April 2, 2023 • 28 mins
In her new book, “The Love Stories of the Bible Speak: Biblical Lessons on Romance, Friendship, and Faith,” Shannon Bream has written the third book in her best-selling series she created, which began with the number one New York Times best-sellers, “The Women of the Bible Speak” and “The Mothers and Daughters of the Bible Speak.” In her latest book, she draws lessons from Biblical romances, friendships, and families. Newt’s guest is Shannon Bream, anchor of FOX News Sunday, and Fox News Channel’s chief legal correspondent.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
On this episode of News World, I am really pleased
to talk with Shannon Bream, anchor of Fox News Sunday
and Fox News Channels, chiefly Will correspondent and a good friend.
She's got a brand new book out entitled The Love
Stories of the Bible Speak, Biblical Lessons on Romance, Friendship,
and Faith. And this is the third book in a
(00:25):
series she's created which began with the number one New
York Times bestsellers, The Women of the Bible Speak and
The Mothers and Daughters of the Bible Speak. And I
think she's doing a lot to really open up the
Bible in a practical, human way for millions of people.
In her latest book, she draws lessons from the good,
the bad, and the ugly of biblical romances, friendships, and families.
(00:48):
She shows how God's love is often very different from ours,
turning upside down our assumptions about life relationships in each other.
Here to talk about her new book, I'm really pleased
to welcome back my guest, Shannon Bream. Shannon, welcome, and
(01:12):
thank you for joining me again on News World. Thank
you so much for having me. It is an honor
to be with you. You know, we last spoke last
March about the Mothers and the Daughters of the Bible speak,
And you're now getting in this pattern of releasing one
book every year and they are all bestsellers, And I
have to say I'm a little bit jealous record yourself. Well,
(01:33):
I've had occasional But the Women of the Bible speak
the Wisdom of sixteen Women and their Lessons for Today,
March of twenty twenty one. The Mothers and Daughters of
the Bible speak Lessons on Faith from nine Biblical families
March twenty twenty two. And I'm curious, how do you
manage the process of writing alonging with preparing to be
(01:54):
on Fox News every Sunday and continue to be Fox
News Channel's chief legal correspondent. Well, mister Speaker, you do
this too. You manage all kinds of things, And you know,
when you're writing, you're sort of in the zone. So
when I'm really hardcore trying to hit it deadline for
the book, there's not a lot of doing anything else.
I mean, it's either work or book, and that means
not socializing, not hanging out, not going on one trips
(02:17):
or anything else. They're just sort of in the zone.
So I find that I really compartmentalize things so that
each thing gets done and it's timing, and then you're
off to the racist on the next thing. So I
like to be busy and I like to work. I'm
actually working on trying to find better balance for that.
But I love the work I get to do. It
feels like a blessing. You said something I think very
important for somebody. I want to become a little writer.
How do you get into the zone? I know the feeling.
(02:39):
I've published something like forty five books over the years,
and there is something that happens when you're really able
to focus and it's just kind of flowing correctly. I mean,
how do you experience that? What's your sense of that?
You know? I know I have to have a few
hours that are just quiet and set aside, knowing I'm
not going to be distracted by anything else I have
to do. I know this is going to sound weird,
(03:00):
but I play Christmas music for whatever reason. The Christmas
music works for me when I'm writing, and it's just instrumental.
I don't want any words, so I just listened to
instrumental Christmas music for a few hours. Turn everything else off.
And I just have my stacks of research books and
I watch a lot of sermons. I'll watch rabbis, Catholic priests,
Protestant pastors, just to get different viewpoints on these Bible
(03:22):
stories that I've known my whole life, but just to
learn a lot more from different angles. And so between
the Christmas music and the research and the silence of
everything else, hopefully in a few hours, I can get
a lot done. So it doesn't matter what time of
the year it is. It's Christmas music. Oh yeah, yeah,
it doesn't matter. And the funny thing is, I did
write part of this book we were finishing up around
(03:43):
Thanksgiving time, which I'd already started to unpack some of
the Christmas stuff, So the Christmas music fit there. That's great.
I love those image of you surrounded by Christmas no
matter what time of the year it is, and it
kind of fits. You always seem like you're just one
day away from opening presents. You have this primarily positive
attitude towards life that I think really serves you very
(04:04):
very well. Well, thank you, and we come from the
same place. I mean, faith to me is the redemption
of the rest of the world and the things that
we have to confront on a daily basis. It's very overwhelming.
But I feel like when you've got a perspective, like
we know how the story ends and good does triumph
over evil, that there is hope in the world, that
hopefully we share it with other people. The Bible is
an extraordinary book of not just enormous importance, but it's
(04:28):
enormously complex and has an amazing range of stories. And
you have found sort of a way of finding a threat,
if I might say, and you follow that thread through
the Bible, and the most recent one, the love stories
of the Bible speak what led you to that? Some
of these we had touched on in the earlier books.
And I'm like, Okay, let's let the guys in on
(04:48):
the action here, because there are critical parts of these stories.
For example, with Mary and Joseph, I thought she rightfully
gets so much of the attention as being the mother
of the Messiah and taking on this divine assign but
also Joseph had to make some really difficult decisions and
very much was a perfect model of sacrificial love of
protecting Mary and Jesus and in the family they've built
(05:09):
with these other children, a provider Joseph, I kind of
joke was like the world's best step dad ever, because
he was called into this assignment and never backed away
from it. So I thought, let's look at some of
the men in these stories too, and see how relationships
went well in the case of Mary and Joseph and
somewhere they didn't like Samson and Delilah. So you go
through the Bible, which you obviously know extraordinarily well, and
(05:33):
you pick selected examples that really relate, I think, to
every human being. I mean, all of us have some
need to have friends, to have lovers, to have people
we share our lives with, and all of us experienced
this thing of this human emotion. And you manage to
(05:53):
make the Bible come alive as an everyday document that
relates to us. As you went through, how did you
pick out the specific stories you decided to use. Well,
you're right, Listen, these stories are already there. They're beautiful stories.
And maybe somebody who's intimidated by the Bible or wouldn't
pick it up. I want to put it in a
format that maybe they read these stories and then for
(06:14):
themselves they say, oh wow, I didn't even realize that
person or that story was in the Bible, and then
maybe they want to go study more for themselves and
they're drawn to it. So I hope it's an open
door for them. But these love stories, I think there's
some we think of right away, like maybe Mary Joseph,
Adam and Eve. Song of Solomon a very tricky one.
But I felt like, if we're going to do love
stories of the Bible, we have to dig into that
(06:36):
very racy sort of love collection of poems. But Ruth
and boa Has, I felt like there are stories that
relate to everything, whether it's widowhood or being in a
tough marriage or the ideal marriage and what God had
ideally set up with Adam and Eve. So I feel
like there's a lot to learn there. And like I
always do in these books, I include the bad ones,
like we say, Samson and Delilah, because I think that
(06:56):
there are lessons in where people get off track because
we all do that and God can work through our
mistakes our messages, and I find that to be a
really comforting message. Well in a sense, I noticed that
the way you've did this, you have twelve different relationships,
but they sort of break on the one end into
romantic relationships and another hand into friendships, which are also
(07:19):
an expression of love. Absolutely, and you know, we saw
real relationships and friendships with Jesus. Think about all the disciples.
The people that you know best in your life are
the people that you travel with and you do life with.
And these guys were in really trying circumstances, very dangerous
circumstances sometimes, so you really see how their friendships grow.
I spend one chapter on Jesus and John, the apostle
(07:41):
that he loved, and talk about how we see their
relationship mature, and it's a real friendship. In the Old Testament,
one of my favorites is Shadrach, Meshach and a Bendigo,
these friends who refuse to back down when they were
forced to either choose to worship a false god which
would have offended where they were in their allegiance to
the God of Israel, or be thrown into a fiery furnace.
So we talk about having friends that walk through the
(08:04):
fire together with us. Those men actually did that literally
in the Bible, and I just think it's such a
network and glue to our lives, these friendship relationships, and
so I think they're just as important as looking at
the romantic relationships do. I think one of the most
interesting stories you picked was Job and his Friends, because
normally we think of Job and an isolated being punished
(08:26):
by God really living through a terrible set of experiences. Frankly,
until You're a book, I had never thought about Job
and his friends. Could you talk to just a little
bit about that? In some ways, just one of the
most interesting stories you tell. Yeah, I thought about this
because you know, in the beginning, we find that Job
is this really righteous man, and that Satan basically goes
to God and says, oh, I could make him turn
on you, And God allows the suffering into Job's life
(08:48):
because he's confident that Job is of pure of heart
and is not going to turn away from God. So
everything is unleashed on him. He loses all of his
children at once, He loses the thing that the world
would say make you successful, his life, stock and its riches,
all of that goes away, and then his very own
health is attacked, and so he's under every pressure and
nightmare that we all would imagine you could go through.
(09:09):
So his friends, the three of them decide to get
together and say we're going to go to him and
comfort him. As they're approaching him, they see how physically
and emotionally completely devastated he is. They fall down, weeping
and mourning and realizing the pain they're walking into. And
we're told when they get there, they sit there for
seven days in silence. I mean, sometimes that's the friend
(09:31):
that we need and the friend that we need to
be is that we worry sometimes when people are in
deep grief or struggles in their lives, that we're going
to say the wrong things, so we don't show up,
we don't pick up the phone. These guys just went
and sat there, and that gift of their presence was
a beautiful thing. Everyone so overwhelmed by grief they couldn't
even speak, but they were there. So it's when they
start to have their conversations with Job and try to
(09:52):
figure out if he's done something wrong, and they really
pick into his life of U sind, is there something
you've done wrong? God knows the whole story. At the
end comes around and as to these friends, like listen,
you've spoken some truth into him what you've been wrong
about his righteousness? And God is with him in that suffering.
But you see that friends sometimes the most important thing
we can do is just show up, even if we're
not going to get things exactly righteous. Showing up in
(10:14):
the worst moments is important when you're going through this
and you're looking at these things. Was there anything when
(10:35):
you suddenly stopped and said, boy, I've never thought of that,
something which surprised you. One of the stories that's kind
of obscure that's in the book is about David and Abigail.
And I remembered this story vaguely. But that's the thing.
You can read the Bible cover to cover and still
have so much to learn. I always have so much
to learn. But so David and Abigail. It's a situation
where she's married to a guy who the Bible says
(10:56):
is basically a jerk. He's a horrible husband. The people
in his house sold don't respect him. But his wife
is respectful. I mean, she does what she can to
keep their household going, and when they're under terrible threat
at some point, she goes and she's the peacemaker. She
gives this eloquent speech to David, who is going to
come attack their household because of the disrespect her husband
is shown to David, and she makes things right, she
(11:19):
is a wise woman. Listen, the guy ends up getting
struck down because God was so mad at her husband
in the way that he rejected David and was just
an all around terrible guy. And David remembers her, He
remembers the peacemaker, the respectful woman that she was in
coming to make the case. And so he goes back
after she's widowed and says, hey, how about come be
(11:39):
my wife because he had seen how she operated with
such grace under pressure and was so impressed by this woman.
And so there was a lot in that story that
I thought, you know, even if you're in a difficult marriage,
sometimes just your ability to be a peacemaker or to
find the best or to even be the person who
runs interference to try to protect her spouse, sometimes that's
going to be your role. And she was this woman,
(12:00):
and that the wording that the Bible uses in the
original language talking about her intelligence, is really a rare thing,
and it shows that to a strong woman, she kind
of broke the norms of the day, and in doing that,
she saved her entire household except for her husband, who
was an evil guy that got taken out in that
context as you're reading all these various stories, from romantic
(12:21):
love stories to friendship stories, did any of them remind
you of your own life, your own experience as your
own relationships. Yeah, you know what's funny. So I go
through Song of Solomon, which is very flowery and very racy,
but you see these two people who are very much
in love and are trying to get to each other
in marriage, and they love each other as you do
in the beginning of relationship, and there's always that passion.
(12:43):
I think that is a good thing. It's not like
God's surprise, like he invented us in all of this,
so he obviously ordains that. So you see that beginning
of their relationship, and it made me think about the
beginning of my marriage, where I was like so excited,
like let's get married, let's get on with wife, and
you don't know all the tough things that are going
to come at you. And I'm so thankful for twenty
seven years now with my husband, and I'm thinking I
(13:05):
really need to up my game on my love notes
because these notes are like his arms are bands of gold,
and her teeth are like the whitest goats of the flock.
I mean it's very flowery and funny to us now
in modern times. But I think, okay, you know, you
gotta remember what your relationship was like in the beginning
and nurture and feed that and try to say, gosh,
I remember those days, and I still love you in
(13:27):
an even deeper way now. But maybe I could do
better than just like, have a great day XO. I'm
going to work on my love notes. Snoot. That's great.
If I have to say, picking Solomon as your standard,
that's a pretty steep mountain. Yeah, exactly. You also have
some interesting things that I think people almost never think about.
You look at Samson and Delilah, which is certainly a
(13:49):
relationship that didn't work out very well, but you actually
star with the relationship between Samson's parents. How did you
get to that and what did you draw from him? Yeah,
it's a quiet kind of relationship. We do get to
the Samson and Delilah are the superstars, the headliners of
that story. But to go back, you see this beautiful
partnership between his parents where she wasn't able to have
(14:10):
a child. She's then visited by an angel of the
Lord that many people believe was Christ before he came
to earth and talks to her and says, you're gonna
have this child. She runs to her husband. Instead of
him saying, oh, foolish woman, are you hallucinating whatever? Like,
he immediately believes her and knows that she is a
woman to be believed, and so he shows great respect
to her As her husband. They pray, like, Lord, we
(14:30):
want to get this right. Could you come back and
tell us more. So the angel comes back to her
again and she's like, wait a minute, let me go
get my husband. So we see this beautiful marriage in
partnership where these two knew that they were having a
baby that was blessed in a special delivery by God,
and they wanted to get it right. They wanted to
make sure they raised him the right way, in a
way that would honor God. So you have this beautiful
(14:50):
marriage at the beginning. That Samson didn't model that later
in his life. And you wonder if he was always
looking in these bad relationships that he had to get
to this beautiful thing that his parents had. But they
definitely said an example that's one of the quiet ones
in the Bible, but very beautiful. It always struck me
that Sampson is this very sincere person. He's in a
(15:12):
sense a patriot in the context of his world. And
he really is in love with Delilah and trust her totally.
And she's almost a model of somebody who is totally untrustworthy,
I mean, who has a false face but in fact
as set out to destroy Sampson. And it's funny that
(15:34):
we see that he loves her, But like you said,
she's always doing somewhat kind of other double dealing because
she's bribed by these men who are threatened by Sampson.
And what a great warrior and defender he is of
the Hebrew people, and so they constantly go to her
state find out what the strength is, the secret is
to his strength, and he tells her the wrong thing
multiple times, and these men rush in, they try whatever
(15:56):
it is tied me with certain chords. He breaks them off.
He clear has all his strength and goes after them
and defeats them. So you gotta wonder why, after time
after time that Delilah is clearly betraying him, he finally
gives in and says, this final part of my vow
is that if my hair is cut, that breaks my
vow with God, and I'll lose my strength. But he
was so worn down by this woman and so weak
(16:18):
when it came to the demands of women in his life,
that he goes along with this. He gets captured, he said,
you know, he gets his eyes gouged out. The Philistines
are making a mockery of him because he had wiped
them out so many times. They have him chained up
to the pillars of this temple where they're celebrating, and
I do think it's so beautiful, as you pointed out.
In the end, he goes back to God after all
(16:40):
these messes he's made and said, God, just see me,
give me strength one more time so I can take
down this temple and take out everybody with me. He
knows he's going to be giving up his own life,
and God is faithful. He hears that humble cry, and
he shows up and gives Sampson that strength. And Samson
has this great defeat in laying down his own life
and taking out thousands of the Philistine who were oppressing
(17:01):
his people. It's a remarkable story also a story of sacrifice.
So a man who in the end was willing to
sacrifice himself to free his people. Now you touch on
something which I have recently been actually thinking about, and
that is Adam and Eve and the whole degree to
which it all begins there, both in the sense of
the original sin, but also in the sense of the relationships.
(17:24):
And man is lonely, so God takes a rib and
creates Eve and they have a real relationship, and without
that all the rest of the Bible doesn't occur. Right.
I don't think it's often told as a love story,
but in fact, of course it's the first marriage, it's
the first real relationship. It's the first husband and wife.
When you were thinking about it and putting the context
(17:45):
of your book, did that kind of get to you
a little bit? This was a miraculous moment, absolutely, because
think about the creation stories that we're told. Each time
a day wrapped up, say God created the heavens and
the earth, or the plants or the animals. Every time
it would end with good or he saw that it
was good. But it wasn't until Adam was standing there
alone with no partner in this whole thing that it
(18:07):
was the first time that we see in the Bible
that God say is like it wasn't good. He knew
something was missing. For Adam, then there was nothing that
had been created that would be a sufficient partner for him,
And so he does take this rib and creates Eve.
And the thing that I loved that so beautiful. If
you really look at the scripture and look at the
original wording, the word for Eve was this easer idea, Like,
it's not that she was some subservient sidekick. She was
(18:30):
a partner with him in this a helper, a rescuer,
and they had this role together that was a beautiful
thing starting out in the Garden of Eden before it
went tragically wrong. But she's also creating God's image. They
are equals. There's nothing lesser about her. So I think
any interpretation of Adam and Eve different than that is
missing the point that God created them to go together
(18:51):
through life, and they go through really tragic things, and
they cling to each other and build the world and
the family as we now know it. Even in the
story of the app Boling he listens to her. She
clearly has substantial influence. This is not a passive subordinate,
this is a partner. There's a clarity here to the
(19:11):
emergence of men and woman, the emergence of marriage, the
emergence of children. I mean, all of these things are
at the core of who we are as human beings,
and it's a beautiful thing. And listen, we as human
beings have done all kinds of things. When I talk
about Solomon in this book, I talk about David, and
they were men who were viewed as after God's own heart,
but they had their own mistakes with marriages and concubines
(19:31):
and relationships and all kinds of things that I think
they got away from this ideal of what we saw
in the garden there with Adam and Eve, which is
such a beautiful, simple but powerful thing. So I think
human beings we reinterpret things and go off on our
own paths that may not be what was the original
of what God intended. But you also talk about, and
(20:07):
I think it's a fascinating point that Jesus had a
uniquely close relationship with the apostle John, and that John
was very close to Jesus and life and death and
his resurrection. That was probably an enormously important part of
Jesus's own strength was having someone he was that close
(20:28):
to in the sense I think makes Jesus more human
in our understanding of the degree to which this was
God becoming man, not remaining God, so that he needed
him talk from it in justest about John, I mean,
John turns out to be one of the most significant
figures in that sense in the entire Bible story. Yeah,
and he refers to himself as the one whom Jesus loved,
(20:51):
and we do see a very real friendship as these
two journey through life together. And at the beginning, John's
described as he and his brother the sons of Thunder
because they a lot of righteous anger about people not
doing things the right way or not going with the
way that God had outlined or Christ had outlined things,
and they really wanted to rain down on them. But
you can see Christ speaking to John's life like, that's
(21:11):
not the right response here, That's not what we're going
to do. You see John mature, and he's there at
the cross the very end with jesus mother Mary, and
we see Christ say to him like, basically, she's your mother.
Now you take care of her. Now. We see just
how close that they were. And so John obviously goes
on to his own trials and ends up giving us
the Book of Revelation, which ends the Bible. And so
(21:34):
they had a very special relationship, but we can see
how it matured over time. And of course Jesus, as
you said, he walked here as fully god fully human
and had human relationships, and I think we can learn
through those in these friendships. Of all the disciples, John
is the one who stays the rest all gets shaken.
Even Peter, who ultamly founds the modern Church, breaks out
(21:54):
of fear, and as Christ had warned him, betrays Christ,
something which he thought he'd never do until the fear
took over, and I suspect never quite recovered from the
guilt he felt at having betrayed God. Yeah, I think
you're probably right about that, because all of us want
to deny as Peter did, that we would ever do it.
And as you said, at that moment where his pretty
(22:16):
much it was a life or death situation which Jesus
had been taken in and that sham trial. But the
beating and the torture and all the things that happened
him leading up to the crucifixion were all human. And
Peter was and to feel that fear is a very
real thing. But John was one and maybe it was
part of that Sons of Thunder, that real boldness that
he had about him, this real fire and passion about
(22:36):
believing exactly who Jesus was, that he did stick around
to the very very bitter end and beyond. There's no
indication in any of the books of Jesus feeling badly
about the people abandoning him, because he knew they would.
He knew that they were human and that in the
end that they would be frightened, and he accepts them,
(22:57):
and when he does come back from the tomb, he
no recriminations. There's why did you abandon me? And it's
almost as though God's love is endless and constant and
truly unconditional. And you talk about the unconditionality that God
loves us. We may sometimes doubt him, but He never
(23:17):
doubts us exactly. And I think for us as human beings,
because what we experience on a daily basis is claud relationships,
sometimes good, sometimes we hurt each other, I think it's
hard for us to understand this love that God has
for us, which as you said, is unconditional, and there's
nothing we can do to earn it. We can't lose it,
we can't get rid of him. There's nothing we can do,
(23:38):
which I find extremely comforting. No mistake we could make
that would ever force him to say, like, Okay, forget it,
I've reached my limit with you. He's just not going
to I mean, he wants us to walk in relationship
with him and make good choices and being fellowship with him,
but he's not going to stop loving us when we
get that wrong. You, on the one hand, every Sunday
are dealing with hard news, with terrible things going on
(24:00):
around the world. And yeah, you do it in a
context where you are so deeply committed as a Christian.
Your general view of the world is so positive almost
no matter what negative thing you're reporting that particular morning. Yeah,
and there's so much pain in the world. There was
all through biblical times. We see people suffer enormous losses.
We talked about Joe. I mean there was infertility and
(24:23):
heartbreaking widowhood and financial ruin. I mean, none of the
suffering is new to God. And the thing about Christ
walking the earth with us is that we're told like
he suffered in every way as we do. He gets it.
He knows what it's like to be tempted, to have
your heartbroken. He knows all of those devastating losses. Think
about when he wept at the loss of his friend Lazarus.
He was very human in that respect. So listen as
(24:45):
they cover these things. My heart does break for these people,
especially innocent people who are drawn into tragedies, and I
put them right on my prayer list because I don't
know how people manage the heartbreaking, devastating news, the division,
the real hurtful things without some form of faith in
their life. For me, that's the redeeming quality to the
whole thing that makes it all work. Otherwise, I think
(25:07):
you're walking into just a wall full of negative, devastating
news every day, and if you don't have some hope
beyond that, beyond this world, it would be tough to do.
And that context, do you find that your faith enables
you to avoid getting depressed by the very things you're
covering most of the time, Yeah, I think COVID was
(25:28):
really really hard, because that was one where every day
you were just covering the story. We all were the story.
Every single one of us worried about people that we loved.
We worried for ourselves, for our children, for our livelihoods,
for our economies, for lives just being lost all around
the world by the millions. I mean think that was
a really tough one and it was a good reset
(25:49):
for me because it reminded me that every morning for me,
I got to start in prayer and in Bible study.
I like journaling as well. It helps me to look
and see what I'm learning, hopefully and what God's promises
are writing them down. So I think COVID was a
real test for all of us. It really stretched us.
We felt isolated, we felt anxious and fearful, and it
(26:09):
really it was a good reset for me to remember
this world is not all there is, and that God
is very aware of all of the suffering. You've just
now brought out the love stories of the Bible speak
biblical lessons on romance, friendship, and faith. Have you begun
thinking about another book? I haven't, but I actually have
(26:29):
sketched out a fiction book that I feel like it's
finely inspired. The whole story kind of came to me
in a rush, and I wrote it down and got
it out, and I thought, I don't know if they're
any good at fiction. I mean, you're one of these
writers that's good at everything. I think it's a totally
different skill set, but I'm really anxious to see if
I could try and do it justice. So I'm going
to work on that. You are a great story teller,
(26:50):
and I'm absolutely confident that whatever you decide to do,
whether it's writing poetry or haiku or novels or another
nonfiction book, that you'll just do it well. You're one
of those people who has a remarkable level of universal competence.
Thank you, and I do enjoy a haikup. I think
they're a fun challenge. See there you go. Somehow intuitively
(27:11):
I knew I was going to touch on it. Shannon.
I want to thank you for joining me again. And
your new book really reminds us that no matter where
we find ourselves, God's on wavering love will sustain and
guide us. The insights you share into these biblical relationships
will both up left and encourage people. And I recommend
everyone listening get a copy of The Love Stories of
(27:32):
the Bible Speak Biblical Lessons on Romance, Friendship, and Faith,
which is on sale now. What you've done in really
bringing the Bible into everyday life is a remarkable achievement.
It's a thrill to me that you would take the
time to be with us here on news World. Thank
you very very much, thank you. I'm just glad to
(27:53):
be the vessel for this. Mister Spierwit, thank you for
having me. Thank you to my guest Shannon Bream. You
can get a link to buy her new book, The
Love Stories of the Bible Speak on our showpage at
newtworld dot com. NEWT World is produced by gingwistreet sixty
and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Garnsey Sloan, our producer
(28:17):
is Rebecca Howell, and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The
all work for the show was created by Steve Penley.
Special thanks to the team at Gingwide three sixty. If
you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple
Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give
us a review so others can learn what it's all about.
(28:37):
Right now, listeners of neut World can sign up from
my three free weekly columns at gingwigtree sixty dot com
slash newsletter. I'm newt Gangwidge. This is newt World.
On this episode of News World, I am really pleased
to talk with Shannon Bream, anchor of Fox News Sunday
and Fox News Channels, chiefly Will correspondent and a good friend.
She's got a brand new book out entitled The Love
Stories of the Bible Speak, Biblical Lessons on Romance, Friendship,
and Faith. And this is the third book in a
(00:25):
series she's created which began with the number one New
York Times bestsellers, The Women of the Bible Speak and
The Mothers and Daughters of the Bible Speak. And I
think she's doing a lot to really open up the
Bible in a practical, human way for millions of people.
In her latest book, she draws lessons from the good,
the bad, and the ugly of biblical romances, friendships, and families.
(00:48):
She shows how God's love is often very different from ours,
turning upside down our assumptions about life relationships in each other.
Here to talk about her new book, I'm really pleased
to welcome back my guest, Shannon Bream. Shannon, welcome, and
(01:12):
thank you for joining me again on News World. Thank
you so much for having me. It is an honor
to be with you. You know, we last spoke last
March about the Mothers and the Daughters of the Bible speak,
And you're now getting in this pattern of releasing one
book every year and they are all bestsellers, And I
have to say I'm a little bit jealous record yourself. Well,
(01:33):
I've had occasional But the Women of the Bible speak
the Wisdom of sixteen Women and their Lessons for Today,
March of twenty twenty one. The Mothers and Daughters of
the Bible speak Lessons on Faith from nine Biblical families
March twenty twenty two. And I'm curious, how do you
manage the process of writing alonging with preparing to be
(01:54):
on Fox News every Sunday and continue to be Fox
News Channel's chief legal correspondent. Well, mister Speaker, you do
this too. You manage all kinds of things, And you know,
when you're writing, you're sort of in the zone. So
when I'm really hardcore trying to hit it deadline for
the book, there's not a lot of doing anything else.
I mean, it's either work or book, and that means
not socializing, not hanging out, not going on one trips
(02:17):
or anything else. They're just sort of in the zone.
So I find that I really compartmentalize things so that
each thing gets done and it's timing, and then you're
off to the racist on the next thing. So I
like to be busy and I like to work. I'm
actually working on trying to find better balance for that.
But I love the work I get to do. It
feels like a blessing. You said something I think very
important for somebody. I want to become a little writer.
How do you get into the zone? I know the feeling.
(02:39):
I've published something like forty five books over the years,
and there is something that happens when you're really able
to focus and it's just kind of flowing correctly. I mean,
how do you experience that? What's your sense of that?
You know? I know I have to have a few
hours that are just quiet and set aside, knowing I'm
not going to be distracted by anything else I have
to do. I know this is going to sound weird,
(03:00):
but I play Christmas music for whatever reason. The Christmas
music works for me when I'm writing, and it's just instrumental.
I don't want any words, so I just listened to
instrumental Christmas music for a few hours. Turn everything else off.
And I just have my stacks of research books and
I watch a lot of sermons. I'll watch rabbis, Catholic priests,
Protestant pastors, just to get different viewpoints on these Bible
(03:22):
stories that I've known my whole life, but just to
learn a lot more from different angles. And so between
the Christmas music and the research and the silence of
everything else, hopefully in a few hours, I can get
a lot done. So it doesn't matter what time of
the year it is. It's Christmas music. Oh yeah, yeah,
it doesn't matter. And the funny thing is, I did
write part of this book we were finishing up around
(03:43):
Thanksgiving time, which I'd already started to unpack some of
the Christmas stuff, So the Christmas music fit there. That's great.
I love those image of you surrounded by Christmas no
matter what time of the year it is, and it
kind of fits. You always seem like you're just one
day away from opening presents. You have this primarily positive
attitude towards life that I think really serves you very
(04:04):
very well. Well, thank you, and we come from the
same place. I mean, faith to me is the redemption
of the rest of the world and the things that
we have to confront on a daily basis. It's very overwhelming.
But I feel like when you've got a perspective, like
we know how the story ends and good does triumph
over evil, that there is hope in the world, that
hopefully we share it with other people. The Bible is
an extraordinary book of not just enormous importance, but it's
(04:28):
enormously complex and has an amazing range of stories. And
you have found sort of a way of finding a threat,
if I might say, and you follow that thread through
the Bible, and the most recent one, the love stories
of the Bible speak what led you to that? Some
of these we had touched on in the earlier books.
And I'm like, Okay, let's let the guys in on
(04:48):
the action here, because there are critical parts of these stories.
For example, with Mary and Joseph, I thought she rightfully
gets so much of the attention as being the mother
of the Messiah and taking on this divine assign but
also Joseph had to make some really difficult decisions and
very much was a perfect model of sacrificial love of
protecting Mary and Jesus and in the family they've built
(05:09):
with these other children, a provider Joseph, I kind of
joke was like the world's best step dad ever, because
he was called into this assignment and never backed away
from it. So I thought, let's look at some of
the men in these stories too, and see how relationships
went well in the case of Mary and Joseph and
somewhere they didn't like Samson and Delilah. So you go
through the Bible, which you obviously know extraordinarily well, and
(05:33):
you pick selected examples that really relate, I think, to
every human being. I mean, all of us have some
need to have friends, to have lovers, to have people
we share our lives with, and all of us experienced
this thing of this human emotion. And you manage to
(05:53):
make the Bible come alive as an everyday document that
relates to us. As you went through, how did you
pick out the specific stories you decided to use. Well,
you're right, Listen, these stories are already there. They're beautiful stories.
And maybe somebody who's intimidated by the Bible or wouldn't
pick it up. I want to put it in a
format that maybe they read these stories and then for
(06:14):
themselves they say, oh wow, I didn't even realize that
person or that story was in the Bible, and then
maybe they want to go study more for themselves and
they're drawn to it. So I hope it's an open
door for them. But these love stories, I think there's
some we think of right away, like maybe Mary Joseph,
Adam and Eve. Song of Solomon a very tricky one.
But I felt like, if we're going to do love
stories of the Bible, we have to dig into that
(06:36):
very racy sort of love collection of poems. But Ruth
and boa Has, I felt like there are stories that
relate to everything, whether it's widowhood or being in a
tough marriage or the ideal marriage and what God had
ideally set up with Adam and Eve. So I feel
like there's a lot to learn there. And like I
always do in these books, I include the bad ones,
like we say, Samson and Delilah, because I think that
(06:56):
there are lessons in where people get off track because
we all do that and God can work through our
mistakes our messages, and I find that to be a
really comforting message. Well in a sense, I noticed that
the way you've did this, you have twelve different relationships,
but they sort of break on the one end into
romantic relationships and another hand into friendships, which are also
(07:19):
an expression of love. Absolutely, and you know, we saw
real relationships and friendships with Jesus. Think about all the disciples.
The people that you know best in your life are
the people that you travel with and you do life with.
And these guys were in really trying circumstances, very dangerous
circumstances sometimes, so you really see how their friendships grow.
I spend one chapter on Jesus and John, the apostle
(07:41):
that he loved, and talk about how we see their
relationship mature, and it's a real friendship. In the Old Testament,
one of my favorites is Shadrach, Meshach and a Bendigo,
these friends who refuse to back down when they were
forced to either choose to worship a false god which
would have offended where they were in their allegiance to
the God of Israel, or be thrown into a fiery furnace.
So we talk about having friends that walk through the
(08:04):
fire together with us. Those men actually did that literally
in the Bible, and I just think it's such a
network and glue to our lives, these friendship relationships, and
so I think they're just as important as looking at
the romantic relationships do. I think one of the most
interesting stories you picked was Job and his Friends, because
normally we think of Job and an isolated being punished
(08:26):
by God really living through a terrible set of experiences. Frankly,
until You're a book, I had never thought about Job
and his friends. Could you talk to just a little
bit about that? In some ways, just one of the
most interesting stories you tell. Yeah, I thought about this
because you know, in the beginning, we find that Job
is this really righteous man, and that Satan basically goes
to God and says, oh, I could make him turn
on you, And God allows the suffering into Job's life
(08:48):
because he's confident that Job is of pure of heart
and is not going to turn away from God. So
everything is unleashed on him. He loses all of his
children at once, He loses the thing that the world
would say make you successful, his life, stock and its riches,
all of that goes away, and then his very own
health is attacked, and so he's under every pressure and
nightmare that we all would imagine you could go through.
(09:09):
So his friends, the three of them decide to get
together and say we're going to go to him and
comfort him. As they're approaching him, they see how physically
and emotionally completely devastated he is. They fall down, weeping
and mourning and realizing the pain they're walking into. And
we're told when they get there, they sit there for
seven days in silence. I mean, sometimes that's the friend
(09:31):
that we need and the friend that we need to
be is that we worry sometimes when people are in
deep grief or struggles in their lives, that we're going
to say the wrong things, so we don't show up,
we don't pick up the phone. These guys just went
and sat there, and that gift of their presence was
a beautiful thing. Everyone so overwhelmed by grief they couldn't
even speak, but they were there. So it's when they
start to have their conversations with Job and try to
(09:52):
figure out if he's done something wrong, and they really
pick into his life of U sind, is there something
you've done wrong? God knows the whole story. At the
end comes around and as to these friends, like listen,
you've spoken some truth into him what you've been wrong
about his righteousness? And God is with him in that suffering.
But you see that friends sometimes the most important thing
we can do is just show up, even if we're
not going to get things exactly righteous. Showing up in
(10:14):
the worst moments is important when you're going through this
and you're looking at these things. Was there anything when
(10:35):
you suddenly stopped and said, boy, I've never thought of that,
something which surprised you. One of the stories that's kind
of obscure that's in the book is about David and Abigail.
And I remembered this story vaguely. But that's the thing.
You can read the Bible cover to cover and still
have so much to learn. I always have so much
to learn. But so David and Abigail. It's a situation
where she's married to a guy who the Bible says
(10:56):
is basically a jerk. He's a horrible husband. The people
in his house sold don't respect him. But his wife
is respectful. I mean, she does what she can to
keep their household going, and when they're under terrible threat
at some point, she goes and she's the peacemaker. She
gives this eloquent speech to David, who is going to
come attack their household because of the disrespect her husband
is shown to David, and she makes things right, she
(11:19):
is a wise woman. Listen, the guy ends up getting
struck down because God was so mad at her husband
in the way that he rejected David and was just
an all around terrible guy. And David remembers her, He
remembers the peacemaker, the respectful woman that she was in
coming to make the case. And so he goes back
after she's widowed and says, hey, how about come be
(11:39):
my wife because he had seen how she operated with
such grace under pressure and was so impressed by this woman.
And so there was a lot in that story that
I thought, you know, even if you're in a difficult marriage,
sometimes just your ability to be a peacemaker or to
find the best or to even be the person who
runs interference to try to protect her spouse, sometimes that's
going to be your role. And she was this woman,
(12:00):
and that the wording that the Bible uses in the
original language talking about her intelligence, is really a rare thing,
and it shows that to a strong woman, she kind
of broke the norms of the day, and in doing that,
she saved her entire household except for her husband, who
was an evil guy that got taken out in that
context as you're reading all these various stories, from romantic
(12:21):
love stories to friendship stories, did any of them remind
you of your own life, your own experience as your
own relationships. Yeah, you know what's funny. So I go
through Song of Solomon, which is very flowery and very racy,
but you see these two people who are very much
in love and are trying to get to each other
in marriage, and they love each other as you do
in the beginning of relationship, and there's always that passion.
(12:43):
I think that is a good thing. It's not like
God's surprise, like he invented us in all of this,
so he obviously ordains that. So you see that beginning
of their relationship, and it made me think about the
beginning of my marriage, where I was like so excited,
like let's get married, let's get on with wife, and
you don't know all the tough things that are going
to come at you. And I'm so thankful for twenty
seven years now with my husband, and I'm thinking I
(13:05):
really need to up my game on my love notes
because these notes are like his arms are bands of gold,
and her teeth are like the whitest goats of the flock.
I mean it's very flowery and funny to us now
in modern times. But I think, okay, you know, you
gotta remember what your relationship was like in the beginning
and nurture and feed that and try to say, gosh,
I remember those days, and I still love you in
(13:27):
an even deeper way now. But maybe I could do
better than just like, have a great day XO. I'm
going to work on my love notes. Snoot. That's great.
If I have to say, picking Solomon as your standard,
that's a pretty steep mountain. Yeah, exactly. You also have
some interesting things that I think people almost never think about.
You look at Samson and Delilah, which is certainly a
(13:49):
relationship that didn't work out very well, but you actually
star with the relationship between Samson's parents. How did you
get to that and what did you draw from him? Yeah,
it's a quiet kind of relationship. We do get to
the Samson and Delilah are the superstars, the headliners of
that story. But to go back, you see this beautiful
partnership between his parents where she wasn't able to have
(14:10):
a child. She's then visited by an angel of the
Lord that many people believe was Christ before he came
to earth and talks to her and says, you're gonna
have this child. She runs to her husband. Instead of
him saying, oh, foolish woman, are you hallucinating whatever? Like,
he immediately believes her and knows that she is a
woman to be believed, and so he shows great respect
to her As her husband. They pray, like, Lord, we
(14:30):
want to get this right. Could you come back and
tell us more. So the angel comes back to her
again and she's like, wait a minute, let me go
get my husband. So we see this beautiful marriage in
partnership where these two knew that they were having a
baby that was blessed in a special delivery by God,
and they wanted to get it right. They wanted to
make sure they raised him the right way, in a
way that would honor God. So you have this beautiful
(14:50):
marriage at the beginning. That Samson didn't model that later
in his life. And you wonder if he was always
looking in these bad relationships that he had to get
to this beautiful thing that his parents had. But they
definitely said an example that's one of the quiet ones
in the Bible, but very beautiful. It always struck me
that Sampson is this very sincere person. He's in a
(15:12):
sense a patriot in the context of his world. And
he really is in love with Delilah and trust her totally.
And she's almost a model of somebody who is totally untrustworthy,
I mean, who has a false face but in fact
as set out to destroy Sampson. And it's funny that
(15:34):
we see that he loves her, But like you said,
she's always doing somewhat kind of other double dealing because
she's bribed by these men who are threatened by Sampson.
And what a great warrior and defender he is of
the Hebrew people, and so they constantly go to her
state find out what the strength is, the secret is
to his strength, and he tells her the wrong thing
multiple times, and these men rush in, they try whatever
(15:56):
it is tied me with certain chords. He breaks them off.
He clear has all his strength and goes after them
and defeats them. So you gotta wonder why, after time
after time that Delilah is clearly betraying him, he finally
gives in and says, this final part of my vow
is that if my hair is cut, that breaks my
vow with God, and I'll lose my strength. But he
was so worn down by this woman and so weak
(16:18):
when it came to the demands of women in his life,
that he goes along with this. He gets captured, he said,
you know, he gets his eyes gouged out. The Philistines
are making a mockery of him because he had wiped
them out so many times. They have him chained up
to the pillars of this temple where they're celebrating, and
I do think it's so beautiful, as you pointed out.
In the end, he goes back to God after all
(16:40):
these messes he's made and said, God, just see me,
give me strength one more time so I can take
down this temple and take out everybody with me. He
knows he's going to be giving up his own life,
and God is faithful. He hears that humble cry, and
he shows up and gives Sampson that strength. And Samson
has this great defeat in laying down his own life
and taking out thousands of the Philistine who were oppressing
(17:01):
his people. It's a remarkable story also a story of sacrifice.
So a man who in the end was willing to
sacrifice himself to free his people. Now you touch on
something which I have recently been actually thinking about, and
that is Adam and Eve and the whole degree to
which it all begins there, both in the sense of
the original sin, but also in the sense of the relationships.
(17:24):
And man is lonely, so God takes a rib and
creates Eve and they have a real relationship, and without
that all the rest of the Bible doesn't occur. Right.
I don't think it's often told as a love story,
but in fact, of course it's the first marriage, it's
the first real relationship. It's the first husband and wife.
When you were thinking about it and putting the context
(17:45):
of your book, did that kind of get to you
a little bit? This was a miraculous moment, absolutely, because
think about the creation stories that we're told. Each time
a day wrapped up, say God created the heavens and
the earth, or the plants or the animals. Every time
it would end with good or he saw that it
was good. But it wasn't until Adam was standing there
alone with no partner in this whole thing that it
(18:07):
was the first time that we see in the Bible
that God say is like it wasn't good. He knew
something was missing. For Adam, then there was nothing that
had been created that would be a sufficient partner for him,
And so he does take this rib and creates Eve.
And the thing that I loved that so beautiful. If
you really look at the scripture and look at the
original wording, the word for Eve was this easer idea, Like,
it's not that she was some subservient sidekick. She was
(18:30):
a partner with him in this a helper, a rescuer,
and they had this role together that was a beautiful
thing starting out in the Garden of Eden before it
went tragically wrong. But she's also creating God's image. They
are equals. There's nothing lesser about her. So I think
any interpretation of Adam and Eve different than that is
missing the point that God created them to go together
(18:51):
through life, and they go through really tragic things, and
they cling to each other and build the world and
the family as we now know it. Even in the
story of the app Boling he listens to her. She
clearly has substantial influence. This is not a passive subordinate,
this is a partner. There's a clarity here to the
(19:11):
emergence of men and woman, the emergence of marriage, the
emergence of children. I mean, all of these things are
at the core of who we are as human beings,
and it's a beautiful thing. And listen, we as human
beings have done all kinds of things. When I talk
about Solomon in this book, I talk about David, and
they were men who were viewed as after God's own heart,
but they had their own mistakes with marriages and concubines
(19:31):
and relationships and all kinds of things that I think
they got away from this ideal of what we saw
in the garden there with Adam and Eve, which is
such a beautiful, simple but powerful thing. So I think
human beings we reinterpret things and go off on our
own paths that may not be what was the original
of what God intended. But you also talk about, and
(20:07):
I think it's a fascinating point that Jesus had a
uniquely close relationship with the apostle John, and that John
was very close to Jesus and life and death and
his resurrection. That was probably an enormously important part of
Jesus's own strength was having someone he was that close
(20:28):
to in the sense I think makes Jesus more human
in our understanding of the degree to which this was
God becoming man, not remaining God, so that he needed
him talk from it in justest about John, I mean,
John turns out to be one of the most significant
figures in that sense in the entire Bible story. Yeah,
and he refers to himself as the one whom Jesus loved,
(20:51):
and we do see a very real friendship as these
two journey through life together. And at the beginning, John's
described as he and his brother the sons of Thunder
because they a lot of righteous anger about people not
doing things the right way or not going with the
way that God had outlined or Christ had outlined things,
and they really wanted to rain down on them. But
you can see Christ speaking to John's life like, that's
(21:11):
not the right response here, That's not what we're going
to do. You see John mature, and he's there at
the cross the very end with jesus mother Mary, and
we see Christ say to him like, basically, she's your mother.
Now you take care of her. Now. We see just
how close that they were. And so John obviously goes
on to his own trials and ends up giving us
the Book of Revelation, which ends the Bible. And so
(21:34):
they had a very special relationship, but we can see
how it matured over time. And of course Jesus, as
you said, he walked here as fully god fully human
and had human relationships, and I think we can learn
through those in these friendships. Of all the disciples, John
is the one who stays the rest all gets shaken.
Even Peter, who ultamly founds the modern Church, breaks out
(21:54):
of fear, and as Christ had warned him, betrays Christ,
something which he thought he'd never do until the fear
took over, and I suspect never quite recovered from the
guilt he felt at having betrayed God. Yeah, I think
you're probably right about that, because all of us want
to deny as Peter did, that we would ever do it.
And as you said, at that moment where his pretty
(22:16):
much it was a life or death situation which Jesus
had been taken in and that sham trial. But the
beating and the torture and all the things that happened
him leading up to the crucifixion were all human. And
Peter was and to feel that fear is a very
real thing. But John was one and maybe it was
part of that Sons of Thunder, that real boldness that
he had about him, this real fire and passion about
(22:36):
believing exactly who Jesus was, that he did stick around
to the very very bitter end and beyond. There's no
indication in any of the books of Jesus feeling badly
about the people abandoning him, because he knew they would.
He knew that they were human and that in the
end that they would be frightened, and he accepts them,
(22:57):
and when he does come back from the tomb, he
no recriminations. There's why did you abandon me? And it's
almost as though God's love is endless and constant and
truly unconditional. And you talk about the unconditionality that God
loves us. We may sometimes doubt him, but He never
(23:17):
doubts us exactly. And I think for us as human beings,
because what we experience on a daily basis is claud relationships,
sometimes good, sometimes we hurt each other, I think it's
hard for us to understand this love that God has
for us, which as you said, is unconditional, and there's
nothing we can do to earn it. We can't lose it,
we can't get rid of him. There's nothing we can do,
(23:38):
which I find extremely comforting. No mistake we could make
that would ever force him to say, like, Okay, forget it,
I've reached my limit with you. He's just not going
to I mean, he wants us to walk in relationship
with him and make good choices and being fellowship with him,
but he's not going to stop loving us when we
get that wrong. You, on the one hand, every Sunday
are dealing with hard news, with terrible things going on
(24:00):
around the world. And yeah, you do it in a
context where you are so deeply committed as a Christian.
Your general view of the world is so positive almost
no matter what negative thing you're reporting that particular morning. Yeah,
and there's so much pain in the world. There was
all through biblical times. We see people suffer enormous losses.
We talked about Joe. I mean there was infertility and
(24:23):
heartbreaking widowhood and financial ruin. I mean, none of the
suffering is new to God. And the thing about Christ
walking the earth with us is that we're told like
he suffered in every way as we do. He gets it.
He knows what it's like to be tempted, to have
your heartbroken. He knows all of those devastating losses. Think
about when he wept at the loss of his friend Lazarus.
He was very human in that respect. So listen as
(24:45):
they cover these things. My heart does break for these people,
especially innocent people who are drawn into tragedies, and I
put them right on my prayer list because I don't
know how people manage the heartbreaking, devastating news, the division,
the real hurtful things without some form of faith in
their life. For me, that's the redeeming quality to the
whole thing that makes it all work. Otherwise, I think
(25:07):
you're walking into just a wall full of negative, devastating
news every day, and if you don't have some hope
beyond that, beyond this world, it would be tough to do.
And that context, do you find that your faith enables
you to avoid getting depressed by the very things you're
covering most of the time, Yeah, I think COVID was
(25:28):
really really hard, because that was one where every day
you were just covering the story. We all were the story.
Every single one of us worried about people that we loved.
We worried for ourselves, for our children, for our livelihoods,
for our economies, for lives just being lost all around
the world by the millions. I mean think that was
a really tough one and it was a good reset
(25:49):
for me because it reminded me that every morning for me,
I got to start in prayer and in Bible study.
I like journaling as well. It helps me to look
and see what I'm learning, hopefully and what God's promises
are writing them down. So I think COVID was a
real test for all of us. It really stretched us.
We felt isolated, we felt anxious and fearful, and it
(26:09):
really it was a good reset for me to remember
this world is not all there is, and that God
is very aware of all of the suffering. You've just
now brought out the love stories of the Bible speak
biblical lessons on romance, friendship, and faith. Have you begun
thinking about another book? I haven't, but I actually have
(26:29):
sketched out a fiction book that I feel like it's
finely inspired. The whole story kind of came to me
in a rush, and I wrote it down and got
it out, and I thought, I don't know if they're
any good at fiction. I mean, you're one of these
writers that's good at everything. I think it's a totally
different skill set, but I'm really anxious to see if
I could try and do it justice. So I'm going
to work on that. You are a great story teller,
(26:50):
and I'm absolutely confident that whatever you decide to do,
whether it's writing poetry or haiku or novels or another
nonfiction book, that you'll just do it well. You're one
of those people who has a remarkable level of universal competence.
Thank you, and I do enjoy a haikup. I think
they're a fun challenge. See there you go. Somehow intuitively
(27:11):
I knew I was going to touch on it. Shannon.
I want to thank you for joining me again. And
your new book really reminds us that no matter where
we find ourselves, God's on wavering love will sustain and
guide us. The insights you share into these biblical relationships
will both up left and encourage people. And I recommend
everyone listening get a copy of The Love Stories of
(27:32):
the Bible Speak Biblical Lessons on Romance, Friendship, and Faith,
which is on sale now. What you've done in really
bringing the Bible into everyday life is a remarkable achievement.
It's a thrill to me that you would take the
time to be with us here on news World. Thank
you very very much, thank you. I'm just glad to
(27:53):
be the vessel for this. Mister Spierwit, thank you for
having me. Thank you to my guest Shannon Bream. You
can get a link to buy her new book, The
Love Stories of the Bible Speak on our showpage at
newtworld dot com. NEWT World is produced by gingwistreet sixty
and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Garnsey Sloan, our producer
(28:17):
is Rebecca Howell, and our researcher is Rachel Peterson. The
all work for the show was created by Steve Penley.
Special thanks to the team at Gingwide three sixty. If
you've been enjoying Newtsworld, I hope you'll go to Apple
Podcast and both rate us with five stars and give
us a review so others can learn what it's all about.
(28:37):
Right now, listeners of neut World can sign up from
my three free weekly columns at gingwigtree sixty dot com
slash newsletter. I'm newt Gangwidge. This is newt World.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Intentionally Disturbing
Join me on this podcast as I navigate the murky waters of human behavior, current events, and personal anecdotes through in-depth interviews with incredible people—all served with a generous helping of sarcasm and satire. After years as a forensic and clinical psychologist, I offer a unique interview style and a low tolerance for bullshit, quickly steering conversations toward depth and darkness. I honor the seriousness while also appreciating wit. I’m your guide through the twisted labyrinth of the human psyche, armed with dark humor and biting wit.