What or Who are You Trusting in 2021?

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We are on our first episode of 2021. Doesn't that feel weird? You guys can shake your head.

They can't see you on the radio. Somebody say yes, please. Yes. Thank you, Rodney. There we go. Anyone else? Jim, do you have a yes there? No.

Okay. Yeah, it does feel weird. Thank you, Jim. Just to be in a new year, there's a whole lot of feelings that come with that, whether it's feelings of anticipation and hope, feelings of dread. You usually find yourself on one side of that equation or another. And by now, you've probably already broken some of your resolutions. Don't worry about it. You got a whole year to break those up. But it is 2021, and I think this year is a little different than a lot of the ones in the past because we've lived such a different 2020. It's been a different season for all of us.

Harold, I know we joke with you about being the oldest in the group. In reality, you've seen more seasons than the rest of us. I imagine 2020 was a quite different one than any other one you've ever seen.

Absolutely. It's unbelievable how different it was. Just crazy from mass to social distancing and all the new terms that we have and all the things that came into our vocabulary this year, like Zoom, in a different way than it had in the past. Yeah, there was a lot happening for sure, right, Harold? Yeah, a lot happening. Yeah, back early on when we were trying to get our word for the year and I felt the Lord was telling me that my word was happening and it was like, what?

Wait a minute, what kind of weird thing is that? And then in about a month, boom, and on and on it went. One of the things that has really been bad for me is we're not able to have our worship services like we used to. We went for a couple of months.

Everything was by Zoom. Then we were able to meet on Sunday morning, but we have two services, one at 930 for the folks over 60 and 11 for the ones under, but then no Sunday night service other than Zoom and nothing on Wednesday night. And I really miss being able to gather together.

I mean, I think that's why the church was actually instituted, was because of what it provides for us. And to a certain extent, we've lost some of that, not all of it, but we've lost some of it. And I can't wait for this stuff to get straightened out where we can get back to normal. Your new word for the year is not normal, is it?

I actually have been asking but have yet to receive. So I'm still forced to look at happening and I'm hoping that things will happen better beginning shortly. Yeah, that could be a positive word or it could move in the other direction. But Andy, you're not with us in person today, but you're with us on the phone. And I like the way that you set the topic and then failed to be here. You sounded like everybody else that's in the room, or at least me and Robby that's done that in the past, and Darren and you. But anyway, Andy, tell us a little bit about our topic for this week.

Andy? Can you hear me? Oh, I can now.

Go ahead. But yeah, Sam and I were talking last Tuesday, just thinking about the topic for the show. Really, we didn't have to discuss anything that really had hit anybody's heart after the show.

But something had been on my heart that, you know, we all, most of us guys, listen to the Wild Heart Podcast. And on their show, they talked about how, you know, a lot of times, as bad as 2020 is, a lot of people were saying, you know, they're just acting like the flip of the calendar is going to give them a new year and a new reset. But with what we see coming down the road, it might not necessarily be.

And the point was, if you're putting your hope in the flip of a calendar, you're probably going to be disappointed. Our hope needs to be, you know, on the rock of Jesus, on the, you know, on his strong foundation. But it's easy with the turmoil that we've already talked about.

We've talked a lot about it this year. You know, we have to stay grounded, focused. We have to allow God to, you know, tend to our heart. We need to tend to our own heart, so that we are putting our trust in Him instead of what's going on on the outside, what's going on in life. But whether it's, you know, COVID and wearing masks or social distancing or riots or civil unrest, you know, the election, all those things are important and God cares about them. But ultimately we have to just put our trust in Him and to get us through. And it's not that easy all the time.

So this is just a reminder to you that that's what we're focusing on today is just to really, you know, press into Him for 2021. Other than the Sunday school answer of Jesus that we throw out there, right? And that is the answer. And when we texted on this topic, Jim was the first to say, you know, the answer is God, right? What do you put in your faith then?

But as you just said a second ago, we can know that, but to know it and to live it are two different things, right? And to live it in every area of your life. You know, at least in my story, there's been times that I do well in one area, but I really don't do well in another area. You know, and that's still, I guess for me, when I try to control something, really it comes down to a lack of faith. You know, when I'm really trying to control the outcome of something, I'm not putting my faith in God as much as I'm putting faith in myself to get the outcome that I want to have. You know, even if I'm praying about it, I'm still actively, probably pushing it a lot of times more than I should be.

You know, and I think that part of the thing is how do you put your faith, you know, what's that look like to put your faith in God for this next year? Yeah, for sure, because I think, you know, the thing is, we are, I think we're expected to take a certain amount of control. It's not all in God, it's not all in us, it's a partnership. And I've usually done the extremes of both, put it all on God and not take any personal responsibility, or put it all on myself and exclude Him, and then that's a failure, that's the way I live most of my life. So it is finding that partnership and allowing Him to lead you in it. And then you got, like you say, Sam, you got all these categories, all these parts of our life, and sometimes we're like, okay, I'm good with that, God, handling my finances, but relationships not so much, or the craziness of this world, you know, maybe that's out of my control, but I'm going to try to take control, something like that.

Thank you. I love you threw that word out, Carol and I, as we were riding together recently, somebody was basically blocking all the traffic, and I made the comment to her about, well, you know, some folks just, they don't have any control in their life, so they want to exert it somewhere, and then, you know, it's one of those pointing your fingers, and three of them are pointing back at me, but because, especially on the road, I'm trying to be in control of the traffic, myself, and everybody else around me, and it is something that's inherent in all of us, and wanting to have that control, but the greatest release I've ever had in my life was when I realized I wasn't in control, and I could trust the one that was. Yeah, it's hard, you know, I look back and say, where have I put my control in other places? You just almost take a checklist, you know, there's finances, I'd love to say that I put my hope in God and my finances, but in truth, there's a lot of times I'm putting that upon myself.

Relationships, how often has I put my faith in that other person? Andy, we got about three minutes before we go to break, I want to go ahead and have you get in this clip from Prince of Egypt, do you want to set it up, or do you want me to play it? No, I'll set it up real quick, it's a short clip, but it basically is after the plague, I think this is, you don't hear it on the clip, but it's basically right after the clip, I mean the event of the judgment of, or the plague of the river turning to blood, and really the Israelites are talking, they're really frustrated, and they're like, Pharaoh's taken everything. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and play it real quick.

Okay, gotcha. Pharaoh still has the power over our lives. Yes, Aaron, it's true, Pharaoh has the power. He can take away your food, your home, your freedom, he can take away your sons and daughters with one word. Pharaoh can take away your very lives, but there is one thing he cannot take away from you. Your faith, believe, for we will see God's wonders.

So Andy, go ahead, you can take us into break, but why that clip? I think the thing is right now, it feels like everything has been taken from us, and you know, some could say that it's, you know, I'm just gonna go ahead and say it, government, some of the things that they're doing, I don't think a lot of us agree with, and we have to, you know, be good citizens about it, but we feel like a lot of things are being taken from us. Our ability, we may have had our holidays taken from us, we didn't get to spend time with family and that kind of thing, but what if we let those things continue to encroach on us and take away from us and make us feel like we are not experiencing life, then we've allowed the enemy to take our faith. That's one thing I will not do, or I really commit not to allow that happen, is for the enemy to take my faith. He can take a lot of stuff from me, but you know, my commitment is to not let him take it, and I think all of us realize that that's really where it's at, our hope and our faith.

We cannot allow the enemy to take that from us. I think one of the things that we need to keep in mind is that if we have most everything taken away from us, we're still going to be better off than most of the population of this earth. Yeah, when you're talking about physical things, I would agree.

I think as we get into the relational distancing that we've all had to experience this year, you know, we've never really had to experience that in our recent lifetime anyway, you know, just the level of connectedness in person that we had, you know, the ability to see people and spend time with people has definitely changed. And I think if you're putting your faith in the government, you're putting your faith in the vaccine, you're putting your faith on either side of that. The election, whatever you're putting that faith in, it's not going to meet your expectation, right? It's not going to meet the hole that's in your heart, right? You may get the outcome that you're desiring for a season, but it's really about this process of learning to put faith in God.

That's right. And so, Andy, what's some of the things that you've lacked to have faith in in the past? Probably just the sense that I was, you know, you guys heard me talk about it. I'm just not knowing that God's there. I'm not in union with Him. I kind of tend to try to go off and do things and take control of myself.

And that affects my faith that whenever you try to live apart from God, you're not really responding to Him in faith. Thank you, Andy. masculinejourney.org. Now what do we do?

Just be yourselves. Where are you going? I'm going to pick a fight. If it feels like every day is picking a fight, then you might want to come listen to The Masculine Journey and find out why we use clips like these to illustrate the story God is telling in the lives of men today.

The truth is God designed you to pick a fight, but which fights do we pick? Well, grab your gear and come on a quest every Saturday at noon. And now The Masculine Journey After Hours Podcast, Masculine Journey Radio. Hi, this is Sam with Masculine Journey.

I'm here with my son, Eli. We're going to talk about ways that you can help support the ministry. One way you can go to smile.amazon.com, go to smile.amazon.com. There's information on our website there on how to do that.

You can go to facebook.com and click the donate button, or you can go to masculinejourney.org and find the donate button, masculinejourney.org. Or if you want to mail something in, mail it to P.O. Box 550, Kernersville, North Carolina, 27285. Andy, thank you for that bump. And who was singing?

Jason Stockton. Thank you. I could have looked on my phone, but I just wanted to ask you to see if you do. Yeah, yeah. You put me on the spot. Little backstory behind that. I think it was back in the summer when we were talking about a perfect love cast out fear. And I remember I had no, I don't think I had heard that song. I was driving into the radio show one night and that came on and I'm like, wow, that, you know, that really speaks to what we're talking about. Just a powerful song to me. Just, we forget that, that, you know, we've truly experienced the perfect love of God that fear will go. You know, I think what came clear to me as I was listening to that bump in is I finally realized why so many Christian songs, the chorus repeats itself so often is because we're really thick headed, you know, and we don't get it the first time.

And so, you know, they have to say it like four times in there and finally go like, oh yeah, fear. If I have that, then I'm lacking some love, right? Some faith in my love here or whatever. My faith is lacking if I'm having the fear. And so, you know, the question becomes those areas that you're anxious in still, why are you anxious if you really have a healthy trust of God that he's going to come through, right? Danny, I want to go ahead and switch over to you. You had a clip that you brought to us this week.

You want to talk about it? Yeah, the clip is from the movie, The Shack, which was a book that literally changed my life because it opened up the door to me to see God in a bigger, broader scope other than a big guy sitting on a throne with a lightning bolt with my name on it. And so, you know, the movie came out and the scene in the clip is, because y'all not gonna be able to see it on the radio, in case you didn't know that.

Yeah, I didn't know that. That the main character is out in the middle of the lake in a boat and the boat is coming apart. And he's sinking and the character that represents Jesus is telling him, don't look at what's going on.

Look at me. You know, this is not, this is what's going on inside of you. And he's in a panic. Obviously, you're out in the middle of the lake and your boat's coming apart. Reason to panic. But the message is focus on me, not on your circumstance.

And it reminds me of, you know, Peter walking on water. Don't look at the circumstances. Look at what you're doing. And that's kind of the clip.

I hope I set that up pretty good. So you can play the clip if you would like, sir. As you noticed in that clip, as he focused more and more on Jesus, the storm decided. It went away. I think that's the boat came back together too. Oh, I couldn't see that. You could watch the clip. But no, you could physically, you could hear that, right? That, you know, things were calming down and things were going to be okay.

Yeah. At the end of 2019, my wife and I were preparing. We had pretty sure we heard God say, get your house ready to sell. Came in, get your house in order. So we began fixing up an old farmhouse, getting ready to sell and two things began to happen. We began to love the house we were living in because it was really looking nice. We were fixing it up. And then we rolled into 2020 and we're getting really close to putting it on the market and COVID-19 hits. And the world just kind of went on pause for a few minutes.

My wife is a school teacher and we're in the middle of this thing and we're like, what to do? And there for just a brief moment for about a week or so, we were questioning what we heard, questioning where the boat was coming apart. Because in my own mind, I'm thinking, okay, I'm in an old farmhouse that probably not going to pass inspection anyway, despite what I've done and all this doubt comes.

And besides that, nobody's going to want this odd little house way out in the middle of nowhere and all these things. But I kept hearing, get your house ready to sell. And so we did, and we put it on the market and actually sold for what we asked for, which was way above what I thought it was worth.

And we moved from Ashboro to King. So in essence, what has happened is in my doubts and my fears, my faith has grown. My wife and I have grown closer together because we've seen once again, where fear has tried to set in and we just kind of closed our eyes and winced and stepped out in faith. And God always comes through, always comes through because we are nothing short of a miracle.

And their story after story after story in the Marsh household as to how that happens. But it amazes me in the human nature that you're always, I seem to be, well, I'm not sure this is really where we need to be, or not sure I heard God correctly. And that's, that's been 2020 for us. I think part of the uncertainty can come from, you can know that everything's going to be okay. But my definition of what okay is, God's definition isn't always the same. God's is always right. Mine isn't always right. But there's that uncertainty of, I may put the house up for sale and it doesn't sell and that's still okay.

Right? Because if God's in control, He's had me do this for a reason. And so that's part of that uncertainty.

And honestly, for me, a lack of faith at times is, it's because I can't control the outcome. I'm going to go ahead and play another quick clip. And then we'll come back in the after-hour show and play our other clips, but I'm gonna go ahead and play this.

This is from First Night. And what's happening here is you've got King Arthur that's talking with the bad guy. I can't remember who the bad guy is in that. Maleficent?

No, I can't. The bad guy. Anyway, I think Jeremy Irons plays him. So he's the bad guy. If you haven't seen the movie, go watch it. You'll know who the bad guy is. But he's, the bad guy's offered something that he doesn't really have to offer. And when King Arthur doesn't want to accept the terms, he talks about, well, then you're risking war. And so this is what King Arthur's talking about on war.

And then I'll come back and tell you why that applies to where I've been. There's a peace that's only to be found on the other side of war. If that battle must come, I will fight it.

Short clip, one of the shorter clips that we used, and it's one of my favorite clips. Robby brought it to the show a while back, but for me, when I look at some of these challenges in my life, these fears that I have, I look at them almost as a battlefield, right? And there's times that I'll try to skirt it to one side and avoid the battle, you know, try to control it a different way, try to influence it. And the real issue is I got to remember that in order to have that peace that comes on the other side of whatever that battle is that I'm facing at the moment, I got to walk through with the general. I got to walk through with the king. I got to walk through with God, right?

I got to go through it with him to get to that peace on the other side and be willing to say, regardless of what that outcome looks like, it's in his will, right? At least for whatever that season is, you know, and I can do really well in areas for a time, but to be quite honest, I have a hard time doing well in all areas, you know? And so a lot of the questions I have for myself this year, as we go through it, is try to keep in front of me, what am I fearful of right now?

Not that I want to focus on the fear, but that lets me know where I need to have more faith and where I need to pray and invite God into it more, right? Because there's some things, you know, I look back and I said a little bit earlier, but to say it more clearly, there's times I've put more faith in my paycheck than I put in my relationship with God. And I hate to say it that way, but as long as the money's there, you know, I'm not going to be to say it that way, but as long as the money's there, you know, everything is going to work out. Well, what happens when the money's not there, right? I've put my faith in relationships, you know, whether that be friends, I'd talk to friends about issues a lot more than I would talk to God about issues, right? And some of those friends are no longer around. So all that investment of time would have been much better suited investing that in God, those types of things.

And so looking at those and saying, okay, Father, where can I put more faith in you in 2021 and where did I lack faith in the past? Robby, we haven't heard from you today. So it's hard when they're mics or so few.

Yeah, we're sharing a couple of mics and so we're down to mic, but we'll make it work. We're going to get to your clip in the after hours segment, but what's going on with your heart right now on this topic? Well, I was really blessed to speak again at Peace Church in Durham this weekend, and God really put it on my heart, you know, what it meant to prepare him room. And, you know, that as I was looking at this, you know, yes, obviously we want to get more in touch with God, but how do I specifically prepare him more room inside what I know as the inner sanctuary and the Holy of Holies, you know, where the law is, where the manna is.

And it's a delightful actually kind of journey as he's really taken me on that to see some things that I did not see. Like I found out last week that Moses fasted four times, four times he went 40 days and 49, you know, we always know about the one fast when he got, you know, 10 commandments. But when you look at it in Deuteronomy 10, he goes there four times. And then in Exodus 15 two, when they've crossed the Red Sea, which Andy, wonderful clip there, he says, God, let me build, in Exodus 15 two, it says, let me build you a habitation.

In other words, he was preparing him room. And then he went on all these journeys up Sinai, you know, keeping everybody in line to whatever extent. But the last time when he asked God if he could see his face after all these fasts and all these things that he happened, if you look closely, it says that after he agreed to show him his glory, he said that, essentially, the angel of the Lord, that's Jesus, descends in a cloud. So before he gets to see the glory, which is obviously something nobody else has seen but Moses, he got to see what we're all longing to see, right?

Like Jesus descending in the cloud. And when you think about, okay, Robby, you know, yeah, you gotta, you know, you're praying some and you're spending a little time in the Word, but now once last time you spent 40 days and 40 nights on, you know, a six-week vacation where you do nothing but talk to God, like, oh my gosh, but look at the fruit of what it would be that when Moses prepared him room. So, very good. And we've got so much more coming up on the After Hours podcast. You can go to Spotify, Pandora, any place you get podcasts, you can download it from our website, go to iTunes, any of those places to get it. If you don't get it now, it's a Masculine Journey After Hours. You can also find out when we do post some events, what's coming up and you can reach out there to contact us. If you have something you'd like to ask about, a clip suggestion, a topic suggestion, we'd love to have you go to masculinejourney.org and reach out to us. This is the Truth Network.