Randy Alcorn's Blog, page 69

Of All the Activities Heaven Will Offer, What Are You Most Looking Forward to?

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First and foremost, I look forward to being with Jesus, my Lord and Savior and best friend. To be in His presence, to listen to Him and walk with Him…nothing could be better than that. To look into Jesus’ eyes will be to see what we’ve always longed to see: the person who made us and for whom we were made. And we’ll see Him in the place He made for us and for which we were made. Seeing God will be like seeing everything else for the first time. WOW!

Secondly, I look forward to meeting other people. I’d like to ask Mary to tell stories about ­Jesus as a child. I’d enjoy talking with Simeon, Anna, Elizabeth, and John the Baptist. I want to hear Noah’s accounts, and his wife’s, of life on the ark. ­I’m eager to listen to Moses tell about his times with God on the mountain. I’d like to ask Elijah about being taken away in the chariot and Enoch (and Enoch’s wife) about his being caught up by God.

I want to talk with Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus. I’ll ask people to fill in the blanks of the great stories in Scripture and church history. I want to hear a few million new stories. One at a time, of course, and spread out over thousands of years. I imagine we’ll relish these great stories, ask questions, laugh together, and shake our heads in amazement.

We’ll each have our own stories to tell also—and the memories and skills to tell them well. Right now, today, we are living the lives from which such stories will be drawn. Are we living them with eternity in mind? We’ll have new adventures on the New Earth from which new stories will emerge, but I suspect the old stories from this life will always interest us too.

I can’t wait to reconnect with many old friends including Greg Coffey and Jerry Hardin, as well as my mom and dad. I look forward to thanking C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and A. W. Tozer for how their writings changed me. I anticipate meeting William Carey, Hudson and Maria Taylor, Amy Carmichael, Jim Elliot, Charles Spurgeon, Dwight L. Moody, Harriet Beecher Stowe, some of the Amistad slaves, and a host of others.

Seeing my friends who suffered physically on earth enjoy living in their new bodies will be a special joy. My old friend David O’Brien, who was always with me at Ecola Hall and Cannon Beach Conference Center the dozens of weeks I spent there,  was a brilliant man trapped in a body that groaned for redemption. His cerebral palsy was gone the moment he left this world for the present Heaven, but the biggest treat will be at his resurrection, when he will have a new body, forever free of disease. I picture David never having to repeat himself because others ­don’t ­under­stand him. I see him running through fields on the New Earth. I look forward to running beside David . . . and probably behind him, because I doubt I could ever catch up with such a godly brother.

Many of us look forward to Heaven more now than we did when our bodies functioned well. Our dear friend Joni Eareckson Tada says it so well: “Somewhere in my broken, paralyzed body is the seed of what I shall become. The paralysis makes what I am to become all the more grand when you contrast atrophied, useless legs against splendorous resurrected legs. I’m convinced that if there are mirrors in heaven (and why not?), the image I’ll see will be unmistakably ‘Joni,’ although a much better, brighter Joni.”

Finally, my wife, Nanci, is my best friend and my closest sister in Christ. I fully expect no one besides God Himself will under­stand me better on the New Earth, and there’s nobody whose company I’ll seek and enjoy more than Nanci’s.

My heart explodes with happiness as I anticipate the world to come and its endless delights of closeness with Jesus, first and foremost, and the people of God and angels and creatures we have known and will one day know in a vast and beautiful new universe!

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

Photo by Elia Pellegrini on Unsplash

Why Christians Should Listen Carefully and Speak with Kindness

I love this four-minute video from Russell Moore answering the question, “Why should Christians speak with kindness?” I think this message is more important right now than at any other point in my lifetime:

Here are some quotes from it:

“The people who are most angry with us right now may well be our future brothers and sisters in Christ.”

“We speak with kindness not because we’re afraid of our opponents, not because we’re afraid of our enemies, but because we are representing Christ.”

“We speak what He has told us to say, but also we speak it the way that He says it.”

“We speak Christian truths with a Christian accent.”

“People don’t change their minds because we have humiliated them.”

I know that some will point to the prophets, who were sometimes angry at people, and John the Baptist, who preached a message of repentance and confronted Herod for his sin. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and chased the money-changers out of the temple. Paul even confronted the apostle Peter. Certainly, there is a place for such things.

We need to be bold enough to speak up and tell the truth even when it’s unpopular. But that doesn’t mean we have to be mean-spirited when we do it! Jesus told the truth, but He wasn’t malicious or ill-tempered, the way many professing Christians are behaving online and sometimes in real life as well. We don’t need more self-appointed prophets whose idea of ministry is dropping in on social media and releasing their little character-assassination arsenals and self-righteous insults, supposedly in the name of Jesus.

The most powerful defense of the truth of the Gospel is the loving unity of God’s people. Jesus prayed for His disciples, “that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:23).

Our need today is for Christ-followers who bear the fruit of the Spirit and love our neighbors in doing so: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:21-22). Those attributes should be a checklist we go over before we hastily post something in anger or spite against those we disagree with.  

“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” (James 1:19). When we are slow to listen—because we just know we are always right about everything and we just know what that person is REALLY thinking—we dishonor God’s Word. When we are quick to speak because that person needs to be corrected because we know we’ve done our research (which sometimes means just reading a few articles online that say what we want to believe), we dishonor Jesus. When we are quick to become angry, because we are sick and tired of all those stupid and uniformed people out there, we dishonor Jesus.

Our churches today desperately need the humility that rejects mean-spirited religion and exemplifies kindness while upholding biblical truth.  We must not just be one more special interest group that’s always complaining because people are picking on us. Unfortunately, many nonbelievers know only two kinds of Christians: those who speak the truth without grace and those who are very nice but never share the truth. What they need to see is a third type of Christian—one who, in a spirit of grace, loves them enough to humbly and kindly tell them the truth.

Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and dearly loved, put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience (Colossians 3:12).

Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: …in purity, knowledge, patience, and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love (2 Corinthians 6:4,6).

But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil (Luke 6:35).

And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil,  correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth (2 Timothy 2:24-25).

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:32).

For more, see Randy’s book The Grace and Truth Paradox.

Photo by Amy Humphries on Unsplash

Amy Carmichael’s Example of Faithfulness to Christ in the Little Things

Note from Randy: My friend Josh Howeth is a pastor of Gresham Bible Church, a wonderful fellowship near us, which our daughter Angela, son-in-law Dan, and grandsons Jake and Ty are part of.  Josh recently sent these words to his church. I share his deep appreciation for Amy Carmichael, so I asked him if I could pass them on to you.

Here are two biographies of Amy to check out. A Chance to Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael by Elizabeth Elliot, and a children’s biography of Amy: Amy Carmichael: Rescuer of Precious Gems (Christian Heroes: Then & Now).

This video about Amy and The Dohnavur Fellowship is also wonderful.

Amy Carmichael is a favorite missionary of mine. 

She was an Irish missionary who served in India during the first half of the 20th century. She opened an orphanage and served faithfully (without a furlough) for 55 years. Amy really was a giant in the faith. I highly recommend her short biography, Amy Carmichael: Beauty for Ashes, that is written by the great Iain Murray.

She had an ability to say things that would stick with others. 

She said things like:

“Faithfulness in little things is a very great thing.”

Christians mature “by little bits of will; little denials of self; little inward victories; by faithfulness in very little things. They became what they are...There is no sudden maturity. There is only the work of the moment.”

“Let nothing be said about anyone unless it passes through the three sieves: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?”

I don’t admire Amy because she had a magnetic personality, or because she accomplished big things, or because she transformed an entire nation or culture. (She did none of those things). 

I admire Amy because she was faithful. She was known for her faithfulness. Through the comings and goings of other workers (whether through death or departure), she remained. She loved others sacrificially, shared the message of Christ, and was a light in the darkness.

I chose the three quotes above because they seem to be modeled in Amy’s life and because they are aspirational and grounding in my own. Truly, quotes like these cut through the noise in my life. 

During our days here on earth it really is the little things, the unnoticed things, the work of the moment, that shapes us overtime. It’s even the words we speak (in public or private) and whether we use discretion and wisdom that reflect the Spirit of Christ in us. 

There really aren’t a lot of big moments in life. But there are a lot of little moments. There is no sudden maturity. There is only the moment. 

Amy writes, “We become what we are.” The question we need to be asking ourselves through our little moments then, is “Who am I becoming?” 

Faithfulness to Christ in the little things is a very great thing to be sure. 

Founder Margaret Sanger’s Racism Is the Tip of the Iceberg of What Planned Parenthood Should Apologize for

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Note from Randy: I’ve written before, in books and articles, about my research into the racism and eugenic beliefs of Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. So I read with interest a recent opinion piece by Alexis McGill Johnson, Planned Parenthood’s current president and chief executive, which says, “We must reckon with Margaret Sanger’s association with white supremacist groups and eugenics.”

In some ways I admire their admission, hard as it is to admire anything related to Planned Parenthood!  I think the backlash has been great enough that they finally, perhaps out of a combination of desperation and sincerity, decided to boldly proclaim Sanger’s guilt—though they needed an editor to delete a few lines such as, “Whether our founder was a racist is not a simple yes or no question.” Actually, yes, it is a very simple question. The clear answer is yes, which is what Ms. McGill Johnson appears to admit but sometimes still backtracks on.

In this article, Joe Carter explains four more reasons why PP should apologize. May we never become complacent in advocating for unborn children and their mothers, and exposing the darkness of Planned Parenthood and other abortion clinics across the country. (Thanks, Joe, for letting us use this as a guest blog!)

4 More Reasons Planned Parenthood Should Apologize

By Joe Carter

Eight years ago, when Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPA) held its annual gala, the motto for the event was “Our past is our prologue.” Part of the past the organization chose to celebrate at the time was its founder, the notorious racist and eugenicist Margaret Sanger.

Sanger wanted to control the reproduction of immigrants, the poor, certain religious groups, and anyone else she thought was from an unacceptable heritage. Sanger referred to such people as reckless breeders who were “unceasingly spawning a class of human beings who never should have been born at all.”

In 1939 Sanger started the “Negro Project” and attempted to persuade Christian ministers to help her effort. As she wrote in a letter to a fellow eugenicist, “we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” (In fairness, as her defenders often point out, Sanger wasn’t against all black people. She mainly just didn’t want poor black people to be born.)

But a lot has changed in the past decade, and Sanger has moved from celebrated icon to an indefensible relic of an even more unenlightened age. In an op-ed published April 17 in The New York Times, PPA president and chief executive Alexis McGill Johnson admitted the organization “must reckon with Margaret Sanger’s association with white supremacist groups and eugenics.”

“Sanger remains an influential part of our history and will not be erased,” Johnson says, “but as we tell the history of Planned Parenthood’s founding, we must fully take responsibility for the harm that Sanger caused to generations of people with disabilities and Black, Latino, Asian-American, and Indigenous people.”

“Reassessing Sanger’s history doesn’t negate her feminist fight, but it does tarnish it,” Johnson adds. “In the name of political expedience, she chose to engage white supremacists to further her cause. In doing that, she devalued and dehumanized people of color.”

It would be easy to dismiss PPA’s change of heart as its latest placation to political expedience. After all, PPA has a history of going along with whatever progressive platitude happens to be trending. (A prime example is its tweet in 2018 that “Some men have a uterus.” Presumably, PP wasn’t referring to male pseudohermaphrodites but to biological men who merely identify as women.) This latest apology, however, appears to be somewhat sincere. Rather than completely spurn the gesture as inauthentic, we should instead encourage PPA to apologize for its other, even more heinous, offenses.

While there are dozens of issues and crimes that PPA should apologize for, here are four of the most significant.

1. PPA endorses infanticide.

In 2013, a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood of Florida testified against that state’s Born Alive Infants Protection Act and told lawmakers that if a baby survives an abortion, the decision about whether the child should live should be “between the [mother] and the health care provider.”

PPA also opposed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act when it was proposed in Congress in 2020. Its rationale was that such a law isn’t needed because Congress had already passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002—a law that PPA opposed at the time. Indeed, when Congress opposed infanticide in 2002, PPA actively worked to prohibit a similar anti-infanticide law in the Illinois legislature.

2. PPA fails to report criminal sexual abuse of minors and women.

Adult men having sex with minors is often referred to as statutory rape, a form of criminal sexual abuse since minors are, by legal definition, unable to consent. Yet PPA has always made it clear that it does not support such laws. For example, in a paper on “Reducing Teenage Pregnancy” it says:

Some states are enacting or more rigorously enforcing statutory rape laws to curb teenage pregnancy among women with older partners by deterring adult men from becoming sexually involved with minors. However, experts assert that statutory rape laws do not reduce rates of teenage pregnancy, but do discourage teens from obtaining reproductive health care out of fear that disclosing information about their partner will lead to a criminal charge.

All 50 states have some form of law requiring that such abuse be reported, and the federal government requires that facilities receiving Title X assistance (like PP clinics) comply with such laws. But PPA seems to believe it is exempt from such moral and legal obligations.

For example, in 2008 Live Action conducted an undercover investigation in which Lila Rose and Jackie Stollar posed as girls as young as 13, with “boyfriends” as old as 31. They found eight PP facilities in six states were willing to cover up sexual abuse and disregard mandatory reporting laws of suspected statutory rape.

Similar investigations before and after Live Action’s sting operation have also shown PP clinics demonstrating a willingness to work with pimps and sex traffickers to exploit young women instead of safeguarding their health and safety.

3. PPA sells body parts—from humans it has killed.

In 2015, the Center for Medical Progress (CMP) released a video that showed a national-level executive of PP admitting it sells intact fetal body parts. That video, and others released by CMP, garnered a surprising level of media attention, sparked congressional hearings, and launched dozens of investigations into the abortion behemoth. Some pro-life Americans even believed it was a fatal blow to the abortion industry. But it was not.

After nearly a dozen state investigations in the course of two years, no solid and substantial proof was shown that PP violated the law in regard to the collection of fetal tissue donations. The main reason the corporation was not punished was that PP had not done anything illegal. And the reason selling fetal body parts was not illegal is that PP helped write the laws that allowed the bodies of aborted children to be sold.

4. PPA kills our children.

Since 1973, there have been an estimated 60 million legal abortions in the United States. Planned Parenthood is responsible for more than 1 in 3 (37 percent) of the nearly 900,000 abortions that occur each year in the United States. Assuming the organization has achieved the same market share since Roe v. Wade, we can estimate that PP has been responsible for the deaths of around 22.2 million human beings.

For any corporation to be responsible for more deaths than the entire population of Florida is rather astounding. But PP manages to still receive taxpayer funding for its gruesome enterprise. In 2020, PP brought in more than $618 million from government sources, accounting for almost 40 percent of its total revenues.

The reason PP can get away with supporting infanticide and the selling of fetal tissue, while killing our children and protecting sexual predators—all while receiving taxpayer money—is a combination of political support and public apathy. In its platform, the Democratic Party explicitly lists providing “federal funding for Planned Parenthood” as one of its main priorities.

The Republican Party platform officially opposes government funding of PP, but once elected, Republican politicians do not do much to defund the abortion provider. (In 2018, after two years of controlling the House, Senate, and White House and still doing nothing to defund PP, the party gave up the pretense that it was a priority.)

But why should politicians care? The number of Christians who refuse to vote for either party because of this issue is vanishingly small. Perhaps instead of asking Planned Parenthood to apologize for these four issues, we Christians in America should apologize for giving an apathetic shrug about these crimes.

This article originally appeared on The Gospel Coalition and is used with permission.

Download the PDF of Randy’s book Pro-Choice or Pro-Life: Examining 15 Pro-Choice Claims—What Do Facts & Common Sense Tell Us? 

In this thoroughly researched and easy-to-read book, author Randy Alcorn examines fifteen major claims of the pro-choice position and shares fact-based, rational responses. If you have mixed feelings about abortion, as many people do, this book can be part of your quest for truth. If you’re pro-choice or pro-life, it can help you think through your position.

If we have any hope of understanding and engaging with each other, let’s move our dialogue beyond bumper stickers, memes, and tweets. Randy encourages readers to listen carefully to arguments on both sides of the abortion debate, and to look at the evidence and weigh it on its own merit.

The print book is available from our ministry.

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A Grieving Mom on the Biblical Teaching about Heaven: “I Grabbed It as Though It Were a Life Preserver”

Not long ago a reader shared a profound comment in reply to a post on my Facebook page. This is one of the most powerful stories we’ve received from readers of the Heaven book:

We—very suddenly and unexpectedly—lost our 16-year-old son on 10/6. He was the fourth of our five children. I have struggled mightily with the “whys”, and life very much feels akin to a marathon swim in an ocean of pain. I do believe that God knows what is best. It just hurts mightily.

Though night is inherently so, the first night without him seemed the darkest of my life. It literally felt as though my own heart might cease to beat. As I lay there begging God for a sliver of comfort, I remembered a tiny booklet on Heaven that a co-worker had given me years before. At the time, I was a little confused because it seemed an odd Christmas gift for someone who had not lost anyone. I read it, and I was delighted at the description of eternity that was unlike anything I had heard in my 40ish years of churchgoing. I put it on my shelf after reading it. That first night without our son, I grabbed it as though it were a life preserver and I were going under. Truthfully, I was. The promises and hope in that tiny book helped me breathe until the morning when my other family members rose.

Within a week of saying our earthly goodbye to our child, I looked you up online and ordered the full copy of Heaven. It has saved my life. I ordered the 50 Days version for our other four children, another copy of the big book for my parents, and 100 of the mini-books. In telling much of our testimony, people have asked for the mini books. I gave and mailed out several at Christmas.

I also teach at my son’s school, a Christian school, and I teach his class. I could NEVER have returned to work to face his empty desk—and listen to the life he left behind being lived without him—without your book. I put together a Christmas gift for each of his 40 classmates. Most of them had been his friend since pre-school, and they are hurting, too. In the gifts, I included a mini-book for each of them, and they found tremendous comfort as well in reading about the real eternity that God has planned for His children. No clouds and harps!! A life joyful, abundant, and FAMILIAR! I can’t tell you how many people already have been reached through your books and the hope they share.

I still have questions about being separated from my child, but I can say with full certainty that some lives have been changed already. I vow to never again take my sights off of eternity, and I vow to, however painful, walk this road as faithfully as possible so that more lives will join us in that incredible place. Psalm 119:89- “Forever, Oh, God, thy word is settled in Heaven.” My tears may rain down here until I am reunited with my child, but I do trust that my anguish already is being settled. God bless you and your ministry, Mr. Alcorn.

Here are some responses to her comment from other readers. Each is a story in and of itself:

We lost our youngest son eight years ago and are continually reading Randy’s books. Heaven was the first one we read, too. …We needed Heaven to feel more real and solid (less ethereal) after our very real, solid boy moved there.

After my dad died, I read the version for children (Heaven for Kids) every evening to my boys. Such a sweet time together to journey through the grief and help them better deal with their mama’s frequent tears.

When our son left us at such a young age of 13, I wanted to read all that I could get my hands on about the biblical Heaven! Randy Alcorn’s book was like reading a college textbook on Heaven! So many amazing details gleaned from God’s Word! What a hope we have in Christ Jesus! Without this eternal hope that our Lord gives, I would have been a heap of dust scattered in the wind! My heart yearns for that day for my faith to be made sight!

…I too lost a son suddenly in 2017. I too had to dig into biblical truths to combat the darkness that wanted to take over. Heaven was a book that helped me keep the eternal perspective and knowing where my son was.

I write this in 50 Days of Heaven:

By meditating on Heaven and learning to look forward to it, we don’t eliminate our pain, but we can alleviate it and put it in perspective. We’re reminded that suffering and death are only temporary conditions.

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).

We should not romanticize death. But those who know Jesus should realize that death is a gateway to never-ending joy.

Grasping what the Bible teaches about Heaven will shift our center of gravity and radically alter our perspective on life. It will give us hope, a word that the apostle Paul uses six times in Romans 8:20-25, where he explains that all creation longs for our resurrection and the world’s coming redemption.

Don’t place your hope in favorable life circumstances—they cannot and will not last. Instead, place your hope in Jesus Christ and his promises. One day He will return, and those who have placed their faith in Him will be resurrected to life on the New Earth. They will behold God’s face and joyfully serve Him forever.

Photo by Meiying Ng on Unsplash

Is Belief in the Doctrine of the New Earth a Secondary Issue?

Question from a reader:

After reading your book Heaven, I’m pretty convinced about the New Earth being our final forever home. However, when I try to share it with others, their brains explode. So, I have to tread softly. This may be a good example of a secondary issue. Do you agree or not?

Answer from Stephanie Anderson, EPM staff:

If it’s a fellow believer who affirms the inspiration and authority of the Bible, you can take them to the passages in Scripture that clearly talk about the New Earth, our forever home (such as 2 Peter 3:13, Isaiah 65:17, Revelation 21).

Randy offers these thoughts:

If being a “secondary issue” means it’s not essential to someone’s salvation, then it is certainly secondary. However, it is not secondary if by that we mean unimportant. Even if it makes people’s brains explode ????, it is a very clear teaching of Scripture, though it is often not taught or understood in churches. This is because of many reasons I address in the book, including the vested interests Satan has in our failing to understand the full implications of not only this doctrine but also the inseparable doctrine of the resurrection, which is rightly regarded as of primary importance.

While the resurrection of Jesus is recognized as primary, the resurrection of God’s people often is misunderstood and underestimated. It is one of the main reasons people fail to do what Scripture says we should do: be “looking forward to a New Heavens and a New Earth, in which righteousness dwells.” When we think of Heaven in a vague and ethereal way, ignoring the promises of our own resurrections and the resurrection of the physical cosmos itself, we undermine the greatness of God’s full plan of redemption which includes not just human souls but also bodies, and the earth itself.

So, while understanding the New Earth certainly isn’t necessary for salvation, it is definitely a part of the good news that’s important for growing Christians to understand—we will spend eternity in resurrected bodies on a resurrected earth, with the Lord we love and all who love Him! You might find this article helpful as you talk with others.

Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels

What to Do When You Sin

How to handle sin in a God-honoring way isn’t often clearly addressed in the church. So what steps should I take in order to deal with sin? First, I must admit my sin to myself. I need to call sin what it is: sin, not just a mistake or a little slip. I must quit rationalizing and making excuses. Jesus died for our sins, not our excuses for our sins.

Second, I must confess my sin to God. Since He knows about it already, the purpose is not to inform Him. It is to verbally agree with God that what I have done is, in fact, sin. Proverbs 28:13 says, “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.”

Though we are forgiven by Christ of our past sins, including some we don’t remember, we are called upon to confess our sins as we become aware of them: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). (This article assumes those reading have already accepted Christ’s offer of salvation. If you never have, I encourage you to read more here.)

It may seem confusing that we must continue to confess recent sins in order to experience new and fresh forgiveness. But while we have a settled once-and-for-all forgiveness in Christ, we also have a current ongoing relationship with Him that is hampered by unconfessed sin.

Remember, God has seen us at our worst, and He still loves us. Arms wide open, He invites our confession and repentance, which He always meets with His grace and forgiveness.

Third, as a part of my admission and confession, I must genuinely repent. True confession is not a begrudging or flippant admission of wrongdoing, but an expression of guilt, regret, and desire and intention to change. It always points us to Jesus, our Savior.

I’ve had people tell me they were sorry for adultery yet refuse to quit seeing their partner in adultery. Actually, their sorrow is for sin’s consequences, not for sin. They admitted something—but they confessed nothing.

Fourth, there is a place in the family and church to confess my sins not only to God but also to others (James 5:16). Two cautions should be exercised in such confession: first, it is made to those who have actually been hurt by the behavior (this may or may not include a whole church body), and second, details should be shared only as necessary. God has no problem forgetting the details, but people do. Why etch on their minds images that will be hard or impossible to shake?

But once confessed and repented of, sin should be put behind us. We should embrace God’s forgiveness. David described it this way: “Happy are those to whom the Lord imputes no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit” (Psalm 32:2, NRSV).

When I was a boy, I had a golden retriever named Champ. Whenever we gave him a bone, he’d chew it until it was bare, then take off to bury it. But once it was buried, he would never let it lie. Every day, sometimes several times a day, he would make his rounds, going to every buried bone—dozens of them—and digging them up to chew on some more. Then he’d bury them again, only to repeat the process until the day he died.

Unlike my dog, God buries our sins and lets them lie; He never digs them up (Micah 7:18-19). Like my dog, however, sometimes we do. We dig up old sins, chew on them, confess them again, and bury them—but in a shallow grave whose location we memorize for convenient access.

We do this not only to ourselves, but others. We piously say, “I forgive you,” but dig up old sins to chew on at our pity parties, wave in front of others as gossip, or use as weapons of revenge or tools to barter and manipulate. In doing so, we become obsessed with sin instead of the Savior. We give more credit to its power than to His.  

(One clarification: the Bible teaches not only forgiveness of our sins but also consequences of our choices. Forgiveness means that God eliminates our eternal condemnation and guilt. But it does not mean that our actions in this life have no consequences on earth. Forgiven people can still contract an STD or go to jail for drunk driving, for example. And forgiving those who wronged us does not mean giving them opportunity to hurt or harm us or preventing them from experiencing sin’s built-in consequences.)

Once confessed, our sins should be forgotten. We should choose to dwell on them no longer:

Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:13-14).

An evil man is ensnared in his transgression, but a righteous man sings and rejoices (Proverbs 29:6).

How secure are we in God’s love? Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:27-28).True happiness can come only in realizing sin, admitting it, and seeking the only solution—the forgiveness of Jesus based on His redemptive work. In forgiveness alone we can have relational oneness with God and, hence, enduring happiness

For more on forgiveness and happiness, see Randy’s book Does God Want Us to Be Happy? See also his blogs What If You Struggle to Forgive Yourself for a Past Sin? and What Is True Repentance?

Photo by Marcos Paulo Prado on Unsplash

How Can I Work Toward Reconciliation with a Friend When We’ve Offended One Another?

We are in a season where it seems there have never been more strong opinions about a variety of topics, and more opportunities to offend others. To some degree, disagreement and conflict with those we care about is inevitable in a fallen world. And certainly, disagreement isn’t inherently sinful. But sin can easily be involved in our communication and responses. So how do we navigate that with grace, and work towards reconciliation when we do offend one another? Here are some thoughts I shared with a reader who asked for advice:

It is not your job to focus on your friend’s sins, even as it is not their job to focus on your sins. The fact that they may do so does not mean you should do the same. They are accountable for their choices; you are accountable for yours. Your leading the way in confession and admission and apology for whatever you could have done better may or may not prompt them to do so themselves. But whether or not it does, it is still right and Christ-honoring.

It may well be true that they have heart issues that need to be addressed. But the way to do this most effectively is to address your own issues first. Your primary job is to deal with your own issues, only secondarily theirs.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:3-4).

I think the plank and speck analogy offers helpful insights. Was Jesus really saying that every time we see something in our brother’s eye there is always something worse in ours? Sometimes, yes, but surely not always. I think the point is that our first duty is always to see our own faults, not the faults of others. And in the case of a relational conflict, if we are acutely aware of our sinfulness, we will see the bigness of our faults outweighing those of our brother. When Paul calls himself the chief of sinners, was he really saying no one on the planet had sinned more? I think, rather, he was saying, “I am the worst sinner I know.” Why? Because he knows his own sins far better than anyone else’s, even those who might in fact be worse sinners. But his focus is on his own sin, and by putting the focus there he humbly calls on God for His grace and sets the example of coming to terms with his faults.

So Jesus didn’t say, “Forget about the speck in your brother’s eye,” but rather take care of the problems closest to you, the big ones in your own life, so then and ONLY then can you really help your brother address his issues.

Romans 14:19 says, “Let us therefore make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification.” Making every effort means going out of our way to pursue peace with others in God’s family, even when doing so is inconvenient or sacrificial. Love never says, “Grow up, believe and act how I do, since as usual, I’m right again.” There is a road to peace and building others up. It doesn’t come naturally or happen on its own—it takes focused effort and leaning into the Spirit’s help.

“All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time.” (1 Peter 5:5-6)

“Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. ‘In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,  and do not give the devil a foothold.” (Ephesians 4:25-27)

“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” (Colossians 3:12-14)

I also encourage you to watch my message, “When Christians Disagree about Beliefs and Actions.” See too my book The Grace and Truth Paradox.

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We Must Learn the Skills to Resist Sexual Temptation

Scripture says, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Only by exercising self-control and being on alert can we expect to resist the enemy’s plan to lead us into sin. Satan “scouts us out” and knows only too well the chinks in the armor of every Christian. His aim is deadly, he excels at tailor-made temptations, and it is at our points of greatest vulnerability that he will attack.

But we shouldn’t forget that “the one [Christ] who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). As powerful as the evil one is to tempt us, God is infinitely more powerful to deliver us and has given us in Christ all the resources we need to live godly lives (2 Peter 1:3-4).

So how do we resist the devil, particularly in the area of sexual temptation? We all have to learn the skills of resisting temptation, because we’re not naturally good at it. I’ve seen a lot of Christians, younger and middle aged and older, end up in sexual immorality. I’ve seen marriages and lives destroyed.

What strikes me most in what I’ve seen over the years is not just how wrong sin is, but how stupid it is: “Can a man scoop fire into his lap without his clothes being burned? Can a man walk on hot coals without his feet being scorched? So is he who sleeps with another man’s wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished” (Proverbs 6:27-29).

I vividly remember a particular counseling appointment as a young pastor. Eric stormed into my office and flopped into a chair. “I’m really mad at God.”

I was startled because Eric was one of the happiest young men I knew. He grew up in a strong churchgoing family, married a Christian woman, and seemed to have a sincere love for Christ.

I asked him why he was mad at God. He explained that for months he’d felt a strong attraction to a woman at his office. She felt the same. He’d prayed earnestly that God would keep him from immorality.

“Did you ask your wife to pray for you?” I said. “Did you stay away from the woman?”

“Well . . . no. We went out for lunch almost every day. And . . . we committed adultery.”

I looked at Eric and slowly pushed a big book across my desk. As it inched closer to the edge, I prayed aloud, “Lord, please keep this book from falling!”

I kept pushing and praying. Sure enough, God didn’t suspend the law of gravity, and the book fell.

“I’m mad at God,” I said to Eric. “I asked him to keep my book from falling . . . but he didn’t answer my prayer!”

I can still hear the sound of that book hitting the floor. It was a symbol of Eric’s life. Instead of calling on God to empower him as he took decisive steps to resist temptation, he kept making unwise choices while asking to be delivered from their natural consequences. Eric went from genuine happiness to misery in a period of just a few years, and eventually he went to jail for sexual crimes. His immorality and sexual abuse didn’t come out of the blue. They were the cumulative product of minuscule daily compromises and choices that sabotaged his righteousness and happiness.

Contrast Eric with his friend Rocky. Raised in an unbelieving home, he’d had sex with many women and later came to faith in Christ. Rocky made new choices in keeping with his new nature: immersing himself in the daily meditation of God’s Word, joining Bible studies, learning to pray, sharing his faith, and reading great Christian books. He fled from sexual temptations that came his way and guarded his heart and mind. In the process of knowing Christ and following him, he became one of the happiest and most Christ-honoring people I’ve ever known. His marriage, family, church involvement, and service to others display the fruit of his wise choices.

Both Eric and Rocky showed a sincere love for Jesus. Both asked God to help them live righteously. But Eric expected God to save him from the consequences of his wrong choices, while Rocky called on God for strength as he did all he could to make right choices.

Both men were defined by their daily choices and by how they chose to respond to temptation, which cumulatively produced sin and misery for one, and righteousness and happiness for the other.

In this video clip, I share some thoughts about preemptively avoiding temptation:

Here are some more ideas about this, and about how to resist sexual temptation:

Chapters 5 and 6 from my book The Purity Principle are available on our site.
Years ago I wrote about carefully counting the cost of sexual immorality as a motivation to avoid it.
This is the first of three short articles focused on overcoming addition to pornography, and here’s one about Overcoming Temptation by Looking Past It—and Looking Up.
Here’s an article from Jon Bloom on How to Resist Temptation’s Mirage Moment.
Finally, my booklet Sexual Temptation: Establishing Guardrails and Winning the Battle contains clear, preventive guidelines we can follow to avoid immorality.

Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash

Is Jesus Displeased with Outgoing and Humor-Loving Personalities?

Note from Randy: One of the things I love about working with the team at Eternal Perspective Ministries is how wise and biblically-based their answers are to the many questions people ask.

In the early days of the ministry I answered nearly all the questions myself, but as time went on I called on our staff members to do more and more of it. I am always struck by the balance of grace and truth in their responses. They genuinely care about people, and they know that God’s Word is the key to really answering their questions. Since people are usually asking their questions of me, our staff tries to quote things I’ve said in books or articles. They do such a great job in their answers, including many things that are directly from them and not me, that I have no doubt people are getting better answers than they would have if the responses were just from me.

We often post those questions and answers on our website, not using people’s names so as to not violate confidentiality. Occasionally we use them in a blog. Someone asked a great question and Stephanie Anderson’s answer was right on target. Hope you enjoy this.

Hello! I really enjoy the articles you write! I'm a college freshman and find them very relevant and encouraging in my walk with Jesus.  I had a question and was curious as to your opinion on it (I did read an article you had regarding this topic!) I have a pretty outgoing personality and sense of humor, and have kind of subconsciously felt for awhile that Jesus is displeased with me and my/in general humor, laughter, being goofy etc. I think I have this image of Him as being very serious and strict, even though He must have had a pretty magnetic personality to draw so many people to Him, the little children, etc. I was just wondering what your thoughts on it are?

This is Stephanie with Eternal Perspective Ministries, and I help Randy with his messages. I love that you are thinking about this! It also makes me smile because if you were to hang out with Randy in person, you would find out that while he is very serious about his relationship with Jesus, he is also quick to smile and laugh and joke. It sounds like a sense of humor is also a God-given part of your personality—and that is great! It is a gift from Jesus, the source of all laughter and joy.

I love what you shared about Jesus having a magnetic personality that drew children. Randy would absolutely agree with you on that. He says in Happiness,

When I wrote my first graphic novel, Eternity, I had to decide how I wanted the artist to portray Jesus’ face in a typical scene. Having read the Gospels many times and known Jesus for forty years, I knew his default look should be one of happiness. Yes, I asked the artist to portray him as angry when facing off with the Pharisees and sad when heading to the cross. But the man who held children in his arms, healed people, fed the multitudes, and made wine at a wedding was, more often than not, happy! If we picture Jesus walking around in perpetual sadness or anger, grumbling and looking to condemn rather than to extend grace, we’re not seeing the Jesus revealed in the Bible.

Randy has a chapter in Happiness about the humor of Jesus, and it’s one of my favorite chapters in the book. It has given me a fuller picture of Jesus and His personality, and helped me gain a deeper appreciation for Christ’s teachings in the Gospels. You can read an abridged version of that chapter here. If we understand that Jesus Himself has a wonderful sense of humor (and the best laugh in the universe), it frees us up to enjoy God-honoring laughter and joking and fun without feeling guilty or like we’re not being “pious.”

Of course, there is sinful and crude humor that is dishonoring to the Lord, but humor can also be honoring to Him. We can test whether it glorifies Him by measuring it against Scripture:

“Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29).

“Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving” (Ephesians 5:4).

“Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Philippians 4:8).

You mentioned being goofy—there is a time to be serious, and a time when laughing and even being goofy are appropriate (Ecclesiastes 3:4). Both are part of the human experience and reflect that we are made in God’s image since He has emotions. I think that as you are walking with Jesus, and growing in your knowledge of Him as you study His Word, He'll make you sensitive to when each is appropriate and how you can honor Him in every time of life.

And being outgoing certainly can be a wonderful strength, and it sounds like it’s the way Jesus made you. I’m not as outgoing myself, but my husband and youngest daughter are, and I love seeing that aspect of their personalities! He is the God of variety and has given us all different strengths and personalities that can glorify Him.

Remember that if you’ve accepted Jesus as your Savior, God is well pleased with you, as He is well pleased with His Son. He made and formed you and designed you to glorify Himself. God “takes pleasure” in those who fear Him and hope in His mercy (Psalm 147:11, NKJV). Zephaniah 3:17 is another beautiful passage, talking about God's delight in His children: “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”

Randy writes, “This is profound on every level. God is with us and is mighty to save—great words, but words often expressed in Scripture, more familiar to us. What is remarkable here is that this great God who created the universe ‘will take great delight in you.’ GOD take delight in ME? God take GREAT delight in me? You must be kidding. No. This is God’s Word. No kidding.”

Here are some more related articles from Randy you might like to check out:

Exploring the Happiness of Jesus

Heaven: Home of Laughter

Laughter in Heaven

Hope this helps. God bless you as you follow Him!

Oh my goodness, thank you SO much!!! I needed to hear this more than you know.  Thank you thank you thank you! Made me tear up.  I truly appreciate your encouraging words, this has been SO helpful for me. Thank you!

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