Mark Lowry: A “Mary, Did You Know” SEQUEL & The GLORY of GODLY Interruptions | Kirk Cameron on TBN

Humorist and performer, Mark Lowry, joins Kirk Cameron to share just how much we can learn from Godly interruptions in our lives. He discusses finding the ‘diamonds’ during hard times, highlights several interesting examples of divine interruptions in the Bible and even drops a hint about a “Mary, Did You Know?” sequel?! Don’t miss this riveting interview on Takeaways with Kirk Cameron on TBN!

Join Kirk Cameron to discuss pressing issues Christians are facing with compassionate, well-informed guests. Together we will find actionable takeaways that we can use today, this week, and this month to bring more of Heaven to Earth.

This is something that we’ve all experienced at one time or another in various
Show me that smile again. We don’t need to know uh, they’re manning up your car ID.
Oh, hold on. Hold on.
Hold on. Little thing.
Hold on. Is that Mark? Yes.
How are you? Oh. Am I am I a little early?
No, no, no, my, Mark. You, you have no idea that you don’t know how perfect this is.
I was just sharing about our topic for today’s takeaways, life interruptions. And so it’s kind of ironic,
you know, how you’re, you know Well, I’ve, um, always honored to be an interruption. You know?
I came back to Bill Gather. One time, he said, you’re sorta like a wart. You just keep coming back.
You know, keep interrupting.
Well, Mark, I know that you know a lot about interruptions.
And that’s what I want us to talk about right now on takeaways.
Mark is a a singer, a songwriter, and a humorist. He’s Pend the Christmas classic.
Mary, did you know? And he’s performed with the Grammy Award winning Gaither vocal band for many, many years.
Mark is widely known for entertaining audiences around the world with his music and his unique storytelling abilities.
I have to ask you, you have a a YouTube video that’s called interruptions.
And it’s got over a million views.
And in it, you talk about god being in the middle of our life’s interruptions.
Where where did you come up with this whole idea? And, uh, what are you talking about?
Well, I was having first one morning with one of my brilliant friends. Her name is Gloria Gaither.
And, uh, you know, she panned all those incredible songs, like, because he lives, I can face tomorrow.
And the king is coming, and it is finished and all and she and her husband built.
Well, I always loved breakfast with Gloria when I was with the vocal band. And she said one morning.
She said, you know, it seems to me like god is in the interruptions of my life, and he is sometimes in my plans.
And I start thinking about my life. I’ll just give you the cliff notes.
You know, I went home and started thinking, well, maybe mine mine too. I was born. Yeah.
That was the first one. I didn’t ask to be born, but mama met that in, but a bing, but a bang.
Here I am. I had ADHD before they knew how to abbreviate it.
Uh, when I was a kid, it wasn’t ADHD.
It was BRAT, you know, and And the thing is, mom and dad thought they knew how to raise kids because I have a perfect older brother than I show up, and they don’t try that again for 9 years when my sister you showed up.
And then let’s see. I’ve had tumor surgeries. I’ve had thyroid tumor. I had a parotid gland tumor.
Uh, those were interruptions. And Gloria talked about how when her son, Benjie, was probably 4.
She was doing the dishes. And then she came up and tugged on her apron. Come. I’m a come.
Come with me. Come right now. And and she said, no, Benjie, I’ve gotta do these dishes.
Oh, mama, please come. You know, you’re just begging her to come.
And So finally, she put down the dishes and followed her little four year old outside and said, look, mama, look at the sunset.
And she said, you know, how did she say it?
I almost missed the sunset for some dishes.
And to live in the moment, to to look at those little children that are interrupting you, not as an, uh, a nuisance, but as a side adventure, maybe, you know, that god’s up to something here.
You know?
I I love that because so often we’re frustrated by interruptions.
Whether it’s distractions that come in in the middle of our important work in the form of little kids or a health problem or a relational disaster, Mark, you mentioned quite a few things.
You talked about health issues. Uh, you talked about ADHD.
You talked about these kinds of things that that nobody asks for.
How has Gloria’s encouragement to you to see god and interruptions helped you with some of those specifically?
Oh, I, you know, I was doing it and really didn’t even know it because every time I go to a van wreck, a tumor surgery, or dysfunctional childhood, I look for the diamonds because I now know that those will turn into stories that I will tell on stage.
But you know, I was thinking about Jesus in interruptions. He had some too.
The woman with the issue of blood interrupted his journey and got healed.
Uh, one day Jesus was preaching. We don’t know what about, but they saw through the roof.
Let a crippled guy interrupt him on his third point.
Jesus saves him, heals him, and the interruption made the Bible and the sermon didn’t.
Here’s god preaching, and nobody took notes. I I love the
lens through which you’re you’re you’re seeing all of this. This is fantastic.
And and so interruptions are all through the Bible. Mark.
And god doesn’t give us his plans ahead of time.
Forgive me for interrupting you right now, but I I’ve gotta ask, do you think that there is an important point to god interrupting our plans?
I mean, do you think that in the providence of god who knows all things, none of these things are actually interruptions to him, but they are to us.
No. Do you think that there’s an important point to that?
Yes. He’s the daddy. We’re the kids. Let him worry about the mortgage.
You know, I am a kid. I get to play in the house.
I don’t have to worry about things how they work out. And I don’t have to know where we’re going.
You know? I just get in the car and he drives.
I mean, that’s the way to look at life.
And I think the key to that is learning to welcome change.
I believe one of the keys to life, at least a peaceful life, a contented life is to learn to not only endure it, but welcome it.
And that’s hard.
Think of somebody now who’s got a diagnosis, a health diagnosis that is, uh, is not encouraging.
How how what would you say to them? To say god is in the middle of this interruption.
How could this be a good thing?
I I wouldn’t say it is a good thing.
But I would say he works all things together for our good.
And according to his purpose, and I prayed to god that I’ll believe that if I ever have a bad doctor’s report, and I’ve had some that were that were pretty bad, but none of them were malignant.
And if you’re going through that, you could teach me I don’t know that I could teach you anything, but I do believe that god is good.
I believe is good all the time.
And like a song I wrote a long time ago, I don’t know what a center you are, but I know what a savior he is.
And I don’t know where your feet have taken you, but his climb Calvary’s hill.
I don’t know what words you’ve spoken, but his words were father, forgive.
I don’t know what a center you are, but I know what a savior he is.
And I’ve heard he can heal. Now I’m baptist. We didn’t get a lot of that. But you Pentecostals.
You you got all those miracles. We have to walk by faith, and that’s enough for me too.
Mark, I love that. I I absolutely love that.
And when I think of some of the the catastrophic interruptions in the scriptures, I think of what Mary must have thought of or the disciples must have thought of as a tragic interruption to the greatest rabbi ministry on the planet.
Here’s Jesus 3 years into his public ministry. He is coming to set the captives free. He’s healing the sick.
He’s giving sight to the blind.
And then all of a sudden, there’s this tragic interruption of an of an arrest of an illegal trial and the crucifixion of the lord of glory.
What an awful interruption. Oh, hallelujah.
Didn’t even understand that there is no way to interrupt the redemptive plans of god.
In fact, god uses uses Jesus’s death on the cross to destroy death and the power of hell.
And so the very interruption is Yes. Turns out to be the very problem
in the yard
to the greatest problem we all have.
Oh, my soul. And you know what?
While they were worrying about everything, those 3 days that he was in the grave, he was in hell cleaning that out.
You know, Peter says he went down to set the captives free.
And, oh my lord, he was doing the work of god even when they we it’s never good to worry because god’s always up to something.
Gloria Gaither said another brilliant thing. She said god is up to some thing.
It is eternal, and it’s for your good.
Yes. It is.
So even when you can’t what they’ll preacher say when you can’t trace his hand, trust his heart.
That’s right. That’s right. I think it was Charles spurgeon who said that when I cannot trace the hand of god in this circumstance, I can always trust his heart because I know he’s working all things together for my good, and he’s the blessed controller of all things.
Yeah. You know, man? And he’s my father, and he’s my father. He’s the most perfect father ever.
You wanna see the image of god look at a father that loves their children. There it is.
It’s a broken image. But it’s the best we got.
A healthy father who loves their children in a healthy way is the most perfect example.
And for you to think You love your children more than god loves you. How rude is that?
The only way you know how to love your children is because god’s in you Right?
That’s right.
I mean, god is love.
I love I love that. And interruptions have actually, uh, been the very best things that have happened in my life.
I think that that if it weren’t for god’s interruptions, I wouldn’t even be a Christian.
I mean, I had no plans to come to faith in the lord.
I was perfectly happy as an atheist on the TV show growing, growing pains.
And god interrupted my atheism when he presented the gospel to me, uh, through a preacher at a church that I didn’t even wanna listen to.
And then he granted me the gift of repentance and faith and eternal life.
Uh, I had another interruption of my singleness when I met my beautiful wife who played my girlfriend on growing pains.
And then all of a sudden, I chucked my, uh, my bachelor live in La Vida Loca, uh, out the window, and all I wanted was to be with my beautiful wife.
And we’ve been together now for 30 years. So I thank god for interruptions.
The difficult ones, uh, that you’ve been talking about, he will work for our good.
And then the things we’re not looking for, we’re not even asking for, may turn out to be the very best things that ever happened in our life.
Don’t you think that’s Well,
you might as well oh, yes. And while you’re there, you might as well look for diamonds.
I mean, you know, when I hit Shepherd Drive, I was on a motorcycle, went face first into Shepherd Drive near my home without a helmet because in tech, is you don’t have to wear your helmet because, you know, we don’t care about our stupid people.
And I did not have my helmet on. Well, on the way down, I told myself 2 things.
Don’t go to sleep. There are cars coming. Don’t take a nap.
This is no time for that, and this is gonna hurt.
And I hit my head, but I I came up and I was awake.
I started taking notes. I have learned as a storyteller, especially don’t miss it. You’re going through it.
You might as well not miss it.
Look for diamonds, you know, and then the one of the, uh, ambulance guys was, uh, a Christian and recognized me and prayed for me and And, I mean, just god was doing all kinds of things, and it’s one of the funniest stories I’ve ever told.
If you Google Mark Lauery Motorcycle wreck, you can watch that, but I’m always looking for, uh, for the diamonds because, look, we got 80, 90 years here.
We’re we’re not gonna get to do this again.
Will have all of eternity to, uh, experience what we’ve learned here.
And we’re walking by faith and without faith, it’s impossible to please god.
And so you can’t please him when you get home because your faith will be sight.
So if you’re gonna please, and you gotta do it here.
I love that. That’s right. We gotta walk by faith, not by sight.
And I’m thinking of the person who may be watching right now and thinking, but the goodness and the love of god, uh, shouldn’t express itself in the kind of interruptions I am experiencing right now.
These are too difficult. These are too hard.
Let me say to you that that I have a wise pastor that once said to me often we we try to make life line up like a mathematics problem.
You know, A plus B equals C.
When really we need to be looking at as a narrative, as a story.
Imagine the very best stories have plot twists that you were never expecting.
There’s There’s often a bad guy in this story and tragedy that happens, but that’s what makes the story so compelling.
Yes. The
key is we know the author. The author of the story knows what he’s doing.
So you may be in a nail biting chapter of the book right now, but Yeah.
You have to remember that the author knows where he’s going in your story.
And by the time you close the book on the last page, you’re gonna say, Wow.
That was an epic story, and I’m so glad I hung in there and was faithful to play my role well.
The very best of stories, whether it’s the lord of the rings, or whether it’s Star Wars.
There’s always a Darth Vader. There’s always a sauron. There’s always against all odds.
The the underdog is is gonna have to go through the the valley of the shadow of death if this is gonna be a really a hero movie.
And you were just saying something to me during the commercial break.
That, uh, if you went to the movies and it had no drama, talk about that.
You’d want your money back. You know, I went through a tornado on a houseboat, and that’s another story that I tell, but I’ll just tell you it was scary.
The next morning, all my friends at the boat dock, they’d all been through this before.
They were all laughing, having a good time. I come down the next morning, it’s still shaking.
And I see them laughing, and I think, well, I would enjoy that too.
Had I known I was gonna live through it?
And I bet you when we get to heaven, we’re gonna look back over our lives and say, I’d enjoy that so much more.
Had I really believed I was gonna live through it?
Yeah.
And no matter what we’re going through, we’re gonna live through this. So we might as well enjoy the trip.
That’s right. Mark, I love that you’re a storyteller, and that’s what makes you such a great songwriter.
So you wrote the song. Mary, did you know? It’s one of my very favorite songs.
I can’t imagine uh, how you must feel after 30 years of Mary did you know being sung all over the world by everybody.
And and the lyrics in those in in in that song are so great.
Mary, did you know that the little boy that you delivered would one day deliver you?
What inspired you to write that song?
Well, I wrote the lyric. Buddy Green wrote the music, and I wanna make that clear.
I I don’t write me. I figure if you can’t read music, you shouldn’t write it.
And I don’t read it. So but I, uh, was asked to write the Christmas tree production for my church in 1984 and being very young, I was 26 and not knowing that I couldn’t. I said I would.
And I wrote a monologue uh, to go between a couple of songs that was the germ of this because the child that you delivered would one day on a cross deliver hurt was in the monologue that I wrote.
And the the child that you do, uh, the baby, uh, when she kissed her little baby, she wasn’t just kissing another child.
She was kissing face of god. And I remember those standing out to me.
And so once this whole musical thing was over for my church, I went back and revisited that and thought, if I could sit down with Mary and ask her, uh, over a cup of coffee, what it was like, raising god.
What was it like changing god’s diapers? What was it like having jehovah nurse at your breast?
What was it like teaching the word of god to talk?
I mean, most of the questions I have for Mary didn’t make the song because they didn’t rhyme.
I had a lot of questions for Mary.
You know, uh, what was it like being his little brothers, following him through school?
Uh, did she ever make him turn the music down.
Did she ever say I can’t have anything nice to you kids have grown?
Did she ever say, uh, clean up this mess, were you born in a barn?
I mean, we don’t know. And what what was it like between this in the silent years between 12:30, I would love to ask her what kind of teenager was he, you know, uh, and good night gods in the house why didn’t someone keep a journal?
And did he perform miracles around the house?
And if he didn’t, how did she know he could?
Because the next time we see him after twelve years of age, he’s thirty.
He knows he’s the messiah. She knows he’s the messiah, and he’s still living at home.
She’s ready for him to go messiah. That’s what we have here.
She walks up and says they’ve run out of wine. Well, I mean, she didn’t say, hey.
You’re gonna turn water into wine? Oh, she said, hey. They run out of wine.
I think that’s why she did it because he but then he looks at her and says, woman well, let’s stop there for a minute.
If you’re gonna call your mama woman, you better be god.
But he said, woman, what have I to do with me?
It’s not my time, which proves he did not know everything.
He he he even said, I don’t know when I’m coming back.
I’m only my father and John Hagee now. They’re the only one. No. No.
But, anyway, so, uh, there are things he didn’t know. He set aside.
Uh, and but mama evidently didn’t know because his first recorded miracle was just keep the party going was turning water into wine, and then baptist quickly turned it into grape juice.
That’s right. Mark, I’m sorry.
It’s hard to even hold the conversation because you’re making me laugh so much. Oh my goodness.
This is this is absolutely fantastic. What has been the impact?
Have you heard stories, uh, of how your song, Mary, did you know has not only been successful, but really impacted people in their life.
Well, I hope that it has made them think about Jesus because this song really isn’t about Mary.
It’s about the baby. And what he will do.
And now looking back what he has done, and I’ve heard from a lot of newborn mothers uh, when they’re holding their baby and hearing that song, it it touches them.
But I, uh, I don’t have any stories that just stick out.
But I’m so grateful, you know, because like I said earlier, I’ve not done this twice.
This I’m a one hit wonder. And this is it.
I tell everybody in my concerts I end with this song because when you have one hit, you better end with it.
You know, and I only have one. And it’s Mary, did you know?
But I’m telling you, if the lord sent me down and said, Mark, you can leave one thing behind.
Because I don’t have children. You can leave one thing behind.
I would have chosen that song because I believe it I believe it with all my heart that god came for us, and he wrapped himself in flesh, and he walked amongst us, and he showed us how the love and who to love, which is everybody.
And he then died for us, and then he rose again from the dead And if you believe that, you are saved that if you confess with your mouth, the lord Jesus, and believe in your heart, that god has raised him from the dead.
It’s of course, it’s important that he died. He asked us to remember his death.
He never asked us to remember his birth, but he asked us to remember his death until he comes.
But I wanna tell you he rose again.
The death is important, but it got him to the resurrection, which is what saves us.
If we believe it.
That’s right. You know, my wife likes to say that, uh, Mary was a Christian in such a unique way in that we talk today about those who follow Christ have Christ in them, right?
The hope of glory. And Jesus says, if if you abide in me and I, my word, abides in you, Christ in me is really what it’s all about.
That’s what it means to be born again. And Mary literally had Christ in her.
And and what it must have been like, to be this young girl
She was the first one to carry the gospel.
She carried the gospel incarnate. Yeah.
And for her plans to be interrupted as a young girl who was wanting to honor god with her life, she was blessed by god, and all of a sudden she has her her reputation is on the line.
Uh, she’s now pregnant. This is, by all appearances, an illegitimate child.
She’s facing potential divorce from from Joseph and yet god works all of this together, not only for her good, not only for Joseph’s good, Uh, not only for Jesus is good, but for your good and for mine and for everybody who’s watching us for all time.
Wow.
Yeah. I know. God is in the corruptions. He is, and he is crazy about us.
Anybody who’d love you enough to die for you is on your side. He is pulling for you.
You know, he’s the hound of heaven is on your trail. That’s why you’re watching this. You know?
Uh, I I really believe the lord can send people to to TV channels or YouTube channels or Facebook pages, because I I am on there all the time with my little show called Just Whenever, and we’ve seen the old hymns but I see them coming in, and they’re saying I needed this today.
You know, you can be a blessing even in your if you’re like me, you’re sixty three or older, you could start your own Facebook page, share your wisdom, sing your songs.
You don’t have to be good. I’m not as good as I used to be, but I ain’t dead yet.
So I think we need to keep going, keep loving Jesus. He may end up giving you a song.
I’m working on Joe’s did you know? Joseph, did you know? And Jesus, we know you knew.
I’m working on those. You
know? Jesus, we know we know that you knew.