There's only one requirement for enjoying God's grace: being broke . . . and knowing it.
Randy AlcornPut your resources, your assets, your money and possessions, your time and talents and energies into the things of God. As surely as the compass needle follows north, your heart will follow your treasure. Money leads; hearts follow.
Randy AlcornIf we were to gain God's perspective, even for a moment, and were to look at the way we go through life accumulating and hoarding and displaying our things, we would have the same feelings of horror and pity that any sane person has when he views people in an asylum endlessly beating their heads against the wall.
Randy AlcornCompassion for the mother is extremely important, but is never served through destroying the innocent.
Randy AlcornIt's curious that the Church has become the most tightfisted at the very time in history when God has provided most generously. There's considerable talk about the end of the age, and many people seem to believe that Christ will return in their lifetime. But why is it that expecting Christ's return hasn't radically influenced our giving? Why is it that people who believe in the soon return of Christ are so quick to build their own financial empires--which prophecy tells us will perish--and so slow to build God's kingdom?
Randy AlcornNothing is more often misdiagnosed than our homesickness for Heaven. We think that what we want is sex, drugs, alcohol, a new job, a raise, a doctorate, a spouse, a large-screen television, a new car, a cabin in the woods, a condo in Hawaii. What we really want is the person we were made for, Jesus, and the place we were made for, Heaven. Nothing less can satisfy us.
Randy AlcornTomorrow's character is made out of today's thoughts. Temptation may come suddenly, but sin does not.
Randy AlcornToo often we assume that God has increased our income to increase our standard of living, when his stated purpose is to increase our standard of giving. (Look again at 2 Corinthians 8:14 and 9:11).
Randy AlcornThe currency of this world will be worthless at our death or at Christ's return, both of which are imminent.
Randy AlcornFor the Christian, death is not the end of adventure but a doorway from a wold where dreams and adventures shrink, to a world where dreams and adventures forever expand.
Randy AlcornFive minutes after we die, we'll know exactly how much we should have given rather than kept.
Randy AlcornTeach your children gratefulness. Do all you can to deliver them from our culture's poisonous entitlement mentality.
Randy AlcornTolstoy said, 'The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.' Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we could help if we chose to, starve and go to hell.
Randy AlcornNothing is wiser than giving first to God, cutting back our expenditures wherever we can, and systematically paying off our debts to others, having placed ourselves through our faithful giving under God's blessing instead of His curse.
Randy AlcornCheap grace replaces truth with tolerance, lowering the bar so everyone can jump over it and we can all feel good about ourselves.
Randy AlcornSelfishness is when we pursue gain at the expense of others. But God doesnโt have a limited number of treasures to distribute. When you store up treasures for yourself in heaven, it doesnโt reduce the treasures available to others. In fact, it is by serving God and others that we store up heavenly treasures. Everyone gains; no one loses.
Randy AlcornThe tithe is God's historical method to get us on the path of giving. In that sense, it can serve as a gateway to the joy of grace giving. It's unhealthy to view tithing as a place to stop, but it can still be a good place to start.
Randy AlcornMaterialism is a fruitless attempt to find meaning outside of God. When we try to find ultimate fulfillment in a person other than Christ or a place other than heaven, we become idolaters. According to Scripture, materialism is not only evil; it is tragic and pathetic.
Randy AlcornDon't forget that the most effective form of child abuse is giving a child everything they want.
Randy AlcornChristians are God's delivery people, through whom he does his giving to a needy world. We are conduits of God's grace to others. Our eternal investment portfolio should be full of the most strategic kingdom-building projects to which we can disburse God's funds.
Randy AlcornWhenever we have excess, giving should be our natural response. It should be the automatic decision, the obvious thing to do in light of Scripture and human need.
Randy AlcornMany atheistic books and blogs seethe with anger. Remarkably, the authors do not limit their anger to Christians. They seem most livid with God. I don't believe in leprechauns, but I haven't dedicated my life to battling them. I suppose if I believed that people's faith in leprechauns poisoned civilization, I might get angry with members of leprechaun churches. But there's one thing I'm quite sure I wouldn't do: I would not get angry with leprechauns. Why not? Because I can't get angry with someone I know doesn't exist.
Randy AlcornNot only will we see His face and live, but we will likely wonder if we ever lived before we saw His face!
Randy AlcornEvery kingdom work, whether publicly performed or privately endeavored, partakes of the kingdom's imperishable character. Every honest intention, every stumbling word of witness, every resistance of temptation, every motion of repentance, every gesture of concern, every routine engagement, every motion of worship, every struggle towards obedience, every mumbled prayer, everything, literally, which flows out of our faith-relationship with the Ever-Living One, will find its place in the ever-living heavenly order which will dawn at his coming.
Randy AlcornShouldn't we suppose that many of our most painful ordeals will look quite different a million years from now, as we recall them on the New Earth? What if one day we discover that God has wasted nothing in our life on Earth? What if we see that every agony was part of giving birth to an eternal joy?
Randy AlcornThe conflicting missions of the two armies seemed to have no fog, no gray, only black-and-white clarity. I had lived my life in terms of compromise, rule-bending, trade-offs, concessions, bargaining, striking deals, finding middle ground. In these two great armies, there was no such thing. Good was good, and evil was evil, and they shared no common ground.
Randy AlcornGod prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving.
Randy AlcornWorry is momentary atheism crying out for correction by trust in a good, sovereign God. Suffering breaks self-reliance.
Randy AlcornIf you're a child of God, you do not just "go around once" on Earth. You don't get just one earthly life. You get another-one far better and without end. You'll inhabit the New Earth! You'll live with the God you cherish and the people you love as an undying person on an undying Earth.
Randy AlcornHe who lays up treasures on earth spends his life backing away from his treasures. To him, death is loss. He who lays up treasures in heaven looks forward to eternity; he's moving daily toward his treasures. To him, death is gain. He who spends his life moving toward his treasures has reason to rejoice. Are you despairing or rejoicing?
Randy AlcornWe are all theologians, either good ones or bad ones. I'd rather be a good one. Wouldn't you?
Randy AlcornIf I try to make only enough money for my family' immediate needs, it may violate Scripture. ...Even though earning just enough to meet the needs of my family may seem non materialistic, it's actually selfish when I could earn enough to care for others as well.
Randy AlcornGive deliberately. Giving is at its best when it's a conscious effort that's repeatedly made.
Randy AlcornEven if abortion were made easy or painless for everyone, it wouldn't change the bottom-line problem that abortion kills children.
Randy AlcornGod loves a great story, and all of us who know Him will recall and celebrate and continue to live in that story for all eternity.
Randy AlcornStatistics show that a soldier's chances of survival in the front lines of combat are greater than the chances of an unborn child avoiding abortion. What should be the safest place to live in America - a mother's womb - is now the most dangerous place.
Randy AlcornParents who spoil their children out of 'love' should realize that they are performing acts of child abuse. Although there are no laws against such abuse--no man-made laws anyway--this spiritual mistreatment may result in as much long-term personal and social damage as the worst physical abuse.
Randy AlcornGive worshipfully. Our giving is a reflexive response to God's grace. It doesn't come out of our altruism - it comes out of the transforming work of Christ in us.
Randy AlcornSin and death and suffering and war and poverty are not naturalโthey are the devastating results of our rebellion against God. We long for a return to Paradiseโa perfect world, without the corruption of sin, where God walks with us and talks with us in the cool of the day.
Randy AlcornJesus didn't tell us not to store up treasures. On the contrary, he commanded us to. He simply said, "Stop storing them up in the wrong place, and start storing them up in the right place."
Randy AlcornThe vermin explain their sin with sanctimonious language like, "We've prayed about it and sought counsel, and we feel it's the right thing to do." Don't let it down on them that to the Enemy what they feel is inconsequential. His moral laws don't give a rip about how any of them feel. The sludgebags have no more power to vote them in and out of existence than they have power to revoke the law of gravity.
Randy Alcorn