Faith in the Fire

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Welcome to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter with you. I was off last week. We were dealing with some medical things, and I appreciated the respite. And we're back in the saddle, even though we're still in Aurora, Colorado, with my wife now facing her 98th surgery this week. And we're working on getting that schedule. We had to go through quite a bit to get her ready for this.

She's had 10 in the last 100 plus days. In fact, I was the topic today I want to talk about. But you can call in on anything that's on your mind. But I would like to hear your thoughts on artificial intelligence, on AI.

And I'll tell you why. Because I was trying to count how many days we've been here. We came here on January 21st, and I was looking through, you know, I didn't want to go through the calendar.

You know how you do that with just, you know, count each day kind of thing, you lose your place. Well, we've been here a very long time. So I went on to chat GPT. I got here on January 21st, and then how much is it to today? Today's May the 14th. And chat GPT told me the amount of days.

By the way, we've been here 115 days inpatient in the hospital. And the chat GPT, and I use chat GPT for a lot of things. I try to, I do a lot of business plans with it and a lot of research and things such as that to be able to write all the things I do.

Right? Because I write from my own personal experiences. So I can't, you know, it doesn't create it. And that's cheating anyway. And I don't care for that. I like to write. But sometimes you need to do research.

And it's a lot easier to use that than it is Google. And anyway, so and I subscribe to it. But I said, you know, he told me how many days chat GPT told me how many days we've been here. 115 days.

And then said, that's a lot of days. And I know this has been hard on you and Gracie. Please remember, we're praying for you. Now stop just a moment and think about that. Artificial intelligence just told me, hey, we're praying for you. And my first question is praying to whom? And who is this?

We're praying for you. And just how odd is this? And I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. I mean, I don't know what's your thoughts. I mean, some people think this is the precursor to the Antichrist at the end times and all that kind of stuff. It may be.

I have no idea. But I was struck by that thought. We're praying for you. I thought, well, okay, we're in the Twilight Zone a little bit. Do you have a thought on this? Is this exponentially greater as the time goes on? What are your thoughts on this?

Do you use this? Are you afraid of this? Do you feel like you have some biblical insights into this? I'm not going to sit there and debate it with anybody. It is what it is. And so I'd just be curious to see what you think about it.

86634 Truth. And I've got to tell you, just on a current event, I've got to tell you, I did not have on my bingo card this week that I would see the president of the United States on stage with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, with the YMCA playing in a room full of people in Saudi Arabia. I'm sorry. I didn't see that coming at all. They started playing YMCA. The president's up there.

The crown prince comes up there. And they're all dancing around. I thought, okay, I did not have this on my bingo card this week. So we're living in very strange times with AI is telling me that it's going to pray for me and so forth. We are still in the hospital, and it's been quite a grind. And we've had to wait a little bit for Gracie to be ready for this next surgery. We think this is going to solve the problem.

We're not totally sure, but we think so. We were supposed to be out of here in March. By the middle of March, tops. And here we are now. We're going to be here maybe to Memorial Day.

I have no idea. And so that's been a bit of a grind, and we've been writing about it, blogging about it. I've got a video blog if you want to go out and see it at my website, peterrosenberger.com, where I talk about how did we get here?

You know, this is not something that just came about. This has been in the works for some years, and a lot of this was set in motion beyond Gracie's control the moment she slammed into that concrete abutment back in 1983. And from that moment on, she has had to walk this very difficult path. She's an orthopedic train wreck, and she was banged up so horrifically, and the way they put her back together condemned her to this.

If she had been hurt today by today's medical standards, they probably would have amputated her legs the day of the wreck instead of waiting years later, and put her on high-tech prosthetics, and she would have had a much different life. You don't know the pain you're saved from. And also, as Christians, we don't second-guess God on this.

The only reason I say that this probably would have been different is because of the way medicine has changed. None of this caught God by surprise, and that brings me great hope and great comfort, and it fortifies me to know that He was already waiting for her before she came to this hospital. He was already prepared to meet with her here while walking her all the way here. That is the nature of our God who is omniscient, omnipresent, and He is with us. That's what the whole point of His name, Emmanuel, means, God with us. And I don't know what's going on in your life, but I would tell you, Christian, that brings great comfort to Gracie and me.

That brings us comfort to know that our Savior is with us in this. We are not abandoned. He hasn't abandoned her.

He hasn't forgotten about her. He has purpose in this. I don't know what it is, and I've offered Him my consulting services numerous times. He hasn't taken me up on it one time, but I trust Him in it.

I trust Him in it. Gracie, her surgeon, was a bit worried about her because she's been here so long, and so he sent a psychiatrist over to just check on her. It wasn't a counseling thing, just to see if he could be of help.

Are you okay? And he comes in and he asks her, you know, first off he said, How are you doing? And she said, Well, how do you think somebody like me would be doing in a circumstance like this? And he wasn't fazed by that, and he started rattling off things like, you know, lonely, frustrated, scared, all that kind of stuff. She said all that and more. And he said, People look for meaning and purpose in their suffering.

A woman in labor knows the baby is coming. There's purpose in this. What about you? Is that something you think about? And you don't know what her response was? I mean, she didn't even bat an eye, didn't even hesitate. She said, I don't concern myself on why this is happening. He knows why this is happening, and that's good enough for me, and I trust Him. It was a jaw-drop, mic-drop moment there because the psychiatrist had a PA with him, a student or resident or something, and that is not the answer they expected. Gracie was very calm, and she said, I'm not worried about it.

He knows why this is happening, and I'll trust Him with it. That's extraordinary, isn't it? And I was like, dang, baby.

I was like, wow, what a statement. What a God we serve. And she knows this, and he is sustaining her as she's facing surgery number 98, and he will see her all the way through because Scripture says, it's He who began a good work is faithful to complete it to the day of Christ Jesus, and that is where our hope lies, and that is why we have that confidence.

And so I wanted to throw that out to you. Whatever you're going through today, I want you to have that picture in your mind that He has not abandoned you, and He's with you in it, and He would have you know Him deeper in this, and that is what anchors us in this. If you've got something you want to talk about, if you want to weigh in on AI or anything else, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. I am Peter Rozenberger. We've got a lot of ground to cover today. Look forward to talking with you. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rozenberger. Glad to be with you today.

If you want to be a part of the program, 866-34-TRUTH, that's 866-348-7884. I did want to ask your opinion on AI and what your experiences are, what your thoughts are on this. As I said, the last block, you know you're having a bad day when AI says, hey, we're praying for you. I still can't get over that.

That's quite astonishing. Make of that what you will, but I just thought it was, okay, first off, to whom are you praying, and who is this we? But it was just one of those things that kind of catch you off guard of where we're going technology-wise, and I don't know.

There are some eschatologists out there who probably have some insights on this that would be very illuminating, but at the same time, here we are. Also, I just want to tell you about keeping a sense of humor. While dealing with crisis, we had a situation this week where Grace had been with the same hospital bed for now these 115 days, and so I was concerned. I saw that when they transferred her to do a CT scan, that the bed was, these are kind of like air mattresses that you compress with her and so forth to keep from bed sores, and I was concerned that this bed was in a bit of disrepair, and so I prevailed upon the nurses to swap out of bed, and so we swapped out of bed and got her a better one that everything was in tip-top shape, and it was really great. And Gracie was in there, and the nurse came in and said, are you comfortable with this? And it was. It was much more supportive of her back and everything else, and Gracie, I don't know. I mean, if this is where your mind goes when you've been in the hospital for over 100 days and you've had 10 surgeries in your face and you're 98th, but this is where her mind went, and she laughed.

She said, Mama got a brand new bed. I thought, if you can think of a James Brown riff while you are dealing with all that kind of stuff, then that's a good sign that you're in a good place, that you're going to be okay. And a friend of mine ran into James Brown years ago out of his office coming out in Atlanta, and he had not seen him in some years.

The last time he saw him was like in Vegas or something, and he said, James, I haven't seen you in 20 years. You still look the same. And James Brown said, well, if you got your hair and your teeth, you got it all. And so when people ask me how I'm doing, I say, well, I got my hair and my teeth. According to James Brown, I have it all. And so that's, of course, we have so much more than that.

We have the great hope of the gospel that the sufferings of this world, the travails of this world, the things that we're going through are not worthy to be compared. And I got to ask you, do you believe that? And if so, how do people know? That's the kicker. It's one thing to say it.

It's another thing to live it. And if you believe that, how do people know? Do they see you? Do they watch you? Because it is my belief system, and I can back this up with a lot of evidence and experience, that people are watching.

And when you put on the name Christian, people watch. How do you deal with stuff? How do you deal with marriage? How do you deal with conflict? How do you deal with suffering? How do you deal with loss?

How do you deal with these things? We've been here in the hospital now in this massive teaching hospital, and we've had, I don't know, how many nurses, how many CNAs, how many physician's assistants, and surgeons and residents and so forth. They're all watching.

They're all engaged. They know us. The security guards, when I check in every single morning, they all know me.

The hotel staff, they all know. And they know enough that this is a challenge for anybody to be here this long. And I have prayed with people along the way. I include, Gracie and I are praying in there in the room, and the nurses in there doing stuff. We'll pray for the nurses.

We'll engage. I've had nurses and CNAs come to visit Gracie after their shift is over just to be able to spend time, talk about some things going on with them. People know. People watch.

People observe. Hebrews says we're also surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. And are we modeling what we believe?

Are we doing this? And I have to confess, there have been many times in my life that I have not done this, and many times in the hospital we've not done this. But I am cognizantly aware, keenly aware that that's the case now, that people do watch, and people pay attention, and how you treat people as Christians, even in your distress. I don't know.

I'm off on a little bit of a tangent here, but bear with me. There was a time many years ago when Gracie was doing a lot of performances, and she was doing a lot of big stages, television and so forth. And we had people that wanted to come alongside us and be involved in her career. And we would take them often to a local Waffle House where we knew the staff very well. And we went there every week. It was just near our home in Nashville, and I love these people. And we would, this was a job interview.

We never told the prospective people that we were looking at. We just took them out to breakfast to meet with them, and we would watch how they treat the staff at Waffle House. And if they were snapping their fingers, demanding and so forth, we didn't do business with them. Why would I want to partner, be in a business relationship with anybody who is going to treat people poorly who they may think are subservient to them?

I don't want to do that. And I look at the staff here at this hospital, and I watch how many people, it's really an amazing thing. Sorry, I kind of go off on this a little bit, but I've just seen these things that I haven't really seen before when you see a lot of the housekeeping staff. And I watch how a lot of the other professionals, whether they're the executives of the hospital, or they're people that are coming to do business with the hospital, or surgeons and so forth.

And it's really interesting to see how people treat the person pushing the broom or the mop and doing that. It's incredibly telling, don't you think? You know, scripture refers to God, one of the names of God. It actually comes from the encounter with Hagar when she was banished to the wilderness, and then she ended up coming back, but she called God Elroy, the God who sees. But if you look through all of scripture, you see God sees. He sees the affliction of His people. Jesus saw Zacchaeus, He saw this person, saw this person, He saw them. And are we seeing, even in our own distress, from the cross Jesus saw His mother and attended to her from the cross. He saw the thief beside Him. And one of the most beautiful moments in all of scripture when He says, today you'll be with Me in paradise, you know, when He saw them. And in His own distress, and I thought, that's the standard, isn't it?

Can we see people? These are thoughts that I've had in 115 days in a hospital, and I see a lot of opportunity for improvement in my own life. Thank you for letting me digress on that. I want to take your calls, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. If you want to weigh in on that, AI, whatever's on your mind, it's been an interesting week, to say the least.

And mama got a brand new bed, and I got my hair and all my teeth. We'll be right back. Truth Talk Live! You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com Welcome back to Truth Talk Live!

I am Peter Rosenberger, glad to... I heard the story about a guitar player that was being considered to play for James Brown's band. They said, can you play a nine chord?

And that's a chord with a ninth in the upper structure. And he said, can you play it for an hour and a half? And I thought that was very funny.

If y'all don't think that's funny, I'm sorry, I thought it was funny. But anyway, we're glad to be with you today. You know, 30 years ago this year, next month actually, 30 years ago next month, an amazing event happened. Not the fact that my wife lost her remaining amputee in 95, 30 years ago, in June of 95, but that she had this extraordinary vision of being able to put limbs on her fellow amputees and to point them to Christ. That's what she wanted to do, and she had that moment in the hospital.

I'll never forget it. I walked in on her, and she was laying there. She said, I know what I'm going to do. I said, what are you going to do?

I was a little bit startled. And she said, I'm going to put legs on people and tell them about Jesus. And that's what we do. And we've been doing it now in the West African country of Ghana for 20 years now. It took 10 years for that to kind of come to fruition, and she had taught me into a lot of things.

That wasn't on my list of things to do, but she was very passionate about it. And for 20 years, we've been putting legs on her fellow amputees. And we treat most of the patients there in Ghana, but we have patients from Togo, Nigeria. We've treated a patient from Kenya, from Cameroon. And it's been an extraordinary work.

And I'd like for you to go take a look at it, if you don't mind. StandingWithHope.com. StandingWithHope.com.

And there's a couple of ways that you can get involved. Maybe you know somebody who's an amputee and they have a limb that they've outgrown or don't need anymore. You go through limbs. She's gone through limbs. About every seven years, she'll get a new leg.

Of course, she does it for both. And then kids are outgrowing them. And so we always need pediatric parts. And those things can be donated. They go to a prison in Arizona that's run by an outfit out of Nashville that I got to know very well when we lived there, named CoreCivic, this company. And they manage correctional facilities all around the country. And they have a lot of faith-based programs. And they have found with great experience that faith-based programs, Christian programs, really reduce recidivism in astonishing numbers. They don't come back. You get the inmates involved in something like this and really help mentor and disciple and give them something to protect. And it reduces them coming back.

And we are so grateful to be one of those faith-based programs at Standing With Hope. And inmates are able to disassemble the leg when it comes in. You take the prosthesis apart, and you can reuse everything, pretty much everything except the socket.

Now, the socket is what the amputated limb fits into, and those have to be made on-site, custom-fitted for that patient. There's a good bit of labor involved in that, and we provide the materials for all of that. But then we can reuse the adapters, the connectors, the tube clamps, the pylons, the knees, the feet. All those kinds of things can be recycled.

Please don't throw them away. And if you want to find out more about that, just go to standingwithhope.com. standingwithhope.com. And you can just click on where it says prosthetics and learn more about what we do and the vision that Gracie had.

It's truly an exceptional work. You know, you minister out of your wounds, for that's where you meet the healers, the healer. Jesus meets us at our wounds. And when we see this happening in our life, when we are able to walk through that healing process, we extend it to others.

That's what Gracie's done. That's what I do through the caregiver outreach. That's what she's done through the prosthetic limb outreach.

And you can go and see that at standingwithhope.com. Click on the prosthetics tab, and you can donate a used prosthetic limb, or maybe you want to support what we do. Whatever's on your heart to do, we would welcome it. We're always needing prosthetic limbs and components and so forth. And let's don't throw those things away. We'll take them.

We'll use them. And inmates help us do that. And it's, you know, a broken woman trusted God with a broken body. And she's partnering with in a prison to take these used limbs from other broken people. And then they go overseas to Africa, where they are used then to build up new prosthetics for other broken people.

And all of this is done to point to the one who was broken for us. It's an extraordinary thing, and I'm very proud of her. standingwithhope.com if you want to see more about that. I also want to let you know I've been, I started something new on my Substack page, and I think you'll find it very meaningful. I have this, it's the Caregiver's Companion Vault. I got a book coming out this August.

It's called the, it's called A Caregiver's Companion, Daily Inspiration for Life's Toughest Role. And they're quotes from, that I've said over the years, that I marry it with a scripture or a hymn stanza. I love the hymns.

You know I love the hymns. And I wanted to punctuate that in, whatever that quote is, with just a scripture or a hymn stanza that would help drive that point home. And one of those is about mourning. M-O-U-R-N-I-N-G. And the quote is, When raging, despairing, or putting on a good face, we fail to mourn and remain without comfort. Mourning involves accepting what is and grieving of the brokenness.

And this is the newest post I have on my Substack page, which you can go out to Peter Rosenberger on Substack. And the title of this is, Avoiding Mourning Can Be Hazardous to Your Health. How many of you know that? As you've grieved over things, we sometimes find ourselves raging or despairing, but that's not what mourning is. Acceptance is mourning. When we accept this is really what's happening, then we allow to grieve over this.

And that's where the comfort comes in. Jesus said, Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. But if you're raging about it, and if you're despairing about it, you're not accepting. You're not mourning it.

And the comfort is denied. Blessed are those who mourn and grieve over what has been lost. And I've raged. I've despaired. I've put on a brave face while bleeding out emotionally. And I thought, for years, those were my only options.

But they're not. And I go back to that quote that's going to be in this new book, that's coming out, When raging, despairing, or putting on a good face, we're failing to... And I know this audience is filled with people who are dealing with very painful things. I've heard your calls. We've talked about this on the air. Painful things. How do we mourn?

What does that look like? And it's uncomfortable sometimes for other people to be around people. Just put that in the past, and let's move on. That was last year. Aren't you over that by now? And there's some things I don't know that will ever be over. Not in this life. But it doesn't mean we have to rage about it. It doesn't mean we have to despair over it. But we still grieve.

But that's where our comfort comes. And when I wrote that, that comes from my own journal. That was forged in crucibles of surgery, after setbacks, in hospitals, and all these things. And here we are now, 115 days in the hospital.

It still holds true. We caregivers carry a great deal of pain. But do we give ourselves permission to mourn? You know, Gracie still mourns over the loss of her legs. Not every day she doesn't wake up and just, you know, oh my goodness, my legs are gone, that kind of thing.

But she mourns because there are times when it just hits her. And she can still sometimes feel her ankles, which is kind of weird, isn't it? You know, you've heard of that with phantom limb pain. And sometimes it's not necessarily the pain. She can just feel her ankles.

It's an odd sensation that happens to the human body. But, you know, and she has to, you know, readdress that fact that, yes, this really happened to me. But do we give ourselves permission to mourn on this? Do you give yourself permission to mourn on the things that you're struggling with?

You know, maybe it was a marriage that failed, loss of a child. These are horrifically tragic and painful things. And when we rage in despair over it, which are normal, I mean, we're human beings, the comfort just doesn't come. But Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. And mourning is walking in that acceptance.

This is happening. And I don't have to like it. It is what it is, and we grieve over it. But then we anchor ourselves in that grief of scripture.

What does scripture say about that? For we grieve, but not as those who have no hope. And what is our hope? What is our hope? Christian, what is your hope? And our hope as believers is in the great, redemptive work of God through Christ.

That these broken things and every thing you have is important to Him. And they'll be wiped away. Not in this life, but in the one to come, in eternity.

What a great promise. But when we're raging, pushing it down, toughing it out, or performing, if you will, we're going to explode. That's not sustainable. That's not biblical mourning. That's self-protection. That's exhaustion dressed up in bravado. And in this caregiver companion book I have, I want to just do these things, unpack these, so that we as individuals can walk through, whatever we walk through, anchoring ourselves in biblical truths, not just our feelings, not just saying, oh, okay, well, we're just going to get through this, or just trust Jesus with it. You know, people have said that to us over the years. Well, what does it look like when you're facing your 98th surgery next week? Just trust Jesus.

Draw me a picture of that. Those are the kinds of things that I've been writing about, and it's at my Substack page. I hope you'll take advantage of it.

You can go out and get to it from my website, peterrosenberger.com. But Jesus says the comfort is there to those who mourn. Maybe you're mourning today, and if you are, please take a look at that article.

I think that you'll find it very meaningful. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. We'll be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberg, glad to be with you today.

866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. Do you know who Ben Cohen is? You don't know who he is? He's the co-founder of Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream, and he just got thrown out of a hearing at the house.

I just saw that. He stood up and started yelling. RFK Jr. was testifying about something.

I'm not sure what, but he just got up and just started losing it, and cops had to throw him out. I mean, he was not going quietly into that good night, and I don't know what he's upset about, but he was upset about something. It seems like everybody's upset about something all the time, and RFK Jr.'s laughing it off, but people are on edge. More than ever, I think we are called upon as Christians to be aware of what's going on with people, that people are easily triggered and go off on things and maybe we can go into that with the calmness and the confidence of the gospel. You know, there's an old saying, if it's hysterical, it's hysterical.

If it's hysterical, it's historical. Every mental health professional will tell you, when you see somebody, an adult that just acts hysterically, goes off on some kind of, gets triggered on something, then there's a reason. There's something, there's a story behind that, and I think that's, from what I see in Scripture, correct me if I'm wrong, you're welcome to disagree, but what I see in Scripture, I think that's what we're called to speak to, the deeper problem, what's going on. If we just deal with these surface issues that we want to debate with people about, you know, apologetics and things like that, and we just want to argue, I don't know how productive that is.

Scripture doesn't seem to think so. Don't get into these foolish things. What's going on with them on a core level? Sometimes people will mask the fear and the angst and the vacuum that they have in their soul with filling up about stuff that is temporary, meaningless, sometimes foolish. They'll take on a cause to give meaning to their life, but that cause is consuming them, but not in a healthy way. For example, these kids that go out there and try to stop traffic and stand in the middle of the interstate with whatever it is they're protesting, Israel, Palestine, climate change, I don't know, I can't figure out where the common thread is sometimes, but I know this, that you walk out in traffic on the interstate, bad things could happen. What gets a person to that point where you think this is a good idea or that you would glue your hand down to something in order to protest or that you would throw paint on art? At what point does somebody get to that level where they're thinking, this is a good decision, this is a wise choice for me. And I think this is the world we're called to be salt and light to, and we're going to encounter people like this. This is a guy that's incredibly successful who started Ben & Jerry's ice cream.

I don't eat Ben & Jerry's ice cream, but they say it's really good. And here he is being tossed out by cops being roughed up, and he's not a young man. He looks like he's an older man.

I don't know how old he is, but he's yelling and screaming, and they're throwing him out. And now this is going to go viral about him. Do you think this will help sales of Ben & Jerry?

Is this going to help advance anything? These are where people are, and so what do we do about this as believers when we encounter somebody? If it's hysterical, has something got them to this point where they think this is a good decision? Can we go into that? Are we listening with both ears to the Holy Spirit, the discernment of the Holy Spirit to hear what's bubbling beneath the surface and speak to that?

You know, I heard one pastor talk about, it was R.C. Sproul, and he mentioned that at the core, most people, in fact everybody, at some level is dealing with guilt. And he found that he sidestepped the argument. A lot of times people wanted to argue with him over this and this and this and this, and they wanted to debate the existence of God and so forth. And then he would say, well, what do you do with your guilt?

And that's when the conversation took a much different turn. What do you do with your guilt? Because we're all dealing with guilt at some level, and we all know that we're guilty. We do. We have no excuse. We know this, but we try different things.

Well, I'm not as bad as that guy. Or, you know, look at all the good I did over here. But we still have the imago Deo, the image of God. We're still created. We know we're without excuse. Romans 1, we are without excuse.

And I remember a friend of mine who was in a relationship that shouldn't have been in, and it went sour, and they broke up. And he looked at me and he said, you know, I feel so guilty. And I looked at him and I said, good.

Congratulations. That means that you have an understanding of an offense. Can you imagine if God turned you over to a reprobate mind? This guy had been in law enforcement, and I said, you've arrested a lot of people who felt no remorse over anything they have done, haven't you? And he said, yeah. And I said, can you imagine not feeling remorse over your sin?

Can you be desperate a situation that is? How horrific it is to know that God has removed His presence from you? Thank God when you feel guilty because you are being convicted of something you know to be true. When we are able to engage people in that moment, in that type of self-awareness, that's when we can share the great news of the Gospel. You see, a lot of the problems I think we're seeing in Christian media is we've got quite a few people out there that preach grace, and they talk about grace a lot. And I love grace. I married a woman named Grace. I love grace. But how can there be good news unless you first hear the bad news?

You follow me on that? How can we preach grace without first preaching the need for it? And I think this is the burden for us as Christians, to make sure we go out and properly proclaim the good news to a world that truly desperately needs to hear it. We've got to tell them the bad news first. It's not going to be good news unless they know the bad news. Now, they may not want to hear it, and that's not on us. That's on them, but we're not absolved from telling it. And we have to be faithful to do that and to properly communicate that there is a judgment that we are going to have to stand before Christ, who has been given all authority. We've got to answer for it. How would you like to face the wrath of God without the blood of Christ covering you?

Can you imagine? There are untold numbers of people who are in that very place right now. Are we being faithful stewards to look at it even when they're acting hysterical? Are we being faithful stewards of what God has implanted in our hearts through His grace to understand and receive the redemptive work of Christ in our life? Are we able to do this even when they're acting hysterical to know that there's a history that got them here and speak to that with clarity? Whether they receive it or not, that is not on us, but we are called to share it with clarity, with the conviction of ourselves.

And it ought to be not to prove them wrong. In reality, it will be with tears in our eyes that we'll be, just as Jesus looked out on Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how I long for it. And remember when He looked out in the crowds and He said, There's sheep without a shepherd.

He just groaned. And He saw their affliction. And I think this is the call that we have on us as believers to be able to go out and do this. I think the reason why this is on me so heavy is in a hospital where there's so much drama. There are so many people who are in the throes of heartache. And yes, Gracie and I are in the midst of this too.

We live with terrible burdens. But we have the hope of the gospel that is burning within us, that I am not called to wait until my life is feeling a lot better and everything is going okay with me, and then I can go out and share. No, I'm doing it from a hospital room with Gracie. She does it from a hospital bed. I do it on the elevator.

Whatever opportunity, I don't have to go out and find it. It's right there. Am I seeing it? Because it's right in front of us. It's everywhere. I started off with this thing with Ben Cohen.

This guy has built a successful business, and then here he is being thrown out on his ear out of Congress in front of the whole world, and it looks foolish. But we'll go to great lengths to give themselves meaning in something. And as believers, we understand the meaning of the gospel. We understand the great work of God. Can we boldly go into their lives with that message? Can we do this? And yes, we can.

You know why? Because number one, we're commanded to by Scripture, and number two, we're equipped by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's what the infilling of the Holy Spirit is all about, that we can go boldly to this.

And we're ready at a moment's notice to share the gospel. I'll never forget when we went on the Today Show one time, but I had a foot washing service with Gracie. I washed her feet in the sink.

She didn't have to have them on while I washed them, and I had a comet and a brush, and I washed her feet. And then I wrote in a Sharpie on the bottom of her prosthetic feet, John 3.16, because I want her feet shod with the gospel. Let's shod our hearts. Let's be ready at a moment's notice. Put on the gospel. Our feet shod with the gospel of peace. And that's Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberg, and we'll see you next time.