What's So Amazing?, with Philip Yancey

Good morning my friend, I hope you're doing well, Dr. Lee Warren here with you

and we're doing a little self brain surgery today.

It's wild card Wednesday and I was going to save this episode for a Friday conversation

but I think it's time to go today.

I've said a lot before, if you've read either of my last two books you know

about my long and really incredibly fortunate association with Philip Yancey.

Philip, really his books kind of changed the, they didn't kind of,

they literally changed the arc of my faith life.

I've said it many times in many different ways, but when I was a resident in Pittsburgh,

it was a hard time for me, and I was struggling with my faith and how the kind

of fundamentalist faith with which I was brought up, didn't seem to give me

a lot of hope or answers to some of the hard things I was going through,

struggling with a marriage,

working in a difficult environment, and I really just sort of hit a wall and

didn't really understand why faith didn't seem to be helping me anymore.

And a friend handed me a copy of Philip Yancey's book, What's So Amazing About Grace?

And so shortly after it came out, I subsequently read that book,

and then his The Jesus I Never Knew in short order.

And those two books kind of reframed my thinking about exactly who Jesus is

and what his message was and why grace turns out to be the thing that you've

got to hold onto. It's the only lifeline that we have.

And so I read those books and years passed and they really helped me get back on my feet.

And just like we often discuss when you're going through trauma and tragedy

and massive things, is that God doesn't usually just eliminate the situation,

but he comes alongside you and helps you navigate it and helps you find hope in the moment.

And really that's now what we've done with Hope is the First Dose,

is try to give you a toolkit, a treatment plan, to help you see that even though

you're still in the middle of the story, there's hope. There yet remains hope.

So years passed, and I struggled with another conundrum that ultimately led

to, I've seen the interview,

And this was this idea that I could be a person of faith and I could believe

and know that God can heal diseases and know that God can do these miraculous

things, but with this particular brain tumor,

glioblastoma, he just never seemed to do it. Like the answer always seems to be no.

And so I would see a patient, I would look at the scan, I would say,

man, I know what's gonna happen to that guy. I've seen the interview.

And I would just forecast in my mind all the science stuff that I knew based on my experience.

I knew when he was gonna get sick and when his hair was gonna fall out,

what the surgery was gonna look like, what his chemotherapy was gonna do to

him, and I knew about how long he would live, just from looking at the scan.

And it was frustrating to me because I didn't leave room for hope for what I knew they needed.

These people need to hold on to hope and hold on to faith and fight hard and

not give up. And they need to redefine what life means.

If their life's going to be shorter than they thought, then we know that holding

on to hope really makes a difference in the quality of life regardless of the length of it.

So I was chewing on that big question and didn't know what to do with it.

And Lisa, in her great wisdom, said, you know, you should reach out to Philip

Yancey. You've read his books over the years.

You've been a big fan of his. You've learned so much from him,

and he's grappled with these big questions.

You should write him a letter, and maybe he can give you some guidance as to

how to sort of process this thought that you're having.

And we found an email address. I thought it was silly.

I thought, no, surely I'll never hear from Philip Yancey.

We found an email address through his publisher, and I sent off an email.

And just the writing of it, just putting it down in words, really kind of helped

me begin to unravel the knot of that question.

How do I doctor people when I can't cure them with surgery? How do I help them

hold on to hope when there is no hope in their diagnosis?

So how do I how do I help people when I can't help them, right?

Well lo and behold a few months later we're sitting there and Lisa says,

hey you'll never believe who just sent you an email and it was Phillip Yancey.

And he worked through the whole problem. Very gracious and kind,

long email and basically said, hey when I've got a big problem I can't I write about it.

I put it on paper and I kind of chew on it and grapple with it.

And so I was a little frustrated that he didn't just tell me what to do.

But he did give me a toolkit. He gave me a plan of something I could do to start working on it.

Well, then a little while later, I found on his blog that he had written an

article about the Iraq War and how he felt about it and all of that.

And I just, almost as a whim, wrote him another email And said hey,

I'm not gonna tell you how to think politically about the war I'm not even sure

how I think about it, but I did write a book about it.

I had written this was 2010 I had written a self -published book,

Called called out that you can still find out there on Amazon But don't don't

please because if you've if you read it It's terrible was my early beginning

as a writer and I later rewrote that book and really wrote it and that turned

it in no Place to hide so if you're gonna read a book read no place to hide Um,

called out has more of my emails home and more pictures in it, but it was, um.

Not well written, I would say. Anyway, I sent Philip Yancey this email and said,

hey, if you want to know what I experienced as part of the Iraq War.

I'd love to share my book with you.

And he wrote back and said, yeah, I'd be happy to read it. So I sent that off to him.

Well, then a few weeks later, we were in Boulder, Colorado, at the St.

Julian Hotel, and my phone rings.

And I answer it, and it's Philip Yancey. He called me, and he said,

hey, your story really helped me. I appreciate it.

You did a good job. It's a good story He said but it feels like you wrote it

for your mom and your friends and I said well I did I just kind of wrote it

so my kids and my family would have

Some record of what I did and he said I think this story deserves to be read

by a wider audience But you need to learn how to write like if you need to learn

how to write for an audience that doesn't know you

And he said if you want I'm not telling you what to do but if you want to have

it actually published and go learn how to write or hire a ghostwriter and And,

you know, if you write it again and it's good enough, I'll introduce you to

an agent because you have to have an agent in this business to get in the door with a publisher.

And so I was like, okay, fine. So then I spent two years learning how to write.

We interviewed ghostwriters and I just couldn't come to grips with the idea

of letting somebody else write my story.

So we interviewed ghostwriters and decided against that. And I learned how to

write. I read every book I could find.

I did every kind of research on how to write books.

And I wrote and wrote. I wrote two novels that were terrible and poor Lisa read

every word of all that and ultimately Hired an editor to help me Dave Lambert and we ended up writing.

I ended up writing what later we came no place to hide.

Well, I sent it to Philip. He read it a few days later He said yep, it's a good start.

It's really good I'm gonna go ahead and introduce you to Kathy and And Kathy

Helmers, his agent, who is still his agent, became my agent.

And she said, I see something in you, I think you can do it,

and I want you to keep working at it and keep working with the editor,

and when it's ready, we'll sell it to the publisher. Well, we did it again.

I rewrote it, I worked with the editor, Dave kind of gave me some coaching,

and it's been another year, so now we're up to...

2000 early 2013 and we finally get the manuscript to where Kathy says,

you know, it's ready She put it on the market Zondervan bought it in 14 days

five publishers bid on it and there it was And so little did we know that in

the year between the time we sold it and the time it came out in 2014 We were

gonna lose a son and go through all of that,

And along the way I was working on what would later become I've seen the interview

So Philip Yancey is wrapped up in this whole story,

and then we've become friends over the years He's been so gracious and kind

and one of the things I love about him is that he's always there for beginning.

Younger writers and podcasters if you google his name and say Philip Yancey

podcast you're gonna find him on a bunch of big shows He's been on he's been

everywhere He's the guy the White House calls when they have a big problem They

want to talk about somebody who can give them a perspective of faith.

He's the guy that shows up at mass shootings and great catastrophic events,

people want to talk to Philip Yancey because he helps them see hope.

But he also will show up on the tiniest little podcasts and he writes forwards

for people who are unknown authors like Bim Kuliak, who's been on this show,

has a connection with Philip because he helped them write her amazing book.

And Caroline Beidler, who's been on this show.

Caroline, the downstairs church, influenced and heavily assisted by Philippiancy.

He just shows up and helps people

and connects with other people who are trying to tell their stories.

And he's just an incredible guy because he loves the Lord so much and because

he knows the answer to the question of what's so amazing about grace.

And it's a long preamble.

Just to say that last week, before I completely lost my voice,

I had a chance to sit down once again with the incomparable Philippiancy to

talk about the 25th anniversary re -release of his book, What's so amazing about

grace the one that started it all for me really?

And he's rewritten it with some updated language and a new forward and just

an incredible re -release of an incredible and life -changing book.

And we had a kind of a short conversation, 30 minutes or so,

about what's so amazing about Grace.

And just as always, it's such a pleasure and a treat to just sit down and talk to Phillip.

He's been dealing with a lot of things. He's had a Parkinson's diagnosis last

year, as you heard on this show.

In fact, I think this show was where he first talked about that publicly other than his newsletter.

So, he's been around a long time, he's been on this show a bunch of times,

but every time you get a chance to talk to Philip Yancey, you learn something new about Jesus.

And I'm so grateful for his friendship and his mentorship, and I think if you've

not read Philip Yancey, start with what's so amazing about Grace.

His books have made a huge difference in my life and literally are a big part

of why you're hearing my voice right now, and why there is even a Lee Warren

book out there, is because of Philip Yancey. So, grateful for him.

We had an incredible talk.

And I just want you to dive in and get to know my friend, Phillip Yancey.

If you already know him, then here's a reintroduction to what's so amazing about grace.

Because my friend, you can't change your life until you change your mind.

And Phillip always helps me do that. And before we get started,

I just have one question for you.

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.

Lord, we do live in a broken world and we are aware of that every day as we

age and there are people out there who will be listening to this broadcast who

need this message and I pray that you bring them to us.

We don't know how you do that. It's a miracle these days, but we can reach people

all over the world just in what we're going to do in the next half hour or so.

So, I pray that you would calm us, that we would rise above our anxieties currently,

especially in Lee's case, battling COVID. That's no good.

That's an energy drain, and I pray for a little 30 -minute respite here where

he doesn't feel that energy drain,

but feels like he's standing in front of thousands of people,

which he will be in this podcast.

So thank you that you're with us, that we have a good news message to share.

It may have come across that way, in your name, amen.

Amen, thank you. Well, friend, we're back, and I am so excited to be reintroducing

you to an old friend of mine and no stranger to the podcast.

We've got Philip Yancey with us. Welcome to the show, Philip.

Thank you, Lee. Great to be back.

You know, you might be the most frequent, recurring guest on my show.

You're pretty close, if not.

Well, the older I get, the more panicked I get about getting all the books I've

ever had in mind out there.

So the last few years, I've been just cranking them out one by one.

And you being a good friend, pick up each one and we talk about it. That's great.

It's great. You know, there would be no Lee Warren books in the world,

probably if there wasn't Philippiancy.

I just continue to be so grateful for you and the influence you've had in my

life and just such a great guy.

I would argue that you've got the latent talent and they would happen one way

or another. I just happen to be a little channel at the right time and the right place.

That's awesome. Hey, we're here

today to talk about one of my favorite books, and I've shared with you.

Before how What's So Amazing About Grace and The Jesus I Never Knew came along

in a time in my spiritual journey where I was really struggling to even understand

and know what I believed.

And What's So Amazing About Grace really changed the arc and course of my spiritual

journey, and I'm so grateful that you wrote it.

But just give us the background on that book and why you chose to write it,

and then we'll talk about the re -release of it here. Right.

It was back in around 1996, 97, I first thought of that book.

And in those days, for the first time, we started having the divisions that are very obvious today.

They weren't so obvious back then. Congress was working together.

You'd have many bills where Republicans and Democrats from both sides would...

Would cooperate. The biggest news of the day actually was Bill Clinton and Monica

Lewinsky. I mean that was it.

The budget was balanced. It was a different world. The Cold War was ended. Berlin Wall had fallen.

Former communist countries were exulting in their freedom, looking to the West

and the U .S. for guidance.

And yet, even then, there were cracks appearing for the first time,

on some of the issues like, of course, abortion and the gender issues.

They just started to come to the forefront and the political parties seemed

to be splitting apart a little bit.

And I was concerned about the way we treated people who are different than we

are, who disagree with us.

And the church was kind of pulling in a little bit and putting up,

almost like pulling up the moat. And, you know, we got to fight the world out there, the real world.

And somehow the message that we represent God's love for you got lost in that.

It became much more about arguing and in the right position and even political

issues rather than the good news of the gospel.

So I got this idea to write a book and my first title option was,

What's So Amazing about grace, and why don't Christians show more of it?" And

the publisher, they didn't like that title.

They thought it was real in -your -face, and then they said,

the closing argument was, you can't fit that many words on the spine of a book.

So they shortened it to What's Amazing About Grace, and I thought I was going

to be writing about politics and divisions, and when I got into the word grace,

I started writing about God's grace.

You know, it's a theological book, retelling Jesus' parables and things like

that with some applications.

Skip forward 25 years and things have changed.

It's a much more divided country Christians are considered a hostile force by

many people in our society.

That was not true 25 years ago And and things have really changed you you've

talked about the rise of the nuns people who have no religious affiliation Yeah,

so I felt it was time to go back and do a complete revision of that book and

update it in modern terms,

And so, if somebody read the book like I did 25 years ago, what's going to make

them buy it again, or what substantive changes are there that's going to make

it relevant for somebody today?

Yeah, well, I would say, if you read it 25 years ago, you don't necessarily

need to buy one for yourself.

But you might think about buying one for your nephew or your niece or your daughter or your son.

That was my concern. and the message of grace has not changed,

but there's a whole new generation.

And I went back, we actually hired a millennial to do this, to go through and

circle every word that they didn't understand or that didn't make sense.

So they'd come up with questions like, who is Al Gore, you know?

Or what is Yugoslavia? I mean, think about it. There hasn't been a Yugoslavia for 25 years.

They've never heard that word. There are several different countries now because

of the lack of grace in that part of the world.

So, that kind of thing, where instead of constantly running into roadblocks

as they're reading, I don't understand this, what is he talking about?

I wanted to make it part of the current world and then add in here and there

some other things I've learned along the way as well.

He did a nice job and I was amazed as I read it.

Nothing ever jarred me to say, I don't remember that in the first book.

Like it was just so seamless how you worked all the updates in and did a really nice job.

And this book is just so precious to me. And I thank you for sending Lisa and

I an autographed copy. We're grateful to have it.

And I've got a little Filippiancy section of my library with books you've signed

for me over the years, so thank you.

Well, yeah, and it's right next to the Lee Warren section in my library,

so W -Y, you know, we're neighbors.

That's right, that's right. but hey, one story that you said that I think that'll

just set the tone for this word grace that we say so easily, let's say grace,

you have grace for that, you have grace for this, we use it all the time,

but the transformative power of what that word really is, I think you bring

out in the start with how some words have,

almost all words, eventually lose what they mean.

They kind of die out over time. You talked about that in relation to what the

word grace has done as an alternative. Talk about that for a moment.

Yes. Take a word like charity. If you go back to the King James Version of the

Bible, 1 Corinthians 13, that beautiful passage on love, the word they chose

was charity, you know, charity, self -worth, long, charity.

It used to be read at weddings and now it still is, usually in a modern version.

Well that word got stained over time because people now say,

I don't want your charity, You know, instead of being unconditional love,

it became kind of love with conditions here.

And so words do, they tend to deteriorate over time. They rarely get better.

But grace is one of those words that has kept its shine.

We use it all the time, as you say, saying grace or grace notes in music, grace period.

One of my favorite stories about it, Lee, was I was returning a rental car in Los Angeles,

got stuck in traffic and I knew I was late and I showed up and I was kind of

irritated because now I'm going to have to pay for a whole another day or at

least a couple hours because I'm turning this car in late.

And the woman said, okay that's all and I said well don't

I'm late don't I owe some more she said no we've

we've got a grace period and I

said well wait what is that what is grace and I'm

pretty sure they don't handle that in this in the Hertz rental car training

manuals because she looked at me with a I've never been asked that question

before and she said well I don't know what I guess it means that even though

you're supposed to pay you don't have to and I thought well that's That's a pretty good start.

All the words I could think of, gratuities, being grateful, there are so many

ways in which it shows up, and they're all good.

They're good news words, and I wish that's how the church came across, too.

But when I started this book, I began asking people in the doctor's office sitting

next to me or on an airplane, when I say the word Christian,

or worse, evangelical Christian, what's the first word that comes to mind?

And they would often say something like, well, holier than thou,

or very moral, or anti -abortion, or anti -gay, or something like that.

But not one time did anybody say, oh, those are the grace -filled people.

Those are the grace dispensers out there.

And so that's when I first thought, hmm, have we lost the most important thing

we have to give away to the world?

Wow. You told that story as a great example of that, of the woman who was prostituting

her her little baby for drug money.

And somebody said, well, why don't you go to church? And what'd she say?

Yeah, she said, church? Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible

about myself. They would just make me feel worse. Wow.

And yet, if you look at Jesus, and you did this. I mean, you looked at all the

places where people go to Jesus.

And they're mostly people who wouldn't think they could go to the church nowadays,

like prostitutes and sinners and tax collectors.

Yes, and even in the stories that Jesus told, his teaching, every one of them,

just about the wrong person is the hero.

So we don't talk about the good rabbi, we talk about the good Samaritan,

you know, the rabbi passed by the person who is in need.

We don't talk about the obedient son, we talk about the prodigal son.

These are the heroes. And Jesus made it so clear when the two guys were in the temple praying.

One was a Pharisee and his prayer was, man, I'm glad I'm not like that guy over there. He's a sinner.

And the tax collector just says, God, be merciful to me. I'm a sinner.

He was ready for grace. He had his hands out. And if you have your hands out, you can get it.

But so often what we do is, and the Pharisees were doing that in Jesus' day,

closing their hands tight into a fist.

I don't need God's help. I'm doing better than 99 percent of those people over

there. And if you don't have your hands out, grace, even though it's a free

gift, falls to the ground and doesn't get received.

So we need to start by just marveling at the amazing grace that God has given

us and then spread that around the world, around our world, wherever we are,

as the good news that God offers everybody.

That's right. How do we get back there? I mean, how do we get to this place

where we stop fighting and judging each other and relative holiness and all

these things that you just alluded to?

What would Jesus say about how we get back to where grace really is grace again?

Well, I'm not sure Jesus would say this, but I would put it in modern terms

and say the recovery movement is one place I've learned it. People who have addictions.

The hardest thing is once you get a dose of religion, let's say,

then it's easy to start comparing yourself to other religious people.

And that's why my church is better than yours, because we don't do this and you do that.

So we're holier than you. We're more pure than you are.

And that's why there's so many denominations. We've got more truth than you

do, so we're gonna start our own denomination.

And we end up with, what, 45 ,000 denominations in the world.

But in the recovery movement, when you go to, I've gone with friends to AA and

groups like that, and they start with the fact that they need help.

You can never say something like, hi, I'm Bob, and I used to be an alcoholic,

but now I've conquered that. Because they know, as soon as you think that,

boom, you're about to fall off the wagon.

So they start by saying, Bob, I'm Bob, I'm an alcoholic, and I need help from

you guys and from a higher power.

And that's a great place for church to start, actually, instead of,

oh, we're more holy than those people down the block, but we're needy.

That's why we're here. We're here because we need God's help,

God's forgiveness, and then we need to show that same sort of spirit toward

the people around us. So, um...

And the other thing, I guess, back in Jesus' day, think about the people that he did hang around.

He would be around the sick. They would come to him because they knew he had

good news for them. He had healing power.

He would touch people that nobody else would touch, people who had leprosy in

his day. Nobody would get near them.

They had to have a bell around their neck and live out of town somewhere.

But Jesus would go up to them and touch them. And in our own context,

those who work in prisons or in foster homes or domestic abuse shelters or going

to help the unhoused people in your city.

When you're serving people like that, suddenly all these little kind of ranking

things we do in our competitive society don't matter so much anymore.

And Jesus last night with his disciples, the first thing he did was wash their

feet. And they said, wait a minute, you're the master, we're the disciples,

we should be washing your feet.

And he said, no, you didn't come to be the master, you came to be the servant,

that's what I'm leaving you.

And I want you to go out and look for people whose feet are dirty and serve

them. That's your role in the world. Wow.

Wow. That's so hard to do. We always want to compare ourselves to others and

find a way that we're a little bit closer to God than they are.

You tell the story about Jeffrey Dahmer.

I mean, I guess since this is something that happened so long ago,

maybe we should tell the story of who he was first, but talk about how people

reacted to the news that Jeffrey Dahmer became a Christian before he died.

Yeah, Jeffrey Dahmer is one of the most miserable human beings that you can run across.

Several dozen people he killed, he stored their body parts in the refrigerator,

he cannibalized I mean, you almost can't see these things on the air,

but it was in the news day after day.

And then he had a conversion. And, you know, a lot of prisoners have conversions,

usually when they're trying to get out of prison or get back on parole or something like that.

He was never going to get out on parole.

And the chaplain said, I've never had a conversion like this.

It was the most devout, impressive change I'd ever seen in someone.

Nobody studied the Bible like Jeffrey Dahmer.

But, of course, a person like Jeffrey Dahmer is in danger in a prison because

of his reputation and the things he did.

So sure enough, somebody took a club and just beat him to death.

And the chaplain said, I know where he is now, I baptized him in the pool in the prison.

And yet when he said that, he got all this hate mail.

Yeah, right. You'd think that somebody like Jeffrey Dollar can be forgiven, you know, no way.

And even in writing about it, I got a lot of those letters as well.

Same thing, I got a letter from the person who killed John Lennon, Mark Chapman.

And he's been serving time in New York ever since, and he became a Christian,

and his wife stuck with him, the marriage has stayed together,

and he has a ministry where he sends out his own personal testimony with handwritten notes to people.

And a lot of people just don't want to have anything to do with it.

But you think about the giants of the Bible.

There are Moses, David, Peter, and Paul, I would say. Those are the four giants. Moses killed a person.

David committed adult adultery plus multiple murders Peter betrayed Jesus almost

as bad as Judas did I never knew the blankety -blank three times.

He said and then Paul Was a persecutor of Christians. He tortured people.

He helped kill Stephen one of the first Apostles and It's as if God deliberately

chose people So that we could never say God could never forgive that God could never use me.

Oh, yeah Well, look at those poor guys.

They're the giants of faith, and they did things that most of us would never think of doing.

And so, you know, when I run into a Jeffrey Dahmer or a Mark Chapman,

I just shake my head and say,

amazing grace, how sweet to sound, which was written by a slave trader,

John Newton, who made his living by selling human beings taken from Africa.

And later, he experienced that amazing grace, changed, became part of the crusade

to overturn slavery in England, and that's the power of grace, what it does.

Amazing story. Another story you told, I had forgotten all about this being

in the book, the story of Babette's Feast, I think, gives us the most just perfect

picture of what grace is and what it costs.

Maybe give us the high -level recap of Babette's Feast. Yeah,

it was this this woman who is a refugee from France and she was working for these,

real stiff, super religious people who always wore black and would never drink

wine or do anything and they would sit around and almost never talk.

They were just this kind of stern Puritan type sect in Denmark, as it was.

And she showed up one day and because of the French Revolution I had to leave

France and And she said, I'm a cook, I can help you cook.

And so she started cooking these wonderful meals.

And then she came in one day and said, some very good news.

I have a friend who stayed in France, and every year she uses my money to enter the French lottery.

And this year I won the French lottery, and I'd like to cook you a special meal.

Well, these people were rather appalled to see what was happening.

And boats would show up, and crayfish, and lobsters, and steak,

and all these exotic foods would be unloaded.

They're used to eating bread and dipped in ale. That was all they would ever eat.

And so Babette created this wonderful feast, and there was an old cavalry officer

there who knew exactly what he was eating all the way through.

The rest of the people were kind of suspicious. What is this stuff?

And she was serving champagne, and he knew exactly what bouf -clicquot,

you know, what year that champagne was, just from the taste.

And he was celebrating, having a great time at Babette's feast,

and finally they loosened up a little bit and kind of walked through the town.

It was a beautiful night with snow falling and the moon shining.

And at the end they said, Well, I guess you'll be leaving us now,

Babette, now that you've won all this money. and she said no no I I don't have

any more money but you've won the French lottery.

Yes, and I spent it all on this dinner for you, as thanks for the way you've

employed me over the years.

And it's just a symbol of God's grace, and Jesus would talk about the feasts awaiting us.

And isn't it sad that some Christians spend so much energy just trying to keep

from having fun so that they can preserve themselves for the next life,

and that best feast shows another And Jesus told the story, the feast is there.

And if the uptight religious people don't want to go out into the highways and

byways and bring in the disabled, bring in the poor, you know,

God's grace is abounding and boundless, so come and enjoy the feast.

Wow. Such a beautiful story and beautifully told.

Now, Phillip, if you had to make a sentence to say what actually is so amazing

about grace in 2023, the elevator pitch for why people should need or want grace, what would you say?

I guess I would say grace means that there's nothing you can do to get God love you more.

There's nothing you can do to get God love you less. A lot of people do both

of those. They try to be more spiritual to get God to love them more,

or they feel like they've done something wrong, so God will love them less.

And the message of grace is God's love is out there.

It's just a constant flow, a constant stream.

An infinite God already loves you as much as God possibly can.

So believe that, accept it, let it change you, and take that message to the rest of the world.

Wow. That's beautiful. Of all the books that you've written,

Philip, which one, like if you could just say, this is the one I'm most proud of, what would it be?

Well, this is the one that has sold the most, I would say, and that wasn't a real surprise to me.

In fact, I tell the story in this new version. When I send it off,

I say, well, that's the last book I write for a Christian audience.

It's going to get me in trouble. I've got a whole chapter in there on Bill Clinton.

I got a chapter on my gay friend Mel White, just struggling with some of those

issues, and they're going to blackball me from Christian bookstores.

And no, what I found was that there is, we have an innate thirst for grace.

It's like we've got a grace -shaped hole in our hearts that only God's living water can fill.

And so if indeed I did kind of sound that tone again, hit that note again of

what we have to offer, of what kind of aroma we should be giving out in the world,

then I can't think of anything that I feel better about.

Wow, friend, you gotta get a copy of What's So Amazing About Grace if you haven't read it.

If you have read it, I would suggest exactly what Phillip said.

Well, I'm just so grateful that I've had a relationship with you that I've had over the years,

Phillip, and so sort of proud to continue to see the work that you're doing

and leading us all into asking the big questions and seeking the real answers

and just really grateful for you.

And for the time you've taken to be with us today, Philip.

What's next? I know you gotta be writing something now, so what's next for you?

Well, I'm writing a book about the Russia -Ukraine situation,

which isn't all that different from Middle East, is it? Of course you are.

Yeah, and it's called What Went Wrong?

Russia's Lost Opportunity and the Path to Ukraine. Because there was a period

when Russia was wide open, they were welcoming missionaries,

the whole society was changing, and then when Vladimir Putin came along they

kind of did a u -turn and went in a very different direction and we're seeing

that lift out very tragically.

Of course you know it's huge it was huge news for the last couple years but

now it's kind of slipped off the front page being replaced by another ungraced

situation in the Middle East so we dare not forget the people who are still

suffering through that conflict as well.

Wow. Philip Yancey, it's always a pleasure, my friend. Say hello to your beautiful

wife for me. I sure will. You too, Lee.

Thank you, brother. God bless you. God bless you. What a great conversation

with Philip Yancey. It's always such an honor and a pleasure to get to talk to him.

And I pray that you'll get his book, What's So Amazing About Grace.

If you haven't read a Philip Yancey book, start with that one.

His books have made an unbelievable impact in my life and probably a hundred

million other people's lives out there, and it'll make a difference for you too, friend.

It's a timeless classic. It's sold over two million copies, and it's been around

and never been out of print for 25 years.

So that'll tell you something. If you've not read What's So Amazing About Grace, start with that one.

Philippiancy always helps me to reframe my thinking and to see the world and

my faith a little bit more clearly, to not dodge the big questions of why did

things hurt, but to dive into them, write about them, think about them,

and always land on the hope and faith that we have in Jesus Christ.

I can't encourage you highly enough to check out Philip's new release of What's So Amazing About Grace.

And if you have read it, read it again, give a copy to a friend,

and just hang in there and learn more from our dear friend, Philip Yancey.

Such a pleasure to have him as a recurring guest on the show and I pray it was

a blessing to you today on this Wild Card Wednesday.

Remember, friend, you can't change your life until you change your mind.

And the good news is you can start today.

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