The Francis Chan Collection: Crazy Love, Forgotten God, Erasing Hell, and Multiply

by Francis Chan

When you are running toward Christ, you are freed up to serve, love, and give thanks without guilt, worry, or fear. As long as you are running, you are safe. But running is exhausting—if, that is, we are running from sin or guilt, out of fear. (Or if we haven’t run in a while.) However, if we train ourselves to run toward our Refuge, toward Love, we are free—just as we are called to be.

The world is not moved by love or actions that are of human creation.

The church becomes irrelevant when it becomes purely a human creation.

have found that it comes down to faith: Do you believe God keeps His promises or not? Do your prayers and actions give evidence of your belief? So God has promised to give us His Spirit if we ask, if we repent and are baptized, and it comes down to whether we believe Him and act upon that promise.

Let’s pray that God would empower us so radically that we would get no glory. That people would see our works and glorify God.

I think a lot of us need to forget about God’s will for my life. God cares more about our response to His Spirit’s leading today, in this moment, than about what we intend to do next year. In fact, the decisions we make next year will be profoundly affected by the degree to which we submit to the Spirit right now, in today’s decisions.

It is easy to use the phrase “God’s will for my life” as an excuse for inaction or even disobedience. It’s much less demanding to think about God’s will for your future than it is to ask Him what He wants you to do in the next ten minutes. It’s safer to commit to following Him someday instead of this day.

The key is that He never promises to reveal these purposes all at once, in advance. We do know that we are called to keep in step with the Holy Spirit. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians we read, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh…. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit” (5:16,

When people give their lives to God in exchange for a ticket out of hell, there is often no turning or change of direction, which is the definition of repentance.

You only need the Holy Spirit’s guidance and help if you truly want to follow the Way of Jesus Christ. You only need Him if you desire to “obey everything” He commanded and to teach others to do the same (Matt. 28:18–20 NIV). You only need the Holy Spirit if you have genuinely repented and believe. And you only need the Holy Spirit if you understand that you are called to share in Christ’s suffering and death, as well as His resurrection (Rom. 8:17; 2 Cor. 4:16–18; Phil. 3:10–11).

“Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” (2:12–13). I love the apparent contradiction in this passage. Paul says in one breath, “Work out your own salvation,” and in the next, “It is God who works in you.” The both-ness here doesn’t allow us to escape with a simple conclusion. Yes, it is God who works in you. And, yes, there is work for you to do. Yes, the Spirit empowers you to do the work. And, yes, you do the work.

God wants the praise for what we do in our lives. But if we never pray audacious, courageous prayers, how can He answer them? If we never follow Him to positions where we need Him, how can He show up and make His presence known? Can you, along with Elijah

When I live by my own power and strength, relying solely on my natural talents to see me through, then people naturally praise me for how I am living. But when I am living in a way that requires me to depend on the Holy Spirit, people respond by praising my Father in heaven.

But even if you took away what I “know” about the Holy Spirit from reading the Scriptures, my “right answers” about the Holy Spirit, I would still believe. I would still believe in the Spirit because I have experienced God the Holy Spirit working in and through and around my life in ways I cannot deny or ignore. I

God delights to show up when His children call on His name and when they are trusting fully in Him to come through, whether that is in relationships, in battling sin, in strength to make sacrifices, or in endurance to be faithful in daily life. Are you living this way? Or are you surviving only by your own strength, by your own wits?

When I read the book of Acts, I see the church as an unstoppable force. Nothing could thwart what God was doing, just as Jesus foretold: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18). The church was powerful and spreading like wildfire, not because of clever planning, but by a movement of the Spirit. Riots, torture, poverty, or any other type of persecution couldn’t stop it. Isn’t that the type of church movement we all long to be a part of?

When you begin living a life characterized by walking with the Spirit, that is when people will begin to look not to you but to our Father in heaven and give Him the praise.