Chasing The Wild Goose Holy Spirit Adventures

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

Stories of hopelessness turned into hope. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it, share it.

But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Welcome to The Masculine Journey. We are glad that you're with us this week. It's just been an adventure. The guys, hasn't this week been an adventure? I've been putting out fires all week. Exactly.

Exactly. If you're not familiar with anything, we're in North Carolina. So if you just go and look up in the search engine, Winston-Salem fire, fertilizer fire, it's right near us, right? It's really within a thousand yards, right across the railroad tracks. Just to give you an idea, we could blow up at any minute. Are we broadcasting from a broken barricade? It's a blast zone.

Yeah, it is. And so what a better topic to pick. We picked this topic before the fire ever came about, before we knew that we weren't going to be able to record on our normal time and had to make other arrangements. And it's just been a very adventurous week.

And so the topic for this week, we'd picked last week to talk about. And it comes from, I want to begin with what you typically hear, it being said, which is not correct. You typically hear something called a wild goose chase. Now, I don't know where you grew up, if that meant something different to you, but when I grew up, that meant it was a phenomenal waste of time. Usually I went on this big wild goose chase to try to find something, or it was a lot of steps along the way to achieve something that should have been so easy to achieve, right?

That's typically how that term has been used. Is that how you guys learned it as you were growing up? Jim, you were looking at the mic, it's not going to talk to itself. Well, I didn't want to steal from Robby, he might smack me. I grew up exactly the same way, but the difference is that was when we were chasing the wild goose, which probably is a problem, but tonight we're looking at the wild goose chasing us. No, we're actually looking at chasing the wild goose.

I'm looking at being chased by the wild goose, because I was running. Okay, what we're going to talk about tonight, ignore what Jim just said, what we're going to talk about today is... And most people usually do. Yeah, that's good. Going back, Robby, did you want to say something? No?

Okay. Going back, probably, I don't know, five, six years ago, and I know Jim heard it from this source, and I think a couple others have, is John Eldridge talked about the Celtic people, and I read more about it this last week of the British Isles, primarily is where it was from. And I know you hear the term Celtic, but it's actually supposed to be Celtic. The Celtic people didn't refer to the Holy Spirit as a dove, they didn't use that as the symbol.

And when we think about the common church now, and we think about the Holy Spirit, it's often represented by a dove, which makes a lot of sense because the dove is about peace, comfort, comforting, those types of aspects the Holy Spirit brings. But what the Celtic people realized is there's a wild adventurous streak to the Holy Spirit. And so they used a wild goose. And when you were following the adventure with the Holy Spirit, they called it chasing the wild goose. I'm on adventure with the wild goose. And it later became like anything else, the enemy takes what is meant for good and is a really cool thing, and twists it and turns it and makes it something a lot less. If it doesn't make it evil, it at least makes it a waste of time, which is what he's done with this story. And so this week we're going to be playing some clips that go along with what we want to talk about, and each sharing stories of our wild goose chases, or in Jim's case being chased by the wild goose.

And that can happen as well. And so I'll go ahead and start first. I'm going to play a clip from a movie called Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. It probably wasn't one of my favorite movies.

I liked it, but I probably think I watched it once. And for whatever reason, when I thought of this topic, I thought of this one, because I did remember that they had to get all these different ways to get home, buses, planes, trains, automobiles, literally, to try to get to home. They were trying to get back to Chicago, I believe it was.

And so you have Steve Martin as one of the characters, and then John Candy. And in this clip, what you're going to hear is they're arriving at their destination in Chicago. They're about ready to split after this long adventure. And you get to hear them saying goodbye. And then Steve Martin thinks about some of the things that John Candy's character had said about his, John's wife, and wondered, okay, is he really got some place to go? So the second part you're going to hear is him coming back to the train station, following the Holy Spirit, you know, to some degree, to come back to the train station, and confront John's character. And then the last part is, he takes him home to be with his family. And so we're gonna listen to that and then come back and talk about it.

A couple days, but I'm a little wiser too, so. Me too. Happy holidays. Thank you. Happy Thanksgiving, Neil. Okay. Give my love to the family, will you? Same to you.

Maybe I'll get a chance to meet him one day. Okay. Say hello to Marie for me.

I feel like I know her. Yeah. And you have a happy Thanksgiving. Hey, you know it.

Heh. So long. Del, what are you doing here? You said you were going home. What are you doing here? I, uh, I don't have a home.

Marie's been dead for eight years. My kiddo. Daddy! Del Griffith, I want you to meet my father-in-law, Walt. My mother-in-law, Hank. Hi.

My mother, Joy. Hello, my dad, Mark. Glad to see you.

How you doing? Welcome, Bill. Hello, guys. Neil, Jr. Hello, Mrs. Martin. Jim, Marty. And somewhere around here is my little baby boy, Seth. Aw. In watching the movie, I watched it this week just in anticipation, you know, of this, so I'd know what I was talking about.

And, well, to some degree. First time. Yeah, first time. And so, in this, you get to hear Steve Martin, who's really frustrated the whole trip. You know, Del, which is John Candy's character, is just kind of going with the punches for the most part, you know, going along the way. And at the end, they're both changed, right? And they go on an adventure and they both end up at home, right? At Steve's home in this. And so, Del's got some place to go for Thanksgiving, a place to be home with some family.

You know, it's not his family, but they're bringing him into it. And I started thinking about just that's what the Holy Spirit does. He brings us to a couple of different places, but it's always a version of home. You know, it could be home with the Father. It could be home with in healing and restoration. There's lots of places that will unpack as we talk through this today.

But my quick story and then we'll get to Danny's clip is Holy Spirit Adventure. Years ago now, don't remember what year it was, but we had a big split in the ministry. You know, we were doing the radio show and there was a big split and it was not a, it was a very painful, painful split for everybody involved. And so, we were faced with the decision, do we continue to do the radio show or not? Because at that point, we were in debt to the radio station, quite a bit of money. You know, if you're not familiar with how Christian radio works, you pay for time on the air in hopes that you get donations, right, to cover it. And so, that's how a lot of that works.

You get advertisers or those types of things. And so, we were into the radio station pretty good, but we had made a commitment that we were going to go till the end of May. And so, Robby and I, who was what was left at the time, pretty much, said we're going to honor that. We're going to honor that thing. You know, we're going to honor till the end of May. And what happened from March is February, actually. February till end of May, all of our debt was gone to the radio station. We had a little bit of money in the bank for the next month.

God just continued to provide because we took a step of faith and said, I don't know how this is going to turn out. But what it ended up doing for me is it brought me to home, right? Because I'm home with you guys. This is my home. This is, you know, my community. This is, this is what I look forward to every week.

And Danny, I'm going to just talk right through to where you're not gonna have any time to do your clip, probably. That's normal, so go ahead. That's normal. It's pretty good. But so for me, it was a bringing of home and just that adventure has been such a cool adventure and continues to grow. Danny, we can go ahead and at least get your clip in.

And so if you want to go ahead and set that up. Yeah, the clip's from Evan Almighty. And it's an interchange between Evan and his wife. She's pretty much questioning his sanity at this point.

And so she kind of confronts him on what's going on with his long hair and all of his interesting stuff. And so this is, this is the clip. A break. This dry, hot weather will continue until September 22nd, midday. And if the arc isn't finished by then, you will be. Is that when it's going to happen? September 22nd, midday. That would be a good day to have chicken. How about mom's chicken?

Huh? Can we have some more chicken September 22nd, midday? Boys, will you excuse us, please? Your father and I need to have a little talk. Daddy, you're busting. Yeah, I know.

What are you doing? Do we have anything on leavened? Yeah, we do. It's in the back next to the frankincense and myrrh. We have a fancy name for it in this century.

It's called PETA. Got it. Evan, what is happening to you?

Don't, no, just put it down. Look at you. The hair, are you on something?

Is it a mega growth hormone? What? Evan, talk to me. I'm building an arc. What does that mean? God appeared to me and told me to build an arc.

He said there was going to be a flood and that I should be prepared. Whenever I shave, my beard grows right back out. My hair grows longer every day. This robe, God sent me the robe. I thought it would be funny. I actually think it's really comfortable. That's why I'm wearing it. The beard, the robe, you're Noah?

Yeah, kind of. Mom? Not now, Noah. Dylan, you left everything behind to come here.

Maybe that's put too much pressure on you. I don't know, but this has got to stop. Please. You're scaring me.

The boys need their father back and I need my husband back. Yeah. That, um, when you follow the wild goose, not being chased by it, um, being the Holy Spirit, you're led to being into something. I can remember a time when I think I had gotten into the wild at heart stuff. And so my life was just in a swirl and felt like God was telling me to get some men together. We had done a, like a day camp at this retreat center near the house. And I rode by there every day and I just kept hearing in my spirit, get some men together and I can see a campfire. And so we began putting this thing together and the resistance, you know, people, well, how are you going to do this?

How are you gonna pay for that? And I had no idea. I just was following this, this idea. And so we scheduled a date and we were going to have a night session and a meal. And then the next day at this place. And that weekend, a, a front was coming through Tennessee, spawning tornadoes, whole nine yards, and we had no way of canceling. So, well, we're going to come back and we're going to pick up that because I want to know what happened after that storm and what continued to store that time.

That's right. In the meantime, go to masculine journey.org register for the upcoming bootcamp. It's coming up March 31st through April 3rd.

We said it correctly. That's one of the few times in the last few weeks that we've done that March 31st through April 3rd masculine journey.org. We'd love to see you there. We know God's got some great adventures. He wants to take you on starting at camp and continuing from then on. One of my favorite things about bootcamp. Well, the favorite thing about bootcamp is every time I go, I encounter God. And as anyone that has encountered God knows generally speaking, it's nothing we expect real encounter with God out of the blue. He knew what I needed.

I knew what I wanted. And those two were rarely the same thing register today at masculine journey.org. What has bootcamp meant to me? That's a really tough thing to articulate. It's so deep inside me. It's ingrained in every part of me understanding woundedness. That's where God really caught me at my first bootcamp, and also helping me step into healing and restoration from those wounds. It's kind of cool.

It's like an onion. He keeps peeling back layers and it's, it's exciting and sometimes frustrating to go there with him. But I enjoy the process and the way God leads me to freedom. Register today at masculine journey.org.

Welcome back to the masculine journey. We are talking about the great adventure. We're talking about stepping out into the great unknown. Like Steven Curtis Chapman just sang in that song. And that whole song is about being on an adventure with God. As you go through the different verses, that was part of the chorus, but it's all about being on adventure and how there's nothing better, you know, but it does require us to step out into the unknown. And that's what we're talking about today. We're talking about chasing the wild goose, following the Holy Spirit on adventures.

And when we left, Danny, you're in mid adventure. You were telling us about something to do with setting up a campfire and something else. What was going on?

Yeah. Well, God had, I felt like God had impressed me to get some men together at a campfire, you know, like an overnight camp thing. And as we set this thing up, we didn't do a real good job about registration and contacting people, but it was like, okay, here's what we're going to do. So there was a, a storm front coming through to spawning tornadoes in Tennessee and just going to be a great weekend for a camp out. So, um, the day of I'm calling and people are going, you're going to cancel this thing. You're going to do this. So my good friend, George Trollinger, I called him and he and I were pretty close at the time. And he said, go set your tent up.

I thought, well, it'll blow down to probably Forsythe County from Randolph at that point. And okay. So I went and set my tent up. It was mist and rain. And I go out into the woods. There's a crosswalk out at that place. And I went out into the woods and I said, God, what did you tell the men that you led out into the wilderness? I won't ever forget what I heard. It was you tell him I am sent you. And I come out of there. I could have fought a demon tooth and nail, just ready to go. We set up to camp and it was an amazing time.

A guy shows up with cooks a whole barbecue meal. Didn't charge us anything. Put a large donation in the, in the, in the coffers to help pay for the thing. Bus plus donated all the food. Guys showed up. We only had rain one time.

We literally on the radar screen, the storefront literally parted around Randolph County and went back around and we didn't have any rain. We camped out. We had a fire. We did the whole nine yards. And when we settled everything out and we had to pay for the place, we had 3 cent leftover and we donated that place.

We figured, you know, what a tip. That's pretty cool. We're gonna have to start calling you weather Moses. You know, divided the store has swirling fire. We have like partying rain clouds. Yeah.

Lots of Americans. That's pretty cool. It's a very cool story. Shake your head. Yeah. Wasn't sure something was coming out of his, this rattled around in there. Jim, we'll go ahead and kick it over to you. If you want to talk a little bit about, I really wanted to follow Danny and there was a reason and I'm pretty sure it had to do with the clip, but I'm clueless now what that was, but we'll still follow that goose kitchen. The goose.

And I, and I decided to amend my assessment of that. I think it's a dance with the goose. We were chasing. I thought it was Dances with Wolves. Yeah. That's a different story. Well, let's just play the, this is Rosie and the wimp. I forgot his name.

It's such a good movies. Never Cry Wolf. Never Cry Wolf. Oh, that was a good lead in if I don't know that. But basically this is a guy that's lived an adventure and another fellow that's on an adventure for the first time. And they're flying in a plane into the heartland of Alaska. How do you, uh, I don't worry about anything.

I feel my way through these mountains blindfolded all the time. Tell me, Tyler, what's in the Valley of the Blackstone. What is it? Manganese? It can't be oil.

Is it gold? It's kind of hard to say. Ah, you're a smart man, Tyler.

Keep your own council. We're all of us prospectors up here, eh Tyler? Scratching for that one crack in the ground.

I'll never have to scratch again. I'll let you know the little secret, Tyler. The gold's not in the ground. Gold's not anywhere up here.

The real gold is south of 60. Sitting in living rooms, stuck, face in the boob tube, born to death. Born to death, Tyler. Born to death, Tyler. What was that? Oh, Lord. What's wrong?

Take the stick. What's wrong? Boredom, Tyler. Boredom, that's what's wrong. How do you beat boredom, Tyler? Adventure.

And that was my life. I was in the boredom sitting in front of the television because I'm not sure I can use the vernacular there, but it really was a time when we were pursuing God, my wife and I together. It was a couple of decades ago and we went to a Henry Blackaby thing at the Cove and I basically asked him, how do you hear from God?

How do you know when you're hearing from God? And I can still, I get chills just hearing his voice because Henry said, oh my brother, you know, if you haven't, then, you know, if you were somebody I was walking with, I'd walk alongside you and just show you. And he was talking about the walk of the Holy Spirit. And he lived an adventure his entire life.

He's still around, but not in ministry anymore. But not too long after that, my wife needed a major operation and it was around our 30th anniversary. So we decided to go to Alaska. And that's was part of the inspiration for this clip, but it really is, did become that level of adventure of flying into Alaska and not sure we weren't going to crash. We went on a cruise. That was the easy part on the cruise and little Presbyterian Church in Skagway.

Both my wife and I heard from God that we were to come to Alaska. Now we had been, never been out of the Carolinas. She was a South Carolina girl.

I was a North Carolina girl. And when we got married, she said, we are not going more than 200 miles from her mom. And got to the point where we'd said, okay, we're going to go on this adventure with God and not in a hurry, we'll sell the house. So I said, well, I'm not going to pay a realtor. I stuck a sign in the yard at noon. And at 7 PM that night, we were signing a contract on the house. And then they wanted us out quick. I mean, we had maybe two weeks to throw away or give away most of our junk and head to Alaska. And the only people that really said, yeah, that sounds like God, were the five men that ended up on our board pretty much. But all family, most of our friends just said, you're nuts.

What are you going to do when you get there? We don't know. And we didn't. And that's sort of why I was saying we were chaste. I mean, we were pursuing God. And it was sort of when he got hold of us, because we were chasing him, it was quite an adventure. And that did, we thought we were going forever. And we had, and we knew what we were going to do when we got there.

And we were wrong on both of those counts. So I felt more chaste than chasing during that adventure. I can understand that.

It was a wonderful adventure with God and one that changed our lives permanently. Jim, quick question. You weren't from uptown Charlotte, were you? I was East Charlotte. So you weren't an uptown girl?

No. I guess I should have seen that coming. I was on Country Club Drive. I just thought Billy Joel might have been in your background somewhere. So riding up here to share a Holy Spirit adventure. Do you have one that you'd like to share with us? Really, that's what, you know, I was thinking along the lines of, there's lots of adventures that I was on by myself, really, since coming to Christ, and then walk my walk of my life and where I'm at with this band of brothers and with my brothers and sisters in Christ in church. And, you know, doing all that is, and then my personal family kind of breaking up now and everything is an incredible adventure with God that is one where I am pursuing that with the Holy Spirit for sure. Because I'm praying, you know, for healing and restoration and all kinds of other things that are just, you know, very personal, very daily type things that are, you know, hey, I just want to be sustained for today. I, you know, forget about tomorrow and other things. And these put a bunch of things into my life over the last, you know, five, six, seven years that have just been, you know, in hindsight, it looks like, oh, there's connection at the time.

There's like, oh, where in the heck am I going? So it's been an adventure of just trying to get through life and just that contentedness that has come over me is absolutely the Holy Spirit, because that's not me. You didn't really answer my question. But when we come back in the after hours, I am asking to share a story about boot camp when you follow the Holy Spirit out into quiet time. So I'll give you a chance to think about that. But you did give me a great answer. You just didn't answer the question.

Well, that's one of the things I had beforehand was really the only place I've ever been on ventures with the Holy Spirit has been boot camp other than this big one I'm going through with my life. Yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, you can answer it. We'll come back for another answer. We'll go round two on that one.

I'm good for that. Yeah. In the meantime, go to masculine journey.org to register you to register for the upcoming boot camp March 31 through April 3. Real quickly, if you think about some of the old stories of the Bible, any of the stories in the Bible, they're all called on adventure. We've talked about that on the adventure topic, right? Abram is called on adventure becomes Abraham down the road, you got Saul that becomes Paul, and all that, but it's a Holy Spirit often led adventure, right? And there's a lot of unknowns, there's a lot of places that we don't know where we're going to end up. And I'd encourage you this week to pray to walk with the Holy Spirit and chase after. This is the truth network.