Okay, before we get started today, I've got a question for you, not you Ann, our listener. Where are you listening from? And you know that we're from Detroit, Motor City, Shelby's in the Philly area, and our Family Life Today headquarters are in Orlando. So we're coming to you guys from all over the country, but what about you? We would love to know if you are in one of those areas or where else you consider home. Text FLT plus where you're listening from to 80542 to let us know.
So again, you're going to text FLT plus where you're listening from to 80542. First Missionary Baptist here in Franklin, Tennessee. I'd gotten to know the pastor, Danny Denson, really well. I said, hey, I'd love to visit your church.
So I go in there one Sunday morning. We had had a men's fellowship, so I knew the woman I sat next to, I knew her husband, Bob, but I didn't know that Dinah was his wife. About halfway through the service, she reached over and grabbed my hand and she wasn't making a point.
It was just this natural, I'd say that she had kind of this gravitational love that she just drew people in. I mean, did you find it really strange? Oh, it totally freaked me out. And I, and I thought, well, this is just, it was the first time I've been to that church.
And I guess, well, I guess this is just what people do in this church. And I looked around and nobody else was holding hand. So Dinah held my hand through the whole service and it felt, well, it felt like I was been, I'd been adopted. I was one of her children. I didn't know the word hesitant. She showed me it was hesitant. It was just natural.
It was a very natural thing. And I will, that changed my life. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.
You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. And the person who owes me nothing gives me everything.
Doesn't that sound just too good to be true? I was just thinking, I wish that could be said about me, but that's not said about any human being. It's about only what God can do. And it's exactly what God wants us to experience.
And can you imagine what would happen if that's what we were known for in our marriages and our families and our neighborhoods? And that's where we're headed today. Today, we'll be finishing a conversation we had with a dear man and really a spiritual mentor to me through his music and his writing, Mr. Michael Carr. And we got to sit down with Michael in his home church in Franklin, Tennessee. And Dave, you asked him something that was really tender, a question to begin the day. And at first, I don't think he realized you were talking about your own family growing up. I could tell, as I was describing it, he had no idea this was my family. So that's where we start this conversation.
How do you turn back to that God when you felt like he's the God of wrath in the Old Testament? Talk to the mom who's caught her husband yet again with another woman with her kids, taking them on vacations. They get divorced. Her little youngest son dies right after divorce. And that her world was wonderful. It's falling apart. She feels like the God that I thought was hesed loved me, has abandoned me. I feel alone.
What would you say to her? Well, I do believe God gets angry, but he doesn't sin obviously in his anger. And so I think fearing God's righteous anger is part of biblical faith. But the same God who would discipline us with that anger is the God who's going to forgive you.
He's already forgiven you. You've just got to accept it. And when one person on one side of the marriage doesn't get that, I think God loves you so much that he will let you suffer all kinds of things. He allows that kind of suffering. Hey, wait, wait.
Say that again. God loves you so much that he'll allow you to go through all kinds of suffering. He'll sustain you through the suffering too, but he also loves you so much. God, he could have wired us all that we would accept him.
But that's not love. He gives us the choice. And there are always going to be people who choose not to love him. I think there are people who hate that God is that way. You talk about the spouse who hates the fact that God is offering forgiveness to this husband that's failed and being a husband. And some people hate that God's that way.
Yeah. But I'm thinking about your mom, Dave. She did cling to Jesus.
She couldn't have gotten through. That mom was my mom. That was my dad. My little brother died. I was seven. And I could never understand how my mom still loved God, believed in God.
I was the one who struggled as a teenager going, come on, mom. Look, he's abandoned us. He's like, no, he's good. He's got me through this. Don't you see he's gotten us through this? I'm like, no, I don't believe that.
I do now. But she believed there's a God I can trust. We talked about that earlier.
Who loves me and is good. His loving kindness goes till her death bed. She held onto that.
That was what sustained her in the middle of all that. And so who do you want to be in the scenario, your mom or your dad? Exactly. It's a fallen world. My mentor used to say, this is a death impregnated world.
There's nothing so obvious as the fact that this world is not the way it should be. We weren't created that get cancer and die. We weren't created to have marriages that break.
That's not what we were created for. And one of the things that the good news of the gospel is that God is, he's redeeming that. He's paid the price for that. I know there are people listening theologically who disagree with this. There are people who believe that Jesus only died for the sins of people that would accept him. But I think the fact that he died for the sins of the whole world is what God so loved the world.
Right. And John, first John says he died for the sins of the whole world, but I've heard very sophisticated theological arguments that that's wrong and I can't believe that. But again, I think you don't go to hell for your sin because your sin has been paid for. You go to hell for not receiving the forgiveness that Jesus uniquely offers you. And that translates into every aspect of our relationships with each other. How can I not forgive my spouse when God's forgiven me? Oh my goodness. What?
It's an insult. It's kind of an indication that I really haven't received his forgiveness if I hadn't been transformed yet. Well, I think what you said earlier though, it is true that to express the hesed love of God to a spouse or to a neighbor or to an enemy is impossible without the supernatural resurrection power of God living and working in and through us.
Absolutely. I mean, you can do it to an extent, but nope, when it gets tough, you're out in our human flesh. And when you fall on your face before God and on the cross and on the forgiveness we have, he empowers you to do what you cannot do. He has to do it in and through us. Yeah, absolutely. That's the gospel.
It is the gospel. I'm sitting here, my mind is going all over the place, but as believers, we're on the planet to reveal God's hesed love. And so I remember being with my dad, being in Chicago when I was a young girl and he always wanted to go down these homeless roads where the homeless people were. He was fascinated by that and I was petrified, but he also was like, don't look at anybody. I think he was just scared. Then I became a believer and I remember thinking like, man, nobody looks at these people.
God's hesed love would see them and love them and touch them and hug them and pray for them and die for them and die for them. Frederick Beegner says, it's not too good to be true. It's too good not to be true. We are listening to a conversation with Michael Card on the topic of God's hesed inexpressible love for us. And a love that we don't deserve, but he offers it anyway. And I know we've said this before, but right now is really a great time for anyone who has not yet experienced this kind of love in your marriage or your childhood or your relationships in the home because family life has created a tool to help you and it's called the art of marriage. And hesed love is this key part of that teaching in the art of marriage.
So listen at the end of the program and Shelby can help provide you with some more information about it. Okay, let's jump back into our conversation as Michael Card explains why hesed love is not just the answer for marriages. It's also the key to reconciliation within our culture that has become so hard for many of us.
Yeah, I love reading part of your book and I've heard you say this in concert as well. When you were feeling this need, I'm guessing it's hesed to say, I want a bridge between diversity with different cultures and different people, white and black, you name it. And again, I don't know if I have the details right, but you're sitting in a black church because you said, I'm going to walk in there and I'm going to build this bridge and the woman reaches over and grabs your hand.
Yeah, Dinah. And well, see, she was showing me hesed. My experience in racial reconciliation was everyone showed me hesed. I mean, I have no right to expect anything. I'm the bad guy, but what did I get?
I got everything. That moment was almost kind of a parable. Take us back there. Tell us what happened. Well, as a first missionary Baptist here in Franklin, Tennessee, I'd gotten to know the pastor Denny Denson really well. I said, Hey, I'd love to visit your church. So I go in there one Sunday morning, a little old lady walks up to me and said, why are you here? She wasn't being mean. You know, she wasn't surprised. It was, it was a very valid question. Why are you here?
Right. Cause I was the only white person there. We had had a men's fellowship. So I knew the woman I sat next to, I knew her husband, Bob, but I didn't know that Dinah was his wife and then it was this big kind of imposing woman. So I sat down next to her about halfway through the service. She reached over and grabbed my hand and she wasn't making a point. It was just this natural.
I'd say that she had kind of this gravitational love that she just drew people in. I mean, did you find it really strange? Oh, it totally freaked me out. And I, and I thought, well, this is just, it was the first time I've been to that church.
And I guess, well, I guess this is just what people do in this church. And I looked around and nobody else was holding hands. So Dinah held my hand through the whole service and it felt, well, it felt like I was been, I'd been adopted. I was one of her children. I found out that's who Dinah was. And Bob, her husband, when I told him, he laughed. He said, he goes, when I go home, I never know if there's going to be another person at the table because she would just bring people home with her. She passed away a long time ago, but yeah, Dinah Smith.
And so I wrote this song called when Dinah held my hand because it was, it was a transforming moment in my life. I didn't know the word hesed then. She showed me, it was hesed. See, when the person from whom I have a right to expect nothing, I have no right to expect anything from this black woman.
I'm the only white guy. I have the right to expect her to throw me out of her church, but certainly not her holding my hand. But again, it wasn't affected. It was just natural. It was a very natural thing.
And I will, that changed my life. It's interesting too, that sometimes hesed feels strange to a person. At first when she grabbed your hand, you're like, huh?
And when you love people and they don't deserve it, or when we feel we don't deserve, when we get loved, we sort of repel. It's like, I don't believe this. Yeah. But can't you see where to do an act like that? If that's not done genuinely, it is weird.
I mean, it would, it doesn't work, but if it's done out of hesed, it's out of her overflow. You knew you could sense. Yeah. I'm sitting there thinking like, it's hard to do that. It's hard to do it to a stranger.
Sometimes it's harder to do it to your husband and your kids. Yeah. When you got history. Exactly.
I know all of them. And can I love him unconditionally now? Yeah.
Yeah. But what you're doing is you're just responding to the love that Christ has shown you. Christ loves me unconditionally.
He loves me as I am and not as I should be because nobody is as they should be. Once that lands in your heart, there's something really wrong with you if you don't respond. In Judaism, the tradition is when people are shown hesed, if they don't respond, that is a very serious kind of an insult, worse than an insult.
To be shown hesed not to respond means that you just don't get it. Well, I mean, in some ways it means the pain in the herd is so deep and you can't. Hesed breaks through that.
Only has it can break, but it takes, it's harder, you know, but that's the only love I think they can get through is that kind of, and I think it has to be continuous for, they have to see it and, and begin to trust it. But we can't muster it up. No, no, no, no. You can't fake it.
That's what I was just saying. I'm going to hold in my hand. You can't fake that.
It's an overflow, but there's a power to it. And again, this is the power of the cross. When the person from whom I have a right to expect nothing gives me everything. There's something really wrong with you if that doesn't transform your life.
If that just becomes, I don't know, something that you kind of conjure with or use to manipulate other people with, there's something really wrong with you. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son. In John, in the opening of John, he says that Jesus is full of grace and truth. John writes in Greek, but he thinks in Hebrew that grace and truth is, is hesed va'emit. Grace there is hesed. Emit is the Hebrew word for truth. So grace and truth, that's from the Hebrew Bible. He's thinking, he's thinking in Hebrew, but he's writing in Greek. Jesus is full of hesed and truth. If you were giving a listener, like they're listening, they're working out, they're doing their dishes, they're on their way to work. If you had to give them one application of what we've talked about. One of the things that makes a powerful is so simple. It's this, God loves you so much.
He would rather die than live without you. And that's hesed. Sorry. See, it's good. Yeah. That's the gospel. He loves you so much.
He would rather die than live without you. That's hesed. I'm still overwhelmed with emotion thinking about that conversation with Michael. Yeah, both you and Michael got emotional. I know that I did.
And I saw him do that too. Okay. Tell us why. Because it's just so unimaginable that God would rather die than live without us. Like think about that.
God would rather die than live without you. I just hope our listeners can feel that today. Yeah, me too. And guess what?
Even if you're not, for whatever reason, we have one more surprise from Michael Card today. You know, I could pull out my guitar and play joy in the journey for you. But it might be better if you actually played it on the piano. Like maybe you wrote it and you could actually sing it on an acoustic if I tuned down or a capo way up.
No, no, that's not what I'm asking. I don't even know how to play F sharp on the guitar. I guess you do an F and you scoot it up or something, but no, it's on the piano.
It's all black notes. Well, it's fun because we're in Nashville at Michael Card's church. I know. Oh, it's impressive, isn't it? It's impressive. It's beautiful. And it's this small, quaint... When was it built? 1849. Beautiful.
Yeah. There is a joy in the journey. There's a light we can love on the way. There is a wonder in the sky.
There is a light we can love on the way. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky. There is a wonder in the sky, it in your life, not only to your relationship with God and you, but also in the relationships that you have with other people. So you can get your copy right now by going online to familylifetoday.com, or you can find it in our show notes.
Or just give us a call at 800-358-6329. Again that number is 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. So it's day three of diving into hessid love, and that word actually doesn't have a direct translation, but it can best be described as covenantal love or unwavering steadfast kind of love, which even still is only just one of the six aspects of how God loves us. It's interesting because Family Life's Art of Marriage has sessions that go through these aspects of love, and session one is our latest marriage study about unpacking this incredible love and discovering how we can mirror Christ's unconditional love to our spouse.
Even when it seems impossible to do, which many marriages are in that situation, it feels impossible to show unconditional love to your spouse. So whether you're seeking something specific just for you and your spouse, or you're looking for small group material, or you're making decisions for your church's next event, or you're just someone who's curious about learning more about going deeper into your relationship with your spouse, Art of Marriage is designed to inspire and transform marriages. So you can preview session one, which was talking about hessid love, and experience the power of love at artofmarriage.com, or you can find more details in the show notes. Trust me, it's worth the journey. If you know anyone who needs to hear conversations like today's, would you share it from wherever you get your podcasts? And while you're there, you can really help others learn about family life today by leaving us a review. Coming up tomorrow, Kia Stevens will be here with Dave and Anne Wilson to explore the emotional journey of recognizing and overcoming father wounds. That's coming up tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of Dave and Anne Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
