Welcome to Truth Talk Live. All right, let's talk. A daily program powered by the Truth Network.
This is kind of a great thing, and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together. Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. I'm going to go ahead and throw it out there to you. Ask Robbie anything. What do you want to ask Robbie Dilmore? Robbie's the, he's usually the host of this show. I'm just a guest here and there.
But today we've, we switched sides of the table. And I'm going to interview Robbie and it's your opportunity. Is there something that you've always wanted to ask Robbie about his life or, you know, maybe something he believes or an idea he has or something like that? You heard on Christian Car Guy or something you heard on Truth Talk one day and you thought, I really want to circle back and ask him that.
Today is your day. So what do you want to ask Robbie? Ask Robbie anything. So, Robbie, I'm going to start by asking you something. Just go ahead and introduce yourself and get us rolling a little bit. Yeah, well, you know, I can tell you one thing. I never dreamed in a million years that I would ever be on the radio. And I'm actually, a lot of people don't realize this. I am a pretty shy person.
In other words, if you go to a gathering with a lot of people, you probably will not see me. So when God called me to be on the radio, I was like, are you serious? I don't even like to do commercials because, you know, I was a car dealer for years.
I said, you know, I'm not your guy. That's so funny. Yeah, that really does surprise me. And I was just terrified. I was absolutely terrified when I gave Stu the, you know, I felt like God was calling me to do the Christian Car Guy show. And he's like, oh, Robbie, that's a great idea. How about this Saturday? Stu never gives you a heads up. He's like, how about five minutes from now?
You ready to go? And so I got here and this is still hard for me to believe, but this is what, and he was not here. Why am I not surprised? I had never been on the radio in my life. Right. And I had no idea what I was doing.
None. Was there a producer here? The guy whose name was Deacon and he was a really super nice guy, but that day he was not very helpful because I came in and he said, man, you must really like to talk on the radio. And I'm like, what are you talking about? You don't want to talk on the radio.
He goes, yeah, you must really love to talk on the radio. And I said, no, it's supposed to be a call in show. They're going to call me at, by the way, 866-348-7884.
Oh yeah, thank you. Good reminder. They're going to call me. Ask Robbie anything.
Yeah. And he said, nobody's going to call you. They never heard of you. That's not, that's not, you better be ready to talk because you can't have no dead air and you got to talk for an hour. And I had, I was. That's a lot of pressure on your first day.
That was unbelievable. I bet you started. Well, at that point you got, I don't guess you could text anybody. You start texting your friends and saying, call in, pretend you don't know me and you've got an issue with your car. What I did was pray and fortunately God came to the rescue. Well, that's probably the best strategy.
That I had listed all these questions that I thought everybody would want to know. Right. Right. Like since, you know, I was a car dealer at the time and I was like, okay, should you take the raid or take the rebate? What's the best time of the year to buy a car? What's the. Great advice. Sure. You know, should you wait till the end of the month?
Should you buy your car at the beginning of the month? You know, all these different things that I had a list of about 20 of them. And so. Did you just ask them and answer them yourself? I just, no, I just threw them out there and the loan phone lines lit up. Oh, great.
Yeah. So then you knew there's a need for this. Once I could, well, once I had somebody on the phone, I really could be myself.
I couldn't be myself sitting where you are. I was terrified. And, uh, but once I could have somebody on the phone, I was able to talk. And that's the only way I made it through that first show. And I promise you, I never came back not prepared to talk for an hour if necessary.
And of course, I never like a show like that. I much prefer. It is fun when callers call. Way more fun. And so, but I, I realized that that's not necessarily always going to happen.
And when it doesn't, it's, it's, it's a lot of fun to now see what God will take me into my mind or what I can do, you know, without that happens. Right. Well, since it's interview Robbie day, I think I'm going to start at the beginning. Tell me a little bit about where you're born, your family, kind of how you grew up because we were just talking and I said, I would have guessed that you were from North Carolina. Although now that you mentioned it, you don't quite have the North Carolina twang, but just tell us, tell us where Robbie came from. So I was born, I was born in Pocatello, Idaho.
Say that again. Pocatello, Idaho, which is, you know, it's a state up there in the Northwest. Well I do know where Idaho is. I just don't know where Pocatello is. Pocatello is kind of right in the center of the state. It's one of the three largest. I've been to Idaho and it is absolutely gorgeous. It's one of the three largest cities in Idaho. Boise is the only one I've been to.
Right. Most people know that one. A lot of people know Pocatello, but nonetheless, my father worked for Buick Motor Division. My father was in the car business long before me and he would transfer every two years to different places.
And so although I was born in Pocatello, I didn't live there very long. We just started moving from place to place and he would tend to get transferred like to Denver and then we'd go to Los Angeles or to San Francisco. Then we'd come back all the way to Chicago. Then we'd go up to Detroit, you know, because clearly General Motors was up there in Flint, Michigan.
And we would where his headquarters were and we'd spend some time up there. And it was like that my all the years that I was growing up. And so I ended up graduating from high school and pretty much settling when I got out of high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
OK. OK. Well, that's a lot of traveling around. So what was that like for you as a kid? Did you like a new adventure or were you you know, were you like, great, we're starting over again. How did you take that as a kid?
Well, I think it actually is part of the reason I'm kind of shy. OK. Yeah. Because I never knew anybody like I was always, you know, the kid that nobody knew because I was the new guy, you know, whatever. And so it made us a very close family. There were four siblings, you know. OK. And so we came into school, you know, we knew each other and I could always hang out with my brother who was younger than me.
But, you know, that was that was the one thing I would say is that it's pretty hard when you come into a new situation every couple of years and you're having to make all new friends and all that kind of stuff. But in some way, it was fun to the extent, well, OK, you know, I can put my past behind me. And so you may know the story that I flunked the sixth grade. Right.
But the fact that we moved that year, nobody knew I flunked. Exactly. That is helpful in that in that situation.
Definitely. Did you you know, did you feel like, you know, once you you know, you were getting to know people and then you were off to your next place. And so you said you were super tight with your family. What was your family structure?
So four siblings. Yeah. Well, again, my father was usually out of town because he worked all the time.
OK. And my mother was a stay at home mom. Wonderful. Wonderful.
And I got two sisters that are older and my brother is younger, but we got to go to a break. OK, we'll be right back. And this will be a great time for you to call.
That's right. 866-348-7884. Ask Robbie anything. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com.
Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. I'm here with Robbie Gilmore and we left off at the break. Robbie, I asked you a little bit about your family and you were telling me a little bit you've got four siblings. And so we had some good discussion over the break.
So let's just pick up right there. Again, my family structure was my father worked for Buick, as we talked about, but he had a very spiritual early life. And then his father was very, very, very Baptist and actually worked for the American Baptist Association later in life and traveled doing that. And so he was brought up very Baptist. My mother was brought up very congregational and her grandfather was a congregational pastor. And so they had a real Christian background. However, my father found General Motors and climbing the ladder in General Motors to be a lot more fun than church, apparently at some point. And even though we went to church when I was younger, like, you know, by the third or fourth grade, my father fell into drinking and womanizing in a whole. It's the whole lifestyle of success and trying to create that identity. And I guess feeling somewhat hypocritical, we stopped going to church.
Right. And so and I can remember him saying things like, you know, I'm not going to tell you who got it. You know, these are things you have to figure out for yourself and stuff like that. And so I didn't really have a biblical worldview at the point in time, you know, that I my mother stayed a little bit closer to ask how your mom how your mom handled that. See, unfortunately, my mother attempted suicide real badly due to all that was going on with my father when I was, you know, about 10 or 11. And she actually took all her medicine jumped in the backseat of her car in the middle of the winter in Detroit, and they didn't find her for about a week. And when they found her, she was barely alive. And it took two to three years for her to for them. She was in hospitals and all this stuff.
My grandparents came and kind of took care of us. But it took a long time for her to recover. And even after that, for a few years.
But those who would listen to the Christian car guide on my mother fully recovered and was absolutely an amazing woman. But at that point, when I was in those years, she was almost absent. Yes, functionally, for several years of your life in those early years, right? And that 12 to 1718, you know, whatever that was, you know, that was so your mom's dealing with illness and mental physical illness and your dad is chasing worldly things. And, you know, and so where does that leave you as a as a teenager? Where did that or where did maybe that take you? Well, there's no doubt that Satan took me someplace that was not good. And that that was to a point of complete depression and fear. I had, you know, I was one of those people that totally afraid of the dark and afraid of my own shadow. And and I literally wouldn't want to even go to I was so shy that I wouldn't want to go into a store because then I would have to look at the cashier and have to check out. So I would get anybody look one of my friends.
Would you mind going to buy this? Because I don't want to go in there. Right. Or I mean, that's just I don't know, I'll get there with this. But it's just a testimony to what God's done in your life, because to think of you at that age with that many fears and that many struggles and who you are now, which I really don't know you tremendously well. But that's just that's just that's how I was. And of course, asking a girl out was way above my right.
Right. Oh, and so that all led to a tremendous amount of depression and a demand and fear. And so when I got to about 18, this is to me, it's kind of a funny story.
But, you know, you may not usually it's only funny looking back. So I decided that the best thing to do is just to end my life. My parents had moved, divorced and moved to Kansas City. I mean, my mother lived in Florida.
My father lived in Kansas City. My one sister lived with me in Albuquerque, and everybody was just all my my family just exploded. And so I decided I'm just going to end my life. But the crazy way that I did that was I was just going to lay in bed until I starved to death. And so if you picture this scene, I'm laying in this apartment in Albuquerque and I have decided that this is what's going to happen. I'm just going to die. And about this time, there's this knock on the door and it won't stop knocking. And I'm like, man, don't you know, I'm supposed to be dying here. Like, would you please leave me alone?
You know, but they wouldn't. And they kept knocking. And so I get up to answer the door. And it's a girl that's selling the books Dianetics to Modern Science and Mental Health. And for those who are not familiar with that book, probably pretty common in the 70s and 80s.
That's the lead in book to the Church of Scientology. OK. OK. And so she's got this book and it's like two dollars. And she's, you know, she's telling me all about this book and I didn't have time. I said, look, I got to get back to what I'm doing. How much is the book?
Two dollars. Good. And I bought the book and she said, you will call me tomorrow. I said, right, right, right. You know, and I went back in my bed to lay down and die. Right.
However long it was going to take. I'm trying not to comment. It's just how it was.
That is never funny, but it is a little humorous. That's how dark my world was. But it was way God chose to rescue me literally through such bizarre circumstances.
Come to the end of yourself and maybe there on that bed, lay in looking at the ceiling eventually. So there I was and I had this book and I was like, well, I paid two bucks. Might as well read it. Might as well read this book. Well, the book made perfect sense to me. Like it was all about all your mental illnesses and what really caused all these problems in your life. I knew I had plenty. And so I just was totally had grown up with that. So maybe you were like, this is what I need to know.
Oh, man, here we are. And so she was right. I called her. I called her and I said, what's my next step, man?
Whatever this is, I need it. And I need to become a dynamic auditors, what they called it at the time. And so that's how I ended up going to the Church of Scientology there in Albuquerque, which was just a mission there.
And within a few years or a year or so, I've graduated through everything that they could teach me in Albuquerque. And so the only place to go from there if you're in Scientology is you've got to go up to the bigger organizations, which in that time or Los Angeles, you know, where they had ASHO and some of the bigger things. And when I got there, then they recruited me into the C organization, which is what runs the Church of Scientology. And so within a very short order, you know, I found myself very, very active and very well versed in the Church of Scientology. And so, you know, if you ever wanted to know anything about that, you know, it's funny because my wife will tell you that to this day, we probably get six or seven pieces of mail from the Church of Scientology. Once you're in, they chase you for the rest.
They're still hoping. And they call me constantly. And I don't know how many of them I've converted over the years.
I would think they'd stop calling me because every time I get a call, it's like, oh, here's another opportunity to show Jesus. And I know all their shtick because I used to do it. Like when you've been on the inside of an organization like that, you know the flaws, you know the thought patterns. But again, you're never going to argue anybody, never.
Yeah, but you don't know the person that maybe God's working in already. And all you have to do is just say, you know, I know what you're learning is really giving you answers and you're really excited about what you've got there. But believe me, after years, you know, I was in the C organization, which one of them is going to get their attention.
Yeah, that's like I was on the cabinet or, you know, I was in the presidential. Right, right. I understand where you're at and I see it. But man, I found something that just totally blew my mind. Like, man, I got freedom because Scientology is all about freedom to some extent to them. They think it is. It's actually a trap. And I could walk somebody through that. But to them, they're getting, they're trying to be free.
They're trying to be clear or they're trying to be OT or whatever they're trying to be. And so, you know, you can pretty much say, man, I got something like, you know, that you're going to want. So, you know, that's just one of the very interesting aspects of my life. Like, how did God save me out of that shenanigans? Well, maybe you got a question. Yeah, ask Robbie anything. Call in if you want to ask him. I'm going to be asking him a few questions on the other side of this break.
We'll be right back. We left off and Robbie was sharing a story about how he, somebody knocked on his door. He was laying in his room. He had decided that this was the end, that he was just going to starve himself to death. And somebody came and sold him a book. And I guess he liked what he read. It's too bad it wasn't a Bible.
I know. Where were the Gideons? Give some money to the Gideons, folks.
We need Bibles around the world. But so that kind of led you into pursuing Scientology. You ended up at the top or top level of that organization, kind of only to be very disillusioned with it. How did how did that end for you?
And what what kind of pulled you out of that? Because, you know, I think of all so many, I guess, you know, definitely falls in the category of a cult. But they're they're always teaching you something that feels familiar and feels right. But it's incomplete or it's twisted. And, you know, the farther you get down that path, the more disorienting it is.
And, you know, so many people, it's very difficult to come out of those organizations. So the way I look at it now is just God just rescued me through some really bizarre circumstances. Yeah. That I think he does this a lot with you, doesn't he? He does. He just failed me.
Like every question is like, well, God just did something very bizarre. That's awesome. I actually married a girl in Scientology and in the C organization. And we were both in the C organization. And I had some debt that and they're not big on debt, like you can't have any debt. And I had some debt from a car that I bought. And it's like, you need to go work out this debt. And so they exited me out of the C organization to go get out of that debt.
And while I was doing that, you know, then I could come back and go on to whatever it was. In the time I left, I never thought... The only time David, Dave Ramsey would say it was a good thing that you had car debt. It was a good thing. And of all the things a Christian car guy got out of Scientology because of car debt.
It's true. And so we exited out and my wife was phenomenally promiscuous. And it led to just a catastrophe when I got out and I was on my own.
And I was so hurt by all those circumstances that I never went back. And I just pursued my car business career. Was that still in Albuquerque or Los Angeles or where were you at that point? It started out in Albuquerque but then my father had gotten into a dealership in Savannah, Georgia. And so he offered to hire me there. So I went to Savannah and went to work in the service department and dealership.
He was there in Savannah. And that's how that proceeded. And eventually I met my wife who wouldn't date me unless I went to church. Tammy. She's amazing.
She is amazing. And when she sees all these books and the e-meter and all the stuff I had from Scientology, she loses her mind and she literally throws them all out behind my back and all my stuff was gone. This is an Old Testament scene.
They're burning the idols and smashing the Asherah poles. So yeah, that's the deal. That's the deal. Okay, so you end up in Georgia. You meet Tammy. You leave Scientology. And how did you come to know the Lord?
Or was that later? Let's walk on down the path. It's a beautiful thing from my standpoint. It was that God came at me from a couple, three different angles. I love when you see a person and you know God is just surrounding them. He's like triangulating every direction.
He's ascending on, descending on you. So I went to this church and the very first sermon I ever heard was from Dr. Redhead there in the First Presbyterian Church in Greensboro. And he preached on what I call the five slamma jamma, cat's pajama prayer.
Say that again. The five slamma jamma, cat's pajama prayer. I named it that because it's so effective.
The five slamma jamma, that's from the NC State. Right. Yeah. Because it's the prayer that just saved me on so many different angles.
Wow. And it basically went like. The slam dunk prayer. That's kind of what you're saying, yeah. He just said you need to realize that you don't have to say a lot of stuff because, you know, it's not a matter of God doesn't know what you've got on your heart. It's a matter of you don't know what God has to say to you. And so if you'll let go and let go and let God and you would sit there and just listen for God. And just prayer being a two-way communication, not a one-way thing.
But hey, let me listen to see what God may have to say about this. Brilliant, yeah. It was.
But not what we typically do. Yeah, so, yeah. So I wasn't, again, I'm coming out of the Church of Scientology and I have no idea what's what.
And I hear this sermon. I'm like, well, you know. And one of the first things, I had a son by that previous marriage and he ran away. And I was terrified.
Like, what are we going to do? And I was like, man, I've run on the answers. Now, I was not a Christian at this point in time, did not know the Lord, but I knew this prayer. And so I just started praying like, God, like, tell me, let me listen.
And I just sat there and I listened and I listened and I remember Tammy was in the other room. It's like two in the morning. I am terrified. And all of a sudden I hear, God just tells me clear, Robbie, I have this. I've got it.
Don't worry about it. And I heard it was clear. Well, I come into the living room and I'm like, Tammy, good news, I've heard from God. He says he's got this. And she said. She's looking at me like, you're crazy.
Well, I mean, it isn't like 45, 50 seconds later, the car pulls up the driver, police guard drives up in the driveway and Leslie's in the back seat. Oh, wow. And he did have it.
Yeah. And once. And that probably grew your faith.
Oh, oh. Like nothing else could. And began my prayer life. Right.
In a huge, gigantic way. So now I understand prayer, whatever. And again, we're attending a church and I'm meeting some people that seem to have something I don't have like friends, not just Jesus, but they have all sorts of I'm just looking at these people really like each other.
I didn't usually see that where I am. But anyway, I you know, I just. And then I picked up a book, a series. It was actually a tape series on the book, The Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peale. Well, I don't know what that book has to say other than this. At the very beginning, he says, if you want to have a positive mental attitude, which is what the book was about, he said, you need to get up an hour early every morning and read the Bible. But before you read the Bible, you need to pray that God will show you what it means or otherwise you'll never understand it. And I thought, well, you know, so was it was because faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of God. And so not unlike the Dianetics book that brought me out of that shenanigans. You know, I began to read the Bible, which just absolutely infuriated me.
Oh, did it? Where did you start? I started the only place I knew to start this is what right. And the more I read, you're like, what is this? I was so mad at God.
Yeah. Like when, you know, Aaron's kids offered the wrong incense and they were just post toasties like, what, God, what are you doing to these people? You know, I thought you were loving. And then, you know, you remember Aiken, he takes the devoted things and they not only stoned him, but they stoned his kids and I'm getting madder and madder and madder.
Like, I thought you were supposed to be loving. I'm reading the Bible now and this is what, and he's just, he's just, he's saying, come on, Robbie, come on down this road. So by the time I get to Job, right. And now you're gonna let Job lose his kids and, and all these people sit there and yak at him for a day, I'm 30. You know, I was just like, oh, this is a good story. Yeah. And all of a sudden I get to the part where God says, you know, Job, I have some questions for you.
Yeah. You know, you have a lot of questions I understand, but I got a few questions for you, Job. Like, where were you, you know, when I set out the foundations of the earth or Robbie, you know, since you're so smart and since you were in Scientology and you guys think you're God, why don't you make it snow or, you know, bring in the tide one time for me. I'd be impressed, you know, or bring up the sun, you know, Hey, what does that look like?
Like lay out the four corners of the earth, bring on the four winds. Well, Scientology's trap is that you will end up thinking that you're some kind of God. Wow.
Okay. And, and so when he broke that through the book of Job, I just bawled for hours, like you're the second person. I don't know if that was your point of coming to Christ, but I know I have a friend who would say they came to Christ by reading the book of Job. And so God, it's all of scripture takes all of scripture. However I didn't come to Christ to that point. I came to conviction at that point, like, Oh my goodness, I am not God. There is a God.
I'm not him. And clearly has a very high standard that all these people ended up crispy critters because they didn't meet the standard. How do I meet the standard?
How do I meet the standard? Well, when you get to the, you start asking the question, who is worthy, right, right. And when you get to the New Testament, you understand there is a line, right? Okay.
Yeah. Now I see why he had to die. And I had a big misunderstanding on death because I always thought when I read Genesis that like, wait a minute, you said Adam was going to die when he ate the stuff. He didn't die. Like, that's a lie. Did you know you lied right at the beginning of your book? When you were actually just angry that God showed mercy.
No. Adam did die the second he ate, because he was separated from God. He died spiritually. And that very moment, right.
And that was my whole problem is I was separated spiritually, didn't know that that's, that was why I needed to be born again. And that's, you know, that's kind of where that happened. Okay. We have a few more, few more minutes. If you want to call in and ask Robbie anything, hit us up after the break, you're listening to the truth network and truthnetwork.com. Okay.
Robbie. We're here. We have just a few minutes left and we're just to put it in your vernacular. We're going to put the pedal to the metal, we're going to put it into high gear and go through some things that are just some significant markers in your life. So you're reading Job, you come to the, come to conviction, then how do you actually become a believer? Where, where does that happen?
How does that happen? So I got to the New Testament and again, I cleared out that situation that I was very concerned that God had lied right at the very beginning of the Bible. Of course, by the time I've got to Job, I wasn't so concerned about that anymore, although I still had the question. And when I realized what Jesus was talking about and, and what that new life was available, you know, obviously in the book of John, you, you get the idea that he is the resurrection and the life. And this is what I was looking for was essentially how do I get that? And I realized that if you, you know, confess with your mouth, you know, it's pretty easy. Yeah, repentance of faith. Yeah.
Right. And that doesn't make it hard for us, but sometimes there are a lot of barriers for us to get to the point where we open our mind, open our hearts and he does, you know, he, he does that as well. So, and then he, he did an extraction like he often has done in my life, uh, that at the time I was the general manager of Crown Hunt of Volvo and Chapel Hill and the craziest set of circumstances happened. I won't go into all the details, but essentially all of a sudden the job that I was very, very successful at just ended like boom, out of the blue. And I was like mad at God, like, wait a minute, I just came to faith. I'm giving you money in the collection plate, like what's up with this?
How could I get fired? You know, but about that time David Neil bought the Chrysler store in Winston-Salem and he needed somebody with some Chrysler experience and I had run Crown Dodge at one time and so he hired me to come to Winston-Salem, which was one of the most gigantic things that ever happened in my life, okay? Because if I had not gotten fired from this dream job, I never would have ended up here, right? It's so, it's easy to see in the rear view mirror.
Oh, it is. It's hard to see at the time that God really has a plan. So I came to Bob Neill Chrysler Plymouth Jeep Eagle and there, um, God sent all these people into my life to decide. We went to Calvary Baptist Church. I met Pastor Mark Quartz almost immediately. He began to disciple me personally. Like he actually took an interest in me.
I was just shocked. I've heard, I've heard so many people tell that same story about Dr. Quartz. He was an amazing man. He knew his sheep and he invested in them heavily.
He would call you on the phone, you know, what's going on? But also there was a man by the name of Jack Mayberry and Jack Mayberry introduced me and asked me to the first Christian Businessmen's Committee meeting and this discipled me like amazingly because very shortly I met a man by the name of Ted Burton who was the area man for Christian Businessmen's Committee and he began to come to the dealership every single week and personally disciple me through what at the time was called Operation Timothy and, and, and. Was that Navigators? Where was that? It was Christian Businessmen's. CBMC.
Well, I'm wondering what, what material he was using. There was a book called First Steps and then you went Operation Timothy one, two, and three and all those books taught you scripture memorization, how to read the Bible, you know, all these different things that essentially just discipled me and began to flesh out how to share your testimony, how to share your faith and all this and we met every week and then a young Stu Epperson probably in his 20s at the point in time that I met him came to start calling up trying to sell me advertising because at the time he worked for WSJS and WK, whatever the country station was and so I invited Stu to Christian Businessmen's Committee because I could see he was Christian, wonderful and so, you know, we became great friends and discipled each other through Christian Businessmen's Committee and Bill makes into many people that you might be familiar with in my life, Dave Parsons and all those and when I moved to Mocksville, when I opened up the dealership in Mocksville, I helped Stu be elected. I was the, ended up being the chairman of Christian Businessmen's Committee in Winston Salem.
Stu became the chairman when I left and went to Mocksville. I have a Christian Businessmen's Committee or I shouldn't say God gave me a Christian Businessmen's Committee in Mocksville. We met this morning. We still meet. Okay.
Yeah. I can't imagine not having that so but that Christian Businessmen's Committee like not only discipled me but I made connections. God brought those people into my life that would radically change my life, right, as I was called to do the Christian Car Guy show and, you know, Stu put me on the air as we talked about at the beginning of the show and, you know, it just blows my mind.
As I said, I never would have dreamed after 40 years in the car business that I would end up, you know, on the radio, especially at the level that— Especially as a shy guy who didn't want to do public speaking or go into a store to buy some candy. Well, let me tell you how bad this was. I don't share this story often but my first—what actually ended my first marriage was I wanted Brenda to go into the grocery store to buy the dog food and she was so mad at me. Like you can't even go into the grocery store. I said, please, please just go in there and buy the dog food. No, no.
And she gets—she left me over that fight over that dog food that I would not go in the store to buy that dog food. That's how scared I—I would put it as fear. It wasn't, you know, it's just I was afraid.
It wasn't, yeah. Just everything you'd experienced and not having the confidence of a dad to say, I've been there, I can do it, you can do it too. Those things that men need and boys need and, you know, we've talked on other days about discipleship and just the impact that one person can have on another person's life and the ripple effect of that. And so when I—when you talk about—what was his name again, Ted? Ted? Ted Burton. Ted Burton.
You know that he came and he spent time with you for two or three years, one-on-one. You know, it's not like he said, well, I'll only, you know, work if I've got 30 people in our group, you know, just one-on-one with you and just, you know, just the power of one and the power of one person investing spiritually in another person. And so maybe that's a part of your story that somebody needs to hear today. Ted Burton. It is.
It's gross. Ted Burton. You ought to be grateful for the people that have, you know, poured into our listeners' lives. And me personally, there was a lady in Raleigh who did the same thing and set the foundation for me spiritually on Christ, but through the way she taught me and led me to the Word and led me through prayer and just, I'm still drawing on that well.
That's been 30 years and just so grateful for her impact. But yeah, absolutely. The impact that people make on your life and the imprint, well, so life has just been easy since then, right? Because it's always a cakewalk with Jesus.
Cakewalks are only for church bazaars. That's not really the Christian life. Well, Robbie, didn't you have cancer and you were saved out of that and didn't you fall out of the tree 35 feet and didn't you have a brain thing, you know, where they... We need like episode two, three, and four. I had all that, yes, yes. God had to show me how much he loved me through people. And to see all those, I don't know how that worked, but those people that I was so afraid of, right, came to my rescue in almost all those circumstances. And so, you know, that was a big part of, you know, it took a lot of pain obviously to go through all those things, but God was doing an amazing thing in my life too. Aren't we glad to know that God is always working in our pain, in our trials, in our suffering, that we have a God that suffers with us and for us and, you know, the whole world suffers, but we suffer with hope because we know that he is creating things in us that shaping us in ways that we can't be shaped by just an easy life.
And this life at times is harder than we can imagine. Yeah, and so, you know, again, one of the hugest things he did was he extracted me out of the car business. In other words, yes, I'm still the Christian car guy, but I literally lost everything in that dealership in Mocksville, and little did I know the car business was ripping my heart out, that the pressures of that and all that that entailed, I had nightmares for years and years. I had to sell one more car.
I had to make this quota. And so that was another one of his rescues that he rescued me out of the car business and praise God. In another crazy way.
Right. And it was extremely painful and a lot of things that went on with it. But nonetheless, like, man, I have to pinch myself, like, really, I get to do this for a living? Like, I get to talk about Jesus every day of my life.
And I get to share these stories, et cetera. Yeah, last week in Bible study, Adairio, now all part of the Adairio studies, but we were studying just abiding in Christ and pruning. And that pruning is what God does for us to make us more fruitful. He may prune away what we perceive to be good things. It's not, it's not usually sin. That's discipline.
When we are disciplined, it's over sin, but pruning is just because there's something in our lives that is draining or distracting us or keeping us from being who God really wants us to be. And sometimes he just takes out those prunes and cuts and it's so painful. But on the other side, you're like, oh, thank you, Lord. I, the process was hard, but I don't know that I could have done that myself and you did it for me out of your kindness because you want more for me. And that's just a beautiful place to realize that's the God we have, that he's, he's our father and he loves us as a father and he extends his relationship to us. And then we reflect and represent him to this lost world and he's, you know, he's constantly shaping us so that we conform to the image of his son, which, you know, we're never going to do perfectly, but, um, well, we'll close out on that, but I've loved this conversation.
I know we could have three more episodes on ask Robbie anything. I'm the only one who asked anything today, but I have plenty of other questions, but, um, you want to sign us off on a last thought? I am just grateful that maybe you can see what an impact you're making on somebody like they made on me. That's a beautiful thing. I'm so grateful for all those things.
