Student Teacher

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This is the Truth Network. It's 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 man, can you guys believe it's already the second week in February?

Nope, no. Well, kinda. It's the end of the first week for us because we're recording this. But by the time it plays on Saturday, it'll be our second week. We'll obviously be in the second week of February. It's like, man. Time flies when you're having fun. Yeah, yeah.

I saw somewhere, I think this is the only time in our lifetime that February will have four Mondays, four Tuesdays, four Wednesdays, four Thursdays, and so forth, all the way through Sunday because of leap year. It's like the next time it happens, like 800 years from now. Yeah, yeah.

Wow. I don't expect to be here then. No, Harold may be around, but they still, you know.

That's right. Harold can tell us about the last time it happened. Exactly.

Yeah, he can tell us about the last time. Did spring come faster? Yeah, well, it might. You know, it might come faster. Well, the groundhog didn't see his shadow.

He didn't. So we're good, right? That's what they say. So we'll find out.

It's North Carolina weather, so it's hard to say. You know what the wealthy French groundhog who was afraid to go outside saw on Groundhog Day? His chateau. Ah, nice. My wife laughed at that one. That's good. You got one. That's what? Keeper.

We're up to one. She usually does what you do, just look at me. Yeah, yeah. Funny look. Yeah. What? Well, yeah, that's – okay, we're good. But Andy, this is your topic this week.

So you want to tell us a little bit about the topic? Yeah, so I was out when we did Word of the Year, and I'd been praying about it, and I didn't really have it at that show, so it was kind of good. But just kept praying into it and was reading through – where I'm at in the Bible now is in the Psalms. And I kind of felt like there was something with learning or some aspect of that, and then I just ran into Psalm 25. It was chock full with just commands to be a learner. And this ministry, the change, the impact that it's had on my life, you couldn't – every one of us in this room would say we wouldn't be where we were without the learning that's taken place already. But I ever have to be a learner.

I mean, I've seen it in all – Robby's a great example of – he's got all this experience with the Bible, but he's still digging in every day. And all of us have our different ways of doing that, and it's so core. I began to think about that.

I was like, God, why are you leading me into this? I've already experienced so much, and it's just like you're not done. You'll be learning for the rest of your time here, and it prepares us, I think, for the millennial reign, for all of eternity. But it's learning about him, but it's learning about life. It's learning about all aspects. And to be a learner to me is to be a godly person because you – I mean, that doesn't solely qualify a godly person. But to just be a learner, you have to be really following and seeking him, you have to learn. And the word, actually, I got was teach. And it was because it wasn't that I was going to become a teacher.

It was teach in the psalm that I read, and it was kind of stuck out. It wasn't teachable or anything, but teach can be done two ways. You can teach, you can be taught, or you can teach somebody else.

And I think that's important. Whenever you learn, when God sows something into you, when he sows a seed of his word into you, he gives you a life experience, and you testify of that. That helps teach somebody else. You were quick to kind of say you're not a teacher, right? But God gave you the word teach.

He didn't give you the word learn. Right. Just saying.

True. Well, I think it was the way I take it. A lot of these words of the year, I try to be open to not just take it from my point of view.

I want it to be receptive from him and outward also to humanity. But I was pretty excited about it because I just wasn't getting something, and I haven't got something like this in a while, this type of word, and I'm excited about that. But I'm more excited about just this thing of being a continuous learner in all of life. I don't limit this just to my, quote, Christian life either. I've been doing a lot of reading in history that I really enjoy. It makes my heart come alive.

There's just a lot of aspects. I want to learn how to do more with my hands that I didn't really get when I was coming up. It's just a variety of things that I want to experience and do, and I think when you do, you give God opportunities. I mean, what does a father like to do?

What do you like to do, Sam? You like to teach your boys, right? Absolutely.

Yeah, it is. And so you had a couple questions you also ask us along the lines of on this topic of teach, and so some of the questions we might dig into as we're sharing some stuff go along with this. Yeah, you caught me off guard. Well, I was trying to talk long enough so you could find it, but I ran out of stuff to say.

I got to go back a couple weeks. Rodney's got him. We could have Rodney talk. Overachiever. Yeah, that was his word, overachiever. But Rodney, if you got him, you can just read him because we don't have time to wait on Andy. I have him.

I don't have a microphone, but go ahead, Andy. I want you to read him some of your questions. You know, how has being a learner played into your masculine journey? What is the father teaching you now, and what have you learned that you are passing on? So, you know, a lot of those aspects, receiving and giving, and just those are just examples.

There are just so many aspects of learning, and again, it's not limited to just our – I think living an integrated life is you don't disconnect the spiritual from the secular or whatever, so just being a learner about everything enhances us of who we are as men of God. Thank you. So we may answer some of those questions, or you may ask us some of those questions along the way, but I actually have the first clip, so I'll go ahead, and I didn't pick it. And we can't say it, and it only makes sense. Yeah, it wasn't me that picked it. Andy picked me to go first.

Yeah, so he just wanted to – There was considerable pressure. Should we all clap? You could. You could clap.

You could say there was pressure, but at the end of the day, I'm still first. But anyway, no, this is from – Out of three clips. Out of three clips.

You didn't have to share that. Oh, and by the way, we're missing a lot of people this week again, but we have the A-team. We do have the A-team with us, and if you don't know what the A-team is, go back and listen to last week's show, because I'm not going to tell you again this week. But Robby's gone. Danny's gone. It's easier to say who's here than who's not. So Jim's here. Kenny's here. Rodney's here.

Andy's here, and Grant's here, and of course, I'm here, Sam. And so my clip is from the movie Zorro, and there's lots of movies on Zorro. There's even a TV show now, but this is the one with Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas, and there were a couple of them, and this is the first Zorro when Anthony Hopkins has been Zorro, and he's kind of aging out of the role, can no longer do it, and he's kind of not sure what he's going to do, and he stumbles upon somebody sitting on a roadside bar. His name's Alejandro, and he starts talking with him, and he recognizes on Alejandro's neck this medallion that Zorro had given to a little kid for helping him, and he realizes this is a kid that helped me years ago, and decides that he's going to try to help Alejandro. And so when we pick it up, he's been sitting in the bar drinking, Alejandro has, because he's lost his brother, and he's wanting to revenge his brother, and just as we pick up the scene, the guy that killed his brother comes riding into town, and he's going to get up and go confront him, but what happens is Anthony Hopkins' character, the Zorro character, stops him, grabs him by the neck, shoves him in an alley, and then teaches him a little bit of a lesson about he doesn't know as much as he thinks he does.

And so it cut out some of the fighting, because you can't really hear it, but we'll listen to it, and we'll come back and talk about it. Would you care to try again? You're welcome. For what? For saving your life. I would have killed him.

No, not today. He is trained to kill. You seem trained to drink. Yes, my friend, you would have fought very bravely and died very quickly, and then would avenge your brother. I would have found the way. I've never lost a fight.

Except you were crippled, old man, just now. What is your name? Alejandro.

Alejandro. You know there is a saying, a very old saying, when the pupil is ready, the master will appear. Now if you want to kill this man, I can help you, and I can teach you how, how to move, how to think, how to take your revenge with honor and live to celebrate it. It will take dedication.

It will take time. As I listen to that clip, and I could have played it longer. It's such a great section of the movie, this particular clip, but I was thinking about where he says to him a couple things as I just listen to it now. It appears you've been trained to drink. You know, he's been trained to fight.

So the question is what is God training you for right now? That's part of it. But then at the end he also talks about I can teach you, but it's going to take time and dedication. I think what often happens is what happens potentially with Alejandro if he doesn't have somebody there guiding him is he would have rushed out with a good heart trying to revenge or trying to do something to make up for a wrong, to right a wrong.

And he's probably taking the wrong approach, obviously. But, you know, we chart off without getting the necessary training and taking the discipline, and then we wonder why we don't end up in a good spot, right, because we've not been taught all the lessons we need to be taught. And there will be time that God will send us out into risk, and that's constantly our Christian walk that, you know, we can't wait until we're 100 percent prepared because we'll never be there, but we have to wait and walk with God.

The reason I really love that clip, though, was God in my life has usually my teachings come in two different ways. Either it will be I make a mistake and there's immediate consequences and, wow, I learn. You know, the first time you touch a hot burner on a stove, you don't typically do it a second time.

Or if you wonder what the candle feels like when you run your hand over it, you probably don't do that more than once, right? There's some things that are immediate learning things, and, okay, I do this, there's consequences. And so that does happen sometimes, and there are times in my life where God's kind of done that, but more often than not, God's been a gentleman saying, I'm going to wait on you to pursue me and ask to say, God, help me learn this, right? And he'll let me live in a Groundhog Day scenario, the movie.

It just happened, you know, last week was Groundhog Day, but if you never watch the movie, the guy wakes up and repeats the same day over and over again until he kind of gets his life together. And I kind of feel like that's my life sometimes, that unless I'm walking with him and learning, he'll let me stay in those repeat cycles, and I can talk about some of them later if we need to, but where he lets me stay in those repeat cycles until I finally break the cycle and lean into him and say, okay, Father, teach me. Help me learn what I need to do.

Send me people that will teach me. Anyway, go to masculinejourney.org. We have some boot camps coming up and an entrenchment coming up at the end of February's entrenchment, beginning of April's boot camp. We'll 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. The first one, I had no clue what I was walking into. And then realizing that other people were in the same boat and, you know, how open everybody was to share their struggle, it was a great group and a lot of contacting with everybody. It is a tight bond of men.

Everybody's the same. And each and every time that I've come to boot camp, I've learned something different. And not one man that's ever been there neglects not to take time out to talk or to share.

It's serious business, and you need to come one time to break bread with the men and fellowship, feel the atmosphere, hear the people pray, and get down to earth about what's going on in life and get real. Register today at masculinejourney.org. The voice of truth tells me a different story The voice of truth says do not be afraid And the voice of truth says this is for my glory Out of all the voices calling out to me I will choose to listen Welcome back to Masculine Journey. And is that my bump or your bumpy? I believe it's our bump. It's our bump. Okay. All right. There we go.

But actually it's your bump this week. Great collaboration. Yeah.

I was looking for something about teaching or learning truth, and I found the song, but I was like, I think we've played that before. And I went back in the archives and found Sam had submitted it about two years ago. I was like, his cut's better, so we use his.

Yeah, we have a folder, an online folder through Teams that we put all of our stuff in. And so last night I went to put my clip in because I had been working on my clip, and it said I already had a bump in there, and I'm like, no, I don't. And it said 2022, and I'm like, uh-oh, Teams is messing up. So I texted Andy like, did you get an old clip? And he's like, yeah, I did. I was, during the text, I was just smiling because I figured it was confusing.

Yeah, I was like, I don't know what to do with this now. By the way, so that song is from Casting Crowns, Voice of Truth. I tell you what, Casting Crowns have some of the best songs with a lot of truth in them, and just a great song. Yeah, that's an amazing song, and it really speaks to a lot of what we battle, right, because it really questions what voices are you listening to. Right, exactly. Right, because there's always voices coming at you. Yeah, we'll just go ahead and make that point. I hadn't even thought about it really until you said it, but we look at this learning thing of being taught by the Lord and all, but you can easily be taught by the enemy.

You can be taught a certain way of the way things are supposed to be or work, or that's not fair, all the kind of crap that you get from the enemy, but it's just who you're going to be taught by. Jim, do you have a comment, or is that your bones, or is that the – There are some squeaking, and they're not doing well. And I did, but then the microphone distracted me, and I have no clue what I was going to say. Okay, well, back to you. It doesn't take much, does it? Well, go ahead, Kenny.

I love that point. I choose to listen and believe. That's right, yeah. What are we choosing during our day? Yeah.

Thousands of choices we make every day. That's right. And I'm sorry, I was talking to Rob. You couldn't hear me, huh? Yeah. But, you know, it's so important. What are we choosing, you know?

What are we following? Yeah, this last weekend, some of us were able to attend the Dangerous Heart boot camp, and so it was really a good time. And it was good to be at a boot camp and not be responsible for everything, right?

You know, you could just kind of be instead of do. And I got the chance to listen to a good friend of the show, an active member of the show for several years, Todd Clark, talk on Sonship. And he reminded us, and it was a great reminder that we were all made to be fathered, right?

It's in our wiring. It's in our DNA that we are made to be fathered, and you will be fathered. It's just who are you going to choose to be fathered by? Are you going to be fathered by the voice of truth or the other voices out there, right?

Another way of saying that, I'm going to be fathered by God or fathered by the enemy. There is no plan C, right? There's A and there's B, right?

And so it becomes a choice, and so what are we going to do? Yeah, for sure. Well, Rodney, you're up next. You have the next clip, probably the longest clip of the day. Oh, it's a doozy. Yeah, I was sitting out with the guys this morning having some breakfast, and I was just like, man, I don't have a clip yet.

I'll ask these guys because they'll have something on teaching them. I was like, let me get something that maybe we haven't used before because one of my first clips I had, man, we've used that a lot. I think it's something else. And there are clips for a while with exactly the same ones we've used a lot, and ones that I hadn't thought of yet, but I was like, nah, I don't want to repeat some of the stuff that we've already done.

Like I just did, but thank you. Yeah. Well, I expected us to have a studio full and basically a folder full of clips. So I was like, well, I looked this one up because it was different, and it was really short because I thought there would be a bigger scene to it because I've never watched this movie. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

What was that? Thanks, Grant. So what you have here is Sean Connery is the older sage character here, and he's going to teach young. I think it's supposed to be Huck Finn or something.

I'm not sure. I was trying to follow the storyline there and look at the different clips, but he's teaching the young buck. He wants to teach him how to shoot because he's supposed to be this extraordinary shooter, Sean Connery is, and he's going to teach him how to shoot. He's kind of offering, would you like me to teach you? And then the young buck's kind of, well, I already know how to shoot. And then the next scene is him talking to him about how to shoot and talking him through that. So let's just listen and we'll talk after. Now, would you like to learn how to shoot? I can't already. Oh, I saw.

It was very American. Fire enough bullets and hope to hit the target. Take your time with it. You have all the time you need, all the time in the world. So I started thinking of the sage. That's really the role he's in there. He's like, I'm offering myself so you can learn from me. I'm going to disciple you.

I'm going to teach you. And that's where more and more older gentlemen have been in the word for a lot of years. And there's even some men who are younger, but they've spent their whole life in the word. They can offer that to other people. And do we offer it or do we hide it and just say no? Because even then we don't have what we are looking for, right?

Because we're looking for something that we don't have. Well, you still have things to share, things you can teach and things you can learn. And again, if it's iron sharpened iron and you're working with somebody, it's like you end up learning a lot more through teaching. And that's one of the things I learned not too many awful years ago that, wow, all this teaching stuff does really help you learn things way better than just sitting and listening or observing and watching. But when you get to do it and actually get to teach it, that just ups the ante that much more. So when you're in the word of God and you want to know who God is and understand his word, teaching somebody else, even if you're screwing it up, is helping you. Even if you're not getting it quite right and somebody questions you, okay, work through it, understand it, go find another sage that knows more than you. And you just have to be open to that. And that's where, like in this clip, I just see the American, right, having pride, saying, nope, I already know how to shoot.

I'm good. You don't have anything you can teach me. Something must have changed in his heart to where he finally submitted. And that's what we have to do is we have to submit to God and say, okay, I'm going to let you teach me. Because he way too often, like you've said earlier, Sam, you kind of get to the point where he may smack you down and just teach you something right in the moment. Other times it's like I'm going to let you fester for a while until you trip over yourself so many times that I'm finally going to – it's going to come at a worse time because you're going to go further down that rabbit hole and then I'm finally going to bring you back out and show you what – I'm going to humble you if you won't humble yourself. And that's where I – the thing I see on both sides is like you have to have kindness, patience on both. And you have to be open and honest.

Either as the learner or the teacher, you're not going to get where you need to go. But the first thing I thought of when I – because I read this when you first sent it out and I'm like, okay, I'll – I tucked it away and I didn't even look at it for a couple days. And I'm like, oh, what are we doing? As soon as I started reading, I'm like, you know, 2 Timothy comes in and it says, you know, all Scripture is God-breathed and it's profitable for teaching, for reproof, correction, training and righteousness.

And it's like, well, so what about that, right? But it says, so that man may be equipped and having been thoroughly equipped for every good work. And it's not for bad works. It's all for good works. And that's where then in Galatians, you know, it says that the one who's instructed or taught in the Word is to share all good things with those who instruct him, right? So it's a relationship between the two. And then you get down to where in verse 8 of Galatians there, 6 verse 8, you've got, again, for the one who sows his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption.

So when you're all in yourself and I've got this, I can do this, that's corruption. The one who sows in the Spirit will reap from the Spirit eternal life. There's no gray in the middle. God's world is black and white. You either win or you lose.

The eternal life, you've got corruption. There's no, oh, well, I'll work it out, I'll figure it out. Well, he'll be kind to me. It's like, well, if you don't know him, you don't know him. You're not his child. And you don't have a second chance in this game. It's like come and submit and just walk with him.

He's so much more gentle and kind and loving and good than anything else you'll ever find. It's just that we just got too much pride and want to do it on our own. Yeah, I was thinking about, as you were talking, I've had a lot of my career off and on involves teaching, teaching, training, things like that. And as a younger person, I'm 60 now, and that's young to some of you, it's old to some of you, right? It's all relative at that point. Exactly. To Harold, it would be incredibly young.

To David, it's incredibly old. So, again, it's perspective. But I used to, as a younger teacher in that type of role, feel like I had to convince people of my position. And I actually, over the years, and hopefully more wisdom sets in and learning sets in, that you realize your best time to teach somebody is when they want to learn. So if I'm trying to coerce them or make them learn, they may get some of the lesson, but it's not going to be hardwired in them like it is they're seeking it out. And do you teach more with questions or with telling?

It depends on the situation. Sometimes it's telling, sometimes it's questions, sometimes it's letting them make mistakes, and then have them say, okay, what should I do differently? Because then they're in a question of wanting to learn. They're in a position of wanting to learn.

And I think that's a lot of times what God's looking to us for. Are you in the heart position to want to learn for the right reasons? Or if you're trying to learn just to get a promotion or you're trying to learn to get this next thing, it's probably not going to stick with you.

Yeah, like a fear of man kind of thing where I'm going to show them what I know because you have to look good or something, yeah. It's like cramming for a test. I may get the information correct long enough to learn it to pass a test. And I'm good at that.

But I'm not going to remember it six months from now or two years from now where the things that take time and that I learn through really working hard at it, those are the things you tend to retain. All those combined, ask the Lord to give you a hand. That's right, ask him to give you a hand. So we do have a boot camp coming up, masculinejourney.org. We have two things coming up February 23rd and 24th, Friday and Saturday. It's Friday night and then Saturday all day. It is not a stayover, but it is free.

And it's in Asheboro that's called an entrenchment. It's like a mini boot camp. You can come to that, that's free and that would qualify you to come to the advanced camp. Or if you've already been to an entrenchment or a basic camp, you're already qualified to go to an advanced camp and that's coming up April 4th through 7th, masculinejourney.org. And go love somebody well this week. We'll talk with you next week. This is the Truth Network.