Thanks for listening to this Susie Larson Live podcast, available thanks to support from listeners like you. Welcome just won't do dance. You don't have to know how to ever since, ever since we've got

you live. Welcome to Susie Larson Live. I'm always so honored to get to spend this time with you.

In fact, I look forward to bringing you conversations every single day that hopefully inspire you in your

faith walk, that deepen your understanding of God's word and that heightens your

awareness of his very real presence in your life. Well, as you know, if you've been listening,

all this month, we've been focusing on the theme of forgiveness, something that's critical to the

life of faith for the Christ follower. Well, today's show, we've also, actually, we've been

dedicating our Tuesdays to the series on different aspects of character

formation.

So who better to talk about forgiveness and character formation than my friend Tom Doyle.

He's an expert on the Middle East and has countless stories to share about the persecuted

church and what we can learn from them about forgiveness, about character formation.

And Tom writes this, there's no doubt about it.

We live in a dangerous world. But instead of motivating Christians in the West to action, today's headlines

appear to be paralyzing us. We were never called to live in fear. Even though the times we're living

in are frightening, we are right on course with the very plan for God for this world. Things are

not falling apart. They're falling

into place. We're going to draw from a couple of Tom's books today, standing in the fire,

courageous Christians living in frightening times, and when he co-authored with his wife,

women who risk, secret agents for Jesus in a Muslim world. And I just got to say,

the Doyle's books read like fast-paced novel thrillers.

Like you forget to breathe. You're holding your breath because they're epic storytellers.

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