Bringing Back Godly Men

This is Robbie Dilmore from The Christian Car Guy and Kingdom Pursuit, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build a kingdom. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it and share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Network Podcast.

More than I can certainly eat in one meal, so I will be dividing this one up. But yeah, you know, I try to be like a lightning bolt, right? You know, so I try not to stay in one place too long. My dad is quoted as saying in the past, son, you don't let any grass grow to your feet.

And I'm like, you're exactly right, dad. So my goal, you know, especially in centering the focus of my time and attention on men specifically, is hosting, really local churches host conferences called Man Up. It kind of ties into the Man Up radio show and podcast and soon to be TV show, the Man Up show. And so I got a host of conferences upcoming. In fact, I've got a huge one in Morningstar Ministries in Fort Mill, South Carolina, August 25th to the 27th with an incredible, I mean, a phenomenal lineup of speakers, including no less than NBA All-Star Al Wood, WWE Superstar Lex Luger, world renowned evangelist Frank Shelton, Dr. Rick Joyner, Chris Reed, Lieutenant General Jerry Boykin. The Benin Brothers.

I mean, it's an incredible lineup of speakers. And coming up, Man Camp. Man Camp. What is Man Camp? That's a five day catalyst where men, small groups gather together to be able to really do this, to empower, stew, to equip, to teach, to train, but then to deploy them back home to be better than they are right now. Godly men, godly husbands and godly fathers.

That's the goal of what I'm doing. I'm asking Nikita Koloff, Koloff of Christ Ministries, Man Camp Ministries. He's all over Instagram, Facebook.

He's tagging me all the time, sending me messages. He loves Jesus. He's the Russian nightmare. Nikita Koloff, I'll never forget the sermon illustration Dr. Tony Evans gave of a puzzle that some people were putting together. There was one missing piece in that puzzle. And the missing piece, it was a family. It was the mom and the kids and all that, but the missing piece was the dad.

And when someone found that puzzle piece and they put it in there, Dr. Evans, and this is a rough paraphrase, but bear with me. He said, when you fix the man, you fix the family. When the man comes to Christ, it's like 80 plus percent of the time the whole family comes to the Lord and goes to church. The opposite, you know, the inverse of that is, you know, other people in the family, which we want them to come to the Lord, but you reach the dad and you're trying to reach men, to wake up single men, married men, divorced men, men that are struggling, young men.

This is a passion God has put on your heart, Nikita Koloff. Tell us why and tell us where all this is going. Well, because I feel as though over the last, and this is not the last couple years, I feel over the last really couple, three, four decades, the men have been emasculated under attack, that the enemy has come against the family, the nuclear family. Get the man out of the house to your very point, get the man out of the house.

And many times the family just unravels and or falls apart or the children end up in a counseling session somewhere because of what happened in the breakup of the family. So the more we can keep the family unit together, the more we can empower men to be, again, be godly men and godly husbands, godly fathers, the greater the result in impacting our society around us, and that's my goal. Well, Nikita Koloff, you are a living testimony of that, and one of my favorite parts when I hear you speak, I can't hear enough, is your testimony. And I'm not saying that I was watching wrestling all the time, every day, maybe sometimes three hours a day, and going to Starrcade in the Greensboro Coliseum with all my buddies, Big Bob and Fox and all the dudes growing up, and watching Nikita Koloff, the Russian nightmare, snap people in half, the only guy to ever take out all four horsemen with one swoop, one sickle.

One or two sickles and you had them all down, even flare. You were just a dominant force, but you are an even more dominant force now for Christ. And I just love to hear, talk about how this big old strapping Russian man with massive biceps, massive chest, you know, breaking every record lifting wise, tell us how God got a hold of you and changed that inside and turned you into a son of the father of the living God. Well, it changed me from the inside out, that's the key.

It's not from the top down, it's not from the head down, it's from the heart up. And so it changed me inside out, transformed me. And you know, you were just given an illustration of a puzzle with a missing piece. Well, I came to a realization after leaving wrestling that something was missing in my life, and what was missing was that personal relationship with Jesus Christ. And so it was almost, I visualized when you were saying that puzzle, that there's a picture of me, but my heart is missing. That's the missing piece in my puzzle, was my heart. And once I gave my life to Christ, that completed the puzzle. My heart was restored. He says He takes a heart of stone out of you and puts a heart of flesh in you.

And so God put a heart of flesh in me, put His Spirit, Holy Spirit, in me, and that has made all the difference. That surrender, that yielding of my life and my heart to Jesus Christ at an altar, 17 October 1993, set me on a path, of course, that in a million years I never would have dreamed. I never would have dreamed I'd have a radio show on Truth Radio Network, a podcast, a TV show coming up on Morningstar TV.

I just never would have dreamed I'd be doing all these things because of a wrestling career. But here I am. And for those people that were like you, you had everything. You had all the fanfare. You had millions of people all over the world.

You can't even go to Russia without getting mobbed by fans. You're signing things. If I went to one of your photo ops, I'm your Christian radio partner here, I probably could barely get a word in, all these people fawning over you.

But this has been the story of your life for decades, yet for someone out there that has it all, Jesus said, He who gains the whole world, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his own soul? So there's people listening. They may have all that. They got that family. They got that two-car garage. They got plenty in the bank. They got all the education. But they're missing something like you were missing.

Talk about how important it is to find it all in Jesus. Yeah, well, let me tell you a quick, funny story to your point on having some notoriety around the world. True story.

You can't make this stuff up. Myself and a wrestler named the Million Dollar Man, Ted DiBiase, and another wrestling friend named Jason Sampson were in the ruins of Petra in Jordan. And the guys who run the camels back and forth recognized us, and they went crazy. And every one of them wanted a picture with the Russian Nightmare and the Million Dollar Man in the ruins of Petra, Jordan.

Right? So just one illustration of how wrestling has been, had an appeal universally worldwide. For whatever reason, okay? The camel guys of Petra. Okay. On that note, that said, many of my friends, Lex Luger, the total package, Sting, the icon Sting, wrestler Sting, that is. I go down the list. Magnum TA, my nemesis back in the wrestling days.

Shawn Michaels, HBK. One by one by one have all come to faith in Christ because they realized all the success in the world when you climb that mountain and you get to the peak, without Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, you recognize all the bobbles and bling and all the fanfare and success and money still leaves you empty inside. You can be successful, but you're always going to be unfulfilled. And the only thing to fill the void is that personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Tell everyone how they can learn more about Nikita Koloff, donations to Koloff for Christ Ministries. You've got a podcast. You've got a regular broadcaster syndicated on Christian radio stations and all over the country.

You've got an amazing man up minute, a little daily devotional challenge men to step up for Christ. What's the best way to connect with you, sir? The best stop shop, koloff.net, K-O-L-O-F-F, koloff.net. You can link to the podcast. You can learn more about the man camp. There's a store there, a couple books I've written, Wrestling with Success and Nikita, A Tale of the Ring of Redemption. You can learn more about Koloff for Christ Ministries. You know, bring me into your community, your local church, do a man up conference. It's all right there at koloff.net.

Awesome. Thanks for sitting down with us here at Camel City Barbecue Factory. Everyone can hear the noise.

A family with a bunch of kids just came in. But it's awesome to be talking about the Lord in this setting. And this is real life.

And this is a real life wrestler. And just folks, a little word of the wise. When the Russian nightmare Nikita Koloff comes to town and he wants to eat real beef brisket and real delicious pulled pork and all of the delicious barbecue fixings, the slaw and all of it at the Camel City Barbecue Factory. You don't ever say no.

The answer is yes. You've got to take care of this guy. What a great man of God. Thank you for the encouragement you've been to me, my friend. The feeling is mutual, Stu.

I mean, it is the relationship. I've been blessed to get to know you and your family. And I want to leave on this note. I want to leave on this note. You talked about being here at Camel City Barbecue, which by the way, he is right.

It is my favorite place in Winston-Salem to go. But consider this. Consider the New Testament. Of Jesus' 132 public appearances, 122 were in the marketplace. Of 52 parables, Jesus told 45 had a workplace context. Of 40 miracles in the book of Acts, 39 were in the marketplace. Jesus spent his adult life as a carpenter until age 30 before he went into preaching into the ministry into the marketplace. And 54% of Jesus' reported teaching ministry arose out of issues posed by others in the scope of daily life. There you go. Take that to the bank.