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Ben Sasse: I am finite, and that is good. That is how it should be. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and infinite, and He creates us to be His children. We need to understand our place, and it is a glorious place to be imago Dei, but we're not God.

John Fuller: That's former Senator Ben Sasse, talking about how we can keep our lives in perspective as we consider almighty God. We have a powerful conversation about the brevity of life and about eternity in front of us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.

Jim Daly: John, I met a few days ago with Ben Sasse in Austin, Texas, to hear his poignant thoughts about life and death as he courageously deals with the recent diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

It was very gracious of him to take some time to meet with me and share about how he's processing things and what God has been speaking to him in these real difficult times. When you get that kind of diagnosis, things become crystal clear: what's important to you. I think anyone listening or viewing will want to pay attention to what he has to say in this important conversation. I found it very inspirational.

John Fuller: Ben Sasse represented the state of Nebraska for nine years as a former US Senator from 2015 to 2023. He served as the president of the University of Florida and was a professor as well. Most importantly, however, he's a husband and father. Let's go ahead and hear the conversation now with former Senator Ben Sasse on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.

Jim Daly: Senator, former Senator Sasse, it's so good to have you with us.

Ben Sasse: Good to be with you.

Jim Daly: Let me ask you a question that Lee Strobel actually asked me when I was interviewing him. He said with your teens and 20-somethings, here's a good question to ask them. If you're with God and God had to answer one question right there in the moment, what question would you ask Him?

I thought that was a good question. So that night at dinner, I'm asking my boys. My science boy, Trent, said give me 20 minutes and I'll find an answer. My other son said give me a couple of minutes. While we're eating, Trent, my science guy, says I'd like to ask Him what is the element that we're missing in the creation of the universe? What do we not see that's plainly in front of us? I thought that was good.

Then my English lit major, Troy, goes why do we suffer? That really shows the heart of humanity, doesn't it? Those that want to understand this material world, and that's a good thing, but then those are asking the deeper question of why do You allow us to suffer? How would you answer that?

Ben Sasse: First, I want to try my hand at answering the question you threw out in your parlor game at dinner. I am just obsessed at present with the Trinity and the mystery of the Trinity and the relationality of God overflowing that He desires relationship with us.

Why? We would gladly be slaves and servants in the kingdom at the adoration feast of the Lamb, and He makes us His children who get to say Abba Father, Daddy, and we get invited to sit at the table. Why? Why would He do that? It's amazing.

Suffering, to your question, I obviously don't understand it, but Jesus took on incarnate flesh and came and didn't just fulfill the whole law for us. He also suffered all the punishment that Adam and we in Adam deserve.

Though it's terrible, there is something very special in being able to be united with Christ's suffering in route to this vale of tears' final enemy, this last enemy, because it helps us cleave away from all the idolatries we've built as we've fallen in love with the creation instead of the creature.

We should love the creation, but because it's overflow of the Creator. We have all these idol factories in our hearts, and they need to be smashed to make us fit for heaven. Not to earn our salvation, but because God has already declared us just, He's now also sanctifying us.

Jim Daly: I want to follow up on that in a moment, but some people listening or watching may not know your situation. So again, I'm so grateful that you said yes because I thought when we first reached out, people need to hear Ben Sasse's story because we're all going to meet this fate. Nobody gets away.

We all have a fatal diagnosis, but we just don't know it. We live our lives as if mortality isn't going to come at some point. Isn't that true? Then boom, all of a sudden you get a diagnosis. What happened for you?

Ben Sasse: Around Halloween, I started having a lot of very weird pains, both front and back, all through my abdomen. I do weird sports. I've turned 54 since then, but at that point, I was 53 and I still did sprint triathlons a lot. When I train, I wear a weight vest a lot. In retrospect, this was so stupid. It makes sense to wear a 45-pound weight vest for some of the running events; I should never have done that on my bike.

Occasionally, I would just leave my vest on on the bike and I thought I pulled a bunch of muscles in my abdomen and in my back. We couldn't figure out what was wrong for six or seven weeks. Finally, we got some full-body scans and the doctors called me back an hour later. This is on December 13th or 14th.

They're beating around the bush and I told them I'm not the toughest guy in the world, but I'm farm kid tough. I can take it, doc. Tell me the truth. Give me something real. He said Ben Sasse's torso is chalk full of tumors. So I have a metastasized stage 4 pancreatic cancer and now five other kinds of cancer, liver being the farthest along.

Pancreatic cancer is a nasty one because the mortality rate is off the charts. It's like 97%. Exactly. So I was given three or four months to live in mid-December, and it's already been three months. I thank the Lord so much that even in the midst of that terrible diagnosis, and to your point we all have a death sentence but mine became a defined number of days instead of the fact that we have a death sentence and we don't know what it is.

I felt with Paul to live is Christ, to die is gain, at peace right away. I didn't want to die because death is terrible and I love my wife, Melissa, of 31 years. My girls are awesome, 24 and 22, but we also have a boy who's only 14, and he still needs a dad knocking him upside the head and loving on him and disciplining him and repenting with him and to him. So I'm grateful that we may get a bunch of extra months out of the clinical trial I'm on.

Jim Daly: Mentioning your children, that's the heart of the reason with your wife, Melissa, that I wanted to talk to you. Not everybody faces something like this, and the way that you're doing it is so honoring to the Lord. Let me ask you about your 14-year-old son. You must sit there and think, Lord, this seems so wrong, so unfair. He needs a dad. I was 11 when my dad died and I was 9 when my mom died. It goes deep. It lasts a lifetime, that loss, that hole in your heart. So I can feel for your son because I know what he's going to experience, and your daughters too. But at the same time, I would say that all of us in the Daly clan, the five children, would say that we have all come to the Lord and we would not have changed anything. But it seems contrary to comfort. So in that context, how do you wrestle with that?

Ben Sasse: R.C. Sproul used to say there is no maverick molecule. God is not uncertain about anything that has happened, is happening, or will happen, and He will weave together that mosaic for our own good. God loves His church and those Christians that He has written into eternity. He will use this for good.

Our son's name is actually Augustine, but we call him Breck. Augustine's theologically pretty heavy for a 14-year-old kid on a football field. So we call him Breck. I trust the Lord through all of this, and yet my deepest aches involve not wanting to be separated from Melissa. I love this woman. I want to be with her. We're going to be together for eternity, all of us in God's church are.

The part that's most baffling is why will Breck not have a dad at 15 or 17 or 19? And yet God knows exactly what He's doing, and He has a plan for Breck's life, that coming-of-age child. But it hurts.

Jim Daly: On behalf of those that are going through some form of pain or suffering, I think the right question right here is for the person who's going no, it's wrong, it's wrong. What would you say to help them reconcile the tear in their heart and to be at peace, which seems impossible when you're looking at what you're looking at and knowing your daughters, your son, Melissa, that unless the Lord intervenes with a miracle, your days are numbered more finitely than others? What would you say to that person saying I don't have the faith to get there?

Ben Sasse: I guess I come at it from two angles. I don't want to be aggressive with the intellectualist rationalist side, but God tells us in Scripture everything we need to know for faith and life, but He doesn't tell us everything we want to know or everything that we ultimately will know. He is God, and to whom else would we go?

I trust Him because He is who He is and He has been faithful. So I won't get every answer this side of eternity. But then I think about in Galatians and Ephesians where so many times you think of the believing community in song.

Then I go to things like Amazing Grace: "When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing His praise than when we'd first begun." Death is an enemy. Death is wicked, but it's the final enemy. It's our last battle, and after that, there will be no more tears. So we will have these answers and we will know that God used it for His good.

Jim Daly: You mentioned the idolatry that we face in this life. It's so amazing. I think you have to be engaged to recognize that idolatry and to work with the Lord to overcome that idolatry.

Ben Sasse: Rightly ordered loves. C.S. Lewis has that quippy joke that the woman who falls so in love with her cat that she makes it her god can't actually even properly love a cat. You should love your cat or your dog. Being great at playing the guitar is glorious, but it can't be God.

To properly order our loves is to understand how God sees the world. God created this world and called it good. This place is filled with a cornucopia of glorious things where we get to think God's thoughts after Him. You get to feel the joy, Eric Liddell in Chariots of Fire, feeling the joy of running.

God has created the opportunity for us who are material beings who live in creation to enjoy sport, but Eric Liddell didn't want to defile the Sabbath by letting this thing become his idol and not be gathered with believers on the Lord's Day. Running is great, but running can't be God. I'm the son of a football coach. Football is great, but football better not be my hope and dream. It will disappoint me.

Calvin has that great line that the human brain after Adam is an idol factory. We're constantly running around the world and trying to say why don't I put myself in God's place? Why don't I put myself on the throne? Why don't I try to assemble all of creation?

I can't even grow skin on my face. We can't keep the planets in orbit. I say that as a joke because Jim, you and I were talking before the show with some of the radical clinical trial I'm on. The chemotherapy, the poison, makes it almost impossible for me to regrow skin on my face. My face bleeds constantly. What a fool to think that I could be God. I am finite, and that is good. That is how it should be. God is omniscient, omnipotent, and infinite, and He creates us to be His children, and we need to understand our place. It is a glorious place to be imago Dei, but we're not God.

John Fuller: This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and that's former Senator of Nebraska Ben Sasse, talking about how he's resting in God's sovereignty even though suffering is part of his own personal story. If you're in that kind of a place today, if you need encouragement, we've got a wonderful resource here at Focus on the Family to help you.

It's our free audio collection called Remembering the Hope of Heaven. It features John Burke, Lee Strobel, Erwin Lutzer, and others. It will be an infusion of hope and encouragement. Sign up for that free audio collection at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. Let's go ahead now and return to Jim's conversation with Ben Sasse.

Jim Daly: This is a good place to insert your work in the Senate when you're talking about idols. Even that city, I used to not like even landing there. It sounds horrible, but I thought Lord, do I have to be here? But then I would go and have meetings with you and your colleagues and we'd pray together, we'd talk about things.

By the way, I would say the meetings that I had with you, you took notes on family issues. You're so studious about the issues and the topics. I think you're the only one that actually sat and took the notes as we talked about policies that could help families. That says a lot about who you are. Also, you did complete your PhD in history. Was that at Harvard?

Ben Sasse: At Yale. Sorry. More importantly, I grew up with a PhD in Focus on the Family studies because my mom had the radio running in every room of our house as a child.

Jim Daly: So good. In that context, the city, how did you literally with what you know and your faith in Christ, how did you get up every day in that role as a senator and say okay, Lord, here we go?

Ben Sasse: God is the God of everything, every domain, every institution. But isn't it wonderful that government, which is necessary now, will not be needed to restrain evil over Jordan? In eternity, we won't need government to restrain evil anymore because we will be in a city where Christ at the center is the light of the kingdom and there will be no gates because all the old things will have passed away and the sin that was still in our members will all be gone.

What a glorious time that will be. Heaven is a place where there is no stealing, there is no cancer. Right now, we need biomedical researchers. We need oncology departments and chemotherapy departments. We need phlebotomists taking my blood all the time.

We need government to restrain evil right now, and so government is a really important calling. But the way Christians around the American founding would have said it is it's a one-cheer-for-government kind of calling. It's neither zero nor three. It's not that we don't need government; the world is broken, there's somebody who wants to take your life and your liberty and your stuff. But it's not a three-cheers-for-government because government is about restraining evil; it's not about the glory of what happens at worship, it's not about the warmth around your dinner table where you're telling your kids how much you love them and asking them about their day. Government is just about a framework for ordered liberty. So we have to be able to hold moderately, not right-left moderate, but our passions hold moderately to certain institutions like government because they're important, but they're passing away. That's glorious.

Jim Daly: That is so beautifully said. Let me ask you though, in that context, where the world is at today in that political sphere. It feels like the enemy of our soul has opened up a can of hate and just like an aroma just fills those chambers in DC. When you talk about the biblical mandate, God's mandate for government to restrain evil, that is the one mandate He gives government. What do we do as Christians when government cannot discern seemingly between good and evil and actually promotes evil?

Ben Sasse: Let's distinguish between two big thoughts here. When we think about after Cain and Abel and we don't yet have Seth as the line that Jesus is going to come from, there's still a mark to protect Cain though he's a murderer from the consequences of what could happen.

Theologians often joke that in the kingdom of the left hand, we have speedboat manufacturing and public policy. These are not salvific things. Speedboats are great, but they're not going to save you. Government is great, but it's not going to save you. It needs to restrain evil. It needs to do basic things to create a framework for ordered liberty so people can assemble for worship on Sunday morning.

Also, we want our government to have a framework for worship for people who don't have the same theology as we do to also be able to assemble for their worship though we don't agree with them. We want to protect everybody under freedom of religion to be able to assemble so that we can then try to persuade people free from violence.

You asked why is there so many hate oozing? I think 100 years from now, if the Lord hasn't returned yet, when we look back on this moment, we're not going to talk very much about public policy. We're going to talk about the fact that social media created a completely different kind of information ecosystem and there's these grand temptations to steal our attention all the time. We know that only about 12% of Americans will read a book this year.

There are many benefits to the digital revolution. There are some benefits to the communications revolution that flow from it. Focus is not just broadcast at a given moment, but you're also able to be streamed and so more people can download it at a convenient time. But we don't yet know how to digest information when it's coming at us fire-hose style from every side.

It turns out the ninth commandment, bearing false witness, matters a lot. If everybody has a giant megaphone, there's a whole lot more ninth commandment violating going on. So we're just spraying nonsense and lies and disrespect all the time, and we haven't learned the habits of editing and self-control and restraint.

Jim Daly: That is a good point because it feels like that's what we've lost as human beings: civility, how to be civil toward each other. Like you go online, people say what they think or feel or rage, and there used to be a filter there that you would never say some of the things in public that we're now saying in social media. To your point, it makes that job of a Christian even harder to restrain from jumping into that cesspool to try to engage people.

Ben Sasse: That's exactly right. Given that one of our obligations in treating other people, other ensouled humans created in God's image with dignity, we need to exercise self-restraint about what we say, not just vomiting out whatever we feel or the anger in any given moment.

But we also have to maintain the opportunity for persuasion. You think about Paul at the Areopagus. We're trying to persuade other people to consider the claims of Christ. One of the things that happens in a social media world is a lot of confirmation bias and fan service where people just say to their audiences exactly what everybody already believed and you just preach to the choir in a secular sense of just say whatever somebody already thought, let me just tell them they're definitely right. Actually, lots of us are wrong about tons and tons of things, and we need to learn the habits of daily repentance that requires a different level of self-restraint and control and self-discipline in our communication.

Jim Daly: The Lord's prescription for humanity, I'm so grateful He wrote it down. Right there in Galatians, when we accept Christ, what should we look like? What's our aroma? Somebody could say I don't see it clearly in the Bible, but Galatians 5:22, he tells you. It's going to be the fruit of the Spirit is what people should see: love, joy, peace, goodness, long-suffering, patience, all the things we seem to be coming up a little bit short with in this day and age as the church. How do you recommend the church become more aware of that fruit of the Spirit and lean into that as the antidote to culture's ills?

Ben Sasse: Being blessed with Melissa as my wife and our girls again in their early to mid-20s and our boy a decade younger, we lived on a campaign bus for about 16 months when they were 12, 10, and 2. Melissa would sing that song about putting on the armor and the fruits of the Spirit. They had these little kids' songs, and I was like man, we need to memorize more Scripture. We need to feel that, live that, dream that, sing that.

The fruits of living a Christian life are gratitude, regarding others more highly than yourself, and singing and singing with other people and committing things like the fruits of the Spirit to our brains.

Jim Daly: Melissa, let's spend a little time there because in 2007, she suffered from a stroke. She was young. So when you look at again, you look at the circumstances of what you're facing physically as a family, with Melissa having a stroke, first and foremost, how is she doing and what's happening for her?

Ben Sasse: You're right, she was so young. She's still looking young. I'm looking a little shabby in my mid-50s, but my wife's looking great in her mid-50s. But when we were 37, Melissa had a vertebral dissection. You have four blood flows to your brain; one of her arteries in the back of her neck came apart, produced three strokes, and we had a year and a half period where it wasn't clear if she was going to live and then if she was going to be coherent.

She had just massive neural regeneration. One of the ways neurologists talk about brain injury in the young as opposed to the old is when you're really old and your brain breaks, it kind of breaks, it's like glass. But when you're young, it's more like throwing a baseball through a cobweb. There's a little bit of cobweb on the baseball that rolled away, but mostly you just have these dangling things and we had neural regeneration where big chunks of her brain regrew.

So we were incredibly blessed that our girls were three and five at the time. Our girls have had a very, very smart and engaged mom for their whole life, and then God gave us another son, a providential surprise a decade after the girls. Over the course of the last seven or eight years now, we've suffered a lot of seizures. You ask how she's doing.

In 2024, she had nine seizures that year. In 2025, one, and so far in 2026, zero. The glory of modern medicine is she's on massive anti-seizure sedative drugs, but then we have an ability to wake her up every morning and counteract that. Twenty years ago, nobody would have been able to live the life she lives. She's incredibly able and competent. She's the smartest woman I know. So we're incredibly blessed with her. You asked earlier about my son and the heaviness of a 14-year-old potentially losing his pops. His mom is going to gap fill in lots and lots of important ways.

Jim Daly: That's very sweet and your love for Melissa is obvious.

John Fuller: This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and what a powerful, really raw conversation with former Senator Ben Sasse. We're going to continue with the balance of that discussion next time.

Jim Daly: When you hear a story like this, facing a diagnosis of stage 4 pancreatic cancer, you're reminded that each one of us is living with the reality that life has an end. We don't know it, we don't feel that way, but it is mortality. We all have a day of reckoning, and we don't know when that's going to happen.

But it is so clear that Ben has found in the midst of his physical pain and uncertainty a peace that is anchored in Christ. I hope that you were leaning into this conversation about suffering, the mysteries of God, and the promise of heaven. When our loves are ordered correctly, when God is first followed by family relationships, everything else begins to make sense, and that was so evident in what Ben was talking about.

God doesn't promise that life's going to be easy, but He has promised to be with us, to be fruitful through us, and to offer us assurance that even in suffering, He's weaving a story that leads to redemption. Allow us here at Focus on the Family to encourage you. We want to share a free audio collection called Remembering the Hope of Heaven, featuring conversations with John Burke, Randy Alcorn, Lee Strobel, Dr. Erwin Lutzer, and many others. You'll be inspired by their insights about the life to come in heaven. If you don't know Jesus as your personal savior, we want to invite you to begin a relationship with God and we'd like to share an online booklet called Coming Home that tells you how you can do that today.

John Fuller: You can visit our website to sign up for that audio collection or link over to the booklet. Our site is focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. Then to schedule a phone conversation with one of our focus counselors to address your struggles or needs, whatever they may be, just give us a call. Our number is 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY.

In right here at the end, John, let me just encourage those that can support Focus to be able to get the gospel out to do so. We need your help and let's just leave it at that.

John Fuller: Get in touch, let us know how we can help you or if you want to partner with us as we reach out literally around the world. Our number again, 800, the letter A, and the word FAMILY. Online, we're at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. On behalf of the entire team, thanks for joining us today for Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back as we once again help you and your family thrive in Christ.