Debunking Perfect Parenthood and Understanding a Grace-based Marriage

Today, on Karl and Crew, we continued our weekly theme of “Family Relationships” with discussions about our identity in Christ, partnering with God in parenthood, and how discipleship doesn’t stop because you got married. We then opened the phone lines to hear miracle stories from our listeners as we asked them, “What’s the answered prayer or miracle that your whole family still rejoices about?” Then Jill Savage joined us to discuss how to overcome the perfectionist mindset when parenting and inviting God to lead you in raising your kids. Jill is an author, blogger, and international speaker. She is also the founder and CEO of Hearts at Home. She also hosts the No More Perfect podcast and has authored several books, including “Empty Nest-Full Life.” We then had Brad Rhoads join us to discuss the importance of the church's discipleship of married couples and to explore what a Grace-based marriage looks like. Brad and his wife, Marilyn, founded Grace Marriage, a ministry that helps church leaders disciple married couples. He also serves as a marriage pastor at their local church and wrote the book, “The Grace Marriage: How the Gospel and Intentionality Transform Your Relationship.” You can hear the highlights of today's program on the Karl and Crew Showcast.

 

If you're looking to hear a particular segment from the show, look at the following time stamps: 

Jill Savage Interview (Debunking Perfect Parenthood) [ 05:41-22:08 ]

Ally Thinks It’s Funny [ 22:16-27:40 ]

Listener Stories (Answered Prayers and Miracle Stories) [ 47:54-57:51 ]

Brad Rhoads Interview (Discipleship in Marriage and Grace-based Marriage) [ 57:55- 01:06:48 ]

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Episode Transcript

S1 (00:00):
Coming to you from the Morning Star Mission sponsored studio.
This is Carl and crew on Moody Radio.

S2 (00:08):
Two kinds of people up and going this time of day.
Those that are off and running. And you're going somewhere,
my friend. Woo! Look at you go.

S3 (00:18):
Okay, who's the second type?

S2 (00:19):
The other type of person is a person that's been
wrestling all night with God or something.

S4 (00:24):
Oh, man. That's true.

S3 (00:26):
Yeah, we've all been there. Yeah, we've all been there.

S2 (00:29):
It's as real as real can be. And I hear
every time I hear that song, I think about our
truth blog before Ali gives it to you. I just
want to pour out my heart to you. Understanding who
you are in Christ is going to get you through
your soul wrestling this morning. You may not be in Christ,
and we're going to talk about that at the bottom
of the hour. And I want you to hang on
for that, because you may feel like, my goodness, why

(00:50):
is my Christianity not working for me? It could be
that you're not born again. Straight up. It's good to
just shoot it straight, isn't it, guys?

S3 (00:58):
Absolutely.

S2 (00:59):
And we love you enough to tell you that. I mean,
that's a reality. Guys, we love you. But there's some
of you who are truly born again, and you're getting
absolutely swamped with emotions this morning. And you were up
all night and somebody's crying right now going, good grief,
you're reading my mail. I'm not really reading your mail.
It's just the reality of the way time works. And
I've been on both ends of this. I've been up

(01:22):
early having to get somewhere. I know what that feels like.
Some of you are like, boy, I'm on the road
right now and I'm five minutes late. Carl, some of
you are just getting swamped with accusation and it's devastating
and we want to help you. This is something. This
something coming out of the chute. We may not give

(01:43):
this away the rest of the day. The rest of
the week for two weeks. But that's how radio works
around here. And we're committed to you. We really are.
There are truths of who you are in Jesus that
you got to get anchored in your soul this morning,
and this might be the perfect time. Ali. 21 days. Right? Morning, evening.
That's our commitment.

S5 (02:03):
I mean, and this is straight from the word of God.
This is just bullet points, a little summary that comes
from God's word that tells you who you are. The
first one, I know it by heart. I am loved
as much as anyone has ever been loved. That's the
first one, and I believe that's out of Ephesians. If
I'm not, if I'm not wrong.

S2 (02:20):
Yep. Ephesians three.

S5 (02:21):
Ephesians. Yep. Get the whole thing and read it. Reread it,
and then read it again. Text truth to 800 555 7898.
Just truth. Truth, truth to 855 five 7898.

S2 (02:37):
Okay. Why do we need this? Why? What's. What are
we up against?

S5 (02:41):
Oh, boy. We're up against the lies of the enemy.
I think first and foremost.

S4 (02:44):
First and foremost, he. He tells us all the time
how horrible we are, how unloved we are, how unthought
of we are. And none of that's true. God loves us.
We are his children. When we are his children, we
are as loved as anyone has ever been loved. We
are inheritors of every good thing he has. And so

(03:08):
we have to remember the truth. Otherwise we will remember
the lies and that will affect our lives.

S3 (03:13):
Big time and culture is consistently telling us what we
should be, how we should look, what we should do,
how we should dress, what we should have. La la
la la la. I mean.

S2 (03:22):
We could never hit that mark.

S3 (03:23):
No.

S2 (03:25):
Yeah, so come and get it, guys. Uh, we want
this for you. This is. This is something I go
back to. This is something. Something everyone on the team
goes back to. Or a variation thereof.

S3 (03:36):
Yes. Oh, yeah.

S2 (03:37):
All right, Ali, take it away, sister.

S5 (03:39):
It's truth to 855, five, 78, 98. Just that one word.
No emojis, nothing extra in there. Just truth to 805, five, five, 7898.

S2 (03:50):
Yeah. So important man. We love you guys. And, um, frankly,
I get so ticked off when God's kids are getting
smoked by the enemy or by thoughts of the past,
and those are often triggered by Satan. He'll take us
back to some reckless words or early childhood experience, family
of origin, way of functioning that was dysfunctional. And there's

(04:14):
no perfect family system. By the way, this is why
no one is immune to needing this. And whatever you're
up against today, here's the point. When you get anchored
in the truth of your identity, the decisions you make
are much going to be much more consistent with whom
called you out of darkness. And that is vital. We

(04:37):
can fall for a lie all day long, but you
got to know who you are in Jesus text. Truth
to 800 555 7898. Truth to 800 555 7898 okay,
coming up here, Ali, we've got we're coming out hot
this morning, sister.

S5 (04:53):
We are. Have you ever wondered, man? Other people's homes
just seem so great. They have those perfect family pictures
with coordinating outfits every year, and we haven't taken a
good family picture since the last time someone graduated. And
that was in kindergarten. And now I've got a college graduate.
It can. It can feel like your home is imperfect, dysfunctional,

(05:16):
and maybe it is to a certain extent. How can
God redeem imperfect homes? We're also going to tackle your
relationship with your adult children. Navigating some landmines there. We've
got some coaching from expert Jill Savage coming up.

S1 (05:30):
She's a choreographer extraordinaire and everything is Greek to her.
Super die is in the crew. It's Karl and crew
on Moody Radio. So, Ali.

S2 (05:41):
When did it dawn on you? You weren't perfect as
a parent.

S5 (05:46):
Uh, the car ride home from the hospital.

S2 (05:51):
The car ride.

S5 (05:53):
You've been taken out wheeled and like most hospitals, will
wheel the mom to the car. And you've got this
heavy car seat with a 7 or £8 little bundle
of joy, and they put you in the car and
they send you on your way. And on that car
ride home, moms usually sit in the back seat because
you got to just be sitting there staring at them
and you go, I have no idea what I'm doing.

S2 (06:16):
I am far from perfect. Isn't that a great revelation, though?
I think I think, uh, this whole idea of perfect parenting,
perfect kids, perfect this, perfect that no one would use
those words. But we want to have our kids pretty
lined out. Isn't perfect the enemy of the grace of God? Jill?

S6 (06:33):
Absolutely. One of the things that you know, we have
to remember is that we can't be a perfect parent,
but God can use our kids to perfect us, to
To change us, to mold us, to be more like him.
And if we're married, he uses marriage to do the

(06:53):
same thing.

S5 (06:55):
Jill Savage, our guest right now, author, blogger, international speaker. Now,
you know when you think about trying to raise perfect kids,
you wouldn't say that. But in many ways, we do
feel like our kids are a reflection of us. So
when our kids are not doing well, whether they're the
toddler who keeps getting in trouble at preschool, or the

(07:16):
high schooler or the young adult, wherever they are in
that journey, when our kids are struggling, we can feel
shame as a parent that somehow it's a reflection of us.
What do you say to that?

S6 (07:27):
Oh, absolutely. I think that happens when our kids are little.
You know, they throw a temper tantrum in the middle
of the grocery store and you're just like, oh my goodness,
you're just so embarrassed. And I remember somebody telling me,
you know, the best thing you can do in a
moment like that is to look up at whoever's staring
at you and smile and just simply say, we're working

(07:48):
on this.

S2 (07:49):
That's a great.

S6 (07:50):
Line.

S2 (07:51):
That's a great line.

S6 (07:52):
But, you know, when they get older and now they're
launching and they're starting to make their own decisions in life,
sometimes even moving away from some of the things that
you taught them and you were hoping that they would
value as well. Oh my goodness. That's when it gets
even harder, because we feel like our kids are an

(08:15):
extension of us. And honestly, that's when we make our
kids an idol and we don't want to do that.

S2 (08:23):
Powerful. Jill Savage, our guest right now, you know, the
one thing that I've been discovering as a pastor, and
I want you to coach us all up on this one,
is that the temptation is so great for parents to
so see their kids as a reflection of them, that
sometimes they don't. They find themselves not praying rightly for
their kids. They pray things like, Oh God, get him

(08:43):
back in the church. God, get him lined out when
really the prayer in many cases, I'd say most ought
to be God. Get them in Christ Jesus. They're clearly
not in you. And I'm talking about kids that have
left your parentage. They're out there. They're really walking out
what they are. Have you wrestled with that yourself? Because

(09:04):
it is so hard to pray honestly when we've done
so much to work so well at raising those kids
to walk with Jesus and then they don't. Jill.

S6 (09:14):
Yes, yes. You know, Carl, we have five kids and
they're all adults now, and three have their own families. And,
you know, faith was a part of our family's life.
My husband was a pastor. It was a big part
of our family's life. And they're not all walking with
Jesus right now. And that has been so hard. That's hard.

(09:38):
And yet I agree with what you said. Sometimes my
prayers have been for the wrong things, and I've had
to get them to the place where it was like, Lord,
I'm not going to pray about this, this situation, this circumstance,
this choice they're making. I'm praying that their heart returns
to you. I'm praying that you become the true North

(10:01):
in their life, and that because we know when that
begins to happen, these other things will get aligned in
their correct place.

S2 (10:11):
Wow, that. How important is this? Ali, we talk about
this here. She just succinctly put it there. Everything else
is a drop down menu of the Lord being the
Lord of their life.

S5 (10:20):
Absolutely. Following up on that, Jill Savage, our guest right now,
what are the biggest mistakes parents are tempted to make,
particularly with their adult children? I know you talk a
lot about empty nesters as kids are transitioning, trying to
launch out, whether that's college age or a little bit later.
What are the biggest missteps parents are tempted to Attempted
to make those transition years.

S6 (10:41):
Well, I think the biggest missteps are the things that
we don't understand we need to let go of. So,
for instance, we need to let go of expectations, expecting
our kids to maybe communicate at the pace we want
them to. Rather than a pace that's natural for them. Um,
we have to let go of expecting them to have

(11:04):
the same values that we did. Now, we hope that
those are still in there somewhere, and at some point
they might return to them. As Proverbs tells us, train
up a child in the way they should go, and
when they are old, they will return to it. That's
a a precept that we are obviously praying toward, but
we have to really watch those expectations. Also, we have

(11:27):
to let go of opinions. Oh, this is hard. We
have we have leveraged opinions in there, our opinions and
their life for 18 plus years, right? And now our
opinions are really only to be leveraged if they ask. Oh,

(11:47):
that's so hard when you have.

S2 (11:49):
An.

S6 (11:49):
18 year habit. And that because that's what begins to
actually alienate them. If you're always telling them what you think,
you don't realize that they get to a place to go.
I don't even want to pick up the phone and
call mom, because all I'm going to hear is what
I'm doing wrong, and we don't want that. And so, man,

(12:11):
I'll tell you in my empty nest full life book,
one of the things I talk about is pray. Don't say.

S2 (12:18):
Wow.

S6 (12:19):
And when those opinions want to come up, when and
we haven't been asked for them, that is a moment
that we need to pray and lift that up to
the Lord and share our burdens with him and our
worries with him. But we have to resist saying things
that right then, our kids aren't ready to hear.

S2 (12:40):
How do we prep our kids to be launched? My,
after now having two adult kids and our first grandbaby,
I'm a grandpa. I keep advertising. The one thing that
I look back on is I think my bride. I
want to cheer for her. She did a good job.
It's never too early to start transitioning because as kids

(13:02):
get older, they get more independence, more independence, more independence.
But how do we prep ourselves for launching kids so
that we won't get in a quagmire of, yeah, sharing
our opinions, having expectations? What can we do in the
soul of a person to prep?

S6 (13:19):
Well, that comes back to the same thing that we're
praying for our kids, right? That God is in his
proper place in in their life. That God is their
true North. That's the same thing that needs to happen
for us, Carl, is that God needs to be our
true North. Because if not, that is a place where

(13:42):
we try to. We don't even realize that we're doing it,
but we're making like our. How we feel about ourselves
is dependent on whether our child is doing well or
not doing well. It's dependent on whether our child's making
good choices or not good choices. That's not what is
supposed to determine our joy and our happiness. God's word

(14:05):
tells us that our joy is found in Christ, that
our joy in the Lord is our strength. And so
that isn't going to change based upon. And I'm not
saying that we can't be sad or, you know, disappointed
in a situation, but where are you finding your value?

(14:26):
And that needs to start when our kids are little
and they're throwing that fit in the grocery store is
in that moment. If you're finding feeling like that child
and their expression is making you look bad, then in
that moment you're not going to parent well, you're going

(14:46):
to actually parent out of anger. And that's not a
healthy way to be thinking about parenting. And so we
have to have our value, our identity in Christ.

S5 (14:59):
Jill. We are seeing a kind of a quiet epidemic
of parental estrangement. I'm sure you're hearing about this, seeing
stories of parents, of adult children who've been cut off
a lot of times for reasons that they don't fully understand.
There are some sort of a value difference or a
a political difference, or an adult child who now views

(15:23):
their parents as toxic or their upbringing as dysfunctional. What
are you seeing? What do you say about this?

S6 (15:31):
Absolutely. I'm seeing it. I have a very large Facebook group.
About 7000 moms, empty nest moms on Facebook. We talk
about it in the group a lot because some of
them are experiencing that. I wish that wasn't the case,
but it is to some degree. We have a cancel
culture and that has extended into the family unit in

(15:55):
these kind of situations. But sometimes, sometimes those kids also
feel like they have not been able to be heard
in their family unit. Every time they try to approach
a parent or their parent about something or have some
conversation about something. Either they are met with defensiveness. They're

(16:20):
met with, well, I did the best I could. Rather
than being approached with empathy and a parent who's trying
to listen, to understand. And this is a skill that
many of us don't have. We don't know how to listen,
to understand, and we don't know how to actually, like,

(16:41):
be able to to listen without that defensiveness rising up.
And so, you know, it may be, boy, I don't
remember it that way. But if you do, this is
important to you. And I want to hear you out.
And I want to understand your pain. That goes a
long way in that parent child relationship, where maybe the

(17:06):
child is revealing something that they struggled with, but their
parent wasn't aware of it. And oftentimes that's where we
move into a defensive place. So I would say when
your children are trying to have conversations with you, be empathetic,
be validating. That makes sense. I can only imagine. In.

(17:26):
Let those kind of phrases lead the way. Tell me more.
I want to better understand. And I think that if
we can get into that place, sometimes we don't need
to have the estrangement happen.

S2 (17:38):
Yeah. Speak about even taking it a step further. And
that's owning it. Where you say I screwed up. Yeah.
Would you forgive me? I mean, there's there's power in that.
I mean, it's one thing to say. I feel your pain.
It's another one to say I'm responsible. Not for that,
but I'm responsible for that and for that. Would you
forgive me? Right.

S6 (17:58):
Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, um, a full so
and a full apology. One of the things my husband
and I teach is marriage coaches is how to give
a full apology. And a full apology is. I'm sorry for.
I see that it affected you this way. Will you

(18:18):
please forgive me? See, sometimes I think we just go.
I'm sorry. Well. I'm sorry. And sometimes it's even, you know,
I'm sorry with a little bit of, like, you know,
a little punch to it that doesn't feel genuine.

S5 (18:31):
Yeah.

S6 (18:32):
And so, yeah, when we can, in that moment with
our child, say, oh, you know, I am so sorry
that I wasn't aware of this. I can see that
it affected you in, um, by you feeling very alone
in the situation. Will you please forgive me? That way

(18:55):
more effective.

S2 (18:58):
I got one more. There's a lot of parents hung
up on a bad theological point. That is not a
point God's trying to make at all. It's a bad take.
And that is, they are responsible for their kid's salvation.
That is the Holy Spirit's work. I want you to
pour out your heart on that one. It'll it takes
the pressure off, doesn't it, Jill?

S6 (19:15):
It absolutely does, because that is the Holy Spirit's job.
That is God's job. Our job is to reflect Christ
to them. Our job when we were raising them, certainly
to introduce them to God. For them to see God
in our lives, for them to see us opening up

(19:35):
God's Word. And if you didn't do that, that's okay.
It's never too late. So for them to begin to
see you reflect Christ in their adult years, that is
what we want to be responsible for, because that is
just the walking out of our own relationship with God.
But it is not our responsibility. And once again, once again,

(19:58):
I think that that brings us to something that we
also have to let go of, and we have to
let go of guilt. False guilt. Guilt over things that
aren't ours. And people will say, look, I feel like
I screwed my kid up and there is nothing you
could have done that is beyond God's redemption in your
child's life. Nothing. Nothing. And you didn't screw up so

(20:24):
much that your child can't come to Jesus. That is
not the way that it works. You're making yourself way
bigger than God, and that is not the way it works.
God is way bigger than our mistakes, and he has
the ability to redeem whatever circumstances were going on in
your family when you were raising your kids.

S5 (20:45):
Jill Savage. A lot of wisdom there. Author, blogger, international speaker.
She's the author of many books, including the No More
Perfect series, No More Perfect Moms, No More Perfect Kids,
No More Perfect Marriages. If you want more, just text
perfect to 800 555 7898. Text perfect to 800 555 7898.

S2 (21:08):
Yeah, what I love about this link, Ali is it's
like going shopping hungry. Oh my goodness. It's like going shopping. Hungry.
You're gonna find you're gonna find links that are just outstanding,
like ten tips for Launching Your Adult children, letting go
of expectations for your adult kids. And then she's got
other blogs for every age and stage of life. These

(21:28):
are free. There is no cost and we ask you
to get it right now.

S5 (21:32):
Text perfect to 800 555 7898. Perfect to [phone].

S2 (21:40):
Jill, thank you for being imperfect. Appreciate you.

S6 (21:45):
You know, Carl, if I wasn't imperfect, I would have
nothing to write about in my book because all of
my books are about the ways that I messed up
and lessons learned. And so I'm glad to share it
with the world.

S2 (22:00):
Yeah. Way to go, Jill. We're proud of you again.
You got you got the key word text. Perfect to
800 555 78, 98.

S1 (22:08):
He was sharing the gospel on the radio and then
he got saved. Young thunders in the crew. It's Carl
and crew on Moody Radio.

S2 (22:17):
Okay, here's the deal, guys. We were just talking with
Jill Savage. By the way, this whole month of July,
we're going after it. We are just spiking it. If
you haven't heard lately, we've got a show cast and
it's in. It's what? That's what we call it, Ali explained.
What in the world are we doing with our show cast?

S5 (22:35):
Show cast.

S2 (22:35):
Is.

S5 (22:35):
Just. Yeah. It's our opportunity to capture what's happening in
the live show in a way that you can listen
on your own time and easily share it with a friend.
So we take the four hour live show and we
condense it to about 45 minutes. You can download it,
you can listen to it on the go. And a
lot of people do. A lot of people go back
and relisten to an interview or specific segment that they

(22:57):
wanted to hear again. So you can get all of that.
Just text show to 805, five, five, 78, 98 text
show to [phone].

S2 (23:07):
Yeah. Uh, Jill Savage is going to be a hot
one today for sure, because she's smoke on the water.
What's the best? I'm almost doing a. What did you
learn today? What did we learn from Joe? Best things.

S5 (23:19):
You know, I specifically liked when she said that if
we look at our parents, she used a toddler example.
If we look at our parenting or our kids behavior
and it makes us feel bad or good about ourselves,
then we've got an issue. And so if we're letting
our how our children are doing determine our joy, and

(23:40):
obviously our hearts are going to be attached to our
kids when they're struggling, we're going to be some pain.
But when we start to put our identity in that,
I thought that was a really, really good insight.

S2 (23:50):
That that was bang. That was huge, wasn't it? It
was great. So text the word show. What? What have
you got, Young Thunder?

S4 (23:57):
No, I think that that was such a big one.
It's so important because we do attach our kids actions
to ourselves, and it has to say something about us.
Or when people look at us in the store, they're
obviously thinking about us. Well, first off, if they are,
who cares? Uh, second off, if, you know, a lot
of people aren't thinking what you're thinking, they're thinking, and

(24:20):
that's okay.

S2 (24:21):
They're getting a they're getting a cube of butter, man.

S4 (24:24):
You're getting a cube. They're here for some steak. They're
in their own problems. Everyone's the main character of their
own story. A lot of people aren't paying attention to you.

S2 (24:31):
If you had the thought bubble, everybody's thought bubble has
been there.

S7 (24:34):
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yep, yep. Oh, I remember.

S4 (24:36):
Those days.

S3 (24:38):
For sure.

S2 (24:38):
And and only the goobers say pity you. Yeah. Okay.
Oh my goodness, Nelly, I almost forgot. Thank you for
reminding me. Team. Sorry about it. I was blowing right
past it. It's time. It's time right now. Take it away,
young thunder.

S1 (24:52):
Making herself laugh no matter who joins her. It's time
for Allie. Thinks it's funny.

S5 (25:00):
Got a couple jokes for you on this Wednesday morning.
Anyone a fan of dinosaurs?

S2 (25:06):
Yeah, a fan of dinosaurs. I like T-Rex all day long.

S5 (25:10):
Good T-Rex. Have you ever into dinosaurs? Or have a
kid who was really into it and collected them?

S3 (25:15):
Totally. My house was filled with them. The little ones,
and you can move them around and make them fight
a little bit.

S5 (25:22):
What do you call a dinosaur with only one eye?
A dinosaur with only one eye?

S7 (25:28):
I don't know.

S5 (25:30):
Do you think he saw us?

S7 (25:34):
That's funny.

S3 (25:38):
Do you think he saw us?

S8 (25:39):
That's so great.

S3 (25:41):
Come on.

S8 (25:41):
It's good. Right?

S2 (25:42):
That's great.

S8 (25:44):
Thank you.

S5 (25:44):
Thank you. Well, I want to give you a little
PSA that there are some important items you should always
keep in your car. Uh, Carl, what are some of
those emergency items you should always have in your car?

S2 (25:55):
Uh, I think for me, it's jumper cables. I've got
a I've got a nylon tow strap and things like that,
but the average. You don't need to carry those. Ali,
you're okay with that. But. Okay. There's things you.

S5 (26:05):
Carry. You should have a, you know, a first aid
kit or something like some.

S3 (26:10):
People.

S5 (26:10):
Carry flares or you should have a spare tire. I
want to add something to the list though. I think
you should always keep a guitar in your car as well.

S2 (26:19):
Really?

S5 (26:20):
Yes you should. Every. Every person. Please. You need a
guitar in your car. You want to know why?

S3 (26:26):
Why?

S2 (26:26):
I'm dying to know why.

S3 (26:27):
You're going.

S5 (26:28):
To need it for traffic.

S3 (26:29):
Jams. Text jokes.

S5 (26:38):
To [phone]. Hey, you got to be prepared. Traffic jamming.
Text jokes to 800 555, 7898. If you want this
morning's jokes. And they do change from hour to hour.
So sometimes people will say those aren't the ones I
heard I texted at this. You got to text them

(27:00):
right away to get the ones from this hour. So
text jokes to 805, five, five, 78, 98 New jokes
coming in your way in about an hour.

S2 (27:09):
Why am I seeing a one eyed T-Rex? And why
am I seeing a guy standing on the hood of
a car jamming with a guitar?

S4 (27:15):
It'd make the traffic jam more interesting.

S3 (27:17):
I imagine it would. It would cause a traffic jam
during one of those gridlocked traffic.

S5 (27:23):
Jams here in Chicago. If everybody had a guitar.

S3 (27:26):
Oh.

S5 (27:27):
About how that would promote mental health. Everybody's jamming.

S3 (27:31):
To. To some degree, yes. There you go.

S2 (27:34):
You can entertain family, friends, neighbors and people in traffic jams.

S1 (27:39):
He was running from God, but God's love brought him home.
Carl is in the crew. It's Carl and crew on
Moody Radio.

S2 (27:48):
A lot of people might wonder, is it a proper
motivation to desire the good stuff in life? Is it
proper to to want to have peace in your life?
Is it an okay thing to that your life would
be used, and that that would be a motivation to
surrender all that you are to Jesus Christ. And I
want to tell you that's an absolutely correct motivation. My goodness,

(28:09):
this is why Jesus put before people 30, 60, 100
fold life. It's why he promised in John 1010 that
you will have life more abundant in Christ Jesus. So
we find evidence of this constantly. I mean, look at
Matthew 25, the story of the ten bridesmaids and five
of them going on to this great reward with God.

(28:30):
And then you look at the parable of the soils,
and that's where you get the 30, 60, 100 fold life. Absolutely.
It's in play. But I, I just want to break
it down and get real honest here. And the best
way for me to do this is this if you
go to Ephesians two, you find a vision for life.
That's amazing. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ

(28:50):
Jesus for good works, which he prepared beforehand, that we
should walk in them. Isn't that cool? That we are
his workmanship and this life of being molded and shaped
and used by God and have abundant life. We got
to be careful with this cultural Christianity. We talk about
it around here a lot, and it's because there's some

(29:11):
of you that are so deceived that being in a
Christian culture makes you saved. And you're wondering this morning,
why is my Christian faith not working? There's two reasons
for that. Either that you are really born again, and
you've got some things in your life that need to
be aligned with God, and those are myriad. Or for
many of you, you have a hallucination of salvation. You

(29:33):
see something in yourself that isn't there, straight up, just
straight up. I'm being honest with you here. So I
want to break this down, looking at this Ephesians passage
and just let's hit some hard truth. And this is
what we find. We find that for by grace you
have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves

(29:55):
it is the gift of God, not by works, so
that no one can boast. So here's the thing. You're
either saved or you are absolutely lost. There's no partially saved.
There's no continuum on this thing. You are either saved
or you are lost. The best story I have for

(30:17):
this is commercial fishing in Alaska. Uh, we were fishing
in the Ugashik district. I did eight eight seasons of
commercial fishing. Over two years of my life. Have been
on a commercial fishing boat, which is almost hard to
get my head around sometimes. Bobbing and weaving out there
in the high seas. And then this one day, we
were up in a little cove on a closure where

(30:38):
the fish and game had shut down our district to
let more fish go up the rivers. It's called escapement.
So we're kind of hanging out and oh my goodness,
I'm mending gear in the stern of the boat. We've
got one of my mates was doing something else. My
captain was doing what captains do because they get short
on sleep, and he was snoozing, just passed out. And

(30:58):
there's a boat. A lot of boats anchored in front
of us. But there was one boat anchored up in
front of us. And all of a sudden, I hear,
never forget it. Mike Motorola, cool Italian dude from San Francisco.
And he is yelling and Mike never yells and he's screaming. Well,
one of his crew hands had fallen overboard. Now, the

(31:18):
problem here is that when the tides go out in
Bristol Bay, it's like a rushing river. So it's not
like bobbing around and, you know, like Tahiti or something.
This is like rushing ocean water because the tides are
so enormous. They they move 20 plus feet in six hours.
So the ocean is emptying. So our cove, although it

(31:39):
looks pretty still, is really just a river underneath us.
And I look over the port side and I'm like,
oh my goodness. This crew hand, who I'd just barely
known he is now being swept by the ocean out
from our cove, out into the bay and he's going
to die. Guaranteed. There's no way in those waters you

(31:59):
don't live. There's no swimming to shore or anything like that.
It's so cold. It's so silty. You go down and
he had no life preserver on and he's going down
and I'm yelling, and Marvin, our captain, he jumps up
and I said, he's we got a guy overboard. We're
just yelling. He's overboard. And Marvin grabbed a line from, uh,

(32:26):
from the Flying Bridge. And it's it happened to be
wound up. And this guy's going by so quickly that
he's right on the port side, left side of the boat,
and he throws it out. And this kid is absolutely panicked.
And in a just a big lurch reach, he reaches
out to grab that rope. Guys. It slips through his
fingers and we know in a nanosecond what's going on here.

(32:49):
This guy's he's dead, man. So he's alive, but he's
destined for death, right?

S4 (32:55):
Yeah. I mean, that's a terrifying experience.

S2 (32:57):
Oh, it was horrible. Marvin had one more shot. And
by God's grace, and I mean that it was amazing.
Marvin coiled that up, actually, very Calculatedly not panicked. And
he just threw that out there. Now he's at the
stern of our boat, and this is the last toss.
There's no no more chances. And he throws it out

(33:20):
and this kid reaches out with his hand. No kidding.
Six inches of line left and that's it. And he
grabs a hold of that thing. Now he's pulling against
this current that's trying to drag him away. Now the
work is we got to get him back, reeled back
into the boat gently without basically pulling the line from

(33:41):
his hand. You guys feel this with me?

S3 (33:43):
Wow, wow. It's like a movie.

S2 (33:46):
Yeah. We're pulling, pulling, pulling. And it was it was
crazy because as we're pulling them in. It was. It
was overwhelming, guys. It was overwhelming. But as we're pulling
them in, we we get them up beside the the
port side of the boat, and then we gently grab

(34:07):
hold of them and we hoist them up and pull
them on board. So we go from absolute certain death
to absolutely, he is on board and he is safe.
And the celebration that broke out is immense. Here's what
I need you to know. Some of you, you are
in the church, but you are culturally in the church,

(34:28):
and you're drifting to an eternity separated from God. You
are dead in your trespasses and sins. That's what we
find Paul saying in Ephesians two. Even when we were
dead in our trespasses, we were made alive together with Christ.
By grace you have been saved And raised up with

(34:52):
him and seated with him in the heavenly places in
Christ Jesus. Here's the point, guys. There the whole world
is adrift until they die. And then the question is
where are they going? And it's sheep or goats. Enemies
of the cross, friends with God. And if you've got

(35:14):
a cultural Christianity, and by grace the Spirit of God
is showing you you've had a cultural Christianity, I appeal
to you today. Reach out and take hold of Jesus.
That's what I'm appealing to you. It's an awesome thing
to aspire to be snatched from the seas of death.

(35:35):
It's an awesome thing to want to be on board
with Jesus and know that you're his workmanship, and you're
being molded by him and shaped by him. And I'm
appealing to you. I'm urging you don't let cultural Christianity
sweep you out to an eternity separated from God. And

(35:56):
you got a choice today. And you can't let pride
hold you back. You can't let presuppositions of being raised
in this home and forget the time that you were baptized,
or raise your hand in the air. And yeah, we
go after this lot around here. Here's why. It is
an epidemic today in the church. People who think they're
born again and they're not. You know why your Christianity

(36:17):
is not working for you? It could be because you
are not a Christian. Not truly. You're Christian in culture,
your Christian in name, but you're not born again. And
the question you have right now because the Spirit of
God is telling you, yeah, my life is not only
not working, Spirit of God is telling me I may
not be born again. You can be today by faith.

(36:40):
You are saved through grace and this not your own doing.
It's a gift of God. And I'm asking you to
take a hold of the gift of God. Today in this,
the amazing thing about this is Paul's casting a vision
for the Ephesian church here about what happened to them
and what happened to them hasn't happened to you until now,
but today you're going to be born again. I had

(37:01):
to be that. I was raised in church. I was,
I did I did all the stuff Christian kids do.
That's air quotes there. But I was lost as a
goose man. And until Jesus Christ has taken over everything
that you are, you cannot know him personally. And today
I'm appealing to you. Please surrender your life to Jesus.

(37:24):
Don't let the pride of. I met with a guy
two days ago who was in a a rocking mega-church
here in Chicago, and he had high level positions of leadership,
and he came to Christ five years ago after being
in that church for like 20 years. I'm appealing to
you right now. Please surrender your life to Jesus today. Today.

(37:50):
Don't let pride hold you back from taking hold of Jesus.
You might say, well, Carl, how does this work? And
all I'm going to tell you is, right now, it's this.
It's as desperate as the kid that reached out for
that line in the water. No more of this. I
got to get better. I've. You know, I'm going to

(38:11):
rub a little Jesus on me. I got to get
to church more. No. You need to surrender your life
to Jesus and take hold of all that he is
for you. Today you're being swept out to a certain death.
There's no question everybody's getting swept out to death until
we take hold of life in Christ. By faith, by faith.

(38:32):
And that just means everything. That you are fully surrendered
to Jesus today. Holding nothing back. And if that's you,
I just I, I want to ask you a couple
of questions and then we're going to give you a
resource Or today is today the day that you are
saying I am surrendering all that I am to Jesus.
I'm putting my full faith and trust in him. Is
today a day that you acknowledge you're a sinner and

(38:54):
you need a Savior, and you're reaching out and you're
taking Jesus hand and you never have before. Praise God,
today is a day that you're abandoning your wisdom and
you're taking hold of Jesus. We want to help you
walk with Jesus today and we got a resource.

S5 (39:09):
Just text the word new to 800 555 7898. Text
new and to 800 555 7898. We want to send
you some resources and some next steps. Take this. Read
through it carefully. Maybe you need to know what to
look for in a church. Uh, how to find a
good Bible text new to 800 555 7898. Just text

(39:34):
the word new.

S1 (39:35):
A basketball mom who's mastered the dad joke. Ali is
in the crew. It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.

S2 (39:44):
I was drawn strings together on something at a camp
that I was speaking at a big conference center last
week up in Michigan. And, you know, we find in
Ephesians that we're called to sing songs, hymns and spiritual
songs to one another. And you want to ask the question, well,
what in the world is that? What's that all about?
By the way, this is just pop up. This just
hit my head here.

S3 (40:04):
Okay.

S2 (40:05):
Um, and you want to ask, well, what's that all about?

S4 (40:09):
Well, it's fair, because if I just walked up to
you right now, Carl, before the show started today, and
I was just like, Carl, how are you? You know,
just like I don't I don't know. I don't know
how that would go.

S2 (40:20):
Give me a little bit more and I'm going to
feel it and see what I'm feeling here. Go ahead.
Give me give me one verse of real. Just give
me some. Yeah. Go ahead Jonathan, you're doing great.

S4 (40:28):
Good morning. Carl, did you know that God loves you today?

S9 (40:32):
Did you know that he loves you?

S3 (40:34):
Oh, wow.

S4 (40:35):
Yeah, but, I mean, like.

S3 (40:36):
That could.

S4 (40:37):
Work. Yeah. I mean, okay, but like, in. yes, we're
doing a little thing right now.

S9 (40:41):
But like.

S2 (40:42):
Out of the water.

S9 (40:42):
Right there. No, because.

S4 (40:44):
Listen, if I came to you at three in the
morning today and I just started, I just started singing. No,
no explanation, no nothing. Just started singing. Even if it
was those words, you might be like, you doing all right?
You're all.

S9 (40:56):
Right. But.

S2 (40:57):
But hold on. I'm going to push back on you.

S9 (40:59):
Okay. Push back.

S2 (41:00):
So here's here's the funny thing about that. I think
if you sing, uh, give me, give me just what's
a big pop song right now? Give me one.

S9 (41:08):
Come on, man.

S2 (41:09):
It's non-Christian.

S9 (41:10):
Pop pop tune.

S4 (41:11):
Uh.

S9 (41:11):
Or give me one from the past.

S2 (41:13):
Earth, Wind and fire.

S9 (41:14):
Come on.

S4 (41:14):
Yeah. September.

S2 (41:15):
Do you know September? Do you know any verses?

S9 (41:17):
Yeah. Uh. All right, well, give me a quick.

S2 (41:19):
Verse of.

S9 (41:19):
September.

S5 (41:20):
All I know.

S4 (41:20):
Uh, okay, I'll just do the chorus. Dancing in September.

S2 (41:30):
Okay, good. All right. So that one doesn't do anything
for me.

S9 (41:33):
Well, sure.

S2 (41:34):
Especially at 3 a.m.. But the other one that you had.
Do you know that God loves you and you're crewing
in a way that's good. And and here's my point.
Here's what's crazy about singing songs, hymns and spiritual songs
to one another. Here's what's amazing about this. Do you
know that the offensive weapon of war is the Word
of God? It's in 70 times in the New Testament

(41:54):
you find the word rhema, which is the offensive weapon
of war that Jesus used in coming out of the
temptation that we find in the wilderness with Satan. Man
shall not live by bread alone, but by every word
that comes the spoken word. The word there is rhema
spoken from the mouth of God. And then you find
in Ephesians six, take up the sword of the spirit,

(42:14):
which is the rhema word of God, spoken word of God.
So it's putting two and two together. You combine that with,
oh boy, now I'm getting in the weeds. The Hebrew
word for meditate is Hagar Hagar. And it means to mutter, moan, sing. Okay.
And then you look at songs of ascent. Here's here's
what's going on. The reason you sing and make music

(42:37):
together is people, is that you are singing the offensive
weapon of war over others. It's not about you having
your little personal, personal worship experience. This is about you
encouraging people. This is why I tell folks at our
church campuses in Chicago, sing loud. I don't care if
you're out of tune. Bel-Air, baby. Bel-Air.

S4 (42:59):
It's a good encouragement.

S9 (43:00):
Because.

S2 (43:01):
The the most hymns, most choruses are grounded in truth, right?

S3 (43:07):
Yes, absolutely.

S2 (43:09):
So sing it out. I don't know why that came
into my head, but somebody needed to hear it. Make
sure there's at least one worship leader out there going, yeah,
let me try to tell.

S9 (43:18):
People this.

S2 (43:19):
For years.

S5 (43:20):
Have you ever been in a worship service and you
were really blessed by the singing of someone around you?

S9 (43:26):
Yeah.

S5 (43:26):
I mean, and it wasn't necessarily because, oh, wow, they
have such an amazing, like, recording style, like level voice.

S9 (43:33):
Correct.

S5 (43:34):
But have you ever just been blessed by someone else's worship?
I definitely have where I could, I could hear a
voice behind me singing their heart out and I was blessed. Definitely.

S2 (43:44):
When you are in a worship service, you're singing with
the small group. This is. This has a two fold
purpose for the glory of God and the good of others.
Lift up your voice, friend. This baptized in pickle juice
stuff that's got to go away. Get out of here!

S5 (44:05):
That's an expression, you know.

S4 (44:07):
Can I I this is. I don't usually do this,
but can I give a resource for people, an app
for people to to check out? That is totally biblical.
It's great. It's called Daily Devo and it's from the
Worship Initiative, which is by Shane and Shane. Uh, we
actually interviewed one of the Shane's, uh, a little bit
ago talking about the worship initiative, and they made this

(44:29):
devotional series. It's a daily devotional that starts with a
song that is completely scripture based, and it's sung by
Shane and Shane. And then after that, it's a spoken
devotional that's based off of Scripture and that song, and
then it comes back and finishes the devotional with the
song again. So it's singing and worshiping, getting your heart

(44:50):
towards God, and then it's doing a devotional in the
Scripture and then going back to that song that was
based in that scripture.

S9 (44:58):
Wow.

S4 (44:58):
It's really good. It's called Daily Devo. It's by the
Worship Initiative.

S3 (45:02):
How has that helped you?

S5 (45:03):
What have you found that to be beneficial?

S4 (45:05):
I love it, I love and I think it's what
we're talking about here. It's the connection between the Word
of God, the truths of God and song. Yes. I
think that there is a really, uh, spiritual connection there
that God designed. And when we put those two things together,
Scripture and worship, uh, that those two things just work beautifully.

(45:27):
And so and I love that it plays the song
it gets your heart ready, gets in the scripture, and
then you end with that song and you hear all
the things you may have missed the first time. It's really.

S9 (45:35):
Great.

S2 (45:35):
All right. It's an app.

S4 (45:36):
Yeah, it's an app. It's just called Daily Devo. And
just make sure it's it's it's called Daily Devo. And
it's from the Worship Initiative.

S5 (45:44):
Text the word worship. We've got it for you.

S9 (45:46):
Text worship to.

S5 (45:47):
[phone]. Jonathan mentioned it, so let's make it easy for
you to get it. Text worship. If you want to
check out this app. Worship to [phone].

S2 (46:00):
All right, I got to do something here. This is
so important. In the last hour, we had a number
of you surrender to Christ. And so there's going to
be a new song on your lips. Because it's on
your heart. Because Jesus has saved your soul. And we
sent out just a little link to help you know
what to do with your first steps in Jesus. 9344.
Last four numbers of those of you surrendering to Jesus

(46:21):
today 8010, 37, 8222, 26. Oh, no. Here. I'm getting
covered up. Okay. We got all these new links going out. Uh, 37, 82.
I said that one, Carl. You see, now we're getting
covered up here. All right, I got it, I got it,
I got.

S9 (46:39):
It.

S2 (46:40):
Uh, I got it, I got it. Hang on here. 22, 26.
We've got 7057 07920093. We got 7051. We got 0189
and maybe a couple others. But those are folks that
just surrendered to Jesus Christ.

S9 (47:01):
How sweet is this guys?

S4 (47:02):
It's awesome.

S2 (47:03):
Praise God man praise God. Okay. This is just awesome man.
When you go worship, bottom line is this you sing
for the glory of God and the good of others.
Sing songs, hymns and spiritual songs. You know why? It's
an offensive weapon of war. You lift up your voice
like Ali said, and you are blessing someone with truth

(47:25):
and Vocalizing the realities that are being sung. And I
pray it comes right from the belly of your soul. Okay,
coming up here. Ali's got a question. Let's hold on
to it for a second. But it's a good one
and we're going to jump into it. Just give us
a couple minutes. We'll be right back here, guys, helping
you take your next step with Jesus.

S1 (47:47):
Your shot of hope to help you through the day.
This is Carl and crew on Moody Radio.

S2 (47:53):
We got a question for you. What's the thing that
God did that your whole family still talks about? Going
to go to the phone lines. Give us a call
right now. 800 555 7898.

S5 (48:04):
Let's go to Janet. First time caller from Florida. Janet. Janet,
what's that thing for your family?

S10 (48:11):
Well, about over a year ago, my daughter, who's a diabetic,
was at home working at home and went into a
diabetic coma, and we didn't know about it. And the
Lord sent somebody to check her house about eight hours
later and found her near death. Um, they rushed her
to the hospital. Her sugar was over 2000.

S3 (48:34):
Wow.

S10 (48:35):
And they said, you know, we're not holding out much
hope for her. So she. If she was in ICU,
she was in a coma for three days. They couldn't
get her sugar to come down. And the next day,
the doctor came in and said, we can't explain it,
but she's coming through and she's going to make it
and she's going to be fine. And that day she

(48:56):
woke up. And. That was an answer to prayer. Big time.

S9 (49:02):
Wow.

S2 (49:02):
Talking about that until you go home to be with God. Wow.
Way to go, Janet. First time caller from Florida. Beautiful.
Oh my goodness. It's suspenseful sitting here listening to it.
It's like, where are we going here.

S5 (49:15):
As you know, there's a God turn.

S2 (49:17):
There's a turn somewhere. Theresa. Thank you. First time caller. Indiana.
What's your story?

S11 (49:23):
Okay, so when my children were younger, over 20 something
years ago, I used to have I had five kids
and I had to run each one to baseball, basketball,
dance rehearsal, and I didn't get gas in the car.
And we're driving. After the whole events were over, we're
driving home and the car runs out of gas and
we're stuck on the side of the road. And I'm saying,

(49:43):
you guys need to pray, start praying and asking God
to get us home and pray in the Holy Spirit.
And they did. And the car started and we got
gas until this day. My kids know how faithful God is,
and they're like 30 years old now. And that's the testimony.
So every time the car goes bad or something, everyone's like,
just start praying, start, you know, start praying. He's going

(50:04):
to work it out.

S2 (50:05):
Yeah, the engine can fall on the ground.

S9 (50:07):
And you're like.

S2 (50:08):
Let's start praying God.

S9 (50:09):
Can lift this thing up. I mean.

S2 (50:11):
And God's big enough for that. And you might say,
that's so small. God knows the hairs on your head.
He's got an answer for your stuff. Let's go back
to the phone lines, Ali.

S5 (50:19):
Yeah, let's go to Maurice. First time caller from Indiana. Maurice,
what's the thing that God did that your whole family
still talks about?

S12 (50:27):
Yeah. My son, when he was nine months old, my
firstborn son, Ian. Um, we thought he just had a
common cold. And we took him to the hospital, and
they diagnosed him with viral myocarditis. He went into cardiac arrest. Uh,
they had trouble resuscitating him. Even when they were shocking
him with the defibrillators. They told us that he wasn't
going to make it through the night three different times

(50:49):
over the course of several days when he would go
into cardiac arrest. But we proclaim God's word that by
his stripes our son was healed and our whole family
was praying for him. Churches were praying for him. They
went in to disconnect his heart and let this heart
lung machine pump his blood while they tried to let
his heart rest because it was swollen twice its normal

(51:09):
size and had to be twice the normal rate to
pump the same volume of blood. And there was no
known treatment, no known cure. And the doctor said, give
me two hours and 45 minutes and we'll we'll get
this done. Uh, because he's small, we don't have to
cut his chest open. We can do it through his
through his arteries. The doctor came out in 45 minutes,
and he was stuttering and stammering, and we said, what happened?

(51:31):
Why are you back so early? He said, well, I
didn't have to do anything. I said, what do you mean?
He said, well, I didn't have to do anything. I
don't understand it. But but right before we got ready
to start the procedure, his vital signs started coming back
down to normal and everything started coming back. And so
I told everybody to stop and don't do it. He said, well,
we're not we haven't done anything. But right now your
son's getting better and I haven't touched him. But, but,
but but we don't understand. But he's getting better and better.

(51:53):
And I said, hey, I know what happened. God healed
my son.

S3 (51:56):
Wow.

S12 (51:57):
My son's 27 years old, and he's a human resource
director in Alta Vista, California. He loves the Lord. And
our family still talks about and knows that that was God.

S3 (52:08):
Yeah.

S9 (52:08):
Maryse.

S3 (52:09):
Wow.

S2 (52:10):
Maryse. First time caller from Indiana. Oh my goodness. Coming up,
we'll take more of your calls. This will put some
real encouragement in your heart today. And someone needed to
hear this. And just just go to God today with
whatever you're facing. He's able. My goodness. More of your
calls straight ahead.

S1 (52:30):
You're listening to Carl and crew on Moody Radio.

S2 (52:33):
Sometimes Ali pops the question and it's like.

S9 (52:37):
Boom!

S2 (52:38):
This is one of those days. What's the thing that
God did that your whole family still talks about this?
We're getting fire hose with words of praise today. This
is amazing, John.

S5 (52:48):
Encouraging.

S2 (52:48):
It's so good. John in Illinois. What do you say, John?

S12 (52:52):
Hi. Um, so this is from, uh, over 30 years ago.

S2 (53:00):
Okay.

S13 (53:00):
Uh, when we were first married, we were married 43
years now. We were first married trying to have our child.
We had infertility problems, and we tried for five years.
Tried and prayed and had our whole church praying for us. And, uh,
the doctors couldn't find anything wrong. And my wife was

(53:24):
then involved in a head on collision. Totaled the car, and, uh,
she came through it. Okay. And after she recovered, we
very quickly conceived, and the doctor said it was because
her uterus was tipped and the accident just shook everything
up inside and straightened it out.

S2 (53:46):
That's one of the craziest stories ever.

S14 (53:49):
Isn't it? Isn't it? That is so. That is crazy.

S13 (53:52):
It just shows how God can take something painful and
turn it into something beautiful. So now we have three,
three grown children, and, uh, I tell people to drive
carefully because accidents cause people.

S3 (54:10):
John.

S2 (54:11):
John. That's almost a dad joke. So I'll tell you what.
You stay on the horn. We're giving you a Carl
and crew prize back for throwing.

S14 (54:17):
That wing dinger in down the.

S3 (54:18):
Stretch. A guy who.

S5 (54:19):
Can appreciate a good dad joke. Am I right, John?

S3 (54:23):
That's hilarious.

S4 (54:24):
I love that so much.

S2 (54:26):
Oh my goodness. Oh, and first time caller in Florida. Hello, Ann.
You're with us. Oh, no. Ann's gone. That's the tone.

S4 (54:38):
Okay, we've got in now.

S2 (54:39):
Oh, we got in back. Ann. Were you with us
right now? What's your story, Ann?

S10 (54:44):
Well, first of all, I got in a little late.
I didn't hear the instructions. That happened a long time ago.
But maybe this will encourage one person out there or more.
But our family pray together as a family for my
mom's salvation. My sister and I prayed for 60 years.
My kids have been praying for 40 some years and
she was Vietnamese, just was not interested in anything spiritual.

(55:05):
Didn't want to hear it. And at age 88 became
a Christian and her heart is soft. She wants to pray.
It's an amazing miracle, and I just want to encourage
anyone out there that's praying for 60 years for someone.
Don't give up.

S14 (55:19):
So that's.

S10 (55:20):
My story. It's a more recent one, but I just
felt like the Lord wanted me to share.

S2 (55:23):
No, that's that's. Oh, come on, that's a family memory
that if we do it right, I'm saying we. If
you do it right, and that that'll be passed down
a couple of generations. If God holds off on coming back. Wow.
And first time caller from Florida. Beautiful. Uh, let me
get one more in here. Adam. First time caller. Illinois.
What do you say? Adam.

S13 (55:44):
So it was about.

S15 (55:45):
20 years ago. I had an aunt that, uh, suffered
from diabetes. She had cane green in both her legs,
and they were actually going to amputate both of them.
The night before she had surgery. The whole family was
in the room when they told us that visitation hours
were over and we started to pray. The doctor comes
in and he says, what are you guys doing? We said,

(56:08):
we're praying for healing. And he says, oh, well, nothing's
going to save your aunt other than the amputation. And
one of my cousins tells the doctor and he says,
My God, my God will heal her. And the doctor
comes back and says, well, if your God heals her,
I want to meet him. Following morning, they get her.

(56:30):
They go into her room to try and start prepping
her for surgery. Both her legs, which were already black,
were now a rosy pink. The doctor calls my cousin
right away. He says, I need you here. She rushes
to the hospital and when she rushes, he says, I

(56:50):
need to meet your God. Wow. After that, my aunt
still lived for about eight years before she went home
with the Lord and she was able to walk. She
was able to enjoy with the family. That's one of
the miracles that up until a story that we tell

(57:11):
everybody just to show the strength.

S2 (57:14):
Adam man.

S14 (57:15):
That is.

S2 (57:15):
That is that is powerhouse, bro. I don't even have
words for that. I don't have words for that.

S3 (57:21):
Wow.

S2 (57:23):
I don't know what you're up against today, but we
got a mountain moving. God. Look, the reality is, even
the apostle Paul prayed for a thorn in the flesh
to be removed. And God said, my grace is sufficient.
So look, every prayer is answered. We just don't know how.
But could God heal? Can he take gangrene legs and

(57:44):
turn them pink and save a doctor's life? Yeah he's
able guys. Oh my goodness.

S1 (57:51):
It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.

S2 (57:54):
You know, it's easy to begin to kind of mail
it in with regard to well, a lot of things
in life. I mean, your career, your calling, your marriage.
It's easy. You know, a lot of people walk down
the aisle. I've married off. Oh goodness sakes. I keep
saying 110 or so. My wife says it's way up there.

(58:15):
So probably 120, 130 couples. And every one of them
had something in common. They walked down the aisle. And
you know what? They get this what I had when
I got married, man, I walked away from that ceremony
and the reception, and my jaw just ached. Why? We
were smiling and so happy that that perma perma smile
created Lockjaw.

S4 (58:35):
Lockjaw I love it.

S2 (58:36):
You know, guys, what I'm talking about. It's that weird feeling.
It's like.

S14 (58:40):
Ah.

S2 (58:41):
I remember pulling off the side of the road, getting
all the getting all the decor off of my little
mini pickup truck. And because we didn't want to have
to smile at anyone else, we were done. We were happy.
We're happy. Everything's good. We don't want to smile at
anyone else.

S4 (58:54):
My face.

S2 (58:54):
Hurts. Don't make me smile. Get my face. I'm holding
my jaw right now because it's.

S14 (58:58):
Like, ah, it's so.

S2 (58:59):
Hurting. But then you get down the road a little
ways and you're like, what in the cat hair happened here?
We were so fired up about this thing, and now
we're glorified roommates. We have occasional sex, we have a
shared chicken account. We got 2.2 kids, and we're hurting.
Where'd the love go? We need God's grace in marriage,

(59:21):
don't we, Brad? Roads. We need it constantly.

S14 (59:24):
Absolutely.

S2 (59:25):
Pour out your heart for a moment, man. What's the
condition of the church right now for marriages? Where would
you say we're at?

S16 (59:31):
We got a lot of work to do. Uh communio.
Barna study showed 72% of churches have no marriage ministries
at all. Um, a large percentage of churches have not
even a budget item for marriage. And, you know, the church.
I'm just longing for the church to have a major movement,
because I believe that marriage will be more important than
the home when it becomes more important in the church.
So I believe in the church that much, and it's

(59:52):
such a huge opportunity.

S5 (59:55):
Brad Rhoades, our guest right now, along with his wife Marilyn,
they founded Grace or Grace marriage, rather Grace marriage in 2015,
helping church leaders disciple married couples through a proactive and
ongoing marriage ministry. Brad, give us a little bit of
your own story. You married your beautiful bride, Marilyn, with
great expectations. The smile that hurts your face, it keeps going.

(01:00:17):
And then you and your wife quickly found that boy.
This was not as easy as we thought it was
going to be.

S17 (01:00:23):
Well, dating was so easy and fun, and we had
a blast. And then, you know, as soon as we
got married, it just seemed like everything changed. And you
know it. I mean, literally, I went from her favorite
person to her least favorite person. About six months. And, um,
I didn't really understand. I was like, well, you know what?
What I understand now, but I didn't understand then. But
it was our first argument was that at our wedding reception.

S5 (01:00:46):
Brad, what did you see God begin to do once you.
I mean, and I know you this went on for
about a year, kind of doing your own thing. A
lot of conflict. What was the the turning point for
you in Marilyn?

S17 (01:00:59):
Well, the turning point. The first turning point was Marilyn
came to me and she said, I don't need you.
And I, like kind of rocked me back like, oh
my goodness, I knew it was bad. I think it
was that bad. And she said, well, then she explained,
let me and I want to ask for your forgiveness.
She said, Christ is sufficient. She said, Christ is sufficient
for my joy, my happiness, my beauty, my security. He said,

(01:01:19):
I've been asking from you what only God can give me.
She said, I'll be your wife, but I'm off your
roller coaster. She told me, I'm not hitching my joy
to you anymore. You know, it was so. That was the.
The revelation of the sufficiency of the Lord Jesus Christ
was the thing that turned our marriage. Now. God has
work to do on me. And he completely broke me later.

(01:01:42):
But but that that that completely freed Maryland from just
living miserable all the time.

S14 (01:01:48):
Yeah.

S2 (01:01:48):
That's powerful. Now, what's interesting here? You practice law for
22 years. Did you have kind of a did that
affect your approach to marriage, kind of that, uh, almost
litigating things or having the facts. And did it. How
did that impact things?

S17 (01:02:05):
It did because with Marilyn say something I didn't agree with,
I would just kind of like, treat her like a
witness and ask her questions.

S14 (01:02:11):
And say, I was wondering.

S17 (01:02:13):
And she would even say, I am not your witness.
And then she finally got to a point. She said, look,
I would I'm not. I would rather just not say
anything to disagree with you because like, conversing with you
is so unpleasant. So it's.

S18 (01:02:26):
Like it was so.

S17 (01:02:29):
I mean, she had something that she wanted to say.
She just wouldn't say it because it might force her
to have to talk to me.

S3 (01:02:34):
Wow.

S5 (01:02:35):
Brad, how did what was the upside of what did
you see in your practice of law that helped you
get a vision for the marriage ministry? Grace. Marriage that
now exists today.

S17 (01:02:47):
Seeing couples, just seeing misery. I mean, seeing coldness and
anger and division and just emotional and spiritual hurt. It's
just it just it was just so sad. And the
kids and the kids all of a sudden going from
being with their mom and dad to traveling back and
forth every other weekend and every week. And, and it's

(01:03:09):
just like I saw that most of this can be prevented.
And then I saw that the way we do marriage
is this it's this crisis response model. It's not a
proactive wellness model. And if we could flip the way
we do marriage so people really take care of this thing.
Have a blast, invest in it, spend time and resources
in it. You'd probably get rid of 8,085% of this mess.

(01:03:31):
And so it's like I felt like I needed to
leave the law to hopefully completely change the way we
do marriage.

S5 (01:03:37):
Dig a little deeper there. Crisis response versus proactive. Explain
what you mean.

S17 (01:03:43):
Crisis. Typically, when do couples invest in marriage? When it's
so bad one of them can't take it. So they're
responding to crisis. They're calling a counselor. They're calling a pastor.
They're going to a tenancy. And yes, we need to
respond to crisis. But a better approach is a proactive
wellness approach where you say, wow, marriage is really important.
This thing breaks down. Everything around me breaks down. I'm
going to really take good care of it.

S2 (01:04:04):
Pour out your heart here for a moment. You really
want to equip churches to move from performance marriages into
grace based marriages. Explain your heart on that one, my man.

S16 (01:04:12):
I want really churches to disciple and shepherd marriages because
people just don't know how to be married. I didn't.
I mean, I didn't know what I was doing. And
when you don't know what you're doing, things don't go
that well. And shepherding and discipleship is a thing. And
I just long for churches to shepherd and disciple marriages
and teach people to do marriage well and do it.
Marriage well is learning. What a great space marriage is.

(01:04:36):
And that's where you just offer your love to the
other as a free gift of grace, just like God
offered his love to you as a free gift of grace.
It's not a reward for performance. Why you've been so
good to me. I'll do this for you. That's our
walk with Christ. While we were enemies of God, he
sent his Son to die for us. And so? So
we'd say, you know, it's a totally different approach. And

(01:04:56):
I just long for a major movement of the church
in the home.

S5 (01:05:00):
Brad, what have you seen so far? I know that
you and your and your bride now are privileged to
work with the churches in a bunch of different states,
even a couple different countries. Tell us what you've seen
as you've seen this approach start to take on.

S16 (01:05:14):
It's exciting. Churches are starting to realize that having a
children's ministry, youth ministry and no marriage ministry is kind
of a dysfunctional family ministry. And that that really to
win the battle for children and youth, you've got to
win the battle for marriage. So it's exciting. Churches are
starting to realize, wow, why? Why don't we have a
marriage ministry? It doesn't make any sense because if marriage

(01:05:35):
doesn't work, nothing works. So it's we're up to about
291 churches now that have launched ongoing marriage Ministries partnering
with us. And I kind of the vision is that
God would move that ongoing marriage discipleship would be just
commonplace in the standard operating procedure in all churches around
this country.

S2 (01:05:53):
Awesome. Brad Rhodes, an amazing guy and phenomenal ministry. God
can call a guy out of lawyering into marriage building.
You got a calling on your life. Here's what I
want you to do. And I want you to keep
this in mind. Boom crew, we are coming into a
season soon when we're going to be launching small groups.
Maybe God stirring your heart here. Big time pastors, leaders

(01:06:16):
all across North America right now. I'm asking you if
this is something God's laying on your heart. There's podcasts,
resources galore that you can just grab right now, and
maybe this is a good fit for you. Check it out.
Text the key word marriage. Just say key word marriage
to 800 555, 78, 98. We love you, Brad. Thanks

(01:06:37):
for your ministry. Again, text the word marriage to 800
555 7898. One word marriage 800 555 7898.