The Life Challenges Podcast
The Life Challenges Podcast
The Heart of a Christian
Join us as we examine how placing God at the center can transform our relationships with both Him and those around us, guiding us through life's inevitable challenges with grace and wisdom. We explore the essence of compassion and how it is taught and modeled through everyday experiences. We also delve into the necessity of engaging with the Word and Sacraments to replenish our spiritual reserves. By staying rooted in faith, we invite you to embrace new challenges and opportunities to reflect God's love in your daily life.
The Balance of GrayGod, doubt, and proof walk into a podcast... it goes better than you’d expect!
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On today's episode, our spouse or a co-worker or a stranger who's having a really bad day, and it shows, or a bad year, and it shows.
Paul Snamiska:Welcome to the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
Christa Potratz:Hi and welcome back. I'm Krista Potratz, and I'm here today with Pastors Bob Fleischman and Jeff Samuelson, and this is the week of Valentine's Day, and so we wanted to talk a little bit about Christian Life Resources, message and ministry with the heart. That is something that we actually talk quite a bit about on the podcast, about just the heart ministry and changing people's hearts and how that happens and what we can do, and so we just really wanted to expand on this topic today as well. Maybe, bob, you know, it's a good place to start with just how does the condition of our hearts influence our relationship with God and others, and just this idea of why we talk so much about this at CLR and also here on the podcast.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, I've been in the ministry since 1983, and I would say daily I still learn things that I realized when I was younger I didn't have correct or didn't have it fully thought through, and the one thing that kind of always stuck in my mind was the whole instance of the flood. God said I'm doing this because every inclination of man's heart is evil. And then, after the flood, god said I'm not going to do this again, even though every inclination of man's heart is evil. And in the work that I do here at CLR, I have walked through picket lines, I have received hateful messages, I've had my life threatened, I had a chair thrown at me once, I've had all sorts of things and so plenty of examples of evil on display. And I found myself sitting in the judgment seat looking down on everybody going evil, evil. Look at that evil. So then I would get back into Genesis 9, and I'd be reading again about Noah and getting off the ark. And you know, he said I'm not going to do this again, even though every inclination of man's heart is evil. And all of a sudden I'm kind of doing an inventory of who's left. It's Noah and the family. In other words, nothing changed.
Bob Fleischmann:And when we talk about a heart ministry, I think a lot of people look at the work we do at CLR, always focused on all those other people. We're going to change them and I began to realize over the years that really the heart first of all. You got to control what you can control. I can't control your heart, but I am called upon to be a messenger and so I have to make sure my message is out there. And well then God begins to dictate how your message is out there. You don't pick out the speck in your neighbor's eye when you've got a plank in your own eye. And all of a sudden I started looking back over things. I've written things, I've said and so forth. And all of a sudden I started looking back over things. I've written things I've said and so forth, and all of a sudden I come off self-righteous. I mean, you realize there's an evil inclination in my own heart. As you begin to start focusing on your heart, heart ministry, you begin to look at the hearts of others who do wrong in a different way, not in a self-righteous, judgmentary way, but in a deeply sad way. If somebody wants to kill their unborn child, what has happened in their life that has led them to the conclusion that in order for me to be happy, I have to kill someone, and it works that way at the end of life and then it has to do with all the decisions you make, and I would say that probably in 2023, it came to a head for me when you know, first of all I've mentioned it before in this podcast that maybe over the last four or five years I became quite a reader of the stuff Timothy Keller, the late Presbyterian minister, had written, and Timothy Keller talks about counterfeit gods.
Bob Fleischmann:I deeply, deeply love my wife, diane, and on April 11th of 2023, diane was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and I was crushed. I mean, there was a period of about three months where it was a tremendous mental thing for me to sort it through and all of a sudden I realized I had created an artificial counterfeit god out of my wife, because the first principle really in heart ministry is for, crying out loud, get your priorities straight. And I realized that about two, three months into the whole process of wrestling with this new reality was that I was far more struck by what had happened with my wife than I was by just my attitude towards God and the attitude of others towards God, and God no longer had that first place pedestal in our hearts. Oftentimes he comes in after our spouse, after our profession, after our children, after all sorts of things. And here I teach on this, I write on this and all of a sudden I realized I was guilty as well, and I'm constantly working on this recalibration. Now Diane's condition continues to worsen she was given with the treatments 18 months to live continues to worsen. She was given with the treatments 18 months to live and we're past that. So I'm thankful for that.
Bob Fleischmann:But somebody had asked me does it make you angry with God? And you see, anger with God, I think, is very much of a cultural thing, you know. In other words, this is the way our culture thinks, because God really is nothing more than a Marvel superhero in our culture. He's got some super abilities he rescues people, he helps people and so forth, but sometimes he lets us down. So we get angry with God. And so you know it drove me back, not so much in the New Testament but into the Old Testament. I look at the stories in the Old Testament and I was reminded do you know that you know the Old Testament followers, even in times of great disappointment, would never recite the name of God because they saw it as possibly violating the commandment. To misuse his name and to be angry with God is not what goes on. People would be angry at a circumstance, they would be frustrated with themselves, but never with God. Only God's enemies became angry with God, and I always remember Ahab telling Joseph that, no, we don't want to talk to God's prophet. Well, why don't you want to talk to him? He's always saying bad things about me. He was angry about the message and so forth.
Bob Fleischmann:And so when we talk about CLR being a heart ministry, you calibrate first of all the heart. You calibrate which is your own, and then it changes the way you see others. Because when you look at what Scripture requires of us, calls upon us to do, it's the sacrifice. You turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile, give your coat as well as your tunic. You know that kind of stuff, and when you do those things, the only way you can possibly possibly do that is you find something of immeasurable value that's out of this world and that is your relationship with God.
Bob Fleischmann:And I think sometimes we get the cart before the horse. You know we say, well, you get to hold the little baby that you saved from an abortion and you get to do all these, and that's all true, but it's a temporary thing. And endurance there's a lot of people who were involved back in the 1970s and 80s, when I first got involved, who just kind of faded away. They didn't have the endurance, but as your love for God grows, it pushes you forward. Why? Because even when you face terminal diagnoses, even when you face horrible things in life, you realize that you can walk through the valley of the shadow of death without fear. Why? That's what happens when your heart gets recalibrated and so you're willing to turn the other cheek, you're willing to suffer.
Jeff Samelson:I will admit about myself that I tend to be more intellectually, more concerned with matters of the mind, thought, knowledge, things like that, and I think that's something that's fairly common. Knowledge, things like that. And yeah, I think that's something that's fairly common actually with Lutheranism in general, because there's a lot of knowledge involved there and a lot of proper, scripturally informed reasoning going on there. And that means there's a tendency, certainly with myself, to not look at the heart so much, and that's a real mistake. That's something that's missing with that, because when we start, as Bob was talking about, start with the reality of it, not what we want it to be, but the reality.
Jeff Samelson:Jesus said, out of the heart come evil thoughts. Murders, adultery, sexual sins, thefts, false testimonies and blasphemies these are the things that defile a person. So the human heart is not this pure thing. It's not a happy place. It's because we're sinful it's not so good. And again, we also begin to realize, as we look at ourself and as we compare ourselves to scripture and things like that, that sin makes hearts sclerotic. They become hard and inflexible the more they sin.
Jeff Samelson:And so what needs to happen?
Jeff Samelson:Well, exactly what God gives us the law for they need to be regularly broken and bent so that they can work the way they're supposed to get the scale and the scum removed. And that's what God's law is for to convict us of our sins, so that we realize how lost we are and how undeserving we are of God's favor. And only after that then can we truly appreciate what we have in the gospel, truly appreciate what it means that God so loved us that he sent his son as the sacrifice to take away our sin. When we grasp this reality about our heart not just how bad it was, but how amazingly wonderful it is that God has cleansed and remade our hearts that then motivates us. First we love God back. We give him our trust, our devotion, our worship, our obedience. But then we also say this isn't just for me. That's when we then turn and love others with it. We love our neighbor with service, with compassion, with simple consideration, and then that flows through in all the things that we want to do.
Christa Potratz:One of the things, too, that you mentioned was this idea of compassion, and so I kind of wanted to expand a little bit on that in the Christian life, the role that compassion plays. How can we embody that in our everyday interactions when we talk about compassion, jennifer?
Bob Fleischmann:Probably the word sacrifice. I always talk about low-hanging fruits. There's easy things to do, but it's the hard stuff. That, I think, is what tells you the measure of where your heart is. And a lot of times now people will wonder how much time do you have to do all the extra stuff? You can't save the world and people who think like that. I always have trouble with that because, you know, a couple of my staff members sat down with me once and said you know, bob, you know, don't be so logical. You got to bring some tenderness into it. And because I do tend to be a little bit like Jeff said, you know, it's kind of that Lutheranism in us. It's that hard logical part.
Bob Fleischmann:Compassion is the. I think compassion is the willingness to sacrifice when it hurts. Well, you know, right now you know we're talking about Southern California and they're looking for money to try to help them rebuild after the fires. And the low-hanging fruit in my arena is we send them some money and of course, almost none of us ever donate to the point that it hurts. All of us donate over what we think we have left and maybe I'll put off getting the new TV for an additional month or something like that. That's low hanging fruit and it's still admirable.
Bob Fleischmann:But genuine compassion is taking their pain and making it your pain. And I think that that's a hard compassion to do. And in my own life you know, like right now I can't leave the house because I'm a caregiver, so I have to always be here. So we just had a death in a congregation I served, and so what can I do? I write to people, I call them, I talk to them, but in my prayer I also say, for all of those who mourn, god, if you will give me some of their pain so that they don't have to carry it all. And you know, in other words, you're willing to carry the burden.
Bob Fleischmann:And I think you know it's not enough to say women ought not abort their children. I mean, that's just an ideological position statement. You're willing to step in, you're willing to carry the load, you're willing to do something and the same thing too. You know, I always tell everybody the difference between a maternity home and a home for mothers. We run a home for mothers. A maternity home takes care of a pregnant woman and up to maybe a month or so after she delivers the baby and then she moves on A home for mothers says you come in here, we're going to help you just get your entire life turned around, and that's much harder. And you've got to be in it for the longer haul and that's hard, it is hard.
Christa Potratz:When I was considering this question and everything too, it just made me think that sometimes compassion is sacrificing, but maybe even in ways we don't think about sacrifice too. One thing you guys might know this, but I don't know if all of our listeners do, but I am a list person. I like writing lists, and when I do something I like to mark it off, maybe in my list, like for the week or different days and stuff. Maybe I will have things that I'll do for other people, like I'm going to make you know so-and-so a meal and bring it over, or I want to make sure you know I have a chance to write this person who you know I like to send personal messages to, or just different things like that.
Christa Potratz:I mean, maybe people would say, well, that's really nice, krista, that's compassion, that's giving your time, I'm giving my planned time.
Christa Potratz:In that, the thing that really throws my list off is something that our family's going through now is sickness.
Christa Potratz:All of a sudden, a kid is homesick and my list just kind of goes out the door and the things that I was going to do I can't do. And then I am struck though that, okay, well, this is my opportunity now to show my family compassion or compassion for my child that needs me. And sometimes too, maybe I'll like, okay, I have an hour for a walk and I get my walking shoes on and I mean this is my time now that I'm gonna go and walk, and then, you know, I'll meet a neighbor who tells me that she just lost her job. Okay, my hour long walk now becomes a 45 minute conversation with somebody that needs my time. And so I mean I just mentioned this too to just say, like that sometimes our compassion can be in those small things, or just giving of ourself in little things, even just like our planned time, and that just it can be something small too and that that can mean something for other people.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, that's a good point, Krista, and ideally compassion should be so much a part of our lives that we're hardly even conscious of it.
Jeff Samelson:Of course I'm compassionate because that's just the way things are, that's just the way we live, but of course we're sinful human beings, so it doesn't work according to the ideal.
Jeff Samelson:But I'd say that including compassion, or incorporating it more into your life, really starts with and includes just simple consideration being attuned to how other people are affected by the choices we make, and then making loving decisions about what we do and we say, because most of us are not going to have lots of opportunities every day to feed the poor or speak up for the voiceless or take care of the wounded, or not.
Jeff Samelson:Everyone's going to run into the neighbor who's just lost a job, but every day we can give a break to our spouse or a coworker or a stranger who's having a really bad day, and it shows. Or a bad year, and it shows. Every day we can hold a door open for somebody whose hands are full. Every day we can communicate with others, not just with strangers that we meet, but even with our spouses and our children, the way that we want them to communicate with us. These are things where we're putting ourselves into their shoes and our heart then is reaching out and saying, well, what's their heart need in this situation? And then just that simple consideration. And when you're that way in the little interactions of life, it's just that much more natural to be that way in the big considerations in life.
Bob Fleischmann:I think too, kristen, just listening to you talk about taking care of the children during sickness, how much compassion is modeled and then learned. I read somewhere that you could list all the directives in Scripture about how we should live and they're going to be real fine and oftentimes they're very crystal clear. We just blur it with our desires and so forth, but when you see it modeled I get motion sick. People always say, well, did you and Diane ever go on a cruise? Not on your life. I mean the moment that ship even moves a little bit, I'd be hanging over the edge. And when I was a child I would get car sick in the car all the time and I always remember that I found that by falling asleep that prevented me from getting sick. And my father would carry me into the house and there would be times where I would feign being asleep just to have him carry me into the house and it left such an indelible mark. And my mother would when we were sick and stuff like that. My mom just was always on call, just never paid attention to the fact it was in the middle of the night and if I got sick she was up. And it's amazing how those memories and you're instilling those memories in your children, realizing that or not on their part. You instill the memory and the day comes back and like for me, rarely did I have to get up with the girls when they were sick. They just, first of all, we didn't have too much of that problem and, quite honestly, their mother got up with them a lot, but now I'm the one who's the caregiver, so I get up and you do it, and you learned it from other people. You learned compassion from other people.
Bob Fleischmann:I always still say that one of the most striking examples is one of the greatest defenders of palliative care, a doctor friend of mine who's spoken before Congress and on committees and is a desired speaker at conferences and so forth.
Bob Fleischmann:He and I were at a conference and we were sitting at a table. We were at the opposite end of the room and somebody in a wheelchair came to the door and we were in Canada, where they don't have the ADA laws that we have here, and he saw her struggling and I remember he shot up out from the chair from the opposite end of the room and he went all the way over, helped her get in, helped her get settled, and then came and sat back down no fanfare, nothing about it and that just made an impression that I have never forgotten and vowed I would try to always be that way, but again, what he did is there's directives in Scripture about thinking more of others and everything, but it was seeing it in action that made the impression. So compassion is very much modeled in the way we live as parents, as spouses and as neighbors.
Christa Potratz:One of the things that I know people do ask and kind of struggle with a little bit is, specifically a Christian can balance showing compassion, love for other people without compromising core beliefs and values. Here on the podcast about talking at I believe it was a school, and a girl came up to you and said that her friend was considering an abortion and just how you had mentioned to her things that she could do and things that she could say to the friend. But one of those things that she would say to her is, if you want to go to get the abortion, I'm not I can't go with you to that, but I will be here for you, you know, if you want to go to your parents or just you know that support and stuff too. And it just made me kind of think too. I think sometimes you know people do in some of those situations wonder how can I show Christian love to people but still not compromise values and beliefs that I have?
Bob Fleischmann:And that can be hard because sometimes you get put into the most peculiar circumstances and in that illustration and I remember that and I remember that instance in that illustration the ultimate sacrifice was if you don't abort this child and you decide to raise the child, I will help you.
Bob Fleischmann:You know, I will be there for you and everything. And that goes back to my you know, low-hanging fruit argument. The low-hanging fruit is you know, abortion's wrong, don't kill your child, all that kind of stuff. When I wrestled with what to tell her, I remember thinking to myself okay, how do I communicate that in a way that is not self-righteous? And so I don't want to be part of the crime. But even if you commit the crime, you still are a soul in need of God and in need of forgiveness. And so I even said in that circumstance and if you abort the child, I won't go with you for that, but I will be here for you when you come back.
Bob Fleischmann:And that's hard. Because that's hard because our ideologically positioning ourselves is then we want to keep punishing. We want to keep punishing for the sin. You don't realize what you did was wrong. So you to keep punishing for the sin. You don't realize what you did was wrong. So you're going to lose my friendship, you're going to lose my communication. No, no, no, no. Now you're building a wall. You got to keep building a bridge.
Bob Fleischmann:Ultimately, she's going to be convicted, not because of your very strong statements. She'll be convicted when she finds out that the God who gave her life, who gave her child life, is the one who says don't take life. That's part of that calibrating of the heart in its relationship with God, and you can't ever be impatient with that process. So sometimes you've got to help people, whether even their bad decisions. I just yesterday, I just was asked by somebody who said you know my grandson's in prison and he's always looked up to you. Would you be willing to talk to him? Would you be willing to? And I can't travel to the prison he's at, but I said, to the extent that he's going to be allowed to communicate, yes, absolutely, and even though I know why he's there. I saw him getting into trouble. I knew that he was on that trajectory. I'm not going to endorse what he did, but I will be there for him to now pick up the pieces and redo life.
Jeff Samelson:One of the things I appreciated about the question. You know it talked about balancing our core beliefs and values. And we're talking about loving others and compassion, because the easy thing is to take it as an either or. Either we stay true to our beliefs or we show love to others, and that's kind of the way the world wants us to look at it. But it is very much a both and kind of situation. And it's important to remember that when we hold on tight to God's truths and priorities, we are loving others, because who else is going to be doing that for them? And yet we can't really love others fully and properly if we're not holding on tight to God's truths and priorities.
Jeff Samelson:And we could probably list a whole bunch of Bible passages to give some guidance on all this. Perhaps what's easiest is to look at the life and ministry of Jesus. No one will ever claim that he was anything but loving. He didn't lack at all in compassion for others in that category and yet he never once compromised when it came to what is true, what God wants and such. And if we're saying I'm going to be just like Jesus, we're never going to quite reach that, but he is the model that we can look to, in that, in the example, and say, well, you know, if he showed us how, then it is something that we can aim for. And what can I learn from him about being firm when it comes to somebody who wants me to compromise the truth, yet at the same time being entirely loving to the person who has messed up his or her life because they lost the truth?
Christa Potratz:As we just kind of come together and close up this episode and just wanted to maybe just talk about some things that maybe we can do to maintain a heart that reflects God's love. What are some things that you know we can maybe just kind of encourage our listeners with the subject of keeping their hearts to the Lord and maintaining that compassion?
Jeff Samelson:I'll start with a negative.
Jeff Samelson:Don't pretend or let yourself be fooled into believing that you don't need the Word and Sacrament, that you don't need the Bible, that you don't be needing to go to church and have communion, thinking that what really matters is just to get to work serving others.
Jeff Samelson:Your faith is the foundation of your service and the gospel is the fuel for it, and if you try to keep on serving and loving and being compassionate when your spiritual tank has run dry, you're going to run into big problems and you're going to lose something, or you're going to burn out and and that that's that's not good in any way. Also, don't let yourself just get too comfortable in your corner. Move around, get out, do new things, see new things, go new places, meet new people. You're going to find plenty of outlets for your love, but if you stay home and you do nothing except what you always do, those opportunities are going to be limited. So, putting it positively, just spend your time in the Word, go to church, remember your baptism, all of these things that are important for all aspects of your faith. They're important also for a life of love and compassion. But then also don't just be satisfied with that. Get out there, do.
Bob Fleischmann:Sometimes you sit in church and you're waiting for that knock-me-over sermon and you get frustrated oftentimes because either it's a simple sermon didn't really teach me anything new and I began to realize that oftentimes when I was going into worship, to realize that oftentimes when I was going into worship I wasn't looking to soothe an ache in my life as much as I was looking to ratify a conviction I already had. And then, of course, like I'd mentioned at the outset, what happened with Diane and the brain cancer, that you all of a sudden are forced to become extremely introspective. And when you become introspective it not only makes you aware of your struggles in life, but then it casts a different light on the struggles of others. I think at times we've said I think Jeff said it a few times here in an earlier podcast that life is messy, it just is, it's not simple an earlier podcast that life is messy, it just is, it's not simple. And yet I'm embarrassed to see how simplistic I oftentimes evaluate life and where I learned the messiness of life is by being introspective. And to show you that we don't, you know, I wrote an article a few years back in which the title of the article was I might Be Wrong and it was kind of at the cutting edge of this introspection that I started drifting into and I might be wrong, and I talked about that and it was funny because I got an email from somebody that said so you're recanting that, what you wrote before, and you're recanting this. No, no, no, no, no. You missed the point.
Bob Fleischmann:The point is, you know, quit being so sure about yourself, about everything, including you, and when you talk about you know, the heart and being compassionate and so forth, you begin to learn about the messiness of other people's life by acknowledging the messiness of your own life. And when you begin to realize that you know and on occasion you know the messiness of politicians' life will come to the forefront, or celebrities' lives will come to the forefront in the news and usually it comes in the flavor of a gossip magazine, you know. But you realize that everyone needs to experience a glimmer of divine love, divine compassion, which says even though you denied me, I will forgive. Even though you turned your back on me, I will die for you. And when you get back into Scripture and you get into those truths and you say it's about me that he did this for me, you begin to say how can I be less loving towards others? And that's ultimately what gives you. It gives you the fuel to keep going, and that's where compassion comes from.
Christa Potratz:Well, thank you both for this discussion today and we wish all of our listeners a happy Valentine's Day, and we look forward to having you back next time. Thanks a lot, bye.
Paul Snamiska:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends. We're sure you have questions on today's topic or other life issues. Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help. You can submit your questions, as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes, at lifechallengesus or email us at podcast at christianliferesourcescom. In addition to the podcasts, we include other valuable information at lifechallengesus, so be sure to check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit christianliferesourcescom. May God give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in Christ for every life challenge.
