Hello and welcome to the Speak Life Podcast. My name is Gwen Scrivener, and uh we are on episode number 300 for the Speaker Life Podcast. And you will leave 300 episodes that seek to equip you in everyday witness. Today, it's so appropriate that uh on this celebratory edition of the Speak Life Podcast, we have one of the great evangelists in the world, Becky Pippin. He wrote the book on evangelists back 40 years ago she wrote out after souls take up. Have you read that book? If you have it, uh one do not walk and don't get yourself a coffee, she speaks so beautifully after more speech, and so beautifully spend your threats, and out of 142, that's just on the still constantly 40 years off, and so forth, all the things that we're gonna do is cost stage soldier. And uh still started stays sold, the world is trying to stay in the last month. And uh, we'll be talking instead of Becky in just a minute about all the things we've learned, about how the world is trying to start and all the things we've learned, about how it got still units of all people. I have an absolute blast talking to Becky, and if you enjoyed even just a fraction as much as I did, you'll be grinning from ear to ear. So without further ado, here is the one and only Becky Pippett. Welcome one and all to Speak Life. My name is Glenn Scrivener, and it is such a privilege to have with us Becky Pippett, author of the new book, Stay Salt. Uh the subtitle is very important. Stay salt. The world has changed. Our message must not. Thank you so much for joining us, Becky.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much, Glenn. It's good to see you again.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you too, you too. Now, you wrote the book on evangelism training 40 years ago. Was it 40 years, something like that?
SPEAKER_01It was exactly 40 years ago. I was just a child.
SPEAKER_00What was the context of out of the salt shaker?
SPEAKER_01Well, at that point, um, is I wrote the book in my 20s, and what I was seeing was an approach to evangelism that was a bit um go preach the gospel, leave. There wasn't an incarnational, relational understanding of why it is so important and still is to have authenticity and compassion and love and relationship. And so that was kind of radical at that time. Uh, and so that was part of why I wrote uh the book, and because everybody always said, then what they say now, I would witness, but it's just not my gift. I I just I can't do it. So I really wanted it um to help people to free them to be able to share the good news of Jesus. The reason I wrote Stay Salt, this is only my second book on evangelism in 40 years, is that the world has changed so dramatically. And so, because the world has changed, it's not that the essence of evangelism, the same gospel, the same love of Christ, uh, the word of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, all that's the same, but the world does not. The world has changed. So I wanted to write a book that would help believers really understand how to be witnesses for such a time as this.
SPEAKER_00Tim Keller has commended Stay Salt's saying, Out of the Salt Shaker was one of the most important books on evangelism written uh over the last generation. Stay salt may be the best book on witness for the next generation. I don't know of a more lucid or penetrating book on evangelism to put into the hands of a Christian. That is high praise from Tim Keller himself. That must have felt great to hear that.
SPEAKER_02It did.
SPEAKER_00So tell tell us how it is that the world has changed. How have you seen things shift in the last four decades?
SPEAKER_01You know, when you look at where when I wrote the book, it was well, I think it was 79, 1979, and and finished it 1999. I finished this new book 1999, and I was just reflecting on the tremendous differences. For example, uh, we have seen in more modern uh history the collapse of absolute truth. Uh, the only thing that that um skeptics may hold on to is science, but even that changes uh daily. But the collapse of absolute truth, um the understanding that was uh for authority, that there's a source of authority to now personal preference. Whatever happens to be your preference, that's good enough because there isn't truth anyway. Um, this sort of cafeteria style approach to looking at um uh your philosophy of life. Oh, I'll pick a little bit of karma and a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And of course, often what unbelievers have as their guiding principles are even in conflict with each other, but it doesn't matter because there is no truth. The sexual revolution, huge change. So you just think of those four, and what a change there has been from 40 years ago to today.
SPEAKER_00You say on page 13 of your book, you you mention all these massive uh uh culture-shaping shifts that have gone on, and you say some Christians feel angry about this, some Christians feel intimidated by this, some Christians feel defeated by this, I feel hopeful. Uh, why do you feel hopeful in the midst of all this change?
SPEAKER_01First of all, when Jesus commanded us to share the good news of Jesus Christ, what I find so hopeful about his command is he doesn't say, Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the earth, all you extroverts, all you scripture memory buffs, all you evangelists and clergy, and the rest of you just hang out, sing some hymns, I'll be back. That is not what the Lord said. He didn't reference personality type, he didn't reference gifts, he said, no, I am calling all of you to go. Why was he so confident we could do it? Because he gives us everything we need to be witnesses. We'll talk about that later. So, number one, I feel confident because though the world has changed, Jesus' command has not, and he's given us all we need. Second thing why I feel confident. My husband and I lived in the UK for seven years. We've only been back home in the States a couple of years now, and we traveled all over the continent and all over the UK. I was continually having conversations with atheists, agnostics, seekers, uh, and they were interested in engaging in spiritual conversations. There was an openness there, and that most Christians weren't recognizing. I kept saying in our evangelism training, there's more openness than you think. Why? Now, of course, I have to say, you've got to engage in spiritual conversations in the right way. You're not preaching down, you are listening, you know, you you are expressing interest in what they have to say, etc. But why do I have hope? Because secularism cannot address the deepest needs of human existence. Um, God has given us uh a longing for meaning, for beauty, for truth, for uh identity. And these things cannot be met with a secularist philosophy. And so that is one of the reasons why that I feel so confident is that I know what we have truly can meet the deepest needs, and even though unbelievers may not be able to articulate their longings, and that's part of what we need to find out what are their longings, what are their obstacles. Um, when you go in the confidence of knowing that the good news of Jesus Christ truly meets our deepest, deepest longings, our deepest needs, it it is it gives you confidence.
SPEAKER_00It's fascinating to me that you were able to come to the um a more secular culture here in the UK and pick up on a spiritual openness to people that others were not picking up on. What do you think it was that you were listening out for? What what do you think it was the the language that you were speaking in that was able to connect with people? Because it sounds to me like a like how a linguist would would think that some people were not speaking picking picking up on the language that was being spoken, but you could hear it and you could somehow speak it. Is that something that's going on?
SPEAKER_01Um that's fascinating, Glenn, what you're saying, and the issue of being a linguist. What was I able to pick up on? Uh my model was Jesus, and I can remember, and I talk about this in the first chapter of Stay Salt. I had just become a Christian. I don't come from a Christian home. And I and by the glory and mercy of God, one by one, every member of my family had finally come to the Lord, but it took a long time. Okay, so I'm the first to become a Christian. I became a Christian uh about four months before I went away to university. I go to university and the conference, there was a conference through a Christian organization on evangelism, and I thought, oh, I really need this because oh, I'm so afraid. What if they ask me a question I can't answer? And what if uh I do it wrong? And um, what if I lose a friendship? All the things you hear people saying today. And I thought, I don't know how to do this. I went to the conference, and although there was tremendous sincerity and love, I think, in these Christian leaders talking about evangelism. The problem was the way they looked at evangelism was go in, preach, and if if they ask questions, just assume they're resistant to faith and um move on to the next person as quickly as you can. And I thought, all right, I don't come from a Christian home, I don't come from any kind of um that kind of background, but I know this isn't right, this isn't the way you communicate with people. And so I went, all right, I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna look at Jesus and I'm gonna look and see in the gospels how did Jesus share faith. I Glenn, I learned so much, and it stayed with me forever. Um, what did Jesus do? Of course, he prayed. That was the first thing, and I realize he's also the son of God, but he was also fully human. So what can we learn?
SPEAKER_00And that that makes his prayer even more remarkable, doesn't it? Even the son of God needs to constantly be in communion with the father.
SPEAKER_01Exactly, exactly, and he depended upon his father, and he shows us that's part of what it means to be human. But what did he do? Okay, he asked questions, he didn't go in preaching first, he didn't go in sharing the gospel, he asked questions, he found out where were they, where were their obstacles to faith, um, what were their longings, their needs, etc. Um, a tremendous compassion. He didn't move on to the next person quickly. Um, and as I I began looking at the respect, the asking questions, and he roused their curiosity, and I went, okay, that makes so much more sense. And I thought, I'm gonna learn the Jesus way of how to do this, and I'm and and so that is what I did. And I said, Lord, I'm gonna reach out to people, and I was in a dorm, and uh, and it was turned out it was a woman's dorm, and I thought, I'm gonna reach out to the people on my floor, no matter how different they are, and I'm gonna do it Jesus way and throw out a God comment as I'm getting to know what would be a God comment, what would be an example of a God comment? Um, we're talking about um a particular issue, whatever it, whatever that issue, like you know, is truth, the word love or whatever, and I go, Do you know what? I Jesus has the most intriguing things to say about that. I was just reading his take on that, and then I don't say anymore. That's the key. Because if you then go on, then send your preaching. Uh, oh boy, you know, uh, that is uh, or or even something like, uh, you know, I wasn't raised in faith, and I was always, I thought, how could anybody say, Oh, I know God? Like, what hubris! How in the world could a finite, limited human being ever say they know God? But then I had an amazing experience.
SPEAKER_00Becky, tell us what it is, don't leave us hanging. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01By the way, do you know what the experience was?
SPEAKER_00What was that?
SPEAKER_01This is so interesting. All right, my big issue, one of my big issues as uh an agnostic, I wasn't an atheist, I was an agnostic, is I thought, how what I already said, how can a finite, limited human being say, I know truth and I've met God? And I went, how would we ever know? And I I really this was a huge issue for me. I'm in the back garden. Notice I didn't say backyard.
SPEAKER_00Good translator, you're a linguist.
SPEAKER_01Exactly, for my British brothers and sisters. I'm in the back garden and was lying out in the on the on the grass, it was a warm day, and I noticed this ant mound, and they're busy building this mound. And I remember taking a little twig and then a leaf and causing them to move in different directions, and they went right on. They would do different things, and I thought, oh my gosh, this is like being God. I'm changing the course of their history, they don't even know it. And then I thought, what if I wanted them to know that Becky is alive, that Becky is here? What would I do? And I kept thinking of different things. I thought that wouldn't work out, and then I went, I've got it. I'd have to become an ant. And I thought, what an amazing thought. The scaling down at the size of me to perfectly represent me in the form of an ant. And if I did that, how would they know that Becky has anything to do with that ant? They just think it's an ant. And I thought, hmm, I'd have to do things other ants couldn't do. And then I thought, and I had interestingly, I went to a very academic uh, what we call high school in the States, and I had taken a comparative religion class, and so I'd read a lot of other religions, but I'd never investigated Christianity, nor did we in that class. And I thought, have I read any religion that says that God actually came into human history? And I was thinking, no. And I went, well, I've never looked at Christianity. I thought, okay, I'm gonna go look. So I got up, went into our house to find a Bible, couldn't find one. I went, okay, I'm gonna get any book in the library that has the word Christian in the title. So I went in and I remember looking at all these books in my parents' library, and then found finally one book. And I remember taking it off the shelf, blowing off the desk, and going, Well, who's ever heard of a weird title like this, Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis? Somebody had given a copy to my mother, she'd never read it, and so I sat down and I began reading C. S. Lewis, and realizing, according to Lewis now, brilliant, brilliant man, that he was saying Christianity is a religion of revelation. God came to us. I it it gave me the landscape of Christianity, and then I went, All right, I've got to get a Bible and I've got to start reading and find out who Jesus is. Got bought a Bible, started reading the Gospel of John. That's where I started. That was the beginning of my become ultimately becoming a Christian. Uh, and I have told that story to so many of believers that go, oh my gosh, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Right. You know, so incarnation keeps coming back in in the way that you think about things. And and I remember reading Out of the Salt Shaker, and your chapter on the humanity of Christ was just beautiful, and just um, it's become kind of the heartbeat of how I think of evangelism as well, in terms of you paint biblical portraits of Christ, and you show him in all his biblical richness and goodness and compelling attractiveness, and you say, huh?
SPEAKER_01Now listen, I want to pick up on that because I think that is so important what you just said. We have to bring, we have to be real, we have to develop friendships, we have to be praying, we need to engage in spiritual conversations, answer their questions as best we can, all of that. But let me tell you what you need to do as quickly as you can, once there's a little trust established. You need to bring them in the presence of Jesus. Nothing is more powerful. And when you are able to say something like, your questions are so good. But I just wonder have you ever actually read any primary source material? That's a great one for college students, maybe uh maybe not so much for maybe.
SPEAKER_00A biography. Have you read a biography of Jesus? Exactly.
SPEAKER_01Have you ever read the biography of Jesus? You don't have to believe in the Bible, you don't have to believe in Jesus, but find out what he's like. He's fascinating. What would you think if we got together and we just did one story? Everybody loves stories. This is what you call a seeker Bible study. And uh I've written uh many seeker Bible studies in Luke and John, and um I in fact I wrote the first one for Uncover, the Uncover series that's so popular. The very first one was what I wrote in Luke. So there's all kinds of seeker studies. You can do this now online with your friends, you know, Zoom or Skype or FaceTime. Bring them into the presence of Jesus. He is so powerful, he is so beautiful, and he is so different than what they thought. Great place to start.
SPEAKER_00And what I've loved about Uncover and uh this word one-to-one, and there's lots of different ways of doing these personal Bible studies where you just uh get the jargon out of your conversation and bring the gospels into your conversations, and at that stage it just becomes a case of sort of pointing to the text and saying, Do you see him? Do you see him? Do you want him? It clarifies and simplifies evangelism so so beautifully.
SPEAKER_01And you know what? I we've done, for example, seeker Bible study training all over the world. And when we were doing this in the UK with university students and then with churches, when they started doing getting the relationship, doing the other things, but when they start doing these seeker studies, they go, it's like Jesus does the work for us. It's so easy. We were making it too hard. So, anyway, and you know what else happens? As Christians, you fall in love with Jesus all over again. It's so important because non-believers can tell if you're doing a formula, Jesus never had a formula, he didn't ask the same three questions to everybody. And when they see you love this person you're speaking about, it is so powerful.
SPEAKER_02Really?
SPEAKER_01And and we need to keep falling in love with Jesus. Boy, read the gospels, that'll do it.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. Which is why you know a line I'm always using is is you know, uh, don't you just love Jesus? And they might think it's a rhetorical question. It's not a rhetorical question, you know. Um but that that that's where our evangelism is taking us. Don't you just love Jesus? Exactly. We're always drawing people.
SPEAKER_01One of the questions I've always asked myself in all these years of evangelism ministry is why are Christians so reluctant to share the best news ever? Why? Why do we struggle?
SPEAKER_00Why do we struggle to share the best news in the world? Well, stay tuned and you'll hear Becky answer her own question in just a second. But let me ask you a question of my own. Do you enjoy the Speak Life podcast? Are we a healthy in sharing your face in everyday life? Uh, if so, we would love your support. Could you just give us a rating or review uh on iTunes or wherever it is that you get your podcasts from? Just a little review uh just helps us to get seen by so many more people. Could you share us on social media or give us a share on Facebook or Twitter? And could you consider supporting us financially? You can go to speaklife.org.uk slash give and find ways of giving either as a one-off or in a monthly way. Why don't we hear Becky answer her own question now? Why are we so reluctant to share the good news?
SPEAKER_01One of the questions I've always asked myself in all these years of evangelism ministry is why are Christians so reluctant to share the best news ever? Why? Why do we struggle? And I think there's a couple of reasons. I think one is um we don't realize we're not the great evangelist. God is. God has always been the great evangelist. What does that mean about us? Well The thing I hear the most in all the years we have literally traveled the whole world. What is the one thing we always hear? Becky, I really would share my faith, but I can't. Why can't you? Because I'm inadequate. I go, of course you're inadequate. You're inadequate. I'm inadequate. Isn't that the most freeing thing in the world to know? We are inadequate. We were created to depend upon God. We are dependent, not self-sufficient. That's by the way, part of the gift or severe mercy of the coronavirus is that we see we're not in charge. But when you realize, Christians, as Christians, we're not in charge. We're not the great evangelist. God is the great evangelist. And so we need to, and God is always delighted in using the weak. He knows we're weak, but he will use us. So two things there. Why are we reluctant? One, we don't realize God is the great evangelist. Two, we haven't learned maybe how to lean on the power of the Holy Spirit. All right, so that is one thing we can talk about a little bit later. Secondly, all right, so we we we don't realize God is the great evangelist and that he's delighted to use us in our weakness. What's the second thing? Um back in the day when I was writing out of the salt shaker, you would say the word evangelism, and what would immediately come to everybody's mind is ah, you you take a formula and you work it on some memorized formula and you work it on some victim and then get away as soon as you can. That is not the way Jesus went about it. And I still find that today, I still find that tremendous confusion about what evangelism is. But thirdly, I think, and this is really more our culture today, I think we're redefining evangelism in a way that isn't uh biblical. What I hear all the time in the West, particularly in the global north as opposed to the global south. Well, our task, and we hear this so much in the States, is to demonstrate the gospel, not tell the gospel. Um, and then what I hear endlessly quoted is a quote that they think Francis of Assisi said, and that is preach the gospel and if necessary, use words. Well, first of all, there isn't one iota of evidence that Francis of Assisi ever said that. And if he did say it, he was wrong. Because what is the biblical understanding of evangelism? Um the biblical understanding of evangelism, it's threefold really. It's who we are, what we do, and what we say. Who we are. Uh Emerson, the poet, said, Who you are, shout so loud, I cannot hear what you say. In other words, our lives need to illustrate the beauty and the love of Jesus. Secondly, um, it's not just who we are, it is what we do. And there is a place for justice. You look at the apostolic church and all they did to help tremendous needs in the culture that got people's attention. That's a part of it. But I have to say, the primary way that I see in the gospels and with the apostolic church is that it's verbal. It isn't just visual, it's verbal. That's where we're so terribly weak in the West. And that is where we need to learn. How can we share the good news for such a time as this?
SPEAKER_00You're uh your subtitle to uh Stay Salt, the world has changed. The second part of the subtitle is Um Our Message Must Not. And that's a that's a very strong must right there. Um why why were you so strong on the fact that our message must not change?
SPEAKER_01Um okay. Uh, first of all, it goes back to what Lewis said. This well, what the Bible says, it is a religion of revelation. The gospel doesn't, it isn't a human invention that we make up as we go along, it comes directly from Christ, it is God revealed. That's why there's so much power in the gospel, it is revealed from God Himself. Um, so our message is the eternal truth, and that is where we need to understand the gospel. We need to understand um what it says, how to defend it, etc. Okay, another thing um we need the message must not change because it is the only answer to the spiritual openness that we are seeing around us. Let me tell you something. With COVID-19 right now, what I am seeing, and I'm on all these um conferences around the world asking, listening to what Christians are telling me, but also talking about how we can be a witness in in today's culture. Um and everyone is talking about a spiritual openness in their friends that they haven't seen. Why? And why must we share the good news of Jesus? Because when catastrophe comes, it gets especially at this level, it always gets everyone's attention, and you begin to realize wait a minute, you start being more reflective, and you start realizing I'm not in charge, I'm not in control. Give you an example. An agnostic friend of mine called me, and I have never seen the slightest openness in her to the idea that her worldview may be lacking. She would always say things to me like, uh, Becky, you know, I don't need some crutch like God. We're in charge, we're the masters of our destiny. Well, she calls me and she said, you know, I always told you that I was in charge of my destiny. I always told you that I knew that I was in control. And I'm gonna tell you something. The one gift of coronavirus, although it's a scary gift, I'm realizing I'm not in control and I never was. I said, wait a minute, how did you know you never were at your core? How did you know that? She said, Again, the uh COVID-19, it forces you to be honest. And the thing I was pushing back and didn't want to face is if I'm God, as I said I was, what kind of God needs to take anxiety pills? I thought that's pretty good. She goes, I who wants to worship a God that needs anxiety meds? And I'm not putting anxiety meds down, but what she said was, Becky, what I've realized, I make a lousy God. I said, Oh, so do I, so does everybody. I said, that's a wonderful discovery that we do trying to be God is way above our pay grade. It it we can't do it, and so I say, Hey, what would you think about? You know, taking a look at Jesus. I've asked you before, and now for the first time, she's open to the idea. But what it's why we need to be calling our friends, genuinely asking them, how are you doing? You know, what how can I pray for you, etc., but also beginning to see because usually they're gonna ask you questions. Why do you have this hope and and peace uh in the in the midst of this? Let me just say one more thing about my agnostic friend. When she was saying, I am not God, and to tell you the truth, I always knew it, that I wasn't in charge. That's Pauline, that's straight out of Romans 1, that we suppress the truth and unrighteousness. And that is the severe mercy of COVID-19, is that it's like the fog lifts and we're able to see things that we were afraid to see. And that's why we need to use this opportunity now.
SPEAKER_00Right. And as people are flat on their backs, they're starting to look up. And how do how do we take advantage of that? So so let's let's call them up, let's be inquisitive, let's try and have good conversations, deep conversations about the things that actually matter with our friends. But if they do start to show any kind of spiritual interest, where do we take them? What do we do in lockdown conditions?
SPEAKER_01Okay. When um right before I get to the practical, let me say one other thing. We have done evangelism training around the world, and you would think that people, it's not that their cultures aren't different. The surprise is that they so often say the same things. And so one of them is, as I've already said, I'm inadequate. I can't possibly share my faith. I'm inadequate, it's not my gift. And what is the answer to that anxiety? It's it's recognizing, and this is why the first section of my books, Day Saul, is on the means. What has God given us? And I love it when Paul says to the Lord, uh, I take away this thorn in the flesh. It's just I don't like being weak, in other words, take it away. And the Lord said to Paul from heaven, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. So Paul goes, Okay, then I'm gonna boast all the more gladly about my weakness so that Christ's power may rest upon me. It is very important if we're gonna learn how to move in for such a time as this, that we remember that we have been given the resources of God, uh, the word of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, learn how to walk in the spirit. Um all right, and those that's important. Second thing we hear, no matter where we are, is well, I just don't know enough. I I just I don't understand the gospel well enough. I don't know, um I I don't know how to defend it, etc. All right. The second thing you knew and need in evangelism, and and it's understanding not just the means but the message, and that actually is the second section of my book. But it's saying, what is the gospel? What is creation, fault, redemption? Well, what is all that? What kind of pushback am I gonna get from non-Christians? How do I answer that? And then how do I help them see that the needs and the questions they have is so beautifully connected to the gospel itself? The third thing that we hear, and and Glenn, this is the question you were asking. I we always hear, I have so many fears, and I'm I'm just I'm not confident, I don't know how to start. How do I even bring up the topic of faith? I wanted to put it, Glenn, in this context because we need the means, we need the message, but we need the model, and we need to learn. Looking at Jesus, what do we do? Now, let me answer your question. Okay, um, how do we even bring up the topic of faith? Give you an example. I'm I'm this is actually fairly recent. This is like within the last year, and it's it's in my new book. All right, I'm flying, it's a long flight, and I had several talks to write. And so I I would think not for that conference, but for one coming up. So I'm working, you know, and uh a woman is sitting next to me. She kept interrupting me and asking me questions, and I realized very quickly she wants to talk, so I put away my materials, and this is the first thing you do pray. Just a second prayer. But I say, Come, Holy Spirit, come, open my eyes, let me understand her, where she is, what her obstacles are faith, blah blah. But Holy Spirit, open her eyes too, and lead us into a conversation. Second prayer. Now, what's the second thing you do? Find common ground, find out where as human beings. Jesus did this so beautifully. You find common ground. All right, so I start asking her questions, and I was saying, you know, tell me about yourself and you know what kind of hobbies, what are you interested in? We found immediately that we were both world travelers, loved different cultures, loved different, love to learn languages. We had a lot in common. Why is this so important? Because you want to connect as real people, and also because um when they do discover you're a Christian, probably in that conversation, they can't put you in a box and say, Oh, one of those fanatics. They already like us, we already genuinely connect. Okay, so you pray, um, you find common ground. What happens when you find common ground? Usually there's more trust developed, and people begin to share their beliefs or their values, and then what happens? You almost immediately will see where you disagree. All right, that's the big issue. How do you continue a conversation when you know that you believe very different things? You ask questions, that's the first thing. So she says to me, for example, you know, Becky, I believe human beings are all good. They're all good. And and I just I just think that the way we have been created, or the the who we are, is just entirely good. And so I said, Hey, can I ask you a question? What do you think about the state of the world now? What am I doing? I'm beginning to gently challenge her worldview, but I don't go in and say, You think we're all good? Have you looked at human history? Hello, duh. You know, that isn't gonna work. But she, I what do you think of what do you think of the state of the world? Oh, she said it's a mess, it's an absolute mess. And I said, Okay, so help me out here. How are you? If the world is truly a mess, then how can that be when human beings are good? Only good. Not that there isn't good, but only good. She goes, that is a very good question. She goes, let me think about that. She goes, Okay, now this is a very American response. I would find this more in America than in Europe or UK. They uh she goes, I think there's two primary problems. Either we are we have addictions and we need recovery programs, or we're psychologically wounded and we need therapy. Don't you agree? And I said, I do agree. I agree that those are real problems, and I agree that uh those solutions have helped people. Now, that's a mistake we make, by the way, is that we don't agree where we can. We're coming on their turf and we need to use their language. However, we know the problem is much deeper. So I said, I agree, but I've got a question. I said, what if the addict finds help and recovery over the primary or over the addiction or struggling with, only to discover that their addiction is far deeper? What if they discover that we're addicted to ourselves? What if they discover there's a heart problem and she said, Oh, wow, well, I agree with that. I'm addicted to myself, and it doesn't make me very happy. She said, But Becky, if if rehab is the answer for addiction and therapy is the answer for psychological wounding, who on earth could solve the problem of the heart? Where do you go for heart rehab? I said, you know something? You know, this is the first time I mentioned God, I said, that is exactly the right question. And I've got to tell you, it was that question that ultimately led me on the search for God and then my becoming Christian. But that's a very long story. She goes, No, I want to hear that story. We began talking, and then we the rest of the flight was about the gospel, and it was interesting because she said at one point, um, all right, so so what does the Bible say is is our fundamental problem? She asked this pretty early on, and I said, I'm gonna use my language to say this, but I said, We've got a God complex, we keep getting our soul of God mixed up. She goes, I find very little pushback on this. She goes, Well, I've got a God complex. And I said, and she goes, Okay, so we've got this God complex, and and uh, but what are we supposed to do? And I said, actually, when we talk about a God complex, that's what the Bible calls sin. And she went, Sin? I thought it was drug sex and rock and roll. That's why we don't initially use biblical language, we define it and then we tie it to biblical language. Anyway, um, we are it was really touching. We got off the plane and she said, I want to keep talking. Will you email me and we can have a spiritual conversation? And I've sent her now books and all kinds of stuff, you know. But that's where you begin. You begin to prayer, asking questions, etc. I wouldn't know what was in the book.
SPEAKER_00I've got to get the book, stay salt, get the book. I I remember I was speaking um in a restaurant uh one evening and uh just giving a little sort of after dinner talk for about 10-15 minutes, and a guy came up to me afterwards and he said, Um, what you said about the human condition sounded dangerously like that old Catholic doctrine of original sin. Um I just I just kind of let that go. We kept on having the conversation. Within 90 seconds, he revealed to me that um he um was currently in a rehab center and he had been uh addicted to heroin for 10 years, but he'd spent the last 18 months clean and he'd finally gotten off the drugs. And I was like, Congratulations, well done. That's a huge um achievement. And he said, you know, but I've got a theory. I think I think everybody's addicted. I said, Oh yeah, tell me more. And and he said, Yeah, you know, my drug of choice was heroin, but somebody else's might be their career or sex or money or power or fame or whatever it is. I think everybody's addicted. And I said, I I like your theory. Should we give it a name? He said, Who do you what do you think we should call it? I said, I don't know. What what about what about universal addiction? Do you think do you think there's such a thing as universal? He said, That's it, universal addiction. And I said, Yeah, that sounds dangerously like that Roman Catholic doctrine over. And we had a we had a great laugh about it, but it was uh it was so interesting that what he actually believed about human nature was almost perfectly described by this uncle doctrine um that had a real PR problem. Um, and just coming at it from the side with with different vocabulary, and he was he was all in, you know, it was exactly what he actually believed. If I were to ask you one more question, I I'd love to ask you about you've you've mentioned a couple of times about um uh leaning on the Holy Spirit and how important that is in evangelism. Would that be a good thing to finish on?
SPEAKER_01When we're in a crisis like COVID, what happened in the past when they had catastrophic crisis on several different levels? Um Christians would fall to their knees, pray, cry out to God for renewal for themselves and revival for the world. And that is the thing I am convinced of that if you would take even just half an hour every day, and uh the prayers too long for this interview, but there were about five things that whether first awakening, you know, with John Wesley and all those guys, uh Whitfield, the second awakening, Jonathan Edwards in in New England, but they they prayed over five different areas. They learned a lot about prayer. But if we need to pray, we need to get sequestered and pray, no matter how much time you've got, even if it's 15 minutes, come into the presence of God and uh ask him to renew and and repent and do anyway. It's too big for this right now, but renew and then pray for revival. What if this were to bring the third great awakening? Oh my goodness, wouldn't that be thrilling? So that is one of the things we can do as we're sequestered at home.
SPEAKER_00That'd be wonderful to do. Uh, yeah, might we learn to pray at this time? I'm reminded in Matthew chapter six, Jesus says uh um, go into your room just by yourself and pray to your father who is unseen.
SPEAKER_01Well, listen, I've just got to respond to that. And that is because I'm a reader of the revivals and of the awakenings, and I'd always think, oh my goodness, they were worried about their time and spiritual decline, and and they would go into their prayer closet. What would they think of our time and the spiritual decline? But what is when you look, oh golly now, I've forgotten what it was I was gonna say. You said something. What was it you just said?
SPEAKER_00Uh Matthew 6, go into your room and pray your father was unseen.
SPEAKER_01Oh, got it, got it. Okay. But Glenn, what you just said about go into your room, and I would look at these revivals and these awakenings, I would think it'll never happen here. I can't imagine Western Christians sequestering themselves, isolating themselves, and myself included. We're so busy. We're so this relentless busyness, never dreaming. There would be something so serious that was so dangerous that the government is insisting, and if we don't do it, we'll get fined, that we go in isolation. What an opportunity, exactly as you said, to go into our fur closet.
SPEAKER_00Wonderful. And another thing we could do is perhaps get out a good book. And uh, we highly recommend Stay Salt, uh, Becky Pippett's latest book on evangelism. The world has changed. Our message must not. And there are a number of ways that uh people can get the book. It's published in in the UK by the Good Book Company. So do go to thegoodbook.co.uk and uh for listeners in the States and elsewhere, you can go to BeckyPippett.org, where that book and many other resources reside. Um, Becky, uh, it's been an absolute pleasure uh to have you on the show. I was uh just reminded uh by a press release on your book that uh Rico has uh commended the book as well. And uh Rico, in his own inimitable style, said uh in his commentation, from now on, as I train searchers, I'm going to be standing on Becky's shoulders, uh, which is a mental image that's hard to kind of expand from the memory banks. You've got to probably learn more figuratively, Becky. Um Becky.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much. It's just been a life.
SPEAKER_00It's been such a privilege. Thank you so much, but he's a bitch in office weak life podcast. What a fantastic wife. Becky Pippa for fighting stuff.