At Home With The Father

Hi, this is Roy Jones with ManTalk Radio Podcast.

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Welcome to Masculine Journey. We're glad that you're with us this week and we have an exciting week. We've got a great topic. We've got a great guest on the line with us. We'll talk to him in just a minute. I'm excited about this topic and, Darren, this topic we've talked around for a lot of years and we have Darren back in studio with us. Great to have you with us again today, Darren.

You just lost your listener. I know. I tried not to mention your name, but I'd already slipped up.

I did give your last name, so that may save us. We've talked around this topic a lot over the years, but our friend Todd kind of really made this come clear a couple weeks ago at a boot camp your group put on. Yeah, you know, Todd was kind of the first guy to do this with the Dangerous Heart Boot Camps a hundred years ago back when you said, whoa, at a red light.

But he came to this boot camp. We asked him to come and do this talk specifically and it was amazing. And part of the reason it was so amazing is Todd believed in the material before, right, and he was experiencing it at that time in a way that probably was more pertinent to him doing the talk when we asked him to do the talk way back when. But over the last seven or eight years, there's been a lot of things go through life for all of us, and especially for Todd, and so it's really brought it home.

And he and I have had a few conversations over the last, you know, we talk maybe every six months or something, and we're always back on this topic, right? And I just count him as really a blessing because, you know, he also has the counselor background, I mean, you know, being a PhD guy and all that. He really has a lot of wisdom, but he's living it. He's not just a teacher.

He's sharing his story and that's really cool. Yeah, and you know, Todd, and if you're listening, Todd, I hate to talk nice about you, but with Todd, you know he can talk ten levels above what I can comprehend, but that's not how he chooses to communicate. He just puts it where everybody can understand it, and the talk that he did at that time was sonship, and he was talking about, you know, being the son to our Heavenly Father, right, and what that really means. And we're not going to take on that topic. We're just going to take on a little bit that came from it, and when he was doing that talk, you know, I took a lot of notes through that weekend, but for whatever reason, when he was doing that talk, it was show topic after show topic after show topic that was hitting me.

And this was one of them because he made the statement, you know, what would it look like to be home with the Father? And he gave several examples, which we'll talk about later on in the show or maybe in the after hours show. We'll see what comes up from us talking and see what we cover. But we're going to be talking about that, but first I want to get to our guest, Mitch.

Welcome to the show. I have Mitch Davis from Mission Uprising in Indiana, right, and in North Carolina. Yes, sir.

Yep, Indiana and North Carolina. Yeah. Yeah, and so you guys have an event coming up here pretty soon.

You want to tell us about your most, the one coming up soonest, and then we can talk about some of the others you have coming up? Sure, sure. That's great.

Thanks for inviting me on. I appreciate you guys. And, you know, we've been doing bootcamps, you know, Wild Heart bootcamps in Indiana for, gosh, since 2004.

So it's been a couple of days. And we started in father-son camps about a year after that in Indiana, and our boys were wanting to go to camp like the guys were getting to go to camp. And so we took a small group and went down and started that. And so for the past 19 years, we've been doing that in Indiana, and we started, or we will start this year in March, like the first through the third, with our first father-son camp at Camp Harrison in Boomer. Yeah, and I've not seen that camp. We know the area is beautiful, but you said the camp's incredibly pretty, and that whole area is just amazing at the part of the mountains where you're hitting at the beginning of the mountains, I think, over there. Yeah, the beautiful camp. Yeah, it's a YMCA camp.

It's got a big lake on it. You know, obviously the beautiful hills, unlike what we have in Indiana here. Well, you have corn and soybeans, right? You have both. Yeah, we have both. We have both.

It depends on which way you look off the straight road between the two fields. But yeah, it's a beautiful place. And our friends down in Charlotte that have been doing boot camps with us for many years at Camp Harrison and love the camp. And so we have signed on to do all of our events in the Carolinas this year there. So we did a father-daughter camp last year in Hendersonville. It's our first time doing something there. And now this year we'll do a father-son camp in March.

We'll do a father-daughter camp in, let's see, I think it's in September. And we do the well down there in also April. Yeah, and the well is a women's event, correct? It is. Yep. It's similar to an outpost, obviously not at all the same. You know, they have nice candles and candies and it smells good.

So you just take that alone and you're in a different world. But yeah, so we've been doing wells, that event, which is similar to a captivating event in the Carolinas for, I think, gosh, coming up on six years. I think six years that we've been doing it down there.

That's awesome. So if someone wanted to get more information, how would they go about either registering or getting more information? What's your website or how would they get a hold of you guys?

Super, super simple. It's missionuprising.com. So missionuprising.com, all one word.

And remember it's.com.net. Or you can call me. I mean, call me directly on my cell phone and it's a 317 area code, 339-0651. So reach out, check out the website. We can answer any questions, but I know it's coming up quickly, of course, for father-son camp, but we'd love to have some people down if anybody's listening and wants to bring their son to an event like this. I mean, beauty of a father-son camp is we want dads, we want men to be able to connect with their sons.

I mean, obviously critically important for a guy to get his heart back before he can really offer everything that he can to his kids or to his family. But that chance to go out and get down on a kid's level, get down on knee level, eye level, have fun with their boys or with their girls at a father-daughter camp and just have a great time over the weekend in the company of men who are walking this path is an incredible journey. So we have guys whose sons have gone from age six to, well, 16, 20. My oldest son's 25 and his first father-son camp, he was six. So, yeah.

That's pretty cool. And is there an age restriction as far as too young or too old? I mean, if I have a 40-year-old son, I probably should just go to a boot camp or an outpost. You might want to do something else.

Take a trip somewhere else around the country. But no, seriously, I have guys that six is usually that cutoff on the younger side because below that, I remember one guy had to carry his son around the entire weekend and he was more like a workout weekend for him than it was time with his son. So I think, you know, age six, the kids get a little bit more independent and even though they get to spend a lot of time with their dad, they like to run around. And then really 16, you know, you get over 16, a lot of times the boys are not as excited. However, just last year, I had a couple of guys come back with 18-year-old boys and they just fished.

They didn't really do a lot of the other events that we do over the weekend, but they just went out and spent some time hiking around and spending some time with their kids that they don't get. Yeah, so it's all valuable and God can bless any of that and bless all of that. Absolutely.

Well, absolutely. Yeah, and it's a good time. Lots of activities. We do an Olympics event, which is just tons of competition and fun stuff, but also, you know, time fishing, zip lines and, you know, the rock wall paintball, of course, and fun stuff that we do with the boys. Our goal is really to wear out dads, embarrass them in front of their children.

We really want them to have a great time together and for them to see that their dads are actually fun and not on their phones 24 hours a day. Yeah, or angry from work. You can't be angry in this location. Yeah, it makes it a lot tougher. Well, thank you. We'll ask you more about that here in a little bit.

Sure. Danny, before I get to your clip, the concept of this, there's a couple of different things. There's some scripture, you know, about coming home, right, and the importance of being home, and there's a lot of that we could look at. But one of the ones that really struck out to me was more on the prodigal son, right?

And if you've been in Christianity long, you've probably heard the story of the prodigal son, and if you haven't, I'm not going to go through it right now, but you can go look it up. But we all have played that role in our life. At least I know all of your stories. You know, Mitch, you're on the phone a little bit about your story, and the guys here, I know your stories, and we've all played that role. But honestly, in some aspects of our life, we still play it.

You know, at least I have to speak for me. There are still things that, man, I trust God so much more than I ever have, but do I trust him in my finances? Do I trust him in my relationships? Or am I still a prodigal and feel like I've got to do it on my own? Yeah, we do have a tendency to compartmentalize him on things we trust him in and then keep him away from the other part. Yeah, we like to be selective in letting God father us, right? And as we grow as a Christian, that becomes less and less. Yeah, that orphan spirit, Andy. Yeah, that was the longest you've went without saying orphan spirit on this topic.

I was waiting. No, it's in there, man. It's like preggo spaghetti sauce.

Yeah, like Robby would say, preggo spaghetti sauce. So, you know, as we've lived that, you know, part of what we want to talk about, we always like to be some experiment, not experiential, I can't talk today, but from our own experiences. I'll say it that way because I can say it that way. From our own experiences, what has it meant to come home, right? What have you found as you've gotten there? And so, as we go through this, we'll have different points and some similar points like usual. God kind of leads the conversation, so we'll see where we land, but Danny, you have the first clip if you want to start us off. Yeah, I like the aspect when you brought up the prodigal, because obviously I haven't been a prodigal, and I also had to go back to my roots of the Andy Griffith Show.

I know that's a shocker. But talking about that and how we are home with the Father, that is his welcoming moment. Actually, we're not going to get to your clip.

I didn't watch the time. We're going to do it after the break, so we're going to have to talk about a couple more things until we get to the break, and then you can come back and talk more about it. Okay. So what do you want to talk about, Danny? I wanted to talk about my clip, but yeah. Well, while we're waiting, we also have – We're in an impasse. I have a prodigal clip, evidently.

I'm going to be back in a little while. I thought you'd give us a cliffhanger. Well, this is from Andy Griffith, so it can't be much of a cliffhanger.

It's probably going to involve Opie, I'm just thinking. Does it, Danny? He's besmirching Andy Griffith. This is really bad.

I mean, really bad. Well, let's see. Other than Danny, how many kids on Andy Griffith can you name? Opie.

And then the bully. That's about it, right? Okay. So my point is there.

Johnny Paul. Well, I knew you could. You memorized like every episode. You have the cheat codes for Andy Griffith. Yeah, I think there's some help for that somewhere, and we'll try to look that up online when we go to break here in a second.

Andy's anonymous. While the music's playing, we do have an event coming up for us, and it's an advanced boot camp, and it's coming up April 4th through 7th. In order to go to an advanced boot camp, you have to have been to an entrenchment, which you just missed one because we're at one this weekend. And you have to have either been to a regular boot camp, and we have one coming up in the fall. 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. What brings you here this weekend? So I met Rob. He invited me to come to the boot camp, and there was just so many doors that were closed before I was able to come here, but God allowed these things to happen. And I said, you know, God, I'm going to ultimately acknowledge what's going on for all these doors to be open for me to come to this camp.

I just want to see you. So throughout that time since I've been here, you know, just the illumination of God speaking to me through my heart and through my mind and through my soul is just, it's went to a whole other level since I've been here at the boot camp. The covenant of silence after the talks and being able to go out and just submit myself to being able to hear from God and what we've been working on, and it's just been transparent in my life. The level of the sanctification process, the discipleship process, and coming here, I feel like this is exactly where I'm supposed to be.

Register today at masculinejourney.org Welcome back to Masculine Journey. That is our bump in. We haven't gotten to a clip yet. But we did get to a bump in, and that's from Michael Buble, and it's from a song called Home. And we were talking about coming home, and I picked the bump, and the reason I picked that, even though that's about a man singing to his wife about this deep love and how he misses his family, you know, that's really the feeling as we grow in our Christianity that we start to have for the Father. You know, but the good thing is we don't have to worry about getting back home because he's always with us.

Home is wherever he is, and he's always with us, and so we can always be home, and that's just something to kind of focus on as we talk. But when we left, Danny, you were starting to tell us about a clip I just can't wait to hear from Andy Griffith. I'm not even sure I want to do it now.

Oh, come on, you know you do. The clip is Opie is planning on running away from home. I'm pretty sure it's from the first episode, and he doesn't like the circumstances that his life is in at the moment.

He's got a new housekeeper, a whole nine yards, and so he's thinking about leaving. And what we'll hear is the interchange between him and Andy when he's telling his dad what he's going to do. And so the clip involves Andy coming after his heart in a gentle way, and obviously he doesn't run away from home for lots of different reasons, but because it's Mayberry. I mean, you don't run away in Mayberry, so not even Sam would run away in Mayberry. Right, they may run him off. Yeah, that's true.

But anyway, we can play the clip and we'll talk about it afterwards. All right, here we go. Oh, yeah, you ain't supposed to ask your pa. Well, yeah, I know I did say that, but see, see, running away from home is a little special. See, what you do in a case like that is first you write a note saying that you're running away, and then you do. You mean to tell me that's all there is to it? That's all. But I don't know how to write.

It does make a problem. I'll tell you what, if you are really bound to run away, I'll write a note for you. You will? Yes, sir.

I'll do it. Now, let's see, when was it you wanted to leave? Right away.

Well, today's Wednesday. Let's see, in about how long was you figuring on staying? Why? Well, never mind that's the reason. If you run away, you'll run away forever. What do you mean? Now, don't bother me.

I'm thankful. Dear Pa, I am running away from home, and you will never see me again. Pa, what are you talking about? Why won't I ever see you again?

Well, that stands to reason. You've run away, and I'm right here. Now, how are we going to see one another? No!

What are you doing that for? I didn't finish the note yet. I don't want you to finish. I don't want to run away. I changed my mind.

Oh, boy. I reckon a little boy gets the right to change his mind. I don't want to leave you, Pa. And I don't want you to leave me. I hope he does go on to ask him that if he decided to run away, did Pa want to go with him, so that was kind of cool. But, you know, I hope he's in that situation, and so many times in my own life I've been just there. In the circumstances of life, I just don't understand what's going on and, you know, frustrated or mad or whatever. And instead of going to the Father and talking it out, then I run. And, you know, that's where he was at.

And, of course, he couldn't write, and I think it's a lot like that six-year-old little boy sometimes. But, you know, Andy comes after his heart so well, and God comes after our heart to explain to us that there's lots of love and security at home. If you stay home, you know, life makes better sense. And so that's just kind of where I went with that. You know, I mean, I've been the prodigal more than one time in my life, and, you know, I love the Scripture where it says, you know, make your life a living sacrifice.

The problem with that is you keep crawling off the altar. So that's kind of where I went with that. Darrell Bock Darren, Todd makes a comment about we are all made to be fathered. Todd Johnson Right. Darrell Bock Right.

And so where does he go with that concept? Todd Johnson Well, basically, we will be fathered. Darrell Bock Right.

Todd Johnson Whether we like it or not. We're going to be fathered by the father of lies, or we're going to be fathered by God. The problem is if you didn't have a great father growing up, then you tend to choose not God.

You know? You don't actively – I don't know anyone. I've met a couple. But I don't know anyone now that would actively choose Satan as their father. And yet, when we don't choose God, I mean, it's us or it's the father of lies, and I'm not too dependable. And so I'm guessing, you know, that he's the one that's talking more than I am.

Darrell Bock Yeah. And that's where, you know, Opie, in his example there, and Danny, as you were talking about, you know, whenever we get that urge to run, we are listening to somebody. We just think it's internal, right? But the enemy is trying to tell us, you know, we can't turn to the Heavenly Father, right? We can't go to him with it for one reason or another. Either we're disqualified, or he won't understand, or he's judgmental, like my earthly father was, or whatever the case may be, right? And so there's something that he trips us up that says your only option is to run.

Well, it's the same as what happened in the garden, we messed up, we have to go hide. And so the playbook's the same, he's just real good at it. Darrell Bock He is.

He is. And I think we got time to get another clip in so we can get two in on this. Darrell Bock I wouldn't trust you. I wouldn't trust you. Darrell Bock Well, you know, I'm so good with the clock, as we saw in the first half of the show, that, you know, the challenge is I'd like to blame you, Danny, but I'd have to do that off the air on why, because you're in Rodney's seat, and Rodney tells me. But anyway, just so I could blame someone else other than me.

But so I took a little bit different approach on this topic, you know, because there's lots of ways you can land on it. And I have a clip that if you've watched very many movies, and if you like action movies, I know you know this clip, but it's from the movie Taken. And in this, what's happened, if you haven't seen it, it's a pretty old movie, so most people have probably seen it. But this guy gets a call, Liam Neeson gets a call from his daughter, his character does, and he gets a call, and she's getting ready to be kidnapped. She's overseas. She's in Europe, and there's people breaking in the apartment, and he tells her, look, you're going to get kidnapped, hide under the bed.

She gets grabbed by these people, and one of the guys pick up her phone, and you hear breathing on the phone before this clip begins. But here's the father speaking to the kidnappers. And I want you to listen to his heart, and then we're going to come back and talk about it. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you. I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you. I will find you, and I will kill you. Well, that's got to get you fired up.

At least it does me. And the reason I picked that is I know it's talking about a daughter, and this is a show called Masculine Journey for Men, but at the end of the day, we're the bride of Christ, right, and we're all his children. And the reason that was impactful for me, security and safe place is important to me. I grew up in a loving household, and a lot of you know my story, but it was mostly loving, and a lot of times not loving. But I had older siblings, an older sibling that was very mean to me, had some molestation that happened to me in my past and things like that that I've talked about on the air. But in my whole life, it wasn't safe.

And that continued. There were parts of it that were safe, but I never felt safe going to my parents with things that really mattered. And I don't have a lot of time to talk about that now, but that was a part of my story. It was just not a safe space to go to my parents and talk about things that came up. And so when I did get molested, I couldn't go to them and say anything to them about it.

I didn't feel like I could at the time. And it continued that as I let my guard down and let people near me, as people do, people hurt you. And the way the enemy came after me with that is, as he does for a lot of people, look, you can't trust anybody. Obviously, God's not even going to – he's not trustworthy because he didn't protect you from getting hurt. And it had me really kind of messed up for a long time in that. And as I've learned to walk with God and I've gotten healings from those wounds and I've gotten a lot of places deeper with him, I've realized that the only safe place I have is in him. That's the only safe space I do have. Now, life's still going to come at me and I'm still going to get hurt. But having that security is the difference between me feeling like I have to guard my heart at all costs and not let anyone near it, pack it down, put it in a vault, buried in a bunker, whatever it's going to be so no one can ever get to it, or I can lean into God and let him guide me and lead me and say, help me understand what I need to do here and when and how to let my heart show and who can I show it to. And that's been really healthy.

It's been a slow process because there was a lot of years of shoving that down and packing it down. But it's better than it's ever been and I look forward to the future as it's getting better. I hope to be married at some point down the road. And so having your heart open is pretty important to that.

Some would say it's vital, but I'm hoping to be at that point. And God's the way to get there because he's the only place that I can say I know is 100 percent safe. It doesn't mean that I won't be hurt, and I think that's what you need to hear. We live in a broken world. We live in a place full of hurt people.

Of course you're going to get hurt, but that doesn't mean you don't have a safe space to retreat to. Right? And that's in the Father's arms and I don't know of a better place to be than that. Darrell Bock Hey, Mitch, before we go from this show, do you have any thoughts that you'd like to offer on what it feels like to be home in the Father's house? Mitch LeBaron Wow, that's great. I love what you just said, Sam, and I think, you know, obviously the O.P. Taylor.

I love those shows. But quick story. We were on the beach right before our marriage week that we were doing in Mexico and my wife was praying. So we went, Hey, look, let the Holy Spirit direct us, let the God direct the day.

And I am all about control, I want to know exactly how the day is going to go. And I said, Okay, let's do it. And so she's praying for God to direct everything that we're doing. And as she's doing it, this dog runs up to me and drops a ball. And of course, squirrel, I reach down to try to pick up the ball. And she is frustrated, gives me that look, you know. And the guy, as I reach for the ball, the guy looks at me and he says, He won't let you pick it up.

And I said, What? He goes, Yeah, that's his game. You reach down, try to pick it up. He picks it up and takes off and goes and does his own thing. And she said, Why are you doing that? And I said, Yeah, that's, that was God speaking to me right there, because I'm always wanting to pick up the ball. Yeah, run off and do my own thing.

And he wants me to be with him and follow him. Sam Well, thank you, Mitch. We're getting ready to end this segment. Thank you for joining us. I don't know if you can stick around for the After Hours show. Hopefully you can. But we'll talk with you guys next week. Go to maskonjourney.org, register for the upcoming boot camp, go to missionuprising.com and register for Father Weekend. This is the Truth Network.