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 and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together.
Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. We are glad that you are with us. We are thrilled to be talking about some of the issues and, boy, it's happening in real time and very fast in our world today.
And if you want to be a part of the program and weigh in, 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. I wanted to start off with a scripture, 1 Timothy 2, 1 through 2. First of all, Paul says, And Paul said again in Romans, And then in Jeremiah, Jeremiah says, But I think that we can rightly deduce that we have a responsibility to be good stewards and good citizens wherever God has us, knowing that He put us there.
And exercise all the duties and responsibilities thereof. And part of that is, I believe that we can rightly deduce from this, that part of good citizenship in this country where the freedom is afforded to us, which it wasn't in many other countries and certainly when this was written, is the ability to vote. That we have a responsibility to be good stewards of this. It is not a situation where we're being fatalistic and saying, Well, God's got this.
We don't have to worry about it. It's a situation where we have a duty. We have a responsibility. I come from a background where duty and civic responsibility was drilled into me from a young age. From my father who served for many, many years in the Navy, also as a pastor, and dealt with very horrific things in his pastoral ministry where he had a duty to go in to see people who were sick, people who were struggling. One of the things he did, my father's funeral was just two weeks ago, and one of the things that he did is during Vietnam, he was a Navy chaplain in inner city Atlanta, and part of his duty was to go into the homes and to notify the next of kin that they had lost a loved one. And you talk about a tough job, and he was just in his thirties when he was doing that.
This was back in the sixties. And he learned a lot of pastoral ministry during that time. A lot of things that were very, very difficult and painful to go into horrificness, and that's part of our duty as believers, to go into the mess of this world with the conviction of the gospel, and that's what he did. And that conviction, that boldness to go into these horrific things, not to go in there with brashness, not to go in there with, ah, it's all going to be okay, God's got this. You know, that doesn't work with me, and it doesn't work with my audience that I have on my radio program for caregivers. You know, and I knew a pastor once that did not want to go into hospitals. He didn't like hospital ministries. Well, I can say for sure that my wife and I, she's had 86 surgeries, she doesn't like being in a hospital, but boy, it means a lot when somebody will come into our misery with the conviction of the gospel, to help minister that to us, to remind us over and over again of these things. That's part of being responsible to the things that Christ said in scripture.
Sick, naked, hungry, thirsty, prison, stranger. And he's going to ask us about that, and we're going to have to look him in the eye, and say, Lord, when did we see you like this? And he's pretty serious about it. I've given him enough to redeem in my life. I don't want to do that.
I don't want to do that at all. And so I think we can extrapolate that same heart of blooming where we're planted. If he has us in this country, then we accept that as his provision, but we model good stewardship of this country by our vote, by our participation. And a lot of people looking at this election coming up and they're saying that's the lesser of two evils.
I don't think so. I think the purpose of it for us as believers is to lessen the evil. Okay? Let's not get wrapped up on who we think is a good candidate or a bad candidate. What can we do to lessen the evil that is in this country? And we see it all around us. 60 million abortions since 1973. This is a monstrous evil.
And then you look at what's going on with transgender and all these kinds of stuff. What can we do as responsible stewards, as people who know the word of God, to lessen the evil, to be good stewards where we are, good citizens where we are? Pay our taxes, do what we need to do, but we need to vote.
We need to vote. We don't just say, well, just, you know, it's all right. God's got this. Would you say that to somebody in the hospital?
It's okay. God's got this. We've actually had people say this to us in the hospital.
Yeah, it's all right, Gracie, that your legs are being amputated. God's got this. Is that what you want to say to people?
I don't think so. I think we can do more. And I think part of doing more is showing up and being responsible and being willing to go into horrific circumstances. That was modeled for me by my father, and I honor his memory by doing the same. The people that I go to see, the people that I talk to, they don't want to be in that situation.
I have a caregiver support group that I do every week, and the heartache that we share around that group, they don't want to be in that situation. But somebody's got to go in there with the gospel, and who's in line behind us to do it? So we're going to do our job, and we're going to be good citizens. We're going to vote.
We're going to pay attention. I will give you this quote. Churchill said this. I love Winston Churchill, and I'm just a huge fan of his work and of his life, knowing that he wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
But listen to what he said. The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous. The malice of the wicked was reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous. May we not be weak. May we be virtuous.
May we not be weak. This is Peter Rosenberger. This is Truth Talk Live, 86634 Truth. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live.
This is Peter Rosenberger, glad to have you with us, 86634 Truth, 866348, 7884. This segment brought to you by Peelaways. Peelaways is this great company I found with a fitted sheet that has built-in tear-away liners for family members who are caring for elderly or people with different kinds of special needs.
And you get tired of changing the sheets in the middle of the night? Well, go out to peelaways.com, put in my name, Peter, promo code, and you'll get a special discount. These things are amazing.
I love these things. And I have a whole audience full of caregivers on my weekly radio program for family caregivers, and this is the product for those who are taking care. They've got it all the way down to infants, every bed size, whatever you need. If you're dealing with wound care, if you're dealing with incontinence, whatever you've got going on, it doesn't matter.
Nobody wants to deal with this in the middle of the night. You just tear it off on the sides and not on the bottom because it's not connected on the bottom. You've got a dry liner right there in the bed and you're good to go and you go back to sleep. Nobody ever told me when I became a caregiver there would be so much laundry, but there is, and Peelaways is for you. Peelaways.com, mention my name, Peter, and you'll get a promo code. I've invited a wonderful author here on this program today. His name is Chris Maxwell.
He's got a new book out. It's called Things We've Handed Down, 12 Letters I Leave for You. Things We've Handed Down, 12 Letters I Leave for You. Chris, I'm glad to have you on the program and thank you for joining us. How are you feeling today?
No, I'm good, man. Thank you, Peter, so much. Thank you for what you're doing and thanks for the honor and the opportunity to be a part of your conversation. Oh, absolutely. I love the title you had.
I love the work you've done. But there's a story behind this book, you getting to this point to write this, and it has to do with your lifelong ministry. Would you tell us about that?
Yes. Just writing this book, so many times it's easy for us to take the nouns and the verbs and the sentences and the paragraphs for granted if that's easy for us to do. Well, it wasn't easy for me when my life drastically changed. Years ago I was pastoring. At that time I was healthy. I could read, I could write.
I was writing Sunday school curriculum. I was pastoring an amazing church in Orlando, Florida. My wife Debbie and I were raising our three sons and that just goes by so fast. But everything changed drastically when I became ill. They didn't know what was wrong with me. I eventually took me to the hospital and they were finally able to determine that I was battling with encephalitis and they did not think I would live. And having Debbie, my wife thought, okay, she's going to take me to the hospital, we're going to find what's going on, give me some meds, take me home. Everything would be just the same in a quick recovery and that was not the case at all. When she eventually brought me back home, I was so different than the man she took to the hospital.
She's called me kind of her second husband. Same name, very different because of the long-term consequences of the brain damage, the scar tissue in the left temporal lobe and now living life with epilepsy. Well, hospitals are far different than taking your car to the mechanic and sometimes this is what happens and I certainly do understand that and I understand the way your wife has looked at this thing. It's left lifelong implications dealing with seizures. Is that correct? Yes.
Unfortunately, I'm free right now. I'm able to travel and speak and it's interesting, though, how God has used my weakness so that He can show His strength. I had to learn to write again, had to go through speech therapy, but I had the right people around me.
From your own experience, Peter, that makes such a difference. The caregivers need people who are showing them care and we did. We had a wonderful church family. We had friends.
We had people that would speak life to us. As I was writing this latest book, this is my 12th book, my neurologist. He's a Jewish neurologist and you'll love this. He said, this was several books ago, but he grabbed one of my books. I met him at a restaurant near an airport and he's like, he just pounded my book on the table. I said, Dr. Planeless, what are you doing? He said, there are two reasons that you're able to do this. I'm like, okay, what? He said, your stubbornness and your God.
And he meant stubbornness as a compliment. Not giving up at people around me who are that kind of holy stubbornness. We're not going to give up. We're going to endure this race. We're going to be here for Chris. We're going to be here for Debbie.
We're going to be there for their sons and living in the plural and not the singular. We did not have to fight through it alone. But I had to I had to realize that I can't give up. Even though it's it's difficult and it's a struggle and it's embarrassing at times knowing that I'm not going to remember a name. All the things that were easy for me before the illness, the post illness Chris had to ask for help.
And, you know, sometimes we don't we don't like to do that. But I've had to ask for help. And now this latest book, my 12th book, it's it's a book about how books and how reading those books have helped me through my struggles and have helped other people through their struggles. And these are the books that I selected because these are the stories and the truth that I want to hand down to not just the younger generation, those that I work with on the college campus at Emmanuel University now, but to other people, whatever their scars. You know, my scar tissue is left to roll over the brain. Everybody has some type of scars, the noticeable and the unseen. What can we do to bring hope to the hurting?
That's the big question for me. And I believe these books did that for me. And that's why I wanted to turn how how these books helped me.
I wanted to turn them into letters to those who are desperate for hope. You've got a quote from this book. You said this is life when the good and the bad mingle, when the laughter and the tears sit together, when the rejoicing and the weeping hold hands. Talk a little bit about that quote. What did that talk about?
Where that came from? Because that's not an easy quote to write when you've dealt with. It's one thing to write that when you're preparing for a message and everything's going right and you want to have a nice message. It's another thing to write that when you have encephalitis and you have multiple seizures and you're permanently altered for the rest of your life. That's a much different foundation to write that quote from.
Yeah. And to add to that, I'm writing this right after a friend committed suicide. And I'm like, OK, how how do I continue writing?
Hoping it's going to be a good tone, a good mood. It's going to be a hope and a smile long term. But sometimes we have to move with the tears to take us there. We can't live in denial of our disabilities and our struggles and call that faith. And I believe that faith is believing God meets us in those in those seasons of pain and that hurt. That's what he's that's what he's done for me.
And he's been able to help me in those times where I was not going to make it on my own. And I was able to write that crying a little bit, you know, some pain in their heart, knowing that he is not help in time of need, not pretending all is well and calling it faith, but having faith in the one who brings hope to the hurting. And yeah, I was I was writing it and I had to leave the funeral service of a young man. It's like five suicides over the time I'm writing this book of people that were dear to us. And one, I'm leaving this funeral service in a pastoral way, you know, wanting to bring hope and love. And this was a young man who had two sons and he committed suicide. His wife had previously died with their youngest son in a car accident over a year before that.
And now a year later, he commits suicide. They leave the two boys. What do we bring to them? They can't just have a little song, a smile. They need some tears. They need us to weep with those who weep, to mourn with those who mourn.
And that is that's the song of love for them. We're going to continue this conversation here. Coming up, we got to go to a break. This is Chris Maxwell.
His new book is called Things We've Handed Down, 12 Letters. I leave for you. This is Peter Rosenberger, PeterRosenberger.com. Don't go away.
We've got more to go. Truth Talk Live. This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad to have you with us. 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884.
By the way, if you want to find out more about what we're doing for our caregiver outreach and so forth, then my program for caregivers airs on the weekends on Truth Network. Go to PeterRosenberger.com. R-O-S-E-N-B-E-R-G-E-R. It's Irish.
No, it's not Irish. PeterRosenberger.com. And if you're a caregiver struggling right now, there's a little button that blinks. It says caregiver 911. Start there.
Just start right there. I got something for you right there. Because I'm all about helping family caregivers in the moment, not six months from now, not a 12-week journey on how to be a better caregiver. No, something is going to help you right now. This is going to settle your heart down. And that's what we're all about through my program, Hope for the Caregiver and everything we do.
So please take advantage of that. PeterRosenberger.com. We're talking with Chris Maxwell and his new book.
It comes out October 1st. Things We've Handed Down, 12 Letters I Leave for You. Now, Chris had a lengthy history as a pastor and campus minister and so forth. And then life hit him with some pretty hard realities. He and his family.
Because it's not just one person, it's the whole family. And this book is about people that he's read, people that have influenced him, that have helped him anchor. You know the old hymn, my anchor holds within the veil.
On Christ the solid rock I stand. And everything else is going to pieces. And so he's gone back to the fundamentals. When a sports team is in trouble, you don't come up with the trick play, you go back to the fundamentals. And when we're in trouble as believers, we don't come up with the trick play. We don't have a gimmick.
We don't have to place our hand behind the television and feel the power. We don't do that. We go back to the fundamentals of our Savior who promised what he would do. That he would sustain us.
His Spirit will sustain us in this. And I looked at my wife just last December when she was in the hospital for two months. And she was struggling with terrible pain. And I looked at her and I said, you know, it was in between pain medicine stuff. And I said, you're going to have to hang on, darling. And I said, remember, Paul and Silas were singing hymns around midnight after being beaten and they were in prison.
And they didn't have anesthesia. And she said, I know, but I'm not Paul. Big tears filled her eyes. She said, I'm not Paul. And I said, no, that's not the point of this, baby. The point is the same Spirit that sustained Paul and Silas will sustain you. And he will never abandon you in this. And she was able to take a deep breath and it just fortifies her and strengthens her spirit because that's all we have. Corey 10 Boone said, you never know how much you need Jesus until he's all you got.
And Chris has been in that place. Chris, as you wrote this book, and I had a friend of mine who was a real coach to me over the years. And he told me, he said, you're not allowed to publish anything unless there are tears on the page. Does that resonate with you? It does.
It does. And there were many tears as I was writing this. And I like the way you word that. Sometimes we just got to stop and just take that deep breath.
And as I was listening to you earlier, some of your comments, you know, show up and be responsible. And the way we do that, let's show up right where we are as we are. Instead of wearing a mask and pretending and performing, let's be the people that God has called us to be. And let's love those people who are desperate and just going back through everything that I was experiencing. I was writing this book and thinking, OK, what do I want to hand down to other people?
What do I want to share? Like, if this is the last book I write, I hope it isn't. But if it is the last book I write, what do I want my final words to be? And I decided I want this book to be me handing books on to others, books that were handed to me, books that changed my life when I didn't even know if I would ever be able to read again.
But I was able, with God's help and the help of others, to read and learn and write again and do things that they never thought I would be able to do. And chapter one of this book, things we've handed down, is disappointment with God from Philip Yancey's book. Oh, I read that book. And it's like what it did to me so many years ago. It's one of those books. And it's marked. I've read it so many times. You ran out of highlighter, didn't you? Yeah, it's like, how many copies of the book do I have?
But I was emailing Philip Yancey as I was writing this chapter. And my argument is the best way to deal with disappointment with God is with God, because life includes disappointments. But can't we change our view?
Instead of just seeing the disappointment as we have nothing, we're giving up, we're desperate. I included stats in there by the condition of our culture. Four million cases of child abuse and neglect every year now. Eight hundred thousand twelve to seventeen year olds using illegal drugs.
Estimated five hundred thousand online predators targeting children. So this is like so much sadness, so much disappointment. And then the deaths and the suicides that I mentioned to you earlier.
What do I need to do? I need to be with God even when disappointed. What if we're wounded, Pastor Chris? Well, my second chapter is Wounds Are Where Light Enters, from that book by Walter Wandering. And the chapter after that, Henry Nowen's book, The Wounded Healer.
Oh, I love that book. Who is our hope? It's the wounded one. I mean, look at the scars are there for a reason. The scars are there for us, right? And we've got to remember that.
That's what I want to hand out. You know, I told my wife, you know, she has a lot of scars. Her body's just broken. She's been hurt for four decades. And her scars are temporary.
She will not have them in eternity. But his, his aren't temporary. And those scars of his speak for all eternity. And there is a difference.
There is a great difference. And there's a quote that I put at the beginning of her book from my pastor in Nashville when we lived there for many years, Jim Bachman. He said, the Lord says, I'll give you brokenness, I'll give you weakness, I'll give you emptiness. Then you'll be useful to me. And I love that. I love that because this is where you are, Chris. And you had this flourishing ministry, and then all of a sudden, boom. But then you're operating in his power and boasting all the more gladly in his strength, in your weakness so that Christ's power may be rested upon you. Those are not easy things.
And those are not easy things to even talk about from one to another here. But I understand this journey. We've walked it. And we walk it now.
And we're going to be walking it tonight. And so will you and your family. And I want to ask you, how is your family coping with all this? It was very difficult at the beginning when all of this happened. But over the years since then, they've adapted, they've adjusted. What should we have done differently? We should have seen Christian counselors and gotten more help early on. We did not.
So it's had a long-term effect. But they're all three of our sons are married. Each one of our three sons have three children. So Debbie and I have nine grandchildren. Every time I look at those grandkids, I just think they are made in the image of God. And he is our help in time of need. He is there for each one of them. And after I write about the disappointments and the wounds, I talk about love, acceptance, and forgiveness, and joy. I talk about C.S. Lewis' book, Surprised by Joy.
Becky Fippert's book, and you'll love this because it's so fitting for who you are and what you do. Hope has its reasons. I mean, isn't that just what we need? Hope has its reasons. There's a reason for the hope that you have. It's not fake. This is not fiction.
This story is non-fiction. Biblical hope is not wishful thinking. Biblical hope is conviction.
There is a difference. That's why Paul would say, I am convinced of this. You stake your life on it. This is not, well, I hope we're going to be okay when we get to heaven.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I know this because Scripture tells me this. And his wounds for me doth plead, as the hymn writer said, and I know this. My father's greatest legacy to me, my mother told me this when I was down there for the funeral, and one of the things we talked, we were just reminiscing, and she was going through something years ago, struggling, and she looked at my dad. She said, how do you know this? And he said, because I know God. What greater testament can a father pass on to his family than I know God?
And I think this is where you are, Chris. You've got nine grandchildren who will not see you as the young, strong man that you used to be, but they will see you as a man trusting God with your afflictions, and there is a difference. There is a powerful moment when that happens, and I know you would wish for something different, but as they watch you face this reality, you are imparting a legacy to your own grandchildren with this.
That's an extraordinary thing. So I'm really quite moved to hear how your family is doing this, because I don't know if you know the stats or not, but 90% of families with a disability end in divorce. Yeah, it's so sad. And Gracie and I, we've been raised by a pack of therapists. Oh my goodness, we've had so many counselors, Chris, that went haywire on us. I think two of them got divorced. One of them was a priest who left the ministry. I think a couple of them turned to drugs and alcohol. I mean, we're hard on counselors in our life.
But they are coping, and they're doing... What is your wife... Well, hold on a second. We're going to go to a break. I'm sorry, I ran on a little long. I blather on, Chris, and I'm sorry for that. I didn't mean to cut you off. I've got a little bit of a delay here.
But you know what? We're going to go to a break. Can you stay one more segment with me?
Yeah, yeah. Oh, perfect. Talking to Chris Maxwell, his new book comes out October 1st, Things We've Handed Down, 12 letters I leave for you. He has compiled books that have anchored his soul in greater truth. He's written about it, and I want you to read it, too. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live.
This is Peter Rosenberger, PeterRosenberger.com, PeterRosenberger.com, 866-34-TRUTH, if you want to be on the program, 866-348-7884. I'm with Chris Maxwell. He's got a new book coming out, a brand new book. I mean, it comes out October 1st.
We got him a little bit early before it came out. And it's called Things We've Handed Down, 12 letters I leave for you. And I want you to check this book out. What he's done is he's gone back into what he read from different authors that sustained him when his whole world crashed down on him and his family. And this is such a powerful story that he's got.
You just heard on the break there Johnny Erickson taught us. He had a quote once. He said, God allows what he hates in order to achieve what he loves. Chris, what does that mean to you when you hear that statement? Yeah, you know, I mean, God cares so much for us that he knows about wounds. And we often think of God as this distant being who doesn't understand us. But just read the gospels, read the gospel narratives and Jesus telling stories and he was there with people and he saw the wounded. He saw the hurting and he became wounded himself. So that is that's the Jesus that we are to serve.
That's the one that has called us for this season. And that's the Jesus that met me in the hospital. I was journaling in the hospital room as they thought I was dying. I mean, all the words weren't spelled correctly. I could barely write.
They didn't know if I would live. But it was like David writing the psalms. I was crying out for who is my help in time with me.
All right. I've preached. I've written Sunday school curriculum. And now where is God? Well, you know where he was, Peter. He was there with me. He did not leave me.
He did not abandon me. And as I'm writing, as I was writing this book, I just wanted to share that truth. As others shared it with me, I wanted to receive what they handed to me and let these words be like a bridge to just kind of cross over and hand it to others.
I work at Emmanuel University now as the campus pastor and director of spiritual life. And I spend my time listening to the stories of the wounded ones, of students who have gone through difficult. Maybe they're excited and they love God and they're serving him. Or maybe they are the wounded ones. But I'm listening to their stories and trying to give them hope in the middle of the pain. And writing this book, with them in mind, writing this book reminded me of the hope that I had through him. I'll tell you something my wife said when she went through her first amputation.
She gave up her right leg back in 1991. And she said something I've always, it's stayed with me for a lifetime now. I didn't know what lay on the other side of that hospital room door. But I knew who waited for me there. And he is. He's already there waiting for us and he will not abandon us. This is the conviction that we have because he says it in his word. Lo, I'm with you always, even to the ends of the world.
He's not kidding about this. But it doesn't become real to us until we're in those places looking up at the ceiling in a hospital room. And hospital rooms have a way of forcing internal conversations we would not have any other way. And this is why I think your book and your message and your ministry is so important, Chris. Because you're dealing with very hard issues.
We no longer have time to have this surface. I don't even have any patience with people who want to just give out pablum. If you don't know what to say to a caregiver, for example, well don't worry about it.
I do. Read my book and you'll know. If you don't know what to say to somebody who's suffering, then just sit with them. Job 2.13 is one of the greatest verses in the Bible. And when it comes to this, they said they sat with him for seven days quiet because they saw his suffering was great. Those people were aghast at what happened to Job and they just sat there with him for seven days quiet. We got people that don't know how to sit for seven minutes and be quiet.
Oh yeah. People in our culture do not know how to be quiet. We live in a culture of high tech without the high touch that we're desperate for.
And we have short attention spans. And I'm trying to train people to make eye contact and to listen. To just be still and listen and to truly care for people. We need to not just come up with what do we need to do, but often just to be there. And as we are willing to be there, then we are better capable of determining those things that they need us to do. When you and I finished the previous part of our conversation, I was thinking about some of the students that I was just recently talking to and listening to their stories and their pain and their hurt. And I just wanted them to kind of rewrite their version of what we know as the 23rd Psalm.
And you should read what they wrote. You know, David wrote that the Lord is my shepherd. But for them, what is the Lord to you?
How is he kind of a shepherd to you? And one of the students wrote, The Lord is my dad and I finally have a dad who will not leave me alone. I finally have a dad who will not abuse me. See, that's the Father that we have. That's the Heavenly Father we have.
And we have a culture of people who are desperate for that Heavenly Father. That's what I want to hand down. That's what I want to hand down to this generation, to every generation, every age, every tribe and every tongue. I want to hand down, even with my own scars, whatever their scars are, I want to hand this loving God to them.
That's what I want to hand down. Well, I have one more question for you, but before we do that, where can people learn more about you and get this book? Yeah, they can go to my website, chrismaxwell.me.
It's chrismaxwell.me. And all of my books are on Amazon if you want to read more about my illness. I've got several books that were written about the illness. Underwater is a very popular book about that. My previous book that just came out a couple of years ago, Equilibrium.
One of the ways to find balance in life's uneven surfaces. That was a popular book also. But they can find all of my books on my website, chrismaxwell.me and on Amazon. Good. All right. Last question. When looking at the landscape of this country right now, college campuses, churches, etc., what concerns you the most? Oh, there's so many things.
There's so many things. By the way, I don't ever give the questions out ahead of time that I'm going to ask people. That's fine.
That's fine. You know, I think we have tried to turn everything into this sprint. That if I just say one quick thing or preach one quick sermon or sing one exciting song, everything is good. Because we live in this. It's got to be done quickly right now.
Well, my last chapter in the book Things We've Handed Down is Eugene Peterson's book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. People are desperate for long relationships where others will walk with them through the storms. Not just sit and debate about the storm.
Is it going to come or not? The storms are there. The storms are all around us. But who's going to be with you in the eye of the hurricane? We need to live this long obedience in the same direction.
You and I both know this. We need consistency. We need to be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the works of the Lord. And if we really believe in this Trinity, the Father, Son, and Spirit, and the Holy Spirit, the presence of God is within us.
Not just like in a building somewhere, but within us. We believe that he can then work through us to show his love to others. And then we can walk with them in this long obedience in the same direction. I think that's what people are desperate for. And they're looking for some quick fix that can be harmful instead of healing.
I want to bring that healing touch of hope to them. And we have to remember, we should not just see God as the artist who is more of a mechanic trying to fix us. He is the artist continuing to craft and design us. He's made us in his image, and he is reworking us to show his love to others.
Isn't that a healthy way to look at it? We are his artwork. And let's treat people with that love and show that we care deeply for them. And I want love to be that that creates that climate. I want that to be the rain falling upon us in this season of division and hurt and hate.
That would be the loudest voice. And grace be the expression on our face to draw people to eternal life through Jesus. Those are great words, Chris, and I really do appreciate it because I know it comes from a very deep place. There is a quote I'll end with today from Shultz Neitzen who said, and I'm sure you're familiar with it, Bless you, prison, for the change you made in my life.
Twenty-seven years he was in a Roman prison, I mean, Russian prison. And he said, Bless you, prison, for the change you made in my life, for there upon that rotting prison straw I learned that the goal of human existence is not prosperity, as we're told, but the maturity of the human soul. And God would have us be adults.
He would have us be mature, and he would have us understand these things more and walk with him in these deep places. And you and your family are doing that, and it's quite moving. And this book, Things We've Handed Down, twelve letters I leave for you. I know this is a very personal book, and it was a painful book to write. But as you went back and looked at all these things that were preparing you, maybe a lot of these things you read before you even had encephalitis, I don't know, is that a fair statement? Yes, some of them I did. And it was interesting, I read them differently when I read them afterwards, too. You know how that goes.
I see it from a different angle now, like a different lens. But even then, he was preparing you. And God is obviously working very deeply in your life and in your family's life. Please know that you always have an open invitation on the program, okay? And I do appreciate you coming. And you're speaking life to people who are desperate for that, so thank you. The more I share these things, these principles that Gracie and I lean on, the stronger we become. Because we're speaking life to ourself, just like David did at Ziklag when he encouraged himself in the Lord, even when his own men were going to stone him. And that's the whole point. That is Truth Talk Life. This is Peter Rosenberg, and we'll see you next time. Another program powered by the Truth Network.
