- Welcome to Saddleback
here in all of our campuses. Last weekend, Pastor
Rick was talking to us, you might remember, about
going through the valleys of life, and a lot of you
talked about how meaningful that message was because who isn't either in a valley or just came out of a valley or just going into one
of the valleys of life? It's part of the realities of
what we all have to deal with. So we're actually gonna
do sort of a part two of that message that week
but in a different way. We're gonna do it through an interview and talk about some of
the life experiences that we face and how you
take what God's truth has to say to us about
going through the valleys and apply 'em to
different life experiences that we're facing, somebody
you love might be facing. And we're gonna do it through
an interview with a friend. Lee Strobel is with us tonight who is one of our great friends at Saddleback. (audience applauds) Don't applaud too much yet,
cause we'll bring him out in a minute, and then
you can applaud more. (audience laughs) Lee, you might know, if
you're new to Saddleback, you don't know that he was on our staff for a good amount of time. He was one of our pastors. He served you. He served us. I love Lee. We've been in each
other's homes for meals. We've been in small groups together. So we've got that connection
together as a family. And he's gonna come out and talk about what God has done in his life in going through those valleys. Many of you know that
not only has Saddleback been a beneficiary of Lee's ministry, but the whole world has been. Through his book, The Case for Christ, so many people have been encouraged to share their faith, and so many people have been brought to faith
as they heard the story of Lee as an atheist coming
to a place of faith in Christ. You may not know this, but Lee's story is being made into a
movie that's coming out in just a few weeks. In fact, before he comes out,
cause it'll embarrass him if he's out here, so before he comes out, let's just take a look at a
quick trailer for that movie. Watch this. - [Young Man] If somebody
wanted to do an investigation into Christianity, where would you start? - [Old Man] If the resurrection
of Jesus didn't happen, it's a house of cards. - You sure you want to
give me that loaded gun? - I'm pretty sure you're not gonna be able to pull the trigger. (suspenseful music) - I've spent my entire
career as a journalist uncovering the truth. Until the day my wife presented me with the biggest story of my life. I'm not gonna lose my wife and my kids to some thing that I
can't even reason with. And what happened next changed me forever. How can we even talk
about historical evidence for the resurrection? The Gospels are filled
with contradictions. - The empty tomb is based on evidence, and is that evidence your trade? - We all bet our lives on something. The question is, what's it gonna be? - As much as I would like to help out a fellow skeptic, what you're
proposing is impossible. - [Man] Could Jesus survive
being spiked to the cross? - There is no evidence
of anyone ever surviving a full Roman crucifixion. - Just because I write something down and I bury it in the dirt,
that doesn't make it true. - What I felt was something more real than anything I've ever felt in my life. - I'm praying for you. - [Man] Do you really
want to know the truth, or is your mind already made up? - Stop blaming me and the church and God, and do your job. (sweeping dramatic music) (woman cries) (typewriter clicks) - No one's ever proven if the Shroud is the actual burial cloth of the Christ. But whenever someone looks in those eyes for the first time, suddenly
becomes a real person. (audience applauds) - Woah, would you, uh, (laughs), let's do this cause Lee's family. Here all over campuses,
let's stand together, and give Lee a warm welcome
being here with us this weekend. Woo-hoo. - [Lee] Thank you. Hey, how are you? So good to see you. Oh, my gosh. - How are you? - Thank you. Thanks. Good to be home. Good to be home. Thank you. It's great to be home. - It is. - It is. I recognize faces here. Hey, how ya doin'? (laughs) - It looked like All the Presidents Men meets God's Not Dead movie. - Yeah. (laughs) - That looked pretty good. - Yeah. - Lee, you're not here just to
talk about the movie tonight although we wanted you here
to make people aware of it. - [Lee] Sure. - But you said you'd be
willing to talk about some of the valleys.
- Yeah. - You've been through in life. - Yeah, sure. - Because there's a lot
of valleys talked about in that movie. - That's true.
- That you went through. - Yeah. - Let me just start way back. A real personal question to start with. I know that in your life, you had some struggles with your dad. - Yeah. - And those struggles
played into the atheism that you struggled with in your life. - Right. - Played into some of the anger issues. - Right. - That you had in your life. They were real valleys in your life. - Right. - Something happened in the
movie, actually in the making of the movie that brought some healing into your life in this area. Tell us about it. - Yeah, um, I had a very difficult
relationship with my dad. We had a big blow-out,
argument, on the eve of my high school graduation,
and he looked at me and said, "I don't have
enough love for you "to fill my little finger." Um, so it created, there
was a rift between us that never healed during his life. I was still an atheist, and
you know, it's interesting. If you look at the famous
atheists of history, virtually all of them,
Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche, Freud, Voltaire, Welles,
Feuerbach, O'Hair, every one of those had a father who either abandoned their family when they were young or
died when they were young or with whom they had a
difficult relationship. And as Freud observed,
if your earthly father has disappointed you or
hurt you in some way, you don't want to know a heavenly father cause you're afraid it's
gonna be worse with him. So I think my atheism in my early life was driven not just by the
intellectual objections and questions about Christianity but about an emotional
issue, a father wound, that many people experience as well. Well, as I say, my dad died
before I became a Christian, and we never reconciled fully. So we're filming this
movie, and my dad is played by a character actor. You may recognize Robert Forster who's an Academy Award nominated actor. Been in 130 movies. - [Tom] I think we might have a picture. - Yeah, I think so. - [Tom] Cause everybody wants
to know what he looks like. - Yeah. - [Tom] Yeah. (laughs) - You may recognize him. He looks just like my dad. That's the freaky thing. (audience laughs) - [Tom] Wow. - So, and by the way, the
film takes place in 1980, which explains the
weird clothes, you know, (audience laughs) We all dressed weird in 1980. Come on. - [Tom] Love the mustache. - Love the mustache and the hair. So during the movie we hadn't
met Robert Forster yet, but Leslie and I were on the set, and they were filming
the scene where we had this blow-out and where he tells me he had no love for me and so forth. And so we're watching this being filmed, and they said, cut, and they
were gonna take a break. And he walks over to me. But he stayed in the
character of my father. And he walked over, and
he stood in front of me. And he looked me in the
eye, and he put his hand on my shoulder, and he
said, "I'm so sorry." And I thought, what a
tender-hearted thing to do knowing that here he's
embodying, in a sense, my dad. And saying the words that
my dad never got to say. And having me say the
same thing back to him, I'm sorry, was a really healing moment. And I think sometimes when
we talk about valleys, and Rick's message last
week was so phenomenal, that we think of ourselves
being in the valley. But, you know, God can use
us to help heal someone and help get someone through a valley. That's a role that God can use us in. And I thought, here's a way
that God used Robert Forster to extend healing in a
way that I never otherwise would have really experienced. And I wonder if there's
moments when we can reach out to someone who's hurting or someone who's going through a
valley that you can be an instrument of God's healing or His love or His forgiveness or His grace, and bring that into someone's life. And I thought, you know, what a privilege that God gives us that opportunity to serve other people who are hurting and desperate and maybe
need your expertise or maybe they need your shoulder to cry on or maybe they need to
hear some words from you that are healing and encouraging in the midst of a valley. So it just, after that
happened, and I've just tried to keep a little more heads up about ways when I meet people who are
going through tough times. Is there a way I can
extend a hand in some way to encourage them or cheer them on or offer some advice or something? - You had to deal with understanding God's a Father that you never had on this earth. - Yeah. - Like some people are. What are some of the
truths from God's Word? What are some of the
truths that have helped you to deal with that life
valley that you faced? - You know, it's difficult. If you had a father
issue, and many people do cause fathers aren't perfect, you know. So some people, many people, get hurt in their relationship with their dads, and it's hard for them sometimes, maybe for you, to imagine
a heavenly Father. You just think of Him as a magnification of your earthly father,
and that scares you. Or it bothers you. Or it concerns you. CS Lewis said something interesting. He said, you know, we can all imagine. Just use your imagination. What would the perfect father be like? He'd be encouraging. He'd be gracious. He'd be loving. He'd be accepting. He would cheer you on. He'd be proud of you and so forth. Well, that's a picture of God the Father, and so, if we can get beyond
magnifying our earthly Father, and imagining him as God,
but imagine what a perfect, if we can all imagine what a
perfect father would be like. And that is our heavenly Father who offers, you know, grace and love and forgiveness and joy and adventure and breathes life into us. And that helped me when I was
struggling with faith issues. I spent two years of my life
as a investigative journalist at the Chicago Tribune
investigating Christianity to try to get to the bottom of it. And so I came up with the evidence that convinced me the
resurrection is an actual event that really proves that Jesus
is the unique Son of God. I did the intellectual
part, but I had to do the emotional part, and
divorce myself from thinking about my earthly father and think about what a perfect heavenly
Father would be like. By the way, and I don't
want to spoil the movie, but there is redemption in the end. - Well, we know there's
some good in the end. You're sitting here.
- Well, there's good. - Cause, you're sitting here. I mean, come on. (laughs) - No, I mean, in my
relationship with my dad. I had a surprise at his funeral,
and that's all I'll say. But that surprise told
me that, you know what? My dad loved me in ways
he couldn't express, and that was healing as well. - Talked about those years
struggling with coming to faith. - Yeah. - I know that the movie
depicts that Leslie, your wife, went through just some real
valleys with praying for you. - [Lee] Right. - In fact, I think Leslie
might, I'm glad you're here, but I think she's here.
- Yeah, she's here somewhere. - Over right here. All over campus.
- Hi, hon. - She happened to be for the
first service watching this. Leslie, love you. (audience applauds) We're glad you came, Lee. We're really glad Leslie came. - Other than God, she's
the hero of the story. - Yes. You have needed to talk,
since then obviously, about the lessons that she
learned, what she went through. And that's become a part
of your life in some ways. - [Lee] Oh, sure. - Her lessons. Just share with us as you communicated after going through that
what you've learned from her. - You know, she was agnostic
when we got married. I was an atheist, and we
were pretty happy together cause we had similar
world views, you know, until some nosy Christian lady (audience and Tom laughs) leads her to faith in
Christ, which I thought was the worst possible news I could get. When she told me she'd become a Christian, the scene in the movie is almost verbatim from what happened. First word that went
through my mind was divorce. I was just gonna walk out. I was an atheist. I didn't want to be
married to a Christian. I thought she was going to turn into some holy roller or something. I didn't know. I thought she was gonna get sucked into this Christian subculture
where I wasn't welcome as an atheist, and I
thought she was cheating on me with Jesus. Seriously, cause who's this
man in her life all the sudden? I thought I was the one to
give you emotional support, and now, she's getting
her emotional support from this Jesus guy. Where does that leave me? You know, I'm out of a job here. (audience and Tom laughs) We had a lot of conflict,
a lot of conflict. Our marriage was hanging by a thread. I remember saying to her at one point, and this is in the film. And I'm not proud of this. I was an atheist at the
time, but I told her. I'm not gonna be doing
this two years from now. If we're still in this
place two years from now, I'm not gonna be here. So it was really difficult. So Leslie learned some
things in that experience that I think transcend the question of an unequally yoked relationship. I think they're practical for all of us. One of them was this
woman, wonderful woman, she's Alfie in the movie,
her real name is Linda, who led Leslie to Christ,
became her mentor. And it was so important in the midst of that spiritual mismatch
with all the conflict and all the pain that we were experiencing to have a mature Christian
woman who would be a shoulder to cry on,
who could pray with her, who could encourage her,
who didn't allow her to fall into a pity party,
who didn't allow this to become Linda and Leslie versus Lee but who would give her Godly
wisdom and Godly advice on how she could live out her faith as best she could in our marriage. And what I want to say is for all of us, we need someone in our life. That's why small groups are so important, to have a small group
of people who love you and know you and care about you and want to encourage
you and cheer you on. But also to hold you accountable,
also to provide wisdom and guidance in times
of valleys and so forth. And it just made me think. You know, how many times in my life when I've threatened to go off the rails where my relationships
with people who love me and know me, who are more mature than I am in the faith
like a Tom Holladay, you know, have given
me wisdom and guidance. So that was, and the
other thing I want to say. You feel so alone in
a situation like that, and you feel like God can
never redeem the situation. And yet, I look at Leslie today, and she is a woman of prayer
and faith and perseverance and courage that I don't
know if she would be that had she not gone through
that valley in our marriage. God used that to mold her. You know, it's very interesting. In Hebrews five, verse eight, it says that Jesus learned
obedience through suffering. And you think about that. If Jesus needed suffering
to teach him obedience in this life, then how much
more do we need valleys in our life to mold us? You know, we can't know
the value of courage and perseverance if we live
in a world with no struggle. We wouldn't learn, you know, integrity if we lived in a world
without temptations. Our world is a soul-forming machine. We are here to have our souls formed, and God uses even the valleys of our life to mold us into what he wants us to be. So I'm so thankful for
the Leslie of today, what she went through that
crucible of almost losing our marriage and all that
turmoil and yielding someone. It's sort of like gold being refined, and it comes out more
pure and more precious. - The valleys in your life didn't stop when you came to Christ. - [Lee] True. - It's not like, hey, I'm a Christian now. I don't have any more valleys. I just get a perfect life. We still are having our
souls formed like you said. And I don't know if the
whole church family knows that about five years ago, you
went through a health crisis. You almost lost your life. - Yeah. - I mean, you, and many of
us were praying for you, asking God to give you grace,
and by God's grace, He did. - Yeah. - Romans 8:28 says, God causes all things to work together for good
to those who love God, those who call on His
purposes are living according to His purposes. - [Lee] Yeah. - So you're going through this crisis. You might lose your life. That verse, did it feel like, I don't know if I can trust this verse. I'm hanging onto this
verse with all my life. How did that experience
happen in the midst of that kind of a valley for you? - Yeah, I had a health crisis. It was a weird confluence of issues that caused my blood sodium to plummet. Our blood sodium is at a very
small spectrum to be healthy. About 130 it's measured. Mine plummeted to 112. Any doctors here? If you tell a doctor,
your blood sodium was 112, they usually say, oh, you died, right? Or you were going through seizures, right? What happens is your brain takes in water, and it expands because
of the lack of sodium. It expands, and of course,
you're in a confined space in your head, so you get mental confusion, hallucinations, seizures, coma, and death. And so I had mental confusion. I had hallucinations. And then, boom, Leslie found
me unconscious on the floor. And they got me to the hospital, and I remember waking up
in the emergency room. The doctor looked at me, and he said, you're one step away from a
coma, two steps away from dying. And I was in really serious shape for quite a number of
days in intensive care. Your blood sodium has to
be raised very carefully, or you'll cause brain damage. I think about 25% of
people emerge disabled as a result of this experience. So it was a frightening time. I'd never gone through anything like that, and Leslie hadn't gone
through anything like this. And you think of Roman's
8:28 and how the promise that God can use even these valleys to bring something good out of it. I'm thinking, really? I mean, you know, I mean I
couldn't work for six months. The income was gone. It was a struggle to get by. So the thing that rescued me from that was the realization that
God was able to take the worst possible thing
that could ever happen in the history of the
universe, which is deicide, the death of the Son of God on the cross, worst thing that could ever happen, the death of the Son of God. He took the worst thing and
turned it into the best thing. He opened up heaven through that, though the death of Jesus,
through His resurrection from the dead, He opened
up the gates of heaven to all those who follow Him. And I thought, you know,
golly, if God can take the worst thing in the
universe, and turn it into the best thing in the universe, He can take my health crisis
and draw good from it. And He has, and I look
back, and you know what? I can honestly say as
traumatic as that was and as difficult as that
was and as frightening as that was, I thank God that He took me through that experience because I think of the lessons I learned. It sensitized me to people
who are far from God because it reminded me
of the brevity of life, that we may not have forever to make these spiritual
decisions we need to make. And it sensitized me to that. It made me more effective in sharing Jesus with other people, more
urgent in doing that knowing that our time is short. Maybe shorter than we know, and so there were so many lessons. My son, who has a PhD in theology and a professor at Talbot
Seminary at Biola University. In the midst of my mental
confusion came to me and ministered to me, my son. I remember him coming to me, and he said, dad, I know you're going
through this confusion. I said, I know. It's hard for me to think straight. He said, I sense that you feel
distant from God right now. And I said, I do. I feel like, for some
reason, that God is distant. He said, let me help you. Let me guide you through a prayer. And so he sat me, this
is my son, sat me down, and we prayed this prayer
for about half an hour where he said, Dad, I'm gonna
walk you through all the, he said, when we come to
God, sometimes we come with these identities of who we are. We're successful, or we're
elders in the church, or we're whatever we are. We bring that identity to prayer. He said, I want to strip all that away. So we prayed things like, God, right now, I'm not a father, and
I'm not a grandfather. And I'm not a husband. And I'm not a pastor. And I'm not an author. And I'm not my bank account. And I'm not, and we just stripped away for half an hour all these identities, all these things we carry
into our relationship with God until we got down to what was left. And all that was left
was me, a redeemed son of the Most High, saved by God's grace. Just me, stripped of
everything else, me and God, and Kyle kind of put us back together. And it was all worth it for that cause I feel like my relationship
with God ever since then has been at a new level, a new
depth, and a new confidence, and a new security that
coming out of that situation as my mental cloudiness cleared up. And that might be a prayer
you might want to pray. Just strip away all your identities of who you are and what
you bring to the table. We don't bring anything to the table. And just get down to I'm
a sinner saved by grace. I'm clothed in the
righteousness of Jesus Christ, and I am a son or a
daughter of the Most High. And connect with God at that level where that's all we are
cause that is all we are. So I mean, to have my son-- - [Tom] That's awesome. - Minister to me in a crisis like that. That was worth it all. - Thank you, Lee. I know that some of you,
we take notes every week. Some of you have a blank
page, and you're not sure what to write down, and if you
don't write something down, you're gonna feel bad about
yourself walking out of here. (audience and Lee laughs) So at least write this down. At least write this down. We all feel far from God sometimes. Stop letting Satan tell
you you're the only one who's ever, here's Lee, a
pastor, world-famous author, who's telling us I felt far from God. - I should, and I feel bad admitting it, but I feel like in a crisis like that, I should be running to God. But with all the mental
confusion, hallucinations, my mind, I couldn't do it. - [Tom] Well, that's part two. We all need other people to get us back. - That's right. Exactly. - Not meant to live the
Christian life alone. - That's right. - So, I mean, the movie's gonna be great, but that answer was better
than the movie to me. I want to thank you, Lee. That was a gift. Can I ask you just maybe
a broader question? - [Lee] Yeah. - Because you have spent
a lot of your ministry working with people who are
struggling with questions about atheism, and you
told me many years ago. We were talking, and you
said the number one question people have is about good and
evil and suffering by far. - Yeah. - It's the greatest
question that keeps people from connecting to God. And I know people are
talking with their friends, their relatives, their
neighbors, people they love, and they have that question. - [Lee] Right. - How do you help people
who are struggling with that question of
suffering, of good and evil? - I think that the key thing
to do in that situation when somebody's struggling,
how can there be a loving God if there's
so much pain in the world? I think the key thing to do is find out why they're asking that question. What's beneath that question? What I like to ask people
is, if you could ask God any one question, and
you knew he'd give you an answer right now,
what would you ask him? And, as you say, most of the time, it's why does God allow
pain and suffering? But I don't immediately jump in and give a theological answer to that. Then I ask them a second question. Why, of all the questions in the universe, did you choose that one? And then, all the sudden, we
get down to the nitty gritty, and they'll say because my wife and I lost a baby in childbirth five years ago. Or my mother just died of cancer after a long battle with cancer. Or I have, whatever it
is, now, all of a sudden, we're getting down to the bedrock reason, and often, it's not a theological
answer that people want. It's for us to be Jesus to them. You know, God doesn't
just give us an answer. He gives us the answerer. When we receive Jesus, we're more than just receiving this gift of grace. We're receiving the gift-giver. We have Him in our lives. And so we can share Him with
other people, in a sense, and be Jesus to them. And sometimes the best thing we can do when someone is asking
that question out of pain and suffering and a valley
they're going through themselves, sometimes the best thing
we can do is not to give some five point theological
answer, which we can give, but it's sometimes better
to sit down next to them. and say, oh, you, too, you know. I've gone through valleys, too. And put your arm around
them and pray with them and encourage them and listen to them. I think that's often
what people are after. - [Tom] People aren't looking
for a theological answer. They're looking for a personal answer. - A personal, cause this
is a personal issue, so we need a personal response. And Jesus is that personal response. - And that's more theological
than any other answer, really, when you come down to it. - I think so. You know, it's interesting. Because I was an atheist and
spent two years of my life investigating the
evidence for Jesus Christ, you know, I've been exposed to some of the greatest thinkers in the world who I interview for my books. And I've learned so much from these great Christian thinkers. And one of the things I've learned is that when we look at the array of evidence that points so powerfully toward
the truth of Christianity, from science, the evidence of cosmology, the origin of the universe,
physics, the fine-tuning of the universe,
genetics, the genetic code that clearly comes from an intelligence, human consciousness, which is inexplicable apart from a Creator. And then we look at
the evidence for Jesus, for His life, for His
teachings, for His miracles, for His death, and then the
evidence for the resurrection, which we deal with in the movie. We look at all of that. There are about 20 arrows
that point in the direction of Christianity being true. Now, on the other side,
probably the strongest counter argument is what about pain and suffering? Okay, I'll put it on a
scale and take my 20 lines of evidence against the one objection, and I think the faith survives. But secondly, I think
we do have good answers to this question. When God has existed from
eternity past in community, God the Father, God the
Son, God the Holy Spirit, and there is love. Love has to have an object,
and so if God didn't exist in this triune form, there'd
be no object for his love. There is perfect love within the Godhead. And so when God decided
to create humankind, He said, I want you to be able to love cause I'm gonna make you in my image. So you can love me, and I can love you. And you can love people. Well, the only way that
you can experience love is if you have the ability not to love. You have to have the fee
choice to love or not to love. And so God gave us free
choice, and what did we do? We walked the other way from God. We've used our free choice,
not to reach out with food to a hungry person, but to
hold a gun and shoot someone. And then to blame God. So I think God did not
create evil and suffering. He did create the potential for it cause it's a logical contradiction to say you could create a universe with free will but no suffering, no evil. That's a contradiction. God is all-powerful, but He
cannot do certain things. He can do the all-power
can do, but He can't sin. I can sin. God can't sin. God can't cause Himself
to go out of existence, but He can do whatever power accomplishes. Well, He can't make a triangle four-sided cause that violates logic. He created logic. Well, in the same way,
it's illogical to think that we could have a
world without suffering but also have free will. So did He create the
potentiality for suffering? Yes, but we're the ones
that actualized it. And so we live in a world
that is a result of this. But then the promises of God. If you follow Me, I
will cause these valleys in your life to accrue
ultimately to your benefit. And the promise of
heaven where in contrast to this world in which we live. There's a woman named Saint
Teresa, not Mother Teresa, this goes back a long
time ago, Saint Teresa, who once said, in light of the beauty and the wonder and the joy of heaven, living a life of the worst
experiences on this planet, in perspective, will be like staying one night in a crummy hotel. Because God says, I'm gonna make it right. I'm gonna judge evil. I'm gonna hold accountable
those to be held accountable. And those that receive this
free gift of God's love and grace and are adopted into His family, what you will experience in heaven. After 250 million years
of being in heaven, if someone were to say
to you, I bet you had a tough time on earth, didn't you? And you say, yeah, I really did. I struggled. I had valleys. It was hard. Say, oh, that must, but then
you say, wait a minute though. In light of this eternity
and the presence of God, I've kind of forgotten about that. It's kind of like puts
it all in perspective. And so God promises to
use it also for our good in terms of shaping our character to create perseverance, to
create courage and so forth, to create us into people
that we need to be. So I think Christianity has good answers to the question of why is
there suffering in the world. I wrote a book called The Case for Faith, and I spend about 50 pages
dealing with this issue through an interview with
a famous philosopher. And that's about my best
attempt to spell all this out. But, you know, it's interesting that in professional
debates between atheists and Christians, they generally don't use the pain and suffering
argument against Christianity. Why? Because we've got some good answers. They make sense. - You know, this is just
a real practical question. - Yeah. - Cause you were talkin'
a moment ago about people in our lives that don't know Christ. And everyone here has
somebody in their life that doesn't know Christ. Here's you as an adult. You came to Christ. You probably have some
advice you could give us about good things to do, bad. We do goofy things
sometimes as Christians. - (laughs) Oh, man. - Push people away rather than, it becomes about us and
about all kinds of things. So let me just give you a free opportunity to give us some wise advice about telling our friends, family, about Jesus. - Talk about doing goofy things. In the movie, which is all
true, Leslie reaches out to me as a new Christian,
and I'm the angry atheist. And she's trying, so one day I'm shaving. I look on the mirror,
and there's a sticky not that says, God loves you and so do I. (audience and Tom laughs) Good try, hon, and then she
would leave Christian books on the tables with things
underlined, and I'd go by, and-- - But people were telling her to do this. - I know. I'd flip it shut. God bless her, but she
did learn the best thing she could do was to
grow in her relationship with God because she knew
that God would changer her in ways that I would find winsome and attractive ultimately, which I did. But, you know, what advice would I give? I think we oughta do more
listening than talking. I think we oughta validate people, even if they're far
from God, validate them as human beings who are made in the image of the Almighty God who have value. And I think we have to look
them not as them enemy. Satan is the enemy. Atheists are not our enemies. They're our friends, our
loved ones, our family. God loves them. Here's the thing. God loves them every bit
as much as He loves you. When you think of, I was just
in Orlando a few days ago, and they had that horrible
shooting, remember? And all those people murdered in Orlando. Think of this. Did God love those victims who were shot? Absolutely. But he also loved the shooter. He loved the shooter who
did a very evil thing. And so don't think of
atheists as the enemies. Think of them as people
made in God's image, worthy of our respect. Understand they're on
a journey of some sort. Understand that they
might not even realize, like I didn't realize. I thought all my objections
were intellectual. And I didn't realize this father issue was repelling me from God in many ways. I didn't realize that the
moral issues in my life. I lived a very immoral
and drunken and profane and narcissistic and self-absorbed and self-destructive life, and I loved it. I loved it. (audience laughs) I loved getting drunk because I was the friendliest drunk in the bar. I was. I would buy two pitchers of beer and go around filling
everybody's mugs up all night. Oh, man, cost me a fortune. But I was a friendly
drunk, and it was my hobby. First time I drank alcohol, I drank 13 Harvey
Wallbanger's in one night. - [Audience] Woah. - I woke up, no kidding, in a coffin. It was Halloween, and I
stumbled in a sorority house where they had a Halloween
display and a coffin, and I climbed up in the
coffin and fell asleep. And I woke up. I should've been a mess. Don't you think God was tellin' something? (audience and Tom laughs) This ain't gonna end well, Lee, hello. But I was too deaf to hear it. And so moral issues, people,
the Bible says, people, God came in lightness,
but we love the darkness. And so there are often moral issues and emotional issues
and psychological issues and intellectual issues, and
we need to understand that. And I think we need to create safe places where our non-believing
friends can feel loved and listened to and
respected and validated. And let them go at their own pace. It took me two years to go from
atheism to faith in Christ. Leslie wishes it were
20 minutes, you know, cause it was hard on
her, but you know what? She gave me the slack. She learned to back off,
build on the commonality she had with me to keep
our marriage together. The hobbies we like to do together and things like that. She built on those to
keep our marriage strong. She built her relationship with God. She built her relationship with a mentor. And, you know, still it
was a hard two years, and we have to understand there are people who it'll be 20 years. There are people who are never going to bend their knee to Jesus. It's not your responsibility for their, you're not responsible for their decision. But what we are responsible for is to love God and to love people. And we can love them,
listen to them, guide them, and sometimes the best thing we can say, they make ask a really tough question. Cause when I was an atheist,
I had 'em in my pocket. When a Christian, I'd encounter them, I'd pull out one of my tough questions. Oh, yeah, what about this? And I'd ask, and most of
'em didn't know what to say. So what my advice is if
an atheist or a skeptic asks you a tough questions
you don't know the answer to, be honest and say,
that's a great question. Honestly, I don't know how to answer it. But let's look for an answer
together, and you know what? There are some great resources out there that can help you, and that
means another conversation, another opportunity to engage with them. And I'd say one last thing. Easter is coming up, and
you know what Rick Warren is gonna preach on Easter,
Christ resurrected, hope through Jesus, grace and love and forgiveness, eternal life. You know in this church
Easter is an opportunity to bring your spiritually curious friends to hear this message
of hope and redemption. And on Palm Sunday,
the week before Easter, when our movie comes
out, it's a safe movie to invite someone to. We test-showed it. Test-showed it? Is that right? - [Tom] Yeah. - We showed it to a bunch of-- - [Tom] As a test, yeah. - As a test, thank you, to
(laughs), I are a writer. (audience and Tom laughs) You can have, we test. (laughs) We showed it to a bunch of non-Christians, and they loved the movie. Greg Laurie, who's a big evangelist, you know Greg Laurie said
this is one of the greatest evangelistic films of history. He said you can confidently bring your non-believing friends to this film. There's no cringe-factor. There's no cheesiness. There's Academy Award
winning actors and actress, Grammy Award winning, not
Grammy, Tony Award winning actress in the movie,
Golden Globe winners, Academy Award nominees, this is a, and I can brag cause I
didn't make the movie. So it's just a incredible,
high-level production. You can bring them, and then
the most important moment's gonna be after the movie
when you go out to coffee, and you talk about what did
you think about all this? And then you invite them, you
know, next week is Easter. You've taken a step by coming to this. Why don't you come with me next weekend to Saddleback for Easter? You know, we have to take risks with our spiritually curious friends. Sometimes we gotta kind of pray to God. Give me an opportunity, and
I'll try not to blow it, and to extend an invitation. This is one of the, you
know, we're so privileged to be part of a church like this. I'm part of a church in
The Woodlands, Texas, called Woodlands Church, that started because of this church, because of you. Because of the way you support this church that message went out,
and Kerry Shook and a team learned, you know, what
God was doing here. Started a church in Woodlands, Texas. Now, it's almost 20,000, people
coming to faith all the time because of you folks and what you've done. But we have an opportunity
at these churches to bring our friends and
know you're not gonna cringe. There's no cheesiness. They're gonna hear the message delivered in a powerful, in a
clear, crystal clear way. And they'll hear the Gospel
in the movie as well. - Thank you, Lee. I got one last question for you. - Yeah. - Real broad question,
we're talking about valleys, going through valleys of life. How, you've been able to
observe how you've dealt with valleys as an
atheist and how you deal with them now as a Christian. What differences do you see? - Night and day. I mean, when I faced a
valley as an atheist, that's when I would go to the bar. You know, the Bible says that as believers we don't mourn like the world. We have hope, and our hope is anchored in the resurrection of Jesus. I didn't have that hope,
so it's very difficult to face the reality if
you're an atheist as I was. It's very difficult to
face the stark reality of what that means. No hope, no eternal life with God, you die in this world, and
I believed that was it. You're extinguished. It's very difficult for me
anyway to honestly face. I was willing to face it if it were true. Thank God it's not true. So now, as a believer,
I have the Holy Spirit in my life who gives me encouragement and guidance and whispers in my ear, you're a child of the Most High. I've got Christians in
my life who encourage me and pray for me and hold me accountable. You know, I've learned from the valleys that we've gone through
that God is faithful to his promises. He is faithful, and that
is anchored in the reality of the resurrection, and
the evidence for that is so persuasive it
converted an atheist like me to faith in Christ. So, you know, I'm so thankful that now when we face tough times,
as we do, we're not alone. We're not alone. God is in our life. The Holy Spirit is in our hearts. And God puts His people in our life to get us through it. - You know how I'd like to end? Lee, you still love these people. - Yeah. - You still have a
pastor's heart towards 'em. There's a lot of people here
facing a valley right now. - Yeah. - So as we end this,
would you just lead us in a prayer for those
who are facing valleys. - I'd love to, absolutely. Let's pray. Father, with all these people here, we know there are many who
are going through valleys, through suffering, through
confusion, through pain, financial or medical or who knows what? But you know. You know. And I pray by your Spirit
that you would encourage each person as they're in the midst of these difficult times
that You would register in their heart the fact
that you are faithful to Your promises, that
you would help them see that just as You took the
worst thing in the universe and turned it into the
best thing in the universe, that as painfully these
circumstances are right now, in retrospect, we will see
how You have come through and how You have used these experiences ultimately for our benefit. So we thank you for that promise. We pray for those that
are still on the journey, who are still on the outside looking in. Even at this moment we
pray they would reach out in repentance and faith
and receive Your Son, Jesus Christ, as their
forgiver and their leader, that they might be adopted as
Your son, as Your daughter, so that they would have hope, too, and have access to these great
promises that You provide. And we thank You for that. We thank You for this great church. I think of the words of Your Son in the Sermon on the Mount when he talked about a city on a hill, a city on a hill, shining the light of hope
and grace far and wide, and I think of this place. Thank you for allowing
us to be a part of it. We pray all of this in Jesus' name. And all God's people said, Amen. - Amen, amen. Let's thank Lee for being here with us. - Thank you, man.
- Thank you, Lee. (audience applauds) - Thank you, and God bless.
