Avoiding the Eclipse of Life After Hours

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On the topic, it's ecliptic, eclipsing of the heart. But we have a new voice, a new friend, a new brother. Seriously, a new brother amongst the band.

And we have Terry. And so, Terry, you know, like from your perspective, what is this topic really speaking to tonight? Oh, man, I think it speaks to the hearts of so many guys. Because I think you find so many guys in that heart of theirs is where the darkness is.

And they try to hide behind it. And I think that the guys that God called out to do a work for him, we're that light. And we have to kind of like show him, guide him, lead him, if you will, into that point. But in the way God, I like it when he says he'll make you a fisher of men.

You know, I've never been a real fisherman, but I'm excited about the way God allows me to toss that rod and speak to the hearts of guys. And I think that's what it is. And you guys, thinking of the eclipse, I think we even develop best in the dark. I think that's where we actually, you know, we come to know him. And he draws us out of that. Oh, I like that.

A whole photography developed in the dark room. Oh, yes, absolutely. That's really, really cool. I love that. He brings us out of that. And that's awesome. So speaking of developing in the dark room, Rodney. Uh-oh. We promised the best sermon ever. Obviously, you're going to introduce a clip along those lines. But I really think this is the spectacular understanding that people, that certainly it's really helped me over the last few weeks as I've dug into this particular understanding. So go ahead.

Set it up. Yeah. Well, when the first topic came up, it was, what, Friday or something?

So it was a little bit later. And I was like, okay, I'll find something on that because immediately my mind went a million places. Well, then by the time I actually started looking for clips and figuring out where do I want to go, the first thing that jumped into my mind was, well, what is really an eclipse from God? Where he shut off, you know, like Jesus on the cross, right? And then it really went to, well, for me, it's going to be, well, if he actually ever says to you, I never knew you. And that was just something that was very sobering to me.

It's like, ooh, is there something out there that I could have that would talk to that? And I looked for clips and stuff and I couldn't find anything until I came across this sermon by Paul Washer. And this is actually, of course, I clip it down to a couple minutes from something that's at eight minutes. It's probably, you know, some 45 minutes to an hour sermon, right?

But it's all just getting chopped down. But listening to it was very powerful. And I'm like, how am I going to get two minutes out to say the things that I'd want to say through that?

And just had to kind of work at figuring out a way that I could narrow this down. But I think if we listen to it, we'll just talk to it on the backside. Do you want to know what your profession of faith in Jesus Christ is worth? Your confession of faith in him, what it's worth? The answer is this.

It's worth absolutely nothing. They come to him on that day and say, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name cast out demons and in your name perform many miracles? Their defense before the Lord of glory is their own works. Would a true Christian illuminated by the Holy Spirit to know the depravity of his own heart, do you think he would actually give good works as a defense as to why the Lord should let him into heaven?

Depart from me, I never knew you. When he speaks about few finding eternal life, he's talking about those who profess his name. Among those who call Jesus Lord, few of them will find eternal life. So what we hear here is not everyone who says to me, Lord, will enter into the kingdom of heaven. No, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. And what he's saying is not everyone who emphatically declares me to be Lord will enter into the kingdom of heaven.

And that we bear fruit, according to chapter 15 of John, and fruit that remains. So in no way is Jesus teaching that salvation is the result of our ability to conform to the will of God. What he is teaching is simply this, a man that has truly been converted, regenerated by the power of the Holy Spirit will be a new creature who will live a different way. You will see the evidence of conversion in their life. The question is not, do you want to go to heaven, or do you want to escape hell? The question is, has God so worked in your heart that you want God?

Not everyone who confesses with their mouth, Lord, Lord, will be saved. To me, the culmination throughout that came into the point where it's not about heaven or hell. It's about the person of Christ.

It's, do you want him, or do you just want the nice side benefits? What's the, Richard Dawkins, just heard a few clips on him recently, where he's been saying, hey, you know, here we're losing Christianity because he's been, you know, pounding on us as an atheist for a long time saying God doesn't exist and stuff. And now in the UK, you've got Islam taking over, replacing where Christianity has left the void because Christianity is going out of the country.

And he's like, panic, panic, right? We want to bring Christianity back because he says his words. He's a cultural Christian. You've got things going on where you're really sure that you want to eclipse God out of life. He loves the side benefits that he gets from common grace and sitting there going, wow, I love the Christmastime and the lights and really it's a great religion because the people are nice. Okay, well, that's a side benefit.

You know, you're not going to come to Christ. So how does that actually, like for you personally, when you think of that eclipse that you've escaped, what are some of those fruitful things that you've had an opportunity to observe from the way God worked in your own life that you're like, wow, that, you know, it wasn't just the fruit. It was the fun of actually walking with him through the fruit. Yeah, so instead of what was the darkness that was before the fruit, then coming to the fruit, it's been, and I've said this for probably about three years now, being able to be content in who I am, which I never had. I was never content in what I had or who I was or my identity of who I was trying to be. But now I don't have to strive for those things because they just don't have that much meaning. They're still there. They rear their ugly head.

I have thoughts of those things and they do exist. But being able to go through life and trust in God in a way that I never thought I could trust anybody, especially myself, is such a fruit that I can walk through life not having very many peaks and valleys as far as emotions, as far as trials and tribulations, as far as like extremely high, like you're trying to look for what's going to make me happy. I'm like, well, I've already got it and it does not change.

I, the Lord your God, do not change. I'm like, okay, well, if you're there and you're already bringing me the fulfillment of my life, I don't have to strive. That's within you and I get that that's part of the fruit.

But when God's looking, you know, he's looking for fruit, what kind of other fruit might you expect that he's looking for? One of the things that I never did was serve. I was always looking to be served. And now in different ministry things that they're not big things on my part, but being able to go out and help others and do things for them. But the biggest things I do is a part of our moving ministry, which I was like, there's no big deal, something I can do. And when you see how many people, because I've been helped by it myself, because I've been moved a couple of times, the smallest things are sometimes huge for the simplest things. And I love to be able to actually go out and help in things that I never would have done before. And that's awesome.

I don't mean to discount that and that could be huge in what I'm thinking of. But, you know, I've served the real you, Robby. Yeah, the real you. I'm trying to get, like, you've served with me on numerous occasions for listening prayer, right? And during those listening prayers, what were you praying?

It depends. Sometimes I'm praying just specifically for what do you have for Joe or Frank or Bill. Sometimes I'm praying that, hey, what is it that you just need to share generally on this topic?

But it moves in different places. But, you know, you can think back, I'm sure, and I know I can, to several people in listening prayer. For the first time ever in their life, they heard from God as a result of helping set that up, being part of it.

In other words, those people are now walking in something that they know of a relationship with God. Am I missing it? You see what I'm saying? And, again, it's to the point of what you're, you know, Mr. Washer saying or Pastor Washer, however you want to put that, Maytag.

Washer and dryer. Anyway, you know, what I'm getting at is that, like, oh, my goodness. When God is coming to the party, you can't, it's going to explode. It's going to be huge.

It's going to be big. And I've seen it in your world, and I just wanted you to perhaps reflect on that, you know, as what, I mean, it's beyond cool to me to see what God does as a result of just my obedience to praying, you know, to what I know God's working on in this particular, and you're obviously the ramrod himself and doing so much with prayer and all that stuff at every boot camp and what opportunity that always is, right? And that's something that, again, back to being intentional. Once God gets you in your heart, you realize I can't just wing it anymore. You do have to have some intentionality in your life. There are things that come up as surprises that are going to take you by surprise, which are wonderful, but being intentional to go to him in time of need, in time of plenty, you know, at any time. Just go. Right. And that's one of the real gifts that you have that I see all the time is you have the gift of prayer and so many ideas that you bring out of prayer for all of us that has resulted in unbelievable fruit, because, again, you bring God into the situation.

It doesn't get any better than that. Amen. So Danny?

Yes. The kid. The kid, not the karate kid.

I was, you know, way astray. We dropped the karate by now. Just because his name's Danielson doesn't mean that it's karate kid, okay.

No, I know you're deeply disappointed in this, but we'll do the best we can, what we got to work with. I actually love the movie The Kid. Yeah, the movie's The Kid, and the clip is the classic scene we use at boot camp all the time, and we've used it on the show, and I actually moved it from another folder because I've learned how to do that too. But it's a scene where Little Rusty is learning his dad's upset with him because he got to fight at school, things going on, and his dad's just blistering him right there in the yard because his mom had to go get him. His mom's dying of cancer, and so this interchange is going on, but what you see is the beginning of a wound, which begins an eclipse in Rusty's life, I think.

And so we can listen to the clip, and we'll talk about it afterwards. What is the matter with you? I'm sorry. How can you do this to your mother? What are you trying to do, kill her faster?

What? We're going to lose her. Stop what you did today.

You're killing her. I found the screw, Dad. The screw. Stop trying. Here's the screw, Dad. Look, here it is. You're going to found it. Stop trying. Look at the screw.

Here it is. Stop trying. Stop. You got to grow up now. You understand? Grow up. Grow up.

Mom's dying. I know. Soon? Yeah.

For your next birthday. Did I do it? No.

No, you didn't do it. It's not your fault. Dad was just saying those things because he's scared. Because he knows that he has to raise you alone.

He doesn't know how to do it. I thought you never cried. Not since my eighth birthday. I guess I'm starting up again. Go on.

Because I just figured out where I got that twitch from. Somebody called the Lambiolus. Yeah. Yeah. Got to need him now, huh? Come on. You got to get out of here.

Let's go. There's so many times in our life that events begin an eclipse of the heart, so to speak. Going back to the bump in we had in the first show. But the word eclipse comes from a Greek word. I know this is a Hebrew sponsored show. But I'm going to bring some Greek into this because it was just there.

No karate kid and then Greek. Probably old thin ice, I realize that. But eclipse, the word means abandonment or falling away. And so when you think about that, when you think about the actual eclipse, we had the moon block the sun. And so there was a falling away. And here we see in Rusty's life, he begins to fall away from who he truly is. And you see that, you have to watch the movie, and I won't spoil it, but I know it was made in 2000.

So if you haven't seen it by now. But in essence, that's what I got out of this topic. When I'm going to read this is, you know, okay, I know how to avoid it because I've been through it before. But when the earth spins in the right direction and the moon's in the wrong place and the sun's blocked in my life, I forget a lot of lessons I learned. You know, I was thinking back to, I don't know why I thought about this, but in the late 80s, before this movie was made, I was a young married guy and my grandfather died, my marriage went down.

And then ultimately my ex-wife took my daughter and went to New York. I was raised in church, I was raised, you know, Christian faith. But the eclipse began right there because I thought, God, if this is what you've got in store for me, I won't know part of it. And I began to walk away, I began to fall away. And, you know, some darkness really fell on my life. And what I realized is that even when it fell in my life, it failed to shine in a lot of other people's lives because I wasn't reflecting the glory that I was supposed to be. And so when I look at that and I look at how that began and, but, you know, I met you guys a few years ago and, Robby, you say something that I have adopted. And, you know, I began to look at life from 10,000 feet. And, you know, I was sitting in life, my marriage had failed, so I was a failure. I lost a grandpa that was dear to me. God, why could you do this to me? And then basically lose a daughter who's still alive, but I didn't see her for four and a half years. I don't know what you're up to.

So, you know, we talk about at boot camp a lot of times, the question is, do I have what it takes? But the dark side of the moon, so to speak, is, God, how could you do this to me? And that begins us turning our backs on the one who can give us life to start with. And when I reflect on that, you know, I'm sitting in my grandmother's house years later, we're talking about, you know, grandpa dying and Kristen being taken to New York and that kind of thing.

Grandma says something, she says, you know, it worked out just like God planned because if your grandpa would have had to live through that baby being taken, it would have broke his heart. And I think for the first time in a long time, I had to think about, hey, that affected somebody other than me. And, you know, we were talking about, I heard a preacher say a while back, he said, we become reverse astronauts. You know, an astronaut basically revolves around the earth when they get up in space, but reverse astronauts think the earth revolves around us. And, you know, I became a reverse astronaut. Yeah, when you think about it, you know, I love that illustration because when the earth revolves around us, it definitely is going to block the sun. Yeah.

At one point in the day, you're like, oh, no. You know, that's beautiful. Reverse astronauting. It's kind of ecliptic.

Ecliptic. Yeah, to add to that, so maybe this is what you were saying, but, you know, sometimes it's one thought spurs another. But the whole thing about the eclipse is we, during the eclipse, we lose a view of God because the moon gets in the way. But also what happens during that is when you see the moon, there's no reflection going on from the sun because it's blocked. So we're not reflecting God.

Not only are we not seeing God, we're not reflecting God at that particular time. Well, yeah, because the moon doesn't have any light of its own. Right.

So at night when you see the moon lit up, it's because it's reflecting the sun. Exactly. And when you really think about that from a Hebrew standpoint, or certainly, you know, from the idea of the Aaronic blessing, you know, may God bless you and make his face shine upon you. So when God turns his face, when you sin, guess what happens? You know, God can't look at that.

You know, if you don't have Christ in your life, God can't look at that. And so it is technically when he turns his face, it's eclipse time, right, which he unfortunately had to do on Adam, and it was an eclipse, right, of real life life shine. So, Grant, you grabbed a mic, and that means that you are going to be granted time on this particular episode. I was going to say Einstein, but anyhow. Why were you going to say Einstein?

The forecaster. Okay. But what I was saying is no works, you've got to live life with love. Amen. That's beautiful. Amen. Yeah, because Danny and I are on the same wavelength coming into tonight. We've got to get ourselves out of the way. God can do it all.

He does do it all. And if you don't surrender your own life and everything else to him, because there's always something we're not surrendering, but that's where the gold is. It's right there with God. And unfortunately, we want to go off the rails and go in a ditch and do all kinds of other metaphors that we like to talk about. But the biggest issue with having an eclipse from God and getting away from him is usually due to our own stupidness.

I know it is for me. Terry? You know, I like that because I was sharing with a Bible study group just this past week, and I was telling them about the fruit of the Spirit. And you know, the word of God says that love is the greatest fruit, I think. Am I right on that? Yeah. Okay. But you know that the bottom and the last part of that version, they say it differently, but this one version I was reading says self-control.

Okay. And the thing I kind of gleaned with me is if you don't have self-control of your one self, the rest of the fruit won't do anything. You're in the way. You're in the way. You're in the way the guy can produce all those other things, you know. But you, self-control, if you can't do it for yourself, it won't work.

Yeah, you're kind of like you're on eclipse. Absolutely. Absolutely. And if you're doing it without God, I mean, there's things we have to do, but it's got to be in prayer. It's got to be in supplication to him.

It says, Lord, you do it through me. Absolutely. Humble yourself. Humble.

Absolutely. I had a mentor years ago, Bill Hughes, and just a wonderful man, he used to say, we have found the enemy, and it be's us. And there's so much truth to that, because we get in our own way, and we get in our own, and we talk a lot about boot camp and stuff, and around here about letting your glory shine. And it's not about me.

It's about letting God do through me what he wants to do, what he created me to do. And the hardest thing for men to do is to get out of the way. That's us, man. It's our way. That's what we do.

That's what we do. We boast on us. Lots of times we wear the hats with the decals. We wear the jerseys. We wear the numbers. It's all about us, and it's not.

You know, sometimes we shield ourselves. We become, that's what makes some men what they think they are. It's what they wear. So when they're without that, they're not, you know, they have no identity. And it's not even about that, because God gives you the true identity. It's not about what you wear.

It's not about how you wear it. Go ahead, Andy. So we were talking before the show about, more about Bagger Vance and the point about the eclipse. So he had been eclipsed all this time, and he found his authentic swing. And he came from 12 strokes down. You're talking about Juna.

Juna. Sorry, did I say Bagger? But he came back, and he's tied it up. And then he's out there, and it's, I guess, the last day, right? And he's, what, 15 or 16?

It's getting close to the end. And he's like, okay, I'm going to put it on. So he automatically takes his self out, I mean, from the sun, you know, and he's going to be the thing.

He's getting in the way, and he's eclipsing God and wants to take the glory for himself. He has Caddy. Bagger says, what did he say?

I wouldn't. There's a time to put that club in the bag, and there's a time to play it. And he said there's a time to play that club, and then there's a time to leave it in the bag, meaning that, you know, this was the time to leave it in the bag. But unfortunately, you know, he hit the same shot out of the sand one time right back at himself the next time in the water.

So it was a mess. He got off, again, it's how we end up in the eclipse a lot of times. We take stuff on. God has shown so much grace and mercy. We've humbled ourselves. We've got things straight. But we begin to puff ourselves up and think that we're all it, and we get off base. And a lot of times that can take us out for a good while until we come back and humble ourselves. And the beauty of the thing, again, if I ruined the movie for you, I'm sorry, but Bagger leaves him before the match is over, right? The tournament ain't over. When he leaves him is when Juna calls a penalty on himself that he does not have to call. That's right.

And I don't know if you've – I've thought a lot about that. But Juna completely does that with joy as he sees Bagger leaving. He's completely good with Bagger leaving because he understands something that when he called that penalty on himself, he now has let go of the game and turned it over to God.

Like, I have faith God's going to do what God's going to do with the game. That was his authentic swing. He became who he was intended to be and the character that went with it. Fabulous movie. Fabulous topic. Chuck, thank you for doing that and for everybody that took part in tonight, especially you listening.

We appreciate your prayers. But we'd even more so like to meet you, have you come out to a boot camp. It's happening November 21st to the 24th. That's the weekend before Thanksgiving.

It's going to be amazing. You've got to go to masculinejourney.org. Masculinejourney.org. Our podcast is available all sorts of places. If you didn't get a chance to watch Danny on Facebook, I'm sorry. You can get the podcast right there at masculinejourneyradio.org. Thanks for listening. This is the Truth Network.