Kathie Lee Gifford - The God Who Sees

Kathy, I am so excited to have you with us today on the Crazy Blessed podcast. What a joy.

Thank you. I am crazy. I love your name.

We are Crazy Blessed. And by the way, you are exceptionally crazy blessed. How do you stay so beautiful and vibrant and energetic and doing everything? I want like a complete download of all of your strategies because it is incredible. Super excited.

Basically, mooch off your rich friends on their boat in St. Bart's in the Caribbean. That's how.

All right, so everyone's got it. Easy peasy Mac and cheesy.

So excited vacation I've had in well over five years. I can't remember the last time I had a vacation. So I just grateful to get away and be with my dear friend and just hang out with her and just the beauty and just. It's been a very, very epic sort of last four years since I left the Today show, and I've been working on this. These various projects and, and they are all consuming projects, and you just realize how exhausted you are until sometimes you don't realize you've been on treadmill. I was on the treadmill. Somebody should have told me to get off and rest for a while, but I didn't. Wow. Faithful. And I was able to complete the work he set before me. And now I'm just waiting for, you know, for another download from him. But I'm grateful for some rest right now. Really.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, one reason that I wanted to have Kathy Lee here with me today is because of all of that that you've been creating, because God truly has used you and is using you as a vessel to get his word out. And I love seeing that. I love seeing your boldness and I love seeing your creativity and also the expertise that you bring to everything you execute. Now, I know a lot of our listeners, our viewers here know you from all the television that you do, but I want them to know the heart behind everything that you're doing. And. And it truly is the heart that beats in tandem with Jesus. And it is beautiful. I mean, just watching the video, the God who Sees it, by the way, if. If none of you have, if you haven't seen that, make sure you watch. The God who Sees it was a project that Kathy Lee Gifford did with Nicole C. Mullen. Beautiful, amazing production. And just if it doesn't, if that doesn't set your wood on fire, then your wood's wet.

Something's wrong.

Like we got. But you have also, I mean, but you've been doing so much. I mean, the video project and the Way the book tell us what caused all of this, like, like to be so bold to use your talents to bring this project out to the world.

Well, the Lord always gave me a boldness when he called me into the entertainment world, much to the chagrin of many, many Christians who thought that was an evil place and God would never lead a Christian there. And I said, oh really? Okay, yeah. So anyway, millions and millions of people later who have heard the gospel because God led me into the entertainment world and put me at NBC, put me on abc, put me on Broadway stage, put me in movies. That's where I had lots and lots of time to impact people. And I used every opportunity. And the Lord told me early, early on, because this was when I was 12 years old, I knew I was going to be an actress and a singer and a writer. I knew it, I was born for it. And all my life that's all I wanted to do. He said, kathy, do not ever separate the secular from the spiritual. We make a mistake, Hannah, of doing that. It's God's world. There's no secular world and spiritual world. There's our world in him and he created it all and he will use us anywhere he leads us if we will trust Him. So I knew he wouldn't leave me where he wouldn't supply me with what I needed.

Right.

But I have had a boldness about Jesus and the share of my knowledge of him and my studies rabbinically into the scriptures. I just, once you, once you learn this stuff, it's a fun fire that burns in you. You can't not share it. And I gotta say, I was on the movie set of a movie that I filmed a few years ago for my friend Craig Ferguson, wonderful Scottish actor and writer and comedian who had been the host of the Late Late Late show after Letterman. People remember the tall Scottish funny guy.

Yeah.

Well, I fell in love with him years ago when we first started, started working together on something and I said, he said, can you just write a movie together? Well, I went to bed that night, Woke up at 2 in the morning and went squirrel. I knew what the movie should be. Long story short, I wrote the movie for us. I raised the money and I co wrote all the music with one of the top writers in the music industry. And we found ourselves in the Highlands. And Craig says something. I'm only using this story to explain why I do what I do. He said, now we're on a set in the Highlands, a lot of guys around, but we're waiting to shoot. So there's just tons of. I'm paying for all of it. I'm going, tick tock, tick tock. I have quality time just with Craig. And he goes, he says, can I ask you something? And I said, what? And he. And Ricky Gervais. I've always said Ricky Gervais is my favorite atheist and Craig Ferguson is my favorite agnostic in the whole world. I'd rather hang out with them. And I just love them. So why do you love me and Ricky? We're not good guys. We don't believe anything you believe. We don't vote the way you. He has no idea how I vote. I don't talk about that stuff with people. But he knew my faith and I've shared it with him forever. He goes, why do you love us? And I said, well, why wouldn't I love you? You're more fun than anybody. You're good people. You really do have hearts of gold. I love being with you. You make me laugh. You're made in the image of God. Whether you believe him or not. He believes in you. And I love everything God creates. And he created you, so why wouldn't I love you? This is the point of the story, Hannah. He looked at me. He goes, kathy, no person of faith has ever told us that they love us. And I went, well, then maybe you've never met one until now.

Is that not the most heartbreaking thing?

What did Jesus say? Go into all the world and make disciples of all people. Tell them that I love them. Tell them that I came to save them from sin. That I came to show them a the way to eternal life. And not just eternal life, but life every day as Christians in our world today. And ever since we got all screwed up and separated the Old Testament from the New Testament. Never should have done that. It's one magnificent love story. And the Old Testament doesn't belong to the Jews and the New Testament belonged to the Christians. It's a lie from Satan. Just know that.

Right?

Lie. It all started with God creating a nation which was calling Abraham and Sarah to come to the promised land and start the nation of the Jews. And so our Jewish story, my I am Jewish, my father was Jewish. But you know, I. People, when did you convert to Christianity? I said, jews don't convert to Christianity. They just come to know the Messiah that of all as long as been they've longed for, long for and prayed for and prophesied. Yes, and you start teaching if we start loving our Jewish neighbors and racing the fact that Christians were grafted into Judaism.

Right, right.

Christians were not called Christians. That's a. That's a Greek word. The first believers in Jesus were called followers of the Way. That's why my film called the Way. And it wasn't until years later Jesus had died and been ascended into heaven when the. When the. The apostles started going out into the gentile world and sharing the knowledge of Yeshua. That's why they called them Christians, which means in. In Christ. Is this the. Is the. Basically the. The Greek word for Messiah?

Yeah, yeah.

And so they called Christians little Christs because followers of the Way. But the original followers of Jesus were all Jewish. And that's an. In truth for too many people in the Christian world. They don't like that. They don't want to talk about it. They don't want to study it. Do you know that every important thing that ever happened in Jesus's life happened on one of the Jewish festivals? And there are three major ones where every male was required to go to Jerusalem to worship, but there are many. And seven of them were the most important things in Jesus's life. And Jesus was a rabbi. He kept every one of them. And yet we call those followers of Jesus. We don't even know what those are.

We don't. We don't. And I can tell you, like, my life has become so much more richer, so much more full. My walk with Jesus has become so much more enlightened since I started studying Hebrew, since I started really studying what he originally was explaining. It just gives it such a depth and such a dimension, and it's almost like. I don't know if you feel like this or not, but like, I can own it to a new level.

Oh, deeper. I mean, I was. I was one of those lukewarm Christians because I wasn't getting fed. I. Right. I didn't want to go to church anymore. I just. I knew. I knew what they were saying wasn't true.

I mean, probably felt boring to you as well.

To tears. And I'm a lifelong musician, too, and some of the music made me crazy because it was built on bad theology.

Yes. Don't even get me started, girl, don't eat some of these songs. I look at the lyrics, I look and I'm like, that is that. That is completely against everything. He come. He came to tell us, came to set us free from. And you're saying, oh, this walk is so hard.

What?

He came to give us that yoke.

That is light and easy and gentle. Gentle in spirit.

Gentle. It's so. It's so Much more powerful.

The scriptures were written in the Hebrew in like really what you're going to call. So call, call it the first covenant if you have to.

Yes.

And, and, and the. The first covenant goes till Malachi, and then it starts in the second covenant or New Testament, which I, as, as I've said, I don't like. It divides people.

Yeah.

Continuation of the covenant that Jesus, that God made with Abraham. Right. He would, you know, it's the fulfillment.

He said, I did not come to abolish the law. I came to fulfill it. And we have to understand what he's fulfilling.

Exactly.

And it's. I just believe that's so important that we understand.

And when you start. Look at the fervor and the fire you have in you now. Because you. I was ready to say, you know what? I think I'm kind of done with this right now. This was years ago, but about 12 years ago, I said too much of what I want. I can't find Jesus anywhere.

Wow.

Which is where he is taught. And then they do teach the original Greek in the New Testament, the original Hebrew in the new covenant. The first covenant. But again, if you think of it as one story, you know, we were. Jews were enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt for 400 years. Well, that's the amount of time from Malachi to Matthew. 400 years. God didn't stop loving the Jews then. He was preparing them to be delivered. He was. He had his reasons for everything he does, because he is sovereign God. You know that in Hebrew. You probably do. You've studied this. There is no word in the Hebrew language for the word, for coincidence.

Isn't it incredible? There is no luck. There is no luck.

No luck. And Christians go, good luck. Bless you. Well, don't like.

No, get that off me. Get that off me.

It means that. It means things are random. No. God is either sovereign in all things or he's not God at all. And when you start ending that and when you find out that Jesus wasn't carpenter, that's a bad translation of the word Tecton. In the New Covenant, where the people that had never even been to Israel translated that word tecton meaning architect, builder. They said, oh, he was a carpenter like us. They were English. It was for the King James Version. There was no buildable wood in 1st century A.D. exactly.

It was all based on rock and stone and absolutely stone mason. Yeah.

And if we're wrong about something as simple as that, I asked my first rabbinical teacher years ago, if we're wrong about something so simple, so simple, but also wrong. About it goes everything. Everything Fire in me, Hannah, that I do. Now I'm obnoxious now about it because I'm angry. I'm righteously angry that right now we are. We are graduating people from seminaries who still. Still don't know Greek and Hebrew, and yet they. And then they keep perpetuating the myths and the truth, you know?

But I also believe, Kathy Lee, I also believe your righteous anger goes a little deeper than that. I don't think. It's just that. I think you see the joy and the abundance, and I believe the rest, like the grounding rest that comes with knowing about our covenant with God. Like, when you really understand, when you really get this and you really look at the multidimensional aspect of it, you can't stumble along. You have to know that God is over all this or there's no God. And that grounding can stabilize you and strengthen you and empower you. And I believe the righteous anger that you feel right now is because you see too many people who were where you were being born at church feeling uninspired, feeling. Feeling like maybe it's just, let me, like, get a good Bible verse that I can tweet and I should be okay today. And it's not that it's everything or it's nothing. And I believe that righteous anger will not just serve you and what you're doing, but also serve the people that God has inspired you to touch.

Well, I just want for them what. I have this person on my saint bar. It's. My friend's husband was saying, I just believe. And he grew up as a Jew. He'll always be a Jew. And. And I was sharing with him as a Jew to Jew. Also. My. My. My walk with Yeshua, he was very respectful, very listened. He's brilliant guy. And he was. You know, I've always just felt like there's an energy. God is an energy. And I said, yes, the Holy Spirit is. It means. Is a movement. Yeah, yeah, it's a movement. The church means. It's ecclesia. It means movement in the Greek. And it's not a building we go to. I mean, that's where we meet and have great fellowship. Wonderful. But, you know, it's just. It's so frustrating to me that. That religion has become our God.

Yes.

Not relationship with the living God. And I. I don't want anything to do with religion.

No. No.

Religion enslaves us. And I'm sorry. And Jesus set us free.

And Jesus calls that the law of Sin and death. Because that spirit of religion does want to divide.

Yes.

And, and you're speed. What you're speaking about is unification.

It's Satan's greatest tool, is just to get Jews, Jews to hate Christians, all of them to hate the Muslim, everybody to hate their brother and their sister. Somebody said to me the other day the funniest thing, and I thought, oh, I hadn't thought about it that way. They said, yeah, when, when Christians disagree, they get angry and they leave the church and they start their own church. They start their own nominations through history.

Yeah, right, right.

Jews, do they just say good night and then just being Jews together, they never think about on and starting their own.

Well, that's how, that's how learning happens in the Jewish culture is through communication, is through questioning, is through understanding. And that's why we have to do it with other people. We have to have that question. Corporal worship. And I think we're. We serve a God who wants more for us than just to feel good on a Sunday morning and go back to a boring life.

Imagine in Ephesians. Yes.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's amazing if you go from being somebody that has a little teeny ember in their soul to a raging fire, a raging fire that cannot be put out. And even the burning bush that, that, that Moses was walking by in Midian and Midia when he was, you know, had run away from God's plan for his life. That is a bad translation in the Bible. Do you know what that burning bush was? A burning thorn bush. Wow.

Look at that.

Born burning.

Look at that. And then we see that reflected again. It's, it's always going to come back. It's so beautiful how it.

When, when Adam and Eve sinned and what did God say now? You're going to, you're going to, you're going to toil in with the soil and the thistles and, and the thorn thorns. Yes. And then it shows up again with, with Moses and God is in the thorn bush. And then, and then again, of course, the thorn bush, the thorn.

Like, look at the ram caught in the thorns.

And that one too. Exactly. Good girl. And all of those, those thorns are only on these plants at a certain time and in a certain place. And it's in the Holy Land during, during spring.

And Jesus carried it for us and all of that.

And he will for eternity.

He will for eternity.

He. He wore that crown so we could throw ours at his feet.

Oh, girl, you preaching now. This is incredible. What is, what is your hope? You have Poured so much of yourself into the Way. An incredible documentary. It's not really a documentary. Tell me about that. Tell me about that.

The Way was based on the success of the Goddesses, which you were just discussing. I just felt like, all right, Lord, I didn't know anybody had a desire to go this deep in their faith. I haven't seen that much spiritual curiosity. And I said, but maybe it's there. I'll spend the rest of my life, Lord, if it's your will, telling these stories in a symphonic way. I have an amazing group of musicians here. I live in the Nashville area now and just geniuses. It's extraordinary. And all of them really know and love Yeshua and want to use their incredible gifts for him. So we all just got it together and I wrote three other oratorios with other brilliant composers that I love to work with. We did the God of the how and when with my friend of mine, James Brett James. He wrote Something in the Water. He wrote, you know, Carrie carries hit. What is it? Allie? Help me, help me, Jesus, take the wheel. He's in the. You know. Right. Yeah. So I. He and I had written all the music for Then came you, my movie with Craig. So I knew him from that. And then he said, what are you working on now? I said, well, this is. So he said, let's write that. I love it with him and our friend producer named Asal Oliveri. And then I wrote the God of His Word with my Jewish scientologist dear friend who I've shared you. And I took him to Israel with his wife and child and his son was the first one in the bat in the Jordan River. I also took. I took people from every walk of life and faith on that one trip to Israel and I cannot how it impacted every single person. Then the one with Nicole C. Mullen and I told you about. And then one was a group called Lewis York. They're just a duo, but they are two of the most successful writers, composers in all of black urban music ever. But love Jesus and are my neighbors here in Tennessee. And we found each other and we write pop songs together. I mean, when I go into a recording session with these, I'm like the hippest woman in the world. You are. I mean everybody from Michael Jackson, a Madonna party in the U.S. i mean. Yeah, everybody. All the Whitney. Forget it. And then white little Jewish girl named Kathy Lee.

Hey, she can carry her own messianic.

Jew who loves Jesus.

Yeah, that's right. That is so beautiful. I love your heart, Kathy Lee. It's beautiful. And I love the passion that you feel behind this because I know it's, it truly is just an outpouring of you because what you said earlier, and I want to go back to this. I don't have a lot of time, but you mentioned how you felt that there was a lot of division in the church. You felt like there was a, you know, Jews not not liking Christian, Christians not liking Jews. And one thing I kept on hearing issue say was they will know you by the love you have. One for another.

Amen. Amen.

That is just, if I can hear, like, your heart speaks so much of love right now. Inclusive, beautiful God love.

You know, I'm just, I, I trying to be faithful, like every believer is. We all have a different walk. We shouldn't judge each other's walk. Nobody has. I mean, we got to get out of the judgment business. You know, we spend too much time talking about salvation. I think I praise God for salvation. And we all have to have that.

That's the first step. It's not the last. That's the first step.

There's something called sanctification and the rest of our lives until we get to the eternal life. And that's when the work of the Holy Spirit begins in our lives. And we don't spend any, anywhere near as much attention on that. It's just, get them down the aisles, boy.

Right, right.

How many people came to know Jesus? And that's wonderful. But then we need to, we need to spend the time teaching them and growing them. So I try to write these books. There's a companion book to the movie. The movie is called the Way. The companion book is called the God of the Way, which I wrote with my friend Rabbi Jason Sobel. And he and I had written a book called the Rock the Road and the Rabbi, which was a very, very big, best selling, surprised all of us a book about studying rabbinically. And then we together have just completed a Bible study series called the God of the way series 1, 2, 3, and 4, which is available now on Faith Gateway. And people are signing up, I think. I don't know when your podcast airs, but it starts on the 16th of January, and they'll continue in the next few months as we go through the entire book, the God of the Way, going through each one of these four oratorios and going deeper than you can just go with a song, you know, and the narration. It's so important, you guys, to go deeper, the rabbis always say, but there's more. There's More.

So much more.

So exciting.

It is so exciting. It gets it, it goes just like God talks about. His Word says that we go from grace to grace, we go from faith to faith. And in one version, the amplified version says, from one heaping gift upon another heaping gift. And I truly think that life, where you are living in that abundance, comes when we're willing to apply ourselves and get in the Word. Something that your friend Rabbi Jason Sobel shared is when you get in the Word, the Word gets in you. And I believe that's so important that we understand that it's not just a book. It is a beautiful covenant, all inclusive, that he has. And when we get in there, we learn it and we apply it. Life just takes on a completely different look, feel, and we carry ourselves differently, we see people differently. And I see that in you. And I just, I just want to thank you so much for joining me. And we're going to be putting all the links here to get into that study and apply the Word. Let it get in you. It's going to change your life.

Well, when Jesus said, I am, I've come, that you might have life and life more abundantly. The word in John 10:10 is for life is Zoe. It's a Greek word, E, O, E. And it means so abundant it cannot be contained.

It's overflow.

Oh, like streams of living water. And if you're, if you're thirsty and you don't feel like you have that right now, you guys, it's because you don't. You're not feasting on, on the Word. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us to teach us the way, show us the way, provide the way. I love all the names for it, for Jehovah, God. They're all so interesting and there's so many aspects to God and so study. You're so right. And that will make, that's the one thing that will make all the difference in the world. Start studying the Greek and the Hebrew. That doesn't mean you have to become fluent in the languages.

Right.

Just get one of these books that all of us are writing. I'm not the only one. There are wonderful books out there. And get to this source material. Go back to the source, not bad translations of the perfect word of God. They've been floppy through the centuries with the Word.

Yeah, yeah. But get in that word and it will change you.

Pleasure to talk with you today, Lord. Bless you. I. I wish you great shalom. Shalom. Shalom. Which does not just mean the peace of God. It means his faithfulness. It means His. His everlasting love. His. His. His patience. His. His justice. All the attributes of God are in Shalom. I wish you that.

Praise God. Thank you so much.

Shalom. Shalom.