Anne Graham Lotz: Jesus In Me
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It's living the Breen with host of Fox News at Night, Shannon Breen.

This week on Live in the Dream, we have a very special guest. I interviewed years ago when I was just starting out in the business. She was so kind to me and so genuine. So everything you know that you think you know about her, everything positive is all true and more. And she's got a brand new book. She's a speaker, bestselling author and teacher. And Graham Lotz joins us to talk about her new book, Jesus in Me. Anne, it's great to have you. Shannon, thank you. It's my pleasure. Thank you.

you. You know, it's such an interesting topic and one that I think whether you are a Christian or not, you probably have a lot of questions about. But your book talks about the Holy Spirit as something more than just sort of this vague idea. But even you say you yourself growing up in obviously a faith centered home,

It was something you didn't even feel like you maybe got a ton of instruction about. And I know when you bring it up with people, sometimes folks are like, oh, that sounds creepy and weird. It's a ghost. What's happening? Tell us about your journey into writing this book and why you're broaching this conversation with folks. Well, you know, Shannon, I was raised in a committed Christian home where Jesus was loved and he was obeyed. He was proclaimed. But I don't remember being taught about the Holy Spirit. And

We went to church every Sunday, but he was referred to as the Holy Ghost, which was sort of off-putting for a little girl. You know, I didn't want to...

really know a ghost and right and yeah so and then when I became a young adult I was studying the Scriptures the Gospel of John in particular and learned more about who the Holy Spirit really is and he's not a ghost he's not mystical in the sense sensational he's he's not a flame of fire he's not a dove he's not an ecstatic experience or an emotion he's not an it you know he is a living invisible person so so just as Jesus

is the exact representation of God. The Holy Spirit is the exact representation of Jesus. Jesus said in John 14 that the Father is going to give you another me. In other words...

you know, or another counselor. So Jesus is a counselor and God would give us another counselor. And the word another means exactly the same as. So the Holy Spirit is exactly the same as Jesus, just without his man's physical body. And when I was a little girl, I confessed my sin, told God I was sorry, asked him to forgive me, believe Jesus died for me, invited him to come into my heart and

He came into me, and I didn't know. I just asked Jesus to come into my heart. But Jesus understood. He's in a man's body up in heaven getting ready, I believe, to come back and rule the world. But he came into me in the person of his spirit, the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit literally is Jesus in me. And I think a lot of Christians, a lot of people who go to church, you know, the Holy Spirit is sort of a—

A P.S. And we have the most important member of the Godhead. We think of God, the father and then the beloved God, the son. But we don't know what to do with the Holy Spirit. You know, he's we don't quite understand. And and yet he's the one who Jesus said he said, I won't leave you like orphans. I'm going to come to you. And he has come to us in the person of the Holy Spirit. I can actually have Jesus living inside of me.

Yeah, and for a lot of people, when you talk about the Trinity or something like this, it's a little bit deeper theologically. Some of them, their eyes get glazed over, they get confused, or they think, this sounds very hocus-pocus. I don't know what to make of this. So when you say that idea of the Holy Spirit living inside of you,

What does that do? What does that mean practically? Is he guiding us? Is he a conscience? What is that role? How does it play out in actual daily life? Well, it's such a great question because if we can't figure out how he works or how relevant he is, then it's like a never mind.

So the last four years, this is when I wrote this book in the last four years. And four years ago, my husband, I found him unresponsive in our pool and rushed him to the hospital, put him on life support for two days and then two days later.

He went to heaven. Two days short of our 49th wedding anniversary, I buried him. And so I was suddenly thrust into the new normal of widowhood. Three years after that, my father went to heaven, and I became an orphan, really. And then six months after my father went to heaven, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and have been going through a whole year of treatment, chemotherapy and radiation and, you know, all the meds and everything. And

And so during that time has been when, and I think this is why God lets bad things happen to good people or disasters happen or disease like, you know, because when we go through hard times, that tends to be when we look up. That tends to be when we pay more attention to God and who he is than we do when everything is going well, because when things are going well, we

We mistakenly think we don't need him, you know, but when things are going bad or things are, then we need God and we cry out to him. And so the past four years, while I've gone through this journey, and it's been difficult from hard thing to hard thing to hard thing, God has been there for me and the Holy Spirit has comforted, he's guided, he's strengthened, he's helped me.

my aha moment in all of this, Shannon, was so special because I thought when I asked Jesus in my heart that, you know, the Holy Spirit comes in, that he was sort of assigned to me and that God would tell him, all right, you have to go into Ann because now Ann belongs to Jesus and you need to clean her up and make her good. And then one day the Holy Spirit would present me to God and say, well, I did the best with what I had. But I discovered that the Holy Spirit loves me. He

He's committed to me. So in the scripture, it says not to grieve him. And grief is a love word. We only grieve for those that we love. I grieve for my husband, my father, my mother. But the Holy Spirit says don't grieve him. And we grieve him when we do the wrong thing, when we step outside of God's will or we sin or whatever.

you know, break God's law or just do something that displeases him. And the Holy Spirit loves us so much that when we do the right thing, he rejoices. We do the wrong thing, he grieves because he's emotionally involved in our lives. He's committed to us and he wants the best for us. And he wants to fill us with a sense of his love and his nearness and his blessing. And

And I'll be honest, I don't sense his presence 24-7, but I know by faith that he will never leave me, never forsake me. And at those difficult times, I mean the hardest times, he has been there and he has carried me through. So I can tell you, Shannon, just from firsthand experience, that the Holy Spirit is alive. He is real. He is an invisible person who lives in me and has enabled me to get through these last four years, not somehow, as I like to say, but triumphantly.

Yeah, I so agree with you that when life is good and we're sort of on autopilot, we feel very self-sufficient. And it's when we're in those darkest, worst valleys. That's been my experience too, is where you just are at the end of anything you could do yourself or any other human being can do for you, that you really turn to the one resource that is the only true resource if you are walking in the Christian faith. Each of the things that you outlined there,

Would feel for most of us just devastating and crippling So when you say that you were sort of sustained through this time, but the Holy Spirit you say in the book He's more than just a helper. I mean there's more to it Did you feel like there were times that? Just in your prayers. I know that if you're of the Christian faith You believe that there's intercession for us when we can't even find the words to pray sometimes you're in such a terrible place and

I know for me sometimes my prayers have just been, "God help me." That's all I could get out. I couldn't formulate anything else. I mean, is that part of this equation too? It absolutely is because the Scripture says that the Holy Spirit prays for us. So I can tell you a prayer of desperation when I found my husband and I had no words to pray at that moment. It was just, it was a heart's cry, you know, "Help me." And God did.

And later, not so much when I was diagnosed with cancer because the Holy Spirit had so prepared me that that diagnosis didn't surprise me. But when I went through my fifth round of chemo, it was horrific and I didn't think I could take anymore. And so I was praying those prayers of desperation. You know, God, I want to quit. And I felt like he spoke to my heart and let me know that

that he had healed me in answer to the prayers of other people. So I asked him then, if that was so, could I claim the healing by faith and just not finish out my chemo? I had two more treatments. And he spoke to me. The Holy Spirit just whispered to me from 2 Kings 5 that when Naaman went to Elisha and wanted to be healed of his leprosy, and Elisha told him to go dip in the Jordan River seven times. And Naaman didn't want to because it was dirty and muddy. But Elisha said, if you dip seven times, you'll be healed.

And I had two more treatments to go, and I didn't want to do it because it was so horrific. But I felt like the Lord was telling me, Ann, you go through your seven chemo treatments, and you'll be healed. And so I did, and then followed through with the radiation because I thought God told me to do what my doctor said. But I will tell you that when we have those prayers of desperation, and God hears those prayers. So

Our God is a prayer hearing, a prayer answering, a miracle working covenant keeping God. And I can tell you that. In fact, in the book, I relate, you know, other experiences where he has answered not audibly and not immediately and not sometimes in some sort of a miracle or.

But he just takes you through and gives you wisdom and brings people alongside to help you and bless you. And you look back and you think, my goodness, I've been walking through this valley of the shadow and I'm making it, you know, with regaining some of my strength, my health. And I know it's because the Holy Spirit has seen me through. Well,

What would you say to people? First of all, I mean, we've got several different audiences, maybe people of no faith at all, who this sounds, you know, it's not their vocabulary. And so to hear these kinds of things, they're like, wow, these concepts are strange and maybe it doesn't make any sense to me. But also, you know, the audience that we have of people who are practicing the Christian faith, believers who would say,

I'm stuck in a terrible place and I'm not being healed or I'm not going away. How can I find comfort in the midst of that? Well, I want to speak to the people who have no faith and tell them that God is inviting them. God loves them.

God loves a person who has no faith as much as he loves a person with faith. God loves the whole world, and God loves you. And he invites you and me not into a religion and not into a denomination and not into a tradition, not even into a church. God invites us into a personal relationship, and that's what Jesus in me is. It's

God coming to live within us, you can't get more personal, more intimate than Jesus in me. And so it's about a relationship. It's not something spooky. It's not something weird. It's the life of Jesus on the inside of you. And then to grow in your faith, then you need to read your Bible, and that's where he speaks to you, and you pray, where you talk to him, and you begin to develop that relationship with

until it gets stronger and stronger and it can carry you through those deep dark times so for people who are believers and they're going through that deep dark time all I can say is that I've been through those deep dark times and it's been Jesus in me who has carried me through but

I think many Christians, Shannon, they sit in church and they go through the motions, but they're not developing their personal relationship with God. They're not spending time in prayer. They're not spending time in God's Word. They're not spending time living out what God says. They're not spending time serving Him. And then a crisis hits, and they don't have that strong faith and foundation to draw from.

So I think it's very important before the crisis comes that we develop our personal relationship with God so that it's strong enough to carry us through the hard times because life is hard and things are going to happen. I pray they don't for our listeners, but I expect sooner or later something's going to happen and they're going to wish they had a strong foundation of faith that would carry them through. So don't wait until that crisis happens. You do it now and develop that relationship. Plus,

The relationship with God through faith in Jesus and indwelling of the Holy Spirit is the joy of my life. So if it never carried me through another crisis, in itself, it's worth every moment of time that I invest in it. And I'll tell you one thing. I've discovered that loneliness is affecting—

The statistics, I believe, are 22% of adult Americans feel so lonely from time to time that they have suicidal thoughts and that loneliness is an epidemic among millennials. And I felt loneliness knocking at my door during these last four years. I was thrust into widowhood and then, in a sense, being an orphan and handling things like bills. I paid bills for the first time. My husband always did that. I had to make these...

these life decisions about doctors and treatments and all that in a sense by myself, but I never, loneliness never came in because I wasn't alone. I had the constant companionship of the Holy Spirit. So, so for people out there who, um, whether you're, you have faith or you don't, uh, I expect there are times when you feel desperately lonely and, um, and, and,

the Holy Spirit can fill that void and give you a sense of his presence, his love, his companionship that makes life worth living and takes the drudgery out of life, takes the burden out of life. Yeah, and I noticed that you dedicated the book to the lonely. Yes. And it really is, when you see the statistics, sort of a stunning look at the numbers of how people feel so isolated at a time when we're told that

our communities and our world is more connected than ever. But in, especially you mentioned millennials and in talking to them and even the generation behind them, young people, so many of them have these virtual relationships and social media can be a plus or a minus in their life. I mean, I've actually made friends through people that I've met on Twitter or something else and then actually have a chance to meet them in person and, and have a lovely friendship. But

I think that so many people also look at social media and it makes them feel lonely or isolated because we all put the best of what's going on usually in our lives on social media where people see trips and weddings and babies and things that, you know, promotions that maybe they feel like they don't have in their own lives. Do you think that social media in some ways is contributing to that loneliness factor? I'm sure that it is because it keeps us on sort of a superficial level.

And we're busy, busy, busy contacting our followers or our friends, as we call them, and building our following and our friends and increasing the numbers. But it really doesn't satisfy that need for an in-depth relationship. And I think the human heart longs for someone who understands us, who knows us, who loves us.

And that's who the Holy Spirit is. The Holy Spirit understands you and me better than we understand ourselves. He knows us inside and out. And knowing everything there is to know about us, he loves us, and he's committed to us, and he wants the best for us. And we can trust him so we can confide in him. He never breaks a confidence. You know, he's not going to deceive us or betray us. And he's somebody we can count on. And that kind of relationship is...

You know, it's rare in life with another person, but it's what God offers to us through the person of his spirit. So social media is a wonderful thing, and of course I use it in my ministry, and I thank God for the way we can connect with people around the world. Now, I'll tell you, Shannon, just take this opportunity to...

Thank people who may be listening who have prayed for me because that call to prayer went out around the world and thousands of people have prayed for me. And I know God has heard and answered their prayers. So I thank God for social media, but I don't want to substitute...

those virtual friends and all those followers and all that for a one-on-one relationship, whether it's with my friends or my family, but especially with the Holy Spirit, who there's no friend like him. And, you know, you just have to read the whole book, but he is more wonderful than you and I can even imagine and more wonderful than certainly I could write about in just one book. And the book is not...

theological treatise. It's not a complete paper on the Holy Spirit at all. It's my experience. It's like my memoirs on who the Holy Spirit has been to me during my lifetime with the emphasis in the last four years. Yeah. So your best advice to people who say, okay, maybe I'm a Christian and I haven't learned about this as much as we talked about in the beginning. So many people can spend years in church and not hear a lot about the Holy Spirit.

Your best advice for those who want to cultivate this relationship, is it just time in the Word, time in prayer, or just saying, God, I don't know how this whole thing works?

but my heart is open and I want to learn more. I think you can start right there, just where you just said, and just say, God, my heart is open. I want to learn more. And we draw near to God and the Bible says he will draw near to us. And so the first thing I think we just tell him and then open up our Bibles. And I suggest maybe starting in the Gospel of John and you read and just, you don't have to read a whole chapter at a time, or you can read through the book if you want, and then go back and just read paragraph by paragraph and

and ask God, what does it say, and what are things I can learn from this, and how does this apply to my life? And just listen for the Spirit to whisper, because it's a still, small voice. You know, when Elijah ran from Jezebel, and he was hiding in a cave, and he was told to come outside the cave that God was going to meet him there, and there was an earthquake and a fire and a strong wind blowing,

But God wasn't in any of those things. And then there was a still, small voice, and that was the voice of God. And God speaks to us through his word, but it's – I think he can get our attention through the earthquake, the fire, and the wind. But he speaks to us in a still – like, for me, it's just whispers. I'll read a verse, and it's just – I'll go back and reread it, and, you know, God is speaking to me through this. And –

And we never know for sure because we, at least me, I live by faith. But I talk to the Lord about whatever it is that I think he's saying to me. And then I pray it and then lay claim to it if I feel like he's confirmed it and apply it, live it out. And I've done that enough so that I recognize his voice when he's speaking to me through scripture. So it's a process. There's no quick fix.

But it starts, like you said, just drawing near to God, asking him to draw near to us, spending time reading our Bibles, and then talking to him about what we read. So prayer is – you don't have to be formal. You don't have to use King James English. You can talk to him like you would talk to your friend and just talk to him about what he's just –

seem to say in his word and ask the Holy Spirit is the one who opens our minds and helps us to understand the scriptures. Ask him to open your mind. You may not understand everything, but could you understand one thing from what you read this morning or tonight? You know, just be simple. Keep it brief and

and ask him to start making it real and relevant for you. Live it out. And I would encourage people to get into a church that loves Jesus, loves his word, would help you understand it, give you Christian friends, because that kind of fellowship also can help you develop that relationship with God.

Well, you've been through so much the last few years. And as you said, we often learn the most through our most painful times. So I thank you for being willing to share all that and to use your life as a lesson for people who are searching for something deeper. And, you know, an important part of the puzzle that a lot of people, even people of faith, may be missing in their lives is,

The book is Jesus in Me. We've been talking with Anne Graham Lotz. Anne, thank you so much for your time. Shannon, thank you so much. I enjoy talking with you and look forward to the next time I see you face to face. Sounds good. God bless. God bless you. From the Fox News Podcast Network. I'm Janice Dean, Fox News Senior Meteorologist. Be sure to subscribe to the Janice Dean Podcast at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And don't forget to spread the sunshine.