At Home With The Father After Hours

Hi, this is Roy Jones with ManTalk Radio Podcast. Our mission is to break down the walls of race and denomination. Your chosen Truth Radio broadcast will be starting in just a few seconds. Thank you.

Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours, and I'm excited about this topic and about the guest we have on with us on the air. And we'll get to the guest here in a second, but the topic we're talking about today is, what does it feel like to be at home with God? Right? If our goal is to be at home with God, and we're not talking eventually. I mean, eventually that's where we all want to be. Right? Heaven and hell. Right? Heaven.

Heaven here on earth. You know, whatever your theology is on that, but it's time with God. Right? Either way, and I'm not going to debate which is what or whatever, but time with God is what we're all after.

Right? And to be home with Him. And it's available to us now in great chunks. And sometimes we lose sight of that. And so, what does it mean to be home with God? Mainly now in our everyday life. What has God shown you as you've kind of come back to Him from our prodigal ways as we head out and do life on our own or try to live life outside of God, which doesn't ever work. You know, and we find ourselves back at God's door saying, okay, Father, need some help here. And so, we're going to continue that topic here in a second with Rodney in his clip.

But first, we have Mitch Davis on the line. And Mitch, you're with Mission Uprising in Indiana and North Carolina. And you have a great event coming up here in just a couple weeks. Yeah.

Yeah. Looking forward to it. And thanks a lot for inviting me in to join you guys today. Yeah, we have our Father-Son Camp coming up on March 1st through the 3rd at Camp Harrison down in Boomer. It's a YMCA camp down there, not too far from you guys. And yeah, it's our first Father-Son Camp down there, but our 19th year of doing it in Indiana where we started in 2004.

And we did that first Boot Camp in 2000, or first Father-Son Camp in 2005. We also do a Father-Daughter Camp down there in September. But yeah, love to have people join us if they want to.

I know it's coming up soon, but if they go on our website at missionuprising.com, they can check this out and see if it's something they're interested in. Yeah, or if they happen to miss the one in March, they could come up to the one in Indiana. It's only about a nine-hour drive from where we are right here in the Triad. We do have guys come up from the Carolinas for Father-Son Camp in Indiana. And so yeah, that's in May. So May 1st through the 3rd, we have our Indiana Father-Son Camp. So yeah, love to have people up there. And then we actually have our Carolina Well coming up April 18th through the 21st, which is kind of like a captivating retreat we've been doing down there for a number of years as well. And that's also at Camp Harrison. That's an amazing women's event and just speaks volumes to their relationship with the Father and getting chunks of their heart back and moving in deeper intimacy with him.

And so that's a great event. So men, if you're out there, ladies, if you're out there listening and you want to know more about that, you go to missionuprising.com. You get information there and you can reach out to Mitch from there if you need to talk to him or ask him some more questions on that. And we'll come back and ask you a little bit more here in a second, Mitch. But Rodney, you have a clip.

You have the first clip of this show. So congratulations. You made it to number one.

Woo hoo. Oh boy, applause. Come on, fill it in with some applause or something.

I don't know how to work the board. Oh, come on. Damn.

Let me down. Smooth. There we go, Andy. Yay. Thank you, Rodney.

You're the man. All right. So you based this on Psalm 23 6.

Yes. And that is, surely goodness and loving kindness will pursue me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of Yahweh forever. Excuse me. It always happens. Yeah, you won't have that in heaven. I know.

We want our water. I know. But I landed the same place you did.

I went back and I read over that and I started studying a little bit on that. I was like, security. I'm like, it's a definite. It's a final. It's complete. It's done.

It's finished. And that's kind of where I went and reminded me of some other scripture. But I was late in finding something so I'm searching for something that would portray security and I really couldn't find it but I'm like, promise. So I went to that and I ran across David's clip that I'm like, I started listening to the clip. I'm like, hey, we just had this on a few days ago or what I should say, shows ago.

A few shows ago. And I went and searched and found it. I'm like, yeah, well, I don't care. I'm going to do it again. And then I found out from David's like, well, we never actually had the chance to play it.

He had it. We listened to it because we prepped, you know, to say what everybody's clips was. But this is We Were Soldiers and it's the speech before they actually go off into war. And it actually has a little bit of Psalm 23 in it, the beginning portion, not this later portion. And it just talks about the promise that he's making and God's promise to us is that he will never leave us nor forsake us and we're going to dwell in his house forever.

It's finished. And that just gives me a lot of comfort and gives me rest in him when I allow it to be. Because a lot of times I fight that and like we were talking about, I want to take control of my own life. I want to do it my way, God.

And I do screw up like that. But that's where I really like this because he's making a promise to him. And any earthly promise that we make in something like this, I mean, we're striving to make a promise like God makes and can keep it. But we can't quite come through.

So why don't we just take a listen. In the 7th Cavalry, we got a captain from the Ukraine, another from Puerto Rico. We've got Japanese, Chinese, blacks, Hispanics, Cherokee Indians, Jews and Gentiles, all Americans.

Now here in the States, some men in this unit may experience discrimination because of race or creed. But for you and me now, all that is gone. We're moving into the valley of the shadow of death where you will watch the back of the man next to you as he will watch yours.

And you won't care what color he is or by what name he calls God. They say we're leaving home. We're going to what home was always supposed to be.

So let us understand the situation. We are going into battle against a tough and determined enemy. I can't promise you that I will bring you all home alive. But this, I swear, before you and before Almighty God, that when we go into battle, I will be the first to set foot on the field. And I'll be the last to step off. And I will leave no one behind.

Dead or alive. And what I love thinking about is also like the promises, right? Like Paul reminds us in Galatians when he says, you know, the promise is what was made and that's where we have faith. It's not by law, but it's by faith that he made to Abraham and Abraham was considered righteous, you know, for having the faith. And then I love getting into Romans, you know, for he foreknew and also predestined. So this is Romans 8, 29, and 30. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified.

And those who he justified, he also glorified. So it's finished. It's complete. That language isn't something that, oh, he's going to do or something's causing it. No, God said it. It is final.

It is there. And it just gives me the strength to go and walk with him and have the discussions with him and be able to soak in his word and believe in it. And not just – so many times I want to go off on my own and I have to remind myself that I am not someone who has any power to make really anything happen without God. And when you start to get back to that point where you can trust in him and when things are sideways and you just see, you know, depravity going around in the world that we see today, it's like I would have been just mad, throwing things, hitting things, doing whatever, complaining to everybody, right? Just going around, oh, what's going on in this world? You know what?

I know he's got it. I wouldn't do it this way because I would just blow everything up and go back to the end of the flood. I would just say, we're done. Okay, start raining. Yeah, you people are done.

I'm done with you. But he has just so much patience for us. And then also when they're crossing to Jordan, he talks about security in him. When they're going to cross, he's going to remove them from their enemies. And I just love that picture of them going in there and he's going to set them free in his land that he has for them. And I just think that's a beautiful picture because when we go to heaven, we're going to be secure with him. And that's what I love when you said on the first show, we're there now.

It's the already but not yet, but we just can't really live in that. We kind of keep breaking away from them. We can't just rest and be trusting all the time. We go in and out of trust all the time. And I know for myself, when I get out of trust, at least it's a lot sooner that I realize it now and I don't go as far. So I'm on a little tighter rope and he just kind of jerks that collar and I go, okay, I'm coming, Dad.

I'm coming back. That's a good rebuke. It's one of those good things like, okay, you're doing it for me, Lord. Thank you, Rodney. Before we go on to the next person, David, I'm going to ask you some of your thoughts.

But this is part of the list. As we were talking on the first show, if you weren't listening to that, you can go back and listen to it. But our friend Todd did a talk on Sonship, which we also do at our boot camps.

But he did it at the last boot camp that we were at at the Dangerous Heart boot camp that Darren put on. And some of these were things that he was sharing as what it looks like to be at home with God. And some of them were things that God laid on my heart that I added along the way. And there's more that we'll talk about today, but I want to make sure we covered some of the list, because we won't get to all these in just our stories as we go through the rest of the show. And there's so much more, but what does it look like to be at home with God?

What does that really look like? It's to have no fear, to have no condemnation, no shame, to have constant affirmation, to always be loved, to always be protected, to always be safe and secure, and so much more. And just in that little list, I know for everybody in this room, that wasn't the story we grew up with. Parts of it were. Maybe we had the affirmation. And this isn't saying your parents are horrible people.

I'm not saying that at all. We had broken people raising us in a broken world. And of course we're going to have these types of things that happen. And what we say over and over again, they were never intended to be everything that we were created to receive from God. They were kind of a down payment on it, but we really need to go to him for all these things, for consistency, stability, even though the best father is going to give you some of those things, it's not going to be to the level of consistency that God does.

Right. If this isn't what living with the father looks like eventually and every day up until then in small degrees, then why do our hearts long for it so much? Is there any one of those that your heart just doesn't go, man, I want that. I want a season of living in that. And man, just the thought of living the rest of my life in that, how cool would that be? And so that's another thing to say, if we weren't really called to that, why would we all long for it? Because God laid that in our foundation. We were made for heaven. We were made for eternal time with him.

We're just behind enemy lines at the moment. And we just lose sight of where we are sometimes, but that causes us at times to lose sight of who God is. David, over to you. What are your thoughts on this being at home with the father? Well, I think before we can really see us being at home with the father, we have to really start to dig into some of those father wounds from our earthly fathers to be able to get healing and breakthrough from that, to be able to start actually coming home to the father. I know for me, I'm not going to share my whole story on the air tonight.

I have before, and if you come to a boot camp, you've heard some of it. But for me, it goes back to the sonship. I mean, God has placed people in my life to start to show me the things you just talked about, the affirmation, and to follow me through things.

So the end game was for me to get back to him and start building that trust up with him. I mean, everybody in this room in some sort of shape, way, or fashion has fathered me in something. And people in my life, like my uncle, and Tom's my brother, and Tom's my earthly father, has too. I just spent the last weekend at home with my family, my entire family.

I wasn't anticipating that. I thought it was just going to be my wife, my daughter, and my parents, but it was my whole family. It was good. It had its ups and downs, and there were some things that came up and some things that didn't. But ultimately, I ended up fixing some stuff around my dad's house, didn't plan on it.

Yes, I work in construction, but newly in construction, don't have any idea of what I'm doing. But that was something that God laid on my heart to do it. And as I was doing it, I could see that I was coming home to the father.

I was at home with my earthly father, but I was coming home to the father and trying to show the father's love to my dad through me. That's good. Thank you, David. So, Andy, you actually have the next clip and the next segment of this. Yeah, I'll try to make this quick. We've got a little bit of time. You'll have to make it real quick. All right. If you're going on, I'll just look at you. I'll stare at you. I'll start talking about The Orphan Superior.

All right, well, let's get at it. So it comes from The Patriot, and The Patriot is more of a war movie, and the context necessarily wasn't a war movie for this topic, but, man, I see it in here, this idea of security and stability. So you have Gabriel, Benjamin Martin's son, who's older, wants to go off to war, wants to fight in battle, and his dad's already been there in the French and Indian War, doesn't want to see his son go and get into all that, but he does. And then he's missing, and you can hear battles around the house that they're living in.

This is Benjamin Martin's house. He has an intruder comes in, what happens to be his son Gabriel, who's hurt, and he actually holds his gun on him. You know, he thinks he's the enemy. But anyway, he sits there and he nurses his son back or tries to help with the healing process or whatever, and, you know, you could just see that fatherly love there, and the son spills his guts about what's going on in the war. I mean, what do we do? We come to God and spill our guts to him when we feel at home with him.

We spill our guts about the war that we're in. And then the son, the enemy comes up, Tavington, Colonel Tavington, I believe, he comes up and he's really, I mean, he's the enemy and he's trying to find this son. Actually, he's just trying to find anybody that's on the patriot side, and he, Tavington calls him out. Essentially, he finds out that he's carrying this, he's like a messenger or whatever, and says he's going to be hung. And then you see the father step in and try to protect and keep his son away from that. What's not shown on here is the younger son gets killed right after this, and then the father, you get to really see him going after the rescue of the son.

But this is all set up just to show where the son knows where to go back home to feel safety and security. Slowly turn. Father. Abigail. Have you seen any red coats?

No, not yet. Abigail, the children, please. Children, come upstairs. Gates smashed us straight at the red coats. Our lines broke. The British green dragoons cut us to bits. I was given these dispatches. As I left, I saw the Virginia regular surrender.

The dragoons rode into them, killed them all, over 200 men. I have to get these dispatches to Hillsborough. You're in no position to ride. I can't stay here.

It's not safe. Thank you for the care of His Majesty's soldiers. Lieutenant, have an attachment take our wounded to our surgeons of Windsborough. Yes, sir.

Fire the house and barns. Let it be known, if you harbor the enemy, you will lose your hand. By standing order of His Majesty, King George, all slaves of the American colonies who fight for the crown will be granted their freedom without victory. Sir, we're not slaves. We work this land with freedmen.

Then you're freedmen who will have the opportunity and the privilege of fighting in the king's army, aren't you? Who carried this? I did, sir. I was wounded.

These people gave me care. They have nothing to do with the dispatches. Take this one to Camden. He is a spy. Hang him, put his body on display. He's a dispatch rider and that's a marked case.

Destroy the livestock, save the horses for the dragoons. Colonel, this is a uniform dispatch rider carrying a marked case. He cannot be held as a spy. Well, we're not going to hold him.

We're going to hang him. Colonel. Father.

Oh, I see. It's your son. See, as you can see there, Tabbington discovers that that is his son and, you know, that's even more of a reason for him to torment, like the enemy does. We can be at home with the father, the enemy's not going away. Not the point of this topic, but, you know, I think just knowing that the father is there, you know, my occurring, what I felt like was going on with my idea of God, the father, was that Jesus loved me a lot and God did too, but it was pretty much up to me. And as much as I knew the gospel at all, I think a lot of us live this way, we did not understand the availability of the father, that he was there accessible, that he was there for us. And to me, that was coming home for me. You guys have heard me say it at nauseum. I've talked about the orphan spirit, didn't really realize I had it.

It was way past nauseum. Yeah, that's right. Exactly. But then when I found the love of the father, I really did find that place to be at home, and I still struggle, obviously, with a lot of these things, finding security and fear and those things, but there is a place, I believe, that you can come to, to where you experience all that you're supposed to be. It's so clear all through the Bible, particularly in the New Testament, talking about we are the sons of God. He gave us the right to have the power to become sons of God. Those are our giftings. These are the things that he hands to us and we don't take out and accept them. We're like the orphan that says, nah, nah, I'm an orphan, I'm good.

And they're all available to us and we don't step in, but man, it feels good whenever you do come home to the father. Yeah, I'm drawing a blank at the moment, and I've heard it countless times in my life, but what is it that Eldridge talks about that, yes, we are in a world at war, but we're in the middle of a love story. Do you remember how that goes? That your life is a love story set in the midst of a great battle. Thank you.

That's how I was trying to remember it. Yeah. Yeah, and so, yeah, so of course a lot of what we're going to talk about revolves around battle because that's our daily thing we live. It does.

And when we lose sight of that and we live in the smaller story, then it really amplifies things, but when we can have the right perspective and realize, okay, we are in a love story first and foremost, the battle is just raging around us and we've got to deal with it. Yeah, go ahead. Darren, you're up next with your clip.

It really doesn't need a lot of setup. It's Dan Allender and John Lynch and... The other guy. William Young. William Young from The Shack.

Bill, old friend Bill. Yeah, go for it. All right, here we go. All stories have a framework. You know, every human being is a story. The Prodigal Son story is you've got this beautiful emergence of the very being of God inside of our humanity. You've got God the Father, who is a Father, and every one of us, male and female, are the sons. And what the Father does is to work, to open up a path so that they know the truth of their being. We are sons and we are to call him Abba, which means I'm a little boy. There's something in us that knows what it is like to desire to be so small and so protected by a great Father.

Most of us didn't have one. But the few who did really understand what it is to crawl up in his lap and to know that he beams over us. There is in all of us this innate capacity to believe and receive a really wonderful Father. That clip is, you know, obviously just true, but it really spoke to my heart. And it's actually Andy's clip.

He just let me steal it. So thank you, Andy. You can come be an orphan spirit with me if you like. More please, sir. So anyway, you know, what you guys know is John Lynch had a huge impact on me.

I mean, obviously Eldridge and their ministry did as well. But growing up in a very legalistic background, Lynch really, really opened my eyes to this idea of grace and the Father's grace for me. And so I'm only 58, and I like to say only now, but I'm only 58. But the older I get, I used to think about, I heard this story in seminary about this guy named Richard Baggett, who was a professor, and he got up every morning and he prayed over a globe every morning, and he prayed for like two hours every morning for missionaries all over the world. And I thought to myself, I want to be like Richard Baggett. I want to get up and pray for two hours every morning. And about 10 minutes in, I was either thinking about what I had to do today or I was asleep, one of the two. And now in my life, I've figured out how, what works for me, and I do get up pretty early in the morning, not as early as Robby, but I mean, he's almost dead, so he doesn't need a lot of sleep. But I get up usually around 4.30 or 5, and I will sit there with my laptop and I will pray and I'll journal and I'll write prayers and I'll journal scripture and I'll do different things.

But literally, when 8 o'clock rolls around, I'm like, I don't want to start my day. I'm still there and I'm still just bathing in the Father's love. And I'm 58 years old. I still call my daddy, Daddy.

I do. He's dead, but when I talk to my sisters or my family about him or any of my aunts and uncles, it's still Daddy. And so I've learned to stop calling God Lord. Todd talked about that as well, and I think that might have come from a conversation he and I had a while back where I stopped it. But I now, I refer to him as Dad or Daddy most of the time.

Father every now and then, but that walking in that relationship, knowing that he loves me just as much as my earthly dad, way more in fact, is, you know, that's transformative for me now. Well, thank you, Darren. Mitch, real quick, tell people how to reach you and when the event's coming up. Yeah, so they can go to missionuprising.com, so www.missionuprising.com.

They can call me at 317-339-0651. And March 1st through 3rd is Father-Son Camp in the Carolinas. Awesome. Awesome. Can't wait, Mitch. I hope you have a great event. We have a boot camp coming up, an advanced boot camp coming up April 4th through 7th, masculinejourney.org. Listen by well this week.