Easter: Seen. Known. Loved.

The crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus proves that you are seen known and loved by God. We can go for a very long time about hearing the voice of God. When God finds a crack becomes a wedge and that wedge becomes a door window because he loves us in our lives. Welcome to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, author of the New York Times bestseller "The 5 Love Languages" , each one of us know someone in your corner value as a person, like yesterday, spent many years trying to find that kind of love and a lot of different places you'll hear his story of going from atheist to embracing the truth about God, you're more is our guest in his life is a living, breathing example of God's love action Dr. Chapman teamed up a brighter future resourced talked about it, seen, known, love five truths about God and your love language. Find out more website. I love languages.com click on resources then building relationship@ 5lovelanguages.com Gary this is a special weekend for followers of Jesus, talk about that right Chris something the death and resurrection, of course, which were celebrating this tomorrow. That's the heart that's the heart of Christianity you know leaders of other world religions lived and died. There's no other religious leader ever defeated death, and the course you know what he did on the cross for us and paying for our sins so that God could forgive us and still be a just and holy God.

That's the Christian message, the heart of and I will be selling were celebrating this weekend so it's a great great time to be talking about the Christian faith.

Jacob always struggled with Good Friday and Easter Sunday rushing to rushing past Good Friday because of the other great thing that happened on Sunday morning but here we are in that time between and there's probably some people listening today you're going through some rocky times and in their own life and your want you want the resurrection you you want the sun to come out and everything to shine in new life we cannot see and that right now I want you to listen to York more stories we get into it are York more.

He's a speaker revivalist and abolitionist.

He serves as Executive Director catalytic partnerships and as national evangelist for inter-varsity Christian Fellowship USA York became a Christian from atheism while studying philosophy at University of Michigan, we hear more about that. He also has an MA in global leadership from Fuller seminary is the author of several books, lives in the Detroit area with his wife and three children.

Find out more about him in the book seen known love@ 5lovelanguages.com welcome back to Building Relationships. It's great to hear your voices again brothers in the South here in the north and curses in the West, but covered we got it covered the four corners were glad to have this opportunity today so order to answer that same question that Chris asked me why is this weekend so important for followers of Christ. While it marks the high Hall high holidays of what we call the Christian faith. But really, at the at the proximate is the resurrection right without the resurrection of Christ from the grave. We are still in our sins we are to be pitied. Above all, but that's where our focus. Our hope is in the glorious resurrection of Jesus. And it's not just a holiday that we commemorate. It's where we find the epicenter of the powerful Christian living goddess and just want to forgive our sins, he wants to transform our lives and set resurrection power that same power that raised him from the dead is what enables us to live lives. The kind of life that God created us to live and always feel that way.

So take us back to how your family would celebrate Easter when you were young, hi don't think I even heard the word we were homeless on the streets of Detroit in and out of homelessness for many years.

Even though my parents were Masters degree holders, educators in drugs and alcohol. You know, dismantled our family and but when we were homeless. We had a sign in the front of home. It said the Moors atheists.

We had a barrel in the center house for burning Bibles.

The RMI name stands for land I'm named after an atheistic philosopher and in-kind land. And as I was steeped in atheism when I went to their greatest university in America, the University mission. Go blue. I was you know reinforce that commitment atheism. My nickname in my fraternity with Satan persecuted Christians for papers against Christians, and it wasn't until I had a a crisis moments where I actually met the met the living Christ. The resurrected Christ that I had a change of heart when I began to learn about things like a certain everybody knows about Christmas because that's when Santa Claus comes in and sees Jan so there's some affiliation with Jesus of Christmas is famous really know much about Easter and I actually was baptized as a new believer on Easter morning, the United Kingdom, Christian Selby I house all the Paul story for sure now and I did you observe any Christians when you are in luck elementary school. I don't think I had ever seen or heard of a Christian until I was probably all the way into high school I never met a Christian, at least not that I would've unable to tell the Christian teachers snow will Christian students. Nothing. We had a couple of brushes with churches and were trying to help us during our our season of homelessness and so we actually were living in the basement of the church at one point during our homelessness and we felt so bad the Inviting Us to Church As Atheists, We Would Say Kindly Know and Finally We Said One Sunday What Will Go and I'll Never Forget That Sitting in the Pew Wooden Pews, and Their Passing Plates of Money. I Thought They Were Giving the Money Away, but We Are Supposed with the Money and NMA. Please Send the Children Should Go to the Sunday School Class Juice and Cookies and Jesus on the Flannel Graph and in All Never Forget Sitting at the Table with Other Children and That's That Was My First Encounter with Christians and That They Were Reading the Bible Story of Moses and the Burning Bush and You Know, Not Knowing That I Was Blaspheming I Began to Take the Name of the Lord in Vain and I Was Thrown Out Of the Class for Something Called Blasphemy.

So the First Time I Went to Church Yesterday. How I Got Picked out a Search for Blasphemy, Whatever That Is.

So You Grew up Really with It, a Dislike of Christianity Right Yeah You I Inherited That for My Parents. I I Was Rather Indifferent until I Went to College and Then I Really Began to Grow Hatred for People of Faith. I Saw Them As Enemies Is Weak Intellectually. Hypocrites Say All the Normal Things That People Typically Will Sling It Christians That Really Describe My View of Them so Did Anyone Ever Bring up to You. The Whole Thing of Crucifixion of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ.

Back in Those Days.

So When I Went to College There. I Did Start Having Experiences Where Christians Were Evangelizing Me Now Very Very Terrible at It and You and I Don't Know What They Were Thinking, but I Found It Almost like a Game Server Time I Was Evangelized.

I Thought All You Will Make Will Make Some Fun of This and I'll Never Forget Them Woman in the Mall about My Age Early 20s and She Just Stopped Me and Said Do You Realize That God Loves You. He Is a Wonderful Plan for Your Life.

The Normal Kind of Intro That You'd Expect from an Evangelistic Encounter and There Was Something about Her Spirit. It Was Just Something about Her Demeanor. Not Only Was She Beautiful but She Was Kind and She Was Patient.

I Didn't Think She Was Very Bright but There Was out There Was a Presence in Her That Was Just Different. There Wasn't Enough to Change My Mind but I Thought At Least I'll Hear Her, At Least I'll Be Kind and Return Show You Something. And A Lot Of Times We Think That Win-Win People into the Kingdom of God through Some Kind of Intellectual Progress When in Reality What People Need to Experience the Presence of the Living God and One of the Most Powerful Ways We Can Actually Experience That Presence Is by Personifying the Characteristics of Christ.

Should Christ That They She Sure Softened by Heart.

Thanks for Joining Us Today for Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman. He's the Author of the New York Times Bestseller "The 5 Love Languages" Were Hearing from York More Today about Five Truths about God and Your Love Language in Our Featured Resources. Their Books Seen Now in Loud, You Find That and More Simple Ways to Strengthen relationships@ 5lovelanguages.com again got a five love languages.com York would you ever believed you would be doing what you're now doing way back in the days when you're growing up. I'm assuming that would never crossed your mind. Never in a million years. Not in my wildest dreams. It's almost as if God is poking fun at me in his Divine comedy making an atheist into an evangelistic area.

I would never trade it for the world. I mean not only do I get to know Christ.

But I get to make him known in our existing incredible honor to speak well of Christ into that preach and teach him across the country and and I've taken upon not tick-tock. I got so sick and tired of this pandemic is an evangelistic you know I went to preach Jesus online and so I started the tick-tock ministry in July and to date I've reached over 30 million and 110 people praying to receive Jesus. I have 200,000 followers and I'll tell you. Besides the metrics and the numbers every single one of those numbers is as a person who God has locked his eyes on and has a plan to change their hearts change your mind every single morning, including this morning I woke up this morning and I get a message in my tick-tock inbox and a young person will say you save my soul. You changed my life.

I have to remind them know I didn't. Jesus did. He died on the cross he rose again from Everett to remind them. But every single day. Hundreds and hundreds of young people are coming to Christ through my tick-tock ministry I just one of many many Christians who have taken the tick-tock to preach Christ in these days. It shows that is it not the hunger of people out there and known whatever their background when they hear there there's that they're searching. Now let's rate there is a hunger in them and I think though we try to fill that hunger with the things of this world and we can go for a pretty long time, especially if you're if you're in the West.

I mean let's face it, even the poor amongst us. We live like kings and there are lots of things to keep our appetites spinning and we can go for a very long time without hearing the voice of God and then God finds a crack and that crack becomes a wedge and that wedge becomes a door or window. In my case and next thing you know, God climbs right in and he invades those secret spaces and begins to create what I call a sense of holy discontent where we began to realize that the emptiness of the things that we thought were filling us are really folly a lot of people don't respond to that.

But God, God's God said gentle and cheesy. He works his way into the cracks of our lives because he loves us and he's doing a work in in in our lives if we are willing to receive it. For those who haven't heard what happened, how did you finally make the leap to believe that Jesus really did rise from the dead room. That's an interesting phrase elite that was a essentialist and the belief in the in the dark was exactly what I didn't want to be sentenced interesting turn of phrase in somebody who studied neat seeing Jean-Paul Sartre in these kinds of thinkers. But still, Gary Miller Cantor had, you know, I went to college to find the meaning of the universe can can light have meaning without God.

Is it all just a social construct is a fabrication and so I became an honor student in the psychology and philosophy departments focused on research methodology six questions statistical analysis and in philosophy and my main question was, you know, how can we actually find any kind, transcendence or meaning or purpose.

In a world where there is no church. There is no divine and after three years of entertaining this question from a from two disciplines perspective, and I came to the conclusion that there really is no God and you can't have meaning you can pretend to have meaning, but when you die, you cease to exist. So I became a nihilist and I said well if that really is the case, I'm just gonna go ahead and kill myself and it was an intellectual decision was because I was depressed or I have lots of reasons to be depressed, but wasn't depressed and I said well you know it doesn't matter if I live a day or hundred years. When I when I die. When you cease to exist in modern why not just take my life right now and so before I forget something so final and drastic. I thought you know, let me just double check because I had you know I had encounters with various religious people and it was always the Christians that would save this disturbing phrase is appointed unto us once to die in the face judgment is no other name under heaven given among my will, by which we must be saved except that of Jesus and so is this idea of Jesus only that he's the only way to the father is the only way to heaven. It was really disturbing and so I thought we all focus all of my energy on making sure that Jesus isn't real and I because if it's a lot can work myself on a Helen if it's blue or Christian all have lots of opportunities but for this Jesus person he really scares me and so I interviewed Christians that I had a pastor friend because the ladies in church seem to be easier to get along with in the non-Christians and so I interviewed Pastor Dave and Pastor Dave gave me a bunch of books and other forget, though asking myself yesterday for anything God exists so well you know York. It doesn't really matter if the Bible is God's word or of Jesus was ever born of a virgin. How can we know such things in my mind like I didn't know there were Christians that would claim the religion of Jesus without his power. This is just a waste of time. This is a colossal waste of time and Aurora got to talk to Christians, the more I became convinced that Jesus wasn't real because I did II didn't know one single Christian who had any good reasons for the faith that they were claiming they had the source okay before I begged you such a terrible day of a deed ongoing praying. So I began to say yo. Dear Alana Buddha Christian Jesus. He, she, it, whoever you may be here I am, reveal yourself to me. I was expecting the injured Moron I to show up on the front porch or some algorithm in the sky but when we got didn't reveal himself to me in my terms on my timetable. I became very distraught like okay I'm done speaking to nobody talking to had December 25, 24th, rather Christmas Eve. I'm watching the little mermaid in the theater that shows you how old I am. I was watching on streamer DVD in and I had just gotten done praying this prayer and I had what I what I thought was a religious epiphany that there is no God. Here we are in a Christian nation on the verge of a national Christian holiday. Christmas Eve and it doesn't matter if you're an atheist or Christian. All were doing is were entertaining ourselves to death were just entertaining ourselves to death and there is there's no meaning in life so that very moment I decided to kill myself and so I drop my fiancé off at the time got my car going about 90 miles an hour down the freeway. My plan was to smash it on the viaduct near her home, and second, the twisted sense of courage fully intending to do the deed. The presence and the power of the spirit of God filled that car and I would never use that language. At the time, but I had a divine encounter with the living God, and it scared me. He steered me safely and got me home that night I fell asleep in a cold sweat woke up Christmas morning in a cold sweat and for the first time in my life I prayed a prayer of desperation is a God that was you last night. I need to know right now because I'm still in kill myself walk into the next room and I had two older brothers who were also studying at the greatest university in America, University Michigan and that one of them had brought up a picture frame of the poem footprints in the sand I am and I am an atheist scholar studying at one of the most elite schools in America and God chooses to use a simple Hallmark like column to reach into my heart. I read it before you know the footprints of the sand.

If you're not feeling with it. It's a simple story about how God is active in our lives. He's he's working our lives even when we don't see him most of the time, it points worth it's difficult and I'm reading this poem.

All of a sudden I hear the voice of God, and God says three things to me that change my forever who said number one. I do exist number two I'm the reason why you exist. Those were the only two data points I need that's a philosopher. Everything else was a derivative of the third thing blew me away. He said, number three, I'm the one who kept you from killing yourself last night which meant that God knew my name. He was involved in my story and he cared enough to intersect me at a point of crisis right then and there. Gary, I ran into the other room in tears, blessed God. If you can take my life and make anything out of it. From this day forward I mentally for you Kyle well, not everyone has an experience that dramatic am sure who who come into the family of God, but you mentioned earlier Paul in the New Testament it was Saul before he became a Christ really had a similar experience dignity absolutely radical conversion is always very splashy and it has an impact on many people who are watching Gary. Here's the testimony I want my kids to have that they were raised in a Christian home by two loving Christian parents who taught them the love of God and model the life of righteousness and holiness. And they love God because they've seen his power and his faithfulness and that's the good testimony I got the consolation prize with the drugs and the homelessness in the near-death experience.

No one should have the story that I have. It's a terrible story but I'll use it for the glory of Christ whenever I can fill a man and man we are because you know you and I wrote this book together, seen, known and loved. You had read "The 5 Love Languages" . I course, wrote "The 5 Love Languages" and one of the things we deal with in the book is that there are so many people who struggle to feel loved. Today talk about that now offer small thank you Gary for "The 5 Love Languages" have transform so many people's lives hundreds of millions, perhaps even out the world over in our marriage is indebted to you as many marriages are and when you and I began to collaborate on this book. What you and I had agreed upon.

As we wanted to write a book where people could apply this evangelistic lien holistically to their lives in a way that they can have an encounter with God that was real substantive when they can actually feel got not just know that he loved them, but sense his presence in his love for them. And isn't that what we've all been you know created for if we are created in the image of God, who defines himself as love, love us and something that God does love is who he is and if were made in the image of this God.

There is a way in which will never be complete will never be whole will never be everything that we were meant to be, unless were actually living into that love. So we the experienced reality of love is what you and I am a rat, really hoping to get after as as an entry point to help people make the most important decision of their lives decision to make Jesus their Lord, a decision to walk with with God. And so, in these in these five or six simple chapters, what we do is we we help a person understand through their love language how they can experience God's love how they can feel God's love how they can walk and that love and that I think has helped so many people and I realize it intellectually, they can have a concept in God believe in God and hit experientially. This this concept helps them experience that the normal thing I think for most people is that we all almost everyone agrees that our deep one of our deepest emotional needs as humans is the need to feel loved by the significant people in our lives, but the reality is it when were seeking love them other people, it often leads to emptiness right now that we were being loved by people who have the same sin sickness that we do in the even with our best motives, our best attempts.

Often times we get it wrong. I'll never forget when I was first married Mrs. obviously before I read "The 5 Love Languages" .

I thought I was loving my wife well through my own love language which is words of affirmation, and I'll never forget that we were both working at the time and she would leave for work in her car before I would and I would come in after she would return home not always block her current and this went on for weeks and weeks as newlyweds and in her she would get up in the morning and I would sleep in and she would move my car for me and she would take her car to work and I thought home. What a loving thing she's doing and so I would encourage her with the words of my lips and after several weeks of this, my wife finally blew up and she said these words, if you really loved me. Now whenever you hear those words fully take if you really loved me you wouldn't make you unblock me in the first place and you certainly wouldn't make me move your car every single morning. So my wife's love languages, acts of service since she felt terribly unloved because I was obviously not caring for her in the way that she was designed to be cared for and that's the same thing with our our relationship with God. God speaks "The 5 Love Languages" fluently.

They were his idea. In fact, I'm convinced that the wild success of your of your work is because it's it's inherent and what it actually needs to be created.

The image of God and we Into that in our relationship with him.

It can unlock really just an incredible new story a new chapter in our relationship with him. Some people the engage with God through a window and involves knowledge and understanding in doctrine and that's all very important but if your love language say his physical touch. There's a whole world to explore in your relationship with God through that love language if it's words of affirmation or its acts of service, God speaks that love language and he wants you to experience him through that window as well. what we want impact in the next segment is look at the five love lines and how these help us in our relationship with God but you.

You've experienced this in your tick-tock ministry right absolutely another something electric about applying this to the lives of non-Christians and as I shared you notice hundreds of thousands of people engaging with me on tick-tock and I'm I'm applying the same philosophy that we do in the book, helping people connect, how they been created to the living God. So I will very frequently create tick-tock's that are specifically designed for and acts of service listener, a word of affirmation, listener gifts, listener, and I might not be teaching next you know you're talking about, 58, 66 second clips, but over the course of many many clips what the what the listeners actually getting is a window into the heart of God specifically designed for them and the impact it's just been incredible to see you don't sing or dance of his New York not yet coming into effect for you.

Listening to Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman, New York Times best-selling author of "The 5 Love Languages" . Find out more about the love language concept and an easy assessment you can take online@ 5lovelanguages.com you can hear a podcast of the program and find out about the book were featuring today by York Moore and Dr. Chapman.

It's titled scene known lab five truths about God and your love language. Find out more at 5lovelanguages.com five love languages.com will York walk us through "The 5 Love Languages" and describe the struggles that people have in the words of affirmation gifts quality physical touch acts of service and how this relates to our relationship with God when it's not intimidating at all to talk to battle and silently affect what one of the things that you know after reading your book in my 20s as an evangelist. I began to apply this to relationships with non-Christians in a concept that I've I've developed over the years. When I call heart hopes and sought my conviction is that for every love language behind that love languages. It is a request if you will, and every person has one of these quests. So if we take, for instance, words of affirmation person which is which is my by far my love language and what what what people without love language are really questioning after is the idea of having an impact leaving a legacy person whose love languages seek acts of service there asking the question does my life matter is what I'm doing important quality time a person is asking in my known deeply ill. These are these are quests of the human heart, and I think what happens in people's lives when their love languages and spoken their heart.

Hope goes on answered, they fall into what I call a deep despair and that deep despair can take people to some pretty dark places. I maybe think about a person's love language is gifts. For instance I believe that their quest.

There really asking do I have more you know a person who likes to give and receive gifts. And that's how the experience love. I am my personal belief is that there asking the question, do I have worth and boy if somebody really comes to the place where they feel worthless and you can see how many people how many ways in which we can destroy ourselves. The cutting and eating disorders and with pornography in them and the list goes on and on. There's no end to the way in which we consolidate ourselves when we feel as if we are worthless. The great news again.

God not only speaks these love languages fluently. He cares deeply about our heart hopes and all of the answers to our quests are yes and amen in the person of Jesus.

And so were talking about the crucifixion were talking about that Saturday at place of despair were waiting for resurrection day when Jesus rises from the dead he he answers every single one of the quests of our hearts. He speaks it fluently through our love languages and they're all yes and amen and what a great privilege we have.

To introduce people to the living God, who knows them so intimately wants to speak their love language wants to wrap his arms around them so that they can know his love right. The Bible uses the word.

It's not good gnosis.

It's not the knowledge that we acquire from Dr. or fax. What eternal life is actually knowing God. It's an experiential knowing and so what we want people to have is an experience or an encounter with the living God, how we do that we introduce them to the God of the Bible.

And as they encounter the God of the Bible and you and I have done a careful work and field testing in Encino loved making sure that people connect with the word of God. In fact, we did a field testing, we found 100% of college students who went through see no loved. They made a commitment to actually begin regular Bible reading and when you get into the word of God, you will encounter the God that speaks your love language and has intimate knowledge of who you are and what you need and I remember the young lady said to me she was only she was an alcoholic and that she ended up in a treatment center and she said the days of coursework teaching the Bible and they got to the place and they were saying things like, God loves you and God wants to give you the gift of forgiveness. She said I was under such a burden of my life and had made such a mess of my life and she's can believe it, that the God would want to just give me forgiveness because of crop that Christ had already paid the penalty and sees it. Always thought I'm not pleasing God God that love me and it any right she came to recognize the God loves.

He is given her wants to give her you know the gift of forgiveness of her sins give her eternal life.

Give her relationship with himself and that they were I encountered her, she'd come to one of my conferences and she brought me a loaf of bread and gave it to me and and found out he's a what I do now to since God has given me so much I bake 20 loaves of bread every week and I just look for opportunities to give them to people throughout the week. You see speak of her love language back to God. This is a good season for giving to the exhibit expressing her love by giving gifts to other people, which I think is another part of this that we don't deal somewhat within this book but I think when we do become believers and have a relationship with God. We just naturally express our love to God in our love language is out. It's a beautiful story but a whole objective here is to help people recognize that as you do read the Scriptures and listen to the Scriptures, taught you come to recognize that God does speak all five of these.

Love language is and whatever your love language is he communicates to you and will and if you're listening. Open your heart to listen. You will recognize the speak and his love to you. Well, you know, today, of course, is a time of social media and you're using social media in a really really positive way. But socially, it is also complicated things when it comes to understanding love present know you and I actually wrote a chapter in the book about the sin, it's another one of those chapters that really connected very strongly with young people. Social media is both positive and negative. It's not a net neutral and so the likes of the shares and their complements that people can garnish on Instagram can also backfire in and cause them great sin great sorrow and shame. We've seen that through the data that's just been released through Instagram in terms of body shame and body positivity issues. Young people are facing and so social media can be really a dark place and but it's something that God is determined near the really isn't. If you know that Kuyper quote there isn't a place in the universe that Jesus doesn't claim as his.

He says mine over everything and include social media, and so many of us are are in places like YouTube and tick-tock in Instagram with the light of Christ and isn't always the case that the light of Christ always shines past where it's the darkest and boil tie Gary tick-tock is a very dark place and anything that your mind could imagine lives just on tick-tock or just beyond its borders.

A lot of wickedness a lot of hate but there are there is a revival happening. I'm convinced of it. In fact, as we speak right now there's a gathering of young Christian tick-tock evangelists in Dallas, Texas that are gathering for collaboration and became the cumulative reach of this community that I'm a part of 20 million people were reaching every single week on tick-tock and reaching them with a very positive message biblical centered message preaching Jesus preaching the cross, inviting people to repent of sin and what were seeing really is a revival in our midst.

There is something happening engine Z that is just unlike anything that I've ever seen in the 27 years of professional clinical professional ministry that I've been engaged in this because God has a plan for every single person that has a great love for every single person that is not going to give up just because the pandemics, you know, the Ukrainian crisis is happening. God is going to continue to build his kingdom and that we get to be a part of that is so interesting how things that we would never have thought about God designs God uses like.

I'm sure that one before the pandemic you were speaking all over the country everywhere and so consequently you were thinking that much about social media and using that as a means of touching people but God led you into this aspect of the ministry when you were kind of not allowed to go around around the country and it's right very much like you write all of us, author, speaker types. All of a sudden, we had a lot of time on her hands and I boy I I gotta do something here and and now. Literally I go to sleep. And in my sleep. People are still praying receive grace and I get messages from Lafayette from Canada from South Africa from Sweden. People who they prayed to receive Christ and they say that I want to be baptized. How can I be baptized or you know what they'll say I want a Bible civil abdominal DU version Bible app. Now I want the real Bible. These are young people.

I want to read the Bible. Never in my wildest dreams that I think we would see anything like this that's amazing. Just amazing for you to the break York. I want to play want your tick-tock you keep these really short there like a minute or less. Right now it's right. That's all you got right here is one titled first step to heaven as God's plan begins in his will is is is Jesus my life is my sin. I spent that the tick-tock posts from York more. I guess today on Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman.

His book is our featured resource scene known lab five truths about God and your love language. It's written with Dr. Chapman.

Find out more about that in more simple ways to strengthen relationships that find love languages.com again, go to five love languages.com. I would find out from you what kind of response did you get from that what you see.

Well it's interesting that one was when my very first what I would call a viral video when the algorithm takes it and starts pushing it out of my non-followers since that was viewed over 90,000 times. I reposted it a few times and so it's well over 100 hundred and 50,000 views and what's interesting is that know the gospel is powerful enough to change a life in a moment. And that's part of what's happening on tick-tock but react really what happens when a person is impacted or removed by one particular video. What they end up doing is clicking on my profile and I've had many reports of people saying I took a deep dive into your tick-tock. I watched 3040 6090 of your videos and I've prayed to receive Jesus.

Now what and so the responses. This incredible guy. I don't want all I want to minimize the fact that there are also people who have problems and questions and I'm engaging those people as well. In fact, one of my favorite stories is a person who came on with a lot of vulgarities very angry about my tick-tock and out over the courses two or three weeks. Myself and other people who were engaging this person in the comments. They wore him down and it was really the Holy Spirit and the and he actually changed his heart and gave his his life to God. So don't think of anyone particular tick-tock as just standing by itself. It's the whole corpus it's a whole body that has made me back the last thing I'll say is I get instant very controversial issues on tick-tock and out but over the course of snow. Let's say a person watches me for a few weeks there getting more biblical theology than they probably would in an entire year. They were in a youth group I write every single one of these tick-tock's for an imaginary kid that lives in my mind, 14-year-old Nick his mother's just pick them up at the back of the SUV.

He's going from school to soccer practice and I have 50 seconds to get his attention. I'm 6 inches from his eyeballs on his phone and reaching into his heart with the word of God, inviting him to take that first step with Jesus and many, many of them are York this we can, of course, people who haven't thought about religion or Christ or its Easter and they have heard about Easter. Maybe they have the concept of the money Easter bunny. But folks who basically don't attend church and are not sure about the God him. If God really exist. What would you say to them today. I would say open your heart and keep an open mind. No, just reach out to him.

He's he's closer than you think. Oftentimes we when we grow up outside of the churches I did. We think that God if he exists someplace, you must be a million miles from me or my circumstances. Whether a person is going through a hard time like homelessness or maybe cancer chemo treatment to her a beers relational strain or chemical dependency.

Whatever it might be the circumstances of our lives lead us to believe that God is some place very far away and the word of God tells us you know what does it say the word is near you. It's in your heart if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord.

You believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved, and I think this idea of God being near is really the scandal of the Christian faith and I've studied the world's religions. I've read the back of acute on the upon the shots in the Quran up in the mosque statement that various temples in Cambodia. The gods of this world are always very far away are always austere. There always transcendent in the scandal of the Christian faith is that God became man took on flesh lived as we did perfect life. He went to the cross, suffered, and bled and died and he rose again on the third day and all that story comes every single year compressed in a single weekend for us just to just look at and sent an marvel at the specter of the nearness of God so that anyone soliciting and feels as if God is very far away. Open your heart and you'll find him standing right next to you in the midst of your circumstances not waiting for you to get it right to clean yourself up, but weeping with you where you weep and working with you in those places that are hard and difficult at oftentimes carrying you without even realizing it.

Your cat how does the Bible come alive to us when we do open our hearts to God's love. This is where I think one of the love languages. It's probably most difficult for people to imagine in their relationship with God really becomes electric and that is the physical touch. How can we have a physical touch relationship with an invisible God and the reality is that when you open your heart to God and you welcome Christ in he comes with open arms in a way that is so powerful it's even more powerful than the embrace of a grandchild or the embrace of a spouse or loved one or dear friend, you know, we think about God crashing into our lives in beauty with sunsets and swirling snow and waves on beaches, but isn't in those moments. There's just something that pulls at our heart from another world and when we stopped to listen for the God whose near the God who is all around us, particularly in places of beauty. It's almost as if we can feel his arms around us and I don't want to know make the show about to talk to one of the things that I've done on tick-tock for health what I call the prayer of encounter and I invite the person to just open your hearts through listening prayer to invite God to speak to them to touch their lives and the responses just been amazing.

People report the that the sense God's presence, they hear his voice as I did when I first became a Christian and that is that is God's invitation to us each and every day and I don't get the one mislead people in Sierra God is always talking all the time and we can we can converse with him, as if we we do other people. God is selected with his words and I'm thankful for that. Because every time God is spoken to me. It has been very disruptive and it's it's changed my life in ways that I wish they had not been changed and so I'm glad that God chooses silence from time to time because it would be overwhelming.

But the reality is that God is speaking all the time and when he speaks.

It's as if he's wrapping his arms around us and welcoming us into a holy relationship, something that is only enjoyed between the father the son in the spirit and if we spend more time exposing ourselves to the Bible particular the life of Jesus address. Read the account of his life and what he did when he was in a before he died, and why he died, and the resurrection. Then we experience that for ourselves. Speak briefly also to as we open our hearts to God. The whole aspect of worshiping God and often we worship with music didn't have to be music, but that is participating in worship. Help us feel the presence of God. When you have an encounter with the living God.

You cannot not worship. Worship just comes out of you, and it can take the form of journaling or crying and weeping in song it can take the form of service to meet worship can look a lot of different ways. But what worship basically is the outpouring of our hearts after we've had an encounter with the living God and more. What a beautiful thing. It is when you see a young woman, a young man enraptured in worship, not even knowing that that's what it's called because they been touched by the living God. They just respond and I think we've made so much, particularly in America of this idea of worship through song. It's a whole industry with the record labels and deals in big stages, and I've been in most of those places in there something beautiful about that.

There's something meaningful that propels us deeper into the heart of God. And so I don't want to denigrate that.

But here's the reality. Worship is accessible right here right now and it comes after having an encounter with the living God because I just go back to the Bible because really there isn't a time were right where I don't pick up the word of God, where even when my heart is hard, even when I feel far away from God even when I'm struggling with sin. If I pick up the word of God and I open it without a heart to listen what comes out of me is worship. What comes out of me is praise the Lord God tells us that God inhabits the praises of his people and is not a beautiful thing in that moment. We have a connection with the living God. We are living into what was what what God intended when he created us in his image.

This divine community that we get to participate in and worship is the language that we speak when were in that community.

Well York is been great talking with you today.

I'm also very excited about how God has used of this book that you and I wrote together, seen, known, loved, in fact, this Easter 250 prisoners here in our city were given a gift bag that had this book in it. The leader of that ministry called and said Gary to get something that would be appropriate to give to prisoners and blessed yes we are all prisoners.

Some of us examples of those not.

But before we come to Christ were prisoners to our own ideas.

I continue to be encouraged by the way God is using this book and I hope those are listed.

I will say it is an opportunity that they can use with people dissipated in their hands and say you read this and intimate what you think about it, and can be a conversation starter for people, so thanks for being with us today. May God continue to guide you in your ministry both as you travel in and on tick-tock on my pleasure Douglas to have someone in your life who doesn't embrace the love that God has offered this resource can help you and them understand that they are seen, known, love five clues about God and your love language.

Find out more. Five love languages.com guest is been our York mooring. You can hear this conversation again.

Five love languages.com don't miss a powerful conversation big thank you to our action team Steve Blake and Janice Todd.

Building Relationships with Dr. Gary Chapman's production at leading radio in association with the ministry in the Bible