An Interview With Robby

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This is the Truth Network. Alright, for my YouTube channel, If Not For God with Mike Zwick, just like, subscribe, and hit that notification bell so you'll be alerted when we have our next video. Have fun, If Not For God with Mike Zwick. I get to be back with my friend. Hey, Mike. Hey, Robbie.

I hope everybody had a good Christmas. I believe this is airing Saturday, New Year's Eve on the 31st, so I remember a Bible verse, Robbie, where it says, Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. So be careful when you go out there tonight. I remember years ago, my dad was leaving somewhere New Year's Eve. He was going to his car, and he said there was a guy who kept standing up and kept falling down, kept standing up, kept falling down.

He finally went to a car, and then he realized he got into the car and drove off. So it's not a joke. We have to be very careful. There are some decisions that we make, and God is a forgiven God, and God will forgive you of whatever you've done. But there are some decisions that you make where there are no second chances.

So I don't know why. I just felt the Lord prompting me to say this, but be careful when you go out tonight, and maybe you don't need to go out at all. But today we're going to be looking at Acts chapter one.

Is that right, Robbie? Yeah, well, you know, when you say be careful, you know, I think about your own story. And since we're talking about Acts chapter one, you know, your story has got everything to do with what we're going to talk about in a little bit. But your story about being careful, right, was one time you just got this inkling you better put your seat belt on, you know, latch up at things.

We were just talking about that on Christmas night. It was November 1st of 2011, and I was in Germanton, North Carolina. I think it's Flat Shoals Road.

Right. And there was curvy, curvy road, but I was at the bottom of the road, and all of a sudden I was listening to Charles Stanley on the radio, and all of a sudden the music went off, and a voice told me in my ear, now I don't know if it was an audible voice. So I try to be honest about these things, and it may not have been an audible voice, and it may have just been something that said to me or within my spirit saying put your seat belt on.

So I don't want to lie. Okay, but I was at the bottom of the hill, and the voice said to me, you need to put your seat belt on. And so I said, okay, and I put my seat belt on.

I drove to the top of the hill, and with my seat belt on, I ran straight into a tree at 80 miles an hour or so, and split the car right up to the windshield. And the officer who came said if you had not had your seat belt on, we'd be flying you over to Baptist. So how do you like that? How do you like that, the Christian far guy?

Well, be sober, be vigilant, you know, all those things are coming to my mind. But also the thing that you mentioned there too, which I think is significant, is you said you heard a voice. It's really cool. I don't know if you ever noticed it in the fifth chapter of the Song of Solomon, the second verse says, I slept but my heart waketh, right? It says it is the voice of my beloved knocking.

Now that's an interesting thing. If you go study that verse, as you might imagine, knowing me, I've studied it and studied it, right? Looked at the Hebrew in depth and realized that what it's saying is that the Lord's voice knocks. In other words, he says, Behold, I stand at the door and knocks. In Revelation it says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. But how does he do that? According to the Song of Solomon, he does that with his voice. And so his voice knocks at your heart.

Isn't that cool? I heard a story about somebody who actually literally went to their front door because they heard somebody knocking at the door and they opened the door and nobody was there. But what they said was they realized that that was Jesus who was talking to them and they realized that they needed to listen to Jesus. I have heard Sunday night was an amazing night. It was a Christmas night. It was like no other night I've ever had in my life. I wasn't going to talk about it.

Well, I'm glad you are. We'll get to why this is interesting in Acts chapter one here in a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Acts chapter one, starting in verse one, it says, The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and to teach, until the day in which he was taken up. After that he, through the Holy Ghost, had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen, to whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days. And speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God, and being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which saith he, Ye have heard of me. For John truly baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence. When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time again restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his power, in his own power. And here's the verse that you liked, Robby, but ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you, and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost parts, uttermost part of the earth. And so I had actually listened to this several times, but you're a basket, your son's a basketball player, you were, you played basketball, I played a little bit of basketball.

Nothing to speak of. But I listened to the complete testimony of Pete Marovitch on Christmas Day, Christmas Eve, Christmas the day before that, whatever. There was a part, and this is what you were, this is what we were going to with being a witness. Pistol Pete said this, and he said, This happened to me. He said, There's people who don't believe that it happened to me. He said, There's theologians who don't believe that it happened to me. Then he said, There's theologians who don't believe in God, however possible that is.

He says, But it happened to me. He said, I was sitting in my bed one night, and all of these sins had come to my mind, and I started to talk to the Lord, and he said, I started to ask the Lord to forgive me. He said, I was just about to go sit down beside the bed, and I was going to pray to receive Christ as my Savior. And he said, Right before this happened, he said, I heard an audible voice. He said, It wasn't in my head.

It wasn't anything like that. He said, It was an audible voice, and it was the voice of God. And he said, The voice said to him, Be strong, and lift thine own heart. That's his personal witness.

That's his personal testimony. What did you think about that verse? You said you really, that verse stuck out.

What I said that, man. Well, of course, the verse stuck out, because I've seen it time and again, that our testimony is one of the amazing things. And there's a line in 119 Psalm that says, I'll give my testimony before kings and not be ashamed. And the reason is, is your own story, just like Pete Marovitch is telling his story. This is his story. We can't argue with him because it's his story, and he believes it. And therein lies the opportunity for the power of you've seen God with your own eyes. And of course, you know, when you read the gospels, you got, you know, four people that saw Jesus with their own eyes. And so they're giving, you know, eyewitness accounts to it.

But what happened with you and Jesus is your eyewitness account. And that's, to me, where the power is. And we see this all the time in radio, right?

That, you know, it's one thing, you know, to get on the radio and teach, whatever. But if you start telling a story, right? The story of like, man, what happened to me on Christmas? If this will be a Christmas Eve, I never, ever forget.

That was your setup, by the way. And so, as you said that, man, people aren't going into Wal-Mart, right? They want to hear the rest of the story because our life comes to us in a narrative like a story. And that's the way we relate to people. What's going on in your life?

What's going on? You know, we want to know what it is. And that's why so much of the Bible comes to us as a story is because that's how we get faith. It's faith comes by hearing and hearing, right, by the word of God. And so the idea is to grow our faith as we hear eyewitness accounts, right?

What does that do? It gives you faith that this did, in fact, happen. So happen. And so in the case of Pete Maravich's story, clarify for me, because I had not heard this. Lift your own heart to God? And you can go back and you can look at the video.

You can go online. Look up Pete Maravich testimony on YouTube. And this is right around anywhere between the 37 minute to the 42 minute mark.

I don't remember exactly where it was, but it's somewhere around there. And he tells the whole story about this. And of course, there were other parts as well. I mean, there were, he talks about how, you know, that we didn't come from, you know, we didn't come from soup, that we haven't evolved over billions of years. And he talks about different people who, there was somebody who was an evolutionist who basically began to study it more and more. And they said, I can't believe this. So there's a lot to that.

But I would highly recommend that anybody go through that and actually look at that. And so as a result of him hearing this from God, where it says, lift thine own heart to God. Be strong and lift thine own heart. That's what I remember.

Be strong. And did he feel like he received Christ as a result of this? Well, he did. I mean, he heard that and he was going to get down and kneel down and give his life to Christ anyways. But he heard this voice and then he did it. So he did what he was going to do anyways.

And there was a lot to it. There was some repentance. And he even said, Lord, he said, Would you be willing to accept me? He said, I've plucked your beard. I've sinned against you. I've spit at you. And the Lord's answer was obviously yes, which encourages me, Robbie, that I don't care how far you've gone. I don't care what you've done. I've said this before.

I'll say it again. There is room at the foot of the cross. Jesus is willing to receive you with open arms. But sometimes, and unfortunately, and it's happened with me, sometimes our own pride gets in the way.

Oh, it clearly does. And, you know, it's interesting to me, I had a very similar experience again, you know, where God showed me all this sin. You know, you may have heard me and I've told it on this show before that I was praying and all of a sudden God asked me in a very, which I would say he was knocking at my heart saying, you know, Robbie, what do you want?

And that's what I heard. And I glibly and I know I glibly because he scared me. I was it was one of those things, you know, like for whatever reason, right then it was not it was it was the voice of God. But it was a it was a like, whoa, like get down on your face voice of God. And so I said, I just want to serve you, which was I know I know it was a glib answer, but it was what came into my mind.

And he said, do you? And when he said that, all these things came into my mind where I didn't serve him. So these were my sins. They were just they are all couched in the idea of things that I had been asked to do that I didn't do. And but it was a beautiful thing, not from a standpoint that I didn't do them, but that I saw that these were all things that I could do.

They weren't like, you know, go to Africa or whatever else. And they were things that I could literally repent. And the idea of me repenting, you know, was extremely exciting. And so, you know, what I would say about what Peter Pete Maravich is saying, which you've always heard, he had a wonderful testimony. Would be that those things are personal, you know, there for him.

That's his test. But that was his encounter with God. And just like you heard a voice and say, put your seat belt on. I mean, all of those listening, you know, know that you I've heard that story many times. I mean, that's exactly what what you're testifying to, which tells us all that there may be times in your life when you hear a voice.

Pay attention. I mean, I was in I was in my own house on Christmas night. And, you know, sometimes you're not sure about something or whatever. But I went to the door and I unlocked the front door for a minute and I was walking around down right around down there. And I clearly heard somebody either lock or unlock the door, just like I did. And it was just like you're talking to me. And I went there. The door was still locked. Another point during the night I was at the and there was some stuff going on, you know, but I was at the bottom of the stairs.

And I audibly heard a tiger growl. Now, what does all of that mean? I don't know. I've got some ideas. Right.

I mean, but but I but I do know this. I was I was spending some time with the Lord. And he gave me some numbers. God speaks to me in numbers. And one of a couple of groups of numbers that he 90 percent was one of them.

But the ones that were more important were 95 to 98 percent. And I asked him, I said, Lord, what does this mean? And this may surprise some listeners. It may surprise you. It surprised me. But what the Lord showed me was that 95 to 98 percent of what's going to happen in life is already almost it's like it's determined it's going to happen.

But then there's that two to five percent that's. Malleable that that we can change through. What did we do before we did the show? We pray. Right. There's two to five percent of things that happen in life that that, you know, we constantly have decisions that we can make. But what I got from that was that really like we think that we're making a decision. You know, if we have the mind of Christ, which it says that we do as Christians, that that God is it's really God speaking to us. Well, God, do I go to the gym now or do I come and do a show with Robbie? God, do I do I get something to eat now or do I wait until after? And I do believe that we can ask God.

But I do believe that from if I heard right at about 95 to 98 percent of what we do is already determined. And I've seen that happen so many times in my life. I, you know, one time I got a check in the mail for five thousand dollars. And I was like, wow, this is going to start in my son, Michael, in the back seat, turned around, looked at me and yelled. That was a gift from God. Have you ever had anything like that happen? Oh, my goodness.

Have I ever had anything like that happen? What? Speaking of testimony, since we're in Acts chapter one, you know, when we lost the dealership and we we literally lost all our money, we had no money. I had to go through a newspaper so that we could get a deposit so I could get the power turned on in the house that we're having to rent after losing our house and all this stuff. So we're broke.

We can't even. Robbie wasn't going to be able to graduate from high school. My oldest son, because, you know, we owed the Christian school a bunch of money in order. But somehow or another, that got taken care of. So his dream in life, this was somehow or another.

Yeah, that's exactly like the gift to God idea. It was. And so his dream in life was to play Division one basketball. And we had looked and looked for colleges. He'd been recruited here and there. And finally, the University of Northern Arizona recruited him. But and they said they were going to let him play, which was a Division one school, but there wasn't a scholarship involved. So, you know, we're like, well, how are we going to afford to send Robbie to the University of Northern Arizona?

We don't have any money. Right. And so but we're so. I have great faith, Mike. I'm like, well, we're going to take him up there. We're going to talk to the coach.

We're going to see what's going on. So we go up, drive all the way, you know, opening week, University of Northern Arizona. It's going to be twenty thousand dollars for that semester. And this was what, 19 or two thousand seven or eight. And and we talked to the bursar's offices or whatever they call that thing.

And they were telling us, maybe you could get a loan, maybe you can do this, maybe you can do that. And so we were left there was, you know, Robbie's been, you know, whatever you call it, inducted or whatever. He's been approved to be in the school. You know, he's going to be on the team, blah, blah, blah. And so and he's got a dorm. It's all set up, you know. And I'm like, OK, well, we're just leaving him here. And my wife was like, are you out of your mind?

We don't have any money. In Flagstaff, Arizona, you're going to leave him in Flagstaff, Arizona. We're going to drive all the way back to North Carolina. Yeah, I just I just feel like God's going to make this happen. He didn't come this far this long. This was not I'm not going to let this stand in his way. So I'm going to I'm going to give you a verse right now.

I'm glad to do this. It's Luke 18, eight. And I'm gonna look at the ESV version. It says, I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the son of man comes, will he find faith on the earth? That was you right there. Yeah. Faith is an action step.

Many times there was action in my wife. Oh, man. All the way back to North Carolina.

That's a three thousand mile trip, by the way. I mean, we're here. And like Robbie, I just don't you know, what are we going to do?

You've left Robbie in North. You know, I said, this is happening. I don't know how it's going to happen.

So if this did happen, I, I still don't believe how it happened, but I lived it. So I know. So we get home.

Right. You've been gone for whatever a week. Taking your son to Arizona. We opened a mailbox and in that mailbox, would you believe it? Michael is a check for how much? Twenty thousand dollars.

Twenty thousand dollars. Now, the most bizarre part of the whole thing is who the check was from. It was from the state of North Carolina. Why was there a twenty thousand dollar check in your mailbox from the state of North Carolina? It was because, um, my office manager that had, um, obviously, you know, embezzled, you know, who knows how much, but clearly a whole lot of money from the state of North Carolina in order to not spend as much time in prison had written them a very large check. And since she had paid all this tax money, then in that case, the state owed me. Well, the really crazy thing about it is I owe the IRS, all these other people, they didn't loom onto it because for whatever reason they didn't. And so here's this check.

I shouldn't say for whatever reason. I think we all know what happened. God wanted Robbie to have that semester at the university in Northern Arizona. And so it and so it was. And I think sometimes, Robbie, and this is this is just maybe my own realization. Sometimes we try to look at the natural and go, well, I'm not saying you're doing that.

I'm just saying, oh, it was the state and it was because of this. Well, of course, there's always going to be a logical, even when I got the check for five thousand dollars, it was because my dad died and I was supposed to get the five, whatever. But it was a gift from God. It was it was a gift from God. And that twenty thousand dollars was a gift to me.

And I was not a lot of doubt with that. What did she say when she saw that twenty thousand dollars? She rejoiced. She was like she could not have been more happy because, you know, she had faith to to some extent or she would never have let him. You know, she was she was listening to me and listening to her son. And that happened.

You know, I loved it. Well, I noticed something about your wife. I've met her a couple of times, a very nice lady. One of the things that I noticed was her humility. And it may not come across because she's assertive or whatever. But I noticed it as I listened to her and I got to talk to her. She's a very she's very humble and willing to listen. Am I wrong or.

Yeah, I missed it. I know she is. She's she is very humble and very willing willing to listen to whatever it is I have to say, which, you know, because believe me, being married to me, she's gone out on some cliffs that we've fallen off. Oh, I know the feeling. As your wife has, too.

You know, but the neat thing is after, you know, 30, almost six years now, like man, you know, I think about it all the time. Unfortunately, in the year 2007, like 90 percent of the Chrysler dealers that were out there that were that were small ran out of business. But unfortunately, probably 70 to 80 percent of those, the couples divorced. Right, because, you know, they're married to a rich whatever and the money's gone and that leads to pressures and whatever. But and I saw I saw almost all my friends that went on that were car dealers at the time that went under.

They also lost their dealerships and they lost their wives. It happens. Yeah. And it's it does happen. Like, man, you know, it shows you where, you know, what's what's important as family so much more so than our jobs. And it's been something to, you know, talk about faithful.

And there you go. I have had so many things that have happened to me, Robbie, and I didn't understand why they happen. I mean, I talked to you before about when I got into trading options in the stock market and I started more and more and more money. And it was it was an addiction.

It was game. It was nothing more than an addiction. And I had lost all of this money.

I wish that I would have lost $20,000. I mean, I you know, but in the last last couple of weeks and I heard Charles Stanley say this one time, he said that sometimes you you know, when you don't want to you don't want to spend some time with God, he said sometimes he'll put you in a place where you're on your back and you don't have a choice but to spend time with him. But when I had a couple of these last two or three weeks to spend real time with God, quiet time with God in his word and meditating with him and praying real time with him, he showed me that these things that had happened to me that I thought were the worst things in the world, these things that I thought were absolutely horrible and God couldn't have possibly wanted these things to happen, willed these things to happen. And I didn't question whether he even allowed them to happen.

You know, maybe it was just the devil had cut his stuff. I didn't know. OK, I don't have all of my theology or all my doctrine straight. Neither do you. Neither does anybody else who's listening.

That's true. But what I did learn was that maybe, just maybe, he works all together, all things together for our good to those who love God and for them who are called according to his purpose. There's a verse I got in 2022 and I hope to find something as valuable to me in 2023 and for all those of you listening. It's in Psalms 119.

I can't tell you the number, but here's what the verse says. It says, I know that thy judgments are right. Oh, Lord, I know thy judgments are right. And in faithfulness thou has afflicted me. In other words, here comes judgment and he's going to do it faithful. Whether I lost the dealership, you lost the money, whatever happened, he did it because of his faith in what that's going to produce.

In other words, that big pruning that we're fixing to get. But then the next verse says, it says, which I do love, it says, I know in faithfulness thou has afflicted me. Let we pray thee, thy merciful kindness be for my comfort, according to thy word, unto thy servant. In other words, Lord, I know I'm going to get a spanking, but please give me a hug.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a part, and I'm thinking about this, Job 33, and I've got the ESV version here, but I think it was Elihu rebukes Job. And he basically talks about there's a man who rejects the choices to foods. The best food that is out there, he doesn't want it, he can't eat it, but that the Lord does this so he gets to a place where he absolutely needs God and then an angel touches him.

And if the angel touches him, he's better than he was before. But I wanted to say something. I wanted to pause a moment here to thank one of our program supporters, and that's High Point Financial Design over in High Point, North Carolina. We'd just like to say thank you to our friend, friends, Ronnie Kleinert and his son Brad Kleinert and all of the folks at High Point Financial Design for their positive feedback and encouragement of our ministry. With this sponsor shout out, we recognize High Point Financial Design and their investment focus on intentional planning and abundant living, continued blessings to High Point Financial Design and If Not For God. All right, for my YouTube channel, If Not For God with Mike Zwick, just like, subscribe and hit that notification bell. So you'll be alerted when we have our next video. So. This is the Truth Network.