- [Jennifer] Famed author, Max Lucado,

has written so many books,he finds it difficult

to name every title from memory.

His latest is called Unshakable Hope.

Why did you feel led to writethis 40th book about hope?

- In this case, two things happened.

One was just a sense of despair

among people in our congregation,

people facing challenge after challenge,

issue after issue.

Generally, with the tone ofsaying, is this ever gonna stop?

And then, about the same time,

coming across this statistic that said

that the numbers of suicidesin the United States

have increased 24% since 1999.

And I just was stunned by that.

You know, if a particulardisease increased 24%,

we'd call it an epidemic.

- You write that forevery problem in life,

God has give us a promise.

Make it your aim to get soacquainted with these promises

that you can writeyourself a prescription.

- There's over 7,000promises in the Bible.

7,000.- Wow.

- And, of course, Ijust picked my favorites

and put 'em in the book.

My idea is to whet our appetites

to create our own list of promises

that we can turn to whenevertimes are difficult.

And so, what promises can do,

promises can be that life preserver

that's tossed to us whenwe're out in the water,

just giving us something to hold on to.

Promises can be just that ray of sunlight

in the clouds that says, okay,I know it's a stormy time,

but the promise of God isthat He's with me forever.

The promise of God is thatthe wages of sin is death,

but the gift of God is eternal life

through Christ Jesus our Lord.

And we begin to filter all ofthe challenges that we face,

through the promises of God.

- And you write that Godis incapable of breaking

- Yeah.- His promises.

- The promises only have valueif God is faithful, right?

And every time inscripture that God speaks,

what He says happens.

I mean, we found thatin the creation story.

And God said, and God said, and God said.

And it was, and it was, and it was.

When God says something, it happens.

He cannot lie, the Bible says.

- As a pastor, you saidthat you tend to write about

things that are on your heart,

and things that you're seeing

in your congregation and in society.

I wonder why, right now,

we're seeing people feeling anxious.

What's going on in the world

that's creating this environment?

- My hunch on this is that

we are seeing the fruitof a secular society.

When we raise up a generation of people

and tell them that all of lifeis just what they can see,

what they can touch,and what they can hear,

in other words, there'sno transcending power,

there's no good God overseeingthe affairs of mankind.

When you remove that from society,

my feeling is that thatcreates a discouraged society.

If there's no hopebeyond what I can create,

no strength beyond what I can muster,

no solution beyond whatwe can come up with,

we look around and say,well, this isn't very good.

You know, and I'd justas soon get out of it

than stay in it.

I do not want tooversimplify the whole issue

of suicide, I know it'sa very complex issue,

and I would never want to make it sound

like there's a one-step solution,

but you gotta think that a generation

that does not believe in God,

that is choosing to turn its back on God,

you've gotta think that we would soon

bear the fruits of that.

And secularism suckshope out of a society.

- [Jennifer] With God in his life,

Lucado says he has the promise of Heaven,

the assurance his sins will be forgiven,

and the Holy Spirit living inside of him,

and to drive his message home,

in Unshakeable Hope,Lucado tells his readers

what they can expect on histombstone after he's gone,

a personal message from Max.

- Then it would say something like this,

"Hello, this is Max.

"Thanks for comin' by.

"Sorry I'm not here.

"But I've gone home, finally home.

"I hope you'll be there, too."

And then I might say something like,

and I do believe in the Rapture,

so, it could happen while you're here,

so you might step away.

(laughter)

- [Jennifer] Jennifer Wishon, CBN News.

- That's right.(laughter)