This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Truth Talk Live. All right, let's talk. A daily program powered by the Truth Network. This is kind of a great thing.
I'll tell you what: where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together. Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. When you hear the title "Charlotte's Web," what comes to mind? That heart-wrenching, amazing animated film, or the world-famous book, best-selling book that E.B.
White wrote, that is now the theme. Of an amazing devotion, a through-the-year devotion by a longtime friend of the Truth Network. Wait till you hear how Amanda Chambers has taken this book, this legendary epic work of fiction, and turned it into her own devotional book called Some God. Exclamation point. A Christian companion to Charlotte's webs of hope.
So, Amanda Chambers, I'm so glad you're on the radio with us today. All over the country, talking about this devotion, we're honored to be maybe one of your first national broadcast partners to get the word out about this devotion. Because I know there's a lot of Charlotte Websters out there that want to get a hold of this thing. Wow! Thank you for being on.
And tell us what inspired this wonderful devotion. Hey, Stu. It's so good to talk with you today, and I think it's timing is perfect. The devotion has themes for each month, and the theme for October is writing.
So the devotion was inspired, I think, because. I loved the character of Wilbur. I could identify with him to some extent because he was in critical situations. He often just got very anxious, and so his friend Charlotte mentored him and helped him overcome those things.
So at the very end, he became. Like a Wilberforce, he was able to think in a crisis, and even turn a chapter in his life after Charlotte died, and live peacefully. It's just remarkable, yeah. It's it's, but it's remarkable how you could pull so much out of that. You got a a little bitty spider and a big old pig, and whenever I I love it, love the book, I love I love Charlotte's Web, I love the movie, the program.
You know, they obviously keep bringing it back in different variations, but there's also a little bit of sense when when it comes on TV or wherever I am watching or reading, I kind of know how it ends. You know, with this hero, this awesome spider laying it down, literally laying her life down for this guy, and I just like the fact you took a book. When we talk about spiders and webs, oftentimes in the Christian life, folks write books to talk about the temptation. You know, don't get caught in the spider's web and be careful comparing the devil to a spider and such and such. I get that, but you have taken this really popular work of fiction.
And you've taken and written this whole book, that's got a quick start guide for looking up and becoming unstuck. All kinds of monthly themes: personality, relationships, transition, and struggle. Faith, branching out, budding, and blooming. Freedom and thinking. You've got twenty Bible themes per month, with prayers, radiance, actions, and webs of related entry.
How in the world, Amanda, did you get all this to put this? This is a nice sized devotional. Very nice. Very well done.
Well, Stu, I want to give credit to the Lord where there is good that comes out of it. He gets the credit, and He gave me a wonderful imagination ever since I was a little girl. I grew up on a river outside, and I had a great sense of His presence. But it wasn't until I went to a youth retreat and heard the gospel for the first time that I understood. The joy of having a personal relationship with Jesus, and you know Jesus is so good.
He opens up gifts. He gives us each one a gift. Wilbur thought he might be able have the gift of spinning a web, but he didn't.
So, but Charlotte was equipped to write those words in her web to help win Wilbur's well being, to keep him from being the Christmas. Ham.
So I used to play a game, a little bit of a game during COVID. To I mean, whenever I saw a pig, I would just challenge myself to think of a devotion, but. The book itself has classic themes of self-sacrifice and redemption and teamwork. All those things, so it's easy to pull those out of the book and talk about them. Oh yeah, it's nice to see an example in this movie.
This book, of course, the the movie based on the book, which was long before Hollywood, you know, got a hold of it. But it's nice to see redemptive narrative. You see redemptive narrative all over the movies, and what you've taken is you've taken The redemptive narrative in this wonderful book, work of fiction, very famous, best-selling book, and you have you've extracted some very solid, you know, pre-existing because you know honestly, it all comes from the Lord, doesn't it, Amanda?
So you've taken that's right. You've taken some of that, and I mean all these devotionals, and you know, every day there is a different thought, and you connect it to. You connect it to the reader, to the spiritual life, to walking closer to Christ. What would you say you're when you when you think about that? What is it about the movie if you if you could give kind of a bottom line that like the biggest thing that grabbed you about the whole movie, the whole book, Charlotte's Web, to drive you to write this devotion?
What what is the what maybe maybe I should say what's your favorite part when you think when you connect it to Christ and the gospel?
Well, I love how God gives us a new identity, and Charlotte weaves Wilbur's identity through the words of some pig. Terrific, radiant, and humble, and there are devotions in the book. I think there are nine on identity.
So Wilbur, I think, becomes to act out of his identity and to be able to do and think. And so we, as Christians, have a new identity that's based in reality. It's not fiction, and so we can live new lives. And that's something. Yeah, the world.
You know, the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. The world is bent on your destruction because the devil wants your soul anywhere but heaven. And it's interesting that here, here, this pig was born for slaughter. I mean, he says, "What's he hear about himself?" Well, this is going to be a rip. This is going to be some really good bacon.
This is going to be some super sausage. These are going to be. This guy's going to make some serious links. But he hears this. He starts listening to this other voice.
And and so you're honestly trying to get folks to listen to the voice that comes from the Lord, that comes from the truth, as opposed to all the noise that is really deadly, that has has to do with with the darkness and has to do with no hope, right? That's right. And one of in in the introduction I wrote. That this book is to encourage anyone who needs a word to get unstuck and launch into deeper faith and greater fruitfulness. Burns' last name is Arable, which means a crop-producing ground.
So, so often we are listening to the wrong voices, and we need to listen to Scripture and to what the Lord says about us, because He calls us terrific and He loves us, delights in us. Yeah, and so I want to get into that. I kind of want to get into where you want this to go. We'll give everyone information how to get this great devotional. She's going to be with us for two segments today.
She is Amanda Chambers, a former homeschool mom. She's the founder of Alabaster's Inkwell, a wonderful ministry. Tell us about that real quick. What does Alabaster's do?
Well, Alabaster's actually has had a change of mission. It used to have a very broad mission, and now it is basically going to be an outlet for my writing and connecting people to resources like the Truth Network.
Well, I know. Listen, I've known you and your awesome husband, David, your two boys—one recently engaged for years. Wonderful family. You love Jesus. You've always been great Christian radio supporters.
And this is this is just—it's. I'm so glad. I love it when friends of mine write books. I just love it because this is like something I can put into someone's hand, especially people that really like. They really want their kids to be exposed to Charlotte.
My grandkids are just about the age they can watch Charlotte's Web. You know, where they can they can process it. And so, when their mom, my sweet daughter Hope, gets this devotion, oh my! I mean, this could be a real tool for her to kind of take and explain the narrative of this this book against gospel narrative, huh, Amanda? Right.
It's a comparison. It's so fascinating to me that. Good fiction can hide in it the glimmers of light of the truth. Wow.
Okay, we got to take a break. More on her story. More on this wonderful book, Some God, a Christian companion to Charlotte's Web's of Hope, with Amanda Chambers. Stay tuned. We're going to hear a little bit more about this and this great adventure and this devotion when we come back on Truth Talk Live.
Hang on. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. The power of using fiction. Using movies and books to express the gospel to a culture that's dying and lost to give them hope. I'm Stu Epperson.
I just came straight to the studio from the fair, which is in North Carolina right now. Shout out to Stone Cold Coffee for giving me this delicious latte. I've known Austin and his family for years. They've just blessed me, and then I went down to this. I got this amazing elephant ear.
So many people have passed out tons of Christian radio cards, and so if you are listening right now from there, God bless you. You found a good spot to hear the Word of God and good talk shows like this twenty four seven. Shout out to all of our wonderful affiliates that are brave enough to carry this program like ninety one point seven FM all across Jacksonville, Florida. Here is a powerful prayer from this devotion about fear, Lord. When I am afraid, sometimes I can hardly utter a squeal.
All I can do at such times is fall on my face and wait for You, the Creator. We are Yours. Strengthen me, so I don't faint. Let Your will be done in my life and the lives of my loved ones. Your mighty presence drives away fear.
Rebuke the evil one for harassing me with a spirit of fear.
Now I can't think of anyone that would be more afraid than Wilbur, this pig, who's you know facing a sure slaughter and you know the laughing stock of many and bullied by others. But you took a great. This is just one devotion, Amanda Chambers, from your book, Some God: A Christian's Companion to Charlotte's Web's of Hope, and you took this idea of fear and you wrote in here about how. We need not fear those that know Christ because of what He's done.
So this is, this is an example. Tell us how you were able to do this. Like I just, I am just amazed at the creativity of believers. We have so many guests on the show. God's just taken your brilliant mind and somehow shared this real, beautiful devotional with us from Charlotte's Web of all stories.
Tell us how you got from. This, you know, fictional work, famous fictional work by E.B. White, to a full-blown devotional in something so deep like that prayer that's in in page sixty-five on day eight on you know on fear.
Well, I as we were just talking about fiction and how you can see shadows of the eternal in some of these secular works. Like E.B. White was not a religious man, but he was a keen observer of nature, and I think without really Consciously doing it, he captured these classic themes that are in the Bible that relate to mankind.
So, you know, if you know your heart, and you know, I know that I'm often fearful, and I can see how Wilbur was fearful. It's just natural to. Turn to the Lord and pray and overcome that fear. But I enjoyed, you know, I just enjoyed thinking of things. It was kind of fun.
I um. Loved the thought in the book about the glory of the ordinary. Where Dr. Doran encouraged Mrs. Arable to consider the the glory of a spider's web.
So, in the back of the book, there's a list of radiant actions of things where you can just ordinary, everyday things that can spur you to think of encouraging things, like an egg can encourage you to think of a new. Opportunity, and that's related to the book because there is a devotion on eggs. What do you say to two people, the unbeliever who sees the Charlotte's Web obvious reference here that picks this book up, and the believer who also has a fascination with Charlotte's Web that loves to read that is interested in devotional what What's your what's your message to each of those two folks out there, and maybe they're listening today to this program? I would hope that both the believer and the unbeliever would see the goodness of the Lord in just these illustrations. That they would come to the believer would come to a deeper faith and knowledge that God cares for him personally, understands his emotions, and for the believer just to consider these things, perhaps that hasn't before.
Yeah, very good. You know, Jesus told a lot of stories. He told a lot of parables to communicate truth. Stories are powerful. How have you?
How have you found Amanda? What kind of doors has God opened through this storytelling? Going from, you know, the fictional, the narrative, the popular into the spiritual. Tell us how that has impacted you, and maybe give us a couple of examples how the rest of us can kind of think that way, especially in terms of communicating light. In a dark world.
Well, first of all, there is in the mission world a term called cultural redemptive analogy, which simply means that in most cultures there is something, some kind of metaphor you can grab onto to help explain the gospel. And in my mind, Charlotte's Web is. An American cultural redemptive analogy because it has so much richness in it that you can explain. The gospel. How about that?
You just take him right to the cross. I love this day six page forty one. Runtiness. Quote: The pig couldn't help be born small. Wilbur is born a small, weak, defenseless piglet, destined for slaughter and desperately in need of a savior.
He can't be. He can't help being born a runt, and it's his smallness that creates the crisis and makes a mother out of a young girl named Fern. His size does not determine how much he is loved. What a good word that is. Runtiness does not preclude greatness.
Consider. Charlotte, whose tiny size belies her mighty accomplishments, we are born with all sorts of runty characteristics, things we wish we didn't have to deal with. But like it or not, we own them. These attributes could be physical features, handicaps, other difficult circumstances, even certain relatives. How we deal with unchangeable features will affect our relationship with God.
Take us deeper into that thought. I really like that. I mean, just going back to identity. What what was going through your mind when you put these words down, and where are you taking Well, I love how Jesus picked the insignificant to not only to serve with him, but as part of his ancestry. He picked the unlikely people, and I, I love the thought about a spider, a pig.
And a rat, all being in the same team together, very unlikely. And I love that Templeton, who is the rascal, selfish, gluttonous, but he's actually the muse in the story to bring words, and he saves, though reluctantly, the egg sack, Charlotte's egg sack, at the end.
So I think as we view events and difficult. Difficulties and people in our lives that may not encourage us so much that we can believe that God will use those events for the good, and I love that it was the rotten egg. Of the one rotten egg that saved Charlotte from destruction, because Templeton saved that rotten egg, and then Avery Fern's brother was going to hit Charlotte with a stick. He fell through the barn floor, and it. Smashed the egg and the smell, threw them out of the barn.
So I just think that's a great illustration of how the un you know the difficult things can work for good.
Well, I love it. You know, I think of Romans five, where where Paul says when while we were without strength. Christ died for the ungodly. Every single one of us is marked by some kind of runtiness, you know. And someone believed in me enough to share when I was a little runny guy to share the gospel with me.
Then I needed the Savior, and someone did that with you, Amanda. Obviously, you are writing books about the Lord and bringing a lot of folks to Him through your ministry and your whole family. And I just think about how you took this—you know—the weak, the weak things, the world to confound the wise. It's like God talks about in First Corinthians one. Is there a verse that if you could do a—I used to do a one verse wonder for movies.
I used to do a one verse movie review. What verse comes to mind? You've got so much scripture in here. I love this. This is thoroughly biblical.
This is a one. I know. I know. I am putting you on the spot because you know you've got so much scripture. But Amanda Chambers, you wrote this book, "Some God: A Christian Companion to Charlotte's Web's of Hope, A Through the Year Devotional." What's a verse that really kind of Mike drops it or bottom lines it for you as you think about this whole book and this whole Charlotte's Web story?
You know, taking us to Jesus, taking taking folks from again the narrative, from the story, the tale to the truth of the gospel. What's a verse that hits you?
Well, I was I'm just reading Galatians six nine that says we will reap if we don't give up, and I wanted to quit several times. And I looked up and I was like writing the devotional on endurance, and yeah, and that happened twice. No kidding. Yeah, and I just appreciate my editor Suzanne Rhodes who just combed through it. Shout out, Suzanne.
Is there a website that we go to? For for the books, some God find on Amazon. Best, right? The best way to do it, yeah, do on Amazon.
