I’ve heard it said, “There’s no wrong way to grieve.” I disagree. Certainly, there are different ways and lengths of time to grieve. We should not rebuke or lay guilt on the brokenhearted! The Bible says this about grief: “And now, dear brothers and sisters, we want you to know what will happen to the believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to... Read more
A reader of my book Heaven sent us this feedback: On page 33 you wrote, “And all of us, like Adam and Eve, are sinners.” I assume you were referring to the unsaved as sinners, not those who are followers of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul always opened up his letters and addressed believers as saints, though he knew they still sin as we all occasionally do. But to say that we who are saved are still “sinners” is to imply we... Read more
Over the last two and a half years of grief since Nanci died, I have been sensing deeply the friendship of Jesus. What could be better than for Him to not only love us so much that He would die for us, but to actually call us His friends, and not just servants? That is so beautiful and meaningful to me. “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I... Read more
This is a blast from the past, at least for those of us old enough to remember Dallas Holm and Praise, and his 1977 mega-hit “I Will Rise Again”: I have listened to “I Will Rise Again” multiple times recently, and it takes me back to a crucial time in my life. The song came out in 1977 which was the year Stu Weber and his wife Linda and my wife Nanci and I and many of our closest friends were... Read more
Sufferers commonly ask, “Why me? Why not someone else? Why haven’t my friends lost a child or their husband? Why can they walk and ride bikes while I’m in a wheelchair? Why have you treated me differently, God?” The resurrected Jesus told Peter that one day he’d be taken “where you do not want to go” (John 21:18). Verse 19 reads, “Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then He said to... Read more
The problem of evil and suffering moves from the philosophical to the personal in a moment of time. While researching If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil, I read all sorts of books—philosophical, theological, practical, and personal. It’s one thing to talk about evil and suffering philosophically; it’s another to live with it. Three weeks after his thirty-three-year-old son, Christopher, died in a car accident, pastor and evangelist Greg Laurie addressed a crowd of twenty-nine thousand... Read more
I’m convinced that the Bible is clear that though we will have freedom to choose in Heaven, we will have no ability to sin. Consider Revelation 21:4-5: “Death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new’” (emphasis added). What follows the word for explains why the evil that causes death, mourning, crying, and pain will... Read more
Novelist John Updike tells the story of a fourteen-year-old boy named David. When it’s time for questions in his catechism class, David looks to his pastor for answers: “I asked Reverend Dobson about Heaven, and he said it was like Abraham Lincoln’s goodness living after him.” “And why didn’t you like it?” “Well, don’t you see? It amounts to saying there isn’t any Heaven at all.” “I don’t see that it amounts to that. What do you want Heaven to... Read more
In today’s digital world—and especially in an election year—it’s heartbreaking to see God’s people become a bickering, angry mob. (If you don’t believe me, spend a few minutes reading comments on YouTube, Instagram, or Twitter/X.) We are not called to be a herd of online bullies, rushing to judgment and egging each other on to defame our brothers and sisters. (Some of whom may well be more faithful and honorable in God’s sight than we are.) We desperately need the... Read more
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Becoming a new creation sounds as if it involves a radical change, and indeed it does! Hence, C. S. Lewis could say: “The Christian life is simply a process of having your natural self changed into a Christ self, and…this process goes on very far inside. One’s most private wishes, one’s point of view, are the things that have... Read more
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