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Stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. Hey, this is If Not For God with Mike's Wick, and I've got my good friend, Robbie Dilmore, and this morning we were looking at Revelation 12, and it's verse 11, and it says, and they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they loved their lives not unto the death. And so I thought about that, and I said, man, that is a pretty cool verse. And so I've got a friend of mine, Robbie, named Jeff Hoover, and he said that when he was overseas and when they were talking to people in Israel and they were trying to share the gospel with the people who were not Christians, they may have been Muslims or whoever they were.
And he said... They're in Israel. A lot of them are Jewish. Oh, a lot of them are Jewish. That's a tough one.
A lot of them are Jewish. He said, but people could argue with your logic. They could argue with your arguments that you're making for Christ or whatever it is. He said, but it was hard for them to argue. With your testimony, because that's your personal experience, and I'm sure that you've seen that as well.
Yeah, what you're hitting on is the basis of your show. Because, you know, your original tagline was what? Right. Not for God. If not for God, with you know, hopelessness turned into hope.
That's right. Right. And that's a story. Yeah, and it's a fascinating thing. You mentioned that verse.
Another one of my favorites is in Acts, right? When it says, you're going to receive power from on high to be what? My witness.
Well, you're a witness to what? Your own part of the story of where you've actually experienced Jesus. And so, you know, your personal story is amazing. And I love in the 119 Psalm, it also says, and this is a beautiful verse, one of my favorites, it says, I'll give my testimony before kings and not be ashamed. In other words, just as you said, when you're telling your story.
That's right. You know, that's where God connected to you. And I see it time again on the radio that when people Tell where God interacted with their life, whatever that looked like. That's right. Their light shines brightest.
And that's the power that you receive based on the book of Acts. And so, how fun this show! We're getting to that story with you. Yeah, that's right. You know, in the Bible, there's a verse and it says, Unless the Lord builds the house, the laborers labor in vain.
And so, you know, I had a friend of mine named Pastor Mark from, he was from Cross Assembly, and he would always say, He said, You know, Mike, he said, I understand what people are doing and people are doing a lot of things, he said, but sometimes he said, I get a little bothered when they say, my ministry, my ministry, my ministry, my thing, my, my, my, my, my. He said, it's all the Lord's ministry. And so I'm reminded, you know, no matter how many things that I can do for the Lord, that unless it was the Lord pulling me out of my darkness, pulling me out of my shame, pulling me out of my depression, I wouldn't be sitting here with you. At all. And you know, it's funny, Robbie.
You and I kind of have a connection. And the reason I say that is because I know you were in the car business and I was in the insurance business.
So essentially, we were both in sales, but we have a connection. There's a guy named Pastor Dick Little who was the lead pastor over at Renalda Presbyterian Church. And I think now they call it Renalda EPC or whatever it is. With one of my favorite guests that I've had on, which is Dr. Alan Wright.
You remember him, right? You know him. And he has a great, great story of grace. But when I was growing up, probably kindergarten, first grade, second grade, I went to Renalda Presbyterian. Did you really?
And I sure did. And I remember Pastor Dick Little. And I remember there were little things that he would talk about. And I forget so much, but I remember the atmosphere. And I remember that there was something special about Pastor Little.
And so, and I'll tell my story, but you actually have a pretty cool story with Pastor Pastor. Dick, yourself. Do you remember that? Oh, who could ever forget?
So, at this point in my life, it was 1996, so it was a few years ago, but I had been diagnosed with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma, which was a type of lymphoma that was extremely aggressive. And unfortunately, it was in my skin, and I had tumors all over me. And my sister worked for the University of Michigan Hospital at the time, and she's like, Robbie, oh my goodness, this particular type of lymphoma that you have, there's only been three cases in it in the United States, and none of them lived two months. Wow. And and so it was a pretty gloomy you know diagnosis for sure and that was supposed to start chemotherapy On Monday, this was a Friday afternoon, okay, and I'm at the dealership and I was covered in tumors that were in my skin everywhere, and so I was sitting back in my office because it kind of looked like a freak and I didn't want people to.
You know, be shocked when they came into the dealership, but they all knew where the general manager was back there. And so that particular day, Pastor Little came in, amazing man, amazing man of God. Just as humble as you could possibly imagine. And he says to my finance manager, who he knew because Joe went to Ronaldo Press and said, Joe, the Lord has told me there's somebody here that needs to be healed. And Joe said, Oh man, that's got to be Robbie.
He's got this horrible lymphoma. He's back in his office because he doesn't like to come out. until something happens with these tumors. And so, Pastor Little comes back there with Joe, and he says, Well, I've come back here to, you know, the Lord has said that there was somebody here that needed to be healed, must be you. And so, I need to anoint you with oil and lay hands on you.
Well You know, I came to Christ in 91, had no idea what that was. And I just said, man, this is totally weird.
So it was not a matter of Robbie's faith. I've always said that, you know, just received this. But here's this guy, and he says that. And I'm like, okay, you go for it, you know. And so I sit down, he anoints me with oil, and he prays for me.
And You know, I often think of the boldness of like, how many times have I felt the Lord tell me to do something? And I'm like, well, you sure? Because that's awful awkward. And I can't imagine how awkward he felt that day, but it changed my life forever because, you know, when he prayed, I felt something. I mean, I don't know.
It's a tingling. It's a something like there's, I've been prayed over, but this was a real deal prayer, you know? And uh Of course, there were tons of people, my Sunday school class, everybody in the world praying for me. But all I know is that was on Friday afternoon. And Monday morning, I woke up before my chemotherapy treatment.
And I did not have a tumor. No small miracle, folks, because I mean, I could see them. They were all over me. And they were all gone. It was like gone.
Yeah. You could see kind of where they had been, but they, you know, they were raised and they were tumors, but they weren't there. And so I went into my doctor's appointment. Dr. Cooper was an oncologist at the time, and he looks at me and he goes, What in the world?
And he goes, Man, I got to see what's happened.
So they did another biopsy and it came back and they said, Well, essentially, we can't really explain it, Robbie, other than apparently the cancer turned on itself and ate itself. And again, that was 30 years ago. I've been cancer-free for 30 years. That's right. Praise God.
I mean, it's a complete. Like, and that was a place where I interacted with God, right? That's right. You know, when I tell that. Testimony, I can't tell you the people that have been encouraged because 2 Corinthians chapter 1 comes in there too, where the God of all comfort comforts you with the comfort, so you could comfort others with a comfort you were comforted with.
Well, I can't tell you the people I have comfort with my experience with that and thinking that there is hope. God is in control of these things. And the bigger, you know, you realize God is, the smaller the giant.
Well, you know, and it's interesting that you tell that story because I'll get to the second part in a second, but that's really the third, maybe the third or the fourth part of my story is healing about how healing really helped me to confirm, a belief, confirm in my mind that Christianity was true, that this thing was real. But then I started, here's another thing that we have in common, Robbie. I started to go, we left Rinalda for whatever reason, my mom left, and we started to go to Calvary Baptist. Right. Well, you went there as well.
Yeah, that was where I attended Calvary Baptist. For almost 30 years. Yeah. And so we started. Pastor Mark Quartz was just phenomenal.
He wasn't a good preacher. He was a great preacher. And I remember that guy could communicate a message like almost nobody that I knew. And what he would do is he wouldn't just get up there and speak, but I remember his sermons would come alive. It was, and I don't even know how to explain it.
It would just, he would talk about how, you know, I remember one time he was talking about how the Titanic and they said it was unsinkable. And he said, God is in control. God is in control. And another time he told a story about how a young man was a homeless guy and he found $30,000 and he turned it in. And, you know, they interviewed this guy later on.
They said, why would you turn this money in? You needed this. You got nothing. He said, when I was a young man, he said, my mom told me, always be honest, always be honest. And we have an expression in sales and it says that facts tell, but stories tell.
Sell. You know, so I could sit here and give you a bunch of facts about everything, and people may not remember it. But see, our friend Terry over here, he's a great storyteller. And he's an author of several books, but facts tell, but stories sell. And so I was in elementary school, probably all the way up to high school, maybe from third grade all the way up to high school.
And on and off, we would go to Calvary Baptist. And I remember I would be there, and it was just, I guess, there were some things that I got. I had some moments where I remember crying in church or whatever it was, but it never really stuck to me. And when I went to Appalachian State, the professors all said, well, there's no such thing as God. It's like believing in some fairy or something, fairy tale in the sky.
And I'm like, well, I guess if that's what they say, these are the experts, right?
So I guess I kind of fell away if I was ever even there in the first place. But then my senior year of my junior year, Of college, I had a class called African American History. And when I had this class, I was sitting in the class, and there was a girl who walked in, and she had blonde hair and blue eyes. And I was sitting with my friends, and I said, Do you see that girl right there? And they said, Yeah, I said, I'm gonna marry that girl.
And they said, Ah, they call me Zwick, Zwick, you're just saying stuff or whatever. And but I remember the first day of class, she spoke up and they said, If there's two people that you could meet in history, who would you want to meet? And I don't remember who one of them was, but the other one, she said, I want to meet Jesus Christ. And I remember there was another girl in the class who had already spoken up. She said, oh, I should have said that.
You know, but I remembered her saying that. And I remember she was outspoken about her faith. And so it's funny. At the end of that semester, we just went, I went my way. She went her way.
I never thought, I didn't really think about her much. And I never thought I'd see her again. But she actually sent me an email through campus email over the summer. And she said, hey, I hope you had a good summer, this and that. And I said, man, I said, I'd like to meet with this girl because she was cute.
And so I didn't know what to say. And I said, Hey, I'd like to talk to you about Jesus. That was the last thing that I actually wanted to talk about. That was the last thing that I was thinking about. But I was thinking about this cute girl, and I said, let's talk about Jesus.
And we got together and we started dating, and we dated, you know, long term or whatever. But that's the fascinating thing about that, from my perspective, is to go: God meets you where you are. That's right. In other words, in your case, it's. He knew that that girl would get your attention.
And he knew the path that eventually it would lead to. I mean, it's a beautiful thing. In my case, I know for certain that he came after me with my desire to sell cars. I wanted to sell more cars and I wanted to be more successful. You know, in that way, whatever that was, crazy as it was, that was my dream, right?
And so the way I ended up. Getting to know Jesus was I bought the book series on tape, actually, The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. Not because I wanted to meet Jesus, but because I wanted to become more successful. And there, at the beginning of that book, it says, Oh, if you want the power of positive thinking, the first thing you need to do is get up an hour early every morning and read the Bible. And I was like, I spent $100 for this thing to tell me I need to read the Bible.
I was like, Man, I've been ripped off. But see, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale knew, right, that faith comes from hearing and hearing the word by the word of God. And that's exactly where he met me, not because I wanted. To know Jesus because I was there in that particular place and He came for you.
And it's cool. And my wife was an interesting part of that too. She was like, and she was the same way. If you're going to date me, you've got to go to church. And I'm like, you got to be kidding me.
That's my day off. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, that's how it works. I love it. I love it.
Well, you know, and it's cool. And we both, so it's funny. Here's another connection. We both had a woman. We were interested in dating them, but they said, hey, you got to come to church.
And she, this lady, young lady kept bugging me about Jesus. You got to give your life to Jesus. And she, and she, you know, the thing that I remember, Robbie, is that she really cared. Yeah, she must have really loved you. Yeah, she, she didn't, she didn't have, she didn't, she wasn't an apologetic in apologetics and she didn't have all the answers or whatever.
But I remember she would give me these books to read. And she would try to do everything that she could to try to get me to know the Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. And you know what? I didn't always. I didn't always think about what she knew or whatever.
But what stuck to me, Robbie, was that she cared and that she cared enough about me because, see, I'm sure that it was awkward for her to talk to me about Jesus when I didn't want to hear about it. But she cared enough about where I was going or where I was going to spend eternity to keep sharing Jesus with me, to keep trying to give me these resources. And I remember one day we were sitting there and she said, Mike, you need to give your life to Jesus. And I was like, fine, I'll do it. You know, and I wasn't.
I I don't know how to explain it. Because it was like nothing changed. It was almost like for me to get her off of my back. But then it was also like I. I was saying to myself, Okay, I've made this decision.
And once I've made this decision, I've got to stick with it.
Okay. And so I ended up looking into stuff, praying, all this stuff. My dad was a non-religious Jew. He was a secular Jew, grew up, raised in New York, you know, nominally Jewish. I guess they would go to temple on the high holidays and stuff like that.
But he got a guy gave him a book, a Christian guy, about a guy who it was a Rego surgeon of the rusty knife, and about this guy who would pray for people and he would tell them to read the Bible when he would, you know, pray for them and do all this stuff, and they would get healed. And that was what got my attention.
So, when I was younger, I used to drive a lot. I did a lot of traveling. Two summers, I went to Michigan and Minnesota. But I remember there was a license plate, and it was from Missouri. Do you remember the old Missouri license plate?
Yeah. What did it say? Um Something about that, you know, their deal that you say show me state or something like that. The show me state. And so you could sit here and try to argue logic with me all day and all night.
But when I saw that, when people prayed in the name of Jesus and somebody like you had cancer and Jesus would immediately heal the cancer, it was hard for me to argue with that. And I said, okay, there's something to this thing. And then over the next year until about 2005, I really looked into it. I really prayed about it. And we started going to a church in Winston-Salem.
And I lived in Winston-Salem. I went to Pinedale Christian Church. I think the guy's name was Bill McKenzie. Have you ever heard of him? Oh, very much.
I mean, that's another connection. At some point, I'll explain. Yeah, at some point, Joe. But I started going to his church, and I felt the need to come up to the front when he was giving the invitation. And one day, there were two factors in it.
I felt like I was the only one who was going up there, so I don't want to go up by myself. But the second thing that he said, he said, that the devil will never tell you not to give your life to Jesus. He'll just tell you to do it later. And he said, today is the day of salvation. And I felt so strongly of an urge to go up to the front and give my life to Jesus.
And when I saw other people running up as well, I said, I can go up too. And I ended up doing it. I got baptized. And after that, man, it's just, it's my life has never been the same. Never been the same.
And I'm sure you've seen the same thing too. Oh, it's it's more than beautiful. when you come later in life for whatever reason, I you know, you you see this hunger in somebody that like, man, I that guy is really Changed, right? You see that all of a sudden he's reading the Bible, he's thinking about God. In other words, there's a real change in that.
Again, it's wonderful that a lot of people came to Christ when they were younger, or maybe they recommitted their life. It's just a cool thing to watch. You know What God is doing in somebody's life, and this is huge because, if not for God, right? Essentially. Yeah.
I like what your friend said a minute ago: that surrender isn't like giving God a million dollars. It's giving God a quarter at a time, right? And so it was that you told that girl, okay, this is what I'm going to do. And for some reason, that gave you some type of inward connection with Christ that you'd not had previously. And so it was a step, whatever step, God knows.
Was that actually the point? I don't know. It was a point. And I. You know, I went to church as a small child and I got to see some things that made sense to me.
Um, And made me think that this made sense, but my biggest issue was. I felt That God lied at the very beginning of the Bible. And so, if that's the case, how could this be true? That God told Adam, if you eat of this fruit, you will surely die. That's right.
And he eats it, and he doesn't die for 900 and some odd years. Like, really? I mean, you know, because I did not understand death.
Okay. That was fundamentally my issue: is that Robbie didn't understand that death means you're separated from God. That's right. And that Adam did die the very moment, and that's the reason why he was ashamed because he was naked. And so.
You know, I used that on my wife the other day. She was like, Well, when you came in the room the other day, you looked ashamed. I said, I was ashamed because I was naked.
So I did. That's the deal. That just comes with the fall, right? And that made all kinds of sense to me. But it's fascinating, isn't it?
How God gets you the answer. You needed to see it through a healing. That's right. I needed to know. how to unpack that.
Real truth that was there in the book of Genesis that I did not understand. That's right. And I needed to see it through healing. And there's a verse in the Bible that I've always remembered where Jesus was talking, I guess it was to the Pharisees, and he said, If you do not believe me for the words that I speak, he said, believe me for the works that I do.
So, in other words, yeah, I'm telling you the truth. I'm speaking the truth. He said, but I understand. Anybody could tell you anything. I'm over here.
I'm raising the dead. I'm healing the sick. The blind see. The deaf can hear.
So, yes, my actions are also proving my words to be true. And so I thought that was interesting as well. And so I would go along probably from around 2005 to maybe 2009 or 10. And I believed in healing. And I knew it was true.
And this and that. And I would see little cases of where God would just speak to me and there were miracles. But then one day I was in my car. I would always, true story. I would always listen to the Truth Network.
Man, I'd listen to John MacArthur. I'd listen to Adrian Rogers, David Jeremiah. It was the same guys every morning. Charles Stanley. But then there was this one guy, I think he would come on.
His name was Pastor Chad Harvey. Oh, yeah. He was over at Raleigh First. I don't know if he's still on. I think he may be.
He is. He's still on. But he would come on every morning and he would talk about healing. And he gave a story about Tommy Hicks and how the Lord spoke to him. And he had these healing crusades down in, I think it was Argentina.
And I just, he caught my attention and I started going to his church. And I saw that not only were they talking about healing, but they were actually praying for people to be healed. And it was happening.
So there was a guy named Tom something. I can't think of his name. but this guy had pancreatic cancer and he was dying they were actually making the funeral arrangements and they brought him up to the front of the church and they prayed for him they prayed for him that jesus would heal him and they went back in and they tested they just want to they said i want to see how bad this pancreatic cancer thing has gotten and they tested him and they tested him and they tested him 38 times and they said we can't find anything jesus healed him and this is cool man i want to be a part of that and that guy was on fire he's still Is on fire. I still watch him sometimes. And so I would go to that.
But then it was probably around 2015, which when I was going through a tough time of my life, I was going through a divorce. And there was this lady that I met on accident, but on purpose by God. We've talked about her, Nanette Noel. No, of course. And she was showing me some homes.
I didn't look at it. I didn't buy the home, but she said, Hey, we have a prayer meeting at my house every Tuesday or whatever night it was. And she would literally have people come in her home who there was a lady with a shattered leg with a brace on. And people would, and they prayed for, and she would pray for these people. And the lady took the brace off and started running up and down the stairs.
This lady had a broken leg and was healed. People who had broken wrists and would literally throw their stuff down. Recently, she prayed for a lady named Sarah, Sarah Rubel. And I introduced her to Terry over here. And Nanette prayed for Sarah.
This was probably a month ago. And she had brain cancer. And she said, I just felt heat in my head. Like a heat, like I was being healed. And I was like, man, this is awesome.
So I wanted to be a part of that. And then I saw healing in my own life. And so, and this was actually before I met Nanette, but back in 2010, you know, there's salvation. And then we always talked about sanctification, about how God takes you where you are and he kind of cleans you up. But man, I struggled with women.
I struggled with women. I struggled with alcohol, even after I had become a Christian. And I didn't know how to stop it. But God has a way of getting your attention. And so back in 2010, I would go and I was struggling with women.
And I remember I was, I had woken up the next morning after being with a woman in 2010. And I don't know how to explain it other than this, but I woke up. And when I woke up, I felt death. It just felt like death was in that apartment. And I couldn't, it was in Raleigh.
I couldn't get out of there fast enough.
So I would routinely go get checked for STDs and stuff like that after, you know, after I. Did my crusades with women or whatever you want to call it. And I'll never forget, I was over in Hillsboro and I got a phone call and a guy said, Mike, do you remember me? And I said, no. He said, you took a test over here in High Point.
And I remember where I was, and I started sweating. And he said, you need to come back in. And he explained to me, he said, Mike, you took an HIV test. And he said, one of the tests came back negative, but the other test came back positive. He said, so we need to retest you.
So I went back in and they gave me a quick test. And the quick test, that was the first thing that they did. And that said I was fine. But I went home that night and I prayed and I prayed and I asked Jesus, I said, God, take this away from me, whatever it is. And at three o'clock in the morning, I heard a voice in my ear and it said It is gone.
And so I went back in, and they called me back, and they said all the tests were negative. Right. So I went back in and I got tests every single month. And I went in and I never, it was always free. And I went to the doctor at the hospital and the doctor said, well, maybe your body fought it off.
And I said, my body did not fight that off. That was God. And God is still a miracle-working God. He still works miracles today. And if you need a miracle right now, Jesus could give you your miracle.
Wow, the meter, I mean, that is neat. That is, Michael, and it's wonderful. But you know the actual Healing that took place from what I hear and from what I understand knowing you. is that you no longer met your needs. With women that way.
Right, right. I mean, obviously, you're married, you have a beautiful family, and all these things.
So there's healing that is physical, like, okay, that. Yeah. But when it All right, for my YouTube channel, If Not For God with Mike Zwick. Just like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell.
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