New Beginnings and Cutting Loose: Empowering Men in 2025

0:08 Put me in the game now, I came here to prove it, I'm ready to do it, I can't be afraid now. Put me on the stage now, I'm ready to rage now. I feel like an animal stuck in a cage and I'm ready to break out. You know, and we look at these signs and seasons, God is expecting us to do great things in the earth. Whether it be investing money, investing in real estate or property or crops or farm or whatever. He wants to see growth in everything that we do. Increase in everything that we do. This isn't some prosperity gospel message. Of course not, that's stupid. But what he does want, he wants us to prosper in the things that we put our hands to. Whether it be ministry, business, farming, whatever.

0:52 And so this is a great time. So I hope that many of you, matter of fact, I'm going to, I'm going to expect many of you to put together plans, goals, not a lot of them, maybe one or two goals, maybe a financial goal, maybe, and maybe a physical goal, or maybe a physical goal along with a spiritual goal or some type of personal development. But when you do that, make sure you're accompanying that with some type of, Accountability partner. Yeah, like a coach, a trainer, a financial coach, a, oh, spiritual mentor, someone to help push you over the edge and not rely on yourself.

1:33 Man to Man 360 starts in three, two, one. You've tuned into Man to Man 360, the show for men by men dealing with all subjects. The twist here is we come from a biblical worldview to encourage and empower men to make it in life through the power of Jesus Christ. Chopping it up, chopping it up, chopping it up, chopping it up. You're talking about everything. You're talking about Sometimes it's cool And sometimes it's hidden.

2:16 This is Man to Man 360 Hey, welcome to a brand new episode of man to man, three 60, happy new year. Happy 2025. I am your host, Daryl Anderson, and I'm excited to be here this day, today, the year of our Lord 2025 and it's January and I'm recording on this. Day of January, the eighth, the number eight is actually my favorite number, actually. Because eight represents the number of new beginnings, somebody say new beginnings.

3:02 And so, and the reason it's a new beginnings is because a week is one through seven, eight is a new week and it's a, it's a new beginning. It's a new beginning of a new week. Regardless of how your week was last week. You get a new week and you get to start all over again. It's a new beginning. I think that's a great way to see life. I think that's a great way to see the new year. Heck I'll even go as far as to say, that's a great way to see a new month. And as a matter of fact, I go as far as to say, that's a great way to see a new week and a new day, brand new mercy.

3:44 The scripture says he gives us brand new mercies every morning. So we can have new beginnings all of the time. Why not? I think that's important so that you're not stuck, stuck in the past. Again, this is Man to Man 360. I'm your host, Darrell Anderson, and I'm here to encourage you guys. I know women may be listening to, but this, this podcast is this episode. This show is for men. It's to encourage and empower men to make it in life through the power of Jesus Christ.

4:27 We need, we need to be able to look at a new year with excitement, a new month with excitement, a new week with excitement, a new day with excitement. I mean, are we guaranteed the next day? Are we guaranteed tomorrow? So when I wake up in tomorrow. And it's this morning, I am excited that I made it to see a new day. And then when Sunday rolls around and Saturday night from to Sunday, I'm excited to see a new week. I made it to see a new week. And then when January flips into February, I'm excited for a new month, actually from December to January.

5:10 And then from 2024 to 2025, I am excited. That's a great time. It shows us the grace of God. I want to, you know, with that in mind, I wasn't exactly sure where I wanted to go tonight because I know I'm preparing for a couple of different messages and whatnot. And one of those messages is for the man cave we have coming up this weekend on the 10th, two days from now. So I have a message for that. And I probably. Pick a couple of things from there and then you'll hear this. You'll hear the man cave next week. I want to just share a couple of quick verses. I'm not trying to make it quick, but a couple of short verses to get you going.

5:56 I, so what I do. Throughout the year or maybe once or twice throughout the year. I'll read through the books of the book of Proverbs and Depending on what the day is. I'll read that day's message. So now that that book of wisdom those verses of wisdom and on the 6 Of this month, something caught my attention on a message. I a scripture. I, I, I'm sure I read, you know, literally hundreds of times. But this one had really jumped out and I wanna read it to you right now. It it's gonna go from verse one to verse five in chapter six of, of, of Proverbs.

6:39 And here it is. It was Proverbs chapter six, my child. If you have pledged to your neighbor, that's one thing. If you have bound yourself to the stranger. That's two things. If you've snared by the sayings of your mouth, that's three. And if you are caught by the sayings of your mouth is four, do this. The proverb writer here is going to share some wisdom on these four areas. If you fall into those four areas of a snare, Either with your neighbor, a stranger snared by the saying of your mouth or caught by the saying of your mouth.

7:22 Some of it you said on purpose and some of it you said by accident or by mistake. You didn't, or you didn't, you knew what you were saying and then got caught in a snare and then some, and some things you didn't have really have a clue to what you were saying and got caught in a snare. Either way, the, the, the blessing in this verse is that God is saying through Proverbs chapter six, you don't have to stay trapped. So the things of 2024, if you got snared in some things last year, and even previous years or whatever, don't worry, you don't have to stay trapped forever in that.

8:03 You don't have to be snared in by a bad mistake, a bad choice. You can get out, but it's going to show you how to get out. And I think this is really good. Verse three, he says, do this, then my child and save yourself. So if you do this, you're going to save yourself from these snares for you have come into the palm of your neighbor's hand. So you're actually In your neighbor's hand at this point. So what should you do? He says this, go humble yourself, plead with your neighbor. Do not give sleep to your eyes or slumber to your eyelids.

8:45 Save yourself like a gazelle from a hand or like a bird from the hand of a Fowler. You got to get out of this trap. You got to get out of the, the, the hand of the Fowler. You got to get out. But what he's saying is the best way to do it is to humble yourself. And then plead with your neighbor. Sometimes it's just a matter of, you know, I'm so sorry. Please forgive me. I made a mistake when I signed that contract. I don't know what I was thinking. I was completely stupid when I signed that and I shouldn't have made that type of agreement. There's no way I'd be able to commit to that. And I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. It inconvenienced you and your company or your organization, but I shouldn't have done it.

9:31 And I beg your forgiveness. You're trying to get as humble as you can to get out of this trap and you're going to plead, but he didn't say just plead once or twice. He said, do not give sleep to your eyes or slumber to your eyelids. In other words, you'd be persistent and persistent and persistent and you get out of this trap. The, you know, the encouragement part to that is I can be free. Finally, I can finally be free and that's important. That's important because maybe it's free from a debt. Maybe it's free from a bad relationship.

10:12 And I'm not really talking about marriages guys, you know, that's, those are the things you do with a vow unto God, but I'm talking about, you know, you, you started maybe seeing someone or dating someone that you had some reservations with and had some convictions on and you're starting to feel like, I don't know if this is right, but Hey, listen, you know, I told her I love her or something like that. It's like, you know what, get out of the trap. If this ain't right. Get out now, right? You was getting ready to quit your job and start at this new job, but something seemed fishy They promised you all this stuff. I actually ran into a thing like this about a year or so ago Whereas this company man, it was offering all these things It's like man, this is too good to be true and they did this interview come to find I'm almost embarrassed to say it but it was it was like a fake interview I don't know what they was hoping to get out of it.

11:03 I didn't share my social security numbers or anything like that, but it was so much stuff. I was like, man, I'm getting all this stuff and come to find out it was all a fake. If it was a situation where you were going to. Quit your job over this and it was a fake you're going to want to swiftly get things right either with your job to get back in or To what this new situation to get out of it because there's something she's shady about I remember years ago It was a bunch of us at my company that I worked for probably about maybe almost 20 years ago actually was 20 years ago and It was a huge, too good to be true offer the kind of pay he was going to be making and the kind of things we'd be doing.

11:48 And it was a sales opportunity. I think it was more like business development, but man, there was pouring out a lot of stuff. They said, Hey, but if you're going to come with us, you have to quit your job tonight. You have to let them, you have to let the company know tomorrow morning. I quit. And you're going to come on over to us. I remember saying, well, man, why do I need to do that? But it was like maybe 20 of us in this room and we all work for the same company. And so tomorrow, everybody's going to just go in and say, Hey, I quit. I quit tonight. I'm going on to this new venture. And when I got into work the next day, I said, man, something is just bothering me the whole time. I don't, I don't think I can make that type of commitment.

12:28 And I don't believe that I'm going to be able to, I just don't feel that this is, this, this is right. I can't put my finger on it because the offer was too good to be true. And all my peers were saying, man, you got to go, man. We're, we're going with this, man. We're, we're, we're taking the leap of faith. And when you hear words like leap of faith and all that, you're thinking, man, you're going to get left behind. Well, anyway, the next morning. We all went to work and I want to say more than half of them left quit their job. They basically told the boss, I'm out of here. I'm leaving today. Today's my last day, et cetera, et cetera.

13:10 And I'm out when it was my turn to at least get ready to prepare to go to my go to my boss. I couldn't do it. It wasn't that I was being scary. About a new opportunity. It was that something wasn't right about the opportunity and I didn't go for it. And so I'm thinking, Oh man, I'm being left behind. If this thing is right, if this thing is good, I'm being left behind. Well, lo and behold, and about maybe a few weeks later. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah, I don't think it was a month. I think it was just a few weeks later. The guy, many of those guys started coming back and trying to get their jobs back and whatnot, coming to find out there are some shady things with the company and, and even some investigations of some things in the past.

13:52 And lo and behold, you know, it, it didn't turn out as good as they thought it was going to be. It was a horrible, Opportunity and, you know, I don't regret, you know the guys stepping out there. You know, I think. You know, we, we shouldn't be afraid to step out there, but you have to watch for the warning signs. And in this case I did, and I believe that was just God's way of warning me in the Holy Spirit of bringing about some kind of warning signal to, to me to not to step out in this particular thing here. And so as we read Proverbs six, he says, go humble yourself, plead with your neighbor. Do not give sleep to your eyes or slumber to your eyelids.

14:34 Save yourself like a gazelle from a hand or like a bird from the hand of a fowler. Get out of it. Free yourself. Free yourself. I want to take you to one of the verse here This this part is actually part of my message on this Friday coming up, but it's okay I'll make sure they're two separate messages to some degree This verse here is very key to the Friday message, but again in this podcast here, I'll make sure that we, that the sub, what is the subject of this podcast? I think this podcast is cut yourself loose and be free, cut yourself loose and be free to do what God is calling you to do.

15:22 There you go. Cut yourself loose and be free to do what God is calling you to do. And I'll probably change the name, but by the time I end this recording, but anyway I want you to go to Genesis chapter one and verse 14. Now by the way, this is the fourth day of creation. Somebody say fourth day. This is not the first day and the first day God made light and he made day and night and that was the first day. But here in the fourth day, let's read it. He said, and God said, let there be lights in the vaulted dome of heaven. He said, what, what version am I reading from?

16:03 This is the Lexi ham or something like that. I don't know. But anyway, it says let there be lights in the vaulted dome of heaven. To separate day from night and let them be as signs and for appointed times and for days and years We'll pick up from there right after this How many are ready for the man cave? Yeah The man cave is developed around we call it the five pillars. There's praise and worship Or we sing a song or two and really just, oh invite the presence of God in and get the guys singing and clapping and whatever, and really make a push on getting guys into the music.

16:50 It's typically guys like to avoid praise or lifting of hands or singing and that type of stuff. So we really put a focus on that. And then we go right in from that into prayer, you know, intercession prayer. We ask guys if there's certain things that they want us to pray for, to agree with them in prayer for, oh and we make sure to focus it on them. Sometimes guys will say, Hey, yes, and I got this neighbor, can you pray for them? And we're like, no, no, no. We want to know what is it that you need prayer for? Because, because you're the neighbor, that's your job to pray for your neighbor. From there, we actually go into the competition part. Now that's the exciting part of the man cave. It just creates that competitive. But it gets that testosterone, oh bubbling up and everything else.

17:31 And there's a reason to that, really, too. I've been doing men's ministry now for almost 30 years. A lot of times, men don't really have those men focused things at churches. So, in some cases To guys, it can feel a little, oh feminine or emasculating in some cases. And because of that, we want to make sure that there's a masculine feel to men's fellowship. It's both fun. It's inviting. It's also used as a fish bait to get guys out. The other reason that we do competition is so we can create two teams. And in creating two teams, we create a camaraderie between those guys. They stay on those teams for the duration. You don't go from second Friday to second Friday.

18:11 No, you're contacting guys in between guys, able to reach out. Guys are able to, Hey man, I'm really dealing with this thing. We're struggling with this thing so they can reach out to somebody. We go from the competition part and then we go into the work. We go into scripture. We do some teaching and then we might. Breakout into breakout groups. The breakout groups allows guys to be able to, oh answer some things or share their thoughts on those same tough topics that was just preached a few minutes ago. The word is, is a two headed sword. It cuts open things. It exposes us to ourselves, at least. oh what's really happening on the inside or the things we've been trying to cover up and hide. oh and then we break from there and then we, we eat.

18:52 That's a great time to be able to dive in and just really see how guys are doing. Pastors and churches don't have a men's ministry. You're missing out on the opportunity to Free that man from that thing. He's been trapped in that, that stronghold has been in his life. In his ministry allows him to be free, vulnerable, and then free.

19:53 And they shall be lights in the vaulted dome of heaven to give light on earth. And it was so, and God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the smaller light to rule the night. And the stars. And God placed them in the vaulted dome of heaven to give light on the earth and to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate light from darkness. Now the re and, and there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. Now the reason that verse is there. It was to show you that the sun, the moon, and the stars were created on the fourth day, even though there was already light on the earth.

20:35 So you really didn't need the sun for light. The reason for the sun, the reason for the moon, the reason for the stars is for signs and for appointed times and for days and for years, signs and seasons. Right now, we're, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, it's winter, then we go into spring, then we go into summer, then we go into fall or autumn, and then we go back into winter. For days and years, we went from 24 to 25. We go from December to January. And the purpose for this is so that we can measure things out.

21:15 We can measure our successes. We can measure how long you know, something is taken. We can measure growth. We can, you can measure how tall your kids have gotten in, in six months or in a year or in their first year of life, or let's say their fifth year of life, there was this tall. And then there are six year life. They're this tall. And then there's seventh year of life. They're this tall, or that in your third year. Third year of working at your job, you now make this kind of money or done your fifth year. You now make this kind of money, or you might notice that in the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh, you're making the same amount of money and there's no growth. And that may be telling you, well, it's time for you to leave because you're not growing.

21:57 Or I might say that, Hey, listen, you're made, you've made this much money in your first year of business. But man, in the second year, you've made this much money and you can see the growth. And then the next year you see even more growth. And then the, let's say the fifth year you see a dip, a decrease, but the encouragement is that, well, wait a minute, that you just had a bad year. You've had increasing years every year, God has been good. And so you, you can, what you can. Ride this out because the year after that, even though you dipped a little bit, you did even more. So the year after that, so signs and seasons allow us to measure. Okay. So this is what I'm going to do in the, in the winter while we're sort of indoors to prepare for my launch in the spring.

22:46 Both whether it be for business or for a ministry or for travel or family things, whatever it is. Whatever it is. And the good thing here is that I got four seasons to work with. If it didn't work out so hot in the winter, I still have spring, summer, and fall. And if things did work so hot in the spring, I'm expecting it to be even better in the summer. And when fall comes, I'm expecting it to grow or be better in the fall. And even more better when summer, when winter hits again, and this way, when things get slow, I have enough because of the, those three months of spring, summer, and fall that I I'm, I'm secure enough that even though I may not be making enough in the winter, I mean, may not be making anything in the winter.

23:37 I got. Enough to cover me. So seasons and times appointed times and, and, and days and years are markings for us to show our growth. This is why January, when people talk about resolutions and whatnot, this is a great time to plan goals because planning goals allow us to. Say hey, I want to be able to do this. I want to be able to lose this much weight I might I want to be able to make maybe build muscle and and lift this much in a certain amount of time and so I can measure every day when I go to Do either the gym or workout or whatever?

24:18 I'm doing I can measure that every week. Okay. Well, I went from 25 pounds to 30 pounds and then in a couple of weeks maybe from 30 to 30 pounds to 35 pounds, and then a couple of weeks, maybe from 35 pounds to 40 pounds. But whatever it is, I could measure it and I could see the growth and say, wow. And then at some point you're going to be stuck where, man, I'm stuck at 45 pounds. Well, maybe that means now I have to do something a little different, maybe eat something a little different, rest a certain way, maybe water or whatever it's going to take to help your body break that hurdle. Usually it means, you know, finding help, a coach, someone to help push you over, you know, this time of year is so great for that reason, because you can accomplish goals, but you can also get people to help you accomplish those goals.

25:10 And this is a great time to do it. This is a great time to do it. Now you might be saying, well, what's so spiritual about this? You know, you're talking about You know, this is supposed to be a podcast from a biblical worldview perspective. Well, yeah, it is, you know, and as we look at these signs and seasons, God is expecting us to do great things in the earth, whether it be investing money and investing in real estate or property or crops or farm or whatever. He wants to see growth in everything that we do. Increase in everything that we do. This isn't some prosperity gospel message. Of course not. That's stupid. But what he does want, he wants us to prosper in the things that we put our hands to, whether it be ministry, business, farming whatever.

25:57 And so this is a great time. So I hope that many of you, matter of fact, I'm going to, I'm going to expect many of you to put together plans goals. Not a lot of them, maybe one or two goals, maybe a financial goal, maybe, and maybe a physical goal, or maybe a physical goal, along with a spiritual goal, or some type of personal development. But when you do that, make sure you're accompanying that with some type of Accountability partner. Yeah. Like a coach, a trainer, a financial coach, a spiritual mentor, someone to help push you over the edge and not relying on yourself.

26:38 This is the best time of the year to do it because everybody's looking to help somebody and everybody, everybody realized that people are starting new things. And there's all, all kinds of people out there willing to help. So this is a great time to do it. So. Again I'm going to get ready to wrap this up, but I think though that this is a good time for us to reevaluate last year, look over last year. And for me last year was a really good year. I mean, it wasn't great on some respects, but on some other respects, it was awesome. In ministry 2024 was awesome year and certain levels of work.

27:21 It was okay in business. It was actually pretty good. So this year I want to take those things that went well, worked well and make them better. And those things that didn't work so well, maybe, maybe we might either eliminate them or find ways to improve them. Or just find out, you know what, let's get out of these things and let's spend more time and investment in the areas that God has really blessing. So that's another thing you can do right now in this new year. So listen, I don't want to drag this out any longer. Uh, Listen again uh, I am Daryl Anderson. I am your host and this is man to man 360 happy new year.

28:05 See you next week and we're out. This episode of Man to Man 360 is a wrap. But you can check us out next week wherever you get your podcast and listen on demand to earlier or exclusive content. Visit us at mantoman360. com. That's man, the number two. Man 360. com. This is an ambassador media production.