What Are You Grateful For

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.

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Welcome to Masculine Journey. We're glad that you're with us today and I'm really glad to be back. It's good to see most of you guys. I know it's actually good to see all of you guys, and you too Andy. But it is good to be back and we're talking about a topic that's had some controversy this week. Not necessarily on having the topic, but what does a topic mean?

And so the topic of this week is just a simple question, what are you grateful for? And it sounds simple, but there's more layers to it. It's like if you watch Shrek, you know, an ogre is like an onion, he has layers.

Well this has layers as well. And just try to look up the difference, look up in a search engine, the difference between thankfulness and gratefulness and you're going to find about ten different versions of it. And so the way we're choosing to describe it with the show today is gratefulness is a deeper thankfulness.

It's at the soul level. It's more than, oh hey, thanks for that, or thanks for letting me cut in the line here. That's a thank you.

I appreciate what you did. Gratefulness is a deeper thing. It's felt by the soul. And so as we're talking, and we may slip up and say the word thankful, we really mean grateful, but that's what we're trying to define is what are you really grateful for? And so we're going to talk about that today and we'll be all over the place because we all have different perceptions of what that is and that's okay. Because that's what the question was, as long as Andy doesn't say thankful. The topic is, okay, what are you grateful for and what are you telling God thank you about that I'm grateful for this, Father? It's a deep level. Andy, you want to say something? Well, it's not the exact parallel, but something similar to the difference between happiness and joy.

They're similar but different. Yeah, I can have a Happy Meal. I've never had a Joy Meal. That's not exactly how I would explain it, but one's waiting for you when you get hungry.

Yeah, it is. I'm waiting for a Joy Meal, but I've not had one. I've had some Joyful Meals, but not a Joy Meal. Well, I'll go ahead and do the first clip mainly because the show is my idea for this particular topic and I didn't come up with it. I actually was at a work event last week, a corporate meeting, and that was a question that they did before the actual meeting started.

They said, hey, at your tables, we're just going to talk about this for the next 10 minutes. What's something you're grateful for? And it made me think, you know, what am I really grateful for? And the thing is, our society is so wired for what's not going well, right? Just the news in general is always negative, right? We're a negative society from that standpoint. We're always looking, seems like, for the negative things. And when you focus on the negative things, it's easy to have a negative outlook, right? But when I focus on the positive things, if I focus on thankfulness and gratefulness and those things, maybe I'll have a little bit different outlook on life. And just that whole day was different for me because of that simple question.

It's had me think about it now for a little over a week. And so I shared it with these guys. And so I actually have the first clip. And this clip may not make sense to you, but that's OK because I want to talk about it after we come back. But at the beginning of this clip, you're going to hear somebody rifling through some pages and then you're going to find out why it's a book. But we don't know what book it is quite yet.

It'll become clear in the clip and then we'll talk about it when we come back. Thank you. The new phone book's here!

The new phone book's here! Well, I wish I could get that excited about that. Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73.

Johnson, Navin, R. I'm somebody now. Millions of people look at this book every day. This is the kind of spontaneous publicity. Your name in print that makes people.

I'm in print. Things are going to start happening to me now. So, Jim, you made a very good point before the show. Obviously, when this movie was made, it's from The Jerk, which is a Steve Martin movie back in what, the 90s maybe? Maybe even earlier, the 80s? Probably the 80s, where he said a statement in there, that statement would be changed today, would it not, if the phone book was out now? Well, instead of being millions of people, it would be couples of people.

Dozens of random people will look at this. I did actually have in my foot and a half stack of mail a half an inch of phone book, which was mostly advertising, as I threw it away. Yeah, yeah. The reason I actually used this clip from The Jerk, it actually came to mind when I was first thinking of this topic, and it has to do with it doesn't really matter, just like Steve Martin's character there, whatever he said his name was. I can't remember what he said in the clip, but he was grateful for the phone book at a very, very deep level, and you could hear it in his voice. It was Nathan, but I don't remember the rest of his name. Johnson R. Johnson? Nathan R. Johnson. Okay, you guys remember it. I guess I should have listened better to my own clip. We all learn apart. Yeah, Nathan R. Johnson. For him, it was about identity. All of a sudden, I'm somebody, right?

And unless you knew his background, unless you knew his story from the movie and things like that, that wouldn't make sense if you just listen to that little bit of the clip. And for me, that's about our gratefulness. It doesn't really matter if other people understand our gratefulness because it's between us and God when I'm talking about this type of gratefulness. The story I was going to share quickly on my gratefulness, first of all, the first one that came up when they asked me at work, I talked about being very grateful that my daughter moved back here from Nevada. You know, we'd been close and been talking on the phone and things, but having her 20 minutes away from me is a game changer. I guess here pretty much every weekend, we get to hang out together. It's just been great. It's been good for my heart to have that. And I'm very grateful for that opportunity for the whatever the season of life is in it.

But that's that's not the primary one I wanted to share. The one that's come up since then is I was dog sitting my daughter's dog and it's a good dog, but it's a very active dog. And when I got home after a long day's worth of work, the dog was very energetic and very barky and very taxing. And I'd had a very long day.

And so I went outside to set to just to let her bark for an hour or so, just to kind of let her unwind and get some of her attention out from the day. And I'm sitting there in a chair and I'm kind of looking up at the roof of my house and I see two doves sitting there, which is unusual. I don't often see doves, you know, especially when there hasn't been any bird food around for three or four weeks. You know, I'd see him occasionally when there was bird food, but I hadn't seen any.

I've never seen pairs or multiples. And I was sitting there looking at him and they were pretty, pretty looking does very, very white looking. And in the sun, it was just almost glorious. And I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, OK, God, it'd be really cool if there was three of them, because, you know, the dove is a symbol of Jesus. It's, you know, Christianity uses it a lot. It's about peace, those kinds of things. And my heart could really use some peace.

It'd be really cool if there's a third one there for Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And so deep in my heart, I hear this, look to your left or lean to your left. And I leaned over to my left and there was a third bird sitting behind a branch. I couldn't see it. It had been there the whole time. You know, God had already knew that I was going to ask for that apparently. And so I watched him for a while and they kind of played around on the roof and it kind of just did my heart some good.

And so I went back out there the next day and I was out there and I looked up and I didn't see the dove. And I'm like, OK, oh, my God, it'd be really cool for my heart if that was really you yesterday coming after my heart. You know, I know I'm throwing out a fleece. I know I'm playing the Gideon role here, but here we go. If that's really you, it'd be cool if just one dove came.

I don't need all three today, just one. And so the dog's doing something and I'm busy trying to take care of her. And I look up and there's a dove sitting right on the roof.

And so I start to push it a little bit and I'm like, OK, God, I know I'm kind of pushing it. But it'd be really cool if it's really you that the dove would come down near the gutter, down by where the dog's barking, because I know it's not going to do that on its own. Right.

Because it's against every instinct the animal has more than likely. And my gutters are clean. So I know there's like no food or anything in there. And so, again, I'm sitting there.

Nothing happens. OK. And so I look away and I'm dealing with the dog a little bit and I look back and I look up and I just start laughing because the dove is setting in the gutter, not near the gutter, down inside the gutter, just kind of looking over, kind of at me, looking around, looking back at me. And I just started laughing, saying, God, thank you, because it was all about God coming after my heart. He didn't want me to know it. You said what?

Huh? What did you say? I said, thank you. OK. Yeah, I can say thank you in gratefulness.

I didn't say grateful you. Yeah. He was really waiting. Yeah, no, I knew he was trying. I just wanted to let him go there.

It's not my first rodeo, so I know how this whole show works. So, God, thank you. I'm very grateful for what you're doing here. But he was just wanting to let me know, even on your worst day, I'm here and I'm close by. And that's what my heart really needed the most that day. And I took a picture of the birds up on the roof so that I have it.

And if no one else understands that, it doesn't really matter to me because it's between God and I. Anything anyone else would like to add before we try to get in another clip? I like that he gave you more than you asked for.

Put the bird in the getter, not just near the getter. He does that a lot. He does. And what I really like, and he actually left it out of the story when he told it now, but the first time he laughed, too. Yeah, I did. Because it's like, God just likes to make Sam laugh. He must like to hear it or something because that was the deal, right? Yeah, it was. I needed some laughter, you know, and I laughed and I'm like, okay, that's so funny.

You know, because when he said, lean to your left, it was like, oh yeah, there you are. And it was, it was really, really good for my heart. And that's what I'm like, it wasn't testing God as much as it was, God, I just, I really need to know you're here. And I wasn't in the middle of praying.

I wasn't in the middle of anything. I was just in the middle of living out a very taxing day that would seem to be getting more taxing as it went on. And that changed my whole evening. And it changed my whole next day. You know, and I think that's what gratefulness does is it changes our perspective.

It lets us see things differently. You know, and maybe those things from the world that drive us nuts, so there's inconveniences that I don't do well with. I don't like inconveniences. They make me very upset, you know. And I'm a very selfish person when it comes to things like that. I like things a certain way, and I like them done at a certain time, and life doesn't work that way. I can either focus on those things and be bitter and be in a bad place, or I can focus on gratefulness and be thankful, Robby, for what God's doing in my life.

Right? And so I'm choosing to try to look at things from a more grateful perspective and to say, okay, and remind myself, yeah, there's a lot to be grateful for. Every day, there's a lot to be grateful for. And the humor of God, I think, too. He could have simply just given you peace or spoken to you. God, I think, is playful in some ways, too, and I think that's what he was doing there in his just goodness of really good. You said it's what your heart needed, and that's the way he came after it. But he did speak to you as part of that, too, so we don't want to get away from the point that he talks to us through our spirit. But I think we, as people, neglect how he talks to us through nature too much, not being weird or anything.

But I know he's done that for me. I've talked to him about it many times on some of my hikes and trips and that kind of thing of what he's done. And so I think it's great. I'm happy for you. That's a cool story.

I'm very thankful for the things I have to be grateful for. He thought it was great. He thought it was great. Yeah, he was full of it.

I was full of gratefulness. Well, we do have a boot camp coming up in November. It's the weekend before Thanksgiving, and so we'd like for you to go register for that. That would be a great way to learn more gratefulness because God will give you some stuff to be grateful for that weekend.

I promise you, go to masculinejourney.org to register. 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. Well, what kind of inspired you to come up this weekend? Oh, my goodness, just my faith in general. My father has passed down that heritage of just that Christian life, that Christian faith and just godly morals and principles. And he's instilled that in my life.

And I have children as well, and I want to instill that in their life. So when I get an opportunity to do something like this, I jump on it. I just want to be here, and I'm glad to be here.

It's a great opportunity. We're definitely glad to have you here as well. Any talk that stuck out to you this weekend that's really just kind of made your heart come alive with that fire back in you?

Probably one thing that just stands out to me is John 15. It's just not being alone. Know that I have Christ on my side.

I can't do anything without him, and I need him in my life. I'm a very private person. I like to do things on my own. I don't like to ask for help. So that's hard for me to know I've got to ask Jesus for something and then also just to rely on a band of brothers that I can look to and turn to and say, Hey, guys, I need help. I can't do this alone.

Register today at masculinejourney.org. I see the evidence of your goodness all over my life, all over my life. I see your promises in fulfillment all over my life, all over my life.

So, Andy, that was your bump. I noticed they didn't say thankful in there anyway. Or grateful, yeah. But there was a spirit of gratefulness in the song. Yeah, there really was.

That's Josh Baldwin. Evidence is the name of the song. And we played it at boot camp a couple of times, but it really spoke to my heart the first time I've heard it. And, you know, I really sensed that just, you know, we have so much problem, I think, identifying the good things that God does to us because of the things that we're not getting that we were talking about earlier. Things aren't turning out. And I think it's a matter of perspective that we have to, I mean, you have to be aware of your surroundings and what's going on. And whether you're getting all you want and getting all the results you want, you can still see God's goodness. And I think you see it.

I mean, there's evidence of it everywhere if we look. Yeah, there's an old adage, it was in leadership that I learned if it's true in all sorts of life, that you find evidence of what you're looking for. Yeah.

Right. I was given that advice from a boss that said, you know, if you look for the bad in people, you'll find enough bad. You know, if you look for the good in people, you'll find good, you know, so be careful what you're looking for. And that's true in all aspects, you know, and the question is, what are you looking for? You know, if I'm looking for inconveniences, there's enough of them there, you know, just drive somewhere. There'll be enough of that. So Rodney, you actually have the next clip, so we'll let you talk about that. Yeah, and like where you were going there just a moment ago, the ice of Jesus, it's like I make up my mind of what I believe, and then I just look for evidence to echo back to me what I already believe.

And we can all find that real easy. It's much, much harder to actually go into anything and be open-minded and say, well, what does it mean by what it's saying? And again, back to, well, what did the author intend? And in the Bible, the author's God, so what did he intend? And that's what's so hard, and that's what Robby loves to bring out and go back to the Hebrew and just constantly dig and go, what was the original intent?

What was the original intent? And this is, it's beautiful. That's where, again, where I found myself for this topic saying, okay, what am I grateful for? And I was, you know, completely over on thankful, and I was way off, you know, for so long. It's close.

It's a distant cousin. Yeah, so I finally got to the grateful side, and I'm trying to figure out, well, what am I grateful for? What's going, what can I, where am I, Lord?

What are those things? Because we'd already kind of said there's no ordinary things that we as Christians always say is salvation, Jesus Christ, and a certain litany of things. We're like, okay, well, let's push ourselves into something that is maybe a little deeper within us that we don't always just give the Jesus answer, the Sunday school answer. And while I was praying, I was struggling to what to pray for, and that's where it finally hit me. I'm like, oh, I'm just very, very grateful that I have someone that's going to intercede in my prayers because my prayers were just, sometimes they're just awful. I don't know what to say. Or I say it wrong. I'm like, well, that's not even what I mean. What am I thinking?

And I'm just all over the place. But that's what I was really grateful for. That's where this clip on Meet the Parents where Greg has to give the family blessing over the meal and just kind of is in a very awkward spot, but he can't say no to the way it's presented to him and has to basically pose his way through and say, oh, I've done this tons of times, right? And you can just tell he's just fishing for words the whole time, but it's pretty funny. Yeah, if you haven't seen Meet the Parents, Greg is meeting his fiancé's parents who was a little bit differently than he does. Oh, a little bit. Yeah, so we'll go ahead and listen to the clip and come back and talk about it. Dad's an FBI.

Yeah, the CIA or FBI, one of those, yeah. All right, so we'll go ahead and listen to it. Greg, would you like to say grace? Oh, well, Greg's Jewish, Dad.

You know that. You're telling me the Jews don't pray, honey? Unless you have some objection.

No, no, no, no, I'd love to. Pam, come on, it's not like I'm a rabbi or something. I can say grace in many a dinner table. It's...

Okay. Oh, dear God, thank you. You are such a good God to us, a kind and gentle and accommodating God. And we thank you, oh, sweet, sweet Lord of hosts, for the smorgasbord you have so aptly laying at our table this day and each day, by day, day by day by day. Oh, dear Lord, three things we pray. To love thee more dearly, to see thee more clearly, to follow thee more nearly, day by day by day. Amen.

Amen. Oh, Greg, that was lovely. Thank you, Greg.

That was interesting, too. And like Greg, I'm very grateful that God hears our intents and not our words. But that's where I was like, going back to the Romans, because that's where a lot of this took me back to as far as intercessor. And so Romans 8, you got 26 and 27, then jump into 34. In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should. But the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Then you jump down to 34. Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is he who died.

Yes, rather, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. And just knowing that all the time, it gives me great rest and hope that it's like, okay, even though I don't know how to ask for it, I don't know how to state my thoughts, because there's so many things going on in the world, there's so many things to pray for, that it's hard to actually keep up, even with the guys on this team, because there's enough going on with all of our lives, and it's changing. It's like, oh man, I've got to keep up with this. Sometimes it's just, hey, Sam and his family, Jim and his family, you're just trying to include and make sure you cover certain things. And it's like, okay, Lord, I know that you know where I'm going, what's going on in their lives, and I don't always know the latest update, but I know that he does, and he's reaching out, and he's taking care of things, and it's just a great, great thing to be grateful for, that I don't have to come up with everything. Thank you, Rodney. I'm grateful for your feedback. Gratefulness. I'm trying to intersperse those.

So, Andy, it's over to you. You've got a clip you'd like to set up and talk about. Yeah, this is from the Prince of Egypt animated, basically on the Exodus, and it's Moses and his father-in-law, and I'm just going to probably leave it at that just a little bit. They're discussing about what they're thankful for, you know, kind of got to plug in the gratefulness, but it really, Moses is at a point where he doesn't feel like he's accomplished much. My children, let us give thanks for this bountiful food, and let us also give thanks for the presence of this brave young man when we are here tonight. Please, sir, I wish you wouldn't. I've done nothing in my life worth honoring.

First you rescue Zipporah from Egypt, then you defend my younger daughters from brigands. You think that is nothing? It seems you do not know what is worthy of honor. A single thread in a tapestry, though its color brightly shine, can never see its purpose in the pattern of the grand design. And the stone that sits on the very top of the mountain's mighty face, does it think it's more important than the stones that form the face? So how can you see what your life is worth or where your value lies? You can never see through the eyes of man. You must look at your life, look at your life through heaven's eyes. So that's taken from Exodus 2, a little artistic license there with that. But really, Moses, you can tell, he's like, well, what have I done?

And other people see it, and God sees it. And this is a time when he spent 40 years on the backside of the desert feeling like he didn't have a purpose, where he was trying to be the deliverer in his own strength earlier on. And I think that's a lot of my story is for many years. Even though I knew God, I lived a life that I had begun to lose purpose on it, lost a lot of direction.

I was on the backside of the desert. And I'm just grateful, grateful, that I feel like there's been a shift. And I try to look through things from the eyes of heaven, like it says, because the enemy will love to beat you down and say you don't have a purpose. But, you know, one of the things that I was thinking about, you can have all the comforts, you can have all your needs met, you can have a nice family and all that. But if you don't feel like you're living out of your purpose, you can be a very miserable person.

And a lot of people live that way. And I just, I'm grateful that I feel like I'm living in my purpose. Well, thank you, Andy. That was interesting, too. You've been waiting on that one, haven't you? Nice delivery. That's why I had you go to X.

That was the real reason. That's it. I want to get it in. I want to get it in. I want to get it in.

Yeah, I can. No, that was very good. Thank you for sharing that. So the backside of the desert, are you almost out of the desert? I think we'll always have a little bit of the desert in us. You know, there's some reminders. There's just things. I mean, even Moses, when you see him through the Exodus, Moses fell back into some bad stuff and where he tried to take things in his own hand and hitting the rock. So I hit the rock.

Heat my dust, Andy. But there's just – I think all of us can say this. I've heard your stories. I think we all have an appreciation for where we've really found our purpose. Thank you.

Harold, what would you like to add to this topic? Well, I'm just really thankful that I'm – What? What? What? Grateful. Thank you.

There we go. That I'm somewhat like Timothy, not that I do what Timothy did, but by the fact that I have a faith that was brought to me by my mother, Anna Grace, and my grandmother, Leona. I hate to think what I might have turned out to be if I hadn't had them. I had all the potential to be a real disaster. So you were actually younger than Timothy. No, but I share having a great mother and grandmother like he had. They taught me from a very early age about faith in God and also many other things about how to get along in life.

And without that, I could have been a dumpster fire. Thank you, Harold. We're going to continue this topic at the after hours. So if you haven't listened to the after hours, you can go to any podcast location and get it. YouTube, just name it. We're probably there.

Look for Masculine Journey. And in the meantime, think about going to the boot camp in November, the weekend before Thanksgiving. We'd love to see you there. We'll talk with you next week.