Gathered Under His Wings

Nakita Kolov, the Russian nightmare.

No, the devil's nightmare here. From it's time to man up. Challenging men to step into their true manhood. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it. Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network. Don't worry, you won't fly away from the fun. Welcome to the Christian Car Guy radio show. I say this calls for action and now.

Safe and secure from all alarms. Leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms. Gathered under his wings today on the cast of Christian Car Guy's show.

Didn't even know the name of my show. Gathered under his wings. You know, it's been quite a week and I'm going to do my best to try to explain why all this, you know, it's amazing. It's been really a roller coaster ride from some really low, low, low places to some really, really high places. And God showed me some stuff that has to do with this whole idea of being gathered under his wings. And so you heard Britain Lane there. What a beautiful rendition of leaning on the everlasting arms.

And of course, you know, that was the worst fest to hear about the chicken dance. And so, you know, maybe you see the connection, maybe you don't, but so many times tears come with laughter and, you know, that's kind of how God shows me stuff a lot of times. So to get to it, well, I guess I should tell you that today's show is brought to you by the Hebrew letter Tav. And the Hebrew letter Tav is the last letter in the Hebrew alphabet.

And many people will tell you that means the truth because you'll know the truth at the end of the story. And at the end is interestingly very much connected to the tribe of Dan. And so when you look at the letter Tav, it's actually made up of two other letters, a dalet, which is the D sound in Dan and a nun, which is the N sound in Dan. And you may know that when the Hebrews left through the desert, every time that the camp would let out, the last tribe out would always be Dan. And the reason that would be Dan, it was Dan's job to gather up that which was lost.

Specifically, you think about all those friends and loved ones that you know that are lost that need to be gathered, right? And Dan does that in a very unique way. It says that he judged his people, but the word judge there is more that he's an advocate, almost like the defending attorney, right? And that is the idea of a dalet and a nun. And it very much is connected to the letter Tav. Now the beautiful thing about the letter Tav is it is better illustrated than in the word under. And see, God gathered the waters under heaven. It's a beautiful picture. Actually, if you go to christiancarguy.com, you'll see actually Britain, I have the YouTube of her singing that song, the entire thing, but also there's a picture of clouds that look like wings, and you get an idea that we're all gathered under heaven. And in so many ways, Dan is very much involved in that. And interestingly, if you look at the Tav section of the 119th Psalm, which I tell you is like the decoder ring for Hebrew, the last verse, which is 176th verse of a very, very longest chapter in the Bible, it says, we like sheep have gone astray, seek thy servant, right?

For I have not forgotten thy commandments, which has to do with if you love me, obey my commandments. Well, you get that whole idea that in the end, right, there's a big gathering going on, just telling you. And in the beginning, there was a big gathering going on. And my word for the year that God gave me is headed into this year was the word gathered.

And so I can see all the connections to get it going to give you some idea. But we had this dog, my father had a dog named Corgi, right? Yeah. And he, to say he loved that dog, he actually hurt my feelings many times, because I can't tell you how many times I've ever heard to him refer that the dog is son. Come on, son, let's go to bed.

Like, what? Come on, dad, really? But anyway, this, my father loved this dog. My father loved dogs, period. It was just his whole life he loved dogs. But he really, really, of all the dogs, he had an affection for Corgi. We couldn't go anywhere that he didn't have to get home and be with Corgi. Well, we all prayed that Corgi would outlive dad, because we didn't know how he could take it.

You know, when that day came, and he did, he did outlive my father. And last week, it was obvious, Corgi was 16 years old, he'd lost his eyesight. And he'd lost his hearing. And slowly, but surely, he was losing his hips, and he couldn't even walk.

Right? He was a, he was a Corgi, as you might imagine, and colored like a Corgi, but he was also a Border Collie. So he was kind of a tall Corgi, and had the personality of a Border Collie.

He was just a delightful dog. Anyway, we took him to the vet to see if we could help him with his walking. And they said, we'll try this pain medication, whatever. And I don't know if it was a pain medication or just his age. But Sunday night, last Sunday night, he began to have what I would call grand mal epileptic seizures, where he literally, I've never seen suffering like this. He, he would lift his head and grimace, he would bare his teeth in the tension of it. And then, you know, you can imagine every one of his limbs just completely out of control if you've ever seen somebody have, or an animal have an epileptic fit or a seizure. I mean, and the challenge was that this didn't go on for just like a minute or two. I mean, these would go on for like five minutes, and then they would let up for a minute or two, and then they would go on. And this started at about 10 30.

Sunday night, my wife couldn't watch it. She had to leave the room. And, you know, we were left with different options. Like we live way out in the country. It's not like you're going to get him to an animal hospital just immediately. And, or, you know, I possibly could take his life.

I'm very capable of doing that. I've taken a lot of animals lives in my life. Or wait till the morning because my daughter Mariah had said, wait, if you have to put Corgi down, I want to be there because everybody in my family loved Corgi. So I am praying, praying, praying, as you might imagine, watching this suffering for hours, right?

I couldn't go to bed and leave. You know, I stayed right with him during this entire time. And it went on for all those hours and watched him suffer and prayed during that entire time. Like, God, do you want me to take him?

Would you please take him? You know, can this suffering please be over? Could this suffering please be over?

It wasn't. And so, morning finally arrived and Corgi completely spent, and I don't even know how his heart did it all those hours. We took him to the, to the vet and my wife literally held Corgi with my daughter stroking him in. You know, Corgi was at peace. It was hard, really hard because it was like the last vestige of my dad, you know, is he, Corgi always looked for my father. I knew he was going around the house.

Anyway, so I finally got some sleep the next day. And the next morning I woke up and I crawled in Jesus's lap, which I always do. And I said, God, where are we going today?

You know, what do you want to show me? And he said, Robbie, I want you to translate 1 Corinthians 13, the famous love passage. I want you to translate it back into Hebrew because originally Paul thought in Hebrew he didn't think in Greek. He was a Jew. And he said, I want you to translate it back into Hebrew because there's something you need to know.

So, off I went on this new adventure, which was just spectacular. So, you might know in the 1 Corinthians 13, you know, it's the famous love is this and love is that. Well, the first question, if you're going to study this, okay, well, which word for love would Paul have used? Because there's three in Hebrew, not unlike in Greek, there's three. And we know in Greek he chose the word agape.

So, what is that word in Hebrew? Well, we got so much of that. And the good news is there's the bottom of the roller coaster for you. We're headed to the top, believe me. And I think you'll understand suffering at a level you never have. I know I sure have when we come back.

Stay tuned. Everlasting is Gathered under his wings today on the Christian Car Guys show, and as we were talking about after the loss of Corgi, the next morning I got up and I climbed in God's arms, and he said, go back into 1 Corinthians 13, where the love is version of that, and like I said, the first question is, what is the word love that Paul was describing? And in Greek, it's agapi, which is that self-sacrificing love. Well, when you think about what the bride of Christ said about her beloved, she referred to him as the dalet vav dalet, which is David, okay, David, however you want to say it. And that idea of the servant of servants, that to love is to serve in so many different ways, and agapi is that kind of thing, and I thought that's clearly, clearly the picture of how God services in so many different ways above himself, right? And so what is that? And so the very first thing that Paul chooses to say always was kind of a letdown to me—patient. Or long-suffering, right?

There you go. And I was like, really? I mean, you know, he loves a lot of things, but the very first thing I don't necessarily think of is patient. And so what does that word look like in Hebrew?

Because I can, English has a feel to it, and Greek has a feel to it, but there's something behind understanding Hebrew that gives me a real sense of the power of something. And so I decided to, you know, dive into what is that word patient in Hebrew? Well, it just turns out that the idea of slow to anger is also the idea of long-suffering, which is what God chose to say, almost the first thing about himself, as he revealed himself in Moses, as you might remember, in Exodus, I believe it is, 34, 6 or so, he puts Moses in the cleft of the rock and he goes by him and he says, the Lord, the Lord, what does he say? He's mercies and gracious and slow to anger. Long-suffering.

Right? Well, here's the beauty of Hebrew for me, okay, and I hope it is for you, that that word long-suffering has to do with a wing, because wings are long. And so with that in mind, I want everybody, if you're driving, you can't do this exercise, but picture it with me. So take your wings, stick them out, get your wings out, come on, Richard, I'm not seeing the wings, no, not the chicken wings, we need the regular, yes, stretch them out as far as you possibly can. Now you do realize that your wingspan here is longer than your body.

I mean, you know, if I'm six foot four at this point in time, actually, my reach is six foot seven. So that's long, okay, now while your long hands are out there, now take your palms and stretch them forward for me, which, now feel something in the middle of your palms, okay, and it hurts, doesn't it? And if you think about it, it really hurts.

And then you think about some hours, hours on the cross. And if you think that hurts, picture that you're his dad. And you could take his life, but it's not time.

It's not time. Long suffering, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, I'll redeem my people how many times did he say it in Xmas, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. It's one thing to suffer yourself. You know, when I had cancer and I went through the g-bax and all those things happened to me, it was hard on me, there's no doubt, but it was way harder on my life.

I watched it and I thought many times, how it's so much easier to be the patient than the caregiver. And the ultimate picture of that is the father. You see, he suffered long, and those long wings of his, and he suffered long since Adam sinned, right?

But he knows that the end of the story is Dan, right? That at the end of the story is this idea of the top, this idea of that I was going to gather up, it's the end of the 119th Psalm, you know, we are the sheep of his pastures there in the 100th Psalm, time and time and time again. And what did Jesus say in Matthew 23? He said, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long to gather you under my wings, like chicks, right? And maybe you've heard the famous story of the horrible fire that happened, I believe, in the northwest part of the United States, and they found this mother, I think it was a hawk, and she was dead at the bottom of this tree, just burned up in this horrible forest fire, and as they lifted her charred body from the tree, you get the picture of the bird on the tree, then the baby chicks all came out, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, right from underneath her wings. And so this idea, we've all been taught that, you know, since we were however old, to lean on the everlasting arms, to be gathered under his wings, all these things are all connected to these unbelievable things, that God's been painting this picture of what he would do on the cross since the very, very, very beginning.

And oh you, who are hearing this story and have never understood what Jesus did with that real suffering, right? If you can believe that, then you too can be brought into that great gathering. So we don't want to miss that. You can pray for that now. I mean, ask Jesus, man, gather me and take me in those arms. We'll be back with Love Your Stories, 866-348-7884, 866-34-TRUTH.

You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. So, gathered under his wings today on the Christian Cargas show. Again, I love that version of that song, it's unbelievable. So getting back to our story of Corgi and unpacking 1 Corinthians 13 from a Hebrew standpoint, I hope you now see that love is patient is so much more than that. And so as Jerry was saying actually during the break, that maybe there was that, that passage was quoted at your wedding, and now you maybe have a little bit better picture of how, what that means exactly. That when you stretch out your arms like that the next time, that love suffers long. As Jesus suffered, as the Father suffered, as Jesus was doing that, that's a picture of what that looks like. That's a picture of love.

Like it gives you the picture, there's the picture, okay, but then the next word says love is kind. And so I had a good time backing into that one, and I ended up with grace. With grace meaning that I'm Jesus' favorite, always have been, always will be.

I have a lady at church who always challenges me on that, says, no, Robbie's got that going on. But kindness has to do with graciousness because he has great faith in you, and kindness is this amazing thing that actually was pictured when Ruth was described by Boaz, and he's the one that said, or Naomi described him as having this kindness, and she used that word that has to do with grace. Well to finish the Corgi story, the night before all this happened with Corgi, we had dinner with some neighbors, not neighbors, from dear friends that we hadn't seen in years actually, and they said, you know, Tammy, my wife, love, love, loves dachshunds. She had dachshunds before we were married, and her dog when she was a child was a dachshund, and she loves dachshunds, and these people had a toy dachshund that they dearly loved, and every time Tammy would ever see this dog, she would always say, give me your dog. And so they said, you know, our grandson and this dog don't get along real well, he's small, and you know, we've been praying about this, and there was only one person we think that could take this dog, and that's you, Tammy. You know, that you love this dog, and you know, of course, you know, we just let it all drop right there, because we still had Corgi, right? Well, as we're leaving the animal hospital, I look at Tammy, because now she's coming home to an empty house. In other words, my daughter was just married, she took her cat. Her mother passed away two months ago.

And she walked in the door, the door was going to be empty from a once-filled house. We've got to have some. I said, you call Tanya and get that dog. I said, get it.

Oh, I can't. I said, get the dog. And she didn't the first day, but the second day she called, and she did, and so Wednesday we got the dog, but Tanya told Tammy, there's a few things you need to know about this dog.

Number one, it does not like men. And so when Robbie walks in the door, it's going to bark and growl at him and just tell him to get over it, right? And number two, it won't eat for a few days because it's going to be so brokenhearted because it's left, it's home. And number three is the dog has always slept with me, and just me by myself, and she won't like the idea of Robbie being in the bed at all, and she'll growl and snap, it's going to be ugly, but she's got to sleep with you.

So I walk home, I come in the door the first day, right? The dog comes wagging his tail, I mean, it couldn't be a more cute dog. It looks at me, rolls on its back, wants to be belly rubbed, you know, you get the whole picture.

This isn't exactly a picture of the dog snapping and barking at Robbie, I mean, it just like melted and melted my heart too, by the way, what a beautiful dog. And of course I said, well, is it okay if I feed it? Well, it's not going to eat.

And I said, well, just for laughs, let's see what happens. So I put the food, you never saw a dog scarf food so fast. I was like, man, it's like a Labrador retriever eating food.

I was like, man, I have never seen a dog eat food like that. So now Ruby's the dog's name and she ate the like man. So it got time for bed and Tammy was like, now you need to scoot your pillow way over there because you know, me and Ruby are going to snuggle and you just kind of have to get over it. And I said, okay, whatever. I'll scoot my pillow. So I, because I get up crazy early, I go to bed crazy early.

And so I, you know, I went to bed and I scooted my pillow way over there about two in the morning I woke up to this feeling on my chest and here was this beautiful little puppy with its head on my chest with its eyes looking up at me like, and of course I could not resist. Tammy, Tammy, are you seeing this? Right, right. Love is kind. I mean, it was such a picture of it for me in, in so many ways that, that, you know, I hope that, that you get a sense of, of like, man, how rich the word of God is. And when you can live it, you know, through your suffering, but also through, like I said, it's a roller coaster ride of, you know, here you are, you're going to go through this, you're going to go through that, but then, oh, he's going to, he is going to, you know, build you back up where he needed to teach us something. And it happens a lot of times through suffering, right, Jerry? Yeah. When you, well, I'm just sitting here this morning and I don't even want to put it on.

What did I say? I mean, the truth that you're speaking and stuff is just so deep. I mean, God created us to be in communion with him, to be in relationship with him. And that's the hope that we have. As I said, you know, the story of Christ on the cross, Christ knew what in three days he was going to fulfill. God knew that. So as through all that suffering, it was still suffering with that hope of knowing what the future had. That's the same thing God wants us to have as we're going through it here on earth. It's just really, I don't know if it's, I sit there and when I walked in the door, I was on the phone with a dear friend who's been suffering for a lot of years. And then I'm talking to Robbie about what this morning is going to be about and that's exactly what it is. I mean, cause during my conversation with the last thing that I told him was, I hate what you're going through. I hate to see anybody going through what you're going through. He is MS, right?

MS. He's homebound. But he's living with something that a lot of people in this world don't have. And that's the hope of eternity. And that's the hope of what Jesus Christ has promised and what the Calvary was all about.

There's a ton of people in this world who don't have that. That's the ones that we should be feeling sorry for. That's the ones that we should go do everything we can to bring them that hope and point them to Christ. And this morning, I think what you've been doing is pointing people to Christ and pointing to people to hope.

I mean, if somebody told you that the convenience store down the road had all the way, everybody who got a lottery ticket was going to have a winner, you would call everybody you knew and tell them to go down there and get that ticket. How many times do we have that same? Yeah, it's a Dan mentality, like that's the idea of gathering the sheep under the wing.

I mean, into the fold, how that looks. And you just think, I've thought about this all week, that that tribe of Dan, it's going through the desert and they're the last people. So how many were stragglers? How many people went off into a cave or whatever?

Their job was to collect and find them and dig and scrape or whatever you gotta do to make sure we don't leave no man behind. And you've gone on mission trips. And when you do that, it amazes me when you leave all of the clutter of our life behind, maybe for a week, two weeks, a month, whatever the time it is, you go and you are so on fire to talk to people about Jesus and introduce them to Christ, because we do short term mission trips to church. And the power in that is all of a sudden my challenge is to come back and I always tell those team members that have gone on that trip, you need to bring that same drive and that same experience back to your life, back to what you do every day. Because you go over there and these people that would never talk to anybody about the relationship of Christ or what Christ has done in their life will do it over there or do it when you're not cluttered with all the stuff that we deal with and all the who's on the phone for me, what text message, what I need to check my email, what I need to be doing, what should I be doing right now.

You know, what would Jesus have me do? Yeah. Yeah. And it's a really cool thing that we have, what an honor, to in one A shape or form, you know, help say a word, do whatever you can to get them from that lost place back into the fold. So we come back with a lot more gathered into those arms and leaning on, oh man, to lean on those arms.

You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. We'll see you in the next video, God bless, God bless, God bless, God bless, God bless, God bless, God bless, God bless, God bless, God bless. Gathered under his wings today on the Christian Car Guy show. And again, that's Brittan Lane with her version of leaning. And if you go to the christiancarguy.com, you'll see the picture that I have of the clouds that were gathered that look sort of like wings where we're all getting gathered under heaven. It's kind of a cool idea. also is that video of Britton and you can hear as she begins it she's so excited because she's just recorded this and she gets to do it as part of a movie on Netflix from what she says but she did all and when you listen to it she does all the music she created all that she was given complete license to do and so all the instrumental all that stuff was Britton Lane and as I listen that song this morning I even meant I bawled like a baby because for whatever reason you know I do this devotion at a nursing home in Mocksville and have for I guess 27 years now and Mrs. Beck who was lived to be 104 that was her one of her and she played it on the piano and at we I don't know how many times I sang the song because Miss Beck loved it and she you know she she just loved to lean on those arms and I know she did but as I pictured Britton singing it this morning you know what I felt Jerry I felt my mother's arms and oh I realized that God has sent all these people that we've leaned on their arms our whole life or an animal or whatever it may be that you leaned on those arms you were leaning on the arms that suffer long oh it's an amazing picture so we have Miss Jay in Greensboro I'm very excited to hear from her this morning Miss Jay you're on the Christian Car Guys show again it's so good to hear from you what you got for us oh can you hear me clearly because you sound sad if you down on this option yeah that phone system we'll get a new one coming and it's going to be better but yeah we hear you great oh we might not be able to finish then because I can't understand fully what you're seeing you're being cut up just tell us what you what you want to say oh okay now I would like to call this love in the hood I was coming up and we weren't they had gang fights and stuff and there were um for some of the initiations um I had heard in the community that they were going to be collecting stray cats and taking animals and dogs and and throwing them from the top of our 10-story roof and I stayed on the second floor and I was scared of heights too I didn't know that about 12 or 13 years old and um I'm cooking and in the kitchen some of the things my mom had told me to do before she had left um for my younger siblings and and I hear and I see these objects coming across down across my window and they are animals that they're throwing from the roof that certain ones were being initiated with and so when I heard something inside of me um I wasn't like a true believer then but I did know I heard about God and I kind of like um stopped what I was doing and ran up all the way up the steps um they had a back stairway that I ran up to um fast and I was scared by each climb because I'm scared of heights get to the top of the building to do up there and they a lot of people up there doing the initiation whatever they're doing and um and the the last cat that they had was a little baby kitten and I ran up there and um and for my life for everything I had to go through them hitting me getting through them through um everybody and then taking that kitten from his hands from the grips of his hands over his hands over the building um wasn't even the fear didn't even hit me at that point so I grabbed that kitten and I held it in my arms and um as I was saying one of the older um gentlemen told get her out of here and then and as I they were pulling me back um people were hitting me and stuff so I finally got back to the stairway door and I ran all the way back downstairs to my home with this kitten in my hand and in my arms and um I had like little kisses bruises and little scratches and blood coming from my arms and stuff and um but I had the kitten and that kitten stayed with me I said it um I had to sneak it in my room but my mom eventually my mother um started feeding the cat um she barely had food for us but um the cat ate table food um and then from time to time we would get some cat food and and it was something that eventually the cat grew up and um the cat had to be put down I didn't get the chance to say goodbye to the cat so you guys got a chance to say goodbye and I was just wondering if my oh did I have my last goodbyes and God was giving me the answer today you know yes you got your goodbyes and you did what I wanted you to do so that's what that's my love in the hood thing and I feel like I was under his wings when I was doing it and I know that puffy and that was the name of the cat that grew up in my household in the hood um I believe we gave it the best love and the best life I could give it why it was alive wow yeah there's no doubt you know that we we have those precious memories you know of pets and interestingly because I've talked about this with a lot of friends this week there's a lot of them have said the exact same thing to me that one of the most difficult things is to lose a pet and never have a chance to say goodbye or to lose a loved one and never have a chance to say goodbye um and so I I you know my heart goes out to you with that but also I rejoice in what God showed you about your own courage which I know that about you is you're very courageous and and what courage right a 12 year old girl up against all these I imagine they were not the most pleasant people up there um but I know you can't hear me well so but thank you Jacqueline thank you so much for your call and thank you for listening and and and I know that you honored puffy today so thank you god bless you Joyce bye-bye well Jerry that's a difficult thing with our phone system right now we're gonna live through it for another couple days but anyway and we know we have hope we do we do um you know it's all gonna it's all gonna come to life um you know so you know but just hearing that story and then didn't didn't you telling about story you know the people will there's a lot of people will criticize people you know well you know chris is just an animal but you know what god puts them in our lives to bring joy and and so many times like her story with the with puffy is the fact that you know what that that cast life always pointed her back to a time she was courageous and probably stepped out and did something she did not feel she had strength to do but it's always a reminder with Corky it's always a reminder of that that that the bond between your dad and and that precious pet and that that's you know i think god places that stuff i thought you know in james you know talks you know part of it is the things we experience and stuff and we may not understand is we're doing it but it's also he gives us those experiences because it's going to minister to us and we can minister to others sometimes that ministering comes through a through an animal yeah it's wonderful it's wonderful so there's no doubt that love suffers long and uh i hope you got a picture of that today and and more i i hope you see how amazing it is that we all get to be dans in our own way some of us could be daniels where you know dan is just at the beginning of the word daniel which is the lord is my judge okay and so in other words he's my advocate he's my defense attorney so be someone's defense attorney say one thing though the suffering we have the hope in jesus christ that overcomes that suffering that's exactly right that's exactly right thanks jerry remember slow down jesus walked everywhere he went got it all done in 33 years and thank you so much for listening today this is the truth network