Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 17

I Will Rise Again

This is a blast from the past, at least for those of us old enough to remember Dallas Holm and Praise, and his 1977 mega-hit “I Will Rise Again”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh_KFneobCM?si=1Lx4t1LekHVKY2tS

I have listened to “I Will Rise Again” multiple times recently, and it takes me back to a crucial time in my life. The song came out in 1977 which was the year Stu Weber and his wife Linda and my wife Nanci and I and many of our closest friends were planting our church, when I was 22 and Stu was 31. (Now I’m 70! You can do the math on Stu.) I vividly remember listening to that song repeatedly the first few years of our church, and it was a source of great blessing to Nanci and to me and to what became Good Shepherd Community Church.

Dallas wrote me not long ago to share that his wife Linda went home to Heaven in December after battling breast cancer for 37 years. He wrote on his website:

In going through Linda’s things in recent days, I came across several notebooks which she had written in over the years; usually as she was having her daily time of Bible study and prayer.

The following illuminates the depth of her understanding of Scripture and the level of intimacy she maintained always with our Lord and Savior.

In reading one verse in Proverbs 30:31 which describes things that are stately when they walk, she expressed herself fully from just the one line, “A king with his army around him.”

Linda wrote, “My mind went straight to You Lord, and how true this is. You are praised by Your army. Your army is made up of totally weak, inadequate, sinful people who have been pursued, redeemed, equipped, trained, and made ready by Your Blood, by Your Wisdom, by Your Strength, Your Love, and Your great Promises. You are lifted high. You Lord Jesus are so very generous. You give always and then You promise to share through eternity. Your ‘army’ brings nothing. We come to You sad and broken, full of rot, and You give joy for sins forgiven! You give wholeness in spirit, mind, and body. You give strength, wisdom, purpose, and You equip perfectly. You meet every need, each desire, and Your timing is perfect! My response is to bow in awe, to cry tears of amazement, to rejoice and express my gratefulness in living for You; displaying my relationship with You to those I come in contact with. Jesus…be lifted up! I place You high and look to You for everything. Great are You my King!”

Scripture says that, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.” Linda has spoken. Her words are saturated with Godly perspective and deep gratitude. I miss everything about Linda; her joy and laughter, her breathtaking beauty, her grace and poise, but most of all, her inner, spiritual strength and holy centeredness.

She was (and is) a truly amazing woman! I will see her again, and…next time it will be forever!

Thank you, Jesus, that Linda and Nanci and all who have placed their trust in you will not only be with you, and each other in your presence, but will one day rise and return with the One who rose again!  

Photo: Unsplash

Be Intentional, Curious, and Passionate Like Jesus

Note from Randy: Greg Stier has written a Christ-centered, biblically-grounded, and from-the-heart guide to what a normal Christian life should be, but for most of us is a radical one. His new book Radical like Jesus is a clear and engaging call to follow Him and share His good news with others. I highly recommend it. (Watch this video to see Greg sharing more about the book.)

Hope you enjoy this excerpt from Radical like Jesus.

To become radical like Jesus we must be intentional, passionate, and curious when it comes to spending time with the Father.

Nobody embodied this more than young Jesus. Although there is but one New Testament passage about him during his preteen and early teen years (see Luke 2:40-52), these thirteen verses are packed with insights about the boy-about-to-become-a-man and his singular passion to be with the Father.

In Jewish culture, the transition from boyhood to manhood took place at the age of thirteen. In this passage of Scripture, Jesus was twelve and on the brink of manhood. At the end of his family’s annual trip to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration, he was left behind and found himself in the Temple courts for three days, asking questions of the rabbis and giving profound answers to their questions. By the time Mary and Joseph found him, there was a crowd of teachers surrounding him who were astounded by the gravitas of his answers and the penetrating profundity of his questions.

When Mary rebuked Jesus for his decision to stay in Jerusalem instead of traveling with the caravan back to Nazareth, he simply answered, “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (verse 49, NLT).

It is clear from this passage that Jesus was fully aware of who his real Father was—not Joseph, but Yahweh. It is also clear that Jesus longed to be with his Father in his house, the Temple.

Why did Jesus enjoy being in his Father’s house? Although a direct answer is not given in this verse, the underlying answer is hidden beneath the surface, waiting to be dug up.

Jesus longed to be where God’s Word was being publicly read and explained.

Jesus was asking questions, processing the teachers’ answers, honing his theology, and arriving at biblical conclusions. He was doing this before the best of the best—and they were shocked at his depth of understanding. The word used here for “understanding” in the original Greek is sunesis, which means “a bringing together.” The implication is that Jesus was utilizing synthesized reasoning to connect the dots in ways that bring deeper insights than the rabbinical teachers had previously considered.

If we want to learn to be like Jesus when it comes to being with our heavenly Father, there are three stark principles for us from this story: Be intentional. Be curious. Be passionate.

Be Intentional

Luke 2:41-42 says, “Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Passover festival. When Jesus was twelve years old, they attended the festival as usual” (emphasis added, NLT). The annual festivals were attended “as usual” by every committed Jew. In the Jewish culture, males were commanded to attend three festivals in person per year: Passover (also known as the Feast of Unleavened Bread), the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), and the Feast of Tabernacles (see Exodus 23:14-19).

Yet Jesus had more than just three annual festival “as usuals” in his life. He most likely had personal times of learning from his earthly father, daily times of Torah mastery, weekly times of learning at the synagogue as a family, and, of course, his own time of meditation on God’s Word.

The Holy Scriptures were central to his “as usuals.” They were central to his time at the Temple and synagogue. They were central to his home life and personal life.

Are they central to yours?

We are living in a culture of Christianity where five-minute app devotionals (which are better than not having devotionals at all!) have replaced deep, reflective, and prayerful reading, study, and meditation on God’s Word.

Most Christians I know have never read the Bible cover to cover. They skim the top of texts like rocks skipping on water. But God desires us to plunge deeply into his Word, like a large anchor plummets to the depths of the ocean. Listen to the words of David:

The law of the LORD is perfect, refreshing the soul.

The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.

The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart.

The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.

The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever.

The decrees of the LORD are firm, and all of them are righteous.

They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold;

they are sweeter than honey,

than honey from the honeycomb.

By them your servant is warned;

in keeping them there is great reward.

Psalm 19:7-11

God’s Word is perfect, refreshing, trustworthy, right, radiant, pure, firm, righteous, precious, and sweet. David believed this. Jesus, the Son of David, believed this. They scoured the Scriptures because they believed this.

Do you believe this? Do your “as usuals” reflect this?

Your annual “as usuals” of spiritual retreats, Bible conferences, etc.
Your weekly “as usuals” of church attendance, Bible study, small group, etc.
Your daily “as usuals” of time reading and reflecting on God’s Word, journaling, etc.

In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear writes, “Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.” If we want to be like Jesus, then we must have habits like Jesus.

Jesus mastered Scripture. He read it, meditated on it, memorized it, and obeyed it. So should we.

Be intentional like Jesus. Make spending time with God in his Word your biggest “as usual.”

Be Curious

I was a troublesome student. I terrorized my teachers—not because I was not paying attention or because I was goofing around all the time (although I did a lot of that). No, I terrorized my teachers because if I didn’t understand a subject or a concept, I would relentlessly ask questions until they explained it well enough for me to understand. I’m a slow learner, but a determined one.

Jesus was a fast and determined learner. He was curious. His sharp mind, uninhibited by sin and distraction, worked so quickly that it astounded the top teachers of his time. Luke describes it this way: “Three days later they finally discovered him in the Temple, sitting among the religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers” (2:46-47, NLT).

Jesus asked questions and assimilated answers. He wrestled through subjects until he wrestled them fully to the ground and pinned them down.

We should have such an approach when we take time to be with our Father. Ask God hard questions, and wrestle through difficult subjects. Do the same with the preachers and teachers in your world. Be curious, and don’t stop asking hard questions until you get the answers from God’s Word—even if you’re a slow learner like me.

Be Passionate

Jesus was so passionate about being in his Father’s house and understanding his Father’s Word that he spent three days and nights in the Temple, without his family, as a twelve-year-old boy.

Where did Jesus sleep during these three days? How did he eat? Did he eat? Did he care?

It seems like the only thing on his mind was understanding God’s Word better. During these seventy-two hours, he relentlessly quizzed the rabbis. He was passionate to understand as much as he possibly could before his parents found him.

It wasn’t just the acquisition of knowledge. He didn’t want just to know more; he wanted to grow more, to love his Father with perfect love and obey him with perfect submission. That was his passion. That was his obsession. That’s what made food, sleep, rest, and the safety of being with Mom and Dad a distant second.

Jesus was passionate about being with the Father and knowing his Word.

I’m a passionate guy. When I preach, the veins in my neck pop and I sweat like Tommy Boy in a sauna with a broken thermostat. As someone once said, “When I preach, I set myself on fire and people come to watch me burn.”

But as passionate as I am about preaching, I want to be more passionate about my time with God in his Word.

We need to pick a time and place we meet with God every single day. That place becomes our version of our “Father’s house.”

My “Father’s house” is at the end of our long couch by the gas fireplace. Every morning, “as usual,” I meet him there. I seek to spend the first hour of every day with God. During this time, I pray, read his Word, meditate on it, and sometimes journal a prayer back to God about a verse that really communicates to me. I ask God the hard questions. I wrestle through difficult passages until the Holy Spirit, the ultimate teacher, helps me understand. And then I seek to put whatever truth I’ve learned that day into practice in some tangible way.

People often ask me if I ever went through a time of rebellion against God. I haven’t. To be sure, I have struggled with sin and faltered and failed, but I have never stopped fighting the good fight to be holy and to serve Christ.

When they ask how I can explain this, the only answer I can give them is that I am relentlessly in God’s Word every single day, seeking his will, asking him to fill me with his power to conquer the temptations of that day.

I have chosen to be in my Father’s house. And by God’s grace, I will never leave.

Join me there.

Photo: Unsplash

God Knows Exactly What Suffering He’s Called Each of Us to Endure

Sufferers commonly ask, “Why me? Why not someone else? Why haven’t my friends lost a child or their husband? Why can they walk and ride bikes while I’m in a wheelchair? Why have you treated me differently, God?”  

The resurrected Jesus told Peter that one day he’d be taken “where you do not want to go” (John 21:18). Verse 19 reads, “Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then He said to him, ‘Follow me!’”

On hearing this, Peter immediately looked at John and asked, “Lord, what about him?” Instinctively he wanted to compare God’s difficult calling on his life with His plans for John. Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me” (John 21:21–22).

Now, Jesus did not want John to remain alive until His return. He wanted Peter to get His point: John’s time and manner of death are none of your business. He was saying, “Regardless of when and how my other disciples will suffer and die, you are to trust and follow me in my plan for you, including your death.”

Comparison is poison. We shouldn’t resent but rejoice for those who don’t have our diseases or losses. We should thank God He knows exactly what suffering and death He’s called each of us to endure. Early tradition says that when Peter was about to be crucified, he asked to be turned upside down, judging himself unworthy to die upright like his Lord.

As a young Christian, I loved the writings of Joseph Bayly. Joe and his wife lost three of their children—one at eighteen days, after surgery; another at five years, from leukemia; and a third at eighteen years, in a sledding accident complicated by hemophilia. Joe spoke honestly and from his heart. He grieved for his children and stood strong for his Lord.

In 1969, the year I came to Christ, Joe wrote a little book called Psalms of My Life. It contained a poem that a few years later I typed and placed on the wall by my desk in our first apartment. Fifty years later, it still touches me. It’s called “A Psalm While Packing Books.”

This cardboard box
Lord
see it says
Bursting limit
100 lbs. per square inch.
The box maker knew
how much strain
the box would take
what weight
would crush it.
You are wiser
than the box maker
maker of my spirit
my mind
my body.
Does the box know
when pressure increases close to
the limit?
No
It knows nothing.
But I know
when my breaking point
Is near.
And so I pray
Maker of my soul
Determiner of the pressure
within
upon
me
Stop it
lest I be broken
Or else
change the pressure rating
of this fragile container
of your grace
so that I may bear more.

As Joe reminds us, God knows how much we can bear; He knows how to relieve suffering and how to strengthen us to endure it.

For more related to the subject of suffering and God's purposes, see Randy’s book  If God Is Good , as well as the devotional  90 Days of God’s Goodness  and book  The Goodness of God . 

Photo: Pexels

One Day Death Will Work Backwards to Life

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Edmund betrays Aslan and his friends, including Edmund’s brother and sisters:

“You have a traitor there, Aslan,” said the Witch…

“Well,” said Aslan. “His offense was not against you.”

“Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?” asked the Witch.

“Let us say I have forgotten it,” answered Aslan gravely. “Tell us of this Deep Magic.”

“Tell you?” said the Witch, her voice growing suddenly shriller. “Tell you what is written on that very Table of Stone which stands beside us?…You at least know the magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill…And so, that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property.”

…“Oh, Aslan!” whispered Susan in the Lion’s ear, “can’t we – I mean, you won’t, will you? Can’t we do something about the Deep Magic? Isn’t there something you can work against it?”

“Work against the Emperor’s magic?” said Aslan, turning to her with something like a frown on his face. And nobody ever made that suggestion to him again.

C. S. Lewis is borrowing from the ransom theory of atonement which has some serious weaknesses compared to orthodox substitutionary atonement.

But in an incredibly sad scene, Susan and Lucy observe the terrifying death of Aslan. They are in utter despair that the best being they had ever known had been mocked and killed.

Suddenly, they hear a great noise. The Stone Table was broken into two.

Susan says, “Who’s done it? …Is it more magic?”

“Yes!” said a great voice from behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.

“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad….

“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.

“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward.”

Lewis captures here the resurrection of Jesus which holds within it the promise of our own resurrections, and the resurrection of the original creation itself, in the form of the New Heavens and New Earth. Ultimately, the redemptive work of Christ will entirely reverse the Curse, and all God’s people will experience death working backwards to life itself—but not just God’s people, but also animals and all the rest of His original creation (see Romans 8:19-24).

Photo: Unsplash

When the Problem of Evil and Suffering Becomes Real

The problem of evil and suffering moves from the philosophical to the personal in a moment of time.

While researching If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil, I read all sorts of books—philosophical, theological, practical, and personal. It’s one thing to talk about evil and suffering philo­sophically; it’s another to live with it.

Three weeks after his thirty-three-year-old son, Christopher, died in a car accident, pastor and evangelist Greg Laurie addressed a crowd of twenty-nine thousand at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California. “I’ve talked about Heaven my whole life,” Laurie said, “and I’ve given many messages on life after death. I’ve counseled many people who have lost a loved one, and I thought I knew a little bit about it. But I have to say that when it happens to you, it’s a whole new world.” The day his son died, he told the crowd, was “the hardest day of my life.”

When I spoke with Greg ten months later, his faith was strong, but his profound sense of loss remained. Pain is always local. It has a face and a name. And sometimes, for now, it doesn’t go away.

A friend of ours spoke at a Christian gathering. On her way back to her car, someone raped her. She became pregnant and gave birth to her first child. Because racial differences would have made it clear her husband hadn’t fathered the baby, the couple placed the infant for adoption. Since then, they’ve been unable to conceive another child. Her lifelong dream of raising children remains unfulfilled.

After his wife died, in great pain C. S. Lewis realized, “If I had really cared, as I thought I did, about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came” (A Grief Observed). Our own suffering is often our wake-up call. But even if you aren’t now facing it, look around and you’ll see many who are.

Many people point to the problem of evil and suffering as not merely a problem, but the problem.

A Barna poll asked, “If you could ask God only one question and you knew he would give you an answer, what would you ask?” The most common response was, “Why is there pain and suffering in the world?”

Suffering and evil exert a force that either pushes us away from God or pulls us toward Him. I know a man who lost his faith after facing terrible evil, suffering, and injustice. My heart breaks for him, and I pray that my family and I will never suffer what he did. But if personal suffering gives sufficient evidence that God doesn’t exist, then surely I shouldn’t wait until I suffer to conclude He’s a myth. If my suffering would one day justify denying God, then I should deny Him now in light of other people’s suffering.

The devastation of tragedy feels just as real for people whose faith endures suf­fering. But because they know that others have suffered and learned to trust God anyway, they can apply that trust to God as they face their own disasters. Because they do not place their hope for health and abundance and secure relationships in this life, but in an eternal life to come, their hope remains firm regardless of what happens.

Losing your faith may be God’s gift to you. Only when you jettison ungrounded and untrue faith can you replace it with valid faith in the true God—faith that can pass, and even find strength in, the most formidable of life’s tests.

In this life, the only way to avoid suffering is to die.

Bethany Hamilton grew up surfing on the island of Kauai, Hawaii. At age five she chose to follow Jesus. When she was thirteen, a fourteen-foot tiger shark attacked her, severing one of her arms. Bethany returned to surfing one month later. A year later, despite her physical challenges, she won her first national title.

Bethany says, “My mom and I were praying before the shark attack that God would use me. Well, to me, 1 Timothy 1:12 kind of tells me that God con­sidered me faithful enough to appoint me to his service. I just want to say that no matter who you are, God can use you even if you think you’re not the kind of per­son that can be used. You might think: why would God use me? That’s what I thought.... I was like thirteen and there God goes using me!”

Bethany and her parents had given careful thought to the God they served and His sovereign purposes. Obviously not every tragedy leads to winning a national title, but Bethany began where all of us can, by trusting God; in her case, with a support system of people having an eternal perspective. Hence, she was prepared to face suffering when it came, and to emerge stronger.

Unfortunately, most Christians are unprepared to face the realities of evil and personal suffering.

A pastor’s daughter told me, “I was never taught the Christian life was going to be difficult. I’ve discovered it is, and I wasn’t ready.”

A young woman battling cancer wrote me, “I was surprised that when it happened, it was hard and it hurt and I was sad and I couldn’t find anything good or redeeming about my losses. I never expected that a Christian who had access to God could feel so empty and alone.”

Most of us aren’t taught the truth about evil and suffering until we experience them. This forces us to formulate perspective on the fly, at a time when our thinking is muddled and we’re exhausted and consumed by pressing issues. Readers who have “been there” will attest that it’s far better to think through suffering in advance.

Sometimes sufferers reach out for answers to others equally ignorant. A physician’s assistant friend of ours wrote,

When I was admitted to the hospital in sepsis with a 50/50 chance of survival, I asked the chaplain how we could believe that God is love, when this felt like the antithesis of love. I said I wouldn’t inflict this much suffering on someone I hated, let alone someone I loved. She told me she would “look it up,” then left my room and never came back. I posed the same question to the social worker who came to visit me a few days later. She told me that God’s like a giant and we’re like little ants, and sometimes He accidentally steps on our ant hills and some of us get hurt. She said our suffering is random and God’s probably not even aware of it.

Pastor James Montgomery Boice had a clearer perspective. In May 2000, he stood before his Philadelphia church and explained that he’d been diagnosed with liver cancer:

Should you pray for a miracle? Well, you’re free to do that, of course. My general impression is that the God who is able to do miracles—and He certainly can—is also able to keep you from getting the problem in the first place. So although miracles do happen, they’re rare by definition.... Above all, I would say pray for the glory of God. If you think of God glo­rifying Himself in history and you say, where in all of history has God most glorified Himself? He did it at the cross of Jesus Christ, and it wasn’t by delivering Jesus from the cross, though He could have....

God is in charge. When things like this come into our lives, they are not accidental.... God is not only the one who is in charge; God is also good. Everything He does is good.... If God does something in your life, would you change it? If you’d change it, you’d make it worse. It wouldn’t be as good.

Eight weeks later, having taught his people first how to live and then how to die, Pastor Boice departed this world to “be with Christ, which is better by far” (Philippians 1:23).

On the other side of death, God promises that all who know Him will experience acceptance into the arms of a holy, loving, and gracious God—the greatest miracle, the answer to the problem of evil and suffering. He promises us an eternal kingdom on the New Earth, where He says of those who come to trust Him in this present world of evil and suffering, “They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain” (Revelation 21:3–4).

For more related to the subject of suffering and God's purposes, see Randy’s book  If God Is Good , as well as the devotional  90 Days of God’s Goodness  and book  The Goodness of God . 

Photo: Unsplash

No Place for Sin in Heaven

I’m convinced that the Bible is clear that though we will have freedom to choose in Heaven, we will have no ability to sin. Consider Revelation 21:4-5: “Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” (emphasis added).

What follows the word for explains why the evil that causes death, mourning, crying, and pain will no longer exist. It’s because the old order will have once and for all passed away, and God will replace it with a new order—one that is fundamentally transformed. Deception, sin, and rebellion against God will be things of the past. Those in Heaven need never fear another Fall.

Since “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23, NIV), the promise of no more death on the New Earth is synonymous with a promise of no more sin. Since sinners always die, those who are promised they will never die are being promised they will not sin anymore.

Sin causes mourning, crying, and pain. If those will never occur again, then sin, their cause, can never occur again either.

But, some argue, “Adam and Eve were sinless, yet they fell into sin. Why shouldn’t the same thing happen again?”

Adam and Eve’s situation was very different from that of God’s resurrected saints. The first man and woman were innocent, but not righteous. That is, they had not been made righteous by the atoning work of Christ. All people who will be in Heaven, on the other hand, have been made righteous through Christ: “As by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19).

To suggest we could have Christ’s righteousness yet one day sin in Heaven is to say Christ could one day sin. God completely delivers us from sin and vulnerability to sin. Scripture emphasizes that Christ died once to deal with sin and will never again need to die (Hebrews 9:26-28; 10:10; 1 Peter 3:18). We’ll have the full experience of our new nature, so we will in Christ “become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Possessing God’s own righteousness, we won’t sin in Heaven for the same reason God doesn’t: He cannot. Christ purchased with His blood our eternal inability to sin: “By a single offering [himself] he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified” (Hebrews 10:14).

“Nothing unclean will ever enter it [the New Jerusalem], nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life” (Revelation 21:27). The passage doesn’t say, “If someone becomes impure or shameful or deceitful, they will be evicted.” No eviction will be necessary, because nothing impure can ever enter in the first place.

The fact that evil will have no footing in Heaven and no leverage to affect us is further indicated by Jesus when He says, “The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace. . . . Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matthew 13:41-43, emphasis added).

Even in the present Heaven, prior to the Resurrection, people cannot sin, for they are “the spirits of the righteous made perfect” (Hebrews 12:23). Ultimately, we’ll be raised “incorruptible” (1 Corinthians 15:52, NKJV). Incorruptible is a stronger word than uncorrupted. Our risen bodies, and by implication all that we are, will be immune to corruption.

We will have true freedom in Heaven, but a righteous freedom that never sins.

Heaven will harbor no evil desires and no corruption, and we will fully participate in the sinless perfection of Christ. What does this mean in terms of human freedom? Remember, though God can’t sin, no being has greater free choice than He does. That we won’t be able to sin does not mean we won’t have free choice.

Once we become what the sovereign God has made us to be in Christ, and once we see Him as He is, we’ll see all things—including sin—for what they are. God won’t need to take away our ability to choose; He won’t need to restrain us from evil. Sin will have absolutely no appeal to us. It will be, literally, unthinkable. The memory of evil and suffering in this life will serve as an eternal reminder of sin’s horrors and emptiness. Sin? Been there, done that. And have seen how ugly and disastrous it was.

Theologian Paul Helm writes, “The freedom of heaven, then, is the freedom from sin; not that the believer just happens to be free from sin, but that he is so constituted or reconstituted that he cannot sin. He doesn’t want to sin, and he does not want to want to sin.”

Modified from We Shall See God: Charles Spurgeon's Classic Devotional Thoughts on Heaven.

Photo: Pexels

Homesick for Heaven

Novelist John Updike tells the story of a fourteen-year-old boy named David. When it’s time for questions in his catechism class, David looks to his pastor for answers:

“I asked Reverend Dobson about Heaven, and he said it was like Abraham Lincoln’s goodness living after him.”

“And why didn’t you like it?”

“Well, don’t you see? It amounts to saying there isn’t any Heaven at all.”

“I don’t see that it amounts to that. What do you want Heaven to be?”

“Well, I don’t know. I want it to be something. I thought he’d tell me what it was.”

We all want Heaven to be something. The Bible teaches it is something. Yet when it’s spoken of so vaguely by Christian leaders, who speak so clearly about other aspects of life, it appears to us—as it did to Updike’s David—that Heaven amounts to nothing at all.

How many ministers have said at funerals, “she will live on in our memories”? That sentiment suggests that though we might remember her, she will not live on. The Bible teaches that when Christians die, we will live on in Christ’s presence, awaiting the greatest day in the history of the universe—the Resurrection—all Creation renewed and living on forever, real people on a real earth.

Few, however, really seem to believe this. “Scientific, philosophical, and theological skepticism has nullified the modern Heaven and replaced it with teachings that are minimalist, meager, and dry.”

Heaven was once an elementary teaching in which believers were solidly trained. This is no longer the case. Vagueness and dimness characterize our modern view of Heaven. We, our children, our churches, and our culture are thereby impoverished.

Paul, in 2 Corinthians, wrote, “We groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling. . . . As long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. . . . We . . . would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (5:2,6,8)

Paul wasn’t alone in his longing, then, and we’re not alone in ours now. Following are some of my favorite quotes written by people who also anticipate the coming happiness of Heaven:

To speak of “imagining heaven” does not imply or entail that heaven is a fictional notion, constructed by deliberately disregarding the harsher realities of the everyday world… We are able to inhabit the mental images we create, and thence anticipate the delight of finally entering the greater reality to which they correspond. 

Alister McGrath, A Brief History of Heaven

One of the most disconcerting experiences which can come our way is to make a long journey, perhaps even to the other side of the world, and to discover on arrival that we have not been expected. … Heaven, however, is guaranteed not to disappoint. . . . We are expected.

Bruce Milne, The Message of Heaven and Hell

Our deepest instinct is heaven. Heaven is the ache in our bones, the splinter in our heart…

Homesickness—this perpetual experience of missing something— usually gets misdiagnosed and so wrongly treated. . . . All our lives we take hold of the wrong thing, go to the wrong place, eat the wrong food. We drink too much, sleep too much, work too long, take too many vacations or too few—all in the faint hope that this will finally satisfy us and so silence the hunger within.

. . . We are metaphysically handicapped. This is not so much a design flaw as a designed flaw, a glitch wired into the system, a planned obsolescence.

. . . This shaking, unslaked desire in me is a divining rod for streams of Living Water. . . . He put in me, in you, a homing device for heaven. We just won’t settle for anything less.

Mark Buchanan, Things Unseen

O my Lord Jesus Christ, if I could be in heaven without You, it would be a hell; and if I could be in hell, and have You still, it would be a heaven to me, for You are all the heaven I need.

Samuel Rutherford, quoted in Morning and Evening

Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. …I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Can you hear the sighing in the wind? Can you feel the heavy silence in the mountains? Can you sense the restless longing in the sea? Can you see it in the woeful eyes of an animal? Something’s coming . . . something better.

Joni Eareckson Tada, Heaven: Your Real Home

What can this incessant craving, and this impotence of attainment mean, unless there was once a happiness belonging to man, of which only the faintest traces remain, in that void which he attempts to fill with everything within his reach?

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

The modern philosopher had told me again and again that I was in the right place, and I had still felt depressed even in acquiescence. But I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in spring. The knowledge found out and illuminated forgotten chambers in the dark house of infancy. I knew now why grass had always seemed to me as queer as the green beard of a giant, and why I could feel homesick at home.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last. . . . Apparently, then, our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy, but the truest index of our real situation. And to be at last summoned inside would be both glory and honour beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Nothing is more often misdiagnosed than our homesickness for Heaven. We think that what we want is sex, drugs, alcohol, a new job, a raise, a doctorate, a spouse, a large-screen television, a new car, a cabin in the woods, a condo in Hawaii. What we really want is the person we were made for, Jesus, and the place we were made for, Heaven. Nothing less can satisfy us.

When I see ocean fish in an aquarium, I enjoy watching them, but I feel as if something’s wrong. They don’t belong there. It’s not their home. The fish weren’t made for that little glass box; they were made for a great ocean.

I suppose the fish don’t know any better, but I wonder if their instincts tell them that their true home is elsewhere. I know our instincts tell us that this fallen world isn’t our home—we were made for someplace better.

I’ve never been to Heaven, yet I miss it. Eden’s in my blood. The best things of life are souvenirs from Eden, appetizers of the New Earth. There are just enough of them to keep us going but never enough to make us satisfied with the world as it is or ourselves as we are. We live between Eden and the New Earth, pulled toward what we once were and what we yet will be.

Browse more resources on the topic of Heaven, and see Randy’s related books, including Heaven and The Promise of the New Earth.

Photo: Unsplash

Outrage Is Not a Fruit of the Spirit

In today’s digital world—and especially in an election year—it’s heartbreaking to see God’s people become a bickering, angry mob. (If you don’t believe me, spend a few minutes reading comments on YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter/X.) We are not called to be a herd of online bullies, rushing to judgment and egging each other on to defame our brothers and sisters. (Some of whom may well be more faithful and honorable in God’s sight than we are.)

We desperately need the Lord to do a transforming work in all of our hearts and lives. For God’s glory, our good, and the good of a desperate world that needs to know Jesus, let’s stop relentlessly sniping at each other and become in actual thought and practice what He went to the cross to make us—His pure and spotless bride: “...just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish” (Ephesians 5:25-27).

We are far too quick to believe reports we hear, and so eager to engage, imagining that we are standing up for Jesus when our actions are based on falsehoods. We gang up like cowards, imagining that if we punch hard enough and yell loud enough, we’ve been courageous.

Outrage appears to now be a core value of some Christians. Righteous indignation is sometimes appropriate, e.g. when it involves the killing of children, or false doctrine promoted at the expense of the gospel. But when outrage/anger becomes our default, we lose all credibility and, in my opinion, become poor ambassadors for Christ. And when our outrage is against Christ-followers who are doing the right thing, I believe it is particularly hurtful and repugnant to God. Jesus clearly taught that we will be held accountable for our behavior.

Likewise, another problem killing many churches is where the old (that includes me!) think all the young are too politically liberal (even when they’re not), and the young think the old care more about being conservatives than sold-out followers of Jesus (even when they don’t). So each writes off the other. And the young end up leaving biblically solid churches because they feel there’s no place for them, and go to churches where doctrinal heresy is, tragically, more acceptable. (Of course, it’s not that simplistic, and there are other factors too.)

What would happen if each of us did our part to emphasize first and foremost not human figures or political agendas or earthly kingdoms, but our identity as His sons and daughters and citizens of HIS kingdom? What would happen if we acted as ambassadors of Christ, not ambassadors of political parties and agendas? “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God” (2 Corinthians 5:20).

Political tribalism related to various news channels and talk shows encourages people to pick up their verbal boulders and hurl them at anyone with an opposing viewpoint. We throw stones even at fellow believers who think differently than we do.

But what good does this accomplish? Doesn’t it just fuel our anger and rob us of perspective and peace? Instead, let’s “encourage one another and build each other up” (1 Thessalonians 5:11, NIV).

Don’t get me wrong: there is a time and place to discuss political issues and candidates, particularly as we evaluate them against the standard of God’s unchanging Word. But if we would walk away from online disputes and pour the same amount of time and energy into helping those around us, God would be honored and we (and those we help) would be happier. Chances are, real and positive change might actually result!

Photo: Unsplash

No One Is Ever Too Old to Be Used by God

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Becoming a new creation sounds as if it involves a radical change, and indeed it does! Hence, C. S. Lewis could say: “The Christian life is simply a process of having your natural self changed into a Christ self, and…this process goes on very far inside. One's most private wishes, one’s point of view, are the things that have to be changed.”

But it should be a great encouragement to us that no one is ever too old or to set in their ways that the Holy Spirit can’t change their hearts, as this wonderful story a reader shared on my Facebook page demonstrates:

I would like to share my mother’s testimony for her. My parents, in their 90s, had to go into a nursing home because I physically could not take care of them anymore. When my father passed six months later, my mother became depressed and started having hallucinations about him. Many people told me to just go along with her hallucinations and not upset her with the truth that he was dead. It took prayer, long talks, and taking her to the cemetery for her to come to the real truth.

She then began asking about salvation and about my father in Heaven. He had accepted Christ as his Savior. I gave my mom your Heaven book, and it has helped change her life. Before I never really knew if she was saved, but she is now openly telling everyone that Jesus is her Savior. She is telling nurses and residents about salvation and Heaven. She has gone from staying in her room to actively participating in activities and meeting people. I’ve seen the Holy Spirit move in her as she slowly walks the halls with her walker going in residents’ rooms, spending time with them, and covering up someone in bed if their blanket has fallen off.

My mother at 93 is ministering to others and telling them about Heaven. No one is ever too old to be used by God for His purposes. I had given up on my mom ever changing but with the Holy Spirit in her heart now she is truly a new creation. Randy Alcorn, thank you for ministering through your book to my mother and others.

After reading her story, I thought about how I often hear (and totally understand) why people say, “When someone has dementia, don’t feel the need to correct the untrue things they are saying. That will only frustrate them.” Many years ago, when Nanci’s dad kept looking out the window and seeing his wife who had died, and other family members and friends, many of them deceased, and saying various people had come to visit him, Nanci and I just nodded. We learned early on that if we pushed back, it would hurt him and make him think we didn’t trust him. So it was only the really BIG things that mattered when we would offer gentle correction.

However, what strikes me about this reader’s story is that she took her mom to her dad’s grave to help her understand he had died. It was then that “She began asking about salvation and about my father in Heaven.”

Suppose she had taken people’s usual advice and not “bothered” her mother with the truth that her husband had died. Would that have meant her mother wouldn’t have asked about salvation in Heaven that led to a relationship with Jesus? Something to think about.

But for sure, let’s never give up on our family and friends who don’t know Jesus, even those with dementia. Let’s keep pointing them to Him and trusting that the Holy Spirit is at work, even when we can’t always see it. 

Photo: Unsplash

Eric Liddell, Margaret Holder, and How God Rejoices to Rescue Us

If you didn’t read Wednesday’s blog about Olympian Eric Liddell, I encourage you to go back and read that one first. The following story was first told in my book The Grace and Truth Paradox , and touches on Eric Liddell’s life after he won Olympic gold. I asked Stephanie Anderson, who works on EPM’s staff and helps with my blogs, to do some research and fill in the blanks to share more of what life was like for the children in the prison camp. She did a terrific job, and much of what she added was new to me and greatly improved this blog. Thank you, Stephanie!

Nanci and I spent an unforgettable day in England with Phil and Margaret Holder. Margaret was born in China to missionary parents with China Inland Mission. In 1939, when Japan took control of eastern China, thirteen-year-old Margaret was imprisoned in a Japanese internment camp, with no sanitation or running water, and limited food. There she remained, without her family, for six years.

“Separated from our parents, we found ourselves crammed into a world of gut-wrenching hunger, guard dogs, bayonet drills, prisoner numbers and badges, daily roll calls, bed bugs, flies, and unspeakable sanitation,” fellow prisoner Mary Taylor Previte said in a 2005 speech.

China Daily explains,

Fearing the internees could make contact with the outside world or even escape, the Japanese covered the walls with electrified wires and set up searchlights and machine guns in the guard towers. The camp was under military management and the internees were forced to wear armbands displaying a large black letter to indicate their nationalities - "B" for British, "A" for American, and so on.

Despite the difficulties, there were glimmers of hope and joy. Margaret told us stories about a godly man called “Uncle Eric.” He tutored her and was deeply loved by all the children in the camp. We were amazed to discover that “Uncle Eric” was Eric Liddell, “The Flying Scot,” hero of the movie Chariots of Fire. Liddell shocked the world by refusing to run the one hundred meters in the 1924 Paris Olympics, a race he was favored to win. He withdrew because the qualifying heat was on a Sunday.

Liddell won a gold medal—and broke a world record—in the four hundred meters, not his strongest event. (That was the 100 meters, which Harold Abrahams won when Eric withdrew to avoid running on a Sunday.) Later Eric went as a missionary to China. When war broke out, he sent his pregnant wife and his daughters to safety. Imprisoned by the Japanese, he never saw his family in this world again. Suffering with a brain tumor, and physically wasting away, Eric Liddell died in 1945, shortly after his forty-third birthday, and less than 200 days before the camp was liberated. (This statue of Eric is in front of Weihsien Concentration Camp, which is now a museum.)

Through fresh tears, Margaret told us, “It was a cold February day when Uncle Eric died.”

At times it seemed unbearable to be cut off from their homes and families. But Margaret spoke with delight of “care packages falling from the sky”—barrels of food and supplies dropped from American planes.

Still, the adults of the camp knew their situation was grave as 1945 continued on. Janie Hampton writes, “The rumours of imminent peace meant even greater danger: without Japanese guards, the starving Chinese surrounding the camp would steal what little food they still had, or Communist guerrillas might kidnap the children as hostages. If defeated, the guards had been ordered to kill all prisoners, regardless of age.”

On August 17, 1945, Margaret and the other children were lined up as usual to count off for roll call. Suddenly an American airplane flew low. They watched it circle and drop more of those wonderful food barrels. But as the barrels came near the ground, the captives realized something was different. Her eyes bright, Margaret told us, “This time the barrels had legs!” The sky was full of American soldiers, parachuting down to rescue the 1,500 or so prisoners!

Mary Taylor described the scene: “Grown men ripped off their shirts and waved them at the sky. Prisoners ran in circles, wept, cursed, hugged and danced as the plane circled back. The Americans had come!”

Margaret and several hundred children rushed out of the camp, past Japanese guards who offered no resistance. Free for the first time in six years, they ran to the six soldiers and one translator, and threw themselves on their rescuers, hugging and kissing them.

Mary wrote, “We trailed our angels everywhere. My heart flipped somersaults over every one of them. We children wanted their insignias. We wanted their signatures. We wanted their buttons. We wanted souvenir pieces of parachutes. …They gave us our first taste of Juicy Fruit gum. We children chewed it and passed the sticky wads from mouth to mouth. We made them sing to us the songs of America. They taught us ‘You Are My Sunshine, My Only Sunshine.’ Fifty-nine years later, I can sing it still.” Imagine the children’s joy. Imagine the soldiers’ joy!

Janie Hampton explains:

The seven US paratroopers had been warned they were unlikely to return alive from ‘The Flying Angel’. Instead, they were hoisted onto shoulders and carried back to the camp in triumph, where they were greeted by the Salvation Army brass band playing a victory medley of national anthems which they had been practising in secret for four years.

…It took several weeks to evacuate all the internees by train and plane. The children then faced the task of tracking down their parents.

(Janie’s full article, about liberation from the camp, is well worth reading. Also, Mary Taylor Previte, great granddaughter of Hudson Taylor, wrote a touching piece about years later tracking down the paratroopers who liberated the camp.)

Now 36 years after that day we spent with the Holders, I can still vividly see Margaret’s face, full of wonder and tears of joy as she told us that story. Nanci and I were weeping along with her. Imagine the soon-to-come reunion with 19-year-old Margaret and her missionary parents, who hadn’t seen their daughter since she was 13!

God rejoices in the grace He offers us as much as we rejoice in receiving it. Whether it’s Him returning from the sky to liberate us, or drawing us to Himself through our deaths, we will be rescued and at last reunited with loved ones who’ve gone before us. We too will be taken home.

Camp photo: Wikimedia Commons | Statue photo: Wikimedia Commons