What Is An Entrenchment

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Go to TruthNetwork.com and click on the Fan the Flames Bibles for Asia. Hi, this is Roy Jones with ManTalk Radio Podcast. Our mission is to break down the walls of race and denomination. Your chosen Truth Radio Broadcast will be starting in just a few seconds. Thank you.

This is the Truth Network. The heart of every man craves a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus speaks of narrow gates and wide roads, but the masculine journey is filled with many twists and turns.

So how do we keep from losing heart while trying to find the good way when life feels more like a losing battle than something worth dying for? Grab your gear and come on a quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides in what we call the masculine journey. The masculine journey starts here now. Well before we get going with today's show, we have sort of a special announcement. You know, we like to honor, you know, those who we serve with, you know, and we're coming up fresh off an entrenchment and there's many that I guess they're just battle fatigue.

I guess that's what happened. Still in a trench, maybe. And they're in the trench, right? And so you may- Or the latrine.

This is our concern that the trench turned into latrine in certain cases. And so we want to honor those for which honors to, namely, Sam, David, of course, Harold and Big Jim, and of course, Wayne. We're always missing Wayne. He's entrenched somewhere. He's really entrenched. Big Jim is taking off on another boat ride.

He's entrenched in the love boat again. And so just in case you thought the entrenchment, you know, there's battle involved, Andy, and then here we go. So, you know, tonight's show, very special. Before we get started, we want to tell you, yes, there's only six of us in the studio tonight. And if you can't count, you know, that would be me.

Is it six? Yeah. Do we need to do a count off? But the truth is we really miss them, don't we guys? We do.

Yeah, we do. And so enjoy this special edition of a very sparsely equipped band of brothers. So welcome to the Masculine Journey radio show. We're fresh off an entrenchment this weekend and apparently we took some casualties because, hey, nobody here. So you're not here and Sam, and of course you're not here and David and Big Jim's not here and Harold. And so it was a battle, wasn't it, Rodney? It was definitely a battle. We had iffy people, if they were going to show up on their given time and somebody was not able to make their first toss but made their second one. And then we had to have a substitution at the last minute and that's the way it goes sometimes. It's been hard. And so, you know, what we will say is when the going got tough, you know, that the real men showed up here tonight.

However that works. So I know if you're listening, you probably have had this question like Robby, like Sam, what is an entrenchment? You guys talk about you do these entrenchments and you talk about that they're F-R-E-E free and they happen at churches. And so we thought, how fun. We would do a show tonight on this whole idea of what is an entrenchment.

And so along those lines, we have clips and we have all that kind of stuff. So I really love this first clip that Rodney obviously put quite a bit of thought into and he did, he did. And so I'll let him set that up and kind of take you into the idea of, you know, what is an entrenchment?

I would win Jeopardy with an answer. Well, I will say this, not much thought really went into this. So Robby set up a little bit bigger expectation than I can deliver on the thought process. But when I just remember we're talking about, you know, after the entrenchment, it's like, oh yeah, the entrenchment is kind of the theme of the radio show for this week. And I'm like, I was asking Sam, I said, yeah, what is it about entrenchment?

What did we say? And he's like, what is an entrenchment? So my first thought was a hiking gave me the Jeopardy answer. I'm like, okay, well I'm going to go out and I want to find all these Jeopardy programs on YouTube and I'm going to be able to put this montage for something together and all these Bible questions and make it a Jeopardy Bible something or other. It was almost crickets because when I did my search, lo and behold, there's only two actual shows that I found on there that were done by different hosts. One was by Alex Trebek and one is by whoever I guess hosting now.

I don't, I don't know. I never really got into Jeopardy a whole lot. I've watched it a few times, but I was just kind of like, hmm, there's not a lot there.

So I took one of them. That'll be the clip. But there was, it just slowly worked on my mind and my heart a little bit as to, well, what is the link between Jeopardy and a bootcamp? So what we'll do is we'll play this and then we'll come back on the backside and talk about that.

And actually the link between Jeopardy and an entrenchment. Yeah, there you go. For our final today, we deal with the Old Testament players. Here's your clue.

Consisting of 21 verses, the book of this minor prophet whose name means servant of God is the shortest. You have 30 seconds. Good luck. Andy, we come to you first. You had $3,000. You weren't in third place and you picked Esau. Incorrect.

It'll cost you. Let's go to our champion, Ellen. She had 7,800. She picked Malachi.

Incorrect also. Now we come to Angela Ward who was leading. She's smiling. Why did she get the correct response? She said, who is Joel? Know the correct response. Who is Obadiah?

Obadiah, shortest book in the Old Testament. All right, you become a new champion. We all got it wrong, but you're a new champion. I know your expectations that this is going to explain the entrenchment are really low at this point, but it actually will get there.

So do my Alex Trebek. An event in your own church where you can get to know the heart of God. Rodney, what is your answer? What is an entrenchment? So where I ended up going with Jeopardy and entrenchment is you've got people that are asked or given an answer and they got to come up with a question. So how often do we walk through life where it's the exegesis, iceegesis thing. I already got an answer in my heart and I already got an answer in my head and I already know what the answer is. I'm just looking for the question to go into it and say, oh, that's what it means. Not by what it says, but why do I think it does and it's going to give me my, give me my truth, right?

I'm looking for the Bible to feed me something that I already know and I want out of this. I got a paradigm as Robby was saying, I've got a worldview. I've got an expectation of, well, this is what it's like to be a man. This is what it's like to go into spiritual warfare as a man.

This is what it's like to rescue a beauty as a man, adventure, all the different things that we talk about. So when you're, when you go in, you've, you've got some preconceived notions. Some of us come into a entrenchment and we will be, this is what I'm expecting to happen. Some of us come in with, well, I don't have a lot of expectations.

Let's just see what happens. But when you're going into that with this mindset of typically I think I know things about me, I think I know things about God's heart and what's going to happen with all that, it's going to get challenged. When you come to an entrenchment, you're doing it with a band of hopefully brothers in Christ, right?

But what we're trying to present is to become more than a bunch of guys who know each other. And yes, we're brothers, but it's, well, what did you go through this week? What'd you go through last year?

What'd you go through this past 10 years in your whole life? What are those things that are deep in your soul that you really haven't told anybody else? When you start forming that band of brothers that I've never shared this with anybody else, but I trust your heart because you've trusted me with your heart.

Now I can trust you with my heart. And that's really where a lot of this goes is that vulnerability. It's making some little small shifts to where over time with your brothers that you're going to come to a whole other place, but this is either where a seed's planted or maybe something's watered where you've done a little bit this before. Maybe you've been hurt in that. That's one of the big things you see people, I've shared before and I was hurt. Well, we're trying to really foster an environment where you can be vulnerable, you can open up and others are going to open up with you and you can walk through those with God as the main source of contact. And we know how God loves to work through others. And that's where this whole band of brothers working in and through some prompts from some topics can often kick out something in your heart, especially when you start talking about deeper things like I pose and I pretend like I'm somebody I'm not your identity.

It talks to that. Then your wounds from all these things that have happened in the past and those attack and attack and attack on identity that Satan, the world and other people will put on you that it's hard to just shake off by yourself. And that's where the biggest thing happens here is you really have to, again, the concept still is die to yourself. You have to understand you're there before you can die to yourself. So that's what we try to expose and then bring God in as the savior that he is in the times when we go out and are what we call the covenant of silence. And it's just you and God forget about everybody else. And that's where you really get your healing and restoration. So, wow, you said a lot.

Let me see if I can. You know, you start out by saying I didn't think a lot about this. Well, you just heard that there's a lot of, you know, I'm sure everybody listening and saying, yeah, there was a lot of thoughts out there. So let me see if I can dial those together a bit for us here that the idea that we're going to go into a church, right, that has a men's group of some kind, we hope, and quite often the fruit, right, you'll know them by their fruit. So what is the fruit of the men's group at your church?

Or what is the fruit of the men's group that you're involved in? You know, what does that feel like? Because here's what it feels like to hang around Jesus. Here's what he told us it would feel like in Isaiah 51. It's going to feel like the healing of the brokenhearted. And it's going to feel like there's some captives being set free.

And I mean, literally free from addictions, pornography, you know, drugs, alcohol, all sorts of interesting anger addictions. You can listen to Harold on that subject anytime. The original kickboxer. It's all coming up when we come back.

More on what is an entrenchment. We'll be right back. How did God remind you who you were at boot camp? Oh, in so many different ways from beginning to end, you better expect God to show up because he's going to show up.

If you give him the time, he's going to show up big at this boot camp. It's so important to me that I'm gonna drive 550 miles to get there. You can spend three days laughing with your brothers, fishing, shooting, it don't get no better than that. And then you're given time to spend time with God and he will talk to you with the brothers, your friends, the things that you're taught and the things that you think about. Just amazing experience all the way around. What we have at our boot camp is something that makes you stronger and gives you the strength to go on your regular walk with God.

It's something that will make you be bigger than you were when you got there. The first one I had no clue what I was walking into and then realizing that other people are in the same boat and you know how open everybody was to share their struggle is a great group and a lot of contacting was able to be done. It is a tight bond of men.

Everybody's the same and each and every time that I've come to boot camp, I've learned something different and not one man that's ever been there neglects not to take time out to talk or to share. It's serious business and you need to come one time to break bread with the men and fellowship, feel the atmosphere, hear the people pray and get down to earth about what's going on in life and get real. Register today at masculinejourney.org So what is an entrenchment? It's a symphony. Yeah, there you go.

You liked it? Nailed it. Nailed it. No, that's from the band of brothers, the theme and you know, our focus is on really helping the band of brothers, not helping, but just being an encouragement to those band of brothers. We have a great band of brothers and just, you know, like Rodney was saying, just bring Jesus in the way that we've learned him through the boot camps to the church environment. But the band of brothers, we'll have a clip from band of brothers probably on the after hour show, but I love that show and it really, it really to me is what the gospel looks like. It's community with Jesus, but it's community with all his sons that he's put around you.

Right. Because when you face a common enemy or eminy either way, and over a period of time, right, as you've locked arms in battle over all sorts of things, then you end up with a camaraderie that is not unlike people that have been through whatever war and whatever situation is. But the challenge behind that, right, is that unfortunately in many church settings, you'll never hear what's really bothering the guy. You'll never know what his addictions really are.

You'll never know what's really going on in his heart because he's hiding. And so actually a big part of what's going on in the entrenchment is we're trying to draw out people into a place where they feel safe as Rodney described in order to do that. And part of the way that we do that is through their identity, right, and getting into their story and our common story and those kinds of things. And so I chose a clip from Stripes and you might think this seems inappropriate. But it's extremely appropriate because we've played the William Wallace clip I don't know how many times where he talks about in the speech where he calls out these men because he gives them a larger story.

He gives them eternity to think about, right? Well, here interestingly in a very cool way in my opinion, Bill Murray calls these Americans out, right? And so as you listen to this clip and it's pretty funny, but the real point I'm trying to make here is doesn't it actually touch something down inside of you that you're proud to be an American and proud to be, you know, the wretched refuse as he describes?

And isn't there something that's stirring around and so as you get stirred a little bit and maybe you start thinking about when you cried at Old Yeller, then we'll talk on the other side. We're all very different people. We're not Watusi. We're not Spartans. We're Americans with a capital A, huh? You know what that means, do you? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts.

Here's proof. His nose is cold, but there's no animal that's more faithful, that's more loyal, more lovable than the mutt. Who saw Old Yeller? Who cried when Old Yeller got shot at the end? Nobody cried when Old Yeller got shot.

I'm sure. I cried my eyes out. So we're all dog faces. We're all very, very different, but there is one thing that we all have in common. We were all stupid enough to enlist in the army. We're mutants. There's something wrong with us. Something very, very wrong with us.

Something seriously wrong with us. We're soldiers, but we're American soldiers. We've been kicking ass for 200 years. We're 10 and 1.

We don't have to worry about whether Captain Stillman wants to have us hung. All we have to do is to be the great American fighting soldier that is inside each one of us. Now do what I do and say what I say and make me proud.

Fall in! You know, I can't, I don't know if you can picture this, but I would love to picture it. You're a pastor standing in front of the Lord's army, right?

And giving that speech because guess what? We are all in a battle. And a lot of us are not living life that way. Unfortunately, we're living life like a movie that we've gotten into, you know, 20 minutes late. There seems to be bad guys in my life.

There seems to be good guys. But on any given Tuesday, right, I'm not exactly sure where I fit into this. And more importantly, where does my heart fit into this, right? If I have a heart that was meant for battle, a great epic battle, where does my heart fit in that to the church?

And often, unfortunately, the only thing the church would answer to you is sin, right? Your battle is to behave yourself, okay? Well, that's, that's just not enough.

It's not enough to waken up the heart of a man. I mean, there needs to be a large epic battle. And oh, by the way, we are in the middle of one, right?

And we were all crazy enough soldiers to enlist in this and here we are, right? So what's the, you know, what's the great adventure, the great adventure at your church that's going to call up a man to where he's willing to die? Let, you know, a soldier's willing to, he's written his name on the line and says, I'm willing to give my life for this cause at your church. At your church, what are you willing to, I mean, right? So you can go direct traffic out there on, no, it's gotta be something large enough to grab your heart to want to engage all that you know, God really gave you and, and become the great American Christian soldier that, right, that this is, this is the whole deal. And what about a beauty to rescue, right? Like what about marriage and that, right?

Well, the church quite often will tell you, you know, go attend a survey, you know, of course, you know, a little bit to, you know, on the five ways you can communicate better with your wife. You know, not that that's bad, not that stuff's bad, but let's, let's, let's face it. It's not enough to make me feel like, man, I am totally in on this deal. You know, I'm wholehearted. I'm King David. I'm ready to go to war here.

I'm ready to do some stuff to rescue my beauty. Well, I can guarantee you, your wife, your daughter, your mother, your granddaughter, all those desperately need rescuing and they got a real live enemy that's really coming after their heart. And we really want to grab the hearts of men to realize that they can lock arms. And as I said, you know, right before you go on the break, we have a lot of stuff in Christianity that looks like it's the gospel, but what is the fruit when you really look at it?

Well, didn't Jesus really come to us and say, you know, if you really love somebody, are you willing to lay down your life? Right. That's what you're getting at. Are we really willing to lay down the distractions that Satan puts in our and get to that point where we see these souls, we see these wounded, we see the strongholds of Satan.

He's got the entrancements too. And there's the entrancements on either side. We got to, oh, do we really choose God's side? Do we really want to dig in? Like you say, and get to the heart of the matter.

Because if we don't get to the heart, what have we got? We got Chuck? Yeah, we got that. Okay. No, I'm just kidding. Chuck is Kenny's son and he was wanting to say something. So sorry.

No, you're fine. And when I need to say something, I got to get it out. I forget it. It'll go just like that. But the thing when I started looking at this, what is an entrenchment? You know, I went through so many clips and then I started looking at the history of entrenchment and I looked at a lot of historians and started just hearing the story behind it. And a common mindset of these soldiers that I kept hearing over and over and I watched like four or five different clips from historians was that soldier entered that trench with a mindset he's not leaving. He's going to die right there.

Okay. Well, that's what entrenchment is all about. I mean, when you, when you go to entrenchment, you better be prepared to die to self and actually submit to the Lord and do what he's calling you to do to enter these missions that Andy talks about. It's about full submission because I'm telling you, all my life I haven't fully submitted to God's calling on my life and it's fully submitted to that. So it truly is when you talk about the Christian walk and entrenchment, it's about dying to self. You know, not just what you don't like.

It's some of the stuff you do like about yourself that God calls and says, leave that behind and come follow me. This is where I need you and that's where you're going. Yeah. And you get a chance to actually, right Rodney? I mean, you get a chance to enter into this and something that you actually feel like, wow, I'm taking up the real battle. And I just love where you're going with soldier because I was like, man, where have I been reading soldierly? I'm like, oh yeah, I've been reading second Timothy a lot. And I love where Paul goes with him. You know, he's like, this is second Timothy two, three, and four suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life. Like he said, parking cars, doing the ushering, there are needed things, but they're just everyday life so that he may please the one, which is Jesus Christ himself who called you, right? Who enlisted him as a soldier because he's the one who enlists you.

It's Christ himself. When you get a context of that larger story, that bigger picture, there's more to it than just what's in it for me. I may be scared to do it. I may not want to go do this, but let your heart be entrusted to something a little larger because usually what God does, he fills you with what you need to go work for him and his causes.

It's just one of those things you can't prescribe out ahead of time and put a plan out there and say, well, this is how I'm going to get there. It's like, I'm going to go and I'm going to trust. And you got to put down all your preconceived notions, right? And that's, that, that's a big part of it. And so Danny, you have been quiet over here.

Yeah. Um, I was just thinking when we were talking about the soldier and stuff, you know, we quoted quite often about in Ephesians six, about putting on a full armor of God. And we had a conversation at our church, we have a prayer ministry on at nine o'clock on Sunday morning.

And me and the lady who started it, I said, I come in here to do battle because you know, prayer, that's what prayer is. That's what, you know, we talk about our covenant of silences at bootcamp and, and I think you're, you're engaged in battle and you know, every news story that has a tragic, I mean, you don't have to look far. There's a wound behind that. There's a, there's a, there's an agreement, there's a vow, there's something that needs breaking. And that's kind of what we're talking about. And that's, you know, taking that inside a church with a band of men who may be a little discombobulated for a while.

And after we leave, maybe even worse, you know, I mean, half our staff didn't show up tonight. I mean, you know, so well, the idea again, is that as you're listening to this, wow, I need this at my church. I want more than that. And we're not saying that all those things aren't necessarily your church, but there is more in your heart was made for more. And if you want this, I guess what you got to do, just go to masculinejourney.org and email Sam at masculine journey, Robby at masculine journey and tell us, I want an entrenchment. We'll figure out how to get it there. Thanks for listening. This is the Truth Network.