Ignite with Barry Meguiar Podcast

Barry Meguiar  00:00

Music. Welcome back to ignite. You know, when people ask me what I do, I tell them I lead people to Jesus. It’s a wonderful opener for conversation. People say, say what? It’s not offensive. It’s almost funny. But people immediately know where I’m coming from, and I like that. In 2016 this is interesting story. In 2016 David Wilhelm and his wife invite us to dinner, carry me. And during dinner, David was struggling a little bit about saying something to me, and I said, Well, what’s going on? He’s well, I have someone to tell you, but I’m sworn to secrecy, but I got to tell you now, he was not a believer. Okay, Dave will not a believer. And he says to me, our friend, Dave Robertson, you need to get to him right away. And I said, What’s, what’s the urgency? I hadn’t seen him for a while. He says, I got to tell you. Again. I’m not supposed to tell you, but, but he has stage four cancer, and he’s dying, and it’s soon, it was a total shock. So I called Dave later, actually the next morning, asked him to go to lunch, and he said, Yes, he wanted to go to lunch. Now, mind you, Dave and I have known each other about 30 years, and abandoned back and forth for 30 years about God, he always had another question. He loved the debate, but he wasn’t antagonistic. He wasn’t arguing to be argumentative. He was just searching for God, and now he’s dying. And so his focus on God was a lot clearer, you understand. So when I invited a lunch, he said yes immediately, and so we had lunch the very next day. And over a three hour lunch, he told me exactly I did act like I didn’t know anything about it. And he told me that he was dying and he was concerned. And and by the end of that three hour lunch, he was ready and, and he received the Lord, wow. I mean, it was just, it was just great. The next day he called me, and he had a different countenance, but he did have four questions, three, four, I don’t know he had some questions, all right. One, he said, I don’t have a church. I said, Yeah, well, I don’t have a place to have my memorial service. He was thinking about that. I said, Well, I got that handled. What else you need? He’s I don’t have a pastor. Could could you lead my memorial service? I said, Of course, I will he do it. Do that for you. He says, Then I my friends that are coming, they’re mostly car guys that don’t know the Lord. Would you? Would you tell them I received the Lord? I’m in heaven. Now, I would have done that no matter what, of course. And then he said, and would you give them an opportunity to receive the Lord? Would you have an altar call at the end of my funeral? I said, Absolutely, I would do that. So the funeral came and we had a wonderful time, a wonderful time. David Wilhelm actually got up and spoke, but then I talked about God’s faithfulness to Dave Robertson, that he accepted the Lord at the end of his life. And I said, if there’s anybody else here that would like to raise their hand and receive God’s gifts eternal life right now, just just raise your hand. Four people raised their hands. One of them was David Wilhelm. Understand that? Do you get the irony of this? I Dave Robertson accepted the Lord only because David Wilhelm told me about him. He said, You need to get with him. And then Dave Robertson, before he died, says, I need to, I need you to give a call at the end of my service for people to receive the Lord. And David Wilhelm received the Lord. You see the dichotomy. It’s just God. It’s how God works. And so now, when we go to our Calvary champachito Hills, who’s saving his seats, it’s David Wilhelm in Victoria, and they’re holding Bible studies. They love the Lord, and it’s just such a great experience. I mean it just, I say every time I’m with them, I think of Thank Thank you God for allowing me to be a small part of these two miracles, really. So a few days ago, Karen threw me a surprise birthday party, a surprise 82nd birthday party. Who throws a birthday party for an 82nd birthday, unless they don’t think they’re going to have an 83rd birthday. Karen knows something I don’t know. I’m feeling pretty good, but everywhere. And not only that, she threw it on the night before my birthday, which didn’t make sense at all. Okay, so we have a wonderful time. It was a great surprise, and David Wilhelm was in rare form. He had us all laughing. We had pictures, and it was just, it was. It was a sensational evening with our with David’s closest friends. Okay, what a wonderful night. At 745, The next morning, suddenly, David died. He died. We all know about the temporariness of life that we leave at any time, but, and I know that I live that, but then it happens like this. It’s in your face, and I’ve talked with God about it a bit. What is this message? It is you need to be ready and live for me every moment. I know that, but it’s more poignant now you follow what I’m saying. Think back for a moment. If Karen hadn’t thrown me the birthday party the night before my birthday, we wouldn’t had a birthday party because David was going to die the next morning. We would never had a party after that, but what she had the night before he passed away, so he could be with all of his friends and have a wonderful evening. And then he drove 40 minutes to his office the next morning. He’s a dentist. He drove to his practice, and he could have passed away along the way, because he died suddenly. Could have been tragic. But he got to his office, he met with his staff. His assistants had a wonderful time with them. Told him about the time what happened the night before, just a wonderful last time with them. Sat down with his first patient and working on that patient sitting in a chair, he suddenly just leaned over, and he was gone, gone. The message, the takeaway is, always, always, always be ready. You know, we just have to live that. And it’s the sadness of life, the temporary ness of life. James 414 describes our life on Earth as like being a morning fog. You think about eternity. Eternity. It never ends. I’m wondering after we’ve been there a million or two years, well, we remember much about this 100 years that we had on Earth, and that’s why he says that our the temporary ness of our life, is like a morning fog. It just comes and and goes away. The moral of the story is we need to always be ready. David was ready. Are you ready? See you next time you