New Year, New You

This is Robbie Dilmore from The Christian Car Guy and Kingdom Pursuit, where we hear how God takes your passion and uses it to build a kingdom. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds.

Enjoy it and share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick.

Welcome to If Not For God with Mike Zwick. I'm glad to be back here again today. I hope you guys are doing well. The weather has been warming up. I know it was ice cold, but things are getting better and things are getting better in life too.

You know what? You woke up this morning. You can say, this is the day that the Lord has made. I'm going to rejoice and be glad in it. How did you wake up this morning?

How are you feeling right now? You know, and I was just talking with Robbie about this, but I told him, I said, I felt like I heard from the Lord on this, that about 95 to 98% of our life is just self-determined. We think that we're thinking thoughts, oh, I'm going to go into this door or I'm going to go to this restaurant. But the Bible says that if we have the mind of Christ, and if we have the mind of Christ, that it's God thinking through us. But I did say, and this is what I felt like I heard from the Lord, that about 2 to 5% of what happens can be changed in our lives. And a lot of times it can be changed through prayer. A lot of times it can be changed through somebody speaking directly to us. A lot of times it can be a word of knowledge. A lot of times it can be something that we hear on the radio, something that we see on TV. Hey, you may be listening to this show right now and God may be speaking to you through me and you just don't even know it yet.

Oh man, you thought about that? If you got your Bibles, and I hope you do. The Lord really spoke to me about something and I hope He speaks to you as well today. 2 Corinthians 11. We're going to be looking at the New Living Translation, the NLT. 2 Corinthians 11. And I'm going to be starting in verse 17. It says, Such boasting is not from the Lord, but I am acting like a fool. And since others boast about their human achievements, I will too. After all, you think you are so wise, but you enjoy putting up with fools. You put up with it when someone enslaves you, takes everything that you have, takes advantage of you, takes control of everything, and slaps you in the face.

I'm ashamed to say that we've been too weak to do that. But whatever they dare to boast about, I'm talking like a fool again. I dare to boast about it too. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they descendants of Abraham?

So am I. Are they servants of Christ? I know I sound like a madman, but I have served him far more. I have worked harder, been put in prison, more often been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again. Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked, once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea.

I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the city and the deserts and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not.

Whoa. I have worked hard and long, and during many sleepless nights I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold without enough clothing to keep me warm.

Then besides all this, I had the daily burden of my concern for all the churches. Who is weak without my feeling that weakness? Who is led astray and I do not burn with anger? If I must boast, I would rather boast about the things that show how weak I am.

Oh, he's going to boast in his weaknesses. God, the Father of our Lord Jesus, who is worthy of eternal praise, knows that I am not lying. When I was in Damascus, the governor under King Aretas kept guards at the city gates to catch me.

I had to be lowered in a basket through a window in the city wall to escape from him. And when I see that, one of the things that I hear him saying, and I believe it was in verse 20, he says, sometimes we put up with things that we shouldn't be putting up with. Oh, now we come across in a nice way. We say it in a nice way. We try to come across as gentlemen. We try to come across as nice. And I'm for all that stuff.

If anybody knows Mike Zwick, you know that I'm going to try to be polite to you. I'm going to ask you questions. I'm going to hold the door. I'm going to be as nice as I can possibly be.

Okay? But once again, going back to that 95 to 98% thing that I believe that the Lord gave me, there are going to be a small number of people that we deal with that I don't care how nice you are to these people. I don't care how polite you are. I don't care how much you try to be pleasant, nice, caring, and all those things. It's not going to work.

There are going to be a small number of people. You can't deal with these people the same way that you deal with everybody else. And I don't say that in a mean way. Sometimes there are some people, and I've learned this myself, that you have to be firm with these people. Now, I believe in being kind and generous and nice and stuff like that, but there's times where I'm nice, I'm polite, but I look somebody straight in the eye and I say, this is what I'm going to do. You don't have to like it, you don't have to accept it, you don't have to do any of that stuff, but this is the way that it's going to be. You do your thing and I do my thing, but this is the way that it's going to be.

There are people where you're nice to them, you're talking to them in a low and a pleasant tone, and they're going to start yelling, and no matter what you do, no matter what you say, being polite to those people is not going to work. Now, you have a choice. We always have a choice how we react to these people. We always have a choice whether we listen to the Holy Spirit or not. There, I'll tell you this though, there are going to be times, there are some times where you have to say, I'm sorry, but I've got to leave right now. There are going to be some times where you may, you know, you may have to do some things that don't seem to make sense in your own mind. You may raise your voice, you may not like to raise your voice, but there may be times where that's going to be the only way that somebody's going to hear you. There may be times where you may have to ignore some people, because guess what? You can try things every way until you're blue in the face. We can try 72 ways to do it, but there are some people who just will not listen, and the only way that they're going to hear you is if you're firm with them and a little bit hard.

Hey, I don't like it, I don't like that that's the way that it's got to be, but that's the way that it is. If you've ever read the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, the guy who wrote the book, Dale Carnegie, even wrote this in the beginning of the book. He said these principles that I give you, being polite, asking questions, being a good listener, he said this will work with most people. He said, but there's some people that it won't work with, and that there are times in life where, see, God doesn't always give us the blueprint. God doesn't always give us the complete plan, the complete goals, the complete everything that we need. He doesn't always do that. You know, I'm reminded of J. Vernon McGee where he said, God runs his own universe. You may not like the way that God runs his own universe, but you don't have your own universe.

God does. So, it is what it is, and I don't know how I got on that, I just got on that and I'm telling you the truth. But yes, we always try to be kind with people, we always try to be nice, we try to listen, but unfortunately there are going to be some people, and maybe what it is, they just don't want to hear what you have to say. Maybe what it is, they don't like your answer. You know, you could tell somebody something, and they may not like what they're hearing, and they say, well, you're not listening to me, I tried to talk to you and you're not listening, or you won't listen to what I have to say. And I say, no, I've sat and I've listened to what you have to say, and I've explained my side of it.

It sounds like you just don't want to listen. And so, yes, there are always going to be people who are impossible. There are always going to be people who are difficult to deal with. We love them, we treat them with respect, and the golden rule comes into case, you know, where you said, where Jesus said, do one unto others as you shall have them do unto you, for this sums up the law and the prophets. I would say probably there are over 90% of people that I can get along with pretty well. I would say there's maybe another 5% that are difficult, but there's just, I notice I may have to tweak some things, or they may have to tweak some things, and we can end up getting along, we can be polite, we're probably not going to hang out a whole lot.

But then there's that final 3 to 5%, you know, or 2 to 5%. And it's just, you're going to have to ask the Holy Spirit. So unless the Lord builds the house, the laborers labor in vain, you know, unless he's helping us out every step of the way, then we're not going to make it. You know, I mean, so I don't know what else to say about that, but as we're walking along this day, and as we're walking on this road together, what is it that the Lord is speaking to you about right now? What is God telling you? See, I was spending some time with the Lord, I had been a little bit sick, and you could probably hear it in my voice, it's not 100% my voice back, but I am feeling better. But during the time when I was sick, one of the things that happened to me was I got to spend a lot of time with the Lord. And sometimes we do it voluntarily, and sometimes we do it involuntarily, and obviously, this was involuntarily.

This was not something that I was planning, seeking, or even really looking for. But when I spent some time with the Lord, I tell you what the Lord speaks. Jesus is speaking to you every day. As a matter of fact, we were over at Just Like Jesus Ministries, and there was a service that we had with Cliff Sutton, and my friend Christy Reel came over, and Tammy and Steve Ross came over, and everybody got up and started to share what the Lord was sharing with them. And I had seen Steve, he's a house member of Steve Ross in North Carolina, and I had seen him before listening to sermons or maybe kind of looking or this or that, but on this particular time, he walked up to the front, and he said, I've always felt like the Lord was speaking to me. And he said, the Lord has been speaking to me for about the last 20 years or so, and he said, but the people who were in this room prophesied over me. And he said, you guys got it right in the money. His wife was crying, there were people in the audience who were crying, and one of the things that I've learned is that we want things to be clean.

We want things to look good. We don't want tears, we don't want mess, we don't want this, we don't want that, but God's going to have his way. And many times if we want a true deliverance, if we want to be delivered from demonic influence, or if we want to be delivered, or if we want to be healed of the sickness or the illness that we have, sometimes we just have to say, Lord, I don't care what you got to do.

It's going to be your way, or it's going to be the highway. I don't care what you have to do. I was in my shower on Christmas night, and there were some things that were happening to me. And I said, Lord, I said, I don't care what happens, Lord. I said, I just want freedom. And that night the Lord gave me freedom.

There were some people who prayed with me, and I thank God for these people, Tiger and Elena. My wife was in the house, there were some kids, and it was, you know, I tried to be as nice as I could be, but there was some stuff that came out and it was difficult. Is there something that you need to be delivered of? A lot of people right now are dealing with depression. A lot of people right now are dealing with mental illness.

And so, so many times we look at a pill, or we look at a doctor, or we look at what they're saying on television. You know, the first person that you should be looking to is the Lord. Lord, what do you have to say about this issue?

Is this something that I just need a pill for? Or is there something demonic that needs to go? Do I need somebody to pray for me to help me get delivered of these problems that I'm dealing with? Because I tell you what, the devil is going to camp out and hang out as long as you'll let him.

As long as you're okay with him being there and running your life, he doesn't have a problem with that. Matter of fact, the Bible says in John 10, 10, it says that the thief comes but to steal, kill, and destroy. But Jesus comes so that we might have life and that we might have it more abundantly. You know, one of the things that happened to me, and I had gotten to the point where I had, I guess it was when they say the spiritual, you know, you normally see, like there's a microphone in front of my face right now. I know you can't see this, but it is. There's a door over there to the right of me.

So we can see in the natural. But one of the things that happened to me on Christmas night was that the walls came down, so to speak, and I was able to see in the spiritual. One of the things that I saw was a chicken foot.

I saw these black dots. I saw all of these other things that I couldn't even explain. I mean, there were so many things that were happening to me.

And I do believe that the chicken foot may have had something to do with witchcraft that was trying to come against me, and I don't know what it was. But I started praying to the Lord and I asked him to release me from this stuff. And I had my friends come over and they had prayed for me.

And when they prayed for me, stuff started to go. During this whole time, there was a time where they said, Mike, is there anything that you need to repent of? I'm going to be honest with you. Sometimes you don't want to say stuff.

Sometimes you want to keep stuff to yourself. At this point, I said, Lord, you have your way. And stuff just started coming out of my mouth. I started repenting of all this sorts of stuff. I called my mother and I asked my mother to forgive me for some stuff that I've done to her.

I called several of my friends. And I just started speaking it out. I said, I forgive this person.

I forgive that person. Because the truth is, is that unless we're willing to give up everything, that the Lord is not going to be able to do his work in us. You think that what happens with you every day is an accident? You think that when you decided to go to that restaurant, you think that was you that decided to go to that restaurant? Or you think the Lord had already ordained that?

Yes, like I said, there's going to be two to five percent of the time where, you know, we can kind of make our own decisions and it can kind of change things. We know that prayer changes things and never stop praying. The Bible says to pray without ceasing.

Well, how is that possible? I don't know, but I'm going to pray as much as I can. I'm going to pray as much as I can. The Lord spoke to me and he said to read, read 10 chapters a day in the Bible.

And so guess what? This morning I woke up and I read a chapter that I wasn't even planning on reading. It was Second Corinthians Chapter 11. And he spoke to me through that. The Lord spoke to me through Acts Chapter 1, verse 11.

He's talking about the Lord going, the Lord's coming back. I mean, you know, the Lord can speak to you, but are you open to hearing his voice? The word of God says that my sheep hear my voice and another they will not follow.

Who are you following? Are you following the Lord? Are you following another voice? One of the things that I learned on Christmas night is that there's plenty of voices that are speaking to you. There can be plenty of voices that can be speaking to you. And yes, we asked the Lord that to speak to us and Holy Spirit speak to us, speak through us. But there are other voices that can speak to us. And there was one point during that night where I was convoluted. I got mixed up.

I didn't know who was speaking. But you know what? The Lord was able to deliver me and the Lord will deliver you too. I don't care how far you've gone.

I don't care what you've done. The Lord wants to forgive you. The Lord wants to forgive you. The Lord loves you. Jesus loves you so much that he died on the cross for your sins. He rose from the grave. He was seen by over 500 people. And it says he did it for the whole world. But guess what? If you were the only person in this world, he would have done the same thing just for you.

I'm going to say it again. If you were the only person in this whole world, the Lord would have died on the cross for just your sins. He cares for you that much. How much does he love you? I heard it said one time that he loves you so much that he spread out his arms and he died.

He did on the cross. He loves you. He's coming back again soon. And so this is an exciting time to be alive. This is an exciting time to be following Jesus. There are so many other things that are going on. And I'm just going to throw this in as a side note. You know I hardly watch the news at all right now. I see this. I see that.

It pops up on my phone. But I don't really spend a whole lot of time in the news. It's depressing. It's not uplifting.

It's not really going to help you. I mean I can see, you know, oh so-and-so died, this person died. I got news for you. The news that you're seeing and hearing, it's not good news. It's bad news.

They taught us when I was in college. They said if it bleeds, it leads. They told us another example. They said if a dog bites a man, that's not news. They said if a man bites a dog, that's news.

Because they said that's crazy. Let me pause for a moment. I want to pause right 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 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. John 10-10.

Continued blessings to High Point Financial Design and, if not for God, with Mike Zwick. So, that being said, what are your next steps? You know, I don't know if I ever told you guys, and I think I did, and this happened after my deliverance. One of the things that happened to me was that the Lord spoke to me another time previously. Something really bad had happened to me, and I was sitting on my counter, and I was looking at the alarm, and I was so depressed, and I felt the Lord speak to me, and he said, What are you going to do now, Mike?

If you're listening right now, what are you going to do now? You've heard what I've said. You know what I'm talking about. You know the first thing that I was talking about where there's difficult people in your life. There's difficult people who you have to deal with day in and day out, and what you're doing right now is not working.

I'm not saying that to be offensive. I'm not saying that to be mean, but what you're doing is not working. You're trying to be nice.

You're trying to do this, trying to do that, and it's not working. Maybe it's time to change strategy. You know, there's an old expression that says, People always want what they can't have.

You know, it's funny. When you take something away from somebody, all of a sudden, now they want it all that much more, and sometimes when you try to do everything that you can do, it's like a dancing bear. You're doing everything that you can do to try to please this person, to try to do this, to try to do that, and it's not working, but guess what? When you ask the Holy Spirit what to do, maybe sometimes you just turn around and you take a step back and you move on, baby. You move on. Maybe sometimes, hey, you know, maybe there's somebody you're talking to on the phone three, four, five times a day.

Maybe you move those phone calls to once or twice a day, and then you move it to once a day or every other day, or maybe you move it to a text message. Listen, I didn't say that this stuff was easy. The gospel is not always easy. The work of the cross was not always easy. Do you think it was easy for Jesus to be hanging up on that cross when he was dying for our sins? Do you think it was easy for him to feel rejected by God? You know, usually he called God his Father, but when he was on the cross, he said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

He said, my God. If you're listening right now, is there something that you need to change? Maybe you need to be more assertive. Maybe you're listening right now. Maybe there's somebody who's listening right now who's dealing with depression.

You're dealing with some major depression, and what you're doing is not working. Ask the Lord what to do, and then take action. See, one of the things that I've learned, and I've had to learn this the hard way, is that when the Lord says jump, you better jump.

When the Lord says go, you better go. I was watching a television show that I knew I had no business watching, and I'm going to tell you what happened. I had prayed against, it was a paranormal circus, and there was a truck that I was driving by on the highway, and so the next day I drove back that same place that I went at about a mile on the road past where I had driven past that truck, and I was cursing that truck. That truck was sitting on the side of the road broken down. You see, the Lord is greater. Greater is he who is within you than he who is within the world. But guess what?

Then there's always that second step. That Sunday night, or that Saturday or Sunday afternoon, I was watching a show. It was on something about the paranormal. Here I had gone, and I was just praying and speaking against this paranormal event, and now all of a sudden I'm watching a show about the paranormal stuff.

Guess what? I shouldn't have done it. I was sitting on the couch, and the Lord told me, you need to turn this off. I looked for my remote.

I couldn't find it, and I saw that the remote was probably five or ten feet across the floor, across the room. So instead of me going over there, I said, Lord, instead of me going over and turning this off, I'm going to watch a Christian show afterwards. Now, see, the devil will argue with you.

God won't argue with you. Just said, okay, and that was it. But then after that, I got extremely sick. This was a few weeks ago.

This may have been three weeks ago. But, and a lot of bad things happened. Now, God used a lot of those things for my good. Romans 8.28, We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, and for them who are called according to his purpose.

I get that. But I believe I could have been saved a lot of heartache and headache and stomachache and a lot of other stuff had I just listened to the Lord. And yes, I learned a lesson. Yes, I learned that, Lord God, when you tell me something, I need to do it. So now it's like when the Lord told me to share something with Rick Pearson. He told me to share with him a word that the Lord had shown.

I shared it with him immediately, and he said, thank you, I received that. I said, amen. You know, and then there's sometimes when we have something, and we're like, God, I don't know, is this, is this, am I supposed to do this?

Am I not? And this is what I call the 50-50 shots. I mean, there was something where there was a little video that I had posted. And I just wasn't sure if I was supposed to post it. So I tried to post it once, and it would not work. And the Lord told me at the beginning, he said, you can try this three times. And I tried to post it again, and it just didn't work. So I said, I'm going to try it one more time. And I ended up trying it, and it worked, and it went on there. But the video was kind of a dud. It didn't do too well.

It wasn't a great video. And sometimes the Lord tells us we have to do something. And I believe sometimes he suggests it. But the devil is very loud when he tries to get you to do something. If you feel a prompting to do something, say, first of all, ask the Lord, is this godly?

Is this something that you would have me to do, or is this a shortcut? You know, many times when we're working in business and we're dealing in business, one of the things that can happen to us is that there is things that are black. There are things that are white. There's good things that we know are right, and we know are fine, and we can do them.

And there's black. There's bad things that we know are wrong, and we shouldn't be doing it. But unfortunately, fortunately or unfortunately, there are many times where there are gray areas, and there can be something that everything within us wants to do it because it's the easy way out. But if you've ever seen the movie Rocky, there was a song in there, and that song said there is no easy way out. There is no easy way out with the Lord. You know, Jesus actually even said this to the Lord when he was praying in the garden of Gethsemane. He said, God, he said, if there's any other way out of this, he says, let me get out of it. He says, but at the end of the day, it's not my will that needs to be done, Lord, but it is your will that needs to be done. Your will, Lord. But see, the devil doesn't do that.

He said, look, this is just going to make it easier. And I'm telling you something. I've learned this recently. I've learned it.

Oh, I've learned this. You do not get into an argument or into a conversation with the devil. I don't know if you remember this, but I believe it's in the book of Jude, and you can check me on this. But that Moses was having a or Moses was having a dispute with the devil about something.

It doesn't even matter what it was. But instead of or it might have been the Archangel Michael. OK, it might have been the Archangel Michael was having a dispute with with the devil. But instead of arguing with him, instead of saying, no, it's this, no, it's that. Angel just said, the Lord rebukes you.

And sometimes instead of getting into a conversation about something and people may not like it. You just speak your peace. You say, I don't want to do this. And that's the end of it.

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.