A Heritage Passed Down

Have you ever tried to map out plan for your life.

Alister big says he did that once I had written the script for my life which was times were to get a law degree.

BMW 2002 I was going to marry this American girl call Susan Jones if I could just manage to keep her on the wire for long enough. As I was writing letters across the ocean. I faxed out to God as one would say, and asked for his signature. He sent it by just with a blank sheet said if you sign the bottom of the points you now fill in for this is family life today hosts are David and Wilson Bob been confined to some minor family like today.com whatever plan you have imagined for your life. Here's a promise, the one God has for you is even better stay with us and welcome to family life today.

Thanks for joining us. Many blisters know this about 10+ years ago we got a phone call from our friends at truth for life. The ministry that Alister big leads and they were getting ready to make some changes to their program and they called and said I asked Dennis and me. Would there be any way that Bob could be the announcer for our program complement when it was I was humbling and Dennis I sat down and thought as I can be confusing for people who hear me and family are today and then they hear me on truth for life in the go wait, what's going on leave what he should do a Scottish accent on truth, I got nobody could touch that's got a sex Alister so so we talked about it and ultimately I said, you know, I've stolen so much from Alister over the years. The preaching I've done that I owed it to him.

So for more than 10 years now. I have been the guy at the beginning and the end of the truth for life radio program introducing Alister got heard you honestly one time I originally thought all its its family and then I heard Alistair like oh it's not. I have such respect, such appreciation and admiration for him and a recently we were together we had about all but an hour and 1/2 where we just sat down in the studio and I said there are things I don't know about your life about your history about your background but your marriage, your family, that I think blisters would be interested in, so we recorded an extended interview in this week were to share some excerpts of that interview with our blisters and for those listeners who don't know who Alister is a goes as Alister big guy Alister is the pastor at Parkside church in suburban Cleveland, Ohio.

He is the Bible teacher on the radio program truth for life. He is an author is a well respected well-known conference speaker and you if you don't know him, you will recognize immediately that he did not grow up in these Alister grew up in Scotland and so I started my questions with him about what it was like to grow up in Scotland a generation my grandfather on my father's side was a Shepherd and literally sheep on the on the cliffs and eventually once you have children when there's only fishing and farming, and not a lot of that and so you have to go down south to to find work not only for yourself but also for your children.

So that's I have this strange combination of being raised in the city of West of Scotland. I a father and grandmother on his side who were Highland Scots which said kit gives a flavor to things that I'm very grateful for what did your father do what vocation he was an insurance guy.

He was at pensions, investments, life insurance, he was discharged from the Army in the second world war because he had a sense of call to the ministry and they discharged him so that he could attend Glasgow University.

He never was able to explain to me why that did not happen. That having been discharged. He then reenlisted and did not take it up and one of his questions for me as I grew into when I ended up in pastoral ministry. He just asked me do you think there is such a thing as second-best that God has the best and then he has a second-best due thing in my life is been God's second-best which was always very troublesome to me. I'm not sure I ever get a very convincing answer to the question, but I think as a Christian, Lehman.

He was he was a wonderful model of friendship in the workplace that wasn't intrusive but was eos would say to me, you know, even though the fellows made. I think I'm a little crazy there will come a day when they will walk into my office and close the door and say john. I want to ask you about this and he said, so we just we just soldier on it in in the in prospect of that day and I was admired that about him because he had a very clear witness without as I see being you know an invasive and in people's life's a spiritual legacy of the big family goes back a long way.

Well, it goes on my father's side. Yes, it goes back up into the highlands and and up then into essentially, you know I Scottish Presbyterianism, which was not my background in growing up, but the legacy of it lingers. You know those those 70 statements that find themselves embedded. As with every family, like my father would say what's for you will not go by, you know that what what God has purposed you know will be fulfilled right on that kind of writing this while that's not that's not just your average sentiment so you beneficially affect and I've heard you describe the church environment in which you grew up as being pretty proper, pretty strict. What was a combo actually it depends on who I was talking to and exactly what era they went referencing when I'm answering that question because an interesting and interesting thing happened that when my grandparents moved from the highlands starting to glass cars have said a man who was a highlands card as well and I don't know the details of it, but he came to become the superintendent of a mission that was established by Moody and Sankey at the at the turn-of-the-century when Lillian Sankey came to Britain. As you know, I went to Edinburgh, or in certain places. To the north of England. Certainly to Glasgow and they did these big tent missions.

Then Moody would go around and he would seek to raise money before he left and say to people look at always full set of professed faith in Christ. We need something for them. Well, one of those places was called the tent Hall.

All right, not a great deal of imagination went into that. We used to have a tent we build a Hall hey let's call it the hall and so what was that well.

It was the legacy off of Moody.

It was a building near the fish market in class goes wasn't salubrious surroundings that seated 2200 people and it was a combination of evangelical fervor and social engagement.

Insofar as street people because we are talking at the 50s street people had no nothing from the government, a toll that had not stepped into place we can come in about as well but anyway so if the church didn't do it.

Nobody did. And so we would have, I would. I grew up in that environment.

I went to Sunday school. In that context, and the reason was because the person who became the superintendent work was a highlands card and use my grandparents and I that became the context it was there that my father was converted as a 13-year-old boy so you had exposure to the town hall to the high church right simultaneously. Guess what did gravitate in one direction or know at that point I never you just seem perfectly natural to me that this would be. This was where my father was, therefore, that's fine because I the age of 15. They then my father's job took us to England, and I introduced another element because I should say as well that my parents were both baptized as believers and interestingly I just saw a piece in the times in the last six weeks where a letter written by the pastor of the church where my mother was baptized this plaster was on the Titanic and he gave up his place on the lifeboat to somebody who he asked. And do you know where you will go if you don't make this the man said no.

Then he said well then you should take my seat and a letter from this man just so for a fairly substantial sum of money not because of the spirit is very Celeste like a good just because of the historical value of it. So you've got the highlands. Scott you've got the Presbyterian Church and now you've got, you got the Baptist Church as well and when we went England in the small time that we lived and we went to the Baptist Church. There and the minister there was was a kindly man but he was pretty hopeless and I'm not sure that I think he was very it was an interesting soul, and so that give you very slim pickings and so my life then I say came alive spiritually went in search of our phone good material and this is my driver's license at 17 is when you get it in the UK with the man that was highly influential at that time was a fellow called David Watson who was an Anglican cleric in York, which is fairly good distance from Italy maybe 40 miles but we would I would load up a few my friends in the car and we would drive to York on Sunday evenings are in order that we could listen to this fellow preach. Well I'm fascinated that 17 you get your drivers license and your loading up friends to drive 40 miles on a Sunday to hear somebody preach yeah there are many 17-year-olds, then or now who are doing that now. How did that happen while he didn't seem peculiar to me at the time, you know. But as I look back on it, and as you say, as I look out on young people and I say to them enough I'm saying in our evening service is an important part of our life and watches you know their eyes glaze over and they go somewhere else and I said to them, you know I'm not saying this to you because I'm your pastor, even when I was your age another Leo here we go again.

You know you you can convince them but how did it happen. Well, we could mix a little Billy Graham into it as well. How is 16 Billy Graham was back in Britain in the Aeros Ct. in London that material was then relayed to centers throughout the country and one of the centers was leads is about 20 miles roughly from Italy where I live at. I was in the youth group. In this this church and and I had multiple school friends at the school and so the youth leader said okay what we going to do his will get a coach and we will take people bring your friends and and let's go here. Billy Graham, so I to my friends to hear Billy Graham. I don't know what happened to them but I know what happened to me at because it was whenever it would be 68 something like that and he was trying to be hit and his whole thing was he.

Did he care that the hippies were saying things like, you know, turn on the dropout and said he was playing with ident and turn on June June and try to what he was doing, but the analogy that he used was some of you your life's are like a radio that you're actually tuned into the signal but your volume control is way down low and the reason it's down low is because of the state of your own spiritual pilgrimage and I want to encourage you tonight to resolve to be done with that and so in the midst of all that great embarrassment to my friends, you know, I'm the guy that goes.

I go up to the front so I get a counselor who only knows how to deal with the sort of regular get you right so the first person they said you know well you do this and you admit in size and not done all I says no I am here. I can remember, the person was, but he went away to get this like every other top 20 or so.

I can remember her finish, but I went home and my father would was was up I don't. My mother was up but I he said I was so that I don't know what happened down there I said and I told him what happen he said well because my father led me to the Lord as a young boy, he said well I think what is happened is simply this, that is somebody like you in a Christian environment like this has to get to a point where you make this all your own and where without the divine that the spirits of the flatus of your parents or whoever else it is you get a decider you enter your thesis. Sounds to me like tonight is been at least a point on that journey, which, in point, a fight it was.

But I before that I in the Bible class that I was in in Glasgow. I've always been a salesman you know if there's something I'm excited about you going to hear about whether you want to or not. And so I was in a Bible class in in Glasgow for sort of like middle-class boys who didn't go to church.

Although I didn't fit that, but I went you know, sorry to my school friends I would go I go to the houses on Sunday afternoon. It began at 230 around 2 o'clock or knock on Graham Clark store hey Graham you going to come this afternoon.

I don't know, yet we can't go pick up another two or three up and I would take them. Then I messed around in the class. Then they throw me out the class and I remember asking one of the leaders.

Hey, I'm not the only one. Why do you throw me out is that I throw you out because I know your dad will send you back if I throw some of the boys you bring if I throw them out there. Parents will never send them back and I want them to stay in here, but you should stop messing around. As you look back on your Billy Graham experience and and try to put theological grid over the second work of grace. This your actual conversion what what you think you know I think it was a just a step on the journey. Definitely not a second work of grace. I think it was that what he said made sense that you might have brought a few your friends to the thing, but you're a bit you're a walking contradiction. You know your heart, partly truth are partly fixed and taken every longer ration on your lonely way back home. You yeah I think just like I see people are lots of the steps along the way.

I think that the sea who said it, you know that the that the Christian life is a series of new beginnings. You know I was reading Genesis 12 this morning because I'm supposed to be jolly Murray mixing his thinking is gracious. You know that the guy has to come to Abram in Genesis 12 say why you tell me she's your wife. This is the this is the man that God picks this case could try to get his his game going well. He had a series of new beginnings. Somebody is movie one time do you believe in the second blessing in his response was, I do.

And third, for so yeah what what was the spiritual environment in your home other than churchgoing was was the Bible red was down family time you yeah my dad was a very disciplined man. You know, he'd been in the Army you know if you find his Bible. He read his Bible heat and in the market was in the place so you could pretty well set your set your clock by it and so that that was part of our lives as well. Around the table. I mean sometimes and I remember I thought about it often and in my own children of how joyfully difficult it is to pull this off with the school bus is coming. The thing is the toast and everything, but he was he was sexy soldiered on the use that use you see is the daily light.

You know from Richard W Gahanna or whatever Larson just for those times so it was very brief and you have a little thing in a word of prayer and then and then were on our way.

Our home was also populated by other Christian people, and I was thinking about that the other day when you know we were reading in our team meeting and in second Timothy where I processed to so timidly pursue righteousness, faith, peace and love, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart and the great benefit of all of this of larger environment of recognizing that is not just you know, because when you're young to remember.

My parents are just the weirdest people in the entire community and NCO know there's a number of these really weird people and they keep coming to my home, my parents were given to hospitality. If someone was a visiting preacher or something they would be in the home and so it was a very happy environment that was was then broken in upon. Of course, by the premature death of of my mother tell me about your mother's faith. Yeah, my mother's faith was genuine simple, quiet and very very sensitive to people when people try and press people into public statements and professions, and particularly in in public prayer times. My mother would never have intruded in a conversation in any kind of conversation except invited and therefore it would be strange for me to to hear her pray in that kind of public environment, but it wasn't because she couldn't or didn't because I do have recollections of hearing. Both my parents praying for us, us children when they thought I was asleep. My mom was very funny lady.

She loved laughing. I mean she found humor in in some of his strangest places that much to the chagrin of my father. And when we would go on vacation. We would almost inevitably find ourselves close in the funniest church you've ever been in an my mother sparsely keeping us under control and getting some of the dirtier salutes from my dad to not by the she was a doer, she was kindly see was very good. The domestic duties of motherhood and and wife them and I really got the great benefit of that when four a.

Of my life for one year I was at home and it turned out to be the last year my mother's life, which neither of us knew saw and by that time I was probably 19 and you know you've moved into that realm where you start to become friends with your parents and I would've said that I would pick her as a really good friend to knowing that context, and even though my dad didn't have the jokes that was was this to see genuine faith in the life of your parents and know there's not a disconnect or not just churchgoing people. These are people this is real for them to look at how many young people today abandon the faith and I wonder how many of them grew up in the kind of home as opposed to just churchgoing. Yeah yeah I think so. You know, because when as a youngster, you begin to voice your concerns, your challenge things and so on. My my father was one of his great lines will as I said to him I want to go to this and he didn't say you can go sometimes. He said no. You definitely can go. But where the was it like maybe a marginal decision. It was several son, you can go. But you can go with my blessing.

Note unless that means something you're in the car so fast and gone.

That you make the wheel spin, but where there is that connection, where you have where you fall you that then it may not prevent you from making dumb decisions on a freak.

In every case the fight that it did it enough times for me is the fight that all these years later I can still recall it. A lot of people who have some spiritual awakening in their late teens also have a lapse in their early 20s did you go through rebellion. Did you ever have a two I really believe this kind of check out for a while now. I think the biggest challenge for me was at the age of 22 lose my mother and to stand at an open grave site for actually the first time in my life because she preceded the death of her own parents and and and for me then to say okay do I just do. I really believe in the resurrection. Do I really believe that the promises of Jesus will be fulfilled and you know I end up in the goodness of God. As I as I struggled through that I I said yes I do believe I will believe you know know I am a bit I as you know, I'm pretty simple. So: that I trust that the Bible is the Bible that I trust what the Bible says about itself, and if I want trust what he says about itself.

I really trust anything else that it says and again that's the product of good teaching is the product again of the mercy and grace of God because I'm sure you find this out the same. You find yourself saying why is it that I believe this why is it I still believe this and I don't have to posture this if you cut me open. I believe this this is the grace of God. The circumstances of your mother's death, dramatic heart attack out of nowhere, just sitting sitting in our house and when I with her know my sisters were high was: how did you get the news I was a student at LPC gloriously knowing I was the London school of divinity. This and I roomed with the boy from my Rhodesia, who had been a geography teacher older than me, and early in the morning of November 2 early in the morning.

Something came knocking on the door. One of us said yes and it was the principal. The Rev. Gilbert Kirby said I just need to come in and talk to Alister. I felt Cali only been here three months and get is like a Bible class about, especially because he said to Peter. He said Peter could you just leave us for a moment I had no idea what was coming and he sat down on the edge of my bed because I was still in my bed. They said Alister I can only tell you this one way last night your mother died and it was just unbelievable as it was nothing to prepare you for it and and I was it that was it. Gilbert. Gilbert then was a key part of my journey from that point on I mean I ended up with Terry prime in Edinburgh as a result of a letter written by Gilbert Kirby to Derek trying to say you are to consider this boy I hadn't seen him in a long time and I was speaking at the Keswick convention, which is kindly you know was then in those states that the Super Bowl you know you get to play and there was a minister house party that Gilbert Kirby now was a man, probably in this deep into his 70s was. He was caring for those ministers.

I was staying in the speaker's house party which was a separate hotel, but I I remember as I came up the hill, he came out of this property and it was pouring as it does in the Lake District and he had a could go along and he saw me in and he just came towards me and he just enveloped me. I was soaking from his kugel and everything else and I don't and we hardly said anything. We didn't need to say nothing it was just that it was that bonding that happens that we've seen in pastoral ministry where we deal with people at the extremities of their life's. We may not say much, but we are privileged to be there.

That privilege was given to him, and there could've been a better person to have essentially had that responsibility than that then Gilbert he was he was a wonderful man. How did your father do after your mom passed.

My dad was was very good at stuff my dad because of his involvement in the second world war as a Batman to a general new how to cook and would would easily turn out you know of really splendid Sunday lunch, but what he did. He had to do. He had two children at school. I he would stop by the grocery store, either in his way into work out of work. He would come home. I was going.

You see I was.

I was then at college and then from college I was in Edinburgh that he did really really well, but he lasted for seven years and then remarried to my shame. It never really occurred to me to think about what it meant for my father because my mother was only 46 so that my dad was probably 48 as a 20-year-old. I was it was all about what it meant to me. But yeah, it was half a minute had to be tough like I can see I can imagine doing what he did but he didn't.

Again, of course, I deep conviction about faith and incidentally the man's name was Harper. The Rev. Harper is the Harper Memorial church that was built as a memorial to Harper, who is coming to America to preach. Yeah, and that's where my mother's funeral took place as well. When your dad remarried was that a challenge for you and your sisters. I think a big challenge for my sisters challenge for me only in absentia. Ironically, he married my best friends mother. My best friend's father had died some years previously. I can remember the details, but he was a man who had a poor heart and eventually he heart heart failure to came out and so my best friends mother was a widow and his best friends father was a widower and although we had no there was no relationship between the families.

Despite the fact that we as children were friends in school chums, and so on. I guess in the sense of shared loss. They find comfort and affection in one another and so were married I would not suggest that for everybody and my younger sister, who was only 11 and has only the vaguest recollections of my mother, Hines a new relationship with her father and this lady foisted now upon her with all the elements that are attached to the end and none of it was. It was bad or anything, but is just so different. It's a challenge is in only time we work with families in the best of situation where there's there's loss site every step family comes out of loss right and so everybody's processing the loss in what used to be an who was who is now in what's my relationship with my dad and of this new bright all of that, the dynamics are fraught with all kinds of disappointment and getting sideways with yeah I I've seen some wonderful illustrations over.

I've seen a lot of the other trying to in pastoral ministry. Your call to pastoral ministry that happened in your teen years. No, I wouldn't say so I wanted to do law.

I thought that II thought I could be Perry Mason. I didn't realize that nobody can be Perry Mason. There is no such thing as right as you you but I love those I love Doris shows.

I think they were in black and white. When I was watching them.

But yet without delving into all of that. When I stepped away from from where I was and this year out to to figure out what I was going to be when I grew up I came to another one of these points along the race where I had a strong conviction that although I had written the script for my life which was was going to get a law degree.

BMW 2002 I was going to marry this American girl called Susan Jones if I could just manage to keep her on the wire for long enough, as I was writing letters across the ocean. I faxed out to God as one would say, and asked for his signature. He send it back just with a blank sheet said if you sign the bottom of the blank sheet of filling out fill in the stuff for you and this metaphor of course, but I get I came to a strong conviction that I had my thing upside down that I was simply asking God to bless my plan and I and had all these things, you know that will end I'm taking my school chums to the thing I'm loading the car up. I we had a singing group you know in the singing group and the coffee bars of the 60s. I was the one that did the talk because I was any good, but because the other two guys wouldn't do it. So all of that is in their. Also, I remember I told you that the ministers used to come and stay in our house when they were the visiting preachers and they would say things to me like and maybe you will be a minister one day so you know which is was nothing could be further from my mind and that but I now remember, I told her about the campus Crusade. I had been introduced. Vobis crazy American campus Crusade people who had come to London to try and advance the cause and so that the those people are in all haste sign up let's go so I wasn't ready to do that but I was fascinated by these young intelligent meet. Often athletic, zealous people and I thought you know that I admire that.

I admire that they haven't adopted this because they've got nothing else to do so then I said what what I'll do is I'll go somewhere that I can do a theology degree and prepare myself for whatever God has for me. But the one thing I know he hasn't for me is pastoral minutes really. I will not do that because I could never tell my friends because there's nothing there's nothing cool about that.

I could tell them I'm involved with Christians in sport gets on that I'm involved in a student ministry or I could tell my involved in the music ministry, but I couldn't tell him that him up.

Pastor Jimmy think that cannot happen and so the definitive moment that I just took the rug out from underneath me was in the spring of 75 and I was doing things with an English evangelist at the time for sort of work exposure and we would go and do youth weekends and we would meet the people and sing to them and do whatever he doing in turn increase and lead them to to faith and so one Monday I have returned from one of these ventures down in the south coast of England and I'm sitting at lunch with some of my friends at college, and a couple of the faculty member and one of them.

The Rev. John Bolton who had Coca-Cola glasses and you squeeze it is all talk and so cannot nobody say much, so I said you know I don't like these things anymore. What things these weekends. Why don't you like the weekends. What Joe might. I said no and I can tell you I don't like because the end so we meet so I go down there on Friday night and I'm introduced a whole group of people that I've never met before and come Sunday night I get in the car and I driveway and I'll never see them again. I don't like poaching leeches forward squeeze his eyes together and he says and I can tell you why that is said that is because God has given you pastors heart.

If you are an evangelist, you could come and go as a pastor you can't, and I remember even as I tell it to you now. I remember like it was Everest. It was like the deathknell and the opening up of the future. I remember I went back to my room and I went. I wept because I said no you know this is this is ridiculous and plus I'm 23 years old. How you become a passionate and what what is boat you know he didn't know anything in order to go through all of this notice comes in from Derek prime it screwed up on the board and in his said Derek prime dear Gilbert, my assistant is moving to take a church on his own. I wonder if you have anybody down there that you may care to recommend Gilbert writes a letter to say to him I go meet him at the King's Cross railway station coffee bar and you know the rest is history. I never have never applied for a job and ministry I have never, it was the call of God. When I when I was ordained and I wore a clerical garb.

I think you've heard me say this before.

I might just as well. It stood out with no clothes on from the congregation.

That's how vulnerable and I said if I'm if I'm going to do that I'll never quit on their equipment and so that's that. That was that was it and then when you know when I was ordained and I trusted the elders that they said yeah we we believe that that you know your subjective sense of of being drawn to this reluctantly is a realistic sense and so I trusted them as you look back on the family you grew up in your father, your mother, the spiritual influences how did that carry into your own marriage and family and how you chose to raise your kids yeah well, not as well as I would've liked. I think you know this from your own variant career if we might put it that way. There is I think a distinct advantage in being a father who is in the normal sphere of life works in inch works in the job goes comes Sunday he's in this and whatever else it is both for the individual, and also for the child and and so for me, one of the things that has always been so daunting is for example you know weekends are not weekends, there's none of that wonderful Friday night feeling at end, and it is not even shareable with your children in the same way.

Added to that. I'm doing this in America if it was in Scotland's I'll be teaching my children all the things I knew about Scotland and sports in Scotland. I never shot a basketball. I never had my hands on American football. I never played baseball so you have this weird role reversal in at one level in the raising of your kids that your children are introducing you to a world I wrote a school bus now all that is is is superficial stuff in terms of the drumbeat of our our focus is on Christ on the Scriptures were going to read them together despite the toast despite the bars all of that, we sought to do and where in the happy situation of our children not only understanding that embracing that is just a portion of a conversation that I had recently with my friend Alastair Begg who is the host of the radio program truth for life and the pastor in Cleveland, Ohio, and just fascinating to me families mark us for life. The home you grew up in for better or for worse marks you as is and it's not determinative because I know a lot of families who have done everything to the best of their ability.

According to God's design and they watch their kids walk away. I know families that have messed things up right and left, and they raise kids really need my my home. No perfect parent transparent but but these these are our kids were walking with the Lord today and they didn't have a spiritual heritage in Alastair's case, there was the mark of a mother and a father who loved the Lord his mom's death, the course marked him as well and it's a heritage. He has sought to pass down to his children. If our listeners are interested in the extended conversation with Alastair you can go to our website.

Family life today.com the entire conversation is available. There is an MP3 download again, go to family life today.com Alastair's also written a brand-new book about faith that called brave by faith God -sized confidence in a post-Christian world we got copies of the book in our family life today resource Center would love to send a copy to you.

Go to family life today.com order Alastair's new book, or call us at one 800 FL today. Again, the title of the book is braved by faith. You can order online@familylifetoday.com or call one 803 586-329-1800 FL today to get your copy that I know most of us are kind of looking forward to the official opening days of summer and maybe the opportunity to do some things this summer that we have been able to do for a while. Summertime is a glorious time for ministries like family life. It can be a challenging time because as people get busy with other things we often see the donations to ministries like family life to the go down. We had some friends of the ministry who have come to us recently though and they said during the month of May they want to help get us ready for the summer so they have agreed to match every donation we receive this month, dollar for dollar up to a total of $350,000. That's a very generous offer. We have been hearing from some of you who have been making donations this month. Thank you for those those donations have already freed up funds from the matching gift fund. So that's exciting for us. We also want to let you know if you become one of our monthly legacy partners during the month of May.

Every donation you make.

Month in and month out for the next 12 months is gonna be matched dollar for dollar you're giving for the full year will be maximized. Thanks to the matching gift opportunity that's available and is a new legacy partner working to send you a certificate so that you and your spouse can be our guests at an upcoming weekend to remember marriage getaway. We started having those again people coming out for those getting great response to the weekend to remember in the fall.

We hope to have a full slate of events coming up. Your certificate is available to use any time you like. And it's our thank you gift for you becoming a legacy partner during the month of May and again, your donations will be matched dollar for dollar for a full year. When you join us this month. Anybody who gives whether it's to become a new legacy partner or it's a one-time donation. We have some gifts for you as well. We have a pair of books by Aaron and Jamie Ivey book for husbands and book for wives. Both books are called complement the tall about how we complement one another in marriage, and we've got a flash drive that includes some extended conversations with Dave and Anna and me about some of the significant lessons about marriage and family that I've learned over the course of 28+ years as cohost of family life to the flash drive and the books are our gifts to you when you donate this month and help us take advantage of the matching gift opportunity you can do that online and family life to a.com or you can call one 800 FL today to donate and that we want to say thanks in advance for your support and we hope you can join us again tomorrow when working to hear about how 16-year-old Alastair Begg met 13-year-old Susan Jones how they fell in love and will hear the shocking story about the first time he kissed his bride-to-be up tomorrow. You can tune in for that. I don't think our engineer today. Keith Lynch got some extra help today for Mark Ramey and our entire broadcast production team on behalf of our hosts David and Wilson about looking see back next time for another edition of family life, family life, to a is the production of family life of Little Rock, Arkansas. The crew ministry help for today hope for tomorrow