Welcome to the God's Goodness podcast, where our mission is to encourage as well as highlight
God's goodness and modern-day miracles.
We are your hosts, Josh and Shelly Hankins.
Today I'd like to start off with giving props to the Holy Spirit.
He's running all things in this podcast.
He's leading me to all the right guests in the most amazing order.
When you hear us speak, none of it is scripted.
Right now I'm only reading from notes because I don't want to forget these thoughts that
have been on my mind.
So when you hear something, it's more than likely it's the first time we're hearing
it as well.
Now, the connections coming from this podcast are so amazing.
It reminded me of our 27 months of no discernible income.
We described the story in one of our first four episodes.
I can't remember which one.
But the short of it is, I was a stay-at-home mom and Josh was laid off from the gas industry.
They have his feast or famine.
But during those 27 months and one week, we didn't lose our house, utilities, nothing.
God worked things together in the most interesting of ways and looking back, I wish I had written
them down.
Now, with that said, I'm starting to keep track of all the connections made from this
podcast and I'll share it each year.
I'm still working on how to present it visually besides just having a list.
So that's one thing I'll be working on.
Now talking about connections, it's wild how God works.
I've said before and I'll say it again, life is about relationships.
Relationships with one another, a relationship with the Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit.
Now, today's guest actually knows Jim said we released his episode just yesterday and
then past repeat.
His episode is releasing next week and Leo Wisniewski, he was mentioned in Jim's episode.
So you may actually know him too.
He helped the Steelers win four Super Bowls in six years back in the day.
And now he's doing more meaningful things for the kingdom and we're going to let him
share what the Holy Spirit has led him to share.
With that, we'd like to welcome John Colb to the show.
We'll have him start things off with an opening prayer and then we'll get into it.
So thanks for coming, John.
Thank you.
And when you said opening prayer, I thought, oh, wow, I was hoping we would do that.
Great.
Father, we know that all things come from your hand and that's including strength, the
very life we live, the breath that you give us, knowledge, wisdom, understanding.
It all comes from your hand and it's for your pleasure.
And so Lord, we just pray that this would be a gift to you and a gift to those that
we serve.
In Jesus' name we ask, amen.
Amen.
So where would you like to start, John?
Most people, you mentioned it already.
I did.
I had the opportunity to play in four Super Bowls.
That was really hard to describe and that was over a period of 13 years with the Steelers
and then after that I ended up coaching for 10 more.
And again, it's not like I grew up milking cows.
So I didn't want to milk cows the rest of my life and God gave me an opportunity to go
to college on a football scholarship because it's hard to pay for college milk and cows.
And so then I find I'm 44 years old.
I've been with the Steelers 23 years.
So that's over half my life.
And all of a sudden, I don't know a single guy that's ever played.
You mentioned Leo Wosniewski.
Nobody says, oh, this is not funding anymore.
I think I'll do something else.
He would play another day, but at 35, I was 35, I played my last football game.
So you could play every other week.
You could play a couple more years.
But what happens is you play a game on Sunday and then the next Sunday, you're still beat
up from the previous game.
And I was blessed.
I got to coach for 10 years.
And then Chuck retired and Bill Cowher came.
And I actually did interview with Bill, but being around Chuck and it was just a different,
I thought, OK, this won't work.
And so I to quote Chuck, I thought I needed to get on with my life's work, but I wasn't
sure what that was because I had been so intense on playing football and then coaching football.
I had gone to grad school and so I was prepared.
And I'd like to bring up in a minute, God says, love the Lord with all your heart,
so mind and strength.
I was prepared with my mind because I'd gone to school.
So from that standpoint, but I wasn't really prepared with my soul, my heart.
Your heart, God, that's our emotions.
Pharaoh's heart was hardened by Moses.
So I wasn't prepared with my heart.
I wanted something that was challenging like football was.
And what we're doing now with adventures and training with purpose, we have veterans that
have been in combat.
I've never been in combat.
I've never had someone shoot at me.
Most of us would remember Beirut Lebanon, 423 Marines were killed by a suicide bomber.
One of those men that was in that blast, but wasn't killed, is one of the people that
we work with.
And we could go on talking about some of these men and what PTS really is.
And the only thing that I found that heals that is God's Holy Spirit.
So I've taken a long time to try to say this is way more challenging than playing against
the Cleveland Browns or whoever you wanted, Cincinnati Bengals or something.
I have a couple of Cleveland Browns fans that work with us and so I'm always kidding them
about the Cleveland Brown trophy case.
It's easy to dust.
Yeah, it's easy to dust.
It's not a lot in a way.
So you have some thoughts that you wanted to bring to the table?
If you wanted to go into what the Holy Spirit led there?
Yeah.
So I kind of alluded to it a while ago.
When I was growing up in Oklahoma, when I did, the University of Oklahoma had won 47
football games in a row.
That's still a NCAA record.
And Bud Wilkinson was the head football coach at the University of Oklahoma.
On Sunday afternoons after church, there would be the Bud Wilkinson show.
And so I'd always want to watch it because I was a little guy, but I was at the time
I was in the fourth grade.
I had never played football, just watched it.
And this, you know, if you think back, most of us can think back to moments or words or
sentences or questions that have impacted our life.
So they asked Bud Wilkinson what his definition of football was.
And here's what he said.
He said, football is 40 young men running around on a football field desperately in need of
rest, being washed by 40,000 people up in the stands, desperately in need of exercise.
And that stuck with me.
And so years later, as I grew and I came to Christ, you know, we have different definitions.
What's a Christian?
Well, in a way, that quote makes me think of what is a Christian?
Am I a Christian that's in the stands or am I a Christian that's in the game?
And when you think about the church, I think that whether people agree or disagree, this
is what I see, you know.
And I think even in revelations, when you look at, describes the church in revelations,
I don't want to be the church of Leo to see it, for example.
I don't want to have lost my first love.
And I think sometimes today as Christians, we've lost our first love.
As Jesus said, we're to be salt, we're to be light.
And it's very scary because he says, you know, salt, if it's lost its flavor, it's good
for nothing and it'll be thrown away.
I don't think Jesus cracked jokes.
I mean, I'm sure he did.
But I don't think that's, yeah.
And so those are things that when I read them, they're eye-opening statements and it makes
you, so get it back to the game.
It makes me think, okay, John, are you in the stands?
Are you in the game?
And if I'm in the game, if I'm in the game from a Christian standpoint, then what does
that look like on a daily basis?
What is my life like?
And so for example, I train to play football.
Do I train as a Christian?
And so what is it that I need to do to grow as a Christian, to become more walking closer
to the Lord as I would do that to grow as a football player, you know, or as an athlete?
Yeah.
It's interesting that, you know, Jesus calls us to not be in the stands either.
You know, if you look at the Great Commission, he says, go and make disciples of all nations.
He doesn't say, hey, guys, I want to attract people to you and you guys just sit here and
be comfortable and greet one another and love one another.
And I believe that church is wonderful for fellowship, for worship, for a leaning and
a support system.
But there needs to be an action word to go with it, a go, and to serve him in a capacity
other than sitting and waiting.
And I agree with you all heartedly on that.
You know what, to me, I'm Vietnam era.
And I had our quarterback in high school was killed in Vietnam.
And at his funeral, the pastor said, Benny Cole died for us.
And I'm like, wait a minute, this pastor has been saying Jesus died for us.
And I couldn't give you the difference.
I couldn't have defined that.
And a few months later, Johnny Tagman, another one of my teammates, was killed in Vietnam.
And it was a different pastor this time.
But sure enough, he said, Benny died for us.
And so I'm thinking, OK, I really got to understand.
I really got to investigate and see what this means.
And then for me, that's what brought me to the Lord to understand that I'm a sinner and
the penalty for sin is not eternal life, but the penalty for sin is death, because God
is perfect and holy, holy, holy.
And Jesus, there's a big word, propitiation.
That is a big word.
I thought you said you weren't smart.
Yeah.
But yeah, but I had to understand, I had to study this.
What is propitiation?
It's what God is.
The God that says, I am holy and the penalty for sin is death now pays that penalty.
And he did it through his son.
I have three sons.
You know what?
You can look at me and you can pretty much tell if I'm happy or sad based on how my sons
are.
If my sons are doing well, I'm a happy guy.
It doesn't matter what happened to me.
And so when I think about God in heaven watching his son being killed, crucified on a cross,
and one of the verses I... For something he didn't even do?
For something he didn't even do.
And one of the verses I will... I probably come to him a little bit, but this is maybe
a good time to bring it up.
In Romans 12, 1, it says, I urge you by the mercies of God to offer your body as a living
sacrifice, as Christ offered his body as a crucified sacrifice.
And so a sacrifice, if I go back to the Levitical laws, is without blemish.
Christ was without blemish.
So what am I offering to the Lord?
And as I look at this, I'm not called to be without blemish and perfect, but I'm called
the word that it uses in Thessalonians is teleos, to be all that you can be.
And I'm not trying to be a scholar, but I want to understand this, to be all that you
can be.
And I think about it, there was a time when you talked about football, there was a time
I could squat 700... My best squat was 710 pounds.
And I did a 535 pound bench press.
That's like three of me, just to put it in perspective.
But so I can't do that anymore.
But you can still do.
But you're called to be what you can be.
And so as Christians, as believers, do we, with every head bell and every eye closed,
do we slip up our hand and know that we're saved and we're going to have it?
Or do we say, okay, I'm going to listen to James and he said, you show me your faith
without your works and I'll show you my faith with my works.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I'm saved by works.
I'm saying that, but he says, faith without works is useless.
There's no life, there's no soul.
Because there's no evidence of that faith if you're not acting out in it.
Yeah.
So I guess what I've come to, because you don't just walk on the football field and
play a game, you've got to train.
You've got to train.
Hard.
You train hard.
You train with everything.
I am so close to my training partners, Larry Brown, for example.
And that's one of the things I see kind of getting off the thing here, but I think it'll
come back.
That's one of the things I see with our veterans, that they have trained, they've been in combat
and then all of a sudden they're done.
The suicide rate for former NFL players is 10 times the national average if you read Tony
Lynch's book.
Well, why is that?
I think it's very similar to the fact that somewhere between 20 and 40 veterans in the
United States take their own life every day.
So what's the common denominator, I think, between football players and veterans?
I think they have trained hard.
They've been in a, they've had a purpose.
They've had a mission.
All of a sudden it's gone and they don't.
And I had a coach used to say, you look like a blind dog in a meat house.
So can you imagine a blind dog just sniffing me?
You know, just sniffing around?
You know, you're lost.
You're bumping into things and we've lost that direction.
So how do we find it?
You know, and this is, with every head bowed and every eye closed, we slip up our hands
and call ourselves a Christian.
I think we need to open our eyes.
You know, we've closed our eyes, slipped up our hand.
Now open your eyes and let's get to work.
Get on the battlefield.
Get in the game.
Yeah.
It's more than just expressing a desire.
You have to believe in your heart that this is what you want and you have to pursue a relationship.
And you know, you mentioned training.
You only train if you want to win, right?
If you're kids and you're just playing a game, you don't care.
There's no training involved.
You just throw a ball back and forth because you don't care.
So if you say you care about this, then you absolutely should train because you absolutely
want to win.
And you want to win souls for the kingdom.
You want to win hearts.
You want to win minds.
You want to win everything you can get.
You want to win glory for the father, right?
You mentioned before, you know, be strong and courageous.
The rock, the kazakh, you know, the spiritual war cry.
And this is what we need to do is tighten up our knuckles and get into the fight.
But with the purpose of winning and we can't possibly hope to if we haven't trained.
And if we don't know the word, we haven't trained.
If we don't know the hearts of men, we haven't trained.
If we're not physically fit, how am I going to go and go that extra mile for somebody
if I can't stand up on my own?
And I, you know, I really love the message that you're going to bring with us today.
Yeah.
Thank you.
That's well said.
You know, there's one place in the Bible that it, I think most Americans would tell
you God makes a mistake.
And Paul writes it in Corinthians because in America we say it doesn't matter whether
you win or lose.
It's how you play the game.
You were just talking about that.
And that's what made me think of it.
But the Bible doesn't say that.
It says, don't you know that all those people running a race, they all run.
And then it says, but only one person wins.
And then it should say we should make a correction here for the Bible.
Should say, doesn't matter whether you win or lose, but it doesn't say that until God
changes his mind.
We need to run to win.
And it uses the Greek word and I'm not a scholar.
I originally, my first Bible was in King James and I couldn't understand.
I mean, these and the, okay.
It's a tough one.
Yeah.
But I have a Bible now.
I love it.
It's a new American standard.
It's a new language.
And I can look up those numbers over the words and I can look up those numbers and I can
see what the Greek word was.
And where it says, don't you know that all those people running a race, only one person
wins.
And it says they, and the Greek word is spelled A-G-O-N-I-Z-O-M-A-I.
So if we want to make something Greek, we just take a regular word and put O-M-A-I
on it.
So he's given us, how hard do we go?
Well, to our agonizing.
I think the reason the Pittsburgh Steelers over the years have been so popular in Pittsburgh,
but also other places is because traditionally they're a team, a blue collar team in a blue
collar town that's going to go out and give everything they have.
We used to make fun of the Dallas Cowboys and their cheerleaders.
Can you imagine, Pittsburgh Steelers would never, I mean, it's about, we're about playing
football.
We're about running down on kickoffs.
We're about intercepting passes.
We're about making tackles.
We are not about cheerleaders and little white boots.
No.
Not about the showmanship.
No.
You get down to business.
Yeah.
So that's where I was a while ago.
I was a little bit more focused on, I guess, do I want to be in the stands or do I want
to be in the game?
And if I want to be in the game, then I think you can still follow that same outline.
I've got to prepare, you know, and then I prepare.
So what are some of the things that we may prepare?
I think over and over again, also the Bible, it's interesting that, you know, Moses is
told by God three times to be strong and courageous.
And when God says something three times, you know, he means it.
And then when Moses hands over the reins to Joshua, he tells Joshua three times to be
strong and courageous.
So I think if I'm going to, if I'm going to take this seriously, I've got to start
off, you know, again, we can use the football analogy, running down on the kickoff.
You know, you're one guy running down there, but you got one guy with the football and
10 other guys are trying to block you.
And you don't know which one it is because they're crisscrossing and stuff.
So most games that people watch in America, I guess golf's a little different.
I haven't figured that game out, but most people watch.
There's a kickoff kind of element in it.
And with that in mind, one of my most, I don't know what the word is, but my, the verse,
when I think of Jesus, it talks about Luke 9.51.
It says, Jesus resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem.
That to me is a statement that asks a question.
If Jesus resolutely set his face to go to Jerusalem, that's the statement.
What's the question?
Well, the question to me is, John, where's your face set?
And it says in the Old Testament, I love this one.
In fact, I passed repeat and I had a discussion on this one time.
It says in Isaiah 50 verse seven, it says, therefore I have set my face like flint.
Set my face like flint, therefore I shall not be ashamed.
And so over and over again, I can, in the Bible, it says different places.
Don't turn to the right or to the left.
You sit, you know, you're setting your face straight.
So to me, if I am, if I'm serious about my faith, if I'm serious about growing, then
I don't want to be distracted.
And there's so many ways today to be distracted.
For sure.
And I don't even need to go into those.
But I can set, I need to set my face like flint.
And what am I setting my face on?
The Lord Jesus Christ.
And what is he, what is his plan for my life?
I can't be looking around like the blind dog in the meat house.
I've got to be setting my face.
Every day Lord show me and not looking around the direction.
So you mentioned earlier adventures in training and you help veterans, predominantly, but
not just veterans, obviously.
Did you start with the will to help veterans?
And if so, is it stemmed from growing up with some of your football teammates having died
in Vietnam?
Is that where your heart, like, you know, you give your heart to Jesus, but then something
else is laid on your heart that, hey, these guys really went through a traumatic experience.
And I know that Jesus can help because he's helped me.
Yes.
You know, I could, yeah, all of that.
I mentioned about the veterans taking their own life and the football players.
Tony Dungey was a teammate.
Tony Dungey was also a roommate of mine.
And so he went on from playing to coaching and he won a Super Bowl as a coach, which
is pretty cool to play in a Super Bowl and coach a Super Bowl.
And he's the one that talks about in his book that the suicide rate for former NFL players
is 10 times the national average.
And so I guess to try to pin that around, one of the things that actually literally
makes me angry and I don't know how to, other than through Christ, but I worked in orthopedic
offices.
And anybody here needs their hip replaced or their knee replaced, I can do it.
I've seen enough of them.
Okay.
And you know, and I'll save you a lot of money.
But what I saw happening and what got me to where we're at is that we would do a knee
replacement or a hip replacement.
And 12 weeks later, the insurance company, their insurance would say, okay, you're done.
And so they would quit treating the doctor would say, okay, you're done.
And I would go because I'm working with this lady and I'd go into the office and say, but
she can't get off a toilet seat.
We did a hip replacement.
We're supposed to help her and she can't get off a toilet seat.
She can't go downstairs.
So how did we help her?
Well, insurance says she's done.
She can bend her knee 115 degrees.
So she's done.
But the word that we use usually is the word functional.
So you measure 115 degrees.
Okay.
So that's a number.
But if you can't get off a toilet seat and you can't go downstairs, you're essentially
a prisoner in your own house.
You're not functional.
And so I saw that repeatedly over and over again.
And particularly as people got older.
And so we started this nonprofit is called Adventures in Training with a Purpose.
And I love those words.
Adventure means I don't know how it's going to turn out.
It's definitely an adventure with God.
We have to raise funds for this.
And it's tough.
And somebody said the other day, man, you need a really big donor so that you don't have
to work on raising funds.
And I went, yeah, no, no, because we did have a big donor for a little while.
And you know how much I prayed when I had that big donor?
I didn't need to pray because I had his check coming in.
But then when that stopped, man, I pray constantly.
Yeah, we're your Lord, man.
If you don't come through, we're in trouble.
So I pray constantly.
So the people that we work with started out mostly with physical problems that their insurance
had was done.
And yet they needed to be functional.
They needed, you want to have a life.
You want to be able to walk.
You need to be able to climb stairs, ride a bicycle.
My sons are all into kayaking and rock climbing.
You need to be able to do those things.
And if you can't, then your life is limited.
So adventure means I don't know how it's going to turn out.
Training, sometimes people will say to me, are you a therapist?
And I go, no.
And I didn't go to Pittsburgh Steel or Therapy Camp.
We went to training camp.
And after my first year in Rocky Blire was shot, and I was in, put me in the Army National
Guard, I didn't go to basic therapy camp at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
We went to basic training.
And then we shot how it serves.
That wasn't therapy.
So what we need to do from either a physical standpoint or a spiritual standpoint, we
need to make that connection that we're constantly having.
We need to be training.
We need to be training and growing.
So adventure is in training with a purpose.
And that's where I was going with the military a while ago, because why do the veterans take
their own life?
They're on a mission.
And then the next thing, they're home, and they don't have that mission, and they don't
have that group of men around them.
They're by themselves.
They're isolated.
Why is it the suicide rate for former NFL players is 10 times the national average?
Because you've got a game.
You've got a group of men.
You're on a mission.
You want to win a Super Bowl.
You're getting ready for training camp.
You're training for training camp.
You've got those men around you, and then all of a sudden, you don't.
And you don't know how to deal with that.
And so you've lost that purpose.
So our program is called Adventures in Training with a Purpose.
And it started out with military.
So we have people that are not military.
Right now, I think I have six people that are amputees.
We have people that are paralyzed.
A lot of our people, most of them have what you call chronic conditions.
And the chronic condition means it's not getting better anytime soon.
And so if you're an amputee, how do you go downstairs?
How do you get upstairs?
How do you get around in weather like this?
And so we're working with people to help them climb stairs.
But the most amazing, coolest part to me is, I think, the verse I said a while ago in Romans,
I urge you, brothers, by the mercies of God to offer your body as a living sacrifice.
And don't be conformed, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
That is a biblical statement. Acts 17-28 says,
And now may the God of peace himself sanctify, sit you apart, may your spirit and your mind
and your body be teleos, all that they can be.
So he's talking about three parts, our spirit, our mind, and our body there, and that they
work together.
I have exercise, science, kinesiology, college textbooks that say things like neurogenesis
is the hottest topic in neuroscience today.
And I understand you're having a neuroscience case, so maybe you want to talk about that.
But neurogenesis is something we didn't even know about.
You know who knew about it?
Dr. Liu knew about it 2,000 years ago.
But we just discovered it about seven years ago.
And neurogenesis is the creation in our brains of new neurons.
How does that happen through movement?
I hope I connected those thoughts together.
You talk about the Shamad, the love of the Lord your God with all your heart, with all
your soul, with all your strength, with all your might.
And so, obviously we've discussed your heart, your feelings, your indomitable will towards
God, hopefully your indomitable will towards God, your soul, which gives your flesh the
life.
So if your soul leaves you, your body is just done.
And so your training camp seems, it's focusing on the strength aspect of the loving of the
Lord with everything.
And do you think that there's an application that we can use that it doesn't necessarily
have to be adventures and training with a purpose, but it could be for everyday Christians
that go to church to help them practice their strength because this is something Jesus told
us to do.
This is like a quasi-commandment from Jesus.
If I'm going to love the Lord my God, here's how he's breaking it down in this little outline
that he's doing this, that this is how you do it.
How would a guy like me learn to use strength to serve the kingdom?
How would strength, how does that tie into it?
Can you share on that?
That's a great question.
And first off, I think you nailed it.
I don't think God says this is multiple choice.
Okay, love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Okay, let me take heart for 25, soul for 25.
You know, no.
He said all of those, and I think that's what you were saying a while ago.
And so to try to answer your question, so how do I love the Lord with all my strength is
I have to look at, well, how did I love the Lord with all my heart?
Okay.
So spiritually, there are things like Bible study, fellowship with other believers,
going to church, worshiping, prayer, all of those things.
If I want to grow in the Lord, I want to put those into my life.
So then how do I do this strength part?
So I think that's what your question was.
And God made us, and it's really neat physically, He made us in three dimensions.
Okay.
So one of them is what, we have three energy systems.
We have, I call it just a walking energy system.
It's called aerobic.
You know, and my wife confuses this.
She thinks aerobic means she puts her leotards on, and she goes out with her friends, and
they put some music on, and they dance around to the music.
Well, that is aerobic, but you don't have to have the leotards on.
So if I'm taking a walk.
Thank goodness.
Yeah.
So if I'm taking a walk, that's aerobic work.
If I'm riding my bicycle, that is aerobic.
And it, it strengthens my heart and lungs.
That's the fact.
But there's also various biomarkers.
One of them is called atrial naturitic peptide, atrial naturitic peptide.
So atrial would suggest it's produced in the heart.
And when you take a walk and you're, are riding your bike, then your body starts producing
this A and P atrial naturitic peptide.
And when it circulates in the blood and it hits your brain, your brain produces a substance
called dopamine and serotonin.
That stuff makes me happy.
Yeah.
So what is dopamine and serotonin?
That's your feel good hormones.
So somebody says, oh, I went for a walk.
I came back.
I feel so good.
Yes, you actually do feel good because you were, your heart was beating.
You were actually producing that biomarker.
I just think that's so cool.
But then there's other ones and they work, a lot of them work on what we call sensory
integration.
So what's sensory integration?
Well, what are our senses?
What's the sense?
Is the sense hearing is a sense touch feel is a sense.
So when I am combining all of those senses, that triggers other biomarkers and they have
funny names like vascular endothelial growth factor, fiber blast growth factor one and
two.
And there's a whole bunch of them.
And so, but they are created, our body produces those when we're active and we're doing sensory
integration type of activities.
Like in our, in our facility, we have a little climbing wall and it's kind of horizontal.
And I have on the rocks on the wall, some of them are red, some of them are white, some
of them are different colors.
And so you've got to climb from one area to the next.
And if you want to, I mean, you don't even need to get over two feet high, a foot high.
But you've got to kind of reverse engineer the climb.
You've got to look and say, okay, if I got on this third white rock, if I've got my right
hand on that rock, then I got to reach over with my left hand.
I won't be able to get the next step, so I got a reverse climb it to think it through.
How am I going to get there?
It's a physical strength part, but it's also kind of a reverse engineering mental part.
One of the saddest things that's happened to me in the last three years is losing a
teammate, Tonshilkan, to ALS.
And that's a nasty disease.
That's a nasty disease.
But guess what?
Ten days, ten days before he died, he was still climbing that wall.
So I don't want to hear somebody say, oh, I can't do that because I'll come, I'll get
my club out because that's not a, no, ten days.
I mean, that was part of, he kept trying to train to the very end and he was having, he
was really struggling cognitively with stuff.
And this was part of the training, trying to figure out where to put his hand.
So sensory integration is that kind of thing.
Craig Wolfley's wife, Craig Wolfley played guard for the Steelers next to me.
I played tackle.
His wife teaches boxing combinations.
Now we're not out there beating each other up, but she has light of life mission.
Men come one day, the women come the next.
Light of life is a great organization.
They help people that are struggling with various addictions and they come in and they
do the training and sensory integration.
So Fay teaches these boxing combinations and what you're actually doing, she's got these
focus mitts on, she holds them up and you, there's various punches that you have to use
to hit the mitt.
And so it's a sensory integration kind of thing.
Sounds like a blast.
It is.
That we really have fun.
Yeah.
And we do stuff, then you can do it with music and she'll do steps with music and stuff with
it.
If you really want to have fun, come watch me try it because I'm not, it's like my feet
don't, but those are all sensory integration.
So what are you using?
You're using your ears because you hear the beat of the music.
You've got to plan and see where the focus mitt are and then you've got to, with your
arms and with your feet, you've got to be able to have everything in the right place
to make those connections.
It makes a difference.
And it's, there's tons of research.
If your listeners are interested, Google eight adventures in training with the purpose and
you'll, you can see more about it.
But that is really, to me, an awesome thing because what do we want to do today when we
struggle will give me a pill to fix this?
Well, a lot of our struggles can be fixed and improved if we start moving.
I hardly believe that.
Yeah.
Movement and the right nutrition.
There doctors aren't trying and I'm not trying to throw shade at doctors, but doctors aren't
trying actively to heal patients.
They're trying to band aid over symptoms and so that you can feel better, but feeling better
doesn't necessarily get rid of the problem.
And so I could take something to take away the pain from a cut, but it doesn't mean my
cuts healed.
And so it's better, I think, to have a little bit of pain because that's your body's natural
response to say, don't do that and then work through that pain until that pain gets less
and less and less.
And I work as an EMT.
I work in a...
Well, that's right down your head.
You know what I'm talking about.
You ought to be doing...
You ought to be...
Yeah, you ought to be teaching this.
Yeah.
I have done many a lift assist for a 60-year-old person that can't get off the floor at 60.
And I've done others where I've had a 104-year-old lady that finally fell and broke her hip
and didn't want to go to the hospital, right?
Because she was active for 104 years and because she kept moving, she could keep moving.
And the 60-year-old, because they didn't keep moving, they couldn't keep moving.
And I can't stress enough how emphatic I am in what you're saying and the belief system
I have with what you're saying that it is real.
Being mobile will last you your life.
And if you're immobile, that will also last you your life, which will be shorter.
And by stretching, by moving, by doing things...
I didn't know about the endorphins that get released and such when you go for a nice walk.
That's nice because that's a motivator, right?
So who wants to do this?
Well, if you knew that you were going to be happy because you did it, right?
You may not be happy in the process, you know?
But I think once you get halfway through and your blood starts pumping, you'll get happier.
And then when you're done, I was in the military as well.
And I remember doing a two-mile run and just being feeling great at the end.
You had that like that runner's high, they called it.
And you know, it explains a lot when you say that, hey, you're serotonin, you're dopamine,
it's like firing and like a brain is rewarding me for this exertion.
It says thank you.
Yes, it's thanking you because your mind is a part of your body, right?
And so because your mind is a part of your body, it does reward you for giving it the
physical activity that it needs to get the blood flow with the oxygen and everything
it needs to continue to grow and expand and fire off the synapses we're supposed to be
in order to regrow neurons, to remap places that are damaged from other things.
I think that's such an incredible concept as well that we're just not coming back around
full circle to this neuro-regrowth, right?
Neurogenesis and what a concept.
Say, hey, look, I'm paralyzed from the waist down and so I'm practicing certain things
and I'm training my brain to take a different route to these spots instead of the spot that's
not working from.
And all of a sudden people are seeing results.
Yeah, that's a wonderful thing.
And it just shows just how impressive God was when he made us that.
Yeah, these bodies are pretty frail compared to the hard things in the world that we created
in it, like cars and bullets and things.
And our bodies are very frail compared to those things.
But God still made a way for these bodies to be such supreme machines, right?
Well, that just blows my mind.
Another thing I just thought of it, you mentioned like these three things, the heart, the soul
and the body as being like these three things.
And I could think like, what else is these three things?
Well, there's God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
And they almost tie directly to these same three things.
Because almost when he says, hey, I built you in my image, I created you in my image,
this is a huge piece of what he's talking about.
He doesn't mean that God is walking around looking like me, right?
Or a guy with a beard and the white robes and the cool hair and the fiery eyes.
And God is this being that is beyond comprehension, right?
Which is kind of like a soul, something that's beyond comprehension.
And then you have Jesus, who is the body, right?
Jesus, physical aspiration of God so that we can actually put a tangible look that we
can touch, taste, feel, hug, feel the love come from.
Jesus is this physical manifestation of God, right?
And then you have like the heart, which is the Holy Spirit.
You know, this is something that helps run everything.
And I think that's such a wonderful correlation.
I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner.
Between the Shema and God himself.
And you know, we like to call it the Trinity and you know, these other buzzwords that aren't
in the Bible, but we have to make something to make sense for us.
But the fact is the fact that God is a triplet and so are we.
Right.
Yeah, it is neat.
And you mentioned what you were talking about a while ago.
Neurogenesis is our body actually creates new neurons, neuroplasticity.
You mentioned that you didn't use the word neuroplasticity, but that's where something
happened neurologically at the bridges out.
We're going down the road, the bridges out.
Oops, can't go down this way.
Neuroplasticity is that neuron finds another way around.
How does it happen?
It does not happen sitting still.
It happens through movement and that movement with the sensory integration, as you were
talking about using the sound that you might be moving to a rhythm, using the sight.
That I might be with like face, buck, seen hitting, focus, myths.
I'm so excited.
I fell off my mountain mountain bike three weeks ago twice.
I got one of those fat tired mountain bikes and why would you be excited about that?
Well, because at my age, most people probably aren't riding mountain bikes.
Or getting back up after they fall.
Yeah, yeah, but I did and I only got about 50 yards to fell off again.
There's one particular place that's pretty steep and I still struggle getting up and
down that.
But those are the challenges when you're doing something that requires balance.
It requires strength.
Requires sensory integration.
Listen to a sound as a rhythm, a vision, moving targets.
All those things keep us healthy and grow us.
The thing that I don't understand is if God is real, one of the hardest things for me
to learn to pray and prayers.
Another one is Paul writes that I might know him and the power of his resurrection.
Okay, let me back up.
Paul writes that I might know him.
Check.
I'll take that one.
Yep.
I want to know him and the power of his resurrection.
You betcha.
And when I die, I'm heaven bound.
Yep.
And then the third one is, we talk about threes and the fellowship of his suffering.
Oh, does that one come with it?
So being conformed to his image, it goes on to say, and conform to his death.
And I used to try to pray that.
Okay, Lord, Paul writes, whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted
as loss, more than that, I count all things to be lost and feel the surpassing value of
knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.
And then he says, for whom I have lost all things.
Paul, he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, all that stuff, and he lost it all.
And I thought, man, that's an awesome prayer.
And I couldn't pray that prayer.
And I'm talking about months and months and months, just struggling with this, to come
to the point that I could say, okay, Lord, sure, take it.
Am I required to say that, to be a Christian?
No.
But am I required to say that that I might know him?
And what's that word, no?
I mean, well, it's the same word that it says Abraham knew Sarah.
And then intimately.
Intimately, yeah.
He didn't walk in the tent and say, oh, hi, Abraham.
Hi, sir.
This is Abraham here.
No, he knew her intimately.
Yeah.
Do you really want to know God intimately?
Then you've got to do all of it.
Well, I agree.
I've been telling lots of people, many times when I share with about Jesus that he wants
an intimate relationship with Jesus.
And that's why we pray things.
That's why we confess things to him.
That's why we tell him what's on our heart.
Because he knows, so why do we tell him?
Because what we're doing is we're saying that I feel trusting enough with you, that I feel
safe enough with you, that I love you enough to let you know from me personally what's
going on.
And that is an intimate conversation.
And that's what he wants to hear from us.
Of course, he already knows.
He knew before he created you that you were going to do this at a certain point.
He knew that you were going to stumble.
So when you come to him, you're saying that I want to open up an intimate dialogue with
you by trusting you with my heart, by telling you that I have not been faithful with yours.
And this is a really good place to be for that.
And I really like how you are so focused with your ministry, with the adventures and training
with a purpose on strengthening people.
It comes, the mind and the soul is entwined with it, but mostly it's the strength of the
body that you're working on with this rehabilitation.
And I think it's just so funny that God oftentimes, not every time, but oftentimes plays to our
strengths.
And you're a dairy farming lineman for a professional football team that was at one point, were
the strongest man in the NFL?
Well, they had a, yeah.
Well, we did.
They had three or four years.
They had, it was pretty cool because Terry Bradshaw gets to throw touchdown passes.
Stallworth gets to catch him, Franco gets to run 4,000 yards.
What's the lineman do?
Well, you get the pass block.
You get to run block.
You get flat noses.
Okay?
And so they would have these, while the last few years I was playing, these World Strongmen,
or yeah, they had that one too, but they had the NFL Strongman contest.
And it was fun to compete in that because you kind of got to step up a little bit if
you could.
And again, it's just so neat how God said, so you're a strong guy, huh?
Right?
And you're a dairy farmer, which means you're built different than a city kid every day.
Right?
And then you're an alignment for football where these people aren't small people.
Right?
You're pushing people into the dirt that are bigger than me.
And some of them you do with these and some of them it's a struggle.
Right?
Some of them might push you down.
Right?
But God put on your heart this strength.
And I don't know if you're aware of the correlation to it, but I just think it's so great how
you're answering the call, the gifts he's given you from birth, from the life that he
has laid out before you that you've said yes to, to the ministry that he's called before
you, that you've also said yes to, all correlates to the same strength of which he's blessed
you with.
And I think that's just tremendous.
I really love.
I love your heart behind it.
I love your enthusiasm for it.
I love your knowledge about it.
And now you kept, you know, you started off with, I'm not a real smart guy.
It's like you're, you're a lot smarter than I thought a dairy farming lineman would be.
I'm gonna be honest with you.
And so it's, you're, you're a very impressive person and I don't watch football.
I don't, I don't know a lot of it.
So when, when you first came here with Pastor Pete on that men's breakfast, he's like,
John Colbert, I don't know who that is.
Right?
That's great.
I mean, I've heard of, I've heard of Tunchilkin.
I've heard of, you know, Franco Harris, but Bradshaw, you know, I don't know anybody else.
Like I was a bears fan growing up because I did, I grew up in Vegas.
We didn't have a team then.
And I just picked at random and I was a front runner at four and the bears were doing pretty
good when I was four.
And, you know, you had Mike Singletary and you had the sweetness Walter Peyton.
I was like, these guys are great.
I love these guys.
I knew nothing about any other team.
And so I, my limit of football is very limited.
So the fact that you are a four time winning Super Bowl champion means so little to me
in, in, in respect to what you're doing for God's kingdom.
Right?
I am so impressed with you for what you're doing for him.
I am so impressed with you for your heart for him.
I'm so impressed with you and I'm, I'm proud of you for the work that you're doing because
I know it isn't always easy.
In fact, I know it's downright hard to serve him in a lot of instances and I think you
were just a tremendously amazing person because of it.
I don't want to discount what you've done for the Steelers.
I'm just saying that that part of your life doesn't matter to me as much as what you're
doing for the kingdom matters to me.
And I think that you are, I think you're just a tremendous human being.
You've got a heart for God.
You're smart.
You're well thought out.
You're physically fit for your age.
You're probably more physically fit than I am.
Right?
I'm, I'm but like a linebacker for the cheesecake factory.
You know, you, you are just an impressive man of God and a mighty man of God and we
don't have enough of those.
And so I really appreciate what you do for the kingdom and I appreciate your amats, your
spiritual headlong into what God has called you to do without regard of what safety, whatever,
knowing that God has your back and I wish that more people would follow your lead that
you could through this podcast, through your ministry, that more people would take this
as a coaching element so that they would also do exactly what you do and follow God with
the spiritual hoodspot, you know, this rock kazakh, this, this be strong and courageous,
this I don't, I'm not afraid of failure because my God will carry me.
Exactly.
Yeah.
I'm just so impressed by you.
There is a judgment, you know, we've been judged when we, but when Revelations talks
about when we come to him, you know, and I don't even know if that's, but that shouldn't
be, that shouldn't be the reason that were to me that we want to, you know, you play
a football game, you want to play well.
You mentioned the while ago playing.
I played 26 women, no, 29 football games against Alvin Batea, the Houston Oilers, 13 years,
twice a year, that's 26 and then three times in the playoffs.
Man, those were physical games and you just didn't want to win.
You wanted to make it hurt.
You don't want to hurt somebody, but you want to make it hurt.
If that makes you want them to look forward the next time they see you.
And so you're giving everything that you've got.
And so to me, the analogy is, do I do this because of what I mentioned a while ago, because
there is going to be a judgment and Jesus is going to ask, what did you do with what
I have given you?
Because the Bible talks about we've all been given gifts.
What did you do with those gifts?
Did I do it because of that?
Or did I do it because I love you, Lord?
And I'm not going to try and sing here for people, but there's a song, I love you, Lord.
Because you just love Jesus that He would, because nobody here, nobody in the world knows
my heart.
Man, it is just like the Bible says.
So no, there's a verse that says, we command that I am, who will set me free from the body
of this death?
For the things I know I should do, I don't do, and do the things I don't want to do.
Man I am the president of that club.
I'm a faithful member.
Yeah.
And God loves me in spite of that.
So that's got to be the motivation.
Last Sunday in church, Pastor John Nunez is our pastor.
He gave an example, he's talking about prayer, but I think it fits what we're talking about
now.
And when he was first married and his wife and him, they were at a restaurant and there
was no salt on the table.
And so he asked the wanker if he would get some salt.
And the wanker's like, oh, so annoyed that he had to run and get some salt.
And his wife's kicking him under the table.
You could have just not eaten, just eat it without the salt.
And anyway, the message that he was trying to make is come to God, and we're not just
asking for salt.
We're asking, you know, he's not annoyed that I would even ask him for salt.
And he loves us.
And so I'm thinking about the God that loves me and wants me to come to him for salt and
for the very meat and potatoes and heart of everything.
Wow.
So nothing I can do in terms of love would be enough for what he's already done.
That's so great.
You know, I shared a story.
My wife does a lot of social media now that she's started the podcast and whenever she
did a TikTok video and she asked me to share something on it.
It's the only time I've ever been on a TikTok video, you know, I'm elusive.
And so my time is not valuable.
It's just I'm elusive.
And so I'm going to share what I shared then because I think it fits as well.
And I was taking my son to bed late.
I'd let him stay up to watch the show and he was maybe three and a half somewhere in
there.
He was young.
He's 12 now.
And so I was carrying the bed and as I was walking down the hall, I thought it doesn't
matter if he was bad that day.
Yep.
And it doesn't matter if he was good that day.
It was my it was my my pleasure to carry him.
I felt so much love for this boy that it didn't matter what he did and it didn't matter how
he behaved.
But because he was my son and because I loved him because he was my son, it was my absolute
pleasure to take him to bed and I enjoyed it.
And God never lets me off the hook with just one little thing.
He shared that with me.
And as I got to the top of the stairs, he shared another little nugget with me.
He didn't say it out loud, but you know, it comes to my mind.
And if it's a really good thought about him, I know it came from him.
Yep.
And so as I got to the top of the steps, I realized that that's how he wants us to come
to him.
He wants us to love him not because he healed us, not because he blessed us, not because
he gave us an easy day, not because he gave us a hard day, but because he is the father.
And so that's a direct relation of like he teaches me so much with my kid.
And so I think that really just ties into what you were saying that, you know, don't
be afraid to ask him for the salt.
Right.
He doesn't matter what you did.
He wants to he wants to serve.
He wants to love you.
He wants you to be close to him.
And that's the point.
We got to do football camps in Israel with Israeli soldiers a few years ago, four or five.
And then some tough son of a gun.
Wow.
We have to be there.
Yeah.
You got to be.
Nobody likes him.
But anyway, there were so many things that impacted me because I told him when they asked
me if I had go, I wanted to be there.
I wanted to take me to some of the places and they did.
And if you have time, I can tell you about that.
But one of the most impactful things, what you just said about your son, we're getting
off the plane and there is a little boy, little Jewish boy.
He's got the little yarmulke hat and he's not very big and he's with his mom and they're
right in front of me as we get off the plane and he gets into the terminal and he sees
his dad and he starts running to his dad and he's going, Abba, Abba, Abba, Abba.
Now for you guys, maybe that doesn't mean anything, but think about it.
In Romans eight, it talks about that God loves us so much that we can call him Abba
Father and Abba means daddy.
And I never really, I ain't going to call it daddy, but then I heard that little Jewish
boy call his father Abba, Abba, Abba with all this enthusiasm and love.
And I went, okay, I think I get it now.
I think I get it that we can love him so much and he wants us to call him daddy.
He's not annoyed if I ask for salt.
Yeah, we call him Papa a lot in the house.
It's our English version of the Hebrew Abba.
And we've done it for as long as my son's been alive and so he calls me Papa sometimes,
especially if you want something.
Otherwise, it's dad, don't do that.
Dad, quit being, be serious.
Most times I'm like, Papa, guess what?
And it's so endearing.
I never thought I'd be a Papa.
It's because of the language we use when we talk to God and he has such a pure soul at
his age that he also shares in the Papa and he correlates it.
So I see a lot of themes coming along with your experiences and my experiences.
I just really think that's great as well because I think it helps reinforce to anybody
listing doesn't matter what you've done.
It doesn't matter where you are.
Jesus never said, hey, I want you to clean your room before you talk to me.
He said, we're all sinners, right?
We're all sinners of the false and the glory of God.
So even in our sin, he sent his only son for us while we were still sinners, right?
And so we oftentimes think that we need to have a tightly run, squeaky clean, navel vessel
of a ship.
And most of the time we've got a leaky dingy with a bed sheet for a sale.
And God is not asking anything from us except our heart.
He's not asking anything from us except our heart.
And when we give him our heart, he rewards us with multiple blessings.
He rewards us with grace.
He rewards us with mercy.
And through those things, because of it, once we identify his love for us, we start doing
those works for him, right?
Not because we think we're impressing him, but because it's the natural disposition of
our heart that's turned towards him.
And I think this is a great theme for people and I hope they understand that mess up, it's
going to happen, but don't be afraid to come to the Father.
Don't be afraid to cry out to Jesus.
Don't be afraid to wallow in yourself while you talk to the Holy Spirit and say, oh, I
just did it again and I don't want to.
And the Holy Spirit is like, yeah, I got you.
I'm speaking to the Father right now and groans that you can't even understand because
he knows your heart and I know your heart because I am in you.
So thank you so much for sharing.
Now, don't you have, isn't this a family affair too?
Your family is involved with the.
It is.
Yeah, thanks for that.
Yeah, thanks for asking that.
My wife comes and she does the scheduling and the bookkeeping and stuff like that.
And she also promotes herself as my boss.
You know, well, you need to do that.
Well, you know, and I know that you guys.
We can talk about some of us have the administration.
Yeah, I'm kind of, I worked hard in grad school.
That was some hard stuff.
And yet she can tell me, well, you know, you ought to be doing such a, you know, and I'm
like looking at her.
But then the other, the other part of it is, and I'm proud.
I like I said, I have three sons.
My youngest son Caleb works with us on a daily basis.
And he has taken, when I say adventures in training with the purpose, if you look at
our emblem, there is someone 21 says, I'll lift my eyes to the mountains.
Where's my help come from?
It's a rhetorical question.
And so one time we were climbing a mountain.
And when I got back down, I took a picture of the mountain from the bottom.
And there was a cross made out of snow in the mountain.
And I climbed through that cross and I didn't recognize the cross when I was 14,000 feet
up high.
So when we started this nonprofit, our emblem or whatever, our logo, that's the word I'm
trying to think of.
The logo has a man climbing a mountain with a cross right there in front of him.
So someone 21 says, I'll lift my eyes to the mountains from where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth.
So my son Caleb works with us and he's right.
He takes people they've climbed.
I've climbed Mount Kilimanjaro once.
They've taken our people up four times.
We've done the Grand Canyon.
We do white, like I said, we do the whitewater kayaking.
So we're training with a purpose.
And the purpose is what's the mountain represent?
Well, Romans 12 says to offer your body as a living sacrifice and don't be conformed.
We mentioned that a while ago.
J.T. Thomas, one of my teammates said, if you take the word challenge, C-H-A-L-L-E-N-G
challenge, take the word, take the letters L-L-E out.
You got change.
And so I really like that because change without challenge, it's like changing your underwear.
You're the same guy.
But when you do something that brings about a challenge, that's what I think that means
in that Romans 12, one, because it renews us.
So God created us to be, live, move, and in him we live, we move, and we exist.
That's what he made us to do.
And the other one, yeah, thank you.
That's my youngest son.
My middle son is a strength coach at WVU and trains wrestlers and stuff at West Virginia
University.
My oldest son, really proud of all my sons, my oldest son has muscular dystrophy.
He may have been the best wrestler of the group, but as he got into high school, he
got skinnier and skinnier.
And I thought it was because he was pulling weight for wrestling.
Turns out he has muscular dystrophy.
And I remember the day he was diagnosed and I said, probably cold, but I said, boy, man,
you got to find something you can do from a wheelchair because he had about a year left
before he's in a wheelchair today.
Has been for 35 years.
And he continues to, his body continues to, to, to, to teary-aid.
So what did he do?
He went and he, he went back to school.
He has a PhD in psychology and he's written three books and he started on his fourth one.
And he's written a book called The Psychology of God.
You can get them on Amazon.
Eric Cobb, he's written a book called Human Mind and the Human Soul, where he talks about
those things we were just talking about.
Now our soul and our love the Lord with all your heart, strength, mind and soul.
And I would really recommend them.
But if you're in a hurry, you don't want to read this book because, you know, he's a
PhD.
I'm not.
It's like trying to read a King James version.
Yeah.
You have to decide for everything.
Yeah.
But if you really want to grow, if you really want to understand what we've been talking
about, he's done tremendous research.
And the cool thing about it is he combines what does the Bible say and people say, well,
science says the Bible's not you.
No, when you look at it, no, there's no discrepancy, you know, and that's what you'll see in this
book.
So good.
Well, thank you for being with us.
This is great.
You've been tremendous.
I love your sons are wrestlers and not football players.
I just want to throw that little thing in there.
I think they look to you.
It's like, I don't want to know it's like that or something.
You know what's funny you said that because Caleb, the youngest one said, dad, he said,
I don't know what I want to do.
If I play football, I'll get a nose like yours.
And if I wrestle, I'll get ears like Tanner and Eric.
So he ended up wrestling and he's got the worst cauliflower ears that of all three of
the boys.
You didn't want the most.
Yeah.
I heard that you didn't you didn't think you were going to play for the Steelers as
well.
Yeah.
I think that's funny.
My sophomore year in college, we beat the University of Oklahoma, which was a big deal.
In Oklahoma, everybody's Baptist.
Everybody's Republican.
Where they divide is are you Oklahoma State or are you Oklahoma?
And that's fierce.
Yeah, it is fierce.
It's very fierce.
And so while I was in college, we beat the University of Oklahoma my sophomore year,
which would been we hadn't beaten them in anyway, decades.
And it was a big deal.
And two days, three days later, I got a letter from the San Diego Chargers and said that
they saw the game and they were going to be scouting me.
And then a few days later, a couple of weeks later, I got some more letters, started getting
phone calls.
By the day of the draft, three years later, I had heard from every single NFL team except
the Steelers.
And people would say, well, where do you think you're going to go?
And I would say, well, I don't know.
I just know one thing.
I won't be going to the Steelers.
And I told enough people that the day of the draft, I thought the draft took, you know,
choosing in the backyard.
You know, you play backyards.
Right, right.
I got Tim.
I got Billy.
Yeah, yeah.
The whole thing takes five minutes.
Well, it doesn't.
The first round takes an hour and a half, you know.
And so it was, you know, they told me to stay by the phone in the morning.
And now it's noon.
And I said, oh, he's called.
I said, oh my, I didn't get drafted.
My world has come to an end.
I didn't know what to do.
What am I going to do?
All my plans are messed up.
And so that night, well, so finally the Steelers called.
And I thought it was my friends putting some guy named Rooney up to calling me.
Because Mr. Rooney, you know, he was probably, even when I was drafted 70 years old, he was
like, John, you know, that's how Rooney started.
Yes, this is our Rooney.
And I'm all right.
And I was really rude because I was so hurt and disappointed that I hadn't been drafted.
And for one of my friends to put some old man up to calling me and telling me from Pittsburgh,
that was beyond the one team you knew you weren't going.
The one team I knew I wasn't going to.
And so, you know, I was just devastated.
And that night then, you know, I thought, well, I'll turn on the news, the sports and
find out.
Did you hang up on him?
Yeah.
So then, yeah, I hung up on him because I thought, yeah, I thought this was a joke.
So that night, I turned on the TV because I wanted to see where some of my friends,
my roommate, well, anyway, my roommate.
So I turned on the TV and sure enough, it says, Terry Brown going to the Minnesota Vikings.
That was my roommate in the third round.
And John Colb going to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the third round.
And I'm like, gosh, that really was, that was really, oh my gosh, whoops.
Now what do you do?
Because you were just rude.
So the next morning, the next morning, the first thing I called and I'm going, Mr. Rooney,
this John, I'm sorry that I was, and he, he left.
And, and so what was neat, three months later, four months, whatever it was, when the Steelers
fly me to training camp, guess who was waiting for me to get out of the car when they picked
me up at their port?
Mr. Rooney.
And I'll just never forget that.
That is how classy all the Rooney, the whole family, that, that, you know, the Roonies
are first class Chuck, no, the whole coaching thing staff, first class.
And it's been that way, Mike Tomlin, first class.
Steelers seem to be a pretty classy team compared to some others that we've seen, showboaters
and whatnot.
Yeah.
And that was just my first experience with them and again, class all the way top to bottom.
That's awesome.
That's funny.
Yeah.
I'm not going to the Steelers.
Yeah.
Nice try.
You're going to try and make it work.
Try a team I thought was going to recruit me in the first place.
If you had called sooner in the day, you wouldn't have thought it was a joke, maybe.
Yeah.
But I didn't know how long the draft took.
Okay.
Because if they think at that time there was 2016's, but you've got the first two or
three rounds, because I was involved in the draft later as coach.
And I remember, for example, when we drafted Gabriel Vera, I was coaching the defensive
line and we're looking, you know, you've got 20 minutes or 30 minutes to make your choice.
And every team, you went to 19 minutes and 30 some seconds because you studied this guys,
but then you're calling the guy, you're calling the, well, who's his agent?
So why would you care about the agent?
Well, if certain agents, you may not get the guy in training camp till training camp's
over.
Well, then he's probably not going to help you that much that first year.
You know, what is this agent that's typically out for himself or is he out for the player?
So a lot of things come into play with it.
Which is silly, you think if you're out for the player, you are out for yourself.
Right?
If you do what's best for your player, then you'll get more players and you'll have more.
You're back to the world again.
You know, how's the world work?
Yeah, it's crazy.
Well, I appreciate your time.
I love your stories.
I love hearing about your ministry.
Thank you for sharing your son's books.
Thank you for sharing yourself with us.
And really enjoyed speaking with you.
And I'd love to hear from you again.
I would love it.
Yeah, we'll pick it up right here then.
Oh yeah, perfect.
And with that, thank you for listening.
And we actually have something, a bonus feature in the works and the Holy Spirit is working
on the details and I'm waiting for the download of what that is going to entail.
But besides, you know, the story of our guest, we'll just have that and we don't know how
often it'll be, but we're working out that.
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