July 24, 2025 • 46 mins
How do you live like Jesus in today's world? That question sums up our conversation on Chris Fabry Live. Former pastor and president of Moody Bible Institute, Dr. Joseph Stowell has been thinking about that question. Many people in the culture think the church is just a bunch of angry people. How do we communicate the gospel without alienating the ones who need to hear it? Hear some answers on Chris Fabry Live.
Featured resource:
This Light of Mine: Living Like Jesus in a Non-Jesus World by Joseph M. Stowell
July thank you gift:
Drive Through the Bible by Colin S. Smith
Chris Fabry Live is listener-supported. To support the program, click here.
Become a Back Fence Partner: https://moodyradio.org/donateto/chrisfabrylive/partners
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:05):
We live in a polarized, politicized, divided, angry world. So
many are so frustrated and it comes out in conversations.
You see it on social media. You see it TV, radio.
Many of the cultures see the church as part of
the problem. We are just another angry subgroup of people
who have our agenda, who want to exercise our rights
(00:28):
and get our way, and whether that's true or not
is not really the point. If we are perceived that way,
we need to take a hard look at it. So
that's what we're going to do today with a guest
who says the challenge we have before us as followers
of Jesus is to respond to all the troubling things
that are going on in the culture, the things that
(00:50):
give you tension, that may give you heartburn, keep you
awake at night, things that aren't right, things that need
to change And to see those in a way that
does not alienate the very people who need to hear
the good news about God's redemptive work. He says we
often communicate a sense of hopelessness and despair mixed in
(01:14):
with a lot of fear and anxiety. So how do
we pivot from being consumed in a battle for an
earthly kingdom to embracing the privilege we have of advancing
the kingdom of Christ? That's what we're going to talk
about today with Doctor Joseph Stoll, the third. He is
standing by in this edition of Chris Fabry Live. Welcome
to the radio Backyard. It's great to have you with
us today. Great to have the team assembled. Ryan McConaughey
(01:37):
doing all things technical. Trish is our producer. Ryan will
be answering your calls today. We have one week left
next Thursday. If my calendar is right is July 31st.
And I've been telling you about Pastor Colin Smith's excellent book,
Drive Through the Bible. It is a game changer because
it gives you kind of a landscape, a big picture
(01:58):
of Scripture, you'll discover how every part of the Bible
in 30 days or less, how every part of the Bible,
the Old Testament, the New Testament, the poetry, the prophecy,
the wisdom literature it all points to Jesus. So call
or click through today. We need your help here at
the end of July. Request a copy of this 30
(02:18):
day journey. Drive through the Bible. Call 8669538669532279. Give a
gift of any size. We'd love to send it to you.
Or you can do that. You can sign up. Give
a gift. Scroll down. You'll see how to support this
program right there with a one time gift or become
(02:41):
a back fence partner with us today I sent my
back fence partner. If you're if you give a gift
each month, you look at that video that I sent
you because you get to see the very end of
the program tomorrow with Ben Fuller, uh, singer songwriter. It's excellent. Uh,
so if you're a back fence partner with us, you
(03:01):
get that extra content and would love to send that
to you. All the the information is at Chris Fabry live.
And the last name is fab. Chris. Doctor Joseph stole
the third. Served as seventh president of Moody Bible Institute.
He was also president of Cornerstone University. Served as a
(03:23):
pastor for many years before and after that. He's now
a special advisor and ambassador to Moody Bible Institute's president,
doctor Mark Jobe. So it all kind of comes back around,
doesn't it? He's written a number of books, and his
latest we're going to talk about today. I'm really excited
about this light of mine living like Jesus in a
non Jesus world. Because this is exactly this is the
(03:47):
intersection of right where you and I are living every day.
Doctor Stoll, welcome back. How are you doing today?
S2 (03:53):
It's great. Chris, so good to hear your voice. Think
about us. What? Don't. Don't count the years, right. We
worked together back in Moody radio days when I was
on campus. And now to be with you again. Like
old home week, right?
S1 (04:08):
Yes it is. And you haven't gotten a day older.
How do you do that?
S2 (04:12):
Oh, well, the use by dates are beginning to expire.
I can feel that for sure. But it is great
to be back in Moody World again. And what a
treat to be on this program with you.
S1 (04:25):
Well, I want to talk about what you've written here
because I think this is, you know, it's a very
contemporary problem. But as you mentioned, back in the 80s,
we worked together, and in the 1980s it was a
really difficult time politically, culturally, there were a lot of
shifts that were going on. And then you go before
that and you think of all that was going on
(04:46):
in the 30s and 40s in the country, and then
you go even further back than that, and you look
at what Peter and Paul and Timothy in the early church.
This is the same kind of question that they were
dealing with that we are dealing with today. So back
the truck up. Take a run at this. Why did
you write this light of mine.
S2 (05:05):
You know, the reason is because we live in a
season of unbelievably great opportunity to attract people to Christ.
And that's what we're called to, right? Go into the
world and make disciples. And it's such a needy world.
It's so broken. As you mentioned a couple minutes ago,
all the chaos, the divisiveness, racially, politically, the skyrocketing suicide rates,
(05:29):
a youth culture that's burdened with anxiety. I mean, the
list is long. The despair, the anger that people feel,
the loneliness, the confusion. And guess what? Jesus has the answer.
I want to stand up in this world and shout.
Jesus said, come unto me, all ye that labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take
my yoke upon you, and you shall find peace unto
(05:52):
your souls. And we have that privilege of bringing, bringing Jesus.
And so the book is really about how do we
attract people to Jesus Christ, especially given, I think, Chris,
my fear that we as evangelicals have probably done more
to alienate people from Jesus than to attract people to Jesus.
(06:13):
And our attitudes and actions. So actually, the book is
about how to live to attract your neighbors and co-workers
to Jesus. Jesus has a plan. The book uncovers the plan.
Like how do you attract your neighbor who's front yard
is full of signs that are pumping the progressive agenda?
Or how do you attract people to Jesus when all
(06:36):
your colleagues at the office think because of your stance
on moral issues, that you're related to Attila the Hun,
you know you're bigoted and hateful and for your stance
on gay issues and abortion, etc., etc.. So that's what
the book is all about, Out, you know, kind of
marking our attitudes, marking our actions that have not been
productive and leading us to the Jesus way. Who, by
(06:58):
the way, speaking about way a long time ago, Minister,
attracted people in a very hostile environment. I mean, it
was religiously hostile. It was politically hostile. With the Roman oppression,
people flocked to Jesus in the masses. He attracted people
to him from all different backgrounds. And so this book
(07:22):
hopefully uncovers the Jesus plan, and I'm very excited about it.
S1 (07:27):
I am too, because as as folks are listening in today,
this this is right where I live. It's right where
I want, I want to be. I want to have
God's agenda on my heart and I want his attitude.
But so often I am wrapped up in the anger
and the struggle over some really important issues. You know,
you mentioned the abortion issue. I don't think it's called
(07:48):
a political issue. You need to stay away from that. Well,
that's a that's a life issue. I go back to
the 1850s and I think those who were against slavery.
Now you can't talk about that. You know, don't talk
about that in church. Well, no, that's the that's the
very thing that we need to talk about. But it's
not that whether we talk about it or not. The
question is how do we. And so we're going to
(08:11):
take the rest of the program and do how do
we then live. And I think Francis Schaeffer wrote about that,
this Light of mind by Doctor Joseph Stoll. The third
is our featured resource. How do you live like Jesus
in a non Jesus world? And what's going on in
your own life that you want to talk about? (877) 548-3675. More.
(08:33):
Straight ahead. Is this where you're living today? At the
intersection of all the things that are going on in
the world that make you angry and upset, and you
see they need to change. You see all of that,
(08:56):
and it's affecting your attitude toward the people who need
to hear the message of the forgiveness and the love
and the grace and the mercy of Jesus. You and I.
I don't want to alienate anybody from that message. And yet,
at the same time, I want to I want to
have a backbone, you know. I want to stand strong.
So if you think that what Doctor Stoll is saying
(09:17):
here today is. Yeah, you just need to you be
a wimpy wet noodle Christian and just let everybody walk
over you. You're not hearing him, right? And if you
read the book, you'll see what I'm saying. This light
of mine, living like Jesus in a non Jesus world
is our featured resource at Chris Fabriclive. Org. Chris Fabriclive.
(09:40):
All right, take me on the road because I love
a good story, a good road trip. You and Marty
took a trip out west to some national parks. Tell
me about that.
S2 (09:48):
Right. Exactly. So I said earlier that, you know, I'm
afraid that we've done a lot to alienate people from
Jesus instead of attracting. And when I retired from Christian
higher education. Martinez. Hey, let's go out and see the
national parks out west. And we're going like, how will
we do that? Let's get a camper, Chris. We'd never
camped a day in our lives like major high risk experience.
(10:10):
But anyway, so we've been camping for the last four
years and loving it. Most campgrounds have a nice shower
facility where you can wash the wilderness off, and I
remember one day walking down to the shower house, and
there's a guy in front of me with a towel
and oh, he's going to beat me there. And we
walked in. He stopped at the place to shave. I
got around him to get back there, and there were
(10:31):
two shower stalls, and there was another guy getting ready
to get into his shower stall. And we agree. Hello.
And he said, you know what he said back in
the day, I could bring my little girl in here
and give her a shower, but not any longer. There's
so many perverts and all the gender stuff. And I go, oh, wow,
you know. Then we stepped in. He stepped into his stall.
(10:52):
I stepped into mine. There was a wall between us,
but opening over the wall so I could still hear him. Chris,
he just went into this rant on our culture LGBTQ
how come they get a month and nobody else does?
And why is it now normal on, you know, abortion?
He went down the whole list just angry as all
(11:13):
get out. And then he went after a couple of
politicians that he didn't like and I was just showering like,
oh my goodness. And then he said this. He said,
I go to a great church. He said, my pastor
is all over this stuff. He doesn't have any tolerance
for it. And I'm going like, well, the guy's a Christian,
so I thought I'd lower the temperature a little bit.
(11:35):
Chris and I said to him, I said, yeah, I know,
but I've read the last chapter, I know who wins.
And he goes, yeah, but we gotta a fight. Well,
I stepped out of my little cubicle and guess who
was standing there waiting in line to get in? That
guy who was in front of me with the towel,
who just shaved, and he had heard the rant and
(11:56):
I felt so ashamed of the gospel. You know, I
could have said to him, hey, you want to be
a Christian? You can be just like us. Oh, that
would be a non-starter for the day, right? Because these
this angry attitude we have about all that's going on
in our world is, is an alienation point. Nobody wants
(12:17):
to be like people who are grumpy and mad and
sour on the issues. And so, you know that that
really woke me up to the fact of how alienating
some of this can be. And also, I will say,
the other alienating thing is our politicizing of the gospel.
And this is a very sensitive topic, obviously, but, uh,
(12:40):
a recent Barna survey says that most Americans look at
evangelicals through a political lens. And that's primarily because we
have politicized the gospel. We've as even an evangelical movement,
we've endorsed candidates. We've had pastors, political rallies affirming candidates.
(13:00):
And so if you're a progressive, you don't look at
us as messengers of the good news of Jesus. You
look at us as your political enemies. And nobody's going
to want to find their political enemy. They don't want
to hear what I have to say about Jesus. And so, unfortunately,
I think we've branded Jesus politically. And it's not I
(13:20):
need to just parenthetically say, Chris, it's not that we
don't involve ourselves in the political processes. I think whereas
Christians and good citizens, we ought to vote, we ought
to be on school boards. We ought to do everything
we can to make policies that hold our world more,
our country morally together. But it's when we publicly demonstrate
(13:41):
an affiliation with a particular candidate or party, then that
alienates it. 50% of the population in November voted for
the most progressive agenda that there has ever been on
an American ballot. So 50% of this population looks at
us as their political enemies, and that's a huge barrier.
(14:06):
And so I tried just to, you know, balanced way,
point out in the book that our attitudes and our
actions have not been helpful. And in turn, of course,
to what Jesus called us to do, which is the
important part of the book.
S1 (14:21):
Right? Well, and I just saw was it last week
it came out that the, the IRS has lifted the,
the idea that clergy, you know, churches you can't talk
about you can't endorse candidates from the pulpit and that
now has been lifted. And I've been thinking about doing
a program on that. And so I'm just going to
(14:42):
bring it up now. I don't want my pastor telling
me for whom to vote. I don't want my pastor
in the pulpit saying, this is, you know what, you
need to vote on this issue. ET cetera. ET cetera.
I don't think we keep politics out of the pulpit
because of the tax exempt status. I think it's because
(15:06):
we don't want the gospel compromised by, you know, you
have to trust the people in the pew. If you
preach the whole counsel of God, they're going to be
able to discern themselves how to go out and live
that and how to vote that, don't you think?
S2 (15:22):
Mhm. Yeah I do. And I think we ought to
tell our people to vote their moral conscience you know.
But uh I remember I was watching the World Series,
I don't watch much baseball but just this last fall
and I noticed something I never noticed before, Chris. So
I used to watch a Yankee uniform. Right? Had Yankees
right across the chest. Now, the Yankee uniform or whoever
(15:43):
was playing the World Series also had a corporate badge
on the shoulder, like they were touting somebody else's brand.
And I'm going like, wow, that really dilutes the Yankee statement.
And I think what we have done is branded Jesus
with our politics like, and he doesn't carry a patch
with a donkey. He doesn't carry a patch with an
(16:05):
elephant because quite frankly, Jesus is for everybody. And while
Perez is Christians, we need to take our moral stand.
I think we need to let the world know that
everybody needs him, and he is a non-exclusive Jesus, welcoming
everybody to him as well.
S1 (16:22):
Yeah. Yes. And but but there's somebody who's listening right
now who say, okay, so you're you're for tolerance. You're
for the, you know, a limp noodle Christian, where you
just let everything go. You can you can live as
Jesus because I looked and I looked at his life.
Recently he read the Gospels and there is a person
(16:44):
who is who does not back down from truth, and
yet he shows he has the perfect truth with love,
that he reaches out to people. So that's what you're
calling us to, right?
S2 (16:58):
Yeah. Well, in a moment of shameless self-promotion, I want
to say, if someone thinks that, read chapter three in
the book because I talked about how the early church
never fudged on what was true and what was right,
but their attitudes and their actions that Jesus led them
to actually won the day against the Roman Empire. So
(17:19):
I think we need to know a couple of things.
Number one, that there will always be an offense to
the cross. So if someone is offended by the work
of Jesus on the cross, we don't fudge on that.
And there are clear moral standards and we don't fudge
on that. But the point is that we we don't
like the policies, but we never hate the people. The
(17:41):
interesting thing about Jesus, like people were never the target.
They were always the goal. Luke 15. He's meeting with
tax collectors and sinners. I mean, these guys were the
lowest guys on the moral totem pole. The Jews hated
these people because they were tax collectors, compromised with the
(18:02):
Roman oppressors, and they were sinners. They ignored the law.
But Jesus said, I came to seek and to save
that which is lost. So I think it's this delicate
balance of knowing the difference between policy and people, like
desperately being against the policy, but always letting people know
the love of Jesus Christ. Uh, maybe. In fact, one
(18:25):
of the things in the kingdom of Christ is we're
to love our enemies. Right. And I love the story
about Dan Cathy of Chick fil A. He was he's
president of chick fil A. And some of you may
remember that the LGBTQ lobby did this big protest against
chick fil A because of his stand on same sex marriage.
(18:46):
And so they were protesting out in front of chick
fil A restaurants. And so he's got a couple options.
He can call his lawyer, he can file suit for
them to, you know, hurting his business. But what he
did was he told all the people in the restaurants
where these protests were to go out and take chicken
sandwiches to all the protesters, you know, to feed them
(19:08):
and to love them. See, it was the policy and
it was the people we love, the people we don't like,
the policy. And then he called up the head of
the gay lobby and he said, can I come and
talk to you? And the guy said, yeah. And the
guy probably thought he was going to get what for?
When Dan got there, Dan went in and sat down.
He said, I'd just like to get to know you.
You know, tell me about yourself. And I tell him that.
(19:31):
And to strike up a friendship and and through the
next few years. I mean, Kathy and this guy had
a meaningful relationship. I don't know if this guy ever
accepted Christ. Probably not. But I'll tell you who's a
lot closer to being attracted to Jesus. Because Kathy didn't
call the lawyers and tried to build a bridge to him. So.
(19:53):
So I think that's the balance about, you know, we're
desperately against the policies, but we are desperately for the
people who need Jesus Christ.
S1 (20:02):
You know, that same story happened, uh, and I one
of the persons who blurbed your book is Jim Daly,
a focus on the family. And I lived in Colorado
and saw a lot of the the conflagration of that
happened at focus with those who would protest, you know,
would come. And the very same thing happened. You know,
(20:23):
people would middle of the summer and they'd take him
water bottles, you know, cold water bottles out there for
the protest lines on whatever was going on and then
behind the scenes didn't make a big deal of it.
But Jim and others made friends with the people who were,
you know, antagonists there and took them out to lunch
and had conversations and actually listened to them, not to
(20:48):
take away the, you know, the bad publicity that you
get when you have protests out in front of your ministry.
But to really hear what they were having to say.
And I think that's what it takes for those of
us who have, who care about an issue and want
to reach people's hearts, we have to listen. Don't you think?
S2 (21:09):
Yeah, absolutely. People aren't the target. People are the goal.
We have to listen and understand. I like two friends
of mine, a congressman from here in the state of Michigan,
and he was one of the people I'm going to
do something about this culture, and I'm going to become
a congressman in his fifth term. And he is the
head of the bipartisan prayer meeting that they have on
Capitol Hill. And he told me the story about one
(21:32):
of the most leftist progressive, actually, Muslim congresswomen in Congress
came to one of their prayer meetings. And so they
prayed over her. They asked, what are your needs? Can
we pray for you? And then in their prayer time,
they prayed for her personally. He said when she left,
she came to me. She's got tears running down her
cheeks saying, thank you. I've never been cared for like this.
(21:56):
Now here's a total political enemy right from the exact
opposite side of the spectrum. My guess is she has
a much more open heart to Christians and to the
person of Jesus Christ, than if they would have just
kind of ignored her because she's one of the progressives, right?
There's tons of stories like this. There are stories like
(22:16):
this in our neighborhood. There's stories like this where we
work up past. A friend of mine refused to go
to a multi-faith prayer meeting in a town where he was,
and he was a big spiritual leader in the town
because Muslims and Hindus were there, you know, praying at
the prayer meeting. And the religion editor castigated him in
(22:38):
the in the newspaper, just ripped him to shreds. A
couple of months later, his son committed suicide. Guess who
was the first person by her side? This pastor, it's,
you know, so I think and that's what Jesus did.
Jesus loved his enemies. And in fact, look at the cross.
Where would you and I be if he hadn't loved
(22:58):
his enemies?
S1 (23:00):
Well, that right there is the. That right there is,
you know. How much do you need Jesus to forgive?
I think there's a certain sense that we feel entitled
in the church that we've been forgiven. And now, you know,
we're kind of going on our own steam. If we
don't get back to that truth that all of us
(23:20):
are equal at the foot of the cross, we all
need forgiveness. There's nobody better or worse in the sense
of in need of having their sins forgiven. Right?
S2 (23:30):
Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and I think, too, unfortunately,
over the last couple decades, I think most Christians, when
we've seen the terrible moral drift in our culture, have
felt like we are the losers and that we're despairing
and we've lost hope. And, uh, I remember talking to
(23:51):
a group in Florida a few years ago and saying,
I don't think we're going to get America back. And
I don't think we are going to get America back
when it comes to the moral standards. And some guy
in the front row, Chris, kind of stood halfway and said,
oh no, what are we going to do? You know,
but we're not the losers. You know, Jesus Christ came
to a he didn't. By the way. I kind of
(24:14):
like this Jesus. Everybody thought the Messiah was going to
be a political deliverer. Make Israel great again, right? Get
Rome out of here. Make Israel great again. But he
came to do a whole. He came to initiate a
whole new kingdom with a whole new set of values.
And it's our responsibility to move that forward. And I
think we get despairing because we're more passionate about saving
(24:38):
an earthly kingdom than we are about advancing his kingdom.
You know, read the last chapter, right. We win. If
you're worried about you can't figure revelation out. That's it.
He wins. That's what revelation means.
S1 (24:52):
His agenda was not to make it great. His agenda
was to make it holy. And the only way to
do that is for a Holy one to give himself.
And so what do we need to do? Doctor Joe
Stowe is with us today. He writes, we need an
attitude shift that presents an attractive alternative to a watching world,
(25:14):
and a clear strategy of biblically advised actions that puts
out the welcome mat of the gospel to all. And
we're going to talk about that in our next segment.
And I have a quote from Doctor John MacArthur. And
I know you know new doctor MacArthur. I want you
to hear this because I think it goes right along
with what we're talking about today. If you go to
(25:35):
Chris Fabry live and look at today's information, you'll see
the book, This Light of Mind Living like Jesus in
a non Jesus world. Just go to Chris Fabriclive. Org.
Chris Fabriclive more straight ahead.
S3 (26:05):
This is Chris Fabry live visiting with Doctor Joseph Stoll
the third.
S1 (26:09):
Today at the back fence. He's written a number of books.
Strength for the journey. The trouble with Jesus. Simply Jesus
redefining leadership. So a lot about Jesus and this last
book of his is the latest.
S3 (26:24):
Is this.
S1 (26:25):
Light of mine? There's not.
S3 (26:26):
This.
S1 (26:26):
Little light of mine. It's this light of mine. Living
like Jesus in a non Jesus world. And I find
this is the thing. This is the thing that I
have struggled to live with and live fully under pretty
much my whole Christian life. And the, you know, the
years that I, decades that I've lived it this it
(26:48):
comes back to this whether it's in a corporate setting, uh,
in the, in the cultural problems we're having in the
culture and all of that. And how wrapped up I get,
it always comes back to, do I really trust God
with this? Do who am I trusting in? And if
it's all up to me, then I want to control things,
(27:11):
and I want to win the election that I think
I need to win and win the issues and get
everything lined up. If it's all up to me, I
got to do that. Or if God really is sovereign
over this world, and he has placed us at to
live and work and pray and move and breathe in
(27:32):
his power, in his strength to do what he wants
us to do, even if sometimes we don't understand it.
And I find that as I go back to the yeah,
in the first century, that is exactly what Paul was
struggling with. Well, it's what Peter struggled with. He's the
one who lopped off the year there in the garden, right?
I mean, isn't that kind of what we're talking about?
S2 (27:55):
Yeah. No. And he's the one when Jesus said, I'm
going to the cross. Peter said, no, you're not. Not
on my not on my watch, remember? And Jesus said,
get thee behind me, Satan. Because Peter again was living
in an earthly kingdom, and he expected the Messiah to
make Israel great again. Sit on the throne of David.
And I was just thinking in the break, I think,
(28:15):
you know, it's interesting. What did Jesus call us to do?
He came to announce a new kingdom, and he calls
us to advance his kingdom. And I'm important that we're
good citizens in the earthly kingdom. But I think one
of the one of the signs that we're more absorbed
into the earthly kingdom than we are into the kingdom
of Christ is that, I think, in November when, quote unquote,
(28:39):
we won the election, people think we won. It's good.
Everything's going to be fine. And that's delusional. We have
not won the moral high ground. We are still LGBTQ
as a normal part of living. We're still same sex marriage.
That's not going to change. Abortion is more popular and
(28:59):
more supported today than ever. Gender preferences are alive and well.
We've lost the moral high ground. And I think what
we need to do is to to know that America
is important, but it's not. I'm a citizen of the
kingdom of Christ, and moving the kingdom forward is to
bring people to Jesus Christ, and then that solves the
(29:23):
moral issues for them personally as they walk and follow
Jesus Christ in such a whole different methodology. And so
I'm very thankful that we're getting the opportunity to talk
this because, um, Christ needs to be attractive to everybody.
S1 (29:39):
One of the other signs that I see is there
will be some pundit who will say something negative toward Christianity,
or some issue that I find really important, or there'll
be a friend that I have that I've grew up
with and have grown up with since I was a kid,
who will say something like, how in the world? How
(30:00):
in the world can you think that way? And I
get this nerve that is touched on the inside. And
I forget what you were talking about a little earlier.
The the that they are made in the image of
God as well. And though I am, you know, I
want to defend life and, you know, all of the
issues that I feel are really important. I need to
(30:22):
see them. I need to see them. First of all,
I just need to see them and know them. And
if I have the nerve touched, that can push me
toward prayer for them rather than us unfriending them or,
you know, saying something snippy back to them on social media.
S2 (30:42):
Right, exactly. You know, and I think making Jesus attractive
is making our lives attractive, making him live out through
our lives. I was saying in the book, we talk
about the profile of an attractive Christian that draws people
to Christ. Number one, we're hopeful. There's an interesting survey
that was done not too long ago. 90% of Americans
(31:05):
think Christians are not hopeful people. We are. We are
the people who have the hope. Peter talks about the
resurrection being our living hope. And by the way, hope
in the Bible is not like, oh, I hope it
doesn't rain on vacation, right? Hope is being grounded in
the certainties of future things that are going to happen.
(31:26):
And we know what the future is. We are the
hopeful people. We need to be confident. I think that's
an important part of the profile, the confident in what
we believe and confident in the truth and compassionate and loving.
And I've had to do a whole major chapter in
the book on loving, because I think that's a lot
(31:46):
of people think that's the soft touch. No, we don't
want to be loving. That's it. There was the power
of the early church, the love that they had for everybody,
for their neighbors. And and then we also need to
practice the good works. That's the light of mine. Right?
Where Matthew chapter five, where Jesus says, let your light
so shine, that people might not hear what you have
(32:08):
to say, but because nobody wants to hear what we
have to say anymore. But people will see your good works. Interesting.
Those good works are the works we do to bless
other people. That's the Greek word there. And so when
you think about the profile, how do we draw people
to Christ? We need we need to be have a
(32:28):
life that's attractive. They say, I wish I could be like,
how did you get to be like this? Let me
tell you about Jesus. You know, because we're becoming like him.
So part of the book is just building that case
for the Jesus way to build the gospel into the
world in an attractive way.
S1 (32:46):
Well, and that takes a certain amount of of, as
you say, confidence and self introspection of what am I
really trusting here? Am I okay when everything is going
my way? What happens when it doesn't go my way?
And and and how do you make attractive the whole
(33:07):
thing though of us? Pick up your cross and follow me.
That's not real attractive. That's a hard way to live
to to pick up your cross and follow Jesus.
S2 (33:19):
Yeah, but you're following Jesus in the way. And I
think probably the cross issue is that everybody wants to
do what they want to do. The cross issue is surrender.
The Garden of Gethsemane moment where I surrender to his will,
not my will, and then follow him to be found
in the way with him and his way of love
(33:40):
and compassion and grace and mercy and truth. I am
the way, the truth, and the life. Um, that the
I think the cross issue is, is the hardest thing
we do is to surrender to his ways because we
want to live our ways. And so that's kind of
the sense, the suffering. And there will be suffering from
(34:01):
the world too, at times, obviously. But it's that Gethsemane
moment in my life where, Lord, I surrender all. I
will follow you. And that means that we walk in
paths of love and grace and mercy and truth. And
I think that's the attractiveness of the gospel then.
S1 (34:18):
I think part of that as well is how Jesus
wept over Jerusalem, how he saw the fields white for harvest.
And he just had this desire for people to know,
to know the the father and to know his love.
And he's given us that message of reconciliation. And that
(34:41):
goes back to the anger thing. I wanted to ask
you this before the break because, uh, Doctor John MacArthur
passed away recently and he was asked by someone in
his life about in his personal life, they they noticed, um,
you don't get angry that often. Why? Why don't you
get angry? And he thought about it and said, I
(35:02):
don't have the direct quote, but he said something like,
my anger is directly proportional to my belief in the
sovereignty of God, or my disbelief. You know, if I
believe that God really is sovereign, then I'm not going
to be as wrapped up with fill in the blank
whatever happens. Do you agree with that?
S2 (35:24):
Yeah, totally agree with that. John was always good, right?
He always had the right answers. And it's true. If
we believe that God's managing my life and sovereignly, then
even when something bad comes or something that would trigger
a little bit of anger, you know, we need to
go vertical and get it into his perspective. And I
(35:44):
think John was theologically right. It's another interesting thing. I
remember John saying one time that our major mission is
not to save America. Our major mission is to save Americans.
And I thought that was pretty profound.
S1 (35:59):
Well, and you're saying let God work in you. Let
him save you. Receive his, uh, his grace and his
mercy for your sins, so that then you can move
into the world as a saved sinner that reaches out
to other people who are estranged from God. We're talking
(36:22):
with Doctor Joseph Stoll today. This light of mine is
our featured resource. Highly recommended at Chris Fabry Live. Our
remaining moments with Doctor Joe Stoll, the author of this
(36:45):
Light of Mind Living Like Jesus in a non Jesus world.
This is right where you and I are living every day.
He could have called it this salt of mine because
Jesus in Matthew five said, you are the salt of
the earth. The salt should lose its taste. How can
it be made salty? It's no longer good for anything
but to be thrown out and trampled on by men.
(37:05):
But but then he says, verse 14, you are the
light of the world. A city situated on a hill
cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and puts
it under a basket, but rather on a lamp stand
and gives it light for all who are in the house.
In the same way, let your light shine before men,
(37:26):
so that they may see your political leanings and know
they may see your good works and give glory to
your father in heaven. That's where this title comes from, right?
S2 (37:38):
And absolutely. And I think we just need to kind
of unwrap this Matthew statement of Jesus where he says,
let your light so shine. So what is your light?
He says that your good works. And I think a
lot of times we think it ought to be a
good message that's preach a good message and people will
come or let's talk about theology or whatever, but it's not.
(38:00):
He said, the power of light in a dark world.
And we live in a dark world, right? Is our
good works. And I mentioned a little earlier that the
Greek word there is not good works, like for being righteous,
keeping the rules of Christ. That would be the Greek
word agathos. So that doesn't really attract people necessarily. Like
(38:23):
if I say to my next door neighbor, hey, you
ought to accept Christ, then you could tithe. That's that's
going nowhere, right? You know, you ought to accept Christ
because then you don't have to sleep around. Well, they
want to sleep around and you got to accept Christ.
You go to church on Sunday instead of going fishing.
So that's the agathos kind of keeping the rules. The
(38:44):
good works that he's talking about here are doing deeds
that bless other people. Like, for instance, the contrast is
Agathos does what's right. Kalos forgives those who don't do
what's right. Agathos goes to church. Kalos takes the church
into my neighborhood. Agathos ties. Kalos gives above and beyond
(39:05):
the tithes to the poor and to the needy. Agatha
does not do what others do at the office. Carlos
keeps a keen eye out the office for opportunities to
express the love of Jesus to colleagues at the office.
So it's it's the the works that we do to
bless other people's lives in our neighborhood, in our office
(39:25):
that begins to draw people in toward us, is what
Christ is saying. This is what begins to light up
the darkness. And it's interesting. The early church, you know,
wrestled against the terrible persecution that the emperors put on them.
And for three centuries they stayed faithful to what was
true and faithful to the light of their good works.
If you read the secular people who say, how could
(39:47):
a peasant church finally overthrow the Roman Empire without dented
shield or bloodied sword? They all agree it was the
behavior of good works and good deeds in the community. Uh,
for instance, there's a lot of stories about it. But
for instance, in the abortion law in the first, second
and third centuries was death by exposure. If you didn't
(40:09):
want your baby, you took them out and put them
onto the garbage heap at the edge of town. They
could just die in the hot sun. Christians would go
out and harvest those babies off of the dungheap and
bring them into their family, and rear their family and
in their family. The black plagues of the first century
and the second century. People left their towns to the
(40:30):
mountains to get up into clean air. Christians stayed in
the villages to nurse their relatives back to health. Some
of them died because they did that. Um, they used
to take they used to early church, used to fast
for two weeks or for a period of time, not
for two weeks, to collect money that they would have
(40:50):
spent on groceries to give to the poor. And there
was no welfare in those days. And so consistently they
practice this. It was what they did to bless others
that really began to open the door to the gospel.
And so that's what the Matthew five. It's kind of
like this, Chris, I think, you know, people in your
(41:11):
workplace say, I don't get Christians, but this is a
better workplace because they're here. Or people in your neighborhood say,
you know, I really don't get these Christians, but I'll
tell you this, this our neighborhoods are far better place
because they live here. That's the power of Kalos that
begins to open people's hearts to the gospel. And so
(41:32):
that's and maybe some of our listeners don't like that approach,
but that happens to be Christ's approach. So I'm pretty
good with it personally. And Peter picks it up to
a persecuted church in first Peter two, where he says,
keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, not angry, but honorable,
so that when they speak against you as evildoers and
(41:53):
you know, we're the bad people, right? People speak against
us as being the bad people and culture. They may
see your good deeds And glorify God on the day
of visitation. Where did he get that idea? He got
it from Matthew five from Jesus Christ.
S1 (42:10):
Well, where did he get the whole thing of? If
anyone asks you to give a reason for the hope
that you have, always be ready. You know, and and
how do you do that? You do it with gentleness
and respect. You don't go out and bang them over
the head with how big a sinner that they are,
although that's part of it. You know that you have
(42:30):
to communicate that. Of how big a sinners we are. Um,
but you, you are gentle and you're respectful to. All right?
S2 (42:39):
Yeah, absolutely. Keeping our behavior honorable so that people really
don't have anything really bad to say about us in
terms of our attitudes and our actions. And, uh, and
I think, you know what? I remember back in kindergarten. Right.
That's a long time ago right now. But, you know,
my favorite part was show and tell, right? Like I
(43:02):
get to bring some, show it to everybody. Then I
tell them that. And I think now trying to move
into a secular, hostile culture, it's show and tell. I
have to show people Jesus through my lives, through my life,
which gives me the opportunity then to tell them about Jesus.
S1 (43:19):
Yes. You know, as we come to to the end
of the program here, Joe, I the thing that I
have seen over the last few months and probably year
that I've been looking at is the word fear. And
how much, uh, the fear of God, fear of the
Lord is in the scriptures. But then other places where
(43:41):
it talks about the fear of man and how we
need to order our fears. If I am so wrapped
up with what is going on in the culture, and
I'm so afraid of what's going to happen if this
bill doesn't get through, or if this bill does get through, or,
you know, if this person gets in or that person
and look at the New York mayor and what happens there.
(44:02):
If I'm so wrapped up with the fear of what
might be with the dominoes falling that I forget, my
main fear is if I order it and reverence God
above others, all the other fears are going to line up.
Do you agree with that?
S2 (44:19):
No, totally. That's profound actually, Chris. So true that the
fear of the Lord is the key to really good living.
And the psalmist talks about in Proverbs all the time,
you know. And that's what pleases the Lord. Interesting is
Psalm 147 says, the Lord is pleased with those who
fear him. And with those who place their hope in
(44:40):
his steadfast love. And I call it living vertically. If
you live horizontally, then you judge God by everything bad
that's going on. You live vertically like everything is seen
in terms of God, his sovereignty, his oversight, his victory,
his management, his presence in our lives. Then suddenly everything
(45:00):
on the horizontal, all the political stuff, all the cultural stuff,
begins to fall into place. Not that we're not concerned,
but we're not consumed. There's a big difference there.
S4 (45:11):
Oh. That's good.
S1 (45:13):
Not consumed. We're. But. But concerned, but not consumed. I
like that. That's the echoes of what Paul talked about.
We were beaten down, but not destroyed. Right? Okay. So
we're going to stop it right there. But here's what
I want to say about this light of mine. This
is a book that's calling us to deeper trust, deeper surrender,
(45:34):
deeper submission and less control that we can exert the
over our circumstances here with the with that's going to
make us feel better. We think it does, but it
really doesn't. In the end, we are filled with more
hope as we increase our trust in him and that
(45:55):
he is involved and he is sovereign over all of this.
So Joe, thanks for being with us today. Thanks for
writing this. You have a great rest of the summer
and come back real soon, okay?
S5 (46:07):
Yeah. Thanks, Chris. God's best to you. Love you bro.
S1 (46:10):
This light of mine living like Jesus in a non
Jesus world. It's a it's a deep. It's a challenging
one too. Because I want the formula. I want the list.
Tell me what to do. I do this this this,
this and then I'm good. No, this is, this is
a heart issue for you and for me. You'll find
it at our website. Chris, click through today's information Chris Fabry.
(46:37):
He's in the studio. We recorded this a couple of
weeks ago with Ben Fuller. You got to hear his
music and his heart. Tomorrow on Chris Fabry Live. A
production of Moody Radio, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
We live in a polarized, politicized, divided, angry world. So
many are so frustrated and it comes out in conversations.
You see it on social media. You see it TV, radio.
Many of the cultures see the church as part of
the problem. We are just another angry subgroup of people
who have our agenda, who want to exercise our rights
(00:28):
and get our way, and whether that's true or not
is not really the point. If we are perceived that way,
we need to take a hard look at it. So
that's what we're going to do today with a guest
who says the challenge we have before us as followers
of Jesus is to respond to all the troubling things
that are going on in the culture, the things that
(00:50):
give you tension, that may give you heartburn, keep you
awake at night, things that aren't right, things that need
to change And to see those in a way that
does not alienate the very people who need to hear
the good news about God's redemptive work. He says we
often communicate a sense of hopelessness and despair mixed in
(01:14):
with a lot of fear and anxiety. So how do
we pivot from being consumed in a battle for an
earthly kingdom to embracing the privilege we have of advancing
the kingdom of Christ? That's what we're going to talk
about today with Doctor Joseph Stoll, the third. He is
standing by in this edition of Chris Fabry Live. Welcome
to the radio Backyard. It's great to have you with
us today. Great to have the team assembled. Ryan McConaughey
(01:37):
doing all things technical. Trish is our producer. Ryan will
be answering your calls today. We have one week left
next Thursday. If my calendar is right is July 31st.
And I've been telling you about Pastor Colin Smith's excellent book,
Drive Through the Bible. It is a game changer because
it gives you kind of a landscape, a big picture
(01:58):
of Scripture, you'll discover how every part of the Bible
in 30 days or less, how every part of the Bible,
the Old Testament, the New Testament, the poetry, the prophecy,
the wisdom literature it all points to Jesus. So call
or click through today. We need your help here at
the end of July. Request a copy of this 30
(02:18):
day journey. Drive through the Bible. Call 8669538669532279. Give a
gift of any size. We'd love to send it to you.
Or you can do that. You can sign up. Give
a gift. Scroll down. You'll see how to support this
program right there with a one time gift or become
(02:41):
a back fence partner with us today I sent my
back fence partner. If you're if you give a gift
each month, you look at that video that I sent
you because you get to see the very end of
the program tomorrow with Ben Fuller, uh, singer songwriter. It's excellent. Uh,
so if you're a back fence partner with us, you
(03:01):
get that extra content and would love to send that
to you. All the the information is at Chris Fabry live.
And the last name is fab. Chris. Doctor Joseph stole
the third. Served as seventh president of Moody Bible Institute.
He was also president of Cornerstone University. Served as a
(03:23):
pastor for many years before and after that. He's now
a special advisor and ambassador to Moody Bible Institute's president,
doctor Mark Jobe. So it all kind of comes back around,
doesn't it? He's written a number of books, and his
latest we're going to talk about today. I'm really excited
about this light of mine living like Jesus in a
non Jesus world. Because this is exactly this is the
(03:47):
intersection of right where you and I are living every day.
Doctor Stoll, welcome back. How are you doing today?
S2 (03:53):
It's great. Chris, so good to hear your voice. Think
about us. What? Don't. Don't count the years, right. We
worked together back in Moody radio days when I was
on campus. And now to be with you again. Like
old home week, right?
S1 (04:08):
Yes it is. And you haven't gotten a day older.
How do you do that?
S2 (04:12):
Oh, well, the use by dates are beginning to expire.
I can feel that for sure. But it is great
to be back in Moody World again. And what a
treat to be on this program with you.
S1 (04:25):
Well, I want to talk about what you've written here
because I think this is, you know, it's a very
contemporary problem. But as you mentioned, back in the 80s,
we worked together, and in the 1980s it was a
really difficult time politically, culturally, there were a lot of
shifts that were going on. And then you go before
that and you think of all that was going on
(04:46):
in the 30s and 40s in the country, and then
you go even further back than that, and you look
at what Peter and Paul and Timothy in the early church.
This is the same kind of question that they were
dealing with that we are dealing with today. So back
the truck up. Take a run at this. Why did
you write this light of mine.
S2 (05:05):
You know, the reason is because we live in a
season of unbelievably great opportunity to attract people to Christ.
And that's what we're called to, right? Go into the
world and make disciples. And it's such a needy world.
It's so broken. As you mentioned a couple minutes ago,
all the chaos, the divisiveness, racially, politically, the skyrocketing suicide rates,
(05:29):
a youth culture that's burdened with anxiety. I mean, the
list is long. The despair, the anger that people feel,
the loneliness, the confusion. And guess what? Jesus has the answer.
I want to stand up in this world and shout.
Jesus said, come unto me, all ye that labor and
are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take
my yoke upon you, and you shall find peace unto
(05:52):
your souls. And we have that privilege of bringing, bringing Jesus.
And so the book is really about how do we
attract people to Jesus Christ, especially given, I think, Chris,
my fear that we as evangelicals have probably done more
to alienate people from Jesus than to attract people to Jesus.
(06:13):
And our attitudes and actions. So actually, the book is
about how to live to attract your neighbors and co-workers
to Jesus. Jesus has a plan. The book uncovers the plan.
Like how do you attract your neighbor who's front yard
is full of signs that are pumping the progressive agenda?
Or how do you attract people to Jesus when all
(06:36):
your colleagues at the office think because of your stance
on moral issues, that you're related to Attila the Hun,
you know you're bigoted and hateful and for your stance
on gay issues and abortion, etc., etc.. So that's what
the book is all about, Out, you know, kind of
marking our attitudes, marking our actions that have not been
productive and leading us to the Jesus way. Who, by
(06:58):
the way, speaking about way a long time ago, Minister,
attracted people in a very hostile environment. I mean, it
was religiously hostile. It was politically hostile. With the Roman oppression,
people flocked to Jesus in the masses. He attracted people
to him from all different backgrounds. And so this book
(07:22):
hopefully uncovers the Jesus plan, and I'm very excited about it.
S1 (07:27):
I am too, because as as folks are listening in today,
this this is right where I live. It's right where
I want, I want to be. I want to have
God's agenda on my heart and I want his attitude.
But so often I am wrapped up in the anger
and the struggle over some really important issues. You know,
you mentioned the abortion issue. I don't think it's called
(07:48):
a political issue. You need to stay away from that. Well,
that's a that's a life issue. I go back to
the 1850s and I think those who were against slavery.
Now you can't talk about that. You know, don't talk
about that in church. Well, no, that's the that's the
very thing that we need to talk about. But it's
not that whether we talk about it or not. The
question is how do we. And so we're going to
(08:11):
take the rest of the program and do how do
we then live. And I think Francis Schaeffer wrote about that,
this Light of mind by Doctor Joseph Stoll. The third
is our featured resource. How do you live like Jesus
in a non Jesus world? And what's going on in
your own life that you want to talk about? (877) 548-3675. More.
(08:33):
Straight ahead. Is this where you're living today? At the
intersection of all the things that are going on in
the world that make you angry and upset, and you
see they need to change. You see all of that,
(08:56):
and it's affecting your attitude toward the people who need
to hear the message of the forgiveness and the love
and the grace and the mercy of Jesus. You and I.
I don't want to alienate anybody from that message. And yet,
at the same time, I want to I want to
have a backbone, you know. I want to stand strong.
So if you think that what Doctor Stoll is saying
(09:17):
here today is. Yeah, you just need to you be
a wimpy wet noodle Christian and just let everybody walk
over you. You're not hearing him, right? And if you
read the book, you'll see what I'm saying. This light
of mine, living like Jesus in a non Jesus world
is our featured resource at Chris Fabriclive. Org. Chris Fabriclive.
(09:40):
All right, take me on the road because I love
a good story, a good road trip. You and Marty
took a trip out west to some national parks. Tell
me about that.
S2 (09:48):
Right. Exactly. So I said earlier that, you know, I'm
afraid that we've done a lot to alienate people from
Jesus instead of attracting. And when I retired from Christian
higher education. Martinez. Hey, let's go out and see the
national parks out west. And we're going like, how will
we do that? Let's get a camper, Chris. We'd never
camped a day in our lives like major high risk experience.
(10:10):
But anyway, so we've been camping for the last four
years and loving it. Most campgrounds have a nice shower
facility where you can wash the wilderness off, and I
remember one day walking down to the shower house, and
there's a guy in front of me with a towel
and oh, he's going to beat me there. And we
walked in. He stopped at the place to shave. I
got around him to get back there, and there were
(10:31):
two shower stalls, and there was another guy getting ready
to get into his shower stall. And we agree. Hello.
And he said, you know what he said back in
the day, I could bring my little girl in here
and give her a shower, but not any longer. There's
so many perverts and all the gender stuff. And I go, oh, wow,
you know. Then we stepped in. He stepped into his stall.
(10:52):
I stepped into mine. There was a wall between us,
but opening over the wall so I could still hear him. Chris,
he just went into this rant on our culture LGBTQ
how come they get a month and nobody else does?
And why is it now normal on, you know, abortion?
He went down the whole list just angry as all
(11:13):
get out. And then he went after a couple of
politicians that he didn't like and I was just showering like,
oh my goodness. And then he said this. He said,
I go to a great church. He said, my pastor
is all over this stuff. He doesn't have any tolerance
for it. And I'm going like, well, the guy's a Christian,
so I thought I'd lower the temperature a little bit.
(11:35):
Chris and I said to him, I said, yeah, I know,
but I've read the last chapter, I know who wins.
And he goes, yeah, but we gotta a fight. Well,
I stepped out of my little cubicle and guess who
was standing there waiting in line to get in? That
guy who was in front of me with the towel,
who just shaved, and he had heard the rant and
(11:56):
I felt so ashamed of the gospel. You know, I
could have said to him, hey, you want to be
a Christian? You can be just like us. Oh, that
would be a non-starter for the day, right? Because these
this angry attitude we have about all that's going on
in our world is, is an alienation point. Nobody wants
(12:17):
to be like people who are grumpy and mad and
sour on the issues. And so, you know that that
really woke me up to the fact of how alienating
some of this can be. And also, I will say,
the other alienating thing is our politicizing of the gospel.
And this is a very sensitive topic, obviously, but, uh,
(12:40):
a recent Barna survey says that most Americans look at
evangelicals through a political lens. And that's primarily because we
have politicized the gospel. We've as even an evangelical movement,
we've endorsed candidates. We've had pastors, political rallies affirming candidates.
(13:00):
And so if you're a progressive, you don't look at
us as messengers of the good news of Jesus. You
look at us as your political enemies. And nobody's going
to want to find their political enemy. They don't want
to hear what I have to say about Jesus. And so, unfortunately,
I think we've branded Jesus politically. And it's not I
(13:20):
need to just parenthetically say, Chris, it's not that we
don't involve ourselves in the political processes. I think whereas
Christians and good citizens, we ought to vote, we ought
to be on school boards. We ought to do everything
we can to make policies that hold our world more,
our country morally together. But it's when we publicly demonstrate
(13:41):
an affiliation with a particular candidate or party, then that
alienates it. 50% of the population in November voted for
the most progressive agenda that there has ever been on
an American ballot. So 50% of this population looks at
us as their political enemies, and that's a huge barrier.
(14:06):
And so I tried just to, you know, balanced way,
point out in the book that our attitudes and our
actions have not been helpful. And in turn, of course,
to what Jesus called us to do, which is the
important part of the book.
S1 (14:21):
Right? Well, and I just saw was it last week
it came out that the, the IRS has lifted the,
the idea that clergy, you know, churches you can't talk
about you can't endorse candidates from the pulpit and that
now has been lifted. And I've been thinking about doing
a program on that. And so I'm just going to
(14:42):
bring it up now. I don't want my pastor telling
me for whom to vote. I don't want my pastor
in the pulpit saying, this is, you know what, you
need to vote on this issue. ET cetera. ET cetera.
I don't think we keep politics out of the pulpit
because of the tax exempt status. I think it's because
(15:06):
we don't want the gospel compromised by, you know, you
have to trust the people in the pew. If you
preach the whole counsel of God, they're going to be
able to discern themselves how to go out and live
that and how to vote that, don't you think?
S2 (15:22):
Mhm. Yeah I do. And I think we ought to
tell our people to vote their moral conscience you know.
But uh I remember I was watching the World Series,
I don't watch much baseball but just this last fall
and I noticed something I never noticed before, Chris. So
I used to watch a Yankee uniform. Right? Had Yankees
right across the chest. Now, the Yankee uniform or whoever
(15:43):
was playing the World Series also had a corporate badge
on the shoulder, like they were touting somebody else's brand.
And I'm going like, wow, that really dilutes the Yankee statement.
And I think what we have done is branded Jesus
with our politics like, and he doesn't carry a patch
with a donkey. He doesn't carry a patch with an
(16:05):
elephant because quite frankly, Jesus is for everybody. And while
Perez is Christians, we need to take our moral stand.
I think we need to let the world know that
everybody needs him, and he is a non-exclusive Jesus, welcoming
everybody to him as well.
S1 (16:22):
Yeah. Yes. And but but there's somebody who's listening right
now who say, okay, so you're you're for tolerance. You're
for the, you know, a limp noodle Christian, where you
just let everything go. You can you can live as
Jesus because I looked and I looked at his life.
Recently he read the Gospels and there is a person
(16:44):
who is who does not back down from truth, and
yet he shows he has the perfect truth with love,
that he reaches out to people. So that's what you're
calling us to, right?
S2 (16:58):
Yeah. Well, in a moment of shameless self-promotion, I want
to say, if someone thinks that, read chapter three in
the book because I talked about how the early church
never fudged on what was true and what was right,
but their attitudes and their actions that Jesus led them
to actually won the day against the Roman Empire. So
(17:19):
I think we need to know a couple of things.
Number one, that there will always be an offense to
the cross. So if someone is offended by the work
of Jesus on the cross, we don't fudge on that.
And there are clear moral standards and we don't fudge
on that. But the point is that we we don't
like the policies, but we never hate the people. The
(17:41):
interesting thing about Jesus, like people were never the target.
They were always the goal. Luke 15. He's meeting with
tax collectors and sinners. I mean, these guys were the
lowest guys on the moral totem pole. The Jews hated
these people because they were tax collectors, compromised with the
(18:02):
Roman oppressors, and they were sinners. They ignored the law.
But Jesus said, I came to seek and to save
that which is lost. So I think it's this delicate
balance of knowing the difference between policy and people, like
desperately being against the policy, but always letting people know
the love of Jesus Christ. Uh, maybe. In fact, one
(18:25):
of the things in the kingdom of Christ is we're
to love our enemies. Right. And I love the story
about Dan Cathy of Chick fil A. He was he's
president of chick fil A. And some of you may
remember that the LGBTQ lobby did this big protest against
chick fil A because of his stand on same sex marriage.
(18:46):
And so they were protesting out in front of chick
fil A restaurants. And so he's got a couple options.
He can call his lawyer, he can file suit for
them to, you know, hurting his business. But what he
did was he told all the people in the restaurants
where these protests were to go out and take chicken
sandwiches to all the protesters, you know, to feed them
(19:08):
and to love them. See, it was the policy and
it was the people we love, the people we don't like,
the policy. And then he called up the head of
the gay lobby and he said, can I come and
talk to you? And the guy said, yeah. And the
guy probably thought he was going to get what for?
When Dan got there, Dan went in and sat down.
He said, I'd just like to get to know you.
You know, tell me about yourself. And I tell him that.
(19:31):
And to strike up a friendship and and through the
next few years. I mean, Kathy and this guy had
a meaningful relationship. I don't know if this guy ever
accepted Christ. Probably not. But I'll tell you who's a
lot closer to being attracted to Jesus. Because Kathy didn't
call the lawyers and tried to build a bridge to him. So.
(19:53):
So I think that's the balance about, you know, we're
desperately against the policies, but we are desperately for the
people who need Jesus Christ.
S1 (20:02):
You know, that same story happened, uh, and I one
of the persons who blurbed your book is Jim Daly,
a focus on the family. And I lived in Colorado
and saw a lot of the the conflagration of that
happened at focus with those who would protest, you know,
would come. And the very same thing happened. You know,
(20:23):
people would middle of the summer and they'd take him
water bottles, you know, cold water bottles out there for
the protest lines on whatever was going on and then
behind the scenes didn't make a big deal of it.
But Jim and others made friends with the people who were,
you know, antagonists there and took them out to lunch
and had conversations and actually listened to them, not to
(20:48):
take away the, you know, the bad publicity that you
get when you have protests out in front of your ministry.
But to really hear what they were having to say.
And I think that's what it takes for those of
us who have, who care about an issue and want
to reach people's hearts, we have to listen. Don't you think?
S2 (21:09):
Yeah, absolutely. People aren't the target. People are the goal.
We have to listen and understand. I like two friends
of mine, a congressman from here in the state of Michigan,
and he was one of the people I'm going to
do something about this culture, and I'm going to become
a congressman in his fifth term. And he is the
head of the bipartisan prayer meeting that they have on
Capitol Hill. And he told me the story about one
(21:32):
of the most leftist progressive, actually, Muslim congresswomen in Congress
came to one of their prayer meetings. And so they
prayed over her. They asked, what are your needs? Can
we pray for you? And then in their prayer time,
they prayed for her personally. He said when she left,
she came to me. She's got tears running down her
cheeks saying, thank you. I've never been cared for like this.
(21:56):
Now here's a total political enemy right from the exact
opposite side of the spectrum. My guess is she has
a much more open heart to Christians and to the
person of Jesus Christ, than if they would have just
kind of ignored her because she's one of the progressives, right?
There's tons of stories like this. There are stories like
(22:16):
this in our neighborhood. There's stories like this where we
work up past. A friend of mine refused to go
to a multi-faith prayer meeting in a town where he was,
and he was a big spiritual leader in the town
because Muslims and Hindus were there, you know, praying at
the prayer meeting. And the religion editor castigated him in
(22:38):
the in the newspaper, just ripped him to shreds. A
couple of months later, his son committed suicide. Guess who
was the first person by her side? This pastor, it's,
you know, so I think and that's what Jesus did.
Jesus loved his enemies. And in fact, look at the cross.
Where would you and I be if he hadn't loved
(22:58):
his enemies?
S1 (23:00):
Well, that right there is the. That right there is,
you know. How much do you need Jesus to forgive?
I think there's a certain sense that we feel entitled
in the church that we've been forgiven. And now, you know,
we're kind of going on our own steam. If we
don't get back to that truth that all of us
(23:20):
are equal at the foot of the cross, we all
need forgiveness. There's nobody better or worse in the sense
of in need of having their sins forgiven. Right?
S2 (23:30):
Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and I think, too, unfortunately,
over the last couple decades, I think most Christians, when
we've seen the terrible moral drift in our culture, have
felt like we are the losers and that we're despairing
and we've lost hope. And, uh, I remember talking to
(23:51):
a group in Florida a few years ago and saying,
I don't think we're going to get America back. And
I don't think we are going to get America back
when it comes to the moral standards. And some guy
in the front row, Chris, kind of stood halfway and said,
oh no, what are we going to do? You know,
but we're not the losers. You know, Jesus Christ came
to a he didn't. By the way. I kind of
(24:14):
like this Jesus. Everybody thought the Messiah was going to
be a political deliverer. Make Israel great again, right? Get
Rome out of here. Make Israel great again. But he
came to do a whole. He came to initiate a
whole new kingdom with a whole new set of values.
And it's our responsibility to move that forward. And I
think we get despairing because we're more passionate about saving
(24:38):
an earthly kingdom than we are about advancing his kingdom.
You know, read the last chapter, right. We win. If
you're worried about you can't figure revelation out. That's it.
He wins. That's what revelation means.
S1 (24:52):
His agenda was not to make it great. His agenda
was to make it holy. And the only way to
do that is for a Holy one to give himself.
And so what do we need to do? Doctor Joe
Stowe is with us today. He writes, we need an
attitude shift that presents an attractive alternative to a watching world,
(25:14):
and a clear strategy of biblically advised actions that puts
out the welcome mat of the gospel to all. And
we're going to talk about that in our next segment.
And I have a quote from Doctor John MacArthur. And
I know you know new doctor MacArthur. I want you
to hear this because I think it goes right along
with what we're talking about today. If you go to
(25:35):
Chris Fabry live and look at today's information, you'll see
the book, This Light of Mind Living like Jesus in
a non Jesus world. Just go to Chris Fabriclive. Org.
Chris Fabriclive more straight ahead.
S3 (26:05):
This is Chris Fabry live visiting with Doctor Joseph Stoll
the third.
S1 (26:09):
Today at the back fence. He's written a number of books.
Strength for the journey. The trouble with Jesus. Simply Jesus
redefining leadership. So a lot about Jesus and this last
book of his is the latest.
S3 (26:24):
Is this.
S1 (26:25):
Light of mine? There's not.
S3 (26:26):
This.
S1 (26:26):
Little light of mine. It's this light of mine. Living
like Jesus in a non Jesus world. And I find
this is the thing. This is the thing that I
have struggled to live with and live fully under pretty
much my whole Christian life. And the, you know, the
years that I, decades that I've lived it this it
(26:48):
comes back to this whether it's in a corporate setting, uh,
in the, in the cultural problems we're having in the
culture and all of that. And how wrapped up I get,
it always comes back to, do I really trust God
with this? Do who am I trusting in? And if
it's all up to me, then I want to control things,
(27:11):
and I want to win the election that I think
I need to win and win the issues and get
everything lined up. If it's all up to me, I
got to do that. Or if God really is sovereign
over this world, and he has placed us at to
live and work and pray and move and breathe in
(27:32):
his power, in his strength to do what he wants
us to do, even if sometimes we don't understand it.
And I find that as I go back to the yeah,
in the first century, that is exactly what Paul was
struggling with. Well, it's what Peter struggled with. He's the
one who lopped off the year there in the garden, right?
I mean, isn't that kind of what we're talking about?
S2 (27:55):
Yeah. No. And he's the one when Jesus said, I'm
going to the cross. Peter said, no, you're not. Not
on my not on my watch, remember? And Jesus said,
get thee behind me, Satan. Because Peter again was living
in an earthly kingdom, and he expected the Messiah to
make Israel great again. Sit on the throne of David.
And I was just thinking in the break, I think,
(28:15):
you know, it's interesting. What did Jesus call us to do?
He came to announce a new kingdom, and he calls
us to advance his kingdom. And I'm important that we're
good citizens in the earthly kingdom. But I think one
of the one of the signs that we're more absorbed
into the earthly kingdom than we are into the kingdom
of Christ is that, I think, in November when, quote unquote,
(28:39):
we won the election, people think we won. It's good.
Everything's going to be fine. And that's delusional. We have
not won the moral high ground. We are still LGBTQ
as a normal part of living. We're still same sex marriage.
That's not going to change. Abortion is more popular and
(28:59):
more supported today than ever. Gender preferences are alive and well.
We've lost the moral high ground. And I think what
we need to do is to to know that America
is important, but it's not. I'm a citizen of the
kingdom of Christ, and moving the kingdom forward is to
bring people to Jesus Christ, and then that solves the
(29:23):
moral issues for them personally as they walk and follow
Jesus Christ in such a whole different methodology. And so
I'm very thankful that we're getting the opportunity to talk
this because, um, Christ needs to be attractive to everybody.
S1 (29:39):
One of the other signs that I see is there
will be some pundit who will say something negative toward Christianity,
or some issue that I find really important, or there'll
be a friend that I have that I've grew up
with and have grown up with since I was a kid,
who will say something like, how in the world? How
(30:00):
in the world can you think that way? And I
get this nerve that is touched on the inside. And
I forget what you were talking about a little earlier.
The the that they are made in the image of
God as well. And though I am, you know, I
want to defend life and, you know, all of the
issues that I feel are really important. I need to
(30:22):
see them. I need to see them. First of all,
I just need to see them and know them. And
if I have the nerve touched, that can push me
toward prayer for them rather than us unfriending them or,
you know, saying something snippy back to them on social media.
S2 (30:42):
Right, exactly. You know, and I think making Jesus attractive
is making our lives attractive, making him live out through
our lives. I was saying in the book, we talk
about the profile of an attractive Christian that draws people
to Christ. Number one, we're hopeful. There's an interesting survey
that was done not too long ago. 90% of Americans
(31:05):
think Christians are not hopeful people. We are. We are
the people who have the hope. Peter talks about the
resurrection being our living hope. And by the way, hope
in the Bible is not like, oh, I hope it
doesn't rain on vacation, right? Hope is being grounded in
the certainties of future things that are going to happen.
(31:26):
And we know what the future is. We are the
hopeful people. We need to be confident. I think that's
an important part of the profile, the confident in what
we believe and confident in the truth and compassionate and loving.
And I've had to do a whole major chapter in
the book on loving, because I think that's a lot
(31:46):
of people think that's the soft touch. No, we don't
want to be loving. That's it. There was the power
of the early church, the love that they had for everybody,
for their neighbors. And and then we also need to
practice the good works. That's the light of mine. Right?
Where Matthew chapter five, where Jesus says, let your light
so shine, that people might not hear what you have
(32:08):
to say, but because nobody wants to hear what we
have to say anymore. But people will see your good works. Interesting.
Those good works are the works we do to bless
other people. That's the Greek word there. And so when
you think about the profile, how do we draw people
to Christ? We need we need to be have a
(32:28):
life that's attractive. They say, I wish I could be like,
how did you get to be like this? Let me
tell you about Jesus. You know, because we're becoming like him.
So part of the book is just building that case
for the Jesus way to build the gospel into the
world in an attractive way.
S1 (32:46):
Well, and that takes a certain amount of of, as
you say, confidence and self introspection of what am I
really trusting here? Am I okay when everything is going
my way? What happens when it doesn't go my way?
And and and how do you make attractive the whole
(33:07):
thing though of us? Pick up your cross and follow me.
That's not real attractive. That's a hard way to live
to to pick up your cross and follow Jesus.
S2 (33:19):
Yeah, but you're following Jesus in the way. And I
think probably the cross issue is that everybody wants to
do what they want to do. The cross issue is surrender.
The Garden of Gethsemane moment where I surrender to his will,
not my will, and then follow him to be found
in the way with him and his way of love
(33:40):
and compassion and grace and mercy and truth. I am
the way, the truth, and the life. Um, that the
I think the cross issue is, is the hardest thing
we do is to surrender to his ways because we
want to live our ways. And so that's kind of
the sense, the suffering. And there will be suffering from
(34:01):
the world too, at times, obviously. But it's that Gethsemane
moment in my life where, Lord, I surrender all. I
will follow you. And that means that we walk in
paths of love and grace and mercy and truth. And
I think that's the attractiveness of the gospel then.
S1 (34:18):
I think part of that as well is how Jesus
wept over Jerusalem, how he saw the fields white for harvest.
And he just had this desire for people to know,
to know the the father and to know his love.
And he's given us that message of reconciliation. And that
(34:41):
goes back to the anger thing. I wanted to ask
you this before the break because, uh, Doctor John MacArthur
passed away recently and he was asked by someone in
his life about in his personal life, they they noticed, um,
you don't get angry that often. Why? Why don't you
get angry? And he thought about it and said, I
(35:02):
don't have the direct quote, but he said something like,
my anger is directly proportional to my belief in the
sovereignty of God, or my disbelief. You know, if I
believe that God really is sovereign, then I'm not going
to be as wrapped up with fill in the blank
whatever happens. Do you agree with that?
S2 (35:24):
Yeah, totally agree with that. John was always good, right?
He always had the right answers. And it's true. If
we believe that God's managing my life and sovereignly, then
even when something bad comes or something that would trigger
a little bit of anger, you know, we need to
go vertical and get it into his perspective. And I
(35:44):
think John was theologically right. It's another interesting thing. I
remember John saying one time that our major mission is
not to save America. Our major mission is to save Americans.
And I thought that was pretty profound.
S1 (35:59):
Well, and you're saying let God work in you. Let
him save you. Receive his, uh, his grace and his
mercy for your sins, so that then you can move
into the world as a saved sinner that reaches out
to other people who are estranged from God. We're talking
(36:22):
with Doctor Joseph Stoll today. This light of mine is
our featured resource. Highly recommended at Chris Fabry Live. Our
remaining moments with Doctor Joe Stoll, the author of this
(36:45):
Light of Mind Living Like Jesus in a non Jesus world.
This is right where you and I are living every day.
He could have called it this salt of mine because
Jesus in Matthew five said, you are the salt of
the earth. The salt should lose its taste. How can
it be made salty? It's no longer good for anything
but to be thrown out and trampled on by men.
(37:05):
But but then he says, verse 14, you are the
light of the world. A city situated on a hill
cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and puts
it under a basket, but rather on a lamp stand
and gives it light for all who are in the house.
In the same way, let your light shine before men,
(37:26):
so that they may see your political leanings and know
they may see your good works and give glory to
your father in heaven. That's where this title comes from, right?
S2 (37:38):
And absolutely. And I think we just need to kind
of unwrap this Matthew statement of Jesus where he says,
let your light so shine. So what is your light?
He says that your good works. And I think a
lot of times we think it ought to be a
good message that's preach a good message and people will
come or let's talk about theology or whatever, but it's not.
(38:00):
He said, the power of light in a dark world.
And we live in a dark world, right? Is our
good works. And I mentioned a little earlier that the
Greek word there is not good works, like for being righteous,
keeping the rules of Christ. That would be the Greek
word agathos. So that doesn't really attract people necessarily. Like
(38:23):
if I say to my next door neighbor, hey, you
ought to accept Christ, then you could tithe. That's that's
going nowhere, right? You know, you ought to accept Christ
because then you don't have to sleep around. Well, they
want to sleep around and you got to accept Christ.
You go to church on Sunday instead of going fishing.
So that's the agathos kind of keeping the rules. The
(38:44):
good works that he's talking about here are doing deeds
that bless other people. Like, for instance, the contrast is
Agathos does what's right. Kalos forgives those who don't do
what's right. Agathos goes to church. Kalos takes the church
into my neighborhood. Agathos ties. Kalos gives above and beyond
(39:05):
the tithes to the poor and to the needy. Agatha
does not do what others do at the office. Carlos
keeps a keen eye out the office for opportunities to
express the love of Jesus to colleagues at the office.
So it's it's the the works that we do to
bless other people's lives in our neighborhood, in our office
(39:25):
that begins to draw people in toward us, is what
Christ is saying. This is what begins to light up
the darkness. And it's interesting. The early church, you know,
wrestled against the terrible persecution that the emperors put on them.
And for three centuries they stayed faithful to what was
true and faithful to the light of their good works.
If you read the secular people who say, how could
(39:47):
a peasant church finally overthrow the Roman Empire without dented
shield or bloodied sword? They all agree it was the
behavior of good works and good deeds in the community. Uh,
for instance, there's a lot of stories about it. But
for instance, in the abortion law in the first, second
and third centuries was death by exposure. If you didn't
(40:09):
want your baby, you took them out and put them
onto the garbage heap at the edge of town. They
could just die in the hot sun. Christians would go
out and harvest those babies off of the dungheap and
bring them into their family, and rear their family and
in their family. The black plagues of the first century
and the second century. People left their towns to the
(40:30):
mountains to get up into clean air. Christians stayed in
the villages to nurse their relatives back to health. Some
of them died because they did that. Um, they used
to take they used to early church, used to fast
for two weeks or for a period of time, not
for two weeks, to collect money that they would have
(40:50):
spent on groceries to give to the poor. And there
was no welfare in those days. And so consistently they
practice this. It was what they did to bless others
that really began to open the door to the gospel.
And so that's what the Matthew five. It's kind of
like this, Chris, I think, you know, people in your
(41:11):
workplace say, I don't get Christians, but this is a
better workplace because they're here. Or people in your neighborhood say,
you know, I really don't get these Christians, but I'll
tell you this, this our neighborhoods are far better place
because they live here. That's the power of Kalos that
begins to open people's hearts to the gospel. And so
(41:32):
that's and maybe some of our listeners don't like that approach,
but that happens to be Christ's approach. So I'm pretty
good with it personally. And Peter picks it up to
a persecuted church in first Peter two, where he says,
keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, not angry, but honorable,
so that when they speak against you as evildoers and
(41:53):
you know, we're the bad people, right? People speak against
us as being the bad people and culture. They may
see your good deeds And glorify God on the day
of visitation. Where did he get that idea? He got
it from Matthew five from Jesus Christ.
S1 (42:10):
Well, where did he get the whole thing of? If
anyone asks you to give a reason for the hope
that you have, always be ready. You know, and and
how do you do that? You do it with gentleness
and respect. You don't go out and bang them over
the head with how big a sinner that they are,
although that's part of it. You know that you have
(42:30):
to communicate that. Of how big a sinners we are. Um,
but you, you are gentle and you're respectful to. All right?
S2 (42:39):
Yeah, absolutely. Keeping our behavior honorable so that people really
don't have anything really bad to say about us in
terms of our attitudes and our actions. And, uh, and
I think, you know what? I remember back in kindergarten. Right.
That's a long time ago right now. But, you know,
my favorite part was show and tell, right? Like I
(43:02):
get to bring some, show it to everybody. Then I
tell them that. And I think now trying to move
into a secular, hostile culture, it's show and tell. I
have to show people Jesus through my lives, through my life,
which gives me the opportunity then to tell them about Jesus.
S1 (43:19):
Yes. You know, as we come to to the end
of the program here, Joe, I the thing that I
have seen over the last few months and probably year
that I've been looking at is the word fear. And
how much, uh, the fear of God, fear of the
Lord is in the scriptures. But then other places where
(43:41):
it talks about the fear of man and how we
need to order our fears. If I am so wrapped
up with what is going on in the culture, and
I'm so afraid of what's going to happen if this
bill doesn't get through, or if this bill does get through, or,
you know, if this person gets in or that person
and look at the New York mayor and what happens there.
(44:02):
If I'm so wrapped up with the fear of what
might be with the dominoes falling that I forget, my
main fear is if I order it and reverence God
above others, all the other fears are going to line up.
Do you agree with that?
S2 (44:19):
No, totally. That's profound actually, Chris. So true that the
fear of the Lord is the key to really good living.
And the psalmist talks about in Proverbs all the time,
you know. And that's what pleases the Lord. Interesting is
Psalm 147 says, the Lord is pleased with those who
fear him. And with those who place their hope in
(44:40):
his steadfast love. And I call it living vertically. If
you live horizontally, then you judge God by everything bad
that's going on. You live vertically like everything is seen
in terms of God, his sovereignty, his oversight, his victory,
his management, his presence in our lives. Then suddenly everything
(45:00):
on the horizontal, all the political stuff, all the cultural stuff,
begins to fall into place. Not that we're not concerned,
but we're not consumed. There's a big difference there.
S4 (45:11):
Oh. That's good.
S1 (45:13):
Not consumed. We're. But. But concerned, but not consumed. I
like that. That's the echoes of what Paul talked about.
We were beaten down, but not destroyed. Right? Okay. So
we're going to stop it right there. But here's what
I want to say about this light of mine. This
is a book that's calling us to deeper trust, deeper surrender,
(45:34):
deeper submission and less control that we can exert the
over our circumstances here with the with that's going to
make us feel better. We think it does, but it
really doesn't. In the end, we are filled with more
hope as we increase our trust in him and that
(45:55):
he is involved and he is sovereign over all of this.
So Joe, thanks for being with us today. Thanks for
writing this. You have a great rest of the summer
and come back real soon, okay?
S5 (46:07):
Yeah. Thanks, Chris. God's best to you. Love you bro.
S1 (46:10):
This light of mine living like Jesus in a non
Jesus world. It's a it's a deep. It's a challenging
one too. Because I want the formula. I want the list.
Tell me what to do. I do this this this,
this and then I'm good. No, this is, this is
a heart issue for you and for me. You'll find
it at our website. Chris, click through today's information Chris Fabry.
(46:37):
He's in the studio. We recorded this a couple of
weeks ago with Ben Fuller. You got to hear his
music and his heart. Tomorrow on Chris Fabry Live. A
production of Moody Radio, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.
Popular Podcasts
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.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.