Behind the Scenes with Lee Strobel (The People, Events, and Books that Shaped His Life)

all right friends you're in for a treat today we have somebody with us who you will definitely recognize he is a new york times best-selling author he is uh his life has been the feature of a hollywood movie uh the book case for christ and also known for being evangelists writing a ton of other books the case series uh lee strobel thanks so much for coming on oh sean i'm glad to do it i love you love what you do you make such a huge contribution to so many areas so i'm honored well this interview is going to be a little different we're not going to be pressing you on the case for the resurrection which we did last time we had a conversation last easter this is to give viewers and really myself just a behind the scenes look at your life the people the books that shaped who you are number one because it's interesting but also maybe just get some interesting stories and wisdom and insights that we'd love to learn from you so good luck with that yeah well let's let's give it a shot uh so my first question is you were friends with luis palau who passed away recently i would love to hear how he influenced you and what you learned from him boy louise uh is a little bit like your dad in the sense that he was a friend and a hero of mine um he um i just loved him um and his whole family andrew and kevin they're just a tremendous family but what i did is i'm working on an i was at the time working on a new book called the case for heaven and he knew he was dying he had stage four lung cancer and so i flew out to his home in uh oregon and i spent a day with him um recently to talk to him about his attitude toward heaven and how that changes when you're on the precipice of dying he didn't know how long he would have to live and as it turned out right after the turn of the year he took a turn for the worse and uh as you know just died recently the funeral is just saturday but um luis um louise was amazing you know elise uh was the kind of person kind of like your dad in the sense that everybody who met him walks away saying he's my friend you know he he was just a very gregarious guy uh very passionate very committed to telling people about jesus i remember one of the first times i had dinner with him we were out in chicago and mark middleburg was on one side of him and i was on the other side and sometime between the uh trout and the apple crisp for dessert he grabbed all of a sudden he grabbed both of our forearms uh real urgently and said would you pray for my son andrew wow he said he said he's not walking with the lord he's going down dangerous paths he's walked away from things i would you pray for my son well of course if luis probably asks you to pray you pray right then and there so right dropped our we dropped our we we pray for andrew and and sure enough andrew did end up not only coming to faith but is now uh the main speaker at luis plow ministries and in fact i tell his story in my bookcase for grace but um i had a long conversation with him and one of the things i asked him was um because he joked with me he said lee you're such a journalist he said um i would love it if when i get to heaven i could text you and tell you about it [Laughter] because i know you'd want to know that's right and i said i said if you can you know go ahead and do it because that would be a that would be a great story but um i asked him i said um what do you think you would want to say to your fellow believers once you're in heaven if you could send a message back a text or something what would you say and he thought for a moment and he said i wrote it down because he said i would say go for it go for it he said take a risk tell others about the good news of christ i can't do his great accent sure sure he said remember that it's a job of the holy spirit to convict him of their sin he's your partner let him do his work in them you bring them the best news on the planet that there's redemption that there's a relationship with god that there's heaven that there's an eternal party that's waiting for them wow and he told me the story about when he was young you know his dad died when he was 10. his dad was a great believer and shared his faith would go out and do evangelistic things and uh and so uh he died when louise was ten and his mother would encourage luis she would say uh on a sunday morning luis there are um villages around here and this is in south argentina okay that don't have a church go out and tell them about jesus and wow and louise i said how did you respond and she he said well i was slow to respond um i'd say to her mom i'm waiting for the call and i said i bet she didn't respond well to that and he said no she didn't she was getting upset she said uh she said the call the call the call went out 2 000 years ago louise the lord is the lord is waiting for your answer you're not waiting for his call and he said sure enough she was right you know the the default mechanism the default position for a believer is to go and share your faith you don't need to wait for a special call but as we finish that conversation one of the last things he said to me uh before we parted and i i think this was really powerful he said lee i can tell you from personal experience that at the end of your life when all is said and done you'll never regret being courageous for christ wow i thought that wow that's that's good to remember you'll never regret being courageous for christ wow so that's what i take away from louise louise uh um a man of prayer a man of commitment a man an evangelist to the hilt um love god love people wow what a beautiful legacy now i was gonna ask you a little later at this but i think now is a natural time especially because a question came in if you went and interviewed him about heaven i'm guessing and others are this may have something to do with your next book so here's a great great question from persuasive evangelism what's your next book that will be published tell us about the case for heaven yeah thanks for asking it's uh it's my next major book it's called the case for heaven a journalist investigates evidence for life after death and it'll come out september 14th from zondervan you can pre-order it already on amazon and other online retailers but i spent about two years um it goes back to something that happened to me 10 years ago okay this was the scariest thing that ever happened to me um i started to get disoriented i started to get paranoid i thought that people were watching me i thought the police were gonna come arrest me huh um then i started leslie was out shopping and i'm sitting on the couch i started to hallucinate i saw demons um slithering on the floor toward me and um leslie came home and she said you need to go to bed you're not well i went to bed she finds me later on the floor of our bedroom unconscious she calls a paramedic the ambulance takes me to the hospital and i open my eyes in the emergency room and the doctor's looking down at me and he said you're one step away from a coma two steps away from dying holy cow and then i went unconscious again and um that was the closest i've been to dying and i i was on the edge of death for several days there so it turned out i had a very kind of a rare condition called hyponatremia which is a sudden fall in your blood sodium level and what that causes is your brain cells begin to take in water moisture and they so your brain is expanding in your skull and so you get disoriented you have hallucinations then you go into a coma and then you die wow the the problem with it is uh they diagnose it pretty quickly but the problem is you have to raise that blood sodium level very carefully over a period of days because if you do it too quickly you'll end up paralyzed or mentally disabled wow so that was the closest i'd come to death and it really um got me thinking even as a believer you know we all believe uh in an afterlife we believe in what the bible teaches about heaven and hell but sometimes we don't give it much thought how do we know it's true is there any is there any external evidence that is true um can we really trust it's kind of outrageous to think that we're going to live after we die so that kind of got me thinking about this topic and so i spent the last two years working on this book interviewing neuroscientists uh philosophers um uh um theologians etc um on how do we know that there is an afterlife number one what about heaven what's that like number two what about hell is it logical to believe it health does it make sense what about these new trends of annihilationism and universalism i talked to um an expert on reincarnation could that be an explanation of what happens so and then the luis palau chapter is part of that book okay um so when that comes out the whole the whole chapter will be written or published but um i'm excited about the book because you know kovid has got a lot of people leslie and i were in a restaurant a week ago and the waitress was a young woman i would guess maybe 18 19 years old i work in a part-time job we got talking to her and all of a sudden she's got tears in her eyes and she said i'm sorry um we just lost a loved one to coven wow and you know i'm thinking here's a young woman it's probably the first person in her family who's died and you better believe she's thinking about death um the fragility of life becomes ever more relevant to us and so um i'm hoping that it's an encouragement to people um and um that that it it lets people know that there is hope that there is an afterlife and that we can be assured that we'll spend it with uh with christ lee it sounds like such a timely book because i had a student email me this week and he said hey give me book suggestions for a friend and this is a biola student who's probably 20 21 years old he said he's been worried and thinking about mortality more and more and i've heard that a few times over the past few months so yeah yeah my brother died of covid that's right right at the beginning of the pandemic he was 76 years old and not in good health and and we couldn't even gather for a memorial service at the time um so uh i think that's true for a lot of people um so i i think usually usually death is not something people think about before they get to be about my age but nowadays you know as your biola student illustrates a lot more people are beginning to think about it because of coving well you talked about luis palau the influence he had in your life but tell me some of the other people that come to your mind that shaped you as a writer as a husband just who are the people in your life that most influenced you and why wow i think the single most influential person in my life is mark middleburg wow mark has been my ministry associate partner buddy pal uh for over golly since 1987. that's awesome yeah we i just talked to him a few minutes ago we talk every day he lives in colorado now i live part-time in colorado and part-time in houston and um you know god put mark in my life at a time when i had just left journalism um my whole life was about journalism i went to law school to be a legal editor of the chicago tribune um i had i had printers ink in my blood and i and and i i felt so called to the church to to being full-time on the staff of the church that i took i remember i took a 60 pay cut to join the church wow i remember the pastor called me a couple months later and said by the way when we offered you like a sixty percent pay cut we were kind of surprised you said yes right away and and i said in all honesty i said you know what i would have done it for free wow and i mean i would have done it for free i would have found a way to support me i would have done it for free i felt so called to the church as the hope of the world and so that's how i met mark we we were hired at the same time and he was my boss i was one of my jobs was to be associate director of evangelism and mark was the first time uh the new evangelism director of the church so we became best buddies um and he you know he's got a master's degree from trinity seminary in philosophy religion he mentored me for two years in theology and philosophy as i was coming out of the journalism world and into this new reality of the church world and um you know he reads everything i write and edits it before it goes to the publisher and same with me and here that's great you know i i just think it's so important for people in ministry to have a friend like that um a best buddy who uh who gets you through the tough times who knows everything about you who you are not afraid to confess every sin to wow who you um who will talk you off a ledge if you're on a ledge who will encourage you when you're depressed who will cheer with you and celebrate with you when when when god shows up and something extraordinary happens and i i honestly i don't know how people get ministry is hard and it's hard during this pandemic you know pastors are working overtime this has been maybe the most stressful time yeah for pastors of local churches and they need someone in their life i i got an email the other day from rick warren and uh the subject line said i love you lee oh i used to i used to be a teaching pastor yeah i remember that so i said i love you lee i opened it up and it said um you know in light of what's happened with the fall recently of some well-known church leaders and apologists he said i just want to reiterate i'm there for you i will talk you off the ledge if you're ever on the ledge and i know you'll do the same for me we need each other um and any pastor that's listening any person in church ministry is listening if you don't have that kind of relationship you need to make that priority one for the year 2021. that's such good advice and good wisdom i wondered if you were gonna to mention mark but i know another person who's had a huge influence on your life is your wife leslie tell us just briefly how you met her and what is your and i briefly like i know you could give us the whole story but i'm really interested in the question of what your relationship and partnership looks like yeah we met we were 14 years old um it was one of those situations where uh humanly speaking there was about 30 seconds that our life our lives intersected there was no reason that we ever would have met except for that 30-second strange encounter wow um which you know so what happened was i was i was 14 years old my my buddy uh and i were downtown chicago just walking around downtown chicago and we're near the train station and i see a neighbor of mine another kid by the name of clay and he had a girl with them and i said clay and oh lee oh so we connected and how you doing good and and he said this is my girlfriend leslie and uh i i'm thinking not for long so um she went home that day and she told her mom i met the boy i'm gonna marry oh my goodness at 14 met you once yeah yeah okay and um and sure enough um i i would save up my dimes because i had two older brothers and i couldn't let them hear me on the phone talking to a girl they would harass me of course i i would go to a pay phone at a gas station wow and i would i would put the dimes in the phone and call up leslie and and so we first met at 14 and uh we broke up once for nine months during high school but other than that we've been together the whole time best buddies i think that's been the secret to our relationship is we're the best of friends and um you know romance came later we just we just love being with each other um and so we um dated uh on and off in high school mostly on um when i moved down to the university of missouri to go to journalism school she moved down and worked at a bank and helped put me through school we got married wow right after our sophomore year it was one of those things where back then when i was in school uh phone calls were real expensive yeah and so you only called your parents like every other week you give them a call on a sunday or something so i uh i called my mom one sunday uh my sophomore year in college and i didn't have anything to say and just to make conversation i said oh leslie now you're going to get married and what i meant was someday oh wow graduates oh that's great that's fantastic i'll make all the arrangements she hangs up and i turn to leslie and also the phone rings and i pick it up it's leslie's mom i hear you're getting married i guess we're getting married so we got married wow i was we were so young when we got married we couldn't have champagne at our wedding we had champagne glasses with milken and i was 20 19. that's funny so we just we just have a very easy marriage um we just uh we love each other we we our personalities mesh very well um we have a symbol of course she prayed me into the kingdom and um we have the same heartbeat for christ and for the church and to see people come to faith and um it's just been the greatest joy of my life to have a life partner like that who and now you know i travel with her wherever i go um virtually all the time she comes with me and not just for accountability but because we enjoy sure absolutely i love hearing you talk about it the way i talk about my wife and my dad talks about about my mom as well that's awesome yeah i've got a bunch more questions for and there's some that are that are are rolling in here as well uh what what what books obviously he's a journalist as an apologist a pastor reader ton and i don't mean biblical books what books come to your mind that just were most influential or your life for you in your life are thinking oh golly yeah i read everything so it's more of a conglomeration of everything i read one of the books that really ministered to me it was well before i was a christian but to kill a mockingbird oh wow that's one of my favorite books i read that in high school and the i had a strong sense of social justice back then as i do today and um you know that's a book about justice and discrimination and prejudice and so forth and it just it was a it was a very important book to me um golly what else on the road by jack kerouac oh yeah yeah wow because i used to be a motorcycle fanatic yeah and uh one of my goals was to just ride a motorcycle all around america okay i never i never got to do it but i did have a bunch of motorcycles um okay so um golly uh you know in the christian realm all i just especially when i'm working on a book for every person i interview for a book i have to read about 10 books sure um all their stuff and stuff yeah attacks their stuff and everything so i'm just constantly bouncing around from from book to book so i remember before as a christian i read um you know everything from uh camus uh christian metaphysics to um um um david hume on miracles um yeah i read some early stuff by um c.s lewis and okay and um c.s lewis of course i i think goes without saying that he was influential to every just about every christian apologist so uh of course i want to mention mere christianity um even your dad's book influenced me um before i became a christian um so uh yeah that's awesome i don't know what i expect you to say but i did not expect to kill a mockingbird that is really interesting yeah i don't know what kind of it came together but it was that's what about biblical books do you have a favorite book or story in the bible that you just go back to that resonates or speaks to you well i it may be kind of unusual but i i love luke okay um and the reason i left luke is he's sort of a first century investigative reporter he is he went around and interviewed everybody i love that about luke he checked things out i carefully investigated everything talk about the certainty of what took place you know i mean he was checking stuff out and so i relate to that plus he wrote you know what quarter of the new testament between luke and book of acts so um very influential um one of the stories i like the most that i go back to a lot is the story of um john the baptist when he was arrested and when he started to to wonder is jesus the one are we to wait for somebody else um you know people debate whether he was really doubting there so i think he had questions i i think he had doubts and um but he checked things out he did what i did when i was an atheist he you know he sent some people that checked things out he and they said to jesus you know are you the one we've been waiting for we are we can wait for somebody else i love jesus response you know go back to john and tell them what you have seen and heard the blind received sight the lame walk those leprosy are cured the deaf ear the dead are raised the good news is preach to the poor in other words go back and tell them about the evidence you've seen with your own eyes that convinces you that i am the one i claim to be and of course it's later that uh john get that that jesus gets up and says among those born of women there's no one greater than john right so this didn't this didn't disqualify john from any role in the kingdom of god because he dared to ask a question sure so i i find i find that encouraging i use that story to talk to uh spiritual seekers a lot and say it's okay to ask questions jesus didn't freak out he said here's the evidence go back and tell him what you've seen and heard he didn't he didn't get angry at john for expressing this question when i asked jp moreland about his favorite book he said can i have two because i want luke x and uh did he say that yeah he did and he didn't mention the investigative journalist angle but it's just it's a rational logical thoughtful evidential book which would make perfect sense uh for jp2 well here here's one for you how do you deal with personal criticism and i and i what i mean is i got criticism a while ago it was the very first time somebody really came after me and i called my wife on the phone and i heard her voice and i'm about to teach a class and i just started bawling like i had never had such personal like it hurt this is probably a decade ago now it's like daily to be honest but but i sent out a tweet and i said how do you get to the point where criticism just you know rolls off you like water in the back of a duck and our friend lenny esposito he said you know i'm not sure you'd want to ever get there where you at least and i thought wow that's such good wisdom so how do you deal with that i try to sift it first is there something there that's you know did i mess up somehow was i not clear about something did i make a mistake uh am i an error the problem is today on twitter people won't accuse you of making a mistake to accuse you of being a liar anymore you know it's like no i i made a mistake we do make mistakes um so i try to sift it and say uh is there something to it and then i try to be um i mean it's hard not to be emotionally impacted by people who come after you um so i talked to leslie about it i talked to mark middleburg about it okay i try not to rationalize it um but i try to be as objective as i can about it like i was as a journalist you know in my journalism days if you made a mistake you ran a correction the next day in the newspaper wow um so you had to fess up and say yeah i messed up and i'm setting the record straight um so i've had a couple of things like that that i've had to go back in my books and correct mistakes that i've made um but um it is hard it's an emotional thing especially on social media um i find generally there's a kernel of truth in a lot of it um or some of it that's worth considering and weighing and and owning um but a lot of it is hyperbolic and a lot of it comes from people who are hurting for one reason or the other and um um you know i'll tell you a quick story i i got a letter once full of vitriol oh my gosh just a hateful letter it's like wow and um i was really upset about it and and and and so i was going to write back the hateful letter you know i was going to say oh yeah i'll tell you what buddy and i was and i no no no can't do that i can't do that uh so instead i reached out to this guy and what i found out is that he was a phd who had gone blind oh my god who had lost his job wow who was living on welfare in a trailer oh and he was he is he was hurting he was hurting and when i connected with them we connected on a human level yeah you know and really had a good good conversation and so forth so i find that if i can reach out to someone who's been critical and have a conversation with them often you get beyond the hyperbole and you get down to a personal relationship and often there's something driving it that goes beyond just a mistake that maybe you made that's that is so helpful and good and it takes humility to respond that way that's my goal it doesn't always happen but that's the goal so hey let me let me flip it this way what about success in the sense that i'm sure when you became a christian and became a pastor you weren't thinking you're gonna write a best-selling book i presume we're going to have a movie based on your life like how have you dealt with that and tried to stay grounded in your faith and identity yeah i never expected to write i wrote one book when i was an atheist um and uh after i left journalism and went into the church i never expected to write a book in fact i i i left journalism in 87 and my first christian book didn't come out i don't think until 95 or something there okay um and so i i wasn't part of my plan but um you know i've had some success with it um how do i deal with success but it's a little embarrassing sometimes i feel the least interesting topic is me i feel like that's the least interesting thing so i don't i don't particularly like talking about my life is honestly it's not that exciting i think um um you know i i just try to be i try to i try to take a cue from luis palap louise palau was friends with every bus boy with every waitress with every gas station attendant with every kwik-e-mart um attendant i mean he was just everybody's friend and um he he seemed unaffected by his notoriety and his worldwide fame and i try to take a page from that and just treat people as people who matter to god you know as a mentor of mine said you've never locked eyes with another human being who jesus didn't die for that's crazy so so every person you see is a person who matters to the father and i try to treat him that way and um you know i try to be generous in terms of the the finances that god has flowed our way and um um to to give to those who are in need and um you know it's i i don't like this the quote-unquote christian celebrity thing yeah because hey i don't think of myself that way but uh b there's people that think that there's some secret club with secret handshake or something and and and we're different than we're just we're just folks um you know people here's the biggest misconception about me people think i'm smart [Laughter] all i am i'm just smart enough to interview smart people that's all i just find very smart people and i interview and people think wow you must be really fun no i just read a lot of their stuff and i ask them the kind of questions that everybody's got and i'm trained as a journalist so i write it like i would an article and i don't have to be the genius i just find the geniuses and talk to them hey there's a brilliance in that you know what would you say is the key to asking a good question because one of the disciplines i've tried to learn is to be a better question asker for so many reasons jesus asks questions it unlocks relationships and wisdom what like what's the key to asking a good question i think part of it is um making sure you don't ask a question that has a quick answer so it's easy in an interview to ask a question as a yes or no answer okay that's a bad question um because that doesn't take you anywhere you want to ask a question that digs deep that um that trying to get to the emotional level that gets beyond the so i try to ask a question that i think the average reader would want to know and that comes from my journalism days when i'm you know writing for a million readers on a sunday so um when i try to ask what's the question everybody's wondering about often that's not the um uh the obvious question okay um or the popular question uh in terms of what people think you're going to ask but so i try to often if i'm going to interview somebody well-known i'll ask a lot of folks what would you ask them um and i try to gather a lot of thoughts that's smart kinds of people but i think this also has changed me as an apologist um because um it used to be uh here i'll give you an example when i would get into a spiritual conversation with someone who isn't a christian often the way i would unlock that conversation i would say to them if you could ask god any one question and you knew he'd give you an answer right now what would you ask him well if you ask that to an average american eighty percent of the time it'll be a question of some permutation of why does god allow pain and suffering that makes sense yeah now as an apologist and an evangelist what i used to do is say oh that's a great question let me give you five reasons why god allows pain itself i don't do that anymore instead of doing that i ask a follow-up question and and follow-up questions are the key so if you could ask god any one question you would give an answer what would you ask well i'd ask why does god allow pain and suffering well then i say wow of all the possible questions in the universe why did you choose that one that's great now they say oh well because my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer recently i want to know where's god in the middle of that all right my business went bankrupt in the middle of the pandemic where was god in the middle of the day wow or we lost a child in childbirth five years ago where was god in the middle east now you're getting to the to the real issue and and and you know what they don't want a five-point sermon on why god allows pain to suffer they want someone to be jesus to them and put their arm around say i'm so sorry um tell me about it so i've learned to to to dig a little deeper to be less ready to give a five cent answer to a million dollar question wow um to do more listening than talking and um i by the way gary poole uh yeah who uh who wrote a book ironically called the complete book of questions great title for book uh he taught me how to do that um and and so that's the approach i take now so i think asking that follow-up question why did you ask that question now it just takes it to a whole different level that's that's such a great just wise approach i love i love to hear that uh let me ask you another question this one's a little tougher obviously there's been a lot of conversation about the ravi zacharias misconduct and as you you know i did an entire interview with my dad that just got a lot of positive feedback because he had been sexually abused so understands what it's like not to be believed but has also lived a more well-known international apologetic ministry and had some insights we won't probe all of that but a lot of people have been talking about how evangelism and apologetics should change moving forward because of this do you have any thoughts on whether it should and if so how i'm not sure because of the ravi situation things need to change i think things do need to change um i'm not sure it's because i think the rob the lessons to me from the robbie situation are accountability mm-hmm um transparency um um you know and that's why i'm thankful i've got mark in my life who knows everything about me it's why i travel with my wife that's why i'm glad we're together and um um she could be with me and so um i i think i think to me the the more relevant question for the broader christian world is how can all of us have a higher degree of accountability and avoid sinful situations that can um ultimately be damaging to us and others i think apologetics in general is changing um in in several ways i think we are doing more listening than talking than we used to i think um it's important that we respect people um you know richard dawkins is not our enemy atheists are not our enemies skeptics are not our enemies satan is our enemy um we have to see people as people who matter to god may have spiritual sticking points in their journey toward god they may not be as far along as we are they matter to god we should respect them we should validate them as people who matter to the father give them time don't demand a quick response i mean it took me two years of investigation to come to faith takes a lot of people a lot of time to resolve these issues and so forth so i think there are things we can learn in a in a sort of post-modern culture about um being more sensitive the example i gave about not giving an automatic sermon when somebody asks you a question but digging beneath that behind what's motivating the question i think that is an example of what we need to do more and more of um but i think for the ravi thing um i i think it's more of an issue of how do we stay pure how do we um uh have a structure around us that provides accountability and transparency and protection that's really smart there's a lot of takeaways but one thing i've been saying is students who think if i can sell a certain number of books and be on stage and have youtube hits then i'll be happy and have a meaningful life i think robbie his experience completely flips out on its head what are we chasing after that's certainly not it so that's absolutely i think i think that's another reason why we can never divorce evangelism from apologetics you know sometimes people get so into apologetics and so into the minutia of the evidence and so forth they forget why are we doing this we're doing this because there are lost people headed for hell who need the gospel and who need to understand why it makes sense and why it's true and and sometimes if we if we fall too much into the apologetics realm without remembering why we're doing it um um you know we get we get sucked into a whole different world where we lose that sense of purpose uh my purpose is not to go on a big stage and and give a talk it's not to write a best-selling book my purpose is to reach people with the gospel and if god wants to use books to do that or a talk or whatever that's great but you know what if not that's fine too um if it's just me talking to my neighbor that's okay so when we link it strongly to evangelism i think that gives us the mission that we should stay focused on that's awesome i i i love that one question i had when we were chatting before i showed you that i keep on my desk a little sequoia pine cone because it's a small spine cone and the the seed for pine cone is actually the size of an oat and yet by volume it's the biggest tree in the world and every time i see it it just reminds me that i feel like someone is inconsequential as me maybe god could use me to make a difference kind of like james three something small has big can have big power is there any picture or thing you keep on your desk that just encourages you or reminds you of things that are important yeah a lot of family pictures uh here's a little thing that that somebody gave me it's just a little wooden thing that says wisdom okay yeah and it reminds me to seek wisdom there's a difference between knowledge and wisdom there's a difference between information and wisdom um but i'll tell you the thing i like the most let me get it here it's right behind me oops we got my gran yeah my granddaughter um brighton um you know you talk about the christian success and celebrity thing and so forth uh she's when she was about eight or nine years old or seven she was little uh she was coming back from some activity and she got into the backseat of the car and there were a couple of kids there who were talking about me that they've read one of my children's books and um they said oh yeah um and and brighton got upset she said he's my papa wow he's my bapa he's not your papa he's my papa and so she drew me this this drawing oh that is so cute uh but it's uh there it is it's uh we're holding hands there oh gosh and uh so she she said that to me to say uh that's her and that's bob that's super precious oh that's so fun i love that that's really fun i love my grandkids you know we just the two oldest grandkids have come to faith and were just recently baptized um wow my little yeah my my um 15 year old she's our oldest okay she is so on fire with her faith in fact she's going on a missions trip to alaska this summer wow um she's been on two previous mission trips but uh she um she told me um they actually left the youth group at the church she was at to go to another church and i said why did you go why did you leave that church to go to a different church and she said because the kids in my youth group weren't paying attention she said when when the teacher was speaking they were talking they were on their phone and i'm trying to take notes i'm trying to learn so she's part of this youth group at this church and it's really on fire she showed me her bible it's all marked up you know oh that's great she's she's just growing in her faith and our little penelope who's a couple years younger than her was just baptized and it's just exciting to see the faith of this next generation come alive well i was going to ask you this there's a lot of just negative talk on all sides the political aisle today there's a lot of concern amongst christians and i think some is genuine in terms of questions like say religious liberty etc but you're an upbeat optimistic person a lot like my dad what what gives you hope to stay positive moving forward is it the next generation or what gives you hope moving forward you know i'm not always positive um you see me as positive leslie sees me in the other moments she will tell you i have great highs and great lows we all do yeah but um i generally overall i i'm optimistic because um i i see the gospel still works you know and and i see younger people like my granddaughter um not just coming to faith but alive in her faith and wanting to tell people about jesus and going on mission trips and so forth and um uh golly that just fuels me it just excites me to see that uh there is hope uh the gospel still works and and every time i hear someone come into faith um i just i just say you know what yep it's still working it's still working after two thousand years there's another one um and that's why i love stories of people coming to faith i wrote the book case for grace yeah just to tell stories of people whose lives were changed by christ and um so that i guess that's why i'm optimistic i my attitude is um if god could take someone like me who was a profane and an immoral and a drunken uh narcissist and hedonist and do 180 on me um then there's hope for everybody there's no for anybody um uh you know somebody told me once you know if if god can take the worst thing that could ever happen in the history of the universe which is the death of the son of god on the cross and turn it into the best thing that has ever happened in the universe which is the opening of heaven to all who follow him that god could take the worst possible situations in this world and turn turn him into good and i i remember that peter craig told me that wow philosopher yeah and you know i've always remembered that as i look at what seems often to be a hopeless world um and there is you know i'm a journalist so i i read the papers every day and i sure i see the things that are going on and it's depressing at many times but i go back to that quote and that that reminder that you know god is powerful enough to to do a 180 on it that's that's a great example i love that now i was going to ask you for one of your favorite stories of how someone's used your books but i gotta i gotta ask you to share the evil knievel story because this is one of my all-time favorite examples so oh my gosh tell us tell us that story i'm sitting at my desk one day the phone rings and i pick it up and i answer it and i say hello and uh the guy says is this lee strobel i said yeah he said this is evil [Laughter] i thought satan has got my phone number can satan do that is that possible for satan to get my phone number i thought it was unlisted yeah he said no evil knievel oh okay well i'm a huge motorcycle fanatic uh going way back i used to write for psycho world magazine and it used to be totally in a motorcycle so of course i was a big evil knievel fan when i was younger and he told me the story of how he was on the beach in florida um and god spoke to him he said on the inside and god said to him robert which is his real name robert i've saved you more time so you'll ever know now i need to come to me through my son jesus wow and he felt this and he thought i don't even know who jesus is so the only christian he knew was frank gifford the sportscaster kathy lee gifford's husband yep he calls up frank gifford he says frank i had this experience what do i do who is jesus and uh frank said uh get the case for christ the book and it'll explain it all anyway evil knievel had one of the most radical born-again experiences of anybody i've ever encountered he was absolutely turned inside out by god he called up robert schuler at the crystal cathedral because he was on television and he said i've come to faith in jesus i want to be baptized and let the world know and tell them about jesus shuler thinking wait a minute i got schuler traveled all the way to florida to check it out and found out yeah this guy's born again wow so he comes to the crystal cathedral and he's up there and from this large congregation and they say tell us your story before he's baptized and i'm and and it's online it's on youtube yeah it's on youtube yeah and he just with the child like of course he's got oxygen because he was dying of a lung condition and he he said it was such childlike uh innocence he told his story and then at the end he said do you know jesus have you met jesus and and you can you can know him and and after that schuler's son was supposed to preach that day he ripped up his sermon he said he said you've heard the gospel he said if you if anybody wants to come up right now receive christ and be baptized come on up well in two services seven hundred and twenty people oh my goodness yeah yeah it was like pentecost christian today there's a little article about it it was like pentecost they were running out of water that was unbelievable and um you know so i got to know evil pretty well he called me up uh about once a week and we talked and and his biggest lament and i tell this to young people his biggest lament he said lee i lived a life i was a drunk i was a womanizer i went to prison um if i had only come to faith as a kid as a teenager my whole life could have been different i could have served god i could have told people about god and i would tell him i said evil you know i understand that you can't go back and redo it but because god can redeem amen who you became and he can take your life you have you have credibility with certain people you wouldn't otherwise have and when you get up and say after the life i've lived i have discovered jesus is real he will change your life he will change your eternity you have a credibility with certain people you wouldn't otherwise have and god will use you and he certainly did hundreds of people coming to faith but um he was radically there was a men's magazine this is hilarious a men's magazine went to interview it and um they're hoping for all these stories about his wild life and he didn't want to talk about his past anyone talk about jesus so this poor reporter got nothing out of this interview so he writes this article and he just uses a bunch of old stuff about can the evil knievel at the end of the article he says yeah and so i was with him in his house and all he wanted to talk about was jesus wow it was great so on his tombstone um he has etched believe in jesus really yeah even jesus so it's just a heartwarming story he was a great guy he was hilarious um and he would ask me all kinds of offbeat questions about archaeology and about the bible and he was just full of curiosity he couldn't learn and fast enough so one of the pastors where he went to church at the christian theater was a friend of mine and he said he would call him up you know the last weeks or months of his life time after time just endless theological questions he was just hungry and his boss was like it's evil knievel your job is to answer and talk to him and i thought well you know what do you do that's right so it's pretty fascinating haley what encouragement would you have for younger evangelists or apologists uh you know i would say what louise palau said he would communicate from heaven um go for it go for it just you know don't wait for god to put a call on your life the default call on all of our lives is to share jesus with others so i would say seize every opportunity to share the gospel with people you encounter along the road of life um uh you know get educated um you know um if you're gonna be even if you're not going to be a quote unquote apologist i don't consider myself an apologist i consider myself an evangelist who does apologetics but if you're going to be an apologist you need to get educated and so there's some great programs out there biola's one of them you can you should pursue a degree um so you know what you're talking about but i think these days every evangelist needs to be an apologist at some level because the questions come fast and furious and the internet fuels them and uh we need to be ready as first peter 3 15 says so give it a defense to give an answer to anyone who asked us to give the reason for the hope that we have never lose that connection between evangelism apologize that's you know don't get don't delve so deeply into apologetics that you forget the fact that that woman at the public library who you've checked out a book from matters to god and she needs to hear the gospel lee you've been such a supporter of what we're doing at biola i know you encouraged kyle to go to the m.a philosophy program and we were students together and now we teach together just interviewed him recently for our podcast his new book on prayer is fantastic um he's just a friend doing great work so we really appreciate your encouragement uh here at biola but i heard about your program at colorado christian it's young sometimes in the christian world there can be competition the moment i heard about this i was like praise the lord we need as many programs and we need to lock arms right now so tell us a little bit about what you're doing at colorado christian in terms of apologetics and evangelism yeah we have a program called the center for evangelism and applied apologetics and we use that term applied apologetics to say we're not trying to create uh necessarily phd's in philosophy that's not our goal it's important and we believe in that but we're looking for people going to be influencers in the culture people who do podcasts books radio shows uh do what you're doing sean um we want people who will share across the back fence to a neighbor and so forth so um we've launched 91 courses 91. around the cut i've gone around the country and i chose about 40 to 50 phds in evangelism and apologetics and we we got them to create these 91 courses we have undergraduate degrees in four areas of concentration we have master's degrees and four areas of concentration but to me the most exciting thing is we're just now launching in fact i have right here the list of our courses that we're launching on the certificate level oh good yeah what i mean by that is a lot of people don't want another degree they've already got a degree um but they would love to take a course and learn you know like we have courses on historical evidence for for christianity science in the bible a case for easter how to share your faith naturally building an evangelistic church etc all kinds of courses that you can take not for credit but uh all online so you can grow and learn as a customer and just be more effective in sharing and defending your faith so uh we're just about to launch those i've got a list here about 30 courses that we we've already are set to launch everything from you know um c.s lewis um great of course on cs lewis to world religions uh to islam and and christianity and so forth lots of stuff so we're hoping that um you know there are people out there who say i haven't got time and i don't have the inclination to earn another degree but boy i'd like to take a couple courses so all of our courses whether they're undergraduate graduate or certificate are all online and so people can do it from their homes there's a experience sort of like we're doing with zoom or with a similar platform where you participate with other students and a professor it's great um so we're excited about it we have hundreds of students already going through it and um unfortunately we've launched it right as culprit hit so getting the word out has been difficult i'm sure we're trying to get get the word out a little more if people want information they can go to strobel center well one word strobile.com strobelcenter.com get information that is awesome that's great to know i know clay jones who has been teaching at biola for a long time is doing one of the programs there i'm thrilled he's doing the class on the problem of evil and using his books which i'm biased but i think they're two of the best so yeah i do too in fact i interviewed my book on heaven oh good immortal good yeah it was really ouch by the way we have scholarships available as well oh good so strobel center people can find out more about it that's fantastic i got one more question for you here this is this this is a great one i did not expect this one it says uh what would you recommend for older aspiring apologists yeah that's a great question you know i had lunch um the other day with a guy who was in our master's program um that we're doing at colorado christian who is 69 years old and uh he got his mba about 20 years ago and i said wait a minute you're 69 years old and you're studying apologetics and you're getting your master's degree what are you going to do with it and i love what he answered he said lee my vision is to create a network of small group experiences for non-believers all throughout the city of houston wow and that's one of the courses that we teach is how to do small group evangelism and apologetics which i think is the wave of the future and uh i thought this is fantastic this guy's my age and he's launching a whole new ministry he's going to do in his retirement years uh so i say you know you're never too old for this uh who knows how god might use you as god opens up maybe more time in your life during your later years to be able to do ministry so um there's one example of someone who's gonna do what uh luis palau said and go for it i love it that's such a good word of encouragement so i'm gonna tell our our viewers make sure they pick up your book the case for heaven you said it can be pre-ordered now but it comes out you said september when is it when it release september 14th september 14th all right i'm putting you on the spot but i'm gonna bug you for an interview close to then oh absolutely a lot of options are going to come up we will lock it in so i'll follow up with a message but i definitely viewers you know the case books there are a whole bunch of comments here leah people say in case for the real jesus case for christ my personal favorite of your books you didn't ask it's the case for grace i love the case for grace my wife used it in a bible study with a group of her kind of other friends who are moms yeah about two or three years ago awesome you know real quick funny story about that book i i had all these stories about remarkable stories you know one guy in there killed what 27 000 people oh my goodness you know i mean these are amazing and then i thought wait a minute people are going to read this book and say oh those people needed god i don't need god i didn't so i said i have to interview a nice guy and somebody who realized i'm a nice guy but i needed god so i went to biola and i interviewed craig hazen yeah biola who is a nice guy and he told me about realizing yeah i may be a quote unquote nice guy but i'm a sinner who needs grace wow and and i told the story of the book but i thought thank goodness there's a nice guy story in that book because people read some of these other stories and say boyd some of these other people they really needed god well it's it's a great book if people watching are not aware that one pickup case for grace but help uh propel it in the apologetics evangelism world so pre-order the case for heaven now and if you want to hear more about the apologetics program at corrado christian check out strobelcenter.com uh make sure you hit the subscribe button because uh once a month or so i'm doing these kind of behind the scenes interview but next week we actually have nancy piercy coming up who's agreed to come on wayne grudem is going to come on craig keener some really interesting fascinating scholars going to come on and just give a sense of their their life and their experience and a lot of questions i asked you today lee but two topics you won't want to miss friday interviewing kob cultivac has done massive research on the equality act more research than anybody i know and exactly what christians need to know so at 12 o'clock on friday mark your calendars and join us then next wednesday scott ray who's one of the leading christian ethicists in the world is going to come on and we're going to talk about vaccinations right or wrong what's the ethics behind them so if those topics interest you make sure you hit subscribe and hit notifications so you can join us and of course this channel is brought to you by biola apologetics so after you check out colorado christian come over here and check out biola we'd love to partner with you so lee don't disappear i want to say goodbye and we're done but everybody thanks so much for joining us i love seeing familiar faces on here great questions and interactions blessing everybody we'll see you friday at noon to talk about the equality act thanks for having me

Channel: Sean McDowell

Views: 11,243

Keywords: lee strobel, apologetics, apologist, author, case for christ, life, experience, movie

Id: -d4cASZwD2Y

Length: 61min 20sec (3680 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021