I grew up in an unbelieving home, but at age 15 I came to faith in Jesus while reading the Bible. As a new believer, I couldn’t get enough of God’s Word. I learned the Bible doesn’t contradict itself, but it does contradict me— and I desperately need those mid-course corrections! Scripture was the North Star to which I fixed my life’s compass. Fifty-five years later, that’s truer than ever.
What a privilege it is to spend time in God’s Word! There's nothing like it. Its depths are endless. You can never exhaust it. Day after day, year after year, it always has more to offer. “Let me understand the teaching of your precepts; then I will meditate on your wonders” (Psalm 119:27). Through Scripture, the Holy Spirit transforms our hearts and minds. His Word is the source of correction, training, eternal perspective, and joyful rest from weariness and sorrow.
Here are ten verses that have especially shaped my life and ministry.
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18, NIV)
Even though as Christians we affirm the reality of the spiritual realm, sometimes we succumb to the naturalistic assumption that what we see is real and what we don’t see isn’t. Many people conclude that God can’t be real because we can’t see Him, and Heaven can’t be real because we can’t see it. But we must recognize our blindness. The blind must take by faith that there are stars in the sky. If they depend on their ability to see, they will conclude there are no stars.
That’s why 2 Corinthians 4:18 is my life verse. Once you catch a glimpse of the other world, the real world, you are weaned from the illusion that reality is limited to our five senses. You can't help but live differently once you learn to see with an eternal perspective!
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. …And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1, 14)
Although they are several verses apart, I have always thought of these two verses as inseparable from each other. When we go back to Genesis, we learn that Eden’s greatest attraction was God’s presence. Sin’s greatest tragedy was that God no longer dwelt with His people. But this all changed because of Jesus, and John 1:1 sets it up: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
Then comes this verse that bursts forth like fireworks: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The God who lives in unapproachable light became approachable in the person of Jesus! People could look at Jesus and see who God is. He is Immanuel, “God with us.” And He is not only all about truth, He is also all about grace—a grace that delivers us from the Hell we deserve and grants us the Heaven we don’t deserve.
In a redemptive work far greater than most imagine, Christ bought and paid for our future and the earth’s, ensuring an unending future where we will dwell with the Word who became flesh.
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” (2 Corinthians 8:9)
As we learn to give, we draw closer to God. But no matter how far we move along in the grace of giving, Jesus Christ remains the matchless Giver, who for our sakes “became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9, NIV). “Rich” in this sense is not about finances, and this is not the health and wealth gospel; God gives to us in a thousand ways besides material prosperity. Our greatest resources are spiritual, not material. They come from another world, not this one.
Scripture says Christ gave “himself as a ransom for all people” (1 Timothy 2:6, NIV). Jesus, the sinless one, willingly gave Himself over to be tortured—not for anything He had done, but to save those least deserving. We can never outgive God! Meditate on the truth of that for a few million years. (We will—we may as well get a head start.)
“…remembering the words that the Lord Jesus himself said, ‘There is more happiness in giving than in receiving.’” (Acts 20:35, GNT)
You might have heard that verse translated as “It is more blessed to give than receive,” but the well-documented fact is that the Greek word makarios, translated “blessed,” really means “happy-making.”
Notice what Jesus did not say: “Naturally, we’re happier when we receive than when we give, but giving is a duty, so grit your teeth, make the sacrifice, and force yourself to give.”
Money won’t make us happy, but giving away money can make us profoundly happy! When we give out of love for Christ and others, we experience dramatic and lasting returns for the investments we’ve made—far more than if we’d kept or spent it. Counterintuitive as it may seem, our greatest good, and the happiness that accompanies it, is found in giving, not receiving.
“Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for ‘God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.’ Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you...” (1 Peter 5:5–6)
An unattributed quote says, “Only the humble are sane.” Choose pride and you get God’s opposition. Choose humility and you get God’s grace. This is why the proud fall away while the humble endure. It’s why none of us should ever view ourselves as celebrities, only servants. We are God’s errand boys and girls. And what a privilege that is!
God humbles us in the ways He knows best. Two of the best things God ever did for me were to give me a chronic disease (insulin-dependent diabetes), and abortion-clinic lawsuits that forced me to resign as pastor of the church I loved. I wouldn’t have chosen either, but I’d gladly take both rather than give up what I’ve learned about trusting God. Through our thorns in the flesh God says, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
There is an all-inclusiveness in the “all things” of Romans 8:28. No translation says each hard thing by itself is good, but that all things work together for good, and not on their own but under God’s sovereign hand. So when Paul says, “for good,” he clearly implies final or ultimate good, not good subjectively felt in the midst of our sufferings. God does not ask us to immediately see every individual event as wonderful. He does expect us to trust that He is sovereignly at work even in that event, and will use it in concert with everything else for our very best good.
Perhaps the greatest test of whether we believe this verse is to identify the very worst things that have happened to us, then ask if we believe that in the end God will somehow use them for our good. We can be certain He will!
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” (Revelation 21:3)
As a young pastor, my mom was dying, and every day I would read to her the last two chapters of Revelation. My heart was captivated by God’s promise of a new heavens and New Earth—a new material universe—without death, suffering and curse.
That God would come down to the New Earth to live with us fits perfectly with His original plan. God could have taken Adam and Eve up to Heaven to visit with Him in His world. Instead, He came down to walk with them in their world (Genesis 3:8). Jesus says of anyone who would be His disciple, “My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him” (John 14:23). This is a picture of God’s ultimate plan—not to take us up to live in a realm made for Him, but to come down and live with us in the realm He made for us.
“But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.” (2 Peter 3:13, NIV)
Utopian idealists who dream of humanity creating “Heaven on Earth” are destined for disappointment. However, one day there will be Heaven on Earth. That’s God’s dream. It’s God’s plan. And He, not we, will accomplish it.
If I promised you a new car, would you say, “If it’s new, it probably won’t have an engine, a transmission, doors, wheels, or windows”? No, you’d never make such assumptions. Why? Because if a new car didn’t have these things, it wouldn’t be a car. Likewise, when Scripture speaks of a New Earth (see 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1), we can expect that it will be a far better version of the old Earth, but it will truly be Earth.
Earth can be delivered only by being resurrected. The removal of the Curse will be as thorough and sweeping as the redemptive work of Christ. In bringing us salvation, Christ has already undone some of the damage in our hearts, but in the end He’ll finally and completely restore His entire creation to what God originally intended.
“And then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. They sang: ‘Blessing and honor and glory and power belong to the one sitting on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever.’” (Revelation 5:13, NLT)
Scripture says a great deal about animals, portraying them as Earth’s second most important inhabitants. God entrusted animals to us, and our relationships with animals are a significant part of our lives. Since God will fashion the New Earth with renewed people, wouldn’t we expect Him also to include renewed animals? Indeed, that’s the picture we see in Isaiah 11 and 65, both passages about the New Earth.
If “every creature in heaven and on earth” includes animals, then animals praise God. But animals don’t sing, do they? Well, birds sing and whales sing (I have listened to them at length and worshipped along with them, though there was a time when I didn’t realize they were worshipping too). Animals praising God and singing is real, but that doesn’t mean we should expect it to sound like humans.
Psalm 148 commands all of creation to praise the Lord, including the animals: “Beasts and all cattle; Creeping things and winged birds; Kings of the earth and all peoples… Let them praise the name of Yahweh, For His name alone is set on high; His splendor is above earth and heaven” (vv. 10-11, 13, LSB). If in some sense fallen animals, shadows of what they once were, can praise God on this fallen Earth, how much more should we expect them to do so on the New Earth?
“Yahweh your God is in your midst, A mighty one who will save. He will be joyful over you with gladness; He will be quiet in His love; He will rejoice over you with joyful singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17, LSB) “Delight yourself in Yahweh; And He will give you the desires of your heart.” (Psalm 37:4, LSB)
I appreciate that both of these verses include the name Yahweh, thanks to the Legacy Standard Bible translation. I love God’s name and believe He calls upon us to use it. These verses are just two examples that come to mind for me. (In most of our English Bibles, whenever the personal name of God is used, the word LORD is substituted and written in what's known as “small caps,” e.g. Lord.)
The name Yahweh is related to the Hebrew verb to be, translated “I am” in Exodus 3. Yahweh is the eternal self-existent Creator who answers to no one, and to whom all creatures answer. The God who created the Heavens and the earth essentially said to Moses in Exodus, “Call me by my actual name: Yahweh. Tell others Yahweh is who I am.” He insists this is His name forever, and by that name we should remember Him through all generations (see Exodus 3:15). And lest we are tempted to forget, He chooses to use His own name so frequently that it’s the seventh most frequent occurring word in the entire Old Testament. He isn’t just a LORD who is over all; He is also a warm, beloved friend of His people who wants us to call Him by name. (The name Jesus means “Yahweh saves.”)
Trusting in the name Yahweh is the source of great gladness: “For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name” (Psalm 33:21). May we do so with happy hearts, delighted to know such a wonderful God, whose magnificent self-chosen name is Yahweh, and who will dwell with us forever!
