So you're beginning to work
with Redeemer City to City,
keep telling us the story.
- So I remember I was teaching with Allen,
working with Spanish-speaking pastors in the New York area,
and then we got an invitation to go to Argentina.
So, I went with them to Argentina,
and we just had lots of fun co-teaching.
And teaching, primarily,
helping churches
teach the church to counsel one another informally.
I mean, that's How People Change, Instruments,
all these curriculum was the church should be
counseling one another.
And so, my teaching was to teach leaders to teach it,
whether it's children, teenagers, elders,
that the whole church is thinking biblically about life.
Because a lot of people,
if the church were doing its job,
a lot of people wouldn't need
to go to a professional counselor.
- The things get solved when they're little,
instead of great, big, huge things
they've sat on for 10 years.
That now needs somebody very wise and very seasoned.
- So, that was very rewarding.
So, I think the first trip was to
Argentina,
then it was Cuba,
then the Dominican Republic,
and so,
I think Pastor's Convention in Holland.
They invited me to teach How People Change.
So, it was kind of, I don't know, God,
it just fell into place.
It wasn't something I necessarily looked for.
I just love the curriculum.
- And a lot of what I hear you saying
is you just take the stuff that Paul has written
and just make way better.
That's really what I'm saying.
Over, and over, and over, again.
- I will publicly confess that she teaches that material
better than I ever taught it.
- And you told me that before we even, like, got together.
- But he doesn't realize how great that curriculum is.
That curriculum is kind of old.
I think even CCEF doesn't realize
what a treasure they have there,
but you take the biblical narrative
and then those trial chapters just,
of course, it's all the storyline,
but even those two chapters
on The Heat of Life, The Brokenness.
I remember, like, when I taught it in Cuba,
the reality, the realism
that we live in a world full of broken glass.
I'm not coming with - If you follow Jesus
all of a sudden the government's going to change,
and you're going to have all the food you want.
So, I'm not coming with the prosperity gospel.
I'm coming with this wonderful treasure we have in Jesus
that carries us through the broken glass,
even of living in a communistic country.
And so, it's just so real, it's so exciting
because you're talking about
the realities of life in a broken world.
And then, of course,
the realities of the brokenness outside,
but the realities of the brokenness inside,
which are Chapters 7 and 8.
The real-me shows up in the middle of the brokenness,
and so, by the time you get to the two chapters
on the cross, you're just panting, you're starving.
Like, it's such a mess, what's going to happen?
And so, those two chapters
on the cross are just highlighted,
and you just, it's like being in the desert,
and you drink and you realize,
thank you, Jesus, thank you, Jesus.
- Yeah, and I have to say
that the genius of that material
is not my writing.
It's the gospel.
That the thing that I love about the gospel,
properly understood,
is it's the most accurate description of life.
I mean, read the Psalms,
you'll find yourself in the Psalms.
The angst of the Psalms, the cries of the Psalms,
the questions of God of Psalms, we've all had.
And so, people would come to me in counseling,
and they would think,
well, the Bible is sort of this upper story,
spiritual thing,
and as I would begin to play back
to them the way the Bible talks about life
they would say, yeah, that's what I'm thinking.
That's what I'm going through.
That's that's me.
- And that's the Bible.
- Yeah, the accuracy of the diagnosis of scripture
it just is real,
and it
describes exactly what we're going through,
both outside and inside,
and that Romans eight passage,
it doesn't just say that the world groans
it says that we also groan.
I mean, you groan when you're disappointed,
You groan when you're in pain,
you groan when you've come to the end of your rope.