Spring Boot Camp Highlights

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Welcome to Masculine Journey. We're glad to have you with us today, and we're just coming fresh off of a boot camp. Now, Robby, how exciting is it to come back from being in a relaxing boot camp and get back into the busyness of the world? Just saying.

Well, Sam, I'm glad you could enjoy that right this minute. We've had a few technical difficulties here at the station, and due to that, it was a little stress on Robby's part, a little over the top maybe. No, that's not what I was actually referring to. What I was saying is, anytime you come back from boot camp, coming back into the world is almost like a transition.

Oh, it is? You know, there's like a jet lag feeling. There's a feeling of, oh my gosh, we've got so much going on now. I know my last couple of days have just been off the chain and not really sure what to do as far as just trying to get some rest. Now, Andy, has it been okay for you?

I mean, you kind of work from home, so you could just take a nap whenever you want, can't you? So we had a great boot camp. You know, Robby, do you think that everything was going pretty well with camp this time? I think we had a great turnout, you know, especially since we've had some of the COVID times where we, you know, one time had really small turnout, you know, and other times we've had big turnouts.

Yeah, it was really neat to come out of COVID and that you really sense no feel of the pressure of that. Plus, you know, the thing that really is, you know, to get back into that feel of what that's like back at camp rather than what I've experienced over the last half hour. But was that every camp is just so unique. And with each camp, God has clearly got a message, an overarching message that came through so clear. And I think, you know, for many of us, he was really working on identity and shame, you know, as part of that identity.

In this particular camp, it was really, really spectacular. Yeah, we'll talk about it more later, but we had a new talk. You know, we haven't really done a talk in the way that we did it in lots of different ways.

You know, it originated out of the ministry here. And we had three people that shared a talk. I don't think we've ever really done that. I know we've done two people share the talk. And so it was something completely new. And we'll talk a little bit more about that as we get into some more of the clips and things.

Yeah, it was wonderful. Absolutely. So which clip are we going to play first? Well, we've got aim small, miss small. It's right up on top, so you can go there if you want. Yeah. Who wants to set that up?

I'll be happy to. So this was from the movie The Patriot. And for those of you who haven't seen it, a spectacular movie with Mel Gibson, a little bit gory in places, no doubt, not unlike Braveheart. But the basic storyline is you've got a man from South Carolina who had fought in the French and Indian War as a hero and had certainly done some things in that war that he had made an agreement that he was never going to get involved in another battle like that, especially to risk his wife and kids or his wife had been passed away, but he didn't want to get his kids involved.

And so part of the warfare talk is, you know, open wars among you, whether you risk it or not. And this man didn't want to risk it until the British were actually at his farm and unfortunately were arresting one of his sons and going to hang him. And while the other son got upset about that, they shot and killed him. And at this point in time, they were taking off his other son to be hanged. And at that point, he decided it was time to get involved. Now, the oldest son is being walked away. The second one had just been shot. So you have these two boys that are literally with him in the woods that are now going to take on essentially, you know, I guess like a battalion. I mean, there's like 20 or 30 soldiers that these three are going to take on and two boys are like eight and 10, maybe something like that. So as you hear this, you'll hear him explain to these boys what he's going to do. And then you'll hear a small excerpt of what happened as a result.

Boys, listen to me. I'll fire first. I want you to start with the officers and mark your way down.

Can you tell the difference? Yes, father. Samuel, after your first shot, I want you to reload for your brother, Nathan. Now, if anything should happen to me, I want you to drop your weapons and I want you to run as quickly as you can. Now you hide in the brush, make your way home, get your brother and your sisters and you're taken to your Aunt Charlotte's.

Understood? What did I tell you fellas about shooting? Aim small, miss small. Boys, Samuel, steady.

Lord, make me fast and accurate. Aim small, miss small. That finishing little noise you heard there was that there was one of those soldiers that had his son by the throat with a knife.

And of course, you know, Mel Gibson's character there had a hatchet that he threw that made it quick dispatch of that situation. But clearly, the message of that, for those of us who are hunters or marksmen, of the idea of aim small, miss small, just really stuck to me throughout this boot camp, although I didn't realize that that was going to stick so hard. But in the very first talk that I gave that night as I prayed, God was very clear with me that at the end of my talk, which had to do with the Matthew 20 passage where Jesus asked the two blind beggars, you know, what do you want me to do for you in spite of the fact that they were blind? And, you know, that's very much the idea if you go into boot camp is what are you aiming for? And if you aim for something very, very, very specific, then, you know, your chance of getting that would be much better. And the challenge is, is men are in that situation.

They're like sitting in a smorgasbord of things. What is it, God, you want to do for me? And there's so many to choose from that and really to see what is God after at this boot camp.

And here we are. And so God asked me to get down actually on my knees and pray that God would speak a word. Actually, if you can see my hand, kaboom him on the forehead with a word that that was what God was going after this weekend. And it was really a very small, very specific thing that he asked me to do. And it was really fun to deliver that message and then actually to get down on my knees, which, Sam, you said you were very surprised at how easily I got back up. Yeah, we didn't have to call anybody in for assistance or anything.

You'd use a crane or anything. You didn't hurt yourself. It was great. But the thing about I did aim for that God would give people something very, very specific that first night, a word, a word of something to work on. And oh my goodness, the fruit that came through that, there were so many different guys on the team alone that told me about their word. But one of the words that became significant in the camp for me was one of the guys that had been to a camp before by the name of Rob told me that the word that God gave him was bold. Well, also that same night he indicated to me that he had been thinking he needed to get baptized. Well, God used that as I was praying actually the last day, Sunday morning, to say, you need to get Rob to go ahead and get baptized with his dad here, with his brother-in-law there and his friend.

And it would be a memory that would be beautiful and an opportunity for Rob to see how much his dad loves him. And so I had exactly I aimed small, shoot small, because when I went to Rob, because he looked at me like, you really want me to get in that cold, muddy water? And I looked right at him and I said, didn't you tell me something about the word that you heard was bold?

In other words, he looked at me like, oh, you dog. But, you know, Andy, for you, I mean, you saw that baptism and, oh, my gosh, the harvest of seeing. I wish everybody, and we ought to put that video at our website, of this man rushing to the water for his son to come out of the water, and the hug of those two embracing was not only like, from my perspective, you know, the prodigal father running for the son to put his robe on the boy, but there was also a part that you might remember that it says at the end of the Old Testament that John the Baptist or Elijah will, you know, turn the hearts of the fathers to the sons and the sons to the father. Well, I've never seen that through baptism like that, like John the Baptist would have. But if you could have seen those two hug as a result of what happened, I mean, it was absolutely amazing. Go ahead, Harold, you had something? Yeah, my word was a tough one, pure.

And that sort of makes me cringe because I got a long way to go. Yeah, it was really cool to see how that played out in so many different ways, in aim small, miss small. Yeah, we saw that throughout the camp, I think. You know, we saw some themes come up that we don't normally see. You know, I think you said, Robby, quite well that we find at each boot camp, we find nuggets. I think you called it something else, but something that's always going to be a part of boot camps moving forward.

Right. Right, and this is one of them. You know, that whole concept of, you know, what am I really aiming at? You know, I mean, you had a story that you told us off the air. I know you can't share it exactly, but you did the opposite at one point, didn't you? Yeah, I was deer hunting one morning. And when the sun came up, and, you know, to tell the whole truth, I was smoking, which I shouldn't have been doing, thinking that I wasn't going to see any deer because it was foreign rain.

Instead, there were 40 deer in the field. And so I just thought, well, if I shot out amongst them, I was about to hit something. The gun went off, you know, as soon as I saw fur in the scope, I fired before I ain't really got an aim on anything because I just figured I was going to hit a deer. And deer ran everywhere, and I aimed big, and I missed huge. Yeah, and to be clear, you don't smoke anymore. That's something you used to do a long time ago, right? I'm a car salesman.

Of course I smoked. What would happen this Sunday if Jesus Christ showed up at your church? This is exactly what happened in Luke chapter 19, Mark 11, Matthew 21, and even in John chapter 2. Jesus Christ came in, and He cleansed the temple. The Lord of the Sabbath, the Son of God, came into His Father's house, and He was upset.

And He saw all the merchandising. And in the words of Jesus, as they had turned His Father's house into a den of thieves, Jesus wasn't at home there because it wasn't about Him or His Father. Is your church Christocentric?

That means filled with Jesus. Is He the hero of your church? Is His word being taught? If He came to your church today, would He be uncomfortable, would He even recognize it? Or would He be at home?

Something to think about. True Commentary with Stu Epperson, author of the book, Last Words of Jesus. Available now in bookstores.

Or at lastwordsofjesus.com So, Danny, that was your bump in. That's a very popular song. We use it at boot camp. And so, this is one that you picked to use for the bump.

Tell us why. The word I was given was chosen. And I thought, okay, this could be interesting. So, I went down, and after the wound talk, which Robby got me again, was I had planned, because I was so sleepy during that talk. And I thought, okay, we've got a covenant of silence. And I know you're not supposed to, but I'm going to take a nap. And at the end of Robby's talk, he goes, don't go to your cabin and take a nap.

And I'm going, geez. So, but I would have missed so much, because God showed me that I was His weapon of choice. That, you know, my manhood, who I am, and I think I've been attacked all my life.

And just in different ways. And as I began to dig into that wound thing and the message behind it, I realized God was saying no. And Andy had brought this cool weapon. It was a, I don't even know what you call it. Gun stock.

A gun stock thing that lasted the Mohicans. And it was just a unique weapon. And God was telling me, you're a unique weapon.

I made you and broke the mold kind of thing. And that, you know, all of it was about me taking my question to God and Him answering it. And, you know, that was just kind of the whole theme of the boot camp.

So that song just says that really well. So, yeah. Now, when we did the shame talk, there was also a clip from the butterfly circus that echoed that for you, wasn't there?

Yeah. There's a scene in there where the guy, if you've ever seen the butterfly circus, we won't spoil our alerts. But the redeeming master of ceremonies is speaking to the guy and he's telling him all the things that the old mean guy used to tell him. And he goes, why would you do that? He said, because you believe that. And sometimes God has to come after us and go, this is what you believe. But that's not what I say about you. And that was the message that rang loud and clear. You've believed a lot of lies and you've made those agreements, but that's not what's true about you. And it has just given me all kinds of different weaponry, if you will, in boot camp.

And you come out of boot camp and they send you off to war evidently this week because it has been an interesting week on many different levels. But there's so many tools that you get that you learn to use. I always use the analogy of David. He told Saul he couldn't use those weapons because he hadn't proved them.

He learned to fight with a sword and all that stuff, but he was pretty good with a rag and a rock at the moment. That's a good point. I did a talk on shame this time, and we talked a little bit about it in the last segment. And so one day I was just praying about some stuff and I felt God lay it kind of on my heart to do a talk about shame.

But I knew it wasn't something that I was just supposed to do alone. And so as I prayed some more, he said, you need to ask Andy and Robby to participate. As I prayed more through it, I asked him more about, is this something we should just kind of round it all out together, you know, collaborate all the way through? And he's like, no, I want Robby to work on what I'm talking to him about on shame and Andy and on you and then just put it together.

And that's kind of what we did, wasn't it, Robby? Oh, it's absolutely spectacular from my point of view because God showed me some really cool stuff about identity and shame and how shame to some extent is an identity crisis. And when I was looking at the Hebrews, you might guess I would. You know, I got this idea of, number one, it is your identity, but it is also the fact that your identity is being used to purify you. In other words, when you have shame, it actually pushes you towards God in order to deal with how you're feeling. And unfortunately, if you go to the point where you're so hard-hearted, you no longer feel shame, then you've gone over to the dark side, I'm afraid.

So a lot of what shame is about is actually to give you an idea that something's wrong. But, you know, Andy, you've got this clip that you brought along these lines that as soon as we get Andy over to the white mic, you know, he can share. Yeah, so the clip I brought, we have guys that we listen to beyond John Eldridge. One of them is John Lynch. He's the first one speaking in this. It's really kind of a theatrical documentary, but this is really just where they're talking to these different, you know, sages in, like, counseling that deal within shame. And there's John Lynch, and there's Dan Allender, who was friends with the Heart Ministry. Anyway, every one of these statements is made, there's another lady that does some kind of theatrical, you know, spoken word. Yeah, there you go. But they all, every statement they say is what I felt about shame, and it just really spoke to me.

So go ahead and play it. I feel the sense that something is uniquely wrong with me. So I'm never telling anyone, but it feels like everybody knows. It feels like something on my face that everybody can see it. That if you get close enough to me, it makes me awkward in crowds, it makes me insecure, it makes me perform. I become a great performer. I so much want you to love me, and I think if I'm funny enough, or talented enough, cool enough, witty enough, do funny things in a crowd, that you'll think I'm worth knowing and loving.

But I don't believe it. I always felt that God was mildly disgusted with me. Hearing that he loves me didn't really resonate, because it's like when it's all said and done, he's still going to judge me. You know, when it's all said and done, he's still not happy with where I am or who I am.

And so I don't feel close to him, I don't feel intimate with him, I don't even feel the freedom to speak to him because he's over there and I'm over here. I think shame fundamentally is that inner judgment that there is something ugly, distorted, and broken about us that if someone were to see, they could not bear being in relationship with us and we could not bear being in relationship with them. Shame is that thing that drives my compulsive behavior. In whatever manner, I'm never going to be enough, so I have permission.

I have entitlement to do wrong. So, you know, like I say, every one of those really statements that I felt in my heart, you know, bound up by addiction and, you know, things that, you know, didn't do my heart good. Another thing that I spoke about is that whole, those points that they made kept me in a point of isolation.

I can't let anybody know what I'm dealing with, you know, and that really keeps you bound up and, you know, the whole part of this message is truly leaning into God and even in our brokenness with our wounding and really leaning into him and allowing him to free us. Not only from the wound, from the pose, from those things, but the shame that's associated with them that you get relief from that. And it's like Robby said, I would never look at shame as being something that had anything good about it.

It always was totally negative. But to his point, if you're bound up in shame because of what you're doing, you know, these wounds or whatever. If you're bound up in that shame, you begin to realize that your only exit from that shame is Jesus. Yeah, as we talked about on the shame talk when we were there that God had an intent for shame originally. But, you know, when shame first enters the story, it's in the Garden of Eden and you have Adam and Eve and they eat from the apple and all that. And then God comes to find them and, you know, he's asking Adam, where are you? And Adam says, you know, I'm hiding because I'm naked and I'm ashamed. And God's response is, you know, who told you you were naked? Because Adam and Eve had been naked the whole time. They're just now aware of it.

Right. And so the enemy loves to point out the things that he wants to hold us down by. He wants to embarrass us by.

He wants to put us in a place of an agreement with him and in shame and keep us in isolation. You know, one of the great things that, you know, I stole from our friend Mike G. was he had had in a sermon one Sunday that, you know, Satan knows your name, but he calls you by your sin. And God knows your sin, but he calls you by your name. You know, and I think that's key to remember that when you're hearing something other than your name, it's probably not coming from God.

If you're hearing an identity thing that's not something positive in a name that God gave you, you know, that's probably not coming from God. And especially if it's got a negative connotation, then it's pretty easy to say, okay, that's just the enemy trying to get me into shame and into an agreement and into a place where he can cause me to want to isolate because now I'm naked and I don't want anyone to see me. Yeah. And it was so cool to me to see, like we use the Jerry Maguire clip quite often where, you know, he doesn't want to be just another shark in a suit. And this little boy essentially disrupts his life, you know, by letting him see what an idiot he'd been about, you know, not caring about the things that were actually important. But that is what began the process of dismantling the pose, dismantling the shame, and getting him back to where, you know, he could be who God meant him to be.

Yeah, exactly. And so it's really, like I said, this particular camp, for me, one of the things, there was just so much from the shame talk that we did. And Rodney's new name, you know, we had so many guys hear their name for the first time, and clearly Danny had, you know, his message on the poser, and it was just a lot about identity. Yeah, I was throwing some of your paperwork away, and it said, you know, poser by Danny Marsh, and I didn't see the by initially, and I saw poser Danny Marsh. You know, and I wasn't really sure if it was a proclamation, and then I saw the little word by.

When you hear something about your sin, you know, who's calling? I was just saying. Yeah, yeah.

I was voicing the enemy there. That's all. Good call. So, we have a boot camp coming up in November. It's a weekend before Thanksgiving. I know it seems like it's too early to register. It is, but register next week. Talk to you then.