In this clip from a talk with students in the Torrey Honors College at Biola University in 2012, Randy shares how the deaths of friends and family members compelled him to ask questions about both the present and the future Heaven. The tangibility of the last two chapters of Revelation and the lack of teaching, even in seminaries, led him to explore the New Earth further.

What awaits you in Heaven is a wonderful and amazing relationship and fellowship with Jesus, your Savior, and with all of God’s people. That will be your forever family in all the truest and best sense of the phrase.

Heaven’s inhabitants ­don’t simply rejoice over nameless multitudes coming to God. They rejoice over each and every person (Luke 15:4-7, 10). That’s a powerful affirmation of Heaven’s view of each person as an individual, whose life is observed and cared for.

I suggest giving less weight to the labels society puts on neurodivergent people and spending more time on learning all you can about who Jesus was and is and how you can emulate and follow Him best.

In this clip from the Do Hard Things podcast with The Rebelution in 2022, Randy talks to teenagers about learning to expect suffering. He encourages listeners to ground themselves in the Word of God and live by faith so that this world’s evil and suffering don’t cause them to turn their back on Christ. God is sovereign, and He will carry out His will on Earth as it is in Heaven.

In this clip from the Do Hard Things podcast with The Rebelution in 2022, Randy explains that the hope of Heaven is not simply wishful thinking. He shares that we know more from the Bible about the future, post-resurrection Heaven, which will be on the New Earth, than we do about the present Heaven.

In this clip from the Do Hard Things podcast with The Rebelution in 2022, Randy shares how God worked in his wife Nanci’s life to draw her deeper into the Word. He talks about how her study of God impacted her cancer journey.

I believe, based on what I know about God and His character and the nature of the New Earth (the forever Heaven which will come after our resurrection), that if both you and your mom were Jesus followers here, your focus will not be on whatever happened between you but will be on the One who died to have an uninterrupted relationship with you.

Believers periodically tell me versions of the following: “We shouldn’t be thinking about reunion with loved ones, or the joys of Heaven. We should only be thinking about being united with Christ, who is our only treasure.” This sounds spiritual, but is it?