Lures And Labels

This is the Truth Network. The heart of every man craves a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus and Jesus. Welcome to Masculine Journey. We're glad to have you with us this week, and I'm excited. We actually have one guest on the phone and another guest in the studio. David, you're back with us. Yeah, I am. I'm not glad. I mean, I was the number one guest there for a long time. That's why I referred to you as that. I know. I took a hiatus for a little bit so I could get my number one guest title back. Yeah, yeah. If you're here too much, you're not a guest anymore. Exactly. I'm just part of the team, you know? Yeah, you cured that.

Yeah, exactly. And then on the phones, we have a friend of ours from Ohio, Mike Petticord. I hope I said your last name right, Mike. I'm assuming I did.

But welcome to the show. You got it, Sam. Yeah, tell us a little bit about your ministry up there, Mike, and what you got going on, and thank you for joining us today.

Yeah, thanks for the invite. Our ministry is a non-profit. The kingdom, the name is Renew Kingdom, and we've been doing boot camps since about 2014.

Typically, we'll have 25 to 30 men at a weekend, and we do both basic and advanced boot camps. And I tell you, it's just been one of the most transformational experiences for me, just meeting other men, dealing with the things life throws at you, and being able to have a band of brothers to navigate that. Yeah, it's an awesome experience to have people to walk through the life with you. I mean, I don't know how we get by without it.

I mean, honestly, we don't get by very well without it. You're right. Yeah, and so if someone wanted to attend a camp, now it's up in the beautiful Hocking Hills area of Ohio. If you're not familiar with that, it's an amazing park that's up there. It's a great adventure place to go, and it's just a beautiful area of Ohio, one of the few.

No, I'm just kidding. That didn't take long. Break the seal on insulting our guests. We don't have the mountains you guys have in North Carolina, but we've got other things.

Give me a minute, I'll think what those are. Flatlands. Well, Mike, the reason I can speak with authority on that is I'm from that same general area of Indiana, and so in that middle portion, once you get out of the southern part of the state, there's not a whole lot.

It's just a lot of corn fields and soybean typically. Yes, you're right. You mentioned just how beautiful the property is. It's a lodge that's Colorado-style lodge with a nice lake on the property, and it's just a serene place that God seems to fill up every boot camp we have. Yeah, absolutely.

Grant, you want to add something? Oh, not in Akron, Ohio. Oh, yeah, I'm from Akron, Ohio. Yeah, no, I've been up through Ohio quite a bit, actually, and I do enjoy that as I head back to Indiana. It's one of the last stops on my way to Indiana, so I usually go through there, but you've been up to a couple of the camps up there at the facility. What a beautiful place. You guys' band of brothers, the two groups that run out of there are just amazing guys, and I can't recommend it more fully. Andy, you've been to more of them than I have. Yeah, I went up there through a friend from Ohio who invited me up, and the guys, I mean, whenever I got with them, I mean, whenever I joined the masculine journey, I mean, I got plenty of insults and stuff from Sam, but when I went up there, everybody just put their arms around me and loved me, and no, I'm just kidding, but really, it really is a good place of just acceptance, love.

These guys have experienced the breakthrough, the wild art message, and are on their masculine journey, and they just want to share what they have. The food is incredible. They do their own food, which is a little bit different than us, and I think Mike's been on that team, and I tell you what, if you want to gain a few pounds, if you're kind of light or whatever, you'll do it up there, but the area that you're talking about, you can take a little canoe out on the lake or pond and fish. It's really a cool place. Yeah, it is very cool, and I know they have an event coming up this weekend, but it's sold out. I don't know what it's like to have an event sold out.

We've never had that happen, so I'm really kind of jealous that it's sold out. Congratulations, you guys do a great job there, and I know you have plenty coming up. If they wanted to go to the website, do you know what that website is, Mike? Yeah, it's just renewedkingams.org. Okay, renewedkingams.org, and so we'll say that a couple times throughout the show and in the after hours, but definitely, we have a boot camp coming up in November, which we talk about every single week, so if you haven't been listening, or if you have been and you haven't paid attention, we do have one coming up in November 21st through 24th, but if you want to go on a different adventure, you want to get out of North Carolina, I recommend the guys up in Ohio. It's a great trip and a great group of people to go up and spend some time with.

Yeah, we've had people that come to our boot camps that weren't aware of the proximity, and if you're up in that area, it may be easier for you to come there. I think we have the same heart. It's not always that you find people in ministry, sometimes you want to compete and still have that same heart. There's none of that with these guys.

They just want to serve God, love God, and share what they've learned and experienced. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're going to move on to the topic, and we'll talk more to Mike on the topic and about Renewed Kingdom, but the topic this week, we've had a stretch where we haven't done this in a while where someone recommends at least part of a topic and then they're not here for that topic. I'm talking about our friend Robby. Robby has half of this topic. I'd come up with half of it, he'd come up with the other half, and then he bailed.

He's at a man camp with Nikita Koloff, a friend of the show as well, and so he's at a different type of camp, and he's there this week, and so we wish them the best. But the topic that we're talking about today is called Lures and Labels. And so if you don't know what I'm talking about, it's a lure like a fishing lure.

So what are the lures? What are the things that the enemy throws in front of you to entice you, to try to get you to take the bait so he can reel you in? And we all have things that uniquely work on us. We have things in common, and you hear some commonality as we talk today, and some of them may be more your story than not, and some may not be your story, but the enemy knows your story well. He's been around the whole time you've been alive, and he's watched you since you were first born, and he knows everything about your story, and he knows what works with you. He knows how you were wounded, and that's usually your point of entry.

Yeah, that's definitely a point of entry. And so the other part of that, so that's the lure portion, and then you have the labels. What are the things that he tries to get you to take on as your identity? What are the things that he calls you? You think it's your voice, but it's really his. You know, that he calls you, that he tries to get you to take the bait on.

It's kind of a different type of lure, but it gets you to take on, so it'll attack your identity. Both of these are drawn to pull you away from God, right? Everything he does tries to get you away from God.

That's his whole motive is to pull you away from the Father, right? And so any way he can, but this is two just similar ways that he does it, but maybe sometimes two unique approaches as well. And so we're going to kind of talk through that. And as these guys like to give me a hard time, I'll go with my clip first, because I'm running the board, and it was partly my topic. But anyway, so in the lures, I'm going to play part of an old commercial. Now, this commercial series actually began in 1972, and it continued for a couple decades, at least over a decade, because this part of a clip was from 1982.

And so if you haven't been around that long, you're younger than that, you may not know it, but I'm pretty sure you're going to at least know part of it. I'm going to play it and come back and talk about why I played part of this commercial from a very popular food chain. So we'll just go ahead and play that. You've been going strong all day.

You deserve a break today. And I didn't play the name of the place, but I know you know who it is. It's just at McDonald's.

There we go. I just said it. But that was an old McDonald's ad. I wasn't going to do it.

Then I just changed my mind. You guys all know who it was. Omaha. Omaha. Omaha. Omaha.

I'm calling an audible. The reason that I chose to play that is I really thought about this lure thing, and that was my part of the show that I suggested, is what are the things that he keeps throwing at me, trying to get me to take a bite of? Grant? French fries. French fries. Well, yeah, it could be French fries. He might want you to do that.

But I don't know if it'll work on a fishing hook, but we could try it. Pass. Yeah, pass.

Okay. For me, it's entitlement. And I hate dealing with entitled people, but I realize I'm one of those, and I hate dealing with me when I become that person. And I know I don't blame McDonald's for it, but I think they had a part of the story because they influenced at least a couple generations with this concept of you deserve something you're not getting. You're missing out on something. Something's being held out on you. You deserve this.

This is wrong. That type of thing. And it may sound like I'm taking it a long way, but just look around at society. That is our society in a nutshell. It's an entitlement society, at least in America it is. And I can only speak because that's where I live.

I'm going to live here. And I deal with people that feel entitled every single day in every walk of life, whether I'm at work, not at work, whatever. It's people feel like they deserve something just because they deserve it. And I think you guys can probably relate to that. Yep.

I want to, thinking about myself, you deserve for that person to get out of your way on the road. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

That's a big one. Yeah, I am terrible about that. It's like, come on, lady, turn. Come on, man, move.

What are you doing? Good. A lot of times when I'm not even really in a hurry, it's just I don't like being held up. Yeah, I don't like being inconvenienced. Right.

Right. And so that's part of that whole thing is anything that inconveniences you should not have happened to you. And that's the lie that I buy into. I buy into this, you know, I shouldn't have to deal with this. I shouldn't have to this or this should have happened for me. All these kind of spins on the same thing, but it gets down to entitlement, that I deserve something. And the only thing that I don't even deserve God's love. You know, I've done nothing to earn it.

He just gives it to me freely out of his grace. Right. I mean, there's nothing in my life I deserve. Honestly, when it gets down to it, I have rights as an American citizen. Yeah. Right.

And those rights need to be upheld. And I get that. But again, it's a whole mentality of do I really deserve these things? Yeah. I mean, that whole you deserve is, I think, one of the biggest traps Satan uses.

I mean, you can say that about it. Isn't that anything in sin? We wouldn't want it if we didn't feel like we deserved it. Right. Most of the time it's like you've worked real hard so you deserve a hamburger at the end of the day or whatever. It can be whatever. But that really gets to the heart of how we are enticed as humanity of, you know, the enemy wants us to take something and look for that thing to replace God. And he didn't care what it is just as long as it replaces God in our desire.

Yeah. And not to pick on McDonald's completely, Amazon has basically, we're delivering happiness, saying you deserve happiness. Go to MasculineJourney.org. We'll talk to you after the break. I just want to acknowledge what's going on for all these doors to be open for me to come to this camp. I just want to seek you. So throughout that time since I've been here, you know, just the illumination of God speaking to me through my heart and through my mind and through my soul is just, it's went to a whole other level since I've been here at the boot camp. The covenant of silence after the talks and being able to go out and just submit myself to being able to hear from God and what we've been working on and it's just been transparent in my life. The level of the sanctification process, the discipleship process, and coming here, I feel like this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. Register today at MasculineJourney.org.

Welcome back to Masculine Journey. That is North Carolina's own Luke Combs, and he's actually doing a benefit concert this weekend at Bank of America Stadium for Western North Carolina, which is pretty awesome. He's from Huntersville, North Carolina and went up to App, you know, before he broke into his music career.

App stayed in my hometown. Yeah, absolutely. And so he's loving back on the community and giving back, him and some other people. And my son Eli really got me into listening to Luke Combs. I may have shared that last time. You know, as we travel, the driver gets to pick the music and I really didn't like the guy's music when it first came out. And I know I really enjoy it because I've listened to it so much. But as I listen to the song, and the reason I chose that as the bump coming back in is, you know, when I look at when I've had trip ups in my life, it's when I've fallen for a lure, I've listened to a label, and I keep chasing that same old devil down that dead end highway. Right?

And I know it's a dead end highway and I find myself there less frequently than I have in the past, but only a moment away from being there again, if I'm honest with myself. Right? It only takes a moment of letting your guard down to bite into a lure or to accept a label.

Right? And as we talk more about that throughout the show, hopefully that'll resonate more with you. But before I get into another clip, Mike, is there anything you'd like to add on any of the stuff we've been talking about so far? You know, the only thing I was going to mention was the nuance between not deserving and being worthy. And there's some humility in there, like not entitled to receive something, but because of God's grace, you know, we are worthy.

And it doesn't mean we, you know, would get something, but because we're a son of God, you know, we have worth. Right? Yeah.

Yeah, that's definitely good. You know, you can take that opposite of that, that I deserve something, is I don't deserve anything. Right.

And technically you don't, but because of his grace, to your point, Mike, we deserve to be how he created us to be. You know, that's what he wants for us. Right? Yeah. Yes. Exactly.

Andy, I'm going to call an audible here. Okay. But before I get on to, because I want to make sure we cover the labels portion. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm going to play one of yours on labels. Okay.

And yours and David's, I think it is. But before we do that, what lures, guys, have has the enemy thrown at you? What, what's something you would say is one of those things that he gets you to try to chase after?

I would definitely say, you know, just from my story that, you know, a lot of the listeners when I come as guest appearances on the show here have heard, you know, would be my family. You know, he likes to throw lures with my daughter and some of that has to do with her being a teenager and she makes her own decisions on that. But I think he uses her as a lure to kind of, you know, see if I'm going to bite on that hook. And when I don't, then it turns to my wife and, you know, something between her and my daughter and, you know, 90% of the time, if I'm not paying attention to that, the enemy knows he can set that hook pretty quickly with me.

Right. And then it's just, it's a downward spiral for me. And I, you know, have to take a break from things and kind of readjust and check my margins and stuff. And, you know, it really for me and my growth with God, that's something that I'm very proud of that I can see now because, you know, four years ago when I started first hanging out with you guys, that wasn't something I could see.

You know, that wasn't something that I really understood. And, you know, now I can, I can kind of see it, readjust, refocus and, you know, let God grab those pliers and pull the hook right out of my mouth and then move on in a different direction. That's a good one. That's a good one.

I would think that like with you, the lure, I guess that he's using is probably with my wife. And that's because I'm three years of being newly married and I'm coming in a blended family situation. There's a lot of things in there that, you know, could pull me left or right or whatever. So, and that, that stack, I can find myself sometimes struggling with things like that, you know, and it can become kind of distracting.

But, again, I have to kind of like reset in a way and I have to remind myself of certain things in the Scripture, remind myself who I am and then deal with it from that point. Absolutely. That's good. Anyone else have anything?

I don't have a wife. Okay. But being a contractor. Yeah.

The customers and the jobs. Yeah. At times, beautiful, amazing. But most of the time.

There's that one off when it's really good. I understand. Yeah. But then if something goes wrong, I thank the Lord.

And then when I think about that, okay, I'll skip the next being upset. I understand. I understand. You know, I think a lot of times, you know, an adage in war obviously is to break away communication. Right? And so most of what the enemy does is he messes with our communication trying to get us to bite on that lure. Right?

As you're talking about with your daughter or with a spouse or with friends, you know, or with clients. Right? It's easy to say, okay, I'm going to react to what I think I'm hearing instead of taking a moment to say, okay, God, I'm going to let you be my filter. I'm going to let you help me interpret and I'm going to take a deep breath and say, okay, I thought I heard this. Let me see if I really did hear that. You know, and you'd be surprised how much of that can clear up just by taking a breath because I'm very quick to react to what I think I heard.

Right? And I'm going to respond with at least that level and sometimes elevated, you know, if I'm not careful. And so I know that I have to let God lead that because if not, I'm going to find myself in a lot of dead-end highways chasing that devil and in some really, really bad places.

Harold? I know you believe you understand what you think you heard me say, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant. Okay, I'm confused now. I think I understood that.

I think I understood part of it. No, I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you. And so we're going to switch over to labels for the last part of the show. And if you want more on lures and labels, listen to the after hours. And where can they get after hours, Andy?

Do you know where they can get after hours? Spotify is where I usually go. Apple Podcast. Every podcast location. Okay. Every podcast location. I did not pick all the above.

Yeah, no, you said right once, but there are more. Yeah, I think we're pretty much on just about, you're right, YouTube, Apple, Spotify. If it's a podcast location, we're more than likely on it. It's at Mask on Journey Radio. Our website.

Our website's another unique place you could do that. Plus we do the live stream now, not this week, but a lot of times we do live stream on YouTube and Facebook. When Robby's here, we do live stream. The laptop is with Robby.

With Robby. Yeah. Anyway, so switching over to labels, we have a clip. I don't know who wants to set it up, but I don't know whose clip it is.

It's yours or it's David's or what are we doing? Just play it. Yeah, just play it and then we can. Well, do you want to set it up at all? Okay, I'll set it up.

If it's the one I'm thinking about, there is no need to set it up whatsoever. Well, if you're not familiar with the show. Yeah, okay. So this is from Sanford and Son and Fred and Lamont had a tenuous relationship to say the least. And this is a lot of gist.

If you ever watch the show, it would never be on TV these days. It's totally politically incorrect and you'll see why. But it gets to the point about just see if you can't listen and see if you can pick up on what the label is. Yeah, the subtleness of the label.

You really will have to listen hard. There's a light hint of it. Yeah, as Fred's talking to the son, Lamont, most of the time. Right, yeah. Here we go. Here's dummy. You big dummy. You big dummy. You big dummy. You big cold-blooded dummy. You big dummy.

See what you did? Oh, no. You big dummy.

Oh, no. You big dummy. You dummy. Bigger dummy than my dummy. Dummy. Dummy. Get lost, dummy. Look here, you big dummy. I got a dummy for a son.

You asleep? No, dummy. Okay, dummy. Before this game, you were just a plain dummy. But after the night, you'd be a broke dummy. What kind of life you think of this being the father of a young dummy?

For every man, there's a woman. And for every dummy, there's a dummy. See, for dummy, you catch your own fast. I'm proud of you, dummy. Up until the time that I was six years old, I thought my name was Dummy Samford. Listen, dummy, didn't you hear me call you a dummy? You didn't know how to get mad when I called you a dummy. Well, one of you talked.

So, you know, this was a big, when we were talking about agreements, is where I kind of, I'd found that clip somewhere and I was like, this is it, man. Because I actually had a stepfather that called me dummy and among other things. And he was a good man in some ways. Taught me a lot of stuff, mechanical work and how to work a bit. But he really didn't have my heart, obviously.

But it brought back a lot of that. And I thought, I was thinking today when I brought that up or submitted that clip was that there were a couple of times, there was a time that I ran out of gas. What teenager doesn't run out of gas? I was trying to squeeze. I never, I thought I would never hear the end of about how stupid I was to have done that. And yeah, I mean, I don't think I've ran out of gas too many more times, but it does make you, it could have been a teaching lesson.

But what gets assigned there is a label that you're an idiot for doing something like that. No, I was a human and I was a teenager and I was learning about life. And it was a learning, I didn't have any problem with him saying, you know, you probably shouldn't do it, let that be a lesson. But he tacked the character through a label that I believed for a long time. And that was a series, I'm just going to use that one as an example.

There was a series of other stuff. And I carried that with me. My dad kind of got out of my life at a young age and he was kind of the fill in for that.

My dad, I knew he loved me, so it was very difficult to receive that. And it, you know, I don't think, but the positive part of that was recently I did something stupid and doing a transaction at Lowe's recently. And my interaction, I walked out of that store and instead of saying, you're a dummy, which I did say that for many years, I walked out and said, I said, boy, that was stupid. I don't have any problem with that. We do stupid stuff. We're human. That doesn't make me a stupid person or a dumb person as a whole. That's not my character.

That's not who I am. I just make mistakes. Yeah, we're going to, let me ask you a quick question.

I know we got about a minute left in this show and then we'll talk more in the after hours. But you said earlier, the enemy knows your story. Yeah. So he tries to get you to still take on that label, right? Oh, absolutely. He uses it as a lure. Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm struggling and I'm, you know, my job is to frustrate him to not let that happen and to ask God for wisdom to keep us from falling back into those traps. Mike, real quickly, where can they get information on your boot camps? What's the website again? It's renewedkingdom.org. renewedkingdom.org. And if you want to hear about our website or our website, our bootcamp, go to masculinejourney.org. That would be our website and love somebody well this week. We'll talk to you next week. This is the Truth Network.