Roger Marsh: Well, greetings and welcome to Family Talk. I'm Roger Marsh. And today on the broadcast, we're going to share Dr. Dobson's 2018 conversation with Pastor Jentezen Franklin. Jentezen Franklin is the Senior Pastor of Free Chapel in Gainesville, Georgia. His program, Kingdom Connection, is a weekly broadcast that airs on numerous Christian television networks all over the world. Jentezen Franklin is a New York Times bestselling author. He has written 10 books, including Love Like You've Never Been Hurt and The Fearless Life. Jentezen and his wife, Cherise, have five children and four grandchildren. In 2018, Pastor Franklin visited the Family Talk studios to discuss his book Love Like You've Never Been Hurt. He and Dr. Dobson had met for the first time earlier that year when they traveled to Israel together with a group of evangelical leaders. Today you'll hear Jentezen Franklin and Dr. Dobson recall their memories of that momentous trip. He will also share some of his personal testimony as well, so let's listen in right now.
Dr. James Dobson: I'm absolutely delighted to have a guest here today who is already known by millions of people around the world. He hosts a weekly TV broadcast called Kingdom Connection that's on in nearly 250 countries around the world. He is also a Senior Pastor at Free Chapel in Atlanta, Georgia where 13,000 people worship each week. He speaks, I think, three or four times every Sunday morning. This man is working hard and the Lord is using everything he's doing. I'm speaking of Jentezen Franklin. Let me just say that he flew across country to be with us today for which I am very appreciative. Jentezen, I really am pleased that you came. You're a busy man. People already know who you are. I'm just getting acquainted with you and you're one of those people whom I feel like I've known for a lifetime, even though we've really only known each other since June.
Jentezen Franklin: I remember, one of my fondest memories of you, quite frankly, is when I was going to college, I used to drive about an hour to the campus where I went to school. And I was going to pursue music, I was a music major. I was on full scholarship, I played saxophone and played jazz. And I would listen on my radio to your radio ministry and that's where I met you. It was my daily routine every day. It just so happened when I was traveling, I was listening to you. And I sure do honor you, and I'm sure honored to be here.
Dr. James Dobson: Yeah, isn't it interesting how radio can put you in touch with people? I didn't meet you for a long, long time, but you knew me.
Jentezen Franklin: I felt like I knew you like a father. I mean, there were times when sometimes I'd be laughing at some of the things and some of the guests. And then other times I'd be wiping tears while I was driving that car because you've always had that ability to touch people's hearts with truth, and it comes right through that radio. It's amazing what God has done.
Dr. James Dobson: Well, it's really a pleasure to get better acquainted with you. As a matter of fact, we had an opportunity to be together for 10 to 12 hours on the way to Israel. We didn't choose to sit together, but the Lord chose it. And man, that was a very meaningful time together. I was in tears during part of that conversation and I think you were too.
Jentezen Franklin: I just never dreamed that I would have that opportunity to have James Dobson pinned in on the inside seat, and to get the wisdom that you so ... I didn't want to be like a stalker and bother you, but you are such a kind person. And what people hear on the radio is who you really are. I began to just probe and ask a couple of questions that I had to ask. And I don't know, I think I hit the gold vein or something because you began to pour out wisdom in those few hours. And then I let you go to sleep eventually. But I tell you, I'll never forget those conversations, the stories that you shared and the wisdom. The incredible wisdom.
Dr. James Dobson: You're very kind. We were on our way to Israel, as I said. That was one of the finest trips that I've ever been on. How'd you feel about it?
Jentezen Franklin: Unbelievable. We went there as guests of the Israeli government. And we met with the prime minister, we met with many other dignitaries.
Dr. James Dobson: The Mayor of Jerusalem.
Jentezen Franklin: The Mayor of Jerusalem. And to see what is happening and to know that our present administration was willing to move that embassy to Jerusalem and make Jerusalem, the capital, recognized for the first time in history by America was just unreal.
Dr. James Dobson: They gave us eight helicopters. There were 29 in our group.
Jentezen Franklin: Yeah. And one of the things that still stand out to me that people just don't get, unless you go there, is when they took us in those helicopters to the border, where Syria and the Russians are there, and Syria is there and ISIS is there. And they showed us, we could see the flag of ISIS from a distance. People don't realize the enemies that are on the border, at the door, of that tiny nation of Israel and how critical it is that we have a government that stands with Israel.
Dr. James Dobson: I was deeply touched spiritually, during that time. You remember one of those helicopters stopped just outside the ruins of the synagogue where Mary Magdalene worshiped. Wasn't that incredible?
Jentezen Franklin: It was.
Dr. James Dobson: And the pathway in front of where that synagogue was leads right down to the Galilee. Jesus had to have walked right past there and no doubt attended that synagogue. All eight of the helicopters, took us into the Golan Heights and into the place where Israel had one of its major battles against Syria. I think that may have been the Six Day War. I'm not sure.
Jentezen Franklin: That's right. You're correct.
Dr. James Dobson: And the general, the commanding general for that battle was with us, up on the hill, looking down though on what took place. The Syrians had as many as 10 times as many tanks as the Israelis did. And that general stood there, commander, told us "I moved here and I moved there." He was able to describe that entire battle. And of course, Israel not only won it, but he drove off the remaining tanks that were there. That was deeply emotional for me.
Jentezen Franklin: Yeah. And I mean, we were standing there and they even had some of the tanks still out there that had been blown up, Russian tanks that were out there. And to realize that God defends Israel, that he said, "No weapon formed against you will prosper. And that I'll bless those that bless Israel and I'll fight those that fight it."
Dr. James Dobson: It would not be there today if the Lord's hand had not been on them because they were outgunned, outnumbered. They had Russian military equipment and everything and the Lord simply intervened.
Jentezen Franklin: A thousand tanks, if I remember right. There were a thousand. They were fighting against a thousand tanks and they only had maybe a hundred.
Dr. James Dobson: Well, we don't have time to review the entire trip, but it was unbelievable. I would like to make reference to the fact that I had been there 25 years before. I haven't been back since 1993. And while our group was going through Hezekiah's Tunnel, I have a little claustrophobia, so I went and met with the Chief Rabbi at that time. Rabbi Lau, and he turns out to be the same Chief Rabbi that we met with in Jerusalem. And absolutely amazing because he stood up there and talked about some of those wonderful events that have taken place to make them the nation that they are today. But anyway, you and I, and I think 27 other people, were able to spend those seven days. It wore me out, did it too? I came home exhausted and caught pneumonia when I got home.
Jentezen Franklin: Oh, I didn't know that. I'm sorry to hear that. It was exhausting, but it was unforgettable. And I'm just thrilled at what's going on in Israel.
Dr. James Dobson: Jentezen, I'm thrilled by what God is doing in your life. Don't you look around every now and then say, "What in the world is God doing here?" You're all over the place, 250 countries and running back and forth across the United States. And the Lord has poured out his blessings on you.
Jentezen Franklin: He has. I'm from Eastern North Carolina. I lived in a corn field. My parents lived there for a while. My granddad had 28 children. My mother has 27 brothers and sisters.
Dr. James Dobson: You're kidding me.
Jentezen Franklin: No, sir. So he was a very blessed man, he was a prayerful man. Reminds me a lot when I hear the stories of your father. My grandfather, he was a businessman, very astute businessman, and he had a sawmill and he owned a lot of real estate. He had thousands and thousands of acres and he sent every one of those 28 children through college, many of them CPAs, teachers, business people. And the bottom line on it is he started a faith blessing on my family, my grandfather. I can remember going home for Christmas and he built a beautiful home there. And of course, when you have that many children, it's a large largest estate. He honored God. He was a tither, he was a man of prayer, he went to church religiously on Sunday and honored God. That kind of got passed down, I believe in those generational blessings. I think a lot of the things that I walk in today, the blessings, the favor that God has given me, I don't even earn it or deserve it. It's just probably granddaddy and daddy and some of those people, my mother, have stored up prayers.
Dr. James Dobson: See my family, the Christian faith, goes back to my great-grandfather, who was a minister. And so it was my grandfather and my grandmother and my father. I'm the first one in four generations that haven't been specifically called into ministry. But as we sit here talking about the Lord, I somehow think maybe the Lord is smiling at me, or at least my grandfather is.
Jentezen Franklin: Yeah. If you're not in the ministry, I don't want to be in the ministry trying. If you... Honestly.
Dr. James Dobson: Your father was a minister.
Jentezen Franklin: Yes. Yes he was. Being from Eastern North Carolina, just little bitty towns, and to go all over the world and preach, I tell people "I'm as country as corn bread." This all I've ever known. But I truly am amazed at God's ability to raise us up. He looks for the heart. He looks for a heart, that God blesses where his reputation is safe and we're doing our best to do it right. And learn from people just like you who have done it right for many years.
Roger Marsh: You're listening to Family Talk the broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. And we have reached the midpoint of today's program. I'm Roger Marsh thanking you so much for tuning in today as we listen to Dr. Dobson talking with Pastor Jentezen Franklin, of Free Chapel in Gainesville, Georgia. Dr. Dobson, and Pastor Franklin first met on a trip that they took in 2018 with several other evangelical leaders, making their way to the holy land. That trip had a profound impact on both of these men and they spent the first half of today's program discussing it. By the way, if you missed any of today's program, remember you can always listen to it on our website at drjamesdobson.org/broadcast. And while you're there, you can also order a copy of this two-day conversation that we've titled "Love Like You've Never Been Hurt: Hope, Healing and the Power of an Open Heart." Okay. Let's go back now to Dr. Dobson's conversation with Pastor Jentezen Franklin here on Family talk,
Dr. James Dobson: Tell me about your salvation experience. How old were you and how did it happen?
Jentezen Franklin: When I really feel like I just turned everything over to the Lord, I was 16. I went through a little time being a pastor's kid, a preacher's kid. I wanted to see what was on the other side; I wanted to taste and see my senior year. So I wanted to try this and try that, and I did a little bit of that. I was not a very successful sinner because I think my parents put so much prayer on me. My friends would do things and they wouldn't get caught. I'd do any little thing and everybody and their brother would know about it. My mom would get a call before I could get home; so it's really stacked against me. That's a real lesson to people listening is, keep praying for your family, keep holding them up. I told somebody, one time, I said, "My friends would get high and they would see pink elephants and psychedelic colors. I would get high and I'd see Moses and Elijah." I felt like... I was always terrified that Jesus was going to come back in the middle of my party or something.
Dr. James Dobson: So where did the deeper walk come?
Jentezen Franklin: It happened one Friday night in a revival. A missionary was speaking at Dad's church from Trinidad. I'll never forget it. His name was Ramkissoon; that was his last name. And he preached...
Dr. James Dobson: Say it again?
Jentezen Franklin: Pastor Ramkissoon. And he was a missionary from Trinidad. I was sitting in the back row, still kind of in a rebellious state, but something he said just touched my heart. I don't even remember what it was. It was the spirit and the heart of the man that reached me and I couldn't stand it anymore. He gave an invitation and I went down to the altar; I was gloriously saved. I never looked back, I never turned back. I decided if I'm going to live for the Lord, I'm going to go all the way. And then I started, really my second year of college, I felt this dissatisfaction about... I love music, still do, but I knew there was more. I felt a call to preach and I began fasting about it. And I just began to fast. I don't know why I started fasting. I didn't know that much about it.
Dr. James Dobson: As a new Christian, you were fasting?
Jentezen Franklin: Yeah. I'd read it in the Bible. After three days of fasting, I just knew, that I knew, God had called me to preach. I went back and told my dad, and he said, "If you can do anything else and do it and feel like you can go to heaven, you should do that. But if you can't, then you're truly called and you need to obey God, son." So I knew that was what I was supposed to do and I haven't ever looked back.
Dr. James Dobson: Where did you start?
Jentezen Frankl...: I preached a revival. My brother was an evangelist, he was a preacher. He had graduated from college and he asked me to travel with him one summer, because I played piano too, and I would do music for him before he would preach. He let me preach my first sermon in his revival. And boy, it was pitiful.
Dr. James Dobson: What'd you preach on?
Jentezen Frankl...: I preached from Philippians, chapter three: forgetting the things that are behind and reaching forward ahead. My big point in it was sometimes you don't just need a good memory; you need a good forgettery. And the Lord wants you to forget some things and reach for some new things.
Dr. James Dobson: Do you ever look around again and just say, "Lord what are you doing here?"
Jentezen Franklin: Yeah. About four weeks ago, we had an annual conference we do, called Forward Conference there in Atlanta, at the Infinite Arena. It's about 14,000 teenagers, millennials there. The place was packed, It was sold out and they'd come from all over the nation. I was about to go out to preach and it just moved me to tears. I found myself very emotional and I'm glad I pulled it together. But to know that God just uses ordinary people; sometimes we think we've got to be sensational and got to be spectacular, but God told Moses "What's in your hand, it's just an ordinary stick." Then when he relinquished it and gave it to God, He made it into something supernatural. But the greatest part of that story to me, Dr. Dobson, is when he picked that thing up, that God had used so supernaturally, that stick, it went from being a snake back to a stick. One time, I preached a message that the greatest miracle is not that God can take you and use you in a phenomenal way, but can you go back to being a stick? Can you go back to being ordinary and normal and humble after the Lord uses you in a miraculous way?
Dr. James Dobson: Yeah. You said very nice things about me a few minutes ago. I'm always a little uncomfortable with that because I remember my humble beginnings. My dad was a minister and you don't have a whole lot to live on when that occurs. Shirley and I got married, both of us teaching school, and we see ourselves the way we were then. We see ourselves as just Jim and Shirley and a little couple that fell in love and got married and the Lord blessed their relationship. And I don't feel that anything that's happened to me, and some of it has been kind of breathtaking, had a lot to do with me. I think it was really a product of my dad's prayer life, because the Lord made promises to him about his son, me. And so, I just say, Lord, I don't want to mess it up. Billy Graham was interviewed, I think by the Los Angeles Times, when he first broke in as an evangelist and everybody was talking about him. They asked him what he did. I read this, I never forgot it; they asked him, "What is your greatest fear?" And he said, "My greatest fear is that the Lord will raise me up and make me visible and influential, and I will do something to disappoint the Lord and hurt the kingdom." And that has stuck with me. This was really early, and I feel that way today. I could still mess it up.
Jentezen Franklin: Me too. And I think the most dangerous time in a person's life is when they have nothing and when they have everything. Particularly, I think the greater test is, when God does raise you up and bless you. For me, one time when I was fasting, I felt like the Lord was impressing upon my heart, that it's dangerous to have a growing ministry and a shrinking passion for God. It really is.
Dr. James Dobson: He'd bring you down.
Jentezen Franklin: Because we're not created to handle that. We have to constantly go back to our source and why he trusted us in the first place.
Dr. James Dobson: I think of Hezekiah. And you remember, he had pleased the Lord and his whole life there's no record of anything that he did that was not in keeping with God's will. Until he came time to die and he was lying on his bed and he was crying and he was looking at the wall and he was saying, "Lord, I don't want to die, give me more time." And the Lord gave him 15 years more. And in that 15 years, he angered the Lord. There he was, he should have been dead. He should have died. He was set to die and the Lord was going to let him die and then he begged for more time and he got 15 more years. And during that 15 years, he opened his treasury and he showed the Egyptians his gold. He didn't have any right to even be there and he's bragging about it. God will not tolerate pride, man. I mean, he was wrong. I don't care who you are, you think you're big stuff, he will cut the legs out from under you if you start doing that.
Jentezen Franklin: That is so good. Such a lesson that everybody, that has experienced any kind of success in their life, need to hear over and over and over again; to be careful to give God the glory. To need Him as much as you needed Him when you started. I think that's why fasting is a powerful thing to me is when I feel myself becoming mechanical, when I feel myself just kind of walking in...
Dr. James Dobson: Going through the motions...
Jentezen Franklin: Going through the motions. If I'll fast from sunup to sundown or even a half a day or skip lunch, it's amazing how quick your sensitivity back to God, your heart back to God and His spirit, it's just quickened. And we always have to guard that.
Dr. James Dobson: Well, we're talking to Reverend Jentezen Franklin. We had intended to talk about your book. If you will stay with us, we'll talk about that next time.
Jentezen Franklin: I'd love to.
Dr. James Dobson: The title of the book is Love like You've Never Been Hurt. Boy, that's a really interesting title because it's got a story within it. The occasions when you really love someone, you're most vulnerable to them and that's what you're talking about. Isn't it?
Jentezen Franklin: That it.
Dr. James Dobson: Love Like You've Never Been Hurt. We'll talk about that next time. Thank you for coming to be with us. You're going to stay for another broadcast and I'm delighted that you're here. Give your wife and your family my regards. Shirley gives hers to you. God's blessings to you Jentezen, and may He continue to bless you and we'll talk together next time.
Roger Marsh: I'm Roger Marsh. And you've just heard the first half of Dr. Dobson's conversation with Pastor Jentezen Franklin on today's edition of Family Talk. Pastor Franklin and Dr. Dobson reminded us that God honors the humble but causes the proud to fall. We would all be wise to remember and meditate on that truth, even today. Now we hope that you've enjoyed today's program. And if you want to learn more about Jentezen Franklin, his books, and his ministry, please visit our broadcast page at drjamesdobson.org/broadcast. That web address once again is, drjamesdobson.org/broadcast. Or you can give us a call. Our number is (877) 732-6825. We are here for you all day every day to answer your questions about Family Talk and the JDFI. We also love to take your prayer requests too. So again, don't hesitate to call us at (877)732-6825. And be sure to join us again tomorrow as Pastor Jentezen Franklin and Dr. Dobson discuss pastor Franklin's book Love Like You've Never Been Hurt: Hope, Healing and the Power of an Open Heart. Now, before we leave for today, I want to let you know that here at the JDFI, we have dedicated this entire month to promote and encourage marriages and families. We have countless resources available for you, including books, blogs, broadcasts, videos, DVDs, encouraging posts, and more, if you can believe it. You can find many of these resources on our website at drjamesdobson.org.
Roger Marsh: You can also find great resources on our Facebook page. Just visit Facebook.com/Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. That's Facebook.com/Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk. Give us a follow because you won't want to miss a single one of all the great things going on at the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute this month. Well, thanks again for making Family Talk a part of your day. I'm Roger Marsh wishing you God's richest blessings for you and your family. And be sure to join us again next time for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.
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