Draw Near With Confidence

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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 glad that you're with us this week and I'm glad to be back. Apparently I was absent last week. According to the rumor and what Danny said my word of the year is, and so I hope that that's not my word because hope is actually my word of the year. And this show is going to be all about your word hope? I would hope it would be, but it's not. That was a nice try.

It's not going to be. Now it's actually a topic, Rodney, that you bring to the table this week. So if you want to tell us a little bit about that topic. Yes, I was in studying prayer and just kind of studying different aspects from Hebrews 4.16. It just kind of jumped in there and stuck with me.

Draw near with confidence and just a lot of other things that I was studying. That one phrase kept coming back and back and back and meaning more as I went along. And then when we had our word and looking at our word and thinking about what God was doing with my word I'm like, oh, you're drawing me near with confidence. And then I sat here and listened to everybody but you, Sam, as we talked about our word of the year because you were absent. And then we decided, you know, I was sitting there thinking, wow, that's what he's doing with all you guys with the word.

I could just listen to what was in their hearts pre-show, during the show and post-show. And I'm like, oh, that's what you do with everybody. That's what you're doing with all that you've called. And it's like, you know, I'm a little slow sometimes, but I'm like, oh, I finally get it, God. You're really drawing us all near. That's it? No, thank you.

No, that's true. And one of these days I'll talk about my word for the year. But, you know, actually God has had me kind of stuck in a place here probably the last three or four weeks.

And I know that's not the topic for this week, but I'll go ahead and get it out of the way. But he's just been asking me, what do you hope for? And I'm struggling to answer it. And so, cause I don't want it to be, you know, I hope my team wins this or, you know, I don't want that.

Right. You know, what do I truly, truly in my heart of hearts hope for. And that kind of comes back into what we were discussing when it comes to the prayer topic, you know, what is really in your heart for the prayer, not just, oh, my wishlist, boy, Lord, just give me everything I want. Goody, goody, goody.

I get to go play now. You know, it's, it's much more deeper than that. It is.

Yeah. So when I was doing this, to me, it just kept coming back to relationship and understanding who God is, you know, Father, Son, and Spirit, and then who you are and understanding your vast difference between you two and the real need and dependence upon God. And just, you know, asking yourself, who am I going to trust? Am I going to trust him? Am I going to trust me? Am I going to trust his word? Or am I going to trust what I'm feeling or what I'm thinking about something that I just kind of happened to whip out of thin air that just, you know, happens suddenly. It's like, no, you got to, we talked about, you know, the patience and listening and just, you know, let God do the work and follow and then draw in near to him. So a father, following a father's lead kind of leads us into this, this clip that you have.

Yeah. There's a great father figure in this clip. This is from Talladega Nights. And in the movie, it's a spoof on NASCAR and Ricky Bobby, he gets in a big accident. And I mean, it's kind of funny because he starts in the accident and they go to commercial and they get back from commercial, he's still in the accident. And then afterwards he's out running around, he's ripped off his fire suit. He's running around what looks like a big, huge diaper and he's rolling around on the ground thinking he's on fire. And, you know, his, his buddy even tries to come to his rescue.

I got to save him from the fake fire. And so now Ricky has this fear and his dad who was never in his life, you know, always left a ticket for him to even come to the races and stuff never came, big disappointment for Ricky. And then his dad shows up after he basically shuts down, doesn't want to drive and has this fear. So his dad's like, okay, I'm going to get this fear out of here. And he's buys this beautiful Chevelle with the racing number on it and, you know, racing stripes on it.

And it's this car. And he's like, okay, you just got to get in that car and, you know, learn to drive with the fear. So this clip will kind of explain itself when you hear this Cougar roar and he's trying to get him in the car with this Cougar to overcome his fear.

All right, professor, what's the plan? Basically what happened to you is that you saw the fear. So before you can even think about any real driving, you got to make friends with that fear. So get in the car. It's a Cougar in the car. There's a Cougar in the car. I put it in there.

You got to learn to drive with the fear and there ain't nothing more frightening than driving with a live Cougar in the car. Where'd you get that thing? I trapped it.

Been keeping it in my bathroom at the motel, feeding it old pizza. Back in that car. You hear me?

No, I'm not getting in that car. Hey, listen to me. If you're calm, that wondrous big cat will be calm too. But if you're scared, that beautiful death machine will do what God made it to do. Namely, eat you with a smile on its face. God, he's just following me wherever I go.

Well, he's just looking at you. So you're saying if I just calm down, a Cougar will be okay? You got it. Okay. Come on, son.

You can do it. Come on. Come on.

That's it. No sudden moves. Like is this too fast? See, that's a little quick.

You see what he did? Yeah, you got to be a little more deliberate in your movement. I'm just gonna get in there. I'm just gonna grab the handle.

I'm just gonna get in there and drive that car. But I'm gonna do it calm. Calm.

Piece of cake. I'm just trying to stay calm. Oh, man. Sometime today, son. Okay, here we go.

I'm getting in. Ricky, control your heart rate. That's all you got to do is control your heart rate while you're being mauled by a Cougar. So how does that tie into the topic? Well, I don't think we really want to Reese Bobby father. You know, there is a big reason for the Heavenly Father. Every one of us have had fathers that aren't perfect. And some of us have grown up to be fathers who aren't perfect. And if we don't have that perfectly Heavenly Father in our lives, you're gonna go get mauled by a Cougar.

As I was actually listening to it, I was thinking, there may be a reflection of the Heavenly Father there. Because sometimes the Heavenly Father will take you into a fear that makes absolutely no sense. And you don't want to walk into it. Logically, you're like, no, this can't be the way I need to approach it. But he says, no, this is the way you need to approach it. Wayne, I know that you've walked that before.

Yeah, I just did that this past weekend. God will definitely throw you into a situation where you have no other choice but to depend on Him. And that fear does come. It comes and it tries to grip you and take you out of what God is trying to teach you. I'm full reliance and dependent upon Him.

It feels like a Cougar, though, sometimes too. You know, I thought a couple of times I could have definitely got my face ripped off. Yeah, exactly. One of the things I was thinking about when you're introducing the topic again, and I know we talked about it, you know, before the show and so forth, was I'd love to say that most of my life I've drawn nearer to God in confidence. Most of the time I've drawn nearer to God in desperation.

Right? That's been more of the truth of my story. Now, over the last several years, that's been less and less of the story.

You know, I do have to go to Him in desperation sometimes, but it's more and more becoming in confidence because the relationship's growing. Yeah, that's the Christian maturity, isn't it? I don't know. We'd have to ask our resident maturity Christian.

Harold, tell us about that. What does 700 years of walking with God do? It does give you confidence. That was the part of the topic that I focused on, being able to approach God in confidence, not because of who I am, but because of who He is. Who is He? He is the true, living God, the Creator and Sustainer of the universe.

Without Him there's nothing. And if you're going to create a creature to depict God, what would you choose? I love the choice that was made that I get to see, and that is the lion Aslan and the Chronicles of Narnia. And so that was the clip that I chose. Yeah, we'll probably have to come back for that clip because I don't think we have time to get it in before our break. Oh, okay.

But definitely we'll play that after the break of Aslan and Prince Caspian, I think you said the movie was. Yeah, they can't hear you shake your head. So drawing near in confidence, Harold, to your point, that word confidence, that's a difference maker.

Absolutely. We can do that because God is trustworthy. He loves us beyond our ability to even understand it. I happen to have on my favorite t-shirt tonight, John 3.16, and God so loved us that He sent His Son.

And that's another part of the Chronicles that's really great where Aslan sacrifices himself rather than have Peter be the sacrifice. So there's beautiful parallels between that movie and the reality of our God. Last night, I was just working through a situation that could bring upon fear for me. And as I'm praying about it, all I hear God say is, it'll be all right. And for me, I want to know what all right means. Okay, God, what's the definition?

Your all right, my all right. Because it's not always the same thing. What God feels is all right. He knows what's best for me. It's not necessarily the feeling that I have of what's going to be all right. But just as I've tried to slip back into some of those spots of fear today, I just continue to hear His words, are you going to trust me? I said, it's going to be all right. There's a great song you need to listen to.

It's by Firefall. And the line that's in there is that when things are just going all wrong, just remember, I love you, and it'll be all right. And it's a great song that fits. And when I heard you use the word all right, it just cropped into my head. But it talks about things being wrong, all sorts of ways. But it'll be all right, just remember, I love you.

Yeah, it's a great point. For me, I'm a control person. I know a lot of us can be. And I'm learning how to walk with him and not be wanting to have control. It just really is tough. And for him to give me just, it'll be all right, gave me peace.

But it also made me laugh because I know he's not going to give me more than that. He's not going to give me any type of plan that's going to be it's just all right. Go to masculinejourney.org, register for the upcoming boot camp coming up the weekend before Thanksgiving. Register today.

Fall boot camp coming up November 18th through the 21st. Go to masculinejourney.org and register today. 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. Welcome back to Masculine Journey. Now Rodney, who was that in the bump? That was your bump. That was Scott Brenner singing this.

There's been, there's a few others out there you could pick from, but I really liked his voice and listening to him. And what I like about this song too is there's just the picture between God and us again in this and the fact that like for God, you know, he's holy and pure and he has the never-ending love. And then for our part, you know, we've got to basically trust and obey. That's what we're here to do.

So, you know, we trust and obey. We're going to draw in near to him more and more as we do that, and that's part of that Christian maturity. Now Harold, when we left, we were talking about your clip a little bit, so if you want to go ahead. Now you were talking about in that verse of draw near to me in confidence, if I said that correctly, draw near to me in confidence.

You were focusing on the confidence part and that reminded you of this clip. Yeah, the clip where the kids are leaving. They're going back to their world and they're having their final conversation with Aslan and a couple of things that he says in there that just really struck me as great and reminds me of our relationship with God. Now this is from Chronicles of Narnia, right? And I think this, you'd said this is the last movie, Robby?

It might be Voyager the Dawn Shredder. It's when Lucy's finally, I mean, this is, they're pulling the rug out from underneath him here. Yeah, I've not seen it, but it's the last movie and so we'll go ahead and play the clip and come back and talk about it. This is our last time here, isn't it? Yes, you have grown up, my dear one, just like Peter and Susan. Will you visit us in our world? I shall be watching you, always. In your world, I have another name. You must learn to know me by it. That was the very reason you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there. Will we meet again?

Yes, dear one, one day. So Herod, what was it about that clip that really spoke to you on this topic? Well, one of the things is when he says, I'll be watching always, that's our God. He is watching out for us and we can rely upon him to be the rock upon which we build, knowing that that foundation won't give way and that we will meet again, that there will be a time when we'll share the same world, unlike with the kids being in Narnia, but heading back to their world where Aslan said that he wouldn't go, but he would be watching.

So it's just a thing of beauty to me. Yeah, now we give you a hard time about being the elderly person of our group, but what is it that gives you the confidence in drawing near to him? The fact that I can look back over my lifetime and I can see that even in times when I was not as faithful to him as I should have been, that he was faithful to me. I can see things that he brought about that I could not have done on my own, would not have done. So it's just easy for me to look back and know that God has been in control of my life.

As I was growing up, I wanted to be a Navy pilot. That would have been a horrible thing if I had managed to do it, because I would have been living an immoral life. But instead, he put my sweetheart in front of me, my darling Susie, and I just couldn't resist her. So I changed my whole direction in life, and it had nothing to do with me. It had everything to do with him, because I was not even thinking about being serious with a woman. But he changed it. But he changed it. Pretty quickly, actually.

Absolutely. Her brother tricked me into a blind date the Friday night before Thanksgiving 1962. At Christmas 1962, we told our folks we were going to get married. That didn't happen for about 18 months. I had to drop out of school and go to basic training for the Alabama Air National Guard, come back and finish my last year at Auburn. I graduated on Wednesday, June the 3rd, and we were married on Saturday, June the 6th.

We just celebrated 57 years on June the 6th, and I love her as much now or more than I ever did before. God doesn't make mistakes. Thank you, Harold. Robby, you have a clip, but there's a story that goes along with the clip, and so would you like to tell us a little bit about the clip or tell us about the story?

I've got to set up the clip through the story. On my latest adventure, God has had me memorizing the 119th Psalm. It starts with Aleph, and I'm only in verse two, so at least I'm two verses in of a long journey, and excited to do it. But the second verse happened to be this morning, and it was amazing to me that it was right along Rodney's topic, because it says, blessed are those who keep the testimonies of God. And those testimonies are things that they've seen with their own eyes, just like what Harold just described, that he saw that happen with his own eyes.

And then it says, and who seek him with a whole heart. So as we move forward with confidence, it's a lot of times because we are keeping a testimony. In other words, we have had this experience in our own life, but more than that, we have examples from the Bible.

And so as I was just thinking about two examples this morning, the example of Moses at the burning bush, we get to hear the movie version, but it's in everybody's Bible right there in Exodus. And after you hear a little bit of that, then there's Jeffrey Miller, who is a Jewish gentleman I interviewed at the NRB a few weeks ago, and his experience with coming to Christ, and you need to know a little bit about that story, was he was an atheist and a Jew, very much a Jew, anything but Jesus' Jew, who was going to prove to his girlfriend that there was no such thing as God. And she gave him a book by Dean Jones to read, little did you know, her be the love book driver was a Christian. Any Christian car guy would tell you that. But anyway, he wrote a book that Jeffrey was reading at the point that this story is kicking in, and Jeffrey had been healed by something.

And while he said he was telling me that he was calling Dean Jones an idiot, how could you think such a thing? All of a sudden he saw the healing that Dean Jones had received, realized it came from God, and that's when this happened to Jeffrey. So you're going to hear Jeffrey right after you hear Moses. That light in the mountainside, do you see that strange fire? I will turn aside and see this great sight.

I am here. Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place where I stand is holy ground. But if I say to your children that God of their fathers has sent me, they will ask, what is his name? And how shall I answer them? I am that I am.

Thou shalt say, I am have sent me unto you. And as surely as I'm sitting here before you, Robby, and I've told you this story before over the years, it were as if lightning struck me. I mean, bam, something hit me. I didn't see anything. I didn't hear anything. But up and down my body ran the strongest sensation I had ever felt in my entire life, like being on the highest roller coaster you can imagine and coming down.

Whoa! It was amazing. And I had no, what is going on? But the tears gushed out of my eyes. And I'm crying, standing there in this radio station, not knowing what was going on.

And the next thing I knew, crying my eyes out and shaking in this sensation going up and down my body, I lifted up my hands. Now, you know, the Bible says lift your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord. I never heard that. I never seen it. I had no idea.

Zero. But my hands went up. And I looked up at the drop ceiling of that radio studio. And to my shock and amazement, this atheist Jew cried out, Jesus. Hallelujah. And inside my head, as I cried out those words, inside my head, my mind said, what?

Yeah. So you can see Jeffrey there. This is a testimony we all can say, wow, there's somebody like that in my life. I've heard a testimony like that, something that was an eyewitness. And those testimonies we hold onto so that what the second part of that verse is we can seek him with a whole heart, which that word whole King David, you know, he, he, he really encompassed somebody that would go after God with a whole heart. It has to do with the number seven and has to do with the word Sheba, but it also has very much to do with believing that you're going to see his face. And remember the blessing that David was going after is blessed are you, you know, that, that, that the blessing would be right. Bless you, you know, that the Lord, you know, cast his face upon you. That's the, that's the blessing that David was going for.

That's what we're all going for is to see his face. And wow. It's pretty cool. One of the things I realized listening to the Charlton Heston thing there was Popeye kind of ripped off a God.

Yeah. I am what I am, you know, you know, he's quoting scripture there a little bit, but yeah. And it's kind of cool that I learned that, that actually those are both Charlton Heston's voice that they used, you know, to create the God voice as well as Charlton Heston's own voice. The second thought that I had though, is when you're talking about testimony, you know, when you think about bootcamp, obviously the power of bootcamp is God, right? But the power of the talks, you know, when we get up and do talks is not how eloquently, I can't even say the word eloquent, whatever, how good we speak. It's not that it's the power of God's work in our life when we're doing our testimony of what God's done for us. Right. And that's what it was when I went to my first bootcamp was, you know, when I could hear that someone had had a breakthrough with pornography or I could hear that somebody had a breakthrough with anger, you know, God did this work in their life or did this restoration in relationships.

There is then hope. Yes. There's hope and there's power, right, of that testimony to know, okay, oh yeah, I can step forward in confidence knowing that God's, if he's done that before, obviously he can do it again and he can do it with me.

Yeah. That was the really cool thing about being in bootcamp when you're just like, it's hearing one story after another and you're like, oh my gosh, these guys have been through this and that and then the other thing. And you start to think about your own story and start, oh, well, man, I've been there. I can get healing. I can actually come through and be on the other side of this. And three years later, I can talk about things I never would have talked about.

No, and we're learning all sorts of things about you now, which is great to learn those things. We do have a bootcamp coming up November 18th through the 21st. It's the weekend before Thanksgiving. Please go register this week. We'd love to know who all is coming. It's going to be a wonderful weekend.

God's going to do some amazing things. Go to masculinejourney.org, register for the upcoming bootcamp. Also stick with us. We're going to go to the after hours and talk about this more. This is the Truth Network.