Man Up...At Man Camp! - Part 3

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This is the Truth Network. Once a world champion wrestler, now a champion for Christ. Once the Russian nightmare, now the devil's worst nightmare, and your tag team partner, Nikita Kolov.

It's time to man up. Nikita Kolov here, five-time world champion. I, along with my ministry partner, Lex Luger, have a few questions for you. How healthy are you right now, physically? Physically? Spiritually? Emotionally? Mentally? Financially? How healthy do you want to be? What's holding you back from being even healthier?

What's the gap? Lex and I will take our combined years of experience in health and wellness, developing a championship mentality, as well as our spiritual journeys, and share with you all that we have learned. You won't just get answers, but you'll also get direction. From good to God, from your man cave to our man camp, you are invited on a journey to a new place in life. Man camp is not just another event. This is an experience, and we personally invite you to come and experience man camp. Nikita Kolov here, the Russian nightmare. No, I'm sorry. I always say that.

I don't know why. The devil is a nightmare, Nikita Kolov. I'm here at man camp. We're here live, and this week has been absolutely amazing to witness what these man men from all over America that have gathered together here in Royston, Georgia, and their lives are being impacted.

To just be a witness to that is amazing. I've got Bill sitting here with me. Bill, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Great to have you.

Bill, just share with our listeners. Just take a minute or two, and if you could condense the week down and the days we've been together into how man camp has impacted your life personally. Personally, I didn't know what to expect because I was clueless.

Number one, I'd never been to a camp such as this, or any camp for that matter. So when I got here, I came expecting. You'd sent encouraging emails, which helped tremendously, right? I didn't ask you back, but I was like, thank you, Jesus, for what you sent out because it truly helped me, not knowing what was coming. When I got here, I don't know, I felt the Lord's presence, and I just knew I was in the right place. So as the week progressed, the first night was very touching.

I enjoyed it. Night two, when you brought out the chair. Oh, I can't speak on the chair. Okay, nevermind.

You don't have to go play by play. Oh no, I wasn't. I had to mention the chair. Well, the chair impacted me most out of everything. It gave me the opportunity to clear everything out.

I left everything out that I had in me. Visually, it was my foundation that I had my Christian life based on, or built on, was not of rock. God showed me it crumbling.

That's what I went through in the process of the chair, my whole foundation crumbling. Let me ask you this, Bill. Let me ask you, we met, I was doing an autograph, book signing down at a car dealership in Aitkin, South Carolina, and then I ministered the next day on that Sunday. We met over that weekend, and you had voiced to me, which a lot of guys do, I want to come to Man Camp. Next thing I do, I saw you registered.

What would you say? What prompted you to want, let's just even back up prior to you getting, what prompted you to want to come to Man Camp, Bill? Well, earthly prompts were my feelings toward you. I mean, you were a huge idol of mine. I loved your wrestling career. I followed you throughout your career. I followed you when you were on the Preacher's Daughter. Yeah, the reality show, Preacher's Daughter. Yeah, I saw that you were authentic on the program. I was like, well, okay. And then when I met you, it was a done deal.

Religiously speaking, God told me that you got to do it because I didn't want to do it. Right. A lot of guys don't.

I mean, they do, but they don't. Does that make sense? Yeah. I didn't know what to expect. In my mind, I thought I was doing great as a Christian, but I knew there was areas to work on. And this area, I mean, this just really blew me away. So there were areas of your life that you knew needed some work. And of course, Man Camp is about body, soul and spirit, the whole man. Lex and I, when we facilitate these, our goals is to send men home better equipped to be godly men, godly husbands, godly fathers. Be healthy and spirit, soul and body. So that's part of what you have encountered this weekend.

Yes. And to show you how good God is, about a year ago, I looked at my wife. I said, why am I crying all the time? I just started weeping over little things and I never could figure it out.

Well, here, I figured it out. God was preparing me to be more open, to be okay with crying in front of men. Because first thing, when I cried a sad movie, I'd wipe my eye and make sure nobody was looking.

A little bit shame there because my father was old school. But God is just so good because he was building me up to tear me down. So it was just wonderful. Well, and I would summarize by saying this in regards to that.

One of the shortest scriptures in the Bible is Jesus wept, right? Right. Well, listen, I can't thank you enough. Go ahead. Listen, I can't thank you enough to really honestly, for you to come and be a part of camp here. And it's just been a blessing to watch you embrace the process and grow. Well, I can't thank you enough for doing this. I mean, you've helped me. If you hadn't helped anybody else that's come to camp, you've helped me tremendously. I'm sure you'll begin to thank you for my wife. Well, great to have you. Thanks, Bill. I appreciate you, sir.

All right. It's hard to even put into words this experience when Lex Luger, I like to say my peak performance partner is with me and we get the opportunity to facilitate these events. Of course, I have a phenomenal staff that comes and volunteers their time as well and leaves work. And I got sitting down with me now, my brother, Paul, and I just want to welcome you to the show, Paul. Thank you for being with us. Thank you.

It's great to have you here. And, you know, we met just, I don't know, maybe a month or two ago over at a dear friend of ours, Joshua Gillum's church, I think is where we first met, right? Sure. And, you know, from that encounter, I know he had been speaking to you and talking to you about the possibility of attending this thing called Man Camp. Yeah. What were maybe like your first thoughts when he first started talking to me about it?

I mean, my first thought was no way. Like most men. Yeah. No, yeah. I grew up, you know, going to the Christian camp thing. As a youth. As a youth, yeah. And I kind of hadn't experienced that as an adult.

I would go annually on a prayer retreat by myself in solitude. Okay. But camp with other guys, I just thought, I don't know, you know, that sounds like, sounds like a kind of intimidating, I guess. Sure.

Sure. So conversation with my pastor. In conversation with my pastor, I was kind of working through some issues in my life.

And he would gently suggest time and time again, you should try out this Man Camp thing. And I finally just yielded and said, okay, I'll go. Like, just, I get it. Right. Right.

So, yeah, that's kind of how I ended up here. You're going to have to remind me what the question was here. Sorry. I kind of lost my train of thought there. No, no.

It's all good. So he prompted you, kind of, you finally kind of gave in and said, okay, I'll go. Yeah. And any, any, so I'm just curious, any, so did you kind of build up in your mind kind of any certain expectations or kind of what you thought it might be like? Yeah, you know. How did you have that past camp experience when you were a youth? Yeah, for sure. I mean, my youth camps were a lot, I mean, they were youth camps, right?

It was a lot of outdoor activity, maybe small times of worship, calls to repentance, to Christ. And I had good experiences with that. But, you know, the funny thing is, I had, I'm not a wrestling fan, but I don't know anything about it.

Just didn't grow up with it. Which is okay. That's refreshing. So, you know, I said, well, I have no idea who these people are. So I looked you up and went, oh no, what am I getting into?

Like, is this going to be like a wrestling macho experience? Right. But, you know, my pastor, knowing him, I knew that's not really what I was going to get into.

Like, that's just not him. And he certainly would not have sent me to something like that. So I kind of, I didn't look up anything about main camp. I didn't even really ask questions.

I just kind of wanted to approach the whole thing with fresh eyes. Yeah. Well, and so I've had the privilege of really just kind of not only witnessing you really run after the heart of God this week, but even, even have some conversations with you, pray with you. And, and I've, I've witnessed anyway, God seems like impact, really impact your heart this week. And is there something for you that Paul, that really stands out?

Yeah. You know, again, I came here with no expectations. In fact, I was thoroughly busy with my work in the weeks leading up to this.

So I didn't have time to contemplate what I was approaching this with, in terms of expectations. And we've been having over the past few days, a time of just raw openness with other men, which is something that I hadn't I hadn't really experienced in my life. We as men tend to harbor things.

We keep them buried, cover them up, get a hardened exterior. Right. That's part of what it's like to be a man.

Build walls. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, being with these other men, it's, it's funny from day one on Sunday to today, which is Thursday, I've seen those exteriors kind of just melt off a lot of these men. And I've been developing relationships. And throughout the past few days, as we've been having times where men are opening up and just sharing their brokenness, I started having this experience of my own brokenness. I, I'd like to say that I'm a man of confession. I live a life of confession and repentance. But the Lord just brought to light things that in my life that were unresolved, really tough things that were unresolved. I'm 36 now.

These are things that happened 25 years ago that I buried deep in my heart and have been causing unimaginable grief and pain in my life. And the Lord used this opportunity of seeing other men just come out of their shells and be transparent and exposing themselves to each other, that God just spoke to me and said, it's time to deal with this. Oh, man. That's so great, Paul.

That's amazing. And for our listeners too, you have muscular dystrophy. And so, a lot of times guys come with different physical challenges and, hey, am I going to be able to participate? Have you found that there's anything that we do here that you haven't been able to participate in, even struggling with that challenge?

Yeah, no, not really. There's been a lot of accommodation for my muscular dystrophy. There are certain things, we've got a huge hill out back here to the cabins. I can't walk down that. But the men here have been reaching out with love and compassion. I found out another thing about myself here too, and that's that I'm incredibly prideful.

I'd rather try to tackle that hill. That's foolish. It's leaning on my own strength. And so God's been teaching me to let other people bless me. But, you know, all in all, everyone's been, this whole experience has been incredibly accommodating to my challenges in life. You know, I'm seeing God's glory being perfected through other people because of my struggles. And He's perfecting it in me by allowing other people to love me in my imperfections. That's great, Paul.

I mean, that summarizes it. And again, it's just been a blessing for me to be able to witness and, you know, even with your physical challenges, just embrace the process and, you know, with all your heart and manages. I love you, Paul. I love you too. And I'm glad you're here. I'm glad you came. Thank you. God bless you, my friend.

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DriveCrescent.com. Hi, my name is Lex Luger, one of the co-founders of Man Camp. Nikita and I met, we were both professional wrestlers back in the late 80s. And interesting because we weren't friends. We worked together, we were co-workers, but we didn't mingle at all.

And so I guess they say we really didn't get along all that well. We just kind of tolerated each other. And Nikita left professional wrestling and met the Lord in the early 90s. Then on April 20th of 06, God rescued me and we were reunited in a way that only God can. Things just grew from there until eventually we almost do full-time ministry together, which eventually led to this idea of the foundation and founding of Man Camp. I've never seen an event quite like this where all aspects of being a man, mentally, physically, spiritually, how all those work together in today's world.

It all has biblical truth and foundations behind it. We believe some of the key aspects of Man Camp are number one, the guys taking the time to get away and really dig in in their relationship with God. It's really hands-on with Nikita and I. It's pretty intense, but it's a lot of fun too.

A lot of interactive activities that God's put together. It's so thrilling to watch the men from the first day they come until on the fifth day when they go back home, we send them off. It's just amazing to see the change in them, just their continence on their face. It is truly a blessing to us.

Nikita Kolov here live at Man Camp. I don't even know how to put it into words. It's just a phenomenal week, an amazing week, an extraordinary week. Those words really don't even describe it, but you've got with me sitting here now, my brother Ray. Ray, great to have you on the show. Thank you for having me. Yeah, thanks for joining us. Ray, I know we've met from someone else who had a mutual friend who had attended Man Camp prior who now comes back and has staffed every Man Camp. Steve, I think Steve, is he the one who kind of introduced you to Man Camp and encouraged you to consider coming? Yes, sir. Okay. What did he say?

I'm just always curious. Like, what did he say here? Like, you got to go do this. What did he say? He told me, he said, Ray, you remember the wrestler Nikita Kolov? And I was like, yeah, I sure do. He said, he does this camp for men. It's called Man Camp. He said, and I went, he said, I'm going to tell you, it's going to be a blessing.

I think you should go. And that was about two months ago. Okay.

Maybe two and a half months ago. Okay. And I told him, I said, I'll look into it. He gave me some videos to look up about Man Camp.

Website probably. Yes, sir. Yeah. And I looked at it and immediately God started dealing with me. And God told me, he said, you need this. And about, he told me, he said, Ray, just go on. He said, Nikita's going to text you. I'm going to give him your phone number.

He's going to call you first. Were you like, yeah, right. I was like, yeah, sure he is. And he said, no, by the way, he doesn't have that Russian accent. I was like, okay.

My English is dramatically improved since my wrestling. So I listened and you called me. I waited.

I was anticipation, I guess, waiting. And finally you called and I talked to you and you told me about, and you said, Ray, go, go on it and register and we'll work it out. Don't worry about the finances.

God will make a way. And I started praying about it and I registered and my wife said, I think you should go. She said, I don't want you to go because I'll miss you. She said, but I think this will be good for you and for us. So I registered and then I saw different things about the camp and I was like, man, finances, cause I have cancer and things we went through with my daughter that passed away five years ago or six years ago now. And we're just now getting back on track and man, I started to use that as an excuse not to come.

Right. And you sent me an email saying, Ray, you got a scholarship to come to camp. I said, wow, God, you really must want me to go. And I'm going to tell you right now, I can't put a price on anything that this camp has meant to me.

I would, I wish I miss my wife and I want to see my wife and my kids and my grandkids, but I wish the camp was longer. I actually wish my wife could come to something like that. Yeah. Yeah. It would be a great thing to build that couple relationship so they know how to deal with the issues that women have concerning how to deal with us, me and my daughter.

Right. Concerning how to deal with us men and to be here at camp and learn so much about what God really wants from me. And I won't lie to you. I've never fasted before, but I fasted here and I'm a big boy and I love to eat.

Oh, I love to eat with, I think we all do, but yeah, but food, food was my comforter. And during fasting, we had that one day and God told me, no, you're not going to eat yet. I didn't know I'd have a choice. And God said, no. And then I started reading my Bible and asking God for answers and he laid it out for me. Just crystal clear. Yes, sir. And after all that, I will admit I see, like today, everything is brighter and clearer to me of what I need to do. As soon as I get in my truck, before I pull out of this parking lot, I got a couple of things I need to take care of on my phone that I'm going to do.

Yeah. And my wife deserves better. My kids deserve better, but I also deserve better than what I've been given myself. Well, I have, I know, and just watching you this week and you're embracing the process and just, you know, the transfer, really, honestly, I would say this with the transformation of your heart and your willingness just to engage has been, I mean, nothing short of a huge blessing for me, personally, to witness. And I'm glad you made that decision. How long were you out, like you referenced the cancer, you've been battling that for about how long? A year now. Okay. I found it on June of 2020 that I had cancer and I found out in August that it was stage four.

Okay. And so we're just, I mean, and your approach to that, you know, has been just stellar in my eyes and just how you, as far as I can see how you're handling that. And just in my heart of hearts, whatever God's got planned for the future to come for you, for your wife, for your marriage and your family, I'm excited for you, even in the midst of the current challenge that you're facing in battling the cancer. And we know God's the ultimate physician and the great healer. Amen to that. And that's what I've been praying for. And that's what we're going to continue to pray for in Jesus name is that God touches you physically as he has ministered to you spiritually and even mentally and emotionally, which is what we cover here at the camp.

Right? Yes, sir. Well, it's been great to have you here, Ray. Thank you so much. And, uh, I love you, my friend, growing a love in my heart for you, my friend. Thank you so much for what you do. I really appreciate being here. I'm blessed.

Well, we all, we all are. Thanks Ray. Thank you. Men, I would like to challenge each of you to consider spending five days with Lex Luger and I at Man Camp, pursuing the heart of God. Ladies, if you're listening, we'll send your men home better equipped to be men of God, Godly husbands, and Godly fathers that appeals to you. Give them your blessing and encourage them to sign up today at mancamp.info. Pastors, if you would like to bring Koloff for Christ Ministries and Man Up Conference to your community, go to koloff.org and email me.

Remember this it's time to Man Up. We so appreciate our listeners. If you will support this program with a financial gift of any amount, I will send you a personalized copy of my latest book, Nikita, a tale of the ring and redemption. Go to koloff.net. That's koloff.net, koloff.net, and make your contribution today. Nikita Koloff here.

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