As a young pastor I loved God sincerely; but like my tavern-owner father, I was independent, self-sufficient, and prone to do things on my own. 

Never underestimate the potential of a seed buried deep within the ashes.

Recently reposted in a podcast from Pastor Greg Laurie, pastor at Harvest Ministries, this classic conversation between Randy and Greg centers on how pain, suffering, and the promise of Heaven shapes the believer’s worldview here on earth.

In The Goodness of God, I tell the story about my high school friend Greg Coffey, who died in a horrible accident in 1971, shortly after he and I both became Christ-followers.

If you spell God with a capital G you will always spell tragedy with a lowercase t. 

When the hard things come upon us, we tend to use them as a way of saying, “This is so bad, that if God really is in charge and He sent this to me—or even just allowed this to come into my life—He’s being cruel to me.” 

Randy discusses what Scripture teaches in Romans 8 about the suffering of creation as we wait for ultimate freedom from bondage, in an interview with pastor Greg Laurie at Harvest Church in Riverside, CA, November 2011.

Randy discusses what Scripture teaches about how God refines us through times of adversity from Job 42, in an interview with pastor Greg Laurie at Harvest Church in Riverside, CA, November 2011.

Hope is a much stronger word in the Bible than it is for most of us today.