Agreements-Vows And Bitter Root After Hours

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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're glad that you're with us today. And we're in the middle of a pillar fest, I think we would call that. Not a pillow fest, Danny, but that'd be a pillow fight. Pillars and pillars. Yeah, a pillar fest. And so we're in the middle of running some pillars on the tools of the enemy. And so Rodney, can you set up for us what we're talking about today?

Yeah, so tools of the enemy. This is our second pillar, and we are talking about agreements, and then the vows and the bitter root from those. So there are things that kind of go together here because you're making an agreement, which could be, I agree that I'm an idiot because that's what you hear, or somebody's always telling you you're a motor mouth and that's what you've agreed to.

I got nothing important to say. Those are kind of agreements. Vows get to when you actually start making a vow like, I'm never going to do that again. I'm always going to end up last.

All those kinds of things. That gets even deeper. And what that ends up growing in is a deep bitter root on either a person, or maybe it's yourself, or just a situation that you just can't live in very well. Yeah, the bitter root is the kudzu of the spiritual realm.

That's very good. Yeah, if you don't know what kudzu is, if you're not in an area... You don't want to know. You don't want to know because it takes over everything. Yes, it kills trees, grows up. It's a big viney thing. And farmers hate it because they can't kill it. Yeah, they can't kill the bitter root.

It just keeps coming back. And so you have a microphone in front of you. So why don't you go ahead and set up a clip? Yeah, so in this clip we have pledges, making pledges. And what you have is the delta house versus the omega house here in the movie Animal House. And you can hear how serious one group takes things, and how unserious the other does.

And kind of, we'll compare and talk about those when we come back. I, state your name. I, state your name. Do hereby pledge allegiance to the frat. Do hereby pledge allegiance to the frat. With liberty and fraternity for all.

Amen. Sergeant at arms. Through your duty. From now on your delta tau chi name is Weasel. From now on your name is Mothball. Kroger, your delta tau chi name is Pinto. Why Pinto? Why not? Well, I Pinto.

Why not? What's my delta tau chi name? Dorfman, you've given this a lot of thought. From now on, your name is Flounder.

Flounder? We now consecrate the bond of obedience. Assume the position. Thank you sir, may I have another? Thank you sir, may I have another? Thank you sir, may I have another?

Yeah, I don't want another. But you can see the difference between those two groups where you got one group there that's making these pledges or getting names and it's just a bunch of goofballs. They don't, they don't take anything serious.

And they don't have a bit of root. They are, they're comedians, they're, everything's funny, it's lighthearted. And even this big fight between the houses that kind of goes on throughout the movie, it's like, eh, no big deal.

You've got Bluto, who's, you know, just plain nuts. And then you go over to the other house, they're all serious and they think they're so important and they're so above everybody else. And they just hate, that's all they do. The whole thing that just in their hearts, they just hate. And that's where you see a lot of this, these people that just take themselves, like they think they're everything, right? They're, they're so important. It's got to revolve around me. It turns into this bitter root that, well, if you don't believe what I believe and you don't do what I do, it's just this condemnation that comes out of that.

It's just, it's just ugly. But that's where, you know, that lightheartedness. And that's where I think one of the things in The Masculine Journey that we strive for is a lot of humor and levity. And yes, we take God seriously, but we try not to take ourselves too serious. Yeah.

Or one another. Too serious. Yeah. Before we get to the next clip, you know, this is the after hours, we're supposed to go a little deeper. And, and I know I've shared on, on the after hours many times, you know, my story of my sister, right?

But I want to kind of play out how all three of those phases really played into my life and the danger of agreement. So from the moment I can remember the littlest ever being my sister, always telling me, you know, shut up, you have nothing to say, motor mouth, all those kinds of things I've shared on the air many times, keeping in mind she's 28 years older than me, right? So it wasn't like it was another kid. You know, you're hearing it from an adult who's an authority figure and you kind of, well, they must know what they're talking about. And, you know, my mom and dad never ever said anything to her. And so that was further validation that, you know, I didn't know them. They may have said something to her privately. They didn't say anything to her in front of me. And so it was just, again, further truth, you know, in my eyes that that has to be true because my parents aren't stepping up for me. And so there's the original agreement and then that becomes an agreement of, I'm never going to speak in front of people, as I talked about earlier, or if I would talk for a certain amount of time, I would have this inner clock that would kind of go off and say, you've been talking too long, you need to wrap it up and shut up, right? Because you're going to really just push it over the edge.

People aren't listening anyway. And so, you know, I have these vows of I'm never going to speak in front of people, you know, I have to always be very quick with my reply. It can't be anything that's really drawn out.

And so that's kind of these vows that I'm under. And then where the bitter root comes in is, you know, you would have thought that the molestation I went through was going to be the hardest agreement, the hardest wound, and all that to process. In comparison to this one, it was nothing.

Your guide kind of fixed that one pretty quickly for me, helped me get the healing pretty quickly. This one I didn't realize how much it infiltrated my life. It affected me at work, it affected me at church, it affected me inside my home, mainly with anger. When I couldn't get my wife to understand what I was trying to say, I would get mad, you know, because it was further evidence that I don't, I can't say things right, or I don't have anything important to say.

When my kids wouldn't listen to me, I would get extremely angry, you know, and sometimes the punishment didn't match the, you know, what they were doing. And until God kind of went and had me deal with each one of those, that's when the bitter root came out. And the enemy's still there, he's still out there walking along tempting with that, but I just don't give a credence anymore. But it took years, years, years for that to come out because it was so entrenched. And it came out in all these different directions.

And that's the danger of an agreement that you let go to a vow, or even if you don't go to a vow, but an agreement you let stay there, it will work its way into a bitter root if you're not careful. Does that make sense? I just like the word credence. Did I use that word? Yeah. Oh, okay.

Wow. And Jim's not even here. Yeah, that was a, that was a Jim, you know, coming to me.

Andy, you've, you've got a clip for us, would you like to tell us a little bit about your clip? Um, maybe. Wow, I'm good.

I can get closer up to here to the mic. Sure. So, um, I couldn't find much. I didn't.

Went out there and looked. No, it was a truth. It was a truth. There are times when things aren't just an agreement, they're just the truth.

But anyway, I feel like I ran onto a really good one. I haven't ever seen this movie, but it comes from the movie Ants, and it's about this ant named Z that's got some serious problems. I mean, we counted like three to four, maybe five agreements, three vows, and I throw in a couple bitter roots to, to, for, to make a salad. You know, I mean, he, he's got it all, but he's really damaged. And it's, he's just kind of articulating all the stuff. Notice as you hear, as the clip goes along, you hear a lot of never and a lot of always, those are more related to the vows that he makes.

And just, he's a messed up dude, you know, and I think it's funny though, so let's listen to it. Yeah, I think Panera has a good bitter root salad. I'm pretty sure, pretty sure I've had that one. Tasted like it sounded.

Here we go. I always feel uncomfortable around crowds. I mean it. I, I have this fear of enclosed spaces. I, I, I, everything makes me feel trapped all the time.

You know, I, I always tell myself there's got to be something better out there, but maybe, maybe I think too much. I, I think everything must go back to the fact that I had a very anxious childhood. You know, my, my mother never had time for me. You know, when you, when you're the middle child in a family of five million, you don't get any attention.

I mean, how is it possible? And, and I've always had these, these abandonment issues which plagued me. My father was, was basically a drone, like I've said.

And, you know, the guy flew away when I was just a larva. And my job, don't get me started on, because it really annoys me. I, I was not cut out to be a worker. I'll tell you right now, I, I, I feel physically inadequate.

I, I, my whole life I've never, I've never been able to lift more than 10 times my own body weight. And, and when you get down to it, handling dirt is, you know, is not my idea of a rewarding career. It's this whole gung-ho superorganism thing that, that, that I, you know, I can't get.

I try, but I don't, I don't get it. I mean, you know, I'm, what is it? I'm supposed to do everything for the colony. And, and what about my needs? What about me? I mean, I gotta believe there's some place out there that's better than this.

Otherwise, I would just curl up in a larval position and weep. The whole system makes me feel insignificant. Yeah, so I told you he was messed up. And I think that's the way a lot of, a lot of the way we feel at times when we start making those agreements, it brings on great despair. Like, man, my life is a mess.

And, you know, I can't even lift 10 times my own way. You know, it's like you, even the good things, you find a way to make them out to be bad, right? You know, even those things that you're strong at, you're like, you overpower the people around you with them or whatever. So I think it was really a good clip to point that out. Yeah, one of the things I was thinking about as that clip played, you know, we listened to it before, was that's the difference between knowledge and healing. This character Z had all the knowledge of the things that had went wrong in his life, but he never did anything with it but just lived in it. Instead of taking it, you know, to God, getting healing, I get it, it's a cartoon ant.

But, you know, that's, you could put a name with some of those attributes in there, you know, of people that, you know, that kind of just live in that place. There's a lot of humanity like that, sadly, be until they really get a view of where what God thinks of them. And you don't know really what other people think. The enemy will take those agreements, those lies, and they're connected to some kind of wound or something, some kind of word that somebody's spoken to your life, and he'll just stir those up, and he'll keep them in your mind, and it'll keep you in a place of feeling like Z. Yeah, when you think, as I think more about it, you know, there are two trees in the garden, right? Tree of knowledge, tree of life. Society is all about the knowledge. Yeah, all right. To look at the internet for just what it is, well, I'm gonna find out who's in that movie.

That's right. That's what I use it for, you know, but no, it's knowledge base, and that's the problem of some of the self-awareness that people are going through. Self-awareness is great, unless it just stops there. I can know what my agreements are, but if I don't turn them into Jesus and say, Jesus, I need to, you know, you're the husband in this relationship. You need to break this agreement for me, you know, because that's what it says scripturally, right? The husband can break the agreement, so I need him to do that, and I need to walk in that freedom, you know, or to break the vow or to help unearth the bitter roots. And so, Andy, you still have a microphone in front of you, so you want to talk about anything about any agreements or vows or anything?

This is going deeper now. Yeah, so I was thinking about this, and, you know, there's a lot of agreements that I made. My big one had to do with, I mean, there's multiple, but probably the biggest one was that I didn't realize I had an orphan spirit, and then I was pretty much taken on life to do myself. You know, there were times when I felt like I had given God an opportunity to come through, and he hadn't really done it. Well, a lot of times, you know, it was just a misunderstanding what was going on. Whenever I really stepped into that, whenever he became my father, I began to really have these agreements broken off of us, but that came about because my dad left at a critical time. We talked about it many times, and those things will sometimes be hidden from you. I would have thought, oh, my dad, he loved me.

I always knew that. It was all good, but I didn't realize how important it was when he left at that difficult time. Well, that went on. That kind of manifested itself if everything's on me, and then when things don't work out, it's even more of a report card and reflection on you, and you internalize those things kind of like, well, I don't really have what it takes, and those things become more ingrained, have a lot of never and always tied to them, become vows. I can't, I don't know if I really have a bitter agreement. I've had some of the, I had a good part of the gospel in my life a lot of times, and I'd like to think that I didn't have a bitter, bitter root agreement, but, you know, it very well could be. All I can tell you is sonship and an identity are like grenades to agreements and vows.

A couple things on that. That would start, and then we'll come to you, Rodney, that would start very simply with your dad being gone, and you hear something says you're on your own, and you say, yep, I'm on my own. You're the man of the house now, yep, I'm the man of the house. Right, and those are the types of things that, they seem innocent enough, or even a well-meaning relative says that to you. Yeah. Right, trying to pump you up, and it just solidifies the agreement. It's like, yeah, but I wasn't a finished son, you know.

Yeah. You know, that's great, but I don't have what it takes. Yeah, thank you for giving me that title that I'm not prepared to do, right, and that's the way it fell a lot of times, and there are things that I knew that I did come through for, but I would, it's what we talk about a lot, I'd focus on those. Those were strengths and avoid all the weaknesses, because those were the weaknesses, and those were the things that you continued to make agreements with.

You know, I'll never be a strong man. I'll never be able to beat this anger, this lust, whatever it may be. Yeah, and part of the bitter root agreement, we talk about, you know, God comes and peels back layers. If he's starting to peel back more and more layers on you, there's probably a bitter root agreement there. Yeah, true. Right, if it's not just a one or two times and done kind of thing, if it's something he's coming back to, it's more ingrained in your life than you realize. Yeah.

Right, and that's probably a good indicator to say, okay, God, is there a bitter root attached to this, you know, and help me get it. Rodney, you had something you want to add? Well, I know that Andy has been the one that has talked an awful lot about orphan spirit, and I remember when you first said that, I was like, I don't even know what that is. I just really paid no attention, just kind of went on.

They were banned in the 80s, I think, weren't they? Yeah, it could have been big-haired, but it does sound like a good band. But he kept bringing it up, and then finally, as he talked about it more and explained his situations, I'm like, oh, that's what is meant by an orphan spirit, when you're like, you're basically, you feel like you're alone in the fight. And then I was like, okay, I made the agreement that I don't have an orphan, an orphan spirit.

That's not me. Yeah, and then later on, I'm like, oh my gosh, I've got an orphan spirit. I just remember going through that whole trail in the smash clean journey, since I've joined up with you guys, and I was like, oh my gosh, Rodney, you're just so messed up, because you just started thinking about those things. You're just like, okay, stop, stop, stop, stop.

Let's work this thing out. It's like, okay, yes, I'm an only child. My father really wasn't affectionate at all. My mom was there, but was, you know, saying things into my life that I just basically ignored.

I just wouldn't pay attention. I was like, yeah, whatever, mom, go back to whatever you're doing. I'm a man. I'm over here in this camp, right?

I'm just different. And I had all these excuses and reasons why not to listen to certain people in my life. And then, you know, here I'm like, man, I started listening to these guys a little more. And that was one, Andy, that I was glad you've talked about it for so long, because it's meant a lot to me over time to go, oh, that's what that feels like. So I started understanding when I feel like I'm alone and stuff like that, and I hear that, and I'm like, oh, that's an agreement. You can't, you have an orphan spirit, now break that. So I appreciate it.

Thanks, and I'll, this is just one quick follow-up. You're right, you mentioned your mom, and your mom was still close. My mom was still an influence of my life, and she was always there, and you guys met her recently. But there's something about that, what a father, it was, I was orphaned by my father, and my father bestows masculinity. So I didn't have that bestowment of masculinity from the teenagers on most, what I feel like, more important than those early days, really.

So foundational, and if you watch a lot of movies, you'll see a lot of that. There was a connection with the young boy early on with their father, and then the father disappears at those critical times, usually because the father is going through some midlife crisis and trying to get his validation and understand life itself. Yeah, and it may not be that they're, they've left the family, but you know, they talk about the, John writes in Wild at Heart, that the big part is the industrialization movement. When fathers went out of the home to work, they were gone multiple hours a day, you know, long days, and didn't see the kids. And their contribution to the family was the paycheck, and not necessarily the emotional strength and presence.

Right, you know, so you can have a really good dad at heart that's wanting to do things, but just physically isn't there, because work requires them to be in a different place. So I'm gonna let the rest of you think about a story you want to share. I'm gonna play a clip, and then we'll come back and talk about it.

This is from the movie, uh, Erin Brockovich, and so what's going on here is, she is an investigator, and she's unearthing stuff for this attorney so that he can get a court case. He promises her a bonus of things come through, things come through, and he comes in to talk to her about the bonus, and we'll kind of pick it up from there and talk about it when we come back. Oh, what's up? I, uh, I have your bonus check. Okay.

And now, uh, I want you to be prepared. His, uh, figure's not exactly what we discussed. Why not?

Because after careful consideration, I felt that figure was not, uh, appropriate. Although you may not agree, uh, you have to trust my, uh, experience and judgment. Trust? You want me to trust you? Do me a favor, Ed. Don't use big words you don't understand. It's a complicated issue, Erin, you know. I did a job.

You should reward me accordingly. It's not complicated. You know what? That is the problem. All you lawyers do is complicate situations that aren't complicated. Do you know why people think all lawyers are backstabbing bloodsuckings come bags?

Because they are. And, you know, I cannot believe that you were doing this to me now when I'm up to my in-kettlement plaintiffs, which, by the way, looks like it's going to be double the amount that we had in Hinckley, and you expect me to go out there, leave my kids to be looked after by strangers, knock on doors, get these people to trust you with their lives, and the whole time you're screwing me. I want you to know something, Ed. It is not about the number. It is about the way my work is valued in this firm. It's about how no matter what I do, you're not.

As I was saying, I decided that the figure you proposed was inappropriate, so I increased it. So obviously Erin has some type of predisposition of what she thinks about attorneys, right, because it comes out very clearly on her vow on what she thinks attorneys are all about. The thing I think is funny about that clip is it gets quiet and she looks at the check and the check is two million dollars, and I don't remember what she had proposed to him.

Keep in mind she proposed something much lower, much, much, much, much lower, and he comes back with something else, and, you know, I love his poise in that he didn't let it rattle him, you know, he just let it be a teaching moment, and I wished all the times that I went off the deep end like that would be teaching moments, but they weren't always like that. Who else would like to share? Anyone? I can call on people. Anyone have an agreement?

Yeah, you know, I'll definitely share. So before I met any of the guys with the masculine journey, I had no idea what an agreement was, and after going to the boot camps and listening to the podcast, I started to look at my own life and started to figure out what agreements I had made, and one of the biggest agreements I've made throughout my life was that, you know, I wasn't a good father to my children. Most recently, I mean, a lot of y'all already know the story with my daughter Ashlyn. You know, she's had some issues throughout her life, and most recently some more intense issues, but, you know, I started to notice that, you know, everything we did, every time I tried something, I always came back to it as, you know, I'm not good enough. I'm not doing this right. I'm not, you know, I'm not punishing her correctly. She's still getting worse, and this isn't helping, and really when I broke that agreement, it was me and my wife were in the living room talking about it, and she's the one that actually broke it for me.

She looked at me and said, you are good enough. You are doing it right. You're trying everything that you can, and once I broke that agreement, then, you know, God started speaking life through me into my daughter, and we've seen some changes in her and everything like that, but you know, you got to really dig down and figure out what that agreement is, and I can promise you, even once you break it, the enemy's still going to prowl around around you, throwing little hints of that back at you, so to see if you'll fall back into your agreement that you've made.

I would challenge any, thank you David, I would challenge anyone out there just throughout the day, try to listen to the inner conversation that's going on, and see how many times the enemy tries to get you to make an agreement. It's relentless. It is relentless.

That is the number one way of getting to you. You'll be riding along, something happens, you're like, oh, this is going to be a terrible day. How do you think that day is going to finish out?

Probably terrible, because that's the lens that I'm looking at life through right now, right? Or I remember coming out of boot camp, and I've shared it on here before, this was probably four or five boot camps ago, but I just made this agreement, you know, I'm always tired after boot camps, which wasn't true, I just made, I heard it, and I'm like, oh yeah, that's true, I'm always tired, and I was tired until the point, I mean, like for a week, week and a half, two weeks, and finally I went, no I'm not, and then it just went away. Danny? I think it was Henry Ford said that whether you think you can or you can't, you're probably right, and the, you know, I was just thinking about, because I'm in the midst of, I think, breaking an agreement as I sit here, God has kind of called me toward doing some writing and stuff, and Sam and I talked about it the other day, some, and breaking through the thing that says you're not good enough, or you really don't have time for that, or you waste too much time to be doing that, or just, just the whole relentless attacks of, well, you got other things you need to do, or, or, well, nobody really wants to read what you're going to write anyway, so, in the midst of that, so. Keep fighting it.

Yep. We could pray over you after the show if you want. You could. It's funny you mentioned that I can and I can't thing is that it's one of the things I've been dealing with at work, right, so, you know, with my new job, and I've been there since January, I've really knocked their socks off, but I had that agreement, I started to kind of gain, grab hold of it, I can't do this, and kind of the same thing, God came along, actually through my boss, saying, you know, don't worry about it, you're good, like, you've got one who's with you that is greater than any other, and my boss is telling me that, right, so, God'll, God'll speak into your life whenever you need it most. Thank you. Please go out this week and just ask God to open your eyes to the agreements that you've made, the ones that you're trying to get sucked into by the enemy, and then also just ask him to help you break any of the vows, the bitter roots, all those things, go to masculinejourney.org, register for the upcoming boot camp, that's November 17th through 20th, we'll talk to you next week. This is the Truth Network.