Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 131

Meet the Logos Hope, a Floating Bookshop and an Incredible International Ministry

I’ve blogged before about the Logos Hope, a ship owned and operated by OM Ships International. The ship ministry, the brainchild of one of Operation Mobilization’s founders, George Verwer, began in 1970 as part of OM’s global Christian training and outreach movement. Since then their ships (this is the fourth) have visited 480 different ports in 151 countries and territories and welcomed over 46 million visitors onboard. Ponder those amazing statistics!

Logos Hope travels to ports around the world, acting as a floating bookshop with over 5,000 titles. (They report that, on average, one million visitors come on board each year.)

OM Ships also provides training for those who work onboard, as well as volunteer opportunities to serve by providing supply aid and community care in the places they dock. Their international crew represents dozens of nations. (Karen Coleman, part of our EPM staff, has a personal connection to the Logos Hope—her son Zac served onboard for two years and met his bride, Hannah, there.)

This video shows more about the ship.

Check out another video, this one from their recent stop in Aruba. It not only shows the particular features of the country and the locals, but also the ship’s crew ministering and helping people and getting out the gospel, books, and education about health issues. I love it.

Nanci and I are really excited to have the opportunity to visit the Logos Hope later this month when I’m speaking at an OM conference in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Then, after the conference, we will spend five nights on the ship, seeing firsthand this vital community and ministry.  I’ll also be speaking to staff/crew one morning.

How great it will be to enter the world of the Logos Hope! I look forward to sharing more after our return.

God’s Works of Art Point to Him

If you go to an art gallery, you can watch people sit for hours staring at a single great work of art. They’ve seen it and pondered it before, perhaps many times, for dozens or even hundreds of hours. The human artist unleashed his or her creative instincts on a canvas, for months—if not years—of their lives. The devotees of the painting find it inexhaustible and are able to see or sense something new in the painting each time they ponder it.

If this seemingly inexhaustible beauty is true of the products of human hands, how much more true is it of God’s hands?

If people can stare tirelessly at a represented field of flowers created by Monet, how might we stare more intently at an actual field of flowers created by God? If we might endlessly ponder an artist’s rendition of a person, such as the Mona Lisa, shouldn’t we ponder all the more, and benefit from pondering, the wonder in the face of real people we see daily? And in particular, the marvelous person and work of Christ? If the words of Shakespeare can be read and reread with fresh understanding, how much more should the words of God yield new treasures of insights?

The music lover must turn on the music and listen. The nature lover and art lover must go out to nature or to an art gallery to contemplate their favorite beauties and discover new ones. So the Christ-lover must go to God’s Word and to God’s world to celebrate old insights and cultivate new ones.

Nature is secondary, a work of God and therefore one step from God, the primary. The work of a human being is tertiary, two steps from God who created the person, who created the art. If the secondary and tertiary can be so wondrous, how much more wondrous is the God who is the source of all secondary beauty, and is Himself the cosmic center of all primary beauty?

Consider this the next time you are tempted to skip going to the Bible and prayer and to contemplate God, in order to watch television or play a game or check email or social media: Why turn away from the headwaters of ultimate wonder and beauty to drink from the trickles of muddy water so far from the Source?  

Sure, there’s a place for games and social media, and we may (I do) have a duty to check our email. But let’s put first things first. This will not only acknowledge the primacy of our great God and Savior, but also put all secondary things in their proper place.

Speaking of art, from time to time I go back to this creative conveyance of the Gospel from rapper Propaganda.

Photos: Unsplash; Propanda photo

Ellery’s Prayer, Childlike Faith, and Hobbies on the New Earth

My long-time friend Barry Arnold, one of the pastors at Cornerstone Church, shared this video of his 4-year old granddaughter Ellery. After a conversation with her dad Brian, Barry’s son and also my friend, Ellery prays for a member of their church, April, who was a youth leader at Cornerstone and a professional photographer, and who recently went to be with Jesus.

I was touched by Ellery’s prayer, and I think you will be too.

Thank you, Ellery, for encouraging us with your prayer! If we enjoy hearing our children and grandchildren pray, how much more does God love to hear the prayers of His children. When Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it” (Luke 18:17), He showed how much He values childlike faith and trust in Him.

I’m also reminded that our children’s instinctive grasp of Heaven—and what we should look forward to there—is sometimes better than ours. (Christoplatonism hasn’t gripped them yet.) When Ellery says that April is still taking pictures, one of her favorite activities, in Heaven, I think she’s on to something, even if it might be delayed to the resurrection and life on the New Earth. Because most of our hobbies aren’t inherently sinful (if any are, we should give them up now), we have every reason to believe that the same activities, games, skills, and interests we enjoy here will be available on the New Earth, with many new ones we haven’t thought of.

In my book Heaven for Kids, I say this about the question of arts and entertainment in Heaven:

Do you like a good movie or play? Maybe you enjoy painting or drawing. Believe it or not, God invented art. He created the universe, then wrote, directed, and took the leading role in history’s greatest story. (It’s called the Drama of Redemp­tion.) He is the one who gives artists and writers the kinds of minds and emotions and physical senses that give them their ideas.

Will we find ways to use the arts—including drama, painting, sculpture and music—to praise God? Will these arts continue to provide enjoyment and entertainment for people? I believe the answer is yes.

Think of the joy you feel when you make a card for your mom or grandpa, or when you draw a cartoon just to make your brother Zachary smile.

Or consider how you might feel if you and your cousins Ainsley and Hudson wrote and performed a skit at a family reunion. Then think about how awesome it would be to create something even better on the New Earth. Maybe a great play written by Savannah, starring her sisters Ellie and Julia and her cousins Bailey, Sawyer, and Sydney.

If we believe New Earth (Heaven) will be greater than our present Earth, then surely the greatest books, dramas, and poems are yet to be written. Authors will have new ideas and better ways of thinking. Awesome books, including exciting adventure stories, are just waiting to be written by Courtney and Camber. (And people will be eager to read them.) Mckinzie might paint beautiful landscapes. Christian might make sculptures, and Elena might fashion beautiful jewelry. Alexis and Spencer might compose and perform great songs, and maybe Logan will be the featured drummer.

I look forward to reading and perhaps writing books that describe how wonderful God is, helping me worship him better. And I’m eager to read about adventures you and others will be enjoying throughout the New Universe. I’d also like to see your plays and paintings of those adventures.

Kevin DeYoung on What We Can Learn from Church History About False Teachers

Paul warned the elders of the church in Ephesus, “I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you…and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20:29-30).

These “twisted things” often were not outright denials of the Bible. Rather, they were Scripture reinterpreted to fit the widely accepted beliefs of the culture.

More theological battles have been lost to enemies inside the church than to those outside. The evil one has targeted us for deception. Nothing less than the welfare of God’s people is at stake.

Paul also wrote, “If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, they are conceited and understand nothing” (1 Timothy 6:3-4).

Why is false doctrine connected with conceit? A proud person elevates self over God, believing he is smarter than God’s Word and can improve on it.

In reality, we can’t change what is and isn’t true, but the truth can and should change us. As Christ the living Word is truth, so His written word is truth. Though heaven and earth will pass away, God’s truth never will. Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17).

In a recent post, I shared Joe Carter’s article on Broken Wolves. Today’s guest post is a follow-up to Joe’s article from Kevin DeYoung, one of my favorite bloggers. He offers some important points to consider about false teachers:

What Can Church History Teach Us About Wolves?

By Kevin DeYoung

Last week Joe Carter (not that Joe Carter) published an insightful article on the allure of broken wolves. It got me thinking about false teachers in the history of the church.

And by “false teacher” or “wolf” I don’t mean everyone who disagrees with me on a point of theology. As a Presbyterian, I think Baptists and Methodists and Pentecostals are wrong about some important things, but deviating from Westminster Confession of Faith does not make you another Arius or Pelagius. A false teacher or a wolf is someone who snatches up sheep (John 10:12), draws disciples away from the gospel (Acts 20:28), opposes the truth (2 Tim. 3:8), and leads people to make shipwreck of the faith and embrace ungodliness (1 Tim. 1:19-20; 2 Tim. 2:16-17).

Several years ago I did a series on heresies and heretics. Preparing the messages helped me understand church history better and more carefully articulate the orthodox faith. It also helped me notice some patterns (and non-patterns) related to false teachers. I discovered that church history can teach us a lot about wolves.

1. Wolves don’t usually know they’re wolves.

While some false teachers are knowing hypocrites who borrow religious language to fleece the flock, most errors in church history have been promoted by those who sincerely thought they were doing the work of God. As far as we can tell, Pelagius was not a big jerk. The Donatists were entirely earnest about the faith. We shouldn’t think that wolvish teachers and bloggers are trying to lead the sheep astray. People can be entirely sincere and still genuinely mistaken.

2. Wolves can quote the Bible.

It’s hard to know for sure what ancient heretics were like because most of what we know about them comes from the orthodox opponents writing against them. And yet, judging by the controversies left behind, we can assume that Arius knew his Bible. The Trinitarian and Christological debates of the early church, not to mention the soteriological controversies of the Reformation, involved people on both sides quoting Scripture. That doesn’t mean every viewpoint was right. It means that theology can come with Bible verses and still be wrong.

3. Wolves tend to be imbalanced.

Imbalanced may not be the right word. I’m not suggesting truth is always the golden mean between obvious extremes. What I mean is that false teachers have a tendency to let the big themes of Scripture silence specific verses. Wolves ignore the whole counsel of God. They like to take themes like love or justice or hospitality or law or grace and then round off all the edges of Scripture to fit this one big idea. The problem is not in trumpeting glorious truths. The problem is that their understanding of the truth gets truncated, and the application of the truth gets one-dimensional. This often leads to unbiblical conclusions that can sound biblical. Such as: If God is love, then we can’t have hell or moral demands that make me (or my friends) feel uncomfortable or unfulfilled. If Jesus ate with sinners, then we should not be overly concerned about sin. If God is sovereign over all things, then we shouldn’t evangelize. General truths pressed through to unbiblical conclusions.

4. Wolves are impatient with demands for verbal clarity.

False teaching thrives on ambiguity. It eschews careful attention to words and definitions. The Arians were willing to live with doctrinal imprecision. It was Athanasius and the orthodox party that insisted on defining terms. And they insisted on saying not just what was right but what was wrong. Good shepherds are willing to define and delimit. Don’t trust teachers who love to emote more than they love to be clear.

5. Wolves come in different shapes and sizes.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to settling theological disputes. We will not be discerning if we imagine that false teachers are always Pharisees or always libertines. Or if we assume they are always too rigid or always too loose. Sometimes the truth is either/or: there is only one God, salvation is by faith alone, there is no other name under heaven. But sometimes the truth is both/and: one God in three persons, fully God and fully man, divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Sometimes error comes because we pay insufficient attention to an important issue. At other times, the problem is wasting time on “foolish controversies.”

We can’t solve all our problems the same way. We can’t always assume the more conservative answer is the best, or that the liberal answer is always true.  If we are flexible in some places, it doesn’t mean we should be flexible in every place. If we are rigid over there, it doesn’t mean we need to be just as rigid with this issue over here. Wolves and false teachers don’t know how to use wisdom to settle different disputes in different ways.

For more on the topic of truth, see Randy Alcorn’s devotional Truth: A Bigger View of God’s Word.

Photo: Pixabay

God Owns Our Business: Alan and Katherine Barnhart’s Story of Stewardship

I have the greatest appreciation for the world-impacting ministry Generous Giving (see www.generousgiving.org). I recommend checking out the resources on their website, including their testimonials from brothers and sisters who have found the life-changing joy of generosity.

One of those testimonials is from Alan Barnhart, CEO of Barnhart Crane & Rigging, one of the largest heavy lift and heavy transport organizations in the United States. I know Alan and his wife Katherine—who is a critical part of what has happened in their family—and they are wonderful people. (Alan and Katherine are pictured with their children above.) Here’s more about their story of stewardship:

Alan, [his brother] Eric, and their families decided to give 100% of their highly successful business to charity to keep wealth from taking over their lives. About 50 percent of all company earnings are donated immediately to charity. The remaining 50 percent is used to grow the business. And in 2007, they gave the entire company to National Christian Foundation. Though they still run its daily operations, the brothers will never reap its accrued value; they kept none of it. Alan and his wife, Katherine, have six children and reside in Tennessee.

In the video, Alan talks about studying what Scripture had to say about money as a young man and shares two main takeaways from his study. First, he says, “Everything that I have and everything that I am has come from God, and belongs to God, and I am a steward of it. My job is to figure out what God wants me to do with the things He’s given to me. None of it belongs to me.”

Second, “I came away with a fear of wealth, of business success,” Alan says, citing Matthew 19:23, “It’s hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

I encourage you to watch the full 17-minute video and to share it with Christian business owners you know. We need more kingdom-minded business men and women willing to challenge each other to greater generosity and sold-out commitment to Christ!

For more on money, stewardship, and giving, see Randy’s books The Treasure Principle, Managing God’s Money, and Money, Possessions, and Eternity.

Can Self-Forgetfulness Make Us Happier?

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” —Philippians 2:4-7

"The thing we would remember from meeting a truly gospel-humble person is how much they seemed to be totally interested in us. Because the essence of gospel-humility is not thinking more of myself or thinking less of myself, it is thinking of myself less." —Timothy Keller

On the first day of a long-awaited two-week vacation, I found out that a book I’d labored on intensely had been altered for the worse, and I had no recourse. It was the one and only time in thirty years of writing that the published book would be inferior to the manuscript I’d submitted. It was the low point in my professional life. I was disappointed not only by what had happened but also by how deeply it affected me. If you’ve ever been disappointed by your own disappointment, you understand. (“I should be bigger than this—how come I’m not?”)

We were at our friends’ house on Maui. Despite the beautiful surroundings, I stewed over this writing project, even though I realized I’d eventually gain perspective. (I did, but not until after the vacation; I just wanted to fast-forward to when I knew I’d feel better!) Meanwhile, I snorkeled for three hours a day. That was the only time when the cloud dramatically lifted. Floating and diving among the beautiful fish, turtles, eels, and sharks—and enjoying a magical hour and a half swimming with a monk seal I named Molly—I lost myself in these creatures and the God who made them. I forgot about myself, my shortcomings, others’ failings, and my disappointments.

I left my troubled self on the shore. As long as my face was underwater, I was free and happy. It was only when I got out of the water and came back to “Randy’s world” that my happiness vaporized.

Sometimes when times are tough, I have that same experience of losing myself during quiet times with God. Sometimes I have it when laughing with family and friends. Other times it’s when I’m riding a bike or listening to music or a great audio book. In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis said of the humble person, “He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.” I’ve seen the truth of what Lewis and Tim Keller and others have discovered, experiencing my greatest happiness not simply when I think less of myself, but when I think of myself less. When I’m thinking most about Jesus and others, and least about me, I’m most fulfilled.

People who think a lot about themselves and their plans for wealth and success—e.g., writing a bestselling book and being mentioned in the same sentence with Hemingway—tend to be unhappy.

However, people who think a lot about Christ and His grace, the great doctrines of the faith, and how to love and serve others tend to be happy people. By redirecting attention from ourselves to God, we adopt a right perspective that brings happiness. Just as I revise my writing to make it better, I must revise my beliefs and thought habits in light of God’s Word. Happiness isn’t my exclusive goal, of course, but it’s certainly a welcome by-product.

Psalm 37:4 reads, “Delight yourself in the LORD.” Not “sit there and wait for the Lord to delight you.” It’s active, not passive. We aren’t spoon-fed His pleasures; we need to go to the banquet, reach out our hands, and eat that delicious cuisine. As surely as it’s our responsibility to put good food in our mouths, it’s our responsibility to move our thoughts toward God and be happy in Him!

We need to stop consuming our self-preoccupied thoughts and instead cultivate our appetite for God and what’s true about Him: “Taste and see that the LORD is good. How happy is the man who takes refuge in Him!” (Psalm 34:8, HCSB).

When I contemplate Christ—when I meditate on His unfathomable love and grace—I lose myself in Him. When He’s the center of my thinking, before I know it, I’m happy.

Tim Keller writes in The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness, “Don’t you want to be the kind of person who, when they see themselves in a mirror or reflected in a shop window, does not admire what they see but does not cringe either? . . . Wouldn’t you like to be the skater who wins the silver, and yet is thrilled about those three triple jumps that the gold medal winner did? To love it the way you love a sunrise? Just to love the fact that it was done? You are as happy that they did it as if you had done it yourself. . . . This is gospel-humility, blessed self-forgetfulness.”

As commendable as such humility is, we can never achieve it simply by willing it to appear. Otherwise, we’ll be thinking about ourselves and our valiant attempts to be humble. What we need is to be so gripped by Jesus and His grace, so lost in His love, that we truly forget about ourselves. Why would we want to think about ourselves, the lesser, when we can think about Him, the infinitely greater? This happens directly, when we worship and serve Him, and also indirectly, when we love and serve others for His glory.

Lord Jesus, this side of Heaven we’ll never completely forget about ourselves, but by your grace, help us more and more to turn our focus away from ourselves and toward you so we can experience the happiness of self-forgetfulness. Show us how we can better serve others, not just ourselves. Thank you for motivating and helping us to help others—for your gladness, as well as theirs and ours.

Excerpted from 60 Days of Happiness: Discover God's Promise of Relentless Joy.

Photo: Unsplash

Charles Spurgeon’s Joy and Fruitfulness in Ministry, Born Out of Suffering and Sorrow

I’m a great fan of Charles Spurgeon, the famous 19th century London preacher. One of my books on Heaven, We Shall See God, contains selected segments from his sermons on Heaven, so about 60% of the book is Spurgeon. I’ve found that most of his richest words can be found in his sermons, and my desire was to help readers access wonderful Spurgeon insights into Heaven that they would otherwise never hear. (I love how the audio book version turned out, with a major British voice actor, Simon Vance, reading Spurgeon’s sections. You can listen to a sample on my blog.)

At age 22, as a very young senior pastor of one of the first-ever mega-churches, Spurgeon and his church underwent a terrible tragedy. Throughout his life he struggled with depression, which I blogged about several years ago. Many readers have expressed their appreciation for his insights. To counteract that depression, he preached much on happiness and was very quick to laugh. (I also encourage you to check out Shai Linne’s masterful musical biography of Spurgeon.)

In the article below, Christian George shares more about how that tragic experience early in his career shaped Spurgeon and the rest of his ministry. Dr. George, who serves as Assistant Professor of Historical Theology and Curator of the Spurgeon Library at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, is also the editor of The Lost Sermons of C. H. Spurgeon, a multivolume work which contains his previously unpublished earliest sermons. Volume 1 has been released, and volume 2 is slated for release later this year. (This interview with Dr. George about the project is worth reading.)

May the lessons from Spurgeon’s life encourage us in our own lives and ministries:

Spurgeon Almost Quit

At the age of twenty-two, Charles Spurgeon almost quit the ministry.

He and his wife, Susannah, had been married less than one year. Their sons, Charles and Thomas, were infants. After three years in the big city, Spurgeon’s ministry had solicited envy from his opponents, admiration from the evangelicals, and criticism from the press. Susannah often hid the morning newspaper to prevent Charles from reading its headlines.

The evening of October 19, 1856 commenced a season of unusual suffering for Spurgeon. His popularity had forced the rental of the Surrey Garden Music Hall to hold the 12,000 people congregated inside. Ten thousand eager listeners stood outside the building, scrambling to hear his sermon. The event constituted one of the largest crowds gathered to hear a nonconformist preacher — a throwback to the days of George Whitefield.

A few minutes after 6 o’clock, someone in the audience shouted, “Fire! The galleries are giving way! The place is falling!” Pandemonium ensued as a balcony collapsed. Those trying to get into the building blocked the exit of those fighting to escape. Spurgeon attempted to quell the commotion, but to no avail. His text for the day was Proverbs 3:33, “The curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked” — a verse he would never preach again.

An eyewitness recorded, “The cries and shrieks at this period were truly terrific. . . . They pressed on, treading furiously over the dead and dying, tearing frantically at each other.” Spurgeon nearly lost consciousness. He was rushed from the platform and “taken home more dead than alive.” After the crowds dissipated, seven corpses were lying in the grass. Twenty-eight people were seriously injured.

The depression that resulted from this disaster left Spurgeon prostrate for days. “Even the sight of the Bible brought from me a flood of tears and utter distraction of mind.” The newspapers added to his emotional deterioration. “Mr. Spurgeon is a preacher who hurls damnation at the heads of his sinful hearers . . . a ranting charlatan.” By all accounts, it looked as if his ministry was over. “It might well seem that the ministry which promised to be so largely influential,” Spurgeon said, “was silenced for ever.”

A Radical Joy

When Spurgeon ascended the pulpit on November 2, two weeks later, he opened with a prayer. “We are assembled here, O Lord, this day, with mingled feelings of joy and sorrow. . . . Thy servant feared that he should never be able to meet this congregation again.”

Although he would never fully recover from this disaster, Spurgeon’s ministry did not end on October 19, 1856. He later said, “I have gone to the very bottoms of the mountains, as some of you know, in a night that never can be erased from my memory . . . but, as far as my witness goes, I can say that the Lord is able to save unto the uttermost and in the last extremity, and he has been a good God to me.”

Spurgeon’s joy was based not only on his own ability to recover, but on God’s ability to replenish. It was a joy that would balm Spurgeon in future controversies when he felt beleaguered and bewildered. The joy Spurgeon had after 1856 was a radical joy — a joy deeply rooted in the soil of the supremacy of the God who was great and grand enough to make good things come out of evil. As Joseph told his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:20).

The same God who called Spurgeon to London would not abandon him on the banks of the Thames River. On the contrary, God used this horrible event in his life to save the lives of countless others, for the widely circulated negative press put the young pastor’s preaching on England’s radar — and eventually on the world’s.

More Seen Than Clay

At 11:05 pm on January 31, 1892 — 36 years after the fire — Spurgeon fell into a coma from which he did not awake. During the final year of his life, he had been brought much encouragement by the unity that he saw demonstrated in the various expressions of the church. “During the past year I have been made to see that there is more love and unity among God’s people than is generally believed.”

His earliest sermons were filled with a passion for Christian unity and cooperation, but in the last month of his life, those seeds had fully blossomed. “When our Lord prayed that his church might be one, his prayer was answered, and his true people are even now, in spirit and in truth, one in him. Their different modes of external worship are as the furrows of a field; the field is none the less one because of the marks of the plough.”

After his death, a telegraph alerted the world to Spurgeon’s passing. Evangelicals from differing theological tribes and traditions sent their condolences to Susannah. One scholar has noted, “If every crowned head in Europe had died that night, the event would not be so momentous as the death of this one man.” Over 100,000 people passed by Spurgeon’s coffin at the Norwood Cemetery.

The same newspapers that had once inflicted so much damage upon the young preacher’s ministry now offered recognition of a life well lived for others. In the year following Spurgeon’s death, a new biography of Spurgeon surfaced every month. Some were filled with unpublished conversation with the preacher; others contained letters and recollections of personal encounters and episodes. And yet, for the small group of friends to whom Spurgeon spoke on New Year’s Day Eve, 1891, their pastor’s departing words must have undoubtedly followed them the rest of their lives:

We would have it so happen that, when our life’s history is written, whoever reads it will not think of us as “self-made men,” but as the handiwork of God, in whom his grace is magnified. Not in us may men see the clay, but the Potter’s hand. They said of one, “He is a fine preacher;” but of another they said, “We never notice how he preaches, but we feel that God is great.” We wish our whole life to be a sacrifice; an altar of incense continually smoking with sweet perfume unto the Most High. Oh, to be borne through the year on the wings of praise to God to mount from year to year, and raise at each ascent a loftier and yet lowlier song unto the God of our Life! The vista of a praiseful life will never close, but continue throughout eternity. From psalm to psalm, from hallelujah to hallelujah, we will ascend the hill of the Lord; until we come into the Holiest of all, where, with veiled faces, we will bow before the Divine Majesty in the bliss of endless adoration.

This article originally appeared on Desiring God, and is reprinted by permission of the author.

If I Have Enough Faith, Will God Heal Me?

Okay, first let me say this: if you don’t have much time, just skip through what I’ve written below and go to the video at the end where Joni Eareckson Tada is interviewed by Todd Wagner. What Joni says in this video is more important than what I say below (though I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t think it was also important).  

When I became insulin-dependent in 1985, I wondered who wanted me ill, Satan or God. The obvious answer? Satan. But I’m also convinced, as was the apostle Paul, that the ultimate answer is God. Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, saw God’s sovereignty, grace, and humbling purpose of his disease (see 2 Corinthians 12:7–10). I have clearly and repeatedly seen the same in my own life.

Upon learning of my disease, well-meaning people sometimes ask whether I have trusted God enough to heal me. I respond that when I was first diagnosed, I and others did ask God to heal me. After a while, when God chose not to answer our prayers that way, I stopped asking.

When I say this, I sometimes get looks of alarm and quotes about persevering in prayer and having faith as a mustard seed. I point out that Paul asked God to remove his disease three times, not a thousand times or a hundred or even a dozen. Just three times he asked—but God made it clear the affliction had come from His gracious hand. Paul had no desire to ask God to remove that which his Lord wanted to use to create in him greater Christlikeness and dependence upon God. (Those who claim anyone with enough faith will be healed must believe they have greater faith than Paul and his fellow missionaries who suffered from ailments, including Trophimus, Epaphroditus, and Timothy.)

I have asked God to heal me more times than Paul asked God to heal him, and I’ve cooperated with people who say they feel led to pray over me that God would heal me. But I don’t regularly ask Him to do so anymore. Of course, I’d rejoice if God suddenly healed my pancreas and I no longer needed to take insulin or deal with low and high blood sugar and the toll they take. I’d feel grateful if an ethical medical technology could heal my disease. Yet if I could snap my fingers and remove my disease—apart from some direct revelation from God that I should do so—I would not use that power. Why not? Because God actually has the power to heal me, and He has chosen not to.

Interestingly, when we study the prayers of Scripture, we find that they deal far more with spiritual growth than with physical health. Notice the focus of Paul’s prayer for the Colossians:

And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. (Colossians 1:10–12)

It’s striking what Paul doesn’t pray for: an elder’s bout with cancer, the flu bug going around Colossae, an Asia Minor recession, kidney stones, back problems, and good weather for the church picnic. Did they have these issues back then? Sure. They had diseases, discomforts, financial strains, and bad weather. And did they pray for them? No doubt. But Scripture’s recorded prayers seldom concern such things. They involve intercession for people’s love for God, knowledge of God, walk with God, and service to God.

We should pray for ourselves and our suffering loved ones, not simply try to pray away suffering. “God, please heal this cancer” is appropriate. “God, please use for your glory this cancer, so long as I have it” is equally appropriate.

When you pray only for healing, what are you praying to miss out on? Christlikeness? Shouldn’t we learn to pray that our suffering causes growth, that God will give us little glimpses of Heaven as we seek to endure, and that He would use us?

Let me be clear: God can and sometimes does heal presently, and we should celebrate His mercy. I have often prayed for healing and sometimes witnessed it. But ultimately, all healing in this world is temporary, since people’s bodies inevitably deteriorate and die. Resurrection healing will be permanent. For that our hearts should overflow with praise to our gracious God.

No one has greater credibility to speak on this subject than Joni Eareckson Tada, who in July will mark the 50th anniversary of the accident that left her a quadriplegic. We recently featured Joni after she spoke at our church earlier this year. In a conversation with Pastor Todd Wagner of Watermark Church, she answers the question, “If you have enough faith, will God heal you?” I encourage you to watch and listen carefully to this interaction between two people who, over the years, have both become my friends. You’ll be glad you did. Todd asks great questions, and what Joni says is gold.

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The Difference Between Nice and Kind—and Why It Matters

Barry Corey has written an important book, Love Kindness: Discover the Power of a Forgotten Christian Virtue, which I thoroughly enjoyed. He advocates true kindness without reducing it to mere cosmetic niceness. Too many Christians choose between standing for truth and demonstrating grace, and the result is self-righteous meanness disguised as truth or indifferent tolerance disguised as grace. Love Kindness attempts to avoid both errors, and it’s full of both grace and truth, with warm and heart-touching stories. (I was particularly moved by the example of Barry’s dad.)

The church today desperately needs the humility that rejects mean-spirited religion and exemplifies kindness while upholding biblical truth. You needn’t agree with everything in this book to profit from it immensely—it will make you think, reflect, and see yourself as others may see you. Most important, it may prompt you to ask Jesus, “Will you help me to love kindness?” —Randy Alcorn

I’ve been distressed in recent years by so many Jesus followers who are more interested in picking a fight than making a friend. Someone told me recently that we never lead our enemies to follow Jesus, but we do lead our friends. Christians have been quick to bypass kindness and prefer to begin a shouting match, or they just talk among themselves about how awful the other side is. We have ranted before we’ve related, deeming the latter too soft on sin. Christians—and I’ve seen this especially in American Christians in recent years—have employed the strategy of winning the combative way, and it’s not working.

The “culture wars” have done little to change our society, and we’ve lost many if not all of these wars. As a result, the church too often is marginalized and mocked, and increasingly people are viewing the Bible as just as intolerable as our aggressive tactics. It’s time for a new way of living lives of radical kindness, not to be accepted but to be faithful. I’m willing to bet that if Christians leaned more into kindness and understood more its revolutionary power, the world would see a side of us that would cause many skeptical and irate folks on the other side to take notice. Our radical gestures of kindness may be rejected. They may be received. But they will not be forgotten.

By kindness, I’m not talking about when you buy a stranger coffee or when you bring in your neighbor’s trash cans or when you tell someone they have food in their teeth. These are nice random acts. But kindness is not a random act. It’s a radical life. Kindness is not limited to grandmothers or Boy Scouts. Never mistake kindness for niceness. Kindness is all over the Bible, plentiful in both Testaments. But you won’t find niceness in the Bible once—nor the word nice, for that matter. Kindness is fierce, brave and daring. It’s fearless and selfless, never to be mistaken for niceness. They’re not the same and never were. Kindness is neither timid nor frail. Niceness is kindness minus conviction. I think we should scrub “nice” from our vocabulary. We need to stop telling children to be nice and instead tell them to be kind, and then tell them the difference.

The virtue of kindness is rooted in Scripture, forged on sound Christian theology and modeled over the centuries by followers of Jesus. Since the early church, disciples have walked the risky and sometimes dangerous road of kindness. Kindness is a radical way of living biblically. It’s a fruit of the Holy Spirit on Paul’s short list in Galatians 5. It’s not a duty or an act. It’s an imperative. It’s the natural outcome of the Holy Spirit’s presence in our lives. We exhale kindness after we inhale what’s been breathed into us by the Spirit. Kindness radiates when we’re earnest about living the way of Christ, the way of the Spirit. Kindness displays the wonder of Christ’s love through us.

Niceness may be pleasant, but it lacks conviction. It has no soul. Niceness trims its sails to prevailing cultural winds and wanders aimlessly, standing for nothing and thereby falling for everything. Kindness is certainly not aggression, but it’s also not niceness. Niceness is cosmetic. It’s bland. Niceness is keeping an employee in the job, knowing he’s no longer the right fit therefore failing him and the company because you don’t have the courage to do the kind thing. Kindness calls you to tell him he’s not the person for the position and then dignify him in the transition.

Kindness is a dimension of God’s common grace through us. It’s a civility grounded in gentleness and respect. At the same time, kindness is neither milquetoast nor weak. It is fierce and passionate. The God-authored spirit of kindness in us has the power to upend the enemy and season the world around us for the good. Kindness as Jesus lived it presents the highest hope for a renewal of Christian civility, a renewal needed now more than ever.

Dr. Barry Corey serves as the president of Biola University and is the author of Love Kindness: Discover the Power of a Forgotten Christian Virtue . Barry and his wife, Paula, have three children. 

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Joe Carter on How Brokenness Gives Credibility to False Teaching

Jesus said, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15 ESV). He also promised, “False messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (Matthew 24:24).

Heresies are deadly destructive, but they’re also attractive because of the bits of truth they contain. They’re like chocolate-covered rat poison. Without its truth-coating, many believers wouldn’t swallow its lies. C. S. Lewis put it this way: “By mixing a little truth with it, they had made their lie far stronger.”

The apostle Peter wrote:

But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. (2 Peter 2:1-2).

False doctrine is a killer of ourselves and others. By God’s grace we need to believe God’s truth, teach it, and cling to it.  

In his groundbreaking article I share below, Joe Carter communicates something that has been heavy on my heart concerning the different nature of the heretics the church is facing today. He uses the term “Broken Wolves,” which he defines as those “who use their own authenticity, pain, and brokenness to attract believers who are also suffering and broken.” (In my comments here, I’m NOT referring to all those who have suffered abuse or hurt in churches and have genuine concerns about particular churches and leadership. Rather, I’m referring to, and I take the author to be referring to, those who are promoting teachings, through their platforms, that are contrary to the Gospel of Jesus, and contrary to core truths Christians have believed throughout church history.)

I would add to Joe’s thoughts that these false teachers are not only broken wolves, but they are also often likable wolves, and in many ways more attractive than some of the sheep and some of the under-shepherds. This makes their message much more appealing and persuasive. It’s hard to love a truth-based person who is unkind, and easy to love a kind person who plays fast and loose with the truth. That’s why it’s so vitally important that we speak and share the truth in love, with a spirit of grace, like Jesus (John 1:14).

My thanks to Joe Carter for this particularly insightful article:

Beware of Broken Wolves

By Joe Carter 

Throughout Scripture the people of God are referred to as sheep and Jesus as the Great Shepherd. The natural enemy of the sheep is the wolf who “snatches them and scatters them” (John 10:12). Our Shepherd even warns us to beware of false prophets, who “come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matt. 7:15).

Echoing this warning, Paul admonished the elders of the church:

Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them. Therefore be alert . . .  (Acts 20:28)

Wolves often look like sheep, so to spot a wolf we can often look at what values and qualities are esteemed by a particular religious community. In Jesus’s day outward religiosity was prized, so the wolves looked like legalists. And in the early post-apostolic age, secret knowledge was valued, so wolves took the form of learned Gnostics. 

The values of the evangelical community in America today are diverse, so it’s not surprising we have a broad diversity in the species of wolves we encounter. In our own age, health and wealth are precious, so some wolves take the form of preachers selling a prosperity gospel. We also seek to change the world for the better, so some wolves take the guises of “social justice” or “family values” advocates.

But there is a particularly nasty breed that often goes unnoticed, a type that we might call the “Broken Wolf.”

These are the false teachers who use their own authenticity, pain, and brokenness to attract believers who are also suffering and broken—and then using their “brokenness” to lead the sheep to turn away from God’s Word and embrace sin. They blend into the flock because Christians are not—and should not be—suspicious of broken people. They appear “in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” (Matt. 7:15).

Here are three reasons Broken Wolves are a grave danger to your family and to your local congregation.

1. Broken Wolves Are Authentic

The majority of the Broken Wolves you’ll encounter are truly broken people. They have suffered real pain and hurt—sometimes even at the hands of the church. They are the type of people we should naturally rush to comfort and protect, for they need love and refuge.

But what separates Broken Wolves from Broken Sheep is the former believe their brokenness provides them—like the Gnostics of previous eras—with secret knowledge, such as fresh insights into the human condition. Because they can see more clearly than those who are “whole” (i.e., the average, hypocritical churchgoer), they “re-interpret” Scripture, discarding the musty old understandings of previous generations of Christians for interpretations that just so happen to align with the latest preferences of the secular culture.

2. Broken Wolves Are Beyond Criticism

Your parents probably taught you from an early age not to harm the already hurting (Prov. 22:22). We therefore hesitate to criticize the broken, even if we recognize them as false teachers. No Christian likes to be considered a bully. And the harsh reality is that if you call out a Broken Wolf you will be called a bully. This is inevitable, especially if you’re a man warning the flock against a Broken Wolf who is a woman.

Many of us men—including elders called to protect their flock—remain silent hoping that one of our sisters in Christ will speak up before the popular and prominent female Broken Wolves in our midst devours another one of our own. But if not, we probably won’t speak up. The brokenness of Broken Wolves often act as a shield that protects them from any legitimate criticism because we fear being viewed as harsh or unloving towards women. The result is in failing to speak out we leave the women (and men) in our churches vulnerable to be ravaged.

3. Broken Wolves Are Appealing

Because we share the concerns of our Great Shepherd, Christians are drawn to people who are broken, hurting, and vulnerable. As the Psalmist says, “The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Ps. 34:18). Unfortunately, the Broken Wolves often get there first. They arrive swiftly with the gospel of affirmation: “You’re fine the way you are; it’s the rest of the world that’s screwed up and causing you to suffer.”

The gospel tells brokenhearted sinners to repent (Mark 1:15). The Broken Wolf says, “Don’t worry, God is not so old-fashioned that he still thinks that behavior is a sin.” The gospel says to believe in Jesus to be justified (Rom. 10:10). The Broken Wolf says, “You are justified in believing in yourself.” The gospel says to confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10:10). The Broken Wolf says, “Jesus doesn’t want to rule over you as King, he only wants to be your non-judgmental friend.” The gospel says be transformed by the renewal of your mind (Rom. 12:2). The Broken Wolf says, “You can’t change. Embrace who you are.”

They offer hopeful words without hope. As Jeremiah says, “They offer only superficial help for the hurt my dear people have suffered. They say, ‘Everything will be all right!’ But everything is not all right!” (Jer. 8:11, NET). The Broken Wolf offers a broken gospel, one without the power to save.

Like all wolves in the church, the Broken Wolf is leading the sheep into the valley of hell, away from the Good Shepherd. What then will we do? Will we suffer the scorn of “attacking the vulnerable” for the sake of protecting our sheep? Or will we stay silent because we’re too cowardly to cry, “Wolf!”?

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

For more on the topic of truth, see Randy Alcorn’s devotional Truth: A Bigger View of God’s Word.

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