How Do We Choose Topics for This Program?

Gary: Now, Contending for the Faith….Here is this week’s question: “Dear Dave and T. A., I have been following your ministry for a long time now, and I’ve gotten myself into trouble from time to time defending what you guys do. Nevertheless, I am curious how you go about picking the subjects you address in your newsletter and radio program. They always seem timely and rarely, if ever, nitpicking.”

Tom: Dave, this is kind of a general little question. But it’s something that we really take to heart. The things that we do, the programs that we do, we don’t want it to be just haphazard or arbitrary. Now, for example, we get hundreds of letters a week. One of the aspects of this ministry is to take a look at what’s going on in the body of Christ. We get the magazines, we subscribe to—you know, we don’t watch much “Christian” television, but we do get responses from people who do and check that out.

So, my point here is that we look at what seems to be affecting the body of Christ, doctrinally, for the most part, but also the practices, the teachings that go on, and we do just what we encourage everyone who gets our newsletter, everyone who listens to the program, to search the scriptures daily to see if these things—this doctrine, this teaching, this technique, this methodology—to see if they are indeed true to God’s Word.

Dave: Mm-hmm. That’s part of it, Tom. Much of where the articles, at least, come from. Of course, the Q&As, they’re in response to questions that we get. But, I mean, I’ll be meditating on the Word of God—it might be in the middle of the night as the Lord wakes me up and I’m talking to Him. I think the…what is it? Our November one is “A Call to Discipleship.” That wasn’t really in response to anything that’s happening in the church around us. It was just something the Lord put on my heart. In fact, I gave a series of, I think, six or seven talks on that topic at Word of Life, Schroon Lake, New York, last summer.

And so, as I talk to the Lord, as I read His Word, as I meditate upon Him and upon His Word, His Truth, I mean you just have so many thoughts that come to mind. You couldn’t even begin to develop them all. I can remember—how many years ago?—when this began, thinking, My goodness! How would I ever come up with another article to write next month? No, there are thousands of them that could be written, and that are being written, many by other people, because God’s Word is infinite. We’ll never plumb its depths and the depths of our relationship with Him.

So, that’s part of it.

Tom: But more specifically, Dave—so you’ve got all these ideas, and God speaks to your heart, and you’re going through His Word, but how do you lean upon Him? How do you…what…how do you make the selection?

Dave: Tom, it’s hard to say, you know? I couldn’t say, and I couldn’t say that “Oh, I selected this one because this is just the one the Lord wants this month. I don’t know. I hope so. But it does seem that the Lord guides us. For example, when was it? Was it August when I wrote O Jerusalem, Jerusalem? just before this big blowup in Jerusalem? And some people said, “Oh, my, you must be a prophet? I mean, how’d you come out with that just at the right time?”  I don’t know! The Lord…and I wouldn’t even say that there was anything to that, that there was a connection, but the Lord just…maybe I just feel stronger about “this” than “that,” and there is so much that could be written.

But what we want to do, Tom, as you already expressed, we want to glorify the Lord. We want people to get into His Word. And, in fact, I already have, laid on my heart—and this is way ahead of time, now, for January—I want to write an article—if the Lord spares me, and He has not taken us out of here through the Rapture—the title of it will be The Word of God. Because I’ve got a lot to think about, for people to think about, concerning the Word of God: “In the beginning was the Word,” and the Word is God, and God spoke the worlds into existence through His Word, and so forth.

Well, just some, I think, just incredible insights that I’ve been receiving from the Lord from His Word about the Word that I would like to share with people. So, it’s just something the Lord really puts on your heart.

Tom: Yeah, and, Dave, we were really encouraged because letters that we get…it’s not that everybody agrees with everything that we say, and they shouldn’t. They should search the Scriptures to see if these things are according to God’s Word and then be edified and encouraged because they are. But we do get a lot of letters from people after an article comes out that say, “Look! Our church…this came into our youth group, and…” I remember the article that I did dealing with the contemplative movement and so on. But I received a letter from some youth pastors that say, “We were concerned about this. We didn’t quite know how to handle it. So you helped inform us.” Now, that’s done certainly by the Holy Spirit but also by looking at what is impacting the church. So, it’s an encouragement to people that way, and we’re encouraged to get that feedback.

Dave: We just want to try to be God’s servants. And that’s not easy, because we are so imperfect and so dull in understanding. But we just say, “Lord, here we are. We just want to try to be a blessing and to exalt You, and that’s our desire.”

Tom: Amen.