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“The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). The Good News Translation renders this verse, “The joy that the Lord gives you will make you strong.” The passage isn’t simply about our joy in God but about the way God imparts His joy to us.

I believe there’s one central explanation for why so many of God’s children have such a vague, negative, and uninspired view of Heaven: the work of Satan. Our enemy slanders three things: God’s person, God’s people, and God’s place—namely, Heaven.

There are only seven copies of Plato’s writings, the first of which was copied by a scribe 1,200 years after Plato died! Yet the vast majority of people are confident that what we have is what Plato wrote. In contrast, there are about 5,686 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament and over 19,000 in Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic.

Scripture says Christ gave “himself as a ransom for all people” (1 Timothy 2:6, NIV). Like many biblical terms, such as hope, love, and joy, we have to define what Scripture means by ransom.

In her journal she kept during her cancer years, Nanci quoted Charles Spurgeon: "Oh, that we may know our God—His power, His faithfulness, His immutable love. He is one whose character excites our enthusiasm. Oh, that we may know our God by familiar fellowship with Him."

On June 23, Randy is turning 70. In light of this significant birthday, some of the Eternal Perspective Ministries staff and board wanted to honor him by sharing how he’s pointed us to Jesus. We hope that by sharing how his life has helped us grow in our walk with God, it will be clear that the Lord has used Randy as a conduit of His grace.

Jesus tells us to lose our lives for His sake. He commands us to deny ourselves. And if self-denial and sacrifice aren’t enough, we’re to carry a cross—that dreaded instrument of execution. In terms of costliness, could Jesus have painted a more dreadful picture?

In an era dominated by superficial popular culture, there’s real value in expanding our thinking to God’s glory, and not just going broad but going deep. Deep is where the roots are, and they’re what keeps the tree or vine standing during storms that would otherwise erode and topple it.

This is a great and important response to a reader who sent us a question about my novels, concerned about some of the language I chose to include in character dialogue.

God refines us in our suffering and graciously explains why: “See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. For my own sake, for my own sake, I do this” (Isaiah 48:10). For emphasis, God repeats the reason.

My daughter Angela recently shared a message on Hebrews 12:1-2 at a women's gathering at our home church. She says, “Fixing our eyes does not mean merely glancing at Jesus now and again. Fixing demands all of our attention. So we need to look at Jesus with a laser focus.”

Ruth Wood, reader of our magazine Eternal Perspectives, shared this wonderful follow-up to an article we included in the latest issue about God’s Heart for the Elderly and Infirm. What she wrote is remarkable and powerful, demonstrating a miracle of grace that took place in her dad’s life.

G.K. Chesterton’s character, Father Brown, said, “We are on the wrong side of the tapestry.” How true. We see the knots, the snarls, and the frayed underside. But God is on the right side of the tapestry—the side He is weaving into a beautiful work of art.

We received this thought-provoking letter from a reader named Richard Higby. As you read, consider what it might look like for your family and church to implement his idea of a day celebrating and looking forward to Christ's return and the coming New Earth.