Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 133

The Doctrine of the New Earth Is Central to Our Future and Present Happiness

A character in the movie Pirate Radio says, “You know, a few months ago, I made a terrible mistake. I realized something, and instead of crushing the thought the moment it came . . . I'm afraid it's stuck in my head forever. These are the best days of our lives. It’s a terrible thing to know, but I know it.”

This fictional character is absolutely right: for people with no faith in God, who deny the Resurrection, these are the best days, and certainly they're winding down to a fixed end. But for genuine Christ-followers, these are decidedly not the best days of our lives. In fact, the best by far is yet to come!

J. I. Packer puts it well: “Hearts on earth say in the course of a joyful experience, ‘I don't want this ever to end.’ But it invariably does. The hearts of those in heaven say, ‘I want this to go on forever.’ And it will. There can be no better news than this.” Hence, the doctrine of the New Heaven and New Earth is not simply about our future happiness; it is central to our present happiness. The forever that awaits us should color our lives now. We should daily backload eternity’s joys into our present experience.

This world under sin is in God’s hands, and one day He’ll restore the world to what it should be (see Acts 3:21). Meanwhile, “we wait for the happy fulfillment of our hope in the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13, NET). We rejoice today because He promises us an unending tomorrow, overflowing with gladness and delight.

Jesus told His disciples of a coming new world, “the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne” (Matthew 19:28). Revelation 21:1-4 beautifully portrays what awaits God’s children:

I saw a new heaven and a new earth. . . . I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. . . . And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

We normally think of going up to Heaven to live with God in His place. That’s what happens when believers die. But the ultimate promise is that God will come down to live with us in our place, on the New Earth.

We’ll be physical beings living in a physical world—eating, drinking, playing, working, and laughing to God's glory. That’s the promise of the resurrection—eternal delight and joy in the presence of our Redeemer.

God comforts His people in great suffering, saying to them, “Look, I am ready to create new heavens and a new earth!” (Isaiah 65:17, NET). What should be our response to this promise? God uses joy-drenched words to describe this New Earth, promising a place where his people will bring happiness not only to each other but also to Him:

Be happy and rejoice forevermore over what I am about to create! For look, I am ready to create Jerusalem to be a source of joy, and her people to be a source of happiness. Jerusalem will bring me joy, and my people will bring me happiness. The sound of weeping or cries of sorrow will never be heard in her again. Isaiah 65:18-19, NET

Other passages reiterate the promise of coming happiness:

Indeed, the Lord will comfort Zion; He will comfort all her waste places. And her wilderness He will make like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and sound of a melody. (Isaiah 51:3, NASB)
The ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away. (Isaiah 35:10)

Contemplate what God has in store for you. Read and reread those verses. Memorize them. And don’t ever cease to be amazed at the fantastic, everlasting happiness God promises His people in the new creation.

For more on eternity and happiness, see Randy’s books Heaven and Happiness. 

Photo: Unsplash

Ron Blue on Two Lies We Can Believe About Giving

I appreciated this post from my friend Ron Blue, author of the new book Never Enough?: 3 Keys to Financial Contentment:

In the Bible, Jesus says that Satan comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy (John 10:10). He also says that Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44). One of the greatest blessings of the body of Christ is its capacity to meet the needs of its members through generosity, service, and sacrifice. When Satan succeeds in destroying this flow of love and grace in the church through his lies, I am sure he rejoices.

Two things can happen when Christians are confronted face to face with need and challenged to give.  One, Satan can steal the joy of giving by whispering to us messages of guilt. How many of you ever had to eat your dinner, in full, because someone on the other half of the globe was starving? Probably most of you. I did. Guilt is a powerful motivator, and we let Satan steal the joy of giving when we listen to his lies and believe that we should feel guilty for all that we have and for whom God has made us to be.  The fact is: Jesus died because we could never atone for our own guilt before a holy God. When He died, He abolished cause for guilt for a Christian (Romans 8:1) so that we could respond to His grace out of gratitude, not out of guilt. We are also now free to give out of gratitude for His grace and provision, rather than out of guilt for being born in a certain time, into a certain zip code, with a certain set of privileges.

Alternately, we can allow Satan to kill our desire to give when we believe the lie that our finances are just too tight to give anything. When we believe this lie, we forget that God is the source of all material blessing. We begin to worship our money as our source of provision rather than remembering that He owns “the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10). We are to be wise stewards, but the vast majority of Americans can truly afford to be generous materially and with our time. Buying into the lie that giving is a last priority rather than a first priority in our finances robs us of the freedom that results from opening our hand and sharing our resources with the needs that God reveals.

God is a generous and gracious God. We are called to be generous and gracious people. However you encounter need today, I pray that you are free from guilt and from hyper-control when it comes to your financial life. I pray that you experience the joy of giving and find victory over the father of lies.

May God’s peace encourage you as you pursue financial wisdom and depend on His Truth.

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

Photo: Unsplash

Thoughts on Good Friday, Resurrection, Happiness, and More, from My Time at Harvest Fellowship

I had the pleasure of sharing at last weekend’s services at Harvest Christian Fellowship in Riverside, California, in a Q&A with my friend Pastor Greg Laurie. Each time I’ve visited over the years, Harvest has felt like a second home, and I’m always glad for my time there.

Greg is not only a dedicated student of the Scriptures, but he also has a fun sense of humor. At each of the three services, he introduced me and announced I had written a “new” book. :) These are the three titles:

Though we covered a variety of topics, including happiness, giving, and rewards, we started off each service by talking about Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday.

In this clip, we discuss why today is called “Good Friday.”

Here’s the full service.

May your heart be flooded with gratefulness and joy this weekend as you contemplate the Lord’s redemptive work on the Cross, and His triumph over the grave!

Lord, thank you for planning the Cross from before the world’s beginning and foretelling it centuries in advance. You descended from Heaven’s happiness and lived here, laughed here, suffered here, and were crucified here. Saying thank you is not nearly enough. But it is at least a place to begin. So thank you for living as you did and dying as you did and rising as you did so I can live forever with you and your people in a world where you will, once and for all, make all things right.

Six Rationalizations for Abortions, and Professor J. Budziszewski’s Analysis of Each

The human ability to rationalize is demonstrated in the lengths we will go to redefine what it means to be a person. First, we commit ourselves to do something we think is in our best interests. We start with our conclusion, the place we want to end up. Then we look for ways to get there while still keeping our sense of personal morality intact, so we don’t have to be plagued by guilt. This is called rationalizing.

Simultaneously we reject information that would prohibit us from doing what we’ve already decided we want to do or that would make us feel guilty about what we’ve already done. When looking at abortion, the last thing we want to consider is information that would lead us to believe that we participated in the killing of a child. No one wants to face such a thing.

Distancing ourselves from information that contradicts our beliefs and actions is called denial. Rationalization and denial are methods we use to cope with unwanted, stressful information. This is why arguments for the prochoice position are saturated in rationalization and denial. At the end of the day, it is alarmingly easy for us to ignore evidence to the contrary, as well as the promptings of our consciences, and simply believe whatever we want to believe.

In a recent blog, I shared Justin Taylor’s summary of Peter Kreeft’s analysis of abortion rights. In his same post, Justin wrote, “Consider Professor J. Budziszewski’s analysis of the rationalizations for abortion in light of the widely held belief, ‘It is wrong to deliberately take innocent human life.'"

In a 2005 Amicus Curiae brief, Budziszewski wrote this:

If deep conscience really does hold within it a belief in the wrong of deliberately taking innocent human life, then consider where this leaves a woman who has an abortion. Parsing the rule against murder, there are only six possibilities of rationalization. She may tell herself (1) that her act is not deliberate, (2) that she is not taking anything, (3) that the unborn child is not innocent, (4) that it is not human, (5) that it is not alive, or (6) that what is wrong may be done.

For purposes of the present analysis, the problem is not that all six lines of justification are literally unthinkable. Indeed, all six are commonly entertained. The problem, rather, is that they are so implausible as to require a large dose of self-deception to be accepted. At the moment of decision, a woman may try desperately to talk herself into such the rightness of abortion, but it is impossible to believe it “all the way down.”

Budziszewski then compellingly analyzes each of the six rationalizations:

Possibility 1: “It is wrong to deliberately take innocent human life.

But I didn’t mean for this to happen; I wasn’t trying to get pregnant.”

The reasoning here is that if something happens that I do not intend—in this case, pregnancy—then no matter what I do about it, I am not responsible. This line of thinking is incompatible with any coherent idea of personal responsibility.

It is like saying “I didn’t plan for my wife to become disabled, therefore I am not responsible for poisoning her.”

Possibility 2: “It is wrong to deliberately take innocent human life.

But I’m not taking life, the doctors are doing it. This is just something happening to me. I’m not involved.”

This time the underlying reasoning is that once I have made a decision, the results are out of my hands—even if I planned and intended them.

It is like saying, “I didn’t take my landlady’s life. If you want to blame someone for her death, blame the hit man I hired, not me.”

Possibility 3: “It is wrong to deliberately take innocent human life.

But the fetus isn’t innocent. It has invaded me, violated me, made me pregnant.”

The sole purpose of the uterus is to home and house the baby, who has no place else to go. Yet the baby is here regarded as akin to a trespasser or rapist. Although it is hard to imagine an actual pregnant woman taking this view, some abortion proponents consider it quite promising, perhaps because judges will sometimes believe things that ordinary women cannot. Thus, attorney Eileen McDonagh writes that the fetus is “objectively at fault for causing pregnancy.” It is “not innocent,” she says, “but instead aggressively intrudes on a woman’s body so massively that deadly force is justified to stop it.” Although “some might suggest that the solution to coercive pregnancy is simply for the woman to wait until the fetus is born,” she complains that “[t]his type of reasoning is akin to suggesting that a woman being raped should wait until the rape is over rather than stopping the rapist.” Yet even McDonagh admits, in an unintentional testimony to the enduring power of the deep structures of conscience, “[f]ew people are going to be comfortable with the idea.”

Possibility 4: “It is wrong to deliberately take innocent human life.

But it’s not human—it can’t feel, it can’t think, it can’t communicate—and how could it be human if it’s so small?”

Among pro-abortion philosophers, this rationalization is by far the most popular. The reasoning is that human personhood, who-ness, depends on criteria like sensitivity, intelligence, and self-awareness, and the fetus is just a what. Of course born people too can be more or less sensitive, more or less intelligent, more or less self-aware. Therefore, by this reasoning, born people too must be unequally endowed with personhood—some more, some less. The only question is whom we shall have as our masters. At the top may be those with the most exquisite feelings, the most complex thoughts, the keenest sense of self—it is not difficult to guess who these philosophers have in mind. At any rate, such arguments merely touch the surface of moral awareness. It is a matter of everyday observation that pregnant women do think of their fetuses as human persons, and the thought comes back to haunt those who have had abortions. They view themselves as having violated not only the prohibition of murder but also the duty to care for their babies.

Possibility 5: “It is wrong to deliberately take innocent human life.

But it’s not alive, not truly. It’s more like a blood clot. Or like my period just won’t come down.”

Such a thing was easier for a woman to believe before the discovery of the nature of conception. It takes a ferocious act of denial to go on believing it in an age of moving ultrasound pictures. Blood clots do not roll over and suck their thumbs.

Possibility 6: “It is wrong to deliberately take innocent human life.

But sometimes you have to do what’s wrong.”

Logically, this option is nonsense. That something must not be done is what it means for it to be wrong; to deny that wrong may not be done is to say that wrong is not wrong, or that what must not be done may be done. Psychologically, however, the option is tempting: “I just can’t have a baby right now. . . . My parents would have a fit. . . . My boyfriend would leave me.” The pattern of the temptation is ancient: “Let me do evil that good may result.” Some women who do what they themselves consciously regard as wrong try to square the act with perceived moral law by resolving to be sorry later. Whatever the ethical status of such a resolution, it is psychologically devastating. By making it, one literally calls down upon oneself the Furies of conscience. When a woman talks herself into a justifying script that she cannot really believe “all the way down,” then her surface moral beliefs, such as they are, are at war with her deep conscience. This produces disastrous consequences.

Related books by Randy Alcorn available from Eternal Perspective Ministries: Why ProLife? , ProLife Answers to ProChoice Arguments , and Does the Birth Control Pill Cause Abortions?

Photo: Unsplash

Are Short-Term Mission Trips Valuable?

I’m a strong believer in missions, and in my travels I’ve seen firsthand God’s wonderful work through missions and national churches.  If there’s anything I could do to encourage those who feel their hearts being touched by God to spend the rest of their lives on the mission field, I would do it gladly. But I also encourage those who do not feel God’s leading into a lifetime of missions to take a few weeks and go out on a short-term mission. Nothing will touch and change your heart quite like seeing the work firsthand and getting involved in ministry. It will also motivate your prayer life and stimulate your giving to missions.

Some have asked me, wouldn’t it be better just to take the money spent on short-term trips and send it to the mission field instead? In some cases, yes. Americans sometimes believe that our seeing ministry firsthand validates it. If a missions trip costs tens of thousands of dollars and involves minimal ministry impact, it’s really nothing more than a fun cross-cultural experience—which wouldn’t be enough to justify it. But many short-term missions trips are strategic and greatly help the national churches, missionaries, and indigenous people. They create “world Christians,” who come back changed and who will pray for and fund missions the rest of their lives, thereby spreading their world vision and serving on missions task forces in ways they never would have if they’d stayed home. Also, many long-term missionaries have started with short-term experiences that have helped prepare them and move their hearts toward missions.

In Money, Possessions, and Eternity, I write how it might cost a church over $5,000 for instance, to send a pastor to an area of Africa where there is persecution to fellowship with believers, hear their stories, teach them the Bible, and above all learn from these persecuted Christians. But when that pastor comes back to his church, his visit might bear the fruit of hundreds of thousands of dollars given, many hours of prayer, and an ongoing relationship with fellow believers overseas that otherwise wouldn’t have happened.

Furthermore, if people don’t go on short-term trips, the equivalent money will almost never be spent on missions but instead will go toward cars, vacations, or repaving the driveway. Many missions and vision trips are not funded out of missions dollars but from money that would have been spent other ways.

Our church sends out 50 to 60 short-term missionaries a year. Consequently, our congregation includes hundreds of world Christians who know our missionaries personally, pray for them regularly, and give to missions more generously. The eternal dividends far outweigh the short-term costs.

Here are some good articles that do not blindly, but intelligently point out the good in short-term missions, while at the same time acknowledging the need to recognize their limitations and maximize their effectiveness:

The Place of Short-Term Missions

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Husbands, Your Wife Is Your God-Given Assignment

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. —1 Peter 3:7 (ESV)

We must take seriously that God’s Word tells us to live with our wives in an understanding way, respecting them and granting them honor. These are not suggestions. They are commands.

If you are married, your wife is your God-given assignment. I have been married to Nanci for over 40 years, and I still am learning things about her. This is both a mystery and a delight. I seek not to dominate her, but to protect her, help her and honor her.

Nanci is a godly woman, a wonderful wife and grandmother, and my best friend. But sometimes I fail her. When I do this, 1 Peter 3:7 reminds me, it affects my relationship with God. This passage says God will not honor the prayers of a man who does not honor his wife.

Goethe wrote, “When a wife has a good husband, it is easily seen in her face.” A man should desire that others would see his love for her written upon her face. Her husband’s love should advertise the gospel on her countenance.

If your relationship is not what it should be, how willing are you to get help?
What if it costs time and money for counseling or a marriage conference?
Are you willing to invest in your marriage?
If not, what does that say about what’s most important to you?

Further resource: The Resolution for Men by Stephen and Alex Kendrick, with Randy Alcorn as contributor

Photo: Unsplash

This Changes Everything: A Challenging and Refreshing Book for Teens, and Everyone

I want to share about a new book, This Changes Everything: How the Gospel Transforms the Teen Year, written by a teenager specifically with teenagers in mind. It’s grounded in God’s Word, interesting, and well-written.

Jaquelle Crowe is an outstanding writer, not just “for a teenager,” but for anyone. Writing takes work, as does following Jesus, and in This Changes Everything, the author has done her work well. Reading this book was a pleasure; it’s biblical, challenging and refreshing. Jaquelle’s heart comes across clearly, her theology is strong, and what she says about church is desperately needed.

She writes in the first chapter:

This is the truth I’ve learned: if you live for Jesus, you can’t live an unchanged life. If the gospel is true, it will inescapably change every little part of us—what we do and think and say and mean, and who we hang out with and esteem and listen to and why, and how we live today and tomorrow and for all eternity. It will not be easy, safe, or always comfortable by any means. But it will be good. It will awake in you deep and unquenchable joy.

See this sample from the book to read more.

Jaquelle was recently interviewed on Harvest Show. Brett Harris shares this about the interview:

…it’s interesting to note, once again, how our culture (including church culture) is so quick to paint mature, responsible teenagers as “exceptions” to the rule. Normal teenagers are immature and irresponsible, says our culture. They could never write a book like Jaquelle has. And they should not be expected to study the Bible, to serve the local church, or honor their parents the way Jaquelle does.

Fortunately, the interview turns to this very issue.

 “You write that culture has hijacked the teen years,” Radelich says. “What do you mean by that?”

Jaquelle’s answer gets to the root of the issue. Culture has sold young people short, telling them to find their worth in everything besides Christ. And as she explains earlier in the interview, the church has fallen prey to the same temptation, treating teenagers as second-class Christians and not expecting them to pursue Christ in a serious way.

The question left in my mind at the end of the interview is this:

“What would happen if more young people spent their youth living for Christ? What if they spent more energy on reading their Bibles, serving in their local church, and engaging with older, more mature Christians? What if parents and youth workers raised their expectations and were more intentional about engaging teenagers in true discipleship?”

Here are parts 1 and 2 of Jaquelle’s interview.

I highly recommend This Changes Everything both for teenage Christians and their parents! 

Looking for Real Happiness in a World of Worry

Happy are you when people hate you, reject you, insult you, and say that you are evil, all because of the Son of Man! Be glad when that happens and dance for joy, because a great reward is kept for you in heaven.—Jesus (Luke 6: 22-23, GNT)

“Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart! and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words—‘Wait and Hope.’”  —Alexandre Dumas

There’s a story of a man and his granddaughter who are sitting on a park bench when a traveler asks, “Is this a friendly town? I come from a town full of conflict. Is that what I’ll find here?”

The grandfather replies, “Yes, my friend, I’m certain that’s what you’ll find.” Saddened, the traveler continues on.

Before long, another traveler stops. “I come from a village with many delightful people. I wonder, would I find such charming people here?”

The grandfather smiles in response. “Welcome, friend! Yes, you certainly will!”

As the stranger walks away, the puzzled child asks, “Grandfather, why did you give those strangers two different answers to the same question?”

The grandfather answered, “The first man was looking for conflict, while the second was looking for goodness. Each will find exactly what he expects.”

We bring ourselves to every situation, every encounter, every relationship. The unhappy person who leaves North Dakota in search of happiness in California finds more sunshine and less snow, but not more happiness. The happy Californian who relocates finds that his happiness accompanies him.

Positive people experience adversity, just as negative people do. Their expectations don’t control circumstances, but they do give perspective. Optimists see more goodness and find redemptive elements even in the bad times. Scripture says, “The hopes of the godly result in happiness, but the expectations of the wicked come to nothing” (Proverbs 10:28, NLT). Likewise, Proverbs 11:23 states, “The desire of the righteous ends only in good; the expectation of the wicked in wrath.”

Disneyland claims to be the happiest place on Earth, but according to 60 Minutes, studies show the happiest nation on Earth is Denmark. The United States, despite its greater wealth, ranks twenty-third, and the United Kingdom, forty-first. Denmark’s remarkable secret to topping the happiness chart? Low expectations. The interviews on 60 Minutes demonstrate that Danes have more modest dreams than Americans and they’re less distressed when their hopes don’t materialize.[i]

The general view of life in Denmark is somewhat compatible with the doctrine of the Fall: instead of being surprised when life doesn’t go their way, Danes are grateful that things aren’t worse, and they’re happily surprised by health and success. If they have food, clothing, shelter, friends, and family, life seems good.

There’s a biblical basis for both realistic and positive expectations. We certainly live in a world with suffering and death. But as believers, we understand that God is with us and won’t forsake us, and that one day we’ll live on a redeemed Earth far happier than Denmark or Disneyland on their best days!

Worry is the product of high stakes and low control, coupled with expecting the worst. There’s no greater enemy of happiness. There’s a subtle aspect to worry: if we care, we think we should worry, as if that will help somehow. In fact, worry has absolutely no redemptive value. When good things are happening, we’re worried that bad things will come. When bad things happen, we worry that worse things will come. Jesus asked, “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?” (Luke 12:25, NIV). Nothing is more impotent than worry, and nothing so robs of happiness in Christ.

Just after instructing us to rejoice in the Lord, Paul writes in Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything.” Worry is a killjoy. It specializes in worst-case scenarios—in contrast, God tells his children there is much that should make us rejoice:

He has already rescued us from the worst, which is eternal Hell.
Even if something terrible happens, he’ll use it for our eternal good.
Often bad things don’t happen, and our worry proves groundless.
Whether or not bad things happen, our worry generates no positive change.
The cause for all our worries—sin and the Curse—is temporary, and will soon be behind us. Forever.

The command to rejoice is not mere pretense or unrealistic expectations or positive thinking. Rather, it’s embracing our present life, which includes suffering. But even before God wipes it all away, he gives us compelling reasons to rejoice.

Jesus emphatically commands us not to worry (Matthew 6:25, 34). But how can we avoid it? A big part of it is adjusting our expectations based on his promises not only that all will be well one day in Heaven, but that he is at work here and now, lovingly accomplishing his purposes in our lives.

Max Lucado tells the story of a boy on the beach who eagerly scoops up and packs sand. Using a plastic shovel and a bright red bucket, he creates a magnificent sand castle. He works all afternoon, creating a tower, walls, and even a moat. Not far away, a man in his office shuffles papers into stacks and delegates assignments. He punches buttons on a phone and keys on a keyboard, makes profits, and builds his own castle.

In both cases, time passes, the tide rises, and the castles are destroyed. But there’s a big difference. The boy expects what’s coming and celebrates it. He’s eager for the waves to hit his castle. He smiles as his castle erodes and turns into no more than formless lumps in the sand. The businessman’s life also ebbs and flows, and the works of his hands are swept away. If his castle isn’t taken from him, he’ll be taken from his castle. But he chooses not to think about this. Unlike the boy, this man is unprepared for what will happen. While the boy has no sorrow and regret, the man does all he can to hold on to his castle and is inconsolable when his life or house or business slips away.[ii]

No matter what comes today or tomorrow, may these words from the Lord to his people Israel become our expectation of the life God ultimately intends for all his children: “I know the plans I have in mind for you, declares the Lord; they are plans for peace, not disaster, to give you a future filled with hope” (Jeremiah 29:11, CEB).

Father of all happiness, we expect things to go our way, and are quickly disappointed when they don’t. We look so many other places than to you for our contentment. Help us to lower our expectations of a stress-free life while raising our expectations of who you are and the happiness you have for us not only forever, but now. Deliver us from joy-killing worry, and empower us to ground our optimism on the breathtaking eternal realities you’ve promised us in Christ!

Excerpted from Randy Alcorn’s devotional 60 Days of Happiness.

[i] Morley Safer, “The Pursuit of Happiness,” CBS News video, 12:06, from 60 Minutes, June 15, 2008, http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4181996n

[ii] Max Lucado, And the Angels Were Silent (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2013), 105–6.

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4 Reasons I Appreciate Rapper Shai Linne, and Why I Love the Canvas Conference

I had the pleasure of meeting Shai Linne, who is both a rapper and a pastor, at the terrific Canvas Conference last summer, where we were speaking the same night. Here are some reasons I love this guy:

1) His emphasis on solid doctrine.

2) His classic rap bio of Charles Spurgeon, which I blogged about in 2010.

3) His boldness in speaking out against false teachers.

4) His song “Our God is in the Heavens.”

I highly recommend you attend or send someone to the Canvas Conference coming up August 11-12, in Portland, Oregon. It was incredibly refreshing to see young creatives assemble in a place where God was exalted, sound doctrine elevated and the local church uplifted. This is a great and unique conference. Spread the word!

We’ve Lost Our Vocabulary of Wonder About Heaven

In 50 Days of Heaven, I write:

If we are honest, we must admit that we are not daily and consciously looking forward to Heaven, much less to a New Earth. We’ve reduced Heaven to an otherworldly state, and we’ve ignored the clear biblical promise of a redeemed universe over which we will serve as God’s delegated rulers. We’ve become blinded to the truth, and we’ve lost our vocabulary of wonder and our anticipation of the great and glorious plan that God has in store for us. Jesus said of the devil, “When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Some of Satan’s favorite lies are about Heaven.

A reader recently asked me, Can you elaborate on what you mean by “we’ve lost our vocabulary of wonder”?

By losing our vocabulary of wonder, I mean that we’ve come to think of Heaven as utterly immaterial and non-physical, a home suited for body-less angels, not real people. Floating in clouds while strumming harps isn’t anybody's idea of a great time. But the Heaven God promises is for human beings, who aren't just spiritual but physical too. This is why the biblical teaching of the physical resurrection and eternal life together on the New (resurrected) Earth is so critical. Nobody wants to be a ghost (if they think of it as ghostly, our children will never be excited about Heaven). We don’t get excited about a place we can't imagine.   

In this life we marvel at and talk about the wondrous beauty of mountains, beaches, sunsets, lakes, and deserts. We’re amazed by the experience of snorkeling with turtles, dolphins, and manta rays over ocean reefs. We talk about the majestic power of Niagara Falls and the overwhelming magnificence of the Grand Canyon, a thunderous herd of wild horses, the migration of humpback whales, and the breathtaking rings of Saturn. These move us to awe and worship—and because we use a vocabulary of wonder that pulls us in, holds our attention, and captures our imagination, we get inspired and dream about going beautiful places. We tell our children all about how great the place is we're taking them for vacation. 

Similarly, Scripture tells us “we are looking forward to a new heavens and new earth [redeemed universe] in which righteousness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13). The problem is, many believers are not looking forward to a new heavens and New Earth! They imagine this present life is the real life, their only opportunity to experience everything on their bucket list, when in fact, the place Jesus is preparing for us on the New Earth will be way better than the best of this life—all the present beauty and far more, with none of the sin and suffering. 

Jesus repeatedly spoke of eating and drinking together at great feasts in God's eternal kingdom, and everyone knew that feasts were full of fun and laughter and dancing. So God tells us to set our minds not primarily on this life, but on the person we were made for, Jesus, and the place we were made for: Heaven (Colossians 3:1-4). That way we get a foretaste of Heaven's glory and wonder and beauty as we live our lives today. People will see that we're different, because Jesus and His kingdom are our center of gravity.

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