Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 44

Is It OK for a Christian to Grieve the Loss of a Pet?

A reader recently wrote our ministry: “I am a believer and follower of Jesus Christ. We are scheduled to put our sweet dog to sleep. This is my first time losing a dog. I am wrestling with the sadness. Your blogs and perspectives on animals in Heaven have helped immensely. Thank you.”

We’ve received many notes from readers over the years, who recently lost or are anticipating the loss of their animals, and are grateful for the perspectives I shared about pets—especially after the deaths of our Dalmatian Moses and our Golden Retriever Maggie.

Animals aren’t nearly as valuable as people, of course, but God is their maker and has touched many lives through them. We are called to care for them as stewards of the earth: “The righteous care for the needs of their animals” (Proverbs 12:10). A lot of people may not understand grief about a dog, but I certainly do. I also know my dog Gracie has been a great comfort to me as I have grieved over Nanci.

We needn’t be embarrassed, or feel guilty, that we grieve the loss of our pets or want to see them again. If we believe God is their Creator, that He loves us and them, and that He intends to restore His creatures from the bondage they’ve experienced because of our sin, then we have biblical grounds for not only wanting but also expecting that we may be with them again on the New Earth. (See chapter 40 of my book Heaven, Will Animals, Including Our Pets, Live Again?)

Years ago when I was asked during an interview, “Is it wrong for us to grieve the loss of our pets?” this was my response.

Here are some other notes from readers we’ve received. I hope they are an encouragement to those who are grieving a pet and need to be assured that our Heavenly Father understands our sadness and offers us His comfort: “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted” (Psalm 34:18). “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3).

“I just finished reading your words about Maggie. I cried often as I let missing my cat rise up from its hiding place. I know that cats aren't as ‘connected’ to us humans the way dogs are, but for me, it was close. Your article on Maggie was truly one of the most poignant I've ever read. Thank you.”

“Thanks for this. We just had to put our 13-year-old dog down yesterday, and this is amazing to read today.”

“I read this through tears, having experienced the amazing love of a Golden Retriever. Randy, several years ago I interviewed you at an event. It was a treasured honor. One of the sessions I asked you about our pets going to Heaven...in a somewhat lighthearted way. You gave a very encouraging answer based on Scripture. …Now, reading this, I see how the Lord is blessing us with these amazing friends...and understands the grief we feel as they depart. We haven’t replaced our dog (five years gone) because of my international travel schedule. But I'm sure that will happen sooner rather than later. I miss the companionship and the lessons learned from these special ambassadors of the Lord.”

“I read your blog essay about Maggie just before dinner tonight, and was so touched. I read the paragraph to my wife about Maggie [being upset, putting her legs up on the couch beside you as you were praying for and grieving at Nanci’s cancer]. I teared up before the end of the first sentence and choked through the second. It took a while to finish reading. We once had a ‘Maggie,’ too. She was beautiful like Maggie and happy danced with amazing pirouettes when she heard, ‘Walk? Wanna go for a walk?’ It has been 25 years since I carried her into the vet’s office and (I’m tearing up again) held her as she slipped away. I know it’s cliche to say not a day goes by that I don’t miss her, but it’s the truth. Sometimes when I’m reading I long for her to come to me and rest her head on my leg. Sometimes I’d tease her by letting my hands hang limp by my side as she leaned on my leg waiting to be petted. When no petting was forthcoming, she’d flip one of my hands up onto her head and I’d let it slide off. Second and third verses were the same as the first. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore (she knew that would happen), and I would kneel down and hug and rub her, both of us bonded in pure delight and love.”

“We lost our sweet beagle two weeks ago. The day she began to decline was the day Randy’s blog about saying goodbye to Maggie posted. The timing was a gift of God, because I had a gut feeling we were looking at our own goodbye. God was preparing me for what was to come. Thank you for writing that lovely tribute to your precious pet. It was a huge help for me. We fought for another couple of weeks. She rallied and we had hope, but then a more rapid decline ensued. Such a hard thing to do! But that blog was a comfort.”

“I just wanted to say thank you again to Randy for his article on saying goodbye (for now) to Maggie. Our precious chocolate Labrador (so similar in nature to Maggie) is in her last days following a recent diagnosis of very aggressive cancer. She belonged to our beloved daughter who went to Heaven seven years ago, aged just 25. She has been a beautiful living link to our daughter and our therapy dog through grief. We are devastated to lose her, but the thought of seeing her again and even better than that, of her being reunited with our daughter, who loved her so much, will make the separation somewhat more bearable. Thank you, Randy, for all that you share.”

Photo by Helena Lopes on Unsplash

“Nothing Short of Genocide”: Pray for Christians in Nigeria

In late 2021, I shared on my blog about increased Christian persecution in Nigeria. Almost a year and a half later, our brothers and sisters in Christ there continue to face daily dangers. (International Christian Concern reports that continued militant attacks are threatening Nigeria’s upcoming elections in February.)

Here is a letter sent last month by a dear Nigerian brother we’ve known for years:

Though I am very familiar with the English language, there are some words I have to check in the dictionary to make sure I am using them precisely. The word genocide popped into my mind this Christmas Eve due to reports of many attacks on my people. This week alone, there have been two attacks in a town about three miles from my village. In these two attacks, lives were lost, houses burnt down, and churches set ablaze.

With tears in my eyes, I checked the meaning of genocide in the dictionary. Many dictionaries were consulted. The general meaning is the “deliberate and systematic killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group, with the aim of destroying that nation or group.”

Eyewitnesses and verified reports made me conclude that these happenings are nothing short of a “deliberate, international, systematic and orchestrated” killing of the people of Southern Kaduna people who are predominantly Christians by the Fulani people who have the president of Nigeria as one of their very own. 

…in my previous updates, I have referred to all these horrible events as persecutions of believers, but I believe that it is not just religious persecution of my people but an intentional act to wipe out my people while the government of the day has refused to defend or even to give any support whatsoever. The Federal Republic of Nigeria is headed by President Mohammed Buhari, a Fulani and Muslim, and the Governor of Kaduna State is a Fulani and Muslim.

…[What are these] crimes against my people? The murder of lives and property, burning of homes and churches, rape against women, and forcing young Christian girls into slavery and marriages to jihadists. A family of six had their house completely burnt down. A schoolmate of mine also had his house completely burnt down, and he barely escaped with his life. Several weeks ago, one of our pastors was killed. The Fulani who abducted him from his house gave him two options—to be shot by a gun or slaughtered like a chicken. After three days, he was shot, and his corpse was later retrieved and buried. These crimes against innocent people continue unabated, and there is no hope in sight.  You see why I have arrived at the conclusion that it is genocide.

My people cannot really repel these attacks which often happen between 8 p.m. to 2 a.m. They have only bows and arrows and at best hunting guns, while the enemy has sophisticated weapons such as machine guns and AK-47s. 

You may be wondering what my personal feelings are about these matters. I have lots of fear about the security of my family and even my own [life]. I think about death every day. I think about taking my family and running away and hiding far away from Nigeria. …[but] where can I run to in this situation?  I have my people here.  I have believers here who look up to me, and running away is not an option at THIS POINT IN TIME. 

My prayer is that the world must as a matter of urgency come to the rescue of the people of Southern Kaduna State, who have been selected for destruction and to be wiped out of existence. In my mind, we need the international community and world leaders to investigate and bring to justice the Government of Nigeria and the Kaduna State Government, to account for these crimes against their people. I know I am a small person without the status to be heard by the international community, but I am sharing with you to help us pray to God. And if you are able to communicate this to any international media, please do so as God gives you the grace. If you are also able to reach out to your government representatives who can take our concerns to the international community, it would also be great. 

Our strongest weapon continues to be your prayers. Pray for those who have lost their loved ones—widows, widowers, orphans, etc. Pray for those who have lost everything. I mean everything. I thank you for being friends and prayer partners, and I do appreciate your love, support, and friendship.

Photo: Unsplash

Every Human Heart Has a God-Given Sense of the Eternal

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:1-3).

Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that God “has also set eternity in the human heart.” Look around you at all those people walking the streets, working in offices, standing in lines, sitting in restaurants. Their eyes are filled with needs, hopes, longings. The world tells them they’re just molecules and DNA, time plus chance. But their hearts cry out for eternal realities, for what will last, what really matters.

The sense that we will live forever somewhere has shaped every civilization in human history. Australian aborigines pictured Heaven as a distant island beyond the western horizon. The early Finns thought it was an island in the faraway east. Mexicans, Peruvians, and Polynesians believed that they went to the sun or the moon after death. [1] Native Americans believed that in the afterlife their spirits would hunt the spirits of buffalo. [2] The epic of Gilgamesh, an ancient Babylonian legend, refers to a resting place of heroes and hints at a tree of life. In the pyramids of Egypt, the embalmed bodies had maps placed beside them as guides to the future world. [3] The Romans believed that the righteous would picnic in the Elysian fields while their horses grazed nearby. Seneca, the Roman philosopher, said, “The day thou fearest as the last is the birthday of eternity.”

Although these depictions of the afterlife differ, the unifying testimony of the human heart throughout history is belief in life after death. Anthropological evidence suggests that every culture has a God-given, innate sense of the eternal—that this world is not all there is. [4]

Early Christians’ Preoccupation with Heaven

The Roman catacombs, where the bodies of many martyred Christians were buried, contain tombs with inscriptions such as these:

In Christ, Alexander is not dead, but lives.

One who lives with God.

He was taken up into his eternal home. [5]

One historian writes, “Pictures on the catacomb walls portray Heaven with beautiful landscapes, children playing, and people feasting at banquets.” [6]

In AD 125, a Greek named Aristides wrote to a friend about Christianity, explaining why this “new religion” was so successful: “If any righteous man among the Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God, and they escort his body with songs and thanksgiving as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby.” [7]

These early Christian perspectives sound almost foreign today, don’t they? But their beliefs were rooted in the Scriptures, where the apostle Paul writes, “To me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. . . . I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far” (Philippians 1:21, 23). He also wrote, “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” (2 Corinthians 5:6, 8).

When Jesus told His disciples, “In my Father’s house are many rooms. . . . I am going there to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2), He deliberately chose common, physical terms (house, rooms, place) to describe where He was going and what He was preparing for us. He wanted to give His disciples (and us) something tangible to look forward to—an actual place where they (and we) would go to be with Him.

This place is not an ethereal realm of disembodied spirits, because human beings are not suited for such a realm. A place is by nature physical, just as human beings are by nature physical. (We are also spiritual.) What we are suited for—what we’ve been specifically designed for—is a place like the one God made for us: Earth. God never gave up on His original plan for human beings to dwell on Earth. In fact, the climax of history will be the creation of new heavens and a New Earth, a resurrected universe inhabited by resurrected people living with the resurrected Jesus (Revelation 21:1-4).

Our Terminal Disease

The current death rate for humans is 100 percent. Unless Christ returns soon, we’re all going to die. We don’t like to think about death; yet, worldwide, 3 people die every second, 180 every minute, and nearly 11,000 every hour. If the Bible is right about what happens to us after death, it means that more than 250,000 people every day go either to Heaven or Hell.

David said, “Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath” (Psalm 39:4-5).

Picture a single breath escaping your mouth on a cold day and dissipating into the air. Such is the brevity of life here.

The wise will consider what awaits us on the other side of this life that so quickly ends.

God uses suffering and impending death to unfasten us from this earth and to set our minds on what lies beyond. I’ve lost people close to me, my wife being the most recent and impactful loss. (Actually, I haven’t lost them, because I know where they are—rather, I’ve lost contact with them.) I’ve spent a lot of time talking to people who’ve been diagnosed with terminal diseases. And I’ve endured the pain of watching my own wife lose her four-year battle with cancer. We all, under these circumstances, develop a heightened interest in the afterlife.

Most people live unprepared for death. But those who are wise will go to a reliable source to investigate what’s on the other side. And if they discover that the choices they make during their brief stay in this world will matter in the world to come, they’ll want to adjust those choices accordingly.

Ancient merchants often wrote the words memento mori—“remember you must die” —in large letters on the first page of their accounting books. [8] Philip of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great, commissioned a servant to stand in his presence each day and say, “Philip, you will die.”

In contrast, France’s Louis XIV decreed that the word death not be uttered in his presence. Most of us are more like Louis than Philip, denying death and avoiding the thought of it except when it’s forced upon us. We live under the fear of death.

Jesus came to deliver us from the fear of death, “so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14-15).

In light of the coming resurrection of the dead, the apostle Paul asks, “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

What delivers us from the fear of death? What takes away death’s sting? Only a relationship with the person who died on our behalf, the one who has gone ahead to make a place for us to live with Him. If we don’t know Jesus, we will fear death and its sting—and we should.

Seeing the Shore

Are you burdened, discouraged, depressed, or even traumatized? Have your dreams—your marriage, career, or ambitions—crumbled? Have you become cynical, or lost hope? A biblical understanding of the truth about Heaven can change all that.

In 1952, young Florence Chadwick stepped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island, determined to swim to the shore of mainland California. She’d already been the first woman to swim the English Channel both ways. The weather was foggy and chilly; she could hardly see the boats accompanying her. Still, she swam for fifteen hours. When she begged to be taken out of the water along the way, her mother, in a boat alongside, told her she was close and that she could make it. Finally, physically and emotionally exhausted, she stopped swimming and was pulled out. It wasn’t until she was on the boat that she discovered the shore was less than half a mile away. At a news conference the next day she said, “All I could see was the fog. . . . I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.”

Consider her words: “I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.” For believers, that shore is Jesus and being with Him in the place that HE promised to prepare for us, where we will live with Him forever. The shore we should look for is that of the New Earth. If we can see through the fog and picture our eternal home in our mind’s eye, it will comfort and energize us.

No matter how tough life gets, if you can see the shore and draw your strength from Christ, you’ll make it.

[1] J. Sidlow Baxter, The Other Side of Death: What the Bible Teaches about Heaven and Hell (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1987), 237.

[2] Harvey Minkoff, The Book of Heaven (Owings Mills, Md.: Ottenheimer, 2001), 87.

[3] Edward Donnelly, Biblical Teaching on the Doctrines of Heaven and Hell (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2001), 64.

[4] Don Richardson, Eternity in Their Hearts, rev. ed. (Ventura, Calif.: Regal, 1984).

[5] Spiros Zodhiates, Life after Death (Chattanooga:AMG, 1977), 100–101.

[6] Ulrich Simon, Heaven in the Christian Tradition (London: Wyman and Sons, 1958), 218.

[7] Aristides, Apology, 15.

[8] Basilea Schlink, What Comes after Death? (Carol Stream, Ill.: Creation House, 1976), 20.

Excerpted from Heaven. You can also browse our resources on Heaven and additional books.

Photo by Lucian Dachman on Unsplash

This Month Marks the 67th Anniversary of the Martyrdom of the Five Missionaries in Ecuador

Steve Saint texted me last Sunday, reminding me that it was the 67th anniversary of the death of his father Nate Saint and the other missionary martyrs in Ecuador: Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Roger Youderian, and Pete Fleming. Their story touched me deeply as a brand-new Christian. 

It’s amazing to think that Steve and his wife Ginny, Mincaye (the former warrior who was one of the murderers), Bert and Colleen Elliot, Steve McCulley, and Nanci and I were all together in January 2006, the 50th anniversary month, at our services for Good Shepherd Community Church, and then at the Elliot family home in Portland where Jim and Bert grew up. For Nanci and me, it was an unforgettable day. Here’s the full service we were part of that day:

This is a video that Mission Aviation Fellowship produced on the 60th anniversary of the missionaries' death:

This 19-minute video tells the story very well. So many people don't know it these days.

And here are some links to different blogs and articles I’ve done over the years related to the five missionaries, including some photos, the movie The End of the Spear, and Mincaye’s death:

End of the Spear Photos: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3

The End of the Spear Controversy: Mart Green and Steve Saint Offer Answers

Steve Saint Speaks from His Hospital Bed

Mincaye Is Now with Jesus

This one is a blog I wrote on Bert Elliot back when you could find virtually nothing about him and Colleen on Google, but then that blog was widely posted by various groups around the world and now you can find many more articles. I was asked to speak at Bert and Colleen’s memorial service, but I had a prior commitment a few thousand miles away and could not do it. At first, it was going to be Bert’s service, then Colleen died just a few days before the service, so it was a combined memorial for both of them. I wrote the forward to the book about their lives, titled Love So Amazing.

Finally, here is Steve Saint’s Timbuktu story he wrote years ago, which I have always loved. He and Ginny have lived such faithful lives, to God’s glory!

Professions of Faith at Crusades: Good News or Reason for Doubt?

I confess I grow weary of some believers’ responses to good news, especially related to evangelism. Instead of believing the best, as Christians sometimes we seem to chronically believe the worst.

I remember the negative responses I received years ago when I shared a follow-up report on my Facebook about “Harvest America,” Greg Laurie’s crusade in Texas. AT&T Stadium was filled to capacity and a few thousand were even turned away. Over 6,000 came forward to accept Christ, plus who knows how many more in the over 6,000 host sites that broadcasted the event.

One commenter responded: “I'm ALWAYS skeptical about these. How does the church follow up on thousands? If you don't follow up and turn them into true disciples, we now have a massive amount of people walking the planet with a false sense of salvation.”

As is true in any public event or any local church profession of faith, or with people I’ve prayed with at retreats or in restaurants, there will always be those who aren’t really regenerated. Likewise, there will always those who WILL be. That was always true not only of the Billy Graham crusades, but also of Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, John Wesley, and D. L . Moody revivals. Some of those professing faith will not prove to be real believers bearing long-term fruit. But I have met countless truly regenerate people, including a godly elder at my own church, who say they came to Christ when going forward at a Graham crusade. Who am I to question God’s work in their lives?

(Crusades aren’t as common anymore, but everything I say about them in this blog applies to all large-scale evangelism. And I frequently hear skepticism when it happens, so this is still relevant.) 

Here’s some other genuine believers who placed their faith in Christ at crusades:

Canadian pastor and author Oswald J. Smith (1889-1986) came to faith at a crusade held by R. A. Torrey.
Billy Graham himself accepted Christ at a meeting led by Mordecai Ham.
American veteran Louis Zamperini placed his faith in Christ at a Billy Graham crusade.
Stuart Hamblen, a country western singer, songwriter, and radio personality in the 1940s, underwent a conversion at a 1949 Graham crusade, and so did Jim Vaus, a wiretapper for mob boss Mickey Cohen.

Someone wrote on my Facebook page, “My mother, in 1950, went forward when [Billy Graham] was in Portland, that changed our family forever.” Many of the stories and results of lives changed we won’t know about until eternity. I think one day we’re going to be surprised at how powerfully God worked in the lives of people when many of us were skeptical about the results. (See also 7 Lives Changed at Billy Graham’s Los Angeles Crusade.)

Greg Laurie preaches the core Gospel message, and attempts are made to align all professing converts with local churches. There are thousands of churches that have participated in the Harvest Crusade. So could each church follow up one or three or five or ten people? Of course. Those are not impossible numbers. So many who profess join a church, are baptized and discipled, and become true servants of Jesus. Many others don’t. If there are tares, OK; but there is also much wheat.

I agree that assurance of salvation is a doctrine that mainly applies to proven believers, and it should not be given indiscriminately to those who bear no fruit of the Holy Spirit’s presence in their lives. As for 6,000 conversions being doubtful at that 2016 crusade, there were also 6,000 churches showing the gospel presentation broadcast live from Arlington. Suppose “only” 1,000 conversions in Arlington panned out and bore true fruit of an indwelling Spirit and a transformed life. Then suppose an average of only ONE person per church telecasting the event really became regenerate. Personally, I’m confident it was a lot more than that, but even if that were “all” it was, the number of conversions would be 7,000.

In Acts 4:4, the Apostles rejoiced at the 5,000 who appeared to be saved, plus family members. I assume a number of those probably didn’t pan out either. But that’s always true, whether someone believes in Christ while alone, with just a friend or a small group, at a church, or at an evangelistic crusade. The point is that some conversions are false and some are real. That’s nothing new. No one knows which will prove which, and no one is being asked to rejoice in false conversions, but to rejoice that the Gospel was preached and that many conversions will ultimately prove true, even though no one but God knows yet which are which. This is true regardless of the ultimate numbers, which I suspect were way more than 6,000 given the number of churches involved.

Paul says, “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. Yes, and I will rejoice” (Philippians 1:18). If we are to rejoice at the preaching of the Gospel even when some preachers are pretending, are we not to rejoice at the response to the Gospel even if some who come forward are not truly regenerate? The point is some are and perhaps many are. Time will tell, and God, not we, will be their Judge.

In an interview, Greg Laurie addressed those who criticize the use of evangelical crusades to proclaim the gospel:

…in a day when Gen-Xers prefer more intimate relationships to crowds, mass evangelism has plenty of critics. Laurie has heard all of the reasons why he shouldn't do it.

“I have just come to accept that criticism,” Laurie says. “I am reminded of a person who came to D.L. Moody once and said, ‘I don’t like the way you preach the gospel.’ Moody said, ‘Madame, how do you preach the gospel?’ She said, ‘Well, I really don’t.’ He said, ‘Well, I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.’”

Evangelist Greg Stier recently shared these thoughts on Twitter:

Sometimes I get criticism after preaching my heart out and challenging teenagers to put their faith in Jesus, “Well we need to make sure our teens don’t just make an emotional decision.” I believe that this thinking is flawed theologically.

When Peter preached in Acts 2:37 his hearers were “cut to the heart” before they repented and believed (v.38-41.) As a result, 3,000 “were added to their number that day.” There were a lot of emotional decisions made. Read the New Testament, and you’ll see lots of emotional decisions.

Read about the sinful woman (Luke 7:36-50) and the Philippian jailer’s (Acts 16:29-32) decisions for Christ. They had lots of emotions before and after they believed. I remember the emotions I felt on June 23, 1974 when I heard the gospel clearly for the first time and believed!

What matters is not if a person makes an emotional decision, but an actual decision for Christ. They need to truly understand the gospel and put their faith in Christ to be saved. With or without emotions, they need to truly understand the Gospel and put their faith in Christ!

Jesus said, “There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10). So Heaven’s inhabitants do rejoice at every single true convert. I join Heaven in rejoicing over all those who have come to Jesus, anywhere, any place and any time. God will sort out the wheat and the tares. “Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, ‘First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn’” (Matthew 13:30).

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Beware Elite Christianity: Don’t Forget the Faithful Believers Whose Shoulders You Stand on

Note from Randy: One of our staff recently sent me this Twitter thread, from a pastor named Michael Clary, who serves at Christ the King Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. His words are powerful. What he shares reminds me of this warning from J.C. Ryle: “Let us watch against pride in every shape—pride of intellect, pride of wealth, pride of our own goodness.”

May we obey God’s Word when it says, “All of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because ‘God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble’” (1 Peter 5:5, CSB).

There once was a certain kind of evangelical Christian I felt free to make fun of. I was pastoring a fast-growing church in an urban environment, and a spirit of elitism had infected us. No one would correct me on it because they made fun of them too. 

The people we felt free to mock were conservative, uneducated, backwoods “fundies” who still read the KJV. They lacked the theological sophistication and cultural insight I had acquired while doing campus ministry and studying at seminary. 

I came from the hills of West Virginia. Appalachian, born and bred. I knew these people well because I grew up around them. But I had moved on. I was better than them. I was more learned and cultured. I had “seen the world,” and they hadn’t. 

I was a successful church planter in an urban cultural context in Cincinnati. My sending organization flew me around the country to share my success stories and train younger planters in “the way it’s done.” 

I would not have admitted this at the time, but deep down, I felt superior to my hometown people and their country religion. My ministry “success” was at least partly driven by a desire to separate myself from them and prove that “I’m not one of those fundie Christians.”

But then it began to dawn on me: I was standing on the shoulders of giants. My grandfather was one of those country preachers. He provided for his family by working a physically demanding job in a steel mill his whole life. His family was poor, but he did what needed to be done. 

He had only received a 6th grade education. He didn’t know how to read very well. He listened to the KJV bible on audio cassette on his 45-minute commutes to work. Up and back, every day, listening to the Bible. King James! Scripture got under his skin. 

My mom told me a story once. When he was filling out paperwork or writing something and didn’t know how to spell a word, he would remember where that word was in his KJV Bible, then look it up to see how it was spelled. 

My great-grandfather was the same way. He only received a 3rd grade education. He planted a church deep in the hills of West Virginia and built a church building for it on his property. He ministered there for many years, preaching from his KJV Bible. 

He lived to be 102 years old and was healthy and energetic up to the very end. In his 90s, he would take fruit baskets to the “shut ins” of his church who were much younger than him. He married his wife when she was 14. He remained faithful to her, and they enjoyed 74 years together. 

In my office, I have this poem framed that my great-grandfather (“Popo Galley”) wrote on September 1, 1928, about his call to ministry. He didn’t really retire, he just slowed down. He remained faithful to that calling for the rest of his life. He died on July 1, 2011.

He stayed true to the Lord and to his calling for 80 years. EIGHTY YEARS!

And here I was, three or four years into my new church plant, attracting a few hundred people, feeling like I’d accomplished something. Feeling superior to men like my grandfather and great-grandfather. 

So I repented. I repented of my arrogance. I repented of my self-righteous attitude towards “that old time religion” that sustained my grandparents who had so much less than me. I repented of looking down on faithful, older Christians who had passed on a legacy to me. 

I share all these things because my arrogance was cultivated in an evangelical subculture that produces a spirit of elitism. And I wanted to ascend the ladder, and achieve notoriety within that subculture. What I have learned is that subculture is actually sub-Christian. 

Elitist Christianity cannot survive the rigors of hard discipleship. But my grandparents did. And they handed me a legacy to follow. There are many points of doctrinal disagreement that I would have with my grandfathers. But these were men who suffered, and knew how to suffer well. 

These are the sorts of men that deserve our respect and admiration. Men who finished well and stayed true. Men of whom the world is not worthy. By God’s grace, I want to follow in their footsteps and be like them. Soli Deo Gloria.

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God’s Grace: More than Amazing

The Bible makes this astounding proclamation: “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Jesus, the sinless one, willingly gave Himself over to be tortured—not for anything He had done, but to save those least deserving. We are not merely misguided subjects; we are rebels and traitors against the King. Yet God adopts us as His children and happily gives us a seat at His table.

If this seems less than amazing, less than wonderful, then we really don’t grasp the meaning of grace.

People in hundreds of languages sing “Amazing Grace.” Agnostics, skeptics, and hardened criminals have shed tears upon hearing the song.

Nothing is as stunning or as hope-giving as God’s grace. And nothing more glorious. Jonathan Edwards wrote, “Grace is but Glory begun, and Glory is but Grace perfected.” But grace also confounds and even offends our human pride and independence. (How dare anyone suggest I don’t deserve grace—and how dare they show grace to those I know don’t deserve it?)

During a British conference on comparative religions, scholars debated what belief, if any, was unique to the Christian faith. Incarnation? Resurrection? The debate went on until C.S. Lewis wandered into the room.

“That’s easy,” Lewis replied. “It’s grace.”

It Wouldn’t Be Grace if We Deserved It

Our pride insists we must work our way to God. Only the Christian faith presents God’s grace as unconditional. Other religions insist we must do good to earn God’s favor—and if we stop, we lose it. Paul wrote, “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:2).

The Bible shows we’re unworthy of God’s grace and can’t earn it. What we cannot earn we cannot lose. We can’t stop deserving His grace since we never deserved it in the first place.

Harry Ironside wrote, “Grace is the very opposite of merit…Grace is not only undeserved favor, but it is favor shown to the one who has deserved the very opposite.”

It should shock us that Jesus went through Hell on the cross so we’ll never get what we deserve. We’ve grown too accustomed to grace—we need to be astounded by it. God promises nothing will ever separate us from His love (Romans 8:38-39). Incredible…but it’s a blood-bought promise we can count on.

Grace: God’s Good Pleasure

Grace never ignores the awful reality of our sin. In fact, it emphasizes it. Paul said if men were good enough, then “Christ died for nothing.” Benjamin Warfield said, “Grace is free sovereign favor to the ill-deserving.” If we don’t see the reality of how ill-deserving we are, God’s grace won’t seem amazing. If we minimize our unworthiness, we minimize God’s grace.

Some people worry that because they’ve failed God so often, they’re unworthy of His grace. But it’s that very unworthiness that motivated John Newton, the English slave trader whom God wondrously converted, to compose the classic hymn. And because every Christian heart is touched by grace, “Amazing Grace” still moves us to heart-felt gratitude today:

“Amazing grace—how sweet the sound— That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost but now am found, Was blind but now I see.”

A.W. Tozer said, “Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving…to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God’s kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

The problem of how to reconcile evil people with a God who hates evil is the greatest problem of history. It calls for the greatest solution ever devised, one so radical as to be nearly unthinkable, and to offend the sensibilities of countless people throughout history—the cross.

As Martyn Lloyd-Jones once wrote, “The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God.”

How long has it been since you’ve allowed yourself to be fully awestruck by the magnificent miracle of God’s grace?

For more on this topic, see Randy’s book  The Grace and Truth Paradox , and his devotional  Beautiful and Scandalous . 

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Suffering Is About Knowing Jesus Better

Readers of my blog know how much I love and admire Joni Eareckson Tada, who has now spent 55 years as a quadriplegic. Joni, reflecting on what was then forty years in a wheelchair, once told me, “I’ve learned that suffering is messier than I once thought.” And yet God has used her to profoundly impact countless lives, for His glory. Including my life and Nanci’s.

Joni has a new book, Songs of Suffering: 25 Hymns and Devotions for Weary Souls. In honor of her book, Crossway produced a touching 13-minute video of her talking about suffering. In it, Joni says, “Suffering is meant to press us up against Jesus. It’s not so much about us...it’s about how I can hear His heartbeat and identify with Him in His sufferings.” And, “My paralysis is about knowing Jesus better.”

This is vintage Joni:

Joni’s words remind me of C. S. Lewis’s famous quote: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

My friend Jim Harrell, reflecting on how his slow death from ALS was helping him to discover real life, wrote me, “Suffering is the icy cold splash that wakes us up from the complacency of living this life. We truly don’t see God and His purpose and strength without suffering, because we just become too comfortable.”

Paul wrote, “I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while—yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed” (2 Corinthians 7:8–9). God intended to help these erring believers by drawing them back to Him through their pain.

Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:31). We need a cure, and that may require nasty-tasting medicine, painful surgery, and rigorous physical therapy.

In 2019, my wife Nanci, who died March 28, 2022, wrote to a friend also suffering from cancer:

The cancer battle has been tough. However, my time with the Ancient of Days (one of my favorite names for God) has been epic! He has met me in ways I never knew were possible. I have experienced His sovereignty, mercy, and steadfast love in tangible ways. I now trust Him at a level I never knew I could.

I saw firsthand what God did in Nanci though her suffering, and I know what He has done in me through mine. Richard Baxter wrote, “Suffering so unbolts the door of the heart, that the Word hath easier entrance.” God uses suffering to bring us to the end of ourselves and back to Christ.

And that is worth any cost.

For more related to the subject of suffering, 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 . Also, the booklet If God Is Good, Why Do We Hurt? deals with the question and shares the gospel so that both unbelievers and believers can benefit.

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God’s Faithfulness in the Past Assures Our Happy Future

Psychotherapist Lynne Rosen and motivational speaker John Littig cohosted an hour-long radio show on WBAI in New York called The Pursuit of Happiness. But this Brooklyn couple’s final act was putting plastic bags over each other’s heads and committing suicide.

Rosen and Littig were experts in pursuing happiness yet failures in catching it. This tragic couple epitomizes the irony that the more we advertise and purchase products, events, and books intended to make us happy, the unhappier we may become.

In 1997, thirty-nine members of the cult Heaven’s Gate, led by Marshall Applewhite, participated in a mass suicide. They’d been taught that once they exited their earthly bodies, they would land on a spaceship following the Hale-Bopp comet. At the time of their death, each member carried a five-dollar bill and three quarters. Why? To pay an interplanetary toll.

Most of us shake our heads in amazement at this kind of gullibility. Yet we fail to see the futility of our own attempts to find happiness. Many people try the age-old practices of turning to money, sex, power, beauty, sports, nature, music, art, education, work, or celebrity for happiness. In the end, each of these proves as big a lie as a spaceship on a comet’s tail. The problem for the Heaven’s Gate followers wasn’t that they trusted too much; it was that they trusted the wrong person. Only Jesus was worthy of their trust. Only He could have granted them, in this life and for eternity, the deep and lasting happiness they sought.

Ask people what they want out of life, and they’ll answer, “to be happy.”

The same is true for the most superficial materialist and the most devout saint: all of us are wired to seek happiness.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) wrote, “Happiness, then, is something final and self-sufficient, and is the end of action.”

Centuries later, French philosopher Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said essentially the same thing: “There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.”

Even Charles Darwin (1809–1882), best known as the father of evolutionary theory, wrote, “All sentient beings have been formed so as to enjoy, as a general rule, happiness.” William James (1842–1910), the philosopher and psychologist, wrote, “How to gain, how to keep, how to recover happiness, is in fact for most men at all times the secret motive of all they do, and of all they are willing to endure.”

The quest for happiness transcends gender, age, and life circumstances. Holocaust victim Anne Frank (1929–1945) wrote as a teenager, “We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.”

In an 1898 article arguing against religion, L. K. Washburn said, “There is a constant mental pilgrimage towards that Mecca of the human heart—happiness. . . . Everybody wants to be happy, and thinks, strives, wishes, and lives to that end.”

How many subjects do Puritans, philosophers, atheists, and agnostics emphatically agree on? One of the few is our innate longing for happiness.

Where does our desire for happiness lead us?

In The Discarded Image, C. S. Lewis references a vivid simile in Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” to illustrate that human beings have “some inkling of the truth,” even if they go about seeking it in the wrong way. The knight describes the human journey this way: “All men know that the true good is Happiness, and all men seek it, but, for the most part, by wrong routes—like a drunk man who knows he has a house but can’t find his way home.”

The human race is homesick for Eden, which only two humans have ever known. We spend our lives chasing peaceful delight, following dead ends or cul-de-sacs in pursuit of home.

We know intuitively that we’ve wandered. What we don’t know is how to return. Our lives are largely the story of the often wrong and occasionally right turns we take in our attempts to get home to Happiness with a capital H—God Himself.

The Bible promises everlasting happiness for God’s people.

World peace and universal happiness seem like utopian dreams, but these dreams are not far-fetched, because according to God’s Word, utopia once existed and will again. (What is far-fetched is believing we are capable of creating this utopia ourselves!)

It should delight us to hear that the future involves a return to Paradise. Jesus promised His disciples that one day there will be a “renewal of all things” (NIV), which the English Standard Version translates as “the new world” and the Complete Jewish Bible renders as “the regenerated world” (Matthew 19:28).

Just as we’ll take on our eternal, resurrected bodies, the world itself will be resurrected. Peter preached that Christ would not return “until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago” (Acts 3:21). The New Century Version translates this as “when all things will be made right again.” Our entire experience on the New Earth will be of happiness far greater than Adam and Eve could have ever imagined!

The past will be remembered as that temporary period of rebellion when God’s creatures turned from Him. We’ll celebrate endlessly that Jesus entered our history to redeem us and to restore the shared happiness of God and His people.

As God’s children, we have a history of His faithfulness in the past and an assurance of a secure future, which should define how we view our present. This perspective can infuse us with happiness even in what would otherwise be the unhappiest times of our lives. “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:18, NIV).

For more, see Randy's blogs on happiness, as well as his book Happiness. 

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What’s the Difference Between God’s Sovereignty and His Providence?

A reader recently asked a great question on my Facebook page: “Could you please define God’s sovereignty as compared to His providence?”

In my book hand in Hand: The Beauty of God's Sovereignty and Meaningful Human Choice, I say this:

Arminian theologian Jack Cottrell says, “The sovereignty of God may be concisely summed up as absolute Lordship. It is the same as the concept of kingdom or kingship or dominion.”

Calvinist theologian A. A. Hodge defined God’s sovereignty as “His absolute right to govern and dispose of all his creatures simply according to his own good pleasure.”

I think nearly all Christians could agree with a definition of God’s sovereignty that affirms all things are under God’s rule and that nothing in the universe happens unless He either causes or permits it.

How about providence? Timothy George describes God’s providence as “God’s faithful and effective care and guidance of everything which He has made toward the end which He has chosen.”

John Piper has a helpful episode of Ask Pastor John answering the question of whether sovereignty and providence are the same. He says:

No, sovereignty and providence are not the same. God’s sovereignty is His right and power to do all that He decides to do. Job 42:2: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” But notice that nothing in that definition of sovereignty refers to God’s wisdom or God’s plans. It’s just right and power: you have the right and you have the power to do what you decide to do. When He decides to do a thing, He does it, and no one can stop Him. That’s sovereignty.

…Providence, however, includes what sovereignty doesn’t. Providence, as I use the word and as most Christians have used it, is sovereignty in the service of wise purposes. Or you could say providence is wise and purposeful sovereignty.

The whole episode is worth listening to or reading.

In fact, Piper wrote an entire book on God’s providence. He writes, “The providence of God is his purposeful sovereignty by which he will be completely successful in the achievement of his ultimate goal for the universe. God’s providence carries his plans into action, guides all things toward his ultimate goal, and leads to the final consummation.”

Here are a few quotes from Piper’s book Providence:

“Many see God’s Providence as somehow impersonal. This is a wrong perception, because his heart is warm toward his creation in general, and to us in particular.”
“God does not intend for us to look at the world he has made and feel nothing…God does not intend for us to see ourselves, or any part of the world, as cogs in the wheels of an impersonal mechanism. The world is not a machine that God made to run on its own. It is a painting, or a sculpture, or a drama. The Son of God holds it in being by the word of his power (Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3).”
“A nail sinks into a board because God planned for a hammer to hit it. A student makes an A on a test because God planned for the student to study. A jet flies from New York to Los Angeles because God planned for fuel to be available, wings to stay put, engines to thrust, and a pilot to know what he is doing. In none of these cases do we say that the cause was pointless—the hammer, the studying, the fuel, the wing, the engine, the pilot. Neither is prayer pointless. It is part of the plan.”
“Every day for all eternity—without pause or end—the riches of the glory of God’s grace in Christ will become increasingly great and beautiful in our perception of them. We are finite. They are ‘immeasurable’—infinite. Therefore, we cannot ever take them in fully. Let that sink in. There will always be more. Gloriously more. Forever.”

So how does this relate to people who have gone through and are going through suffering? That includes me, as I continue to grieve my beloved wife Nanci’s death just over eight months ago. Do words about God’s sovereignty and providence ring hollow? On the contrary—they resonate more with me than ever. While Nanci repeatedly affirmed God’s province and sovereignty throughout our married life, she spoke about them more and with greater delight in her final four years of life here than ever before.

Before Providence was published, we were sent a few of its early chapters, and Nanci dug into them. Along with God’s love and grace and happiness, His sovereignty and providence were two attributes she loved to contemplate. Her journal continually emphasizes that He has a perfect plan and that neither the devil nor demons nor human beings, even when we do evil, can ever derail God’s plan which is for our good.

I was just looking through Nanci’s journals today. Here are some things she wrote out:

“Everything is necessary that God sends our way; nothing can be necessary that he withholds.” —John Newton

“When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.” —Corrie ten Boom

“I choose to believe that there is a bigger picture and that my loss is part of some wonderful story authored by God himself.” —Jerry Sittser

“For the sake of Christ then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Corinthians 12:10)

In one portion Nanci quoted the following sentences from my books:

The way to contentment is to see the advantages of our present calling and to trust God’s purposes in our circumstances.

The Author of Life has placed us in a story far bigger than ourselves. We can trust God not only to bring the whole story together but also to do with our parts of it what He knows to be best.

God sovereignly uses difficulties in our lives as a fire to refine, purify, and strengthen our faith.

We can and should live now with the perspective that will be ours one minute after we die.

God promises that our future with Him will break forth in such glorious happiness that all present suffering will pale in comparison.

I’ll close with this wonderful advice from Puritan John Flavel about reflecting on God’s providence in your life:

O that we practiced the heavenly spiritual exercise of meditating on the providences of God! How sweet it would make our lives; how light it would make our burdens! You live estranged from the pleasure of the Christian life if you ignore or neglect this discipline.

Fill your heart with thoughts of Him and His ways! Let your meditation be as full and exhaustive as possible. Do not let your thoughts swim like feathers upon the surface of the water, but sink like lead to the bottom. Although we cannot sound the depth of providence by our short line, it is our duty to live to dive as far as we can and to admire the depth even when we cannot touch the bottom.

Search backward into all the acts of providence throughout your life. That is what Asaph did: “I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will meditate on all your works and consider all your mighty deeds” (Psalm 77:11-12). He labored to recover and revive the ancient providences of God's mercies and so coax a fresh sweetness out of them.

There is no more pleasant a history for you to read in all the world as the history of your own life. Sit down and record from the beginning what God has been to you and done for you. What outstanding displays of His mercy, faithfulness, and love have taken place throughout your days? If a single act of providence is so ravishing and thrilling, what would many of them be if they were considered together? If one star is beautiful to behold, what is a constellation? If your heart does not melt before you have recited half that history, it is a hard heart indeed.

John Flavel, Adapted from The Works of John Flavel, Vol. 4 (London: W. Baynes and Son, 1820).

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