus has what it takes. And so I was thinking about a clip that expressed kind of how I felt about my dad.

And I thought about, I think we all love the movie Hacksaw Rich. And Desmond Doss, who you may know was a conscious of, I can't say that word. It's easy for you to say. He was one of those. And his dad. He was Protestant, by the way. I'm sorry to just say it.

I conscientiously object. You got to listen to the actual show to get that reference there from Big Jim. So his dad was actually struggling with alcohol and abuse. And in so many ways, you know, the relationship between him and his son was difficult. And when he found out that Desmond had enlisted, he lost it on him.

I mean, it was a really bitter scene. And so to see this turnaround, in other words, he went from a place of really being angry with his son, et cetera, et cetera, to when it really counted, a man steps into the gap for his son. And he doesn't do it without some cost to himself. Because he goes in to get a letter from the general, which you're here, and you hear him get pushed away. Then you hear it quickly transition to, he goes to the courtroom, and he's just helping to hand them the letter and get out of Dodge.

But that doesn't go down that way. And so he actually goes into a conflict. And so you see, I think, the legacy that he gave his son was not just faith, but the bravery of the father. Listen to how he was himself decorated. And then think about the son and the legacy that he got from his dad. But at this point, and again, I hate that you can't see this.

It's all audio. But if you could see the look in Desmond Doss's eyes when he saw his father in uniform walk into that courtroom on his behalf, it was like tear time for Robby. You know, that melts my heart. May I help you, sir? I wish to speak to Brigadier General Musgrove. Not without an appointment you can't.

That would be quite impossible. If you would kindly tell him, Corporal Thomas Doss would appreciate a brief word. He's in a very important meeting. I fought with him in France at Belleau Wood.

He was my captain. Please, ma'am, it's most vital. You okay?

Are they still deliberating? Yes, sir. Okay, now you go take this in there. I can't.

Strictly military personnel. Well, then you get one of them to take it in. They ain't out to help.

They're fixing to bury him. Sorry, sir. Nobody's allowed to come.

No, you don't understand. My son is the defendant. I understand, sir, but nobody's allowed to come.

I have information that you've ordered. While the sentiments expressed are laudable, the facts of the charge seem incontestable, so... What the hell is going on out there? It isn't the train, sir. Not in golf. That's a Greek war uniform. It is, sir. Sir, I need to show you this. With respect, sir, you are no longer a member of the military.

You weren't able to attend this hearing. I'm sorry. Is that truly the way it works, sir? You fight for your country, you lose so much that was dear to you, and then you're done with? The uniform's forgotten.

You have no voice. You were at least... I was, sir, Annabella Wood.

Twice decorated, I see. Sir. I take it you are the private's father? I am, sir.

Thomas Doss. Then, as a former military man, you know there are laws here. Sir, I know the law, Ann. I know my son is protected by those laws.

They're framed in our constitution, and I believe in them as he does. They're why I went and fought to protect them. At least, that is what I thought I was doing, because if it wasn't for that, then I have no idea what the hell I was doing there, sir. Thank you, Corporal Doss.

Let me have the letter. Yeah, so, you know, we cut out there because that letter makes all the difference where, you know, he's found not guilty and able to go serve his country and do things that are phenomenally heroic, if you know the story of saving all these people and being the first conscientious objector ever to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. True story. But don't miss the legacy. I mean, don't miss that that wasn't in a vacuum.

And to know the story, you know, clearly Desmond Doss didn't play the victim of his father either. In other words, he could have played that card in his life. But instead, he took what was good and truly made a phenomenal legacy for this whole country.

Oh, absolutely. You know, none of our parents, grandparents are without flaw, obviously, and they have things, but it's the things that they left us that make the impact. You know, we talked on the show before, you know, I was thinking about things my dad didn't really leave me, but he did. He left me a lot. He left me with the desire to do things a little differently, you know, where he found other things to do other than being at my ball games and scouting events and things like that.

I chose to always be at those things. Now, it doesn't make me a better dad than him. It makes me a different dad than him.

And I'm sure I still had my own flaws and my kids are going to hopefully look past those and tell good stories about me. But, you know, it's those things that, you know, we take away from that we make and we create into good things. One of the things Rodney said in the show that really triggered for me, and I'm paraphrasing what he said, but basically, the important legacy is a spiritual one. That's an eternal one. It's an eternal one. And everything else that's temporal, temporal is just not, I mean, it may be important in that moment. And for me, that was the military. I still love that.

Life never had it. Well, but the, what I'll tell a story and this is sort of about leaving it. But my father, my grandfather, a lot of my family left me that spiritual legacy that didn't take till I was in my forties, but it took. And the, not terribly long ago, my oldest sister was talking about how proud she was of her daughters because they were politically active as she was. And that made me very sad.

I'm reasonably apolitical, but I'm diametrically opposed to where she is with that. So that made it even sadder. But what I was thinking was, you know, if that's all I left my children, all I could say, I was proud of them for, that means nothing in the longterm. And all of my children have chosen to follow Jesus, some better than others, but we're all that way. And if I did nothing else as a father, that's my proudest. Yeah, I think you're right.

But, you know, I think it, it, I think it can't come with an iron fist, right? I mean, how many people do you know that grew up in a Christian household, grew up in a pastor's home a lot of times that turned completely away from the faith, right? Because they weren't given the other parts of the legacy that were important, right? They didn't get to see, you know, my mom didn't become a Christian until really late in life.

I was already a teenager, but the groundwork of love was already there. And so when she got Christ on top of that, man, she could really speak things into my heart, because there was this whole foundation of love already there, right? And so the rest of the legacies are also very important. You know, one of the things I hope to talk about next week, because I don't think we'll get to it this week, but, you know, there's financial legacy, you know, what I leave property things to them. There's relational legacy and there's spiritual legacy. One thing that, I mean, you had to quote from Billy Graham earlier, and you talked about some people reject it. Well, Franklin was a wild man for years, but as the proverb says, raise up your children in the way they should go. And when they are older, they will not depart from it. And that is an emphasis I'm sticking there because you don't know. And there are a lot of people out there that love God, have brought up their children in a loving home, that have children that have rejected it. But it's not over yet.

Darrell Bock Yeah. No, there's always hope. You know, I know that fortunately I outlived a lot of my stupid ways.

Not all of them yet. I got a couple more to check off the list, but I outlived most of them, you know, and really were able to come back now. Andy, we have not heard from you on this topic of legacy, so let's hear from you this week. Andy King So, I'll try to stay in the vein that we're talking about, just the spiritual legacy probably more so. And there's several things I had on my mind. One of them was just the simple fact that we don't think about legacy a lot of times until somebody dies. You know, a lot of times we don't think on a daily basis what somebody has, the impact they have in their life.

I was blessed with being able to do the sonship talk at boot camp this time and was able to go deeper into the men that have spoken into my life and fathered me in the absence of my father being gone and some of the other things and just the impact that it had and how important that is for us. And to me that's a legacy. But I don't think about that a lot. But I recently had an aunt that passed away last week. And I didn't have a lot of connection with her. She was living in another state or whatever. But when my dad got sick, she really helped out. And she was a picture of Jesus to me during that time.

She came in when nobody else was really an advocate for my father and really did a lot. And it meant so much to me. And then I had another friend that was actually a groomsman at my wedding. And shockingly, he passed away last Tuesday. And 56 years old, had a heart attack, and he's gone.

And he was healthy and kept up with him on Facebook. Well, he had an influence in my life. Obviously, for him to be a groomsman at my wedding, that's when I first really got serious with God. And we didn't know each other from Adam, but started doing ministry together and really made an impact on my life. But I guess my thought is, we do need to think more about what kind of impact people do on a day-to-day basis in our life. And then in the legacy that they leave and thank them for it.

I mean, I thank you for each one of you guys and what you're sowing into my life and the legacy that you're leaving. But when it comes to our families and stuff, you think about when Jesus told them to go and preach the gospel, he said, go into Jerusalem, Judea, and the uttermost part of the world. We're in that same concept, we're given a sphere of influence to have a legacy on it. Usually, it's our immediate family, our spouses and our children. And then maybe it's our extended family and our friends. And then it's the whole world.

But that legacy should impact all of those things. So it's something that had been on my heart. Yeah, one of the things from last week when we talked about this topic was, one of you guys shared the story. I think it might have been Darren. But it was a story of the pastor had the funeral. All the nice things were said about him.

And then the kids came up afterwards and said, I wish I would have known that guy. You can't be absent of your own home in that. And we may get to all the topic this week. Danny, what about you as we talk about this legacy of what's been left to you? What comes to mind for you? Well, I often think about my dad.

I mean, he's still living. This father's day, as a matter of fact, I wrote him a letter and gave it to him. And dad's not one of these highly emotional guys.

Not like me. I don't know where I got that from. But I wrote him a letter talking about being my hero. And he always has been, because he's the symbol of strength that I grew up with.

You know, dad's in the house, everything's okay. And I can remember the legacy of that. And one of the stories I put in there for him was, we used to go to North Myrtle Beach every year. And we would ride those, they probably outlawed them by now, those canvas rafts that you blow up and rub you raw, but you ride them forever.

And they would take us out further than we could touch the bottom. But knowing that dad had control of it made it okay. I wouldn't have went out there over my head by myself for anything. But knowing he was there, the security of that. And as my son got older, when he moved out, he had an altercation at his house. And he come to our house, and I won't ever forget it because it made me think of dad because he said, when this was going on, you've always taught me to protect my own house.

And all I wanted to do was come back to yours. So the legacy of security of that's the father figure. That's the thing that has tried to be emasculated on, you know, Hollywood has tried to emasculate it, but the the man is the strength of the house, and the security and that's a legacy that you know, God the Father, you know, if I love the song by Corey Ashbury, when the father's in the house, or when you're in my father's house.

So that's just kind of my thoughts. Aaron, what about you? Well, there's too many to mention. But just in what Danny just brought up, I Sheila and I started watching a TV show, it's on Amazon Prime called World's Toughest Race. And not something that I would typically watch. I don't watch like the amazing race and you know, those different things and survivor and that kind of crap. Crap on TV very often. But for whatever reason, I chose to watch this show. It's hosted by Bear Grylls and and I kind of think bears a cool dude.

I like his heart as well as is anything else. But anyway, it's not about bear at all. It's about these amazing stories of these teams of people that came from all over the world. And they're going to do this world's toughest race 600 miles through the forest and the ocean and rivers and everything else in Fiji. And one of the teams was from the United States.

And it was, it was a team that was cobbled together kind of at the last minute. Because the father was going to he was a world renowned adventure racer. But he's getting older. He's in his 60s now.

And he just developed Alzheimer's. And he was going to race with his team that he's always raced with called the stray dogs. And the stray dogs were going to race together and the son and he had an elite team that was going to race together. And the son put a stop to that and said, You know what, I can't race with this elite team, but I would like to race with my father. And I don't, I don't know that he'll ever race again. And I want this race to be a race that he and I do together.

But I know that his Alzheimer's is going to be a huge thing in this race. And so he pulled together three other world class racers to do nothing but support his father through the 600 mile race. And he told the story of when other kids were worshiping their athletic heroes when I was a kid. I was worshiping my father, I thought my father was the coolest guy around, because he did these world renowned adventure races. And I used to go out in the dark and walk with him and run with him when I was a little kid. And I would be scared to death in the forest. However, as long as I had my dad's hand with me, I knew he wasn't scared of the forest and scared of the dark.

And so I guess there was nothing that I had to be scared of. So the legacy that his father left for him was not just adventure racing. The real legacy that pops out is that he knows how to care for other people that he knows how to love on other people, because the stories that kept coming out throughout the race was, I was in a race years ago with Mark, and I was ready to give up. But he's the guy that came to me when I was at my breaking point and said, No, no, you can do this, you know, you're almost there, you're almost past the hardest point.

And that was this guy's nature. He was this super encouraging dude. And so it was it was just a blast to watch that and see a father's legacy passed down to his son. And as Sheila and I watched it, Sheila goes, Man, he is exactly his father's image. He is definitely the image of his father. And so I guess the legacy that I want to live is, is in the legacy that I want to leave is both one of my Heavenly Father, I want to leave that for my kids and my grandkids.

But I also want to leave the legacy of my own father, because my own father was a phenomenal guy. And that's, you know, I compare myself to Jesus and Tim Kuhn. I mean, those are the two people, you know, I mean, yeah, I look up to Robby, and I look up to Sam, and I look up to Andy and Jim and all and all of you guys, for different things. And there are times when you guys do something do something that to me is superhuman hero faith stuff. And then there are times when, you know, I just say, was that a Tim Kuhn move? And if it was, I'm pretty good.

Was that a Jesus move? If it was, I'm pretty good. And if it wasn't, you know, those are kind of my criteria in life now that I'm finally getting old enough to be responsible with that. But I think it's a powerful thing to think about.

And it does only come, you know, usually after people are gone, unfortunately, it does. And I think that you can look at that. And you can say, okay, if that's the way it is, with people that's left before me, that's what it's going to be for me.

Right. And so if I'm going to make any difference, I need to continually be intentional now. Not scripted, I don't mean that not, you know, some big checklist, but intentional in my behavior. And it really will get down to at least the three areas that I've thought about. I'm sure there's probably a lot more, but it's, you know, what is my financial, for lack of a better term, the physical things, whether that's may not have any monetary value, but the physical things, I leave my kids and the people behind my friends and things, lots of hereditary diseases. Yeah, those types of stuff, you know, another pillar coming. I'm trying not to have the pillar.

That's what I try not to do. But I don't think we're gonna get there. The second, you know, would be relational. You know, what am I going to leave? How did dad treat me, you know, in this way, or my friends and things like that. And then the final would be not the least important and most important is spiritual. What impact did I have on people in that realm? Right? Do my kids want to know more about God because of the way I treated them?

I hope the answer will be yes. One of the things that kind of what Darren said sparked in, you know, my father had this legacy, my father's name was Bob Dilmore. And so there was a thing in our house or in our extended family, whatever that if you went Bob Dilmore on somebody, it wasn't to be confused with Happy Dilmore.

It was very clear that when my father decided that something was going to be, you know, if you were in a store, it didn't matter. When he went Bob Dilmore on somebody, you know, it was just a, you know, it was just a saying, but carried a lot of weight. And it did. And it was his legacy. But it was a really, really cool for me at his funeral, to stand up and explain why my father went Bob Dilmore on people, that this was this warrior. And it was his strength and his power. And if you messed with his kids or if you messed with some, and it was really neat because my sisters had never, they'd always saw his temper as something that was a negative and never realized that it was actually coming from a really, really good heart and a really, really good place. And actually is, you know, because I'm a verbal processor and I was speaking that day, I could really value my dad in ways that I had not before, that even to go on Bob Dilmore, go Bob Dilmore on somebody to me, to this day, it has a sense of the warrior that my father was.

Darrell Bock Yeah, I remember you talking about that at his funeral, you know, and it was pretty cool. I think that we could keep on this topic for a while. And I don't know that we'd ever fully get it.

Right? Because I don't think that's something that we're going to be able to do. I do believe it's going to be, it comes down to a few simple truths.

And we've talked about them a lot through the last few shows. But whatever you're doing and continue to do is going to leave a legacy. Is it the legacy you want to leave? Right?

That's really the question. Am I leaving the legacy that I want to leave in these arenas or any others that God brings to your mind? And am I treating other people the way Jesus said with love? Because honestly, love overcomes almost all of it.

Right? If I can treat them with love when He, the last commandment, love one another, right? If I can just go out and do that well, maybe people will be drawn to Him. And maybe people will say, hey, that was an okay guy, you know, and I'll leave more of a legacy I want to leave. But I promise you, if I don't go do that, it won't be what I want.

And it won't be what you want for you either. So join us next week. We're going to talk about maybe legacy.

I don't know yet. We may talk about something else. We'll pray about it. We'll come back next week. But first go to masculinejourney.org. Register for the upcoming boot camp, November 12th through 15th. You can pick up past podcasts and not quite yet a Daily Devotional, but maybe at some point a Daily Devotional. We'll see you next week. This is the Truth Network.