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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?

If you exchange your sin and brokenness, your independence and propensity for trying to control your circumstances, and even your good works—what Scripture calls filthy rags—for the robes of righteousness which Jesus offers freely, you will enter eternity with Jesus. 

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.

I can’t speak for other believers, but as a fellow human on this sin-cursed planet and hosting a mind that’s been sin-tainted, I can say that putting “God in a box” is a very convenient way to exercise the control we like to pretend we have over our circumstances. 

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.

In times of distress, it’s easy to feel like God is nowhere to be found. That may be what you feel or think, but our feelings can lie to us, especially when we are experiencing depression. 

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.

The feedback you shared reflects a typical dispensational view that turns New Earth passages into millennial passages. For instance, you referenced Isaiah 65 and the Millennium, yet Isaiah 65 specifically says it’s talking about the New Earth.

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.”

On the one hand, the genetic abnormalities that people experience are a result of the Curse, which we know will be reversed forever on the New Earth, after the resurrection. On the other hand, it’s absolutely true that Down Syndrome people are precious and there is something that often shines through in them that is very special.

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.

We tend to think of everlasting life as something that begins after the Resurrection or after we die when in reality it starts the day our lives are returned to us through Christ’s work of salvation. Likewise, we think of the bride of Christ in individual terms instead of as the Church.

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.

When spirit, soul, and body are used, spirit and soul emphasize different aspects of the one unified nonphysical aspect of humanity.