The Family Is God's Idea: An Interview with Dr. James Dobson

Everybody Greg Laurie here. You're listening to the Greg Laurie podcast and my objective is to deliver hopefully compelling practical insights and faith culture and current events. From a biblical perspective to find out more about our ministry. Just go to our website harvest.org so thanks for joining me for this podcast, James Dobson is here to see the Dr. James Dobson is one of the most influential leaders in the world, even of evangelicalism is an understatement. I really I would say he's a living legend and a man of God that I've had the privilege of getting to know personally and I can tell you that the private Dr. Dobson is the same as the public, Dr. Dobson and I'll refer to him as Jim because he's asked me to do that because I was calling Dr. Dobson's and call me Jim but let me tell you little bit about his background.

He was born on April 21, 1936 in Shreveport, Louisiana here and a PhD in child development at USC. He was associate clinical Prof. of pediatrics at the USC school of medicine for 14 years he spent 17 years on the stuff of the Children's Hospital of Los Angeles and the division of child development and medical genetics I and then he is also served on multiple government advisory panels in and testify to government hearings as well. Our president are Dr. Dobson.

He is not been elected president yet but maybe not a bad idea. I think it be a good president talk to has a nice ring.

He's had a close relationship with the many of our presidents, including Pres. Reagan then president of Bush the first and president Bush the second and he is always also the author of many books.

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In total, including data discipline, bringing up boys bringing up girls. The strong-willed child lives with her husband's knew about women when God doesn't make sense and many more in his brand-new book that is coming out soon. Is your legacy the greatest gift we can talk about this in a few moments, but on a personal note, I first met Dr. Dobson in 1995 only to the crusading Colorado Springs where Focus on the Family is located and as the years have gone by. We talk here and there but his son Ryan became close friend of our son Christopher affected both what the Bible together and when the Lord called our son home. Ryan contacted us and asked if I'd like to speak with this father and so after Christopher had died.

We were on the phone for a long time with Dr. Dobson. My wife, myself, our daughter-in-law, Britney, you know, that same voice of this brought comfort to millions around the world was there for us just just as though you the way you hear and that's the way we heard of many, was there in a very important time in our life and he's been for many of us there at a very important time in our life and is influenced us and helped us to raise our children and tell us how to have stronger families and he's been an advocate for so many important issues that we hold dear and loading the sanctity of life and the real biblical definition of marriage and were thankful for his current so with that being said, let's give a warm harvest welcome to Dr. James Dobson well there excited to see you here, are you feeling today I'm feeling fine when you know Jim and you told me I can call you. Generally, literally, how would you feel I started calling you Dr. J. Would you be okay with Jim. You know, known for your advice and your counsel in your teaching on the subject of the family, but I think people would be very surprised to know about your family, your father and mother, your father, James Senior, your mother Myrtle I raise you. You're an only child, but your father very talented artist and also an itinerant evangelism.

He was gone. A lot of the time and so you spend time on your own and you even spent a year in the care of your great aunt that affect you and tell me a little bit about your childhood.

Well, it was very difficult. Greg, first of all, I was an only child because my mother couldn't have any more children. She had a bone structure that did not allow her to have children they told her that she should not have any children and my dad came to my mother and set a been praying about this and the Lord told me you got have a son and cool right there is one hot looking little car that me that's not well I had a very close family implies that there was any lack of commitment there and my dad was committed also to evangelism running. That was the passion of his life and before I got in school. I just traveled with them and then when when it was time to go to school. I was not homeschooling at that time and that they know what to do with me because my dad needed my mother and so I stayed with my great aunt when I was in the first grade and part of the second and my dad and mom would come back every six weeks or so to see me and it was very difficult. I felt abandoned and that my dad sought, and he came home on one of those occasions and he said he's Jimmy is becoming more like his great aunt that he is us and we cannot do that time and so he bought a house. My mother stayed with me till I was out of high school and made an unbelievable sacrifice because he was very close.

My mother needed her, but he gave me priority and when he would come home then he was mine. And so we had a very close family know there's a book about her life, a biography called family man and in the book it mentions that your father's greatest passion was winning people to Christ. What is your greatest passion. Well it's the same passion Greg but it is through the family. The family is like the red blood cell in the body carries a globule of oxygen in the family carries the oxygen of the of the body. Oxygen to the body having to do with the gospel and so that is what I'm I'm trying to do is to use the family strengthen the family support the family and therefore pass on the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Your father's ministry was not widely known except through your mentioning of Kim and one day here the Lord spoke to your father, and this is also in your book are in the book about your life, family man and of the Lord spoke to him in your father was not one to say, the Lord spoke to me all the time so when he said it carried weight in Lord spoke to your father, James Senior, and said to him your reach thousands of people, perhaps millions from coast-to-coast and around the world, but it isn't and it be through you.

It's going to be through your son, that would be you and so you have that later in life that you that was one of the most dramatic events in my life that my father was a was a praying man. Sometimes during four hours a day.

I mean, he was known in his town. This Amanda had no leather on the toes of his shoes because she spent so much time, see war office. The toes before he did the souls and not he was. He was such a good godly man and toward the end of his life.

He had a heart attack.

His brother-in-law had cancer and he was a minister to and my dad was determined.

God was going give them more time to win souls and so he had been praying for three days and three nights without stopping about that that giving them an opportunity continue to minister at about 5 o'clock that morning the Lord spoke to them and said I've heard your prayer. I know you passion you want to serve me and I'm going to answer you go to reach millions of people around the world, but it's not going to be you. My dad and my uncle died that day and my father had a heart attack. The next day, from which he never recovered and he wasn't able to tell me that story and I didn't find out about it for seven years and your biography are your quarter to see the two most important things to you are number one, ensuring that your loved ones get to heaven, your family and your loved ones and number two. Living the best possible Christian life is an important lesson important to all of us semi-what else is there what can compete with faster what becoming famous, getting a lot of money having billings with your name being a great artist on being a great musician water. What else comes close to this task. And if you don't get it down.

With regard to your children, you will never see him again if that will motivate you to give priority to your children. I really don't know what will you. You can hardly think of the name Jim Dobson without thinking of Shirley Dobson, there's just certain names that go together. You know Ron and Nancy Reagan, Jillian Ruth Graham Jim and Shirley Dobson, your story of how you met your wife to be is a classic American love story. His great photo of you backbend and more recently, and I your wife was the homecoming queen. You are the captain of the tennis team and so you met for the first time on your college campus and you are in your tennis outfit probably in your way to practice you member the first thing that Shirley sent you. When she saw you less tells you a lot about Shirley because first of all, she got great sense of humor, but she's also very feisty and that's what I fell in love with and that little flirt, walked up to me and she said hi legs hi legs and that I thought man anybody likes my legs can't be all bad news.

The shirts were shorter.

When it was more like showing that there was a sequel to that, because several days later I figured I know this this girl let it come up there and send that to me and she was standing out on campus after dinner one night and I walked up to her night I had a nickel and I was flipping it in the air and I said that I tell you what Shirley, I'd like to flip this nickel and if I can call it heads or tails I will win a hamburger and you buy me a hamburger and she said a lot take you up on that.

I mean a's brilliant brilliant. I went both ways investor I get a hamburger. I get a day that I so I flipped it and I will and and she said no, oh no you going double or nothing. So I would double another one again and I had to hamburger things are going the right direction and I flipped it again. I want again.

I want 32 Amber, she's been fried all members and you know Shirley.

Her maiden name was dear didn't you write a poem for her when she was running for homecoming queen I had graduated by then and she asked me to come back and beer campaign manager and so I thought, how can I draw attention to this. So there was a little path on campus where everybody had to go the one time or another. Everybody went by that moment that place and so I'm I made a poster and I wrote a poem and it said 100 years ago today, a wilderness was here a man with power and he's gone went forth the hunted deer. But now that things have changed somewhat. The school has been erected and a deer with powder on her nose goes forth to be elected very good one. C1 C1 because of me. Now Jim Shirley had a rough childhood, her parents divorce. She was raised in, out, I think your father was an alcoholic and so when you were growing up together before you are married you made a commitment to her you said I want you to know what you tell me what you said to me reading what Shirley I people here who have experienced alcoholism in the family know that shame associated with that.

You don't want anybody to know, and so everybody hides it. Then Shirley felt that way. Yet they lived in very squalid circumstances tidy little shotgun house and her mother had worked in the cannery at the middle of the night to support showing your brother so it was not easy and it's amazing that Shirley got on her knees at 6789 years of age and prayed for her future husband. She was praying for me to know me and within me until we were in college, but that little kid stalking the door. She had nothing to give him chin having money she had no influence. She had nothing but he heard her and answered her prayer. So we went together for four months through the summer before I knew that she had a tough childhood. She had not shared it with me. She's afraid to tell me and one night she she said to me, I really got something that you need to know and she told me about her childhood and rather than leaving her. My response was Shirley my my purpose if we are to live together in Marion be together the rest of our lives.

This came a little later that that I want to make up to you for what you've lost and for what you experience. And that's been sort of a goal of my life to take care of her and to love her something that every Christian I think that's one of the role that God is given to men. It is in fact there are five elements to it. There is respect a woman deserves respect. Not only the husband for his wife but for women and to protect. I wanted to protect Shirley from the spring and to provide for and to provide leadership for I believe that's a godly role and to then provide leadership for the rest of family. I think that that is what God calls us to do and it if you think about it when you have a boy and you are trying to train him to be a godly man. You start with those you safe.

First of all, you take a girl out for a date pay that bill. This is your responsibility right.right ladies and just say yeah I thought there would be a standing ovation this early system wanted you and this may surprise you to your job is to protect her to get her home safely and this is similar that I think that the kind should walk on the street side when he is with her. It's a way of saying I am responsible for you and I and then of course to live a moral and godly life for her and I and to serve her in servant leadership right that life you want to teach a boy to be a man. That's where you start out with those responsibilities will discuss and that you have the family that started with her own marriage has continued on to your over there at USC in the school of medicine, very productive career and actually started your ministry a bit later in life to you because you felt directed obviously by the Lord to make this the focus of your life and ministry. Do you remember the name of Dr. Clyde Nair Morris, i.e. he had a great influence on me and he gave a speech one time and said if there promising students out there who would like going to this field I will meet with Mike and my aunt heard it and told me about it.

I went to meet with him. I spent an afternoon with a man he laid my life out for me and he said you don't need a PhD and if you do that don't get married too soon and need this.

He gave me very specific advice and that's what I did and and that's why I came into my professional life a little bit later but you got married a little sooner than he told her to go right or not. I was pretty much on target.

I will follow that those who yet again on the Lord was in that I just look back on a course my mom and dad were praying for me the night that I went over to SC to a tick tricky like and register. I was scared because he always scared when you 30,000 students. There and I was standing this long line waiting to register and a man that had gone to my college. She was two years older and me had already gotten his PhD and was a professor and he came over to me and he said that, you know, I not only know you but I believe in you and come on up to my office, took me out of line after the office and said I will be your advisor were going to do this thing together.

While I never had any disrespect for my Christian faith at USC and he told me every class to take. I mean it's just amazing what happened there. Yeah that you went on to found Focus on the Family 1977 your radio broadcast was heard on over 7000 stations worldwide her by more than 220 million people and 164 countries. Since then, you've gone on to found your ministry family talk now and so your father's word about you influencing many really turned out to be true then that it really did and I told you I didn't know about it until seven years later I was on the gambling commission at that time, the hardest, most difficult, most nasty, terrible assignment I've ever had 18 months of seeing stuff that's just out and having people think of pornography as being airbrushed nudity, and so on. I mean it is wretched stuff. It was then. It's worse today and I was running Focus on the Family and I was advising Pres. Reagan and the others and I got tired that people think that those who are in ministry, yourself included, are driven by ego needs that if forces them to do what they do and it is not true. I contemplated I was asking the Lord.

How long can I do this because I was really worn out and I got a letter from my aunt is the one that my dad had told about that prayer and she laid it out for me and her last line is the end is not yet and so far the end is not yet what I'm doing now all I left I left USC that was that was up of a position I was doing what I loved was train for. I was doing research and I think we were accomplishing a lot said director of the national study in 15 major medical centers with this disorder called phenylketonuria and I could have enjoyed staying there, but I saw the family unraveling. I don't sound like father time here, but I saw where we are today. I recognized what abortion was going to me and of what the assault on the definition of marriage was going to be and what the attack on righteousness was going to be and I just felt the Lord put his hand in my back and say I you need to do what you can and so I walked out of there and started this little two room office.

I didn't know where it was going or what would happen but that was a major turning point for me. It's been said that family can survive without a nation, but the nation cannot survive without the family. The family is so important to you. It's so important to our country, just very quickly define what the family as we hear that word a lot. What is the family why it's kind in Genesis. Genesis 224 when it says for this cause a man shall leave his mother and father interest leave to his wife.

His wife and the two shall be one flesh. It's a beginning in the family getting a marriage. It was not man's idea was God's idea that attraction between men and women has characterized the basic social unit in every continent's not just a Christian thing.

In fact, it wasn't Christian, Christ hadn't come in yet but it was divinely inspired, and it is the ground floor is the foundation right. Everything sits on everything our institutions, our government, our way of life. Everything rest on that foundation. And if you undermine and you weaken and you redefine it and you tear into its fabric. The whole superstructure could come down and that's what's happened in other civilization that's going to happen to us if we are foolish enough to walk away from it. Yes, that's right, you don't. The breakdown of the families you been talking about is at the root of so many social little so many problems in our culture today and specifically the lack of father and a lot of studies have been done in the found imprints and 63% of teenagers who attempt suicide come from fatherless homes a child that is from a father's home is 60% more likely to use drugs or alcohol more likely to become sexually active at an early age 3 times more likely to commit a violent crime 71% of high school dropouts from fatherless homes.

90% of all homeless and runaway children from fatherless homes and it just goes on and on.

What is fatherlessness at the root of so many of our nation's problem but because of the role that fathers are supposed to play on the statistics that you just listed with regard to more than 70% African-American babies are born out of wedlock then you had divorced down and other things that take fathers out of the home and that stupid pity the foolishness of the late 60s when they decided that if a man stays in the home. The family is not supported by the government. They destroyed the black family and it is reeling now and take a look at what intercity life is like without this leadership that you know when you don't have a man to teach a boy what it means to be a man and I tell you some else.

Girls need their dads as much, as voiced and going to be the talking about this and I want to talk about what it means to teach a boy what it means to be a boy when he's born here. That's not something that's automatic it has to be taught and if you have a single mother and the husband's gone and his influence is not there, you got find a substitute for because a woman is not equipped teach a boy how to be a man that has to come from a man so when you when that tear is torn down, then the consequences throughout the culture are really terrible you wrote a book on what wives wish their husbands knew about women. What are some of the things husbands need to know about women how much time you have my points.

I let me give you one all right was going okay.

It if men are together and they are talking and discussing what they care about. They talk about their work, they talk about what they've accomplished that.

Well you know where bill in this new complex. Aaron, we have invested this and they talk about those things because that's what how men develop self-worth is that they've done something with their lives. I'm that way you are that way. I think that all men are that way when by contents draw their self-worth from a relationship from romantic love from being love and being cared for and that's something that men frequently don't know about. Well why she complain I know working long hours but I'm doing it for her.

Well take another look brother but because she needs some else from you.

She need your love, your attention, your time to talk about that and what wives with their husbands that went by the way, by the way I was.

I just really step books long time ago just released and I was going to speak on. I had a bunch of pastors there and they guy who introduced me came to the microphone and said that I was the author of the brand-new book what wives wish their husbands knew about other women that one. What I had in my be very know your well-known for your book.

Discipline how many of you read Dare to discipline you look at the lots about vectors.

Boy he was in college, you wrote you a poem once in his poem.

He said roses are red violets are blue when I was a kid I got spanked because of you, and I was a boy to over that there's a whole generation. Yeah that would like to catch me in a blind alley so in this book that you've written about disciplining the children address that today because it seems like were in a time where we don't see a lot of discipline not even a sense of what is right and what is wrong in our culture. Why is discipline important in the lives of our children well and just look around you.

What happens in in airports and in schools and in public. You see that parents have no idea how to deal with those kids you got 234-year-old kids who are arty in charge at home because they been taught not to confront and not to discipline right but the Scripture tells us otherwise. I thought you might ask me about that. So Hebrews 12 seven you mind me reading.

Please okay it is for discipline that you endure.

God deals with you as with sons what son is there whom his father did not discipline that was then not nap, but if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Three more verses there that describe the need for discipline a child feels like he doesn't belong right if he challenges the authority at the home and nobody has the courage to confront our deleting, since enough to know that's not right and you damage child. If you don't take charge. Discipline is necessary. I was raised without a father.

My mom was an alcoholic. I had no discipline of my life and I was know what I was talking about will sure I know it all. From personal experience and and I was a problem in school but I was sent to military school for a short time, and there that you apply discipline and it's funny I went from being a delinquent to being on the honor roll.

When I got structure and as soon as I got out of the structure. I went back to my old ways.

Again, I needed that structure and I think it's comforting, you know, because as you just read that scripture, whom the Lord loves he disciplines, it's not because he hates us, it's because he loves us and it's a sign that God cares about you to give you that reinforcement of what is right and what is wrong and it wishes that Scripture saying it yields the he said all right through off righteous. That's right.

Discipline leads to righteousness in the heyday of the progressive education movement. Some of the educators begin thinking John Dooley and others that they needed to take down the fences that were around. I got up because kids were afraid you know that our they wanted the freedom they didn't want to be him. Then, so they took him down. The kids huddled around the center of the I wanted out of rotation they wanted it.

Can you imagine writing in a car over Royal Gorge.

If you've ever been there in Colorado and it's scary. This looks like forever.

Below you. There, and if no start date rails were not there, you would move toward the center. Those guardrails arrange security right.

That's what a child we have a little bunny rabbit of my granddaughters have them in the his name is fuzzy. They named them and they to come out and play with them in my granddaughter, Allie manhandled a little bit girl handled him. I think you might say at first and now she's been with them in our grandson Christopher. I sometimes pick fuzzy up by the head no. Christopher support is bottom in and so after their complaint with this rabbit. When I think back to his cage. He leaps out of my arms to get in the cage of the let me get in the reason the KG secure the bars are the grandkids and also their security, their guard God is given us absolute parameters they could seem like bars, but we could also think of them as walls to keep people out and to protect us from evil that my dad would've said that'll preach yeah that'll preach that's a message that comes right out of reality today so when you think about marriage as I hear someone listening and maybe their marriage is strong. Maybe their marriage is struggling. Maybe they been divorced or their even contemplating divorce.

Do you think there's anything we can do to effectively guarantee but would give us a better chance of making it in the years ahead.

In other words, is there a way to divorce proof of marriage not in this culture because it's working against us working against your kids to know that where that the cultures at war without the family is so you can guarantee it.

But the best glue to hold a family together is commitment you just decide that man never enters your mind are your thoughts are your words at this since this is for life. This is the way it's intended I you know I was fishing with my father-in-law. Not long ago we chatted a little rowboat and we were on a choppy lake and we were wrong along there together and then the fish started biting and our attention was drawn away from stand together and we wound up with one on the east shore and one on the West show and it was the same lake same when same influences. But when we quit rolling. We drifted apart and marriage is like that you stay together again rolled like crazy yes and don't stop by Craig that so here's a single mother wrote this question in I'm a single mother to them. Try to raise my children in the way of the Lord. What advice would you give me single mom to get loud. I dressed it little earlier you, you find a substitute that you gotta have a man that's involved there and in this day and age you have to be really careful because of the exploitation, sexual exploitation of children, but a coach and uncle and grandfather ever young pastor and all those on occasions have done the unthinkable. So you have to keep a real close eye on but you need some I can't go to good high school with you straight a student and ran a teenager for periods of time to show boy how to throw a ball inside how to be a boy but I was being raised to know my mom was gone most of the time so I would go on to get my own food every night at the restaurant and I always order the same thing a hamburger, French fries and a vanilla ball all my friends envied me because I didn't have to go home at night and eat dinner. I could eat what I wanted when I wanted hamburger, fries, the normal after about doing that for about six months I got tired of it and started going over to my friends house with her was a mom and dad it's at Dell for a family meal because I wanted that structure. So maybe you don't have that structure. But maybe there's another place where that structure could be because it can be modeled for them to see what a family should be even better. What a Christian family should be the other side of that is that the family that has it together yeah not perfect but it's really making it work needs to bring those kids got sick because they've never seen it and Shirley when when her family was all Tori was invited by church people over to the house of the friends and was shocked to find out that after breakfast on Saturday morning that the father came and prayed with everybody she had never seen that happen before it made an impact on her. She said I want that you know I'm we need to also do some teaching when we have an opportunity to tell others about that's right so you been a friend of presidents, Pres. Reagan, Pres. H. W. Bush, Pres. George W. Bush tell us a little bit about Pres. Reagan and what it was like to get to know him and spent time in the Oval Office would like to walk for the first time into the Oval Office. It's all inspiring because you just think of Lincoln, Jan Roosevelt and all the people who lived and worked in that place and I it's dangerous to cause your eyes spin and the unite was Chuck Colson who said that they liens of the waiting room become the lambs of the Oval Office.

Once you get in the presence of power. Just say and you have to be aware that that's happening to you because you can be corrupted very easily. Thankfully, the people I was working with were not there to do that. Ronald Reagan said Craig man, I met him. It was 1981 and he was about to be inaugurated, then I got invited to come and bring six friends with me to the inauguration and we were excited about that new beginning. It was all there was just so much excitement in the country in Reagan was coming in and I just want to catch a glimpse of. I mean that's what everybody in Washington was trying to do this seemed go buying a car or something and we were there for the inaugural speech and all that and and then invited to the inaugural ball and that night we knew they were there were 90 and and we were at the Smithsonian and so that was the night inaugural ball of that night and so we had to wait and it was jammed you could not. There were people just shoulder to shoulder, and we had been there for 34 hours waiting for, and we looked at our watches and said now it's nearly midnight. He's got to be coming soon so after he leaves every bicycle be trying to get their coaches very cold and so let's go get our coats so that we're ready to go so we will couple of us went to get our coats and we were walking back we had a coach over arm and door swung open and Secret Service men who looked very much time six to my friend 65 and we had own taxes look like them and they came in and ran into the stairwell. I looked at my friend.

He looked at me and said why not. We ran with it and we went up the next step to the second floor and opened the door and walked straight into Ronald Reagan. I was 3 feet away from you and you know Secret Service never looks behind. They look ahead, they never turn around to see who was following them that I and we are there, and so they have this cordoned off area blue uniform police to the platform where Nancy and Ann Ronald Reagan were were going to go up and speak and dance and it was just about 3 foot wide and always see if people and they started down that cordoned off area. I looked to my friend. He looked to me and I said why not way what, we followed him 3 feet behind this so we and everybody thought we are Secret Service and we walked to the platform and then they went up and I looked at my face looked at me and said yes. So they Secret Service was looking down at us and all of a sudden they realized we were we were right here and they didn't know what was under the scope job and they panic and take him came running down pushed me in the back and said get out of here.

We decided we should.

We went back and then the he came down and walked right into us and three years later I was sitting beside him and they Oval Office talking to about family when you first came to talking to easy I thought you were in the Secret Service, you know, I was told that there was a Lotta scrambling in the White House to figure out who those two guys are going so your wife is been leading the national day of prayer. Now in Washington DC for how many years I 20. This is 24th year she agreed to do that. Yeah, you have a great job. She agreed to this, there she is yours yesterday but yeah there is coming in Oval Office. I mean into the room. Yes with me trailing behind you know you working at Secret Service that day or were you just got upset. I don't know what they were worried about me you again. I during the Bush administration, they he was their course eight years and he had a prayer service. All eight years and sometimes it was very hard for the year that he went out to fly the plane out to the mayor ARM Lincoln that that was a busy busy day for him and his staff came and said you do not have time to have a national day of prayer. He said this is priority and so he he had an event there and surely spoke at all eight of those she's done a great job. I'm really proud of is he really has been okay so let's shift gears as we come to the end of this interview… Ask you some personal questions. Dr. James Dobson what is your favorite kind of music you don't really want me to answer that I really want you to answer it.

I'm going to dissolution everybody here or really happy to hear it. I'm a Beatles fan how I try so hard. I have no illusion about the Beatles they had a horrible impact on society on young bravo they really did evil men. They really worry like. I like doing with the Beatles would've said oh you want to listen to music you know what you okay so you like Beatles music out what your favorite song what would come out of that. Obviously, I think yesterday probably saw yesterday or Eleanor Rigby are all of those classic siding like it when they got crazy and I like those yesterday all my troubles a mile far away. I have to tell you that I will run that time, but I went to a concert by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston podcast. This is American Academy of pediatrics and in the Boston and the first half of the program was bomb Brahms Beethoven and Mozart and that inner mission. After intermission author author Sessa Arthur Fiedler came out yeah and he said them. You probably not going to agree with this but the music here about the here and now, from the Beatles rank with those other composers job and I that took him by his breath away.

It was not about the words the lyrics it was about the music and he he said that it it is really classy, and unlike anything else anybody as I remember when I can be a radio program a while back in Colorado Springs. I set up lunch with you and your wife Shirley and then today, your daughter and ran your son and were having a meal and we got into this conversation about the Beatles first found out you like them and then we were talking US a question you think the song Lucy in the sky with diamonds was about LSD or about a child's drawing that was brought on the John we talked about the little bit I just somewhat.

It's a real conversation I can James Dobson about this, but as you think you're so back over your life. One is been the greatest regret of your life that when been some significant ones agreement come here today. Yeah well I that's I gave that a lot of thought know I made a huge mistake. One time I was at Children's Hospital and the young woman wanted professionally and she came in and she had a a two-year-old who'd been born out of wedlock. She was struggling as a single mother and she was pregnant again and that she came to tell me that she was going to abort the baby and I said I did everything I could talk her out of that gave the whole pro-life message and she said no, I've got a got one child.

I can't take care of and I will have another and I and so then she told me. In fact I have an appointment at the end one of the hospitals in in town. Will you take me there and I drove her there. Let her out and I've had that on my conscience ever since I that that would rank very high disappointed with myself very passionate about the pro-life position about the sanctity of life about protecting the lives of innocent children still in the womb. I mean I was conceived out of wedlock.

I could have been abortion statistic. Thankfully my mom carried me the term and really there's no illegitimate children may be a legitimate parents, but every child is legitimate in the eyes of God and God loves them and is a plan for the life have you know I was asked to speak. This year the will walk for life in Washington and I met seven young women there who have an organization. Everyone was conceived by rape a while that incredible were not have him on the radio, but that that that conversation with regard to the young woman I talked to have an abortion has another sequel to that couple came to see me but because the wife had had abdominal problems and they didn't know what was wrong with her and they did x-rays honor and would do that today. Do MRIs that are CAT scans, but they did x-rays and found out she was pregnant and they told her you must abort because this child could be mentally retarded could be blind, deaf, could be distorted in many ways you can allow that baby to be born so they came to see me and that they they said what would you do and that I said this is obviously not been easy decision for you to make and it wouldn't be for me but I would let the baby live and leave it up to God and the consequences may be everything they say. I'm not contradicting that and they let that baby live and the most beautiful baby girl was born. She's now 34 years old and has been a blessing in people's mother was told to abort her child because she would die if she gave birth to him, and she decided to give birth and of course he's a strapping young man a great quarterback and even better than that, a committed follower of Jesus Christ. So you never know just you know do what is right and let God be God. Let God be God. Well, you know where were really at the end of our time. So I'm asking just a few little quick questions maybe give me short answers.

If you would mind just like quick. Eric hello hello what makes you angry. What makes me angry is when I see the media and the culture trying to twist and warp the minds of children who are too young to know better what makes you laugh when you left Shirley.

She's got a great sense of humor.

We laugh a lot. What your favorite color.

Dr. James Dobson all that's a consequence of blue. There is an if you want let's talk. You knew that you could only speak one last time. What would you talk about, I would talk about the theme of that book which is winning your children to Christ. I've written 35 votes or so and all of them point toward this one way or the other. That's the capstone of my professional life. If you could ask God one question, what would it be why why what yeah why, indeed, there so many questions you can answer Jesus asked Jesus and bring comfort to those who say why would you do me.

Jesus asked the same question. My God, my God, why have you pursue yeah and why this is such a relevant question, because God never answers he will not be accountable to me years ago years ago II had the opportunity to look to Billy Graham and I asked Billy the question Billy about an older Billy could speak to a younger Billy. What advice would you give yourself and Billy said I would tell myself to preach more of the cross and the blood of Christ because that's of the power is, I pose the same question to Pastor Chuck Smith is now in heaven. And I said if an older Chuck could speak to a younger Chuck, what would he say to what would you say to yourself, and he said I would tell the younger Chuck will the course of an older James Dobson say that the young boy that we saw there in that little car and then as you got older with what would you say here's what I've learned in life is what you need to know to lurch, finish strong.

See see the patriarchs of the Bible. Sampson Solomon yes David so many of them. Hezekiah, who live godly line straight and then fell right and I I realize it could still happen for us.

Dr. Dobson a great representative of us and a great example to us and we want to thank you for your faithfulness to the Lord. Your personal integrity, your love for your wife for your children and in the stand you've made in our culture. You're one of our heroes so we want you to know that we love you Dr. James Dobson everybody Greg Laurie here. Thanks for listening to our podcast in the learn more about harvest ministries. Please subscribe and consider supporting this show.

Just go to harvest.org. By the way, if you want to find out how to come into a personal relationship with God.

Go to know God.org that's key NOW GLD.org