Roger Marsh: Thanks for joining us today for Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh. And during the next half hour, you are in for a real treat. Our guest today is a popular internationally acclaimed speaker, former award-winning professor, and an award-winning journalist. You may know him from his best-selling book called Lessons from a Third Grade Dropout. His name is Rick Rigsby. And what you're about to hear today is a presentation Rick gave at the 2022 Men's Ignite event, as well as a backstage interview with our co-host, Dr. Tim Clinton. The Men's Ignite event in Virginia is an annual event hosted by Dr. Clinton with the purpose of encouraging men to be strong leaders in their families and their communities. Rick Rigsby shares some choice words with the men about the concept of Godly power, and also on being on a God-driven path for your life. By the way, if you'd like to learn more about Rick Rigsby, visit our broadcast page at drjamesdobson.org/familytalk. Let's go backstage with co-host, Dr. Tim Clinton, and Rick Rigsby right now.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Rick, such a delight to have you on Family Talk. By the way, we're backstage at the Ignite Men's Impact Weekend. Rick, you've been here many times. I'm telling you what, you're my favorite speaker. Something happens, but there's a stirring. Rick, do you see a stirring going on among men?
Rick Rigsby: Oh, Tim, absolutely, and I think it's because of the confluence of events that are taking place. We live in a society where the times are troubling. They're difficult, they're challenging. And there is a demand being placed upon a man to rise up, and that's what we're sensing. These guys are hungry. This is an exciting time to be a Christian. What a great opportunity in the history of our world to be a man of God, an authentic man of God, and that's the stirring that you see. It's the Holy Spirit. It's interesting. You don't normally know when an earthquake is coming, unless you're paying attention to the signs all around, like a global pandemic, like racial strife, like the lack of trust for our government. Nowadays... Russia and Ukraine.
We're seeing all kinds of signs indicative of one thing, the Lord God Almighty speaking. And He's speaking to the hearts of men. And His message is quite simple: Surrender, confess, repent. And why is that important? Because you can't experience the power of God without purity of heart. Oh, baby. I got to calm down. In order to experience the power of God in our lives, man, we have to have purity of heart. I believe it was Dr. Charles Stanley who said purity of heart and the power of God are linked. The Holy Spirit is stirring the hearts of men. Let me say that sentence again. The Holy Spirit is stirring the hearts of men saying it is now time to surrender. It is now time to confess. It is now time to repent.
And Dr. Tim, that's not punishment. That's the process of purification. Just look at Psalm 51. David just begins with, "O God, have mercy upon me according to your loving kind..." And then after surrendering, he what? Confesses. When he says these words, he says, "Against you, God, and only you, I have sinned." And then what a perfect picture of repentance when he says, "You want to know my innermost being." In other words, I don't want to hide my sin from you again. And notice the other thing that I see in Psalm 51. As powerful as David was, this is really important for men to grab a hold of, as powerful as David was, he couldn't fix himself.
Dr. Tim Clinton: No, he couldn't.
Rick Rigsby: He had to yield to the stirring of the heart, and that's where we are right now.
Dr. Tim Clinton: A lot of men, Rick, have given up some ground.
Rick Rigsby: Yeah.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Yeah, they've made some decisions that's cost them, but I love this.
Rick Rigsby: Amen.
Dr. Tim Clinton: It's never too late. As long as you have breath...
Rick Rigsby: Come on.
Dr. Tim Clinton: It's time to step up and take it back.
Rick Rigsby: Come on, come on.
Dr. Tim Clinton: It's time to go. It's time to get after it.
Rick Rigsby: Yes, sir.
Dr. Tim Clinton: I'm telling you what, that message is resonating.
Rick Rigsby: Yes.
Dr. Tim Clinton: Hey, one of the greatest men you have ever known, by the way, was a third-grade dropout. You did a piece on this, Rick. Over 300 million views on social media.
Rick Rigsby: Yes, sir. That was my dad. The wisest man I ever met in my life, a third-grade dropout, wisest man. And here was his greatest wisdom, his greatest wisdom came to me on my worst day. As you know, I married my college sweetheart back in the '70s. She was a nurse. I'm a television reporter. Everything we touched turned to gold. We get married in August, get saved in November, have two beautiful children, and then she's diagnosed with breast cancer. Six years later, me and my boys walk up to mama's casket. This was in 1996. I was only 40 years old, and I'm looking at that casket thinking my life is over.
In fact, I turned to that third-grade dropout daddy and I said, "Daddy, I've lost hope." Listen to what he said. Now, remember, no academic education, but filled with godly wisdom. He said, "Son, you haven't lost hope because you can't lose something God gave you. You haven't lost hope. You've lost perspective. Now, son, you just stand." Little did I know, Tim, 20-some years ago that God would use that moment to place a message indelibly upon the plaque of my heart to take to all the world, not for my glory, but for His glory to encourage people that they haven't lost hope for their hope is in the revelation of Jesus the living Christ.
Dr. Tim Clinton: We're going to go now to your talk at the Ignite Men's Impact Weekend.
Rick Rigsby: It is all about understanding how to live with the power of God. It's okay to be powerful, but it's greater and far more meaningful to be a powerful man of God. How do we get there? Oh, it starts with surrender, it goes to confession, and it ends up in repentance. And what that does is it purifies the heart because purity of heart and the power of God are linked. Come on, somebody.
Roger Marsh: Well, I hope that your heart is on fire for the Lord like Rick's is. I'm Roger Marsh and you're listening to Family Talk. And today's guest is Rick Rigsby. You've been listening to Rick backstage with our co-host, Dr. Tim Clinton, at the 2022 Men's Ignite event. We thought today was the perfect time to present this to you to start your year off with some fire. Rick Rigsby is a best-selling author and evangelist. He's most known for his book called Lessons from a Third Grade Dropout. Let's rejoin Dr. Clinton and Rick Rigsby right now as Rick goes on stage to speak to 5,000 men.
Rick Rigsby: What's up, men? How y'all doing?
Yeah, baby. Y'all can be seated. Man, I couldn't wait to get here. I love y'all. I love each and every one of you. I wish I could hug every one of your necks. Has this been an amazingly powerful weekend or what, y'all? Come on, give it up for the Lord. Give it up for the Lord. Amen. You know what, guys? I got to tell you something. I think men, we love power. Amen. We love power. As a matter of fact, I like those guys who say, "Put me in the game. And if I can't get in the game, at least let me buy tickets to the game. Let me somehow be where the action is." Here's the point. The point is I love power, but I want it to be godly power. Come on, somebody. Anybody can have power, but we have to have a godly kind of power if we want to make an impact. As we all know in here, the most powerful person to ever walk the face of the earth was our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Audience: Amen.
Rick Rigsby: He's our Lord, He's our savior, but He's also our standard for living. And so with that thought in mind, thinking about the power that He operated in, thinking about His whole goal in life was to glorify the Father who's in Heaven, thinking about how He yielded Himself every day, paying the price for the power of God to flow through Him, that really is what I want to talk about just for a few minutes. And don't want to ask you a question. Everybody say I'm listening.
Audience: I'm listening.
Rick Rigsby: Here's the question. Are you so filled with God's power that you're shaping culture or is culture shaping you? Come on, somebody. It's one or the other. You either pregnant on you ain't. Come on. Come on, somebody. Are we shaping culture or is culture shaping us? Here's another way of saying that: Are we willing to pay the price to be powerful men of God, particularly in this day and age? Are we willing to pay the price? There's a coach down there in Tuscaloosa named Nick Saban.
Audience: Whoo.
Rick Rigsby: Any Alabama fans here?
Audience: Whoo.
Rick Rigsby: Any Alabama haters here?
Audience: Whoo.
Rick Rigsby: I still want you to listen to the quote. Nick Saban said, "You know what?" He said, "It's not about what you want..." Listen. Listen, men. Saban said, "It's not about what you want. It's about what are you willing to do to get what you want?" Everybody wants to be that guy. Everybody wants to be a powerful man of God, but here's the question the Holy Spirit has been laying on my heart: Am I willing to pay the price every single day to be that powerful man of God? It's no longer just about the power when it comes to me. There's too much at stake, but listen to this. I'm thinking of a city right now, y'all, that was powerful, but the city wasn't godly. And whenever you look at Babylon in the Bible, what you see is a powerful city. In ancient days, as many of you know, it had one of the biggest populations in the world at that time. Babylon. It's situated geographically in a perfect place for trade. It's right on the Tigris and the Euphrates.
They were the epicenter for trade and fashion and art and commerce, but they weren't godly. They were not godly. As a matter of fact, if you look in the Bible as you normally do, if you look from Genesis 11, the Tower Babel, all the way to Revelation 18, to utterances that speak to the rebuilding of Babylon and then its eventual demise, you will see associated with the word Babylon: debauchery, humanism, secularism. Every time you see Babylon, you see it being a rebellious, arrogant, affront to God. You see and it symbolizes the fact that we are so independent that we don't even need God. We want to do our own thing. You hear it today. "I don't really need to go to church to be a Christian. As a matter of fact, I got a relationship with God. We had an understanding. I can do my own thing. I can do whatever I want." And then we wonder why we lack power. We see tendencies of Babylon today. Does this sound familiar to anybody? I can't hear y'all. I said does this sound familiar to anybody in here?
Audience: Yeah.
Rick Rigsby: What I'm saying, men, is that the Holy Spirit is saying this: We have to be more than just powerful men, but God has called us to be powerful men of God who impact our communities, who impact our families, who impact each other. Why is this so important? Listen to me. Whether we want to admit it or not, we're living in a post-truth culture. Come on, somebody. Every single day watching the news, you got another group trying to turn wrong into making it right.
Audience: Amen.
Rick Rigsby: Come on, somebody. Enough is enough. They poo-poo the Bible. There's no biblical standard whatsoever in our society as folks practice a kind of moral relativism as opposed to absolute truth. Look up. Everybody say I'm listening.
Audience: I'm listening.
Rick Rigsby: It is incumbent upon the men of Virginia to stand up and say enough is enough. It is incumbent upon all of us who believe in the bloodstained banner to say, "There is a biblical standard and my life is going to start showing that at a much different level." Y'all, say amen.
Audience: Amen.
Rick Rigsby: Are we willing to pay the price? That's the question. Are we willing to pay the price to experience the power of God? Just like Babylonian culture, American culture is replacing God every single day with things, with stuff, with activities, with busyness. We've literally neutered God out of our culture. I want to ask you a question. Despite the difficulty of the hour, despite all the tensions that divide us, despite everything that's going on right now, I want to ask you a question. Do you think it might be possible that God has strategically placed you... Your birth was not an accident, that God has strategically placed you at this place, at this time in history, in the words of Mordecai, for such a time as this, that God has placed you in that family, in that community, on that job for this particular time right now?
Listen to me, men. "What are you saying to us, Pastor Rick?" This is what I'm saying. I would rather march every day onward towards Zion than wandering all day in the town of Babylon. Come on, Pastor Rick, preach. I'd rather be on my way someplace for God than wandering around in a half-truth compromised kind of situation where I love God. In the words of Craig Groeschel, "I just live as though he doesn't exist." Help me, y'all. I'm telling you, God is giving us a clarion call. He's issuing a wake-up call so that we don't spend the rest of our lives wandering in Babylon. So the question that hangs over this auditorium this afternoon as we get ready to depart is this: Now, what? And here's the answer that the Holy Spirit gave me: Purity of heart and the power of God are linked. That's it.
Purity of God, purity of heart. Everybody repeat after me, purity of heart.
Audience: Purity of heart.
Rick Rigsby: And the power of God.
Audience: And the power of God.
Rick Rigsby: Are linked.
Audience: Are linked.
Rick Rigsby: Listen to this, fellas. Listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to each and every one of us right now. Without purity of heart, you'll never see or experience the power of God in your life.
Because purity of heart and the power of God are linked. Do y'all know that a small season in the life of one of the greatest men who ever lived that season, he literally lived in his heart in Babylon? I'm talking about King David. "But Pastor Rick, wasn't David a man after God's own heart?" Yeah, but just like all of us, he had setbacks, and this brother really had some setbacks. Come on, somebody. He was wrong, more wrong than two left feet. Come on, somebody. Come on, help me. And I mean, not only did he see her, come on, y'all, he is a man, then lied, had the woman's husband kill. He is sinking. He is one who has experienced the power of God his whole life because he worshiped and the Lord cleansed him, but not at this moment. Purity has vanished and so has the power and the presence of God. About this time, about a year after, all hell literally broke loose. This is what David wrote in Psalm 51, "Create in me," verse 10, "a clean heart." Did y'all catch that?
He didn't say I'm going to. He said, "Create in me a clean heart. Renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from my presence. Do not take thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of thy salvation. Sustain me with a willing spirit. Sustain me with a willing spirit." You what's amazing to me? Here, you have the king of Israel. Listen. Here, you have the king of Israel. Here, you have one of the mightiest men in the Bible. Here, you have a man that is strong for battle, mighty in spirit, a prayer warrior. And guess what? Somebody in here needs to hear this. He could not fix himself. Stop trying, but there is something you can do. Uh-oh.
I said there's something you can do. Uh-oh.
Audience: Uh-oh.
Rick Rigsby: There you go. I like. Y'all got a lot of soul up in here. If you just meditate on these verses as I know so many of you have, leading up to verse 10, David shows us what we can do, and thus gives us the blueprint for how to be mighty and strong in God by first having our hearts cleansed. Just listen for just a moment. Amen.
Audience: Amen.
Rick Rigsby: Listen to what we can do. First, David surrenders. The very first verse in Psalm 51, "O God, have mercy on me according to your loving... God." How many times have I said... How many times, "I can't believe, God, I did that again"? Have mercy. First point, he surrenders. Point number two, he confesses. Around verse four, you get this, "Against you God, and only against you, I have sinned." Third point, he repents. I want you to just hear verse six. This is the perfect picture of repentance, "Behold, thou desirest truth in the innermost being and in the hidden part." "Pastor Rick, what does that mean?" When David says that, what he is saying is, "God, I don't want to hide my sin from you any longer." "Rick, how do you expect us to remember surrender? How do you expect us to remember, number two, confession? How do you expect us to remember, number three, repentance?" I like acronyms. Acronyms help me. One of my favorite shows to watch is SportsCenter Right Now. Remember that. If you don't remember anything else, remember that. Because S, David?
Audience: Surrendered.
Rick Rigsby: Center. Number two, David Confessed. And then number three, David repented, which has an R and an N. SportsCenter Right Now. Come on, somebody. You can remember that. SportsCenter Right Now. David surrenders, he confesses, he repents. Oh, by the way, surrender, confession and repentance, listen, is not punishment. It is the only process toward Godly purity.
Audience: Amen.
Rick Rigsby: And purity of heart and the power of God are linked. Are y'all hearing me? Are you going to go back home and you're going to be different people? "Well, Pastor Rick, I think I can surrender. I think I can, but I don't know. I don't know. I don't know about... I think I can confess. I don't know about repentance. I just don't know about repentance." Can I just tell y'all something? I can tell you this. I'm done saying the words I'm sorry. I'm sorry, you know what that means to me? That I didn't get caught. Come on, y'all. I'm sorry is a polite way of saying, "Ooh-ooh, I made a boo-boo." No. God, I repent. Oh, let me give you a visual. I completely turned from my sin. Some of you are saying, "I have a hard time confessing." He already knows. David said He knows the innermost parts. Might as well give it up. Most of us in here, just like Carson was talking about, have a hard time with surrender. I can't judge y'all. I'm in the same boat. Y'all know that song, I Surrender All?
Unfortunately, too many times in my life, the lyrics have gone like this, "I surrender some." I'm talking about me. Let me just tell y'all something. I have learned that God is not a celestial vending machine that you put a coin and manipulate. I'm here to tell you that God is not some grandfather that just winks at your sin. I'm here to tell you that He is the holy one of Israel who is telling us today that enough, is enough, is enough.
Audience: Whoo.
Rick Rigsby: Are we willing to pay the price? Do you know what I'm learning? Arrogance is the byproduct of rebellion. You know why? Arrogance says, "I don't need God." Arrogance says, "I can do it. I can do this on my own. I don't need his word to cleanse me. I know how to cleanse myself." Whereas arrogance is the byproduct of rebellion, humility is the trademark of Jesus the living Christ. Humility says, just like Isaiah, "I can't go another... I can't get in my car after a weekend in Lynchburg and drive one foot without you. I cannot do it and I will not do it."
Roger Marsh: Humility and pureness of heart, those are keys to letting God lead your life. That was Rick Rigsby. He is president and CEO of Rick Rigsby Communications, and you just heard why he is an evangelist and international speaker as well. His words transformed many hearts at the Men's Ignite event that he spoke at in March of last year. In closing, I want to ask you, have you considered ordering our 2022 Best of Broadcast collection? All you have to do is head over to drjamesdobson.org/bestof2022. From there, click on the link. And for a suggested donation of $50, you will have a six-CD set mailed directly to you. Again, go to drjamesdobson.org/bestof2022. You can also order by phone, just call 877-732-6825. That's 877-732-6825. You can also always mail us your requests for products, send us your questions, or ask us to pray with you.
Our ministry mailing address is The Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, P.O. Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, the zip code 80949. Once again, that address is The Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, or JDFI for short, P.O. Box 39000 Colorado Springs, Colorado, the zip code 80949. Feel free to send us your prayer requests, your notes of encouragement, even your questions. We look forward to hearing from you. I'm Roger Marsh, wishing you God's richest blessings upon you and your family. Join us again Monday as we start another week providing you with great content for you and your family on everything from marriage, to parenting, to mental health, and public policy.
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