Story

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. And welcome to Masculine Journey.

We are glad that you're with us this week. And it's a bit of a story this week that we're going to be talking about, right? It's just a long story.

Darrell Bock It always is. It's part of the masculine journey. Mike Zwick Yeah, story is key. So, actually, Robby, we're going to be talking about story this week.

And can you tell us a little bit more about that? Mike Zwick Yeah, it's really one of our core values in Masculine Journey is the importance of a guy's story, right? And how, you know, it's vital to understanding your identity and, you know, where you're walking with other people. And it's kind of like holy ground, actually, when you hear a man's story, it's a sacred thing. But often, by hearing someone else's story, someone else's struggles, it ignites hope in you. And again, we see this in the book of Acts, where it says, you know, you're going to receive power on high, you know, to be my witness, the idea of testimony there.

And again, in the book of Revelation, when it says, right, that you'll overcome by the word of your testimony and the blood of the Lamb. And so, we have seen this time and time again, where our stories ignite hope in somebody else as they see that, then they get real with their story. And you've heard it said that somebody's as sick as their secrets. What they're usually secret about is something in their story, right? And so, we're just talking tonight about story and the power of that.

We got some neat stories that we're going to share. Scott Horner We are. Mike Zwick And so, you know, Sam's trying to hang himself as part of the story right now. Scott Horner I'm trying to hang myself, yeah. Could take off my glasses. Mike Zwick Glasses and then they hang up. Scott Horner Yeah, it's kind of funny.

We should get a camera in here. Now, when you think about boot camp, in the most common thing we heard, the number one thing that people talk about is always time with God. And that always is going to be number one, and you expect that.

But number two is not this clip really like, rock my world. It's not, hey, the talk that they gave was amazing. It's about testimony, right? It's always the testimony that motivates, you know, to dig deeper.

I mean, the Holy Spirit motivates, but he uses, or the Holy Spirit uses testimony as a part of an igniter of some of the kindling that he throws on the flame to get you hope back. And to think, wow, if that, probably Dilmore could come anywhere from that shenanigans. You know, maybe I got a chance, you know? Scott Horner Absolutely, absolutely.

We got plenty. We're gonna talk about it through the regular show and the after hours. But our first clip is from Art. So, Art, you went from having your first clip ever not only to go to the first clip of the radio show, that's pretty neat.

That's a quick, yeah. I don't know where you topped that, though. You may want to retire right after the show. Art Smith I think I will. This will be it.

I'll retire, I'll go out on top. That's right. Scott Horner Yeah. Well, go ahead and tell us a little bit about your clip, and then we can listen to it, and then you can tell us why you chose that clip. Art Smith Okay. Well, first of all, I'd like to say that as a journeyman to this show, that one of the first things you learn is that there's no topic that we can come up with here that can't be covered or combobulated to The Andy Griffith Show or to Clint Eastwood. Scott Horner Yeah, yeah. Art Smith So, my first clip last week was from a Clint Eastwood movie, and this is my second clip, and it's from The Andy Griffith Show. So, I have learned that here on this show. Scott Horner That's awesome. Art Smith Yeah.

Okay. So, in this clip, Ernest T. Bass, he has returned to Mayberry, and he wants to get himself an education. He thinks he will impress a young woman named Rowena if he gets a diploma, becomes an educated man. So, here he is in the class. He's in Helen Crump's class. It's an arithmetic class, and Ernest T. is being disruptive, and he wants to go to the chalkboard and write a sentence that he has learned rather than work on math.

And Ms. Crump, she has to actually slap his hand, his knuckles with a ruler to get him to comply with her wishes to go and sit down and quit disrupting the class. So, we'll play the clip. Scott Horner Yeah. Go ahead. We'll play it. Ernest T. Bass Nine times one is nine. Nine times two is... Mr. Bass Two doggone much. Mr. Bass My turn.

My turn. Mr. Bass I'm going to write it. Mrs. T. Bass Mr. Bass, you return to your seat right now. Mr. Bass Teaching takes two doggone long.

Rowena will wait. Mrs. T. Bass Give me that chalk. Mr. Bass Open that hand. Mr. Bass Open it. Mr. Bass I want to write my sentence. Mrs. T. Bass Mr. Bass, you are a grown man and you're forcing me to take measures I have never taken with my pupils before. Mr. Bass Turn to your seat. Mr. Bass Yes, ma'am.

Can I tell you something before I go? Mrs. T. Bass What is it? Mrs. T. Bass I love you. Mr. Bass So are you going to tell us you fell in love with your teacher? Is that part of the story? Mr. Bass No.

I guess not. I had kind of a... Well, it didn't really affect me that much. It didn't really hurt because I put all my chi in my hand and I made my hand like a little rock. And when she hit my hand, it broke her ruler. My hand was harder than her ruler. And rulers were made of real wood back in the day.

They weren't as composite wood they make now, balsa wood or whatever. But anyway, yeah, so Ernest, he fell in love with Helen Crump after she hit him. And they had figured out on the show, Andy and Barney figured out that that was because she became like a mother figure to him.

And so he fell in love with her immediately. And Andy and Barney were able to explain what had happened to Ernest and get him to understand what had happened to him and get him to lay off of this being in love with Miss Crump. So my story is, yeah, I got hit in the hands in the second grade by my teacher, Miss Jackson, and she actually broke her ruler over my hand. And the reason I got hit was for not being necessarily disruptive, but just excessively talking. So I have learned that I learned not to talk excessively. So I haven't been talking much here on the show, but I've been working at it and getting better at that. But everything that happens to us, I guess, or most things can have some kind of effect on us. And, and we always saw what happened to Ernest. In my case, I probably learned to be quiet, or it didn't have a great effect on me. But that's, that's part of my story, part of my story.

It is now I would say, you know, we've known each other for a while now, I would never use the words excessively talking in any description of you. I don't think I don't, I don't think those would be the tops of the choice. Yeah, that's true. That's true. It does impact us.

It does impact us. Well, Rodney, we actually have time for your clip, if you'd like to go ahead and set it up and Alrighty, let's squeeze it in there. We can try.

All right. So I was struggling to come up with clips, or what I was even going to talk about what was going on. And I was praying and we were hunting this past weekend and trying to figure things out. And all of a sudden, fast times at Ridgemont High came into my mind. I'm like, what is the meaning of this? And I started more, I started things like, oh, degenerate teenager, which is kind of redundant, isn't it?

But that's where I kind of went in my head. It was like, oh, those teenage years in high school where you just, your story was all about you. Well, it was all about, well, how am I going to impress the girl? How am I going to press the guys? You know, whether it was hanging out with the jocks or hanging out with the smart kids or the cool kids or, you know, even the kids that were, you know, I went to a small school. So, you know, the non-athletes, they didn't, they weren't in clubs. Some of them are really smart, but it was just, you know, you had different factions of kids and it was all about that versus anything else. And just here for this clip in fast times at Ridgemont High, I'm like, where would I identify?

Where do I pull something out? And I can talk in the end why I kind of identify a little bit with this clip, but this is Spicoli and he's a, you know, druggie, alcohol, you know, he's just a big partying dude in high school. You can kind of hear him say dude in the clip here. This is his, he's in history class and Mr. Hand is the teacher and Mr. Hand runs a pretty tight ship. And in the previous day, you saw a portion of the movie where Spicoli doesn't show up and he's talking about truancy and why you guys are, you kids are always ruining my time because it's my class and my time and what they're doing about him. So, for Mr. Hand, it was all about him and Spicoli figures out, well, there's something a little bit different with this picture of time. And then at the end, Mr. Hand comes in and straightens about. And the very first pause you see in this clip is actually Mr. Hand realizing that Spicoli's actually in class today, which is, you know, a shock.

Go ahead and play it. Now, in 1898, Spain owned Cuba outright. Think about it. Cuba owned by a disorganized parliament over 4,000 miles away.

Cubans were in a constant, Cubans were in a constant state of revolt. In 1904, the United States decided to throw a little weight around and, who is it? Mr. Pizza Guy. Again? Mr. Pizza Guy, sir. Pour the double cheese and sausage. Right here, dude.

Here you go, dude. Am I hallucinating here? Just what do you think you're doing?

Learning about Cuba, having some food. Mr. Spicoli, you're on dangerous ground here. You're causing a major disturbance on my time. I've been thinking about this, Mr. Hand. If I'm here and you're here, doesn't that make it our time? We certainly did nothing wrong with a little feast on our time. You're absolutely right, Mr. Spicoli. It is our time. Yours, mine, and everyone else's in this room. But it is my class.

Hamilton, Brandt, Kornfeld, up front. Mr. Spicoli has been kind enough to bring us a snack. And be my guest.

Help yourselves. Get a good one. Much like Spicoli, I could always rationalize anything into what it meant to me, what I'm supposed to be doing in this moment, and why I am right. That was always easy for me to rationalize those kinds of things into my story, where I was trying to either be the jock, the kid who could win the girl, or the kid who could be the butt of jokes, and be able to say things, and be able to just roll off the tongue with all kinds of quips. You just wanted to be known. You wanted to be in the main subject of the story. And when you're finally, you break free, and you're free from all that, and you're relying on Christ, it's just, you look back on those times, and instead of just feeling the dread that I used to feel those high school days, and trying to relive them or relive them, you can finally let go of them and actually say, okay, well, I'm just going to go forward with you, Lord.

And it completely flips the script on everything you're doing. Thank you, Rodney. We got plenty more coming up, but go to masculinejourney.org to register for the upcoming boot camp the weekend before Thanksgiving in November. We'll talk to you after the break. What we have in our boot camp is something that makes you stronger, and it gives you the strength to go on your regular walk with God. It's something that will make you be bigger than you were when you got there.

How things been going since the last boot camp? Doing good, growing. I've got growing pains. I came up here as a little boy, falling down, getting up, and now I'm a cowboy ranger going into adolescent hood.

It's a pleasure to be here. So you're speaking about cowboy rangers. Is that one of the talks that really came alive to you this weekend?

Yep. I don't want to grow up real fast. I had to do that a long time ago. I'm just taking baby steps along this journey, and I can't think of any place or a group of guys I'd rather be with because you are appointed and accountable for me to learn and listen, and I've got a notebook full of good tools that's going to help make her open. Register today at masculinejourney.org. Welcome back to Masculine Journey, and that is Blessed Assurance. If you didn't grow up in a church, you might not have heard that song before, but I promise you, if you grew up in a church, gosh, during the 70s, anyway, you definitely have heard that song at some point because I know it was played a lot, but when we were talking about this topic of story, this is a song that just kept coming to me because it was beat into my head in the 70s as a teenager listening to it in church, you know, that it was one of them we sang pretty frequently. And back then, we called them hymns.

We did. Yeah, yeah. It called itself a song, by the way, Jim. It doesn't say this is my story, this is my hymn. Yeah, exactly. So thank you, Robin.

It would have if it hadn't been a new group singing it. No, you're right. I'm sorry.

It's not from the 1800s, Jim. We're okay. But thank you. But yes, go ahead, Robby. What's your name? Crosby? Stills Nash.

No, no, no, no. I can't think of the girl's lady's name that wrote that song. Fanny. Fanny Crosby, yeah.

How could you not think of that? Pardon me? They wrote that song? Yeah, Fanny the Crosby still is. Fanny Crosby, yeah. That's my grandmother's name, Fanny.

Oh, okay. Fanny Bacon. I can't help it.

It's just her name. All right, go ahead. Seems like it'd be Ham. It's part of my story.

This turned out as Fanny ended up as Ham. This sounded like an after-hours. Anyway, if you've ever heard an after-hours program, that's what you're missing as we talk about other stuff. But we are continuing the topic of story and the importance of story and the importance of your story, which we're going to dig into more and more throughout this part of the segment and into after-hours. But, Robby, that kind of tees up your clip, if you want to tell us a little bit about it and kind of go from there. Yeah, this was kind of what teed up the whole topic for me was Wild at Heart has just gotten this whole new initiative that it's called fires, what as Rodney points out are campfires, actually, that guys are doing across the country, which are essentially bands of brothers getting together and meeting around a campfire and with ground rules that you can't teach, can't preach. It's essentially about your story and sharing your story with the other men there in a safe place. And of course, when they introduced the subject, if you're like me, hopefully you're not, but you're just like, oh yeah, yeah, this is the latest thing here.

You are unique, maybe even very unique. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So I was just like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Here's another big initiative. I was listening to this podcast and totally unengaged until I heard this story and then, oh, it hooked me. And so I'm just going to let this, it speaks for itself. This was a story about this guy's campfires that we had a guy named Joe, typical man who, who made a mistake and had an affair with his wife and Joe, you know, typical response by my religion, the religious leaders in his life, they booted him out of his church. He had nowhere to go.

Those ones, he called friends, no longer answered the phone and experienced some devastating church hurt nowhere to go. But down the road, there was a barn and down that road and that barn were a couple of guys that said, come on in. We're not going to leave you. We're not going to, we're not going to boot you out of the religious setting that you were in.

Here's an invitation and a permission given to show up. We'll get around you. We'll get on your shoulders. Well, you can sit on our shoulders. We're going to wrap you up in a hug. And, and, and we're going to believe that God's going to come for you and we're not going anywhere. And we lit the fire and he'd come and he'd listen the first month and the second month he listened. And then about the seventh month, someone called him out and said, Hey, we haven't heard from you in about six months.

I'd love to know a little bit more about you. And it broke open and he opened his heart and said, I'm hurting. And Jay mentioned it before I'm alone and I don't have anywhere to go because all my religious support has, has now rejected me out of the, out of the structure in the system. And we were able to, to meet Joe. We're able to wrap our arms around him. We're able to pray for him. We're able to support him, but more importantly, we're able to have an environment where he could come and he felt safe enough to share and safe enough to be heard and seen, where he could start to find healing for his heart. Now, long story made short, now long story made short, Joe starts seeing a counselor. You know, a lot of us in that barn were there because we've seen counselors.

We've experienced trauma. We've been hurting in the same similar way that Joe had, and they got to hear, Joe got to hear our stories first. And in that exchange, Joe's doing to bring it up full speed today. Three years later, Joe's, Joe's one of behind the scenes leaders. Joe is a, Joe is a guy that will show up for anybody and he's, he's happily remarried, happily, his structure's in place to support him. He's found fruit in the areas of life where he was damaged the most. And it all started because he came and sat and listened to other guys' stories and found hope where he was hopeless. Yeah. So I want to clarify that he met these guys in a barn.

Yeah, he needs to enunciate that word a little bit more. Sounded like he met him in a barn. No, it's a barn where they have their fires there in Idaho.

That's a little backstory on that, but those guys at that barn, what they were doing, and literally they do a campfire, right? And there, you know, we always have a campfire the first night of bootcamp, but we have expanded this idea because as Jim and I were talking about it, big Jim and I at dinner tonight, that many of us travel quite a ways to get here, to meet together because we desperately need that safe place where we can tell our story, what we really are struggling with, you know, where we really are with our kids or where we are in our marriage or where we are with a friend or where we are at church, right? Where it's completely safe and you know, that you know that these people will wrap their arms around you. They will pray for you.

They will hug you even when you've been despicable me. And that often, unfortunately, is just is the case, but it is a band of brothers and yours, you know, I can't tell you the times that somebody else's story has ignited hope in my own story and the power of that. So, you know, we're expanding on this, believe it or not. Sam, we are got two initiatives coming up. We do. We have a couple of them. You want to tell us about both of those?

Because you're involved with both of them. Yeah, I am. So at the second Tuesday of every month, Wednesday. Excuse me. Thank you. That's why I got you guys here to back me up.

Yeah. That's why we need a band of brothers. That is why I need a band of brothers. The second Wednesday of every month will be at West Ashboro Baptist Church, beautiful, neat church, which is actually where I attend. But we have a place right outside the church in the woods where we're going to have a fire out there. It starts at 630 at West Ashboro Baptist Church there in Ashboro. And again, the ground rules are this thing is there is no preaching. There is no teaching. There is just guys sharing and story, and nobody's allowed to listen to your story and say, well, you need to, what you're allowed to say is, wow, or you're allowed to say, you know, clarify this for me.

But there is no judgment, and it's going to be an environment where guys who hopefully find that brotherhood that we feel like is so necessary. So that's the second Wednesday of every month at 630. The third Wednesday of every month is actually going to be in my neighborhood, which is in Stokesdale, North Carolina, right on Blue's Creek Lake. So it's at Blue's Landing, and this has got a really neat little place where we can have a campfire right there on the lake so you can see the sunset over Blue's Creek Lake.

It's absolutely beautiful and very, you know, kind of back in the woods there. And again, if you go to the Wild at Heart website for fires, you're going to find both of those listed, the addresses, all that. Or if you just get up with me, rdelmore at masculinejourney.org and orabi at masculinejourney.org.

Robby, yeah, it's his first name. Yeah. And I'll be happy to tell you all about what we're doing or how we're doing it.

And again, we just believe that, you know, what God has done for us through these stories and being able to share a story and being able to have a band of brothers, you know, we want everybody that feels like this would be something that they want to do it. And there is a fire involved. So.

Yeah. The other thing I would say is if you're in an area listening to us, it's not covered by Ashboro or Stokesdale, you're like, I have no idea where those are. Reach out to us if you're looking for a place where a fire might be happening. And we might be able to help you locate one as well. You know, there are some resources we have available that we can look that up and see if there's anything in your area. We're looking at other areas here in central North Carolina to be doing some stuff, maybe Kernersville, potentially Moxville, King, just Boone, potentially might be some other areas. So we're looking at potentially having some others coming up in the near future that we'll be announcing. Yeah. And that'll be every week.

And again, I mean, excuse me, every month, once a month, you know, so you too can have that community. And yes, we will, you know, end up with the kind of shenanigans that we have here. You know, you can tell that they're brothers and they love each other. And that's, you know, part of what goes on. Little warning, be careful with the fire in Ashboro. Apparently they've had bad experience before.

I have no idea of what you read. That would be me. Ashboro. Okay. Keith's expression says it all. I know this is not video, but just imagine the expression and that's it.

You can, it's probably the same one you're making right now. He's still shaking his head. No. Yeah. Yeah.

As we all are. That was originally just burrowing in the ashes. You know, it was like the whole deal was right. So the power of story, the question becomes if story's not that important, why did Jesus opt to teach in stories? Right.

Because that's what he did. He taught in parables, which are stories, right? But just like a hymn is a word for a song. A parable is a word for a story, right? But a story with meaning, right? It has something to it.

That's right. And so that, and when you talk to friends, what are you wanting to hear about? You're wanting to hear about the story. Well, if you haven't talked to a friend, you know, since last week, what's the first thing you're gonna probably ask him? How's your week been? How was your weekend?

What'd you do? In other words, what's the story? Our whole life revolves around about learning stories, right? And this is just another one where this is an area to have a safe space where you can share things about your story that you can't share with anyone else.

Right. It's just hard in a Sunday school setting to, you know, share the stuff that you really struggle with. But wouldn't you really like somebody to talk to about that and would you love somebody to listen?

Yeah. I can't imagine that some of the churches I've attended, right, that I've been a part of, had I mentioned that I'd struggled with pornography or something, whether I'd be invited back, right? Or I'd be ostracized out of the group, you know, and talking about, you know, the person in the clip you played that, you know, they were kicked out of the church, you know, I go back to, you know, Jesus saying, you know, who hasn't sinned, Cassifer Stone, right? Did they forget that story? You know, but we tend to forget that story. And that's the shame.

Christians do end up a lot of times being mean on their own people. And that's not what this is about. This is about giving you a safe space that you can talk about your story and you can spend some time and let God heal your heart.

Right. I'm looking forward to it. I know the fruit that he's talking about there and can hardly wait to see what God's gonna do with it. Well, coming up next, we're gonna have the After Hours, which will be playing at your podcast location near you. Go to maskandjourney.org for bootcamp registration. Talk with you next week. This is the Truth Network.