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God is omniscient, omnipotent, and infinite, and He creates us to be His children, and we need to understand our place. And it is a glorious place to be a Magode, but we're not God. That's former Senator Ben Sass talking about how we can keep our lives in perspective as we consider Almighty God.
Well, we have a powerful conversation about the brevity of life and about eternity in front of us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. John, I met a few days ago with Ben Sass in Austin, Texas to hear his poignant thoughts about life and death. As he courageously deals with the recent diagnosis of stage four pancreatic cancer, it was very gracious of him to take some time to meet with me and share about how he's processing things and what God has been speaking to him in these real difficult times. When you get that kind of diagnosis, things become crystal clear what's important to you. And I think anyone listening or viewing will want to pay attention to what he has to say in this important conversation.
I found it very inspirational. And Ben Sass represented the state of Nebraska for nine years as a former U.S. Senator from 2015 to 2023. He served as the president of the University of Florida. He was a professor as well.
Most importantly, however, he's a husband and father. And let's go ahead and hear the conversation now with former Senator Ben Sass on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Yeah. Senator, former Senator Sass, it's so good to have you with me. Good to be with you.
Let me ask you a question that Lee Strobel actually asked me when I was interviewing him. And he said, you know, with your teens and 20-somethings, here's a good question to ask them. If you're with God and God had to answer one question right there in the moment, what question would you ask him? I thought, wow, that's a good question.
So that night at dinner, I'm asking my boys. And my science boy, Trent, he said, give me 20 minutes and I'll find an answer. And my other son said, yeah, give me a couple of minutes. And we're eating. And then Trent, my science guy said, I'd like to ask him, what is the element that we're missing in the creation of the universe?
What do we not see that's plainly in front of us? I went, oh, that's good. And then my English lit major, Troy, he goes, why do we suffer? And that really shows the heart of humanity, doesn't it? Those that want to understand this material world, and that's a good thing, but then those who are asking the deeper question of.
Why do you allow us to suffer? How would you answer that? Wow. I mean, first I want to try my hand at answering the question you threw out in your parlor game at dinner. I am just obsessed at present with the Trinity and the mystery of the Trinity and the relationality of God overflowing that he desires relationship with us.
Why? We would gladly be slaves and servants in the kingdom at the Adoration Feast of the Lamb. And he makes us his children who get to say, Abba, Father, Daddy, and we get invited to sit at the table. Why? Why would he do that?
It's amazing. Suffering. Your question, I obviously don't understand it, but Jesus took on incarnate flesh and came and didn't just fulfill the whole law for us, he also suffered all the punishment that Adam and we in Adam deserve. And though it's terrible, there is something very special in being able to be united with Christ's suffering en route to this Veil of Tears final enemy, this last enemy, because it helps us. Cleave away from all the idolatries we've built as we fell in love with the creation instead of the creature.
And we should love the creation, but because it's overflow of the creator, and we have all these idol factories in our hearts, and they need to be smashed to make us fit for heaven, not to earn our salvation, but because God has already declared us just. He's now also sanctifying us. I want to follow up on that in a moment, but some people listening or watching may not know your situation.
So, again, I'm so grateful that you said yes, because I thought when we first reached out, I thought people need to hear. Ben Sasse's story because we're all going to meet this fate. Nobody gets away. Yeah. We all have.
A fatal diagnosis, but we just don't know it. That's right. And we live our lives as if mortality isn't going to come at some point. Isn't that true? It's totally true.
And then, boom, all of a sudden, you get a diagnosis. What happened for you? I'll give you the speed history. Around Halloween, I started having a lot of very weird pains, both front and back, all through my abdomen. And I do weird sports.
I'm turning 54 since then, but at that point, I was 53 and I still did sprint triathlons a lot. And when I train, I wear a weight vest a lot. And in retrospect, this was so stupid. It makes sense to wear a 45-pound weight vest for some of the running events. I should never have done that on my bike.
And occasionally, I would just leave my vest on on the bike. And I thought I pulled a bunch of muscles in my abdomen and in my back. And we couldn't figure out what was wrong for six or seven weeks. And finally, we got some full body scans. And the doctors call me back an hour later.
This is on December 13th or 14th. And they're beating around the bush. And I'm like, I'm not the toughest guy in the world, but I'm farm kid tough. I can take it. Doc, tell me a.
Truth. Get a brass. Give me something real. And he goes, Really? And I said, Yeah, be blunt.
And he said, Ben Sas's torso is chock full of tumors. And so I have metastasized stage four pancreatic cancer and now five other kinds of cancer, liver being the farthest along. But pancreatic cancer is a nasty one because the mortality, the death rate is off the charts. It's like 97%. Exactly.
And so I was given three or four months to live in mid-December, and it's already been three months. And I thank the Lord so much that even in the midst of that terrible diagnosis, and to your point, we all have a death sentence, but mine became a defined number of days. Instead of the fact that we have a death sentence and we don't know what it is, I felt with Paul to live as Christ, to die as gain at peace right away. I didn't want to die because death is terrible. And I love my wife, Melissa, 31 years.
My girls are awesome, 24 and 22. But we also have a boy who's only 14 and he still needs a dad. Knocking him upside the head and loving on him and disciplining him and repenting with him and to him. And so I'm grateful that we may get a bunch of extra months out of the clinical trial I'm on. You know, Ben, mentioning your children, and that's kind of the heart of the reason with your wife, Melissa, too, that I want to talk to you, because not everybody faces something like this.
And the way that you're doing it is so honoring to the Lord. Let me ask you about your 14-year-old son. I mean, you must sit there and think, Lord, this seems so. Wrong, so unfair. He needs a dad.
I mean, I was 11 when my dad died, and I was nine when my mom died. Yeah. It. It goes deep. Yeah.
It lasts a lifetime. Yeah. That loss, that hole in your heart.
So I can feel for your son because I know what he's going to experience and your daughter's too. Yeah. But at the same time I would say that all of us in the daily clan, the five children, would all say that have all come to the Lord that we would not have changed anything. But it seems contrary to comfort.
So, in that context, how do you wrestle with that to say, okay. R.C. Sproll used to say, there is no maverick molecule. God is not uncertain about anything that has happened, is happening, or will happen. And he will weave together that mosaic for our own good.
God loves his church, and those Christians that he has written into eternity, he will use this for good. And our son's name is actually Augustine. We call him Breck. Augustine's theologically pretty heavy for a 14-year-old kid on a football field.
So we call him Breck. But I trust the Lord through all of this, and yet my deepest aches-I don't want to be separated from Melissa. I love this woman. I want to be with her. We're going to be together for eternity.
All of us in God's church are. But the part that's most baffling is why will Breck not have a dad at 15 or 17 or 19? And yet, God knows exactly what he's doing, and he has a plan for Brecht's life and becoming a child, but it hurts. Yeah. You know, on behalf of those that are going through some form of pain or suffering.
I think the right question right here is for the person who's going, no, it's wrong. It's wrong. What would you say to help them reconcile the tear in their heart and to be at peace? Which seems impossible when you're looking at what you're looking at and knowing your daughters, your son, Melissa, that unless the Lord intervenes with a miracle. Your days are numbered more finitely than others.
What would you say that person's saying? I don't have the faith to get there. I mean, I guess I come at it from two angles. I don't want to be aggressive with the intellectualist, rationalist side, but. God tells us in scripture everything we need to know for faith and life, but he doesn't tell us everything we want to know or everything that we ultimately will know.
And he is God, and to whom else would we go?
So I trust him because he is who he is and he has been faithful. And so I won't get every answer this side of eternity. But then I think about. In Galatians and Ephesians, where so many times you think of the believing community in song. And then I go to things like Amazing Grace.
When we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing his praise than when we first begun. Death is an enemy. Death is wicked. But it's the final enemy. It's our last battle.
And after that, there will be no more tears. And so we will have these answers, and we will know that God used it for his good. You mentioned the idolatry that we face in this life. It's so amazing. I think you have to be.
Engage to recognize that idolatry and to work with the Lord to overcome that idolatry. Rightly ordered loves. C.S. Lewis has that kind of quippy joke that the woman who falls so in love with her cat that she makes it her God can't actually even properly love a cat. And you should love your cat or your dog.
There are many, many things. Being great at playing the guitar is glorious, but it can't be God, right? And so to properly order our loves is to understand how God sees the world. And God created this world and called it good. This place is filled with a cornucopia of glorious things where we get to think God's thoughts after him.
You get to feel the joy, Eric Little, and chariots of fire. Feeling the joy of running. God has created the opportunity for us who are material beings who live in creation to enjoy sport. But Eric Little didn't want to defile the Sabbath by letting this thing become his idol and not be gathered. Hebrews 10, 24, and 25.
Let us not forsake assembling with believers on the Lord's Day. Running is great, but running can't be God. I'm the son of a football coach. Football is great, but football better not be my hope and dream. It will disappoint me.
And so Calvin has that great line that the human brain after Adam is an idol factory. We're constantly running around the world and trying to say, why don't I put myself in God's place? Why don't I put myself on the throne? Why don't I try to assemble all of creation? I can't even grow skin on my face.
We can't keep the planets in orbit. I say that as a joke because Jim, you and I were talking before the show with some of the radical clinical trial I'm on, the chemotherapy, the poison makes it almost impossible for me to regrow skin on my face.
So my face bleeds constantly. And what a fool to think that I could be God. I am finite, and that is good. That is how it should be. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and infinite, and he creates us to be his children, and we need to understand our place.
And it is a glorious place to be a Magode, but we're not God. Yeah. You know, this is a good place to insert your work in the Senate when you're talking about idols. And, you know, even that city, I used to not like even landing there. It sounds horrible, but I thought, Lord, do I have to be here?
But then I would go and have meetings with you and your colleagues, and we'd pray together. We'd talk about things. By the way, I would say the meetings that I had with you, you took notes on family issues. You're so studious about the issues and the topics. I think you were the only one that actually loved that.
You took the notes as we talked about policies that could help families. And, you know, that says a lot about who you are. Also, you did complete your PhD in history. Was that at Harvard? Yale.
Yeah. At Yale.
Sorry. Boy, was that. Mistakes more importantly, I grew up with a PhD and focused on the family studies because my mom had the radio running in every room of our house as a child. No, it's so good, though. But like in that context, the city, how did literally with what you know and your faith in Christ, how did you get up every day in that role as a senator and say, okay, Lord.
Here we go. God is the God of everything, every domain, every institution. But isn't it wonderful that government, which is necessary now, will not be needed to restrain evil over Jordan? In eternity, we won't need government to restrain evil anymore because we will be in a city, as Revelation said, where Christ at the center is the light of the kingdom and there will be no gates because all the old things that will have passed away and the sin that was still in our members will all be gone. What a glorious time that will be.
Heaven is a place where there is no stealing, there is no cancer. Right now, we need biomedical researchers, we need oncology departments and chemotherapy departments, we need phlebotomists taking my blood all the time. We need government to restrain evil right now. And so, government is a really important calling. But the way Christians around the American founding would have said it is it's a one-shifter government kind of calling.
It's neither zero nor three, right? It's not that we don't need government. The world is broken. There's somebody who wants to take your life and your liberty and your stuff, but it's not a three cheers for government because government is about restraining evil. It's not about the glory of what happens at worship.
It's not about the warmth around your dinner table where you're telling your kids how much you love them and asking them about their day. Government is just about a framework for ordered liberty. And so we have to be able to hold moderately, not right, left, moderate, but our passions hold moderately to certain institutions like government because they're important, but they're passing away. And that's glorious. And that is so beautifully said.
Let me ask you, though, in that context, where the world is at today in that political sphere. It feels like we're like the enemy of our soul has opened up a can of hate. Yeah. And it just, like an aroma, just fills those chambers in D.C. And when you talk about the biblical mandate, God's mandate for government to restrain evil, that is the one mandate he gives government.
That's right. And what do we do as Christians when government cannot discern, seemingly, between good and evil and actually? promotes evil. Yeah. Yeah.
Let's maybe do distinguish between two big thoughts here.
So, your culture mandate or your creation mandate, when we think about after Cain and Abel. And we don't yet have Sem as the line that Jesus is going to come from. There's still a mark to protect Cain, though he's a murderer, from the consequences of what could happen. And so, my friend Mike Horton, the theologian, often jokes that in the kingdom of the left-hand, we have speedboat manufacturing and public policy, right? These are not salvific things.
Speedboats are great, but they're not going to save you. Government is great, but it's not going to save you. It needs to restrain evil. It needs to do basic things to create a framework for liberty so people can assemble for worship on Sunday morning. Also, we want our government to have a framework for worship for people who don't have the same theology as we do to also be able to assemble for their worship, though we don't agree with them.
We want to protect everybody under freedom of religion to be able to assemble so that we can then try to persuade people free from violence. You asked, why is there so much hate oozing? I think 100 years from now, if the Lord hasn't returned yet, when we look back on this moment, we're not going to talk very much about public policy. We're going to talk. Talk about the fact that social media created a completely different kind of information ecosystem.
And there are these grand temptations to steal our attention all the time. We know that only about 12% of Americans will read a book this year. There are benefits to the many benefits to the digital revolution. There are some benefits to the communications revolution that flows from it. Focus is not just broadcast at a given moment, but you're also able to be streamed.
And so more people can download it at a convenient time. But we don't yet know how to digest information when it's coming at us fire hose style from every side. And it turns out the Ninth Commandment, bearing false witness, matters a lot. And if everybody has a giant megaphone, there's a whole lot more Ninth Commandment violating going on. And so we're just spraying nonsense and lies and disrespect all the time.
And we haven't learned the habits of editing and self-control and restraint.
Well, that is a good point because it feels like that's what we've lost as human beings: civility, how to be civil toward each other. Like you go online, people say what they think and feel a rage. Show a rage. And there used to be a filter there that you would never say some of the things in public that we're now saying. in social media.
And, you know, to your point, it makes that Job of a Christian even harder to restrain from jumping into that cesspool to try to, you know, engage people. That's exactly right. And given that one of our obligations in treating other people, other ensouled humans created in God's image with dignity, we need to exercise self-restraint about what we say, not just. Vomiting out whatever we feel or the anger in any given moment, but we also have to maintain the opportunity for persuasion. You think about Paul at the Areopagus.
We're trying to persuade other people to consider the claims of Christ. And one of the things that happens in a social media world is a lot of confirmation bias and fan service where people just say to their audiences exactly what everybody already believed. And you just preach to the choir in a secular sense of just say whatever somebody already thought. Let me just tell them they're definitely right.
Well, actually, lots of us are wrong about tons and tons of things. And we need to learn the habits of daily repentance. That requires a different level of self-restraint and control and self-discipline in our communication. You know, the Lord's prescription for humanity, I'm so grateful he wrote it down. I mean, right there in Galatians, when we accept Christ...
What should we look like? What's our aroma? You know, somebody could say, I don't see it clearly in the Bible, but Galatians 5:22, he tells you it's going to be the fruit of the Spirit, is what people should see. Amen. Love, joy, peace, goodness, long-suffering, patience, all the things we seem to be.
coming up a little bit short. with in this day and age as the church. How do you recommend? the church become more aware Of that fruit of the spirit and lean into that as the antidote. To culture's ills.
This feels like I'm going to do a kindergarten version of it, but being blessed with Melissa as my wife and our girls, again, in their early to mid-20s, and our boy a decade younger, we lived on a campaign bus for about 16 months when they were 12, 10, and 2. And Melissa would sing that song about putting on the armor and the fruits of the spirit. They had these little kids' songs. And I was like, man, we need to memorize more scripture. We need to feel that, live that, dream that, sing that.
The fruits, and so many Pauline epistles, the fruits of living a Christian life are gratitude, regarding others more highly than yourself, and singing and singing with other people and committing things like the fruits of the Spirit to our brains. Yeah. Melissa, let's spend a little time there because in 2007, she suffered from a stroke. She was young.
So, when you look at again, you look at the circumstances of what you're facing physically as a family with Melissa having a stroke, first and foremost, how is she doing and what's happening for her?
So, we had a vertebrae. You're right, she was so young. She's still looking young. I'm looking a little shabby in my mid-50s, but my wife's looking great in her mid-50s. But when we were 37, Melissa had a vertebral dissection.
So, you have four blood flows to your brain. One of her arteries in the back of her neck came apart, produced three strokes, and we had a year and a half period where it wasn't clear if she was going to live and then if she was going to be coherent, and had just massive neural regeneration. One of the ways neurologists talk about brain injury in the young, as opposed to the old. When you're really old and your brain breaks, it kind of breaks. It's like glass.
But when you're young, it's more like throwing a baseball through a cobweb. There's a little bit of cobweb on the baseball that rolled away, but mostly you just have these dangling things. And we had neural regeneration where big chunks of her brain regrew.
So, we were incredibly blessed that our girls were three and five at the time. Our girls have had a very, very smart and engaged mom for their whole life. And then, God gave us another son, a providential surprise, a decade after the girls. But over the course of the last seven or eight years now, we've suffered a lot of seizures. And so, if you ask how she's doing in 2024, she had nine seizures that year.
In 2025, one. And so far, in 2026, zero. The miracle is not the right word, but the glories of modern medicine. She's on massive anti-seizure, sedative drugs. But then we have an ability to wake her up every morning and counter affect that.
And 20 years ago, nobody would have been able to live the life she lives. She's incredibly able and competent. She's the smartest woman I know. That's a word. I love the smile on your face.
I'm sorry you said. No, you asked earlier about my son and the heaviness of a 14-year-old potentially losing his pops. His mom is going to gap fill in lots and lots of important ways. Wow, that's very sweet. And your love for Melissa is obvious.
This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and what a powerful, really raw conversation with former Senator Ben Sass. We're going to continue with the balance of that discussion next time. John, when you hear a story like this, facing a diagnosis of stage four pancreatic cancer, you're reminded that each one of us is living with the reality that life has an end. I mean, we don't know it. We don't feel that way, but it is mortality, right?
We all have a day of reckoning. And we don't know when that's going to happen. But man, it is so clear that Ben has found in the midst of his physical pain and uncertainty a peace that is anchored in Christ. And I hope that you were leaning into this conversation about suffering, the mysteries of God, and the promise of heaven. When our loves are ordered correctly, when God is first followed by family relationships.
Everything else begins to make sense. And that was so evident in what Ben was talking about. God doesn't promise that life's going to be easy, but He has promised to be with us, to be fruitful through us, and to offer us assurance that even in suffering, He's weaving a story that leads to redemption. Allow us here at Focus on the Family to encourage you. We want to share a free audio collection called Remembering the Hope of Heaven, featuring conversations with John Burke, Randy Alcorn, Lee Strobel, Dr.
Erwin Lutzer, and many others. You'll be inspired by their insights about the life to come in heaven. And if you don't know Jesus as your personal Savior, we want to invite you to begin a relationship with God. And we'd like to share an online booklet called Coming Home that tells you how you can do that today. You can visit our website to sign up for that audio collection or link over to the booklet.
And we've got the link in the show notes. Mm-hmm. and then to schedule a phone conversation with one of our focus counselors to address your struggles or needs, whatever they may be, just give us a call. Our number is 800, the letter A and the word family. And right here at the end, John, let me just encourage those that can support FOCUS to be able to get the gospel out to do so.
We need your help. And man, let's just leave it at that.
Okay.
Well, get in touch. Let us know how we can help you or if you want to partner with us as we reach out literally around the world. And on behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ. Yeah.
Live your truth. A lot of people say that, don't they? But truth isn't something we decide. God has decided it for us. And it's our job as believers to share his truth with a world in need.
I'll encourage you to do that through my podcast, Refocus with Jim Daly. I visit with fascinating guests about important topics like gender confusion, cancel culture, and more, while helping you share God's love with others. Listen at refocus with JimDaily.com. Uh
