Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Join host Dennis Rainey and discover powerful stories of everyday heroes who prove that courage isn't the absence of fear—it's taking action despite it. Together, we'll explore life-changing testimonies from battlefield veterans, wounded warriors, and ordinary people making extraordinary choices, including an exclusive interview with Commander Butch Wilmore from the International Space Station.
Practical wisdom for life's toughest battles
Join us as we uncover how real courage transforms marriages, families, and faith. From confronting difficult relationships to making life-altering decisions, learn how everyday people find strength to stand firm when everything screams "compromise."
New episodes weekly
Perfect for: Parents, leaders, and anyone seeking inspiration
🔔 Subscribe for more stories of courageous faith
#CourageousFaith #Inspiration #FaithStories #Leadership #PersonalGrowth
Chuck Colson was known as the hitman in
Richard Nixon's White House. He was the man,
the go to man that he could count on to
get the job done no matter what it was. After
Colson helped Nixon get reelected in 1972,
Colson left the job as counsel to the President and returned
to his old law firm. But he felt empty.
Something was missing. And when he met with one of his old
clients, he immediately saw what that
something was in that other man.
And then I went to Boston one day after I left the White House and
I went back to my law firm, had a
meeting with the president of Raytheon, one of the largest corporations in
America, because I was once again to be their counsel. I'd been counsel before
I went to the White House and I was coming back to be counsel again.
And he, Tom Phillips, the President just seemed
so different. He was calm and he was peaceful, and we
had a great conversation. And he started asking me about me and my
family and how I was weathering in Watergate. I said, tom, you've changed what's happened
to you? He said, yes, I've accepted Jesus Christ and committed my life to him.
He kind of looked away when he did that, almost like he was embarrassed to
say it. But he shocked me. I mean, I took a firm grip on the
bottom of the chair. I never heard anyone say something like that that boldly.
I'm Dennis Raney with inspiring, courageous faith,
and you're going to hear a story today, a
compelling story, one of the best I've ever heard of
redemption, and I've heard a lot of them is about a
young man who was involved in the Watergate scandal
back in 1972 through 74.
He was working for the White House and with full knowledge and
direction of President Richard Nixon and his key staff,
committed federal crimes. Federal crimes
for which he was imprisoned for a number of years because he tried
to cover them up. One of the key figures in the scandal was
Chuck Colson, but his life took a different turn.
I remember hearing about his conversion in prison
when he made it public that he had received Christ as his savior and
Lord. Like many others back then, I had
some skepticism whether this was truly real. But
sure enough, Chuck Colson was born again. He was
a new creation in Jesus Christ. After spending
seven months in prison, that experience led him
to start Prison Fellowship, which was one of the most significant
ministries to prisoners around the world. He wrote a book
called Born Again, which became a nationwide bestseller.
I met Chuck Colson a number of years ago when he
Came to Little Rock to be on my radio show, Family Life Today.
And we did an interview with Chuck. But
after we did the interview, we invited him to go to my house and
have my famous blackened
salmon dish. And I told Chuck I knew he had
his own recipe for fish that he
liked. It was Chilean sea bass. And I said, I'm sorry, Chuck,
yours is in second place to mine. Come to my house tonight and
you'll find out why. So he did. We had a delightful meal.
And by the way, just the stories he told about the White House
and what it was like to work there during the Nixon administration
were fascinating. But after he finished his
blackened salmon meal, he shook his head and he said, you know,
Dennis, my Chilean sea bass is really
good, but your blackened salmon is right up there with
it. And he had promised me
to get together with me later on
in South Florida. But I'll tell you about this a bit
later. Chuck had a more important meeting.
Now listen to this. This broadcast with
my co host, Bob Lapine, where we interviewed Chuck and
heard the story of God's redemptive work in his.
You write in your book called the Good Life, you
mentioned that this book is like looking in a rear view
mirror. Yeah, it is. And you're looking back over
how you describe a tumultuous life. And you know,
if you would have said that to me 25 years ago, Chuck, I'd
have said, well, yeah, maybe you, because of where you came
from, being with Nixon and in the White House
and going to prison and all the fallout of making
national news with a crime. But you know what?
Now I understand what you mean. Life is
tumultuous. And looking back over it, we can live a
good life if we have our hope in the right place.
Yeah, it's true. Everybody thinks that you can go through life
and it's a breeze. People who haven't had a
major crisis in life, people who haven't fallen on their face, just have
to wait for their turn because it will happen. You think you've got
life all together, the world rolls over on top of you. There's a scene that
I think really sets the stage for your book. And
it's early, early in the book, but it tells the story of how
you got together with a group of people and announced your conversion. Said there was
polite applause and you were near some bay or some
sound, and a man was.
I love the way you described it. He was leaning back with a
cocktail in his hand and he basically said,
Mr. Colson, as you can see, all of us here have lived a good life.
We have it all. It was evidently people who owned yachts and
three and four homes around the world. It was Hope Sound in Florida, which is
one of the watering spots for the truly rich and famous and wealthy from all
over the world. And this woman, who's a lovely, beautiful Christian
woman, took her backyard, which looks over the bay,
and the bay was full of beautiful 70, 80, 100 foot
yachts. And she put a tent out and she had a five o' clock party.
And everybody came in their white dinner jackets and long gowns because they were heading
off to different parties for the evening. And I gave my testimony
because she had arranged it this way. I would give my
testimony and then take questions and answers. I gave my testimony and most people were
looking away or they had this studied indifference about them. They didn't
want to appear to be affected by it. All the questions were then about Watergate,
Nixon, the presidency, prison.
And just as it was, getting ready to get over. It was not
an easy experience. Just as it was about to end,
this man leaning against the tent pole, legs crossed, cocktail in one
hand, looks at me and says, Mr. Colson, you had this dramatic experience
going from the White House to prison. But what are you going to say to
the rest of us here? He said, you can see. And he sweeps his hand
over, looking at the bay. You can see that we really, we have the good
life. We don't have these kind of problems. I said, well, you may not
have had them yet. You will. If there's anybody here who's really had a
life without problems, I'd sure like to talk to him afterwards. Because everybody
has their share of problems. And if you don't now, you will when you're lying
on your deathbed. And all of these things will have no meaning to you because
you know your life's about to end. It was like letting air out
of a bellows. It just whoosh. You could feel people
exhaling. There wasn't a sound. Nobody applauded.
The hostess got up and said, well, make yourselves comfortable and Mr.
Colson will stay and answer questions. And I had a stream
of people and my wife did as well, right? And we did a dinner that
night coming up telling me my son is on drugs and I can't find
him and my husband's got four mistresses. I don't know how to deal
with it. I mean, it was just a never ending series of problems.
There's one study I cite in the book that finds
that empirically finds that People can
become content and happy middle class lifestyle. Money
in excess of that doesn't do anything. It does not increase their
happiness by any measure and very often creates
unhappiness. You know, there is a generation
of our listeners who really
have never heard the story of how you came to faith in Christ. So
to set the stage for how this book has come about, how your
Ecclesiastes began to be
written, take us back to the White House.
You were working for President Nixon, had one of the most
prestigious jobs there. You were, you were a powerful man,
an attorney. You and your wife Patty
were raising your family at the time. Were you counsel to the President? Was
that your special counsel to the President? Yes, and I was in the
office. Matter of fact, my office was immediately next to his, in his
working office in the Executive office building. And we were very close. I
was one of the four or five people closest to the President. I really
came up with a strategy for the 1972 campaign, which was a landslide
victory for the President, historic landslide victory as a matter
of fact. And when the election
was over that night, as a matter of fact,
when the voting was taking place, Nixon had me and Bob Haldeman,
just two of us, in his office. We sat there until 2 in the morning.
Patty and my kids were in the next morning office waiting for me.
And he's toasting me with all the vote results coming in and
talking about the fact that I've made his presidency and I can do anything
I want, win the cabinet, go
practice law. And I'd make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, which
I'd done before I'd gone to the White House. So I really had life
made. And the next morning I woke up feeling miserable.
And for two or three months I would sit in my office and look out
over the beautiful manicured lawns of the South Lawn of the White House
and think about, boy, this is pretty good, you know, grandson
of immigrants comes to this country, rises to the top,
earns a scholarship to college. I've been a success at everything I ever done
and here I am and what's it all about? And had this
incredible period of emptiness. And then I went to Boston one day after
I left the White House and I went back to my law firm,
had a meeting with the president of Raytheon, one of
the largest corporations in America, because I was once again to be their
counsel. I'd been counsel before I went to the White House and I was coming
back to be counsel again. And he,
Tom Phillips, the President just seemed so Different.
He was calm and he was peaceful, and we had a great conversation.
And he started asking me about me and my family and how I was weathering
in Watergate. I said, tom, you've changed. What's happened to you? He said,
yes, I've accepted Jesus Christ and committed my life to him. He kind of
looked away when he did that, almost like he was embarrassed to say it. But
he shocked me. I mean, I took a firm grip on the bottom of the
chair. I'd never heard anyone say something like that that boldly. Now, wait a
second. You hadn't grown up in the church then? Oh, no. I'd been in church
twice a year, if that, and would say I was a Christian because I
grew up in America and it's a Christian country and I wasn't Jewish, so I
must be a Christian. I had no idea what a Christian was, no clue.
And he said to me, I've given my life to Jesus Christ. It was
shocking words, but over those next several months, I began to
think about that conversation and wonder what he really meant and why
he was so peaceful and why his personality had changed
so dramatically. And so in the summer of 1973, in the
darkest days of Watergate world caving in, I went back and spent an evening
on his porch of his home outside of Boston. Hot
August night. And he witnessed to me, told me what had happened to him, told
me his story, an amazing story. And he
also read to me a chapter out of C.S. lewis book, mere Christianity, about the
great sin. The great sin, pride. And
it was me Lewis was writing about. And I realized my life, I thought, was
idealistic. I was trying to do all these things for my family. I was trying
to serve my country. It was all about me and it was
pride. And I didn't give in. He wanted to pray with me and
he led a prayer, but I didn't. You resisted. I
resisted, sure. I'm too proud. Big time
Washington lawyer, friend of the President of the United States. You didn't want to
bow to anybody. That's right. And I went out to
get into my automobile and start to drive away and got
about 100 yards and couldn't, had to stop the car. I was crying too hard.
Called out to God, I said, come into my life. If this is true,
I want to know you. I want to be forgiven. And that
was the night that Jesus came into my life. Nothing's
been the same since. Nothing can ever be the same again. The world all scoffed,
as you guys noted at the beginning of the program. But it was okay.
I persevered, and my faith really sustained me through prison.
And then I saw a mission in life. And, of course, that's the great paradox.
One of the things I talk about in this book is that everything about life
is a paradox. It's not the way it appears. And
we get this idea about what's good in life, but what turns out to
be best for us is the thing we least expect or maybe don't want.
The greatest thing that ever happened in my life was going to prison. Thank God
for Watergate. Thank God for what happened to me, because I went through this.
I've discovered what life is really all about. And that's what I write it in
here, basically, what I've discovered life is all about.
You actually said that in a 60 Minutes interview. I did.
And Mike Wallace, it stunned him that you said that. Thank
God for Watergate. He stopped the interview that was on the 20th anniversary of Watergate.
And he was sitting on my porch at home. He brought his camera crew, and
Mike and I had been pretty good friends, actually, through the years. And he was
sitting there, and I said, yeah, I thank God for Watergate. He
just. He was at a loss for words. And they stopped. And there
was. When you saw that on the screen, there was a break at that point
because he. He didn't know how to respond to that. Your spiritual
malaise, though, really came before Watergate was a news story. Oh,
yeah. Yeah. It was the fact that I'd done everything, and I was 41 years
old. I ended up in the office next to the president. I grew up in
very humble circumstances. I earned scholarships. I went into the Marines,
became the youngest company officer for a brief period in the Marine Corps,
youngest administrative assistant in the United States Senate. Went through law school
at night, which was a tremendously difficult
thing to do. And, you know, here I am. I've done everything, built a law
firm, great success, and I couldn't see what life was about.
You know, you get to the point, is this all it is? There's got to
be more to life than this. And I think every human being arrives at
that point. When they do, a lot of people will
go and take a drink and try to make that feeling go away, or they'll
take some pills or they're getting drugs, or they'll go have an
affair. But there are also nagging questions
in the life of every human being. And I think what we Christians have to
do today, I think it's really a difficult period because we live in a time
what's called postmodernism, which means there is no truth, everything
is relative. You can't trust anything you read because all
it is is the opinion of the person who wrote it. So there's no standards,
no yardsticks, nothing to measure your life by. It's pure drifting in the.
And what I'm saying to people is, yeah, that's where the secular
world is. And if we hit them with a Bible, they're going to turn away.
They're just going to say, here comes one of these people preaching at us, or,
this is the Bible Belt. But if you start talking about the meaning of their
lives and where they're going to find fulfillment in life, you. Can engage them well,
and we can be seduced as believers by the cultural message
which says you will find meaning and purpose and fulfillment. I think materialism
is. Is the greatest seductress of our day, don't you?
Absolutely. And it gets into the church. It seeps into the church.
It's almost impossible for it not to affect Christians because you
can't turn on the radio, look at a billboard, pick up a
newspaper magazine. So we Christians
absorb all this stuff, and then we kind of give it a little
bit of a holy varnish by saying, well, we're really Christians. And,
you know, Sunday morning at least I'm going to be devoted to Christ.
So we get affected by this. Yeah, we got to look at ourselves, at our
values. Chuck, there's a scene that you paint
vividly in your book. You'd just been picked up by the
federal marshals. You're being taken to this
prison that was anything but
like the White House. I mean, you describe it well of how
musty, and it wasn't a country. Club like everybody
said it was. Well, you know, it's interesting. People say that about prisons,
minimum security prisons, but I've never found anybody trying to get in.
You describe that scene, though, of driving along with those federal marshals.
You just left your family, and you describe
a peace, a lack of fear.
Now, I have to ask you, was it your newfound faith in Christ that
was the basis of you moving toward three years of
incarceration? Yes. You go through
something like Watergate, where you pick up the newspaper every day and hear these charges
made about you and headlines and screaming headlines, people
saying outrageous things. You're in the middle of a battle for your life.
It just totally absorbs you. It's very hard on the family.
And so all of a sudden, I've made the decision. I pled guilty. I got
my sentence I'm going off to prison. And
on the ride to the prison, I was kind of, well, I'm relieved it's
over. In fact, I slept. First night in prison, I slept better than I slept
at home in months because I knew what I had
to do and I knew what I was going to have to face. I knew
it was going to be tough, but I knew that Jesus would sustain me. Do
you remember when Timothy McVeigh was executed
and he read and as his final statement in life,
the poem Invictus, which ends with, I am
the captain of my own destiny?
Do you think most people think that that
is what life is all about? Well, I think a
lot of people would say that because I would have said that before I was
converted. And that's a statement of
pride. And in the case of Timothy McVeigh, it was insufferable
arrogance. He was captain of his own ship, master
of his own destiny. He could control life. That was Nietzsche, the
will to power. You can will yourself to this position.
And a lot of people imbibe that because they think that's what they're supposed to
think deep down inside. No, they know they need things. One
of the great studies I cited in this book was done at Dartmouth,
and it discovered that human beings are wired, literally
the way we are genetically disposed, the way our brains work. We are
wired to connect. In other words, we don't live alone.
We live in community. We live with family. We live with friends. We live in
a nation. And secondly, we're wired for God.
We are actually searching for a meaningful relationship with the one
who created us, whether we acknowledge it or not. And most people, out of pride,
won't acknowledge it, just like I wouldn't. But, oh, I was so
desperately hungry. And as soon as I let those defenses go, that guard go
down that night in the driveway in that flood of tears,
sure, it came to me. So I'm trying to walk people through that same
question. In this book, reason can only take us so far.
Faith is what finishes the connection between the human
soul. Exactly. And God. And what
you've attempted to do is exhort us to come to the truth.
And one of the things I want you to comment on, you just alluded to
it briefly a few moments ago. You say that today there is no such
thing as reality or capital T, truth
in our culture today. And I think for the average mom and dad who are
raising kids, I don't think they realize, Chuck,
what a battleground this is around truth. This is
the battleground. This is the Battleground. Is there any
reality? Is there any ultimate reality? Or is it just
opinion? Yes. Is it just your preference versus my preference? And
that's what they're being taught in college. Look at popular culture. The
Matrix, the film, the Matrix. What the story of the Matrix is all
about is that life is nothing but the projection of
a computer. And we're simply the product of a computer
projection on a screen. Or they get Eastern religions. Eastern
religions mean that we don't really exist. We are just a dream in the mind
of God. Or they get to a campus or
high schools and they're taught that we arose as single plant cells out
of the primordial soup. So how can there be any. The element reality
is that we're an accident. Or the element reality is we don't exist.
So only one way of understanding life, that is we were
created by God, gives you an anchor in ultimate reality.
The job is to find it. But, Dennis, you hit the nail on
the head. You get to the point where you can prove it.
I've gotten so convinced of the truth of the
biblical worldview as applied in life against any other worldview, that my
great dream, as I write in the Good Life, my great dream is someday
to be able to stand in the Supreme Court, every lawyer's dream, and argue his
case in the Supreme Court. And I'm convinced, if I could argue the case that
the biblical worldview is the only one that conforms to reality, that I would win
that case hands down, intellectually, by reason, by arguments,
by logic. But that doesn't get you to God.
As a matter of fact, sometimes the more you know, the tougher it gets.
I tell a story in the book about a professional man, a lawyer, who came
to me and said he had studied everything, studied all Calvin's Institutes from start to
finish, finished, read all the great theologians. But he said,
I'm not saved. I said, well, you got to give yourself in faith. He said,
but I can't, because I can't prove that this is all true. He had gotten
so wrapped up in the mind that he lost the capacity for faith. He got
by it. But the fact is,
the case for God is, to me,
incontrovertible. But it doesn't get you a
relationship with God. That's why the last chapter of this book is about faith
as the step we have to take. And people say, well, I don't want to
profess faith because I have doubts. Good. If you
didn't have doubts, faith wouldn't be required. If God were as obvious as the tree
next to the tree in the yard. You wouldn't have to have
faith. And if you don't have faith, you can't love him. That's a great quote
that you've reflected on many times from Tom Skinner, right? Yeah. In fact,
I don't know if you've heard Tom Skinner's, but Tom was
chaplain of the Washington Red state. Oh, I knew Tom, sure,
for a number of years and had an impact in my life. And he gave
me a quote. It goes like this. I spent a long time trying to come
to grips with my doubts when suddenly I realized I better come
to grips with what I believe. I have since moved from the
agony of questions that I cannot answer to the
reality of answers that I cannot escape. And
it's a great relief. Well, that's a great quote.
What happened, Chuck? Is Tom Skinner in that quote? Hit
my life at a time of doubt, at a time of
spiritual searching and seeking, like you're talking about in your book.
You know, God works in mysterious ways to get our
attention. In fact, I kept reading your book and I
kept saying, you know, Chuck's using all these tough
circumstances, prisoners, people
suffering unjustly, and your daughter, a single parent
raising an autistic child. And I reflected
back on just a couple of days ago of walking
into a children's hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas,
where there was a father who had,
along with his wife, gone to have pizza with their four kids.
The night before 6 o' clock, they're driving down the
highway in northwest Arkansas and a
guy evidently goes to sleep at the wheel. They hit one another, both
going 55 miles an hour. The mother,
who was pregnant, three months pregnant at the time, was killed.
The son in the back seat had both legs broken.
The seven year old boy banged his head and
he was in children's hospital having been airlifted there. And
I stood beside his body and I wept. I just
wept. But I left that room to go back
out to talk to a 28 year old father who is now a
widow. And I put my hand on his forearm
and his mother who had flown in was there and they asked
me to pray. And I thought later of the simplicity
of that act of acknowledging that there
is a God, that you know what, we are not
in charge and he is. And I thought, what would someone who has no
God, who has no faith, how would they walk
into that waiting area? You couldn't. What do you do in the waiting room
if you don't know God? Is a great question, Dennis. That's
very Powerful. And I can
really connect with it. Because after this book was finished, just when it was finished,
I was thinking, boy, my life is really. I got things together now. You know,
this is good. I've got this book finished, things are really going well. And I
hear my son has spine cancer. 51 years old.
And it was absolutely shattering. I think the hardest thing anybody can ever face is
having a child whose life is in peril
three weeks later. My daughter, who's so precious to me, Emily,
has a melanoma on her leg. So two out of three kids have cancer at
the same time. Now, at first it was
real tough because I thought, God, how could you let this happen to
me? But eventually it hit me,
through a series of circumstances that this is part of living,
this is part of faith, that I'm a very visible public witness.
How do I handle something as tough as this? And I also
realized that if two years ago somebody had said to me, you're going to have
two kids with cancer at the same time, I would have probably jumped off a
bridge. I couldn't imagine that. A pain that would be unbearable.
And yet I've discovered stronger faith through it and
stronger faith with my daughter. My son, the one who has the
cancer in the spine, is not a believer. He was freshman at Princeton
when I was converted. Took a lot of razzing. He's got much more of a
scientific mind, and he's been hard to get to. I think he's going to
get there. But this is when your faith is put
to a test. Is this faith real? You find that out in the hospital
waiting room, and I found out it's real. I'm more convinced today of the reality
of Christ than ever. You know, it's interesting to hear
you say that because you're a very bright
intellectual man, well
educated. You continued to study the world religions
throughout the scope of your life. And yet as you
move toward the last phase of your life, you're more
convinced. Oh, yeah, much more. Less. I remember many
years ago hearing Malcolm Muggeridge. I don't know how many of our listeners will remember
that name, but he was a great, great writer, great journalist
who converted late in life. And he said, I'm more convinced of the
reality of Jesus Christ than I am of my own reality. And he
was a colorful guy, white hair, going all over the place, and he'd
always have a wonderful chuckle. I was with him once for tea, and he was
talking about this, and I thought, well, he's an old man at that point. He
was the same age I am now. And I
think I said this is a bit of hyperbole. You know, it isn't.
The spiritual world actually animates the physical world, so I think it's right. I
think we're more convinced of the reality of Christ than I am of my own
reality. And the more I study, the more convinced I get.
You conclude your book talking about how
the good life ultimately ends in death, which can
result in new life. And
throughout the book, you use illustrations of people who. Who
illustrate the good life positively and negatively.
And as you talk about the end of a matter that is
death, you use two illustrations. One is a
funeral you and I attended where Bill Bright was honored for his
life. And another illustration you use
was a funeral neither of us attended because there was none. John
Ehrlichman, a Watergate figure. Just quickly
contrast John's life with Bill's
life. Well, John Ehrlichman I went back to see
when he invited me to. When he was in a nursing home in
Atlanta. Everything had collapsed in his life. He'd been through three marriages. His family
abandoned him. He had nothing. He was penniless and powerless.
Once one of the most powerful men in the world. And he
wanted to see me because a doctor had told him he had renal failure. He
was on a kidney dialysis. A doctor told him that he could get a shot
of morphine and put himself out of misery. I was shocked. I
spent an hour talking about the dignity of life and the meaning of life.
I don't know whether it sank in or not. A friend of mine went back
and prayed with him, and hopefully he received Christ. I'd like to think he did
before he died. But he died alone in a nursing home
with nobody around him, having given up on life.
I can't think of a more despairing story, and I tell it as a
tragic story because he was such a good man until
the collapse came in his life. And we said earlier, what happens to you
doesn't matter. It's how you react to what happens to you. Well, he reacted badly
to what happened to him in the fall of Watergate. Contrast that with
Bill Bright. And I remember being with you at the funeral, Dennis, and
what a great experience that was. What a joyous day that was for Bill's celebration
of his life. But Bill, when he learned he had
pulmonary fibrosis, which is one of the most difficult ways to
die. You're slowly suffocating, and it's agonizing death.
And the doctor told him how bad it was going to Be. And Bill said,
praise the Lord. This is what God wants. Throughout that two, three
year period that Bill knew he was dying, maybe the most productive period in
his ministry. He wrote all kinds of things, did kinds of videos.
I'd go see him in his apartment. He had the oxygen strapped to him,
and he never was without a smile and always giving me ideas. And here's
something you can do in the ministry. He was an extraordinary man.
And when he died, Vonnet was with him and whispered to him, it's
all right. And he turned his head and he died peacefully. And we have to
know that if you're going to live a good life, it contemplates a good death.
It contemplates facing it with equanimity because you know you're going to be with the
Lord and dying with grace to
the extent you can. Obviously, some people are in terrible pain,
but Bill Bright set the gold standard for me. He really did. He showed us
how to live and. How to die and how to die. There may be a
man or a woman listening to this broadcast, perhaps a boy
or a girl who goes, you know what? It's time for me to
have that faith experience that you talked about where
you had to pull the car off to the side of the road and receive
Christ. Would you explain to them what they need to do just
at their point where they are right now, of how they can connect with God
and know they're forgiven all their sins? It's maddeningly simple.
And the problem with it is that people think there's got to be more to
that. I've got to do some good works. I got to do something to show
that I'm a good person. I'm really not. My life is a mess right now.
I'll clean up my life first before I come to God. Wrong.
You can't clean up your life. You're incapable of cleaning up your life. And God
doesn't want you to even try. What he wants you to do is surrender.
The humblest possible surrender. Get rid of your pride, which is the great
enemy, and simply say, lord Jesus, I want you in my life.
Forgive me my sins. Let him worry about cleaning him up. When I
came to him, I had a ton of sins. And there were some he could
immediately erase, the some he had to work on with me for a while.
And that's part of the process of sanctification. It's a joint process between us and
between God. But what it takes is a simple act of faith,
recognizing that your doubts are a good thing. I
loved what you said about Tom Skinner. That was a marvelous quote. Your doubts are
a good thing because if you didn't have doubts, you wouldn't take God seriously and
you wouldn't need God. We need him because he
settles the question for us. And he's made
it so easy for just us to turn to him, as long as we
are genuinely repentant and ask him to come in and take. Our
lives, and he'll take us out of word at that point and make us
a new creation in Christ. You know, people say, does God answer prayers? He
answers the prayer of every single person who says, jesus, take me.
And that puts you on the path for the good life, doesn't it? It does,
yeah. That is the good life.
That's amazing. To me, the story of Chuck Colson
is one of tremendous courage
and definitely courageous faith. Here's a man who had
achieved so much and was so full of himself
and yet emptied himself and gave his life to Christ to
go and work with prisoners and became a world leader
in prison ministry. Chuck was. Was a
hero of mine. I don't know why he liked me,
but I liked him and we clicked and we talked on
numerous occasions and. And as
time went by, he had invited me to come to
South Florida where he lived and have his, as I mentioned, his
Chilean sea bass, but begrudgingly say
this, but I can't really say it that way. He had a more important
appointment with God in heaven. He died.
And he had just been with our speaker team that speaks at the weekend,
remember marriage getaways, about
50 couples there in South Florida. He had spoken to them and
talked about going the distance in ministry
and had their ultimate respect as a
leader. And at over 80 years of age, he
was still clicking on all eight cylinders. There
wasn't anything retired about him. He was a great
leader and also a great friend. And I
miss being able to call him and ask his opinion on things. I
didn't do it often, but I. I did do it enough that he was a
trusted source of wisdom and advice. Looking back on
it, Chuck, as a fellow believer,
was a hero of the faith. A true
courageous man of God who followed Christ
all the way to the finish line. A lot of people were
laughing at his conversion, really questioning it, but they
didn't laugh for long because Chuck was so filled with
credibility and authenticity that they couldn't
deny what they had seen in his life. Chuck Colson,
if you're listening in heaven, we miss you. But thanks for
your work here and thanks for ultimately being a
guest on Inspiring, Courageous Faith, which you
demonstrated so well. And if you like this
broadcast, I'd like to encourage you to like it,
to subscribe, rate it, review it, share
it with another believer or with a bunch of believers.
I think his story needs to be told. There's a lot of people today
who do not know who Chuck Colson is, and that's too bad, because
he was a true remarkable hero of the faith.
Thanks for joining us. Hope you'll be back again for another
edition of Inspiring, Courageous Faith.