Embracing My Savior

Mez McConnell grew up in Scotland. He was physically abused by his stepmother regularly. He joined a gang early, was in and out of trouble with the law throughout his teen years, and eventually wound up in prison. That's where Mez came to faith in Christ and decided he wanted to be a pastor. So the first year of Bible college was a bit wild.

I was nine months out of maximum security and was in seminary. So you can imagine, and I wasn't used to debate, if you disagree with someone, whoever slaps the other person the hardest would win. So, you know, it was an interesting time. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson.

I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. Mez McConnell joins us again today to talk about his journey from juvenile delinquency to being a church planter. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.

Thanks for joining us. One of my favorite passages of scripture, one I come back to over and over again, is the passage from the book of Isaiah, where the prophet says that the ministry of Messiah is a ministry that will bring beauty from ashes. Because I think of what God has come to do in our lives.

All of us, no matter how pristine your background may look, there are ashes in all of our lives, right? There's dysfunction, there's a mess that God has to come in and address. And this week we've been hearing a story from a guy who had a messier than normal background, the kind of background that if someone shared, this is my life, you would think, well, there's so much damage here that if you can just heal from your wounds, that would be remarkable. Yeah, but to be able to be healed and recover and then be used by God to help others? I mean, if you've ever thought I'm too far from God, there's no hope for me. Listen today.

When I read this book, what I told Dave was this is one of the most horrific stories that I've ever heard and one of the most miraculous redeeming stories. Mez McConnell is the guy we're going to hear from today. Mez is one of the pastors at Niddrie Community Church in Edinburgh, Scotland. He is the founder of a ministry called 20 Schemes, and we think of schemes as being plans that we cook up. No, a scheme in Scotland is an area of government housing, often lower socioeconomic status there.

And there are 20 areas that this ministry has targeted throughout Scotland to try to plant churches in some of the hardest places in Scotland. Mez has been to Bible college and to seminary, but his background, he was abused as a child by a stepmother. He had a dad who was not there to protect him as he should. And Mez wound up getting involved in gangs, doing drugs, being arrested for burglary and drug-related offenses. And we've already heard some of his story this week, but we're going to pick up our conversation with him at a point where his street life had begun to catch up with him. What landed you in maximum security prison?

Serious assault on two men. I stabbed a couple of guys and a robbery from the bank got me 15 months in maximum security jail. And did that harden you, or did that begin to cause you to pull back and go, wait, I've got to re-evaluate my life? I mean, I've been looking to re-evaluate my life anyway, if I'm honest. I've been on the streets quite a while. I've been on the streets now since about 16, 17, you know, dossing in old, what you would call crack houses, railway stations, bumming about. My life was going nowhere fast, and I was like, a lot of my friends were dying.

A lot of them caught the virus, as we called it back then in the 80s, HIV, you know, a couple murdered. And so I was wondering, what the heck is life? What's going on? What am I doing with myself? If you'd have come on my estate and seen me with all these boys, absolute nut jobs, and I'm at the back of the lads reading a copy of Les Miserables or something.

They always call me the professor. I was always reading something. I was always thinking, there's something more to life than this, but I don't know if I can be bothered with it. And then when I got into max secure, that was 23 and a half hours a day in a cell, which, to be honest, really suited me. As soon as I knew there was a library in the prison, I'm like, just give me a lot of books and did my jail time easy. But you had to be tough to survive.

I did a few brutal things to survive, but that's just jail, right? And you said you didn't mean to turn to God. What did you mean by that?

That's right. I wasn't looking for God in any sense. I was looking for meaning. I was looking for some sort of hope, something bigger than us, bigger than what was going on, bigger than me.

Sort of Christians were about now and then. I remember in jail walking down a corridor with some guys chatting and seeing a poster on the wall that was just a picture of a guy standing in a dark room with a little ray of light shooting in from the side. And it just basically said, the light is coming to the world and the darkness has not put it out. And I remember being completely arrested by that photo thinking, what the heck does that mean? But I was thinking, I'm that guy sat in a dark place here.

What does that mean? And that sort of got me thinking about spiritual things. So how did thinking about spiritual things morph into first hearing or understanding the gospel? Well, I heard the gospel before I went to jail. And so I was dealing some drugs and outside what we would call a community center. And then these Christians drove up. I didn't know they were Christians at the time. They drove up and jumped out and asked if he wanted a game of football, soccer. And I'm very suspicious. I'm like, these guys must be the police or something, right?

No, no normal people do this. Anyway, we got a free game of football out of soccer. And at halftime, these guys started talking about Jesus and sin and hell. And I'm like, who the heck are these idiots? And so the first time I met Christians, I was actually arrested. So I went outside, we smashed their cars up and the police came. And then I'm thinking, well, we won't see these morons again. But the next week they came back and they kept coming.

Even though I was fronting it with the boys saying, this is all BS. I was listening to and they were saying things like, have you ever wondered about life and death? I'm thinking I wonder about it all the time. If you ever wondered about what the meaning of life is, I'm thinking I wonder about it all the time. You ever thought about hope?

What does hope mean and meaning? I'm thinking I wonder about it all the time. But I didn't say anything to my pals.

So I'm sat there having a dilemma inside me thinking I have a rep now. But at the same time, these guys are asking questions that preoccupy me almost all the time. That happened over a period of two or three years. And then when I got sent to jail and two of those boys, those Christian boys actually came to visit me partway through my sentence. I did begin throughout the process of my sentence was thinking more and more about particularly about Jesus, because Jesus seemed like a real pain to me.

He seems like the sort of guy that I quite like. He he stuck it to the man, to the authorities. You know, and I'd had a picture of Jesus growing up. It was all rules and regs and follow the system.

And then the Jesus that I was hearing about and picking bits and bobs sounded edgier than that. And so I was very interested to find out more about him. So how did that journey continue for you? Well, I was due for parole. After my sentence and I didn't have an address, I'd been homeless for almost six years at that point. And so this Christian guy said, Why don't you come and live at my house with me?

And so I went and lived at this Christian guy's house. And it was there I found a book called a Matthew Henry commentary on the Bible. You ever seen that? Yeah.

That thing's bigger than me. And so I started to read that. I thought, this must be a Bible. I'll just read this bad boy, see what it's about. So I read it. You read the whole thing? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I mean, what hit you? Do you remember what what it was? What hit me? I tell you what really hit me. What the Lord used to save me was the Book of Romans, actually. That's how I was converted. So I grew up with counselors, social workers. I grew up with all sorts of people telling me, Look at heart, you're a good boy. You just got a bad break in life.

If you'd have been born into a nice middle class family, you'd be a nice middle class boy. But you're only a product of the cards that life has dealt you, your environment. Then I'm reading the Book of Romans where Paul, and I'll paraphrase, is basically saying, Boo hoo, you had a terrible childhood. You're still a sinner.

You need to take responsibility for your sin. And I did not like that. But that was the truth of the Bible. And that's what led to my conversion. It's like, you know what?

Actually, it's true. I am a sinner. I yep, terrible, horrible, disgusting things have happened to me. But I'm still a sinner before a holy God. And so over a process of a few months, I gave my life to Christ.

Mez, we got to deconstruct this for just a minute, because boo hoo, you had a terrible childhood. But you're a sinner and you're still before a holy God. I mean, that sounds to some people like you have no compassion for others who are suffering. Yeah. Well, to be clear, the context of this conversation, I was talking about myself, not anybody else.

Yeah. Trust me, I don't approach my people like that. I've been a pastor for 20 years, but you're asking me, and that was my process of thought. And that's how we talk on the streets. That's how we process information. Obviously, I can couch it in far greater intellectual terms, if you like. But that's the bottom line for me anyway. For my point was I'd been taught you're a victim of circumstance, you're a victim of circumstance. And to some degree, that is true.

The Bible is saying yes, but you also have a duty to take responsibility for your sin against God and other people. And I'm like, I like the first bit of that. Yeah, I don't like the second bit.

And it was the second bit that I knew was true, even as I disliked it. I mean, it's a huge step because of anybody, you have every right to say I'm a victim. And yet you make the step to say it's on me.

I'm a sinner. Yeah. To be clear, I am a victim and I'm still a victim. But the two had been conflated, you see.

Yeah. So God's interested in my sin first, my rebellion against him. Then we'll deal with the pastoral fallout because obviously you can imagine I didn't just come to Jesus and go woohoo. You know, thank you, God. All's forgiven. Don't let my past bother you anymore. I had a lot of questions. Coming to that realization was one of the most painful processes in my life.

I had to eat a lot of humble pie. You know, that's a difficult thing to just put everything that happened to me to one side. I admit.

Right. We'll come back to that. But at heart, yes, I am a rebel. Yeah, I'm a sinner. I've hurt people. I've rebelled against the Lord.

People have absolutely one million percent hurt me. You know, I get to a process where once I find out about hell, that's brilliant. I like that bit and judgment because I'm glad they can all burn because for a long while I prayed. Thank you, Lord.

I hope they get toasty down there. And so I'm trying to explain to you a process. As I passed for 20 years, I could clean the process up for you. But in the moments where I was, that's how my brain was processing information. Which is why I wrote the book the way I did.

I didn't want it to be a way to tell people what to think because people are going to be processing it differently and be on a sort of different trajectory. How did you process the goodness of God with what you had experienced growing up? I'm still processing it. And I have two degrees and 20 years in the ministry. Let me be very clear about that. And again, as I say in the book, it is a process.

It's not clean. Do I think that God is good? Yes. Do I think that God is absolutely sovereign over everything, even over my abuse? Yes.

Am I comfortable or happy about that? Sometimes, no, I'm not. Because I don't understand it fully. But this is where faith comes in. Because faith is not just in Jesus, is it?

Particularly for those of us who've been abused. Faith in Jesus is almost the easy thing. It's the faith in the rest of the character of God that we've got to take on.

His word. That we won't get answers now. We may get some, we may find some peace. But ultimately, I don't know why people torture children.

I do not know how in any way that brings honor or glory to anyone. For some people, that reality has been enough to cause them to abandon what faith they've had. I can appreciate that 100 percent, yeah. How can you cling to what you do believe, rather than saying, if this is who God is, I can't bow a knee to him?

Well, you see, I can appreciate this. I've talked to lots of people who've come up sort of in a Christian environment. And I think in many ways, my non-Christian environments helped me process it better. And what I mean by that was, I was pretty much existential nihilist. There is no meaning.

There's nothing. It's all a waste of time. It's why study? Why go to school? Why behave yourself?

Why do anything? We just don't have a piece of rock in the middle of the stars rolling around. We live. We struggle.

We get trampled on and we die. And then I came to something about God and the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I had two choices. I can continue on in my nihilistic, there's no point to anything. And therefore, no point to my suffering, no meaning behind it.

Boo hoo, get over it. Whereas actually finding Christ, finding hope in Christ, finding meaning, even struggling with these questions, has, in a strange providence of God, given me comfort to know my suffering only has meaning because of God's existence. And therefore, even if I don't fully understand it, I cling to it. And so I think sometimes it's easier to handle this if you've come from a non-Christian background, in many ways, pastorally, than particularly when I hear of people, you know, my dad was a pastor and he abused me and this and that.

And I'm like, that's far worse than, I think, than what happened to me. You know, someone who's claiming to know Christ and work for Christ and be an overseer for the sheep is abusing people. That would take a lot of serious unwinding about the goodness of the Lord in that.

You see what I'm saying? Oh, for sure. So in many ways, I've got it easy. When you go back to your conversion and your early Christian walk, what did God start to do?

I mean, you were led to Christ by Matthew Henry and then you start this walk, what began to change? I mean, lots of things. I stopped taking drugs. That's always quite helpful. You know, I still was smoking.

Is that pretty immediate? Oh, yeah. I did a deal with God. I remember when I was like, listen, I'm going to go and trust Jesus.

I don't know anything else about anything else, all right? Here's the deal. You sort me out and I'll stop doing stupid stuff like taking drugs. So I went cold turkey, we call it, for two weeks.

I went blind for a while. I mean, it was rough. It was rough, but I did it. That's the sort of guy I am. I'm doing it for the Lord.

That was the 3rd of May, 1995. I've never gone back ever since to anything. So, you know, I'm pretty determined. So that was the sort of the first immediate thing. The other things I didn't sort of notice, but people noticed them about me. You know, I stopped swearing and stopped being so aggressive and violent.

Although some of my friends said you can put that down to sociology because you're socializing now with nice people. But I knew there was an inner change in me. What was interesting is I questioned God more coming to faith than if you know what I mean before. I didn't just come to Jesus and go, well, that's it.

I accept everything now. I was questioning everything. I was reading the Bible voraciously. I grew pretty quickly. Within nine months, I was at seminary.

How did you decide to do that? I just, well, because, I mean, I was great at going back on the streets and telling my friends about Jesus and stuff like that. But I didn't know much more than, listen, we're all rats. We're going to hell. Jesus went to the cross and that. Trust me, just get on the Jesus train. You'll be all right. And then that was about it.

And so I figured maybe I need to know a little bit more about what I'm talking about. And so through a strange process of weird providences, I actually ended up in seminary a year earlier than I was supposed to be there because a secretary put the wrong date on the offer to me. So I turned it with my offer letter early. So the first year of Bible college was a bit wild. I was nine months out of maximum security and was in seminary. So you can imagine, and I wasn't used to debate.

If you disagree with someone, whoever slapped the other person the hardest would win. It was an interesting time. I have to ask about how you began to process the whole idea of marriage and family given what you had grown up with. That's a great question because I had great Christian friends.

The local church is good for me. I had some good Christian friends. The guys led me to the Lord who got married.

They had kids. They were so good with me. And I would ask questions. I mean, I've been married for 22 years now, been with my wife for 25 years, Miriam. And they would give me all sorts of advice on fatherhood, on being a good husband and stuff.

And so that was really helpful. But the whole idea of even meeting somebody, falling in love, wanting to get married, I would think given the background you'd had, you'd just stay a free agent and fool around. I wasn't really that sort of guy. I wasn't into fooling around with girls.

I was more into selling drugs and violence, really. I didn't really bother with girls. And so when I met Miriam, again, as I said, I'm actually an off-the-scale introvert. And so she was a quiet girl. She was actually 16.

I'm 22. So can you imagine her parents, super Christians. And I just wandered out of Max's secure. Were her parents worried? Oh, yeah. I mean, her dad was part of the original people from the church who went onto the streets initially when I was first there. So he knew who I was. And so when I met Miriam, she was 16. She wasn't a believer. She was pretending. And I had a good nose for sniffing out the old nonsense.

You know what I'm saying? And I'm like, so she's in this Christian-y youth group. And I popped in and I'm like, you don't even believe all this nonsense. What are you about? And so she actually came to faith through a conversation with me.

This is the irony. It was going to be bad for her. But actually, she came to faith through me. And so I remember saying to her, Dad, just remember that.

She was the rebel, not me. But I think their parents saw that we were good for each other. I mean, I didn't know what you do with Christian girls. I thought, did you sacrifice a sheep or something?

Who knows? I mean, you've got to remember, I'm reading Leviticus and that thinking what's going on. And then they've got, because they're quite a nice family. I hope they don't see this. They'll be mortified.

But it's true. There's certain words you can't say. So I don't know. What do you call the toilet in the US? Toilet. Toilet bathroom. They call it the bog where I come from. And I'm like, said to her, Mom, you know, where's the bog?

Because I am busting to go. Do you know what I mean? I mean, I didn't know I'd committed the ultimate cultural, you know, four parts, stuff like that.

And I don't know. We laugh now years later. I'm like, how the heck did I get to your front door if my girls came home with a guy like me? But to be fair, they did say we they could see very quickly that I was a positive influence.

I wasn't like, you know, trying to get hooked on heroin or anything. So. But it was a process.

I would I look back and wince thinking, wow, I must have been wild. There's one other subject we have to ask you about, because it's really one of the things that you you deal with a lot in this book. And that's the question of forgiveness. Yeah. Which is not something that happened instantly for you as a follower of Christ. Yeah.

So it's a question I always get. Do you forgive? Do you not forgive? People always point to the story of Joseph. And I think I say in the book, why does everybody jump through, jump straight to Genesis 50 with Joseph? You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. They forget the decade he spent in jail and you didn't think he laid in his bed cursing the Lord and cursing his brothers. I mean, the guy went through a process. And sometimes I think we we iron out the wrinkles in the Bible characters.

We flatten them, don't we? And so this whole process for me, even as a pastor of forgiveness, has been difficult. Do I have a responsibility to forgive my abusers, I suppose is the question. My answer controversially is, people will disagree with this is I don't think I do actually have a responsibility. Now, I do, though, I have a responsibility not to have a bitterness in my heart towards her. Well, she's dead now anyway, her or any of my other abusers. As a Christian, I do have a responsibility to leave judgment and justice in the hands of the Lord.

It's not mine for vengeance, is it? The Lord says I'll repay and I'm going to leave that to the Lord's justice that's taken time. However, if she had come to me, repenting and ask for forgiveness, then I would definitely have a responsibility as a Christian to forgive her. Thankfully, in the providence of God, that never happened to me. I don't know how I would have responded. I'd like to tell you, well, I'd forgive her because I'm such an amazing Christian. I think that would have caused me some soul searching.

And so the book at the end is deliberately actually quite vague, and not vague in giving an answer. But like, there's more than one way to answer this question. I wouldn't go up to someone who suffered abuse. And the first thing I would do is right now you need to forgive that person from the heart. What does that even mean?

What does that look like? I'd want to give people space. Have I forgiven the woman who abused me? My main abuser? The answer to that question is no, I haven't. If by what you mean is did we meet up, hug it out? And I said, Forgive and forget? No. But do I store bitterness or anger toward her in my heart?

The answer truly is no, I don't. And I leave it to the justice of the Lord. And it makes people feel uncomfortable answer because they want to go No, you got to forgive. You got to forgive. I've had this all the time. You must forgive.

And it's slightly more nuanced than that, I think. Was there ever a time that you can look back and think through when the bitterness subsided? Did it go away? I mean, I think early as I was pretty, it was like, Yep, I'm gonna forgive this. I'm getting on with my life.

I'm not gonna be a hostage to this anymore. Then when I had children, it came back a little. I looked at my holding my kids in my hand and thinking, You absolute monster, how could you do this? And then it went away, really can't think I've held any bitterness toward her for a long time. Now, when I'd found out about her death, those four or five years ago, even then I wasn't bitter. I just felt sad and had a conflict of emotions like, Yeah, she's dead up, she's in hell. And we shouldn't be thinking that you're a pastor, you should, that conflict that goes on, even as a pastor within me, because obviously, we know what's the right answer, I could tell you all these cheesy Christians, I'm sick of hearing them. I don't think it brings any comfort to people. I think people in a book like this, hopefully will see in the rawness in the, in the battle that you see on the pages that that's where the comfort comes from that listen, I'm not abnormal for being a Christian 1520 years and still fighting with these things. I'm not, you know, I'm not a bad Christian, just because I've not put things to rest from my childhood 30 years ago, just now and the law still that. That's what the book was written to counteract this almost weird obsession I find in middle class Christianity with putting on a brave face smiling and pretending we've got Jesus in our hearts, the sunshine in the air. And if you don't got it all together, then you have a faulty theology. I'm just not convinced that that is true.

Well, that's just me. What about with your dad? Yeah, I have a good relationship with my dad. Have you forgiven him? He's never asked for it. And I don't feel like I need to give him any, if anything, I have sympathy for him. He could have easily abandoned us. You know, he stuck with, I know we got taken into care and stuff, but he, he came, he took us out.

He was never, he's never violent towards me or raised hands him. He's actually a really nice guy. I think he was just a young, foolish guy.

Got married too soon, had kids too soon, wasn't emotionally capable. He probably, if I asked him now, we don't talk about it in his sixties. Now that he'd have regrets, I'm sure of it.

I don't see any spiritual benefit in dragging things from a lifetime ago for him. Do you know what I mean by that? Yeah. I'm wondering, you had a woman speaking death and hatred in your ear for years, and that seeps down into your soul. Did you go through times of self-hatred, unworthiness, shame of even all the things that were done to you? How did you deal with that? I mean, I didn't deal with it very well, obviously for a long time.

But even now? Even, listen, when I was writing the book, I remember some stuff, the bad stuff, to be honest, I edited out the really horrific stuff. Some of the stuff I hadn't thought about for a long time and I'd wondered and I agonized, should I keep it? Should I leave it?

It's embarrassing. I'm opening myself up, do I need to do this? Look, I honestly just trust, I just love Jesus, and I trust Jesus, and I get to heaven, it's all going to be because of Jesus, and I'm going to get there a bit dinged up along the way. But I'll take this 60, 70 years of whatever's going on right now, just to hang out with the law forever after. I know that's not like a great answer, but I spent too long, I wasted 20 years destroying myself, drugs, stupidity, anger, bitterness, and so I've lived my last 25 years seeking to love people, forgive people, minister to people, pastor people.

I work and live in the most dangerous neighborhoods, we plant the churches with street gangs in Brazil, we live there. You know, I'm not going to let her words. I decided when I came to Christ that that wouldn't define me anymore, I'm a new creation. The old is gone, that means the old man doesn't mean the old pain, but I think the problem is in a culture, particularly like ours, is self-medicating itself to death.

There is no medicine for this, it's just time, time with the Lord, time with the Lord's people. It's slow, but ultimately, you know, I'm not glad that it happened to me, but I'm glad that I'm able to serve people because it happened to me. I would just add, thank you, Mez, as I read your book, the honesty, the rawness is so refreshing and hard to read. I mean, honestly, man, as I was reading it, it's like, you know, boo-hoo for my life. My dad walked out, you know, and I felt all this pain, and then I read your pain, and I'm like, wow. But you shouldn't do that, though, because your pain is still as real as my pain.

Yeah, it's still, it's my pain, and it's real. But you know, when I picked up the book, and I read the foreword, this is the most disturbing book that I've ever read, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. And as I read the book, I thought, that is so true.

It's got the pain and the gospel. At the end of the day, the story is not about you, it's about Jesus and you being a brand new creation, so it is so beautifully written because it exposes sin, and it overwhelms you with grace. And that's what I'm hearing from your story, so thank you. This book, your life and your story is going to be used by God, as you know, to literally transform generations, for generations to come, because of your honesty, letting us in the dark, but allowing the light to overpower in such a powerful way. You are a new creation, and you give us hope that we can be, and our generations can be as well. So thanks.

I appreciate that, man, yeah, that's cool. Well, again, we've been listening to a conversation we had recently with Mez McConnell, the author of a book called The Creaking on the Stairs. It is a remarkable story of God's providential care and his redemption in a person's life.

I'm thinking of the person who may have experienced physical abuse in their own background, or a significantly dysfunctional family background, and they think, I don't know if I can recover from this. Reading Mez's book shows you, with God, all things are possible. And there's actually so many people I've recommended this book to.

Oh, really? And I think so many of them are trying to recover from such darkness, they've lost hope, and this book brings hope back. There is a God. He sees you.

He knows you. He can heal you. I think it just reminds us of there is no one so far gone that God cannot rescue them. You can get a copy of Mez's book, The Creaking on the Stairs, when you go to our website familylifetoday.com, or you can call to request your copy, 1-800-FL-TODAY is the number. Again, the book is called The Creaking on the Stairs by Mez McConnell, Finding Faith in God Through Childhood Abuse. Order your copy when you go to familylifetoday.com or call to order 1-800-358-6329, that's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. I sometimes wish our listeners had the opportunity to hear the stories that we've heard from people whose lives and marriages and families have been changed because they went to a weekend to remember, they were listening to a Family Life Today program, they got a resource, read something that we put online. God used this ministry in their lives to alter the course of their life and their marriage and their family. And I say that because I want those of you who are regular listeners and who invest in the ministry of family life to know that's what you're investing in. Changed lives and changed legacies is what family life today is all about. The story we've heard from Mez this week is a story of God's intervention in his life.

And if it hadn't been for those soccer players who kept coming back and kept presenting the gospel to him, who knows where he'd be today? Well, in the same way, if it weren't for family life today, the resources, this daily radio program coming back every day, being here, being available, there are some of you who would say, I don't know where I'd be today if it weren't for this ministry. So thank you to those of you who are regular donors, contributors to this ministry. You're investing in the lives and legacies of hundreds of thousands of people every day through your donations, and we're grateful to be partnered together with you. If you're a longtime listener and you've never made a donation or if it's been a while, make an investment today. Go to familylifetoday.com to donate or call 1-800-FL-TODAY and make a donation over the phone. If God has used this ministry in your life, pay it forward for someone else. Again, donate at familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-358-6329, that's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now tomorrow, we want to talk about what it's like for the men and women who every day get up and put on a uniform and put on a badge and head out into what have been increasingly more difficult environments for police officers in our cities and our communities.

What's it like on their marriages and on their families? Adam Davis joins us tomorrow to talk about that. I hope you can tune in as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Hope for today, hope for tomorrow.