Discipleship After Hours

Hi, this is Roy Jones with ManTalk Radio Podcast.

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Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. And Andy, this is your topic this week. You jumped right on that. I did. I love jumping on that.

You didn't even get them welcome to get them before you jumped on that. Well, I can say it again. Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome. Andy, it's your topic this week. What would you like to tell us about on your topic? What is your topic?

Okay. The topic of this week is discipleship, but basically discipleship from the heart. I think there's discipleship that's not necessarily from the heart. It may be more from the mind or the flesh. But I woke up one night this week and I just felt like sometimes God gives me stuff as I wake up through the night.

I think it's because I'm still. And it was just there in my spirit that, you know, what does your discipleship look like before now and recently in the last few years when you really begin to focus more on the heart? While the heart is a big foundation for that, but really all things the heart because I think a lot of times, you know, through church culture, through things that we've learned, it's a lot of good foundation and learning the word, praying, those kinds of things.

But it becomes a chore and a checklist and it's not as much the relationship. And I was in church, we talked a lot about the relationship and stuff, but there's something like, you know, something about the cares of the world choking the word out and you kind of get off the focus of really operating out of the heart. And I just feel like I don't think God, I don't think he has any desire for disciples that are not operating out of their heart, how he created the individual and them having a, you know, a vibrant relationship. He said, come follow me. He didn't say come and follow, you know, this certain teacher. He didn't say come and follow and just read the letter of the law and not have any relationship.

He said, come follow me. And that's where I feel like, you know, in the last few years, it's really picked up. I just, just a much more sensitivity to that and the realization that it brings life. And that's what we need is life.

And Jesus, you know, one point in the scripture refers to himself as friend. Yeah. Right.

Well, think about your friendships or your friendships are at a heart level. Yeah. Right. Your marriage is at a heart level, right?

Your relationship with your kids is at a heart level. That's right. Right.

And it's not necessarily feelings and emotion. That's not what I'm talking about. But it's a decision that's made real deeply that you enter into intimacy with other people. Right. Right. You know, at that heart level.

And that's what we're talking about. It's more than just the mind. Yes. Right. It has to be more than just the mind.

Try just if you're married, just try giving, you know, your wife your mind and see how well that works for you for a while. Right. You know, there's got to be heart conversations. There's got to be other things that come from that. Right.

It's all about the nail. Right. Yeah. Even in friendships. Right.

How deep is a friendship really if you don't know your friend's story, you don't know where they've come from, you know, what their fears are. Yeah. You know, those types of things. I mean, it's truly when you get at that level in a relationship, you're at that heart level is when it really has the deep impact. Yeah, absolutely.

So probably, did you want to say something? Oh, well, I knew we were setting up this clip that had to do with John, as he had this podcast this week, which we definitely couldn't recommend higher that you go to Wild at Heart. And this week's podcast is just Jesus's stories, stories of them encountering Jesus in nature, encountering Jesus in dreams, encountering Jesus in all sorts of different places. And as we walk closer with Jesus, what we discover, and I know because I know these men well, is that the Bible is Jesus and Jesus is the Bible.

So don't get us wrong in any way, shape or form. I mean, when you're experiencing him in there, you're experiencing him. That's completely where he is. However, as you begin to see a bird that's talking to you, obviously, or trying to get your attention or the other day, I saw a fawn that was still in spots and it was playing in the grass. And if I didn't see God there, I would have been missing something. And so what John talked about was he felt like he had gone through the wardrobe door. Well, the wardrobe door is, you know, reference back to the Chronicles of Narnia, specifically, you know, the lion, the witch and the wardrobe. So in this particular scene that we're going to do is Lucy has gone into Narnia through the wardrobe and met Thomas, the fawn, and in the snow. And she's had quite the experience and comes back and tells her brothers and sisters who think she is crazy. Well, just go tell somebody you talked to Jesus this morning and see what that might feel like for you.

I have to say, unless you've got wonderful brothers that are willing to discuss that with you. So she had had that experience and so her brother is going to, you know, make fun of her and follows her into the wardrobe and he ends up in Narnia, only he goes and visits the white witch. His name is Edmund. And in this scene that you'll hear at the beginning, he shames Lucy by saying, oh, because he didn't want them to know that he'd had this discussion with the white witch and that he was actually had to deal with her. And so he was hiding that fact and he shames Lucy and says, oh, she's just a little kid. She's got a wild imagination, you know, and all that stuff. Well, then in this clip, what I did was put two together where they all end up coming through the wardrobe into Narnia and once they realize, oh, this is real.

Then, of course, they need to apologize to Lucy. Well, for me, I felt like Lucy, okay, a lot of my life. Like I would tell people I was called to do the Christian Car Guy show and they would look at me, you know, like I would explain how God called me one night and we had this discussion about the logo and all this stuff and they would look at me like I was not, you know. And so once, you know, I began to hang out with Sam and Darren and hear John Eldredge, you know, here's this world-renowned author and this guy says he talks to Jesus and this guy says he has a relationship with Jesus. And this guy obviously reads the Bible and he's got credibility and it was like, yeah, there's a whole world as you go further into this relationship.

You want to switch mics real quick? Yeah, and obviously Satan would not like that, but there is a whole world that is like going through the door. So I don't say this because I know some listeners being, oh, I haven't had that. And I hope that you will come to a boot camp with us and change the agreements that you can have that kind of relationship with Jesus, but for those of you who are listening who have had it and thought you were crazy, listen to Lucy, you know, show them the experience of actually walking into Narnia. But I haven't. I saw Miss Thomas again and this time Edmund went too.

You saw the phone? Well, he didn't actually go there with me. What were you doing, Edmund? I was just playing along. I'm sorry, Peter. I shouldn't have encouraged her, but you know what little children are like these days?

They just don't know when to stop pretending. Get back. Impossible. Don't worry. I'm sure it's just your imagination. I don't suppose saying we're sorry would quite cover it?

No, it wouldn't. For that, mate. Stop it. You little liar.

You didn't believe her either. Apologize to Lucy. Say you're sorry. All right. I'm sorry. That's all right. Some little children just don't know when to stop pretending. So, Robby, on that clip, you know, obviously you had some emotion there and I kind of feel good because I was going to feel good that God stopped me.

I was going to tease you and say your new name's Lucy. You know, but then you broke into that, but, you know, obviously there's a lot of power in that clip because of the story that you told. And so knowing that it's available for other people, what are some of the things that get in the way of that, that people just can't step out and accept it? Yeah. And, you know, clearly, like you talked about in that previous show, in John 10, Jesus says, my sheep hear my voice. And clearly you can see David and Moses and Isaac and then Jacob and all these people had some conversations with God. And so it is a matter of faith.

I mean, it's a matter of is this Bible a book of examples or is it a book of exceptions? And if this is who you are, God, I'm going to believe that you do want to have a conversation with me. And often, you know, when we're sending people out on their first covenant of silence, we say, well, you know, don't go out there and put a lot of pressure on yourself or put a lot of pressure on God.

Just try something easy. Like ask God, what do you think of me, you know, and see if you hear something. And then here comes the critical part of it. Believe what he tells you. Because, you know, he's probably going to say, oh, man, I chose you since the beginning of the world.

You're my absolute favorite. And when you hear that, you're not going to want to believe it. And so don't let Satan grab those seeds and take them away from you. But grab onto that and make it your testimony.

Because it's true. And believe that you heard what you heard and begin to walk into that. And like you had to learn how to listen when you were a child to English and be able to understand language, well, it's the same thing in walking with God.

You start out with simple, easy things and you begin to just practice it on a daily, hourly basis, however you want to go about doing it. Listening for the voice of God, asking him, what do we think about this, you know? I love for me the whole idea of the 16th Psalm where God's at my right hand, my place to God always before me and saying, okay, God, where are we going right now? And just listening and getting a feeling like, oh, you don't want me to just hang out.

You want me to go actually call this person that I've been putting off for three hours, you know? Because God so often, that's exactly where he takes me. And as you begin to hear that and obey it, it's amazing that as you pick up on that relationship.

I think there's some important things to realize as well. You know, the enemy likes to imitate, right? And so you definitely want to test things with scripture, right? He's not going to tell you to do anything that's against scripture. If you're hearing you need to go kill this person, I promise you that's probably not from God, right? Okay, just thinking more than likely that's not from him.

Okay, you need to test it. And if you hear condemnation, that's not from God. He'll do conviction to remind you of something, but it won't be in a way that attacks your character as a person or identifies you or labels you in a negative way.

You hear those things, those are from the enemy, right? And so just say, okay, I'm not going to trust that one. And then just learn to interpret the voice. And when you've done this a lot more than a lot of people, I mean, you love to do that.

So how do you know how to test what you're hearing? I don't, well, I do. Well, I mean, from the people I know, I think you do it a lot. So you asked a question of Robby and the answer is fear. The reason a lot of people don't step out in this is because of the fear. Whenever you feel like you've heard in your heart that you just need to go over and love on this person and you go and that's a dangerous thing, right? You're stepping out of your comfort zone.

But that's it. It's inviting Father into your life and giving him permission to do this. And then when you hear that, step out in faith. Test it.

That is the testing part. It's learning his voice because you just know. As you know, you know your father's voice. You know your mother's voice. A sheep knows the shepherd's voice and won't go to anyone else.

Same thing. You're learning his voice and you're learning to step out in that faith. That's a great point.

That's a great point. Thank you. Well, Andy, I'm going to kick it back to you because part of this going deeper thing is us sharing our discipleship stuff since that's the topic for the week. So what questions would you like to ask the group? Oh, ask? I get to ask? You get to ask a question. Wow. You want to think about it for a while?

I might have to. Do you play a bump music or something and then come back? Oh, okay. You know, the obvious one would be examples of what it was like before, an example of something where you wouldn't be led by the heart maybe. Somebody said you should be a certain way and maybe what it looks like now whenever it's more of Jesus gives you a direction in a particular topic or a direction. Is there a question there?

Yes. I'm looking at Danny. Come on, Danny. Help me out here. Well, I'll share something for me.

And I shared it a few weeks ago. I used to get all worked up about finance stuff when something would break and, oh, my gosh, how am I going to have the money to fix this or when that would happen. And as I've walked with God and those things have happened, as I've walked with Jesus and learned more about trusting in him, I don't freak out, I don't worry. I may not have an answer, but the other day I know that it's going to work out whatever workout means, that God's got me and he's going to take me to a place that's going to make me be in a better place.

Whether that's solving the issue somehow for me or it's not, I'm still going to end up, if I'm walking with him, in a much better place than I am today. And so there's a whole lot of worrying that doesn't happen for me that would be pretty routine. The kids, if their car would break down, they'd always kind of wonder, was I mad?

I wasn't mad. I was just worried. Okay, where am I going to figure out how to fix this? What's going to happen?

How are we going to get them back and forth to places? You know, all these worries come in. And honestly, walking with him, the worries just kind of step aside. Not that there's not momentary times of that, they just don't last long.

I don't wake up at night thinking about him or worrying about him or any of those things. And for me, that's been a huge part of discipleship is him just saying, I got you. Yeah, meditating on a negative result or outcome is what we do a lot.

That's called worry. And I think a lot of us go there because it's an orphan spirit. We talk about it a lot.

We try to do things our own way and we try to control it. Well, in discipleship, in my experience with the discipleship, that was my pre-existing condition, I guess we'll say, until I came to a deeper knowledge that came out through a deeper level of discipleship. Yes, it says plenty of times that we are his children. I thought it was like some kind of random, God's got all these kids running all over the place like a school yard and doesn't know where any of them are and really isn't involved.

Well, that's not it. He's intimately involved with each of us. And more particularly, the ones that when we open ourselves up to let him be that involved, then you quit living your life as an orphan.

You quit taking control of stuff and making messes yourself because you sit back and allow him to do it. So thanks for leading in with that, Sam. That's a good example. It does help me.

Robby? Yeah, one of my absolute favorites that's happened to me probably in the last five years was, you know, I do love my normal discipleship stuff, get up early, study the Bible, pray, pray, study the Bible. It's all kind of all mixes together. But I always had some project that I felt like was necessary, like I need to go through the Bible in a year or I'm going to go through all of Matthew, Henry, at the same time read this or do the – and I had a program that was all structured and this was what I was going to do. And it got kind of old and it got kind of dry. And one day I just said, well, Jesus, where do you want me to go today? And, you know, he took me to a word.

He said, let's just look at this word. And I started looking at the word and then the next thing I knew, you know, that opened up just beautiful things that were just completely connected to things that I was experiencing in my life that day. So the next day I started, well, you know, what's my word for today?

Well, I locked myself into that because, of course, I always got to have a program. Now I got to get a word every – what's my word today? You know, because – but as I began to experience more freedom, okay, God, where are we going today?

And where are we – in my whole thing, right? And then at some point in time, just as you begin to break free, disciple, and, you know, you can wear a little of his dust that Sam's going to play here in a second. Like this morning, he said, Robby, let's go fishing.

I'm dead serious, man. He was like, you don't want me to – no, you don't want me to break – no, let's go fishing. Okay, we're going fishing. And so we went fishing, but I went fishing with a very clear intention of, okay, like the 16th Psalm, you're going to be at my right hand. And so as I'm casting this fly, you know, it's just beautiful, and I see the thing just land out there beautifully, and I'm like, yeah, only you could make that cast.

God, that was not me, you know. And then all of a sudden, boy, it was a really, really nice sunfish that really just was a beautiful fish, and it was just so obvious he was winking at me and so obvious where he was taking me. And, you know, then I hear, you know, John's podcast where he's talking about how nature is God and God is nature and all these things. And, yeah, I learned some really cool stuff in the Bible today.

I did. But more than that, I experienced Jesus and the freedom of, wow, you know, I'm not necessarily in that program, nor can I say I got through the Bible in a year. But, you know, where I'm going is just having so much fun, and I look so forward, really.

Here's the big difference. When I begin to pray in the morning, like, I am excited about where, because I know where he's taking me is going to be just awesome. Yeah, I want to go ahead and play a clip. I want to kind of set up what it looked like to be a disciple in Jewish culture. Right? And so I'm going to play this little two-minute clip on it.

It's kind of packed together. I want you to listen to it and listen to who became the disciples and what they did when they became a disciple. So most Jewish boys or girls around the age of six would go to school for the first time to learn the Torah. It'd probably be held in the local synagogue and be taught by a local Torah teacher who was a rabbi. This first level of education was called Beit Safar and lasted until the kid was around 10 years old. Most kids would memorize the Torah every word. By the end of Beit Safar, which most kids were no longer going to school, they were apprenticing, learning the family trade, learning the family business, learning how to manage a household.

But the best of the best would keep going. They would continue their education into the next level, which was called Beit Talmud. The ones with the most natural ability would memorize the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Genesis through Malachi. By the end of Beit Talmud, 14, 15, most kids obviously learning the family business, learning the family trade, apprenticing with their parents. But the best of the best of the best would continue on to the next level of education, which was called Beit Midrash. And they'd go to a rabbi and they'd apply to that rabbi to become one of that rabbi's disciples. And so different rabbis had different sets of interpretations about how they lived out and understood and interpreted the Scriptures. Now, a rabbi's set of interpretations was called that rabbi's yoke. So when you went and applied to a rabbi to become one of that rabbi's disciples, what you wanted to do is you wanted to take that rabbi's yoke upon you so that you could learn to know what the rabbi knows in order to do what the rabbi does in order to be like the rabbi.

So you'd go to a rabbi and you'd say, Rabbi, I want to become one of your disciples. The rabbi would then grill you because the rabbi wants to know, can this kid sit in front of me? Can this kid do what I do? Can this kid spread my yoke? Does this kid have what it takes?

There's a whole lot we could unpack in that, and we only have probably three minutes left or so. But what I want to tell you is you don't have to worry about that question, do I have what it takes? You're already the best of the best of the best. Christ calls you that. You're his friend.

God's adopted children. You're the love of his life, the apple of his eye. You're already that. You don't have to go through a grooming process. He's going to do that with you.

You just have to be willing and do it with him. And that's a really cool thing, but there's so much in that clip of why the disciples left everything and followed Jesus. One of the cool things I heard that time I listened to it was you had to go to apply to a rabbi.

Jesus went out and saw it, all of his disciples. And he's still doing that. He's seeking you today, right? And he wants you to walk with him.

Yeah, I love what Andy said earlier. He's not close to the mic, or I'd let him say it, was that Jesus said, take my yoke. Of course you want Jesus.

His yoke wasn't the burdensome whatever. I mean, he's got something custom-made for you, custom-made for your heart, right? I mean, he's got something, like if you like bluebirds, he's got bluebirds for you. You know, if you like eagles, he's got eagles for you.

Or hawks. Robby, you reminded me of, and I don't know why I thought about this, but back in 1994, my life was a mess. And I found myself in a treatment center. And God gave me one of them hugs Wayne was talking about.

And I will never forget it. I rolled over one night and there was a cross upon the wall and it was glowing. And it scared me. I had done enough hallucinogenic drugs to figure I was freaking out again. And so I reluctantly asked my roommate across the room, I said, Jackie, is that cross glowing to you? He said, yeah, he said it glows every night. I said, that's why I watch him go to sleep.

Okay. But at that moment, I heard God say in my spirit, I got this. And my life radically changed from that moment on. And the men that he's put in my life, and you guys, and there's a whole journey there. But it's just awesome.

I won't be able to, thank you, Danny, I won't be able to play the clip, because we won't be able to hear it. But one of the things that Rob Bell says, Rob Bell, a pastor, and he did a lot of teaching through a series called Pneuma Series. But this was, he would say one of the things that the rabbis, they would tell the disciples following the rabbis, may you follow so closely, and I'm paraphrasing, that you're covered in the dust of your rabbi. Right? And so that's really the intimacy we need to have with Jesus when we follow him so closely that whatever he stepped in, we're kind of wearing that day.

Right? That's a badge of honor because we're walking so closely with him. That's what they did. That's what the disciples did. They got to walk with him and live with him and learn from him and be loved by him. We'll talk to you next week. This is the Truth Network.