Karen:         Two conversations we witnessed recently on television were what prompted today’s podcast discussion.

David:         We’re actually grateful for these weekly podcasts because it gives us the opportunity to kind of reflect together on our walk with the Lord and whether we’re still growing in our Christian faith.

Karen:         And we thank you, dear listeners, for joining us and gives us a little more impetus.

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.

Karen:         You told me about the first television conversations that got you thinking.

David:         Okay, I’ll kind of set the scene alright. It was freezing cold outside here in Chicago and then I was channel surfing inside. There was a live studio audience. I guess were two male actors who had gone to the same high school at the same time. I recognized one of the actors due to the commercial he was in, but I didn’t know his name. At any rate, the host of the show asked if the two remembered any stories about the other guy. Without hesitation, one said he was ready and recall a time in school that was funny. It was the other fellow who was being kind-of ridiculed, but it was also a little bit crude. A high school embarrassing situation which a person would just as soon not be remembered for, but it was good for the audience to laugh. Then it was the second man’s turn.

Karen:         Instead, this man told about the other fellow trying out for a part in a high school concert. And the second fellow said something to the effect that his classmate sang like an angel.

David:         He was totally taken aback. He didn’t realize this was an incredible talent he had.

Karen:         Yeah.

David:         And then he went on to express how beautifully the schoolmate sang. Everyone listening wondered where this guy learned to do that they said.

Karen:         So, the second actor extended his own thoughts a little bit more, remembering how incredibly impressed he had been at the time when they went high school together. Then went on to say how his classmate sang even better now than he had when he was younger.

David:         And there was a slight pause because it was like, hey, you’re breaking the rules. You’re supposed to tell a bestie story about me. And it was just quiet. And then the audience began to clap one person and another. And then the sound of clapping all through the audience.

The storyteller as well as the one who was being told the story about, just like a whole unexpected moment. And it was so noticeable because you never see this kind of thing. The whole attention of the audience changed from humor to, wow, that was very nice.

Karen:         This was an example of what we began to recognize was grace being extended. The second man turned the whole atmosphere in that auditorium around because he said something that was good, something that was admirable about his classmate.

David:         Yeah. Now let’s go to this second time that we watched and probably, you know, many, many, many, many people watched it with us. This was the debate between Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. From the very outset, they went after each other. They used strong words. He’s a liar. You can go to this website, see all the lives that he stole and so on and so on.

Karen:         Yeah, they were antagonists. But that’s what our political debates have sort of, I’m going to say, degraded to. What I would love to have seen, just think how remarkable this would have been if there’s something like this that happened. If, let’s say, Nikki Haley, before the debate even began said, now this is a political debate, but I want to begin with something else because no one is all bad or all failure. We like to point those things out into the political process. But here’s something good you need to know about Ron DeSantis.

David:         I really appreciate this about him, and it needs to be said, so I’m going to put it right up front.

Karen:         Yeah, and I know this about him and many of his constituents do as well. And then DeSantis said, “As long as you’re being nice, let me tell you something great about Nikki Haley.” I just think that would have turned the whole aspect of a political debate into something else. It would have been a modeling methodology, which we desperately need.

David:         I don’t know what that audience at the debate would have done. They probably would have clapped as well, saying, “I like this.”

Karen:         Yeah, maybe so.

David:         Something different. Yeah, wow.

Karen:         Graceful. In the past, I remember in political conversations a phrase that is never used today, “My worthy opponent.”

David:         Oh, yeah.

Karen:         You remember that?

David:         Yeah.

Karen:         My worthy opponent.

David:         I do.

Karen:         And they did feel that there were things that were worthy on the other side. So, we’re going to talk about grace on this podcast, and we will confess right now that we had some trouble defining what grace was. We have to look hard at it.

David:         Well, ministers, we usually say it’s an unmerited favor.

Karen:         Yeah.

David:         This is not what you deserve, but this is what you’re going to get.

Karen:         It’s sort of a theological definition, don’t you think?

David:         Yeah, well, how does God act toward us? We are all guilty. He is so beyond us, but He extends grace our way. What is it? It’s favor and it’s unmerited. So that’s a big part of the whole of the Christian message. I think that it can be applied to many, many parts of our lives, including what we’re talking about, just the political scene.

Karen:         So, these podcasts, as we mentioned up at the front of the beginning of this, often help us define what we’re thinking about certain things. And you and I had rather a long discussion on where we have seen grace in our own lives. When it’s been extended to us, who did we look at who were graceful people and what really is the meaning of that word? And are we extending grace now in the present?

David:         So, I ask you to share where you thought you were in this, and I think you’re much better than you’re giving yourself credit for. Because you have extended all your life to different people. Unmerited favor. I’m thinking of Jane, who is kind of an adopted daughter in a sense, not officially, but she has been a part of our family when she first came to the house.

Karen:         A friend brought her to the door. She basically had been a motorcycle gang maw. She had done some street prostitution. She was tight in her personality, very, very wounded, profane. And I just was filled with unaccountable love for her. For a stranger who has a very sketchy history, that has to be a gift of God to have a particular kind of love for someone you’ve never seen before. And so, we invited her into the house, and she basically then came and lived with us for six years. And I learned as much from her as we gave to her, Dave, because I had never encountered someone who had given themselves to evil. At a certain point in her life, she had worshipped wolves, and now her dreams were haunted by these ravenous creatures.

David:         I remember the first time you know.

Karen:         You know, it was terrible. She couldn’t get through a night’s sleep without being awakened by these dreams. So, she invited me to journey with her in the healing process of her life. I learned as much from her in that journey we took together as you and I gave to her.

David:         You gave her grace.

Karen:         But it was grace that I think was beyond my human capacity. I think it was something that came from the Holy Spirit. So that I could give her that love, listen to her for hours, understood what she’s doing, found the right questions to ask her. And we took a journey into healing prayer. I had never participated in before, and I was learning as I went, talking to people, did this kind of spiritual work. It was a huge thing in our lives.

David:         This wasn’t the only time you invited someone to come and live with us.

Karen:         Was this a habit?

David:         You couldn’t say that because I’m only thinking of two other people. But those stories didn’t turn out as well.

Karen:         No.

David:         One of them we realized relatively soon that we were beyond our skills or our gifts of the Lord to be able to help this young woman.

Karen:         That particular gal had psychiatric hospitalization, and she did need skills that were way beyond what we were trained to do or had any background to do.

David:         And the other woman, I don’t know if it was successful or not successful, kind of quasi. She stayed in our lives for a long, long time. At a certain point we lost track of her. But Jane calls regularly.

Karen:         She considers you, her dad.

David:         It kind of melts me.

Karen:         She’ll say, “Hey Dad.”

David:         Yeah, this is Jane.

Karen:         So, I guess we’re saying that when grace is extended, sometimes we’re the greatest recipients of favor as we extend God’s grace. And then sometimes we don’t have enough wisdom as we attempt to extend grace to have it affect the people the way we would like to have it affect them.

David:         I struggle with this area of extending grace sometimes, especially leaders who disappoint me.

Karen:         Yeah.

David:         And there’s a part of me that has a prophetic sense that says this needs to be challenged. And I don’t know if I keep that balance nearly as well. I’m glad for who you are and the gifts that you have been given and that you’re not a prophetess.

Karen:         Certainly, I’m not. So, we begin to look back as we were struggling with this topic between how do we explain what grace is. And we asked the question of ourselves, where did we see grace extended in our past? We came up with a couple examples.

David:         Well, we can only give a couple. There would be numerous times when people have been gracious beyond words on our behalf. One of those, I remember Dr. John Stott, who is now with the Lord, a beautiful English clergyman, highly respected by all people in the world.

Karen:         Time magazine named Dr. John Stott and said that if evangelicals had a pope, he would be it.

David:         And that was a compliment.

Karen:         He was a leader. He raised up leaders all over the world.

David:         We first met him when he came and spoke at the church in the city where we ministered for ten years. But then later in life we met him in California. The scripture reading was one of the dullest times of church services.

So, we decided we would make it more interesting, use several voices or a speech choir or whatever. And we were invited to go to this conference on biblical authority out in California. And Dr. Stott was speaking the same night. We were asked to read the scripture in a creative way.

Karen:         All the people who were going to be on the platform gathered in a certain place before we all marched out to be on the platform. And Dr. Stott came over to me and I was mid-life.

David:         Well, he came to us because I was standing right next to you.

Karen:         Yes, we there and during those years I had a goal if I was going to get dressed, I couldn’t take more than 15 minutes to put make him on fix my hair and get dressed. So, it was it’s kind of that way we need to get to the conference.

David:         Family of four kids in such family for that was quite a discipline.

Karen:         So, he came over to me in his gracious sweet way. He said, “Karen I had forgotten how beautiful you are.”

David:         Wasn’t that nice?

Karen:         It was lovely. It was lovely, lovely, graceful thing for a man his age to do.

David:         That’s who he was. Even talking about him you just say what an incredible individual and how gracious he was. Unmerited favor. I’m not saying you didn’t deserve what he said. I don’t know how many minutes you had taken to get ready for that meeting.

The other person, Karen, was another well-known individual. That’s Dr. Vernon Grounds. Both these gentlemen are with the Lord now. Vernon Grounds was the president of Conservative Baptist Seminary in Denver and he had also come in because the church for we were had a certain amount of notoriety.

Karen:         They were looking to see what we were doing but we would often have them invite them to come and speak. And then we always brought them home with us for Sunday meal.

David:         So, Dr. Grounds came to the house where we were living. When he rang the doorbell our oldest, Randall, who is probably about 10 at the time, came down to see who’s here. Kind of like who’s come to dinner. Dr. Grounds asked Randall a question. Then he asked another one. And I would say my memory is pretty accurate where he must have talked between 10 and 15 minutes to Randall. Just to this 10-year-old. They hit this man going all across the country in church circles. And the weren’t dumb questions. There were good questions. Randall did quite well answering. He wasn’t silly. He was serious, which is kind of Randall’s nature. And I thought to myself, here is this man he’s come to the house and he’s giving his time to my son. What an incredible honor. Oh gracious.

Karen:         You look back on that memory and it still means something to you. It’s not just an incidental memory out of the past. I still have this warm feeling of kindness being extended of gracefulness being modeled not purposely so it’s just who he was. But it has become a standard in my mind when I think of Christian leaders. We’ve had others who came to the house and sat around their table, and they talked about themselves the whole time. We call these the me, me, me, me, me, me, me people. So, there is that as well. But we did not want to be like those people. And so, then you had these other gracious men. I’m sure there were women too. But those stand out in our minds as examples of grace extended that we do want to be like.

David:         There’s this wonderful verse in Scripture, it’s Colossians 4 verse 6.

Karen:         “Let your conversation be always full of grace seasoned with salt so you may know how to answer everyone.” That’s really interesting particularly given the context of those times the gospel was controversial. I’m imagining in those Jewish circles particularly. And so, here we have this out of Scripture, “Let your conversation always be full of grace.” Lovely.

David:         I put it into a sentence. That’s just my habit that I can’t break. And I find that people many times say that’s very helpful. So, here’s how I put it into a sentence. Christians would do well to be known as people of grace. Christians would do well to be known as people of grace. You probably are known that way by many, many people. I don’t know if I’m known that way by many, many people. Some people I’m sure would say, Jane would be one who say, “Oh yeah, yeah, filled with grace. But I am at a place where I’d say I still need to work at that. Work not to remain quiet but to say the gracious word to affirm the person for something that is done that is very beautifully something that is a learning time for me.

Karen:         That scripture is taken from Colossians 4:6. So, if someone wants to write that down and then meditate on it read about grace from Scripture, I think that would be a great Bible study to even take on.

David:         We talked about who have we seen this modeled by. What about ourselves in terms of our lives? And then we’ve also said, Who in Scripture is somebody who is thought of as a gracious person? I’m not sure that I would say the Apostle Paul was a gracious person. And I identify with who he was. He could be very direct kind of put his finger right on your nose. Are you listening to me or not?

Karen:         Probably a prophet too.

David:         Well, I’m not sure.

Karen:         Prophet type.

David:         The two, yeah, probably the prophet type. That would be fine. I would say that’s fine. Then I don’t have to say, “Where do I fit in this?” But I do know that there have been times in my life where I have not been gracious. That wasn’t what I was robed in that given day. And I wish that I were more gracious many times as I look back as to who I was.

Karen:         David, I think one of the things I’ve discovered in this human journey is that, when you have people who you are opposed to such as the debates, we started to talk about, that sometimes a few questions help us understand where people are coming from. And one question when you’re in more of a conflicted conversation is, “What things do you hold dear? Or what are the things that are most important to you?” And when you begin to open people up that way with a few questions, that are not challenging questions, but I want to get to know you better so I can understand you. And if I understand you better, then I may understand this position that you’ve taken that I disagree with.

So, I find when I ask folk to tell me more about how they landed where they are now, or why they’ve taken certain platform, and I’m standing adamantly on it, is at least I have an understanding. And often there will be a painful area in their lives that brought them to those conclusions. Or they have a lot more rationale. When I take the time to get to know what it is for taking, even the political positions that they take these days. But I think what we’re trying to say in this podcast is that this is a time of extraordinary contention that our country according to all analysts is being torn apart. And that if we ever needed a time for people of graciousness to step forward, this is the time. And those politicians have to begin to consider how can we model that, not just don’t throw stones at one another.

David:         Don’t call each other names.

Karen:         Call each other names. How can we model hearing one another and learning from one another. Even when we don’t come to agreement after our conversation. But we know more about our adversaries than we did before. And so, that has put a totally different element to this political conversation than we are seeing now in our American situation.

David:         I extended grace the other night to a person for about an hour by asking questions of a political nature not leading questions at all. Just tell me how you came to the place where you are now, and I didn’t respond in any way except listen very closely. I wanted to make sure the person knew that I was appreciating what was being said. And I think that I would say that’s one of the recent times where I have extended grace. And I was glad to do that. I didn’t have to say now I’ll give you…

Karen:         …where I’m coming from.

David:         I’ll give you the ministerial part. I was trying to think through scripture when we were playing with this topic. Who is someone gracious in scripture so that, in a sense, I can go back and say I have models. One of the names I came up with was Luke. I think Luke made it a special desire of his to be gracious to women.

Karen:         Oh yeah.

David:         He’s the gospel writer who lets you know that women played a big part in what was going on. They come off his heroes.

Karen:         Wow, I haven’t thought about that before.

David:         So, he’s one of those individuals that I’m saying I’m learning from Luke. I want to continue to learn just as I hope people listening to us say, “That’s very interesting.” I wonder if I’m a person who exemplifies grace. Where can I learn, where can I become better at this. And if we pull that off Karen, that’s pretty good.

Dean:          David, you were talking about the Apostle Paul, and I think it’s important to take note of the fact that God teamed the Apostle Paul with Barnabas who was the son of encouragement. So, part of the thing that God had a plan where he was allowing Paul to be that strong confrontational individual and then Barnabas would kind of come along behind him and clean up all the feelings that Paul might have stirred up. That’s really been true in the ministry that God has given you and Karen. I mean you’ve been together so many years now and yet each of you has a role in that relationship. That when you minister together, you’re allowed to be who you are because your partner is there to provide balance. And I think that’s one of the things we need to be aware of. When we are ministering, is there a partner that God has given us in our ministry? We’re not in this by ourselves. We have to recognize that we’re a team. Even in the Godhead itself, God is a team in the Trinity. Each person of the Trinity has a specific responsibility and a specific role to play. Even though the whole concept of the Trinity is quite beyond our comprehension, nevertheless, God models for us the fact that the team approach is probably the best approach.

David:         And it’s so neat Dean. Thank you for sharing. Very, very, very helpful.

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.  If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2024 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois 60187.