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MJ Freedom

The Masculine Journey / Sam Main
The Truth Network Radio
December 28, 2024 12:30 pm

MJ Freedom

The Masculine Journey / Sam Main

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December 28, 2024 12:30 pm

Welcome fellow adventurers! This week the guys discuss the impact that the Masculine Journey as a whole has had on their lives. We're not just speaking about the show's impact, but also the boot camps, books and experiences over the years. The clips are from "It's a Wonderful Life," and "Braveheart." 

Be sure to check out our other podcasts, Masculine Journey After Hours and Masculine Journey Joyride for more great content!

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This is the Truth Network. The heart of every man craves a great adventure, but life can't be stopped here. Welcome to Masculine Journey. We're glad that you're with us this week. And welcome to the post-Christmas edition of Masculine Journey.

This is our first show post-Christmas. So, wow, it's come and gone already. Yeah, it has. And we're all going.

Yeah, everybody just kind of looked at me. Yeah, it has. So, New Year's is right around the corner, and next thing you know, it'll be 2025. That's crazy. That is. I know it comes after 2024. I know how the whole calendar works. Are you sure about that?

Relatively. I'm not really sure how this room works at the moment. You guys are just kind of like staring at me. I feel like, eh. Is it something in my nose? Somebody wrote on your forehead. Somebody wrote on my forehead. We just have our same face on. You guys are just staring at me.

It's a tie-dye t-shirt. Yeah, you're not in orange. We don't know how to act. Yeah, I know.

Where's Sam? We don't have a camera. Everybody thinks I only wear orange. And I don't even hunt. It's like a road cold or something. Well, yeah.

It's easier to walk in traffic. Anyway, welcome back to Masculine Journey. We have a really cool topic, I think. And what's most surprising about it is Danny came up with it.

Oh, no. Danny, it's a really cool topic. So why don't you share with us what it is?

Well, I was thinking about it. We come up with topics week to week. And the title of the ministry is Masculine Journey. And there is a journey that we all have been on since we joined this ministry in one facet or another. And I just thought about that and thought, you know, if we just focused in on, you know, the masculine journey and how boot camps or entrenchments or, you know, the radio show or, you know, just the book, Wild at Heart or any of the Eldridge stuff has impacted our lives and how it's changed us from who we were to who we are now. And that was just kind of, I don't know, dropped in my spirit, I guess. No, it's good. Honestly, not that anyone would want me to.

I honestly think I could talk for both shows constantly, you know, and not cover everything that God's done through those things that you mentioned. The way we're acting, you may have to. I'm hoping I don't have to. That was not what I had planned.

You know, I'm hoping that's not what God had planned for the show. Anyway, but no, it's been monumental. I can't imagine what my life would be like having not gone to my first boot camp and then all the ones after that without having read Wild at Heart, which started the whole thing for me. You know, it's just been pretty cool, and I'll talk more about that later. Yeah, I think some of my clips will kind of reflect this, but I was caught up for a long time. I knew Jesus, but I was not living the way he created me to live. There was a lot of focus on self-improvement, performance, repetitive sin, cycle of sin, but not living truly free, not living the way I felt like I was created, and I can remember some of the things that I used to try to do to bring life.

You know, back in the 90s, I spent a lot of time, early 2000s. There was all this self-help stuff, and I'd go get a book, and I'd get a little bit of desire through the flesh to try to change my life, and then, you know, that had happened. I'd read the book on Tuesday, and by the next Tuesday, I was totally out of it or whatever, and there was just a cycle of that, and at certain times, your heart had come alive a little bit, but there was no true life because I just didn't really have a context or an understanding. And for example, just before we jump in, you know, the Scripture, you know, guard your heart for out of it comes the issues of life or whatever. So I always thought, well, that just means just keep sin out. You know, guard your heart, don't let nothing in.

Well, that's not really what that's first or second boot camp of. That's not what that Scripture means. It means tend to your heart. You know, you've got these desires. Some of them are holy desires. It's just like you need to allow them to lead you into who you are and that kind of thing, and it's just an example of what we'll be talking about today from my perspective. Yeah, there's so much, and I can't imagine what my family's life would be like. They definitely would have a different dad. I mean, it would still be me, but it would have been, you know, an old version of me that was even a lot more broken than the one they have today.

And obviously, I'm still broken in lots of ways, but not nearly as much as I was. And so, again, we'll talk about that more in a minute. But, Andy, you've got the first clip if you want to tell us about it. It's a Christmas clip. I mean, it is post-Christmas, and you're playing a Christmas clip. Well, it branches all the way into New Year's, too. Yeah, well, it kind of does.

It kind of does, yeah. We're not going to play that part. But, you know, it's a wonderful life, and it's George Bailey. He has all these dreams, and he constantly keeps getting put in the situation where he is helping his family and the people of the town, and he's this building and loan guy who gets people, houses, and stuff. And he's all working through it, and he knows he's doing the right thing, but he's not getting what he wants from life. And he's very frustrated, and then some stuff happens.

His cousin or uncle gives money away to Potter, who's trying to take over the town, and he's got to come up with this money, and he really is a point of frustration. And if you try to look and parallel my life, it was when God really disrupted me, I felt like my life disrupted me, and to where I started looking for something different. And you just have a different perspective whenever you look at life, whenever you're living from a smaller story instead of a larger story. You really don't understand the context. Now, in this scenario, he's really probably doing the right thing and stuff. He just doesn't realize it, and part of that he doesn't realize it because he's not getting what he wants, but he's really in the plan or whatever.

How this pertains to the masculine journey is you can be doing a lot of the right things, but you can be having the life sap your strength, take life out of you, the daily life grind, and you're not living fully who you are, and you don't have an appreciation for life, so you'll hear that on the clip. So if we go ahead and play it. I had to work quickly. That's why I jumped in. I knew if I were drowning, you'd try to save me. You see, you did. And that's how I saved you. Very funny. My lip's bleeding, George.

Yeah. I got a bust in the jaw in answer to a prayer a little bit ago. Oh, no, no, no, George. I'm the answer to your prayer. That's why I was sent down here. How'd you know my name? Oh, I know all about you.

I've watched you grow up from a little boy. What are you, a mind reader or something? Well, who are you then? Clarence Oddbody.

Oddbody? What's with you? What did you say just a minute ago? Why'd you want to save me? That's what I was sent down for. I'm your guardian angel. I wouldn't be a bit surprised. Ridiculous of you to think of killing yourself for money.

Eight thousand dollars. Yeah, just things like that. How do you know that? I told you, I'm your guardian angel. I know everything about you. Well, you look about like the kind of an angel I'd get. Sort of a fallen angel, aren't you? What happened to your wings? I haven't worn my wings yet.

That's why my names were second class. I'm worth more dead than a lie. Now, look, you mustn't talk like that.

I won't get my wings with that attitude. You just don't know all that you've done. If it hadn't been for you... Yeah, if it hadn't been for me, everybody would be a lot better off.

My wife and my kids and my friends. I mean, look, little fellow, go off and haunt somebody else. No, now you don't understand. I've got my job. Oh, shut up, will you? I suppose it would have been better if I'd never been born at all.

Like you say? I said I wish I'd never been born. Help me, Clarence! Get me back! Get me back! I don't care what happens to me! Get me back to my wife and kids! I want to live again! I want to live again! Please, God, let me live again. Yeah, I guess I should have, in that long setup, mentioned the angel that's kind of guiding him through this.

His guardian angel, Clarence. It's just, you hear that cry at the end. God, I want to live again. And there was a time when I had lost hope. And, you know, it looked like nothing I was touching was working.

And it wasn't. And God sees that. And again, I love God. And in some ways I was serving him and stuff, but I wasn't really serving him from a full heart. I was serving him from a, I knew Jesus had died for me and all, but I was not living in the victory. I wasn't living from a whole heart. And it just, you know, I can identify with all of a sudden, I want to live again. I want to live again.

That was my cry. Because you were talking about the smaller story versus the larger story, and George spent so much of his focus in the smaller story. I find for me, when that concept was first told me at my first boot camp, it was very eye-opening. From the standpoint, I just always was in the small story. But what I found is, I know when I'm in the small story, I don't have grace. Because for me, when I'm living in the small story, I don't have grace for others.

Or myself, usually. But when I realize that there's a lot more going on, there's a lot more happening in everybody's life, that maybe that person was a jerk to me because they've got a lot going on and it's been a horrible week for them. It doesn't always excuse behavior, but it can put me in a place where I'm ready to listen and have grace for somebody where I wouldn't if I just stayed in the small story. Or realizing that God's working in all these scenarios that you think are hopeless or precast and nothing's going to ever change.

And God can change anything. And when you live in the small story, it leads to hopelessness. And when you can find yourself, we have to focus on the small story. And if you're not familiar with what we're talking about, the small story is what you have to do on a daily basis.

Going to work, paying bills, making sure there's food on the table. And it's stuff that's vitally important, but there's a lot more going on than that. That's what the enemy wants you to focus on is being in that small story. And God has a larger story where he's at work in people's lives. And when we lose sight of that, the enemy gets the upper hand. And the larger story will remind you that you are in a battle and the reason these things are coming at you that you can't is that you do have an enemy. You are opposed and it's not always just our failures.

It could be our failures. You know, just walking in that place of understanding that we are on this world for his purposes and we don't see them linked to our smaller story, but they're very linked. Right. And so how do you, before we go to break, how do you navigate the smaller story and still live in the larger story? That's hard to do.

It is. Right. For example, I think, well, just me, you know, in those human relationships and understand that those people are broken, to your point, that you have to have grace.

I want grace for me because I know I mess up and I have grace for them. I'm playing that into the larger story. The smaller story says, I don't care, they hurt me and that's all, I'm going to hurt them back. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. For me, a lot of it is just making sure I have time with God because that takes me back into the larger story. We'll talk with 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. I think sometimes as men, we feel like we're on our own and we've got to do everything ourselves and the way of the world is on our shoulders and it's our job to fix everything and make everything right and have all the answers. And I think when you come here, you just get really honed back in and reminded that God really is for us.

That a good Father helps you and a good Father makes you have all the tools you need and a good Father comes through for you when you need Him and you just feel less alone. Register today at masculinejourney.org. Welcome back to Masculine Journey. That is Josh Baldwin with the song There Is Freedom. And so we've actually used that at boot camp I think a few times, haven't we? Yeah, I can never remember who does it. You know, literally Danny just had to tell me. I had to look it up. Had to look it up and I'm the one to cut that clip. So that's how bad it is.

I love the song and I just can never remember who sings it. And so we are talking about one of the topics we're going to talk about is freedom, which kind of leads us to some of our next few clips. But Andy, you have the next clip, so you're just like Mr. Clippy. I am Clippy.

Clippy Longstock. Yeah, I needed to do something to get that title back. You earn it every week.

It's not like you lost it. Well, I look out there and there's like two clips I figured I've got to fill up to show. I do my part. I wasn't here last week, so I've got to make up for it. That's right.

You've got clips in you, you've got to get out. That's right. But this is from Braveheart and Sam and I are kind of tag teaming on this. This is William Wallace has spoken into the lies and they've won battles and finally he gets captured. He's in prison.

The princess comes to him and she's trying to get him to save his life. And this is the same conversation we have with the enemy. You know, make a deal with me. Give up your heart. You know, if you give up your heart, you know, you'll be safe. That's what he tells us. That's essentially what the enemy's trying to get him to do, to give up and say, you know, I confess. And the statement he makes here, it's not a long clip so you'll know what we're getting at, but I love what he says here. And this is something, talking about how this links to the boot camps.

I remember seeing this distinctively in the first few boot camps and I was like, you know, that quote is so true. So we'll go ahead and play it. If I swear to him that all that I am is dead already. I will die.

It will be awful. Every man dies. Not every man really lives.

Every man dies, but not every man really lives. And, you know, I went there like the first boot camp. I was just trying to get my marriage back. And I knew that these things were appealing. You start talking about the core desires and all that stuff. But when you start seeing those clips from Braveheart, something awakens with you. That whole idea of being a tyrannical force that's trying to get you to do what you would be easy to just capitulate and give in. Or you can rise up and be who God created you to be. And that's a method of fighting back. God receives glory when we do that. God receives honor. That's what we were created for. And it's a contest for our heart. And when we do that, we really become men who are really living.

And that's what he's talking about there. Yeah, when I first heard that clip, it struck me as well. You know, when I heard that at my first boot camp.

And it's still, listening to it tonight, it does it to me again. Because it makes me question, okay, I'm going to die. That's going to happen. You know, unless God comes back, you know, before that, right? But I'm going to die. But am I going to live? And am I living now? And am I living outside the smaller story?

I have to do the stuff inside the smaller story. But am I living my life that's going to have a legacy to it? You know, that's going to affect people beyond Duke Power that get the bill paid.

They're not going to care when I'm gone because someone else will be paying the bill, right? Is there going to be an impact in people's lives? Well, back to what you said before the break, I think the question. You know, the smaller story is part of the larger story. And we forget that. But it's getting that perspective that, yeah, these things have to happen. And it's not so much that the smaller story is always negative. It's just we get focused on the things that really ain't going to matter anything in a few days or a few years.

You know, Duke Energy is going to go on. You know, those things are going to go on unless you don't pay the bill. But, you know, those things are going to happen. But then the perspective is that what I do affects those around me. And, you know, I am part of a larger story. And I have a purpose.

And that's kind of what, you know, the masculine journey as a whole, when we talk about that, that genre of ministry, it means to me is that I have a purpose. And it's kind of like if you're familiar with the movie The Wizard of Oz, if you're not, I don't know where you've been. But it came out about the same time as It's a Wonderful Life, actually. Yeah, it did. But, you know, it switches. It switches from it's in black and white. And then all of a sudden it's in Technicolor. And that's kind of what life has done in my own eyes. It was just kind of black and white. It was living and it was going on and there was a story going on.

But all of a sudden it hit Technicolor. And I looked at the scriptures, you know, now abideth faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.

And that kind of struck me when Andy was talking a while ago that there's a progression there. That we get faith. We know there's a God. We know that, you know, there's salvation.

And we know these things. And then all of a sudden somewhere in that story we get hope. There's a hope for me that my life can change. It can be radically different.

I don't know exactly what that looks like yet. But then there's love. And love is the Technicolor of life. And all of a sudden you experience what Jesus said, I'll give you life and life more abundantly. You begin to really live. You know you're going to die, but you begin to really live because loving is living.

And, you know, when you love others and you love, you know, and it doesn't really matter anymore what people think. You begin to lose that, what we call, the poser. That stuff begins to fall away.

You know, we talk about Shrek and The Onion. Those layers begin to fall away. And all of a sudden there's something totally different and radical about, you know, you start trying things you've never tried before. And loving radically beyond what you ever thought of. Yeah, it, for me, this whole progression of stuff, it's been amazing. You don't really realize it when you're in the midst of it. It's when you look back. You know, and again, you have clarity, you have things, you see where God's hand's been in the mix of it. But you can also see where he's been molding you along the way. And he's been forming you, you know, kind of pushing you back into the mold he created you for. Right, that the world's kind of taken you out of, decisions I've made's taken me out of, that kind of thing. You know, there's times I've just joyfully sided with the enemy.

It didn't end up well, but I thought it was going to be okay, you know. And so you can kind of look back and you can kind of see this whole progression. Yeah, and he orders it. And we all don't follow the same orderly path, I think. Because we're unique and he knows how to, we're very unique, actually. Yeah, yeah, that's for Jim. Yeah, yeah, he, well, it is, it's just like Jesus never healed the blind the same way twice in scripture. Right, there's no cookie cutter formula with God.

Right, because we're all individual people. I want to go ahead and get to our next clip, and it's from Braveheart. And what you hear, and he's laying on what is eventually his death cross, for lack of a better term. He's on a thing that looks like a cross. And the enemy's trying to get him to say mercy.

And so we're going to pick it up there, and I'm going to talk about why I chose that when we come back. Go ahead and play the clip. The prisoner wishes to say a word.

Freedom. You know, when we cut a clip, a lot of times we're looking to cut out those long interludes of music, or the long interludes. And I didn't want to on this particular clip for a reason. There's anticipation.

Right, there's something building up. And I initially started to take out the part where it says the prisoner wishes to say a word. But you know what, we were all prisoners. Right, the enemy had us in his grasp.

Right, and God rescues us, and he comes there. And the word that we get, and the only word that really fits in my life, is that word of freedom. Yes, there's identity, there's all these things, but the word that just goes above all others is freedom that I've been given in this masculine journey message. Freedom from wounds that I grew up with as a kid that I didn't even know how much they were entrenched in my life. You know, that just was in every aspect of my life, and it affected how I interacted with my kids, and when I was married, how I interacted with my wife. And you know, the healing of those wounds gave me freedoms that I never knew I had there that was available. Right, and you can't go through that metamorphosis and not have it change you. Right, into something that's better than what you were before, and the freedoms you get are just amazing.

You know, the freedoms of being comfortable with being me in front of people. You know, that yes, you still have to have discernment and discretion, and you can't always be all out there all the time, right? Because God does say to guard your heart, and it's not always safe to be completely transparent in all situations, right? But that doesn't mean you are false in those situations.

There's a big difference there. Yeah, you used to tell me that you said you don't have to tell everything, but if you're using deception to hide, you don't want to do that. But you don't have to share everything, but you're not afraid to be who you are is what you're saying.

That's right. You know, it's funny. You'll go and people will say, hey, do you mind sharing about that? I'm like, are you kidding me? I'll share about anything, man. After having done this for that long, and God, haven't you talked about all these things that you said you'd never talk about? I'm like, yeah, I don't mind sharing. That's not a hard thing for me.

Maybe shutting me off may be the harder part. But no, just the freedoms of being able to be comfortable with who I am. You know, I spent so many years not there, and I'm not fully there now. Don't get me wrong, I'm still evolving. But I'm more fully comfortable with me than I ever have been, and I hope to be more fully comfortable with me.

And I'm 61 going on 62, and I hope to be more fully there when I'm Harold's age, you know? And you know, Jesus is really the picture of that, obviously. But that's why he had no fear of man, and he would say anything any time if he felt like the Father was leading him to that. And that's what I think he wants us to. I mean, Jesus used a sermon.

I'm sure he could have said a lot more. You know, but I think just having that desire just to be who you are and not worry about it. You know, be who God created you to be. Of course he wasn't created, but we are. No, it's being comfortable to know, okay, I'm going to be who God designed me to be to the best of my ability, and be comfortable with that.

Right? And there will be times in the midst of that that it will be very uncomfortable. But that's okay, because God's got you. You know, years ago I would have never envisioned letting the Holy Spirit prompt me in praying with a client at work. But when it happens, I trust God more than I trust the world and say, okay, I'm going to go do that. Go to masculinejourney.org if you want to reach out to any of us or know what we have going on. And love somebody well this week and let yourself be loved.
Whisper: medium.en / 2024-12-28 14:43:34 / 2024-12-28 14:55:08 / 12

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