What Makes You Listen

Hello, this is Matt Slick from the Matt Slick Live Podcast, where I defend the Christian faith and lay out our foundations of the truth of God's Word. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. The heart of every man craves a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus speaks of narrow gates and wide roads, but the masculine journey is filled with many twists and turns.

So, how do we keep from losing heart while trying to find the good way when life feels more like a losing battle than something worth dying for? Grab your gear and come on a quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides in what we call the masculine journey. The masculine journey starts here now.

Welcome to the masculine journey. We are glad that you're with us this week, and we are not that far away from boot camp, are we, Robby? No. I guess I could say yes. It's about a month and a half, right? Two months? Yeah, but that goes by so quickly.

It does. You know, next thing you know, it's going to be almost Thanksgiving, which will mean boot camp time. Now, when you see those pumpkins popping out, think boot camp. Pumpkins are popping out now.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah, drive past the stands every day, you know, pumpkins for sale. But yeah, November 18th through 21st, go to masculinejourney.org to register. We'd love to have you there. And I know God's got some great things for you.

I don't know what that is, but I know He does, and He's just waiting on you to be there. And so, we are starting to fill up. You know, men are kind of slow sometimes to respond and decide what they're going to do, but I have a lot of faith that God will have just exactly who wants at this boot camp, and hopefully that includes you. So please go register right after this show. Which this show, we're going to help you with that, because it's about listening. It is. If you haven't registered, you might take the hint.

That's true. Today's show's topic is what makes you listen? What was it that makes you perk up and go, oh, I need to pay attention? That's a very interesting question. That's all I got. Well, fortunately for us – Are we in a listening competition or something, because nobody's saying it? It kind of looks that way. Fortunately for us, we have Danny. And Danny has listened and come up with a good clip to kind of get us cranked off here. Crank us off there, Danny. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah. The clip is from the movie Nacho Libre, and everybody's cracking up in here. So the kids are wrestling in the courtyard, but the backstory behind it is Nacho Libre is the alter ego of Ignacio, who's the cook at the orphanage, the Catholic orphanage. And so they have been listening to him, and they kind of know he's been wrestling. And so they're out there doing what they shouldn't be doing or doing what boys do. And so there's a fight breaks out, and the scene goes into that.

But the point of listening is that they begin to listen to what he says. What's wrong with you? But sister, they are just ninjas trying to release their wiggles. Ignacio, they're wrestling in a sacred place. Okay. Orphans, listen to me.

Listen to Ignacio. I know it is fun to wrestle. A nice pile drive to the face or a punch to the face. But you cannot do it because it is in the Bible not to wrestle your neighbor. So you've never wrestled? Me? No. Come on. Don't be crazy.

Listen, I know the wrestlers get all the fancy ladies, and the clothes, and the free creams and lotions. But my life is good. Really good. I get to wake up every morning at 5 a.m. and make some soup. It's the best. Love it. I get to lay in a bed by myself all of my life.

My life is fantastic. Go away. Read some books. So Danny, what was it about that clip?

Well, there are several things. The children obviously respect Ignacio because he's quite a character. But they respect him because he's an adult. But what you hear out of his heart is that he's not really listening to his heart. And there have been many times in my life I've not listened to my true heart. Because he's telling you his life is good. But he doesn't like getting up at 5 a.m. making soup.

He doesn't. But the listening part of it is, and we talk a lot about it at boot camp, is God give you a new heart. And there are desires in there that he gave you. I don't know whether it's being a wrestler or not. But before someone else says that, I have dressed up once as Nacho Libre.

It was for the creams and the lotions. It was for the Lord. But listening to your heart and what God's desires put in you is kind of what made me think about that is that that's who you truly are. And it's scary sometimes because he says you're favored.

You do have what it takes. And sometimes I don't know that I believe that. I think we need to kind of go back to last week's topic for a second just to revisit. Because last week's topic was the difference between hearing and listening, right? And so if you're hearing, you may not be listening. And what we're talking about, what makes you listen, pay attention to try to understand what somebody's saying, not just to shake your head and kind of get through the conversation, but to really hear, listen intently, to try to comprehend. And so what are those things that make you listen?

You can talk now if you guys want. Darrell Bock Well, since it was kind of my idea. I was and have been for a while studying the 119th Psalm. Had the Hebrew Sages had come down in the hay section, which the hay is expression, and so it has everything to do with listening, and talked about that they felt like the two things that made people listen were love and respect, or love and fear, that, you know, the fear of the Lord's beginning wisdom. So, you know, is when you hear the kids listening to nacho, you know, in this case, that they have some respect. And so, you know, the top the clip that came to my mind was from Hacksaw Ridge.

And actually, this is one of two compilations that we have. So we hear the beginning of the clip, it's Smitty really abusing Desmond Doss, because he won't carry a gun in battle. To say he won't fight is not accurate, I think, as you'll see later on. Because, you know, Smitty attacks him, he has no, he asked him some questions, but he doesn't have ears to hear anything that he has to say. And he does it in public, and he does it in front of a bunch of guys.

And so whatever posing is going on. But then, you'll hear it moved to a scene that where they're actually, now they've had a common enemy, they've come into battle together. And actually, Desmond Doss has just saved his life without a gun. In other words, he jumps a Japanese soldier who's got a machine gun that's going to kill him. But he jumps him without a gun, saves his life. And now all of a sudden, Smitty's got that respect.

And he's got that ability to listen. And the situation is different. The Bible says to turn the other cheek, don't it?

Yeah, see, I don't think this is a question of religion, fellas. I think this is cowardice. Why the hell are you still here? My daddy used to beat me and my brother just because the sun rose, and then whip us just because it's it.

If I could take that. But when he would do it to our mama. But you didn't kill him. In my heart, I did. So that's what I made my promise to God. I ain't ever going to touch a gun again.

Well, I ain't giving you mine because you're crazy. Yeah, so you know that it's a fascinating thing to me in Corinthians where, and, you know, Paul talks about the husband's love your wives, but your love your wives are to respect their husband. And, and there's an aspect to listening to both those things, right?

Truly in love with somebody, you're going to sit there and, and listen. But as you pointed out, Sam here, I, I get a sense at this point in the relationship, that it's both love and respect. In other words, there's more to this relationship now between Smitty and Desmond than just respect.

I mean, you know, there's a certain amount of affection there. And it's interesting to me that when you have a condiment common enemy, which, you know, the Japanese provided for them in that particular situation. When I was first getting into radio, I did an interview for with a gentleman that was in the church in Lebanon. And he talked about that when the war happened in Lebanon and the enemy was pouring across the border and the bombs were dropping that the fragmented church where there were Baptists and there were Catholics and there were, you know, Episcopal and all these different stuff, all of a sudden nobody's denomination mattered one, you know, nothing as they all poured into the Catholic church because it had the highest wall. And they're all, you know, huddling up in the pews, as you can picture the scene, then all of a sudden they started listening to one another. And the, the result is you begin to listen is then you end up with this love and you end up with respect and there's, you know, a lot to that, but also then there's the whole aspect of, you know, what's inside my life, what's in my life, what's in my life, what's inside my life, you know, what am I, how am I living in such a way that the people around me would listen to me, that would respect me, that, that, that, but also that they would love me, you know? So there's, there's some aspect of those two things that I really have been just processing over the last couple of weeks as we came out with this topic of, you know, how are these two connected to how do I listen? Yeah, I think it definitely is easier to listen when you're invested in the relationship. Now, that's not always true between husband and wife. We'll come back and talk a little bit about that, but it is in this love and respect type of situation when, when someone doesn't feel loved, they don't act out in respect. And when someone doesn't feel respected, they don't respond in love.

And so that's the crazy cycle that's been described. Go to masculinejourney.org to register for the boot camp coming up November 18th through 21st. 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 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. That's Sam's playlist right there. It is, and we'll listen to it every morning. It helps me get amped up for the day.

Probably one of my least favorite bumps. And I picked it. I think it's such a nursery rhyme kind of thing. It is from a little kid's classroom. But everything she says there is accurate. You listen with your eyes, you listen with your ears, you listen with your body being still.

Those are all keys. You know, we talked a little bit last week, you know, I can have Robby, the relationship that, you know, my son will come home and he'll be talking about his day at work. And if I don't pause the TV, I won't listen. I like to kid myself that I'll listen, but I'll hear at best, but I won't really be listening. And so I have to actively pause the TV, turn, look at him, and listen in order to really comprehend.

Otherwise, you know, it's just, uh-huh, yeah, mm-hmm, yeah, kind of like, you know, sometimes we do with spouses and significant others. Darrell Bock Danny Allender, actually in this week's podcast with Wild at Heart, made a phenomenal point that I hadn't thought about until you just pointed out that we listen with our eyes, that when we masked humanity over the last couple of years, and this is not a commentary on mass, it's just commentary on how you listen, that a lot of what we read are in facial expressions. And for what he was saying scientifically as a doctor, that your mind reads facial expressions in nanoseconds as to how something is being delivered is how you listen. And so as we've masked, you know, we've certainly, you know, taken away a certain amount of the expression of what it is. So, you know, from my standpoint, when I teach, and sometimes, you know, and I teach at a church that everybody's wearing masks, you know, but I, you know, I want to, you know, I don't want to rob anybody of the experience of seeing, you know, what it is I'm trying to express, because how can I do that with a mask on? Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, I've noticed in doing client meetings, you know, with masks on, one, I have to be a lot more intentional about shortening the information, because without having, yes, you have eye contact, but you can't see each other's lips.

It makes it a lot harder to have that conversation. And humor really doesn't work well when you're wearing a mask most of the time. Because they can't see you laughing or can't see, you know, the faces.

Dr. Darrell Bock It doesn't work well on the radio either. I've told that people for years, Robby, why do you laugh at your own jokes? Because I've got nobody else laughing. Somebody's got to laugh here.

Otherwise, you know, there's no humor. Dr. Darrell Bock Rodney laughs with you. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, he does. Dr. Darrell Bock Somewhere. Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah, he does. Rodney's always laughing, aren't you, Rodney?

He's laughing over there now. I'm going to go ahead and go to another clip. This is actually a clip Robby put together for me today of two clips from the same movie called Seabiscuit.

And when I saw the movie the first time, these two points really stood out to me. And what you have at the beginning in the first part of the segment is you have the key guy, Charles Howard. He owns a car company. He's getting into horse racing, he's looking for a trainer. And he happens upon this guy he's looking for named Tom Smith, who is sitting out in the woods trying to nurse a horse back to health. And I want you to listen, you know, to that conversation. And then later on, once they're a team along with the jockey, there's a little bit of a shake up in it. And the trainer's words come back to kind of haunt him a little bit or kind of put it in perspective would be a better way to say it.

And so once you listen to it, and we're going to come back and talk about it. Charles Howard. Tom Smith.

Nice to meet you, Tom. What's in his bandage? Oh, that's Hawthorne root.

Increases circulation. Will he get better? Already is, a little. Will he race?

No, not that one. So why are you fixing him? Because I can. Every horse is good for something. He could be a cart horse or lead pony. He's still nice to look at.

You don't, you don't throw a whole life away just because he's banged up a little. It's not my fault. Not this time.

I told you, look out for Rosemont. I thought I had it. You stopped riding. I couldn't see him. What were you talking about?

He was flying up your tail. No, I can't. What?

See out there. He lied to us. What? He lied to us.

You want a jockey who lies to us? What do you mean? He can't see.

He's blind in one eye. It's fine, Tom. It's fine. Yeah, it's fine. You don't throw a whole life away just because it's banged up a little bit.

Good night. When I watched the movie originally, that was probably one of my favorite scenes. Just because you have, you know, Tom who, when he's dealing with horses, has all this grace and compassion and sees the value of the life, right? But when it feels a lot more personal and it's on an individual basis, that stuff wants to go out the window.

The enemy wants that stuff to go out the window. And what happens is Charles brings him right back by using his own words and saying, you know, you don't throw out a life just because it's banged up a little bit. And God often does that with me. You know, I'll say something and then I'll get in a point where I'm really frustrated or angry about it and those words will come back. You know, and it really just kind of stops me in my track and lets me know, okay, I need to listen here. You know, there's a bigger picture than what I'm just angry about.

There's a bigger picture than that person's a crazy driver, you know, or whatever that situation is. You know, he reminds me that there's more truth than what I can see. And so for me, part of that listening is God just reminding me of things he's done in my life or things that, you know, I've stated, you know, and he kind of brings back to haunt me a little bit or actually teach me and help me have grace and compassion.

And so that was a clip that I wanted to play just because that's one of the ways that God helps me to listen more intently. You know, I'm easily frustrated. I get frustrated very easily, you know, which is kind of funny because a lot of people think I have a lot of patience except for my kids, they don't think I do. But I'm getting more patience as time goes on. I think God's just kind of teaching me through some of the type of stuff I was just talking about. Yeah, I think I've experienced some of that some lately. You do get frustrated with people a lot of times, and that brokenness that they experience, you tend to overlook. You know, I always used to say, yeah, you want judgment for me, but grace for yourself.

Well, I do that very same thing myself. And, you know, a lot of times we don't know what somebody's going through. We've talked about it, but being, I think, listening to God, the Holy Spirit is the one that will bring that to you and say, wait a second, you know, you want to get this, you know, the speck out of their eye, but you got a log in yours, you know. And so it really does help us to listen and to think about, you know, keeps us out of frustration. And I think there's times where working through it, you can be frustrated, but when you take and use that against somebody, that's where it impacts somebody and really there's a sin. And we just have to be listening for those opportunities so we don't do that kind of harm. Because again, we're all broken.

We are. You know, for me, I think part of the listening falls into two categories. One I talked about a little bit earlier on active listening, right? You know, paying attention, getting the distractions out of the way, trying to clear my mind. Those are things that I own, you know, in that, you know, to put myself in a position to be able to listen versus just hear. The other part of it is I think the overall health of the relationship plays a big role. You know, if I have an unhealthy relationship, meaning that it's, you know, someone somewhat very one-sided, that someone just seems to always be asking for something but never really depositing into that relationship, I don't have very good ears to hear, you know, which I think I need to take God's lesson on it because I kind of treat him that way sometimes, you know, but yet he has ears to hear me all the time. But I think some of that is just trying to give grace when it's not been earned and say, okay, is there something here worth listening to, right? Because at the end of the day, everybody has a need to be heard. Everybody has a need to be understood, right?

And that's just a choice. I don't have to agree with them. I can understand people without agreeing with them, right? And I think that sometimes we get that backwards.

We think because if we understand, it means we're going to have agreement. You know, I used to talk to my son about the reasons why he didn't want to clean his room. I can understand why he didn't want to clean his room, but I didn't agree with him.

He's going to clean his room. But at the end of the day, he just wanted to be heard, right? And I think that's a big part of that relationship is putting ourselves in position to hear someone else regardless of what the eventual outcome is. Darrell Bock Whether they have a nail in their head or not.

Mark Bailey Exactly, yeah, exactly. You know, and I think that's a big part of it. But listening for me is something that I need to grow a lot more at. You know, along the way, just in human, you know, interactions, and especially, you know, with God. Darrell Bock Yeah, because it's a two-way thing, you know, that when it comes to relationships, it's interesting that apparently, we should be listening for God within that, or for me, I feel like that I'm listening for God at the same time I'm listening to the person to see God, where are we in this?

Help me to interpret this situation, you know, if I can somehow or another get my head in the game. Mark Bailey I just had a memory from about 75 years ago, when you were talking about everybody wants to be heard. I remember getting switched more intensely, because my mother would say not another word, and I would say, but mom, I'm not through yet. I had to say what I wanted to say, even if I was going to get more switching. So I think that emphasized for me the importance of what you had to say. Darrell Bock Now, did you have to go pick your own switch? That was always my, yeah. Mark Bailey I think it stunted his growth, if I'm not mistaken.

Darrell Bock It may have stunted your growth, yeah, it may have, or the coffee, I'm not really sure. Anyway, thank you for listening to the Masculine Journey Show. Please go register for the bootcamp coming up November 18th through 21st. It's going to be an amazing time, and what a, the best weekend to absolutely go is right before Thanksgiving for lots of reasons. One, it prepares you for your family, good or bad, it prepares you for your family. And secondly, you get to go to bootcamp, come back and work for a couple days, and then you get a few days off.

How great is that? Go to masculinejourney.org to register now. Mark Bailey Listen up. This is the Truth Network.