Celebrate

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Welcome to masculine journey. We are very glad to have you with us today. And like I say often, I say that every week, but we are very grateful for our listeners out there and how much that you help us celebrate what we're able to do each week. And so we're just very grateful that you join in and listen either on the radio or via podcast. And thank you for doing that. And you can always reach out to us through our Facebook page, through our website. There's emails there that you can reach out to us on.

So if you have any questions, any ideas for clips, any ideas for topics you'd like for us to talk about. Our daily devotion. Andy's going to start writing, I think. Obviously, God's laid that on your heart, Andy. That's a reference to a faux pas, a slip-up I made a couple of weeks ago. I couldn't help it.

When I said check out the website for the daily devotional that we don't have on there. Well, we do. It's just like three years old. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway. Classic Andy.

Now we'll go ahead and throw it to you, Andy. It's actually, it's your topic. Okay.

I went to the body punch and Sam just put a haymaker back at me. That's right. No, it's actually your topic this week that we're talking about. So you help us talk about this topic of celebration and how it kind of came up for you.

Sure. So, you know, we're connected with the Wild at Heart Ministries, who you referred to, Ransom Heart. It's based on the Wild at Heart book, Boot Camps.

And we listen to, I think most of us listen to the podcast quite regularly. And then they just recently started doing something for people that have been to their boot camps or involved in the ministries. And basically they were going through, how are you taking care of your heart during this crisis we're in? And they've been on that theme for some time because, you know, these were in unprecedented times, but they, as they talked to us as leaders, they said, how are you handling your heart? And in doing so, instead of, you know, you've heard on this ministry before, we're really focused on letting Jesus do what he wants to, to heal us.

The whole Isaiah 61, he came to heal the brokenhearted and we don't feel like it's just a one and done kind of thing. It's a process and it's continual. It's iterative. You continually do work with it. But anyway, that's a cool word.

If you like to explain it, because I would have had to look it up at the break. It means that it's continual. It's kind of saying we do in like IT, you are constantly improving.

So, so with that said, they, their point was, and I hadn't heard them ever talk about it really. I'm sure they have, but they said, you know, guys, you really need to celebrate where God's brought you because everybody involved in that ministry and involved in, you know, as it outreaches throughout the United States and the world, people are greatly affected. It's just really discipleship, but it's helping men focus on their hearts. Not to get into that too much, but you got to take time to celebrate the successes that you have, the growth, you know, the sins or the failures or the disconnection from God that I felt for years. It's such a blessing to be able to realize that, you know, I don't have, that he has brought me through. I'm in a better place and I need to celebrate.

I don't just need to move on to the next thing to become a better man or, you know, a better disciple. I need to stop right here and just celebrate with God and the accomplishment. Well, obviously celebrations are important, right? Because it was a big part of the Old Testament was they would take time to have celebrations and festivals and things. And so God knew how important the celebration was to our hearts, right?

And that's what John was reminding us to take time, you know, don't look for that next item on the to-do list as you're saying, Andy, but, you know, to put the next check mark on what I need to work on for healing or sin management next, you know, where do I have to go next? Yes, we have to do that but take time to say, wow, God, you've done some amazing stuff. Let's celebrate that for a season. Yeah, absolutely.

Even a short season. So, Robby, we want to go ahead and play your clip, you know, and this is a unique clip. We have not really used anything like this on the show before. No, we haven't. It's not a TV show.

It's not a... No, it's not. It has to do with the, you know, NBA finals that are the Western conference finals right now. My son is a huge Laker fan.

So I, you know, I like to keep up with what's going on because it's important to my son's heart. And honestly, I've never been much of a LeBron James fan, you know. However, when I saw this interview, I was like, oh my goodness, you know, he hit some really deep stuff here that I thought was really beyond cool on this topic because this happened, actually, this interview happened Sunday night after his teammate had made this phenomenal Anthony Davis, they call him AD in this clip. You're going to hear him referred to as AD. AD as Anthony Davis hit a buzzer beating, you know, right at the end of the game, three point shot, they're down by two and they win the game with this just phenomenal shot.

However, what you don't know is LeBron has not played well in the fourth quarter of this game and a lot of people are knocking him about that. And here he has a chance to celebrate his community when they're kind of accusing him of like, you know, isn't that supposed to be you? Yeah, right. Did you see my reaction? I saw a smile. No. Did you see my reaction after you made it? I didn't get to see everything. I was on TV.

I tried to chase him down just like every last one of the teammates and staff that we had out there. A special moment for a special player. Happy to be a part of it. What does it take to take on the pressure? First of all, want a shot like that, to take it, to make it? Well, it's not about making a shot.

It's about having a belief of just taking it for one and living with the result. I think right back to our game right before COVID hit, we played Brooklyn at home and he had a similar shot right there on that left wing, right in front of their bench for us to win the game and he missed it. And he was doubting himself, but at the end of the day, I told him, I said, listen, if you open, it's just the confidence to take the shot.

You're not going to make them all, but the belief that just take it and live with the results is what it's all about. And, you know, tonight was his moment. Tonight was his moment to just, you know, find a space, you know, hunt the ball down, you know, in our top 10. And it says one of our top 10 leaders in Rondo was able to find him and he knocked it down. Big time play.

Big time play. It's always been about the man in the arena, you know, the quote from Theodore Roosevelt, you know, it's about the guy that's in the arena, you know, that's gone through everything, the blood, the sweat, the tears, you know, and in our situation, the competition, but it's about the work that you put in and the belief in yourself. It's not about the doubters or naysayers or the people who was going to talk about you and try to slander you and put you down and bring you down every single day.

It's not about them because they've never been in the arena. They don't understand. So A.D., he know how special he is.

When he don't, I'll be the first one to tell him how special he is. That's what it's all about. But, you know, you put that pressure on yourself when you don't really care about what other people think because what other people think doesn't really matter because they don't understand. Anybody can talk from outside, but if they got into the ring or they got into the arena 10 times out of 10, they shit their pants.

Darrell Bock I had to throw that little bit in there at the end. But the more I listen to the clip, the more I like it. Of course, what he's talking about is a basketball game. And I understand that's definitely important to my son's heart and a lot of people. But in life, this is huge. This is so huge that to be part of a band of brothers that actually does stand up and give a talk and ask God to come in and do something. And a lot of these guys, you know, Sam, they've never done, they've never spoken public. And they're not only speaking in public. You know, they are being completely transparent about their sin and going deep into where that was and how God bailed them out of that sin.

And the point that I'm thinking is that like, oh my goodness, they stepped into the arena originally with Jesus to even take on the sin. To even say, yeah, I need to go do something about this problem I have. Yeah, I know I'm going to heaven, but I have other things that are obviously messing with my family. They're messing with my world.

They're messing with my workplace. And Jesus, you know, I know you want better for me. And so I'm going to step into that arena, either get some counseling or you and the Holy Spirit, whatever that looks like. And then, right, you've seen this, Sam, how many times when a guy steps off that stage, is he beating himself up like crazy? Pretty much most times, yeah. Because Satan has come at him with a brick bat, right? And I think about what LeBron said there that, you know, I don't want Andy to forget he's special.

You know, I'm going to remind him that that was just off the hook special or big Jim, you know, all, Darren, all of us. But also the invitation is to each person is to go there, to step into the arena, let Jesus take you where he's been dying to take you. But it takes courage and it's painful. I'm not saying it's not. Yeah, I think that there's lots of ways that you can look at it.

And risk always seems worse than what it is most of the time. You know, I know for the longest time when I was a young Christian, I would make the statement, I don't like to pray for God's will in my life because I don't want to go to Africa, right? That was my whole thing. I know as soon as I pray, God, you know, your will, make your will happen, I'm going to be in Africa somewhere and I don't want to go, right? And it's not like that, right?

I mean, God does send some people to Africa, but it wasn't me. But, you know, I think that's that whole risk component. But I'm also reminded of some of the stuff that I see, you know, I don't like a lot of the things I see on Facebook. Well, once in a while, you see some quotes that are really cool and you'll see a quote that's along the lines of, you know, as you get towards the end of life, you look at the risk you didn't take and they outweigh and bother you more than the ones you did, right? You know, it's because you get to the end and you say, wow, if I should have taken more risks here because I wanted to live too safe, you know, and I think that's what happens is we want to feel in our comfort zone, we want to stay safe, whether it's going back into woundedness or it's going into a place of calling or anything like that, it just feels so risky. You know, and I know it's going to be painful. Going into a wounded area is going to be painful, but the good thing is you don't stay there.

You come out victorious on the other side of it. Yeah. And the bad thing is if you don't risk, you're likely not going to be able to celebrate a whole lot, right? No risk, no reward. Right. And so, yeah, no, no, what is it?

No risk at no biscuit. Exactly. At the last bootcamp, Jim Berakee, who's not unfortunately not here with us tonight, but you know, he took a huge risk as he came into the group and he said, I'm going to break an agreement right here that, you know, I've let some people get in my head or Satan get in my head and believe that I couldn't play the guitar and worship. And so I'm going to worship with all you guys sitting here and he brings out this guitar and we're all looking at each other like, this might not be good. What have we got ourselves into?

Because somebody starts off by saying, you know, I don't think I'm any good, but you know, it's, but, oh my goodness, could we celebrate the fact that he broke an agreement? And quite honestly, I was sitting there going, oh my gosh, I have that exact same thing in my life that I need to work through. And we've got a lot more coming up on that. Yeah, we'll continue into that, but also go to masculinejourney.org.

You register for the upcoming bootcamp, November 12th through 15th, masculinejourney.org. Rodney here with another great product from MyPillow. It's the new mattress topper. Get a MyPillow mattress topper and get some of the best sleep of your life.

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That's mypillow.com, promo code TRUTH, or call 800-944-5396. Hi, I'm Danny Morris with Masculine Journey Radio. Like Gary, I found real solutions at bootcamp.

I didn't grow up in church, so I always felt my spiritual growth is coming later on in life. So I knew that I had to get here. And I guess what surprised me most is it's not a suit and tie kind of environment that I expect. It's real guys, real problems, looking for real godly solutions. Go register now at masculinejourney.org for the upcoming bootcamp, November 12th through the 15th.

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Coming November the 12th through the 15th. So bring your good times and your laughter too. We're gonna celebrate your party with you.

It's just more good, happy music. Celebrate. Harold, you were talking about the not taking risk. Yeah. I'm going to refer you to a John Prine song called Safety Joe. You ought to try to play it off YouTube. Okay.

Safety Joe by John Prine. Yeah, we'll do that. We were talking about this topic of Celebrate, and Andy came up with a bump in, which was Cool and the Gang from the 90s, I believe that was. Yeah, yeah. It linked well with Word Up from last week.

Yeah, it did. And so we had another one that Jim wanted us to play, which was Three Dog Night, Celebrate, celebrate, dance and music, right? The name Celebrate. But the whole topic is to celebrate these things, these things that Jesus has done in your life. And when we left, Robby was telling about Jim Barecki taking a risk, going through into his woundedness, right, with Jesus in front of a group of people that he really, I believe, cares about what they think.

I would hope that he cares about what we think. It can't seem more risky than that, but as a result of that, you're impacted deeply, and it changes what you do. And now you're on a 12-string, nine-finger adventure with Jesus.

Yeah, and if this show cuts out, Robby's bringing interference in with his left pinky. So yes, there's a lot they just said that's a mouthful, that I had made the same agreement. I used to play the guitar at my parents' weddings and my brothers and sisters, and I loved to play the guitar, but then I fell victim to some people saying I didn't play well, and so I, for 30 years, didn't play. And as I listened to Jim, I was like, man, I need to break that agreement.

That would be good. So I pulled out my guitar, and I started to play classical gas, which is a really difficult piece, but I played classical guitar, and so it was really different. And boy, I just went headstrong into it. I'm like, I'm going to play this at boot camp. I'm going to get this down like I've never played it in my life.

So I'm playing hours and hours and hours a day. Well, the attack comes. So yesterday, last night, we're not talking something that happened a little while ago. Last night, I decided to trim the bushes, and as I'm trimming the bushes and failing to use the directions of using both hands on the trimmer at all times, I decided to take one hand off and kind of make sure that the other one was just straight, and at what time it attacked my little finger. And almost, you know, it was bad.

It was bad. And I could see that Satan was going to see it, because if you ever watch somebody play classical gas, a little finger is absolutely, you know, one of the most critical fingers in the... So it is nine strings now on a 12 string guitar. And I asked Jesus to catch my heart, because I'd put so much time into this and all my thoughts of what this was going to be like to play this at boot camp. And now, he said, Robby, it's me. And you know, this is going to be a new kind of adventure. You're going to have to relearn this song that you've learned as a kid, you know, and you're going to have to relearn the way you do it, because you can't use your little finger anymore. And so I'm kind of excited about the adventure when I'm really honest about it. And like Stu told me this morning, because everybody's talking about the way I'm holding my little finger in this cast thing that I have, Stu says, well, you're pointing people to Jesus.

So if you see my little finger in the thing, you know, it's just straight up. And here we are. And like guys do, we prayed for him and said, oh, that's so bad. And then we've just been hammering him. You're like, Robby, you got a question? Robby, you got a question? You know, yes, Robby, what do you have?

You know, the whole rest of the time, like guys do. But you know, that's part, what you just said there, though, Robby, you got the woundedness, you're entering into some healing. The enemy doesn't like it. So he rears his ugly head at that, right? Right. Right.

And somehow convinces you to use one hand on it, two-handed implement. But yet, you're not letting that rob the joy of the adventure in the promise of healing. Right? You're not letting that set you back. And that's part of that celebration is believing in the promise of what Jesus is going to do. And has been doing, because you have been getting healing. Oh, it's been wonderful. And you know, what an experience. I'm so grateful, because if Jim hadn't, you know, jumped in and taken the risk that he'd taken, and there we go. So you know, celebration, Andy, it's just huge.

I'm really, really glad you brought the topic. Yeah, I mean, when we were listening to John say this, I mean, it kind of hit me, it was like, I really hadn't thought about it that much that we don't do that. Now, I know that I have celebrated, and we have glorified God in this community.

We have. But there is something about the enemy will take and point you to all the crap that you don't do. And get you to forget, same you said earlier, we forget the good things that God does and the progress that we've made. You know, we don't do that to our children. I mean, I was telling you guys earlier, and I was going to save this, but I just feel like it's the right time is just, you think about the best celebration story in the Bible to me is the prodigal father. I'm going to call it the prodigal father, because he was the one that took the action more so. I mean, it's a prodigal son. But, you know, when that takes place, the son has walked away, he realizes he's in bad shape, and he goes back to the father, and they do it.

But I don't, I always say the fatty cat, but you're saying the staff and the ring. He restores him fully. And I was thinking about that. It was like, we think about that as a one and done. Okay, he's saved now, he's good, move on. That kid probably still had a bunch of junk in his life that had to be, you know, he had to go through progressively to, you know, deal with the wounds and stuff that he did, guilt from when he walked away, all that stuff. And that's the same thing we have to do. And I have to think that, you know, we celebrate, you know, we want to celebrate those things every time that they come along, every victory. I have to think that in heaven, there's a party going on. I mean, that's essentially what it's saying in that, that really, it talks about their celebration in heaven when one sinner repents. But, you know, as we progressively mature and get those things out of our life and become more like him, the celebration isn't just here, I think it's there as well in heaven. And I think one of the things that you said, Andy, was we're good at, I think, as a team, for lack of a better term, corporate celebration. We're not really good at individual celebration as much as we need to be. And I think that's what John's challenge was, was celebrate personally with Jesus the things that's happened.

You know, Harold, you had something you want to say? I was going to say that one of the celebrations that comes to my mind is the Lord's Supper, that when we celebrate communion, that, and I hadn't previously thought of it as a celebration, but that's really and truly what it is. The fact that Christ came, lived, died, lived again, lives now, promising that we'll live with him. Wow, what a time for what a time for celebration. Yeah, I actually, it really studied that based on the term, you know, me, I was going to go into, I'm not going to go into all that for you, but I will say this, that every feast is a celebration and that the Lord's Supper is a feast and, you know, that's part of the deal. And when you think about those times where you are breaking bread with Jesus, I mean, here you go. I mean, in a way you're breaking Jesus.

I mean, it's kind of what's going on. I think what Andy you're referring to, we talked a little bit before the show, the things that kind of get in our way of celebrating, I don't think it's a conscious choice. A lot of times say, I don't want to celebrate. I think there's some level of the fact you want to make sure that, you know, the healing stuck for lack of a better term, that I'm not going to screw up again.

I'll be back where I was. And so don't want to celebrate too much. You know, I think there's that element of it, but I think it's more along the lines of how forgetful we are. You know, I've talked about on the show many times, you know, I tell people you should probably, you should journal, which I don't ever do. Right. And Robby's good at doing that, but that journal keeps you from forgetting those things.

Right. So you can go back and say, wow, I remember that. The few times I have journaled, I remember, and I've told this story before, but I went to Hanging Rock one time and I took my journal and I was going to be praying over something that I needed some answers to. And I opened up my journal and I looked and a few years before I'd been to Hanging Rock and I prayed about the same thing. And he already gave me an answer and I had it.

I just forgot it. You know, two years later, I just read it like, okay, I just walked a mile for nothing. You know, it's pretty new. But you know, had I just opened up the journal, I would have said, okay, oh yeah, God, you told me about that. Let's celebrate that.

Let's go from there. Well, you know, in the Old Testament, you know, God knew people would be forgetful. And he was constantly telling him, go build an altar, go build this tabernacle, whatever, as a reminder.

You know, I think back at me, I mean, I was just saying, what's something right now that I can celebrate? I used to wet my seat or wet my pants in this seat, you know, behind the mic. And now it's just become much more natural. And it's just because, you know, you get – he grows you. He really does. Darrell Bock LeBron said that, 10 out of 10. Darrell Bock Yeah, that's right.

It was very close, wasn't it? Scott Horrell We called that the Andy chair. We don't want the Andy chair.

For the after hours, don't sit in the Andy chair. The other thing I didn't want to say, though, I think we're too much of a to-do list mentality, especially as men. We want to get things done.

And so I'm not going to take time to celebrate that because I've got nothing to go do. You know, this last weekend, I spent a lot of time working on the outside of my home. Even to the point I put up a hummingbird feeder. I filled the bird feeder. I did some stuff. And then I realized yesterday, ever since then, I've set with the curtains closed. It's like, what good is it to have, you know, it's like these little half curtains or whatever, right? But I need to fully open those up so I can celebrate and say, okay, this is kind of cool what I did.

Even something that small, we're just so hesitant. I'm on to the next project. You know, check that box. It's time to go do another one. And God's like, no, take time to spend some time with me here in celebration.

And I think because we don't celebrate, sometimes those things don't stick as well as they need to. Danny, you have something you want to add? I guess I do. Robby, shove the microphone up. Celebrate. You got a mic in your face.

You're right. We don't celebrate things like we should. And I have spent since Andy sent a thing thinking about tons of things that I haven't celebrated. And I was just, we were doing some stuff around the house this weekend and my 13 year old niece, when she was, I don't know if I have time to tell the story or not, but when she was christened, I was going through a time in my life when I was trying to be ordained in the church we were going to. And I got a big packet of stuff and in big bold letters, it basically said, if you've ever been divorced, we don't want you.

The way I read it. And it just crushed me. And I'm sitting on Sunday morning, sulking. But in essence, what happened was the pastor called me up to do her christening. So she is my celebration sometimes.

I see her as a 13 year old child and think, God said, no, you let me choose what you do. That's awesome. And when we come back for the After Hours show, you can go download that at many different locations, Spotify, gosh, iTunes, just about anywhere it carries the podcast.

You can go get it there. We're going to continue to talk about this and go deeper. But in the meantime, go to masculine journey.org, register for the upcoming bootcamp, November 12th through 15th. God's got some amazing things he's going to do there for each of us and for each one of you. I know he wants you there. Just make time. Go ahead and make the plan and just go do it masculine journey.org. This is the Truth Network.