Busyness After Hours

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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're talking in that beginning of the show, he talks about a trench, being entrenched right here in the heart of North Carolina. Well, we have an entrenchment coming up. It's coming up September 30th and October 1st, and it's going to be in Reedsville at a, I can't remember the name of the church right off the top of my head. Something Lebanon. New Lebanon Church up in Reedsville area, and it's going to be a Friday night evening dinner, and then a session or two, and then Saturday to about dinner time, to about early evening to around six. And so we're going to... Yeah, I think it might run till eight if I remember right.

Yeah, I kind of refined that a little bit. And it's F-R-E-E free. It is. The only thing we'd ask is that you bring a donation for the food, right? Because the church is putting out for food. It's F-R-E-E free.

It is. It is free. So if you ever wanted to kind of say, what's a boot camp like, but you didn't want to spend the money, you could go to this.

And so go to our website, which will direct you to the church's website. You can register there through an email, and we'd love to have you come. It's going to be great. I'd love to see somebody, some of the people here locally come show up, and we're going to do a few of the talks from boot camp. We're still finalizing what that looks like, but it's going to be exciting. And did I mention it's F-R-E-E free?

It is free. We could call it a lost leader except we don't make anything on the camp. No, we're fine. We're fine. Anyway, it will be a blast and a really awesome way to spend a weekend.

I'm really looking forward to it. It's a Friday and a Saturday in Raidville, which isn't far. I'm actually very close to where I live.

Chris Yeah. And Jared, the pastor there, is excited about having us come for this. He's got his men coming from the church and some from the community. And so really just looking forward to it.

I'd love to have you there. Go to masculinejourney.org. You can click at the banner at the top that says, Entrenchment.

The one Robby put up, very good job, Robby. That looks great. And you can go right to the website, the church's email, and register. So if there's more information on there, Rodney's got some more information that we can send you in a flyer.

Just reach out to us at any of our emails. Sam at masculinejourney.org, Danny, Jim. Jim won't check his. So don't send it to Jim. That's like the spam folder.

It's like our spam folder. It's just called Jim. Anyway, Rodney, you want to tell us a little bit about the topic that we're talking about today? Rodney Well, you're thinking about entrenchment. I'm like, wow, you got a busy life and you're just fighting that. Get behind an entrenched barricade.

That'll do it for you because behind the entrenched barricade, it is calm and peaceful. But we're talking about busyness, busyness in life, busyness with work, with ministry, with anything that kind of becomes a burden, becomes a chore, becomes something that hinders you from being with God, with your family, with other loved ones, friends, brothers, sisters, whatever it happens to be that just kind of keeps you from being where you really want to be. If it's not good for your heart, that busyness just might not be where you're supposed to be. So I'm going to go ahead and set up then the clip then because where I kind of went, my thought was like, okay, Lord, where do we have some busyness? And he just took me back to an old clip that I had had before, which is family vacation. You've got a family where a father who really wants to have his family enjoy this vacation and do all these things together, he's got something in his mind that is quite different than what everybody else has planned. They're just kind of like, okay, we'll just kind of go along.

And you hear the planning of it in the beginning of this clip. And then there's the pause into the next thing, you know, everybody's fed up. They just want to go back home and everybody's mad at each other.

And that's what ends up happening when you try to cram too much busyness into something that's supposed to be peaceful. Yeah. It's from the movie Vacation. Yep. Family Vacation.

Yep. Just Vacation. Is it Vacation? It's just Vacation. Well, it's just Vacation. Okay, we'll play it.

Mm hmm. Who wants to see the trip, Dick? What? Dad, we're playing. Okay, shut off the video games. Come on, Russ. Shut off. I know you'll enjoy this.

I've worked out the whole trip on the computer. So we get the maximum amount of fun time at Wally World without missing any of the good stuff along the way. Go. There's us.

And there's Wally World. Now let's just take a look at day one, shall we? Honey, come on in. We're going to do day one. Okay, now there's the family truckster as we leave Chicago. Rusty, please do not eat the truckster. Russ, do you mind?

I'm trying to work this out here on the old computer. Please, Russ. All right. Thank you, Audrey. That's just great.

God dang, you're a clown. All right. That's enough, Russ. Okay, now I think we're moving forward. Thank you.

Good shot, Audrey. I don't want to be in the car anymore. I want to go home.

I don't want to go to Wally World. Clark, under the circumstances, I wouldn't mind if we just went home. In retrospect, it seems like a pretty bad idea driving out.

It's been one disaster after another. Yeah, it's been a real drag, Dad. Maybe we can try it some other time.

Wally World's overrated anyway. What do you think? We're 10 hours from Fun Park and you want to bail out? Well, I'll tell you something, this is no longer a vacation. It's a quest.

It's a quest for fun. I'm going to have fun and you're going to have fun. We're all going to have fun. We'll need plastic surgery to remove our smiles. You'll be whistling Zippity-Doo-Dah. I got to be crazy. I'm going to pilgrimage to see a moose. Praise Marty Moose. Dad, do you want to ask for a song? Don't touch.

Don't touch. And the Oscar for editing, because anything that you use from that movie has to be severely edited. Yes, it does. Even for after hours, it has to be severely edited.

Yeah, there's a lot of editing. So let's everybody raise their hands if they've ever been there where they've had that fight and that argument during the middle of their vacation. Oh, I'm going home. I'm done with this. I'm tired.

I'm out of here. You know, everybody's had those moments and you're just trying to cram so much in sometimes or sometimes you're just, there's moments where you're just, there's a family member. You're just not being kind to their heart because they want to do something. You're just kind of leaving them out and they just, you know, end up getting the short end of the stick and they never get to do anything they want to do. And then all of a sudden that leads to something else. And then their one brother's picking on the other brother or the other sister and then mom and dad are next thing, you know, drawn into it because once the kids go, parents come along for the ride. If we could just figure out ways to just go back to have a nice relaxing vacations, everybody still just, everybody I talked to, they're cramming so much into their days off.

They come back more tired than they left and it's even harder to come back to work and do things when you're even worse off than when you left. Yeah. Wild at Heart did a series on when COVID was starting to lift some of the restrictions warning about a lot of what we're seeing. And that's pretty common.

You know, people have not been able to take vacations or haven't felt like they could, you know, they haven't been able to go to concerts, you know, Indianapolis 500 had 325,000 people there for the first time in the last, you know, three years or since COVID began, you know, it was things are coming somewhat back to normal and people are just hungry and they're overdoing their outreaching. But even before that, they did a series, Wild at Heart did a series called the Spirit of the Age. It's a really good audible download that you can listen to from them. I'd encourage you to go do that.

You can become a tribe member for free and go listen to any of the resources. But that's a good one and it really touches on this topic in a lot of ways we haven't today. You know, we're touching on things they didn't touch on and but it'd be good to go listen to that if you have an opportunity. Jim, it's your clip now.

And wow, last week we had the No, I'm just kidding. Well, I thought I was going to get to go first tonight because I have the funny but all of our ladder show clips are funny. I tried hard to find something serious.

I worked at it for probably two hours, which for me is a lot. But I went to my favorite movie because I knew there was a little something there. And we're starting out with Wesley, our hero, and Princess Bride has been captured by the evil Count Rugen, who is being invited to come watch him tortured to death, which is ultimately what happens. And this is the clip.

The clip starts with that. And then I tagged on the end the actual his friends taking Wesley to get reborn, in a matter of speaking, but it's basically you got good guys and bad guys, both having problems with time management. Wesley's got his strength back.

I'm starting him on the machine tonight. Tyrone, you know how much I love watching you work, but I've got my country's 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Gilderoy. My wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Gilderoy to frame for it. I'm swamped. Get some rest. If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything. We need a miracle.

It's very important. Look, I'm retired. Besides, why would you want someone the king's stinking son fired? I might kill whoever you want to meet the miracle. He's already dead. He is, huh?

I'll take a look. Bring him in. I've seen worse. Sir.

Sir. We're in a terrible rush. Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle mainly to get the right of the miracles. That's, uh, when I looked at this topic, I got to thinking more and more about it, and I said, well, everybody, whether they're in the kingdom of God or not, has the same problem with busyness, and this was a lighthearted approach to that. But it occurred to me that two of the godliest men I know are very active. I won't say busy because busyness implies you're not really accomplishing anything, but they have amazing energy for doing things and following God.

And I know men also that have amazing energy and pursuing the lust of the flesh, the things under the sun. And so it's really, for me, more a matter of I have in my life, I go from being excessively busy to quitting everything and not doing a lot for a while. And I've been through that cycle. And recently I was, uh, well, I was released from a job I was getting paid for. And I said, well, at least now I'm retired and I can quit scrambling.

And I've been scrambling more after that in doing what I was doing before, but now it's for free and it's far more rewarding and actually busier, at least for the time being that it was before. And it's much more meaningful. So I think our real goal is to find the sweet spot with God where we are doing what he's saying, whether we're, we don't want to be busy. You know, that's not the big deal. It's we want to be where he's got us, whether it's a peaceful time or an extremely busy time.

Yeah. Active, active time. To use your words. And so why is busy-ness bad, right? Well, absent of God, why is busy-ness bad? Because the enemy knows that eventually you're going to wear down. And when you wear down, your choices aren't very good most of the time. You know, um, what's the old adage?

Gosh, I'm trying to remember when people struggle. It's a hold heart. I'll think of it a minute, but it's, it's when they're hungry, they're tired. Can you say that in the microphone? Hungry, angry, lonely, and tired halt. Oh yeah. I said Holt. Yeah. It was close.

It was halt, right? Hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. And so doesn't busy-ness produce most of those in one way or another? And so the enemy knows when he can get you to those places where you're hungry, angry, lonely, tired, you're going to fall real easy. And when you fall, it takes your family a lot of times. It takes your friends.

It takes other people. Not that that's pressure, but there's more writing on it than just you. And so some of this busy-ness, you may not feel it. You may not feel the effects, but know that it's coming. The enemy has done this for generations and he knows how to do it well and he'll mask it and it can be, you can be busy with good things. It's not like you're out, you know, gambling or whatever.

Right. And I'm not saying that it's, you know, maybe you're in five different ministries and you really should only be in three because that's what God knows you have margin for. And that's hard to say, but it's one of those things where you look to God and say, God, is this really where I need to be?

Where do I need to be here? It's amazing. You talk about that. It comes up spiritual health and physical health because you get run down, your physical health goes. For me, I'm usually pretty healthy, but when I lose sleep, next thing I know, that's when I am more susceptible to catching something, getting something and just getting run down a little bit. But when you're physically healthy, you're working out and you're, you're active.

It's, you know, you're, you're much more likely to stay healthy. And the same thing spiritually, it's, it is, it's the quality of that time and how you spend it. Not necessarily what it is, because like you said, it, you, you dedicate yourself to something you think, wow, this is really something that's important. And next thing you know, it's more important than God. You put it ahead of him and it's taken the wrong position.

It's like, no, you need to go to P2 instead of P1. Right. Yeah, exactly. Now, Andy, we were talking a little bit, uh, between the shows about, you know, scripturally, is there anything scripturally where, you know, it addresses busyness? So the pastor had a sermon this weekend and he was talking about, there's a lot of scriptures, the Bible say one thing, talking about priorities, just trying to make the point of these are really things that you should look at. And one of the scriptures was from Luke 10, Luke 10 42, and it's, and it's where Martha is trying to get everything ready and it's a good thing. She's trying to prepare for everybody. It talks about being good and hospitable, but then Jesus kind of calls her out on it and says, Mary's chart, uh, chosen the better thing, the better part.

And she was sitting at his feet worshiping him. And I think that's where, you know, there is that balance. I mean, the hospital stuff had to be done preparation for him coming. But there's a time where I think we're too busy serving the Lord to the, to know the Lord and to, to really, to follow him. I truly believe the more that we get closer to him, we realize that we're in a partnership and that anything that we go out there trying to be, do something good on our own, it's where, uh, and leaving him out, we're, we're really getting things out of balance. This is what we're talking about here. Just you need to be doing all the right things.

But if he's not in it, you know, there's no purpose in it. And the other thing I would bring out about that scripture that's beautiful. And it's also in the Song of Solomon, because what she says is, you know, this is what she says.

119th song? Yeah, it's not, it's, it's actually Song of Solomon. And she says, my mother's sons were angry with me. They've made me keeper of the vineyards. Well, see, that's what Martha is not only taking her busy-ness to the next level, she's trying to pull the person that's getting it right back into her deal. And so, so, so often you may be, you know, attempting to get in your own vineyard and sit at Jesus's feet, but you got a whole bunch of other sisters that are going to get angry with you because you're just not producing. You're sitting on the bench.

You need to get in the game. You know, I can hear all the speeches, right? And you've heard them and, and, you know, it's, so it's a real opportunity sometimes if you've managed somehow or another to get in your vineyard to then realize that, wow, some really good intentioned sisters are going to be really angry at you in order to get the, get you to work in their vineyard.

That's true. Hats off to my wife. She went through that very thing because she, we went through the purpose-driven life and in a lot of different ways, she found out she was supposed to be a school teacher. So she followed that call of God and she had lots of her sisters who were like, yeah, but what are you doing for God? You need to be teaching his Bible study. You need to be doing this stuff.

And it really disenfranchised her, but she stayed the course and now she's been teaching for quite some time. So yeah, I think we should get stuck in the should do this. We, we ought to do this. You know, this would be the right thing to do.

Doesn't make it anything unless God says, yes, this is where you need to go. Yeah. Because what, those are the things that tend to burn us out. Yeah. It's not the things that we tend to be passionate on. It's the things that we take on in addition to that.

And then that kind of wanes into your passion, it wanes into your family, all those kinds of things that it kind of feeds into and robs from. Yeah. We're really good at the logs and the specs, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh yeah, look at Jim over there, man. He's a big old problem. Oh, you know, I see all his problems.

Tell him what to do all day long. Then I go look in the mirror and I'm like, I'm lost. I don't know what to do.

I'm, I'm messing up, but that's why I got brothers. Yeah. We've got a list we've been working on, Randy. I appreciate that.

His is very unique. Boy, we're going to hit pounding that hard tonight, Jim. We're justifying our rationalizations by the way. Yeah. We are doing that too.

Rationalizing our justification. Yeah. So Andy, you have a clip? Yeah, I do.

You want to tell us about it? So it's from the movie. Here we go. I like, I like making you wait. Okay. So this is from...

Silence is not a good thing for me. This is from the movie, The Great Outdoors from a while back. John Candy is the character Chet in here and he's with Roman, the Dan Aykroyd character, but basically, um, Chet is wanting to get out into the great outdoors and get some relief and from the busy-ness of life and seize the value in that. Well, Roman's come along to kind of get a loan from some investments, but he's kind of co-op the trip for his own purposes and they're having to talk about the, you know, what they see and the value of where they're at. I have great memories of this country when I was a kid, you know, and I used to come up here with my dad and I want the boys to have the same memories. Actually, I would look around you, Roman, for God's sakes.

This is, this is, this is beautiful country here. Take a good look. I'll tell you what I see when I look out there. If you want to know.

Hey, yeah, I'm curious. I see the underdeveloped resources of Northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. I see a syndicated development consortium exploiting over a billion and a half dollars in forest products. I see a paper mill and if the strategic metals are there, a mining operation.

A green belt between the condos on the lake and a waste management facility focusing on the newest rage and toxic waste, medical refuse, infected bandages, body parts, IV tubing, contaminated glassware, entrails, syringes, fluid, blood, low-grade radioactive waste, all safely contained, sunken in the lake and sealed for centuries. Now I ask you, what do you see? I, I just see, uh, see trees. That says it all.

A guy that's like just the simplicity of life and the, and the value of what it does to my heart to just see trees and see creation. This other guy, he's got a whole list of busy-ness of what he wants to do to be more efficient, more, be more industrialized, to see a way of making profit and you know, it's just, it kind of just, you see the, uh, the, you know, the, just the differences of, of their view of it. Juxtaposition. Thank you, Jim. Rodney, you got anything else? It's your topic. Okay, let's go with Rodney because there's nobody else to go to. Oh no, I think I got some stuff.

I just wondered. I, I, I really liked that clip a lot because I, the viewpoint, right? What's your viewpoint? You got, and back to Robby's with the model T at creativity and it's like, I see it in both. The creativity of, wow, it's just beautiful. Just enjoy it.

I love it. And then the other side of, this is what all we can do to make, make something else out of what it is. It's just that, you know, we, we, we have to really watch ourselves is that we don't want to become a wasteland of just do it because you can, it's like, what are we called into? What are we making better? Who are we making better? Is it me?

Is it somebody else? It's, it's about going in the right direction versus going in the wrong direction. And if you're going towards God, you're in it with God. If you're going towards God, you're in it with God. Yeah, that's, that's a good thing.

But if you're going to take off down a road and path, it was like, no, this is mine. This is what I do. I own this.

I'm going to make it succeed or fail. Then you need to kind of reassess and take a step back and go, okay, do you do and do that honest assessment of your own life? Where do I have those places? We all have them. It's just a matter of, are they, are they taking over? Are they choking everything out?

Are they just allowing some other things to maybe not grow as much as they could? Yeah. And you can be busy inside of the passion God gave you. We can try to outrun God instead of waiting on him to lead and guide. And that's what happens with a lot of ministries is God gives them the idea.

He plants the seed in their heart and then they forget who gives the sun and the water and the fertilizer to it. Right. And they try to do it all on their own. And it ends up just, they, they can't, they can't sustain it. Yeah.

The old apart from me, you can do what? No thing. And you know, that's, it keeps going there in the vine and the branches.

It does. And the idea, um, is so spectacular when you're doing it with him. Right. And, and, and what an adventure, whether it's, you know, making a sanitation dump under lake, if you were doing that with God, I'm sure it would be absolutely. And, and you'd be reaching people and doing all those kinds of things. Um, but it, it, it really is a challenge. And actually, you know, as we were doing the study that we're going to be doing through the Wild at Heart book, you know, just amongst our band of brothers, you know, the question was, you know, what hill would you really like to, you know, to battle? You know, what place would you, what hill would you like to take? Well, the, the biggest hill in my life has always been like, can I get to that place of constant prayer with God where I'm never hanging up? Can I get to that place where I really am abiding all the time? What a hill would that be? Because to me, if that's something I'm a hill worth fighting for, and again, I, you know, I just keep praying God will show me the way to do that, but that's a heck of a hill. Just to get to that place that you're talking about is to abide.

Yeah, it's, it's amazing all these little stories, not little stories, all these stories in the Bible that we consider to be little, how huge they really are when you start to put them in perspective. Well, I wouldn't, you didn't have to stop. That's right, I was done. Wow, okay. I don't know, now that the music's playing, I want to take it back to you.

Well, we got a minute, so you can go ahead and talk to the person. Well, I don't know, I just got a trip coming up. Really planning it out to the nth degree, what used to get me in trouble, but a lot of it, I believe God is leading me into. I want to accomplish a lot, see a lot of family, have a lot of goals. Obviously, I'm holding onto it loosely, though, and, and leaving some flexibility for God, but, you know, I have a sense, as you walk in this longer, of when you're overdoing it, and when you're doing the right amount, and then staying connected to Him, I think you get some discretion on what's, you know, where to go. Well, you walk with God, and I know you'll have a great time. You know you'll have a great time, go to masculinejourney.org, register.