Attributes We See In Each Other After Hours

Hey, this is Mike Zwick from If Not For God Podcast, our show.

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Now, Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. We are so grateful that you're with us this week. We're actually just so grateful to be back this week. If you didn't notice, we weren't here last week.

We didn't have an After Hours podcast. It wasn't because we didn't want to. It's just weather got in the way and the inability to clean things as well as we need to in this particular area to get people on the roads as quickly. Like I said, if it's in one part of the country, they would have looked at it like it was nothing. And another part of the country would have been out for two weeks versus a couple of days.

So, you know, it just kind of depends on where you live. But we got a pretty good little session of ice around most of the area and made it very difficult with snow on top of that and then ice on top of that. But we're back to talking about a topic we started a couple of weeks ago with a little bit of a twist. Jim, you want to set it up for us? We started two weeks ago with talking about attributes and names of God and what appealed to us there. And that progressed to looking at each other and seeing what attributes of God we saw in one another.

And we drew each other's names two weeks ago and nobody knew who anyone had or didn't know who had us anyway. And we're still trying to figure that out this week. And so when we left off like we normally do, we cut Wayne short. Even when it's – he's not here. Hey, Wayne, I was trying, man.

I was trying. It's Sam's fault. We seem to cut him right into the music every time. Well, he gets in both shows that way, though. He does.

He does. So anyway, you had set up a Rudy clip. And so you're talking about Wayne and the first show in what regard? Yeah. So that clip, just if you want to go back and watch the show, regular show, Rudy – Listen to it. Yeah, listen to it.

There we go. Watch, listen, whatever. Whatever you want to – You sit there and watch your phone as it plays the podcast. But no, Rudy in this clip, it's really like a documentary. And he comes in and he's talking about it.

And then they'll have some of the parts of the movie on it. But he's explaining really what it was to dream, to become a walk-on at Notre Dame and not really have any chance. He just wanted to walk on that field and play one time. And it really – the whole movie was about that. He went on to become a very inspirational speaker and all. But what I saw in it was just – what I see in Wayne is Wayne is a dreamer. Wayne is a dreamer for himself. He listens to God. He wants to fulfill God's will and God's dreams for his life. But he also has a gift, I believe, to be able to speak into other people's life and help them confirm or hear from God of what their dreams may be. But also in that clip, you also see somebody that the dream didn't just happen to him. It was like Joseph.

Joseph got the dream and the sheaves were bowing down to him. It was about his brothers and the future. And that took, what, 30 years to happen?

He spent 14 years in a jail. It wasn't easy. And I know Wayne in this past year has made a choice to obey God and go a certain way in it.

Some would say, well, that really brought a lot of difficulty into your life. But he was willing to do what God said because he believed that's what God said. And he's come through some things that we've seen, but we believe and we've seen the hand of God on that.

And we've also seen how he's been able to speak into other people's lives through what he went through. So one final thing, just to say, I mean, I'm just really praising Wayne, but I mean, I see all these things is, you know, one of a boot camp, it was the one at what you call, I think, the vineyard or whatever, the Wolf Lodge. Yeah.

Yeah. It was up near Westfield. So we were up there and that was the only time I think we've ever had a ropes course or whatever. And it was one of those cargo nets and that we were climbing up in. And I just, I had known Wayne from one other boot camp, he knew me, we were going up this thing, this cargo net, and we were doing it as a team.

And I just was out of shape or whatever. And he did all he could to push me through. And that was just a, that's just a picture of who Wayne is.

He wants to see people to see their dream transpire in their life or whatever they're, they've got up against them. So now we have an opportunity to talk about it. Yeah, you can talk about it. Well, yeah, you covered pretty much the Wayne's world of events around there. You kind of covered the everything.

I think we need a visual of Wayne trying to push Andy anywhere though. Yeah. It's a little different. Yeah. It could be worse.

It could be Harold trying to push me, but not much. It's true. I'll chime in on Wayne. And you talked a little bit about Wayne, a little bit about it in your tribute there.

Well done, Andy, well done. And very deserving for Wayne. I'll give you that. The word for Wayne for me is faithful. Wayne does what he feels like God's calling him to do, regardless of the consequences. I don't know that I could do the things that he's felt God calling him to do. I would like to think that I could. I just don't know that I could. And so that faithfulness is I'm going to obey you even when it doesn't seem to make sense.

Because Father, I trust you more than I trust what I feel. And I really respect that. I've never seen that to that degree out of anyone. So that's what I'd throw in there.

Yeah. You said the word obey, and that's where I'm at is obedience. I've never seen a man so obedient. It's like, this is what God said.

This is what I'm going to do. And I know he's told us about times when he hasn't done what God's told him to do. But I've never seen any person that has done the amount of things and that risk the things that he has risked because he feels that, hey, I'm being obedient to God. I absolutely know there's things that I would not have done, and have felt at times that, yep, that's what I needed to do in my life was to be obedient to God and follow something I thought he was telling me.

But I was like, no, I don't think I can do that. And just hats off to Wayne for that. And like you said, the amount of people he has touched and been with, like the recent story where the gentleman in the COVID, and it was in the hospital, nobody else could go see him. And he was the one who went in and was with him in his last hours and days and spent some very high quality time with that man.

And you just got to tip your hat to that. Thank you. I know that there's a lot more we would like to share about Wayne, but there's a few more people we need to get to in this episode. And so Danny, I want to go ahead and jump to your clip. Do you want to talk about your clip or play it first?

I'll just set it up a little bit. Surprisingly enough, it's from the Andy Griffith Show. That'll shock a lot of people. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's basically an interchange between a character known as Ernest T. Bass and Andy and Barney are involved in the thing. And I'll just let the clip speak for itself. And then I'll talk about who. Hi, Sheriff. Howdy, Daphne. Ernest T. Surprise, surprise.

I can see it in your eyes that you didn't even know I was here in town, did you? We knew all right, Ernest T. Ms. Wiley called us about the broken one. You sure caused a lot of trouble over her, Mrs. Wiley. They were pretty shook up over there. Well, lost our woman was a girl named Ms. Wiley. She just got mad all over. Last time you was in town, we gave you Barney's uniform to help your girl.

Plain? All right, dude. But didn't, didn't take a halt. That's why I brung it by. See, when I went home wearing that uniform, I just expected all the girls just go plunk, flop right down my feet. But now, same as always, just gaze right on through me. Sorry to hear that, Ernest T. I know how important it is to you to get a girl. I tried carting old Hogg's daughter, Hoggette.

Pretty just as proper as proper can be. First off, I wrote a love note asking to go on that with me. And then I tied that love note onto the prettiest rock you ever did see. And then I give it the prettiest talk right through the front window. Well, did Hoggette come out with you?

Couldn't. Caught her right through seven stitches. All mature, good looks, nice. Didn't mean to peck anything.

Ernest T., you don't throw rocks through windows. Maybe if you gave it another chance with Hoggette, with a more proper courtship. She's counting for her now.

She's gonna marry the taxidermist, but sewed up her head. The best thing for me to do is find myself a cave and just hermitize myself. Ernest T., I'd like to try to help you. Yeah. Now, are you willing to learn? That's important.

And after learning, there'll be a woman? It's- She got involved in it bad enough we have to run him out of town once a month? All I want to do is try to help him. You know, cleanage him a few manners.

Maybe he'll even quit throwing rocks. It's impossible. Look at him. He's a child.

He's a mess. Well, the attribute is a friendship and pouring into people's lives. And the person that I had was Robby. And I think about all the encounters and comparing more to Andy, not Ernest T. You make that clear. Sure. Okay.

Okay. But the stories that he tells about the different encounters with different people and a lot of them have challenging personalities. I mean, he does hang out with us. And just, you know, scripture tells us that he's a friend that sticks closer than a brother. And the people who talk about Robby and even the short time I've been around, so to speak, compared to others is, you know, if Robby's your friend, he's your friend. And he's in to try to help you and call the glory out and to speak into those things, just like Andy was trying to do with Ernest T. And there's a whole adventure in those scenes there. But that was my attribute was he's a friend that sticks closer than a brother.

That's awesome. For Robby, the one that came to me for him was joyfulness. You know, you hear his laugh all the time, right? I mean, Robby, many times in his life, the things that he's gone through would have lots of reason to not be joyful, but he's probably the most joyful person I know. And, you know, I just see that regardless of the situations he's in, his circumstances, that he continues to lean into the Lord and find joy.

And so that's where I would throw in for Robby. Yeah, and that's where, again, back to the faithfulness and obedience, too, that you have with Wayne is seen in Robby as well. And everywhere you go, you're here in Winston, because he's been here for so long now, and he's so well known, and through church families and people that I talked to, oh, yeah, we used to go to Calvary, and we know Robby. And you can go a lot of places and talk about him, and it's the same thing. When any of his shows, oh, I just love your laugh, and you get that joy, and he just has fun, and he speaks into people's lives, and he just, you're not going to keep him down. He has too much of the joy of the Lord in him, and he just brings it out. And it's just fun to walk with him, because, again, when we get going, and Sam gets with his humor, and Danny gets with his humor, and Robby gets with his humor, those three can really start to rock the humor, and it is fun.

That's why you get so much joy ride with them. Yeah, exactly. Thank you.

I'm going to just ask a question. I wonder how many people consider Robby to be their best friend. I'd only known one other person in my life that might rival that number. Well, you know that since he's God's favorite, he's God's best friend. Yeah. Well, the first thing I thought of when I heard that is what a friend we have at Jesus, and he reflects Jesus as well as anybody I know. Yeah. Yeah, that's very good.

That's very good. Andy, you want to talk about that? Yeah, I mean, you can't get away from the humor. I mean, I mean, in his puns, I mean, some of them are cornier than, you know, they can be, but they're spot on.

A lot of times, he's like you, that he's very quick on the wit of a pun as we're talking, but Robby has been. I mean, I tell the story, you know, I think of him as almost like a Barnabas, or like I would look at him as like kind of like an ambassador for the kingdom or whatever. I can remember whenever I was first started coming to boot camps, and I didn't want nobody to talk to me or nothing. But, you know, you kind of wanted somebody to at least approach you. And Robby was that guy, and he comes up and looks at my shotgun and says, oh, that's a Mossberg. I'm like, I don't know what the hell it is.

My dad gave it to me or whatever, you know. And, you know, it was just, he was really just outgoing. And, you know, he had asked me, you know, how did God come after your heart this boot camp? And I didn't know what he was talking about, and obviously I do now. But, you know, it was just that love for life. And, you know, you would have to think it's a picture of what Jesus was like when people got around him.

They wanted to be closer to God, so. Thank you. Jim, you actually have a clip. So you want to go ahead and talk about your clip, or do you want to play the clip first? I don't want to talk about the clip, because I don't remember the clip. It's from me.

I did take a hit on the, oh yeah, I remember that. But let's play the clip. Okay, we'll play the clip. You. It's about us. The team. It's about this.

Um, a giant hole in the ground. Okay people, are we feeling good? Yeah. Great.

Now, R1734 through Z7829, you guys are on Wrecking Ball. You got it. Swirl. You got it.

All right. Now remember, Azteca, be the ball. That's the main thing.

Remember that, you know, gotta be one with the ball. Did you cut it out already? Geez. I love my work. And you, well, you think too much. Come on, Z. Help us build a bigger, better colony. And for crying out loud, try to be happy about it. Sure.

You know, I mean, how could I possibly be unhappy being a piece of construction equipment? Okay, workers. Remember. Here it comes.

Be the ball. This is for the colony. This is just a lawsuit waiting to happen. Did I happen to mention that heights make me nauseous? No. Come on, Z. Yes, yes. I understand. I dropped the ball.

Okay. Now it just came back, rushing back into my brain that I had Andy. And Andy, do you feel like, do you feel like you're Z in this clip? You make us nauseous.

No, I wanted to do the reversal on that. Azteca is the female that's very encouraging here. And that's what I see in Andy. Although I can see him identifying with Z. But that's actually me. And a lot of times Andy will step in there when I'm beating myself up.

Self-deprecation used to be my favorite form of humor, but I'm getting over it. But he's very good at jumping in there and being encouraging at times when you don't really want to hear any encouragement, but you need to. And I love that about my brother.

Yeah, that's a very good point. Andy is very much that. What really came to mind for me, for Andy, that he mirrors God's desire, a relational heart. And part of that is encouragement, but it's also, he really desires to be in deep relationship with people.

And is good at moving past just the stuff on the surface. Even in your reaching out to the group from Ohio and the stuff you've done there and staying connected from when you went up to their boot camp and just it's that relational nature of really wanting to be in deep, intimate relationships with people. And I think that you mirror that from God quite well.

Yeah. From my very first boot camp, it was authenticity. Andy was as authentic as he could ever be. He constantly just puts himself down a little bit and says, I'm not this, I'm not that. But you just listen to him. He's like, okay. Once he gets past that, notice open up his heart.

It's beautiful. So he shares that. And like you said, Jim, the encouragement that you get out of his heart because he'll open up about his life, which is still one of the craziest things about this ministry that I just find so intoxicating with the group is that, you know, willing to do that. And when you're thinking it's a detriment for yourself and yet you're still willing to share it, that's huge. You know, a lot of you guys have been sharing things for a while and you move past certain things, then there's new things that come up and I can see it in people that like, here it comes, I'm going to bring this up and share it. And it's so encouraging because, I mean, the other side of sharing is healing and redemption. And that's what we're all after.

Thank you. You're looking at me, Danny. Okay. Well, here we're at a point where we're out of clips, but we're not out of people. And what that tells us is the two people that aren't here, Wayne and Robby have two of the people here.

Well, we know it's not Rodney. So one of them has Danny and one of them has Jim, right? But what we have the opportunity for you three people over the next 10 minutes, not 10, about eight minutes we have left is to talk about stuff that we see in you.

And so I'll throw one out. I'll start with Jim because he's closest to me here on the left. And so I'll open the door on Jim. And what I really appreciate about Jim, there's a lot of things, but one of them is his pursuit of other people's hearts. And I want to go beyond that, the point that Jim is really, really loyal to people when other people would discard them.

Yeah. You know, you've shared personal stories here with us and I won't share them on the air because it's not my place, but you know, Jim, you've went very deep in your loyalty and helping people well beyond what other people would do. And I know at times that's burnt you or it's hurt you, but that's who you are.

And that's how God made you. And I think that that pursuit of other people's hearts to the point that you're going to be loyal to them even and others won't, sends a message that no one else sends to them. And so I think that's where uniquely God's placed you to speak hope into their life when they would have every reason to find hopelessness.

Yeah. Jim, getting to know him, and then we were doing some trading and some other things, and you just, you got all those backstories when we're sitting there doing that. It was like, how does this man keep going on and having faith in mankind when he has been just pummeled by so many people with so many different things, he's renting to people that won't pay him, they're so bad to him, they mistreat him, and yet he keeps going back and saying, what can I do to help you? And he just, he keeps wanting to help. He's just got such a giving heart. It's just, it is overwhelming, Sam. It's just, it's huge. Just like his big old body over there. His heart had to be that, his body had to be that big to hold that big old heart in there. You're the opposite of the Grinch. Yeah.

Your heart's two times too big or whatever. Yes. There you go. See there, and then Sam with the humors. If you haven't noticed this show, it keeps coming up. It's got an exclamation point on all of that.

I would say authentic would be mine with Jim. And it stems back to a story of, I hadn't been here too long. I was the new guy, ill am I think. But anyway, and you made whoever was sitting between us slide out and you said, I owe you an apology. And you shared your heart with how you were feeling. And there was no, you, you shared, there was no calls behind it and that kind of thing. And it planted a root for what I think is a great friendship that we developed. I mean, we spent some time at the last boot camp. We had a Walmart adventure and I survived your driving from the road to the rest of you guys. But it's just really cool to, to, to interact with you, your wisdom, your wit, you are a funny guy and just your perception of things. Well, to be fair, as soon as we saw you get in the car with Jim, we started a prayer session.

I figured it was, I looked for the group text and said, gather prayer now. All I can say is how I see God's attributes is Jim and God both know a lot of words. Big words. A lot of stuff.

Big words. It says seeing a lot of stuff. They know a lot of stuff. They know a lot of stuff. I have used Google more in conversations with words are brought up than I ever have.

That's right. I come to the radio show with a thesaurus anymore. So we got a few more minutes. We got two more people to get through. So we'll jump over to Danny and I'll go ahead and kick it off again. Danny, what I see in you honestly is this discernment slash wisdom. You know, you always have this way of you get kicked pretty hard, right?

You know, the truck that won't start and you take it and the mechanic doesn't do what he's supposed to and all that. But you don't let that hold you down. You have a discerning spirit that comes in and, you know, lets you say, okay, well, maybe there's more to the story than I know. You know, you're looking for that other angle that lets you have grace and compassion for others. And that's only through a discerning spirit and the use of wisdom. And I know that comes from a place that there's times that you didn't have it. So it's a learned skill, right? But you've learned it when a lot of people don't, right? And it allows you to have grace in situations that I don't think other people would be able to have grace in. Yeah, I'm appreciative of his Southern wisdom because he's got some isms and some things he says.

Humor brought with wisdom in it. But no, there's really – you can see that he sought God throughout his life. And you can see, you know, just the heart he has had for men. And you can see in his life how God was preparing him for this very moment. And that faithfulness – I mean, I think you'll probably say it. There are times when you kind of wanted to give up on that faithfulness and God was faithful and got you. That was a part of your life.

That was a season. But this season, I think you feel like it really is, you know, where God has you right now. One of the things I appreciate is his patience. There are times that he's on call when we're here to do our recordings. And he'll get these phone calls. And I have yet to see him get angry.

I would have gotten really ticked. But he does not. He handles it with grace. And I love that – and the humor, like Andy was saying. Darrell Bock Thank you, Harold. I hate to cut it short, because I know Jim wanted to say more about Danny and stuff.

But we've got to get to Rodney before we run out of time. And so I'll throw it out there. Rodney, I see God's orderliness – orderly – I can't say it – organizational skills coming through you.

I see that coming through you. And you can say, well, God doesn't have order. Yeah, God is order. You can see how the days when he did creation, how they were structured. And just even the naming of the animals and everything just had a way about it. And you're all about finding normalcy in the midst of chaos. You want to find something that has structure in the midst of chaos. So we'll go ahead and you guys throw out some other stuff.

Ron D. That was actually my first take, too. But he has a great attitude, even when the things seem to be lost. I appreciated that, Rodney. And he's encouraged me also.

That's what I was going to say. He's an encourager. Yeah. And you know, it's been fun to watch you step into you with this group over the last year or so. You know, for a while we didn't even know you talked. And then, you know, it's changed a lot. And the more we get to know you, the more we love you. And so, anyway, this is the types of things we talk about. Go do this with your community this week. Pick a person, pick something, and share it with them and love on them. We'll talk to you next week. This is the Truth Network.