Godwink Experiences

[Music] what's going on man I always love that moment right like when you're like standing like okay all right let's get this thing rolling and then we connect guys all right go for it couple couple dudes standing in a field right now um anyway uh oh actually this seems appropriate ohy got glasses glasses the eclipse what what does God call a total eclipse what a wink that's that's good that one on that is a 20 foot hike up from the car that is a God wink yeah God wink we just had the eclipse what two days ago yeah yeah and you missed it man it was awesome I know I was on the top of a mountain and somehow I missed it well you don't have the glasses it's not like you're really going to get the the experience I mean you'll see the Shadows cast and stuff but yeah it's a got its own metaphor though like those who have eyes to see let them see right those who have the 10-cent glasses they're mass produced from in China they have them like see yeah um yeah so I I wanted to talk to you just about what have you been experiencing lately as far as God Wings go um I feel like you know just from the glimpses that I've pun intended I've seen of your life recently and my life and some of the overlap and um even just some things I've had happen personally this has been on my mind and and I wanted to to bring it up and see what's what's been going on for you um before we jump into that I want to share a scripture um I went to a conference over the weekend and this was one of them that they posted up on uh during a presentation and I heard it before from The Chosen that series and um and man it's just such a good one it's in Isaiah 43 uh 1 through 3ish fear not for I have redeemed Thee I have called thee by name Thou Art mine when thou passest through Waters I will be with thee and through the rivers they shall not not overflow thee when thou West Through the Fire Thou shalt not be burned neither shall the flame Kindle upon thee for I am the Lord thy God um and you know I think part of the reason I love talking about God Winks is because it's it's all about that it's it's about that that custom relationship that personal intimacy that that that God wants to have with us and kind of manifests in those little moments where you're like how else could that not have been God you know yeah right um so yeah what what is that for you yeah that's a it's good topic we haven't talked about this in a little while and you know in case we have one or two new listeners um the guide of a godwink is is our choice to have eyes to find God in our day-to-day lives and to and to have eyes to see your ears to hear and I like the scripture you just shared because I don't think either one of us believe that that being righteous makes you not have challenges and then God blesses you so much as it is that you do go through the Deep Waters you do go through the flames you do go but but when you have eyes to see God's hand in things the Flames don't burn quite the same the you don't drown and it's a way of I love what he said call thee by name it's also a way and in a lot of ways these God Winks I I believe are forms of God calling us by name right and so um if there's some things that you're thinking of in our lives that I miss like feel free to chime in but maybe maybe we should trade back and forth for a second sounds great so one that one that just kind of hit last week it's weird because I saw it as a God wink for myself even though it was what I think is a godwink towards one of my clients okay so we had one of our clients go to the Rising Sun Retreat um about two weeks ago and he had this kind of really poignant and potent experience at The Retreat where he felt and saw on display true vulnerability from other men he felt the connection that came he felt the freedom that came and the main takeaway from all of the retreat for him emotionally he had this emotional kind of experience this emotional shift where he had this hunger turn on inside of him that he wants to live a life of authenticity and vulnerability and uh and so that was his takeaway from from The Retreat he goes home and he's asked to give a lesson in church and what's the topic people don't know he's been to this retreat they don't know what's happened and the topic that he got was the contrast between the truth and appearances and I'm like and this guy this this client's biggest this client's biggest hold up with this whole recovery has been performing so other people think he's one way and instead of just letting himself be held and loved and I'm just like Hallelujah like how is that not God at Place somehow right how did that guy get asked to give that lesson the day after he's you know he comes home from a retreat where he feels it pierce his heart that he needs to start stop worrying about appearance how cool is that like that is just it's just awesome I love that so much yeah that's going to change that guy's life yeah yeah and one of the best parts about about these types of things God wins is that they're they're most of them are almost comedic like the irony like wow well times God knows timing um um okay so one for me that happened recently was um I you know after the retreat I feel like we get hit with it pretty heavy so whether that's physical I was sick I was sick for for almost a full week um I know you you caught some of that too um and then just something about riding the high leading up to the retreat and then plummeting down and afterward afterwards and and just feeling that kind of emotional mental whatever depletion and um that takes a little bit to gain back too that's something that we've been learning as we're doing these things but um I had a really heavy week last week with a couple different things that were going on and I could I was feeling pretty depressed like lower than I felt probably all year and and probably for a long time and um and I I think I voiced this to you and to to be and a couple of other people um just to like give you a heads up like hey this is where I'm at and I I can understand why but I don't know how long it's going to take to climb out or whatever um and it had been a few days like that and um you know after after I'd shared that with you and we got done with this this meeting with be you came in and gave me a big hug and and I I uh sat down and started kind of thinking what do I need to do differently right now that will help me kind of shift a little bit if if there's anything and um the thought that I had was hey you should write in your journal and I don't journal in the middle of the day it's just kind of a it's not really the time for I'm busy and going right and so that seemed kind of antithetical to my normal flow but I um you know I was asking so I I listened and enacted and um when I was journaling um I had this pretty awesome thing happen um where I was on page 175 I'm writing that I'm feeling low you know feeling depressed here's some of the things that I think it might might be contributing and and I think all that was maybe helpful to some degree but I think what was more important is that I I flipped the page and I could see um you can kind of see maybe in the lighting a little bit um there were words on a another page in the middle of the journal in the middle of the journal I was like well what is that cuz I don't do that you don't write in the middle of your Journal I don't write in the middle of my journal that's one page after the next um and so I flipped it to see and it was um just a a letter that my wife had written me back in December 2022 so you know that's not quite a year ago but it's close to that and um and it was it was really um just real quick I'm going to read just a couple of Snippets and you can probably get the sense of what this would have done for me um says Dear babe there's a lot of uncertainty and fear and disappointment I've been feeling about myself um and when I think I can't go deeper um in sin than I already have I uh I get surprised um and she goes on to talk about some of the decisions that she'd been making and things that she was trying to work on and change and and then uh she says thank you for loving me thank you for your truly unconditional love for me I can't put in words the significance your love has had uh on me as I journey to uncovering my Divine worth you're my favorite person and I absolutely love life together um it was so cool the finding that in the moment that I did and looking at just where I was sitting positioned you know just kind of trying to have this moment of mindfulness and and shift and God hit me with that message and it's cool we had a meeting uh later that day um there was like an hour after um I read this and I originally did not want to go to that meeting I was like I don't want to go be around people and kind of just want to isolate I just want to hide and this was kind of the Catalyst to help get me moving get me more engaged and I started thinking of some different things to maybe participate in in the meeting and and started reaching out to a couple of other people and it it was that shift that I needed and it it all came from a a year you know yeah yeah how cool is that that how cool is that that a wife you know that God working through a wife plants a a letter in the middle of a journal where you happen to go to it on the day that you're needing a lift me up and and knowing who we are as men and what a callup that is to you to have a wife say hey I'm struggling and thank you for loving me and even if you're depressed you can't help but have that thing hit your heart and go like I am that guy like I'm going to go love my wife and you know like that's who I want to be and man what a gift like that is that's really cool Chase I I didn't know that that had happened it's beautiful it's amazing to me that you know if we were to probably go talk with your wife too there was something beneficial to her and having chosen to do that that day excuse me for for her own mental health and how so often it's amazing to me that God can be working through two people in different ways at the same time with the same experience and in seeking to pursue our hearts you know yeah um it was cool I was able to call and talk to her afterwards and be like hey you don't even know what a blessing yeah how inspired she was and even that phone call to her might have been the thing she needed yeah it's just like Ripple man so cool might might have been the thing she needed to know oh hey I'm not all of those things that are in that letter I'm I was an instrument I'm an instrument in in God's hands yeah um I got a couple more is that all right keep going keep going yeah yeah so this actually is along the lines of instrument we had a guy tell us from the retreat another Retreat story um he spelled when he's in his shame he feels like he's just a tool you know you know it's the negative conation like that's the that's the language you know that's what my my wife calls me when she's mad at me you're a tool you know that that kind of thing and we had him at the retreat at one stage we had him share some of his talent he he's got a great singing voice and he sang a song He's sang um be still my soul and then we had this amazing sort of kind of experience going through the the aspen trees that are changing color right now towards the rest of the activity that were doing and then throughout the rest of the retreat he had these things pressing on him and we teach and talk about this concept of a new name and uh he had it Dawn on him at the retreat that he's not a tool he's actually an instrument and that he can be an instrument in God's hands and he had the image of the the touch of the Master's Hand poem go through him and think you know the only thing that's stopping him from being the instrument that God wanted him to be is him not accepting the fact that he has the gifts and talents that he's been given and that God wants him to share those gifts and talents and so he got a new name instrument what a cool new name right you know another one another new name one that just happened this week I don't know why but we we do this activity where we're like talking we have guys kind of getting a whole bunch of feedback from a bunch of guys about the things they love about them and we have one of our guys Mcall gave me permission to talk about this he said I can use his name anytime I want so Mall here you go um Mcall gets up and the guys are yelling names at him and then we're done and you stand up and you're like hey Tyler like is there anything else you want to say to mall and I said oh yeah like actually there is one more thing like Mall's way into guns he loves Firearms he's going on this big like 60 mile challenge with with a friend of his to go do like the Sniper Challenge thing and and so I got up there and I said Mall your new name is sniper you're a sniper and not just like with your guns but the way you live your life like your Precision you you you can find the cutting thing that needs to be cut through to get to the point with your therapy he's a therapist that works for us and uh and he kind of got teared up a little bit and like he I could tell that he accepted the new name of sniper right God named him sniper um and then we go up the next week and he shot his first elk so and that that hunt is like 8% success rate and somehow a guy who's never hunted before ended up making a perfect shot on a bowl and killing his first elk like to me people are like oh you kill animals that's not a Godly thing but that was a God wink like he he he basically was like crowned you know the ritual of getting his new name was just crowned on him as he like hunted that elk like that's freaking awesome you know so oh man you can choose to you can choose to see it anyway you want but I choose to see it as a god way yeah oh that's great yeah it's cool in the photos too that dude's just glowing oh man his his face is just so excited yeah yeah um what yeah what else you got I was show the last one that uh was big for me same thing with the hunt um this is what's cool to me is that this this is a whole year in the making kind of like your Journal one where we did a video it's a video that's actually done the best for us like we usually get a couple views and this one's up to almost like 200,000 views and it was a video about a hunting experience I had with my daughter where last year we were hunting and we had gotten in position to actually make a kind of make a a stock on a deer and my my daughter was laying down waiting for a deer to step out of the bushes that we knew was there we'd watched it go into the bushes we were laying there in our bright orange and some hunters came up over the top of us about 50 yards and right in front of my daughter as she was laying there having been waiting there forever they shot over the top of her killed the deer you know it was BIG Story right so I'm trying to teach my daughter how to be a different kind of Sportsman than that kind of Sportsman and nothing illegal nothing wrong with what they did it's just she kind of shock just just the human element I don't want to be in the woods with people like that I don't you know I don't want to be friends with people like that you know even though we went and made friends with them and were kind to them and tried to be classy with them CU that's that's what I choose to want to teach my daughter for better worse right so this year right before Mall shot his elk we see all these elk and we have a group of people where one of our guys is back here on a r and then I'm right here on a ridge and then my daughter and mall are up here and the elk are right here and we see the elk we start making a stock mall and Paisley are going in to try to get shots on the elk I'm watching with the glass and a guy comes up the mountain right over the top and talks to the to our friend back here and says hey I'm here I see these elk and I'm going to go make a play on them and our friend was like do you mind waiting for a second like we got people right here and he walks up past our friend but they swap phone numbers and then he gets up on a knob and he sees a different bull than the ones we're hunting but it's over kind of the top of us fivepoint bull we're hunting like little twoo bulls and he has in his sights in his crosshairs he has the bull that he can take and instead he calls our friend and says hey I've got him in my crosshairs can I take the shot and our our buddy said hey give them a minute looks like they're about ready to pull the trigger we shoot our bull his bull steps behind bushes he doesn't get to take a shot and uh he held off he's laying there and if anyone who knows this like when You' got a an animal in your sight it's like you want to take the shot when you have it he had the fortitude to hold off and and for me as a father with what had happened with my daughter the year before to have a sportsman come through and handle the situation in such a different way than the way that it was handled the year before that was a God wink um for me it was God saying it doesn't matter what all the people on YouTube say about you like you're you're doing right by me keep teaching your daughter the right way to to do things in the woods and uh and it just felt like God was like shining down on on me in that moment and my daughter I got to teach my daughter that and I got to have that conversation and we got to make two new friends and and more to the story which is kind of cool and this is where I think it flips back that was on a Saturday and uh I said to the guy who was there I said hey man like I can't thank you enough you don't know what this means to me and I told him the story about what happened last year and I said you know what I'm going to be back up here hunting on Monday if you're here I'm your man I'll help you do whatever I can to try to to help you get to get yours you know and he's like I don't know if I'll be here or not but thanks whatever Monday we're hiking up in the morning you were with me and you guys come hiking up and we're booking it like straight up this mountain it's like a Death March and we go flying by some hikers who are coming up to huntting who was it this guy it was this guy it was this guy with two of his buddies and you could see the look in their face like oh no they're going to take our spot again you know and so we go flying up past them and we get set up and and we're probably 20 30 minutes ahead of them and uh and we find elk we find that five-point bull again and we're sitting there looking at him like Hey we could go make a play on this elk right now and instead we're like Hey we're going to wait it out we're going to let him have a shot so we went and found his elk for him and then then another elk stepped out even closer that Paisley could have shot at it was like right there broadside and we held off and he comes walking up 30 minutes later and we like hey we got you we got you your out and he looks up and he climbs up and he shoots his elk and then after he shot his elk he said to me he was like kind of this big strong guy and he kind of got just a little bit emotional and he said you don't know what this means to me he said I I've got a 5 and 1/ half month W pregnant wife at home I'm stressed about what I'm going to be doing to try to like feed my family and put food on the table and for this to happen and for you guys to help us this way it it's unbelievable and he even got the benefit then of having us carry out half the Y for him too it's not an easy hike it's not an easy hike but but it was cool to see it kind of come full circle where the day two days before we were in Reverse roles and we got a chance to kind of pay it back and what's cool about that is is that not only were both parties successful the mountains feel so much better when you got friends with you instead of competitors or enemies and we made we made new friends and it was awesome so anyway that's that's a long extended story but that's uh that was my godwink for this the most recent you know godwink well that that was one of the main ones I was thinking too cuz that that seemed like such a special experience um you know I I did get to go up with you guys on on Monday and spend some time up there in the mountains and you kind of watched all this unfold and it was it was wonderful to see that level of sportsmanship and camaraderie and connection um all take place just right there on the mountain side trying to trying to do this hunt you know yeah yeah I I didn't and kind of yeah I think I've told you this before I don't think I'd really caught the vision of of hunting up until maybe this last time around like you know I didn't grow up doing it and seeing all the those good moments um and it did feel like God was just up there just looks like he's riding a motorcycle full speed trying to dodge bucks but um yeah it it was it was really special yeah we being up on the mountain on a Saturday right when the eclipse was happening I did not have eyes to see that wink but we had eyes to see some other ones and um it was cool yeah it was [Music] cool