A reader asked me, “I often hear the saying ‘I want to be ready to meet my Lord.’ Can you explain what exactly you mean by this, please?” First of all, and most importantly, being ready to meet the Lord means you’ve made sure of your relationship with Jesus Christ, and are trusting only Him to save you—not anyone or anything else, and certainly not any good works you’ve done. R. A. Torrey put it this way: “I am ready to... Read more
In honor of Black History Month, Live Action produced a video featuring Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first Black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School, in 1951. I had heard of her before but had never seen her speak. She is articulate and exudes an inner strength and conviction that’s remarkable. I can see how she succeeded in persuading Ronald Reagan to become prolife and oppose abortion. I read these words in an article about her death in an October 2010 New York... Read more
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn” (Romans 12:15). We tend to do better at rejoicing. Because we don’t like to feel pain, we tend to ignore others’ pain. But they need us to become the arms of Christ to them. Here are three things to remember when we’re called upon to comfort those who are grieving, especially during this holiday season: 1. To ignore someone’s pain is to add to that pain. Instead of fearing we’ll... Read more
Jesus said in John 5:44, “How can you believe if you accept praise from one another, yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God?” Christ said we should not live for the approval of people. But He also says we should very much want to get God’s approval. (To be clear, we’re not talking about earning our salvation, which we could never do, but pleasing the Father we love.) So God wants us to obey Him in order to... Read more
“What’s the good life?” The world attempts to answer that question in many different ways, but they all lead to dead ends. The biblical answer is that the good life is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. When you live that kind of life, among other things, it’s happy-making. Jesus said, “It is more happy-making to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). The Greek word... Read more
I have met abortion survivors who have told me their stories, just as I have met people conceived in horrific acts of rape and incest. In each case these are precious people, made in the image of God, with the same value in His sight, and the same right to live as the rest of us. The following powerful video, produced by Faces of Choice, features adults and children of different ethnicities but with one thing in common: they are abortion survivors.... Read more
God never guarantees that the Christian life will be smooth or easy. In fact, he promises the opposite: “All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12, NKJV). We’re not to be surprised when we face great difficulties (see 1 Peter 4:12). All the psalms of lament, the book of Lamentations, and many other Scripture passages reveal the importance of realism and sorrow in the Christian life. No treatment of joy and happiness should deny or... Read more
In my book Money, Possessions, and Eternity I suggested sharing giving testimonies in order to help Christ’s body grow in giving. I once objected to this—and many still do—because Jesus said, “But when you give to the needy do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you” (Matthew 6:3-4). But in an appendix in the same book, I explored... Read more
In my books Happiness and Does God Want Us to Be Happy?, I emphasize that the primary source of our happiness isn’t our present circumstances but our God, who promised He’d be with us always and who commands us to rejoice in Him. When we talk about our circumstances, we usually mean the temporal, outward conditions of our lives. These may include a lost job, estranged relationships, illness, fatigue, or depression. But if we are in Christ, we should look to and affirm our... Read more
Over the years, I’ve been asked by readers about whether God’s future restoration of creation means that “undesirable” and “unpleasant” animals like rodents (such as rats) and insects (such as mosquitoes or spiders) will be present in Heaven. As one reader candidly wrote, “That sure wouldn’t be Heaven for me!” But asking how rats and spiders and insects could possibly be on the New Earth is like asking how they possibly could have been in Eden. The point is, they... Read more
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