Podcast
What a Life!
Hosted by Paul J. Batura · EN
What a Life! Lessons from Legends Podcast is a daily commentary featuring 90-second (or so) obituaries of interesting people who lived interesting and meaningful lives. Bestselling biographer Paul Batura believes we can and must learn from those who just died. In fact, we often learn as much or even more from their successes as we do from their mistakes. The best life is the life that makes the most of this one and yet reaches happily and faithfully for the next.
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124: Brian Shul
May 31, 202300:07:04Tap to summarizeBrian Shul, 75, was a fighter pilot who was shot down in Vietnam and yet recovered to fly the world's fastest jet in top-secret Cold War missions. QUOTABLE QUOTES: "I was fearless enough to not fear failure. I'm just going to try it. It's a greater harm not to have tried." I don't think you can motivate people. I think you have to motivate yourself. You either want it or you don't." "Life is what you make it, and it goes by really quick."
Transcribe →123: Rick Hoyt
May 23, 202300:05:15Tap to summarizeRick Hoyt, 61, was the son of the father-son duo of TEAM HOYT, who together competed in more than 1100 races. He died May 22, 2023. QUOTABLE QUOTES: "Dad, when I'm running, my disability seems to disappear." "I use running to help motivate people and inspire them. You can do anything that you set your mind to do." "[Dad] I have a list of things I would do for you if I was not disabled. Tops on that list: I would do my best to race the World Championship Ironman pulling, pushing and pedaling you. Then I would push you in the Boston Marathon."
Transcribe →122: Reverend Dr. Timothy Keller
May 22, 202300:08:56Tap to summarizeReverend Dr. Timothy Keller, 72, was a prominent founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. He was a teacher and bestselling author. He died Friday May 19, 2023. Quotable Quotes: "All death can now do to Christians is to make their lives infinitely better." "The central basis of Christian assurance is not how much our hearts are set on God, but how unshakably his heart is set on us." "If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said. If he didn't, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether you like his teaching, but whether he rose from the dead." "Describe the God you've rejected. Describe the God you don't believe in. Maybe I don't believe that God either." "Contemporary people tend to examine the Bible, looking for things they can't accept; but Christians should reverse that, allowing the Bible to examine us, looking for things God can't accept." "Satan doesn't control us with fang marks on the flesh but with lies in the heart. . . . Our best defense in the fight against [his] lies is not the production of incantations but the rehearsal of truth." "The gospel is that I am so sinful that Jesus had to die for me, yet so loved and valued that Jesus was glad to die for me. This leads to deep humility and deep confidence at the same time. I can't feel superior to anyone, and yet I have nothing to prove to anyone." "The doctrine of sin means believers are never as good as our true worldview should make us. And the doctrine of common grace means unbelievers are never as flawed as their false worldview should make them." "Only if your god can outrage and challenge you will you know that you worship the real God and not a figment of your imagination. . . . If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself." "The glory of God is available to you in the church in a way it's not available to you anywhere else. . . . There is no more important means of discipleship than deep involvement in the life of the church." "You don't fall into love. You commit to it. Love says, 'I will be there no matter what.'" "To say 'I know God forgives me, but I can't forgive myself' means you've failed an idol whose approval is more important than God's." "If you make work your identity and you succeed, it'll go to your head. If you fail, it'll go to your heart." "To be loved but not known is superficial. To be known but not loved is our nightmare. Only Jesus knows us to the bottom and loves us to the sky." "The only person who dares wake up a king at 3:00 a.m. for a glass of water is a child. We have that kind of access." "Tolerance isn't about not having beliefs. It's about how your beliefs lead you to treat people who disagree with you." "Traditional religion says, 'I give God a good moral record, so he has to bless me.' The gospel says, 'God gives me a good moral record through Christ, so I want to bless him.' . . . Religion says, 'If I obey, then God will love and accept me.' The gospel says, 'God loves and accepts me, therefore I want to obey.'" "The gospel says you are simultaneously more sinful and flawed than you ever dared believe, yet more loved and accepted than you ever dared hope." "If you're falling off a cliff, strong faith in a weak branch is fatally inferior to weak faith in a strong branch. Salvation is not finally based on the strength of your faith, but on the object of your faith." "The temptation for those who suffer is to assume that because we can't think of any good purposes God may have for our suffering, there can't be any." "There are the good things of this world, the hard things of this world, and the best things of this world—God's love, glory, holiness, beauty. The Bible's teaching is that the road to the best things is not through the good things but usually through the hard things. . . . There is no message more contrary to the way the world understands life or more subversive to its values." "The Christian sex ethic was understood by the apostles to be a nonnegotiable part of orthodoxy, one of the core beliefs of Christianity. What Christians taught and practiced about sexuality was as much a necessary implication of the gospel and the resurrection as were care for the poor and the equality of the races. This makes it impossible to argue, as many try to do, that what the Bible says about caring for the poor is right but what it says about sex is outmoded and should be discarded." "Sex apart from marriage becomes a product we consume if we find someone attractive enough in quality and low enough in price. If the quality goes down or the cost goes up, we can walk away, because there is no covenant. But if sex comes only with the radical self-giving and whole-life commitment of marriage, that takes sex off the market, as it were, and makes it priceless." "When Jesus Christ was in the garden of Gethsemane and the ultimate darkness was coming down on him and he knew it was coming, he didn't abandon you; he died for you. If Jesus Christ didn't abandon you in his darkness, the ultimate darkness, why would he abandon you now, in yours?" "Only a grasp of what Jesus did on the cross—the doctrine of substitutionary atonement—can prevent spiritual distortions. . . . Only this doctrine keeps us from thinking God is mainly holy with some love or mainly loving with some holiness—but instead [he] is both holy and loving equally, interdependently. Only this view of God makes the spoiled or the neglected into the healthy and the loved." "The secular framework . . . has nothing to give the wounded conscience to heal it. It has nothing to say to the self who feels it is unworthy of love and forgiveness. Anyone who has seen the depths of their sin and what they are capable of will never be mollified by the bromide of 'Be nice to yourself—you deserve it.'" "True repentance begins where whitewashing ('Nothing really happened') and blame-shifting ('It wasn't really my fault') and self-pity ('I'm sorry because of what it has cost me') and self-flagellation ('I will feel so terrible no one will be able to criticize me') end." "Forgiveness is granted (often a good while) before it is felt—not felt before it is granted. It is a promise to not exact the price of sin from the person who hurt you. . . . It is likely you have always thought, 'Well, I have to feel it before I grant it. I have to start feeling less angry before I start to not hold them liable.' If you wait to feel it before you grant it, you'll never grant it; you'll be in an anger prison." "It is hard to stay angry at someone if you are praying for them. It is also hard to stay angry unless you feel superior, and it is hard to feel superior if you are praying for them, since in prayer you approach God as a forgiven sinner." "Prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change—the reordering of our loves. Prayer is how God gives us so many of the unimaginable things he has for us. Indeed, prayer makes it safe for God to give us many of the things we most desire. It is the way we know God, the way we finally treat God as God. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life." "God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knows." "We know God will answer us when we call because one terrible day he did not answer Jesus when he called. . . . Jesus' prayers were given the rejection that we sinners merit so that our prayers could have the reception that he merits." "Mercy isn't just the job of the Christian. Mercy is the mark of the Christian." "A good sermon is not like a club that beats upon the will but like a sword that cuts to the heart." "Expository preaching should provide the main diet of preaching for a Christian community. . . . [It] is the best method for displaying and conveying your conviction that the whole Bible is true. This approach testifies that you believe every part of the Bible to be God's Word, not just particular themes and not just the parts you feel comfortable agreeing with." "Preaching is not only explaining the text but also using it to engage the heart. I often see preachers giving so much time to the first task that they put little thought and ingenuity into the second." "Every time you expound a Bible text, you are not finished unless you demonstrate how it shows us that we cannot save ourselves and that only Jesus can." "Christian communicators must show that we remember (or at least understand) very well what it is like not to believe." "The humanistic moral values of secularism are not the deliverances of scientific reasoning, but have come down to us from older times . . . they have a theological history. And modern people hold them by faith alone." "Through faith in the cross we get a new foundation for an identity that both humbles us out of our egoism yet is so infallibly secure in love that we are enabled to embrace rather than exclude those who are different." "[These are] Christianity's unsurpassed offers—a meaning that suffering cannot remove, a satisfaction not based on circumstances, a freedom that does not hurt but rather enhances love, an identity ...
Transcribe →121: Marlene Hagge-Vossler
May 18, 202300:05:10Tap to summarizeMarlene Hagge-Vossler, 89, was co-founder of the LPGA and a member of the LPGA Hall of Fame. She died Tuesday May 16, 2023. Quotable Quotes: "When I won the LA City Women's championship in 1947 when I was 13, on the back of the scorecard it said, 'No children under 14 are permitted on the course.'" "In those days, it was tough to be a golfer if you were a girl. They didn't allow women onto some of the snitzy golf courses in L.A."
Transcribe →120: Don Denkinger
May 16, 202300:06:20Tap to summarizeDon Denkinger, 86, was a Major League Baseball umpire best remembered for a blown call in the 1985 World Series. He died Friday May 12, 2023. Quotable Quotes: "Nobody wants to have the call that I did in the World Series. But I did. And now it's part of history." "I'm not tired of talking about it. I mean, it happened. I just know that if the same thing happened now, they'd get it right on replay and it'd be over with." It's life, and it goes on. I'm obviously reminded constantly that I made a mistake. You know what? I was an umpire for more than 30 years in the major leagues. I know I made a lot of mistakes. That one was just blown out of proportion."
Transcribe →119: Denny Crum
May 15, 202300:05:25Tap to summarizeDenny Crum, 86, was a legendary college basketball coach. He died Tuesday May 9, 2023. Quotable Quotes: "Most of our future lies ahead." "I don't try to get players emotionally up for a game. It creates too many peaks and valleys... I strive for even keel; they will get up for the big games."
Transcribe →118: John Pappajohn
May 9, 202300:05:21Tap to summarizeJohn Pappajohn, 94, was an Iowa entrepreneur and philanthropist. He died April 22, 2023. Quotable Quotes: "If I can do it, you can do it."
Transcribe →117: Larry "Gator" Rivers
May 5, 202300:06:12Tap to summarizeLarry Rivers, 73, was a renowned Harlem Globetrotter and arguably the greatest dribbler in the world. He died April 29, 2023. Quotable Quotes: "When I was seven years old and saw Marques Haynes, I knew that was what I was going to do," Mr. Rivers later told the New York Daily News. "I took my ball with me everywhere, dribbled it every place." "They took me into a dark closet for my tryout to see how I could handle the ball with obstacles in my way. I made the team that night as a dribbler that does fancy tricks to go along with their comedy routines." The Lord blessed me in a special way, and with his blessing I can touch other people and make them smile, bring a little joy into their life if they're a little sad."
Transcribe →116: Ginnie Newhart
May 2, 202300:06:06Tap to summarizeGinnie Newhart, 82, was the wife of the legendary comedian Bob Newhart. She died April 23, 2023. Quotable Quotes: "Buddy came back one day and said in his own inimitable way, 'I met this young guy and his name is Bobby Newhart, and he's a comic and he's Catholic and you're Catholic and I think maybe you should marry each other." "He listened, and I thought, 'Boy, this is a very special person. He was compassionate. He cared. There was no phoniness. He genuinely cared whether I was happy or unhappy."
Transcribe →115: Dr. Michael Brescia
May 1, 202300:08:04Tap to summarizeDr. Michael Brescia, 90, was a pioneering doctor who helped make dialysis possible for patients. He died April 19, 2023. Quotable Quotes: "We took a road. To the left, it looked shiny and gold. But to the right, it looked happier to us." "You have to be present, to touch, to hold, and you have to say it. Families need the same care as patients." "We are part of Christ's redemptive mission. We make up for the misery of the world. Every time I go into a room, and I come out, I'm different. I made a difference in this world, to this person."
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