Readers and followers of the late Warren Wiersbe and those new to his work, will be spiritually encouraged by a newly released volume of his work. Dan Jacobson, grandson of the famed-writer, joins Wednesday’s Mornings with Eric and Brigitte to talk about Becoming New, a 100-day Journey of Transformation through God’s Word.
You're listening to mornings with Eric and Bridget here on Moody Radio 89.3.
There are books, and then there are books that go down in history and authors along with them. And Warren Wiersbe is one of them, especially his commentaries on the Gospels. I remember as a high schooler, early college student working at family Christian stores back in the day. Remember them?
Yes I do.
And Warren Wiersbe Be collection had its own section. It was color coordinated with whichever gospel it was. He's got them all. And those books were flying off the shelf all the time. It seemed like people just just couldn't get enough of them.
Because they were used for personal study, and they were used for group study. And they were they were relatable. I think they were something that you could read through and grasp because it wasn't over your head. It was into your heart, almost theology. And there's a new book called Becoming New, not a B book, but Becoming New, and it is by Warren Wiersbe. But you might be thinking, well, didn't he die? What's going on there? Right.
A few years.
Ago. And so I saw this book on our bookshelf there, and I looked. Wow. It looks gorgeous. So I pulled it just because of the look of it. And then I started looking through it and I went, oh, wow, I should read this to my daughters. So we've been going through it slowly, but at night before we go to bed, we read a section, a couple, it's just a couple pages each day. And we've been really impacted by it, even in just the first few days that we've done it. Yesterday, talking about rest, my daughter went, oh, this is a good one before we go to bed. Yeah, the rest of God. But really from day one, talking about masquerade and how we can at times be be phony. But the Lord changes our lives and he transforms us. Metamorphosis. Just from that first one, the girls were really impacted by it. So this has been a great resource for us and we wanted to spend some time. I was talking to Bridgette about this. She goes, oh, we're talking to the guy that edited that book here.
And that guy is Dan Jacobson, who is the grandson of Warren Wiersbe. Well, Dan, I'm just so curious, what is it like to to have grown up with such a legacy like your grandfather's?
Well, good morning, Eric and Bridget. Thanks for having me on with you today. I love hearing about the impact of my grandfather, and that's what it's like for me to grow up having Warren Wiersbe as your grandfather. So many people have been impacted in their faith to know Jesus better because of the way that he just dedicated his life to God, to, to, to the local church, to pastors, and to knowing God's Word. Um, and so really just grateful for the legacy that he's left in my family and my life. Um, and how that's trickled down even into the lives of my kids as well. So very just humbling and honoring and just a joy to have Warren Wiersbe be my grandfather.
All right. So one of my favorite TV shows I mentioned this all the time. Expedition unknown. Josh gates, he's an explorer. He's an archaeologist. He goes and finds things and I think he should send we should send him into the archives of Warren Wiersbe. This is where you found this book, right?
Yes. Oh, man. This is a great idea. Yes, yes. So my grandfather, you hinted at it just a couple of seconds ago. He passed away in 2019. And, uh, when when he died, my grandmother died just a couple of weeks later. It was a very poetic story of, you know, 50 plus years of marriage. And they both went to heaven in the same season of life. And, uh, we had the whole estate to kind of take care of and their, their house. And my grandpa had a legendary library in his basement, over 13,000 books that he had collected and used in his ministry. And we were kind of sorting through everything and going through it all. And my uncle discovered this manila file folder, kind of tucked away in one of the boxes near his desk and pulled it out and kind of Eureka! Look at this. This is a whole entire devotional book that looks like it's almost done, but, um, really needed the work of an editor. It needed an archaeologist to kind of discover the structure and then to supply the missing pieces that weren't there. And so that task fell to me. I was really humbled that my family looked at me and said, Dan, you know your grandfather. You know his voice, his heart, his theology. Um, I'm a pastor by trade myself. I'm a fifth generation pastor. And so they're like, why don't you just take a stab at kind of rounding out what your grandfather did? And, um, guys, I got to tell you, it was a daunting task.
I was about to say how many minutes before the wait? How many minutes before the burden of that hit you?
It took me about six months to touch this project, to be quite honest. It was just very daunting. But once I got into it and really understood what my grandfather was trying to do, he was really, you know, my grandfather's heart's a pastor's heart. Loves people. Wants them to know God's word and be transformed into the image of God's Son. And that's what change is all about. God changes us. You know, here we are at the beginning of a brand new year. A lot of us are trying to resolutions to bring about change in our lives, but real, lasting change. How does that come to our life? That was the question. He wanted to walk through. Any new believer in the faith, or someone whose faith might just be stagnant or stale. Been following Jesus for decades. He wanted to speak to them and say, here's how. God here's what God is up to through His Word and through His Spirit, changing you into the image of Jesus, His Son. And so once I figured out that was his approach, it was pretty easy to to track the 100 days from there. And I'm really pleased with the results. You know, Eric, my own daughter, I have an 11 year old daughter is going through in the evenings as well, right before bed. She's got her her little routine. She does, she says. I brush my teeth, I hop in bed, I open becoming new. I read two pages and I go to sleep. And it's it's accessible enough that my 11 year old daughter can figure it out and read it right. It's also deep enough that the people in my church who are in their 70s and 80s, who receive this book as a Christmas gift are also telling me, man, this is insightful, this is deep. This is really, really helpful for me to grow in my faith and understanding of the whole arc of God's God's acts in history. So really grateful for my grandfather's accessibility and his insights.
That's something unique to his writing that he does so well. In fact, day one of Becoming new. He talks about that change. He talks about metamorphosis and defines it as a permanent change on the outside that comes from the inside. And they kind of juxtaposes that with masquerade. So just dive into that topic a little bit as it seems to be the theme he carries out throughout the entire book.
Yeah. Well, I think one of the one of the real challenges that modern followers of Jesus have today is we can forget that there's an enemy. Um, and what my grandfather didn't want us to do is forget that there's an enemy, that anywhere that God is planting seeds, the enemy is also planting weeds. And so wherever we're trying to see change come about and God's trying to bring about change, there's a temptation to take a shortcut. And shortcut. Change is the masquerade. It's just the putting on of a of a face or trying to, um, be someone that you're not from the outside in. That's the world's type of change. It's the promises that we have for a better life through through shortcuts and not and not necessarily substantial character change or formational change of our spirit. What God's into is, is the real stuff, the real deal, the lasting change that he can only bring about when our souls are surrendered to His Word and his will and his way. And so the whole book is about how does God transform our lives? He wants to. God doesn't want to leave us the same when we come to Jesus. Thank God. So grateful for this, that that when we come to Christ we don't have to be perfect, but he doesn't leave us in the same condition of our character. When we come to faith, he grows us up. And that's that's the call of this book is to become new. I love that you guys picked up on the reference to my grandfather's B series. I titled this book Becoming New because I wanted to give it like a a wierzbie shine to it, but also have a it's for a new generation. It's for a new group of people. People my age, people my daughter's age. And we're all the we're we're craving in this world right now. Something real, something true, something powerful. And that's what God offers us through His Word.
Yeah, through his word. And you've hinted on it also. You know, there are so many lies that we believe, and Satan wants us to capture those lies and build those into our life. But we have a helper, and many times we don't really understand the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We don't understand what his job is. Part of that job is to help us through this, to discern what's truth and lie through through God's Word, but also through his work in our life. The Holy Spirit is a key integral part of this book. Isn't he part of this?
Absolutely. Yeah. My my grandfather had two real clear from the outset, uh, the Spirit of God and the Word of God. And, you know, our theology will tell us that the Spirit of God wrote the word of God. Um, and so the two of them work in tandem. But but there's not a lot of, um, change that comes to our life through quick impressions. I think a lot of our, a lot of our world today, a lot of my world today is just kind of quick hits on Instagram or Twitter or something. That's a good truth. But I don't let my soul meditate on it. And so picking up a book like Becoming New is a great way for us to have the habits of meditating on God's Word and letting God's Spirit really marinate and change our minds about different things the world would tell us are true, that God's Spirit will reveal to us over time. Oh, that's a lie that I've believed. And actually, the truth is, is over here where God says it was. I just didn't understand it because I didn't take the time to let that truth sink and saturate into my soul. So, um, my grandfather, in his preface, just kind of outlines the way to use the book. And he says, read it slowly, read this book slowly. There really every day is 100 days and it's about 500 words each day. So it's very short readings that are accompanied by scripture readings. Um, biblical literacy was very important to my grandfather, but he wanted those short readings not to be a quick excuse to zip through the Bible. He wanted those those short readings to be a good excuse to sit and really let it saturate in our hearts.
Dan Jacobson with us, the grandson of Warren Wiersbe, out with a brand new devotional from Warren called Becoming New. Dan, obviously the theme of this book we've talked about already. Transformation. How has going through your grandfather's writings and working on this? How has that transformed your own spiritual life?
Well, yeah, Bridget, that's such a great question. And this book, I picked it up to really work at it in earnest. It was it was really Covid that gave me the excuse to find time to sit down with this and get into it. My grandfather, when he wrote it, he was in his 80s. And this is, I think, the decade of his life. He did the best of his best work. And and so when I received it, though, it was not really well put together. It was kind of like the diary of a mad man, if I could be honest. So a lot of my time with it was spent just kind of prayerfully sorting through it and sifting through it and going, God, what is up to this? And just prayerfully, um, just asking God, what what what was my grandfather trying to say? And what are you trying to say now that this project is in my hands? And that process of listening to the Lord and waiting for for his illumination and for his inspiration to really show me, hey, this is how this unfolds, was really a process that inspired my faith in some way. You know, sometimes we got to go through projects like this in our, in our own sense to, to go, okay, God, your word is true. And you, you do lead and your spirit is real. And so for me, this is just a real big faith building exercise just by the virtue of putting this together. So that was huge. But over the past four years since I've started working on this and now it's it's out in people's hands. God's just done this incredible work in my own life through some highs and lows in my in my life and my family's life. We've we've walked through some real struggles together. Um, even in this past year with the medical journey for one of our young children. And, um, to know some of the scriptures that I've poured time into, that the spirit will just prompt in my in my, my soul, in a sleepless night to be able to bring the right word to my heart that'll calm me down or help me have faith to to to move forward into the hard stuff that God might be calling me into. I just really appreciate that. You know, the point of the book isn't to, um, find a shortcut or a secret to a good life. The point of the book is to spend deep time with God, because that deep time with God in the moments of crisis or pain or trial really surfaces God's Spirit and God's Word. So for us to be in a hospital room not too long ago, and to have God's Spirit just calming us in the midst of a real, real crisis was was just a real, a real blessing for me to know. Man, God, you're changing my character that even in these moments of crisis, I feel and I hear and I kind of exude your word, and that's a calming, uh, calming presence for me. It's really it's the type of person I want to be of faith is to be someone who stands firm, under trial. And, um, just going through this book has helped me have the words and have the the verses at my at my ready and my soul that that have brought my my mind back to God.
Well, before we let you go, are there any other manila folders just hanging around that you've seen?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a great question. And there's a my grandpa outlined for us the next five becoming books. He didn't write a single word of them, but he had this idea that there would be these, like 100 day devotion books out there. And so this book becoming new stops at the end of acts so it doesn't get all the way through the New Testament, but it gives us the arc of history in God's world. So there's a couple more that could follow, and we'll see how we go about doing those. But to the best of my knowledge, Eric, this is the last word. And we're to be a book that will be put in print.
I don't know. Let us into that attic. We'll find something. I love it. I love it. Dan Jacobson has been with us. Grandson of Warren Wiersbe, out with a brand new devotional from his grandfather. Becoming new 100 days of transformation through God's Word. We have a link to it at our website right now. Eric and Bridget.