Word of the Year: What A Year It's Been!

Hey, this is Mike Zwick from If Not For God Podcast. Our show, Stories of Hopelessness, Turned into Hope. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. The heart of every man craves 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 the masculine journey. We are at our post-Christmas pre-New Year's show. One of our favorite, I like to say that, I don't like to say it once a year, you know, it only applies annually. Yeah. It's the annual edition of the post-Christmas pre-New Year's show. Yeah.

And we're going to be talking about our words for the year, but first Robby, you know what I'm going to ask you what this is, what today is. Yeah. It's New Year's Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve, Eve Eve. Thank you. Now we have that out of the way.

Yeah, it is. Hopefully you enjoyed your Christmas yesterday. I know it's been a different year, year, year for everybody as far as getting together with family, those types of things.

So hoping that everybody out there had a good Christmas and everything went well. And maybe you started some new traditions like we talked about over the last couple of weeks, but we are going to be revisiting our word for the year, which it's at the end of the year. So this is the end of this word for this year, and then moving on to our new words. And so Robby, I was going to ask you to kick it off if you would and talk about your word.

Yeah. Well, to kick it off, of course, some people maybe had not heard what the word of the year means in previous. So we actually got this from John Eldridge's ministry.

Some many years ago. And the idea is you move in through December to begin to think of where God, where are you taking me in the new year 2021 is the case maybe this year. Begin to pray and ask God, you know, what's a word that we can kind of focus on in this year that we can kind of go on an adventure together. And so last year we all participated quite heavily and did a show in the middle of the year talking about the progress we've made and those kinds of things.

So my word this year was actually the word in Hebrew for love, which is ahava, which has to do with God's expressed love. And it seemed like, man, how cool. What a fun adventure to go on this year.

And it's been a year to have that adventure in so many ways. But what's interesting to me is he took me an attack with it. Not attack, but attack like a sailor would take a different tack that I never would have seen coming. Because the word in Hebrew is kind of like the father expressed and the kingdom expressed. If you can picture those kinds of things merging together, then that's an expression of what love actually is. If God is love, you've heard that. Well, that makes perfect sense. Well, where he kept taking me to was kind of like the two moose, if you've ever seen Brother Bear when they played the I spy a movie and I spy a tree and then, you know, a vertical log tree.

If you've seen the scene, it's absolutely hilarious. But everywhere I looked this year, he kept taking me back to trees. And my study this year has been really fun. I've enjoyed it in Hebrew. And the zadik, it's a letter in Hebrew, and it's very much connected to trees, as you might see, as we'll get to in a second, but, you know, when you think about how many trees that you see just on your way here and your way there, and you begin to see that that that letter itself means righteousness, right? And I had never connected how much righteousness was involved in love. And I've heard people say before it's right relationship that would be righteousness, but, you know, if you bottom line that now that I've spent a year on that word and spent a year looking at trees and thinking about how trees were involved in making things right, okay? Jesus hung on a tree.

All the sacrifices were burnt offerings. Do you ever think about that? The fuel to make things right, it was a tree. And so, like, I end up like these moose. Okay, tree. You know, tree. And I've just been going there, and so many different things that I've seen that the ark of the covenant, how did he save Noah and the boys?

Go for tree. You know, it's a picture. And I just spent my whole year just, like, oh my goodness, God, in all pointing back to what the cross.

If you want to see an expression of love like there is no other in the history of anything, right? It's tree. The ark was made with a lot of trees. It was.

Yeah, and the ark of the covenant was, too, in the poles and the, you know, you can go on and on and on on this, you know, you just think about it, and it's really, really a beautiful thing. So I had a lot of fun with that word, so I was really kind of sorry to say goodbye to it, because I'd had so much fun with the word love, so much fun with the word tree. And so this year, as I began to pray about it, I really thought I was going somewhere else. And again, he put me on a left turn, right turn, whatever.

And his word this year for me was engaged for 2021. And I thought about, oh my goodness, in order to love, you have to engage, right? You have to contend in some cases.

You have to move in where it looks uncomfortable, whatever that may be, to have the courage to do that. So this scene in the movie Top Gun for years and years and years and years has just absolutely intrigued me, because this is how I feel most of my life is, Robby, you need to engage. Oh, it's no good.

It's no good. Well, listen to how Maverick did it. 160 miles and closing in fast, sir. Ready, Willard and Simconop, catch three and four. Maverick supersonic, I'll be there in 30 seconds. Get up here, I'm engaged in five, repeat five.

Come on, kid, hang in there. Maverick, how about some help? Engage. Maverick, we got a MIG on our tail. Watch out, watch out!

Yeah, we just flew right through his jet loss. Get control now, get control. Good recovery now. Okay, let's get in there. Well, we gotta help Ice. Come on, let's get back and engage, Maverick. Come on. It's no good. Get in there, Maverick. It's no good. Maverick's disengaging.

I knew it. Get in there, Maverick, you can't leave him. Come on, Maverick. Maverick, get in there. Ice is in trouble. He's got no cover. Get in there, Maverick.

You won't last down there alone. Get in the fight. Maverick, Maverick. So to explain about a little bit of what you're hearing there is in the movie, Top Gun, you know, Maverick had this, you know, this not wingman, his guy that sat in the back seats name was Goose and he'd flown through a jet wash before and it ended up that they crashed and killed his best friend there and so he's trying to engage and then all of a sudden he has the exact same thing happen to him. In other words, Satan knows where to get to him.

He knows where to attack him to try to keep him from engaging and he hits him with the same thing. Well, then you can hear, you know, Maverick begin to, you know, talk to Goose. Talk to me, Goose.

You know, what do I do? And a big part of that clip and I sense for my adventure for 2021 has to do with my wingman. If you're familiar with the movie, you can't leave your wingman, okay? I mean, it's a big message of the movie.

Well, Jesus is our wingman, right? And so a big part of Engage for Me, what I'm looking forward to see where Ollie takes me on that, but that's what I'm doing. So I just kept thinking, you know, as we were playing that clip, I wish I had a dollar for every time they said the word Engage. I was like, man, that's a lot. But no, and the other thing I was thinking about as you were talking is it'd be perfectly appropriate for me to go, those are righteous trees out there, if I understood from the Hebrew. Yeah, so I could do that.

Sounds like from Southern California at that point. Exactly. Jim, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your word from this past year.

And then I don't know that we'll have time for the clip beforehand. But we'll talk about your word from last year. So why don't you talk about it for us and fill us in on how God took you on the adventure this year with it.

Well, it's really my word is faithful, which is also Robby's name. And he was the one that gave it gave it to me last year. And I appreciated it. I wish I'd done better with it. But I did do my best when I thought about it. And but the amazing thing about last year really was that God showed faithfulness to me in amazing ways, including just recently, selling a house after I'd given up on it selling in time to do what we needed to do.

But he did it a week and a half earlier than we needed to get Carolyn's money back in our IRA. So it has been an amazing year of watching God's faithfulness. Thank you. And we come back after the break here in a minute. We'll talk about your next word and play your clip. Andy, let's talk a little bit about your word from this past year.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about it and what God's kind of taken you on the adventure with. All right, so this is pre clip, right? pre clip. Okay. So my word was abundance.

And once again, I'm the slow student in the class. All I've got is last year's word. I don't have next year's word.

That's way out in the head. But anyway, abundance, God's just done some incredible things. When I first started praying about my word last year, I kind of trying to help out God and thought I knew what it was, but I just didn't have a peace with it. So I kept praying and got abundance. And this year, you know, abundance, yeah, we got abundance of sitting at home doing nothing, you know, with COVID. And, you know, it's didn't seem like a great year. But my, you know, john 10, 10, I come the key thief comes to kill, steal and destroy. But I have come that you might have life and have it more. But I used to listen to that, hear that a lot of times, and always, we tend to always think that's, you know, physical provision, you know, money, you know, or, but God has shown me so much, you know, that the Matthew 633, seek the first kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you.

But he did, he's just done some incredible stuff, based basically in the relationship standpoint, but in other relationships. And really, it's been my best year financially ever. And it was like, and it was like, I didn't expect that because the previous year wasn't that good.

So it was, it was like, it all happened at the end of the year, I was working towards it, but it really came in at a good time. And but, you know, those things are measurable, they're easy to see. But I'd trade it all in for what I experienced in a deepening relationship with him, my abundant friends here, that all my relationships with each one of these guys has grown. And just, you know, it like I say, you know, we talk, we will laugh about the facing of giants movie that, you know, the guy's got all these things up against him. And all of them, God solves. And, and really, I mean, I feel like, in a lot of ways, God has done incredible amount, I could say that there's more than I desire for him. And there's always going to be that, that he could delivers and, you know, various things, but just in the relationship standpoint, I mean, that love God and love people, if you get that down, those relationships are really where you want to be abundant at. So Absolutely, we come back, we're gonna get your clip.

And we got a special bump in that I don't think you'll be surprising, but it is about a word. Go to masculine journey.org. Look at past podcasts to get our contact information, or send us an email. And now the masculine journey after hours podcast, masculine journey radio. P.O.

Box 550, Kernersville, North Carolina, 27285. I promise that was only 30 seconds. It seems so much longer in some ways, but no, so we had two bump ins for this, this show today, we had a really good Christian song that, that Rodney brought, and I said, No, we're not going to use that one.

And because I wanted to actually use Greece, the other one, the other one was great. It's amazing song. And it's one of my favorite Christian songs. But so you go ahead. Sorry.

No, that's right. Go ahead. I was just gonna say my interpretation that for that for you is God is telling you that you need to be a missionary to Greece.

It's not Africa. No, but thank you. God's not sharing that with me yet. So maybe you get the premonition.

I don't have yet. But no, the reason I want to use this bump, Robby had the idea for it last week. And I wanted to use it because, you know, it's about a word, you know, the whole song is about the word Greece. Right. And so we're talking about a word. And a lot of times the word that God gives you doesn't seem to make any sense.

If Harold was here, he would tell you that his word for last year was happening. And we're like, What? You know, when he first got it in January, and then when you look back and say, Wow, this is a year of a lot happening, you know, and so I mean, you look at that, you say, Okay, so if God does give you the word Greece, he's got something behind it.

He's got something he's intending to dive into you with. So there's no silly words, you know, whatever God throws out there, you just got to say, Okay, God, I'm gonna walk through this with you and see where you take me. So that's, that's why we played that. I really like that. It's much better than my take on it.

So I realized, Sam, you need to go to Greece. So anyway, you have the microphone, but you go ahead and talk a little bit about your clip, because it's about abundance, right? And so you're going to be using a clip that is now kind of out of season, a little bit, it's right in the middle, because I got some Christmas to it. And it's got the old anxiety. Oh, okay.

Well, I'm going to outsource it some Robby grab, grab a mic, because I'll forget something. So I, you know, being the plagiarizer that I am, I ran onto a clip that was only used about a month ago. So but it really felt it really met my word, I felt like it matched with my word of abundance. It's from it's a wonderful life. And knowing the story, George Bailey, he's, he gets in a bad situation, he's running a savings and loan.

And it looks like he did embezzlement, he really didn't. And he was like, he had finally gotten given up. And he's like, you know, it's probably better that I wasn't ever been born. So when he gets, he does that wish, and he sees what goes through life.

And he was like, he never was born. And so all the things, all the people he touched, you know, they're missing, including him stuff, like he saved his brother's life and all. And he's got this angel that gets him out of this dream. And, you know, it's near the end of the movie. And he begins to see how the people have rallied around him in this situation, he's gotten in of embezzling the money and they and all these friends come up and are helping him out.

So I'll let you take over if I've missed anything there. Well, you know, it's actually one of my favorites by all means. So the big deal from my perspective is when the bell rings, you know, Clarence is going to get his wings and, and George gets this book from Clarence the angel. And then that book, it's Tom Sawyer, because it was Clarence's favorite book. And it's written in the cover, you know, as a gift to him, it says, you know, no man, it says no man is rich unless he has friends or something, you know, basically, oh, here's the actual code he had it in his phone. Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.

Thanks for the wings. And, you know, again, he had a scarcity mentality, right? Like, all reason he was committing suicide is he didn't have the money to cover the bank deposit.

Yep. But the next thing you know, the money poured in way more than he could have ever right. So that what you're seeing here is everybody's coming to his rescue, and providing the money that he supposedly stole for the savings and lonely head. And there's a couple songs in there, you know, just Christmas songs and, and, you know, and then it gets down to where he he's meeting with Clarence and he actually Clarence gives him the book with the note in it. But it, you know, just on abundance, when you look at it, that there's a lot of stuff going on in the movie, to where you see the abundance. It's his friends coming to help him. But it was a, you know, he had a monetary abundance or whatever his needs were met through that.

But mainly, it was just seeing that he had friends and he had God looking out for him with the angel. But I wouldn't have a roof over my head if it wasn't for you, George. Just a minute. Just a minute. Quiet, everybody. Quiet, quiet. Now get this.

It's from London. Oh, Mr. Gower cabled you need cash. Stop.

My office instructed to advance you up to $25,000. Stop. He ha and Merry Christmas, Sam Wainwright. Mary, I got him here from the airport just as quick as I could. The fool flew all the way up here in a blizzard. Oh, I left right in the middle of it.

Soon as I got Mary's telegram. Good idea, Ernie. A toast to my big brother, George, the richest man in town. That's a Christmas present from a very dear friend. That's right. That's right. Alright, Andy, you did get New Year's in there. We're covered on.

That's a wonderful life for a while. Yeah. And that particular clip.

So, well, that's true. You know, we did display it not too long ago, but you used it quite well. Yeah. I mean, Robby, he used it for, you know, being thankful and, you know, I'm definitely thankful for the abundance I experienced this year and all that God has done. You know, it's like you say, whenever he gives you a word, I was like, it was out of place. My, what I felt like last year's word was going to be with something like restoration.

And even though there's some restoration that took place, it was like, no, I got something even beyond that for you. So. Yeah. I think one thing is you're talking about the whole abundance thing that 2020 has taught us that a lot of things that we wouldn't have recognized as being abundance in the past, we'd really long for now. Right. You know, a big gathering of family, you know, even the weird cousins or whatever that you don't really want to be around. You know, I mean, you start to even miss those people after, after it's been long enough, you know?

And so it's the abundance thing I think is, is a lot more clear this year when we've had been restricted from things that we would consider to be normal. Now, Jim, I wanted to get to you on your word for this next year of 2021. You want to talk about it or play the clip first? No, I want to play the clip first. Okay.

So I still have to remember the word. Do you want to set up the clip? Uh, this clip is actually from, uh, two of our favorite. Well, from our favorite Western with one others that I found out last week, it's from the outlaw Josie Wales. And this clip pretty much talks about my word without ever saying it. And your word of death is here in my pistols, there in your rifles. I'm here for either one. These things you say we will have, we already have.

That's true. I ain't promising to nothing extra. I'm just giving you life and you're giving me life. And I'm saying that men can live together without butchering one another.

It's sad that governments are achieved by the double tongues. And there is iron in your words of death for all commands you to see. And so there is iron in your words of life.

No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men. The words of 10 bears carry the same iron of life and death. It is good that warriors such as we meet in the struggle of life or death.

It shall be life. So that, that clip didn't say your, your word. Nope. So it wasn't life, death or iron. Those were the three words that were completely through that. That's true. It wasn't any of those yet.

All of those are involved. Okay. Um, first my name is Jim, which is short for James, which is an anglicized version of Yaakov in Hebrew, which is like Mary. It's not one of those names you want.

Mary's better. I'm a deceiver, a supplanter, a trickster. I mean, there, you got lots of words that go for Yaakov and we know you, but, uh, and, uh, don't make, don't make me cry. You're hitting me where it hurts. Oh no, we know that's not true about you, Jim. Well, but it is, I mean, that is my past.

I am a people pleaser and I've always wanted to say whatever I needed to say to make people like me. And, uh, it was funny cause last week when, oh yeah, you need to come up with your word by next week. I had it in the next second and it was integrity. Um, and I came close to that last year, but I was dancing around it and faithful came first. And as I said, God was extraordinarily faithful to my wife and I this year and she retired and like the two times we've lacked for money, the least have been the times when we were earning the least cause she retired.

And when we went to Alaska, the mission trip, that was a, a time when we never lacked for anything, but we had gotten rid of everything. But the integrity really, um, is something I've been hearing for awhile and not necessarily just in that word. I was crying the other day as I was reading the Bible before I got the word asking God to give me a new name, which he's given me three. So I can't really cry about that.

But Israel was what Jacob got. Yahkol got after wrestling with God and the wrestle's over and I'm ready to have that integrity. It's going to be an interesting year. I can't wait to hear how it plays out for you. As we share throughout the year together, go to masculine journey.org and you can download and listen to our podcast. You can also look at it. Like I said at the last break, but you might want to click on the button and listen to them. You can do that.

You can go to Spotify, Pandora, any place that has podcasts and pick up a podcast. We're getting ready to go into masculine journey after hours after this show. And we're going to talk more about this topic with Rodney and I sharing and a little bit from everybody else. But we hope you have just a wonderful new year and reach out to us in this new year. Let us know you're out there and let us know any questions you might have.