David:          A good king wept bitterly. A famous prophet told him to put his house in order because he was going to die. Karen, do you remember the story from Scripture?

Karen:          Oh dear, you would throw that at me. Not right off the top of my head.

David:          I’ll read it for you, okay?

Intro:             Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife, noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:           This is 2 Kings chapter 20, and it reads as follows, “In those days Hezekiah,” that’s the famous king, “became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah, son of Amos, went to him and said, “This is what the Lord says. Put your house in order because you’re going to die. You will not recover. “

Now that’s a strong word and Isaiah of course is a huge name among the prophets. Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, “Remember, O Lord, how I’ve walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.”

And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Before Isaiah had left the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him. “Go back and tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, this is what the Lord, the God of your Father, David says. ‘I have heard your prayer and seen your tears. I will heal you. On the third day from now you will go up to the temple of the Lord and I will add 15 years to your life. And I will deliver you in this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city for my sake and for the sake of my servant David.’”

Karen:          Wow! That’s a turnaround.

David:          Well, that’s a huge turnaround. Souse has military problems and gives him 15 more years. In fact, Hezekiah then said, which a lot of times we do, let me make sure this is what you’re saying.

Karen:          He’s repeating it back to the to the prophet.

David:          Yeah, that’s when he asked for the shadow on the dial to be turned back.

Karen:          As an indicator.

David:          Yeah, as an indicator and it went back instead of going forward went back 10 steps. This is an amazing story and probably it wasn’t the best thing in the world to have happened because after that in those final years of Hezekiah’s life he made some really stupid mistakes. But I think that knowing that I’m going to live 15 years.

Karen:          Sort of thinking you can get away with some stuff. The other thing is the aging process is the aging process and sometimes we’re not as wise or as careful. And the Lord’s plan often is the best plan for our legacy.

David:          Well, Hezekiah had visitors from Babylon coming. He showed them all of his treasures.

Karen:          Was Babylon an enemy country to them at that time?

David:          It was a long far distant away country. And Hezekiah apparently thought those guys are a long way away. We don’t have to worry about them.

Karen:          They’re never going to bother me. Yeah wow.

David:          And Isaiah says you did a dumb thing. All those things that you showed, they’re all going to belong to the Babylonians. And then they’re going to come.

Anyway, this coming year most of the days ahead of us, the Lord willing in August I’m going to turn 86. I don’t know what my future is, but I believe I’m already living on borrowed time. In other words, I have passed the average number of years someone like myself should expect and my high school and college friends, they’re dying rapidly.

Karen:          Yeah.

David:          And the alumni magazine’s coming. Oh man that’s another one. So, for me anyway every new year, such as the one we’ve just entered into, is a gift from the Lord. And God’s special gift of additional years even though we don’t know how many they will be, should be used wisely.

So, I’m in a position where I’ve been thinking a great deal in these days. What is the American church needing to hear from the Lord? It’s kind of a prophetic type of thing.

Karen:          Well, this is a question that you’ve asked of yourself to consider most of your ministering life. I think that the Lord put a burden for the local church on your heart when you were a young, young man. And you were dissatisfied with its structure and the way it was not adapting to reach the contemporary culture that was rising up at that time. And so, I remember a lot of those disaffected conversations you had with friends and fellow pastors, and we moved into the inner city because churches were abandoning those neighborhoods. Neighborhoods would change racially and then the white churches that had been planted there would…

David:          Well, it was the white flight.

Karen:          It was the white flight. Yeah so, we moved back into it, but we did that because of the conversation that you were having with God, I believe at that time is, “What do we need to do to enliven the local church.” And there were a lot of things out of it, and these were conversations that you had with fellow ministers and people who were faithful in their church attendance but were dissatisfied. And out of that conversation then there came a whole process of renewal.

And then you began to teach other pastors. We had an organization called Step 2 where we were stepping alongside other pastors and we’re helping to train them in some of these newer methodologies of preaching, preaching for response…

David:          Worship.

Karen:          Worship that was designed out of the brainstorming of the lay people of the church. I mean it was just a totally different model.

David:          Then I was able to because my uncle… he would just worn out.

Karen:          He had founded the Chapel of the Air, and he was tired.

David:          He was tired yeah. I would say that I found where I belonged. There’s a difference between a minister and a church. You have a pastoral role you play, and I played that, and I knew that distinction but then there’s a more of a prophetic role when you’re talking to the church at large.

Karen:          To a nation.

David:          Yeah. And my uncle had built that ministry, and he was on 500-some stations around the country and I kind of inherited that. Now I was saying where is the American church and that’s a different question to answer than where is this specific church.

Karen:          My local church than when I’m pastoring. Very different.

David:          So anyway, I was in that position where I was saying “What is God wanting to say to the churches of America?”

Karen:          And as you said already in this podcast you had been given a national ministry. It aired on 500 stations daily.

David:          Six days a week.

Karen:          Six days a week and estimated listenership at that time was about two million people a day. So that’s no small platform and you were trying to be responsible then before the Lord to this place where he had positioned you that you hadn’t worked to get it. It just came your way.

David:          I am still thinking that way all the time. This podcast doesn’t reach anywhere near that number of people but I’m saying “What does the Lord want to say to the American church?”

Karen:          Have you come up with an answer?

David:          I’ve been trying to as the year came to a close. And now, we’ve entered this new year. What is the situation with the American church? When you talk about revival you can say well the American church is backslidden. I’m not sure it is. I don’t know that it’s gone that far, and I also think that that’s an antiquated term and it’s a term that sets people’s teeth on edge. If I say the best that I can do, at the moment, is to say I think that the American churches, and here’s the word I’m working with, superficial.

Karen:          What do you mean by that?

David:          Well superficial means surface. I don’t mean depth in terms of profundity. I just mean that the church doesn’t have the high priority that it needs to have if the church needs new life coming to it.

Karen:          So, we’re saying that it’s among one of the many to-do things that’s on the average Christian’s list. And it may not be high on that to-do list either.

David:          It’s still shallow. We’re not saying that everybody is that way but I’m talking…

Karen:          No, or every church is that way but as an aggregate you don’t see an American church that is absolutely challenging culture or changing culture for the better.

David:          Or even speaking to the culture.

Karen:          Or even speaking to the culture, that’s right.

David:          I would say that superficial is the best that I’ve come up with so far and I’m not only interested coming up with where the church is so that people understand but I’m wanting to say what about myself? Being part of a society where the church is superficial has that begun to mark me.  And I want to make sure during this year if the Lord is gracious given another year, I don’t know how many he’ll allow me to have. Am I going counter to that? Is what I’m saying of value? Is it something people should be listening to? Almost is it prophetic if I go back to that word? I’ve been examining myself.

Karen:          Okay. You’re putting yourself under the spotlight of the Holy Spirit to help you see things that you often don’t see yourself. And we get these annoying little nudges in the middle of the night or whenever saying, “What about this area?”

David:          Well, yeah, we know that we are not the great saints of the Lord. Probably they knew that even in the biblical times.

Karen:          Yeah, there’s the humility amongst them all.

David:          Otherwise, God blesses them in such a way they get.

Karen:          Yeah.

David:          It’s just the natural human problem, but I’ve been wrestling with the Lord. I’m saying God for life to be complete, we need to follow hard after you. We need to make you the essential part of our lives and am I good at doing that?

Karen:          Are you the priority in my life? Are your desires the priority? Are they like number six on the list or number 20 on the list or are there priorities when I can get to them after I’ve worked down everything else I have to do?

David:          That’s always a battle.

Karen:          It’s always a battle, isn’t it?

David:          So, for this year where I am, I want to get to know God better. And I have set up a pattern for myself. I get to bed early, and I get up quite early because that’s the quiet time and I like that, and I want to do that even more in the days ahead. But one of the things I want to do is I want to start in my own mind putting on paper what I know God to be. So that over a period of the 365 days I have 365 specific things that I know in terms of God and I’m going to learn to live in the reality of that.

Karen:          These are like attributes or characteristics of the divine. You’re not wanting to repeat yourself when you get midway through the next year.

David:          For example, I think that in this defense sometimes on what I’m reading in Scripture. I’m past the point where the people have said to Samuel, we want a king. We don’t like the idea of a prophet or a judge. Well, he was all that. He was a prophet, judge. He wasn’t king. But Jesus is king. “I am honored to be your servant, you know, and I think of you as the most incredible king that ever has lived on the face of the earth. For the next day as my king, you are totally trustworthy.” So, I’m trustworthy and I’m doing them alphabetically.

Karen:          Oh, you are. You are going out about it. How can you do that?

David:          I’m not going to go ABCD. I will put it in his proper place each time so that I will not duplicate. And probably when I get into August, September, I’m going to say, man, I don’t know. I’m running out of plots here, but I’m going to explore this thing of who I know God to be and praise him in a very special way. God is omniscient. That’s the one I put down early this morning that related to the Scriptures I was reading. He’s all knowing. He knows the past. He knows the present. He knows the future. I don’t know anybody in the world who’s that.

Karen:          Yeah, right.

David:          He is unlike myself. He is far beyond who I am.

Karen:          I have one little idea that just popped up. Sometime in your list making of the attributes of God when you can’t think of one. Then just say, Lord, you tell me who you are. And then often there are things that are revealed that either a more creative way of saying an old characteristic that we all know and have heard for all of our Christian lives. Just another way of looking at another slant. So, I find him to be very creative in that.

David:          Oh, yes, you will do that. So, but I’m looking forward to this. It is becoming meaningful to me even as I’ve gone through just a few days of a given week. I choose to begin each day with personal worship. Worship means to attribute worth to God. And that will be an essential part of my day and my year. And then I also, and this is the harder part for me, I also want to mark each Sunday with a deep-seated conviction that God himself is truly present in his church. And I will do my best to fully participate in the corporate worship that has been planned. Even though, to me, it may seem very superficial, it may not be the kind of music I like. It may be that these are things I learned a long time ago that are being taught. But I’m going to get out of the critic mode, which is just a part of who I am. I analyze everything. I’m going to go to church and I’m going to make sure that I’m involved in what’s gone on and what’s been planned. I’m going to be a worshiper with that church at whatever level it is and whatever level I am. And that will be different because on the way home, instead of me saying…

Karen:          It was a little hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.

David:          Yeah, a little like a pep rally.

Karen:          A pep rally, what’s the difference between the pep rally and, you know, when God moves in and there’s this extraordinary sense of his presence and tears are running down the people’s cheek and then maybe you go into silence and you can actually hear the silence, you know.

David:          Yeah, you can. Yeah, many times in revival, you know that some things happen because it’s very, very quiet and God is present.

Karen:          So, it’s not that we don’t hold that in high value. It’s that we, that you are saying “I need to change my attitude and at whatever church service I am be in it and worshiping to the best of my ability, even though it’s not a framework that is satisfying.”

David:          Yeah, I’m not going to say, “I don’t know any of those songs.” I’m going to say “I’m going to try to learn from those songs and enter into them.” And then that’s going to be difficult for me. I will do my very best. I’m going to make this a good year as far as church is concerned and as far as my worship is concerned.

2022 will be a year when I challenge the superficiality of the American church and especially how that superficiality has marked me, but I will not be the guy who thinks he knows it all.

Karen:          Okay, is that your sentence?

David:          I don’t think it was my sentence, but I do have a sentence. But anyway, I want to not be like Hezekiah, if the Lord gives me extra time, I don’t want to use it foolishly. I want to use it wisely. And I mean, this may sound like kind of dorky as I talk about it, but this is where I am. And I believe that God will use that in a special way in my life. Okay.

God’s special gift of additional years to live should be used wisely. That’s my sentence.

Karen:          Okay, say that once again.

David:          God’s special gift of additional years to live should be used wisely.

Karen:          Okay, that’s great.

David:          Okay, now I said to you that I would like for you to have opportunity, for you to say, “Where are you in terms of this being a year when the Lord lets you finish off one year and starting to give you another year?”

Karen:          Okay, well, I’ll talk about that next to podcasts. Okay?

David:          Okay.

Karen:          That’s my turn then.

David:          Okay, yeah. I think we talk about equally, but this time I think I dominated.

Karen:          Well, it’s your journey that you’re talking about right now. So, that’s not a problem at all. I think that a lot of people who listen to our podcast are in the 50 above years, and so many of us are thinking about these things if I’m given another year of life to live. How do I want to live it for the Lord? So, it encourages those thoughts.

David:          To bring this to a close, I think we’re living in perilous times.

Karen:          Okay, I agree.

David:          I think the country actually is on the brink.

Karen:          Yeah.

David:          And if the country were to fall, like Israel fell, I would say the country is backslidden. It has no love of God. It’s become secular in every way. If democracy would fail, and it could, these are incredibly perilous times. I don’t want to live this year just like I did last year. I want to live this year with the purpose…

Karen:          … and intention.

David:          … and a great desire to be as close to God as I can so that I don’t, when I speak, whether it’s to a group or a conversation, I don’t misrepresent him. I want to be just a very faithful servant who’s walking close. And when I say that I don’t think that is an equal thing because a lot of times what God wants you to say is not what you want to say. You know, it doesn’t make you popular.

But anyway, this is a good year, and I think that we have to look at it soberly, but at the same time, we have to look at it not only in regard to others, but what about me in this whole time? Am I being who you want me to be? Lord, help us. Help us all.

Outro:          You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address, hosts@beforewego.show. That’s all-lower-case letters, hosts@beforewego.show.

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