How Topics Are Selected for This Program

In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call.  Here is this week’s question: Dear Dave and TA, 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 nit-picking.

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.  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 magazines [that] we subscribe to, you know, we don’t watch much Christian television, but we do get responses from people who do 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 their 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:

That’s part of it, Tom, much of where the articles at least come from, of course the Q&As—they are in response to the 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 “The Call to Discipleship.”  That wasn’t really in response to anything that’s happening in the church or and 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 in 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—you just have so many thoughts have 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?  You know, there are thousands of them that could be written and that are being written many by other people because God’s Word is infinite, it will never plumb its depths and the depths of our relationship with Him.  So, that’s part of it as well.

Tom:

But specifically, Dave—so you’ve got all of these ideas, and God speaks to your heart, and you are going through His Word.  How do you lean upon Him, 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’ve 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 as 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 did you come out with that just in the right time?  I don’t know, 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 it, we want to glorify the Lord. We want people to get into His Word.  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 will be, “The Word Of God,” and I’ve got a lot to think, about for people who think about considering 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—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:

Dave, we are really encouraged because letters that we get, not that everybody agrees with everything that we say in our articles, 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 says look our church—this came into our youth group.  You know, 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, and so you helped inform us.  Now that’s done certainly by the leading of the Holy Spirit, but also by looking at what is impacting the church.  So, it’s an encouragement to people that way and we are 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.