But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.—Romans 5:8

When you tell other people about what God has done for you, you are sharing your testimony. A testimony is when you share your story of how you came to faith. Every Christian has a testimony.

Some Christians have dramatic testimonies where they tell of being delivered from a life of drug addiction or crime or some sordid deeds. Other Christians don’t have testimonies that are quite as dramatic—but they are just as significant.

I like to hear how people came to Christ, but I don’t like it when people go into gory details about their past. Then there are testimonies where people tell how much they have given up for Jesus. They’ll say things like, “I gave up this and that for Jesus. I have made such sacrifices for the Lord. I have done it all for Him!”

Your testimony is not about what you gave up for Jesus. It’s about what He gave up for you. Don’t share what you have done for Jesus. Share what Jesus has done for you. Jesus is the one who has done the work. It is Jesus whom we are proclaiming.

A good, strong testimony will lift up what Christ has accomplished. The fact of the matter is that all of us were sinners hopelessly separated from God, traveling in the same boat on our way to hell; and the same gospel came and transformed us. That is the testimony we all have.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

“And when people escape from the wicked ways of the world by learning about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and then get tangled up with sin and become its slave again, they are worse off than before.”—2 Peter 2:20

Sometimes we hear about well-known people who claim to have made a commitment to Jesus Christ. Often, it is around election time. When they address Christians, they speak of their great faith in God. After the elections, we seldom hear about it again.

Then there are people who say they are believers, but a month or two later, they go back to their old ways again. They say, “I tried Christianity, but it didn’t work for me.” But in reality, they never really found Christ.

Others will turn to God when they hit hard times. Awhile later, you see them going back to their old ways, and you wonder what happened. I would suggest that many of these people never were converted at all. They went through the motions, but Jesus Christ never became a part of their lives. Often, they end up worse than before.

When Jesus Christ truly comes into our lives, He takes up residence. And He doesn’t just do a basic housecleaning; He does a thorough one. There is real change. But when a house has only been swept, that is, when someone has made only moral changes, he or she is still vulnerable to the enemy. This is why we must recognize the futility of simply turning over a new leaf or making a few new resolutions. We must realize the problem is deeper than our moral sins. We must get to the heart of the matter and have Jesus Christ take residence in our lives and change us from the inside out.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

“And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.” —Galatians 6:9

Some say they are “burned out” in ministry and can’t go on.

In 40 years of ministry, I have never been tired of service but I have been tired in it. What better thing to be tired from? Time spent serving God is never wasted.

Nowhere in the Bible are we told to “take it easy.” Jesus told the story of the foolish man who said that very thing: “I’ll sit back and say to myself, ‘My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Eat, drink, and be merry!'” (Luke 12:19 NLT). And that is exactly what people say to us today: “Take it easy, man!”

“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'”

We are told to “press on” and “not be weary in well-doing” and “run the race.” Our greatest recreation and rest will come later in heaven and on the new earth. Oswald Sanders said, “The world is run by tired men.” We will never do great things for God until we have learned to minister when we are tired. In the sports world, you learn how to press on even when injured. God uses people who are willing to work hard and apply themselves.

The apostle Paul understood this, and wrote, “Surely you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you” (1 Thessalonians 2:9 NIV).

• By the way, you will find whenever God called people, they were busy doing something! Elisha was ploughing a field when Elijah called him.
• Moses and David were tending sheep when they were called, one to save a nation and the other to lead one.
• Gideon was threshing wheat when he was called by an angel to lead the armies of Israel.
• James and John were fishing for fish when they were called by Jesus to start fishing for men.

There is certainly a time to refresh and rest and recharge, but let’s be busy about the work that God has set before us!

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

He is despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. —Isaiah 53:3

I was watching a movie with my wife the other day. It was funny, but then it got sad in the end. I was kind of choking up and holding it back because I didn’t want to cry watching a movie. That is the nature of men in general. We hold it back.

Sometimes it is even thought that it isn’t manly to cry. But I have a two-word answer to that: “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). There was never a more manly man than Jesus of Nazareth. He truly was the man’s man.

Even Pontius Pilate, after Christ had been scourged, said of Him, “Behold the Man!” (John 19:5). Look at what Jesus went through—the whipping, the scourging, the beating. Still, He carried that four-hundred-pound cross through the streets of Jerusalem after that loss of blood, after that trauma. He fell beneath the weight of it, and He got up again. That was a man like no other.

Yes, Jesus is God, but Jesus wept. He felt Mary and Martha’s pain when Lazarus died, and He feels our pain, too. If it touches us, it touches Him. The Bible says, “[God] hears the cry of the afflicted” (Job 34:28). David wrote, “He does not forget the cry of the humble” (Psalm 9:12), and “the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry” (Psalm 34:15).

When God sees us cry, He cares. Jesus has walked in our shoes. Isaiah 53:3 says that He is “a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” It was our weaknesses He carried. It was our sorrows that weighed Him down. He felt our sorrow. He cares about our sorrow. And if it concerns you, it concerns Him.

Jesus weeps with us in our time of pain.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

“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

When calamity befell Job, he asked God why many times. There is nothing wrong with asking God why, as long as we don’t feel that He somehow owes us an answer. I think if God actually were to give us the answer, we wouldn’t be satisfied anyway.

What if you said, “Lord, why did this happen?” and God said, “I’m going to tell you right now. Are you ready? Sit down. Here’s why. . . .” Do you think that would really satisfy you? I don’t think it would. If the Lord told you why things happened the way they did, would it ease your pain or heal your broken heart? I don’t think so. I think it would raise more questions.

When her brother, Lazarus, died, Martha cried out to Jesus. Unfair. Foul. Not right. Instead of correcting her, Jesus tried to give her an eternal perspective: “Your brother will rise again” (John 11:23).

Martha said, in effect, “Yeah, I know—in the resurrection on the last day.”

But Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (verses 25–26).

In other words, “No, Martha, you are missing the point. I am the resurrection and the life. . . .”

Here is what Martha didn’t know. Jesus was about to raise her brother from the dead. She wanted a healing; He wanted a resurrection. God was going to do abundantly above and beyond that which she could ask or think.

God says, “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways” (Isaiah 55:8). We live on promises, not on explanations. We shouldn’t spend too much time asking why.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

Now Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.”—John 11:21–22

“Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” Loosely paraphrased, Martha was saying, “Lord, You blew it.”

Jesus loved her brother, Lazarus. But when Martha and Mary sent word to Him that Lazarus was sick, He waited. In fact, He waited a long time. He waited so long that Lazarus wasn’t just sick, he was dead. And he had been dead for four days. Martha wasn’t happy about it.

Have you ever felt that way? Something happened, and you said, “God, where were You?” Where were You when this marriage dissolved? . . . Where were You when my parents divorced? . . . Where were You when my child went astray? . . . Where were You when my loved one died?

But notice that Jesus did not reprove Martha for what she said. He could have. In some ways, it seems like He should have. But I think the reason He didn’t was because it isn’t sinful to tell God how you feel. That is all Martha was doing. She was just being honest with God.

Even our Lord, when He hung on the cross and was bearing the sins of the world, cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). That could sound accusatory, but Jesus was simply describing the reality of the situation. He was crying out to God.

When something difficult happens, we can withdraw from God and from others. We can get mad at God and at God’s people. But we need God, and we need His people.

Just talk to God. Tell Him how you’re really feeling. If you’re hurting, tell Him you’re hurting. If you’re in pain, tell Him you’re in pain. If you’re happy, tell Him you’re happy. Be honest with God.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. —Psalm 46:1

When crisis hits, when we are facing hardship, when we are sick or in need, we should call on the Lord.

When the Israelites criticized and turned against Moses, we read that he “cried out to the LORD” (Exodus 15:25). When King Hezekiah received a threatening letter, he “went up to the house of the LORD, and spread it before the LORD” (Isaiah 37:14). When John the Baptist was beheaded, we read that his disciples “came and took away the body and buried it, and went and told Jesus” (Matthew 14:12).

That is exactly what we ought to do when hardship comes our way. We should go and tell Jesus, because “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1).

Paul had his “thorn in the flesh.” We don’t know what it was, but he asked the Lord three times to take it away. God didn’t answer those prayers as Paul wanted Him to. Rather, He gave him the grace to get through that time of difficulty. There are times when God has a purpose in suffering, a plan through the pain. We always want to leave that option open. And, it is okay to pray about it. In fact, James 4:2 says, “You do not have because you do not ask.”

Paul prayed about his difficulty more than once, and we can pray about our problems more than once. Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9). This could be translated from the Greek, “Keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking.” The Bible encourages persistence.

We don’t necessarily need to tell God what He should do, but we should call on Him. Bring your troubles to Jesus.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.—Revelation 22:13

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God” (John 1:1–2 KJV).

In the original text, there is not a definite article before the word “beginning,” meaning you cannot pinpoint the moment in time where there was a beginning. This verse stretches back in time to eternity past—farther than our minds can imagine.

Before there was a world, before there were planets, before there was light or darkness, before there was matter, before there was anything but the Godhead, there was Jesus.

Jesus Christ: coequal, coeternal, coexistent with the Father and Holy Spirit. He was “with God” and He “was God.”

Yet, Jesus did not stay in the safety of heaven. Jesus became “Deity in diapers.” He entered our world. He breathed our air. He shared our pain. He walked in our shoes, and then some.

He lived our life and then He died our death.

Jesus did not become identical to us, but He did become identified with us. In fact, He could not have identified with us more closely than He did. It was total identification without any loss of identity, for He became one of us without ceasing to be Himself. He became human without ceasing to be God.

The Bible is clear in pointing out that Jesus Christ was and is God Himself. Even before the creation of the universe, Jesus was always there, as God without beginning or end.

Jesus said of Himself, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.” (Revelation 22:13 NKJV).

With this in mind, there is no question that Jesus, who is our all-powerful God, can help us in our time of need.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

“Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love.” —Revelation 2:4

If you want to experience revival in your life, then hang out with a brand-new believer. It is the best thing you can do for your own spiritual health. A brand-new believer is fired up and has questions that will have you digging back into the Scriptures again. You stabilize that new Christian, and he or she reenergizes you. Everyone benefits.

On the other hand, if you hang around with jaded Christians, with those who have even become cynical, then you need some new friends. Sometimes people worry about new believers not changing quickly enough, but I am more concerned with older believers who have stopped changing altogether. They are settled in their ways. Maybe they have traded in old vices like immorality, drinking, drugs, or profanity and replaced them with new ones like pride, backbiting, gossip, or bitterness.

I find it interesting that 80 to 90 percent of the Christians who personally share their faith have been believers for two years or less. In other words, most people who come to Christ through personal evangelism have done so because someone young in the faith shared the gospel with them.

I think this is because new believers are still discovering what God has done for them. They are still excited about it. As we get older in the faith and have walked with the Lord for a time, we start taking these things for granted sometimes. That means we need revival. We need to be brought back to that place where we once were, where we realize how important it is to share with others what Jesus has done for us.

If we have no desire to share our faith, then we need personal revival. Revived people are evangelistic people because their evangelism is a result of a Christ-filled life.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

“When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer went up to You, into Your holy temple.” —Jonah 2:7

God told Jonah to go and preach to the people of Nineveh, but Jonah boarded a boat and went in the opposite direction. When a violent storm hit, the sailors began to cry out to their gods. But Jonah told them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will become calm for you. For I know that this great tempest is because of me” (Jonah 1:12).

You know the rest of the story. They followed Jonah’s advice, and the Lord brought a “great fish” to swallow Jonah. I have to say that Jonah was stubborn. He spent three days and three nights inside that fish’s stomach . . . wrapped in seaweed . . . fish smacking him in the face . . . humidity like you wouldn’t believe. Yet he refused to budge.

Eventually Jonah came to his senses. He prayed. There in the belly of that fish, he had a personal revival. Jonah was ready to do what God had called him to do. He was revived and recommissioned by God.

First God sent revival to Jonah, then Jonah brought revival to Nineveh. That is because nothing can happen through us until it first happens to us. It has to start with us.

If you want to raise your children in the way of the Lord, then make sure you are walking in the way of the Lord. They will listen to your bedtime stories and mini sermons, but they will be watching your life to see if you live that out. Some things are caught, and other things are taught.

If you want to tell people you work with about Jesus Christ, then make sure you are a model of what it is to follow Christ.

Revival starts with you and me.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

The LORD gave this message to Jonah son of Amittai: “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh. Announce my judgment against it because I have seen how wicked its people are.” —Jonah 1:1–2

You might say that Jonah was the original chicken of the sea. When God told him to go to Nineveh and preach, his response essentially was, “No way! These people are wicked. I don’t want to go.”

It’s true the Ninevites were very cruel people. They were known for their savagery. In fact, when they would conquer a nation, they often would torture their prisoners before executing them and were known to burn boys and girls alive. They tortured others by tearing the skin from their bodies and leaving them to die in the scorching sun. Rather than hide this depravity, they celebrated it and proclaimed it. They even built monuments to their own cruelty.

Another reason for Jonah’s reluctance was that Nineveh was the capital of Assyria, the enemy of Israel. Jonah, being a patriotic Israelite, thought this through and deduced that if he didn’t go and preach to the Ninevites, God would judge them—and that would be one less enemy Israel would have to deal with.

But with a little extra persuasion, Jonah finally went and preached to the Ninevites—and it resulted in the largest spiritual awakening in all the Bible.

Unbeknownst to the people of Nineveh, their days were numbered. Assyria was the reigning superpower on the planet at this time, having ruled for 200 years. It required three days to circle metropolitan Nineveh, which had a population of about one million. That was a very large city for ancient times. But it would not be all that long until Babylon would come and overtake her. God was giving Nineveh one last chance.

If God could use someone like Jonah to bring about a revival in Nineveh, then certainly He could use someone like you or me to bring about a revival in our nation.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

Then we will not turn back from You; revive us, and we will call upon Your name. —Psalm 80:18

America needs an awakening, but the church needs a revival. We often use the words revival and awakening interchangeably, but there is a distinction. An awakening is when a nation comes alive spiritually, sees its need for God, and turns to Him. A revival is when God’s people come back to life again.

Revival simply means to bring back to life, to restore. To be revived is to wake up from a state of sleep. As C. S. Lewis pointed out, “A moderately bad man knows he is not very good: a thoroughly bad man thinks he is all right. . . . You understand sleep when you are awake, not while you are sleeping.” In other words, if you think you are a great person with no problems, then you are really more asleep than you realize.

Revival is coming back. It is waking up. Revival is getting back to the Christian life as it was meant to be lived. Revival is being in the bloom of first love for a lifetime, walking closely with the Lord. You can’t always have those initial emotions you had as a new believer any more than you can have the same butterflies in your stomach you had when you first met your husband or wife to be. That is unrealistic. But your love can grow deeper. Your love can grow stronger.

That is how we ought to be as followers of Jesus. We need the faith of the Christians of the first century, the faith that turned the world upside down. Revival is nothing more or less than a new obedience to God. Then it is, to quote Nietzsche, a “long obedience in the same direction.”

Only God can send an awakening to America. But revival can happen right here, right now.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other. —Isaiah 45:22

In John 3, Jesus lays out the “ABCs” of the gospel to Nicodemus:

“And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life (verses 14–15). Jesus is sending Nicodemus back to familiar territory: the Torah, Numbers 21.

The Israelites were complaining that God had abandoned them. They accused Moses and God of failing them, and bringing them to die in the wilderness. They were sick of what God had given them. So the Lord sent venomous snakes to bite them.

I once aspired to be a herpetologist (someone who studies reptiles), so I wondered, “What kind of snake was this?” I have been bitten by many snakes—king snakes, gopher snakes, red racers, pythons, boas—but never a poisonous snake.

These snakes in Numbers 21 could have been cobras. They are native to that region, and the bite of a cobra is deadly for sure. But there is another possibility. It also could have been a saw-scale viper, which is indigenous to that region. Saw-scale vipers are on the “Top 10” list of the most deadly snakes. They are only two feet long but have a huge striking range and are very aggressive. They put so much effort into a strike, they actually leave the ground. Once bitten, you only have hours to live.

The Israelites knew they were in trouble and called out to Moses. Moses was instructed by God to erect a pole with a bronze serpent on it. Whoever then looked at that serpent on a pole was healed of their venomous bite. God did everything He could do. It was up to the Israelites to look at that pole. They could have known of the pole’s existence yet never have looked.

In the same way, Satan has bitten us and the bite is potentially fatal if not treated. There is very little time. God provided the antidote through the atonement of Jesus on the cross. On the day Jesus hung on the cross, we read that some looked and believed. Others looked and turned away.

You can “look and live” or you can “look and leave.” In Isaiah 45:21–22, God says, “There is no God apart from me . . . Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other” (NIV).

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him I will trust.” —Psalm 91:1–2

When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he quoted the Scriptures—but he left something out. He said, “If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone’ ” (Matthew 4:6).

He quoted Psalm 91, which says, “For He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone” (verses 11–12). Notice Satan left out the words “to keep you in all your ways.” Why? If you look at it contextually, these verses are effectively saying that when you’re in the will of God, you don’t have to be afraid. You can trust the Lord.

Satan was essentially saying, “Just jump off, and the angels will catch you.”

But Jesus put it into context, saying, “It is written again, ‘You shall not tempt the Lord your God’ ” (Matthew 4:7).

You don’t have to get up every morning and say, “I might die today.” Yes, you might—but not if God doesn’t want you to. The Lord knows the date of your birth and the date of your death. You can be confident in Him. I believe that Christians are indestructible until God is done with them.

That doesn’t mean we go out and drink strychnine or play with venomous snakes. But it does mean that if it is not a Christian’s time, then he or she isn’t going anywhere. There is a difference between trusting the Lord and testing the Lord by taking unnecessary risks.

We don’t have to live in fear, because our times are in His hands.

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. —Romans 6:23

It has been said that opportunity knocks once, but temptation beats on the door every day. It happens to the best of us.

Don’t feel bad about that. Just because you are tempted doesn’t mean there is something wrong on your part. There is no sin in being tempted, because it is not the bait that constitutes temptation; it is the bite.

We play a key role in our own temptation. The Devil needs our cooperation for us to give in. Where there is no desire on our part, there is no temptation. As James 1:14–15 tells us, “Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”

In these verses we effectively have the five steps of temptation. First, there is the temptation itself: “each one is tempted.” This is when an evil thought comes knocking on the door of your imagination. But instead of rejecting it outright, you invite it in and begin to entertain it. You think, What if I did this . . . just for fun?

You’re in trouble already, because now you’ve reached the second step. You have been enticed. Your will is weakening, and the temptation is getting stronger. You’re thinking, processing, and considering. There is still a way out, but it’s getting harder to resist. And now the hook is set.

That brings us to the third and fourth steps of temptation. Desire has conceived, and it gives birth to sin. The evil thought has been acted upon. The process is in full swing, which leads to the final step of temptation, where the effects of sin kick in: “sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”

Harvest.org | Greg Laurie