Personal Warfare

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Welcome to masculine journey. We're glad that you're with us today. And we are only three weeks away from boot camp.

Three weeks from now we will be at boot camp. Isn't that amazing? You guys can shake your head, but they can't hear you on the air.

Yes, that's amazing. Well, David, they could hear you. The Is that like a knock sound like my brain? Yeah, it was like a rattle. The rattle came through.

The marble was loose. Yeah, we could hear that part. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, three weeks from boot camp. So if you haven't registered, go do that now. I mean, not right this moment, but soon.

masculinejourney.org register for the boot camp coming up November 16 through 19, which is a few weeks away. But this week's topic, Danny, is yours. It is. Well, it's God's but God gave it to you or Yeah, we're assuming God gave it to you.

Well, good assumption. Anyway, yeah, I've thought about warfare. And actually, we're coming up on boot camp. And we talk about warfare a lot at boot camp and and you know, agreements and stuff like that. And so, you know, leading into that and current environment around my house has been not in my house, but you know, my life has been full of warfare lately. And so just seemed like a good thing to talk about.

And to process some stuff in that. And so, you know, because when we think about warfare, interestingly enough, a lot of time in modern day American church, you'll hear a lot about warfare. And we talk about that amongst ourselves some and not beating up on the church. But, you know, it's a real thing. You know, in Galatians, you know, Paul talks about the spirit war against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit. And, you know, then there's the Revelation Scripture where it says a war broke out in heaven. But yeah, we're just kind of like, yeah, just come to Jesus, and we'll skip all the way glory kind of thing. So it's a real thing. And, you know, so we want to kind of break that out and talk about it a little bit, some personal stories and stuff like that.

So, well, thank you. And I think Robby has the first clue. Yeah, we're gonna let Robby starts to think probably the first clip, because, you know, it just makes sense. It could happen, you know, I didn't, you know, whatever, you know, it's pretty, it's an honor, Danny, I appreciate it very much. But this clip kind of speaks for itself. And if you don't recognize the warfare in it, you know, I don't know what to say.

But, you know, when you start to hear this kind of stuff, it might take you back to the garden for a minute and recognize it immediately. So go ahead, Tim. This is all your fault. This is all your fault. It's all your fault.

Great. So this is all my fault. This is all your fault. This is all your fault. You idiot, this is your fault.

Looking to blame throw, but that one was Razor's fault. Yeah. So, Sam, did you recognize Shrek in there just for a minute? He's in there. Well, I didn't actually I was trying to listen to the movies and figure out what they were from.

Yeah, all sorts of different one of them was actually Shrek. He's in there. Yeah. But, you know, when you start hearing that word in your head, it's somebody's fault. You can begin to recognize that there's probably warfare, you'd imagine that there was a bit of warfare going on in the Garden of Eden when Adam started to say, well, it's that woman, you know, and a woman is saying is that snake and and on you go. Right.

It's a woman. You gave me God. Yeah. So ultimately it was God's fault. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly right. So, you know, I like to think of it as this check engine going off, check an engine light going off in your dash that's flashing at you. And in spite of the fact that you might have been in ministry for a number of years and you might have a Christian, you know, talk show or two or five. Maybe you've had 14 boot camps to experience, but a warfare on all sorts of levels.

Let me just tell you that you can still just completely ignore the warning signs and charge where no man has gone before. So I was at Nikita's actual like man camp last week and had a real opportunity to serve, which was real honor. And I was actually on the floor praying with a man and another pastor bent down and prayed exactly what I had prayed. And that's exactly what I had prayed. The warfare was on right. And I was totally offended and I was completely certain it was his fault. I mean, I could not been more certain that it was his fault, but I saw the fruit of what what happened is he prayed that prayer that the man that was actually, you know, trying to get some breakthrough, you know, he broke and he started to get that breakthrough.

And so actually the effectiveness of his prayer was good, but that didn't change the fact that I ignored my check engine light that was saying. Robby, this is warfare. Robby, this is warfare.

Robby, this is warfare. But all I could sense was actually I was being triggered by something. My oldest sister used to always correct me, always used to do that, which I'd done the right way just to show mom and dad that it had to be right. And so unbeknownst to me, you know, Satan had found just the right way to push my button. And so after we got up from the floor and I went and charged this pastor who was significantly shorter than me, and those people who know me know that I'm, you know, six foot five and his the way that he described it later, he said, man, I didn't know what to do. This guy's a foot taller than me and he looked like he wanted to kill me.

This wasn't funny at the time, obviously, but I was like, what are you? You know, and I started to blast him and then fortunately some other people in ministry made me sit down and then I watched God just completely do a mighty work amongst all the different people that were in the campers, whatever. And as I sat there and processed it like, oh, wait a minute, you're hearing that.

It's your fault. You're hearing that, you know, you know, you're offended. You know, this is warfare. And I was able actually to repent in front of everybody and, um, and get a lot of healing and very cool, really, because all the ministry team was there and they perceived that this pastor was, you know, at a certain level and that Robby was a certain level. And they watched us resolve this conflict. Um, and so they thought that, you know, like, wow, Christian men can do this, can, you know, actually scream at each other and everything be okay. Um, you know, but again, it was him having grace from my screaming.

He never screamed at me. Um, but honestly, if you know me well, you know, I still have the capability of, of going off, but you know, the Lord's working on me and hopefully I'll get on the other side of that. So that was my warfare over the weekend.

This is fresh happened last weekend. So what advice would you have for somebody, right? Because in certain situations, there are fault. I mean, sometimes it's pretty clear. I mean, that there there's fault. Right. But there's also still warfare going on. And so is there any advice, not just you, Robby, but anybody would have that?

How do you sort those? How do you deal with the warfare? And, you know, not deal with the, you know, you have to deal with the fault sometimes, if that makes sense. Go ahead, Danny.

Well, I was, I was taught years ago that you, you have to look at your side of the street. And I've always, I've country did up, you know, you have to clean off your own front porch first. So there is some, some ownership of the refrigerator. Yeah, move the refrigerator. Yeah.

Get a couple cars out of the yard. You know, that guy. I think Jesus said something about a plank in your eye. Yeah.

It was a porch plank. Yeah, that's what it was. Yeah. So, but, you know, looking at that and assessing, you know, I have a part to play in everything. And I've gone through this process over the past few weeks, but with some stuff that's going on, but the analyzing, okay, I do play a part in this doesn't mean I own everything going on.

And so, you know, just kind of like raising the hood as we talk about right here. Look at that. This isn't quite right. So what actually really helps me is that there's a verse in 119 Psalm. It says, great peace have they that love by law. Nothing shall offend them.

That's pretty high standard. And actually, that's my check engine light. Robby, you're offended. So what is that telling you is telling you that this is warfare and you've lost your peace. This isn't the other person's deal right now. Because the plank in my eye is I'm the one who's lost my peace, right? Mm hmm. One of the keys for me is when I start getting emotional. Cause my emotions, I might say, Oh, follow your heart.

Follow your emotions. No, don't use that as your check engine light. My grandmother and I may have shared this before, but I'm going to do it again. And a plaque that I have lost my peace. My grandmother and I may have shared this before, but I'm going to do it again. And a plaque that I absolutely loved on her wall that said, keep your temper.

Nobody else wants it. And it was considered a real problem in my household, the way I was brought up to explode in anger. In fact, for decades, I would never even admit I was angry and I was eaten up inside because of that. But we have to release it, just not targeting those that are not the enemy. There's an awful lot of friendly fire and warfare and we need to watch out for that.

Yeah. Ephesians four 15 says to speak the truth and love. And so what you were talking about, if there's fault, you have to, you have to address it, speak truth into it, but do it in love. You know, I think one of the times we, we, we try to do either or we'll speak, we'll speak the truth, but it won't be in love or will, um, you know, you mean you just kind of limited, it's gotta be both. It can't be either.

It has to be both of those. Or if you just speak truth, uh, truth, but it's hurt, it's hurtful. You know, that's what we're kind of talking about here.

So it's a balanced approach. I think you also, grace plays a factor in that too. Not only grace for the person that you may perceive as at fault, but grace for yourself to actually have those feelings.

Cause I think the enemy will take it then and potentially turn it into shame and start going down that road. And then, you know, you got another foot down the path you didn't want to go. So if you say I love you through Clint's teeth, what message is actually getting delivered? Well, Andy, to your point there that, um, the truth I heard, I had a mentor, he used to say, truth without a solution is cruelty. So just shouting truth at somebody. Yeah.

And there's no, you know, that got eaten. It is a cruel way to do somebody. Well, I think, I guess probably part of the answer would always be, you go to God with the situation first before you go to the person, you know, like God worked through that with you. Because there are times you do have in relationships, you know, accountability is a part of relationship, right? But accountability done wrong, you know, sailing, I love you through clinched teeth, you know, you know, sends the message that you don't think it sends, right? It sends a completely wrong message.

And so walking with God through it would be key because you do have to get your own emotions out of the way. You got to get, okay, what's triggering this response? What's triggering the anger, right? It's probably not solely this situation.

It's something as Robby talked about is pushing against something from the past, right? And being able to separate those because you may still have to go deal with some fault. But in absence of God, you probably will end up being cruel and end up in really bad spot, you know, if you don't walk with him through it. You reminded me of something happened to my wife that was struck me as quite funny, but it was a relative who's a Christian said, I have to love you because I'm told to, but I'm not going to be your friend on Facebook anymore because you're so stupid. I mean, that was basically the entire story.

And that's not really done in love. No, no, no. And there's a lot to unpack there. We don't have time. We're going to break. Go to masculine journey.org to register for the boot camp coming up November 16th through 19th.

Talk to you after the break. 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. I've been coming regularly and it's just such a blessing. When you guys invited me, I was at the worst time of my Christian walk. I was going through some things. The first time I came, I don't know if you remember, I was walking.

I couldn't stand up straight and I'm walking now. I ain't running around the lake yet, but the greatest things is just being around a group of men that love the Lord and sharing his kindness and his love. All of you guys, I done sat and talked with all of you guys, different occasions, different conversations, and it's all been unique and refreshing.

You guys gave me a whole different perspective in life and you can't hide the true genuine love of God. You can't hide it. Register today at masculinejourney.org. Where can't you be? Can't be a man with a musket on his shoulder. I've got to stand up tall before I'm done. Wrap these hands of mine around the gun. Taste the taste of bondage from my tongue.

Can you run? That was from a group called the Steel Drivers. They're kind of a bluesy, bluegrass band that we actually went and seen up in Lincolnton, I think, a couple years ago.

Super nice bunch and I love their music. Obviously, you don't, but that's okay. Jumping to conclusion may be accurate, but still. They do a lot of songs that has a story behind Civil War stuff. And the song is actually the story of a man who's entrapped in slavery and they're getting ready to escape. So he's asking his wife, can you run?

Because they've got an opportunity to go. And the lyrics are, you know, they're talking about, can you run? But he says, before he dies, he's going to wrap his hands around a musket. But the start of it was contraband can be a man with a musket on his shoulder, but he's not only going to gain his own freedom by escaping where he's at, but he's also going to turn and fight for others' freedom. And I thought about warfare, you know, there's a choice you have to make. You have to stand and fight. But you have to learn to fight the right way is what we're talking about. Because, you know, you can go raging into battle. And what is the phrase of boot camp? You can charge the field quickly, bravely and die quickly. And you don't want to do that.

So that's the bump. Yeah, and there is the whole piece of warfare that you mentioned is fighting for others. Right? Because it's hard enough fighting for yourself. You know that it helps when you have brothers, you have sisters or other people that will fight alongside you, you know, in the battle, you know, to help you kind of fight against that warfare. And we need those people. We need those people. Yeah, we need people to speak truth into our life and speak love into our life and help us see, you know, how God sees us.

Because a lot of times we've lost that sight so easily. Yeah. Help us break agreements. Well, you have a microphone in front of you. I think you're next with your clap. I am. Okay. All right. Danny picked. You're going to speak the truth in love?

It's your turn. So this is from Andy Griffiths in honor of Danny's topic tonight. So, but this is from the show.

I think this is my second favorite Andy Griffiths show. It's, it's from, I think the title of it is feuding or whatever. So it's a takeoff on the Hatfields and the McCoys. It's a Wakefield and the Carters. And like Romeo and Juliet, they have a daughter and a son from each side that they're going to get married and it's brought them into more feuding, which they didn't need much encouragement.

They were doing pretty good on the feuding before this, but it just kind of goes in and just the mentality. They don't even, you'll find out in listening to the clip that they don't even really know why they're fighting and who the enemy really is and stuff. So let's listen to the clip. Well, now you must have a pair of mighty sharp eyes there.

I don't see no Carters. You don't? No, I don't. I was afraid of that. There you have it, Sheriff.

Have a drink of water. Sorry about putting a gun on you last night, Sheriff, but a fella's got a responsibility to see that his young'uns is brung up right, ain't he? Of course he does. Don't worry a thing about it. At times, a fella gets mighty discouraged.

He tries and he tries to teach them right from wrong, but this late generation just plain ain't got no respect for the elders. Well, now I don't know now. Maybe your reason for feuding with the Carters just don't seem strong enough to young Josh. No, it ain't that. How you know it ain't? Because he don't know the reason. He don't?

You mean you ain't never told him? Nope. Well, how come? Because I don't know the reason. You mean your pa never did tell you?

Nope. Well, why? Well, it could be because he didn't know the reason either. Well, who was the last Wakefield that did know the reason? I must have been his grandpa. Well, then how come he didn't pass along the reason? Well, it could be either time his young'un got old enough to join the feuding that my great grandpa just clear-light forgot it.

Oh, I'll be dogged. Now, do you mean to tell me that you've been carrying on a feud for four generations without knowing why? Why not? Well, I don't know. It just seems to me if I was gonna take a shot at a fella, it'd pass my mind to ask what for.

I'll be damned if I know where you young folks get all them new-fangled ideas. Reason, Sheriff? Of course I know the reason I'm shooting at him. Well, how come? Because he's a Wakefield.

Well, what does that mean to you? Well, it means you gotta shoot at him. Well, why do you have to shoot at him? Because he's a Wakefield. Well, why do you have to shoot at the Wakefields? Because we're feuding. Well, why are you feuding?

Because he's a Wakefield. You know, I don't believe you're understanding me. And that's the problem. We don't really understand the spiritual battle that we're in. And, you know, Ephesians 6 says we wrestle not against Wakefield and Carter, but against principalities and powers of spiritual wickedness in high places. And we just interjected that, but that's the whole thing is it's flesh and blood really that we ended up wrestling against. And the enemy loves to get it. He'll instigate stuff and get us fighting with one another. And a lot of that fighting is a lot of times how agreements enter in because it's something that somebody else says that we begin to agree with. And we think we're agreeing with that person and their take on something, but really we're agreeing with the enemy. It's his foothold that he's got us on some wound or something that's happened to us.

But, you know, I just love that because that clip really is where we're at a lot of times. We don't really know who we're fighting against. And a lot of times we don't know why. They didn't know why.

There was a history there. And then we project that onto the people that are around us of why we are fighting and we don't really even know, but we've got everybody stirred up and stuff. And, you know, it's just the thing is the enemy loves to keep us stirred up against one another. And he also wants us to be unaware of what we're really fighting against him. He'd love to put the target on God or each other and stuff. So anyway, I just think it makes a point well.

I mean, I think he uses it as a tactic to keep us confused to the point where he can start isolating us. And once, I mean, I know you all know him, probably a lot of our listeners, once you get isolated, you know, you're going down a pretty rough battle road at that point. Yeah, no doubt.

Oh yeah, you become lion chow pretty quickly for the roaring lion who's looking for people to devour. Yeah, sure. The real scary one in that is, you know, I think about, unfortunately, how the different denominations view. You know, well, I'm mad at them because they're a Methodist, you know, or I'm mad at them because they're a Catholic, you know, or whatever it is that they're the right. And, you know, they're not really sure why they differ, but, you know, we've been against them for our nominee generations. And so, you know, they couldn't be right. Or even within denominations, when you have a divide in the denominations where this one doesn't like this of the same denomination. Yeah, it's crazy.

We have all of nine elders that are the ruling part of our church. Are they from the Lord of the Rings? You'd think. I've always liked Gimli, I'm going to be Gimli. Okay.

And the elf really irritates me sometimes. With him remaining nameless, though, we often butt heads on issues, but he said to me, and it gave me a little bit of a pleasant surprise yesterday that, well, you know, we agree on 99.9% of the stuff. And I had to say, yeah, we do. And when we're looking at that 0.1%, we're going to fight. But if we can focus on the, even if it's 50, you focus on the part you agree on and you'll get along. Yeah, the enemy is really good at getting us to assign motives to other people's behavior. That's one that I tend to fall into, you know, and we don't know really what's going on. You know, we only know what we perceive. And so he's good at fueling the fire.

Once he's seen a spark start, you know, he'll just keep pouring it on and pouring it on. You know, one of the things that we talk about heading into a boot camp, which we are, we have one coming up in three weeks, if I haven't told you that, like four times, there is one coming up in three weeks. So go register masculinejourney.org. But aside from that, you know, we talk about as approaching a boot camp, you know, and then especially after a boot camp, no major decisions. You know, you got to give yourself a week or two just to decompress because you got to expect warfare, right? Because the times that we have had issues within the ministry is we've jumped into things right after a boot camp or right after an event, you know, instead of, okay, let's let's let some things settle down.

Let's not pay attention to our emotions. Let's let God be God, you know, and do his stuff and then we'll come back and revisit it. And, and the majority of that stuff just goes away because the end of the day, by the time you're a week out or you're two weeks out, it's like, it really wasn't that big of a deal.

You know, that really wasn't something to be frustrated about. Like I was or, or as a case may be, you know, it's just looking at that and saying, okay, we're going to be intentional. And we do that after every boot camp, we remind each other, leaving boot camp, no big decisions, you know, not the time to accept a new job. Maybe, maybe you want to pray about a little bit longer, you know, there's some things here cause the enemy is going to try to come in and trip you up pretty quickly. He does that all the time, but he especially ramps it up right after boot camp. Yeah.

When I went to, um, Ohio to the, um, the becoming a King there, I did with them, you know, it's like I'd been going along pretty good at work. I got three things were really jeopardize my, some of the sales that I was working on right before boot camp. And then I used to, that would take me out and be worrying about it and think, but no, I'm not doing that. I am not doing that. I know what it is. I see it for what it is, but those things are there.

They're real. And a lot of times the enemy so wants you to say, no, that's just something that just happened or not. If you, that's the way I used to live. Now you take a more proactive approach of dealing with those, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. When they happen, it changes everything.

It changed or usually changes your attitude. And then those important times, cause you're really going to battle for your heart there. When you're at a boot camp, you're protecting that. Then you're able to make strides and advances. So before we, we in this particular segment of the show, we've got about a minute left.

Um, what advice would you give them? You know, I, am I facing warfare? Well, first of all, the answer is yes. Not are you, you know, am I?

Yes, you are. Right. But, but what do you do with that? You know, what would you suggest that they do with that?

Well, first and foremost, I would pray about what God would want you to do with it, but understand that you will get through it. I'm for sure using the tools in the Bible that you learned as well as doing it with God. Go to After Hours and download the podcast on any platform. And we have more on the subject.

We do. We're going to talk more about this as we come up on the After Hours and go to any platform and do that. But first, go to massgunjourney.org and register for what? The boot camp that's coming up in about three weeks. It's November 16th through 19th. If you're having financial trouble with it, let us know. We'll find a way to help you. We'll talk with you next week.