The heart of every man craves a great adventure, but life doesn't usually feel that way. Jesus speaks of narrow gates and wide roads, but the masculine journey is filled with many twists and turns.
So how do we keep from losing heart while trying to find the good way when life feels more like a losing battle than something worth dying for? Grab your gear and come on a quest with your band of brothers who will serve as the guides in what we call The Masculine Journey. The Masculine Journey starts here now. We're glad to have you with us today and we are coming back fresh off of boot camp, which is always going to be a tiring but fruitful and I don't even know how to describe it. Yeah, more tiring. I like that. That's a pretty good description of what that feels like. It's just a tiring week, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
I don't know about you guys. It's such a great experience with God and we had so many breakthroughs just on the team, not on the team, just everybody at camp and it was an amazing camp. It seems like whenever we have a smaller camp, it's a lot more intimate and people really get to know each other more and get to share and talk and that's really what I thought we saw this weekend.
Robby, what did you think about that? Oh yeah, it was really fun because it was in Georgia. A lot wilder experience, really a little bit more out in the outback, so to speak, where we didn't have quite the connection, but we had a big hill to walk up. It was over by the band of brothers. We got to see where the band of brothers was filmed, which actually, Andy, you can describe that more than I can. Yeah, I mean, I got to looking when we were first talking about going down there and I was like, I think Cura, he is near the camp we're at. So yeah, we went and saw it. We went up to the top of the mountain that they actually ran and it was a pretty cool experience.
Yeah, for those of you who have not seen the band of brothers, I wasn't that aware of it. Had seen it, but forgotten about this particular scene where the captain kept making them run this hill, which was actually more of a mountain when you actually go to do it. And he told this one guy, you're supposed to do this in 15 minutes, which it's three miles up and three miles back. So you do the math on that and even four minute miles, you couldn't do it. And they were doing it in full gear with rifles and all that stuff.
But this is real life. I mean, they were training for the invasion that would have later happened in Normandy. And when we drove this thing, hill is not a word for it.
No, mountain is the word for it. Exactly. And so we got up to about maybe 400 yards from the top and I said, well, I'm going to run this thing. You run that last 400 yards that steep and you realize that, man, when he was teaching them to be a band of brothers. And one of my favorite scenes of that actually was where he told one guy to go run it. And then you see three of the brothers come alongside him to run it so that, so essentially he didn't have to do it alone.
Yep. And that guy was really difficult. He ended up getting sacked. He was no longer, he was taken out because he didn't lead men well, but he prepared men well. And that is why they had the strength and the fortitude to do what they did. They were the only unit I believe that went from D-Day all the way up to whatever it is, the Eagle's nest, Hitler's lair, whatever. They went all the way into Austria and very strong, strong unit that, and that's where you get the term band of brothers.
Yeah, it was, I've watched it a few times now, you know, and ever since we went down there, Andy, to Camp Tocco, Toccoa, Toccoa, Toccoa and the mountains Curahee. Right. Right. And so not only is it where they filmed it, it's actually where it happened. Yeah.
Right. They filmed it on location where these guys actually trained. Now the camp's no longer there, but enough of the camps there that you can kind of go visit. Yeah, they've got the barracks still there and they've got a C-47 out front that you can actually see. If you go on the weekend, we've gone twice during the week, so we could just look at it through the fence.
Through the fence. Yeah. We enjoyed it. We were on alert when we were there the first time to realize, oh yeah, this is a Thursday.
We can't really get in, but definitely worth it. And definitely it was, it was impactful. And we use the term band of brothers constantly. And you know, I showed a clip, you know, on the wounding about how we, these guys knew their wounds. And that's kind of what we talk about is doing, um, of learning each other's wounds. So you can, they can, you can help each other heal.
I mean, you can help heal each other and through God, of course. But that whole thing of just what a band of brothers is, that series really does make it true because these, we talk about battle quite a bit. They were in battle constantly, but they were, they loved each other. They stay connected after the war and stuff.
So anyway. Yeah, a lot of them did, but we are going to be talking about boot camp. We're going to be talking about this last boot camp during the show and the after hours. We're also going to be talking about boot camps in general because we have a couple of guests with us and we're going to be talking about an event coming up this weekend, but unfortunately we do record this on Tuesday. So by the time the radio listeners are hearing it, you know, they're not, it's going to be too late because it'll come on at noon and the event will be over. And so, but if you're on Facebook or what else we do it on YouTube, watching it live, then you'll still have time. So Garrett, welcome to the show and tell us a little bit about the event this weekend. Thanks for having me guys.
Yeah. Finding out that it won't go until this Saturday is what my church would call that a classic Garrett. So a perfect, perfect scheduling on my part again. Um, we're doing a marriage weekend. It's a half day seminar at our church at foothills Christian church. And uh, my parents are also pastors. My dad just retired after 40 years of ministry and um, they're coming up to do their, their, their marriage talk. And so guys out there, if you are married, um, your wife, it will mean the world to your wife.
If you initiate this and say, Hey, you know what, I got this for us, so let's go do it. It's $20 a couple. It's super inexpensive and uh, there's still time to sign up. So this Saturday doors open at eight 30 in the morning, there's going to be snacks, there's going to be lunch and Q and a and all sorts of stuff. So it's going to be great. Uh, bring your, bring your spouses and um, invest in your marriage.
It's never too early or too late to start investing in your marriage. So I hope you do foothills, christianchurch.com right on the homepage. You'll find it. And I'm going to share it on Facebook page as well. You get a link that way as well. Yeah, we will share it on our Facebook page. Uh, assuming I remember when I leave here, so I have to make a note in my phone.
So I'll do that during the break. But uh, Garrett, you're also a, uh, a former alumni of bootcamp. I am. Yes. Yeah. So you want to tell us a little bit about some of your favorite bootcamp memories?
Yeah. So, um, I'm the odd man out and I go with this batch here, but I have been to it and I will say this, I, I encourage you to do it. If you have an opportunity, they come up every so often. So please make time for yourself to go to one of these. Um, I was asked to give a talk on, uh, being fathered by God and anyone who's ever taught before, you know, if you have to teach something, it kind of registers with you in a different way than, than before.
Right. And so I had to start thinking about, okay, what's it like having God as my father. And I, it reminded me of this interaction I had with my dad when I was in high school and uh, uh, I was sitting in the car with my dad and I had a really hard relationship with my dad as a lot of high schoolers have with their dads. And uh, I will say this, if you're, if you've got a strained relationship with a teenager parents out there, please don't give up. All right.
There's something coming around the corner. You just don't give up on that relationship. And uh, one day I finally just got to a point where I told my dad, I said, you know, I think you would be happier if I was my brother. And thinking back about that, I can't imagine how much that hurt my dad to hear that. But my dad just kind of stopped. I remember the stoplight we were at.
I can see everything perfectly right now. And he goes, Garrett, I don't want you to be anybody else other than you. I love you. Like you're, you're the child I want. And now that I'm a dad, I have four kids and I think about my relationship with my kids. I, it, it, I have this register in my mind where I go, Oh, I now know how off base my thought process was as a child because as a dad, it is never even occurred to me to think, you know, um, I wish my child was some other person. I just want my child. I just want my kids. You know what I mean?
That's all I want. And, and when I think about God and it's really easy for me as a pastor, as a Christian to be like, I'm sure God's really proud of these other Christians out there. I'm really, I'm sure he's really proud of these other guys who are really, you know, hitting the ball of the park. And I'm over here like some loser and he's going, Oh, Garrett, you're the guy I want. You're the Garrett I'm looking for.
I'm not looking for any, any other Garrett's. And so that was my big takeaway from my, my bootcamp and I, uh, I loved it. I appreciate it. That's awesome.
Thank you for sharing that. Now you guys may have a bootcamp this fall as well, right? Uh, yeah.
Uh, Darren is, um, getting all amped up to put one out and, um, uh, that date is not yet set, but in the fall he's wanting to put one out as well. So yeah, some options are coming up. Yeah. We do.
We just ask him not to choose the weekend before Thanksgiving. Why? Why?
Cause that's when our next bootcamp is. Wow. Yeah. You know, you can't go register for it quite yet, but you will be able to soon and we'll tell you about it. But we know the weekend, the weekend before Thanksgiving. I think I can miss that one. I think I can just be off of it a little bit. So yeah, well that's true. You could just pick a week or two ahead of that.
And so that'd still be good, you know? And so, uh, our only, uh, challenge with that time of year is anybody that likes to hunt. It's hard to get them there cause it's usually in the middle or beginning part of deer season.
And so it makes a little bit of a challenge sometimes. But, uh, that, that is our weekend pretty much every year. And so we haven't, uh, finalized the location for sure yet, but once we do, we'll be putting up the link and so just go ahead and bookmark it so you know when it is the weekend before Thanksgiving. If, if you don't know when that is, just look at a calendar, it'll look for Thanksgiving and go to the weekend right before that.
And so that's exactly what we do when we're trying to figure that out. But, uh, thank you Garrett for sharing that. Danny, uh, wanted to ask you a little bit, you weren't able to make this boot camp and you just had some lame excuse but we won't even need to go into that. But if you want to tell us about like some of your favorite boot camp experiences.
Yeah. You know, minor appendix surgery doesn't mean anything to you guys apparently. No, no.
We wouldn't cut you any slack for that. Oh no. But you know, I mean the, I hate I miss this boot camp cause you know, new location and that kind of thing.
But you know, one of the things that's always cool about boot camp is you never come out the same way. No. And you know, that's, that's ultimately a good thing in that, you know, I mean there's been so many times and I don't even know how to narrow one down cause we got so much going on in his brain right now. As my wife says, there's too many tabs that are open. Yeah.
And that Too much memory being used. Yeah. Yeah.
I think I'm out of Ram. I really do. Yeah. We're probably using the wrong terms cause Andy's sitting over there. Yeah.
Andy's going, Oh God, I don't know what's going on. But you know, the, you know, you guys have already talked about you being a part of a band of brothers and hanging out with you guys. It's awesome. Yeah, it is. That's all I got to say about that.
Well, that's enough. We appreciate it. We're glad you're here, Danny. It's, it's, it's really good to see you and we're glad that you're with us. I can't say enough about Camp Little Light, which is where we went down in Georgia.
It's such an amazing place. You pull up and you think that you're pulled up to this ghost town, right? It looks like a facade that you would see out West, you know, cause you got the freedom barn over here and then in the middle you got the Chuck wagon and then you got the bunkhouse and you're like, are these even real buildings?
Am I going to open it up and step on the, you know, the backside of that building? You know, it's just like a front and they're rugged. You know, they're very men like, you know, it's, ah, you know, you could almost grunt as you pull up there. Right.
Like the old Tim, Tim Allen show on home improvement. Yeah. So, you know, you feel like going, you know, that kind of thing.
Right. And then you go in and it's so nice, you know, you, you couldn't ask for much more. And we, we had so much fun. We were down there, you know, not everybody participated in everything, but that's, what's good about it.
You don't have to participate in everything. And so we're able to do, um, you know, uh, a zip lining and some skeet shooting and, and, uh, some, uh, team building events along with the sessions. It was just an amazing weekend.
And like I said, we just let people participate where they wanted to participate, but it was amazing. We'll be back to talk to you after the break, but, uh, we've got so much more and we've got clips coming up and more about this bootcamp. We'll talk to you when they come back. What we have at our bootcamp 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. What brings you here this weekend? So I, uh, met Robby and he invited me to come to the bootcamp and there was just so many doors that were closed before I was able to come here, but God allowed these things to happen. And I said, you know, God, I'm going to, I'm going to ultimately acknowledge what's going on for all these doors to be open for me to come to this camp. I just want to see you. So throughout that time, since I've been here, you know, just the, uh, the illumination of God speaking to me through my heart and through my mind and through my soul was just, it's went to a whole nother level since I've been here at the bootcamp, the covenant of silence after the talks and being able to go out and just submit myself to being able to hear from God and what we've been working on. And it's just been transparent in my life, the level of the sanctification process, the discipleship process, and coming here, I feel like this is exactly where I'm supposed to be. Register today at masculinejourney.org.
Come back to masculine journey and Andy, I'm gonna let you tell us a little bit about that, that particular bump. Cause that's from bootcamp, correct? It is.
It is. And I was, uh, I think we, the church, I think is the name. That's why I had you do it. Cause I couldn't remember what it was. Um, but that's that, uh, song about two boot camps. I just kept coming up in my spirit.
I would hear it and it had come up in my spirit and, and I just thought it was just a worship song that gets people to enter in. And that's true, but I got to thinking about it a little bit more after bootcamp is that, you know, we talk about, you've got to remove the pose or, and you've got to heal the wound. Those things have to, you, you have to make room for God to do those things. And it opens it up for all the other stuff to come, all the good stuff through restoration and healing of finding out what you're calling is of stepping into sonship, of getting your identity, but you have to make room.
And a lot of times all the junk from the past get is, is filling up the room. Oh, absolutely. And part of the process of the weekend is there's talks that help you get things out of the way, you know, so that you can work on some of that stuff. And the talks don't do anything.
Honestly, the talks are topics and then God does all the work, but you know, it puts you in a place mentally, spiritually, emotionally, a lot of times where God can work. Yeah. Truth opens you up to those things. The truth does need to be.
I heard it'll set you free. I've heard that too. A really smart guy said that a long time too, didn't he? He did. That was Eliza Smith and her church. I couldn't get that far.
I couldn't read that far in my little notes. So that's who was the lead singer in it. But onto our first clip of, of the show and Robby, you have the first clip, so I'm gonna turn it over to you. Yeah. Well, so we have, for many that have seen Vacation, the movie, you know, it, it's iconic, this particular scene where, uh, Clark Lizwald is trying to take his family on vacation and they want to turn around and go back because it's a little problem with the grandma dying and, you know, rain, you know, the car crashing on numerous occasions, all sorts of things that have led them to this. And of course, at this point in time, you know, he becomes frustrated, not unlike my father would have, or many fathers probably that you experienced. And he gets to the point where he's going to have fun no matter what, at whatever cost he's screaming at them, you know, that this is going to be about fun.
And if you want to go ahead and play that clip, then I can tell you how I relate to that. I don't want to be in the car anymore. I want to go home.
I don't want to go to Wally World. Clark, under the circumstances, I wouldn't mind if we just went home. In retrospect, it seems like a pretty bad idea driving out. It's been one disaster after another. Yeah, it's been a real drag, Dad. Maybe we can try it some other time.
Wally World's overrated anyway. What do you think? We're 10 hours from the fun park and you want to bail out. Well, I'll tell you something. This is no longer a vacation. It's a quest.
It's a quest for fun. I'm going to have fun and you're going to have fun. We're all going to have so much fun. We'll need plastic surgery to remove our files. You'll be whistling Zippity Doo-Dah. I got to be crazy. I'm on a pilgrimage to see a moose.
Praise Marty Moose. Dad, do you want an aspirin or something? Don't touch. There are two things.
I don't know how many times I've seen the movie, heard that clip, and I picked up some things at the end of it that are significant when it comes to this particular boot camp. And number one, that his son, you know, didn't seem to be too affected by his dad's rant and says like, you need some aspirin, Dad? Think how kind that really is. Like, I'm not going to be affected by your shenanigans. I'm just going to offer you some aspirin. And then he admits he's under attack.
And I never heard that before, but clearly he was under attack. And you know, I've often thought the 16th Psalm, it says, in his presence is fullness of joy. At his right hand are pleasures forevermore. In other words, when you're running, walking with Jesus, however you're doing that, it's fun, man.
It's a blast. In his presence, it's right there. And so when that ceases to be like that in your life, it's like a check engine light going off saying, it's time to check under the hood. Maybe I'm not walking with God right this minute.
Well, at bootcamp, you know, we often talk about how God will dismantle you, disrupt you. And in an effort actually to remove a pose is what we talk about. If you want to get rid of the pose, you need to get disrupted, something to see it because you don't even know you got the pose.
Well, one of the poses that I have honestly is that same pose that you just heard from Caulk Griswold. He didn't mean anything by it, but he was just angry and he was speaking angrily. In other words, he was clearly not walking with God in that particular scene. And, you know, we were doing this Teams course thing and this guy, from my perspective, got out of line and I decided I was on a quest for fun. He was going to have fun whether he liked it or not. And unfortunately it upset the poor guy and I triggered him to where he was wanting to leave the camp.
I mean, obviously. And that was on me. And it just totally disrupted me. I mean, and next thing I know, I'm sitting in a meeting with Sam and Jim Graham and we're doing our best to try to apologize and say, man, don't, don't, don't, don't, you know.
And fortunately he had the grace to hang out and to stay with us and somewhat resolve that. But, you know, the next morning in my continued quest for fun at breakfast, you know, I felt myself being snippy again towards the people that were trying to help me cook breakfast. And so when I got home and I got alone with God Monday morning, I was like, help me God, I know I have this and I don't have any control over it. It's like, I want to walk with you. I want to be with you. I don't want to lose my temper.
I want to be something other than I am and I really don't know how to do that. And God just, you know, in this loving way, faithful are the wounds of a friend and nobody loves you more than God. He says, Robby, you don't trust me. And I'm, oh man, I guess that is it. So I need to work on that. And so, you know, like a lot of people, I immediately thought of Proverbs 3, 5, where, you know, would lean on the Lord with all your heart. And I mean, trust in the Lord with all your heart. There's the word trust and lean not on your own understanding and all your ways. Acknowledge him right.
And he's going to make your path straight, which apparently I'd gotten crooked here. And I started to ask, you know, what was behind that? And as I studied that word trust, I saw two words over in Hebrew was the word to talk angrily. So I thought, well, isn't that fascinating that here we have trust and then right after that, talk angrily.
What's the difference between the two words? It's actually right before. And what I saw was that to talk angrily ended in the letter Aleph, which that letter has to do with the father. You hear it in ah, but it sounds like an A, right? And it has to do with who's in charge. Alpha, meaning the alpha male, right? So who's in charge in the situation of talking angrily?
That would be Robby. If you look at the word trust, however, the last letter, same two, first two letters, different last letter in the word trust is a letter het. And that letter het has everything to do with the union. In fact, it looks like a marriage canopy because it is a marriage. And it's a marriage between you and God. And so when you're in that marriage and you truly do trust, and if you think about a marriage, it's based on faith, right?
How do you please God through faith? And so clearly this isn't something you're going to fix overnight, but it was an opportunity for me to push into, you know, my own weakness in my own, you know, because it's bad enough I talk bad to my friends or to people at a boot camp. But what about my own family? What about my wife?
What about my kids? You know, and to realize, you know, number one, I got to own this thing. I got to push into it. I got to repent, but I'm going to have to really do some work to get where I know God wants me to be. But, you know, how cool is it that really we're all in that place.
We're asking for God to come for us. And sometimes it isn't so pleasant. Like this one wasn't, but, you know, there we are.
Yeah. I remember when you were talking and doing that and saying those things at the camp that I really, I don't ever remember you being mad at anybody because I was standing there cooking and he was next to me cooking and you were running around trying to make sure we're all cooking and getting other stuff done. And I don't even remember you because you're describing these things. And it's like, I don't remember that, but I'm sure you knew where your heart was at.
You knew that, ah, dang it, I'm mad about this. And he probably thought I'm worse than what I even sound. But I don't know, Andy, if you noticed it, but I was just like, well, he was just, he was helping us all the time cause we all needed it.
He was. And I know about myself, I'm kind of a flunky in the kitchen and there was a process and stuff and he guided me through it and I just didn't see it. There was a incredible amount on a lot of us, um, but on Robby, especially with having to really manage the kitchen and do talks and whatnot.
And I really didn't think anything about it. In fact, um, I've been told that I'm like, um, uh, a madman when it comes to like, Yeah, that's the clip we really need, Sam. Is it like when he goes to cook and French toast, it's like, like Lee Harvey, you're a wild, wild. Lee Harvey, you are a mad man.
So that actually is probably my favorite memory from, you know, as far as pleasant memory is, you know, that's in the, in the movie stripes and we'd use that clip. But when, when Andy was kicking out this man, French toast, like you've never seen in your life, he was flipping it. It was, it was coming.
I was like, Lee Harvey, you're an animal because I mean, who would name their kid Lee Harvey? Well, this is all in the same timeframe when he was saying he was getting upset. So we, we had some, some fun and all that. So it wasn't, it wasn't, he had both, he and Rodney were sitting there like, man, you are there, you are there. And then I was like, cause we had played the clip in, in one of the sessions in the posing session. Lee Harvey.
And it just kind of stuck. They just kept going on him and it's like, I got the names, I said, Harvey Lee. And it was like, Robby, he knows every movie or whatever.
He instantly knew what I was talking about. So we, it made it fun. But I mean, really there was a lot on, on Robby and, and we all do things when we get under pressure.
I think I, I really appreciate how he's leaned into how he wants God to walk him through this, but I want to, and I think Rodney and say the same thing that we don't, we don't see that there's anything there much from our side, but I will let God do whatever he wants to do with Robby. Well, we'll, we'll be talking about the rest of bootcamp when we get to the after hours. And so if you listen to us on the radio show and you said, what is this after hours, go to any podcast location, you just name it. If it's a podcast, we're on it, look up masculine journey radio and you can listen to the rest of the talk. And you can also go to masculine journey.org to see anything we have coming up, but we don't even coming up right now. So don't go today, but that's where you would go. Or if you want to reach out to any of us, go to through email, our first name at masculine journey.org. Talk to you next week. This is the truth network.
