 like the love of the Heavenly Father and he wants to do nothing more than to lavish and to pour out his love upon you. And we love you too. We're so glad that you're joining us on Hope Today. I'm here with Tom and here with Angela. And Angela, tell us about this conversation because we are going to be talking about love. Yes, we are, Sid. I have a question for you. Are you living a life of fear, dissatisfaction or insignificance despite your efforts to do all the right things? Chances are emotional scars have left a taint on the lens through which you see and experience the world through her own journey of massive success and epic failure. Today's guest, Weiwei Chang, is going to give us an eye exam. Help us identify some lenses that just may be keeping us from the fullest expression of joy and peace. And she's going to help us to correct the prescription that we're seeing through to live a life of contentment and freedom. You guys, I think that this lens of love conversation is so important because a lot of times we don't even realize that we're looking through the world with broken glasses on. I mean, it is so true how we see our situation, how we see the people around us, how we see God, how we see God is so influenced by that, you know, kind of worldly fog that's out there. You know, just even speaking about like just the lens of love, like just at the Presence Conference, as last night just really reminds me, they were talking about the sight, having the sight that Jesus gives us. And even there was like a word about like, you know, when Jesus is really powerful, like, you know, spit in the man with the put of the mud on the eye and touch the ground. Do you know that when the reason he spit was to put the DNA of himself into us to have that lens? So I'm like super excited. Yeah, like, yeah, Reverend Rodriguez, like Samuel Rodriguez, like shared that point last night. And so I just think this is so apropos, so on point of what God is speaking and wants to help us understand. We got to change our vision. We got to have the right perspective to see how he sees. We know we say we walk by faith and not by sight, but it is truly so important that we have his perspective so we can walk and navigate the day. Well, you know, that whole thing about seeing through a glass, darkly, you know, or a mirror. Actually, we see kind of darkly right now in Pittsburgh. We have a picture of our, this is our parking lot. You can see the sun up there barely. But this is all this isn't really fog so much as kind of like fogs mixed with smoke coming down from Canada. So be careful out there. They say it's gone beyond like a red if you're in the Pittsburgh area, it's gone beyond a red warning day to purple. It's like really hazardous. And Jean and I ignoring all the warnings when I'll biking last night like a ninny. I was a mini out there biking and and actually we could feel it. We could actually feel it in in our lungs, kind of like like a little bit belabored breathing by the time we were done. So be careful out there. And some of you that are seeing us in other parts of the country probably haven't experienced this yet. But in the northeast, it's it's tough. Yeah. Yeah. Well, even when you're saying that, Tom, I don't think it's by happenstance that we're talking about the lens of love today. And part of our nation, you know, our eastern coast are and California are experiencing this dense fog. And it really impacts how you not only see but how you breathe, how you take in life. And I think today, even as we talk with way way, we're going to begin to recognize that just like this fog, we're experiencing here this smoke. It doesn't just impact how we see things or how we treat people, but it gets into the deepest parts of who we are. And it impacts how we experience life, joy, peace and goodness. So true. And it's it's it's a it's something that like you said, it's a it's a clearly a demonstration of what it's like when we don't see things clearly. I do want to say that a little bit later in the program, we're going to have a special trailer. You're going to want to stay with us about our Gettysburg special wonderful program. And it's called Gettysburg Stories of Faith. We're going to have a special trailer about that. So exciting. Well, listen, today's guest started out in early life with a determined drive to achieve greatness. At just 15 years of age, she became independent from her parents in an effort to pursue an education that would lend itself to a better life. Wei Wei Chang found herself riding success after success until she didn't. Coach, speaker and author of The Lens of Love, a fresh perspective on increasing intimacy with God, enhancing relationships and discovering contentment. Wei Wei Chang joins us from Arizona. Welcome to hope today, Wei Wei. It's good to be here. It's such honor to be here. We are so glad to have you here. And just to start out our interview so that those who are watching can be a little more familiar with you. Would you share a little bit of who you are and your family life and ministry? Yes, I grew up in China as ACS. I came to United States to earn a PhD in economics and pursue American dream. But little did I know the first fulfillment American dream was to accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior only one week after I arrived in the United States. So my life was changed forever since then. Oh, Wei Wei, I love that that was a part of the American dream that the Lord had in his heart for you, unbeknownst to you. Well, Wei Wei, you share in your book a little bit of your success. I mean, you had phenomenal success working in corporate America, climbing that ladder. Until something interesting happened to you, would you share with us a little bit of that story and how that moment changed what was happening in your life for then and ultimately for forever? Yes. One of the Amazon review for my book wrote, I have never met a person who earned a PhD in economics and up writing a book about intimacy with God. It sounds impossible, but only God can do that. So in 2007, I was into my job as a vice president for a fortune 500 company over a year. I thought I was doing good. You know, I had a regular one on one with my boss who flew in from New York. And I know that one on one to change my life forever, turn my world upside down. This is when he said to me, I, you cannot report to me anymore. Instead, you have to report to somebody locally with a lower level position, which means I was just demoted. And my world was turning. I couldn't believe it. You know, the motion to most people, maybe a lot of people is like, no big deal. You know, it just, you just move on with your life. But to someone who came from China, we are a performance driven country. And the emotion means total failure. Emotion means shame. You know, Chinese, I think culture wise is very shame based culture. So I went home, I locked myself inside my house. And I feel I couldn't see anybody. And I decided to do several things. Pretty radically. I checked into a prayer center here in Arizona. And I start reading Bible ask God a question I've never asked before. Is as a guy you say in your word, you know, those who believe you, those who serve you, they are blessed. How come I have been serving you for 15 years? How come I have never been satisfied? And the third thing I asked God was, you know, I'm going to try, I'm going to stop doing everything that I know in serving God. See if he still loves me. See if he's still blessed, because my theology that time was conditional love. If I serve God, he'll bless you. But the emotion didn't sound like a blessing. So I said, I'm going to try to stop everything. See if he still loves me. And another thing I did is that I started to visit a different church, because I was free from all the obligation in my own local church. So I'm going to visit a different church, which the church will allow the Holy Spirit to fully operate. And I just go there and I worship and pour my heart my tears out. That's where my journey of healing by my journey of intimacy with God started. So that, yeah, that was the emotion that changed my life. I love that during that demotion, it pushed you into the arms of Jesus. I mean, like you said, when you came to America, you got saved, but it was really from the demotion that you met him. Would you share with us a little bit Weiwei of how when you started to press in into that space of what that looked like, and how did he uncover that you were kind of not in the depths of where he wanted you? Yes. And I really started searching God. So I decided to go to I call it in the life conference, which you pretty much sitting there, waiting on God and doing nothing else. So as I waiting on God, you know, one of the songs as waiting the worship music was playing, one of the sounds is I surrender all. You know, I've seen that sound so many times. It didn't really read just to me to my soul and spirit. But that day, when I was seeing the sound, but everything become alive. I realized, Lord, I have not surrendered all to you, because a lot of things was under my control. I started to weep. And I start to repent. And so during the break, and I was sharing my experience of emotion with a fellow attendee, I think he was a pastor. I share my loss, my, my sadness about this loss of emotion. And he said, I know exactly what your problem is. That I lean forward, I want to hear, you know, I did not know what was a problem. And he said, I know exactly what you have, you have made your titles and positions at a corporate world, your God, and you have idolized your titles and positions. That was something completely unexpected to me. And I didn't have a clear concept idolatry, because I feel like I'm believing God, I serve God. And I don't have idol God is God is my God. I don't have idol. But when you are idolized something outside God, when you're in it, you cannot recognize it. It's like you are your lens, your visions completely blocked. It's kind of like Apostle Paul. He believed he was serving God. He was so firm and zealous. Yet, he was blind. It was revealed when he encountered the light of Jesus, he was blind. Wayway, I think that's so true and critical for us to recognize that we may be looking through fractured lenses or skewed and tainted lenses without even being aware of it. Would you take a moment for us and just share with us the seven different lenses you speak to in your book that we may be able to begin to recognize just by your mention of them and what they are in our life. Yeah, there's lots of lenses in my book identified along my intimate journey with God. Number one was the lens of idolatry, of course. Number two was the lens of pride. Pride comes when we have a man side of achievement mindset. Actually, when I started to write a book, I wanted to write about performance. I said, why am I on this rails, right race rails? I'll stop and keep achieving because I didn't find my significance. I got to do more, achieve more, accomplish more. So I was very prideful that I earned my PhD at age 24. So I was the youngest in my graduate school that I earned a PhD. And so achievement is through our own effort that we become a prideful. Another way of getting prideful is acquiring knowledge, of course. So lens of pride was biggie for me. That was only shown only after the emotion was happening. When something taken away, the position or title taken away, you recognize, oh, wow. I was weeping. I was weeping the loss of it. Then I realized that the pride and idolatry was my lenses blocking me. Other lens that I struggle with a lot is lens of fear. And that has something to do with generational traits. In my book, I shared my grandma lost six babies, Mr. or Mrs. carriage. There's a fear of death, fear of loss, life. So carry on in my life as well. I said there's not only physical DNA passed around from generation to generation, but also spiritual DNA passed around from generation to generation. Until the time that we recognize we repent and we can break it off. There's a hope in Christ, even though we have this generational trait. Other lenses that I struggle with, the lens of hatred, it sounds very, very silly or hatred, but it started with judgment, being judgmental, being bitter, being offended. And so it leads to hatred. It leads to killings through words, but then more severe killings through weapons. So hatred, we see that a lot more nowadays in our society because the freedom of internet, freedom, social media, things pass on so fast that people are easily offended and the words are spoken, you know, hurting and cutting. So lens of hatred is more prevalent now than the time that when I was younger. So lens of hatred. Another lens that I struggle so much as also generational is called the lens of injustice. You know my grandfather had a business was taken away by the authority. He had no way to make a living and he was very, very poor. He has growing kids and sometimes he has to probably go sell his blood, make some living to have food in the house. So there's a really injustice down to us, kind of sense of injustice. You see the world through lens of injustice. You complain. The symptoms you complain and there's a hatred on forgiveness continue on. So when the emotional happened to me, I had a huge sense of injustice. You know that was down to me that I carried on that as well. Over time, God allowed me to purify my lens seeing this whole event of the emotion as a blessing. Completely turn it around from injustice to a blessing. So those are the some of the lenses that I struggled. There's many, many lenses in the book that you can read in detail. Yes, they need to get that book because even as you just mentioned the names of them, I think that a lot of us can use those titles to begin to search our heart. Well, you talk about switching those lenses with the lens of love and just way, way very quickly if you could share with us how intimacy is the key to that. Yeah, the lens of love is, I call it lens of love because the original lenses when God created us, when God created the world he said everything he sees was very, very good. So, but now at a fall we have seeing, we have this judgment, right? This is good, this is not good, this is good, this is bad. So, at a creation of time the lens was hope, love, and faith. But at a fall the lens we acquire become hopeless, fearful, and hatred. So, those are the lenses that I call faulty lenses or tenty lenses or cloudy lenses. So, the old-home Christian journey is going back from this tenty lens is going back to lens of love which is how God sees everything. So, when we align our vision with God, see God as who he is, see ourselves as God sees us, see others as God sees them, I call that lens of love. Weiwei, thank you so much, such a powerful book. We appreciate your ministry and we pray blessings over you. Thank you for joining us today. So beautiful, so beautiful. Just even thinking like one thing when she was just going through the different lenses of just like going through what we deal with the one thing that I just want to encourage you and God just like spoke in my spirit and put in my spirit reminded me when she was talking about idolatry, about pride, all of those things is just like I'm gonna say this really quickly that God spoke to me is like right now that we are in a new Hebrew month called the month of Tammuz. And Tammuz is when that you know Moses was on the top, getting the Ten Commandments, God was speaking to them and the Israelites they're in they're going towards the promise line and they made a golden calf, they blinded, they put on a different lens even though this is the God that part of the Red Sea, even though this is the God that gave the manna for heaven, they had on these different lenses and I think it is so important in this season that in this Hebrew month that it's so important that God wants us to examine our hearts, examine ourselves so we know what is blocking us from fully seeing God, fully seeing the promises, fully accessing who he has called us to be. So that was such a beautiful and poignant point that she made during her conversation. I think it's such a key thing to see God as he is. He takes away, he begins to take away the clouds, take away the blinders, take away those things that have distorted our view of him and put all these other things, all these other lenses on us, very important conversation, very important process in our lives. Well our nation went through a time of very wrong attitudes towards one another. It was called the Civil War and we have a special about the God stories in the Civil War reaching kind of its crescendo at the Battle of Gettysburg. Watch this. At the far end of the Union Line on the southern side of Little Round Top stood Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. He was not your typical soldier. A professor from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, he spoke nine different languages and taught religion and rhetoric. When war broke out he felt called to serve the Union, frustrated at his colleague's lack of enthusiasm for what he saw as a just cause. He wrote the Governor of Maine saying, I fear this war will not cease until men of the north are willing to leave good positions and sacrifice the dearest personal interests to rescue our country from desolation. What he lacked in military experience he made up for in dedication. By July 2nd 1863 he had become Colonel of the 20th Maine Regiment. Chamberlain was instructed to hold the end of the Union Line to the last on the south side of Little Round Top as Confederate troops led by Colonel William Oates from the 15th Alabama Regiment charged the hill again and again. The Alabamans had already marched 20 miles that day and been unable to find water to refill their canteens. With nothing to lose Chamberlain ordered a bayonet charge down the hill. By all accounts the men already figured out what they were going to do so the order was not really an order order but when he ordered up the charge everybody lined up they all charged down the hill and their momentum running into the Confederates they were spent the most of them gave up or turned around and ran back out of the way so he saves the day. This charge was successful beyond all my hopes. We took twice as many prisoners as we had men in our ranks. The results of this movement beyond question was the saving of Round Top itself. Well that uh the stories of faith the stories of God in the Gettysburg battle uh well that special will air this weekend the times were there July 1st at 11 Sunday July 2nd at 11 30 a.m. and July 4th at 1 30 p.m. and 8 30 p.m. I got a little story this stick right here I when I was there when we had that that tour guide there who does a spiritual tour of the battle of Gettysburg I asked him about the trees because there's these huge trees near the the cemetery there I said were they there then he said these trees weren't I mean it was 160 years ago but there are trees they call them witness trees that were there during the battle and they're still there a lot of them when one of them falls down they treat it with a lot of respect and they make walking sticks out of it and canes and different things just kind of uh so that people can have a piece of that history and my kids got me one and there's an inscription on this it says battle of Gettysburg long streets witness tree and then there's a number there's only a limited number of them made so this is uh something my kids gave me it's like a little piece of that battle but it's important for us to remember there is a god purpose and a god story he can bring even out of the worst battle sydney he can bring his purposes yeah even just like talking about you know with like Gettysburg and a war that we have to be understanding that there is a war that between the kingdom of light the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of darkness and every day we need to just get into the presence of the lord we need to sit before the father and make sure we are not operating out of that kingdom and make sure that we are walking in the spirit of the god in the spirit of the holy spirit so we just encourage you today that today i just really sense it's like when we're talking about looking through the lens of love we're talking we're seeing about history and with Gettysburg that let us make sure that we know that we have a heavenly father who is avanai savayat the lord of the angel armies that is warring that is fighting our battles but it is so important for us to partner with heaven to agree with what the word says in the bible in scriptures and the promises he spoke over life that is where true power is when we stand on that angel yes you know when you said about the war i love that because a lot of the war that we see it may not be external and it may not be with batons or weapons that are carnal but that it is an internal war and even not with our brother or our sister but within ourselves and wei wei cheng brought a beautiful point to us that when we look through a different lens just as you were saying sydney it changes our inner most world so today we just challenge you do you carry a tainted lens do you feel hatred or injustice do you feel like there is an idol maybe that you set up and that's what the priority of your life is we ask you just like way we did go to the father find intimacy with him that you may be fully seen and experience his goodness in your life yeah and god is taking this program this moment to kind of redirect you to him okay redirect your focus to him he wants to reveal himself to you today and he will do it as you seek him have a great day in him on tomorrow's hope today ever wonder where god is and if he hears our prayers author and evangelist ray comfort shares how you can have confidence that god hears your prayers by revealing several keys to entering his holy presence and receiving his blessings that's tomorrow on hope today cornerstone television t-shirt where'd you get it i am so glad that you asked you know this is an exclusive offer for the month of june for you to receive this one-of-a-kind ctvn t-shirt you can support and support your favorite christian tells the network this summer when you go to barbecues hanging out with family and having tons of fun oh man that is so much fun and speaking of cornerstone television i love their programming 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