Masculine Journey Boyhood 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 are glad that you're with us today. We are talking about our next series of stages, as you said, Andy, right? Stages.

We could say that, more authority, more confidence. Stages? You really wanted to name it Pillars. I don't know.

You do what you do. It's the stages of the Masculine Journey. That's the next pillars that we're talking about. I guess it's different.

Hey, this is the difference. Pillars are independent and build the building out itself, but stages build on one another, like you explained in the last show, right? I build houses for living, Andy.

Well, my dad did something about construction. He did. He did. No, I'm just kidding. No, but you're right. I think when we enter into a pillars series, we think there's a known number and it ends up being just a much bigger number. I think what's definitely different about this, it's defined six stages, so it can't be pillars.

We're not going to add any. Yeah, we're going to add five more. All right, so we are talking about the six stages of the Masculine Journey. Andy, do you want to kind of tell us briefly again what that's about?

And if he doesn't give you enough information and I don't, go listen to the last show because we just set it up. We'll do this quick because we got a lot to get to, but you know, the stages of Masculine Journey are really like the stages of a man's life. And I never had really heard them broken down in so defined and distinct ways. And after I got done reading Wild at Heart, I read Way of the Wild Heart or Father by God is the Other and it went through these stages. And what it helps you do is if you've read Wild at Heart and know all that content and wounds and sonship and warfare and all those things, this gives you a context of where you're going to see those and how you're going to see those in the different stages of your life. I also give you some context of asking God to go back and help fill in those areas that you missed, you didn't do well, you didn't even understand that you needed them. And you're an unfinished man there that needs help from his father and who better can do it than the one that created you to walk you through this process.

Yeah, and he'll either walk you through it personally or give you other people that help you get through it and he'll send people into your life. And so as you go through it, as you go through that book, very powerful book, Father by God, if you get an old copy, it was the Way of the Wild Heart, pretty much the same book, but it breaks down into these stages. And then the questions that come behind that is you learn what you're supposed to have gotten in each stage, how you might have been wounded in that stage. And then you're supposed to go ahead and fill in the blank, where did you get wounded? You know, asking God, where did I get wounded in this stage?

And from that, what agreements did I make? Because that lets you break the warfare, it lets you step back into that area in a way where God can work on your heart. And what wounds, sometimes we think of them as like a positive thing, where an arrow went in and something bad happened to you, you got hurt in some way. But a lot of times, it's just the absence of somebody walking you through those things, maybe because you have an absent father and he didn't take you through the things you needed to know to become a man. Yeah, I remember a friend of ours, a friend of the show, a friend of the ministry, Ron Mitchell, talking about it at boot camp when he responded to the wound talk of his dad was gone at a very early age and not knowing how to tie a tie.

You know, not knowing how to ask a girl out on a date, you know, those types of things. And those were all wounding moments because he felt like he was just left alone and abandoned. I saw on TikTok this last week, I sent it to some of the guys in the groups I know that would look at TikTok, but there is a guy out there that is doing Father How Do I, is what it's called on TikTok. But it's a series of things that teach men how to do things like tie a tie because he grew up without a father and had to figure it out on his own. And he's like, I don't want anyone else to have to go through that. So even in, you know, what could be like a frivolous kind of thing like TikTok, God can do some really good work, you know, through a guy that has a good heart that wants to try to help others. And so as we talk about this stage, Andy, when we left the radio show moving into After Hours, you just played your clip from Braveheart, but we didn't get a chance for you to share how you were wounded in this boyhood stage and how God's come after you.

OK, if I must. So my dad really did give me that, just like William in Braveheart, I feel like he really was. I was a beloved son and youngest child at the time. I wasn't his youngest, but I really felt like he gave me a lot. He gave me a lot as a kid working in sports and stuff like that, and probably spent more time with me on that than my brother, who got the job of working quite a bit, you know. But and there was times that he spoke hard into my life, kind of like the first clip in the Braveheart scene is like I can remember a time when I wouldn't I really wouldn't, you know, go in and spend time practicing for baseball. Like I was a pitcher and I didn't spend the time. And when he took the time to help me through that, it helped out. But he would give me a hard time. He would give me a hard time. One time I was acting cocky on the mound and I heard it.

I mean, I heard it on the way home because and, you know, I didn't really have a whole lot to be cocky about. And he reminded me of that. But probably the worst thing, probably the wound that came and affected me the most through my life was dad had a good heart and wanted to reach out. And we had a he had been married before his previous wife's son's horrible situation. He had been in juvenile and all that. Well, dad went and got him out, brought him to our house and ended up exposing our family. A lot of stuff made to pornography for the first time. And so dad was trying to do the right thing and trying to even do the right thing for.

I think he felt like the whole family really thought he felt that would be good for my brother and sister who had actually lived with this brother. But it really damaged me. I mean, that was something a stain that I dealt with a big part of my life. And so that's that taking of innocence that you mentioned.

And and I really struggled. But I was like, ding, ding, ding. That's it. When you talk about taking the innocence at a much younger age than it should have been.

Right. So how's God come after that? So, well, it took years, but really, really set set me free from lust and pornography and those things that, you know, just bound me up. And, you know, those are the things that you didn't really know that God had. Obviously, all you did was run from the father. You didn't run to the father as we've talked about before. So really just he's he's set me free. I don't know how to put it any any other way than that. All right.

I want to actually go back to another thing. You know, one of the things your dad did when you were young, he loved to take you on adventures. And when that was stolen from you, God has stepped in and take you on.

Absolutely. Now, that was a little bit older age, but it was still I mean, you still that we did a lot as a family. We were still together as a family. And he made I mean, I remember spending time the rivers camping out at the rivers.

You know, there are a lot of stuff. He was involved in my sports. He was he was in the proper place of helping me mature as a young man. Was he perfect? No, but he he was a brick mason. He worked hard. He had a lot of responsibilities. And, you know, I've had one shot. He had three at the time. And then four when he brought this other son in.

And, you know, how do you manage all that and give each one? That's I don't know how he did it. Thanks, Andy. Robby, we're up with your clip. Would you like to tell us a little bit about your clip or some of your story first?

Which would you prefer? Well, the clips about Old Yeller. And so I hope you've seen it. But, you know, it's a classic movie from the 1950s and early 60s. But Bill Murray liked it because he asked, you know, how many people cried when Old Yeller died, you know? Is your wound like Old Yeller pants? Is that what it is? That's one of my Old Yeller. Yeah. And you might remember my faithful story.

What am I, an old dog or something? So, yeah, in a lot of different ways, Old Yeller speaks to all those things. But that's the setup for the movie. And I really highly recommend it as a movie in the masculine journey for a lot of reasons, because you can kind of see what happens as a dad leaves.

Because that's the that's the setup is the father is going to he's got to go on a cattle drive and he's he's going to make some money for the family. And he leaves the two boys, one that is in the cowboy ranger phase, actually a little bit older, and then the beloved son, which is played by, you know, Kevin Cochran. And if you're a fan of old Disney movies, you would know Kevin Cochran and and actually Tommy Kirk are both in Pollyanna and they're both in Swiss Family Robinson. And in both cases, they play very similar parts where, you know, Kevin, this young boy, is the beloved son. And quite honestly, when I thought of the beloved son, I was thinking of a clip.

I thought, man, it's kind of like Opie, like, you know, this is the beloved son is just the way it is. But unfortunately, when the guy when the when the father left. On this, it reminded me all too much of my own childhood because my father was constantly he left every Friday. I mean, every Monday morning on a business trip and he did not come back until, you know, we didn't see him until Saturday.

Sometime when he woke up and then he wasn't in a particularly good mood because he'd worked all week. And what little bit I had in my dad was a little bit frightening at times, although I knew I was the beloved son. But I didn't exactly always know what I was going to get with my dad.

But I knew one thing I was going to get is he wasn't around much. And when he would leave, he would do what the father did in this movie. You know, he takes a boy that really is too young for the responsibility and says, you are the man of the house.

OK, and this is you're going to be the man of the house. Well, he did that when I was six, seven, eight years old, when clearly I was not the man of the house. And it was pretty obvious to me that I didn't have anywhere close to running things, especially when I have two older sisters bossing me around. And it was really a very difficult thing that left me in a in a in a place of fear, like I do not know what to expect in life. And it left me really afraid of a lot of things, even walking into a grocery store and walking up to a clerk would terrify me because I didn't know what to expect from people. And I made that agreement that you can't trust people because you don't know, you know, they seem to be nice to you one minute, but the next minute, man, they could be really hard. And so it led to a lot of uncertainty, a lot of fear.

But as you listen to this clip, I love what the mom does here as she comes after both sons hearts in spite of the father is left. And you can hear that, you know, obviously or I shouldn't say obviously what's happened is the Tommy Kirk carried the older boy was told that if he could if he could grow corn, you know, that they'd have bread for the winter and then he could do a man job, then he would get a horse. And so everything's all bet on this horse. Well, old yellow, the dog comes in, causes a ruckus.

The mule box tears up the corn, you know, and so now he's he's not he hasn't got what it takes and he looks like he's a failure. So he's obviously blaming the dog and he wants to kill the dog. And about that time, little boy comes in, falls in love with the dog. And there you have this scene. Get out of here.

All right. You hit my dog. Travis, Arliss, what are you doing out there? Don't you dare hit your brother. He was trying to kill my dog. He's not your dog.

And I never even touched him. Where on earth did he come from? Same old stray dog that wrecked the fence.

Stole that big side of Midland meet there, too. He's my dog. Ain't nobody going to try to hurt him.

Where? Looks like we've got us a dog. You don't mean we're going to keep that old ugly yellow dog after what he done? You're not an ugly yellow dog.

He's a pretty yellow dog. Come on, Nita. Why not let Arliss claim him? Stop eating jumper again? You could break him at that. He's a thief, Mommy. He'll steal his plan. Most creatures will steal when they're hungry enough.

All right, but I still don't want them. Now, Travis, you're not being fair. You had a dog when you were little, and Arliss has never had one. He's too little for you to play with. He gets lonely.

After breakfast, you can take to the woods and get us a deer. And, Travis, do some thinking on what I said about Arliss and that old yellow dog. Yeah, you can't help but see how that mom goes after Travis's heart. At the same point, giving him a chance to love on the beloved younger son, who's supposed to know that he's the favorite right there, right?

You're supposed to know that you're favored when you're that age. And there's no doubt that we see her do that. But when she tells him, go out and get a deer and all that, she's saying, I know what it takes, Travis, to make this happen.

I know you can break him at that. She has confidence in him and pours that into his heart, which does well for there. So I really look back on that wounding of the fear that I had in my life as a result of what happened to me in the boyhood stage. And what I remember when I went to my first boot camp, that you guys pointed out that Jesus needed this. And if Jesus needed to know he's the beloved son, how much more do we need to know that we're the beloved son? He needed to know this so much that God broke protocol at his baptism, right, and said, this is my beloved son, right, in whom I'm well pleased. And when you guys said that, I've never forgotten what it did for my heart to say, oh, oh, oh, oh, if Jesus needed to hear that, you know, how much more do I need to hear that?

How much more do I need to see that? And I love the wounding part where it says in there that, you know, if a father is violent, not that my father was violent physically very much, it happened, but not much. He was violent verbally. And that led to some remarkable fear. However, just like when we did the – it's so funny to me what I know about this. When we did the collage that you talked about, when we did the sonship talk, I was supposed to go through how God put these different fathers in my life that really, really helped me.

Well, this is going to sound bizarre, Rama, but it's just a story, folks, okay? So when I was in my early 20s when I was really, really struggling with this fear, God sent me L. Ron Hubbard, okay? That's the founder of the Church of Scientology. It's my gravity mic.

It's my gravity mic. That's so true. But in the Church of Scientology, one of the very first fundamental things you have to do is a communications class, and in that communications class, you deal with fears, especially relational fears, constantly. And they had something they would call bull baiting where people would actually try to get you to be intimidated on purpose, and you had to walk through that. And it really—God sent Ron Hubbard.

There's no doubt in my mind. I would not be who I am today. I wouldn't walk into a grocery store.

My first marriage broke up because I wouldn't go in the grocery store, okay? I mean, it's a true story. God sent that man with that information to get me to where I could even relate to people. God sent, obviously, Jesus to die for my—and a whole lot of stuff to get me where I am today after that.

But there's other fathers that come along the way, and he's the one that—God orchestrated that. Thank you, Robby. David, you are actually up next with your clip. Do you want to talk about your clip?

Do you want to— Yeah, we can talk about it. So this is from Spider-Man 2. It's Spider-Man talking to his school friend.

I mean, a friend from school. And basically, they're going through how their father wound has left them where they're at feeling abandoned. And ultimately, as everybody shared tonight, when you feel like you're abandoned from your father, God doesn't like that feeling happening.

So ultimately, he'll turn it around sometimes and put somebody in your life to help father you through that and father you with them through that. So we'll listen to this clip, and then we'll come back and talk about it. Yeah, and at the end of the clip, they're skipping stones across the lake. You'll hear the lake in the clip, but that's what they're doing at the end. Yep.

Thank you. You know, when my father sent me away, I tried to forget everything about this place. I guess that kind of included you. You ain't got to explain anything to me, man. The boat got dumped. You ever figure out why your parents bailed? My dad left a briefcase.

That's all I got, a briefcase full of junk. Whatever. I don't know. I tried to think about it.

How's that working out for you? Perfectly. Nice form. It's just the wrist. It's just all in the wrist, buddy. So, you know, he talks about his father leaving him a briefcase full of junk. And, you know, that might be true in the Spider-Man movie, but we can all look back, and our father has left us with something. You know, me personally, looking back at some of the wounds that I've gotten throughout my life, has really shown me going through this boyhood stage and more of the stages of the masculine journey, because I'm new to that part of it, to see how the enemy really takes those and twists those and really comes back up later in life. I mean, just for me, for instance, I can look at just me bothering my children through what they're going through right now. I can see tendencies of me wanting to lean towards how I was bothered. And ultimately, you know, praying about it and trying to fight through it is a battle, and I'm battling the enemy to make sure I don't fall down the same path, or my kids don't go down the same path that I went to. Luckily, I mean, I had, you know, my uncle was there for me and taught me a lot and fathered me through a lot of things that my dad wasn't there for.

You know, I was number four of five kids, and so by that point in time, you know, my parents were there, but, you know, they were older, somewhere around Sam's age, maybe a little bit younger. But, you know, we were getting there. But the enemy really takes any type of wound that you get through any of these stages as you're going through it and twists it and turns it all the way up through the rest of your life. Yeah, I think what I really liked about your clip is you've got these people that are talking at a very deep level about woundedness and opening up and being vulnerable. And that's the first part of moving towards healing is recognizing there is something there, that there's something that needs to be dealt with. You know, why is it that I always get angry in these situations?

Okay, that needs to be dealt with probably, right, unless it's really just truly defending somebody type situation. And so digging back in, Harold, I wanted to go to you. Was there anything you'd like to add on this topic? I had a great and terrible boyhood. I was born in a little small town in northwest Alabama and had the freedom to roam all over the hillsides.

So that part of the boyhood was great. My father had a problem with alcohol and was gone. Was it a state yet? It was a territory.

It was a territory of Alabama territory. And my father was gone a lot working on construction and stuff. Most often when he was around, he was drunk. And so I had a lot of shame that I grew up with, a lot of frustration that things that I wanted to do that I didn't get to do. So like I said, I had a great and terrible childhood.

So how's God come after that for you? By teaching me that I don't want to be like that, that I did not want my kids to ever be ashamed of me and what I did. Unfortunately, with my temper and some of my fit-throwing, I think they were, but didn't realize that at the proper time. But my dad eventually got over the problem in his later years.

We did have some good years going on, but early on, no. Thank you, Harold. The list we talked about in the first show is what you're supposed to get, knowing that you're the apple of the Father's eye, you're the beloved son, you're noticed, you matter, your heart matters.

You have the opportunity for safe exploration, to do things that you love to do, and to find out you have power and strength. And that's wounded with a sudden loss of innocence, kind of like you talked about, Andy. When you don't know you're the beloved son, if that question is never answered, maybe your dad's not horrible, maybe he's just not really there. And so you don't have that question answered, and so that's a wound as well. A passive, checked-out father just won't really engage in anything. Again, it doesn't mean that they're mean or anything like that.

It's just not there when you need them to be there kind of thing. Absent father, and that can be inside the house absent or outside the house absent. We've all experienced some of that here in the team, different ones. Violent father we talked about. But, Robby, you kind of mentioned one that was inconsistent father, right? You don't know who you're going to get next time you see him.

You don't know who you're going to get. And that was the dad that I was for a lot of years until I got a lot more healing, right? Because I would let my emotions lead, and I was inconsistent. And that's a really wounding thing because they don't know when they can trust, like you were talking about, or how to engage, or can I engage, do I need to just not engage. You don't know any of the answers, and so you just kind of in fear shy away.

Now, is that a fair assessment? Oh, yeah, the scary thing is I know I was exactly that way. I mean, I know I came at it, ooh, I would have loved to have known what I know now 30 years ago, but I didn't. But the cool thing is I can still come after their hearts and apologize for the shenanigans, for lack of a better word. Yeah, it's never too late.

It's never too late to kind of turn that around. As I was going through this checklist, what was really good for my heart going through the boyhood stage, I mean, I've been doing this for a while off and on. I haven't done it in a long time, honestly. And so I felt challenged as we were going through it to kind of look at the stage with fresh eyes and say, okay, God, what were the big wounds? And he just laid them right out, and I've talked to him about them on the radio show at the molestation. The agreement I got from that was that I'm tainted.

I'd never be a real man. He came after that with a vengeance and really got me in such a great place in that area to where that doesn't even bother me anymore to talk about. My dad not being around, not being a priority in my dad's life. You know, I know that a couple of you talked about knowing that you were the apple of your dad's eye.

I knew that. I just wasn't important to him in a weird way. He loved me, but I wasn't as important as the Cincinnati Reds game that was going on or the horses or whatever was going on there. And God's came after that to make sure that I know I'm a priority in his eyes.

And it goes on and on. And I was open. I was able to find a new one a little bit. You know, the enemy was saying, you know, you're always on your own.

And then I thought about all these guys in this room and realized that's been broken for such a long time. And I'm so grateful for it that I'm not on my own. You know, and I'd encourage you to go do this as well. If you want the sheet, reach out to us. We'll get it to you. Go to masculinejourney.org to register for the upcoming boot camp coming up November 17th through the 20th. And then also the entrenchment September 30th and October 1st. That is a free event. It is not an overnight event, so you have to travel somewhere from there. Masculinejourney.org. Talk to you next week.