The Gospel in Challenging Times

Peter Rosenberger. He's not a preacher, but he's got great hair. Welcome to Hope for the Caregiver.

I am Peter Rosenberger. This is the nation's number one show for you as a caregiver. ...care of the elderly, a special needs child, somebody who's had a traumatic event, somebody who's been diagnosed with a horrific disease, somebody who's dealing with a mental illness, somebody who is dealing with addiction issues, alcoholism. There's so many different kinds of impairment, and there's always, always, always a caregiver. Now, that caregiver may be really up close and personal, or that caregiver may be somewhat detached, but they're still there.

And they are still involved and engaged, and it is a difficult journey for the family caregiver. How are you doing? How are you holding up? What's going on with you? And this is what we're going to talk about again today, but in the context of the church, pastoring, theologically, doctrinally, what's going on? And I've asked a very close friend of mine, my pastor for 20 years in Nashville, Tennessee. I live out in Montana, but he still pastors me.

And he is Jim Bachman. He takes my calls, you know, usually twice a week, just out of mercy, I guess, but I'm glad he does. And we kick around ideas, and he keeps engaging with me as we tackle this very difficult issue. I have the largest platform broadcast and podcast to family caregivers in the world, and it's important that I have people around me that can help me work through some of these difficult issues. And so my father's a minister, and I have a great deal of respect for ministers, particularly those who are as hands-on as Jim is.

And he's the senior pastor of Stevens Valley Church in Nashville, Tennessee, stevensvalleychurch.com, and that's Stevens with a PH, stevensvalleychurch.com. And Jim, so welcome to the show. How are you feeling? Thank you. Well, I'm feeling more senior every day, Peter. It's happening to the best of us, isn't it? Older by the minute, man.

Older by the minute. You know, those are very kind words. I have to tell you, it's a two-way street you pick me up to, and I benefit from your ministry a great deal. And I always look forward to your calls.

I don't always take them immediately, but we do connect. And you're blessed with a wonderful sense of humor, good theology, a way with words, and I get good sermon ideas from you, so thank you for your ministry. Well, you know… You didn't pay me to say that, did you?

No, I didn't. It's a mutual admiration society, but we both have been through some heavy-duty storms together, and you've walked with me through some very, very painful realities, and I've had the privilege of walking with you through some of those as well. And we'll get into that maybe a little bit later. The purpose of this call today and this conversation, you and I have it on the podcast, as we start this new year, we thought that, okay, we're going to look at 2020 in the rearview mirror, but then 2020 turned 21 and started drinking. And so now we're in a… 2021 says, hold my beer, you know, and we're going to make this even worse. And, you know, people are just unsettled. And before we get into a lot of the more current events, I wanted just to give a little bit of background with you and update. You know, we've been into the COVID world now here almost a year, and as your church, you were building this church, and then, I mean, just before you got the doors open, or right as you got the doors open to your facility, you guys moved out of a school that you were meeting in, and then, boom, this thing hit. And so how have you all fared as a church through this? And let me talk about that for a bit.

Let's just start with that. How have you all fared through this? The Lord's been good to us, Peter.

You're right. We were building a new building, and we had our first service on March the 1st, and big crowd, good crowd, full every seat, you know, and March 8th, we dedicated the building again, every seat filled and great. Then came the 15th, and I think we were one of the few churches that stayed open on the 15th, and we just had a smattering of people there, and it was ominous.

I remember the feeling. As a matter of fact, I think it was that very week I happened to be at Bridgestone Arena, and watching the first round games and the SEC basketball tournament, I like basketball, and they came on the speaker at halftime and said that they'd go ahead and finish that game, but the remainder of the tournament was being canceled, and I don't know, Bridgestone maybe holds 15,000 people, and there were 15,000 boos that went up, and they booed for about 10 seconds. They were very, very unhappy, but you just had this ominous feeling that something, you know, something was happening, something dark, something destructive was invading our lives so rudely, so unwelcomed, and it was going to change us, and it did. We stayed, we as a church stayed closed until the end of May, so we opened sooner than others. We're not a large church, Peter. We've probably got 400 members, I guess, and visitors and whatnot, but it's not back to where it was, and I don't know how. The church was closed, but you were still preaching. Oh yeah, we kept, right, I'm sorry, we taped our services, and we preached to an empty room like a lot of churches, and just posted them on YouTube and Facebook, and now we just do it on YouTube, but then we did reopen our doors into May, and gradually people began to come back, and actually had recovered somewhat.

I would say we were maybe 60% full, and then it seemed like the second surge came on us, and I declare, I believe people are maybe more frightened now than they were before, even with the vaccine coming out, even young people. I would have thought the young people would be less concerned about it. We have a mix of people, but we have a lot of older people, and on the front row today, we're one man who's in his 90s, and his wife's up there too, but the young people are frightened, and just staying away, playing it safe, and they'll watch us. We live stream it, so it's discouraging, honestly. I mean, you know, you like to see the church is full, and you like to see a lot of joy and enthusiasm and growth, and good camaraderie and so forth, and so it is muddled along just like everything else. The parents with kids in schools, they're having difficulties trying to adjust to it, and you watch these ball games with empty stadiums.

How strange is that? It's been a weird year, and I'm hoping probably things will get better. Having said that, Peter, though, in many ways it's been a good year too, because we've learned the hard way, and the best lessons are always the hard ones. We've learned not to take things for granted, so the Lord has been teaching us in 2020.

Well, that brings me to my next question for you. As a pastor, when you started preaching to an empty church, and I watched your service, I was watching you on YouTube from here in Montana, and I got my parents watching you in South Carolina. You must have been bored. No, no, it was very moving, because I've watched you preach for over 20 years, and I didn't see you miss a beat, and I knew you were preaching to an empty room. I think Eli was there running the sound, but other than that, I think you were preaching to an empty room. That had to have been very surreal for you, wasn't it? Yeah, my Easter sermon was entitled A Quiet Easter, and boy, it was quiet.

There was nobody there. You get used to it. We got used to it fairly quickly, but certainly not what you prefer. We need each other. That's how God's made us. We're made to interact with each other, and we believe in the communion of the saints. You hear that phrase from time to time.

We believe in fellowship, and we're to stimulate each other to love and good deeds and not forsake assembling ourselves together and so forth. And yet, the virus has really put a cramp in our style, you might say, and so we just put one step in front of the other and move forward and trust in God. The good thing is His Word never returns void. And you know what?

I'll say this. We added, by His goodness, we added about 40 new members beginning of mid-September up until the end of the year, and there's a nice group of visitors that are waiting in the wings, hopefully, to become new members here over the next six or seven weeks. So even in a pandemic, you know, Jesus said, I'll build my church, and nothing's going to stop it. The gates of hell are not going to stop. And so we're very gratified by that. But we miss the good old days. I'm sure I speak for every pastor and church members.

We miss each other, and we yearn to be back together again, singing God's praises and worshipping Him together. Well, you've also created virtual memberships. You've got people that watch you all over the country, now all over the world, and that's got to be different, too, because they are engaging. I mean, it's not like they're just passively watching.

They're communicating back and forth. You guys are communicating to them, and it's a different way of, quote-unquote, to use it as a verb, to church people, to pastor people. It is a different way to do it, but you guys seem to have embraced that somewhat better than a lot of churches that I've seen do. And how's that been for you? Good. I don't know what the other churches are doing, but through a set of circumstances, a lot of churches have become more progressive theologically, and there are some believers that I think feel a little homeless, a little disenfranchised.

And we're a conservative church, reformed. I know you know what that word means. I don't know if your audience does.

They're starting to. We talk about that a lot here on the show. I'm sure you do.

Like I said, you've got good theology, and some people know what they're looking for, and they will look long and hard. One of your guests that you had some weeks ago, Dominic Aquilla, remember Dominic? I do indeed. I'm sure you do.

He has been sort of the link for us. And so, yeah, we've got some virtual members in Indiana. We've got some in Florida, some in Augusta, Georgia. I've got some friends on Lookout Mountain that are not virtual members, but they watch. There's a lady in New Hampshire that watches regularly.

We've got a former friend who lives in Australia. I haven't seen him in 25 years, and he watches, and many of these people do contribute. And for the time being, we are their church. Now, we recognize that it's better for them to find a church in their own locale, and I think they recognize that too. But these are unusual times, and so we're happy to welcome them.

They don't have voting privileges or things like that, but we're still happy to count them as members of our church family for the time being. Well, and I think that that is part of, you know, caregivers struggle with isolation. That's one of the biggest issues that caregivers struggle with, even in a crowded room or on a crowded pew. And now the world is struggling with isolation, and you're seeing an uptick in all these kinds of things, and this is an issue that I've been hammering since I started doing the show, you know, eight years ago, and of the isolation of caregivers. And now as we all are facing this, and this brings me to another point with you, is that what is happening to the collective church theologically and doctrinally, because you can't just go out there and just preach the same way when you know that people are closeted away, they're having to watch virtually, that a lot of them are despairing, and in many respects, that is a picture of what my audience struggles with on a daily basis and has for as long as they've been caregivers.

You know, I was that way. I remember many times feeling so sequestered away, so cut off. And, you know, and even one time, one of the lowest moments I had, I don't know if I ever told you this, but one of the lowest moments I had was at Easter service at your former church that it held, I don't know how many people could fit in that place, but it was, you know, well over a thousand. And this was an Easter Sunday we had there, and there was a huge orchestra.

There was just standing room only. And I was standing there, but Gracie was at home. She was very, very sick, and we just lived a little bit from the church, so I slipped out to go to church.

The kids were on spring break, and they had gone down to be with grandparents while she was sick, and I was just all by myself. And I felt so, so disconnected. And I think this is where so many people feel right now, and so I want to talk about that as we move forward.

We're going to take a quick break. I want to talk about it as we move forward about, you know, connecting people and letting people know that the gospel is still more than ever able to reach into that. This is Peter Rosenberg. I'm talking with Pastor Jim Bachman of Stevens Valley Church in Nashville, Tennessee, my long-time pastor for 20 years. And this is Hope for the Caregiver.

Hopeforthecaregiver.com. Don't go away. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

We'll be right back. And yes, there is pain. There is heartache. There is suffering.

There is so many unsettling things. So how do we find that place where we can rejoice no matter what's going on? And that's from her CD Resilient, and she is indeed resilient. You can go out to Hopeforthecaregiver.com today, and you can see more about her music and get a copy of that CD. I think you'll find it very, very meaningful to you.

You know, that's 80 surgeries, both her legs amputated, 37 years of nonstop pain, and yet she's singing Rejoice. And it brings me to my conversation that I'm having with a long-time friend and pastor, Pastor Jim Bachman, Stevens Valley Church in Nashville. And we're talking about how the church has changed, ministering to people, fortitude. Where do we find these things as we are struggling as caregivers, as just as individuals? And I think the whole country, the whole world, really, in real time. We've never had a situation where the whole world struggled with the same issue in real time. So a lot of things are, there are a lot of moving pieces going on right now, and this show focuses on equipping caregivers to better deal with the onslaught of challenges.

I mean, we have them relentlessly as caregivers. And I had a friend of mine that called me up last week, and he said, you know, we're struggling with this whole thing with the coronavirus, all the politics. There's so much unsettledness. And it occurred to me, you and Grace have been dealing with this for decades.

How have y'all done this? And I answer truthfully, we've done it poorly. And, you know, but we've learned a few things along the way. And I've learned that the real battle here, certainly for caregivers, is not in caregiving, the verb, the action of caregiving, but it's in our hearts. And there's nothing that I go through as a caregiver.

I'm in my 35th year of this. There's nothing I go through that is not dealt with in scripture on a heart level as far as the real core issue, the fear, the despair, the resentment, the rage, the angst that goes on. Because that's where the real battle is. It's not about which wheelchair or even sometimes the money. I know people who have plenty of money and they deal with the same thing, the obligation, the guilt, all these kinds of things. And so I thought when I did this show, we're going to speak to those issues. And now my longtime pastor and mentor and friend, Jim Bachman, is coming as a pastor, is dealing with this in a significant church.

And he's had a lengthy ministry and he's seeing these collective changes going on across the country. And so, you know, I, Jim, I just you and I share some things. One of them is we're both history buffs and we're equally inspired by those whose faith persevered and helped pave a road for the rest of us.

Where have you kind of gone to as you've been watching this unfolding across the country? Who have you gone back to read or study about or learn about that's really kind of like, you know, you've known these people, but you kind of maybe revisited. What are some of those things that you've done?

Well, I'm like you, Peter, I think whatever I've done, I've done pretty poorly. You know, I do like history. I read a lot about Charles Spurgeon. And I remember when there was a color outbreak and early on in his ministry and you know what he did? He just kept on doing what he was always doing. He visited the people and preach the gospel. Don't know if you ever heard of Father Damien or not. Yes, went to a colony of lepers and and ministered among them for many, many years until such time as he caught leprosy himself and and that I don't know.

I mean, everybody has to make their own decisions, but I just believe the Lord has called me to keep on keeping on and keep on doing what I'm doing. There was a Thanksgiving service we had this year and I read something out of Daniel I'd never read before that. The men conspired against him and law was passed that you couldn't pray to anybody. But was it Nebuchadnezzar? I don't remember now, but what did Daniel do?

He went home and he opened his windows and got down on his knees and prayed toward Jerusalem three times a day just like he'd always done. So I'm not by no means to want to imply that I'm reckless with regard to the virus or not. But I looked at these examples. God's called me to the ministry. My time's are in his hand. I don't think one hair can fall from my head without the will of my father in heaven. And I respect the decisions other people make.

Some people just want to kind of quarantine and lock down and that's fine. I watch service, you know, on TV or the computer. But in my case, at least, and for whatever reason, I've not had the virus yet. I'm left out. As a matter of fact, everybody else at church is sharing their virus story.

I don't have one to share. Count yourself blessed. I mean, I got it, but I didn't have really much in the way of symptoms.

But Gracie did, but I didn't. And so to me, it's still a conundrum of how this thing, it's almost like it's Russian roulette, you know, of how this thing is going to affect people. And but I most of our people have had. Go ahead.

No, no, you go ahead. Most of our people have had mild cases, too, and most of them are are coming out of it now. And with the vaccine gradually getting out, hopefully things will begin to improve. But I think I heard a famous man one time say that so many people are afraid of dying.

They've stopped living. Does that sound familiar to you? Well, yes.

I did say that folks. Well, we can't stop living, but we you know, and even if and I learned actually, I won't just take credit for that because I actually learned that from my wife who learned to live with extreme challenges, you know, and she wouldn't, you know, whatever way she was able to do it and from a wheelchair, from a hospital bed or whatever. And and so I these are things that I have wrestled with. And I look at my fellow caregivers and thinking that somehow, OK, when when life gets better, we can go on living.

And I'm saying, no, we're going to live today, no matter how that looks. And and and theologically speaking, I mean, you've coached a lot of teams and and over years you've been a basketball coach and a baseball coach and so forth with your kids. And when the team's in trouble, they don't come up with trick plays. They go back to the fundamentals. And, you know, you've got to learn if you're a baseball team, you've got to learn to hit, throw, catch and run and work together as a team. You don't you don't come up with trick plays. And and and I think that those churches that go back to the fundamentals with it and just say, OK, here's where we're going to be. We're going to stay in our lane here and in this very tight area. And I look at that for my fellow caregivers and myself that, you know, I go back to the fundamentals. There's no trick play when you're dealing with a chronic impairment. You've got to deal with here we are now and what does God have to say about trusting him today?

Right here, right now. And, you know, I and one of the things one of the things that happened early on was our government. And I'm a patriot. But our government began to define certain things as essential and other things as not essential. Remember that certain businesses were essential.

And I took offense at that, to be honest with you. I just I don't ever I mean, we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that's all sort of wound up in how we make a living and how we live life. And I don't see how you can tell anybody that the way they live, the way they work, the way they worship is not essential.

Well, the arbiter of what's essential was not essential. That is a very good question. We're going to unpack that the next segment.

We're going to take a quick break. We're talking with Pastor Jim Bachman, Stevens Valley Church, Nashville, Tennessee, Stevens Valley Church dot com. This is Peter Rosenberg. This is hope for the caregiver. Healthy caregivers make better caregivers. Today's a great day to start.

We'll be right back. Pastor Peter Rosenberg, have you ever helped somebody walk for the first time? I've had that privilege many times through our organization Standing with Hope when my wife Gracie gave up both of her legs following this horrible wreck that she had as a teenager. And she tried to save them for years.

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An independent associate. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the show for you as a family caregiver. One of the benefits of having a wife who can sing is you can use her on bumper music, and that is a great song from Gracie's CD, Resilient.

Go out and get a copy of that at hopeforthecaregiver.com. Talk with Pastor Jim Bachman. He's been a steady hand on my shoulder for over 20 years, and I'm grateful for it. He's in Nashville, Tennessee, and one of the hardest things that Gracie and I did when we moved out to Montana was to say goodbye to him. You're going to move back. Let's go ahead and tell the world you're going to move back. I sent pictures of snow to Jim. He likes it when I do that because it makes him jealous. Oh yeah, I love that snow, man. It's real snow, not just pictures. Yeah, well, we have plenty of that out here.

I'm sure you do. I'm watching a lot of things going on, and one of the things that happens, I have found, particularly in the audience that I'm trying to reach on my show here, is that in our isolation and in our struggles or whatever else, bad theology can creep in. Why is that a problem? Well, because what you believe is going to affect how you act and respond to what's going on around you. And for whatever reason, I have immersed myself in the last several months in some of the great preachers and the reformers of our faith that go back all the way to the 1300s and 1400s, and these individuals who stood fast against some of the most harshest, brutal realities. And I look at a lot of people concerned right now, they're seeing the government overreach and all these kinds of things, but it is nothing compared to what Luther, Tyndale, Huss, and Wycliffe and all that just all went through. And what they went through is astonishing against a state that was, hold on a second, my computer just activated on its voice activated, and now I'm having to deal with technology. But it is nothing next to what these guys had to deal with, with a state that would actually burn them at the stake for going against. And so it is really astonishing of what's going on in the country right now where people are being extremely very, very distressed, discouraged. And they're starting to question whether or not goodness of God and all these kinds of things. Talk a little bit about that.

Well, you mentioned some great examples from history, and you're spot on. People are discouraged, people are tired, tired of quarantines and lockdowns and masks, and governments are tired of the conflict in the government, in our country that they see right now. I'm tired of it.

I'm sure you're tired of it. We need God to do a work in our country. We need a revival and a reformation. We need to pray for our leaders, whether we were for them or against them. We need to pray for them that God would have his way, because the Bible tells us the nations are just a drop in the bucket.

And furthermore, that he raises one up brings another down. And God, God, Peter, I think it all gets back to the sovereignty of God, which I think is a doctrine that troubles some people, but rightly understood should comfort people. God is not sovereign. And that doesn't abdicate us of our responsibility, by the way.

I think that misunderstanding is a source of, it's a word I'm looking for, it troubles people. But rightly understood, sovereignty of God doesn't absolve us of our duty. I mean, the Bible's full of things for us to do, to pray for those who persecute us, to pray for our leaders, to evangelize, share the gospel, worship, on and on, love our neighbors ourselves. But behind it all, the time and again, there on every page of the scripture, God is sovereign. And these nations are just a drop in the bucket. And he's raising up one leader and bringing down another. And as the sovereign Lord, there aren't any maverick molecules out there.

And he's still on the throne. And I know we, I've said this many times, I feel like God, I could run this world a whole lot better than you are. If you just give me a chance. Well, what a foolish thing to say. I don't know what I'm talking about.

I see an American dimly. My knowledge is so limited. But what the Bible does tell me is that all things work together for my good, and they're all working for his glory, ultimately. And I don't have any idea how that's all going to shake out. But like I said, on every page of the Bible, he's the king and he's the sovereign.

And his purposes will never be thwarted. And that's so hard to wrap your mind around. And I appreciate the fact that you've helped me by admitting that that's hard to wrap your mind around. You know, and so it's a leap of faith.

We trust it. And yet, you know, we've come to see that not only Scripture, but then we have these individuals in our lives who, or history has shown us. And I was, you and I are both a fan of the hymns and the great hymns of our faith. And I was watching a documentary the other day on Fanny Crosby. Fanny Crosby wrote over 10,000 hymns. She was one, she's probably the most prolific hymn writer of all time. And she's been blind since she was an infant. And, you know, and I look at her life and the life that she had, extraordinary impact on the world. And she was blind. And you think, and somebody asked her one time, says, you know, how can you write these songs about Jesus and have this faith in Jesus when he's let you be blind? And her response was, oh, no, you don't understand.

The next face I see will be his. But you don't come to that point easily, do you? Right.

No, no, you don't. She was a very, a woman very mature in her faith. And I think if I had to criticize the church today, I would say we're all pretty soft. We're the American church. We're soft.

We're spoiled. We tend to let the culture dictate our theology to us rather than vice versa. And if you don't believe that God's sovereign, who is in charge? And if nobody's in charge, we got something to worry about.

I mean, if life just happens, if it is random, I don't know. I'm not going to sleep as well at night. But I believe he put the stars in their courses above. And I believe he's numbered the hairs on my head and yours.

And he's working all things according to the counsel of his will. I don't like there's a lot of things. I'm discouraged right now.

I could probably bore you to death with the things that I'm troubled about these days. But talking about hymns and hymn writers and great men of the faith, how about John Newton? The Lord has promised good to me. His word, my hope secures. I believe that. I believe I don't understand why there's such a mess right now, but he has promised good to me and his word, my hope secures.

And so we got better things to come. And did you ever read the book by Scott Peck called The People of the Lie? I don't think he was a Christian. He was a Harvard. He's deceased now.

He's a Harvard psychiatrist. It's a fascinating book. But the first three words of that book, I'll never forget. Life is hard. We live in a fallen world and we have expectations that are unrealistic. We're looking for heaven. We're looking for perfection and paradise.

And this is a jungle. It's a fallen world. Do you think the virus just happened? Do you think God's sovereign over that virus?

Is he got a purpose in it? And I believe the latter. And I'm sorry people have died from it. They die from the flu.

They die from car accidents. Is he sovereign over all of life or some of life or none of life? I just find much more comfort in believing that God has a plan and that God is omnipotent and God is loving to his people. And there's a promise that all things work together for our good. So we have to be patient now while we see in the mirror dimly.

But one day we will understand it all. One of the biggest milestone moments for me, theologically and doctrinally, because I used to rail against this. I never doubted that God could intervene and do stuff.

I always railed against God for not intervening. And particularly like when it came to Gracie stuff. And, you know, I remember one time a lady was tough because Gracie fell asleep at the wheel. She was 17 years old, middle of the day. She was going to see a friend and she just put her head down on the wheel and slammed into a concrete above it.

And that story got out there and, of course, has been told many times on media and so forth. And I remember one lady who was a little bit odd, but, you know, that's notwithstanding, but it was she looked at me. She said, well, one time I fell asleep at the wheel, but God woke me up in time. He was really gracious to me.

He woke me up in time. And I was I was not in a good place theologically. And I retorted back to her words that were very cutting. And I cringe over saying it, but I won't say it anyway.

I said this is what I said. I said, well, I guess God wasn't so gracious to Gracie. And I've cringed over that many years because there was a there was a flip in my belief. That as God watched Gracie slam into that concrete wall, he was still gracious.

He never stopped being gracious. And we don't understand that in the context of great suffering. But everything in scripture shows me that he is still gracious and merciful is wide as the sea is. Mercy is still loving and kind, even in the face of these horrific things. There is no way I can understand that. So I have to accept it by faith.

And this is something you've kind of helped. Be timidly walk down this path, because as brutal as the cross was, that was the ultimate expression of God's graciousness. And it's hard to wrap our minds around that. It really is. And it's hard for my fellow caregivers that are listening to this show, when they see their loved one just spiraling out of control or circling the drain or acting out in just horrific ways, or changing an adult diaper another time in the middle of the night.

If it's an adult diaper they're changing, they may have to change something else and it's even worse. And they're thinking, how can God be gracious in this? And as we collectively, as believers, are watching so much suffering and fear and unsettledness going on, I still can hang my hat on this, that God is gracious. And the only way I can believe that is because I've walked a little bit closer to the cross. I've been drawn a little bit closer to the cross, let me correct that. And the closer I get to the cross, the more I can understand the graciousness of God, even while watching Gracie as a 17-year-old slam into a concrete abutment.

That is a hard thing, but that's what everything in Scripture screams out to me. Did I miss the mark? I think it was your friend Johnny Erickson Tada that said the wheelchair was the best thing that ever happened to her. It made her look forward to heaven. Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, bless you prison for having been in my life. Cory Tin Boom said, thank God for those fleas. He kept the rapist, the guards, away from her. So Jim Boyce used to say, there's mercy and misery. And nobody likes to be miserable. I don't mean to make light of it at all, but God's mercy is often revealed to us in our suffering.

C.S. Lewis said, pain is God's megaphone. That's how he gets our attention.

And that's a good thing. So sometimes if it takes a tragedy to really get my attention, a virus, a death, whatever, loss of a job, then the Lord's being merciful to get our attention and to drive us to our knees and cause us to cry out to Him in prayer. You've preached, I don't know how many times I've heard you say this, all you need is need.

And it's difficult to cry out to a savior that you don't think you need. And here we are collectively now seeing that we really have, we are in great need. We are a fragile people and we're watching the entire world deal with this in real time. We've never had a situation like this where we could watch it all in real time.

We got just a few minutes for the break. Unpack that a little bit. All you need is need. Well, those are not my words. They're the words of John Gerstner, who was R.C.

Sproul's mentor. I wish I had the whole quote with me, but all you need is need. All you must have is nothing.

The point he's making is that most people don't have nothing. And God can't pour His treasures into hands already full. And so we're blessed really to, this morning I preached on blind Bartimaeus. And a beautiful story. And he cried out, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And I unpacked that word cry. That's not the way we use the word cry.

We use it. We mean somebody shedding tears in the Bible. It's a loud voice, a passion, an urgent pleading, you know, just out of desperation. Even Jesus himself about the ninth hour cried out with a loud voice. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Bartimaeus was in a good place. When we're miserable enough that we finally cry out to God for mercy. Son of David, have mercy on me. That's a good place to be in.

It's a hard place, but it is a good place. And this is where all of scripture is leading us to. Because it is paradoxical. And the thief on the cross, you know, remember me when you come in your kingdom. He had nothing to offer Jesus.

And yet in exchange, Jesus gave him everything. This is my message to my fellow caregivers. This is my message to myself. In those low, low moments, this is our cry to understand that our need is what he is seeing. And I appreciate Jim being here with me. I'm talking to Pastor Jim Bobman, Stevens Valley Church, Nashville, Tennessee, StevensValleyChurch.com. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Hope for the Caregiver.

We'll be right back. Have you ever struggled to trust God when lousy things happen to you? I'm Gracie Rosenberger. And in 1983, I experienced a horrific car accident leading to 80 surgeries and both legs amputated. I questioned why God allowed something so brutal to happen to me.

But over time, my questions changed and I discovered courage to trust God. That understanding, along with an appreciation for quality prosthetic limbs, led me to establish Standing with Hope. For more than a dozen years, we've been working with the government of Ghana and West Africa, equipping and training local workers to build and maintain quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. On a regular basis, we purchase and ship equipment and supplies.

And with the help of inmates in a Tennessee prison, we also recycle parts from donated limbs. All of this is to point others to Christ, the source of my hope and strength. Please visit standingwithhope.com to learn more and participate in lifting others up. That's standingwithhope.com.

I'm Gracie, and I am standing with hope. of our vulnerable loved ones and their caregivers. Constant Companion is the solution for families today, staying connected, staying safe. It's smart, easy, and incredibly affordable. Go to www.mycompanion247.com today. That's mycompanion247.com. Connection and independence for you and those you care about.

Mycompanion247.com. He will be strong to deliver me safe. And the joy of the Lord is my strength.

And the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength. Welcome back to Hope for the Caregiver. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is the show for you as a caregiver. It's hosted by caregivers, about caregivers. It's for caregivers. And what we're doing here is to strengthen the family caregiver.

Those of you who are toiling away, often in obscurity and often in great isolation. And the passion behind this show that I started many years ago comes from my own journey of this. I mean, these are things that I am still working out. And there are times when I still bang my head up against the wall.

I don't say these out of anything I'm saying out of a sense of accomplishment. I'm saying out of a sense of awareness, of going down so many dark paths. So my message is don't go down there.

That's a bad place. I've been there. That's the benefit of making more mistakes than most people will ever make in their lifetime. And when you are the crash test dummy of caregivers, the wily coyote of caregivers, this is the benefit I have of it. But one of the things I have learned is that we can reform our thinking. We can be anchored in something that will sustain us. And you never know how important an anchor is until you're in strong seas.

And we as caregivers face those strong seas. And I brought in today my friend, my longtime pastor in Nashville, Jim Bachman, who has banged these ideas out with me. I've said under his sermons, I think he still gets amazed that I've memorized so many things that he said. But he was saying them to somebody who was so thirsty to hang on to something so strong that because I was being buffeted about. And so every time he preached this no frills message of here's what the gospel looks like in plain English.

He said it in a way that I could understand it. And then my goal here with this show is to be able to be a good steward of that and say in a way that you can understand it as a fellow caregiver and understand this message of strength and hope and encouragement. And Jim, in the last few moments we have here, again, I go back to you and our big history buffs of great men and women of the gospel who have done extraordinary things and stood again in extraordinary times. And there are always these individuals that seem to come up who face these horrific things and yet just with such power and such, I don't know how to say it, but just so precisely be able to speak the word of God to a generation that needed to hear it. As you look out on our generation, as we're facing this global pandemic and the American church particularly, what are your concerns and then what are some things that encourage you about how the American church is facing the virus, the social and the political issues that are going on, both encouragement and concerns. What are your thoughts on this in the last few minutes?

Well, that's a pretty big question. My encouragement, again, is in the power of the Lord to build his church, to call people to himself. Christians have always been in the minority, Peter, and that's not comfortable. We would like to be in the majority and there was a time in our country, I think, certainly where there was much more of a Christian consensus.

People say we were a Christian nation and there certainly were strong Christian leaders and principles built into the documents written by our founding fathers and so forth. We're a long way from that, as we all know now. I think we just have to be a rest in where God has us at this time and I'm comforted by the fact that he wouldn't destroy Sodom if he could find, what was it, 10 righteous people. You know, Abraham started at what, 50 or I don't remember now, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10, and he wouldn't destroy Sodom, so there's hope for America. Well, I don't know what the ratio was. If it was 10 out of 10,000 versus what are we in America?

I'm not sure where the ratio is. But he's a God who delights to show mercy, that's my encouragement. My concern is that the church is, the world, I mean, I don't have high expectations for the world, do you? I mean, they're not regenerate and I kind of expect them to act like unregenerate people. God's common grace might restrain them, but might not. But the church, Jesus said, if the salt loses its labor, what's it good for?

And that's my concern. And I see too many churches that I think are just caving on issues that the Bible is very clear about. And I suppose tickling the ears, as Isaiah mentioned, was a problem back in his day.

It's always been a problem. We all want to be popular, we all want to be in the majority, we all want to, I say we, I'm talking about church leaders, we want the world to like us. And it's just not going to happen, I don't think. We are just like Israel and then Babylon. Spurgeon said that the church that the world loves is certainly the one that God abhors. I paraphrase the thing, but if you're looking to get the approval of the secular world, rest assured, you're not going to have the approval of God on this.

And it does require us to take a stand. It is a minority thing, but you and I, again, we share this common reverence and admiration for these guys. And I look at people like Luther Wycliffe and Tyndale and Huss and these others, and they were not in the majority by any stretch of the imagination. And yet they changed the culture. And in some cases, the world was changed through them.

You know, certainly I think you make an argument that through the work of Luther, God changed the entire world. And that's why we as Christians individually don't underestimate God. God doesn't usually work through the majority. He doesn't usually work through committees in my experience. I had a friend one time that told me he was very active, very active in his church and church boards and all that and all meetings. He said, on the day of judgment, the first thing sent to hell will be all the committees.

Never forgotten that. He was tired of committee meetings, but he works through individuals. And that's not to say he can't use the church.

But Israel had to sing the Lord's song in a strange and foreign land while they were exiled to Babylon. I think it's a great picture of the church today. I think we Christians have put too much trust and too much hope in government. I know a lot of people in my church are very disappointed that Donald Trump didn't win the election. And Donald Trump would not be my best friend, probably, but I did appreciate many of the things he accomplished. I really did. Most of the policies were policies I thought were good for our country.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I thought they were good. But maybe the Lord doesn't want us to have our trust in Donald Trump. Maybe he wants to have our trust in him. Well, and I think about the people listening here on the show that are in these very lonely, dark places, and they have a loved one that is causing great consternation in their life. And they wonder, how can God use any of this? And my closing message to you all is, is that yes, he can, and he does.

And he has a lengthy history of using broken people. So that is to me, that is... Remember how Elijah thought he was the only one left? Remember how Elijah, under the juniper tree, God still had a great plan for his life. And that's a great story for us to remember, that it is really, truly not about our circumstances being rosy, but it's about us staying true to what he has said, trusting him in it, looking unto him the great author of our faith. My time with Pastor Jim Botman is up. Stevens Valley Church, Nashville, you can watch them.

They've got a whole library on YouTube, so take advantage. Jim, thank you for being with us today. Yes, sir. God bless you. Keep up the good work, Peter. This is John Butler, and I produce Hope for the Caregiver with Peter Rosenberger. Some of you know the remarkable story of Peter's wife, Gracie. And recently, Peter talked to Gracie about all the wonderful things that have emerged from her difficult journey. Take a listen. Gracie, when you envisioned doing a prosthetic limb outreach, did you ever think that inmates would help you do that?

Not in a million years. You go to the facility run by CoreCivic, and you see the faces of these inmates that are working on prosthetic limbs that you have helped collect from all over the country, that you put out the plea for, and they're disassembling. You see all these legs, like what you have, your own prosthetic legs. And arms.

And arms. When you see all this, what does that do to you? It makes me cry, because I see the smiles on their faces, and I know what it is to be locked someplace where you can't get out without somebody else allowing you to get out. Of course, being in the hospital so much and so long.

And so, these men are so glad that they get to be doing, as one band said, something good finally with my hands. Did you know before you became an amputee that parts of prosthetic limbs could be recycled? No, I had no idea. You know, I thought of peg leg. I thought of wooden legs. I never thought of titanium and carbon legs and flex feet and sea legs and all that.

I never thought about that. As you watch these inmates participate in something like this, knowing that they're helping other people now walk, they're providing the means for these supplies to get over there, what does that do to you, just on a heart level? I wish I could explain to the world what I see in there. And I wish that I could be able to go and say, this guy right here, he needs to go to Africa with us. I never not feel that way.

Every time, you know, you always make me have to leave, I don't want to leave them. I feel like I'm at home with them. And I feel like that we have a common bond that I would have never expected that only God could put together. Now that you've had an experience with it, what do you think of the faith-based programs that CoreCivic offers? I think they're just absolutely awesome. And I think every prison out there should have faith-based programs like this because the return rate of the men that are involved in this particular faith-based program and the other ones like it, but I know about this one, is just an amazingly low rate. Compared to those who don't have them. And I think that that says so much.

That doesn't have anything to do with me. It just has something to do with God using somebody broken to help other broken people. If people want to donate a used prosthetic limbs, whether from a loved one who passed away or, you know, somebody who outgrew them, you've donated some of your own for them to do. How do they do that? Oh, please go to standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Standingwithhope.com slash recycle. Thanks, Gracie.