Randy Alcorn

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." (Jeremiah 1:5)

Grace and truth found their perfect union in Christ, but the rest of us tend to gravitate toward one or the other. 

This is a small group lesson I wrote for Good Shepherd Community Church Growth Groups. It was designed for use in groups following my message on abortion in the January 18-19, 1997 services. Pastors (or anyone else) are welcome to make use of it. — Randy Alcorn

When it comes to financial stewardship, God hasn’t handed each of us a standardized checklist with little boxes to mark off one by one. Rather, He has provided us His Word with principles for effective financial stewardship—principles we have to wrestle with. In the process of this struggle, God expects us to seek His face and to pursue the counsel of godly believers who have traveled further than we along Stewardship Road.

All these questions are addressed in Randy Alcorn's book Heaven (Tyndale, 2004). Most of them have clear, though not comprehensive, biblical answers. The others that don't have clear answers can be intelligently speculated upon, based on what Scripture does tell us.

"When [the Lamb] opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, 'How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?' Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed" (Revelation 6:9-11).  

Years ago I was given an amazing opportunity to address three thousand people, most of them high school students, for fifty minutes on the subject of abortion.

You will inevitably adopt the morality of the programs, movies, books, magazines, music, Internet sites, and conversations you participate in. GIGO—Garbage in, garbage out; Godliness in, godliness out. The cognitive is basic to the behavioral—you become what you choose to feed your mind on.

More people point to the problem of evil and suffering as their reason for not believing in God than any other—it is not merely a problem, it is the problem.