Stuck In Fear

Hey, this is Mike Zwick from If Not for God podcast, our show Stories of Hopelessness Turned into Hope. Your Chosen Truth Network podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it. Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening. And for Choosing the Truth. Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network.

The heart of every man and craves upgraded Regehr one life, does it 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 our quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides and what we call the masculine journey. The masculine journey starts here now.

Welcome the masculine journey. We're very glad to have you with us today. And we just kind of find ourselves today kind of stuck in fear.

Yeah. Terrified. Yeah, I say that because. Paralyzed. It's our third week. It is. It is our third. We're still stuck. Yeah. Still stuck in fear. Yeah. Yeah. So hopefully we'll try to break through that fear. Yeah. Today it appears the wheels have come off. Yeah.

Well, apparently there's a lot of things to be afraid of. You know, I think that is something in our society that we see out there. There's a lot of people reacting out of fear in one way or another. Harold Tejo, something you want to add to that?

Yeah. It starts in winter school. That's that's true. Because when you're an elementary school, you pass love notes, says, I love you. Do you love me? And the little box art. Yes. Little box. Mark. No. And you sit there in fear that it's going to come back marked. No. Yeah. So fear begins really early. And it's combined with love, which the other aspect of what we hope to talk about tonight.

It was harder back in your takes. That was with Chisel.

It's easy to say, you know, their love, I.

Yeah, but you. You will be. Yeah. Yeah. Ladies, your text. Your love. No, not get caught. There's an emoji for it. Isn't that tablet. It's hard. Yeah. This check. Yes or no. And I'm going to go viral. But to think, think, think think. You're right though. Fear does start early.

Yeah it does. You know, it's one of the things that comes in and so. Well, we hope to talk about is how to kind of break through that fear.

Yeah. Actually, you know, one of my favorite authors that I have a really hard time understanding the depth of which she writes, which is Lee Payne. That's one of the comments that she. She's a great psychologist and a and probably an even better theologian. She wrote a book called The Broken Image. And the premise of that book is we're born in fear, that we're born lonely and fearful. And so we began to do anything and everything in order to provide an image of ourselves that would be loved. That would be accepted. That wouldn't scare other people away.

The problem is that's not the true image. And so so we learned to pose. We learn to pose. You know, the pose starts that early.

And then let's say it brings a lot of bells right there. They're going through that.

They're there. Yeah. And then, you know, you're you're fearful that the pose is going to become an expose.

Mm hmm. And so. Yeah. So we're stuck on fear. Yeah.

We're scared of moving on. We are God. Because we don't know where to go from here. And now we're going to go to a clip.

This is from a movie called The Backup Plan and in how sometimes our past can really bring up fears in the present. Know we're afraid we're gonna repeat them. You know, things like that. There's a lot of things that kind of go into that. What causes fear in this particular clip? If young lady that's in her 30s, she's not married, she wants to have a baby. She goes to a fertility clinic and gets eggs implanted or whatever all that stuff is.

You know, the stuff. Yeah. She gets the stuff, gets the stuff you you get at that clinic.

And anyway, she doesn't know whether she's pregnant yet or not. And she meets a guy and then she learns later that she is pregnant. She realizes they're not obviously his. And so she tells him about it and he decides to stay with her. Right.

And so unlike Mary and Joseph. Yeah.

It doesn't it doesn't really play out real well, at least in this scene that we're going to get to, because, you know, they're trying to go through all this stuff together as new parents. They just watched. So I give birth the night before into to a swimming pool, you know, a little portable swimming pool.

You know, they've experienced that together. They're going through all. Do you do lemons? Do we do this? Do we do that? And so he's going to reference that. And he's been studying for this test to where he can really improve his career and he's decided to drop out of the school.

And just that way, he could provide for the family. And where we pick this up, they're taking a walk. A friend of his walks up and starts approaching him in conversation about, hey, I see you dropped out of the exam, something along those lines. Just kind of hear where this conversation goes and how quickly fear can get hold and cause us to do things that really don't make a lot of sense.

Yeah. And listen closely, because when you are reacting out of fear as this one of these characters does, you will. Here, whatever you want to hear or whatever your enemy wants you to hear.

Hey, I was just coming by to see if you're OK. Worried about you after the exam.

What happened with your exam? I was trying to tell you last night. Oh. Well.

What happened? I walked out of the exhibit. By quitting school.

I can't believe you're pregnant. Why are you cutting school? Because if I stay in school, I can only work part time. If I can only work Part-Time, I can afford our expenses. I need to work. I had no idea it was serious. You're having a baby. I didn't know you'd been together that long. Well, yeah. They're not mine. But yes, we're having a baby. We're having twins, actually. What do you mean they're not mine? I mean, why would you say that? I'm sorry, honey. I'm not exactly thinking straight. Had been up all night watching or can give birth.

I'm such an idiot, you know. I'm so stupid. This this is not about money, but that you can't afford kids. You don't want this. That's the problem. He always told me he didn't want kids. Why are you still here? Okay, that's it, isn't it?

Really, after everything we've been through, you think I don't want kids, you really think that that's what you just said? Not what I just said. It's what you just heard. There's a big difference.

I don't think you're ready for this. Now that it's all happening, now that you've seen a woman push a baby out now, now it's all too real for you. You're scared. Yeah. Aren't you scared? You know what I'm scared of? I'm scared. I'm going to have these babies. And then you're going to walk away. You're going to say, never mind and just walk away.

Well, every day you're looking for some kind of hint that I'm leaving, no matter how many times I tell you that I'm not. I don't know what else to do. What else am I supposed to do?

Nothing. So what are you saying to school now?

I don't want to go. Go. This is crazy, Zoe. It's crazy. If you don't go, I'll go. Wow.

You know, just so you know, when you do the autopsy here, you better realize you have no one to blame but yourself.

Not the most uplifting. Oh, but we've ever put here usually doesn't have though either.

No, it doesn't. It doesn't lend to that. And so as you guys listen to that clip, what are some of the things that kind of jump out at you from the topic here?

Well, I mean, I see a guy who is fearful and he admits it, but he's reacting seemingly in a pretty good way, in a very loving way, saying, you know what, my career is not as important as these babies and and my new wife.

I am willing to change things for a very noble cause. And so it appears that he's reacting in love, trying to.

But, you know.

She's reacting out of fear. She had this fear, I'm never going to have a man, I'm never going to have a husband, so I might as well go ahead and take control of my life. Have the fertility issue taken care of, you know, circumvent that process. And then magically delicious, as we say, God provides, you know, a man after the fact. And and so she's reacting out of fear and she's hearing things. She's always believed, obviously, that she's going to be alone raising children. And so it's just better to go ahead and just commit to that rather than risking, you know, staying in a relationship that might have rocky days.

Yeah, if you if I'm remembering the movie. Right. I saw it several years ago, but know she has a history of her dad, abandoned the family. You know, there's an abandonment spirit in there. And so, you know, she's just kind of looking for that first clue. Wins is going to happen to me because I know the show is going to fall inside.

Yeah. And that's kind of a Paul Harvey thing. What's the rest of the story? Right. Because when you know her whole story and how she reacts, because then shortly after this, her best friend's honor saying, well, you're just looking to get rid of him. Here's finding another excuse. Exactly what he said. Her mother comes in with a one finally getting married because she was like, oh, my mom, they're just good. Done talking about her mom never marrying. She comes in and says, Oh, I'm getting married. Oh, but you two have inspired me so much. What am I afraid of for all these years? I should just go out and get married. This guy loves me. Why don't I just do it? Mom. We just broke up. It's like she gives. Then she walks away. The one who says we just broke up. And Mom chases her into the bedroom and gets the door slammed in her face when she's like, you're just doing this, you're just running away again. And that, you know, it's like there's these habits that we get into because we pose and that's becomes who we are. And she's like, everything in my life fails. Right? I have that agreement. So she's like instead of trying to break it, let's dove back right back into it, because it's getting to that fearful place again in this relationship.

Yeah. And, you know, you go where you can see the enemy get his hand in this situation. Right. I know this is Hollywood, but when you look at this one, this is clip. You know, you have a guy that's trying to be descriptive to his friends question. You know, he's saying she said, I don't think you've been together long enough to have kids. And his response was, yeah. Yes. They're not mine biologically is what he's meaning, that he just says they're not mine. Right.

And so that feeds right into her fear, which gets everything going, because what do you really want to get into this long conversation with a friend you just walked up with and try to explain his whole past? Well, it is all I know. So you try to jump on and move on because you realize he's at that time, OK, her heart is broken. I got to go after it. He's trying to and he's trying to dismiss this other one and get her out of there.

Yeah, I think at some level he did bail instead of continuing to fight for her heart at this point. Yes, I agree.

So he can also took away one of the things that Sam touched on that relationally is critical. And I see it all the time as I look at it. For me to say what I'm misinterpreting because we see what we expect to see or what we want to see, we hear what we expect to hear or what we want to hear. And often it is a fearful place that we're doing that from. And married especially Sacket, multiple marriages where they do have that. I've been left MoD's. And, you know, they're going to do it, too.

I'll talk to him about, you know, what?

Does this person love you? Oh, yeah. Then why are you expecting the worst from him or her? And that's so common and so painful.

Yeah. They're just they're waiting for that indicator that, you know, things are gonna go the way that they fear they will go. Yeah.

And then we just talked earlier about being introspective and who is and who's not. And we're like, yeah, Sam's probably one of the best we have in the group that is doing that on a regular basis does very well.

And I will have to say that. I wouldn't say I do. Well. But in the masculine journey, I'm doing a lot better than I did before the masculine journey.

So things are really, you know, coming to where it's like I do stop. I take that pause and the things start to escalate. I can recognize them sooner. I can say, oh, where am I? What one of my adding to this.

Absolutely. And when we come back, we're going to dig into some of our questions of each other, of how do we react with fear. Now go to Maskin Journey Dorji Register for the upcoming bootcamp, November 12th through 15th at Park Springs up in Providence, North Carolina.

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Are you going to pick a fight? If it feels like every day is picking a fight, then you might want to come listen to the masculine journey and find out why we use clips like these to illustrate the story God is telling in the lives of men today. The truth is God designed you to pick a fight. But which fights do we pick?

We'll grab your gear and come on class every Saturday at noon. And now the mass.

It's me. Welcome back to Maskin Journey. That song reminds me Bootcamp is your son used to sing?

Yeah, we've we've used that in several boot camps, I think. And it's it's one of my favorite songs. I mean, it is that is the process of boot camp is, you know, we're coming after the one.

Right. I mean, that's the one of the clips that we usually use or we use several clips from the movie typically, which was Saving Private Ryan. The the billboard for that movie was in front of the theaters. It had, you know, the picture, that band of brothers there. And it said the mission is a man and that's our mission at a boot camp. And so it is it is Jesus leaving the ninety nine and and looking for the one. And you are the one. Whoever you are, you're the one always.

Yeah. Yeah. You're the favorite. That's right. Yeah. To quote Robby. Yeah. We need to stop thinking otherwise.

Yeah we do so well we good there in transition to some of the questions that, you know, you'd kind of prompted the group with. And we started to discuss them before the show. I mean, we emailed back and forth to school and we just wait and talk about it on the show.

Well, I mean, yeah, there's no point in preparing. You know, everything just comes out a whole lot better when it's impromptu. Right. Well, we have questions. I'm an extemporaneous thinker, but most people can't follow my extemporaneous thoughts because they're not nearly as good as my prepared thoughts. So anyway, there is an extent for that. OK, well, that's that's some of y'all can look that up. So it kind of some of the questions that I threw out to the guys this week was, you know, how do you respond to other people's fear?

Well, so I'll just throw that out there. I mean, if if you're the one who can be objective and understand that, oh, well, they're acting out of fear, how do you respond to that? So, Harold.

Well, usually I try to apply a little bit of logic to it. That always works well, but unfortunately, unfortunately, most people don't react well to that as you do. And now it's most and that usually doesn't go well with me, because if I can understand it, then why can't you? I just told you in clear, unmistakable terms and here you are rejecting that.

And I don't know how that rule will come, and obviously logic seldom plays into I mean, fear is not a logical thing. It's really not. I mean, under certain circumstances. Yes. If somebody is holding a gun and pointing at you and saying, I'm going to shoot you, then fear's very logical at that point. But most of the things we're talking about our relational type of things. And so it's not necessarily logical. But Jim. Rodney, what are you guys.

Yeah, people don't like to be told that they're acting in an illogical way, especially coming from a nerd like me who had 40 plus years of programing, a computer.

You just don't realize that it's not about the nail you have to. I mean, if you recognize that logic is important, but feeling is, too. And there are things that talk about our personalities that there's a tension there between them. And we all have both. We're not sure about your feeling, but since you're 98 percent logic. But well, I want to I don't have pointy years, but I do have characteristics like Spock.

And it's important to recognize who is causing the fear in you. I mean, my biggest fear is rejection and started while at my early.

You get to know on that note. Right. Well, actually, I was always too afraid to send the note because I had left the room.

I didn't have but maybe three dates through the end of high school. And then I married the first one. I say it jokingly, but it's true. I married the first woman that took me seriously.

And Carol, that said, the joke's on you because I take everybody seriously.

Yes. So I'm with Harold on the absolutely on the logic side.

I always come down on. Well, let's go through this logically and what makes sense and try to argue my way through those things. And definitely my better half is not the logic sides is the emotional side, right? So that has been come something that's like I've had to learn how to actually deal with that and be able to approach her and, you know, affirm those emotions and what's causing them. So when you do that, it's like, oh, OK. You understand? You kind of get me a little bit. So that helps a lot because I would never even want to understand in the past. Now I at least go down the path of, OK, let me try to understand. And let me ask some questions. And my background now has trained me to do that at work. This stuff can work at home, news it relationally to to try to understand. Again, if you're trying to use it to manipulate, that's not good. I hate it when that happens because now I can point out people are trying to manipulate me. But you should try to understand. And you go deeper with someone. People love to be understood.

Yeah. Yeah. I think when things you guys were saying logic works. When people come to the conclusion themself. Yeah. And so it's when you're asking those questions and you're entering into their feelings. All right, you can help. You can help by asking the questions, hopefully get him to a logical place where they can kind of see, OK, this isn't really based in reality. Mm hmm. Right. What is it about that that makes you so afraid? You know, and start entering into some of those questions and letting them express it. And hopefully the logic will kind of work, you know? But sometimes it doesn't.

No. You know, we make fun of counselors. Good counselors. And we make fun of bad counselors there. They're even more fun to make fun of.

But you're a counselor there. I have been called that. You know, especially unlike TV sitcoms and things like that. And one of our favorites around here is Bob Newhart. You know, and his show for years as being a counselor. Just stop it, you know. And so but the best counselor is the is not the guy that tells you how to fix your problem. The best counselor is is the one that ask you good questions that allows you to travel down the road. You were just talking about Sam took to come to the realization that, oh, I, I have I possess the answer to that question. I possess the answer to this problem. And if if you don't see it as a problem, then you're not gonna be passionate about fixing it. Number one, you know that all day long, Rodney. And at work, if you're trying to help somebody fix a problem and they don't see it as a problem, they're not going to be passionate about fixing it at all. And so when we recognize it now, let's shift gears a little bit. What if you are the focus of their fear? How do you react when somebody says, I'm scared of you? Not necessarily. You know, you're they're physically scared of you. But I'm scared of the way you are going to treat my heart. Here. I'm scared of the way you're going to deal with me.

And typically, you don't get that forthrightness, do you? You typically get some version of them averting the truth. Showing emotion, showing some negativity. So now you're trying to play this chess game of what are they really thinking? And now it's a game and you're going back and forth and that's when it starts to get scary. But. If if I know something is that forthright and they're just like they're scared of me. I'm like, what the heck you got to be scared of me for? And then I got to go down Sam's path of, oh, what did I do? And it's like when I'm smart enough to do that and they have that pause. I usually find it. Okay. I can kind of understand where they're coming from. But if you don't. And he's hard to react and you die very into the fear instead of diving into, you know, thought process of work with understand, it's like, oh, yeah, let me really blow this thing up.

The scariest person in this room to me is the smallest physically. And I'm the biggest guy in here. Hello.

Sam's working on it, but I want to go down.

But, you know, at one point I was just shy of six, nine, and I have usually been over 300 pounds all my life. And so I work hard to keep people from being afraid of me because that's the natural response. And when you said, you know, talked about fear, my neep immediately went to the physical cause. That's where people are afraid of me. Once they get to know me, I don't like Amirli is scary, but in a dark alley, I would terrify folks without. Any cause, from my perspective and that and and to me, the scariest people tend to be the smallest one cause they're the most aggressive because I've had to make up for that. And the the aggression is one of those things I fear.

And Roddy's tell a couple, fortunately, about the asylum row for Baril so he can't get TB.

But it really is a matter of often a physical for me, but emotional is the most painful thing to get hit with. You know, somebody comes after my heart wounded. My reaction is normally running before fighting. But if you corner me, my golden retriever, part of my personality comes out and once I'm cornered, I'm going to bite.

You know, when somebody is afraid of you in whatever manner and physically you have a presence that you talk about or decision making, you know that you're riskiness, whatever those things might be that make them afraid.

You really only have one response that's going to work right in you. That's the topic of the show. It's love.

It's love. And that that'll be more of a topic. Next week, we'll be still running from fear. Next week and running hopefully into the arms of love. But, yeah, that's, you know, totally unlike Jim, most of my life, I've been very much the risk taker. And I'm not saying that he's not a risk taker. It's just that I've never been worried about people being scared of me physically. It's always well, Darren's could be a scary guy because he takes risks and his risks sometimes cause the community to also risk or the family to also risk or the churched also risk or whatever. And so I've been called, you know, dangerous before in a negative term. I've also been called that by God in a positive sense. So my reaction to that, though, when people go, I'm scared of you or you scare me or it's it's not out of love.

Usually my reaction is usually fear, unfortunately, not a good place to be. We're going to talk more about that in the after hour show.

Yeah. And when we come back next week to the radio show, we are going to be talking more about entering into love and how you can really go against fear by acting in a loving way. We talked about the counselor. That's really what the council was doing. When they're approaching you that way, they're doing it out of a loving place. That's why it works. It doesn't work when you come to it from a logical place. Right. Right. Because it's not necessarily out of a loving place in the same way. It's interpretive. Right. Right. And so you go to Masculine Journey Dorjee to register for the upcoming boot camp, November 12 through 15. That's gonna be at Park Springs up in Providence, North Carolina. What a wonderful place. See you next week.

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