Interview With God

Hi, this is Roy Jones with ManTalk Radio Podcast. Our mission is to break down the walls of race and denomination. Your chosen Truth Radio Broadcast will be starting in just a few seconds. Thank you.

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 The Masculine Journey. No, this isn't Sam.

I'm sorry. We've had Sam for so long, we've gotten spoiled, you know. Back when he used to go to the beach, I got to guest host every once in a while. But he's gone to see his daughter in Las Vegas. How exciting.

He's on an adventure. And we have, like, a week from Saturday, like, on November 12th through the 15th. There you go. We will be at boot camp. And honestly, I don't know I've ever had more anticipation than what people are going to experience at this particular boot camp.

And I feel like we have this amazing opportunity in this show for somebody or tens of somebodies or whatever to have an opportunity to see how God might really come after them with a question, Darren, that by reading the Scriptures, you'll find it wasn't uncommon for Jesus to ask this question. In fact, in my own personal experience, he's asked me this question with a similar response that I really wonder if every listener, whether they come to the boot camp or not, doesn't need to have this experience with Jesus right there. Yeah, every listener, whether they come to the boot camp or not. In fact, I hope all, you know, I mean, there's going to be more that don't come to the boot camp than do.

So let's work on those because we'll get the ones at the boot camp, right? We're going to give this question to them. And the question comes straight out of Scripture, out of out of John's gospel and out of Mark's gospel. Mark presents it one way, John presents it a little bit differently. But both of them basically present Jesus at the pool of Bethesda.

And there was supposed to be this almost magical aspect to the waters at the pool of Bethesda. And you or I typically do the opening night talk and we always start with this question. Jesus goes to a blind man in Mark's gospel, a guy who's been called an invalid, which means invalid, an invalid man. And it appears from the gospels that Jesus approaches them.

They don't approach him. And he literally says to them, what would you have me do for you? Would you like to be healed? And these guys are sitting there obviously because they want to be healed, right? And the reason Jesus is not being crude, he's not being rude by asking the question and he's not being, you know, just overly sensitively kind either. I honestly believe he's trying to remind them of what it felt like the first day they realized I'm really broken and I really need some help and I don't have it within me to get the help.

I need it from somebody else. And I think Jesus is trying to remind them of that time in their life and he's doing it in a kind way. But it appears that this was a regular habit of his. And we know as a group of band of brothers, it's a pretty regular habit of his because he's done it with us a lot of times.

Darrell Bock Right. And it's a phenomenal thing that if you come to boot camp, and we hope you do, you're going to see men sharing a story of where they've had struggles with pornography or struggles within their marriage or struggles with what's my calling or struggles with posing or struggles with lying or struggles with anger or whatever that is with their particular story is like a map that you find them on. And then by them sharing how they've been healed, it builds a hope in you that you did not have. And we're going to show a movie and a clip at the end of the – it's called an Adventure to Live talk about the butterfly circus of a man that's got no arms and legs. And as he's watching all these people perform, you know, the ringmaster is like, what you got? And he goes, well, you don't understand. I'm not like those other people. And he goes, oh, yeah, but you're – you have an advantage. And he goes, advantage?

I don't have any arms and legs. I mean, what's up with that? And he says, oh, the greater the struggle, the more glorious the triumph. And wow, that's what I thought about so much of my brokenness is when I looked at my story, I tried so many times to get it fixed. You know, I'm not like those people.

I don't have that stuff. But what we're hoping to kind of share, and we took it to the team, and this week I ask them all to think about coming into this boot camp, you personally, like me included, like I'm coming to this boot camp because if we all don't get healing at this boot camp, what can the ministry flow out of, right? Yeah, I mean, we do it for the men that are coming, but we've never made any – we've never hidden the fact that we do it for selfish reasons too because we get a lot of healing out of these boot camps.

We get blessed beyond our wildest imagination at these boot camps. And we always start the night with this question. And so last week you called me and said, hey, I think we need to ask the team to present themselves with this question. What would, you know, if Jesus were sitting beside you right now and put his arm around you and looked you eye to eye and he said, Robby, what would you have me do for you? And I thought, man, that is a great, that is a great topic.

We need to do that on the radio. And I was super excited about it until I began to pray about it and think about it. And I literally, I thought, oh, wait, wait.

And I called Robby back and I said, wait, Robby, I don't know. I don't know if we need to send this out to the team because, man, I don't know if I'm prepared to say it on the radio, the question that I have for Jesus. I don't know if I'm even prepared to say it, to verbalize it, period, to anybody but Jesus. And the reason was is because I've lived very much of my life as a senior pastor, as a lead guy for a church. And when you do that, you have to wear a mask a lot because you can't let your church know how screwed up you really are. And so if you're a broken down preacher listening to us right now, we have about 10 of them in our midst, broken down ministry leaders or preachers of some sort. Are there any other kind here?

No, there's really not, but a lot of them don't realize it yet. And so that was one who just spoke in. But honestly, and so that was where my clip came from was this whole idea. Right, which talk about a ministry leader here, if you want to say that, it's beautiful.

The clip comes from a movie called Ragamuffin. If you've never seen it, it's the life of Rich Mullins, one of the greatest Christian music authors and writers of my lifetime. I loved his music. I remember the day that I heard that he died in a car wreck and literally cried. And I had never had that experience before with any kind of personality that I didn't know personally. But I just felt like I knew Rich Mullins because of his lyrics were so deep and and all of that.

And I loved his music. And so this comes from he's doing a concert at a church and he's not having a great day. His father's in the audience and he's got some horrible father wounds, which the movie illustrates very well. And you can kind of feel the tension. And he's up on stage and he's supposed to be entertaining, leading people in worship.

And this train of thought just begins to kind of unconsciously come out. And he talks about this issue of wearing masks. You know, you guys are all into that born again thing, which is fine. We do need to be born again. Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus.

If you tell me I need to be born again to enter the kingdom of God, I can tell you that you need to sell everything you have and give it to the poor. Because Jesus said that to one guy, too. Maybe that's why God invented highlighters, so we can highlight what we like in the Bible and just ignore the rest. I think that when we do things to corrupt our lives, that we're really just trying to comfort some ache that we have. And I think that the church exists because we all kind of need each other. And why are we all walking around church wearing these masks, pretending to be perfect?

It's so exhausting. Why do we do it? And I think that our only hope is the love of God.

So, Darren. Yeah, I mean, that, as I began to pray about this question, it took me back to the first time that I was at a boot camp myself back in 2009 in Colorado. And I remember John Eldridge standing on the stage and presenting that scripture at the end of his talk on Thursday night and then asking and basically saying, okay, right now, just pray. Write it down in your journal as if Jesus is sitting here talking to you because he is.

And he's asking you, what would you have me do for you this weekend? And my thought was, your journal's not big enough. I got a long list. But it hit me hard. And as I began to think about that, I thought of some of the things that I would have listed in 2009 are still things that I would have to list again in 2020. And that brought some shame and it brought some guilt and it brought just condemnation.

And I thought, man, you know, I don't know that I'm ready to go there. I think I would just soon put on the mask here and just fake it. And that's literally why I called you. And I said, no, we can't do this topic if guys aren't going to be real about it.

Because if we fake it and we pose our way through this question, it will give the audience the idea that that's okay and it's not. Now, you don't have to tell me and you don't have to tell anybody. I'm not going to tell you some of the things that went through my mind right then. But I will be taking them to God day in and day out between now and the boot camp. And, you know, I'll look forward to the healing tomorrow if Jesus will bring it.

But if not, I'll still be looking forward at this boot camp. So that's kind of where I wanted to go with this topic tonight. And so as I set up this, you know, the initial one I thought of similarly is, like, I know based on the healing that I'm looking for, which really is within my family, within my relationship with my wife. Not that that's horrible or we're on the rock, but just like it's not where I wanted to be. Like, Jesus, I need you to come in here.

And it seems like this is something that I know I'm sitting under some lies. So, you know, Buddy the Elf kind of helped us out with this one as we go into the break on sitting on a throne of lies, because obviously that's where I'm sitting. Santa. Ho, ho, ho, ho! It's me, Buddy! Who the heck are you?

What are you talking about? I'm Santa Claus. No, you're not. Why, of course I am.

Ho, ho, ho, ho! You're Santa. What song did I sing for you on your birthday this year? Happy birthday, of course.

You're a big boy. What's your name? Paul.

And what can I get you for Christmas? Paul, don't tell him what you want. He's a liar.

Let the kid talk. You disgust me. How can you live with yourself?

Just cool it, Zippy. You sit on a throne of lies. Look, I'm not kidding. You're a fake. I'm a fake? Yes. How'd you like to be dead? Huh? He's kidding.

Robby Dilmore here. Your mattress getting a little thin on top? Well, check out the new mattress topper from MyPillow. I sleep hot and my wife sleeps cold, which make its phase change material invaluable to us. It comes with a 10-year warranty.

It's washable and dryable, and it's made in the USA, backed by Mike Lindell's 60-day warranty. And best news ever, go to mypillow.com, save 30%, use promo code CARGUY, or call 800-943-7096. Remember that promo code CARGUY. 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. 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 through the 15th. MasculineJourneyRadio.org. I found myself alone, surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends. I found myself further and further from my home, and I guess I lost my way.

There were oh so many roads. So unlike Sam, I don't cut off the bums. If you're listening, Samuel, that one was a particularly good bump to not cut off. I mean we could have listened to the whole song. But nonetheless, Andy, that spoke to you on this subject.

It did. So we've been trading Bob Seger songs all week. And this one came up, Harold mentioned that this was his favorite song.

So I was trying to think, I was trying to stay in the line of Bob Seger, but I was like I know that he's got some good lyrics to his song. So I looked at Running Against the Wind, and it talks about I found myself alone, surrounded by strangers I thought were my friends. I found myself further and further from my home. To go on, I mean it just seems to me like that's exactly where I was at when I went to my first boot camp. I was really alone.

I had people I knew, and I did have good friends, but I just didn't know really where I was at and what I needed. So it spoke to me that way. That's awesome, Andy.

Thank you. So when we left our hero Santa, he was fixed to get it from Buddy the Elf, but in my own, as I began to process this in my own situation, I was having dealt with my own struggles with pornography, I received all that healing from coming to boot camps, and I've received all kinds of healing relationally with community and some other things that actually at the bottom of so many things I've found is there's this lie, right, that is in there that I have bought and an agreement that I need to break, and quite often it has to do with the internal lie of what I'm telling myself about what the situation is like, Nick, that he thought he was different than anyone else. So as I was working on this show, actually I found this clip, and like another friend of mine, he was talking about when he started thinking about this topic, and so when I saw this clip, I sat there and bawled like a baby because it so much led me into where I think Jesus really wants to take me. So here's a clip from a movie called Flight, and in this Denzel Washington, it's sort of the hero and the bum, you know, in the same deal. He's an alcoholic, but due to his fantastic ability to land a plane, he saves all the passengers on this plane, but the problem is he was drunk when he did it. And so here comes, you know, your plane's coming apart, you're going to have a crash landing, and it requires this guy to have what it takes, which he really does, but he's so broken in the midst of it, and now he's being brought up as a hero, and all the FAA and everybody wants to treat him like that, they don't want to hear anything about the alcohol, and so now we're sitting in the trial where they're trying to uncover all this stuff, and everybody's told him to hide this, his lawyers and everybody else, and then everybody's ready to sleep under the covers, but God won't let him do that.

And so here we have flight. It's my opinion. Trina did not drink that vodka. Excuse me, Mr. Whitaker?

She saved the boy's life. Could you speak louder, Captain Whitaker? Trina Marquez did not drink the vodka, because I drank the vodka. Objection! Please be seated, sir. Mr. Whitaker, misspoke. Sir. I drank the vodka bottles.

Did you hear what I said? I object. Please be seated, sir. This is not a courtroom.

Well, object anyway. I drank the vodka bottles on the plane. Captain Whitaker, on the three nights before the accident, October 11th... October 11th, October 12th and 13th and 14th, I was intoxicated. I drank all of those days. I drank in excess.

On the morning of the accident... I'm drunk. I'm drunk now. I'm drunk right now.

I'm miss-blocked, because I'm an alcoholic. You hear all that clicking? Those are cameras. Because, you know, people got themselves a story. The truth comes out. And as I was listening, I went to tears, because I realized that, oh my gosh, I crash-landed.

Bad. That when I got news that Westside Chrysler Dodge Jeep was millions of dollars short of what we thought we had, it was quite obvious the wings had come off the plane, and Westside Chrysler was coming down for a very hard crash landing, and it was then that I was thrust into this position of how was I going to save as much as I could save, especially what appeared to me at the time. I wanted to make sure that the customers were made whole, that nobody got their car with tax liens on it, or that we didn't pay off their trade, and I wanted to make sure that the employees didn't get left stuck with tax problems or other things, and all those things, I had to make value judgments, because it was crashing. Yeah, not to mention saving Robby Dilmore's face. I mean, that's what Satan is going to be telling you through all this, is it's most important that you save your reputation. Now, I know Robby is faithful, so I know the story you're telling is true, that you are trying to save those other people, even at the cost of your own detriment. And at one point, I even tried to save God, because I was coming up Depot Hill, which if you've come to Mocksville, you know what I'm talking about, and I'm praying, God, you know, this looks really bad, because a lot of people know I'm a Christian, and you know, they're saying all sorts of stuff, and this just doesn't look good for you.

I mean, what do we need to do? And he pretty clearly told me, Robby, I'll handle my reputation, you handle yours. But just like Denzel Washington, the plane was crashing, and I was intoxicated with other things that had my attention, which were actually horrible internal problems, and things that were way over my head spiritually, and I took my eyes off the instruments. And that's exactly what Satan wants to do with us, is get your eye off the ball. The cool thing that I love about that clip, and I know where God wants to take me November 12th through the 15th, is until Denzel Washington admits and confesses that he was drunk, that he drank to excess, that he was intoxicated. Was Jesus able to come in and bring a healing, which, you know, if you watch the movie, it's a beautiful thing. Well, I'm looking forward to that beautiful thing, too. I really, really am, and so the cool thing is we got a few more of these, and we got an after-hour show to do, but, you know, I don't want anybody to miss, I just don't want anybody to miss the opportunity that we have at this boot camp. You see, your story is a map to where healing is available to you, just like this. And so at the last boot camp, I've talked about this before, but I don't want anybody to miss it.

It may seem small, but it's actually huge. Jim Bericke came in and said that he was going to break an agreement in front of all of us, and he was going to play his guitar and sing in worship, because he felt like some people had teased him years ago that he wasn't, you know, good at playing the guitar. And so he was going to break this agreement and play for all of us. Well, what he didn't know when he was sitting there doing that is I'm sitting there watching this guy get freedom, get healing, get life, get it abundantly, and sitting there going, golly, I made that same agreement, you know, a long time ago for a lot of the same reasons.

And the next thing I know, coming out of that boot camp, I was going to break that agreement. I began to practice my guitar, and so, yes, I'm going to play it, but I want you to see that the desire that I had to play once again could bring me back to that place that God really had for me. And like in the movie, Jared's a fire. There's this validation that comes from him. I can feel his pleasure when I'm doing this, but there would be no healing if Jim didn't share his healing. And then as I'm sharing my healing, I notice all of a sudden, you know, Sam left a pain, like a painter, like pictures, like beautiful pictures. This one had been sitting there for two years getting touched, but as he's hearing about Jim's breakthrough on artistic endeavors, right, Robby?

So next thing you know, Sam's turning out paintings like Van Gogh or somebody, I don't know. I'm trying to grow hair, but it's not helping. And so, you know, I don't know what it is in your life, but Jesus wants you to ask that question. You know, he wants to deal with that with you. Where's the healing available?

And let's get to work on this. You've been putting it off too long, because everybody in your life is suffering as a result of that condition. And you have no idea that when you tell your story, when you're a witness to the healing that you get, the freedom that you're going to give to all the people that are in your community, whatever that looks like, Harold? You have not because you ask not. I had road rage starting as a teenager. I'm now 79 years old and just in the last couple of years, because I asked for God to have his Holy Spirit help me get over that problem, because I couldn't get on the highway without screaming at people that I thought were just plain stupid.

And my wife was constantly telling me, you're polluting my air. And I hated myself for doing that, but it took the help of the Holy Spirit for me to get out of that. And so now what I would ask if Jesus said, what do I want? It's give me a better attitude toward other people and not be an intellectual snob thinking that I'm smarter than other people, because I'm really not. Harold, I want you to know they are no less stupid out there. So you have gotten healing.

Now there's some wisdom. So the really cool thing is that we have this after-hour show where you're going to hear Rodney's. He's asked that question. Big Jim has asked that question and they have clips to go along with that. So we have much more healing that's at your disposal.

Maybe they'll hit something that's a chord in your life. And through someone's testimony of where God showed up, he's so available at boot camps because we realized that he is the star of the show. We're going to give him time because we're going to have coming into silence where we're allowing time to take these questions to him. And this is where the breakthrough happens. Yes, we're going to talk about wounds. Yes, we're going to talk about all those things. But it's November 12th through the 15th. Go to masculinejourney.org.