Kingdom of Heaven with Paul McDonald and Rob Porter
Paul McDonald and Rob Porter we dive into the 2005 film Kingdom of Heaven starring Orlando Bloom, Liam Neeson, and Jeremy Irons. We compare how our initiation mirrors Balion’s experience. We discuss how investing 1% every day will yield a bountiful harvest down the road. Our job is not to build a bigger kingdom, but to make the one we have burst with life.
Join us as we discover God’s truth in this movie.
About Rob
Rob Porter is married to PJ, with 2 joy-bomb daughters Abigail (5) and Chloe (3). Rob serves as a facilitator at the Become Good Soil Intensives, led by Morgan Snyder (https://www.becomegoodsoil.com). He offers what he has received to allies in New Zealand, the UK, and beyond. Originally from the UK, he has recently moved to the land of Gondor and Mt Doom (New Zealand), where he invites men to join him on regular expeditions in the pursuit to recover masculine initiation. Rob is a pioneer and an adventurer of a life lived from the heart.
"The result of having abandoned masculine initiation is a world of unfinished, uninitiated men." John Eldredge - Fathered by God
Quotes
Seeing story unravel in film really helps us to connect to pieces in our own story.
All these men in the stories we love have gone through something and don’t return the same.
It’s not what you do, but who you are that will determine the outcome.
“What man is a man who does not make the world better.”
Your choices have an impact. Who we are is reflected in our daily choices.
When we go through challenging times, our perspective can be that God has abandoned us.
The experience of bestowing a gift and a new name is powerful, transformative, calls you out of the self-life and into the larger story.
We have to unlearn that which is false and relearn that which is true.
Life is made up of 1% shifts that we have to make until they aren’t decisions but who we are.
He doesn’t get frustrated with his assignment, he just does it to the best of his ability. He brings life and care to what’s been entrusted to him.
Whether it’s stuff you’re proud of or stuff you’re ashamed of, God uses both. He redeems it all.
The greatest good we can pursue and protect is our soul.
When we have had our identity bestowed, when we have been initiated, we can empower those around us to rise up to their identity.
“We can’t offer what we haven’t received.” –Morgan Snyder
Instead of trying to build a bigger kingdom, bring water to the one you have.
Themes
The process of initiation: the preparation for who you are becoming. Initiation bestows identity before it is earned. It calls you up into a cause greater than yourself. It comes from someone older, further along the path. It’s about learning to guard your heart. It will widen your world. It is not easy, but is necessary for you to mature and grow stronger. It happens through embracing the assignments you are given. It is necessary to go through it with close relationship with other men to remind you of your identity.
A Father’s rights-through the gospel, God’s rights supersedes the law’s rights.
The Father sees who you can be and speaks truth to you.
Baleon needed to relearn who his father was. There is redemptive power in learning Father right.
Guarding your heart and soul means saying no to the small evil, even if it might lead to a greater good. Because you’ll be polluted and poisoned by that little evil.
Masculinity bestows masculinity, and you can pass on what you have received.
Resources
Anything Anywhere – The Four Primary Questions for Masculine Initiation by Morgan Snyder
Photo described in the podcast
Fathered by God: Learning What Your Dad Could Never Teach You by John Eldredge
The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono
“Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible. Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature: either into a creature that is in harmony with God, and with other creatures, and with itself, or else into one that is in a state of war and hatred with God, and with its fellow creatures, and with itself. To be the one kind of creature is heaven: that is, it is joy and peace and knowledge and power. To be the other means madness, horror, idiocy, rage, impotence, and eternal loneliness. Each of us at each moment is progressing to the one state of the other.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” – Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
“For you (insert your name) are God’s masterpiece. He created you anew in Christ Jesus, so you can do the good things he planned for you long ago.” Ephesians 2:10 (NLT)
“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” G.K. Chesterton
Questions
Where are you being initiated these days?
What pictures and scenes resonate with your story?
Where do you feel like a little boy? What is going on when that happens?
Like Rob’s acorns, how can you mark your investments in the “great good that is unfolding?”
Where are you looking and measuring to see if you’re enough, you’ve done enough?
How has your identity been bestowed on you? Did you receive a physical token from an older man? (And if you haven’t experienced that, ask God to provide this experience)
How do you chase your validation, the sense of being enough?
How do you perceive Father? What words would you use to describe who you think God to be?
What past events do you worry about, struggle with, regret? Can you ask God to redeem your mistakes, to heal the wounds you have caused, to use the pain to draw others to Him?
Where have you said, “Yes,” to a little evil in pursuit of what you thought was a greater good? How did that change you?
When have you woke up thinking, “How did I get here, to this point? I never thought I would be here.”