Hello, this is Will Hardy with Man Talk Radio.
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But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Network Podcast. It's a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus speaks of narrow gates and wide roads, but the masculine journey is filled with many twists and turns.
So how do we keep from losing heart while trying to find the good way when life feels more like a losing battle than something worth dying for? Grab your gear and come on a quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides in what we call the masculine journey. The masculine journey starts here now.
Welcome to masculine journey. We are very glad that you're with us this week. And we're going to be talking about a topic that I think that at some level we all think about. But do we do anything about it?
And I don't know that we actually have the words to think about it. Where this kind of came up is over the last few weeks, I've noticed a theme and some different communication I've been getting. At my work, they've been sending out this COVID update every week announced every two weeks.
But the very last paragraph of it. The owners of the company have been including a paragraph ever since the beginning days of COVID way back in February, March, of make sure you're taking care of your heart. You know, do things that are good for your heart. You know, run a mile, run a mile, eat healthy, take glycerin, vegetables, you know that?
No. Yes, that but also, you know, emotionally for your heart. Oh, emotional, not cardio. I'm glad we're not talking about cardio. Yeah, I can look around the room and there's not a lot of cardio.
Well, if it is, it's accidental cardio. Like a set of stairs. Yes, indeed. But we've been some of us been on the Wild at Heart has this leaders thing where the group out there has been having different people from around the world, and to join in people, it's kind of been in areas of the message.
Yeah, and John's been reminding of that, you know, about your heart, what are you doing for your heart? And it really made me think about during this time of yes, COVID of election, which wears everybody down regardless of what side of the equation you're on or no side Satan wins. Exactly. It's, it's just can the day get here fast enough, you know, just so at least the ads will go away, if nothing else.
Yeah. And again, regardless of which position you take, you get tired and beat down by it all. And then obviously, social unrest and things that's been going on society, and it's just very attacking on your heart. You know, and so what do you do to offset that?
And what are the things that you're doing to bring your heart life? That's really the topic today. And, you know, your heart is indeed hungry. It wants things it's going to consume things. Oh, yeah. Right. But is it?
What's it? What are you giving it to consume in your life right now? Yeah, I love the topic. I'm so glad that you, you know, thought about this and that that, you know, others, and I'm sure God prompted you to bring this topic up, because it is needed. And, and yeah, as a band of brothers, we kind of talk to each other about that sort of thing.
And, but probably not enough. But to take it on out to our listeners, for us to consciously be thinking about it, and asking the questions, what am I doing intentionally, to care for my heart right now? And, you know, some of the things I'm doing, you know, I fast from the news. I, you know, I, I don't need to watch the news to know what Joe Biden thinks, or what President Trump thinks, or what the news media thinks. I don't I already know what they all think. And I know what I think and I and I believe I know what God thinks. But, and so I don't need that.
And it's not helpful at all. I mean, I've, I don't hardly watch any TV on TV anymore. I try to just do Disney Plus, and all of the cartoons, you know, but you know, they even sneak in, sneak in the stupid presidential ads into, you know, everything it seems like, and it's just like, Where can I go to escape? And so yeah, I do a little bit of that. And, and then, you know, I do try to focus in every morning on just reading from Scripture.
I try to dig into Scripture and just kind of journal Scripture a little bit and, and pray through that. And, and that seems to be the best. Imagine that. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I haven't tried that one. It seems to work pretty well. And when I don't get it, I definitely know it. And when I do get it, I also definitely know it. So yeah, if you spend any time on any version of social media, you're really going to understand our first clip. Yes, yes. So Derek, why don't you go ahead and set up our first clip. Yeah, so if you're a Star Trek fan, you'll love this.
It comes from Star Trek. And honestly, our friend Dewey Hilton sent me a text the other day, and said, Oh, great. And we've been sending some texts back and forth, hey, pray for me over this, pray, I need some prayer on this, da da da da da, these types of things.
And in the midst of well, how are things going in your world? I get this text from him. And he's talking about his air conditioner, but it fits for our show. McCoy. He's dead, sir. That man's dead back there. She's dead. He's dead.
Must be dead. He was worse than dead. His brain is gone. And he's dead. He's dead, Captain. He's dead, Jim. Is this a dead man, Doctor? Very dead, Mr. Spock.
Let her go, Jim. He's dead. He's dead.
She's dead. You know, I there's only three years of that original series, you know, I think is what you're kidding me. Yeah, I think there's like 103 No, I think it's like three, three years as original series back for Star Trek, if I remember correctly, I mean, I caught it in reruns, obviously, you know, I didn't get to see it. Some of the original ones, I think I did.
But anyway, that must have been McCoy's, like something every week. Somebody died, you know, at every show. But you know, I think if you I'm dead, I'm dead. If you spend any time these things that and I'm not saying politics aren't important. I'm not saying that the social issues aren't important. They're important. But if you're only feeding in them, it's not going to lead to life. Right on text, context, context, right. You know, at some point, you just get weary and you get worn down and weirdness being worn down leads to death. It's not a life giving thing.
No, it's not right. And again, I'm not saying none of those are important. They're very important. But you also got to have the balance of feeding your life, feeding your heart things that bring out life. Yeah, I think you have to be aware of what's going on. I mean, it's been fascinating to me, because I do think a lot of these things play into, let's just say the world we live in now, which is different than it was five or 10 years ago, I believe, I think we all see a shift. But with that said, you're spot on and that they don't there are days that when this first started happening with COVID, I'd sit there watch that work from home.
Everybody's working from home, but sitting there watching it all day. And I was like, man, I can't take any more. And it doesn't there's you cannot the spirit is not meant to live off of that. It brings no life. You do have to be aware of what's going on. But those, you know, your your heart wasn't made for that.
It was the wrong fuel. I think there's some reference to that later. But yeah, Darren, you talked about not watching the news. It's been a decade now that I haven't really watched the news. Intentionally, if I've been somewhere in the news happened to be on where I couldn't get away from it, then I've watched part of the news. You know, and I do try to keep up with what's going on in the world. But I'm very selective what I try to read.
Yes, because, you know, at least at that point, I can kind of hopefully have my own opinion versus trying to hear everybody else's opinion on it. You know, I want to get the facts and I want to get the facts. And, you know, like you said, Andy, about COVID. How do I protect other people? How do I protect myself? What do I need to do? But beyond that, there's a whole lot of it.
I really just don't need that's not going to do my heart very well. I mean, how fast do things change? Do you really need a new 10 minute update?
You know, constantly on COVID? I mean, what's changed since really this things began? And what's changed in the hearts of other people with the other situations since certain things have began?
It doesn't change that fast. As long as you have a general knowledge of what's going on. And, you know, I get enough people around me doing watching all those things, watching the news, telling me that it's telling me that I've got my trusted sources that I go to. I'm kind of like you.
I haven't watched the actual nightly news in probably two decades. And I'm now completely 100% out of sports. I don't watch a single sport from a guy who just loved it and played it and was all part of it.
That was a big deal for me. Like you, Darren, I'm, I don't do a whole lot with a lot of TV shows at all. You know, I'll watch the movies here and there with my wife. But that's about it when we, you know, when the tide has just cooled down for the evening, but I just kind of protect myself and, you know, what I have found for myself is a lot of podcasts that so when I'm driving or doing things, I'm working and I can have my earbuds in and I can just kind of listen to other people talk about something much more possibly. You know, our podcast I listen to, I'm, I'm back in seasons ago.
I'm in season four right now. I've found other podcasts I've listened to that are newer that I really like. And I'm like, oh, let me go down that one for a while and listen to theirs. And just, but I want to be fed by something that's positive. And some of them are godly. Some of them are specifically, yeah, they're, they're godly, but they are about the social issues and how to respond properly.
And I'm like, oh, that helps so much to like, good biblical solid references to the social issues of the day and what's going on in our world is very positive for me to listen to because I'm like, okay, there's an answer to that, rather than, oh, my gosh, the doom and gloom of how am I going to deal with it? Oh, well, you could have just watched a presidential debate and known exactly what was going on in life. Oh, man. Yeah, that was that was not fun. I watched a snippet. That's all I needed to know. I didn't want to watch any more of it. Yeah, you know, it it I saw a little podcast or a little snip from the, I don't know, YouTube or something where somebody put together from Peewee's Big Adventure.
I know you are, but what am I? So that's basically if you miss the if you if you miss a debate, that's pretty much what you miss. And that was pretty much the truth of the situation.
They were dead, Jim. Exactly. You were gonna fight life tuning into that thing. That's for sure, regardless of what side you sat on. Well, when I find myself needing a faster heart rate and a little bit higher blood pressure, I can turn on the news and take care of that. That's true.
That will do it. But aside from my smart remark, I do have something in a very positive nature that when we're talking about what are you doing for your heart, I can give a shameless ad because I have no stock or whatever. But there's an app on the phone called you Bible. And they have various reading plans. And you can share these reading plans with other people.
And you're able to make comments regarding the lesson and so forth. I find that to be very, very helpful for my heart at this time, because getting up in the morning, and I'm not an early morning person, I'm more of a night owl. But when I get up and I go after that first cup of coffee, and I get out my phone, and I start doing whatever reading plan that we're on, reading the comments from the other person. That, to me, is something that is very good for my heart. That's cool.
Well, thank you. And I know something would be really good for everybody's heart that's listening right now. And that's going to a boot camp coming up November 12 through 15. Go to masculinejourneyradio.org to register now. Boot camp November 12 through 15.
Go now. Hey, this is Rodney from the Masculine Journey radio. At the last boot camp, I actually had a chance to respond to the warfare talk. Now, here's what Sebastian learned about the true reality of spiritual warfare. That there really is an enemy. It's not just me and God.
But in reality, it's me when I get up in the morning, me when I go to work, on my drive, my daily life. God has something for you at the next boot camp. Come register now at masculinejourney.org.
Coming November the 12th through the 15th. Hi, I'm Carson Kuhn. I'm Darren Kuhn's grandson on the Masculine Journey radio. Mike's boot camp experience was like mine. One of the things that I realized this week was that I need to take time to listen to God. I felt like the Lord had spoken to me and he said, Mike, how are you going to listen if you're always busy?
So this weekend, what I've done is I've taken some time just to go on walks and to be alone and to think. Join us young guys at the next boot camp. Coming November 12th to the 15th. MasculineJourneyRadio.org. Welcome back to Masculine Journey. We are glad to have you back with us. And hopefully you went and registered for a boot camp and you're back with us now. But if you didn't, you can do it between the shows, between the podcasts. You can hit that little pause button and go back and listen to it.
If you're listening on the radio, you just may have to wait another 15 minutes or so and then you can go register. But we want to have you there. I know God wants to have you there.
And man, if it's anything like the one we had this summer, it was just amazing to see all the stuff that God did. All these bumps that we have between the show at the break. It's all from this most previous boot camp that we just had, the most recent one. Yeah, the testimonies that you hear.
It's really cool. Every one of those testimonies, I think, are first-time visitors. Maybe Carson, I guess he had been. But a lot of them, Mike and some of them are all... Yeah, almost the entire crew of the last boot camp were first-timers. And almost everybody that came, except for I think one or two small groups, were there by themselves. And that's another key. If you're thinking, man, I'd like to go but I really want a friend to go with me, no you don't.
You don't. You want to come by yourself, don't you, Andy? Yeah, absolutely. I did. It was a step of faith because I'm more reserved and I didn't know these guys.
They may try to dump me in the water or start shooting at me or something like that. But no, really, you just really didn't know what to expect. And then I don't think I've missed one since. So I guess it must be comfortable there. And Rodney came the first time by himself and the beauty of it... I went to my first boot camp by myself. I think you went kind of by yourself. And the beauty of it is you can really focus on you. You can let God... You don't have to be selfish when you're by yourself, right?
Because we're not going to ask you to go hang out with a bunch of other guys and tell your story to all these guys. We're going to encourage you to go out and talk to God about that. And you don't have to worry about anybody coming back into the cabin and going, hey, did you talk to God about that issue with your wife?
Or whatever. You can be there by yourself and you and God, you're never by yourself. Yeah, my first boot camp I went, I knew a couple people that were there. And I kind of just stayed away from everybody because I just wanted alone time with God. And the only uncomfortable time that was from a person... God had me step into some uncomfortable times, which was great for my heart in the long run, to deal with some woundedness. But it was one of the guys I knew, and as soon as I walked in from the one segment, he's like, so hey, what's your wound? I'm like, I'm just now talking to God about it. I sure don't want to talk to you. I'm just like, yeah, I'm not ready to talk to you. It's you right now. And I'm going to go to another table and eat lunch.
He's dead, Jim. We're talking about the heart and what you're doing. And what's really kind of good, to be very honest, from March, February, March, other than the boot camp, honestly, most of what I did that was good for my heart was Tuesday nights coming to see you guys. We record the show on Tuesday night.
It plays on Saturday, and then you pick it up either Saturday on the radio or on podcast or whatever. But it's our time that our community gets together, and that was necessary for my heart during that time. But honestly, it was about the only thing I was doing that was really that healthy for my heart. Well, and that was even hard. It was because at certain times, we couldn't get together all in the studio.
It'd be one or two people in the studio and the rest of us on the phone. And just we weren't together, and we longed. We literally do long for these boot camps. We love them. We go a day early to set up everything, but also to kind of let our hair down. I mean, Andy and I don't have any hair to let down. You let it all down.
Yeah, our hair was let down a long time ago. But we kind of go a day early to decompress and take some time with God for ourselves and to cut up and have fun with each other, and we long for that, and we long for this. And so that's some of the things we're doing for our heart. I was listening to Morgan Snyder's book, Becoming a King, and if you don't have that book, get it. If you like to read, read it. You can get it on Kindle, Amazon, Audible.
I've got all three, honestly. I'm just a freak like that, according to what I'm doing. But I was listening to it again today, and Morgan tells a story of Bart Hansen, who's with Wild at Heart, and he's on the board of directors at Wild at Heart, and he's one of the speakers of the speaker team. And Bart's a man's man. He knows equipment, has worked around heavy equipment all of his life, that sort of thing. Construction.
Construction. And Bart was telling the story that he was out working on his ranch one day, and all of a sudden his Kubota tractor died, and it wouldn't start. And he tried everything he knew to try, diagnostic everything he could possibly think of. And it's just, you know... It's dead, Jim. Yeah, it's dead, Jim. Exactly. And so he's on his way back, walking back to the house to try to figure out, and he's just praying, God, what's wrong with the Kubota tractor?
And as he passes the fuel barn there, he realizes, I just filled my diesel tractor up with gasoline. That's what's wrong. And so the point is, your heart needs fuel, and it needs a particular type of fuel. The news is not the fuel your heart needs.
That's what I was talking about earlier, yeah. Yeah, the presidential debate, not the fuel your heart needs. It may be something that you need to listen to, don't get me wrong, but it is not good for your heart, I can promise you. But there are things that are good for your heart.
Absolutely. And I started thinking about, as this topic came up, and started thinking about, what am I doing? And I was feeling better. And so some of the things I was thinking, what am I doing? And the first one, I'll go ahead and play a clip.
One of them I may wait and share after hours. But I found, after I went through my divorce, I always considered myself not to be very creative, as far as artwork. Yeah, most people do, if they know me. But I just couldn't really do it, I had no desire to do it, my kids kind of enjoyed it, some of them.
Some of them didn't. But I'm like, yeah, that's really not me. And so I took this class, this paint class on a date. You know, I went on a date, we did this painting thing, and I loved it.
Oh, you're one of those. Yeah, I loved it. It was fun. And I started to learn to paint, and I really enjoyed it.
Well, I went through a shoulder surgery and some other things, and I just kind of quit working on it. It kind of set in the other room, and I thought, well, I'll motivate myself, I'll get rid of my dining room table and make that area in there an art studio. And so I put the painting in there, and it set for another year. And I walked past this partially dead painting, right? And I'm like, this is ridiculous. And so one day, I just started to paint a little bit. And I'm going to go ahead and play the clip and then come back and talk. But this is the ultimate person who loves to paint and gets joy from it. This is Mr. Bob Ross, and let's listen to him.
Touching the canvas, use just the corner of the brush, just the corner, and begin pushing, making the bristles bend slightly downward. See there? Look at that.
Isn't that a nice little tree? And he lives right here in this brush. All you have to do is sort of push him out. One of the questions I get asked quite frequently, what if I do a tree and decide I don't like him? Or maybe I'll make him taller. Watch here, watch here.
Let's see. Well, I hate to mess up this tree, but I want to show you this. It's a good tree. Maybe you want to make this tree taller. All you have to do is touch and come right back over the top of him. See here?
And you just paint a bigger tree right over the top. We don't make mistakes. We have happy accidents. I have lots of happy accidents.
As long as I got my depends, that's a happy accident. That's not a dog painting in the background. It's him painting the tree. But, you know, I can't paint a tree still, and I can watch Bob Ross. And I used to watch him just so I could nap, because he never really – it's like golf.
He never really talked at a very high rate. You know, it's like, happy trees, and I just go to sleep. But, you know, watching him and the joy that he gets from doing it – I think his show is called The Joy of Painting or something like that. And I started the sedan last week, two weeks ago, and work on this painting. And I've probably changed it three times since then and painted over this spot and painted over that spot.
And it's nowhere near what it started to be. That's what he told you to do. But it's happy accidents.
That's right. And what I'm finding is I'm really enjoying – I don't know what it's going to end up being. You know, but it's like, okay, I like that. I don't like that.
I'll just paint over it some more until I like something. You know, and I've got a thought of what I want. It may not be the same thought I have two days from now, but it really doesn't matter, because it's not about the destination. And I'm a destination guy.
It's about the journey. But you're a professional procrastinator. What are you going to do now? Well, I've been painting on it almost every day. I didn't do it yesterday, but I've painted a little bit every day. If you're not careful, you're going to get so much paint on that thing, you can't pick it up. I know. It's going to be a very thick painting.
Very expensive painting, just called the paint painting. But just listening to that clip, because I've never heard of Bob Ross in my life. No?
No. And I don't – no, I'm not going to be – I'm less artistic than Sam, and Sam was doing hard on himself. But I just listen to his heart as he talks. He's just full of joy. And there's something out there for all of us that brings that joy. I've learned that I enjoy creating and finding beauty in things, right? And I think that's universal. I think that's universal to all of us, whether that's creating a great Excel spreadsheet, whether it's creating a great computer program. Whatever it is, it's the creation portion that brings you life. Why is that? Because you were created in the image of God, the Creator, right?
Exactly. I was out a couple weeks ago helping a friend of the show, Corey. I was picking up some trash on the job site. We had the owners of the company coming in, and we were trying to make it look good. And I could have been out there just being frustrated, because it was hot.
It was a miserably hot day, and I'm out there picking up trash pretty much all day. But as I'm walking along, I see some pretty cool rocks. I'm like, that's a really weird-looking rock.
And so they're a pretty good size, probably about the size of, I don't know, a cell phone, maybe a little bit bigger. And I picked them up and just put them in the back of my car and took them home and kind of broke them up a couple weekends ago, put them in the rock polisher. And I took them out last weekend thinking, nah, they're just going to be all crumbled up and be nothing.
They're beautiful. I don't know what they're going to turn out in the next – it takes like five weeks. A thing in patience, if you get a rock polisher, it takes a long time. It's about five weeks to go through the cycle, because you go out through these different grits, all these types of things.
Each week, you do a week at a time. You probably spend more on electricity than you could buy new rocks. But part of the process is just saying what's been discarded, literally, these rocks laying on the ground, what God created, and what they can become. So, Sam, you must have prayed for patience, and God gave you a rock polisher.
Yeah, yeah, He kind of did. Well, isn't that what He does to us, as part of the process of maturing us, puts us in the rock polisher, and we stay there on a particular subject or something for a while, and then we move on to the next thing. But it stages. It is. It is.
And we touched on such a little part of the topic. I would encourage you, if you haven't yet, went and listened to the After Hours. Go do that.
Go download it. We're going to talk about more of what we've been doing for our hearts, but also, how has the enemy been trying to come after our hearts in the midst of it? What's he throwing at us? Things like frustration, apathy. Those types of things.
Those are the key tools, you know, that get us off of those things that give our heart life. But in the meantime, go to masculinejourney.org. Register for the upcoming boot camp, November 12th through 15th. God's going to be there. We're hopefully all going to be there, and we can't wait to see you there. Please join us. We'll see you then, and talk to you next week.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-02-05 20:15:48 / 2024-02-05 20:28:10 / 12