Bootcamp Memories After Hours

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This is the Truth Network. Coming to you from an entrenched barricade deep in the heart of central North Carolina, Masculine Journey After Hours, a time to go deeper and be more transparent on the topic covered on this week's broadcast. So, sit back and join us on this adventure. The Masculine Journey After Hours starts here now. Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours, and we are talking this week about last week. That's what we're talking about last week. We're talking about last weekend specifically and the boot camp that we had. And man, it was an amazing, amazing time.

Jim, you've been to many, many, many, many of these in your short lifetime. This to me was one of the top ones that we had. I don't know how you felt about it. For me, it was a very interesting, it was very different.

And for me, that means it's a great one because I like different. But there were a lot of things that went on that, and mine was sort of a roller coaster emotionally. And one of the emotions, I guess I'm leading into a clip here. There's a clip we've used always from the movie The Kid. And this is where Russ and Rusty, the same person, get together after dad has caused a major father wound. And the little one, and Rusty. And this clip has always emoted, usually tears, but at least getting choked up for me.

And during the boot camp, Sam said it always had for him as well. But we're going to watch the movie and then we can talk about it. We may listen to it. Maybe we'll listen to it. I'm still at boot camp watching it, and I will see everything that goes on.

And somebody has to be funny here. So here he goes. Yeah, in your mind, Jim, you're watching it.

Well, close your eyes so you can follow along. What's happening here is little Rusty has, Russell Duritz has hit his 40th birthday. And he's kind of got this pattern and this plan for his life. And as God often disrupts, he disrupts this time by sending eight-year-old Rusty, himself as a little kid, back into his life. And then they journey back in time to try to figure out how they got so broken. And then this scene comes in with a dad. There's a little bit in here.

It's not like porky pig myself there. A little bit in here that he talks about losing a screw. Earlier in the show, he's lost a screw that his dad needed.

And he thinks that's why his dad's mad, but we'll go ahead and pick it up and listen to it. What is the matter with you? I'm sorry. How can we do this to your mother? What are you trying to do? Kill her faster? What? We're going to lose her. Pull something. Stop what you did today.

You're killing her. I found the screw, Dad. Look, the screw. Stop crying.

Here's the screw, Dad. Look, here it is. Here it is. I found it. Stop crying. Look at the screw.

Here it is. Stop crying. Stop. You got to grow up now.

Do you understand? Grow up. Grow up.

Mom's dying. I know. Soon? Yeah.

For your next birthday. Did I do it? No. No, you didn't do it.

No. It's not your fault. Dad was just saying those things because he's scared. Because he knows that he has to raise you alone. He doesn't know how to do it. I thought you never cried.

Since my eighth birthday. And it is important to know this is his eighth birthday and he's losing his mom before the next one and I was trying to force Sam to go first but I'll go ahead and jump in. Sam said that he had always been moved by this scene and then discovered a wound in that but in this if I've got a wound I'm not aware of it yet but there may be and God may show it but I've always felt so much compassion for everybody in this scene little Rusty, Russell the adult and dad because he and and the fact that Russell understands what his father was going through now 32 years later but he's also able to let himself know at eight years old that it's not his fault.

It's okay. You know this is it's part of life but you didn't do anything wrong and that's a big theme in these two. It is you know and one of the things if you watch the movie older Russell does not have a good relationship with his dad. He's very distant and very cold to him so they're both getting healing at this exact same time. Older Russell just has the age and experience to articulate it to the younger one right and it's really pretty cool you know and I wonder you know what that relationship with the dad looks like you know later on when they get back and there's healing on Russell's side now you know we don't get that in the movie but it is such a great movie. It didn't take it wasn't a long stretch for me to know why it always choked me up because I was that dad especially with my youngest son. He was very strong-willed. I'm very strong-willed didn't work well together you know and and when I would see that clip it would remind me that I had wounded him you know until God came in and did some healing in his life we had some open conversations not in God's life my son's life. I was in the hospital and I was in the hospital. We had some open conversations about you know how he felt growing up and how I felt and what was else was going on in life because there was a lot going on that he didn't know about you know that you know and I could ask for his forgiveness and we could really just talk through that and then God speaking into my heart at the boot camp before this one just basically telling me some things that let me let it go knowing that that's no longer who I am and I haven't been for a long time but the enemy wants to say remember when you did this remember when you were like this and he wants you to hold on to that right and God say no no that's not been true for a long time here so let's let's get perspective and let's move forward and that was the first time at camp I could actually watch that clip not feel condemnation and break down and feel like I was gonna start bawling you know and that's just all because of God's healing and the healing especially is done in my son's life you know we have the closest relationship we've ever had over these last few years and I have a similar I felt like I was a crummy dad I didn't take the time that my father took with me and I also was harsh with my boys frequently and my first boot camper too I'd go to them multiple times oh no they remembered things being fine and I wasn't as bad as I thought but that was the enemy working on me as well so it's and yeah there were a lot of things that I regretted but the unconditional love that my father made clear to me and when I don't see it in other relationships with fathers it breaks my heart and that's kind of why this I think I will always get teary over that scene well you see the the damage the enemy is doing the dad's scared right he doesn't know what he's gonna do he's losing his wife he doesn't know how to take care of an eight-year-old kid you know all those emotions are coming out at this kid he loves right I mean it's just you just see the enemy all in the midst of it and everybody gets wounded in the process you know it's a shotgun blast it's not a rifle blast you know everybody's gonna get hit with some shrapnel you know it's not really shrapnel it's buckshot I guess but still you know what I mean and it was it was this particular clip that was part of this boot camp that got to me in a kind of a different way it was when we went into the coat of silence after this talk God showed me my six-year-old self and that kind of led into some of the stuff I've already talked about it but you know that identity of you know I came from a world where I was an only child and king of my own castle at six and God gave me the name appraiser he said you see value in people and you take that at face value that they will see the value in you the value in you and when they didn't and so that was that clip I could just see it just I can see my first grade picture that I have always despised to see as plain as a day and I kind of like the kid now so yeah that was oh sorry oh good well that was one of the big things about this that I saw is that we can see exactly the same clip and get such diverse things from it and you added another dimension and it's probably true for everybody that was there that saw this God gave them something special to them out of the same experience yeah and I didn't really have anything of value to say it wasn't a big deal I was just gonna just gonna say that he probably gave you you missed part of the name is good appraiser I work in the housing industry there's some really bad appraisers out there I've done some bad appraisings in my life too so okay appraiser works fine who am I to second guess God yeah yeah exactly I'm gonna go ahead and move to my clip before I stick my foot in my mouth some more but before I do that Andy you want to make a point about something you know these clips aren't really the most uplifting clips we've ever played right and so it makes boot camp kind of sound like Debbie Downer yeah it's Robby's fault he's a laugh trap guy and he's not here so nobody stood up and was a pinch hitter for him so we did you know boot camp is can be a very serious thing I mean we're talking about going after men's hearts we talk about you've heard us talking about the wounds there's there's things in it but it also talks about the vibe the um a merry heart does it does like medicine to us and there was a merry heart the entire time we were there so we don't have to have a clip to prove that um any of the guys that were there would tell you there was a lot of laughter a lot of joy a lot of inner um you're wanting the mic will you hold on please no I'll finish up real quick here Jim but it really was a good time of just a lot of and particularly our team I think it's important that we stay connected and joyful and then that rubs off on the other guys but they brought it themselves they they all had great spirits about them and it made it made ministry uh just work and then you know you know that they went back with a light heart into whatever situation they had yeah Jim boy I'm glad you were quick I never am but this is one of the things I have seen in my life is the closer I get to God the more I laugh and the more I cry yeah no I would agree with that yeah I think the other things about camp that we don't talk often enough is the activities you know there's a lot of bonding you know Andy you had the uh Andy airsoft experience yeah right which is more fun than it sounds yeah I actually got to play this time too so uh that that was good but you know that goes into that old fun we're having this was a really good group we had a lot of fun uh just some ideas on what we've run into in the past though that I thought was really funny is we we gave some liberty and freedom to guys we're running around in the woods and it was like if you find something you can use that as a shield to protect you and these some guys we had some young guys in the past uh and they were really creative I remember there was an um an old mattress laying out in the woods in the woods and you know how much rain is actually in it I mean how heavy it is and this guy's dragging along as his then some dude found an old dead Christmas tree and he was using that as a shield so you know that's some of the crazy stuff we do it's it's just out there and just having a good time most people just use Robby as a shield that's true I mean he's he's out there he's taking quite a few hits I have his chair tonight and I also got him killed during there's also yeah probably why he's not here thank you very much actually and to help explain the lighting technician expert it's literally a switch it's sort of like he's dealing now I got another wound to deal with exactly but you know we've all done it we've all taken our turn and we've all messed up we didn't it is a switch it's not even a a double throw switch it is literally on and off yeah and I missed it like two or three times yeah he only got called out from the stage one time one time but that was enough yeah and I finally graduated out of it I guess but I don't really like you were salty about it absolutely I was not no the supervisor didn't come over and tell me that there would be somebody taking my shift and taking that role and you were let go Andy it was it was a need and every time every time that Danny failed I was over there cheering you were cheering my favorite time that we did it for the first probably four or five boot camps the most educated guy in the room was running it Jim do you remember Peter who who's an emergency room not emergency room intensive care physician physician we had him by the lights for I don't know how many boot camps did he mess up as much as Andy did not as much as you did okay yeah he messed up more than Danny less than Andy is how we would go you know kind of in that order that's why Andy had to do it for so many turns until he perfected it at the end he did get it perfected pretty well well moving on to my clip this is actually a clip from the the beauty talk that I used but it really applies it's a beautiful thing that happened at camp and so I go ahead and play it but what you have here it's from Bruce Almighty early in the movie Bruce's character Bruce is a character played by Jim Carrey thank you you know is dating a lady named Grace they live together and he try he gets the power of God for a short period of time and messes it up messes up the relationship with her chases after her for most of the movie and then you get towards the end and you have Bruce and Morgan Freeman who's who's playing God not Norman Mandela this time but not Norman Norman Mandela Nelson Mandela yeah wow I can't talk Norman Mandela his lesser known brother Norman Mandela but yeah uh no but he's uh they're having a conversation in heaven you know and this is Bruce and uh God what do you want me to do I want you to pray son go ahead use them um lord feed the hungry and bring peace to all of mankind how's that great if you want to be Miss America now come on what do you really care about grace grace you want her back no I want her to be happy no matter what that means I want her to find someone who'll treat her with all the love she deserved from me I want her to meet someone who'll see her always as I do now no through your eyes now that's a prayer yeah yeah it's good it's good it's good I'm gonna get right on it it's good yeah it is good the uh the part of that it was you know obviously his heart had changed right and he was doing something out of love for someone else not expecting anything in return right and that's the way we really should be doing things is you know out of love and so what happened at boot camp was you know part of boot camp is pretty scripted in the standpoint there's certain talks we do every boot camp they may change in order slightly but certain talks you do at every boot camp and then there's some other times that we flex with god you know and there may be an additional talk here or a couple talks or it may be a prayer time that we do maybe different things and this time we just felt like we were called to do a couple different things and one of them on sunday morning was a question and answer session you know and so the first person to talk you know that had a question said hey could you pray for our hearts they've been wounded you know god's kind of showed us these wounds and could you pray for us you know and the team said yeah we'll just do it right now and so we each kind of walked out and just prayed over one person just kind of listening to what whatever god had to say to him and and prayed over him and but okay that was really cool that's that's awesome you know and came back and sat down and then the next person that asked us said something said hey uh how can how can we pray for you what do you guys need and so you know we went through and as a team we were honestly probably the most open i know definitely the most open we've ever been at any boot camp just sharing where god's had us you've had lots of healing and lots of restoration but there's always more you know and this is where we're at today and those guys the campers you know the people the attendees you know came up and prayed over us and it was just so amazing to have them speak from their heart what they're hearing from god over us you know that's never happened in a camp i don't know that'll happen again but you know the guys you know some of you had to leave earlier but wasn't that really amazing to have that happen and and how genuine they were in wanting to pray for us yeah really amazing i wasn't sure what was going to happen but yeah it was just so sweet to have somebody pray from their heart and you know over you because one of the dangers of ministry and leadership is people look to you for answers and you pose and say i think you got all the answers and to open up to the people and go hey where we're at is authenticity i think so yeah we make it pretty obvious we need prayer yeah yeah yeah you had to be clueless from the air or at on the boot camp yeah you can see we need prayer yeah we probably should have collected prayer for you he was one of the ones that left and it turned out that was seven on staff and seven campers left after it sorted out so that to me spoke volumes about it being god one of the things about this camp that was unique to me and very special is it's the first time i haven't well let me start from the other hand it's the the it's probably the most spiritually mature group we've ever had as campers it's the first time i didn't feel like i felt like i was just one of the entire group instead of you know staff campers being separated and they treated us that way and that made that even more special to me yeah i think there's a lot you know when you come back to where we had it at carolina bible camp it there's really a lot that brings intimacy there you literally are eating there with the guys at the same tables you know we're sharing meals with them and and we're speaking in the same room that's curtained off and it's curtained off in a way that it's a very intimate setting you know and at the place that we were before has got its own attributes but that's not one of them you go eat in a totally different area sometimes you're completely separated from the guys because we're eating trying to get stuff ready you know that type of thing but here there was just a whole lot of intimacy and it was a very spiritually mature group not that the others in the past weren't we were just able to see it very closely from a 19 year old uh kid that a young man that is very mature for his age you know all the way up to i don't know who the oldest camper was and probably not your age harold but yeah yeah yeah i was trying to figure that out and i think it it was someone in the high 50s high 50s yeah i was thinking it was probably high 50s you know and so we had a big range there and i think you know just from different coming from different walks of life and backgrounds we had some definite diversity right but it all clicked in unity it was really pretty cool and this was a very relaxed camp you know we didn't really have any technical issues thankfully we really didn't have any uh spiritual issues the one that you know the enemy tried to get between danny and i you know uh god was able to intervene and avoid that you know it really was just a very peaceful restful camp in the midst of god doing some amazing work yeah i think we were all kind of concerned that we didn't have a larger group i mean we typically had larger groups than this but i think the previous one wasn't that big of a difference but you know i think that's just another thing of where you just have to trust god we want to impact the whole world if we can you know but we also know the way god did it he picked his 12. jesus picked his 12 and and went with those guys and we just have to trust god knows what he's doing when he's putting those things you know together and i think that's what he's probably trying to show us in this is that there was a lot of fruit there were things that we had never seen before but we had never had a group that small in that dynamic and the individuals of course he knows who's coming he knows he knows that what probably brought some some guys to come out a little bit more just uh and talking and being open just because it was a smaller setting yeah and what was kind of funny was to see guys pair off with people that you probably wouldn't have talked to outside of camp right yeah because you wouldn't come in contact with them yep right or if you did you would think there's so much difference and then they realize that they're all sons of god yeah right and there's commonality they're the most commonality you need to have and they had things to share we did have a camper in their 60s um but every activity that god kind of laid on our heart that the weather was only good one night to have the the bonfire that we wanted to have and there was conversation do we have it or don't have it you know people want to go down it's a smaller group we had it and one of the guys from one of the campers spoke and and and really completely impacted the camp you know just from sharing his testimonies you know and we were able to pray over him and i think you know according to what he said the next day he got some healing on some old stuff yeah yeah which is really really pretty cool and it was funny to see you know the youngest guy in the camp to be the first one to jump up and then the next guy coming up and you know they were all right there for one another which was really cool do you have anything to say danny you're looking at me i didn't know if you had something you want to say you were talking oh you're being oh thank you i i don't know what plight is in the appraisal of that the appraisal that yeah yeah i'm still reeling over norman mandela i don't know where i got that one norman i think i think it's good for it's called we're never really sure where you get a lot of things i'm really pretty certain it's good for it's called yeah it's his half brother third time you know twice removed and all that kind of stuff yeah yeah so coming up for this next boot camp what do you think people need to know we've got about a minute here but what do you think people need to know other than just trust guide and come you oh yeah because that that's where my mind went first you got to trust guide you got to be open you got to let things flow and let him talk through here because it's just amazing when you can let him leave yeah we could do a hundred shows on boot camp and never tell you what a boot camp really is because we try the best but it's just god showing up in cool ways the biggest thing is is you're going to have an encounter with god we don't matter and if you want to do that go to masculine journey dot o-r-g it's november 18th through the 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