Just How I feel About Team Jesus

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Now with extremely limited availability, contact your local retailer for inventory information. This is Stu Epperson from the Truth Talk Podcast, connecting current events, pop culture, and theology, and we're so grateful for you that you've chosen the Truth Podcast Network. It's about to start in just a few seconds. Enjoy it and please share it around with all your friends. Thanks for listening and thanks for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Kingdom Pursuits, where you hear from ordinary people instilled with an extraordinary passion. Together we explore the stories of men and women who take what they love and let God turn their passion into kingdom pursuits. Now, live from the Truth Booth, your host, Robbie Dilmore. There's so many times I wish that, I don't know how to praise God enough for having the job that I have.

Well, how can you imagine like having the Christian Car Guy show to just have the calls that I just had from these unbelievable saints? And then I get to do this show with two unbelievable poster children for, you know, how does God take your passion and use it to build the kingdom? And our first guest, apparently, wow, I'm excited to hear about the story behind this, but it's a new author, Gwendolyn Burton, who wrote the book, You Don't Know Just How I Feel, Hope for the Grieving Heart. So Gwendolyn, based on that title, it sounds like it came from a deep place. It would help if I pushed the button so you could be on the air, Gwendolyn. But you're now on. Good morning. Good morning.

So share with us how that looks like. It sounds like it was the story behind that. Robbie, I tell you, there certainly is a story behind You Don't Know Just How I Feel, Hope for the Grieving Heart. And that story began in 2016, when my then 26-year-old son suffered a seizure. He had epilepsy and passed away.

And it's known as seven unexpected deaths in epilepsy. And with his transition came a journey that I never thought I'd be on, a journey of grief, a journey of learning to navigate that grief journey and dispelling grief journey and dispelling some of the myths, some of the misconceptions that surround grief. And so that's where this book came from, not only those misconceptions in the world, but rather those that we experience in the body of Christ as well.

Oh yeah, You Don't Know Just How I Feel is so well put, and I love the title of that, and so I know we're all excited to hear the journey, but also the hope that's on the other side of that journey. Absolutely. And the other guest today is also somebody kind of new in what they're doing. We have Tony Boyd, who is with Team Jesus.

Everything is possible. And so Tony, how fun to have you this morning. Great to be here, Robbie, and thanks for having me on.

I'd just like to add a little bit first of what you said. They're about getting to come to work every day to worship and praise God and to speak about Him. And to go just a little bit beyond that, what an awesome honor and privilege it is for you, for me, to be chosen by the Creator of everything to represent Him. What an honor.

Oh yeah. You know, it's just like if you chose somebody to go out here and represent you, you're going to hold them to a pretty high standard. And He holds us to a higher standard, and I don't take the privilege lightly. But to move on to Team Jesus' ministry, we're a local outreach.

We're in our infant stages. We do things for people in the community there, buy groceries for needy people. We take a group of underprivileged children to Walmart every year and give them money to buy their own Christmas presents. Just anywhere we see a need, we try to fill it in. And Team Jesus is represented by this beautiful yellow Corvette, one of the new Corvettes.

So for you to see that car, you know, you can see that obviously there's a really high standard. But in order to lower everybody's standards, you know, I have to do my shenanigans. Shenanigans. So speaking of feel, right? So Gwendolyn, you know, as we start these, it's just part of what we do in the show every week is we try to have a little bit of fun to lighten things up with before we get real heavy duty, which obviously we're going to get there. But to begin with, since this has to do with feelings, right? So speaking of feel, you know, for those who don't know, my wife's name is Tammy. So I feel like Tammy and I don't speak the same language sometimes.

I say long distance relationships. And, you know, she says, I have a restraining order. Oh, no, that's not the right language, right? And remember, said the boss, there is no up. That's a different joke. That was last week's joke. I've never recycled a joke in the middle of my jokes.

But anyway, there you go. But anyway, speaking of feel, a fly feels a bug on its back. You've been wondering about this, haven't you? And the bug says, hey, fly on my back. Are you a mite? And he said, I might be, giggles the mite. That's the worst pun I ever heard, groans the fly. What do you expect, says the mite. Are you ready for this?

Yes, let us know. All right. I came up with that on the fly. So, yeah, there you go.

And are you sweating whilst putting fuel in your car these days, feeling sick when paying? Well, you know what you might have. Are you ready for this one? Yes, we're ready.

Are you ready, Tony? You know what you may have? It's the car owner virus. The car owner virus, OK. And I don't know if you've heard about this, but I told the guy who gave up on Superman comics, right? I am told. I said that wrong.

So I've got to get my jokes right here, Tony. I am told the guy who gave up on Superman comics. You know what I was told about him?

No, what were you told? He feels marvelous. Must have been his kryptonite.

He feels marvelous. You liked that, didn't you, Gwendolyn? Yeah, you thought, well, OK, you knew that Marvel made all the comics. OK, so here's the actual riddle that you knew was coming on today's Kingdom Pursuit. And I do like this one. Whose faith made Jesus marvel?

So speaking of marvel, as we just did, who in the Bible did Jesus marvel at their faith? If you know the answer to that, you could call in and win. And we've got an exciting gift today, don't we, Carmen? So call them, tell them what they'll win. If you know the answer to that, if you know the answer to Robbie's, if you know the answer to Robbie's riddle today, go win a family four pack tickets to the dash. See them take on the Asheville Tourist, August 23rd. Yes, that's August 23rd.

And from what I understand, this may be their last home game. So this is your last opportunity to be dashing before the snow, so to speak, in a one horse open eight, six, six, eight, six, six, three, four, eight, seven, eight, eight, four, eight, six, six, three, four, truth. You just have to tell us whose faith did Jesus marvel at? Again, eight, six, six, three, four, truth. And you could win those dash tickets.

We would love for you to do that. So Gwendolyn, I know everybody's kind of wondering the same thing I'm wondering. So you had no hint at all that he was epileptic when he had that seizure? You know, Robbie, and first of all, thank you for having me today. But yes, my son Miles was diagnosed at age 21. Now I have another son, my older son, Robert, was diagnosed at 18 months of age. So we had, our family was very familiar with epilepsy.

Our family, you know, we volunteered. We thought we had all the facts about epilepsy. But when my son Miles, my younger son, was in college, I got a call that said Ms. Burton Miles was in the library studying.

Imagine that a college student in the library studying. Yeah, it could happen. And had a seizure. And so I flew out to Boston. Oh wow, I hate to cut you off, but we got to go to a break. And so when we come back, we're going to hear a lot more from You Don't Know Just How I Feel, Gwendolyn Burton's new book, as well as Tony Boyd with Team Jesus, Everything is Possible by Glorifying God. I love it.

Love, love, love his yellow Corvette. So we've got so much more coming up. Stay tuned. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build the Kingdom. And today we have got, again, poster children for that. I feel so blessed to have with us Gwendolyn Burton.

She is a new author of You Don't Know Just How I Feel, Hope for the Grieving Heart, as well as Tony Boyd with Team Jesus, Everything is Possible. Romans 8-28 is right there on his card. And, you know, really, really neat. Oh, by the way, I should mention that somebody called in.

I thought they were going to win the tickets to the dash, right? All you got to do is tell us whose faith did Jesus marvel at? It's pretty easy. Whose faith did Jesus marvel? I love that story. Like, well, there was a situation there in the Bible where Jesus marveled at a guy's faith. Now, that's pretty interesting. That's pretty fascinating. Don't you think, Tony, that Jesus wouldn't—you're stumped. Well, that's okay.

There's a listener who's going to call, 866-348-7884, and they will be dashing before the snow on April 23rd at the ticket. But anyway, during the break you were telling me, you know, it's just really, really cool that you feel like everybody on earth has a purpose, right? Right. I believe God put everybody here for some specific reason, you know. Some find it, some don't.

No doubt you found what you're supposed to do. And everybody has a different opinion of why God put man here. Here at Team Jesus Ministries we live by one thing. Man was put here to please God. And so the whole ministry is built around pleasing God by glorifying Him. Anything we do, whether it's we buy groceries for people that are having a hard time, they just send us a message on our Facebook page, and we ask no questions.

We just go get the groceries and deliver it to them. But we make sure God gets the glory in everything we do. And when we do that, that pleases the Father. You know, even Jesus said in John 8, I do all things that please the Father. And I know you've heard the Scripture say, it is impossible to please the Father without faith.

Oh, you couldn't be more right. And, you know, I love the line in Chariots of Fire, right? When I run I can feel His pleasure, right? You remember that?

I've never seen the Chariots of Fire. Eric Little was a runner, and he was supposed to be a missionary in Africa. And his sister was complaining to him in the movie that, like, you need to be a missionary in Africa. Well, I'm going to go be a missionary in Africa, but first I've got to run because when I run, and he was an Olympic runner, when I run I can feel God's pleasure. Well, what's really neat about what you said, Tony, is that in the Lord's Prayer, right, we all pray it every single time, I hope, and frequently I pray it a couple times a day. And it says, you know, our Father art in heaven, hallowed be your name, right, thy kingdom come. And then it says, thy will be done. Well, the interesting thing about that word will, if you, and I like to look at words really hard, so if you take the word will and you look at it in the, you know, if you took it from what the Septuagint would say, the Hebrew equivalent word of that is the word Ratzon.

Well, Ratzon in Hebrew means delight. And so, what you're actually saying when you say your will be done is, Jesus, I want you to be, or Father, I want you to be delighted, right, which is I want you to be pleased, right, because if he's delighting, right, you're feeling his pleasure, right, it's the same, it's the same kind of idea. And I often think about that, I actually, you know, have what I call the RSV, that's the Robbie Standard version of the way I pray that. You know, because I usually will say, you know, you know, your delight be done. And then I say, instead of give us this day our daily bread, since Jesus is our daily bread, I always give us this day our daily Jesus.

Right, yeah, exactly. You know, just maybe getting off just a little bit there, we talk about the Lord, we can go in any direction the way I see it, but you talk about his will be done. And so many times people pray, and they don't think about his will, they think about their will, you know, and so if I ask for anything, I ask for very little, mostly forgiveness of my sins. But of course, you know, being a truck driver, I ask for a safe trip, and then I always add to it, if it be your will, you know, and people all the time telling me, Tony, I pray for you, I hope you have a safe trip out there. And I say, well, me too, but you know what, the worst thing that can happen to me is the best thing that could happen to me, because I would be with Jesus, you know, and so whatever the Father's will is, that's got to be our will also.

It's actually because God is for us and who can be against us, right? Absolutely. So something comes along, he's got something that's going to be absolutely unbelievable, like what is the case? Obviously, Gwendolyn, I know everybody's brokenhearted about what your family's been through. Obviously, you have a lot of experience with epilepsy, but I guess we got to get to the point where we can kind of understand a little bit of what you experienced. Can you take us there?

Oh, certainly. After my son, Miles, was diagnosed with epilepsy, I, actually, he was, his epilepsy was controlled with medication, and so this was certainly unexpected. And so when he passed away, I was just, our family was just, you know, thrust into this place of, what happened? How could this happen? He was okay ten minutes before.

We went downstairs and he had suffered a seizure face down in his bed. And so we, I never knew, I couldn't have known then how God would use my grief journey to encourage, to uplift, and to provide validation and comfort to others on their grief journey. And that's how the book came along.

You don't know just how I feel. That's how it was birthed. And so I just began writing this book. I'm guessing that somebody came along, and I can kind of picture this maybe in the funeral line, or something like, I know how you feel. I'm guessing you're mirroring something that you heard from someone.

I'm mirroring something, the title, something that not only I heard, but as I've spoken with countless others, they've heard as well. And actually that is one of the statements that grieving people have told me that really causes them a little angst. When people say you don't know just how I feel, you don't know, I'm sorry, I know just how you feel. And I believe that we cannot know exactly how a person feels. Although we may have similar or common losses, we can't know exactly how a person feels, a grieving person feels, because each of us has a unique relationship with the person who died, our person who died.

And so that's how that title came along. So what, you know, obviously people are, it's an awkward thing, right? You know, to go to a funeral of a parent that's lost a child, it's really unthinkable.

And so it's awkward. What would you tell somebody would be a better thing to say? A better thing that someone might say is, I know that you're in deep pain right now and although I don't know, I can imagine that you're hurting deeply and that I'm here for you, I'm here to support you, something of that nature.

Right, something where you feel like that they are, you know, essentially on your side and wanting to be there in the difficult time. So you know, you had mentioned that obviously you went into this place of unbelievable pain and what happened? What was the turnaround? Let me say that for me, there, although there has been, I've learned to navigate my grief journey, I've learned some of the things to expect.

There has not been a, I would say, a point where there is a turnaround. I believe that to some degree that I will grieve my child for the rest of my life until the Lord joins us together again. But then I also believe that there is hope and as I move forward on my grief journey and knowing that I don't have to live with the excruciating, raw pain of loss that I experienced during the first, and I'll say early years and that's subjective for each person, but that I still experienced the first few years after my transition.

July, he transitioned in July, so this past July was six years. And although I don't feel the excruciating, raw, agonizing pain that I felt when he passed away, I still feel pain. And there are days when that pain comes in, it sits with me and I respect that and I honor that and I try to teach others how to respect and honor their pain as they move forward, knowing that there will be a time where the pain won't be as intense, but to know that there may still be days where you experience pain of loss. Wow, that's beautifully said and, you know, I kind of wanted to take back that question as soon as it came out of my mouth, like I know there could be no turnaround.

I'm glad you handled that graciously. But we'll find out more when we come back about Gwendolyn's hope journey, right? Where she starts to find her hope and where she, and I love that idea of respecting your pain and I want to get into that a little more, as well as Team Jesus.

All things are possible and what Tony is doing with this yellow car, it's bright yellow too, by the way. It's right out here. It's beautiful. And we've got so much more coming up.

Stay tuned. Welcome back to Kingdom Pursuits, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build Kingdom. And just wonderful, wonderful guest God has provided for us today, Tony Boyd with Team Jesus.

Everything is possible. Please God by glorifying Him. I love that, love that line. And Gwendolyn Burton, she is the author of You Don't Know Just How I Feel, Hope for the Grieving Heart. And I would point out that her book is there at KingdomPursuits.com and you can order it right there from Amazon. But, you know, what I'd always tell people is for new authors, man, you have no idea what kind of encouragement you've got in your hand when you buy a book on Amazon and you go back and you rate that book and you tell that author not only that you enjoyed the book, but specifically, you know, I read this part and it meant so much to me. What an encouragement you can be because people go on this journey, right? They're scared to death to write a book. I know I would be. And then they step out and do it and then, oh, to have somebody come back and say, God touched me when they read your book. I mean, it means so much.

So, as you order books on Amazon, you know, think there's somebody out there that laid their self out and put out a lot of risk in order to come on and do that. But now I have the absolute joy of I have all these riddlers. We have Minnie and Jill in Orlando are all calling with an answer to whose faith that Jesus marveled at. But before I give this to anybody, let me say that none of them apparently are going to the Dash game because Minnie's in Ohio, Jill is in Richmond, and Orlando says he just wants to answer no prize. So, you three all means stay on because I want to get to all three of you. But if somebody else wants to call in that only wants to come to the Dash game, you know, we got room for you at 866-348-7884. But first, we're going to go to Minnie is in Ohio.

How exciting is that? Minnie, you're on the Kingdom Pursuits. Good morning.

Good morning. So, whose faith did Jesus marvel at? The Centurion's soldier. Isn't that cool? Isn't that cool?

Now, Jill in Orlando, stay with me if you had the same answer. But, you know, it's one of the neatest things that he didn't marvel at any of the Jews' faith. Didn't marvel at any of the Jews' faith. He marveled at this Roman Centurion's faith. And what do you think, Minnie, it was that he marveled at? Well, he didn't even ask him to come home. He said, you just say the word, and I know it's going to happen because I say the word and things happen for me.

Oh, you're exactly right. He knew the authority that he had because he had authority. So, you know, all he had to do was say the word and not even have to come home with him. So, he wasn't even wanting to bother Christ. He just wanted him to speak the word so his servant would be better.

He would be well, he wouldn't be sick anymore. Oh, that's so well said. So well said, Minnie.

I'm guessing you don't want to go to the dash game in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. My granddaughter was just out there last week. Oh, well, she was here.

We could get her the tickets, but we have a prize vault that we are going to give you access to. So, I'm going to put you back on hold and let our producer, Carmen, get your information so we can help you out there with something. Minnie, I'm so grateful for your answer.

It's just beautiful. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, next up we have Jill, who is in Richmond.

So, Jill, you are on Kingdom Pursuits. Yes. Good morning. Hello.

Had you, how about you, have you got another answer about who's... No, she gave the same answer I was going to give. It's all right. Well, I love it.

I love it. I would love to know your take on that verse. Well, I mean, it's just what the text says.

I read it before. He said, yes, he was going to come to the guy's house. And the man told him, no, but speak the word only and he should be healed. So, that's all right.

That wasn't after any prize anyhow. No, no, that's... I don't think I should be running up your bill for too long.

I'm not a Christian anyhow, and I don't think I should be running up your bill and you not getting anything out of it. Well, let me just tell you that I think it's absolutely wonderful, Jill, that you would call us. I'm really honored that you would take the time to do that. And you would listen to our station. Are you listening to WLES in Richmond? Well, sometimes I listen to one, sometimes I listen to another. So, hopefully, you find our show somewhat entertaining.

I appreciate you listening. Well, it's somewhat interesting. There are four kinds of radio programs. One is the church program and one is the sports program.

And one is a program about how to invest money you haven't got. And the other is the call-in conservative talk show. Now, I like the call-in conservative talk show, but I can't stand the sports shows. They're so boring. And I don't necessarily have to believe in what you say. My idea is just don't bore me out of my skull. Those sports programs bore the heck out of me.

And there's programs about how to invest money you haven't got. Right, right. I'm with you, Jill.

I am. I also find it fascinating that you have the answer, right? So, you know your Bible.

It sounds like that. Well, I know what I'm talking about. I've read philosophy.

I've read Aristotle's works and others. Well, Jill, can I ask you a question? You said you're not a Christian, but what do you consider a Christian to be? Could you define that for me, please? Oh, Christian is somebody who believes in Christ and believes that he's the savior and believes in original sin. And I do not. It's you don't believe in Jesus. No, I do not believe in original sin or the necessity. Original sin. I don't understand what you're saying. I don't believe in any sin inborn in me.

I'm sorry. She's saying that she doesn't believe that mankind is bad inherently. She believes all men are good. Are you right?

Am I right? Well, Jill, we are grateful for your call. We really are and grateful for you listening. Oh, okay. God bless.

Thanks for calling, Jill. Okay. All right. Bye-bye.

All right. We got Orlando is in High Point. My old friend Orlando.

Orlando, you're on Kingdom Pursuits. Good morning. Good morning, Robbie. How you doing? I am awesome.

I am awesome. And we can all be praying for Jill. She sounds a bit. Yes, that's the main thing.

That is the main thing. She needs to know Jesus. Yeah, the Father must be drawing her to be listening to a Christian show.

And Jesus said, no one comes to the Father unless he draws them. It's an interesting situation. There's no doubt about it. She sounds like a very intelligent person. And I'm.