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Good morning my friend, I hope you're doing well. It is 5 September 2023.
I'm Dr. Lee Warren here on the Self Brain Surgery with Dr. Lee Warren podcast.
In case you're new around here, we had over 200 new people sign up for the newsletter yesterday.
And so I suspect that there may be some folks that this is the first time you've ever heard this show.
And welcome aboard if so. We had an amazing opportunity to have a guest post on Anne Voskamp's blog yesterday.
And there's always a whole bunch of new folks that come along when Anne does something.
And we're so grateful that you found us, if you're new here.
We're here about trying to change our minds and change our lives.
Life is hard. It brings these massive things to us. And when it does, there's a plan.
There's a way to remain resilient and to find your way back to hope.
There's a treatment plan. That's what my brand new book is about.
Hope is the first dose.
So we're grateful for Anne publishing that yesterday. And if you are one of the folks that got here
from Anne Voskamp, thank you so much for checking things out.
Today is an episode where we're gonna go back in time, all the way back to 2015.
Because Thursday night, two days from now, at 5 p.m. Central Time, Max Lucado and I
are gonna sit down via the magic of Zoom and have a one-hour conversation about the neuroscience
and the faith elements of hope.
We're gonna talk about my book, We're going to talk about hard stuff, we're going to talk about how to find the light
again and if you have gone through a massive thing, some kind of trauma or tragedy or loss
or pain, anything that's really hard.
Or you're a caregiver or love someone who is or has gone through something like that,
this is going to be a great opportunity to pick Max's brain. Max, of course, is.
Probably the most successful living Christian writer, maybe of all time. He's sold hundreds
of millions of books, and he's been successful not because he's got a formula, but because he
breaks down gospel and biblical truths and helps us see how they can impact our lives today and
and help us find hope and move forward.
And Max and I are gonna talk and he's gonna ask me some questions and I'm gonna ask him some questions.
And you can sign up for that for free. You do have to sign up to get the link to come in.
But Baker Bookhouse up in Michigan is hosting this event and it's absolutely free.
You don't even have to have bought the book or read the book, but it would be helpful
if you buy the book and read it.
It would be helpful to just kind of guide your thinking. Can even when you register,
they ask you to submit a question.
You don't have to submit a question, but I think to get the free ticket to come into the event,
you have to type something into that box.
We're gonna go through a few of those questions and we're gonna answer some of them.
And I think it would be helpful to you.
But back in 2015, was the first time that Max was ever on the show and he talked about the greatest news ever.
What's the best news that you can ever imagine? And this world right now, friend,
eight years after that, needs some good news. And I thought in preface to the conversation
Max and I are going to have on Thursday night.
And by the way, the link is baker, B-A-K-E-R, bakerbookhouse.com slash events, E-V-E-N-T-S, bakerbookhouse.com slash events, and you can sign up for
free to get your ticket, digital ticket and link to jump in at 5 PM on Thursday
night, central time to listen to me and Max have a talk about hope.
And today I thought it's a wet your appetite for that. We're gonna go back to the very first time Max was ever on the podcast way back when I was calling it the you start
Today podcast the very first year that I was podcasting. I think it was May of,
2015 so I've been at it about a year by then and Max was so kind to come into this.
Inexperienced podcasters Show and have a wonderful talk almost an hour and it's gonna give you some blessings today as you may hear us talking about some
things that were contemporary to that time, so don't get caught up if we talk about something
that was happening in 2015.
This is a timeless message about the greatest news ever with my friend Max Likado, and I
hope that you'll join us on Thursday night. It's going to be worth it.
It's going to be an amazing talk about neuroscience and faith and doubt and fear and anxiety and
massive things and how we can always flex and land on hope because of the greatest news
ever that Max is going to remind us about today.
Friend. You can't change your life until you change your mind and Lisa's about to
tell us the really really good news is that you can always start today. 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 where the neuroscience of how your mind works smashes together with faith and
everything starts to make sense. That place is called self brain surgery. You,
You can learn it and it will help you become healthier, feel better and be happier.
And the good news is you can start today.
Thanks Lisa. Hey, so glad to have you listening today. I'm Dr. Lee Warren and I live in Nebraska in the United States of America
with my incredible wife Lisa, my father-in-law Tata, and the super pups Harvey and Lewis.
I'm a neurosurgeon and an author and I'm here to help you harness neuroscience, the power of your brain,
faith, the power of your spirit, and good old common sense to help you lead a healthier, better, happier life.
Listen friend, you can't change your life until you change your mind and I'm here to help you learn the art of self brain surgery to get it done.
If you like the show, please subscribe so you never miss an episode and tell your friends,
about it. If you tell two or three friends this podcast was helpful to you, imagine how much good,
we can all do around the world together.
I'm Dr. Lee Warren and I'm here to help you change your mind so you can change your life.
Let's get after it.
Hey my friend, Dr. Lee Warren here. Welcome to You Start Today.
I am so thankful that you've joined me on the podcast today because without a doubt,
this is the most important episode of the You Start Today podcast ever.
Today we're going to hear from one of America's best-selling authors, Max Lucado.
Max has sold millions of books, but I didn't invite him here today to impress you with
his success or to teach you how to become a famous writer like he is.
On this episode of the You Start Today podcast, Max Lucado will share with us the greatest
news in the history of the world.
This is huge news.
In fact, this is the life-changing news. That changes everything.
The biggest and greatest news in the history.
That is a life-changing discovery, Lee. My friend, I don't know what you're doing right now.
You might be driving, you might be working out, or like my friend, Wynn,
you might be replacing somebody's knee or hip.
But whatever you're doing, I would encourage you to turn this up,
to play it at normal speed, to pay attention, because the conversation you're about to hear,
contains the most important information you'll consider in your entire life.
I'm not exaggerating that, and let me explain why.
If you want the best life you can possibly have, I think you would agree with me that
being at peace in your heart, being comfortable in your own skin, and having a sense that
you understand your purpose in life and your destiny are essential components.
And one of the key elements common to all those things is to settle what you believe
concerning spiritual matters. Today's guest, Max Lucado, has achieved more personal success than I'm sure anybody listening
to this podcast.
But that's not why he's on the show. I didn't ask him here to talk about how to become rich and famous.
I asked Max to come on to the You Start Today podcast and he graciously agreed to do so
because he has carefully sought out the answers to the two biggest questions of life.
And he's discovered the greatest news in history. No matter what you believe, these 39 minutes,
this interview is about 39 minutes and it will help you in your life, I promise.
Even if you don't agree with Max's conclusions, I think you'll be better off for thinking through them with him.
I saved Max's bio for now because if you don't know who he is, if you've never heard of Max
Lucado, I didn't want to tell you who he was before I told you why I invited him here.
Because some people see titles like pastor, preacher, inspirational author, and they think
oh that's not for me.
I didn't want you to turn this off because you were afraid of the label or you didn't
like what Max might stand for if you don't come from that kind of a background until
Well, I told you why I thought this episode was so important.
Trust me, remember I'm a brain surgeon. I want you to turn this up, pay attention,
and listen to my friend, Max Lucado.
I promise you, you'll thank me later. Now, let me introduce him, and then we'll get started.
Max Lucado is a preacher with a storyteller's gift. He has a pastor's heart and a poet's pen.
He serves as the pastor at the Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas.
That's where we met him 10 years ago. Max was my pastor when I worshiped there at Oak Hills.
He's been on the staff at Oak Hill since 1988. He preaches and writes to the hurting, the guilty,
the lonely, the discouraged, and his message is simple. God loves you, let him.
That message has traveled around the world in more than 54 languages.
More than 120 million individual products have been sold.
Most of those products are books. Max has sold over 92 million books as of the time of this recording.
And he's occupied spots on every major national bestseller list.
Anyone you can think of, New York Times, down to your local newspapers, bestseller lists,
have had Max Lucado's name on them.
Over the years, Max Lucado's been featured in countless national media outlets.
He's been dubbed America's pastor by Reader's Digest, and he was named one of the most influential
social media leaders in the world by the New York Times.
My friend, I can't wait for you to meet Max Lucado.
Let's go. Max, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. You're kind to have me on. It's really great to have you take your time
be with us on You Start Today today and just I've told the folks your official
bio but tell us your story Max, tell us who you are.
Well, I live in San Antonio, Texas. I love working with messages and working with people.
I really get a lot of excitement and enjoyment when I feel like I've had a good heart-to-heart conversation
with somebody about a tough topic,
or even presented a message that seemed to connect with people.
I've been a Christian since, a follower of Christ since I was 20,
so that's 40 years now.
And the call to missionary work came early for me.
I went to Brazil and that was my first chapter of missions, of ministry, and then came to San Antonio in 1988.
I've been here ever since.
Marriage has been great. Caught a great woman on a bad day. She wasn't panicking.
And God has given us three delightful daughters and we're about to have our first grandbaby
in the next two to three weeks. So pretty pumped about that.
And I broke 80, I'm sorry, I broke 90 on the golf course last week.
So that was good news. So everything's good.
That's good. And along the way you started writing books. Yeah.
Books have you published now?
Well it all depends on how you count them. If you throw everything in, children's books, fiction books, gift books, and then what to
me is kind of the bread and butter, the Christian non-fiction books for grown-ups.
There's about 70 of those. The ones that really require the work, the Christian non-fiction adult books, I just
finished number 34 about two months ago on that one.
And I typically do one of those a year and have for all these years.
And many of those, as you know, Lee, come out of messages that I prepare for our church.
They're not transcribed sermons, because we really take them and clean them up and rework them.
But they begin, they have their birth as sermons, the messages that I prepare for our church.
What's the new one that'll be coming out? What's that one called and about?
The next release is in September and it's called Glory Days.
And it's a real fun topic for me.
It's basically this idea of why do so many Christians find the Christian life unfulfilling?
What's missing. There's been some fascinating, I know this isn't our topic so I won't chase the
rabbit too far, but there's some really some interesting research that's come out in the last
two or three years, the most comprehensive interview study of Christians that's done in
probably 30 years. And it suggested that only 11% of everybody who calls himself a Christian
would describe their Christian life as thriving, or vital.
And that really perplexed me and interested me, and so, of course, if a baseball team
is only winning 11% of its games, the coach is going to say, wait, something's not right.
So I dug into that and ended up with this book called Glory Days, and it'll come out in September.
Wow, that sounds great. It's amazing to me how your books in my life always seem to hit something I'm struggling
with right then.
Folks, I just encourage you, if you've never read Max Licato, just dig in and start getting to know him.
It's worth your time. So Max, all your books come around to Jesus in one way or the other.
Tell us about Jesus and why He's real to you, who He is to you.
Well, the big aha moment for me in terms of Jesus excuse me, happened when I was 20.
I said, that's really when my faith began.
Sometime in my college years, this whole theme of the empty tomb of Christ, the resurrection of Christ,
it began to dawn on me, that's the deal maker, the deal breaker.
If the tomb is empty, then Jesus is who he says he was.
If the tomb is occupied, then billions upon billions of us have been suckered into the biggest hoax in all of humanity.
So in my own mind, I've just come to believe that the Easter promise is true.
And I don't follow any unprecedented logic in this. Many people have followed the same line of thought,
but it just made sense to me.
And that is that.
How else do you explain what happened in the birth of Christianity?
Except that Jesus rose from the dead. If he didn't come out of the tomb,
then it would have been very easy,
for the enemies of Jesus in the Jewish culture to produce the body and bring it into the church before it began
as all the excitement began around the New Testament church, or the Romans,
it was a high insult to a Roman soldier that somebody could have stolen the body,
and yet they couldn't have proven otherwise, or they would have.
The disciples, if they were the ones who took the body, you know, 11 of 12 of them, historically,
were martyrs for their faith.
I don't believe that people, 11 of 12 people, who can be martyrs for a lie.
And so as I reasoned through what happened on that Easter morning,
I just came to believe that there really was a vacated tomb,
that Jesus did exactly what he said he would do, three times while he was alive.
He said, I'll be killed, I'll be in the tomb for three days,
and then I'll come out.
And so that was, for me, Lee, the birth of my faith.
I began to realize that the Christian faith is not an allegiance to a religion,
but it's an allegiance to a person, to a being, to Jesus Christ.
I don't try to defend everything that has been done in the name of Christianity through the years.
It nauseates me as much as it does anybody.
I believe that the Christian faith is really a pursuit of a relationship with God through this Jesus Christ.
I believe that everybody's gonna stumble and fumble in this and terrible things are gonna happen.
But as I've grown in my faith, I've come to realize.
That core belief in the empty tomb is enough. And you see, if I believe in the empty tomb,
then that gives me ability to believe in what Jesus said about life.
He becomes the authority for me.
He becomes the authority. If I don't believe in the empty tomb,
then someone else is the authority. I'm the authority or society is the authority.
But for me, Jesus is the authority on how to have a great life and where we're headed after life.
And all these huge questions. And so if he did vacate the tomb,
then what he says about heaven is what I'm gonna believe.
What he says about loving your enemy, that's what I'm gonna believe.
What he says about money, I'm gonna try to obey that. I don't succeed always.
But the big thing is that what Jesus says about forgiveness.
And here's what separates Christianity from any other religion in the history of the world.
Jesus offered to die for our sins, And his teaching is that we cannot pay for our sins.
We can't be good enough.
But he was and he is, and his death on the cross was a substitutionary death. He took my place.
And so that leads me then to believe that not only did he vacate the tomb,
but he paid for all my sins.
So those are the two big questions in life.
Guilt and death, the guilt and the grief. And so that's where I land.
Wow, that's probably the best encapsulation of Christian theology, folks, that you could
hope to hear in a short period of time. Thank you for that, Max.
Max, there's probably somebody out there listening who might say, well, that's all well and good,
you know, Jesus was clearly a great prophet or a great guy, but how do you deal with,
This this thought process of maybe Jesus is just one of many possible paths to God or paths to heaven
How do you respond to that? Yeah, and I sure understand that Here's the deal,
Again, remember that the claim of Christ,
Regarding access to God is that we are we are incapable of doing it on our own, right? In other words,
No matter how many good things I do,
I I cannot build a bridge to God out of my good things that I do.
The teaching of Christianity is that we have access to God through grace,
through a gift of God, not through things we do.
If you want to really do an oversimplification of world religion, it comes down to this. There are two views.
One says we access God by what we do. the other says we access God by what God has done for us.
Every religion except Christianity says we access God by what we do.
Now that makes perfect sense to me until I try to do it. But it basically says if you're good enough,
you will go to heaven, if you're good enough, you'll be reincarnated, if you're good enough,
you'll see God in some form or fashion, if you're good enough.
So all of the access to God depends upon me.
Jesus said, you know, the fact is we're not good enough and we're never gonna be good enough.
For that reason, Jesus is God made flesh and the only perfect person who ever lived.
And when he died, he died that substitutionary death for me so that I accept him, I accept his gift.
So there's really only two roads. There's not one way to God, there's two.
One says, I'm gonna save myself, and the other is, I'm gonna let God save me.
Now, for a person to say there's only one way to heaven, and that way is through Jesus Christ,
that sounds very exclusionary. It sounds almost pompous.
But the truth of the matter is, if you believe that you can save yourself,
then you don't need Jesus.
If you don't believe you can save yourself, then these other options are off the table. And so it's.
Two ways are not possible. The two are mutually exclusive. Does that make sense? It does.
You can't say, I'm saved by grace, and you can't say, I'm saved by works.
You have to say one or the other. One excludes the other.
If you say, I'm saved by what I do, then you can't say that Jesus is the way to heaven.
If you say, I'm saved by trusting Jesus, then you cannot say, and be morally honest,
that every other way works too.
Because they exclude each other. And so it's just simply a matter of,
you know, if you say you're going to Rome, then you don't take a flight to Sydney.
It just doesn't work.
There's either this way or that way. And so we all choose, we all choose.
And that's why I believe that Christ is the way.
And I long ago quit trusting my own good works or my intelligence, but I'm gonna trust him.
And that's where I ended up.
Jesus kind of excluded himself from that conversation when he said I am the way right? I mean he said it
So if you believe him, you can't believe the other the other path. Let's it's the old Lord lime Lord,
Liar or lunatic argument, right? It makes sense Jesus claimed to be Lord either if he's not then he was a liar or he was a lunatic,
Or he is still Lord or he was right and he's Lord and and and so So, to say that he's just a great moral teacher is,
that simply doesn't work, because he's either a lord, or he's a liar, or he's a lunatic.
Those are the three options that God has left for us.
Well, then I guess on the other side of the coin, you might have a person who says,
well, that sounds great, but if there was really a God, why do all these terrible things happen in our lives?
Why do people shoot up schools, or why does my wife get cancer and die,
why does my child die?
So when you encounter a difficult circumstance, how do you, Max, sort of address the person
who maybe chooses not to believe in God or gets mad at God and doesn't wanna believe in that God
because of hard things that happen?
There's really two approaches. Again, if you don't believe in God,
then everything is random and things just happen because people are bad people.
If you do believe in God, then how does God let these things happen?
Is he bad? Is he distant?
Is he disconnected? Well, the Bible presents a God who is involved, who is concerned, who is compassionate.
How could a God who is involved, concerned, and compassionate let things happen like riots
in Baltimore or shootings in an elementary school or an earthquake in Nepal?
How could he let these things happen?
Well, the biblical answer to this is ultimately heaven.
Ultimately, heaven is the answer to this. And the Bible never, ever, ever suggests
that the world as it is, is the way the world's intended to be.
There's nothing in the Bible that would suggest that, well, this is as good as it gets.
Everything in the Bible says, no, we're looking forward.
There was a decision made by humanity in its earliest form and Adam and Eve were the earliest people to turn against God.
And so the consequence of that was a fall, a breach in the relationship between God and humanity.
God, at that point, declared there would be free will, there would be a choice.
And if Adam and Eve and their children choose to turn from God, God was gonna let them
because the alternative would be a set of robots.
So he let them turn from him, and the consequence of that turning away
has been for all of these generations, free will.
And where there is free will, there are stupid choices. Where there is free will, there are mistakes.
Where there is free will, I believe, there has even been an unsettling in the universe,
in the physical universe.
This gets a little mystical for some people, but I believe that there's something that's happened
even in the universe that causes things to get out of balance.
And so, the short answer, then, to that question is, God chose to let us choose.
He chose to let us choose. He chose to let us have free will.
Where there's free will, there are bad decisions. Where there are bad decisions, there are broken hearts.
But since God is loving and since God is sovereign, He has given this promise,
that He will take all of these bad things,
and He will use them for something good.
He'll redeem them for something good.
So I have passed through tough things. You've passed through more than your share of tough things.
But God promises, I will redeem those things.
I'll make you a better person or I'll use them to shape your character,
or I'll use them to reveal more of myself.
And so God takes those difficult circumstances and he redeems them.
The two great promises in the Old Testament and the New Testament,
what you intended for evil, God used for good, that's the words of Joseph.
And everything works together for the good of those who love him.
Those are the words of Paul.
And so we kind of hang on to those as the sovereign grace of God.
He's sovereign, but he's gracious. And we believe that all of these things
going to pass but till then they're going to be used for good.
That's powerful. And let me testify, Max, the quote you just had, the story from Joseph, Max's second
to most recent book, You'll Get Through This, addresses that, how to handle hard things
and hard times in your life.
And that book came out really around the same time that we lost our son, almost two years ago.
And if you're going through something hard, I would recommend that you reach out for that
and let Max pastor you through that hard time.
Thank you for writing that, Max, and for sharing that with us.
So the other thing that happens sometimes is we might believe and we might have encountered Christ
and we might even trust him,
but maybe some of the things that we've done make us feel like maybe we love God,
but he couldn't possibly love us.
I mean, Max, how do you talk to somebody who feels like maybe they're just too broken
are too far away, too sinful for God to reach out for them.
Again, I go back to the empty tomb.
If Jesus actually rose from the dead, then everything he says about the value of humanity,
is reflective of the heart of God.
So what did Jesus say about the value of people? Well, we love the gospels because the people Jesus loved the most
were the people that thought they were the most unlovable.
A woman caught in the act of adultery, a woman who had been divorced five times,
a demoniac, a scoundrel of a tax collector,
all of these people who were just really, from an earthly perspective, unlovable,
and who'd made a mess of their lives.
But Jesus made a big deal out of loving them. In fact, the most famous people in the Bible
are people like Peter, who.
Who denied Christ, who cursed Christ, people like Paul, who set out to destroy Christianity.
And the theme that these people all have in common in their stories is they found not just a Jesus
who knew them, but a Jesus who loved them.
That's why even people who don't know anything about the Bible have heard somebody quote John 3,16 from the Bible.
And that verse says, for God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son,
that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
God loves the world. This is huge news. In fact, this is the life-changing news.
It's one thing to say God is, it is something else entirely to say God is love.
To speak of the existence of God is great, but to speak of the existence of a gracious God,
that changes everything.
And so my contention is that the biggest and greatest news in the Bible and the biggest and greatest news
in the history is not just that God knows me, but that God loves me. He's fond of us.
You're everything to Him. He cares deeply about you.
And He's had more thoughts about you than you have hairs on your head
and there are specks of sand on the beach.
That's how much God loves us. And that is a life-changing discovery, Lee. It really is.
To discover that I'm known and that I'm loved. There is a hole within each one of us
that longs to be filled by the love of a father.
Every person. You work and you chum around with some of the most successful people in the world.
Most brilliant, successful people, and you're one of them. But I don't care how successful a person is.
They've gotta know God loves them, or they're gonna have an empty heart.
They're gonna be longing to have that emptiness filled.
And nothing feels that like believing in the fact that God loves you,
and He's got a great plan for your life.
Somebody hears that, Max, somebody listening right now hears you say that, and they say,
wow, I want some of that.
What do they have to do to get that, to get that grace or that love from Christ?
Yeah, really, the word the Bible uses is receive or trust.
These are somewhat passive words, especially compared to words we might expect in our culture
because we're used to earning and to deserving.
But it's simply a matter of trusting. It's a matter of believing.
You know, that's the promise of John 3, 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son
that whoever believes in him, in other words, whoever accepts him.
We see signs of this though in our daily lives. I've done things that would cause my wife
to have every reason to be mad at me or to kick me out.
Sometimes I think, how could she still love me?
But she does. She says she does. So I'm just gonna believe that.
I'm just gonna believe it.
And I wish there was, no, I'm not. I'm glad there's not a more complex answer. Let it be simple.
Just say, okay, I'm gonna start believing you, Lord. Now it's up to you to reveal yourself to me.
And that's where it starts.
And usually just when somebody makes that decision that mean right now literally as they're listening to this,
Podcast if somebody says, okay, I'm gonna believe are they gonna are the lights gonna flicker?
Are they gonna feel the earth shake? I mean, what's the next step what's gonna happen? Yeah,
Let me tell you what happens that we do not see What happens is that God through his spirit begins to take up residence in that person?
God begins to live inside that person This was the teaching of the Apostle Paul that's so wonderful.
His favorite preposition was in. Christ is in you.
And so some miracle happens and Christ takes up residence inside us.
And as we begin to trust Christ and live in Christ, Christ begins to grow inside us.
And what you'll find, what your listeners will find is that little by little, day by day,
there will be patience where there used to be impatience.
There'll be love where there used to be hatred. There'll be peace where there used to be anxiety.
Now, I've seen it both ways, Lee. Probably you've seen this as a physician.
Sometimes the healing happens overnight and everybody stands in amazement.
How did that person heal so quickly, so fast?
Other times it just takes time.
And I wish I knew more how to accelerate the healing or the growth.
That's what fascinated me about what we were talking about earlier about glory days, why some people really connect
and other people get stuck, but that's just another topic.
But what happens, though, is undeniable, and that is a relationship with Christ is born,
and then that salvation issue is secure.
God pledges that he's gonna save us, and then he's gonna develop us
and help us to grow to be more and more like him.
There have been cases where the people did see lights, and they did have visions,
and they did experience some wonderful things.
Most of the time, however, it's somewhat subtle.
And that's the way Chris is. He's just gentle. He's just gentle.
Well, that's powerful. If you're listening and you're believing,
maybe send an email and let us know. Max would love to hear that this conversation helped you
in your walk, right, Max? We'd love to hear about that. Max, let's talk for a minute about,
just to change the subject for a minute.
Recently you released your first work of fiction that wasn't for children.
Talk about why you decided to write fiction and then talk specifically about
Miracle of the Higher Grounds Cafe and why you wrote that book.
Well, I love fiction. I just think that fiction is read by people who don't read nonfiction.
You know, a lot of people don't wanna pick up a nonfiction book and learn what the Bible says
about this particular topic because maybe they're students and they spend all day reading books of that sort
and the last thing they wanna do is pick up another one.
For whatever reason, fiction is a lot more enjoyable to read, it's a lot more enjoyable to write.
And wonderful things can happen when you tell a story. And so I started writing this story on vacation one year,
and nothing real complex.
I just had an idea what would happen if there was a place where people could ask God any question,
and God would answer that.
Where would that place be? What kind of inner questions would we ask?
And so I finally decided, well, it could be in a coffee shop and maybe this coffee shop would be equipped,
with a special heavenly blog or internet capacity.
And so then that it started to grow and it took on characters, some of whom are angels,
some of whom are struggling people, and it ended up where it is.
I wrote the first draft of it, Lee, and got it to about, let me see, about 20,000 words.
And it seemed like it was too short for a novel or even a novella.
So I talked to my publisher, and they were very interested in publishing it, but they,
agreed that it seemed short.
I was kind of up to my eyeballs in other projects, and I said, I know these two screenwriters,
Eric Newman and Candice Lee, screenplay writers, and great, bright young people.
They're both in their early 30s.
They happen to live in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And I said, what if I pitched the idea to them
of taking it now and expanding it and seeing if we could add more layers,
of relationships and personality development?
And so the publisher loved that idea. And so Candace and Eric agreed.
And they spent about three months working it over.
And I think they really took what was a Malibu who'd be Alexis, in terms of just good storytelling.
I really enjoyed working with them.
Well, the book is beautiful and you're right, there are people who won't approach non-fiction,
but they'll get to the same concepts and ideas through fiction.
I read your book and my favorite scene, Max, is when the main character, Chelsea, is taken,
by an angel and gets back in the past and gets to see the cross and what happened on the cross.
You talked about how loneliness is a choice because of the work that happened on the cross.
Can you just expound on that for just a moment, please?
The beauty of involving angels in a story is that you can, you're not bound by time.
And the whole story is imagining what God might do to win someone's heart.
Chelsea is the main character and she's had a rough go of it.
She married a jerk of a guy. She's had one problem after another happen.
And she's pretty well given up on God, but God hasn't given up on her.
She's the one who inherits the coffee shop.
She's the one who inadvertently employs angels in her service, in her coffee shop.
And so one of the big moments is when she is transported back in time and she stands before the cross,
and is actually there seeing it.
And then when she witnesses the resurrection and it's that personal interaction
with the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ that changes her.
I would love to do that in my life. I mean, if God were to say,
could you go anywhere in the world in history, I would volunteer to be time-traveled,
time-lifted back and witness the crucifixion and resurrection.
There's nothing that to me would compare with that.
And so it's just, I think it was, Being in those moments in our imagination can change us.
And so in the book, I allowed that to be the moment that really changed Chelsea.
I was running, I was on the treadmill, listening to the audio book, and that scene,
and I started weeping.
I got off the treadmill, sat down, opened the Kindle version, and called my wife
into the room and read that out loud to her.
Because you just hit on the head, Like what it might have felt like to be there
and to fully understand in one moment what the work on the cross did for us.
And Max, what in 2015, you know, 2000 years later, like with technology that we have
and how advanced we are as a society, why does the cross still matter to us now?
Why is it still relevant?
What a great question. By the way, you do a great job on these interviews.
Oh, thank you. Maybe you should hang up your scalpel.
Maybe I will.
Hang up your scalpel, take up a microphone.
Well, the cross speaks to the two fundamental questions of human existence, the grave and guilt.
When we die, do we leave and enter into the great nothingness or do we enter into something else?
And guilt, every person on the planet,
has a deep gnawing sense of failure and disappointment.
They're disappointed in themselves and they believe if they're disappointed in themselves,
then for sure God must be disappointed in them.
So that leads to either being angry at God or denying God or running from God
or trying to satisfy God through good works.
And none of those end up making us better people.
So the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ make a huge difference because through that weekend,
there is the announcement that death has been defeated.
It's gonna happen unless Christ comes first. We're all gonna die, but there's this promise
of a great reunion that we're looking forward to and supper's on the table.
And then number two, there's forgiveness, there is. Here's what's unique and wonderful
about the Christian faith, and that is God does not love me more if I'm better.
He doesn't love me less if I'm worse.
That's just monumental.
He wants me to be better, but he's not gonna stop loving me if I screw up.
He's gonna keep loving. Failures are a part of life.
So God says, here's what I'll do. I'll forgive all those failures,
and I'll satisfy the justice part of God's character. I'll satisfy justice through the sacrifice of my own son.
But then raising him from the dead proves that even the tomb couldn't hold him back.
So everything is satisfied. The justice of God is satisfied.
My failures are washed away. My death is defeated. My life has meaning.
And so everything happens that weekend.
Now, if somebody can prove that Jesus is still in a tomb somewhere,
that the grave is occupied, that we've all been suckered into a big hoax,
then that changes everything, it does.
Christianity stands or falls on the veracity of the empty tomb.
And that's just, it all comes down to that.
That's why for me, my faith began when I began to believe that the tomb was indeed vacant.
Powerful stuff from Max Locato. Max, you've sold millions of books and you've interacted with,
Literally, you've touched hundreds of millions of lives in the world and you're at an age
where some people start thinking about retiring and kicking back and playing golf every day.
Why does Max Lucado still get up every day and pastor people and mentor people and write books?
And what keeps you going, Max? Well, if you could see my golf game,
you'd know I don't wanna play every day. I do love golf, though.
You know, I'm healthy. I love what I do.
Lee, I love the church. I get frustrated because we tend to make things
real complicated in religion.
So that's a challenge. But I still down deep have a love for the people. Love the church.
Love what the church is up to.
I don't see changing. I'm in a good balance.
I feel like I'm not overworked or overstressed in what I do.
And as long as I feel like people are happy when I stand up to preach, then I think I'll preach.
That day could come that maybe I get too, I don't know, old or weak or whatever, and I'll be happy
to move into a new chapter at that point.
But I really love what I do. I have slowed down some. I don't preach all year anymore.
I preach six months out of the year. That makes a huge difference. That gives you time to back
away and regroup when you're not preaching and prepare the next batch of lessons. I would say
that I'm doing the most what I love to do, and that is as much as I could ever ask for.
That's beautiful. We look forward to everything you have coming up in your next book because
every book that you write has made a difference in my life, Max, and I know for many other
people listening out there. The last thing I want to ask you, Max, is there's inevitably
there's somebody out there listening who, they're just stuck. They're stuck in some
place in their life. Something in the past is holding them back or they're scared about
something in the future. How do you help those people decide to start today to make something
different tomorrow than it's been in the past?
Okay, I think, again, you ask such great questions.
What I do is very similar to what you do, Lee, as a physician.
When I sit down and talk to somebody, I go through a spiritual analysis of their life,
just like a person might take a physical.
We're systematic by nature. If there is a headache, there's a reason there's a headache
and trying to determine the source of that and not just treat the symptom is really what we're all about.
Trying to find the source of our hurts.
Where I like to go is I like to go back and help a person examine their belief system,
because I believe that our beliefs create emotions and those create actions.
And so I go back and I help a person say, now what is your fundamental belief system?
Do you believe there is a God?
And if you believe there is a God, do you believe he's a loving God?
And if he's a loving God, is he a gracious God?
Everything goes back to their belief system. Because if they're dealing with, for example,
if they're dealing with inordinate fear, or if they're living in stress,
all of us have fear and all of us have stress,
but inordinate, perpetual fear and stress is not healthy.
And if a person is facing anxiety 24 hours a day, You can treat that with some medication
and that's very appropriate.
And then in addition to that, you can treat that with an analysis of their belief system.
So maybe you don't really believe that God is in control.
Maybe you believe it's all up to you. So let's go back and look at what the Bible says
about God's sovereignty and God's grace.
And I like to help a person go back to their belief system.
I have an agenda. I believe the healthiest belief system says,
God is sovereign and God is gracious.
I mean, those are like two pillars, two tent poles that hold up everything else.
And where a person does not believe God is sovereign, and if a person does not believe God is gracious,
then that's gonna spin off and create certain emotional problems or fears.
And so I try to help a person go back and say, now, do you really believe God is sovereign?
And do you really believe God is gracious?
If so, believe it, trust it. And rather than giving in to the anxieties on day to day,
when you feel the anxiety come up, go back and look at that truth, God is sovereign.
Or when you fail, instead of giving in to guilt, go back and look at grace and forgiveness
and treat those emotions with truth, treat them with truth.
But if a person doesn't believe that God is sovereign, person doesn't believe God is gracious,
I don't have a whole lot I can give them, you know.
But, so that's why our faith is so important.
And I can't remember how I got on this from this question, but it's kind of how I think when I sit down with somebody.
And over the 30 years that I've done it, I've found that those are the two things
that help people the most, a belief in a sovereign God and a belief in a gracious God
and a healthy belief system.
Beautiful. Max, thank you so much for your time today. Really always a pleasure to be in your presence and hear from you.
And just I wish you the best and your family and- We've been talking about my books,
and you know I love your book.
You know, I really do, and I hope that if any of your readers, or listeners,
haven't yet read it, boy, they ought to.
They ought to. And catch me up. I think you're working on a new project, right?
I'm working on a lot of things.
I'm trying to learn how to write fiction, and just trying to understand how to help people
in this day and age, because I realized that I could help a lot more people with words,
and the internet than I can with my hands in the operating room.
Well, the beauty of working with words is that you really go upriver, don't you?
You go upstream to where a lot of people's problems start.
I know I say this often in marriage counseling. By the time somebody comes to me
for advice on their marriage, the problem is so big, it's just next to impossible to solve.
I'm always gonna say, Could you not have come to me six months ago or two years ago?
You gotta go upstream where people's thought process is the beginning.
And that's the beauty of books.
And you just have that opportunity to do so. Thank you for that wisdom too, Max.
Thank you so much for being with us today.
I'll do it. Thank you, thank you. Hope I can do it again. Thanks for letting me be a part of the program.
Thank you, God bless. God bless you.
Wow, what a great conversation. Thank you, Max, for taking the time to be with us on You Start today.
I've never heard anyone lay out the basics of the Christian faith as clearly and plainly
as Max did in that interview.
Friend, if you're a person who's always thought there were many paths to God,
I wanna encourage you to think about what Max said.
There are not many paths to God. There's actually only two.
There's not one way to God, there's two. One says, I'm gonna save myself,
And the other is, I'm gonna let God save me.
Listen, I've tried to save myself, it doesn't work.
And when life makes war on you, and it will eventually, we need to know where to hide.
We need to know where the safe places are. And there's only really one safe place.
And I believe that safe place is in Jesus Christ. If we decide we can't save ourselves,
that means we have to trust somebody else to do it.
Max summarized perfectly why we can trust Jesus to be that savior and to answer the two big questions
of life, the question of guilt, and the question of the grave.
The Christian faith is not an allegiance to a religion, but it's an allegiance to a person,
to a being, to Jesus Christ.
I don't try to defend everything that has been done in the name of Christianity through
the years. It nauseates me as much as it does anybody.
I believe that the Christian faith is really a pursuit of a relationship with God through this Jesus Christ.
I believe that everybody's gonna stumble and fumble in this and terrible things are gonna happen.
But as I've grown in my faith, I've come to realize.
That core belief in the empty tomb is enough. And you see, if I believe in the empty tomb,
then that gives me ability to believe in what Jesus said about life.
He becomes the authority for me.
He becomes the authority. If I don't believe in the empty tomb,
then someone else is the authority. I'm the authority, or society's the authority.
But for me, Jesus is the authority on how to have a great life,
and where we're headed after life, and all these huge questions.
And so if he did vacate the tomb, then what he says about heaven is what I'm gonna believe.
What he says about loving your enemy, that's what I'm gonna believe.
What he says about money, I'm gonna try to obey that. I don't succeed always.
But the big thing is that what Jesus says about forgiveness.
And here's what separates Christianity from any other religion in the history of the world.
Jesus offered to die for our sins And his teaching is that we cannot pay for our sins.
We can't be good enough. But he was, and he is, and his death on the cross
was a substitutionary death.
He took my place.
And so that leads me then to believe that not only did he vacate the tomb,
but he paid for all my sins.
So those are the two big questions in life.
Guilt and death. The guilt and the grief. And so that's where I land.
If you've decided that the hard parts of life are reasons not to believe in God,
Max would encourage you to rethink that. The Bible never says life will be easy,
but it does give us the hope that everything will eventually be okay. Isn't
that better? Well, the biblical answer to this is ultimately heaven. Ultimately
heaven is the answer to this. And the Bible never ever ever suggests that the
world as it is, is the way the world's intended to be.
There's nothing in the Bible that would suggest that, well, this is as good as it gets.
Everything in the Bible says, no, we're looking forward.
Take heart, my friend. You've just heard the greatest news in the history of the world.
God loves the world. This is huge news. In fact, this is the life-changing news.
It's one thing to say God is. It is something else entirely to say God is love.
To speak of the existence of God is great, but to speak of the existence of a gracious God,
that changes everything.
And so my contention is that the biggest and greatest news in the Bible,
and the biggest and greatest news in the history is not just that God knows me, but that God loves me.
He's fond of us. You're everything to him. He cares deeply about you.
And he's had more thoughts about you than you have hairs on your head
and there are specks of sand on the beach.
That's how much God loves us. And that is a life-changing discovery.
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TommyWalkerMinistries.org. Remember, you can't change your life until you change your mind,
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