Avoiding the Eclipse of Life

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This is the Truth Network. The heart of every man craves a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus speaks of narrow gates and wide roads, but the masculine journey is filled with many twists and turns.

So how do we keep from losing heart while trying to find the good way when life feels more like a losing battle than something worth dying for? Grab your gear and come on a quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides in what we call the masculine journey. The masculine journey starts here now. Yes it does and once again we are Samless in Seattle. Or wherever we're at. Yes, but we're still in Salem. Samless in Salem.

Yeah, we're Samless right here in Winston-Salem. But anyway, we're so excited that you're joining us because we have an ecliptic topic. And we have clips of ecliptic nature so that, you know, the whole thing, Danny, it's ecliptic. Sounds cryptic. Yeah. And this is getting weird all of a sudden, just like an eclipse.

There you go. Our topic actually comes from our buddy Chuck, who we're hoping someday will join us if he's listening again. But he threw out something with the recent eclipse and all the excitement that went with it. But we're talking about how to avoid a God eclipse.

And, you know, I love what he wrote and I'm giving him all the credit here. So that, you know, how to avoid or what do we do to prevent an eclipse of our life that keeps us from seeing the fullness of God. And, you know, there's so many things that factor into that and I love the pre-shows and many different directions that we usually go with something. You know, if we all line up and go in the same direction, there's going to be one heck of a wreck one day, you know. But it is because you get to hear perspective from everybody on what something means, just a simple phrase or something like that. So it ought to be fun. You should be enlightened afterwards. You will be.

You will be. I know I have been. And so it's like any good Bible passage or all the Bible, right? If I just understood one 16 millionth of it. But all the Bible is like a diamond, right? You hold up that word, that letter, that passage, and it's like a diamond.

It's got all these different facets to it, right? Here comes light out of here, comes light out of that. And so the beautiful thing is when you pass it through the prism of Danny or you pass it through the prism of Harold or we have Terry with us today and I'm hoping we can pass it through that prism and hear that, then you hear something that's actually somebody's true authentic swing, but we're going to hear about that in a minute. But before we get that, you know, it's very important to us here at the masculine journey to have a laugh track because we like to laugh.

We have a lot of joy, right? And so, you know, and I looked at this idea of an eclipse. My immediate thought was it's just like, you know, the total eclipse that happened.

And I had a really fun show I did on Truth Talk Live that a lot of callers called from Ohio. And they all talked about how cool it was, you know, when it went dark. But it wasn't dark for long. And all of a sudden, things began to get light. And as it did, the full sun comes back and everything goes back to where the real power is, which is with the sun.

Like without no sun, we're all in the weeds. So I reflected back on one of my favorite movies of all time, Evan Almighty. And you may know that Evan has been called by God to build a mark. And it's pretty clear to him what he is supposed to do. And it's made very clear to him because he starts growing this beard he can't control. He's supposed to wear these clothes he doesn't want to wear. And every time he tries to put something over it, God pulls something on him, so he has to do it. So it starts out that he's just trying to hide the fact that God has come into his life. And I don't know if you're this way, but I know I was. Like when all of a sudden I realized I was actually talking to God, I knew that I was kind of a nut.

And so you just didn't want to, you know, just spill the beans. And I love the way that this one— We can confirm. Yes. And so this is a montage, whatever it's called. It's a time lapse through Evan Almighty, where you can see at the point where he begins to think he's a nut. And so he's not so clear about the encounter he's had. But listen what happens at the end of the encounter.

Of course, this is after he shoots up Rogaine. So here we go. And again, very important you don't hit record when you do play a clip.

You know, I'm used to recording. Did you say build a boat? It might be something fun for the family. We could take the boat, go sailing on the lake.

It'd be great in case it floods or something. What is going on with you? You bought all those lots and you're talking about building a boat. You grow this crazy beard. Is this like a midlife crisis?

It's not that bad. Evan, what happened? Did you fall out of mind, chef? No. Did you just come out of a coma? No. Were you attacked by a werewolf? What, are you shooting up Rogaine?

Evan, what is going on? I'm building something. You're building something? You have five seconds. You've marked yourself and your little animal troop out of here now, or you will be forcibly removed. I'm afraid I can't do that, sir. Congressman.

These animals are not trained. Congressman. I think they want me to save them.

Save them from what, Congressman? The flood. The flood? This has been the hottest dry summer on record and you say we're going to have a flood. When might we expect this?

September 22nd, midday. That's what I was told. Why'd I ask who told you? God. God? You talked to God? Yes. And God is talking back? Yeah.

We hung out, Will. First man, your name is being removed from this bill. Obviously, the stresses of this office have proven too much for you. Please have the Congressman removed. No, please.

You don't understand. God commanded me to build a park house. It's going to rain. It's going to be a flood.

Please. So, again, it is a laugh track. And from the idea that, I don't know if you've experienced this, you know, you really have had a God encounter and at first you're very timid about the whole thing. But then it becomes clear that God wants more than timidity here and you can try to eclipse that if you want to.

But when he starts to turn the full power on, he will get your attention. And so, you know, I think back to my own calling to do the Christian Car Guy show. So, you know, that night I'm praying about a lot of stuff.

I was a car dealer in Mocksville. I was praying about payroll and cash flow and a lot of stuff had nothing to do with the radio. And, you know, God was like, Robby, you need to build an ark. He said, Robby, I want you to start a radio show called The Christian Car Guy.

I want you to get on the radio and talk about what breaks your heart every day. And I was like, well, God, you know, I was a lot like Evan Baxter. I was like, you've heard my voice. Like I could never do radio. I mean, people go to the college to learn how to talk on the radio. I mean, and I don't even like to do in commercials.

I'm not a public speaker. This is, you know, and he was like, God, this is what, I said, Robby, work with me here. This is what I want. Here's your logo.

This is what I want. You're going to have a radio show. I woke up the next morning, like what in the world has happened? But I remembered, like, I heard a sermon once that if God calls you to do something, he'll swing the door wide open. So if you see somebody called to preach and they can't find a church, they weren't called to preach.

And so I thought, hmm, this is my out. I don't have a radio show. I don't have any idea who would give me a radio show. This is a crazy idea. So I'll call Stu Everson, my gold buddy, and I'll ask him to lunch and see what he says. And so, you know, I could not have been as timid as he was telling his wife, well, God wants me to build a boat.

We'll go swimming on the lake, you know, the whole, you know, the whole scene. And Stu is sitting across from me at lunch. And I said, well, Stu, you know, I know this is going to sound a little crazy. It sounds really crazy to me. I didn't say that to him, but you know, I feel like God wants me to do a radio show.

It's called the Christian Core Guy Show. He wants me to talk about what breaks my heart every day, which happened to be people going into crazy amounts of debt. And he gave me the logo on everything. And, you know, I understand if that's not something you can do. He looks at me in complete Evan Baxter silence and says, Robby, that's the best idea I've ever heard in my life.

How about this Saturday? Right? And so next thing you know, like you're talking on the radio, whether you like it or not. And literally within a month, you know, Charles Stanley hears this show and Stu got him together with him. So the next thing I know, I am on a satellite radio. Talk about God swinging the door wide open.

I'm talking to people in Mexico and New York City and all over Canada and calls coming in from all these people. Like, and it happened within, you know, no time. And I'm terrified, right? But nonetheless, you can't, when God really comes in, you can try to eclipse that all you want to. Believe me, if it's real, the darkness could not overcome it, right? And like the little mustard seed, it just blossoms bigger. And you're like, man, but it's God doing it.

It's never was Robby, believe me. And so along those lines, Harold, I know this topic resonated with you. Yeah, I didn't get a clip, which is not unusual for me. But I did have a thought that I wrote down along this topic, if I can get my phone to open up so I can see it. But expecting a life free of problems as a Christ follower will block vision of God when they inevitably arise. We're not promised a trouble free life, just God's help to get through it. Earth is not perfect.

Heaven is. And we must not assume there is no God, since we face so many imperfections here. A lot of people try to act like that, well, if God were real, we wouldn't have war, we wouldn't have babies being aborted, on and on you go. I was thinking you're sort of the poster child for your own statement there. I've had my share. But the thing is, we have to realize that God is God and he created it. And if he'd have wanted it to be perfect, then they wouldn't be heaven apart from earth.

Right. So just thinking back to your own life, what came in there to try to eclipse that for you that really sticks out in your mind like, man, he about had me? Well, I've had a few things.

I had rheumatoid arthritis for a while that I thought would keep me from ever playing tennis or anything else athletic. Then I flatlined twice while having a checkup in the hospital. And the next morning I had five bypasses. So I've had a few things to come along that could have told me, well, if there was a God, he wouldn't let that happen to me. But I don't see it that way.

I'm here tonight talking. Right. And in their own way, didn't those things actually strengthen your faith? Absolutely.

Absolutely. God is good. And when bad things happen, we shouldn't attribute it to God being an evil, malicious God. We live in a world that the devil roams in, looking for people he can hurt.

Right. But what Satan meant for evil, God used in Joseph's life, obviously, to bring in some amazing stuff. So what does this conjure up in your mind as you're listening tonight? What was your ecliptic moment? What did that feel like? What did it feel like on the other side?

How did God use that in your life? And I bet you'd love to come join us on the next bootcamp coming up April. No, it's not in April.

It's in November, the weekend before Thanksgiving. We'll be right back. What we have at our bootcamp 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.

I listened to her, Morgan Snyder's book, Driving to Work last year, and that was a very profound experience. So this kind of culminated into it. I'd been invited to it several times, and it never worked out. And God really had it set up that I came last time. So coming into this one, I knew this one went deeper, and I really wanted it.

It's a break for me to get outside of things I've got going on, and I just needed a break from it and needed to reconnect. And it's been absolutely that, this process. The covenant of silence, silent prayer, those are some of my favorite parts. This is real connection with the Lord. You hear Him speak, you can get direction, guidance, anything you're missing is there.

You always learn something new. It's fun experiencing it with other men. It's fun standing for them and what they're going through. We're all different and unique, but we all go through the same struggles.

And when you hear somebody else went through it too, it kind of gives you an encouragement that, hey, you can make it through this, and God's got you, and He's going to hold you up through it, and He's going to carry you to the next level. Register today at masculinejourney.org. So, I was waiting to be posted. So. So.

So. I totally clipped to the heart. That just took the obvious. Everybody, I think everybody had the idea of submitting this for the bump, but it is Bonnie Tyler, I guess, from somewhere around the 80s. But I was just sitting there reading the lyrics, and I thought I was falling in love, and then it was a total eclipse of the heart. I think that's what a lot of us, sometimes we leave our first love and we allow, you know, things to come in to where we have an eclipse of the heart to where we can't really see God. I think that's kind of what Chuck was getting at. And, you know, that's obviously a love song, but, you know, what greater example of a love story is of God in us, and, you know, as much as He comes after us and rescues us and gives us our identity back and heals our wounds and stuff, we still find a way a lot of times to have a total eclipse of the heart and just kind of allow, you know, quote, the moon of life to get in the way of the sun.

Yes. And, you know, beautifully, last week we talked about our favorite moments from boot camp, and we talked a lot about the movie Bagger Vance because it was a movie we showed, and we used a lot of the clips, and it stuck in all of our hearts. And so we so inspired Andy that Andy went and watched the movie last weekend because he was too sleepy, you know, during boot camp to stay up with the rest of us.

You shamed me in to finally – no, I really did want to watch it, and so, yeah, I did pick my clip from there. I felt left out in the last show, so I figured I'd throw one out there, and I felt like it was the perfect clip for this because it's Bagger talking with Hardy, who's kind of Juna's protege and kind of an encourager, kind of this kid who has more belief in Juna than Juna does himself, and they're out on the course just kind of preparing for the next day, measuring the course, and Bagger's just kind of guiding Hardy in life – well, really in golf, but it's really in life. And, you know, as he talks through about how Juna can win the tournament if he finds its authentic swing, which to me is really finding his identity and who he is and really Juna's connection to his caddy Bagger, which is a symbol of God, I believe, he talks about how, you know, the wouldas and the couldas and the shouldas get in the way, and you'll hear some of that, and a lot of that to me is just when the things of life get us away from our identity and who we are in him and just kind of blocks, just comes and gets in the way, just like an eclipse does, of what our true relationship is with him. The blades of grass gonna follow the sun. The grain is gonna shift. That same putt gonna go one way in the morning to other night the noon. One way in the morning to other night the noon. You see that? Yeah, golf course put folk through quite a punishment.

It lives and breathes just like us. You think Juna can win? Yeah, if he can find his authentic swing. Authentic? Go on, hit one more for me. Inside each and every one of us is one true authentic swing.

Something we was born with, something that's ours and ours alone, something can't be taught to you or learned, something that got to be remembered. Over time the world can rob us of that swing and get buried inside us under all our woulders and coulders and shoulders. Some folk even forget what they swing was like. Some folk even forget what they swing was like.

We keep swinging. But I don't have any balls. Don't worry about hitting the ball or where it's gonna go. Just swing the club, feel the club.

You can close your eyes. You can't make that ball go in that hole. You got to let it. Just keep swinging that club until you're part of the whole thing. That's a good thing. Can you see it? So what he's teaching him there and it sounds like he's that's a duplicate by mistake but that in that clip it's almost like a dream kind of thing where he's repeating himself and I cut some of it out but you know there's just guidance along the way of what he's been doing for Juna and Hardy were baggers just kind of speaking into their life but you know as he's talking with Hardy there about hitting that shot he said just feel it just do it and that to me was Juna the example of finding his authentic self he was striving the whole time instead of trying just being who he was and coming back he was so damaged from the past that he was striving to get out of that and and he to the point to where he had just given up because all the striving hadn't worked and it was that authentic swing to me in that in that context in that clip is that it's not just about finding your identity or it's not just about finding God it's that connection and that authentic swing is flowing and being who you were created to be and living that out and and the and the parts of life the would is the could is the should is or what obscures that and gets in the way and gets us again I think it's kind of what Chuck was alluding to where just life can beat beat the crap out of you sometimes and it just gets in the way and we have to keep going back to our authentic swing. Wow and and so as I was listening to you Andy I couldn't help but know what Danny had talked about last week and also at the boot camp that you know God wants you to do stuff with him not just for him and so as all those adversities are coming and opportunities right to push into him what does that look like in your life I mean when have you seen that where you I like the word you used striving striving when did you strive strive strive strive and then they went oh wait a minute yeah I mean I really felt like I made a connection in my late uh 20s early 30s but it moved from grace uh to where I was striving because I felt like I had something to do I felt like I had to make up for a lot of the past and I spent a lot of time striving in it and then the more you strive I think the more you fail because you're living up trying to living up God never intended to us he just doesn't want us to meet the mark on our own that's not the intent it's to do it with him and I think that's how what whenever um you know God changed everything and brought me into this more of a grace-minded um walk with him and finding out my identity and it's something I didn't have to strive for that would come to me uh in the movie it says your swing will come to you your your swing will find you right chooses you it chooses you and and it chose me and whenever you begin to walk in that but I tell you what I can lose sight of I can be eclipsed really quick I had my moment this weekend uh we were talking I think God challenges us men most uh in in the action of driving of I totally lost well before we go there I just you know knowing you well okay and I'll know if you've ever identified this but I see it so beautifully is it a big reason that you joined us and a big reason that drove you to come to the early boot camps was you were striving to get your marriage back together oh yeah yeah I mean this was this was it and you were gonna you were gonna put all your efforts into yeah I mean that's the only talk I really listened to that's where I was gonna get the nugget that was gonna save that and then I ended up finding so much more I began to realize who I I tell people you know I feel like I knew God I didn't know all aspects that I do now and it's a continual progress but I didn't know who I was and that's where I felt I feel I feel like that was part of finding the authentic swing for sure again it's a progression there's failure along the way and stuff but there's a place where you can find yourself where you can find you know this is it it feels right it feels like I don't have to go outside of myself I don't have to to create anything it just happens and you just bask in the glory of it you know really I mean and you know I talk a lot about those trips that I took early on they were a foundational of miss me getting along with God and him restoring my sonship through that and that's you know I wasn't having all I was doing was driving a car you know I mean that those trips just he felt so real there was no striving there right there was no strike and it was completely like man there he is and I'm getting yeah all this stuff my soul desperately needed absolutely yeah and it was from relationship not for me taking action of doing anything it was just going and being with dad and enjoying myself you know and being with him and and I it's just a beautiful story and I and I I think that's so important to understand that all you know if we think we need to strive we need to you know buckle up and that we're going to do this for God you know it's just a struggle in the Denny yeah I mean well real quick on there we saw Juna striving out when he's hitting the balls out there rain and stuff I mean I'm gonna do this thing and I'm gonna he had to go out and try to get by himself to be alone because he was gonna do it I'd lived my life alone striving for so long and you get put in a community of men we talk about it all the time but yeah go ahead well one of the most profound scriptures for me that I've discovered is just a simple phrase and Enoch walked with God and he was no more and when you think about that and I've always pondered it this way and going back to you using my quote that you know you want to do things with God and human nature tells us that oh if I'm doing things with God it's always an upbeat thing but the reality of it is is that he wants to do things with us all the way through the deep dark valleys of life when you look at the prayers of David and David was in some tough spots but what we see in the Psalms is Lord they're after me Lord you know but but recognizing the fact Lord you are with me and and that's kind of what we're talking about instead of just striving to to do things for him so that God will be pleased with me that he's um that he's with me no matter what time for school time for school thank you Grant we got Grant in there so speaking of school November 21st through 24th 21st through the 24th is the next boot camp talk about having fun chasing after the heart of God for four days with like-minded men who are going to go into covenants of silence where you get a chance to to really find that authentic swing that place your soul is hungry for and and then also find people to walk in that message with you again go to masculine journey radio or just masculine journey dot org masculine journey dot org and click on the register for boot camp or listen to the after hours coming up where you will hear the greatest sermon ever from Rodney this is the truth network