Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 118

Full of Grace and Truth, Like Jesus

Below are some thoughts about grace and truth and our need for both, in an age where some are all truth and no grace and others are all grace and no truth. (In fact, grace without truth is NOT biblical grace, and truth without grace is NOT biblical truth.)

Truth hates sin. Grace loves sinners. Those full of grace and truth—those full of Jesus—do both.

“Hate the sin, but love the sinner.” No one did either like Jesus. Truth hates sin. Grace loves sinners. Those full of grace and truth—those full of Jesus—do both.

“‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin’” (John 8:11, NIV).

Attempts to “soften” the gospel by minimizing truth keep people from Jesus. Attempts to “toughen” the gospel by minimizing grace keep people from Jesus. It’s not enough for us to offer grace or truth. We must offer both.

When we offend everybody, we’ve declared truth without grace. When we offend nobody, we’ve watered down truth in the name of grace. John 1:14 tells us Jesus came full of grace AND truth. Let’s not choose between them, but be characterized by both.

Some Scripture that pertains:

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

“For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). 

If you’d like to read more, see The Grace and Truth Paradox.

Photo by brandon siu on Unsplash

Benjamin Watson on Finishing the Drill of Life, to God’s Glory

I’ve mentioned before my profound appreciation for New Orleans Saints tight end Benjamin Watson. I love this brother and admire his willingness to speak out on things that are close to his heart, and that are close to God’s heart too, including racial justice and value of the unborn. At times this makes him unpopular with others, but he’s continued to boldly share about these issues. 

He’s also the author of two books: Under Our Skin, a book on racial issues, which I highly recommend; and his book on fatherhood, The New Dad's Playbook. He also posts frequently on Facebook.

Ben wrote an article on his blog about our call to finish life well, to God’s glory. I was encouraged by what he wrote, and hope you will be, too:

In 2001, The University of Georgia introduced Mark Richt as its new head football coach. One of the first things he did as coach was implement a new motto for our football program. The words “Finish the Drill” became the heartbeat of Georgia Football. They were on t-shirts and posters; they even put them on the locker room walls. To become a great team, Coach Richt knew that we needed to finish everything we did. Finishing is what separates good from great. Anyone can do just what is required of them, but the best finish everything they do with effort and excellence. In the classroom, in the weight room, and on the field, everything we did was predicated on Finishing the Drill. From 5:45 a.m. winter workouts, to stifling two a days, to the fourth quarters in the regular season, the words “Finish the Drill” (or FTD for short) reminded us to always strive for the perfection that would one day lead to a championship.

Finishing the Drill is not a new concept, though. It’s a theme throughout Scripture. At the end of his life, alone and in a Roman prison, the apostle Paul inked these words to his young disciple in the faith, Timothy: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” Paul would leave this world confident that he would receive the crown of righteousness the Lord has promised those who are faithful to Him. He wasn’t perfect or sinless, but he ran the course God had laid before him with excellence. Thus, he felt victorious when facing death. Because of his faithfulness to Christ, Paul eagerly awaited being in the presence of his Savior and Lord.

Jesus is our ultimate example of what it means to finish. Before he gave up His spirit on the cross, He uttered, “It is finished.” Jesus came to finish God’s awesome plan of salvation. He came to pay the penalty for our sins. He glorified the Father by completing the work He was given. Because He finished, we can become new creations and live in freedom from the bondage that sin has on our lives. We can live life abundantly with no condemnation and spend eternity with Him because He finished!

My hope is that at the end of my life I too can say that I finished the drill, that I fought the good fight, that I kept the faith, that I finished as a husband, a father, a teammate, and a friend. We have to take an honest assessment of our lives. At this moment can we say that we have wholeheartedly run the race God has laid before us; that we have been obedient to His call on our lives? Our time on this earth is a blessing from God, and He expects us to be good stewards of the time we have. There is no greater purpose in life than to know God and to make Him known. There is no better way to do this then to finish the work He has given us to do.

So how do we stay the course to finish the life God has given us? I believe the missing ingredient in the lives of countless Christians today is motivation. Given our false assumption that what we do in this life won’t have eternal consequences—apart from our decision to place our trust in Christ for salvation—it’s no wonder we’re unmotivated to follow God’s directions regarding money and possessions, giving, or anything else. Will it really make a difference? According to the Bible, it will make a tremendous difference! The doctrine of eternal rewards for our obedience is the neglected key to unlocking our motivation.[1]

Moses “regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because…” Stop right there. Because why? Now read the rest: “because he was looking ahead to his reward” (Hebrews 11:26). Motivated by long-term reward, he chose short-term disgrace. Not because he wanted disgrace, but because he wanted reward!

The apostle Paul was unashamedly motivated by the prospect of eternal reward right until the day he died. As Ben shared above, at the very end of his life, knowing he was about to be executed under Nero, Paul said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7). He went on to say, “Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing” (v. 8).

To Paul, gaining Christ made everything else seem comparatively worthless (Philippians 3:7-11). But part of gaining Christ was looking forward to eternal reward, Christ’s stamp of approval on his faithful service while on earth. This prospect of eternal reward from his Master’s hand was Paul’s consuming motivation throughout his life (1 Corinthians 9:24-27) and his greatest anticipation at his death.

May the same be true of us, and may it motivate us to “Finish the drill!”

Read more about eternal rewards in Randy’s book The Law of Rewards.

Photo by Riley McCullough on Unsplash

[1] I am indebted here to some insights on reward shared by Bruce Wilkinson in a one-day gathering for Christian leaders at Western Seminary in 1987.

A Letter to “Raised-in-a-Good-Church” Kids About How to Become a Christian

I grew up in a non-Christian family, with no Bible and no church. When I was around 16 years old, I came to faith in Christ. Having never heard the gospel, I picked up a Bible and started reading. Some people say they get confused when they’re in Leviticus. I was confused from the very beginning! But God did a miracle of grace in my heart, and life has never been the same since.

Sometimes people who grow up in the church don’t stop to contemplate both the simplicity and the radical call of the gospel, perhaps because they’ve been surrounded by the message from day one. This certainly isn’t true for all people who’ve been raised in Christian homes, but it’s something to be aware of. The church services we’ve attended, the Sunday school classes we’ve sat through, and our parents’ faith aren’t enough to save us. Only Jesus can do that, and His message of repentance and grace is for everyone. He calls us to follow Him, and to lose our lives for His sake, that we may truly find them (Luke 9:24).

My thanks to Bryan Elliff for this great article. —Randy Alcorn

To teenagers who are in good churches,

I want to tell you how to become a Christian.

Like you, I grew up in churches. Not just churches, but good churches. There was real Bible study, real community, real thoughtfulness. I also grew up in a Christian family. Not just a Christian family, but a good Christian family. My dad was, in fact, a pastor and itinerant teacher. He and my mom were very diligent to raise me well and to teach me about Jesus. On top of that, I was homeschooled.

As I grew older, I ran into a problem. I wanted to become a Christian.

The problem was that I couldn’t figure out how to become a Christian. Yes, I knew that you had to repent and believe, that the Holy Spirit had to work in you to give you new life, and that you couldn’t just pray a prayer to “get saved.” But when it came down to the actual logistics of the thing, I was in a bit of a fog. How could I get the Holy Spirit to come work in me? What would it look like for me to decisively repent? I mean, I wasn’t doing drugs or even disobeying my parents, at least not in big ways. And how could I know that I had “believed” with a genuine faith?

There were many times when I would pray, “Lord, make me a Christian,” but I was never really sure that the transaction had gone through. I wished that I could get some sort of automated email from heaven that would read, “Congratulations, you have officially become a Christian!”

The email never came. Thankfully, through a much longer process, I did become a Christian. But as I’ve gone on in my Christian life, I’ve realized that my problem is one that is common among those of you who are growing up like I did. So, from one raised-in-a-good-church kid to another, here are my thoughts on how to become a Christian.

First, it’s simpler than you think. Really, it begins with a decision. It’s a decision to follow Jesus. So let’s think about how that looks practically. Let’s say you already have a desire to follow him. So, one day you wake up and say, “Well, I have this desire to follow Jesus, so, you know what? I’m going to!” There you go. The decision could look something like that.

But be careful here. Deciding to get on board with Jesus is a simple decision, but it’s also a major one with some crazy implications. If you’re going to do it, you can’t do it halfway. It’s all or nothing.

For one, you’re going to have to accept, and even like, who he is. He’s the Lord, the ruler of everything (Acts 2:34-36). He has the authority to call the shots, he has the power to do what he wants, he has the position to judge people who are alive and people who are dead. But remember that his is a good reign. Where he rules, there is love. Where he rules, there is justice. Where he rules, there is peace and happiness.

You’re also going to have to start seeking to live out the things that he taught. One of the first things that Jesus said when he came into the world was “repent” (see Matthew 4:17). It means you should decide to stop doing sinful things. Change your mind, stop doing them, and do what is good and right instead. That’s what repentance is.

He taught many other things about how to live, such as the importance of love. You should love people, he said, with everything you’ve got, even people who don’t love you back (Matthew 5:43-48). You should seek to live with humility, putting other people above yourself (Luke 14:7-11). You should pursue a righteousness that comes from your heart. That is, don’t be a hypocrite (Matthew 6:1-6). There are many other exciting and challenging teachings from Jesus, too.

You won’t do these things perfectly, but as you’re on the journey, you’ll find forgiveness and the help of the Holy Spirit to grow in ways you never would have thought.

Finally, if you decide to follow Jesus, you can expect to go where he did. He experienced death. You’ll find that there is much death in following him—death as you let go of sin, death as you are persecuted, and death as you experience the trials and sadness of this life. He, himself, said that those who would follow him must pick up a cross like his every day (Matthew 16:24).

But it is a good death and here’s why: Through death comes resurrection. Here we find the soaring hope of Christianity. Jesus came back to life. He was the first one to be lifted out of the decay of this world and be created new. And he, as Lord of everything, has poured out the power of this resurrection into the world so that we can stop doing what is bad and follow him with love and humility (Ephesians 1 and 2). Above all, he has given us hope that one day, he will pour out this power without measure in order to create a brand new world without sin or death (Acts 3:21, 2 Peter 3:13). And if we follow him, we will be resurrected to life in that new world.

So, if you would like to become a Christian, then become one! Count the cost, enjoy the journey, and expect a bright, never-ending future.

This article originally appeared on For the Church .

Photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash

Star Pitcher Donates $10 Million Mansion to Ministry Helping Special-needs Children

Many of God’s people have been entrusted with much, and Jesus said “To whom much is given much will be required” (Luke 12:48). We are all accountable to use what belongs to God, which He has entrusted to us, to help the needy for their good and His glory. All this is also for our good, since Jesus said “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving” (Acts 20:35, GNT).

Here’s a story that I hope will inspire athletes, business people, and others to whom God has entrusted much (and which ultimately belongs to Him!). Without a doubt, God will bless people who act in accord with what we see in this story. By God’s grace, may more of His people step forward and give to Him and to others what will bring Him the greatest glory, others the greatest help, and all givers the greatest joy!

Major League Baseball star pitcher Cole Hamels and his wife are giving away their $9.75 million Missouri mansion and land to a Christian camp for children with special needs and chronic illnesses.

Camp Barnabas has two locations in the Ozarks and notes in its values that “Christ comes first always” and staffers “point people to Christ in everything we do.”

The organization doesn’t just serve kids with special needs but also serves campers’ siblings and parents, as well as missionaries.

Hamels — who’s pitched for the Texas Rangers since 2015 after starting his career with the Philadelphia Phillies — said the work of Camp Barnabas “really pulled on our heartstrings,” the camp noted. “Seeing the faces, hearing the laughter, reading the stories of the kids they serve — there is truly nothing like it … we felt called to help them in a big way.”

Read the rest of the story.

Here’s a video showing the touching work of Camp Barnabas.

Top photo: Camp Barnabas | Cole Hamels photo: Wikimedia Commons

Giving Help and Hope for Change to Teenagers Ensnared by Lust and Pornography

Since the time we were young teenagers, many of us have heard lists of reasons for walking in sexual purity. God commands purity and forbids impurity. Purity is right. Impurity is wrong.

True? Absolutely. But it’s equally correct to say purity is always smart; impurity is always stupid.

That’s what I call The Purity Principle: Purity is always smart; impurity is always stupid. Not sometimes. Not usually. Always.

That idea forms the basis of my book by the same title, The Purity Principle. I was delighted to see the following message to youth leaders and workers by Dustin Brown with Crossings Ministries, where he shares points from the book on how to help and encourage teenagers to walk in sexual purity. Thanks, Dustin, for sharing about the book and how it can be used to help youth! —Randy Alcorn

You just finished leading the Wednesday night youth Bible study when one of your 17-year-old students approaches you. He was convicted by your message and confesses through tears that he’s been hooked on pornography for the past five years. He wants to change. How will you lead him? A couple of weeks go by, and you get a phone call from a frantic parent who just discovered their 13-year-old daughter has been engaging in sexting. Her parents are desperate. How will you lead them? While most church-going teenagers know about the sin of sexual immorality, I’m convinced that very few of them know how to change. (Let’s face it: very few adults know how to change.) The chairs in our youth groups are filled with teenagers ensnared to lust and pornography, and yet most, if not all, do not know how to break the pattern. The church is indebted to Randy Alcorn for his contribution in filling this gap with his book The Purity Principle. There are several principles he presents that help us turn from sexual sin to walk in purity.

At the Heart of it All

If we want to help teenagers be free of their sexual sin, we must help them understand the heart behind it. Sexual sin is fundamentally idolatry. Desiring any sexual encounter outside of marriage, whether it is the actual act, in the mind, or on the computer screen, is a desire for something other than and “better” than God. In that moment, we are essentially saying that we desire pleasure, power, acceptance, control, comfort, leisure, etc. more than God. We must help students understand the idols of their hearts. These idols must be repented of and replaced with a worship for the Lord and a desire for him above all else. We must choose to fight for a greater joy and love. The problem is not just our sexual behavior; it is also our worshiping heart. Our desires need to change. Those bound by sexual sin have worshiped their way into it, and now they must worship their way out of it.

Renewing Thoughts

The battle of sexual sin begins in our minds, and Alcorn gives us helpful insight into how we can renew them. He reminds us, “Tomorrow’s character is made out of today’s thoughts…we become what we think” (41). We don’t just “fall into” sexual sin. No teenager innocently gets addicted to pornography. There is a progression that leads up to the sexual action, and that progression begins in the mind. We must guard our minds, quickly repent of any impure thoughts, and then replace those thoughts with what is pure. Again, the problem is not just with sexual action; it’s with our thoughts. Teenagers in our youth groups must be taught how to renew their thoughts, which leads to our next principle.

Radical Measures

Second Timothy 2:22 charges us to “…Flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (NASB). This verse has played an integral role in my own fight for purity, as it calls us to flee from impurity and pursue what is pure. Not only must we flee sexual immorality, but we also must take radical measures to replace those things with those that are pure. Romans 13:14 exhorts us to “make no provision for the flesh.” Alcorn uses the example of someone trying to stop eating donuts. If that person continues to drive by the donut shop every day, thinks about donuts all day long, and watches donut commercials, it’s only a matter of time before they eat another donut. And yet as funny as that sounds, this is exactly what we often do with sexual temptation. Spending the day fantasizing about lustful thoughts, putting ourselves in situations with other people that will lead us into sin, watching and listening to materials that fill our minds with impure thoughts, and continuing to give ourselves access to the very things which cause us to stumble, will indeed result in more sexual sin!

What are some radical measures we can take against sexual sin? It depends on what makes a person stumble, or what makes it easy for them to sin. There is nothing worse than sin, so whatever one has to give up to avoid it, it’s worth it. Consider the consequences if you don’t. Make a list for yourself, and instruct students to do the same, of what would happen if you had premarital sex, continued to look at pornography, or had an affair. One of the things students do not usually understand is how their choices affect other people. They don’t think their sexual sin hurts people, but it does. Sin kills. When we sin sexually, it will damage relationships (first and foremost with God), it will damage our witness and any future ministry, and it will damage a future marriage. Therefore, get rid of what causes you to sin. Jesus teaches this in Matthew 5:27-30. Let’s apply his teaching to our context. If your smart phone causes you to look at pornography, then get rid of it. Neither you nor your students need a smart phone. Some students may need to get rid of their computers. Yes, that is possible. Schools and public libraries offer free access to computers where homework can be done. If you do feel the need to have a computer in your home, sacrifice whatever money necessary to buy some type of internet filter software. These are just a few examples illustrating that we can get rid of what causes us to sin if we truly desire repentance. Do it and teach your students to do it because it’s worth it!

Jesus, the Purifier of our Souls 

The Purity Principle is a gift to the church; it is a gift to us. Alcorn gives us principles that serve as guardrails against impurity in our lives. If you’re ensnared by sexual sin, or if you minister to students who are, take heart. “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:7 NIV). Jesus can, will, and does purify us from all of our sexual stains. Neither you nor your students are ever too far gone for Christ to reach, heal, and make new. If you are haunted by past decisions and regrets, as some of your students will be, know and teach that Jesus’s righteousness on our behalf covers all of our sin. The principles discussed here point us to Christ, and as we implement them, we realize it is only by clinging to his grace and mercy that we can be transformed and changed. The principles Alcorn presents are given to us first by God in the Scripture, and it is through these principles that God works new life into our hearts. Change is possible for all of us, and that change comes from Jesus, the purifier of our souls.

See also Randy’s booklet Sexual Temptation: Establishing Guardrails and Winning the Battle, as well as his blog on overcoming pornography, the first of a three part series.

Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash

Hope and Resources for Those Struggling with Depression

Depression can be symptomatic of the deep desolation of our hearts. We are capable of fearing we’ll never again know happiness, and many who love God have suffered from such dread. God’s grace, His promise to never forsake us, His sustaining presence, and His promise of a plan for our good are always part of the cure; sometimes therapy and medication can also play significant roles.

I’ve known a few people with perpetually sunny dispositions, but my own nature is reflective and, at times, melancholic. I’ve experienced seasons of depression, both before and since coming to faith in Christ—some due to my personality type and emotional makeup (and perhaps genetics), some triggered by my long-term physical illness (insulin-dependent diabetes), and some the result of adverse circumstances.

I share in my book Happiness how as a teenager, before knowing God, I had nothing much to fight it with. Now I have far better tools—first and foremost an awareness of the presence and grace of God. I thank Him that as the years have gone on, He has enabled me to experience more frequent times of happiness even in the midst of difficulties. God’s gift of laughter is a huge part of that; in fact, sometimes it’s like a ladder that helps me climb out of deep holes. A close friend once told me, “I always know when you’re hurting. You joke and laugh more.” (Again, there are medications that help some people, and I’m grateful for that, as they’re part of His common grace.)

When I blogged about my depression several years ago, a few people expressed shock that someone who had written about subjects such as grace and Heaven could ever be depressed! I had to laugh, since far better people than I have experienced far worse depression, including Martin Luther, John Owen, and William Cowper, to name a few. 

Here are the posts I wrote about Charles Spurgeon’s experience with depression, which many readers have found helpful:

Depression, Gratitude and Charles Haddon Spurgeon

More on Depression in the Christian Life and Ministry (with Citations from Charles Spurgeon)

Third (and Final) on Spurgeon, Ministry and Depression

Also see Shedding Light on Depression and Thoughts of Suicide.

A few years ago I recorded this ten-minute video with Desiring God’s David Mathis about some things I learned while experiencing depression.

Finally, if you’re depressed, or if you have a friend or a family member who’s dealing with depression, check out David Murray’s helpful article 8 Ways to Help Depressed Christians.

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Discipling the Children in Your Home, with Insights from Our Daughter Karina

If I could give parents one piece of advice, it would be this: When it comes to your children’s lives, no one can take your place. So, don’t wait for someone else to talk to your kids about Jesus. Do it yourself. Read Scripture with them. Memorize it together. Pray with them. Go help the needy together. Give together and serve together. Show them what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

I love what the parent writing in Proverbs 23:26 says to his child: “My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.” Children don’t just get their spiritual guidance from Scripture; they get it as their eyes observe the ways of their parents. When your children trust you enough to give you their hearts, they will follow your example.

Deuteronomy 6:6-7 says, “And these words, which I command you today shall be in your heart; you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.”

To “teach” is a formal term. It implies a certain time set aside for instruction. This is to be done diligently. It might involve reading to our children, memorizing with them, and discussing relevant issues. Family devotional times can be a great way of providing spiritual reference points which will lead to conversations throughout the week.

The passage also speaks of the informal. We are to “talk” to our children when we sit at home, as we walk, when we go to bed. In our family, many of the greatest learning opportunities arose as we worked together, went out to eat or had fun together, or traveled on vacation.

Above all, the heart of discipleship must always be to take our children back to the cross, to the Gospel of Christ. This should be the center of everything in family life. Our children must see their deep need not merely to be outwardly obedient, but to be delivered from the power of sin, to be transformed on the inside, to become new creations in Christ. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

This brings me to a video that our daughter Karina recorded for Life Bible Fellowship Church in Upland, California, where she and her husband Dan Franklin attend along with their three boys, and where Dan is a teaching pastor and elder. In a conversation with one of their pastors, Troy Spilman, Karina discussed what discipleship can look like in the home. They both had great insights to share. This woman is the real deal! (Trust me. I’ve had the privilege of knowing her since the day she was born.)

Photo: Pixabay

Love Is Not God: A. W. Tozer on How Equating Love with God Is a Major Mistake

A.W. Tozer has had a great impact on my life. His book The Knowledge of the Holy, which profoundly influenced me when I came to Christ as a teenager, is a classic that I think people today need to read.

In the book, Tozer spoke of the attributes of God. He wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” Unfortunately, many modern Christians have reduced Him to a single-attribute God. Never mind that the angels in God’s presence do not cry out, day and night, “Love, love, love,” but “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty” (Isaiah 6:3, NIV).

Certainly love is a very important attribute of God. God is love, we’re told in 1 John 4:16, so in some senses it is a defining quality of God. However, this does not minimize His other qualities, and that’s the problem: when you start saying (as I’ve heard people say) we must interpret all of God’s attributes in light of His love, you introduce the error of us imposing our limited understanding of love onto God, and recreate Him into our image.

By all means, we should rejoice in God’s mercy and love. But we must also recognize that our Lord is relentlessly holy, righteous, and just. “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong” (Habakkuk 1:13, NIV). The universe exists not for Love’s glory, but for God’s glory.

Here’s what Tozer wrote about the danger of defining God only by His love:

The apostle John, by the Spirit, wrote, “God is love,” and some have taken his words to be a definitive statement concerning the essential nature of God. This is a great error. John was by those words stating a fact, but he was not offering a definition.

Equating love with God is a major mistake which has produced much unsound religious philosophy and has brought forth a spate of vaporous poetry completely out of accord with the Holy Scriptures and altogether of another climate from that of historic Christianity.

Had the apostle declared that love is what God is, we would be forced to infer that God is what love is. If literally God is love, then literally love is God, and we are in all duty bound to worship love as the only God there is. If love is equal to God then God is only equal to love, and God and love are identical. Thus we destroy the concept of personality in God and deny outright all His attributes save one, and that one we substitute for God.

The God we have left is not the God of Israel; He is not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; He is not the God of the prophets and the apostles; He is not the God of the saints and reformers and martyrs, nor yet the God of the theologians and hymnists of the church.

For our souls’ sake we must learn to understand the Scriptures. We must escape the slavery of words and give loyal adherence to meanings instead. Words should express ideas, not originate them. We say that God is love; we say that God is light; we say that Christ is truth; and we mean the words to be understood in much the same way that words are understood when we say of a man, “He is kindness itself.” By so saying we are not stating that kindness and the man are identical, and no one understands our words in that sense.

The words “God is love” mean that love is an essential attribute of God. Love is something true of God but it is not God. It expresses the way God is in His unitary being, as do the words holiness, justice, faithfulness, and truth. Because God is immutable He always acts like Himself, and because He is a unity He never suspends one of His attributes in order to exercise another.

From God’s other known attributes we may learn much about His love. We can know, for instance, that because God is self-existent, His love had no beginning; because He is eternal, His love can have no end; because He is infinite, it has no limit; because He is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity; because He is immense, His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea before which we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreats confused and abashed.

Yet if we would know God and for other’s sake tell what we know, we must try to speak of His love. All Christians have tried, but none has ever done it very well. I can no more do justice to that awesome and wonder-filled theme than a child can grasp a star. Still, by reaching toward the star the child may call attention to it and even indicate the direction one must look to see it. So, as I stretch my heart toward the high, shilling love of God, someone who has not before known about it may be encouraged to look up and have hope.

We do not know, and we may never know, what love is, but we can know how it manifests itself, and that is enough for us here. First we see it showing itself as good will. Love wills the good of all and never wills harm or evil to any. This explains the words of the apostle John: “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.”

…To know that love is of God and to enter into the secret place leaning upon the arm of the Beloved—this and only this can cast out fear. Let a man become convinced that nothing can harm him and instantly for him all fear goes out of the universe. The nervous reflex, the natural revulsion to physical pain may be felt sometimes, but the deep torment of fear is gone forever.

God is love and God is sovereign. His love disposes Him to desire our everlasting welfare and His sovereignty enables Him to secure it.

Photo: Pixabay

The Growing Body of Research Says Yes, Your Smartphone Really Is Changing You and Your Family

One of my favorite bloggers, Tim Challies, linked to a fascinating article in his daily A La Carte feature: Your smartphone is making you stupid, antisocial and unhealthy. So why can't you put it down⁉️ Here are some notable sections from it about the impact smartphones are having on our lives and minds:

They have impaired our ability to remember. They make it more difficult to daydream and think creatively. They make us more vulnerable to anxiety. They make parents ignore their children. And they are addictive, if not in the contested clinical sense then for all intents and purposes.

Consider this: In the first five years of the smartphone era, the proportion of Americans who said internet use interfered with their family time nearly tripled, from 11 per cent to 28 per cent. And this: Smartphone use takes about the same cognitive toll as losing a full night's sleep. In other words, they are making us worse at being alone and worse at being together.

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Average users look at their phones about 150 times a day, according to some estimates, and about twice as often as they think they do, according to a 2015 study by British psychologists.

Add it all up and North American users spend somewhere between three and five hours a day looking at their smartphones. As the New York University marketing professor Adam Alter points out, that means over the course of an average lifetime, most of us will spend about seven years immersed in our portable computers.

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In 2015, Microsoft Canada published a report indicating that the average human attention span had shrunk from 12 to eight seconds between 2000 and 2013. The finding was widely reported at the time and elicited some shock – for about eight seconds.

But John Ratey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and an expert on attention-deficit disorder, said the problem is actually getting worse. "We're not developing the attention muscles in our brain nearly as much as we used to," he said. In fact, Prof. Ratey has noticed a convergence between his ADD patients and the rest of the world. The symptoms of people with ADD and people with smartphones are "absolutely the same," he said.

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When taking in information, our minds are terrible at discerning between the significant and the trivial. So if we're trying to work out a dense mental problem in our heads and our phone pings, we will pay attention to the ping automatically and stop focusing on the mental problem. That weak attentional filter is a bigger shortcoming in the smartphone era than ever before.

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Even people who are disciplined about their smartphone use feel the effect.

The devices exert such a magnetic pull on our minds that just the effort of resisting the temptation to look at them seems to take a toll on our mental performance. That's what Adrian Ward and his colleagues at the University of Texas business school found in an experiment last year. They had three groups of people take a test that required their full concentration. One group had their phones face down on the table, one had them in their bags or pockets and the last group left them in another room. None of the test-takers were allowed to check their devices during the test. But even so, the closer at hand the phones were, the worse the groups performed.

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Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist and research associate in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, interviewed 1,000 kids between the ages of 4 and 18 for her 2013 book The Big Disconnect. Many of them said they no longer run to the door to greet their parents because the adults are so often on their phones when they get home.

And it gets worse once they're through the door. One of the smartphone's terrible, mysterious powers, from a child's perspective, is its ability "to pull you away instantly, anywhere, anytime," Dr. Steiner-Adair writes. Because what's happening on the smartphone screen is inscrutable to others, parents often seem to have simply gotten sucked into another dimension, leaving their kid behind. "To children, the feeling is often one of endless frustration, fatigue and loss."

The digital drift affecting families shows up in national statistics. The Center for the Digital Future, an American think tank, found that between 2006 and 2011, the average number of hours American families spent together per month dropped by nearly a third, from 26 to about 18.

So how do we combat the ill effects of smartphones, both in our personal lives and in our families, and find ways to use them for good? Tony Reinke, another favorite writer, has addressed this same subject with great insight in his book 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You.

Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways. (Psalm 119:37)

Photo by rawpixel.com on Unsplash

Enjoying God’s Creation in Maui, and Trusting in His Sovereignty for What Lies Ahead

Nanci and I have had a great and relaxing time in Maui the last two weeks, enjoying God and each other. Our first weekend, I spoke on giving at Hope Chapel Kihei’s three church services. (Watch the video of one of the services here.) Thank you to those who’ve been praying for this time away.

If you receive EPM’s prayer updates by email (sign up here) you know that earlier this year, Nanci was diagnosed with colon cancer. EPM has set up a Caring Bridge site where the latest updates will be posted (you’ll need to create a simple Caring Bridge account, or log in with Google or Facebook, to access the page). Caring Bridge is a much more effective way to communicate because all the information stays in one place, and people can access any prior updates they’ve missed.

There’s no new medical information except that doctor appointments begin again when we return, and five weeks of radiation treatments may start the end of March or first of April. 

We’re both in good spirits, talking often of God’s grace and sovereignty and that we can fully trust Him in whatever is ahead. We continue to pray for direct or indirect healing, and if He chooses not to heal immediately, we ask Him to use the common grace of medical treatments to restore Nanci to health. We deeply appreciate your prayers during this season. From here in Maui, this has been part of my worship:

School of yellow tangs, various reef fish, and a Christmas wrasse, drifting with me in the surge zone:

Contented turtle cruising the deep blue:

This giant sea turtle, over five feet long and probably over 300 pounds, turned toward me and kept coming closer. We bonded:

A beautiful but particularly elusive species, the peacock grouper. Very rare to get them on camera for more than a few seconds:

Finally, I handed my camera to Tony Cimmarusti, EPM supporter and good friend who “happened” in God’s providence to be here when we were, and asked him to catch me swimming below a giant sea turtle near Makena beach:

I took this photo of Tony C. with a smaller turtle. We had a blast!

“Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it” (Psalm 96:11).

“But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the LORD has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind” (Job 12:7-12).