God's Great Outdoors

Dean Hulce: In today's world, everything is so high-speed and high-tech that it seems like we're going 100 miles an hour. There doesn't seem to be enough time to accomplish all that we want to accomplish from day to day. On today's program, we'll hear from a pastor that has worked with adults and kids alike.

We'll talk about what it means to be still in this world that is anything but still. And we'll learn what the Bible says about our need to just be still in the midst of chaos. We'll spend some time thinking and talking about God's great outdoors and how we can find peace that we need there in the woods or on the water. We all have a need to take some time and cease what we're struggling with and just be still. So come along now as we head down the trail to adventure where we can be still in God's great outdoors.

Welcome to God's Great Outdoors, the Trail to Adventure. We are again in North Florida at Fernandina Beach, at the First Baptist Church of Fernandina Beach. We actually have one of the pastors today in with us, Shad. Shad, can you pronounce your last name for me?

Shad Goltz: Goltz. I'm from Marietta, Georgia, so I tell people it's like Smaltz, John Smoltz, the baseball player.

Dean Hulce: We got a chance to hear you last night do the message for a Wednesday night, and I could tell right away you were a Braves fan. I've been a lifelong Cubs fan.

Shad Goltz: Great franchise there.

Dean Hulce: It is, not quite as winning as Atlanta. I've always enjoyed Atlanta. Actually, there's several very serious hunters that have been. Chipper Jones was a big, is a big outdoors person. And so I always notice that, and there's a few others that have shown up on TV on occasion.

But I love Atlanta, not downtown Atlanta. But actually, it is if somebody else is bringing you. If somebody else is driving you and you don't have to worry about it, it's great. When I first started coming down south, it wasn't so bad. And now Atlanta is probably the worst place I've ever had to drive at rush hour especially. And coming south, you don't have a lot of options. I mean, you do, but it's either spend four hours in Atlanta or you spend six hours going around it.

Shad Goltz: That's very true.

Dean Hulce: But you've been a pastor here for how long?

Shad Goltz: 14 years next month, March 1st, 14 years.

Dean Hulce: What's your actual position then?

Shad Goltz: Right now it is Pastor of Adult Ministries and Pastoral Care. I came as the youth pastor and then moved positions. I got too old for it, got too tired for it. I love teenagers still, but man, it's just tough to stay relevant with the teenagers.

Dean Hulce: Our world changes so quickly right now that it's a little scary. If we didn't know the Lord, it would be extremely scary. And I've got a son. My son Nick is in camping ministry. And he loves the kids, and that's why he stays there. He loves working with the kids, but he's 40. I asked him the other day, I said, "Nick, how long can you do this? How long can you keep up with first, second, third graders?" And he said, "Probably not much longer." I said, "You probably ought to be looking for something different."

Last summer, summer before, he ripped his calf muscle really badly the very first day of camp. And it's like trying to keep up with kids. And I did, I got a chance last night to hear your message. It was really good. I will say that it brought me in from the start and kept me all the way through, and great points for each of us to consider day in and day out.

Give me a little bit of your background because you were at one time a hunter and fisherman.

Shad Goltz: I was. And I've started fishing again, and I'm going to start hunting again. Now I just do surf fishing. I grew up in Marietta, Georgia, so we had lakes and different things that I grew up fishing, creeks. Me and my friend Billy, we'd go fishing all the time in the creeks and different things like that.

And then as I got older, I would go hunting with Dad down in Wilkinson County around the Macon area and absolutely loved to hunt. Really, I loved to hunt, but I just loved being with my dad. That was the big thing.

Dean Hulce: And that's really for a lot of us. For me, the social aspect of the hunting, especially when you get a group of Christian guys together. I love, and I've shared this before on the show, there's nothing better than the evening time of, first of all, telling the hunting stories. But then that quickly, if it's a group of Christian men or predominantly Christian men, it always turns to what God is doing in our lives. And that's the best part of hunting for me.

There was a time when I was a lot more driven, and I guided full-time for 10 years all over North America and for at least part-time for 38 years. And that's really given me. I write a daily devotion, all outdoor-related. 99% of it is outdoor-related. And so it gives me a new story every day. God reminds me of things that I had forgotten every day.

And that's as a youth pastor, you've got to be fresh and new every day because you get bombarded with questions, with situations, and family dynamics of teenagers. And I think that's one of the things that truthfully, at the time whenever I made the transition from youth pastor to family ministries pastor and then associate pastor and then what I'm doing now, it is one of those things that I felt like God was just saying I couldn't keep up. And so I needed to hand it over to some of the younger guys that have a heart and passion for Jesus and teenagers.

Guest (Male): Well, and I spent an hour with Gabe yesterday. What a great guy. And loves the Lord, obviously very, very intelligent and Bible smart.

Shad Goltz: Way smarter than me. I'll claim that.

Guest (Male): I could tell right away he was smarter than me, so it didn't take long.

Dean Hulce: One of the things that I got from your message last night and what you started with is talking about friendships and talking about long-term friendships and issues with that. And I want to come, we're going to take a quick break before we get into that because we have to take a break sometime. This would be a good time before we have to stop that. But we'll take a quick break, and then we'll be back and we'll talk about friendships and some of the pains and the fun, the joy of that. So we'll be right back on God's Great Outdoors.

For the last 26 years, God's Great Outdoors Trail to Adventure has been broadcast out to win men and women, boys and girls to Jesus Christ. This is only possible by the generosity of our listeners. Thank you to all who have supported us in the past. God has blessed us because of you, and we pray that you feel His blessings as well.

Additional underwriting support has been provided by: Matthews Archery, the leader in the archery industry. Mission Archery, with revolutionary crossbow technology. Three Rivers Archery, supplying everything you need to make your own traditional archery equipment. Hunter Safety Systems, saving lives is what we do. And Conviction Game Calls. At Conviction, we don't separate work from our faith. We believe that our faith should be evident in every aspect of our lives, and the outdoors is one of the best places to share that.

God's Great Outdoors has produced many ministry tools, including tracts, DVDs, and books to help you reach others for Jesus Christ. You can access these items, other God's Great Outdoors items, and so much more at our website, godsgreatoutdoors.org. That's godsgreatoutdoors.org.

Welcome back to God's Great Outdoors on the Trail to Adventure. Again, we're in North Florida, and we're with Pastor Shad. Shad, I will say I've never heard another name like anybody else ever. Is that your whole first real name?

Shad Goltz: It is my whole first name, and I have to tell you this. When I got old enough, maybe middle school, I asked my dad, I was like, "Dad, come on. Where did Shad come from?" And he said, "It came from the Bible, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego." And at the time, my dad wasn't a believer. He grew up in the church, but he walked away from it, different things like that.

And he said, "It is from Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego." And I was like, "Dad, I don't think so." And I found out, I was born in 1973. I think there's a cover of a magazine in 1973 that had a fish on it, and it said something about using shad or something like that as bait fish. And I was like, "Dad, I think you got it from that cover. That's what I think."

Dean Hulce: Well, either way you're carrying it now. I like the Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego story.

Shad Goltz: I wish it was that.

Dean Hulce: Well, it certainly would speak well to your heart if it was. You talked last night and this morning now as we started, you were talking about a close friend that you did fish with as a kid and spent time in the woods. I had a very good friend that I hunted with. He begged me to fish with him over and over, and I loved to fish, but he'd call me, say, "Dean, we're going out on the boat. We're fishing for salmon." And I was always too busy.

And I regret that. You know, I regret that. And he was, about 12 years ago I think now, he was killed in a car accident. But you shared a story last night that's a painful story, but if you'd share part of that with us, I'd love that.

Shad Goltz: Yeah, definitely. Billy, I met him in the seventh grade, or excuse me, I met him when I was seven years old, about second grade actually. And we met on the recreation field, and I was watching, we were playing frisbee. And I was watching him. Billy says that I don't remember this, but this is what Billy told me. He said that he would come up and talk to me, but I wasn't paying attention to him because I was watching, focused on the frisbee game that was going on.

But something about that day, just we clicked. And for 45 years, we were best friends. I mean, great friends. I say it now, my wife is my best friend now, but Billy was my best guy friend that I had forever. And we did so many things together.

I have to share this. I didn't share this last night, but April 8th, Billy committed suicide. And the month, about a month, month after that, I was still struggling with it, but I was struggling with it really heavy then. And Mary and I, Mary's my wife, we were at Chili's. And I'm going over some of these things. And there are stories, obviously, stories that we've never told anybody. Billy and I, we always said we were going to hold them to the grave.

And so I was like, "Mary, I just got to tell you some of these things because this is just who we were growing up." And so I started telling her about these things. I won't go into them, but basically, one story is we broke the sliding glass window at his house, and we created this story to tell his mom so he wouldn't get in trouble. Right? So we didn't get in trouble then.

And then there was one story where in high school where we created—I hate to say this, but we created this cheating system because we would sit—anyway, we would have on tests, we'd create this system where we could just do it and not ever get caught. It was awesome.

Guest (Male): You're past the years that anyone can do anything now.

Dean Hulce: Praise the Lord. Yes.

Shad Goltz: Jesus has forgiven me. I'm a new creation. That's right. And then I told her about the fact that we would climb under at night, go into the neighborhood and sneak into the pool and swim and stuff like that. And I told her, I was like, "We've never done anything really bad. We were just good kids having fun."

And she goes, "Time out. You just told me that you lied, you cheated, and you broke into places." And I went, "Well, if you say it like that, then that's not right. Come on now." And then I said, "Okay, we maybe—it was because we never got caught." Right? It's not illegal if you don't get caught. As kids, we use that one all the time.

Dean Hulce: All the time. Are you going to be here for this weekend's events at all? Well, the speakers that are coming tonight, Zach just spent a week at my house. And I had met him before and they—I had recommended him to Johnny. And one of them ends up being—Zach was his pastor up in Huntsville area originally.

But he starts out when he talks about sin and he said, "Okay, what is lying? What are you if you lie?" And he said, "You're a liar." Well, he said, "There's one of the commandments." So your wife was right, you were wrong.

Shad Goltz: Man. I don't ever want her to hear that, okay? Please. Just kidding. Yeah, and so Billy was—we did everything together. And loved him dearly. Had many conversations, deep conversations about faith and about Jesus.

And I don't know if this was a compliment or whatever, but he would always say, "Shad, I know you believe it. And I know you believe it, but I have a hard time believing it because other Christians, other people that call themselves Christians aren't living that way." Right? Had a lot of conversations and he just couldn't get over that.

And so on April 8th of last year, 2025, he took his life. He was having a hard weekend and actually, talking about regrets earlier, there's a couple of things that I regret deeply. And I'm praying that God would take this from me because I don't believe guilt is from the Holy Spirit. I believe conviction is. But for some reason, I cannot get rid of this guilt.

The week prior, I was sick and just was horrible, had the horrible sinus stuff. Whenever we get stuff here in Florida, it gets bad. And so on Friday of the week before he committed suicide on Friday, I was sick as a dog and he sent me a text or called me, or I can't remember what it was, but I told him I was like, "Hey man, I'm sick. I'll call you back whenever I feel better." And I was just sick. And then on Tuesday, he killed himself.

And so I hold that guilt and that regret still to this day. I know that that's not my ultimate responsibility. He had to make a choice. He made that choice and I know that. But it's those moments, those quiet moments that I feel like Satan really comes in and attacks me and says, "Hey, guess what? Your buddy's not here and you didn't help him."

Dean Hulce: Right. I ran a lodge on Kodiak Island for a year. And a friend called—and this friend didn't know Christ at the time. And we'd just kind of hit it off, but we only saw each other once a year. He wasn't an old friend. It was a couple of years is all we knew each other.

And I was in the middle of a crisis. Actually, we'd just had a boat sink with five people on it. So it was a big crisis and I'm trying to find a way to get out to where that boat is and assess the situation. I was ultimately responsible for the lodge. And a friend called and he says—and his nickname is Shorty—and he said, "You got a minute?" And I said, "Shorty, I really don't. I'm sorry. Can I call you back?" He said, "Yeah, no problem. Don't worry about it."

So it's about three or four days before I call him back. And I said, "What's up?" He said, "Oh, don't worry about it. No big deal." He said, "My dad just died. I didn't know who to call." And I felt about an inch high. Same thing, you know. I mean, the end was way different. And it just woke me up to the fact that we have a responsibility.

I mean, you could only do what you could do. But we do have a responsibility when we can as believers to be looking out for each other and others. And also people are watching us. We need to realize that as you talked about Billy watching others. In the end, the difference, Shorty a couple of years later called me and said, "Hey Dean, will you come talk to me? I got some questions." And he came to Christ and now he's been a great brother besides a great friend.

But why don't you go on with last night? I mean, you tied that into a great message.

Shad Goltz: How I started last night, I talked about "be still" in Psalm 46:10. It says, "Be still and know that I am God." I landed on "be still" because every year my wife and I do something some people think it's kind of cheesy or whatever, but we just take a word for the year. We really pray about it and we think, "Okay, a word or a phrase," and we ask God, "Okay, what do you want us to focus on this next year?"

And because in 2025 Billy died, I just didn't want to do anything happy or joyous or anything. I just wanted to be as raw and as real as I could. And I had this coffee cup that says "be still" on it and that phrase kept on coming up over and over again. "Be still, be still, be still." And so okay, I was like, "That's going to be my 2026. I'm going to focus on being still."

And so then I started doing a deep dive into where it talks about being still in the scriptures and what it says. Basically though, with Psalm 46 is the main verse. You know, it talked about when Jesus calmed the waters and different things like that. But it really hit me hard whenever in Psalm 46, it says "be still and know that I am the Lord" or "know that I am God."

And then in Psalm 37, there's another reference that says "be still and wait patiently for the Lord." But those two "be stills" are totally different. And God really opened up my eyes to the fact that in Psalm 37, it says "be still and wait for the Lord," but that "be still" is more like what we think of being still—like just sitting quietly, sitting patiently and waiting, where you're sitting, you're resting, you're still, you're focused on God. However, after God speaks or whenever that time is allotted, you get up. You're still moving, you're still living in that kind of "be still."

In Psalm 46—and last night I said what it was in Hebrew. I think it was *raphah*.

Dean Hulce: You had it written down, it was easier.

Shad Goltz: Or if I had a good memory. So Psalm 46, it says "be still and know that I am God," but that "be still" actually, that word, that phrase means totally cease, totally quit striving, totally give up, totally surrender. And it means surrender and know that I am God.

And so whenever you think about that and I like the word cease because whenever you cease, you cease to exist. It is like you're saying, "I'm going to die to myself. I am totally going to completely die to who I am, my sinful nature, everything, my will, my desires, everything. Place them on the altar, die to those, and live in Christ." And that phrase, "be still and know that I am God," has really come alive in my heart.

Like I said last night, I've been a pastor now for 29 years, and my walk this year because of that statement, because of digging into that, is really stronger than it has been in my previous 28 years of being a pastor. And I say that because I believe the scripture teaches that God can bring beauty from ashes. And I feel like He's doing that in my life.

Dean Hulce: If we look back at Romans 8:28, and as hard as that thing is with Billy and as it was for me with Curtis, there's a reason. God's got a reason. He wants no one to perish without knowing Him. But still, if it happens, He's going to work it out for the best for those that love God. And in your situation, and it affects your wife and it affects your kids and it affects all those around you. But we can rest on that. In the moment it doesn't really make it easier. We're still struggling, but in the long run it does.

Shad Goltz: It does, because even in that scripture where it says "be still and know that I am God," that concept in the whole chapter talks about the sovereignty of God and talks about who He is and His character and who He is in His sovereignty. And I think whenever we "be still and know that He is God," we can rest in that, in who He is, definitely.

Dean Hulce: I've gotten to spend many, many months in the mountains over the years. 38 years of guiding, and a lot of that in Colorado and some in Wyoming and up in Kodiak Island, Alaska with the mountains. And it sounds like a good time, and often it was. I'm a mountain person living at the beach, so I'm like, "Oh, you—" I loved especially Colorado. I would love to get, whether it be my wife and I, and we cared for pastors there.

Because as you were telling your story, people hear a pastor say that I struggle and they think, "Well, that can't be." But one of the problems is we put pastors on a level where they can't be just men. They got—and that's not right. And one of the reasons we were in Colorado was to care for pastors and we were caring for pastors that just needed a break, that went through what you just went through, and a chance to go up on the mountain and be still.

And that was one of—that's what we really based our ministry off of, was just to be still, to cease, to just sit down before God and look at creation but just be still. And I think that we need that. We don't do that enough. And when we don't do that enough, when these things come, it's more likely to destroy us or wipe us out enough to make it harder to function and to do what you're called to do and what I'm called to do.

The other thing I want to quickly reiterate, and then we'll jump out of the radio portion and we'll jump into the podcast and talk some more, but is again that realization of those people that Billy talked about that they claimed to be Christians but they didn't show it. Now some of them could have been Christians and some might have just been in name. "I was born into this church or born into that church, my parents were Christian, so obviously I'm a Christian." That's some of the people he was talking about.

But some of those people, unfortunately, were true Christians. But we all mess up, but we got to be careful of our lives. Well, listen, we got to jump into the podcast, radio time is over. And we'll carry on and we'll laugh a little more instead of—but it is a great message. And you really, because of the loss of a friend and loss of my dad and you know, it really touched something last night and I appreciated that. Thank you for joining me on the radio.

Shad Goltz: Definitely, thank you for having me.

Dean Hulce: We'll jump into the podcast here in a second. Thank you for our listeners for joining us. Please, if you want to get involved in this ministry, come alongside of us in any way—in prayer, in financial—we are donor-supported. But join us each week here because if we're just sitting here by ourselves, it's kind of meaningless. So join us each week and listen to the radio program wherever you're picking us up and we'll meet you there again in God's Great Outdoors as we head down the Trail to Adventure.

Life can be extremely difficult at times. Getting through times of struggles with loss or pain can bring us down and hold us there for a long time. We can struggle to dig out and wear ourselves out in the process. Sometimes we just need to look to God and be still and know that He is God and that we have to cease what we're struggling with and just allow Him to have control.

Psalm 46:10 tells us this: "Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord Almighty is with us and the God of Jacob is our fortress." This is a promise that if we just be still, cease what we're struggling with and allow God to have the reins in our lives, then He'll bring the peace and the victory in life.

Thank you for joining us this week. We pray that you have a peaceful week ahead and that you'll gain confidence in allowing God to lead. If you've enjoyed today's program and would like to hear the extended podcast version, you can find it by looking for Dean Hulce or Trail to Adventure wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This program is provided by and can be contacted at God's Great Outdoors, P.O. Box 414, Powers, Michigan 49874, or on the website godsgreatoutdoors.org. Please join us each week as we head down the Trail to Adventure in God's Great Outdoors.