Focus on the Family

Ben Sasse: Hey parents, Adventures in Odyssey has been helping kids like yours form relationships with Christ for almost 40 years. Now the animated Adventures in Odyssey film "Journey into the Impossible" will reach a new generation of fans.

But we need your help to finish the film and launch it in theaters. Your gift will be matched dollar for dollar before May 1st. See the trailer and donate today at focusonthefamily.com/impossible. That's focusonthefamily.com/impossible.

John Fuller: The following program is sponsored by Focus on the Family and is supported by the prayers and financial gifts of wonderful friends like you.

Please remember to let us know how you're listening to these programs on a podcast, app, or website.

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.

John Fuller: That's former US Senator Ben Sasse last time on this broadcast, sharing about God's sovereignty in everything, especially in difficult situations and in his case, a recent terminal cancer diagnosis.

This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. If you didn't hear the conversation last time, get the Focus on the Family app for your phone or listen online. Jim, what a conversation you had with Ben Sasse just a few days ago in Texas. We've got part two of that queued up today.

Jim Daly: Yeah, we do, John. Ben really opened up last time about facing a diagnosis of stage four pancreatic cancer, like you said, and how his faith has been shaped through this experience. You think about this as only a negative, but he really brought the idea that when you get that diagnosis or something else might happen, just like Paul said, be content in all things.

We don't know how we're going to react when that comes, but the reality is each and every one of us will have our last day. That's something to think about. I think one of the most poignant things that I caught from talking with Ben Sasse is how this helps order and prioritize your life and how he wished he would have been able to make some of those decisions long ago.

I think that's what we need to take away from this, those of us that are healthy and doing well, because that's the clarity that we need to hear about. He's an inspiration and he'll offer more practical wisdom for parents and families about living with intentionality in this powerful reminder today. Ben's message is that God's promises and presence are eternal, and I believe you'll be inspired by his thoughts today.

John Fuller: Ben Sasse, of course, is a former US Senator from Nebraska. He's a husband and father. We're going to pick up again where we left off in the conversation last time that Jim had with him just a few days ago on today's episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.

Jim Daly: Let me play a clip in a moment. This is Dr. Tim Keller, a friend of yours, a friend of mine. He passed away from pancreatic cancer. I think we spent three or four times talking for Focus on the Family, doing an interview.

The last one was not long before he passed away. We had to do it right alongside the Hudson River. It was an amazing discussion that we had about where he was at in his life. But one of the things that he has said referring to suffering is that suffering is God's gymnasium. It's something we go to work out to strengthen our holiness. Let me play this clip and get your response.

Guest (Male - Tim Keller Clip): The core of suffering is to stay faithful. Don't stop reading the Bible, don't stop praying, don't stop going to church, don't stop obeying the Ten Commandments, don't get into the medicating behavior we were talking about before. Don't rationalize. Do not get into bitterness and self-pity.

Do everything you can in prayer to simply say, "Lord, I'm just going to take the next step. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'm going to trust you. I'm going to take the next step and every day I'm just going to go through my paces. I'm going to go through the normal things that I always did as a Christian, but in suffering, I don't feel like doing. I'm going to do them anyway," which means the grace, Bible study, prayer, fellowship, serving other people, worship. You just do it.

That's the core because when it's over, and it will be over, you will find, "Oh my goodness, it's just like bicep curls. It's like all that stuff. I am in far better spiritual shape than I was before." Now, that's not to say that there aren't specifics around every kind of suffering, but I think that's the core is acting like you're in God's gymnasium.

Ben Sasse: Wow, that's special. It's fun to hear Tim's voice again. I still listen to a lot of his sermons as well. I've been to that high rise with him and Kathy at that kitchen table you're talking about in the city.

What a special way to say that faithfulness God will use. The word never comes back void by the Spirit. In the Old Testament, one of the most common hortatory verbs is "remember, remember, remember, remember" the faithfulness of the Lord. And we get to respond in gratitude by being faithful and doing things like attending to prayer, to the reading of the Word, to the assembly with believers, and to worshipping God.

One of the things that Tim said to me, and I think you've probably played this clip before too, he said, "I hate pancreatic cancer. I would never wish pancreatic cancer on anyone. And yet, I would never want to go back to the prayer life I had before I knew the prayer that flowed from pancreatic cancer."

It's not unique to his and my specific disease, but the weakness, the feebleness, the dependency that you feel. We lie to ourselves all the time and pretend we're independent. No, we're little babies and we're old people who are becoming incontinent and need somebody at our hospital bedside with us.

Prayer of dependency is true prayer because you're saying to God, "You are the Almighty. You are God the Father Almighty. You have all this power, and yet you tell us to approach you as a daddy." I know I'm dependent and we get to attend to that in faithfulness, and God honors it.

Jim Daly: I'm thinking in those low places in my life when I can overcome that through the power of the Holy Spirit, right? When you're in that moment, I've had the impression that puts a smile on God's face because he has you when your circumstances should not dictate joy, confidence in him, you name it.

When you can maintain that like what Tim was just saying, he smiles, I think, because he has your heart. It's not about your circumstances. What's so hard in this life and in modernity now is how much we rely on comfort and winning and all of that. It's such a spiritual deficit for us as human beings.

Ben Sasse: It is. A word that we neglect is "pilgrimage." We are on a pilgrimage. We are meant for home. We should yearn for home. We should be looking forward to that glorious city that has foundations. We should also cease our labors, not just every Sunday, but every evening, and break bread with our families.

But we should know that you don't build your dream house on a bridge, and we're on a bridge. We're not there yet. The opportunity in that time of uncertainty to rely on the Lord, it's a blessing. We don't know the outcome A versus B on a whole bunch of choices. Is my clinical trial going to last a few extra months?

We're all going to die. We're all going to be pushing up daisies. But then we're going to get a glorified body and we're going to be at that adoration feast again. It is going to make the sufferings of this present age seem too infinitesimally small to even try to recall.

Jim Daly: That's so true. I think I want to make sure I capture this out of the Tim Keller clip and your experience right now, that illumination, if I could refer to it that way. Most of life is muted. We're going down the highway of life, for the metaphor, and things aren't popping all the time. You get married, you start your career, you have children, we go through the motions.

So many of the families that write or call us for help, they've fallen into that rut. So many marriages that are not thriving in Christ because they've just grown weary of loving each other. I'm grateful that we have Hope Restored. We give these couples simple tools to reconnect emotionally, spiritually, physically. It is amazing—an 81 percent success rate—and many of these people have divorce papers.

But the point of that illustration: when you're facing what you're facing, that illumination of what is important in this life must be so much easier to see. Like a clarity that comes to you in every aspect of your life, it would seem.

Ben Sasse: It does feel that way. I use the football example because I love football. If I could have done anything, I would have been the Nebraska football coach. My dad was a football coach for my whole childhood. Right now, thinking back to January and the NFL playoff season, I still love football.

It wasn't a temptation to be an idol like it has been in the past because I know I have limited days. You can't take things that are tools or respites of this world and make them ultimate things when you're headed toward the vale of tears. When it's like you are reaching forward and touching it and you know it.

The things of earth will grow strangely dim. That doesn't mean that creation isn't glorious. I want to know more about biology. I want to know more about the diversity of colors in God's created order and on that rainbow at sunset. But I want to know it because I want God to explain to me, "What were you building there? What did you create? What are you allowing us to co-create?" Not because we would make it the center.

Jim Daly: I interviewed John Burke, who lives in Austin. He wrote a great book called *Imagine Heaven* and then *Imagine the God of Heaven*. In there, he was an agnostic engineer and he ended up taking over his father's work, which was near-death experiences.

He interviewed almost 2,000 people. As an engineer, he put those experiences into about 40 loose categories. Really well done. But things where people were outside of themselves on an operating table and can give you the numbers on the top of the fan or the tennis shoe location on the top of the hospital.

So it doesn't explain a hormone rush at death because they were seeing things above themselves. In that context, he paints such a picture of heaven. Those people that have come and looked into that arena in this middle area and then come back into their body.

It's a fascinating view of just the light from a throne and things like this. It gives me such confidence of that next step for me. It makes me want to leap into that experience with the Lord with joy in my heart, not with fear. Have you thought about it?

Ben Sasse: I have. Ecclesiastes says the chasing after the wind when we take things that are meant to be goods in instrumental ways and we try to make them ultimate things and it becomes so futile. It feels like there are three kinds of time: there's daily time, there's a planning horizon, and there's eternal souls.

Every day we should be good at the gratitude of saying, "Give us this day our daily bread." We should be able to stop at the end of the day and look at the fruit of our labor and be grateful to God that we could live a life of gratitude to him by serving our neighbor. We know who we want to be and who he's making us for eternity.

Planning matters. Decisions and habits we build over the next 30 days are going to pay off over the next 30 years. But man, that middle space can crowd out daily gratitude and thinking about eternity. When you're in pain on an operating table, it's pretty tough to think, "I wonder if I've gotten my funds allocated properly in my 401(k)."

Not that that's unimportant, but it's instrumental work. It's pretty glorious to think: what does it mean in Revelation when we say all of the beasts, all of the scary things will have been cast off into the sea? We will have no more opponents and no more threats. The feast table where we get to break bread with our family will now be purified with no selfishness, and Jesus will be there.

Jim Daly: How about all tears being wiped away? I want to feel that. You have talked about the family. Let me ask this question in terms of that illumination, that clarity that comes when you're in the circumstance you're in. Being the dad you want to be, how has that changed your relationship with your girls, with your son?

Ben Sasse: We are a family of type-A overachievers. I have repented to my family. It started before this diagnosis, but we've talked about it a lot more intensely since then. I have repented to my family about not having been a good leader about the Lord's Day.

We never missed Sunday morning worship, but often by two or three in the afternoon, our hearts and affections and attentions were getting on to all the achievements we had to do starting Monday morning and all the work we needed to do. A lot of that work is important and meaningful, but the feast day of the soul is more important than I gave it attention to.

I now want my kids to view the glory of not needing to strive from Saturday night to Sunday night as an unbelievable blessing that we get to rest. Martin Luther's *A Mighty Fortress* is based on Psalm 46. If you read Psalm 46, there are three movements.

There's a "you don't have to fear anything," "you're going to be fine, God's got this," and then this command: "Be still." It means stop trying to be self-sufficient. You get to be a child of the eternal King, and every Sunday we can live that. I didn't do that enough.

Jim Daly: No, that's really, really good. I want to ask on behalf of the fathers that maybe have not done many things well. How do we recover that? When we're healthy, not being motivated by death in front of us. I mean, you're seeing it more clearly than many of us. What advice would you give to a dad to live it better now? Don't wait for the diagnosis that you're not going to be here tomorrow.

Ben Sasse: Let's be humble with our kids and say, "I'm not announcing a new policy for our family starting four days from now that we've never lived before and it becomes as law." But it's glorious to get to reflect on the things of the Lord.

What can we read together as a family this Sunday? How can we lock up our phones? How can we set aside time on the Lord's Day to just linger and reflect back on the sermon? Not have to get out of church the second it's over, but go find the folks who are in need there or the visitors there.

Two of the most practical ones for us are: we lock up our phones most of Sunday and we read aloud together a lot. If I had the skills, we'd make music together. One of my kids is a great pianist and one of my daughters is a great violinist. I've told them one of my deathbed asks is, "Can you guys write a few songs for Dad?" Not about Dad, but just play your music more.

John Fuller: This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly, and you're listening to Ben Sasse share some of the moments of joy that he's found as he's fellowshiped with his family and with God.

It's so important to find joy in difficult times and moments of adversity. If you're experiencing something like that, we'd love to come alongside and offer you our free audio collection. It's called "Remembering the Hope of Heaven," and it puts a real eternal perspective on this life that we have and the life to come.

It features guests including John Burke, Lee Strobel, Erwin Lutzer, and more. Sign up for that free audio collection at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. Let's go ahead and continue hearing this conversation with Jim and Ben Sasse.

Jim Daly: One of the things, and you're sharing very openly, Jean and I have this discussion about talking about death. She's very adverse to that. I'm more open with it, probably because I experienced it with my mom and dad and I understand that uncomfortableness.

But even in that context, advice you might have for parents who are facing something similar or are hitting that moment where we've got to talk about Grandma and Grandpa. Of course, it's always age-appropriate, but how open should we be? How open have you been with your kids with what's facing you?

Ben Sasse: We've been very, very open with our kids and we're incredibly grateful to the Lord that they have embraced even a little bit of the gallows humor about it. We should laugh at death. It's terrible, but it's not going to win. Death doesn't get the final word.

I have a podcast that I had agreed to do in October and then I got this diagnosis in December and we were due to launch in January. We decided to still do it. We changed the name from "Quick Study" to "Not Dead Yet," which comes from Monty Python. We need to redeem the time.

We're blessed that the family trusts that God knows what he's going to do and eternity is long and we will be together again. Two really concrete things we can do to make the reality of death more tangible and be more aware of it in our lives: go to nursing homes and go to cemeteries and go a lot.

Our age has the best technology in the history of the world, but we don't have the most wisdom in the history of humanity. One of the stupid things we do in our time and place is crazy age segregation, where we act like the year you were born should define your peer group.

If you're 17, everybody you know should be 17. That's ridiculous. 17-year-olds' frontal lobes aren't fully formed. When you're 17, you need to be around two-year-olds and 82-year-olds, not a lot of 17-year-olds.

So we go to nursing homes a lot and find people to serve and adopt there. We also walk cemeteries a lot. We've done that for a long time. We embrace a little bit of gallows humor at our house. We have a day we call "Not Dead Day," which is January 25, 2007, when Melissa had her aneurysm and didn't die and we thought she might.

We have for 20 years now since then taken that day and tried to go spend a lot of time with long walks in cemeteries just praying out of gratitude to God that he preserved Melissa, but also to make us reflect on the reality. We bought our cemetery plots early in marriage in Washington County, Arlington, Nebraska.

I think it's important to go to the cemetery and particularly go to cemeteries who were built by people who had rich theology, where when you walk in through the gates, it says things over the archway like, "The dead shall be raised." These molecules are going to be knit back together.

Jim Daly: I love that. I love that embrace. I think it really opens your children's minds to that moment. Like we began this discussion talking about how we really don't realize our own mortality. But for your kids to experience that and to be able to navigate it, understand it, that they do have a set number of days that the Lord's going to give them. I think that's healthy.

Ben Sasse: Amen. It's just basic wisdom of, "You got cut from a baseball team or a cheerleading squad? Guess what? It isn't the biggest deal in your life." When you're 17 or 13, it might seem like the biggest deal in your life. If you were helping some 85-year-old with dementia at a nursing home four days ago, turns out you get a little more wisdom.

Jim Daly: I love that. Ben, right here at the end, I think one of the amazing things—I'll say it in a political context and then I'll move it toward the spiritual—this question of a friend of mine who's a non-believer said, "If you guys are worried, I should be really worried because you guys are supposed to be 'fear not' people."

Isn't that interesting? So he's looking at us and our panic and saying, "Wow, if those people are supposed to be people that do not fear and they're fearful, what am I missing?" That's interesting and a great observation. So we as Christians again, what are we projecting?

In that context on the spiritual side, I'm so glad every year we do survey work at Focus. Over the last 12 years or so, anywhere from 170,000 to 290,000 last year, people said Focus was the organization that led them to the Lord. Praise the Lord.

I don't think Dr. Dobson nor I years ago saw this as that kind of organization. We're here to help your family. But amazingly, how many people come to Christ because of pain in their family? In that context, speaking to—I'm assuming we're going to have a number of non-believers listening to you.

You were a senator, the president of a university, a football fan. In that context, what would you say to the person right now who's going, "Wow, this guy's days are numbered, but he still smiles, he still has joy." What would you say to them?

Ben Sasse: The calling to be a human created in the image of God is big and grand, but we're a part of an idol-making, rebellious tribe. We are all united with Adam, Genesis 3 tells us, in rebellion against the good Father who created this world and created us for fellowship with him.

Romans 5 says the bigger story is that there is a second Adam. There is a new Adam. Jesus came to fulfill all that Adam failed on and to justify us, to declare us righteous in a court of law, but also intrinsically to begin that process of sanctification.

I am both in Adam and in Christ, but the real Ben, the future Ben, is the one in Christ where the old Adam's sin and members are being crowded out. So death and judgment is terrible, but also what a mitigating blessing for there to be a truth among us that says all the brokenness of this world, all the pain that you feel, all the suffering that you've known, this is not how it was supposed to be.

This is what came from Adam's fall and what's going to become true and more true in the future is going to be the end of that age and the arrival of the new age that Jesus ushered in and that his resurrection was the first fruits of. So I will never shy away from saying death is wicked.

I don't want this wicked thief to come. I don't want to be broken away from my partner and friend Melissa. I don't want my daughters and my son to not have a dad there to walk them down the aisle or to celebrate with my kid when he hits a home run or to give him a big hug and noogie and maybe slap him upside the head if he thinks the strikeout was too big of a deal. Let it go, man.

I don't want those things to happen. And yet, passing through this final vale of tears, it need not scare us who are in Christ because it will be the last enemy and then there will be no more tears.

Jim Daly: I love it. Ben Sasse, you're a good friend. I wish I could have spent more time with you.

Ben Sasse: You as well, Jim. And we will again, whether this side or the other side of Jordan.

Jim Daly: So appreciate everything you've done for the country and the way you're modeling how a Christian behaves with a lot of headwind. Your faith in Christ is a great example and I hope literally thousands of people of the 100 or 200,000 will say it was that show with Ben Sasse that brought me to Christ. Thank you.

Ben Sasse: Thank you, brother.

John Fuller: Former Senator Ben Sasse on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. What a powerful message from him, Jim, as he really shared from his heart just a few days ago.

Jim Daly: He is so focused on worshipping God and loving his family. It all boils down to that, and you could hear the sincerity in his heart as he shared both as a husband and a father. It's so interesting, a man that successful—senator, a president of a big-time university—but his core message is faith and family. That's what we believe as well.

Pray for Ben and his family. I know they would appreciate it. In the New Testament, Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die." Amen to that.

The time is coming, as I've said, for each one of us to cross the finish line at some point in this life. We don't know what the time will be or the day, but God does. Then comes eternity. What happens in eternity depends on our relationship with Jesus.

If you know him, you'll spend eternity with him. If you don't know him yet, I want to invite you right now to put your trust in him. You can become a Christian. You can decide to follow the things that Jesus taught and ask him to save your soul.

We have a free online booklet called "Coming Home" that will explain what it means to put your hope, trust, and faith in Christ. We also have a special free audio collection called "Remembering the Hope of Heaven," featuring Lee Strobel, Pastor John Burke, Randy Alcorn, and many others with inspiring thoughts about what heaven will be like.

It has turned my attitude around. I want to jump into the next life because of the authors and how they have captured what this is going to be like. It's going to be amazing.

John Fuller: Get that free audio collection, "Remembering the Hope of Heaven," and also the little booklet online, "Coming Home." The links are at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. Then if you'd like a counselor to speak with you or pray with you about whatever is really on your heart or mind, set up that phone appointment, which won't cost you anything to call. The number is 800-A-FAMILY.

Jim Daly: And here at the very end, for those who believe in the mission of Focus on the Family—that we are here to strengthen marriages and to evangelize, to tell people about Christ—pray for this effort that we can continue to reach as many people as possible and help those who are hurting. If you can help us financially, let me just say thank you.

John Fuller: And next time, we're going to hear from Deborah Pegues with a 30-day challenge to avoid saying anything negative because our words do make an impact.

Guest (Female - Deborah Pegues): Because words never die. And that's what we have to remember: words never die. They're going to last like shrapnel in that person's brain.

John Fuller: On behalf of the 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.