Piano Talk Live from Sept. 30, 2020: Bill Gaither and Dr. David Jeremiah

television the internet live events and resource materials and books he's the author of more than 50 books including is this the end the spiritual warfare answer book david jeremiah morning and evening devotions airship genesis kids study bible and the jeremiah study bible he serves as the senior pastor of shadow mountain community church in san diego california where he resides with his wife donna they have four grown children and 12 grandchildren david it's good to be talking with you today the fun thing about what i'm doing these days is what i would be doing even without the camera i'd be talking to you on the phone saying how how are things going in san diego well we've been doing that for a long time way way back into the uh indiana days and um we've shared a lot together over the years two uh two guys from what ohio and indiana that well it was 40 45 years ago maybe yeah i've been in shadow mountain 39 years so i came here in 81 yeah so i was in i was in fort wayne from 67 to 81 and those were good years well and that's when we got acquainted and at this age there's nothing like long-term relationships and you have been a good friend for all those years and it's good i feel the same way same here david uh we're going to talk today about your book uh the publisher or maybe maybe you sent the copy to us and gloria and i looked at the topic and i said hey somebody needs to be saying these things especially during this time just the title of the book alone uh forward i told somebody the other day too many people are living in the past yep yeah and it's and it's such an easy trick to get into i loved one of the lines uh in the front part of your book when it says with our eyes fixed firmly on the rear view mirror we wonder are our best days behind me and the answer quickly you say no and i love this line when you serve the kingdom of heaven your future is always unfolding at the speed of grace when you serve the kingdom of heaven your future is always unfolding at the speed up that's a hooky that's a hooky line well i'm expecting i expect to see a song here within the next few weeks but that was the purpose of the book to simply say don't get stuck in the past and i don't care and you're talking to the right guy today i don't care how old you get your best days are in front of you yeah you know bill the thing that happened as i tell the story in the beginning this book that i went to a concert where tommy walker uh was was singing some songs he'd written and the concert was almost over he said hey let me just do this one last song before we leave and he and he got up and he started singing this song and the song was called forward it was all about getting your getting your eyes going in the right direction and not living in the past and i was sitting with my wife donna and i turned to her and i said honey that's what's been brewing in my heart that's what i've been concerned about so many people want to they want to live their lives looking in the rearview mirror and i always repo i always report to them that the rear view mirror is like this but the windshield is huge i don't i think that's a great picture look toward the future and when people stop doing that they die before they die and that's a sad thing to see and you know what they don't have to be old to die they can be 40 45 absolutely that's even more sad to see when you when you i think sometimes in artistry that is very very true artistry can be a very very uh cruel master sometimes and music can be a young things and i've watched the careers of artists and they go like this and when they start doing this which every artist has that experience they get discouraged they get depressed whether or not is in the secular field or even or or even the spiritual field i love your i love your chapter divisions your first one was about dreaming talk to us about it well uh the story in that chapter is about david he was sitting in his paneled house one day and he began to think about the fact that the ark of the covenant was still in an old torn up tent and he thought to himself this isn't right here i'm in this luxurious palace and the and the instrument that represents the presence of god is in a tent and he made up his mind right then he was going to build a place for the ark of the covenant and it was his dream and of course uh as you know bill his dream was great until god told him he couldn't do it god said no david you're a man of blood and i'm not going to let you build this and so david had to allow his dream to die for a moment and it came alive in his son i always loved the part about the fact that he spent the rest of his life raising the money for the temple so that his son could go out and live his dream his dream was so great it was beyond his death and it lived after he was gone and and in the chapter i just try to tell people you know when you stop dreaming when you start thinking and allowing god to place these thoughts in your heart you you don't have any real reason to keep going in and i don't think that's the way god wants us to live we wrote a song one time for lauren eldest saying dream on when the world just doesn't believe god has promised never to leave him alone dream on follow hope wherever it leads in the seat of dreams there's a promise of the dawn dare to listen to the music keep on following the star morning can't be far dream owned love that child well i ended up i ended up that chapter by telling the story about how i always dreamed about being in radio and i used to i used to do radio kits when i was a kid and i got a couple of jobs as an announcer on some stations when i was in college and then god called me to preach and i remember telling donna i i'm i'm okay with what he's want me to do but man i don't know i love radio what's that all about and then i made the comment in the book god didn't call me to preach to take away my dream he called me to preach because my dream was too small and what god has done through radio in my life is is way greater than anything i could have achieved if i'd have kept following my own plan when you when you follow god's dream it's always going to be better than anything you could have come up with that's for sure in all the years that we did the billy graham crusades the one thing i heard them talk about more than anything else in preparation for the crusades and during the crusades and after the crusade was a word pray pray pray i i've never seen an organization that emphasized praying anymore your second chapter is about praying yeah and you know what that's the reason god blessed billy graham and he prayed he was a humble man something about praying that keeps your your your your eyes in the heaven and your feet on the ground and the story in in the story about prayer is about um nehemiah who went back to build the walls of jerusalem and how he he got a vision for it then he prayed and the purpose of the chapter was to point out that when you get a dream it's prayer that carries that dream through to fruition and so the story about nehemiah is great every time he turned around he had opposition and the bible said he stopped for a moment he prayed then he dealt with a problem and if you've been a leader as you have been and as i have been you know that prayer is a conversation with god it's not something you just spend in the morning all day long you hear yourself saying so so now lord what do i do with this and and that's that's the thing i wanted to convey that you start with the dream and and the dream probably was instituted by prayer but it's carried along by prayer nehemiah is such a great illustration of that as he built those walls and fought his way all the way through 52 days later the walls were up and they had a big praise service to thank god for his his provision the book is so practical gloria and i kept talking about how practical this book step one dreaming step two praying chapter number three talks about the importance of choosing and you touch on a topic that we love very much what do we hang on to what do we let go we have to one way or the other we have to prioritize and many times our friends don't understand our priorities and many times christian friends will even lay a guilt trip on you about wanting you to do what but sooner or later you've got to say yes to what god wants you to say yes to and sometimes you got to say to notice not that something is bad if it were a choice between an a or an f we can all make that decision but a lot of our decisions are between an a and a b and at that point and yeah and the longer you go and the more god honors you the harder that is to say this isn't that true like for instance with what's happened with the video thing and all of that you know i remember you telling a story years ago and i don't know why i remember this telling about somebody calling you up and say god told them that you were supposed to be at their church at a certain time and and i think you said well i hadn't told me isn't that didn't that happen actually happened i even had uh billy cioli one time and he told this story publicly call us and what did the triode is saying i forget the date let's pick a date april the 22nd and grand rapids on monday night uh because president ford at that time was he's from grand rapids he was going to be speaking and he wanted us to do the music and i said billy uh we can't do it and he said well i just checked on your schedule you're not booked i said oh yes we're booked we're booked at 211 east hanna street alexandria indiana with three little kids it's on a monday night we don't do anything else on a monday night except we're home with our kids there was a little pause he said are you serious i said it's serious so you're not going to sing for the president right i said well i like president ford but no we can't do it and learning how to say no in a nice kind of a way even for wonderful invitations is not an easy thing to do no and you know i i have to do that a lot i did it some this week and it's i remember one time telling my wife that you you need to have a list of things you do but you also need to have a list of things you don't do and i i said if those are priorities these should be posteriorities so i don't know if there's a good word or not but i made a list of posteriorities for instance when my children were little we used to go to bible camps and i'd stay there and i'd teach the word of god for a whole week and i loved it but as my children got older and god began to do things he's done at turning point at shadow mountain i couldn't devote a whole week to that anymore i just had to say to my schedulers unless it's something overwhelmingly compelling i just can't do that so i just give you permission to let them know that's not something i can do here's another thing i couldn't do sometimes people would write to you or call you and say hey we want you to come and we want you to speak on this topic and all that i don't have time to prepare special information for these events i can come and share something i've already studied but i felt guilty about that at first but then the lord really showed me you know he put me here to do what he wants me to do and nobody else can come and change that i have to do god's bidding and not let other people try to steer me in places and i get i get caught sometimes bill i do it and i usually regret it i usually say how did i get that how did i do that so that's that's one of the real challenges if you're going to see your dream through to fruition you can't go down too many side roads you kind of stay on the main drive i know that you and donna probably have some of the same struggles that gloria and i have and a lot of our struggles and uh and i just got to be honest about it uh in the past have been been on two topics one however raising the kids uh you may not have that problem but the priority business is we've probably had more heated discussions as jeff easter said when they said do you and sherry argue he said no we just have intense moments of fellowship from time to time and some of our most intense moments of fellowship have come when i did say yes to something and gloria and i got there and she would say why did you say yes to this you know we could be at home with the kids doing something else that never stops that is tough no it doesn't no and you know when i was in indiana back in those years when we were together in the same state i was building a church the black hawk baptist church you started with seven families and i was out every night visiting and all that and my we had two little children at home and uh i would come home after dinner and donna would say honey are you gonna be gone again tonight and i'd give her this little spiritual answer hey i'm the gross national product here if i don't do this nobody else is going to do it and this is what god's called me to do that went on and i saw the sadness in her face one day she got me she said we need to talk went in the satin in the kitchen and she said david i feel like when i ask you about what you're doing with your time i'm arguing with god and i'm not going to do it anymore you're the priest of this family you're not a pastor first you're you're a father a first and so i'm just going to turn this over to you and god you need to resolve this i'm never going to ask you about it again and it broke my heart and i i'll tell you the truth it was one of the main things in my life i never missed the key things when my kids were playing football on the east coast i went every week sometimes getting home at three o'clock in the morning i never regretted and i owe it to donna for making me realize and i came up with these little priorities i'm a person a relationship with god i'm a partner i have a relationship with my wife absolutely i'm a parent i have a relationship with my kids then i'm a pastor and i stood up in my church one day bill and i said i hate to tell you guys this you're number four or the on the prayer list and i said but if i don't do one two and three right i got nothing to give you so you better pray that i stay in that priority list so what you say yes to and we'll talk to the folks who are listening and what you say no to is a very important thing let me say this about you because i know you wouldn't say it and it's interesting when you're trying to prioritize but you and i both had a dear friend who passed away during this pandemic phil brauer from grand rapids and you called me at the house and said bill uh i'm gonna do phil service on online and uh and and would you participate in it and i said yes and i told uh and you put it all together and that takes time to do that kind of a thing yes it is and i told gloria i said you know what i love about david is his heart he has to say yes to a lot of stuff nationally but this was a private little service for a good man who who was in both of our lives god bless you for for that kind of decision-making well i miss him even to this day and think about his wonderful wife and i know the the the time of morning is still there so i um i'm glad we did that and by the way your pardon that was great and it was it turned out to be quite a good service glory for glory and i glory and i loved it and knowing how phil was a producer and he loved to have everything on time when that service ended it was exactly 60 minutes and i said phil would have been happy believe it or not i told her guys that i said we can't mess around with this and we can't blow this thing because phil was he he was a perfectionist and i used to sit in the booth with him at the quartet convention when and he started that fining process when people would go over time he started finding him per minute i said you really collect that he said absolutely and he put the fear of god in those people with the a i i finally figured out at 84 i am an 84 year old a.d.d person i got it from mark lowry okay but but the challenge of getting people to focus your quote was make your one thing the main thing talk to us about it well you know it's it's a lot of people have written about the one thing deal my friend john gordon has some stuff in writing about that others have written about it and it seems a little bit overwhelming to think that you can you can control your life with one thing and i'm not really sure you can but i i think the interesting thing in that chapter is this bill for years and years and years the word priority was in the singular and then about 14 or 15 years ago somebody added the word s to it and priority became priorities and that's the problem really what is my one priority in life is to bring honor and glory to the lord jesus christ with all that i do everything flows from that and if you get too many you get spread out so thin you haven't got you got nothing and you wear yourself out i see people doing this all the time it's kind of back to whether you can say no or not you can because if you can't say no pretty soon you can't say yes your focus so much is talking about the future and forgetting the tapes of confusion that keep running over and over again in our minds the confusion of the past and what we could have done what we could have done better i told you on the phone there are a lot of reasons why we're excited about the book but one of the reasons i said i can give you a song of course i'm always plugging songs i don't care i mean i'm not a songwriter i'm a song plugger i take glorious ideas but nightly uh a little west hampton with a group sings this song i repent for moments i have spent recalling all the pain and failures of my past i repent for dwelling on the things beyond my power to change the chains that help me fast i will go on the past i leave behind me i gladly take his mercy and his love he is joy and he is peace he is strength and sweet release i know he is and i am his i will go on and you know that's that's really a reflection of what paul said in philippians 3 he said forgetting those things which are behind i press toward the mark of the high calling of god in christ jesus and what he was saying this is one of his later letters he was all he was like you and you and me he was in the final triad of his of his ministry but he said i look back and you know paul could have looked back and dwelt on his failures he he was one of the he was one of the persecutors of the church he was standing at the feet of those who stoned uh stephen he could have looked back and have been just demolished by all the things that he did before he became a christian or he could have looked back and taken great pride in everything that happened after he became a follower of christ but he basically said look you know i refuse to use the past either to defeat me or to give me arrogance my goal is to move on from here and here he is he's where we are and he's saying i press toward the mark of the high calling of god in christ jesus what a testimony that is to me and to you and to all of us it's never time to quit looking to the future it's never time to dwell in the past the past is a teacher but if you let it become your life and i've seen this happen in so many people's lives many pastors you know and it's really tragic because it steals the joy right out of their heart and and that's the last thing they need in some ways this last year and what i'm doing this summer even during this is some of the best days of my life i mean the the joy of being able to communicate to people that uh you know travel has limited that but to be able to do that they these are good days and thank god for technology absolutely i told my wife the other day i said i don't think people really understand that nothing like what we're going through right now has ever happened in the history of our nation when they write about this period they're going to write about it being the most unusual period in the history of america and you and i got to live through it and we got to challenge it and we got to be a part of it and what an opportunity every every good invention every good thing that's happened to past always came out of some kind of crisis some kind of struggle and somebody said i'm not going to let this get the best of me one of my one of my friends is in a church where they have decided not to go back to church and he was telling me on the phone yesterday he said i am so tired of hearing my leaders tell me what we can't do and none of them seem to have any creativity and talk about what we can do and that's really the issue here if you want to focus on what you can't do i can give you a long list but there's some things you can do like i told you earlier we had to have church outside on the fourth of july when we usually have a big celebration and there were some things we couldn't do but we figured out the one thing we could do that we couldn't do inside was we got some guys to jump out of an airplane with the american flag flying over our assembly and it was a glorious moment and we just kind of we kind of high-fived each other yeah you can kick us outdoors but you can't keep us the big outdoors is a big opportunity absolutely absolutely chapter five talks about risk there is no way any gain is going to happen without risk right absolutely if you can't take a chance and you know really risk is just a secular word for faith it's believing that that if god calls you to do it he's going to supply the wherewithal for you to make it happen and in the story of in that chapter is about caleb and joshua coming back from their visit to canaan and they got back to katie's barney and 10 of their buddies said we can't do this it's too you know these people are we look like grasshoppers in front of these people we can't do this but caleb and joshua said no this is god's dealing we can do this and they gave a positive report to the people you know the story bill the people who didn't believe including the spies who came back with a bad report the spies were killed almost immediately and the whole generation had to live in the wilderness for 40 years until that generation died off and then caleb and joshua led the people into the promised land if they hadn't been willing to risk going against the full report of everybody else and told the truth every well the whole world would have been different because out of that whole story is the continuation of the line of redemption that goes through the bible so you know i uh i look back over my life and there's probably five or six times where i told god okay if this is what you want me to do and i'd go home and tell donna and she would say you're gonna do what if you don't ever get it you don't gonna do what you haven't really lived you know the the the thing i loved about this chapter uh was the integrity that you handled between facts and faith that's a big struggle uh for the 21st century christian the whole business about what here are the facts okay but here is the faith and how to marry those two it's not easy and sometimes i think there's some false teaching out there that uh that people really mess up their lives because they totally ignored the facts and i have told you this before but i mean it i i appreciate the tension that you bring between you you're realistic uh and even add prayer and all of that talk to us about that the tension between the facts and the reality and faith well you know the the old adage bill is there's a there's a thin line between faith and foolishness yeah and you know i know a lot of guys who i see them on television i know some of them personally you know if you can think it if you can believe it it'll happen but it doesn't happen that way yeah that's not true that's not gospel that's not biblical i tell them all the time i used to believe that i'd be a great basketball player if i was 7-2 but i never got past six two because it wasn't in the plan for god for me to be that big and and and you know the bible doesn't tell us to deny the reality of the universe the bible says in fact a miracle wouldn't be a miracle if it wasn't unusual yes you know the bible people say the bible is full of miracles no there's about five sections of the bible where a miracle is abound and there's thousands of years between those miracles in terms of the absolute miracle itself a miracle is a miracle because it challenges everything and so if you start making everything a miracle there aren't any miracles anymore and that's what sometimes they do they get involved in this you know whatever you say you can make it happen it and then that that especially is hurtful to people who are going through trials who are in times of sickness um who have incurable incurable diseases and i you know i pick up the pieces for a lot of those things because of the hurt that it brings many pastors do that they have to pick up the pieces of stuff that just wasn't true in the first place [Music] pursue your dream chase your dream here again i think you're the way you practically handle this is so good in this book talk to us about it well bill you know sometimes people say well okay i've got the dream it's going to happen no the dream is just the blueprint that god gave you and now he wants you to go and fulfill that i told a story there that after god called me to preach when i was a senior in college i didn't just sit there and say okay lord show me a place to preach i realized that i wasn't adequately prepared and i called a friend of mine who was a graduate of dallas seminary and i said what's what do i have to do to get into seminary and i went after my calling that's what i think i was trying to say there if god calls you to do something that's not a call to passivity it's it's the reminder this is the door that's open now you walk through it and you give it everything you have you pursue this with all of your heart and if you don't the dream is not a dream it's just an idle vision a dream god gives you to pursue and i'll tell you the truth i don't think i i don't think i violated the biblical definition of ambition but i have worked hard my whole life built like you have when god called me to do what he called me to do i gave it everything i had and i didn't i never apologized for that there are a lot of people who think that ambition is evil no evil ambition is evil but godly ambition is pursuing your dream with all that you have and i've watched you do that i mean this thing you've built with these videos and how you've used that to help so many people and not just in the very listening and watching of them i watch them every saturday when i'm getting ready to go to sunday night church and the only thing i don't like about it is there's too many people in there that aren't here anymore and i have to i have to look at that and that but i love the music but not only that but your vision went way beyond that i know a little bit about how you wanted to help these people and give them hope and we started and we started we started a trust fund we got about three million dollars in that trust fund now to help artists who get into financial trouble because their planning wasn't good so there are many wonderful things that came out of that that absolutely and once you realize it's what you what god wants you to do i think your obligation as a child of god is to be the best person you can be and do that i remember when i got out of seminary i uh donna said honey today you sounded like charles swindoll or you started like howard hendricks yeah i think we all have a tendency the people we admire sometimes we try to copy and i remember one day during that whole discussion with her i i realized god was saying look i don't want you to be him or him or anybody else just be the best david jeremiah you can be that's why i put you here that's what it means to follow your dream to give everything you have to accomplish what god has given you the opportunity to do when i was 19 my dream was to be like uh hobie and jake and all the guys james blackwood the blackfoot brothers so i went out with a group of guys for about eight or nine months a good thing happened david we starved to death and after that nine months i looked in the mirror and i said your piano your keyboard skills are not that good your vocal skills are not that good you need to go back to school and prepare and when i went back to school i did not major in music i measured i majored in english and i hung that dream up in a closet and i said well that's a good idea but not now put it up in the closet and then after four years i started teaching english in public high school and but i started writing tunes and songs now unlike my voice and unlike my keyboard skills i looked at those songs and i said these are pretty good these are better than some of the songs they kept you called your sweet spot i found the sweet spot they kept building and building in the building ten years later god took that dream that i had put hung up in a closet and said i think i can trust you with this now because 10 years later people were calling from all over the country our little career was starting demands started happening for what we were doing i told this to a group of artists one night and they said well when you hung your dream up what did you do in the meantime for your dream to come true i said i'm glad you asked that question i became the very best english teacher my my goal was to become the very best english teacher at alexandria monroe high school ever had and i still run into students today i had you in 11th grade english class and i liked your practicality in your book when you said you had a dream you wanted to pursue and there are steps to get there but at the same time in the meantime and i'm glad the kid asked the question what'd you do right now my goal and my and my immediate goal is to become the best of what i'm doing at that time and it came in and the two fields uh i've never left the teaching field i'm still teaching the day on stages across the country so so i think i think it's possible but i love the practical way that you handled it in the book thank you well it's it's true you know we sometimes when you talk about a dreamer the picture you get is somebody who's in a hammock out on the back porch and just waiting for something to happen i've learned this things don't just happen i don't you you pursue them in the right way in a godly way and god honors your determination to go for it this is fun we ought to do this all the time yeah forget we're on a program we're just having this conversation chapter seven get your mind right it all starts up here doesn't it yeah hey bill i have a trainer who i go to see uh when when we're not in the coronavirus yeah and his name is todd durkin and that's his when you walk into his gym if he sees you he'll say get your mind right get your mind right and he kind of drilled that into me and i began to realize that chapter is about being positive and how vitally important it is for god's people to be positive and i remember uh bill when i was growing up i don't know what your early days were but i grew up in a it was a good godly church but it was legalistic and pretty negative i knew yeah i knew what i was against i wasn't just sure what i was for and and it wasn't until i went to dallas seminary and i got a wider view of the kingdom and what god was doing and i still think there's a lot of issues among christians because uh you know when i first started to circulate some of this material i had some guys come back and say well you can't do that positive stuff i said what do you mean you know that doesn't belong to any genre the positive stuff is in the bible well tell me what you mean well how about this one paul said i can do all things through christ who strengthens me that is really positive but it's the right lesson because he knows he can't do it himself but he has such great confidence in god and i think it's time for god's people to get out of this negative stuff that have so controlled us i mean i used to go to some meetings as a young boy bill and i'd come home wondering why do we even go man i'm in worse shape than i was when i went because negativity just now does that mean you're not against sin of course not but if you study the bible the vast the vast portions of the scripture are positive and they're they're challenging and encouraging and i wanted to write that chapter i told the story of uh davos swinney in that in that chapter who's the coach at clemson i met him in new york city uh last christmas and you know he's one of the most positive guys i've ever met in my life my family and i sat in his room at the marriott marquis hotel in downtown new york and and for one hour we heard him talk and when we got done we were walking down the hall i told my son no wonder he no wonder he's we're in championships he's a champion yes he talked about his kids how much he loved them how how great it was to be in the school it was just such a refreshing time to be with somebody who understood and if you read this guy's story he didn't grow up easy he went through a lot of problems and the story's in the book but i just think it's good it's time for god's people to realize yeah we have there is sorrow that we have to face there are difficulties we have to face but i'll tell you what being a christian and knowing god and loving him and serving him is the greatest privilege you could ever have and if you don't see it that way you're just not understanding the scripture because that's not the way the scripture is i think another thing that helps you david uh uh is the love and the particip the participation that you've had in sports for all these years and i keep telling gloria because when she married me i wasn't that i've never been a jock okay uh but but i wasn't that much interested in in sports and that just kept developing and she says why do you do that i said can i tell you something sports at its very best is just a wonderful teacher in life and there are so many interesting stories but i think you're being an athlete and your son is uh his vocation is in a professional sports i think that helps you a lot also and your time with the coach uh as far as inspiration is concerned personal discipline is all about you know doing what you need to do when nobody's watching getting getting prepared and being trained and being able to face the obstacles that come you know the adage that you learn a lot by losing but you don't want to keep learning that lesson and i got to tell you something before i forget it one of my favorite people in in sports just left my town and came to your town his name is philip rivers oh yes he is he's he's come to be the quarterback at indianapolis or the colts and he is with the colts and bill you got to get to know that guy he's a wonderful man he has a has a large family but i i stayed alive with the nfl because he was here he had some great great moments when he was a quarterback yes i don't think he's done either he's a talented guy well we're and we're very excited about having him yeah yeah well i'm going to be i'm going to cheer for the cults this year so you just added a fan but you know you're right about you know i don't i don't know any negative people who achieve much in their life i know i know a lot of negative people i've met them over the years they spend their whole life telling you why you shouldn't be successful yeah i know but they're very miserable and i i i remember one day realizing that i couldn't afford the luxury of being around those people too much you know they are very demotivating and discouraging people and i'd love to help them but i've discovered some of them are so buried in their negativity you can't get them out so you just need to leave them alone it's a good stuff chapter eight the importance of investing in all the scriptures that talk about what the kingdom is all about investing our tracer that's about being alive after you're you're not physically alive it's out living your life yeah it's doing things in your life bill that that lasts beyond you and and beyond where where you are in in this world and it's about investing in the word of god one of the great things that i've been able to do during the years when i've been doing stuff after most people said i should have retired i i worked really hard pulling all of my study notes together and and i um and we produced the jeremiah study bible and i remember we had a big opening ceremony um that was at the madison square garden theater in new york city and we just invited a whole bunch of people from new york and don donald trump and his wife came to that event and sat in the fourth row as we shared the gospel and we shared the joy of this bible and i i told the story in this chapter that's kind of helped me understand the importance of that when i was a child when i was a young man my parents who were godly people they gave me for my 16th birthday a copy of the schofield reference bike oh i remember that yeah that's the first study bible i've ever seen and i got really excited about i still have it marked up and kind of beat up and one day it dawned on me that when i was reading that schofield reference bible he wrote that in 1909 and so it had been in process it had been in existence for many many years but here that bible was ministering to my heart as a 16 year old boy and one day i thought lord i hope that you can use the jeremiah study bible like that that's an investment in the future whatever happens with that in the future i won't even know about it unless you get reports on a daily basis in heaven but what a great thing that's something that will last that will that will it has a long shelf life and i think we ought to find things like that we can invest our lives in the other way that happens bill is when you invest in people like you've done all through your life and you've had such an investment in these musicians and help them and encourage them i've watched you do it and they love you and they they respect you but most of all their hearts are kept alive by your positive vision and your writing and we we need to find ways as believers not just to live for the present moment yeah but to live for the future to realize that our lives are leveraged against heaven and writing songs that are going to be sung long after you're not able to sing them on this earth writing study bibles and preaching sermons and doing teaching you know the the bible says bill there's only two things that are eternal the word of god and the souls of men and women and i thank the lord every day i get to get up every day and i focus those that's my major process the souls of men and women and the authority of the word of god those are the only two things are going to be here when this world is gone and you get to do that too you get to involve yourself in the souls of people who are blessed by your music and by the the scripture that is in those songs that's where our joy comes from and it doesn't end when we when we end our life here it just keeps on going well for whatever it's worth gloria and i have watched you and i have known you ever since the blackhawk baptist days in fort wayne your focus has never changed david and uh it's been so god-honoring and i'm proud to call you friend thank you thank you for having me thank you for letting me talk about this project that has been so special to me and you know i don't i'll be honest with you i don't know where to tell people to go find that book because half the stores aren't open but i think you'd probably get it at amazon they're pretty much always and get that book and it comes it gets released october the 2nd and it's just called forward and and i think it will be an encouragement to people as they try to come out of this crazy period of time that we've been in get the book and gloria is going to use it as a bible study this fall amen blessings to you

Channel: Gaither Music TV

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Keywords: bill gaither, bill gaither piano talk live, bill gaither live stream, gaither, gaiter music, gaither music live stream, gaither facebook live stream, gaither piano talk live, Piano Talk Live from Sept. 30, 2020: Bill Gaither and Dr. David Jeremiah

Id: u2xsyM2Cmwk

Length: 45min 50sec (2750 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020