If You Think, You're Dead: Trust The Guide Episode #3, Christian Hunter Devotional Outreach Speaker

well for better or worse we're rolling welcome to the campfire my brethren ah it's a beautiful night a little bit cool but got a little extra wood here if i need it so this old guy i used to work with his name was dennis harms he was a master guide he used to say or he used to consider that a brown bear hunt an alaskan brown bear hunt was the pinnacle of north american big game hunting and you know when i first started working for him 23 years ago i didn't know any different but after 23 years i'd have to say that he's exactly right he guided on kodiak dennis did for over 40 years and if uh if i don't um if there's anything that i'm going to try to make you more of than a a christian it's going to be i'm going to try to make a bear hunter out of you because that's my favorite i love bear hunting it's it no other hunt tests my faculties as a guide as a hunter more than bear hunting particularly to go after an old mature boar you know they'll live in to be there 20 over 20 years old and they are so smart a brown bear grizzly bear same thing is way smarter than a black bear they're they're tougher to jut they're tough to judge you know is it a bore how big is how mature it is so as a guide it really it tests all facets of your abilities you have to be patient you have to know when to be aggressive but you definitely have to be patient because their sense of smell is so so acute and i learn more bear hunting than i do anything else they're such a fascinating animal and obviously the element of danger you know that's that makes it like all-consuming you're kind of all in when you're hunting brown bear and grizzly bear and just watching them is fascinating you know a bear the way they live life is kind of remarkable they just live one second to the next that that's it you know their job like most animals is to grow as big and as strong as they can and reproduce and that's it i mean doesn't that sound like a pretty sweet existence you know just grow big strong live to be old and have sex man that sounds like a pretty sweet gig but they they are are they're masters at everything that they do out of necessity and it's so cool you watch them they're everything they're doing everything in nature happens for a reason so that's what enthralls me about nature is because everything you see everything an animal does there's a reason for it and trying to put all those pieces of the puzzle together you know that's that's a guide's job that's that's what's gonna make you successful and like a grizzly bear let's say a brown bear you know in the springtime they come out the bores they're going to start roaming the first thing they're doing not necessarily really to look for food you know they haven't eaten anything for months or they're going to breed you know and they'll you know they go through their breeding process and then they feed on during the summer and you'll watch different conditions they'll feed on different things at different times and one of the things that i found really interesting is in the fall time when i'm hunting grizzly bears let's say and you'll watch them in a lot of the areas where i'd guide there'd be some salmon so they'd feed on the creek some but by september most of the salmon spawns done and oftentimes they're going for berries they want sugar they want that carbohydrate but then all of a sudden you get this skiff of snow let's say you get two inches of snow and i remember like just that one year it was so amazing and this was just not that many years ago we were watching this bear and he he was just sniffing the snow he was a couple miles away grizzly bear and i started watching how what he how he was acting and it wasn't a real big bear so i didn't uh um you know look at him real close but then i was watching what he's doing i'm like what the heck is he doing and so i put the spotting scope on him and what he was doing was he was catching mice or lemmings and i think that snow that little bit of snow the lemming had to go up on top of the snow he couldn't go under it it was wet and and i think the bear could smell really good and i was watching that bear and he was catching like a mouse every two minutes he gave up on the berries because right then you know the pickens on mice was really easy and it was unbelievable how many he was catching and it's just so fascinating to watch them at work and how they just automatically and instinctively respond to everything in their environment and it's and it's absolutely effortless obviously it's honed over time you know when they're they're taught from their their mother but bears just roll with everything you know they just they just wake up in the morning and it's like there's no such thing as a plan there's no you know there's no schedule they just go out and live life one second to the next and i think more than anything that's what i love about guiding and being in the wilderness is you have to basically do the same thing you know it's a real simple life you um more or less my job is just to keep my clients safe make sure we have shelter water food and don't get eaten by a bear you know and don't get hypothermia just stay alive and then hunt beyond that and that simple existence is such a beautiful thing and in today's modern world that's that's hard it's hard to come by you know and so i i'm not uh this isn't leading into a grizzly bear story so i apologize i'm a kind of shifting gears here i wanted to share this grizzly story and incorporate it with what i'm going to be talking about today but i just realized it was going to get way too long so i apologize for that you know just like a hunting trip you know you you start off with an idea you know you you leave camp in the morning with an idea of what you're going to do but basically you've just got to react and adapt to whatever's going around you and whatever it is that you're seeing and so you know i just had to change things up but rest assured the grizzly bear of charge story will come eventually so this um this campfire we're going to be talking about or the title of this message is if you think you're dead now we're going to talk about bush flying and a bush pilot an alaskan bush pilot like a true bush pilot who's like landing off airport on a regular basis lives a lot like like a grizzly bear they have to trust their instinct every decision is kind of made one second to the next and yeah at times they kind of go on autopilot but i mean things can happen in an instant so like a bush pilot you know on a super cub let's say you know they have very minimal instruments they want to keep it lightweight they they don't have anything they don't need okay so they keep it very basic when a pilot bush pilot comes in to land he does there's too many things going on and largely anyways there's such a small window and margin for air where he's landing you know he might have a stump or a tree to avoid in the middle of his runway you know or maybe he's never landed maybe nobody's landed there before and so often times like they're not looking at their air speed or their altimeter or whatever else they're feeling the airplane they're listening to it they're feeling the vibration and they just over time they develop this this instinct and it's like they probably couldn't even tell they don't they couldn't tell you what they they're doing because it's subconscious they're not thinking about it it just has to become automatic and there's a a saying amongst monster amongst bush pilots there are old bush pilots and there are bold bush pilots but there are no old bold bush pilots because that flying is so technical that you know if you push the elements um you know sooner or later the law of averages is going to catch up to you and i i mean i've met some amazing flown with some amazing pilots i've flown with some not so good pilots so i i know i know the difference a little bit anyways but one of the most uh amazing pilots that i've ever met is a guy by the name of kurt bettingfield now kurt he was a a trooper uh alaska state trooper to start with so he was like a fish and game warden and i actually first met him when he was a trooper and he would come in and check our camps and he was always very respectful you know the outfitters guys everybody really liked kurt and really respected him because he respected us you know he wasn't he wasn't coming in like treating you like a criminal you know he treated you like a human being and well one day um as kurt was coming home he was stationed in cold foot alaska his family lived there in a little hut they have there and he was coming back from a uh court proceeding out of al-qaeda and there was a storm moving in and he raced to beat the storm home in his super cub he lands ties down the plane and as he's walking to the house all of a sudden he says he told as he described it he said he saw a bolt of lightning at his level and he said all of a sudden he heard this bang and then he was out he got struck by lightning and he said he wasn't out for very long because when he came to his wife and kids were running out to him they heard it they thought the house had gotten struck by lightning and so they came running out to him and curt was getting up and he was pulling his wool shirt away from him he said his badge was like a branding iron all the hair on his exposed hair had been had been torched off and everything was hot and he you know they got into the house and you know everything was seemingly okay and then over time he started to notice this deterioration in his voice his vocal cords he would talk kind of shaky and eventually this led to an issue where he was at a uh a function for troopers he had to you know they called all these troopers in and they had to go through like a development day where they go through and um you know they had to shoot or don't shoot exercise and and at one point he had to get up and speak in front of uh you know the people that were there and nothing would come out of his mouth you know he i guess he just kind of got excited or had some adrenaline or whatever but he but he couldn't speak and at that point they realized okay this is gonna the the state i guess more or less gave him an ultimatum that hey this is going to hinder you being a trooper you can either take early retirement he had 19 years in at that point and they offered him 20-year full retirement or he could take like a desk job or something and he said nah that's job's not my style so he took the coyotes episode number two my coyotes howling in the background and so he took early retirement but he loved to fly that's kind of kurt's you know passion and so he as he said it he started flying for the other side he start he hired on as a pilot for the outfitter that i was guiding for at the time and so that's how i got to got to know curt a little bit and years later after i've been flying with curt we were down in sand point we were bear hunting and the weather was horrendous and i was asking kurt and brett thought was down there and and i'm like how how like what what is that like you know how do you learn how to do that to the bush flying particularly and i believe it was brett that said it was a line off a top gun if you think you're dead and what he they kind of described him and him and kurt both they just described as like you've got to start somewhere you know you got to start flying and i i got my pilot's license many years ago and i remember like uh an hour long lesson was it was so draining like i would go and nap i would go to my grandma's house she lived like five miles away from the airport i was like a 25 minute drive but i was so wiped out that i i was so tired that i would fall asleep i was afraid if i went home and so i'd go to my grandma's she was you know all alone and they had this big couch and you know grandparents houses are always like quiet and comfortable and so i'd go there and i take a nap after every lesson because it just wears you out because you're trying to learn you know a thousand different things all at the same time so your your brain is just constantly spinning but anyways they just described that in order to do that kind of technical flying because i mean like a bush pilot flying in the wilderness of alaska during hunting season particularly on the alaska peninsula with you know some of the highest winds in the world the worst weather conditions imaginable like that's the world series that's the all-star game i mean that kind of flying is going to make a 747 captain blush you know that is as real as it gets and so their their analogy or that that analogy from top gun or whatever you want to call it if you think you're dead if you think you're dead it makes it makes perfect sense and i think it puts it into perspective of what you've got to do the level of commitment and like clarity of mind that is necessary and the decision-making process that goes into it like almost every landing you know that is it's an amazing amazing thing that they do but you ask any kind of any bush pilot and most of them they would never want to do anything else you know they it's why they get up in the morning it's it's what they live for you know and so through the years i get to know kurt a little bit um you know hanging out in the guide shack before season and at the end of season kurt just had this authority he didn't say a lot but any time that he started talking it's like everybody shut up you know there's a couple guys and we all know them you know they're talking all the time and you just talk over him because you know he's going to tell a story that you've heard a thousand times before but with kurt it was it was different you know kurt was kind of a man amongst boys in the wilderness you know he uh as i learned through the years of sitting in the back seat of a super cub with him him carting me around the brooks range and you know all over alaska really is uh kurt more or less grew up he was born in montana but more or less uh was raised in alaska his dad was a preacher and kurt was pretty young when they headed to alaska and you know his parents were just real earthy people and he ended up getting married and they started flying and he just realized that he really loved that so that's why i wanted to be a trooper to offer him a uh a way to fly and i just remember our conversations of just getting to know kurt there was something different about him that you know just drew me to him and i'll never forget one day as we're flying along and we're just remarking talking about how beautiful the weather was and the scenery in the mountains and everything else and he just said you know you see those mountains that's god staring you in the face and i looked at the mountains like man i don't see them you know i didn't say that but i was just like okay i'm not i'm not seeing it but that him saying that probably rolled over in my eyes i mean or rolled rolled through my mind thousands of times in the years that followed that and even to this day i think of it particularly when i'm in the brooks range when i'm flying somewhere i think back to that conversation and as i got to know kurt a little bit he's i remember him telling me he's like you know it's the little things in life that really really matter and i remember one thing that a couple things that he told me he's like sitting on the porch with my wife watching the sunset on a hot summer day with a cold beer that was the one thing and i wasn't married at the time but i just remember him saying he's like those are the best moments in life and i couldn't i couldn't argue with him i mean it kind of made sense but boy as i get older i really recognize what he's saying i mean it makes perfect sense and another thing about kurt that really spoke to me and i've we've probably all heard this thing and i believe it's probably true or largely true maybe entirely true is how you do a thing is how you do everything kurt's plane was always immaculate he did a hundred push-ups hundred sit-ups he had like a pull-up bar in the in the pilot cabin the guides would stay in some stinky hooch there'd be a ton of us and you know one two three pilots whatever it would be in their own little cabin but he had this an ice axe on ropes and so he'd do chin ups he'd go for like a four or five mile walk every day he's very disciplined very drill sergeant-like you know he had a very straight posture which i could learn from in that that regard but kurt told me something that i'll never forget he said pilots die when they make a mistake and get scared after once they make a mistake and then fear sets in and then they quit flying the airplane and i learned exactly what he was talking about after i got my pilot's license you know i was thinking i'm going to be a and i'm going to be this big time outfit or whatever you know it's kind of the natural progressions of things you know you slog enough moose out of swamps and you start to figure there's got to be an easy way to make a buck and i started flying super cubs and it was cool i mean it was all right um i don't know i was probably doing okay with it but i tried landing on a very narrow runway and a guy by the name of matt walker was with me he was in the back seat he was kind of instructing me helping me out very good pilot christian dude good dude um and we tried landing with uh know i probably had like maybe 10 hours in a super cub and like a super cubs like a ferrari i learned in a 150 didn't have much horsepower and did okay but then i get into the super cub and just like man this thing is pretty fun to fly anyways i come into land with a crosswind on a very narrow strip short trees at both ends i mean it was way more than what i was ready for and i touched down and i don't know i kind of bounced i kind of forced it down i was like slipping in to land and i had done i had gone around like two or three times already like missed approaches and tried it again and so this time i was thinking i'm gonna put it down and the airplane bounced and the tail popped up like the nose was gonna dive into the ground and i froze i didn't do anything matt you know he had a stick in the back he pinned the stick back we pinned the tail down you know it was fine but that that rattled me and i flew a little bit after that but it's just i think more than anything i realized that i didn't have the right temperament for bush flying i think more than anything a bush pilot to to you know do it for any longevity a you got to love it and i think that comes into anything in life if you want to do something well if you want to succeed at something you got to love it because you're whether you're no matter what you're doing you're going to hit obstacles and if you don't like what you're doing anyway it's very easy to quit but if you love something you just can't quit and i don't love flying and i enjoyed hunting and and i just like being on the ground and just kind of experiencing things at a real hands-on personal intimate level and so i kind of quit flying but i got a taste of it of of all that's involved and what goes in and the skill set that one must possess to do what these guys that you see on my videos what they're able to do it it takes unbelievable discipline it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of balls to be quite quite honest um but kurt kurt described it to me and i he said every every landing you you make he said that's that's a little bag that's a little that's a little something that you can put into your bag of tricks he said you're always learning and he said you you want to make every landing effortless but you want to learn from everyone too so that when the hard ones come along you you've been in so many different scenarios that nothing can shake you that nothing can rattle you you've done it before and kurt is just one of those guys that like like anything if somebody's good at something they make it look easy and kurt always made it look easy and like just like kurt you know when he was trying to tell me how to uh how to fly you know or like explain it to me you know no more than kurt could explain to somebody how to fly an airplane yeah you can tell them the basics but you just like hunting you know you can give somebody the basics give them some general instruction but you've got to get out there and do it and i guess for me the christian faith is kind of the same thing kurt is the one that interested me in in being a christian i didn't know what it meant other all to me until i met kurt the only thing that being a christian meant was that you went to church on sundays that's really pretty much it but there was something different about how kurt led his life and who he was and how he interacted with people that that just intrigued me and it made me know that that i that's something that i need to look into maybe let's leave it at that and i think what i'm finding is just like being a uh uh surviving as a pilot a bush pilot is you can't a pilot can't succumb to pressure when the weather's bad and he knows it and hunters are calling guides are calling and say yeah it's nice here you know joe's here and you know he's not feeling too hot or he really wants to leave he shot his moose or whatever he wants to get out of here a pilot's just got a dan sailors is the best pilot i've ever known for this like nothing gets under his skin because if you let it get under your skin and you uh you worry about it or you you try you push your luck or you get you know you push too hard you get out of your comfort zone that's going to catch up with you and i think the same the same is true for one's christian walk and i'm guilty of this of anything in life i'm kind of a ramrod that's that's why i knew that i'd i'm the one that likes to get in there and kind of take things on and try to solve all the problems and get her done you know and i and that's why i realized that i couldn't be a bush pilot because i would have killed myself and and that's one of the things that uh you know being a christian that i struggle with too is like i probably take on uh too much at times when we we can't do that you can't overload yourself you know that's you know jesus said my my yoke is light you know so it shouldn't be a burden and a matter of fact i met with my buddy preacher man paul here we went on a hike here this afternoon and that's one thing that he reminded me of you know in doing this he's kind of my mentor he's really helping me through this and he said as soon as this gets to be work he goes you kick it out and um and you know it really helped put it into perspective for me so um but but i am uh i am enjoying this and um and and i do i appreciate i guess i feel this piece when i share when i share this with people i feel this the same piece that i do when i'm in the alaskan wilderness and i'm guiding hunters and i think maybe i've shared that before so um yeah we don't need to go any more to that but um i've got i've got a copy of my book that i wrote a bunch of years ago and i wrote a chapter about kurt and just i was just kind of recollecting um you know just my ex experience with kurt and it came to the end of the chapter and this i'll just read this with you it'll be fairly brief in ways that really matter kurt is probably the richest man that i know through his time in the wilderness the solitude and even through life setbacks and hardships curtis found what is valuable in life and has never lost sight of it recently his wife lynette and their oldest son jeremy helped kurt select and transport a 350-pound boulder of guadalupe marble into their backyard kurt was living in arizona at the time where kurt hand chiseled out a headstone for his father who passed away a few years earlier in the same way that neither kurt nor i could express how we feel about the alaskan wilderness many of life's most important feelings and moments cannot be expressed in words i couldn't possibly write an accurate testament to kurt's character nor could he ever string the right words together to say how much his father meant to him but without him ever realizing it i think he managed to do both it took curt over 200 hours to do it but he composed himself it all by himself he chiseled it in every line every curve every fine detail and on every rough edge and i think his father and everyone else who knows him would agree that this legacy of granite speaks a lot stronger than words while words are fickle dependent on memory or paper his solid granite message will last forever so kurt after his dad passed gets this rock spends 200 hours chiseling this down and they placed it at the head of his father's grave and like that headstone what drew me to kurt was the fact that his life was founded on the rock matthew chapter 7 verse 24 says therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock kurt's faith just his life like he he never once shared i don't believe a single verse of scripture that i can recall with me but just who he was just his character just the way he did everything that was a piece of fruit for me when i was at a point in my life where i was starving spiritually where i i kind of i needed somebody to look up to to cling on to to influence me i guess and you know he's one of those guys that i just i think about him all the time and his influence on my life and i'm so blessed to have encountered him on the book of john uh chapter 15. gonna be a little bit scripture heavy but hopefully it all ties together here uh john chapter 15 verse one through six i am the true vine this is jesus talking my father is the vine dresser every branch in me that does not bear fruit he god takes away and every branch that bears fruit he prunes that it may bear more fruit so god allows things to happen in our lives so that they strengthen us so that they allow us to be um better witnesses and so that we have more to offer others as we wrestle through it um and see seek god through our our hardships verse three you are already clean because of the word which i have spoken to you i got a question mark by that one i'm not entirely sure you know the the real meaning of that so again i just have a tendency to you know try to grasp it but i'm not gonna act like i do but verse four abide in abide in me and i in you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine and the vine is jesus neither can you unless you abide in me i am the vine you we as one as when you become a christian you become the branch he who abides in me and i in him bears much fruit for without me you can do nothing so jesus saying without the way i'm interpreting it is that without jesus we will never be able to offer anyone else any fruit anything that is truly valuable in life probably particularly uh you know spiritually speaking obviously you know you can give things in the in this in the physical realm but what kurt gave me was some spiritual fruit if anyone does not abide in me he is cast out as a branch and is withered and they gather them and throw them into the fire and they are burned so that last word is a little bit heavy um no doubt about it but as i'm reading this and i'm trying to like i don't know i'm trying to like interpret it but just trying to give a offer some help with this i think sometimes we expect too much from people and i think that's what i was kind of meaning last week when i was saying how um you know if you want to be a christian don't go to church i just don't think that's the place to start out because the church are just just the you know you go on a sunday and it's filled with imperfect people and you know there's branches there and there's people there at church that will help you no doubt about it but different people offer different fruit and so i think it's important especially if you're you know in the beginning of your your faith walk or your journey of you're seeking jesus is you got to recognize that not everybody's going to be able to give you what you need and note i didn't say what you want because what we need is not always what we want um you know when i look back at my hunts you know the hunts where i learned the most are usually the hunts where nothing went right you know you learn by trial and error and you know you're gonna you're gonna find um fruit sustenance from different people along your walk you know people that are that are that are trying to help others some you know this might not be for you i mean i i i don't want to try to make this for everybody but i really want to try to you know there's just there's like i have this image of a you know a middle-aged man or you know just a person that's you know that's like me and just struggling to struggling to believe in god and and struggling to believe that there's a god that he can that we that we can talk to and that you know we have a purpose and that we're good enough for god because that's that's ultimately i mean if you take anything away from any of this that's that's why jesus was sent to this earth is because to take away our sin all of our shortcomings that that hold us back from doing the things that we think that we should do and therein lies my whole point of the message i guess and maybe getting ahead of myself is if you think you're dead you know if you think you're not good enough and if you think of you know why god shouldn't love you you're dead you know you you've got to get beyond your reason and just somehow find faith and and just put faith that that god will be there when you need him and that he does love you you know as i shared in my testimony that's what that's what really brought this undeniable faith in jesus to me is when i realized that there's nothing more that god could do than to send his son to earth to die for our sins and eventually you know hopefully enough people will help you along in that journey or you know just there's coyotes again eventually you know jesus will come into your heart and then you latch on to that vine to jesus and then you'll become one of his branches and as long as you continue on you'll start producing fruit and there's been a few times in my life where you know i i'd like to think that i've you know people have come to me with um you know shared with me how they've received fruit from my story and that's about as rewarding as it gets that's better than a 10 my client getting a 10 foot bear or shooting a 65-inch bowl or shooting a 40-inch ram which by the way i've never had a client shoot a 40-inch ram yet so lord willing i'll still be climbing the mountains and who knows one day i don't i don't care if a guy gets 40 tram or not but i never have had a guy that's kind of the magical mark but and that's uh that's a humbling thing that is a humbling thing when when we're able to do that and you know jesus supplies what we need he is the vine and as the branches we we receive from him but there is there's there's seasons you know to growth and life is an adventure of seasons and obstacles and i think any christian and i'm no different is anything in life any facet there's times when you just want to quit you know there's times when you just want to on your way home you just want to go to stop at the bar i mean nothing wrong with a bar i mean i'm having a beer you know um as far as i'm concerned i'm sure there are people that will tell you otherwise but you know you just want to stop off at the bar and enjoy happy hour you know you want to go you know you should go home to your kids or your wife or whatever and you're just like you know what i just want to i want to escape i want to just numb the mind to everything it's hard being a man these days you know it seems like a man can never do enough and then you know one minute they're telling you you need to open the door for the woman the next minute you you shouldn't and then the man should pay and then other people say the man shouldn't pay and women don't have it have a real great goal of things either i don't suppose at least not in this day and age but it's hard being a man and um and it's just i think what prompted me to do this is because i know there's a lot of people that just with everything that's going on in the world it's just it's tempting to quit you know they don't wanna it's hard to know what we should do and ii timothy chapter 1 verse 7 says for the spirit of god for the spirit god gave us does not make us timid but gives us power love and self-discipline and that verse is one that you know just really came to mind for me here just kind of really recently because god gives us the bible is like our our weapon it's like our tool bag like like curt was saying like our bag of tricks you know each landing or when you come in to make a tough landing and all this you know your things are going wrong you've got that bag of tricks and that's what scripture is and so as you uh as you move as you move forward you're constantly having to adapt and trust your instinct and you're going to get into situations um that you've never you know you've never been in before and you don't know how to navigate them and every time there's always this doubt and fear that that creeps in like like you kind of want to quit or you don't want to go through it but then when you do that it's like there's a it's like it's like a gateway to to growth and peace and sometimes happiness you know sometimes it doesn't end up so so good i mean don't get me wrong but that's just kind of part of the journey and the more that you go through those and and you build your your faith these go through these obstacles and you face your fears in the and you know just face them head on it's like the next one gets a little bit easier so i mean it's a long long process and i feel like in today's world we're kind of like a grizzly bear let's say a grizzly bear is going through the wilderness trying to he's just living his life and like imagine a grizzly bear and then every turn that he makes there's a new pack of wolves that are nipping at him you know pestering him trying to steal his lunch you know and i i kind of feel like that's kind of what it's like going through life a little bit you gotta how do you tune that out you know how do you uh ignore all the distraction and how do you fight them off you know so like the word the bible the the the word of god becomes like ammunition to the hunter and like i said that that trick in the bag for the bush pilot you know all those those landings that he did and he got you know with a pilot he's going to start out on a 5 foot 500 foot strip you know he's landing on pavement and then gravel and then he's starting to do some ridge top stuff and eventually a good pilot he's working on 200 feet you know on a mountain and it it's just something that you just have to kind of like it's the repetition you know and again if you if you think if you overthink these things as you're going through these difficulties you're dead if you think you're dead you'll you'll quit because you'll find a million reasons um and most people would say that so often that especially in the spiritual realm you're gonna find a million reasons not to seek god because the devil will come to you and he'll he'll put him right at your lap he'll he'll present you with reasons or people maybe even or circumstances that that will hinder you and i mean i know i've i mean i've done it a lot in my life a lot of times when there's things where i know i should be doing i'll find like a distraction i'll find like some busy work let's say and i'll do that to keep me away from the thing that i that i know that i should be doing i uh i had um i had a guy it's kind of a crazy deal i'll try to just keep this short but this morning i was woke up this morning early and um i got an i had a voice message from a guy who basically berated me he said i sent you a message on instagram and uh whenever it was looking for information on a caribou hunt you told me to send you an email and that you would get right back to me and you never you never replied and i and here you are claiming to be so religious you know well i went to catholic school and i'm here to tell you you're a blankety blank blankety blank blank blank blank blank blank i was like holy smokes i mean i i try to get back to people it's it's getting increasingly hard i'm not good at administrative stuff but i mean this guy just berated me and like my chest tightened i was like angry about it and i i started thinking about it as like why is this even bothering me you know why am i letting this bother me and there i i looked at my notes and then there it said if you think you're dead right there i just realized that i knew it was i mean i knew i knew the day was coming that i and it has come i mean i've gotten different things you know especially you you step out on a limb in any any regard i think i talked a little bit about this last week is that you're gonna face opposition people are gonna try to knock you down and i wish i could say that i went right off you know that i that i that it just rolled off of my back like water off a duck's back but it didn't i held on to it and there i am looking at this on my computer screen if you think you're dead if you let that it will kill you it will squash it you know whether it's your your dream of doing whatever whether it's your you know your faith walk if you let the force of evil i mean the guy called late at night maybe he's drinking whatever but i mean you know he's just he's just mad at me you know probably not even a bad guy but i mean he he's not a fan of billy moles i can tell you and he's telling me how he's gonna you know go on youtube and leave me bad feedback and he's gonna share every video and you know badmouth me because i didn't send him an email about caribou hunting or whatever it was you know if you're out there i i apologize that you know it i don't like going back on my word but it wasn't intentional but anyways so right then it bothered me and i and it was wasting my time it was sucking the life out of me and right then boom that's when you got to dig into your pack that's where scripture that's where the bible is so important because right away i looked it up i kind of i know a fair number of verses not many like by heart but a few but i know bits and pieces and you can find them easily this day and age you know you just ask siri you gotta i call it the cell phone the depression device so you got to pull that out and then you look it up but so this is what i cling to isaiah 54 17 no weapon forged against you will prevail and you will refute every tongue that accuses you this is the heritage of the servants of the lord and this is their vindication from me declares the the lord john chapter 14 verse 27 peace i leave with you my peace i give you i do not give to you as the world gives do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid and also uh philippians 4 13 i can do all things through christ who strengthens me it was real early in the morning like really early in the morning and i did a little bit of work and i realized man i need to get some more sleep so i just laid down and i just recited those two over and over again and they just gave me this piece and i was able to fall relax and fall asleep and what i tell my girls every morning is they head out for the bus there's a song and the verse is from joshua 1 9 but every morning as they're walking outside i open the door and i say be strong and courageous and then they sing the second part god is with you wherever you go so that that's from joshua uh chapter one verse nine and because i and the reason why i do that is because i'm hoping that that will be a seed that one day when they're going through something that they'll think of me that's how i want my kids to well i guess kind of think of me but more importantly that's that's what i want them to say to themselves to be strong and courageous god is with you wherever you go there's there's so much good in this world and god has blessed us in this this life is to be a joy and we are to we're to live i think it's john 10 10 i came that they might have an abundant life and live it to the full is what jesus said you know we shouldn't be stressed out um you know and and and be fearful coyotes are going man i love that stuff my fellow coyotes i love it and so why why do i trust god's word i mean what gives me the confidence to do this because i've been there before i've found myself in positions where like the only hope that i had and and this is what i want to share with you guys are those times when i was like down and out that i don't know for whatever reason i kind of like to push envelopes and it and it's it's it's gotten scary sometimes there's been a few times where i you know i was really really close to death and there's a few times where i did things really really stupid and i almost got one guy killed um i'll be sharing some stories but the reason why i trust god's word is because every time that i've had to rely on it it's pulled me through whatever it was that i was going through and that's how you build that faith it's just like um it's just like the skill and the instinct of a bush pilot our faith in god i don't know is that it can really grow unless we're you know you're pressing forward you know i just i don't think god wants us to just say oh i believe in you god and then that's it you know that that's just boring there's that's not very exciting you know it's just like a bush pilot you know he comes in and circles a spot a spot that he's going to try to pick out to land how he learns is he learns by trial and error he's got to pick out a spot he comes in he slows down cuts the power pulls the flaps and at some point he's got to decide all right i'm either landing here or i'm not you know at some point he's got to commit and and and that's a process that i think we all have to go through if we don't do that we'll never be the person god created us to be and our spiritual walk that's it's no different than any aspect in life you know whether it's in business or sports or whatever you know our spiritual being is no different than our physical being you know we have to exercise it i think to grow um or you know spiritually it's easy to sit and watch tv and eat potato chips just as easy it is to do it to do it physically but here's the thing if you ask uh any bush pilot how good it feels and you'll probably see this if you're watching some of my videos you know like a bush pilot what they love is getting in there and pioneering a new strip they love it probably out of their own ego you know that's part of it and maybe that's okay but it's that challenge you know and that that that self-discovery and i think for me that's part of the reason why i'm you know pursuing this one of the things that i i came to and i don't have the verse here but um i'll have to look it up you know that guy calling me the other day it causes me to question is like okay is is am i reaping or am i sowing there did that guy call me and did i get that criticism from him is that something that that i invited in my life and there's another verse forgive me i don't i don't have it just it just kind of came to me but um it's basically saying the way you judge other people you will be judged and so through this process today i've asked myself you know hey have i judged other people harshly and i have there's no doubt about it i'm yeah i have and there's been people there's been you know hunting celebrities that you know that i've watched on on tv at times and i've i've dogged on them no doubt about it i see something they're doing and i'm like oh that's a bunch of crap that guy doesn't know what he's doing he's he's talking out of his butt probably much like you're you're saying about me and you know a lot of yeah you might might be might be right and so i that's the process i've learned that being a christian is humbling and it isn't easy all the time at least the way i do it like i tell people if uh if if you're sheep hunting and you're not questioning your sanity and you're not in pain and you're not you know questioning everything your reason for being there you're not doing it right so maybe i just have a tendency to do the do things the hard way but what i find is by going through that and and being honest and open and you have to seek god through it seek god in in this trial and this one is no different than any is i'll come out being a better person just like a pilot you know he goes into some of those hairy spots he's got to know when when when to pull out when to go around you know but he's got to get into them spots where he's not comfortable to grow and so uh with that i i just i want to encourage you as you move forward you're going to be challenged and i'd like to offer some prayer here and we're going to wrap this up i said that i wasn't going to go outside of an hour maybe i did that's probably right around the hour mark but forgive me and if you i'll say prayer and then we'll wrap things up heavenly father thank you for this beautiful evening lord thank you for the for the song of the coyotes that was very very timely thank you for this beautiful beautiful night lord thank you for my family thank you for the experiences that that you've blessed me with lord everything that i've i've like dreamed of in my life has come true and i might say that i've achieved it and at the end of it all you were there waiting for me you've been with me the whole entire time but it wasn't until i started looking beyond myself that i that i found you and you promise lord to never leave us and never forsake us no matter what it is that we're going through lord and i and i believe that there's people that are going through things in their lives i know that there's people going through things in their lives that they've never gone through and they are seeking answers lord i'd ask that you come into their hearts and give us that peace that peace that you give us not as the world gives give us your peace help us to trust in you lord bring let your will be done lord if it is your will let this let this community of men of hunters of outdoorsmen people that love your creation help them to know your son jesus and i ask for this in the name of your son jesus christ amen if uh if you have any hang-ups i'm just gonna ask you for a few things if you have any hang-ups you know about christianity put them in do me a favor and put them in the comments on youtube i'm i'm probably what i'm going to probably be doing is not checking my messages so much the support on this has really been overwhelming and i and i really really do appreciate it um i but i for me i've got to kind of just take this one step at a time i've got a litany of hunting stories that i want to tell you i mean i've got like you know i mean i've got like a list of probably like 30 hunting stories and and how i want to relate them to faith and and i'm i'm super super excited about it and i have a tendency to just go gung-ho and i just want to take it one step at a time but i thank you and i don't want the the comments and the feedback to stop if you receive jesus i'd you know i'd love to hear it i'd love to hear your testimony and i'd and i'd love to hear your witness and if you have specific hang-ups about christianity i've got some really good comments from some guys you know how do i do this or you talked about this how does you know can you elaborate on that i'd love to hear that stuff and i'm going to do the best i can to bring that to you my whole goal for this is i want to save you a few trips around the mountain that's an analogy that's used in the bible that as people are trying to get to the top to find god they wander around the mountain in the same trip they do the same thing over and over again and we make the same mistakes we can all relate to that and so i've been around the mountain a few times and i'm still you know i'm still climbing like everybody else believe me but i just i have a heart for people that wanna want to be who god created them to be and they want to help people along the way and they have good hearts and they're just struggling to find the fruit that they need at this time and i mentioned before about how to get it to get a new a copy of the new testament for yourself or a bible uh one thing i just wanted to mention there you might start with like a paraphrase bible don't go to the king james version you know with the the oust and um you know that's just hard to understand that there's different versions of the bible that are easier to read one you might start with is the msg the message version not not the stuff and you know all of our processed food we have but msg or niv the new uh can iv new international version it's kind of like easier to understand look for that and also if there's anybody out there um a christian who's watching this i would i would i would love some prayer for me and my family um you know this this is a journey for us for sure and if if people are willing to to lift my family and i up in prayer that that would sure mean a lot to me and also i just want to leave you this with this maybe it's a bit of a challenge i i don't want to don't do it i don't want this to be a burden for you but one thing i might offer a suggest homework if you will there's this miniseries i believe it's on netflix look it up it's called the bible it's maybe like 10 12 hours long it came out about 10 years ago it's it's the story of the bible in in video form it's very well done it's very new buy that on dvd or find a place where you can watch it it's man it's amazing it it truly is i just think it'll help bring things to life and again i would i would uh challenge you to you know read read the gospels you know maybe a chapter or two a day probably two chapters probably going to take you about 20 minutes um you know just just go through and read them and like i said get a paraphrased version that's easier to understand and and you read the the gospels of the four gospels matthew mark luke john you read those a couple times i think like i mentioned before and you might be ahead of most people that go to church and and i just i feel strongly that if you you study that study the word of god and that there's going to be a verse man it's just going to strike you and it's going to give you strength and it's going to give you courage and it's just going to help you break whatever bondage of worry or addiction or fear of whatever you're going through um we believe that this is the living word this is going to speak to you somehow and so that's my encouragement that's my prayer for you is is to don't have the the the spirit of timidity because that is not what we are created for so with that uh be strong and courageous and uh let the spirit lead see you next time

Channel: Billy Molls Adventures

Views: 8,479

Rating: 4.8646617 out of 5

Keywords: Christian Outreach Speaker, Wild Game Dinner Speaker, Christian Testimony, Hunter Sermon, Jesus Christ, Sermon for Men, Men's Ministry, Sermon for men, christian message for men, Men's devotional, Christian witness, The Good News, The Greatest Story Ever Told

Id: 4LAgB85w4WY

Length: 63min 22sec (3802 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020