What Are You Going to Do with Your Life?

Hi, this is Roy Jones with ManTalk Radio Podcast. Our mission is to break down the walls of race and denomination.

Your chosen Truth Radio Broadcast will be starting in just a few seconds. Thank you. plans with a yield of up to 3.25% API. As a fraternal organization, the PRCUA provides member benefits such as educational scholarships, sports tournaments, and numerous Polish-American cultural programs, and much more. Consider joining the PRCUA this week. Now through April 15th, 2021, you can earn more money and lower your 2020 tax bill while boosting your retirement income. Open a new PRCUA Life Annuity. Minimum deposit of $500 to take advantage of their competitive rate. Elite Plus is an eight-year annuity with a 3.75 API, one-year guarantee, and minimum guarantee of 2%.

So lower your taxable income while increasing your retirement. PRCUA.org. That's PRCUA.org. Welcome to If Not For God, stories of hopelessness that turn to hope. Here is your host, Mike Zwick. If Not For God with Mike Zwick, and today we have the president of the Southern Baptist Convention, J.D. Greer. J.D. Greer actually grew up in Winston-Salem, went to Gospel Light, was, I think he went to Campbell University, and he was going to be an attorney, and then Jesus got a hold of him. Is that right, J.D.? Yeah, no shade or disrespect to any of the attorneys out there, but God just showed me that the role that he had for me was a little different.

I always say instead of representing criminals before the judge, I know I'm supposed to represent the judge before criminals. Yeah, and J.D. 's got a new book.

It's out. It's called What Are You Going to Do with Your Life? And I actually, when I read this book, I mean, I told J.D. and I told Robbie that there have been very, very few books over the course of my life that have really changed my life, and this book really just lit a fire underneath me. And, you know, so many times I think, J.D., in Christianity we get so comfortable where we say that, you know, oh, it's all about his grace, and, you know, it's all about Jesus, and I actually, I saw, and it is, by the way, but I actually saw a quote recently, and it was by Lottie Moon, and she said something like, just because Jesus paid at all doesn't mean that we don't have to do anything. Well, talking about getting on the Southern Baptist President's good side, you're quoting Lottie Moon? I mean, that's a great way to start the interview.

Well done. But, J.D., what inspired you to write this book? You know, I tell a story at the beginning of it about a sermon that, you know, we throw around the phrase, changed my life really pretty glibly, and I've had a lot of things that I thought changed my life, but really you need a couple decades until you can really see that, but this sermon changed my life. It was by John Piper. It was at one day, which is the first early version of the Passion Conference, in which John Piper preached about not wasting your life, and he told this story that was so gripping about a couple that had achieved the American dream. I mean, just retired early, bought a yacht, going around to the different islands in the Caribbean, you know, to pick up seashells, and he asked, he's like, you know, is this a successful life? And then he continued on a story of a couple of older ladies in his church that had gone to Cameroon to serve on mission, and they died tragically there, and he's like, this is not a wasted life. The former thing, the American dream, that's the wasted life, because this couple, this couple that bought this yacht and went around to pick up seashells all over the world, he said, can you imagine them standing before Jesus saying, here are my shells, you know, here's my collection of shells, and that's how they're going to go into eternity, and he used that as just this metaphor for saying that so many of us spend so much time focusing on things that don't eternally matter, and I'm not that old, you know, I mean, I guess it's all relative, but you know, I'm in my mid-40s, so I hope that I have a lot of life ahead of me, but I think already beginning to think about one day there's a finish line coming, and you know, only one life to live will soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last, and that's a phrase that my dad used to quote for me.

It was by a missionary named C.T. Studd in the early or late 19th century who had been a professional athlete and just understood the implications of the Great Commission, and so I wrote it to challenge a generation of college students and young professionals, but not just them, just you know, especially them, but people at every age, to say, what are you doing with your life, and when you get to eternity, are you going to be glad that you spent it the way that you did? Not everybody's called to write books and preach sermons, but all of us, you know, God has called into to leverage our lives for the Great Commission. A line that I use at our church and with all of our students is, you know, the question is not if you're called. That question was settled when you got saved, because the decision to follow Jesus and the decision to leverage your life for the Great Commission are the same thing, because Jesus said, follow me and I will make you a fisher of man.

The question is not if you're called, the question is where and how. So the book is an exploration of where, whether you are using your life in a way that counts for eternity, and if you've got questions about that, whether you're approaching retirement or whether you're brand new, you know, starting out in life, how do you know what that is and that your life is going to impact eternity? That's awesome, and one of the chapters that really hit me was, it was chapter three where it says the myth of calling, and you quote William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, and it says, not called did you say, not heard the call, I think you should say, put your ear down to the Bible and hear him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin.

Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Then look Christ in the face whose mercy you have professed to obey and tell him whether you will join him in the march to publish his mercy to the world. And I think you said when you were younger, and this might have been around the time when you decided that you wanted to follow Christ full-time into the ministry, where you said you actually had a, there was a vision that came to your mind of a baby that was on a train track, is that right?

That's right, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it was, and I don't mean vision in the, you know, full-on Pentecostal sense, but more just God arresting my attention and helping me. It took place one afternoon, well actually, excuse me, one morning when I was in college and I was preparing for my finals in my pre-law degree, and I read through the book of Romans seven times that semester because my pastor challenged me to just read through the book of Romans over and over again. And it finally, I mean, I knew these things theologically, but it finally, like, settled deep in my soul, this understanding that every single human being is either going to heaven or hell, and the only difference between the two is your relationship with Jesus Christ.

And the vision was of this young child on a railroad track, and, you know, let's just say that they're, for whatever reason, they can't move, they're crippled, and they're there stranded on the railroad track and a train is coming, and you're trying to figure out, you know, you're seeing this thing right in front of you. I knew that nobody in that moment would drop down on their knees and say, Lord, what do you call me to do? Would you just move in my spirit and give me a piece about this? You know, you know in that moment what God has called you to do. He's called you to do what you can to save the child. But, you know, even though we know that's true, so many of us when it comes to the Great Commission feel like it's some special calling that we have to have in order to give our lives to tell other people about Jesus. And, you know, what I say is 2 Peter 3, 9, we're always talking about finding God's will. Well, God's will's not lost. The Lord is not willing, 2 Peter 3, 9, that any should perish. He wants all to come to repentance. And so, you know, when you understand that, you quit asking, pardon the blunt talk, but you quit asking dumb questions about whether God wants you to be used in the ministry or whether in the Great Commission or in the Great Commission, but simply where and how. Jim Elliott, a missionary, a young man in the 1950s who had the world in front of him, you know, just very talented, could have got a job anywhere and probably been fabulously wealthy, but he just said, you know, we're sitting around waiting on a voice when God has already given us a verse. And that verse is the Great Commission or 2 Peter 3, 9, and it tells you what God is doing in the world and if you want your life to count for eternity, whether you're a dentist, a homemaker, or an architect, or a pastor, you know what the trajectory of your life needs to be toward making the gospel known to the people around you and the people around the world who have never heard it yet. That's awesome. And one of my favorite parts of the book is actually page 7, where you talk about quarterback Tom Brady, because for so long, you know, I was concerned about, hey, you know, people don't want to hear me tell them about Jesus or people don't want to hear this stuff and, you know, you're just supposed to keep your religion to yourself, but, you know, when I read page 7, it really showed me that everybody really wants to hear the good news.

Here it is. Quarterback Tom Brady may have summed it up best. After winning his third Super Bowl, he was asked by Steve Croft in an interview on 60 Minutes, this whole upward trajectory, what have you learned about yourself? Brady answered, why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, hey man, this is what it is. I reached my goal, my dream, my life, me, I thank God, it's got to be more than this.

And what else is there for me? Croft asked, what's the answer? Brady smiled for a moment, then the smile faded. I wish I knew, he said.

I wish I knew. Another of our generation's greatest philosophical minds, comedian Jim Carrey said the same, I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything that they ever dreamed of, so they can see that it's not the answer. As a matter of fact, this weekend at your service, you quoted Eminem, is that right? Well, I'm not sure how your audience, your listeners will interpret that, but yes, I quoted Eminem basically saying the same thing. Yeah, you know, I was going to say is, you know, there are people like Brady and Eminem that are searching for purpose and what you find is that the purpose that you spend the majority of your life living for, the people that have actually gotten to the place you want to be have gotten there and said, it's not what I thought it was and I know there's got to be more.

You know, I think in the book I quote this CEO who was quoted in Forbes magazine as saying, I spent my entire life climbing the ladder of success only to find that it was leaning against the wrong building. And you realize that people at some point realize, they look around and realize that they chased a lot of things that don't matter and won't last. The generation that I'm, you know, that is coming up now, the college students and young professionals, they're a very cause-driven generation and I'd say in large part that's a good thing, you know, but they want to end suffering and they want to, you know, save the planet and they want to end injustice. And again, I don't mean to say that at all lightly because I think those are very worthy goals that Christians ought to be involved in, but at some point you have to ask yourself like, so if everybody has clean drinking water on the planet and they die and go to hell, have we really done what God asked us to do? You know, to get into quote John Piper, he said, you know, we Christians ought to be involved in relieving every kind of suffering, but the greatest and worst of all sufferings is eternal suffering. And if you believe the gospel at all and you have an ounce of compassion, you know, Christ-like compassion in your heart, then you're going to give your life to make sure that people everywhere around you know and that this generation all over the world has a chance to hear and respond to the good news.

That's awesome. In the chapter 9 where you actually say worth it, Robbie and I, we quote this all the time, it says, it is not the critic who counts, the critic belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again, who spends himself for a worthy cause, is who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat. And I'll tell you this, Robbie and I were talking about this, that when I first started to tell people about Jesus, JD, it became a thing, it was almost like something that I had to do. Okay, I know I have to do this and I know I have to tell people, but I don't know if you've, you've gotten to this place because I know you share Jesus, you sat on airplanes with people and really everywhere you go, waitresses and waiters, but it actually gets to the point now where it's like, man, I get to share this with them and it's awesome. It's what an opportunity we have to be able to share the good news. And it's, I don't know, from what I've learned, it's almost kind of a mindset change to where it's before I got to do it. I had to do it.

And now it's like, we get to share the good news. Do you see that? Oh, absolutely. Um, well, let's start with a quote that you gave, which was Theodore Roosevelt's quotes about, you know, just like, Hey, if you're going to do this, you're going to make mistakes and you're going to mess up. And there's a lot to critique. Um, we had Michael two weeks ago, you said you were there this week, the week before we had 350 people last two weeks ago, profess faith in Christ for the first time in a, like a moment of decision at the end of our service.

Um, 350, you know, first time decisions and man, praise God. Right. That's like, you know, awesome. And thank God. Well, man, I got lit up this week on some people, not in the church, but just, you know, critics that were, Oh, you did it wrong, you know, and you did this and you shouldn't do this. And listen, we always need to be open to critique because, you know, we don't want to ever use the, uh, the machinations of the flesh in this, but, um, you know, I kind of listened to that, I listened to all this criticism and I think of the words of DL Moody, who was like, well, yes, ma'am. I understand that, that, that there are prove how we're doing this, but I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it. Right.

So I was like, man, we're in the game and we're, we're sharing Christ with people and, and I'll tell you on a personal level, um, you know, take it out of the church realm and just, for, you know, I, and I share Christ with a lot of people that it doesn't go anywhere and I get out of conversations and think that was terrible. Like I just did a terrible job. I didn't answer their questions.

Right. Um, you know, I got defensive or I said the wrong thing. Um, and I, I found two things. One, um, the times when I feel like I've done the worst, sometimes they end up being the ones that actually get a re a response. I I'll get, I got a letter recently just from somebody who overheard me talking to somebody else. And I remember feeling about that conversation because that person was not given the person I was actually talking to was not giving me anything.

I mean, just like it was like a brick wall. Little did I know, you know, two rows back, there's somebody listening the whole time and they, they just recognize who I was. And so, um, they told me seven years later, they is when they told me, um, Hey, I want you to know that God used that as a key part of my journey and coming to faith in Christ.

Um, you know, because God just uses those things. Also tell the church that I pastor that they get to hear the glory stories and they get to hear, you know, that story right there. And they hear me sharing Christ with somebody and then come into faith in Christ.

I was like, what you don't hear is that for every one story I tell you, there's nine stories that don't go anywhere. Um, that are just like, you know, talking to, um, you know, talking into the wind. Um, and it's just how God has ordained obedience is he compares us to the solar and the seed.

And he just says, man, your responsibility is to go out and you make the message known. And as you throw out the seed, sometimes it responds. Um, the analogy I love to use is it's like, um, going up, running a magnet over the sand. You just keep running over the sand. And then all of a sudden, you know, something jumps out of the sand, a piece of metal jumps out because you don't know it today.

Or, and in order to find it, you got to do it everywhere. My job every day is to get up and through the power of the spirit, run that evangelistic magnet over the sand and see where the Holy spirit has already prepared people to hear the message and respond. That's awesome. You know, one of the parts in the book that really kind of surprised me was, uh, there was, there was a chapter where you were talking about, you know, which, which denomination of Christianity is the fastest growing denomination. And, uh, you said, well, you know, you, you would have thought it was going to be the Baptist Baptist church because, you know, like you said, Lottie moon and, uh, Amy Carmichael and Billy Graham and all these other folks. And then you said, no, it's actually the Pentecostal denomination. Is that right? Yeah.

Well, okay. So one slight adjustment is what it was, was the denomination that per capita, um, mobilize their people for mission the best. So out of all the Christian denominations, evangelical denominations in America, who's doing the best job of mobilizing their people to go out on mission.

And I naturally thought, well, it's gotta be the badness because I mean, Michael missions is our thing. You know, you mentioned Lottie moon, um, you know, uh, uh, even if you go back to like William Carey and that environment judge said, and a lot of your famous missionaries were men, they were Baptist. And even today, if you were to make a list of the, you know, four or five most powerful mission speakers, chances are the majority of them will be Baptist. You know, um, uh, John Piper, Louie Giglio, David Platt, um, all these guys, you know, they're coming out of a background that is, is Baptist. Um, and so I just thought naturally it would be us, but it, it said that, no, I'm surprisingly the, the, the, the denomination does the best job or the Pentecostals. And they said, here's why they said in Baptist world and reformed Christianity world, um, what you have is you have this, all we talk about is the overwhelming-ness of the need. And that's great. We need to hear about that, but it can leave you. It can leave you paralyzed.

You know, man, there's 2.3 billion people that have never heard the name of Jesus. How am I supposed to actually change that? You know, it's, it feels paralyzed. What Pentecostals do is they'll talk about that, but they'll also talk about the spirit's empowerment and calling of you so that I'm also focused on the spirit of God is leading me to go here or do this or share Christ with that person. And this, you know, article I was reading was basically explaining, you know, evidently, um, it's more compelling to be gift driven, you know, spiritual gift driven than it is to be guilt driven. Um, and I realized that, that in my own, you know, kind of how I was approaching things, whether leading people at the summit church or whether it's the summit church in Raleigh Durham, or whether it's, um, you know, just, uh, my own ministry, I, a lot of times I'm thinking about what I need to go out and do for God, as opposed to getting up and saying the spirit of God has anointed me and he has specific people for me to go to today. He has specific plans for me. I know that, you know, our listeners right now, every one of you that is listening, um, you know, you might say, well, I'm just not that, I'm not that talented. And I, you know, there's just the, the, the needs are so overwhelming. Look, all God wants from you is he wants you to obey and the spirit of God, the same spirit that was on John, the bad, the same spirits on me, same spirit that was on Billy Graham is on you. And it's not about your, uh, your ability anymore.

It's just about your availability. And you get up and say, yes. And God sends, uses that willingness and sends you to the people and the places where he wants to work through you to, um, to bring people to, to understanding, understanding Jesus.

That's awesome. And, and, you know, one of the things that I've heard you talk about a lot, JD was, uh, you know, for, uh, I guess there are some churches or there's some people today who are, you know, they say, well, the God told me dot, dot, dot, or the Holy spirit told me dot, dot, dot. And I heard you actually say one time, you said that, um, do you know how many disasters have happened in churches because somebody stood up and said, God told me so there that's one side of it, but I guess the other side of it is to say, okay, we're not going to listen to the Holy spirit at all.

And then, so how do you find that happy medium? Yeah, good question. And when that's obviously, um, a big part of the book, because, um, you know, just to reiterate what you said, more havoc has been wreaked in the world following the words God just told me than probably any other face. Um, and you know, I hear people sometimes say, well, God said this to me and I'm like, I don't think that was God, you know?

Uh, so it can definitely be something that's abused. However, however, when you study the book of acts specifically, um, you know, people always call it the acts of the apostles, what's really a misleading name, by the way, the name wasn't inspired by the Holy spirit. That was something that, um, you know, church historians added later, but, um, actually the apostles as a misleading name because the main actor in the book of acts is the Holy spirit. Um, the Holy spirit, you know, appears 36 different times in the book of acts.

And in every single one of those, he is speaking is, is, is, is talking, he is guiding. And so I get it, I get it that, that the apostles were a unique group. I get it that they experienced some things, some signs that, that are not as prevalent in our day.

Some of them maybe not, not, not even really, you know, in operation functionally at all anymore. Um, but, but you can't convince me that the only book that God gave us, the book of acts that tells us in narrative form, what it, what it, what it's like for, for the Holy spirit to be at work in the church. You can't, you can't convince me that that whole book is filled with stories of people whose experiences have nothing in common with us. And let me quote John Newton here, cause he's not a, you know, he's not a raging Pentecostal. He's a, John Newton has a, was a Puritan wrote, wrote amazing grace. And John Newton said, can that which is, was so essential for the ministry of the early church be completely non-essential for the ministry of our churches today?

And the answer is of course not. That means we have to learn how to be guided by the spirit. We use a phrase at our church called led by the spirit taught by the word.

We're taught by the word. Whenever we say, God said, we want to make sure we got a chapter and verse because that the scriptures are God's God's revelation, his, his voice that you can say, that's what God is saying. But, but what the spirit does is he takes that word and then he applies it into various situations and he leads you so that, that you know where you're supposed to be going, what you're supposed to be saying, what ministries you should be involved in. Another one of my favorite little phrases and it's in the book is, is not everything that comes from heaven has your name on it.

Not everything that heaven wants to do on earth is something that's for Michael or for JD or for, or for you. It's something that you got to discern from the spirit what he's called you to, the ministry, that that part of the body of Christ and that part of his mission to the world that you're supposed to play. That, that's awesome. And you've actually, I've heard you say many, many times that when you first started out in your ministry, you said that you were praying for revival, you were praying for a revival, and then you said you felt like the Holy Spirit told you something. Do you remember?

Yeah, oh, very well. It was a kind of a defining moment in my life and, and what it, what it, what it illustrates is that a lot of times the obstacle to God answering our prayers for awakening and revival are our own idolatrous, you know, kind of sinful motivations. What, what happened is I'd taken a day to just do some prayer and fasting and, and one of the things I was asking God to do is just to, like you said, send a revival, send an awakening. And I remember seeing you say, God, I want it to be the kind of awakening that a hundred years from now, when they tell the history of, of Raleigh Durham, man, they're going to mention this revival, how it changed, it changed the city. And, you know, God doesn't, I don't have this happen to me all the time, but it was one of those moments when I sense the spirit of God moving in my heart very strongly and very clearly.

And what he said was, um, he said, okay, what if I say yes? And what if I answer that prayer? And what if I send an awakening that turns the triangle upside down? But what if I don't use you or your church to lead in that? What if nobody ever even notices you were the summit church?

What if it's another church down the road that gets really big and they get, they get all the attention and nobody knows your name at all. Do you still want me to do it now? Michael, I know the right answer to that question. The right answer to that is, Oh yes, Lord, you must increase. I must increase. That may have been the right answer, but that wouldn't have been the real answer.

The real answer is no, I'm not okay with that. I really wanted God to, to cause there to be an awakening, but I also wanted him to exalt my own name in it. And it revealed to me that in that moment, what I was doing is, is my lips were saying, thy kingdom come. But what my heart was saying was my kingdom come. And God used that as a moment is to expose me and say, I can't answer a prayer for awakening and revival when, when, when so much of your own idolatry or self-interest is tied up in it. And so it was a time, it led to a time of repentance, you know, and I'd love to tell you, you know, 10, 12 years later that all, you know, that's something I don't struggle with anymore.

No, I still do. I mean, it's, that's a constant battle for me to ask who am I wanting to get the attention, me or God. But I do know that that started a trajectory where I began to say, God, it's, I really, I want to lay down my reputation. I want to lay down my own interest. I want to lay down all the things in this that are good for me. And I just want your kingdom to come, whether that benefits me at all or not, let's just, people's souls are so important that I want to see awakening and revival. Who cares who gets the credit?

Who cares who gets the credit? And, and yeah, I mean, I, I'm so excited about this book. I want everybody to, to get the book.

I want everybody to read it. It's What Are You Going to Do With Your Life by J.D. Greer. J.D. Greer, how did they get the book? Well, you can go to my website, probably the easiest way, J.D. Greer, J-D-G-R-E-E-A-R.com, and there's a link to all the resources that I have there. There's also What Are You Going to Do With Your Life?

You can just type that in on a search engine or whatareyougonnadowithyourlife.com. It'll, it'll take you there. And then pretty much everywhere books are sold, you know, Amazon and Walmart have not pulled it yet to my knowledge.

You never know these days based on what they're doing right now, but you know, everywhere books are sold, I know they can get a copy of it. Well, J.D. Greer, thank you so much for your time. J.D. Greer, you are sent. This is the Truth Network.