Tag: Randy Alcorn

The gospel is attacked on both fronts—on the one hand, stripped of its intrinsic happiness and on the other, stripped of its holy uniqueness and ability to deliver happiness.

If God decided all the suffering of history is worth the price paid, who are we to say otherwise? He knows everything and took upon Himself the lion’s share of human suffering. Hasn’t He earned the right to be trusted?

I’ve studied many worldviews, but none comes close to the biblical worldview in accounting for all the facts of our existence—including our longing for happiness.

As one of our grandsons sat beside her, listening to her struggling to speak and to me reading powerful words from her journals, he said, “Grams, if you can trust God in this, I know I can trust Him in whatever I’ll go through.” Another grandson told her, “I will never forget what you said to us today.”

We should seek the Lord’s will through the reading and study of His Word, prayer, and the wise counsel of others. I emphasize “wise” to discourage counsel only from those who automatically agree with us and are not committed to speaking God’s truth.

The false idea that prosperity brings contentment is nothing new. Paul warned Timothy and the church at Ephesus about false teachers—first-century equivalents to modern prosperity theology proponents—who were “depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain” (1 Timothy 6:5).

Choosing to rejoice, by rehearsing reasons to be happy and grateful while suffering, affirms trust in God.

The Puritans have been stereotyped as legalistic and impersonal and believing in an impersonal God, but in many hours of reading them I believe nothing could be further from the truth!