Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 19

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

One Hundred Years Later, Remembering Olympian Eric Liddell

This is the 100th anniversary of Eric Liddell winning the gold medal in the men’s 400m. He won it on July 11, 1924, but in this year‘s Olympics that event final is scheduled for August 7. And it is in Paris exactly as it was in 1924!

Today’s blog is the repost of one I first shared about Eric in 2018, with the addition of a few paragraphs and some tweaks here and there. If ever we were going to reshare a blog at a particular time, now is the perfect opportunity for this one.

One hundred years later, Eric’s example of wholehearted devotion to Christ is still inspiring countless readers. Even if you read this before, I hope you’ll be touched once again by his story. And I hope you’ll especially enjoy the story of Nanci and my meeting Margaret Holder on a trip to England in 1988, where to our great surprise and delight we discovered she was with Eric Liddell at an internment camp in the final five and a half years of his life, throughout her years as a teenage girl.

One of my favorite movies of all time is the 1981 Chariots of Fire. It’s the only reason many people are familiar with Eric Liddell, the “Flying Scotsman” who shocked the world by refusing to run the one hundred meters in the 1924 Paris Olympics.

Liddell first ran in the Scottish Championships as a 19-year-old in 1921. He won five times in a row in the 100 yards, 200, and 220. Later in 1924 and 1925, he also won the 440 yards, including his Olympic gold medal. At the AAA Championships, Liddell won the 100 and 200 in 1923 and the 440 in 1924. 

His time of 9.7 seconds for 100 yards in 1923 stood as a British record for 35 years. The 100m was his best race, one he was strongly favored to win at the Olympics, but also the one where his heat was scheduled on a Sunday, the Lord’s Day. He declined to run, giving up what was almost a certain gold medal. (As shown in the movie, in the absence of Liddell, Harold Abrahams won that race.) Eric then ran in the 400m instead and shocked the world by winning gold and breaking a world record, since he was a sprinter and that distance was considered too long a race for him. (In the black and white photo, that’s the real Eric Liddell in his gold medal winning 400m final at the Olympics.)

My favorite lines from the movie are when Eric’s character, played by actor Ian Charleson, says, “God…made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure.” Though those lines were actually penned by screenwriter Colin Welland, I think the real Eric would have agreed with the sentiment. Those who knew him testified that his personal and moral convictions weren’t born of a cold, rigid religious piety, but of a warm, happy devotion to his Lord and Savior. Here’s that clip from the movie, with Eric talking to his sister Jenny.

I still remember sitting with Nanci in a large Portland theatre in 1981, smiling and crying through various parts of that unforgettable movie. Chariots of Fire ends with these brief words about Eric’s life after the Olympics: “Eric Liddell, missionary, died in occupied China at the end of World War II. All of Scotland mourned.”

A Tragic Ending?

After the Olympics and his graduation, Eric returned as a missionary to China, where he had been born to missionary parents in 1902. When the Japanese occupation made life dangerous, he sent his pregnant wife, Florence, and their two daughters to Canada. Japanese invaders placed him in a squalid prison camp, without running water or working bathrooms. There, separated from his family, Eric lived several years before dying at age forty-three. 

Upon learning of Eric’s death, it wasn’t just Scotland that mourned. All over the world people who had been inspired by him in the Olympics and in the Christian life joined the mourning.

On the surface, it all seems so tragic. Why did God withhold from this great man of faith a long life, years of fruitful service, the companionship of his wife, and the joy of raising those beloved children? It makes no sense.

And yet…

There is another way to look at the Eric Liddell story. Nanci and I discovered this firsthand when we spent an unforgettable day in England with Phil and Margaret Holder, in May of 1988. We knew almost nothing about the Holders except that Phil was a pastor. Some missionary friends we were visiting in England took us to their home in Reading.

Margaret was born in China to missionary parents with China Inland Mission, founded in 1865 by Hudson Taylor. In 1939, when Japan took control of eastern China, thirteen-year-old Margaret was imprisoned by the Japanese in Weihsien Internment Camp, where many foreigners in Beijing were sent to. There she remained, separated from her parents, for six years. (Can you imagine this not only from a young girl’s perspective but that of her parents, last being with their daughter at age 13 and not seeing her again until she was 19?)

Margaret told stories to Nanci and me about a godly man she called “Uncle Eric.” She said he tutored her and was deeply loved by all the children in the camp. She looked at us and asked, “Do you know who I’m talking about? Uncle Eric’s name was Eric Liddell.”

I recall like it was yesterday how stunned we were (gobsmacked as they say in England where we were with the Holders) because Chariots of Fire told one of our favorite stories of all time. It was released in the fall of 1981 when Karina was two years old and Angie was only four months old. Nanci and I had watched it several times in the seven years since it was released and had countless conversations about it with our closest friends. Now here we were learning firsthand information about one of our heroes!

Uncle Eric’s Influence

Margaret shared with us many great stories that day, one of which illustrated this man’s Christlike character. In the camp, the children played basketball, rounders, and hockey, and Eric Liddell was their ref­eree. Not surprisingly, he refused to referee on Sundays. But in his absence, the children fought. Liddell struggled over this. He believed he shouldn’t stop the children from play­ing because they needed the diversion.

Finally, Liddell decided to referee on Sundays. This made a deep impression on Margaret—she saw that the athlete world famous for sacrificing success for principle was not a legalist. When it came to his own glory, Liddell would surrender it all rather than run on Sunday. But when it came to the good of children in a prison camp, he would referee on Sunday.

Liddell would sacrifice a gold medal for himself (though he ultimately won the gold in a different race) in the name of truth, but would bend over backward for others in the name of grace. 

A Godly Example

Mary Taylor Previte, imprisoned at Weihsein as a child, described Eric as "Jesus in running shoes." Dr. David J. Michell, who was also one of the children at the camp, wrote how besides sports, Eric Liddell taught the children his favorite hymn:

By still, my soul, the Lord is on thy side;
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to thy God to order and provide;
In every change He faithful will remain
Be still, my soul, thy best, thy heavenly Friend
Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Dr. Michell also wrote:

Eric Liddell often spoke to us on I Corinthians 13 and Matthew 5. These passages from the New Testament clearly portray the secret of his selfless and humble life. Only on rare occasions when requested would he speak of his refusal to run on the Sunday and his Olympic record.

…Not only did Eric Liddell organise sports and recreation, through his time in internment camp he helped many people through teaching and tutoring. He gave special care to the older people, the weak, and the ill, to whom the conditions in camp were very trying. He was always involved in the Christian meetings which were a part of camp life. Despite the squalor of the open cesspools, rats, flies and disease in the crowded camp, life took on a very normal routine, though without the faithful and cheerful support of Eric Liddell, many people would never have been able to manage.

…None of us will ever forget this man who was totally committed to putting God first, a man whose humble life combined muscular Christianity with radiant godliness.

What was his secret? He unreservedly committed his life to Jesus Christ as his Saviour and Lord. That friendship meant everything to him. By the flickering light of a peanut-oil lamp early each morning he and a roommate in the men’s cramped dormitory studied the Bible and talked with God for an hour every day.

Marcy Ditmanson, a Lutheran missionary imprisoned with Eric, shared his recollections:

Eric spoke with a charming Scottish brogue, and more than anyone I had ever known, typified the joyful Christian life. He had a marvelous sense of humor, was full of laughter and practical jokes, but always in good taste. His voice was nothing special, but how he loved to sing, particularly the grand old hymns of the faith. Two of his favorites were “God Who Touches Earth with Beauty” and “There's a Wideness in God's Mercy.” He was no great orator by any means but he had a way of riveting his listeners with those marvelous, clear blue eyes of his. Yes, that's what I remember most about him as he spoke―those wonderful eyes and how they would twinkle.

Full Surrender

Though he had become an “uncle” and father figure to numerous children, Eric Liddell never saw his own wife and daughters in this world again. After writing a letter to Florence from his bed in the infirmary, he said to his friend and colleague “It’s full surrender” and slipped into a coma. Suffering with a brain tumor, he died in 1945. And while all Scotland mourned, all in Heaven who had cheered Eric on as a servant of Jesus gave him a rich welcome.

Through fresh tears that unforgettable day in their living room, Margaret Holder told us, “It was a cold February day when Uncle Eric died.” No one in the world mourned like those in that camp. When five months later the children were rescued by American paratroopers and reunited with their families, many of their stories were about Uncle Eric. Liddell’s imprisonment broke the hearts of his family. But for years—nearly to the war’s end—God used him as a lifeline to hundreds of children, including Margaret Holder.

Viewed from that perspective, the apparent tragedy of Liddell’s presence in that camp makes more sense, doesn’t it? I’m convinced Liddell and his family would tell us—and one day will tell us—that the sufferings of that time are not worthy to be compared with the glory they now know…and will forever know. A glory far greater than the suffering which achieved it.

In an interview with Liddell’s youngest daughter, Maureen, who he never met, she shared this after visiting the granite monument in China dedicated to her father’s memory: “I felt so close to him and, more than ever, I realized what his life had been for. It all made sense. What happened allowed him to touch so many lives as a consequence.”

Her sister Patricia agreed:

The number of people he’s influenced … well, things seem to add up, don’t they? You only appreciate it when you look at each stage of his life and make the connections between them. …I used to ask myself: How would things have turned out if the three of us and our mother had been in the camp with him? Then I understood my father would have spent less time with the other youngsters, which would have deprived them of so much. That didn’t seem fair to them. He was needed there. The stories we heard after his death prove that.

If we can look at Eric and his family’s tragedy, and others’ tragedies, and see some divine purpose in them, it can help us believe that there is purpose in our own tragedies too. It can help us believe the blood-bought promise of God: “all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, CSB).

A Joyful End

Though years ago I had been deeply touched by Liddell’s story watching Chariots of Fire, it was what Margaret Holder told us that day that really made me look forward to meeting in Heaven this man whose Olympic gold medal was nothing compared to his humble service for Christ.

Dr. Norman Cliff, who was imprisoned with Eric, recalled this:

Eric Liddell would say, “When you speak of me, give the glory to my master, Jesus Christ.” He would not want us to think solely of him. He would want us to see the Christ whom he served.

I’m counting on Eric, in his resurrection body on the New Earth, being able to move slowly enough for me, in my resurrection body, to run alongside him. Together, we’ll worship our Lord and Savior, the One to whom all glory and praise is due.

You might enjoy this last clip of Eric racing in Chariots of Fire. He was known for looking face up to breathe deeply, and sometimes flailing his arms. His reckless abandon and face skyward beautifully symbolize how he set his eyes on the risen Christ in Heaven.

If you wish to know more, here’s an article on Eric's life, and here's another I read and loved, about his life after the Olympics. And finally, here’s a great article about Eric from the C. S. Lewis Institute.

To hear a short but heart-touching story about the rescue of Margaret Holder and the other children from that prison camp in China, check out our next blog.

Top photo: Le Miroir des sports, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Let the Love of God Be the Object of Your Contemplation

I’ve been studying the love of Christ, and my heart has been touched first by Scripture, and second by great thoughts from God’s people. Hope you find these truths encouraging! Why not write out a verse or two, and a quotation or two, and post it where you can see it daily?

“For when we were still helpless, Christ died for the wicked at the time that God chose. It is a difficult thing for someone to die for a righteous person. It may even be that someone might dare to die for a good person. But God has shown us how much he loves us– it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us!” (Romans 5:6-8)

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? . . . Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35, 38-39)

“It was now just before the Passover Feast, and Jesus knew that His hour had come to leave this world and return to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the very end.” (John 13:1)

“By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” (1 John 3:16a)

Here are some great quotations worth meditating on:

“The only storm that can really destroy—the storm of divine justice and judgment on sin and evil—will never come upon you. Jesus bowed his head into that ultimate storm, willingly, for you. He died, receiving the punishment for sin we deserve, so we can be pardoned when we trust in him. When you see him doing that for you, it certainly does not answer all the questions you have about your suffering. But it proves that, despite it all, he still loves you. Because he was thrown into that storm for you, you can be sure that there’s love at the heart of this storm for you.” –Tim Keller

“When we look into the face of our Lord and he looks back at us with infinite love, we will see in him the fulfillment of everything that we know to be good and right and desirable in the universe. In the face of God we will see the fulfillment of all the longing we have ever had to know perfect love, peace, and joy, and to know truth and justice, holiness and wisdom, goodness and power, and glory and beauty.” —Wayne Grudem

“The love of God, as manifested in Jesus Christ, is what I would wish to be the abiding object of my contemplation; not merely to speculate upon it as a doctrine, but so to feel it, and my own interest in it, as to have my heart filled with its effects, and transformed into its resemblance.” --John Newton

“Don't you need a fountain of love that won’t run dry? You’ll find one on a stone-cropped hill outside Jerusalem's walls where Jesus hangs, cross-nailed and thorn-crowned. When you feel unloved, ascend this mount. Meditate long and hard on heaven's love for you.” --Max Lucado

“When you realize that every breath is a gift from God. When you realize how small you are, but how much he loved you. That he, Jesus, would die, the son of God himself on earth, then you...you just weep.” --Angela Bassett

“We cannot understand this readiness of Jesus to love us and help us and bless us—because He does not really need us. One of His attributes is omnipotence—so He doesn’t need us. But the secret is this—He loves us!” --A. W. Tozer

“The love of God, as manifested in Jesus Christ, is what I would wish to be the abiding object of my contemplation; not merely to speculate upon it as a doctrine, but so to feel it, and my own interest in it, as to have my heart filled with its effects, and transformed into its resemblance.” --John Newton

“We please Him most not by frantically trying to make ourselves good, but by throwing ourselves into His arms with all our imperfections, and believing that He understands everything and loves us still.” —A. W. Tozer, The Root of the Righteous

“God does not accept me just as I am; He loves me despite how I am. He loves me just as Jesus is; He loves me enough to devote my life to renewing me in the image of Jesus.” —David Powlison

See Randy's book It’s All About Jesus. It's available from EPM’s online store and also on Kindle.

Photo: Unsplash