Podcast: 365 Christian Men

January 19. James Tour. James was already brilliant when he entered college. But he didn’t know everything. He didn’t know Christ, and the language of the Christians around him started out confusing, but he soon became intrigued.  

James is still brilliant. He is now a nanotechnologist and a Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, and Professor of Computer Science.  

In 2008, James won the Feynman Prize in Experimental Nanotechnology and the NASA Space Act Award. In fact, if you type up his list of awards in 12-point type, the list is six-inches wide and a foot long. Today’s story begins with James in his first year in college—when he was still confused about those Christians. 

The heart of the problem is a problem of the heart.  

Having grown up in a Jewish community outside of New York City, James Tour was unfamiliar with some of the catchwords he kept hearing in his first year at college. One was: was “born-again.”  

Born-again—what’s that?  

One day, in the dorm’s laundry room, he asked a football player, “What are your plans after school?”  

“I want to do lay ministry,” the guy said. 

Lay ministry. He didn’t know what that meant either, but he figured this guy must be ‘born-again.’ 

The football jock asked if he could draw James an illustration showing how to have a right relationship with God, and James agreed. 

The football player whipped out a sheet of paper and quickly sketched a tall cliff on the left side of the paper and a stick-figure MAN standing on top of the cliff.  

On the right side of the paper, football guy drew another tall cliff and labeled it: GOD. 

Between the cliffs, a chasm stretched from the base of one cliff to the base of the other. And he labeled the chasm: SIN.  

“Sin separates man from God,” he said. 

“But I’m not a sinner,” James said. “I haven’t murdered anyone or robbed any banks, so how can I be a sinner?” 

The guy pulled out his bible and showed James a verse. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). “All” meant everybody—everywhere—anytime. 

In that steamy room full of spinning washers and dryers, God was exposing sin—a kind of dirty that didn’t come clean with soap and water. 

The jock showed James another verse where Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, do not commit adultery. But I tell you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27-28, NRSV). 

The words hit James like a punch in the face. How did he know? How could this man Jesus know about James’s addiction to pornography? 

The trouble had started when James was fourteen and worked at a gas-station. When his co-workers ended their shifts on Fridays, he fished for the magazines they’d thrown away so he could look through them.  

Now, in the laundry room and listening to the football player, James heard how Jesus died for his sins and rose again to make a way for him to find peace with God and eternal life.  

Jesus bridged the gap between God and man. Jesus was the bridge from one clifftop to the other. And it wasn’t a toll bridge. A man could trust that bridge and walk right across.  

But James didn’t accept all the guy had said right then. He studied the Bible himself. He discovered that the prophet Isaiah foretold how the Messiah would be whipped and executed.  

“All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. …Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the booty with the strong; because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:6, 12, NASB). 

Gradually James became convinced Jesus was who he said he was—the Son of God.  

He got down on his knees in his dorm room and prayed, “Lord, forgive me. I’m a sinner. Come into my life.” 

Later, he described it. “All of a sudden Someone was in my room…I opened my eyes. Who was in my room? That man Jesus Christ, he stood in my room. This amazing sense of God …” 

The sheer kindness of God’s forgiveness washed over James. And he no longer felt compelled to mess with pornography.  

Today James is an acclaimed scientist, researcher, and professor, but his passion is sharing his faith. God uses James to help people know about the man on the cliff separated by SIN from the God who loves him—and Jesus, the bridge, the way for the two to connect.  

Have you realized we are all sinners? Have you discovered the remedy who is Jesus Christ? The heart of the problem is a problem of the heart.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szbli4m11Lk Video program published by Shalom World December 26, 2018, Dr. James Tour, Star of the World 

https://billygraham.org/decision-magazine/march-2019/renowned-chemist-bold-witness-for-christ/ article by Richard Greene, Renowned Chemist is a Bold Witness for Christ, March 4, 2019, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association website 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNGLZvtRoiU youtube video, One for Israel.org 

Would You Like to Learn More About This Man? 

In an article in Scientific American “Better Killing Through Chemistry,” which appeared a few months after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Towers, Tour highlights how easy it is to get what’s needed to create chemical weapons.  

Story written by: Toni M Babcock, https://www.facebook.com/toni.babcock.1 

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/