Unshaken Faith

SPEAKER 02 : 0:00

You’re listening to Family Talk, the radio broadcasting division of the James Dobson Family Institute. I am that James Dobson, and I’m so pleased that you’ve joined us today.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:19

Well, welcome to Family Talk. I’m Roger Marsh. In just a moment, we’re going to hear a powerful presentation about what it means to have unshaken faith in uncertain times. First, though, a special reminder, today is Friday, December 27th. That means there are only four days left in 2024. That means you only have four more opportunities to take advantage of our special year-end matching gift and to reserve your copy of of the 2024 Best of Broadcast Collection from the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. Now, this six-CD set is also available as a digital download, and we’ll be happy to send it to you as our way of thanking you for your gift of any amount in support of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. However, there are just four days left in our special dollar-for-dollar matching gift, which means your $100 donation becomes $200, your $500 donation becomes $1,000. You get the idea. So to reserve your copy of the six CD set, the 2024 Best of Broadcast Collection, and have your gift doubled now before the end of the year, go to drjamesdobson.org or call our customer care team at 877-732-6825. In Psalm 16, we read these words, I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Those words are especially meaningful for today. We’re seeing families under pressure from all sides, broken marriages, addiction, abuse, and these challenges don’t just affect parents. They are rippling through generations, touching our children’s lives as well. Well, on today’s broadcast here at Family Talk, we’re digging back into the archives to bring you a conversation that’s more relevant now than ever before. As Dr. Dobson sits down with Sally Burke, the president of Moms in Prayer International. Her book is called Unshaken, and she shares her surprising path to ministry, along with incredible stories of answered prayers from mothers all across the country. So let’s join Dr. Dobson and his guest, Sally Burke, right now on today’s edition of Family Talk.

SPEAKER 02 : 2:19

Well, hello, everyone. You’re listening to Family Talk. I’m Dr. James Dobson. And I want to take those of you who have been listening to me and our programs for at least 15 or 20 years will remember, I hope, a series of programs that we did with a woman named Fern Nichols. She was the founder and president of an organization called Moms in Touch. Then it went on to become Moms in Prayer. And Fern taught tens of thousands of women to meet regularly to pray for their children and for their schools. And it caught on. I had the privilege of playing a role, I think, in helping to publicize the early efforts of this organization and to draw a lot of women to the ministry and to that work, and it grew like Topsy. Fern has become a great friend of this ministry, and I Like I say, I did everything I could to help. Now, I have the privilege of introducing her successor to this ministry. It’s still going strong. It’s an international ministry. We’re going to hear about that. And I want our guests to catch us up, if you will, on Fern’s activities and what’s happening now. in the ministry now. And with us is Sally Burke, who is the successor to Fern. Sally, welcome to the ministry.

SPEAKER 03 : 4:00

Thank you, Dr. Dotson. It’s a great joy to be with you. And Fern sends her love to you and says hi. She’s doing wonderful. In fact, she still speaks for our ministry. She comes in on Thursday.

SPEAKER 02 : 4:12

She’s a great speaker. She really is.

SPEAKER 03 : 4:15

And the vision and mission continues on. What she has passed on, we continue toward two more moms for every school so every child around the world can be prayed for.

SPEAKER 02 : 4:25

Well, describe for us where the ministry is now and what’s going on. It is international. How many countries is it in?

SPEAKER 03 : 4:32

146 countries. Really? Yeah.

SPEAKER 02 : 4:35

Is that right? Going back to the late 80s, early 90s, I would not have believed it would have grown that fast and that far. It’s obvious that there are millions of women out there who really believe in prayer and know that the only protection for their kids in the kind of world we live in is to be on our knees before the Lord on their behalf. That’s what you’re trying to do, isn’t it?

SPEAKER 03 : 5:02

That’s right. God has a great plan for this next generation. It’s not by surprise that our kids are here in this generation for such a time as this. And they’re doing a tremendous battle. We must pray for them. We must continue to battle for the lives of the kids. A tremendous battle when we think about it for the souls of the children.

SPEAKER 02 : 5:23

Are the parents anxiety-ridden over what’s happening in the schools with the shootings, the violence, and other things that are taking place there?

SPEAKER 03 : 5:32

Yes, even Christians can be shaken, but yet when they go to the Lord in prayer, they can stand unshaken as they unload His power through prayer.

SPEAKER 02 : 5:42

As a matter of fact, you’ve written a book by that name, and I want you to explain it. It is titled, Unshaken, Experience the Power and Peace of a Life of Prayer. Tell me what the word unshaken means in this context.

SPEAKER 03 : 6:00

Oh, my goodness. You know, as I was witnessing even Christians being shaken in this world, as they are seeing what’s going on, I had to share with them what I get to see. You see, I get a bird’s eye view of what God’s doing all over the world as people take our four simple but powerful steps of prayer. Women in the most hopeless situations empowered through prayer. And they’re impacting their children who are impacting others for Christ.

SPEAKER 02 : 6:26

Why not describe it? They come together off school grounds usually, right?

SPEAKER 03 : 6:32

Yes, yes. Unless it’s a private school, then they’re on the campuses. They meet just one hour once a week. That’s all the Lord needs. They come together one hour once a week and they pray. They just don’t talk about prayer, but they actually pray. They begin with praise.

SPEAKER 02 : 6:48

This is not a coffee club. You don’t come together to gossip a little bit and have a good time seeing with your friends. You go there on your knees and pray.

SPEAKER 03 : 6:57

Yeah, God tells us to enter his throne room boldly and confidently to find mercy and help in our time of need. So we’re entering to his throne room. We’re in a tremendous battle and victory is found on our knees. The weakest saint praying defeats the enemy every time.

SPEAKER 02 : 7:13

I want to know a little bit about your background. You were with NASA. You are sort of a statistician or an analyst, a data analyst.

SPEAKER 03 : 7:25

Is that what you do? My degree is out of the School of Business and Quantitative Analysis, Computers and Calculus. Where? University of Florida. That was fun. Go Gators. Yeah. What they did was they came and brought me and made me an engineer on the space shuttle. So I became an engineer. Math, you can be anything. And so what we did before the shuttle took off, we tested everything. So I worked with the computers on board. I worked with the computers that tested. I made sure everything was ready for launch day.

SPEAKER 02 : 7:56

You’re kind of a rare bird, aren’t you, for a woman to do that?

SPEAKER 03 : 8:00

Did you see Hidden Figures?

SPEAKER 02 : 8:02

I think I did.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:04

Those were my predecessors. These women were mathematicians.

SPEAKER 02 : 8:07

Yes, I did see that. That’s a good movie.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:10

That’s a good movie. And those computers that they were just about to work on, I got to work on those.

SPEAKER 02 : 8:15

Really?

SPEAKER 03 : 8:16

Yeah. Yeah. So it was fantastic. It was an incredible time, I think, in American history.

SPEAKER 02 : 8:22

Men were very skeptical that women could do that job, especially minority women. And they really gave them a hard time, and then they proved themselves. It really is an uplifting movie.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:35

Yes, yes, yes. There were only five of us women engineers at that plant at that time, and it was exciting.

SPEAKER 02 : 8:43

Did you take that kind of pressure? Oh, yeah, you always do. You had to prove yourself. Did you find men look down on you?

SPEAKER 03 : 8:47

Yeah. Oh, yes. Yes. You had to learn not to take it personal. If you went to a meeting and everybody’s yelling at you, you just didn’t take it personal. You just went back and proved them wrong.

SPEAKER 02 : 8:59

And you did.

SPEAKER 03 : 9:00

Yes.

SPEAKER 02 : 9:01

How long were you there?

SPEAKER 03 : 9:02

I was there five years until I had my first child. After about a year later, I came home. I decided that anybody could work on the space shuttle, but not anybody could raise my child.

SPEAKER 02 : 9:14

So how does a data analyst for NASA find herself in a prayer movement? How long were you with Fern in that responsibility?

SPEAKER 03 : 9:26

I have been since 1990 in Moms in Prayer. And the very first meeting I ever went to, I knew that God blesses our children through prayer. That’s the avenue God has chosen to bless us. We have not because we ask not. And so I heard about this prayer group, and I went to it. Well, little did I know you had to pray out loud. I did not know how to pray. You had never done that? No. I asked God, teach me to pray. And how does God answer that prayer? He has me go to a moms in prayer group. And that group was so good to me. They were praying out loud, and I just sat there silently. I was in the very presence of God. As they praise God, God enters the presence of his people.

SPEAKER 02 : 10:03

I tell you, Fern knows how to pray, doesn’t she?

SPEAKER 03 : 10:05

Yes. Yes, but everybody there, short, simple prayers. So you don’t, if you never prayed before, come to Moms in Prayer and you’re going to learn how to pray. It’s going to forever change and touch your life forever. And then your children’s lives. And then each one on that school campus, life will be changed as you pray.

SPEAKER 02 : 10:24

Have you seen miracles?

SPEAKER 03 : 10:25

Yeah. In fact, the first miracle I ever saw was my first grade teacher for my son. I dropped him off and she says, oh, you’re in that mom’s in touch at that time. Mom’s in prayer group. Will you pray? There’s a little boy who’s very sick. They don’t think he’s going to make it through the weekend. And I said, yes, we’ll pray. So I went back to our group, and we prayed for this little boy. On Monday morning, I went rushing to her. I said, tell me. Tell me, how is he? And she says, well, he’s healed. And I’m like, wow, how did that happen? And she goes, you prayed. And so that was my very first miracle. But I saw miracle after miracle. Pretty soon we saw our kids so favored on that campus, our moms and prayer kids. They’re all lined up getting awards. And my heart was burdened for every other child sitting there. And I said, oh, Lord, may each one of these kids hear the good news. May they hear it. And so what does God bring on our elementary school campus but a good news club, children evangelism? Over 100 kids would come each month, and they would receive Jesus as their Lord and Savior. Today, they’re pastors, they’re teachers, they’re lawyers. They are now impacting this generation. And then 14 of our 22 teachers we prayed for on this elementary school have come to know Jesus Christ. Yes, it’s just amazing.

SPEAKER 02 : 11:41

Give us your journey, your spiritual journey. When did you become a Christian?

SPEAKER 03 : 11:47

You know what? I don’t even know the year. My husband came home one day from work. I was a stay-at-home mom, and we were greeting him in the door. I had a baby on this hip and one holding onto my leg. And he says, Sally, I was listening to John MacArthur on the radio, and I had to pull over. I just received Jesus Christ as my Lord and my Savior.

SPEAKER 02 : 12:06

Had you been praying together?

SPEAKER 03 : 12:08

Nothing.

SPEAKER 02 : 12:09

There was anything going on in your family that would have led to this?

SPEAKER 03 : 12:14

Somebody was praying for us. That I do know. I don’t know who it was. When I get to heaven, I’ll know. But it was obvious somebody was praying for us. And when my husband said that, I said, whoa. I’m thinking in my mind, my husband’s working too hard. Something’s wrong. But for the next few months, he walked in this peace and this strength. He can say no to the things of the world, and you just witness it. So that Christmas, I was used to getting diamonds or different things. Well, he bought me a Bible. And I thought, okay. And he was telling me how he prayed over what Bible to get me.

SPEAKER 02 : 12:50

You were not thrilled over the gift.

SPEAKER 03 : 12:52

No, I was surprised to say the least over that gift. And I remember opening it up and I remember reading at the beginning of it. And, you know, this person would be got this person. I thought, well, you know, I’ll go to Psalms. And I thought, whoever wrote this book is brilliant. He’s making the most incredible truth so simple. And just like a great calculus teacher. It was amazing. And then my husband goes, why don’t you read the book of John? And there I saw that Jesus was God. And there I surrendered my life to him. And then I began to listen to the radio.

SPEAKER 02 : 13:26

And you don’t remember what year that was.

SPEAKER 03 : 13:27

I don’t remember what year that was.

SPEAKER 02 : 13:29

Sally, I remember I found the Lord in 1940. You don’t remember yours?

SPEAKER 03 : 13:33

Because nobody explained it to me. Nobody said, oh, you’re a Christian now. And nobody explained that to me. All I did was I began to read the Bible every day. I began to, you know, it took us about a year to go to church. Some pastor came knocking on our door. And, you know, he comes, he goes, I’d like to invite you to my church. I said, well, come in. Tell me about your church. Do you believe in the Bible? And then we started going to church. It was God’s journey for me.

SPEAKER 02 : 13:59

Has he remained faithful to the Lord?

SPEAKER 03 : 14:02

Oh, my husband?

SPEAKER 02 : 14:04

Yes.

SPEAKER 03 : 14:04

Yes. Yes, he has. Yeah.

SPEAKER 02 : 14:07

And the two of you have been married how long?

SPEAKER 03 : 14:11

We have been married 34 years now. Wow.

SPEAKER 02 : 14:14

How did you get from the work you were doing at NASA to this responsibility? First, you joined Fern in Moms in Touch. I will always call it that, even though it’s Moms in Prayer. And now you have taken over that responsibility. How did the Lord let you know that this is what he wanted you to do?

SPEAKER 03 : 14:38

God just kept surprising me, and I kept witnessing him answer prayer wherever we were at. God kept raising up leadership and kept impacting the schools and the children for Christ. And pretty soon Fern called me to headquarters, and she said, I would like you to work with the women around the world. Now, I only speak one language, and I don’t speak that very well at all. And I said, Fern, I’ll have to pray about it. And God taught me so much as I began to work with our international women around the world to see their faith, to see these courageous women. I mean, some of them live on garbage dumps. Some of them live in mud huts. Yet when you give them the gift of prayer— Oh, yes. We’re all throughout South America, Africa, throughout Europe. We’re on about every continent there is. So we only have a few more countries to go and we’ll be in every country. But, yes, one of the first women I worked with, she came from Rwanda. When she was a young mom there in Rwanda, she lost her two kids during the time of genocide there in Rwanda. She comes here to the United States. She has two more kids, learns about moms in prayer. She takes it back to Rwanda. And she begins to teach these women how to pray, not fight between the tribes, but how to come together and pray. Within a few years after she did that, we had a key leader there who said, Sally, we will no longer be known as a nation of genocide. We will be known as a nation of prayer. I mean, they began to just really open my eyes to what God can do when we pray, when we unleash his power to do his will through prayer. He can do great and mighty things.

SPEAKER 02 : 16:15

Do people find the Lord through that ministry?

SPEAKER 03 : 16:18

Many, many, many people.

SPEAKER 02 : 16:19

So they come not really knowing, like you, didn’t know how to pray.

SPEAKER 03 : 16:23

Well, I didn’t know how to pray, but we have a statement of faith. So they do know the Lord. They accept, you know, is Jesus and God one? Yes. Is the Bible the inherent word of God? Yes. Yes. So they must agree to that. And some of them truly find out who God is. In moms in prayer, you get to know them by name, by attribute, by character. These women become transformed. You know, it’s like those who know the name of the Lord will be strong and do great exploits. As they get to know who God is according to his word, all of a sudden they become, you know, just courageous women. They witness God answering prayer for them.

SPEAKER 02 : 16:59

Well, let’s talk to the woman who has children at home. She is not real sure who she is. She doesn’t sense a mission or a responsibility. She’s heard about Christ but didn’t really know who he is or what he taught or what he came to do. And maybe they also might be lonely.

SPEAKER 03 : 17:21

Yes.

SPEAKER 02 : 17:22

All right. What do you say to that woman about looking up a Moms in Prayer group and becoming involved in the fantastic mission of this ministry.

SPEAKER 03 : 17:34

There’s a wonderful sisterhood just waiting for you. You’ll never feel alone. You know, you just think about the story of Moses. The children of Israel are out there on the battlefield, battling. Well, our children are battling. And Moses, as long as his arms were up, interceding for the children of Israel— They were winning. Well, his arms got tired. So Aaron and Ur came beside him and lifted up his arms. And the children of Israel were victorious. Well, every week when you come to Moms in Prayer group, there Aaron and Ur come alongside of you. They fall in love with your kids. They pray for your kids. They battle for your kids. I’ve been with the same group of women for over 20 years. And we continue to pray for those kids. We’re never going to give up hope. We know God has a great plan for them. You will grow in confidence. Your kids will be blessed. You won’t feel lonely anymore. You’ll know who God is and you’ll know who you are in Christ. You’ll know and understand the plans that God has for you and for your children are for good.

SPEAKER 02 : 18:31

When you gather together, do you pray for a specific school or specific children?

SPEAKER 03 : 18:37

Yes.

SPEAKER 02 : 18:38

Explain what one of those sessions is like.

SPEAKER 03 : 18:41

Okay. Well, as soon as you come in, that leader is going to start on time. She’s going to say, welcome to my group. Here’s a prayer sheet. And then you’re going to look at a name of God. You’ll look up maybe three scriptures. Let’s say God is all-present. And you’ll look up the scriptures that go with that or that he’s sovereign and nothing’s too hard, nothing’s impossible. And then you’ll take a few minutes to praise. And then you’ll go to a time of silent confession. You don’t want anything to hold back your prayers. And then you have what I call a Holy Spirit party. You have a time of thanksgiving where you hear prayer after prayer after prayer being answered. And then you intercede on behalf of one of your children. You bathe them in prayer. Like, may Ryan love God with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his soul, with all his strength, and love others as he loves himself. The other mom comes alongside and agrees, or two or more agree. And his name is really done.

SPEAKER 02 : 19:33

That must be something to behold. Do visitors ever come in and watch and listen?

SPEAKER 03 : 19:40

We have a lot of new moms who come that want to find out about Moms in Prayer. So we welcome them into our groups. And they’re probably like me who did not pray out loud for a while. I sat there in the midst of it and witnessed this going on. And then we pray for a teacher. We don’t talk about the teachers. We pray for the teachers. That’s why so many teachers at our elementary school came to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, because we prayed for them. And then we pray for the children on the campus. We ask for revival and spiritual awakening. My daughter, in her senior year on a high school, witnessed 91 kids come to know Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER 02 : 20:16

You don’t.

SPEAKER 03 : 20:17

Yeah, and then they kept adding to their numbers. We prayed for Aubrey and her friends that they would not only love Jesus, but they would impact others for Christ. And so they themselves started to pray for their fellow students. They even started a Bible study. And sure enough, when there was a big outreach, 91 kids came to know Jesus, and they started going to this Bible study. I remember I asked my daughter, what are you teaching them? And she goes, well, we’re going through the book of Romans line upon line. And they kept adding to the numbers. And it’s been six years ago. And they still have that Bible study. Kids are still coming to know Jesus on that school campus. You see, we have not if we ask not. So we must come together for this next generation. We must pray. We must build that wall of fire around those schools. And His glory be within those schools. I’ve had non-Christian principals tell me they feel the difference when a Moms in Prayer group is on their campus or not.

SPEAKER 02 : 21:13

You can see why when I first heard of this concept and got acquainted with Vern, and I saw what she was trying to do, my heart was really drawn to it. And I just said, this is a good thing.

SPEAKER 03 : 21:27

Yes.

SPEAKER 02 : 21:27

And it has been. I mean, it started off as a little bitty thing.

SPEAKER 03 : 21:31

Yes.

SPEAKER 02 : 21:31

And then it just grew and grew and grew. How many individual chapters or units do you have?

SPEAKER 03 : 21:38

Yeah, we can’t even keep count. We know we have over 100,000 women, but that’s counting leadership. And so there may be 25 in a group. There may be only two in a group. So we literally do not know how many women that we have in Moms in Prayer. And I want you to think about this, Dr. Dobson. When Fern first started Moms in Touch at that time, which is Moms in Prayer now, she was one shaken mom. Her two kids were in her middle school. So she grabbed another shaken mom and they began to pray.

SPEAKER 02 : 22:04

It was divinely inspired. There isn’t any question about it. How do they find out in France and Germany and other places around the world? How does that word spread?

SPEAKER 03 : 22:14

Multiple ways. Our women so love Moms in Prayer. They realize they’ve been given a gift to be part of Moms in Prayer. So when they go travel to another country, they take our booklets with them and they go share it. We also, our website, momsinprayer.org, many type in prayer or children and they find out and they contact us. And we have key leadership all throughout the world. We have 60,000 volunteers. These are volunteers. These are moms that want to gather women together. so that they can impact children in schools for Christ.

SPEAKER 02 : 22:45

You’re excited about it, aren’t you?

SPEAKER 03 : 22:47

I love it. You know, you asked me the last time, you said, do I miss the excitement of working on the shuttle? I mean, it was tremendous to watch the shuttle take off. But there’s nothing like watching a woman’s life transform, watching her children’s lives transform, watching prodigals not only come home, but become pastors, become missionaries. There’s nothing like that in the world.

SPEAKER 02 : 23:09

Sally, I congratulate you. Thank you for having the courage to take on a new responsibility, one that didn’t have the status that you had as an engineer for NASA. Maybe not the dramatic events when the shuttle blasted off, but the Lord is working in your life, and it’s on your face. And I appreciate your doing this. And I’ll just pick up where we left off with Fern.

SPEAKER 03 : 23:39

Yes, yes, yeah. And Fern’s doing well speaking and doing well. She’s my mentor still, still prays for me still. You give her our love, will you? I will, Dr. Dobson. Thank you so much for this opportunity to be with you. And we thank the Lord for what you’re doing. You’re a part of what God’s doing around the world.

SPEAKER 02 : 23:58

Well, that’s what we’re here for, too. We’re on the same team, aren’t we?

SPEAKER 03 : 24:01

Yes, we are.

SPEAKER 02 : 24:02

Come back and see us, will you?

SPEAKER 03 : 24:04

We will. Thank you.

SPEAKER 01 : 24:10

You know, we’ve seen God work in amazing ways when moms come together in prayer. And if you’d like to share this message with another mom in your life, use the Family Talk app or go to drjamesdobson.org forward slash family talk. And while you’re there, you’ll also find information about joining a moms in prayer group in your area. Well, if you enjoyed today’s program, be sure you request the 2024 Best of Broadcast Collection. We’ve gathered our most impactful programs from this past year and curated them into one CD set. We’ll be happy to send it to you as our way of thanking you for your faithful financial support Thank you, Father. every donation dollar for dollar right up until December 31st. So go online to drjamesdobson.org, make your best gift in support of our ministry, and we’ll thank you for that tax-deductible donation by sending you a copy of our 2024 Best of Broadcast Collection. Again, go to drjamesdobson.org or write to us at Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk, P.O. Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado, the zip code 80949. Now for Dr. Dobson and all of us here at the JDFI, I’m Roger Marsh. Thanks for spending time with us today. Be sure to join us again next time right here for another edition of Dr. James Dobson’s Family Talk. This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.