This is the Truth Network. Welcome to If Not Forgot. Stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. If not for God with Mike Zwick, I've got the one and the only Robbie Dilmore, the Christian car guy in the house.
And we are talking today about pressing on towards the mark. And we were talking about this, Robbie. One of the things that you said is you said there's something from the book of Psalms. Is that right? Right, teach me to number my days.
Right. It does.
So, and the other verse that I was looking at was Philippians chapter 3, where it says, I press on towards the mark for the higher calling in the Lord Jesus Christ. But I was reminded before the show, I was talking about a guy named Josh, who was the number one salesperson selling books door-to-door back in 2004 when I was in Michigan. And 80 hours a week, man, tough job. It is a tough job. It is a tough job.
Doors and you're slamming your face. Rejection. No, rejection, man. But man, it taught me a lot about life, brother. It taught me a lot about life.
But what everybody would do is they would kind of look at their watches and we would finish up at 9 or 9:30 at night. All right. And what he did was different. Instead of saying, oh gosh, I've got another three hours and then I'm done, he would say, I've only got three hours left. I want to make the most of my time so I can make as many sales as I can before 9 o'clock or before 9:30.
And I thought about it, it can be the same thing in our Christian life. You know, I've heard somebody say one time, Robbie, they said that the devil wants you to think that this life is really long and that eternity is really short. But the truth is, as you know, it says in the Word of God, it says, Don't you know that your life is like a vapor or a mist? You're here for a moment and then you're gone, and eternity lasts forever. And I was actually talking to my friend down in South Carolina named Todd.
I'll leave his last name out of it. But he's going through a very difficult time. He's working at Chick-fil-A. He's having a tough time. You know, he always tries to keep a positive attitude, but when I was on the phone with him, I could tell that he was discouraged.
He was disgruntled. He was upset, something to do with his children. And. You know, I I asked him, I said, Todd, I said, let me ask you something. I said, If you could push a button.
Everything would be great with your kids. They're acting great. They're acting right. I said, you're making a million dollars a year, you've got all your stuff together. But you die and go to hell.
Would you trade that with what you're going through now and you know that you're going to be in heaven forever? He said, Not for a minute. Yeah, I mean therein lies the Opportunity we all have almost every moment, right? Just as your friend talked about, that you only have so many moments.
Well, every moment we Can sit there and go, Okay, am I going to be focused on? me, my problems, what my situation is, things that are disturbing me. And how does that make people feel that are around you when they know that you're essentially consumed with Oh, I've got to be here, I've got to go do this, or you know, I'm I'm you you know, how do people feel when they're around you, right? But it's it's an amazing thing that God's teaching us to be more like Jesus. You know, how much of my time during the day am I worried about Gee.
Am I Am I getting towards the mark of being like God. Like Am I concerned about what he's concerned about? Or am I concerned about what I'm concerned about? And again, that idea of. you know My situation, you know, what I call the larger story.
The larger story being God's story, am I going to be consumed with that, or am I going to be consumed with Robbie's story? And every time, you know, and really, if you just compare Judas to Peter. Hmm. Right, Judas took his life because it was all about Judas to some extent. This didn't play into what I thought was going to happen, and so this is on me, and blah, blah, blah.
For whatever reason, You know, Peter looked at it differently. and decided to dig into it after he denied Christ. Similar situation. But the beauty of it was apparently Jesus knew the answer was, do you love me, Peter? Do you love me, Peter?
And, you know, one of the I heard a preacher say years ago, I won't even say which one it was, I know, but he said there was a part in the Bible where Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law. Do you remember that? Sure. And the preacher said, now we know why Peter denied Christ because he healed his mother-in-law. But, but, you know, obviously it's just a joke.
But, you know, the difference between an in-laws and outlaws, in-laws, and outlaws, right? I'm sure you're gonna outlaws are wanted, you know. But, you know, going back to this, I, and we talked about this before the show, but there was a famous race, and you could still go on YouTube and watch the race, but it was the Miracle Mile, they called it. And it was the first race, it was August the 7th of 1954, and it was with Roger Bannister, who was the first man to break the four-minute mile. But it was also another guy named John Landy, who was from Australia.
And they were both running this race. And towards the end of the race, John Landy was a good bit ahead of Roger Bannister. And they were about to come down to the home stretch. And you can watch it, and John Landy kind of almost stopped in the middle of his tracks and turned around. and looked at Roger Bannister.
and Roger Bannister passed him right on by and won the race. And after the race he was very gracious, John Landy. But what John Landy said to the reporter was this: He said, If I wouldn't have looked back, He said I would have won. If I wouldn't have looked back, I would have won. And so the Bible says, I press on towards the mark for the higher calling in the Lord Jesus Christ.
And that means, hey, you might have done some great stuff 10 years ago. You might have been like me and done some really stupid stuff and made a lot of big mistakes, but. You know, there's an expression that we use, Robbie, and it's yesterday's history, tomorrow is a mystery, today's a gift. And that's why they call it the present. And Larry Bird was actually pretty famous.
He never used to try to pad his stats or anything like that. At the end of the game, sometimes they would, hey, let me get a couple of extra buckets at the end. But he wasn't concerned about that. He was concerned about winning the game and how the team did. And they asked him why he didn't look at his stats.
And he said this. He said, as long as I'm looking at my stats from behind, he said, I'm not focused on the next game. And so in the Christian life, if we're constantly, and I know I've done this, beating myself up for all the mistakes I made or said, oh, I could have changed this or I could have changed that, then I'm not focusing on what the Lord has for me today. Yeah, and and you know, here at the Truth Network, we you know Stu Epperson is our fearless leader.
Well, his dad we referred to affectionately as Big Stew went to be with Lord a few years ago. But he he was the first person I ever heard say this. He said, Um that if your dreams are not bigger Than what you did in the past? Right? If your glory days are what you focus on rather than your dreams, like what are you dreaming this?
It's bigger than what has happened in the past. And again, he was saying this when he was in his 80s, right? And this was the man that founded, you know, Salem. Radio. And so he's obviously lived some big glory days, but his dreams were always always bigger than that and I and and I find that fascinating.
As long as My dreams are in line with what You know, I feel like God wants In my future, right? Like, where are we going? Because I don't want to do this alone. You know, I want to do it in unison with you. And so, pressing on towards the mark, you know, that mark, like he said, is the higher calling.
And as we've talked about in previous shows, heaven touching earth. And when you have those moments, That Require the Holy Spirit, require You know, a sensitivity to what God's doing in a moment. It's just this simple.
Okay. Yeah. Our church, we went to a boon a weekend before last. And that Sunday morning, I was going to preach, right, as you normally would. I was going to preach in the campground.
And so I was sitting there in the campground. I'd made my camp coffee. You can smell the campfire in the background. And I'm the only person up as. You know how I am.
Okay? And as I'm looking across the skyline. all of a sudden I see these beautiful big pine trees. And I noticed just the way that their branches were, They were praising God. Like, and you just think about a pine tree.
Usually the end of their branches might be turned down. These were turned up. And so every single branch set. was praising God. Hmm.
And I was thinking at the same time about the passage In Hosea, excuse me, Haggai chapter 2, he's talking about go to the mountain and bring wood. That's right.
Well, would In Hebrew, it is the same thing as a tree and it's alive. And again, Jesus obviously went to the mountain bringing his own wood. Certainly. went to the mountain bringing his own wood, his father brought the fire. Mm-hmm.
But the idea that that that would is alive and it in and of itself Is praising God. Just look at it. You can see it. And it has a single mindset. In some ways, I'm envious of like, man, I was just sitting there going, man, they they got it.
I just would love, like you said, to spend you know, every day praising Jesus and Hopefully, we can continue to do that. As long as we're here, my favorite psalm - I know a lot of people like the 23rd Psalm and a few others.
Well, it's close. I love Psalm 103 as well, but I would say my favorite is Psalm 150. And this is what it says: it's the last Psalm. And you know that it says, Praise ye the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary.
Praise him in the firmament of his power. Praise him for his mighty acts. Praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with the sound of the trumpet. Praise him with a psaltery and harp.
Praise him with a timbrel and dance. Praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals. Praise him upon the high-sounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath, praise the Lord.
Praise ye. The Lord. And so I remember years ago, I was over at Asheville selling insurance, and there was a lady, I was older, in her mid to late 80s, and she said something, and she says, Mike, she says, When praises go up, blessings come down. And I was just like, wow, this is so exciting. I'd never heard this.
And then I went around and started telling people, and they're like, yeah, I know that. You know, but it's like, you know, it's like, you know, that. But are you putting it into practice? You know, and I remember sometime, one time somebody was telling me, he said that people say that knowledge is power. Knowledge is power.
And he said, no, it's not. He said, the application of knowledge is power. Because anybody could know anything. He said, even the book of James says that faith without works is dead. But when you start to put, you know, because even if you look at the word of God, even if you look at a Bible, you know, if you don't do anything with it, if you're not praying, if you're not treating this as the living, breathing word of God, then it's just words on a paper.
But if you pray and you say, Lord, I want you to speak to me, Lord, speak to me in your word today. How can this apply to me? And some days, Robbie, I just open the book randomly and it takes me somewhere. And that's exactly what I need to hear for today. And I'm trusting in the Lord with all my heart and leaning not onto my own understanding.
But at the same time, it's like, man, when I realize that I've got the living, breathing Holy Spirit living with inside of me, he empowers me and enables me, not because of me, but through him living inside of me, to do a lot more. Charles Spurgeon, many years ago, they asked him, they said, there was a guy who kind of followed him for a couple of days and wanted to see what he was doing. And the guy, when he was done, he says, I can't believe this. He said, you do the work of two men. And Charles Spurgeon said, it's because there's two men living inside of me.
There's two men living inside of me. And uh And I'm sure you've seen that too.
Well, You know, and and Charles Spurgeon didn't live very long. Yeah, but the years he lived, oh my gosh. you know, what he was able to do and You know, I Stu knows Ted Burton well, or knew Ted Burton well, I'm sure he he's in heaven now, but um He didn't come to Christ until he was like... 58 or whatever, and he was an alcoholic. He would tell you he was in a...
in a hotel room. He was a salesman. He he sold um Restaurant equipment. And he was in a hotel room, as you can imagine, the salesman in a hotel room drinking. And he's just flipping through the channels.
And. You know, as it would be, Billy Graham comes on and he comes to know the Lord. Praise God. And He immediately joined Christian Businessmen's Committee. In Grainsboro.
Just Just swallow, I mean, just everything that he could get his hands on. Read the Bible, prayed. I mean, he was. It was amazing. But he was, if I ever met a disciple, this was the guy.
Like, when I came to Winston-Salem. Like shortly after I got here, before I met Stu Epperson, I met Ted Burton. And a lot of people know David Parsons around here. He was a good friend of Ted Burton's, and so was Bill Mixon. And Ted.
It was like, Robbie, do you have time? Because I was a baby Christian. I came to Christ in 91, and this is 1993. And he said, Have you got time? To meet with me for an hour every day, I'd really like to disciple you.
And I had no idea what that meant, but I was like, this makes sense. The guy's good. And so. I was at the The Chrysler store, which at the time was on Miller Street, And he would come by, literally. Every day for an hour.
not excuse me, every week he would come by one day for an hour. We'd And he would do things like, okay, you got to memorize these scriptures. Yeah. Like what 1 John 1:9 and all these. And they had this thing booked called First Steps.
And he discipled me on all these things that I still use to this day, one of which is obviously getting up and having a quiet time with the Lord, which I'd kind of been doing before Ted anyway, but Ted was an amazing disciple. And like I said, he lived, he got... Shortly after I knew him, like two or three years after I knew him, he got prostate cancer, died within six months.
Okay. So and he was in his early sixties, m maybe mid sixties. Yeah. So about fifteen years later, Just fast forward, I go to this meeting in Greensboro, the Christian businessman. And there's a room with about 200 people in it.
And the guy stands up and he goes, 'How many men in here?' were personally discipled by Ted Burton. Yeah. And almost I'm telling you, at least three-quarters of the room raised their hand. In other words, He personally came and spent an hour with all these guys that were obviously still very much in Christ. And so when I think of somebody who He did, like I said, I don't know what he had 14, 12 years, 13 years after he came to Christ.
But oh my gosh. What an impact he made, because I can assure you, he had an impact on me. He had an impact on Stu. To this day, if you do listen to the Christian Car Guy Show, my first guest on the first Saturday of the month is Bill Mixon. Bill Mixon.
Was a member of that Christian business. He was discipled by Ted Burton. Stu was discipled by Ted Burton. I was discipled by Ted Burton. You get the picture?
I do. I do. When I think about it, I we just watched a movie. And it was Jesus Movie, and I'll find it in a minute, but it's on JesusMissionMovie.com. But the name of the movie is called Jesus Mission, and it's on Angel Studios.
Do you have that? Yeah, sure. We watch a ton of that.
Now, have you seen this movie? I have not seen it. You've got to see it. I mean, it is absolutely amazing. We got Angel Studios.
They were having one of their sales or whatever. And I know some people say I think it's run by Mormons or something like that. Oh, that's the people that did the chosen. Yeah, the people who, yeah, all of that stuff. But at the same time, This is not Mormon.
I mean, this is a Christian movie. Oh, you know, the Dallas. Um Willard I mean Dallas no not Willard Dallas Jenkins is is the main deal behind Angel Studios, right? And he is this is the son of the man who wrote Left Behind.
Okay. And uh the chosen and whatever, he he in fact we We'd very much uh worked on one of his first movies which was called um Uh what if? A great Christian movie. Oh, he is, he is believe me, is not even close to. I don't know who in the world came up with the idea that Jallas Jenkins has anything to do with Mormonism, but I can assure you, Angel Studios, and I've interviewed several of them.
I've interviewed Dallas. I interviewed Dallas Jenkins actually. Are you talking about the what is the chosen, right? Right. I'm talking about Angel Studios.
Angel Studios is an outshoot of Dallas Jenkins ministry.
So I want to say this: that Angel Studios is owned and operated by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormons, specifically the Harmon Brothers. Who said that? Google.
So, anyway, Google. That's crazy.
Okay, that is crazy. Absolutely crazy. Because again, Dallas Jenkins, all the stuff that happened on the chose and all that was done by, and I'm trying to think of what his father's name is. I interviewed Dallas. Oh man.
And I can't tell you how many people from Angel Studios I've interviewed and people that help Angel Studios.
So that's so far from and again, we talked about it in another show. What about AI? Wrong. Just it can be wrong. And I can assure you that is not the case.
Yeah, the now Dallas Jenkins is the he's is he over the chosen? Is that right? Right. He he he's the director and originally the you know, it was his script, all all that all that went into that.
Well, see, Angel Studios, it's it's a crowdfunded idea that started as a result of The Chosen. And because of the great popularity of The Chosen, then they just leveraged what they were doing and started to do other movies. Like that the Young Washington movie that just came out that was such a big hit that made all the money. It was done on Angel Studios. The that the the big A sex trafficking movie that was out two or three years ago.
It came out of Angel Studios. Freedom, the sound of freedom. Right. The sound of freedom, yeah. Right.
There's. I don't know where in the world Google's getting that information, but I think you know there may be another Angel Studios. No, when I watch Angel Studios, and I do, there is a lot of stuff on there. There are Mormon movies and there are Mormon shows and stuff like that.
So when we watch the, when we see that come up, we actually change it. And we can look into this more. That's fine. But. The point that I was trying to make was this: what we do is we are able to sift through the stuff that we like, the stuff we don't like.
And I don't care what you're doing out there, you're going to find this is the thing that I really wanted to recommend. It's called Jesus Mission. And it is about a young man who grew up in a church. I think his dad was the pastor. And he ended up becoming a missionary.
over to uh I want to say he was in the Philippines. And he came back and he said, He said, Dad, he said, I guess I'm going to do foreign missions. And his dad said, Well, what do you feel called to? And he said, I feel called to Nashville. And so this kid goes out, started going out every Friday night.
In downtown Nashville, On they call it Broadview, Broadview Street, and it is just packed. I've been there, Robbie. I used when I sold books door to door, we went to Nashville and we went out there, and it was packed. And they have seen thousands and thousands of people come to Christ because they do worship music. They do street witnessing.
They pray for people just like we were talking about. And because of their obedience to the Lord. The Lord is doing big things in Nashville. And now they made a movie. And like I said, it was on Angel Studios.
And it inspired me. I mean, it inspired me. We're going out to Walmart every Saturday morning and going out and sharing the gospel. And we're having more and more people do it. But I guess the point is, is that each and every one of us can do something.
And now. I've met people who are very quiet, very shy. They're afraid to talk to people. The Lord has something else for them. And they may do something.
I'm not saying every single person out there has to be out on the streets on a Saturday morning or a Friday morning in different places, you know, giving out tracts or praying for people or whatever. But I do believe that all of us can do something. But I think we have to know what the talent is that the Lord has given us. And so when I'm thinking about this, what kind of comes to mind for me is the story of Charles Blondin. He was a famous tightrope walker.
And Robbie, you probably remember this. I grew up in a Baptist church, Calvary Baptist. And they used to tell us all of these stories. But there was one story I never forget. And it was about a guy named Charles Blondin.
And he said that he would do a tightrope. tightrope walk and he was really good and people he was really well known about walking across this tightrope over niagara falls and they said that he would push a wheelbarrow he actually would sit down and he would cook himself breakfast And they said one day he pushed the wheelbarrow across. And he came back over. And he said, How many of you? Believe.
that I can push somebody across. Back and forth, and they're sitting in this wheelbarrow. I can make it across Niagara Falls and come back. And they said, yes, you're Charles Blonde and you could do anything. And he said, okay, I need a volunteer.
And all of a sudden, there were crickets. Except for one man, and it was his manager. And he got in the wheelbarrow and he came back. It's one thing to talk about sharing the gospel. It's one thing to talk about spending time like you do in prayer each morning.
It's one thing to talk about sharing the gospel on social media or however we can do it. It's one thing to talk about, you know, all the different gifts that we have: teaching, reading the Bible, studying the Bible, discipling other people like that guy, Ted. Is that his name? Right, did. But it's another thing to actually go out there and do it.
And my dad told me something when I was younger, and I never forgot it. Talk is cheap.
Well, again, it's an opportunity that we have. um to be a friend of God. And Yeah. That was a beautiful thing in Hebrew if you look In Genesis Chapter one, as it begins to close and goes into chapter two, it says that he made the world. To do.
Mm-hmm. Which what? What? Like. To do, yeah.
Because he left things for us to do. And just like we talked about either in this show or the previous show, you know, Ann and I. got to go Pray for Paul because he wants us to be his partners. Yes. But it does require Getting up.
and doing to be his partners. But The the beauty of it is, as as Paul says, Um That you're Or Jesus says very clearly, apart from me, you can do nothing. And so you can do a lot of stuff that is not doing anything. But as you partner with God in things, it really becomes a beautiful idea. And I went and looked up Angel Studios in the meantime before we close.
And it's a publicly held company. And those people that you're talking about, apparently, there is a connection there that you aren't totally, but I don't think it's quite as cut and dried as what you said. And primarily, what they do is Christian content. And Dallas Jenkins being one of the biggest that they deal with. And he is full-on Christian, believe me.
Well, and I think it's really good. And so, Robbie, you know, I want to thank you because you were the guy who actually helped me out. And we were talking about this before. You are the one. I mean, you've helped disciple me over the years.
Now, sometimes when you were discipling me, it was while we were on the radio. And I'm like, we're preaching to them, but you're talking to me, man.
So I want to thank you for that. And I want to thank you for being the, you know, having the hunger for God you've always had. And and I you know, I'm I'm honored that The truth network is you know, drawn young talent and obviously the next generation is coming on. We're excited to have you with us. If not for God.
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