The Story of One Man's Faithful Service to Christ

There are many stories of men who faithfully served Jesus and shared the gospel, despite never seeing any of the fruit from his efforts for many years.

While we may never seem to see any results from serving the Lord here on Earth, Malachi 3:16-18 is a remarkable passage that tells us God is watching and is documenting the faithful deeds of his children on Earth: “Then those who feared the Lord talked with each other, and the Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored ...

October Giveaway of the Month: Game Plan for Life

This month on Randy’s blog we’re giving away three copies of Game Plan for Life with Joe Gibbs. (If you're reading this post on Facebook or Amazon or elsewhere, don't leave your comment here; visit http://randyalcorn.blogspot.com/2009/10/october-giveaway-of-month-game-plan-for.html to leave your comment and enter.)

Randy writes:

I was honored when Coach Joe Gibbs asked if I would write about Heaven for Game Plan for Life. Joe said my Heaven book had meant a lot to him, and I told him I would be glad to contribute a chapter.

Joe is a ...

Question and Answer of the Week: the Old Testament Model of Tithing and Christians Today

Does the Old Testament model of tithing still apply to Christians today, since it was part of the old covenant?

I have mixed feelings on tithing. I detest legalism. I certainly don’t want to pour new wine into old wineskins, imposing superseded first covenant restrictions on Christians. However, the fact is that every New Testament example of giving goes beyond the tithe. This means that none falls short of it. The strongest arguments made against tithing today are “law versus grace.” But does being under grace mean we should stop doing all that was done under the law?

I ...

Announcing the Winners of the If God Is Good Giveaway

Here are the three winners from September’s giveaway, who will each receive a copy of Randy’s newest book, If God Is Good. The randomly drawn winners are:

1) SwitchingGranny (HeisMyJoy)
2) Adam (adamgraunke)
3) Fran (sonflower74)

All winners, please e-mail me at Stephanie (at) epm.org with your mailing address.

Thanks for entering! Be sure to check back at Randy’s blog on October 5 for the next giveaway—we’ll be giving away three copies of The Game Plan for Life with Coach Joe Gibbs. Randy is one of the contributors to the book, which includes a ...

The Church as a Body

I recently read an interesting book by Philip D. Kenneson: Life on the Vine: Cultivating the Fruit of the Spirit in Christian Community (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1999).
Here is an excerpt:

This [the church as a body] is only one important lesson that reflecting on the metaphor of the church as the body of Christ might teach us. Given the rampant individualism that pervades much congregational life, the contemporary church in this country would do well to reflect seriously on this metaphor. For example:

• Bodies are wrongly understood if their parts are considered to be in some ...

Four Things You Cannot Recover...

A few months ago I happened to see this on The Heart of a Pastor Wife's blog, and thought these pictures were profound.

Four things you cannot recover....

What do you want readers to take away from If God Is Good? (video)

Unbelievers and believers have the same heart-cry in response to evil and suffering: “Something's terribly wrong.” We know we were made for something far better. But our heart-cry itself is revealing—why do we expect more or hope for more? Why are we outraged by evil and suffering when if the atheists are right it’s no more than we should expect in a world of random chance and survival of the fittest? Where do we get the standard of goodness by which we judge evil to be evil?

In If God Is Good, I appeal to unbelievers and believers alike to consider these questions: Why is there so much good in the world? Why do the great majority of suffering people want to go on living nonetheless? Is evil and suffering just bad luck, or is there a rational explanation for it? Is there a redemptive purpose for it? Can we as hurting people, and as those trying to help hurting people, find perspectives that recognize the full force of evil and suffering, yet offer hope? I suggest the answer is yes.

God’s Redemptive Purposes for Evil and Suffering

(Click here if you're unable to view the video.)

The stronger our concept of God and Heaven, the more we understand how Heaven resolves the problem of evil and suffering. The weaker our concept of God and Heaven, the stronger our doubt that Heaven will more than compensate for our present sufferings.

If Heaven did not exist, we could never solve the problem of evil and suffering, for we would never receive any lasting compensation for it.

Nanci read me letters written in 1920 by her grandmother, Ana Swanson, to her family in Sweden. Because Ana suffered severe health ...

What is the problem of goodness? (video)

While atheists routinely speak of the problem of evil, they usually don’t raise the problem of goodness. But if evil provides evidence against God, then shouldn’t goodness count as evidence for him? And wouldn’t that be evidence against atheism?

From a non-theistic viewpoint, what is evil? Isn’t it just nature at work? In a strictly natural, physical world, shouldn’t everything be neither good nor evil? Good and evil imply an “ought” and an “ought not” that nature is incapable of producing.

If God Is Good Releases Today, September 15

Today, September 15, is the release date of my new book If God Is Good. I hope you’ve had the chance to read some of the excerpts from the book that have been posted over the last few weeks. I've enjoyed reading your comments and seeing your responses.

I never feel really GREAT about a book when it’s finished, but I do feel good about this one. It's God’s Word that redeems it—so much powerful Scripture that it will more than compensate for my inadequacies. (He promises in Isaiah 55 that His Word will ...