I'm Ready to Die!

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So lower your taxable income while increasing your retirement. PRCUA.org. That's PRCUA.org. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. If Not For God today with Mike Zwick, and you know, I just got to tell a funny story. Last night on my way home, you know, I drive every day from the Truth Network, which is in Winston-Salem all the way out to Stokesdale or a little bit beyond because I live at Blues Creek Lake and so I got a long drive and as I'm driving along, I can see my text come in and then all of a sudden it says I'm ready to die from Mike Zwick. And so I will say this much, I did the hands-free thing and I told Siri to tell Mike what's wrong. His answer, I meant that in a good way.

So Mike, what was going on with that? Well, I had read, it was Philippians 1 21 and it says, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. And I think at many times in our lives, we've given mental assent to that, but do we actually really believe it? Are we actually so sure of our salvation and so sure of heaven that we say, hey, you know, I'd love to be around my kids, there's stuff that I'd like to do here, et cetera, et cetera, but I'm ready to go at any time and I'm not really afraid of death. As a matter of fact, there's another part where Paul says, where he's, do you remember he's torn, Robbie, where he says, part of me wants to leave and go with Christ.

He says, but part of me wants to stay here so I can help you. And it's, I heard a quote one time and it said that for the unsaved person, for the non-Christian, um, this earth is as close to hell that we'll ever get. And for the Christian earth is as close to hell as we'll ever get.

Did I say that right? Or did I say, for the unsaved person, I think this is as close to heaven as they will ever get. And for the Christian that is obviously our eternities in heaven, this is as close to hell as we will ever get. So it's how it is hell on earth, so to speak for, and if you haven't experienced that lately, maybe you're not living in the same place. It's gotten real lately. Yeah. But, and, but you can see, you know, really when you think about it, Mike, the desperation, the fear, um, that, you know, the reason that people get so angry is, is when they're really, really, really scared. And you can see a lot of angry people out there and the hate that is coming out, um, is something really I've not experienced in my life.

Yeah. There's a, there's an old song and, uh, it's called the war. This world is not my home. And it says, this world is not my home. I'm just a passing through my treasures.

Treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from heaven's open door. And I can't feel at home in this world. And a Lord, you know, I have like you, if heaven's not my home, then Lord, what will I do?

The angels beckon me from heaven's open door. And I can't feel at home in this world anymore. Yeah.

And do you know what's happening in DC? I'm like, yeah, it really makes you feel that way. And the quote that you mentioned before the show, um, Martin Luther King Jr. A man who is not willing to die for something is not fit to live. Right. And, um, and, um, and, um, but, but also you were talking about says, you'll never know that God is all you need until God is all you have. Right.

Right. That's the quote that, that I was thinking about as you were describing, you know, as, as, as we detach ourselves from like, I can't live in that place, you know, anymore of what all is going on and what I'm seeing. And it does kind of leave you at that place like, wow, God, you're all I got here because, you know, in a way that I hadn't seen before that I really hadn't experienced because, you know, one of the legs, I guess, that was holding up my table was the country that I live in and, and, and some faith that I had that it was being run by somebody who at least, you know, had some semblance of the values that I, that I have, but, uh, or a media that had some sense of right and wrong. Um, but I don't feel that at this point.

No. And I think I saw something recently, 39% of the people in the United States believe that the election was fraudulent. Um, you know, and, and it's, and, and things have been heating up so much and a lot of it, I do believe may have been perpetuated by the media. Um, but there, I guess in a way, there's a lot of things that we can't do anything about.

We can't necessarily change what the media is going to do, but the word of God says that we can change our attitude and that we can, we can, we, you talked, we talked about it before, be a light in the darkness, the light shines in the darkness, right? Yeah. And I love that. And what happened to me this week? Cause I'm like you, I'm struggling.

My legs are kind of cut out from underneath me. Some of the things that I was supporting my life on that God was removing so that I could end up in that place where God's all you know, you need to hear Robbie. I gotcha. But so you may know, I pray every morning for a word and that usually is consistent for a word that he's given me for the year. And the word he's given me for the year is to engage. And so as I was Monday morning, I'm, I'm praying, I'm like, God gave me a word.

And interesting. He never did this to me before he gave me two Hebrew letters that I can see very clearly, but I don't know what those two Hebrew letters, when you put them together, they make a word. Well, they make a really cool word. When you think about the letters, cause if you look at the pictures, the nice thing about the Hebrew language is it isn't just an alphabet.

It has pictures that say that what it is. And so the, the iron in Hebrew is a, it's a yoke like you would put on the oxen. Like Jesus said, take my yoke. I mean, it's throughout the scriptures, a very biblical concept of being yoked to something.

Okay. And so as I'm seeing this word that God's given me, I see the yoke and then I see a plow and that plow in Hebrew in the ancient script was a Zion. And so as I'm sitting there thinking about that, I'm like, how cool.

If you take a yoke and you hook it up to a plow, you know, that's a really neat concept. I wonder what that word is. And so, you know, I did a simple search where I put in the letters in Hebrew and then asked what the Strong's number was and I backed into it. And when you looked at that, the word is strength, which has a lot to do with engage. And, and as I began to think of the kind of strength it is, it's the strength of plowing. And you may know those passages about plowing, you know, your hard ground, which is prayer. And so as I was looking at that word and the use of it in the scripture, it's all over Psalm 68. It's in Psalm 68 continually, this word that is strength. And specifically in the, I think it's the 18th verse, God says, strengthen. You know, God commanded that you strengthen your strength.

And it, it was using these words on what he was working. In other words, God is at work. And I think that I know God's at work, but he's saying, look, you need to strengthen your strength on what I am working on.

And so David, as he was praying this Psalm, what he was really saying was, you need to strengthen your strength on what you're working on. Let me add my strength to that. Let me put the plow. Let me yoke myself to your plow, right? Where we're plowing up this fallowed ground, this hard ground.

Where is my heart hard that I need to sow your seeds and get in there and work? And so I really had a blast this week, honestly, of praying the 68th Psalm. And when you see that, God is at work, clearly.

And how do I get, you know, hooked up to his plow? But he did the same thing for you, but he did it with numbers. Yeah, it's tough to get time to really, especially with a two-year-old and a three-year-old, but to get time to just be quiet, be alone, and pray. But I got about 30 minutes where I was just quiet, alone, and praying, whatever. And at the end, I said, Lord, I said, is there anything else I need to do to be saved?

Or is what you did on the cross enough for me? And so I have this random number thing that goes from one to 100, and I hit the number and it said 77. I was like, well, that's cool. And I was like, is there something else I want to do on Saturday?

But is that safe to do it? And it's 77. Well, I think you got to tell them what you were going to do on Saturday. There was a march. A march for what? A march for life.

So, yeah, that's pretty. You're not marching on the Capitol. Not marching on the Capitol.

No, that's why. No, a march for life. A march for life.

A march for life. And you hit the 77 twice in a row. Twice in a row. And, but, you know, when you were talking about something a minute ago, it was that thing that we were talking about where you never know that God is all you need until you know that God is all you have. Well, I had a dream not too long ago. And in my dream, I was doing ministry and I was, everything was fine, this and that, whatever. And I was just about to, I guess, wake up or be finished with what I was doing. And I took my shoe off and I realized there was a snake, a little snake that was held onto my toe. And so I asked, I said, well, what does that mean?

And it said that there, it was, it was exactly what we were talking about. Is there anything else that is more important to God? Or is there anything else that competes for God? Because it says in scripture that God is a jealous God.

He wants no gods before him, whether it's money, whether it's sex, whether it's people liking you. A little snake in your shoe. Yeah.

Or snake in your shoe. Something that may be hindering the gospel. And so that's what I said. And I said, well, okay, Lord, it's, it's, it's all about you. It's, it's gotta be, it's gotta be him first and everything else.

Not even a, further than a distant second. I mean, I know we have to, we have to live, we have to eat and all that, but sometimes, I mean, we, we can get caught up in these little things, whether it's, and I was telling you before, whether it's, you know, friend of mine, who's always talking about the news and how bad things are in the world and how awful things are. And it's like, okay, well, what are you going to do about it? But the pastor from the Lamb's Chapel a couple of weeks ago, he, he actually said, there's something called the serenity prayer. And he said, God, grant me the serenity to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. But I think every day when we wake up, you know, and there is, there's kind of a fine line there, because you don't want to stick your head under the sand and, and just ignore everything that's going on in the world.

No, no. Jesus taught that you need to be ready. So when these signs occur, you'll know that they're occurring, but at the same time, look and say, what can I do to make a difference?

That's really cool that you were talking about the snake in your shoe. You know, I, interestingly, my notes on January 12th was God asked me to go take a look back at the 10 commandments specifically. It's always confused me a little bit. What's the difference between, you don't have no other gods before me and a graven image, because it's like two different commandments.

Like the first commandments, you know, have no other God. And the second one is make yourself know graven image. And so my first problem is what does graven mean? Even in English, what does graven mean? I mean, what does that mean? And so what I, you know, just simply looked up the etymology of the word graven, and it means to engrave or to carve, right?

Yeah. And so when you think about when you're going through your day, what, what are you carving into your heart? What are you engraving? Because the more time you spend on something, you know, you begin to engrave. This gets embedded into what you're doing. So as I started to think about that, of course, you know me, I was going to look at the Hebrew in that. And it kind of showed how you were going to have a presence that took precedent in your heart over God. In other words, instead of God being, you know, in other words, Adam and Eve, when they sinned, right, they hid from God's presence.

Well, if I really, really am honest, I mean, most of my day, I'm hiding from God's presence some way or another. I mean, any kind of squirrel will take me off, you know, squirrel, and I'm off no longer in God's presence. Sure, sure. And so I started to think of all the different things that were going through my mind.

You know, you may have heard all these different conspiracy theories that are running out there and all these things that, you know, if my mind starts to go there, I'm engraving this stuff on my heart, unless, like you said, I get the snake out of my shoe, which I really like that picture. And it's okay to go look at that stuff. But who's, as far as presence of, is God with you while you're looking? Yeah. Is he first, you know, or are we engraving something?

Right. And I thought, wow, if I do this, if I go study this other thing, I go look at this other thing, I go spend a lot of time with anybody, and I don't bring God into the equation, man. You know, he had, I think it's beyond cool that he had us on the same track.

That is cool. Matter of fact, when you were talking about the book of Psalms, I saw something, and one of the things that came to my mind, well, you never know that God is all you need until God is all you have is Psalm 121, and it says, I lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip. He who watches over you will not slumber.

He never sleeps. Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you. The Lord is your shade at your right hand.

The sun will not harm you by day nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm. He will watch over your life. The Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore. And when I look at that forevermore, I think about heaven. I think about heaven.

We talk a lot of stuff on the show. We don't talk a lot about heaven, what it's going to be like, but I think it's going to be pretty great. I think that would be the most understatement that you've ever said to me.

It really, really is. And it puts some context to what you had said earlier is, okay, so to live is Christ, right? Which would be actually in his presence without your snake in your shoe. Or to die is gain. And Paul was not giving us everything that could be said there either.

That, oh my gosh. I mean, the number one thing that we get in heaven is we actually get Jesus. We actually get to be in his real presence, see his real face, experience real light. Have you ever thought about that?

Yeah. When I look at it, I think the Bible gives us a glimpse of heaven. We don't know everything about heaven or all that's going to be. But when I look at Revelation 22, it says, then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb. Down the middle of the great street of the city, on each side of the river, stood the tree of life, bearing 12 crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Well, that's pretty, the healing of the nations. Man, it'd be nice to have a healed nation right now. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.

That sounds good. They will see his face. Right. To see his face. To see his face. Yeah.

Yeah. And not through a mirror dimly. In other words, we're going to see his face with real light, right? We see through sunlight right now. We see through our atmosphere. We see through our eyes, which in my case, take contact lenses to either begin to get focused. And you think of the guy, you remember Jesus healed him.

And when he first tried it to focus, you know, everybody looked like big trees walking around. Well, the cool thing is when you get a look at Jesus in heaven, you're going to have a focus that you've never even begun to have. Well, and you look at 1 Corinthians 13 verse 12, it says, For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide.

These three, but the greatest of these is love. And I think you said there was a, was it John Eldridge, or there was somebody who had said that the, there was going to be a vicious attack of hate that comes by and the only way that they could overcome it is, is the love is that, you know, river of life actually is to, is to pray that kind of love into our situation. Said back, you know, in the summer of 1919, and he felt that Satan had released these two horrible spirits on the 19, 19. Yeah.

20, the summer of 2019. Okay. Okay.

Right. That the, and those spirits were that of hate and that of death. And so think of how the world of, here we are in early 2021. If we look at the world, not what we're experiencing with God, but the world, look at the way that both hate and death have ramped up in the last two years. It's not even in the same world.

I mean, it doesn't even seem like this could be possible that people could be acting the way that they're acting, but you coop them all up and you tell them they're all dying of COVID and, and you, you know, let all the shenanigans go on politically and next thing you know, we're at rate hate. Oh my goodness. Yeah. And I, I actually, I don't know if I told you this, but I had a conversation today with a lady named Marge from the PRC UA who's sponsored the show. So thank you PRC UA.

Now it stands for the Polish Roman Catholic union of America. And but, you know, I was talking to Marge about the book of revelation and about how, you know, we were talking about heaven and this and that. And I figured, well, you know, she's, she's not going to want to hear this, but she was really interested.

She was really interested in it. And it, and in a world where so many bad things are going on, gosh, I mean, it's, it's a good time to hear some good news. Yeah. And revelation is full of it in it because it's the end of the story. Yeah.

He is coming back. You know, it's, it's a beautiful thing that people are in a position to want some, some real life. And as you were talking about another dream that you had this week, when, when you came up, you know, like, didn't you say you were witnessing to somebody? Yeah, I was, I was explaining the gospel and, and I was given all these facts about how Jesus, when he, when he was risen from the dead, he was seen by over 500 people. And I was explaining how, you know, many other people who have been written about in history, you know, whether it was in, you can, Aristotle or Plato or Socrates, whoever it was, I mean, people wrote about these people hundreds and hundreds of years after they died. But the people who wrote about Jesus were actually, they were around to see him. As a matter of fact, not only that, but the people, his disciples who followed him and saw the miracles that he did, they, they died for him. I mean, with the exception of Judas who sold him out and killed himself, but these people actually saw, saw Jesus after he was raised from the dead. They saw him ascend to heaven. And you probably know this, but a lot of the disciples, they, they died violent deaths. I think Peter was crucified upside down. John, who wrote the book of Revelation, I believe was, was they burned him in like this oil and they sent him off to the island of Patmos. And I'm just thinking, Robbie, why would you be tortured for something that you know wasn't true? I wouldn't. Yeah, they boiled him in oil.

Yeah. Would you do that for something that wasn't true? But, you know, how did he even survive it?

It was one of the, you know, miracles of, of, of the time is, you know, they're trying to figure out how he did that. And so as you were in this dream, you were sharing those particular pieces of information, but maybe you're listening right now and you're thinking, gee, it would be nice to not fall into this hate, scared to death category. It would be nice to have something to hold onto hope-wise and something that would really say, okay, how do I, how do I measure up to be a Christian? Cause obviously I don't feel like that.

I don't feel like I'm good, you know, good enough to be whatever. And the good news is that's the beauty of the good news. That Jesus is the one that was actually good. And he went to the cross to pay for what it is that essentially I did.

That was beyond horrible. It was my sin that put him on the cross and it was my salvation. It was part of what he was looking at as he faced that so that I would be able to have a relationship and to be able to see through the light that we were talking about a minute ago in heaven. Like he begins to give us that light in our hearts to where we can see things that just weren't available to us before.

Yeah. I mean, in what I, when you say that I think of Ephesians 2, 8 through 9, for it is by grace that you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast. And I tell you what, I mean, you know, sometimes you, you work hard for your salvation or, God, am I doing enough? And a friend of mine named Scott told me, he said, when he was Catholic, he said in his whole life, he basically, what they believed was, you know, do my good works or do they outnumber my bad? I mean, that's a heck of a way to live. I mean, to have to worry, Lord, am I, am I doing good enough? And, and, and you've heard it said, and I've heard it said that all the other religions of the world, they spell salvation as D-O.

Do, do, do, do. But Christianity spells salvation D-O-N-E. D-O-N-E, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Well, you say that's too simple, right, Robbie?

Well, I love that, you know, Dunne, like he, he did do that. And, you know, I actually know lots of beautiful, wonderful Catholics that completely get that, you know. I work with several, but they understand Jesus paid it all.

They understand the way that they're going to get to heaven. So, you know, we, but I know plenty of Baptists, by the way, who think they've got to do, do, do, do. Right, right.

And so we don't want anybody to fall into, well, I'm one of these. And so because of that, well, what denomination you are is not a qualifier. Right, right. It's faith in Christ, right? Right. And so that's the opportunity that you have, no matter what denomination you may fall into is, do I really, like, like Mike was saying, is there something else that I need to do in order to be with you forever, Jesus?

And, and your own answer is D-O-N-E. No, it's, it's a done deal. There's, there's a song and it says, I hear the savior say thy strength indeed is small, child of weakness, watch and pray, find in me thine all in all. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Sin had left a crimson stain.

He washed it white as snow. And that's, that's all it is, is you just, Lord, I want to follow you. You just pray and say, Lord, Jesus, just forgive me of my sins.

I trust in you. And I, I, I turn to you and I give you my life. And it's, it's the most wonderful thing that you could, you could do or even think of. I mean, what else compares to Jesus? I mean, Jesus, he even said, what good is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?

On the other hand, if you have absolutely nothing and you've got Jesus. Yeah. It's If Not for God.

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