Interview with Robby part 7

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. Alright, this is Mike Zwick from If Not For God with Mike Zwick, and I've got Robbie Dilmore, the Christian car guy here. Robbie, this morning you said the Lord had you in Habakkuk Chapter 2, is that right?

Yeah, I'm really thinking, and those who know me well know that I get a word of the year, and my word of the year was more of a phrase this year, Mike. It was to be gathered in great faith. And interestingly, which I find now absolutely hilarious, that I asked the Lord, because I like to have him order my steps in your word like it says in the 119th Psalm, and I was like, okay, God, that sounds awesome.

Where are we going? And he says, I want you to go to Habakkuk. Well, you know, my initial response is Habakkuk, like what in the world? But I was not aware that the second chapter holds this verse, which as he has illuminated to me, has just lit up my whole world. But anyway, I'll read the verse, and probably most of you are familiar with it, but I never saw the contrast in it, nor the value of it, until I really studied it this year, and what it says is the second chapter, fourth verse. Behold, his soul, which is lifted up, is not upright in him, but the just shall live by his faith.

And then to move on, this is poor Nebuchadnezzar here. Yea, also, because he transgresses by wine, he's a proud man, neither keepeth at home, and enlarges his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gather up into him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people. Well, as you think about the contrast of, wait a minute, we had the righteous live by faith, and who's this other guy?

Well, when you start to lose faith in God, and you think about it, any atheistic culture, right, as they lose faith in God, then they begin to lose faith in people. And when you just take Cain as the perfect example of this, is that, you know, he was a proud man. He thought he should be the one that got the goodies. And when his brother got him, then he lost original faith in God, because he didn't get the accolades, but then he lost faith in his brother. And when he killed his brother, what happened? Immediately, he became terrified that he wouldn't be safe anywhere on the earth. He hadn't even told God. He said, you know, the people are going to find me, and they're going to kill me. That's why God put a mark on him. But I don't know if you've ever considered what it says in that verse. It says he's a proud man. He won't stay at home. The reason why he won't stay at home is because when you lose faith in people, then the next thing you know, everybody's out to get you. You become paranoid.

And like you had said, you run after people. It's a crazy thing. The cool thing, as horrible as all that is, is grace. That grace means that I've got great faith in Mike Zwick, right? And so if Mike Zwick is my favorite, and he is, I mean, I can just tell you, Mike is a great disciple, and like Abakkuk, he's got a lot of questions. And Abakkuk has a lot of questions in the first chapter.

And it's kind of cool. I don't know if you do this, Mike, but it says, this first verse of the second chapter of Abakkuk says, I will stand upon my watch, and I will set me upon the tower, and I will watch and see what he will say to me, and what I'll answer when he reproves me. In other words, he's been asking all these questions, and now he's saying, I know I don't have it right, and so I'm waiting for God to give me. Well, this is the answer that God gives him, that righteous live by faith.

And what he's telling Abakkuk in his own way is Abakkuk, you know, all that stuff you were saying in the first chapter about, you know, striving and contention, he was essentially talking about his brothers and sisters. Well, as you lose faith in all the people around you, it's no different than murdering them. And you become more fearful of those people around you. And so as you have grace about the people about you, like, man, they're all your favorite, and you realize that they're gifted by God and that they're born into this amazing gifting, then you can have a whole lot better life.

Well, years ago, yeah, that's true. And years ago, I was spending some time with the Lord, and I remember saying to myself, I finally realized something, that I don't trust people who don't trust people. You know, if somebody doesn't trust anybody, and they're skeptical of everybody, and they don't trust anything that anybody is doing, not always the case, because sometimes people have been burned. And it's not good to just trust everybody. I mean, you have people calling you on your phone all the time trying to sell you something. You know, I got something, I got an email a few months back, and the guy said that he was a prince in Nigeria, and he had a special deal for me, or somebody told me that I want a million dollars. All I had to do was to pay them $3,000, and they would send me the rest.

Well, you know, why not just take it out of the million dollars? But, you know, whatever, you know, I mean, but so there is good reason to be skeptical, but sometimes if somebody just doesn't trust anybody, there is a chance that they may not be that trustworthy themselves. I remember when I was in high school, there was a girl who was dating a guy, and she ended up getting pregnant by a guy, and she said that this guy was always, he was always saying that she was cheating on him.

Well, she found out later on that he was actually the one who was cheating on her, and, you know, it's that whole thing that the wicked flee even when no one pursueeth them. That's in the book of Proverbs. I remember one time myself, I was trying to buy a house, and I just didn't trust this lady who was a real estate agent, and she said something. She said, Mike, she said eventually you're going to have to trust somebody, and you are going to have to trust somebody, but, you know, there are people who do let you down. There are people who will not come through for you when even when, you know, even when you trust them, and we've all been burned. I know you've been burned in the car business before. I think somebody was stealing you blind, and I've been burned in, you know, trusting people with, you know, just different kind of business avenues.

That's a cool thing. There's the word trust, and then there's the word grace. Thank goodness for grace, right? You know, so a perfect example to me of what you're describing here is if, you know, often, you know, we help the ladies with the Jesus labor love, and most of them, honestly, when they begin to tell you the story, they tell you how everybody has ripped them off. Right?

You hear that? And it's not surprising because they've lost faith. They've lost hope.

You know, they didn't get into that situation that they're in because, you know, everything's working out in their life, right? And so as people lose hope, they lose faith. And so what is really cool thing is if you want to spread light, spread hope, spread faith. And so grace is like faith in somebody. It's not saying that what they've done is right or that, you know, because we're going to forgive them for the ways that they have let people down because I've let plenty of people down. There's no doubt in that. But the cool thing is that, you know, like my kids who are my favorite, right? Sure. I know they make mistakes, but because I love them, you can still love on them in a way that you have better expectations for them, but at the same point in time, you still love them.

Right. And there is the idea of faith in somebody versus trusting somebody. Well, and the people that are the closest to you, and we've talked about this before, are the ones who can hurt you the most, right?

I mean, you know, if I have, I'll put out my podcast or my, my YouTube channel or something and somebody, you know, we get a lot of great comments, but if somebody makes kind of a strange comment or a, you know, somebody who disagrees with me sharply says something that kind of stings a little bit. But it's another thing if it comes from a close friend or a close family member, it hurts even more. And so what we're doing is, is when we're putting faith in someone or when we're trusting someone, especially who is closer to us.

Well, we're making ourselves vulnerable. And so many times, you know, if somebody is not a Christian or somebody is afraid of Christianity or if somebody doesn't completely trust God, what they're saying, what they may be saying is, is, well, I may have trusted God in the past and I prayed for somebody to be healed and then they died. Oh my gosh, how many times have I heard that? Or I've prayed for somebody or I've prayed that God would get me this job that I just really needed and I didn't get the job. And so then all of a sudden they lose faith in God or they lose faith in Jesus. There was a pastor out of Raleigh one time who said that he was doing a mission trip in Jamaica. And he said that when he was doing the mission trip in Jamaica, he was going around and he was sharing the gospel and he was sharing it with a guy. And this guy said, no, he said, the reason I'm not a Christian is because of somebody who dropped the ball in the 1980s.

I believe it was Jim and Tammy Baker. And he said, the reason I don't believe, he said, because if these people really believed what they said they believed, then they wouldn't have done what they did. Well, and so I like what this pastor said. He said, so you mean to tell me because of this goofball who dropped the ball, you're going to give up your whole faith in God.

That doesn't make any sense. You know, I went to a bad restaurant one time, but I'm not going to say that all restaurants are bad. And so there is this thing that we've talked about again and again in the Christian walker, in the Christian life called resiliency, where we fall down a thousand times, but a thousand and one times we rise again because that's what Jesus did. I mean, how many times was Jesus persecuted? How many times did people come against Jesus and he had no sin? Well, we have sin.

So we have reasons for people to try to come against us, but we just need to keep on picking ourselves up. You know, I had this thing with healing lately where people have been, I've prayed for people to be healed. I pray for people to be healed, see miraculous healings. Well, last night I prayed for a guy and I didn't see anything. It just like Jesus ministries.

What am I going to say? Pack it up and say, well, I guess, I guess God doesn't want to use me anymore. No, but keep praying for people. You know, I could pray for the next hundred people and nothing ever happens, but I'm going to keep praying because I realize that it's not through my power that these people are being healed, but it's through the power of God. And so what if I stopped praying for somebody, but what if the next person that I prayed for received healing number one and then number two said, Oh my gosh, this thing is true.

I want this Jesus guy that you're sharing. I don't want to quit. Yeah, that's the beauty of like, if you truly love somebody, then you don't give up on them, right?

That's right. Love never fails, right? It doesn't think wrong. It thinks that this is going to, this is what's going to happen.

And so, you know, it's a wonderful opportunity to keep faith in spite of the fact that things are not operating in the way that you think that they ought to be. But here's the here's a really cool thing that I think is beautiful that the word Adam, you've heard it before. I'm sure you may know that it's the first man, but what you may not know is in Hebrew, the word Adam means people. Did you know that?

I did not know. And so if you if you were to say people, you would say Adam. All right. It's the same letters, which is an aleph, right?

Which is the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet, right? Or there you go. I like it.

I like it. It is actually. That's what you say. But that letter, when you think about it, is very much connected to fatherhood.

Okay. So what was Father Abraham? You hear the A or you hear Adam himself was a dad. I don't know if you thought about the original father was Adam and Adonai.

You've heard of God called Adonai because that idea of father and Abba. You've heard that. Well, you hear the A again. Okay. So that's the beginning of the word Adam or people. Right. The second part of the word Adam is Dom. And you know what? Dom in Hebrew is blood. Really?

It's a Dalet and a Mem. Yeah. Okay. And so when you think about what you're saying when you're saying Adam is the father's blood. Wow.

Okay. So every human being, you may have heard C.S. Lewis said you never met a mere mortal. Well, let me just tell you, they've got the father's blood. They have Noah's blood. They have Adam's blood. That's right. But more than that, they have the father's blood. That's right. That's right. And God chose them before the beginning of the world. And so, you know, often, you know, God will tell me in discussions about people.

He's like, Robbie, do you have faith in them or do you have faith in me in them? Wow. Wow.

Right? And so the truth is that that spark, that light, that flame is inside of every single human being while they're still taking a breath on this earth. And so the cool thing is if you truly have faith in God, I mean, if you really believe that God is...all things work together for good and it's all gonna come out. If you really live by faith in God, then you can't help but live by faith in your brother because he's in there like praco spaghetti sauce. He's there. He said he'll never leave you nor forsake you.

And, you know, the word of God and Jesus had a lot to say about faith. I mean, you know, there's a verse and it says, who hopes for something that they already see? Right? I mean, who hopes for that? I mean, if we...I've even thought about this before. If we knew every single thing about heaven and everything that was gonna be there and everything that it was gonna be like and everything, when we got there, we'd be like, oh, okay.

Yeah, this is cool. We'd like it. But it's like, can you imagine when we close our eyes for the last time on earth and open our eyes for the first time in heaven?

It is going to be amazing. And yes, we have people who have passed away and come back and I do believe that they can give us glimpses, but even with everything that the Bible tells us about heaven, and yes, I believe it's there that when we get there, it's gonna be absolutely amazing. And the Bible says, and Justin, my friend Justin and I had talked about this, the Bible talks about there being rewards for those, for us when we get to heaven.

And when I interviewed Justin about this, he said, and there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, Robbie, you've basically served for how many years at the Truth Network? Eighteen.

Eighteen years serving God. You know, many times you've done things and you haven't even probably gotten a thank you. Am I wrong?

No, I don't know. I mean, but people, you do a job that many times is a thankless job. A lot of times you do stuff, Robbie, and people are grateful for it. And sometimes you do something for people and they don't really show you a lot of gratitude.

Is that right? Well, yeah. And I'd spoke about the Jesus' labor of love. And unfortunately, again, you hear their story and they're gonna tell you about how this person ripped them off and that person ripped off. And you can hear in their voice, and I can't look into their eyes to see if I've found grace, but I can hear their voice. They don't trust me either. And I understand why. The cool thing, and I've noticed this every time, and it speaks to what you do, that if you will pray with them, you say, it's all right if I pray with you?

Sure. And you lift up a prayer and you say, God, I'm so grateful that Rebecca called me today and that she had the courage to reach out to you for help in this, and I just pray. And at the end of that prayer, you can hear a difference in how they feel about you because you have increased their hope that there's something stronger that's at work there. You literally, when you pray for that person to have healing, what you're doing is you're connecting them with a source that can heal them because like you said, you can't. And I don't know, sometimes God is using that, whatever that is that's going on in their life, to help them get closer to Him. I mean, that's the whole idea here is to fall more and more in love with God and whatever it takes, right?

Don't you want, I mean, God, whatever it takes to make me more like your son? I mean, if that means I got to go through cancer, which I did, or I got to get crushed by a jeep and all those things. You know, they were the worst of times, but they turned out to be the best of times because at the end of it, what happened?

You know what happened? You know what I really think as I went through those many trials that people are familiar with that know me, that all these people reached out and loved on me like I never realized, people just love you sometimes because they love you. They came to visit me in the hospital, they built a wheelchair ramp on my house, they were all lined up outside the emergency room when I showed up at one o'clock in the morning after I got hit by the jeep and all these people poured out their love to me. And what I saw was the hope because Adam was in all those people. You know, and what you're doing, Robbie, when you're helping people out or what I'm doing when I'm praying for the sick or when I'm praying for them to be healed.

And I'll tell you about this past Sunday where Jason came and prayed for people that were absolute miracles. But every time we do this, I guess in a sense, we're taking a chance, right? I mean, because I'm putting faith that Jesus will heal them and I believe that he will. But, you know, we never really know how it's going to go. When I'm invited to speak at a church, it's like I do get a little nervous sometimes because I don't know exactly what I'm going to say. I don't know how people are going to receive it. And, you know, the Word of God really talks a lot about the fear of man. And it says that the fear of man is a snare, but those who trust in the Lord will be satisfied.

Those who trust in the Lord will be rewarded. And so if I'm constantly worried about what everybody else is going to think about what I'm going to say, do, speak or think. And by the way, there are times where people do come against this. There are times when people don't receive what we're trying to tell them. And it does hurt. It does hurt. I mean, you know, the thief comes but to steal, kill and destroy.

He's out there working hard. But you know what? I've heard people say higher levels, higher devils.

But higher levels, higher angelic protection. That's what your friend Jungle Jen said, who used to, remember, used to have the show or probably used to go on here. I love her, yeah.

She's absolutely wonderful. And so she was praying for people. They were praying for the sick, praying for the sick, and she was seeing miraculous healings down in the Amazon jungle.

What is it? Was it Brazil or where was it? Yes, it was in Brazil.

In Brazil. And she said that one day she actually prayed for a guy and this guy did not get healed, but he went away and he was so happy. And he went back to his village. Well, little did she know that he got healed right for, it was for his knee, right before he got back to that village.

And he told everybody about what happened. And what she said, the Lord, she was spending some time with the Lord and the Lord shared this with her, that if he had been healed right away, by the time he got back to the village, his mind would have been on something else. But since he was healed right before he got to the village, it was fresh in his mind and he shared every effort with everybody what the Lord had done. And so many times we think about healing as physical healing.

And yes, that's a part of it. But this past Sunday when I was preaching in Northside Baptist Church in Greensboro, and I had my friend Jason, Jason Hamlet there, who was praying for people. I was preaching and he was praying for people. Well, there was a guy named Bill Eiderle. Do you know Bill?

No. He prays outside of the abortion clinic. He's heavily involved. I probably have met him. Yeah, but just a wonderful guy. And he's out there in front of the abortion clinic.

He goes out Wednesday mornings, goes out Saturday mornings and all that stuff. But, you know, one of the things that Bill has told me is that he goes out there all the time. And I actually said this to Bill.

I said, well, Bill, I said, what if something actually, what if some madman or madwoman came out and decided to go nuts on people and, you know, did something terrible? And he said, Mike, he said, I am at the place where I am ready to die for Christ. And it says in the word of God that for me to live is Christ that to die is gain. And I tell you what, Robbie, when we get to the point when we're willing to no matter what people say, we're even willing to die for Christ.

What else can the enemy do to us? Now, I was thinking actually about that as you were talking that, you know, I love that episode of The Chosen recently where Little James didn't get healed. And he said, you know, you know that there's things that are more important than the body, that the soul is more important than the body. And one of my favorite, like Tony Evans' son, when his mother died, he said he was praying for her before she died, right? Just like you might imagine. But he knew that she would either be healed or she would be healed.

And she would either be with family or she would be with family. That when we pray, especially for that type of healing, you know, it's kind of cool, like I've got all these friends that are special needs, you know, I taught that class for years. And I know that, man, when I get to heaven, they're going to be healed. I'm going to get to hear all the things they were thinking all the time they were sitting there watching me and my shenanigans, right? How cool is it that the blind will all see, right?

The lame will all walk. And, you know, all the issues that I struggle with, you know, that God's going to do that. But again, the righteous will live by faith.

And it's an amazing, amazing thing that that's a life abundant. You want to have a bad life? Lose faith.

I mean, you're going to live literally in hell. God's not there. You can't find him anywhere, right? But if you have faith, then God's in every face you look at.

Yeah. He's around every corner. He's in every bird that's singing, especially in the spring, right? I'm sure you've noticed that it's a beautiful spring. And I've been hearing the birds sing, you know, and I'm thinking about the Song of Solomon, you know.

It's going to be 82 degrees tomorrow, I've heard. So, you know, it's really a beautiful time, and you know what's going on in Kentucky. Oh, and by the way, that's spread. I know.

That's spread. It's not about being in one place, and that's the thing. And so Bob Jones, I don't know if you've heard of him, not the Bob Jones University, Bob Jones, but another guy who was at International House of Prayer for years, said years ago, he said that after the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl, and he said this back in the 80s, when they had, I mean, so they hadn't won a Super Bowl in 50 years, he said it was going to start revival. And so they won it in 2020, and now they won it again, and now immediately, like right at that same time and afterwards, there is a huge revival. But I tell you what, I think this revival is going to be something like we've never seen before. We've heard about the First Great Awakening, the Second Great Awakening, and stuff like that, but this revival that we're going to see, he said, was actually going to be a faceless revival. And if you think about it, the revival that's happening in Kentucky and all these different places, it's not about one person who's going up there and speaking, it's all of the youth. Thank God for the youth who are surrendering their lives to Christ. And I heard it said this week, I thought beautifully, that the Jesus Revolution movie is coming out, the Greg Laurie movie, and what happened in the 70s as a response to the sexual revolution of the 60s.

Like, people were wondering, where's the line get drawn? Well, now we've got the homosexual revolution going on, and interestingly, the youth break out into revival. Like, you know, might that be the answer that they're, you know, trying to figure out, you know, what the answer is to the homosexual revolution that, again, Jesus is the answer. So it's kind of a cool thing, or some very cool thing, it's not kind of a cool thing, that all these people are giving their heart to God. And again, we don't know necessarily, you know, what the fruit of all that will be, but we know one thing, you know, any time one person gets saved, it's a huge deal. That's right. And there are hundreds and thousands. That's right.

That's right, yeah. I mean, when I interviewed Justin back in, I think it was December, he said he was spending some time with the Lord, and one of the things that he said was, he said, Lord, is this the revival that we're talking about? Because we're seeing people getting saved, we're seeing deliverance, we're seeing this, that, and the other. And he said when he was spending some, a lot of time, quiet time with the Lord, which you do, he said the Lord told him, oh, you ain't seen nothing yet. I'm sure that's true, if not for God. I mean, essentially, if you're listening and you're like, man, what is that? Well, you know, there is a God, there is a God, and I'm not him.

Okay? You have faith in that God and turn your life over to Jesus Christ, accept his blood that he was the Son of God. That's right. For your sins and pray that prayer, right? Then you too can join this revival and fall in love with Christ and not live in hell anymore. You can begin to have faith that he's working through everything and everybody.

Yes. If not for God. If not for God.

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. This is the Truth Network.