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're in the middle of our final 2024 Word of the Year update for some of us. I think we'll continue this probably next week for the ones that aren't here this week, but we are talking about our Word of the Year.
Now, Robby, you set it up at the last segment, but I'm going to have Danny kind of set it up this time, kind of throw a curveball. Danny, can you kind of explain, if they're just jumping in, you don't have to give a big, long explanation, but what the Word of the Year is about. I don't think I could give a long explanation if I wanted to. Well, I was being gracious there. Yeah, I appreciate that. It doesn't happen often. Take advantage of it. Every year we pray for God to give us a word for the year, and we focus on that, or some of us focus on the word throughout the year and how God develops that in our life. And it's usually pretty neat. I'm kind of lackadaisical sometimes, and I'll go months, and then some of them say, hey, we're going to do an update on the Word of the Year.
I'll have to look up and see what mine was again. But it is fascinating to watch how it develops and how God just kind of unfolds things in your life around that word. Absolutely. Now, Michael, I know you haven't participated in the Word of the Year, but what's kind of your thoughts so far as we talk about maybe looking at doing one for 2025? Well, I obviously got to do some praying on what my word's going to be, although I do have a few ideas just based off the examples you guys have given.
I'm just excited to see where God takes me. Awesome. Awesome. Now, Harold, I'm assuming you're going to participate in it this year? Prank up the old turnip wagon. Let's roll it.
I still got a big nod on my head. Well, for the listeners' sake, we've got to tell them that during the break, Harold made reference to falling off the turnip wagon. At what point, Sam certainly said, turnip wagon? Boy, we can sure change it to see the difference in the age that back in our day, there was no wagon. It was all a turnip truck. And so we pictured this wagon from Bible times. Square wheels.
I was picturing, like, William Wallace's dad doing it. Oh, wow. That is – yeah. You guys just don't know what you missed out on. We don't. We don't. We're ignorant to that.
We're ignorant about lots of things. That's just one of them. That could be your Word of the Year for 2025, wagon. It could be. Turnip.
Turnip. That could be a good one. Well, see where it all turns up.
Yeah. Anyway, Danny, you have the first clip for this segment. You want to tell us anything about your clip? Do you just want to play it?
What do you want to do? Well, I'll talk a little bit about it. It's a clip out of a song. I don't use those much and lots of different reasons, but this song really has been instrumental in just God bringing my Word of the Year alive. And the song is by Jonathan Heltzer, and I'll tell a story afterwards, but he's a local guy, local artist, and his song is I Am Your Beloved.
And we can play the song. I'm assuming your word is beloved. It is beloved, yeah. Spoiler alert. Well, I'm assuming.
Here's the song. I am your beloved, you have borne me with your blood. And on your hand you've written out my name. I am your beloved, one the Father loves.
Mercy has defeated all my shame. That's the chorus to the song, and there's a whole lot more to it, but with music and stuff, we have to compact stuff. But that song was, going out through the year, at first I thought, like some of you guys talked about earlier, that, oh, I can see kind of where God's going with this.
Well, boy, was I wrong. But what has happened along the way is that I've really begun to pay attention to how well I have been fathered in my life. You know, because we talk about father wounds and stuff like that, but God has really poured in not only himself, but different people in my life for long periods of time that they fathered me. And I've been a beloved son, and I can see where he has sent somebody in in times when I needed him the most. And, you know, I am his beloved. And part of that song that really, I didn't get it in the clip, was that it says, he hears a voice reminding me of who I've always been. And I've heard all my life that, you know, God reminds you who you are, but who you've always been is who you've always been to him. And that's, we talk about the new name, it's new to us, but it's been God's label for us for a long time. And the way this song came about was, you know, Sam, we went up to Ohio.
And I've been a Jonathan Heltzer, Jonathan Mussel Heltzer fan, you know, knowing the family, been part of that genre of music for quite a long time. And so, we're up in Ohio with a group of guys I've never met. The only guys I knew were you and Nandy, pretty much. We call him Andy, you can call him Nandy. Nandy.
Nandy Pambi. Anyway, turn up, you know, whatever. They played a little bit of worship music before, you know, different sessions. And we got to talking about Jonathan Heltzer's music and everything, and they said, we're going to play a song. And I aerially made the assumption, I'd already heard the song. They told me the name of it, and there's a similar song. And so, I made the assumption, oh, I know this song.
And so, they started that song. And the next thing I know, my heart is wrecked, because I had never heard that song before. But the words of that song just rang through me, and it was as though God was singing that song to me himself. And it just, it is, it's on my playlist, and it's my go-to song right now. That, you know, when things are kind of tough, or things are just, I'm not sure, I just go get lost in that song for a couple times. And it just kind of writes the world for me, because there's so much in the song.
I would suggest, if you don't know it, go look it up. But there's so much in that song, so much truth. And I think that's probably the beginner's version of that song, because Jonathan is notorious for singing songs for 15 to 20 minutes. And every while you go, okay, can we switch?
But we always call the shorter ones the beginner's versions. But it has really changed my life, it really has, because I know that I know that I know that I am his Beloved. And there's a difference between being just part of God's family and knowing you're his Beloved Son. And you have his favor, you have his love, you have, he looks at you with eyes of affection. And when you understand that, it makes your heart come alive. So what did you, it said that you thought it was going to go one direction, but it went this direction.
Where did you think it was going? Well, I just thought maybe, you know, if you just talk about how much he loved me or something like that. But what I've seen is, as you talked about so well, I was able to taste and see, Robby.
And just see like the, I mean, just examples of things, you know, and I've talked about it before, is hunting and fishing and getting outside. And experiencing God in ways I've never experienced him. Because I've learned that he's not just sitting beside me when I'm in church. He wants to be engaged in everything I do. And he's, you know, my biggest cheerleader at times. And also the biggest, you know, coach or whatever, trying to get me to see the larger stories we were talking about.
And that has been just a total surprise to me. It's no longer just a, it's a life, I guess is what I'm trying to say. I'm going to ask you, similar to something you talked about, you know, yes, we all know some of each other's stories. I'm not going to share any of each other's stories. But I know everybody's story, whether you're in this room or you're out of this room, you've been assaulted this year. I can promise you, you know, we've all been assaulted this year. Fill in the blank on what assault means, but it's happened to every one of us that's listened to this. So how has focusing on this word helped you deal with the assaults that's come at your life this year?
I know you shared some of that a minute ago. Yeah, we've had some family stuff and I won't go into details with it. And I really sat perplexed on how to love one of my children for a long time. And it was almost, the enemy comes around and goes, yeah, some beloved you got.
You know, this is going on or that's going on. But in reality, the way God come after my heart and the way it spoke to me was, God says, I will father you through this. Yeah, the hunting, the fishing is neat, you know, and the mountaintop stuff's always cool. But it's when you understand you're his beloved in the valley. That's what makes the difference. Yeah, when he's pulling you out of the muck and the mire. Yeah, because, you know, I've actually got some closure and some, you know, basically God is telling me, I just want you to love without expectations. I don't want to, you know, because that speaks to that wound and all that stuff. But when you can get beyond and know that you're loved by him and that nothing else matters, the way people react to you, kind of like Buddy the Elf. What does it matter?
You are who you are. And that's kind of, I don't know whether that answers your question or not. No, it did. I mean, it is a huge lifeline in the midst of when the enemy tries to pull you under. Yeah. Right, because he's constantly trying to pull you under with one direction or another, all of us. And it happens to be the same lifeline that obviously God the Father broke protocol, right, at his son's baptism.
The Holy Spirit comes down and you see the full trinity in full regalia right here at this moment and God says, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. And if Jesus needed to hear that, oh man. Yeah. Right, that's – I always think the irony of that, Robby, is that's before Jesus ever done a miracle, ever done anything. Right. So last question for you. How have you seen the words from previous years kind of dovetail or tie into the next word?
Or how has God built upon those for you? Well, last year mine was heritage. And I think it was last year. It was.
And I don't remember the year before that. Yeah, I got nothing. But they have built one on the other. Yeah, I didn't either.
I had nothing. But they have built on each other because there seems to be a vein in where God is going with things. And so I'm kind of excited to see what this year is going to bring. Well, I want to challenge you to do something that I'm challenging myself to do. I'm going to go back and look up my old words and record them and focus on them because just as the Israelites had to build these monuments all over because they're forgetful people, I'm just as much forgetful, right?
And if I can't remember what the word is, how am I going to retain the lessons that I learned? And so I think I need to go back, but I was just throwing that out there because you were just talking about it, that I think I need to go back and list all those and keep them with me on my phone so I can refer to them and say, okay, yeah, I remember when we worked on this, God. I remember when we worked on this.
And refresh some things for me. I always remember, and I've talked about this a lot. It's sitting in the first show Michael reminded me of. And you guys were talking about the word of the year.
And I'm sitting around just kind of looking around going, I'm going to fake this somehow, I guess. And finally I had to ask, I don't even know what y'all are talking about. Yeah. I at least got a summary. Yeah, there's a couple summaries. If you want to see a funny look on somebody's face, see, in my daily prayer, they're all written there.
That's where they are. And so I'm like it's 2.50 in the morning most mornings about the time that I get to this. And you can imagine I'm trying to focus on what in the world is this.
What does this have to do with anything? And for whatever reason, I find it extremely helpful that it sucks me right into my relationship with him. That idea of reflecting back, oh, yeah. One of the words of the year he gave me, one of the first ones, was prosper, which really just kind of upset me. Like really, you're going to give me the word prosper?
And it leapfrogged into others. And so it's really cool for me every morning to come back to that place to see where he built that and where he's building it. Well, thank you. All right, I'm going to move into my word. I talked a little bit in the last show about some of my words from previous years. The last few years I had the word talents two years ago, three years ago, whatever, however you want to look at it. Three words ago was talents.
Two words ago was family. And then this word this year was generosity. And this one initially kind of rocked me because I'm kind of tight with money. I'm selectively tight with money.
Ebenezer Sam. Yeah, not always in the ways I should be tight with money. Sometimes I'll spend it previously, whatever the word is, when I shouldn't. And then there's other times when I should really spend money and I kind of hold onto it. And I think a lot of it I can justify just by saying, you know, when I went to a one-income family, you know, eight, nine years ago, but my bill structure didn't change a whole lot. You know, there were a lot of concerns for a number of years over money.
And money was really tight for a number of years. And it can be, again, if I'm not careful. And so some of the habits I developed were good, but the outcomes were not always good.
Any good thing taken too far can be a bad thing. And I think I did that with some of my tightness or being frugal, right? And so when God gave me generosity, initially I'm like, oh, what's it going to cost me? You know, just to be very honest, I'm like, God, don't give me that one.
I know you're going to ask me to pay for stuff and do things that I don't really want to do, right? But, you know, I've had the last few years of the word that's really – that I've dug into with him. I've had words for the last several years, but the last three years I've really dug into him with him each year. And I've seen the fruit of those. And I thought, okay, God, I know your fruit is good, right?
I'm not sure what it's going to be, but I know it's good, so I'm just going to go there with you. You know, and I kind of had an idea. And, yeah, there were times that he's had me pay for this or pay for that or whatever that might be, but it was so much more than that. It's a spirit of generosity, right? And money is one aspect of it.
Money is the one that I was tied up on the most, and so that's probably where he focused on the most for me this year. But there's also generosity of attention, right? I can be generous by paying full attention to you. You know, when I'm on the phone with people now, often I turn my TV completely off because I have to just be very honest with myself. I can either watch the game or I can listen to what you're saying, you know? And so I have to not just mute the sound.
I've got to shut it off if I'm going to be generous with my attention, which I should because you're talking to me, right? And so that generosity goes in lots of different veins. And so I'm going to play the clip and come back and talk more about how he's worked in my life with it. But this is a clip that I used at the mid-year update in July or whenever we did it. And it was a Christmas movie then, and it's still a Christmas movie. But my son Caleb actually is the one that suggested it, and it's still the perfect one. And so this is from the movie Santa Claus 2. And what's going on here is if you've never seen the Tim Allen Santa Claus movies, why not? But they're really good.
They're family-friendly. And so in the second movie, he finds out the Santa Claus, which is the name of the movie. The first one, there was a clause where he became Santa.
It was actually a legal clause. Well, there's another clause in the second Santa Claus movie where he has to get married, right, in order for him to stay being Santa. There has to be a Mrs. Claus.
And so he heads back from the North Pole, back to, you know, the U.S., to where his son's at. And his son's in trouble at school, and he gets to meet the principal who's very attractive, which helps. But she's single, and so they kind of go on a date.
And it's not really a date, but it's kind of a date. And he goes with her to the staff Christmas party. And what I really like about this and what you're going to hear is that the party's really not going well.
It's not going well. And so Tim Allen gets up on stage as Scott Calvin, and he makes an announcement. He says, hey, we're going to bring out the secret Santa presents.
And the principal's like, well, there isn't any. Well, what she doesn't know is Scott Calvin is really Santa Claus. And so he has created all these presents unique, or very unique for our friend Jim, unique for all these people receiving them because he knows their story.
He knows their history, right? But the cost to him is potentially his ability to get back to the North Pole. So he's risking everything for nothing that doesn't really seem like he's going to get anything out of it.
There's no real reward. And that's the spirit of generosity, is giving because it's the right thing to do. And so that's what we're going to hear. We're going to hear that, and then we're going to talk more about it.
Could I have your attention, your attention, please? There we go. Hi, I'm Scott Calvin, and I just thought I'd step up here and say the word that we've all been longing to hear. Fire! Okay. What I think, folks, is that a lot of you have just forgotten what the true spirit of Christmas is all about.
Golly, if you're not willing to dance or laugh or flirt or risk your lives at the buffet, I don't think we have much choice. So before the choir gets out here, I say we rock this house with the Secret Santa. Carol, happy Christmas. I think they're just decorations for the Carolers. She's afraid that these are just decorations for the Caroling. I think Carol is right about the Caroling. I'm talking about the packages that are backstage. There aren't any packages backstage.
Oh, there's none back there. I always thought I was mistaken when I saw this bag of gifts. Maybe I'm wrong, but it sure looks like a bag of gifts. Oh, it's heavy like a bag of gifts. Look at this. What's in here?
It's very heavy. John Pierce. Doesn't your mom call you J.J.? Merry Christmas, J.J. Oh, wait. This is Dosser Cross. I used to love this when I was a kid, but I never told anybody. Who did this? Grace Kim. Yes, there you are.
Merry Christmas. Thank you. Tom Astle. Me? Have you changed a bit, have you?
Lizzie Garcia. Here, here. There you are. Merry Christmas.
Welcome to Arkham Robots. This is incredible. Oh, hobby, hobbyism. Oh, I'll talk about generosity in a minute, but yes, I know Santa is not God, right? But, you know, have you ever thought about, like, the thing that I love about this clip is because it reminds me of God, right?
When you see the generosity of someone that knows your story and gives things out of just pure love, just because what they'll do for your heart. Yeah, in this clip it was Santa, but in our lives that's God, right? That's a Heavenly Father that loves you dearly, right? And so we're not promoting Santa, obviously, we used a couple movie clips, but what we're promoting is the concepts that God brings to us that's reflected in all these other stories.
That's why we use these movie clips, that's why we use stuff secular, we use all this, because you can't get away from God's story. Because he knows your heart, like he knew that guy knew love toss across. Yeah. He knows what word for 2025 you will unwrap all year long. Right. And, you know, he gets to see the light in your eyes all year long as you see how good, you know, and the way he's tracking with what it is that your heart needed.
Yeah. So generosity for me started out, wasn't sure where it was going to go, and honestly, looking back, I'm not really sure where it's been. It's just been a lot of really cool places. You know, what I've learned to do with the exception of one time this year that I still regret, every time I felt God lay it on my heart to be generous in a situation, whatever that generous required, maybe it was helping somebody when I really didn't want to go help them, I had a long week, and I can make a hundred excuses not to go help. You know, when God would say, you need to go help, okay, I'll go help. And it ended up being something really cool. It had been something really good for my heart, good for their heart.
You know, because God knows all that, right? And so this whole experience of generosity, the one example I kind of wanted to show or share is, you know, I have a grandson that I've talked about on the air, that he was in Florida, and just through a series of circumstances, I don't get a chance to really talk to him much or hear from him much, and we don't get to see each other much because of the distance. You know, and he's kind of limited to be down there, at least for this kind of season of his life. He's not traveling a whole lot with some health concerns and things.
But it's been really hard for me to know how to love on him because I really haven't had a lot of time with him. Right? And so I've shared on the air, you know, where God has helped me with gifts in the past. And so this year, whenever I've been on TikTok watching something and an ad will come up, you know, and most of the time I just flip right past the ads because I'm wanting to get to the history story or whatever the thing is that's going to pop up next I want to learn about, right? And so, but an ad will pop up and I'll go, oh, I bet Barton would like that. And I'll sit for a minute and say, God, am I supposed to get this for Barton? And sometimes it'll be, no. Okay. So Barton's my grandson.
So I'll just go on. Well, there's been a few things this year that I've just really felt God say, yeah, send that to him. And it's been really, really cool because he's absolutely adored him. He's absolutely loved him. Now, part of it is it's a hundred percent God.
Don't get me wrong. It's a hundred percent God. But you know, a good thing for me is I kind of know what little boys like cause I was a little boy and so not all little boys are the same, but I, you know, I've, I've kind of been around him enough to kind of know some of the stuff he likes, but God's really been there to help me show, you know, my love to him through it. And what's been really cool is he's excited because pop is sending him something, you know, and it just screams a love from somebody that's not with him every day. Right.
And how important it is for you to know that there are other people out there that you don't see every day, your mom and your dad, whatever, that there are people out there that love you just because they love you. Right. And so he's getting to know that his pop loves him, even though we don't get to see each other very often, but he's always in my thoughts. Right. And he's letting God's love reflect through me to my grandson. And I'm so very grateful for that because it'll forever change that relationship for he and I, you know, and it's all because I listened to a word of the year that I discounted for way too many years.
So I would encourage you to, to ask for a word of the year this year, to, to listen for the word and to go with the word and dig into it. Right. What's the worst that's going to happen? You'll grow?
Seriously, that's the worst that's going to happen. Go to masculinejourney.org. Reach out to us if you'd like and love somebody well this week. We'll talk to you next week. This is the Truth Network.
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