October 3, 2024 • 23 mins
This episode was uploaded on September 26, 2024.
Discover how the greatness of God shines through YOU in this powerful message by Pastor Joakim Lundqvist! In this video, you'll learn how to embrace your divine purpose and radiate God's love in ways you never imagined. Pastor Lundqvist shares inspiring stories of biblical heroes, historical figures, and modern-day saints who boldly let their light shine to impact the world.
Are you an Apricot Soft Light Bulb, an Oven Light Bulb, or maybe a Party Lamp? No matter your unique gifts, God has created you to shine His light and make a difference. In this video, you'll:
Break free from doubt and embrace your unique purpose.
Gain the confidence to shine your light in a way that impacts others.
Discover how to make a lasting difference for Jesus today.
Experience the joy and fulfillment that comes from living out your God-given calling.
Don’t miss this chance to uncover the special light God has placed within you to transform the world! Watch now and be inspired to shine brighter than ever before. #ShineYourLight #Faith #Purpose #ChristianLiving #JoakimLundqvist
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The Bible says that Jesus is the light of the world.
(00:03):
And my guest today has written a book about that,
but he also brings not only the light of Jesus,
but the healing of Jesus,
most recently to Gateway Church in Dallas,
which has been in the news.
The church has actually brought him in
to help the church move through that.
And today on The Strang Report, we talk about that,
but we also talk about his brand new book,
(00:23):
Shine Your Light.
I got a lot out of it when I read it this week,
and I think that you will be too.
You don't wanna miss my very interesting conversation,
not just to find out what's in the book,
but to get some insight that will help you.
Don't miss my interview with Joakim Lundqvist,
originally from Sweden, now from Dallas.
(00:44):
Stay tuned to The Strang Report.
I'm Stephen Strang.
["The Strang Report Theme"]
Welcome back and welcome to you, Joakim Lundqvist.
Thank you for being on my podcast today.
We are so glad to launch this book, Shine Your Light,
Discover Your Unique Call
to Illuminate the World with God's Love.
(01:05):
I just finished reading it.
I was very, very impressed.
So let's start by you telling me why you wrote this book
and what you hope people get out of it.
Well, Mr. Lundqvist, I'm very, very impressed.
What you hope people get out of it?
Well, Mr. Strang, thanks first of all for having me on.
But for so many years of ministering
(01:27):
and preaching around the world,
I've seen so many Christians who kind of hesitate
and doubt their own ability to shine.
Even though Jesus calls us the light of the world,
so many times, we as believers think,
oh, we're not good enough, we're not holy enough,
we're not perfect enough.
But I wrote this book simply to remind us all
that the light that we can shine is not originating
(01:51):
from our own level of perfection,
but actually from the fact that Christ is living in us.
And as we understand that, and as we gain confidence in that,
we can shine through our personalities, through our gifts,
through everything that God has created us to be.
And of course, in your book,
you talk about how Jesus is the light of the world,
not like a light, and you go into the whole thing.
(02:13):
And even though I, unlike you,
you did not grow up in the church,
I did grow up in the church.
And so some of these concepts are familiar to me,
but I was fascinated, like for example, in Isaiah,
which I happen to be reading through right now,
all the things that Isaiah said about light.
I mean, the Bible is just full of it.
(02:34):
And I found it very interesting
how you would take these concepts
and then you would tell stories.
So what prompted you to write about light?
I know that that was part of your salvation, wasn't it?
It was, it was.
I grew up in the Lutheran Church of Sweden,
hence the accent, and my father was a priest.
(02:55):
So I was raised in a Lutheran church,
which is a state church.
And sadly, that church is now degenerated
into more like a cultural institution rather than a church.
Many of the priests in Sweden are not even believers of God.
So it's a completely different ball game
that compared to what we will say a biblical church.
(03:17):
But because of that, I was raised inside a church.
But as I hit the teenage years,
I just ran away from it all.
I rebelled against it all.
This was not relevant to me.
I never heard the gospel.
I didn't know why I was there in church in the first place.
I didn't like the organ, you know, all these things.
But then when I was 16, a friend actually lied to me
(03:40):
in Jesus' name, basically,
and he invited me to a Christian conference
claiming it was a party.
He said there would be drugs and booze and girls.
And I went.
All of a sudden, I was in this room
with about 100 young people praising God.
And I couldn't wrap my mind around all this going on.
(04:01):
But I stayed long enough for this guy,
a young speaker, to get up there
and read from 1 John, chapter 1, saying, God is light,
and there's no darkness in him.
And that caught my attention.
I never heard that.
And then he went on to talk about how we could know
that God is a good God,
that only good gifts and perfect gifts come from above.
(04:24):
And for the first time, really,
I was introduced to a God that I can get to know personally,
a God that had certain characteristics
and therefore was trustworthy.
And that was the very first time
I ever heard that being told to me.
And I gave my heart to Christ that night.
I was filled with the Holy Spirit.
And because that word about God being light
(04:47):
was actually the first one I heard that made sense
and that drew me to come to know Jesus,
that's why the concept of light
has always been very precious to me.
Right.
Well, you've had a very interesting life.
I wanna get to know you.
I want my viewers and listeners to get to know you as well.
And Europe is well known.
(05:08):
It's basically post-Christian.
And even as you described it,
the state churches aren't really biblical churches,
yet you have raised up a great group of churches.
I'm not sure if you call it a denomination,
but you have churches all over the world.
Now, we've written about you numerous times over the years
in Charisma Magazine.
(05:28):
I've known you slightly for a number of years.
I remember having some very interesting conversations
at a conference that we both went to.
And now it's interesting to me
that you've moved to the United States
and you're ministering here,
and now you've written this book.
So bring us up to speed a little bit about the churches.
(05:50):
It started from one church in Stockholm,
if I remember correctly,
and now is actually around the world.
Yeah, it's been a beautiful wild ride.
I mean, Sweden is the second most secularized nation
in the world, second only to Japan.
But we always claim what Paul says in Romans 5,
(06:10):
where sin abounded, grace would abound even more.
And that's really what we've seen by the grace of God.
One year after I gave my heart to Christ at 16,
I had led 45 friends to the Lord.
But the problem was I had no church
to take them to, there were no churches around
in the town where I grew up.
So I started a church at the age of 17.
(06:34):
Not recommended, not recommended for any 17
who might be listening to this.
But I started a church and by the grace of God,
it worked out.
We partnered with that church that arranged that conference
where I gave my heart to Jesus,
which was a baby church called Word of Life.
So we became sister churches.
Eventually I moved down to Uppsala,
I became the pastor of Word of Life.
(06:57):
And yeah, by the grace of God,
our church now in Sweden has been the launch pad
of over 950 churches all over the world.
And basically all of our churches are in nations
such as Afghanistan, Ukraine, Russia, Central Asia,
(07:19):
the Middle East, India, China, Vietnam.
Basically wherever there's a problem in the world,
there will be a Word of Life church.
Hopefully we didn't cause the problem,
we're there as part of trying to fix it.
And again, I'm just trying,
but wherever there's darkness,
I do believe that light is most needed
(07:39):
and also light will be seen the clearest.
So that's kind of the way it has led us.
And that ties into your book as well.
And even the cover, there's all these different
kind of light bulbs.
And it was interesting to me how you tied your message
into different kinds of light.
(07:59):
Yes.
And I don't remember all the different kinds,
but there was one, was it the avocado light or something
that was really faint?
And then you have a flashlight
and could you kind of just talk through that?
Because I thought that you gave such insight,
you have such a way.
And then you told stories about Martin Luther King Jr.
(08:20):
and just different ones.
You're a great storyteller.
Stories is actually a big part of how I wanna communicate.
Not just because I like stories in general,
but for me, the stories and the testimonies
are like the Word becoming flesh.
Jesus came down to the earth to make the gospel,
to make God really graspable and touchable.
(08:42):
And I do believe that stories and testimonies
about what other Christians have done,
people of flesh and blood with the same strength
and weaknesses as you and I,
those are like what makes the spiritual principles
graspable and personal and touchable.
In regards to the light bulbs,
(09:03):
the whole book actually went back to a message
that I crafted a few years ago,
because I was kind of sick and tired
of hearing all these Christians saying basically
that my personality excuses me.
I'm not a preachery kind of guy.
I'm not a pastoral kind of person.
I don't know if pastoral is even a word,
but I'm a Swede, so hopefully I'm excused.
(09:29):
The concept or the line of thought
that I need to be of a certain personality,
and only that personality is the only one
that's gonna be used by God.
So what I did was I crafted a message
where I used 10 different light bulbs on stage.
So there will be a lamp stands,
and I'll put a light bulb into it,
and I'll have these different light bulbs
(09:51):
kind of representing different personalities.
I'll say maybe you are an apricot soft light.
Maybe you are the kind of person that always brings peace
and a great atmosphere and make people feel at home.
Maybe you are the kind of person
that helps turning a church into a family,
into a house where people can relax
(10:13):
and open their hearts for the presence of God.
Or maybe you're an oven light bulb.
You know, the tiny little light bulb
that is inside the oven that helps us know
when the pizza is ready?
Maybe you're that kind of person.
You're more like an introvert.
You hide inside the oven,
and you don't have to be
the center of attention all the time.
(10:33):
You don't want to be the center of attention all the time.
And maybe just because you're a little bit more isolated
in your personality,
a little smaller than the other light bulbs,
you might think that,
oh no, I'm the wrong personality.
God can't use me.
But the oven light bulb is the only one
who can take the heat of 500 degrees.
When the pressure rises, when the temperature climbs,
(10:55):
the oven light bulb will keep shining and keep serving.
And if that's you, we need you in the body of Christ.
Or you might be a party light or a work lamp
or a flashlight or a dark room lamp.
So I use all these different light bulbs in the book
to illustrate the fact that whoever you are,
whatever personality you have,
(11:16):
you can shine for Jesus and make a difference in your world.
That's so important.
Thank you for sharing that.
Let me talk to you about what you've been doing lately.
I've been told at least
that you've relocated to the United States.
You're in Dallas.
You're doing work with Gateway Church,
which is a great church.
I've attended there, I know,
(11:38):
and have known for a number of years,
many of those in leadership.
I've observed its growth from a distance.
And lately it's been in the news in a not so positive way.
So what can you tell us about what drew you there
and what's happening now?
Well, Mr. Strang, I was a guest speaker
at Gateway for many years.
(11:59):
I guess all in all about seven or eight times.
I visited the church and I was actually scheduled to speak
back in June on the Sunday after the tragic news broke
about its founding pastor.
And I thought to myself
that maybe they wouldn't want a guest speaker
on this weekend.
(12:20):
It's gonna be a very, very special weekend.
But then they reached out to me and said,
no, because maybe you're one of the few pastors
who might be able to relate to what is going on here.
Because about 10 years earlier,
my own church had a similar thing happen.
Not the same kind of reasons,
but similar in the sense that our founding pastor
left in a very drastic, unexpected and dramatic way,
(12:44):
which launched our church and our movement
into a temporary crisis.
A lot of confusion, a lot of grief, a lot of,
yeah, a lot of hurt basically.
So they actually asked me to come and speak that weekend.
And by the grace of God,
it really became a moment of healing
and a start of a long process of mending.
(13:06):
And afterward, I just felt that the Lord had me pray
for Gateway every morning and every evening for some reason.
And then about six weeks later,
they reached out asking me if I could become
the interim teaching pastor for this fall, the fall of 24.
And if I would be there and follow them through
this gentle walk of healing and restoration.
(13:29):
And for me, it was a 10 minute decision.
All I needed to do was check with God
and check with my wife.
And they both said yes.
So I'm actually very blessed to be there right now
and see the beautiful work of healing
that the presence of God is doing in Gateway Church.
(13:49):
And I think that whenever something like this happened,
whenever a leader has a moral failure
or falls or is disgraced,
so many times the victim,
the silent victim, the unheard voice is the local church
that wasn't aware of what was going on at all
(14:13):
and cannot be guilty by association, but it's hurting.
And I do believe that if you're gonna cancel
a hurting church because you don't want your image
to be tainted in any way,
if you're more concerned about your own image
than you are about sheep that are actually hurting
(14:36):
because of something that happened to the shepherd,
then maybe you shouldn't be a pastor.
Maybe you should do something else with your life.
I don't know.
But for me, it's an honor and a privilege
to work with this church and again,
see a beautiful work of healing and restoration
that is taking place right now.
Well, I think that's so important as well.
And sadly, scandals are not new.
(14:59):
They go all the way back to the New Testament church.
That's a lot of what Paul, the apostle,
wrote about in his books.
And throughout history, there have been scandals.
Most of them were not publicized
because the media wasn't around in the same way
or they've been forgotten.
(15:20):
You mentioned this thing you walked through.
I lived through something in 1981.
That was a long time ago
that affected me and my family deeply.
We were able to go on and that's what we have to do.
We're not here to talk about Gateway or the scandal,
but what happened happened a long, long time ago.
(15:43):
But yet now with the media and the Me Too movement
and certain laws and all this other kind of,
all this kind of comes into play.
But the fact is that the gospel is still true.
God is still on the throne.
People still need Jesus.
And I think it's so good that there are pastors like you
who can help people understand what's going on
(16:03):
because the Bible, and I'll end with this one comment
because I wanna hear what you have to say,
but the Bible says that Satan comes
to steal, kill, and destroy.
Jesus, of course, comes to give life
and to give it more abundantly.
And the enemy will try to stop the work of Christ
in any way he can, including scandals,
(16:24):
playing up scandals, making people feel discouraged
and giving up on God.
So I guess my point is that a lot of people
have been through something similar,
probably on a much, much smaller scale.
Maybe like me, it was a long time ago
before social media was around.
(16:45):
How do you tell people to cope with this
other than to just forgive and go on?
Actually, I don't think just forgive and go on
is a good advice.
I think that healing of trust takes time
and needs to be allowed to take time.
What we need to keep in mind, just as you were sharing,
(17:07):
is that the name the devil in Greek, Diabolos,
is really a divider.
And whereas the Holy Spirit is a unifier,
he unites us with Christ, he unites us with one another.
So basically, we just need to make sure
that we're on the right team,
that we're on the team of the unifier
and not the team of the divider.
(17:30):
When it comes to healing, my experience is that
so much of it happens in the presence of God
and so much of it happens like step by step.
But constantly, we have to remind ourselves
that men will fail us and we will fail men
because we're still imperfect on this side of eternity.
(17:52):
And however, eventually, God has not fallen off his throne.
Jesus still stands in the center of the church.
The church is still his body, however imperfect.
So my one concern basically is for,
when I meet people who might say something like,
oh, this person let me down.
(18:12):
I have this negative experience in church.
Now I'm never gonna go back to a church.
I'm just gonna read my Bible and pray all by myself.
And I always say, I fully respect the hurt
that brought you to that conclusion,
but it is the wrong conclusion.
We're not called to do life on our own.
We're called to do life together.
(18:32):
And even when people let us down,
we're called to heal together,
to pray for each other together.
We don't heal well on our own, but we heal well together.
And basically that's what I'm seeing at Gateway.
Now we just came out of two beautiful full days
of staff gathering and just seeing the spirit
(18:53):
of the Lord descend and seeing the worship
and seeing also the beauty of the brokenness.
Because sometimes actually God
can take a situation like this.
I'm not justifying whatever event that launched the crisis,
but I'm speaking about the aftermath.
Sometimes God can use that brokenness
(19:13):
and our understanding of how dependent we are on Jesus alone
and have us actually come out of the process more healthy,
more broken, more humble.
And that's actually what we experienced back in our church.
What the devil meant for evil,
(19:34):
God turned around to something good.
And every time people ask us about our crisis 10 years ago,
I would say that I'll never wanna do that again,
but I never wanna be without the beauty
that was born in the middle of the heartbreak.
So well said.
And as we wrap this up,
(19:55):
and I'm gonna want you to pray for my viewers
before we're finished.
And there's so many things we could pray about,
but I think it's important to pray.
This book is coming out.
People can actually order it ahead of time.
I realize most people probably watch this
after the books come out.
It's available wherever Christian's books are sold.
And nowadays you can get everything online.
(20:18):
I really think that this is a very encouraging book.
Like I said, I've read it myself.
I felt I learned a lot.
In fact, I even said to myself,
I need to reread some of these parts
and go a little bit deeper.
So I wanna go ahead and give you the last word
and then ask you to pray.
Sure.
Well, first of all, thank you, Mr. Strang,
(20:40):
for publishing the book.
I pray and I do hope from the bottom of my heart,
and I believe that it will be a blessing to you.
Looking at the world now,
there's so much darkness.
There's so many problems.
There's so many challenges
that might scream out to the church
that you will never ever be able to solve this.
(21:02):
You will never ever see the light break through.
And I do believe that as long as we only count
on a certain little group of pastors
or professional preachers or evangelists,
we will never be able to fulfill the great commission.
But the answer to that problem,
the answer to the question
is to rise up an army of believers,
(21:23):
thousands and millions all over the world
who will realize themselves, I am the light of the world.
God has sent me to my world, to my neighborhood,
to my workplace, to my school, to my university,
to my set of friends,
to actually make a difference for God.
And in this book, I try to explain how you can do that,
how you can not only be a partaker of your own world,
(21:45):
but actually a definer, a changer,
a light in your own world.
So it will be my privilege and my honor
to pray a prayer for you.
Lord, I thank you for everyone
and anyone who's watching this broadcast.
Lord, whoever they are, they are here for a purpose.
You did not make any mistake in having them born
(22:06):
in such a time as this, such a dark time as this,
because you already call them the light.
You don't wait for a certain level of perfection
or holiness already now where they are,
they can be a light in the world.
And I pray that they will be.
And just like in the dawn of creation,
in the cold, in all the confusion and darkness,
(22:28):
you said, let there be light.
I pray that will be the life motto
of everyone who is listening,
that they will go into the darkness of this world.
And instead of just complain about it on Facebook,
that they will actually be able to turn on the light.
And as they do, may your glory be seen
and may the name of Jesus be glorified
(22:49):
and may salvation be released.
I pray your blessing upon everyone who have listened to us
and for their entire future, Lord,
let them be the light of the world truly
like you've already called them by your son, Jesus Christ.
I pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Thank you for praying that prayer.
I hope that it really touched your heart in a very deep way.
(23:12):
I also hope that you will order this book.
I think that you will really enjoy it.
It's a good read.
It's good to just read a chapter
with your devotions in the morning.
It's not written as a devotional,
but you can read it that way.
So many good stories, so many insights, so many scriptures,
and he helps us see how each of us
can be a light of the world.
(23:33):
If you enjoy these podcasts,
be sure to subscribe to The Strang Report.
Hit the little bell so you'll be notified
when we're on live every Tuesday and Thursday,
4 p.m. Eastern time.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for sharing this very important podcast.
Thank you for helping us get the word out
about this very important book, Shine Your Light.
(23:55):
Until next time, I'm Stephen Strang.
God bless you.
The Bible says that Jesus is the light of the world.
(00:03):
And my guest today has written a book about that,
but he also brings not only the light of Jesus,
but the healing of Jesus,
most recently to Gateway Church in Dallas,
which has been in the news.
The church has actually brought him in
to help the church move through that.
And today on The Strang Report, we talk about that,
but we also talk about his brand new book,
(00:23):
Shine Your Light.
I got a lot out of it when I read it this week,
and I think that you will be too.
You don't wanna miss my very interesting conversation,
not just to find out what's in the book,
but to get some insight that will help you.
Don't miss my interview with Joakim Lundqvist,
originally from Sweden, now from Dallas.
(00:44):
Stay tuned to The Strang Report.
I'm Stephen Strang.
["The Strang Report Theme"]
Welcome back and welcome to you, Joakim Lundqvist.
Thank you for being on my podcast today.
We are so glad to launch this book, Shine Your Light,
Discover Your Unique Call
to Illuminate the World with God's Love.
(01:05):
I just finished reading it.
I was very, very impressed.
So let's start by you telling me why you wrote this book
and what you hope people get out of it.
Well, Mr. Lundqvist, I'm very, very impressed.
What you hope people get out of it?
Well, Mr. Strang, thanks first of all for having me on.
But for so many years of ministering
(01:27):
and preaching around the world,
I've seen so many Christians who kind of hesitate
and doubt their own ability to shine.
Even though Jesus calls us the light of the world,
so many times, we as believers think,
oh, we're not good enough, we're not holy enough,
we're not perfect enough.
But I wrote this book simply to remind us all
that the light that we can shine is not originating
(01:51):
from our own level of perfection,
but actually from the fact that Christ is living in us.
And as we understand that, and as we gain confidence in that,
we can shine through our personalities, through our gifts,
through everything that God has created us to be.
And of course, in your book,
you talk about how Jesus is the light of the world,
not like a light, and you go into the whole thing.
(02:13):
And even though I, unlike you,
you did not grow up in the church,
I did grow up in the church.
And so some of these concepts are familiar to me,
but I was fascinated, like for example, in Isaiah,
which I happen to be reading through right now,
all the things that Isaiah said about light.
I mean, the Bible is just full of it.
(02:34):
And I found it very interesting
how you would take these concepts
and then you would tell stories.
So what prompted you to write about light?
I know that that was part of your salvation, wasn't it?
It was, it was.
I grew up in the Lutheran Church of Sweden,
hence the accent, and my father was a priest.
(02:55):
So I was raised in a Lutheran church,
which is a state church.
And sadly, that church is now degenerated
into more like a cultural institution rather than a church.
Many of the priests in Sweden are not even believers of God.
So it's a completely different ball game
that compared to what we will say a biblical church.
(03:17):
But because of that, I was raised inside a church.
But as I hit the teenage years,
I just ran away from it all.
I rebelled against it all.
This was not relevant to me.
I never heard the gospel.
I didn't know why I was there in church in the first place.
I didn't like the organ, you know, all these things.
But then when I was 16, a friend actually lied to me
(03:40):
in Jesus' name, basically,
and he invited me to a Christian conference
claiming it was a party.
He said there would be drugs and booze and girls.
And I went.
All of a sudden, I was in this room
with about 100 young people praising God.
And I couldn't wrap my mind around all this going on.
(04:01):
But I stayed long enough for this guy,
a young speaker, to get up there
and read from 1 John, chapter 1, saying, God is light,
and there's no darkness in him.
And that caught my attention.
I never heard that.
And then he went on to talk about how we could know
that God is a good God,
that only good gifts and perfect gifts come from above.
(04:24):
And for the first time, really,
I was introduced to a God that I can get to know personally,
a God that had certain characteristics
and therefore was trustworthy.
And that was the very first time
I ever heard that being told to me.
And I gave my heart to Christ that night.
I was filled with the Holy Spirit.
And because that word about God being light
(04:47):
was actually the first one I heard that made sense
and that drew me to come to know Jesus,
that's why the concept of light
has always been very precious to me.
Right.
Well, you've had a very interesting life.
I wanna get to know you.
I want my viewers and listeners to get to know you as well.
And Europe is well known.
(05:08):
It's basically post-Christian.
And even as you described it,
the state churches aren't really biblical churches,
yet you have raised up a great group of churches.
I'm not sure if you call it a denomination,
but you have churches all over the world.
Now, we've written about you numerous times over the years
in Charisma Magazine.
(05:28):
I've known you slightly for a number of years.
I remember having some very interesting conversations
at a conference that we both went to.
And now it's interesting to me
that you've moved to the United States
and you're ministering here,
and now you've written this book.
So bring us up to speed a little bit about the churches.
(05:50):
It started from one church in Stockholm,
if I remember correctly,
and now is actually around the world.
Yeah, it's been a beautiful wild ride.
I mean, Sweden is the second most secularized nation
in the world, second only to Japan.
But we always claim what Paul says in Romans 5,
(06:10):
where sin abounded, grace would abound even more.
And that's really what we've seen by the grace of God.
One year after I gave my heart to Christ at 16,
I had led 45 friends to the Lord.
But the problem was I had no church
to take them to, there were no churches around
in the town where I grew up.
So I started a church at the age of 17.
(06:34):
Not recommended, not recommended for any 17
who might be listening to this.
But I started a church and by the grace of God,
it worked out.
We partnered with that church that arranged that conference
where I gave my heart to Jesus,
which was a baby church called Word of Life.
So we became sister churches.
Eventually I moved down to Uppsala,
I became the pastor of Word of Life.
(06:57):
And yeah, by the grace of God,
our church now in Sweden has been the launch pad
of over 950 churches all over the world.
And basically all of our churches are in nations
such as Afghanistan, Ukraine, Russia, Central Asia,
(07:19):
the Middle East, India, China, Vietnam.
Basically wherever there's a problem in the world,
there will be a Word of Life church.
Hopefully we didn't cause the problem,
we're there as part of trying to fix it.
And again, I'm just trying,
but wherever there's darkness,
I do believe that light is most needed
(07:39):
and also light will be seen the clearest.
So that's kind of the way it has led us.
And that ties into your book as well.
And even the cover, there's all these different
kind of light bulbs.
And it was interesting to me how you tied your message
into different kinds of light.
(07:59):
Yes.
And I don't remember all the different kinds,
but there was one, was it the avocado light or something
that was really faint?
And then you have a flashlight
and could you kind of just talk through that?
Because I thought that you gave such insight,
you have such a way.
And then you told stories about Martin Luther King Jr.
(08:20):
and just different ones.
You're a great storyteller.
Stories is actually a big part of how I wanna communicate.
Not just because I like stories in general,
but for me, the stories and the testimonies
are like the Word becoming flesh.
Jesus came down to the earth to make the gospel,
to make God really graspable and touchable.
(08:42):
And I do believe that stories and testimonies
about what other Christians have done,
people of flesh and blood with the same strength
and weaknesses as you and I,
those are like what makes the spiritual principles
graspable and personal and touchable.
In regards to the light bulbs,
(09:03):
the whole book actually went back to a message
that I crafted a few years ago,
because I was kind of sick and tired
of hearing all these Christians saying basically
that my personality excuses me.
I'm not a preachery kind of guy.
I'm not a pastoral kind of person.
I don't know if pastoral is even a word,
but I'm a Swede, so hopefully I'm excused.
(09:29):
The concept or the line of thought
that I need to be of a certain personality,
and only that personality is the only one
that's gonna be used by God.
So what I did was I crafted a message
where I used 10 different light bulbs on stage.
So there will be a lamp stands,
and I'll put a light bulb into it,
and I'll have these different light bulbs
(09:51):
kind of representing different personalities.
I'll say maybe you are an apricot soft light.
Maybe you are the kind of person that always brings peace
and a great atmosphere and make people feel at home.
Maybe you are the kind of person
that helps turning a church into a family,
into a house where people can relax
(10:13):
and open their hearts for the presence of God.
Or maybe you're an oven light bulb.
You know, the tiny little light bulb
that is inside the oven that helps us know
when the pizza is ready?
Maybe you're that kind of person.
You're more like an introvert.
You hide inside the oven,
and you don't have to be
the center of attention all the time.
(10:33):
You don't want to be the center of attention all the time.
And maybe just because you're a little bit more isolated
in your personality,
a little smaller than the other light bulbs,
you might think that,
oh no, I'm the wrong personality.
God can't use me.
But the oven light bulb is the only one
who can take the heat of 500 degrees.
When the pressure rises, when the temperature climbs,
(10:55):
the oven light bulb will keep shining and keep serving.
And if that's you, we need you in the body of Christ.
Or you might be a party light or a work lamp
or a flashlight or a dark room lamp.
So I use all these different light bulbs in the book
to illustrate the fact that whoever you are,
whatever personality you have,
(11:16):
you can shine for Jesus and make a difference in your world.
That's so important.
Thank you for sharing that.
Let me talk to you about what you've been doing lately.
I've been told at least
that you've relocated to the United States.
You're in Dallas.
You're doing work with Gateway Church,
which is a great church.
I've attended there, I know,
(11:38):
and have known for a number of years,
many of those in leadership.
I've observed its growth from a distance.
And lately it's been in the news in a not so positive way.
So what can you tell us about what drew you there
and what's happening now?
Well, Mr. Strang, I was a guest speaker
at Gateway for many years.
(11:59):
I guess all in all about seven or eight times.
I visited the church and I was actually scheduled to speak
back in June on the Sunday after the tragic news broke
about its founding pastor.
And I thought to myself
that maybe they wouldn't want a guest speaker
on this weekend.
(12:20):
It's gonna be a very, very special weekend.
But then they reached out to me and said,
no, because maybe you're one of the few pastors
who might be able to relate to what is going on here.
Because about 10 years earlier,
my own church had a similar thing happen.
Not the same kind of reasons,
but similar in the sense that our founding pastor
left in a very drastic, unexpected and dramatic way,
(12:44):
which launched our church and our movement
into a temporary crisis.
A lot of confusion, a lot of grief, a lot of,
yeah, a lot of hurt basically.
So they actually asked me to come and speak that weekend.
And by the grace of God,
it really became a moment of healing
and a start of a long process of mending.
(13:06):
And afterward, I just felt that the Lord had me pray
for Gateway every morning and every evening for some reason.
And then about six weeks later,
they reached out asking me if I could become
the interim teaching pastor for this fall, the fall of 24.
And if I would be there and follow them through
this gentle walk of healing and restoration.
(13:29):
And for me, it was a 10 minute decision.
All I needed to do was check with God
and check with my wife.
And they both said yes.
So I'm actually very blessed to be there right now
and see the beautiful work of healing
that the presence of God is doing in Gateway Church.
(13:49):
And I think that whenever something like this happened,
whenever a leader has a moral failure
or falls or is disgraced,
so many times the victim,
the silent victim, the unheard voice is the local church
that wasn't aware of what was going on at all
(14:13):
and cannot be guilty by association, but it's hurting.
And I do believe that if you're gonna cancel
a hurting church because you don't want your image
to be tainted in any way,
if you're more concerned about your own image
than you are about sheep that are actually hurting
(14:36):
because of something that happened to the shepherd,
then maybe you shouldn't be a pastor.
Maybe you should do something else with your life.
I don't know.
But for me, it's an honor and a privilege
to work with this church and again,
see a beautiful work of healing and restoration
that is taking place right now.
Well, I think that's so important as well.
And sadly, scandals are not new.
(14:59):
They go all the way back to the New Testament church.
That's a lot of what Paul, the apostle,
wrote about in his books.
And throughout history, there have been scandals.
Most of them were not publicized
because the media wasn't around in the same way
or they've been forgotten.
(15:20):
You mentioned this thing you walked through.
I lived through something in 1981.
That was a long time ago
that affected me and my family deeply.
We were able to go on and that's what we have to do.
We're not here to talk about Gateway or the scandal,
but what happened happened a long, long time ago.
(15:43):
But yet now with the media and the Me Too movement
and certain laws and all this other kind of,
all this kind of comes into play.
But the fact is that the gospel is still true.
God is still on the throne.
People still need Jesus.
And I think it's so good that there are pastors like you
who can help people understand what's going on
(16:03):
because the Bible, and I'll end with this one comment
because I wanna hear what you have to say,
but the Bible says that Satan comes
to steal, kill, and destroy.
Jesus, of course, comes to give life
and to give it more abundantly.
And the enemy will try to stop the work of Christ
in any way he can, including scandals,
(16:24):
playing up scandals, making people feel discouraged
and giving up on God.
So I guess my point is that a lot of people
have been through something similar,
probably on a much, much smaller scale.
Maybe like me, it was a long time ago
before social media was around.
(16:45):
How do you tell people to cope with this
other than to just forgive and go on?
Actually, I don't think just forgive and go on
is a good advice.
I think that healing of trust takes time
and needs to be allowed to take time.
What we need to keep in mind, just as you were sharing,
(17:07):
is that the name the devil in Greek, Diabolos,
is really a divider.
And whereas the Holy Spirit is a unifier,
he unites us with Christ, he unites us with one another.
So basically, we just need to make sure
that we're on the right team,
that we're on the team of the unifier
and not the team of the divider.
(17:30):
When it comes to healing, my experience is that
so much of it happens in the presence of God
and so much of it happens like step by step.
But constantly, we have to remind ourselves
that men will fail us and we will fail men
because we're still imperfect on this side of eternity.
(17:52):
And however, eventually, God has not fallen off his throne.
Jesus still stands in the center of the church.
The church is still his body, however imperfect.
So my one concern basically is for,
when I meet people who might say something like,
oh, this person let me down.
(18:12):
I have this negative experience in church.
Now I'm never gonna go back to a church.
I'm just gonna read my Bible and pray all by myself.
And I always say, I fully respect the hurt
that brought you to that conclusion,
but it is the wrong conclusion.
We're not called to do life on our own.
We're called to do life together.
(18:32):
And even when people let us down,
we're called to heal together,
to pray for each other together.
We don't heal well on our own, but we heal well together.
And basically that's what I'm seeing at Gateway.
Now we just came out of two beautiful full days
of staff gathering and just seeing the spirit
(18:53):
of the Lord descend and seeing the worship
and seeing also the beauty of the brokenness.
Because sometimes actually God
can take a situation like this.
I'm not justifying whatever event that launched the crisis,
but I'm speaking about the aftermath.
Sometimes God can use that brokenness
(19:13):
and our understanding of how dependent we are on Jesus alone
and have us actually come out of the process more healthy,
more broken, more humble.
And that's actually what we experienced back in our church.
What the devil meant for evil,
(19:34):
God turned around to something good.
And every time people ask us about our crisis 10 years ago,
I would say that I'll never wanna do that again,
but I never wanna be without the beauty
that was born in the middle of the heartbreak.
So well said.
And as we wrap this up,
(19:55):
and I'm gonna want you to pray for my viewers
before we're finished.
And there's so many things we could pray about,
but I think it's important to pray.
This book is coming out.
People can actually order it ahead of time.
I realize most people probably watch this
after the books come out.
It's available wherever Christian's books are sold.
And nowadays you can get everything online.
(20:18):
I really think that this is a very encouraging book.
Like I said, I've read it myself.
I felt I learned a lot.
In fact, I even said to myself,
I need to reread some of these parts
and go a little bit deeper.
So I wanna go ahead and give you the last word
and then ask you to pray.
Sure.
Well, first of all, thank you, Mr. Strang,
(20:40):
for publishing the book.
I pray and I do hope from the bottom of my heart,
and I believe that it will be a blessing to you.
Looking at the world now,
there's so much darkness.
There's so many problems.
There's so many challenges
that might scream out to the church
that you will never ever be able to solve this.
(21:02):
You will never ever see the light break through.
And I do believe that as long as we only count
on a certain little group of pastors
or professional preachers or evangelists,
we will never be able to fulfill the great commission.
But the answer to that problem,
the answer to the question
is to rise up an army of believers,
(21:23):
thousands and millions all over the world
who will realize themselves, I am the light of the world.
God has sent me to my world, to my neighborhood,
to my workplace, to my school, to my university,
to my set of friends,
to actually make a difference for God.
And in this book, I try to explain how you can do that,
how you can not only be a partaker of your own world,
(21:45):
but actually a definer, a changer,
a light in your own world.
So it will be my privilege and my honor
to pray a prayer for you.
Lord, I thank you for everyone
and anyone who's watching this broadcast.
Lord, whoever they are, they are here for a purpose.
You did not make any mistake in having them born
(22:06):
in such a time as this, such a dark time as this,
because you already call them the light.
You don't wait for a certain level of perfection
or holiness already now where they are,
they can be a light in the world.
And I pray that they will be.
And just like in the dawn of creation,
in the cold, in all the confusion and darkness,
(22:28):
you said, let there be light.
I pray that will be the life motto
of everyone who is listening,
that they will go into the darkness of this world.
And instead of just complain about it on Facebook,
that they will actually be able to turn on the light.
And as they do, may your glory be seen
and may the name of Jesus be glorified
(22:49):
and may salvation be released.
I pray your blessing upon everyone who have listened to us
and for their entire future, Lord,
let them be the light of the world truly
like you've already called them by your son, Jesus Christ.
I pray in Jesus' name, amen.
Thank you for praying that prayer.
I hope that it really touched your heart in a very deep way.
(23:12):
I also hope that you will order this book.
I think that you will really enjoy it.
It's a good read.
It's good to just read a chapter
with your devotions in the morning.
It's not written as a devotional,
but you can read it that way.
So many good stories, so many insights, so many scriptures,
and he helps us see how each of us
can be a light of the world.
(23:33):
If you enjoy these podcasts,
be sure to subscribe to The Strang Report.
Hit the little bell so you'll be notified
when we're on live every Tuesday and Thursday,
4 p.m. Eastern time.
Thank you for watching.
Thank you for sharing this very important podcast.
Thank you for helping us get the word out
about this very important book, Shine Your Light.
(23:55):
Until next time, I'm Stephen Strang.
God bless you.
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