Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said: “Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?”—Job 38:1–2

Whenever I post on my Facebook page about our son Christopher going to be with the Lord, I’m amazed at the number of responses I receive. Every time I talk about this, I’m reminded there is a massive community of people who are in pain around the world.

One person wrote me and said, “My son would have been sixteen years old this year. It has been fifteen years since his death, but he was the person who brought me to the Lord. Because of his death, I received my salvation. . . . I have found salvation through God’s Son because of the loss of mine.” I found that to be powerful.

Basically a horrific tragedy brought this person to Christ, but I am not saying that is the reason it happened. I think we make a big mistake when we connect dots like that. Do we think God could not reach a person without the death of another? Here is what I will say: This death happened. It is tragic. It is hard. But despite this tragedy, God worked and brought someone into His kingdom.

Let’s not try to explain the mysteries of God. We don’t know. I’m convinced that when I’m in Heaven, the things I thought were good in this life may be perceived as bad. Things that I perceived as bad in this life may be perceived as good.

We might say that good in this life is having everything go our way. But what if everything is going our way and we have no time for God? What if those bad things that happened in our lives brought us into a relationship with God? We would actually look at them and say they were good. Until that day, we simply need to trust God.

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“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding.”—Job 38:4

Had greeting card companies existed back in Job’s day, they definitely wouldn’t have hired Job’s three friends to write for them. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar initially had it right as they wept with their friend Job through his suffering. But then they started rambling on, basically offering the same lame explanations that people still offer today about suffering.

A card from Eliphaz would have read, “Sorry you are sick. . . . You got what you deserved.”

Bildad’s card would have said, “Hoping you get well soon.” But then the inside would have read, “But if you were really as godly as you claimed to be, this would not have happened.”

Zophar’s card would have been the most brutal of all. The outside would have read, “I hope you get worse.” But Zophar wouldn’t have stopped there. The inside of his card would have said, “You will die. No one will remember you. You will be thrown away like dung.”

As we move further into the book of Job, we see Job asking the question why five times in chapter 3. By the way, there is nothing wrong with asking why when you’re suffering. Even Jesus cried out at Calvary, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). It isn’t wrong to ask why. It isn’t a lack of faith to ask why. But don’t expect an answer. Quite frankly, if God gave you the answer, you wouldn’t understand it anyway.

Even if the Lord did tell you why things happen the way they do, would that ease your pain or heal your broken heart? Does reading the X-ray take away the pain of a broken leg? It comes down to this: We live on promises, not explanations. We should not spend too much time asking why.

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“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.”—2 Corinthians 4:7

I read about someone who just paid one million dollars for a Fender Stratocaster. Why so much? It was the guitar Bob Dylan played at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival.

The festival was a defining moment for Dylan, who went from playing acoustic to electric. The folk purists saw this as an act of treachery.

That purchase may make a little more sense than the person who paid $380,000 for a burned guitar. That was also a Fender Strat, but it was played by Jimi Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival. He played the song “Wild Thing” and then set his guitar on fire!

The value in both of these guitars was in who played them. If I were to play a Strat, it would go down in value. But, get Hendrix or Dylan or Eric Clapton to play it and the value goes up.

The disciples’ greatness was not because of who they were as individuals. It was because of who called and used them.

“This priceless treasure we hold, so to speak, in a common earthenware jar to show that the splendid power of it belongs to God and not to us. We are handicapped on all sides, but we are never frustrated; we are puzzled, but never in despair. We are persecuted, but we never have to stand it alone: We may be knocked down but we are never knocked out!” (2 Corinthians 4:7–9 PHI).

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Then He said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me.” —Matthew 26:38

I wish you could have met me when I was twenty-one, because I knew everything then. I would have had an answer for any question you may have asked. But now that a few years have passed, I don’t know as much as I once did.

The fact is that I didn’t know as much as I thought I knew back then. And after more than forty years of ministry, I have found that one of the best things you can do for a hurting person is to just be there. Sometimes when we don’t know what to say, we simply don’t show up. That is wrong. Just being there means a lot to someone who is suffering.

When the time of Jesus’ crucifixion drew near, He went to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray. He knew exactly what was waiting for Him. He knew they would crucify Him. Worst of all, being God, He knew He would have to bear all the sins of the world. So Jesus went to Gethsemane and took Peter, James, and John along. Then He told them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with Me” (Matthew 26:38). Yes, Jesus is God. But He actually asked for His three friends to stay with Him and watch with Him during this time.

If you’re speaking to a grieving person, it’s often good to simply say something like “I love you” or “I am here” or “I am praying for you.” If they don’t want to talk, don’t talk. Don’t try to explain things, because explanations never heal a broken heart. Just sit there with them.

We have to avoid the easy answers and clichés when we’re trying to comfort the suffering, because if we aren’t careful, we may add to their pain.

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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled.

—Matthew 5:6

Have a nice day. We throw that expression around a lot in our culture. When you make a purchase, the cashier might say, “Thank you. Have a nice day.” Or, maybe you want to return something, and you’re told, “No, we cannot take that back again. Have a nice day.” It’s really their way of saying, “You can go now.”

But what does it really mean to have a nice day? I suppose it would be a day free of sickness, conflict, and hardship—a day that is, well, nice.

That is how God is sometimes perceived. We might imagine Him thundering from Mount Sinai, “Have a nice day!” We like to think of Him as perpetually smiling, wanting us all to be happy, healthy, and wealthy.

I’m not suggesting that God cannot or will not bless us with health or even wealth. Nor am I suggesting that God doesn’t want us to be happy. But that is not God’s primary objective for us. God doesn’t sit around in Heaven and wonder how He can make us happier. What God is really interested in is how He can make us more holy. He wants us to be holy more than He wants us to be happy.

The remarkable thing is that if you really are a holy person, then you will, in turn, be a happy person. Happiness is the fringe benefit of holiness. What does it mean to be holy? Maybe if we respelled holy as wholly, as in wholly committed, we would get a better understanding of the word. You can be wholly committed to surfing or wholly committed to golfing or wholly committed to money. That is a commitment.

If you want to be holy, be wholly committed to God. You will be happy as a result.

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But at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them.—Acts 16:25

I think the worst thing that ever happened in history, the greatest travesty, the greatest injustice, was when Jesus Christ Himself was crucified. What could have been worse than that? What could have been worse than for God the Father to look down from Heaven and see His Son who He loved with all His heart suffering and dying for the sins of the world? How could God allow that? It was so awful.

Yet the Bible says, “It pleased the Lord to bruise Him” (Isaiah 53:10). Does this mean God was pleased in watching His Son suffer? Absolutely not. But God the Father was pleased in knowing this suffering would produce something wonderful called salvation for you and for me. As awful as it was, it accomplished God’s purpose. Out of the greatest bad came the greatest good. That is how God showed His love for us. As John tells us, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

In the same way, when hardship comes and you are still praising the Lord, that blows the mind of the nonbeliever. Remember the story of Paul and Silas when they were thrown into prison for preaching the gospel? We read in Acts that “at midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them” (16:25).

Maybe you are going through a hard time right now. Maybe you’re asking, “Why, God?”

God has a purpose. He has allowed it. God has either done it or He has allowed it. Deal with it the best that you can and seek to bring Him glory. That is a powerful testimony to a world that doesn’t know God.

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“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the Lord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts.”—Isaiah 55:8–9

Why does God allow tragedy? I’ve heard this question asked in many different versions, including these: Why would God allow wars to rage, killing innocent people? What about injustices in the world? Why are there epidemics? Why do horrible things happen? To the point, if God can prevent terrible tragedies, then why does He allow them to happen in the first place?

Let’s take a look at the core question first: If God is good and loving, why does He allow evil? The very question is based on a false premise. It’s essentially saying that God doesn’t necessarily meet our criteria for goodness. In essence, we’re making ourselves the moral centers of the universe.

God doesn’t become good because we think He is good or if our opinion of Him is good. God is good because God says He is good. Jesus said, “No one is good but One, that is, God” (Luke 18:19). God is good whether we believe it or not. God—and He alone—is the final court of arbitration. The Bible says, “Let God be true but every man a liar” (Romans 3:4).

That brings us to the question of what is good. Good is whatever God approves. It is not what you think is good. It is not what I think is good. It is not what we vote on as good. If God says it is good, then it is good. And if God says it is bad, then it is bad. Everything begins with God and ends with God.

As Isaiah 55:8–9 points out, God’s thoughts are higher than our thoughts. God’s ways are above our ways. There is no higher standard of goodness than God’s own character and His approval of whatever is consistent with that character. God is good. Period.

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“Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the lord. Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, who seek Him with the whole heart.”—Psalm 119:1–2

Surveys by Gallup, the National Opinion Research Center, and the Pew Organization conclude that spiritually committed people are twice as likely to report being “very happy” than the least religiously committed people.

So, happy people are spiritual people. But let me take it further: truly happy people are godly people. The Bible says, “Happy are the people whose God is the Lord!” (Psalm 144:15 NKJV).

According to the Bible, if we seek to know God and discover His plan for our life, we will as a result, find the happiness that has eluded us for so long—not from seeking it but from seeking Him! As Matthew 6:33 says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (NKJV).

C.S. Lewis said, “God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about faith. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.”

According to the Scriptures, happiness is never something that should be sought directly. It is always something that results from seeking something else.

If we seek holiness, we’ll find happiness.

And what is holiness? The word holiness has gotten a bad rap. If you hear that a person is “holier than thou,” it is not a good thing. But true holiness is not a fake, condescending, or mystical thing. Holiness can be understood better if we spell it another way: whollyness.

It was said of Caleb, “He wholly followed the Lord God” (Joshua 14:14 NKJV). When you wholly follow God, you will be a holy person—and a happy one too!

We find what we are looking for in life by seeking God, not seeking “it.” Henry Ward Beecher once said, “The strength and the happiness of a man consists in finding out the way in which God is going, and going in that way too.”

So, if you want to be happy, be holy. In other words, live a life that’s wholly committed to Him.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

So I am eager to come to you in Rome, too, to preach the Good News.—Romans 1:15

Prosperity is a very popular word today. Some preachers talk a lot about prosperity, and sometimes we refer to this as the prosperity gospel. This is basically the idea that God wants everyone to be in perfect health all the time, that sickness is always outside the will of God, and if you are sick, then you should just claim health, and you will be better. It is also the idea that God wants you to be very wealthy. But this is not what the Bible teaches.

Now, the Bible isn’t saying that we should all live in abject poverty and have nothing. But the Bible is saying that God’s definition of prosperity may be different than our definition of it. Prosperity doesn’t necessarily mean that everything is going easy and well. Prosperity means that you are in the will of God.

Continue reading Greg Laurie – God’s Definition of Prosperity →

Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked.—1 Timothy 1:19

All of us hope for clear sailing in the sea of life. But there are storms that come our way, and there are shipwrecks that we will encounter. We will have things happen in our lives that don’t make sense.

The apostle Paul went through three literal shipwrecks during his lifetime (see 2 Corinthians 11:25). Now, that would cure you of ocean travel. But Paul also wrote about people who had their faith shipwrecked. In his epistle to Timothy, he warned, “Cling to your faith in Christ, and keep your conscience clear. For some people have deliberately violated their consciences; as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked. Hymenaeus and Alexander are two examples . . .” (1 Timothy 1:19–20).

Some people have had their faith shipwrecked. I have seen it happen. Sometimes when people are facing a tragedy, they say, “I’ve lost my faith through this.”

Continue reading Greg Laurie – Shipwrecked Faith →

“Go, for Saul is my chosen instrument to take my message to the Gentiles and to kings, as well as to the people of Israel.” —Acts 9:15

Prior to his conversion, Saul was a leading Pharisee and possibly even a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin. He presided over the death of Stephen, the first martyr of the Christian church. After his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus Road resulted in his conversion, the Christians of Saul’s day were initially suspicious of his conversion, and understandably so.

When God directed a believer in Damascus named Ananias to seek out Saul and pray for him, Ananias was reluctant, of course. But Ananias did what God told him to do. He found Saul in the place where God said he would be. He prayed that the Lord would restore Saul’s sight (he had been blinded by the light as Jesus spoke to him on the Damascus Road), which the Lord did.

It is interesting that when God wanted to use someone to minister to Saul, He didn’t call an apostle like Peter or John. He called an ordinary man. Ananias didn’t write any book of the New Testament, raise a dead person back to life, or give a notable sermon that we know of. But he did, by faith, take a man under his wing who would do all of the above and far more. Ananias discipled the newly converted Saul who, in time, became the legendary apostle Paul and probably the greatest preacher in the history of the church.

Thank God for the Ananiases of the kingdom, those who faithfully work behind the scenes to make such a difference in our lives. They may be

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“Then Agrippa said to Paul, ‘You almost persuade me to become a Christian.'”—Acts 26:28

The word almost is an interesting word. It is a word that we sometimes use when we are delaying something. When we are not quite ready to commit. When we are procrastinating. When we can’t make up our minds at a restaurant, we will tell the waitress, “I am almost ready to decide, but not quite yet.”

Today there are a lot of people who see themselves as almost Christian.

Now, let’s be clear: either you are a Christian or you are not a Christian. You may be well on your way to becoming a Christian. You may be looking into the claims of Christ and investigating them. You may be highly interested in Christianity. But either you are or you are not a believer. And I bring this up because in Acts 26 we read of Herod Agrippa. He was so moved by Paul’s powerful and persuasive presentation of the gospel, that he said, “You almost persuade me to become a Christian.”

Continue reading Greg Laurie – The Almost Christian →

“For you were once full of darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. So live as people of light.”—Ephesians 5:8

I think there are a lot of people running around today who think they are Christians, but really are not. They may believe in the right things, but they don’t act on those beliefs. Sometimes what appears to be a conversion to Christianity is nothing more than some visible changes in a person’s life.

For instance, you can pray and not be a Christian. Just because someone prays doesn’t mean they are a believer. Polls show that nine out of ten Americans pray.

You can keep the Ten Commandments to the best of your ability and not necessarily be a Christian.

Continue reading Greg Laurie – Darkness to Light →

“Seek the LORD and His strength; seek His face evermore!”—Psalm 105:4

You are not done as a Christian.

No matter how much you love, you ought to love more.

No matter how much you pray, you ought to pray more.

No matter how much you obey God, you ought to obey more.

Continue reading Greg Laurie – Are You Satisfied with Your Present Spiritual State? →

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace . . . .—Galatians 5:22

The future is something we all should be thinking about, because we need to plan ahead. Not only do we need to think about what we will do in this life, but also what we will do for all eternity.

An extensive survey conducted in the United States by a leading polling agency distributed questionnaires to people of various ages and occupations, asking, “What are you looking for most in life?” When the results were compiled, the analysts were surprised. Most expected those who were polled to say they wanted to achieve certain materialistic goals. But the top three things that people wanted in life were love, joy, and peace—in that order.

Galatians 5:22 tells us the fruits of the Spirit include love, joy, and peace. Thus, the very things people are looking for today can be found in a relationship with God. Yet some have given up on these things. They say, “Love, joy, and peace? That’s a pipe dream of flower children. Give me a break. You are not going to find love, joy, and peace in this world . . . not in the real world I live in.”

Continue reading Greg Laurie – Love, Joy, and Peace →

After this prayer, the meeting place shook, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. Then they preached the word of God with boldness. —Acts 4: 31

Sometimes we will take a step of faith if there is a backup plan, if there is a safety net. There is a place for caution, a place for prudence, and even a place for seeking the counsel of those who have lived longer than we have. But having said that, there is also a place for faith. There is also a place for taking chances and taking risks.

As we get older, we are less willing to do that. We want everything laid out for us. We want to know what will happen after this and after that. But sometimes God will say, “I am not going to tell you. I want you to just obey Me.” That is why I would rather try something and fail than never try at all. And if you do try and ultimately fail, then learn something from your failure. I would venture to say that any person who has been successful in ministry, in business, or in any other enterprise has had more than his or her share of failures and has learned something from every one of them. It has been said that the doorway of success is often entered through the hallway of failure. So if at first you don’t succeed, relax. You are just like the rest of us.

So take a chance and do something for God. If you have been thinking about starting a little Bible study at work and are unsure whether anyone would show up, go for it. If you are thinking of sharing the gospel with someone, but you don’t know how they would respond, go for it. Try it. Pray about it. Ask the Lord for direction. But take a risk. Take a chance here and there and watch what God will do.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie