When your House Burns to the Ground

Tragedy, Preparation, and Using Suffering for Gospel Witness

All right, there are times that we have tragedy come our way. There are times that we're not always prepared for tragedies in our life. And the reality is, there are ways that not only can you prepare, by the way, that's what we've been dealing with in our daily episodes all week long.

But today, we're gonna have an interview and talk to someone who, not only did he have tragedy in his life, but he's actually someone that I look to model after as someone who took tragedy and didn't look at it as something to be crying about, but actually looked at it as an opportunity for the gospel.

Welcome to The Wrap Report with Andrew Rappaport, where we provide biblical interpretations and applications. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity and the Christian Podcast Community. For more content or to request a speaker for your church, go to strivingforeternity .org.

All right, so we have a guest with us this week. If you're familiar with Striving for Eternity and you've followed us for any length of time, you will know who this brother is from four years ago. Four years ago, he had a fire in his home.

It was the Sunday before Christmas. And one of the things that always amazed me was the fact, the testimony, actually, and you see it in the journalists that did a report about the fire, about the fact that here is our brother, Joe Konkle, sitting in his pajamas outside of his burning house, and he was more concerned with sharing the gospel with people.

So, Joe, welcome to The Wrap Report. Well, thank you for having me, Andrew. Now, you and I, well, you and I, we have a friendship that goes back many years. You live out in Ohio. You do a lot of evangelism out there, so that kinda is a thing that you and I have in common.

We've gone to some Super Bowl outreaches together that are hosted by Sports Fan Outreach International. Bill Adams runs that. Which, by the way, you had, you found a great trick for the Super Bowl, didn't you?

Indirectly, in handing out tracks when you were really cold one year, right?

You have to refresh my memory. Well, remember when you were really cold and Caleb bought you a jacket? Oh, yeah, that was at San Francisco, yeah, 50, Super Bowl 50. Yeah, he got me a, he bought me a nice jacket, and people thought I was part of the event staff and kept asking me questions, and I was trying to direct them to the proper place to go, and I would hand them a track, and they would just take it, you know?

So, I was able to get rid of a lot of tracks because they thought I was part of the event staff.

Where they usually don't take our tracks at those events.

So, let's start from New Orleans. New Orleans was the same way. I mean, I kept, I was standing there at a choke point, and I kept, I was trying to pass out tracks, and nobody was taking it, and I just started to hold them up and say, Superdome, and everybody, people were reaching around me to grab one, so.

Courthouse Evangelism and the Prayer Stand

Well, let's start, let's have folks who may not know who you are. First, let's give a little bit of background of who you are, and then I wanna focus, most of the show afterwards, about what happened to you four years ago, what's happened since then, be a good update for folks.

But, first off, you are an evangelist. You do, pretty much now, kind of full-time. Talk about your ministry, where God has you, what your background is.

Well, my background was a retired correction officer, and as far as street evangelism, I do regular courthouse evangelism here in our local town, and I get to share the gospel with a lot of people, pass out a lot of tracks, and I set up a prayer stand, and it gives me an opportunity.

I always ask people if they need prayer for anything, and going into a courthouse, where they're gonna stand before a judge, yeah, a lot of people, they request prayer, and then it gives us an opportunity to share the gospel with them.

Go ahead. The prayer stand, let's talk about that for a moment, because I know it is, a lot of folks may, that's a great witnessing opportunity. Describe what the prayer stand is, and describe how that helps in sharing the gospel.

Well, I think in a situation where, at the courthouse, it's a non-confrontational type of thing to start to share the gospel with someone, because it stands up, it's skinny, and it's a tripod stand, and the middle's a carousel that you have different tracks in, and on the top of the pole, it says prayer.

So people know, people's been saying to me that this has gone on my sixth year with doing the prayer stand there, so that people get to know who I am, get to pray with even some of the staff that work in there.

I've had people ask me to pray for them as they're coming to work, because I get out there before everybody gets in, and as they're coming in, and I've got to pray with a lot of different people out there but it's non-confrontational, and everyone would like prayer when they're gonna stand before a judge, and then we've got a custom track that we made that has the two judges that they stand in front of, and on one side, it talks about court etiquette, and it shows a picture of the judges that you'll be standing in front of, and then the back side, it talks about the ultimate judge that you'll have to stand in front of.

And the prayer stand is something that, I mean, the thing I love about that, and the guy who had created it, Tom Kaiser, he used to be in New York, he's now out in your area, and we used to go out to Union Square every week with it, and if you're interested, folks that are listening can check it out at goforthall .org, I'll put a link in the show notes, and that's his website where he's got the prayer stands, and the thing that always amazed me, I mean, it's something he developed where you can carry it on your back and just walk over to where you're gonna go.

It is heavy, but he designed it to be able to be, you stand in the wind, in the rain, all your tracks stay dry because that carousel is waterproof. He really put a lot into it in thinking through, and it was always amazing, is I would stand up and do open-air preaching, and I'd be on the box, I'd look over where he is, and he would just have person after person just walking up, asking for prayer, he'd have opportunities to share the gospel with him.

He listened to what their prayers were, he prayed for their prayers, he prayed for their salvation after explaining the gospel, handing them a gospel tract, but he was always talking to someone with that stand, and it really was an interesting thing because it gets people to come to you versus you having to go to them, and that's why I love the prayer stands.

Recovering from the Fire and God's Provision

Now, you're still doing the Super Bowl outreaches?

I'm not doing this year. I've got a situation with my other knee I'm dealing with, so as you know, I'm a retired correctional officer, and I medically retired because I was injured in the line of duty with my knee, and now it's been forcing me to work with my other knee, and now I've been having trouble with it, trying to get into a doctor, but I'm not gonna be able to get in, so after the first of the year, just see what's wrong with it, but that ministry requires a lot of walking, a lot of standing, so I'm gonna have to get this checked out first before that.

Yeah, well, and we'll get into why your knee may be hurting because you've been pretty busy doing something that we're gonna get to, but let's talk about four years ago. We know, those of us at Striving Fraternity, we really, we heard about what happened four years ago.

We put a GoFundMe and tried to get you some support with this, but let's first start what happened four years ago. For folks who don't know, bring them up to speed with what happened that day because the thing that I really wanna focus on is the fact that your attitude that day has always been amazing to me.

It's something that I've always looked to and said, if something like this ever happens, I wanna be like Joe Conkle. I mean, I hope that this never happens, but I've always been impressed with you and how you handled yourself.

Even when I read that article that was written up, even the journalist couldn't believe your attitude, and so talk us through what happened four years ago.

Well, I usually get up early in the morning before sunrise, and I think I was up a little bit before 6 a .m. You read the Bible and you pray, and it was around close to eight o 'clock, 8 a .m. at this time, and I was gonna go in, and at the time, I was making homemade bread.

I was a head of mill. I would grind my own grain, so I mean, I was really into this, and I was getting ready to make some bread, and then I heard a popping sound. And then I just continued to go, and I heard it again, and I turned around behind me, and I had an exhaust stack.

We had remodeled our kitchen, so we had an exhaust stack that came down stainless steel. It came down from the ceiling, and I saw smoke coming out of it, so I kinda took the filters out and looked up there, and I couldn't see anything.

It was just smoke, and so I went back, and at the time, my wife and my daughter was there. That was the only ones that were there, and I told them, I woke them up, and I said, hey, there might be a fire in the exhaust stack.

You might wanna come out. You might wanna get up. And then I walk, so I leave them, walk to the garage and open the door, and it's an inferno, right? And then I just absolutely panicked. I've never mentally prepared for fire, and I was in panic, so I was screaming out of the house.

I mean, I was screaming so bad, I lost my voice, and I'd never lost my voice before, so they gathered up my wife and her wisdom, grabbed the animal, one of the animals, and we had to duck going out the door because the fire was coming out of the eaves of the house, so, and within minutes, the house was engulfed in flames, and I'm in a pair of shorts, crocs with a pair of socks on, and a Carhartt hoodie, and that's all I had on, and so we got outside, and like I said, it seemed to take forever for the fire department to get there, they finally arrived to put the fire out.

We're standing over at the neighbor's house as we're watching, they're putting us out, and he says, well, you won't have to worry about where you're gonna stay, and I said, what do you mean? He says, well, you can stay in my dad's house.

Now, his dad had died two years prior to that, and the house was two doors down from where I live, so it was on the same side of the street, and so here, four hours after the fire, you know, we're inside this house, and nicer than the one I had.

The electric's on, the gas is on, the cable's on. Four hours after that, the refrigerator and cupboards were full. Beds were made, so there were three beds in there, so there was enough places for us to sleep.

Well, we didn't have to buy pillows. Everything was there, towels, and, you know, except for personal items, and, you know, the bath soap and things like this, deodorant, these things were given to us.

Well, even more than that, it was also given, what also was given was, this was the Sunday before Christmas, you even had all the Christmas presents were, not the ones you bought, obviously, replaced, but I remember there being people that brought Christmas presents over for you guys.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so we had Christmas presents. All of it was lost. Yeah, so, I mean, it was a total loss. There were some items that we were able to salvage. Probably the thing that, one of the things that got me the most was my grandmother gave me my grandfather's Gibson banjo.

Okay, she gave it to me because she knew I'd never sell it. Okay, and, you know, so, you know, my grandpa loved this. My dad played it, my uncle played it, and my dad died before my grandmother, so my grandmother had to give it to me, and I had that in a closet, and that was the only closet that had not, had not had fire damage from, the fire burnt from the top down.

Wow, I didn't know that. So, it did not burn through that, so the fire department, when they actually went in and started putting out a fire, they started bringing stuff out, and they brought out this banjo, and that was somewhat emotional.

You know, it's only something, but it meant so much to my grandfather, you know, to my dad, to my grandmother, so it was just kind of one of the things that, and they, the company took it to clean it, the outside case and all that, because it smoked damage, but other than that, it was perfect.

So, we're, I was blessed. That's just one of them things that you would never be able to replace.

The Gospel in the Midst of Loss

Yeah, yeah, because of the sentimental value, but talk about, because there's two incidences I remember, and I want to talk about the first one was the day of the fire, you're outside, people are coming out just to look.

I mean, they want to see what's happening. You had reporters that came, the fire department's there. What were you busy doing?

Well, you know, people were talking to me, asking me questions, you know, and I was just, you know, thanking God that I was awake, was thanking God that my son wasn't in the basement, because I don't know how he would have gotten out, and was just, you know, I mean, I had gospel tracts that I had in my pocket.

I was able to pass some of those out, but yeah, and when the reporter came over to the house to talk to us, she was, you know, asking me questions, and she commented that, she said, you're really happy.

She goes, I don't understand. Why are you so happy? And I said, you know, I said, I was, I said, my house was on fire. I just lost everything, and I'm standing in a nicer house. I'm warm. You know, I said, we got cupboards that are full, and, you know, I said, what is there not to be thankful for?

What's there not to be happy about? And I said, you know, I said something to the fact that, you know, that God's taken care of me through this tragedy, and, you know, so she never, she never included that into the report.

Yeah, I wonder why, hmm. You know, but that's the amazing thing. I was talking, actually, about you in my Bible study Wednesday night, and what you went through, and actually, I was talking about you again this Friday night at a Bible study that I teach, and the thing that always amazed me is it was your perspective.

It's the fact that we see in Scripture that those who sin much, right, they recognize their sin before Holy God, not that you sin more than others, but the idea of, I think, those of us who properly understand what sin is, we view our sin as so bad that because of that, we love much.

The question that came up Friday night's Bible study was talking about someone bringing up the fact that they were talking to another person, and they're talking about the wrath of God, and this person says, no, no, no, no, no, God's not like that, and the reality is when you look at the person's life, the person that thinks God's not wrathful has a really, if they're a believer, it's a really, you know, immature faith that they have because they really don't seem to show that they love God much, but those of us who really understand sin, really understand God's wrath and His justice, it's in light of knowing His wrath and justice that we love Him so much that we can, in light of something like you went through, losing everything, can be thankful for what God has provided because we recognize we don't deserve any of it.

We don't deserve anything. We deserve God's wrath and His justice, and instead, He's given us His mercy, and in light of losing everything in a worldly sense, I mean, when your house went up, you lost, you know, a lot of your personal possessions were gone, never to be retrieved again.

You had your car, your Bible, things like this that you can't replace, like all the notes that you put in your Bible, right, and these things are just gone, but we can rejoice because we know God is still active in our lives, and like you had said, He's still blessing you.

He's giving you a bigger home, temporarily, but a bigger, nicer home with a fully stocked fridge. Within a day, people were giving an outpouring of care and love for you, and

Yeah, the community was wonderful. The community came together. They brought us food, blankets, clothes. You know, I mean, just, we had no need for anything, you know, and they even gave us gift cards.

I mean, we were able to pay for Christmas with gift cards. I mean, it was just absolutely amazed at God's care, God's, you know, care for me, and it was, and to the whole thing, there wasn't like, I never in my mind questioned God.

I never thought, you know, why would God allow this to happen? It was just like, you know, it was just like there was a peace about it, and it's hard to explain, but I was at peace with the whole situation.

I mean, now, there was anxiety. I mean, when you, for a few days after the fire, I mean, it's, I mean, you have a little post-traumatic stress, so that you struggle with, because fire is, the noise, it's very fearful, and so every night, I'd hear a popping noise in the house, and I'd wake up in the middle of the night thinking I'd hear this popping noise, and I'm walking all around the house, looking, this happened for a few days, but literally, just, there was never one time I was worried about what's gonna happen, what, how are we gonna do, what's, how are we gonna get another house, how's all this gonna work out, and I just told, you know, my wife, she was, you know, she was a little worried.

I told her, I said, listen, you know, God will take care of us, I'm not concerned with it, and, you know, I can't even begin to tell you, I mean, to fully explain how God has provided through this whole thing.

I mean, one of the desires of my heart was, is I told my wife that we really needed to focus on paying off the mortgage, so we could spend more on evangelism, you know, and not just, you know, myself for evangelism, but also to support other brothers in evangelism, you know, there's several brothers that I support financially, because, you know, every little bit helps, so I'm just one of many pieces in there of people that can help, and if I've got the money, if I, you know, then why not give it to help support ministry?

So that's one thing I'd done, but I had spoke to my wife and told her, so we really need to focus on paying off our mortgage. Well, the house burns down, okay? So we're going through the process of, well, to rebuild the house, we were gonna rebuild, I thought to myself, well, we have to rebuild there, because the community had been so helpful to us, but my wife says, well, let's think about getting some other place, let's move in somewhere else.

So, okay, so, you know, I reluctantly, you know, gave in to her, and we found a house and bought it, and then with the settlement of, from personal property, the house and all that, with the property that burned up, I have to pay the mortgage off with this money.

So I have to pay the mortgage off, so the property's mine free and clear. So I got a hole in the ground, basically, you know, I got a burn up, rural home. Well, and given that to another Christian, I just gave him the property, if he was gonna build a home on it, and then we were able to purchase a house, we got a good price on this house, and in a town 15 minutes from where we were, right, minutes from where Brenda would work, so I'm retired, so minutes from where she's at, and it was nicer than the one we had, and we were able to pay it off in cash.

Not only that, but we were able to furnish it, you know, in cash, too. So that was a huge blessing right there. So now, the desire of my heart was to pay off my mortgage, so we had money to spend on evangelism.

Well, two things happened in there. Number one, I was able to buy this house and be mortgage-free, right, so no longer a mortgage, plus my church ordained me as an evangelist, and they support my ministry.

They support all my efforts, what I do. I just, they reimburse me. My church gives me a budget of $6 ,000 a year, which is very generous, and so I'm able to do a lot with that.

And I would encourage other churches to think about that, is if you have Christians in your church who do evangelism, not that they go out for an hour or two on the weekend or something, but guys like Joe who are going out regularly, going to different places, think about maybe setting some budget aside to support those evangelists within the church to be doing that.

Helping a Newer Christian Family After a House Fire

Now, Joe, you and I are doing this show because, as you well know, someone in my church, four years after your incident, but again, very close to Christmas, went through a very similar thing. We have two members of our church, Kurt and Annie, who have woke up at one in the morning, so this is unlike you, and you and I were talking about this, they woke up to hearing the fire alarm go off, so that's even scarier.

And just having to go through that, and what ended up happening in their house is the fire department came, put the fire out, so they thought, but what ended up happening is some of the embers actually started smoldering in the attic, and after the fire department left, the house caught fire a second time in the attic, and the fire department had to come back and put it out, and the pictures are just devastating.

I remember the pictures after your house, and I am gonna put in the show notes a link to the GoFundMe account for Kurt and Annie, and what I'd encourage is for Christians, you know, Joe, being a very mature Christian for years, was prepared for tragedy, he saw things in light of what God has done for him in his life.

Kurt and Annie are newer believers, and this is a real test of their faith. I'm asking for the church, Universal Church, to stand up and help them out, to help this couple as they're going through what Joe went through four years ago.

It's devastating for them, and they've gone through a lot. I mean, Annie has some health issues, so this has been like trial after trial after trial. Maybe some of you can identify with that. You know, you profess faith in Christ, and all of a sudden it seems like everything in your world turns against you.

That's sort of what their life has been, and it's really been something where we get to see them grow, but if you can, I know it's the Christmas season, and you're buying gifts for everyone else, but here's a couple who just lost their entire house.

He called me, or I called him actually to see how he's doing, and he told me, the one thing he was upset with is they lost their Bibles. I said, is there anything I can get you? He's like, can you get us replacement Bibles?

I had MacArthur study Bible, and you know, Annie had the ESV study Bible, and they can't even think of buying new Bibles now. They have so many things they have to do, but they're like, go to church, and they don't have a Bible now.

That's the mindset that they're having, and these are newer Christians. I encourage you to go to the show notes and think about clicking that link to support them in this way. This is where the church needs to come together and do this, and I wanna talk about some things that happened, Joe, after a commercial.

I wanna talk about some things that happened during the fire. There were some ways you had opportunities to share the gospel through this. So right after this announcement from Supporting Podcasts, take a listen to this.

Justification and Trusting God in Trials

Justification. This theological term is legal in nature, but to understand it, we must first understand our legal predicament. Because we have sinned against God, i .e. broken his law and thought word and deed, we are guilty in his court and must be punished as lawbreakers.

You see, since we have sinned against an infinitely holy God, we deserve an infinite punishment. Enter justification. This is the one-time event when God declares the lawbreaker, us, righteous, in his court.

It's been said that to be justified means that God sees me just if I'd never sinned. This is more appropriately stated, God sees me just if I'd been Jesus. See, Jesus lived the life we couldn't live and died the death we should have died and was resurrected on the third day.

In this, Jesus fulfilled the requirements of the law and paid the fine for our lawbreaking. If we repent and believe in him, God credits his righteousness to our account. Only then are we seen just if I'd been Jesus.

This has been another Growing Moment with Robert Houghton. For more information, visit growthproject .org.

That's a great view on things, isn't it, Joe? I mean, that's exactly the view that brings us through trials like this when we recognize justification, and that's from the Growth Project radio podcast.

But Robert's got a great point. It's not just as if we never sinned, but it's just as if we were Jesus. And it's that justification, I think, that can bring us through trials like this. Don't you agree?

Absolutely. Well, like I said, there was a, there's a piece about the whole thing that's hard to explain. You know, we have, you know, we trust God, but, you know, it's when the rubber hits the road. You know, it's like, all right, you can always say, well, we'll trust God if something happens, but when you're in it, and then to, you can say, but then to say to trust God, but then to have this piece about it, that's what's hard for me to put my finger on, how to explain that.

It was just, I had no fear, no worry, no doubt, other than, like I said, I had trouble sleeping. So when your subconscious was, when you were unconsciously sleeping, you know, it kind of would take over, but, you know, there was just a absolute piece about it that I can't, I can't, it was supernatural.

That's all I can say. And now let's talk about, there was something that happened.

When you told me this account, I've just always, I've always got to chuckle out of it, but there was a time, you're living up the street from your old house that burned down, and there was an account where you saw some guys with some air conditioning units.

Tell the audience that account, what happened.

Extending Grace to Thieves and Seeing God at Work

Well, like I said, I was two doors down, so I just happened to be out in the backyard and saw somebody walking around the property, two guys. But I saw one guy standing there and the other one walking around.

So I walk over and I said, hey guys, what's going on? And they said, well, we're from this local home improvement company. He said, you know, there's, they want us to come here and clean this stuff up around the property over here.

And then he hollers at the guy, you know, oh, take care of this. And not acting like he's a supervisor. And he said, I said, well, who told you to come on here? He said, well, the owner of the house. I said, oh.

And I said, do you have a business card? And he said, he didn't have one. So I let him go on for a little bit. And I said, listen, I said, I'm going to be straight up with you. I said, I'm the owner of this house.

And he said, and I didn't call anybody. And then I have to look over and I saw the air conditioning unit was flopped over on its side. So it had been cut loose and it's flopped over. And I said, just, you know, just admit you're lying.

I says, you know, I'm not going to tell anybody, but just, you know, just take off. You know, nothing will happen. And then I explained to him, I said, you know, I mean, what you're trying to do is you're stealing.

I said, that would be a thief because I said, this is my stuff. And then I went into a gospel presentation with him. And the guy I gave, I didn't have any tracks on me at the time. And then he said, well, I'm sorry.

He said, you said, I'm sorry. He said, we'll see you again. And he left, okay. Couple nights later, I happened to, I'm coming back from somewhere and I see my air conditioner now is out to the street.

So I go back to the house. I said, well, I'm going to get my truck and go over there and I'll put it in my truck. So I went over there and picked it up and put it in my truck. And then as I'm sitting there putting it in the truck, I see these two guys drive past me in a pickup truck, little S10 pickup truck.

And so I'm sitting there in the road. I wait for them to come back around. So they came back around. I said, I thought I told you guys that this was mine and don't come back here anymore. And they said, well, we saw it sitting here on the edge of the road.

And we thought you didn't want it anymore. And I said, no, I said, wait a minute. I said, no, I've talked to you before about not lying to me, telling me the truth. I said, I'm looking here in the road and I can see glass and insulation.

So you've tried to put this in the back of your car, didn't you? And it fell out of the back in the street and you moved it back over. You could see where it was scraped on the road. And they said, yeah, that happened.

And I said, well, listen, I said, you clean this stuff up, clean this glass up out the street and all that. And I said, and I'll let you have this air conditioning unit. They go, oh, oh really? Let me have it?

And I said, yeah, I said, listen, I said, I'm extending grace to you. I said, like I explained to you, you don't deserve this but I'm gonna let you have this, right? And just shared a little bit more of the gospel.

And at this time I had gospel tracts on me. So I gave them a couple of man parts and I gave them one of my business cards. And I said, listen, I said, you wanna sit down, you wanna read the Bible, you wanna talk?

And the guy, he was real apologetic. And they said, yeah, they would. They would get back on. And they said, this is like, this was probably January, maybe at the time in February. And so I usually start my street ministry in April and in March, depending on when the weather is, I get back out there regular every day or not every day, twice a day or twice a week.

And so, but later on that day, after I let them have it and they took it, Sheriff comes to the house. Sheriff asked me, he says, if I, he asked me the story, if I did that. And I said, yeah, they explained it to him.

He said, yeah, it's exactly what he said. Then he explained to me that they didn't know who the one guy was, but the main guy that acted like he was the leader said, he's a heroin addict. And he said, we're very familiar with him.

So here I'm, I'm feeling guilty now that they probably used us to buy heroin. It was months later. And I saw the man at, he come up to me, I'm doing the street evangelism at the court. He come up to me, I got a picture taken with him.

He said, he was, he said, he's been clean. He said, he's going to church. He said, he's, he's gave his life to the Lord, but I haven't seen him at the courthouse. So I haven't seen him. So I don't know how he's doing, but he still has my business card.

But, and he looked healthier. So when I saw him before, he looked kind of sickly. When I saw him this time and he said, he's, you know, turned his life around and he looked much healthier. So I was, I praise God that, that hopefully this man will endure to the end.

Forgiveness, Grace, and the Gospel in Personal Tragedy

And, you know, and that's just a testimony to you. I mean, this is why I'm always amazed with where your walk is with Christ. The fact that so many of us, with someone stealing from us, I mean, our pride would be like, you're not stealing from me.

I'm going to call the cops on you. And actually, I mean, there was an incident with, I think if I remember correctly, with the, where the cops were involved because the truck that he had wasn't really his, it was from a dealership and the, and the manager, if I remember correctly, followed him.

But Yeah, they borrowed it from a dealership to test drive it. And the dealer knew something was up and he followed him. So that's how the police got involved. The police was kind of watching them and they took it to a certain place.

And then that's where the police got on him. And the police asked him the story and the sheriff was, it was a county sheriff. And the county sheriff came to my house and asked me the story and I explained it to him.

He said, that's exactly what he said. And he stuck his hand out. He said, I want to shake your hand. And I said, okay. He said, he says, not many men would, I forget how he said it. He said, it's not, not many men would respond that way.

And I told him, I said something to the fact that I've been forgiven for much and I can't, it's easy for me to forgive others for things that they do, so.

And that right there is the whole point that amazed me. And this is why I did a whole week of my daily podcasts about the dealing with tragedy, preparing for it, because we don't prepare for tragedy. And when it comes, many people are caught off guard, but I am always so encouraged by you that when I think about how many people, you lost your house to a house fire and how many people heard the gospel because you lost your house.

I mean, it blows me away that there are people who will be in heaven for eternity because you lost your house to a fire. And that's not a perspective many of us, and I can only wish that I could have that perspective.

I don't know what my perspective would be, until I'm in a situation like that. I hope never to be, but I can only wish to be like you in a situation like that, that so many people got to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ because your house burned to the ground.

I remember, and I don't know if I ever shared this with you, but I understand what you mean about opening that door and seeing the inferno of flames. You know that I grew up in a well-to-do family. My father, he was a professional captain on his own yacht, and it burned to the water in probably about 20 minutes.