Pivotal People
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Pivotal People
Transforming Lives with Dan Jacobsen
What if the legacy of your faith journey could inspire generations to come? Meet Dan Jacobsen, a fifth-generation pastor, as he shares his remarkable story of transformation and grace on the Pivotal People podcast. From growing up in a deeply religious family to discovering the gospel at 16, Dan's path is one of profound change and enduring faith. Influenced by his renowned grandfather, Warren Wiersbe, Dan's spiritual journey is a testament to the power of storytelling and the gospel's ability to reshape lives.
Join us as we explore Dan's latest project, the devotional book "Becoming New: 100 Days of Transformation Through God's Word." Dan edited and published his grandfather's final unpublished manuscript into this new book so these words could be shared with everyone. I have been reading the devotional and not only do I love it, but I'm giving it to family members for Christmas this year. It's a wonderful, inspiring devotional based on Bible stories and verses.
Whether you're seeking to enrich your spiritual life or looking for the perfect gift, this conversation will encourage and inspire you.
You can reach Dan Jacobsen here:
https://djacobsen.com/about
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I'd like to welcome Dan Jacobson to the Pivotal People podcast. Dan is a fifth-generation pastor and he has pastored multiple churches, but right now he's pastoring Heartland Community Church in Olathe, kansas, which is near Kansas City, and he's with us today. I said fifth generation. He has published his grandfather's writing. His grandfather passed away in 2019.
Speaker 1:His grandfather is Warren Wiersbe, a very prominent pastor, teacher, speaker. He was a prolific writer. He wrote a series of 50 books in the B series. Like the books were called Be Rich, be Real, be Joyful. He pastored a church with thousands of members. He had his sermons televised, he was on radio, he taught at universities, so he had quite a legacy as a man of God. Dan, as his grandson, discovered an unpublished manuscript of his grandfather's and for the past two years, has worked on editing it and bringing it to the rest of us. And it was just published a week ago and I've read and you hear this from me a lot, but I will tell you what this is a must-read, must-buy, must-give-to-the-people-you-love book and we'll get into that. But first let's start with Dan. Dan, welcome, I'd love to hear your story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, stephanie, thank you so much for inviting me onto the podcast. This is an honor, a privilege, and thanks for that warm introduction. You've really captured a lot about my family and my grandfather's legacy in just that short intro, so thank you. Yeah, I'm a fifth generation pastor. You could imagine that comes with its own set of baggage or its own set of issues for God to sort of sort out in my life. But I grew up in a family that knew the Lord.
Speaker 2:I was raised in a small little church just on the backside of O'Hare Airport in Chicago Illinois. My dad was chairman of the deacons and my mom was the director of worship. She led the singing and the music and grew up just kind of around church, and so I was a Pharisee of Pharisees. I grew up to be the kid that kind of had the famous grandpa on the radio and parents who were power brokers in the church, and so I was a Pharisee of Pharisees. I grew up to be the kid that kind of had the famous grandpa on the radio and parents who were power brokers in the church, and somewhere around 15, 16 years old I was confronted in my own heart with the fact that I'm not as good as I really project that I am. Actually there's this like dark side to my heart that was really starting to bubble up inside of me and I remember in that moment hearing the gospel preached. I was like I know I was 16 years old at this moment. I had a great youth pastor who just loved Jesus and he preached Ephesians 2, 8, 9, and 10. It's by grace you're saved and then not by works.
Speaker 2:And here I was, this like kid of evangelical nobility, I guess, in my mind, just thinking I was saved because I had great parents and realized it's grace I need, the same grace that God gives to every single soul. So I represent the elder brother of the prodigal son story, the one that grew up in God's backyard but didn't ever go in and enjoy fellowship with him and enjoy the rights of sonship. It just kind of worked and worked and worked. And when I was 16, I really said, god, I'm going to try this your way until you let me down.
Speaker 2:And so just in that prayer was this like spirit filled desire. I just had this insatiable desire Some 16 year olds really get into video games. Some 16 year olds really get into sports. Some 16 year olds really get into, like you know, fantasy, football or things like that or music. I got into the Bible and the Bible got into me. You know like it really started to shape the way that I understood God's grace, his love, his mercy, his kindness. I was a junior and senior in high school, driving to school my high school and I was the kid listening to preaching on the radio.
Speaker 2:You know all my other friends are listening to Radiohead and all this other stuff. I'm listening to Joe Stoll and Moody Radio in Chicago and as I'm being fed the word and growing in this love for who God is and what he's done in this world, I feel inside of me this really arrogant thought of like I think I can do what he's doing. Joe is in his 60s or 70s. At the time he's really at the apex of his spiritual gifting and his craftsmanship and preaching and communicating to the world. And here's a 16 year old thinking I can do what this guy's doing. But what really? What really stuck out to me was just the way that he took the Bible and made it relevant to today. It was. It was like I looked around at my friends, I looked around at my church, I looked around at my, my own family and thought what God has said to us is so important for our lives today, like he hasn't left us. He hasn't left us to wonder. He's been really clear, and sometimes it just takes one of us to be able to raise our hand and say, hey, here's what God said. And so I had this like desire to do that, and so I applied to the Moody Bible Institute, became a student there, got trained in the word. Institute, became a student there, got trained in the word. And from there I just let God lead me, step after step, to just test that calling and say, god, are you really calling me to ministry? Are you leading me in my life to be useful in your world? Stephanie, it was the most incredible thing when I I'll tell you this.
Speaker 2:I haven't said this on many interviews, but the first night I went to Moody you know, here I am an 18 year on many interviews, but the first night I went to Moody you know, here I am an 18 year old off to school for the first time and my mom and my dad come and help me move into the dorm room. My mom is being like extra sentimental about the whole thing. I'm her youngest, I'm kind of represent like the empty nest stage of life for them and I can kind of feel that I'm like mom, it's okay, it's going to be fine. I'm, you know, they live just down the road. Uh, 30 minutes on the road. I was like I'll be home next weekend, it'll be great.
Speaker 2:But she wasn't kind of caught up in her feelings about me. It was more what God was doing in that moment for her. She took it upon herself to, to, to, like, make up my bed for me and I was kind of like, mom, get out of here, I'm fine, I'm like I'm losing all of my credibility with these guys on my floor. But she she snuck a letter underneath my pillow and it was just a letter that detailed for me God's faithfulness throughout my life in some of the highs and lows you know of my life and how God had she had watched God lead me through those, and she correlated it to a prayer that she had been praying for for some 28 years of her life just that her kids would be used in God's kingdom, that she would just have kids being drawn to the Lord, drawn to his gospel, and wanting to help bring that about here on earth. A couple of weeks later, I was so impacted by that, you know, I was so profoundly moved that here I am feeling called by God on my own, but yet it seems like my mom has maybe prayed me through all of this into this season of my life, and so there's this interesting mix of like the prayers of my parents and the future that I feel like I'm independently stepping into and just watching God just meld in the ways that only God can this, this, this beautiful synergy of past and future and present, and his calling and the spirit being all throughout it.
Speaker 2:I told that story to my grandfather. He was in town a couple of weeks later. We were sitting, we were standing in the back of the church that we were at that Sunday and I said grandpa, my mom told me she's been praying for me for like 28 years, that there'd be a preacher in every generation of our family or that I'd be a preacher. And my grandpa. My grandpa said well, dan, that's nothing. I've been praying for you for over 40 years. And then that's when he told me he said you know, there's been a prayer in our family. It goes back to the 1870s, that there would be a preacher in every generation of our family. And there was just a faithful man of God back in Sweden who loved his family, loved God, and just said God, would you allow me to be the first prayer warrior that sends out this whole tribe of people who would be at work building your kingdom? That's kind of the way that he phrased it. That's the way my mom phrased it. That's what my grandfather phrased it too just building God's kingdom.
Speaker 2:I've come to learn there's like dozens of us, through those five generations, that have been missionaries or pastors or influential people in preaching the gospel in different communities, in different ways around the world. And so who am I? I just am one of these people who've got a really powerful prayer background in the back and have met my own end and found Jesus to be the only one who I can trust in. And I'll tell you this for over 20 years he hasn't let me down. He's just led me faithfully. That prayer that I prayed back when I was 16, god, I'll follow you until you let me down. I'm still going because he's still going.
Speaker 1:You are still going and I'm sitting here listening as a mother who prays for her sons and so many of my friends who have kids listen to this and what I'm hearing on the mother's side is how wonderful it was for you, how humbling it is when you realize someone has been praying for you that long. My son jokes my son's like I just achieved X, y, z and I was so proud of myself. And then I just found out my mom's been praying.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But the beauty of her prayer and telling you at the right time, yeah, right, right, when you were ready to hear it. And how wonderful. And then, how wonderful for her to see God answering your prayers. How wonderful for you to say okay, as you just now said, he's been faithful to you for 20 years and so many times we talked before we started recording. When we look over our life experience in retrospect, it's always much easier to do this. So if we can take the time to look over our life experience, it's amazing how we can see God's faithfulness. Like when did God come into the story? Oh, my gosh, look at that. I thought I was making this scary decision and then this totally surprising thing happened this person came into my life that actually led to this and wow, and pretty soon you see where God showed up.
Speaker 1:Bob Goff always says about you know, about sharing the gospel with people. You don't need to share Bible verses. You can share stories of how Jesus worked in your life and relatable. So you said earlier, which I loved was how a good pastor will take the Word of God or a Bible verse and bring it down and explain it to us. And here's what I love about the book that you edited, because, yes, his grandfather wrote this book, but he edited it for two years, so we want to hear about it. It is a devotional book, which means that it's 100 days. It's called Becoming New 100 Days of Transformation Through God's Word. And I'll tell you, I always read the books before guests come on the podcast. But when it's a really long devotional book, you're like well, you know, I get the gist. I can read a couple of these and have a really great conversation with Dan. That's what I thought I couldn't put it down. I'm on day 27, and I started about three days ago.
Speaker 1:What I love about this book is this Everyone listen to this. First of all, it's in kind of chronological order of Bible stories. It starts out each day. So it's a bite-sized piece of what I call combination Bible study slash application, slash inspiration and reflection.
Speaker 1:So what I mean by that is, you start out and here's the title, and then it gives you a couple Bible passages to read and then it's the Bible story, right so Old Testament. I'm in the Old Testament right now and I'll tell you what. I am not an Old Testament expert. A lot of these stories really confuse me. But what his grandfather did was he would pull out the key points of the story and start there and then immediately apply it to today's world and then kind of bring you down to asking you reflection questions. So helpful. Do you mind if I just read a?
Speaker 2:couple things. No, please, yeah so this morning.
Speaker 1:Everyone always hears. I'm always telling my husband about these guests and about the books I read. We're both retired so we just talk to each other all day, or maybe I'm doing all the talking, I don't know, but I read this to him like here's an example. This is a little bit of a story about Moses and the title is Tested Faith Produces Character, so character. Here are some lines. It's too bad when people succeed before they are ready for it. Talent is one thing, character is quite something else. Talent is what people see us do, but character is what God knows we are. Fame may determine what we receive from others, but character determines what we give to others.
Speaker 1:Last one, I loved it. Life is built on character and character is built on decisions. We sometimes forget our decisions, but our decisions never forget us. And it goes on. And that's just a little snippet, but I so love. I mean, those are very practical sentences that he pulled out of the Moses story. Instead of just reading the Moses story and saying, okay, everyone, do you believe that next? No, you know what. I really need someone with great insight and wisdom and experience to pull out these kinds of sentences that make me stop and think, and then I start my day with a little spring in my step. You know what I'm going to focus on, what I'm saying and each devotional. I loved it, dan, because it taught me a little bit about the Bible that I didn't know, but then it brought me into some thinking. And you just said you're fifth generation pastor. Obviously you had a great relationship with your grandfather. That had to be something, though, to be his grandson. Yeah, you know, especially within the church.
Speaker 2:It caused a lot of problems for me, just in the sense of my last name is not Weersbe. My mom is a Weersbe, she's Warren and Betty's second child. She married my dad, who's Jacobson, and took his name, so that's how my name is Jacobson. So that alone helped me kind of fly under the radar and evangelical circles to not be connected. But invariably whenever anyone finds out that I'm, whenever someone had found out, I mean it's kind of out of the bag now and it's fine. But there was this like weird power change of like appreciation and sort of like disbelief that they were close to someone who they admired or had been helpful to them. That caused some issues for me that I kind of had to sort through in my own life. And God really has used the cross of Jesus to free me from the shame of how I feel other people judge me according to my grandfather's works or whatever that would do in my heart. But it also, you know, sometimes our great challenges in life are also our great blessings. And I love, you know, I truly love my grandfather. He was an amazing grandfather. He's so funny. He thought the way to someone's heart was through humor, so he would always try to make us laugh. I mean, I probably heard a thousand jokes in a day if I hung out with him. Now, not all of them were funny. He thought they were all hilarious. He used the same ones over and over again. My grandma one of her spiritual gifts was the gifts of patience, because she heard for decades the same jokes over and older and she would laugh. She was just an easy laugh and they were such a cute couple in that regard. But my grandma did a lot of the heavy lifting for a lot of us in terms of appeasing my grandpa's humor, but we loved it. We loved that. Just he was a fun person. He he learned magic when he was about 10, 11 years old how to do tricks with thimbles coins, mental magic, how to like read people's minds, so to speak, like these are all illusions and stuff. And these were the first books that he ever published. At 16 years old he published a Trinity, three works on how to do magic. He went downtown Chicago to a magic shop publisher and I think they gave him $10 for these three manuscripts and that was his first. Warren Rearsby's first published books were magic trick books back in the early 1940s, and so he'd always show up and be pulling coins out of our ears and it was just fun. It was just super fun.
Speaker 2:When I went to Moody, our relationship changed for years the spiritual better. My grandfather always prayed for us, was always encouraging our us grandkids and and he did that for everybody he just loved people. But when I um set my attention towards the ministry, my grandfather was my biggest champion. He he immediately gave me books. I mean, if anybody ever knew my grandfather, he was a book nerd. He had had a 13,000 volume library in his basement. I mean, just absurd.
Speaker 2:He was constantly buying books and giving them away and then buying the same book again and giving it to somebody else and just trying to pass around good insight. He was always asking his pastor friends, what are you reading and what are you preaching? They'd have conversations around those things. And so it was his delight for me to jump into the book world and the world of words and I didn't really realize it.
Speaker 2:But the same aptitude that my grandpa had for words that he cultivated in a library over years of his growing up experience, god put that in me in a more, I think, innate way. My grandfather is. I wouldn't, I wouldn't compare my intelligence to him. He had a photographic memory and was like AI before there was AI like his. His ability to synthesize arguments and remember things is off the charts. But there's just this thing that God's put inside of me with words, that I do my best work with words, and my grandfather was the same way. So when he passed away we discovered this manuscript, my uncle kind of picked it up and it was substantially finished.
Speaker 2:I'm laughing because the reading that you just read I know where I stitched my own thoughts into what you just read, because there's some of me in there and I know where my grandpa had those and I love that you pulled that one out, because that reading and the day before were one of the most encouraging ones for me to write. I'll get into that in a second. Oh, neat, but when we found this manuscript my grandfather had written 170 books maybe Nobody really knows and there was this other book that was in a mental file folder that hadn't been published. That was really substantially completed. They had like 80 or so of these hundred days like really done. But my uncle was kind of in a midst of a season where he was moving and had some stuff going on and just trying to sort through my grandparents' estate.
Speaker 2:They both passed away within five weeks of each other and that's a really sweet story that God called them both home to heaven in the same season of life. But he had so much to do so he looked around and he said, dan, you know the Bible, you know your grandpa's voice, why don't you just take this and see what you can do? And my grandpa and I had always talked about writing a book together. It never really came up. In his eighties, stephanie, he was still publishing almost two books a year and publishing some of his best work in his eighties. I mean, there are some books that I don't know publish. Publishing is a whole different world that I've got. I'm starting to have opinions about.
Speaker 2:I think some of the books that he wrote, like like truth on its head, is a book that my grandpa wrote. That's about the paradoxes in the Bible and how they actually, like help us understand life, and so what he does, he just explains the first shall be last, last shall be first, right Things like that and has 16 of those that he wrote. He wrote that when he was like 84 years old. So this was a man who was really doing great work. And I picked up this manila file folder from my uncle and I looked at it and, stephanie, it was like the diary of a madman. It was not put together, it was just a first draft and it was substantially there.
Speaker 2:But I knew my grandfather had a very specific purpose for writing this book, and here's what the purpose was. He had accumulated so many decades of Bible study knowledge, and what he wanted to do was have one volume to like pass along to the next generation. Here's what I've learned in my 70 years of studying God's word on a daily basis, my favorite thoughts from God's words. What would it be about? And really, if you go back, I've done this work just because I'm his grandson and around his work a lot. But the theme that he chose to focus on is the theme of transformation.
Speaker 1:Transformation.
Speaker 2:How does God change a person? Is change possible? How does he do it? What does it look like? How could I be changed?
Speaker 2:And my grandfather, for decades, had written about this in a pretty tangential. He'd come at it from many different angles. If you've got sort of ears to hear what my grandfather was saying, you can hear that he really made it plain in this work. This is really a capstone project for his life. To say if I only have a hundred days to walk someone through the Bible, here's how I'm going to help them get started. And so it's really like the diary of a sage being unpacked for someone like me, like it really was written for someone like me, someone who knows a little bit of Bible but like just wants to grow deep in God's word. He really had a college kid in mind, I think, someone who was growing in their faith but would receive wisdom from someone who had already been a little bit further down the road of the narrative of the Bible. And because of his desire to make the Bible plain in this type of way, it really does help everyone across the spectrum of faith.
Speaker 2:It doesn't surprise me to hear you say this is like one of my favorite devotionals right now. And I've got a friend who is in her 20s who was texting me yesterday she's on day three saying I'm just eating this up Like this is just so helpful and amazing. And and what she said was I love that I've got my Bible open and this book open. It's not just like one line of Bible that then it gets explained, it's all in the book. And I just opened the book and that's my devotion for the day. She was like I'm digging into the.
Speaker 2:You've got me digging into the Bible and that got me digging into the Bible and that, that, stephanie, is like the legacy of my grandfather. That's what I'm hoping. My legacy is to want to get people digging into God's word, because how change comes into our life this is the whole premise of the book. How change comes into our life is a combination of the spirit of God using the word of God to point us to the transforming power of the son of God, so that we might be changed into that same image of the son of God. Transformation is all about spiritual formation, sanctification, our holiness, our becoming like Jesus. So my grandfather, from day one to day hundred, just kind of unpacks that theme. Can I talk about the process. I don't want to ask my own questions.
Speaker 1:No, no, I want to talk about the process. But as you're talking, I don't want to interrupt you. And I'm sitting here thinking, okay, transformation, like I was talking with someone recently about how we pray and we pray and we have things we're asking for. These are good things. We're asking for these circumstances to change instead of asking God to change us, because if he changes us gradually I mean this is, or maybe overnight, I'll take overnight If he changes us, then our circumstances will look different. Our circumstances might change. We're the common denominator of these circumstances. What would it look like if God transformed us to be more like Him? And then the other piece is, as you're talking about.
Speaker 1:I was trying to articulate why I liked this devotion so much. I read a lot of devotionals. What is it about this one that feels so good? And I think that's what we talked about. You said okay, here's the piece of the Bible, and I'll admit that because I was reading this quickly, I did not open up and read all the Bible passages. So if people are listening and saying I don't have time for that, okay, you know what you can start out. You don't have to read the Bible passage. You're still going to get a lot out of it. Reading the Bible passage will if you have more time. It's they're short and that'll add to it.
Speaker 1:I forgot to tell you the PS when I was reading this to my husband. He has to hear about every book I read because I think everything is great and he never says this. And today he said I read it and I told him what I liked about this devotional and he said I want to read it next. So if you are thinking of giving someone a gift and, dan, I know you said this would appeal to people who know a lot about the Bible I would say this would appeal to anyone, regardless of their Bible experience. In fact, I almost feel like it's an extremely unintimidating way to introduce the Bible to people because it's so practical, this practical application it might make them curious about. Oh okay, thank you for explaining that. That's just like today, even though it was 2,000 years ago. Let me see what they were dealing with.
Speaker 1:So Becoming New 100 Days of Transformation Through God's Word. Now I want to get to your process. How in the world did you take Diary of a Madman and come up with this beautiful book? Two years? It did take two years. It took a while.
Speaker 2:It actually took longer than two years because I let it sit on my desk for about six to nine months, intimidated by it. I was freaked out to touch this, the capstone thoughts of a legendary author, great pastor, my grandfather, one of my own spiritual mentors. What in the world could Dan Jacobson possibly add to the great Warren Wiersbe? You know what I mean. Like that's. That was. That was haunting my soul and I was excited for the project. But I also I pastor a church, I'm busy, I've got my own things going on and it was not in a shape that was maybe intuitive at the moment. I let it sit and it finally took me COVID. It was the COVID pandemic that really bought me the time to say, okay, I need to get my heart and my head around what my grandpa was doing. My family didn't have the aspiration Stephanie maybe this is interesting. We we didn't think this would get out into the world. We just wanted to know what he was, what my grandpa was thinking right.
Speaker 2:Like like here was just like a a whole file folder with, like his work, what's in here? You know, we've got all these things from my grandfather we're just curious about like what's in here the sermon notebooks and his devotional diaries and so we're reading them just in the background of our lives, just kind of wondering like what's in here. And this was another like what's in here moment, and so I approached it in the sense of like grandpa, teach me something about the Bible, teach me what you were trying to say. And when I approached it that way, it was way less intimidating for me than thinking about folks that I don't know around the world picking up a Warren Wiersbe book and me having to represent his voice. And maybe I did it right, maybe I did it wrong, I don't know. It's such a risk to that, but for me just to try and hear what he's saying really freed me up. And so I realized what he was going after. He was going after the daily transformation, the slow, steady transformation and the sometimes really quick transformation that god does in our lives. And and he was trying to help people see that arc of scripture that really beautiful. He was going for spiritual literacy to help people have maybe a primer on the bible, like here's how the bible works. You don't have to read all the crazy things in numbers or Leviticus, but let me get you through some of the stories so that you can have these anchor points to the narrative that show up in Jesus's life and then help, let me help you with him so that you know how he shows up in your life.
Speaker 2:And my grandpa only got through Acts. I mean, the book goes Genesis to Acts. It doesn't go through Revelation, although all of the Bible is at play. You'll see almost every book of the Bible is quoted. But he really just wanted to get. How did God change the world through Christ? How does God change followers of Christ? And then, how does God use those followers to change the world for Christ? And so once I figured that progression out, it was really easy. The sequencing became simple and I could see where the missing pieces were and I could supply some of those. It was in the middle of this whole process that I had an epiphany about dinosaur skeletons. What are those called the big things?
Speaker 1:We'll call them dinosaur skeletons. I like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, whatever, it is the night of the museum skeletons. I didn't know this, but like there's maybe in that entire representation of a T-Rex, one bone that is like completely authentic and the rest might be fragments that then an archaeologist came in and like plastered together the remnants, like it's very rare to have a complete set of perfectly intact you know. And so I realized, like I've got a beautiful piece of literature here but I've got to supply some of the pieces. There's a lot here, but I'm going to have to, like I'm going to have to add to this. And so it took me a little bit of courage to start using the backspace button and to start thinking about what is my grandpa, what am I grandpa missing? And it was the.
Speaker 2:There was the reading of the day before day 26, where Moses is talking about, you know, character that gets tested, and so my grandpa does about a week on Moses, and there was just this like bottom line that was missing for that day, and my grandpa had said the thing about the faith of Moses and how God had to really test him, but he hadn't said that in any really clear way. And so it was the first moment where I kind of just put my head down and prayed and said, god, I know that you're in this project and you've got something for me to learn, but I also know that I need to represent how my grandfather would say what he's trying to say. So help me just know his voice in this moment. And it came to say so, help me just know his voice in this moment. And it came to me. There's a line in there that that that I wrote, that says faith that can't be tested, can't be trusted.
Speaker 1:And I, I thought, I remember that line, I thought about that line, I know yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a good line, it's a. I'll say it myself it's a great line and I remember thinking like that's exactly how my grandpa would say it and like for me it was like a little kid riding a bicycle that they've always watched their dad ride. You know, I was like I'm doing it, I'm, I'm, I'm writing you know like it was that. It was that moment of like. Okay, I think I got what it takes, stephanie.
Speaker 1:I I also have what it takes Well.
Speaker 2:I also wanted to make sure I wasn't plagiarizing someone else that might be in the recesses of my own mind, and so I Googled it right, like you just gotta be. I can't. I don't want to put my grandpa's work in jeopardy by plagiarizing other people. So there's a lot of research that goes into these things. So I Google, google that phrase and wouldn't you know? It's like some business leader from 2010 put that on their blog and it was a very popular person. Like everybody knows this person's name.
Speaker 2:I was so disappointed. I was like, well, it's a good line, it's a really good line, but I can't use it. So I kept going with that day's devotion, kept kind of wrestling through it and writing it, and I was haunted by the line. I was like it's too good of a line to let go. I'm going to go to like I'm going to scroll down a little further and see like maybe everybody said this right, and it turns out not everybody said this. But what I did find on page two of Google, which is a place that I rarely go, but on page two of Google, guess whose name popped up? It was Warren Wiersbe. Oh, my gosh, in like 1974. And I thought I can't plagiarize the guy who's writing the book. I get it. I get to use it.
Speaker 2:And so that was just like a fun moment for me to be like, okay so, so that thing about helping people understand God's word and having an understanding of your grandfather's voice, like I think. I think God's equipped me for this, and so that was what it took for me to kind of put the project in a hyperdrive and to really feel the confidence that, like all that stuff about your grandpa, just don't worry about that, help people, bless people, honor what he was going for, and let's see where it goes. David C Cook was floored to get this manuscript when, um when, I was a publisher, the publishers, thank you, thank you, yes, the publisher.
Speaker 2:Uh, there is no guy named David C Cook. This is the publisher. And they, they sell all of the B books, the, the, the individual books of the Bible that my grandfather wrote, the commentaries on, which are incredible studies. They picked it up and the greatest I think, maybe the greatest compliment I've ever gotten in my life was from them saying hey, the professional editors have looked at this. This is vintage Weersbe, this is like a really authentic Weersbe. And we, we, actually we can't figure out what you did and what he did.
Speaker 1:And that was my. That was my goal.
Speaker 2:I just want my grandfather's voice to rise up and and to be able to be heard, because there's so many people still alive who heard him preach and who know, who know his books, and he's a trusted voice for our daily lives, right Like like the living out of our faith. I hear his voice in my head. I know that's a weird thing for maybe just me, but there's a lot of pastors who I know who just think in in terms of Warren. Wiersbe once said this, and so I think this is a great introduction to a really prolific man of God, who who just really cared about people loving God and loving his word, and I know, um, if anyone picks it up and earnestly looks through it, they will experience this deepening love for God's word too. It's just an inevitable process. God's spirit won't let us down when we actually show up to the Bible.
Speaker 2:My grandpa used to say he would do his devotions and he would read them out loud to himself. So he'd be in his own room and he'd just read the Bible out loud, and he did this because he said, when I talk to the Bible, I find the Bible talks to me, and so it's just this engagement right, the word of God is living and active and it's piercing, it's penetrating our souls and I think anytime we get people into God's word we give them a chance to be shaped by the spirit of God. Not superficial change, but deep change that comes from the inside inside out. Superficial change, but deep change that comes from the inside inside out. And so I've grown to really appreciate this is an enormously beneficial project and I've kind of backed my way into being a part of it and that's a really humbling experience.
Speaker 2:I never thought that you'd be holding up a copy saying this is really great and my friends in my church are holding up saying like, wow, this is really great, dan, and I'm grateful for the reception, but I also am grateful that it's helping people know God better.
Speaker 1:And it will help people. Now I can't find the line, but I loved the line. Did I write it down? You're going to be able to finish it Maybe. Transformation is not about behavior modification.
Speaker 2:It's about. I don't have the end of that one. There's a lot of it's not behavior modification.
Speaker 1:It is spiritual transformation. It's not modification, it's transformation. It's not what we do, it's what God is doing in us. And the back of the book says this. It's super simple Learn God's word, love God's word and then live God's word. And here is where I got that. Here's an endorsement from a really popular Christian radio host, chris Fabry, and here's what he said, and I think he really crystallized it. When I first heard about becoming new, one word came to mind treasure. Warren Wiersbe minds God's Word and helps us see on each page that the work God wants to do in us is not behavior modification but full transformation. So I just want to thank you so much, dan, for a couple of things. One is for taking the time to come on the Pivotal People podcast, because I got to talk to you and get to know you. If anyone wants to hear him preach, he's in Olathe, kansas. You want to go hear him? You're also a speaker, so it looks like if people want to have you speak, they could. Your website is at danjacobsoncom.
Speaker 2:Just my first initial last name and it's a blog that I gave up on a long time ago, but you can get ahold of me there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you can get ahold of me there, yeah, and you can see his cute family and you can. There's a form to fill out if you'd like him to speak. And as far as the book, we can find it. It's been out, so it's out. We can find it everywhere, online, for sure.
Speaker 2:Find it everywhere online. Yeah, barnes and Noble out here does where I'm at does not carry it in store, so you got to go online for that. I found that out because the book released the same day my daughter who's 11, had a young adult fiction book that she follows release and she woke up that morning and she goes Dad, guess what day it is? In my mind I was like she knows about the book, she knows like it's out today. That's really cool, it's really sweet. What a sweet daughter I have. And she tells me she goes it's my book day and I was crushed. I was like oh right, it's your book day.
Speaker 2:That's right, so we went to get that and picked up her book and I couldn't find it in the store. But Barnes Noble carries it, amazon Christian Book all of these places carry it.
Speaker 1:Our family is in charge of humbling us. You realize that right.
Speaker 2:They do an amazing, particularly audible has an incredible for people like me who listen more than read. I hope that's okay that I say that I I listened to so much podcasts and audio books. There's an incredible audio book. Maurice English reads it. He's a legendary narrator. This is the last project that he's done in his famous career. He wanted to go out with a Wearsby project, which is so fun, and then I tucked in the back of the audio book, just kind of a little Easter egg.
Speaker 2:In 2013, I had my daughter and we brought her out to Lincoln, nebraska, to visit her great grandparents.
Speaker 2:It was a four generation moment, and whenever we went out to Lincoln, my family would go to church with my grandparents, but at this stage of life they weren't getting out of the house very much, so what we would do is have church in the living room.
Speaker 2:My grandpa would just pull out a Bible and preach from memory a beautiful sermon that inspired us. After a few times of this happening, I finally had the wherewithal to record one of these messages, and so I recorded it on my iPhone, and my daughter is six months old. She's crying in the background and there's kind of like it's the most interrupted sermon ever. But when we did the audio book, I remembered I had this and I I sent it over to a friend, asked him to clean up the background noise and all that stuff and surprisingly they did some incredible magic with it and so we included it as an epilogue to the audio book and it's the last known recording of my grandfather's preaching, so it's the last sermon that we know has been recorded while he was alive, and it's on Psalm 1, and it's a treasure.
Speaker 2:It's worth the audiobook alone and the readings on a daily basis are just beautiful. That's part of how my wife and I you know the Lectio Divina app, like the 365,. We love hearing God's Word just as much as we love reading God's Word, so it's a great way to do that I've just started listening to audiobooks and I'm going to say that if people belong to Spotify, you could probably I think it's going to be in there. I think it's going to be in there.
Speaker 1:Probably listen to it free on Spotify.
Speaker 2:Well worth your time.
Speaker 1:Now, yeah, so lots of easy ways to get this, but I just want to thank you so much. We will have your website contact on our show notes it's djacobsoncom and, of course, a link to order the book, and I'm going to suggest this is what I'm going to do that people give this as a gift to people in your life. It's a beautiful hardback, really solid, good quality book. It definitely could be on a coffee table, has a beautiful cover and I'm very I've noticed books because I love books, really like good quality pages. This will last a while, so that's my endorsement for buying the book. Anyway, thank you so much and I wish you the best in all of your projects. It's been so great to talk to you, Stephanie.
Speaker 2:thanks for having me again. This has been a real joy.
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