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 Masked and Journey After Hours, and before I forget about it, if you ever wanted to know who our entry music was, Darren, what's the name of the the guy that we know that? Do you remember his name that did the that music? Keith something.
Well, yes, it's coming back. He's having a senior moment. Yeah, it is. I'm watching it happen live. Art's got the camera on him.
Yeah, he's got two cameras. Darren is speechless. We'll have to write this one down.
Well, he didn't know I was going to do this. He medley. That's right. That's right. It is.
I couldn't bring it, but it seems like a medley. It is. No, he very graciously allowed to use allows us to use it, and it's an amazing amazing guitar.
Well, the story behind that song and many of the other songs that are on the album that that we use is I met Keith at a boot camp out in Colorado several years ago, and we were sitting there drinking coffee early in the morning because we were both. Early risers and one of the few of the five hundred guys that were there.
Well, you're from the East Coast, yeah. And so, and he started telling me about this guitar that he was building, and he was trying to describe it, and I'm not. Musically inclined, I can play the radio, and I'm sitting there listening. And you know, I probably had a weird look on my head, like dogs do, you know, when they turn their head. But he went on to say, you know, I I was like, well, what possessed you to build a guitar like that?
And he said, well, because it's a twenty-seven string guitar. And he said, "Well, I've had the music in my head for years, and I kept writing it, and figured out I don't have enough strings to play it, and so I kept putting the music down until I finally designed the guitar that would play the music that God had already put in my head." And he actually works at Auburn University. Mr. Harold, as a music professor.
Well, not music, but he's he's a like a. Structural arts type stuff, but they make guitars there.
So he's a he is a luthier. He was he used to be the vice president. What a luthier, a person who makes. I was wondering that was me. A person who makes instruments.
Loser for you. Is that for Lutheran church for you plebeians who don't know anything about culture? You're such a loser. Luthier, luthier.
So anyway, but Keith was the vice president of Gibson Guitars in Nashville for a long time. Was he really? Yeah, and he he. I mean, his story is phenomenal. We ought to have him on the show sometime.
Absolutely, you talk about a guy that God's used in amazing ways. Keith played a twenty-seven string guitar like nobody ever. And he built a sister to that. That one's acoustic, and he built an electric to match it. Wow!
I thought he had some videos of him playing. There's a ton. Yeah, go look up. Yeah, Keith Medley on YouTube, and the whole process. He's got it documented on Facebook as well.
You can look up Keith Keith Medley music on. Look up luthier, luthier.
Well, there's a lot of those guys. Yeah, some are not as good as he. You know, as many years as I was in elementary school, I never met a luthier coming in for workday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Three times.
Show and tell. Here's my 27 string guitar. Oh, that's pretty awesome. Career, yeah, it is amazing. And I luthier.
I think his grandfather. He's from Kentucky. And his grandfather, I think, taught him. Wow! Yeah, he's very talented.
And the guitar, when you see it on the video, it's just amazing. It's mind blowing. Yeah, how anyone could, yeah, not only build it but even play it. Yeah, and and just the whole story of how he plays it. I mean, if you know a little bit about guitar and you hear how he's playing those strings, he's not just playing him with the pit.
You know, I mean, he's playing him with his fingers. There is a lot going on. Yeah, he's a cool dude. And then there was Grandpa Luthier. Yep, yep.
Yeah, no comment.
Well, the next town over from where I grew up was Luther, Oklahoma. But you know me. Yeah, home of the Luthiers, the fighting Luthiers. That's right, the fighting guitarists. Um.
Anyway, Darrin, you have the first picture of Robby was on their helmet. Um. Before we do the clip, we're talking about. Good. Yeah, we're talking about what do we need to leave behind?
Yes. And how? Kind of how? We're saying right now. Would you please, please, yeah, leave the guitar thing behind, please, for you plebeians that you know don't understand good language.
But we're we're talking about leaving things behind. What is it that maybe God has? Encouraged us to leave behind in the past more specifically than others. I mean, he encouraged us to leave behind a lot of things, including you know the false self, the old man, our sin. I mean, sometimes relationships that are unhealthy.
You know, it it might even be a church relationship that's unhealthy. But things that God is calling us to leave behind, and He's not leaving, calling you to leave behind church, but perhaps an unhealthy scenario. And you know, how does He do that, and what does that look like in our life? And maybe you know the testimony of what it is that we've tried to leave behind, and sometimes end up picking back up. Yeah, the other thing we didn't really talk about is you were saying churches.
I remember I went to a church in Indiana that we loved, but we kept feeling at some point God was calling us to leave there. And we really couldn't say why we weren't unhappy with anything. We just both knew that we were called to leave there. Is because he's calling us on the next adventure. You know, he knew we were moving to North Carolina.
We didn't know we were moving to North Carolina. Yeah, to Robby's point in the first show. Yeah, yeah.
Well, Darren, you have the first clip.
Well, this clip is from a movie called Wild, and it's wild. It is wild, and it's starring. Reese and her Witherspoon Robby. She did not leave her withered spoon behind. She took it with her on a thousand mile journey down the Pacific Coast Trail, and so the story is that this is a.
Young lady named Cheryl Strayan, and Cheryl's had a hard life. Her mother had a hard life. Both of them parallel each other in some abusive things, relationships they've been in, but even abusing themselves to a certain extent. And her mother suddenly dies, and it's a true story, and that really rocks her world, and she goes. To a counselor who basically confronts her about many of her bad habits, one of which was heroin, the other was promiscuity, and he.
You know, kind of confronts her about that, and and what she decides that she needs to do. And I mean, she's a city girl, hundred percent. She decides, well, I just need to go hike the Pacific Coast Trail. She's never hiked anything. She's never carried a backpack.
And you know, about two seconds in, she's asking herself, "Lord, what have I done?" So you can play it. You're gonna be one in a different club, don't you?
Sorry, that's a different. Yeah, yeah.
William, William was not with Miss Witherspoon in this movie. Yeah, I forgot you told me Andy was gonna go first, and I just jumped right over to yours. Anyway, that was not the clip, but here it is. That okay? If your nerve deny you.
Above your nerve, Emily Dickinson and Charles Drake. What have I done? I'm sorry you have to walk a thousand miles just to finish that sentence. Why do I have to walk a thousand miles? Happy trails, Charles.
You get lonely. I'm lonelier in my real life than I am out here. Must have been some breakup, huh? Breakup is sort of a shorthand. How much do I love you?
I miss you. God, I miss you. My mother was the love of my life. You're using heroin, and you're having sex with anyone who asks. Do you ever think about quitting?
Only once every two minutes or so. I've quit a bunch of stuff: quit jobs, quit marriages. You regret any of them? I didn't have a choice. There's never been a time when it was a fork in my road.
Here are some questions I've been asking myself. What if I forgive myself? What if I was sorry? But if I could go back in time, I wouldn't do a single thing differently. What if all those things I did were the things that got me here?
So several things in there. One, I don't think I could say what she said. That you know, if I had it all to do over again, I wouldn't change anything. I would change some things. I would definitely change the way I've treated other people.
I would change that in a heartbeat, and I think that probably would change the way they treated me. But. One of the powerful statements in there is, but what if I didn't change anything? What if what if I just realized that all of those things brought me here, and that's reality. Everything that you've done up to now, good, bad, or indifferent.
Providentially or impro unprovidentially, they've all brought you here to this point. And if you are a person that has the dignity of causation and you have the ability to to change things, not only in your own life but perhaps in others, it's probably going to demand laying some things down. And in her case, you know, she her mother's taken from her. She doesn't get to lay that down by choice. But over this journey, she several times is confronted with, "What do I lay down?" And I, I love the, the cut and dried answer of the guy that is giving her a ride, and she says, "You know, he he asks her, 'You know, have you ever think about quitting?' Yeah, every two minutes, and that's true of all of us.
I mean, I can tell you the times I've tried to quit, God." You know, I mean, there's a period in time in my life where I was so angry with God. I was like, "Hey, if you can't protect me from all the things that have hurt me, what good is it for me to be in a relationship with you?" Now, I might have given up on him. He never gave up on me, and you know, and I'm not giving up on him now, but. The guy in in there, you know, I've given up on a lot of things. I've given up on jobs.
I've given up on marriages. And she asked the question, "Do you regret it?" And he's like, "Well, I didn't have a choice." And I don't know if he's saying I don't have a choice but to regret it, or I didn't have a choice. I had to drop those things. I had to quit them to move forward in my life. Um.
And there are those stories for some of us. You know, hopefully it's not a marriage, but I know a lot of women who have had to, you know, leave a marriage behind because of the abuse or or any number of other things that a husband was, you know, putting her through. And same. You know, for some men that have had wives that have been pretty abusive, yeah. And so, for me, the thing that I struggle to leave behind is this idea of being in control.
And there is a thousand things that I struggle to leave behind, but that's probably the biggest one that God's been working on with me over the last few years. And I have to say, it's pretty surreal to me now. There are times, almost weekly, when I'm confronted with something, and I'm tempted to take control of that. To all right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna deal with this situation, or jump in to save somebody that doesn't want me saving them. Different things along those lines.
It it has become surreal to stop. And say, okay, God, what are what are you calling me to do here? Is is it time for me to act, or is it time for me to trust you and let you do some acting? Um. And I'm not saying that he always says don't act.
Sometimes he does call me to act, and I don't always like that because usually when that happens, I'm wanting him to say no. It's okay for you to be passive here, but he's usually not. But it's a very surreal place that I find myself in, being okay with not trying to control the outcomes so much. Yeah. That's good, thank you.
Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Darren. Before I do my clip, yeah, I just that really brought me back, and I used to be the most impatient person, and probably still am. I don't know, but I mean, come on, just thinking about it. More patient than you.
Sorry, proves a point. But no, I mean just just reflecting on that. You know, I was I was really big into control as well, not really even really realizing it. But now it's something.
Sometimes I think I'm too passive, actually. But thank you for sharing that. But my clip is from Bagger Vance, and this has been used numerous times. It's such a good clip, though, that you and it really speaks to this. I mean, we actually have the whole idea of.
Leaving stuff behind, it's it's actually laying it down. And Juno is the Matt Damon character, and he's he's got survivor's guilt from World War One, where he lost his whole unit, and he's brought that back, and it's kind of just destroyed his life. And to that point, and really hung him up. He's stuck all the way back there in the war. And he's got all these people coming into his life and trying to help him out, but he's just stuck.
And he ends up getting a caddy, a life caddy, Bagger Vance that comes into his life and speaks a lot of truth to him and kind of hits him upside the head a few times, but really is a Holy Spirit figure of a comforter and a guide, and anyway, you'll you'll hear this interchange. He's stuck on the course, and it's they're playing a golf game. But this is the life. This is they're addressing where he's been stuck at life, and it's just this interchange between Juno and Bagger. Yep.
You gonna be wanting a different club, Dale Juno? I can't do this. Yeah, you might should just loose your grip up a smidge. You know, man's grip on his club just like a man's grip. It's not what I'm talking about.
I know. No, you don't. What I'm talking about is a game. Game that can't be won, only played. You don't understand.
I don't need to understand. And a soul on this entire earth ain't got a burden to carry. He don't understand. You ain't alone in that. But you've been carrying this one long enough.
Time to go on, lay it down. I don't know how. You got a choice. You can stop, or you can start. Start walking.
Where? Right back to where you always been, and then stand there, still, real still, and remember. It's too long ago. Oh no, sir, I was just a moment ago. Time for you to come on out the shadows, Juno.
Time for you to choose. I can't. Yes, you can. But you ain't alone. I'm right here with you.
I've been here all along and played the game. Your game. The one that only you was meant to play. One that was given to you when you come into this world. You ready?
Take your stance. Strike that ball, Juno. Don't hold nothing back. Give it everything.
Now's the time. Let yourself remember. Remember your swing. That's right, Juno. Settle yourself.
Let's go.
Now is the time, Juno. You know, the crowd cheered. We missed that. I'm sorry about that. Out, but you had to.
It's okay. Yeah, it. Yeah, we're limited to two minutes. I couldn't have gone two minutes and five seconds to hear the crowd. You could not.
Sam would have not played my clip. Probably. But as far as is like letting things go, I mean, he really needed to let his false self go. He had lived in that false self for so long, and covering up that pain and become a totally different person. Um, and it talks about going back.
Where do I go? He was like, "Where do I go? Back where you've always been. Where you've always been is where you got stuck. Is really where it is.
Go back to find out who you were before." This pain and this trauma, and you know that's what life does to us. It gets us stuck. I mean, whenever I went started going down this path with the masculine journey, it was like you went through, you know, pose or wound and all that stuff, and it was this package of stuff that you could look at yourself and internalize. But what I realized through that process, really, it got back posing was just a portion of it. But really, it was all about you know finding yourself, your identity as a son, and all that.
And it brought you back to who you were. And I think God wants us more than anything is to give up who we have become—the false person that we. He wants us to live true. I mean, if He created us that way, He doesn't want us to live a false example of. I mean.
False presentation of ourself. He wants us to live who He created us to be. That's the most honoring thing you can do for to for Him, and to say thank you, Jesus, for saving my life.
Now let me live true to how You created me.
So anyway, that's that's what I feel like I need to do. And and I think whenever you do give up the false self, whenever you lay that aside, everything else. It's possible because again, God will guide you as as you're living in your true self. For someone sitting out there and they're just saying, "Well, why wouldn't you just let go of the false self?" Yeah, I mean, it sounds so obvious, right? Yeah, it's not.
But when you look at Juno, yeah, in that story, if you haven't seen Bagger Vance, he's he's an amazing young golfer. He gets sent across overseas. He's a leader of his platoon. Right, right. He's called into this authority role.
And when it doesn't doesn't go well, he comes back and he wants to get anywhere away from any of that.
So no one asked him to do anything. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, it's safe. I've tried that. I'm going to stay safe.
Yeah, I'm not going to show my glory. Right, right. I'm just going to wallow in the mud. Right, because at least I know the mud how it feels. Right.
Yeah, and that's where we get stuck sometimes because we're afraid of stepping out. Yeah. And I've been there. I'm there in some ways now, but stepping out without God is the dangerous part. Yeah, right.
The beautiful thing, you know, it's just the way that it's done. He says, "Strike that ball with everything you got." And see when he's carrying all that load, he can't strike it with everything he's got because he's not wholehearted. That's right, wholehearted. Right? He's he's he's playing halfhearted because he doesn't want to risk.
Right. What if I give it everything I got and then it still goes south again? Yeah. Um. Not realizing that what Bagger said was, "I'm right.
You're not by yourself." Right. I'm right here with you. Apart from me, you can do nothing. Give it all you got, but with, right? There's the levels of that.
Yes, are phenomenally. Beautiful, in my opinion. Every time I hear that clip, I I catch something I hadn't heard before.
Well, I mean, I hear you, Robby. I I heard I heard what you said there. You and I have had a couple of conversations about that recently, and yeah, the the scary part is. I did that once. I did hit the ball once, you know, with everything I had, and it didn't go well.
I hit the tree, and it came back hit me right. And so, you know, step into leading men, step into leading at church, step into leading a women's group, or you know a A small group, a community of people in your home.
Well, I did that once, but it didn't turn out well. You know, it those people turned on me they they you know whatever or I hurt them. You know, I mean, t here is t here is a thousand whys as to why it did not turn out well, but that does not mean that God has. Taken the glory that he gave you to display on his behalf away, you still have to step into that, even if you've tried it a hundred times and it's not gone well a hundred times, and maybe. Maybe it wasn't well by your standard, but it was exactly what God needed to happen.
And the one that stands out at me as I was just processing the whole thing is if you go see the the movie George Washington, young George Washington, yes, it's exactly the same scenario. He steps in, gets his whole no. We're talking about a real life story. I mean he he got his whole platoon wiped out, his best friend killed, and he didn't want to step back. Either, but he couldn't stand there and watch him get killed, and so he he walked back into the leadership road of changed America because he hit it with all that he had.
But yet, you know that that so many things to step into, but again, fear being the thing that holds us back. Yeah, and I think you know we're talking lots of different places, but yes, as you think about the big things, what God's calling you to be, you know, to show His glory to other people, but He's also with you in the small things, the things that the enemy trips up with. Jim was talking about regret, and I think as you get older, that's something you naturally feel. You wish you had done something different as you reflect on your life, and I remember a couple times where I would say something to different. One's of my kids just kind of apologizing for things in the past, and what always surprised me was they never remembered it that way.
Your kids are special.
Well, or they didn't tell me they did. No, but the way I had it in my mind, that's not what they remembered. Yeah, right. And the enemy plays those games with you just to hold you in bondage. Because if he can hold you on the small stuff, you have no chance to step into the big stuff.
I am so glad that I have the relationship I have now with my adult children, and that we've worked really hard to create that safe place where they can go. Dad, do you remember? When you yeah, and I'm okay hearing it, and I usually tease them and go, "No, I don't remember anything about that." But you got to work at that too. You got to create the opportunity for that to be done.
Well, spend some time this week, just spending the time with God, saying, "God, what do you want me to lay down? What's that next thing you want me to lay down?" And show me how to proceed. We'll talk with you next week.
