Boot Camp Remembered After Hours

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

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Now, welcome to Masking Journey After Hours. We're excited about this show today. We're excited every week about the show, but we're really excited about this week's show because it's a follow-up to our boot camp that we just got back with from last weekend. It just seems like a couple days ago, you know, and here we are and we're at another weekend.

So hopefully everybody had a great Thanksgiving and everything went well there, but we're not talking about that right now. We're talking about boot camp. And so we're over to David. That's your name, right, David?

Yes. Okay, yeah. You've been here enough now. I'm getting to know your name.

I mean, I don't know, so maybe the listeners know who I am now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're no longer a guest. You're actually on the team. Yeah, yeah. I've actually been on the team for like two and a half years now. Oh, I know. Yeah, you've never actually been a guest on the show. Just putting it out there in case anybody didn't know. Yeah, in case anybody did here. But yeah, so David, you have a clip from the boot camp this last week.

I do. It's from, we've used it on the show before and we use it at every boot campus call. It comes from the butterfly circus, which is, it's about a 20 minute YouTube video, right?

Not done by any type of Christian filmmaking company, but actually has a really good message along with it. And what we're going to hear from is actually from the adventure talk. I quoted it wrong not to pose or anything like that during the pre-show and said, I think it's from the new name talk.

And they corrected me. And so here we are. And this is where we come into play with Will. He's missing all of his limbs except for one little leg. One little foot. One little foot. And what's the actor's name, Sam?

Nick Vojizek or something like that. I can never say his last name very well. That's why I asked you to say it.

I can't say it at all. Yeah, but it's close to that. But it's a great, I mean, honestly, we were talking about it in this movie itself, actually. You can put it in to a lot of the talks that come through the boot camp.

And I think it's a really good clip to kind of show what somebody could speak negative into your identity into life. The world's labels, right? The labels the world gives you.

And so we'll go ahead and play it and come back and talk about it. Yep. And now, ladies and gentlemen, gather in. A perversion of nature. A man, if you would even call him that, whom God himself has turned his back upon.

I give you The Limbless Man. So following that clip, which is not in there, is actually the ringmaster from the butterfly circus that he actually leans down and says that, no, he's actually beautiful. And then Will spits in his face and they go from there and then ultimately gets into the butterfly circus. Great story.

Definitely go to YouTube and check it out. But I think what I take away from that is that, like you said, the world's labels, we can get kind of drawn into that. And if you come to a boot camp, you get to hear the talks from the wild at heart and then hear personal stories from the rest of the team, as well as we come up there and respond to stuff and kind of relate to some of those, to hear that whatever identity the world's labeling you as is not what your identity is in Christ. And you kind of start to, I think, the adventure talk, the new name talk, all that stuff starts to be a pivotal moment in the boot camp. At least for me, when I went to my first boot camp and everyone after that, I think, things start to unfold and start to change. And this boot camp, this last weekend, I think I've been to four now, counting the entrenchments that we were doing.

Maybe, well, we did three entrenchments, right? So quite a few. And I've heard these talks over and over again. And I can tell you, I've never heard the same talk at everyone.

I always get something from it. This one was crazy awesome. The listening prayer we did on Sunday morning just went on and on.

And it was one of those moments. I was a facilitator of one of the listening prayer groups and Sam actually was in there with me and it was a really good group. We heard a lot, prayed a lot.

And then me, of which every guy in here will vouch for it, I pray, not necessarily the prayer of the group. It took me a little while to get comfortable in that. Ended up leading more listening prayer with the entire boot camp. Like once we got back into where we did the talks and stuff when we're trying to wrap it up and it kind of, you could feel God moving through that. And it's just like y'all were describing it, the numbness and everything like that. But it was really warm. Kind of what I remembered feeling when I got confirmed in the Lutheran church where I was getting confirmed I could feel the Holy Spirit come in.

It was nice and warm. But if you're thinking about it at home right now, listen to us talk about boot camp on the earlier show and then this after hours, definitely recommend you go. If you're even thinking about it, that means you probably should go. Something's pulling you towards it.

Pray about it. And then once we have the dates and stuff set up on the website, go ahead and sign up for it. Yeah. David, I did the new name talk this time and one of the things, and it's crazy. I've been hearing these talks since 2002.

It was the first time I heard them, right? And been to countless boot camps, done many of these talks multiple times. But every time God peels off a different layer or a deeper layer. And really what for me, as you talked a little bit about it there, was everything that happens to us, good and bad, produces a label.

Oh yeah. Yeah, something the enemy refers to us as. You're not important.

You don't matter, right? It may not be a word you can say, but it's definitely a message behind it. And so every one of our wounds has a label, right? Every one of those things that have... To get a picture of that, watch the Jason Gray video, remind me of who I am. That's great.

That's a great idea. Jason Gray, remind me who I am. That's on YouTube. Go watch that.

It'll show you exactly the labels we're talking about. One of the things about that clip, and it's in the butterfly circus that was powerful for me, is you hear, you've got the circus master who's bringing him out of this image of himself. And at one point in that movie, he says exactly what the evil guy said. He speaks that identity back and the guy's like, no. And the guy says, why would you say that?

Because he's been building him up. He says, because you still believe it. And it really is one of those agreements we make.

We'll accept the labels and we'll sometimes carry them all our life, even though they're wrong. Well said. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. It's hard to believe when you watch that movie and you watch it with the context of the Christian message to say, how could this not have been made by Christians? It is such a redeeming little movie.

It is. Like I said, it relates to a lot of the bootcamp talks because it ultimately shows the ringmaster being... I don't want to label him as Jesus or God, but it has that portrayal. He is a Jesus character and he's in the movie.

He's pulling basically Will out of shame and bondage and all that stuff to kind of bring back into what his actual identity is. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Art, do you have something from camp you'd like to share with us?

Yes, I do. Well, as far as people knowing me, I introduced myself to one young man at the camp and he said, oh, you're Art. You're the one that Robby always says, where for Art thou?

So I'm getting a name for myself by Robby saying that. But yeah, as one of the newer members of the group here, I just have to say that I was impressed with the work that everyone did. They brought their talents and abilities and time and put this together. And I brought some firewood on a dump trailer.

I know that's something I can contribute. Danny, I caught Danny's presentation. It was great.

Kenny played the guitar and sang his song. Even Grant. Grant told me he fixed the water heater. I don't know who was taking cold showers, but Grant's a fixer and he fixed the water heater.

And an air conditioner. Yeah. Well, he said it needed work. He fixed it too. Well, I think he got it fixed. It seemed like it was working.

Okay. So yeah, Grant's our fixer. And I told Grant, I told Grant, I said, I hope you're getting a lot out of this camp. And he said, well, yeah, but mainly I'm there to talk to people and to help them along. And that's what this is about.

None of us get paid mileage or a salary. We were all volunteers and we come and put this on and it is a lot of work. If you're behind the scenes and you're watching, it takes a lot to put on a camp like this. And we do it for our own growth along our own paths and to help others along their paths or in some cases even to consider other paths that from the one they've been on totally. And I think I'm speaking for the group here.

This is my perspective for me. Doing a great job. Okay. Very good.

Okay. Well, yeah, the other, the other thing, of course, I can talk about my dogs every week. Danny and Sam, they enjoyed seeing them and playing with them.

And I think Andy said he missed having, when he had a dog. Yeah. He went to take one of the dogs, I think.

Yeah. I was about ready to steal max. So I last year I got to see him a little bit, but I got to hang out. Max came and pretty much sat on my lap almost. I was about ready to steal him, but it made me think about having two dogs. I used to tell my wife, I was like, you know, I really want to get two dogs and name one mercy and goodness. And it was like mercy and goodness.

She'll follow me all the days of my life. You know, it's like, shoot, I really need two dogs just for that. Just to give them those names. And I think we got to get a new name for Art though. Yeah.

Like we need to go with how great that water down. There you are. Yeah. There. Yeah.

Let's upstage Robby. Yeah. It's not easy to do. Oh, you got to do it before I did. I've been waiting to throw that out there.

I almost had the moment and you did it first. Yeah. Well, you just got to wait on time. It's all the time. I mean, it's age, you know. Yeah, it is. It is. So go ahead. Yeah.

Yeah. The other thing I wanted to talk about is speaking of volunteering, while I was there in the building, I saw a picture of my old friend, Mr. Edwin Boger. He was a dairy farmer. And in my teen years, I worked helping cut silage on his farm. I worked for him some. And we were good friends. And we talked a lot. And he's passed away now.

But he was a great man. His picture was on the wall there. He was, I think, on a tractor or something. And they said he did a lot of the volunteer maintenance on this camp, maybe mowing, maybe some light grading and things.

I don't know. But I also saw some pictures of some other people that from my youth, you know, a few scores ago, they were instrumental in putting on the main function of this camp here is to have a Bible camp for the young people. And they, you know, they let us use it a couple of weekends a year. But that's the main purpose of this camp, why it was built and why it's there.

And of course, Edwin Boger contributed a lot. A lot of members of the church there did. And I also saw some pictures of some people that were active in the camp when I was in my youth.

And I went to the camp myself. And I certainly remember the names. And they were great people. And it's, you know, they used to say in church to live your, I'm not sure the exact words, but live right because the young people are watching you and they know what you do. And I certainly remember a lot of the older people that contributed a lot and were good people. And Harold was one of them.

I knew him when I was a young man in the church. And I appreciate the elders that went before us and contributed to things like Bible camps. And, okay, that's good.

That's good. Now, the pictures of people in Harold's youth were all just chiseled. They weren't.

Yeah, they didn't have. Yeah, they're mostly on cave walls. But yeah, they are there. Stick figures.

Mine may be in black and white, but it's not chiseled into the side of a cave. Anyway, we're going to go to another clip, Andy. So you're next on the clip brigade. And then we'll go to Danny from there. So I'm stealing this from Robby. I thought he did a great job on the sonship talking.

As you guys know, that's my favorite. He mixed it up a little bit and used some clips from A River Runs Through It. And in this story, you see this is really the start of the the movie and kind of lay in the foundation of what these boys and his two boys, what's his name, Norman and Paul, and their dad is a Presbyterian minister, and he loves fishing. And you'll hear that. And they really start out being fathered.

Well, it looks like he goes after his heart. And if you watch through the movie, and Robby brought some of these points out, the father is kind of hard just because of what went on during that time at all. And it kind of affected the boys later on. But this is a great foundation. This is a clip I'd love to use. And like if we're going through the stages for boyhood, because it's an excellent example of what a father should be doing at a young boy's age. Yeah, it was an impressive clip, impressive talk.

It was most impressive talk. A, the content. B, he actually got done in time. True.

He actually like he said, he said at the end of it all 42nd prayer and 40 seconds that his the timer hit zero and he was done. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the order. Yeah. I didn't even remember this clip, though, from the movie. And I was like, I gotta go back and watch the full movie because it is a great movie.

But I just didn't remember this particular clip. So here we go. My father was a Presbyterian minister, and a fly fisherman. And though it is true that one day a week was given over holy to religion, even then he told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen. And we were left to assume, as my younger brother Paul and I did, that all first class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen. And that John, the favorite, was a dry fly fisherman. The poor without Christ are of all men the most miserable.

But the poor with Christ are princes and kings of the earth. In the afternoon, we would walk with him while he unwound between services. He almost always chose a path along the big blackfoot, which we considered our family river. And it was there he felt his soul restored and his imagination stirred. Long ago rain fell on mud and became rock, half a billion years ago. But even before that, beneath the rocks, other words of God.

Listen. And if Paul and I listened very carefully all our lives, we might hear those words. Even so, Paul and I probably received as many hours of instruction in fly fishing as we did in all other spiritual matters. As a Presbyterian, my father believed that man by nature was a damn mess, and that only by picking up God's rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty. To him, all good things, trout as well as eternal salvation, come by grace, and grace comes by art, and art does not come easy. So my brother and I learned to cast Presbyterian style on a metronome.

He began each session with the same instruction. Casting is an art that is performed on a four-count rhythm between 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock. If he had had his way, nobody would have thought he would have had to catch a fish, would be allowed to disgrace a fish by catching it. Yeah, you just see the fatherly guidance and participation and, you know, speaking into the boy's lives and leading them into this kind of this warrior poet life of not just being, you know, a warrior, but being a poet, you know, connecting to nature, connecting to the arts, which is the most important part of the the arts, which would be a skill in fishing. And you see it later in the show, I mean, we play the Trinity clip quite a bit where the father and two sons go fishing and they have a kind of a competition, but it's really a cool clip. But this just kind of sets the stage for that, but I think it really is a good example of the way things should start out in sonship. Thank you.

Danny? Yeah, I like that clip, Andy, because it speaks to my boot camp experience this time, I think, because I walked away from boot camp really feeling like I was being fathered by God. Not that I hadn't had a relationship with God, but so many pieces of the puzzle fell into place over the weekend, you know, with the talks and especially when we got to your new name clip, Sam, that especially the one with the one with Santa Claus in it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You had the Russian dolls. Yeah, yeah. And I knew the gig was up, but in my own heart, I was like, wow, this is amazing because God showed me my glory, so to speak, and in my middle name, which was interesting. Before we ever got to Covenant of Silence, I was already a wrecked mess over there, and I was like, oh my gosh. But he showed me, you know, because we talk a lot about how the enemy comes after you, and a lot of times it's got to do with that thing in you, that glory, and that's what he doesn't want to shine. And so, so many of those pieces fell into place, and you know, you used a phrase in one of my talks that, you know, if you don't recognize there is an enemy, then you'll make an enemy out of your boss, your wife, and those kind of things just kind of impacted me that, you know, yeah, there's an enemy. I kind of know more about the schemes in my own life, and I know that, you know, nobody around me, flesh and blood is not my enemy.

So that sets up the red flags now, and so, but what I done was I prayed as I left, Lord, father me in this, because I don't want to rush the field bravely and die quickly, which I've done many, many, many, many, many times. And so, I loved that kind of thing because, I mean, and everybody has said the spirit of that camp was just awesome. I mean, just awesome the whole time. So, absolutely loved everything that went on.

Even loved hanging out with you guys. Yeah, that's a stretch, but you kind of have to. I think, I think it was called Nesting Dolls. I think that's what they're called. Well, I just love the resurrection power of Jesus.

As many times as you died, you come back a lot. Yeah, yeah, you gotta love that, don't you? Yeah, yeah, I know. Well, I guess that gets down to my clip, and then we'll kind of go from there.

In order to play my clip, I gotta set it up just a little bit. It's the only way it makes sense. It's absolutely the only way it makes sense. So, that's why I waited to go last. I went to my first boot camp in 2002 in Colorado, Buena Vista, Colorado, and on the new name segment, I had some really great breakthrough on the wound, that boot camp, and was just expecting every talk I was gonna go out and just get a download from God. And it didn't quite happen that way.

I mean, God gives you what he wants to give you at each camp. And so, I went out, and I was praying over a new name, and I heard all these guys just talking about, I got Maximus, or Marshamus, if that might be your name. Maximus, and different names, right? And I'm like, oh, I want a cool name.

I'd like to have something like Braveheart, or something cool. And so, I got out there, and I'm like, God, what name do you have for me? And he's like, teacher. I'm like, yeah, okay. Is that a vocation?

Is that a name? And then he follows it up with facilitator. I'm like, yeah, okay, that's even less good.

And with three strikes, you're out. Yeah. And so, that's in 2002. And so, I go back in 2004, think I'm gonna get more progress, and this continues on.

And honestly, it goes on for a long time until I get a different name. Well, that's 2002. That's important to keep in mind. And so, I'm gonna play this clip about a teacher, and it's a clip from boot camp. We didn't happen to use it at this boot camp, but it's Robin Williams in the Dead Poets Society.

Thank you. And this would be, what would your verse be? And I'm gonna play it, and I'm gonna come back to how Jesus got me with a good one at boot camp again this time, and talk about why I played this clip.

But we'll go ahead and play it. Words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.

Huddle up. We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.

And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, oh me, oh life of the questions of these recurring, of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities filled with the foolish. What good amid these, oh me, oh life? Answer, that you are here.

That life exists and identity. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be? Now that's a good teacher right there, you know, with Robin Williams.

I know someone wrote the things for him, but still, he's a good teacher there. But so, you know, God eventually gave me another new name later on, and it was my favorite name, you know. And it's still probably my favorite name, which was Samuel, and that's a story for another day. But this is close. It's really close. When I really didn't, the name, I wasn't sure.

I was like, eh, teacher, come on. So I'm listening to Danny do the warfare talk, and he doesn't, it's not really anything Danny said, I'm just listening to his talk. And I hear, well, Danny said a lot of important stuff. Don't get a big head over there.

No, no, no, no, no. That you weren't listening to. No, I wasn't listening to Danny's talk. But, you know, Jesus has a way of reaching you when he wants to reach you.

So I'm listening to Danny's talk, I'm running sound for his talk, and I'm listening to it. And I hear Jesus say, you know, they called me teacher. And I just started laughing. And I'm like, yeah, that's a good one.

Man, you got me pretty good there, you know. And then later on, you know, over the next day, he helped me understand that when he called me that was, you know, right after he'd worked on a wound with a big part of my wounds, you know, one of the wound sets was not having anything important to say. That was something I grew up with and never had anything of value, nothing important to say. And that's not who you usually put in a teacher's role. You know, a teacher's role is to impart wisdom, to impart, you know, things of importance to people. And so when Jesus was calling me teacher, he was wanting to let me know, hey, I see you as having importance, you know, that you're going to have something valuable to say.

He was coming after my wound 21 years ago, and I didn't even have the eyes to see it until this year. Not in the vein that you were thinking. Yeah, not in the vein. And he knows how much you love the humor and sarcasm through humor. Yes.

And so when he said it, I was just like, okay, yeah, dang, you got me. That's a good one. Now it's about time for you to get around to facilitating.

Yeah, I'm gonna try that. Well, next week's the radio show. First you can teach him how to say it. Exactly. We'll work on that. Go to masculinejourney.org to not register for a bootcamp, but to find out more about a bootcamp when we're ready to register. And we'll talk with you next week. Love somebody well this week. This is the Truth Network.