Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 29

The Best Is Still Yet to Be

Emmanuel Ndikumana was nineteen years old when he heard that a group of young men in Burundi planned to murder him in two weeks. He chose to stay where he was and survived the attempted murder through God’s amazing providence. When telling me his story, Emmanuel made this comment: “You Americans have a strange attitude toward death; you act as if it’s the end.”

The truth is, we’ll be far happier in this life if we understand it isn’t our only chance for happiness . . . and neither is it our best chance. I’ve read books on happiness stressing that we must be happy right here and now, living in the moment, because this is all we have. But the Christian worldview is that God’s people will have an eternity of present-tense happiness. This assurance of never-ending happiness is capable of front-loading joy into our lives today.

Jonathan Edwards said of God’s people, “They are not only invited to go with Christ, and to dwell with him, but to inherit a kingdom with him; to sit down with him on his throne, and to receive the honour and happiness of a heavenly kingdom. . . . God made heaven on purpose for them, and fitted it for their delight and happiness.”

In the ages to come, we’ll remember past happiness and its cause (God) and look forward to future happiness and its cause (God). So if you’re not happy today, or if your happiness isn’t as deep as you wish, relax. Take a deep breath. You’re not missing your only opportunity to be happy! The time is coming when there will be nothing you can do except be happy. And that time will never end! Still, the Bible makes clear that God doesn’t want you to wait until then to be happy in Christ.

All who know Jesus will live together in that resurrected world, with the Lord we love and the friends we cherish. We’ll embark together on the ultimate adventure in a spectacular new universe awaiting our exploration and dominion.

Jesus will be the center of everything. Happiness will be the lifeblood of our resurrected lives. And just when we think, It doesn’t get any better than this—it will!

If we come to understand the biblical doctrine of the resurrection and the New Earth, we’ll find exactly what we all wish for. So let’s be sure we understand it! How kind of God to provide for us exactly what he wired us to most desire—to be in His presence forever, delighting in Him and each other and enjoying our lives together.

Father Boudreaux wrote in Happiness of Heaven, “Never can there come a day when He will frown upon us, and make us feel that His love for us has grown cold. . . . Never will there come a day when His divine beauty will fade away, or when He will lose his power of making us happy.”

Think of it: millions of years from now, in the presence of the happy God who will never tire of us, we’ll still be young. We’ll be able to say every day, “I will never be separated from my endlessly loving and creative God and Savior, the source of all happiness. Every day has been better than the one before . . . and the best is still yet to be!”

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

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Everything Is Going Wrong in the World? G. Campbell Morgan Reminds Us to Adjust Our Focus

The following was first posted on my blog ten years ago. The grandson of Marden Wickman, my first pastor, recently shared it on Facebook, and it made me think that given all that has happened in the last ten years, and even the last five, the message of this blog is more pertinent than ever.

My first pastor was Marden Wickman, at Powell Valley Covenant Church in Gresham, Oregon. I came to faith in Christ through that church, and Pastor Wickman baptized me. For 35 years now Nanci (who grew up in that church) and I have lived less than a mile from Powell Valley Covenant’s church building. I drive by it several times a week and am flooded with memories.

I loved Marden Wickman, who loved to preach God’s Word. There was one preacher he quoted more than any other—G. Campbell Morgan. Under Pastor Wickman’s influence, I bought Morgan’s Westminster Pulpit, the five volume collection of his sermons, and I also read many of Morgan’s books.

G. Campbell Morgan was a British scholar and the pastor who preceded Martyn Lloyd-Jones at Westminster Chapel. One of his many books was The Unfolding Message of the Bible, which he wrote in 1961. That was over fifty years ago.

Recently I was reading a portion in this book where G. Campbell Morgan said something I think evangelical Christians in America really need to hear today—especially those who are obsessed with how bad things are in our culture, and those convinced that as a result of how bad it’s getting, Christ absolutely has to return right away.

I should back up and say I was a new Christian in the seventies when everyone was reading Hal Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, the bestseller of the decade. We listened to Bible teachers “proving” from Scripture that Christ had to return by 1980. They based this largely on the predominant interpretation of Matthew 24:32-34, calculating that Israel’s return as a nation in 1948 demanded that Christ would come within thirty years of that event, or at least forty. And besides, we said, “Look around, how much darker can things get?” And here we are, forty years later.  (One of my friends didn’t get dental work done—“Why spend the money when Christ is going to return within a year or two?” Believe me, he lived to regret it.)

I do believe in the imminent return of Christ, which means He CAN return any time, as has been true for 2,000 years. But it also means, despite all the books persuading people these are the darkest days of history and that current events in Iran and Iraq and Israel are fulfilling Bible prophecies, He does not HAVE TO return anytime.

Listen to Dr. Morgan, writing over fifty years ago:

I have no sympathy with people who tell us today that these are the darkest days the world has ever seen. The days in which we live are appalling, but they do not compare with conditions in the world when Jesus came into it. Historians talk of the Pax Romana and make much of the fact that there was peace everywhere, the Roman peace. Do not forget that the Roman peace was the result of the fact that the world had been bludgeoned brutally into submission to one central power.…

Notwithstanding the prevailing conditions, the dominant note of these Letters, revealing the experience of the Church, is a note of triumph. The dire and dread facts and conditions are never lost sight of—indeed, they are there all the way through. The people are seen going out and facing these facts—and suffering because of these facts—but we never see them depressed and cast down, we never see them suffering from pessimistic fever. They are always triumphant. That is the glory of Christianity. If ever I am tempted to think that religion is almost dead today, it is when I listen to the wailing of some Christian people: “Everything is wrong,” or “Everything is going wrong.” Oh, be quiet! Think again, look again, judge not by the circumstances of the passing hour but by the infinite things of our Gospel and our God. And that is exactly what these people did.

When Morgan said, “Oh, be quiet!” it is a close equivalent to “Just shut up, would you?” Yes, let’s serve Jesus faithfully and seek to preserve Christian liberties, but let’s not whine about things being so dark. Instead, let’s shine the light as faithful children of God. Let’s trust Jesus to return when He is good and ready to do so, whether that is today, or a hundred years from now, or a thousand. Let’s live as people who are indeed going to meet Jesus soon, either by His return or our deaths. And let’s be ready to meet Him, and by His grace, hear those incredible words: “Well done, my good and faithful servant; enter into your Master’s joy.”

“But concerning that day and hour [when Christ will return] no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” (Matthew 24:36)

“Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people.” (Philippians 2:15)

Photo: Unsplash

The Place Where God Was Homeless and All Men Are at Home

I am a great fan of G.K. Chesterton, but I don’t recall ever reading this poem of his until last year. Though it is an old-style rhyming poem, it really moved me. Merry Christmas to you and your family. —Randy

The House of Christmas

by G.K. Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

Photo:

 

For Your Sake Christ Became Poor

In a sermon given on December 24, 1854, titled “A Visit to Bethlehem,” Charles Spurgeon portrayed a conversation between a Christian family on Christmas day. This excerpt is drawn (and slightly modified) from part of that conversation, and includes one of my favorite verses: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Meditate on the truth of that for a few million years! (We will—may as well get a head start.)

We ought all of us to think how our blessed Lord cast in his lot with the poor. When those wise men came from the East, I daresay they were surprised, at first, to find that Jesus was a poor man’s child; yet they fell down and worshipped him, and they opened their treasury, and presented to him very costly gifts—gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. Ah! when the Son of God made that great stoop from heaven to earth, he passed the glittering palaces of kings, and the marble halls of the rich and the noble, and took up his abode in the lodgings of poverty.

Still, he was ‘born King of the Jews.’ Now, did you ever read of a child being born a king before? Of course, you never did; children have been born princes, and heirs to a throne, but no other than Jesus was ever born a king. The poverty of our Saviour’s circumstances is like a foil which sets off the glorious dignity of his person. You have read of good kings, such as David, and Hezekiah, and Josiah; yet, if they had not been kings, we should never have heard of them; but it was quite otherwise with Jesus Christ. He was possessed of more true greatness in a stable than any other king ever possessed in a palace; but do not imagine it was only in his childhood that Jesus was the Kinsman of the poor.

When he grew up to be a man, he said, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” Do you know that our comforts were purchased at the expense of his sufferings? “He became poor that we, through his poverty, might be rich.” We ought, therefore, to thank and praise the blessed Jesus every time we remember how much worse off he was in this world than we are.

Photo: Unsplash

Meet the Messiah Who Came to Serve

When Jesus washed the feet of His followers (John 13), they were amazed that a leader and teacher they respected so much would do the work of a servant. Peter especially couldn’t bear the thought of Jesus doing that. But Jesus insisted on washing His friends’ feet.

Jesus also said, “The servants who are ready and waiting for his return will be rewarded. I tell you the truth, he himself will seat them, put on an apron, and serve them as they sit and eat” (Luke 12:37)!

Chad Bird writes about verse 37:

The master dons the uniform of a servant? Serving his servants? In that culture, this reversal of roles would have been as preposterous as a CEO today having a janitor sit in for him in the board meeting while the CEO scrubbed the toilets.

Ah, but this “unacceptability” is the point, isn’t it? Meet the Messiah who comes to serve and not be served.

Jesus fulfilled this servant vocation not only in His ministry—feeding the crowds, washing His disciples’ feet, and giving His life as a ransom for many—but, as we read in Luke 12, He is pictured as serving us even at the Messianic banquet.

What kind of heart beats inside the Babe of Bethlehem? A loving heart, a serving heart, that will never stop giving to us, His beloved ones.

We owe Jesus everything. He owes us nothing. But that doesn’t keep God from choosing to serve us, His servants. Jesus served us when He died for us. He said about Himself, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). And in Philippians 2:7 tell us that Jesus “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

I share more in this video:

As a father who loves his children goes out of his way to help them, God promises that He will always give of Himself for us. Why? Because He loves us and wants to show forever His appreciation for our loyalty and service to Him in this life. Does that mean we deserve God’s grace? Of course not. By definition, God’s grace is something we don’t deserve. If we deserved it, it wouldn’t be grace!

We must assent to Christ’s service for us (John 13:8). But even in Heaven, it appears, Jesus will sometimes serve us. What greater and more amazing reward could be ours in the new universe than to have Jesus choose to serve us?

If it were our idea that God would serve us, it would be blasphemy. But it’s His idea. As husbands serve their wives and parents serve their children, God desires to serve us. “On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples” (Isaiah 25:6). God will be the chef—He’ll prepare us a meal. In Heaven, God will overwhelm us with His humility and His grace.

Somehow, in His great love for us, our King becomes a servant, making us, His servants, kings! Notice that He won’t merely command His other servants to serve us. He will do it Himself. That’s why the grace we sing about in church is called “Amazing Grace.” If you think about it, there’s nothing more amazing than that God would love us so much.

Doesn’t that make you want to love Him more and more every day?

See Randy's books  It's All About Jesus  and  Face to Face with Jesus .

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How to Fight Materialism at Christmas and All Year Long

I was on the Faith & Finance podcast with Rob West, talking about giving guidelines to fight materialism. (You can read all 11 guidelines here.) We don’t need to be victimized by the world’s materialism, especially at Christmastime. By taking our focus off the human receiver and putting it on the divine giver, Christmas can become a symbol of God’s giving heart rather than people’s grabbing hands.

Here’s a clip from the interview, about why we need to keep hearing “God Owns It All”:

You can listen to the full interview here.

See more resources on money and giving, as well as Randy's related books, including  Managing God's Money  and  Giving Is the Good Life .

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Immanuel Came to Secure God’s Eternal Plan to Live with Us

Multiple times in Revelation 21, God says He will come down from the present Heaven to live with His people on the New Earth. The city “comes down out of heaven,” God’s dwelling place is “with man,” God will “dwell with them,” and God Himself “will be with them.” Despite the repetition, most Christians still don’t appear to believe that God’s plan is to bring Heaven to Earth and dwell here with us forever. Not just for a thousand years in a millennial kingdom on the old earth, but forever on the New Earth.

Christ is Immanuel, “God with us,” forever. The incarnation of Jesus was not temporary.

We normally think of us going up to Heaven to live with God in His place. That is indeed what happens when we die. But the ultimate promise is that God will come down to live with us in our place, on the New Earth. The ultimate Heaven will not be “us with God” but “God with us” (Revelation 21:3). The New Earth will be Heaven incarnate, just as Jesus Christ, our Immanuel, is forever God incarnate who will happily live in our midst.

Charles Spurgeon put it beautifully: “‘God with us’ is eternity’s sonnet, heaven’s hallelujah, the shout of the glorified, the song of the redeemed, the chorus of the angels, the everlasting oratorio of the great orchestra of the sky.”

In this clip from a chapel message I gave last year at Liberty University, I share some thoughts about Immanuel, God with us, and the blood-bought hope He secured for us:

You can watch the full chapel message here.

Photo: Pexels

Eternity Changed Because Nanci and I Met 55 Years Ago

I shared a version of this on Facebook last week but wanted to also post it on my blog, and add a few more things.

Last week was the anniversary of the day Nanci and I met 55 years ago, December 7, 1968. The photo at the top of this blog was taken exactly one week earlier on her 15th birthday. The night we met, Nanci was wearing that same outfit. I remember her exactly as the photo portrays, including that impish look on her face. 

It fills my heart with joy to remember that day, as if it were yesterday, when my life began to change. I thank the Lord Jesus for bringing Nanci into my life, leading me to come to a youth group and a church where I first heard the good news, and eight months later knelt with an open Bible in front of me in my bedroom, and gave my life to Him.

What if I had not met Nanci (all the odds were against it) and come to Jesus a year later? Since my name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, I won’t ask the question of whether I would’ve come to Jesus without meeting Nanci, but I certainly believe she was central to His plan in drawing me to Christ. Even though the circumstances of our meeting and the fact that we were together in a serious relationship 10 months before I came to Jesus were not God’s moral will, they were part of His sovereign will. 

I thank God for the 54 years Nanci and I were best friends, including the 47 years we were married. I can’t imagine my life without Him, and I will be eternally grateful for His entrusting to me my soulmate Nanci, who walked beside me as together we walked with Jesus.

I will never forget Nanci saying to me a week before she died, “Randy, please take me home.” Of course, we were in our earthly home, where she lay in the hospital bed we had moved into our bedroom, but we both knew she was speaking of our home with Jesus. In tears, I responded, “Sweetheart, if I could take you home right now, I would, and I would never come back to this fallen world. But we know God is in charge of the timing.”

That Monday morning in 2022, when I held Nanci’s hand as she exited her body and entered the presence of Jesus, I could picture Christ’s outstretched arms and hear His loving words, “Well done.” I could imagine her broad smile as He hugged her. Home at last! And I thought of all the people from all over the world she would then meet and get to know and love—those we had the privilege of helping through our giving and ministry, and who thereby received the gospel, food, clothes, clean water, medicines, Bibles, and good books. Sometimes I feel like part of me went to Heaven with Nanci. That’s not only because of our deep love for each other, but because she and I partnered together to invest in people for eternity. I so look forward not only to seeing old friends but to having Nanci introduce me to these new friends we invested in before we ever met them!

I can’t wait to see Jesus face-to-face—Him above all—and then Nanci above all others. ♥️ 

A Grieving Mother’s Cry, and a Glimpse into How God Is Using Eternal Perspective Ministries

One of the things I love most about our ministry is that our staff take the time to respond to people who contact us. I have been told by countless people that in times of need they reached out to their church and didn’t hear back, or that they wrote to a ministry and didn’t hear anything. Or worse, they got back a form letter, reminding them to financially support the ministry. 

I do not want in any way to jump on the bandwagon of anti-church sentiment. I love the local church. I understand that pastors and churches get overwhelmed sometimes by all the needs in their midst. More people could sometimes be trained to respond as our staff does. There are legitimate reasons why a response might have fallen through the cracks in situations such as these, but I also know that it communicates something important when a hurting person receives a personal answer.

Heidi McLaughlin is one of our Eternal Perspective Ministries staff members who responds to emails. Recently she replied to a reader, and what she wrote was heart-touching, beautiful, and biblical:

A reader wrote:

To anyone who might be willing or able to help: I’ve always enjoyed Randy’s novels and perspectives, until my adult son died earlier this year. …grief aside, the worst for me is…the potential terror of the “intermediate state” that my son is in now. For, wherever he is now, and whatever he is now...he is not a complete, integrated human—body and soul. He is a disembodied spirit, lacking eyes, ears, hands...and along with it the (assumed) capacity to laugh and love as a human would. I am in terrible grief over this, dare I say, agony.

I’ve spent the past  months reading every book, article and summary on “the intermediate state” that I can get my hands on... I know the resurrection has not yet occurred. What then, is my son? How can he possibly enjoy life as a “disembodied spirit”? …If anyone knows of any literature on this subject, and has any time to attend to a personal cry, it would be appreciated.

Heidi responded:

I am so sorry for your loss. I have sons and I can only imagine the terrible grief and pain that you are going through. 

Here is where Randy has addressed the “Present Heaven” (he prefers using the term “present” rather than intermediate).

Please read the whole article, but I want to highlight two sections that I think speak to your concerns directly: 

Though the present Heaven is not our final destination, it’s a wonderful place, and it’s understandable that those who have had loved ones die in Christ wonder what life is like for them there. Based on the Bible’s teaching, we know several things: the present Heaven is a real (and possibly physical) place. Those who love Jesus and trust Him for their salvation will be with Him there, together with all who have died in Christ. We will be awake and cognizant. And because we will be with Jesus, it is “better by far” than our present existence.

And also:

Given the consistent physical descriptions of the intermediate Heaven and those who dwell there, it seems possible—though this is certainly debatable—that between our earthly lives and our bodily resurrection God may grant us some temporary physical form that will allow us to function as human beings while in that unnatural state “between bodies” awaiting our bodily resurrection. If so, that would account for the repeated depictions of people now in Heaven occupying physical space, wearing clothes and crowns, carrying branches, and having body parts (for example, Lazarus’s finger in Luke 16:24).

I really hope that Randy’s words are comforting to you.  No matter what though, please know as Jesus said to the thief on the cross as he was dying, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Your son is not at all miserable. There is no misery in Heaven whether we are talking about the present Heaven or the New Earth to come. 

Have you considered grief counseling? I just wonder if some of what you are going through is grief fatigue. Sometimes when our brain is so busy with grief we can’t think clearly. It sounds like your mind is spinning and unable to find rest. I would highly recommend finding a grief counselor or a grief share group at a church near you. You can search for a group near you at this website.

I’m praying for you today that you will feel the peace and comfort of the Lord as you walk this difficult path of grief.

The reader wrote back:

I’m flabbergasted that anyone, gatekeeper or staffer, actually ANSWERED my plea for help. I sometimes feel like a wounded animal howling into the wind in my pain, wondering if I’m heard at all. 

So…bless you…in every sense that God can…

I’ve never found this article Randy wrote…how I missed it, I don’t know. But thank you beyond words for pulling and sending it to me. 

Only in Heaven…will you know how much your time and small effort helped this grieving mom.

Randy again: Jesus said, “And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward” (Matthew 10:42).

The same is as true for you as it is for our staff: our Savior will not forget a single one of the countless acts of kindness each of us do for others, through work, church, and in our own personal lives with neighbors, friends, and strangers (one of whom may be an angel or Jesus Himself).

I’m deeply grateful for the servants’ hearts of our staff, and also for their wisdom. I’ve said this before, and it’s still true: daily we are humbled and amazed to see remarkable responses from people worldwide who are being touched by this ministry. 

I want to also say a special thanks for the ongoing support of our donors. You are the backbone of this ministry and enable us to keep serving in Jesus’s name. I am profoundly grateful for your kind support!

If you’d like to be part of our efforts to reach out to people in Christ’s name and to keep producing quality resources, we invite you to consider making a one-time or recurring donation. It’s the generous support of our ministry partners that enables us to continue our eternity-shaping work.  (I encourage you to start by giving to your local church where you are taught God’s Word, enjoy the fellowship of God’s people, and collaborate to take the Gospel to the world. Secondarily, you may choose to support other church groups such as EPM.)

We’re here to serve everyone without cost, so please don’t feel obligated to give to us. Jesus said, “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8). It’s our privilege and joy to share freely what God has so graciously given us.

(If you do wish to make a year-end, tax-deductible donation, please note donations postmarked no later than December 31, or received online by 11:59 p.m. PT on December 31, will be included on this year’s tax receipts.)

Photo: Pixels

Could You Summarize the Christmas Story with One Word?

Note from Randy: A great book to reflect on Jesus this Christmas season is Come Let Us Adore Him by Paul David Tripp (Amazon, Christianbook). There’s no greater subject in the universe to contemplate than Jesus! The following is excerpted from Paul’s book.

If you had to summarize the Christmas story with one word, what word would you choose? Now, your word would have to capture what this story points to as the core of human need and the way God would meet that need. Do you have a word in mind? Maybe you’re thinking that it’s just not possible to summarize the greatest story ever with one word. But I think you can. Let’s consider one lovely, amazing, history-changing, and eternally significant word.

It doesn’t take paragraph after paragraph, written on page after page, filling volume after volume to communicate how God chose to respond to the outrageous rebellion of Adam and Eve and the subtle and not-so-subtle rebellion of everyone since. God’s response to the sin of people against His rightful and holy rule can be captured in a single word. I wonder if you thought, “I know the word: grace.”

But the single word that captures God’s response to sin even better than the word grace is not a theological word; it is a name. That name is Jesus. God’s response wasn’t a thing. It wasn’t the establishment of an institution. It wasn’t a process of intervention. It wasn’t some new divine program. In His infinite wisdom God knew that the only thing that could rescue us from ourselves and repair the horrendous damage that sin had done to the world was not a thing at all. It was a person, His Son, the Lord Jesus.

Photo: Unsplash