Reflection After Hours

This is Hans Schile from the Finishing Well Podcast. On Finishing Well, we help you make godly choices about Medicare, long-term care, and your money. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds.

Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours, and we are having a reflective type of topic today, aren't we Jim? We are reflecting on reflection. We are.

Yeah, we almost said as much as present, presence, presence, like Andy and Andy back a couple months ago in his Braveheart kick. Those were actually two separate things. You mean that's over? Oh no, it's not over.

It's never over. You just switched to the Patriot. Same movie, different era.

That's right. We are. I set this up in a way that I didn't want to tell you guys what reflection was about and see what came out, and it turned out pretty well in the first show. You pulled a Rodney on us there, did you? Yeah, well, yes.

Why do we have to have a topic, right? Jim's is the way we have to understand the topic. Totally different show.

I believe that'll probably be on the joyride right there. We are working through this to figure out what we're talking about. There you go. And so we have Andy up first, right? Andy, that's you?

Yep, that's me. So this clip is from Facing the Giants. Oh, they're staying with the stairs. But it's about the team. They've had a good season. They're getting ready to play the Giants in the playoffs. A better team, the team that's supposed to take everything. And the coach is talking to them and inspiring them, but he's talking about the success that they've already had through the season and a little bit of reflection there. Okay, we'll play it. In about five minutes, we head out for the warm up. I want to say two things.

Number one, I love you and I'm proud of you. I wouldn't trade this season for anything in the world. Secondly, you're about to play the biggest team you've ever faced. They're strong, fast and undefeated so far. But I want you to remember where God has brought us.

I want you to remember how hard you've worked. We weren't supposed to have a winning season, but we do. We weren't supposed to advance through the playoffs, but we did.

We're not supposed to be here, but we are. So if there's anything in you that says this is a losing effort, throw it out. Because as I stand here, I believe that as long as we honor God, nothing is impossible. Nothing. Leave everything out on the field.

Give your best to God tonight. And whether we leave the field of victors or not, we will give God the glory. So he's talking there about how they would be victors regardless of the outcome.

But he does go back and talk about the successes they've had early in the year that I mentioned. But to me, that's what reflection is. There's a lot of stuff in the Bible where it talks about remembering your victories. Obviously, we overcome by the word of our testimony.

What is that testimony? It's reflection on where God's come through for you. I mean, facing the giants is a takeoff on the story of David and Goliath, obviously. And so you know the story about David and how he killed the bear and the lion.

And Goliath didn't seem to be that big of a deal because he had already had these victories with God and that reflection back. And I just think about in this masculine journey, there's plenty of times that you can reflect back. We talked about don't look back and don't look back and stay back for the bad stuff. But as you look back, there's a lot of times that you do see that you were taken out and you were defeated. But whenever you started really partnering with God in this walk, in this masculine journey, then you begin to – I can tell you, I mean, where I was 10 years ago and the kind of anger and frustration I had, and then to see that to where I don't carry that anger around like I used to, and those victories that came because it was progressive, there were times where I – it was a little bit of improvement on what I had in the past. So just looking back at where God has brought you from or certainly those memorials, like you're talking about in the Old Testament, of setting up something as a reminder of the faithfulness of God, not necessarily your faithfulness, but how he was faithful to bring you through something. And then you can rely on that very fact for your future struggles.

I mean, I'd call on that quite regularly now is I've known I have a victory in an area and I allow that to be established to where I don't go back there. You know, when you reflect back, you can see God's hand, right? It's not always easy to see it in the midst of it, but when you look back and you can see it, and it does give you confidence as you're in a place where you can't see it today, right? Do you know it's still there even though you can't necessarily feel it at that exact time? You know, okay, based on history, based on God's history, you know, he's there and he's doing something. You know, I just got to trust him and walk with him in it. I mean, you have the scripture that talks about we're to get our faith from the Word, and that's true. But I really believe that personal, that's that personal word to you that he establishes that same word in you, and that's your memorial for yourself.

That is my favorite face in the Giants Club. I thought so. I was trying to ruin your day. I didn't win an Academy Award.

Wow. It was a good movie. I mean, low budget, but it really spoke to it. It had some great meanings to it. And that was a good clip. That was one that I had not remembered, so I ran onto that. I like that clip.

That was a good clip. Sam, being your favorite from that particular movie, does it take it up to the Mr. Rogers level, or even a little above? No, it's above Forrest Gump. No, still not above Forrest Gump. So, yeah, I just got this weird palette, you know, when it comes to movies.

You know, there's ones I definitely like and ones that don't. Is that what we're calling it as a palette? Yeah. Okay. I mean, we'll go with that. I'll explain to you what that is later.

Oh, thanks. Paint your wagon. Wayne, I want to hear from you. We've missed you. First of all, Wayne, it's great to have you here.

Yeah, good to be back. Last time I saw you, you didn't have a beard. It's been that long. It has been a while. Yeah, and it's not a small beard. No, no. It's to continue to grow, too. Yeah.

Just let us see what happens. It's not like Rodney Rip Van Winkle long, but it's still. No, but I was looking around, and since he bowed out, I am the holder of the longest beard in the room. You are. Yeah. And it's a beard that definitely reflects the fact that you're getting teenagers.

Yeah. You know, my oldest daughter, we are putting her in driving school. Thank God for the break that that young man or older man or whoever is on the other side of that car has.

That explains the gray in the beard right there. I took her out a while back. I love her. But she can't really see. But we're trying.

We're trying. And my wife really wants her to drive, and I'm like, okay. I took her out the one time, and we almost went into a ditch, right? So after that, I told my wife, I said, look, we've got to put her into a school. And we found out it's going to be X amount of dollars. And my wife is like, I just don't know if that's the good wise spend of money. I was like, look, dear, we are putting our daughter into a box that could kill somebody. I was like, we're not paying for anything other than for that other break.

Yeah, for the second break on the other side. So you've probably got some stuff on this reflecting topic over the last period of time. Yeah, it's an interesting topic.

I didn't realize that was even the topic of the show. I mean, I've been pretty busy with work, and we closed on a house a couple weeks ago. So I've been very busy with that. It's a fixer-upper, but a whole story there. But yeah, this is definitely a topic I've been stewing in for a while, considering the last, what, three, three and a half years for you.

For anybody who's followed, it's been interesting. But it's all kind of coming full circle in the reflection of things now, looking back of all that I had to do to get to where we are now. Even with the home that we just closed on, everything that I had the weight of my shoulders on trying to build out in the place where we were, all of the infrastructure is already there. My wife wanted to do goats.

The infrastructure there is specifically for goats and sheep, which is awesome. Just at work is amazing. So the other day I was working in the house, and I was painting it. And you need to understand that whenever we found this house, I hated it.

I hated it because I walked in it and I saw how much work there was to it. I couldn't believe that God would have taken all of that away from me to bring me into this place where I had to do all of this. And I heard him. He said, Wayne, you have no idea what a blessing this place is going to be to you. And in the last three and a half, four weeks, he told me at one point, he said, you're not working on a house. He said, you're building a home.

And he said, you're going to do this with your family. And so we've been doing it together. It's been good.

It's been really good. Me and my wife, we're talking more. Me and my oldest daughter, she told me that we're spending time together. I found out her favorite band is Earth Wind and Fire, which is amazing. That's a cool thing for me to just find out. So we start blaring that while we're in there painting together, which is pretty cool. She had me take her to get her piercings in her ears.

Instead of having her mom take her, she had me take her, which was pretty awesome for me. So I was working on the house the other day and looking out the window, and out our front window, we have a pond in our front yard, which is amazing. It's God. And all I could keep saying was, look what God did. Look what God did.

Look what God did. Yeah, but being with you during those three or four years, there were a lot of times that there was a lot of questioning, right? Your faith was strong.

I know there were times that you felt like you wavered maybe a little bit, but, dude, you held on when I don't know anyone else that could have. And God definitely had this in store for you, so I'm excited to see what happens with it. Yeah, he's out in the outdoors that I would have never believed.

Yeah, it's quite amazing. Thank you. That's good. I think something else jumped back in. Danny, you have the next clip, right? Yes, the next clip.

Yeah, it's not the first of any kind. Olympus has fallen. Olympus has fallen. You've been knocked off the pedestal.

Yeah, it's pretty rough. I'm reflecting on this show. You're like five clips down.

I know. Second show, second clip. Anyway, a clip is from the movie Fire Country, a fairly new show, and it's about a firefighter family and multiple firefighter families, actually. And the lead actor, he's the son of a fire chief and battalion chief, and he's in prison. And the back story behind it is he was in a wreck with his sister, and his sister got killed. And his life spiraled, and he went to jail for an armed robbery. And now he's in this fire camp that he finds out is in his hometown.

And he doesn't want to be there. His dad, you know, there's all kinds of father wounds and that kind of thing. But they're like oil and water and lots of different stuff going on. But, you know, you see all this stuff transpiring, which leads up to the scene that we're going to play, is there's been a wreck on a bridge up in the mountainous region somewhere in California. And there's a wreck and there's a car with two, a brother and a sister, hanging off the edge of the bridge. And they're trying to do this rescue thing without the car going off into the river. And the parents of the kids are in traffic back there. They don't know if they're kids just yet. Well, they do at this point that we step in. But the father, the battalion chief, has made some decisions.

This cost them some time. But he's reflecting on the night that his son and his daughter were in a wreck and he lost his daughter. And that is affecting his actions and affecting his decision making. And the interchange between him and his son, you realize what's going on and you obviously can't see it because it's a radio, but he does reflect back to that night a couple of the memories. And, you know, so often sometimes we reflect back and we remember the things that sting really bad.

And that's kind of where I went with this, but we can play the clip and talk about it on the other side. Yara! Sweetie! Chief! Oh, my God.

Right here. Listen, guys, the ambulance is close enough for us to push her to it, okay? We're just going to get Yara to the hospital, all right? Let's go. I don't want to go.

We're going to try everything we can. And unlike my chief, I'm not going to make you any promises. So please, once you're out of here, stay in the safe zone. Watch your back. Okay.

What? I know I shouldn't have made that promise, but why you got to talk to the parents like that? I'm just telling them like it is, Chief. You should have stuck to my plan. Your plan? Your plan is what wasted the time we did have to do a peel and peep, Chief.

Your plan is what made this already unlikely save a complete Hail Mary. It's probably what's going to leave that family broken. You don't like the way I talk to those parents?

You go talk to them. Make another promise you may not be able to keep. You're right.

It should be me. Good. Your pops listen to the reason. Why is he going the wrong way? Hey, hey, hey, the parents are that way, Dad.

They're that way. So is your crew and your captain. Just fall back, Bodie. Don't make the situation any worse than it has to be. Worse would be you trying to get in that car to get access to Sam.

Only way to save her. Hurry, hurry. Dad, get off me, Lou. Hey, hey, Dad. Here, Bodie. Let me go.

It's an order. It's not Riley in that car, Dad. It's not Riley. It's not Riley.

Look, this is hard for me too, but you have to separate them. I know. Yeah. You're right. Riley's dead.

Sam's not. Not if I can help it. You know, so often that I've reflected on things that have happened and wished I had a, in a golfer's term, a mulligan to do over.

And there are no mulligans in this life. You know, that's what I feel like the dad was seeing was if I could save this person, you know, it would undo some of the stuff I wish I would have done back then. But, you know, we know and, you know, listening to Wayne's story a while ago and, you know, all of our stories in this room that, you know, if we hang in with God and just let him direct us, then those reflections, he takes the sting out of them, so to speak.

And they become a story that you tell to somebody else to help them to a tough time. And that's just kind of where I went with this topic and all this confusing topic. And, uh, I feel like when we played the bumpy and then I probably needed to wear bell bottoms next week or something. Yeah. Based on the picture I saw of your boot camp or church. I mean, the members only.

Members only. Bell bottoms. You got it all, man.

Cowboy boots. That's right. Yeah. So, Wayne, I want to go back to you on something. You know, Danny makes a good point, you know, walking with God. But during that time, you know, a few years back, you were definitely walking with God, but it didn't give you a lot of clarity, did it?

Oh, no, no. There were some times when I was sitting on a mountain that I probably was planning on not coming down from. I mean, you know, it was not easy.

I remember one time slinging something at the front of my car and just screaming at God, like, you know, why God, why? But I screamed. But directly after that, I was like.

It might be helpful for those who have just tuned in for the first time to know what we're talking about, you know. You know, a little back story of why were you sitting on that mountain? Oh, man. Well, it started with leaving your full time employment, right? It was a very good job.

Oh, yeah. And I had a very, very good job with a very large law firm in IT doing their wireless networking security. I had my hands in a lot of different pieces there. Really cushy job. Very good job.

Very easy job. I also was day trading and things at that time. That's something that I had been working on for years, years to try to hone some kind of skill. And, you know, me walking with God the way I do at some point, he told me, hey, quit your job. And I said, okay.

When nobody else agreed, including my wife. And he gave me some things along the way that said that he was with me, that this was him, that I was going to have to do it alone. And it was okay that he was with me.

But there were a lot of times when it didn't feel like he was with me. Do you mind if I share a little bit more? Sure. And so it goes from there. And it doesn't get better, you know, because you still have bills and a house payment and that kind of stuff. And so, you know, the enemy is definitely probably wanting to try to stir that up a little bit.

But, you know, walking on the path with God is hard to do sometimes. Yes, when I did it, originally I thought we were going to, the trading was going to take care of everything. Literally right before I quit my job, in a matter of a month, I had made 20, 30 grand. I mean quickly, very quickly. And I was like, this is it. It's time. And I had seen the moment in a dream. I knew that this was it, because this had aligned with everything else. And it just went with everything it was showing me. Literally three days before I quit, I lost it all.

Wow. That was, you know, with my wife and everybody, I mean that was when it all started again. It was hard. But I heard him kind of laugh. And he said, what are you going to do now? Are you going to do what you told me you were going to do? Are you going to trust me? And I said, yeah.

Yeah. It's a lot. You know, and there was more challenges that came, and you just kept sticking it out. And your wife stuck it out with you, you know, as you went through. And, you know, issues with your house and all that kind of stuff that, I know it had to make you question at times. But I'm telling you, man, it was, A, I was glad I wasn't in your shoes to be very truthful. But B, the amount of respect, oh my gosh, that I had for you and your faith and your journey.

It was hard to see you as a brother that loves you go through that. But it was very motivational in a lot of ways to see, oh my gosh, Wayne, your faith is so strong. And I didn't go through it all well. Yeah, I remember. But there were people's lives that were touched at every junction.

Right? I mean, there were suicides. There were things that I'm all too aware of that where God was not wasting any pain, in my opinion. He was using your weakness, right, to make things strong.

That's really beautiful, actually. And that's something that so many Christians say, well, God only wants these good things for me. And I went through a very similar situation where I lost close to $50,000 while I was in divinity school because trading was what I felt like he was leading me to. And I'm not so sure he didn't lead me into that financial disaster. So that I could get to the point that you're talking about trusting him with everything.

He'll take things away from you for your own good. Looking back now, now I can see you couldn't have trusted me with that kind of wealth. I don't know that you can trust me with that kind of wealth now. No, thank you. Just give me what we need and I'll trust you for the rest. Well, you've got to fix your upper house.

You're not going to have wealth for a while. It's not that bad. It's really not that bad. It's a beautiful home. I can see so much there. I can see the people there.

He's shown us that we're going to get to minister and love on a lot of people there. That's awesome. Thank you.

I'm going to go ahead and throw my clip real quick. And this is from The Lion King. We played it a few weeks ago.

It has a word reflection in it. So just listen to it and I'll talk about it when we come back. You know my father? Correction, I know your father. I hate to tell you this, but he died a long time ago. Nope, wrong again.

He's alive. And I'll show him to you. You follow old Rafiki, he knows the way. Come on. Shh. Look down there. That's not my father. It's just my reflection. No. Look out.

You see? He lives in you. Simba. Father? Simba, you have forgotten me.

No. How could I? You have forgotten who you are and so forgotten me. Look inside yourself, Simba. You are more than what you have become. You must take your place in the circle of life.

How can I go back? I'm not who I used to be. Remember who you are.

You are my son and the one true king. Remember who you are. No, please. Don't leave me. Remember. Father. Remember.

Don't leave me. Remember. You know, I like that clip.

We just played it a few weeks ago, you know, a version of that, and I still wanted it for this particular topic, mainly because it had the word reflection. Now, mainly because it reminded us that Christ lives in us, right? And we lose sight of the fact that we, even on our worst days, John Lynch would say, and he's a friend of the show, has some great stuff on Grace.

Just go look him up. Not the football player, but the preacher, John Lynch, on Grace. And he talks to the navigators. Go watch that one.

It's awesome. But he says, you know, even on his worst day, he still has Christ in him. There is still Christ in John Lynch. There is still Christ in Sam Main and Andy and I think even David, you know, in most days.

No, it's in all of us. The thing is, is when we forget that and when we lose sight of it, we forget God to some degree. You know, and I really like that about that as Rafiki's taking back, saying, hey, don't forget. This is key. And so the question I have, you know, we talked about reflection isn't always looking back. You know, in the morning when you go to look in the mirror and you're shaving or whatever, take a moment and just look. And try to look past what you see at the surface because the enemy is going to try to say, oh, look at those bags under your eyes, Sam, or look at this or look at that or look at all the gray hair or lack of hair or whatever you want to fill in the blank with. No, have them say, God, help me see something deeper. Help me see the reflection of you in me. And then go live from that today.

Go try to live the best you out of that that you can because when you focus on God versus anything else, it's going to be an amazing adventure. And so we're going to be wrapping up here in a second. But we'd like for you to go register for the boot camp. If you've been to a boot camp before, go to masculinejourney.org. We'll talk to you next week. This is the Truth Network.