Spring Boot Camp 2025 Memories After Hours

This is the Truth Network. Coming to you from an entrenched barricade deep in the heart of central North Carolina, Masculine Journey After Hours. A time to go deeper and be more transparent on the topic covered on this week's broadcast. So sit back and join us on this adventure. The Masculine Journey After Hours starts here now. Welcome to Masculine Journey After Hours. We're glad that you're with us this week. What you're hearing is tired, full of excitement, and tired. That would pretty much explain how I feel after our weekend in Georgia. Man, I wouldn't have done it any differently than we did, except for maybe Charlotte traffic, but you can't get away from that even if you try. But it was such an amazing weekend, but you do come back pretty spent.

But it's hard to explain. It's so worth it that, you know, we do it as many times as we can, you know, just because what God does on those weekends and how he restores pieces of our heart or shows us more about our purpose in life is or what he's got planned for us this next season, all those things that he continually does. And I know that we've done something around 30 boot camps.

I don't know what the number is over the years. Total, I've been to probably at least 40. Every one of those, God has done something for me. Every single one, you know.

And honestly, I know me. Had I not gone, it would have been a lot harder for him to do that for me because I just keep my mind and I keep my body so busy all the time or I'm asleep. That's usually what's going on.

I don't have, it's on and off. You know, there's not a lot of just pause and rest and coast. And when I go to camp, that makes me have to do that. And it's really, really good for my heart, you know, and you think I would learn after that many times I need to do it in between camp and I do a little bit, but not nearly like I should. Anyway, we are talking about last boot camp and we're also talking about an upcoming retreat, this seminar this weekend. Garrett, you want to tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, we at Foothills Christian Church are putting on a half day seminar bringing in Cam and Sarah Huxford from Savannah, Georgia. Cam just retired for 40 years of ministry and so he's bringing all that wisdom up here. And they're going to just give us three talks on marriage. They're going to be doing start with the end of mind. What kind of marriage do you want?

Aim for that and how you start living for that now and the differences between men and women. Everyone always loves those talks. And so there's also going to be a chance for a Q&A for you to get your questions answered if there's something specific you're looking for. And so this Saturday, March 22nd from 9 o'clock to about 1230.

Doors open at 830. There's going to be coffee and donuts for you. And yeah, come on out.

It's going to be great. And look us up at foothillschristianchurch.com and right on the homepage you'll find our marriage weekend. Yeah, and we'll put a link on the Masculine Journey Facebook page so that you guys can get to that.

Yeah, so there's still more tickets. Come on out. It's going to be what we'd love to have you.

I'd love to meet you. Thanks, Garrett. So over to the guys, some of the guys that came with us to boot camp and which one would you like to go first? David? Well, I guess James is pointing at you, David.

He was quicker than you, so we'll go with James. No, I'm just kidding. I would love to do that to him, but I won't. Next time you're here, that's what's going to happen. But David, this is your second boot camp?

Yes. Yeah, so tell us about this boot camp for you. This boot camp I didn't really know what I was searching for or looking for because I got so much from the first one. I know the first one focused on, my focus was trying to find my identity through God as me being freshly in recovery. I'll be, actually I'll be a year sober next week. That's amazing.

Congratulations. Yeah, that was the first boot camp trying to find my identity. This boot camp I really didn't know what to look for, what I wanted to look for. I really was just trying to get a mental and spiritual reset from my everyday schedule. But in all reality, I just, I know I needed to let some hurt go, let some pain go.

And like I told you off the air, my grandfather passed away March 10th of last year. And the boot camp fell right later on the week of that anniversary. So I wasn't really in the right mind or I thought I wasn't in the right mind to find what I was looking for. But you guys, all you guys at the boot camp were a big help. Your prayers just helped me refocus.

And then I just, I got there and I believe it was the first or second day we had our covenant silence, the first one. And I just asked God, like, whatever is blocking me from hearing your word or hearing your voice or just getting close to you, getting over my grandfather, remove it. And if you can't remove it, just let the tears fall.

And I cried for a good 10 minutes. And I mean, it's still some stuff lingering there because I don't know if it's pride or just me being stubborn. But there's still some stuff there. But God is, this past weekend, God did a lot on me. And like I was telling you earlier, we don't necessarily own the outcome. We just have to own our obedience to God. And I'm trusting that he knows what he's doing.

And like this, I mean, I know I'm only coming back for more because the curriculum might necessarily be the same, but you take something different each time. I love it. I love you guys. And y'all guys are a big blessing of my life. So I appreciate y'all. Thank you. It's been amazing to learn about you and to walk with you through some of this and looking forward to doing a lot more of that. You know, and it was a little over a year ago, my brother passed away, you know, and so about the year's time, it was really hard. But I just started looking more and more at the grief is just like an onion, like we talked about, you know, it's grief layers. You know, God will peel back a couple layers, but you know, you got more to come. You know, and so it's good. And just keep focusing on him. And like you said, he's got it.

Thank you for sharing that. We appreciate that. So, James, it's over to your turn.

We can't wait any longer. There's no one else to point at. I'm just saying it's your turn. First of all, I would like to say thank you all for having me.

Second time coming to boot camp. I really enjoyed it. And but what stood out to me is trust. I just finished my journey at the year program, and as I'm transitioning back out in society, my sister was like, so where's your mind at right now? And I was like, it's all over the place. But as I'm watching my brothers go to college for barber school and and other guys in the 90 day side getting jobs back to back, here it is. I'm putting in an application. She was like, well, the thing is what God has for them is for them.

What he has for you is totally different. So you can't expect the same thing that God's given them that you're going to receive. So as the week's gone by, here it is. Focusing on job hunting. And as I'm walking down the street with my resume, it's like. You can't do this no more. You don't have the tools like you was back home just to reach out to somebody like, hey, I just need a kitchen job or something. Now, here it is.

You up in Winston don't know nobody. And as I'm walking, someone's saying you you can't do this no more. You don't have it. But I stopped and paused. And I told myself, I said, you could do this. You go and do this. And right after that, I just started going by restaurants, dropping off my resumes or whatnot.

So here it is. It's just in this weekend, being that boot camp with you guys, it's always a learning experience. And I've been telling the guys, I wish, you know, I'm saying a lot of you guys can go and experience this because going there. And me doing a giant own trust and God showing me different ways of how just to trust in him. That's all I need is the trust in him, because at the end of the day, he already know what job that I'm about to get. But he's just trying to see if I'm going to trust him and be patient enough to wait that long or and not just take the first job to come.

That's just like today. I had an interview knowing where the job was located at. And I was like, are you serious about this job right here? And I goes in and talk to him. And off-gates, the manager sends someone else out there and tells me, can you come back tomorrow? You're in a meeting.

So here it is. How can I trust you? And I'm sitting here looking at the manager.

So that's a trust issue right there. And I was like, this is not it. This is not where God want me to be at. So as I said to myself, as soon as I walked out the door, we won't be coming back tomorrow. And as I'm sitting here talking to you guys and I get an email about a job interview tomorrow. So here it is. I got two job interviews back to back.

It's just by me being able to learn to really trust him like I've been on this journey. And here it is. Like my brother David said, he's in the week, a year sober and may. Here it is.

The longest I ever been sober is two years. Awesome. Good job. And just by me trusting him as on this journey that you could do anything long as you put God first and just let and just let go and let God do it.

That's what I really got out of this. Just trust God. And it's not going to happen on my time. It's going to happen on his. So just because all your brothers around you getting jobs, that don't mean you're not going to get one soon.

You just got to be patient and have trust in him. And I learned a lot this weekend from you guys. I enjoy it.

I wish a lot more guys from the mission able to go. It's a learning experience. It really is. And I enjoyed it.

It is. You know, and God's the star of the weekend. You know, it's so cool to watch what he does. And we have fun. You know, it's nice to get out and have fun, too. But the whole power of the weekend is just what God chooses to do in each one of our lives.

You know, and it's it's so cool to see everything that he's done throughout that weekend and the impact that he's made, you know, in a lasting impact that he's made. And so I commend you on and listen to the Holy Spirit today saying this isn't the place for you, you know, because the wrong job would be the wrong place. Right.

And be around the wrong people or whatever that might be. And God knows that. And he's got a special place for you. So I'm excited to see when that happens and what that'll look like for you. Me, too. Well, thanks for sharing, James.

Andy, you have our first clip of the after hours. You want to tell us a little bit about it? You want to play it?

What do you want to say a little bit about it? It's from the kid. And we've we've done clips from the kid. I'm not sure we've done these.

Maybe we have. But basically, the kid is the story of a 40 year old man who's posing, who's wounded. And when you see a lot of this in the clips we showed at camp, that won't help you. But basically, Russell Durst is kind of messed up and God interrupts him by sending his eight year old self back in his life to kind of heal the wounds that he went through.

And we should show those that clip, typically every boot camp. But this is an indication when the 40 year old man meets the eight year old kid, you hear the eight year old kid and all that was in his heart about his future and what he was going to be. He finds out that that's not really what happened. And we know from another clip that basically he was hurt at eight years old, that wounding turned him into the bitter man that he had become. But then then you hear the the 40 year old Russell and the eight year old Rusty talking through this. But once once they kind of identify, you know, he says he well, he says kind of an indicator of how his life had turned out.

Then it goes on to the healing after the healing process where the script is flipped and he kind of isn't that way. I don't want to say the word exactly. I don't want to give it away. Let's just listen to the clip and then you can tell us what you were saying. Exactly. You were so solid and it was like, oh, man, I felt like I was kind of like being in a spy interrogation or something. I was trying to avoid giving the goods.

It's almost like a red biplane crashing. Anyway, if you watch a movie, you know what that's from. Here we go. Here's the clip. Chester! Here boy, come on Chester! Chester! Here boy, come on Chester! Chester!

Kid, will you stop that yelling? Chester! Hey!

Now! Where's Chester? Who is Chester? My dog. The dog I'm going to get when I grow up. The world's greatest dog. The one who rides in the back of my truck, plays frisbee, goes everywhere I go.

Chester! Bad news, kid. No dog here.

What do you mean? I mean no dog. There's no dog here. I don't own a dog. No dog? No dog? I grow up to be a guy with no dog?

That's right. Why don't I have a dog? Because I don't want a dog, okay? I can't take care of a dog. I travel all the time for work.

Travel for work? I grew up to fly jets, right? I knew it! I knew I would grow up to fly jets. No, I don't fly jets?

Not really, no. What do I do then? You're an image consultant.

What's that? What does a consultant do? Consult. But what do I do? You don't do anything. You tell other people what to do. That's the fun of it. You boss people around.

Like this. Stop talking! Shouldn't there be a lady here somewhere?

What do you mean? A lady living here? No. I live alone. I thought you said you were 40. I said I was almost 40.

So? I'm 40, I'm not married, I don't fly jets, and I don't have a dog? I grow up to be a loser. We did it! I'm okay! We're okay! We're okay!

We're okay! You're a pilot. You're a pilot. You're a pilot. No, you're a pilot. I'm the pilot. We grow up to be pilots!

We grow up to be pilots! Did you see our dog? What's his name? Chester.

Chester. So we're the greatest object! I am not a loser! So what you don't see there is a 70-year-old Russell came back into both of their lives and kind of corrected the scenario. And basically, life turned out good.

They weren't a loser any longer. They went through the healing process. It's just a cool clip because we speak a lot about the healing, the wound, and a lot of times you feel like, well, once I'm wounded, I'm always wounded. And God can come in and heal that. This is a fictional story here, but he truly can give you your heart back. All those desires you had as a kid, you can still receive them.

Those dreams that you wanted to happen in your life are still possible if you allow God to come in and heal that wound. Well, awesome. That was good, Andy. I appreciate that. That's all you got to say about that? Yeah.

I'm sitting here looking at you on the other side of these monitors, and I kind of feel like home improvement and Wilson on the other side. Yeah, Wilson. Yeah. Yeah.

Harold's era would have been Kilroy, you know, whatever little thing that looked over the fence. I was just going to say, you know, it's so encouraging to me to see that not only are the wounds healed and he's restored back to the things that he really wanted to do. Right. But then one of the neat things of that clip that, you know, you can't play everything, is he's saying how much he appreciates the 40-year-old Russell. Yes. And he goes, it's particularly good to see you again. I hated having to cut that out, but you're right.

It's particularly good to see you again because that's his childlike heart. Yep. Mm-hmm.

And that childlike heart that has a blast with that dog and has a blast thinking about being a pilot and all those things, you know, that's the beauty of him not becoming a loser is he actually gets back. That's right. A little rusty. Yeah. Yeah.

For sure. One of my favorite memories of boot camp was a man that went to regain his past faith and get a lot closer to Jesus. Yep. That was one night, next morning, early morning, they were baptizing in a lake. Yep. He came running down the hill and dove in the lake.

He baptized. Yeah. And it was not warm. Yeah. It was not warm at that particular boot camp. Yeah. Agreed. We didn't have any bathtubs at this particular camp this last time, but we have had them in the past.

And when you do them in early spring and late November, the water's not typically the warmest. He had no complaints. No, no, no. It took us a while to warm up. But, yeah, it was good. Our hearts were warm the whole time.

The extremities, not as much. But, well, I guess we get back down to my clip. My clip is from the movie Amadeus. And most people have not seen that, which is okay. This is the only clip I think I've actually seen from the movie Amadeus. I may have watched it one time, a long time ago.

The one with the chocolates. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was right before this part. Yeah. But on this particular clip, what we have going on, I was doing the spiritual warfare talk.

And so on the spiritual warfare talk, I decided to use this clip. Because what it is is you have Solari, I think his name is. And he's the court person or the king's person who's to put music together.

Right? I don't know what they call them when a musical director or whatever. But there was a title. Do you know what it was, Andy? Composer? I don't know. Ugly old guy. Yeah, ugly old guy. Composer.

It was somewhere in that range between those two. Ish. Yeah. So Mozart comes up, Amadeus Mozart. And he is just flawless in his work.

You know, in a previous scene, he talks about looking at his work and there's not even a pencil mark where he's erased anything. That everything just kind of comes from him, you know, just flows from his heart. And so he gets this jealousy, this incredible jealousy.

And it really looks like the enemy. You know, because Satan, you know, when you look back in Revelation 12, it talks about him being cast down. But the description of Satan when he was Lucifer, referred to as that, he was the most beautiful angel there was. Right?

He's endured and had all these jewelry and all these things and has nothing to, you know, look at other angels. But that wasn't good enough for him. He wanted God's position. Right? And he had a distaste for God and wanted to overthrow God and got cast down.

Right? But this jealous root. And so because he couldn't defeat God, that's why Satan comes after us so strongly. And so I want to play this clip because it echoes the way the enemy looks at each one of us. And you'll hear something towards the end. It's a crackling sound. It's a fire, a roaring fire. And he throws a crucifix cross into the fire as he's talking to God.

He's having this conversation with God. From now on, we are enemies. You and I. Because you choose for your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy. And give me for reward only the ability to recognize the incarnation. Because you are unjust.

Right there. Unkind. I will block you.

I swear it. I will hinder and harm your creature on earth as far as I am able. I will ruin your incarnation. That pretty much sums up how the enemy looks at us. And keep in mind, angels are powerful beings, but they weren't, as far as we know, created in the image of God. We're created in the image of God. The people that don't have the power, the angels do.

The lowly human. And so that really explains why the enemy hates us so much. He doesn't really care about me. He doesn't care about you, Garrett. He just cares about hurting God.

And the way he hurts God's heart is to hurt his children. And so that's a clip that I used. And during that talk, I've got a couple things I want to talk about on that talk. But during that talk, I experienced a lot of warfare. I know this talk really pretty well.

I've done it. It's really only one major bullet point. You talk about agreements.

And honestly, I own some of this because I went into it too lightly. Yeah, I prayed before I went in and I prepared for it. But I didn't prepare as if I was talking about the enemy's home turf.

Right? And so during the talk, every time I would say something, I would hear an exterior voice, not from the crowd, but an exterior voice kind of whispering in my ear, you already said that. Or why'd you say that again? Or what's going on here?

You know, and I was just getting confused. You know, to the point where I had to stop and actually kind of pray some of that stuff off of me in the middle of the talk. And it really did help me to be able to continue.

Now, the talk was what the talk was. The power of that particular talk was I didn't have a responder going into the weekend. Sometimes I have responders. And I really hadn't thought of who I wanted to respond. And it just hadn't become clear to me on it. And so when I got there, I saw Mike, a big Mike friend of the show.

He's helped us with team stuff all the time and been on the radio before. And I said, hey, Mike, would you respond to the warfare talk? You know, and initially Mike said, yes, I'll do it. Well, God wants you to talk about it. And I had something in mind that I wanted him to talk about, but that's between him and God.

Right? And so he came back the next day and said, yeah, I'll definitely talk, but I don't want to talk about this topic. And it wasn't really what I had hoped he would talk for. But I said, okay, that's fine.

As long as that's what God told you to do, go ahead and talk about that. He said, okay. Well, then the next day he came in and it's the day we're going to do that talk. He came in and he said, or later that day, he came in and said, hey, on my quiet time, God told me to talk about this other topic. And it was exactly what I'd hoped he would talk about.

And when he did, it moved everybody in that building. There were guys in there that he didn't know that had the same similar story or knew people of a similar story or knew people that may be going into that story or whatever the case may be. But there was people moved through his testimony of what God's done in his life.

And it's such an amazing thing to sit and watch and see those guys. And what you guys don't get to see and we don't share publicly is we get to read the prayer cards and pray over them. And just really how many people were touched by what God had done in Mike's life and given them hope that they might not be in the exact same situation, but they're in a similar type of situation, either emotionally, spiritually, financially, whatever that might be, that hope that God is still there even though I can't see him at the moment. He is there working and there will be an outcome down the road. It's not done yet. It's not finished yet.

Because a lot of the time along the way we give up hope way too early in not realizing or not remembering God's still working in the midst of it. But that's what I have to say about that. Anyway, we've got about half a minute left. Does anyone else want to add anything or anything come to mind you want to talk about?

Go ahead, David. I'll tell you my least favorite part of the camp was that tilt table. It's kind of hard for a 290-pound man to sit still on the rotating table.

And when it crashes down, it crashes down hard. I was sitting there looking at me like I'm doing something wrong. It's gravity, man.

It's gravity. Yeah, well, I kept listening and I'd hear, ugh. I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm glad I'm not in there. My back had been killing me. And I'm like, yeah, I can't imagine that. It was all a blessing, man.

Go ahead, James. I was thinking about trying to stand up and you surfing and the wind blowing your calf muscles getting to shaking. Oh, yeah, because if you moved at all, that thing was going to come down. I mean, I didn't participate, but I just kind of watched it. And it was enough just watching it.

Rodney? It was just funny. I'm sitting there relaxing. I'm like, oh, we got this thing leveled off.

It's been a little bit of time. And next thing I see, somebody's talking to me. And I'm like, gosh, just be still because you're going to shake this thing. We're going to lose this. Then they keep talking and talking. I'm like, no. Finally, I said something because I'm like, you guys aren't going quiet. We're going to lose this thing and we're going to move.

And I get all wrapped up in what was going on instead of just thinking about where are they at with their heart. Thank you, Rodney. Garrett, tell us one more time about the weekend event.

Where would they find out about it? FoothillsChristianChurch.com. Our homepage has the event on there. And you can find us on Facebook or Instagram. So come to our Facebook page, Foothills Christian Church in Louisville, North Carolina. We'd love to have you. Thanks for being on the show with us.

Go to masculinejourney.org. We will have the fall boot camp coming up. It is the weekend before Thanksgiving. So mark your calendars now. We'll talk to you later. Enjoy your week.