Interview With Robby part 4

This is Stu Epperson from the Truth Talk Podcast, connecting current events, pop culture, and theology, and we're so grateful for you that you've chosen the Truth Podcast Network.

It's about to start in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, and please share it around with all your friends. Thanks for listening, and thanks for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. 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. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. All right, If Not For God with Mike Zwick. I've got my good friend Robbie Dilmore back here today, and it's exciting to be out.

It's cold, it's raining, and they told us there was going to be snow, Robbie, but it looks like no snow this weekend. If not for God. You know, when Jesus died on the cross, he took all of our sins, he took all of our pain, he took all of our illnesses, and he nailed them to the cross. I love Isaiah 53. I was actually in Isaiah 53 earlier today, and I love the verse where it says, by his stripes we are healed. But here's some other verses about healing the sick. This is what Jesus, I believe he tells us to do. Matthew 10 8, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.

You received without paying, give without pay. Matthew 10 1, and he called to his 12 disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every disease and every affliction. James 5 14, is anyone among you sick?

Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And I tell you what, Robbie, I was talking to you a little bit before, but I'm excited, man. I've seen some healings recently. I've, uh, you know, Jesus had a few things to say about faith as well, Robbie. And I, I, I've been praying for the sick for a long time, praying, praying, praying, and I would see some results or whatever, but recently it seems to be just about every single person I'm praying for, especially knee problems.

I'm seeing knee problems and back problems go away immediately. I was, uh, it was actually over in Elon, North Carolina yesterday. And it was an older guy who was on dialysis and I was talking to him. I said, well, what do you need prayer for? And I told him about all these people who had been healed. And he said, well, my knee, I've had problems with my knee for the longest time.

And I go to the VA and this and that. I said, well, I'll pray for you right now. I said, I just want to pray right now in the name of Jesus, Lord, that this knee is healed. And I cast out any sickness in Jesus name.

Amen. I said, I said, stand up and start walking around like you normally do and tell me where the pain is. And he says, Oh my gosh, it's gone. The pain was gone. I prayed for, uh, you just saw the video. I prayed for a lady, uh, another lady yesterday.

They were neighbors live right around the corner from this guy. And, uh, when I prayed for prayed for her, it was a husband and wife. And I prayed for her, uh, her, she had knee pain and leg pain all the way down her leg and her, uh, her knee pain and her leg pain was better. And I asked her husband and I prayed for, I said, what do you need prayer for? He said, I need prayer for my back. And I prayed for his back to be better. And I, and I asked him, how are you feeling? He goes, Oh my gosh. He said, it's much better. He said, I haven't been able to move around like this. And he was moving from side to side. He said, I haven't been able to move around like this for a while.

And so it's exciting. And I love to see the healing hand of God, but I tell you what, man, it has nothing to do with Mike Zwick. All I do is say a few words and I'm done. I love the fact that you said, but it doesn't work on my wife and other people that, you know, I, you know, that's the interesting thing that, you know, ultimately that proves the point that God's the one who decides and quite often it may have something to do with whether or not your wife is thinking, Oh, that's just Mike, you know, or, or your friends saying, Oh, that's just, you know, but it's interesting. I remember when I, you know, pastor little came to say, he was, you know, in my office, I was struggling with cancer thought I was dying.

I had no faith whatsoever. When he showed up, I thought he was a nut. I mean, don't worry, pastor little, I know you're, you're, you're in a better place now, but a lot of people think I'm a nut too.

Well, it's just a point. I thought he was in that and he knows that. And I've told him and because, you know, I had no idea of laying out in the hands anointing with oil. He did the whole, the whole thing, man.

And I was like, what is up with this? And, but, you know, when my tumors all got gone within 48 hours, you know, he had my total attention. You paid attention and you said you had had other people praying for you at that time, but you said, I remember you said there was something different, right? There was a bit of a fire or something that I sensed that day, but no doubt it was not my faith that, that from my standpoint, there was no, no real belief on my part. He was the one who had the faith.

Well, I think it's God. I mean, I, I just think, like you said, you don't know what that's going to be, but the cool thing is, and I think it's really beyond cool, that it's a, it's a, it's a physical issue that is pointing to a lot larger one, right? Because it's one thing to be, you know, like the way that Pastor Quartz, my old pastor used to say, he goes, if we prayed for near as many people to get into heaven as we prayed for him to stay out of it, we'd be in a whole lot better shape, you know? And so, you know, the, the spiritual healing, so I got to tell you the story that's going to lead up to, this is all about healing in its own way, is I was studying the book of Habakkuk, as you know, and these people are going to be carried into captivity, like sand is what actually it says in the first chapter of Habakkuk, and so I was trying to look at that word captivity in Hebrew, and I realized that the part of it was inflammation.

What? That it would be hot if you, in other words, if you get carried into captivity, there's some fire involved in that, and so I said, let me see if I can find that word, so I study that word, and I look in my concordance, and I find, wow, that word's all over this passage in Deuteronomy that talks about literal inflammation like fevers, and what was called consumption back in the day, I don't know if you know about COPD, emphysema, those things, they used to be called consumption, that's when you look, what that really meant was they didn't know what it was, they actually knew what it was, listen to what it is, you hear it today, but you'd never have put it to your mind to think what they're saying in English, it's inflammation, and COVID, it's inflammation, and so when you think about it, inflamed, right, so it's a simple solution, if somebody's got a fever, right, they're running a fever 103, what are you going to tell them to do? Take a couple aspirin and drink plenty of fluids, what do you do for a fire? You pour water on it, well, if you got spiritual information, I'm just saying that Jesus told the lady at the well, you might remember it, some people call her the woman at the well, but I think she was the lady, anyway, what did he tell her? If you drink from this water, you'll never be thirsty again, that's kind of important because how often are we dealing with spiritual infamy, like your spirit is all inflamed? I promise you that, and I think about this every night that I go for comfort food all over the place because my spirit is inflamed, right, but in the morning, because I've spent all that time in the Word of God, I don't have as bad inflammation, that's it because that living Word, that water, it cuts down, I bet you like that, in the morning, did you notice that your spirit's a lot more peaceful than it is in the evening after you've been worn out by four or five shenanigans?

Makes sense to me or when you say in the morning, my morning lasts for about 15 minutes before the kids are screaming and so what I have to do is, that's interesting, I have to find my quiet time, I have to make my quiet, I'm not gonna find it, I have to make it, you have to set aside time to be with the Lord, you have to set aside time to be quiet. One of the things that I've seen, this is one of the interesting things about healing that I've noticed, Matthew chapter 11 and starting in verse 20, I'm looking at the ESV, he says, then he began, and this is Jesus, then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done because they did not repent. Woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you, Bethsaida, for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes, but I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you, and you, Capernaum, will be exalted to heaven. You will be brought down to Hades, for if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day, but I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you, and this is what I've seen. Do you remember the passage where there were the 10 lepers?

Of course. They all got healed, right, and they went away, but only one of them came back, so I've seen some different reactions when I prayed for people and I seen them heal. The people that I mentioned just now, both the couple and the other guy, they were both excited. They were praising the Lord.

They were really happy. I've seen some other people. It's just like a blank stare on their face, and it's just like nothing. It's like, hold on, the Lord just healed you, and you're just like, you know, hey, I'm not judging anyone, but when I read that verse, it was at Matthew 11, 20, or when I read that passage, what I hear Jesus saying is that if you weren't going to repent, if you weren't going to surrender your life to Christ, if you weren't going to say yes to Jesus and submit to his authority and accept him as your Lord and savior, from that passage, he's saying it would have been better had you not have been healed, so I feel like when I pray for people and if they are healed and then they go, yeah, I still don't want Jesus, ooh, it might have been better for them had I not even have prayed for them to be healed because then they wouldn't have seen it. Well, the good news is that you don't know the end of the story, right? And so it's like I was a baby Christian, no doubt, when Pastor Little, you know, healed me, but I can assure you if I was not, if you'd seen the look on my face when he got walked out of the office that day a year ago, that guy is not even close to impressed by what just happened, although what just happened saved my physical life, right? And I believe I was saved at that point, but I had not yet had any grasp of what was actually going on or any sense of thanksgiving for what had transpired.

But those things, they sit in your mind and they begin to bubble around. I was thinking about it today, right, that I remember the first answer to prayer I ever had was when, you know, my son Leslie had run away and I, you know, he pulled up in the driveway, talk about a miracle, right? Like Jesus told me I got this and my son is recovered for me. If there was ever a point in time where somebody should have said, thank you, man, Lord, that's awesome, that's awesome. But you know what I didn't do with that line?

I didn't surrender to Christ for probably four years after that. But see, it just bubbled around in there like, you know, preggo spaghetti sauce, it was in there. And other things would happen and I would recall like, man, maybe that stuff is true.

Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, you know? So, you know, like they say, you plant seeds, you know, Apollo's watered and all that stuff, but God makes it grow. And so over a period of time, you know, you don't know, you know, you don't know what, you know, God's doing with people. And, you know, I love all the things that I don't pay attention to, but all of a sudden God starts to bring them back like dominoes. They start tripping over in my mind and like, oh, wow, look at that, look at that. Oh, that all... Yeah, there must be something to this. And so you're just one domino, man.

Once again, their healing has nothing to do with Michael's wick. I've just said a few words. Have you met Christie Real?

Sure. You know, you met her at the revival, right? Oh, yeah. You probably knew her before that though, right? I'd met her a couple of times, obviously, because, you know, I know her family well.

Cameron Horner. Right. And it's her sister. But what she... I did a video with her and she said something that was really cool and it helped me when I'm praying for the sick. She said she was praying for the sick and everybody was getting healed. And she said all of a sudden she stopped reading... She was reading her Bible 12 hours a day.

That's a good thing, getting some water there. Yeah. But all of a sudden she wasn't reading her Bible as much and she wasn't seeing as many people healed. And so she asked the Lord, she said, Lord, do I have the gift of healing? That's what she asked. And she said the Lord told her no. And she goes, thank God. No kidding. She started praying for people after that.

And around 150 people straight were healed because she realized it wasn't her. Right, right, right, right. And I'm not saying that it was... I mean, you're just thinking, oh, we have this expectation, right?

In fact, there was a great podcast I heard this week. It came out of Wild at Heart where they talked about expectations lead to resentment, right? So when we see something that we go, oh, if that were me or whatever, we set up this expectation. But then because whatever happened didn't meet our expectation, then there's some kind of resentment that's down in there. The interesting thing is it's not even spoken, right?

You're harboring it. And actually, Morgan Snyder was talking about this, that his father was a doctor. And so all the time he was growing up, his father was so busy, he never had time. He didn't come home and that he wasn't either eat or sleeping. And so his mother did all the cooking all the time in the kitchen. So his expectation was that a wife would do all that stuff in the kitchen and he wouldn't have to. Oh, man, I feel a few jokes coming along here.

No, no, no. So he said, you know, after I got married, I knew that a good husband would help out in the kitchen, but every time I had to do it, it met an unspoken expectation. And it took, he said, it took years, really, for the Holy Spirit to get him to see that he had this expectation, that his own mind didn't know that he had an expectation and it was leading to resentment.

And so I can't help but wonder, God, show me, you know, my hidden expectations, because really, as we end up with these expectations, we can resent things that we know aren't necessarily right, you know? Oh, yeah. And there is, you know, Christie also said in the last time we talked, she said, Mike, she said, I found something out.

She said, if I'm looking for sin in people, if I'm looking for something wrong, she says, I'm going to find it, you know, and it's like... Abraham Lincoln, that was a quote from Pollyanna. You never heard it? Uh-uh. Really?

It's one of my favorites. Okay. So if you... I think the exact quote from Abraham Lincoln, and it was on Pollyanna's locket in the movie, it said, if you're looking for the bad in people, you will surely find it. That was what Abraham... So you couldn't be more right.

But that's really, really unbelievably sad when you think about it, that most people don't get to hear near as often, you know, what's wonderful about them than they do about what's bad about them. And so, you know, I did this Sunday School lesson, I don't know if I've ever told you this one on the air, it's my classic story, where I had the students all take this piece of paper and put it on their back, and everybody walked around. I said, I want you to write on their back how you see Jesus in that other student.

Oh, wow. And so, what I thought was gonna be a 10-minute exercise, these students went wild. And so, for an hour, they wrote on each other's backs how they saw Jesus, right?

Okay. And I taught these students for like two years. Well, about four or five years later, maybe three years later, we had a reunion. And at that reunion, you know, we taught all these great Sunday School lessons, all these years, Michael, you know.

Somebody said, well, of all the Sunday School lessons we taught over all those years, what was your favorite? And this girl says, well, you know, that time Robbie had us write on each other's back, I still had my paper. And then another girl says, oh, I still have my paper. And a guy said, I still have my paper.

And it turned out almost everybody in the class still had their paper. Why? Because we need encouragement. We never hear how we look like Jesus.

We never hear, you know, whatever. But it's fascinating to me that that's, of all the lessons we taught, I've never forgotten it. You never forgot that one. The, you know, it's funny, Proverbs 18. And sometimes people can take verses and they can kind of go with them and get a little out there. But I love this verse, starting in verse 20, actually, but Proverbs 18, 21 is the verse. But it says, from the fruit of his mouth, a man's belly is filled with the harvest from his lips.

He is satisfied. It says that life and death are in the power of the tongue. And those who love it will eat its fruit. He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. I thought it was interesting that right after it says that life and death is in the power of the tongue, it says, he who finds a wife finds a good thing.

Yeah, not to mention all that fruit of the tongue if you're married. There's kind of a connection there. You know, people need encouragement. And especially with our spouses, with our loved ones, with our intimate family, our immediate family, and I guess intimate, we know them closer.

We're closer to them. It's so easy to criticize the people that we love the most, but the people that we love the most, they need to hear encouragement from us probably more than anybody else because what your wife says to you, Robbie, means a whole lot more than if I say something to you. What your son says to you, Robbie, means a whole lot more to you than what I would say to you, or even Stu would say to you. And so if you're listening right now, I want you to think about that, that, you know, are you encouraging your spouse? Are you encouraging your children? Are you encouraging your parents? And I'm not here to throw a guilt trip on you.

If you're not, start now. Well, the beautiful thing about grace, and you know how I love that word, is it has everything to do what we're talking about. Because when you break down the word grace, which interestingly is Noah spelled backwards, okay, so grace has to do with somebody that you're united with in some way, family, whatever, in relationship, and then the letter none, which would mean that you have unbelievable faith in them. And you can tell when somebody's looking at you whether or not they have faith in you, whether or not they like you, right?

Whether or not that they want to be actually your friend. And interestingly, you know, that is grace, and that there's tremendous healing in grace, because when you feel like people believe in you, they trust you, they want you around, and if they'll speak it... Yeah. There is something about that spoken word.

We were actually praying for an older couple today, a friend of mine, Jason, and I were. And the guy, we were praying for his healing, and I think his wife said something, oh, his toe's moving a little bit there. And Jason said that life and death is in the power of the tongue.

And it's powerful. The words that come out of our mouths are powerful. You know, I heard years ago, there was a pastor over in Raleigh, and he said, you know, there's all these things that are wrong with the prosperity gospel. And he said, a lot of these guys, or a lot of these people, they're going to different places, and it's not to share the gospel, but it's just to make money. And he said, but one of those things that those guys have right is that the mind leads the body. And so, and especially the words that come out of your mouth, they can lead you. And so, you've been in sales, I've been in sales, but when I first got into sales, they would teach us, they say, every day, when you're out there, you want to speak out positive phrases out loud, out loud. And I was like, this is crazy.

This is silly. Well, now here I am 41 years later, spitting out positive phrases out loud, not just while I'm on the sales field, but sometimes when the enemy starts to attack, you see, you know, I can kind of be thinking something and maybe listening to you at the same time, but Robbie, it's really hard for me to be speaking out loud and for me to be thinking something at the same time as well. And so it's powerful. You know, you start to say, thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Jesus, I've got faith. Increase my faith. It's these little things that you can say out loud.

I've seen them make a difference. Yeah. God literally spoke the world into resistance, into existence with words, right? I mean, expression is exactly life and death in so many different ways that, but the other thing that I think about as you say that is that, you know, the incredible thing in my own life of when I speak something that is a prayer out loud, that you have to be in present time. You can't speak in the past and you can't speak in the future. And so as you speak that prayer or whatever it is that you're saying, it brings you into the moment that you're in, because everything that I'm saying right now is right at the very second. So if you're gonna listen, you gotta be with me right this minute. But the person speaking is in the moment because they're the one that's speaking. And so as you get yourself into present time, because a lot of the time the reason I'm afraid is I'm stuck in the past or I'm scared of the future, right? Either of those or I'm not in present time. And so as you begin to speak and you come into the present, which is fascinating that the letter pay is what the mouth is in Hebrew, and it has to do with being present. And so if you actually heard from God today in any way, shape, or form, guess what? That was a present in the present of his presence.

Oh, man. When we started selling books door to door, I remember there was this trainer and he said, if you've got one foot in the future or one foot in tomorrow and one foot in yesterday, he says, you're peeing on today. And there is...

I love healing, I love the water, and we're gonna talk about that on the next episode, I believe. But there is something about having faith. And I've seen a difference. When I believe something is gonna happen, and they even taught us this when we were out selling, they said, we can't explain it. Remember, this wasn't a Christian company, but they said, we can't explain it.

But there's something about having faith and believing that you're going to make the sale, and then it actually happens. Well, Hebrews 11 has something to say about that. It says, now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, for by it, the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible. By faith, Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained witness that he was righteous. God testifying of his gifts and through it, he being dead still speaks. By faith, Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death and was not found because God had not taken him. For before he was taken, he had this testimony that he pleased God, and here it is, but without faith, it is impossible to please him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

Let me ask you this. You can have faith for healing, and I believe you'll see healings. You can have faith that you're going to be successful in business and you're going to have success.

I believe you will. But what about where you're going to spend eternity? Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. He says that nobody comes to the Father but by me. And if you've never surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, I want you to take a minute right now, and Robby's going to pray with you.

Oh, Lord. I am so grateful for this opportunity to say I really believe that you are the Son of God. I have that faith that you really did die for me and that you really did pay the price for all that I've done.

And I also believe that you can clean that up with your blood and make me a new creation and that I'll be cleansed and be able to spend eternity with you. And I ask this that you would help my faith. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Amen.

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 thank you.