Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 128

No More Boredom

Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov said, “I don’t believe in an afterlife, so I don’t have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.”

Sadly, even among Christians, it’s a prevalent myth that Heaven will be boring. Sometimes we can’t envision anything beyond strumming a harp and polishing streets of gold. We’ve succumbed to Satan’s strategies “to blaspheme God, and to slander his name and his dwelling place” (Revelation 13:6).

People sometimes say, “I’d rather be having a good time in Hell than be bored out of my mind in Heaven.” Many imagine Hell as a place where they’ll hang around and shoot pool and joke with friends. That could happen on the New Earth, but not in Hell.

Hell is a place of torment and isolation, where friendship and good times don’t exist. Hell will be deathly boring. Everything good, enjoyable, refreshing, fascinating, and interesting originates with God. Without God, there’s nothing interesting to do. David wrote, “In Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11, NKJV). Conversely, outside of God’s presence, there is no joy.

Our belief that Heaven will be boring betrays a heresy—that God is boring. There’s no greater nonsense. What’s true is that our desire for pleasure and the experience of joy come directly from God’s hand. God designed and gave us our taste buds, adrenaline, sex drives, and the nerve endings that convey pleasure to our brains. Likewise, our imaginations and our capacity for joy and exhilaration were made by the very God we accuse of being boring! Do we imagine that we ourselves came up with the idea of fun?

“Won’t it be boring to be good all the time?” Note the underlying assumption: Sin is exciting, righteousness is boring. We’ve fallen for the devil’s lie. His most basic strategy, the same one he employed with Adam and Eve, is to make us believe that sin brings fulfillment. But the opposite is true. Sin robs us of fulfillment. Sin doesn’t make life interesting; it makes life empty. Sin doesn’t create adventure; it blunts it. Sin doesn’t expand life; it shrinks it. Sin’s emptiness inevitably leads to boredom. When there’s fulfillment, when there’s beauty, when we see God as He truly is—an endless reservoir of fascination—boredom becomes impossible.

Those who believe there can’t be excitement without sin think with sin-poisoned minds. Drug addicts are convinced that without their drugs they can’t live happy lives. In fact—as everyone else can see—drugs make them miserable. Freedom from sin will mean freedom to be what God intended, freedom to find far greater joy in everything. In Heaven we’ll be filled, as Psalm 16:11 describes it, with joy and eternal pleasures.

Another reason why people assume Heaven is boring is that their Christian lives are boring. That’s not God’s fault. He calls us to follow Him in an adventure that should put us on life’s edge. If we’re experiencing the invigorating stirrings of God’s Spirit, trusting Him to fill our lives with divine appointments, and experiencing the childlike delights of His gracious daily kindnesses, then we’ll know that God is exciting and Heaven is exhilarating. What else could they be?

As for having nothing to do in Heaven, we’re going to help God run the universe (Luke 19:11-27). We’ll have an eternity full of things to do. The Bible’s picture of resurrected people at work in a vibrant society on a resurrected earth couldn’t be more compelling. (No wonder Satan works so hard to rob us of it.)

God will give us renewed minds and marvelously constructed bodies, full of energy and vision. James Campbell says, “The work on the other side, whatever be its character, will be adapted to each one’s special aptitude and powers. It will be the work he can do best; the work that will give the fullest play to all that is within him.”[i]

Even under the Curse, we catch glimpses of how work can be enriching, how it can build relationships, and how it can help us to improve ourselves and our world. Work stretches us in ways that make us smarter, wiser, and more fulfilled.

The God who created us to do good works (Ephesians 2:10) will not abandon this purpose when He resurrects us to inhabit the new universe.

We are told that we will serve God in Heaven (Revelation 7:15; 22:3). Service is active, not passive. It involves fulfilling responsibilities, in which we expend energy. Work in Heaven won’t be frustrating or fruitless; it will involve lasting accomplishments, unhindered by decay and fatigue, and enhanced by unlimited resources. We’ll approach our work in Heaven with the same enthusiasm we now bring to our favorite sports or hobbies.

In Heaven, we’ll reign with Christ, exercise leadership and authority, and make important decisions. This implies specific delegated responsibilities for those under our leadership, as well as specific responsibilities given to us by our leaders (Luke 19:17-19). We’ll set goals, devise plans, and share ideas. Our best workday on Earth—when everything turns out better than we planned, when we get everything done on time, when everyone on the team pulls together and enjoys each other—is just a small foretaste of the joy our work will bring us on the New Earth.

If you think that life in God’s new universe will be boring, you’re just not getting it. Imagine the flowers that botanists will study (and enjoy), the animals that zoologists will research (and play with). Gifted astronomers may go from star system to star system, galaxy to galaxy, studying the wonders of God’s creation. A disembodied existence would be boring, but our resurrection to bodily life on the New Earth will forever put boredom to death.

Excerpted from 50 Days of Heaven: Reflections That Bring Eternity to Light. See also the comprehensive book Heaven. 

Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

[i] James M. Campbell, Heaven Opened: A Book of Comfort and Hope (New York: Revell, 1924), 123.

Increase Your Happiness by Enjoying God’s Creation

Joy is like the stars. Some nights they blaze in glory; other nights they’re covered by clouds. But they’re always there. Since childhood, I’ve loved the stars. I loved them before I loved the God who made them. Loving God causes me to delight in the stars not less but more—partly because I can’t look at them without thinking of Him and partly because I know He loves His creation. When I enjoy the stars, I pay Him a compliment and join in His enjoyment.

It won’t matter whether stars are visible if you don’t put yourself in a position to see them. Walk away from the Internet, open the door, step outside, and look at God’s creative productions—most of which are free to behold.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) wrote, “If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore. . . . But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.”[1]

Clyde Kilby (1902–1986) wrote a list of personal resolutions to help him stay alive to the beauty of God’s world around him.[2] Here are two of them:

At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me. . . . I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are, but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying, and ecstatic” existence.[3]

As I write this, I’m looking up from my computer at a photo I took underwater. It reminds me of the sheer delight of my unforgettable ninety-minute encounter with a wonderful monk seal I named Molly. Whenever I look at Molly’s photo, my heart fills with joyful memories and longing for the New Earth’s joy and the days that await us. That anticipation gives me a harvest of happiness today.

Charles Spurgeon said,

I confess I have no sympathy with the good man, who, when he went down the Rhine, dived into the cabin that he might not see the river and the mountains lest he should be absorbed in them and forget his Savior. I like to see my Savior on the hills and by the shores of the sea! I hear my Father’s voice in the thunder and listen to the whispers of His love in the cadence of the sunlit waves. These are my Father’s works and, therefore, I admire them and I seem all the nearer to Him when I am among them.[4]

Spurgeon went on to say these profound words about finding happiness in this world:

If I were a great artist, I would think it a very small compliment if my son came into my house and said he would not notice the pictures I had painted because he only wanted to think of me. He therein would condemn my paintings, for if they were good for anything, he would be rejoiced to see my hand in them! Oh, but surely, everything that comes from the hand of such a Master Artist as God has something in it of Himself! The Lord rejoices in His works and shall not His people do so?[5]

For more on happiness, see Randy’s books Happiness and God’s Promise of Happiness, and the devotional 60 Days of Happiness. 

[1] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature and Selected Essays (New York: Penguin, 1982), 37.

[2] Clyde Kilby’s resolutions, as cited in John Piper, The Pleasures of God (Colorado Springs: Multnomah, 2000), 95–96.

[3] Ibid., 95.

[4] Charles H. Spurgeon, “God Rejoicing in the New Creation” (Sermon #2211).

[5] Ibid.

Photo by Francisco Moreno on Unsplash

Why Abortion Isn’t Just a Political Issue: the Profound Significance of Oregon’s New Law Mandating Taxpayer Funded Elective Abortions

Some people claim that abortion is just a political issue, and not something that Christians should get involved with. But the abortion issue, at its core, is moral, not political. It has everything to do with the worth of a human child. If I were to jump today in front of a car to rescue a child, it would not be to lodge a political protest against reckless driving. It would be to save the life of an innocent child. Abortion became “political” when the law was changed to justify the killing of children.

Long before it was ever a divisive political issue, abortion was a moral issue, and one which God has a clear and emphatic position on. I encourage you to take a look at what God’s Word says about unborn children, and what the people of God throughout history have said about abortion.

Abortion and end-of-life issues aren’t “merely” about politics. They’re about the dignity and sanctity of human life. I share more on the question of “Is abortion just a political issue?” in this video:

The Slippery Slope in Oregon

Martin Luther King, Jr. (who like many others was a hero in one moral realm while coming up short in another) said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Sadly, my home state of Oregon, which I love in so many ways, legalized abortion four years before Roe v. Wade, and we were the first state, in fact the first principality in the world (yes, even before the Netherlands), to legalize physician assisted suicide. Five states have now followed Oregon’s lead. (In 2014, making national headlines, 29-year-old terminally ill Brittany Maynard chose to end her life under Oregon’s physician assisted suicide law.)

As if this weren’t enough for Oregon to be famous for, last month, Governor Kate Brown signed House Bill 3391, making Oregon the only state in the U.S. without any laws that restrict or limit abortion, and one of only a handful of states that chooses to use taxpayer money to pay for elective abortions. 

Oregon Life United explains more about the bill:

First, HB 3391 requires all private health insurers to offer free abortions without restrictions or copays. The one exception is Providence Health Plans, which had threatened to pull out of the state because of the abortion requirement. Instead, individuals covered by Providence will soon be able to obtain free, taxpayer-funded abortions through the Oregon Health Plan.

Second, it gives $10.2 million to expand the Oregon Health Authority in order to provide “services, drugs, devices, products and procedures” for undocumented residents, $500,000 of which would specifically be used for abortions.

Additionally, beyond expanding taxpayer-funded abortion, the law goes further by specifically barring public employees from inhibiting or restricting access to abortion in any way. 

ABC News summarized the law like this: “In some states such as New York, abortions are cost-free if they're deemed medically necessary. The Oregon bill is unique, however, in that patients would have access to the procedure for virtually any reason, at any time, including sex-selective and late-term abortions.”

In short, it’s one of the most aggressive pro-abortion laws ever passed in the history of our country.

The slippery slope that Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop spoke of in the seventies has become terrifyingly real where I live.

What Oregonians Can Do

I’ve written before to encourage prolife churches to get involved with circulating the petition headed up by Oregon Life United in an effort to help stop taxpayer funding of abortion in Oregon. With this new law in place, it’s more crucial than ever that the petition gets enough signatures for a ballot initiative.  Passing the initiative would also reverse the expansion of taxpayer-funded abortion mandated by HB 3391. They need to get 117,000 valid signatures in order to qualify for the next statewide ballot, and they’re hoping to complete the petition drive by September 30.

If you’re an Oregon citizen, you can sign the petition or order sheets to circulate at www.stopthefunding.org. (And whether you live in Oregon or not, we can all pray for the unborn and their mothers, and also pray for divine appointments where God can use us to make a difference in people’s lives.)

Oregonians, let’s join together to “love our neighbor” by protecting the youngest human lives in our state. Pastors and church leaders, if you place these petitions in your church for people to sign, it would be a great opportunity to explain from the pulpit why you are doing so. You can say it’s not to bring politics into the church; rather it’s to obey God’s Word which says, “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Proverbs 31:8-9).

(Some have genuine concerns whether circulating petitions in church is legal; the answer is yes. According to the IRS churches may engage in legislative activity, which includes sharing petitions, and retain their tax-exempt status as long as it’s not more than an “insubstantial” part of its overall activity in terms of time and money. This document provides more information.)

Before it becomes necessary to contemplate the alternative of civil disobedience to avoid paying money for the killing of children, please do whatever you can to help reverse this law and keep similar ones from being implemented in your own home state or, if you’re outside the U.S., your country.

For more, see Randy’s books Why ProLife? and ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments. Also see his articles Pastors, You Must Speak Up on Abortion and The Evidence Doesn’t Lie: The Unborn are Children (which includes a special note to pastors and church leaders). 

Photo by Daiga Ellaby on Unsplash

Why I Signed the Nashville Statement: It Speaks the Truth in Love about the Biblical View of Human Sexuality

If you follow social media and news online, you’ve likely heard about the Nashville Statement, put together by The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. Along with several dozen other Christian leaders, I’m one of the initial signatories of this statement, which seeks to provide a Christ-honoring and biblically faithful standard on homosexuality and transgenderism.

When it was posted in late August, unfortunately during Hurricane Harvey (its release was prearranged some time earlier), it caused another kind of cultural and online hurricane. Here are a couple of comments from people on Twitter who expressed disappointment at my signing it:

So disappointed in @randyalcorn for signing #nashvillestatement. He gave me hope of heaven & now he banished me for loving people.

Somehow @randyalcorn believes, from an eternal perspective, that publicly condemning LGBTQIA people who are facing persecution is good.

Redefining God’s Love

I cannot apologize for signing a statement that I believe to be true to Scripture and true to reality. As for the claim that by signing it I “banished” someone “for loving people,” I hardly know what to say. I believe that I truly love people who think and live differently than I do in terms of sexual desires and practices. I also believe God loves them far more than I, or the people who sent these tweets, do.

But instead of expecting the God of love to define love as we do, we need to look at what He actually reveals in His Word. The Nashville Statement attempts to do this. We need to realize that we can’t truly love people by lying to them and saying God believes their actions to be right, when He has said He doesn’t.

This would be like claiming that it is unloving to say racism is wrong or that abortion or adultery are wrong. Some do claim that, at least concerning abortion, but it’s simply not true. The most loving thing we can do is provide people alternatives to abortion, and be quick to offer the gospel of God’s grace to those who’ve had abortions, as we should and do to all who have committed sexual immorality and every other sin, including greed and gossip and gluttony. But the solution is not to say “abortion is right” or “homosexual marriage is right” any more than to say “greed is right” or “gossip is right.”

Why a Statement?

Some have honestly wondered, “Why the need for such a statement? Isn’t it more divisive and offensive than it is helpful?” First, I highly recommend reading the actual statement before either criticizing or commending it (that should go without saying, but remarkably does not). Second, I also recommend reading through these posts from other signers that give excellent answers to that question, starting with the article by Rosaria Butterfield, who lived as a lesbian for many years:

Rosaria Butterfield: “Why I Signed the Nashville Statement”

John Piper: “Precious Clarity on Human Sexuality: Introducing the Nashville Statement”

Albert Mohler: “I signed the Nashville Statement. It’s an expression of love for same-sex attracted people”

In his article, Albert Mohler writes:

The backlash to the document shows why it is so needed: While the Christian church has held to a normative understanding of biblical sexuality for over two millennia, we now face challenges to biblical teaching that require an unprecedented level of specificity. It affirmed what would have been universally acknowledged as the historic Christian faith without question or controversy until just the last several years.

…Pastors, parents, and individual Christians are asking for clear answers to what they see as new questions. We have attempted to provide them. Churches and Christian institutions have asked for a statement to which they can point for reference and affirmation. We have sought to assist them.

Homosexuality and the Historic Christian Faith

It’s amazing the degree of anger in other comments you can read online, especially considering that this is hardly a new position for those who’ve signed the statement. I’ve written blog posts related to homosexuality in the past, and stressed that the Bible makes clear that God’s very best for all of our lives involves our purity and obedience to Him. This includes forsaking all sexual sins, heterosexual and homosexual, outside of the marriage covenant between a man and a woman. 

This isn’t about condemning or persecuting people or pointing a finger at them. It’s about speaking the truth in love, for people’s good, because true love doesn’t deny God’s revealed truth:

“But speaking the truth in love, let us grow in every way into him who is the head—Christ” (Ephesians 4:15, CSB).

“There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death” (Proverbs 14:12, CSB).

“Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6, CSB).

In response to my comment that we need to speak the truth in love about homosexuality, a commenter on Twitter responded:

That’s not what this is. You’re saying, in Article 10, if I don’t have the same CONCLUSION as you about Scripture, I can’t be saved.

Here’s what article 10 actually says:

WE AFFIRM that it is sinful to approve of homosexual immorality or transgenderism and that such approval constitutes an essential departure from Christian faithfulness and witness.

WE DENY that the approval of homosexual immorality or transgenderism is a matter of moral indifference about which otherwise faithful Christians should agree to disagree.

I find it odd to hear people say that if I were a true Christian I would support homosexual marriage and transgenderism, then turn around and say I have no right to consider these inconsistent with the historic Christian faith.

Of course they are inconsistent with both Scripture and the historic Christian faith. Feel free to reject Scripture or the historic Christian faith if you so choose, but don’t feel free to retroactively revise them to make them fit the positions that our culture has come to embrace in, oh, about the last five minutes!

It may feel much nicer and more loving, but such revisionism is not only objectively wrong, but also cowardly and ultimately unloving. Our job is not to reinvent and dilute and dismantle the Christian faith, nor to cower in fear about declaring it. Rather, it is to accurately represent it and live it out faithfully and humbly. Our job is not to disagree with God and say that sin is right and that moral righteousness is wrong, but to explain that the God who offers us His grace does so in the context of recognizing our proneness to violate His truth. 

Denny Burk offers some helpful insight to the pushback on this specific part of the statement in his post, “Why the Nashville Statement now, and what about article 10?”He writes this:

We labor for moral clarity on the point not so that we can say to sinners, “Keep out!” We are standing with our arms wide open saying, “Please, come in. Come to the waters of life available to any and every sinner who turns from sin to trust in Christ.” But we cannot make plain the path to life to those who think they don’t need it. And the revisionists of our time are leading precious people away from Jesus and not to Jesus because they are telling them that they have no judgment to fear. This is the opposite of love.

Our Quickly-Changing Cultural Landscape

It’s not only astounding but also revealing how quickly our culture (and many professing Christians with it) has abandoned thousands of years of consensus on the issue of homosexual marriage. Just five years ago (not merely a hundred or fifty or twenty years ago) the great majority of Americans—including Hillary Clinton—still believed homosexual marriage should not be legal. In fact, Hillary opposed legalized gay marriage as recently as 2013. That’s how quickly the cultural landscape has changed.

In 2000, Hillary Clinton went on record as stating this: “Marriage has historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage has always been, between a man and a woman.”

The Democratic Party didn’t change its platform to include same-sex marriage until 2012. The fact that in the entire history of humanity this concept has not been regarded as right or legal in any culture until extremely recently is itself revealing. Is it possible that sometimes people throughout human history have been right about things (abortion comes to mind) that we are wrong about today?

And it’s not just the secular landscape that has shifted quickly—the views Christians hold about homosexuality have changed rapidly in the past decade. (See Denny Burk’s article Four stages of “evangelical” affirmation of gay marriage.) I believe that in the coming years, pastors and Bible teachers who reinterpret Scripture to make it popular and to sound “more loving” will increasingly try to take the moral high ground as they portray Bible-believers who hold to biblical views as hateful bigots. Of course, some are bigots, but most are not. And, of course, some who oppose one form of bigotry are themselves bigots in other areas. (Which is why so many people are so hateful toward those they claim are hateful, and so intolerant toward those they think—sometimes rightly and often wrongly—to be intolerant.)

The kindest, most Christ-like and grace-centered believers will be marginalized and labeled hateful despite their loving actions. They are the ones whose hearts break for gay and transgender people, and every other broken person including themselves and their loved ones, and who believe that love doesn’t mean refusal to tell the truth, but means acting in what God says are people’s true and ultimate best interests and will bring them eternal happiness.

Concerns over President Trump

I also want to address one other common concern about the statement. Many have remarked that those who signed the Nashville Statement haven’t spoken out about issues related to President Trump, and instead have chosen to focus on this particular issue, and therefore have lost their credibility.

I can’t speak about each of the initial signers, but I know many have been vocal about their concerns over President Trump both before and after he was elected, notably Russell Moore and John Piper. Before the election, I was one of many who warned against the character flaws of Donald Trump and his unbiblical attitudes and moral behavior that I believed were obvious in his life, his books, and his public statements.

Following his election I determined to refer to him as President Trump, just as I referred to his predecessor as President Obama. I’ve chosen to pray for him and our nation with as much respect as possible. This is not a double standard—I did the same with President Obama, whom I also had profound disagreements with (though those disagreements were in different areas—for instance, abortion). I can pray for my president and support him whenever possible, even though he says and does some things I cannot in good conscience support.

My intent is to show my respect to the office even when I disagree on some fundamental levels. I certainly agree with some of President Trump’s views, and I am totally supportive of his Supreme Court Justice appointment and the prolife actions he’s taken so far, including rescinding the Mexico City Policy. But I often take positions in blogs on issues and matters of morality, civility, and demeanor which show my disagreements with our president in numerous areas. (For example, my recent post on the events in Charlottesville, which included a post from Russell Moore, showed a different view of what happened there, than what President Trump shared in his tweet, where equal blame seemed to be implied: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.”)

Politics is not the main concern of my blogs. Just as I rarely posted about President Obama, I rarely post about President Trump. There are other Christian organizations whose focus is speaking to current issues that include politics, such as the Ethics &Religious Liberty Commission. (For example, see their recent article on DACA and Dreamers.)

To assume I always agree with our president just because I don’t announce my opposition to each misguided tweet he posts is simply incorrect. For journalists, or for that matter some Christian leaders, to portray the attitudes and actions of President Trump as if they are representative of all evangelical Bible-believing people is irresponsible and wildly inaccurate.

Indeed, I know many Christians who did not vote for President Trump precisely because of their convictions. And I know many others who, with reluctance, voted for President Trump because they saw no viable alternative. But they do not routinely defend his demeanor, offhand comments, or decisions as wise, and certainly not as Christ-honoring. The stereotype of evangelical Christians as blind justifiers of all our president’s attitudes and behaviors does disservice to the many believers and churches that are centered not on partisan politics, but on Jesus Christ and the Gospel of God’s Grace.

Showing Both Grace and Truth

So please don’t see the Nashville Statement as either political or hostile. I hope you will read all the way through it. If you do, I think you’ll see that it isn’t just another angry reaction or unkind backlash, but a thoughtful, careful expression of biblical truth.

We should respond to our culture’s rejection of biblical and historic Christian truth not with hatred or with cowardice. God help us to be like Jesus, who courageously exemplifies both grace and truth: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

Related books by Randy Alcorn: Truth: A Bigger View of God’s Word, The Grace and Truth Paradox, and The Purity Principle.  

Escaping from the Love of Money

My good friend Tony Cimmarrusti has two degrees from Harvard, a Wall Street background, and over 20 years of hedge fund experience. But most importantly, he loves Jesus with all his heart, and is one of the most generous people I know.

I greatly appreciate Tony’s message in this short video (and the edited transcript that follows), which is a challenge for all of us to live with an eternal perspective about the resources God gives us to manage:

Christianity is both reasonable and logical. But there’s not enough logic and not enough reason for anyone to believe it on our own—it’s a miracle of the Holy Spirit when that happens. Similarly, I think that for people who have fallen under the trance of the love of money and don’t even know it, it’s also a miracle when they break that power. It only happens by a spiritual transaction, and by God helping them pry their fingers off of whatever it is they’re latched onto. It’s with the Holy Spirit’s help.

What does my life stand for? What if my life ends tonight, and I stand before God, and God says to me, “Why should I give you Heaven?” I know what I would say: “Because your Son died for my sins. He was my Savior and my Lord. And you promised me that you would prepare a place for me. And He promised that to me, and that He was going to come back and take me to be there. So here I am.”

Now, the next thing that He’s going to ask is, “Okay, so what did you do with what I gave you on Earth?” And, wow, that’s going to be a tough exam. I know that it’s going to be filled with grace. And yet, when I stand before God, I don’t want to hand Him a bunch of stock certificates and think He’s going to say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

I want to be able to say, “Lord, this is what we did with what we had. You gave us five talents; here’s ten back.” We want to be in that number. The last thing we want to do is be the guy who had the talent and went and buried it.

Although there’s nothing inherently wrong with money, there’s something desperately wrong with devotion to money. “But those who want to be rich fall into temptation, a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and by craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs” (1 Timothy 6:9-10, CSB). As Tony says, we all need God’s help to escape from the clutches of materialism and money-love so that we can find freedom and discover the lasting joy of true, eternal riches.

Tony refers to the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), which shows that we’re each entrusted by God with different financial assets, gifts, and opportunities, and we’ll be held accountable to God for how we’ve invested them in this life. We’re to prepare for the Master’s return by enhancing the growth of His kingdom through wisely investing His assets. What a privilege that is. So let’s live to hear the Father’s “Well done!”

Photo: Pixabay

Hope and Perspective When We’re Dealing with Doubt

In times of doubt, difficulty, and trials, our fundamental beliefs about God and our faith are revealed. So how can Christians find faith in the midst of doubt? How can they trust God’s plan when their lives seem out of His control, and prayers seem to go unanswered or, sometimes it feels, even unheard?

If you or someone you love has been there, these questions may be far more personal than theoretical. You might wonder: Is God good? Is He sovereign? Does He care?

When we’re assailed by trials, we need perspective for our minds and relief for our hearts. It’s essential we realign our worldview by God’s inspired Word: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).

The sovereignty of God is a solid foundation for our faith.

God’s sovereignty is the biblical teaching that all things remain under God’s rule and nothing happens without either His direction or permission. God works in all things for the good of His children (see Romans 8:28), including evil and suffering. He doesn’t commit moral evil, but He can use any evil for good purposes.

Paul wrote, “In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). “Everything” is comprehensive—no exceptions. God works even in those things done against His moral will, to bring them into conformity with His purpose and plan. We can follow Scripture’s lead and embrace the belief that a sovereign God is accomplishing eternal purposes in the midst of painful and even tragic events.

Genuine faith will be tested.

Suffering and life’s difficulties either push us away from God or pull us toward Him. Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl wrote in The Unconscious God, “Just as the small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it, likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicaments and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.”

Only when you jettison ungrounded and untrue faith can you replace it with valid faith in the true sovereign God—faith that can pass, and even find strength in, life’s formidable tests.

The devastation of tragedy is certainly real for people whose faith endures suf­fering. But because they do not place their hope for health, abundance, and secure relationships in this life, but in an eternal life to come, their hope remains firm regardless of what happens.

Faith means believing that God is good and that even if we can’t see it today, one day we will look back and see clearly His sovereignty, goodness, and kindness.

In our times of doubt, God promises never to leave us.

Paul Tournier said, “Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no longer any opportunity for faith.”

Trusting God is a matter of faith. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). We must immerse ourselves in God’s Word. As a solar panel stores sunlight’s energy, faith is established only by regular exposure to the truth and application of that truth to the events we confront in our lives. This is why it’s essential that we attend a church that teaches God’s Word and that we study it daily ourselves. When our beliefs are established on the truth, we are more likely to stand during times when doubts assail us.

We should ask God to deliver us from Satan’s attacks of unbelief and discouragement. We should learn to resist them, in the power of Christ (see James 4:7). Trusting God for the grace to endure adversity is as much an act of faith as trusting Him for deliverance from it.

God promises in Hebrews 13:5 (NIV), “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” This unusual Greek sentence contains five negatives. Kenneth Wuest translates it, “I will not, I will not cease to sustain and uphold you. I will not, I will not, I will not let you down.” When we languish in the deepest pit and wonder if God even exists, God reminds us that He remains there with us.

We can trust God is refining us through our trials—and one day will bring us into his glorious presence.

The Lord says to us, “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you…When you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you” (Isaiah 43:2).

God’s presence remains with His children whether we recognize it or not. In periods of darkness, God calls us to trust Him until the light returns. “But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold” (Job 23:10).

In this world of suffering, I have a profound and abiding hope, and faith for the future. Not because I’ve followed a set of religious rules, but because for forty some years I’ve known a real person, and continue to know him better. Through inconceivable self-sacrifice He has touched me deeply, given me a new heart, and utterly transformed my life. To Jesus be the glory, now and forever.

If you’d like to read more related to the subject of suffering, see Randy’s book If God Is Good, as well as the devotional 90 Days of God’s Goodness and book The Goodness of God (a specially focused condensation of If God Is Good, which also includes additional material).

Photo by Guilherme Stecanella on Unsplash

Are We Shooting the Wounded or Acting in Love By Not Soon Restoring Fallen Leaders Back to Ministry?

First of all, it’s vital to remember that while transparency and the admission of sin are necessary, they are not sufficient, nor are they necessarily indicative of a changed heart. There are guys in accountability groups who share with each other week after week how they failed again by viewing pornography. Some are routinely congratulated and commended for being open, honest, vulnerable, and transparent. Those qualities all seem virtuous. But where it counts the most, by returning to their sin as a dog goes back to its vomit (2 Peter 2:22), they are not being virtuous at all, even if their “transparency” gives the illusion they are.

Not long ago, I read an online forum where hundreds of people were commending a Christian leader for his honesty and humility in publicly admitting his immorality (after it had already been made public by others). But when one person posted the suggestion that in light of the biblical qualifications for being a church leader (1 Timothy 3; Titus 1), he should stay out of Christian ministry for the foreseeable future, she was met with a barrage of responses from people accusing her of being judgmental and unforgiving.

The tables get turned, so that the “loving” thing to do is to act as if the affair (in this particular case, multiple affairs), divorce, and remarriage are not relevant to future ministry, and the “hateful” thing is to suggest that while God’s forgiveness is always there for the truly repentant, there are indeed consequences. One of those consequences is disqualification for ministry for at least a significant period of time (unless and until a new long-term track record of purity has been clearly established).

Years ago it became popular to say, “The church is the only army that shoots their wounded.” Now, if this were an appeal to stop telling people they are ungodly because they struggle with depression and fear and suicidal thoughts, and face difficult marriages and abuse and mental and chemical imbalances, it would be called for. It would be a very valid criticism and a call to express God’s grace and kindness, and to understand and emphasize with hurt, struggling, and wounded people.

But too often, the accusation of “shooting their wounded” is applied to those church leaders and laypeople who understand God’s grace, who affirm His full forgiveness of the repentant, but at the same time believe that the Bible’s moral qualifications for church leaders should be taken seriously and therefore extreme caution should be exercised before restoring someone to pastoral ministry and Christian leadership.

I personally worked with a gifted Christian leader who fell but who publicly confessed, truly repented, and lived out the rest of his life doing what jobs he could find, including driving a bus. At his memorial service, his family could hold their heads high, and I believe God said, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” But when he was asked two months after his affair was over to pastor a church, our counsel to him was that it was way too soon to even consider it.  

Some interpreted our response as unloving and judgmental. In fact, we were not only trying to protect the body of Christ, but we were also trying to protect our beloved brother. Even apart from the message it sends to the church, to go back into Christian leadership without a significant time away is to put oneself back into the context that lent itself to the temptations in the first place. Repentance and forgiveness always means full restoration to fellowship in Christ’s body. It does not mean you should go right back to a position of leadership.

Those who defend fallen Christian leaders as “wounded warriors,” and put all the emphasis on their need to heal and be productive and use their gifts, often do not seem to grasp the harm done to the church, the body of Christ, and the damage done to the credibility of the gospel among unbelievers. In some cases church leaders have counseled fellow pastors not to confess their adultery publicly, and not even to tell their own wives whom they have betrayed.

Some people think that by admitting their sin (often after having been caught in the lie) they place themselves above responsibility and consequences. The unspoken assumption is, “As long as I admit I’m a sinner, no one has grounds to criticize me.”

But a man who betrays his wife and children in an affair, or who falls back to pornography again and again, must do more than admit he was wrong. He needs to call upon the power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, in the context of true accountability to others, to live a righteous life. He must recognize that God’s grace doesn’t make sin okay—it makes sin something that can be conquered and abstained from over the long haul: “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age” (Titus 2:11-12).

This is also a reminder that all of us in positions of leadership should rehearse in advance the devastating consequences of sexual sin, including the forfeiting of our ministries. I once met with a man who had been a leader in a Christian organization until he committed immorality. I asked him, “What could have been done to prevent this?” He paused only for a moment, then said with haunting pain and precision, “If only I had really known, really thought through and weighed what it would cost me and my family and my Lord, I honestly believe I would never have done it.”

Some years ago my friend Alan Hlavka and I both developed lists of all the specific consequences we could think of that would result from our immorality as pastors. The lists were devastating, and to us they spoke more powerfully than any sermon or article on the subject by encouraging us to refocus on the Lord and take steps of wisdom and purity to keep from falling. You can read through mine on my blog, and use it as a basis for your own. (My booklet Sexual Temptation, which contains clear, preventive guidelines we can follow to avoid immorality, also has a specific section for pastors and church leaders. See also my book The Purity Principle.)

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

Tim Challies’ Review of Managing God’s Money

A while back, blogger Tim Challies reviewed my book Managing God’s Money. I wanted to share it with those who aren’t familiar with the book. Thanks for the review, Tim! —Randy Alcorn

I have a love-hate relationship with money. I think most people do. On the one hand money is a necessity–a resource we depend upon, a resource we need if we are to live and thrive in this world. On the other hand money is spiritually captivating, a resource that offers a particularly insightful look into our hearts. Money is the topic of Randy Alcorn’s book Managing God’s Money. This is a biblical guide to managing our money with an eye to eternity.

Many of you know that this is not Alcorn’s first book on money. I believe it is actually his third, so let me tell you how it fits into the Alcorn canon. While I haven’t read Money, Possessions, and Eternity or The Treasure Principle, my perception is that this book fits right between the two. In the book’s final pages Alcorn writes, “I wrote Managing God’s Money to serve as a small and inexpensive resource that covers a lot of ground in addressing financial stewardship with an eternal perspective.” More ground than The Treasure Principle but less than Money, Possessions, and Eternity. To that end it is printed as a mass market paperback and priced at just $5.99 (or $3.99 for Kindle).

Let me tell you how Alcorn goes about addressing this issue. He does so in six sections: Money and Possessions, Perspectives that Impede Faithful Money Management, Our Stewardship in Eternity’s Light, Giving and Sharing God’s Money and Possessions, Wisely Handling God’s Money and Possessions, and Passing the Baton of Wise Stewardship. As you would expect, he progresses from biblical teaching on the foundations of money to the way we use our money to the way we teach others how to use their money.

A few principles underlie much of what Alcorn teaches.

Ownership: all of our money belongs to God.
Stewardship: we are to be faithful managers of God’s money.
Morality: money is not evil; however, it can be used to expose the evil that inhabits our hearts.
Materialism: we are drawn toward desiring and idolizing money and possessions.
The Treasure Principle: you cannot take it with you, but you can send it on ahead.

These are a few of the most important big-picture principles that bind the book together. Working in his trademark question and answer format, Alcorn teaches how we can (and must) handle our money and possessions in a way that honors God. This is no-holds-barred stuff; he teaches that most of us have neglected our responsibility to give deeply, consistently and generously. He rebukes the materialism that inhabits the church to almost the same extent that it inhabits the world. He calls for a radical rethinking of the way most of us relate to our money.

Speaking personally, I found the book very convicting. I read it in the run-up to a series I am building on this very topic, and this book has given me a lot to think about. There may be times in which Alcorn overstates the case just a little bit, but even then, I need to do more study to really determine if this is the case. My impulse as I finished the book was to empty my bank account and give it all away. If only it were that easy. A couple of days later my thoughts have (thankfully) moderated a little bit. But I don’t think I’ll lose the heart of what Alcorn teaches here. The primary takeaway for me is a simple one, but one I needed to ponder: All I have belongs to God; he is the owner and I am merely the manager. My house, my car, my bank account–all of these belong to him. it is my responsibility to ensure that I am seeing them not as my possessions but as his. This then puts me in the proper context of a manager. That is a critical difference that is already changing the way I think about all that he has entrusted to me.

Managing God’s Money is a powerful little book and a very helpful one. It’s priced low enough that just about anyone can afford to buy it and read it. And if you read it, I’m sure you’ll benefit from it.

An Interview on the Frank Sontag Show about Service, Humility, and Truth

Last week I was interviewed on Frank Sontag’s radio show. Frank asked some great questions, and we discussed my recent blog post on leadership as well as the subject of my devotional book Truth.

Hope you enjoy the interview, which you can download here.

Photo by Alphacolor 13 on Unsplash

Lessons from an Otter on Doing Hard Things

You may have seen the “otter video” that’s gotten a lot of traction on Facebook. There’s a spiritual lesson here, I think. If you haven’t seen it, here’s this four-month-old pet otter who (for some reason) is being introduced to water for the first time. Please don’t get caught up in speculation about why someone has a pet otter and why the otter has never before been around water—maybe the otter was rescued and there were problems we don’t know about. (Not knowing, I’m going to assume the best, not the worst.)

So laying aside speculations, look at the video. Despite all the TLC from the owner, the otter is terrified at the sight of the water. Yes, terrified of the very thing he was made to enjoy and thrive in!

Since a friend sent it to me a few weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about how sometimes we shriek at some of the very things God calls us to. Sharing our faith? Being baptized? Giving? Bible study? Praying? Adoption? Church membership? Opening our homes? Mission trips? SHRIEK!!! And then we actually do them, and we realize, like the otter, THIS IS WHAT WE WERE MADE FOR!

So, sometimes we need to just get our shrieks out of the way as God lowers us toward the water, finally just jump in that water, and discover the wonderful things God has for us!

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5–6, CSB).

“Haven’t I commanded you: be strong and courageous? Do not be afraid or discouraged, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go” (Joshua 1:9, CSB).

“Some take pride in chariots, and others in horses, but we take pride in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7, CSB).

“When I am afraid, I will trust in you” (Psalm 56:3, CSB).

Photo: Pixabay