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Neurosurgeon and award-winning author Dr. W. Lee Warren, MD delivers daily prescriptions from neuroscience, faith, and common sense on how to lead a healthier, better, happier life. You can’t change your life until you change your mind, and Dr. Warren will teach you the art of self brain surgery to get it done. His new book, Hope Is the First Dose, is available everywhere books are sold.
Well, friend, we're back. It's Sunday afternoon on the riverbank here in North
Platte, Nebraska, and that can only mean one thing. It's Tuesdays with Tata.
How are you doing, Tata? I'm well. How are you? I'm doing really well.
It's a beautiful day here in Nebraska. Yes, it is.
Except we don't have any sunshine today. It's a little bit cloudy.
We had a great time at worship and good time having breakfast with our friends.
It's been a good day so far.
Yes. Now we get to talk about going all in. Yes.
We're still talking about going all in. That's right. All in,
all of us. When people hear this, it's going to be the 20th,
which is a big day in our family.
It's the 11th anniversary of the day we lost our son, Mitch.
That was kind of an all-in moment for our family, wasn't it? Yes, it was.
So, friend, we're with you. We're feeling you. If you're in that time of a massive
thing or something difficult in your life, we're here with you.
We can just tell you, Tata and I both walked a lot of that ground,
and the only way out of it is through it, isn't it? Absolutely, absolutely.
And I've said this before, but one of the things that I often think about is,
and some of the work that I did in the past, I did many, officiated many funeral
services at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, which is a military cemetery.
And the first thing that I said was that not only do I understand how you feel,
but I know how you feel. Yeah.
Because Patty and I have walked this way before.
That's right. Our son is resting there. That's right, you've lost two children.
One of them's buried at Fort Sam.
James, yeah, that's right. Well, so we just wanted to extend that to you,
friend, if you're in the earlier phases than we are of that sort of situation in your life.
We feel you, and we're with you. We notice you. We see you, praying for you.
And we just want you to know that there comes a time, and it's not early in
the grief process, but there comes a time when your heart starts to tell you
that it's time to try to get your life going again.
Well, what happens to you is, and someone said this a long time ago,
that time heals everything.
I'm not sure that I believe that. Yeah. Totally. But what happens to you over
time, the pain isn't as severe.
Yeah, and you can start to see other things besides it. That's right.
That's right. Your vision isn't clouded. That's right, as much.
And you start to be able to see that there's still good, there's still light,
there's still hope, there's ways to move forward.
So when you're at the time, at the place,
when it's time to do that, you need to go all in at
getting your life back and one way to do that is to find purpose
in the pain that you're suffering to give it
some meaning or some purpose and so we just wanted to
acknowledge that put our knee on that holy ground that you're absolutely and
the thing that that and I keep I keep mulling over in my own mind is and I think
it's attributed to CS Lewis that he said that no one had told him though that
grief was more like fear it felt so much like fear, that's right.
Yeah, that was in A Grief Observed, the first line of that great book.
Yeah, yeah. No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear.
That's exactly right, Tata. Yes.
Exactly right. Well, what are we gonna talk about today? We're all in,
what are we gonna talk about? Talk about Esther.
Esther from the Old Testament. Yes. Good story.
And I'm using the English Standard Version that I still, I've mentioned that before, but...
This is an amazing story, and I'll give our listeners time to get to that.
It's right after Nehemiah and before Job, so it's situated right between those
two groups, between those two prophecies that were astounding,
and the event that happened to Job as well.
They talk about all in as well. Yeah, no kidding.
But Esther begins when we're talking about, And the scholars that I've read
think this is King Darius that they're talking about.
And the setting is that the people of Israel, they're immersed into the Babylonian kingdom.
They're scattered throughout the kingdom. And Nebuchadnezzar has since died.
But think about the power that Darius had.
He reigned from India to Ethiopia.
Wow. 127 provinces. Wow. Probably 127 countries.
Yeah. But he was a powerful king at that time.
And one of the things that he always did after, and I'm sure,
I'm guessing this is probably after the summer campaigns,
that he would have all of his leaders in for a feast, which lasted 180 days.
Wow. Can you imagine that? No, half a year.
Just they come in and celebrate what they had done. And during one of these
events, and his wife and the queen at that time was having, she would have the
women at celebration as well.
But at one of those celebrations, he called for the queen. She refused to come.
Absolutely said, I'm not coming. And I don't know what was going on there, but he was very angry.
And what prompted all of that, and this gives you an insight in how they did
things and the power that they exerted.
The people that were at this celebration, they said, you've got to do something
about this king because all of the women will start acting like the queen.
That's right. And they'll rebel against their husbands.
And so the king issued some kind of a declaration that said it made it a law,
which was irrevocable in the
eyes of the people, that they couldn't treat their husbands that badly.
When the husband said, come, he's meant to come. You gotta come,
yeah. And when he said go, go.
So he banished his queen. and so
at that time so interesting that
it starts talking about Mordecai that he and
for some reason I had it in
my mind that he was Esther's uncle but he was her cousin but he adopted her
so I'm guessing she was a young girl but she was Jewish but he told her not
to tell anybody but Esther was among the people,
among the women that were selected to be candidates for the Queen.
And the King was very enamored with her when he saw her because she was very beautiful.
She was, and she was very attractive to him.
But some time passed and ultimately she became the Queen.
But at the same time, Haman, he had rose to power in the king's entourage some way or another.
But anyway, he convinced the king to issue a proclamation that all the Jews to be exterminated.
Wow. Because he said that they followed their own law and they disregarded the law of the king.
Wow. So, and I'm not sure that that, I don't know how he skewed that,
but he made it look like them, they made them look very bad. Yeah.
And so the king issued another proclamation that it was okay to kill the Jews.
Wow. And they couldn't fight back.
But remember, Mordecai had told Esther not to reveal her nationality.
Yeah. not to reveal that she was a Jewish person.
And he told her that she needed to go in and talk to the king.
And she said, I can't do that.
He hasn't called for me for 30 days. And anyone that goes in there without him
calling you, it will be killed. That's right.
Unless he extends the scepter to you. That's right. And you touch it.
And so what what happened was that esther said
okay i will let us pray about that and
so she was said let's do it let's have a fast three days
and let's pray about it call every jewish person
that you know to a fast and a prayer pray for us and she said i will do the
same thing and i'll ask my attendants to fast and i will pray as well so so
she had some she had some kind of a group of women that were part of her attending her.
So that's what she did.
And finally, and one of the lines that stays with us is what Mordecai said to Esther.
You were born for this, for right now. For such a time as this. That's right.
For such a time as this. That's right. You were made for that.
And so we have to stop and think a little bit about, I'm sure she had to be
afraid. because the king had already issued a proclamation that said all the
Jewish people would be killed.
And here her cousin, Mordecai, is asking her to go into the king's presence
and plead on their behalf.
Well, a long story short, there were several...
Esther did that. She went into the presence of the king and he extended the
scepter to her. That's right. And she touched it.
And it was so interesting to me, the things that the king said.
You see the Lord, if you spent more time in this than we're going to do right
now, you could see the Lord's hand in every event. That's right.
Not one thing took place without the Lord's blessing.
Because he told Esther, the king did, why are you so downcast? Why are you so sad?
I want to make you happy. I'll give you anything you want, even half my kingdom.
What a powerful statement. Yeah. So that tells you the kind of relationship
maybe that Esther had with him or how he viewed her. I'm not sure.
But my thinking is that he probably saw her as someone that's very,
very attractive and very desirable in his mind.
Yeah. But at the same time, his willingness to part with what he had for her.
That's right, he loved her. Yeah, he did.
He cared about her. And he was one of those kind of people.
We don't know how many concubines he had or how many wives he had or how many
women that were in the palace for him at his disposal.
I'm sure there was quite a few. But anyway, Esther had a feast for the king,
and she invited Haman as well.
And she had a couple of those events. And each time, the king asked her why she was so upset.
And finally, she didn't tell him. But anyway, Haman became very powerful.
And he he was he was he was behind the instigator of all this but about,
extermination of the Jewish people yeah but at
the end of that what Esther said
to the king is she was very upset about that that the Jewish people were being
they were they were going to be exterminated and her people yeah she was one
of them and she revealed who she was yeah that's right so she told so she She went all in right there.
She told Mordecai, she said, if I die, I die.
So she went into the presence of the king, not requested and unannounced. That's right.
I love how Mordecai set that up with her. He had such faith that God was going
to deliver the people, but he recognized that sometimes we have an opportunity to serve God.
And God's will is going to get done whether we do or not. That's right.
But we have an opportunity. That's exactly right.
In 414, he says, He says, if you remain silent at this time,
relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place.
That's right. But you and your father's family will perish.
And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this. That's right.
So sometimes God put you in a specific place at a specific time.
In fact, there's New Testament scripture, Acts 27, where Paul says that exactly,
that God knew the exact times and places where you were going to be and spend your lives.
That's right. So that you will seek him and perhaps find him.
That's right. Though he's not far from anyone.
So this is Old and New Testament theology here, where your life is what it is
and where it is for the purposes that God intended for it. That's right.
And what this illustrates to us is, very clearly to me, is that we do not own ourselves.
That's right. We do not have any claim to ourselves.
And we're an instrument of God and we
and so we should consider that and when
we decide that we're going to quit playing the game maybe that we play a lot
of people play with themselves as poor me that's right so we have to decide
that yes whatever it is whatever is it right now I'm not discounting the
that I'm not discounting.
I'm not speaking lightly of any kind of trauma that people are experiencing
now, or I'm not speaking lightly of the trauma that I've experienced.
But I know this,
That all of those events that took place, they happened. You said that yourself
many times. It's happened.
And if it has happened yesterday, and we can't control yesterday.
That's right. All we control, well, we can't even control that,
but all that we know is right now. That's right. We don't know tomorrow.
And what can we make of now that will make tomorrow more likely to be better. That's exactly right.
As you said, we can't control it. By the way, I misspoke a while ago that verse
in Acts is in 17, Acts 17, 27.
I said Acts 27. But that's exactly right. You can't go back in time and change it.
You can change your response to it. That's right. And you can change what you do now.
That's right. So that tomorrow may be better for you or for someone else.
That's right. So the question that you have, what if Esther hadn't done something?
That's right. But I think Mordecai said it, even if she didn't.
She would suffer at the hand of that because she was a Jewish person herself. That's right.
Jonathan Edwards was a missionary in the 1700s. And Mark Batterson writes about
this in the last chapter of All In.
And it goes with this idea that Esther had that Mordecai reframed her vision
from her initial thought of, I can't do that. I haven't been invited.
I can't do that. I don't have access. I can't do that.
I would be disobeying, like all the excuses that come. And Mordecai says, no, no, no.
You've been placed here at this time with the access that you have so that you
can do God's will and save your people. It's not about you.
So Jonathan Edwards says, January 12th, 1723, made a written consecration of
himself to God and wrote it out with his hand. He wrote it out.
By the way, that's interesting.
The neuroscience is really clear. When you handwrite something,
it wires into your brain much more powerfully than it does when you think it, say it, read it, type it.
But something about the process, the manual process of writing something out,
puts it in your brain in a different way that you remember it more effectively.
And Jonathan Edwards wrote this, I made a solemn dedication of myself to God and wrote it down.
Giving up myself and all that I had to God to be for the future in no respect my own,
to act as one that had no right to himself in any respect, and solemnly vowed
to take God for my whole portion and felicity,
looking on nothing else as any part of my happiness, nor acting as if it were.
He's basically saying, God, my life is yours. My future is yours.
My body is yours. Like I am all in. Well, and that's accurate. That's exactly right.
But to say it and to write it down is another thing. That's right.
We don't want to do that. We don't wanna, and I think it has to do with acceptance.
That's right. And it has to do with making a choice.
Sometimes overcoming fear.
But you're right. We have to make a choice that says, my life was given to me.
I didn't make my own life. That's right.
My body is a temple of God. My mind is an indwelling place of the Holy Spirit.
And I'm here for a purpose. And the purpose is to glorify God and help others see Him.
And so how dare I say, I can't do that. I won't do that. I'm going to hold this part of my life back.
That's why Joshua said the night before they finally took possession of the
promised land, what did he say? say, consecrate yourselves for tomorrow the
Lord will do amazing things in my life.
So friend, you want to see some breakthrough in your life? You want to see some
fruits of going after God, finally breaking through?
Consecrate yourself. Go all in. It's for such a time as this. That's right.
And we always remember that, for such a time as this. And we can't deny that.
But at the same time what happens to
us is and I and I and I it's the only way I can say it is that we just get so
embroiled with our own feelings and our own grief and our own concern that's
that's all we can see that's right and and what what tags along with that is our fears that's right.
And so we want and we have a natural tendency to
try to preserve ourselves that's right we want to survive that's
right and so it's hard to say this because it
sounds so insensitive but we've talked about it
before and i even wrote about it and hope is the first dose that what you just
said sometimes our grief our pain our limitation our family of origin our past
trauma whatever it is can become the only thing that we can see and that's a
that's a territory where if something is bigger in your
mind than God is, what does that become?
It becomes an idol. It becomes an idol. It becomes God to you.
And so your question then is, if you feel like something is limiting or holding
you back and God doesn't even have the power to break through it,
you better adjust your theology.
Yes. Because God can do anything. That's right. You can do anything through
him who gives you strength.
That's right. If you go all in and give God the glory, give him the honor,
he will give you the tools to do those kinds of Esther and those kinds of big
things when you're called to them.
And sometimes your big thing is a bunch of little decisions that you make throughout
your life. That's right.
Well, and if you think a lot about Esther, yes, this was huge.
It was big for her because it amounted to her life. She was risking her life. Her life, her death.
And she knew that. That's right. But she still did it. That's exactly right.
She went all in. That's right. She went all in. That's right. What a great story.
So, you know, friend, there's some place in your life, there's some place in
my life, there's places in Tata's life, and days like the day you're going to
hear this, Tuesday, August 20th, it's one of those days, like,
do we lay down under the weight of the things that have happened to us?
Do we let them define us? And the hard part about that is people will come alongside
you and enable you to let that define you.
And they'll say, it's not your fault. Your son died. It's not your fault. You lost your daughter.
It's not your fault. He cheated on you. Like, of course you're destroyed by that.
Of course you are. Of course it makes sense that you would drink every night because of that.
Of course you shouldn't expect yourself to ever need to not have therapy over
that. Of course. People will enable you.
But the question, and sometimes maybe
there is a time when something is so overwhelming that they're done for.
I hope not, but maybe there is. But the point is, you're going to feel some
sort of tug in your heart at some point.
God's going to send somebody alongside you, or you're going to get a text message,
you're going to read a book, you're going to find all in, you're going to read
Hope is the First Dose, you're going to hear Tuesdays with Tata.
And at some point, your heart is going to say...
It's time. That's right. It's such a time as this. It's time for you to take a step.
It's time for you to go in. It's time for you to move.
It's time for you to change. And when you hear that, that's your moment.
That's your call. That's right. That's when it's time to go all in.
The Bible says this. We talk about sin a lot, Tata.
And unfortunately, sometimes the definition of sin is a little hazy.
And we don't like to talk about that kind of stuff in today's culture.
But the Bible in James makes it very clear.
You can give yourself a very good working definition of what sin is.
It says if a man, a person, knows what they ought to do and they don't do it, it's sin.
That's right. And the flip side then would be equally true. If you know what
you shouldn't do and you do, then it's sin. We always focus on the nots. Yeah.
But God's basically saying if I'm calling you and I'm equipping you and I'm
opening the door for you and I'm having the king extend the scepter for you, your only job is to go in.
It's to go all out for the all in all, as Mark Patterson says.
So the call is today, friend.
We're almost at the end of August. We're almost at the end of all in August.
We've got 11 days left by the time you hear this.
And the question is, what were you born for such a time?
Why are you born in the time that you're born? With the opportunity that you
have, with the place that you're at, with the set of tools and gifts and people
around you, what are you here for? and are you ready to get after it?
Well, and the other part of that is, the other side of it is, it sounds so easy.
When we say it, it sounds easy. But the only way you can do it is with his help. That's right.
And the only way you're going to get his help is ask him. That's exactly right.
So you ask him, okay, the question is very simple. Okay, Lord,
what do you want me to know now? What do you want me to know now? That's right. Right.
And so again, friend, there's a time and a place for this.
Esther wasn't called to go before the king at some other point in her life.
She wasn't called the day before then. She was called then at that particular
moment, at that particular time.
There's a time when it's not the right time.
And maybe that's the acute phase of grief for you. Maybe it's the time when
it's too fresh or it's too big or it's too hard.
But there also is a time when it is time. That's right.
And so the question for us then is when it's time, when you know it's time, what do you do then?
And so, Tata, if we're going to take that call to go in before the king,
we'll go all in, consecrate ourselves to give it all to him,
to recognize that we're here for the purpose for such a time as this.
Like, when do we start? Today. We start today.