Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 100

An $8.2 Million Judgment, Over $8.2 Million in Royalties Given Away, and God’s Sovereign Grace in Your Life and Mine

Note from Randy: Many of my readers already know this story, but I wanted to share it for others who might not have yet heard it. It also sets up why the fact that our ministry has now given away over $8.2 million in book royalties is so significant!

In 1990, I was a pastor of a large church Nanci and I had helped start in 1977, making a good salary and earning book royalties. I had been a pastor for thirteen years, and I didn’t want to do anything else. Had you asked me what I expected to be doing in another thirty years I would have said, “Continuing to serve as a pastor at Good Shepherd Community Church.” Then our family’s life was turned upside down.

I was on the board of a pregnancy resource center, and we had opened our home to a pregnant teenager, helping her place her baby for adoption in a Christian home. We also had the joy of seeing her come to faith in Christ.

After searching Scripture and praying, I began participating in peaceful, nonviolent civil disobedience at abortion clinics. We simply stood in front of the doors to advocate on behalf of unborn children scheduled to die. I did this nine times in a twelve month period and was arrested seven of those times.  

An abortion clinic won a court judgment against a group of us. We were told we were liable to pay $2,800 for having prevented ten abortions (child-killings) on a particular day. We were also made liable for the abortion clinic’s legal fees, which were over $19,000. Like most of the others, I refused to pay.

I stood before a judge in Portland and told him I would pay anything I owed to anyone else, but I could not in good conscience willingly hand over money to people who would use it to kill babies. I explained to the court and the media and all who were there the human rights of the unborn children, and the established history of civil disobedience to defend human rights. I quoted from Martin Luther King, Jr. among others. I had no idea when I prepared my statement that I would be standing before an African American judge.

Unlike other judges I’d stood before who were disinterested, dismissive, or clearly angry, this particular judge listened intently as I spoke. After I spoke of civil disobedience for matters of human rights and social justice, and quoted MLK, I said there is no more basic human right than the right to live. I saw the emotion on the judge’s face. He paused before responding. Then he said something beautiful I’ve never forgotten: “One day you may see me out there standing on that sidewalk beside you. But today I am a judge and must follow the law.”

He sentenced me to jail for just two days. Amidst news photographers with strobes flashing, I was chained at both the hands and feet, and led away from the courtroom to the Multnomah County jail. It was not an easy time for my church and my fellow pastors, since people’s idea of the ministry usually doesn’t include newspaper photos and television news about their pastor being arrested and going to jail.

Not long after this, I discovered that my church was about to receive a writ of garnishment in which the court would try to force them to surrender one-fourth of my wages each month to the abortion clinic. The church would have to either pay the abortion clinic or defy a court order. To prevent this, I resigned the day before the writ of garnishment was delivered. I’d already divested myself of book royalties. The only way I could avoid garnishment in the future was to make no more than minimum wage. Fortunately, our family had been living on only a portion of my church salary, and we had just made our final house payment.

Another court judgment followed, involving another abortion clinic. They requested a half million dollars in punitive damages against each of the defendants—for totally peaceful and nonviolent actions—to persuade us not to rescue again. In court, the owner and staff of an abortion clinic falsely accused me and others of yelling and swearing at women, calling them names, and putting our hands on them as they attempted to enter the abortion clinic. When a Portland pastor testified that he had watched as we quietly and peacefully stood in front of the door, blocking access to the place where innocent children were being killed, the judge’s anger erupted. Finally the judge issued a directed verdict. He told the jury they must find us guilty and choose a punitive amount sufficient to deter us from ever coming to the clinic again.

On February 11, 1991, nine of the twelve jurors agreed to award the abortion clinic $8.2 million dollars, averaging about $250,000 per defendant. It was the largest judgment ever against a group of peaceful protestors. It seemed likely our family would lose our house, and we would not be able to continue to send our children to the school they loved, Good Shepherd School.

By all appearances, our lives had taken a devastating turn. Right?

Wrong. That judgment was one of the best things that ever happened to us. Because what others intended for evil, God intended for good (Genesis 50:20).

My family faced this situation with the firm belief that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, and that no matter what happened, He would work things out for our ultimate good (Romans 8:28). That is exactly what He did! The fact that we lost the case was irrelevant. We’re fortunate not to have to wait for eternity to see how God worked it for good. We’ve already seen it in countless ways, though no doubt we’ll learn more when we’re with Him.

God is sovereign over all the apparent uncertainties and negative twists in your life and mine. He is never taken by surprise, never perplexed, never faced with circumstances out of His control. In this situation, God’s hands weren’t tied by the vengeance of child-killers. He didn’t merely “make the best of a bad situation.” He took a bad situation and used it for His highest good. So much so that I can no longer think of it as a bad situation—it was a severe mercy, a grace disguised in hardship. 

I remember how unthinkably large $8.2 million seemed to be. I used to joke with people, saying, “$8.2 million dollars is more than I made as a pastor in a year!” But despite that $8.2 million court judgment, we never lost our house and thanks to someone’s kindness, our daughters were able to continue attending our church school. We began a new ministry, Eternal Perspective Ministries (EPM). While paying me a minimum-wage salary and my wife Nanci a secretary’s salary, the ministry received all the royalties from my books. And wouldn’t you know it, suddenly I had books on the bestsellers list and royalties began to dramatically increase. (One of the first books I wrote after having to leave pastoral ministry was ProLife Answers to Prolife Arguments, one of the bestselling prolife books in history, widely used to train young people and other prolife advocates to speak up for unborn children.)

The original court judgment of $8.2 million was in force for ten years. The abortion clinic was frustrated that it hadn’t received very much money—and none at all from us, because minimum wage is not garnishable under Oregon law. They managed to get the judgment extended for another ten years, so I ended up making minimum wage for twenty years.[1] God provided faithfully and most of the time we didn’t even think about it.  With joy in our hearts, now nearly thirty years later Nanci and I continue to give away 100 percent of the book royalties to a wide variety of Christian missions, famine relief, and pro-life work.

Since EPM began, by God’s grace, over eleven million books have sold. And as our staff recently pointed out to me, we have now given away over $8.2 million dollars in royalties—an amount that has now, ironically and delightfully, surpassed the judgment against us and the whole group of prolifers all those years ago!

Last month, as I sometimes do, I asked our staff to decide where to send another $55,000 in royalties (they each designated $5,000 to the ministries of their choice). To give you an idea of the kinds of ministries and projects EPM has supported with the royalty funds, here is where the staff decided to send the money:

$1,000 to Trout Creek Bible Camp for their volunteer and staff cabin fund 
$500 to Wilderness Trails for a camp scholarship fund
$1,000 to Orphans Unlimited
$2,500 to Life Impact Ministries
$1,000 to The Seed Company
$1,000 to SAT 7
$2,250 to Gotta Go
$1,000 to Vital Signs Ministries for prolife outreach
$1,000 to GAiN (Global Aid Network) for famine relief
$2,500 to Open Doors USA for persecuted Christians in Yemen
$2,500 to Operation Mobilization for  Yemen relief
$4,000 to Peace International for building/funding schools and conflict resolution classes for Sudan’s refugees  
$1,000 to Compassion Connect for Adorned in Grace (anti sex trafficking work)  
$2,500 to NOE International
$2,500 to First Image
$2, 500 to Emmaus Japan for Christian church planting in Japan
$2,500 to The Bible Project for videos work on biblical stories
$1,250 to Focus on the Family for Operation Ultrasound
$1,250 to Show Hope
$1,250  to Samaritan’s Purse for Venezuelans in crisis
$3,000 designated to EPM’s  prison ministry (sending books to inmates)
$2,000 to Bible Study Fellowship
$5,000 to Hope Africa International
$1,500 to Choice Adoptions for work with foster care and adoptions
$1,500 to Kerith Springs Lodge
$2,000 to Romans Project for training African pastors how to study the Bible
$5,000 to LUV for emergency medical needs for orphans

For a longer list of some of the organizations EPM supports or recommends,  see here .

See how God continues to use me going to jail and losing my job as a pastor and those lawsuits from child-killing clinics to further His Kingdom? What they intended for evil God really DID intend for good. It brings a big smile to my face.

Some have wondered if I realize what we could have done with over $8 million dollars. My answer is always the same: “Nothing that would have brought us nearly as much joy as we’ve found in giving it away.” I firmly believe they’re not my book royalties—they’re God’s. Nanci and I certainly don’t need them, and it delights us to see God using them to touch lives all over the world!

We thank our sovereign God for bringing us such freedom and joy in a way we never saw coming and never would have chosen, but which—if we had it to do over again—would do nothing to change.

“But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand” (1 Chronicles 29:14).

[1] An extension on the judgment finally expired in 2012. A year later our ministry board significantly increased my salary. Since then I’ve been paid a good wage by American standards and a great wage by global standards. We’re grateful for the higher pay, and we’ve enjoyed being able to do things we weren’t able to before. As the wages have increased, our personal giving has increased. Still, God was with us all those years when our salary was lower, and He always faithfully provided.

The Paradoxical Christian Life

Learning about the paradoxes we see in Scripture is, to me, fascinating. Paradoxes are not contradictions, but apparent contradictions that are unresolved in our minds, but resolved in God’s. (I’ve written on paradoxes in my books The Grace and Truth Paradox, hand in Hand: The Beauty of God's Sovereignty and Meaningful Human Choice, and If God Is Good.)

For example, God’s sovereignty and meaningful human choice aren’t contradictory. God has no trouble understanding how they work together. In His infinite mind they coexist in perfect harmony. And while our brains can never fully grasp sovereignty and meaningful choice, by affirming what Scripture says about both, we can avoid the mistake of denying one in order to affirm the other.

The universe, though full of paradoxes, is not full of contradictions. So is the Christian life, as Jen Pollock Michel points out in the following article.

“When we unearth the tension of paradox in the Scriptures,” Jen writes, “we should move toward it with expectation, rather than from it in fear. To be left with tension, complexity, and mystery necessarily moves us toward humility: the still smallness of knowing that he is God and we are not.”

May studying the paradoxes we find in God’s Word and in the Christian life increase both our awe of God and our humility before Him! —Randy Alcorn

Christian Life Is Paradoxical. Embrace It: Worshiping the God of the Both-And

By Jen Pollock Michel

She was angry with me. As any parent might expect, her reasons were both just and unjust. It was the unjust ones, of course, that I rehearsed the next morning, remembering how the house had shook with the gale of tearful, bitter words the night before. Standing at the sink, I reassured myself that self-preoccupation was the stuff of adolescence, that the relational chafing was normal as her high-school graduation loomed. I felt battered all the same.

Worry had woken me early that morning, and I had obeyed it, following it down the stairs to the kitchen. As the kettle heated, I scanned the morning headlines. Luke Perry was dead, and dozens were still missing from the mile-wide tornadoes that had roared through Alabama. Grief, it seemed, was still the confirmed condition of the world. I climbed the stairs to my office, hot coffee in hand, and in the hush of the still-sleeping house, began trying to untangle the previous night’s conversation, which I had not ended but punted to my husband after crawling into bed with a book—a book ironically on the seeming indecency of need. On the pages of my journal, I unwound fears for the future and the besetting guilt of all that I’d gotten wrong these past 18 years. I worried over the fossilization of those mistakes, wondered if the years had hardened them beyond repair. She was turning 18, and time was running out.

The words dripped and sputtered on the page. But they did not console the terrible anguish of being human.

Paradox of Being Human

Like any other human being, I’m a riddle to myself. I want to parent my children well. I will to do right by them. Yet even on my best days, I fail these good intentions by virtue of being human, limited in understanding as well as capacity. I don’t sovereignly know the secret burdens my children bear, nor can I always rise, indefatigable, to carry them. On the worst days (and there are more than I wish to count), I fail my best parental intentions, not simply because I’m human, but because I’m a sinner. When my phone rings, my oldest daughter’s angry, accusing voice on the other end of the line, I won’t answer with sympathy or love. I will hang up.

In his letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul insisted on this paradox of being human, which is to say, in one sense, that we’re both morally frail and also morally aspiring. In Romans 7, he confesses his own tragic doubleness: “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” In this, we’re a mystery to ourselves: We fail the good that we will, and indulge the evil that we hate. Empirically, I prove Paul’s point every day.

According to G. K. Chesterton, the paradox of being human is that we’re both “chief of creatures” and “chief of sinners.” Made in the image of God, we shared his moral likeness, loving the good and hating the evil in the very beginning. We were the “statue of God walking in the garden,” and our great grief, after the fall, wasn’t that of beast but of “broken God.” Though we were meant to be like God and rule with him, we choose autonomy and rebellion over submission and worship. One bite of forbidden fruit has damned us, self-loving creatures that we are, to paradoxically choose the harm of sin every time. In the garden, God graciously offered life, and we willingly refused it. Body of death, indeed.

On the one hand, human depravity is such terribly bad news—a devastating indictment rendered by Paul, earlier in his letter to the Romans, like this: “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” On the other hand, to acknowledge ourselves to be sinners is a terrific relief—far better news than the optimism of the secularist who gives short shrift to human capacity for breaking things.

One paradox of the gospel is: The bad news is God’s very good news.

Paradox of the Gospel

Paradox, Chesterton argues, is the beating heart of the gospel. In Chesterton’s journey to faith, the paradoxes of Christian thought particularly compelled him. Reading secular atheists and agnostics, he observed that while Christianity was consistently attacked, it was always attacked for inconsistent reasons. Some criticized it for being too optimistic—others for being too pessimistic. Some faulted it for being too bold—others for being too meek. Christianity was to be blamed, although no one could agree why. Was it too ascetic and monkish—or too insistent on pomp and circumstance? As Chesterton continued to reflect, he began to wonder if Christianity wasn’t in fact all these “vices” at once: pessimistic and optimistic, bold and meek, ascetic and worldly.

In other words, was the only fault of Christianity its hospitality to paradox?

Built on the idea that God had donned human flesh and remained God, Chesterton eventually concluded that Christianity isn’t a theology built on tidy eithers and ors. Instead, compared to other religious systems, Christianity is uniquely hospitable to paradox, which is to say the apparatus of both and and. In fact, as Chesterton saw it, paradox is the sharp edge on which much of God’s truth could be found: “Whenever we feel there is something odd in Christian theology, we shall generally find that there is something odd in the truth.”

And it’s odd to affirm, in the same breath, that human beings have reason for “great pride” and “great prostration” (Chesterton again). Nevertheless, to grapple with the paradox of being human is the small step that, with God’s help, can become the giant leap toward salvation. At least this was the conclusion of Blaise Pascal, a 17th-century mathematician, philosopher, and converted Christian, in one of his famous “fragments” of religious reflection, or Pensées, that he left behind before his premature death. “It is wretched to know that one is wretched,” Pascal wrote, “but there is greatness in knowing one is wretched.” The paradoxical condition for salvation isn’t moral merit but moral fault. We can’t offer to God pledges of consistency and purity and fidelity because these are promises we can never keep. Our lot is moral failure every time, even should we try willing it otherwise. We are only helped by admitting our need.

But according to Athanasius in On the Incarnation, it’s not just the depravity of humanity that necessitates his salvation; it’s, paradoxically, his greatness. How could God allow his special creation, endowed with his likeness, to fall into disrepair? And if he did, could he call such apathy love? “It was impossible . . . that God should leave man to be carried off into corruption because it would be unfitting and unworthy of himself.” It was God’s glory, even his glory bequeathed to humanity, that demanded a rescue. As Chesterton wrote, “Let him call himself a fool and a damned fool . . . but he must not say fools are not worth saving.” As God has willed it, humanity has been saved by paradox: that falling short of the glory of God, he should be rescued to, once again, become like him.

The reasons for salvation seem paradoxical; consider also the means. According to the great surprise of God’s story, Jesus Christ didn’t consider equality with God a thing to be grasped but made himself nothing, humbling himself to death on a cross. The firstborn of all creation became last, and humanity’s life was found in God’s own losing. Further, lest we think of Christ’s self-sacrifice only as means to acquittal, we must remember the paradox of grace: the gospel announces both leniency and violence; mercy and judgment; rescue and death. What blazes up on Golgotha is God’s embrace of contradiction: weakness as power, foolishness as wisdom.

It’s a paradox to make men stumble.

Invitations of Paradox

It would seem, at least to me, that God has a kind of preference for paradox—that given the choice between either and or, God would often choose and. Paradox is, of course, the way we can rightly reckon, not just with our nature, but God’s: that he is immanent and transcendent; merciful and just; mysterious and knowable. In the person of Jesus Christ, the great I AM became the great I And, neither moderating his godhood nor his humanity but clothing himself with what seems to be contradiction.

There are certainly more paradoxes to uncover in the story of God than I have room to mention here—including the nature of the kingdom (as a reality both now and not yet); the nature of grace (as “God’s working in us that we might will and work for his good pleasure”); the nature of lament, which, like on the morning I scanned the headlines and sat down to journal, invites us simultaneously into grief and hope. These are the irreducible mysteries that no systematic theology can logically explain, and it’s best that we imitate Moses when confronted with paradox. When he stood before the bush that burned and was not consumed, he did two things: drew closer for a better look, then removed his shoes.

Paradox inevitably offers these two invitations: curiosity and humility.

Recently, I was rereading Rosaria Butterfield’s book The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. As she describes some of her assumptions about Christians before she became one, she admitted she thought they lacked curiosity. She thought they read the Bible badly, bringing the Bible into conversation only to stop it, rather than deepen it. They seemed to always be offering answers, but like Rosaria noted ironically, “Answers come after questions, not before.”

Sadly, Butterfield’s experience has sometimes been my own—that we short-circuit our curiosity by insisting, too prematurely, on certainty. I’m not one to argue against certainty, for the Scriptures were written and the creeds argued to establish theological and doctrinal certainties. To maintain the importance of paradox isn’t the ambivalent shrug of postmodernity, which dismisses human capacity for objective knowledge. Instead, paradox gives a category for a different kind of certainty: “of truths that do not logically cohere.” Instead of evading truth claims, paradox is a mechanism for affirming that truth, while knowable, can yet remain mysterious, even beyond the reach of reason.

When we unearth the tension of paradox in the Scriptures, we should move toward it with expectation, rather than from it in fear. To be left with tension, complexity, and mystery necessarily moves us toward humility: the still smallness of knowing that he is God and we are not. Such childlikeness seems argument enough on its own, though curiously, it’s also a compelling witness to our secular age, which, despite having rejected the reality of God, yet longs for the transcendent—for something bigger and more enduring and more beautiful than their muddled, material lives. Our most compelling witness may not always be our reasoned arguments and sophisticated apologetics.

It may also be paradox.

The Both-And

On the morning after the explosive argument with my teenage daughter, I came to the end of several journal pages with a clearer understanding of the way to move forward. Unsurprisingly, the conclusions were mostly built on the both and the and. I needed to both persist in a ministry of words and a ministry of silent presence—because God had given me both the command to talk to my children as a means of spiritual formation and the example of his own quiet ministry of kindness to Elijah, who’d arrived dejected and despairing on the other side of his confrontation with the prophets of Baal. As a both-and, it was an answer full of tension and one that cast me back, not on my own understanding, but on God’s. Unlike an either and or, it was an answer that left me with the conviction that ongoing dependence on the Spirit’s wisdom would be needed.

I suppose the sufficiency of the both-and is what Job discovered at the end of his long, angry tirade which God never saw fit to answer. “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Dress for action like a man; I will question you, and you make it known to me. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” Job never got answers to his questions. He never had definitive reasons from God for why he had permitted his suffering.

And the paradox is:

It was enough.

​Jen Pollock Michel lives in Toronto with her family. She’s the author of Surprised by Paradox: The Promise of ‘And’ in an Either-or World(IVP, 2019), Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home (IVP, 2017), and Teach Us to Want: Longing, Ambition and the Life of Faith (IVP, 2014). You can follow her on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on The Gospel Coalition and is used with permission of the author.

Photo by Tachina Lee on Unsplash

An Update on Mincaye, a Dear Brother and the Former Warrior who Speared to Death Nate Saint and Ed McCully

When I was a brand new Christian in 1969 I heard the story of the five missionary martyrs in Ecuador. It had a powerful effect on my life, one that has never diminished.

Some years ago Steve Saint (Nate Saint’s son) and I became friends. He came to my home church within a week of the 50th anniversary of the death of those missionaries, and I interviewed him and Mincaye, the former warrior who speared to death both Nate Saint and Ed McCully. Steve McCully, Ed’s son, also came to our church that weekend, and after the service we all had lunch together at the home that Jim Elliot grew up in, here in Portland, Oregon. That’s where I met Bert and Colleen Elliot, who I later wrote about.

Mincaye came to Christ, and for many years now he has been a transformed man. He is a delightful brother who is a joy to be with. Of all the people I’ve met and spent time with, one I felt the most privileged to meet was Mincaye.

Steve Saint calls Mincaye “father” and Steve’s children call him “grandfather.” Years after the killings, Mincaye baptized Steve Saint and his sister, and then years later still, he baptized Jamie Saint and his brother. What can account for the reality of grace and forgiveness and transformation, and the closeness of these relationships, but the power of God and the gospel of Christ? There is no other explanation.

Here is an excerpt from that interview, with Mincaye urging us to walk God’s trail:

And if you’re interested, here’s the full video of the interview:

I recently read this update from Joni Eareckson Tada, sharing how earlier this year Mincaye, now about 90 years old (dates of birth were uncertain in his tribe), was fitted for a wheelchair by Wheels for the World, an outreach of Joni and Friends (a wonderful ministry EPM highly recommends). Thinking of time Nanci and I have spent with both Mincaye and Joni stirs my heart!

I’m Joni Eareckson Tada sharing a follow-up to Jim Elliot’s story. 

You know the background well. In the mid-50s, Jim Elliot and four other missionaries, including their pilot, Nate Saint, left for Ecuador to evangelize the Huaorani, an ancient tribe never reached by man. They made contact with the tribe from the airplane using a loudspeaker and a basket to pass down gifts. After several months, the missionaries decided to build a base just a short distance from the village. Encouraged by one or two friendly encounters, they began plans to visit the Huaorani. Then in January 1956, they landed a plane on a small beach in the river near the village. At first, the Huaorani seemed friendly, but raising their spears, they attacked, and Jim Elliot was, that day, the first of the five missionaries to be speared to death, including Nate Saint, the pilot.  

It was a tragic massacre, but the blood spilled by those martyrs provided a seed for the gospel to go forth, because not long after that, Mincaye, one of the Huaorani men who speared to death Nate Saint, he became a Christian. The word of God spread and many years later Mincaye became an elder in the village church. He later said of the change in his tribe, “We acted badly, badly, until they brought us God’s carvings (that’s the Bible). Then, seeing his carvings and following his good trail, now we live happily and in peace.” Years later, Mincaye met the young son of Nate Saint whom he had murdered. Steve Saint and his family had come to live among the Huaorani. 

Because he had killed Steve’s father, Mincaye felt a special responsibility in helping to raise him. A kinship bond was formed and Mincaye adopted Steve as his tribal son. In 1995 when Steve was older and brought his family to live permanently with the tribe, Mincaye considered Steve’s children as his grandchildren. It is an amazing story of God’s healing, grace and mercy – this man, Mincaye, who was rescued from savagery and heathenism is part of Nate Saint’s family, the man he murdered many decades ago. I had the blessing of meeting Steve and Mincaye years later at a big event in Holland organized by Billy Graham. And, over the years, we’ve stayed in touch, Steve and I. 

That is why, not long ago Steve Saint called our ministry at Joni and Friends. He let us know that Mincaye is now 90 years old with very weak legs, unable to walk and he needs a wheelchair. Steve asked: “Can you help us find a wheelchair that would be suitable for rugged terrain in Ecuador?” Well, I tell you what, our ‘Wheels for the World’ team was happy to provide just the right wheelchair for Steve to take with them to Ecuador for Mincaye. We normally don’t provide individual wheelchairs to people overseas, but this was an extraordinary case. And I’m so proud of our ‘Wheels for the World’ team because they bent over backward and worked so hard to provide just the right wheelchair. 

If you’d like to see a photo of Mincaye in his brand new chair, I’ve posted it on our radio page today at joniradio.org. I am also posting a photo of the wonderful Wheels for the World team, our friends and our staff who put this wheelchair together. If the story of Steve Saint or Jim Elliot has inspired you over the years, then you know all about this remarkable man, Mincaye. Please pray for him as it is not easy to be 90 years old and live with pain, especially in a jungle. Pray that his spirits remain bright, and that the wheelchair will be a testimony of God’s grace and provision and that the church in that area will continue to grow. Pray for him and his congregation in Ecuador.

Spiritual Warfare, and Times I’ve Sensed the Presence of Demons and Righteous Angels

The warfare against demonic powers depicted in Scripture is very real. But though unrighteous angels can fight God, they cannot overpower Him:

And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. (Revelation 12:7–9)

We should never believe that the conflict between good and evil is only figurative, not real. This passage vividly shows its reality—Michael and his angels fight in a great battle, with much at stake.

However, we should never believe that anyone can thwart God’s ultimate plan. The rebellion is real, the warfare is real—but Satan “was not strong enough” to stay in Heaven. God accomplished His will by casting out the devil.

We, too, war against these evil beings: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). We don’t want to overestimate the power of demons in our lives, but neither do we want to underestimate it. We should take up our armor yet not fear the future, for the outcome is certain: “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8).

Years ago I was asked, “Have you ever been personally aware of being in the presence of demons? Have you ever been aware of a guardian angel doing something on your behalf?”

Regarding demons, two instances in particular stick out. One was years ago when our girls were young and we were in Egypt, staying with a missionary family, our dear friends Pat and Rakel Thurman. After we’d been there perhaps six days, when there was no more jet lag and we’d been sleeping fine, one night Nanci and I were troubled and fitful and unable to sleep all night. It was a heavy presence of evil that was palpable. We prayed quietly, for protection of our daughters and ourselves, and got almost no sleep.

In the morning Pat and Rakel said, “You didn’t sleep last night, did you?” We were surprised, since we hadn’t been making noise. How did they know?

They said, “We couldn’t sleep either. There are nights here where the demonic presence is so great no Christian can sleep.”

Another time, Nanci and I were in Hawaii. We had an interview scheduled at what we thought was a Christian radio station. But the moment we walked in the front door, it took our breath away. There was a dark oppressive spirit in the place, one like I have felt only a few times in my life. It turned out to be a New Age station with pictures on the wall of various eastern mystics and religious leaders. We understood why we had felt what we had when we walked in. They wanted to talk about my book—they must have misunderstood what it was about—but all I talked about was Jesus being the Son of God, and how He is the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by Him. (That’s the benefit of a live interview—if it had been prerecorded they would have just tossed the tape!)

Another place I’ve felt that throat clenching darkness is at abortion clinics. Once I opened a dumpster at an abortion clinic and saw blood and flesh. I was overwhelmed with a horror that wasn’t like something made to look bad in a movie, but was real and undiluted evil, from the very pit of Hell. Satan, the murderer, and the one who lies to cover his murders, loves to kill children. As I looked at destroyed human flesh in that dumpster, I could feel his hatred. The devil is the ultimate serial killer. 

On a less dramatic level—but real nonetheless—a hopeless sense of dread and foreboding has fallen on me at times, especially when I’m in the midst of a challenging writing project. When that happens, I call upon the blood of Christ to cover and protect me. I used to do this silently, but now I speak aloud. God hears me either way, but I want the demons to hear too, and the righteous warriors. Jesus responded aloud to Satan during the temptation. He quoted Scripture so the devil could hear it, perhaps also for the benefit of the holy angels. When we resist the devil, it may not always be appropriate to speak aloud (or to speak loudly anyway, e.g. at a restaurant or in church or at work), but as a rule I think it has merit. By verbalizing we give shape and expression to the weapons of spiritual warfare. A. W. Tozer entitled one of his editorials (and it became the title of one of his books), “I talk back to the devil.”

As for righteous angels, I’ll never forget driving too fast as a teenager, looking down at something that distracted me, and then looking up to see all yellow in front of me. I swerved to the right, bumped along in a field, cut back onto the road and saw in my rear view mirror the school bus that had come to a complete stop in front of me. I knew immediately the situation was impossible—I simply could not have been that close to the back of a school bus, where all I saw was yellow, going at that speed and not crashed into it. Yet I didn’t. God graciously delivered me, and I suspect someday I’ll find an angel or two were involved in the rescue.

My family stayed with the Shel Arensen family in Kenya back in 1989. Shel grew up attending Rift Valley Academy in Kijabe, Kenya. During our visit, Shel told me a story I’ve heard since, about something that happened there in the 1950’s. Herbert Lockyer wrote of it in his book on angels, and I think it’s in Billy Graham’s book on angels too. Shel’s family was living there at the time, and he pointed out to us where the events of that night unfolded.

That particular night during the “Mau Mau rebellion,” the ruthless warriors of the Mau Mau tribe gathered to climb the hill up to the missionary school (RVA) to capture and kill the missionary children and teachers, and fulfill their vows by eating the brains of white men, who they considered their oppressors.

Word got out about this plan, but it was too late to evacuate the school or to get outside protection. Desperate phone calls were made and people around the world were called upon to pray for God’s intervention. The night went on, with teachers and children huddled at RVA, praying and fully expecting to be attacked, and likely killed, any moment.

But nothing happened. The warriors never made it to the school, and no one was harmed.

No one knew the rest of the story until sometime later, when a Mau Mau warrior was in jail, and on trial. At his trial, the leader of Mau Maus, who led that attack, was asked, “On this particular night did you intend to kill the inhabitants [of the missionary school]?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Why didn’t you?”

His answer? “We were on our way to attack and kill them, but as we came closer, suddenly between us and the school there were many men dressed in white, holding flaming swords.” He said he and his warriors were all terrified, and fled down the hill, never to return.

Sure, sometimes God chooses not to answer our desperate prayers exactly as we wish. And yes, sometimes God’s children are hurt and even killed. But how many times has He answered when we haven’t realized He’s moved Heaven and earth—and maybe a company of righteous angels—to do it? Had the human warriors not told what they saw, no one would have known what really happened that night. How many amazing stories will we not hear until we are with Jesus? I have no doubt that the answer is “the vast majority of them!”

For more on spiritual warfare and the Christian life, see Randy’s novels Lord Foulgrin’s Letters and The Ishbane Conspiracy

Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash

How Being an Insulin-Dependent Diabetic Has Affected My Walk with the Lord

In my twenties, I was very independent. My health had always been good. I did not grow up in a Christian home, and my father, who owned a number of taverns and was the most independent human being most would ever know, was extremely healthy and strong. Even though I came to Christ when I was in high school, in pastoral ministry I discovered—and the people who worked with me, I’m sure, discovered—that I too was very self-reliant.

Now, I was a Jesus-loving Christian who was seeking to draw upon God’s empowerment in what I did. But pretty much I got out of bed, worked long hours, did what I did, and didn’t really need to rely on anyone that much. Christ’s words, “Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5), rang true to me—but the fact is, and I am not proud of it, in retrospect I believe I did a lot of things relying on His common grace strength, without drawing on His supernatural strength in Christ. So from eternity’s viewpoint, those things amounted to nothing.

When I became an insulin-dependent diabetic in 1985, at age 31, suddenly I had to take blood tests throughout the day. I had to take insulin over and over again. Sometimes I have low blood sugar where my body isn’t working right and my mind isn’t working right. So the strong body and strong mind that I had, now, periodically, isn’t so strong. A few times a month, at least, I experience what I think of as what Alzheimer’s patients experience. The only difference is I can drink some orange juice and in fifteen or twenty minutes I’m fine. I can vividly remember what it’s like to be thinking in a thick fog, and not accurately perceive what’s happening around me.

“To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations,” Paul wrote, “there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7–10).

As a teenager who had just come to faith in Christ, I read this passage with perplexed interest. I believed it because it was God’s Word—but it made little sense to me. Now, fifty years later, it makes a great deal of sense. I can honestly say I’m grateful for the diabetes; yes, I even delight in it, because I recognize the value of being humbled, for “when I am weak, then I am strong.” My weakness drives me to greater dependence upon Christ. I wouldn’t begin to trade the spiritual benefits I’ve received. Learning to be more dependent on Him has been worth every moment of discomfort and inconvenience brought on by my diabetes.

And there’s more: since acquiring diabetes, I take better care of my health, exercise more diligently, eat better, relax more, keep a saner schedule, have more time with my family, possess a better understanding of others, am closer to God, and generally just enjoy life more (not bad, huh?). I know many others who likewise wouldn’t exchange for anything what they’ve learned through their diseases and disabilities. 

Whether or not we understand it in this life, it is absolutely true: “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28). While it is always true, the beauty is when we don’t wait until we die to believe it.

For more on God's purposes in our trials, see Randy's books If God Is Good and The Goodness of God.

Photo by Klemen Vrankar on Unsplash

Looking for the Good in a World of Bad News: God at Work through His Church

I appreciated this encouraging article by Daniel Ritchie about how God is at work through His church. As I shared in a blog post a few months back, God is doing great things worldwide using His people—but we won’t hear about them if we just keep watching the news or reading social media and don’t purposefully go to other and better sources, and if we don’t open our eyes to His work in local churches.

Having been part of the same local church for 42 years, trust me when I say I am not stranger to problems in the church! But I am also no stranger to the beauty and goodness and local and global fruit of church life—though I would be had we chosen to walk away from church the various times we were tempted to. (Of course, God can call people to leave a church and go to or even start another one, and that happened to us 42 years ago! My concern is with giving up on all churches, which is increasingly common.)

May we never forget that our God is present with us and the local church, and at work in the world every minute of every hour of every day! —Randy Alcorn

His Bride Is Still Beautiful

By Daniel Ritchie

We live in an age of constant bad news. Mass shootings, wildfires, hurricanes, social and political division, distrust in the highest levels of government—everywhere you look it seems the world is holding on by a thread.

Turning your gaze to the church doesn’t seem to make things better. You see stories of pastors falling into sin and disqualifying themselves from ministry. There are heaps of abuse allegations. More churches than ever focus on felt needs rather than gospel truth.

But what if the church isn’t as bad as we assume? When we dig deeper, we see that social media thrive on bad news and drama while shoving good news off to the side. Perhaps the problem isn’t the church so much as the platform where we get our news.

Healthy Churches Aren’t Newsworthy

Having spent the last year on the road as a speaker and evangelist, I have seen all sorts of churches from the East Coast to the West Coast. I’ve been in churches of 30 people and churches of 5,000. Traditional worship, contemporary worship, and everything in between. All sorts of backgrounds and demographics. Different places, different churches who worship the same God and share the same gospel.

These churches are witnessing lives pass from darkness to light. They’re meeting physical needs in their community. They’re raising a voice of change for people who don’t have the strength to muster a voice of their own.

Everywhere you look, the church is thriving. So why don’t you hear about it? It’s not sexy. No one will tweet about a church hosting an after-school program for at-risk elementary kids. Nobody wants to do a news story on the five people you baptized last week. Yet as Twitter is silent, heaven rejoices.

We don’t have to fall for the cultural narrative that the church is a lost cause. She certainly has her issues, and there is much work to be done, but the bride of Christ is still beautiful. She is clothed in splendor and is washed in the water of God’s Word. No matter where we worship, there are plenty of things we can thank God for.

As we discard the clickbait caricatures, may we thank God for three beautiful things we can see in his church today.

1. God’s Family

Through the work of the cross, God has adopted us as sons and daughters. He has given us relationships that are unbreakable and deep. We’re not bound by preference or personality; we’re brought together by grace and maintained in love.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Eph. 4:15–16)

Our relationship to the church is built and maintained by love: love of God and love of others. This global body is held together by God’s steady hand, that he may be glorified and his church may be edified.

2. God’s Mission

A God-centered church is a God-sent church. John 20:21 reminds us that just as the Father sent Jesus to the world, so he sends us. Every day and every relationship offers us the opportunity to share his gospel.

And just as God said, the gospel is spreading. Young and old. Rich and poor. The church is growing by leaps and bounds in places where you’d least expect it. He is calling dead men to life, and he’s using the church to do it. He’s using your church to do it. God has sovereignly placed your church so that it may be a light on a hill for all your town to see.

3. God’s Glory

Even as all of creation sings of God’s amazing attributes, his church doesn’t fail to tell of his works. Everywhere the body of Christ goes, it carries the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus can be clearly seen in his church.

God has given us a hope that doesn’t fade and a call that never grows old. As the author of Hebrews reminds us, “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:28). We received what we could never earn, which is why we sing of a hope that will never fail.

Though our local church may have issues, God still sees his bride. And so should we. May we give thanks for what the cross has won us: an unfailing hope and an unchanging purpose to see Jesus magnified in all the world.

Daniel Ritchie is a speaker and writer from Huntersville, North Carolina. He is a husband and father of two and the author of My Affliction for His Glory. He also writes at www.danielritchie.org, 

This article originally appeared on The Gospel Coalition and is used with permission of the author.

Photo by Nicole Honeywill on Unsplash

Did you know EPM sends out a free biannual magazine called Eternal Perspectives? It’s full of articles from Randy Alcorn and others, helping you to live in light of eternity. You’ll also get previews and news about Randy’s new and upcoming books. We would love to send you a copy of our latest spring/summer issue. Sign up here (check “Eternal Perspectives Magazine” under “Stay connected with our ministry,” then select “I would prefer to receive a copy by mail”). You’ll also be signed up to receive the next issue in the mail this fall. It’s a great way to keep in touch with our ministry and be encouraged in your walk with Christ!

Is an Unborn Child a Parasite, Living off Another Person’s Body without Permission?

Some abortion advocates argue that even if a “fetus” is actually a person, that doesn’t change the fact that one person does not have the right to use the body of another person against their will (in this case, against the mother’s will). Therefore, she should have the right to “evict” the fetus from her body.

In his book Abortion Practice, Warren Hern, one of the world’s most prominent abortionists, wrote that “the relationship between the [mother] and the [baby] can be understood best as one of host and parasite.” [1] He’s not alone in this view. One woman, referring to the twins she was pregnant with and later aborted, wrote, “Right now it’s just a parasite only living off of me. I would survive in this world without a host. The definition of a parasite.” [2]

In a recent article for The New Yorker, Jia Tolentino writes, “If the fetus is a person, it is a person who possesses, as Sally Rooney put it in the London Review of Books, ‘a vastly expanded set of legal rights, rights available to no other class of citizen’—the right to ‘make free, non-consensual use of another living person’s uterus and blood supply, and cause permanent, unwanted changes to another person’s body.’ In the relationship between woman and fetus, she wrote, the woman is ‘granted fewer rights than a corpse.’” [3]

“Kidnapped” for Nine Months?

Years ago, abortion-rights advocate Judith Jarvis Thomson invented an analogy that was widely quoted in prochoice literature and debates. She compares pregnancy to a situation in which someone wakes up strapped to a famous but unconscious violinist. Imagine, Thomson says, that some group called the Society of Music Lovers has “kidnapped” you because you have a certain blood type. Now you are being forced to stay “plugged in” to the violinist’s body for nine months until he is viable, or able to live on his own.

Thomson then asks what if it were not just nine months, but nine years or considerably longer? (Apparently this is a comparison to having to raise a child once he is born.) Thomson assumes that readers would find such a situation “outrageous” and would not consider it their obligation to be subjected to nine months—at least—of bondage and misery for the sake of the violinist, who is little more than a human parasite. [4]

This analogy is worth a closer examination, because it is typical of the way the abortion issue is framed by prochoice advo­cates and by many young people in our society. I’ll address four fallacies of this argument that cut to the heart of the abortion debate.

1. Over 99 percent of all pregnancies are the result of sexual relations in which both partners have willingly participated. One is rarely coerced into pregnancy. Though prolifers may be in Thomson’s mind, neither they nor anyone else is parallel to the Society of Music Lovers. No one is going around forcing people to get pregnant. The outrage the reader feels at the idea of being kidnapped and coerced is an effective emotional device, but it is a distortion of reality.

2. In this scenario, mother and child are pitted against each other as enemies. The mother is at best merely a life-support system and at worst the victim of a crime. The child is a leech, a parasite unfairly taking advantage of the mother. Love, compassion, and care are nowhere present. The bonding between mother and child is totally ignored. The picture of a woman waking up in a bed, strapped to a strange unconscious man is bizarre and degrading to women, whose preg­nancy and motherhood are natural. “The violinist is artificially attached to the woman,” Greg Koukl writes. “A mother’s unborn baby, however, is not surgically connected, nor was it ever ‘attached’ to her. Instead, the baby is being produced by the mother’s own body by the natural process of reproduction.” [5]

3. The child’s presence during pregnancy is rarely more inconvenient than his presence after birth. The burden of a born child is usually greater on a woman than the burden of an unborn. Yet if a parent of a two-year-old decides that she is tired of being a parent and that no one has the right to expect her to be one any longer, society nonetheless recognizes that she has certain responsibilities toward that child. She can surrender him for foster care or adoption, but she cannot abuse, neglect, or kill the child. If the solution to the stresses of pregnancy is killing the preborn child, is killing not also the solution to the stresses of par­enting the preschooler?

Greg Koukl says, “What if the mother woke up from an accident to find herself surgically connected to her own child? What kind of mother would willingly cut the life-support system to her two-year-old in a situation like that? And what would we think of her if she did?” [6]

4. Even when there is no felt obligation, there is sometimes real obligation. If a woman is being raped or murdered, what do we think of those who make no effort to rescue the woman? Don’t we recognize that there is moral responsibility toward saving a life, even if it involves an inconvenience or risk we did not ask for or want? Scott Klusendorf writes, “We may not have the obligation to sustain strangers who are unnaturally plugged into us, but we do have a duty to sustain our own offspring.” [7]

For the woman carrying a child, isn’t it a significant consideration that her own mother made the same sacrifice for her? Can we forget that every one of us was once that “leech,” that “parasite,” that “violinist” dependent on our mothers in order to live? Aren’t you glad your mother looked at pregnancy—and looked at you—differently than portrayed by this prochoice analogy?

A Symptom of a Broken Society

This argument for abortion is based in utilitarianism, the idea that whatever brings a person momentary happiness or relief is the right course of action. This is a shaky foundation for any society that hopes to be moral and just in its treatment of the weak and needy.

As Michael Spielman, the founder and director of Abort73, says, “The absolute dependence of unborn children has become the rationale, not for their protection, but for their destruction! The fact that so many mothers think of their child as a parasite is a scary indictment of our society.” [8]  (On the issue of an unborn child’s dependency, don’t miss this recent post with a great video answer from Kirsten Watson, wife of Ben Watson, a highly respected veteran tight end in the NFL.)

Browse more prolife articles and resources, as well as see Randy’s books Why ProLife? and ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments.

Photo by Edward Cisneros on Unsplash

[1] Warren M. Hern, Abortion Practice (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1990), 14.

[2] Michael Spielman, “Publicly Aborting Twins on Instagram,” Abort73, September 12, 2014, http://abort73.com/blog/publicly_aborting_twins_on_instagram/.

[3] Jia Tolentino, “The Messiness of Reproduction and the Dishonesty of Anti-Abortion Propaganda,” The New Yorker, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-messiness-of-reproduction-and-the-dishonesty-of-anti-abortion-propaganda.

[4] Judith Jarvis Thomson, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1971): 47–66.

[5] Greg Koukl, “Unstringing the Violinist,” Stand to Reason, http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5689.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Scott Klusendorf, “My Body, My Choice? How to Defeat Bodily Autonomy Claims,” Life Training Institute, https://prolifetraining.com/resources/five-minute-12/.

[8] John W. Kennedy, “The Hidden Holocaust,” Power for Living (January 18, 2009): 7.

Let’s Anticipate the Incredible Experience of Worshipping in Heaven with All God’s People

Most people know that we’ll worship God in Heaven. But they don’t grasp how thrilling that will be. Multitudes of God’s people—of every nation, tribe, people, and language—will gather to sing praise to God for His greatness, wisdom, power, grace, and mighty work of redemption (Revelation 5:13-14). Overwhelmed by His magnificence, we will fall on our faces in unrestrained happiness and say, “Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!” (Revelation 7:9-12).

Will we always be on our faces at Christ’s feet, worshiping Him? No, because Scripture says we’ll be doing many other things—living in dwelling places, eating and drinking, reigning with Christ, and working for Him. Scripture depicts people standing, walking, traveling in and out of the city, and gathering at feasts. When doing these things, we won’t be on our faces before Christ. Nevertheless, all that we do will be an act of worship. We’ll enjoy full and unbroken fellowship with Christ. At times this will crescendo into greater heights of praise as we assemble with the multitudes who are also worshiping Him.

So the next time you’re singing in church, expand your mind to anticipate worshiping with the entire assembled body of Christ. Imagine it now, with the following scene from my novel Edge of Eternity spurring on your thoughts. The scene occurs on the day Nick observes— and joins—Heaven’s army in its final cosmic campaign against the forces of darkness:

We rejoined our comrades in the great camp of Charis, embracing and shedding tears and slapping each other on the back. Then warriors around me turned toward the masses of untold millions gathered in Charis. The army began to sing, perhaps hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million.

I added my voice to theirs and sang the unchained praises of the King. Only for a moment did I hear my own voice, amazed to detect the increased intensity of the whole. One voice, even mine, made a measurable difference. But from then on I was lost in the choir, hardly hearing my voice and not needing to.

As we sang to the gathered throngs of Charis, the sheer power of their voices, our voices, nearly bowled me over.

Then suddenly the multitudes before us sang back to us, and our voices were drowned by theirs. We who a moment earlier seemed the largest choir ever assembled now proved to be only the small worship ensemble that led the full choir of untold millions, now lost to themselves. We sang together in full voice, “To him who made the galaxies, who became the Lamb, who stretched out on the tree, who crossed the chasm, who returned the Lion! Forever!”

The song’s harmonies reached out and grabbed my body and my soul. I became the music’s willing captive.

The galaxies and nebulae sang with us the royal song. It echoed off a trillion planets and reverberated in a quadrillion places in every nook and cranny of the universe. The song generated the light of a billion burning supernovae. It blotted out all lesser lights and brought a startling clarity to the way things really were. It didn’t blind, it illuminated, and I saw as never before.

Our voices broke into thirty-two distinct parts, and instinctively I knew which of them I was made to sing. “We sing for joy at the work of your hands…we stand in awe of you.” It felt indescribably wonderful to be lost in something so much greater than myself.

There was no audience, I thought for a moment, for audience and orchestra and choir all blended into one great symphony, one grand cantata of rhapsodic melodies and powerful sustaining harmonies.

No, wait, there was an audience. An audience so vast and all-encompassing that for a moment I’d been no more aware of it than a fish is aware of water.

I looked at the great throne, and upon it sat the King…the Audience of One.

The smile of His approval swept through the choir like fire across dry wheat fields.

When we completed our song, the one on the throne stood and raised His great arms and clapped His scarred hands together in thunderous applause, shaking ground and sky, jarring every corner of the cosmos. His applause went on and on, unstopping and unstoppable.

And in that moment I knew, with unwavering clarity, that the King’s approval was all that mattered—and ever would.

Browse more resources on the topic of Heaven, and see Randy’s related books, including Heaven.

Photo by Rachel Lynette French on Unsplash

Remembering David Powlison, a Faithful, Jesus-Loving, and Gospel-Centered Brother

Last Friday, author and psychologist David Powlison went to be with Jesus. I love this brother. I met and talked with him only once, but I will never forget the sweetness of his spirit, and how I saw Jesus in him. His books (a few of which he asked me to endorse) and his articles made a difference in my life, and the lives of countless others. And the updates he shared after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September are gold.

Over the years I’ve read and recommended several of David’s books, including Speaking Truth in Love, God’s Grace in Your Suffering, and Good and Angry: Redeeming Anger, Irritation, Complaining, and Bitterness, as well as his booklets Stress: Peace Amid Pressure and Breaking the Addictive Cycle. I also quoted from him in some of my own books. His insights were penetrating and gospel-centered:

“Don’t ever degenerate into giving good advice unconnected with the good news of Jesus crucified, alive, present, at work, and returning.”

“God does not accept me just as I am; he loves me despite how I am…He loves me enough to devote my life to renewing me in the image of Jesus.”

“Are you too bad to receive grace? How could you be too bad to receive what is for the bad?”

“Jesus’ death is your guarantee that when you come to God and confess your sins to him, you will receive mercy.”

Thank you, David, for honoring King Jesus with your life. I’m sad for your loved ones, but glad for you that you are enjoying His presence. I can’t wait to see you again. “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

There have already been a number of wonderful tributes to David, including this one from John Piper and this one from Kevin DeYoung (as well as this great overview of David’s life, from Justin Taylor). But I’m focusing on the following article by Ray Ortlund because not only is it a tribute to David, it is also a powerful and practical help and challenge for all our lives. Let Ray’s wonderful story be a conduit by which David Powlison, who “being dead still speaks” (Hebrews 11:4), speaks to you, realizing he is more alive than ever in the presence of Jesus.

How God-honoring if people will be able to say such things of us before and after we die! (And if they couldn’t if we died today, why not call upon God’s grace and power and make conscious efforts to spend the rest of our lives becoming the kind of people others could honestly tell such stories about?)

Thank you, David Powlison

By Ray Ortlund

Remembering David Powlison moves me deeply. When everything was on the line for Jani and me, David and Nan were there for us.

We spent a day together in 2007—for Jani and me, a catastrophic disaster of a year. David was an oasis of calm, gentleness, and reasonableness amid a swirl of accusations, loss, and heartbreak. David, with Nan, kept our hope alive.

One suggestion David made became so significant that I have passed it along to many others since then. I can’t remember his exact words. But it went something like this: “Ray and Jani, you are suffering. And it isn’t going to get better any time soon. So here is an idea. Ask the Lord for a verse of Scripture, a promise in the Bible, to help you get through this. And when that verse jumps off the page into your heart, make it the theme of your life while you slog your way forward. However dark the nighttime sky might be, you can always look up at that North Star promise, get your bearings again, and keep going. But wallpaper your reality with the Word of God.”

So we did. We asked the Lord to personalize to us some biblical encouragement of his own choosing. And he did. Jani was reading 1 Peter 5 soon thereafter, and verse 10 was a direct hit—in the best of ways: “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen and establish you.” We seized that verse.

We memorized 1 Peter 5:10, discussed it, prayed over it. Jani wrote it out on 3×5 cards and taped them to the inside of the kitchen cupboards, so that every time she went to get a glass or a plate, there was 1 Peter 5:10. I wrote it out and stuck it to the visor in my truck so that, at a red light, I could look up and be strengthened by 1 Peter 5:10. We never let that verse out of our sight. And in ways we could not have imagined, God has proved faithful to his promise. To this day, whenever Jani and I experience some restoring, confirming, strengthening, or establishing mercy, we look at one another and say, “1 Peter 5:10!” In fact, we did so just yesterday. That word from above didn’t merely help us cope. It redefined how we experience reality. It kept me in the ministry.

David Powlison understood human despair. He understood how God helps sufferers. He understood that what we need is a hope dependent on nothing in this world but grounded in God alone. The word himself in 1 Peter 5:10 has become, to me, one of the most precious words in all the Bible—God, not delegating the task to any angel, but God himself getting personally and directly involved with us in our real need. How glorious.

At the time, I have to admit that, though my heart resonated with 1 Peter 5:10, I struggled to believe it. Jani believed it more than I could. But David was right. And thanks to his wise counsel, I turned toward the Lord with the weak faith I had. And gradually I was enabled to believe it more and more. And now I know, at a deep and personal level, that God himself restores, confirms, strengthens, and establishes us, when we have nothing to offer him but our sorrow and need.

Thank you, David. Thank you.

This post originally appeared on Ray’s blog and is used by permission.

4 Lies That Give Us an Unbalanced View of Singleness

Today’s blog post, on the subject of singleness, is a helpful one by Elizabeth Woodson. She’s a passionate Bible teacher who serves on staff at The Village Church writing curriculum, teaching, and developing leaders. She’s also a graduate of Dallas Theological Seminary with a master’s in Christian education. 

And by the way, let me again recommend Christopher Yuan’s excellent book Holy Sexuality and the Gospel. His chapters on singleness, and the church as spiritual family, are a wakeup call for local churches to rethink our unwitting assumption that marriage is God’s calling for everyone. Scripture emphatically tells us otherwise, and demonstrates it in the singleness of Jesus who was not only God, but also the most well-adjusted human being who ever lived. —Randy Alcorn

Many unmarried people in the church struggle to accept the label “single,” since churches can treat singles as second-class citizens. This treatment rests on wrong teaching about singleness. Simply put, the church can idolize marriage and make it the ultimate goal for maturity in Christ, relegating singles—no matter how old—to perpetual immaturity until they find someone to marry.

Confusing marriage with maturity has always been wrong, but it was easy when marriage was a cultural norm for the American church. At the turn of the century a large majority of the general population was married; in the 1970s the marriage rate had dropped to 70 percent; and by 2014 it had dropped to 50 percent. The inescapable reality is that countless congregations include singles of all ages. The church needs to learn how to love singles better—and the first step is repairing broken theology.

While this list isn’t exhaustive, here are four major lies that contribute to an unbalanced theology of singleness. By correcting these misguided interpretations of Scripture, we’ll be better equipped to love and serve the unmarried people in our congregations.

Lie 1: Single = Alone

“Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’” (Gen. 2:18).

Outside the companionship of animals and God, Adam was functionally alone. By default, he was also single. God declared that being on mission alone is problematic, and so he gave Adam a wife to help him.

We tend to approach Genesis 2:18 as a prescriptive text, concluding that God’s solution for lack of companionship is marriage. Yet if this is true, what does it imply about being single? It would mean God doesn’t think singleness is good. But if that were true, why were some of the major characters in Scripture single, including John the Baptist, Jesus, and Paul?

To understand this text we need to widen our lens. I believe Genesis 2:18 is a descriptive text from which we can extract the prescriptive truth that living outside of community isn’t good. God created us to live in the context of relationships, and those relationships look different for different people.

For some of us, community will take the form of a spouse and kids. For others, it will look like a good network of friends and extended family members. For all of us, it will mean belonging to a local church.

Lie 2: Your Value Is in a Role

“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels” (Prov. 31:10).

I’m particularly sensitive about the messages we send single women regarding their value and significance in God’s kingdom. One phrase I’ve heard consistently is that a woman’s greatest fulfillment comes from being a wife and a mother. And for many of us, Proverbs 31is the passage that springs to mind when we ponder what it means to be the epitome of a godly woman.

Yes, the Proverbs 31 woman is an example of spiritual maturity, but not simply because she was managing her home and providing for her family. It was because she embodied godly character.

Temporary life roles—like wife or mother—aren’t the ultimate markers of godliness. We should most strongly accent the godly character that will help a believer glorify God in anyseason of life. There is nothing special you need to be successful in marriage that you don’t need in singleness. No matter our marital status, we still need to confess and forgive, communicate well, and die to self every day. Let’s encourage singles to place their value not in what is temporary, but in what is ultimate: godliness.

Lie 3: Marriage Is Guaranteed

“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Ps. 37:4).

Context is crucial here. When we don’t read Scripture in context, we can make God responsible for promises he never made. David wrote Psalm 37 to remind God’s discouraged people that God would bring justice and bless their faithfulness. David wasn’t giving a blanket guarantee that whatever they desired God would grant, simply because the desire was good.

Sometimes people conscript this verse to teach about marriage, leaving many singles angry and bitter toward a God who never promised them marriage in the first place.

Not all godly people get married.

The truth is, not all godly people get married. We need to embrace this, preach this, and celebrate this! God’s best for many will include a life without a spouse and biological children. These people will know him more deeply, serve him more powerfully, and experience greater joy than they could as a married person. Not because singleness is better, but because marriage wasn’t part of God’s perfect will for their life.

No matter how deeply we desire it, Scripture never guarantees marriage. But it does teach us to “not be anxious for anything, but with prayer, supplication, and with thanksgiving make [our] requests known to God and the peace of God will guard [our] hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:6–7).

Scripture also teaches that God’s ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts higher than our thoughts (Isa. 55:9). We can ask God for whatever we desire—but he reserves the right to decide what’s best for us. And his “best” is never a consolation prize.

Lie 4: Marriage = Happiness

One common perception of marriage is that it’s near-perfect bliss. Social media, movies, TV shows, and books communicate that all our “single problems” will be solved when Prince Charming swoops in on his white horse and rescues us. In reality, marriage is two deeply broken people joining their deeply broken lives to become one.

Wherever we’ve believed one of these lies, our theology of singleness needs to be revised. We need to dethrone our idol of marriage and learn to define our identity the way God does. He views singleness and marriage as equally blessed gifts to be stewarded for his glory (1 Cor. 7:7). Do we share his vision?

This article originally appeared on The Gospel Coalition and is used by permission of the author.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash