What or Who are You Trusting in 2021 After Hours

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

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Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours, and we are on our first broadcast of the 2021 year, which I'm sure I'm going to mess it up about a hundred times in the next couple weeks. You know, back in the day when you used to write checks, you know, yeah. How long did it take you to get used to writing in the new day? April.

April, yeah. Most of us don't write a whole lot of checks anymore, but you know, still there's an adjustment period. And what we've been talking about is what are you putting your faith in in 2021, right? Really at the core, where are you putting your faith, right? Are you putting your faith in whatever the election results end up being? Are you putting your faith in the vaccine?

Are you putting your faith in the government? You're putting your faith in your job, your relationships, just fill in the blank, enter anything into that. Where are you putting your faith? And if it's anything other than in God, it's probably going to come up short somewhere, right?

And really the only way to know for me anyway, how often I do that is to look back in the past and say, where have I put my faith before? Right. And when I, when it didn't work out and by working out, I don't necessarily mean the way things, I think I should work out the way it should, the way I think they should.

It's to work out to the best outcome. Right. And so really we want to just talk about more about putting our faith in God in this upcoming year. And in this upcoming year, regardless of what's going on and all those other environments, right? Cause there's very little we can do to control any of that anyway, on an individual basis.

Pray, pray, you can pray. Right. And so taking it to God and then relying on God is really going to be our best source. And that's the show. No, I'm just kidding. Well, we're going to talk more about that. But Andy, this was really your topic that was on your heart. So did I articulate that well enough?

What would you add to it? Well, it's pretty spot on. I don't like that your topic, cause I don't believe in that. It's our topic, but, uh, it's our time, Mr. Hand. I know.

I cracked a Kool-Aid, Andy. I'm on your side. But, but we were texting about it. Now the guys had some, uh, some things that guy were, was working on their heart about this idea of what fears are you're dealing with or what, what, what, what are you trusting in?

And, and then in general or in the new year, but no, I think where I came up with the ideas, you know, really just kind of brainstorm more salmon when we were talking, it was like, I'd remember hearing them talk on the wild art podcast. We talk about that quite a bit. That's where a lot of our ministry is based out of. And it made a lot of sense to me that they said, you know, they've talked a lot about, they're very focused on the heart. You know, that, that, you know, it's really not, you know, what the thrust of this ministry and their ministry is it's the heart of the man masculine journey, those kinds of things, and not dealing with what goes on in current events. But this has been a current event kind of year in 2020. And, you know, I've seen it on social media.

They made reference to it. A lot of people have put their hope on the flip of the calendar and everything's going to be good at 2021. Well, there's no guarantees in it. You know, you have some political leaders saying we're going into a dark winter. You hear people talking about, you know, the results of the election or the civil unrest or the global reset.

There's a multitude of things there. Well, if, if we're getting in a stew about all those things, and not really putting our trust in God, we're going to be disappointed. But just like the guys were saying, you know, there are times I've started thinking about this, even on this show, I sometimes I just think I've got my face nailed. I'm just, I know I'm trusting in God. And usually these are probably areas I've dealt with most of my life, but I guarantee that there's blind spots in my life where I trust me way more than I trust God. So my hope is in 2021 is to get more revelation into what those places are that I'm not really trusting in God. And, you know, really to have that complete faith to where my faith is not determined on what's going on around me, whether the circumstances are good or bad, or the outcomes are good or bad. Yes, I believe what we trust in God outcomes come, but they're not always going to look like what we expect.

And they're not always going to come in the time that we expect. And sometimes they may not even come because our faith is an internal faith. And that internal trust in Him is really, you know, what's what we're driving at with faith. I mean, there were we do have a results-based faith, but not everything has to be our way, I guess. And I think there's nothing wrong with being passionate about or being an advocate for how you feel. But there's a difference between being a passionate or an advocate for something and putting your faith in it. I think there's a world of difference, you know, because I think it's okay to feel the way you feel in all those topics, right? But that's really between you and God anyway, to sort out where the truth lies. And it's okay to feel that way. But where is that where you're putting your faith?

And that's what we're talking about here. And I think one way to indicate where there's a lack of faith is where do you still have fear? What are you still fearful of? Right? Because that fear shouldn't in a Christian's walk, if you're perfectly doing it, which none of us are doing, we're all striving to get better at. But if you're perfectly doing it, there shouldn't be those fears. Right? Because you're walking in love and daily communion with Him. But there's still fears that are there. Right?

And so that's a good focal point for this year of trying to move into that faithful walk with Him and putting your faith in Him. Robby, do you want to talk about your clip? Or do you want to play Andy's clip?

What would you prefer to play here? We'll play my clip. Okay, I'll set it up a little bit because my word for 2021 we talked about last week was engage. And so God's been certainly certainly taking me there trying to figure out what that exactly means to, you know, where am I supposed to engage in what ways and I understand that that's probably with Him.

And to some extent, He's showing me that He's definitely engaged with me. So this morning, to quote Dr. Seuss, you know, sometimes I've puzzled and I've puzzled and my puzzler gets sore. But I have, I mean this sincerely probably for 15 or 20 years, puzzled over the Song of Solomon, chapter 5, verse 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, right in there over exactly what is going on there. And you may have heard this before, but it's essentially what the bride says, which is the church in the Song of Solomon is the bride. And it says, I slept, but my heart was awake. And it's a parallel passage to Peter, you know, right in the Garden of Gethsemane. He was asleep, but his heart was awake. And Jesus, you know, woke him up a couple of times, you know, like, wake up, Peter, you know, engage.

Okay. Are you getting that? Well, the next line is that the lover comes to the door. He's knocking on the door.

It's very similar to Revelation. He came to the door and he knocked. His hair was dripped with the dews of the night. Well, you know, the only place you're going to see that is, again, in the Garden of Gethsemane, where he sweat great drops of blood.

Of course, you know, that was a deal. And he's knocking on Peter's heart, saying, you know, get up. And she says, you know, how can I get up?

You know, I've already taken off my clothes, and I don't want to get my feet dirty, and so I can't get up. Here comes the part where my puzzler has gotten sore, okay? Because it says that he took his hand, he reached through the lock of the door. Now, I've studied this a great deal to understand that in those days, in the Middle East, that doors were split, like, you know, the old farmhouses, like the top was open and the bottom was like—so he put his hand through the door to unlock the door so he could come in.

But then he went away. And so she gets up out of bed, and when she does, she says, my hands dripped with myrrh. It says, with sweet myrrh from the lock of the door, or the bolt of the door. So if you picture a door in the Middle East, and, you know, whatever century Solomon was, you know, this is a bolt like you would lift.

Well, when she gets up, obviously in her bare feet, not wearing everything she was wearing, she puts her hands on the bolt, and it's covered with myrrh. And I have puzzled, and I have puzzled, and I have puzzled about that particular part of the verse. And finally, after years, God said, Robby, it's the anointing. He left the anointing for her when she finally got up, that when she went to open the door, she would get the anointing.

Are you following me? And so when you're sitting there asleep, and he's been knocking on your heart for three days, or whatever it is, and it happens to me all the time, or just feel, or just feel like I've fallen away, like Peter did when he denied Christ. This is exactly what's going on, that he has left. This is so beautiful. It gives me so much hope.

It's unbelievable. Even though my heart's asleep, and I'm falling down on the job, and all this other shenanigans, if I'll get up, he left the anointing on the lock of the door. So when I step out, he's left his, you know, and essentially, there's a really cool thing in Psalm 92 where David says that my anointing is a fresh anointing. In other words, he's getting a new anointing, a fresh anointing, and the word is green, okay, in Hebrew. And so when you think about what he's saying is that if I'm attached to the vine, I'm going to get a green, I'm going to get a new anointing. So every time you wake up, Christian, you know, me, I'm talking to me, every time you finally wake up and decide to get engaged, the anointing is waiting on you at the lock of the door. And if you look at what he did with Peter, it's exactly what he did.

When Peter, you know, Peter, do you love me? The anointing was just waiting for him as soon as he decided to, you know, jump out of the boat, just saying. So, you know, for me, I find all sorts of faith right there to go, okay, Robby, you're working on getting engaged. You're working on, you know, contending where he wants me to contend so I can get peace on the other side of war, because there's a lot of wars I need to fight that I'm staying away from, because when people please her like Jim and other things too.

But what he's telling me is, Robby, at whatever point in time you finally get up, the anointing is going to be there for you. So this clip is from Harry Met Sally. And what happened here is that these two have been together, but they have been asleep for the whole movie. They obviously both love each other, but it's just been pure shenanigans of fighting and all this stuff. And I see this in so many of my own relationships, like when are you going to engage?

When are you going to take this relationship serious? And what you see here is finally Harry leads, and he decides to really come at her. And it's a really beautiful interchange, one of my favorites. I've been doing a lot of thinking. The thing is, I love you.

What? I love you. How do you expect me to respond to this? How about you love me too? How about I'm leaving? Doesn't what I said mean anything to you? I'm sorry, Harry.

I know it's New Year's Eve. I know you're feeling lonely, but you just can't show up here. Tell me you love me and expect that to make everything all right. It doesn't work this way. Well, how does it work? I don't know, but not this way.

How about this way? I love that you get cold when it's 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you're looking at me like I'm nuts. I love that after I spend a day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it's not because I'm lonely. And it's not because it's New Year's Eve.

I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. You see, that is just like you, Harry. You say things like that and you make it impossible for me to hate you. And I hate you, Harry. I really hate you. The first time we met, we hated each other. No, you didn't hate me. I hated you. The second time we met, you didn't even remember me.

I did too. I remembered you. The third time we met, we became friends. We were friends for a long time. And then we weren't.

And then we fell in love. So Robby, about that clip, tie that into what you were just saying. No, I understand what it means, but please articulate it.

I will. So if you love me, you'll obey my commands, which have everything to do with that relationship with him. So if you'll wake up, Robby, and engage, if you'll stand up, the anointing is waiting on you. It's just like Danny's clip, if you'll get your eyes on me and wake up, Peter, start praying that you don't fall into temptation. You know, if you'll wake up, Sally, and come to your senses. I love that line that, you know, is there, you know, with the prodigal son, when he came to his senses. In other words, when he woke up, the father was waiting to put an anointing on him. Just completely waiting.

And, you know, even though Sally didn't know it in her heart, she'd been waiting for Harry to finally commit. Right? To finally say you're the one.

And here it came. Does that make sense? Yeah.

And one of the things you'd shared before the show that one of the lines in that clip was, when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life. Yeah, you want to start as soon as possible. So what's keeping us from starting? Right. Right. What's keeping us from engaging? What's keeping us from stepping into that fear?

Right. And stepping into that place of uncertainty, not knowing how it's going to work out, trusting in him, whatever the situation is. And so the question I have for Andy, you on the phone, for all of us here in the studio, where's a place of fear that you still need to step into? And don't feel like you have to share them. I'm going to call on you anyway. So you kind of have to share something. But I'll start. I'll start.

And this is a hard one for me. It's really become apparent to me over the last six months, I need to really invite God into my finances. You know, I've tried many, many things over the years to get things to where I want them to be.

And I don't do well with it. And so I've been praying a lot over the last few months. And God's been leading me down some paths to really change some things and to trust in him and some things in my finances, because that's probably the one big area that I've held so tight. Because it feels like everything's risky. You know, and part of that is being a single parent, you know, one income to the family, you know, and feeling a pressure that's there.

But it's really saying, God, I need to trust in you. You've always provided, but I need for you to help provide for me as I start to look towards retirement. You know, because I'm starting to enter into a stage in my life that's going to look a lot different in five, six years. You know, I'm going to be at an age where I could potentially retire and I want to be in a position where I can, when I want to do that. But I really need to have some things changed financially. And that is inviting God into it and then just walking with him through it. And so I've started that over the last few weeks of really stepping into that with him and making some plans to do some things a little different, do without some things, and really try to be in a healthier place three or four years from now. And so that's a big one for me. It's hard for me to admit, but it's one of those that it's, it feels like a burden that's been lifted. I was, I came into this pretty cocky thinking, well, you know, I am relying on God.

I'm not listening to the news. So most of that stuff doesn't bother me. You hit on the one thing that bothers me most about a new year is figuring out how to remember what year it is. First today, earlier, I was writing a check, believe it or not, and I started putting 1990. So, you know, that gets worse as you get older. But we, my wife and I were, we didn't go out Christmas Eve because it was a nasty night. We moved into a new neighborhood and went out today to give some little presents to neighbors and meet them. And we met a wonderful 80 plus year old lady that's next door and her two puppies. And in talking to her, she lost her husband last year and she lost two daughters the two previous years.

And it hit me like a ton of bricks. You know, what I fear most is losing loved ones. Everything else is temporal.

It doesn't matter. That is too, if they're going to heaven, because I'll see them again. But the, I don't know how to put it exactly, the flaky faith of two of my sisters who have more faith in the election than they do in God, even though they will not say that, but that's the way it comes out. Mending those words, making sure the relationships are good is important to me. But my biggest fear really is losing my wife, my children, my siblings, and not necessarily knowing. Most of them I know, but it's, that is really the only fear I can think of at this moment.

Yeah. And, and especially in relationships, that's a place to definitely invite God into it. Cause a lot of times the way we've handled on our own doesn't work out real well. You know, I know that being a father, I've learned to pray more and more because my kids get into different situations than I've had to face. And so I have to pray, okay, God, how do I father them? You know, and so how do I mend this relationship? How do I grow this relationship?

How do I enter in? How do I pull back? What, what should I do when that type of thing?

Yeah. As many things as I screwed up over time, I've really tried to master, you know, being contented this last year and letting a lot of this stuff go. I still screw up stuff all the time, financially, relationally, but really trying to let a lot of those go and just, you know, put them at the foot of the cross, you know, it's easy to, you know, you know, you know, it's easy to, you know, cross, you know, it's easy to say it's really hard to, to do. I've done a lot better with that, but I'm still very, very fearful in the moment when something attacks me, someone hits me, you know, with something, you know, I was listening to one of the old podcasts, you know, when we're talking about fear and, you know, what is it that, you know, you know, hits you and it's like, I'm really okay now. I don't, I don't walk around fearing a lot of these things that hit me, but it's when it does hit me and I'm in the middle of it and I'm not prepared, you know, and then it just hits me. And then I'm like, you know, it's fight or flight. And sometimes it's still, you know, there's no in between for me.

I'm either running for the Hills or I'm ready to fight. And that, that part is something that I still need to contend with and try to work on and try to be able to say, okay, when that happens somehow, some way, let God take over in that moment of heat and passion and, you know, strife or whatever happens be hitting me. It just let him take over and not let me into that moment.

Cause when I enter in, it's not going to be pretty. Yeah, I can understand that. Andy, what about you?

So really glad you guys shared that. Cause I was, I hadn't really thought about it, to be honest with you. I mean, like Rodney, I feel like I've found much more contentment in the last couple of years. And I feel like that where I used to carry, it's kind of like, what was the, I don't know, Eeyore kind of like the cloud around him, just like, just waiting for something bad to happen. And that's, well, I think that was through the orphan spirit and that's the way I lived for a long time. And a lot of that stuff, I feel like I'm really much more in union connection with God. With that being said, without having fear or dread on a daily basis, I still, I'm not taking, you know, more of an intentional attitude towards my finances, like what you were saying, Sam, and really, really getting a plan and really trusting him more in stewardship and giving and those kinds of things as much as I should.

He's blessed me extremely. And I've got to, you know, take more action in that area. The other one would probably be relationships of where there are times when, you know, I'm not scared of engaging sometimes, but yet I probably don't depend on his wisdom enough to handle things. And there are times when I get defensive and I kind of justify my actions and those kinds of things.

I don't see that from the other person's point of view. And those things take, what happens is, is I disengage at times and, you know, the difference between fear and faith is that is, are you going to engage? Like Robby's talking about, am I going to take those things on or I'm just going to back up because I can't figure them out? Or I can't, I'm not dependent on God to help figure them out.

So those are probably the two biggest things. Thank you, Andy. Danny, what about you?

I just did a message on hope and part of the Hebrew word, not trying to steal Robby's thunder, it means thread. And one of the things that's come out, my word for the new year come to me as heritage. And I'm beginning to think about DNA. And most of my life, I've been somewhat of a chameleon that not really knowing who I am and being a people pleaser. And so fitting in wherever I think I should be instead of finding out who I truly am. So diving into my spiritual DNA and being fearful of that is asking God, okay, God, who am I?

Who do you see me as? And like you said, or am I going to be okay with that? Because there's part of me that says, well, maybe that's not who I really want to be.

Because it could be this or it could be that. But that's kind of a fear is I don't know whether that makes sense or not, but it's just something that's just kind of gnawing at me, I guess. Yeah, the only thing scarier than asking God, what do you think of is asking your spouse?

No, but you know, the world has told us we've accepted labels we've accepted things in our life that God doesn't see us that way. And so it feels very risky stepping into that arena and, and saying to God, God, what are you going to say? But I'm looking forward to the adventure he's going to have you on this year, because it's going to be awesome.

He's going to really open your heart up to some things and the way you see yourself. Robby, you got anything you'd like to share on fears? Oh, yeah, I really do.

Okay. Um, so night before last, I had this horrendous dream. Actually, my youngest daughter, Mariah, was in my fear is similar to Jim's, but he I did not know I had this fear as glaringly as God allowed it to be pointed out to me. And she was at the beach and swimming in the ocean. And as I was watching her swim, all of a sudden, I saw a great way a green, gray whale, jump way up out of the water come in. And I thought that was the coolest thing. You know, like that, man, look at that whale.

That's really, really cool. And rise about, you know, she's 10 feet offshore. So I'm thinking there's no way the whales coming up there. Well, about the time, man, this whale just charges her, you know, knocks her down, begins to chomp on her. And I'm seeing the blood and I'm, I'm sitting up in the beach, you know, and I'm so stunned. I don't run to the water.

Right. At the point of it becomes absolutely scared. And I am terrified. I mean, I am beyond terrified. And then all of a sudden the water drains out of the ocean.

And Raya gets up and she starts walking. And when I got up and started to talk to God to help me understand this dream, he had me read, believe it or not, I still can't believe this. You ought to look at it. It's, it's Isaiah 49 25. At the end of the verse, it says, I will contend with him that contend with thee, and I will save thy children. And I mean, he had me at this verse within 10 minutes of that dream. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I had no idea that, you know, I'd never seen it. But if you look at all of Isaiah 49, those of you who share mine and, and, and Jim's fear, Jeremiah, I mean, excuse me, Isaiah 49. What are you putting your faith in this year? Go to masculinejourney.org. This is the Truth Network.