Word Of The Year 2023 After Hours

Hey, this is Mike Zwick from If Not For God Podcast, our show.

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Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Now, welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. We are glad that you're with us today because we are talking about the word of the year. No, it's not last week's word of the year. It's this week's word of the year. It's this year's word of the year. It's 2023, and we're talking about our words this year. Ta-da.

That's all I got. Thank you for listening. We'll talk to you next week. No, the first show, several of us went.

Some of us haven't yet, and so we'll continue to talk about it. And Danny, you actually have the first clip of the second show, so that's almost something. First clip of the podcast version. There you go. Yeah, it still stands. Number one on the podcast.

Yeah, number one, not number two. Anyway, my word of the year was beloved, and I was listening to the Father by God things off of the Wild at Heart website, because we had talked about doing some stuff for that. And when you listen to the boyhood stage, it talks about the boy knowing he's a beloved son. And every time he would say that word, something just clicked, and I thought, I think my word's beloved.

And then I go to church on Sunday, and pretty much that was the pastor's message with what he was going with with the, you know, New Year's thing. And I was like, okay, so my clip is from a movie called Love Comes Softly, which is a series by Janet Oaks, I think, who wrote the books. And my wife started watching this movie, but the clip is from toward the beginning of the movie where this lady and her, this young lady and her husband coming out west. And there was an accident, and her husband fell off worse, and he got killed. And she's pregnant, and so she's out in the Midwest, you know, during pioneer days, and really has kind of stranded. And so she meets this guy who's lost his wife, and they kind of team up. And the deal is that he can stay with her, they marry, and when she has her baby or whatever, and spring comes, she can go back home. Well, the, I won't, spoiler alert, but the, anyway, the scene is, you know, all this tragic stuff is how he's lost his wife, you know, all this stuff, and they're talking about, he's talking about praying. And so she begins asking him some tough questions, and you can play the clip, we'll talk about it on the other side. Missy can watch Erin for a little while.

Where are we going? Well, in church. Missy could fall down and hurt herself, even if I'm walking right there beside her.

That doesn't mean that I allowed it to happen. She knows the father's unconditional love. I'll pick her up, and I'll carry her. I'll try to heal her.

I'll cry when she cries, and I'll rejoice when she is well. In all the moments of my life, God has been right there beside me. God has been right there beside me. The truth of God's love, it's not that He allows bad things to happen. It's His promise that He'll be there with us when they do. So, in Ephesians 3, 17, it says that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you be rooted and grounded in love, and may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and the length and the depth and the height, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you might be filled with all the fullness of God.

If it's ever been probably a spiritual struggle I've had, it's been grasping the love of God, you know, having the technicolored past that I have, you know, how could He possibly love me when I'm such a knucklehead sometimes, or, you know, as somebody says around here doing stupid human tricks, but to know that He is, that you are His beloved Son, that I am His beloved Son, you know, and He is walking with me, and it doesn't take me long to look back over my life and know that, you know, God has been with me a long time, but just still that so He is just kind of laid His finger and goes, I want you to dig into this and to know that you are my beloved Son. So, that's kind of where I think we're going, but I've been around here just long enough to know that buckle up because you're not sure what interstate we're going to take. Yeah, you'll be on that road but you don't know how long and where else you might go.

There are probably a couple of dirt roads from between here and there. So, there's a gravel in here. Yeah. Well, good.

Thank you, Danny. Robby, we come to your clip. Yes, we do. And so, you know, I guess this is my seventh or sixth. Anyway, we've been doing a while. And as we've talked about, it's been quite a journey. And, you know, I went from prosper to engage, which was, you know, two years ago.

And last year's word was to delight. So, in the engage year, it was this idea of beginning to memorize Scripture, which was like really an unbelievable experience as He took me to places I never thought I'd ever go. But in, you know, essentially learning to engage the Word of God like I had never engaged it in my life.

Did not expect that that was what I was engaging at all when I went into the beginning of the year, but that's where that turned out to be. And as I engaged in that, it led to that idea of delight in so many different ways. And I really think that it has been my heart, my quest almost for a long time to experience God in my every moment somehow. It's just I want to really want to have happen.

It's my dream. And so, interestingly, this after the idea of delight and all that in the Word, He gave me the Word this year. And actually, it's interesting you guys mentioned a theme. He added two more words to it this year, which He had never done to me. But He added the word great faith. That Jesus marveled at certain people's great faith, and great faith is a significant thing. But the actual word is the idea of gathering, which is kava. It also is the word like He who waits on the Lord is going to rise up like wings. It's that same word that's used in Isaiah. And so, the first time you find the word in Scripture is actually in Genesis when it says He gathered the waters together. And so, it's interesting that as we wait on the Lord, we're supposed to push into Him and be gathered into Him apparently in this idea of great faith. And so, with the idea of this union—I hate to be so—but that's just where my mind goes. So, for another two years, I've been working on this idea of what in the world are the statutes of the 119 Psalm?

And they're spelled with just two letters, a het and a kuff. And so, that kuff is the beginning of the idea of kava, that you can hear the sound of kava. It's the idea of drawing close. It has to do with being in proximity of God. Well, to be reconciled to the Father is not as easy as you may think, and it has so much to do with deep intimacy, which as much as I hate to say it, I run from it at times.

You know, you start to get close to God, and you've got to break off because you can't necessarily take where it goes. So, this clip is from the movie Snow Dogs, and it's an extremely intimate clip. There's a reason why I chose it because it's an idea of a reconciliation between a father and son.

It's quite comical, actually, in its own way, but you can hear the intimacy in the clip, and that was what I was going after, is that there's a young man. His name is Ted Brooks, and he's a black dentist in Miami, and he finds out that he was born to a mother in Alaska. And so, when he gets this will that says that he's inherited all this stuff in up in Alaska, and he goes, you got the wrong Ted Brooks. You know, I'm the white Ted, the black Ted Brooks.

You're looking for the white Ted Brooks. Well, it turns out his mom was black when he gets up to Alaska to get this stuff, but unbeknownst to him, his father was white, and turned out to be this real character, James Cogburn, who was just a noxious old man by the name of Thunder Jack. Well, he is trying to get the real story of how he was born and how he was turned over for adoption and why they didn't want him and all that kind of stuff, and so after he finds out Thunder Jack's his dad, you know, he goes about trying to make his dad proud by learning to run dog sleds and all this stuff, but he gets into more shenanigans, and Thunder Jack ends up saving him by taking him to this cave that's way back, you know, because he got himself all lost in the woods, and he saved him only by taking him to the shelter of the cave.

Well, when he's in the cave, Thunder Jack tells him that he wasn't even there when he was born, and so, you know, Ted Brooks gets real dejected, goes all the way back to Miami, and then he sees that Thunder Jack goes into this big bobsled race, or dog sled race, and gets lost in the same part of the wilderness because he takes off in the middle of the night when he wasn't supposed to, and so he knows that he's going to be in this cave, so he goes to save him, his father, and this scene is when, you know, his father wakes up after he's splitting his leg. What are you doing here? Your leg's broke. I'm splinting it. Yeah, well, how'd you get here? Same way you did. Not bad for a greenhorn, huh?

Not bad at all. So what kind of crazy stunt were you trying to pull out there? I thought I could win if I rode off into that storm, but if I'd bunked in like I should, if I wouldn't run into that tree, I guess I ought to thank you for coming after me, because you didn't. You didn't have to, you know. It's payback. Now we're even.

No, we're not even. You know, I've always believed that a man who don't tell it like it is is a liar, and I hate liars. Well, I lied to you, son. I was at that hospital, so now you can't blame everything on Lucy.

I was nowhere near ready to be a father. Did she love you? Well, she said so once. And then she poked me right in the face. Tell me you turned out okay. Look, I bet Lucy would be proud of you.

I bet Lucy would be proud of you. I know who I am. And so, you know, there is that moment that, you know, every son longs to hear from their father. And this idea of union that comes from validation from your father, whatever that might look like, but in an intimate setting when it's just you and him, and, you know, the conversation is run deep, and you have a chance to fully hear it. And so, you know, I have a sense that at this point you can see the great faith that Thunderjack had in his son. I mean, he wasn't just gathered in him.

He was gathered in great faith, and now he has faith in his son, and you can see that his son has faith in him as a result of him admitting he was lying, right? And so this idea of great faith and gathering together is a journey I'm really looking forward to for this year. Well, thank you, Robby.

So we come down to my clip, and it's going to spiral downhill. Thank you, Rodney. I appreciate that gesture.

I couldn't see it on the air, but I could see it. Thank you. That's who it was intended for. Thank you. I appreciate that. Last week, you know, when I called in, I was at home because I had family in town, and so I called into the show. I was pretty set that I wasn't going to get a new word. You know, I didn't want to get rid of my old word, you know, and coming from the guy that had to keep a word for two years because I didn't do anything with it, that's great improvement. So God's been working on me, and I really just loved my word last year because I think it took me into places I never anticipated.

It made me learn things about myself that I had either forgotten or had been stolen from me or maybe learned them for the first time. You know, and as he had me work in these talents, you know, the things that he called me into, and there was a lot of the year that opportunities would come up, and I was like, God, is this a place where you're asking me to enter into? You know, and it was very much an adventure together. And I really wasn't ready to let that go.

Not that you can let go of your adventure with God, I just wanted to do so much more with it. And so, to be quite honest, I wasn't really looking for a word, you know, and I can't remember how it came about, but we were kind of talking about some stuff, and I heard the word family. And I knew that that's exactly the word he had for me for this year. It's just one of those things like you talked about on the first show, Robby, you just kind of know. You know, and I don't know where that's going to go, but I'm excited, you know, because I love my family. I mean, most people do love their family, you know, you should, and some are harder to love than others.

But, you know, I do love my family, and so I'm excited about what he wants to do there, but I'm also a little nervous, because I don't know what that's going to mean, you know, because it's not always what you think it means. And so, this clip is actually a couple first for me. It's a Christian movie, which I don't normally use clips from a Christian movie. I usually use them from secular movies, and just because I know them better. And this is one from Pure Flix, which is Robby's like favorite thing to watch.

And I have watched something on Pure Flix once, and once, and one time. But this is a clip that I found when I was looking at something for family, and this just really spoke to my heart, and so Harold's already given it his approval. It's a great movie to watch, so I will trust that, and we'll watch it at some point. But it's called Faith of Our Fathers, and what I gathered from this clip, and a little bit that I watched, is you have this boy is getting letters from his dad who's overseas at war, you know, and so he's kind of getting them, and this is the last letter he gets from his dad in the process. And I want you to listen to the father's heart for the son, and this is really my heart to my kids on a daily basis, put to words much better than I could. And so, I want to listen to that, and we'll come back and talk about it.

through them all. He loves you more than I ever could, John Paul, and I love you with all my heart. I'm already so proud of you. I'm proud that God gave you to me and your mom. And know that you've got my biggest blessing to be who God intends you to be. No matter what, son, know that I love you and that Jesus loves you.

You can trust him with your heart, John Paul, just as I have. I can't wait to see you again. Until then. You know, there are times, I'm in a season of my life where I'm an empty nester. My youngest son is in college, and he comes home some, and I do get to see him. Unfortunately, he's only 20 minutes away at college, so I do get to see him a little bit more frequently than my oldest son when he was at school, almost four hours away. But it's a different season because I have two kids that live out of state and very much have their own lives going on there. I have a son that's over in Raleigh, which isn't that far away, but he has some real busy seasons with his work.

He's an accountant, and going into a really busy season, we won't really have much opportunity to talk for the next three months or so. And just having a 19-year-old, I love him all dearly, but he's got 19-year-old things to focus on, and that's where he should be, and that's the time they should be. And so, as I think about my season as a father, it's a much different role now. But this kind of sums up if I can accomplish this in my kids' lives, whatever the next years bring, that they know that I love them and I'm proud of them, and how important my relationship with Jesus is, and hopefully they'll want a relationship with Jesus. Man, if I could just do only that, that's everything, that's all that I need to focus on.

It's kind of that simple. It's not a simple way to get there, but it is a simple focus. And that's where God has me kind of focused this year of starting out, anyway, just a few days into it, of, okay, how can you step more fully into that? See, last year was about talents and it was about things, but a lot of that took me into things outside the home. And I don't think I neglected my kids at all last year, because it was a season of change and they were on their own path, but I think this is a season of investment back into them, you know, and being excited about what that might look like. And very much I have to rely on God on this adventure because they're all adults, you know? And my constant prayer, if you heard me saying the error so many times is, God, help me know how to love a child that's this age and this situation.

You know, the old adage that small kids, small problems, big kids, big problems proved to be pretty true, you know, and find that I have to lean into God more and more as my kids get older and I get older because I just realized how many answers I don't have, you know? So I'm excited, I'm nervous, and see where God's going to lead me, but I'm hoping it's worth deeper unity in my family and at least being able to, if nothing else, whenever my time's done here, they know my heart, you know, and my heart towards them specifically and uniquely to each one of them. And so that's, I'm excited about this word this year. I am going to miss the old word, but I know God's going to dovetail them together somehow, you know, and he's got a plan and we'll just see how that kind of plays out, but I'm excited.

I'm excited for this word and know it's just the right one for me. So we're done with our words for the year. We've got a few more minutes left. Anything you guys would like to add? Anything you'd like to talk about?

Any questions I could just randomly ask you? You know how much you love for me to do that. To help out a little bit, it goes again along with Wild at Heart, and again, that's where we got this idea from, but something I guess I neglected. I've heard John talk about consecration quite a bit, but he actually talked about it in the context of starting your year out really putting them, making, dedicating the year to the Lord in whatever he does, and it's going to correlate with that word, but I think it's important to do that and take a more active role. It could be that you say, I'm really going to dedicate my home to the Lord and it'll be used to his service, and maybe you go around and pray for it, pray over it. You know, there's a lot of different ways that you can actually do that, and I just think it's just another addition to the word of the year to help us to really focus in on really giving everything to him and allow him to work through that.

Thank you, Andy. So I am going to ask you guys some questions, because that's kind of what we do. So now you have your word.

It's the first week of January. All right, now what? Where do you go?

How do you start to unpack it? What's a process God takes you through? What's some advice you can give people out there that say, well, I got this word, but now I have no clue what to do? Well, for me, as you might imagine, I love, love, love the Blue Letter Bible app. It's a fantastic app, and I couldn't recommend it high enough to anybody that just, it's a Blue Letter Bible. And so if you take your word and put it in your Blue Letter Bible app, the little search thing, then you can search that word, and you're going to find that word every place you'll find it in the Bible. And you can just click on every one of those verses and see if something there is speaking to your heart. And so that's one of the things that I've done every year early on is to go, okay, where's that word?

Where's that word? And then if you really want to go deeper, you can look at that word in, you know, all the different definitions of it is, and it's going to be used in different ways in different places in the Scriptures, but then you can actually even dig into the Hebrew and see, oh, that Hebrew word here is always in these Scriptures like this, and you'll get insight into that. So, you know, you've got a whole lot of joy, in my opinion, of searching the Scriptures and see where God wants to take you and praying along the way. Clearly, as you're diving into that, is this where we're going, God?

Is this what you have in mind? What does this Scripture mean? And I love it when I don't understand because that's where it all starts. I begin to wonder, what in the heck does that mean? Why are you taking me there?

Well, that wonder is the source of much learning. Thank you. David, what about you? So for me, you know, last year was a little different. You know, it took a little while for me to really start to get into the walk of my word, but this year it was a jump both feet in, and one thing I really feel is where he's leading me with patience is, you know, when I get to work every morning, like I'm two cups of coffee in, amped up, ready, wide open, ready to go, and every morning so far this week he has had me stop and be patient and pray in our text message with the Band of Brothers, and I do it every morning, and you know, even if I get out of my truck and like, nope, got to go to work, like, he stops me and makes me do it to calm down and be patient with what I'm doing. So it's been pretty cool for me because it's not a slow start on this one.

It's wide open, 100 miles an hour right off the rip for me for this year. Good. Patience at 100 miles an hour by David. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Avoiding the train wreck. Yeah, absolutely. Danny, what about you? I see you grabbing the microphone. Well, some people ask Alexa questions, some people ask Siri questions. I text Robby questions as well.

Oh, okay. Yeah, for Hebrew stuff, and I've began to dive into it that a way and just kind of dive into the word and see what it means and go try to find it and see where it pops up. Yeah, I don't think there's a wrong way to start. It's just to start. You know, for me, it's going to be, okay, God, you gave me this word, so let's just talk about it. You know, let's pray for a little bit.

Where do you want me to start first and let him guide you into that first place. We do have an entrenchment coming up, which there's going to be some quiet times with God. Great time to work on your word and other things. That's coming up January 27th, 28th. That is free and it's in Kernersville, masculinejourney.org to register. Also bootcamp coming up March 30th through April 2nd, masculinejourney.org to register. We'll talk to you next week. This is the Truth Network.