Archives: Episode

January 17. Antony the Great. According to theologian Athanasius, when Antony was about 20, the devil afflicted him with boredom, laziness, and phantoms of women, which Antony overcame by waging a war of prayer. 

After fifteen years of this battle, at 35, Anthony withdrew from public life and lived in absolute solitude in an abandoned Roman fortress, where people tossed food to him over the wall. Still people found him. Over the years, many people had flocked to the hermit Antony and returned healed of their ailments. The man was gifted with discernment and steadfast faith. 

Some people asked the monk to pray, and some simply slept outside his door, believing that they could be healed just by being in his presence. It was never Antony himself who healed them, but God, who was working through Antony. Yet Antony’s faith meant life-changing rescue to everyone who sought him. 

The way you live out your faith may be another man’s lifeline. 

There was an honorable military officer named Martinian, who was raising a family, and he believed in God. But one day he found his sweet daughter afflicted with an evil spirit. 

Horrified, Martinian would have done anything to see his daughter in her right mind again. Antony was the man for the job. 

So Martinian hiked into the desert, where Antony lived alone on a mountain near the east bank of the Nile River. Martinian walked and kept walking and eventually came upon the abandoned Roman fort where Antony had lived for nearly twenty years. 

Martinian knocked on the door and waited. He listened for any sign of movement from inside, but he heard nothing. 

Again, he knocked—longer—and he yelled for the hermit. 

Still, there was no answer. Desperate, Martinian resolved to knock until the hermit answered, and he kept knocking and pleading for Antony to come out and pray to God for his little girl. 

Finally, though he would not open the door, Antony’s voice rose above the noise of the officer’s pounding. 

Martinian stopped and listened. 

“Man, why do you call on me?” Antony said. “I also am a man even as you. But if you believe on Christ whom I serve, go, and according as you believe, pray to God, and it shall come to pass.” 

Martinian did not protest, as other pilgrims had, but he left immediately. Believing Antony’s instruction, he called out to God and asked Him to heal his daughter. 

When Martinian got home, he saw his daughter free from the evil spirit, and he was so happy. 

Antony had never seen the girl but found confirming joy in his heart. 

“When Jesus had entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, asking for help. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘my servant lies at home paralyzed, suffering terribly.’ 

“Jesus said to him, ‘Shall I come and heal him?’ 

“The centurion replied, ‘Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed. For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, “Go,” and he goes; and that one, “Come,” and he comes. I say to my servant, “Do this,” and he does it.’ 

“When Jesus heard this, he was amazed and said to those following him, ‘Truly I tell you, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith.…’ Then Jesus said to the centurion, ‘Go! Let it be done just as you believed it would.’ And his servant was healed at that moment” (Matthew 8:5–10, 13 NIV). 

How can you use your own gifts in faith to strengthen someone else today? The way you live out your faith may be another man’s lifeline. 

Servants’ Preparation Program. Nashville: Coptic Orthodox Diocese of the Southern United States, 2002. http://docshare01.docshare.tips/files/2097/20971251.pdf. 

“St. Anthony of Egypt: Egyptian Monk.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, Jan. 12, 2000, https://‌www.britannica.com/‌biography/‌Saint-Anthony-of-Egypt. 

St. Athanasius. “Life of St. Antony.” St. Athanasius: Select Works and Letters, edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. New York: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1892. pp. 188–221. 

January 16. Malcolm Gladwell. In 2013, Malcom published David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. Throughout the first year of research on this book, he collected examples of people’s disadvantages turning into advantages. 

For example, many American presidents and British prime ministers had lost a parent in childhood. A young shepherd boy beat the giant Goliath. 

Malcolm spent time in libraries and talking to social scientists, pouring over research to find how this had happened. Today’s story begins as Malcom meets the Derksens, whose daughter has just been murdered. Surely this disadvantage could never be turned to any kind of good. 

Turns out: it took more than twenty years for Candace’s killer to be found. Here’s what Malcolm found out. 

Jesus gives ordinary people extraordinary power, if they’re willing. 

Malcolm was on his way to Winnipeg to interview Wilma Derksen, whose teenaged daughter, Candace had disappeared on her way home from school. A week later, she was found—her hands and feet bound—and she was dead. 

At the time, the search for Candace had become Winnipeg’s biggest manhunt in the city’s history, and as the tragedy unfolded, Wilma and her husband Cliff were called to a news conference. 

One of the reporters asked, “How do you feel about whoever did this to Candace?” 

Cliff said, “We would like to know who the person or persons are so we could share, hopefully, a love that seems to be missing in these people’s lives.” 

Wilma added, “I can’t say at this point I forgive the person. We have all done something dreadful in our lives, or have felt the urge to.” 

The Derksen’s lack of vengeance and anger intrigued Malcolm, and he wondered how a family—whose daughter had been brutally murdered—could find such strength. 

Wilma told Malcom that her family had emigrated from Russia after suffering persecution for their faith, and she grew up in the Mennonite tradition. “I was taught that there was an alternative way to deal with injustice,” she said. “I was taught it in school. We were taught the history of persecution. We had this picture of martyrdom that went right back to the sixteenth century. The whole Mennonite philosophy is that we forgive and we move on.” 

Ironic. Malcolm had grown up in a Mennonite community in Ontario, and his family was full of seminarians and preachers. The running joke back then had been that Malcolm was the only one who hadn’t preached a sermon. 

But when he moved to New York, he stopped attending church. He still believed in God. He just held onto the evidence and physical side of God—the logic of the Christian faith. Outside of logic, there wasn’t much he was holding onto. 

But with Wilma in her garden, he felt a change in his heart. She was so normal. How could she overcome something so horrible? And he saw what he had been missing in his own faith: the power of Christ. 

“It was one thing to read in a history book about people empowered by their faith,” Malcolm wrote. “But it is quite another to meet an otherwise very ordinary person, in the backyard of a very ordinary house, who has managed to do something utterly extraordinary.” The Derksens—through their press conference—showed the whole country the path to forgiveness. That could only be explained by the power of Christ at work in their lives. It was what Malcolm had been missing. He knew he had his own journey to take, just like the people in his interviews. He had been missing the power and beauty of the faith he grew up in. “Here I was writing about people of extraordinary circumstances,” he wrote, “and it slowly dawned on me that I can have that too.” 

“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26 NIV). 

Do you see the power of God working in your life? Do you want to? Jesus gives ordinary people extraordinary power, if they’re willing. 

“Malcolm Gladwell: How I Rediscovered Faith.” Published July 27, 2020. Relevant Magazine. https://​relevantmagazine.com/​life5/​malcolm-gladwell-how-i-rediscovered-faith/. 

Gladwell, Malcolm. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2013.  

Bailey, Sarah Pulliam. “Author Malcolm Gladwell finds his faith again.” Published October 11, 2013. The Washington Post. https://​www.washingtonpost.com/​local/​author-malcolm-gladwell-finds-his-faith-again/​2013/​10/​11/​d633d8f4–3266–11e3–89ae-16e186e117d8_​story.html. 

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January 11. Chuck Stecker. Chuck is the Founder and Executive Director of A Chosen Generation—a Christ-centered ministry that exists to train up leaders for intergenerational ministry. 

As an Army Lieutenant Colonel, Chuck served as a leader, including three years on the Joint Staff in the Pentagon. Combining business experience, twenty-three years of military service and more than thirteen years of full-time ministry, Chuck delivers a clear strategy to equip, train, empower, and release a whole new generation of leaders. These leaders would develop clear pathways to keep young adults actively connected to their churches and to help them develop into the leaders that will impact every area of our society. 

A Chosen Generation is all about intergenerational ministry. Today’s story begins at a “When Men Pray” event at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, and it’s all about intergenerational too. 

A godly man resists the temptation to judge another man’s actions. 

Retired Lieutenant Colonels did not cry. And if they ever were to cry, it would not be in a huge public event in the Ryman Auditorium. 

But when the man with the microphone said God would heal men who had never received their father’s blessing, Chuck’s stoicism flew out the arched windows. He hadn’t seen his father in twelve years. Wasn’t sure where—or if—he lived. And Chuck bawled like a little kid. 

It was the When Men Pray conference, and a friend saw Chuck crying. The man hugged Chuck and prayed a father’s blessing over him. 

During the next month, Chuck began to heal, but it was hard to release the poison from years of resentment. 

Then Chuck traveled for ministry, and he carried a letter with a Wichita address—his father’s last known place of residence. On the way home, when Chuck reached Memphis, he had to choose between two routes. One was I 40 through Wichita. Did God really expect Chuck to seek his biological father? 

Chuck was in no mood to be spiritual. “I’m tired, God. I’m going the shortest route home.” Chuck grabbed his Rand McNally map and counted the mileage. Twice. Chuck took I 40. Then turned north on I 35 toward Wichita. 

Finally he approached the place his father lived. Trash, beer cans, and needles littered the street in front of the dilapidated apartment building. His father’s name was on a mailbox. Chuck tugged on the front door. Locked. 

Chuck leaned against his car. “What now, God?” 

Just then, a woman appeared and opened the door from the inside. 

He stood still, kept his hands in sight, and relaxed. The woman was clearly frightened. 

“I’ll stay right where I am, ma’am,” Chuck said. 

She gazed at him. “You’re one of the old man’s boys.” 

What was she talking about? “I’ve never been here before,” he said. 

“You’re one of the old man’s boys,” she said again. “He’s told us for years one of you would come. But it’s been so long, none of us believed him anymore.” 

She flung open the door, ran back into her apartment, and spoke through a slit in her door. “Third apartment on the right.” 

Chuck walked down there. Printed on a grimy piece of tape was his father’s name. 

Chuck knocked. Knocked again. No answer. 

A neighbor stepped from her apartment. She banged on Chuck’s father’s door. “Open up!” 

Finally, the door opened. 

And there he was, bowed over like a baboon and wearing only boxers. 

His father stared at him. “Well, I’ll be damned.” 

Chuck stepped onto a greasy carpet pocked with beer cans. He sat on a broken-down chair. And huge cockroaches scuttled up the wall. 

After an awkward visit, Chuck said he would return in the morning, and he made his escape out to his car. 

But in his hotel room that night, Chuck couldn’t sleep. 

God asked, “What control do you have over your father?” 

“None,” Chuck said. 

“What control do you have over yourself as a son?” 

“That’s what I get to control,” Chuck said. 

“Honor thy father and mother.” 

As a boy, Chuck had to be very careful around his father. If you backed him into a corner, he would coil up like a rattlesnake and strike. 

Chuck wished Scripture said to honor your father unless he was an idiot, a drunk, or a jailbird. 

But it didn’t. 

The Holy Spirit repeatedly asked the same questions and whispered, “Honor thy father and mother.” 

The next morning Chuck returned to his dad’s. On hands and knees on the dirty carpet, Chuck clutched his father’s feet and prayed aloud, “God, forgive me. I have not been the son I should have been. I have resented my father. I have not honored him.” 

His dad didn’t say much. 

With the promise to stay in touch, Chuck left. 

And Chuck kept his word. His father installed a phone to make it easier. Chuck realized no one had taught his father how to love. Yet Chuck had held his dad responsible for what he didn’t know. Based on his own needs, expectations, and desires, Chuck had judged his father. 

Three years later, during one of their visits, Chuck’s dad asked spiritual questions. 

“You have never accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, have you?” Chuck asked. 

“No,” his dad said. “If that’s why you’re here, that’s not what I’m going to do either.” 

“Dad, heaven and hell are real. I’m not much of a theologian, but I know heaven will be in the presence of God. Hell will be out of God’s presence. For eternity. 

“Someday I’ll be the family patriarch, and I’ll make sure your grandchildren know about Jesus. But if I get to heaven and you’re not there, it won’t be the same without you.” 

His dad sobbed. Then he knelt on the exact spot of carpet where—three years before—Chuck had knelt. Now they knelt  together and cried together. His dad accepted Jesus. 

“There’s a little bit of Pharisee in all of us,” says Chuck. “We hold people to standards we ourselves can’t stand up to.… I judged myself by my good intentions and my dad by his actions.” 

God’s grace changed Chuck—then it changed his dad. 

“We are careful not to judge people by what they seem to be, though we once judged Christ in that way” (2 Corinthians 5:16 CEV). 

How do you measure yourself? Is it how you measure others? A godly man resists the temptation to judge another man’s actions. 

Based on an interview with Chuck Stecker, May 23, 2020. 

Story written by: Shelli Mandeville, https://worthy.life/ 

January 9. Richard Wurmbrand. In his younger years, Wurmbrand  was an atheist. He prayed: 

“God, I know surely that You do not exist. But if perchance You exist, which I contest, it is not my duty to believe in You; it is Your duty to reveal Yourself to me.” 

But in time, Wurmbrand learned the truth about himself, about God, and about Jesus. Not long after that the world turned upside down; politics suddenly made no sense.  

In 1941, Nazis overran a city in Romania and massacred 13,266 Jews and sympathizers, including many Jewish Christians. That’s the world where Wurmbrand was a Christian, a husband, and a pastor. Here’s what happened. 

At times, your only option may be to speak up. Be bold. 

In 1944, when a million Russian troops poured into Romania, Wurmbrand saw it as an opportunity to share the love of Christ. He felt compelled to help the Russian soldiers know who Jesus was. 

Wurmbrand knew the Communist Party had hijacked these men’s minds; they could no longer think for themselves. They were unable to believe in God unless they were ordered to. 

And the Communist takeover was beyond swift. Twenty-three-year-old King Michael the First had been left on his own to deal with the sudden shift of power. There was no time for a propaganda campaign to sway the masses’ attitudes toward Stalin. 

When the Foreign Secretary of the Soviet Union barged into King Michael’s office, he demanded that Communists be given government positions. Young King Michael could not resist. Communists muscled their way into the Romanian government while war-weary American and British forces finished off the Nazis in Europe. 

Once police and military power in Romania had been dismantled, the overthrow was complete. Churches and their leaders were now subject to Communists, who bombarded the people with constant propaganda and intimidation. 

Knowing Romanians had a strong interest in religion, the Communists sought to consolidate power by gaining the support of all the different kinds of religious leaders. In 1945 they held a meeting of four-thousand pastors, priests, and ministers in the Parliament Building at Bucharest. Stalin was the honorary president of this so-called “Congress of Cults.” 

As a pastor, Wurmbrand was required to attend. One by one, ministers, priests, and bishops from various denominations stood and praised the Communist regime, said the Church could co-exist with Communism, and assured their loyalty to its Stalinist rule. 

“Stand up and wash away this shame from the face of Christ,” Wurmbrand’s wife Sabina told him. In her eyes, they were spitting on Jesus. 

“If I do, you will lose your husband,” Wurmbrand said. 

“I don’t wish to have a coward for a husband,” she answered. 

There was no turning back. Wurmbrand stepped up to the podium in front of a packed audience and praised Jesus, proclaiming that God and His Son Jesus Christ demanded their full loyalty. He broadcast live throughout Romania. 

The powers accused Wurmbrand of counter-revolutionary lies, and he spent 14 years behind bars. His wife Sabina was consigned to slave-labor for three years. Wurmbrand was starved, beaten, tortured, whipped, and pressed to betray his brethren. 

“Why don’t you give in? It’s all so futile. You’re only flesh, and you’ll break in the end,” a tormentor asked him. 

But Wurmbrand wouldn’t break. He knew he was more than flesh—he knew he was a child of God. 

Jesus said, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it” (Matthew 16:25). 

Have there been times when what you believe about Jesus has demanded you speak up? At times, your only option may be to speak up. Be bold. 

Would You Like to Learn More About This Man? 

On the night Wurmbrand became a Christian, he wrote, “I do not understand everything that has happened to me, but I believe that my whole life, and the life of all His [God’s] children, has been planned by God, down to the smallest detail.” 

“Richard and Sabina Wurmbrand: Founders of Voice of the Martyrs.” March 29, 2016. Plough. https://​www.plough.com/​en/​topics/​faith/​witness/​richard-and-sabina-wurmbrand. 

Voice of the Martyrs. “Tortured for Christ: The cost of discipleship for Richard Wurmbrand.” June 26, 2018. CHRISTIAN TODAY. https://​www.christiantoday.com/​article/​tortured-for-christ-the-cost-of-discipleship-for-richard-wurmbrand/​129834. htm. 

Wurmbrand, Richard. Tortured for Christ. Bartlesville, OK: Living Sacrifice Book Company, 1967. 

“Our Founders.” Accessed September 21, 2020. The Voice of the Martyrs. https://​www.persecution.com/​founders/. 

“Who Was Richard Wurmbrand?” Accessed September 21, 2020. The Voice of the Martyrs. https://​www.torturedforchrist.com/​about/​who-was-richard-wurmbrand/. 

Colón, Peter. “The Story of Richard Wurmbrand.” September/October 2010. ISRAEL MY GLORY. https://​israelmyglory.org/​article/​the-story-of-richard-wurmbrand/.