It Takes Friction To Have Ignition

This is the Truth Network. Welcome to the Christian Car Guy radio show.

I say this calls for action and now. It takes friction to have ignition today on the Christian Car Guy show. Now I don't know if you've ever thought about it, but the more you think about that, the more helpful it may be in your walk with God and your walk with others. The whole idea of ignition, as I was interviewing actually just a few days ago, Barry McGuire, you may know, is a car guy but also a wonderful Christian man, often has minutes that play on this station and he's always talking about igniting, you know, your faith by sharing it with other people. And as I've just been praying and thinking about that word ignition since the NRB and the more I thought about it, the more I realized, oh my goodness, it takes friction to have ignition and ignition's a critical, you know, aspect of our faith in so many ways.

And so as I began to think about that, I went and studied, as you might imagine, if you know me well, I went and studied the Hebrew word for kindle, which kindle is a lot to do with ignition. If you're building a fire, you might remember as a boy scout, you used to take those two pieces of wood, or if you're really creative, you took a piece of string on one of those pieces of wood, right? Some of them use gasoline, but that's cheating. Or you know, charcoal fluid, but still it took some friction to light the match, you know, you're just able, you know, you're rubbing it across the thing, but however you went about doing it, I can assure you there was friction involved. And so if you're a car person, you undoubtedly know that it takes a spark plug. If you've got a car, a gas car, but if you have a diesel, interestingly, they get ignition without a spark.

How does that work? Same way as rubbing those two sticks together. Enough friction, which is those pistons going up and down, compressing a lot of air, and as that air gets compressed, tighter, tighter, tighter, tighter, it creates a lot of heat. That heat, when it gets hot enough, right, if you're sitting there working on it, trying to build that little fire as a Boy Scout, all of a sudden you see that little puff of smoke. It's a big, it's a wonderful thing if you've ever done it, like man, you work so hard, there's that little puff of smoke, and then there's that little bitty flame. Now if you happen to have the right fuel, if you had rocket fuel right that second actually, like we did at the very beginning of the show, you could go to the moon if you had the right fuel once you have ignition, but if you don't have ignition, you don't, your rocket fuel does you no good. So when you think about fuel, and we've talked about this many times, and I wrote an article years ago, What's a Four-Stroke Christian?, and the idea of having the right fuel, well, you know, rocket fuel spiritually, from my perspective, is the Word of God. So if you want to have some rocket fuel, you know, the Word of God will help you blast off.

There's no doubt about that. So my question for you today, and I would love to hear your stories, you know, that's what I do, it's my favorite thing, is to hear you guys. When did God light your fire? When did you have that ignition experience when you got to see, maybe you got to see another person catch on fire based on a little bit of a flame that you had. Or maybe, you know, it was just something that somebody lit in you, and as soon as you got it, and you began to understand it, it started a fire that maybe hasn't stopped to this day. In my case, you know, Norman Vincent Peale, I'll tell you, he told me in his tape series of Power of Positive Thinking, that if you'll get up an hour early every morning, an hour earlier, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got, and read the Bible, pray first, right, because you've got to have some ignition here. If you'll pray before you read the Bible, that you will end up with a positive mental attitude, because what he knew was that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. It's the same kind of thing, however, right, I want to just push into today your stories of how that fire got started, and how you fuel it, and all those kind of things. It's a beautiful idea, especially, you know, in the car business. But one of the things, you know, and I have Bill Mixon, by the way, my Christian insurance guy here, who is, I love to have him with me always, because he has great questions.

And questions are part of what I think help with the process. And so what I did was I went and I looked at the Hebrew word for kindle, and I noticed that there were three letters that really gave me a deeper understanding of what's going on here when we kindle a fire, whether it's spiritual or physical. And the first letter has to do with, it's called a kuff, but that doesn't matter, the letter has to do with proximity. In other words, the closer you get to something, the more liable you are to have friction.

Did you ever notice that families fight more than, just saying, than somebody you don't know, because the closer you are in proximity, the more friction you naturally have. And that's the whole idea, by the way, of compression. But nonetheless, the letter kuff is the beginning of the word holy. And you know, holy is always, or not always, but often thought about as a fire of some kind, right, because, but it's also an interesting thing, is if you get really, really close to God, or you spend a really neat time with God in prayer, did you ever notice that as you get closer to God, time has less to do with things? In other words, as you push into eternity when you push into God. And so proximity has to do with the first idea of kindle, in other words, how close. And if you think about how you're gonna create compression in the engine, believe me, it's the clearance between the piston rings and the walls of the cylinders, that proximity will help you get more compression.

And that's the idea of getting the friction, okay? Now the second letter in the word kindle is a word, or letter, it's also a word, it's called dalit, but it has to do with sort of a doorway, but it also is sort of like a matter of the energy involved. Because it takes proximity, but it also takes a great deal of energy in order to get that fire going, and that idea of the letter dalit has to do with service, and as you're servicing your, you're going after, helping God, or coming after God in any way, shape, or form, sort of like a waiter, like, God, you know, what will it be today?

What, you know, do you want the usual? So as you're serving God, right, in proximity, then all of a sudden you begin to get things going, and the last letter in the word kindle is the letter het, which is like unity, and it has to do, in fact, it looks like the canopy that you would be married under, because you're coming together. And so you're coming together through that door of that energy that I'm talking about. And so to put that all together, and I hope I didn't totally lose everybody, but I'm gonna try to get it so it's practical for you, for me it is, that I'm gonna go into a piece of scripture that I want to study, and of course I'm getting closer to God as I begin to, you know, let's just take the first verse of the 23rd Psalm, right, the Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not be in want, okay? So as I push into that, I'm getting closer to God the very second that I begin to do that. I've asked the Holy Spirit to help me, right?

That's gonna bring some fire too, by the way. Now as I begin to wonder, do I really understand these things, like, I shall not be, what is exactly be in the middle of that, or some word in there that I don't really completely grasp? As I begin to dig into that idea of what it is that I'm not grasping, the more I dig, the more energy I put into that, the more friction I'm creating, and that friction along with being close to God is now going to be the doorway into our unity, okay?

This is the way it works, real practically. You have this person that you go out on a date with, and you're not in a relationship yet, just say that you're trying to be in a relationship with this person. As you're sitting there with that person, you begin to ask them questions, because there's some part of them that you're anxious to get to know. Those questions are almost like the friction point that bring you closer together, as you begin to know, oh, their favorite food is steak, right? You now know a little bit how to serve them better, because do you want steak? The next time you see them, you have some point of intimacy with them. You begin to get to know them better, and that creates this intimacy, which, again, can give you the ability to ignite. Why is this important? Okay, I know you were wondering that.

Well, the reason why it's important is there's so many people out there who have never ignited with a Bible. In other words, they'll say, why haven't you, oh, I'll never understand that, okay? And they give up on the idea that they'll never understand, see, they quit digging.

And when they quit digging, there's no chance of intimacy. And there is the opportunity that I see. When we come back, we're going to see why Bill looks so puzzled at me. And more than that, I hope we've got some calls of where you got ignited.

866-348-7884, 866-348-7884. We would love your stories. So when we come back, stay tuned. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. It takes friction to have ignition today on The Christian Car Guy Show.

I think this is actually quite important. The more I've thought about it and a need I feel like people have, I like the way that I heard it at the NRB, to get the Word of God into the people of God. In order to truly get the Word of God into the people of God, to me, there has to be some ignition.

There has to be a burning of the fuel so that they need more fuel, right? And therein lies the issue. So how did that work in your life?

I would love to hear your story, 866-348-7884, 866-348-7884. Again, wonderfully, I have my good friend Bill here to help me begin to ponder this idea. This is what you said during the break. You know that clearly, how did you put it that with part of the situation is how do we get people to enter into the process? Well, the Bible's wonderful and people need to read it. There's some people that read it and they don't get much out of it. And that makes it harder to go back and read it again. But in my mind, if I sit down with the Bible and I'm trying to learn something instead of trying to reinforce my preconceived notion, then it's a whole lot more godly experience. And the more times I crawl into it with this preconceived notion, I'm trying to prove or back up a point that I have. And I get frustrated because I can't do what I'm trying to do that it makes it more difficult to get back in it again. So to be able to pick it up and enjoy it, just because I'm reading it and God shares with me what God wants to share, instead of going in it to find what I want to find, they're totally different experiences.

Oh, that's beautiful. I love that because it is so much to do with what really is your entrance point. What is your attitude as you're going into the process? Is your attitude to draw close? Is your attitude to learn, like you say, to understand, to have him touch your heart?

Those kind of things. It seems true with conversations with people. And I've got to say, I've got this bad habit of having a conversation and there's points I want to make, which I put a whole lot more emphasis on than learning what points you're trying to share with me. And I end up justifying that in my head, thinking we've got to have a particular place that we start. We've got to agree on something to have a point of reference for both of us to understand what we're trying to say. That seems to be more and more difficult these days.

Yeah. Well, the poor reason that, you know, one of the reasons that God put this on my heart and feel like he did was that I spent last week at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. And my other unique role at the convention is that I'm literally interviewing people that are there with some kind of passion that they have for God's kingdom. I do – every hour I do in the neighborhood of five interviews.

Sometimes it can be six and sometimes it can be four, but I'm going to do that many every hour that the convention floor is open. And so you have a very interesting situation where the whole place is abuzz with all sorts of chatter. It's a convention floor, but then the people sit down in front of you, and Bill would know exactly what I'm talking about right this minute, because you have a microphone in front of you and you have headphones on, which puts you into a different space. And there's no way to recreate that that I know of. I wish I could. A cone of silence.

It is. It's like the cone of silence. But it gives you a point of intimacy, because they're looking at you and you have this different kind of situation that's there in front of you. And then usually they have some kind of agenda that they want to lay on me of why they're there at the NRB.

And what I have discovered is that by just trying to listen to what they have to say and come up with a natural question like, I don't understand what you're talking about, like just stop, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second, what did you mean by this or what did you mean by that, and then trying to relate back to them something in my own life or my own experience in order to try to see if they'll go deeper with that idea of whatever that is. It creates this intimacy that is absolutely spectacular. I've watched it over the years that at the end of that 10-minute conversation, that person and I both are totally energized with what God is doing in their ministry. I've seen it time and time and time again.

And there's no way I can recreate it because I've seen the video and I listened to the audio that we recorded, and it's just not even close to the actual experience because I guess it's artificial, whatever we've recorded or whatever has happened. But it's so invigorating to me to see what God is doing around the world and hearing it through these people's view of it that they have a unique way of doing it. For example, I'll give you a good example, one of the first interviews I did was these people out of Egypt. It was a young man and a young woman, and they have a church that apparently is right on the town square in Cairo that's similar to Times Square.

And so this is where all the big events have happened or Arab Spring started in this square, and it's a big place like Times Square, like people all over the place. And there at their church, not unlike probably Times Square Church, they've seen just tremendous fruit in people coming to Christ, and they're broadcast and reaching actually hundreds of millions of people because they are preaching the gospel in their own language. In other words, because they're broadcasting this in Arabic, then somebody that's a Muslim, whatever, they can hear God's word in their own language, which gives them an ability to, obviously, that process of building a fire, right?

Because if I'm not speaking your language, I'm talking to you, ain't no fire gonna get going here. But fascinatingly, to see and to hear from them all that was going on in their church was just a spectacular thing, to see what God's doing. And I know you've got a story like that, where all of a sudden the light came on, the fire went off, whatever, and man, you realize that God was doing something spectacular.

866-348-7884, 866-348-7884. We'll be right back. We're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. It takes friction to have ignition today on the Christian Car Guys show. Oh, it's so wonderful when you see somebody catch fire, right? And that process is worth studying, in my opinion, is, you know, what does it take for somebody to catch on fire for the Lord or catch on fire in their ministry or, you know, it's opportunity every single day for people to come to that point of it's a phenomenally intimate thing, to be on fire with God. I mean, that fuel of His Word is burning with you and whatever.

So what does it take to ignite that? I would love your story, 866-348-7884, 866-348-7884. And so, Bill, your thoughts. Well, I'm thinking of some times in my life where I felt the spark. And Norman Vinson Peale's book just changed my entire life, dealing with alcoholism and a little drug addiction, and a new wife ready to give birth to a new baby. And I was going through depression and frustration and aggravation and business troubles. And I was reading Norman Vinson Peale's book.

The Power of Positive, the same book? And I did not realize he was a doctor of religion. No, me either.

That's a funny thing. I'm halfway through the book and I realize, yeah, this guy's just talking about the Bible. And I've sort of ticked off at him.

I was too. But I'm so far into it, I think, well, I got to go ahead and finish this stupid book. And I remember I got down on my knees and I said, God, yeah, I've been trying to fix all these things on my own.

I can't do it. I'm at the end of my rope. I want to be a great father in a few weeks. I want to be a great husband. And I'm going to believe this verse.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And I stood up sober. And it was just amazing to me. The light came on. It was like the quality of the light in the room changed. My entire attitude changed. I dove back into that crazy, dusty book, the Bible. And things just started going unbelievably well. I had more energy. I wasn't wasting hours and hours and hours thinking about how miserable I was and why all these things weren't going right. I wasn't blaming other people anymore. And that positive energy just sort of lit me up and gave me the oxygen I needed to go do the things that needed to be done. That's absolutely beautiful.

I did not know that. We had a similar experience with that book. How long after that did you meet me? Because we've known each other, what, almost 35 years or something. We've known each other a long, long time. I'd have to pull out some papers to figure that out. I would think five years. I met you in 93.

I'd have to go look it up to figure it out. But I bet I've given away 100 copies of that book in different situations to different people. It really had a huge ignition experience for me in that it had to do with reading the Bible. And of course, when you put enough friction, which you had in your life, I certainly had in my life, next to that much fuel, I don't know if you really thought about it, but you had a lot of friction. I did too. A lot of friction. And the Bible is just pure rocket fuel.

And three, two, one, kablammo. I remember that I had gotten lots of books and lots of tapes on positive thinking and positive affirmations, and all of them did a little something. But almost all the ones that did any good at all went straight back to the Bible and straight back to some Bible verses.

And when I moved past all those positive thinking courses and books and tapes and got into the Bible, it was amazing how much the undiluted truth, how much better it did than the reverse day. Well, I know how to put this together. What year was your son born first or your daughter? My daughter was born first. So – oh, you don't – oh.

I don't have her birth year in my life, and that's going to get me in so much trouble. Hard for me to remember that I'm 65. I understand. I understand.

See, I'm just asking, you know, like in general terms, is your daughter in the neighborhood of 35 or is she in that? So again, it's got to be right about the same time, because again, my 35-year-old son was born in 89. And so we met in 93, and interestingly, we must have had a similar experience about the same time in life.

I think it was about five years after. And the next thing we know, we both meet Ted Burton. Now, do you think God – and did Ted Burton have something to do with the fire in your life? Well, that was a different kindling, a different fire, but it was an interesting journey.

Whole thing's been an interesting journey. Yeah, so for those who are wondering who in the world was Ted Burton, Ted Burton was over the Christian Businessmen's Committee in this area of North Carolina at the time, and he personally discipled me. In other words, he would come by the dealership every single day, and we would read scripture, memorize scripture. He had a book called Operation Timothy, First Steps, and things like that that we had there in Christian Businessmen's Committee in the time. And when you think about it, you know, I was completely – and so was Bill – discipled to some extent by Ted Burton, as was David Parsons, and as was at some level, Stu Everson.

It was either 89 or 90. I just don't know which one it was. It's essentially the same interesting time. It's like, man, I never knew that. I find it absolutely cool that, you know, he brought Norman Vincent Peale into our lives around the same time, and then clearly, you know, you were one of the first people I really got to know when I moved to Winston-Salem, because you were in that group with David Parsons and Ted Burton and, you know, Christian Businessmen's Committee. And there weren't a whole lot of other people there, as I recall. We were doing Larry Burkett's book on – I forget what it was, but it was something to do with – Transforming grace. That was another one. But anyway, I just find that fascinating. So how about you?

Your story. When did that fire get lit? How did it get lit?

Maybe it hasn't been lit yet. Maybe you would like some ideas. 866-348-7884. 866-348-7884. So, you know, another really amazing thing that happened that I'll never, ever forget is that the first morning that we were there at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, Chuck Swindoll spoke. He was actually interviewed. And for those who don't know, Chuck has recently turned 90 years old. And so when you see him, you would go, oh, he could be 90 years old.

But when you hear him, Bill, he opened up and he started to speak. And I'm like, he could have been 35. And his laugh is just as real – and he would throw his head back when he would laugh. And it was like, that's Chuck Swindoll.

He may be 90, but he's Chuck Swindoll, and completely Chuck Swindoll. And some of the wisdom that he shared was just beyond cool. You know, like here's a guy who was so instrumental in Christian radio, one of the first pioneers of having sermons on the radio, right, of actually taking pieces of sermons.

Not stuff that was made specifically for radio, but stuff, you know, from what he did. And you know, the process of what that was, that it became, you know – and so he talked about, you know, like, now that you're 90 years old, you know, what would you tell your younger self? I like one of the questions the guy is saying. What would you tell your younger self that would help you, you know, do life, grow closer to God? And along these lines, he said something similar, what we've been talking about all morning. He said, I would talk less and listen more. And family is way more important than I thought it was.

And you know, both that's phenomenal wisdom right there, right? God put us in families, because you are the only father your child has, your only husband your wife has. You know, your family is critical to the whole equation, and I love what he said, because he said, you know, you're all out there involved, you know, heavily involved in ministries and you've got big responsibilities and I understand all that. He said, well, you'll get all that done. He said, focus on what's important, your relationship with God and your relationship with your family. Listen more, talk less.

You know, you're telling a bunch of radio people. It was just phenomenally sound advice, right? We were talking earlier that I've got so much respect for how well you listen to people and how well you can take what somebody says and make it relate to others in a much deeper way than I'm able to do. It's just wonderful to learn from you. It's just been a wonderful, wonderful experience. And same here, Bill, so we have. We got one more segment.

We need your call, 866-348-7884. It takes friction to have ignition today on the Christian Car Guy show as we've been talking about that whole thing, you know, is internal combustion engines have a lot to teach us, in my opinion. I've taught on this for years, I'll illustrate it one more time, that inside of a car engine, it's got what they call four strokes. In other words, that those pistons go up and down in the cylinders four times in order to have actually one power stroke, one part of the car that's going to make it go faster.

And those strokes can teach us a whole lot, in my opinion. So the very first time that the piston goes down in the cylinder, if you can picture this piston in a cylinder with me, and you see that thing going down, and when it goes down, it draws oxygen, in other words, air through the intake manifold. It draws air, and it draws fuel, sometimes through a fuel ignition system. In the old days, it was a carburetor, however it is, the fuel is part of what gets in there, and that air and that fuel mix together, and that is called the intake stroke. Well, all of our lives, whether we like it or not, have intake strokes. In other words, you might be sitting there on the couch thinking you're just boob tubing it, whatever, but you are intaking. And you're intaking some pretty tough fuel, just saying that.

You're intaking all the time. And you can intake good fuel, which is the Bible as far as I'm concerned, and I hope you are too, but the fuel is critical. Like, if you go buy the cheapest gas possible, I bet you your car is going to ping, you're going to lose power, you're going to not get the good gas mileage.

Well, it's the same thing with your life. That if you take in the wrong fuel, you're going to have problems, I'll explain a little bit later. Well, that first stroke coming down, it brings in the fuel and the air.

The second stroke is what they call the compression stroke. Now we're going to take this fuel and we're going to compress it. Okay, so the piston's gone down, now the piston's going to come up. So the crankshaft made it go down, now the crankshaft's going to make it go up. And as it goes up, it is going to compress that fuel and that air, which is the friction that we've been talking about also, and whether it's a diesel engine, which just the friction itself will cause it to ignite or in the case of a gasoline engine, it has a spark plug. And that spark plug will cause that fuel to ignite. And once it ignites, then it is going to push that stroke, it's going to push that piston down with all it's got. The challenge is, and the reason why, you know, they have timing and all those kind of things, is that if that fuel ignites prior to the piston coming all the way up, what they call top dead center, then you get this idea where the rest of the engine's trying to push the piston up, but if it ignites too quickly, it's pushing down and you get this horrible ping sound in the engine.

In the old days, it was a lot worse because they didn't have things to stop. But believe me, it's called pre-ignition, and I bet in your life, there's times when you ignite too quickly. And when you do, you know, you kind of freeze up the whole engine. You remove power, you lose gas mileage, all that stuff, because what the reason is, is that the fuel has what they call low octane. Cheaper gasoline actually does not catch on fire, excuse me, cheaper gasoline catches on fire way quicker than expensive gasoline. Effective gasoline that has more octane in it has a much higher flash point.

The higher the flash point, the better stroke you get because it won't pre-ignite. It won't ignite before it's supposed to. Well, if you think about all the horrible fuel that we take into our lives, if it pre-ignites, then you got all sorts of issues, okay?

And I'm sure that you're all on fire for a lot of things as you're going down the road with road rage or whatever the situation is, you're suffering from pre-ignition based on what you've been taking into your life. So then you got the power stroke and hopefully you did it right on time, you had the right fuel and it came down, that's beautiful. And so, you know, you had your intake stroke, right?

You had your compression stroke, now you've had your power stroke, you got three strokes and you got to take that four strokes. So the four stroke, after that piston comes down with all the power from that fuel igniting, it's going to come back up and when it does, the valves open. And when the valves open, it pushes out the exhaust, I should say the exhaust valve opens and it pushes the exhaust out of the exhaust valve if you picture that piston coming up on the fourth stroke. Now here's the thing, if you're like me, you got plenty exhaust, right? You got all this sin in your life and you got to get it out of there because if you leave any little particles in it, it begins to build up on the sidewalls of the compression chamber or the piston cylinder and guess what?

It too causes pre-ignition because that carbon sitting there, the next time that you start to get some heat, it will ignite the fuel prematurely. And so the exhaust stroke is critical to getting rid of the spent fuel, it's critical to get rid of all the carbon and all the stuff that's in there. In other words, we have to confess regularly, like examine our lives. Now how can we do that if we're not reading the Bible because if you're like me and you read this passage on love, especially the passages on love, you know, love keeps no records of wrong, oops. You know, in other words, as you read the Bible, it helps you with your exhaust stroke, right? It helps you to see the things in your life that need to be, you got to get rid of it, you got to confess.

And so as you go through that idea of, you know, of the all strokes of an engine, you know, then you can really get ultimate performance. But you can see the critical aspect of the whole thing, what I've illustrated I hope, is the Bible, right? Does that make any sense, Bill? Yeah, I understand that. I think we've all got that sin now.

We want it to get smaller and smaller, we want to flush it out. But yes, I understand what you're saying. It's good to be reading the Bible with the right frame of mind and the love of God. But it also means you got to accept yourself, you've got to have some self-worth, not beat yourself up, because you've got to understand that God wants good things for you. Yeah, and I, you know, that goes back into, from my standpoint, and part of the Christian experience is prayer, right? That hearing from God, which, you know, as you read the Bible, you develop those ears to hear better. But also, in your prayer life, to me it's critical often, you know, God, what do you think about this? What do you think about, you know, often He'll encourage me, or He'll encourage me through other people like you. It's also a reason to be in a fellowship with a lot of wonderful Christians, because a lot of them are great encouragers to say, Robbie, you know, I know you're getting beat up on this right now, but, you know, you're listening to God and you're doing what you should be doing. We've got to shut up and listen.

And sometimes my biggest problem is I'm not listening, I'm doing more talking. Yeah, it's that way in prayer, too, isn't it? God, let me tell you what I've got planned, and what I'm through. If we've got enough time, you can pat me on the head and tell me what I want is fine, instead of going to prayer and saying, God, what do you want in my life? And which gets to the point of, you know, in His presence is, 16th Psalm, in His presence is fullness of joy, and His right hand are pleasures forevermore. And so when I saw Chuck Swindoll up there on the stage, I mean, here's a guy, he's 90 years old, if you didn't see joy, you weren't sitting there, okay? If you didn't see all those things, like, man, that man, you know, clearly was in the presence of the Lord.

And so whatever you can do through being around Christian people, reading the Bible, spending time in those things, you want to end up at 90, looking like that, throwing your head back laughing? Let me assure you, you know, what he was saying makes perfect sense, and, you know, I'm praying for that for all of us, Bill, that we'll get better fuel, get plenty of the right ignition in order to get the right power strokes going on. Thank you all so much for listening today. Thank you, Bill. As always, a joy to share this with you. Thank you, sir. Enjoy the audience. Remember, slow down. We just walked everywhere we went, got it all done in 33 years.