Masculine Journey Lover After Hours

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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. We are in the middle of stages. We are in the middle of stages. We are doing stages, aren't we, Andy? Yeah. Glad to not be doing pillars any longer. Yeah, yeah.

There's a difference between pillars and stages. And if you want to hear that, go listen a couple weeks back. I'm sure we covered that pretty clearly.

If not, just look it up on Google. Right, David? Anyway, Andy, you want to tell us a little bit more about the stages? Kind of where we've been just briefly?

Because, you know, we just set this up in the last show. So, if you did listen to the previous part, you're getting the Reader's Digest version here. Yeah, I would have called it the Cliff Notes. Cliff Notes, okay.

Yeah, Cliff Notes version. All right, first one was Boyhood, 0 to 12. Pretty obvious there.

Cowboy Ranger, Teens, basically 10 to 20. And then Warrior Stage, we went through that. And all pretty obvious.

And we're moving into the Lover Stage now. What's not obvious, though, is how you've uniquely been wounded. And so, you got to dig into that with God on those stages.

And that is the point. This is a journey. And there's the point of the journey is that you should have received certain things from these different stages or experienced them. And when you don't, you ask God to come back in and, you know, be a father to you and show you what you missed.

And He'll lead you into people, to experiences, to where you can actually feel fully initiated and complete in those areas. Yeah, and we've all talked. Some of us have been through this quite frequently over the years, not always in depth, but at least read through it and looked at it some for the first time. But I think every one of us, going in a little deeper this time has, at least for the first four stages, got something out of at least one, if not multiple. And so, this is one of those things where Shrek likes to talk about, you know, ogres are like onions. Well, your wounds are like onions. There's layers upon layers upon layers.

And God peels them back as He decides to peel them back. Yeah, there's lessons, but there's also positive things that you can learn to where you actually got what you were supposed to in that stage as well. And you can draw on that and you can say, well, I have a certain strength that because I got what I needed at that stage. Oh, absolutely. You know, an example would be in boyhood stage, you just didn't get from your dad that you were the beloved son, you know, but when God comes after you relentlessly time and time again and throwing you gifts, just personal gifts, you know, things like you've seen on your adventures, Andy, or for me, like when a cardinal just shows up when I'm in a really bad mood, whatever that is, whatever those unique gifts, and he keeps coming after your heart, at some point, he wears you down to where you go, wow, thank you.

I am a beloved son. And you accepted what he's been trying to tell you for a long time. And that's how he comes after it in any of these stages. And so we're talking about the lover stage. And so I do want you to go ahead and go back and talk through what's meant to get out of the lover stage. And this is not just about the woman. The woman definitely plays a part in this, but it's more than that. Yes, absolutely. So lover stage late teens to for the rest of your life.

So it's another one of those and beyonds. Robby, you discover beauty, you discover poetic is more than analytical. You begin to know God as a lover, you learn to give and offer versus see what you can get. I think a lot of us struggle with that I have just how it's wounded, you get the woman too soon before you really fully developed and understand. You take questions to the woman, you fail with a woman, you remain underdeveloped when a man stays in the world of analytical.

Hope that made sense. But you don't develop properly if you stay in the analytical and Lord knows I'm in a IT field, very analytical. That stuff don't work when it comes to relationships. No, it really doesn't. What's really got to see at some point in life is watch Harold, who also came out of the IT field, right with his wife, Jan. She wasn't in the IT field.

Yeah. Well, you know, you would think as long as we've known each other, that they wouldn't talk about the dishwasher anymore. And I know, you know, for those of you this inside joke, I understand to some extent, but Harold, when he got out of retirement, I'll let you tell the story because it is your story to tell. And it does explain well, the analytical versus the poetic idea of dishwasher loading. Well, when I came home, I was around what I had not been around as much prior to that. So I began to see that the dishwasher was just jumbled up a mess in my eyes. I had spent 40 plus years as a problem solver.

So naturally, when I see a problem, I'm going to solve it. My sweetheart took it as criticism. I only intended as something to make better. But boy, it was a can of worms I should have left away from the can opener and just let them worms sit in there. You opened up a can, you just didn't know what the can was. It was a can of whoop. Yeah, whoopee. And I was the recipient of the whoop. Well, while I got the mic, I want to read something that I wrote earlier today.

I do a Bible study on the phone. And the topic was, oddly enough, about love. David Sanborn, who is a jazz saxophone player, has a favorite song of mine. It's titled Love and Happiness. One of the lines in it says, Love will make you do right. Love will make you do wrong. And I wrote after that, since love is such a powerful motivator of our actions, we need to carefully choose the objects of our love. If we are the object of love, then our response should be to love in return. It's easy to love the Lord, but not so much some of his children. Thus the imperative, and I have this kind of in quotes, because it's from the Herald Revised Version, by this they'll know your mind by your love for one another. Christ has made it clear that he chooses who we are to love, all people, not we ourselves. Not we ourselves, just those who please us. God does the choosing. Yeah, very good.

Thank you. Actually, well, I have Harold, you know, because, or you have Harold, whoever has Harold. We all have Harold. We have Harold, which is a joy, okay?

Because of all the people that are in this room, right? I'm telling you, there's the poet right there. He writes poetry.

The same man that fixes dishwasher clutter. But actually, those poets are the ways that you want and continue to win Jan's heart, right? Yeah.

Yeah, they would be called odes because they're in praise of. I love that little woman. I mean, sometimes we're at one another's throats, just like everybody. But there is no question about our love for one another. And it's been that way since we first met.

We were engaged to be married only six weeks after we met. That's awesome. Jim, you have the first clip of the after hours, if you'd like to tell us about it. And his poem was a pretty good segue into it. This is about a young boy who finds a picture of a lady and he's staying with his uncle.

It's from Second Hand Lions. And he is entranced by Jasmine. And there are there's a story to tell. And I'm going to add to the story after we go at it.

But I think that's enough of a setup. So he's out and he comes upon his uncle and he's going to ask him about you. He's asking about Jasmine. What happened? What happened to Jasmine? I have to know. I have to. She died, died in childbirth, her and the baby. What did you do? I went back to the only life I knew, back to the legion. The next 40 years, there was always one more war to fight. And I got old and came here.

Here I am. Those stories about Africa, about you, they're true, aren't they? It doesn't matter.

It does, too. They don't know what to believe in. If you want to believe in something, then believe in it.

Just because something isn't true, that's no reason you can't believe in it. There's a long speech I give to young men. It sounds like you need to hear a piece of it.

It's a piece. Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things that a man needs to believe in the most, that people are basically good, that honor, courage and virtue mean everything, that power and money, money and power mean nothing, that good always triumphs over evil. And I want you to remember this, that love, true love never dies. Remember that, boy? Remember that. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in.

Got that? That was a good speech. And it really was a place I found myself when I was very young. I was loved. I was in a household where I knew my mother and father both loved me unconditionally, and I tested that on a regular basis. But I also knew God's love. And in my early childhood, I just kind of considered that God is love, and I didn't get into anything more complicated for a while. But I was always seeking love and seeking approval. And I was falling in love every puppy love, you know, crushes is the way we usually look at it. But I started at about four years old and did it regularly.

And God kind of set me up, and He allowed me to dodge most of the bullets that come from seeking love too early. And I met my wife at 17. We were married at 18. I think we decided about eight weeks after we met.

But when you're that young, you do it. But Harold and I have been married a long time to one woman, and that's what we seek. Different women.

Different one woman each. Okay, there we go. He's verified. And God, if you give Him time, or if, like me, you're rushing it, but He is protecting you, you will find the one that you're meant to be with. And God loves us enough to set that up.

And I believe that for those that have done it the wrong way multiple times, but there's still somebody there. So Jim, in your seeking love, was that seeking validation? It was. It was seeking acceptance, approval, as much as validation. I don't think I ever really had trouble with validation until I'd failed enough to think of myself as an invalid.

Or invalid, depending on which way you want to say it. But it was, well, the funny thing was, and Carolyn said this, and this was, I was looking to be married from the age of four on. I was seeking marriage, and I saw that as a wonderful goal. And I married the first girl that took me seriously, which was my wife.

And she laughed, and when I told her that, she laughed and said, well, the joke's on you because I take everyone seriously. But it was, it was ordained and has been a wonderful journey. And like Harold, there have been some rough patches, but it's been a wonderful time. And seeking beauty is not just the love of your life, or it can be. I know Andy seeks beauty regularly, traveling the country, and I'm a little envious of that. And I've done it some and would love to do it some more, and I think we're going to be heading that way pretty soon. But there's there's so much out there that is beautiful. God has created, and all of it is something to appreciate.

Music for me is a great beauty. We're going to come back to that in just a few minutes. Andy, you got, thank you, Jim. Andy, you got the final clip of the evening, but it's the Braveheart clip. The best for last, because this, these stages are echoed in that movie. Yeah, they are.

And they do build. This is, you know, Robby had the best Braveheart clip. We used it recently, though, and it really gets into when William meets Miron for the first time since they had been children, and he came back into her life. And really, he delights in her, and it shows that. It's just a great picture of a man going after a woman's heart.

But then this is follow-up from that. You know, he ran off with her, and her dad's kind of ticked, and he wants to get him engaged in the battle. He just wants to come and live a peaceful life. And that's not the William Wallace you know later on in the film. You know, they take something precious from him, but he's challenged in that, and that's when you see a little bit of the warrior overlap with the lover. But then it goes on to where William goes after her heart and actually proposes in a funny way. And then it goes and just touches on their marriage. But there's such a commitment that drives him through the rest of the movie, that you just see that that love. He was genuinely a lover, and a lover beyond just his woman, but people, freedom, and God. Sir, I know it was strange of me to invite Miron to ride last night, but I assure you.

McClanock's daughter is another martyr. I've come to fetch you to a meeting. What kind of meeting? The secret kind.

Your meetings are a waste of time, Campbell. Your father was a fighter and a patriot. I knew who my father was.

I came back home to raise crops and God willing, a family. If I can live in peace, I will. Go on.

You say you want to stay out of the troubles? Aye. If you can prove it, you may quote my daughter. Until you prove it, my answer's no. No. No. No, Waller. No.

Didn't I just prove it? No. No.

No. Of course, running a farm's a lot of work, but that'll all change when my sons arrive. So you've got children?

Not yet, but I was hoping that you could help me with that. So you want me to marry you then? Well, it's a bit sudden, but all right. Is that what you call a proposal? I love you.

Always have. I want to marry you. Is that a yes?

Aye, that's a yes. We best hurry. He'll be waiting. Oh, wait.

Where are you going? I will love you my whole life. You and no other. I know you.

You and no other. Forever. So what prepared him for that kind of passionate love and that we saw in his life? I mean, it was only a short time that he had with Meron, but you just saw such a passion and all through his life he carried what she had given him, the garment, scarf or whatever. But you think back, okay, well what gave him that strength to love that well? And you look at how Argyle had come in and fathered him. He knew he was the apple of his dad's eye, so he'd been loved well by his father. And then his uncle, who became that father figure to him, took him on a pilgrimage, exposed him to other beauty in other countries and stuff. So it drew so much, I mean, it put so much into him that he had a reservoir of that love to actually give to Meron.

And really to people, as you see, as he calls the greater story out of him, that's a way of loving the men that he led. I thought it was interesting at the end of the clip, he says in Latin, those gummies taste the same. Oh man, I thought we were past that. If you don't get that reference, you have to go back and listen to the first show at this point. Man, I don't see what the big problem was. I totally understood what he said. And that's the problem.

Without Google. That says more about you. That's the problem. Yeah. So switching to, for the rest of the show, the rest of the topic on the lover stage, you know, what has God been awakening in you or continues to awaken in you of beauty, of things that's poetic versus analytical? You know, where's God continuing to take you or has taken you on that adventure? Andy, you have a microphone in front of you.

Yeah, I'll just jump in here. You know, it's given, it's exposed me more to go back and try to do a better job. You know, I've been separated for some time, but to actually, and I still, I'm a work in progress of this.

My word of the year is love. And it's to really, to a multitude of things. A lot of it has to do with being more patient and kind to people, but also really have it taken more of an interest and really just bring in a strength that I didn't have. But getting outside the realm of the beauty, you know, guys talk about it, but beauty through nature has really came to me as a kind of a healing balm. And it's kind of just, you know, I experienced God in nature. I've seen so much. I've been so blessed to go to a lot of different places, but I mean, you don't have to go to some place to experience the beauty and nature of God.

Robby goes out on a daily walk and finds so much. But, you know, I've heard, you know, men struggle with lust and pornography and those kinds of things. And John says, John Eldridge says, a lot of that is where you're not exposing your heart to other forms of beauty that God intended you.

You're going, all you know is one avenue. But you get something out of being out in nature and the beauty of the experience. And then it just brings out a love for God in my heart because he does. He's, I've got multitude of experiences where he's shown me stuff and he showed up on those.

No different than my dad used to go on, you know, we would go on adventures together and trips and I would experience that with him. I experienced that with my heavenly father now. And it is such a, I don't know, it just kind of strengthens that bond. I have an experience to go to that says, hey, yes, we shared this together, Father. Thank you, Jim.

Mine's a little strange, but it has been popping up lately. And it's beauty in difficulty and disasters and tragedies because it does bring us to a focus on our real beauty, Jesus Christ. I was, don't remember why, but I was remembering what I consider the biggest tragedy in my life was when I was 14, I lost my best friend in an automobile accident. And out of that, there were bonds that grew stronger with other friends during that time. There's a wonderful son that bears his name and has me remembering Steve, who was just one of the greatest guys. He was amazingly wonderful and well-developed for a teenager. And I wasn't the only one that called him my best friend. A lot of people thought he was their best friend and he was, because he was, he showed love. And I've often thought, you know, how would I have been different if I had been, not been inspired by that loss?

Thank you, Jim. Harold, poetry, I mean, you've been writing it for a day or two. You've been writing it several years. What is it about poetry that makes your heart come alive, that speaks beauty in ways that other things don't? I like the fact that to write poetry, you take a thought and you distill it into as few words as possible to express as much as possible.

And that to me is the joy and the fulfillment that I get from writing it. And my sweetheart has been the inspiration for most of the poems that I've written, but I have a few others that don't deal with her that I think are really good. One of my most favorite ones is titled Jan and the Wren. And I have a photograph of my sweetheart and her recliner doing her Bible study, and a photograph of the Wren outside on the deck rail.

Because early in the morning, they both get up, happy as they can be, and each one having so much to say, having company with God. And I love that particular one. And it does involve her, of course, but the Wren is now my second most favorite bird. That's pretty cool.

Behind the mockingbird. Yeah. I'd like to get a copy of Ode to Dishwasher. If you could provide me with that, I'd like that. I guess I'll have to create that one.

It doesn't exist at this point. Danny, you got a microphone? You got something to say? Yeah, Jim shoved it over here, so I guess I do.

Yeah. Writing some has been very, has brought something out in me. I don't know what it is, but allow me to see the beauty. And my wife, she loves to take pictures and stuff like that. So we've kind of combined with some things, because she has always seen God in nature and stuff like that. And I've seen that. And Robby mentioned a hulk earlier and God seems to have a connection with me in a hulk because... Not the big green thing. Not the hulk.

Not the hulk. But when we moved into the house we live in, there were three hawks flying around the field over there. And I sat down on the couch.

We just moved it in and sit down and just take a break. And one of those hawks come across about head high across the yard. And it looked like he was coming through the big window in the living room and just swooped right up.

It was almost like a hello. And it's just so awesome. But those are kind of some stuff.

Thank you. As I look back through my camera roll, it tells me the things that make my heart come alive. I have pictures of just some of the amazing skies that we get here in North Carolina, just when the reds and the purples and the colors that come out. I've got a lot of pictures of that.

Or when the moon, you can get a good picture of the moon when the clouds are just right. But more than that, it's been flowers. Just lots and lots of pictures of flowers. I love when I travel to take pictures of flowers and just look at how intricate they are and how unique each one is from another one. I'm not on the same plant.

I mean, obviously, they're similar there. But from different ones and how God intentionally made every one of those to be exactly what they were. David, did you have anything you wanted to say?

Yeah, I mean, really with what God's been really coming after my heart is really teaching me that love is really about being present and compassionate with Him and others, instead of going for that project or materialistic things that our world flesh typically goes for. So I challenge anybody that's thinking about it just to go to God about it. Thank you. Sorry we didn't get you in, Robby. But please go to masculinejourney.org to register for the upcoming boot camp November 17th through the 20th. Again, masculinejourney.org. We'll talk with you next week and focus on loving others well and the beauty God has around you this week. This is the Truth Network.