Danny Gokey, Kirk Cameron Share How to ‘Let Go’ and Find Hope
By Movieguide® Contributor
Christian artist Danny Gokey recently shared with Kirk Cameron why it’s important to “let go” when you reach a point of hopelessness.
“One of the things that God told me to do when I lost [his first wife] Sophia…I was so desperate to hear the Lord because I was struggling so hard,” Gokey said. “I said, ‘God, you got to speak to me so I can get out of this.’ I heard the Lord not through an audible voice, but I heard in my spirit Psalm 46:10, ‘Be still and know that I’m God.’ And I remember looking that up in the Hebrew. It meant ‘let go.’ One of it had several meanings, but it said, ‘Stop striving, stop fighting with God, let go.”
“And here’s the last one—cause yourself to let go,” the singer continued. “I think some people who are in hopelessness, it’s time to make yourself let go because everything that you’ve become today is your decision…You have a decision to make even in the worst circumstances.”
Gokey’s first wife, Sophia, died when she underwent surgery for heart disease in 2008. He told PEOPLE that he felt suicidal after she passed. But when God spoke to him, he found hope again.
“Think of [psychiatrist and neurologist] Viktor Frankl…He said the one thing that they can never take away from me is my decision to have a good attitude,” Gokey explained. “No matter what happens to me, even while he lost…his whole family in the Holocaust, he said I will not let them take my attitude, my joy, my reason for living.”
“And he self-studied himself for the three years in the concentration camp, and he began to write books, and he began to help people say don’t be a prisoner to your own thoughts,” he continued. “You can be a prisoner to it by making a decision, by yielding to the wrong thoughts. Because here’s the thing—your thoughts transform you. Neuroscience has proven it’ll transform you, and you will be your own downfall.”
Cameron then used an analogy about phone updates to emphasize that hope in Christ transforms lives. A phone doesn’t function correctly when it needs an update. But if instructions are followed and it gets an update, it operates well.
He said, “When it comes to hope, [it’s] life-changing. When we come to Christ and he actually makes us a new creation, when we turn to him in repentance and faith, and gives us an entirely new operating system that comes with hope. It comes with joy; it comes with eternal life; it comes with a relationship with God; it comes with a new capacity to love other people.”
Gokey also recently spoke with Cameron’s sister, actress Candace Cameron Bure, about giving. Movieguide® reported:
The singer…shared that he “had to learn” how to give.
“When I was younger, I never gave,” he said. “Giving was something I had to learn because we grew up with nothing…I understand American poverty is a lot different than world poverty, so I’m not going to overemphasize it, but growing up with 8 people in a 1,000-square-foot house as a kid was uncomfortable.”
Gokey said his “biggest breakthrough” when it came to giving was “when I began to give with no more expectation to get.”
Cameron also previously spoke about hope on social media. He drew from Psalm 121 and said, “Notice three times he says that ‘He shall preserve you from evil. He shall preserve your soul. He shall preserve your going out and your coming in.’ The triple promise of the Lord’s preserving grace should slay and extinguish every fear that you and I have.”
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