It is About the Nail

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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 Masculine Journey. And Robby, I got a question for you. What's happening in about three weeks? Boot camp. Boot camp. Yes. Do you think we have a listener out there who has not heard that there is a boot camp coming? They need to Andy up.

That's right. We have Andy with us today. He'll explain that to you.

Just reach out to him at Andy at masculine journey.org. That's boot camp EVV like 26 times. And so it's time to Andy up. Yeah.

It's time to register and just make the commitment. You know that you're going to want to have this break right before Thanksgiving. You think Thanksgiving is the break you need. I'm telling you, it's the break before the break is what you need because Thanksgiving can go one of two ways a lot of times.

It can be really great with family or really not great with family. I'm just saying. The calm before the storm, right? Exactly. It'll prepare your heart for what you're going to have happen the next week. Good or bad, it's going to prepare it. Anyway, that's not the topic for today, but I'm sure we'll talk more about boot camp at Andy.

Danny, you have the topic for today. Yeah. Title is always a nail in a sure place. Um, it comes from Isaiah 22, 23.

I'm not counting. That's just 22, 23, whatever it takes, you know, whatever it takes. Yeah.

I will fasten him as a nail in a sure place and he shall be for a glorious throne to his father's house. And I heard that topic done by a pastor friend of mine several years ago. And it just has resonated in the last little while as being a nail and a sure place that not all, sometimes we find ourselves in places we really don't want to be, but it may very well have been designed by God that we be there for whatever purpose that is because life's not always skipping gloriously toward glory. It's just, there's tough seasons and finding yourself in a secure place, which ultimately we know to be, if I'm in Christ, I'm in a secure place, no matter what my circumstances are going around me. Yeah. I think that as a, uh, as a country, as a world, a secure place, hasn't really soon to be there, you know, over at least the last couple of years, right. You know, with all the COVID and everything that's been going on and just lots of other different things, you know, to even consider that there is a sure place is really pretty cool. You know, that there's a place in, regardless of what's going on around us, that we can be in a sure place.

Yeah. Just kind of a question out of the thing was, you know, do you ever consider that wherever you find yourself right now, God placed you there. And, you know, so often I've questioned, you know, where I was in life or like recently just thinking about, I've become kind of the, the go-to guy in my family, including my father, cause kind of taken over helping him with financial stuff. And because he just, that's just not his thing, but he looks to me to be his nail in a sure place that to find the answers to, to navigate where we need to go.

And it's a place to be honest, I really don't want to be most days. So, you know, I think that, um, you know, it's football season, right. Whether you follow college or pro or you don't even watch it at all, it's still football season. But you have the, uh, you have the guy that scores a touchdown and, you know, points to heaven and all that. You know, he's really glad of the place he's in. Right.

But you take that same receiver and he drops a pass in the end zone. You know, is he still pointing to heaven and saying, oh, it's okay that I didn't do it. Right. I mean, I think there's, when you ask the question, do we consider, you know, that God put us there?

I think if it's positive, you know, a lot of times, yeah, we're pretty easily to accept it, but what if it's not a real positive thing? Yeah. Right.

What if it's not the place that I really wanted to be? Yeah. You could be the guy who was guarding the guy who just made the touchdown. It could be. Yeah. Yeah.

We're not guarding the guy. Yeah. Well, Andy, we have a clip that we went to play. So if you could tell us a little bit about this clip, it's a really short clip.

Yeah, it is one of my shorter ones. So, uh, yeah, it's kind of got a sports theme show tonight, I think. But this is from Rudy. Uh, you know, there's a couple of clips that Rudy that just really spoke to me. If you haven't seen it, it's about a kid that went to Notre Dame as a walk-on and, uh, you know, had a lot of aspirations of just playing Notre Dame football. And, and there's a lot of, and I don't, I can't remember exactly on this, uh, uh, instance, what he's needing direction from, from the priest, but he's praying a lot.

Uh, maybe it was a situation on the football team. I don't know if you guys remember, but, uh, I don't know if you guys remember, but anyway, he's just, he's looking for answers from God and he's in a place you can tell where he's beginning to question, okay, am I doing the right thing? Am I praying enough or whatever, where that's the way a lot of us get, if we're not getting the, you know, the results that we expect, we begin to question either us or God or somebody else that may have gotten in the way or whatever, but this is kind of the dialogue. And so he's talking to a priest, right?

Yeah. Maybe I haven't prayed enough. I'm sure that's not the problem. Praying is something we do in our time. The answers come in God's time. Have I done everything I possibly can?

Can you help me? Son, in 35 years of religious studies, I've come up with only two hard, incontrovertible facts. There is a God and I'm not him. So, yeah, I mean, it really gets into the whole point of, you know, there's, God sets this thing up, dialogue, prayer, and we always, or we, a lot of times expect that when we pray, we should get results, particularly if we're in God's will. And if we're not getting the results that we expect, we're not in God's will or something's broken there. Am I praying enough?

You know, usually that's where we go to. There's something that's in me that's not inherently good enough to get God's attention to give me what I want. I mean, there's a good desire in what he wants to do, and you see that in the movie. But there's timing on things. There's growth.

There's maturity. There's a multitude of things that keep us nailed at that place where we're at. We're right in the center of God's will, but that may be where we're at, but we just sure don't feel that way. So looking back over scripture, how often would you say that people really enjoyed the place that they were nailed to at that moment? I mean, honestly, how many do you think really, maybe David, some of the time? Some of the time, right.

Some of the time. When he got to his place of promise, the castle, if you will, the president king tried to kill him. So I don't know whether he was too sure about that place or not. Yeah.

You know, I mean, you look up and down the whole thing, you know, the one that got thrown in the pit from his brothers. Joseph, it took a long time to receive his, yeah. His story was a lot of being nailed in places. Yeah, absolutely.

He's a good one to always go back to, particularly if something carries on for time, because I think it was, what, 13 years or whatever in prison. Yeah. Yeah. Joe, the apostle Paul, he wrote most of what we read in prison, right? Yeah.

Not the ideal, I guess that was the original prison ministry. I don't know. Yeah. Yes.

Shipwrecked bitten by snake and all those things. Right. Sounds like a real joy.

Then there was the guy that was actually nailed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The night in the garden gets enemy. Yeah.

That was, yeah. Not easy. Not easy. So what do you think when we find ourselves in those places in life that we're not real happy to be at, you know, what is some of the responses that people tend to fall back on? Well, I know you're talking about, you know, what's the response. And I think it can run the gamut because everybody's a little bit different, but I know like you're just now talking about, boy, in an easy place or hard place. But honestly, for me, I think it's a lot easier to find God in the hard place when things are going really well.

We were just waiting to know who's going to be the first one to do that, of course, Robby. But when things are going good, I can rely on myself, I can forget God and leave Him behind, and things are just nice and rosy and cruising. But when problems happen, that's when it's like, oh, God, I need you. I need you. I need you. Peter, like we were talking earlier, jumps out of the boat. Oh, yep.

I forgot. Now help me. You know, nice little sweet, short prayer right to the point. I need you. That is the stuff that really pulls me into crisis when it's a—and typically it's relationships. You know, something's going wrong, somebody's doing something. You know, what's the kid doing this time? Or what's my wife got to say? Or where am I at with mom and dad? Or what's going on?

There's always something relationship-wise. It's just, you know, it's got you thinking. It's got you worried. So it's one of those things where it's like, stop and be able to say, okay, Lord, okay, I've been in this now for a while.

I don't know what to do. I don't know why I didn't start to pray this before I got into it. But at least more often than not, now I'll get in the middle of something when I start to realize, oh, I'm in the middle of this, but I'm going to say at least a quick little help me prayer. And at least reach out because I'm like, I didn't bring you into this.

I need you here right now. So for me, that's one of the things you say from the old response of anger, of frustration, and usually what would happen for me is first I just pull back. Yeah, I'm angry, but I'm going to pull back.

I got this. I'm under control. And then kaboom, you know, after a bit of time, this thing's been festering, whether it's a week or a month or whatever, or we've been talking about this, or it's a lifetime. You know, you're spending so much time, you know, you spend 20, 30 years with a spouse, you know each other so well. And you just get to that point where it's so easy to go, I know what's coming.

And when it does, boom, you explode. You know, and I'm like, I'm so much better off being able to say, no, I see things are coming, then start to pray. Thank God for God, because if it wasn't for Him, I just wouldn't have the strength to do a lot of these things.

Agreed. You guys must be a lot better Christian than I am, because I still get angry first. You know, I still get frustrated. I, you know, want to pout a little bit. You know, if I'm in a situation I don't want to be in, you know, a little bit of the why me kind of comes out. And it just takes me a while to get to that place where I can say, okay, God, yeah, I don't like it. But I'm here. So at least help me learn from it.

Help me learn what you need me to learn, help me to grow in the midst of it. I can't say that there's times I still like it. Right? I don't think there's sometimes you don't ever get to the place where you like it.

Right? And maybe liking it's not the point. Obedience is a point and walking with Him through the midst of it is the point. But yeah, you know, I find myself on that anger side, you know, because a lot of it is, honestly, it's trying to walk independently of God sometimes. And I get my own plan together.

And when my own plan doesn't work, I get mad. Right? But anyway, we're gonna talk more about this when we come back and find out how to be in that sure place and know that who's got us nailed there. Go to masculinejourney.org to register for the upcoming boot camp, November 18th through the 21st. We will see you there. Please register now.

masculinejourney.org and register today. Carolina 27285. So Danny, that was your bump. Can you tell us a little bit about it? Well, it's from a local artist here just south east of here named Jonathan Helser. He does songs so that people may know, like Raise a Hallelujah. And I can't remember the little right off the top of my head.

But local guy used to go to church with his dad. And the song is about seeing I am and knowing who you are. And that's kind of in a roundabout way. What we're talking about is, you know, the larger story that we talk about and the knowing who you are, your identity, that's our sure place that no matter what's going on in my life, and as you said earlier, once I get past my whining, my anger, and my I'm not doing this. I find out who I am and find out who's I am, which is more important, I think. That's good point. So Wayne, we haven't had a chance to really have you weigh in on it.

Sorry about that. And I see you're blinking here on the line. So we know that you're here.

Why don't you tell us a little bit about your thoughts on some of the topic. I'm actually sitting here looking through Scripture, and I'm reminded of where, you know, Peter talks about the reality that, you know, we're all going to be tested. We're all going to go through trials from time to time. And as much as we don't like to think about it, they're for our good and for the good of God. They show that, you know, that our faith is true. In 1 Peter 1, it says, So be truly glad there is wonderful joy ahead, even though you must endure many trials for a little while. These trials will show that your faith is genuine and it is being tested by fire as it tests and purifies gold. So your faith is far more precious than mere gold.

So even in my own life, there are most definitely, you know, you guys got to hear some of it a couple weeks ago, right? I mean, it's not comfortable to be in these fires. It's not easy.

And you're right. Sometimes we get an anger. Sometimes we get a fear.

Panic comes to mind. But ultimately, it's do we believe God loves us? Do we truly believe He loves us and that He wants the best for us and that He's going to use whatever we're going through? But what me and my wife have learned really a lot. We've had four miscarriages. And since then, she's been able to minister to so many other women, because she went through that. And so she is one of the few people who understands what they're going through. And God does that a lot with us, right? He takes our misery and turns it into something where we get to live on others through that. Darrell Bock And thanks, Wayne.

Robby, you want to tell us a little bit about your club? Robert Chisholm Absolutely. So it's a cool opportunity to watch or listen to, in this case, two really great boxers. I mean, you know, certainly if you came up in the 60s and 70s, you know the name Muhammad Ali and you know George Foreman. And you may know that George Foreman was the heavyweight champion of the world. And he took, you know, a challenge from Muhammad Ali and all the world thought that Muhammad Ali didn't have a single chance in the world. And so here, George Foreman is going to share some wisdom how this event of what would be just a gigantic loss, literally was the best thing that ever happened to his, in his life. Because as it turned out to be a great weight loss program for George Foreman, but we'll talk about what weight it was he lost and how he lost it after we hear, you know, a little bit from Muhammad Ali on his idea of weight loss. Robert Chisholm The fight with Muhammad Ali was spectacular for me.

It changed my life because I never lost as a professional. I intended to win the easiest fight of my career. I get into the ring with the guy. I bluffed him. I done everything, beat him up, basically for about five or six rounds. I thought it was easy. Then about the sixth round, he whispered in my ear after I'd hit him in the side that, Oh, you got George. That was about all I had.

I didn't understand losing. He knew something about that. So he prepared himself.

He's reserved his power and his strength. I had nothing in back of my mind to shield me or protect me. So I lie in devastation. Well, left boxing in the 70s, I became a minister at the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm still doing so. And I realized that a reporter asked me, what happened in Africa, George? Surely something happened. And I admitted that I'd lost the boxing match.

I said, I got proof. From that point on, I was able to cope because I realized not only did I lose the boxing match, but I'd lost the greatest man I've ever met. Somebody who would never give up.

Your name as young as you are in my training camp, me working with you, get your way down and you're not fighting for money. God knows us in your heart. You ain't got to answer the man. See man judges man's actions.

God judges man's heart. You go in the rain for God. Now you've got the whole world shook up.

George former came back. Now you go out and start preaching. You got thousands of people coming. You don't go out and lose it. You go out and win it.

And this is the wild idea I had. Sometimes people come to me and say, what do you think? Was Muhammad Ali the greatest boxer? And I feel almost insulted because boxing was just something he did. I mean, that's no way to define Muhammad Ali.

He was one of the greatest men to ever appear on the scene of the earth. So, you know, to break down the wisdom of that clip, which there's 10 points at least that I just, I find absolutely phenomenal. These two men outline for us, but the first thing was that, you know, clearly Muhammad Ali threw out what we call an agreement. In other words, this is a lie. Is that all you got George? Well, it wasn't all that George had, but George bought it, went into the agreement. You know, Ali used, you know, essentially something to get his opponent to bite down on this lie, which obviously caused the loss of the fight to some extent. Of course, I don't know how much George would actually extended, but nonetheless, the wisdom of Ali to do that. And then obviously George Foreman's understanding of that. And then there was the wisdom of Ali holding back all his power and strength and the fact that he'd lost and he knew that there was a longer battle here than just four or five rounds.

And how many battles in our life are we really prepared to fight for as long as it takes? And so there's all kinds of wisdom in that secure place, the nail that he's talking about there. And then there's George Foreman's humility to see that, oh, here was my real problem is when he said, I lost the greatest man I ever knew that never gave up on anything. In other words, in this case, God was using the claw hammer to rip the nail out. And if you've ever had that claw hammer on you, you know what I'm talking about, that sometimes, you know, you're ripped out of this place because he has a secure place, which obviously, you know, it was, I thought it was really cool that Muhammad Ali picked it up, that there's so much more to this, George, than a boxing match. And how much more value is it for George Foreman, this great communicator, to be able to share something of great value that he does as a preacher?

And there's that. But then don't miss the end wisdom, which is, to me, the best part of the whole clip, was don't, who, he's saying, you can't define Muhammad Ali by being a boxer, right? Well, how about you? Are you defined as a computer programmer? Are you defined as a radio talk show host?

Are you defined as whatever? I really hope someday somebody says that about me, which really just speaks volumes about George Foreman, that says, that man wasn't a boxer, the boxing was what he did, right? The wisdom in that statement of the way he delivers it is beautiful. But then again, there's, gets to the idea of where Danny was going, which the word nail in Hebrew has this tav, meaning at the end of the story, we will know, right, what the truth is.

The truth is going to come out. And the truth was always secure. And it was always in a sure place. And yes, you being in that place, wherever that may be for that time, may be for the long haul. But but you need that wisdom to set yourself up for I need to stay in this as long as God has it for me.

Because it's, it's, it's where it's, it's eventually headed, of course, like everybody in this room. You know, I've had the hammer come down on me a few times. Yeah. You know, I was thinking about George Foreman, you know, he had two careers in boxing, right? I mean, he had the one where he was champion. And then when he tried to make a comeback, and everyone kind of laughed him off. Right. But, you know, I kind of wonder in the timeline of that conversation with Ali, it sounded more like it was when he was doing his comeback a little bit, from the standpoint of, you know, you get up there, and now you can reach a lot of people for God.

Right, you know, from this platform, from a different perspective, you have an opportunity to do things. And he really did that pretty well. During his comeback, during his comeback, he was very quick to thank God, is very quick to point back to God. And he did have a lot of success in his comeback. And he was in his 40s at the time, I think, wasn't he, when he did his comeback? Shaking your head, they can't hear that on the radio. I just say it.

Yes, he was in his 40s. Well, there were a lot of you shaking your head. I would just say, if they could hear it, there's something more wrong than what we're talking about.

So from here, the sure place, what do we talk about here? Rodney, you're reaching for the microphone? Yeah, since Harold won't speak up. He was nodding his head, though.

Yeah. So one of the, you know, when Danny came up with this, it's like, the first thought was, Jesus nailed to the cross. But then I started thinking, well, what did he do to help others out? You know, because he had been leading all the disciples up to that point, and he's revealing more and more and more. And then he actually gets nailed to the cross and he dies. And they're just like, I don't believe that this just happened.

They're, you know, yeah, they were, they felt really awful. And they didn't know what to think when they, he kept telling them over and over and over, I'm going to die. And then he actually does it.

But then you will have grief, but then you will overcome your grief and the whole world will rejoice. But then he comes back and he's like, here I am. I'm in the room.

Here's my hands. Here's my side. Thomas doesn't believe. And then Thomas is there and he believes. You got, Mary's the first one that saw him and she's like, oh my gosh, you won't let go of him. You've got all these things going on where he's reassuring and saying, this is assurance.

This is me. I'm coming back to life, just like I said I would, the three days. And here I am, just like Jonah. And then with Peter, do you love me more than these? And he asked him three times and, you know, Peter's grieved, but he takes him through that to put his rock that he wants to build in Peter.

And what we just got out of 1 Peter from Wayne, you know, that was all built starting right then and there. Yeah. When we come back for the After Hours show, we're going to talk more about this topic. You can get the After Hours show at any of the podcast outlets.

So whatever, pick your favorite Spotify, any of those. We're on all those different forums, so you can pick it up there, the different formats. But in the meantime, go to masculinejourney.org, register for the bootcamp coming up November 18th through the 21st. I promise you, promise you, promise you, God has some amazing things there for you. Don't know what it is, but He does.

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