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June 16, 2021 1:00 am

Have You Heard the Voice of God?

If Not For God / Mike Zwick

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June 16, 2021 1:00 am

A missionary shares his experiences with the audible voice of God, including a miraculous healing from lymphoma and encounters with the Holy Spirit in Israel and the Palestinian territories. He reflects on the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the need for faith and trust in God's presence.

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PRCUALife, protecting life through all its stages. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. It's good to be back on If Not For God with Mike Zwick, and today we got a special guest, Mike. Jeff Hoover, right?

We do. Jeff is a personal friend of mine. Him and his dad come to the Bible study that we have every Saturday in Mebane, and Jeff just kept coming and coming. And I met Jeff at Wednesday in the Word, but Jeff has some really cool stories.

Jeff was a—he was a missionary in Israel for 18 years, and he shared the Gospel with Palestinian Muslims. And so we've got some good stories. But before we started that, Robbie, we were talking about audible voices. Yeah, you asked if I'd ever heard the audible voice of God. You know, there's all kinds of there's all kinds of ways that we hear from God, usually the still small voice, you know, that we feel like we believe we heard it.

We're not quite sure and like so many things. Well, one night, actually about 2005, I was praying diligently about a lot of things that had to do with the dealership at the time and my family, and I was just kind of on my face, you know, just praying, praying, praying. And all of a sudden from, you know, like nowhere, I hear this, Robbie, what do you want? And it wasn't just a voice. It was a presence like I've never felt before or since that was just clearly—and it was terrifying.

I mean, that's the best way I know to put it. It was completely terrifying. And I glibly, you know, because it shocked me so bad and it scared me so bad, I just said, I want to serve you, Lord. That was my response. And he responded back to me in a funny way. I cannot tell you how he managed to do it, but he said, oh, do you?

And he did not, he was not sarcastic in saying that. He just said, oh, do you? And when he said that, immediately my experience was, you know how they say your life flashes before your eyes?

That's right. And all of a sudden, hundreds of things that he had said to me start flashing into my mind. Wow. You're supposed to, you know, call this person, get in touch with that. Yes. You're going to have lunch with this person. You had said this, and every one of those situations were interpersonal things that he had put on my heart that I had not done.

Yes. But as I was sitting there watching this like movie in my mind of boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, these things flashing in my mind, I went, oh, I can still do this stuff. So I went and got a piece of paper, and I started, because I didn't want to lose it, I started writing down all the things that he had brought to my mind of things that I had told him, or that he'd given me opportunities to serve him. Wow.

Which all were other people. And so after that, I went back and started to pray. Okay. And repenting, like, oh God, I am so, man, thank you for this. I can see now what it is that you really wanted me to do. And this is simple, and I can do this. You know, I was really excited. It was an interesting kind of repentance, like, oh, now I really know what you want. You know, I can really, this is something I can do.

Yeah. And as I started to say that, then all of the sudden, there was this golden glory that starts showing up in the bedroom, and something welled up inside of me. I had no idea it was there. And I was, like, screaming in my soul, you're going to see His face. You are going to see the face of God right now.

It's coming, and here comes this glory and this bright, bright, bright shining. And I was so excited, I woke my wife up. I was like, Tammy, I'm going to see His face. I'm going to see His face. And she looks at me all grogged out, and it kind of just took the moment, and the glory faded. And there I was, you know, just like in this, I'd been on the mountaintop, and now here I was, you know, I had my chance to see His face. And I was like, Peter, you know, it ain't going to happen.

Yeah. So all of the sudden, once again, the audible voice says to me, Robbie, now, do you know what you want? So the question that was actually somewhat rhetorical, the original question that he had asked me was, do you know what you want? Well, there were two things that became more obvious to me the more I've thought about the incident over the years, and I've never forgotten it, obviously, was number one, I want to do what He wants me to do.

I want to serve Him. I really do. I mean, it was exciting to me that I really wanted to do that. But even more than that, something that I did not know, there's something deep inside of me that wants to see His face desperately. And again, that's an exciting thing to know. We'll get to see it sometime.

It does. It says in the New Testament that, what is it, blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Yeah, and that's actually Matthew 5, verse 8. But Jesus said, Jeff, you've done a lot of mission work in Europe and also in Israel, and one time when you were in Europe and you were contemplating going to Czechoslovakia, there was an audible voice as well, is that right? Yes, I was in a mission group, and there's 12 of us, and we had gone on short-term trips to the Czech Republic and to Czechoslovakia and to Poland and all this stuff. And then we were following up from Germany where we lived, driving to the Czech Republic and then doing Bible studies. And then while we were back in Germany, we were also working on those Bible studies and things like this.

So everybody was like, well, why don't we just move to Czech? And I said, well, I want to hear from God. Everybody else had good excuses for moving, and that's understandable, but I wanted to hear from God. So this one day, 11 people, we had a meeting, 11 were already ready to go.

I was the only holdout. So after the meeting, I went back to my room and continued to pray and to talk to God. And I sat down, and God just spoke to me almost as soon as I got in the room. And it just said, Jeff, go to Czech. Okay. And that was your answer, and you went to the Czech Republic.

Yeah. And then I went and told my leader that I was ready to go, that God had told me now, spoke to me and told me. I didn't say with an audible voice, but it was an audible voice. I mean, it's the actually only time that God spoke from an audible voice, but this was an audible voice that just told me, Jeff, go to Czech. And that's what we did.

Jeff, go to Czech. And I remember Robbie, last year, when the whole COVID thing was going and people were making all these predictions about the election and exactly what was going to happen. I think you said it, there was a time where you said that you can't, we realized if nothing else, if nothing else, we can't really put God in a box. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. But it's a beautiful thing in its own way now to see kind of how God has been moving through this and really helping us to see some places where we had cracks that need to be filled.

I mean, our own needs for Him are more desperate than I think we realized. And so it's an opportunity for growth, no doubt. Absolutely. And speaking of stories of hopelessness turned into hope, Jeff, you actually, there was another story that you told me about. It was in Russia and Christians were being forced to choose. Is that right?

Yes. I had a book that was given to me. Now I didn't experience this, but I had a book that was given to me about some of the things that Russian Christians had gone through. And one of these stories was that they lined them up, the communists did, in the winter along a frozen river. They cut holes in the ice and they were going to make every Christian jump into those holes. And they said to them, if you deny Christ and you come up out of the river, then we will pull you out and we will, we have a heater over here.

Basically it was some kind of ceramic kind of old heater that tried to heat your body back up and save your life. So there was a soldier who was up watching everybody. And if any Christian tried to run away, he was to shoot them. So they were lined up.

They went over the holes and I don't know if they were even pushed in or whatever, or they jumped in, but they went into every hole. And this soldier says that he saw these crowns coming down from heaven over every hole. And then he saw one crown come down and it got almost over the hole and then it went right back up into heaven. And the guy came up and denied Christ. And so they pulled him out and they tried to heat his body back up and he died anyway. But what happened was the soldier put down his gun and he came down, accepted Jesus as his Lord and took his place, took the other guy's place in that hole. He jumped in the hole himself. But he accepted Jesus as his Lord.

Wow. And it says in Matthew 10 39, it says, whoever finds their life will lose it. And whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. And that's what kind of reminded me when you were saying that there was one guy who actually came up, denied Christ. Not only did he possibly lose eternal life, but he lost his life on this earth as well.

So he ended up losing it all anyways. But that was interesting. You had actually said there was a time where you were driving somewhere, but the gas was a little empty.

Is that right, Jeff? Yeah, there was a time where we were traveling from Germany to Poland and we were going to, as missionaries, we were going to go to teach how Polish Christians could use music and drama on the street to help lead people to the Lord. And on our way to that camp, when we were leaving Germany, right at the border, right around the border, I noticed that we had like a quarter tank of gas and that something said I should fill up.

Well, at that time, I didn't know that was the Holy Spirit. So I said, but we're, you know, surely there's another gas station. It's a Sunday, but in Germany, you could get gas.

So I figured that in Czech and, you know, as we were traveling in Austria and all that, we would be able to get gas. Well, I was wrong. Everything was closed on Sunday.

Okay. And so we got down to the red, little, you know, right before the E. And I said, well, you know, Lord, just help us get to the gas station. So we went to the first gas station.

It was closed. So then I had to pray again and say, Lord, just help us get to the next gas station so we can make it, you know, and we just kept going. And then we went about 200 miles doing that because on E, just going, you know, praying that God, you know, the hand never moved off of E. But we kept going and going and going till the next gas station till all of a sudden, the next day in Poland, we were able to get gas.

My goodness. And, you know, it's interesting when you're talking about miracles like that. I'm reminded, and I told you, I went to Calvary, Calvary Baptist when I was growing up. But before I went there, probably the first church I went to was Rinaldo Presbyterian. And there was a pastor, Pastor Little. And Robbie, you were sick one time, right? You knew Pastor Little.

Yeah, there was no doubt. I had lymphoma. So stories of hopelessness turned to hope. There I was, I had a very strange case of lymphoma. It was called cutaneous lymphoma and it was even called killer cell lymphoma. My sister called it when she saw the pathology report.

She worked at the University of Michigan Hospital at the time. And so, you know, they were like, well, there's only two people in the United States that have had this kind and neither one of them, you know, made it a couple months. And so the way it looked was that there were these little tumors. Well, they weren't all that little and they were popping up all over my skin. And so I kind of looked like Job in that, you know, all these sores were coming up all over my body and they were flat and they were round. And so I looked kind of like a freak. And I was still working because, you know, at the dealership there and on Cloverdale at the time. And one day, Pastor Little came in, the pastor at Reynolds Presbyterian, and he said that the Holy Spirit had told him somebody was there that needed to be healed. And my friend Joe was, you know, Joe Volz, a dear friend, said, well, that must be Robbie. He's got lymphoma.

He's back in his office because nobody wants to be out in public. So he comes back there. Well, at the time, I'd only been a Christian, you know, maybe three or four years. And so I had no idea about anointing with oil or being laid hands on or anything, you know. So I did not, like, it wasn't Robbie had the faith to be healed, okay. It was just like, because I actually thought, as nice as the man was, I thought he was a little freaky. And so, but nonetheless, he prayed.

And I'll admit that it was just a really unusual prayer. And I felt something happened, right. But this was on a Friday, and I was covered in these tumors. I was supposed to start my chemotherapy on Monday. And when I woke up Monday morning, I did not have a single tumor, you know, because you could see them all there, right there in my skin. And so I was, no tumors anywhere, went onto the hospital that day. They took pictures.

It was unbelievable. They did a biopsy. They said, oh, wow, the cancer turned on itself and ate itself somehow miraculously.

But I think we all know what actually happened. I still did do chemotherapy. And of course, I'm here today. It's been a lot of years since 1996. So I was coming up on 30 at some point.

Yeah, 25 years this year, if not for God. That was an awesome story. And then Jeff, you said there was a woman who was sick for 20-some years.

Is that right? When we went to Bulgaria as a group, there were some people that we saw God really move as we prayed for them. There was a lady who was in her bed, laying flat. She had not moved out of her bed or not set up in 20 years. And she'd just been laying down there and everything. So we prayed for her. And we really thought that she would get up completely. But when we prayed for her, God touched her. And she didn't get up completely, but she sat up in the bed. And they said she hasn't done that in 20 years. And she sat up in the bed and praised God.

That was just a move of the spirit there. And then there was another lady who we prayed for that was having a problem with her leg and all. And when we prayed for her, nothing happened, you know, really. But then we walked out. We told her that, you know, just continue to have faith that, you know, God was moving.

And we knew that God was moving and all. She thanked us and all. And then we went out her door and we were walking down the hallway. And then all of a sudden, she comes out her door jumping in the air down the hallway where God had touched her. She was completely healed. Another lady, it was her eyes.

She was blind. And as soon as we prayed, God touched her. So as God did some mighty things, you know, I've seen other deliverance and other things like this.

But these were all healings and all that I saw. Praise God. And then, you know, another friend who was in the Palestinian areas and we prayed for him. His brother was a believer. And so he brought his older brother to be prayed for. And so when we prayed for him, he felt the Holy Spirit move in his life. And we'd ask him to pray in Jesus' name. So as we prayed for him, he felt the Holy Spirit. So he asked his younger brother, who was a believer, he said, I want to know more about what was going on. So they called us and all. And we went down. And make a long story short, that later on, this young man came to know the Lord. So we give God all the praise and honor and glory. Amen.

Amen. And you know, I'm reminded of the story. There was a guy who went into a bank and all of a sudden the bank was getting robbed. And when the robbers were robbing it, one of the guys, his mask slipped off for a few seconds. And he turned to the first person and he said to that person, he said, did you see my mask slip off? And the guy said, yes. And so the robber shot him.

Just like that, shot him dead. He looked to the second guy and he asked him, he said, did you see my mask fall off? And the second guy said, yes. So the robber shot him as well. And the third guy was there. He was sitting there and the robber said, did you see my mask fall off?

And the guy said, no, but my wife did. So the reason I bring that up is because right now Israel is in the news and you actually ministered to the Palestinians who were living in Israel. And right now it seems like if the Palestinians or the Israelis were probably in a bank, something like that might happen. Seriously. So what, I mean, what, what, I mean, you were there for 18 years. What did you notice? Well, there's, I look at things a lot different than what I did when I first came, when I first came there. You know, I didn't know much about the Palestinians.

Okay. And for, and what I learned about the Palestinians from here was that they were bad people, you know, and stuff. So when God called me there, I wanted to find out who the Palestinians were. And so I was talking to the Lord all the time about the Palestinians and all, and what I would encourage people, you know, the Bible says that the forced to pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

And, and I would encourage you to pray for the peoples of Israel, the peoples, meaning both the Palestinians and the Jews. And one day, one day I was praying over Hebron. I went down there and I was praying and I was praying over Hebron and God showed me a picture of two men and they were holding hands and walking together. And I said, Lord, I said, what is this? And I thought that maybe he would say friendship because a Khalil in Arabic, which is Hebron, is, means friendship. So I thought God was showing me a picture of Hebron, but then God said, no. And I said, well, I said, okay. So I looked at, I was thinking, then I started thinking about brothers and I said, well, is this Isaac and Ishmael?

That's what I was thinking. Because most people look at the Israeli situation, they go, it's Isaac and Ishmael. And God said, no. And what God told me that day was that the next thing came to me was that this, and I asked God about, and it was, okay, is it Jacob and Esau? And God said, yes. Now, not everybody agrees with that, but I felt like God was showing me that mostly there are no pure peoples on the earth at all. I mean, you can say this people group or that people group or whatever, but they're all mixed.

Okay. But there is an overall spirit behind the situation. And when you have the Palestinians, you're talking about Jacob and Esau and the way I look at it. And Jacob and Esau both have, Jacob was the one who got the promise. Esau sold his birthright. But the thing is that God also, through Isaac, blessed Esau. So there is a blessing on both Jacob and Esau, and it's a blessing to live together.

And so I pray that for that blessing, that peace between both the between both the Israelis and the Jews, and the Palestinians. And the thing is that I say that they are the descendants of Esau because they got the name Palestinian from the Romans. Now, there were Palestinians that were the enemies of Israel. But those Palestinians, those Philistines in the Bible were called Philistines. They actually came from somewhere in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Could have come from Malta, could have come from Crete, could come from other areas, but they were those kind of peoples, boat people. However, the Palestinians have taken on that name for two reasons. One, that Rome didn't, after the last uprising of the Jews, Rome decided that they would squish any other uprising. And they would do this by naming the people, naming their land after their enemies. And so they named the land Palestine or after the Philistines.

Wow. And that's where the name, now Jesus, it was called Palestine when Jesus was there. Okay, so it was Palestine. But the thing is that we know in the Bible also that through faith that God gave Abraham Covenant, you know, and that part of that covenant is the actual land of Israel. However, the blessing is that Jacob and Esau will live together. And if you look at this, the Jews are the people who design, who are the designers. They are the ones who make all the plans. The Palestinians are the builders.

So if you put that together. If you put it together, just like anything else, you can really work together. And Jeff, I wish we had some more time today, but I really enjoyed your stories about Israel, the true stories that happened with you about the healing.

Robbie enjoyed your stories as well with Pastor Little and the audible voices, man. I tell you what, if not for God. Imagine having peace of mind. In these turbulent times, peace of mind may be the most valuable of all assets. Feeling secure in your financial future is worth its weight in gold and in emotion. Liberty Bankers Insurance Group can help provide you with that most precious, life-affirming sense of security. We work hard to create smart and innovative life, health, and financial plans that help ensure your family of not just the stability that you deserve, but the future potential you desire. To create a generational legacy of peace of mind. Liberty Bankers Insurance Group. For life. Not all products available in all states. Visit LBIG.com for additional terms and conditions.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-11-03 22:57:22 / 2023-11-03 23:07:39 / 10

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