Rodney Smoots, David Bradswell and Brad Bartlett drops by for a conversation

This is Hans Schile from the Finishing Well Podcast.

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Oh yeah, that was. I was like, well... Kingdom Pursuits, where you hear from ordinary people instilled with an extraordinary passion. Together, we explore the stories of men and women who take what they love and let God turn their passion into Kingdom Pursuits. Now, live from the Truth Booth, your host, Robbie Dilmore. Oh, what a show we have lined up for you today.

All sorts of fun, because there are so many, you know, you don't usually think of January as being an event-filled month, but I can assure you that January is an event-filled month, especially the end of January this year, because we have so many things coming at you to begin with. We have Rodney Smoots. Some refer to him, and you'll hear him later on today. Smoots, right, and David Braswell with Masculine Journey's Entrenchment that's coming up actually this Friday, next Friday, and Saturday.

So that's the 27th and the 28th, and wow, you're going to find out so much more about that, but welcome guys. Thank you, thank you. Good to be here, Robbie. So if you are regular listeners to The Masculine Journey, you're familiar with Rodney. Rodney is guest hosting today, by the way, on Masculine Journey, so it's a really good episode. Don't you think, David? Yeah, it was a great episode, yeah. Did you notice that Danny didn't get in the first clip this time? No, no he didn't.

Nope, wonder why. And next up, we have Brad Bartlett, and Brad is an author. He wrote a book, Mended in a Broken World, and so welcome, Brad.

Well, thank you. It's good to be here. And I love the byline to that, or what do they call that line underneath that says, Living with Peace and Contentment.

Yeah, that was the subtitle I came up with after the book was edited. And what do you guys think? Does it look like peace over there? Are you seeing peace? Now that looks like peace.

I'm pretty sure that's contentment. I was gonna say, he's calm as can be. He really is. So you're looking forward to hearing from Brad. And then also, talk about events. You have The Intensive coming up with Roy Jones and his group that's coming up this weekend with Lee Strobel. And as an exciting part of that, Stu is in the Energize Network with Andy Bowersox, Andy Bowersox has put together a pastor's lunch on Friday, the 27th at 1130. It's going to be at Calvary's West Campus here in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. So again, Lee Strobel, what an event.

And for pastors and leaders of any kind, actually, from what I understand, really easy to do if you go to energizeministries.com to register for that. We got, Stu is going to be calling in. We hope we'll be able to hear him, or maybe he'll be able to hear us.

We got a little phone issue going on, but we're doing what we can here. So, you know, Carmen, that, you know, we're speaking of men and mended. I like the way that mended goes with men, don't you think?

So it's the men's intensive, it's the men's, you know, all that stuff. So speaking of mended. Now the fun begins, cause now it's time to play Shenanigans. Yeah, that's what we've been waiting for. You can say it's smoots.

Okay, let's see how he does. All right, so an ancient lecturer of Greece took his fancy trousers to be mended. You know, the idea is mended today. So, you know, Euripides, asked the tailor. Ah, yes, replied the lecturer, Eu-mendedes.

They were Italian, you know. Yeah, Euripides. No, Eu-mendedes.

You liked that, didn't you, David? Yeah. Okay, good.

So here comes the hard ones. Are you ready? Are you ready? Okay.

What did the nurse tell her patient after he refused to let her men to cut on his arm? Anybody got anything? What do you think? Brad? No. Rodney? Smoots?

David? No, nothing. All right. She said, fine, suture yourself.

I'll have to put that in my repertoire. Of course, yes. And I've been having a lot of trouble mending this broken fence out in my neighborhood. So I went to Stu and other Facebook aficionados, you know, the people spend a lot of time there because, you know, I needed some tips. You know why? Come on, you guys know Stu. He might spend a little time on Facebook. You couldn't find anything that was posted? I like that.

But he is the best at reposting. Very good. See, I don't do social media. So, you know, at the end of those shenanigans, we actually would have a riddle for you to call in and win. And oh my goodness, what are you going to win today? All sorts of stuff. So what are you going to win today? All sorts of stuff. So we have prizes galore. And there's lots of answers possibly to this.

But here's what happened. I visited the Wailing Wall the other day. You know, you go to Jerusalem, you go to the Wailing Wall. Yeah. I brought my harpoon and they just looked at me like I was stupid.

Well played, Smoot. So, you know, with that said, here's the actual call, riddle to call in. And what is a Wailing Wall in Jerusalem?

If you don't use a harpoon, what is the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem? 866348 is the number to call in and win. 86634 truth. And if they can guess that, I'll have to tell them what they'll win because we have so many mics and just one karma. You are going to win. Like not only do we have Demon Deacon tickets, we have Demon Deacon tickets to Saturday. That's next Saturday, the 28th.

And they're going to be playing, let's see, NC State. Oh, my goodness. And so you could win those if you choose or if you would prefer. We have tickets to the Intensive with Lee Strobel on Friday and Saturday. And we have tickets for the Lee Strobel Luncheon at 1130.

And if we hadn't mentioned that the entrenchment that's going on Friday, the 27th and the 28th, it's F-R-E-E free. Oh, yes. All that.

All that. All you have to do is call in at 866-348-7884 and tell us what, what is the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem? And we will try to get your calls in.

Either way, we can get you the stuff, even if the machine isn't working. But we've still got Stu calling in to talk about what's going on with the pastors at Lee Strobel. So how fun is that? So, Brad, is this your first book? Yes, sir.

It's my first book. It's been a 12-year process. So, you know, based on 2 Corinthians chapter 1, it always says, you know, the God of all comfort comforts us with the comfort we've been comforted with. I'm guessing you were mended in a broken world. Oh, yeah. At 37 years old, I wasn't worth killing. So God had a lot of work to do with me. And did you have a lot of peace and content when you were 37? Oh, no. Oh, no. Things were not working well.

Trying to live my own life, my own way. And I got saved. And I thought, wow, this is the most awesome thing I can imagine. But I went ahead for the first 15 years and managed to try to do it in my own strength.

And that didn't work either. And that's when I started journaling. And the journaling ended up as a process that led to the book.

So why did you start journaling? Well, I looked at the New Testament church. And I looked at my own Christianity. And during my prayer time, I always had an underlying theme of what is it about my Christianity that doesn't look like New Testament Christianity. And as the Lord revealed some things to me, I would write those down so I could remember them for myself. And it turns out it might be for others also. Isn't that wonderful? So again, the book is called Mended in a Broken World.

We have it there, by the way, at KingdomPursuits.com. And we're going to be talking a lot about Brad. We'll see how broken he was. We're going to...

But speaking of broken, David, that's what the entrenchment is for, right? Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely going to be a great weekend to be able to listen to some good talks from other men that have walked some of the same things that we're dealing with on a daily basis.

And to bring you closer to the Father and just kind of secure that relationship and kind of give you a more intimate feel with it. Right. We have these boot camps you may have heard of that we do with Masculine Journey. But this is like boot camp light to some extent, because you don't spend the night there. You come in Friday, listen to a few talks, and come back and spend the day Saturday with us.

How wonderful. And in doing so, you'll be eligible to go to the advanced boot camp that's coming up in the spring. And so we're hoping a lot of people come share that maybe have not had the time to do a complete boot camp to get the spirit of that. And so that's coming up again next Friday. And we've got so much more details for you.

Stay tuned. Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the kingdom. And we have poster tickets for the book of Kings, and we have a poster ticket for the book of Kings, and we have a poster ticket for the book of Kings, and we have a poster ticket for the book of Kings, and we have a poster ticket for the book of Kings, and God uses it to build the kingdom. And we have poster children all over the place today.

For that, here in the studio with us, how fun is this? We have Brad Bartlett. He's the author of Mended in a Broken World, as well as Rodney Smoots, and David Braswell with Masculine Journey's entrenchment that is coming up this Friday and Saturday. You can go to masculinejourney.org to register for that.

It's absolutely strobel. It's also on the 27th and the 28th, and all that information is at truthnetwork.com, as well as there is a luncheon with Lee Strobel, which is going to happen on Friday the 27th at 1130 at Calvary's West Campus. And we're going to get more information, I hope, from Stu Everson on that in just a minute.

He may be on the air, right, but we're waiting on him, but as the case may be. So, you know, Rodney, what would you tell people that are thinking, you know, I've listened to these guys on Masculine Journey, and I've done this and that. You know, how do I get set up to go on this entrenchment? What's my next step? The next step is to sign up. So, you got to do that.

So, first things first, right? Get on the website masculinejourney.org and go sign up. It's going to be this Friday night for one talk, and then the rest of the talks will be on Saturday. Meals, both Friday, not on Saturday, though, I guess, just lunch. You got an evening meal and then a lunch, and then the biggest thing is who doesn't need encouragement from God?

That's what I need. So, when God comes in and starts, you know, wrecking your life and you got things bouncing all over the place and he's like trying to, you know, bring you to him and, you know, stop relying on yourself and rely on him more. It's one of those things where if I don't take some time to put God into my life and, you know, have some focused time with him, I can just let my mind go anywhere I want and just get wrecked and just go off and do things on my own power, just like Brad was saying a minute ago. And one of the things that I love is these entrenchments, these boot camps force me into a time where it's like, okay, I'm going to spend time with you, Lord, and not let other things come in and butt in. So, it's one of those things where I get away and I'm able to just sit and focus more on God when I am in a situation where everybody else is doing that.

When I'm off in the regular world, I have a very tough time focusing. So, that's what I love about getting into these camps. And what Rodney's talking about is what we call a covenant of silence. And so, we have these talks.

There's no doubt that we people talk, but we're nowhere near as powerful as when God talks. So, after those talks, in each case, there's an hour where you go out in the woods, essentially, or we'll have other places to go, whether it's not for you to get along with God in a journal, like what Brad was talking about. And oh my goodness, that's what changes lives, doesn't it, David? Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I know the last entrenchment we had, even though there was a hurricane going on, I had breakthrough right in the middle of the stage, responding to the wound talk. And it's kind of awesome just to see how not only does God work in your life during those, but he also works in everybody that's theirs lives. And just the joy that you get from seeing that and knowing that you're a part of that and God's working through you to speak to other men is just, I can't even explain it.

Right. And so, again, what I see time and again is when people hear something from God on a subject that, obviously, these were designed, maybe that's not obvious, they were designed by John Eldridge, his team, when they started doing boot camps up in Colorado. And, you know, we're part of that ministry to some extent, and we've just used that material to hopefully stimulate that prayer time. That's what, you know, we're the setup for the main event. And what we're getting is the stories of the individuals that are going up on stage. What you're finding out is, wow, they've had some of the same struggles, the same problems that I'm going through.

Different things hit you from different people at different times. And when you get a whole weekend to go do that in a regular boot camp, you know, there's a lot of time to interact in here for, you know, two days, you know, one full day at a night. It's not as much time, but it gives you a taste and a flavor for what a full weekend with God could be like, and that's where we start at.

Very fun. Well, we have Jamal, and we're going to see if our phones work. Oh, well, Jamal is in North Carolina. So, Jamal, you're on the Kingdom Pursuits, which I almost said Christian Car Guy.

I get confused at times. I understand that you do a lot of dinner radio shows, Robbie, and we thank you for what you do, sir. Thank you. What have you got for us? So this is about the Wailing Wall question, right?

Oh, yes, yes, yes. So I showed up with my harpoon and just didn't get it done. What should I have been doing?

You should have been, from my guess, wailing and praying at the wall as some of the other Orthodox Jewish people do. That's my stab at it. That's my shot with the harpoon. Oh, you are exactly right, Jamal. You're exactly right. And why, from your perception, which I know you're familiar with it, why do you think they wail? It's like a crying out, getting out things that are on their chest, things that they're holding in. It's a chance for them to cry out to God while they do it at a wall.

You got me on that one. Well, here's my—well, I'm going to actually let somebody else call in and talk about why they do it at the wall, but they are wailing out to God. In fact, I wonder if they're at times quoting either the 13th Psalm or maybe they're quoting Habakkuk chapter 1, verse 3—no, 2? How long, O Lord, will I cry and you will not listen? How long will I even cry for violence and you will not save? Yeah, that is something to wail about. That is something to wail about. And wow.

And sometimes he's like, I did. Hello, McFly. I'm sorry, I couldn't resist. But thank you, Jamal. I appreciate you.

Always one of my favorite people. And by the way, just so you know, Jamal years ago sent me a joke book from March, which I often find fodder for, you know, these wonderful like—I heard this terrible joke a minute ago from Brad. What was your joke, Brad? Have I told you the joke about paper? It's terrible. I told you, Jamal, isn't that a joke?

That's—it is terrible. Thank you, buddy. I appreciate you calling in so much.

God bless. And you won. So I'm gonna put you back on hold so you can get which of those prizes you want. Hang on. So you can see we still have—and the good news is the phones are working again. So I'm excited about that.

Which means that Stu can call in and we're excited about that. But you can call in and you can win if you can tell us why that wall. What's up with that wall? And there are no harpooning from that wall. They won't even allow you up there.

Somebody found out for sure. So Brad, me being just a curious person, so when you say you were broken, can you take us—what does that actually mean? You were strung out on cocaine? Well, in my 37 years, I don't want to give the enemy a praise report, but just the typical bill of fare—drugs, alcohol, women, alcohol.

I said alcohol twice because I like alcohol, or I did, rather. And also, mental breakdown, the whole spectrum, jail time. So can you take us back to the mental breakdown part? What were you, what was going on? Well, the best I can refer to it in a Christian context is I was wandering, I was wandering around— The mic was wandering there for a minute. And I was wandering around in the Spirit without the protection of Christ.

Right. It was just all craziness and demonic things and wild thinking and all that, so. And so what were some of those thoughts? One of the thoughts was that I had gone into the throne room of God. I didn't know it was called the throne room then, but I knew in my heart if I opened my eyes, I'd be a dead man, that kind of thinking. At a place at the beach and the refrigerator was empty, I was hallucinating.

The next moment the refrigerator was full of groceries. I mean, nobody's going to want to buy my book if I keep on much longer, but like I say, I'll answer your question. No, no, actually, in my opinion, they're more likely to buy your book because it can relate. Right. Well, I've got a lot of stories about it. And therein lies the real, you know, where His powers made manifest in our weakness. Right, right.

Well, I was plenty well weak. And I'd, you know, rock bottom does have a basement. Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, and therein lies the, you know, the beauty of where, you know, where we need Him. You know, He's going to find us if we keep running.

I did this amazing, amazing interview this week on Land and Rescue of this man in Pakistan, which you ought to listen to that episode. And oh my gosh, did he run from God. And, you know, he was going to kill his sister and his mother. And I mean, it was a horrible mental anguish that he went through for seven years, praying nights and 11 hours to Allah until he collapsed. And then God showed up in a big way. You know, he was tormented.

But now it's so, you know, I don't know that you can understand peace and contentment if you didn't understand torment. Yes, sir. So, wow. I love that. And I love, well, we have Stu. We're going to get him on for a minute and then we'll get him on in a second. Stu, you're on the Kingdom Pursuits.

What you got for us? Oh, hey. Hey, Robbie.

How are you? Oh, that would be Andrew. I put the wrong Stu on.

Hang on just a second, Andrew. I'm going to get Stu back. Stu.

There you go. Hey, it's and Stu, not Andrew. Well, we're going to the break.

I hate that, Stu. But quickly, what you got for us? Well, Lee Strobel, we got a big lunch for pastors and leaders next Friday, January 27th. He's here for this amazing event. It's a co-ed event that our friend Roy Jones is putting on in Kernsville. But we're doing a lunch that day, Friday. EnergizeMinistries.com, register.

It'll be sensational. Door prizes, great gifts. Reach out to us if you're interested. Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the kingdom. We got Brad Bartlett. He's the author of Mended and a Broken World.

Rodney Smoots and David Braswell with MassPend Journeys. Entrenchment coming up Friday and Saturday. And then the amazing intensive Lee Strobel event that is coming up Friday and Saturday, as well as the luncheon, which we got Stu with us.

And by all means, Stu, let us have it. What have we got going out? It's going to be at Calvary's West, right? Calvary West campus, but it's going to be amazing. We've got lunch. It's for pastors. It's for business leaders.

It's next Friday, the 27th. I've got a bunch of folks helping to sponsor tables, thanks to Le Blue, Mighty Muscadine, Calvary Day School, Goliance Christian Supply, The Intensive. They've been a big part of getting Lee here. We're so excited and grateful for them. And we're excited about the big Friday-Saturday event with them, with Keith and everyone. And so we've been very grateful. WBFJ is also working with us.

They've been supporting and promoting it, and Energize Ministry. So Robby, you know about Lee's books, you know, Case for Christ, Case for Easter, Case for Heaven, right? But have you heard of his latest book that he did with, he hooked up with Betty Crocker? You guys heard about this one? No, he just did a new one, Case for Casserole. Unbelievable, apologetic.

Gourmet? Yeah, and then he's got this other one that's, and of course, I'm glad we can laugh about this now, Case for COVID. It comes with two test kits and a couple masks as well. So that one's really selling. Well, I got you on the air. I know, you know, I get a text, you know, maybe every 20 minutes or something on Facebook, or everybody wants to know what's going on with the towers. And since you're there and you could give us the latest update because I know all our listeners are really concerned and, you know, you can share what's really going on.

Well, so yeah, and on my Facebook page that I posted a couple weeks ago, I've been shocked at the amount of love and amazing prayers from all over the place. High up, President of NRB reached out to me this week, all kinds of folks, and we're, you know, someone just went out and over a period of a systematic, just malicious deal over a period of a couple, two and a half weeks starting before Christmas and just started cutting towers down at one of our main tower sites through network. And so the FBI is involved, they're investigating, our team's working around the clock.

It's been ugly, it's been painful. We're not, we don't know if it's isolated, we don't know if it's a hate crime, a terrorist act. We don't know if we do know if you don't just cut stuff like that down, it takes some real acumen and some real, you know, evil intent. And so we're just trusting the Lord, you know. One verse I've claimed in this season is Proverbs 18, the name of the Lord is a strong tower, and the righteous run into it and are safe. And so we're, I told the TV, and I was on the news, it's interesting, they interviewed me 20 minutes, and I spent 90% of that time from, you know, talking about the Lord and lifting up Christ and trying to share the love of Christ and prayer like we prayed for Erwin Hamlin and all that, and they played about, they played about, they played the only 30 seconds where I talked about the technical stuff, and they played all that. But I know you're not going to edit this out, Robbie, because we know what you're about, and we're so grateful for your program, it's amazing, all those awesome guests in there.

But one thing that I told them, I said, look, they didn't cut our towers down. I said 25 years ago when God started the Truth Network, we gave the whole thing to Him. So they're on His bad side, not on our bad side, and that's why we're praying for them to find full repentance and salvation, and we're just glad that this program's on and everyone's listening and we're thankful for you, and we're pumped about all the events coming up, we're pumped about the Lee Strobel luncheon next week, Lunch with Lee, and go to energizemenistries.com, and you can register, even if you're not a pastor, just register as a leader, and we love that. But we got to have a head count for the food, it's going to be just an amazing time. We're going to have all kinds of goodie bags, and just to hear from Lee and hear his heart.

You know, a guy was an atheist who was a journalist who set out to destroy the Bible, and he came to know Christ when he encountered the resurrected Lord in trying to deny Him, much like the Apostle Paul. So we're pumped about having lunch with all you guys next Friday, the 27th. Thank you, Stu. I really, really appreciate them. Again, God bless you in all you do. Have a great day.

You're out there deaconizing right now, aren't you? I'm deaconizing and wishing everybody a happy stew year in this beautiful January, and a happy Andrew year as well, okay? Thank you, buddy.

Love you guys. All right, well, you know, I don't know if you'd noticed, it's coincidentally, I think it'd be no problem to go out there and get strobelized if you want to go see Lee Strobel at 1130 and still make it to the entrenchment. Yes, absolutely.

And then maybe even, you know, depending on how fast you are, you might could get over to the intensive as well. But, you know, there's all sorts of ways that you can be pushing into the Savior this weekend, this coming weekend, both Friday and Saturday. But we do have Andrew's been hanging on forever, and I'm pretty sure he has a weather report for us. So Andrew, you're on.

Kingdom Pursuits, finally. What's the weather supposed to be out there, Andrew? Okay, we got some cold temperatures, which is supposed to be mostly cloudy skies for the area today. We do have some sun, and after two o'clock, the clouds are going to come in, and it looks like we're going to have some cloudy skies until Sunday or Monday afternoon. Snow chances are in the mountains for freezing temperatures, and then it looks like we've got some warm temperatures, high to mid to upper 50s and low to mid 30s for Stokesdale and the mountains of North Carolina.

We do have some showers here in the Triad, but they're not, they're very light, but as we can tell Kennedy said on WXI-12, we do see some showers and thunderstorms on our radar, but we will see some clearing skies throughout Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, and we'll be happy for that. So Robbie, thanks to you and Stu Everson, and you have a good day. You tell Tammy I love her, okay?

I will do that. Well, so for our listeners, Andrew is my very special friend. He's been in our special needs class at Calvary for years and years, and he's blind, and so when you hear his weather reports, but he has not taken notes.

Well, he might have them in braille, but I don't think so. I think these are all right off his head, and so you do just an amazing job with that, Andrew, and I'm so grateful for what you call in and share. We love you, buddy. Oh, yeah, Robbie. Well, yeah, man, I love you, but I hope you and Tammy can come down and see me this summer. Wouldn't that be good? I know Tammy would love to, and we'll tell her.

I'm going to tell her you called because Tammy loves you. You know that. Yeah. All right. Thank you. All right.

All right, buddy. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. So I have to tell this story on Andrew one time because I got it right here. Like, he loves my wife, and they would always sit next to each other in Sunday school, right, and one day he tells her, right, because he is a big Oprah fan, and so he tells my wife, you know, Tammy, I know exactly what you look like. You look like Oprah. You know, I've seen my wife in a lot of ways. Thank you, Andrew.

She's a sister from another mother, no doubt. Anyway, however that works. We do have all these events coming up, but we want to give you, Brad, another moment to talk about, like, when you knew you were going to come on, what did you want to make sure our listeners knew about your book? Well, I want to lay the background that the book is intended to help make believers become believers. Oh, I like that, make believers. I've never heard that.

I can coin that. It's not copyrighted. Oh, okay. The book is, but not that. Anyway, there are people who know about God, but they don't know God, and that was the first 15 years of my journey with Christ. And it's also to help seekers find the way, but also it can be a devotion book, Sunday school study book. It's 45 short chapters with reflection questions. And one of the pastors I gave the book to said that she is preaching some messages out of the points made in the chapters.

So I think it's a versatile book. My heart desire for 25 years has been to wake up the sleeping giant, which is the church in America. And I believe this could be a resource because my goal and purpose for the rest of my life is to try to be influential in my sphere of influence, the people around me.

If I can't do something about it, if it's too far removed from the impact, I'm not going to go for it. And I want to populate heaven as much as possible before I go. Darrell Bock Don't we all? So we got one more segment coming with my friends, Rodney and David with Masculine Journey. And of course, that's going on as well.

You can go to masculinejourney.org and register for the entrenchment. And we'll be back in a minute with Brad and Rodney and David and maybe you if you call us 866-34-TRUTH. Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the kingdom. And I just love that line. Like, wow, God gives us a passion and then He allows us to to play in a sandbox, so to speak, however that works.

And we have such amazing people with us today. Brad Bartlett, who wrote Mended in a Broken World, Living with Peace and Contemplate, as well as Rodney Smoots and David Braswell with Masculine Journey and their entrenchment, which is coming up this Friday and Saturday. And so if you were to look at Brad's book, Mended in a Broken World, you will notice that it's a globe, but then it's got shards of glass, right? And these shards of glass are specifically what Jesus was talking about in Isaiah 61, where He said, you know, the Spirit of Lord is on me, right?

And He's going to what? Bind up the brokenhearted. Well, that broken heart actually, if you look at that in Hebrew, it has to do with these shards that you're literally, they're pieces of your hearts.

They're shards, and those shards require some binding. And that is what the entrenchment is about, right, Rodney? God is the one that's going to do that binding. It's not going to be Robbie speaking or Rodney.

Rodney will speak, and it'll be wonderful. But that binding of the heart requires the big guy. If you're not getting mended by the Lord Jesus Christ, you're not really getting mended. You think you can do a lot of things in your own strength. For men out there that were broken in all kinds of different ways, you have wounds that you carry from those.

You pose and you fake and you present a false identity so often to who you really are. There's spiritual warfare that comes at you. There's all kinds of things. We're going to speak to many of those topics this next weekend and hopefully give you something that you can take away, right, and go work with God on this.

But hearing from us just as a prompt is something that's going to, you know, be fresh in your mind. You take it to God, and we've seen God go with those exact things and go, wow, really work on somebody's life really quickly. We've also seen God come in and say, nope, that's not for you.

You're going down a different path. And they come back in and say, oh, I went out and just got a completely different revealing from God that says these are the things I need to work on. It has nothing to do with anything we gave or talked about, but the fact that they go to God, they really get what He wants to work on with you rather than what we say or what you think, and that's where the power comes in. All right, and you never know when it's going to sneak up on you, right, David?

Like, you talked about it, the last entrenchment. You know, why don't you take our listeners into what actually happened? Because you were talking about your dad who's a pastor. Yeah, so I was responding to the wound talk, which is one of the talks we do during boot camp and entrenchment, and was speaking to the group about, you know, my father wounds with my dad being a preacher and going through that. Now, specifically, his dad would use him as a sermon, illustrations, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I can probably say there's probably, you can write a book on the illustration he's used on me, but yeah, and then, you know, going through that, trying to speak my story on it, and, you know, God hit me with that one-two punch and started working on my heart right then. And what was that one-two punch? Really that I didn't forgive Him for it, that I was holding on to it, and even though I thought I had worked through it and forgave Him, I didn't. And it brought me down to my knees. I think you were the one that came out outside behind me right after that and, you know, was talking me through, and then I went to the covenant of silence and went out there and really, you know, started asking God, why?

What is this about? And He started, you know, peeling back the layers of the onion on it for me, and, you know, really showed me that, hey, you're not forgiving Him about it. It doesn't, I mean, yes, this happened.

Yes, this is the way you felt, but you got to let go and forgive, or you're never going to heal that wound. Right, and so, you know, the very picture what we're talking about is our hearts are broken, and you wonder why you fly off the handle at your wife, or you wonder why you fly off the handle at that driver that just cut you off, and you got all these things going on in your life, and are you willing to take the time to push into that stuff with God? Because it's like this check engine, being a Christian car guy show, I can tell you.

It's a check engine light that's flashing, telling you, you know, let's go, let's talk about this, Robbie. Let's get together on this is not, you know, you don't, you think you can control your temper? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Yes, Brad. I think the heart of the problem is a problem of the heart. That's a good book that was written by somebody a while back. You have these catchy sayings. You should be on TV. Not if you've seen my face. Anyway, I love what you're talking about doing, piercing the hearts of men, because we tend to hide our heart, and God, the last thing He wants to do with us is have a hidden heart.

And it's almost like we have this grudge sack that hangs on our shoulder, and little inputs, little frustrations open up that whole sack when we just need to dump the garbage. I know the hardest thing I had to forgive was in 2003, my niece, who had come to live with us, was brutally murdered. She was eight months pregnant, and she had moved in with a guy when she turned 18, and he, I won't go into the gory details, but it took two hours to go to court, and I mean, two years to go to court. I had to choose to forgive him. That doesn't mean I was setting him up for a job, to forgive him. That doesn't mean I was setting him free.

That meant I was setting me free, because I didn't want what that boy did to my niece to color my life the rest of my life, because I want to dump the garbage sack. And what he did was horrible. He'll have to answer to God for it, but I won't let that man rule and reign over my life. So Brad's book, Mended in a Broken World, again, it's at KingdomBursuits.com, and the entrenchment, what you got to do to register for that is go to MasculineJourney.org. If you want to go see Lee Strobel for the luncheon for leaders, that is Energize Ministries. And again, the regular intensive is at TruthNetwork.com. If you want to go see Lee, you got so many things that are coming at you, as well as Encouraging Prayer with James Banks coming up in just a moment. Thanks for listening. This is the Truth Network.