This is the Truth Network. The heart of every man craves a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus speaks of narrow gates and wide roads, but the masculine journey is filled with many twists and turns.
So how do we keep from losing heart while trying to find the good way when life feels more like a losing battle than something worth dying for? Grab your gear and come on a quest with your band of brothers, who will serve as guides in what we call. The Masculine Journey. The Masculine Journey starts here now. Good afternoon, I think.
Barely. We're we're doing we're taping this, but yeah. Welcome to Masculine Journey. This is Andy. I'm filling in for Sam.
Duty calls once once again for his work, and he's not here. And Robby's back though, right, Robby? That's true. I'm back. And we got a we got a pretty good full house, but we are going to be clip light this show.
We're going to hear a lot of conversation, but I'm going to let Jim set up the topic. It's his topic, and and give us some insight. We've been bantering about it before in preparation, trying to understand because.
Well, I'll just let Jim's. Say it's peace, but it's it's more. It's multifaceted. Let's just say that. As normal, I generally fly by the seat of my pants, and I think they fell off this time.
I wasn't very communicative, but this is. It was inspired by. The Lord's Prayer, and immediately after it, and I'm not going to read it, but the context is we are forgiven as we forgive, right? And if and God does forgive us much if we we forgive much, but I really was more inclined towards including grace. Because there is a difference.
Sometimes they're used almost the same way, but forgiveness is when you have been hurt, letting go of that. Forgiving the one that has hurt you, and grace goes beyond that, and it tends to be not one thing, but it is a can be a lifetime of loving on someone that really doesn't deserve that love. It is giving. When there's no expectation of that, and the best definition I think I've ever heard came from Mike Card and on the essence of love, God's love, is when you give someone that you owe nothing everything, and that's the sort of grace and forgiveness that we need to go after. I'm not going to give it a name because I'm still working on that.
Well, I mean, just the definition we've heard of of grace is unmerited favor.
So, unmerited means they did something bad to me, right? That's the the idea for forgiveness. That's when you get to forgiveness. Yeah.
So you're at forgiveness, but then unmerited is that that part. Favor is that grace that says I'm gonna I'm gonna look at your situation I'm gonna see what you did to me but I'm gonna be good to you regardless and I'm like I'm I agree I think it is deeper than what we what we talk about the very first example of grace in the Bible is Noah who's interestingly his name spelled backwards is grace. But he found grace in the eyes of the Lord, and he hadn't necessarily done all that much to him. Yeah.
But the way he found grace, and the only way you think about that, is if you look for it. Yeah.
And it's a fascinating thing when you think about forgiveness; is you really don't find it unless you look for it, and. You know, I think that it's almost a partnership between the Holy Spirit and us and God in order to to kind of get you like, whoa, yep. Especially when Jim Jim brought up the topic, I one of the things that really flipped my switch or made me excited about it was he talked about. The one who needs it the most is ourselves. Like one of the hardest person to show grace to, is to find grace in your own eyes.
Which which grace has to do, interestingly, from my perspective and studying the word a lot over my lifetime, having faith, and and I don't really have a lot of faith in Robby. I got a lot of faith in Christ in Robby. Um, and and so it's kind of neat that when I have grace for somebody, it's because actually you know God's in there somewhere, yeah, and he's he's liable to show up.
So there's a lot of angles to what you're talking about, but you promised a big story, Jim.
So yep, you know we and I've already found another big story. I want to. Oh, good. Um, the the first.
Well, do we want the clip first? Yeah, well, okay. Yeah, let's go with the clip. If you wanted to do that, Danny, you had the first clip.
Okay, I wasn't sure to wait. Surprise! We're winging it. Yeah, have grace for us. Yeah, grace and mercy and all that stuff.
My clip is from the show Blue Bloods, which you know, fourteen seasons of Tom Selleck series, and the The clip to set it up is: You've got he invites two, or he summons two cops into his office. He's the commissioner, and one of them is his grandson, whose father was killed by a dirty cop. And the other one is the son of the dirty cop, who killed his son and this guy's dad. And he puts them in the same room. Because there's been some banter back and forth about this guy joined the force under his mom's maiden name.
It wasn't his legal name, and so there's some repercussions there and and that kind of thing. But then you know he's carrying a legacy that he didn't really earn, and so Tom puts them together. And their exchange back and forth is what led me back to this clip. I've used it before, but you can play the clip and not explain more about why. Yes, I do.
I want to introduce you to someone, Officer Mike McFadden, Detective Joe Hill. Joe was named after his father, Joe Reagan. I've seen pictures of your dad. He looked just like him. How old were you?
Fourteen. It's a few years younger, but I never met him. I was raised by my mom. Same here. And a whole bunch of kin on the McVaden side.
I didn't meet the rest of mine until a few years ago. It's been a trip. Aren't all families? Must have been really hard for you growing up with that inheritance. Likewise for you, I bet.
The job lets me connect to my dad. The job lets me pay back something for what he did. Unless I'm here to turn in my shield, sir. You will be disciplined, but you certainly won't be terminated. You know what a what a scene in in my eyes that you know they're both learning about each other, and you know when I read the topic, I read into it.
You know the grace and forgiveness, and I remembered this clip and I went back and found it. And um, but the reason I chose that is because you know years ago, I learned a lesson on forgiveness and grace that I don't think I'll ever forget, because in order for you to get there. In my opinion, is that you sometimes need to walk a mile in the other guy's shoes. You know, I had a mentor who I he was in kind of a bind. I may have told the story before, and he wanted me to borrow some money for him because he his credit was shot.
You know, anything.
So I borrowed the money. It wasn't a small amount of money either, and. And he said, "You know, I got some money coming a few months down the road, and I'll give you money back." Okay, no problem. Trusted the guy. He was a mentor.
He was your friend, and that kind of thing. And well, the money never came, and here I am paying payments on this this money that I borrowed. And needless to say, I felt I had been done wrong, rightfully so. And the longer it went on. The worse it got, and I had some other friends were saying, "Look, you need to hold him accountable." And so I'm, you know, struggling with this thing, and you know, so we devised a payment plan for him to pay me.
Then he had a heart attack, and so he couldn't work for a while.
So one thing led to another.
So after he got recovered from the heart attack or whatever, thing I just felt like God told me forgive the debt. I'm thinking, Lord, you know how much money that is, right? You know, and so I am struggling this thing.
So what I did was, and and against some of my friends telling me you shouldn't do this thing, but I felt like this is what God wanted me to do. Took him out to dinner, paid for dinner, and told him I said, "Look, as far as I'm concerned, we're square," because the only way I could. Get that unforgiveness out of my heart was to forgive him, and when I did that, I became free of the resentment, the anger, and that kind of thing. And you know, could I have used that money? Yes, could have.
But you know, I let him off in forgiveness and grace, and it taught me so much about forgiveness and grace. And you know, it was just kind of a Kind of a life lesson there, for sure. My encouragement is to continue, and we'll continue this conversation through the evening. But just the thought of having that, looking for opportunities to forgive and to have grace to another, just this is the masculine journey. Go to masculinejourney.org and find us there.
They will find us there, but they do have the address. All right, just a little technical difficulty, so we're still going. We we we broke in a little bit early, so we'll just keep talking. I think we have time. One of one of yeah, one of the things that I heard my father tell me, and he might have gotten it somewhere else, but.
Lending money to a friend is the best way to lose both. Yeah, and that's true in the world, but that wasn't true in your case. Yeah.
We don't know how much time. No, we don't. How much times?
Well, I'll start with this one, and this goes back to, and this is forgiving myself, which, and we're here we go again. I will, after the break, have a story about addressing the person as Robby pointed out that I need to forgive most, which ended up being myself, but I didn't know that. Absolutely, that's a that's a big one. I'll I'll have a story about that as well. Go to masculinejourney dot org.
I know I messed that up, but that's that's where everything you'll find out about us. 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. God's really touched my heart. He showed me that He loves me.
He put His hand on my heart and says, "I love you, Mike." And that's the way my cat used to do. You know, he used to tap on my heart, give me a squeeze with my hand, and then tell me he loves me. And I'm wonderfully made, and God loves me the way I am and who I am. And He's going to be there with me. I have the tools now from this boot camp to follow Him and conquer the enemy that comes against us every day.
God loves us and shows us that here. Register today at MasculaJourney.org. It'll clear the bitterness away. It can even set a prisoner free. There is no end to what its power can do.
So let it go and be amazed by what you see through eyes of grace. The prisoner that it really frees is you. Forgiveness. That's Matthew West with forgiveness, and it really speaks to that that idea of of the idea of forgiving and at releasing, not just the other person, but us.
So, and this is sort of an example: things are going wrong, and I'm already blaming myself. Because I didn't prepare enough, but we had no control over that. No, no, no. It's all good. My story on self-forgiveness takes me back to chaplaincy training.
CPE, CPE, I was did a year's residency, and during that time, we had some intensive talks. And this was one of those times, and there were other people, supervisor type people, that were part of the board that were called into some of these. And in this one, I was beating myself up. One of my favorite things for most of my years, and talking about you know I don't pray enough, I don't read the Bible enough. I was getting very emotional about it.
And I'm pretty sure there are even some tears, but I don't think I was sobbing. And I'm in the midst of this self abuse, which it really comes down to that. And loathing, yeah. And a guy I didn't like anyway. Unfortunately, I was already so emotional that it didn't hit me the way it might have if we met on the street.
But he says, "You know, you're really arrogant," and that hurt a lot because I hate the word and I hate that place. And I recognize that I do have a modicum of that, and some of you may say it's a lot more than that. But when he said that. You know, at one point, I just I it blew me out of the water, so I couldn't say anything, which was good because after saying that, he said, "You know, you're talking about all this stuff you don't do, and you don't sound like you're forgiving yourself, and it is arrogant that God is forgiving you." And you're not willing to believe that God's decision is better than yours, and that was a life changer. I still have some self-deprecation, but nothing like I used to, and that is something that we do need to get out of this.
But I was really more inclined towards. Talking about grace, and we mentioned the difference between those. But grace is showing favor to somebody that doesn't really deserve it. And the story I have on that will fit better after hours, so we'll save that for then. But you have a clip.
I do. I'm going to wait for the next show for that, but I will. I will say this real quick, and then I'm going to get to Robby. But you know that whole thing about forgiving yourself. I I carried a lot of not being able.
I messed up my marriage. I messed up as a kid a lot. I heard a lot, and I believed what I had heard. And you know, there's truth to it, but. The people that are saying those things or whatever, the enemy.
Is there any grace within it? If it's you know, if it's coming from God, if it's coming from Jesus, you're going to have that. And today, I messed up. I I was involved in a wreck by myself. Um, and normally I just would have beat myself up because it probably could have been prevented or it could have been less than what it was.
But I told the guys I was like that would have ruined my day, and I wouldn't have been here probably at the show tonight. But. I feel like I'm pretty normal. I mean, I just you go forward. You know, it's one of those things that you learn from, and and I think God, you know, there was teaching in it, but there was also grace.
And I think we need to learn that. We're to love our neighbors, ourselves. A lot of times, we we love our neighbor like we love ourselves, which isn't very much. We don't love ourselves. We don't have grace for ourselves.
So, yeah.
Well, I. Really intrigued by the topic, and again, I hear lots of people say stuff about grace, and when they say it's unmerited favor, I, you know, I don't want to be argumentative, but I just disagree that the word means favor. But you are Christ, you are God's kid. You merit it. I mean, literally, God is in every single one of His creations that He handcrafted to be exactly what they are supposed to be, and so to think, and and I heard Stacy.
Elder John a podcast here just this last week. It's such a powerful thing. The way she explained it just really helped me. Was some things I was struggling with, and she was talking about. It's called the Love Ladder.
Is the new book that she wrote, and she talked about that you go from this position on the ladder of being a servant to being a son. And if anybody could speak to that, we know that would be Andy. Right. The idea of Orphan spirit, but the idea of being a son. He said, "She.
What she said was was so beautiful. She said, 'If you're a servant, you have to go in the back door and you have to clean your feet before you go in. But if you're a son, you can buzz through the front door. You don't care if your feet are clean. You don't even think about it, and you leap into your father's lap.
And." That son, the fact that he's a son, yeah, merits all that favor. Yeah, because of fascinatingly one little thing. Do you trust God? Yeah, yeah. Do you believe what he had to say?
And as I was listening to Danny's story, um. That God told him, and he took him up on it. And when he took him up on it, he let go of all that other stuff that he was, you know. And so many times when I'm mad at myself, which is constantly like anybody else, right? That one of the most interesting things is trying to let go of this.
So. You guys know that we went on this trip this week with my son, and people that know me well know I struggle with my temper. I am not a very patient person by nature, or wasn't way I was. And there are so many legends in the Dillmore family lore of the time that you know the. This happened at a restaurant, or whatever, and Dad loses it and goes completely what we call Bob Dilmore on somebody.
And so, I've been I've been really trying to trust God more, and and accept that He's got this. He's got this. And so, my son gets two flat tires. You know, just ran over something on the way into Jacksonville, and normally, you know, it's eight o'clock in the morning. I don't want to be on the road for another five hours.
You know, we get AAA. They go, "Well, it's going to be ten thirty." Well, this is at eight thirty, so I'm like two hours really.
Well, five minutes later, they send another text. No, it's going to be eleven fifty-seven. Like three. Hours and then the place that they wanted to tow it to didn't have the tires, and it was just one thing after the other. But fascinatingly, because I just really been working on, okay, God, I'm you know I don't have to take this.
You know, this is not self. Like God, I just trust you. It's going to be fine. Yeah, it's going to be fine. Like this fire's out.
I don't know how it's out, but it's going to be fine. And somehow or another, I I just had the best time just hanging out with God during this three four hour. I guess it turned out to be five hour ordeal. And I just thank God that somehow or another. I've begun to turn the corner a little bit into doing what Danny talked about or what what what Jim talked about, because when it comes to forgiveness, so much of is it do you trust God?
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
So just to clarify, I get you on the unmerited. Favor. This has always been my perspective. When unmerited, is so you have so many people in the kingdom, or trying to work their way to God and feel like they can justify and do enough to merit that favor. And it's it comes with the relationship and the trust that you were talking about.
It's still unmerited, but it's part of the package when you sign up to be a son, right?
So. But I hear you. It's almost like we're unworthy to receive anything. We are worthy because He's made us worthy.
So, yeah, and it is. You know, we I couldn't agree with you more. That one of the biggest trip ups of so many people in so many different religions is you got to earn it, right? And it's a gift, and it's absolutely a free gift, and grace and forgiveness are both all of that, right? Um.
However, you know, there's a lot of work that I have to do in my heart to get to the point where I feel comfortable breaking through the front door and jumping into his lap, like I deserve that. Like, but fascinatingly, it's what he wants. Yeah, no doubt. And the invitation of that to me. Is beyond spectacular.
Yep. Yeah, no doubt. And and I think that's where we get into where the whole merit.
Sometimes we feel like we have to do enough to even be able to have the privilege of doing that. If we don't have anything to bring, he doesn't want us. But that's counter to what? Oh, that's it. It's exactly part of the equation.
What you got, Harold? He could have made us capable of anything and everything, but he made us as he did, so that we could be dependent upon him. Amen. That's right, no doubt. Yeah, yeah.
It was. It's a relationship fully, um, predicated on dependence. I've been reading in Nehemiah nine, and you know they're reading through the. They've been exiled; the the children of Israel have been exiled, the Jews, to Babylon, I believe, and they are coming back. And you know Nehemiah and Ezra, they're I can't remember who's reading, but they're reading through the relationship with God and.
And talking about all their misdeeds, but then they get, and this is what we're talking about here. They, they are asking for forgiveness, but it says, "But you are a God of forgiveness, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in mercy, and you did not abandon them." This is Old Testament God. Right, this is before Jesus, and this was his attitude to his children, and how he wanted them to return and to jump into his lap as they return to Israel. And you know, you can find God anywhere in the Bible, obviously. And you know, I didn't didn't expect that something that would enter into the show tonight in Ephes, I mean Nehemiah nine.
But masculine journey dot org, come and visit us there.
