How Has God Shown Up In Your Life?

This is Sam from the Masking Journey Podcast, and our goal with the podcast has helped you to try to find your way in this difficult world. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it, but most of all, thank you for listening and choosing the Truth Podcast Network. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. How has God shown up in your life on the other side of your obedience?

That's the topic of today's show. My name is Andy Bowersox from Energize Ministries. I am your host today for Truth Talk Live. I also have a special guest with me today, and we're going to hear from him in a few minutes, but right now, we want to talk about how has God shown up in your life. If you have a story to share about how God showed up, how he's been blessed, been a blessing to you after your obedience, we want to hear about it, because we're all just going to share stories today about God's faithfulness and how we've seen him move after we've been obedient. If you've got a story about that, 866-348-7884, we want to hear about it.

It's 866-348-7884 or 866-34 truth. We're talking about how God has shown up after you've been obedient. If you read through the Scriptures, you know that God does miraculous things after there's been a step of obedience. In the Old Testament, it happened with Joshua walking around Jericho. It happened with Moses parting the waters. It even happened with Jonah, sort of, if you count that, I guess. But, you know, Jonah finally, when they threw him over the boat, is when the seas calmed. In the New Testament, we see it happening when Jesus asked the disciples to throw their nets over the boat, the other side, after they've been fishing all night and after they did what he said. Miracles happen.

It still happens today. So, anyway, we're going to talk about it. How has God shown up?

How has it been a blessing to you on the other side of your obedience? I mentioned earlier, I've got a special friend in the studio today here with me. His name is Mike Dillon. Mike is a husband of Tina. He's father of Austin and Time.

He's heavily involved in the high-pressure, highly competitive world of NASCAR, and I'm sure if you're a diehard NASCAR fan, you know the Dillon family name and who he is. But, most importantly, Mike is here today because I have come to know him as a man committed to following the Lord, and not just committed, but excited about it. Passionately pursuing Jesus and being obedient to the commands of Scripture, to the wisdom of the Word, and being obedient to the call of God and his life. So, Mike, welcome to Truth Talk Live today. How does it feel to be in here talking about what God has done in your life? Oh, it's great, Andy. I appreciate you having me here.

I'm always willing or ready to share what God's done for me. And I'm excited about today. This is the first experience for me on a radio show like this, and I've been on shows before in our sport. I feel like you're no stranger to the microphone over there, dude. So, we're glad to have you on here today, for sure. Hey, so we already have a caller in here.

Looks like Buxman from Ohio. You've got a testimony to share. Buxman, let's hear what you have to say about following the Lord and being obedient. Hey, Brother Andy, you sound just like Brother Stu on the radio out here in Ohio. I don't know about that.

You do. I thought it was Stu on the radio, but no, this is a dear brother of ours who's got a ministry here, and his name is Andy. I said, oh, he sounds just like Stu. So, you can be Stu's vocal stunt double, Andy. Well, Buxman, that's your first name or last name?

What is it? That's my moniker. Yeah, that's my moniker. That's my motorcycle handle. Oh, great.

You're a biker man. Well, give us your story about obedience, Buxman. What do you have to say about it today?

Absolutely. Well, John 336 comes to mind right now, Andy. It says where he was talking to Nick Ademus. He said, you know, yeah, you can believe Nick, but unless you obey, which is what we're talking about here, guys, the wrath of God is still upon us.

That should make us kind of shudder a little bit. So, he is so right. So, in an act of obedience where I was like, you know what, Buxman, I just got to start following the word and stop following my Christianity.

And I'm putting my fingers in quotes, guys. Oh, good word. Good word.

Yes. I just got to stop following my Christianity and I've got to stop reading my Bible and taking a step in faith and doing what that blessed word says. And guys, I can't go on enough. We don't have enough show time to tell you all the blessings, but I will share this with you. I started my own podcast and one of the first interviews that I, that God put me in, the Bible says this, guys, I will put you before Kings.

So, if you use your Strong's Concordance and put in Kings and I will put you, you'll find the passage. But he put me before Kings, Truth Talk Live, because just a couple days ago, for two questions, I interviewed the 45th president's firstborn, that's right guys, Don Jr. And all I've been is obedient, just following the word, doing, you know, wrestling my sin, no longer giving into my sin, just things that the word says for us to do as Christians. And I'm just blown away, Truth Talk Live, Andy, I'm blown away. I interviewed, for two questions, I got to talk to Don Jr., Donald Trump Jr. Well, listen, Buckswin, that was a great example about Nicodemus, and it's a great story. You were obedient to start a podcast, to start a show, and got to talk to somebody you never thought you'd be talking to before. So, great, great story. And such a great, you know, such a great thing that I want to pass on to all of the listeners on the program. I love Truth Talk Live, I love the Truth Radio Network, I listen right here on 106.5 here in the Dayton area here in Ohio. So I want to pass blessings on to Big Stu, and also Junior Stu for keeping everything going here in Ohio.

Love you guys. Alright, well thanks for the call. If you have another testimony or a story to share about how God has blessed you after you've made it, whether it's a simple move, a heavy move, you know, something radical, when we come back from the next segment, I'm going to share a little bit about how our ministry exists based on obedience. There are so many rewards all through the Scripture, we see the radical moves of God show up when we're obedient. So get your pen, write this number down, 866-348-7884, 866-348-7884, or 866-34-TRUTH, and we want to hear your stories about radical obedience, selfless obedience, how has God blessed you and rewarded you after you've done what he's called you to, and how that's played out in your life.

So give us a call. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com Hey guys, it's Andy here from Energized Ministries. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. Today we are talking about how God has shown up in your life on the other side of your obedience. For those of you that are not familiar with our ministry, Energized Ministries provides preventive care and prayer support for pastors and their families. We've been doing this, I've been doing this now for almost 15 years, and literally everything we do is a blessing and a response to our obedience from our Lord and Savior. I can't tell you in 15 years that we've charged one single penny for anything that we do, but somehow or another what we do is respond in obedience to the ways that God asks us to give and to call and to serve his pastors, and somehow he shows up, and it's radical stories, and we're going to get into some of that, but I was thinking a few minutes ago, as we talk about radical obedience, what does it look like, how has God blessed you, we want to hear your stories about that, I gave you that number again, it's 866-348-7884, 866-348-7884, but I was reminded of a story, a friend of mine that was in New York City years ago, and they were out doing street evangelism, and he was a youth pastor at the time, had the youth group out there, and at the end of the day they were tired, they'd been talking to people all day, and you can imagine New York City, it's a little rough environment, but there was a guy on the subway when they were headed back to the hotel, and this guy in his description was sort of rough looking, and my friend Troy was his name, Troy said, I knew the Lord wanted me to talk to this guy, and I just didn't feel like it, and he said the longer the subway ride went, the more I felt convicted about it, I just should talk to this guy, and so he did that, he said he pulled out a little gospel tract, and he just handed it to the guy, and he said, hey, I just wanted to share with you, this is how you can get to heaven, and he said, that guy looked straight at him, and said, I have been waiting all day for somebody to talk to me about that. That's crazy, right, and so Troy led this guy to the Lord right in the middle of that subway, underground New York City, only because he responded to what the Lord asked him to. So if you've been following along on the show, you know I've got Mike Dillon in here, a good friend of mine that's committed to serving the Lord, so Mike, have you got a story of obedience, have you did something?

I think your smile is, you must have something, but something you did in response to what God was asking you to do. Share a story about that with us. Well, you know, just recently we had an event over at the Ray Shop, a hometown men's fellowship, and I had, you know. You say an event, like, what does that mean?

Well. Why were you having an event, first of all? Well, because the Holy Spirit put it on me, you know, I was. The Lord asked you to do, to have some kind of event, okay. I was, I pray every morning to read my Bible and spend my first hour with God, but it put it on my heart to, we needed to, you know, do something, I wanted to do something to get men back in the role of leadership that they're supposed to be in. So you felt like you were supposed to share your experience to encourage other men.

Yes. That's all I'm tracking with the story so far, okay. So what happened? So what happened was Richard Payne, who I call preacher, who's my mentor, and I called him up, I said, hey man, we need to have an event or get together over here at the shop.

We got a pretty big facility over there capable of housing, you know, a few folks. And so I said, why don't we see if we can't get together and share what God's given me, you know, the relationship that he's blessed me with. And I, you know, I just, it was on me. I couldn't not do it. So you talked to preacher Payne and a couple of you decided we should get together and share what the Lord's doing. Yeah. That's all you knew to do.

That's all I knew to do. I said, hey, we need to get, I think we can get, you know, some guys together. We have a good group of men over at the shop. And I said, well, I can get a hundred of them over here and maybe, and we got to talk. And I said, well, we ought to be able to comfortably get 300 men together and tell them what's going on with God and what they can have, right, with the Lord as their guide. And so we started and we got, and you know, we actually got with you in Energize Ministries and asked, hey, can you help us out and maybe get us some pastors together? And let's talk to them about it.

Would they be interested in talking to their men's group? And then, so that, that worked out and we got some other guys in the neighborhood, Roy Morgan and, and, and others all around that, that jumped in and it was like, nobody, everybody said yes. That was the, you know, the crazy miracle number one in that story.

Well, it was like, it was, what the really crazy part is, is all the help we got. And I mean, the things that were going on that it was, it was, yeah, yeah, we'll do it. We'll do it.

We'll do it. And then, you know, we had Matt Hammett came and entertained. We had Parker Webb and Guilford. They came and sang and, and ended up, you know, our goal, I thought I could, I thought I could get 300 folks from, from the shop men. And I honestly only got about 20 and, but we ended up with over 700.

700 guys showed up. Yeah. And, and, uh, it was such a blessing. It was, it was, it's incredible. So were you excited about this? Oh God, it was, it was incredible. It was going to, it was probably the coolest experience of my life to, to experience and see what, what, if you trust God, what he can do. And, and, but you got to listen, you know, you got to listen and, uh, listen and respond and respond.

So this is what happened if, if you're just tuning in here, we're talking to Mike Dillon, the founder now of Hometown Men's Conference, Men's, Hometown Men's Fellowship. And it was what was it like seven or eight months ago? Maybe not even that you felt you're first supposed to do it.

We did it in three months. I mean, okay, so let's call, let's call it four or five months ago. You're studying, you're reading your Bible, you're praying one night. You feel like the Lord wants you to get up and just share what he's done, what he's done in your life, what's happened to challenge some other men. You're optimistically hoping that there's going to be two, 300 guys show up for this thing. And more than double showed up to come out to, to listen, not just listen, but to be challenged and encouraged to pursue them, make them first hour, first priority of their life. Well, one of the, one of the cool things about it, one of the cool things about it was, uh, you know, I thought I could, you know, I could probably shame a hundred in to come. So I could, you know, I could get that many from the, from the, I don't believe that's the way God does it. I understand. Well, that's what I was going to do it.

Okay. So we, right. Well, I didn't get, I honestly probably only got 20, you know, I don't want to cut anybody short, but we have, we're, uh, we're, we're allowed to have Bible studies at work. And so we have, I had the men in the Bible studies where they, they showed up and they knew about, they were, they were excited about it and maybe one or two others, but not none of the other, you know, what I thought was going to show up. But then, and I didn't really realize that until the event started, but man, they started pouring in and it was like, so we were, it was like, we couldn't figure out where it was going to park all the cars. They would just kept pouring in and, and I didn't know, uh, all these folks, you know, there's a lot of local guys around home too that came and ended a really blessing was weeks afterwards, months afterwards. People were saying how cool it was. Now I've got, had men come to me and say, Hey, I've told my, my son-in-laws and my boys that we, they're, they're waiting for the next one. So it's like, it's awesome.

It was really cool. So you know what I think about the scripture that says God can do exceedingly abundantly more than we ask or imagine. So you just got to hear Mike's story about obedience, what happened, Lord blew his mind, radically, radically blessed that, that whole endeavor.

We want to hear yours coming up. You're listening to the truth network and truthnetwork.com. Welcome back to truth talk live today. It's Andy Bowersox here from energized ministries.

I'm in the studio with Mike Dillon founder of hometown men's fellowship. Before we get back to Mike's story, I just want to remind you, if you've got a story of how God has shown up on the other side of your obedience, you've responded to that. If you're a believer, you know what it's like to get that nudge from the Holy Spirit, that little bit of conviction, or just a, just a prompting to respond. Whether it's sharing the, sharing the gospel at the gas station, whether it's buying a box of cookies for your pastor. In our ministry, we love pastors, we love to encourage pastors, but whatever that is, when you've done something in response to what the Lord's promised you to do, or the Holy Spirit nudge, will you just give us a little story? We all, we just want to encourage each other today. So call and give us your story.

It's 866-348-7884, 866-348-7884. And we just want to hear your stories. But before the break, we left off, Mike was sharing about how God showed up in a radical way in his life after the Lord asked him to, to just share what, what's been happening, what his relationship's been with other men and challenge other men. But I want to ask you, Mike, I feel like there's something that led to that. There was, there was some point that you weren't always actively following the Lord like you are now, and, and something changed in there. Let's, let's peel back just a little bit. How, how did you ever get to that point of wanting or feeling like you need to share what the Lord's done in your life with other men?

So give us a little history on it. Well, you know, I have to go back, I have to go all the way back to my grandmother, as far as my, my experience of life with God. You know, she started, started me off young. Um, and pray her prayers, uh, you know, I was in and out of church, you know, not necessarily with my family with the, actually with friends, family, uh, would take us.

And then, uh, uh, I got saved when I was 17 at Calvary Baptist church over off of the country club road in a summer camp. And, uh, and then, uh, then the world kicked in and, uh, it was like you said, I haven't always, um, have, uh, how you say it? Not the same Mike you are now. Let's put it that way. Exactly right.

But good. The one thing I have figured out is that, that the Lord has, has looked after me and guided me the whole way. And I just didn't know it all the time.

And, uh, and now my relationship, he's showing me that, hey, I took care of you over here too when you were, weren't doing right. And had a plan for your life. He sure, yeah, he sure did. Thank, thank, thank him for it too. And, uh, but no, I, um, I had, I had someone send me a, uh, uh, a book and, uh, you know, I had a bookmark on it and saying, hey, this book has changed my life. And I hope it does the same for you.

Basically said, thank you for helping his, uh, his son out, uh, in, uh, in our, our business. And, uh, I was like, okay, you know, that's cool. You know, and I took the book and set it up on the shelf. Well, I kept getting this nudge.

I like you, Andy, you say a lot of times I had this little tap on the shoulder. Well, mine was in the gut, you know, I was like, hey, you need to open this book about, so I'm like, okay. So I opened it up and looked at it and realize it was, uh, actually the author of the book was Mark Cook. How just, I'm curious when you got the book to you actually open it, how long was it? Well, I said it on the shelf about two weeks, you know, kept pushing it off.

And, but I couldn't, I couldn't get away from it. Right. I don't know. I do know. Hey, most people listen to the show.

Absolutely understand what you're talking about. I got the book, looked at it, realized it was his tape. He had his testimony in there and I'm going to, I'll shorten this up, make it quick.

But it was, uh, sounded a lot like me, you know, and, uh, I'm like, Hmm. And then there's the book was a, is a 30 day challenge basically to say, Hey, here's, you know, here's how you can get yourself in the Bible. You know, it's a tool. It's all the book is, is a tool commit. And there's a commitment there. And you sign in a contract, you know, you sign a contract to yourself, but I, like I told you during the break, it was a contract. It's no different than my marriage to my wife. You know, I was, yeah, I was committing to her, but in the, in your marriage vows, you commit to God. And that's a big deal. You know, that's not a something to take lightly.

And I never have. And, uh, so in this deal, I was like, okay, I'm going to do this. I looked up the calendar.

I said, well, August 1st is coming. I said, I'm going to start on that day and I'm going to go ahead and do this, knock it out and be done with it. Well, you know, some of those commitments you do like that when you get done, you're like, okay, cool.

Well, this is the coolest thing that's ever happened to me. That was, uh, August 1st, um, in 2020, and now I've not stopped doing it. I'm doing it every day and I'm actually going back through it again right now with a friend of mine who's in a Bible study with me at, uh, at RCR. And, uh, watching his life change has been an unbelievable blessing to get to see it and him go through it.

And, uh, so I get to, uh, I'm going to get ready to go through it again and experience it, but I haven't stopped doing it every day. The, you know, praying, reading my Bible, spending that time with him and it's, uh, and he talks to you and it, you know, and it's a, it's a relationship that, uh, you can't explain unless you got it. You know, that's, that's the part that, that's the part that when it came to me or put it on my heart to do that deal with the felt me and I want people to have this because you, you cannot explain it.

If someone doesn't have it, they, they, they, they don't, they don't get it. You know, you have to get into Bible. It's the truth is this God, the living word for a reason. You know, you know, stew normally he hosts a show on off a lot and he loves to talk about the Bible is a, is the text message from the Lord.

You won't know what Lord has to say. You don't need a cell. You got a text message. Just open it up. That's all you need.

Yep. That's all you need. The other, I'm not knocking anything else that people, if you want to read and look at, I do. I look at daily devotionals.

I do that. But the Bible, um, it's all you need. It's all right.

There are presented two edges. Sure. Right there. And it's active living, breathing word of God. Yeah. And it's made a difference in your life. Uh, it's just, just turned it around, turned it upside down and do it, uh, an awful, awesome, I might even say miraculous difference there. To me it is.

And it's trickled down in your family. Oh yeah. I mean, that's, that's important, right? Yes sir. Yeah. So good.

All right. Well, we got Mike's story. We want to hear your stories.

866-348-7884. If you've got a story to share about how, uh, your obedience has led to an amazing blessing in your life, what the Lord's done, we want to hear it. Uh, in our ministry, one of the things I often think about is, uh, as Energize Ministry, we provide gifts of encouragement, uh, appreciation for pastors. And several years ago, I remember there was a very clear moment when the Lord asked us to go on tour and just share this message about praying for your pastor, serving your pastors. You know, we do a lot of work through Christian Radio, Truth Network, one of our, one of our favorite partnerships. But we're always, we're always looking to encourage a nation of believers to be actively investing in the lives of their pastors and their families. And so I remember the moment that God asked us to go out on tour and go visit with these radio stations and just, we were supposed to go coast to coast.

We didn't have a tour bus, we didn't have anything. And uh, and we, but we, but we knew we were supposed to go. So we started lining up these interviews, lining up partnerships, stations that we're going to work with and we're getting closer and closer and we don't have any way to get there.

But the dates were committed. And finally I was driving back from, from Roanoke, Virginia one day and I saw this old RV sitting out by the road and I just stopped and talked to this guy and I said, you know, we're doing this big tour, we're looking for an RV. And anyway, we ended up, make a long story short, we ended up doing some horse trading and got this old thing. And I said, you know, we're leaving in about five days, is it going to make it to San Francisco? That's where we're headed.

He said, I hadn't driven in two years, but I don't see why it wouldn't. And uh, so I had my family, we loaded up, we had this thing all wrapped up into the Energized Ministries, pray for your pastor tour bus. It wasn't much of a bus in those days, but uh, we headed out with not enough money to even get back, but I knew we were supposed to go.

And there were so many amazing stops along the way. Like just those moments that, you know, God puts you in this place for such a time as this. And I remember in those moments of provision, you know, the whole time, you know, we're praying, God, you know, we got to get back, we want this thing to hold together.

And uh, and so there was a moment there at the gas station, the truck stop actually. And uh, we're getting ready to pull out and this big semi pulls across in front of us. And he says, you know, I get out because I know what's getting ready to happen. And I got my little kids in there and he said, uh, he said, what's this big tour all about? I said, well, we're out and encouraging people to be, to be reinvested in the lives of their pastors. He said, well, I don't get to go to church and the Lord just told me, I'm supposed to start tithing and supporting you guys. So here, this guy is a big truck driver. He started sending us a check and little things like that happened all along the way.

Well, do you know we made it back other than one small incident where this, this, this rig I'm telling you about didn't even have a gas gauge in it, it worked. And so it run out of fuel at one point, but it was, but other than that, we made it back and it ended up being, that thing has now transpired into an annual part of our ministry and the, and the Lord has been gracious and has allowed us a much nicer tour bus than we started with. But that was a crazy thing to do, right? And it was, it didn't make any sense, but we have lifelong relationships now with these pastors, people that count on us to count on the prayer support of our team and, and our constituents to, to fight the battle for these guys.

And we, we would have never known any of those people or had these other partnerships if we didn't take this radical leap of faith to go out. So if you got, so you got a story to share like that, we want to hear it. Give us a call. It's 866-348-7884 or 866-34-TRUTH. We just want to hear how, how you have been blessed beyond measure, maybe in smaller ways in, in what the Lord has done, because you've been obedient to Him. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. So if you're just tuning in back to Truth Talk Live, it's Andy Bowersox here, Energized Ministries. We've been talking about how God has shown up in our lives on the other side of our obedience.

We've got Mike Dillon in here with me. We're talking about his conferences, the Hometown Men's Fellowship. He's going to share with us in a minute a link that you can sign up for one of those if you're interested in it. But I was sharing on the other side of this break that in our ministry, you know, there's a lot of things that I don't feel we always get right. I wish there was a lot of things better about what we did, but one of the things that I think people appreciate about our ministry is that we're genuine, we're authentic, and we do our best to respond in obedience to what God asks us to do. If you'd have asked me 14 years ago how we would be reaching pastors nationwide, I thought you were crazy, because in those days it was just me hanging out with pastors, drinking coffee, trying to be a word of encouragement. But I got reminded after I was sharing that story about our bus trips and how one thing has led to another, you know, through the years those bus tours, those prayer tours have led to pockets of people around the country that are committed to the preventive care and prayer support for their own pastors. You know, when it's developed into a program we call PCRs, where people can respond in and become active affiliates of our ministry to help care for their pastors. And one of the ways that thing has grown is that we now have a couple girls and a ladies in our office that are committed to prayer and care support for pastors' wives. And so maybe if you're a pastor listening to this and you're not familiar with our ministry, we'd certainly love to get connected with you.

It's energizeministries.com, our pastors' wives ministry, if your husband's a pastor out there, by all means, you know, right into our office, we'd love to get connected and be the encouragement for you there as well. But anyway, there's, you know, there's more opportunity to share. We were talking about in the Old Testament stories about Joshua and how crazy it is that, you know, the Lord asked him to do something radical, to start hiking around the city of Jericho and, you know, in those days Joshua was a military man and, you know, had strategy and war tactics and, you know, marching around and blowing trumpets was not part of the plan on taking down a city. But that's what God asked him to do, and we get to know the rest of the story, how it played out, and it was miraculous, you know, and I often think personally, Mike, you've probably heard me say this about Noah building an ark and how is it possible that here's a man for over a hundred years, I mean, that's the amount of time it took him to put this ark together, when there's never been any rain, how is it possible that this guy stays committed for over a hundred years because he believed in what God told him to do and as we know now, it saved his family and just crazy big story, right?

I mean, there's so many of those things. I mentioned the story about sharing the nets earlier, putting the nets down on the other side of the boat with the disciples. God sometimes asks us to do things that don't make any sense.

He has reasons beyond our understanding, you know, the Bible tells us clearly we get to see in part, not in full, so we follow, we obey, we get to experience the blessing of the Lord when we do. So if you have that story, got a few minutes left, we'd love to hear it. It's 866-348-7884, love to hear your stories, but Mike, what else comes to mind, what else have you seen God do either through your hometown men's fellowship or in your own life that you want to share with our listeners today? Well, I mean, it's just, it's every day, you know, I, um, you and I, we're talking about now, um, doing our next event, October 15th of this year. And, uh, it's just, I, I, it's, it's every day anymore that I get to, uh, experience changes more so with the, with the Bible studies, you know, um, we do there at the shop and, uh, with other men and women in our Bible studies and, uh, just to get to see the changes in folks and what God can do for them.

Yeah. You know, when I think about your life and how you were obedient to that, like, first of all, I just pick up a book, it was devotional book that led you deeper into the scripture. And then you feel the, you know, among many other little things, but then you feel the nudging to, to start this, to, to bring some men together to share and Lord brings you way more over, over double what you are even optimistically hoping for. But I, what I see in your life is little things that add up, right?

I believe it's somewhere in the, in the Bible. He talks about if you're faithful in the small things, he'll grant you the bigger things. And I've experienced that. And so, you know, you're, you're one of those guys that's an encouragement to me that little things add up to bigger things and it keeps growing. And that's so true in so many areas of our life.

So probably, you know, you, you made me, you think made me think about it, probably the, the biggest blessing. I've been married for 37 years now and, uh, the, the, to recognize what I should have been doing for 37 years for my wife, the man I should have been, the, you know, the husband I should have been as her leading her and, and our, uh, we're one, right. And uh, um, you know, she's, she's got a, she's not, I'm not there yet. I don't know if I'll ever be there.

Right. But, uh, I'm working hard at it for her and, uh, I want to be the best I can be for her. And that, that change has come along with all this also, you know, I thought it was pretty good guy for a while, but I was horrible.

I wasn't a good, I wasn't. And, uh, but I'm getting there. I'm getting there. It's getting better. And we're doing this together.

And that's the coolest thing. Again, there's all kinds of, of experiences. Like you asked a question like that, it's like, it's a, it's an every day, you know, that's why you got to get up every day and, and start your day with God because it's the battles every day, you know, the spirit that you're going to be battling every day in order to keep this going.

And uh, and it's not going to do it. You can't do it once a week, you know, do something good here and there. It's a every day and then you go to sleep and then you wake up the next day and you better put your armor on and get up and be ready to fight again because the devil's not going to stop. Hey, we, we say all the time, ministry is messy, you know, there, there's nothing easy about it. And, and for all you pastors that are listening out there, I know you're out there.

I know you're in the car somewhere right now. Listen to this. And, and you know, like we tell people, if God doesn't call you to it, to some sort of ministry then like, you know, vocational ministry like pastoring, you better run the other direction because we need it. We need another hour here because we need some people to call in and we want to hear what they got here.

Here are those doors. I want to, I want to share another, another quick story just cause it's sort of cross, you know, you're in the racing business and, and uh, you know, we, we've, we've had some connections in there years past, but one of the things I often think about is several years ago when the book crazy love was, was very popular. It was, it was a Bible study book from Francis, Francis Chan and my small group from our home church was studying that book and it was after we had started energized ministries, we're reaching out to other pastors and for whatever reason, I just felt like we were supposed to, we were actually going to be in California at the racetrack out there in Fontana and uh, I was out there with some friends and I just felt like we should reach out to Francis Chan and say, Hey, would you like to come join us and just take a day off and enjoy, you know, us giving back to you.

And I remember talking to his, to his assistant and she said, he needs that more than anybody I know. I'm gonna make sure he comes out and just spend some unencumbered recreation time with your team. And so we had him there and uh, you know, Lonnie Klaus, he was, Lonnie was a chaplain for NASCAR at the time. And Lonnie came up to me that morning at the racetrack and he said, Hey, you got to make sure that you bring Francis Chan to, to the chapel service.

And I said, well, we're planning on coming, but he's like, it's going, it's going to be like nothing you've ever seen. So I said, okay, well anyway, we would go to the chapel service, you know, and in the world of NASCAR, MRO is very faithful to provide chapel services before the races for the drivers and team members. And um, so as we're sitting there, Lonnie been a, been a chaplain at that point, I think for 12 years and honestly, you know, that's a, it's a pretty good gig for a minister, right? He's going to fly around these fancy planes and hang out at racetracks and, and Lonnie made the comment that side, that Saturday after Saturday afternoon for Saturday race, he said, guys, you know, I've been here for 12 years with you, but this is my last week.

I'm going to resign because I've been studying this book called crazy love. Now then Lonnie had no idea at the time that the guy who wrote that book, Francis Chan is going to be sitting in that chapel service. No way he could have known that, but he said, I've been studying this book and it's challenged me to give up the comforts of my life.

So he was moving from the, that flashy, you know, at the, especially in those days it was, the NASCAR has always been kind of a big deal, but uh, he said, I'm gonna move to Mexico and I'm gonna work at this, move a whole family to Monterey, Mexico to work in this orphanage. He said, that's how what the Lord spoke to me through this book and he said, I didn't know it and you guys certainly didn't know, but the guy that wrote that book happens to be here today. And so in this moment, Mike, you know, Lonnie's making this major change out of obedience to go follow the Lord based on something he wrote or he read and the guy that wrote it happened to be there that there's no way anybody could put this together. So Lonnie moves, I know you didn't see him for a few years after that. But I didn't see him until I ran into him on a, on a cruise ship.

It's a Christian themed cruise we happen to be on. And I run into Lonnie and he's like, you're not going to believe what happened. He said, I've been, I've been trying to visit this church in, uh, up north and wasn't able to work it out. Well, lo and behold, the pastor from that church happened to be at a conference in Texas where the, where Francis Chan was speaking about this NASCAR chaplain that resigned his position to go pursue the Lord, no matter the cost. And that guy remembered, Hey, this is the guy that's been calling me anyway. Lonnie went up to church, started supporting him. All this crazy stuff like these dots connecting dots around the globe happened in California.

I don't hear about it until we're in the Bahamas from a pastor from New England to Texas. It all works together. God works together, all things work together for the good of those that love him.

And all this happens because God calls to be faithful and obedient. So just to wrap it up, Mike, thanks for being in here with us today. It's always great to hang out with you. For you guys that are listening, tune in to make sure you follow the hometown men's fellowship October 15th, 2024, it's going to be another event in North Carolina. Love to see you another program powered by the truth network.