First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: Max Lucado and Dr. Kevin Leman

A two-part program this week as Wayne talks first with author and pastor Max Lucado about his new book OUTLIVE YOUR LIFE, then Dr. Kevin Leman about his latest, HAVE A NEW YOU BY FRIDAY. Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 03 Dec 2010
Audio Format:: other

A two-part program this week as Wayne talks first with author and pastor Max Lucado about his new book OUTLIVE YOUR LIFE, then Dr. Kevin Leman about his latest, HAVE A NEW YOU BY FRIDAY.

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

To him, who much has been given, much is expected, and to use that to call other people to open up their eyes to see the blessings that we have. I didn't come from a perfect home, but a message to parents everywhere in this book is a step up and believe in your gifts. Welcome to First Person, a weekly program where we sit down with guests and today we have two of them join us. Something a little different today, both Max Lucado and Kevin Lehman will be with us. First, Max Lucado's newest book, adding to the 55 million already in print, is titled "Out Live Your Life" and Max himself is an example of that and we'll learn why. Then later, I'll talk with Dr. Kevin Lehman about his promise that you can have a new you by Friday. If you know Kevin, you know how whimsical but how insightful he can be. So both men will join us today, one at a time, but before we start, I hope you'll take the time to visit us online at firstpersoninterview.com. All of these interviews are archived to listen to any time or you can subscribe to the podcast and receive it automatically each week through iTunes. Interviewing authors is something I've done for years and two of my favorites join us today. Let's start with Max Lucado, who still ministers in the local church, Oak Hills, in Texas. A senior pastor for about two decades, as the writing opportunities and responsibilities increased, I felt like I was neglecting some of the jobs that a senior pastor should do, but I didn't want to resign. I didn't want to leave the church and so we came up with kind of a good solution. We brought in a fellow to be the senior pastor and I stayed on as a teaching pastor, so that enables me to teach about 50% of the time and it's worked out and it's been a great relationship so far. Now what's the connection between writing and preaching? Obviously there is one, but I'd like to hear you talk about that. I don't think I've ever talked to you about that before. Well it's a very important connection in my case because all of my books begin as sermons. When I determine what seems to be the right series of messages for the church, if those are well received in the church, then I'll turn those into books. Now that doesn't mean that my books are just transcribed sermons because after I've preached the sermon, I think there's a big difference between a sermon and a chapter and a chapter is harder to write than a sermon is because you're only speaking to the "I", you're not speaking to the ear and the "I" and so I'll go back and we will rework that chapter or I will many, many times trying to turn it into something that is good for the reader. So all of the books however have their beginning as messages that I present to the church. So in my situation, the preaching and the writing are interrelated. Max, as I read through this book, the thought that came to my mind is not a new thought but how is it that we can look at the same passage of Scripture over a lifetime and when we read it today, it means something entirely different to us in a much more meaningful way today because of what I'm experiencing. I think that the answer to that is what Scripture says, that the Bible is a living word. It's not just words on the paper but the Holy Spirit enables us to engage and interact with Scripture in such a way that it just as a person might say something to you today and then they say it to you five years from now and you hear it differently. So Scripture does that. That's why we enjoy coming back to the same stories over and over and we find something fresh every time we do. Come back to those stories because it is the living word of God. Ever thought what you might be doing if you weren't preaching and writing? That's a good question. I probably have gone into, I don't know, I didn't have a lot of direction and I became a Christian and decided to go into ministry all at the same time so I didn't have a real clear sense of direction as to what I was going to do with my life. At the age of 20 when I made a commitment to Christ, by the age of 21, I knew I wanted to be a missionary so it came pretty soon thereafter. I used to tell people I was going to be a lawyer but I just had to have something to tell people because they would ask what are you going to be when you grow up. I don't have a real sense that that would have happened but who knows? I know I would never have become a professional baseball player because I always struck out in the game. It's kind of hard for me to imagine Max LeCate as a lawyer too. I mean you have that hard of compassion you know. You spent some time as a missionary didn't you? I did. I went to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and I was there from 1983 to 1988 so that's really how my ministry began and I started writing when I was in Brazil because we were studying Portuguese during the day and in the evening I wanted to do something in English and this is predating the internet and it's very difficult to get movies in English and Brazil so I would just do a lot of reading and then I would write. I was starting to do some writing, some creative writing and I took all of a bunch of articles that I had written for magazines and I put them together in a manuscript and I sent them to publishers until finally one of them said yes and that's how the writing began. Ever been back to Brazil? I have. I've been back twice since we left 20 years ago. I was just back in the summer of 2009 for an extended visit at least for me an extended visit 14 days and spoke like 29 times in 14 days. It was just a whirlwind of a trip, a lot of interviews, a lot of churches. I still speak Portuguese and so that's a great advantage. I don't speak it super well. I get really rusty but I'll be able to speak with a great tool when we went down there last summer. Let me take you back to traveling to other parts of the world and being confronted with the needs in those places. What goes through your heart and mind when you encounter those kinds of things and how do you come home? What do you do with it once you're home again? You go to places in the United States and you see poverty or even in developed countries and you see pockets of poverty and they could be very large pockets of poverty but eventually those pockets of poverty will be interrupted by a pocket of affluence. The difference in a third world country like Ethiopia or Nigeria or Haiti is that it just seems like those pockets of poverty are never interrupted. You never come across a nicer neighborhood and it just seems unending and in some cases it really is. What I learned living in Brazil and then also traveling to different places is that this whole idea that if we just worked harder, if somebody worked harder they wouldn't be poor does not always hold up. That does hold up sometimes. Some people are poor just because they're lazy and those people just need to get to work. They do. I think scripture is real clear about if somebody who doesn't work, don't let them eat. But then there are those who are willing to work, who've done their best, who've poured their life into certain projects but they just happen to live in a place and a part of the world where there's no paved roads, there's no education, there's no clean water. It's not like they were born on third base, they weren't even born on a team and these are the kind of people that I think we need to be aware of. These are the kind of people that organizations like World Vision exist to find and to help, to find these people who live in a place where there's no clean water, no access to education. I was born to a very modest family but if my dad had lost his job, there was a government program to help him subsidize him until he could get back on his feet, he never did lose his job. But if you live in Ethiopia or you live in Nigeria, you live in parts of Central America and your ox dies, there's a famine that comes through or AIDS devastates the region, I mean there's simply no margin, there's no safety net to catch you. And that's what the passion that I have is about these days, is trying to find those people and just give them some support, help them get on their feet so that they can truly have a shot at leading and living a productive life. Have your wife and family been able to travel with you Max? Yeah we have, we've taken our family to Central and South America several times and then my wife and one of my daughters and my son-in-law traveled with me just a year ago to Ethiopia with World Vision. When you come back to this country, do you go through a sort of a re-entry, it's kind of emotional isn't it? Well it is, you know and there's the adjustment to sometimes a form of guilt, you know, that we have so much, you have to be careful and not become cynical. To me I have to just simply learn to be grateful for the country in which we live and be reminded that to him who much has been given much is expected and to use that as a call to call other people to open up their eyes to see the blessings that we have. Speaking of your family you have more than one writer in the family now. Well we do. My daughter Jenna has written her first book and is working on her second. Her first book was called Redefining Beautiful and it's a book for teenage girls and she loved me to help her with that and then also she's worked, she and I have worked together on a project in the Outlive Your Life initiative, made to make a difference book that she's worked on and now she's working on a project all by herself. It's a very good writer in her own right, I think she's got a great future ahead of her. Of course dad would say that but I believe you, I really do and I've seen some of her work and I agree with you on that. If I were to talk to your wife is Denil Lynn right? Yes sir. If I were to talk to her and say what does Max really do to unwind, just to have fun. What would her answer be? I really enjoy going out and having a nice dinner with her with a couple of friends, sitting around the house and talking, I enjoy a good movie and my hobby is golf, I'm not very good, you'd watch me play golf and think he's never played in his life but I really enjoy it. I'm trying to do better about taking a day off a week, I was in a habit for many years of not doing that very well but now I am, I really get to where I look forward to that day and on those days I'll be on and I'll go out and have breakfast and then I'll usually play golf that day and maybe we'll go to a movie that evening and to really try to unwind. For me it's important to do that like on a Friday before a busy weekend because we have Saturday and Sunday services at church and so Friday's usually that day that I unwind. So nothing crazy like cliff diving or? No, not now, not now. Maybe later huh? Maybe so. Maybe when I get older. Alright, before I let you go, as we talk you're planning to go on tour with Third Day and Toby Mac and Michael W. Smith. Now what's the deal, Max? Is that what keeps you so young? Those are great guys and they were so gracious to accept this invitation to go out on tour and the idea is to not only bring an evening of worship and inspiration to 20 different cities around the country but to look for these 25,000 sponsors of children and they'll be helping me invite people to give that some serious thought. I think it's going to be a great tour. My promise is that I will not sing into a microphone and I'll let those guys do all the musical part and I'll just try to bring a good word here. I just want to see a dress like Toby Mac, that's what I want to say. Only I had to have. Now you've got a website maxlocato.com with much more information about everything we've talked about. Do you tweet as well, Max? I do. I do. Max Locato, just everybody follow me, we'll have fun. I'll try to keep everybody updated, some inspirational thoughts during the day and let them know where I'm headed on each of my trips. How about that? Sounds like you're enjoying life and enjoying preaching and writing still after all these years. It's all good. It really is. A lot of fun. And it's going fast though, you know, every so often I look up and think, well, this could be the day the Lord returns and that'd be okay with me. My thanks to Max Locato coming up on First Person, a conversation with Kevin Lehman. When you join us next week, Alice Teason tells about serving God and ministry in spite of her disability. God provided in a six month period, close to $11,000 more than what I would have made in my disability insurance. Kind of showed me yet again that my God is the one who owns the kettle on a thousand kilos. Alice founded His Wheels International. It's an amazing story and you'll hear it when you join us next time for First Person. For the second half of today's program, joining me now is Dr. Kevin Lehman, whose new book is Have a New You by Friday and Kevin, you and I have known each other a long time. Oh, Wayne, I should tell people that you and I go back a number of years, we're old friends. Not that we're old, but we've known each other a long time. Who are you calling old? Yeah. I know, isn't that the truth? We are getting older. I've got five kids and two grandchildren and I know you got kids and we're going to be chasing those grandkids from one of the earth the other. I have a feeling that's true. Yeah. Now, Kevin, you've admitted openly that you barely got out of high school and now you've got all these successful books. You're giving a lot of hope to some underchievers all over the world. You know that, right? Well, I hope so. You know, I was a kid that was written off in life. My high school counselor, who's still living, by the way, said to me when I asked him if he could help me go on to college, under a university, he pulled his glasses down on his nose. He looked over the top of his glasses and he said, Lehman, with your grades and your record in this school, meaning disciplinary record. I couldn't get you admitted to reform school. He pushed his glasses back when back to his busy work and yet, you know, Charlie Mosino, my counselor, had every right to say what he said. I had SATs or with a 0 percentile. Now, if you don't understand mathematics, folks, let me tell you, that means 100% of the people who took that exam did better than I did. Yeah. Zero is zero. Sure. Zero is zero. They give you 200 points for showing up. And so I was written, I had a sister who was perfect and still is. She would still put newspaper under the cuckoo clock if you gave her the opportunity. I had a brother who is now retired clinical psychologist and quarterback on the football team very well, like voted best looking in his class and all those silly things we used to do yet in yesterday year. Then there was me. So I believed a lie, Wayne, that I was the non-achiever and I think I compensated that for that by being the class clown. Teachers dislike me immensely. I drove one of them right out of the classroom. She never came back, but the kids loved me. And in this book, you tell the story of that one teacher who looked you straight in the eye one day and said, "You can be better." Yeah, she was the first one, Wayne, that ever mentioned that I had skills, not the first teacher that ever said I had skills. Now, keep in mind that my mother, God rest her soul, who lived to be 95 years old, lived to see her youngest son achieve a degree of success in life. But she believed in me and so did my dad. I didn't come from a perfect home, but a message to parents everywhere in this book is, "Hey, step up and believe in your kids." It doesn't mean you snowball the roads of life for them or make excuses for them or anything else, but you still have to exude that basic belief in your child. So when you talk about the possibility of change in a person's life, you know what you're talking about. No, I've lived it. I mean, I've absolutely lived it. And you can read all the shrinky books you want, folks. And you can listen to every DVD, watch every video, and unless you have that basic will to change, ask yourself that question, "What does old self do in this situation? What does new self do in this situation? Nothing's going to change." I say in this book that this book ought to cost $199. You go to a shrink these days, Wayne, and you're going to pay about $175 per year, a little half hour appointment. And they're going to sign you up for several appointments because obviously you have deep seated emotional problems lately. Don't go there, folks. I spent a lifetime telling people when they came in my office, "Hey, my goal is to get rid of you. My goal is to get you out the door and live life with a little reckless abandon, a little attitude that says, "You know, God created me with His help. I can do it." Here's what people need to understand that, you know, you get these kids and they come into earth on this earth without a stitch of clothes on. They're totally dependent upon you. And you mold them. And you know, you teach them at the knee when they're young, and they grow up, and you know, you go through the rolling eyes, and maybe some of them got a little spunk and talk back to you from time to time, and they need some discipline or discipline equals love. But the reality is that they grow up, and what we want them to do is to fly away and do life as it should be lived. And what we're happy about is these five kids that we have love each other, and they love us. It doesn't get better than that, and they're all kids of faith. So we're just extremely pleased, but anybody who knows me knows that I do things personal. I have my own Facebook. People like me have people who do their Facebook for them, and I do my own. No ghost writing for you, huh? No, no. And I'd bang it out all myself. I would admit I've got three editors, and I've learned to use those editors. The editors are great. They're a gift from God. So they do. They know what a dangling participle is. I mentioned that once to a woman, she slapped my face. So there I go, entertaining again, see, it goes back to, and this is what I want people to see, is that indelible imprint that mom and dad put on you in your home, in your birth order, your private logic. Each of us have a private logic. I only count on life when I win, I only count on life when I dominate, I only count on life when I control. Now, when I say that to you, Wayne Shepherd, I'll bet personalities that you've worked with over the years pop into mind. Oh boy, how much time you got? Yeah, the controller, the dominator. I mean, I won't name names, but you know who I'm tempted to name names, but I'll hold back. Yeah, exactly. And so this, this life theme that we have turns out to be a lie. See, I believe the life theme or the, my private logic was, I only count on life when I get attention. Well, you know, if people looked at my feet on Tuesday of this week, I was interviewed in New York by George Stephanopoulos. Good morning, America. Good morning, America. And of course, they look down and they see the striped wild socks. I always wear wild socks, always. You got to have that attention, right? You don't, even though I've grown up and I've sort of gotten by all that, and my life changed, like the Lord through coming to terms with his son, those screens still remain. My litmus test, where I go to New York and I do a show like The View or Fox on Friends or any of them is do I get the jaded cameraman or woman to laugh? That's the test. If I can hear the staff, you know, the crew laughing in the background, then I know that I've connected with people because they've heard everybody. I mean, I'm just a chubby psychologist from Tucson, Arizona, why would they care about me? But so this, this whole idea of unmasking the lie that you live, if you're stuck people today, if you're not in the job that you think you ought to be in and life isn't working out for you and your relationships just tend to fail and you're frustrated, this is a book where you can be your own shrink, figure yourself out, and you can do some social experimentation without a great deal of risk I would add. What I'm saying is, hey, if you see some things, you hear some things I should say that you don't like across them out, modify them. But use this to change your life. I tell people, and they read Lehman books, you might find a page of stuff you just don't agree with at all, rip the page out, crumble it up, you won't hurt my feelings. But use the book to help you get to where you want to get. Most people are held back by their own self-destructive behavior. It's Dr. Kevin Lehman, and by the way, my thanks to oasisaudio.com for their cooperation today. Earlier we talked with Max Lucado, and if you'd like to listen to both of these interviews again or recommend them to someone who may not be tuned in right now, check out our website firstpersoninterview.com. Not only is the audio archive there of past programs, but the schedule of upcoming interviews is also posted, so visit us online at firstpersoninterview.com. And by the way, at that website you can find links to us on Facebook and Twitter. First Person comes to you each week at this time, and sometimes as happened today you may recognize the guests, but sometimes maybe not. Next week we have one of those unsung heroes of the gospel, who's quietly following God's leading and making a huge difference in some people's lives. Alice Tissen will join us to talk about his wheels international next week here on First Person. I hope you'll be listening. Now with thanks to my unsung hero and friend and producer Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepard. Thanks for listening to First Person. [Music]