Don't Look Back After Hours

This is Stu Epperson from the Truth Talk Podcast, connecting current events, pop culture, and theology. And we're so grateful for you that you've chosen the Truth Podcast Network.

It's about to start in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, and please share it around with all your friends. Thanks for listening, and thanks for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. 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. We're glad that you're with us today, and we are talking about a really cool subject. Andy, now this is your topic, but this is a really cool one because you got to do it but not do it, but it can be confusing, but you've made it really clear. So you want to share a little bit with us?

Well, it's been the team. I think the thing is, yeah, I got to be humble, right? But yeah, Don't Look Back is the name of the topic, and it really has to do with Philippians 3, 13, and 14 about not looking back and not remembering the things of the past, moving forward to your high calling in Christ Jesus. And as a ministry that we believe in going back and being healed from the past and breaking past agreements, there is a going back that you actually have to do, and there's some remembering. But I think the context of what the Scriptures say is, don't remember those things and live there.

Don't let them keep you there. And that Jesus will probably, in that finding that high calling, not probably, he will, if you have those things, if you have those wounds or agreements that need to be broken, he's not going to just leave you there. He's going to take you back. But what we were talking about earlier is that going back is actually going forward because you're following him and he's leading you into the place. There is a context, I believe, for not remembering those things. We have a lot of times where people will bring up our past to us, and we've had victory over that now. And if we remembered those things like they're trying to tell us and remember probably a different thing of actually what happened, that can take us into a bad place spiritually or even our own thoughts or even, I believe, I'm put down here, the accuser of the brethren.

The enemy would love to keep you in a place where you have victory over it and lie to you and try to tell you otherwise that you don't have victory there. Yeah, or trick you back into that same entrapment again, take you back into that place. And I think a big part of this is, as we talked about Saul, who became Paul, part of that's an identity change, right? Literally, he had an identity change from Saul to Paul. But we also have that identity change in Jesus. I think back at Gideon, you know, has a huge identity change because he's stuck literally in a pit, right? And God calls him out of that pit and into a higher calling and into a place of true identity. And so the enemy wants to love to get us back in that place of that false identity, that accusation, that place of shame, to keep us in that pit or in that rut to where we can't move. So Gideon became the mighty warrior. Enemy would have loved to tell Gideon, you're not a mighty warrior. That was just an aberration or whatever.

Anything to get you back to where you remembered who you were instead of really remembering who you're doing, I mean, who you are right now. Absolutely. Nice word usage there.

Yeah, it was good. Big one. Jim's back and you're still using big words. Oh my gosh, come on guys, get a dictionary.

You act like everything is aberration? Really? Yeah, David. Wow. I'm just a guest here. I'm sorry.

That was kind of cold. Exactly. That's, I don't know about yet. I think Sam, we need to do something about cutting him off at the door or something.

We'll draw rocks later. Jim, you had something to add? Well, he pushed the microphone in front of me because it was a big word. I figured I was going to have to define it, but we know that one.

I do have a big word I could use. In the first show, we almost beat to death the metaphor of vehicular ideas with the rearview mirror and the stuck in a rut. And you had a great observation, go back and listen, but basically sometimes you have to rock back to get forward. But my first thought when you mentioned rut was you could almost never get out of a rut by turning to one side or the other. You're either going to go back or you're going to go forward. And when we get in those situations that we need to press forward, we may have to rock back. But if you end up going back out, you still have the same obstacle to get past. Yeah, you got to go back through it. And if you let Christ take you through the rut and go forward, he's got a big tow truck and he's just waiting for you to ask for help.

So it's easy to get out of the rut. It may be a terrible time. You'll come out muddy on the other side, but you can still get through that. That's a great point. And obviously we didn't beat it completely to death. We had one more.

It should be dead now. I think it's called. We just called it.

Yeah. So Rodney, you actually have a, you have our next clip. We haven't heard from you today.

How are you doing running? It's been good for you. Hasn't it? Well, you know, I didn't recognize it until just now, but no, no, please.

We'd love to hear what you have to say. I just got stuck back here in the corner. Yeah. Back in the rut.

Yeah. So this clip is actually the one that you played just a couple of months ago and it just kind of jumped out at me probably because it was fairly recent, but Chariots of Fire, you've got two men that tell a great story and how they had things from their past that really haunted them, that really could have taken them out, but they pressed on. They had a higher calling. They were striving for more. They had people in their lives that were really, you know, one of them was very persecuted. The other one wasn't as much of a persecution, but it was a calling from the family's past. So it's a lot of pressure on a person to say, Hey, you have this calling.

You're supposed to walk in that. And that may not be the calling. The calling may be, yes, I will be there, but I may have to take another path.

And this clip is when Eric Little is telling his sister, yes, I agree. I'm supposed to go back to the mission field, but first I got a calling to go run. I've decided. I'm going back to China. The missionary service have accepted me. Oh, I'm so pleased. I've got a lot of running to do first. Jenny, Jenny, you've got to understand.

I believe that God made me for a purpose for China, but He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure. To give it up would be to hold Him in contempt.

You were right. It's not just fun. To win is to honor Him. Jenny, Jenny, you've got my degree to get, all our work.

Then there's Paris, Olympic Games. It's just not enough, wasn't it? I'm asking you to manage the mission on your own. Till then, will you do that for me, Jenny?

It sounded like he had her number. I know you guys are all, you guys got many references. Yeah, we do. But that's such a great clip and it's based on a true story. That's the really powerful part of things like that. When you realize these true stories are out there and people live in them and they're real and you have them all day all around the world and we don't know about them.

So when things get magnified for some people's stories in the movies and you can learn from them, it's a real treasure. So Eric there, his family was missionaries in China and he's like, well, he's fighting against his family because his sister specifically is saying, hey, you need to go back to the mission field, forget about this running. But he feels the pleasure of God when he's running because he's just in a state where he can really commune with God in that moment. And that's unique for him.

Others that don't have that don't understand that. But he is willing to press into it a little press into it a little deeper and say, no, that is my calling for this season. My calling in life, yes, is missions. But first I have to walk in this season and get through this. And who knows if God says, well, I know you've gotten through the running. You're running some Olympics.

That's great, but I may have something else yet. You don't know until you get there. We try to prescribe things, but God directs our steps. Then you had Harold Abrams who had to really suffer under a lot of persecution for antisemitism. He goes off and fights through that and he gets into the Olympics and he comes out and gets defeated pretty quick, easily, and maybe even embarrassed a little in his showing, I think in a 200 meters. And then I think he ends up winning the 100 meters. And he has the wherewithal to say, no, I've got a higher calling. I'm still going to press forward. I'm not going to give up. Could you imagine all the persecution he faced up until then just to get to there and then to get in there and then lose and not have a good showing.

He could have just folded. But I just love their examples of pressing forward. And I know for me, I love to live in the past.

I really do. All my sports days, the old girlfriends, the old friends, the stomping grounds, it's easy to live in that because you glorify things that really weren't that glory filled. Bruce Springsteen made a song about that, right? He sang about that a lot. Even though when you're pushing into what you know you need to push into and you know you're going in the right direction, it didn't keep little from having still some challenges, right? Wasn't his event on a Sunday? And he refused to run on a Sunday and he ran in an event that was not his and God chose to give him glory through that by honoring him. And so even though you know you're stepping in that direction, you're stepping there with God, doesn't mean you're not going to have opposition because the enemy still doesn't like it and he's still going to fight you on it. Yeah, it's a struggle.

We will have tribulation in this world, but I have overcome the world being Jesus, yes? Jenny. Jenny. Yeah, I thought you guys might do it for... I was going to say I was waiting for the Forrest Gump reference. So you actually made a point that I wanted to make or supported that. Why do you sound surprised? No, no, no. I'm sorry. I screwed up. It wasn't out of surprise. It was out of... Smooth. Thank you, smooth.

That's what I should have started with, was smooth. No, it was the point that you can have... There was an expectation that he was going to be a missionary and it was Jenny's will for his life, but not necessarily God's at the time.

And she was kind of stuck on the past of, this is what our family does. And the high calling for Eric at that point in time was to run, maybe to eventually get to admissions. And some people would say, no, that can't be God. He's called us to go to missions at all. God has a specific plan for all of us, but remember him forgetting the past and forget what Jenny says and going towards the high calling was the right call.

Yeah, and how many more people may have come to hear him because he was an Olympic champion? Exactly. Yeah, no one knows except for God on why he chose to play it out that way. Yeah. Well, you actually have the next clip. David, did you want to add something there?

I was just going to say, God's timing is always perfect, regardless of the situation. That's right. Yeah, I think he had you throw that in right there. Yep, he did. That's a good word from the guest.

It is, yeah. I try real hard. We may have you back next week, David.

We'll see. All right. Andy, you got the next clip, actually.

I do. So this is from The Patriot, and we've used this to talk about agreements and wounds in the past and kind of made the points about how the character Benjamin Martin is kind of like a Francis Marion in this movie, and it's on the revolution, and it's really Francis. Well, Benjamin Martin, in this fictitious story, he fought in the French and Indian War, and he had some sins from that. He was a violent man from what we gather. The thing is, he comes on the first part of this clip, he talks about that, about his past, and then it gets into this legislature talking about whether they're going to go to war or not, and then a legislative representative brings up the fact that you had a pretty bad past, and the point is, is Benjamin's got this idea, and it's keeping him in his past.

You've got this other guy speaking, and the movie goes on, and he overcomes a lot of that, but again, it's this constraining factor of other voices trying to keep you in the past. I have long feared that my sins would return to visit me, and the cost is more than I can bear. You all know why I'm here. I'm not an orator, and I would not try to convince you of the worthiness of our cause. I'm a soldier, and we are at war. From Philadelphia, we expect a declaration of independence. Eight of the thirteen colonies have levied money in support of a continental army.

I ask that South Carolina be the ninth. An elected legislature could trample a man's rights as easily as the king can. Captain Martin, I understood you to be a patriot. If you mean by patriot, am I angry about taxation without representation? Well, yes, I am. Should the American colonies govern themselves independently? I believe they can, and they should, but if you're asking me, am I willing to go to war with England?

Well, then the answer is most definitely no. This from the same Captain Benjamin Martin, whose fury was so famous during the wilderness campaign? I was intemperate in my youth. Temperance can be a convenient disguise for fear. So, you know, you hear it there both from the start at the start of that clip and the end of just those voices that want to keep you in the past, and you know there was a high calling, the American Revolution, and he had a purpose in that, but he didn't want to enter into that immediately. I use this a lot, we've talked about it in Spiritual Warfare, of whether we're going to engage in that, but the past was really what was preventing him from going and moving forward to his high calling in this situation. He was also fearful of the effect on his family and losing his family, it says it in the clip, but ideally, or not ideally, actually it was more of a fear of what had happened in his past and how he was just kind of stuck there, and he had to really, if you go on and watch the movie, he really had to be drawn out.

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly. The one thing that I thought about, though, as we're playing this clip, he kept the weapons. You know, so there was something in him that knew that God created him for a time such as this, right?

Because if he really, I knew he had some regrets, he had some things he didn't like about himself, but not enough to get rid of the instruments that he would need, so I think there was some level of him that knew that it needed to be directed differently maybe, you know, than it was in the past. That's a good point, because his son found him and went and looked at him, and he was like, he took him away from him. Yeah, he didn't take him and throw him in the fire.

He took him away from him, set him aside, and ended up having to use him. Right, yeah, so I think down deep he knew that in the right situation I am called to do these things. Right, and it took a lot to get him there, but I mean, you referred to him as being afraid. I saw him as being very brave, because the overwhelming sentiment was to go to war with Britain at that point, but there were plenty of Tories around, and he had seen how horrible war was firsthand, and was not going to rush back into it. He got shoved back into it, and the glory returned, but I think he was just as brave fighting against the politicians as he was fighting in the war. Yeah, great point, Jim.

Thank you. I think taking on that a little bit further, there are times that we step out, you know, into a place where we know God is calling us to step out. Right, and it doesn't necessarily end the way we think it should end. Right, and so the enemy wants to come in the midst of that and say, you should have never done this.

You should have never went there. We may have rushed out ahead of God. We may have had some things we needed to learn from it, but that doesn't mean that we were wrong in stepping out, and I think that's part of this moving past the past, is realizing that sometimes God called you into some of this stuff, and that you just needed to trust that, okay, maybe I got misguided a little bit, or I got things off a little, but it doesn't mean my heart was in the wrong place. I just need to follow him more clearly or more fully, if that makes sense. That's exactly my story, is that the enemy is in the wrong place.

Exactly. My story is the fact that there was so much, so many times when I felt like I was stepping up and doing something for God, and you were inspired that way, but again, this goes back to do you have your heart back, and do you have the right mind, and are you being led by him? Are you following him, or are you out in the head of him? Come on, Jesus. Come on, let's go, and I think that's a big part of it, and that's the things that, um, you know, you remember those things, and you're not that eager to jump back out, and it's taken me a long time.

It took me a long time to get to the position to where, you know, I would really follow him into those battles and stuff that I normally would have just kind of given up to, because, you know, I don't like repeating failure, you know? No, and the enemy is there the whole time just beating you up over it, right, and to the point where it makes it hard to hear God. The interesting thing, Robby was talking about electricity a while ago, and we're talking about facing things in resistance, or resistance is what brings light. When, when electricity passes through a filament and light bulb, the resistance, it is what makes it glow, what gives you light, and there's another analogy, I think, for, you know, the things that we've dodged for years is what we're talking about, going back into the wounds, and, you know, like the Lion King, you know, going back, he knew he was going to face resistance, but yet it did shed light on what was going on, so. Yeah, and that's where the light shines is entering into that.

Yeah, so you're going to meet resistance when you're, when you're pressing toward that high calling, Andy, you're, you're going to meet resistance, but, but it will shed light on things, I think. And I thought I saw your light bulb come on there, Danny. Yeah. It was just, it was bright. Yeah, I shaved my head this morning, that's why.

Oh, okay. You're working the Uncle Fester right now, pretty well. I like that reference.

I'm going to have to try that, I don't know. That's why I wear a ball cap, Danny. Yeah, it could be.

Mine's in the other room, so. So, Andy, you had a couple questions. We got, you know, five, six minutes left, seven minutes left. You got anything you want to ask us about? Yeah, I think, has there been a time in your life where the past has prevented you from moving into that high calling, where if Jesus was to sit down to, in front of you and say, hey, I want you to follow me into this high calling.

And you're like, no, I can't do that because of this happened in the past. And then, you know, maybe how he's done that recently, where you've actually followed him into that high calling. Yeah, I think back at one of our first boot camps, you know, I was coming, it was over to wherever the place was down in Ashboro, I can't think of the name of it. Caraway.

Caraway, yeah, Camp Caraway. And I think it was either our second boot camp that we were there. And, you know, I'm really stepping into a space that's very uncomfortable for me and speaking in front of people when I swore to myself I would never, ever do that, you know, and God's calling me into it. And I remember just feeling this place of failure.

I was doing a talk and feeling like I was just failing all over the place and to the point where after the talk was over, I didn't talk to anybody. I just made a beeline out in the woods and just cried, you know, because I felt like I completely let God down, you know, and I was out there quite a long time. And when I came back, he chose to have people stop me along the way and talk about how much they got out of what I thought was a horrible offering, you know, and it helped me to see that, God, you're bigger than all my mistakes.

You're bigger than this whole thing. And I need to trust that if you're calling me to do it, even if it doesn't go the way I think it's supposed to, I still need to have faith that you called me to do it. You know, and so there have been other times that you've been to some of the bootcamps, you know, some of the talks don't go as well. But, you know, it's just saying, okay, God, I trust that you're with me. Because the enemy, you know, for all of you that haven't done a talk, right, you know, or been in front of the public and speaking to some degree, if the enemy doesn't want you to do it, he will constantly beat you up.

Right. And so you're having warfare in the midst of it, you know, and just learning how to walk in that. And I love the movie, A Beautiful Mind.

You know, if you haven't seen it, it's a guy struggles with schizophrenia. But one of the things that he learns to do is he knows the enemy is always out there at the edge and he just ignores it. You know, because he knows he's not going to go away.

But he also knows he doesn't have power. And getting to that place of saying, okay, God, I'm going to walk with you. And I know the enemy is going to give me opposition. But I'm going to trust in you more than I think that I hear from him and continue to walk through that. There's a phrase and we all use it.

I do too. But that's hit me several times in both of the radio show and now is what we're going to do for God. Can we do anything for God?

One of the things that you pointed out, and it's very true, he wanted you to speak and you weren't comfortable with it. I think when we think we are doing something for God and we see it's something we can do and pull off and we're going to do this and give him the glory. No, we're taking the glory on our own. And he will invite us into the things that are difficult or even look impossible.

And that's when he gets the glory. Yeah, absolutely. Anyone else? Anything you want to share?

Anything on the topic you want to talk about? You know, going back to what Jim just said, I mean, sometimes, yeah, I definitely think he's inviting. Sometimes he's shoving as well.

And, you know, I think he's, you know, shoving as well into it. I know for me, you know, praying publicly has been a very thing I was struggling with to do. And for me, I mean, not only did I pray at the last boot camp, you know, when we were doing the prayers over each other, but ultimately sending out the daily text messages, which just so happened, started again today.

I wasn't anticipating. But into tonight when, you know, some of my brothers showed up and we prayed over the business that I run and stake-prayed and actually took possession with the authority of God back over the property. So definitely, if you feel like you're being pushed, just let that go and get pushed into it for sure. Yeah, do you mind me sharing when I first asked you about prayer?

No, go ahead. So we prayed before the show, right? And so David's been with us for a while, you know, he's on the team. And so I look over, he's been here a month or two at the time and I go, hey, David, will you pray for us tonight?

And he just went, no. Okay, you know, so to see God's growth in you has been amazing, you know, to see that, you know, that walk with him, that trust with him, you know, because it's beyond just becoming comfortable with us, you know, because you're doing it around other people as well. And so I think it's pretty cool just to continue to step into that place of comfort or discomfort, as Jim said, a place of uncomfortableness and knowing that he's got you.

So it's been pretty cool to watch. And the prayer over the talk of the speakers, you know, for our talks. Yeah, because, amen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, David was Mr. Amen. Yeah, I think for almost two days it was just, amen, amen. Everybody looked at me at the end of it, they're like, is he going to say, amen? And then finally I got comfortable and up and really stepped out and started to actually pray out there and out loud. I was still praying even when I wasn't speaking, so.

So let me ask you a quick question. What did that do for your heart when you stepped out and it went okay? It was great.

It really, it made me see more that I can just trust in God and let it all go instead of holding it in and trying to control it myself. Yeah, because if it was about us, we're probably going to tease you about something. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I'm sure we probably did. Yeah.

I mean, y'all still look at me at the end of prayers for if I'm going to just say, amen or not. So, but yeah, that's true. But we do have a bootcamp coming up and it's an advanced bootcamp. What that means, it's new topics. It's going deeper into some old topics.

It's some really cool stuff. So if you've been to a bootcamp, you have to have gone to a bootcamp to come to this one. You go to the bootcamp, go to masculinejourney.org to register. It's coming up March 30th through April 1st, 2nd, April 2nd. We're going to be there an extra day, April 2nd. This is the Truth Network.