Lee Strobel
20 min read ⭑
“Any Christian’s life should be fueled by the Holy Spirit. He is present in us. He guides us. He points us toward truth. I’ve seen in my life ways in which the Holy Spirit has opened my eyes to things that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible.”
There’s a good reason the Washington Post called Lee Strobel “one of the evangelical community’s most popular apologists.” His journey from atheism to faith — as told in the popular film “The Case for Christ” — has inspired millions to follow Jesus for themselves. With more than 40 books under his belt and 18 million copies sold, he’s tackled topics ranging from “The Case for Christ” to “The Case for Faith,” “The Case for a Creator,” “The Case for Grace” and more, all rooted in his investigative approach to spiritual questions.
His latest release, “Seeing the Supernatural,” delves into well-documented cases of people experiencing a reality beyond this physical world. Today, Lee is opening up about his favorite ways to reach the lost for Jesus, the long-lasting effects of a troubled relationship with his father and real-life stories of miracles and glimpses of heaven. You’ll also read about his own supernatural experiences with God and the books that have informed his faith over the years.
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
The meals we enjoy are about so much more than the food we eat. So how does a “go-to” meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
It’s funny you ask about restaurants because my wife, Leslie, and I sort of have a ministry to restaurant workers — an informal ministry. We go out and eat quite a bit because Leslie is not the world’s greatest cook (and she admits that). It gives us an opportunity to build relationships with people who work in restaurants. Many years ago, we thought, Rather than just visit a random number of restaurants, why not focus on a few we can return to on a regular basis and get to know the people, make friendships and ultimately share Jesus with them? So we go back to a handful of restaurants over and over again. We’ve become friends with so many servers, managers and cooks. There’s one particular little restaurant called El Chaparro in Texas that we go back to often. It’s a Mexican restaurant owned by a local family. I like to eat fajitas because it takes some time to make them. Putting them together gives you time to talk, linger at the table and have conversations. So we really enjoy building those relationships. We’ve seen several restaurant people come to faith as a result. My life goal is to drag as many people to heaven with me as I can.
We had one waiter from Colombia we got to know. I remember one day we came to the restaurant. He didn’t have our table, but he glanced over at us and smiled. As he walked past our table, he said, “I did it.” Later, we got to sit down with him and ask, “What do you mean?” He said, “I received Christ last night.” The look on his face of joy and fulfillment and satisfaction and grace was just palpable. So those are the kinds of things that keep us going to the same places over and over. We call it strategic consumerism.
Spencer Scott; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity do you love engaging in that also helps you find essential spiritual renewal?
For me, it’s doing anything with my wife, Leslie. We met when we were 14 years old on a chance encounter on a sidewalk in Chicago. She went home and told her mom, “I met the boy I’m going to marry.” We dated on and off in high school and got married. She was 19, and I was 20. We’ve been married for almost 53 years now. We’re best friends and have been together so long that we just love hanging out. It can be anything. It can be going for a car ride. It can be going to an ice cream shop. It can be sitting around the house and chatting. We just sync up so well and enjoy each other so much that hanging with Leslie is my favorite pastime.
Any excuse I can have to hang out with Leslie and chat and just cuddle and talk about life is time well spent — especially if it involves the grandkids. We have four. The oldest is 19, and then we have a 17-year-old, a 14-year-old and a 12-year-old. They’re all girls except for the youngest one, Oliver Lee. He’s named after me.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power head-on?
One of the most difficult things for me revolves around probably the simplest doctrine about God: that he loves us. I have a difficult time accepting that he loves me personally. I know he does. I trust the Bible. I’ve felt his love, but I lived a very immoral and drunken and profane and narcissistic, self-absorbed life when I was an atheist. I hurt a lot of people. It’s hard for me sometimes to accept the fact that God has forgiven me and loves me. I know it’s true intellectually, but emotionally, it can be difficult.
Part of that stems from a complicated relationship I had with my father. My parents had three children in rapid succession. They threw themselves into their lives. Then my dad was kind of done with the dad thing. Several years went by, and then, oops, all of a sudden, my mom found herself pregnant with me unexpectedly. My dad and I just never jived. We never connected. We had a very difficult relationship. We had a big argument on the eve of my high school graduation, and he told me, “I don’t have enough love for you to fill my little finger.”
If you look at psychology, you’ll learn that people who have a father who disappointed them or with whom they have a difficult relationship or who abused them in some way often walk down the path of atheism. They don’t want to know a heavenly Father because their earthly father hurt them. That’s part of the reason that I went down the road of atheism. I had intellectual objections to the faith, but my father issues also propelled me down that path.
There’s a cure for it, as I discovered later in life, which is to imagine what the perfect father would be like. We can all imagine what the perfect father would be like. He’d be loving, kind, gracious, our biggest cheerleader. That is a picture of our heavenly Father. He’s not a magnified version of our earthly father. He’s the Father we need.
I still struggle sometimes with questioning God’s love for me because of all the things I did as a nonbeliever. I hurt so many people, including by setting up an abortion in which I arranged for the destruction of an innocent, unborn child when I was in college. These things linger and sometimes nag us at moments when we wonder if God truly loves us and has forgiven us. I believe he has, but the emotional side of that can be difficult for me.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
I just released a new book called “Seeing the Supernatural.” It was a very exciting project for me to delve into. I looked at everything from angels and demons to mystical dreams, near-death experiences, deathbed encounters and all the things that are part of the spiritual reality. My background is in journalism and law. I tend to be very analytical. I’m always looking for corroboration. I wanted to see what evidence there was that there is a realm beyond what we can see and touch and put to the test. That’s the approach I took to this book. I wanted to see if there was any corroboration, for instance, of deathbed visions — which are very common — where people will have a vision of what’s to come just before they die. We see it in the book of Acts, where Stephen, who’s described as full of the Holy Spirit, just before he dies, sees the heavens open up and sees the Father and Son together.
Similarly, it’s very common for people who are about to pass from this world to see angels coming for them and a realm beyond our own. In fact, one huge hospice in New York State had researchers go in and tell people if you have a vision before you die unlike any you’ve ever had, would you please tell us? They said this because some people are reluctant. They don’t want you to think they’re crazy or have dementia. The researchers found that 88% had a pre-death vision. These are extremely common. We’ve certainly studied thousands of them and concluded that they’re definitely not hallucinations, fantasies or memories caused by grief, nor are they projections of the subconscious mind or products of an overactive imagination. These are very real visions that people have. Again, I’m looking for corroboration. The corroboration I found are cases in which people see in the realm to come or see people who have died — even though they didn’t know they had died.
For instance, there was a woman named Doris. This was a very well-documented case. Doris was on her deathbed, and she saw the heavens open up. She saw angelic beings and her father, who had died several years earlier, trying to welcome her to this next realm. And then she got this puzzled look on her face and said, “Wait a minute. Why is Vida with my father? That doesn’t make any sense. Why is Vida there?” And then she died. Well, Vida was her sister who had died three weeks earlier, but nobody had told Doris because she was ill, and they didn’t want the shock of her sister’s death to kill her, so they withheld that news from her. And yet, on her deathbed, she saw her sister in the realm to come. That, to me, is the kind of corroboration I’m looking for.
Similarly, during near-death experiences in which people are clinically dead but are going to be revived, they often see or hear things that would have been impossible for them to see or hear if they hadn’t had an authentic out-of-body experience. Here’s a quick example: a woman named Maria was dying in the hospital. She was declared clinically deceased, and yet she later said she was conscious the whole time. Her spirit separated from her body. She was watching from the ceiling the resuscitation efforts on her body. Ultimately, she was revived, and her spirit returned to her body. She said, “By the way, there’s a ceiling fan here in this room, and on the top of one of the blades is a red sticker.” She couldn’t see it from where she was in the room because it was on the top of one of the blades. But she saw it from her perspective near the ceiling where she was watching the resuscitation efforts. So they got a ladder and looked on the top of the blade — and there was the sticker, just as she had described it.
That’s just one of many examples of cases where people see or hear things that would have been impossible for them to see or hear if they didn’t authentically have an out-of-body experience during a near-death experience. So that’s what I’m looking for — miracle cases that are more than merely stories told in a church or seen on the internet. I’m looking for stuff published in medical journals. For instance, the story of a woman who was blind for a dozen years with an incurable condition who learned to read Braille, who went to a school for the blind, who walked with a white cane and who married a Baptist pastor. Then one night, they’re getting ready to go to bed, and she’s in bed. He comes over and puts his hand on her shoulder, begins to cry and begins to pray. He says, “Lord, I know you can heal my wife. I know you can heal her, and I pray that you do it tonight.” With that, she opened her eyes to perfect vision and the perfect vision stayed for the next 50 years. She’s been fine. She said, “I was blind when my husband prayed for me, and when I opened my eyes, I could see perfectly. It’s a miracle.” That was documented by multiple medical researchers and published in a medical journal as a case study.
So that’s the kind of evidence I’m looking for. That’s what I talk about in this book, “Seeing the Supernatural.” I’m trying to help people understand that there is a realm beyond what we can see and touch and put to the test.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
Any Christian’s life should be fueled by the Holy Spirit. He is present in us. He guides us. He points us toward truth. I’ve seen in my life ways in which the Holy Spirit has opened my eyes to things that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible. I’ll give you an example. One of the things that I’ve learned to do after I pray daily is to pause and say, Lord, if you want to speak to me, if your Holy Spirit wants to convict me or guide me, I just want to be quiet for a few minutes and invite you to speak to me if you so desire. I’ll be quiet and let my spirit be open for several minutes, sometimes 10 or 15 minutes, to see if God is speaking. Most of the time, I don’t feel anything in particular. But then there are those times when you feel guidance, you feel wisdom, you feel conviction.
One time, when I was a pretty new Christian, I felt very specifically from the Holy Spirit that he wanted me to empty my bank account and give the money anonymously to a young woman in our church. She was a single woman whom my wife and I knew had gone through some struggles. It was very specific — that I should get an anonymous cashier’s check and mail it on Friday. I told Leslie about this. We only had $500 in our savings account at that time. I said, God’s impressed this on me. What do we do? She prayed, and we prayed together. She said, “Honey, I feel the same thing. I feel this is from the Lord.” So we emptied our account of the $500. We got an anonymous cashier’s check on Friday afternoon, and we mailed it to this young woman in our church. Monday morning, my phone rings, and it’s that woman. (She called before the mail was delivered that day.) She was crying and said, “Something terrible has happened. Would you pray for me? My car broke down over the weekend, and it’s going to cost $500 to fix. I don’t have $500, and if I can’t get my car fixed, I’m going to lose my job and my apartment. I don’t know what to do. Would you please pray that God would provide this $500 to fix my car?” I said, “Absolutely. I’d love to pray for that.”
Sure enough, that afternoon, she opened her mail and out fell an anonymous $500 cashier’s check that she used to fix her car. What was cool about that to me is God didn’t have to do it that way. He could have prevented her car from breaking down, but then my wife and I wouldn’t have had the joy of being an answer to her prayer. My faith wouldn’t have been deepened by that experience with the Holy Spirit. It gave me confidence to know that when he guides, I need to follow — even if it seems risky and, golly, that’s all the money we have in the world right now. If this is from God, it’s from God, and we ought to do it. I just look back at that as evidence that God still guides and encourages. It was a win-win-win. We won because we saw God’s answer in our lives. She won because God provided for her in a time of need. Over the years, it’s been an incident that I always bring back to my mind in those quiet moments when I invite God to speak to us, not knowing what kind of adventure he might take us on at that moment.
I also had an encounter with an angel when I was 12 years old that I never used to tell people because I was embarrassed by it. I thought maybe it was just bad pizza I ate or something. It was the only dream I remember from my childhood. In this vivid vision, I was in the kitchen of my home, and an angel appeared and began extolling heaven and how wonderful heaven was. I casually said to him, “I’m going to go there someday.” He looked at me and said, “How do you know?” I was shocked. I said, “What do you mean, ‘How do I know?’ What kind of question is that? I’m a good kid. I got good grades in school. I pretty much obeyed my parents. I’ve got nice friends. I’m good to them.” I was trying to justify that I was good enough to earn heaven. He looked at me and said, “That doesn’t matter.” This chill went down my spine. How can that not matter? All my efforts to be dutiful as a son and do good things. Then he said, “Someday you’ll understand.” I kind of wrote it off and suppressed it. Then, about 16 years later, as a nonbeliever and an atheist, my wife brought me to a church. I heard the gospel for the first time. It isn’t based on a good deed. It is a free gift of God’s grace. My mind instantly flashed back to that encounter with that angel.
I realized there were two forms of corroboration that was an authentic experience. Number one, the angel told me something that day that I did not know — that salvation is by grace alone. Number two, he made a prophecy that someday I’d understand. That prophecy came true 16 years later. I was so embarrassed. I remember, even as a Christian, I would never tell people that. I remember my ordination. They always have these theologians there, and they’re questioning you about your doctrine, making sure you’re all orthodox on your beliefs. I’m thinking to myself, Do I tell them about this experience I had? Are they going to think I’m weird? But I shouldn’t withhold it. Maybe they need to know. I said to all those theologians, “I’ve got to tell you something that happened to me when I was 12,” and I told them the story. They looked at me, and their basic reaction was, “Yeah, OK, that’s fine.” They weren’t surprised. They weren’t shocked that sometimes God does stuff like that. Anyway, I’ve had a couple of experiences like that where God has intervened in a way that I think was definitely supernatural.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
My son — who has a Ph.D. in theology and is a professor of spiritual formation at the Talbot School of Theology at Biola University — wrote a book not long ago titled “Where Prayer Becomes Real.” I almost died in 2011. I was on my deathbed for several days. God saved me from that, but my son ministered to me at that time in a very unique way. It’s a unique experience to have your son minister to you. Right now, I’m almost in my mid-70s, and he’s in his 40s. I knew him when he was just a little kid, but now he’s this profound thinker.
He took me on a prayer journey that I still use to this day. It has enriched my life. I think it’s called a Prayer of Relinquishment. It took him about an hour to guide me through the process. I usually don’t spend that much time when I do it now, but I go through the same practice, which is to systematically strip away all of our identity that we tend to rely on. In other words, while we were praying, he guided me by saying, “OK, you’re not a father. You’re not a grandfather. You feel that being stripped away from you. You’re not an author. You’re not a pastor. You’re not a speaker. You’re not a husband.” You systematically strip away these identities that you tend to rely upon. It took about an hour to strip away all these different identities until, at the end, all that was left was me and God. No identity to try to color or influence things. It’s just simply me and God.
That was a very profound experience when he took me through that process. It took quite a long time to do it thoroughly. It was very profound to then connect with God at that kind of level, not as a pastor, not as an author, not as a father, but just as me, as a child of God. I do that to this day, periodically, by taking time to strip away all of the things that people see. I strip everything down to just me and God so I can reconnect with him at that level. That’s been very profound for me.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and your heart?
One of the most profound books that influenced me, especially as a young believer, was J.I. Packer’s book, “Knowing God.” That’s a great volume talking about not just knowing God in an intellectual sense but experiencing God in a profound, personal way. I’ll never forget this great line: “To be forgiven by God the Judge is a wonderful thing, but to be adopted by God the Father is better yet.” He talks about adoption and what that means to be adopted. John 1:12 says, “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” We become adopted as a child of God, and as he says somewhere in his book, if you don’t understand the process of adoption, you don’t understand Christianity. Maybe it stems from the difficulty I had with my relationship with my dad. I don’t know, but I found that book to be very profound, influential and formative in my life.
Another book that influenced me greatly as a younger person and has stuck with me all these years is the book “To Kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee. It’s not a Christian book. Rather, it’s a book about racism in the South. It’s fiction, but reading it as a young person for the first time in junior high school opened my eyes to racism and how insidious it is. It’s a great story of someone doing the right thing in the midst of a very tumultuous time in our country’s history. I like to go back and read that every once in a while. They made it into a play on Broadway recently, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to see it.
“Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis is another one that influences so many people who have an intellectual bent to faith and are trying to understand the philosophy of faith and how it syncs up with the reality of God. That was a very helpful book. A lot of books by C.S. Lewis I found to be helpful.
We all have things we cling to to survive or even thrive in our fast-paced, techno-driven world. How have you been successful in harnessing technology to aid in your spiritual growth?
I have been unsuccessful. My nickname is Analog Strobel. It’s not that I dislike technology; it’s very helpful. I wrote my first book back in the 1980s, before I was a Christian, on an IBM Selectric typewriter. I don’t recommend trying to write books on typewriters. It’s very, very hard. I much prefer the technology of Microsoft Word and being able to move things around and edit things on the fly. It revolutionized everything.
I’m just not a technological person. I’ll be honest, I’m in my 70s, I’ve got a bad heart, I’ve got one kidney, and I’ve got five bulging discs in my back. I’m not going to live that much longer. The average American male lives to about 76, and I’m almost 73. I’m OK with that in terms of technology because, as I see AI come in, I don’t know that I have the capacity to engage with it in any meaningful way. I’m ready to go to the next realm, be with God and let other people who are smarter than me wrestle with this newfound artificial intelligence. It’s unbelievably wonderful and terrible at the same time.
I don’t have a staff or even an assistant — it’s just me. And so when my computer breaks down or I get screwed up in some app, my IT department is my grandkids. They come over and fix it. Somehow, they shake their heads and fix it in about two seconds. Then they say, “Oh, Papa, you just don’t get it, do you?” And I don’t know how these kids get it so quickly, but somehow, this next generation is born with an intuitive sense of how to use technology.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
God is continuing to sharpen the focus of my calling. As Christians, we start out thinking we have a calling of some sort from God. We maneuver our way through things. We rely on the Holy Spirit to guide us and lead us. Over time, I’ve sharpened my focus on what God has called me to do, which is to drag as many people to heaven with me as I can. So that’s my focus, and that’s where I want to spend the rest of my years.
I’m writing some new books. I’ve got a motion picture coming out in movie theaters in December called “The Case for Miracles.” It’s a documentary. We hope that reaches a lot of folks who are curious about the corroborated miracles that have taken place. I have another book called “The Case for Christmas” that’s coming out in September, which looks at evidence for the incarnation and Christmas.
I’m a writer by nature, by temperament and by giftedness. And because I love to do it, I’m going to keep writing books that I hope will open people’s eyes to God for the rest of my life. I’ve got a couple of projects that are percolating now that hopefully will come to fruition before I pass, and I’m looking forward to working on those. The greatest joy of my life is when people send me a note saying, “God used your book to bring me to faith in Christ.” That, to me, is the greatest sense of satisfaction I can get.
Lee Strobel says that his atheism was, in part, due to the broken relationship he had with his father. One study reveals that 26% of adult children are estranged from their fathers, compared to only 6% with their mothers. Sadly, adult children are also less likely to reconnect with their fathers than they are with their mothers.
As widespread as estrangement from fathers is, it still doesn’t account for all the children who have been hurt, traumatized, or abandoned by their fathers.
It’s a big problem. Especially since, as Lee pointed out earlier, we tend to view God through the lens of our relationships with our dads. Were our fathers emotionally distant? Did they ignore us? Did they fail to protect us or, worse, hurt us directly?
These things don’t — and never will — describe our heavenly Father. Instead, he is:
Compassionate … “as a father shows compassion to his children” (see Ps. 103:13, ESV).
Forgiving … “as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (see Ps. 103:12, ESV).
Generous … “how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (see Matt. 7:11, ESV).
Ever-present … “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (see Heb. 13:5, ESV).
Invested in our growth … “the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Heb. 12:6, ESV).
Do we believe this?
Atheist-turned-Christian Lee Strobel, the former award-winning legal editor of The Chicago Tribune, is a New York Times bestselling author of more than 40 books and curricula that have sold 18 million copies worldwide. A former spiritual skeptic, Lee became a Christian in 1981 after probing the evidence for Jesus for nearly two years — as depicted in the film The Case for Christ. His books include award-winners like The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith, The Case for a Creator and The Case for Grace. His latest is Seeing the Supernatural. Lee and Leslie have been married for over 52 years.
