FamilyLife Today®

Speaker 1

When he decided to pivot from this carpentry business to the toy business, everybody tried to talk him out of it. This is during World War II. It was the start of World War II. Like, you're crazy. You're out of your mind. The people need food. They do not need toys.

And he disagreed. He's like, no. Now more than ever, people need play. They need to learn how to play well. I think he glorified and pointed to the character of a God who delights in just watching you make a piece of art or build Legos with your kids because he's your heavenly Father.

Psalm 37:23 says that the Lord directs the steps of the godly and delights in every detail of their lives.

Speaker 2

Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson.

Speaker 3

And I'm Dave Wilson. And you can find us@familylife today.com. this is Family Life Today. Okay. Do you know this name, Fannie Lou Hamer?

Speaker 2

I do now, but I had never heard of her before.

Speaker 3

You know, I've known her for decades. I wish I could say I did, but I don't.

Jordan Raynor is with us, written a book called *Five Mere Christians*. And man, these are not mere Christians. These are some of the most amazing people in the world.

But Jordan, I had never heard this name before in my life. And you've said that's somewhat common.

Speaker 1

I have never met a black friend who does not know Fannie Lou Hamer's story. Wow. And I've never met a white person who does.

Speaker 3

What does that tell you?

Speaker 1

I think it tells us a lot that we're not gonna have time for. Let me tell you the basics of this woman's story.

Speaker 3

And by the way, just to remind our listener and maybe watchers, because people watch this on YouTube, these are five Christian people in history who are not pastors, not missionaries.

Speaker 1

They change the world without a pulpit. Right. And they give us inspiration for the, quote, unquote, secular work we do today and show us how to follow Jesus more fully as we do that work. That's why I wrote this book.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Yesterday we talked about Fred Rogers, which a lot of people hear that name and not even think of the way you're presenting him. Like, this guy changed the world and he was a pastor without the title because he pastored millions of our kids.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 3

We're gonna talk, hopefully about the founder of Legos, which I spent hours putting a Legos race car together at Christmas. And I love him. I really do. I wanted to do it. I'm, like, pushing my grandkids away, like, let me build this thing. And I didn't know his story.

But today, Fannie Lou. Tell us about Fannie Lou.

Speaker 1

All right, let me give you the basics of this woman's story. Fannie Lou Hamer was this poor black sharecropper in Mississippi who in 1962, had the audacity to register to vote. Well, Mississippi, that was a big deal. And long story short, her registering to vote led to her being imprisoned and beaten by a police officer named, wait for it, Herod. After that incident, she forms what's called the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.

This is gonna get wonky for a second, but bear with me. It's worth it. So in 1964, this new party, founded by Hamer, Dr. King, and a bunch of others, went to the Democratic National Convention and said, "Hey, you have to unseat the delegates from the traditional Mississippi Democratic Party because of all this black voter suppression in Mississippi." And so this presents a huge problem for LBJ. LBJ is president but hasn't been elected in his own right. He succeeded Kennedy in '63, so he's campaigning desperately for the presidency.

While he's privately sympathetic to Fannie Lou Hamer, he can't be public about it because if he doesn't carry the South, he loses the White House. He knows that Hamer and her team, including Dr. King, are trying to testify to the DNC about what's going on in Mississippi, and he does everything he can to stop it. We have evidence that he tapped Fannie Lou Hamer's phone through the FBI. That didn't work. He couldn't figure out what was going on. He made angry phone calls from the Oval Office to stop this testimony from happening. None of it works. The DNC agrees to hear this woman's testimony.

So she's taking the stand. He's literally watching this on TV happen, and he freaks out because he can't stop it. He rushes out of the Oval Office to the White House press briefing room and calls an impromptu press conference because he knows she's about to talk about the beating she had at police hands in prison. Sure enough, the cameras switch to LBJ carrying his press conference, where he says absolutely nothing for three minutes. And by the time...

Speaker 2

Wait, wait, wait. He says nothing for three minutes.

Speaker 1

It's just like, America's great. Like, it's a nothing press conference, right? And by the time the cameras go back, Fannie Lou Hamer's testimony is done, so Johnson appears to win. What Johnson didn't count on was that the NBC camera inside of the testimony room kept taping, and they aired her testimony in full on the nightly news when far more people are watching. Right. And so it causes this big hoopla. This leads to a bunch of things that eventually give African Americans the right to vote in America. And she is largely credited for that.

With that 1964 testimony, Fannie Lou Hamer, this devout follower of Jesus, fought hard against injustice. She refused to hate the unjust. She refused to retaliate. She prayed for her enemies. And I think that preaches today. Yes, we are called to join Jesus in his mission of biblical justice, but we must not trade Jesus' methods of pursuing justice.

I think Fannie Lou Hamer shows us how to do this in a Christlike way.

Speaker 2

So if Fannie Lou had an Instagram page or a Facebook page or a Twitter account, you think she would be graceful with her words? She'd speak the truth?

Speaker 1

I think she would be. There's this great scene with Hubert Humphrey, who's desperately trying to be LBJ's vice president. LBJ sends him in there to try to negotiate a peace after this testimony in 1964, and he's basically like, you guys, wait till the next election cycle. Wait till 1968. And Fannie Lou Hamer's like, respectfully, no. But she goes, but I'm gonna pray for you, senator. He was a senator. He's like, I'm gonna pray for you. I'm gonna pray to Jesus for you right now. And it just, like, walks out of the room like, mic drop, right?

And I believe she did that. She's got journals that show her praying for these people. She prayed for her enemy, as Jesus calls to do these enemies that beat her. I mean, this woman. You can't imagine the trials that this woman went through.

And an unfaithful husband that she never spoke ill against publicly tried to resolve that peacefully. Personally, just a beautiful model of how to pursue justice. Yes. While loving the unjust.

Speaker 2

Wow.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 3

Yeah. It's interesting. I don't know if even if I should do this, but I'm going to do a little test for this.

Speaker 2

He's getting his guitar. Yes.

Speaker 3

I'm going to do a test for Anne and a test for Jordan to see if you recognize this little lick.

Speaker 2

No, I won't.

Speaker 1

Ooh, blackbird come on now Blackbird singing in a denim.

Speaker 3

Take these broken wings.

Speaker 1

And learn to fly.

Speaker 3

You Know what that song's about? No. Paul McCartney, Beatles wrote it about the plight of black people in the south, in the US of A. Wow.

Speaker 2

That's what that song's about?

Speaker 3

Yeah, he's like, blackbird Sing. Yeah, you should be able to sing. I mean, nobody knew that, but he read about it, he heard about it.

He's like, this is terrible. The injustice of this. And he wrote a simple little song.

Became obviously very famous. And it was just to say, you're valuable, you're seen, and I hope you can just fly and sing.

Speaker 2

Now I need to listen to the whole thing. You didn't know that either, Jordan?

Speaker 3

No idea.

Speaker 1

No idea.

Speaker 2

Blackbird singing in the dead of night.

Speaker 3

I'm guessing Paul McCartney knows Fannie Lou Haynes.

Speaker 1

I bet he does.

Speaker 3

I bet he knows her name.

Speaker 2

I bet he does too.

Speaker 3

You know, let me ask you this. So she handled injustice in a beautiful, powerful, yet. I was going to say gentle. It wasn't gentle, but I was going.

Speaker 2

To say she spoke the truth.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I don't know that it was gentle, but I also knew that Jesus's addressing of injustices were gentle. He was gentle and lowly in heart. Yes, but he wasn't gentle with the Pharisees.

Speaker 3

No. Hell no.

Speaker 1

He fought hard.

Speaker 3

He had harsh words.

Speaker 1

He fought hard. And I think that's appropriate at times.

But man, we are also people who model Jesus' methods, which is loving his enemies. I think about that song from City of Light.

Jesus let the soldiers hold and nail him down so that he could save them. That's the picture of how to pursue justice and beauty in the world.

Speaker 2

I think Fanny too. I think her example of praying for those who hurt you, I mean, that's biblical. Jesus continually said that.

And I think that's really important because I don't always want to pray for those people. I get mad and I feel justice, and I want to get them back.

Speaker 3

Apply this to marriage. This is what we do here. We're marriage and family. You feel you've been treated harshly. You feel like what's happening in your marriage is not what you signed up for.

Speaker 2

Yeah, but I like you.

Speaker 3

Yeah, but there were days, there were months, there were times where it felt very. I felt you felt controlled by me. And again, I'm not just talking about our marriage.

I think there's a lot of listeners right now who are wondering, how do I pray for? How do I Fannie Lou, my own marriage? I speak the truth and I'm not going to hide that.

I have to say it, but I don't want to destroy this man or destroy this woman. I want to save this marriage.

Speaker 1

Yeah, it's praying for him. But I think there's another takeaway in Fannie Lou Hamer's life that I talk about in the book. This idea that we glorify God by trusting in God to produce all results and all things, but also hustling to make things happen. You could apply that to marriage or work or anything.

So you got a hard marriage. There's a tension that we see in Scripture. On the one hand, Deuteronomy 8 tells us that it is God alone who produces any results. Saving your marriage, right? Helping your business grow, helping your kid, whatever. Every good and perfect gift comes down from God. See James 1. See Deuteronomy 8, et cetera, et cetera. So we trust.

But on the other hand, we're also told we don't let go and let God, right? We hustle. We work hardly as under the Lord. See Colossians 3:23. So which is it? Are we called to trust? Are we called to hustle? And I think the answer is both.

Fannie Lou Hamer held that tension. Well, she once said, quote, "You can pray until you faint, but if you don't get up and try to do something, God is not gonna put it in your lap."

Speaker 2

See, I like the combination of that.

Speaker 1

J.I. Packer once said, "It's not let go and let God. It's trust God and get going," is what he said. And whether you're fighting for your marriage, whether you're fighting for the life of your business, or whether you're fighting for justice in the big company that you work in, yes.

Trust in prayer is number one, and communicate your trust in the Lord for all those results, humbly.

Two, get hustling. Get working to find a single next action that you believe, by God's grace, you can take to bring that marriage conflict to resolution, whatever it may be.

And then finally, number three, rest. That's what's lost in this. If we have properly trusted the Lord and done our part, hustled as hard as we know how, we can fall asleep at night peacefully, knowing that the results are in God's hands.

Speaker 2

That's my problem. I tend to strive and I make things happen instead of praying, doing my work, doing all the things, and then resting. I think that's critical.

Speaker 1

But rest is a sermon to the ambitious, reminding ourselves that we are not the Christ. We are not the ones that keep this world spinning. We are not the ones ultimately to solve all the problems in our marriages.

We can sleep and trust that God's going to work things out in the business, whatever it is. Rest is a sermon of preaching the gospel to ourselves so that we might trust more.

And, oh, by the way, so that we might also hustle more in the good works God's prepared in advance for us to do.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Let me just say, I mean, family life, we're here for you.

And if you're listening to this and like, yeah, but I am so defeated right now, or I'm struggling so much it's hard to get the going part going. Let us help you.

Familylife.com strongerfaith go there. We would love to be a partner with you to rebuild your faith, to strengthen your faith, to get you back on your feet so you can start walking forward again.

And I tell you what, we got one more. You got five in your book. We have time to get at least four.

Speaker 1

Let's do it.

Speaker 3

And I mean, we got two left. We got the founder of Legos, we got CS Lewis. Who do we go with?

Speaker 1

Lego's so fun.

Speaker 3

Let's talk about legos.

Speaker 1

Nobody knows the story.

Speaker 2

Nobody knows this story. I didn't know this story.

Speaker 3

Okay, let's hear about Legos. What do you want? Talk about tragedy. Talk about buildings burning up. Oh, like, oh, my goodness. Tell us about this guy.

Speaker 2

Dave, you're a LEGO fan. You're a Lego Movie fan especially.

Speaker 1

Oh, come on. Are you gonna play? Everything is awesome.

Speaker 3

Everything is awesome. I even love LEGO Batman. It's awesome.

Speaker 1

Yet so few people know this story. But the founder of Lego, Ole Kirk Christiansen, was a remarkable follower of Jesus.

Unfortunately, or I think he would probably tell you, fortunately, because of the strength of this faith, he was also a modern-day Job. You read this guy's story, and you're like, this is Job. He watched the LEGO factory burn up in flames. Not once, not twice, but three times.

Speaker 3

I mean, it's crazy.

Speaker 1

This guy watched the business for death.

Speaker 2

And he rebuilds it.

Speaker 1

He rebuilt it. He spent years on the brink of bankruptcy. In the span of just a few days, he suffered the unimaginable loss of a child and his wife. And yet, this guy consistently blessed the name of the Lord. He joined God's servant, Job, in saying, "The Lord gives, the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." He clung tightly to Romans 8:28, believing that in all things, even the most terrible ones, God is working for the good of those who love Him.

I think Christians can glorify God greatly by persevering through those unimaginable trials in faith. By God's grace, he eventually created the most valuable toy company of all time. But this guy, I mean, he's just a legend. He persevered through trials, smuggling grenades in Lego boxes under Nazi soldiers' noses who were staying in his house, which they had commandeered.

This guy was just super playful and super joyful. I think, I don't know, he delighted in life more than most Christians do. A legend, he shows us how to glorify God by, number one, persevering through trials, and number two, embracing play as a gift from God.

Speaker 3

I mean, I'd love to talk about embracing play as a gift from God because I'm married to a woman that does that. Do you embraces play like nobody on this planet?

Speaker 2

I think you do more than I do.

Speaker 3

I love the play.

Speaker 1

You seem like a playful guy.

Speaker 3

I am a playful guy. But she with the grandkids, I am not kidding.

Speaker 2

I have a little more intensity than Dave does. I've got that ambitious drive he does too. But you don't see yours as much, probably. Like, I'm more intense.

Speaker 3

You're cool watching her with the grandkids. I mean, I know I'm subjective. I know I can't see this, you know, objectively, but I'm like, there's not a better grandmother in the world with their grandkids in terms of fun and joy and play.

It's like every day with her is a trip to Disney World.

Speaker 1

Do you know what the word LEGO means?

Speaker 2

I didn't know that and I read it.

Speaker 1

It means play.

Speaker 3

Well, I know. I did not know that.

Speaker 2

Well, what language is that?

Speaker 1

It's in Danish. Yeah. So he wasn't playing on starting a toy company. He actually had a very boring, traditional carpentry business building houses and doors and tables and chairs. You know, kind of like our Lord and Savior.

Speaker 2

Not to speak negatively of those of.

Speaker 1

You who do that work, listen, that's the most God glorifying work. If we could say that Jesus spent 80% of his life doing this work.

Speaker 3

And his first toys were wood. Right?

Speaker 1

His first toys were wood. But all throughout this guy's life, he played incredibly well personally. Right. He would be the. He was the dad in the neighborhood who on Sunday after church, rounded up all the kids in the neighborhood and played outside.

Speaker 3

That's me.

Speaker 2

That's you?

Speaker 1

That's you. That is me. I'm not that guy, man. I love that. But I think Ole Kirk Christiansen, this really ambitious professional who built Lego, is pointing us to something really important: that God values play and God values work that the world calls useless and trivial. Right? Because he's a God of beauty and play.

All throughout Scripture, we see God himself doing work that, by human standards, is useless. In Genesis 2:9, it says God made trees that were useful for food and beautiful. In Job 38, God says he sends rain in the desert. In Revelation 21, we're told that God covers his eternal city, the new Jerusalem, with 5,600 miles of precious stones. What purpose do beautiful trees, desert rain, and thousands of miles of jewels serve? My guess is none. And that's the point, right? Utility is not the only reason why God does things. Sometimes he does it for the pure joy of doing it.

I think Ole Kirk Christiansen understood that better than most. It's interesting that when he decided to pivot from this carpentry business to the toy business, everybody tried to talk him out of it. This was during World War II, at the start of the war. People said, "You're crazy. You're out of your mind. People need food; they do not need toys." But he disagreed. He believed that now, more than ever, people needed play. They needed to learn how to play well.

By simply embracing work that people saw as useless, I think he glorified and pointed to the character of a God who delights, yes, in people who are prosecuting human traffickers. But he also delights in you if you're styling hair today. Yes, he delights in the work of seeing people fix the world's biggest problems, but he also delights in just watching you make a piece of art or build Legos with your kids. Because he's your heavenly Father.

Psalm 37:23 says that the Lord directs the steps of the godly and delights in every detail of their lives. So if you're listening and thinking, "Jordan, I don't feel like I'm changing the world through my work. I'm just doing the job, and I don't know, my family doesn't understand why I do it. It just doesn't feel like it has any meaning," remember Ole Kirk Christiansen. This guy played well, did "quote, unquote" useless work, and I believe greatly glorified our Lord and Savior because of it.

Speaker 2

It's so fascinating, too, because you think if for any of us, as a listener, as a viewer, if your house burnt down and then three times burnt down again, and then it burnt down again and then you had a stillborn child and then your wife.

That is incredibly hard to walk through and still point to love Jesus and play. It's miraculous of what he suffered and endured and yet still pointed toward Jesus and wanted to walk with him.

Speaker 1

Yeah, I think prayer was the secret. Right. He was a deeply prayerful man. In fact, I can't remember after which fire it was. It's crazy that we have to keep track of fires.

Speaker 3

Right.

Speaker 1

And somebody's like, he. He hauled himself away in a closet, didn't know what to do, just got down on his knees and begged the Lord for vision about how in the world am I going to pay off my debts?

How in the. Where am I going to find the money to rebuild?

Speaker 2

And he had other kids.

Speaker 1

He had other kids he had to raise. The Lord gives him this vision of this massive factory just pumping out toys.

He didn't see the LEGO brick. God didn't give him that specific of a vision, but it was enough to where he knew it was from the Lord and he could get up and just go back to work.

Literally the next day, they started rebuilding this thing. It's remarkable.

Speaker 2

But of course, I think about how he remarried. Yes, he hired a woman basically to help him raise the boys and take care of his home life.

And she was ambitious. She had ideas that helped him with his company. They ended up getting married.

And so I think of the blended family, like, you know, somebody's lost a spouse, so he gets married. But the two of them together rebuilt this whole life.

Speaker 1

Her money, if it weren't her name was Sophie, his second wife. If Sophie hadn't brought the money to that marriage that she did, LEGO would not exist.

Speaker 2

I didn't know that part.

Speaker 1

Yeah, she brought a significant sum of money because again, he had just experienced a fire. Christina's first wife had died. She was the majority owner of Lego for many, many years. It's a wild, wild story and again, just an encouraging one to us modern mere Christ of what it looks like to be faithful to the Lord when circumstances just are not great.

Right. When we are suffering, when we are going through trials, it is possible to persevere in the faith if we get on our knees in prayer. We didn't touch on this and look to the stories of these people who came before us. Again, Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ.

I think this is part of the reason why the Word became flesh, because I think God knew that you and I need to be told how to glorify him through his written word. But I think he also knew that we needed to be shown how to glorify him through the lived word of Jesus Christ. We need animated people, three-dimensional models of what it looks like to follow Jesus.

And of course, we have that first and foremost in the gospel biographies of our Lord and Savior. But second, we have it in Christ's followers, which is why Paul said, follow me as I follow Christ. Biographies allow us to do that with people we can more readily relate to, who live closer in time to us, who struggle with some different things than we did.

Speaker 2

Could you see reading this as a family?

Speaker 1

100%. 100%. In fact, I've read excerpts of this book with my girls, my 10-year-old and my 8-year-old, and these stories are sticky.

My daughter Ellison came up to me the other day. She's like, "Hey, you remember that time that Fred Rogers met with that boy who had never spoken in his life and he started speaking in full sentences and the power of the Holy Spirit that was in him?" I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, I remember that. I'm glad I read you that one."

Or do you remember when ole Kirk Christensen's factory burned down three times and he still worshiped the Lord? The kids literally tell me this.

So I love reading this with my kids, and I think families will really enjoy reading it with theirs.

Speaker 2

That was a great conversation with Jordan Raynor.

Speaker 3

Always is.

Speaker 2

It is his book Five Mirror Christian. It's just inspiring to hear these stories and Jordan is just good at what he does.

Speaker 3

Yeah, you can get Jordan's book. Trust me, you're gonna love it. It's in our show notes. You can go to familylifetoday.com and find it there. And I hope you get it and I hope you get it for some of your friends too. It's a life changing read.

Speaker 2

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