If Only a Button

This is Andy Thomas from the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we discover what it means to be a wholehearted man. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just seconds. Enjoy it.

Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. Wow, what a treat we have for you today, really, on If Not For God.

And believe me, that's just like the whole thing to my life is If Not For God. So, Mike, I just love the way God gave you that name of that show, right, as you prayed about it as something that he would want. And so today we really do have a special guest in the studio and a special topic that's actually near and dear to my heart in so many different ways. So, Mike, why don't you introduce Pastor Ron? Yeah, we've got Pastor Ron Harris from Greater Love Church over in Burlington, North Carolina.

And he's actually, if you guys ever listen to The Masculine Journey, he is a personal friend of Danny Marsh, who comes on The Masculine Journey from time to time. But Pastor Ron is a Marine, was in Vietnam, and I think when he came back, he somehow found Jesus. And it's just been a miracle.

Everything in his life, really, just has been an absolute miracle. But yeah, today we're actually going to be talking about being a servant leader, or servant leadership, and I've got Matthew 24, verses 45 through 47, and it says, Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing. Assuredly, I say to you, that he will make him ruler over all his goods. But if that servant says in his heart, My master is delaying his coming, and begins to beat his fellow servants, and to eat and to drink with the drunkards, the master of that servant will come on a day when he is not looking for him, and at an hour that he is not aware of, and he will cut him in two and appoint him with his portion, with the hypocrites. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and when I actually see that, one of the things that I think about is that, you know, number one, we have to be a servant.

And number two, we have to always be ready. But Pastor Ron, have you always been a Christian? I have not. And not only that, but I want to just say a bio-correction to my friend, who nobody finds Jesus. Jesus is never lost. Jesus finds us and fine-tunes us and touches us. And yes, I found my walk and my life with the Lord actually in the Marine Corps. It showed me when I got back from boot camp that I needed something in my life greater than myself.

The Marines emphasized a lot of things about who we need to be. And so when I came back from boot camp, I immediately went to my pastor, and I got baptized on the same day that two other young men got baptized. I was actually taller than the pastor was and two little other guys, so it took two people to do that. But God changed my heart in so many different ways and has worked with me ever since. That's the great thing about the Lord. He finds you wherever you're at, because He was there all the time. And so once I understood these things and even on my days that were not so great, He was there all the time, standing patiently in line. And so I just thank the Lord that I do understand who He is today, and He walks with me. There was an old song, and it says, and He walks with me, and He talks with me. And He tells me, I am His own. I am His own.

Amen. And we actually have some pretty good stories today about servant leadership and what it means to be a servant. But one of the things that I'm brought back to is I remember, and I told a story at Wednesday in the Word over with Stu this morning, was that when I first started selling insurance, I was having a tough time, and I wasn't selling as much as I really felt like I should have. And the president of the company named Peter, he actually came to me, and we talked for a while. And he said, Mike, he said, during my lifetime, he said, I've noticed the times where I have tried to look out for myself and to really get what's in it for me.

Look what's in it for me. And he said, I've looked at the times in my life, he says, where I've had a servant's heart and where I've tried to help other people and I've tried to look out for other people. And he said, the interesting thing is, is he says that it's actually natural for me to want to look out for myself. He says, but I've noticed in my life where I have been the happiest is where I have actually tried to be a servant of others and try to help other people. My immediate manager named Vance at the time, we actually talked one day and I said, Vance, I'm not selling any insurance.

I'm not selling any insurance. And he said, that's the reason why. He says, you keep saying I'm not, I'm not, I'm not. He said, you have to have a servant's heart. And he says, you can go out and sell insurance. And he says, if you have a servant's heart, he said, it can actually be enjoyable.

He says, because you're never nervous when your mind's on service. And this is not only with the, not only with business or whatever it is, but it's also, I believe, with the ministry as well. I've noticed so many times, even when I'm going out to sell insurance, that when I think, hey, I can share the good news with these people, I can pray with these folks.

I can share Jesus with these folks. All of a sudden it has, it changes from the mindset of, I've got to go out and do my job to, I get to go out and do my job. And so one of the things that I've seen that you've done, Pastor Ron, is that you always keep money with you. And, but it seems to come back to you, right? That's right.

It does. And not only that, but I've found that money is one of the best communicators that there is. I am not a rich man, but I tell everybody I am definitely not a poor man. I'm one of those guys that understands what money is about. So I walk around so many times and I give away $50 bills and $100 bills, and I've asked the Lord to allow me one day to be able to give away $1,000 bills. And I see that day coming because I've had some opportunities to do that kind of thing.

And so I want to be a great steward over things because people understand that money, those dead presidents, those things are international in their language. I had a young lady at church one day, and she is one that calls me her papa, and she was about, at that time she was about five years old. And so I had given away a couple hundred dollars that day and only had a $10 bill left in my wallet. So I took it out and I handed it to her. And her mother said, Pastor, you have wasted your money because she doesn't understand denominations of money.

But when I looked at her, I noticed she was looking at money over differently and everything. And I realized she doesn't know denominations, but she knows it's something different than what most people give to her. So I'm one of those things, people that really believe that you can take money. And I tell people that I'm sowing a seed in you with this money. And I'm constantly teaching people about tipping. The tip does not tell what service you got, but it tells who you are. So people that I work with or come to our ministry, we might leave $200, $300, $400, $500 tip to somebody on a meal that's only $100, $200. But, you know, you should see the reactions that they have. I'm trying to displace that rumor that Christians are the worst tippers in the whole wide world.

Oh, yeah. And as a matter of fact, I actually heard that from waitresses and waiters before and they said, yeah, and then the Christians come in after church and they'll give their 10%, but they don't want to give anything like that. But the, you know, it's funny now that people have heard on the radio that Pastor Ron is out there giving $50 and $100 bills out.

Everyone is going to want to meet Pastor Ron. But Robbie, you've actually learned about servant leadership as well because you were actually in the car business. And from what I've heard, everybody who's in the car business is honest and trustworthy.

Is that right? Yeah, I was. You know, the story that comes to mind that really just revolutionized the way I did business was it worked my way up as a car salesman to the point where I was the general manager of Crown, excuse me, I was the general manager of Crown Dodge in Greensboro after 20 some odd years in the car business and I thought I was something, you know. And that happened in the Gulf War and the dealership just tanked. It just tanked. And we weren't selling any cars to speak of. It was like the 10th of the month of October and I think we might have had six cars out. The dealership was supposed to sell over 100. And our CSI, which was customer satisfaction index, came in the letter. And the man I worked for, he wouldn't put up with, like, if your customer satisfaction went down, you weren't going to be the general manager long.

And our CSI was 1.5 on a 4.0 scale, okay. So it was an F. I mean, we had gotten an F and we weren't selling any cars. And so I figured my career in the automobile business was over. I had heard about this crazy prayer that you could, you know, just listen to God and he would help you out if you had a problem. And so then I went and got in the field and I'm just like, God, help me out and I'm listening.

I'm just listening because I don't know. I know I need you. I know I'm messed up. And I actually fell asleep. And when I woke up, I was in more trouble. The dealership was looking for me. My wife was mad at me.

I got up the next morning, which was a Saturday morning, I'll never forget as long as I live, and I just prayed again. I said, God, I don't have anything. I don't have any answers. I've worked all these years.

I don't know what's going on. And he shows up to me in my heart and he says to me, Mike, he says, you know, it's all said and done. It's not going to matter how many cars you sold and it's not going to matter what your customer satisfaction rating is. He said, all that's going to really matter is how many people you really helped. And so I called a sales meeting and you could imagine this is the craziest thing.

I went in there and these people were used to my language not being that of a Christian, believe me. And I said, well, guys, I've talked to God this morning and I have a new plan. Like the Blues Brothers, I'm on a mission from God. Here's what we're going to do. And so I, you know, just simply said, from now on, we're not going to sell cars and we're not going to service cars. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to help people. So if a guy comes in here and he needs a Nissan, then you carry him over the Nissan store. If a guy comes in here and they don't need a car because they're passed too far their credit, don't sell them a car. Help them. Just think this is your brother that just came in here, your mother, and do everything that you can possibly do to help them. And if they're in here to get the car serviced, we're not going to sell them a bunch of stuff. We're going to find out what they really need and what we can really do and we're going to help them.

And I think we'll be OK. And I think it's just going to be OK. I can't even begin to tell you the turnaround in that dealership in such a short period of time. It ended up that the Dodge store was out selling the Honda store.

It's true. And it embarrassed, you know, the owner was like, oh, my Dodge store was out selling the Honda store. I'm going to move Robbie over to the Honda store.

That's how I ended up at Crown Honda Volvo was. But, you know, I'll never, ever forget that. And I certainly feel that way to this day. Whatever it is I'm doing, if I'm doing it in the radio or I'm doing it at home, right, it's not going to matter.

Right. What a lot of the stuff that's in it for you, but what you do for God. So, yeah, and I think sometimes people divorce their spiritual life from their work life. And they say, well, when I, you know, I go to church on Sunday and then once I leave church, then it's like a totally different person. But I mean, I think there's actually a passage where Jesus talks about this and he says, whoever can be trusted with little can also be trusted with much.

Whoever cannot be trusted with little will never be able to be given much. And I was actually having a conversation at Pastor Ron's house last week or whenever it was. And we were talking about this and you said, Pastor Ron, somebody will come into your church with two dollars. Somebody will come to my church with two dollars and they have no problem about putting one dollar in. We're not like a lot of places where we take five or six offerings or anything else. We just give you an opportunity to plant seed in the kingdom, but they'll come with two dollars. They have no problem about putting 50 percent of the one dollar in or they'll come with five dollars. They have no problem about putting the whole five dollars in.

But you give them a job and give them some things and all of a sudden they're making two or three thousand dollars. They have a whole lot of problem about putting 10 percent of it in. And so the thing about it is what's great with us is God doesn't need any of your money. The kingdom will be all right without every bit of it. But what you do is the only place where it says that God will open the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing to you. If you give, giving it shall be given to you and it is going to be pressed down, shaken together and running over what he given to you. So, so many people come up short and they don't have anything to give. And one prayer you will never hear me say is bless those that didn't have anything to give. I want to know why you didn't have anything to give. A good friend of mine who is Jean Dominique, he was telling me his mom, he's from Haiti, and he said his mom told him always to be able to give somebody something if it's only a button, you know. And so all of us have something to give.

And if we get out of that motion of where it's all about us, us four and no more and that sort of thing. And I'm not telling you anything about giving to the pastor or any of those things. I tell people where I'm at all the time, you know, I don't need a thing you have. God takes care of my needs and all of these kind of things.

You are a source, but you are not my resource. And so I am counting and depending upon the Lord. In fact, I'll tell you just a little something. Many years ago, I was on my way to a golf game and I got a call from a friend of mine who's an evangelist. And he said, look, one of the local guys here, his son needs somebody to minister to him. And I told him, you would be the man. And so I counseled my golf game, my guys I was with had him drop me off.

And I went to meet this young man and I was able to lead him to the Lord. And so when I called my friend back, he said, look, you call him up. This is his number.

Turns out the guy had just sold a business for $40 million. And he said to me, he said, look, man, you know, if you ever need something, let me know. I'll be able to give it to you. And I told him, your phone will never ring. I will never call you and ask you for anything because if I do, pretty soon you will become my God. And so if you want to give me something, fine, I'll take a check and spend it quick as anybody. But I'll never ask you for anything because God is my source.

And I work with that. And you cannot out give God in no matter, no fashion or anything. The more you give to him, the more he gives back and rewards to you.

Amen to that. There was actually a story I heard about, I don't know if somebody in Congress or I don't know if it was a senator or whatever it was, but the chaplain over all of Congress. One of these guys was a Christian and he came up to the chaplain and he said, chaplain, he said, I need you to pray for me about something. The chaplain says, okay, what do you need to pray for? And he says, listen, he said, when I was making $30,000 a year, I was able to tithe.

I gave $3,000 no problem, never had a problem. He says, but now that I'm making $800,000 a year, he says, I can't give away $80,000. He said, would you pray for me? And the chaplain said, absolutely. So he came up and he says, all right, I'm going to pray for you. Dear Lord, please bring this guy's income down far enough to where he can start tithing again. So, you know, I'm reminded of that too and in addition to giving money, Robbie, you actually work with children who have special needs.

Is that right? Yes, I teach, you know, Sunday school at Calvary and have with the special needs adults. These are people from, you know, some of them are 18 and some of them are older than me in their 70s.

I mean, really, really fun because they're special. But that didn't happen, you know, I shouldn't say that it happened because of anything other than God and my wife. OK, because actually what had happened, I had gotten an opportunity to teach the Ham Sunday school class at Calvary, which was like 150 people. And so and I just thought I was so honored, you know, they came to me and I immediately said, oh, yeah, you know, I would be delighted to teach the Ham Sunday school class without asking my wife or God or anybody else. You know, so I come home that night and I was like, honey, good news, we're teaching the Ham Sunday school class.

No, we're not. I said, what do you mean? And she said, no, God has told me we're going to work in special needs.

Well, we don't have any special needs in our family down syndrome, you know, autism, that kind of thing. I'm like, what are you talking about? No, no, this is what God told me that we're going to do. And I said, honey, you know, I have all this. This is how not humble I am. I was like, I have all this wonderful Bible knowledge.

How could I teach this? She goes, no, I'm telling you, this is what we're doing. Well, the next day I have this men's group that I go to in Mocksville to this day called the Christian Business Men's Committee. And there was an old missionary there by the name of Archie Jones. And so I tell him all my story, expecting these are my guys.

They're going to have my back here. Say, yeah, go home, tell your wife what you know, this is what happened. Archie looks at me after I tell the story and he goes, he says to me, Michael, he said, unto the least of these, my brother. And I was like, you dog. And so, man, I had to call and, you know, tell him I was, you know, not going to be the teacher. It was very embarrassing because they'd already put me on the roll, voted me in.

It was like gun deal. And so, oh, my goodness. And then I go to the class. And when I got to the class, people actually scared me. Michael, I mean, some of them are punching the air. They're looking out the window and just really, you know, these aren't young kids. These are adults and some of them are, you know, a handful. And I was like, man, I don't know.

I you know, I don't know. After I was there about three weeks, the teacher looks at me and she says, Robbie, I hear you're a pretty good teacher. Why don't you teach next week? And I said, really? And she goes, what do you want me to teach? She said, the fifth commandment.

I went, what? That's honor your father and mother. And I can't teach my own kids to do that. So anyway, so I'm like, God had me right where he wanted me. And I start praying again, using the same technique, essentially, that I used that day in the field like, God, I got nothing. I have no idea how I'm going to teach this. And so I prayed and I prayed and God said, well, you know how your honor, you know, is just get down on a knee.

People can see that and no matter what the situation is, this is what you can teach. So I go in that day, I am thinking I have accomplished. I get down on my knee.

I do that. I do my best to explain what a mother and a father, you know, and what God teaches on this and all this stuff. And they're looking out the window and punching the air. And I've got no idea, you know, if I've accomplished anything until the family show up. And as the family shows up, the students start getting down on one knee and the parents go, you know, or the families go, you know, what's this? And they're saying, well, we taught on the fifth, you know, the honor your father and mother. And the tears came.

And I was like, oh, God, you did it, didn't you? And that, believe it or not, Michael, was over 20 years ago now. And I can't even imagine my life without these people. And I can't even begin to tell you how much they have taught me.

It isn't Robbie, but it's almost funny how much these folks have taught me about this whole subject. You know, what is amazing is that I used to work with the Ark of Alamance, and I worked with these same folks. One of the things that been a true blessing to me, I got to attend a camp that they do every year called Hesse.

Oh, yeah. And so I'd worked there, and I never seen part of it. I worked with a pastor friend of mine, and we got there, and it was about 80 people that were there, and they had disabilities of all sorts. And it was just a wonderful thing. We did so many different things. But one of the things that really impressed me and changed my life was the second time I went, I was in a particular cottage, and they asked me if I would look after this young man that was there.

And it was a young man of probably about 25 years old. And one of the things I had to do was I had to go into the shower with him. And so it instilled something in me, you know, to be in a shower with a young man that is naked, and you have to wipe his back and everything, and I had to shave him and all.

And the first thing it did was it said to me that he had no choice about who came in that room and saw him or anything else. And for a man to have to touch another man that he does not know is not related to something, I'm a guy who has served all his life, and yet I was taken to a place I was not familiar with. And the Lord humbled me so much that day, it changed my whole perspective and outlet from a person who was looking with sympathy to a person who could empathize with what had happened then.

And it humbled me in such a way I have never forgotten that thing and gave me a respect, a sense of respect that I've never had before, you know, God's growing us all the time. Oh, yeah, I'll tell another story, Michael, like three years ago, I went to Haiti on a mission trip with actually the Teen Challenge there, I was doing boot camp talks, but they take me to an orphanage there, a Catholic orphanage was in Jamaica, and people in Jamaica, because of their religion, when somebody is born special needs, they think they're garbage, and they throw them to the curb, literally, they're out on the curb, these babies. And this Catholic orphanage goes around every day and picks up these babies and takes them to the orphanage. Now, unfortunately, the Catholic orphanage doesn't have near the resources needed to minister to these people.

So unfortunately, many of them that would be able to walk, many of them that would be able to talk, never get the help they need. So they're actually in cribs, and they're all stacked up, and you had to see it to fully appreciate, you know, what the deal is. And then God had me, you know, there, here, I'm here, and we're helping these people put on diapers, and we're helping them feed people that really should have been able to feed themselves, and now they're 15, 16 years old, and they've spent their life in a crib, Michael, okay? And I watched the same kind of thing, like totally out of my element, totally, you know, like, oh, my goodness. But then what I saw was that these people that had lived in this environment this whole time still had the glory of God in them. There was this one young man, and this other guy was picking on this other guy crib to crib, you know, he took his plastic that he'd been playing with. And this other young man, he was like, whoa, and he was going, you know, they can't talk again.

But you could just see that, man, this guy knew what was right, and he wanted to help his friend. And I was like, this is just, you know, and the least little of attention that you gave them, they shine like a bright morning. And it just makes you want to cry when you think of, you know, all the stuff that's going on out there that God gives us to the window sometimes to see what's going on. And to close it out, I wanted to kind of share some, so many times we say we need to tell people about Jesus, we need to tell people about Jesus.

And I know every week when we have the Wednesday in the Word, that's what we say, but if you think about a practical application of that, you'd be surprised when you give somebody a $50 bill, you give somebody a $100 bill. Whereas before, they didn't want to hear anything about Jesus. Now, all of a sudden, they're all ears. And so, you know, when Jesus said, what you have done for the least of these, you have done it unto me, that when we help people out in a situation that they're in, then their hearts and their minds may be opened to hearing the gospel of Jesus. And Robbie, glad to have you on as always. And Pastor Ron from Greater Love over in Burlington, go visit his church, check out the website and all that.

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