Forever Young

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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.

Welcome to Masculine Journey. We're glad to have you with us this week. And we have just a plethora, I think would be the word, of clips. And so hopefully we'll be able to get through a lot of those.

But more importantly, we hope that we go where God wants us to go in this whole topic. And speaking of that, Jim, it's your topic this week. Do you want to tell us a little bit about it?

I do. And thank you for the appropriate use of the word plethora. Last week we were talking about being old, and it was mostly old guides here, all the young guys bailed on the old program. And for some reason, when we were talking about the new, which actually was texting about the new topic, I was thinking, well, we did old and forever young, the song that you'll hear later popped into my head. And I said, okay, that might work.

And Sam polished it a little as he often does. And today we are talking about staying young. And originally I suggested that's by having an eternal perspective instead of a temporal one, by looking at our future and not instead of the life we're living in the moment. And that was, as we often do, largely ignored, and everybody went their own way. And that's fine.

Those are the best shows. We call that the Holy Spirit. Yes. Yeah.

Whether it is or not, we're not sure. I always do. And then when you explained it more, I was like, I'm more confused. Which I often am.

So no, we did go, I'm confident we will cover that part of the topic. Very touched. But there's just a lot to this topic of staying young. And Danny, you actually have the first clip in this.

And I've got to say, your choice of clips are excellent. I'm just saying. Yeah.

It's almost like a mind belt. It is. It is. Yeah. It's what happens when you hang out together all weekend, I guess. Yeah.

My clip is from Big. And it's a scene where Tom Hanks, if you're not familiar with the movie, you've never seen it. I'm not going to do a spoiler alert because it was made in the 80s. But as a 12-year-old boy, he makes a wish that he was all grown up. And his wish comes true. So he's this young man, a 12-year-old in a young man's body. And he finds himself in the corporate world. And this scene, they're in a meeting where this company is going to produce a new toy. And what you can't see is he's sitting there messing with a toy. And they're talking about all the statistics and stuff like that. And he brings the 12-year-old perspective into the room is basically what happens.

And in other words, he's being forever young in the scene. So we can play it and talk about it afterwards. Transformers pull 37% market share. And that we are targeting the same area. I think that we should see one quarter of that.

And that is one fifth of the total revenue from all of last year. Any questions? I don't get it. What exactly don't you get? It turns from a building into a robot, right? Precisely. Well, what's fun about that?

Well, if you had read your industry breakdown, you would see that our success in the action figure area has climbed from 27% to 45% in the last two years. There, that might help. Oh.

Yes. I still don't get it. What?

What don't you get, Josh? Well, there's a million robots that turn into something. And this is a building that turns into a robot. What's fun about playing with a building?

That's not any fun. This is a skyscraper. Well, couldn't it be like a robot that turns into something like a bug or something? A bug? Yeah. Like a big prehistoric insect with maybe like giant claws. It could pick up a car and crush it like that. A prehistoric transformer.

Interesting. Gentlemen. So the robot turns into a bug.

Gentlemen, listen. If you had just got a very good idea here, the robot turns into a bug. This is a great idea. Something's a water bug, Josh. Different sizes and things. And then we could do ladybugs. You could have them wreck buildings.

Transformers for girls. A building is an urgent bug. It's got all kinds of possibilities. This doesn't just happen.

This doesn't happen. He doesn't just come to a meeting and say bugs. Well done, Josh. Well done. You know, there at the end, I guess the guy is the, he's the CEO or whatever.

He's well done, Josh. And that's what we long to hear. But we were in, we were in a function this weekend and there was a lot of talk about trees and we talk about the masculine journey, your boyhood and cowboy and all those stages never go away in us. Obviously we need some maturity, but I thought of it as a sense of wonder. If you ever lose your sense of wonder, you know, cause even Jesus tells us to come with a childlike faith, not a childish, which is a huge difference, but you know, and, and I saw, you know, in a tree, if you cut a tree down the cross section, you got your annual rings in there and everything that's happened to that tree is encapsulated in those rings. If you look at them and that, you know, same with us, I think, you know, those boyhood rings are in there and they show themselves, you know, in the playfulness of, you know, no matter how old men get, there's always that joking, picking, poking fun, it seems. And you know, and that, that to me is being forever young.

Cause if you ever lose that, I think you lose the light that God intended because it just become a, it's facts and figures and there's nothing but just a stoic response. One of the things I loved in that clip is how everybody, but the original presenter got into it and we're really excited about the prospect of doing the bugs. Yeah.

Yeah. I like that clip. Well, Danny and I had, we, we rode up to Ohio together. We rode back, we talked a little bit about it, but we didn't really talk about what we were going to use and we actually cut the exact same clip, just slightly different. But I have a second clip I'll play here in a second. But what I, you know, the things you said are absolutely on track of what I was thinking, but you know, you have the one guy in that, that, that clip that talks about just the statistics, the numbers, you know, it's all about numbers, but you have the boyhood perspective of it.

Is it fun? Right. Cause kids aren't going to play with something that's not fun. Right. I'm sure the pet rock was popular for a little while, but the other day it was just a rock, you know, and it's no longer around. Right.

You know, everything has its novelty, but it has to have the perspective of, of the, of the end user, which, which he was able to bring. Now I know why nobody played with Jim when he was little. Yeah. You gotta be fun, Jim. I knew you lost the mic. And Jim now has a large collection of pet rocks and transformers.

Most of us call that a driveway and bugs. The real issue is Jim was never little. Oh, that's true. No comment, Harold. I won't say. I want to play another clip before we go to break here in a few.

And, and this would be a little bit different perspective on being young and I'm gonna go ahead and play it. It's from Lord of the Rings. They're getting ready to go on an adventure. Aragorn, if you haven't seen it, is taking the hobbits, which are these little playful creatures that they're beings. I don't know what else to say. They're, they're creatures.

And, and so go ahead. We have a good representative of a hobbit. We do. We do.

We can't see his toes to see if they have hair on them. But other than that, we know that the size and everything's about correct. But on this, I want you to listen to what their concerns are as they're getting ready to head off on this big adventure to go save the world. That's what they're gonna end up going to do. And this is what they're concerned about. And so the point of that was, it makes me laugh, but the point of it is there's a difference between maturing and losing your youthfulness, right?

And there may be a better word for it. And we're, we're to keep that youthfulness about us to have that childlike faith, to have that, that approach to life that has the wonder that Danny was talking about. But we also have to mature and move past Second Breakfast and Elevensies and Second Tea or whatever, Third Dinner, whatever the things were in the clip, right? And they do mature throughout that movie, but they always have their playfulness, which is really pretty cool.

And that's why I enjoyed that, you know, and love the hobbits so much is because they were very playful in that. But anybody else want to make a comment? We've got a couple minutes before we go to break. Anything on your mind?

If not, I'll throw a couple things in there. Jim, what do you have? Well, I was pointing at Daddy because he pointed something out during our preparation about how and how it went from my brain. But you remember it. From what? Yes. Well, maybe when you see the wizard.

That was it. Thank you for the reminder. We are always playful on this show and Hal, you know, and how popular would we be if we were giving you statistics on the joy of the Lord? Yeah, none of us would be here. No.

It was like, oh, 10 people came to this and 12 to that. Yeah. Can't make it this week. Sorry, guys. Won't be there. We do have a boot camp coming up. It's coming up November, November 21st through 24th.

Go to masculinejourney.org to register. We'd love to have you there. And we go over lots of different topics.

I know we talk about it a lot on the show. And the reason we talk about it a lot because it's changed every one of our lives for the good. There are things that change your life. It doesn't mean it's always for the good. This has always been for the good.

And it continues to change our life. If we go around and count the number of boot camps we've all been to, it would well over be a couple hundred just sitting in this room. I've been over 30 some.

I don't know what number it is. And Jim's been to the same, very similar amount. And a lot of us have been to it. But every time God does something at every single one of those boot camps. And that's why we keep going back. Yes, the camaraderie of our brothers. And that's a pretty cool thing. But we're there for God and to see what God's going to do for us. And every time He has something. Sometimes it's a little nugget that means a whole lot. Sometimes it's a great big piece of your heart that comes back.

But you always get something when you come to a boot camp. And that's why we'd love to have you come. If you want more information, you can reach out to any one of us. Just put our first name in an email at masculine journey dot org. So you could put Rodney at masculine journey dot org, Harold, any of body here on the radio here and you would get to their email and you could send us an email if you'd like to know more. If you have topic suggestions for the show, please send them to us or a great movie falls along in the lines of something that we talk about in here. Please let us know that but reach out to us or go to our Facebook page.

Catch us on any of the social medias. 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. But what kind of inspired you to come up this weekend? Oh my goodness, just my faith in general. You know, my father, you know, has passed down that heritage of just that Christian life, that Christian faith and just godly morals and principles. And he's instilled that in my life.

And you know, I have children as well and I want to instill that in their life. So when I get an opportunity to do something like this, I jump on it. I just want to be here and I'm glad to be here.

It's a great opportunity. We're definitely glad to have you here as well. Any talk that stuck out to you this weekend that's really just kind of made your heart come alive with that fire back in you?

Probably one thing that just stands out to me is John 15. It's just not being alone. Know that I have Christ on my side. I can't do anything without him.

And I need him in my life. I'm a very private person. I like to do things on my own. I don't like to ask for help. So that's hard for me to know I've got to ask Jesus for something and then also just to rely on a band of brothers that I can look to and turn to and say, hey guys, I need help. I can't do this alone.

Register today at masculinejourney.org. Well, Jim, that was your pump. And I hear it's one of your favorite artists.

No, not even remotely. And Robby cut one musically I like better that was Rod Stewart. But yeah, Bob Dylan was a form of torture from a roommate when I was 17 at the Citadel. And he played he loved it.

He was from New York. That's a strike against him too. But I loved him anyway. But just it was one of the wonderful things about this guy is when I saw him pass out in formation.

I knew I was next. So I was always prepared to go after he dropped. But wonderful guy, but he loved Bob Dylan. He played it all the time. And this was on the album he played most often.

And Robby's gonna jump in. He's trying to understand little clarity. So when he passed out, you knew you were next exactly. Yeah. Can you explain that? Standing at attention long times in the fun Charleston sun in the summertime, cause a number of people to faint. And he was always first and I was always second.

I don't know who was after that, because I was laying on the ground and take it and Well, after the first guy went down, then they didn't call a break. Oh, no, that's not how the military works. To be fair, you were closer to the sun, so it's probably harder. And there were a lot of comments on how this was hard to understand. So I'll read it real quick. The it's May you grow up to be righteous. May you grow up to be true. May you always know the truth and see the light surrounding you. May you always be courageous, stand upright and be strong. May you stay forever young, forever young, blah, blah, blah.

And I love the lyrics, but I would have rather played Robby, but that was not being our choice. I cut that for you. I had no idea. Yeah. Forever young words I got out of that. Yeah. And Rod Stewart's not among my top 500 either, but he's easier to understand a little bit a little bit.

But yeah, it works. That was a great lyrics of that. And so you actually have the next clip. So if you want to tell us about it, it's one of our most played movies.

Most played. Well, and I credit Sam with this being my clip tonight, because once not that long ago, he said sooner or later, we're gonna have the whole movie. And I'm pretty sure we haven't done the end of the movie. And for those that don't know the movie, that's unfortunate, but I'll give you a quick synopsis.

You got the Confederate. What's the name of it? What's the name?

What's up there? outlaw Josie. Okay, there we go. Josie is a confederate and the ugliest part of the Civil War which occurred between Kansas and Missouri primarily. But at the end of the war, they are surrendering. And his friend and commanding officer Fletcher betrays the whole unit and they're gunned down except for Josie who bails out one kid and they're together briefly and that kid was wounded and died. And so he's alone.

And he's getting out of Dodge because everybody in the neighborhood is searching for him. And as he travels, he takes out a lot of enemies and picks up stragglers that need his help. And by the time he gets to the end of the movie in this clip, there's only one enemy left and that is Fletcher, the commanding officer that betrayed him and his unit. And that his journey has been killing off a number of the folks that were part of the unit that gunned down the his unit.

I'm using that word a lot. But anyway, this scene is when he and Fletcher meet at the end. And the town's what's left of the townspeople's point out there are five or six of them, but they're part of the group that have gathered around him.

And they are his friends. And those are the people you hear talking about the death of Josie Wales. I don't believe that story about Josie Wales. You don't? No, sir, I don't. I don't believe no fire pistol layers could do in Josie Wales. Maybe it was six could have even been 10.

I think he's still alive. Well, I know, sir. I think I'll go down to Mexico to try to find it. And that. He's got the first move.

I own that. I think I'll try to tell him the war is over. What do you say Mr. Wilson.

I guess we all die a little bit more. And this is his last confrontation with those he considered his enemies. And he there wasn't a gun battle there. He listened to his previous friend and they parted and that to me really spoke to the life of a warrior. And if you're a man, if you don't realize you're a warrior, you kind of missed an early stage. But each of us have that in us. And we are in a world at war, so we need it in us. But we have to know which battles to fight and which ones to lay down and get past peacefully. And he does that twice.

And this is the second time in the movie everybody else gets taken out because he's a supreme warrior. But that reminded me of last week's topic of aging. Knowing when to go to peace. And that in my life at least is largely contingent on looking at things from God's perspective.

The eternal perspective instead of from our situations which we call temporal. That's in time. And that's I've been fighting battles against allies for a few weeks, a few months, maybe two years. But it's been something God really brought to me in the last few weeks is that these are not my enemies.

These are my allies. And just because we disagree is not a reason to go at it against one another. We need to recognize the true enemy is the one that's stirring up the strife among us. And that's the powers and principalities. And if you can look at that from an eternal perspective and remember the person that you're right now in conflict with, it's not them that's the enemy. And remembering that is a big part of growing.

Darrell Bock And I think Josie there lives a lot of the life that we end up living. Because even there he's, as it depends on him, he tries to live free and be at peace. But no way will let him rest. They keep chasing him. He really never started anything. They always came after him. He was just forced into it. Darrell Bock Harold, what about you?

You have a clip you want to tell us a little bit about that? Harold Jones Oh, yeah. I picked this one like I pick a lot of things because of my sweetheart. When the topic came up about being forever young, that's how I wanted my marriage to be. Too many marriages get stale. People allow them to fall away to the wayside.

They grow old and unhappy. And I didn't want that. So I still have my sweetheart. She's not my wife.

She's not my old lady. She's my sweetheart. And I like to treat her like we're still dating, even though we've been married for 60 years now. I'm still excited about her when I'm away. I want to be with her, and so forth. So I write her poems. I open the car door. All those kind of things you do when you're first dating a girl and you get all excited.

This clip comes from the movie Forever Young, and it's involving a little boy that's got a crush on a little girl, and he's being told how to romance her. Darrell Bock Here we go. Darrell Bock Here we go. Darrell Bock Tell her everything. Tell her how you feel.

I know it's hard, but you got to do it. Just let go. Darrell Bock How? Darrell Bock How?

Well, you know that stuff you told me. Tell that stuff to her. Open up your heart. Sing to her. Darrell Bock Sing? Darrell Bock Tell her everything.

Sing to her. The sooner the better. Because, you know, you might never get another chance. Do you follow? Darrell Bock Uh-huh. Darrell Bock Good. Dad? Dad's me. What are you doing here? You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. You'll never know, dear, how much I love you.

Please don't take my sunshine away. Dad There's some kind of prank. Darrell Bock Um, no, sir. No, sir, this is very serious. Look, I'm sorry to disturb you, but my name's Nat Cooper, and I'm in love with your daughter.

I see her in class every day, and I just really like her a lot. And that's the truth. Dad Nat? Darrell Bock Mm-hmm. Dad Go home. Darrell Bock Sir.

Dad Good night. Darrell Bock I can't tell you how many times I've tried to sing that song and played it off of the record for my girl. Songs mean a lot.

We've got some that we play for one another. Willie Nelson's Always on My Mind. Ray Charles, If You Were Mine, I'd Never Let You Leave Me. If You Were Mine, I'd Never Let You Go.

A lot of things like that. And so we have kept our marriage young, even though we're old. So my encouragement to people out there is don't let it grow stale. It doesn't have to. Keep treating one another like you just met or just starting to date.

The excitement doesn't have to end. Darrell Bock Well, thank you, Harold. Go to masculinejourney.org to register for the upcoming boot camp, November 21st through 24th. Also, lean into God this week and say, God, how do I reclaim some of that youthfulness?

Not immaturity, but youthfulness. How do I do that? And let him guide you through it. And while you're at it, remember to love somebody well this week, and we'll talk to you next week. Have a good week.