God's Great Outdoors

Guest (Male): As hunters and fishermen, we are constantly taking aim at something. As fishermen, we at times are sight casting to fish in a river or other bodies of water. In order to have our lure land where we want it to land, we take aim at the exact spot and let the cast go. As a hunter, it's a requirement that we concentrate on a target before pulling the trigger or releasing the arrow towards the target.

In life, if we want to hit the target we're aiming our life at, we need to take aim at what God has set before us. On today's program, our host, Dean Hulce, will introduce the two men that are part of an outdoor products company and an outdoor TV program. They'll talk about the importance of taking aim in life, not just in hunting and fishing, but in our striving for having the best life possible.

Let's join Dean now and hear about some great outdoor experiences and some amazing products that help outdoors people hit their targets, not just in the field, but in their daily walk as well. Let's head out now down the trail to adventure with Dean and his guests in God's great outdoors.

Dean Hulce: Welcome to God's Great Outdoors on the Trail to Adventure. We are in Rockford, Michigan this afternoon, and we are with Rob Wynalda and actually with Joe Coy in the studio with us, or in the conference room, I should say, because we're on location. Joe's been on the show with us before, several months ago. It's been eight months.

And Rob, at that time, Joe said that you'd be really good doing this with us, and I appreciate that. We are good to have you, first of all. We've been talking for 45 minutes, and we should have been running, but we'll go back to those things. Rob, you've got a TV show on Pursuit Channel, and I've just recently started watching it. Why don't you tell us first about the television show and how that started?

Rob Wynalda: The television show's name is Take Aim Adventures. Take Aim Adventures is really part of the outreach and marketing arm of Fourth Arrow, and Fourth Arrow's our hunting products company that we have.

What we were really trying to do is trying to think through a good way to talk into the hunting industry about taking aim as you get ready to shoot, but in a bigger picture, be able to sit back and say ask ourselves and ask those that are viewing, what are you really taking aim with your life at? Are you taking serious what your life is being spent for what and is it for the glory of God? We really wanted to focus on that and think through that and hopefully live that out on the show in front of people, that we live well for the glory of God.

Dean Hulce: One of the things I really enjoy about the show is it's not fake. So many hunting television shows are fake, but you guys are laughing during it, laughing at each other, and it's really like going hunting with some friends. It really is.

Rob Wynalda: Some of it's pretty raw and real. If you hang with us a little bit, you realize that there's almost no mercy. So if you mess up, everybody knows, and we enjoy that. That's part of the fun. It really is. We absolutely love working together, and we love the outdoors. Part of our love language is if we're not teasing you, that means we probably don't love you. If I'm giving you a hard time, you know I love you, and that's the way it should be.

And frankly, guys, that's what we do when we go to the outdoors. If I'm hunting all by myself forever, all by myself, what fun is that? It's the participation, it's getting the flashlights out and going trying to find a blood trail, it's celebrating with someone who's been successful, it's crying with somebody who's messed up. You still got to give them a little jab, but then you can cry with them after. Sometimes a little bit too early, but we don't care. We want to wait.

Joe Coy: I heard a guy the other day, he actually was shooting at one buck in Texas, and he actually hit another in Texas and got it on film and shot the wrong deer. That makes a great video. That was one of those situations where you're targeting a specific deer and the weather's terrible, nothing's working out, and you end up staying even a day later to try to make it happen.

Then it's like last light, and these target deer still haven't shown up. So there's still a couple deer that's out there. I might be able to shoot them. Earlier in the week, I'm just praying that it would happen in a way where God would get the glory. You've got to be careful when you pray that because I shot a really nice deer, but it wasn't the one I was shooting at. That was a pretty funny experience, kind of humbling.

Rob Wynalda: And he came home and confessed it. We found out real quick. When you have video evidence, it's kind of hard to keep that one under wraps. But we all mess up, and that's part of the fun and part of trying to not take ourselves so serious and enjoy life together.

Dean Hulce: I just used this with talking with Jay and Lee this morning was Terry Gross came to our church. He happened to be up there, and it was New Year's Eve. We said we're going for a New Year's Eve party, and there was no message. It was just getting together.

He was kind of amazed at people just being real people, that it wasn't what he expected there to be. That's what church ought to be. There's a reverence, there's a difference than the world, but it still needs to be just real people being real people.

Rob Wynalda: It's interesting you'd say that because I was dealing with a group yesterday, and we were talking about this whole idea in Genesis 1, everything is good, good, good, very good. All of a sudden, you get to chapter 2, and you get this first shocking "not good." What's not good? Alone. Being alone. Not being.

Now this is going to end up being husband and wife, but it expands all the way into community and expands into the fellowship of the church. There's something beautiful about coming together with fellow believers and sitting together on Christmas Eve or whenever and sharing in all the joys and the fun and all the things that are happening well, but also the heartaches. There's a ton of heartaches, but in a group and that fellowship, what an opportunity. Don't be alone.

Dean Hulce: We were talking about men's ministry earlier before we got on the radio, and that building relationships with other men. That's come down to laughter and tears sometimes, and it comes down to holding somebody close sometimes that's in pain.

We got to stop in Milwaukee on the way down Tuesday night briefly with the elder board meeting, and we found out one of our members was in intensive care in Milwaukee. I said we're going to Indianapolis, we'll go down and visit the family. So it took us a long time to get in intensive care, and I got to go in and pray with the husband and wife.

He was gone the next morning. But what a blessing, hopefully to them, but also for me. That's a tremendous blessing. You've probably been there, and I missed him. He was always one with an "amen," not overly done but enough. I told him when I came in, I said, "I miss your amens." As I went to leave, he said, "Amen," as I'm walking out. A few hours later, he was gone. All the better for him. Good for him. What a great thing for him. Those relationships, that building each other up, we can't do that without each other.

Rob Wynalda: Absolutely. And I think we miss that, and that's one of the advantages of hunting. We've talked about that a little bit, this camaraderie and friendship you make sitting out in the north woods on a bear hunt.

To me, it's one of my most favorite hunts is probably by far, especially for community, is a bear hunt. You go there with four or five people who aren't used to being out in the middle of nowhere, where it feels dangerous. A bear hunt can feel dangerous. You go track an animal or you go help drag a nice bear out of the woods, that bond that you start to create together and that memory you create is priceless. Then that pays off when life goes hard, which we all know it does. Those relationships start to come back, and you get opportunity to speak in, or even more importantly, people get to speak back into your life and say, "By the way, did you see this? Do you know what you're doing?" And you're going, "Oh my, I know you know me now, and you know my flaws. Thank you for pointing them out and loving me well enough to do that."

Dean Hulce: What I've found is, and having guided and outfitted for years, those guys that don't know the Lord, when you just treat them with respect, when they hit a wall, when they hit a rough spot in their life, they come back to where they know truth was.

Terry Gross and so many others, every year I think we should quit guiding, and every year God puts somebody that comes to him. We think our job's not done. Our guiding is really, we just decided it's either ministry or we're not doing it. But it's the same thing in your business. All your businesses, if it's not ministry, then you're wasting your time.

Rob Wynalda: Absolutely. If you're not waking up every day thinking about how is God going to get the glory for our decisions and what we do. It doesn't mean that I may not fire someone today, but it does mean that I have to be a good steward of the business.

I need to be good steward of my time and energy. I need to be honest to the people I'm dealing with, with my employees, with my customers, with my suppliers. All those relationships, what an opportunity to be light in darkness, and actually be the guy who pays your bill. That's a different world, isn't it? Or you're honest about how a contract can take place.

I've got my own personal opinion on the whole side of work, but I think work is so undersold in our churches. The opportunities you have, and I don't care where you're going every day, the people you're coming in contact with up and down the chain of employment, we have so many opportunities that I think as a Christian community, we walk by. We don't think that people are watching us and we have that opportunity to build relationship. We know that if we live well before them, they may not be saying anything today, but when their life falls apart, when they hit the dark of the night, they're trying to think about people who can answer and can bring something out that's lived that out, and you want to have that privilege. Is that five years from now? Is that a month from now? I don't know. That's up to God.

Dean Hulce: I'll tell you real quick other, we had a guy that came through Gabe Van Wormer from Michigan Outdoors had told them, saw our show. Michigan Outdoors had filmed a lot of shows at our camp over the years, and one of them, this guy's wife had said, "Hey, my husband doesn't have a place to hunt anymore." She took it on to call Michigan Outdoors, got our name.

Well, he came up, and I won't mention his name because after several years, he called one day and said, "I can't come this fall." I said, "Well, why?" He said his wife had filed papers, and he said, "I don't know if I can afford it." I said, "Don't ever stay home because you can't afford to be here. You come, and if God supplies later on, if not, he's going to take care of it anyhow."

So we started praying for him. Our grandson, who was young at the time, I forget how old, but every day he'd say, "Did you talk to Mr. Doug? Just tell him we're praying for him." And he came to Christ, and I got a chance to baptize him years later. Like you said, you don't know where that is, but that's our life.

We're going to take a break in just a second because I've got to thank those who make the show possible for us. I was going to just say Matthew 28, and I've said this once in a while on the show, but the very last thing Christ could have told his disciples, which that's us too, is to go into all the world. Right now, all the world is the people that are under your care in this company. It could be when you're out duck hunting or deer hunting or whatever, that's all the world to us. If we're not living that out, we're messing up.

Rob Wynalda: Absolutely. You get that opportunity. We talk about a little bit because we're in the scent industry. You can parallel that to what do you smell like when you're around me? One of the goals is that we want to smell like Christ. We have that privilege, and not just when I go to church, not just when I'm sitting in a meeting with a bunch of people that I know are believers. That's great, and I love the fellowship. But my, what do I smell like when I'm traveling on an airplane and I'm talking to the stewardess?

All the way down the line, guys, we have this privilege to be lights in darkness. Are we really going to be that? What do we smell like?

Dean Hulce: I love it when the disciples walk out of, I think it's with the Sanhedrin, when they walk out and they were found worthy to be punished really because they had been with Jesus. That's what our life should be. If not, we better examine ourselves.

Listen, we're going to take quick break just to share with people and let them know how they can come alongside this ministry, and we'll be right back.

Guest (Male): 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 show that.

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

Dean Hulce: Welcome back to God's Great Outdoors. We're on the Trail to Adventure at Wynalda Packaging and also just across the street from Fourth Arrow, which is first of all, tell us about all your line of products.

Rob Wynalda: Well, Fourth Arrow is a hunting products company. We formed the company, the name is actually coming from Psalm 127: "Blessed is the man whose quiver is full." The short version is I have five children. I had five arrows in my quiver from the time they were born. I would write their name on it. I would tell them, and my wife and I would use it as an object lesson that it was our job to prepare them just like the arrow in my quiver to hit the target for the glory of God.

So that's what it was all about. It became an object lesson when they were in their teenage years and we're having some of those days that you have with teenagers and say, "By the way, we're preparing you to hit it for the glory of God. This may not be comfortable, but there's a goal."

In Fourth Arrow, we have a couple different product lines. One is camera arms, so guys are using it to record their hunts. That was really our first claim to fame. Then the other one would be Wind Scent, which is a vaping unit which is putting scent out. We have all these different scents. It goes with a remote control. That's a fun business. Depending on what you're doing, depending on what you're looking for, scent, bear scent, things like that, some of the donut shop things that we have, that's really a lot of fun.

Then we have Final Rest, which is just shooting systems, tripods, blind mounts, so you can take the unit and actually mount it to the window of your blind. We were taking our camera arm know-how of how you make an arm and how you let it be nice and steady and carry a lot of weight, and next thing you know we're putting guns on our camera systems and going, "Hey, this might be a nice additional product line." So we did that. Then today we have Slayer Blinds. We started them up or we picked them up two years ago. That's mostly a Michigan thing where we're pushing because you're delivering a blind, and that's a little bit different business.

So that's kind of Fourth Arrow in a nutshell. Just really kind of a lot of fun to do it with my fourth child, which is my Fourth Arrow, and so we enjoyed that.

Dean Hulce: I noticed that we asked the question, or Linda did, about who was around the table today, and it's nephew, nephew, nephew, nephew, nephew kind of all the way around the table basically.

Rob Wynalda: We have a little bit of family around. We enjoy that. Usually the guys from Airstream meet us also, and so they'll come on over, and that's why we go there to eat because the deal is we all want to see each other practically daily because of the ability to interact, to see where each other's at, and to encourage each other and also just enjoy some lunch.

Dean Hulce: While you're building each other up and you've got the relationship that does that. Before we took the break, you were talking about bear hunting and that thing together. One of the things I love is I love to turkey hunt. I wouldn't travel across the country to shoot 30, 40 pheasants, but I'll go across to shoot one stupid turkey. Somebody else told me that at one time, and it wasn't my wife. But the thing I like about that is you're sitting with somebody one-on-one, and God created us to be together. I mean, he didn't create us. I've often said I would never make it on alone on the TV show because I want to be around people way more often. I can't do that. That's not me. I want to be that. But you were talking a little bit about even what the Bible says about marriage and the biblical aspects of this.

Rob Wynalda: It's fascinating if you really think about aloneness. The idea that when we get Genesis 1 and 2 sitting there, God creates and I always kind of read the text and kind of smile because God could have just created Adam and Eve together. "Here it is, you're a couple, there you are, I've assigned you in this marriage."

Instead, you have this delay in time where Adam has to sit down and name all the animals. In some ways you could almost imagine Adam sitting here going, "No, that one doesn't sit alongside of me. This one doesn't work. Why is everybody else in pairs and I have nobody?"

Lord, you totally messed up. We know in the text God makes this list of everything is good, good, good, good, and all of a sudden we get into the middle of 2, and he says the first thing that's no good. What is the no good? It's the alone. It's man being by himself.

God does this unbelievable thing that he takes man and out of man he forms this woman out of man to stand beside him, in front of him, to be his companion, to be his equal in so many ways. Yet that privilege of having a wife and being able to live in community with her and being able to live life, to go through it, what a gift from God. I'm not sure if we completely understand that, especially those of us who like to hunt a lot. We generally want to be outside, we generally want to be all by ourselves. Reality is no, image of God is God has made us for that community. He's made us for that. If he gifts us with a wife, and sometimes I think we often lose that sense as we're married, as the years go on, we start to lose the thrill of that gift. It's unfortunate.

Dean Hulce: I think we come in and out of that. It's kind of like watching the Israelites, coming close to God and they lose sight and they come back. Linda's been my best friend since 14 years old. It changed too, and everybody says, "Oh, you're so lucky because she's always been a very avid hunter since about 23, 24 years probably now." She's killed way bigger bucks than I've killed. I say that's because her guide she said no. I've learned to follow her around with a sharp knife. That's what it is.

But there is a spot when we would go to South Dakota and hunt whitetails, tremendous whitetails. We never both got a tag, one or the other of us, so we could hunt side-by-side. That was the best days of hunting we had all year.

Rob Wynalda: My wife won't do that with me, so you should be thankful. She has shot one deer with me all of our married life. I love to hunt. She's been so patient with me. She's been so kind to let me. I've taken all my kids, and my kids love to hunt.

To me, it's been great. I had it, oh, this is probably close to 20 years ago, late rifle season on part of the farm, I saw like five bucks in one night. Just shocking. You don't see five bucks in one night. So I went home and grabbed her and said, "Listen, tomorrow morning at 5:30, we need to be sitting on the other side of that farm, and you're going to get a chance to shoot a buck."

She gets up, goes to the woods with me, we sit in, and sure enough, it gets to be light, and here comes this nice six-point walking down through the field past us. She shoots him, he falls over. She turns to me, hands me the rifle, and says, "Are you happy now?" And I went, "You've got to be joking. I thought I was." What was funny about it was I finally realized, to me it was just like a huge moment, but I was putting onto her something that really wasn't. She was happy for me and just be happy doing that. She doesn't have to sit out there in the woods and freeze. That was not her thing. So okay, I get it, sweetheart. Thank you for being and it was really to me even to this day, it was a real gift for her to go out there and be willing to participate with me in that because she's my wife.

Joe Coy: We're hoping Joe's on the path to that now. He's getting closer. We've been watching her shoot her first deer. That was really neat. I got a text from the woods practically from you, and that was great. We're enjoying following it.

Dean Hulce: We're going to have to break here in a little bit. We got to bring the radio program to an end here shortly, and we'll pick up the podcast. But it's interesting because I got leads me to actually over the last few years almost 300 of these programs. I love every minute of it. Every story's different. I love what your heart is, and obviously the business's heart, because business is your heart. God's been so kind.

I'd be remiss if I didn't add the Cedarville stuff right now because in my board of directors for God's Great Outdoors, half of our board is connected to Cedarville. So if my board was here, they'd say right now, "Oh yeah, his kids go to Cedarville. He's on the board." Of course he is, you know, because that we've been so blessed because they're producing so many strong Christian young people.

Rob Wynalda: God has been so kind at Cedarville, and it's been just an absolute privilege to serve with Dr. White and the staff that's there and then the trustees that are involved. It's just such a rich you get some of those sweet spots in life. You get some of those times in life and people that you meet when you get together with them, you just know that God's preparing you for other things. That's what's happening right now at Cedarville. So it's been a real thrill to be allowed to participate with that.

Dean Hulce: It's a blessing for you and it's a blessing for them. There's another come-together because the board there is all people coming from different directions but coming together for one purpose. That's what Fourth Arrow is too. My board of directors is that way. I told my board the other day at our annual meeting, we're really an elder board. We're here to see God's work get done, and that's the same thing there.

Listen, we're going to have to break from the radio program. Thank you for joining me for this portion, both you guys. Then we're going to pick up in the podcast for our listeners. Hopefully you can if you're listening on the radio, go ahead and find us at any of your podcast where you listen to them. In the meantime, we're going to sign off for our listeners. Join us each week as we head out into God's Great Outdoors on the Trail to Adventure.

Guest (Male): There are special ways to hit the targets in life. The best one is to turn off all the noise in life and concentrate on the purpose that God has for us. Until we can do this and keep our focus on God, we'll find struggle in life.

As we heard today, God calls us to carry the aroma of Jesus Christ through our lives so that others are attracted to Him. If we truly are living a godly life, others will see and figuratively smell Jesus on us. If we have any other aroma on us, it will be the smell of death. We challenge you to carry the aroma of a godly life so others see Jesus in you. There is no greater way to live out your life than living for God.

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 godsgrreatoutdoors.org. Thank you for joining us again this week as we travel down the Trail to Adventure. Please join us each week in God's great outdoors.