Have you ever noticed the difference between doing something because you feel you have to and doing the same thing because you are so full you can't help it? That distinction is at the heart of this week's conversation between Candace and Francis Chan.
Francis opens with a memory from Africa, traveling with Candace's mother, Barbara, who brought chocolate chip cookies and a heart ready to work. They built homes. They dug wells. They got kids into school. And Francis says he remembers thinking: “I could die now, and I would die a happy man.” Not because the work was easy, but because it was exactly what he was made for.
That’s the overflow he’s talking about. Not a feeling you manufacture. Not a spiritual discipline you power through. It’s what happens when someone has tasted the goodness of God so deeply that sharing it stops feeling like a responsibility and starts feeling like an irresistible invitation. Francis uses the image of a taco truck near the podcast studio, quesabirria so good he immediately wants to take his friends there. That, he says, is how we should feel about God.
Candace wants to know: “but what about the person who wants to feel that and just doesn't right now? What about the one who has had blow after blow and can't find joy?”
Francis doesn't offer a formula. He points to Joni Eareckson Tada, a woman who has lived through more physical suffering than most people will ever encounter, and whose joy is beyond anything he has seen. He says simply: go watch her for half an hour, and it will answer your questions better than he can.
But he also talks honestly about his own experience of sorrow. Francis preaches from Ecclesiastes 7 at memorial services, where Solomon writes that it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting. Sorrow, he says, is not the enemy. Grief is not a sign of weak faith. God Himself grieves. Jesus wept. And the Bible calls it wisdom to stay in that place long enough to let it do its work, rather than running for the party, numbing out, or telling ourselves to just feel better.
Francis talks about sitting with people at funerals where everyone is dressed to celebrate and ready to forget. And how that impulse, while understandable, robs people of one of the few moments in life when we actually let ourselves think about what matters.
Francis took his four youngest children to Ethiopia and Uganda specifically to show them where the money went: to a school for women who had been sex-trafficked, now graduating in caps and gowns, dancing and jumping, celebrating. To a boy in Uganda who was sponsored through school, now practicing as a doctor. To a 10-year-old in a hospital who weighed 30 pounds and was given six hours to live, and who is still alive today.
He tells his kids: if that is all we did with our lives, that is a great life. And he means it. He doesn’t present giving everything away as sacrifice, but presents it as the thing that filled him up in ways nothing else could.
Candace asks the honest question many people wonder: can you have a nice home and also give generously? Francis laughs and says he still considers himself rich. The answer, he finds, is less about a rule and more about learning to sense the Spirit. Sometimes there is peace. Sometimes there isn't. Sometimes a $20 bill appears on the ground when he prays about museum tickets. Sometimes a golf driver shows up as a gift the day after he couldn't bring himself to buy one. God, he says, seems to enjoy those moments.
Listener Cammie asks what to do when the motivation for spiritual disciplines simply isn't there. Even when you know you should want them. Even when you teach others how to pursue them.
Francis answers with two things. First: just tell God. Say, “I don't have the desire to be with you right now, and please change that.” He says God is always faithful to that prayer, and Candace agrees immediately, the kind of agreement that comes from having prayed that exact thing. Second: look at what you're snacking on. If we fill ourselves up on screens, entertainment, and constant low-grade pleasure, we arrive at the thing God is offering and we're not hungry. Fasting, Francis says, is one way to empty yourself of everything else so there's room to be filled.
Candace mentions she just finished a 34-hour fast during travel and is already looking ahead to a 48-hour one. She is honest that it’s hard, and also honest that it’s worth it.
Sponsors mentioned in this episode: Van Man (vanman.shop/bure, code BURE for 15% off), International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (ifcj.org), Lovebird Cereal (lovebirdfoods.com/bure, code BURE for 25% off), 316 Financial (bank316.com/ccb, code CCB), PHD Weight Loss (myphdweightloss.com or 864-644-1900).