Trusting The Father After Hours

Hello, this is Matt Slick from the Matt Slick Live Podcast, where I defend the Christian faith and lay out our foundation of the truth of God's Word. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network.

This is the Truth Network. Coming to you from an entrenched barricade deep in the heart of central North Carolina, Masculine Journey After Hours, a time to go deeper and be more transparent on the topic covered on this week's broadcast. So, sit back and join us on this adventure. The Masculine Journey After Hours starts here now.

Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. We're excited about the topic today. David, it's your topic. I'm so excited about this one. This is such a good topic.

Thank you for bringing it to us. Where was that energy at on the first show? I had to make it up. It took me a while to build it up.

I had to build that up. He was saving sarcasm for the after hours. I was trying to be nice to you.

I've been nice to you all day. So, I figured I just that little snippet. We were talking about scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I think he's posing right now. No, no, no. It is a very good topic.

It is a good topic. It's trusting in the Father and what that looks like, taking a leap of faith. You can go back and listen to some of my story in the first show, but a lot of my last four years have been taking leaps of faith, starting with the first boot camp I went when Jim invited me. That was a leap of faith, walking into Jim's office that day. It was a leap of faith for you to stay at the boot camp.

And then show up to the next one and then get on the team and start doing the boot camps with my band of brothers. It was all a leap of faith. Started four years ago. The whole thing with it is I was trusting in the Father because he had my back. I wasn't worried about it then. I'm not worried about it now.

Good. The reason I wanted to set that up is A, we're going to talk about it the rest of the show again, obviously. The other part of it is, a lot of times, I'm sure people wonder, how do we come up with topics? A, we hope it's God that's bringing us topics, but normally it's from what's going on in our life. It's a season we're in or a season we just came out of or something that we're facing or historically we've dealt with.

Robby and I both lost our moms the same year, and so that year we did some shows at Christmas on dealing with loss at Christmas. And a lot of things come from what we're experiencing every day. And so that's where we try to stay very authentic and talk about what's happening in our life. And we don't always have the answers because you know what? They're not always revealed to us in time. Eventually we may know them. And we may not ever know the answers.

We know God does and we trust in him and we walk with him, which is a topic we're talking about today. So the clip that we're going to play first, David picked it not me, is my clip, but actually I picked the clip, he picked to have me play it now. But it's from the movie The Last Crusade, Indiana Jones, and we played one on the last show from that. But it's part of the actual same scene a little bit earlier in this particular thing that David played in our last show. But what's happening here is Indiana Jones's dad, played by Sean Connery, he's been shot.

And Indiana has to get through these series of challenges over to get the, I just lost the name of it again. The chalice. It wasn't a chalice. Holy grail. Holy grail.

Thank you. Yeah. That's the holy chalice, the holy grail, right? We're not going to send you out looking for it.

No, because I would be like, what am I looking for again? Is there a chalice here? But anyway, he has to go get it. He has to go through these series of challenges and these obstacle course that is designed to kill people, right?

And so this first one is, this is the first one he comes up on and all he sees when he walks up to it, and obviously it's a visual scene because it's in a movie. You can't really see it as we're talking about it, but there's two headless bodies laying on the ground that obviously didn't make it very far, right? Something happened to him. And so he's sitting there and so they lost their head. They did.

They did. Yeah. Yeah.

But anyway, they, um, so what's been going on is, and he's been looking at this book that his dad had scribbled a lot of notes in, had kept a lot of notes in this book and, and it gives him the answers that he needs to get through these challenges. And so we're going to listen to it, but you hear him saying this over and over this, and I can't say the word penitent, penitent, penitent, penitent. I still can't say penitent. He'll say it like 500 times in this clip here in a second. I still can't say it, but it basically means repentant, right? It means repentant man. But when you hear this, you'll hear both Sean Connery and you'll hear Harrison Ford, but they can't hear each other.

That's what you don't know because it's a movie, but I'm going to have you listen to this clip and we'll come back and talk about why I chose it. So here we go. Penitent man will pass. Penitent man. The penitent man is humble before God.

Okay. So the reason I chose that one, he actually said it 17 times. I exaggerated one 50 times, but they said penitent. I think I said it right that time. Thank you. I won't say it right again next time.

So I'm going to try it. So I'll say repentant man. But the reason I chose that clip is Indy is going off of the history of his relationship with his dad, right? He's not getting the advice from his dad right there in person. He's not getting the instruction. He's not saying, hey, do this, take this next step.

It's not in real time. It's historical relationship that he's playing back in his head. The things that he and his dad had talked about many, many times, you know, that enough to where it's just hardwired in him. Plus he has his dad's book that he can refer to. Kind of like that scripture, son, attend to my word. I guess. His word.

Right. I just didn't know what scripture that was. I didn't give you it first, did I?

No, you didn't. But it's in there. I know Robby knows. Like Prego spaghetti sauce, it's right in there. But anyway, the reason that I like that is a lot of times, you know, with God, I'm wanting the quick answer. I'm in a situation. I'm like, okay, God, I need an answer now. And a lot of times God's grace, his graciousness, and he'll give that to me.

But there's sometimes, you know, I just have to figure it out. And what I liked about this is, as the longer I walk with him, the more that I walk with him, I can rely on the historical answers that he's told me over and over and over again. As we get into, at times we talk about the enemy and the enemy likes to attack us. He likes to attack our identity.

That's the primary place that he attacks us in. If I don't know firmly who I am in God's eyes, I'm going to be real susceptible to the enemy's poise. Right. But if I know who God says I am, and it's hardwired in me because I've talked with him about it, he's proven it to me against the things the world would tell me. Right.

When that's hardwired in me, I can sustain a lot more. Right. And it's that relational part of it that's important of having that relation with your dad, with our Heavenly Father, to know I can get through this because historically he's helped me get through it. I may not have the answers I need right now.

Back to your bump that you did in the last show. The mountains may not be moving right now. The waters may not be parting. But I can still trust in God even though I can't see that he's right here.

I know he's here because he's always been here. Right. And so for me that was an important clip for me to play. I think the refreshing part around that, too, is not refreshing, but just where we've come, where we've grown a lot of us is just hearing your story is that, I mean, I used to be a piñata for the enemy. You know, beating the crap out of me of not – yeah, that's after-hours hush.

But, you know, just really – I wonder what the smell was. Really? Exactly. That was a long time ago. Okay. Didn't feel like it.

No. No, I wouldn't say it's that long ago, but yet there is just such an awareness of who you are as a son that prevents you from that. You go to that place where you know you can go back to him. And for years you don't – if you're not – you started off with you've got to know who you are and where your identity is at.

And if you don't really know that, if you don't have that foundational place in him, then you are going to be a piñata. So Rodney, that actually takes you. You're the next clip.

So if you want to tell us a little bit about your clip or however you want to set it up. Yeah. This is from a movie called In Harm's Way. It's a World War II movie. And you have – there's a point in the war here where they got a chance to take some ground, take an island. And the admiral that's currently in charge or the general – I'm not sure exactly what is in charge of the island – he's not moving.

He's not making things happen. So they're going to bring in this admiral and he's going to actually make the move. And this is kind of the scene where they're introducing him to what he's going to go do. And you'll hear in there, like, it's been, like, four weeks or something and the guy hasn't moved an inch on the island.

So you're going to have to come in. They're talking about there's no element of surprise anymore, but they're going to have to make decisions. So you're going to hear a part of indecision come in here. And that's the part I'll kind of focus in on because that's one of the things that when this topic came up, I started thinking through. Besides just the fact that, yeah, the more you know the father, the more you're going to run to him, is that you can see lack of faith come through in other times and lack of trust in things like indecision, where you just don't trust him. If you don't trust him, you're not going to go forward.

You're not going to take those steps like we've been talking about. So that's where I wanted to go with this and we can go ahead and play. Well, we gave him the molasses.

Now let's feed him the sulfur. Admiral, do you know what that is? Yes, the shape of those islands.

This is Gavibuta, Lebovana, Tokorota, and that's Pala Passage. It's Skyhawk. Pala tells me you guessed the strategy a couple months ago. Wild guess, sir.

Wild, but accurate. Well, what's your opinion of it? Well, in theory, good.

In fact? Well, the delay has cost you the element of surprise, how far as Broderick advanced on Gavibuta. He's got himself bottled up behind these mountains.

He hasn't advanced an inch in four weeks. Well, we better break the bottle and take that whole island or you can forget Skyhawk. He's got to launch an attack on Lebovana before the chaps there are ready for it. Torrey, you just named your own poison.

You're going to mop up Gavibuta and mount the invasion of Lebovana. Well, how about Admiral Broderick, sir? Some smart man once said that on the most exalted throne in the world, we are seated on nothing but our own arse.

Well, where Broderick's concerned, I'm on mine because I can't fire him. I can't scramble this old command overnight. Means a bad effect on our allies and aid and comfort the enemy. All I can do is put you in tactical command of the operation. Abe Lincoln once found himself in the same predicament with General George B. McClellan. He was a great man. He was a great little organizer, but he couldn't make up his mind when to fight. An indecision is a virus that can run through an army and destroy his will to win or he can survive. Lincoln called in a hard-headed Yankee named Grant. Grant didn't give a damn about organization, but neither was he afflicted with the virus. He just pointed his battalions in the right direction and shoved off.

Torrey, you're going to be my Grant. And however you deal with Broderick is your own business. Just get the job done. Just how far can I go in dealing with Admiral Broderick, sir? You can't kill him. Can't kill him.

But the quote in there, indecision is a virus that can run through an army and destroy its will to win. And I just think of us in the flesh before we come to know Christ and that's where we're at in basically Psalm 14, three verses, and also in Psalm 53, basically a repeat of it. There is no God is what we say as a wicked fool and that we are basically corrupted in our deeds.

No one does good. Yahweh looks down from heaven and says, you know, is there anyone who seeks after me kind of thing. And it's like none of us look for him.

We are not seeking him. That's when some of the first stuff you had was we seek. And it's like it's only after he gives us a gift of salvation to know who he is when he actually reveals himself to us. It's like now we chase after because we know. But man, in our flesh and our own strength, we don't do anything. We just run away.

And that's where I wanted to go because I was like, well, what gets in the way of us doing this? And then even after we come to faith, our pride is still in the way so often where it's like, oh, no, I got this. And we go to him to bail us out rather than going to him to start, you know, the fight and let him take it to the enemy for us. And like Proverbs 16, 18 here, pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before stumbling.

And I'm like, yeah, been there, done that and got that scar. And then also Proverbs 29, 23, a man's lofty pride will bring him low, but a lowly spirit will take hold of glory. That's the Lord right there taking ahold of him and glory. And it's just one of those things where the more I know for me is the more I know the Lord and understand him, the more I can be content and take that rest in him and not have to sit there and just fight with everything I have to do and every decision I make. And I can just say, well, this seems like what the Lord would want. This seems like the right thing.

I'm going to go this direction. If it's not, I will turn and go another direction when he tells me or sends me in another way. It's just much easier to do now than it was five years ago than 10 years ago and so forth. And it's just much easier to make decisions knowing that everything doesn't depend upon me. It's his sovereign plan. I just rest in that and say, well, the only way I know that it's his will is I look in history and say, well, I did it. That must have been part of his will.

I must be learning something or going somewhere with this, even if it seems like it's something bad. Thank you. Andy, you'd be up next. You have the next clip and the next point. So Andy's coming with another Braveheart clip. Really? Yeah.

Okay. Can't be Braveheart, but this is William when he was a young boy. It's right before his dad is killed in battle, and his dad's given him advice on kind of how to handle life. And then his uncle comes in, who's kind of this weird dude, and he's not sure he wants to go with him and kind of speaks into his life and gives him some advice, very similar to what his dad gave him. And I'll talk a little bit more about how it impacted me after the clip. It's just listen for those times of the advice that was given and how common, I mean how close they are related. Okay, here we go.

I know you can fight, but it's our wits that make us men. What are they doing? Saying goodbye in their own way.

Playing out loved tunes on out loved pipes. It was the same for me and your daddy, when our father was killed. First, learn to use this, then I'll teach you to use this. So what he's actually pointing to there is he points at his head first, use your mind first, and then he'll teach you how to use a sword. What are you doing? I was showing our Facebook live viewers what exactly happened in that movie. I'm about ready to pull a sword.

It's on. That's right. He's going to pull a dictionary out. He's the dictionary.

So anyway, he's the wordsmith. So anyway, it's just really impacted me ever since I've did this Sonship Talk. Those scenes that Morgan uses from Wild at Heart really began to become part of me. It showed me that my dad left this world, and I had a great relationship with my dad. He just wasn't in my life a lot of the time. I didn't live with him a lot, and it was similar to William.

Then God came in five or six years ago and really became my father. You look at William's life later in the movie and what he goes through. I mean, he rises up and loves a woman well. He rises up and inspires men to go and do greater things than they thought that they could.

He calls Scottish men back out to be who they were as Scots, as fighters and warriors. But then you think about it too. What's this relate to real life is he was betrayed twice, and his life wasn't always easy, but he always handled things in the right way. I think it was because it's kind of like what you were saying in the fact that the father had already sewn so much into him, both of his fathers, that he knew who he was. But I think too it's more not just a movie, but real life is keeping that connection to the father to where it's not – there is a lot, there is a lot deposited from the past, but there's also real-time stuff that we were talking about that you can get hung up and say, try to be exact like what you're saying, Ron. Not step into something because you're afraid you're going to make – that's not really God.

But he wants us to ask and then trust that he's given us the answer and leading us in the right way. I just see so much more fruit of that in my life, still messing it up a bunch. I mean, going right before I went to see my brother who's got cancer, I wanted to go and just love on him, and it was a great trip. But before I went, I was attacked with a lot of stuff in my home.

Everything was breaking. I'd been reading Job, and I'm like, crap, Job's happening right here. But no, it really – just during that time, I just pushed into him, and things really turned out well on that trip. And you just get a sense of peace that he truly does. What I really read in this Word is really what happens in my life if I believe it.

Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think a lot of times we talked about in the first show, David talked about it, that it's easy to trust in God when things are going well, right? But do you still trust in him when the job doesn't stay there, right, and the job's gone, or the person you love passed away anyway, even though you've been praying, right?

Or the test results don't come back the way you hoped they would, right? Those are the times that really – am I going to trust in you when I don't understand? Am I going to trust in you when this doesn't work out the way that my heart hoped it would? And it's knowing that I may not know how this outcome's going to work out, but knowing that, okay, God, I know that you're in this no matter what, right?

That, yeah, you may not have wanted that to happen either, but it happened. Because I think sometimes as Christians we get – God can do anything, and that's absolutely true. It doesn't mean God is going to do absolutely everything, right? He's not. You know, Jesus didn't heal everybody that came to him, right? Could he?

Yes. I don't know why he didn't, and I'm not being, you know, judging Jesus. That's not what I'm saying, that why would we think it's any different for us, right? And it doesn't mean God's not involved or he doesn't care. It's the opposite of that, but he also knows that there's free will involved, right? And so if I do something that imposes upon David because of my free will, it may not be the outcome he wants, right? But God was not in the mix of any of that.

That was me doing my free will and him getting the result of it. And without faith we can't please God. Trusting God is having faith. It may be easy to have faith when things are going our way, but that's not real faith because they're going our way.

It's trusting him when it feels like the world is caving in on us. That it's true faith. When you read Hebrews 11 and the Heroes of the Faith, Hall of Fame of Faith, you know, most of the stories in that are people that really had the odds stacked against them, you know, or, you know, they were sawn asunder, they were beaten, they were, you know. The world wasn't worthy of these saints, but, you know, it could have been easy. God could have, but that's not God's way. And I think our, we've talked about it many times, the deepness of our faith is only brought out, I think, in those trials and tests.

I mean, it's our, the refining fire of our faith. Darrell Bock And Jim, I don't know that we're going to have time to get the last clip in. Jim Evans It's not my clip.

Darrell Bock Is there anything you'd like to add? Jim Evans Well, one of the things about this clip, and I'll just give it a quick description, it's from, we were soldiers once, and yeah, well, that was the book, and yeah. But it is the pep talk the colonel is giving the 7th cavalry unit before they go into what really is the major large battle of Vietnam that was a turning point, and they were being, they were in a very tough place. But this is before they go into it, and he's saying, you know, we are, I'm going to be first man out. That's God. I'll be the last one to leave the field. That's God. And he's also not going to leave anyone behind. And it doesn't mean we're all going to survive.

That's kind of what happened in the clip. It's a powerful story, but in that, it is imperative that we are all one. And it goes back to John 17, and Jesus' prayer was where I was going to go with that.

And I do thank you for lending me that, but we won't hear it. But it's a matter of, you know, we're, well, I'll illustrate it with a new thing I'm saying. When I go on the cruises, I will frequently be wearing a Christian t-shirt.

And my most common comment from folks is, oh, I really like your shirt. And I've started responding, and I'm really happy to meet a brother in Christ or a sister in Christ. And that'll be, you know, the entire conversation. But it's meaningful. And if we are loving on our brothers and sisters in faith, we're going to be better prepared to love on those that don't know him, and we need to draw them to him through love.

So last couple, thank you, Jim, last couple minutes that we have. So what if the listeners out there are saying, you know what, I'm not in that trusting place with God right now. How do you grow that? Right? How do you get to that place?

Any thoughts? I don't know anything other than getting deeper into him himself. Get into the Word. I mean, yeah, you can go get some biblical counseling and let people explain and help you learn together. Find somebody to disciple you.

Find a good, avid learner or teacher that's going to help you learn who he is and grow. Like a boot camp or an entrenchment or a mini boot camp or an advanced boot camp. Like, oh, my goodness. And because, really, with a band of brothers, they're all walking with him that can help, you know, for all of us. Can you imagine? Really? I mean, I can.

I personally can't. Wait a minute. Grant's got something.

Go ahead, Grant. It's like a bank. Insurance. Insurance.

That's where FDIC. Well, one of the things that really has meant a lot in my walk is how many times I've totally screwed up, fallen flat on my face. And he is faithful when we aren't. And if you're faithful, you can always trust him. And you don't need to know what's around the next corner if you're walking with God. And it does take a step of faith, right? In order to walk with God, I got to have faith that he's got me, even when I don't know how the outcome's going to turn out, right? And trust him in the midst of it. And it's hard.

You know, even Christians, it's been Christians for lots of years struggle with this topic from time to time. At least I do. I can't speak for everyone else, but I know my brothers do, right?

And so it's not uncommon for us to walk in that. Go to masculinejourney.org to register for the upcoming entrenchment, February 23rd and 24th. That is free, as Rob would say, free, right? And then we have Advanced Boot Camp coming up, April 4th through 7th, masculinejourney.org, and Darren's Dangerous Heart Boot Camp. This is the Truth Network.