This is Bold Steps with Mark Jobe. I'm Wayne Shepherd, and today we're discussing something that could transform our family. Not just now, but for generations to come. Mark.
Yeah. You know, Wayne, we're discussing legacy. And there's some people that are listening that have a great legacy that they need to repeat. And there's some people that are listening that need to break the cycle of the legacy they've inherited. I've thought a lot about this over the years.
Being a pastor in Chicago. So many of the men, especially that I was meeting, I realized that as I talked to them, part of their challenge was to break the cycle that had been given to them cycles of addiction, cycles of violence, cycles of divorce and fidelity. And it started to become a real burden for me to realize, hey, I was given a legacy from some parents that broke cycles. And, um,
it gave me a greater start. And I started to realize that there's a first generation that has to break cycles so that their children and their grandchildren don't repeat those cycles.
Well, let's have this conversation today about influence and about investment and that lasting impact we can make. It's coming up today on bold Steps. Welcome to a special Bold Steps with Mark Jobe. Mark is senior pastor of New Life Community Church and president of Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Mark, you recently took a meaningful trip back to Spain, where you spent your childhood. Let's talk about, uh, new lessons learned going back to a to a former place of of residence there, huh?
Yeah. So some of the listeners know, but I grew up in the country of Spain. Went there when I was six years old. Left the US when I was six months old. You know, every time I go to Spain, when my children were small. I would love to take them to this little cemetery outside the city of Burgos. There's a very simple grave there. Engraved on the top of that gravesite are the words para el morir is Ganesha, which in English is for me to live is Christ,
and to die is gain. Beautiful. And, uh, my father was buried. He died at 60 years old. He's buried in that grave. And I would bring my children there because I would want them to understand the power of legacy. And legacy is that which we inherit and that which we pass down. We all have a legacy. We're all deeply affected by our legacy and the cycles that are ahead of us. Those do not determine our future, but they explain some of our battles in the present. My
parents Fortunately, they were first generation cycle breakers. My mother's father was an alcoholic. They would have to drag him out of the bars that he was fighting in. My father's parents were believers, but, um, you know, they later on in life got more grounded. And so both of my parents, uh, were not believers into their teenage years and had to come to Christ and really break some cycles. And I feel like growing up in their household, they had broken cycles that I didn't have to break. So
I've been beneficiary of those beautiful cycles. But there are many of the people that I work with. They are the first generation of cycle breakers and the battle is more intense.
So they were not just your parents, they were your spiritual mentors as well, weren't they?
Yeah. That's right. Deeply influenced by that. My mother, she's almost 88 years old and just has a very vibrant, positive faith, reads five chapters of the Bible every day, spends probably a couple hours in prayer every day she walks. She's very engaged in the church, even though she's lost most of her eyesight. And, you know, she's just passed down this incredible legacy. As I look back of someone that just has a super positive attitude, loves Jesus, cares
about people. Those have splashed down to myself and my siblings, and I realize that those are some of the cycles that we want to carry on.
Yeah, indeed. The power of mentoring. We'll talk more about this and later, Doctor Chris Ragazzini will join us as well in this special edition of Bold Steps. But I'm just thinking of Second Timothy in the relationship between Paul and Timothy. That has to come to mind when you think of spiritual mentoring.
Yeah. You know, the apostle Paul took on a young man who most scholars believe his father was not a believer because Paul speaks about the faith of his grandmother and his mother. Paul's father was a Gentile. His mother was Jewish, which was a forbidden marriage to begin with. Probably not supportive of his faith, probably wondering what he was doing with his life. Uh, Timothy seems to struggle with insecurity. Confidence. The ability to confront. He's got physical ailments,
but Paul takes him under his wing. And I think Paul sees in him something that maybe Timothy didn't see in himself. And Scripture doesn't tell us this, but it seems implied that, um, probably Timothy's father was not this presence that really had an influence on Timothy. And the apostle Paul is a surrogate father that is speaking into his life, I think, breaking cycles and building up the sense of calling that Timothy really needed.
Well, you've preached on this passage from Second Timothy. And let's listen to that. And later we'll bring in Doctor Chris Rappaccini to talk about it as well. Here's Mark Jobe.
Look up at me, men, if you're a father here, raise your hand if you're a father in this place. Okay? We have a lot of fathers. I want to speak into your life right now, men. And it doesn't matter whether your son or daughter is 30 or 40 years old, or whether they're two and five years old. I want to say this to you. Never miss the opportunity to speak into the life and destiny of your son or daughter. Never miss that opportunity. Do you know how many men
and women that I have talked to? Oftentimes balling their eyes, crying and weeping? They're grown adults and they say, I never understood. I never felt like my father never heard him say he loved me, I never knew that I was important. I never knew that I could do something. I felt like I had a distant relationship with my father. I wish he would have spoken to my life. I wish he would have encouraged me. I wish I would
have known that he believed in me. There's power. I believe that a young man develops his identity, oftentimes through the words of his father, and a young girl develops her identity and how she relates to men also through the influence of a father. Young Timothy, whose father more than likely had passed away, was being spoken into by the Apostle Paul. And the apostle Paul was saying, I know you're timid, and I and I know sometimes you
back away, but I believe that you're a leader. He was telling Timothy, stand up when you need to stand up. He was saying, you have a gift and a call in your life. And I believe in that gift and that call. Timothy went on to be an incredible leader because he had a man that believed in him. The Apostle Paul was not Timothy's father, but he was a mentor. And I want to challenge you and encourage you. If you have known the Lord for a while, if you're walking in God for a little bit, it doesn't mean
that you're perfect. But we need people like you to step up and say, I will share with someone else because someone poured into me. I'm willing to pour into someone else. We need mentors to step up and invest in other people's lives.
What a great example from scripture. Paul and Timothy. Mark, for listeners who don't have the kind of parents that you had or have this spiritual mentor in their life, their past doesn't determine their future, does it?
No, it doesn't. And I realize that more and more in the society that we live in. There's so much brokenness, dysfunction that it seems to be more and more rare for people to come from families that are whole and spiritually alive. And so I realized that probably most of you listening come from some degree of brokenness in your family.
Your family's background. First of all, if you come from a lot of brokenness, if you didn't grow up with a father present in the household, or if there was addiction, infidelity, divorce in your background, I want you to hear, hear me. Well, that does not determine your future. It does explain some of the challenges you face, some of the struggles with your identity, your worth, your value. It does tell me what are the cycles that you have to break, but
it doesn't determine your destiny. And I think you need to know that because some people just allow it to. However, I would say that it's very easy to repeat the patterns that we've grown up with unless there is a determination to be a cycle breaker and legacy.
Intentional steps, right?
Yeah. So I always tell people they have to take bold steps to break their cycles. Actually, the the title of this program, Bold Steps, came from really challenging both men and women to to take bold steps, to break cycles and to create new legacies. I recently heard a young lady that I helped lead to Christ. She's married and has grandchildren now and came to Christ probably 25 years ago. She told her story. She was her grandmother was a runaway that got pregnant. Her mother was a
runaway that got pregnant. She ran away from her house and got pregnant. And she said, I determined when I came to Jesus, I was going to break that cycle. And I was very fearful for my daughter, who when she turned 16, 17, she was thinking about there was tension boiling up, and she brought her daughter on stage and she said she stayed, she got married and and she brought the little girl, that's her daughter and said, we have broken the cycle in Jesus name.
Praise God! Wonderful. Well, you're listening to a special edition of Bold Steps with Mark Jobe. We're talking about building lasting spiritual influence. But what if we've messed up in life? What if we need to move forward after making some pretty big mistakes? We'll talk about that with our guest coming up on Bold Steps. You're listening to Bold Steps with Mark Jobe, and we will continue our conversation about
building lasting spiritual influence in just a moment. Just a reminder that you can listen to Bold Steps wherever and whenever you like. We're online 24 over seven at Bold Steps. Org or listen to the podcast anytime, wherever you subscribe. You can also connect with us on social media, Facebook, Instagram and Mark's YouTube channel. Look for Bold Steps Radio and have you downloaded the Bold Steps app here and see full length messages and link to more content that
will encourage and challenge you. It can all be found at Bold Steps. Well, right now we've got a special bold step gift available for our listeners as a book titled envy A Big Problem You Didn't Know you had written by our guest, pastor Mike Fabares.
Yeah. By the way, many of you are familiar with pastor Mike because he's on the radio. He's written several books. He's a graduate from Moody Bible Institute and actually on the board of directors as well. And so love pastor Mike and his ministry. I was thinking about this topic of envy and how oftentimes we just don't consider ourselves envious. Pastor Mike, if you were to help someone self-diagnose whether they have envy, what would you point to? What should they be looking for?
Well, I would start by saying, are there any people in your everyday world that you just find yourself erring on the side of being critical when you really shouldn't be. And you think, why am I not happy applauding their success, right? This is hard, but we need to look at the
people that we are critical of. And if you look hard enough, you often find it's because I'm really envious of what they get that I don't have what they've accomplished, that I haven't been able to so that they make so much money, so much more money than I make. There's a lot of reasons that we, um, just spring into gossip and criticism and just talking behind people's back in a negative way. And usually we can start to realize what's happened is something really between me and God.
It's really not between me and them.
Pastor Mike, are envy and jealousy interchangeable?
Not really. Um, there's a kind of jealousy that's appropriate in the Bible, right? God says he's a jealous God in Exodus 34. There's a time for you right to rightly in your marriage. Be jealous if there's something threatening that relationship. But envy is always seen as something wrong in Scripture, and we're never to envy anyone. And what envy is, is taking a jealous feeling when I have
no right to feel jealous. And now I start to have a a bitterness toward that person for accomplishing or achieving or securing something that I haven't been able to. And Jesus tells parables about this. You've got to be careful in your own heart to guard your heart against this kind of envy, because it is different than jealousy, because sometimes jealousy can be appropriate.
That's great. So there you have it, pastor Mike. We would love to get this book into your hand. It's called a big problem. You didn't know you had envy. Thank you, pastor Mike.
And we'd be happy to send you a copy of the book when you make a donation of any amount to support bold steps. Again, it's titled envy. A big problem you didn't know you had. Just call us at 800 Moody. Again, that's (800) 356-6639. Or give online and request this book by going to Bold Steps. You can also send your gift through the mail. Write to us at 820 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 606 ten. Again. Bold steps. 820 North LaSalle, Chicago, Illinois. 606 ten. Glad to have
you listening to Bold Steps today with Mark Jobe. Again, I'm Wayne Shepherd and we're going to have a guest join us here. But we're talking about spiritual influencing and the importance of that. You had great parents who did that. And we need to be that kind of person, Mark.
We do. And Wayne, we have someone with us today. I think that has put a lot of thought into this. Today we have Doctor Chris Rappaccini. He's associate professor of leadership at Anderson University in South Carolina, leadership life coach and founder of Faithful Steps Forward. So for 11 years he was a professor of pastoral studies here at Moody Bible Institute. And he's also.
Yeah.
Yeah, you've heard of that place, a moody alum as well. And so, Chris, welcome to Bold Steps.
Well thank you Wayne. Thank you Mark I'm thrilled to be with you all.
Sounds like our theme today is right up your alley.
Well, I love talking about leadership. I love talking about, um, leaving a legacy as well. I like to tell people that, hey, the life you lead shapes the legacy that you leave. Because, hey, we all have decisions to make and people are going to remember those decisions long after we're gone. Whether it's gone from a work, uh, gone from a community, a neighborhood, or gone from this world into the next, people will remember us. So what kind of legacy do we want to leave?
Yeah. That's great. That's a huge topic and a huge theme in bold steps. This whole idea of, uh, mentoring, breaking cycles, taking bold steps. So, Chris, tell us a little bit about young people today, spiritual mentoring, uh, how that affects and, um, the influence of spiritual mentoring, which we don't hear talk about enough, I don't think.
Yeah. We don't we don't hear it talked about that much, but I can speak both from maybe the research but also my own personal life. So I had a father. He passed away when I was a teenager, so I was essentially fatherless. But then it was when I was in seminary that a professor reached out to me and
mentored me. And what the research shows is that men, particularly in this day and age and with, you know, the divorce rates over the last several decades being relatively high, um, that young people are wanting those adult figures in their lives to help them, you know, point the way particularly I think hopefully point the way to Christ. And what does it look like to be a follower of Jesus? And so it's so crucial. It's so important for, you know, the generations coming up right now.
Hey. And I want you to hear that if you're listening and you're over 55 or 60 years old, because I oftentimes feel like some of the older people say, or more mature people should, I say, say, well, young people don't really want to hear from me. I can't connect with them. But you're right, Chris. The research says right now that there is a longing to connect, especially with mature adults. And in the spiritual realm, mature adults who love Jesus have a good marriage. There is a
longing for that, especially in this generation. So I think mature, seasoned adults need to know how to bridge the conversation or invite people. And I think young adults need to know how to ask as well.
That's right. Yeah. I think too often I like to say is we need to stop trying to impress the younger generation because we're not going to impress them, but we can make an impression on them by sharing our story, by talking about, um, you know, things that, that they
care about as well. Now that's difficult. It's challenging because actually, what studies show is that they will listen to you, but first you have to listen to them, which can be kind of challenging because like, well, why do I want to listen to them complain about their slow Wi-Fi, you know. Or how come their Uber is late, right? I don't want to listen to that. But you do need to listen to those things. And then after you've
listened to them, they will actually listen to you. And that's when you can make an impression on them.
Mark and I talked about, uh, those who didn't have positive role models and how they overcome these generational cycles. What would you add to what we've talked about, Chris?
Oh, that's a great question. I think you already mentioned this, but it takes intentionality. It takes making a purpose. And I think also one other thing is it takes building really strong habits. Um, you don't drift into mentoring, you don't drift into breaking cycles. You have to take the time. And actually, you know, maybe even, you know, put pen to paper. How am I actually going to take this bold next step? What am I actually going to do? And then you can do it.
Well, Chris, before we let you go, one last question for you. Where do we start? Where does it begin for us to have this kind of influence, spiritual influence in someone else's life?
I think it it starts. This is going to sound trite, but it starts with prayer. Ask the Lord to open up somebody or to put somebody on your heart that you know that is struggling right now, that needs help and that you can you can be that help for them, even if you're struggling yourself. I think one of the things that we can do, we think, well, we have to have it all figured out before we can help somebody. No you don't. Um, you are a sinner trying to
help other sinners. And so we are on the way, on the road to to Christ. So I think that's where it starts. Is asking the Lord in prayer. God, where do you want to use me? Who do you want me to help? Who do you want me to serve today? And then see where he takes you.
It's been great to have Doctor Chris Rappaccini with us today, the author of Moving Forward After Messing Up, and we're so grateful for your time, Chris. Thank you.
Thank you Chris.
Yeah. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
You know, Mark, uh. He's right. Uh, it begins with prayer, and it begins with being grounded in God's word. I mean, if we don't have something to give out, then why would we ever try to influence someone else?
Absolutely. There's someone listening today that needs to take serious what Chris said. Start to pray. God use me. Is there someone that you want me to mentor and impart in? And maybe one of those ways you could do that. We wrote a booklet called Discovering Who You Are in Christ. It's a 15 day devotional. I think some some of us need to be reminded that we are someone in Christ. Our identity and our position is in Christ, not in
who you are, but who you are in Christ. And maybe as you read or pray through this devotional 15 days, you could pray with the mentality saying, God, who am I in you? And who do you want me to coach in part mentor. Build a relationship with that could really help them. Some of you need to think of when you were 16, 20, 25, 23, the struggles you were going through and what it would have meant to have a mentor, a coach, a prayer partner at that
time to walk you through that. And maybe, just maybe, God will lead you to a relationship that is life changing for, uh, a person that is next generation.
Well, if today's message has resonated with you, and if you'd like to discover this booklet more than a label discovering who you are in Christ, just go to npr.org. Click on the devotional tab and you'll find it right there. And of course, your partnership with this program means a lot to us as well. Your consistent support allows us to plan effectively and expand this outreach to more families who need to hear about God's power to break cycles
and build legacies, as we've talked about here today. Now, when you think about the influence your parents or mentors had on you, or perhaps the influence you wish you had, that's exactly the kind of impact your partnership makes possible for others. So please sign up today at npr.org, or call us at (800) 800-3566 66639. Well, what a meaningful, helpful conversation here today. Mark, thank you for this. But we've got to pray about this, don't we?
We do. And I'd love to pray for that person right now that this has stirred something up in your heart. And maybe it's your own sons and daughters that you need to be mentoring. Uh, some of you are at the cusp of having to break cycles and determine, I will not pass this cycle of a critical spirit of infidelity, of addiction, of divorce, of, um, uh, whatever it may be that has plagued your family, that this cycle stops with me so that my children can have a new legacy.
And so I'd like to pray for you, if you are right now, in one of those cycle breaking moments in your life and needing to make a decision. Father, I pray for that father who never had a father to invest in him and feels like I don't know what it is to lead a family in a godly way. I pray in Jesus name that they would feel the confidence that you give, that they would get the help, the instruction that they would determine. I will learn and
grow to be a godly father. I will break the cycle of brokenness, abandonment, dysfunction, and I will set a new legacy for my family. I pray in Jesus name for that grandparent that maybe feels like their voice isn't important. Their influence doesn't matter. I pray that you would give them a greater sense of confidence that God yes, the voice of the mature, the voice of the seasoned has
power in the next generation. Father, I pray that you would connect them with next generation young people that they can influence as well. I pray for the person that has a heart to mentor, but feels inadequate because of mistakes that they've made in their past life. God, I pray in Jesus name that they would understand the blood of Jesus and that they would sense the. What it means to be forgiven and not let the accusation and lies of the enemy keep them back from being an
influence to other people. Father, so, God, we pray that we would take bold steps to break cycles, that we would identify those cycles and that we would create new cycles in Jesus name.
Amen. That's Mark Jobe. And on behalf of Mark and our guest today, Doctor Chris Rappaccini, I'm Wayne Shepherd. Thank you for listening. You can find out more about resourcing available at Bold steps.org. And we pray that you'll step into the calling to become an influence spiritually in someone's life for Christ. Take on that challenge and you'll live a great life. Thank you for listening. We'll see you
next time for Bold Steps. Bold steps is a production of Moody Radio, a ministry of Moody Bible Institute.