Sanity in the Insanity After Hours

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

It's about to start in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, and please share it around with all your friends. Thanks for listening, and thanks for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Coming to you from an entrenched barricade deep in the heart of central North Carolina, Masculine Journey After Hours, a time to go deeper and be more transparent on the topic covered on this week's broadcast. So sit back and join us on this adventure. The Masculine Journey After Hours starts here now. Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours, and we are talking about a crazy subject today, aren't we, Jim? It is beyond crazy. It's almost insane.

It's how to maintain your sanity in an insane world. And we close the last one with... Is that better? Yeah, that's better. Yeah. I don't know what was happening there, but I was afraid to touch it.

It was the way you were leaning. We were ending the last session with Mel Gibson trying to kill himself and Danny Glover doing it, and that's about the worst place to get. But as Robby pointed out, sometimes that seems like the most sane thing to do is to get out of here. And we want to assure you it's not and talk about it a little further in this half hour.

Yeah. I also want to talk about what we're each doing, each, all of us, even those that haven't talked in the last show, to stay sane in an insane world right now. You know, we pointed out in the last segment, it feels more so than other times, at least for some of us right now, but it's always kind of been insane. From the beginning of Adam and Eve, breaking things down with God.

I mean, we don't have a lot of Mongolian hordes invading and taking our women and killing us all, but they could. But there's never been a time in history when people weren't doing awful things to one another and lying and hurting, and we have a solution for that. The first one is God, but we're going to, we know he's the solution for all of our problems, but we want to get to the point of looking at some more practical things as well. Are you saying God's not practical? He's imminently practical, but he doesn't have to be. He can do things miraculously. We don't understand his ways. And won't, even when we're in heaven, I don't think.

I don't think we'll care at that point. So Andy, onto a clip that you have, and one of the things that can be part of a solution to staying sane, right? Yep. So this is a clip from Despicable Me, and Drew is giving a, quote, pep talk to his friends that are helping him build a rocket to the moon, a dream of his. And, you know, this is more of just like a conflict and resolution type of, in a movie, not necessarily insanity, but the insanity of it is, is things were going good. They had a vision, they had a purpose, and then all that fell through. And then the response of the people to come back and make it. My point is here is there's a lot of bad stuff, a lot of crazy stuff going on. And how can God's people, us, how can we bring sanity to an insane world? And we, I think Wayne keeps talking about it, and I believe it's key to it, is loving others.

And you see some of that love in this clip. Yeah, what's happening at the end is the minions are offering up what they have to help with the solution. Yeah, you'll hear the coins hit the plate. Now, I know there have been some rumors going around that the bank is no longer funding us. Well, I am here to put those rumors to rest.

They are true. In terms of money, we have no money. So how will we get to the moon? The answer is clear. We won't. We are doomed. Now would probably be a good time to look for other employment options. I know I have fired up my resume, as I suggested all of you do as well. What is it? Don't you see that I'm in the middle of a pep talk?

Yes, we will build our own rocket using this and whatever else we can find. So you hear a lot of hope that comes back from people that have reached out in love. And I think we've heard a lot of stories about as bad as things have been in this crazy world we live in, that there's been people, hopefully all of us, I think we have in different ways, stepped up and loved on humanity in a variety of ways. I know that personally for me, I've tried to think back. I mean, there was a time for COVID, you couldn't really have a lot of contact with people.

But I know that I did a lot. God put a lot of people on my heart and brought other people into my life to be an encouragement during that time. And I wouldn't have been able to give that out unless he had prepared me, I think, through the community I have here and the things that I've been through. You know, it's just, it is not an easy time for people. And I think that there have been a lot of, God has been glorified in his church, I believe, quite a bit in the way that we've responded to the needs of others and helped others.

Yeah, I think that's, Danny, I'll come to you in just a second. You know, one of the things that we've done as a team, honestly, is continue to have boot camps. You know, the first one that we did, after the spring got canceled, we did a summer one. And it was right in the middle of COVID. We were at the limit of people we could have there, but it was providing, it was a way we could go love on others by letting them be with God in a quiet place to where they could hear him.

Right? And that's why we, you know, do them each time is because we see God love on them. And the way we can do that is to help provide that opportunity. God obviously gives us the resources and those things, and it all falls back to him. And he allows us to just play a part in it. But I think that's, as a team, one of the ways that we do that. And I know it sounds like we're always plugging the boot camp, which we are. And it's not because it's a money-making thing. That's really not it at all.

We don't really make any money off of them. Maybe sometimes a little, maybe sometimes not any, right? But it's more about the ways we see people get set free, right? And the joy of seeing people walk in some level of freedom or healing or those types of things. And so, you know, if you do want to come to the boot camp, there is one coming up in November 18th through the 21st. And you can get information at our website at masculinejourney.org.

But I would say that it would be a great thing for your heart to consider coming. So Danny, you had something you want to add? Yeah. I was a product of that boot camp, as a matter of fact. Yeah. That was the first one I came to. The summer boot camp.

The summer boot camp that was going to be the spring boot camp that was going to be at one place, but we ended up in another. Yeah. But that's a whole other story. I was drawn to looking at this topic, the story of Jesus and the boatloads of guys going across the sea to the guy who was naked and in chains in the tombs and possessed by demons, where cast them out and pork prices went up, you know, the whole nine yards. But I always think about that because the resources that were involved in that was loving on somebody. That's what we were talking about. In an insane world, here's a guy that nobody really wanted anything to do with.

I mean, he was a little off kelter, and I've been that way in my lifetime where nobody really wanted to deal with me. But here comes Jesus. We call that Tuesdays. Tuesdays, yeah.

Yeah, that's it. We even did a Monday night thing. That's kind of weird. But here, and the response of the people in the community should have been a rejoicing. But here's a guy who is now clothed and in his right mind, and the people run Jesus out of town. And so often I think, Robby, we run Jesus out of town, even though the miraculous has happened. And that's the insanity. But Jesus brought sanity to an insane world and everything going crazy around him. You know, what a wonderful story. But that's been my life, and thank God that somebody reached out into my insane world and brought some sanity and clarity to it. Thank you, Danny. Jim, do you want to ask questions of the guys? How do they stay sane in this time, or do you want to play the next clip?

What would you like to do? Well, actually, I want to put my wife in this because she gave me a few quotes, and if I don't use at least one of them, I might be in trouble when I go home. And maintaining your life at home is a good way to stay sane.

And this is actually part of the overreaction of the world. One of my absolutely favorite – actually, he is my favorite author – is Mark Twain, or Samuel Clemens. And I think half of his books are banned now because of the content. But brilliant man, he loved cats, which is always a good sign to me.

Not to eat, either. But he actually – I got a quote here from him. Actually, I'm looking at the other one, so let me slide back over here because I'll screw it up. He said that – and I screwed it up again. Sorry. Never mind.

We'll go back to it here. Mark Twain said, Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect. And I think – I mean, I've rarely been more attacked than I have in this time, and I've been quite at peace with both the attacks and with all the stuff going on around me.

Because, first of all, getting older helps, doesn't it, Harold? And, you know, things don't get you as excited. But I see a lot of excitement, a lot of fear that passes for insanity. And the way I stay sane is to not listen to some of that. And the next clip I'll let you talk about, because it might be yours. It is.

And I'll set that up here in a second. But I think that, you know, you've seen, you know, here recently, there's 60 Minutes show the other night. I didn't watch it, but I heard about it where they were accusing Facebook of stirring up things because fear generated income. Right?

We could have called that the nightly news, you know, for the most part. You know, they've done that for years that fear generates income. Right? And so some of that insanity that we see is manufactured at some level. Right? Because people know that it's a profitable thing. And so I think realizing part of that can help you stay a little bit more sane, because you may have more of a discerning spirit at that point to say, maybe I'm not going to trust everything I hear or read, you know, but I'm going to try to find out a little bit more for myself.

You know, and hopefully that does help some people in. And so we'll move on to my clip now, get off the little soapbox thing there. But the clip is from a TV show called Ted Lasso.

It's on Apple TV. And I won't go into the whole setup of it, but he's an American football coach, a college football coach. He gets hired by a British soccer team in the Premier League, the highest league there. He's hired by the female owner who got the club at a divorce. And the only reason she hired him is because she wanted him to run the team into the ground because it was her ex-husband's favorite thing in the world.

And the husband had cheated on her. Where we pick up here, Ted's kind of won the owner over in loving on her well, being a good person. And we're at a scene in a pub where the husband, the ex-husband's there. He's kind of putting pressure on the ex-wife about some of the stuff on the football team. Excuse me, the soccer team, they call it football, right, on the soccer team. And Ted steps in and says, hey, isn't darts a big deal over here? So we'll go ahead and listen to that as he steps in and kind of rescues her.

But listen to the very end of the clip, it's really kind of key. If you win, I'll let you pick the starting lineup of the last two games of the season. But if I win, you can't go anywhere near the owner's box, at least not while your back is still in charge.

What do you think? You're on. Let me know if I'm winning or losing, all right? Oh, I forgot I had these on me. Oh, wait a second. I forgot I'm left handed. Oh, this is going to be a hoot. What do I need to win? Two triple-twenties and a boomer.

Good luck. You know, Rupert, guys have underestimated me my entire life. And for years I never understood why. It used to really bother me. But then one day I was driving my little boy to school and I saw this quote by Walt Whitman. It was painted on the wall there. It said, be curious, not judgmental. I like that.

So I get back in my car and I'm driving to work and all of a sudden it hits me. All them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one of them were curious. You know, they thought they had everything all figured out. And so they judged everything and they judged every one. And I realized that their underestimating me, who I was, had nothing to do with it. Because if they were curious, they would ask questions, you know? Questions like, have you played a lot of darts, Ted? Which I would have answered, yes, sir.

Every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father from age 10 until I was 16 when he passed away. Barbecue sauce. At the Indy it's the game winner. You know, he hits what he has to. And what I really liked about that scene is that whole thing of curious versus judgmental. You know, in the last year and a half, two years, I've realized how judgmental.

I'm realizing, anyway, how judgmental I really am. You know, and I think that if I would take time to be more curious once in a while and try to understand someone else's point of view versus judging them for what theirs is, you know, we'd be in a different place. You know, that I would have a different heart towards others.

And maybe in return they'd have a different heart towards me. And I really think that that's something that as a society we lack. We don't lack judgmental. You know, being judgmental, that's rampant, you know? Just get on any social platform, especially Facebook, and you see it through there. But being more curious about digging in and saying, okay, why do you believe that? Or what makes you feel that way?

Those types of things. And I think that we could benefit greatly from doing that. And I'm going to try to be doing that more frequently.

I've already started it. And it seems to help. At least it helps my heart be in a different place. Because all being judgmental does is make me hardened and more depressed. And that takes you to ugly places. We need to be discerning. That's not the same as judgmental. Judgmental we're talking about, okay, Andy, you're awful because you talk a lot.

You have this accent. I mean, that sort of thing is not productive. And I don't believe anything I just said. I would add a different thing. Yeah, and we could all find things about the best person we know that are negative. But if we're looking for those, we're in that place that's really ugly. And I think one of the biggest solutions to dealing with the crazy world was our topic last week. And that does take me back to the other quote. But if we have community, people that will call us out when we're doing things, it can go a long way.

And we can be different than most of the folks out there that don't have. I almost said Jesus. Jesus.

I guess I did. The other one was a Ben Franklin quote, which I've always really liked Ben Franklin too. But it's, we must indeed all hang together or most assuredly we shall all hang separately. And if we're out there on our own, we're going to be a lot more vulnerable to the world, to the things that do appeal to us that are not godly things. It's just there's so much going on now that it's a time for us to come together in community. And I know somebody has something to say about that.

Except he doesn't want to. Wayne, apparently you have something you want to say about that. Uh, you okay?

Yeah, I don't know. We get into the conversation around crazy and that's me in a mirror, I guess. It's a conversation I have with God a lot, especially here recently. I'm tired of being crazy.

It's not easy. You said something earlier about how people are drawn to crazy. It's funny how they're always drawn to it, but they never get involved with those who are. They look at it from the outside, but they don't want to be a part of it. They don't really want to be a piece of it. They don't want to be curious and ask the questions.

They just enjoy the judgment from outside. You know, the thing with the whole Despicable Me, I'm living that. I'm getting ready to lose my house. And I'm okay with it, in a way, because I know it's what he's told us to do.

We're getting ready to probably have to go into foreclosure or sell a home. It's hard. Sorry.

Now I get to go on the crime spree, right? And from the outside looking in, it was crazy. And I asked God. I was like, I don't understand.

I don't get it. And he's telling me that he's taking us to this place to understand. And he took me to the scripture recently. You know, there's no man who's given up, you know, mother and father and sons and daughters and homes that won't be given much more. I know that what he's calling us to is to do something much greater. We could stay where we are, and we could be a great blessing in the many people that will come. We have some different beliefs about what's coming with the things that are staring down at us. Or we can go, and we can help others understand. We can help others see, and we can help others build, and we can build up people's communities, build up actual places where people do life together instead of doing this thing individually and separately.

Because we are. We're all building our own kingdom. You know, even whenever you look at the prayer that Jesus told us to pray, you know, your kingdom come, your will be done. How many of us are truly asking for the will of the Father, and how many of us are praying and crying out for comfort in a time of craziness? You know, give me some comfort in a time of this craziness rather than teach me how to go out and be a comfort.

You know, a couple weeks ago we had to talk about how, and it's not about me, but it's about how God used me to love on a man whom nobody else wanted to love on, and he didn't have to die alone. How many people are crazy enough to do that? The nurses thought I was crazy. You know, they came up to me and would ask me, are you sure you know what you're risking? Yes, I do. I'm willing to die for my friend. So yeah, I know a little bit about community, I think, maybe.

I don't know. So loving on others for you obviously is a way that God helps you reach that same place, right, to stay there? And I am sure you're not alone in that losing the house, Wayne, and I love that I was sending that over to talk about community, but that's an important thing. And briefly, one of the best times of our lives is when we left Asheville.

We were just a few years away from having house paid off, and we were going to be fine and dead, and God called us to Alaska, and we sold and got rid of just about everything we owned and did what we were told to do, and it was among the best times in our lives. So being in a desperate situation is a good place to be because that's where God will come to you and bring you out of that and through it. Yeah, obviously, like every time we come down to the show, the answer is Jesus and God, right, I mean, the Holy Spirit, the whole package, right, that they're the answer to the situation. There's also practical things that we talked about. When I was talking earlier about being curious versus judgmental, it doesn't mean changing my values to your values, but trying to understand where you're coming from, right. You know, it's not necessarily a change of position, but a change of understanding. And I think there's things that you can do. For me, when we were doing this show, I just realized why I've been on this probably the last six weeks. I've been organizing things in my house and getting rid of stuff. And I think it really comes down to, yeah, I want to get rid of this stuff, but it's more it's the one thing I feel like I have some control over right now.

You know, when so much feels almost out of control, you know, that and doing projects, just little projects around the house, whatever they are, to feel like I accomplished something. You know, but it's not sitting in front of the TV. It's not sitting in a place where it's going to make me feel depressed. You know, the weather is so beautiful right now. Get outside, do some stuff outside. It's not too hot, it's not too cold. You know, get out there, enjoy some of the weather, you know, let the sunshine hit you. During our talking about this, I was asked by Robby if I enjoyed what I'm doing.

And I basically said, I never use that word. But is it fulfilling? Absolutely. And I think so much of our society has been on, you know, I want to feel good about me. I want to have things easy. I want life to be fair. And none of those are part of life. And whether it's crazy times or the best times of our lives, we're still not going to have those. But you touched on the biggest change in my peace and my life is when I finally got to the point of saying, I don't have to have any of the answers, much less all of them. I want to know everything and be in control of everything. And that's kept me out of some bad times, but it's also put me in some bad times.

But if we could release the control to God and go with what He has for us, you can have peace in the midst of hell. You were talking about trying to do all these projects and stuff. And I've been on that for some time, more lately. But, you know, it's interesting that you say that.

John brought it up on the Wild at Heart podcast, I believe, that, you know, that's kind of where he's at. And I think you're right. I think you want to put the world is not right right now, but your area of that world you want to make right. But, you know, going back to the whole insanity thing, I think a lot of our insanity, in my opinion, comes from basically a lot of people that are saying things that aren't true. And it brings a lot of confusion. It brings a lot of division. And, you know, Jesus gave a command for that.

To me, this is very important. It's like you can get in truth and be mad at everybody that doesn't get it. But he says, you know, be wise as serpents and harmless as doves. And I think that's what our call to be in this insane world is to be that way. Yeah. And if in doubt of what the truth is, there is only one truth.

Right? And that's Jesus and walking with him in the midst of whatever is going on in the world. It's always been something that his people, you know, came out of bad situations when they walked with him.

It's still the answer today. Whatever that situation is, to walk with him through it. Go to masculinejourney.org.

Register for the upcoming boot camp November 18th through the 21st. We'll talk with you next week, and we hope you have a wonderful week. Get outside, enjoy the weather. If it's raining, look at it from the porch. I don't care. Get outside, get away from the chair, and just enjoy some time with God this week.

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