What Does Restoration Feel Like

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Welcome to The Masculine Journey. We are really glad that you're with us today, and we're following up on a topic that's near and dear to our heart. You know, actually, we're following up to a podcast.

So if you want to listen to last week's show on the podcast about healing, right? Danny, what was your topic? Tell me what it was. That was last week. I don't remember. Yeah, it was healing. It was something about healing. Purple heart.

Purple heart. Yeah, you really didn't remember. I thought you were joking. When I saw the blank look on your face, I realized, oh, okay, that's what that is. But yeah, this is kind of a follow-up to that show, so if you want to go back and listen to that. If not, just listen about restoration, because we're going to touch on some of the stuff from last week anyway. This topic kind of came about for me. Actually, I was driving over to the radio show last week, I think it was, and was driving here and was just feeling really good. And I'd like to say that that happens a lot, but honestly, it doesn't happen a lot as much as it should. And I was feeling really good about me, just good about life, good about things.

Not that it wasn't challenges out there. It just wasn't affecting me that day very much. And I started thinking about why, and I thought back to boot camp and really just some healing I got at boot camp that led to restoration. And then it made me just say, oh, wow, this is what restoration feels like. And then the question becomes, what does it feel like? And there's lots of areas that we want to try to touch on today. What's it feel like spiritually? What's it feel like emotionally or mentally or even physically?

I'm not necessarily talking about restoration of healing of the body, but when you get healing of the spirit, how does that affect you in those areas? And so we're going to talk some about that today and kind of follow up and really dig into some of our stories. But first, we have a clip from Jerry Maguire.

And Andy, you brought this one. Yeah, I did the Poser talk at the last boot camp. And this is, you know, the Wild Art team uses it in their talk. And I really, I've always liked it.

But whenever you do a talk, you dig into it a little bit more. And I just really liked, it's a guy who has become a shark in a suit, a guy that was a sports agent that was really doing all he could to get every dollar he could for his, his athletes. But in doing so, he wasn't looking out for their best interests. And he really wasn't taking care of his heart.

He wasn't living authentically of who he really, from his identity. And he gets disrupted by this kid. It's not in the clip, but this kid kind of gives him a hard time. This kid is a son of a hockey player who keeps getting hurt and it's like on his eighth concussion or whatever. And, and Jerry Maguire is sitting there saying, no, you'll be out there right at, you know, any, any moment you'll be back out on the ice.

And his kid saw what it was doing to his dad and he called him out on it. And after that, Jerry kind of has a, you know, a repentant moment when he begins to realize he's veered off from who he truly is. Do you know your name? I couldn't escape one simple thought. I hated myself.

No, no, no. Here's what it was. I hated my place in the world.

I had so much to say and no one to listen. And then it happened. It was the oddest, most unexpected thing. I began writing what they call a mission statement, not a memo, a mission statement, you know, a suggestion for the future of our company.

A night like this doesn't come along very often. I seized it. What started out as one page became 25. Suddenly, I was my father's son again. I was remembering the simple pleasures of this job, how I ended up here out of law school, the way a stadium sounds when one of my players performs well on the field, the way we are meant to protect them in health and in injury. With so many clients, we had forgotten what was important.

I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote and I'm not even a writer. I was remembering even the words of the original sports agent, my mentor, the late great Dickie Fox, who said, the key to this business is personal relationships. Suddenly, it was all pretty clear.

The answer was fewer clients, less money, more attention, caring for them, caring for ourselves in the games too, just starting our lives. Really? Hey, I'll be first. What I was writing was somewhat touchy feely. I didn't care. It was the me I always wanted to be. So yeah, Harold pointed out that that was a bit more than a mission statement, what all he got into. But really, he was focusing on what he wanted to accomplish in life and be that would come out of his identity. And, you know, that some of the things you heard it open up is like, somebody asked him who he was, and he was and then it talks about him becoming his father's son. And, you know, that part of being restored, we talked about it early, I think a lot of it was restoring him to his authentic self, which his identity would be tied to his relationship with his father that he mentions. And the byproduct of that is, is you have much more confidence, you have clarity of who you are, your purpose. And he was finding all that out.

As he went through this process, he had to be disrupted to do it. But I think that's what all of us is that we're all here because of a disruption. You know, something that, you know, happened in our life, a wound that we finally wanted to get healed. But through that process, that restoration, when you get there, I was telling him, the guys, you know, I feel, I feel restored. And I think there is a place of restoration, but that doesn't mean we stop there.

We're continually going on. There's more wounds, there's things that we live in false self that we're not looking at living out of our true identity. But it comes to a place, like Sam was talking about, where you really sense that you have been restored. And it's not this up and down, you know, totally inconsistent life, something that, something that can just, you know, something that comes along just takes you out.

You have the confidence that you and your father can handle whatever. Yeah, I'm doing my George C. Scott impression there. Anyway, the thing I liked about this clip, if you haven't seen Jerry Maguire by now, I'm not really worried about ruining anything for you because he had cell phones the size of tennis shoes, you know, back in this particular movie. So, you know, and the white type on the computer is all you had. Yeah, the laptop, man, it was like huge. It's like clicking like crazy or whatever.

Yeah, old technology, definitely. But what I liked about this particular thing in the movie is he gets some really clear vision. He gets some really clear restoration, right? He feels really good about himself, but life doesn't, life isn't easy. You know, it's at that point that everything turns and he gets a lot of warfare at him. Right?

And I think sometimes we think when we get the restoration, oh, we're past this. Well, the enemy doesn't like it. He's going to come at you pretty hard. And he does in Jerry Maguire story. It's when his whole company turns on him right after this big moment moment of clarity, right? And it takes him a while to really get to the freedom down the road. He has to work for it. He has to work through it. He has to has to hold on to it as he's going along the way. Rodney, you were talking a little bit about that in the pre-show about the kind of holding on. Well, that's where it's I know for me myself, it's just really easy just to grab a hold and kind of ride where you're at.

We talked, you know, last week about being a people pleaser and trying to do that. So it's it's like, OK, ride your pose. You've made it. Now ride it. Let's just let's just take this pose and keep a hold of this and not let anybody else see anything different.

Because this is what this is what they've come to expect. I'm here to make sure that I meet their expectations so that they're happy with me so that I can be happy with myself. And that's where when you when you really step out in faith, you're going to say, OK, God, this is who I really am. I have to stop posing and stop being my false identity because there is no way that you're going to have that healing and restoration in your life if you're still under the pose. And to release that and to be able to talk through that is one of the most interesting things that I found when I first got to boot camp.

Because, yeah, I heard some stuff on the radio. But then when you guys went even deeper and I'm like. Starting to think about, OK, well, where am I at? Where am I posing?

Where are my wounds? What's going on? What does my heart really want? Not just what I kept telling myself I wanted. That took several years to really work through to kind of open up my heart to have some freedom to be able to say, OK, this is really what you want right now. How are you going to go after and go get it? And holding on to the truth that the Father gives us.

I want to delve back into a little bit of some of the stuff from last week. But you have the cycle of you're wounded, right? And maybe the enemy orchestrates it. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe it's just hurt people hurting people, right?

Something happens and you're hurt. But he's 100 percent behind the message you get from it. He may not have caused it.

He may not have been able to do all the things that caused that to happen. But a lot of them he does. But even the ones that he doesn't, he's behind the message you get afterwards. He's behind the shameful message that you get afterwards.

Something that puts you down, pushes you down, makes you feel like you have to pose because no one can see that real you, that he's led you to believe that you are. And so that's where you're stuck. And the reason I want to talk about this topic is because working back through that is not an easy journey. And it's so easy to want to quit along the way to say this is just too hard because it can be incredibly hard.

God can obviously say you're healed right now. And he'll do that sometimes. But most of the time it's a process that you're working through with him. And it's not always a fun process. It's not ever really a fun process. And if you go in looking like, hey, I'm going to get this done. Let's see, I've got 10 minutes left in my day.

I can get this done. You're going to end up with hurting worse because you're going to try to force something, try to make something happen. Hey honey, I'm going to heal this whole thing up. I'm going to have the magic wand and just sprinkle some pixie dust and it's all going to be better and it's going to be done real quick. You can force things. The hardest thing for me was to just allow it not to be me in there and let it be God.

Just go, okay. It's not do nothing and just let God do everything. You have to take your part but you have to be intentional and slow. You can't just be intentional and fast and go and run. It's like take your time, do one step, be methodical, wait for the response, understand the response, go through that in your head a while and work.

Work on it because it's all relational and it's just not easy just to say, oh, yep, step back, hit the three, I'm done. What happens after that is the freedom and restoration you get is so much worth going through it. And we're going to talk more about that when we come back but in the meantime, go to masculinejourney.org.

Look at the upcoming bootcamp coming up March 31st through April 3rd. We'd love to see you there. God would love to see you there. He's got some amazing things he'd like to do with you. 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 PO Box 550, Kernersville, North Carolina, 27285. This week on A New Beginning, Pastor Greg Laurie presents a fascinating message called, What I Would Tell My Younger Self. What guiding principles are important to share with the younger generation or any generation? Pastor Greg explores that this week. Tune in for A New Beginning with Pastor Greg Laurie.

Welcome back to Masculine Journey. That is a Stephen Curtis Chapman song. It was called, For Me. It's actually one of my favorite songs of all time. Yes, I do like worship music guys, even though sometimes I act like I don't. But that's one that always, even little segments like that, move me. Because there's so much said in there that God's broken my chains and given me my wings and now I'm free.

And for me, that's what restoration feels like in a nutshell, is that chains have been broken, the bondage has been cleared, and I not only walk free, but I can fly free. He's given me permission. He's always had it there for me.

He just reminds me of it and sends me on my way and walks with me. I love that song. I forget how much I like it until I hear it again and then I need to put it on my playlist. It's one of the older songs, probably back in the 90s. The 90s are old now, aren't they? The 90s are old, in comparison to Harold. The 90s are young. You're just in your 80s, so you're not in your 90s yet.

You just turned 80, so we're kind of good for a little while. Want to go back a little about what we were talking about. Ronnie, I think what you were describing is a process that Jesus takes you through, and sometimes he will take us all through that type of process, and sometimes it will be something different. It's kind of like when he heals the blind, which we've talked about on here and John Eldredge talks about.

He never does it the same way twice. So your healing is going to be unique to you, but it will be a process. Yeah, and what I have found that just kind of blows me away is you're getting healing and restoration in one part of your life while you're getting some wounds over here in another part of your life. And you're getting something else in another part, and what you have to be really is intentional about trying to figure out, okay, something just happened here that was either, felt like healing or restoration, or felt like more wounding, and felt like, wow, I just posed my way through that.

Why did I have this urge to lie here? You have to be intentional about asking yourself questions about that. It's like, okay, you work all things for good, so what good is there? And you may not get an answer right away, but if you keep asking and working on those things, you go through the process. And that's the thing I love is in my work I get to ask a lot of questions. So it's like, okay, now I've got to learn how to ask myself questions rather than being what I'm better at is asking others questions that bring out what's going on inside their mind to understand how they're thinking about trying to solve problems. It's like, oh, I need to actually figure out how to solve me because I'm the biggest problem. Or you can let Jesus ask you questions.

He does that with me a lot, and his are always much better than mine. If you can get yourself to that point where you can relax, right, and just listen, it is so awesome. It is, it is. And so moving kind of more into restoration, you have the mic in front of you, you have a clip. We're actually going to play your clip. You're going to let me play my clip?

It's one and done. Well, this is a great clip. This is what I get for going into Forrest Gump. What I do like is we didn't get to play it during Danny's show, but we get to play Forrest Gump. Why do you like it because we didn't play it in my show?

Because I get to play it during Sam's show, and Sam is not a fan of Mr. Forrest Gump. No, but you did a good job with the clip. Well, what I like about this was when I started thinking about, you know, for the healing, it was like what came to mind was healing and restoration, and then you came up with the topic of, hey, after healing, let's go into this restoration because of what you just spoke about. And what I love about Lieutenant Dan here in this story is if you really try to think of a man who has nothing more on his mind than, wow, I'm going to go die, that's going to be my legacy, is that I died in war. That's really not much to shoot for. That's not, you're not aiming very high. You're not thinking, you're not dying for others.

You're dying for yourself to make yourself look good, to be, that's the most I can be to anyone out there. So when he has that and what you're going to have in the clip is him basically explaining to Gump, hey, this is what you've ruined for me. You've ruined my destiny. And that's the scene where they're in the hospital just after, you know, Lieutenant Dan lost his legs and he pulls Gump down on the floor and talks to him about this. And then the next scene is Gump actually becomes the shrimp boat captain. And because Lieutenant Dan, you know, said to him basically out of a jest, but it was like, well, if you ever become a shrimp boat captain, I'm going to become your first mate. Well, he shows up on the dock, you know, and this is the scene where this is just a little bit afterwards, but, you know, Forrest just jumps off the boat and the boat goes and crashes, you know, stuff like that, you know, it's just stupid, silly stuff. But then there, it opens up with, they can't find shrimp. They're not finding any shrimp anywhere.

They're horrible fishermen, you know, they don't know what the heck they're doing. So then, since they can't find any shrimp and they're trying to do all this, you know, then Lieutenant Dan is wondering, okay, where is God and all this because he knows Forrest is a believer. So where is God and all this? And he starts to basically start poking God. And then, so they have this encounter out there on the ship where God shows up and Lieutenant Dan is having it out with God. And it's just pretty funny to listen to him. And then at the end, through all of that, that encounter with God, he comes into the healing and the restoration and actually gets himself to a point where he shows up to the wedding of Forrest and announces also he's got a fiancé himself.

I think officially the setup was longer than the clip. I tried. Now, you listen to me. We all have a destiny. Nothing just happens.

It's all part of a plan. I should have died out there with my men. But now, I'm nothing but a cripple, a legless freak. You see that?

Do you know what it's like not to be able to use your legs? Yes, sir, I do. Did you hear what I said? You cheated me. I had a destiny. I was supposed to die in the field with honor. That was my destiny. And you cheated me out of it. Look at me. What am I going to do now? What am I going to do now?

Well, how are we going to find them? Maybe you should just pray for me. So I went to church every Sunday. Sometimes Lieutenant Dan came too, though I think he left the praying up to me.

No, shrimp. Where is this god of yours? It's funny Lieutenant Dan said that, because right then, God showed up. Now, me? I was scared. But Lieutenant Dan?

He was mad. Come on! You call this a storm? It's time for a showdown! You and me! I'm right here! Come and get me! Forrest, I never thanked you for saving my life. Lieutenant Dan.

Hello, Forrest. You got new legs. New legs! Yeah, I got new legs. Custom made. Titanium alloy.

It's what they use on the space shuttle. Magic legs. This is my fiancé, Susan. And you can hear just there at the end, I mean, just think about the anxiety he had when he was like realizing I'm still alive and have no legs. Then he's angry at God and just listen to his voice at the end where he's just like, he's content. He's satisfied.

He's finally been humbled to the point where it's like, I can just be myself and be happy with myself. That's restoration. Yeah, when you think of the healing there, obviously he has new artificial legs, limbs, right, that he can move around. But the healings of the soul, right, it's much deeper. He could have got just the legs and not got the restoration part of it. You've been able to walk and all those things, but you can hear a total difference in his voice.

Andy, that's a pretty good orphan spirit clip, too, if we ever need one for orphan spirit when he's screaming off the bow or the top of the boat. But you look at that clip and you see, okay, there's definitely a change in people's hearts, so what are those things that change in us, right, when we get restoration? Right, one of the first things that, it may not change how people see us, right, we have no control how others see us, and that's really not, honestly, that big of a thing anyway because we can't do anything about it, but what it does change is how we see ourselves, right, and that's the big one. Well, Jim Vinnie used to say a lot about, God gives you a revelation of freedom, and I always equate, obviously, to my days in alcoholism and drug addiction, and the way you got sober was you quit drinking and drugging, and the very first day I was free of that. But the restoration come as I learned to walk on my new legs, if you will, and undo the habits that had been created by that false self. And so that's the battles, and I don't know why I was thinking, you know, coming into this show was, I thought about how God promised the children of Israel the promised land, but there were still battles to fight.

It was theirs, you know, Caleb said, that's my mountain, now let's go kick those dudes off of it, is basically what he was saying. And, you know, we kick out the, by getting up one day at a time, and walking in that freedom, and no, it's never easy. I remember a guy looking at me, he says, it's easy, all you got to do is change one thing, and I went, good.

He said, your whole life, and I went, oh. But it's so true, because God gives you a freedom, and he touches your heart, and you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has done something, but walking that out is, I think, what we're talking about, and as it becomes, what does it feel like? All of a sudden, I think somebody said earlier, you know, a couple years, years down the road, you're like, hey, I'm free. Yeah, I've never been in a program like that, but I'm assuming that as you talk through it is, you know, it's the process as well, right? I mean, you have the different steps that you go through, that at each step you have different things that you recover about you, or learn about you, or take away the enemy's ability to attack you, right, when you go ask for forgiveness, those types of things. Yeah, you, it is, one of my first mentors used to say, he said the first step was about not drinking, and the rest was about learning to live again. Yeah, or maybe to live for the first time.

Yes. So, we're going to come back in the after hours, so go get it off a podcast, you can get it at any podcast outlet, you can listen to it on Facebook, there's all sorts of places you can get it. It's called Masculine Journey After Hours. We're going to talk about our stories of restoration, and the things that God's done for us, and the freedoms that we've found in it, and how to hold on to that, and why it's worth going through that process. I don't think anyone would tell you it's an easy process, but I don't think on the other side they'd say it wasn't worth going through. And so go to masculinejourney.org, register for the upcoming boot camp, March 31st through April 3rd, we'd love to see you there, God would love to see you there, we'll talk to you next week. This is the Truth Network.