Coming to you from the Morning Star Mission sponsored studio. This is Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
If you've lived any length of time at all, you know that you're going to hit some bad patches in life, right, guys? Yes.
Of course.
Choices that you make for yourself. Um, I have those. Ali doesn't have those.
Of course not.
Ali. Uh, we had a live audience in studio yesterday, and she said, uh, you know, I was the kind of the goody two shoes kid. But it's true, Ali. Even the goody two shoes kids, their their problems, their messes that they make for themselves are sometimes even more complex. Oh, yeah. They're in secret.
Yeah. Because it's it's quiet. Because there's it's quiet. There's an outward, real high level of compliance with rules. There's a high level of performing for people, but inside all kind of things can be going on.
And that must be pressure, huh?
Oh, yeah. I mean, when you when you put the pressure on yourself to always be good. And I use that in air quotes because we know that Scripture says no one is good. But if you feel that pressure to always be the good kid, to not get in trouble, to not disappoint teachers or parents, well, then you just start hiding stuff.
Yeah. I, on the other hand, am out there. There was no pretense of goody two shoes for me. I think I wanted to put on a good front with Mom and Dad.
Sure. Yeah.
By and large, I was out there kind of living it. But whether you make the bad yourself and you'll understand why I'm using the word bad. I mean, that can be a pretty generic term. Whether the bad that you're experiencing is self-inflicted or if it's others inflicted. And those happen. Man, we live in a world right now that I was, I was telling a group of men in Arizona over the weekend when you're breaking free from sin. I said, listen to me. Make sure that you find people that
you can trust. I even told them I said, doesn't mean that you go into a small group and tell everyone in that group, this is what I'm battling with. I sometimes that's okay because you can trust everyone in the group. You got to find people you can trust, because sometimes things that you share with people today can be used as a knife hanging out of your back tomorrow. So be wise even in how you do that. But pain from others is real. Sometimes you're in the bad
suit because of something that someone did. It could be from childhood. Those things ravage our soul. And the question is, can God turn it around? And that's what we're focused on today. And I just want you to I'm going to give you the payoff punchline right now. According to Romans 828. And this is why context is so important. I was talking to my right hand man at 180 Chicago, Christopher, and I said, man, we need to the the epistles. We need to read the entire book and have full
context to understand what's going on, he said. Carl. Every book of the Bible, you can really only understand these letters, these works, when you understand the broader perspective and the broader perspective of Romans. Quick flyby is we're on this highway to hell, and apart from God intervening, who knows what we're going to do? Romans one lays it all out that creation is screaming at us, but we got our backs to God and we're going a new way.
But by faith, the father of all who believe Abraham displayed that we put our full faith and trust in God with no assurance of what's going to happen. And then Paul moves into, but we got this problem called sin in our life. We do bad stuff, we create messes. And then he says, but praise be to the Lord Jesus Christ. So all of that leads up to Romans eight, where we find these words, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good
for those who are called according to his purpose. We're going to illustrate that this hour. But this you need to know right now. Whatever bad you're going through, God can turn to good. I've seen it. Ali seen it. Super die, young thunder. We've all seen it. Yeah, it's not saying that it's all roses, but it's redeemed. God does that. So I'm asking you today to love God. Those are not words. Those are not little, you know, hallmark sentiments. This is an abandonment of yourself to the
lordship of Jesus Christ. Give him control of everything. Our God will turn it to good. And someone needed to hear that today. And we go right to the foot of the cross.
He's a sports fanatic with a stat for anything you can think of. Young Thunder is in the crew. It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
Every time I have found myself in the soup of bad stuff, wanting to see God turn it to the good. Every time there is no help and healing in Carl, wringing his hands and trying to get fancy with his footwork. I'm here to admit it today.
And the hope that we have as Christ followers that that Jesus can redeem and does. I mean, that's a powerful hope, O ally.
It is. And it's a hope based. It's not some fanciful notion like, oh yeah, butterflies for Jesus memes. This is about our God took to the cross, our sin. The tomb is empty. We're living in resurrection power till still today. Do you know Easter? Still going on?
Yes.
Amen. Amen.
Come on man. So our guy can turn it all around. Well, every now and then I get fired up about something around here, boy. But there has to be a certain reason why I get fired up about this thing.
Okay.
Is there a good reason?
Thinks I'm nuts. She does. She don't you? You think I'm certifiably nuts?
Not every day.
I don't even know what that means.
We'll just let that one sit as is, I think.
Hang on. Three minutes. You'll find out why.
She was trying to earn her way to God. But God showed her she didn't have to. Ali is in the crew. It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
What a golden opportunity we have today. And I just got some info that I'm so giddy about. Ali kind of knows what I'm giddy about here. I gotta tell you, there's going to be a lot of people out there today that are beckoning you. Come on. Own. I have not realized how big the uptick is, Ali, on this. There's a lot of people leveraging a day like today in a powerful way, and we've got some juice for incentive that is unparalleled. Rarely will you find this. There's
my setup. I'm going to let you take it away. Ali.
Okay. Well, before I tell you what it is, let me tell you what it is. It's giving day here at Moody Bible Institute. 139 years of God's faithfulness to Moody Bible Institute. Yeah. We are inviting you to partner with us, but I want to bring in doctor job giving day 139 years. Connect the dots. What is this?
Well, you know, it's a great idea. I didn't really realize it until I started here. That it's a really a day of celebration of the faithfulness of God. You know, Moody Bible Institute next year will be 140 years.
Yeah.
It's amazing that students have been coming to the campus of in Chicago at Moody Bible Institute, being trained and sent all over the world. And so this is one day where the entire institute sort of celebrates God's faithfulness,
his resources. Because Moody is tuition sponsored. Students that come, they they pay for their room and board if you're full time on campus, but the tuition is paid by generous people, really, from all over the world that say, I believe in the mission that we need to train the next generation. So it's a day of celebration.
That's beautiful. Mark, one of the things that we hear constantly from our boom crew is that they're so grateful that we're not weak in the knees, we're not wobbly on the gospel. We're going gospel. We're not going to start getting weak on this. I want you to pour out your heart. Why, as the leader of MBI, this is so important to you. And what are we doing to stay strong in a culture that can sometimes get weak in the knees? About what the truth really is?
Yeah. You know, a week ago this past Monday, we celebrated 170 years of the conversion of a 17 year old boy whose father was an alcoholic, who grew up in poverty, who people would have just discarded this guy. He's comes from a broken family, toxic poor, was working at a shoe store, and a Sunday school teacher came in and shared the gospel with him. His life was forever changed his night. His name was D.L. Moody and he became a passionate evangelist. And and really, the school
was started because the gospel does change everything. Out of a passion to get the gospel to the nations. And I don't know why specifically, but in a very supernatural way, God has had his hand on this institute and kept it anchored in the truth, grounded in the Word of God. In spite of how culture has changed, because I look around the landscape of America and so many schools started sort of like moody, but they have gone way off course. God has had his hand on this place in a unique,
powerful way and kept this place grounded. So every student that comes here is going to get Bible courses, no matter what their degree is. They're going to get Bible courses, systematic theology, survey of the New Testament. They're going to be in chapels. They're going to be going they're going out into Chicago doing practical Christian ministry. In fact, I was taking a walk yesterday. Uh, it was a nice night. I was downtown on Michigan Avenue and there was some
street preachers there, so I went up to encourage them. Hey, thanks for sharing the gospel. That's great. And you know what? And and I found out two things. One of the guys, he said, hey, uh, I go to one of your campuses. So. So he was one of, uh, goes to one of our campuses, one of our new life. But a young guy came up to me and says, I'm a moody student. And here it was out in Chicago sharing the gospel.
And I thought, wow, I love that that I ran into Moody Student out in the streets of Chicago sharing the gospel.
With this tuition sponsored model. Whenever you give to something, you like to know where that money goes. And obviously it goes to help sponsor the education of a moody student. But talk about some of the alumni. Where does that money ultimately go in terms of where these students are sent, what they do after they graduate?
Yeah. So we have 50,000 living alumni. And as I travel around the world speaking in different places, I'm always amazed to run into people. Some of them that lead great, you know, big ministries and some of them that are in faithful spots. You would never know their name, but they are just faithfully serving in very difficult parts of the world. And I'm talking about close countries. I'm talking about, um, inner cities. I'm talking about, uh, just every nook and
cranny that you can imagine. There's moody students that are serving God. I'm so encouraged when, uh, people come back to campus and they tell me, hey, for 50 years, I've been pastoring a little rural town in, you know, Montana. Or they come back and say, I've been leading an orphanage in Africa or I've been, uh, you know, leading a non-for-profit. That's that's helping to mentor inner city youth in Detroit. Uh, it's just amazing that these alumni go
all over the place. Um, some of them end up in other places outside of what we would call traditional vocational ministry. Like there's a congressman that, you know, I talked to recently that's a moody grad. And I said, are you sort of sad that you went to Moody? I don't know how that equipped you. He said, no, the best thing I did in my life was get biblically grounded. And he said, I view my position in Washington as a ministry to people in Washington, and I thought, I love it. Wow.
That's beautiful. Okay. Huge news when I heard this, this this will put fuel in your belly. Mark, I'm going to let you share this. We've got either a person or persons who stepped together and have done something pretty extraordinary. We've got a do I have this right? A dollar for dollar match until 9 a.m. on any gift given today.
On any gift given. Any gift given until 9:00. We've had some, um, generous donors that really believe in what we're doing here, and and they're willing to double whatever you give. $100, it turns into 200. Give 500, turns into 1000. And, you know, yesterday I was with some students talking to them about their story, and two of them happened to be international. One was from Portugal and the other one was from Kyrgyzstan. And they came here to get trained and have a passion to go back
to their nations as well. And, um, we have a thousand students that live here on the campus. We train a lot more than that, but a thousand that live in the heart of Chicago, coming from all over the world. Sit down and hear their story. And how some of them got here is literally a miracle. I talked to one student a little while back. He's from Pakistan and his dad's a pastor there, and he was telling me how people pelt their building. And his dad, pretty much.
He was telling me his dad pretty much scraped up everything he could get to to send him to Moody Bible Institute. And I thought, wow, that is who you're investing in those kind of students.
You know, I met a young man on just on Easter Sunday. We were singing in the choir together. I'd never met him, I said, and I asked him his name. He said, my name is Tom. I said, where are you from? He said, I'm from Kenya. And I said, how did you get here to Chicago? He goes, well, I wanted to come to Chicago and I wanted to come to a Bible college. So I looked online and I found Moody Bible Institute. So I came here to go to Moody Bible Institute to be trained up. Young
man from Kenya. Tom. Carl. Go ahead.
Yeah. This is big guys. I'm asking you to jump in right now. Every gift of any size is doubled right now. And we're asking you to do this. Do this for the Tom's from Kenya. Do this for those from that have come from all around the globe, some of them overcoming huge obstacles to put it all on the line. And some of them are standing on street corners preaching the gospel. Would you be a part of this today? Text the word give right now to 805, 55, 78, 98.
Just text the word give. Every gift of every amount is doubled.
What do you love that.
I love that. Well, the reason I love that is it's every part in God's greater family that's doing their what they can handle. And we've got some folks that have stepped up and said, let's, let's make this a phenomenal day. Text the word give to 800 555 7898. Give to 800 555 7898. Mark, thanks for ducking in here, man. We appreciate you doing this today.
Absolutely. Thank you again and God bless you. And again, thank you, listeners, for praying for us and for your generosity. God bless.
It's a beautiful thing. Text that word. Give to 800 555 7898. Give to 800 555 7898.
You're listening to Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
Crazy questions, because that's what I do.
You're good at those.
Have you ever had a detergent or cleaner that you just bragged about to someone?
A detergent.
Detergent or cleaner? Think about it right now. Super dry. Obviously. Her default is Windex. I mean, come on.
Yes.
Come on. Duh.
She's Greek. Don't you know?
Of course.
That was the best flick ever. I laughed so.
Hard. You know, it's one of your favorites. My big fat Greek wedding. Yeah, you got it.
If you. If you. Part one, the other ones leave them out. They tried to churn some dollars off the first good one. That was.
Disappointing.
But back to my cleaners thing. You ever had a cleaner product? House product. Counter. Scrubber. Granite washer. Stainless steel buffer. Some kind of cleaning product that you're like, um. Are you guys gonna leave me high and dry here? No one has a product.
I mean, okay, what do you got? I don't think a lot about.
Mine is a laundry product.
Okay.
Okay.
Or you're not willing to.
Say.
Well, okay, so it's a laundry bar. It looks like a bar of soap. It's called Fels-naptha. It's it's very random looking, but it looks like a long bar of soap. But this thing can get stains out of anything. I mean, like grass stained baseball stained pants. You take it and you scrub it into the fabric. It gets anything out? It is not. Failed me once.
What's it called again?
You know what you have to do right now, or else we're going to get texts out the wazoo.
I know.
I am. This is a product that I love. I want to be careful. Fels-naptha is what it's called. It's a, uh. It's a laundry bar.
I'm going to try it. Thank you. There you go. Yeah.
Good grief. That's not even my department in my life. But I think I'm going to go get one.
Like, maybe I got sold pants. I can go out and play.
In the grass.
Today just to try it out.
Yeah, I'm going to go out. Well, here's. You know why you like that?
Because it.
Works.
It works.
It works really well.
It works. And I I'm going to boil it down. That is the litmus test for any God you are following. And I believe there's one true God and that he can work to good, even the bad. And if it doesn't work, it's not worth using or following anything. Right, guys?
Yeah, that's true, of course, but.
I think the question is, how do you know? Like, what's the proof of whether or not it works?
Yeah. That's. Yeah. And and how do we do this with God. Well, this is the claim that Paul has in Romans 828. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. And it goes on in verse 29, for those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Here's the point. I am absolutely convinced that some people aren't convinced that God can work all things together for good, even the bad stuff. And when I'm talking bad stuff, I'm talking self-inflicted bad, for which we all have that. Even ally goody two shoes ally, as she likes to call herself. But and we talked about that in a
previous hour. But and I'm not making light of that because one of the great pains of, of people that are putting their best out front is you live with some pain inside that.
Oh, yeah.
It's hard. Right?
Sure.
And that's true for every. No one escapes it.
No one escapes it. So the question is, can God turn what is bad? Self-inflicted. Others inflicted. Inflicted for good. That's the acid test of the gospel. Because if he can't, why follow him? Bottom line. Now the secret sauce is a full blown abandonment of self to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. It's Paul crying out, foolish man, that I am that which I want to do, I don't do, and that which I do, I don't want to do. Who will rescue me from this body of sin and death?
Praise be to the Lord Jesus Christ. Coming up here in a moment, we're going to do it right. We are going to illustrate it by way of story. Hang on. He's in the boom crew.
She's a choreographer extraordinaire, and everything is Greek to her. Super die is in the crew. It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
Well, you're the boom crew, and this is your show, and we're going to prove it to you right now. Little show prep. Yesterday, I was pouring my heart out to my bride, and I said, Romans 828 God taken bad stuff and turning it to good. Self inflicted. Others inflicted. Some of you going through some tough things right now and you're like, how in the world is God going to turn this around? I don't care how many locusts came to the years or seasons of your life, that
is the promise of God. And sometimes you got to hear a story to just bank it. Somebody in the boom crew that we love have actually had a chance to go out and get a bite of breakfast with. This man is Phillip, and he has got a walking banner ad for God turning bad stuff into good. How you doing, Phillip?
Good morning, my brother. I'm blessed beyond measure. How are you, man?
Doing great. Um, I gotta tell you, Phillip, I. We're going to cut you loose here. Give us your story. High level. What? What? This thing got off the rails here, my man. Let's get honest. Your life was a train wreck on steroids, right, Phillip?
Absolutely. It was. I mean, I was lost, I was chasing my tail. I was so lost in sin. But you know something? During all that time, oftentimes our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will allow you to go just as far as he needs you to go in order for you to reach what is going to be your end, the end of yourself. And that's what happened to me.
Philip Van Lier is our guest right now, a part of the boom crew. He's a graduate of Moody Theological Seminary. He has a 40 year career as a professional actor director, presenter. We know him as Philip from Aurora.
Which is a suburb of Chicago.
You've probably seen him on small screen or big screen because he's done a lot of stuff, right?
Yes, he has.
He most prominent roles in Prison Break, Chicago Code, Meet the Browns, Holiday Heist, My Dog, The Space Traveler. That sounds interesting. He's appeared regularly on stage here in the Chicago area as well. Philip, you you got into acting? Was that what you thought this was going to spend? I'm going to spend my whole life on the stage in front of the screen. Was that your passion?
Oh, from the time I was in seventh grade, I was, as you can imagine, a rambunctious child. I guess I can just say it that way. I had a teacher, Vincent Popolizio. God bless him. And he said, you know, young man, we've got to find an outlet for you. So you use that energy in a positive fashion. He turned me on to theater and that's all it took.
You know, Philip, I want to get as as honest. You're very honest guy. But what led to this spiral downhill that God ultimately pulled you out of? And give us some of the give us some of the low points. And let's just pour it out here right now.
The greatest sin, as we know, is pride and believing that we are our own gods. And I, I grab hold of that with both hands. I had made it a determination back in the early 70s that I was going to be the greatest actor to come out of Aurora, Illinois. And I was going to do whatever it took. And I went for it with all the gusto. But it also meant I went for all the things that the world had to offer regarding that business. Uh, women, drugs, alcohol, Home. Uh,
just the most, uh. The most, uh, Colonel, uh, segment of that business that I could find. And as oftentimes the enemy does, he latched on to those weaknesses in me. I did find fame. I found fortune, but unfortunately, what tripped me up is that I didn't recognize the folly when it fell into my lap.
So, Philip, did you reach a a breaking point was obviously there's the fleeting pleasures of sin, or else we wouldn't go back to it. As you're seeing success in your acting career, you're living the life and the pleasures of sin. What brought you to a point where you go, this is this can't continue. Did you make that decision on your own, or did God absolutely break you?
The decisions I made on my own allies, but got me into that place. So absolutely. You know, I was I made my own mess. But but, you know, as as the fame increased and I was, you know, doing show after show on stage here in Chicago, you know, I was doing television and film. I was working with
three major corporations and presenting all over the world. But, you know, there was this as we know, Pascal told us, this God sized hole in my heart where I knew that I had walked away from the faith of my family. You know, I was raised in the church. You know, my my family footprint fingerprint was all over the church that I grew up in. But I had turned my
back on it. But, you know, even though you may walk away the Holy Spirit, once you've given yourself to Christ, once you've received Christ into your heart, the Holy Spirit is dwelling in you. And as much as you try to push it away, it's still going to be pulling you back. And so I knew that. I knew how far I had fallen, and that what I was doing was, was killing myself, killing those around me. I had already torpedoed two marriages. I was on my third, and I
had started to detonate that marriage as well. Um. But. But, God. Yeah, but God, finally. You know. Yes. Turned me around.
Coming up, Phillip is going to share with us here, and we get to all take it in together. How? God takes the bad sometimes the mess we've made ourselves. And I'm talking ugly stuff and can turn this for good to those who love God. And that's the point. More with Phillip Van Lear straight ahead.
You can take him out of Alaska, but you can't take Alaska out of him. Carl is in the crew. It's Carl and crew on Moody Radio.
Can God take what is bad? Self-inflicted. Brought on by others. And I mean ugly. Bad and turn it for good. That's the promise in Romans 828. But the key is for those who love him. It's that formation of the soul. That's everything. He was high flying, low living, blew up two marriages fixing to ruin a third. And God got a hold of him. His name is Philip, and we love him a bunch here. He's one of the boom crew. Philip, tell us what happened. I want you to take us
to that moment. Moment of, I mean, snot blowing brokenness where you're like, this has got to end.
No. Amen. Amen. You know, because rehab didn't work. Carl, I like rehab so much. I went three times.
You and me, buddy. We must have gone to the same dive.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. We have. Somehow we got the same reference. You know, I, you know, I wanted to get that that 90 and 90 chip. And then once I got one, I said, well let me go back and get two more. Yeah. But you know, but you know, that's the madness. That's the insanity of sin. But what really got it for me? Praise God for my lovely wife. You know, Heather, such a strong woman, been through so much. I so all
kicked my coverage, but I remember it was May. It was May of 2012, and and I had just been on a bit of a bender. It had been five days of constant drug use. And Heather looked at me and she said, that's it, I'm done. Either you're going to get help or you're leaving. Now notice she didn't say she was leaving. She said no. She said she and the kids were going to stay in the house that we had just bought. She said, she said, but you,
you are going to leave. And it was that moment, and maybe it was something in the tone of her voice or the look in her eye where I knew that she was serious, you know? And all this time I had been playing a church card and I had been going to church. And of course, it was a church that was a mess, you know, with the rainbow flag hanging over the altar and everything. So I was just going there because it itched my ears, you know.
But finally I went and got help. And I remember the day sitting in that psychiatrist's office when she did an assessment of me, and she said after her assessment, she said, you are you're suffering from severe depression and severe anxiety. And the dam broke right there. The tears just flowed. Not because I had a miraculous conversion. No. I had already been saved by the grace and mercy
of God. But at that point, I realized that all of this machismo, this macho thing, especially as a black man, that I could handle it, that I was going to be okay. That wall broke down. Praise be to God. Yeah. And I realized it was all right for me to ask for help, to seek help. I got help right then. The last day I used Praise Be to God was
the 24th of May, 2012. Now, things were not all unicorns and rainbows after that because as we often know, as as as addicts, we'll replace one addiction for another.
Yes.
And even though I was freed, praise God from that one addiction of cocaine and marijuana, I was freed from that. But yet the enemy said, okay, well, I got you over here. Come on over here, buddy. I got something for you. Yeah. And so then those other addictions, the, uh, the infidelity and the, uh, like the deceit, uh, those addictions kicked in. Now, praise be to God, man. I got connected with a great church out in Aurora, harvest Bible Chapel, the Aurora campus. And for the first time,
first time in my life. And I've been a Christian since 19. What, 65? When I walked that aisle. But for the first time in my life, I had men, godly men who came around me that didn't shame me as much as I felt that shame from an absentee father. You know, as much as I felt that shame from other men that thought that I felt I was lesser in their eyes, seeking the glory of man, not of God.
But for the first time I had men that loved me and held me to account, put my feet to the fire, and held me there and said, no, bro, we love you. But but you, you claim to be a child of God. But what are you doing? Yeah. You know, what fruit are you bearing right now? You know, and that that is when it began to change is when I. I realized that I was hurting my bride, the woman that had stayed with me through all of this mess. You know, she I was hurting her to the point where she was desperate.
Yeah.
Philip, tell me, how have you seen this? In about a minute left. How have you seen Romans 828? In your own life? We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. You have walked a difficult road. Some of it, by your own admission, has been your own doing. But how have you seen God work things together for your good as one who loves him?
You know when you come out of it and you start to realize that that God actually does love you and it's okay for you to love yourself. And and what I've seen is that even in the when we say we, we often misquote that verse and verse, and we think everything's going to be fine. You know how many coaches have told us, yo, all things can work. We're going to do this. No, no, that means that means that means everything. That means the good and the bad.
That means my my glaucoma. You know, as I've lost my sight, it means, you know, my journey with cancer. When I had three tumors in my on my tongue and my throat and on my neck, you know, it means spinal fusion therapy. It means losing my agent, you know, and my professional career basically ending all of that worked for his good because what he did, he gave me opportunities to be a spokesperson for the Glaucoma Research Foundation.
He gave me an opportunity to lead a men's ministry, to create a creative arts ministry at my old church city line. He he's given me opportunities to be able to speak to men on a real level because, as you know, the best witnesses are those witnesses who have who have been in the trenches or I should say, have been stuck in the muck and the mire because once God brings us out of that. Our story has much more validity to it, you know? It's because it's genuine,
because we've lived it. And people can see in us the power of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Yes. And for those who love, you know, and when, when we profess, boldly profess Christ, proclaim Christ, and when people can see the love of Christ in us and in our eyes. Yes. Amen.
Philip, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. There's a lot of you listening today. And your question is, can God do that for me? And the answer is he can. He absolutely can. Our God works together for good, even the bad, to those who love him, those that are called according to his purpose, those bowed low before God who are being made into the likeness of Christ. Bank it.