How Is God Active In Your Life After Hours

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Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. We are glad to have you with us today, and we are talking about David's topic. I know that may sound foreign, but we are talking about David's topic. David, was this like your third or fourth topic now? Yes, like my third or fourth show too. Well, not that you've attended.

Yeah, yeah. Hey, I still have not created a topic and not shown up. So, I mean, I've always shown up when I've created a topic.

Have you? I think there was one that you did. No, no, no.

There was one I submitted a bump for post bootcamp show and I didn't, wasn't able to make that, but I have not made a topic and not shown up yet. That's why you're still a guest. That's not Masculine Journey Protocol. Yeah, you're not material. Yeah, yeah. So, you want to tell us what the topic is, Dave? Yeah, sure.

The topic is... Dave? Vid? Yeah. Okay. Okay. That's all we're gonna start the After Hours show.

Got it. We are. Cool.

So, I mean, if you guys are wondering where I'm at next week, you know, probably took a break again. So, I was getting picked on too much. No.

There's a way to get bailed out. I think I see smoke coming out of David's ears here. Yeah, probably a little bit. Nah. It's, so the topic is... Back it up, Dave.

Calm down. How is God walking slash leading you in your current season of life that you're in? And the reason I picked this, this is a spinoff of our show last week that Danny's topic was for spiritual warfare. And I think it's a good reminder of knowing where we're at in Christ during our walks. Because I think as men, and even, you know, just human beings alone, we get sidetracked with everything, the hustle and bustle of the world going around and loose focus on really where God was.

And how he wants to take us and how he's leading us through that and then get wrapped up with the enemy's lies and deception and ultimately fall down a path that, you know, nobody wanted to go to initially. But, so that's where I was going with this topic. Sam, what do you think?

I think it's a good topic. Yeah, me too. Andy? I was surprised.

Andy? Yeah. Anyway, so who's up first with the clip this time? I think we're gonna go with my clip. You wanna go with your clip? Sure.

Alright, you wanna tell us a little bit about it? You must have had Andy's loaded up here. Well, yeah, because you said Andy's before, but now I'm back to you. Well, I think I said I wanted to go with a serious clip and then we'd go with a funny clip afterwards. Because this is a serious dude, but it's got some humor in it.

Okay. So mine's from the Robert the Bruce movie. And this is his speech at the Battle of Lou Dane, I think is how you pronounce it. The only one I think that knows how to pronounce it on here tonight.

So that's how we're pronouncing it. And he gives a very passionate speech about the battle that they're walking into. And the reason I chose clip, which we can share, I'll share more after we listen to it is because, you know, this is where I'm at, this is what God's showing me is that, you know, I need to remember that I do have what it takes to fight the battles that I'm in, and that I didn't lose any of my tools that I've learned from bootcamps or from my band of brothers, as well as just growing up in life in general, that, you know, I just need to not forget that I know I know what to do. And I know how to fight the fight. So we'll listen to my clip, and then we'll come back and talk about it. Remember this, the men that we fight today have sworn fealty to a godless murderer.

Make no mistake, his aim will be to take our England next. I could talk about God, but he has no place where we are going. I could talk about honor, but you are here. You know enough about honor. I know you all as men, but today, today we are beasts. We fight for God, for honor, for country, for family, for yourselves. I do not care so long as you fight!

Take the day! You know, your friends and your band of brothers, they're great, but you know, they got their own stuff going on, and you got your own stuff going on, and you're being successful the way you want to be successful, and all this is happening for you. Just keep going with the flow and stuff like that. And ultimately it put me, inspired me into starting to isolate, and you know, I know Sam texted me one time, he's like, hey man, I haven't heard from you in a while, make sure you don't isolate, but really what hit me, basically between the eyes, was my wife said it to me.

She was like, hey, you haven't been going to the radio show, I know you've been busy with work, but you need to go. You're different when you don't go hang out with your friends and do that. You act different, your week's not set up. It used to be like that for me going, now, church is still like that for me, but if I don't go to church, it doesn't mean I'm not worshiping God or feel that same way about it, but it is like coming to having the community here with my band of brothers and just talking about how our week's going, how our month's going, and just having that support that God has placed each one of us in each other's lives for really resets us and helps us ground ourselves back into the walk we're doing. That speech right there is basically my motivation, not the exact speech, but the passion that you can hear in that is my motivation that God has laid in my heart that I try to speak to myself every day. It didn't come overnight. In fact, it just actually started happening probably a couple weeks ago, and my mood and mentality and headspace has changed completely of where I'm at in life currently than where I was, because ultimately, listening to the enemy had brought me down back into a bitter root of anger. As Sam said during the pre-show, what was I angry about? I was angry. I was still fighting. I was just fighting myself. It didn't matter what I did to try to get out of that or what somebody did. The enemy was going to use that and let me know how angry I was about it. Honestly, it doesn't matter.

I would care less normally. I used an example like my daughter. She might not have thrown away a bottle.

I think I used the example of a soda bottle. I saw it, and I was like, hey, pick up after yourself. I got onto her about it. She's like, Jesus, it's just a bottle.

Well, the enemy's placing that in your head. Well, that's just a bottle. She's going to never throw that bottle away. She's never going to do it. She always does it. Yeah, she always does it. She does it just to make you mad. She leaves it in the couch cushions just so you find it and all this stuff and builds that anger up. Then you get onto your kids about it and then immediately comes back at you with a shame like, oh, you're a bad guy. You just yelled at your kid. You made her cry and upset. Then you go and try to apologize. Then he comes back at you and says, what, are you cowering like a dog, like a big dog with a tail between your legs? Why are you showing her that satisfaction? You're like, all right, now I'm mad again. It's just never any cycle.

There's no fruit from that at all. Ultimately, it's death and destruction. You're killing your heart when you do that. Yeah, one of the things, well, partly, David, part of it is the stage that you're in. You've been in the king stage for a while, right? But part of the discovery in the king stage is learning what battles to fight and what ones to not. Because when you're just a warrior and you're reporting to a king, which we're always reporting to the king, right?

So, getting our direction there, which is key, and trusting in him. But when you're just at the warrior stage, everything's a battle. So, you're called, you feel like you've got to fight everything. And then as you get into the wisdom of the king stage, you start to learn not every battle needs to be fought. Or not every battle needs to be taken head on. Yes, maybe this is one that I fight later in a different way and using God's discernment in it. And so, there's part of that that plays in. But you're right, the enemy, he traps you one way, then turns around and traps you another, then traps you another.

And that's his M.O. Yeah, I was going to say, you articulated that very well because I think a lot of us have been through that stage. It's a constant shame along those stages about every action that you take. And you feel like by the end of the time that you walk through that process, you feel like a failure.

I missed it in every way and it's all lies. Maybe there's some truth to it, like the enemy does, but it's like where you want to go is not to God at that point in time. God, I just screwed up all this series of stuff. But it is a trap, I think, that he sets.

Multiple traps that are all connected. And the way that always plays out, it's the same, you'll hear the words slightly differently, but it's always the same kind of thing. It'd be like, yeah, she always does that. And so that gets you angry, right?

Oh yeah, she always does that. So you start to agree with the enemy, that's what he's waiting on, the agreement. And then he piles it on and then you get angry. And as soon as you do that, he's like, yeah, you're a bad dad.

Yeah, that's the grand finale right there. Or your wife gets onto you for it and you're like, wait a minute, you're always the one telling me I need to be, you know, stern or more strict than I am and now you're coming at me, what the heck? Or during all that, you're like, she must not have any respect.

She's 14 years old, you should know this. Yeah, exactly. It's like the very thing that hits at men a lot of times is we're not respected and those actions are a lack of respect. One thing I do want to stress though, because me and Sam were talking about it, I think it might have been last night, is that one thing I've learned, and for our listeners too, don't confuse disruption and dismantling that God's doing in your life for an attack on the enemy. The enemy will use that too to kind of come back at you and say that that's not what God's doing. And I think where I'm at in my walk now where I haven't been here at all, this is all new territory for me, is that I'm starting to gain the understanding and the discernment to be able to tell when it's an attack from the enemy and when it's God disrupting and dismantling because ultimately, even when I fell in isolation with work and stuff, I had a lot of stuff going on, God was actually dismantling and disrupting stuff in my career life that I wasn't seeing it that way. And instead of me not seeing it the way I should have, the enemy came in and snuck right in my back door and turned it into a life or death battle for me. And the enemy likes to turn that and flip it and say, abandonment. God's abandoned you.

Look at everything you've been doing, how hard you've been working. And God's just trying to take those things from us that are in the way out of the way, but it looks like we're being abandoned from the enemy standpoint. I like the way you put destroying your own heart. You've seen what Satan's trying to do to you, is pull the people you really love with all your heart and build these little mountains out of molehills, like you're saying, like choosing the battles and all that. That's the wisdom coming from, you know, they say, learning, hey, how do I deal with imperfect people?

Start with the man in the mirror, me and others, and really learn that love, that agape. I want what's best for my family and all. And making them wise decisions, what she's talking about, is that cup really worth wounding somebody? Sam was talking about that. Choosing it wisely, how to handle these little differences, because Satan's always wanting to make a battle.

Instead of an opportunity to serve each other. And it does get frustrating sometimes when you have to pick that bottle up. But this is just a little season you're going through.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I think as men that are listening and sitting here, I mean, we've all been in that season. And I'll get out of this season and I'll come back to this season. Not just that, the season of raising your daughter. She's got a few more years.

We'll see, it might be longer than a few more years, who knows how long. Well that's true. But you know, I appreciate you talking about the wisdom I have now. If you would have met me three years ago at bootcamp, there was no wisdom. And I'm glad you see that.

We all work to progress. Yeah, for sure. Those of us who know you better didn't say it.

No, absolutely. I noticed the three on this side of the room didn't say anything. You know, one thing I do, I was talking to somebody, actually I was talking to my brother about the upcoming bootcamp trying to get him to come because he's going to have some free time coming up. But I told him, because he won't be able to do a lot of physical activity. And I was like, you know, it's not bootcamp, if anybody's wondering about bootcamp, it's not bootcamp like the Marine Corps or something like that. It's physical, but understand everybody but me is fairly older and probably doesn't, except for Robby, he's a lot more active than Harold.

And Sam too some days, I guess. It's not really the physical aspect. It's not a bootcamp for you physically. It's a bootcamp for your heart and spiritually.

And that's what it's all about. And if you are even sitting there right now like, you know, that sounds pretty cool, but I don't think I have enough time. Yes, you have enough time. Make the time.

I promise you, you will not regret it. And if you do, I will personally pay for your bootcamp because I don't think that's ever going to happen. The term bootcamp is more focused on the intensity. You hear about bootcamps for the military. You hear about bootcamps for technology and learning that, exercise, all this stuff.

It's just a matter. It's an intense weekend, but it's still pretty relaxed. I just saw bootcamp online, I think on a Facebook ad or something. I went and looked at it. It's another bootcamp, similar, has nothing to do with what we do, but it still is a Christian men's bootcamp.

And they're like running miles every morning when they wake up and doing all the same workouts the military do. And I'm like, that's cool. Maybe that's somebody's cup of tea. Not mine. Well, it is.

I think the idea there is the whole man and stuff like that. But yeah, we probably won't be doing that. We may have a bootcamp at the lake fishing or something like that. If you see any of us running that bootcamp, you probably should run too.

You better look and see what's after me if you see me running that far. Just for clarity, we've had people in their late 80s, early 90s at bootcamp that participated in just about everything and not had an issue. We've had some recently, had some younger men.

We've had some younger kids in their late teens, mid to late teens. We had a gentleman in a wheelchair a few years back that participated in everything that we did at bootcamp for the most part. And so it's not as much physical to your point, and I'm glad you guys brought that up, as it is. It is a workout, but it's a spiritual workout.

It is. It's good for your heart. Kenny, you have a microphone in front of you. What's God doing in this season for you? What's He doing with you in this season? He keeps reminding me just to be sober and vigilant. Because that's one thing we talked about in the bootcamp was when you really start striving towards God, Satan's going to come after you. And Chuck's been fighting hard, but he's had a lot of health issues and like that.

And I kept telling him, this is the season. Once we get through this, we're going to be stronger because God's going to take this and produce more of our faith. And that's one thing that came to my mind as I was listening to y'all's talks and all, was what's precious to God is our faith.

He says it's more precious, it's gold, it's refined. Because He's refining our lives with that fire of challenges, of really to trust Him that, hey, He's got us. He's got our back on all these situations. And that's the testimonies I hear here is, hey, we know our Father. We know the plans He's got for us. We don't understand Him sometimes or see that end game, but we know where He's going to take us is He knows plans are good for us and the people around us because He's developing our heart. He's developing us to really love each other and give Him what's needed. Yeah, agreed.

That's good. Not getting into how we respond and not just react. About that bottle on the table or the different things that strike our nerves because that's where Satan wants its own edges and then nerves and anxieties and frustration and depression. And then, like you say, get us separated like a line. Get us separated and get us weak, pick us off.

A couple times during this topic today, as we've been talking about, I'm not a big Rolling Stones fan, never have been. But the song talks about, you might not always get what you want, but you get what you need. And that's the difference between God and the world. The world keeps telling you, you deserve everything you want. You're entitled to it.

This should be yours. And God's like, I don't really care about as much what you want. I mean, He does care about what He wants. He's a loving Father. He's more concerned about what we need as a good Father would be. A lot of times my kids wanted certain things. They didn't get a lot of them. But they did try to make sure they got their needs met.

And so, Andy, that brings us to your clip. Before we get into that, John Eldridge talks a lot about desire. And we all have those desires. We want something out of life. It's just a misdirected desire that we end up with. We think we will be happy with X, but we really need Y.

And God knows that we need Y. So, you know, it really gets into desire. We have these core desires.

We talk about them. That's the first talk of boot camp is these core desires. But how many of our desires have been misplaced, thinking we're going to get life out of something else other than God and His intended purpose for us? So my clip is from Evan Almighty. Evan meets God and God sent him a ship of gopher wood to build an ark, not like the original ark that Noah did.

But in doing that, he's kind of leading him through a process of he's giving him some disruption, you know, when he starts growing the beard and all that. But this clip is where he's kind of, they're kind of getting started and he's telling him, you know, he's drawing Evan in and Evan's not sure that he wants to go. And God just gives him some guidance on what the expectations are. Evan mentions his plans in here of what he thinks, you know, and God just laughs at him. And that's the way we are a lot of times. God just laughs at our plans.

But he takes him on a journey of something, a good outcome, to where they partner in bringing safety and salvation to people. Are we playing? Yep. Here we go.

That's like flood territory. You wouldn't do that again. You wouldn't do that.

Would you do that? Let's just say that whatever I do, I do because I love you. Well, then you have to understand that this whole building an ark thing is really not part of my plans here. I need to settle into my house.

I need to make a good impression at work. Your plans. What are you talking about? We're talking about an ark, right? I mean, an ark.

An ark is huge. I don't even know where I would begin. Well, I hear that a lot. People want to change the world. Don't know how to begin. You want to know how to change the world, son?

One act of random kindness at a time. So just, you know, like you were talking about earlier about trusting, you know, God says, and I believe this is what truly God says, is that whatever I do, I do because I love you. And we don't always trust that. It doesn't always appear to be that because we have our own preconceived ideas.

And we do have an enemy that's trying to give us believing in another story. But that whole thing of just simple. Here he is. He's called him to build an ark.

But what he focuses on is just start with something simple. What is it? Sam's looking at me. The ark.

I'm wanting to flip the letters, so anyway. So anyway, that whole thing, you know, I've wanted to change the world. I felt like God called me into missions years ago and really kind of got off that path. And part of this ministry and just how he's led me in. But, you know, I always was always about the performance of doing something big for God. And, you know, obviously Jim had scold me, you don't do anything for God. Well, you do. You partner with God. You get led into that plan with him. But it does start with something simple. And it's just kind of been a reminder to get back to some of those simple things.

Whatever you do to continue seeking after him. Those things are going to be a byproduct. Acts of random kindness. There I go. Acts of random kindness will be a byproduct of you, you know, in relation, deep relationship with God. But, you know, God's led me recently starting a book by Dallas Willard called Life Without Lack. And it's on the 23rd Psalm. And I thought it was interesting.

David submitted the topic. King David wrote, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in creamed pastures.

Maketh me, that's a form of leading. And sometimes we're so busy and active, God makes us sometimes lay down. Lay down, you know, like a shepherd would a sheep.

Lay down. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. You know, it just goes on and that whole, I realized, that whole 23rd Psalm is about his leading.

And Jesus said, follow me. And those things can be a lot more simple if we'll just tune in. Tune into, as Robby says, W-G-O-D. And just, you know, just allow him to lead us into those things. And, you know, a lot of times it's not all relationship and it's not all mission.

They're combined. I said in the adventure talk, you know, we're partnering with God. This is the family business. This is Yahweh and sons that we're taking part of. And, you know, going out there and participating with him is what he calls us to do.

But it's all in relationship. I want to go back to something you said. You said that, you know, you were called into missions but you haven't really been doing that. Really? No, I know. I know.

Just a minute, though. Aren't people needed in our churches to reach out to people that are, I mean, there's people in our churches that don't know God. Right. There's people in our work, right? And so we're all called to mission. And I see you doing a lot of missionary work. Yeah, absolutely. And I've adjusted that. Obviously I was thinking four missions and the story's not over.

Who knows what happens? With that said, this is definitely on mission. And it's definitely, I've been, and I've seen where God said, well, your story can help a lot of guys. And that's, the mission is, that's part of the deal is to be able to share that story and the pain that I've caused others and I've caused them myself and not doing it the right way.

But that is, there's a, the story is there for something and it's to use in mission. I'm just saying it wasn't what I thought. Again, we've been talking about the whole show about you thought it was going to be one way and it ended up being another way. But I appreciate that, Sam, and that's the way I feel.

Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that we brought up, David brought up a little bit and Andy mentioned it. You know, there's this thing that we didn't create it.

I think Wild at Heart people talked about it first, where we got it from. But God's constantly up to four things in your life at all times, right? He's constantly up to disrupting, dismantling, healing, and restoring. And that may sound a little foreign and it did to me at first, but sometimes things need disrupted.

When he maketh me lie down in green pasture, he knows I need rest. That's disruption of what I had planned. Sometimes he has to dismantle beliefs, right? Or dismantle bad habits with finances, right? There's things that have to be broken apart so they can be healed and restored. And once we know that and we have the vision for that, it lets us build a deeper trust with God. Go to masculinejourney.org to register for the boot camp coming up the 16th through 19th.

Again, that's masculinejourney.org. We'll talk with you next week. If it ends this week sometime, reach out to God and say, how can I love someone well this week? We'll talk to you next week.