Courage 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. So sit back and join us on this adventure. The Masculine Journey After Hours starts here, now.

Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. And if you're watching us online, thank you. You can watch us online at YouTube or Facebook, at our Facebook page. But thank you for watching us online. And we are online every week, most weeks. On Tuesday we record the show. So if you're listening to this on podcast, you can't get it, well you can go back and watch the online feed if you really wanted to.

But you can actually watch it live starting Tuesdays at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. A little after 7.10-ish we go on the air and so you can see us and see what we're doing in here and see how disorganized we appear to be, not just sound. And so anyway, we're on our topic for today.

Andy, would you remind us what the topic is? So it's on courage. And if you've heard, if you've been listening to us, been to a boot camp, there's a theme that we are, to be as men with that masculine heart, we're to not run. We're to step into what God has for us. In the earlier show we were talking about Joshua 1 and where God encourages Joshua three times to be strong and courageous and take the land. And I think he calls us to do that, whatever your land is. It could be relationships and stepping in and being able, not backing away from things that are hard to deal with, that are not easy.

It could be something at your work. It could be whatever he's called you to do, something in ministry. Maybe he wants you to do something in ministry. And he doesn't want a fearful people. He wants us to have our confidence in him because he said he would be with us. And that's the point of Joshua 1. And I think a lot of times when we hear God say you need to be courageous, we feel like we have to work this courage up with inside of us.

And we're the source. Well, that's never what he intended to be. That's where I crashed and burned many years is I thought I was supposed to do something where really I'm just following him into whatever he wants to lead into. Yeah, not doing it out of our own strength, but doing it in his strength. As you were talking about, I was thinking about a friend of the show and founder of the show, Darren, when he talks about God calls him to be dangerous, to be dangerous for good. As men, we are called to be dangerous for the right things and fighting for the right causes and the things that make a difference for the kingdom and the things that make a difference like that. And so we are called to be dangerous entities, but just with his guidance. And that's true, his guidance. That's the thing is if we don't use wisdom, courage needs to have a certain amount of wisdom.

As we learned from the coward and the lion last year. Exactly. Absolutely.

Yep. So Danny, you have the first clip of the after hours. You want to tell us a little bit about the clip? Yeah, this was an orphan clip, evidently. He didn't have an owner until I walked in.

A father. So you're washing your hands of it? Is that what you're doing? Trying to get away from it?

No, actually no. I have adopted it as mine. Thanks to my co-producer Andy over here. But it's from Open Range.

It is from Open Range. And it's a bar scene where they're talking about some of the current events. Do you want me to tell it? No, just kidding.

I keep putting it in my jar. We have a secondary commentary going on. This is amazing. And now I refer to Sam.

But they're talking about current events and there's some challenge for them to be men and to step up to go against what's going on, which is wrong. And so we can play the clip when we talk about it afterward. Was that good enough set up for you, Sam? Yeah, that was pretty good. You finished strong.

You started weak, finished strong. It was good. I just adopted it five minutes ago. Okay. Yeah. All right. I'll give you that.

All right. Here we go. Mr. Mac? Ralph? Ray? Corey? Wesley? This is Ralph Peterson.

He runs a general store. That's where I was when the dog got free. Oh, you thought it was the free grazers I expect? No offense.

Personally, I don't stand with others around here about free grazers. There was a fight in your store about a week or so back. Some of Baxter's men jumped our friend. There's a big fella. Yeah, saw the whole thing. That big fella drove the hell out of them other three. Broke one's arm.

Your gun hand ain't Butler, would it? That's what they say. Felt bad about your friend. Is he all right? He's dead. Too bad.

Seemed like a nice young fella. It's a shame what this time has come to. You could do something about it. What? We're freighters.

Ralph here's a shopkeeper. You're a man, ain't you? I didn't raise my boys just to see them killed. Well, you may not know this, but there's things that gnaw at a man worse than dying.

Yeah, there is. There's things that gnaw at a man worse than dying. And when I think about this topic, I think about you stay on this earth long enough, you're going to be confronted with something. And there are times you have to step up. And like we had talked about before, that without God's guidance, sometimes you can step up at the wrong time or the wrong approach. But you're going to have to confront something. And it does take courage because nobody wants confrontation, really, unless they're way off base. Usually some people live for confrontation, I think. But I've had several incidents in my life in ministry and in relationships that takes courage to step up and say, Hey, I think we need to do something different here. And do it in love. I try to, but every once in a while the beast comes out. But those are the kind of things that I think about when I think about courage. David always, I remember the time in Scripture where David's place had been raided and they took his women and everything. And he asked the Lord, Shall we pursue?

And then he went and got back what the enemy stole. And sometimes we have to do that. And it does take courage to do it. Yeah, that's such a good clip. Andy, you can quit submitting it each week now.

It's finally got better. No, that's such a good clip. But I love, you know, we're men, ain't you?

You're men, ain't you? But that part about gnawing at you, there's things that worsen dying, you know. It reminds me of that scene from Braveheart where he's talking about many years from now lying in your bed, who would give up and go back and fight your enemy today, you know. And I think those are the things, yeah, we have regrets that we live with as we get older, things we wish we would have done or wouldn't have done, rather. But I think that we're equally filled with things we wish we would have done. And times we would have had courage and times we would have entered in. I wish I would have been courageous in love. I wish I would have been courageous to end my anger when it was time to fight something I needed to fight. I wish I had courage here and here.

And those are the ones that I think that really gnaw at us are the times that we didn't step up when we weren't sure that we had what it takes, but God knew we had what it takes. And so, anyway, that's a very good clip and very good points. So thank you. So, Andy, it's over to your clip.

You're up next. So I took this, so you just mentioned Braveheart, a little bit different part of the movie. It's when William Wallace is talking with Robert the Bruce. And William Wallace is trying to get Robert the Bruce to get beyond living from a safe life or what we're going to lose, what the nobles are going to lose, and really get them to encounter and come into the battle and to lead because he was the doofal king for the area.

And so he's just trying to encourage him and pull something out of him. William Wallace, as we've talked many times about Braveheart, had already gotten a lot of – he had been fathered well. He was confident. He knew what he wanted, freedom.

He had lost something. His wife through – and needed and wanted to not just – Revenge. Revenge that, but really he was fighting for a people. He didn't want to see that happen to everybody. He was fighting for a people and trying to encourage that. So here he is trying to inspire Robert the Bruce.

Wait. I respect what you said, but remember that these men have lands and castles. It's much to risk. And the common man that bleeds on the battlefield, does he risk less?

No. But from top to bottom, this country has got no sense of itself. Its nobles share allegiance with England, its clans war with each other. Aye. If you make enemies on both sides of the border, you'll end up dead.

We all end up dead. It's just a question of how and why. I'm not a coward. I want what you want, but we need the nobles.

We need them. Aye, nobles. Now tell me, what does that mean to be noble? Your title gives you claim to the throne of our country, but men don't follow titles. They follow courage. Now our people know you. Noble and common, they respect you.

And if you would just lead them to freedom, they follow you. So we were talking earlier, what does this courage mean? And Robby was talking, and hopefully not to steal your thunder, but courage means that you care about something enough to care about the people around you and a better life for them. And that's what Wallace was doing. He wasn't just caught up in the few.

He wanted to see freedom for everybody. And the courage to step into that, yes, there had to be risk. There had to be risk for the nobles and the common man.

And he was calling, you know, a lot of times it takes everybody to win, not just a certain portion. And I think a lot of times we don't risk. We don't have that courage to step into something because we're afraid what we're going to lose, the lands we have talking about.

And it's easy. I mean, I would say that that's what gets in our way more than anything. We're a peacetime people. Now, we've had people fighting over other countries, but none of us, I don't believe, has been to war. And it's hard to keep that warrior mentality. But our battles are different. They're against flesh and blood, but they're for our families, for the people around us, for everybody we come in contact through for this ministry. We're fighting for their hearts. And we could say, I mean, we could say, no, I'm just not going to risk it.

It's too much to put out there. Heck, every time I go to boot camp, I get creamed before it with spiritual warfare, you know, these attacks. But, no, we say, no, we're not going to do that because we believe God is leading us into that. Right, and we know that the enemy is coming so hard because he's afraid of what's coming next.

Exactly, yeah. And so knowing that God historically has always been there, he's going to be there this time, we don't know what it looks like, but he does, and he's going to be there in the midst of it. But the love, I think, is the generation for that courage, too. There's something worth fighting for. Absolutely.

Robby, you actually have the next clip. And then we have a story from Harold I'm looking forward to hearing. Oh, absolutely. By all means.

So, you know, I love this topic in a lot of ways. It speaks to both strength and courage, especially if you look in Joshua, and the idea of strength and courage fits very good into this clip. It's about George Washington in the early days of the Revolutionary War when at this point in time, actually, America had not won a single battle. As a matter of fact, they had retreated in every situation, and they had started out with three cities that they were responsible for, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. And at this point in time, New York is gone. It's been overrun by the British.

Philadelphia has just evacuated, especially the Congress, because they knew that they couldn't defend it. And here, since George Washington and one of his leading generals that were under his command was General Gates, which is a completely different kind of general than General Washington. And so what we hear here is a confrontation over at dinner table right before General Washington proposes, or it's actually during when General Washington proposes the idea of the Battle of Trenton, which is to go against the Hessians on the day after Christmas while they're sitting there after their partying, which we all know what happens, but to hear this conversation really reveals a lot of George Washington's courage, and especially with this idea, and we talk about it at boot camp, is what are you so passionate about that it's worth dying for?

Like, that you literally would lay down your life, and let's listen. And finally, you will not defeat Hessians. They are European soldiers. The most disciplined, the most rigorously trained, the best soldiers on earth, and you bloody well know that. Why, their superiority. Their superiority will be their undoing.

Oh, my dear sir, please. Their training has not prepared them for an attack of this nature. They will be roused from their beds, and we will not give them time to achieve the formations with which they are comfortable. I fear for your sanity, General. I fear that you are no longer fit for command. How dare you!

No, sir, how dare you! I am sick to death of your looking down that long nose of yours, and equally sick of the pretense of military competence that you and your colonial cronies display. You are no soldiers, and you, sir, are a damned poor leader.

Have you finished? Surrender. This revolution is over. So we surrender.

We weigh the pros and cons and reason. But you see, sir, I am an unreasonable man as well as a poor soldier. But you are right. My men are not soldiers. They are lads.

Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen. They run away. They fear the Hessians as they fear death.

All this is true. Yet they have put their trust in me. They could have deserted. Thousands have.

But these lads have not. They remain with me. And I, not you, General Gates, I command this army. And if I, a bumbling Virginia farmer, should decide to lead them into hell, they will follow me into hell. Now you hear me, and you hear me well. You will ride out of my camp.

You are not to discuss what has occurred here tonight. Put your pistol on him, Alex, and go with him. See him onto his horse and out of this camp. And if he tries to take his men with him, shoot him. You would not dare try me, General Gates.

Only try me. I love it. I really do. That got me fired up just listening to it. And that Alex he's talking about is actually Alexander Hamilton, which was sort of his aide during the Revolutionary War, later became president. But there's so much in that that's spectacular from my perspective. So that idea of be strong has within it this idea of love. And love, again, is God.

I mean, his name means it, and everything about it is love. And what you can see from that clip, I think, whoever wrote it had the genius of understanding that General Washington loved those men. In other words, many had abandoned him, but now he had the 300 Ligetian water lappers.

I mean, these guys were in it for the fight. And the fact that they were unified and together in that made them almost unstoppable, very, very strong and very courageous because they followed a leader who loved them. They followed the leader who would lay down his life for them.

They had all found something worth dying for, and so they were in the battle. And such is actually the case for us in all those things that we gnaw on us. You know, that if you truly, truly love, it's the riskiest thing that you'll ever do. And to love somebody to the point of whether or not they hate you for the rest of their life because you stepped in at that particular moment to oppose them because you felt God opposed them, that was what they needed at that moment in time, well, then you're truly being their friend, right? I mean, you're laying down your life for their sake, whatever that may be. Or it may be coming beside somebody when nobody else would because you love them. And the whole thing is driven by love because that's what Jesus is.

And so, yes, so much of what we talked about in this show, courage comes from being with God. But if you're with God, you're certainly in love with the people that – so in John chapter 10, there's a fascinating thing that Jesus says about him being the good shepherd. And he says the hireling will run away because he cares nothing about the sheep.

And so as I listened to that clip, you could tell that General Gates was a hireling. He couldn't care less about his soldiers. He cared about his pride. He cared about all sorts of things that didn't matter. George Washington was not a hireling.

He was a good shepherd. And I think it couldn't be more clear in this particular situation. Thank you. Harold, do you have a story for us on courage, correct?

Well, yeah. When I was a young guy in college and so forth, I used to hitchhike because I didn't have a vehicle. Consequently, I was very prone to stop and pick up hitchhikers.

As we went through time and things started deteriorating in the way that people attacked and so forth, I got scared. I stopped picking up people. I did occasionally, but there was an incident just a few years ago that I was on my way into church one evening. And this was a raw, windy, cold, rainy kind of day. And I saw this older guy on the side of the road and kind of close to Mocksville.

I live about five miles outside Mocksville. On my way home after church, this guy had made his way out and was only about a mile from where I lived. I drove by. I went on home, and I told my wife, I've got to go get this guy. And so I got my pistol, and I got the phone.

She wanted me to call her on the phone and leave the phone on so she could hear everything. So I went back, and I picked the guy up. He was from Ohio, and he was trying to make his way over to Lexington, which was from where we were there at that time, about 15 miles or so. And so I drove the guy over there because it was a really bad, cold thing. He was kind of crouching down behind a sign trying to block the wind when I got to him.

So I took him over to his relative's place there in Lexington, gave him a jacket, one that I didn't use all that often. But to me, that was a feeling of being courageous on my part as opposed to the many times that I had passed by other people. But it was a combination of the fact that he looked to be kind of an old guy and the weather conditions and stuff that I was determined to do it. I did try to protect myself. That was wisdom.

Okay, I'll take that. That was one of the reasons that she let me go and do it. I told her, okay, I got my gun, and I'll be safe.

But one time when I didn't act courageous, it bugs me ever since. When I was around 12 or so, I was at the Dairy Queen back in Prattville, Alabama. And this was a hot summer day, and this black gentleman drove up, and he had several small children in the car. They would not sell him ice cream. And you didn't even go inside. You just had to place an order, and it got passed out the window.

I have wished over the years that I would have bought the ice cream for those kids, but I didn't. And that's bugged me ever since. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Harold. Grant, you have something you'd like to share? Too much love. Yeah.

So, question. When has God helped you in your courageousness? When sometimes he stepped in and said, okay, son, I got you.

And you may not know what the outcome's going to be, but he was there with you, and you could feel his presence. And since I asked the question, I'll throw one out there, okay? And I've shared it, I think, on the air before, but back in 2006, 2007, the housing economy was not great. It got worse in 2008, 2009. But I was with a company in Indianapolis, and at the time, I was in charge of about 60-some-odd employees in my department. And so I had the responsibility of terminating almost every one of those employees face-to-face in meetings. You know, over nothing that they had done wrong, they were great employees.

It's just the market was bad, and housing was bad, and we had to cut costs. And so the first three or four I did out of my own strength, and I was completely wiped out and just couldn't face the thought of doing 50-some more of these, right? With people that I hired, people that I loved, people that I knew well. Most of them I loved. But yeah, there were people I knew well.

Not to be honest, right? But they were all hard for different reasons, because I knew their story. They had families. They needed the money.

They depended on it. And somewhere along the way, I just thought, you know, I haven't prayed about any of this. And so I said, okay, God, I'm going to take you with me each time that I went in there, and I'm just going to follow your lead.

Right? And so I just said, God, what do you want me to do here? And here sometimes you say, just listen. And other times I want you to pray.

You know? And I was with a company. It was a Christian company. But still, it was kind of hard to do that you're going to pray with these people, especially when you're terminating them.

You could open yourself up to HR issues and some of that. And I just had confidence at what God was calling me to do, and I prayed with the majority of them. And can I say that they went well? No.

When you're letting somebody go, they don't go well. But I can't tell you the number of hugs that people gave me, how understanding people were. And I attribute 110% of that to God. You know? That was all Him. Yeah.

The outcome that I just needed to lean into Him. And so, okay, you know what this person needs more than I do. What's the best thing I can do for them right now? Is it pray for them? Is it listen to them? Is it talk?

What do I need to do here? And I would just try to lean into Him, because I had no clue. I knew I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be the one doing it. I was grateful I had my job. You know?

But it's so much more fun to hire people than it is to try to let them go. And so that was a time for me that was huge. Robby? Yeah, well, just Sunday, actually, you know, I'd actually gone to lunch with Dr. Carson at a little restaurant right after I preached, you know? And we were sitting in the restaurant, and the lady sitting right across – or, you know, right behind where Dr. Carson was, you know, she looked to be in her 80s or 90s. She was old. And she fell out on the floor, like, and looked like it was over, right?

And, of course, everybody's screwing around. But one of the people that came to her rescue was actually a member of our church, whose name was Amber. And she bent right down there, and immediately, like, the Holy Spirit said, you need to go pray.

And it was easier. I guess God knew that, because Amber was there, and I knew her. And so I just kind of put my arm around Amber, and I said, don't we need to pray? And she goes, oh, Robby, yeah, let's pray.

And so – and this lady is, like, comatose looking on the floor. And so I prayed, you know, just like a regular prayer. And God prompted it, and God did everything that happened. But as I finished the prayer, man, the lady, like, comes alive. I mean, by this time, you know, the ambulance people are coming in and all this stuff. And I'll never forget as long as I live, you know, like, oh, my gosh, like, immediately God answered it. But believe me, that was not easy to just sit there and all of a sudden just jump up with all these people screwing around with this lady down. But I thought, well, God, you said it.

Okay, I'm in for the deal. And boy, he blessed it, you know, amen. So any outgoing words of advice from anybody on the topic of courage, what you would share with the listeners? I think just listen to God and ask him where – what areas can I step into something I've feared or not taken action on. Help me to take the land, you know, that you're putting before me, just like God said to Joshua.

Yeah, I think that's great advice. I think also taking some time maybe after the event to say, God, why was I so fearful? What was behind that? Was there an old wound?

Was there something that felt like this in the past that I failed at? Right? And let him dig into that. Go to masculinejourney.org. This is the Truth Network.