Speaker 1: So down love someone with de Hi Max, It's Delilah, Delilah.
Speaker 1: I'm just stopping my clinging clock. Did you hear it? Now?
Speaker 1: Let it clan, let it chime, let it, let it chime.
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk about your new book, which
Speaker 1: I am holding in my hot little hand. I got
Speaker 1: an advanced copy of Unshakable. Yeah, it is Unshakable Hope,
Speaker 1: and I just have to say I opened it up
Speaker 1: and was like maybe five paragraphs in, and my heart
Speaker 1: was was beating stronger, like like my daughter has asthma
Speaker 1: and when she can't breathe, she has to take abuter
Speaker 1: all and so one time, when she was two or three,
Speaker 1: I thought, I want to know what this does. So
Speaker 1: I took a hit of it just to feel what
Speaker 1: she feels when she takes the bull and it makes
Speaker 1: your heart beat faster and you feel you can actually
Speaker 1: feel the oxygen, your blood getting oxygenated. And I was
Speaker 1: maybe five pages, not even not even five pages, five
Speaker 1: or ten paragraphs into Unshakable Hope, and I had that
Speaker 1: physical sensation, Max, of my heart beating stronger, and I
Speaker 1: felt like my blood was getting oxygen eated with Hope.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to hear that. I mean, you know, hope
Speaker 1: can can feel like it's in short supply. And I
Speaker 1: feel like if we can just give each other enough
Speaker 1: hope to face these challenges of life that are so
Speaker 1: unspeakably difficult, these uphill stretches that that we're called to climb,
Speaker 1: h then we've done just such a great favor, one
Speaker 1: for the other. Finding hope. It's not easy, it's not
Speaker 1: at all. It's not that you're your gift of storytelling
Speaker 1: and taking stories that you know are two or three
Speaker 1: thousand years old and retelling them in a way that
Speaker 1: that is easy to digest. It's like the albuticle from
Speaker 1: my daughter and made her lungs able to absorb the oxygen.
Speaker 1: Your gift of storytelling max makes us able to absorb
Speaker 1: the wisdom. Well, I really appreciate that. I really do.
Speaker 1: And um, you know, I've I love to tell stories,
Speaker 1: but I'm mainly I'm I'm just an old preacher, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh And and so every week I I do what
Speaker 1: you do every night. You have a much harder, harder
Speaker 1: job than I do. But you know, every week I'm
Speaker 1: trying to find a way to encourage people. And uh so,
Speaker 1: so one of the tools I've used over the years
Speaker 1: is UH is teaching people the promises of God. And
Speaker 1: there's about seven thousand promises of God in the Bible.
Speaker 1: And if we and if we can learn to tap
Speaker 1: into the power of these promises, I really think that
Speaker 1: it it gives us access to hope that they're they're
Speaker 1: kind of like an apothecary of of hope because whenever
Speaker 1: we face particular challenges, if we can be acquainted with
Speaker 1: with the promises of God, will find that there are
Speaker 1: there are promises that match our problems and and getting
Speaker 1: acquainted with these promises really gives us a place to go.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean it's going to be easy and and
Speaker 1: there's not gonna be some hard, hard days, but I
Speaker 1: think it does give us hope that that we're going
Speaker 1: to get through this challenge and I'm going to stand
Speaker 1: on this particular promise to help me get through it.
Speaker 1: And that's UH. Like I said, when I opened the
Speaker 1: book and started reading, that was what I was immediately
Speaker 1: impressed with was your your ability to take those promises
Speaker 1: and share them with us the reader. Even if you've
Speaker 1: been a believer for years or decades, it's easy at
Speaker 1: least for me, when you're in a circumstance to lose
Speaker 1: sight of those promises, yeah, and to feel like the
Speaker 1: circumstances so overwhelming. Yeah, it is. It's just I'm sure
Speaker 1: would never want to leave the impression that it's easy.
Speaker 1: And I know that you're acquainted with really the dark
Speaker 1: knight of the soul. Every one of your listeners has
Speaker 1: gone through seasons in which they wondered if they were
Speaker 1: going to make it through. And I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: think as a pastor even as a friend, I do
Speaker 1: anybody any favor by uh, you know, leaving the impression
Speaker 1: that it's easy. It's just, it's just all we can
Speaker 1: do some days, just to climb out of bed. You know,
Speaker 1: in fact, climbing out of bed can be the victory.
Speaker 1: But what I what I want to do is give
Speaker 1: about rolling out onto the floor, rowing, just landing on
Speaker 1: the floor. You know what. A For example, here, here's
Speaker 1: a promise from God. It's it's in Psalm thirty and
Speaker 1: verse five, and it's just such a beautiful verse. It
Speaker 1: says weeping may last for the night, but joy comes
Speaker 1: with the morning. I've said, I've used that verse so
Speaker 1: many times as I sit down and talk to somebody,
Speaker 1: uh after church or in their living room when they're
Speaker 1: passing through a tough time, and I just say, you know,
Speaker 1: I know that weeping has come your way, but but
Speaker 1: it's not gonna last forever. It's really not the promise
Speaker 1: the promises joy comes. It's not gonna come as quickly
Speaker 1: as you might want, or even in the fashion that
Speaker 1: you want. But would you be willing to just be
Speaker 1: open to the possibility that joy is gonna come? And
Speaker 1: and and and just that verse? I think De Lana
Speaker 1: is an example of sometimes that's all we need somebody
Speaker 1: to do is just say, Okay, weeping comes, but so
Speaker 1: does joy. We don't need an explanation, you know, or
Speaker 1: or even proof, just just a verse from scripture to
Speaker 1: give us enough hope to roll over and fall out
Speaker 1: of bed. When I first I was in my late
Speaker 1: twenties when I came to know God. I had a
Speaker 1: pastor that had me right versus on little note cards
Speaker 1: and talk him in my purse, or put him in
Speaker 1: the bathroom on the mirror, or he said, wherever you
Speaker 1: know you visit most during the day, he says, if
Speaker 1: you go to the coffee pot at work, you know,
Speaker 1: talk one by the coffee pot. Yeah and uh and
Speaker 1: from I said, well, then that would be putting it
Speaker 1: in the refrigerator. But I did that. I took his
Speaker 1: advice and I wrote up, you know, passages that were
Speaker 1: important and I did that. And as I'm reading through
Speaker 1: Unshakable Hope, your new book, um, I'm going to do that.
Speaker 1: I'm going to actually physically copy down some of these
Speaker 1: wonderful promises and put them on note cards and stick
Speaker 1: them in my pocketbook, and stick them on my refrigerator
Speaker 1: and stick them, you know, on the mirror in the
Speaker 1: bathroom when I brush my teeth, because I need to
Speaker 1: be reminded of those promises right now. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: the story that we've heard from the Teachings of Jesus
Speaker 1: is the story of the two builders, you know, one
Speaker 1: who built his house on the rock and one who
Speaker 1: built his house on the sand. What they have in
Speaker 1: common is that both of them experienced the storm. Um.
Speaker 1: What they're don't where their stories diverge is that one
Speaker 1: house collapsed in the other house withstood the storm. So
Speaker 1: the message there is that all of us face storms. Um,
Speaker 1: young people, old people, rich people, poor people. Everybody faces storms.
Speaker 1: Some people are destroyed by the storms, and and that's
Speaker 1: what we don't want to happen. You know, we've we've
Speaker 1: got to help each other. We've got to help each other.
Speaker 1: And and Jesus said, the difference is the person who
Speaker 1: withstands the story arm is one who here's my teaching
Speaker 1: and applies a life to it. So so the idea
Speaker 1: is not just to hear, not just to know that
Speaker 1: God has spoken, but to begin building your laugh on
Speaker 1: top of a foundation you know that says okay, God
Speaker 1: said this, And so my emotions those are sandy foundations.
Speaker 1: But the rock, Yeah, the rock, that's what we need,
Speaker 1: isn't it. That's what we need. I actually, um recently
Speaker 1: had an experience that I know it's gonna work great
Speaker 1: when I'm out doing public speaking again or preaching again.
Speaker 1: Because my porch was soggy. I went out on my
Speaker 1: porch and when I would step on it, it kind
Speaker 1: of felt mushy. And so I kept saying, on my hobby,
Speaker 1: you gotta go to look at the porch, this one spot.
Speaker 1: It feels kind of mushy. So he says, Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: have my friend DoD come over and we'll tear off
Speaker 1: some of the decking and figured out. So they tear
Speaker 1: off the decking. Comes in, he says, eight news. Good news.
Speaker 1: Point is just mushy in that one spot because the
Speaker 1: decking had got wet and that had done d D
Speaker 1: and we just need to get some new decking. Great.
Speaker 1: A few hours later they came in they said, not
Speaker 1: so great news. Uh, wasn't just a decking issue. Wasn't
Speaker 1: just the top layer. Seems like the beams that run
Speaker 1: under the porch that holds the porch up were not
Speaker 1: continuous beams. The builder had sistered them together and had
Speaker 1: not left enough space and and didn't use heavy duty screws.
Speaker 1: He just nailed two or three boards together and they've collapsed. Great,
Speaker 1: So now they not only have to take the decking off,
Speaker 1: now they're going to have to replace some beams. The
Speaker 1: next day, my husband comes in and he's white as
Speaker 1: a sheet, and I said what he goes, well, it's
Speaker 1: a little bit more than just the decking or the beams.
Speaker 1: The pads, the cement pads that had been poured to
Speaker 1: hold the whole house. The porch is twelve ft wide
Speaker 1: and it wraps around the whole house, and there's a
Speaker 1: metal roof above that is part of the house. The
Speaker 1: paths that were poured under each post. Each post is
Speaker 1: four five ft apart, should have been three or four
Speaker 1: ft square. They were fourteen inches and with all the
Speaker 1: bad weather, they had sunk down into the mud. One
Speaker 1: of them had sunk down eight inches. Literally, my porch
Speaker 1: was falling off, which means my house is compromised. But
Speaker 1: all that to illustrate what you just said. So sorry
Speaker 1: that happened to your house, but it is a perfect illustration.
Speaker 1: You know, the most important part of the house is
Speaker 1: the foundation, right exactly. It's it's probably the most expensive. Uh.
Speaker 1: But but if the foundation's not there, so I guess
Speaker 1: the question would be upon what are we building our lives.
Speaker 1: I've been guilty of building my life on a relay,
Speaker 1: aation ship. I've been guilty of building my life on pleasure,
Speaker 1: you know, and we've come to find that people and pleasure,
Speaker 1: they're they're terrific, I mean, golly yeah, but but they're
Speaker 1: not stable foundations upon which to build a life. And
Speaker 1: so I think that's a great question, Delilah, that we
Speaker 1: could all ask ourselves right now today, upon what am
Speaker 1: I building my life? And am I staking my hope
Speaker 1: on a person, or upon a retirement account, upon my career.
Speaker 1: If so those that's risky, that's really risk that's really risky.
Speaker 1: And you know what, Max, I've noticed the last five
Speaker 1: or ten years, people are building their hope or staking
Speaker 1: their hope on political parties, on the current economy. That's
Speaker 1: the silliest thing I ever heard. Yeah, the Bible comes
Speaker 1: at the whole idea of hope very realistically. And and
Speaker 1: there's a passage in the Book of Hebrews I talked
Speaker 1: about in in this book on hope where the Scripture says,
Speaker 1: for we have this hope as an anchor for the soul,
Speaker 1: and not that word anchor, a N C H O R,
Speaker 1: not anger, but a anchor. That speaks to me because
Speaker 1: I grew up even though I didn't grow up on
Speaker 1: the coast, I did grow up fishing, and I know
Speaker 1: the purpose of an anchor. And you don't anchor a
Speaker 1: boat to another boat. You don't anchor a boat to
Speaker 1: a buoy, you don't anchor a boat to a tree.
Speaker 1: You drop that anchor to the bottom of the waterbed
Speaker 1: and you wait until it tugs against something that is
Speaker 1: so rock solid that no matter what storm comes, You're
Speaker 1: not gonna be sucked out to see. And and this
Speaker 1: is what we all need. We just need an anchor.
Speaker 1: We need we need an anchor for the soul. And
Speaker 1: that would just contend that no other person can be
Speaker 1: an anchor. No political party can be an really, no
Speaker 1: religion can. And if you define religion just as you know,
Speaker 1: somebody's philosophy about God, but but God himself, I really
Speaker 1: believe can be that anchor. He can be that foundation,
Speaker 1: and consequently we can have the promise of a solid
Speaker 1: hope for our soul. I love the picture you chose
Speaker 1: for the cover of the book. It's red and white
Speaker 1: lighthouse on top of this massive rock and it looks
Speaker 1: like a stormy sky out to see. It's beautiful, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's beautiful. That's got to be on the East coast. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It looks like something along the New England uh shoreline.
Speaker 1: It looks like something you see in Maine, uh, somewhere
Speaker 1: along along that Coastline's beautiful, but such a beautiful representation
Speaker 1: of of what a lighthouse us in the storms of life.
Speaker 1: You've seen your share of lighthouses, I'm sure right, Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I used to draw and paint them. For I went
Speaker 1: through a season of lighthouses where I probably drew and
Speaker 1: painted twenty or thirty from from the East coast and on
Speaker 1: on the West coast. Yeah, I would go visit them,
Speaker 1: take pictures, learn their history, and then draw or paint them.
Speaker 1: But I don't recognize this one. Yeah, you spent a
Speaker 1: lot of your life along the coastlines. I have never
Speaker 1: not lived by the ocean. I've lived on both both
Speaker 1: sides of the US. I have never lived in the middle.
Speaker 1: I have always probably because I was born, you know,
Speaker 1: less than two miles from the ocean. Uh. I don't know.
Speaker 1: God just has shown mercy and he knows. I love
Speaker 1: the water. But I've always lived Uh. Philadelphia was the
Speaker 1: furthest inland I've ever lived, and that was only fifty
Speaker 1: minutes to the Jersey Show. Are so Yeah, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love But I love the story of the lighthouse. I
Speaker 1: love what they what they do, and how they work.
Speaker 1: And who knows how many lives have been saved by
Speaker 1: the lighthouses. Ah, but how many millions of lives have
Speaker 1: been saved by unshakable hope. Unshakable hope, You're a special,
Speaker 1: special soul Delilah. Thank you. I know I've told you before,
Speaker 1: but I've been listening to you, Kyle. They I don't
Speaker 1: know over two decades? Could it be that longer? Or
Speaker 1: longer I've been on the air, Max. This September will
Speaker 1: be forty four years. How could that be if you're
Speaker 1: not even I know crazy? Huh? How I found a
Speaker 1: magical time clock to turn back the hands of time? Uh?
Speaker 1: Just like my my porch, you know, with the eighteen
Speaker 1: instrument pads sinking in the mud. My foundation quickly sank
Speaker 1: in the mud. But your book unshakable. Hope, I hope everybody,
Speaker 1: anybody who is going through a dark time right now
Speaker 1: who might be forgetting the promises of God or might
Speaker 1: be questioning them. I actually heard my own mouth saying, yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe in God. I just don't believe he cares
Speaker 1: about me right now. Yeah. And and you know what,
Speaker 1: I he better care about you. I mean, that's all
Speaker 1: I gotta say. You don't. I don't think we I
Speaker 1: don't need a God. That sounded terrible for me to
Speaker 1: say that. I mean it all disrespectful, but but God
Speaker 1: sure is shooting better love us. He does, and I
Speaker 1: know that. But your book reminded me of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he does. It's just that when your emotions take over,
Speaker 1: it kind of cancels out what you know to be true.
Speaker 1: And this book Unshakable Hope for anybody who is going
Speaker 1: through tough time and your faith has been shaken, you
Speaker 1: need to read this book. And if you're not going
Speaker 1: through a tough time, you should get this book, like
Speaker 1: as preventive medicine, because you're gonna go through a tough time,
Speaker 1: isn't it true? We're all going to go through stuff.
Speaker 1: What's that old line they say if you're either coming
Speaker 1: out of a hard time, you're in the midst of
Speaker 1: a hard time, or you're just a calendar flip from
Speaker 1: a hard time exactly. So just I take my vitamins
Speaker 1: even when I don't have a cold, to kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, prevent them. I take that airborne stuff when
Speaker 1: I fly on an airplane to prevent it. So I'm saying, Max,
Speaker 1: anybody who's not going through a hard time needs your
Speaker 1: book Unshakable Hope, because because they're just that calendar flip
Speaker 1: away from from something that might make them forget God's
Speaker 1: promise that weeping may last through the night. But joy
Speaker 1: does come in all right, Max. Thank you, God bless
Speaker 1: you and your family, and God bless you for writing
Speaker 1: unshakable hope. Thank you so much. You have a great day.
Speaker 1: Thank you, honey,