All people are looking for answers to big questions - even if they suppress those questions. They probably are answering those questions in bad ways and trying to drink from “cracked cisterns.” We can point them to the better answer of the gospel. Learn more in this episode of Questions That Matter as Randy Newman discusses "Magnetic Faith" with Dan Strange.

Recommended Resources:

• Dan Strange's Website
• Making Faith Magnetic: Five Hidden Themes Our Culture Can't Stop Talking About by Dan Strange (2021)

Transcript

Welcome to Questions That Matter, a podcast of the C.S. Lewis Institute. I'm your host, Randy Newman, and I am just so… I've been looking forward to so much having this conversation with Dan Strange about his book Making Faith Magnetic. Dan, all the way over in the UK, in the London area, welcome to Questions That Matter.

Yeah. It’s great to be with you, great to be with you, Randy. And, yeah, looking forward to our chat now.

Let me tell our listeners, Dan is on the faculty at Oak Hill Theological College. He's a tutor in culture, religion, and public theology. He is the director of Crosslands Forum, a center for cultural engagement and missional innovation. He's written several books. We're going to discuss his book today, Making Faith Magnetic. But Dan, how about, just for starters, tell us a little bit more about the Crosslands Forum. What is that about? And what kind of things do you do?

Yeah. So, in the last year, I've actually left Oak Hill, and I'm now full-time director at Crosslands Forum. So Crosslands Forum came out of a partnership between Oak Hill College, where I was the director of the seminary there, in North London, and Acts 29 Church Planting Network. And Crosslands Forum is a center to try and encourage Christians and churches to think about cultural engagement and what that might mean for mission. My background is as a theologian, but more and more I've been involved in teaching on culture and religion and missiology, so this is kind of a center to help do research and make relationships and provide resources for Christians to really engage with the culture wherever they are. And so that's part of Crosslands’ training.

Oh, great. That's great. Well, there's a lot of resonance there with the C.S. Lewis Institute where I serve. So it will be no surprise that I just loved your book and was highlighting all sorts of things. I really like the parts where you talked about asking questions.

Yeah.

I know that was shameless self promotion on my part. Sorry. But so tell us about this: Your title is Making Faith Magnetic. And then the subtitle—I’ve got to get this right—Five Hidden Themes Our Culture Can’t Stop Talking About and How to Connect Them to Christ. So what are some of these? Or if you want to go for all five, what are these themes? Number one, what are they? Why are they hidden? And yet, why is it that we can't seem to stop talking about these things?

Well, the book came out of… kind of a question that I've had is how do we get traction? In my context, in the UK, how do we get traction to talk about Jesus with people who are living their lives and don't seem to have any interest in anything that we want to say? And it was important that I try in the book to establish a theological foundation for this, to say that all human beings, if they're made in God's image, they're suppressing the truth, they’re substituting the truth with idolatry. That's what Romans 1 tells us. But we don't lose our religiosity. Paul said in Athens, didn’t he, “People of Athens, I see you're very religious.” And that word, which only appears in that form once, really encapsulates all human beings. People are asking questions.

Now, they may be looking for certain things differently than they did 50 or 100 years ago, but the book is arguing that, at the end of the day, all human beings ask very similar questions. And this is based upon the work of a missiologist, a Dutch thinker called J.H. Bavinck, who's the nephew of a very famous theologian called Herman Bavinck. J.H. was a missionary in Indonesia, and he looked at the world religions and he said, “Look, they're saying different things, but people seem to ask the same questions.” And he calls these magnetic points. It's not that people consciously think about these things, but our lives are answering out these points, and he bases it all—and I deal with this in the book—in an exposition of Romans 1, God’s eternal power and divine nature are revealed.

So these five questions or magnetic points in the book, what I try to do in—Bavinck was in Indonesia, I'm in England, slightly different contexts and different times, but I think the same questions we see that people live out all the time. So there are five magnetic points. There's totality. Is there a way to connect? We want, as human beings, to belong to some thing, some one, some cause. We struggle between feeling are we insignificant in the world or are we significant? We can't quite decide. And that comes out in all kinds of different ways.

Now, if you're in a Muslim context or a Buddhist context, there’d be a particular form. What does it mean for your average secular Brit or North American? I talk about what it means, whether it's kind of LGBTQ parades or Comic Con or sports. We all want this sense of belonging, this idea of totality. So that's the first magnetic point.

Then there's norm. Is there a way to live? We all have rules. We all have standards. Even those cultures that want to go against the norm, they still have their own rules of engagement, and I deal with that in the book. So we all have norms or rules. The question is how do we decide where those norms come from? Who makes the rules?

Yeah. Right, right. Let me just jump in.

Yeah.

Because I want to, and it's my podcast. Something tells me that our engineer will not edit that line out and that I'll have to be apologizing it for a long time, especially to my wife. So they're already asking some of these questions, and so we want to ask them as well and say, “Yes. That’s a good question to ask.” But then we want to ask the question behind the question. So if they're already asking and wondering, “Are there norms? And why is it that we do have right and wrong as a clue to the universe,” as C.S. Lewis said. Well, then we ask the question behind the question of, “Where’d that come from? Why are those rules?”

Yes. And it might be, Randy, that we even have to… I'm not even sure sometimes people are asking the question. The point is their lives are an answer to the question.

Yes.

Remember that passage in Isaiah, where Isaiah says about the person who's kind of making the idol and then using it to make their dinner, and the key verse there: No one stops to think. Our job, I think, as Christians, as Christian witnesses, disciples, evangelists, however you want to call us, is to help people to stop and think, and actually-

Oh, that is so good. That’s so good. Thank you for saying that.

And actually, maybe we have to do a bit of excavation work to get people to ask the question, and then what's the question behind the question? But the point is the encouragement to know that people's lives, their hopes, desires, dreams, the things that they decide upon in their lives, these are answering these questions already. And these magnetic points maybe give us a framework to get some traction, to understand them, and then to engage them with the gospel in the way that we answer these magnetic points.

Yeah. Quite often, when I'm doing training and evangelism, I try to say, “Now, here's a good word to throw out.” And I've said this a bunch of times of, well, you know, a good word to throw out is, “Maybe.” Somebody says something. “Well, maybe.” There might be something to that. Well, I just thought, here's another word that could be really helpful in our pre-evangelistic conversations. And it's the word, “Huh.” Someone says something like, you know, “I just, you know, I just I think—I don't know, this seems like such a beautiful day.” “Huh. It is. I wonder why that strikes us as such a big thing.” Because it is a big thing, and again, it's trying to connect and find agreement before we start showing the disagreement.

Yeah.

I think a lot of Christians—I don't know if this is the case in the UK. I think this is common in the US. We want to emphasize what we don't have in common, and we have to get to that eventually. But starting with, “Huh. Yeah. I think you're on to something.”

Yes. And these magnetic points give us these broad categories that give us the traction that we might need. So, yeah. There’s totality. There’s norm. There’s deliverance.

I interrupted you, I'm sorry, but let’s go on. Three, four, and five.

That’s fine. There's deliverance. Is there a way out? People are looking for…. They know the world isn't as it should be. The question is: What’s the problem? And then is there a solution? And I don't just mean people questioning, like, big questions of deliverance, like death, or it can be, “How do I find deliverance to get through the day?” It might be another drink, another fix, not having an argument. These are all mini deliverances that people are looking for.

And then the fourth one is destiny. Is there a way we control? This is my favorite one. Bavinck has this great line. He says that we both think that we lead our lives and we undergo our lives. Sometimes we think we're the masters of our own destiny. We can do what we want to. Other times, we think we're just a pawn in a big game of chess. We're just a puppet on a string. And we kind of flip flop between those two things. And, without Christ, we can never work out, “Are we in control or are we being controlled?” And I think that's a really rich one for our modern contemporary society.

And then the final magnetic point, the super magnetic point, I suppose, is is there a way beyond? As we talk about totality and norm and deliverance and destiny, we have to ask the question: Is there a reality beyond reality? It's not simply—well, we believe it's God, but really just thinking is there transcendence? Was John Lennon right? “Above us is only sky.” Or is there something or someone that gives us connection, that gives us the rules, that gives us deliverance, that helps us to see are we in control or not? And I suppose that's the super magnetic point.

So that's kind of the general framework. And, yeah, I'm arguing that all human beings made in God's image who suppress the truth, are still answering these questions in the way that they live. And that's our way in, to be able to say something about Christ.

Oh, yes. This is so good. By the way, I'm going to put you on the spot here while we're recording. Well, I'm not going to ask this as a question. I'm sorry. I don't know how to do this. My Jewish upbringing right now is is wanting to inflict guilt on you: Dan, you need to write an evangelistic book with these ideas. No, I really mean it. Your ideas are so good. This book that you've written, it is definitely for Christians. It's these themes that people can't stop talking about and how to connect them to Christ. So the second part of your book is so helpful with how to connect them to Christ. But I want to—I don't want to guilt you into it, but I do want to encourage you. I think this is… writing about these five themes could be a really great short book for us to give to our thoughtful, inquisitive, non-Christian friends. Anyway. Here, wait. Let's put it this way: Please write it, or I'm going to write it and steal all your ideas and write a long acknowledgment section. “I really owe the whole idea to this book to Dan Strange, but I'm not going to share the royalties with him.” Anyway, sorry.

All right. So these are things that people are… they're either asking them outright, or they've suppressed them, but they're answering them, or they're trying to answer them. You say here, “Western culture today is not disenchanted, but rather differently enchanted.” I thought that was such a good insight. Say more about that.

Yeah. So within the sociology of religion, there's a big discussion between sociologists of religion who say that, in the West especially, we're disenchanted. We’ve become immune to transcendence. And I suppose some people, like Charles Taylor the philosopher would be one person like that, who wrote this big book, A Secular Age. And then Rodney Stark is another guy at Baylor, and he argues no, people are as religious as they ever were. They just express it in different ways. Now, I think biblically speaking both are right. And I think, yes, scientism, what you might call the idea that above us is only sky, has been quite an influential worldview. But a lot of the qualitative surveys that go on—there was a big survey called Exploring Unbelief, which was looking at unbelief in five continents, across the globe. And it was saying just because people are atheists or agnostics, they still believe in meaning and purpose.

And so I think this idea that we're not disenchanted or enchanted, but rather we're differently enchanted, but again, it's this idea, as Paul says to the Athenians, “People of Athens, I see you're very religious.” They've got this unknown god. They had all these other worldviews, but they're hedging their bets. They're saying there might be this…. So this idea that we are, as human beings, we're always worshipers. We’re always focusing on a particular goal. We have hopes, dreams, and desires. And so, in the book, I'm trying to explore that and trying to give people encouragement that there's always a way in, because we are religious beings made for worship, and we can never totally suppress that, because Romans 1 says that we are without excuse. We know, and yet we don't know. And that's the messiness of humanity. I think the magnetic points capture that really well.

I regularly talk about all of the resources that we've put together at the C.S. Lewis Institute, and I want to highlight one right now. It's our Keeping the Faith, and it is a whole library and collection of resources for you, parents and grandparents. It's a whole entire program with courses and materials that have been developed to equip you, parents and grandparents and other caring adults, for intentional discipleship of the children that God has placed in your life. And we've got videos, we've got articles, we've got study courses. This is one of the things we've made as a major emphasis on our newly designed, award winning website. And I really want to encourage you to check it out. And even if you are not a parent, that you'll check it out and recommend it to the parents that you know or perhaps use it at your church in Sunday school. It's a wealth of things, resources for equipping the next generation of disciples.

I think this is such an important point. I think I've said this several times on several podcasts, and I word it differently, but one of the ways I want to say it is that worship or faith is inevitable. It's not optional. Everybody worships. Everybody takes certain things by faith. I've had this long conversation with a friend of mine who's an atheist, and he wanted me to read a book by another atheist, very much from a scientific point of view. And so I read it. We're going to get together and discuss it in a few days, and I read it, and on one level I was pretty frustrated. But on the other hand, I was struck with how often this very scientific, strongly atheist guy who argues against any kind of belief in God or any supernatural, but then he makes these statements that are amazingly, profoundly faith-based statements that are not scientific statements. He tells about his search for…. He really believes that life has meaning, but he cannot prove it rationally, logically, philosophically, or scientifically. But then, toward the end of the book, he said, “Through some unconscious process of recalibration, I returned to my basic attitude that all is as it should be.” And I thought, “Wow, that's got to be one of the most faith-filled statements I've ever read.” So that's going to be one of my talking points with my friend. Do you believe that? That all things are as they should be? Now, again, it's a faith position, and I love that you keep going back to Paul's starting point in Athens. “I see that you're very religious.” I wonder. How do you think they responded when he said that? Because I imagine some of them thought, “Oh, no, no, no, no. We’re not religious. We're the rational, intellectual ones.” But Paul was trying to say we're all religious. We all have certain assumptions that we can't prove, but we adhere to them and hang on to them by faith.

I think it's a very cleverly chosen term, because I think it would pique the interests of these intellectuals. I mean, the context is crucial. Paul's been talking about Jesus and the resurrection, and they say, “We don't understand what you're talking about. You're a babbler.” Literally, “You’re a seed picker.” And I know that you'd agree with this, Randy, that the need for what we might call pre-evangelism or worldview setting is so important. If we just start talking about Jesus and the resurrection, people don't understand what we're talking about. That Judeo-Christian framework is crumbling. So what Paul does, he has to kind of what I call do a run up and a run through.

Yeah. You say that. I like that.

He steps back, and he has to paint the picture into which Jesus and the resurrection make sense. And so I think that idea of religion, of being religious…. Now, of course, it's not that we use that word with people. If you say to an atheist, “You’re religious,” they could get very annoyed. But theologically, people have ultimate commitments. They have commitments. Even using the word faith might be a little… that might irritate them. But people do have commitments, and if you trace it back, they have ultimate commitments, which, you're right, are very faith based. And I think we need to be able to push people. Where is your friend getting their idea of norms from? Or this idea that the world is as it should be. I mean, yeah, these are very religious statements, and we can't be the only ones who are seen to be irrational in that way. We need to show that they are faith based. The issue is that we have a solid foundation on which to justify those beliefs.

Yeah. All right. So this is very helpful. So you're right, religious, it's probably too explosive of a term and even faith. So what did you say? Ultimate commitment?

Yeah, I think something like commitments or ultimate commitments to something.

Yeah, I think that's a good phrase.

If you keep asking the question, “Why? Where do you get that from?” I think everyone comes back to a place where they just have to say, “Well, that's what it is.” And I think that's quite helpful, I think, that we try and do that, and then that gets to kind of a level playing field in some ways. And I think we need to be doing that.

Yes. Yeah. And to be able to say, “Listen, we all have ultimate commitments. We all do. We all have to hang on to something. So it's not bad that you've come to have to have some ultimate commitment. But let's compare our two ultimate commitments.”

Yeah. Yeah.

“Which one connects to reality better?”

Yes. And the magnetic points is really just a recognition that we can't escape our human beingness. And our human beingness always asks these questions. And in some ways, again, yeah, we're on a level playing field. We're all asking these same questions. The question becomes who or what is the one that's going to give us totality and a norm and deliverance and destiny? Is there a reality beyond the reality? And of course, our answer to that is, “Of course, it's the Lord Jesus.” It's the Christian worldview that answers this wonderfully.

So I love that you shift in the book from talking about these five magnetic points to, now, how do we connect these points to the gospel? And you say, “The Gospel of Jesus both connects with and wonderfully answers, these magnetic points, intellectually, emotionally, holistically. But it does so with answers that confront our idolatrous, wrong answers.” I think you call this subversive fulfillment. That's a really, really important concept, and I want our listeners to get it. But they don't have to know that term, subversive fulfillment, although you probably want them to. But what does it mean?

So the hinge here, and I think this is helpful in terms of a biblical passage, is this passage in 1 Corinthians 1. Jesus says that the message of the cross is foolishness, and we always need to understand that, when we present the Gospel to a worldview that doesn't believe in Christ or puts other things ahead of Christ, what the Bible calls idolatry, the Gospel message is a contradiction to that. Christ crucified is foolishness to the world, but that passage also talks about two different groups, Jews and Greeks. They're different ethnic groups. They’re both looking for different things. For Jews, it was power. For Greeks, it was wisdom. Now, if we just preach a bland message of Christ crucified, why does Paul bother making these distinctions between two ethnic groups? But what he does in the passage is he says, yes, the cross is foolishness to both of those groups, but to those who have been saved, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Now, sometimes evangelicals are a bit worried and say, “Oh, this is like a felt needs gospel. You mean Jews are looking for power, and Jesus is power? Greeks are looking for wisdom, and Jesus is wisdom?” Yes, but in precisely the opposite way that they expected. Power is not a crucified Messiah. Wisdom is not a crucified Messiah. So what the gospel does, at the same time, is both confronts—there has to be repentance. At the end of that Acts 17 passage, Paul says, “You need to turn around. You need to repent.” And Paul is provoked by idolatry. That’s got him started there in the first place. And yet there's always connection. He wanders around the objects of worship in Athens, and he focuses on the unknown god. Now, the unknown god isn't Jesus in a straightforward way. So there has to be a subversion, but there's also a fulfillment. And the challenge is we're not in first century Athens. I’m in England. You’re in the US. Christians are going to be in Africa or Malaysia. Where are the objects of worship? And how does the Gospel in your particular context both subvert and fulfill? How does it confront and connect at the same time?

And in my experience, some Christians have been great at the connection, less good at the confrontation. Others have been great at the confrontation, less good at the connection. And I think Paul modeled in both Acts and 1 Corinthians, and in fact, the whole Bible, this idea of subversive fulfillment. So that's a key theological context. And what I tried to do in the book then is to say how is Jesus the subversive fulfillment of the magnetic points? How is Jesus the way that we connect? How is Jesus the one who gives us the norm? How is Jesus and the gospel true deliverance? How is the gospel tells us that God is sovereign and in control and yet we still have responsibility? How do we deal with fate and freedom? And the gospel deals with that. And then how is Jesus the higher power? He's the way, the truth and the life.

So the book is trying to say that the gospel is the answer to all of these things. Jesus is the answer to all of these things, but in a very kind of contextual way, rather than just a generic, “God made you. You’ve sinned. You need to turn.” It’s how in these magnetic points that everyone is living out, how does Jesus expose those in our hearts? And how do we help people turn from those cracked cisterns, as it says in Jeremiah 2, to the fount of living water? And there's always a connection, but there has to be repentance.

Oh, I love this, Dan. I love this. And so the gospel both subverts and fulfills. It subverts the way you're trying to get this thing answered, but it fulfills by giving the right answer.

Yes.

Well, you have a forward in your book written by Tim Keller. I was so encouraged by that, and I've heard Keller say on a number of occasions that a lot of our gospel conversations can flow as, “Yes, but no, but yes.” And it’s, “Yes, you're asking the right question. Yes, we are made to connect and to have intimacy. But no, you're not going to find that in another human person, and you're not going to find that in sexual escapades or whatever. But yes, there is a fulfillment that can be found.” And it’s found in Jesus.

And with that, there has to be, and again, this is where I think we find it hard, and we need to be careful that we don't forget this, that in that “no” bit, that we have to point out to people that this way of…. well, it's that Jeremiah 2 picture. People are drinking from cracked cisterns. It's not good for them. It's not good for them now. It’s not good for them eternally. So there has to be what we might call an exposure of idolatry, but in a way that still then shows the connection to Christ. So this idea of entering into someone's worldview, exploring their objects of worship, exposing, and then evangelizing, becomes important. And yeah, that's how that model works. So the book is then just trying to take the examples I used in the first half of the book to say here, how does Jesus subversively fulfill, how is their exposure, and how do we evangelize to call people to Christ?

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I want to keep coming at this from different angles, so that it reinforces, because I really want our listeners and I want me to be able to really internalize this. So here, here's another thing you say in the book that I found so helpful: “We don't come as bringing religion to them. We come as those offering answers to questions they are already answering. We're offering an exchange for religious commitments they already have, and we're offering a way to mend a relationship with God they are already in.” That's exactly right. It's not bringing religion to them. It's answering questions they're already trying to answer in other ways.

Yeah. They are already in a relationship. Yeah. Romans 1 makes it clear all human beings are already in a relationship with God. It's not a good one. It's very dysfunctional, and like any broken relationship, it's complex. But we come offering Christ in terms of an existing relationship. And I think that will be, I suppose, the other thing to point to, Randy, in the book, and this has become clear as the book's been published. The book was originally in a set of evangelism and apologetics classes in seminary. But what's more and more become clear to me, and the way I think we can use this material best, is realizing that the first thing we need to do with these magnetic points is apply them to our own hearts.

Oh, good.

How evangelism flows from our discipleship. And that gives a sense of fellow feeling. It’s to say with people, “Look, I struggle with all of these questions of destiny and deliverance and the norm. This is how Jesus has answered it in my life and continues to do that every day.” And I think not to see people—and again, you've brought this out in your work so strongly. People aren't projects. Evangelism isn't a thing that we do. As I am transformed by the Gospel, as Jesus is the answer to the magnetic points in my life, that gives me a natural opportunity then to say what Jesus has done for me as I'm then answering people who don't know Christ. So this idea that our evangelism comes from our discipleship is really important, and in some ways I'd really want us to be doing that first. How are we still being pulled away by other things? How do we stay magnetized to Christ and magnetic? And when we do that, that naturally will give opportunities to talk about Jesus, because our life is being shaped by him and the Gospel every single day.

Yes. I’m so glad you went there. I was going to go there with a highlight in your book. You say, “These five magnetic points, these are the idolatrous longings of our own hearts, not just the hearts of those around us,” and we can be lured away to think… I'm longing for right and wrong, and I'm being tempted to think, “I come up with my own set of right and wrong. I'm the ultimate authority.” Or, yes, I'm struggling, and so I need a deliverance, and to think deliverance comes from getting drunk or getting distracted or binge watching so many hours of whatever kind of entertainment. So we want to be able to say to people, “Yeah, I understand that lure, that attraction, because I'm attracted to it, too, but here's what God has done in providing something far better.”

Exactly. Yeah. And I think maybe that's the answer to your question, Randy, as to why naturally I haven't written the evangelistic book. Because if we're doing this properly, it should be that our lives are that evangelistic book. Do you see what I mean?

Okay. Yeah.

So I'm not saying that…. I think that evangelistic book would be helpful. Don’t get me wrong. But I think what I'd love us to do is to be able to answer these magnetic points in how the gospel has transformed my life. I mean I’ll give one example: I think I give the example in the book that whenever I used to get a taxi in London, invariably, sometimes it was a Muslim driver, and in the windscreen or the dashboard, there'd be an evil eye. And I think to be able to say to people, “Look, I'm not denying that these evil spirits exist, but I believe that I have a loving Heavenly Father. I believe in Jesus Christ, who is above all of these things. And that means I don't need to fear. I don't need to be anxious.” And so to be able to show in my own life how the Christian worldview is continuing to shape me by God's spirit and the magnetic points, how I can stay magnetized, and I think, again, at the end of the book, we look about what are the means by which Christians stay magnetized. And in some ways…. I had a pastor friend of mine who said, “Actually, I was really pleased that your book was an anticlimax, because at the end of the day, we stay magnetized by the ordinary means of grace.”

Yeah, yeah.

It's coming together as God's people. It's all of those things that keeps us magnetized. And then we're sent out into the world to be to be mini magnets for Christ. And I think that's important in terms of our own discipleship. There's not a magic bullet here. It's we're magnetized. Because in the week, we know as we go out into our lives, don't we? We're demagnetized. We're being pulled in different directions, but coming together as God's people every week, listening to the Word, being with each other, and then being remagnetized to be sent out again. That's the kind of the way that we keep that magnetism for Christ.

Oh, good. Good. This is a good place for us to draw this to a close, although I'd love to keep talking. But you play out that visual picture toward the end of your book, and I think we can all remember this from whatever grade we were in chemistry class or something. So there's a magnet, and then there's all these metal shavings or filings, and they start sticking to the magnet. But then after a while, there are pieces of metal that are now sticking to pieces of metal. They're not directly touching the magnet. Some pieces are touching the magnet, but some pieces are just touching other pieces, and what a great image. Jesus is the ultimate magnet, drawing us to Himself, and we are connected to Him. But if He’s making us magnetic, if He’s making us more and more like Him, then people will be attracted to us. Now, ultimately the illustration breaks down because we want to point them and connect them directly to Him.

Yes, yes.

But I love that visual image. And for me to think of myself, “I'm a magnet. I'm touching the Ultimate Magnet, but, Lord, would you make me a magnet so that people would be drawn through me to you?” There’s theological problems with that and we could-

Just very quickly, since the book was published, I did this material. A physics teacher wrote to me to say, “You can easily push it further,” because apparently all objects have these little mini magnets inside them that are all in different directions, and you need an outside thing to pull it in one direction. And he was great because he said, “Isn’t this what we pray for when David prays, ‘Lord, give me an undivided heart.’”

Oh, good! Yes, yes.

Often our lives are kind of internally in all different directions, but Jesus pulls us into one line, and that's then how we're remagnetized. So that magnet thing is a rich illustration. Yes, you can go overboard on it. But originally, as you know, in the book, that was a sermon that Spurgeon preached called “The Marvelous Magnet.” When we’re magnetized to Christ, others will be attracted to Him because we're stuck to Him. And so how do we stay magnetized becomes a very important question.

Yes. Well, let's draw this to a close. I really hope this has been encouraging for our listeners. Get a hold of Daniel’s book. Read it. Start seeing those magnetic points of connection in conversations that you have with other people. Start looking for their ultimate commitments and have really engaging, common-ground-building conversations. But then don't be afraid to also subvert and let the gospel subvert, so that it can indeed fulfill people. This is really great. Dan, I really appreciate your work and what you're doing. We're going to look for you more and more, especially that evangelistic book that maybe you might write, perhaps, Lord willing, guilt inspired. So we're going to put some show notes in our podcast about your materials and your center.

To our listeners, thanks so much for listening. We hope that this and all of our resources at that website we have, cslewisinstitute.org, will be helpful for you as you reach out with the good news of the gospel and you grow in your love of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanks.

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