By David Brandt Berg

“And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come.”—Matthew 24:14

In Matthew 24, Jesus said that when this gospel of the kingdom shall have been preached in every nation, then shall the end come. At that point, He doesn’t say in that scripture that it will be preached in every tongue, to every tribe, which He does later in Revelation 14 when the angel preaches to everybody just before Jesus comes: “Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people.”¹ At that point, everybody will hear it!

Once we have preached the gospel to this world, to all nations, as Jesus Himself said in Matthew 24:14, “then shall the end come.” He gave many other signs, but in verse six He said, “but the end is not yet.” There will be wars, rumours of wars, earthquakes, famines, pestilences, and all kinds of things, but He said, “Don’t worry, the end is not yet.”

The first sign He gave that the end was near was when “this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations.” If there was ever a day in which it looks to me like every nation has heard the gospel, it’s today! Maybe not every tongue and tribe yet—that will come at the very end.

Now remember, “the end” is not a particular point, a certain hour or second of a certain day of a month of a certain year. In fact, what is spoken of by the prophets as the endtime or the “last days” covers the span of years between the two comings of Christ. The endtime began with the first coming of Christ. In Hebrews 1:2, Paul said that they were already living “in these last days,” which will end with His Second Coming. So the end is already here and the world has been in it for 2,000 years. Some people get all excited when I say “the Crash is here,” but my Lord, the Crash has been here ever since the first Depression!

The end is here, and it has lasted 2,000 years already, and it’s going to last some more, but it gets closer all the time. The end will progress day by day as it has and continues to do, and as you read in the news. With every day that passes, we are a day closer to the end—one more hour, day, month, year closer to the end.

The end is coming, and we can see that it’s getting closer, as the gospel is being preached to every nation like never before. We’ve done our particular job to reach our generation. And now there’s not a nation on earth that hasn’t heard the gospel through us or somebody else. God is trying to give everybody a chance to know Him.

Even if people haven’t heard specifically about God, they can just look at His creation and know that there is a God. Scientists are daily discovering marvelous things about His creation, more all the time—the marvels of His design and plan, His amazing balance of nature, and everything about the creation that couldn’t possibly have happened by accident. As Paul said, “For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”²

Logically and reasonably just by the world and all that He has created, it is clear that there’s a God! “Only the fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God.’”³

This gospel of the kingdom is being preached in all the world, and in those last terrible days of the Great Tribulation, God’s even going to send the angels of God to preach it! And in the very last days just before the Lord comes, at the end of the days of the Great Tribulation when the gospel has been preached in every possible way, then the Lord will come to rapture His saints. Praise the Lord!

When they see us rising to meet Jesus in the air, in this glorious, thunderous, earthshaking, heaven-quaking event that raises the dead from the graves and the living from the ground, the whole world will know that Jesus has come to rescue and save us, just as He foretold in the Bible.

Jesus will come back with all the saints who have already gone to be with the Lord through death. They come back with Him to pick up their dead bodies, which will then be new resurrected bodies like the one He rose in; they are going to be beautiful, arrayed in white garments like a bride.⁴

It’s going to be the apocalypse for sure—the revelation of Jesus Christ Himself coming in the clouds of heaven, in great power and glory, with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God. Christ Himself will shout and call us from every part of the earth, and we’ll be gathered together to be with Him! “And so,” He tells us, “shall we ever be with the Lord.”⁵

We will jump for joy for Jesus and go sailing right off into the air, clear on up into the clouds to be with the Lord! It’s going to be so wonderful you’re going to forget about all the hardships and suffering that happened before.

Oft times the day seems long, our trials hard to bear,
We’re tempted to complain, to murmur and despair;
But Christ will soon appear to catch His bride away,
All tears forever over in God’s eternal day.

It will be worth it all when we see Jesus,
Life’s trials will seem so small, when we see Christ;
One glimpse of His dear face, all sorrow will erase,
So bravely run the race till we see Christ.⁶

Originally published May 1980. Adapted and republished April 2021.
Read by Jon Marc.

Love Analyzed

By Henry Drummond

After contrasting love with eloquence, prophecy, faith, charity, and sacrifice, Paul gives us an amazing analysis in three short verses of what this supreme thing—love—is.

It is a compound thing, he tells us. It is like light. As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and pass it through a crystal prism, and you see it come out on the other side of the prism broken up into its component colors—red, and blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colors of the rainbow—so Paul passes this thing, love, through the magnificent prism of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side broken up into its elements.

In these few words we have what one might call the spectrum of love, the analysis of love. Will you observe what its elements are? Will you notice that they have common names, that they are virtues which we hear about every day, that they are things which can be practiced by every man in every place in life; and how, by a multitude of small things and ordinary virtues, the supreme thing, the summum bonum, is made up?

The spectrum of love has nine ingredients:

• Patience: “Love suffereth long.”
• Kindness: “And is kind.”
• Generosity [goodwill]: “Love envieth not.”
• Humility: “Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.”
• Courtesy: “Doth not behave itself unseemly.”
• Unselfishness: “Seeketh not its own.”
• Good temper: “Is not provoked.”
• Guilelessness: “Taketh not account of evil.”
• Sincerity: “Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth.”

Patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, good temper, guilelessness, sincerity—these make up the supreme gift, the loving stature of the perfect man.

We hear much of love for God; Christ spoke much of love for man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven; Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion is not a strange thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The supreme thing, in short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a further finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up the sum of every common day.

Patience. This is the normal attitude of love; love passive, love waiting to begin; not in a hurry; calm; ready to do its work when the summons comes, but in the meantime wearing the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. Love suffers long; beareth all things; believeth all things; hopeth all things. For love understands, and therefore waits.

Kindness. Love in action. Have you ever noticed how much of Christ’s life was spent in doing kind things—in merely doing kind things? Run over it with that in view, and you will find that He spent a great proportion of His time simply in making people happy, in doing good to people. There is only one thing greater than happiness in the world, and that is holiness; and it is not in our keeping; but what God has put in our power is the happiness of those about us, and that is largely to be secured by our being kind to them.

“The greatest thing,” was once said, “a man can do for his heavenly Father is to be kind to some of His other children.” I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are? How much the world needs it! How easily it is done! How instantaneously it acts! How infallibly it is remembered! How superabundantly it pays itself back—for there is no debtor in the world so honorable, so superbly honorable, as love. “Love never faileth.” Love is success, love is happiness, love is life. “Love,” I say with Browning, “is energy of life.”

Where love is, God is. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God. God is love. Therefore love. Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, love. Lavish it upon the poor, where it is very easy; especially upon the rich, who often need it most; most of all upon our equals, where it is very difficult, and for whom perhaps we each do least of all. There is a difference between trying to please and giving pleasure. Give pleasure. Lose no chance of giving pleasure; for that is the ceaseless and anonymous triumph of a truly loving spirit. “I shall pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer it or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”

Generosity. “Love envieth not.” This is love in competition with others. Whenever you attempt a good work you will find other men doing the same kind of work, and probably doing it better. Do not envy them. Envy is a feeling of ill-will to those who are in the same line as ourselves, a spirit of covetousness and detraction.

And then, after having learned all that, you have to learn this further thing, Humility—to put a seal upon your lips and forget what you have done. After you have been kind, after love has stolen forth into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shade again and say nothing about it. Love hides even from itself. Love waives even self-satisfaction. “Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.” Humility is love hiding.

The fifth ingredient is a somewhat strange one to find in this summum bonum: Courtesy. This is love in society, love in relation to etiquette. “Love does not behave itself unseemly.” Politeness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little things. And the one secret of politeness is to love.

Love cannot behave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored persons into the highest society, and if they have a reservoir of love in their hearts they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply cannot do it. You know the meaning of the word “gentleman.” It means a gentle man—a man who does things gently, with love. That is the whole art and mystery of it. The gentle man cannot in the nature of things do an ungentle thing, an ungentlemanly thing.

Unselfishness. “Love seeketh not her own.” The most obvious lesson in Christ’s teaching is that there is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only in giving. Half the world is on the wrong scent in pursuit of happiness. They think it consists in having and getting, and in being served by others. It consists in giving, and in serving others. “He that would be great among you,” said Christ, “let him serve.” He that would be happy, let him remember that there is but one way—“it is more blessed [it is more happy] to give than to receive.”

The next ingredient is a very remarkable one: Good temper. “Love is not provoked.” Nothing could be more striking than to find this quality here. We are inclined to look upon bad temper as a harmless weakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family failing, a matter of temperament, not a thing to take into serious account in estimating a man’s character. And yet here, right in the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible again and again returns to condemn it as one of the most destructive elements in human nature.

You will see then why temper is significant. It is not in what it is alone, but in what it reveals. It is a test for love, a symptom, a revelation of an unloving nature at bottom. It is the intermittent fever which bespeaks unintermittent disease within; the occasional bubble escaping to the surface which betrays some rottenness underneath; a sample of the most hidden products of the soul dropped involuntarily when off one’s guard; in a word, the lightning form of a hundred hideous and un-Christian sins. A lack of patience, a lack of kindness, a lack of generosity, a lack of courtesy, a lack of unselfishness are all instantaneously symbolized in one flash of temper.

Hence it is not enough to deal with the temper. We must go to the source and change the inmost nature, and the angry tendencies will die away of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids out, but by putting something in—a great love, a new spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Christ interpenetrating spirits, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate what is wrong, work a change, renovate and regenerate, and rehabilitate the inner man. Willpower does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does. Therefore, “Let that mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”

Guilelessness is the grace for suspicious people. The possession of it is the great secret of personal influence. You will find, if you think for a moment, that the people who influence you are people who believe in you. In an atmosphere of suspicion men shrivel up; but in that atmosphere they expand, and find encouragement and educative fellowship.

It is a wonderful thing that here and there in this hard, uncharitable world there should still be left a few rare souls who think no evil. This is the great unworldliness. Love “thinketh no evil,” imputes no motive, sees the bright side, puts the best construction on every action. What a delightful state of mind to live in! What a stimulus and benediction even to meet with it for a day! To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief of our belief in them. The respect of another is the first restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of what he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become.

“Love rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth with the truth.” I have called this sincerity from the words rendered in the Authorized Version by “rejoiceth in the truth.” What Paul meant is a quality which probably no one English word adequately defines. It includes, perhaps more strictly, the self-restraint which refuses to make capital out of others’ faults; the charity which delights not in exposing the weakness of others, but “covereth all things”; the sincerity of purpose which endeavors to see things as they are, and rejoices to find them better than suspicion feared or calumny denounced.

So much for the analysis of love. Now the business of our lives is to have these things fitted into our characters. That is the supreme work to which we need to address ourselves in this world, to learn to love.

Public domain. Condensed and slightly adapted from the original, published in 1891:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16739/16739-h/16739-h.htm.

A compilation

With Me all things are possible. When you bump into massive difficulties on your life-path, I want you to consider it pure Joy. As you bounce off these “impossibilities,” My everlasting arms are wide open—ready to catch you, calm you, and help you do what does not seem possible. You can be joyful in the midst of perplexing problems because I am God your Savior. I have already accomplished the greatest miracle—saving you from your sins. If you keep looking to Me, your resurrected Lord and King, your pessimism will eventually yield to courage. Though you are an earthbound creature in many ways, your soul shares My eternal victory.

Since I am infinite, and “impossibilities” are My specialty, I delight in them because they display My glory so vividly. They also help you live the way I intended: in joyful, trusting dependence on Me. The next time you face an “impossible” situation, turn to Me immediately with a hopeful heart. Acknowledge your total inadequacy, and cling to Me—relying on My infinite sufficiency. All things are possible with Me!—Jesus¹

*

While God can do anything He wishes to do, God will not do things that would be against His holy will or contradictory to His purposes. He can commit no sinful act, for example, for He is completely holy, and sinning is not in His character. …

We see throughout the Bible that God is omnipotent—all-powerful—not equaled or surpassed by anyone or anything. In discussing God’s making a dry path in the mighty Jordan River to allow the safe passage of His people, Joshua 4:24 says, “He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful and so that you might always fear the LORD your God.” Similarly, Jeremiah 32:26­–27 relates, “Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: ‘I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?’” Continuing, in Hebrews 1:3, we see, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word.” These verses and others show that all things within God’s will are possible for Him.

The angel in Luke 1:36–37 said to Mary, “Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.” … Something being possible for God does not obligate Him to actually do it. We must be thoroughly familiar with Scripture so that we can know what is God’s desire and what He has promised, and thereby know what God will make possible in our lives.

When we consider all of our heavenly Father’s mighty supernatural works throughout the Bible, we see that He indeed is capable of moving human events along the continuum of time, in spite of things seemingly impossible, all for His glorious purposes.—From gotquestions.org²

*

People who say it cannot be done should have an encounter with God. Through God all things are possible. —Dina Rolle

*

I can do ALL THINGS through Christ who empowers, enriches, equips, enlightens, energizes, re-creates, revives, promotes, strengthens, purifies, sponsors, and prepares me! Yes, I can… ALL THINGS, I can!—Israelmore Ayivor

*

Many of the things that seem impossible now will become realities tomorrow.—Walt Disney

*

Every great achievement throughout history was once considered impossible until someone made it a reality. Consider the life of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple. He wanted to create something that didn’t yet exist, but his ideas sounded impossible and far-fetched. He once said, “How can people know what they want when they’ve never seen it before?” His board argued with him at one point that there was no market for a personal computer and that ordinary people wouldn’t want or need one. Sounds ridiculous now, but at the time, that was the logic.

Such vision requires a mindset of refusing to accept things as they are but instead striving to make things better. No wonder it’s often referred to as thinking “out of the box.” Too often we can limit ourselves to thinking within the confines of how things have always been done or what everyone else is doing or what’s already been created.

When God calls us to step out and try something new, we need to have faith and keep our eyes on Jesus and His promises no matter what difficulties we face along the way, always remembering that “everything is possible for one who believes.”³

God wants us to avail ourselves of the promises that were recorded in His Word for our benefit, encouragement, and comfort,⁴ so that our faith will grow and be strengthened in His power to do the greater things Jesus promised His followers would do. The Bible is full of God’s intervention in history to achieve His good purposes. Compared to those events, the things that seem impossible to us today that He is calling us to may seem a little more reachable.

G. M. Trevelyan, the British historian, said it succinctly, “Never tell a person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.”⁵ —Tina Kapp

Published on Anchor April 2021. Read by Gabriel Garcia Valdivieso.
Music by Michael Dooley.

The Family International

To the unprejudiced historian, the historical facts regarding Jesus are as definite and evident as those of Julius Caesar. Not only do we find an accurate portrait of Him in the documents of the New Testament, but dozens of ancient non-biblical manuscripts confirm that Jesus was a genuine historical figure who lived in Palestine in the early part of the first century.

If any adjective were to describe Jesus, it would be “unique.” His message was unique. The claims He made regarding Himself were unique. His miracles were unique. And the influence He has had on the world is unsurpassed by any other.

One very outstanding and undeniably unique aspect of Jesus’ life is that literally hundreds of detailed predictions and prophecies were made by ancient prophets many centuries before He was born—specific details regarding His birth, life, and death—that no mere mortal man could possibly have fulfilled. In the Old Testament, over 300 such predictions about the “Messiah” or “Savior” can be found. The discovery of hundreds of ancient Old Testament manuscripts by archaeologists has proven without a doubt that these prophecies were indeed written centuries before Jesus was born.

In 750 BC, the prophet Isaiah prophesied that “The Lord Himself shall give you a sign; behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.”¹ Seven and a half centuries later, a young virgin in Israel named Mary was visited by the angel Gabriel, who announced to her that she would bear a son who would be called Emmanuel, which means “God with us.”

The New Testament tells us that “Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, seeing I have not lain with any man?’ And the angel answered, ‘The Spirit of God shall come upon you, and the power of the Almighty shall overshadow you. Therefore that Holy One which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God.’”²

The very beginning of His life on earth—His conception and birth—were not only unique, but miraculous. Jesus of Nazareth fulfilled not only this prophecy, but specific predictions regarding His birth, life, ministry, death, and resurrection. Truly He was—and is—unique in every sense of the word!

Not one of the great recognized religious leaders—Moses, Buddha, Confucius, or Muhammad—ever claimed to be God. Some have been deified by their followers after they died, but none ever personally claimed to be deity. That is, with the exception of Jesus Christ, who claimed to be the Son of God, God manifest in human flesh. Unlike all the great philosophers, teachers, prophets, and gurus throughout the ages, some of whom taught about love and about God, Jesus claimed that He was God’s love for the world.

Although He was literally the ruler and king of the universe, He chose not to be born in a fine palace with the elite and powerful members of the governments of man in attendance. Instead, He was born in the humblest and most lowly of circumstances, on the dirty floor of a barn amidst the cattle and the donkeys, wrapped in rags and laid to rest in the animals’ feed trough.

When Jesus began His life’s work, He went about everywhere doing good, helping people, loving children, healing heartaches, strengthening tired bodies, and bringing God’s love to all whom He could. He not only preached His message, but He lived it among us as one of us. He not only ministered to people’s spiritual needs, but He spent a great deal of time ministering to their physical and material needs, miraculously healing them when they were sick, giving sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, cleansing lepers, raising the dead. He fed the crowds when they were hungry and did all He could to share His life and His love.

Just before He was arrested and crucified, knowing that He would soon be reunited with His heavenly Father, Jesus prayed: “And now, Father, glorify Me along with Yourself and restore Me to such majesty and honor in Your presence as I had with You before the world was made … for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”³

The Creator of all things willingly stripped Himself of His unlimited power and became a tiny helpless infant. The source of all wisdom and knowledge had to study and learn to read and write. He left His throne in heaven where innumerable angels worshipped Him, where all the forces of the universe were at His command, and He took the place of a servant—scoffed at, ridiculed, persecuted, and ultimately killed by the very ones He came to save.

The Bible tells us that Jesus is “a high priest who is touched with the feeling of our weaknesses, for He was in all points tempted the same way we are, yet without sin.”⁴ Imagine! The Son of God literally became a citizen of this world, a member of humanity, a man of flesh, in order to redeem us with His love, provide a tangible expression of His compassion and concern, and help us to understand His truth.

Jesus made many specific, unique claims regarding Himself. Here are a few examples in Jesus’ own words: “I am the bread of life; he that comes to Me shall never hunger, and he that believes on Me shall never thirst.”⁵

Deep in their hearts, most people know that something is missing in their lives. Outwardly they may seem to have everything—money, position, friends, all the things that are supposed to make them happy—yet they still have an emptiness, a hunger that nothing really satisfies. Jesus said that He is the bread of life who would fulfill our heart’s “hunger and thirst.” The loneliness, emptiness, and dissatisfaction so common to the human experience can be replaced with lasting peace and joy when we come to Him.

He also claims, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except by Me.”⁶ This is an extraordinary claim and is in fact the heart and soul of the writings of the New Testament—that Jesus alone is the way to eternal life, salvation, and union with God.

Jesus and His life and teachings are universal. God sent His Son to show all men and women, all nations, all people, what He Himself is like, to freely bring us His great love and truth. People will often ask, “But can’t you just speak of ‘God’s love’? Why must you insist on using Jesus’ name? Why is Christianity so exclusive?”

If Jesus is God’s Son, and God chose Jesus to reveal Himself to the world, then God Himself has insisted on it. These are God’s conditions: “Love Me, love My Son.” The Bible says, “All men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.”⁷

No mere mortal, whether prophet or teacher, sage or guru, could possibly do what Jesus did. Only God Himself in the person of His own Son could pay the price for our sins and take the punishment that we deserve. Only God could have done that in the person of His Son Jesus. This is why Jesus alone could rightfully proclaim Himself to be “the way, the truth, and the life.”

There is simply no other way to make peace with God. He will not accept any other terms, any other deal. In Jesus, the one thing necessary for the salvation and redemption of humankind happened in such a way that it never needs to happen again. It is for this reason that we can claim with certainty that for the greatest ailment of humanity, there is only one specific remedy—Jesus.

The historical facts regarding Jesus of Nazareth cannot be denied by anyone who seriously and open-mindedly examines the facts. The fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies given many centuries before He was born, describing His birth, His life, His work, His death, and His resurrection also cannot be denied by sincere seekers of truth.

There is also no reason to doubt that after His death, something incredible happened which transformed His tiny band of dejected followers into a company of witnesses whom all the persecution of Imperial Rome could not stop. Downhearted and discouraged, their Lord cruelly crucified by His enemies, those disciples thought their hopes had died and their dreams had been shattered. But three days after Jesus’ death, their faith was rekindled in such a dramatic manner that no force on earth was able to quench it.

The New Testament tells us that Jesus personally appeared to over 500 eyewitnesses after His resurrection.⁸ This was the resounding message that His first disciples boldly proclaimed throughout the world, “God raised Him from the dead.”⁹

And that lowly handful of His original followers went on to tell the entire world the Good News that God not only sent His Son into the world to teach us His truth and show us His love, but also that Jesus suffered death for our sake, and then rose from the grave. So that we who know and believe on Him never need to fear death again, for we are saved and on our way to heaven, thanks to Jesus.

Originally published May 1988. Adapted and republished April 2021.
Read by Jon Marc.

By Dennis Edwards

A friend and I have been talking about the uneasiness we feel with all that is taking place in the world right now, and the questions that can come with that, such as: Is the end near? Will the endtime prophecies be fulfilled in our lifetime? What does God want me to do? Are my family and I where God wants us to be? If not, where do we go? We wish we could just fly away to some secret place and find peace and quiet from the storms of life that seem to be roaring all around us.

When we start having those types of thoughts, worries, and anxieties, the best thing to do is to stop and seek God. Seek God in His Word. Seek God in praise and song. Seek God in desperate prayer. He promises to answer when we seek Him with all our heart.

David in the Psalms wrote, My heart is sore pained within me: and the terrors of death are fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror has overwhelmed me. And I said, Oh that I had wings like a dove! For then would I fly away, and be at rest. Lo, then would I wander far off, and remain in the wilderness.¹

But what did David do in this situation of distress? Did he just stay there worried? No, he sought refuge in prayer. As for me, I will call upon God; and the Lord shall save me. Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray, and cry aloud: and he shall hear my voice.²

David finishes on a positive note, and we should, too. He wrote, [God has] delivered my soul in peace from the battle that was against me. … Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.³

God promises in His Word to be the refuge that we seek. In Isaiah we read, For thou has been a strength to the poor, a strength to the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shadow from the heat.⁴

So we indeed can find the peace of heart and mind we seek by seeking God and finding Him. We need to keep our minds on Him. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.⁵

The trouble is that the enemy of our soul tries to get our minds on the winds and waves of the moment and forget that we have God on our side. Luke recorded Jesus’ words about the last days:

And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth.⁶

Those words may very well be describing the state of the world today with the great uncertainty of tomorrow. Suicide and domestic violence have increased in these days of anxiety. What are we as Christians supposed to do? How shall we walk? How are we to react?

Again, if we look to God’s Word for guidance, we can find many passages that offer counsel and comfort and strength. Let us look at a few. The first command that God gave Moses and Joshua as they began the conquest of the Promised Land, a land full of giants and nations stronger than the Israelites, was:

Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the Lord thy God, he it is that does go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee.⁷ And the Lord, he it is that does go with thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.⁸

The Lord told them not to be discouraged, not to be dismayed, not to have fear, but to be strong and of good courage, to be brave, because the Lord would be with them whithersoever they went. God knows that fear incapacitates us. Fear is the opposite of faith and stops us from trusting God and His care for us.

Because fear has torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.⁹ For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.¹⁰

God wants us to overcome fear through faith. God wants to direct us. He wants to use us to our capacity. Our job is to seek Him diligently and desperately to know what He would have us do. And when fear and worry enter in, we can follow David’s example:

What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.¹¹

Using praise in times of anxiety and trouble, coupled with spending time in God’s Word, will help to bring us the victory and the clarity of mind and heart we seek. God will be our refuge. Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusts in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.¹²

We don’t know how long it will be “until these calamities be overpast,” but God has promised to be with us. He has promised to be a shelter in the time of storm. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee. For I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel, thy Savior. … Fear not: for I am with thee.¹³

One night the disciples traveled with Jesus on the Sea of Galilee. A storm broke out, and the vessel was about to be overcome with the waves and sea roaring. The disciples went and woke up Jesus, who was asleep in the rear of the boat. Jesus said to the sea, “Peace, be still.” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto them, Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?¹⁴

Let us draw nigh to God in full assurance of faith that He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to His power that works in us.¹⁵ If God be for us, who can be against us?¹⁶ As David has said, “In God have I put my trust, I will not be afraid,”¹⁷ for He will uphold me with the right hand of His righteousness.¹⁸

A compilation

Harmony in a world as racked by tension, strife, prejudice, and violence as the one we live in today? Impossible, you might think.

What if a decree was made that all people of every country, race, ethnicity, and creed were to respect everyone else, regardless of their differences? Unfortunately, even if someone had the authority to issue such a mandate, it would never work. Simply put, righteousness cannot be legislated.

So how can prejudice, fear, and distrust be overcome when these things have been ingrained in humankind for centuries? The answer can be summed up in one simple word: love!

The Bible says, “Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins.”¹ If you hate somebody, your interactions with them are likely to breed disagreement and conflict. But if you love them with God’s love, even if they have wronged you, it’s possible to forgive them.

This may sound like a noble aspiration, and realistically, how many people are capable of releasing resentment, hatred, fear, or other deep-seated negative attitudes they may harbor toward individuals or entire groups of people? Most of us lack the resolve and emotional wherewithal to do that.

The good news is that despite our limited human resources, it is still possible for us to love others, regardless of their or our past or background. The key to such love comes from the ultimate source of love, God Himself. The Bible tells us that “God is love.”² He is the all-knowing and all-powerful Creator of the universe who brought us all into being.

To show us what He is like, He came down to our level by sending His own Son to earth in the form of a man, Jesus Christ. Jesus’ entire ministry was one of love and truth. He experienced human suffering and had great compassion on the people as He ministered to their spiritual and physical needs. He became one of us.

He taught that all the laws of God depend on one great commandment: to love. Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”³

An expert in religion overheard Jesus teaching this and publicly challenged Him by asking, “Who then is my neighbor?” Jesus responded with the story of the Good Samaritan, in which He clearly showed that our neighbor is anyone who needs our help, regardless of their race, creed, ethnicity, or nationality.⁴ We can learn to love our neighbors and do our part to bring peace to the world by asking God to give us His love for others.

The Bible says of Jesus, “He Himself is our peace, who has made both [different races] one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation.”⁵ The love of God is what brings genuine peace and mutual respect between us.

“Man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”⁶ And when we align our lives with God’s vision for humanity, we too can look past the differences in other people to see their worth and dignity as unique individuals created in the image of God.

Even when fear, prejudice, and hatred have been ingrained for years, the wonderful love of God can wash it away! Once you personally know that God loves and forgives you, it becomes much easier to love and forgive others. You can then “be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God forgave you.”⁷

When you open your heart to Jesus, He can free you from the bondage of hatred and ill will toward others. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”⁸

What a wonderful world it could be if we were all race-unconscious, where the only thing we saw when we looked on a person of another ethnic background was God’s love! It is possible, in Jesus, where “there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither slave or free, there is neither male nor female; for you all are one in Christ Jesus.”⁹—The Family International

God loves all people equally

God’s great love and grace reaches out to all His creations, and He didn’t make some that He loved less and others that He loved more. He didn’t label people of one race, ethnicity, or culture as the most favored, and the rest as less so.

As Christians, we are called to love all people regardless of their background, social standing, or any other characteristic. It is our belief that Jesus died and gave His life for all humankind. He has shown the greatest love possible by dying for each of us.

The fact of the matter is that God loves all humankind equally, and He gave His Son for each one. The Bible tells us that “greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”¹⁰ What greater love is there than that?

The blessings and rewards that He bestows upon His children who have entered into a relationship with Him should be distinguished from the love that God has for all His creations and the great yearning He has that they would all come to repentance and all be able to enjoy Him and His heavenly kingdom forever. Jesus died for all His creations, and He wishes that all—each one of them—would come to repentance and salvation. He is not willing that any person should perish, no matter who they are or what their sins are.¹¹

Jesus said, “As My Father has sent Me, even so send I you.”¹² His Word says, “Christ left us an example, that we should follow His steps.”¹³—Maria Fontaine

Published on Anchor March 2021. Read by Jon Marc.

By David Brandt Berg

I remember as a boy a mud bank piled up in a bay by the dredges which were deepening the channel, and soon these mud banks were turned into little islands covered with grass and plants and flowers and trees. Yet it seemed that no one lived there but the birds.

When I asked my father how all that vegetation got there where no man had ever set foot, he said, “The wind and the birds, my son, the wind and the birds.” Then he explained how God made some seeds so small and light they could be carried by the wind to faraway places, and others, a little larger and heavier, by the birds and animals in their droppings to populate other places with the plants so necessary for man’s environment and existence.

So every time I looked at those new little islands with their new little plants and trees I marveled at the wisdom of God, for this is God’s first principle and His first commandment to His whole creation in the very first chapter of the first great history ever written. “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.”¹ The old is constantly dying, so the new and the young must be continually reproduced and constantly growing to have a living new world day by day. “For except a seed fall into the ground and die, it abides alone. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit.”²

The blossoms must fade, wither, and die so that their seeds might fall and be scattered or blow or be carried and planted on new ground to die there to themselves that a new plant might be born, springing forth from the death of the old and multiplying its members manyfold. This is God’s principle of life and growth and strength and reproduction and multiplication throughout nature.

The old must give way to the new, and the parents must suffer pain, separation, and even death for their young that all things might be recreated and reproduced to repopulate the earth day after day. Even the earth itself must die one day that it may give birth to a brand-new world. So all things must come to an end sometime except that which is eternal. All things must die sooner or later that others may live.

Birds must build nests for a while that they may lay their eggs and bear their young. But soon the new little fledglings must be pushed out of the nest to fly on their own and fend for themselves to build new nests to bear more birds to fly away and build more nests to bear more birds, ad infinitum. Each time the nest must be deserted and the fledglings be scattered abroad to build birds’ nests elsewhere.

But some don’t want to leave the nest—they simply want to build a bigger nest in which they can concentrate more baby birds to have one big baby bird choir all in one place all singing gloriously together for the entertainment of those nearby while the rest of the world is dying to hear the music.

God has asked His children to disperse throughout all the world instead of bunching up in bursting barns. Jesus said, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”³ Many times throughout history God has had to scatter His own people when they refused to go. Since the beginning of time this, too, has been God’s way: If you refuse to leave the nest, the nest is eventually blown away. If you refuse to share the contents of the barn, the barn will one day be torn down. If your blossom refuses to die to scatter its seed, it is plucked apart by the birds and carried far away.

Let’s not be like the man in the Bible who wanted to build bigger barns to hold more grain instead of scattering it abroad to the hungry and starving multitudes. Or like the flowers in our garden that want to remain big and bright and showy instead of fading, losing their petals, and going to seed, which is being scattered by the birds to grow new flowers in other places, the fruit of the bloom and its original purpose in the first place.

The blooms must die that others may live. That is their fruit and method of multiplication, their true intent and purpose in existing at all, in order that they might produce seed or fruit that will perpetuate the entire plant to reproduce more plants, more seeds, more fruit.

Let’s be like the birds, who have been plucking away the showy petals to get at the seeds with which they fly away, scattering them abroad in their droppings so that even new islands and the desolate places are soon covered with new verdure, new flowers, new plants, new trees and new fruit with new seed from the same.

God uses the weak things to confound the mighty, the foolish things to bring to naught the wisdom of the wise, and the things that are not or seemingly nothing to bring to naught the things that are, or that think they are. For it is the base things and the things which are despised of the world which God has chosen, like you and me.⁴ He has called and ordained us to be His newsboys and girls who are willing to go into all the world and proclaim the good news to all people!

Originally published October 1974. Adapted and republished March 2021.
Read by Jerry Paladino.

By Maria Fontaine

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”¹ His life-changing power is the same as ever, and it is available to all those who have put their faith in Him. If we avail ourselves of His promises, we can all experience His power to transform lives—both ours and the people whom we share the gospel with.

It is as we continue to become more immersed in Jesus and His Word, earnestly wanting His best and asking Him to work in our lives day by day, that we grow deeper in Him and truly become the new people He wants to make us.² Our old mindsets pass away as we are transformed by the renewing of our minds.³

The Lord doesn’t make one big change in us at the time of our salvation, and that’s all. He continues to work in our lives to transform and perfect us—if we do our part and allow Him to “perfect the good work He has begun in us” and “bring it to completion.”⁴ Our part includes asking for Him to work in our hearts and lives. His Word tells us that if we ask, we will receive,⁵ and that He “gives generously to all without reproach.”⁶

But we are also told to ask in faith. “Ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.”⁷ If we’re wavering in our faith, then of course we’re not trusting the Lord. We have to place our focus on the Lord and His Word, and trust His promise to fulfill His purpose in our lives and perfect that which concerns us.⁸

The Lord says He’ll keep us in perfect peace if our mind is focused on Him and we set our affections on things above.⁹ The psalmist David said, “My heart is steadfast, O God.”¹⁰ If our mind is focused on Him, our heart is steadfast on Him, and our affections are set on things above, then we’re going to be firmly connected to Him in spite of the real obstacles, trials of our faith, and seemingly insurmountable challenges we may face.

It is possible to live above worry and fear and discouragement! Of course, you’re still going to be tempted to worry or fear, but as long as you’re fighting it in your spirit and mind, and asking the Lord for His perfect peace to fill your heart and mind, you’re bound to overcome it. Memorizing a few key scriptures and quoting them to yourself at those times increases your faith and helps to replace fear and worry with faith.

You have to choose to not allow fear, worry, discouragement or anxiety to take root in your heart and mind. You can’t help but have negative thoughts sometimes, and you can’t help but have feelings of depression sometimes. But you don’t have to allow them to have dominion over you.¹¹

As Christians, we are not supposed to operate according to our feelings; we are supposed to operate by fact—faith in the facts according to God’s Word. We walk by faith and not by sight, or by feelings.¹² So when you are besieged with negative feelings of any kind, you have to take a stand of faith and overpower them with God’s Word.

If we allow ourselves to become overwhelmed with discouragement or worry or anxiety, we miss the offer of the Lord’s mercy, help, faith, and grace, as well as the Lord’s miraculous power that can not only free us from these negative feelings but also transform us in the process. This is why we are told to “Count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”¹³

When we are too focused on the circumstances and problems we are facing, then we can’t see the Lord’s presence anymore and how He is working in the situation, because we’re too busy looking at the mountains of obstacles! But the Lord says if we have our eyes on Him and have just a little faith, no larger than a mustard seed, we can say to the mountain, “Be removed!” and it will be cast into the sea.¹⁴

Fears, worries, and discouragement can seem like mountains looming larger than life, but for us as Christians, we have been given His promises in His Word and the power of His Spirit to overcome these.

We also have to remind ourselves constantly that no matter what we are facing, He knows best, that He does all things well, and that His priorities are often different and much more long-term and “big picture” than ours. Living the Christian life requires faith and trust, because we’re not in control—Jesus is.

Even when we claim His awesome promises—promises like, “Whatever you ask the Father in My name He [will] give you,”¹⁵ and “If you have faith, nothing will be impossible for you”¹⁶—we still have to remember that we’re not the ones calling the shots. We’re not the ones with the bird’s-eye view of the past, present, future, and master plan for eternity. It is His will that must be done.

It’s so important to keep an attitude of trust in Him, as otherwise we can struggle with so many questions when things don’t turn out the way we were hoping or the way we prayed they would. There is so much in the Bible on this topic, as well as throughout the writings of men and women of faith from the past 2,000 years, and of course Jesus can also still speak to our hearts today. Every now and then it’s good to stop and reflect on the various reasons why Jesus works the way He does, why things don’t always turn out the way we’d like, why every prayer isn’t answered in the manner we had hoped, and why life is sometimes harder than we think it should be.

If you don’t strengthen your faith, life can seem pretty hard for no good reason. When that happens, you can start to feel that it’s your fault, that you must be doing something wrong, that Jesus must be displeased with you because He isn’t answering your prayers as you want Him to. But the more you study God’s Word, the more your faith will grow.¹⁷

Whenever things are rough, whenever you feel that they’re not turning out the way you’d hoped, when you feel your prayers aren’t being answered, when the trials of life are a little too much to bear, when your faith is under attack, when you’re feeling weary and aren’t sure if you can take much more, climb up onto the rock-solid foundation God has provided for your faith through His many promises and encouraging words, and rest in that safe haven.

Take comfort also in the fact that this battle isn’t uniquely yours. It’s one that every Christian of all time has had to reckon with, and the answer is the same today as it has ever been—trust in God and His wonderful ways. Encourage yourself in God’s Word and relax in the comfort of knowing that Jesus has everything in His hands. Rest in Jesus’ arms, let Him shield you and support you, and trust that in God’s time the storm will pass.

Compiled from the writings of Maria Fontaine. Adapted and republished
February 2021. Read by Carol Andrews.

A compilation

“Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches, but let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know Me.”—Jeremiah 9:23–24

If any Jew had any reason to boast for having the most outstanding résumé in terms of family background, education, and occupation, we would have to say it is Paul. He was circumcised on the eighth day, from the tribe of Benjamin, where he was a Hebrew of Hebrews. Although he lived in Tarsus and Seleucia, he was educated under Gamaliel, a famous Jewish teacher of the day, and learned to be proficient in the Hebrew language and scriptures. He studied the law and was a Pharisee with such great zeal that he persecuted the Christian church.

After stating all his qualities, Paul tells us, “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…”¹ We see the word Paul repeats throughout this verse is “loss.” Soberly, he considers all his credentials and qualifications as loss and rubbish.

Paul gave everything up so “that [he] may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of [his] own that comes from the law.”² Paul’s impressive résumé catalogued his own righteousness, but righteousness that comes from God has nothing to do with that. Paul reminds us that our righteousness comes “through faith in Christ”—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.³ This is not a produced righteousness, but a received righteousness.

If our relationship with God is based on what we did, some of us would have an advantage over others because some are more disciplined and self-confident than others. But the marvelous thing is that the weaker we know ourselves to be and the less confident we are in ourselves, the more likely we are going to put our confidence exclusively in God and say, “This is not what I do for You, but what You do for me.”

No matter how strong our résumé is, our righteousness does not derive from what we do for God… When we stop trying to justify ourselves through our qualifications and start believing in faith that our righteousness is found in Christ, even when we consider everything we have in life as loss, we have gained the most precious treasure—to be found in Him.—Brett McBride

The treasure that turns treasures to garbage

Paul … does not simply say that compared to Christ, legal achievements are garbage; he is more specific. He says that what is superior to moral and religious achievements is (1) knowing Christ, (2) gaining Christ, and (3) being found in Christ.

1. Knowing Christ. “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”⁴ “Knowing” here is not just knowing the fact that Jesus is Lord. It is the kind of knowing that prompts the phrase “my Lord”! He knows the supreme Lord of the universe⁵ as his Lord. So there are two aspects to Paul’s passion for Christ here. One is the rational and relational knowledge of the greatest person in the universe. Paul’s mind and heart are full of Christ. The other is that he belongs to Christ as subject to the all-ruling, all-protecting Lord. This is better than being at the top of any human heap.

2. Gaining Christ. “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.”⁶ “Gain” means get all that Christ is for us in heaven, not just on earth. Paul has already said, “To live is Christ and to die is gain,”⁷ because “to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.”⁸ … So it is clear that part of what makes human achievement a pile of garbage compared to Christ is that soon (and very soon!) he is going to meet the king—in a way far more full and intimate and stunning and satisfying than anything he has known here. And he has known so much of Christ here that the garbage verdict has been rendered on that alone.

3. Being found in Christ. “. . . and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”⁹ Paul was overwhelmed by the fact that “in Christ”—that is, united to Christ by faith alone—he possessed a righteousness that was infinitely better than all his legal achievements could ever be. Paul knew he needed a righteous life in order to be accepted by God and in order to enjoy all the glories of Christ forever. He did not have such a righteousness in himself. He needed the free gift of righteousness from God himself. God gave it to him in Christ.

Therefore Jesus Christ was both the treasure he cherished and the one who provided the right to have the treasure. … Christ alone is the ground of our acceptance with God and the goal of our heart’s desire. He is our righteousness and our reward. Compared to him (knowing him, gaining him, being found in him), all else is garbage.—John Piper¹⁰

The eternal things that matter

Our true citizenship isn’t on earth. God’s Word says, “But what things were gain to me, these I counted loss for Christ.” Paul was saying that all things were just nothing, he counted them loss! They weren’t worth anything compared to what he received in the Lord Jesus Christ. “Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ… that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.”¹¹

Then Paul goes on to say, “For our citizenship is in heaven.”¹² Our attitude as a citizen of heaven is to be detached from this world, not attached to it. Not to be conformed to this world, though we be well informed in some ways, but we are to be transformed by our living in the things that are eternal, and in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, and living upon His Word.¹³

We must have a deep realization that we are living for eternity and not for time, and our heavenly citizenship can never be put in a secondary place. There never was a day when spiritual matters could be so easily put in a second place, and the things of time can consume our thoughts and our energies. We can’t thoughtlessly give ourselves to the temporal because we would be defeated mentally and spiritually by all the hubbub that surrounds us.

If we could but see the events of life framed in the ultimate results that they lead to, what a change there would be in our lives and in our sense of values! God help us that we might keep the divine perspective clear and not allow ourselves to become so occupied with the temporal that we have little time for things eternal.

God’s Word says in Colossians, “Ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God,” and “Set not your affections upon the things on earth, but on the things that are above.”¹⁴ And Hebrews 13:14 states, “We have here no continuing city, but we look for one to come.”

Can you trust that in the Lord Jesus Christ you can have a supply of His strength and His power and His wisdom, to play an active role in His service and in the affairs of the heavenly kingdom where your real citizenship is?—Virginia Brandt Berg

Published on Anchor February 2021. Read by Jon Marc. Music by Michael Dooley.

Words from Jesus

My dear love, thank you for serving Me. Thank you for loving Me. Thank you for being Mine.

I want to take this time to thank you for all you give Me. I often ask you to praise Me, both because it makes Me happy and because it’s good for your spirit. But now I want to give you some praise. I want to let you know how I love you and how thankful I am for your sticking with Me even when the going has gotten rough.

Please know that I will always be with you. Sometimes you have a hard time seeing My presence when you are in the midst of your troubles. But if you will hold on to your faith in Me, My love will pour over you and fill you with comfort and hope that will strengthen you to face any trouble, pain, stress, and all the little things that clutter your life and make it less than beautiful. My love is greater than all these and will abide with you in all things.

You have manifested your love for Me and I will continue to show My love for you. Remember that no matter what happens, no matter how badly you think you may have failed Me or fallen short, I love you. That will never change, no matter what. That is a sure fact that you can hold on to, come hell or high water. I love you. And because I love you, you can know that everything will be okay.

*

Come, sit at My side. I know you feel unworthy; I know you feel dirty in comparison to the beauty you sense here in My presence. But come, and let My Word wash you clean. As I speak to you My words of love and tenderness, every spot and stain is washed away, every ache is healed and soothed, every wound is tended to, and every tear is wiped away. Come, let Me take you and whisk you away in the spirit to sit by My side as I tell you of My love. All else fades from sight, for the glory and beauty of what is before you in My heavenly realm.

The love that we share cannot be measured. It is so vast, so wonderful, so completely beyond description! Any of My children who love Me and desire My presence can draw close to Me, at any time of day or night. When you get quiet and reach out to Me in prayer and communion, you are entering My heavenly realm and partaking of the peace and rewards of My Spirit. Here there is total peace, rest, and love.

When you seek Me in spirit and join Me in My heavenly realm, it helps to take your mind off of the cares of your world and brings things into perspective. Here, in the presence of My majesty, you realize again how perfectly I am in control. So come, My sweet one. Come often to our precious place of communion.

*

You have significance simply because I love you. You are My beloved child. That is your identity. Don’t measure your value in terms of how successful you are or what roles you play. You are valuable because I have declared you precious and honored.

When life feels mundane and you are caught up in laundry, work, or cooking, it’s easy to doubt your importance in My Kingdom. Nothing could be further from the truth. When feelings of insignificance torment you, come and praise Me. As you worship Me, your identity becomes more firmly rooted in Me rather than in who you know or what you do.

Thank Me for the price I paid for you. You are worth everything to Me. When you praise Me, you are more able to let go of worries about your worth and efforts to try to prove yourself. Always remember that you are a royal priest or priestess with a divine calling in My Kingdom. It doesn’t get any better than that!¹

*

Your strength and your faith are indeed beautiful in My sight. When you feel you cannot go on one step further, when your world seems to be caving in on you and the difficulty almost seems too great, you look to Me. You have faith that I will slip My hands underneath you and carry you over the raging waters. You look to Me as a young child looks to her father, full of trust that He will care for her, that He will not let anything happen to her that would not work together for good for her. This faith that I will lift you up over the threatening waves and wind is pleasing in My sight.

I cradle you, My darling, within the safety of My hands. And though you can see the storm raging about you, it cannot touch you, because you are protected on all sides, hallowed in My loving hands, cared for as a priceless gem, one that cannot be replaced, and therefore, one that the Master never takes His eyes off of.

I will continue to renew your spirit, to strengthen your body, and to lighten your heart.

*

(Prayer:) Father, I belong to You. I am the apple of Your eye, Your beloved child. Thank You that You know all my fears, worries and imperfections, yet You call me Your beloved. It’s not what I do, but what Christ did for me. There is no greater love than that. In Jesus’ name, Amen.²

Published on Anchor February 2021. Read by Jerry Paladino.
Music by Michael Dooley.

By David Brandt Berg

For three years I taught school, about the only kind of job open for the talents and education and idealism of an unemployed preacher. I took a junior high school class that no one else had been able to conquer and which had caused three other teachers to quit, and God helped me to learn how to make them love both me and the Lord. It was a tough fight, but I finally won, and when I left, the kids actually wept to see me go. But during those days I learned what the youth of that day was all about and its many problems. I became determined to do my part to save tomorrow’s youth from drugs, crime, and violence.

I showed my own children how to love God and their fellow man by filling our home with the poor, the needy, the helpless, and the unloved, restoring their faith in God and teaching them how to live for others. We shared what we had, and I did what I could, and taught others to do the same, and it worked. True voluntary genuine unselfish Christian sharing worked on a small scale, with charity beginning at home. The early church was our ideal and example, and it worked for us just like it did for them! Praise God!

During those years, we had taken three months off to take the Soul Clinic personal witnessing course under its founder, Fred Jordan, and his teachers, Lee Shelley, Charles Shepherd, Abe Schneider, and Lottie Snyder, and we owe much to them and their modern interpretation and application of the principles of the New Testament, as well as their insistence that the New Testament church could again live like the Acts of the Apostles, if the commandments of Christ were truly obeyed and Christians would forsake all to follow Jesus and go into all the world to preach the gospel to every creature, by faith with the love of Jesus and living in the simple way His first disciples did. And it worked!

However, we also learned from their mistakes. Except for his personal TV show, which I booked on over 300 TV stations and over 1,100 radio stations for about 13 years, Fred’s great Soul Clinic work did not last, except in the hearts and lives of those he had trained, like me. When a crisis arose in his work, most of his students and missionaries left him and he had little left but his TV show, his family, a handful of missionaries, and empty buildings.

It was not until 1968 that I and my small family discovered exactly what God wanted us to do. It had taken me 49 years to find my life’s work. And we found it among the hippies of Huntington Beach. They had tried everything, and it hadn’t satisfied; so they were earnestly searching for the answers—the truth, love, and peace that they knew must exist somewhere.

I felt that I and my generation were responsible for their plight. The anti-God philosophy of Darwinist evolution had sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind in its children. A society with no God has no principles, no authority, no rules, and no laws that are valid, no right or wrong, and every man is left to do that which is right in his own eyes. Chaos and anarchy can result, with its pitiful products living like animals, dog-eat-dog, and to hell with the hindmost.

When my children came to this lost generation with the loving message of God in Jesus and His Word, and tuned to the language of their music, many of them were more than happy to receive them. They were ready for revolution and found its greatest fulfillment in the “Revolution for Jesus!”

Teen Challenge, which was not having much success with the hippies, with only two churchlike meetings a week, soon turned their club over to us, as we were packing hippies in to capacity the other five nights of the week. They were getting saved, filled with His Spirit, and set on fire by His Word to go out into the highways and hedges and compel others of their friends to enter into the kingdom of God. And the Jesus Revolution began to roll like a mighty wave from these humble beginnings! Hallelujah!

There in the tiny Light Club, a hippie hangout of Huntington Beach, we were the first to proclaim it a “revolution,” a term which became accepted and popular. Each Sunday morning we would go to a different church and try to sit together wherever we could find room, which was usually the front seats, which are normally vacant in most churches, although in some of the more crowded churches we were compelled to sit on the floor. In most cases, we would join enthusiastically in the singing, listen attentively to the sermon, and encourage the preacher with our amens, and then mix in friendly fashion, getting acquainted with the church folks after the meeting.

Most pastors liked it, welcomed us publicly, and received us with open arms, commending us for coming, exhorting us to keep up our good work with the young people, and even inviting us back to conduct services for them, giving them a sample of our music and testimonies. Our welcome was usually particularly warm in the larger, more liberal churches, but sometimes a little fearful in the more conservative ones.

However, as usual, only bad news makes news, and the two or three churches where we were not only not well received but asked to leave or even cast out with physical violence—these were the occasions that received the most newspaper publicity and which gave us an undeserved bad reputation with some people. In an Episcopalian church, one of our boys shouted out unwisely during the communion, which of course stunned the congregation, but the members kept their cool, considering the childish source, and were still friendly afterward. But this mild incident got the lurid headline “Howling Hippies Disrupt Church,” which served to frighten some other churches about having us.

In the spring of 1969, we went to Tucson for the summer, establishing a sort of hippie church in good Brother Ware’s former church building, known as the Lighthouse. Here we grew and prospered from about 50 to about 75 full-time witnessing disciples, until we left there in four separate teams to cross the country with the gospel of the good news of God’s love for the youth of the nation as far south as Miami, Florida, and as far north as Montreal, Canada. Coffeehouses were established in Texas, Florida, and Quebec. The Jesus Revolution was not yet nationally known, understood, or popular, but it was growing and soon to be in headlines throughout the world!

We all traveled across the nation on our first big faith trip together, and we all finally arrived safe and sound 3,000 miles away at dear Dr. Martin’s campground at Laurentide near Montreal. Here we had our first official convention and organized as a definite religious body, ordaining about 50 bishops, elders, deacons, deaconesses, etc., to lead the work of reaching the youth of the world with the love of Jesus!

We always made news, which helped get out God’s message of warning to the world. In fact, we were first called the Children of God by a local newsman in Camden, New Jersey, who found us camped behind a truck stop and whose curiosity we had aroused. We had never before heard of any religious group outside of the Bible being called by the name “Children of God” as a distinct religious body or denomination, so God must have been saving the name for us!

Originally published June 1972. Adapted and republished February 2021.
Read by Simon Peterson.

By Andy Bannister

The following Short Answers to Big Questions are part of a series produced to provide short Christian responses to the big questions people raise, demonstrating that hope in hard times can only be found in the Christian faith.

How can I know the presence of God in dark times?

All of us will face suffering at some point in our lives; all of us will go through difficult times. In this Short Answers video, Dr. Andy Bannister shows how Christianity offers the most powerful resources not so much to answer the question of suffering (we have covered that in other films), but for living through and coping with suffering. Whether you’re experiencing suffering yourself or seeking to help somebody who is, Andy shows why the hope, peace, and comfort that Jesus offers can be life-transforming.

Run time for this video is 5:05 minutes.

A compilation

God works through incredibly flawed people. God could have chosen to only work through people who have their acts together, but he wouldn’t get much done that way. The fact is, we are all broken. “We who have this spiritual treasure are like common clay pots, in order to show that the supreme power belongs to God, not to us.”¹

God uses weak people to show his power. God chose to put his glory in clay pots. If you drop a clay pot, it will break—just like you and me. We’re breakable spiritually, physically, and emotionally.

The history of the church is filled with examples of how God works through hurt and broken people. … God puts his greatest gifts in “common clay containers” so he gets the credit. God did this over and over again in the Bible, even before he established his church.

Hebrews 11:32–34 says, “I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength.”²

I love that final phrase—“whose weakness was turned to strength.”

That’s what God does with us; He takes our weakness and turns it into a strength.

The Bible describes Gideon as a “mighty man of valor,” yet he was a coward who hid in a winepress when the angel appeared to him in Judges 6:11–12.³ He was the youngest kid, from the weakest family, and in the weakest tribe. But God made him strong.

Peter was anything but stable. He was “Mr. Impulsive” throughout the Gospels, but Jesus told him, “You’re a rock!” He turned Peter into a rock of stability for the early church.

David, an adulterer and murderer, was called “a man after [God’s] own heart.”⁴

Abraham is called the “father of faith,” but he had so little faith that he twice told his wife to lie in order to save his own life.

Hudson Taylor, a British missionary to China in the 19^th century, once said, “All God’s giants have been weak people.” You can see the truth of that statement throughout the Bible. You can see it in the lives of the great giants of church history. God loves to use weak people to fulfill his will.—Rick Warren⁵

*

God says in His Word, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”⁶ 1 Corinthians 1:27 says, “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and the weak things to confound the mighty.”

He says, “When I am weak, then am I strong.”⁷ Now this is all contrary to human logic and natural expectations, but God is showing that His way of doing things is quite contrary to human logic and natural expectations.

In Isaiah 27:5, God says, “Take hold of my strength.” And Isaiah 49:5 says, “My God shall be my strength.”

The wise Christian will say, “I have no strength of my own. I can’t do these things alone; I have to have God’s strength and help. I must have God on my side.” Then, because of your utter dependence on God, the Lord will come to your aid.

He’ll back you with all the resources of heaven, and the scripture is then fulfilled, “My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

This is why along the highway of life, the most beautiful souls you’ll ever meet, the most dedicated Christians, are those that have learned this lesson, and they’ve learned it many times in great suffering and weakness. They have known their lack, felt their weakness, and knew that their only help was from the Lord.

They knew they would have to reach beyond all human strength and depend utterly upon the strength of their God. Thus they become empty of self and humble. It is of them that God says then: “My strength is made perfect in weakness.”—Virginia Brandt Berg

*

As the apostle Paul begins to close his letter to the Ephesian church, he makes this appeal: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.”⁸ The word translated “be strong” here actually means “be strengthened,” as rendered in the New English Translation: “Finally, be strengthened in the Lord and in the strength of his power.”

Jesus said, “Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”⁹

The believer’s empowerment comes from being in Jesus. Apart from Him, we can do nothing, but in Christ we have at our disposal all the strength of His might. Through the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, the Lord’s power makes us able or capable. He strengthens us with everything we need for any task.

True Christian strength comes from recognizing our utter dependence on God. This is what Paul meant when he wrote, “I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me.”¹⁰

Often we are strongest in the Lord when we operate in the realm of human weakness. God allowed Satan to afflict Paul, but God’s purpose was to keep Paul humble and to demonstrate His power in his life: “But [Jesus] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”¹¹ The power of Christ in the Christian’s life can be defined as “power in weakness,” for the Lord’s grace is [found through] recognition of our weakness.

Throughout the Bible, God delights in demonstrating His power in situations where human strength is lacking.¹² When we are weak in ourselves, we are strong in the Lord because God’s strength becomes evident: “For he was crucified in weakness, but he lives by the power of God. For we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by God’s power.”¹³—From gotquestions.org¹⁴

*

Some people are used to having so much natural strength and drive that when they don’t have it, it really gets them down. But that can be the very thing that stands in the way of the Lord showing His strength! That’s why the Lord had Paul say, “When I am weak, then I am strong. For His strength is made perfect in weakness.”¹⁵

It takes strength to try to be good, act good, and look good, whereas this kind of strength is strictly from the Lord. You just have to accept it from the Lord. It’s like salvation; there’s nothing you can do for it except to receive it by faith. Let go and let God!—David Brandt Berg

Published on Anchor February 2021. Read by Simon Peterson.
Music by Michael Dooley.

Words from Jesus

“The same Lord is Lord of all, and gives richly to all who call on Him, for, ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How then can they call on the One in whom they have not believed? And how can they believe in the One of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone to preach?”—Romans 10:12–14

When you look out to this needy world, doesn’t your heart break for those who have not heard of Me? I look down upon this world, and again I weep for My lost and lonely children, scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. There are so many in the world dying without ever learning the truth or experiencing true love.

How beautiful are the feet of them who preach the gospel, who bring good tidings to the poor!¹ My children are called to play a role in the thrilling experience of leading souls to Me and bringing people into My kingdom. Instead of living a life focused around self and the everyday routine of life, those who follow Me have tremendous wealth of the kind that matters, and they have the pearl of great price to share with others.

There are so many who believe that young people in these times have no ideals or causes, and nothing to do but to live for themselves. I call all My disciples to share the truth with these young ones, to show them something real, something genuine. Show them that I am the way, the truth, and the life, and they can have that truth and experience My love and know that this is the answer to their questions and the alternative to the confusion of the modern world.

You must work My works while it is still day, for the night comes when no man can work. Please be My hands to comfort every cold and lonely person that you can. Be My feet for those who don’t have the strength to stand. Be My eyes, My ears, and My mouth to those who feel abandoned and lost and are dying in this world without hope.

Do your part to ensure that the people I bring into your sphere of influence won’t leave this life without hearing of My love, without having the opportunity to know the truth that can set them free. The harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are always few. Please be one of My laborers in this great harvest!

The only hope for an aching planet

How can anyone know of Me unless someone shares the Good News with them? Pray, number one, first and foremost, with all your heart for the lost. Pray as I prayed on earth. I spent nights praying to My Father, pleading for the salvation of those in the world and for their pain to be alleviated. Prayer is a union of your spirit and Mine. It is unseen, but it is fortitude. It is quiet, yet in its silence it is all-encompassing. The fruit of our union in prayer is service.

As you love Me and worship Me, give your heart, soul, and mind to Me. I will give you the power and the counsel and the guidance to be My voice, My love and truth to others. You’ll have the assurance that I am with you regardless of how effective you feel your efforts are and regardless of the circumstances.

My first disciples lived in My presence. They prayed with Me. They failed and got back up. They were instructed to tarry, so they tarried, and they were endued with power from on high. In obedience, they went out, and as they went, their lives were a testimony of Me. They went through martyrdom. They lived Me and breathed Me. Paul’s statement spoke to who they were: “I die daily.”²

Be willing to die daily to self to live for Me and others! Be prepared to encounter hardships, to be able to endure temptation, to create a life of prayer, and also to receive many sheaves, so that when you enter My kingdom there will be many to greet you as a result of your fruitful life! Be like a tree planted by the waters that gives fruit to satiate the hunger and thirst of the people around you.³

So many on this planet ache for God! They ache for My Spirit and truth! This world desperately needs the message of My truth and love. Ask Me to help you to hear the heart cries of those around you, of those who are without hope. My Spirit longs and hungers to satiate their thirst and alleviate their pain.

Each of My disciples is called to be an everyday missionary—one sent with a message, no matter what else they are doing. As you clothe yourself with Me, let your witness be filled with My Holy Spirit in you, in sincerity and in truth. When you say, “I am a Christian,” put all your conviction and sincerity there to back it up.

Being a faithful witness starts with picking up your cross daily in small matters. It starts with being willing to accept discomfort in your life and self-sacrifice and death to self. It starts with reaching out even when you know the witness and message may be rejected. It means planting and being faithful in season and out of season, trusting in Me for the outcome of every seed you plant and water and care for.

As you are faithful to be a messenger for Me, I will bless your witness with My Spirit and power, and you will experience My joy to overcome and My peace that passes all understanding. Seek and you will find. Create a hunger in your heart and you will be satisfied.

Be the everyday saints of God for those around you today so that others can have the opportunity to know the truth that will set them free and bring them eternal life.⁴

Originally published February 1998. Adapted and republished February 2021.
Read by Gabriel Garcia Valdivieso.

By Greg Morse

Christianity is unlike any other religion. Not merely because it is true, but because it is beautiful. Yet it offends a man before it can save him. It tells him that he is dead in sin. It tells him that he’s a rebel. It tells him that unless he plunges himself underneath the flood of Christ’s blood by faith, he will die and never live. That his blood will be upon his own head forever.

But as plainly as it tells a man that he is condemned before God, it commands him to draw near and receive mercy.

Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.—Isaiah 55:6–7

(Read the article here. You can also find a nice rendition of the song “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood” at the top of the page.)

By Peter Amsterdam

We are told in the Gospels that at some point Jesus moved from His hometown of Nazareth to take up residence in Capernaum.¹ Capernaum was a town on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee, along the road from the Mediterranean coast of Palestine to Damascus. Moving from the remote hill village of Nazareth to the more populated lakeside town of Capernaum put Jesus in closer proximity to other thriving villages along the coast of Lake Gennesaret. From this location, He was in a better position to speak, teach, and minister to a wider range of people, as the Jewish towns of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Magdala were not far away.

It was in Capernaum that Jesus healed Jairus’ daughter, a demon-possessed man, Peter’s mother-in-law, a paralytic, the centurion’s servant, and the woman with an issue of blood.² Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Jesus spoke a number of parables while there, as well as taught about humility, stumbling blocks, and forgiveness.³ He taught in the local synagogue, and it was in this synagogue where He said that unless His followers eat His flesh and drink His blood, they have no life in them, which caused many to stop following Him.⁴

Capernaum was home to a number of Jesus’ disciples, and it was there that they made their decisions to follow Him. The synoptic Gospels all tell the story of the events surrounding the decisions of Peter, Andrew, James, and John to become followers of Jesus. The Gospel of John tells of an encounter Andrew and Peter had with Jesus in the area where John the Baptist was baptizing. John may have been describing an earlier encounter, or it may have been John’s way of giving an example of how some of Jesus’ disciples came to follow Him. An earlier encounter is how I like to see it, as it gives added context to their immediately leaving their livelihoods upon Jesus’ call. Having already met Jesus and having had some experience with Him makes it more plausible that they would immediately respond to His call than if a perfect stranger approached and called them to follow him.

Matthew’s Gospel tells the story like this:

While walking by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on from there he saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.⁵

This was the start of Jesus calling a number of people to follow Him. His calling had similarities to how Jewish teachers (rabbis) had students (known as talmidim) who often traveled with, lived with, and imitated their teacher. They learned not only from what their teacher said, but from what he did. The task of these followers was to become as much like the teacher as possible.⁶ The talmidim, having chosen their teacher, dedicated themselves to intense study of the law and their teacher’s interpretation of it.

While there were similarities between the typical Jewish students and Jesus’ disciples, there were also differences. Jewish students sought out their teacher rather than the teacher choosing the students. But Jesus called His disciples; they didn’t come to Him and ask if they could study under His teaching.

Jesus’ goal with His disciples wasn’t for them to learn and transmit His teachings of the Law in the manner of Jewish rabbis. He was calling them to undergo a transformation process. By coming with Him, learning from Him, remaining in His presence, in time they would learn to become fishers of men, which would be a radical break from their present occupation as fishermen.

Jesus’ call wasn’t without consequences. “Come and follow Me” meant leaving some things behind—their nets, boats, business, livelihood, and for James and John, their father. Answering the call was economically costly. These men were not poor. They were involved in a family business. The cost of following wasn’t only financial. Besides leaving their livelihood, James and John left their father.

Elsewhere in the Gospels, it’s clear that the disciples remained connected to their families and perhaps to some extent their family business. Jesus and His disciples returned to Capernaum on a regular basis.⁷ Peter lived there in a house with his wife and mother-in-law.⁸ The apostle Paul wrote of Peter and the other apostles traveling with their wives.⁹ James’ and John’s mother was involved in Jesus’ ministry and was present at His crucifixion.¹⁰

Though they stayed connected to their families, the disciples had a major change of lifestyle. Their focus became being part of Jesus’ community, being taught by Him, assisting Him in His ministry, and learning to become fishers of men. They spent substantial time away from their families, traveling around Galilee with Jesus during the years of His ministry.

Though we don’t know exactly how many disciples followed Jesus during His lifetime, Luke’s Gospel says: “The Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go,”¹¹ so we know there were at least seventy-two others.

Later in the gospel accounts, we learn that there were also women among Jesus’ followers.¹² At the time of Jesus’ crucifixion we’re told: “There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him, and there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem.”¹³

During His ministry, Jesus chose and commissioned twelve of His disciples to be apostles.¹⁴ The twelve apostles were those who were with Jesus from the early stages of His ministry, disciples who were constantly with Him, watching, listening, and learning. They often didn’t understand the meaning of what Jesus taught, and their understanding of the role of the Messiah was in alignment with that of first-century Jews in general, so they misunderstood much. But over time, through Jesus’ patient teaching and as a result of the time they spent with Him, they began to see enough that when Jesus asked them:

“Who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.”¹⁵

Though they didn’t fully understand who Jesus was or the meaning of all He taught, after His resurrection He further explained the Scriptures to them so they gained full understanding, and “He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.”¹⁶ After being filled with the Holy Spirit, these men preached the good news of the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation with God. Most of them were martyred for doing so, but they faithfully carried out the commission Jesus gave them to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”¹⁷

As disciples, as followers of Jesus, we have been given the same commission: “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation.”¹⁸ Like the first disciples, we may not fully understand everything there is to know about God, Jesus, theology, etc., but, as disciples, we know more than enough to do our best to love Him, live for Him, apply His teachings to our lives, and bring others to Him.

While Jesus had many disciples, the gospel writers seem to have seen no need to tell the story of how each one came to know and follow Him. In the specific instances they wrote about, we see the immediate response of those called and the radical change it brought about in their lives. From this we understand that following Jesus calls for more than just assent of the heart—it requires commitment. By their actions, these first disciples set the example of discipleship, of the willingness to sacrifice in order to follow Jesus. They repurposed their lives by changing their priorities. They no longer served their own interests, but focused on the interests of the one who called them to follow Him. This would have held true for all of the disciples who followed Jesus during His lifetime.

Jesus’ call to these men wasn’t only a call to belief, it was also a call to action—to follow Him, to allow Him to make them into those who would “fish for people,” who would change hearts and lives. The call to God’s service, to follow Jesus, wasn’t given only two millennia ago. He gives the same call to believers today. The question is: Do we answer it? Are we willing to orient ourselves, our lives, our actions, our hearts, toward Him? Are we willing to apply His teachings in our daily lives? Are we fishing for those who are searching for Him? If we are disciples, the answer to these questions is yes.

Originally published April 2015. Adapted and republished February 2021.
Read by Reuben Ruchevsky.

By William B. McGrath

“Isn’t it curious that physical courage should be so common, and moral courage so rare?” This quote by Mark Twain piqued my curiosity. I wondered why that is, and what exactly are the differences, the demarcations between physical and moral courage.

The dictionary defines courage as “the attitude or response of facing and dealing with anything recognized as dangerous, difficult or painful, instead of withdrawing from it.” To be moral is “to be good or right in conduct or character; to have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong.”

Those of strong moral courage may not appear physically strong, or show courage in physical ways; however, some people display both physical and moral courage. We see this in the actions of brave firemen, security guards, military men, lifeguards, or civilians who just happen to be given the opportunity by being in the right place at the right time. However, acts of great moral courage can take place without the show of physical force or strength.

For example, as portrayed in the movie Official Secrets, Katharine T. Gun was working for British Intelligence in 2003. While at work, she came across a document that she knew was proof of dishonesty on the part of top government officials, officials who were attempting to persuade her country’s government to be allies in the invasion of Iraq. By law, she could not share the information. But she believed that she had a moral duty to decry the use of deception to bring her country into the war and the reality of all the innocents that would die if they were to go to war, and this duty superseded her moral obligation to obey the law. So she decided to do the right thing; that is, to do all she could to expose the deception and try to stop the war. This occurred just days before the invasion of Iraq.

Months later she stood trial, and although her lawyers explained how she could most assuredly receive a light sentence if she pled guilty, instead she chose to plead innocent. She sincerely believed that she was innocent, on the grounds that she was breaking a law for the sake of a higher moral law, acting to save lives and to expose the illegal actions. Although she could not prevent the war, she won in court and was recognized as a heroine.

Not all forms of physical courage are combined with moral courage. Sometimes physical courage springs from pride and becomes a mere demonstration of violent self-assertion, with little regard for the well-being of others. Moral courage is manifested when someone stands for what is right.

There are many activities that build courage, with healthy reward. The movie Chariots of Fire brings this out. Eric Liddell believed he was made to race and he knew he was good at it. But he was determined to keep it in its rightful place; he would not allow his love for racing to gain precedence over his love for God. So he made a promise never to run a race on the Sabbath day, even if that were to mean losing out on an important race. He held true to his promise.

Another example of modern-day moral courage is found in the movie Hacksaw Ridge, which portrays the true story of Desmond Doss, who enlisted in the U.S. army during WWII. He was a conscientious objector, who wanted to serve as a medic without bearing arms. In the end Desmond was awarded the Medal of Honor for his exceptional bravery, saving the lives of scores of others without the use of a weapon.

During basic training, however, his fellow soldiers mocked him and called him a coward. But when the time of fierce combat came, he was in the forefront saving others, displaying courage that went well beyond the call of duty.

Men in the army can be under pressure to demonstrate how physically tough they are. And some men of this sort decided to browbeat Desmond during his basic training. They accused him of cowardice because he refused to bear arms. But later, in the heat of the fierce battle, we see Desmond come out shining, displaying his notable God-given courage and, without a word, considering those who had criticized him still worth saving. It became obvious to all that God’s power was protecting him through the thick of machine-gun fire as he went out again and again, without a weapon, to rescue wounded soldiers. So his fellow soldiers came to recognize a type of courage beyond that of the mere physical.

There is a book about the excellent character of Jesus and how this same, rich character is imparted to us. Tim Keller writes:

One of the greatest sermons ever was written and preached in 1738 by Jonathan Edwards, titled “The Excellency of Christ.” Edwards’s imagination was captured by the prophetic vision of Jesus’s disciple John in Revelation 5:5–6: “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’ Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne.” John is told to look for a lion, but then in the midst of the throne is a lamb. Edwards meditates on this: “The lion excels in strength and in the majesty of his appearance and voice. The lamb excels in meekness and patience … is (sacrificed) for food … and … clothing. But we see that Christ is in the text compared to both, because the diverse excellencies of both wonderfully meet in Him. … There is in Jesus Christ … a conjunction of such really diverse excellencies as otherwise would have seemed to us utterly incompatible in the same subject.”

Edwards goes on to list in detail all the ways that Jesus combines character traits that we would consider mutually exclusive. In Jesus we find infinite majesty yet complete humility, perfect justice yet boundless grace, absolute sovereignty yet utter submission, all-sufficiency in Himself yet entire trust and dependence on God.

But in Jesus the result of these extremes of character is not mental and emotional breakdown. Jesus’s personality is a complete and beautiful whole. …

At the end of Jonathan Edwards’s sermon on the paradoxical character of Jesus, he says that these same radically different traits that are normally never combined in any one person “will be reproduced in you because you are in the presence of Jesus Christ.” You’re not just becoming a nicer person or a more disciplined person or a more moral person. The life and character of Jesus—the King who ambles into Jerusalem on a donkey, then storms into the temple with the audacity to say “This is my house”—are being reproduced in you. You’re becoming a more complete person, the person you were designed to be, the person you were ransomed to be.¹

So it seems safe to say that the courage He is developing in us now, and will one day perfect, is not a self-centered courage, but a courage that is coupled with gentleness and humility, great restraint coupled with great power, centered in the great causes of God for man.

A compilation

Jesus said, “Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.”¹ Is this a blanket promise with no conditions? … In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says that whoever asks receives, whoever seeks finds, and whoever knocks will find an open door.² But with this and all other verses we must examine the context.

Jesus goes on to say that God will not fail to give His children good things.³ So, this is one condition to the promise of “ask and receive”: what we ask for must be good in God’s estimation. God will give advantageous gifts to His children; He will not give us bad or injurious things, no matter how much we clamor for them. The best example of a good gift is the Holy Spirit, according to Luke 11:13. We begin to see a two-fold purpose of prayer—to increase our understanding of what God calls “good” and to cultivate a desire in us for what is good…

Our prayers are based in a relationship, as Jesus points out in Matthew 7:8. If a child asks his father for something the father knows to be hurtful, the request is denied. The child may be frustrated and unhappy when he doesn’t get what he asked for, but he should trust his father. Conversely, when the child asks for something that the father knows is beneficial, the father will provide it eagerly because he loves his child.

We have another condition to the promise of “ask and receive” in John 14:14, “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.” Here, Jesus does not promise His disciples anything and everything they want; rather, He instructs them to ask “in my name.” To pray in Jesus’ name is to pray on the basis of Jesus’ authority, but it also involves praying according to the will of God, for the will of God is what Jesus always did.⁴ This truth is stated explicitly in 1 John 5:14, “If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.” Our requests must be congruent with the will of God.

The promise of “ask and receive,” even with its conditions, can never disappoint… He promises to supply what we need when we “seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.”⁵ Of course, what we want is not always what we need. If what we want is not in God’s will, then we really don’t want to receive it. God knows what is good for us and He is faithful and loving to say “no” to selfish and foolish prayers, no matter how much we want what we’re asking for.

God will always give us good things. Our job is to understand what is good, so that we know what to ask for. The natural mind cannot understand this. But, when we offer ourselves as “a living sacrifice” and are transformed by the renewing of our minds, then we “will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.”⁶ Then, asking for what we need in faith, we will have all we need for life, godliness, and fullness of joy.⁷ …

Jesus emphasizes faith: “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.” Those who truly believe God will witness the amazing, infinite power of God. However, comparing Scripture with Scripture, we know that the asking must be done within the will of God. Part of having faith is acceding to God’s plan as best. If we ask for healing, and that is the best thing for us, we should not doubt that God will heal us. If He does not heal, then not being healed is a necessary part of a larger plan—one that is ultimately for our good.

Consider Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” … [This] means that, when we delight ourselves in God, then we will find everything we want and need in Him. The key here is that the heart of the seeker is changed—when we delight in the Lord, God’s desires begin to become our own. When our desires match God’s, then our prayers are automatically aligned with His will.

Among the most important prayers in the life of a Christian are “Teach me to love you above all else” and “Cause me to want what you want.” When we truly desire God, when we are passionate to see His will accomplished in this world, and when we ask for what brings Him glory, He is eager to give us anything we ask. Sometimes the things that glorify God are pleasant—a marriage or a child. Sometimes they are difficult for us—a failure that humbles us or a physical weakness that makes us more dependent upon God.⁸ But, when we pray within His will, in the authority of Jesus, persistently, unselfishly, and in faith, we will receive what we need.—From gotquestions.org⁹

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The Bible certainly encourages us to pray fervently and to have faith that God not only hears our prayers but also will answer them. Jesus said, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”¹⁰

But this doesn’t mean God will give us anything we want, if we just pray hard enough. If you have children, do you give them anything they ask for, if they just keep asking and asking? No, of course not. You are wiser and more experienced than they are, and you know they don’t need everything they want. In fact, you know that some of the things they’re demanding could actually hurt them. You love them, and because you love them, you sometimes have to say “No.”

In a far greater way, God knows what is best for us and, because he loves us, he sometimes tells us “No” or “Wait.” More than once I’ve asked God to do something I was convinced must be right and was disappointed when it didn’t happen. But later I realized it hadn’t been God’s will, and I was thankful he had said “No.” The Bible says, “If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.”¹¹—Billy Graham¹²

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Hebrews 11:6 says, “But without faith, it is impossible to please Him, for he that cometh to God”—and that’s what we’re doing when we pray—“must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.”

Many people have struggled with this question: How can I pray in faith if I’m not absolutely certain that what I’m asking for is in accordance with the will of God? The reason we struggle is that our faith is misplaced. We think that we somehow have to work our faith up to the place where God will answer a particular prayer. But that is not the case. The object of our faith is the person of God Himself, not our faith.

When I do not have faith, I’m saying one of two things: either God cannot answer this prayer or God will not answer this prayer. If I say He cannot, I’m questioning His sovereignty and His power. If I say He will not, I’m questioning His goodness. To pray in faith means that I believe God can and I believe God will insofar as it’s consistent with His glory, because God is good…

We must believe that He exists, that He is … Almighty God. That He is not limited by anything that we can think of. And then we must believe that He rewards those who diligently seek Him and believe that He is good.—Jerry Bridges¹³

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Prayer is not meant to be a “pious reverie” that has only a subconscious effect on us. Prayer is an intensely practical thing, as real as using the telephone. And the party at the other end of the line—God Himself—says to us, “Whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”¹⁴ After we ask in prayer, then is the time to believe, to wait in faith, and to receive, according to God’s will. “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.”¹⁵

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.”¹⁶ Faith is believing that God is going to answer, even if you can’t see the answer yet, or even if the answer isn’t exactly what we expected. It is not what we think about it, but what God says about it that counts. It is not what we feel, but what God wills.—Virginia Brandt Berg

Published on Anchor February 2021. Read by John Laurence.
Music by John Listen.