Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 195

Spend Your Day with Eternity in Mind

Missionary Adoniram Judson said this (read these words carefully):

A life once spent is irrevocable. It will remain to be contemplated for eternity. The same may be said of each day. When it is once past, it is gone forever. All the marks which we put upon it, will exhibit forever. Each day will not only be a witness of our conduct, but will affect our everlasting destiny. How shall we then wish to see each day marked with usefulness? It is too late to mend the days that are past. The future is in our power. Let us then each morning resolve to spend the day into eternity in such a garb as we shall wish it to wear forever. And at night, let us reflect that one more day is irrevocably gone indelibly marked.

In the video and following transcript, I share some thoughts on this quote:

Judson is saying that everything we do each day can make a difference for eternity. It really does matter how we live. Missionary C. T. Studd said, “Only one life will soon be past. Only what’s done for Christ will last.” John Wesley said, “I judge all things by the price they shall gain in eternity.”

God tells us that whatever we do, whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, do it to His glory (1 Corinthians 10:31). This includes the “mundane” things of life, like driving somewhere and picking up kids in the carpool and mowing the lawn. It’s not just evangelistic crusades, your Bible study group and going to church that matter (though those things are certainly important). This is each and every thing you do, and the work that you do. Do it all to God’s glory.

Every day matters. Every hour matters. So spend it with eternity in mind.

         

Related Resources

Blog: Francis Chan on Aging Biblically—a Message for All Ages
Resource: Ann Hasseltine Judson: America’s First Female Foreign Missionary
DVD Set: Eternity 101

The Fine Art of Selection

Life consists largely of selection—choosing one alternative over another. Those things we choose are our priorities.

Deciding “I’ll read the Bible and pray when I can find the time” is like saying “I’ll give to God’s work when I can find the money.” There are an infinite number of things on which both time and money can be spent. Without a careful plan and self-discipline, expenditures always rise to meet income. Living beyond your means of time—trying to spend time that you don’t have—is courting disaster.

Time in God’s Word doesn’t just happen. You must make it happen. “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). How do you renew your mind? I like to start my days listening to Scripture audio, which I play on my smartphone or iPod. If you can’t seem to carve out time to sit down, you can listen as you fix breakfast, pack lunch, load the dishwater, clean the fridge, you name it. When you’re doing something mindless, fill your mind with Scripture. And you can listen to good novels and nonfiction too! (There are websites and smartphone apps with hundreds of free audiobooks.)

The hardest lesson we learned in our first twenty years of marriage was this: life is full of good, worthwhile, and meaningful programs, activities, organizations, causes, and ministry opportunities—the vast majority of which we cannot and should not be involved with!

It is not sufficient that something be good or important. It must be the best and most important for me, and God must show me that. Why? For the same reason that if I have a hundred dollars to spend on groceries this month, I should buy meat and milk and fruit and vegetables, not donuts and chips. Most good things I will never be able to do. If I try, I’ll burn out and end up dropping out of half of them and doing the rest poorly.

We sometimes mistake Christian busyness for true spirituality, failing to realize that over-commitment is no more honoring to God than under-commitment. In our relentless pursuit of spiritual success, we drag ourselves through a dizzy, busy, barren life. Our unspoken motto seems to be “Weariness is next to godliness.”

In the next two months you may be asked to host a luncheon, collect for the American Cancer Society, teach a class, lead a discussion group, work in the church nursery, be a room mother, run a booth at the carnival, serve punch at a wedding, coach soccer, be a teacher’s aide, cook for the high school group camp-out, and go on the women’s retreat. Very likely it is God’s will for you to do a few of these good things. But all of them or even most of them? No way.

Consider making it a policy never to say “yes” to anything until you’ve thought and prayed about it for one week. Even if someone needs an answer today, tell them you’ll call them back no sooner than a few hours. Don’t impulsively say “Yes” or you will feel—and be—out of control. Of course, there’s also the woman or man who says “No” to everything and needs to learn to say “Yes.” Be sure you say “Yes” enough to get your exercise, and “no” enough to get your rest. Steward your life so that when it’s something you sense God’s prompting to do, you will have said no often enough to give you room to say yes to those relatively few things God wants you to do.

         

Excerpted from Randy and Nanci Alcorn's book  Help for Women Under Stress .

Related Resources

Blog: How do I stay motivated in my relationship with Jesus Christ?
Resource: What is your Bible study method?

Painting photo credit: arbara_v via. sxc.hu

Taking Stock of Your Time

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff which life is made of.”

Over three thousand years before Benjamin Franklin said those words, Moses said these:

Teach us to number our days aright,
That we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)

The New Testament speaks the same message: “Redeem the time,” or “Make the most of every opportunity” (Colossians 4:5b).

Time management is life management. But we don’t need to save time in order to fill it up with more responsibilities. Rather, we need to manage our lives better so we may take more time to enjoy the Lord, our families, our church, our neighbors, and all the important people and opportunities of life that too often get buried beneath our busyness.

Nanci and I sit down periodically to take stock of what we are doing with our lives. We have sometimes discovered that our real priorities—demonstrated by how we spent our time—haven’t reflected our ideal priorities, how we believe we should best spend our time.

We suggest you try this kind of evaluation yourself by making a list of all your daily and weekly activities. Here is a list (in no particular order) of some things to include. Feel free to add others:

time in Word/prayer
volunteer work
children/grandchildren
eating
shopping
getting dressed
exercise
driving
phone calls
checking email
church
parents/in-laws
school/study
daily routine
doing makeup
relaxation
watching TV
hobbies
sleep/naps
spouse
friends
yard/garden
bathing
job/career
church work
reading
social networking

For a week or two, keep track of how much time you spend on each of these, and write down the total. Once you’ve determined how you spend your time, decide how you want to spend your time. Techniques to save time are ultimately useless until you’ve decided what you want to do with the time you’ve saved. Time that is saved but uncommitted disappears.

If you’ve determined how much time you spend on the above and other things, go back and put the letter “M” for “more” next to the things you want or need to do more, the letter “L” for less” by those you want or need to do less. Cross out the things you can afford not to do, and add things you presently aren’t doing but want to do.

Note that since you are presently using all the time you have, in order to add anything, something must go. If you add a scrapbooking class on Tuesday nights, the time must come from laundry, family, exercise, devotions, sleeping, television, phone calls or somewhere else. Remember, time is like money—spend it on one thing and you can’t spend it on another. So get the best value for your time. Spend it wisely—but don’t overspend. Redeem the time, for God’s glory and the good of yourself and others.

         

Related Resources

Blog: Stewarding Your Time
Resource: Can't You See That I'm Busy?
Book:  Help for Women Under Stress

Pocket watch photo credit: fwdthought via sxc.hu

The Urgent vs. the Important

When it comes to time management, the greatest principle for us as Christians is truly a liberating one: In the final analysis, I have only one thing to do. Does this principle sound strange? It comes straight from the mouth of Jesus. Do you remember when the two sisters from Bethany, Martha and Mary, gave a dinner party for Jesus and His disciples in their home? Martha was busily doing dozens of things that “needed to be done”—or so she told herself. Mary, meanwhile, was taking the opportunity to sit at Jesus’ feet and enjoy His company.

Martha got uptight because there was so much to do and so little time. She finally confronted Jesus with her resentment toward Mary for spending time with Him instead of helping her serve the meal. We can imagine Jesus gently placing His hand on Martha’s shoulder as He said:

Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her. (Luke 10:41–42)

The passage says Mary chose “what is better” or literally, “the better portion.” The word is used normally of food, and it sets up an interesting contrast. While Martha devoted herself to preparing physical food, Mary devoted herself to receiving spiritual food. She was a hungry soul, single-mindedly devoted to the spiritual meal served by Jesus.

The time we spend with God determines the direction and the quality of all the rest of our time. Because of this, the more stress we’re under and the more pressures we face, the more time we need to spend with God in order to face them properly. That’s why Martin Luther did what at first glance seems senseless—on days when he had more to do he spent more time in prayer.

Charles Hummel’s booklet The Tyranny of the Urgent reminds us we must learn to discern between the urgent and the truly important. Serving the guests seemed much more urgent to Martha than listening to Jesus. But she failed to realize that it was also far less important.

Every person’s day is filled with things that are urgent—work, appointments, housework, homework, phone calls, carpools, shopping, and checking the Facebook pages of family and friends. If I don’t do the wash tonight, there’ll be no clean clothes tomorrow. If I don’t study, I’ll fail tomorrow’s final exam. All of us feel the urgency. But if we don’t spend time with the Lord or read to our children or call our parents, life goes on. These things are not emergencies. In neglecting them we don’t neglect something urgent. We neglect something important.

At the end of our lives, when we look back, most of the seemingly urgent things will be long forgotten. What we will thank God for—or regret—is what we did about the important things.

         

Related Resources

Blog: Planned Neglect: Saying No to Good Things So We Can Say Yes to the Best
Audio: What is your personal quiet time like?
Book: Help for Women Under Stress

photo credit: tom1 via. sxc.hu

How do I respond with grace and truth if I’m invited to a gay wedding?

Many people wonder, “What if I’m invited to a gay wedding?” In the following video and transcript, I share some thoughts.

I have been invited to one, even where it might not have been legal. There are also ceremonies to “honor” this union.

I’ll take the question a step further. What if it’s a heterosexual couple where a Christian is marrying a non-Christian? I believe that 2 Corinthians 6 says it is an unequal yoke for believers to be married to unbelievers. What if there is some other reason why I believe this wedding is wrong? Should I still attend?

I would say a general rule would be that you have to figure out what constitutes approval. For instance, if you’re invited to the home of your gay neighbors and they want to serve you a meal, is it a form of approval to have dinner with them? No. I think that’s just being a nice person and a good neighbor. You’re not making any comment on the choices they make by accepting the invitation. Likewise, having them into your home for a meal would be appropriate.

A wedding, it seems to me, is a little bit different—maybe a lot different. The old wedding ceremonies would often talk about (and sometimes they still do today) how people are all joined together to witness the ceremony and the couple are making themselves accountable to all who are attending. The very attendance is in some way an expression of approval—not just, “I wish you well in general in life,” but specifically, “I wish for you the greatest happiness in this union.”

Well, if you fundamentally believe it is wrong, are you expressing approval by attending? I have counseled people before and encouraged them not to get married because I saw some huge red flags. If they still chose to get married, in the end I did not attend those weddings. This was not because I was “trying to make a statement”; I just couldn’t say I felt good about those weddings.

By the way, one of those people years later came to me and said, “Thank you for telling me the truth. You were absolutely right. Our marriage ended in disaster.” (If everyone who knew a couple like this and believed the marriage wasn’t right and was not going to work said to them, “I love you, and have always wanted to be your groomsman or bridesmaid, but I can’t in this situation”,  maybe we could avoid that sort of thing.)

So yes, I’m not comfortable with the implicit approval involved in attending a gay wedding.

On a similar note, somebody asked about having people in their home. I would say, when they’re inside your home and under your roof, you are accountable to God for that. This is a place where you have dominion and responsibility. I would not say to a couple that is living together, “You guys sleep in this bedroom.” Instead, I would have the uncomfortable conversation with them and say, “We love you. You are welcome to stay at our house. Because of our convictions, would you mind the separate bedrooms?” They might say, “Well, then maybe we should stay at a motel or wherever.” I would respond with, “But please understand that this truly is us trying to honor God. This is not something we just came up with.”

What about your child marrying somebody and you know it isn’t right? Do you allow them to stay in the same room together in your house? I think when they’re husband and wife and the marriage is a real marriage, even if you didn’t approve of it, I would say yes, sure.

But is “gay marriage” truly a marriage in God’s sight whether it’s made legal or not? I don’t think it is. I think that’s another component that’s involved.

Of course we’re to speak the truth in love and share grace with people. But I do think there is a time to say, “You know what? In the name of love, I can’t make the statement that I approve of this by attending.” (I share some specific thoughts on how to turn down the invitation in this article.)

You just have to find ways to graciously communicate this. This is very tough to do.

         

Related Resources

Blog: "Are homosexual sins worse than other sins?"
Resource: How can we lovingly decline attending my sister’s lesbian wedding?
Book: The Grace and Truth Paradox

Cake photo credit: bjearwicke via sxc.hu

Ways to Connect with Our Ministry Online

Our ministry, EPM, encourages people to live in light of eternity, and one of the ways we seek to do so is by having a presence on several major social media sites.

When it comes to the dangers of social media, I’ve shared some thoughts here in a past blog. Can Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest really be Christ-honoring, eternity-pointing tools? I believe when done carefully, they can be.

Some of you may follow us one place, but don’t know we’re present elsewhere in a different form. Here’s where you can find us online:

Since you’re reading this, it’s likely that you’ve already discovered my blog, where I post three times a week. However, you may not know that you can subscribe to receive the posts directly in your inbox. Go to www.epm.org/blog and in the left-hand column under “Subscribe to receive posts by email”, enter your email address.

If you’re on Facebook and aren’t yet following my page (www.facebook.com/randyalcorn), I invite you to join me there, where I regularly post thoughts, Christ-centered quotes, Scriptures, and the occasional pictures of my grandkids and our dog Maggie. :) I check my page daily and really enjoy reading the comments and interaction.

I encourage you to also like EPM’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/EPMinistries). It’s a great way to get the latest news from our office, including specials and promotions, information on ministries we support around the world, and more.

I post regularly on Twitter (www.twitter.com/randyalcorn), including Scriptures, quotes, and shorter versions of the thoughts that appear on my Facebook page. So if Twitter is your thing, I invite you to give me a follow.

You can also find EPM on Twitter (www.twitter.com/epmorg), where you can get updates from our ministry and links to resources.

I know some of you really enjoy Pinterest, so thought you might like to know that EPM has a presence there (www.pinterest.com/randyalcorn). Jenny at our office has done a fantastic job of gathering up attractive visuals related to my books and things I’ve written. We have pins ranging from scripture graphics, book quotes, ministries we support and many things in between. I hope you enjoy taking a look.

If you’re always on the lookout for a great book and are part of Goodreads, you’ll find us there as well (www.goodreads.com/author/show/4862.Randy_Alcorn). I share titles of books I’ve read and recommend, and we run occasional giveaways for my books.

The EPM staff post all of my videos, including everything from short Q&A clips to full-length sermon messages, on our Vimeo site (www.vimeo.com/randyalcorn). We have over 600 videos now, so there’s plenty to browse and watch. Feel free to share and use the videos as you wish.

Due to the questionable and often offensive content that’s unfortunately available on YouTube, we’ve hesitated to refer people to their site in the past. However, YouTube is the place to be when it comes to video and we want to make our content as readily available and searchable as possible. If you subscribe to YouTube channels, you can find us at www.youtube.com/eternalperspectives, where we’re adding new videos each week.

Our EPM staff would like to hear from you: What social media sites do you use and enjoy? And if you have content-related suggestions for any of our social media sites, we’d love to hear them!

         

Related Resources

Blog: Living Life or Documenting Insignificance?

All Men Seek Happiness

Blaise Pascal wrote this, and I think it’s very insightful:

All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.

In this video and the following transcript, I share some thoughts:

This is a very powerful statement. Pascal is saying, “Look, we all do want to be happy. So let’s get real about it. Everything we do is motivated not by what will make us happy, but by what we believe will make us happy.” If what we believe will make us happy is indeed what will make us happy, then great—we’re starting at the right place.

But why is he saying that even the person who hangs himself seeks happiness? The person who commits suicide is tired of all the unhappiness and wants it to end. They want to be “more happy,” so they even hang themselves to do it.

It’s so descriptive and has a lot of explanatory power to say, “We all seek happiness.” So what we need to do is figure out the best object of our happiness. Where should we seek happiness? Where will we find and experience a real and lasting happiness?

According to the Bible, that is in God. God is the Source and Creator of all happiness. It is only in Him, and in a right relationship with Him, that we’ll be able to experience the lesser happiness in life as flowing out of the great fountain of God’s own happiness.

         

Related Resources

Blog: Longing for Happiness, in Blaise Pascal
Resource: True Happiness!
Book:  Managing God's Money

The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life, and Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis

No writer has had greater impact on me than C. S. Lewis. I find both his fiction and nonfiction to be penetrating and life-shaping. That’s one of the reasons I’m excited to be speaking at this year’s Desiring God National Conference, “The Romantic Rationalist: God, Life, and Imagination in the Work of C.S. Lewis,” in Minneapolis, Minnesota on September 27-29. My topic is “C.S. Lewis on Heaven and the New Earth: God’s Eternal Remedy to the Problem of Evil and Suffering.”

John Piper will be giving two plenary messages, and there will be other main sessions from Phil Ryken, Douglas Wilson, Kevin Vanhoozer and me. On Friday, there will be breakout sessions from Lyle Dorsett, Colin Duriez, Joe Rigney, and N.D. Wilson. There will also be a variety of 10-minute short monologues in the exhibit hall related to Lewis. In the words of DG’s David Mathis, “Our hope is this will be the next best thing to visiting Narnia yourself.”

In this 2-minute video, John Piper shares more:

I’m honored to be sharing at the Desiring God conference, which Nanci and I think of as the best we’ve ever participated in (we’ve been to two other DG conferences).  

Raised in a nonchristian home, I came to Christ as a teenager. My first Lewis books were The Problem of Pain, then the Space trilogy, then Mere Christianity. By the time I’d been a believer for two years, Lewis’s fingerprints were all over me.

It was Lewis who convinced me that the same person could write good nonfiction and fiction, and emboldened me to try. Those who read my books know how often I quote him. Lewis’s mentorship and impact on my own life, and indirectly on my ministry, has been profound, and I’m grateful to God for him.

As I shared in part 1 and part 2 of an extended blog about Lewis, I learned long ago what he knew, that an author can become a friend, someone you can rejoin at will and pick up right where you left off. In that sense, Lewis has been my friend now for over forty years. I’m looking forward to the conference not just as a speaker, but also as an eager listener.  

If you’re interested in attending this year’s conference, Desiring God is offering a super early-bird rate of $125 when you register by June 1. Learn more and register on the event page.

         

Related Resources

Book: Lord Foulgrin's Letters
Blog: C. S. Lewis's Influence on My Life and Writing, Part 1
Resource: Randy Alcorn Reminisces About His Visit to C. S. Lewis’s Office in England

Christian Universalism

There’s a movement among Christians today towards what’s called Christian Universalism. It’s a belief that everybody ultimately will be saved—there will be no Hell, or at some point Hell will be depopulated and everyone will live forever with Christ in Heaven. It’s a wonderful thought. But does the Bible really teach it?

In the following video and transcript, I share some thoughts:

A lot of people look at all the passages where Jesus talks about Hell and immediately and intuitively realize that no, of course that’s not taught in Scripture. But at the same time, there are passages (which I believe are taken out of context) that “Christian Universalists” cite to prove their viewpoint.

One of those passages is 2 Corinthians 5:19, which says, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ.” They point out, “Look, it says ‘God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.’ That means not just Christians, but the whole world is reconciled.”

I heard in an interview a Christian Universalist (C. Baxter Kruger) say that there are (according to this passage), 1) those who know they have been reconciled to God in Christ, and 2) those who do not yet know they’ve been reconciled, but the point is that all of us have been reconciled and one day all of us will know that. That sounds pretty persuasive to a lot of people. It certainly sounds attractive.

(Here’s a video in which Baxter Kruger doesn’t say that, but something quite similar. Krueger is now regularly making presentations with Paul Young, author of The Shack. You may wish to see my blog I wrote about the book).

There are some major problems with this position on 2 Corinthians 5, one of which is the issue of context. This interpretation ignores something critical. In verse 19 Paul goes on to say “And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.” Who’s the “us”? It’s believers who are going out to tell people about the importance of reconciliation. So you say, “Well, that could still just mean telling people they’re already reconciled. There’s nothing they have to do. They’re already going to go to Heaven.” (That obviously undercuts the urgency of the Gospel message, doesn’t it?)

Picking back up in verse 20, Paul says, “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.” What’s he saying? He’s saying that you need to be reconciled, so get reconciled, “be reconciled.” Whatever it means that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, therefore, it does not mean everybody is already reconciled in the sense the word is used in verse 20!

Maybe it means that God did a work of reconciliation that is available to all people and He’s already accomplished that. But to say that this is teaching Christian Universalism negates the larger context, where Paul is challenging believers to go forth as Christ’s ambassadors to take the gospel to the world, that people may be reconciled to God!

There’s numbers of places in the book of 2 Corinthians that refer to believers and unbelievers. In the very next chapter Paul talks about not being yoked together with unbelievers, contrasting light and darkness (2 Corinthians 6:14-18). Clearly Paul’s entire argument rests upon there being a fundamental distinction between regenerate and unregenerate people. Can you imagine him saying that the unbelievers God’s people are not to be yoked with are already reconciled to God just as we are, but just don’t know it yet? No, this is a radical distinction, not just in the potential, but the actual, not in just what is known or not, but what is true or not.

What shall we say about Colossians 1:13, “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves”? Is our message to unbelievers to be, “God has already rescued you from the dominion of darkness and brought you into Christ’s kingdom—we just need to tell you”? Is it that “you have already been born again, we just need to tell you”? That “you are already going to Heaven, Hell isn’t even a possibility, and that’s the good news you can enjoy, whether or not you believe it”? Do we say repentance and turning from sin to trust in Christ’s atonement is necessary, or do we say “repentance doesn’t matter, you’ve already been forgiven, you just don’t know it, and haven’t asked for it, but it’s true anyway”?

What’s true of 2 Corinthians 5 is true of all the so-called Universalism passages. If you take them as one verse by itself, it can sound like all people will eventually be saved. But when you compare it to all the other passages, numbers of them spoken by Christ Himself, then you realize that’s a myth. Jesus said there’s a wide road and a wide way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. He also said straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life, and few there be that find it (Matthew 7:14). Yes, there will be people from every tribe and nation and language in Heaven, as Revelation 5 and 7 makes joyfully clear; but to say all people will be there is to do great violence to countless passages, including those where Jesus emphatically speaks of the fearful reality of Hell.

(EPM staff member Julia Stager has written some more perspectives on this subject which I find insightful.)

The message of “Christian Universalism” sounds like good news, but it is ultimately a false message that sabotages and undermines the true good news of the Gospel of Jesus.

         

Related Resources

Book: If God Is Good
Blog: Universalism: Will Everyone Go to Heaven?
Resource: Reflections on The Shack

Image credit: Krappweis via sxc.hu

How to Fight Modern-Day Slavery

The problem of human slavery, with at least 30 million known victims in the world today, is a staggering one. [i] There are many organizations and people around the world who are dedicated to fighting this injustice, and this is good. (One such ministry that EPM supports is Make Way Partners and their work in places like Sudan, Romania and Peru.) However, you may not be aware of the ways that you personally can help contribute to this fight.

In this post from Desiring God, Ben Reaoch shares about five ways we can help:

What Christians Do About Modern-Day Slavery

by Ben Reaoch 

If you are a believer, be reminded that you were a slave. Jesus redeemed you from that slave master called sin. And he has given us freedom. Therefore, as freed slaves, we should have a heart for those who continue in bondage — whether spiritual or physical, and in many cases, it’s both. It should be our desire to continue in the path that Jesus set out for us in his earthly ministry: to proclaim good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives, to set at liberty those who are oppressed (Luke 4:18).

An amazing thing about the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it’s a message not only for the oppressed, but also for the oppressors; not only to the victim, but to the perpetrators. Remember, “Love your enemies.” And don’t forget that God saved Saul of Tarsus, who was persecuting the church. Our gut response would be, “Free the slaves, and to hell with the cruel criminals who are keeping them in bondage.” But the gospel goes beyond that.

The good news of Jesus crucified for sinners and victorious over death is a message of hope for both the slave and the human trafficker.

In reality, the human trafficker is a slave as well. The predators are slaves to lust, power, money, and all kinds of perversion. The pimps, the predators, the pedophiles, the traffickers, the enslavers are shackled with bonds of a different kind. So, as Christians, we ought to pray for them. We ought to pray for the sex tourists who travel the world exploiting women and children. We ought to pray for the business owners who are taking advantage of their employees. The gospel is a message of hope for all who will repent and believe.

Five Ways to Fight Evil

Now apart from praying for supernatural conversion of the oppressor, what else can we do to fight against the international epidemic of modern-day slavery?

I have at least five practical action points in mind for the Christian community. I understand that God calls us to various areas of ministry, and we are not all obligated to engage in every area of need. But I do hope to make us aware, and to call many Christians to action, in opposition to this grave evil in our world.

Continue reading.

         

Related Resources

Book: The Treasure Principle
Blog: The Least of These: Street Children
Resource: From Sexual Slavery to Restoration and Rebirth

[i] www.makewaypartners.org/what_we_do.html

Image credit: glendali via sxc.hu