Hope and Your Brain, with Max Lucado

Hope and Your Brain, with Max Lucado

Good morning my friend, I hope you're doing well. I am Dr. Lee Warren and I am really excited to bring you this episode of the Dr. Lee Warren

podcast.

We're going to do a little self-brain surgery with an old friend of mine.

Back on September 7th, I had an opportunity to sit down for an hour via Zoom with Max Locato.

Of course, he needs no introduction, but Max has sold literally hundreds of millions of

books. the most successful living Christian author, maybe of all time, one of the most successful authors

in the world at this current moment.

Max has written, I think, over 40 major books plus a bunch of children's books and Bible studies,

and he's just America's pastor, as he's been called by USA Today and other newspapers.

He's prayed with and for presidents and world leaders. He's just an incredible, incredible leader

in the inspirational space, and has always been a personal friend of Lisa and Tata and I.

He was our pastor in San Antonio.

Dennis worked side by side with him at the Oak Hills Church for years as the pastoral care minister there.

And Max has been really important to me in my faith walk, not only through his writing, but through his friendship.

He's one of the people I call when something hurts in my life.

He's just been an incredible friend.

And with this book, he not only gave us an endorsement, he also offered to do this live.

One hour event and we had it back on September 7th hosted by the great people at Baker Bookhouse

in Michigan and Waterbrook the publisher and we finally got the video. I told you I was going to

be able to share that video with you and they finally sent it to me. So I want to just strip

the audio out of the video and I want to give it to you here in case you listen to podcasts

somewhere in the world where you can't get the video. We're going to have the video available

for you soon on my website. We're working on that and for some social media clips and all

all of that, but here's the full length, uncut,

hour long conversation between me and Max, hosted by Baker Bookhouse, you'll hear

the Baker Bookhouse folks at the start of the episode.

And I just wanted to put it in a convenient place for you so you could hear this incredible hour.

And I told you we're gonna do a lot of neuroscience in season nine.

In this conversation, we talk about your brain, how your brain processes trauma,

we talk a lot about faith and doubt and how hope springs up in the midst of all of that.

And so this is gonna be a good place for you to have a resource to hear me, the surgeon,

talking to Max, the pastor, and two guys who have known a lot of heartache and pain

and how we find our faith in the midst of all those doubts.

So there's really only one question.

Hey, are you ready to change your life? If the answer is yes, there's only one rule.

You have to change your mind first.

And my friend, there's a place for the neuroscience of how your mind works, smashes together with faith,

and everything starts to make sense. Are you ready to change your life?

Well, this is the place, Self-Brain Surgery School.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and this is where we go deep into how we're wired, take control of our thinking and find real hope.

This is where we learn to become healthier, feel better and be happier.

This is where we leave the past behind and transform our minds.

This is where we start today. Are you ready?

This is your podcast. This is your place. This is your time, my friend. Let's get after it.

Music.

Well, good evening from beautiful Grand Rapids, Michigan. Welcome. I'm Dr. Bart Denny. I am the,

non-fiction, Bible, and academic book buyer here at Baker Book House.

And on behalf of all of us here, thank you for joining us tonight for an Evening of Hope.

It's an honor to introduce to you our distinguished panelists. Dr. Lee Warren and Max Lucado are here

with us to discuss Lee's fabulous new book, Hope is the First Dose. Lee is a neurosurgeon, an inventor,

and an Iraq War veteran who wrote about his experiences in his excellent book

Nowhere to Hide, a Brain Surgeon's Long Journey Home from the Iraq War. And as a

fellow Iraq War veteran and brother in Christ, Lee, I just can't praise that

book highly enough. I read it some years ago and have loved it, can't praise it

enough. Lee plays the guitar, loves to make connections between faith, science,

and the realities of life. And Max Lucado needs almost no introduction. Max is a

pastor, a speaker, a best-selling author whose books have sold over 145 million copies in 50

languages. And in his writing, Max's passion for Jesus Christ and his love for people shines

through. Max has brought encouragement to countless thousands of people over the years,

including yours truly. And thank you for being here tonight, gentlemen. We surely do appreciate.

It. And again, Dr. Lee Warren and Max Lepido are talking about Dr. Warren's newest book,

Hope is the First Dose. And I know everyone here is looking forward as much as I am to this

discussion, but just a few notes of housekeeping. We do hope that you'll interact with each other

in the chat room and that you'll encourage one another there. However, Lee will not be taking

questions from the chat room. In fact, when you registered for this event on

Eventbrite, there was an opportunity for you to ask a question beforehand. So.

After the book discussion, Lee will field as many of those pre-submitted questions

as our time allows. And if you don't have your copy of Hope is the First Dose, you

can find it on our website at BakerBookHouse.com. And for a limited time, a

a very limited time, just through this weekend, we're offering this tremendous book for 30% off.

That is the best price I could find anywhere online, and we can only hold that for a few days.

But again, that's DrinkerBookHouse.com and just search for Hope is the First Dose.

And folks, before Lee and Max get started, would you mind joining me in a moment of prayer?

Our Father in heaven, Lord, we are truly grateful for this time together.

Lord, we look forward to what you have laid on Lee's heart.

We pray that this discussion might bring encouragement and hope for those who need it.

I pray that this discussion will help each of us to grow, Lord, in our daily walks with you.

Most of all, Lord, I pray that this time together tonight serves to glorify you, Lord, and ultimately

to point others to the greatest source of hope, Jesus Christ our Savior, in whose name we pray, amen. Amen.

And, well, with that, Lee, I would love to hand it off to you and to Max, and we look

forward to, again, what the Lord's laid on your heart tonight.

Thank you, Bart. to have the folks at Baker and Waterbrook supporting us tonight. Max, I'm so thankful for you, my friend. It's good to see you.

Good to see you, Lee. You look terrific. Been too long. You look great.

You do, too. It's been a long time and hopefully we get to see you down in San Antonio soon.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm at the church office right now. I know you're at home.

And I had your book out this afternoon, reading it for the second time. I'm so honored.

Oh my goodness, so honored to be one of the people who endorsed that book.

But I gotta tell you, I might need to get another one because as I was walking down the hallway,

as often is the case at a church building, I ran into somebody who had been in a counseling session.

And so we chatted and I said, how are you doing?

And it's not going too well. She's had a bit of trauma.

And I said, well, I've got just the book for you.

I gave her my, I gotta get it back because I realized that was my signed copy.

I know where she lives, I can get it.

But it's a great book. It's a great book. And I've been so happy to endorse it,

not just publicly, but personally in urging people.

Not only is it full of insights, it's just beautifully written, just beautifully written.

So well done, my friend.

I want to just thank you for that, Max. You and I have had a few conversations over the years of.

The idea of me having two careers, and you were so kind to me.

You can't figure out what you want to do when you grow up, can you?

When I finally grow up, maybe. I just got out of the operating room,

that's why I'm still wearing scrubs today.

I love it. Bart mentioned that you're a guitar player. I was going to pull that one out myself,

because I remember some of the best conversations we had were back when you lived here in San

Antonio and you played in our praise band, and we would have visits either before or after

church or at rehearsal. You're a really good guitar player. Thank you. I remember we did a

song one night. I played at the first Saturday night service that O'Kill's ever had, played lead

guitar, and we actually sang one of my songs that night. It's kind of a rock and roll kind of song,

And you came out and the first thing you said was, this ain't your grandma's church, people.

Yeah, we've never quite recovered from that, Lee. I don't think so.

Hey, Max, I want to I want to tell you, you know, I think all of our children were baptized at

O'Kill's church and and all of them, you know, as they've grown up and it's been a long time

since you've seen them, but you knew Mitch and we're here tonight to talk about some of the

things that we've learned in our experience now over a decade of being bereaved parents,

which nobody ever wants to be. But I just want to remind you and thank you that in the days

after Mitch died, I got a package, a FedEx package from you. And it was a copy of your book. You'll

get through this before it was even published. And that meant so much to me and Lisa. And I've

And I've just reached out to you over the years as a pastor and a friend, and so many

times you've come alongside me when things were hurting and been there with a text or a phone call.

And I just, I'm really grateful for you and Dean Lynn and the way that you knew and loved

Mitch, but the way that you've come alongside and pastored and befriended us over the years.

Well, it's my joy. It's my joy. I love you guys. I love Lisa, your wonderful wife.

She's a great, great friend and has a beautiful voice. And of course, at the risk of taking up

all our time, letting people listen to how much you and I like each other, what people may not

know is that your father-in-law, Dennis, was one of, when I came to this church in 1988,

We had three people on staff.

I think he was number five or six, Dennis could tell us.

And he was just right down the hall from me. He was the equivalent of an executive pastor.

He ran our business. But then what we found is that, though he did a fine job running the business,

what really put the wind in his sails was when he would go visit someone in the hospital

and he would come back just full of insights and encouragement and what to say.

And so it wasn't that long before he became our chaplain.

And I learned so much from your father-in-law, so please, and your mother-in-law.

Patty, who we cherish, who's in heaven.

But please give Dennis my love when you get the chance. I will, he's listening right now,

so I'm sure he heard you.

And you spoke at Patty's funeral, So we have had a long history together, Max,

and we're grateful for you.

A lot of cross paths, a lot of cross paths. And you've helped me, Lee.

I don't know if you remember, I wrote a book on anxiety, Anxious for Nothing.

And I was really trying to get my mind around all this medical terminology about the amygdala.

And I'd heard people say things and I didn't even know if I was pronouncing it correctly.

And I said, what am I doing hitting, beating my head against the wall?

I know a neurosurgeon. And so I don't know if you remember this,

but I emailed you and you gave me a thorough explanation.

I'll probably owe you some royalties because you just helped me understand that

and the role that the amygdala plays in anxiety.

And so, yeah, you've been a go-to guy for me and I appreciate it.

I hope I don't ever have to come to you for brain surgery, it if I ever need it.

I got your number. I hope not too. I'm pretty good at neurosurgery, but I'm not that great at giving

haircuts, so maybe a little trouble. I appreciate that. Max, you know, I asked you if you would do

this tonight because I thought it would be helpful for folks to have a conversation between a pastor,

and a surgeon. Both of us walk alongside of a lot of people who are hurting, and of course,

a lot of times in my career, I have to be the guy to deliver the bad news. And in your career,

you're the first people somebody calls often when something is happening and they're hurting. And so

I thought it'd be an interesting conversation to have about hope and the difference between hope

and faith and hope and optimism. And I thought you might have some questions for me about the

science side of all these things. And then my world is kind of a dual path between being a

a bereaved father and a surgeon who helps people in these hard times and a guy who's

been trying to figure out how to find the light again a few times in my life.

And so I just, I couldn't think of anybody better to call than Max Lucado to say, Hey,

what do you think about having this conversation? So grateful that you're here.

And why don't you just talk about some of that stuff for a minute and then we'll chat about it.

Well, I'm, I'm, I'm very grateful. No one can talk about massive trauma better than someone who has gone through it like,

you have.

And there is no more raw trauma than outliving your child. Yeah, I just don't think there is.

I think it's tragic when you bury your spouse.

I think it's heartbreaking to bury your parent.

To lose a child. It's just, there's just, there's just no words. There are simply no

words and even the word trauma seems weak.

To try to articulate what I imagine you must have gone through.

Leigh, I think you've done all of us a favor by exposing your heart, letting us feel your pain

with you, as you not only inform, remind me, but inform most of the passing of Mitch and

how you had to process that, and your unique ability to process it and help us understand

what in the world is happening in our brains,

and how our mind, as you call the software of the brain,

activates neurons and syntaxes, and that we're not just going crazy.

We're not just going crazy.

So I think, if I could ask you, if I could pretend I'm interviewing you, I think my first question to you,

would be, was there a moment, was there an event.

In which you said, I'm going to be able to breathe again? You know, was there something, I've heard you talk

about hearing the promises of God.

I know that you had a grandbaby born the same day you buried your son.

And so most of us know what the tunnel of trauma is.

We go in and we just think we'll never get out of it.

But we do.

Was there a time in which you turned to Lisa or said to yourself, you know,

there's some light in the sky again?

Yeah, you know, I think there's there's two things that stand out.

One is, as you mentioned, we had Scarlett, it was our first granddaughter.

And there was this kind of a dual complexity to the to the tragedy, this massive thing

that we talked about, because we were all planning on being in San Antonio on that Friday

when we had Mitch's funeral instead.

And our daughter, Katie, was unable to come to be at her brother's funeral because Scarlett was coming.

And so there was all this complex stuff where there was things that were supposed to be

really happy that weren't happening and things that were, you know, supposed to be unifying

family event of having a funeral that parts of our family weren't able to be at.

So it was this big, complex, jumbled up mess.

That I think.

The fact that that light of a new life and a new member of our family came into the world

on the same day that we were going through the hardest thing we'd ever gone through,

gave us kind of a tangible reminder that there was still good out there.

One of the things that happens to people in trauma sometimes is they get into this lie

really that your brain tells you that this is it, I'm done for now, it's never going to be okay.

It can never move forward from this. But we had this little baby that had a whole life in front

of her, holding her in our arms. And there was still something new to live for. There was still

some good out there. And so I think that was one thing. It's just that God gave us that timing of

Scarlet was we knew that there was still purpose and meaning in our family. We knew that all of us.

Had things to live for and to look forward to. And we just had this little person who

reminded us of all that. So that was part of it. And I think another part of it was.

From a scientist side, you know, I had this constantly work in this kind of dual world

between the things we believe and the things we know. I wrote a whole book about that,

in the past. And we were in the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Research Center a few

weeks after Mitch died when we first went back to our office. And our office was in this place at

at the Auburn University campus where we, there was a lot of research going on in the

brain imaging of what happens when you think about certain things.

And for the first time, Lisa and I were able to watch an experiment happen where the researchers

were asking people to think about certain things that made them sad or think about things

that made them happy.

And we could see it on the screen, what was happening inside these people's brains when

they changed the things that they thought about. Thank you.

The researcher would say, OK, think about the worst day you've ever had in your life

and you could see what parts of the brain would activate and where the blood flow was happening.

And then they would say, OK, now think about the best thing that's ever happened in your

whole life, the happiest memory that you have.

And the brain would come alive with all these different lights and blood flow is changing.

And Lisa tied that to the idea of what Paul was talking about in Philippians 4, which

you wrote a whole book about.

And she said, these people change their brains by changing what they were thinking about.

And to me, it reminded me that God has given us all this hardware to take command of the

things that we think and feel, and we can change it by deciding to obey Him and believe

His promises are real, because He says, I do have good things yet in store for you.

This is not the end for you. No matter what you're going through, there's a possibility of hope and a future for you.

That's what Jeremiah 29 is about. And so, you know, I think it satisfied that science piece in me to actually see it with

my own eyes that these people change their minds and that's how they were able to change their life.

It's self brain surgery.

And that kind of that did something to me as the scientist. Like I had the I had the dad part and the grandfather part.

And then I had the science part and then my spirit just started coming alive with the

possibility that I could feel something like hope or happiness again.

It's not easy though, is it Lee?

It's not.

It takes, sometimes it takes everything we've got just to defy despair, much less pursue hope.

Those shadows, they can come really, really quickly. Can you talk for just a minute about,

of the difference between fact and feeling fact and feeling, and how feelings cannot be trusted.

I think we've talked about this before, and so I'm hoping you're nodding your head because,

you know, I'm kind of luring you into it. I think it's a fascinating conversation.

Well, I think that if we zoom out from this conversation a little bit and just look at

our society right now, I mean, we're living in a society that tells people that what you feel

should be pursued and almost worshipped. Like, if you feel it, you go get it, you know, take it.

And so we have a cultural part of that, but from the neuroscience side, it's very clear.

The things you feel are not facts. They are chemical events in your brain. So when you feel.

Fear, for example, your brain can tell you that you ought to be afraid, even if there's nothing

that you really ought to be afraid about. A good example of that is if you open a drawer in your

house in San Antonio and there's a rattlesnake in there, the brain is going to tell you to be

afraid because there's something really to be afraid of. But that same set of chemical triggers

If you hear a noise in the middle of the night and your brain says, oh, there's a killer in my house is going to murder me.

You feel the same thing that you felt when that rattlesnake was there because the same chemicals trigger that event.

And it's a limited palette of neurotransmitters that make you feel the things that you feel.

But the truth is feelings aren't facts.

They're just triggers that point us towards something that may or may not be true.

And so understanding that is the first step to saying, yes, I feel this set of things, but I can take command of my brain and I can tell my brain to take charge of those feelings and I can turn those thoughts around.

And my brain will reliably your brain will reliably produce different chemicals if you tell it different things to think about.

And so that's a critical piece of understanding the trauma response and understanding grief and anxiety and all of these things.

It's just to understand that just because you feel it doesn't mean it's true.

And you can change how you feel by changing what you do.

There's something to the Apostle Paul's admonition then, isn't there,

take every thought captive. Take every thought captive. Like a man once said,

just because you have a thought, you don't have to think it. That's a great quote, isn't it?

That's right. Yeah, it's your quote.

I put that one in the book. But that's all thought management, thought management, you know, and this is a bit of

a new idea for many people.

And that is when you have these thoughts swirling around in your head, take them captive and

take them before, you know, the apostle says, take every thought captive and present it

before the throne room.

And so we take that thought and we present it before Jesus and we can, a practical practice of this, Lee,

that I've found is we talk to Jesus and we say, Jesus, I'm having this thought of despair right now.

I've just buried somebody I love more than life and I haven't seen sunshine.

And I feel like I'll never, I'll never, ever be happy again.

That's how I feel. but Lord Jesus, is that true? Is that true?

See, what we're in pursuit of is truth. Jesus said, it's the truth that will set you free.

And so the truth is, according to the Bible, weeping may last for the night,

but joy comes with the morning.

So in a moment like that, equipped with a few statements of truth.

You choose, you say, okay, I don't feel like I'm ever gonna be happy again.

I don't. quickly say, if that's you,

Be kind to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Cut yourself some slack. But see if you can't give

ear to the truth, because that's what truly will set you free. It may take forever. It really may

take a long time. Or it could be tomorrow. You just don't know. But what you don't want to do,

right, Lee, is just cave in to that despair. That's right. That's exactly right. You know,

You know, we teach this thing, it sounds silly, but we talk about this bad thought biopsy.

I think about when I take care of somebody, if you come to my office and you tell me,

I've been having these headaches, and I say, well, let's go to the operating room and I'll

open your head up and see if I can find a tumor in there.

You would say, hey, time out.

Don't you want to do a scan? I think I won't call you, P. I think I won't.

Yeah. You'd say, well, let's get some data before we take action on this thought, right?

That that might not be the right diagnosis and I might not apply the right treatment

if I don't get some facts first.

So we teach this idea of biopsying those thoughts, that's what Paul's talking about in biblical

terms in 2 Corinthians 10.5 of taking every thought captive.

The thing about doing a biopsy is though, is that once you grab that thought and you

just put a little space in between the feeling or the stimulus and the response that you

take, once you grab that thought and critically examine it, then you can ask yourself three questions of it.

And the first question is, like you said, is this thought true?

And sometimes it is true. I mean, when you lose somebody, especially, you say, I'm never going to feel anything

other than sad about losing my son. That's true.

But the next thought might be, well, that means my life has no more purpose. And that's not true.

And so you take the first thought, and if it is true, then your second question is,

is that thought compassionate or is it at least unharmful to me?

And if it's not a compassionate or unharmful thought, then I need to direct what my next

step is. So you can have a true thought, but then you decide what to do with it and turn it into

something more helpful to you.

And the third thing can be, is this thought harmful to me? Is it untrue and harmful?

And if it is, then you need to replace it. You need to do some kind of radical thought transplant and let God put something more

hopeful and helpful in there for you.

I've learned to sort of take command of that first thought, because five to one, we know from the neuroscience side, that about five to one, your thoughts are biased towards negativity.

And that's just, that's true. It's true. That is amazing to me.

Heard you say that before.

Did I read that in the book, too? I think that's worth underlining. I wish we could

pull out a highlighter and highlight our screen. Five to one, so one out of every five,

only one out of every five thoughts I have are really worth thinking, right?

Yeah, that's true in general terms. And the reason for it is God wired us to protect us. So

When you're a baby and you touch a hot stove the first time, you make a very powerful synapse

in your brain that says, that thing is going to hurt me if I touch it again.

And so then for the rest of your life, when you see a stove, you know not to touch it

without having to think about it.

You see the hot curling iron, you know you ought not to touch it because it's going to

burn you. But the problem is that we have a lot of things that make us feel that same set of chemical

transmitters that feel like pain.

And so we'll say, wow, you know, somebody broke my heart one time, so I can't get close

to somebody because I'm going to feel that same thing if I do, and it's going to hurt me again.

And so we have all these synapses that fire based on prior experiences that aren't necessarily

true in the current moment.

And that can be really harmful in the post-trauma, post-massive phase, because you start feeling

all these things that remind you of what you felt when you lost that person.

When I went through the Iraq war, I had a lot of those triggers when I got home of things

that made me feel like I was getting mortared when I wasn't getting mortared.

And then if you get stuck in that feeling, then you can get stuck in rumination or in

shame or regret or all these what ifs and you can't move forward in your life.

How do you move forward? How do you take that memory and the false triggers that subsequent events have?

How do you rewire that?

I think the first thing is to be aware of what's happening in your brain.

There's some fascinating research that's been published recently.

Mary Frances O'Connor, who's going to be on my podcast pretty soon,

did some brain imaging research of these people that go through what we call complex grief.

Complex grief is about 10% of people that have gone through some major trauma or major loss

and they get stuck there, and they just can't move forward. They're stuck in rumination. They're stuck in guilt and thoughts of the past.

And the brain imaging has shown that there's an area of the brain called the, it's a long

word, the subgenuate anterior cingulate cortex, so we'll call it the cingulate.

And that part of the brain is right in the middle and it's like a big switch yard, almost

like a gear shift in your car, Max.

And it gets stuck in neutral sometimes when you've had major trauma.

And it's like taking the gear shift in your car and putting it in neutral.

And no matter how much you push on the gas pedal, that car's not going anywhere because

it's stuck in neutral. And so the cingulate, if you can re-engage your cingulate gyrus,

then you're gonna be able to say, okay, yes, I'm hurting.

Yes, I miss that person. Yes, I feel devastated, but I need to re-engage my brain

and let myself move forward.

And you do that by remembering that this isn't the first hard thing

that you or other people have been through.

And that other people have made it forward in their lives, and you have too in the past.

And so there's possibility of moving through that hard thing because other people have done it.

And that's why I love the lamentations so much. You know, the guy in lamentations is remembering all these horrible things that are going on,

and he decides to take action.

He says that I'm going to move towards hope. I take hope. I grab hope.

Hope is a verb. It's an action word, and I see it as that shifting the gear

and making that cingulate gyrus do its job again and getting me moving forward again.

So I think just knowing that parts of your brain are going to tend to be immobile and

stuck when you're going through hard things and then remembering that it is possible to

motivate them to move forward by thinking about different things.

And that also happens when you move your body physically. So when you're feeling stuck and you're feeling depressed and you're feeling like you can't

do anything, that's a good time to take a walk or make a phone call or read your

Bible or do something because your brain can't really multitask.

It's just really good at switching back and forth really fast.

And so when you do something else, you generate positive neurotransmitters and

you'll start building rewards around that.

And you'll start making new synapses that'll help you switch and drive forward out of that hole.

You're basically creating new thought habits, right? That's right.

Creating it. We tend to have bad habits when it comes to thinking. One of the things that I see

people struggling with a lot is spiraling. You know, this is bad, now this is bad, this is bad,

now this is bad. And it's a habit. It's a thought process. So something bad happens.

And so you assume something else is going to happen. And that reminds you of something else.

And then you get ticked off at so-and-so, and then you wish we had a different president,

and then you think we're potty trained too early, and it's a downward spiral.

So what you're talking about is developing a new way of thinking, and I think what the

Apostle Paul said, let your mind be transformed. Is that correct? Am I- Yep. Romans 12.

Well, yeah. And so the Holy Spirit will help us have a new way of thinking. You talked about

lamentations. It made me think about the psalmist who said, I lift up my eyes. Yeah. Whence comes

my hope? And I think there's something physical there. You know, the psalmist could keep focus

down, but the psalmist says, no, I'm going to lift up my eyes from whence comes my hope, my help.

And it's almost like a victorious or a fist clench or a punch of the air.

My hope, my hope comes from the Lord.

And so it's a conscious choice.

I have a good friend, he's a well-known, I won't say his name, I don't have permission to do so,

but he lost a son. And he said that for about.

I want to say 30 days, they kept praise music going in their house non-stop, 24 hours. They

just put a praise station on and let Christian music and praise music so that it would always be.

Sowing seeds of hope, you know, to counterbalance the challenge of despair.

And so what you're describing here, Lee, I think it's just powerful, powerful.

But, you know, I think it's really important to say this at this juncture in our conversation.

Like, if you're hearing us and you are dealing with serious anxiety or serious depression and you really can't move forward and you're trying, don't forget that sometimes you need a doctor and sometimes you need a therapist and sometimes you need medicine.

Medicine. And there are times when you need professional help.

So don't don't hear us.

Don't think that we're saying there's no role for that.

I'm not saying that at all. But there's a tremendous amount of positive movement that you can make in your own

life by these techniques and things that Max and I are talking about.

Tremendous amount of power in remembering that you've come through hard things

before. There's a tremendous amount of power in recounting God's promises and

and looking for ways that they've turned out to be true before, because they will turn

out to be true again.

And I saw, you know, we had this, this day that Lisa and I came to, to think about the

fact that, do we really believe that we get to see Mitch again?

Do we really believe that?

Because as Paul talked about, I can't, can't think about where he said it right now.

Maybe 1 Corinthians 15, where he says, if there's no resurrection, then we are above

all people, most to be pitied, right?

If we're living our lives and it's not even true, then that's just pitiful, right?

We had to come to believe that because for.

For me, I started thinking, gosh, if I don't get to see him again, then what is life really?

I mean, is life really have a meaning and a purpose? Or is it just you live out your days and it's all over?

Like I needed to believe that he was alive and I would get to see him again.

And that became this real thing for me. I understood why people feel that way.

And so I started saying, well, if that promise is true and I need it to be true,

then all these other promises have to be true too, because the Bible says that God can't lie and that every scripture is true.

And so then when he says that the Lord is close to the brokenhearted, that needs to be true, too.

And all of a sudden I started seeing it. I would have the worst day ever and you would send me a

text or I would open up my mail and there was a book from Max Licato in the mailbox or Lisa would

walk in the room right at the worst moment or one of our kids would call her. God was just showing

up and being kind to us in different ways. And so then that day was a little bit better because he

He was kind and close to the brokenhearted, right?

And then when you feel all alone and I felt like nobody understands

and maybe even God doesn't care about me anymore,

I would open up my Bible and I would find the Lord longs to be gracious to you, Lee.

He will rise to show you compassion. He'll get up out of his chair, Max,

to come and be nice to you when you're hurting. And I would just start finding those words

and they started coming true.

And over time, the light just started kind of coming on again and it got a little bit brighter.

And it's this kind of dual, I call it quantum physics thing,

because in the quantum physics world, more than one thing can be true at the same time,

which is hard to understand, but the math is true, that God can say something like,

Jesus can say in John 16, 33, this world's gonna give you trouble.

You're gonna have a hard time in this world. And he can also say in John 10, 10,

I came to give you an abundant life.

And both of those things can be true at the same time. And that's how we can make it through,

when it's all hard, you need to know that it's also still good, that there's still good stuff out there.

When you think of hope,

and compare that with optimism, biblical hope as opposed to, I don't know, secular optimism or just

the optimism. Can you unpack those two concepts from your viewpoint?

I think so. There's a lot of science around, there's a lot of research around hope and

the difference between hope and optimism and actually from a secular scientific point of view,

Some people say optimism is better than hope, but I think that's not true. I think it turns out to not be true. Optimism is this, and sort of secular hope and optimism, I kind of put those together, is this idea of hoping for a particular thing to be true or to come true or to come to pass.

That if this happens, I'll be happy, or if that happens, I'll be okay, or I'm going to make it as long as this set of circumstances occurs.

And you can be a generally optimistic person and sort of be always willing to say, hey, it's going to be okay, or that's going to work out for me.

And you can have all that, but it may or may not turn out to be realistic.

And then when you lose the thing that you thought you had to have in order to be helpful, then if that's what you built your hope on, then you turn out to be hopeless.

And hopelessness turns out to be the most dangerous thing anybody can have.

It's way more dangerous than cancer. Hopelessness is the deadliest disease that people can encounter.

But biblical hope, Max, isn't something – it's not hope for something.

It's hope in someone. And so if Jesus really did pay for my sins and he really did die

and he really did overcome death and he rose up again, then that means I can believe that he's going to do that for me too.

And so I think that some people say, what's the difference between faith and hope?

And I think it's that the easiest way for me to say it is faith is the belief that God can do anything He says He can do.

And hope is the knowledge or the belief that He'll do those things for me.

And so will He do it for me? And I believe that He will. And so, Jesus.

Lived this life, and he did the things that he did, and he overcame death, hell, and the grave. And because of that,

that's why I know Mitch is alive, and that's why I know Patty's alive,

and that's why I know I'll get to see him again. Because hope really is a

hope in someone and the things that he's done for us.

And so I think that's the biggest difference is if your hope is based on something that you could

find out isn't true or that could be taken from you, then you're really in a dangerous place.

I mean, you're in a very dangerous place if your life's happiness and meaning and purpose

depends on a circumstance that could change or a person that could die or an amount of

money that could become less because of inflation or something else.

If your hope is in something that cannot be taken from you, then it can really be bulletproof.

And that's what we learned, you know, after we lost Mitch that we dipped down for a while

and we were doubtful and we were hurting, but it turned out that the bottom of all those

emotional holes held. And the bottom was, he's really true and he's really real.

And I'll give you one more, you know, this is a long answer to your question, but.

People say all kinds of weird things to you after you go through major trauma and maybe you lose

somebody. People say, well-meaning Christians say Romans 8, 28, at your son's funeral, you know,

God's going to work this out for good somehow. And most of the time you want to punch them when

they say things like that. It doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel right. So it's not a good thing

to say right after somebody dies. But I'll tell you something that's weird, Max, over the 10 years

since we lost Mitch, two different times I've gotten emails from people who said, hey, Dr.

Warren, I was going to kill myself today until I listened to your podcast or until I read that

email that you sent out. And I feel a little hopeful and I'm not going to do that now.

And so because I started writing and podcasting and doing all these things out of the pain of

of losing my son, a couple of people have lived that might have died.

And that's a good thing. So here we are back to quantum physics.

So it's never going to be good that Mitch died.

It's never going to be okay. It's never going to stop hurting.

But good has come out of us being faithful and moving forward towards those promises

and deciding that other people could be helped by learning some of the things that we've

learned along the way.

And that's why we do all these things. And so Romans 8, 28 turns out to be true, that good things can come.

God can work good stuff out of any soil that your life is tilling if you'll just hold in

there and hang in there long enough.

It takes time and it takes years sometimes, but you'll start seeing that even that hard

one to swallow can turn out to be true.

Don't waste your sorrows, in other words. That's right. Would you say then that,

a person who has gone through a trauma, whether they wanted to or not, has been enrolled in a

particular school of suffering. And some graduate with postgraduate degrees in this school of

of suffering, which qualifies you to do something.

That somebody is going to need. You know, you and Lisa and your family can do

what a thousand of us pastors cannot do.

You can sit next to somebody who has just bid farewell to a child they love more than life itself.

You can sit down on the couch next to them and say, I know how you feel. I know how you feel. As a pastor, I might say I can't imagine how you feel, or I try to imagine, but I've not been there.

But because of your particular struggle, you can and you can then with the same comfort God gave you,

you can begin extending that comfort to other people. And what I'm hearing you say is that

though you would give anything to not go through it.

But you're discovering some purpose in it, and that God can use it. And that buoys you,

and helps you go through it. Am I hearing you correctly?

That's exactly right. I mean, that school of suffering, I remember this Isaiah 48 10,

he says, See, I have refined you, not like silver is refined, but I've refined you in

the furnace of suffering. And for me, I remember talking to God about that verse as I read it.

And I was like, I don't feel like you're refining me. I feel like you're cooking me.

I feel like I'm being burned up. And I came to this crossroads where I had to say, OK.

God is telling me that this fire can turn me into something better than I was before.

He can burn something out of me. And I'm not saying he put me in the furnace for that purpose,

but I ended up there and he can turn it around and he can burn something into my life that will be

be powerful and meaningful and I remember another surgeon came up to me shortly after

Mitch died and he was not a friend, it's a guy that I knew who was another surgeon

and he was one of these kind of, I don't really know what the word is, jock, he was

kind of these big kind of burly sports guys, you know, orthopedic surgeon and we never

really had talked and he walked right up to me, Max, and he put his hands on my shoulders

and he braced me the first time he saw me and he said, Lee, I don't know what to say

But I know this, I know your son wouldn't want his death to cause you to die too.

So don't let it have a 200% mortality rate because your son would want you to make something out of your life that would honor him.

And he just walked off. Like that was the most important thing anybody said to me after Mitch died is don't let his death kill you too.

And I think that that comes into the context of the school of suffering idea in this that Mitchell.

Would want his dad to tell a story with my life that honors him.

And so his life means something beyond that.

It just wiped me out.

And so in the context of my relationship with him, his life still has all kinds of

meaning and purpose because I'm using what I learned from him and from even my

experience of losing him to try to, to try to help somebody else find that context.

Victor Frankl said that famous line that he said, suffering stops feeling like suffering when you give it purpose.

And that's what I think the school of suffering is all about.

Yeah, yeah. I think we've talked about my father and my dad died of Lou Gehrig's disease or ALS.

We were serving in South America at the time we were in Brazil.

And I had volunteered to my father when he was diagnosed with ALS.

I had volunteered not to move to South America.

And my dad wrote me a letter that I'll treasure to the end of my life.

And in one of the lines, he said, go, please God, I have no fear of death or eternity.

Now my dad wasn't a theologian, he was a mechanic. He made his living in the oil fields of West Texas.

But he had landed on a faith that enabled him to weather that trauma.

It was horrible. I mean, it was two years of horror. You know what ALS does to a body.

And here's a robust mechanic in his early sixties who was hoping to pull a camper trailer

around the US in his retirement. And all that was taken from him.

But he said, I have no fear of death or eternity.

And even that though, wasn't quite enough for me. I think I was struggling with it, Lee, more than my dad was.

But there was a moment some month or so after my dad died that I received a letter from a friend of my father's.

I didn't know him well, but they worked together as mechanics.

And this friend wrote me.

And he said, I would visit your father every week. And he watched my father digress into a wheelchair,

into a bed, onto a breathing machine.

He watched that digression.

And he came to the funeral. And I remember meeting him, but I didn't know him well.

But he said, I watched your father suffer with dignity. He never complained.

And I decided that what Christ did for him, Christ could do for me, and I became a Christian at the funeral.

Wow. Now, Lee, that didn't surprise me that somebody would respond to my dad that way.

Because daddy really did suffer with dignity. But what I needed to hear, I needed to hear that my

father's passing had an eternal impact, eternal impact, not temporal, but literally changed a

a person's eternal mailing address.

Wow. And I just needed to say, okay, there was a significance in that.

God was using even that tragedy to reach someone's life.

And of course, the ultimate expression of that is the death of Jesus on the cross.

Take a human being, place them at the foot of the cross on the day Christ died, and they'll say,

well, there's no purpose in this, no meaning at this. This is horrible.

Here's a man being butchered and slaughtered and stripped and whipped and crucified.

There's no good in this.

But man, here we are still talking, you know. Three days later, Jesus vacated the grave

and we realized that he did it for us.

And the greatest display of love was in the most atrocious murder that the world has ever seen.

And so this is what you're talking about, how something can be horrible.

Can I use the word beautiful? You know, horrible, but also we can find beauty in it. We don't

dismiss. We don't dismiss. We don't pretend. We don't suppress. Just the opposite. We elevate the

pain. We present it before God. But then we say, Lord, help me to find the beauty in this and

help me to find the meaning behind it. Wow. I think it's exactly the right point. And I think

Take one nuance of that that we need to say for the people listening who are hurting over something.

Jesus rose from the dead after that beautiful, horrible, cruel thing, and he came back with

his wounds. This is really important, friend, all you listening.

Jesus didn't come back with his wounds all healed up, and the reason he didn't is because

Thomas needed to see them.

Jesus said to Thomas, you want to know who I am? You put your hand in my wound and you'll know who I am.

And that's what we have to do is live in this life with our wounds visible.

Because my friend, Jarrett Stevens, who's the pastor at Champion Forest Baptist Church in Houston says, scars tell better stories than trophies do.

It's exactly right. People need to see your wounds. And thank you for sharing that incredible story.

And Max, we got, we had about 10 minutes left in there. There are two questions that people wrote in, just hundreds of you wrote in beautiful questions.

There are two that I thought we needed a pastor's touch on.

And the first one is a woman named Tamara wrote in, Max, and said this.

How do you deal with the guilt of losing a child? My son, Kenny, at age 20, passed away from suicide five years ago,

and I struggle with guilt and the things I should have daily.

Max, how do you, as a pastor, how do you address that? I had the parental guilt of a child's suicide, that's just devastating.

I think, first of all, what was her name again? Tamara.

Tamara. Tamara, if you were right here with me in my office, I would say, can you be kind to yourself?

Don't feel bad for feeling bad. Yeah.

Okay. Just don't, just don't. Give yourself permission and don't put yourself on a clock.

You say it's been five years, you may have placed an expectation on yourself

that well, after five years, I should be over this, or somebody may have said that to you.

We all heal at a different pace. And so be kind to yourself, take a deep breath.

And then secondly, I have a tale about JJ Jasper,

in one of my books, and he lost a child. And he had to call, you had to do this too, Lee,

he had to call the siblings.

The little fellow was killed in, I think it was a four-wheeler that flipped over,

little youngster, single age, I can't remember the age, but he had, so JJ called the siblings and he said,

as he called them, I think there were four of them, he said, I want you to think about all the good you know about God.

Before I give you this news. There's some wisdom in that. So, Tamara, think about the good you

know about God. He still loves you. He still cares. He's watching over you. He's going to

get you through this. Don't give up. So, hang on to the good. And then, lastly, I think what we've

been saying is really helpful here. What's feeling and what's fact? You know, you didn't make that

to happen. You did not make that happen. And that's not a message from God when you have

that thought. So you need to please take that thought captive, present it before the throne

room of Christ to say, God, is this true? Is this true? No, it's not true. It happened.

It's horrible. If you could do anything to have prevented it, you would have. But you've

got to move out of this feeling of guilt, got to be kind to yourself and begin responding,

break out of this cycle, this downward spiral, just kind of push out of it and say, okay,

don't come it, don't come it, I'm not gonna let that thought hold sway over me.

And the more you do it, the more you'll create that faith thought habit

that we've been talking about.

It's not gonna come overnight, but it will come.

It will come.

That's exactly right. I have nothing to add. That was a perfect answer. We needed some pastoral

wisdom on that. And Max, the other question is just equally devastating. A woman named Sherry.

My faith has been shaken. My 10-year-old granddaughter, Jalen, passed away in May

from glioblastoma, brain cancer. Such a tragic loss for me and our family. Here's the question, How do we go on?

Oh, again, if you were here in my office, I would not give you a quick answer. I would want to hear

more. I would want to hear more about how this hurts, how it makes you feel. And so, based on

that, we might go two or three different directions. I quite likely would invite you to consider,

a couple of scriptures, though, one of which is the words of the Apostle Paul,

that this brief and momentary struggle is not worth comparing with the glory

that outweighs them all.

And that passage can come across a bit trite because I'm not saying that what you feel

is brief or momentary, but I think what the Apostle Paul was saying there

is in comparison to eternity,

and the eternity that Lee will have with Mitch and you will have with your granddaughter.

Can we put eternal perspective here? I wanted more time with my dad, I sure did.

And everybody on this call, I imagine, has somebody that they would say got taken too soon.

I get that, and I hear that.

In comparison with eternity, I think my dad, who's probably in that great host of witnesses,

Mitch and your granddaughter, would say, you know what, I'm okay, I'm okay.

You stay faithful because it's brief and momentary and a joy, a vapor, and we're gonna be home

with them and in the presence of Jesus.

I do not mean to downplay. I would not get to that point in the conversation quickly,

you know, only if you allowed me that permission because you gotta grieve, you gotta grieve it out.

But you can't grieve like those who have no hope.

Because we have that that's right thank you so much max and you know a couple couple more things

we're almost out of time i want to respect your time you've been so gracious max has taken a night

tonight with us less than a week before his own book launch you've got a brand new book coming

out max and just tell us just a second about your new book i'm so excited about it i don't have a

copy yet but i've already ordered it so tell us about your new book well i just happen to have

a copy. Now I am excited about this. This is called God Never Gives Up On You.

And it's a conversation about one of the most fascinating people in scripture,

Jacob. Jacob, you know, he was a scoundrel. I mean, the guy was a scoundrel. He seemed to be

running from God more than he was running toward God. So if you got it all together and you're

You're always running toward God.

This book's not for you. But if you've got a few more downs than you do ups,

you might learn something and benefit from how God was faithful.

The hero in the Jacob story is not Jacob.

The hero is God.

Amen. You know, it's amazing to me that you've been doing this for as long as you've been doing it.

I've written three books and it's like, people say it's like having a baby.

I can't say that, I'm not a woman, but it's certainly a labor of love and it's difficult.

And friends, I would encourage you, Hope is the First Dose has a bunch of stuff in it

that we didn't cover tonight that will be helpful to you if you're hurting.

Max's books always do that for me. He's the one guy that I can say without question, I read everything you write, and it just means

so much to me. And Max, I just, it would mean the world if you would just leave us tonight with a word of prayer.

And I'm just so grateful for you and Dean and the work that you're doing and the help

that you've been to me in my life and for your time tonight. Thank you so much.

To help me to put some words on hope.

It's my honor. It's my honor. And thank you, Lee. Not only does this book contain amazing wisdom,

it's just beautifully written.

Just beautifully written.

I don't get why some people can be brilliant surgeons, great writers, and play the guitar.

Could you not just give me one of those?

Lord, we thank you for this time. We do. I thank you for Lee. I thank you for Lisa.

I thank you for Dennis. And I thank you for Patty and for all these dear ones.

We thank you for Mitch and pray just a blessing over his memory and continued help and strength for the Warren family.

And all these who have been kind to lend in an hour of listening and thought, we pray for them.

We know that you hear everybody's concerns and we pray for strength and faith.

Help us to be strong in these very, very difficult and dark days.

We pray for those who are lonely, who are depressed. pray that if anybody's considering suicide, that you'd urge them, call them back, call

them into hope, and that, Heavenly Father, you would hear the prayers that are being offered.

We thank you for the empty tomb. We thank you for the promise of heaven in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Thank you so much, Max. And friends all over the world, I notice there's at least five countries represented here in

the folks listening.

Grateful that you spent an hour of your time with us. And remember that whatever you're going

through, God has a plan and a purpose, and you can give it meaning and purpose. It won't feel as much

like suffering. And there is a plan. There's always a plan. You can change your life by changing your

mind. And hope is the first dose. So shameless plug for the book. And I'm so grateful that you

spent some time with me and Max tonight. Max, love you. Thank you so much, brother.

Love you too, Lee. See you soon. Yes, sir. God bless you. Bye-bye.

Music.

Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren podcast is brought to you by my brand new book.

Hope is the first dose. It's a treatment plan for recovering from trauma, tragedy and other massive things.

It's available everywhere books are sold. And I narrated the audio book.

Audio book if you're not already tired of hearing my voice.

Hey, the theme music for the show is Get Up by my friend Tommy Walker,

available for free at TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

They are supplying worship resources for worshipers all over the world to worship the most high God.

And if you're interested in learning more, check out TommyWalkerMinistries.org.

If you need prayer, go to the prayer wall at WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,

WLeeWarrenMD.com slash prayer,

and go to my website and sign up for the newsletter, Self Brain Surgery, every Sunday since 2014,

helping people in all 50 states and 60 plus countries around the world.

I'm Dr. Lee Warren, and I'll talk to you soon. Remember, friend, you can't change your life,

until you change your mind.

And the good news is, you can start today.

Music.