MJ Warrior After Hours

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

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Starts here, now. Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. I'm glad to have you this week. Yes, this is not Sam. This isn't Robby. This isn't Danny. This isn't Rodney. This isn't Harold. This isn't David. This isn't Art.

I had to do that. This is Andy. It is Art.

No, it ain't Art. No. Next week. Oh, all right.

I want to hear that. But we're coming back at, oh, my bad. It's not Sam. I think we said that, but Sam's with us on the phone.

He's working remote. Right, Sam? Yep, I'm here. Glad to be with the guys at least for this part. But anyway, this week we're just continuing on our series on the stages of the masculine journey. And, Robby, what are we on this week? Well, we did Boyhood, right?

And then we did Cowboy Ranger. And so today we're up to Warrior, which is, you know, the later teens and to beyond, right? You know, as far as you want to go, we will have a chance to battle for things. And when you agree, Harold, clear into your, like, 120, 30, what?

It's a horrible, horrible thing that I have to go through to put it with you guys. I see some fierceness there. Well, yeah. It takes a lot to say, you kids get off my lawn. But no, the point, though, is, is once a warrior, always a warrior.

And we got to remember that, because the enemy is not going to stop coming after us. He didn't say, oh, Robby's a king or Robby's a sage. Now I'm going to back off even more so because you can help somebody out in those other stages that we'll talk about. But so Sam's got a clip. We're going to let him set it up and we'll get into the show. Before we do that, though, I do want to recognize, I know you guys would agree, that you see the warrior streak in Harold rise up. You know, when it's something he's passionate about, and there's no doubt that that warrior is hardwired in that man.

And I would not want him to be angry at me, that's for sure. But you never do lose the warrior stage. It's with you the whole time, as Robby was saying. My clip is from a movie called Kingdom of Heaven. Not one of my favorite movies. But this is one of my favorite clips.

I really do like this clip. And what we have in it is you have a young man, late warrior, well, there is no late warrior stage. So mid 20s, maybe that's been raised as an orphan. All of a sudden, this guy comes into his life says he's his dad wants him to go on an adventure. He says no, the dad leaves, and things transpire. And Bailey and has to leave town quickly and runs after his father. That's the only place he knows where to go. Where we pick this up. Bailey has been sleeping on the ground.

He got there the night before his father tosses down a sword and start teaching him to be a warrior. Pick it up. Let's see what you're made of.

His hand is hurt my lord. I once fought two days with an arrow through my testicle. Never use a low guard. You fight well.

Let's work on your skills. Take a high guard like this. The Italians call it La Posta di Falcone, the guard of the hook. You strike from high. Like this.

Do it. Sword's straighter. Come on. Think back. Bend your knees. Sword's straighter. Defend yourself.

A blade isn't the only part of a sword. Attack. I have your lead.

What's this? Uncle, have you? You have with you a man, Balian, who killed a priest, his brother. I'm charged by both my father and the lord-bishop to bring him back. What he says is true.

They have the right to take me. I say he's innocent of the charts. If you say he's guilty, then we'll fight. And God will decide the truth of it.

My German friend is a close student of the law. Just give him to me. I'll fight you for something else.

Uncle, he's a murderer. So am I. Whoever dies here today, you will certainly be among them. Yeah, the clip, what I think is really interesting is, you know, Balian's been training for maybe, what, like five minutes at the most? You know, if it was real time, and all of a sudden he's got to use what he's been taught. And that's really our walk as Christian men. We're actually born into a world of war, and the battles are raging around us before we even learn to fight. And so once we do learn to fight, man, we got to use it right away. I mean, God's teaching us stuff, and we're on the field learning it, you know, in the midst of it. And so it's a really good clip for me that you have this guy that has not been bothered, and literally gets bothered pretty quickly, and has to enter into the battle right now.

Yeah, for sure. Once you realize that you actually are in a battle, I think the enemy realizes he's about to lose a hold on something. He had you at naivete for a long time, or maybe passivity. But when you decide to stand up and fight, he's going to send it.

He's going to say, well, let's see what's in his medal. And I think that's what you see in that clip. You know, I think coming up and growing up in church my entire life, I know a couple of guys during the pre-show hit on it when we were talking about it. But it's almost like you get a watered down version of what that spiritual battle may or may not be. I know for me, I really honestly, you know, I mean, I've read books, even though some people say I got to Google what a book is.

I can read. And then, you know, reading books about it and stuff really doesn't do it justice till you get together with, you know, the father and a group of guys that are really showing you what it's about. So for me, I can relate to Sam's clip just by the fact of, you know, I didn't really learn how to start spiritual warfare or start battling for myself until I went to my first boot camp. And that's really where, you know, I got that little bit of, you know, I got that little bit of meat from that and was like, oh, let me take that on.

And then kept going and went to the second one and everything else like that. But also, you know, Sam pointed out one time talking with him over some stuff is we got to be careful of when we are going to battle what we think is the enemy. Sometimes that's God just disrupting what's already in our life that he's got to break down and fix, you know, and that's really where this starts to come up for me as a warrior for me. This starts to come up for me as a warrior for me.

Yeah, I just think about so many times when I just charged into battle and really didn't have that initiation that I needed to. And when you begin to look at it, I mean, I remember back in the day, I mean, I was a Christian and I was trying to live this thing out. And I remember reading Ephesians six and putting on the full armor of God. And I did that in my prayer life a lot. And I saw some fruit of that and I believe God was there, but there was a, there was some missing parts of that story. I didn't really, I was trying to put on the battle, but I didn't really didn't have a warrior's heart.

You know, I didn't have that. I'm going to stick with this and this is truth. And my father, you know, the Lord is a warrior. The Lord is his name from Exodus, realizing that this is an attribute of God that I'm taking on. And, and I think really when you tie it back to identity, it makes it much more powerful. If it's just hanging out there on its own, if I'm just this guy trying to put on this spiritual armor, when you tie it into, well, I'm a son and I'm putting that armor on and it's for a purpose because I'm extending the kingdom of God being part of his family.

It's so much more powerful. Yeah. You know, one thing I was thinking of is in that clip, you know, Balian's father tells him, you know, you fight well or something like that.

There's an affirmation there. You know, I was thinking about when I was growing up, I learned how to fight. It wasn't that I didn't know how to fight.

My brothers got me to fight all the time and I got myself in plenty of fights. I knew how to fight, but there's a big difference between a fighter and a warrior. Yeah. Right. I didn't know how to really battle.

You know, I just, you know, throw some fists once in a while or whatever it might be. And, and there's a big difference between that and being a warrior and being skilled and, and knowing who the opponent is and attacking at the right places. Yeah. Knowing when to use a high guard, right? Exactly.

I was trying to figure out how to even walk for two days. I mean, I think he definitely earned his warrior card with that one. I'm just saying. Yeah.

So, uh, I'm going to go to my clip now. I've surprised, surprised it's from Braveheart and I'm going to stick with it. You know, it's all in there and the Braveheart movie.

So, but it speaks to me. I remember whenever, um, before I really got into this mission, I remember seeing Braveheart gladiator, some of them, and I'd see them on the weekends. You know, you're going to work every day and, you know, you're, you're so disconnected from understanding spiritual warfare, but when you saw the movie, something rose up within you, but there was nothing you could really do with it because you didn't really, you weren't in the battle.

You didn't really feel like it applied to you. That was just watching something from history, but something rose up within me and Braveheart to me is the, the, you know, the classic masculine journey, a movie, you see all the stages in it, but this warrior, you know, that's really a lot of the focus of the movie is the warrior heart of Braveheart. And we've talked about in his boyhood, his cowboy ranger, how God has come in and, and, and shepherded his heart to prepare him for this warrior life that he's gonna, uh, to lead. And, and as Robby pointed out, as we were discussing this, he's really speaking probably more as a King here, cause he's leading men, but he still has this warrior heart that inspires other men to go to battle with him, which is like a King, but he's a warrior himself. He doesn't just say, go to battle without, with, you know, without me, he goes with them. He leads them.

And it's just a powerful clip. And, uh, we'll talk about it when we get back. The almighty says this must be a fashionable fight. It's drawn the finest people. Where is thy salute for presenting yourselves on this battlefield?

I give you thanks. This is our army to join it. You give homage. I give homage to Scotland. And if this is your army, why does it go? We didn't come here to fight for them.

The English are too many. Sons of Scotland, I am William Wallace. William Wallace is seven feet tall.

Yes, I've heard. He kills men by the hundreds. I am William Wallace. And I see a whole army of my countrymen here in defiance of tyranny. You've come to fight as free men. And free men you are. What will you do without freedom? Will you fight?

No. We will run. And we will live. Aye. Fight and you may die.

Run and you'll live at least a while. And dying in your beds many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take our freedom? So that to me is just so powerful. As you hear in the beginning, these clans, they want to capitulate. They want to compromise.

They want to give up on their freedom. And it took him to step in and inspire. Well, where did that come from? I was watching the movie the other night and he almost had backed away. And the fact that he just wanted to come back and be a farmer and marry moron and just live a happily happy life.

And the English were not going to let him do that. And finally he realized, okay, this stuff that I got, you know, this training I got from father that I got from Argyle, Robby, Mr. Stockman. All this that he had poured into him, he had in Reservoir to give to these men, to inspire them to be able to talk about, you know, what about your freedom? Does your freedom mean anything to you? And really, that's what called me out in some ways is that I was living a bondage type of life. I was constrained by religion. I was constrained by a dullness, a passivity. And when you call those things out, you begin to say, this life that means something more than what I'm living now is worth fighting for.

And it is freedom. I think about, you know, when I was actually, when I married Tammy, I was six foot five, 240 pounds, whatever I was, and the complete chicken. I was afraid of the dark.

I really, really was. And I can remember, you know, laying in the bed and if there was a sound in the night or something, I'd like, Tammy, can you check on that? You know, because I was terrified.

It was interesting how in the 119 Psalm, it says, I'll run in the path of your commandments when you enlarge my heart. Well, see, I didn't realize that it was, my fear was holding me in bondage actually in bed. And one night I actually asked Jesus, you know, take this from me. And he came and he said, well, Robby, you know, what are you afraid of? And I said, well, have you seen the movie Psycho in the shower scene, you know, like with the knife and how about Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her husband 40 whacks. I mean, that's pretty scary. And he said, well, Robby, you know, what's so, what would be so bad about that?

And all of a sudden he showed me, Jesus did really my own mortality and like, wow, you're threatening me with heaven. Right. And someday laying in my bed, I was laying there shivering. Right.

Right. Well, fast forward, you know, that was actually at about 1991, 93, actually. Well, 2017, I think it was that I'm laying in my bed and I hear somebody on the roof.

I mean, literally somebody's on the roof walking around Rudolph and it wasn't Rudolph. And so, man, what did I do? I grabbed the shotgun.

I really did. And I'm, I'm heading out the door and my wife's like, should I call the police? I said, you better. Cause I'm fixed to shoot somebody. And so, you know, next thing, you know, I cocked the shotgun going out the door and I hear this guy go, don't shoot, don't shoot. And they're really, there was a guy on my roof and my wife was calling the Winston Salem police department at the same moment and saying, you better get over here. My husband's got a gun on some guys on the roof.

I think he's going to kill him. Well, every Winston Salem policeman, I think that was within whatever earshot. Cause you heard sirens coming from everywhere, coming up and down the street, this dude actually, you know, to finish the story, he, he got scared. He ran off the roof, you know? And of course the Winston Salem police, they show up on both sides of the street, probably 20 cars and dogs, and they're releasing all this stuff. And they're all like, Mr. Dilmore, calm down. Can you please put the gun on the ground?

Really? I say all that for a couple of reasons. Number one, look out what God did between the guy that was shivering in his bed.

Literally. I mean, that was me. I'm not, I'm not kidding you to the guy that was out there like, okay, you know, I'm going to protect my family.

But the other thing that my family, you know, they, they, they didn't have a lot of respect for the guy that was shivering in his bed, but my wife was like, Oh, she was so she was proud of her husband for standing out there with that shotgun on that house. You know, it was, it was a completely different thing because they, they see that, that image of the, okay, this, this is a time to rise up and this is, this is the thing to do. So, you know, if, if you, if you're going out to the warehouse and there's a little snake, I'm just saying. You know, God can enlarge your heart about those snakes, David, I'm just saying. I mean, as Danny said at 12 Gates can take care of those snakes pretty quickly too.

So I mean, either one works for me. You know, Andy, in that clip, I was, as I was listening to it and I'd listen to it earlier and, you know, we were familiar with that clip, but I could hear God speaking to those men through William Wallace and, you know, he's calling us to be warriors and, you know, in, in my own story, I think I shared a little bit earlier, but I've never viewed myself and never viewed myself as a warrior. And I knew, I remember growing up, I've got a letter from the office of president Ronald Reagan, because I heard, and I didn't know as a kid, you know, what the political ramifications were, but I knew they were going to take prayer out of school.

And everybody was talking about it and it was already in process and that kind of thing. But, you know, in my own warrior mind heart, if I write to the big man, he'll stop this. And so I wrote a letter to the president explaining to him why we should shut this down. And I got, you know, the, the, the corporate letter kind of thing.

We're glad to hear from the youth of America, that kind of thing. But in, in, in retrospect, it was kind of a defeat for me because I did what I thought I was supposed to do and it failed. And so, you know, the enemy comes after that kind of stuff. But you know, what's funny is that I've been reading as Barney would say the Bible chronologically in chronological order. And, you know, I was reading it in judges the other day and, you know, Sampson, we always hear about him being a mighty warrior, but, but the key to the whole thing is it says the spirit of the Lord come upon him. And you know, when the spirit of the Lord, the Lord is a warrior, a warrior is his name comes upon you. There's a time and a place that you rise up and do some Mr. Miyagi on some folks, you know what I mean?

And, you know, be that physical, be it, you know, getting a man off of your roof, getting whatever it is, you know, my job as a man is to protect those around me, wherever that is. And, you know, that's, that's, that's something that we write off in church circles is, Oh no, you can't be that way. I got news for you.

You come through my window in the middle of the night. I'm not going to ask you how you got to this position in life. And we're not going to have a word of prayer. You might want to, but those are the things that, that, you know, make us who we are. And that's just as much a part of a valiant Christian man as reading your Bible every day or created in the image of God. And yeah, Lord is a little wound up. No, you're good. And I wanted you to follow that up real quick. You know, what you shared with us this morning, if you don't mind, do you have that or you want me to read it? Oh, I got it.

Okay. I was reading, I've tried to read through the sections that are in these masculine journey or in the book, followed by God. And I've tried to read those and, you know, something kind of pops about every, every time I do it. And so what I threw in there this morning, after I get through the shenanigans in here, um, the, uh, so it's from fathered by God. It says the recovery of the warrior is absolutely crucial to the recovery of a man. All else rests on this for you will have to fight my brothers for everything you desire and everything you hold dear in this world, despite what you feel or what you may have been told you have a warrior's heart because you bear the image of God. And he will train you to become a great warrior.

If you'll let him. And, you know, even at 54, I'm realizing that God is coming after that warrior heart that he put in me as a boy. Yeah. Not to be, you know, I don't want to be shot in certain places with an arrow. I mean, just, you know, that's kind of not in my game plan, you know, but, but the thing is, is that my prayer this week has been God teach me to use the warrior heart you gave me in the spirit that you gave it to me.

Yeah. And teach me the low guard. Teach me the low guard low. I am with you always. What are you talking like this? Danny, I appreciate your comment about the guy coming through the window because, um, as a little guy early on in life, I developed that fierce battling spirit just to try to defend myself against the bigger crowd that was always wanting to bully me. But my attitude is similar.

It's like, if you want to come into my house like that, send your soul on to God because your backside belongs to me. That's right. Yeah. I mean, um, just that whole warrior at being in us as a kid, um, I was going to talk about this a little bit in cowboy ranger, but I think it's appropriate today. I remember time when time when we moved to from Missouri to this apartment complex and all these kids, you just throw them together and you know, you fight through the day and all this one big bully guy and he was constantly beating up on these other two brothers. And, and, you know, he didn't pick on me as much. I was a little bit bigger, but he still, he got under my skin. Well, he picked on them one day and something rose up within me and I was like, I'm fighting back. And he jumped on my back and I flipped him. And you know, when you flip somebody and they hit and it knocks the air out of me, pretty much one, you know, I didn't stick my foot on his chest, but pretty much it was done after that. And it was really weird. I still, uh, it's hard to, I don't know, articulate, but I just, it's like the spirit of God came over me and I knew that I hadn't been living for God. And I started almost like, you know, just saying, I don't know, I said a lot of spiritual things, but I was also mixing in some curse words at the time. Cause it was really, you know, the adrenaline was pumping it to me.

It's a, it's more of that heart. That's not been trained in battle, but it was still that spirit of the Lord that you were talking about that came upon Sampson and, and it was righteous. You know, I didn't persist in that, but again, that was one of those moments where I felt like I was doing the righteous thing. And there were other times my dad had always wanted me to stick up and not, you know, pick on people, but defend them. And I did that a lot, but when dad moved out of my life, I remember that I got caught up in being one that did the picking on because I got, I got validation or I got attention from the guys, you know, that were with me and, you know, and it's sad. But I remember when I finally was getting a little bit older, I was in high school football and this guy was just wearing this one other kid out.

I was like, no, you're not going to do that to him. I'm going to step in, stepped up again, stop that. So God puts those things in us. We all have those stories. I know, but those things make us who we are, but it does look, we talked about you live life forward, but you understand that backward.

Now I look back at those things and that was God rising up within me, you know, during those times. Sam, you got anything? We got about a minute left. Yeah, I just want to encourage people to come to the entrenchment. You know, it is free. Come to the boot camp. You know, you're going to talk about that here in a minute, but God's got so much to do in these areas and he's got so much to share with you.

I just know it'd be really cool for him to be there. Yeah, definitely. The boot camp, you know, that's basically the same content. What we're going through now kind of gives you a context for these stages as we go through the, through our life. But these ideas of the core desires of a man, battle, beauty, adventure, they're all there, but come to the boot camp, November 17th to 20th. Before then, when you got the entrenchment, September 30th through October 1st, come to go to masculine journey.org to get more information.