Ep 266 | Max Lucado on Overcoming Grief in Dark Times | The Glenn Beck Podcast

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Wars, rumors of wars, political divides, hatred over this, hatred over that.

It's pretty much the cycle of news, isn't it?

I mean, that sums it up.

The way we think about our world, the way we think about ourselves, our lives,

sometimes isn't much better than that.

I overslept.

I didn't get enough sleep.

I worked too hard.

I sat around too much.

I don't have this.

I don't have that.

I eat too much of this.

The bills are due again.

I'm such a loser.

All of these things

is common for all of us to think.

But that's not how God made us to think.

He gives us a choice.

This week, our guest has discovered how to reset our minds to factory settings and it makes all of the difference in the world.

Please welcome for his third time on the Glenbeck podcast best-selling author, pastor, and good dear friend, Max Lucato.

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Max, you are, I mean, you're called America's pastor for a reason.

I mean, you are right

on the pulse, I think, of what is happening in the world.

Last time, I think you were on, were we not talking about end of days kind of stuff?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We were talking about, you know, what the future holds according to a Bible, biblical worldview.

Right.

Right.

And

I think a lot of people are going through, is this, what, where, where are we in time?

And I found it really uh reassuring coming from you and that you could take us through as not somebody who is always saying oh the end of the world is here um because that's not really what it's about and now at least in my life this book comes out and um

you know it's so funny because

just two weeks ago i said to a friend i've been wrestling with some things

And

I thought, you know, I wrote this down.

This is how I have to start looking at things.

Choose your thinking and change your life.

And now your book.

And it is exactly the same thing.

It is.

It's the same idea.

Let's get into this because I think this book is so important.

Explain what your concept is.

Well, you just summarized it, Glenn.

By the way, thank you so much for the opportunity.

But yeah, I

really believe that we can determine our life by choosing our thoughts.

And we do have the free will to select the thoughts that we have.

Just because we have a thought, we don't have to think it.

We don't have to believe everything we think.

And so much of life just comes down to managing the thoughts, what we ponder, what we contemplate, what voice we allow to

go around and around inside our heads.

That's really where our

life is managed.

I do believe that behavior is preceded by belief.

And so if you want to change your behavior, go upstream a bit and deal with your beliefs.

I'm glad this connected with you.

I do.

I think it's a struggle for a lot of people.

Yeah, I think it's a way to

reset to factory settings in a way.

I've been struggling to try to figure out because, boy, Max, my life is, I'm about, I'm making massive changes in my life.

My kids are now all moved out of the house.

We just let the last one go.

My wife and I just moved out of the house that was the kids', you know, childhood home.

And, you know, I'm 62.

And boy, my mind is playing all kinds of games with me right now.

And I'm thinking of things that.

I know are destructive.

I'm thinking about the mistakes that I've made with my children and everything else.

And

I know that that is destructive.

And I'm trying to figure out why does that happen?

Why are we like that?

Is that because

it's a safety mechanism that we're always trying to look for the thing that might hurt us and then it just spirals out of control?

Is it also spiritual

in nature?

Why do we always choose the negative over the positive about ourselves?

You're not alone.

I do the very same thing, Glenn.

I've been at the same church since 1988.

The church is doing wonderfully.

We have my successor is leading the staff.

The church is growing.

I preach, you know, a fraction of the number of times that I used to.

I'm 70 years old.

It was right, you know, to turn the leadership of the church.

But Sunday morning, just a couple of days ago, I was sitting in the sanctuary.

The place was packed.

People were happy, young people everywhere.

And what am I thinking?

Oh, they don't need me anymore.

I'm

superfluous to this place.

You know,

I would just let my mind go down.

So I have two answers to that.

I'd love your thoughts.

Number one, I do think it's a spiritual issue.

I agree.

You know, the Bible talks a lot about thoughts.

And there's a little phrase tucked in John 13 and verse 2 about the story of Judas that that is often overlooked.

And it's a little phrase.

Satan placed the idea in the mind of Judas to betray Jesus.

He placed an idea in the mind of Judas.

And so I do believe there is a great God, a loving God who cares for us, who loves us.

But I believe there's

a malevolent force, the devil, who means us evil.

And he places these thoughts in our minds.

And that leads into a little more of a secular answer, and that is we all have proclivities to certain negative thought patterns.

It might surprise people.

I'm a bit insecure.

And I'm not surprised that Satan knows this and that he comes in a beautiful worship service in which I should be thrilled and yet allow myself to feel forgotten, neglected, neglected, because he loves to take our joy.

What do you think, Glenn?

I agree with everything that you just said.

I know, I mean, I gauge what I'm doing sometimes on the amount or level of attack I'm under.

You know, you know, you're over the target when you're getting the most flack.

I think Satan puts up his

best spiritual punches at you when you are doing or about to do something important.

I agree.

But

I also think there are these tapes that we grew up with, tapes that

we heard from a childhood.

I moved away from my home at 18 and I moved across the country in a time when long-distance phone calls were expensive.

And I was poor.

My family was poor.

I was poor.

And I couldn't call.

And I found, in retrospect, I find that time of my life so important

because I didn't have the voice of others.

I was no longer the little stinky brother.

I was never, you know, I was allowed to be me and discover me.

But at the same time,

you know, we tell ourselves these lies over and over again.

I'm fat, I'm ugly, I'm, I'm not smart, I'm whatever it is.

And

I can't figure out why that happens naturally to us, why we're attracted to the negative, other than

it seems to be the way of the world with the Lord, the way he created us.

Service, to get me to do service is like pulling teeth until I'm there.

And then I'm driving home and I'm like, why don't I do this every day?

I feel so good.

I know it.

But it's hard to get there.

It seems like the way we're designed.

I think you're hitting so many truths square on.

I don't know which one to pick first.

Maybe I'll start with what you said about our upbringing.

We cannot overestimate.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

We cannot overestimate the importance that voices of authority have in our lives.

I mean,

if it's a high school football coach, if it's a father,

if it's a Girl Scout master, if it's an older sibling.

But when you're young and you're so

impressionable, and somebody that is physically larger than you,

older than you, perhaps has a position over you, like a teacher or a principal.

And when they say things to you that hurt,

Those go deep.

They embed themselves in our psyche.

And

it's a challenge.

In some ways, we spend all of our lives responding to the negative and positive voices that we hear in our youth.

That's why parenting matters.

And that's why we have to understand

that ultimately God is the

only authority.

And people that we might have respected, they were limited in their understanding.

And we even have to take their criticisms, sometimes especially take their criticisms with a grain of salt.

You know, a friend of mine said,

Glenn, you want to understand how to be a parent.

Imagine God

as your literal perfect father

because

you will see the pain that you have to go through for the best in the child.

You'll see why they don't, he doesn't give you everything you think you want.

You'll know how to discipline with true love

and restraint.

And

I think that's true.

But we look at our parents who are so flawed.

And

at least until I started getting gray hair,

you don't,

you look at your parents in particular as people who, you know, they're your parents.

They're supposed to know better.

And we're all bluffing.

We're all bluffing.

All bluffing.

Yeah.

All bluffing, you know?

And if we would just look for a higher, instead of going to the experts, so-called,

go to the eternal pattern set by God.

I think we're so much better off.

I agree 100%.

And you're going through a lot of change right now in your life, it sounds like.

And these times of change, relocating from one house to another, saying goodbye to our kids, wondering if we raised our kids, if we equipped our kids well,

we tend to be our own worst enemy during times like that.

I came across some.

Oh, go ahead.

Go ahead.

No, go ahead.

Well, a Cleveland clinic tells us, number one, that we have 70,000 thoughts a day.

That's a lot of thoughts.

Most of them don't matter.

You know, oh, I think I need to go to the restroom.

Hey, I need to be sure and feed the dog.

Oh, boy, it's hot outside.

Most of them are neutral.

But of those who have an emotional impact upon us, the Cleveland Clinic says, hang on to your hat, four out of five are critical.

Four out of five are critical.

That is stunning to me.

Our nature tends to beat ourselves up.

Does that statistic surprise you, Glenn?

No.

And that's what I've been pondering.

Why is that our nature?

I mean,

let me go back to Sonny and ask you this question.

I know what logos means, so I'm asking for more of a surface answer.

In the beginning, there was the word, and the word was God.

To me, and especially if you understand logos, the the living word that has power all of our words if we are if we are truly sons or daughters of a heavenly father we have some

some of his power within us and his power comes from speaking it and it becomes and it's the one thing that we don't ever seem to concentrate on.

We don't, even pastors don't really connect that

God God creates through thought and word, not hammers and nails, thoughts and words.

And it's the same with us.

Absolutely.

I could not agree more.

The 20, I was ordained in 1978.

And like many pastors, I thought it was my job to tell people how to behave.

And I would say, do this or don't do this.

That was the essence of my work.

Do this, don't do this.

I was always focused on behavior.

About halfway into my ministry over all these years, it dawned on me that really the scripture always deals with belief before it deals with behavior.

Someone pointed this out to me in the writings of the Apostle Paul, that all of his epistles are dominated by at least 50, I'm sorry, 30%

belief, and then the rest of the epistle will be behavior, belief that God loves you, belief that you're saved by grace, belief that God will hear your prayers.

He introduces his epistles by talking to our belief system, our thought system.

He's shaping a worldview.

And then he begins talking to us about, you know, not getting drunk, about respecting one another, about telling the truth.

And all that's important.

But it's easy when you know who you are.

You know the people.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Once you have that belief system, once your worldview is healthy, one of the statistics I came across really stunned me.

And that is

people who battled the HIV virus were asked, do you believe in the presence of a living and loving God?

Those who said yes

had a 300,000 times percentage greater odds of healing than those who said no.

300,000 times.

30,000 times.

It was stunning.

It's like the belief in a living and loving God

activates something in our physical bodies, in our bodies that creates health.

And conversely, the idea that there is no God, or if there is a God, he's ticked off at me, perpetually angry at me.

That creates a even saying those words can create a sense of heaviness in our lives.

And so that's why I think if we're going to really tame our thoughts, we've got to begin to understand what thoughts it is are best for us to think.

So, could I go secular here for you?

Absolutely.

My father,

he believed in God.

He called God

mind

because he said,

if I say the word God, that is defined by each individual in their own upbringing and everything else.

And it carries so much baggage.

He said, so let's just, let's just call it mind or universal spirit.

And he said, let's look at it as an engine.

And it works the same everywhere, all the time.

And when I was really struggling in my 30s and I was sobering up, he said,

I want you to keep a record of your thoughts.

Keep a record of your thoughts just for one day.

Take a notepad, put P positive on one side, N on the other, put a line down the middle, and just don't judge the thoughts, don't think of the thoughts, just notice the thoughts and just count positive, negative, positive, negative.

And I was overwhelmed with the negative.

And he told me I would be.

And he said,

Your problem is you are you are building yourself, your life into

what you don't, you say you don't want, but because you're thinking about that, that's the way you're perceiving everything.

And that's what you're creating.

And

it's, it's,

he said, you have to start thinking the other to believe the other.

And I said, but dad, I don't believe.

I don't believe any of those things.

I do believe that I'm stupid.

I do believe that I'm whatever it was.

And he said, well, then you always will be.

He said, you want to change, then you have to say over and over, you got to say it five to one.

You have a stupid thought.

You empower it on the other side, five to one.

And he said, fake it until you are that.

And I really didn't think that was going to work because I, because I was saying things I didn't believe, you know what I mean, at the time.

But

there is something to that.

It's, I mean, I believe it is the power of God within us that is creating.

And this is the map of that engine he talked about.

So I believe it is not secular, but you can understand it in a secular way, can't you?

Absolutely.

And what is happening, Glenn, I believe, is that as you are speaking positive words to yourself, you are

agreeing with that logos that you mentioned earlier.

You're agreeing with the authoritative word that is spoken over

the universe.

Now,

a person can be absolutely secular, totally

atheistic, and say things that God would say according to scripture and still benefit from them.

You know, and instead of assuming this is going to be a terrible day, what if I get up and say, okay,

I'm going to have a good day?

Well, that is God's will for you and for me and for every person.

He doesn't wish any evil upon people.

And so when I say that, even if I'm a secular thinker, I'm agreeing with that supernatural presence of God that's in the world and I am receiving his will in my life.

Now, of course, as a pastor, that would encourage somebody.

Jesus Christ is the only picture of God ever taken.

He is the presence of God on earth.

And so here's what he has to say about you.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son.

So you're receiving God's love into your life, and you were intended to lead a life in which you have harmony with him, harmony with others.

And it all begins with the way that you think.

And we know this by the Garden of Eden story.

When Satan tempted Eve, he just simply placed a thought in her mind.

Did God really say?

And he just deposited that doubt.

Right.

And that doubt spiraled into disbelief.

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So let's go through some of the things you talk about.

Anxiety, guilt, lust, being overwhelmed, pain.

Let's start with that.

I have noticed,

and I've really, I've really,

I'm getting better every day at figuring this out.

But I've got bad bad back pain.

I fell out of a two-story window, I don't know, when I'm in my 30s.

And it's just gotten to the point, Max, to where it's just, I can't take it.

I've gone to a doctor the whole time, and he said, I won't cut into you until you beg me.

And I'm like, I'm begging you now.

And I have found, I have come to this place to where I thought

I was a good, I was, I had solved the things that would lead me to be a man of good character.

And pain

can wring all of that out of you.

Yeah.

And I'm trying to get a handle on

how to deal with that and how to choose my thinking on that that will strengthen my character.

So I'm not somebody who snaps at somebody.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would imagine

that nine out of 10 of people listening to this podcast could tell a similar story using a different part of their body.

I just have a feeling that in my case, it's a shoulder.

I had a shoulder replacement surgery three months ago, and it still hurts.

It does.

It woke me up last night, but there were days the pain was so severe that I found my thinking foggy and unclear.

It's a real challenge.

But I think it's the same.

It's the same, isn't it, though, with like with

any kind of pain, mental pain, mental anguish.

You know, you're questioning, did I do enough for my kids?

Did I do too much for my kids?

All of that stuff just weighs down on you.

So how do you get around that?

How do you break that?

In this book, I unpack a couple of tools, three tools actually, that I really think are helpful.

And one of them is to practice picky thinking.

The scripture verse in the book of 2 Corinthians says, take every thought captive, every thought captive.

So really the idea of standing at the entryway to the thoughts that come my way and

determining, filtering out those which are unhealthy and receiving those which are true is really essential.

In this case, let's say, you know, that your back is really hurting.

It's a fair thought.

It's a true thought to say, my back is hurting.

Would it be a true thought to say the second verse of that, I'm never going to get better.

So there's where we have to filter.

Yeah, my shoulder really, I mean, it sucks.

It hurts.

Man, I can't, oh, goodness.

And my day, I get it.

Today is a little, is heavied with pain.

But I have to interrupt the spiral on that.

And I have to say, okay, I'm going to tell myself the truth.

I'm going to practice picky thinking.

I'm going to take that thought captive.

And the rest of that verse says, make it submit to the authority of Christ.

And the idea is to take a thought into the presence of God and say, God, I'm thinking that I really hurt.

Now, that's true, but I find myself

spiraling or catastrophizing or assuming the worst.

Is that that from you or is that from the devil?

And I know the answer to that.

And that's where I'm trying to practice that discipline, Glenn, of interrupting that thought before it takes over and

unfair advantage in my mind.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does.

I look at it like I was very careful on saying how, you know, I was struggling with some of my thinking to rephrase it in, I'm really, I'm getting better every day at understanding some things that are troubling me.

You know, being able to say things like that,

you know, to say, I am really having a bad pain day, but I know something glorious is going to happen to me

because of this.

Something is going to happen.

The Lord is not just saying, live with this pain.

He is teaching me something.

And it's really hard.

It's really hard.

We have to,

yeah, we just have to find

because he has a purpose for everything.

I'm not saying he gives you pain, our bodies give us pain.

Um, he created our body, he can heal our body, but sometimes he chooses not to heal our body for some reason.

And then we have to find,

you know, you, I find, find myself really having a hard time complaining about pain when you just think of the nails being put into the Lord's hands.

Um, you know, my gosh, the pain that he went through.

But he knew

the good that would come out of it.

And I think that's how he endured it.

Absolutely.

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

And Glenn, I think what you're saying is so spot on.

I hope that we can transcribe this and make it required reading.

Because what you're saying is this pain has a purpose.

It's when we think our pain is random and meaningless that we begin to descend into a pit of despair.

But if I can believe that, yes,

I'm not pretending I don't hurt.

I'm not glossing over.

I'm not trying to be some Pollyanna.

It really does hurt.

But I really believe that God

can use this.

Maybe he'll use this to help me be more dependent upon him.

Maybe I needed a reminder that I live in a mortal body and he's preparing me for something eternal.

Maybe I needed a lesson on pain so that I can be more compassionate toward others.

And see, that kind of thinking causes me to say, okay, it really hurts.

It's hurt for 12 hours.

I was up all night.

It's really hard.

But Lord, I'm going to believe that you're going to use this either to shape my character for my good or so that I can be more compassionate towards someone else.

And I trust that you hear me, just like you said, Glenn.

Since Christ lived in a mortal body and experienced physical pain, then I can say, Lord, I know you know how I feel, and I ask you to help me.

That's a far healthier thought process than one that would lead down into this quicksand of sadness and despair.

I think that's, Max,

how you know it's it's true.

I'm listening to you.

And I'm

refiguring everything that has been going on in my life.

And

I think you know it's true when

because it's true that the truth will set you free.

And that doesn't mean you're not going to have pain.

That doesn't mean you're not going to have have troubles.

It's not going to, it doesn't mean you're not going to have regrets or whatever.

But when you look at it that way, and when you were saying to me, because it will shape my character, it'll make me better.

It's going to something good is going to come.

I've been saying that to myself for a while, but when you just said it again, authority figures, when you just said it to me

and I heard it from you,

everything in me

changed

and

I just know that it is true, that the truth setting you free, I'm no longer, I don't have to be burdened by the crap that's in my head.

The Lord is doing something with me that will make me freer and

more like him.

Does that make sense to you?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

I think

understanding the sequence of these these thoughts

is really helpful.

A tool that I use in my life and with others, I call UFO.

UFO.

And I'm not talking about aliens over Roswell, New Mexico.

But I'm talking about how an untruth leads to a false narrative that leads to an overreaction.

An untruth.

The untruth would be

God is, this pain

is a result of God's punishment to me.

He's pissed off at me and my back hurts.

That's an untruth.

That's a lie.

But that could be a thought in someone's head.

That then would lead to a false narrative.

And that false narrative would be, God is against me.

He's working against me.

All the forces of the universe are against me.

I'm all by myself.

Glenn, a lot of people you see walking down the street, they have that kind of spiral going on in their head.

And then that could lead to

an overreaction.

You know, maybe I'm going to drink it away.

Maybe I'm going to spend it away.

Maybe I'm going to exit life itself.

You know, it could lead to an overreaction.

So starting with that untruth and treating it with truth is really how we interrupt that cycle.

And that's why understanding the truth that sets you free is so important.

So you is

untruth.

Untruth.

And then F is

false narrative.

And a narrative is what we say to ourselves and the way we see ourselves.

And that leads to an overreaction.

An overreaction.

And usually that's some type of outlandish.

reaction, a temper tantrum,

over unhealthy, unbudgeted spending, anything trying trying to treat the pain that only makes the pain worse.

So let me try another.

You're somebody who really believes in God, but you've dropped the ball on something.

This is something that I think every parent goes through.

But as my kids, you know,

I've been thinking, we didn't read the scriptures every night.

I knew that was important and we didn't.

And there were times that I cut the corners and there were times that I did this and I was tired.

And so

you don't necessarily think God is mad at you, but the the

you you have

you have this thought

that

I'm not worthy.

That's your false narrative.

You know,

I wasn't enough for this situation.

That's not true.

You did the best you could.

And then your false narrative is I'm not worthy and then your outrageous action is deep depression suicide all of those destructive thoughts am i on the right pattern here exactly exactly and so to treat that the minute that untruth surfaces and you say i was a rotten parent which i have a strong feeling you were not but let's just say no but i think everybody kind of goes through the way we all

i've raised three kids i i know it yeah we we all beat ourselves up right?

We all could have done better.

And that's true.

Yeah.

Okay.

So let me deal with that thought.

That thought surfaces in my mind and it says, you know what?

I was a cruddy father.

But rather than giving in to where the devil wants that thought to take me, what if I take that untruth and say, you know what, Lord?

I fell short as a father, but I trust that you're a perfect heavenly father.

And I believe what the scripture says, and that is that all things work for good for those who love you and are called according to your purpose.

And so I take that untruth and I turn it into a truth.

And I say, Lord, could you make up?

Could you compensate?

Could you, you're unbound by time.

You can even minister in the past as well as the future.

And I start thinking these thoughts of faith.

And that leads to a true narrative that says, all right, the story's not over yet.

My kids, they're still,

you know, they're they're still learning.

They're still being shaped.

And I did some things that were pretty good, Dad Gummett.

I did deposit some seeds by the grace of God.

And then that leads to a healthy reaction.

And that reaction might say, we're all still being created.

We're all works in progress.

God loves those kids more than I love my kids.

And so instead of freaking out,

I trust, I release, and I trust.

Does that make sense, Glenn?

Yes, it does.

It does.

Let me take something else that I think a lot of younger people might be going through.

I talked to a young woman last week, and she was telling me that,

you know, she came from a rough childhood, not rough, but a very tough childhood.

She was Appalachia.

And she worked so hard to get out.

And she went to school and she did everything that she was supposed to do.

And she had good grades and she worked hard.

And then she got married to a guy she loved.

And

they've had children.

And she's like, now I've done everything right, but now I'm stuck with this student loan.

I can't get a job because that was the whole college thing seems to her to be a lie.

You know, I'm trying to do the right thing, but we can't make ends meet.

We're never going to be able to buy a house.

We're never.

And people just get.

bogged down in this place.

And it's easy to see it now, Max.

It's so easy to see how these, so easy to see how.

I mean, I would not want to be 30 again in this environment.

So you can see how it happens.

How what speak to that person?

How do you break that up?

That it's because that leads to resentment.

It leads to

really destructive thoughts.

And that

everything is against me and everything is wrong.

And it leads to, you know, the first rebel was Satan, real rebellion.

rebellion.

42% of young people, high school age people today, experience persistent thoughts of sadness and anxiety.

And 22% have seriously contemplated suicide in six months prior to that particular survey.

Now, you're talking about somebody who's not a teenager, but those statistics reflect the day and age in which we live.

And because we feel overwhelmed, we feel like we're facing overwhelming challenges.

One of my favorite stories, I think one of the most popular stories in the whole Bible, is the story of David and Goliath.

Remember the shepherd boy who went up against the Philistine giant?

And when you read that story, you might note that David only one time speaks about Goliath, but nine times he speaks about God.

One time he speaks about Goliath and he calls him an uncircumcised Philistine.

Not a very politically correct phrase.

But then nine times he talks about the armies of the living God.

And who are you to come against the armies of the living God?

And that phrase is repeated over and over and over.

I think what David did there is an example for us, what we can do when we face these overwhelming challenges, our own Goliaths.

And that is we can be careful and say, okay, we are facing a giant, but my God created the heavens and the universe.

He has solutions I know nothing of, but he does love me.

He does care about me.

And I begin to outweigh the thoughts of Goliath with many, many more thoughts of the goodness of God.

That's why this whole idea of understanding that we do serve a living and loving God is so important.

I can empathize greatly with your friend.

I mean, the overwhelming challenges that she faces must feel like they're going to toss her over the cliff.

But it does no good for us to meditate on our misery.

It does no good.

It does us great good to meditate on the majesty of God because we contemplate him.

We're kind of like Peter.

Remember when he got out of the boat on the stormy sea and Jesus had walked on the water and Peter said, Lord, if it's you, tell me and I'll come and walk.

And Jesus said, come.

Peter got out of the boat.

He took a few steps.

But then the scripture says he saw the wind and the waves and he began to sink.

It's when we see the wind and the waves instead of Jesus that we begin to sink.

But as long as our eyes are

set upon him,

and I know.

Not all of our listeners today believe in Jesus.

Understand that.

And I'm not trying to do any side door evangelism here, but I am saying

try.

Try to set your mind on the idea of a God who loves you and knows you.

Just try that.

Talk to yourself.

Allow yourself to entertain the possibility that there's a good God.

Maybe you don't buy everything that preachers like me are always saying, I get it.

But would you please at least consider the possibility that there's a living and loving God who has a great dream for your future and meditate on that possibility because plan B stinks.

If you stare at the wind and the waves, if you stare at the mortgage and the misery, that's just going to suck you under.

But if you'll open yourself up to the idea that there is a God who means you well and that you will never outrun his outsend his grace or outlive his love, I think you'll find that your heart and your mind begin to change.

It's hard.

It's hard, especially if you have,

especially if you've been raised one way or another.

You know, I was raised Catholic and I didn't really believe in God.

I realized, I was 28, 29, 30, and I realized everything that I believed in God, I thought I had believed in God, but everything that I believed God was,

I had just taken from somebody else.

I had just been told.

You know what I mean?

So none of it was personal.

And

I realized if God exists, he wants me to find him.

He wants me to find him.

In fact, everything in the universe would be pointing to him.

You know,

I thought as a dad, if I had my children and I, for some reason, needed them to be separate.

from me, but I wanted them to find me.

I wanted them to know that I would exist, but I needed them to be on their own.

I could make a round room that they were in where they didn't look like there were any doors or windows or anything,

but I would be on the other side and I would be wanting them to find me.

And so everything in that room would point to me.

Everything would point to, yeah, there is a dad on the other side.

All you have to do is X, Y, and Z and you can find him.

And so I took that and I dismissed coincidence.

And then you find yourself, Max, in a place to where

you will pile up all of these things, but then you're faced with a choice.

I don't want to believe that.

I don't want to believe necessarily that's true because it will change the way, it'll change my friends.

It'll change the way I behave.

And I like doing some of the stuff that I do.

You know what I mean?

You'll come up with all these kinds of really stupid reasons.

But it, again, comes down to a choice.

You can investigate and investigate and investigate and do nothing, or you can investigate and really then

make a pact with yourself before

no matter what I find,

I will pursue because I will find the truth.

I am designed to find the truth.

I have to do a lot of work.

I have to do a lot of meditating.

I ought to do everything,

but I am designed to find that truth.

But will you accept it in the end when you find it?

And I think that's another hard hard place for people to get by.

It really is.

We call that faith, you know, trusting that there is a Father on the other side of the walls and he has planted these signs in the universe calling upon us to look to him.

that he is up to something that's really good.

This is why the big question of life is, who is my authority?

Who is my authority?

You know, when I was a kid and then in middle school and then in high school and even in college, I played catcher on the baseball team.

In college, it was a softball team.

I don't want to leave the wrong impression.

But the point is I spent a lot of time squatting behind home plate.

And whether I was on the Little League Pony League high school team or the college softball intramural team, the width of the plate never changed.

Never changed.

The size of the players changed.

The type of ball we were playing changed.

But the 17-inch width of home plate never changed.

It was unchangeable.

It was immutable.

I believe the reason that many people struggle to maintain their thoughts is because they don't have a home plate.

They don't have an unchangeable standard.

in their life.

Through scripture, God reveals himself as that authoritative voice.

He says, I'm not going to change.

I'm always going to love you.

I'm always going to care for you.

I'm always going to strengthen you.

I'm going to allow you to experience the consequences of your bad choices.

Well, these are truths.

These are like home plate.

And if you don't have that, if you feel that your truth is your truth, my truth is my truth, nobody knows any truth.

Well, then you're left, you're like a weather vane whipped about by the winds of fate and chance.

You're subject to to the economy or to the most recent election or to your emotions or to your shoulder pain or back pain.

Your truth changes all the time.

That's why I really believe that the secret sauce for managing our thoughts is a deep faith in the God of the Bible.

Because whether I like the things he does or whether I

don't like the things he does, I must submit to him because he's in charge.

He's the authority.

And the truth is, his authority says he's going to make everything work out in the right time and the right way.

Why, Max, is it we know, I think we probably know less about space than we do know about the character of God.

You know, there's, there's dark matter.

We have no idea.

Most of the universe is made up of dark matter.

We have no idea what that is.

No idea what it is.

And yet we'll go out into space.

We'll take that leap of faith.

We'll open up the airlock door.

We'll dance around in it.

We'll do all of these different things that we've done in space.

And it's easy for us to, even though we know

a fraction of a percentage of what we need to know about space, we go there and we can accept that.

But

we can't seem to open that door on God so many times.

Yeah.

Why?

I think we're inherently self-centered, Glenn.

I think for me to acknowledge that God exists as the center of the universe is for me to confess that I am not the center of the universe.

If I will refuse to bow before God,

then truly that's an issue of arrogance and

what's another word, self-sufficiency.

That the person who says, I don't need God, is a person who truly is battling pride.

But for me to acknowledge that there is a God, and it's not about me, but it's all about him.

And he is creating for himself a people with whom he'll live forever.

And if I am willing to humble myself before him, literally, to get on my knees, to bow my head, to open my hands, all these physical things we do as we worship, then that's the healthiest thing I can do for myself.

The most unhealthy thing is for me to live the Frank Sinatra song and say, I did it my way.

You know, I may have screwed everything up, but I did it my way.

That takes us down a path of destruction.

But the path that takes us to health is that humility-based worship.

I don't think there's any,

well,

there probably is.

But just off the top of my head, I don't think there's any other

trait that is more important to man and his survival mentally and physically than humility.

I agree.

You agree with that?

I agree 100%, Glenn.

The Bible says that God hates arrogance.

He hates it.

He doesn't just dislike it, but he hates it.

Not because we don't have a right to feel proud about winning a football game

or building a house.

That's fine.

But it's that arrogance that says, I don't need God.

God hates that because that's what keeps us from him.

Whenever we

have this sense that people exist to serve me rather than I exist to serve God, we get things backwards.

It's also...

It's not just that I don't need God.

I don't need anybody else.

I'm smarter than you.

I have the answers.

I have it worked out.

And so you're cutting every other possibility out.

You are the source of all that's right.

I think that's one of the problems that we have with our political system right now on both sides.

is it is either my way or the highway.

My guy is 100% right and you are 100% wrong.

And if you don't agree with my guy 100% of the time, then you are 100% wrong.

And

we stop listening to each other.

And so there's no way to grow.

You know, the one thing that is so obvious to me on what's happening in our world is

look how different the Lord made all of us.

And how could somebody expect that we all would come to an agreement on the political route?

You know what I mean?

On really, you know, you can have great dreams on how to build whatever, a widget.

But when you get somebody else that is thinking along the same lines, has the same goal of let's make somebody's life better and this could be the deal, you put people like-minded together like that that have wildly different concepts of how to get there.

You learn from each other, and then all of a sudden it locks in and

you do something far greater than any of you guys could have done and and that's what that's what arrogance stops arrogance stops the

he put us together for a reason we're all different for a reason my wife is very different than me but she has made me a better man

you're far more politically savvy than i am glenn so i'm going to be careful and not step out of my lane no

i've read stories it may be be nostalgic as we always get, but of how Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill would meet and they would literally share and swap ideas.

And they both became better political leaders as a result of that.

Am I misremembering?

No.

You're not.

But here's the thing on that.

And, you know,

at that time, we agreed on universal principles.

And so

we didn't agree on policies, but we agreed on the big things.

All men are created equal, endowed by their creator with a certain inalienable rights.

Life, liberty, pursuit, happiness.

We agreed on the Bill of Rights.

And so we could make policies and disagree on policies, but we knew in the end we both were trying

to enhance that idea.

And so there are times when I know I can sit with anyone on a different different political view if they agree with the Bill of Rights.

Do you agree that all men are created equal?

That there isn't a Lord that just should lord their viewpoints and tell us exactly what to do, and we all have to do it, and we all have to think alike.

If you believe in the Bill of Rights, we can come there.

But if...

You know, it's, can a pastor of a Christian church and

a Jewish rabbi get together and do great things?

Yes, because their principles are the same.

Exactly.

Can I do that with an atheist or worse yet, a guy who is,

you know, believes that Satan is the answer?

No, I can't.

I can't compromise.

I can't sit in a room and work together on anything because we're the exact opposite in our core.

Does that make sense?

100%.

Our worldview.

is so diametrically opposed that they can't come together.

Yeah.

And it's not that our

policies, but it is our principles, the things that actually, nobody ever talks about principles anymore.

They're talking about policies.

They're talking about whatever.

They're talking about, you know, your truth is everybody's truth.

And you just have to get along with that.

Well, I can't.

I can't.

Because if you don't agree on scientific proof, if you don't believe that there is eternal system.

I don't know what it is.

I can't tell you what God looks like.

I can't tell you what faith he's telling us all to go into, but I can show you evidence that it looks like at this point, it's this direction.

Now, I can get onto the other side and he could, you know, he could surprise all of us and go, yeah, that's not me.

But it made us a better person and we were headed toward, we were on the road of right.

Just I don't know how far down that road we are.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

But

how do we have these conversations?

How do we get back to that tip O'Neill

with people who

don't believe in

those basic principles?

How could a

political activist, in other words,

glean from someone who has a different policy than they do

so that together they are better.

That can happen.

Policy.

And that can happen.

I think it happens when it matters more that the country is strengthened than my party is victorious.

Correct.

Correct.

And that's a lost art.

But the question is, those who do not believe that America is good should be strengthened.

But to restart,

how do you find yourself?

We're so far off the beaten path here.

I'd like to go back to God, but

how do you get back to that?

How do you get back to that person?

How would you do it if I said to you, hey, there's this guy over here who believes Satan is the answer?

You would most likely say, I'll pray for him.

but I'm not going to spend any time with him.

What would you say?

I would like to think, Glenn, that I would say,

let me take him out for a cup of coffee.

And during that conversation,

I would do my best to listen to him asking questions like this.

How did you come to believe the way you believe?

How did you end up here?

Well, you're right.

And I would respect, I would at least try, Glenn, I'm not saying I would do it, but at least in this conversation, you and I, as I'm envisioning my ideal response,

I think I would say,

how did you come to believe what you believe?

And honestly listen to him and do my best to at least respect him.

If there's any chance of dialogue,

it has to have one person saying, Tell me

why you think the way you think.

I had African.

That's humility, isn't it?

That's humility.

Yeah, yeah.

I had a great friend back in the 90s.

He's passed on into heaven now, an African-American pastor.

And he said, Max, the best way that racial division can be overcome is with this question.

And that question is, help me understand.

Help me understand what it's like to be you.

Help me understand.

And he said, Max, if you would ask me, an African-American, help me understand what it's like to be African American in this day and age.

And if I would ask you, Max, help me understand what it's like to...

you know, be a white guy in Texas in the 1990s.

I think we could have a dialogue upon which we could build a good friendship.

I agree.

That may be oversimplifying things, but I think

it would go a long way toward helping us have dialogue with one another.

Let me go back to the idea of the book and our words and the power of our own words and changing our thoughts.

I know a lot of preachers really don't like the, I think they're called prosperity preachers, you know, where they're, yeah, okay.

And

I look at those guys kind of as a gateway drug in a a way that they stop just there.

But isn't it the same rule?

Aren't they applying the same rules that you're talking about?

They're just not going any deeper than that.

Yeah.

I mean, prosperity gospel or prosperity preachers is kind of a big term that refers to a person

allegedly who says

God exists to give you whatever you want.

uh and primarily

financially financially uh i do believe that god will bless us i do believe he wants us to prosper it's just that sometimes prosper could be in terms of a paycheck it could also be in terms of patience it could be in terms of a better living situation could be in terms of a better relationship with my spouse but he does want us to prosper and it's okay for me so it's just lord i'm i'm financially stuck.

Would you help me?

Because he does love us.

But his blessings may come in another way.

So it's really,

the problem is, is expecting the outcome you desire.

That's it.

That's it.

Okay.

Bingo.

Which gets us back to that question of, are we here to make a big deal out of God or does God exist to make a big deal out of Max?

And if I think God exists to make a big deal out of me, then I'm going to be off balance.

I'm going to be out of Kelter.

You know, we don't have the, well, the phonograph records are coming back, aren't they?

I see them every season.

But I grew up, you know, in the 60s and 70s.

That's all we had.

One time I bought a big album and a record, and somehow the hole didn't get punched.

So I went and got my dad's drill and I tried to think where the hole would be.

Of course, I had no way of knowing.

And And I put the album, put the record on the turntable and it was wah.

Oh, that's so fun.

It didn't work because I was off-center.

And the reason we make, we have to continually say, I'm here to make a big deal out of God is that's a centered life.

If I think.

God exists to make a big deal out of me, things are going to get oblong and distorted.

And so that's why we have to keep coming back to that big idea that God has created a people for himself.

He's giving us a choice.

And I exist to

billboard, to advertise, to reflect his goodness.

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I remember one time, Tanya and I, my wife, we prayed and prayed and prayed about some business deal.

And we were very clear.

That's what God wants us to do.

And

we get into it, and it's not working, not working.

And we are praying every day.

What are we doing wrong, Lord?

And just, you know.

And

I said to her at one point, I said,

maybe, maybe we were wrong.

And she's like, do not.

doubt what you know to be true.

You know God said this.

Maybe we should begin to wonder, does he really, was that the outcome?

Was our image of, hey, it's going to be a success, is that what he was planning?

Or was he just saying, it's going to get you right to the place where you're supposed to be?

He doesn't care about our success or failure in that way because he knows he's built us to endure whatever it is.

I said, I don't like that answer.

I think it's right.

I think it's right.

Don't you hate it when your wife does

that kind of stuff.

All the time.

I was bellyaching one time about deadlines and people who didn't believe, who didn't take my advice.

I just had a long litany of things.

And finally, my wife said, Max, is God in the middle of this anywhere?

Wow.

I said, honey.

Wow.

Only your wife.

Don't

say that to me.

I know.

I know.

It's so great.

You know, you were saying something earlier about how our thoughts, we have to control our thoughts.

And the first thing that came to mind was

I get up in the morning and I get up very early and

I go right to the show prep.

My producers have worked all overnight and they send me all these stories.

And the first thing I do is I go online and I'm reading those stories.

And I know at times, if I'm not reading those stories, I get up and the first thing I do is I go to Twitter or whatever.

Somebody said to me recently, Glenn,

you are,

before

you even allow you

to have your own thought on what today is, what

you have in front of you, decide who you are, decide how you feel.

You are putting all of these thoughts into your head.

And do you ever come back to it?

Do you ever come back and do a reset?

And can you do a reset?

I mean,

I think we're living in a time now more than ever.

That first thought has to be scripture and prayer is more important than I think ever before.

Because you said 70,000 thoughts.

Imagine just scrolling how

many more we're having than we've ever had as a people.

Absolutely.

And they're coming at us from all angles.

I know a fellow who went through a terrible tragedy.

He had a son die in a four-wheeling accident.

And this son had, I can't remember, three or four siblings.

And the father had to call them one by one and tell them that their sibling had died.

And he said,

when they answered the phone, I said, I'm about to give you some of the worst news you're ever going to hear.

But before I share it, would you think of five things you know about God to be true?

I thought that was so interesting.

He said, before I share it, would you think about five things you know of God to be true?

And he said, like, God is love,

God is,

God cares,

God is coming for us, God is involved in the world.

And he would help the child.

And we're not talking about five-year-olds.

We're talking about

teenagers and 20s.

And then he said, once they had,

what's a good word, kind of marinated their mind in those truths, he said, now let me tell you some really horrible news.

I've never forgotten that because we tend to do the same.

Maybe the best thing we could do when we wake up in the morning, even if we only have three minutes, right, before we have to jump into the assignment of the day, maybe the best thing we could do is say, okay, here's what I know to be true about God and just reflect, meditate on that just a bit,

and then step into the day.

It's what he's done is he's

he's put a frame around the picture he's going to show you.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

He's asked you to build a wall.

That picture cannot get bigger than it is.

So you're containing that news by that frame.

God loves me.

So you're not hearing it and spiraling out because what he just asked you to do was build that frame around it to hold all of those thoughts that could go way off the road.

Hold it into place.

I think that's brilliant.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brilliant.

You know,

this idea of choosing what our authority is in life, that's just so essential, right?

And again,

if I am subjecting myself to an authority that's my drinking buddy or my football buddy or the lady I play bridge with, they don't know any more than I do.

I need an authority who is high above,

who has been here.

Again, this is why we treasure the teachings of Jesus, because by faith, I believe

he was God on earth and that he came with absolute authority to speak into my life.

He is that home plate that allows me to make decisions even when the circumstances of life are especially when the circumstances of life are so difficult.

I have to choose to believe

who I'm going to trust.

That takes me back to the beginning.

And Max, it takes me back to a horrible thought about me.

Boy, I am just a dim bulb.

because it's taken an hour for me to realize when you first said, you know, we look for a voice of authority

and authority can change us good or ill.

Now as you're saying that, I realize

the only authority that we should be looking for is God.

The only authority that

truly can change us should be that voice.

Absolutely.

It's not in a moment.

It's only in an hour.

You know,

people turn away from God because pastors get immoral or involved in scandals.

I see that quite often.

And

I try to remind them.

I don't know if I succeed, but I try to remind them that

the only authority is the pastor of that pastor, the good shepherd, our almighty God, our loving Savior Jesus.

And yes, that pastor screwed up.

And I know you're brokenhearted and disappointed, but don't let the misdeeds of that person person turn you away from the great deed of our God who came and lived on the earth and died for our sins and rose from the dead.

Don't make that mistake.

So we do have to be careful what authorities we choose to speak into our lives.

And

can I ask you to expand on that just a little bit?

Because I have found God uses really flawed men

sometimes for his toughest assignments.

And I think that's because the really good men have too much to lose.

You know, they're worried about, well, I'm at my church and I've got this or I've got my business that I have to worry about, whatever it is.

And so they come up with an excuse of, well, I can't do that because I can't risk it.

And so God just goes down a list of, okay, well, he won't.

Okay, I asked him.

I asked him.

I asked him.

Okay, I guess it's your turn.

And so you get these really flawed men.

And

we begin to,

we can tell, I think,

when someone

has

an anointing on them.

For instance, let me say something controversial to the world, but not necessarily to conservatives.

Donald Trump, I absolutely believe, is being used by God.

But that doesn't make him the authority.

It makes he is still the man and can make gross, horrible mistakes,

but

he will have flashes and he could have the whole thing could be great.

But

he's not God.

He is the first guy that God

asked that stepped to the plate that could actually do it and would do it, would get back up after he was shot in the head.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, I hear you.

The story that comes to my mind is the story of King David.

The kid was a shepherd.

He was the youngest of eight sons.

He was out in the field when Samuel came to anoint the next king.

Jesse didn't even bring him in out of the field.

I mean, he was such the runt of the family.

And yet Samuel anointed him.

And then when it came time for David to carry food to his brothers in the valley of Elah, and Goliath was there, nobody else would go up against Goliath.

But David said, I'll do it.

I'll do it.

And so David was that guy who was the last one you would expect.

And as long as he kept that mindset, Glenn, he did great.

Israel was blessed.

Their land grew.

The temple,

not the temple hadn't been constructed,

but the faith of the people was blessed and their coffers became full of gold.

But remember the sin with Bathsheba when he was up on the balcony looking out over the city, and he should have been out to battle with his soldiers, but he wasn't.

And you see a different David.

And it seems to me that that David was pretty proud of himself.

And when he was proud of himself,

he fell into temptation.

When he was humble before God, he could fight Goliath.

And so the anointing was on

on David to do great things.

But when David was more impressed with himself than he was with God, then he did very few things and did bad things, in fact.

Very bad.

Very bad.

Max, I just, you're such a blessing to me, my family, and

to everyone who has ever run across your path.

I thank you for

super honored to have a conversation with you, Glenn.

I love you.

I pray God's richest blessings upon you.

I always want to remind everybody I'm a converted drunk.

The Lord had mercy on me.

And two of us.

I celebrated leaving alcohol behind and pursuing Christ this last spring, Glenn, by getting a tattoo.

50 years ago.

When you saw that, I was going to say, you heal.

What does it say?

No.

It says Tatelestai, which is the Greek word for it is finished, what Christ said.

Before he gave up his spirit when he hung on the cross.

It literally means it is paid.

It is paid.

And when I was 20 years old, I was such a mess, I didn't think God could forgive me.

And I heard a sermon on grace that Christ paid for my sins, and that changed my life.

And so I commemorated the 50-year, the golden anniversary of grace by getting a tattoo.

The tattoo artist said, you're the first 70-year-old pastor I've ever tattooed.

I said, I'll probably be the last.

And I don't intend to get another one.

Yeah.

God bless you.

Thank you so much.

God bless.

Thank you, Glenn.

You bet.

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