This is the Truth Network. Coming to you from an entrenched barricade deep in the heart of central North Carolina, Masculine Journey After Hours, a time to go deeper and be more transparent on the topic covered on this week's broadcast. So sit back and join us on this adventure. The Masculine Journey After Hours starts here now.
Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. We were just sitting there talking, almost didn't hear the intro there. So anyway, David, we'll blame you. I was the one that notified you that it was planned.
Oh, that's true. I can't blame you. Andy, it's your fault. Details. Andy, I'll be the voice of the enemy. It's your fault.
No, welcome to the Masculine Journey After Hours. We are talking about lures and labels. Anyone want to take a shot at explaining that? Sure. Mine and Robby's. Let's let Robby explain it. Yeah, Robby, will you go ahead and explain that? You're exactly right. Yeah, crickets.
Robby's not here. Anyway, the topic, lures and labels, it's what the enemy tries to entice you with to follow in his direction. A lure, if you're a fisherman or if you've ever known anyone that's fished, and a lure is a thing you throw out for the fish to bite at. Not a worm, that's bait. But a fake worm is a lure. It can be, a type of lure. And so it's something that's thrown to entice you to bite at it so you can be reeled in. That's what a lure is. And so the enemy has lures that he uses with us. We talked about some of those on the last show. We'll talk about some of those on this show.
And then the labels. What are the things that the enemy calls you? And it's often something, as we learned in the last show, that was from your childhood. It's from a former time in life that someone else has called you that he echoes.
Because it has a special place of pain in your heart, especially until God works on it. And even after that, he'll try to bring it back up and try to get you to enter back into that agreement and try to take on that identity. And Andy talked about playing a clip from Sanford and Sons.
You big dummy. And how that was a part of his story with his dad. And so we'll have other examples of that.
Yes, thank you. Along those lines, I was just sitting here thinking though, it's almost like if we were to go fishing, Dave likes fishing. He's our resident fisher here. You catch a fish. He bites the lure, takes it, you land it. Nice fish. Like that one you had.
Just thinking about this. And it's like David going up to him and taunting him. It's like, you stupid fish. You always bite that worm. That's exactly what I say to him.
Like, what are you drinking, you dumb fish? So you berate the fish or whatever for doing exactly what you wanted to do. That's what the enemy does. I mean, it's that simple.
I mean, and he keeps us in that. You're the stupidest fish ever. Why would you ever do that?
I don't care if you were hungry. Why did you do that, you dumb fish? You big dummy. You big dummy.
You big dumb fish. Well, you were saying before the show, and it finally just now registered, Andy, how they work together, right? So when you take the lure, he'll follow it right up with a label. Right behind that. They'll go hand in hand.
Now, they may be separate. He may try the attack, which is labels only. And that often works.
It does for me at times. Or he might throw a lure out there and try to get you to take it. But if you take the lure, he'll definitely follow it up with a label pretty much every time. See, you thought you were a child of God.
He's going to attack the character. Yeah. When I was stuck in a sin pattern and didn't really know who I was in God, you'd read 2 Corinthians 5, 17, talking about you and your new creature. And I'm like, no, I'm not. I'm just still the same one. And no, not realizing that my nature had changed, but my flesh hadn't.
I'd heard a lot of teaching on it, but still didn't always believe it. That that nature comes in the more of the believing that you are a new creation. That's an important part of it, to break that, that's going to prevent you from continually wanting to do it. There's other factors. What do I want most? I want God more than these other things, that kind of thing.
But that's one where you just get kind of stuck on whatever. There's a little bit of truth. Yeah, you fail, but it's not the ultimate truth. It doesn't change who you are. Right. It's not your identity. It's not your identity. But the lures and labels that we're talking about ultimately is an attack on your identity. It is.
You take the lure, you get the label, and then what sets in after that? Shame. And then you get even more upset because you're like, oh, no, I just fell into that path again. So even more shame. So the enemy's winning, and it's just kind of a revolving circle until you stand up and say, no, God's got this, and let him pull you out of it.
Or the shame will become disqualification. Yeah. Right. You're not fit to follow God. You're not fit to serve the Lord. You're not whatever.
And ultimately, I believe, among other things, I don't want God's people to worship God and take that away from them. Disqualification takes away your whole feeling of your significance and all that stuff, and you're totally pretty much like you're just disabled at that point from a spiritual standpoint. Yeah, you're a floundering fish. You're a floundering fish. Exactly. You're like on a string or just hanging there.
You're not free. And the lures are always designed to pull you away from God. Yeah. Right? It's going to be the lure of God abandoning you.
God wasn't there for you. Whatever that flavor of the day is, whatever's worked on you in the past, he's going to keep throwing it. And the thing is, he'll repackage it. It'll look a little different.
And then when you get right down to it, it's the same exact lure. Same thing. Yep.
They don't know I'm isolated. Oh, what's going on here? He's not very creative. He's not, but he's cunning. He is. Yeah. You're now using labels and lures. Yep.
It's qualifying. Yeah. Andy, you've got the first clip.
You want to tell us a little bit about it? So this is from the movie Fireproof. And this is mainly at the end when he's got his stuff together and he figures out who he is and what's important to him.
And this is, I can't remember, it's Caleb. It's Fireproof and his dad kind of takes him through a love dare to kind of reclaim his life. He struggled with porn, which a lot of us have. And it's really affecting his marriage. And he also struggles with it kind of like he deserves his boat, that thing that you were talking about earlier about with the McDonald's commercial. And he feels like life owes him something. And he's portrayed as not a very good guy.
Yeah, well, he's broken. And she leaves him, rightfully so. And then his dad steps in and kind of gives him some guidance.
And he really works on it. He takes his 40-day love dare, does these things to move towards her and love her properly. And then this is kind of her response. She initially rejects it. She doesn't trust him. And there's been a gap in time and then finally she comes to approach him about what was going on in her heart.
Here we go. If I haven't told you that you are a good man, you are. If I haven't told you that I've forgiven you, I have. And if I haven't told you that I love you, I do. Something has changed in you, Caleb. And I want what happened to you to happen to me.
It can't. Is it too late to ask you to grow old with me? So, yeah, the allures you would have saw a lot more in the movie, but I was kind of focused on the labels. And the labels, we think from a negative standpoint, but he got new labels. And if you take her out of the picture for a second and just think about how God looks at us, it's like he looks at us and he says, whether you know it or not, you're a good man. Whether you know it or not, you're forgiven.
Whether you know it or not, you're loved. And all those are new labels. And they're a byproduct. He took action, and God was still there doing that before he actually got everything, his stuff, together. But that's what God's saying to us.
That's what she said to him. Those are positive labels that God wants us to all walk under and be aware of. But we tend to drift into taking the lure and the results of those lures to those labels. And it's great whenever you can feel free from that because that will hold you down.
Your label will hold you down as much as anything. It's kind of interesting because I've been dealing with the hearts of men for about 30 years. And God pulled me into it.
He kind of pushed me, pulled me into it. And as I continue to walk through it, I see so many things that's happening in the hearts and in the ministry of men and those labels. But how it was stated in the clip, how she said, if I never told you this, then you are. And as I sometimes meet some of these guys that have been going through this torture of label having and whatnot, I have to almost recover the same way she did. It's like you meet them where they are. You say you might let that moment of what had brought them there be there. But then you quickly recover and tell them who they truly are. You don't give a moment of time just long enough for that doubt to stay. You seal it up.
You seal it up with the truth from your heart into his to restore what has been probably ripped away from him. You know? Darrell Bock Yep. Good word.
Dr. Darrell Bock It is. The problem with the labels that we get is we believe them. We believe it's the truest thing about us. And the challenge of it is it's grounded in some piece of truth.
And we talked about that before. That's the way the enemy works. If it wasn't any piece of truth in it, it wouldn't have any effect.
But because there's some part of it that's true, we accept the whole label. Darrell Bock Perfect example is Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. Partial truth Bible actually scripture that Satan is twisted.
Dr. Darrell Bock Yeah. The enemy quotes scripture at it. But in the middle of it, it's an attack if you are the Son of God.
If then you can do this. Right? And so there's a lure there that's being thrown there and attacking the label at the same time. So I'm going to switch back to a little bit different focus on labels.
You kind of had the victory, right? And how to hear what God feels about you. But this is the enemy's heart. You know, I can't share on the air the words that he uses with me because they're not pleasant. The labels.
It would not be appropriate and we'd probably be off the air. But I'm going to use something similar. And so these are from a couple of comedy movies.
One of them is Ace Ventura. And so when I make a mistake, I hear certain words that he tries to get me to accept the label. And it's very similar to both what you hear from Ace Ventura here and then also from another movie, Napoleon Dynamite. And you get to hear a little bit of that. So I'm going to play this. It'll feel longer than it is.
But I'm going to go ahead and play it and we'll talk about it. Le Who Ze Her. Loser. Loser.
Le Who Ze Her. Loser. Loser. Loser.
Le Who Ze Her. Idiot. Probably the Napoleon Dynamite is closer to what I hear when I make a mistake. And what he's really getting me to want to do is to agree with what he's telling me. I hear him whisper in the ear, you're an idiot.
And if I give a credence and I say, yep, I'm an idiot, he has access to my life. That's an agreement. We've talked about agreements in the past. We talk about agreements at boot camp. It's a great time to learn about agreements. But it's actually talking about agreements at this upcoming boot camp.
And so to dig into those some more. But what he's looking at is the access point. Because he's going to attack your identity level there. And what I've really learned is that I do make a lot of really stupid mistakes. It's called being human, like you talked about before, Andy. But that doesn't give me the label of being stupid or a big dummy or anything like that.
Or what he throws at me in my own little vernacular that he likes to use with me. But I have learned to say, no, I did something stupid. But that doesn't make me an idiot. That doesn't make me this. No, I'm a child of God. Right?
I'm a beloved child of God on top of that. Right? We all are.
You all are. Right? And so it's holding on to that identity, which we're going to focus more on in a couple more clips coming up.
One that David has and one that Harold has that we'll talk a little bit more about how to hold on to that. Or what to do in the midst of feeling beaten up by the enemy. Because once you take that bait, once you take that lure, once you accept that label, it's game on. And he's going to attack you like nothing else. And it's going to be war zone at that point. Yeah, I mean, he gets a foothold with that agreement.
And then, you know, just climbs that mountain and just keeps pushing it down and burying you down on it. And the only way to do that and to break that agreement is obviously get right with God and ask Him. That will be a break of that agreement.
It's also coming to a boot camp so we can talk about it and kind of point you in the right direction with it. Right. And you can get lots of quiet time with God to get out there and break agreements and step into healing and get some life into your life. Life into your life. Life into your life.
That's a new slogan. Yeah. Get some light into your life. I think that's what you're... No, I meant life. But I didn't have another word for life. Love.
Love's a good one, too. Yeah. I need Jim here to, you know, be a thesaurus. Yeah. I need to buy a thesaurus.
Get a thesaurus, Sam. All right. So, David, why do you have a microphone? You want to tell us a little bit about your clip?
Sure. It's a clip that's been, you know, kind of recycled on the show several times. You'll hear it at boot camp. You know, I'll usually play this song after certain talks and stuff as we're leaving out for covenant silences and everything. But Sam actually cut this clip and put it in there. I was slacker. I didn't get a clip in, you know, for the last probably 20 shows that I've been on.
But either way, this is Lauren Daigle. You say it's a really great song because you'll actually hear her speaking about the labels that she feels about being weak and not good enough and how God responds to that. We'll listen to it. We'll come back and talk about it. We'll come back and talk about it.
We'll come back and talk about it. So, I mean, that's a great song. Lauren Daigle has a bunch of good songs and, you know, she doesn't pass to advertise for her. But, you know, if you go out and listen to a lot of her songs, I'm sure you'll feel something from it. But I use this song in the boot camps, honestly, for myself. I mean, listening to the words of it and actually have the lyrics, I'm not going to read them.
I actually wish you would read at least the part that we just played. It says, you say I'm loved when I can't feel a thing. You say I'm strong when I think I'm weak. And you say I'm held when I'm falling short. And when I don't belong, oh, you say I'm yours and I believe. And then it repeats, I believe, I believe.
And but I can, you know, relate to that song speaks to me. I mean, obviously, I think God's speaking to me through it because a lot of times, you know, I am fighting voices in my head. The enemy's in your head, whether you think he's there or not. And he's going to be that voice, you know, telling you you don't measure up, that you're not good enough or you don't have what it takes.
And God's always going to be there to say and you do have what it takes and you are loved and I'm here with you. You just got to have some discernment to be able to, you know, figure out which one is who's speaking to you because a lot of times the enemy is, you know, smarter than sometimes people give him credit for or we give him credit for. And he can sound, you know, he can shift it and sound like it's God talking to you. I've heard it. I felt it. I've seen it and saying, oh, yeah, OK, and let's go this way.
And it's it's not. But, you know, I can think of, you know, many times I've laid awake at night listening to voices or driving to work and really have to just go back and listen for God saying, hey, I've got you, you know, I'll pull you out of this. You just got to, you know, believe. And it took me a long time to get there for that. But, you know, I can read the entire song right here and I can probably tell you on each line of a time when when I fell into that path.
And and that's what we're talking here is with lures and labels is that's what enemy uses. You know, when you mess up at work and you're like, man, I just you know, it happens to me all the time. I'm in a whole new industry that I've never been into. I'm in construction now. I've been in the hospitality industry for 30 years and then made a leap into the construction industry. And I barely knew how to use a tape measure.
Still not really that good at it. But, you know, I barely knew how to use a tape measure. And, you know, so there's been plenty of times that I'm standing there and just like, I don't think I have what it takes to build houses. And, you know, I think I'm on like I don't even know how many houses I've built at this point after Sam has taught me how to do it.
But God's been there with with me telling me, hey, I told you to take this leap. You know, I'll put it in front of you. You know, keep going. You have what it takes. I do want you to go back to the lyrics for a second and read be right ahead of what where the song began. OK, because I want you to really listen and I want you to be honest with yourself.
I know you felt this. I know the enemy's attacked you at least on one of these levels, if not all of them. So it says, I keep fighting voices in my mind that say I'm not enough. And every single lie that tells me I will never measure up. Am I more than just the sum of every high and every low? Remind me once again just who I am because I need to know.
And I mean, he's right. I mean, if you've never stood in your shower and asked God to remind you who you are because you don't know who you are, then you're lying to yourself right now telling yourself that you might not have been standing in the shower, but you were standing somewhere in your life that you've asked God to remind you who you are because you forgot. Well, let me say that a little differently. Maybe you've not had the opportunity to ask God to remind you because you never knew that that was an option.
That's a big part of it. Most people don't. As many scriptures are about identity and we're sons of God, we'll read that scripture and disqualify ourselves because of some behavior we had.
I can't be a son of God over this. I did for a long time and I knew the Word and I studied the Word and I still believe those lies and stuff, so I think that's all of our songs to a degree. If we're really honest, some people say, no, I got it, I know who I was. I think sometimes we cover up and not really honest because it's our fallen nature to feel like we're not enough. Well, the other thing the enemy likes to let us believe is everyone else has their act together and we don't. Social media is a great way to spread that around.
Mainstream media is a great thing to spread that around. Sometimes depending on where you go to church, the church also does because, yes, God is good and God is great, but sometimes I'm having a bad day and I got to feel comfortable enough to say, you know what, I don't feel great right now. No, we feel like we're supposed to put on a good front no matter what's going on. That's a pose. It is a pose. It feels like the Christian thing to do. It does. It's our humility.
It's our humility leaf. Right. But God says, no, people need to know that you're struggling because then they know it's okay to struggle.
Right. You know the thing with that as well, when you come to that point, when you finally come to that point to you, you recess yourself enough that God could fill in those vacant spots, that I don't know moment when God can fill in those vacant spots and in your time of recess when God starts to fill in, he kicks it another level. You become even more of what you didn't think and then God kind of uses you in the very doubt of your mind to strengthen in other areas. A lot of times the way that goes is you'll get a new word and you'll believe it. You'll believe that you're that son or whatever. It may not fix what brought you into that place right away, but what it's done for me is positioned me in a way that I'm not afraid to go and push in to those places that I don't feel.
Right. It doesn't automatically, it's not a magic wand that you wave over, oh, you're a son of God at everything, the water's part and all that. It takes some time to walk it out, but the first thing is believe.
You got to believe that. Yeah, and that's how she ended that part of that verse was she chooses to believe. I think that the challenges with believing are a couple things. One is, and I can't remember, the prophet that went and hid in the cave and was looking for the voice of Elijah. Elijah. I thought it was Elijah and it didn't sound right, but Elijah, but he's looking for God in all these big things and it's a small, still voice. The enemy's voice is loud, obnoxious, overbearing, feels true. God's voice is consistent, 100% the same all the time, but it's quiet, it's steady, and it doesn't scream at you, but it's the truth, and it often doesn't feel like the truth. It doesn't come in a whirlwind and all these big grandiose things like we want, but heals.
That's what makes it hard because it feels so much like the other is screaming at you. The other thing I was going to say is, yeah, the waters don't part and all that right away, but you got to hold on to your identity as you live out the consequences of your choices. Yeah, that's true too. You're still going to have the consequences, you're still going to have to deal with the issues of the decisions you made. Sometimes God gives you a free pass on those, but most of the time we got to live them out, but it's holding on to your identity as you live them out.
That's right. Yeah, because he's going to take the... When you believe and you accept that, he's going to start disrupting that. I know in my story, even when you don't accept that, like, okay, this is what I'm doing, he's still going to disrupt it anyway.
He's not going to wait for your permission to do it, and you're going to start seeing it. I've said it before on the radio, I can remember a conversation of when I was broken, I mean, we're all broken, that I called Sam up one night, and I don't know if it was a radio show or not. I was like, hey man, you got a second to talk. It was really before I was part of the team, and I was like, hey, when is this going to end, man? I am tired of this. You're just getting started.
I was like, yeah, I was probably only like a month into it, and I was just like, this is crazy, man. I'm tired of hurting, I'm tired of crying, I'm tired of doing all this. He was just like, again, you're just getting started, but he's like, you might not... You are battling the enemy, but it might be more of a disruption. God's going to disrupt things in your life to get you to the place of where you need to be. Yeah, that's right. Harold, I know we didn't get to your clip, but is there anything you'd like to leave us with before we leave?
Any advice you'd like to give us? Yeah I'm disappointed in Andy. He didn't play the song about short people. Oh, yeah, well, we always have opportunities to play short people songs.
Yeah, we might have to follow up on another show with that one. I'm sure you have a birthday coming up soon. We'll recycle for that, but go to masculinejourney.org to register for the upcoming bootcamp, November 21st through 24th. We would love to have you there. Finances are an issue. Please don't let that be a problem. Reach out to us. We'll help you get there financially, and tell you what, just love somebody well this week and let yourself be loved. This is the Truth Network.
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