Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 139

How Does Understanding God’s Happiness Change Lives?

The following blog is excerpted from my new devotional, 60 Days of Happiness, which is now available in stores and from our ministry. The book’s entries are drawn from carefully selected portions of my larger book Happiness. However, I’ve reworked the material to present it in a fresh and different way. I hope it not only informs readers about one of the most appealing subjects in the world but also encourages and motivates them, and moves their affections toward God.

I wrote 60 Days of Happiness for two kinds of readers: first, those who haven’t read Happiness but long to learn what God has to say about this subject and what His people have said about happiness throughout the centuries. It’s for anyone who likes to deal with subjects in bite-sized chunks that are also heart-touching and practical.

Second, it’s for those who have read Happiness but would like to return to the subject and ponder it in a devotional format that will likely speak to them in different ways. Some of what they read earlier will be reinforced, but much will feel brand new.

This book is also for those who want to pass on the exciting and paradigm-shifting concepts of Happiness but in a smaller and more easily digestible form that may suit their friends or family better.

I hope and pray that this book will help ignite readers’ passion for the happy God and for the gospel of Jesus, which the Bible calls the “good news of happiness” (Isaiah 52:7) and the “good news that will cause great joy” (Luke 2:10, NIV). —Randy Alcorn

Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth. . . . Be glad and rejoice forever in that which I create; for behold, I create Jerusalem to be a joy, and her people to be a gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress. — Isaiah 65:17-19

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. — A. W. Tozer

A teenage boy came to me with questions about his faith. He’d attended church all his life, but now had some doubts. I assured him that even the writers of the Bible sometimes struggled. He wasn’t questioning any basic Christian beliefs, and he didn’t need six evidences for Christ’s resurrection, so I talked to him about holiness and happiness.

“What does God’s holiness mean?” I asked.

His clear, biblical answer: “He’s perfect, without sin.”

“Absolutely true. Does thinking about God’s holiness draw you to Him?”

He responded sadly, “No.”

I asked him whether he wanted to be holy 100 percent of the time. “No.”

“Me neither. I should, but I don’t.”

Then I surprised him, asking “What do you want 100 percent of the time?” He didn’t know.

“Have you ever once thought, ‘I don’t want to be happy?’”

“No.”

“Isn’t that what you really want—happiness?”

He nodded, his expression saying, “Guilty as charged.” Friendships, video games, sports, academics—every activity, every relationship he chose—played into his desire to be happy. But I could see he felt that this longing was unspiritual, displeasing to God.

I told him the word translated “blessed” in 1 Timothy 1:11 and 6:15 speaks of God being happy. I asked him to memorize these verses, replacing “blessed God” with “happy God.”

Then I asked him to list whatever pointed him to God’s happiness—backpacking, music, playing hockey, favorite foods. I said, “God could have made food without flavor, but He’s a happy God, so He created a world full of happiness. That means you can thank Him for macaroni and cheese, for music, for Ping-Pong, and above all, for dying on the cross so you can know Him and be forever happy.”

This boy had seen Christianity as a list of things he should do that wouldn’t make him happy and a list of things he shouldn’t do that would have made him happy.

Since we’ll inevitably seek what we believe will bring us happiness, what subject is more important than the true source of happiness? Just as we’ll live a wealth-centered life if we believe wealth brings happiness, so we’ll live a God-centered life if we believe God will bring us happiness. No one shops for milk at an auto parts store or seeks happiness from a cranky God.

As much as I believe in the holiness of God, I also believe in emphasizing God’s happiness as a legitimate and effective way to share the gospel with unbelievers or to help Christians regain a foothold in their faith.

God feels love, compassion, anger, and happiness. He’s never overwhelmed by unsettling emotions, nor is He subject to distresses imposed by others. But He does feel His children’s suffering deeply.

If your human father said he loved you but never showed it through his emotions, would you believe him? If we think God has no emotions, it’s impossible to believe He delights in us or to feel His love. That’s one reason believing in God’s happiness can be a breakthrough for people in their love for Him.

We’re told of God, in relationship with His people, “In all their affliction he was afflicted. . . . In his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old” (Isaiah 63:9). What a moving portrayal of the tenderness of His affection for us and devotion to us! (Surely God doesn’t want us to read this and say, “of course God doesn’t really have feelings of love and pity and compassion.”)

But if God is so moved by our sorrows, how can He still be happy while we’re suffering?

God Himself models His inspired command to rejoice always. He sympathizes with all His suffering children, but He rejoices in purchasing our redemption and making us more like Jesus. He joyfully prepares a place for us, and He has eternally happy plans. He has the power to accomplish everything, as well as the sure knowledge that it will happen.

While I’m grateful that God cares deeply for me, I’m also grateful that when I’m miserable, it doesn’t mean God is. As any good father will be moved by his daughter’s pain when her boyfriend breaks up with her, God can feel our pain while retaining His own happiness. God the Father has an infinitely larger picture of eventual, eternal good that He will certainly accomplish. Nothing is outside his control. Therefore, nothing is a cause for worry. God does not fret.

Yes, our distress can involve feelings God doesn’t have, such as helplessness or uncertainty. But clearly God intends us to see a similarity between our emotional distress and the affliction the Bible says He feels on our behalf. If God experiences various non-sinful human emotions, as indicated by Scripture, it stands to reason that He feels happiness, too.

Loving Father, you are all-knowing, so nothing takes you by surprise. You are all-powerful, so there’s nothing you want to do but can’t. You are completely loving and good, so you can and will never betray or abandon us. You are the source of all happiness, so you’re able to fulfill our deepest longings for joy and pleasure. Thank you for being both capable of, and committed to, bringing ultimate goodness to us, your children. 

Why I Love VidAngel and Am Pro-Choice About Renting and Filtering Movies

Nanci and I have been using VidAngel for a few months. It’s been amazing, by our choice in checking off some boxes and not others, to mute blasphemy and the f-word and skip sexually explicit scenes in every movie we watch. (We do permit kissing, though we notice many kissing scenes are suddenly cut short, in light of what else we’ve said we don’t want to watch.)

Ever since Clean Films was sued out of existence some years ago by Hollywood, we have wished we could do what we did back then: watch movies edited as we prefer. Movies on network TV and airplanes are routinely edited, so if the technology exits and others are allowed to use it, why can’t individuals in the privacy of their own homes have the right to say what they do and do not want to watch in a movie? I don’t presume to tell Hollywood directors how to make their movies. But I don’t expect them to tell me how to watch them.

Many passages warn us to protect our minds and hearts from immorality. For instance, “Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires….You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: … and filthy language from your lips” (Colossians 3:5, 7-8).

There are some movies I would never watch in the first place. But there are others that would be great to watch with just a few minutes of content selectively removed. The VidAngel filtering system essentially serves as an enhanced remote control. If I could program a remote to mute all the words I don’t want to hear, and skip past all the scenes I don’t want to watch, I would. That’s what VidAngel does for me. I (not they) decide what I want muted and skipped past. Then I don’t sit there nervously wondering whether I’m going to be exposing myself to what dishonors Jesus and may be a source of temptation.

I am pro-choice about the vast majority of things in life, with the notable exception of those things which take innocent lives and hurt innocent people. I am certainly pro-choice about being able to select, on my own, what I want to watch and not watch. Just as I am free to skip over parts of novels I don’t want to read, and can fast forward movies using a remote, I think as long as I pay the rental fee and the company providing the movie legally buys what they’re renting to me, I should be able to say no to explicit sex, nudity, and blasphemy if I so choose.

In VidAngel’s case you actually buy the movie and then sell it back when you’re done (for the net cost of $1). This is one reason that grants them their legal right to accommodate streaming movies to their customers that remove what each individual requests they remove.

Last week VidAngel was directed by a federal judge to suspend their rental services. They are appealing this judgment to a higher court. This video, which is very well done and amusing—and in my opinion is a model for how people with moral convictions can take stands in a disarming way—explains the situation from VidAngel’s perspective.

If you want to express your objection to this injunction against VidAngel, here’s something you can sign.

I have to say, I not only love VidAngel’s services, but also really enjoy their explanatory videos, full of common sense and humor, both of which we need a lot more of these days. Check these out:

Is VidAngel Censorship?

Would VidAngel Paint over Nude Paintings?

How Does VidAngel Pay Artists?

Does Filtering Destroy Art?

Photo: Pixabay

Jon Bloom on Our Need for Deliverance from Distraction

A. W. Tozer wrote, “Among the enemies to devotion none is so harmful as distractions. ….Distractions must be conquered or they will conquer us.” Today’s culture and technology provide us with access to more distractions, but distractions are hardly a new problem in the Christian life.

In his gospel, Luke relates the story of Mary and Martha. We’re told that Martha was “distracted by all the preparations that had to be made” (10:40 NIV). The word translated “distracted” means “to be drawn about in different directions.” We are not distracted to something, but away from something. She was distracted from Jesus. We too can easily be distracted away from Christ, focusing on the unimportant and the trivial rather than what’s eternal and truly important. (I shared here more thoughts about how Jesus dealt with Mary and Martha, and what we can learn from it.)

My friend Jon Bloom shares some helpful reflections in his article “Lord, Deliver Me from Distraction.” As we begin our new year, let’s seek to put aside distractions, to exercise Spirit-empowered self-control, and to set our minds on Christ and things that are above (Colossians 3:2). —Randy Alcorn

Lord, Deliver Me from Distraction

By Jon Bloom

Since the fall of man, people have had trouble staying focused, but we live today in an age of unprecedented distraction. Since you’re already reading this on some electronic device, I don’t need to elaborate.

Lots of experts are talking about the negative effects this is having on us. Many of us feel it: the buzzing brain, the attention atrophy, the diminishing tolerance for reading, especially reading books.

We’re becoming conditioned to distraction, and it’s harming our ability to listen and think carefully, to be still, to pray, and to meditate. Which means it is a spiritual danger, an evil from which we need God’s deliverance (Matthew 6:13).

The Causes of Distraction

Distraction, at least the dangerous kind I’m referring to, is shifting our attention from something of greater importance to something of lesser importance.

Our fundamental and most dangerous problem in distraction is in being distracted from God — our tendency to shift our attention orientation from the greatest Object in existence to countless lesser ones. The Bible calls this idolatry.

This fundamental attention shift disorders us in pervasive ways. We find our tendency to be distracted from the more important to the less important cascading down detrimentally affecting our relationships and responsibilities. So at the deepest level, we are distractible because of our fallen, selfish nature; we have evil inside us.

But not all our distraction problems are due to our resident evil. Some are simply the result of the futility infecting creation (Romans 8:20–23). This futility can infect our biology as well as our environments. All of us have faulty brains and bodies, and so some of us battle distraction more than others due to factors like ADHD and other mental or physical illnesses. Environmental factors like poor nutrition, unhealthy family systems, and cultural/technological forces (such as the constant stream of media) can also affect our ability to focus.

All these factors mix together in most cases, making it nearly impossible to tell how much sin, fallen biology, or environment is to blame for our distraction. But if we ask God, he will deliver us from evil, whatever the cause, by using these powerful foes to our advantage, helping us see what our hearts love, and pressing us by his grace into greater levels of humble faith and self-control.

A Heart Revealer

When we are regularly distracted by something, we need to take note. Our attention often runs to what’s important to us. So distraction can reveal what we love. This happened to Jesus’s friend, Martha.

Martha was busy in the kitchen while Jesus taught in her home. When Martha complained that her sister, Mary, wasn’t helping because she was sitting at Jesus’s feet, Jesus replied,

“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41–42)

Martha was distracted from Jesus. By what? By serving her guests. Why? Because she was anxious. Anxious about what? Anxious about feeding everyone, and in all likelihood anxious about what everyone would think of her and her household if she didn’t do it well.

But Martha didn’t recognize her distraction until Jesus helped her see her heart. She thought she was doing the right thing by serving everyone. But Jesus pointed out to Martha that her values were disordered. She had shifted her attention from the greater importance to the lesser.

So in our busyness, we must ask, what is the real distraction? What does our heart desire? Are we choosing “the good portion,” seeking the great “one thing” (Psalm 27:4), or something less?

A Fight That Builds Humble Faith

Distraction is a frequent reminder of our frailty and limits, that we indeed are not God. And since we are given to such unjustifiable, and frankly ridiculous, levels of pride, this is very good for us. Distraction humbles us and forces us to ask God for the help we so desperately need.

And it can build our faith. God is not nearly as interested in our efficiency as he is in our faith. Do you remember how he allowed enemies to harass Nehemiah and his Jerusalem wall-builders, slowing down the work (Nehemiah 4)? Similarly, God allows us to battle inefficient distraction to build our dependent faith in him. That’s what God is building in all the inefficiencies of our lives.

If we see the Spirit-given graces of humility and faith growing in us through our struggles against distraction, we will count it among the “all things” we give thanks for (Ephesians 5:20, KJV).

Building the Muscle of Self-Control

God also uses distraction to strengthen our self-control. Christian self-control is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22–23). And like nearly all the Spirit’s fruit of sanctification in us, they are cultivated through the primary, decisive gift of the Spirit and our secondary, but indispensible intentional hard work.

It’s helpful to remember that we strengthen self-control similar to how we strengthen muscle: through resistance. Muscles do not grow stronger without pushing against resistance. Neither does self-control. There’s no getting around the hard work of applying ourselves and figuring out what works best for us. But if we prayerfully and faithfully apply ourselves, the Spirit will empower our efforts and we will see our capacity for self-control increase.

Now, just as with physical strength and ability, some are graced with greater ability to focus than others. If you’re one of those people, then good stewardship of this gift looks different than it does for less gifted people. Like a gifted athlete, you are made to excel. Seek to maximize it, for “to whom much [is] given, of him much will be required” (Luke 12:48).

If you’re a person who, for whatever reason, has a more difficult struggle with distraction, you need not feel condemned (Romans 8:1). For you, good stewardship looks like fighting distraction as best you can. Push yourself. You may not be able to do what others can do, but God will only hold you accountable for the measure of grace given to you (Romans 12:6).

Whatever It Takes

It’s right for us to see certain distractions as evils in themselves. Every one is a time-tax we pay, a tax for which there is no refund. Time spent simply means we have less to spend. Every distracted minute is an unrecoverable minute, now frozen in the permanent past. It is right to seek to make the best use of our time in these evil days (Ephesians 5:16).

And yet, we also do not need to be more paralyzed by this than by any other struggle with sin or futility. Our Father wants us to grow in the grace of faith-fueled focus, and will, through Christ, cause our difficult struggles against distraction to work for our good (Romans 8:28). He will, through his Spirit, use them to free us from idolatry and pride and to help us grow in self-control. So, in confident faith we can approach his throne of grace with this prayer:

Whatever it takes, Lord, increase my resolve to pursue only what you call me to do, and deliver me from the fragmenting effect of fruitless distraction.

This article originally appeared on DesiringGod.org. 

Photo: Unsplash

Death: The Last Enemy, and Our Deliverer

Peter uses the word exodus in reference to his own approaching death (2 Peter1:15). Death for the Christian is God’s deliverance from a place of bondage and suffering to a place of freedom and relief.

In 2 Timothy 4:6-8, Paul refers to his death with the Greek word analousis, meaning “to loosen.” Consider some of its common usages in that culture:

an ox being loosed from its yoke when it was finished pulling a cart.
pulling up tent stakes, in preparation for a journey.
untying a ship from dock, to let it sail away.
unchaining a prisoner, freeing him from confinement and suffering.
problem solving—when a difficult matter was finally resolved, it was said to have been “loosened.”

Each of these is a graphic picture of death for the Christian.

On the one hand, the Bible calls death “the last enemy” (1 Corinthians 15:26). On the other hand, for the person whose faith and actions have prepared him for it, death is a deliverer, casting off the burdens of a hostile world and ushering him into the world for which he was made.

No matter what difficulty surrounds it, God is intimately involved and interested in the Christian’s departure from this world: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints” (Psalm 116:15).

What we call “death” is a transition from a dying body in a dying world to a world of light and life. No wonder Paul says, “To die is gain” and to go to be with Christ is “better by far” (Philippians 1:21-23).

There’s evidence that at death the believer will be ushered into Heaven by angels (Luke 16:22). Different angels are assigned to different people (Matthew 18:10), so perhaps our escorts into Heaven will be angels who have served us while we were on earth (Hebrews 1:14).

I’ve always appreciated this depiction of death:

I’m standing on the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She’s an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and the sky come down to mingle with each other. And then I hear someone at my side saying, “There, she’s gone.”

Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side. And just as able to bear her load of living freight to the place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “There, she is gone” there are other eyes watching her coming, and there are other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Here she comes!” And that, for the Christian, is dying.

What will happen as we set foot on Heaven’s shores, greeted by our loved ones? I envision it as C. S. Lewis did in the Last Battle:  “The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets. The inside is larger than the outside.” [1]

The moment we die the meager flame of this life will appear, to those we leave behind, to be snuffed out. But at that same moment on the other side it will rage to sudden and eternal intensity—an intensity that will never dim, only grow.

On his deathbed D.L. Moody said, “Soon you will read in the newspaper that I am dead. Don’t believe it for a moment. I will be more alive than ever before.”

Excerpted from Randy Alcorn’s book In Light of Eternity.

[1] C. S.  Lewis, The Last Battle (New York: Macmillan, 1956), 180.

Photo: Pixabay

What We Can Do to Help Those Suffering in Syria

Many of you have heard and shared about the fighting and bombing in Syria, and specifically in the city of Aleppo. While the hope is that the worst is over, the aftermath of suffering will go on.

Joe Carter put together a helpful list for The Gospel Coalition with “9 Things You Should Know About Aleppo and the Syrian Crisis” if you’d like to read more about the situation.

Joe shares that during the siege, approximately 40 percent of the population in eastern Aleppo were children. It’s a heartbreaking situation, and if you’ve seen the pictures and watched the videos, you can’t help but be broken about the suffering that has taken place there. (Recent news indicates that the fighting may be over in Aleppo. Still, there’s countless suffering people living in absolute devastation in the city. And there’s no telling what Syrian city might be next in the conflict.)

Though this 3 ½ minute video isn’t easy to watch, I encourage you to do so. It will help you remember that these stories and numbers are about real people, real mothers and real children, who have experienced, and are experiencing, unimaginable terror and pain.

It’s easy to be paralyzed by the enormity of the needs in Syria and other places in the world. But in an article for the ERLC, Richard Stearns shares three things we can each do:

- Pray.

- Tell our congressional representatives that the U.S. government needs to do more to stop Syria’s bleeding.

- Give to organizations providing relief to Syrians.

If you’d like to give to help relieve suffering in the Middle East, you can give through EPM to our “Middle East Relief” special fund on our donation page and 100% of your donation will go directly to one of several trustworthy ministries we’ve chosen.

I believe we must ask ourselves, “If Christ were on the other side of the street, or the city, or the other side of the world, and he was hungry, thirsty, and helpless, or imprisoned for his faith, would we help him?” Any professing Christian would have to say yes. But we mustn’t forget what Christ himself says in Matthew 25: He is in our neighborhood, community, city, country, and across the world, in the form of poor and needy people—and especially in those who are persecuted for their faith. (In fact, Aleppo contains Syria’s largest population of Christians.)

I encourage you to meditate on these verses from God’s Word:

“Feed the hungry and help those in trouble. Then your light will shine out from the darkness, and the darkness around you will be as bright as day” (Isaiah 58:10-11, NLT).

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world” (James 1:27).

“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:16-19).

photo credit: MaximilianV Syrian Refugee via photopin (license)

God Designed the Human Machine to Run on Himself

In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote:

What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could “be like gods”—could set up on their own as if they had created themselves—be their own masters—invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.[i]

Every sin we commit, every shortcoming we display is an attempt to be happy through a God-substitute. Lewis, who spent much of his life trying to find happiness outside God, finally realized he’d been deceiving himself. He wasn’t alone.

But it’s not only unbelievers who try to find happiness outside God. Every time believers are tempted to sin, we’re contemplating whether greater happiness can be found without God. If we imagine it can, we’ll succumb to the temptation.

Lewis continued his argument:

God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.[ii]

Lewis also said, “There is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. . . . It is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.”[iii]

We’re free to be unhappy. We’re free to search for happiness where it can’t be found. What we’re not free to do is reinvent God, the universe, or ourselves so that what isn’t from God will bring us happiness.

Excerpted from Randy’s book Happiness.

[i] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), book 2, chapter 3, “The Shocking Alternative.”

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

Photo: Unsplash

Together, Let God’s Family Join the Angels’ Joyful Song This Christmas Weekend

Perhaps this Christmas season is a difficult one for you. Perhaps it reminds you of loved ones who are no longer part of your life, due to death or strained relationships.

Life can be hard in very real and different ways. While our problems may be many and varied, there is one main solution: Jesus. And Jesus—no one and nothing else—is at the heart of Christmas. Yes, family is precious and important. But the truth is, many families are fractured, and while we should make every effort to forgive and ask for forgiveness, sometimes we simply don’t have the power to change the hearts and desires of estranged family and friends.

This season can be a painful reminder of who is and isn’t in the room and at the table.  One who was with us last year may now be gone from this world. Another may have chosen not to join the family to celebrate Christmas. They may be in pain, and the rest of the family in pain and confusion or dismay.

Yet to those who love Him, “God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’” (Hebrews 13:5). Jesus said, “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20).

May we all be reminded of the angel’s message to the shepherds at Christ’s birth: “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people” (Luke 2:10). The Greek adjective translated “great” here is megas—this isn’t just news, but good news of “mega-joy.”

This is the best news there has ever been or ever will be: because Jesus has come, in the end, life conquers death, joy triumphs over suffering. Happiness, not sorrow, has the last word—and it will have the last word forever. “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” (Revelation 21:4).

In his sermon “The First Christmas Carol”, Charles Spurgeon preached on the angels’ joyful song at the birth of Jesus: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men” (Luke 2:14). He then talked about how their example should impact our view of happiness at Christmastime:

Friends, does not this verse, this song of angels, stir your heart with happiness? When I read that, and found the angels singing it, I thought to myself, “Then if the angels ushered in the gospel's great head with singing, ought I not to preach with singing? And ought not my hearers to live with singing? Ought not their hearts to be glad and their spirits to rejoice?” Well, thought I, there are some somber religionists who were born in a dark night in December that think a smile upon the face is wicked, and believe that for a Christian to be glad and rejoice is to be inconsistent. Ah! I wish these gentlemen had seen the angels when they sang about Christ; for angels sang about his birth [and] certainly men ought to sing about it as long as they live, sing about it when they die, and sing about it when they live in heaven for ever.

…Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say unto you rejoice. Specially this week be not ashamed to be glad. You need not think it a wicked thing to be happy. Penance and whipping, and misery are no such very virtuous things, after all. The damned are miserable; let the saved be happy. Why should you hold fellowship with the lost by feelings of perpetual mourning? Why not rather anticipate the joys of heaven, and begin to sing on earth that song which you will never need to end?

This weekend, may you and your family experience a deep, God-given happiness as you celebrate His first coming, and look forward His second one—when all that’s broken in this world will be made right.

Merry Christmas from Nanci and me, and from all of the EPM staff! We know many of you and we love and appreciate you deeply. Those we don’t yet know we will someday, all who are fellow members of God’s family! When we sit in a living room and a table together this Christmas, let’s remind ourselves we will sit at a larger table that includes all of God’s children from throughout human history and around the world today, some here in this world, some already with our Savior and King.

We are true family, brothers and sisters who are children of our common Father, and together are the bride of our beloved Jesus Christ. Wherever we are, whatever our circumstances, whether we gather for the holidays in homes full of love and grace, or in ones full of tension and strife or sadness and loneliness, may we sense our connection to our Lord and to each other in the greater family of God.

Randy Alcorn

Jesus was still speaking to the crowds when suddenly His mother and brothers were standing outside wanting to speak to Him. Someone told Him, “Look, Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to You.”

But He replied to the one who told Him, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?” And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, He said, “Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven, that person is My brother and sister and mother.”

Matthew 12:46-50, Holman Christian Standard Bible

Photo: Unsplash

David Mathis on Jesus Christ’s First Thirty Years on Earth

Experiencing growth and process are integral to the human experience. The first humans lived in process, as God ordained them to. Adam knew more a week after he was created than he did on his first day.

Nothing is wrong with process and the limitations it implies. Jesus “grew in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52). Jesus “learned obedience” (Hebrews 5:8). Growing and learning cannot be bad; the sinless Son of God experienced them. They are simply part of being human.

I love this article from David Mathis (executive editor for DesiringGod.org, and author of Habits of Grace) on the first thirty years of Jesus’ life. As you read his reflections this Christmas season, contemplate what amazing grace God showed to us by inhabiting space and time as a human being.

And consider too the implications that the eternal and omnipresent Son of God will, in ways difficult to grasp but which should prompt us to worship, remain embodied as a resurrected human being forever! —Randy Alcorn

How God Became a Man: What Jesus Did for Thirty Years

By David Mathis

It is striking how little we know about most of Jesus’s life on earth. Between the events surrounding his celebrated birth and the beginning of his public ministry when he was “about thirty years of age” (Luke 3:23), very few details have survived.

Given the influence and impact of his life, humanly speaking, we might find it surprising that so little about his childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood is available — especially with the interest his followers, who worshiped him as God, took in his life. That is, unless, divinely speaking, this is precisely how God would have it.

After the birth story, the first Gospel tells us about the visit from magi, pagan astrologers from the east (Matthew 2:1–12), the family’s flight to Egypt for haven (Matthew 2:13–18), and their eventual return upon the death of Herod (Matthew 2:19–23). Matthew then jumps immediately to the forerunning ministry of John the Baptist, and Jesus as a full-grown adult — with nothing at all about the intervening thirty-plus years of childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.

Development Dignified

The third Gospel has more to say, but captures three decades of the most important human life in the history of the world in remarkably simple terms. Luke tells of the high angelic announcement to lowly shepherds (Luke 2:8–21) and the young family’s first visit to the temple (Luke 2:22–38). He then summarizes Jesus’s first twelve years of life in astonishing modesty:

The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him. (Luke 2:40)

Then, after recounting the story of a 12-year-old Jesus impressing adults at the temple (Luke 2:41–51), Luke reports some two decades — well more than half the God-man’s dwelling among us — in this simple sentence:

Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man. (Luke 2:52)

How fascinating would it be to know what life was like for the boy Jesus? Did he plainly outpace his peers in learning? Did his sinlessness infuriate fallen siblings? How skilled was he as a worker? Was his carpentry “perfect,” or did it make good sense around town when he transitioned into public ministry?

But it’s easy to digress into speculation and miss the powerful point of these important summary verses in Luke. God has something to teach us here in the precious few details. That he would send his own Son to live and mature and labor in relative obscurity for some three decades, before “going public” and gaining recognition as an influential teacher, has something to say to us about the dignity of ordinary human life and labor — and the sanctity of incremental growth and maturation.

God could have sent a full-grown Christ. And from the beginning, he could have created a world of static existence without infants, children, awkward teens, middle-agers, and declining seniors — just a race of young, spry, “mature” adults. But God didn’t do it that way. And he doesn’t do it that way today. He designed us for dynamic existence, for stages and seasons of life, for growth and development in body and in soul, both toward others and toward God.

The lion’s share of Jesus’s earthly life powerfully dignifies the everyday pains of maturity and growth common to humanity.

Jesus Grew in Stature

The ancient creed confesses his full humanity, in both body and inner person. Jesus is both “truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body” (Chalcedon, AD 451). Having a “true human body,” Jesus was born, he grew, he thirsted, he hungered, he wept, he slept, he sweated, he bled, and he died.

All four Gospels unfold his three-year public ministry, and give nearly half their space to the final week of his life. But what was the God-man doing most of his earthly life? He was growing. What did he do for three decades between his celebrated birth and his unforgettable ministry? He walked the ordinary, unglamorous path of basic human growth and development. He grew.

The man Christ Jesus did not simply emerge from the wilderness preaching the kingdom. He learned to latch and crawl, to walk and talk. He scraped his knees. Perhaps he broke a finger or wrist. He fought off the common cold, suffered through sick days, and navigated his way in the awkwardness of adolescence. He learned social graces and worked as a common laborer in relative obscurity more than half his earthly life.

Jesus Grew in Wisdom

But Jesus grew not only in body, but also in soul, like every other human, in wisdom and knowledge. Even by age 12, Luke could say Jesus was “filled with wisdom” (Luke 2:40), not because he got it all at once, or always had it, but because he was learning.

Through sustained effort and hard work, he came into mental acumen and emotional intelligence that he did not possess as a child. And he didn’t receive it all in one moment, but he grew in wisdom, through the painful steps of regular progress. His human mind and heart developed. He grew mentally and emotionally, just as he grew physically. As Donald Macleod captures it, “He was born with the mental equipment of a normal child, experienced the usual stimuli and went through the ordinary process of intellectual development” (The Person of Christ, 164).

Surely, we find extraordinary instances later in his life of supernatural knowledge, given by the Spirit, in the context of ministry. He knew Nathanael before he met him (John 1:47), that the Samaritan woman had five husbands (John 4:18), and that Lazarus had died (John 11:14). Once he even knew that Peter would find a shekel in the mouth of the first fish he caught (Matthew 17:27). But we shouldn’t confuse such supernatural knowledge, given by special revelation, with the hard-earned, infinite learning of his upbringing.

Jesus learned from the Scriptures and from his mother, in community and in the power of the Holy Spirit, and he increased in wisdom by carefully observing everyday life and how to navigate God’s world.

Jesus Learned Obedience

An essential aspect of his growth in stature and wisdom was his learning obedience, both to his earthly parents (he “was submissive to them,” Luke 2:51) and his heavenly Father.

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. (Hebrews 5:7–9)

That he “learned obedience” does not mean that he began as disobedient, but that he began as unlearned and inexperienced, and the dynamic existence of human life gave him experience and know-how. That he was “made perfect” doesn’t mean that he began as sinful, but that he began in sinless immaturity and grew into maturity.

In Favor with God and Man

When Luke 2:52 echoes the words of 1 Samuel 2:26 (“Now the boy Samuel continued to grow both in stature and in favor with the Lord and also with man”), he breaks through a potential hiccup in our perspective on human growth — both Jesus’s and our own.

True human growth is not Godward at the expense of love. And development in love should not serve as a distraction to Godward advance. The first commandment is love God. And the second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself.

No human, not even the God-man himself, skips the growth and maturation process, and no true growth is one-dimensional, but both toward God and man, with all the attendant pains.

Don’t begrudge God the glory of your long, arduous maturation process. In it you are tasting the growing pains that Jesus knows very well. And he stands ready to help you persevere until God’s process is complete.

This post originally appeared at desiringGod.org. 

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Will There Be Seasons and Varying Weather on the New Earth?

Some people have never thought about Heaven’s weather because they don’t think of Heaven as a real place, certainly not on the New Earth. Or they assume the New Earth will have bright sunshine, no clouds, no rain . . . forever.

In a passage that promises rescue, security, and no more famine or fear for His people, God says, “I will bless them and the places surrounding my hill. I will send down showers in season; there will be showers of blessing. The trees of the field will yield their fruit and the ground will yield its crops” (Ezekiel 34:26-27).

Is rain a bad thing? No. It’s good. We’ll see trees bearing fruit on the New Earth. Will they be rained on? Presumably. Will rain turn to snow in higher elevations? Why not? If there’s snow, will people play in it, throw snowballs, sled down hillsides? Of course. Just as resurrected people will still have eyes, ears, and feet, a resurrected Earth will have rain, snow, and wind.

As I wrote these words for my book Heaven on a cold December day, a strong wind was blowing. Nearly bare trees were surrendering their last leaves. A row of fifty-foot-high trees, a stunning bluish green, were bending and flailing. It was a powerful, magnificent sight that moved me to worship God. We were expecting our first winter snow. The feeling of warmth and serenity in the protection of our house was wonderful. It made me ponder the protecting, sheltering, secure hand of God. I’ve often had similar feelings during pounding storms. Lightning, thunder, rain, and snow all declare God’s greatness (Job 37:3-6). Is there any reason to conclude such things will not be part of the New Earth? None. Of course, no one will die or be hurt by such weather. No one will perish in a flood or be killed by lightning, just as no one will drown in the river of life.

When we live on the New Earth, could we go hiking in a snowstorm without fear of trauma or death? Could we jump off a cliff into a river three hundred feet below? Could we stand in an open field in flashing lightning and roaring thunder and experience the exhilaration of God’s powerful hand? Must the New Earth be tamed, stripped of high peaks, deserts, waterfalls, and thunderstorms because these sometimes caused pain and death in this world? Nature, including variations in climate, will be a source of joy and pleasure, not destruction. If we stand amazed now at the wonders of God’s great creation, we’ll be even more amazed at the greater wonders of that greater creation.

I love the seasons, each of them. The crisp fall air, the brilliant yellows, oranges, and reds, the long good-bye to summer. The snow blankets of winter, the freshness and erupting beauty of spring, the inviting warmth of summer. Who are all those from? “God, who gives autumn and spring rains in season” (Jeremiah 5:24).

Will there still be seasons on the New Earth? Why wouldn’t there be? Some people argue that because fall and winter are about dying, we won’t experience them in Heaven because there will be no death there. I’m not convinced that seasons and their distinctive beauties are the result of the Fall. God is depicted as the seasons’ Creator, and we’re not told they didn’t predate the Fall (Genesis 8:22). The “no more death” of Revelation 21 applies to living creatures, people and animals, but not necessarily to all vegetation. Even if it does, God can certainly create a cycle of seasonable beauty apart from death.

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Smart Study of God’s Word

Listen, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.  And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9, NLT)

How happy is the man…his delight is in the Lord’s instruction, and he meditates on it day and night. (Psalm 1:1-2, HCSB)

Study this Book of Instruction continually. Meditate on it day and night so you will be sure to obey everything written in it. Only then will you prosper and succeed in all you do. (Joshua 1:8, NLT)

Biblical meditation doesn’t mean taking a few words taken out of context that we feel free to apply to our own lives in whatever random ways come to mind. We need to view the Bible as God coherently speaking to us in trains of thought. He is a master communicator, so He chose the words carefully. It’s not only the words that matter, but also the particular meanings God attaches to those inspired words—meanings determined by context.

Meditation ungrounded in thoughtful, rational biblical interpretation is not smart or productive meditation. Why? Because it bypasses the actual thoughts of God carefully expressed in God-breathed words. These words are definitely important. They are intended to communicate specific truth to us. But if we latch onto a few of those words and then attach our subjective personal meanings to them, then we substitute our thinking or human speculation for God’s own words. In turn, we act as if our thoughts are His inspired thoughts. That may cause a major corruption of those thoughts.

For instance, we might read Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong to the Lord our God…” We could meditate on the idea that since some things are secret we should not push ourselves to better understand God’s Word. We shouldn’t bother to contemplate divine sovereignty and human responsibility, or to ponder the wonders of the Trinity. Why? Because those things are not for us to know. But in fact, that is not the meaning of the passage. The second part of the verse demonstrates this: “…but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.”

Many passages say we’re to contemplate the great truths of God’s Word. Only then can we break away from the shallowness of our culture. We have too many unthinking, superficial Christians who are either too lazy or unmotivated to study God’s Word. They say, “We know too much doctrine. What we need to do is just live it out.” But in fact, we know less doctrine than the church of Jesus Christ has ever known, and much of our failure to live it out is due to the fact that we’ve never made the effort to learn it in the first place.

Similarly, we can read, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9). We can stop there and erroneously apply it to Heaven, which is not the central subject Paul is talking about. We can also ignore the critical statement in verse 10: “…these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit…”

In context, the revelation by God’s Spirit is the inspired Word of God. Hence, we believe what eyes have not seen, nor ears heard, and have not entered into our thoughts except by God’s revelation to us in His Word. Therefore our eyes are to see and our ears are to hear it and they are to enter into our hearts precisely because God has spoken to us, and we have taken the time and effort to study His Word!

Here are some great quotations that further develop these thoughts:

To get the full flavor of an herb, it must be pressed between the fingers, so it is the same with the Scriptures; the more familiar they become, the more they reveal their hidden treasures and yield their indescribable riches. — John Chrysostom, 347-407   

…the common people cry out for the scripture, to know it, and obey it, with great cost and peril to their lives. — John Wycliffe, 1395   

I had perceived by experience, how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth, except the scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text. — William Tyndale, 1530   

How shouldest thou understand, if thou wilt not read, nor look upon it? Take the books into thine hands, read the whole story, and that thou understandest, keep it well in memory; that thou understandest not, read it again, and again. If thou can neither so come by it, counsel with some other that is better learned. Go to thy curate and preacher; show thyself to be desirous to know and learn, and I doubt not but God—seeing thy diligence and readiness (if no man else teach thee)—will himself vouchsafe with his holy spirit to illuminate thee, and to open unto thee that which was locked from thee. — Thomas Cranmer, 1540   

All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them...The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself; and therefore, when there is a question about the true and full sense of any scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched and known by other places that speak more clearly. — Westminster Confession of Faith, 1647

I want to know one thing, the way to heaven: how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way; for this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price give me the Book of God! …I…search after and consider parallel passages of Scripture, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. I meditate thereon, with all the attention and earnestness of which my mind is capable. If any doubt still remain, I consult those who are experienced in the things of God: And then, the writings whereby being dead, they yet speak. And what I thus learn, that I teach. — John Wesley, 1746

I had then, and at other times, the greatest delight in the holy Scriptures, of any book whatsoever. Oftentimes in reading it, every word seemed to touch my heart. I felt a harmony between something in my heart, and those sweet powerful words. I seemed often to see so much light, exhibited by every sentence, and such a refreshing ravishing food communicated, that I could not get along in reading. Used oftentimes to dwell long on one sentence, to see the wonders contained in it; and yet almost every sentence seemed to be full of wonders. — Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758

It is strange how powerful is the tradition of the pulpit; how often able and thoughtful men will go all their lives taking for granted that an important passage has that meaning which in youth they heard ascribed to it, when the slightest examination would show them that it is far otherwise. — John A. Broadus, 1827-1895

In order to be able to expound the Scriptures, and as an aid to your pulpit studies, you will need to be familiar with the commentators: a glorious army, let me tell you, whose acquaintance will be your delight and profit. Of course, you are not such wiseacres as to think or say that you can expound Scripture without assistance from the works of divines and learned men who have laboured before you in the field of exposition…It seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves, should think so little of what he has revealed to others. — C. H. Spurgeon, 1890

We fail in our duty to study God’s Word not so much because it is difficult to understand, not so much because it is dull and boring, but because it is work. Our problem is not a lack of intelligence or a lack of passion. Our problem is that we are lazy. — R. C. Sproul   

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