Podcast Transcript
Attendees:
Mark Hamby, Margie Boswell, Joshua Boswell
Transcript:
Joshua Boswell: Hello friends. Welcome to the Happy Family Club podcast. We are so delighted to have you here and we're especially grateful and excited to have Mark Hamby with us today and Dr. Mark Hamby is founder of the Lamplighter International Ministry. They are an incredible organization who focuses on preparing people for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what an incredible mission. They work with families, college campuses, schools, homeschoolers, and for over… I think for over 30 years, you've been focused on this ministry. Is that right, Mark?
Mark Hamby: Yep, we are. Inspiring people to know God intimately, proclaim Him passionately and enjoy Him infinitely by building Christlike character, one story at a time.
Joshua Boswell: I love it.
Margie Boswell: What a beautiful mission statement, I love that.
Joshua Boswell: And you have gone back… and we'll get into the interviewer but I just want to introduce you a little bit more. You've gone and found dozens of old stories and then brought them back to life through publishing them and turning them into radio theater and dramatized broadcast is that… Do I have that, right?
Mark Hamby: Yeah, about 275 of them. And I think I got to just kind of let everyone really know what Lamplighter is.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: I don't think I've ever shared this before. So you guys will be the first to hear this.
Joshua Boswell: Excellent, thank you.
Mark Hamby: So we're a stealth operation. Not many people know, but we're… Lamplighter is just really a facade. It's like a Trojan horse. So we started 30 years ago.
Mark Hamby: And what we know really works is that the Word of God never returns void.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: And we know that the truths in the Word of God always work. For example, love never fails.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hmm
Mark Hamby: For example, the goodness of God leads to repentance. For example, God is a Sun and shield, He gives grace and glory and no good thing will He withhold from them who walk uprightly. We know Psalm 16:11 that He will make known unto us the path of life and in His presence is fullness of joy and at His right hand are pleasures forever more.
So because we know these things, because we know, number one, God is good. Number two, God works all things together for good. Number three, God keeps His promises. And number four, God allows suffering to grow our character, so we can experience His love. So because we know those things and we are convinced of them… For example, in Romans chapter 4, it says Abraham was fully convinced that God would keep his promises.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Right after that it says that suffering produces endurance, produces character, produces hope and allows God's love to be gushed out into our lives. Most people don't experience the gushed out love of God because they weren't willing to endure the suffering that leads to hope. And so because we know these things we had to figure out a way… How do we get people, in an image-saturated culture…? How do we get them to hold on to these truths? To be enamored with these truths and to love learning these new truths about God?
For example, Adam and Eve, the very first thing that they bought, the lie that they bought was that God wasn't really good. So if you don't see that as the foundational principle. As soon as you don't believe that God is good, He's got our best interest in mind.
So when a person goes through suffering, they go through a marriage crisis or a health crisis or a child crisis, whatever it is. If they don't believe that God has their best interest in mind, then they fall away and they look for worldly fulfillment to meet that void in their heart.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: And so what we did 30 years ago is we decided, What was the best way to communicate God's truths without hammering people with the Bible? We want to do the Bible later because… but first we gotta get people to buy in. So we decided the way to do this is the way Jesus taught. He taught through stories.
Joshua Boswell: Parables.
Mark Hamby: And so we decided we’ve gotta find… Well actually, we don't really find them, God brings them to us.
Joshua Boswell: Mmm.
Mark Hamby: But if we had stories that you could read and that you couldn't put down and they would be like the best story you've ever read in your life and not realizing The Word of God was threaded throughout each story, then people are gonna be learning the Word of God while they're enjoying a story.
Joshua and Margie, we have people telling us, they read the hedge of thorns 20 years ago, and they still remember the story.
Joshua Boswell: That’s awesome!
Mark Hamby: The biblical principles are lodged in their heart. We have children that were in fourth grade who are now parents who came to know Jesus as their Savior in fourth grade by reading Teddy's Button. So we just love what we do. And so here we are. We're in this image saturated culture, that is, just destroying children's… not just their mind. And we'll talk about this later. It's destroying their ability to exercise faith.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: And trust in a God that's invisible. So what we decided is that people aren't even reading. I don't know if you guys know this but only five percent of the entire North American continent reads nonfiction or anything of value. There was a study done by President Bush. There's a book called The Northbound Train. This study is in there that people can read, but they don't today because they're so addicted to the images that are coming out of Hollywood.
Margie Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: So here we are printing books and only five percent of the entire North American continent are reading. So we decided early on, How can we pivot this? So we decided, Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of God. So now we started Lamplighter Theater. So now people get to hear the same stories. And the Word of God threaded throughout.
Margie Boswell: Oh… isn't that beautiful? That's amazing.
Joshua Boswell: So we, years ago we started reading at night with our children because we have the same idea.
Mark Hamby: Cool, that's cool.
Joshua Boswell: And I'm gonna read every night to my children, out of a book that instills values and virtues and God's Word into them through stories.
Mark Hamby: That's so cool.
Joshua Boswell: And then for example, as our children got older, when we had to have conversations about sexuality and morality and these kinds of virtues and intimacy. We could refer back to symbolism in different books that we read and say, You remember, when this and this happened in this book? See that's actually a symbol for being chaste and being virtuous and honoring your wife, etc.
Mark Hamby: Mm-hm.
Joshua Boswell: And it made all these, what parents often say are such difficult conversations, it made them so easy because they already had the principles embedded in them. So what an incredible thing you're doing.
Mark Hamby: We love it.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: We were living a dream here. Our staff too. We have the most amazing staff here. I love coming to work. I love working with the staff that God's given us. There's just so much joy here. We laugh a lot here. We not only publish the books, but we actually bind them and print them right here, on campus. It's pretty amazing.
Joshua Boswell: That is absolutely amazing. So, a key question that we have for you, which I think will lead right into this discussion where we've already started. We have a firm belief that happiness is fruit on the tree when you follow and obey God's word, right? So you get this blessing… some of His rich blessings.
Mark Hamby: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: So we would love to hear your insights on what you see, brings families real, abiding, godly, lasting happiness? What's a key principle there that really causes us to come out in a family life?
Mark Hamby: Here at Lamplighter, we stress several things. Number one is that you keep short sin accounts. So you've got to really be sensitive to the Holy Spirit's conviction that when we sin, whether it's an evil thought, whether it's an unkind word, whether it is laziness. You know… whatever it is, you want to walk in the light.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: So as soon as people start hiding, their sin they start walking in darkness. And the longer you stay in darkness the more you hide your sin. And the more you hide your sin, then Satan starts to creep in and then what you lose is you lose the sweet, joyful fellowship with other people.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: And so it says this… if you walk in the light as he's in the light you have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from all sin. So a very simple principle, keep short sin accounts. As soon as the Holy Spirit convicts you, confess it. Humble yourself in the sight of God so that He might lift you up in due season and due time. So that's number one.
And number two in, unless you're filling yourself, I tell people if I had a TV… TV and videos, they're so damaging. And if I had a TV or video games, I'd watch it. And the reason I don't have one is because I would watch it. So I have to get rid of the things, but I can't just get rid of things because that follows that principle in Matthew, where it says that if you just clean your house, then seven worse spirits are going to come and take over.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Mark Hamby: So, you've got to provide a substitute. And the substitute is, for us, the Lamplighter Theater, Lamplighter books. I'm reading several books all the time. You've gotta… Look, if you just ask God, Lord bring the right books into my life, you know, you're reading biographies, those things stir the heart.
Joshua Boswell: Mm-hmm
Mark Hamby: And so you're providing a substitute for what is evil, a replacement principle for what is evil and you're replacing it with that which is good. And so, you have to be constantly… We have to be constantly being transformed through the renewing of our minds. A Christian can't be stagnant. You have to be proactive, you have to be filling yourself all the time. John MacArthur said this morning that he recommends people reading seven chapters of the Bible every day and reading the same chapters 30 days in a row. He said that's line upon line precept upon precept.
Joshua Boswell: What?
Mark Hamby: You're taking it in and you're really learning it. Otherwise you're just skimming the Scriptures. And George Mueller, when he was 71 years old, that's when his ministry took off. When he was 71, all the way until he was 92, the one thing that was different in his ministry then, was that he started reading the Bible four times every year.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Mark Hamby: So it would… If you want to get serious, Man doesn't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. You've got to be able to kindle a love relationship with the Letters of God that He left us. These 66 love letters that teach us about God, not just what the Bible says, but you get to get into how it says it. You get into the structure, you get into the poetic beauty.
There's so much beauty in God's word, not just what it says, but how it says it. And when people start to see the depth that God's Word is written, then you start to realize, this book is multi-dimensional. It's so deep and so wide. It's infinite.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: The truths are so infinite that when we get into it and study it, you just realize how amazing and how infinite God's truth really is. I think we only scratch the surface of the Bible. And when you really start digging in, for example, I'm gonna give you guys a little example here.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Genesis 32, the very last verse, I think it is, it says, the children of Israel don't eat the sinew of the thigh because he touched the sinew of the thigh upon the hip socket. That's the very last verse in this fight scene between Jacob and God.
Joshua Boswell: Mm-hmm.
Mark Hamby: So the man who I believe is Jesus Christ in that text is fighting all night long, and the man dislocates, Jacob's hip with a touch of a finger. And then Jacob… The man says to Jacob, let me go for the day's approaching.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: If you just dislocated someone's hip with your finger, a gentle touch with your finger. Why would you, having that power, ask the person that you just crippled to let you go.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Mark Hamby: Because that person has the power to touch your brain and dislocate your brain.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Mark Hamby: So Jacob says… So Joshua, Margie, if someone came that had just this gentle touch and just touched your hip and dislocated it. And they said to you, Now let me go. What would you say?
Joshua Boswell: I would say, Well you have the power of yourself.
Margie Boswell: Go ahead. Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Yeah, but you don't want them to touch you again, right? If they just Yeah…
Joshua Boswell: Right. Exactly. Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Get out of here. You know what? Jacob says, I will not let you go. So you got to be insane to be risking another touch, right?
Joshua Boswell: Right. Yeah, exactly.
Mark Hamby: He says, I will not let you go until you bless me.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: So that's the scene and then the text ends with this poetic device: the children of Israel, don't eat the sinew of the thigh, because he touched the sinew of the thigh upon the hip socket. So, let me ask you this question. Why would God in this beautiful scene of this fight scene that Jacob is saying I'm not going to let you go until you bless me. Why would God end this chapter with this dietary restriction? Any idea whatsoever?
Margie Boswell: So they could preserve the memory. The remembrance is very important.
Mark Hamby: Okay, so when they eat Lamb, for example, they're not going to eat the sinew of the thigh. Whatever the sinew of the thigh is, they're not eating it.
Margie Boswell: Right, whatever that is.
Mark Hamby: Might be the marrow, I don't know, but now I'm gonna give it to you in its poetic form. Ready for this?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Children of Israel don't eat the sinew of the thigh. That's the first statement. The last statement is the sinew of thigh.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: So picture, this top and bottom, sinew of thigh. They match.
Joshua Boswell: Mmm.
Mark Hamby: Next level, hip socket, next level up, hip socket.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hmm.
Mark Hamby: In the very center, you have this phrase, Because he touched. This poem ends this fight scene by telling us the reader now, or listener 4,000 years later…
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Do you recognize God's touches in your life? And if you do, maybe it's a painful marriage, maybe it's something that's happening with a child, or a teenager, or a health crisis, whatever it is. Do you recognize God's touches in your life? And if you do, then do what Jacob did and don't let go. Don’t let go of the marriage, don't let go of the child, don't let go of anything until God blesses you.
Joshua Boswell: Blesses you.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hmm
Mark Hamby: So, the Bible is so gloriously written, and I want people to... So you asked me the two main things. Number one, keep short sin accounts. Number two, fall in love with the Word of God, and the God of the Word.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, I love that.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hmm.
Joshua Boswell: Absolutely. So I have follow-up questions on that, Mark. So we live in a world that promotes anything you do is okay. And that it's all about me and it's very self-centered. And this is a rampant philosophy in the world around us. So how do you step into a family… and what are your insights on how do you step into a family and cause that shift? So that people will humble themselves and keep that short sin account? Because it requires shifting away from anything's, okay, Grayville USA to really recognizing truth. So, your thoughts on how to make that shift with the families?
Mark Hamby: That's great. Great question. So number one, I'm gonna tell a person number one. Are you really happy? Do you have the greatest joy in your life?
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Mark Hamby: Okay, if you have that, keep doing what you're doing. Most people don't have that kind of joy.
Joshua Boswell: Nope.
Mark Hamby: They have a false happiness. And what that's called is that they have the fulfillment of the lust of their flesh that only lasts for a certain while, so that it's not long term.
Joshua Boswell: That's right.
Mark Hamby: Real joy continues to grow and it satisfies a person in whatever state they're in. The Apostle Paul, Peter… when they're in prison, they had great joy even though they're being whipped.
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Mark Hamby: So… is it genuine joy? The joy of the Lord is our real strength. And so that's the question I ask people. And then number two, Psalm 84:11 says, He's a sun and shield, He gives grace and glory, and no good thing will He withhold from them all who walk uprightly.
And so I say, Are you really experiencing God's pleasures and joys? Psalm 16:11, and I quoted it earlier. He'll make known unto us the path of life, in His presence is fullness of joy, in His right hand are pleasures forevermore. So I say to people, if you really want to experience God's joy and pleasures that are irresistible and completely fulfilling then…
Mark Hamby: Hold on, I just lost my train of thought. I'll get it back in a second. My phone rang. And so, I hold on, oh boy, where was I going with this?
Joshua Boswell: Are you really experiencing the pleasure and joy that comes from God?
Margie Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Oh yeah, here it is. Okay. So, it's simply this. God is on the throne and He calls the shots.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: He wants us to live by His rules. If we decide not to live by His rules, there are always going to be consequences. There's always going to be a loss of joy. And so, I say, You've got to make a decision. Either you're gonna do it God's way you're gonna reap the consequences, do it your way. But if you do it God's way, He's given us some simple rules to live by. Number one, Ecclesiastes Chapter 12 says this. This is… I'm going to quote it to you in the original Hebrew. In English it says, This is the whole duty of man, okay? But in the Hebrew it says, This is all of man. Fear God, keep His commandments.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Margie Boswell: Hmm.
Mark Hamby: The Book of Job, the Book of Psalms, the Book of Proverbs and the Book of Ecclesiastes, all begin and end with, Guess what?
Job and Ecclesiastes. Begin and end with fear God, fear God. Psalms and Proverbs begin and end with fear the Lord, fear the Lord. Now watch this. So fear God, fear God. Fear Elohim, fear Elohim. Genesis 1 begins with Elohim created the heavens and the earth. Psalms and Proverbs, fear Yahweh, fear the Lord begins and ends.
Joshua Boswell: The Lord. Mm-hm.
Mark Hamby: Genesis 2, Yahweh created the heavens and the earth. The reason you have those two separate accounts is Elohim is the power of God. God created with his power. Genesis 2, Yahweh creates. He walks and talks with His creation in the garden. It's a relational God.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: So Genesis 1 and 2 is the power of God, the relational God. In Job and Ecclesiastes, the two mysterious dark books of the Bible that are difficult to understand, they begin and end with Elohim, the fear of Elohim.
Joshua Boswell: Elohim. Mm-hmm.
Mark Hamby: Psalms and Proverbs begin and end with the fear of Yahweh, the relational God. Those two wisdom books, Job in Ecclesiastes, demonstrate the power of Elohim, the power of God. Psalms and Proverbs demonstrate the relation of God, the love of God.
Margie Boswell: Mm-hmm.
Mark Hamby: But it's the fear of God that does this. All four books demonstrate, frame, all that is written and all of the content is framed with the fear of God and the fear of Yahweh, which leads us to the last Fifth Wisdom book, which is the Song of Songs. And guess what that begins and ends with? It begins and ends with love, 36 times.
Joshua Boswell: Love. Wow.
Mark Hamby: But you can't experience the love and joy of God until you first experience the fear of God. Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. Those four books present the fear of God to us. Because God says This is all of man, fear God, keep His commandments. So why? So that you can experience the last wisdom book. The love of God.
Margie Boswell: The Love of God. There you go.
Joshua Boswell: When you're talking about fear, Mark, will you dive deeper into that a little bit? Because I'm not sure that you're… I'm not sure we're talking about going to a spook alley on Halloween, that kind of afraid.
Margie Boswell: And just being afraid. Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Right? Help us understand a little bit better.
Mark Hamby: There's two dimensions of fear. Fearing God. And people don't want to even believe this one, but one fear is to be afraid of
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Because… God wants us to experience His love. He doesn't want us to be afraid of Him. But when we defy God and rebel against Him, He wants us to be afraid of Him.
Margie Boswell: That's right.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Because He means what He says and says what He means.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, and we see this… Sorry to interrupt you. But we see the same thing with our children. I mean, the relationships… You know, I don't want my children to be terrified of me, but I definitely want to know I'm serious.
Joshua Boswell: Healthy respect. Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: There should be a nice healthy there… Go ahead.
Mark Hamby: Yeah. Yes. So, you know That… that's the second part. The respect part is the second part of fearing. But you can't have the respect part unless you really understand that God does mean what He says.
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Mark Hamby: And that's the key to understanding the truth of the Scriptures, is that they really are written for our good.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: To keep us away from… Not just keep it away from evil, but to keep us away from the consequences of evil. You know, look what happened to Adam and Eve.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Mark Hamby: I mean, God said, In the day you eat it, you're gonna die. He met what He said. He could not reverse it. So, I think those things are really what causes people to be healthy. You asked, how do you go into a home that's not quite there? I think it starts with Mom and Dad or Dad and Mom. They have to be serious about getting right with God. You know, it's humbling yourself.
I heard the story from Dr. Dobson. Actually I heard it from his son, Ryan. And if you've ever met Ryan, Ryan is quite an interesting character. He's got quite a few tattoos on them, So first appearance you wouldn't think that he's Dr. Dobson's son, right?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, right!
Mark Hamby: Yeah, and he went through a real rebellious stage. And here you've got the founder and president of Focus On The Family.
Joshua Boswell: Focus On The Family. Right.
Mark Hamby: Ryan in his rebellious stage would come home at night, late at night, and his parents would be in their bedroom on their knees, crying out to God on his behalf.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Mark Hamby: He would come home at night and he would hear their prayers. And that's what brought him back to God.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Mark Hamby: And I think, when a mom and dad gets serious about where they are in their relationship with the Lord… You know, there's got to be real repentance, there's got to be a genuine pursuit of holiness and right relationship with God. And you've got to be able to come to God and say, Okay, Lord, do whatever it takes.
I was… 28 years ago, I was… My oldest son and I did not have a good relationship. My oldest son at 12 years old said he hated me. At 14 years old he ran away. I was speaking in churches and our marriage was hanging by a thread.
Joshua Boswell: Mmm.
Mark Hamby: And it took him to run away to get my attention to realize that something was wrong with me. And I'll never forget praying that night, God, do whatever it takes to bring my son back, to help me to be the Father that I need to be, even if you got to take my life.
Within a few days, I ended up taking some medication and I had some severe colitis and depression. And I took this medication that the doctor gave me and I had a severe, you know how you hear those commercials with the medication and…
Joshua Boswell: All the side effect warnings?
Mark Hamby: Yeah the side effect warnings and they've got a list of everything and can cause death, and all that.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Hamby: I happen to be one out of 1000 people that would get the side effects. And I lost my ability to hold saliva in my mouth, my ability to speak and my ability to walk for the next two years.
Joshua Boswell: My goodness, Mark.
Margie Boswell: Wow.
Mark Hamby: No but I needed that.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark Hamby: I needed… God had to get my attention that, it's not by power, not by might, but by my spirit and God resists the proud, but He gives grace to the humble
Joshua Boswell: Humble.
Mark Hamby: And God had to humble me during that time. And I would have lost my family. And even today, 28 years later, God is still teaching me some of the same things that I missed back then. And so my kids are 41, 39 and 37. And parenting never ceases. We're still continuing to learn about God's grace and how to win them to where they need to be with the Lord.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, Amen.
Joshua Boswell: That's wonderful.
Joshua Boswell: You know and I think what you're saying here is so incredibly powerful. And this idea that we first… I'm willing to… Well, I'll tell you my experience. When we started reading books with the children, which we talked about a little bit earlier, books with biblical principles and that taught them truth and God's Word. And through these great stories, you know one of the biggest impacts on that was me. Right?
Mark Hamby: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Because I'm reading and… then I go and lay in bed, and I still do this. I’d go and lay in bed at night and think, Huh. I probably ought to... Yeah, I could work on that.
Mark Hamby: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: I had to learn to pray like, God, can you help me work on that so that I could, really embed this principle into my heart? And I think that what you're saying is so true.
And what's amazing is, a lot of parents today say, You know what, I'd love to do better, I just don't know how. And I think that one of the reasons is that they… Well again, in my case, I came from a situation where I didn't have a dad growing up.
Mark Hamby: Hmm.
Joshua Boswell: I remember at one point I'm sitting in church, I was in this chapel all by myself. And I told the Lord, I said, I really want to be a great husband and father, I just don't know how. And what came to me, and I told the Lord similar to what you said. I said, I'll do anything. Whatever you have to do to make this happen, you let me know.
Mark Hamby: Hmm.
Joshua Boswell: And the Lord did two things. He said, If you'll humble yourself and study My word, I will teach you how to be a great husband and father.
Mark Hamby: Praise God. Wow, that's awesome.
Margie Boswell: Yep.
Joshua Boswell: And then the second thing that He did was he brought Margie into my life. Which is a great story. But I think really what I just wanted to share with people that are listening here. If you will go to the Lord, He wants you to be happy. He wants you to have a great marriage, great relationships. He wants to be humble like you just said. He turns away from the proud and he embraces and loves the humble. And if we turn to that… so there is hope and there are answers and He will guide you.
Mark Hamby: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: And that's… what I love about what you're talking about here, Mark, it's just incredible.
Joshua Boswell: Well and I know that God is more interested in our growth than in our comfort, right?
Mark Hamby: Mm-hmm.
Margie Boswell: As you were talking about earlier, He wants us to grow, He wants us to turn to Him and it's okay if we suffer a little bit to get to that point to where we're humble enough to receive what He wants to teach us and how He wants us to change and improve and come closer to Him.
Mark Hamby: Amen. I was just reading in Proverbs 22 this morning. I think it says, By humility and fear of the Lord are riches, honor and life. Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Mmm.
Mark Hamby: That's a beautiful verse. By humility and fear of the Lord. Those two things go hand in hand. It’s what we've been talking about today. You know there's a man named George in Massachusetts. He was a couch potato. He was surfing the TV constantly. Christian man.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: And he came to a conference, a home school conference. Heard me speak on Great Christian literature, and he got really excited. Went home, threw the TV right in the garbage.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: And then he bought a bunch of Lamplighter books and he started reading them to his kids.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: And that turned into Friday night reading time with his family. And then it turned into Friday night reading time with the neighborhood kids.
Joshua Boswell: My goodness.
Mark Hamby: Kids started coming around and they couldn't wait for Friday night reading time. They got popcorn out and… you would think they were watching a movie, right? They're listening to a dad read stories.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: And kids were loving it. You know, we need more of that again. And this is really cool. One of my staff members here, when she first came here, she did not like Lamplighter books. She didn't even like the Lamplighter audio dramas except for one of them. And today, four years later, she loves the Lamplighter books, and she loves the audio dramas. And I asked her, I said, What made the difference?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: She said, I started growing in the word of God. I started growing in my Christian life. And as a result of that growth, God's truth started to connect. That's what happens. People can't give up… people give up too soon.
They see the Bible as boring. They don't enjoy reading Christian books, but they give up too soon. Faith is a muscle to be exercised. And without faith it's impossible to please God. And so people have to persevere a little bit so that the mind… You got to give time for your mind to adjust to God's truth. Because when we're so used to the worldly pleasures, the world lusts, the things we see, it's gonna take time for the mind to adjust so that you're not so addicted and dependent upon those images.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: So you slowly wean yourself off of that and provide something better. And it will happen, but it doesn't happen overnight.
Margie Boswell: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, I remember I was a missionary for a number of years in Holland and as we would meet people, they would have different addictions and one of the ones that we helped was smoking addiction. And it was always fascinating to me as people would stop smoking, at first it just was a torture to them. But one of our techniques for helping them was that they would brush their teeth five to ten times a day. And what they would report to us is that after a while it's like they started noticing, Oh my mouth feels so clean.
Mark Hamby: Cool.
Joshua Boswell: The air I'm breathing feels so clean.
Mark Hamby: Whoah.
Joshua Boswell: And they're like, I can't believe this. And they started connecting with cleanliness and they started desiring and being hungry for it. And then the smell of smoke was like it started associating with dirt and filth. And then they just completely... and that's a bit of imagery that I have come on my mind because too much TV, too much entertainment, too much video, too much visual. Especially the quality of stuff that's getting put out by Hollywood today it’s just unbelievable.
Mark Hamby: Not only too much, but I have actually 60,000 pages of research on this.
Margie Boswell: Wow.
Mark Hamby: And the research shows that… and this is not just Christian research. This is secular as well.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: That children eight and under who watch any kind of video image whatsoever will have a permanent defective effect on their brain.
Joshua Boswell: Wow.
Mark Hamby: And so what it does is when children are watching, it doesn't matter how good it is. It could be veggie tales.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: When you're watching something, the change of the image that they're watching changes every two to four seconds.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: What it does is it reprograms the brain to start thinking in two to four second increments and pretty soon, it changes the brain wave in such a way that they're starting to think in illogical, disconnected, thought patterns, and that's the reason behind ADD and ADHD.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: So we've got to get children off of the videos. It's so sad to watch young children having an iPhone and playing games on it and stuff. It has a detrimental effect upon a children's mind, a deleterious effect.
And the only way to change that is that once they start becoming addicted to that in an early age, is you’ve got to give them that substitute and you got to get them to wean off of that and replace it with something better. And how do you do that? I think the best way to do it is listening.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Listening to someone read to them or listening to audio dramas that are really saturated with godly principles. That's why we love what we do here, you know?
Margie Boswell: That’s amazing.
Joshua Boswell: So that’s… another question for you is in your studies, what have you seen as the relationship between these visual images and this saturation inside of social media and the visual world… What do you see is that relationship between a lot of the mental and emotional dysfunction that we see in society today?
Mark Hamby: Yeah.
Joshua Boswell: I mean, the suicide rates are up and the gender dystopia and the depression rates are off the charts and the ADHD and autism. I mean, there's so many things there. And I just want to know if you see that, they're from that.
Mark Hamby: Yeah, direct correlation. But let me take a little journey here.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: So let me start with saying… I want to make sure I'm gonna start in the right foundational principle here…
Okay, so I'm gonna… Tell me what these have in common. You ready? .
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Batman, Superman, Antman Ironman… And can you think of any others? Aquaman. Spider-Man.
Joshua Boswell: And Spider-Man. Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Okay, there's seven of them I think. What do they have in common?
Margie Boswell: “Man.”
Mark Hamby: Yes, you got it.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Mark Hamby: Children that watch those… and adults. So in each one of us, God has placed a void that only can be filled by Him. Okay?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: God's a jealous, by the way.
Joshua Boswell: Yep.
Mark Hamby: You know if I’m going to create people. If I got the power and I'm God and I'm gonna create people, I want them for myself.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Mark Hamby: Michael Card once said this. He said God loves us so much He would rather die than live without us.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: And he did already do that,…
Margie Boswell: Right, that's exactly what he did.
Mark Hamby: So when children are watching all of these supernatural men. Antman, Superman, Batman, so forth. What it does is it clogs the filters of the transcendent because they're constantly watching the image of something that to them is supernatural.
Joshua Boswell: Yes..
Mark Hamby: Something that they watch that has supernatural powers. What it does is it clogs the filters of the transcendent so they cannot believe in anything that's invisible.
And they're being filled with something that they can see that possesses supernatural powers. Therefore it satisfies and temporarily fills that void. And then all of a sudden, the void starts to be empty again, and they've got to find something greater, and they go from the Batman, Superman Antman, Ironman, and Aquaman. They go from there, guess where they go. Now, they got to go to something darker.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Now, they got to go into Zombieland. They've got to go into, walking dead and it goes from something that appears good but it's not enough to something that appears evil and is evil because it's more powerful.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: So that's one of the things that's happening with children today. And as soon as they start to buy in, and they have the concept that that is supernatural. They cannot. And this is amazing. They cannot, and this is written in the research. They cannot exercise or have the ability to exercise faith. They cannot believe in something that's transcendent because they've been fed everything that they are able to see that is the extent of their supernatural.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah yeah.
Mark Hamby: Yeah, and envisioning something supernatural. So, when it clogs the filters you no longer can exercise faith. I think one of the main problems today in childhood is that… and the reason that we're seeing people buying into and holding on to these images and not enjoying the word of God, not enjoying books is because they're saturated with images.
Now, having said that, along with that, they are gaining relationships. They are attaching themselves to the characters of the stories. And as soon as you obtain an emotional relationship with a character in a story, then you start to change the way you think and your worldview starts to match the character in the story.
Joshua Boswell: That's right.
Mark Hamby: For example. Dystopian literature. Dystopian is just… they want to have their own authority. And so they want to do away with parental authority. This is what dystopian literature teaches you.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Mark Hamby: Do away with parental authority, government authority, legal authority and moral authority. They want to now bring their own authority. They're going to create their own authority, their own worldview. Which isn't any better than what they had in real life, right?
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Mark Hamby: So once they do that, now what children do who watch these dystopian stories, for example, is they start to see good over evil in the story. And they are like, I like this. They want love in their society, okay? But it's the wrong kind of love.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: So children that are watching it, all of a sudden start to have an emotional… they're connecting on an emotional level. They appreciate the character in this story. For example, Call Of The Wild. Call Of The Wild, it's been required reading for so many children over the years. Seventh grade especially. All it is is an evolutionary principle of survival of the fittest.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: Yep.
Mark Hamby: But the dog in the story is so endearing and you want the dog to win. And so all of a sudden you start to have an emotional attachment with the character of the stories. And next thing you know, you are buying into the philosophy, the world view of survival of the fittest and evolution.
Joshua Boswell: Exactly. Yep
Mark Hamby: So dystopian literature, Harry Potter. All that does is it establishes an emotional connection to the characters and allows the child to buy into the worldview, not just the character, but the world view of the author of the stories.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: I say to moms and dads, find out what the world view of the authors of the stories is and you’d want to run for the hills. You don't want your children to espouse the world view of these authors or the characters in the stories. And our children are being completely brainwashed by it today.
Joshua Boswell: And it's prevalent everywhere we see and we see this degradation of society. And what I love about what you're talking about Mark is that you clearly are not a doomsdayer, everything is terrible. You're a hope giver.
Mark Hamby: Well yeah.
Joshua Boswell: And I love that from the smile on your face and the joy in your voice about what you do and how you do it. And I think that you've talked about a major element here of helping them to listen and to read things. And I'm supposing, I would hope that through the power of God and through the right input, those filters can be unclogged and that people's hearts can be opened up. I mean, if a transformation wasn't possible, then Christ's whole mission would have been for naught, right?
Mark Hamby: Well you're looking at the possibility of that kind of transformation.
Joshua Boswell: Right, after two years of not being able to talk, right?
Mark Hamby: Yeah, not just that, but I grew up on TV. You know if anyone had clogged filters it was me. But when I got saved, the very first thing that happened to me when I came to know Christ as my Savior, I was 22 years old. I'd never read a book in my life.
Joshua Boswell: Oh my goodness.
Mark Hamby: I hated to read, I had low comprehension, high level of fear and anxiety. When I got saved, the first book I read was the Bible.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: I was so enamored with it. I couldn’t put it down. I was reading two to four hours every night. For two years, I couldn't put the Bible down. My character started to change, my level of fear started to decrease, my level of comprehension started to soar.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: And then biographies came into my life. And the next thing you knew, because I was reading truth for the first time in my life and I couldn't put these books down. I was telling everybody, you've got to read this book. This is the best book I've ever read in my life. 45 years later, I'm still telling people, this is the best book I've ever read in my life.
Margie Boswell: Very good.
Mark Hamby: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: That’s awesome.
Joshua Boswell: Love it. So have you found that there's some good insights and tips and tricks…? I mean, I think that there are some parents who will be reading through stuff and would love to say, Okay, we're reading this, our family is getting this dose of God's Word and of truth and we're starting to walk in the light. Do you have some practical tips…? And I just realized what time it was. So I'm keeping an eye on time here, but maybe there's some practical tips and tricks you can give for taking that to the next step. So, as a parent then, how do I transition that into the day-to-day life and into our walk and talk. As us and our children are getting that input?
Mark Hamby: Okay, so I would say simply for me, when I read something and I'm walking with the Lord, if I'm sensitive to the Holy Spirit in my life and His conviction, God brings the right book into my life exactly at the right timing.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: To connect with the people in my life. There's generally, almost always, when I'm reading something… For example, I just read a book called Tip Lewis. Okay, Joshua and Margie. This is the best book I've ever read in my life. No, I'm not kidding.
Joshua Boswell:
Mark Hamby: No, you got to trust me. I'm not kidding. So Teddy's Button and Giant Killer have been my two favorite books of all time for children nine to twelve. Eight to twelve. Have you guys read Teddy's button.
Joshua Boswell: No, we haven't.
Mark Hamby: Holy smoke are you kidding me?
Joshua Boswell: We're gonna change that. We’re gonna repent, Mark.
Margie Boswell: We'll go get it.
Mark Hamby: Okay. Teddy's Button has been the best children's book. It’s about a boy and girl that hate each other and they learned that you don’t win the battle with hate, you win the battle with love and your greatest enemy is yourself. The Giant Killer, a book about the giant of hate, selfishness, pride, laziness.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: And how you kill these giants in your life. And so you're learning these truths. And there's this book called Come What May. Amazing for teenagers. These stories are changing children's lives. It's so powerful. One of my staff members, he said, I have just learned… He just read it this past week. He said, I have learned that I need to sometimes let go of the good and wait for God's best. I’m like, Whoah.
Joshua Boswell: Ah, so… yeah.
Mark Hamby: That is so good. He's thinking of getting married. He's 23 years old. He wants to get married, but he's gotta decide and discern. Is this good or is this God's best? He's got to make those decisions. What is he thinking through?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Is this job good? Is this the right school? And so forth. Anyways, I came across a book called Tip Lewis And His Lamp, okay?
Margie Boswell: Okay.
Mark Hamby: I have been talking about it every day for the last 75 days. It has revolutionized my life. It has every biblical principle from a new believer… this is a child who was the dunce of the class. He was the person that was always getting in trouble, always getting kicked out of school and he comes to know Christ as his Savior. And you should see the step-by-step process of his spiritual growth until he becomes a preacher.
I tell you what, we're printing it in about three weeks. We're gonna make a Sunday school curriculum out of it so the churches can have this. This is the story, for me, the story of the century because it has every biblical principle in helping children to grow and to identify with a character that was not going anywhere in his life.
And if Tip could get saved, and if Mark Hamby can get saved, then not only anybody can get saved, but we can grow to become all that God wants us to become. So that we can be changers in this dark world. We've only just begun. Darkness flees light.
Margie Boswell: That's right.
Mark Hamby: We just need more of it.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Margie Boswell: We need more of it. There you go. That's perfect.
Joshua Boswell: Mark, this is been an incredible journey for us. Thank you so much.
Mark Hamby: You're welcome.
Joshua Boswell: What joy it has been…
Mark Hamby: Praise God.
Joshua Boswell: To just be bathed in God’s light for an hour with you.
Mark Hamby: Praise God.
Margie Boswell: What’s the best way for our listeners to come and find your books? Or is there a best way to connect here?
Mark Hamby: Yeah, they can go to www.Lamplighter.net. That's www.Lamplighter.net or they can call us if they want to get a catalog that shows the 200+ books…
Joshua Boswell: Yeah, sure.
Mark Hamby: And the 34 audio dramas. We have 34 audio dramas and they're heard in 34 countries right now to a million listeners every week. We are so excited.
Joshua Boswell: That’s awesome, that's amazing.
Margie Boswell: Wow.
Mark Hamby: And we use actors from Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean, Downton Abbey, Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings. We try to find the best actors in the world and someone said to me, Why do you use non-Christian actors? I said, I will use whatever actor can act the story the best.
Joshua Boswell: Yes, right. Yep.
Mark Hamby: And then we get a chance to witness to these folks like John Reese Davies. he's come really close to knowing the Lord. He loves us, we love him.
Joshua Boswell: Fun.
Mark Hamby: And so we get to be in the studio with him. We'll fly to London to use some of the best actors from Hollywood. But then we started our own studio here in western New York. And so we bring actors to us now. So they can go to www.Lamplighter.net or call us toll free, 188, the letter “A,” gospel.
Mark Hamby: So it's simply 888 the letter “A,” gospel (+1(888) 246-7735) they can call for a free catalog. We have the best… our staff answers the phone. If you call during the work day, you will not get a recording.
Joshua Boswell: Awesome. Hurrah. One thing I want to point out, because I did a bunch of research on you, Mark, before we got onto this call. Because I wanted to get to know you and your family and your mission and your passion. And I want to say this to all of our listeners, one thing I've been impressed with is Mark and his organization do everything first class.
Mark Hamby: Amen.
Joshua Boswell: It is beautiful. And I have this sense that it's because you really, not only what you're doing, but how you're doing it, you're praising and honoring the Lord. And so, the best of the best is all you can deliver. Yeah, I love it.
Mark Hamby: Yeah. You want to know, Joshua?
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: You want to know why? Because God held nothing back for us.
Joshua Boswell: Yes.
Mark Hamby: He gave us the best in creation. Every time I see a tree, I'm always blown away by the different bark on the tree and the colors of the leaf. I mean you guys are in Arkansas. I'm here in western New York. You should see the colors on the trees here, right now… It's incredible.
Margie Boswell: I bet.
Mark Hamby: It's like Candyland.
Joshua Boswell: Now I want to bring up one of the things that I found in my research and that is, you have another website. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it’s called www.WeAreLamplighter.com. Do I remember that correctly? Or www.WeAreLamplighter.net. And… it talks about different ways you can donate to the school and ways you can participate in your work and your effort that you're doing and…
Mark Hamby: Cool.
Joshua Boswell: yeah. …
Mark Hamby: I didn't know it existed.
Joshua Boswell: Well it's great, everything it all drives back to all your stuff. So there you go, talks about different things.
Mark Hamby: Cool. Or they can just go to www.Lamplighter.net and…
Mark Hamby: I'm sure they can find it.
Joshua Boswell: www.Lamplighter.net. All right we’ll just stick with that. www.Lamplighter.net. Perfect.
Mark Hamby: So Joshua and Margie, four years ago, we started a college program. And last semester, we had 20 students. And that was actually too much for me. Because we try to really mentor the students.
Joshua Boswell: Right.
Mark Hamby: The school, it's called the Master's Guild. And it's based on a very important principle. I’ll… We’ll probably close with this, but in the book of Proverbs,…
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: This is what I did my dissertation on. The book of Proverbs Chapters 1 through 9 is a story of a father teaching his son 12 Wisdom Principles. The 12 Lessons of Wisdom. And it says, My son, my son, my son. If you look at Proverbs 1 through 9, you'll see the statement, My son. And each time it says “my son,” there's a wisdom lesson. And then wisdom herself teaches twice. Teaches in chapter one, teaches again in chapter 8. Whoops, did I lose ya?
Joshua Boswell: No, we're here.
Mark Hamby: Okay, so in this section, the introduction of Proverbs 1:1-6 there are four main characters, The simple, the knowledgeable, the wise, and the discerning. Those are the first four characters in Proverbs and you gotta decide which one you will become. Everyone starts off as simple. The word simple in Hebrew means fathead. It means a person who is gullible, easily enticed and thoughtless, literally, the Hebrew word is fathead. So a simple person, he doesn't want to learn.
So a simple person has to choose. If doesn't want to stay that way, then he's got to become a knowledgeable, useful person. He begins to grow in knowledge. And how do you grow in knowledge? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: That's where it comes from. All the decisions in life come from that one, simple principle. I bring God into every situation in life. Does this please God? What I'm about to do? Is this Godly material that I'm about to read? Fear God. The fear of God is the beginning of knowledge. So you go from simple to knowledgeable and knowledgeable to wise and from wise to discerning. Discerning is the highest level of Christian growth. It's the highest level of spiritual maturity, because you can discern between good and evil.
Now if you decide not to grow in the fear of the Lord and gain knowledge of God, then you go from simple to guess what? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. But guess what? Fools despise wisdom and correction. And so from simple, rather than simple, knowledgeable, wise, discerning, you go from simple to foolish.
Margie Boswell: Foolish.
Mark Hamby: And from foolish, you go to becoming a mocker and from a mocker you go to becoming a hater. And so you've got the simple in-between which direction you're gonna go.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: Either knowledgeable, wise and discerning, or fools, mockers and haters.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: And so when you are presented with those amazing truths, you've got to understand that the Achilles heel that causes a person to fall is very simple. A fool despises wisdom and, in the English text it says instruction, but in the Hebrew text that word is better translated as correction.
Joshua Boswell: Correction.
Mark Hamby: You will find the word correction in almost every chapter in Proverbs 1-9 because it is the key for us to grow. That's how we grow is an embracing of correction. Correcting the way we think. Correcting the way we act. And inviting that correction into our lives even when it's painful and uncomfortable. A person that rejects correction is a person who will stay stunted in their spiritual growth. Joshua and Margie, for you as well. For me and my wife as well.
Joshua Boswell: Yeah.
Mark Hamby: We've got to bring people into our lives, who can see things that we cannot see. And when we invite that kind of correction, the spiritual growth will be rapid. And it will be strong. And you will become all the God wants you to become. And you will be able to have the happiness that you have been desiring.
Joshua Boswell: Amen.
Margie Boswell: Amen. That’s beautiful.
Joshua Boswell: Awesome, Mark. So wonderful.
Margie Boswell: Thank you for teaching us. Sharing with us.
Joshua Boswell: Thank you very much. We're gonna go out this week and embrace correction because that was great.
Mark Hamby: Be careful. It's not real comfortable.
Joshua Boswell: Yep that's ok though. Causes good growth and good discernment there. Well good. Thank you once again Mark for your time. We really appreciate it.
Mark Hamby: Yeah, you're welcome.
Joshua Boswell: And we will do everything we can to encourage people to go to www.Lamplighter.net and to really gain the wisdom and the experience they can from your books and from your great ministry and what you're doing. It's just fabulous. So, thank you for sharing with us.
Margie Boswell: Thank you.
Mark Hamby: God bless you both. God bless your family. We'll do this again, sometime. Thank you. Bye.
Joshua Boswell: Sounds good. All right. Bye now.
Margie Boswell: Take care. Bye.
Mark Hamby: Bye.