Roger Marsh: Well, welcome to Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh, thanking you for joining us for today's program. You know, we all have endured or are currently going through trials and difficult situations, but the fact is, some of us do a better job at overcoming those obstacles than others. Fortunately, the good news is that with God, all things are possible. Today's edition of Family Talk was recorded in March at this year's Men's Ignite Impact Weekend in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Men from all walks of life gathered together, hungry for a better connection to Jesus Christ. Today's guest spoke at that powerful conference, Pastor Tim Timberlake. Let's join Tim Timberlake and our own Dr. Tim Clinton right now on today's edition of Family Talk.
Dr. Tim Clinton: This man is very passionate, passionate preacher, spiritual leader. He's going to be kicking off our entire weekend, and let me tell you this, there's fire deep inside of him. He has a deep zeal for the Lord. His name, Tim Timberlake, and he's the senior pastor of Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Florida and Creedmoor, North Carolina. He's also a graduate of Pistis School of Ministry in Detroit, Michigan.
He's the author of Abandon, The Power of 1440, and the upcoming release, called The Art of Overcoming. He and his wife, Jen, have one son, Maxwell, who he loves, and a home in Jacksonville, Florida. The Timberlakes feel most alive when they're pouring back into the lives of others. They seek to glorify God through their lives and family, and I love that. Tim, what a delight to have you here on Family Talk. On behalf of Dr. Dobson, his wife, Shirley, we welcome you and thank you for joining us.
Tim Timberlake: Thank you so much, Tim. We're super grateful for all that this family has poured into the Body of Christ and the Kingdom of God, and the fruit that continues to flourish.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Thousands of men coming from all over, hungry for the Word of God, to be challenged and inspired. Something happens when men get together.
Tim Timberlake: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: It's hard to describe. When they get in there, and everybody starts assessing, looking around. You know how men tend to be. They want to be sitting in the back corner with their back against the wall, but they're looking around.
Tim Timberlake: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: But when they see that they're flanked, when they see that there's a group in here and we're together, well, there's a dynamic that starts. Tim, what are you seeing, and what are you thinking about men?
Tim Timberlake: Absolutely. I think three things typically unite humanity aside from our faith, and the first one is music. It doesn't matter what language you speak. Music has a tendency and a way of uniting us. The second is sports.
You can take someone that has never seen the sport that they're watching, and they can immediately be attached to the stranger that they're sitting right beside. You can see people from all over the world, come around an event, come around a game, and celebrate the same thing, not speaking the same language, not from the same culture, not from the same place. Then, the third thing that typically unites humanity like never before is pain, and so when you get a room full of guys, we have something in common. We have pain in common, and when you look around that room or when you look around that auditorium or that stadium and you see another brother that has endured and survived, it builds your faith, and so there's no one that understands the plight of men like a room full of men, and so I'm excited to get in there and unpack what God has placed on my heart, and just stoke that flame that's burning inside of us, that you're not alone, you're not crazy, and God has something intentionally and specifically for you that will pull you out of this season and place you in the season He's prepared for you.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Tim, you know this too, that there's a real beat-down on men in culture.
Tim Timberlake: Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: We're hearing a lot about the term toxic masculinity and more, and people broad-brush men, that they're looking at behavior, but then they're saying, "It's men," and that's the problem.
Tim Timberlake: That's right.
Dr. Tim Clinton: "We need to fix men," and I'm tired of hearing people calling men buffoons, and horrible fathers, and terrible husbands, and porn addicts, and all that kind of stuff. Granted, men have given up some ground.
Tim Timberlake: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: We need to own what we need to own, but, Tim, masculinity's not toxic.
Tim Timberlake: It's not. When you look in Genesis 26, you see Jacob, he's going back and he's re-digging the wells that his father dug, because they've now been confiscated and taken by the Pharisees, and something happens in that passage of scripture that's so unique. It says that he re-dug those wells, and then he renamed them, because the Pharisees had named them. Any time we allow the wells of our soul to get contaminated or to get filled with something other than the Spirit of God, the enemy will try to label and name us. It says something so specific and so unique. It says that these wells were filled with earth. Now, think about that language.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Wow.
Tim Timberlake: These wells were filled with earth. These wells were a representation of life for many generations to come, and the Pharisees confiscated these wells and they filled them with earth. The point I'm making, Tim, is if we're not careful, we will allow a generation to come behind us with a muddy revelation of who they are, what they're supposed to be called, their identity, and they'll call themselves what the world calls them because the Body of Christ has not undug those wells and allowed a pure spring, a pure flow of the Spirit of God to flow through it. This is what I believe. I believe there's a fool and a king in every man.
The one that you talk to is the one that will respond, and so if we talk to the fooling men, that's the one that's going to respond, but if we call out that king and the men of God around the world, the kings of God will begin to rise up like never before.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah, because we all have a lot of different thoughts in life.
Tim Timberlake: That's right. That's right.
Dr. Tim Clinton: The real concern is not our thoughts, it's the thoughts that we attach to.
Tim Timberlake: That's right.
Dr. Tim Clinton: That's the problem.
Tim Timberlake: Absolutely.
Dr. Tim Clinton: And we give life to those kind of things. That's what then begins to dominate and dictate our outcome.
Tim Timberlake: 100%.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Our way of life.
Tim Timberlake: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: God, be with us. Tim, let's go a step deeper. You are releasing a brand new book that I think is going to become an overnight sensation.
Tim Timberlake: Thank you, Tim.
Dr. Tim Clinton: A best-seller, The Art of Overcoming: Let God Turn Your Endings into Beginnings.
Tim Timberlake: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: We're going to go deep into this book, but, Tim, one of the things that concerns me and what you and I share in common is a passion around mental health.
Tim Timberlake: That's right.
Dr. Tim Clinton: That we care about people who are on a tough journey. When the world gets dark, this thing up here between our ears starts getting dark too.
Tim Timberlake: That's so true.
Dr. Tim Clinton: And, Tim, we can get lost, and you can begin to ruminate or marinate on that negative thought process, and it'll consume you. It can even take you to a place where you can begin to think that life would be better off without you.
Tim Timberlake: Absolutely.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Tim, speak to the issues of brokenness. There are a lot of people listening today who, they just had the wind knocked out of them.
Tim Timberlake: Absolutely.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Their world just got turned upside down.
Tim Timberlake: I believe, Tim, that in this life, we have to plan our victories, because our defeats plan themselves, and if we're not careful, we'll begin to talk more about the defeats, about the losses, about the pain than we do about the promises of God.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Wow.
Tim Timberlake: And so what I attempt to do in this book, The Art of Overcoming, is really, take us on a journey of understanding some of the things that we are faced with or will face mentally, and how it is not the end, but it allows God an opportunity to show us a brand new beginning, and so the way the book is set up, it's set up in reference to a funeral, and I believe that there are things in our life that needs to be buried and walked away from so that new life can spring from it. If God can heal our hearts from the loss of a person that we love with physical death, then He can also heal our hearts from the little deaths that we experience in this life through trauma, through depression, through oppression, through anxiety, through fear, through worry. All of those things are experiencing little deaths, and God gives us victory through His Word as to how we can walk out this life with Him and unpacked His truth through the gospel of Jesus Christ to benefit our lives.
Dr. Tim Clinton: So Tim, what I think I hear you saying is, if you're overwhelmed with worry and you're weeping late into the night and asking God, just saying, "God, I can't take anymore. Please, God, stop." All that. You're saying that isn't necessarily ... Even though it feels like a horrible place to be, it's not a bad place to be if we can get our hands around.
Tim Timberlake: Absolutely. And more importantly, it's not the end. The enemy would have us to believe when we're going through-
Dr. Tim Clinton: Oh, yeah, to think it's over.
Tim Timberlake: All of these different things, this is it. This is the end of this. This is the end of the road, and we allow his voice to make a home in our mind. Typically speaking, we listen to one of four voices. We listen to the voice of others, which is dangerous, to shape our identity. We listen to our own voice, which is also dangerous because oftentimes it's an echo of everyone else's voice. We listen to the voice of the enemy that tells us everything that we're not, what we have to do better, all of the things that we need to improve on, all the things that we need to really change, and that becomes very toxic for our mental health. But then, we have an opportunity to listen to the most important voice, the voice of God, who gives us our framework, who knows us better than we know ourselves, who gives us the identity that we should base the rest of our life off of, and this book helps us navigate through the muck and the mire, and find the whisper of God, telling us who He's created us to be, who He's made us to be for such a time as this.
How did we get to the place where we no longer believe that God's Word is true for our lives? Not that it's not true, because I don't believe oftentimes, we don't think God's Word is true. We just have a hard time believing that God's Word is true specifically for us when we're going through the darkest season of our life, when we're going through the most severe and intense pain that we've encountered. We have a tendency to believe that God's Word may not be true for me, so how did we get here, and how do we get from here to where God desires for us to be? And my prayer is that this book can help us answer some of those questions.
Dr. Tim Clinton: You're listening to Family Talk, a division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Dr. Tim Clinton, co-host. Our special in-studio guest is Tim Timberlake. He's the lead pastor of Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Florida, and Creedmoor, North Carolina. A gifted communicator, teacher, who has an ability to communicate to people from all walks of life. He has an amazing sense of humor, what a Bible teacher, but he is got a brand new book out. It's going to take, I think Christianity by storm in a lot of ways, The Art Of Overcoming: Letting God Turn Your Endings ... That's what we've been talking about, right?
Tim Timberlake: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: How did you get here into your beginnings?
Tim Timberlake: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Tim, you understand the issue of loss. Go back, you're a young man, 18 years old, you love your daddy, who, by the way, is a pastor.
Tim Timberlake: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Like my dad was.
Tim Timberlake: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: And I love my dad, and, Tim, I know you loved your dad. What happened to you in the midst of that as a young man, trying to figure all that out, because that's not the way it's supposed to be?
Tim Timberlake: For sure. Yeah, I highly admire my dad. My dad was my hero. He was a pastor, a man of God. I saw him pastor our home better than he ever pastored at any church.
Dr. Tim Clinton: That's a word right there.
Tim Timberlake: I saw him just live it out in front of us, and I'm one of seven, the only boy by birth. My parents adopted three, as I got older, but he was my hero. He loved this family, he loved my mom, and he loved God, and he was diagnosed with terminal throat cancer in 1997. When they diagnosed him, he had been misdiagnosed at that particular time for two years, and they caught the tumor at the end of stage four, and when they caught it, they told him he had three weeks to live and ...
Dr. Tim Clinton: Three weeks.
Tim Timberlake: Three weeks to live where he would get this experimental surgery that they had only done about one other time, which they cut the patient from the back of one ear, all the way to the back of the other ear, open up the neck to remove the tumor, and they did that, but when they did that, they removed the quarter of his tongue, so he was no longer able to eat or drink or swallow with his mouth. For the remainder of his life, he was fed through a G-tube. My hero, who was just not only a giant in the faith, but he was also a giant in real life. He was 6'5, about 275 pounds. He's a big guy.
I just saw him just shrivel, and through life seemingly leaving his body, I just saw his eyes become brighter with life, knowing who God was and how his faith was unshakable. On my 18th birthday, he sat me down and he talked to me for five hours, Tim, and really declared into me who I was becoming, who God made me to be. On my 18th birthday, I'm not really paying attention. I don't really want to sit down and have a conversation with my father for five hours. I'm thinking about, "Okay, where am I going tonight?"
"What movie am I going to see? What am I going to eat for my 18th birthday? What kind of cake am I having on my 18th birthday?"
Dr. Tim Clinton: Of course.
Tim Timberlake: My body is there, but my mind is elsewhere. After five hours, he pats me on the leg, Tim, he goes upstairs to his room, 2:00 AM that following morning, my mom knocks on the door, she says, "I need you to help me get your dad out of bed. He's not responding," so I rush into his room. He's laying on the bed. I pull him out of the bed, he falls on top of me, and he kind of looks at me with this grin on his face, and then he goes, transitions from this life to the next.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Wow.
Tim Timberlake: I remember thinking to myself, "I wish I had more time."
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah.
Tim Timberlake: I wish there was more time if I had known that the last conversation we would ever have would happen on my birthday, I would've leaned in a little differently. I would've been more intentional with how I listened. I would've took notes. I would record it somehow, some way just to hold on to that last memory, and so from that moment, I desired to be hyperaware of every conversation, every moment that I had with the people that I value and cherish.
If we allow pain to do anything, we should allow it to propel us, and so every athlete, when they have pain in the weight room, it's stretching them. It's pulling them. It's tearing those muscles, making them stronger. It's allowing them to get prepared for the impact, for the friction, for the turmoil that they will face in any game, and in this life, this walk of faith, this journey of faith, I believe our faith is stretched. I believe our faith is pulled, and it's strengthened, not in the great moments, but in the bad moments. When we allow God to strengthen our faith in those moments, when we're faced with our next test, we'll know how to overcome it.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Tim, tomorrow on the broadcast, we're going to talk about how to journey the four stages in dealing with what you call those death experiences, those little deaths, those things that we experience every day, but as we wrap up the broadcast today, I'm going to come back to that word, pain, because pain can blind your eye.
Tim Timberlake: That's right.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Pain can take you to a place that you didn't want to go if we let it. You're 18 years old and way ahead of your years, but even in your journey, there was anger, there was frustration with God, disappointment, discouragement, disillusionment, and so much more. Tim, speak to that because there are those who need to hear, that it's not about the darkness, it's about the light.
Tim Timberlake: Yeah. Absolutely. I think in all pain that we are faced with, we have this opportunity to either push forward in faith or to sink back into familiarity, but if we allow Jesus to lead us ... David said, "The Lord is my shepherd. I have no wants."
What he's talking about there is allowing God to lead us through the valleys, allowing God to lead us through every season of our life, and when we do that, we find the most brilliant light in the midst of darkness, and so when you think about it, stars don't shine in brightness. Stars shine in the darkness. The moon is most vibrant when it is dark outside, and there's a light of God in each and every one of us that shines in the midst of the darkest hour, in the darkest time, in the darkest seasons if we allow God to shine through us. Our objective is not to create light, our objective is to reflect it, and when we reflect the goodness, the mercy, the grace of Jesus, that radiant light shines so bright through us, that it's undeniable what God desires to utilize that pain for.
Dr. Tim Clinton: The Art of Overcoming: Letting God Turn Your Endings into Beginnings. We're going to talk about grief and loss tomorrow. We're going to talk about, really facing head on reality. We're going to talk tomorrow about how to memorialize and honor what we've lost, and how to process our grief in a healthy way, and we're going to talk about closure as we discover that there's life beyond death or the ending of something that we feel like it's all over for us.
There is no future. No, no, no, no. That's not what God's saying. There's something in how we move forward, but Tim, can you encourage everyone as we go here, that there is that hope.
Tim Timberlake: That there is hope, and just because something seems like it's ending does not mean that it is the end. I want to encourage those of us that are leaning into this moment that are listening, we have to trust God to let things rest in peace without losing our peace. His Word says He'll give us peace that surpasses all of our natural understanding, which means, Tim, that we receive that peace when we give up the right to try and understand. I want to encourage our listeners right now to sink your hope in Jesus, to sink your faith in Jesus. Even in the midst of darkness, He is the brightest light shining so radiant, shining, so glorious in your pain, through your pain so that you understand how faithful He is.
His Words says He'll never leave you, nor will He forsake you. He'll be with you until the very end of all times. He's with you right now, and He's closer to you than your own breath, so trust Him, lean into Him, and watch how He shines light in the midst of darkness.
Dr. Tim Clinton: He's holding you. He's in the midst of it all. Elohim, God is our refuge and our strength. He's a present help in the time or season of trouble. Tim, as we wrap up the broadcast today, again, tonight, it's going to be wild.
Yeah, and I know that while there's a lot of energy in there, there's going to be a lot of brokenness, and guys are going to be crying out to God. I mean, they're going to be singing their hearts out. They will. They'll praise and worship like the women do.
Tim Timberlake: That's right.
Dr. Tim Clinton: What do you see happening? What are you praying that God will do?
Tim Timberlake: I pray that God would take the pieces that often sometimes men try to hide, because we have this idea that we cannot show our pain. Pain makes us weaker, when in fact, it's not that pain makes us weaker, it's when we try to hide that pain that makes us weaker.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah.
Tim Timberlake: Anything that we hide grows, and it makes us weaker as a result of it. Anything we pull into the light and expose it to the light of Jesus, we get stronger in. So my prayer for us tonight is that we would open up, that God would shine through tonight and those men and these moments that we're about to have, and that men would absolutely be wrecked of themselves and take on the image of God and know that they are victorious and that they are champions, and that they are triumphant, but triumph only comes when you put a little try and God gives a little oomph. That's the only way that we get it.
Dr. Tim Clinton: I love that.
Tim Timberlake: And so tonight, that's my prayer, is that we would experience triumph because we've given it our all, and God has given us His.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Tim, what a delight to have you join us today. These are heavy, heavy topics, but I'm finding it's everywhere.
Tim Timberlake: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: People are frantically reaching out and saying, "God, please end this hour."
Tim Timberlake: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: It's so beautiful to know that God sees us, and that He loves us, and that I believe He even weeps with us. He will see you through.
Tim Timberlake: He will.
Dr. Tim Clinton: And joy comes in the morning.
Tim Timberlake: It does.
Dr. Tim Clinton: On behalf of Dr. Dobson, his wife, Shirley, what a delight to have you join us. Again, the book is The Art of Overcoming: Letting God Turn Your Endings into Beginnings. The author, our special guest today, Tim Timberlake. He's the Pastor of Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Florida and Creedmoor, North Carolina. I can't wait until tomorrow, as we unpack how to break free to a new life, a new beginning.
Tim Timberlake: That's right. That's right.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Thank you, again, for joining us.
Tim Timberlake: Thank you, Tim.
Roger Marsh: Jesus is faithful, indeed. Friend, you're listening to Family Talk. Be sure to join us tomorrow for the conclusion of this conversation, featuring Pastor Tim Timberlake and our own Dr. Tim Clinton. Now, if you missed any part of today's broadcast, remember, you could listen to it again on our website at drjamesdobson.org/familytalk, or you can also find it on the latest version of the James Dobson Family Institute official app. I'm Roger Marsh, and on behalf of Dr. Dobson and the entire team here at the Dobson Institute, want to thank you for listening today and making us a part of your day.
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Announcer: This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.