Trusting The Father

Hello, this is Matt Slick from the Matt Slick Live Podcast, where I defend the Christian faith and lay out our foundations 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. The heart of every man craves a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus speaks of narrow gates and wide roads, but the masculine journey is filled with many twists and turns.

So, how do we keep from losing heart while trying to find the good way when life feels more like a losing battle than something worth dying for? Grab your gear and come on a quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides in what we call the masculine journey. The masculine journey starts here now.

Welcome to Masculine Journey. We're glad that you're with us this week and we're not quite at a full-strength team, but we got a lot of people back, right? A little bit more than last week. Well, Jim, he takes up more room. We call him Big Jim for a reason, because he's really tall. He has wide shoulders.

Okay, it takes up a little bit more of the room than some of the rest of us, not all of us. But Harold's still gone, Art's still gone, so we hope they're doing well. Danny will hopefully join us for the after-hours, you know, so hopefully we'll see him. Of course, we got some of the others we haven't seen in a while. Kenny's out, you know, he's recovering, so hopefully he's doing well. We miss Chuck.

We can just keep naming people, Wayne, you know. You know, but Andy's back. Andy is back. I didn't notice. I wasn't really, I didn't, oh, hi, Andy.

Dang. I thought it was just Jim was getting acknowledged today. Well, yeah, Jim's been gone most of the year. Yeah, he's to be there.

He's kind of swaying back and forth like he's on a cruise or something. Yeah, that's literally true. I've been out of the country for most of this year. Yes, you have. Yeah, yeah, so we're just lucky to see him all together. Of course, you've been gone most of this year, too. I missed two weeks.

That's a big thing for me. Well, it's most of this year. Yeah, right. It's like the third week in the year. Exactly.

I wasn't disagreeing with you. I haven't seen you all year. Get a calendar, man.

Yeah, get a calendar. Good one. I like that.

That was good. Yeah. That's a paraphrase of my quote. It is.

It's a callback. So, David, you actually have the topic for this week. I know I sound surprised, and I am a little bit, but, yeah, congratulations. You have the topic. He has more time on his hands to do these things. Well, he doesn't have an excuse that he doesn't have time on his hands. Well, to be fair, I mean, I was waiting for a topic to come in, and it was Monday, and nobody submitted the topic yet, so I was like, well, let's see what happens.

Well, it's kind of by default, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but I had a topic. I just hadn't told you yet. Yeah, I did, too, and beat me to it on Monday morning. Well, you know. Oh, me, too, me, too. Yeah, I was like, you have all weekend to send the text out.

Looks like we're set for a while, though, so. All right, David, what's your topic? It's trusting in the Father.

You can't do that. Where it comes from me, it comes from Proverbs 3, verse 5. I used the message version on it, which is trust God from the bottom of your heart. Don't try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God's voice in everything you do.

Everywhere you go, He's the one that will keep you on track. Do you have to read it that fast? Do you want me to read it again?

Read it slower? That would be easier to understand. Oh, okay. Trust in God from the bottom of your heart. Don't try to figure out everything on your own. Listen for God's voice in everything you do, and everywhere you go, He's the one who will keep you on track.

So, I mean, for me, throughout the season and the walk I'm currently in, you know, it's all about trusting in Him, and the reward that comes from that is greater than anything anybody can imagine. Well, good. That's all you got? Yeah. Well, thanks for the show.

Anyway, well, Robby, you actually have the first clip this time, and so you want to tell us a little bit about your clip, or how do you want to do this? Yeah, absolutely. So it's from the movie Evan Almighty, which is an amazingly funny movie, in my opinion, and just an amazing movie on all sorts of levels. Whoever wrote it clearly knows God's sense of humor, right? And so the whole movie, like from the gopher wood, you know, where they're showing you a gopher, and they're going for the wood, you know, it's the whole thing that, you know, Evan Baxter has been, you know, elected into the Congress, and now he finds himself being called by God to be the next Noah. And seriously, like, he grows a beard, and all this stuff he can't stop, almost like Tim Allen in the Santa Claus, and he's trying to figure out how to tell the world that, you know, there's going to be this flood. And he builds a full on arc, man, and these animals all come and all this stuff, and everybody is telling him he is nuts.

But he has this unbelievable relationship with, what's his name, Morgan Freeman? Not fair child. No, that'd be a little different.

Much different, actually. Plays God, just hilarious. And at this point in time, he's got it all built, it's ready to go, they're going to knock it down with a big wrecking ball. And he's waiting on God.

And, you know, it's a hard place when you're the only person that believes and you're surrounded by people who don't believe. And they're all looking to you. And here he is. Here we go. This is quite the show.

According to my source, the show hasn't even started yet. Still expecting the big flood. You know, voters don't respond to the gloom and doom stuff.

They like it more positive. Now, you look down there. Those are the wolves, son. I'm going to give you one last chance. Take down this boat. I'm giving you one last chance. Repent. Such a shame.

You have possibilities, but you want to stop progress to save the earth. Go for it. Good luck getting the tree to come to the polls. Take it down. This is a court order approving the demolition of this boat. Evacuate immediately. You have three minutes. Honey, we have to go.

They're going to destroy the boat. No, we can't end this way. Is it too much to ask for a little precipitation? Get on the ark. Everyone on the ark now. I think we should get on the ark.

I agree. I think we should get on the ark also. I'm cold. I'm wet.

I'm going home. So what you're actually hearing there is the dam breaks above, you know, where the ark is. And there is a flood, but it doesn't come from necessarily the rain. And, you know, as always, God comes through with a reason for what he had put Evan Baxter through. And for those of us who have had an experience or two, you know, where you're stepping out and doing something that everybody's looking at you like you're crazy and just trusting God, you know exactly what Evan's going through when he says a little precipitation would be good, you know? And so we at bootcamp often do something called listening prayer. And I've never done it, not one time, where I don't feel like, oh my gosh, I look like, you know, because we're supposed to sit there and listen, and then we're supposed to hear somebody's name. And then we're supposed to listen after we get a person's name and get confirmation for things God wants to say to that person.

Of course, we don't know who that person is. We don't know if God's going to speak to somebody in the group. And probably the second or third time we'd ever done that right at a bootcamp, we did it at the Carolina Boys Academy. And I had, I happened to draw the group of 13, 14-year-old boys. And of course, we're trying to explain this exercise to these boys. And so we're all sitting down and the idea is everybody's just got to be quiet. Well, you take a group of six or seven 13-year-old boys, and you tell them all to be quiet and listen for God. And within about two or three minutes, they started to snicker. And then they're trying to hold it in to be respectful. And this went on for the better part of like 10, 15 minutes. And I'm praying the whole time, like, God, please, what am I supposed to do here? And he just was like, hold, just wait, hold, hold.

And I said nothing. And they tried their best to hold it in. And all of a sudden, one of the boys said, I'm hearing Max, or there was some name that they were hearing. And then somebody called Max's middle name. And only Max knew what his middle name was.

And then he was like, oh, well, that's me because that's my middle name. Right? Well, then once that happened, the boys started hearing things that wanted to be said over Max, which really spoke to Max's heart and ended up being a really cool session from a standpoint of that. But that wasn't when the water broke over the dam. Okay.

When the water broke over the dam was 20 minutes, 15 minutes, or whatever. I'm back in the kitchen. You're making popcorn, right?

Making popcorn, getting ready for movie night. Right. And the boy that heard Max's middle name comes up to me like, Mr. Robby, did, was that really God that I was hearing? I said, well, did you know Max's middle name?

Well, no. Well, do you just think that's why I did, I did it, you know, and he, and he's standing there just in amazement, like, so you can actually hear from God in prayer. And I'm like, yeah, that's, you know, God's real, you know, this is a real thing. And, and, and I'm not talking to him two or three minutes and here comes the next boy.

Right. And he's like, Mr. Robby, did I actually, you know, this is way back. Like I didn't even know that they knew where I was, but they had found me and, and three boys came up and asked me a very similar question with the last one. I actually, his got so serious cause he had a very personal issue and he wanted to talk to me about that God had talked to him about while he was in this thing. And, and that conversation probably went on for 45 minutes. And so it was just like what Evan's experiencing, like, right, you just walk with God. He had told us to do it. We knew clearly we were supposed to do this in spite of the fact that these were 12, 13 year old boys. And it is, and I will never, ever forget the impact that God had on those guys. Yeah.

I don't think this sounds like a distrust of God and it's not at all cause he's shown up every time, but every time we've done the listening prayer, I think every one of us is like, okay, God, we really need you to show up on this when cause we're kinda, we're kinda like hanging out here waiting, waiting on you. Cause there's no place to go from there. Right. I mean, there's no fleece moments. I mean, you're already out there.

You're on the water, you better walk. You know, I mean, you gotta do something here. And, and, and so God's shown up every time. And, and the confidence in that is, you know, God's constantly gonna have us in places where there is uncertainty, right. That we have to step out in faith.

We got to take that leap of faith towards him. And you think about it, the last boot camp, man, the Holy Spirit literally fell down after the listening prayer on Sunday. Like the people were breaking out in spontaneous prayer after the thing, right.

And just this massive prayer thing that happened as a result of, of what God did at, with that listening prayer at that camp, it was mind blowing. Yeah. And so it just gives me confidence in knowing, okay, there are going there are going to be times constantly in my walk. Right. It's not, I'm past that now. Right.

If I think, if I say that, or I think that God just laughs, right. It's not like hit 65, lose that card. Not 65. Sorry.

But that's right, David. Yeah, that's okay. Yeah. Better friends know my birthday.

Well, to be fair, it's just your age, not your birthday. Well, that's true. That's even easier to know. Yeah. Nevermind. Anyway, we have a lot coming up, a lot of activities coming up. Next, no, two weekend, next weekend, next weekend, next week, we have the dangerous heart boot camp. Now that's not ours. That's our friend Darren's. And we'd love to have you out there.

I don't have that address for his church right now, but we'll get that for you at the break. But we also have a, an entrenchment coming up and an advanced boot camp coming up. Talk to you after the break. What we have at our boot camp is something that makes you stronger and it 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 got away from, from Christ and suffer a overdose. And he took my memory at that time. I didn't know where I was, who, what I was doing. So he showed me a little bit of his power there, letting me know that without him, I'm nothing.

I don't got nothing and I will be nothing. So I decided to come back and just right now for the first time, like I've been through a lot of things. Like as you see me, tattoos all over and everything I've been through a war. So for the first time in my life, on this camp, I've been able to feel that peace in my heart. I haven't seen my family in over eight years now, but I actually can say today that I'm okay with it. God is with me and he's been dealing with my heart on a way that I never experienced it before. And I'm just thankful and grateful.

Register today at masculinejourney.org. Welcome back to Masculine Journey Radio. David, that was your bump. Well, we didn't sing it. I mean, it sounded like you, but it wasn't you. No, no, definitely wasn't singing.

That's by Lauren Daigle and it's trust in you. I'm glad you enunciated that in case you, in case everybody wanted to know who it was. Yeah, for sure. You might need to tell her what enunciate means though. Yeah, I will.

After the show. I'll drive my map. So I used a part of that song that says, she's singing, it says, when you don't move the mountains, I'm needing you to move. When you don't part the waters, I wish I could walk through. And when you don't give the answers, as I cry out to you, I will trust, I will trust in you.

And I use that for a reason. It's really easy to say, oh, I, you know, I'm trusting when everything in life is going the way, you know, you think it should be going. It really, when the trust really comes, where you're really trusting in the father is when you're at that spot that, you know, maybe your prayers are getting answered in a different way that you thought they should, or things aren't necessarily going the way you thought they should go, but they're the way he wants it to go.

Because as you get through that road of trusting and going through all those, you know, little hiccups and little bumps in the road, the reward from that outcome is awesome. Yeah. Things most often don't work out the way we think that they're going to.

Or the way in our flesh wanted to. Yeah. Right. Right. And only in hindsight down the road, when we look back, we're, okay, God, that's where your hand was. And not always do we see that, you know, that's part of where faith comes in there. It's like, okay, I don't understand what just happened, but I trust that you're in the midst of it. And that's what she was thinking about. Right.

When the waters don't part, you know, when whatever the other one was, don't move the mountain. Yeah. Sorry. I couldn't remember. It was like 30 seconds ago, but yeah. Well, you started talking to quit listening.

So yeah, hopefully the listeners don't do that. But anyway, David, we're back to you. You have the next clip. So this is from one of the Indiana Jones movies. There's several of them. Is that what they're called? Yeah.

There is Last Crusade. So he's coming up on a challenge and he's trying to figure out the path to take and what needs to happen to be able to move on to the end of it. And that during this time, his dad had been shot and he's, there's a part that comes up and he's saying, hurry, Indy. And so he's pushing through this and trying to follow through the, it's not really a riddle, but it kind of is. And then, you know, he takes a step out. So we'll listen to the clip.

Yeah. Well, you don't see, cause we're obviously not seeing the clip is he's standing over this great ravine or precipice, right. But it's a great ravine there.

And there appears to be no way across and it's too far to jump, but he has to get across to try to save his dad. Cause he has to try to get the, Oh, what'd I say was earlier that the thing you drink out of the Holy grail, the Holy chalice. I kept thinking chalice was not the Holy chalice. Right. It's the Holy grail. Right. So he's trying to get to the Holy grail.

And so when we pick it up, he's looking across the ravine. Yep. Okay.

Here we go. So, you know, the last, I don't know, probably my entire life, but for sure in the last four years that, you know, I've been really focused on trying to, you know, work on trusting in the father more, um, with life decisions and in a career and personal life and church life and everything. Um, you know, it's always been, I got to take a leap of faith, like a big sigh, like, like Andy just did on that, uh, more so in the last, probably, I don't know, month, month and a half, um, over, over the last year or so, um, at my previous career, I was working for sheets as a store manager and, uh, it was a great four and a half years that I was with him.

But this last year, it was really tough on me mentally, physically, and spiritually, and just was really wearing me down and emotionally and emotionally. Did I miss that? I thought through him. We noticed. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so psychologically, I think so. Yeah.

I'd have to get a dictionary to understand that. So anyways, um, you know, I was really looking at trying to, you know, with my daughter and my wife, I needed to be at home more. Um, that was really weighing on me. And, and, you know, as, as, um, our pastor at re3 talked several months ago about margins and my margins were really full working for them. And so I kept praying, you know, Hey, if God, if this is not what you want me to do anymore, I really feel like I'm being called away from this of, of doing what, what I was doing.

Um, let me know. And so, you know, slowly but surely, sometimes quicker, he would show me that, Hey, this is not where you want to be. So started looking elsewhere, um, started putting fillers out there, applying to things and, you know, again, praying to God saying, Hey, you know, if this is what you want me to do, I still have my family, please open up some doors.

And so, all right. So the application process started with all kinds of companies and phone interviews were happening, zoom calls were happening and all that stuff. And I was like, awesome.

That's right. But every single one of them kept saying, no, every single interview I had, didn't get a call back, got the, you know, the professional auto-generated email says, Hey, thanks for applying, but you know, we're going with somebody else and all this. And so, um, and then Sam's company true home started, um, hiring for a position in the field and, and he had mentioned it to me and I had applied to it. Well, I started to apply to it and I stopped and I was like, I don't think this is the way I should go. And so I didn't finish my application with that. And then fast forward, I don't know, probably six months later, I think, um, Sam, you know, says again, Hey, you know, we're, we're, we're hiring for this position.

Are you interested? And I was like, sure. And so this time I put the application through, um, prayed about it, felt really good about it, interviewed for it. 95% sure that this is the direction God wants me to go.

95% sure. I'm about to get a job offer and I get a phone call and says, Hey, you know, our paths are going to cross again and you're going to work for us, but just right now is not the right time. We're going to put this on pause. And I was like, Oh man.

I was like, okay. So kept doing what she's kept praying about it, really praying intensely. And then, um, I, you know, probably foolishness, it was a leap of faith, send my boss an email and just said, Hey, I'm not, I'm not coming back. And, um, as of January 1st, like, this is not what I want to do anymore. I've asked for help. I want out, um, nothing's changing. So I'm going to make the change.

So I sent that out and, uh, Oh, so you took a leap of faith without having another job. That's exactly what I just said. Yeah. I was just clarifying. Okay. Yeah.

Cause the listeners, you know, I need a little clarification on that. So took that leap of leap of faith. And I think it was two, maybe three weeks prior to my end date. Um, true homes calls me back and puts me in for a final interview. I'm hired that day, um, left sheets and now have a quality of life that, um, to be home with the family, my margins aren't as full, um, stress-free my phone's not well, stress-free semi I work with Sam on a daily basis.

So it's a little bit of stress or maybe uncomfortable, but, but the biggest thing is the leap of faith for that was I've been in the service industry, restaurant, hotels, hospitality industry for the better part of 21 years. And then I just took a leap of faith to go into an industry, doing something, building new home construction for true homes that I've never done, um, construction at all. In fact, I think the first time I ever went and did anything, um, for our church to help Sam and then build a ramp at a house, I pulled a hammer. He asked me if I had a hammer. I was like, yeah, I got a hammer. I pulled out a ball peen hammer.

And he's like, what are you going to do with that? So I absolutely go fix some pipes. Yeah. So I had no idea.

And so it was a big leap of faith and I'm already starting to see the reward a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, we do. Yeah. So we've got a, we've got a couple of minutes.

I thank you, David. I want to talk a little bit more about the upcoming activities we have so that we don't run out of time. We do have dangerous heart boot camp, which is coming up next weekend at Carolina Bible camp, which is where we normally have our camps. Darren's having that there and it's going to be a slightly shortened boot camp.

It's not a full one. It's, it's a Thursday night, all day, Friday, and then part of the day, Saturday. And so, you know, being back at church on Sundays, it really vital to you. This would be a great boot camp for you to go to.

Right. And so Robby, do you have the, the that's Lake Springs church, but you have the, yeah, it's, it's actually pretty easy. If you just Google Lake Springs church, it comes right up that it's in Holly Springs. And then once you get there, it shows what's happening and it shows a dangerous heart boot camp.

You click on that and you can go register right there, Lake Springs church in Holly Springs. Easy enough. And again, that's coming up February first through third. Right.

Right. And then coming up behind that on February 23rd and 24th, we have an entrenchment, which our very own like, and it's absolutely free, right? We always like the F R E E. And that's going to happen actually at my church at West Ashboro Baptist church in Ashboro on Urari street. And I just got confirmation corn will be there. So, I mean, that's if no other reason, not on the cob corn in person, we might have corn on the cob too, because we do have food coming, you know, of course, Friday night and Saturday morning. It might be it's operation Arby's is fully underway at West Ashboro Baptist church, but yeah, very, very cool event.

And it like we talk about is a mini boot camp where, you know, you come in on a Friday night, we spend all day Saturday. The great news about either of these events is we have an advanced boot camp coming right in April and neither of these qualify for you to be able to attend the advanced boot camp coming up April first through the fourth. Is it that was either he said neither sounded like might've been neither since we're pronunciating, right? Yeah. Either either qualify for that. Right.

And so the, uh, the advanced boot camp is April 4th through seventh. There you go. Right.

And so I got all the dates, right. That's kind of new for me. I know. Yeah. But I've been looking at my phone unlike David.

I've not been reading Facebook. I've been, um, in trying to, uh, see what the dates were, make sure I had them right. Proverbs three. He was three, five, five. Yeah.

So he could read it like the message version of the message. That was a good version. It's a great version. Yeah. Yeah. It got the message across. It definitely did. I was impressed. I really was. Yeah.

So any other last thoughts before we head off of this show, we're getting ready to wrap it up here in the next, uh, 30 seconds to a minute. I do have a question about your clip. You said all the animals were on board the ship already on, on the new arc. Yes.

Yeah. And they're getting ready to demolish it. Where the human, I mean the animal rights people when you need them, you know, I have no idea. That's just astonishes me.

That movie wasn't full of animal rights people, however, the animals took their own rights pretty much throughout the movie. So to remind you what we have coming up, we have dangerous heart bootcamp next weekend. You can go to Lake Springs church in Holly Springs.

You can look that up on any type of search engine and register their dangerous heart bootcamp. I think it's $135 for the weekend. Then we have an entrenchment coming up and that's going to be the 23rd and 24th of February. And that's an Ashboro West Ashboro church and it's free and it's free. And then beyond behind that in April, April 4th through 7th, we have an advanced bootcamp back out at Carolina Bible camp. You can go to masculinejourneyradio.org to register for those last two or for the first one, go to Holly, Holly Springs, Lake Springs church. Talk to the next week. Love somebody well this week. This is the Truth Network.