When I Saw The Light After Hours

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. So sit back and join us on this adventure. The Masculine Journey After Hours starts here, now. Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours.

We are very glad you're with us this week. It's just a very lighthearted week as we talk about seeing the light. So Robby, would you help us understand when you're talking about seeing the light, really what you're talking about there? Yes, I had this friend that had this discussion with me about our nature. And when you're born, you don't have a nature that would be able to see God's light or be able to talk to God because you're in opposition.

You essentially have the same nature like, you know, you can't hear a dog whistle, but there's no way you're going to be able to see God's light because you just don't have that nature. And so something has to come along. Interestingly, quite often you'll find where people see a lot of darkness and start to curse the darkness. In other words, they all of a sudden need to see the light. And when the, you know, the pupils ready, the master appears.

And so I thought, you know, what a neat idea to hear the stories of these guys, which, you know, a lot of people have heard us through a lot of episodes, but you don't necessarily know their story of when they actually came to faith or where they went, aha, you know, there is a God and I'm not him. Right? Yep. And so we're doing our aha seeing the light moments. Right. Right.

And so that brings us to you, Chuck. You have the first clip in this show. So would you tell us a little bit about your clip and set that up?

Sure. The clip I chose comes from the movie Unconditional. And I immediately just went to love when I thought about my aha moment. It's through a series of circus tests throughout my life, but that's what you see in this movie. The main character, Samantha, she undergoes a test of her faith. She has a pretty strong faith, but she loses her husband. He dies from a gunshot wound.

He's murdered in the movie. And so she has to draw on past relationships and even draw on her faith some, you know, to kind of hit rock bottom. She's just lost her husband. And she has to find a pretty much a second aha moment to really remember what God's love is all about. And that's kind of where my aha moment comes from.

I can remember like it was yesterday, even though it was 1991. But I was sitting in the pew of our church and my pastor just finished a sermon on the love of Christ. And then he went into Romans eight and he was just talking about the love of Christ and how once we have that love, we can't lose it. There's nothing that this world could do.

Anyone can do to take that from us. You know, we have that type of God and the love that he displays for us is just is just profound. And it's very hard for us to comprehend that, you know, but I went through a series of loss, a series of evil that had touched my life before the age of 13. You know, I had lost my biological father.

He just walked out of my life and I didn't see him again. But I had a wonderful father that stepped in and raised me and became a father. I had some family members that, you know, did some unspeakable things to me, you know, growing up. So, you know, I had seen an evil side, but I had also seen the love side from, you know, my mom and dad, from, you know, my family, from my church, especially from my pastor. You know, he was a great mentor to me. And then I had my youth group.

We had a strong youth group growing up. So I can remember hearing that how God, you know, calls us, you know, and then he justifies us and then he glorifies us in Christ. That was just profound to me, even at the age of 13.

And I can remember just sitting in a pew, just shaking uncontrollably. And I just began to weep over that love because even though I had been shown a love from my dad where he came in and, you know, not to put him so high up, but he didn't have to love me. You know, but he chose to take me in as his own.

He adopted me. And that's what God done for me when he called me. You know, so if you want to play the clip, you know, it speaks profoundly on love. And, you know, we've got something to look forward to.

Okay, here we go. Life is so beautiful, so full of magic and possibilities. I thought that my story had come to an end, but I was wrong. Once upon a time, there lived a little baby Oriole bird. His mama called him Firebird on account of his amazingly beautiful orange feathers. Now, little Firebird, he just lived for the sunshine.

He would bask in that sunshine for hours. Very good. Joe helped me find something that I had lost along the way. Something I had once believed so strongly. That the storms of life were bound to come, but that maybe even in those storms, in the loneliest times of all, you're never really alone. Love is the most powerful thing on earth. I've seen what it can do.

And it can do amazing things. Sometimes I imagine a world where everyone knows a love that's unconditional. And what a beautiful world it is. I think Billy had it right, that there truly is enough love to go around.

All you have to do is share it. What if God's love is like the sun, constant and unchanging? What if you woke up one day and realized nothing can take that away? That's what's so amazing about God's love to me. I still sin every day. Even from 13 on, I've never stopped sinning as much as I try.

But it's through the love of Christ and through that lens, the veil of Christ over me, that God sees me in a new light. That just astounds me. And so much so that I should be sharing that with others. I should be stepping out there and sharing that with others. And we have many aha moments.

And what's kind of crazy about that, even at my conversion at 13, it was some 20 years later. It took me going through a divorce and losing my family, my wife, and just hitting rock bottom that I ended up having a second aha moment. Because it really brought into light for me the true love that God displays for us on the cross through Christ. Because, you know, I failed at that in my human form. I could not be God for my wife.

I could not continue to love her through what was going on during those circumstances in our life. But in turn, it showed me what God has truly done for me. You can't take that for granted. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Rodney, do you have anything you'd like to share with us? Well, first of all, Chuck, it's glad to have you back. It's been like five weeks since we've seen you. It's almost like we should call you David. I really wasn't really sure how to do that, but it's glad to have you back. Thank you. Rodney, what about you?

I can't believe you send every day. Golly, we let him in this room with us? We have an intervention after the show. Oh, that's good.

Yeah, like who doesn't, right? And that's one of those aha moments. Honestly, after the big aha moment when you're getting saved is, oh my gosh, I am a sinner. Oh, what a wretched sinner I am. It just keeps growing and growing to your understanding of just the separation between you and God.

That's beautiful, Chuck. For me, I had recently lost a job where I was really kind of thriving and doing well and thought things were really good. And next thing you know, I'm like, nope, we don't need you anymore. And the guy who was mentoring me at the time said, hey, I've got a, I think, a potential job for you down here in Charlotte.

They need someone who does what you do. I go down there. And so I'm on Monday mornings, I get up early in the morning, head out about 5 a.m. to beat the traffic from Winston-Salem down into Charlotte. And it's, I also listened to a lot of NASCAR back then. So I was, there was a Sunday where I was out driving around doing stuff on Sunday.

I had the race on in the car, get home. It's on that station next morning when I go to work. And there's this guy, Dr. Jay Vernon McGee, and I didn't know who he was from Adam, you know, and he's, he was already into the show, I think, and I was listening to it. And he was in Romans and I just remember that very first time I listened to him, like, oh, I loved what I was listening to.

How do I ever find him or get a hold of this? And I had no idea how. And so at first it was just every Monday morning. I listened to this guy for about a half an hour and I just remember one morning I'm driving down to work and I'm in tears and I'm just giving my life to Christ. I don't remember exactly what day, um, but the day in the year, which month?

I know it's, I think it was somewhere in October, but it was just one of those moments. And he was going through Romans and how convicting his Romans. Like you just said, yeah. And I was just, I just, I'm like, that's the truth. I've heard different things and I would have told you I believed in God, but I would not have been able to tell you the God I believed in.

Although, you know, the one in the Bible, I don't know what goes on in the Bible. And like Robby mentioned, you know, you get this thirst, this appetite, this hunger that you just, it's insatiable now that you have to know more and learn more and go into it and we're all, we all kind of display that a little differently. But that aha moment that, oh, this is really who God is that he gave his only begotten son to save me. And when it gets that personal, that's when you just have those moments.

And there was many moments after that, as you learn different doctrinal truths, different things in that where it's like we talk about many times the relationship. You know, it's not just head knowledge. It's actually a head knowledge that turns into something that's way more than, oh yeah, I know that truth. And let me tell you how I know that truth.

It's, no, let me show you. And not because I want to make it about me. It's about him. And boy, over these years trying to make it less and less about me and more and more about him. How many times I have that aha moment like, oh, I failed here.

I failed here. That's where my ahas are at a lot of times is how much I really truly in my own humanness fail. And it's like, but then all of a sudden, four or five years later, I had the aha moment for, wow, I'm actually content with things.

A lot of it happened like during COVID, too, where it's like chaos all around me. And I'm like, I don't care. I don't. It's OK. You guys go talk about this and rant about that. I'm OK.

The election stuff and all of a sudden, yeah, it's stupid. I don't like it. Nothing I can do about it. God's got it. He's sovereign.

He's in control. Those things just allow me to have those moments where I'm like, OK, I can live. I can go on. I don't have to give in to that other side of myself that just always wanted to bite and yell and scream and be ticked off about these things. You know, I can.

So that's where I just keep having those aha moments of things that, oh, that used to frustrate me. That's right. Yeah.

Oh, well, I'll go move on. And it's a lot easier. It's not perfect, but it's way better than it used to be. And you can walk with God a lot closer when you're having those moments in those times where you just like Robby was saying, to get to know him better and understand him because, man, it's constant of through you guys, other men and women in my life that know Christ and just listening to their stories and understanding their walk. And you know how many times you come to somebody, you know somebody already for a while and you already got their story in your head. And then you find out it's way different.

Way different. It's wonderful. It's like, oh, my gosh, really?

It's just and you have that that relationship with other believers quickly, how quickly you can just come to know somebody that's in Christ and just you just next thing you know, you're having deeper conversations really quickly with them and just get to grow in them. That's wonderful. It is. Thank you, Rodney. Andy, you're up. You got the next clip.

All right. So before the clip, I mean, I came to Christ at nine, the age of nine, a revival in a church that my ancestors started, which was pretty cool. Didn't really know it at the time, but I can still remember that that tug, that pull. I think I was the only one that went up for that particular night of revival. And but I knew it was real and I knew I always wanted to serve God, dabbled in fellowship of Christian athletes, did those things growing up, but walked away and got into my late teens and 20s and just kind of was walking away.

My mom was real concerned. And then I'll kind of stop right there and pick that back up after the clip. The clip is from Bruce Almighty and Bruce and Grace are, I think, fiancees and they are really growing apart. Bruce is so career focused and then and then they have a breakup and he's trying to win her back and he's trying to take control. And God actually shows up on the scene and actually gives him the powers. That's how Bruce Almighty is. God gives him the power to to control some things.

And he does a very poor job of it, does probably what most of us would do with those powers. And he's finally ready to surrender here. He's you'll hear him. It's he actually gets run over by a truck.

And then he has a conversation with God about, you know, kind of what's been going on. And we'll just go ahead and play it here. You win. I'm done.

Please. I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to be good. I want you to decide what's right for me. I surrender to your will. Am I? You can't kneel down in the middle of a highway and live to talk about it, son. But why?

Why now? Bruce, you have the divine spark. You have the gift for bringing joy and laughter to the world. I know I created you. Quit bragging. See, that's that's what I'm talking about.

That's the spark. What do you want me to do? I want you to pray, son. Go ahead.

Use them. Lord, feed the hungry, bring peace to all of mankind. How's that? Great.

If you want to be Miss America. Come on. What do you really care about? Grace. You want it back?

No. I want her to be happy. No matter what that means, I want her to find someone who will treat her with all the love she deserved from me. I want her to meet someone who will see her always as I do now.

Through your eyes. Now that's a prayer. Yeah. Yeah. It's good. It's good. It's good.

I'm going to get right on it. So if you've listened to the show, you've heard that clip quite a few times. And, you know, I'd reuse it, but it just really spoke to my situation a lot because I was trying to do be my God, I guess, or be God.

Not really realizing that, but like I said, when I was in my 20s and 30s, I was going the wrong way. And my mom, I know she was a prayer warrior and began to pray for me. And, you know, me and this girl were dating and I wanted to do my thing and told her I would. And I did. And she said, fine, see you later.

And then I got scared and I was like, oh, no, I don't want to miss out on this. And tried to win her back. And in doing so, I began to seek God to do it.

Well, God, it was a great setup because he did a bait and switch and I ended up with the better deal, no offense. But God really did come into my life and changed me in a lot of ways. But not everything that I needed. And I think all of us have those stories where you get a little bit of light as you go along. And there's things that you don't know. That light that comes in, when you see the light, it's progressive to me. It's like he shines a light on who he is initially and that changes tons of things. But I didn't have any light shined on really at the time of about myself. And what was going on in me in this stuff.

Morgan from the Wild at Heart team speaks and does the Sonship talk and really is a powerful talk. And he says he feels like he has two conversions. One whenever he met Jesus and one when he really received God as Father.

And I feel like when I separated from my wife later on in life, I just can't seem to get these relationship things right. But I began to seek God again and got exposed to this Wild at Heart message and really it took me some time. There's so many things that God brought to my attention and ways that I could just understanding myself. Not just him but understanding myself and how he created me. And when I did, I mean it was truly like a second conversion to me. It filled in so many of the gaps, put light on situations. He spoke light into my life and then again we've talked about it at the Band of Brothers. That doesn't hurt either when they're just voices who can speak into you and bring what the Father has for you through individuals.

So it's just coming to the light to me is progressive. Most of the people in the Bible didn't get it all right the first time. They would come and receive him and then go off and make stupid mistakes just like we do. And there's a lot of consolation in it. Apparently Chuck more frequently than anybody else. Daily.

I do bi-weekly since Chuck does it every day. But I like this scripture from Psalm 20-27. It says, the spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. And I believe that's true in the fact that he blows on that candle with his spirit and it brings more light to the situation. I believe that in those dark places when we're well away from him, he does that, blows in there a little bit, gets that light going.

And we come alive and we begin to realize we need light, not all this darkness that we have around us. Well, there's plenty of darkness. No doubt. No doubt. And we were talking about that. I think some of the things about darkness is that we always look at it bad. But that's when creation happened when there was darkness on the face of the earth and the Holy Spirit was hovering over that. And I think it's a necessity. You don't appreciate the light if you don't have darkness.

Yeah, you've got to have one for the contrast and the other. Exactly. Thank you, Andy. Well, I tried to delay long enough where I had to do my clip.

And now we're down to it. Robby brought up this topic last week and I thought, that's a really good topic. I have no clue what I'm going to use for a clip. And I thought of a few things, but Andy, you said something about you hated to use that clip again. You didn't use it. God chose you to use it. And that's kind of how things do.

Sometimes clips choose you. And so I'm riding along on Sunday and I'm mowing my yard. Long story short, I'd been up all night flying back from out west and didn't want to go in and go to sleep and then not be able to sleep that night.

And so I'm trying to keep busy, so I'm mowing my yard and so I have a riding mower and I throw in my AirPods and I listen to a playlist that I've listened to thousands of times, probably hundreds of times. And the song that I was listening to just hit me differently than it ever had. And I got emotional and I couldn't figure it out. And I go, God, why? You know, we always talk about, you know, something's going on. If cars make a noise, you lift the hood, right?

And so this is a lift the hood moment. And I said, God, why is this song really impacting me? He said, because this is what you've always wanted from me. Right.

You know, and you just didn't have the words to say it. You know, in this song, it's part of a song from Darius Rucker, who used to be Hootie from Hootie and the Blowfish. But it is Darius Rucker. He's a country artist who sings and sometimes travels with Hootie and the Blowfish. Is that directed at Robby?

It is directed at Robby, in case he didn't understand the whole context of it from our off the air conversation. But anyway, the song's called If I Told You. And so I'm going to go ahead and play it. And then I'll come back and I'll read a little bit of the lyrics.

It's only 31 seconds, something like that. Because it's sometimes hard to hear the lyrics as you're listening to them. But he's singing about a female in this.

But it really, for me, it was like this is what my heart wanted from my Heavenly Father. Not perfectly in this chorus, but pretty close. And so listen to it, I'll read you the lyrics, and then we'll talk about it. So the words from it, as he's singing here, he said, If I told you all the stupid things I've done I've blamed on me being young But I was old enough to know, I know If I told you the mess that I can be When there's no one else there to see Could you look the other way?

Could you love me anyway? And so I was thinking about that, and I've got plenty of time on the mower, so I kind of pause the song for a minute, I'm like, okay God, help me understand a little bit more. And so he's unpacking that particular part of it. And I'm going to come back to that here in a second. But back to when I became a Christian. I was at church, and honestly I'd like to say I went to church because I wanted to go to church.

I went to church because I lived in a small town and that's where the cute girls were. And so that's why I ended up at church, you know, God had a way to bait me in there. And so I came in, and so I'm studying through a sermon and I'm actually listening. And something just strikes me, and I've got to go up front.

I don't want to go up front, but I can't help but go up front and kneel at the rail. And I accepted Christ as my Savior, and it was an amazing, amazing time. And I thought everything was going to be perfect after that. But you're looking back, and I don't know if it was my not paying attention in church. And I think it was more the church protocol that they only kind of preached in certain streams of Scripture. Nothing they ever said was inaccurate. It just wasn't the full story.

Right? And so, you know, here I am, I accepted Christ as my Savior, by congratulating me. And then there's no discipleship, as we talked about earlier. There's nothing that says, here's what to expect next. So I'm expecting I'm just going to be perfect from now on, right? I mean, God's healed me. I'm a new creation. You're not?

No, I know, you know. And so, not very long, probably that day, Chuck, back to you. Probably that day when I sin, I'm like, wait a minute, I'm not even 24 hours into this thing, you know. And here I am blowing it again. And so these words, I can just hear them in my head, you know, saying, God, I thought this was going to be different. And I thought all these stupid things that I've done, I wouldn't do anymore.

But not knowing and not understanding at that age, you know, we still have the old nature we're pushing against, and all the things that I know now. And so I lived in this roller coaster of a relationship with God, and I wouldn't even call it a relationship, because it was very much one way. I didn't know how to do my part of it, right? I'd never been taught how to do that, and I really didn't understand it. And so I'd try really hard, and I'd do well for a while, and then I would mess up again.

And I would try really hard for a while, and it was all in my effort, right? And I'd like to say that was only for a short period, but we're talking 20 plus years back, well, even more than that, to 2002, when I go to my first boot camp, and I hear about warfare. Like, oh my gosh, warfare?

There's something called warfare? It means it's not just me? And then I learn about the grace of God and his love and all these things, and so I go back to these lyrics, and, you know, I'm thinking about the times, I just wanted God to look the other way, and he reminded me, when I'm sitting on that mower, he's like, I didn't look the other way, I looked right at you because I love you, and I am so fully in love with you. Yes, you make mistakes, but nothing's ever going to change that. And I needed to be reminded of that every day, right? Because I am going to make those mistakes every day, and I need to be reminded of it every day, and know the goodness and the love of God. And yes, I will change over time as he helps me change.

But you know what? There's no timeframe on that. God's going to do that in his time, you know, and just walk with him in it. And that's what I encourage you to do this week, is walk with him in it this week, and say, God, where do you have me right now, and where do you want me to go, and what's my next step with you, and let him love you through it. We'll talk with you next week.