Our debt to God is jaw-dropping. Take a moment to consider just how deep God’s forgiveness is for you. What debts has God released you from? What sins have you committed against your Creator? Consider the cost of that forgiveness. Spend time reading the accounts of Christ on the cross and see the love of your loving God who loved you so much he gave his Son to pay the price of your sins (Matt 27:27–55; John 19:1–37; Heb. 12:1–17).

“How can I forgive them?” It’s a question spoken out of a yearning to release the one who has inflicted injury. It’s a question that is said out of hurt and sometimes anger.
How do we forgive the person who keeps sinning against us? How do we forgive the one who sins against us in a grievous way? How do we forgive the individual who sins against us and isn’t repentant?
And when I ask, How, I do not so much have the mere mechanics of forgiveness in mind—although I mean this too—but the resources of the heart that might enable one to forgive. Where do these resources come from? We need to know because forgiveness, we read in Scripture, is mandatory for a Christian. In his depiction of how we ought to pray, Jesus seems to bind our forgiveness from God with the forgiveness we offer others, saying, “and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt 6:12).
Knowing that we might choke on that commandment, Jesus offers an explanation for the stakes of our forgiveness at the end of his prayer. “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matt 6:14–15). Yikes. There it is, in black and white. We must forgive the one who has offended us.
Now, to be clear, this is no spiritual tit-for-tat. Jesus is not saying that God will withhold forgiveness from us until we grant it to others. Rather, what Jesus is saying is that the forgiveness we receive from him is demonstrated in our forgiveness of others. Those who have received forgiveness will forgive.
Jesus is also not saying that forgiveness is the same as reconciliation. We might forgive someone, but their lack of repentance or change in behavior might mean that we are unable to trust them again. Jesus does not command that we reconcile with everyone (although, in Christ, that of course is our hope). But Jesus unhesitatingly does demand that we forgive.
But how can we muster forgiveness for everyone? Jesus tells one of the most unforgettable short stories ever told that points us to how we can possibly forgive those who have hurt us badly. The story goes like this:

Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants. When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents. And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, “Pay what you owe.” So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you.” He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, “You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?” And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. (Matt 18:23–35)

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Heaven will be dynamic. The new heavens and new earth will be a place of learning and growth. Days will roll by, each as full and dynamic, and restful, and delightful as the last. There will be laughter and work and discovery and all of it will be done as worship. Can you wait for that dynamic day?

When you enter heaven, how much will you know? Will you have all knowledge as it pertains to your life? Perfect knowledge as it pertains to everything?
Can we learn in heaven? According to one survey, only 18% of Americans believe that people will “grow intellectually in heaven.”[i] It makes sense. We should know everything in heaven, right? In the presence of God, won’t all knowledge be ours?
I don’t believe so. I think that Scripture sides with the 18% who believe we will be learners in heaven. Paul says, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace” (Eph 2:6-7). Do you catch the presumption of active learning in heaven in that verse? God is going to show us the incomparable riches of his grace… in the coming ages!
What are the incomparable riches of his grace he will show us? The list is endless. We will certainly understand the wonder of God’s grace on the cross more perfectly, but we will also be shown more profoundly God’s grace in creation, in art, in science, in beauty!
America’s greatest theologian Jonathan Edwards rejoiced in the progressive increase of our knowledge in heaven, “The number of ideas of the saints shall increase to eternity.”[ii]
In God’s grace-filled purpose, we are built to be learners. The wonders of the new heavens and the new earth are an invitation to discovery. We need eternity to explore our infinite God, who is incomprehensibly beautiful and intelligent. Each day we will exclaim about God first, and then his creation, “Look! Can you imagine? This is amazing!”
We will read; we will talk; we will study; we will learn. We will explore; we will discover; we will create; and we will work. That’s right, we’ll work!
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He argues that there will be no meat at this feast. This question, of course, is a minor one, and yet is a disagreement I have with Alcorn’s theological approach in Heaven that I think is worth discussing. This disagreement ought not diminish how grateful I am for Alcorn and his wonderful book. Throughout his book, Alcorn chooses Eden over Pentecost as a picture of what the new heavens and new earth will be.[iii] Scripture points to both (Eden and Pentecost) in picturing the new heavens and the new earth, but when there is a tension between the two, I believe Pentecost points us more faithfully to what the reality will be.

How was your Independence Day celebration? Was the food delicious? Guess what, our feasts are a foretaste of heaven!
Some of the most surprising and revealing passages in scripture are the glimpses we have of the resurrected Christ. In these snapshots, we have brief previews of what our bodily resurrection will look like. In two of these snapshots, we see Jesus eating fish with his disciples.[i] The resurrected Jesus eats? He sure does.
And with our resurrected bodies, we will eat too! One of the most powerful images in scripture of heaven is tucked away in Isaiah 25:6:
On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine – the best of meats and the finest of wines.
That, friends, is a party! I don’t know about you, but the idea that we get to eat for eternity is very attractive to me. Can you imagine all the new types of food we will taste? Exotic dishes we will experience?
I can smell the steak grilling and the bacon sizzling now.
But wait, will there be meat? In his book, Heaven, Randy Alcorn takes up the question of whether we will eat meat in heaven. He argues that there will be no meat at this feast:
Would God call ‘very good’ a realm in which animals suffered, died, and devoured one another? Surely the repeated redemptive promise that one day animals will live in peace with each other is at least to a degree a return to Edenic conditions, though it’s certainly more than that (Isaiah 11:6-9).
If, as I believe, animal death was a result of the Fall and the Curse, once the Curse has been lifted on the New Earth, animals will no longer die… 
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The gospel and God’s grace to us are not set aside in giving, but God himself, in his grace, is the one with the power to make this grace abound in us. God’s blessings result in good works.[v] And every good work is the work of generosity. In this, we return to Paul’s first reason for giving: it is a grace. Generosity is beautifully cyclical. When we actually cheer as money leaves our wallets, we are a place of delighting as God delights. It is then that we are experiencing the gift God intends to give us, the gift of generosity.

I worked for a few years in development and was trained in best practices for raising money. I was blessed to work for a Christian organization that was committed to raising money in a godly way, but the broader development industry doesn’t have many scruples in doing what they do best: separating people from their money. And they are clever! How does a development professional unlock the giving vault?
Secular Generosity
The secular handbook on getting people to give reveals a lot. There are three universal rules in development:[i]
1)      Appeal to donors’ emotions, not their minds: tell a story that will move them;
2)      Inflate a donor’s sense of importance and appeal to their interests;
3)      Create urgency: donors need to feel as though the need is immediate and significant.
Christian Generosity
The Christian generosity handbook is very different. Having delivered his four strange reasons for giving. Paul is now going to five equally strange instructions for giving in his letter to the Corinthian church. Paul’s instructions contradict the development professional’s handbook at almost every turn. Paul tells us we should give this way:
1)      Thoughtfully
2)      Not reluctantly
3)      Not under compulsion
4)      Cheerfully
5)      Through the power of Christ
Paul explains his instructions this way in 2 Corinthians 9:7-8: “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” It is staggering just how different this is from today’s secular handbook for giving.
Faux Christian Generosity
But shouldn’t we take tithing seriously? The LDS (Mormon) Church takes tithing very seriously. In an official publication, they state that a bishop may move forward with disciplinary action on that member including “information probation, temporarily restricting his privileges as a Church member – such as the right to partake of the sacrament, hold a Church position, or enter the temple.”[ii] That’s a far cry from our evangelical churches today. On the one hand, the LDS Church is to be commended for the seriousness with which they take stewardship and generosity. On the other hand, these guidelines draw very near overturning two of the ways in which Scripture calls us to give: “not reluctantly” and “not under compulsion.”
The Beautifully Strange Difference
Where today’s handbook tells one to appeal to the emotions, not reason, Paul tells us our giving must be thoughtful. Where the secular handbook tells us that any giver, even a reluctant giver is okay, Paul tells us that true generosity requires that there is an eagerness.
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God withholds nothing from us. As we are conformed into his image, we grow in our Triune God-echoing generosity. When we give, we display the very character of Christ to the world. We, ambassadors of this strangely generous King, display his category-defying generosity in our own generosity. 

Why do we give? The first hit when you Google “why should I be generous?” is this article which lays out four reasons:
1)      Giving frees you from the “burden of materialism”
2)      Giving helps you “to feel better about yourself”
3)      Giving makes you less self-centered
4)      Giving helps make people like you.
Do you find those reasons compelling? Two of them (1 &3) have echoes of biblical truth in them. But 2 & 4 are shockingly empty reasons.
Paul also has four reasons for giving: none of which overlap with this list. Here is Paul’s list:
1)      Give because giving is a grace
2)      Give because it proves your love of Jesus
3)      Give because Jesus first gave
4)      Give because you will be blessed.
Give Because Jesus Gave
Today we arrive at the third reason on that list: give because Jesus first gave. Paul says it this way in 2 Corinthians 8:9:
“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that thought he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”
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If we claim to be Christians and are stingy, we need to look in the mirror and ask if we really are Christians. Have we been changed by God’s generosity? Do we really believe the first reason: that generosity is a grace, an opportunity, given to us by our Savior?  

No one argues that miserliness is an admirable character trait. The national convention of Ebeneezer Scrooge urging Americans to be less generous doesn’t exist.
Many perceive one of America’s strongest virtues to be generosity. There is some evidence for this. News reports gushed that over $471 billion was given to charity in 2020, the highest recorded number on record in U.S. history. That’s a huge amount of money. But that number represents a mere 2% of the US’s GDP, which stood at $20.94 trillion in 2020.
2% hardly seems a number to hang on our wall. What about Christians? Unfortunately, we do little better, giving approximately 3% of our income to charity. And fewer than 5% of Christians tithe.[ii] Generosity isn’t graded on a curve.
Most disappointingly is the self-deception of Christians. 17% of Christians report tithing despite the actual number of 5%. Worse still, 10% of those who claimed they tithe actually gave less than $200 to charity.[iii]
The Second Reason to Give
Paul would have something to say about this. In this series, we are exploring the reasons Paul says that we should be generous. The first reason was that giving is a grace; it is a gift offered to us by God.
Paul’s second reason is found in 2 Corinthians 8:8, Paul urges, “I say this [that you ought to participate in the grace of giving] not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine.”
Paul’s second reason for giving is that our giving proves that we love Jesus.
That ought to catch our attention. The ledger of my giving is the proof of my love of Christ?
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What is most incredible is that God enters into our groans with us. In the Garden of Getsemane, Jesus “was troubled” and prayed “in agony” to the Father in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mt 26, Lk 22). On the cross, Jesus cries out David’s words in Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Mt 27:46). He groans for himself and he groans with us.

Spine: that’s the technical word for the pointy things that come out of cacti. Most Arizonans use more colloquial expressions like prickers or stickers when referencing them. Either way, they’re nothing to laugh at. If you’ve lived in the Sonoran desert for any length of time, you’ve used a pair of tweezers to yank them from your skin.
After my parents moved to Tucson, my grandfather visited from Florida. Amazed by the beautiful and seemingly soft “fur” covering prickly pear cacti, he stroked the apparently innocuous fuzz. The prickly pear gifted him with a few hundred spines that pierced his fingertips. He groaned.
Recently I was doing some yard work and got too close to a saguaro’s spine as I tried to weed around the base of the cactus. The spine pierced my fingernail. I groaned.
It has remained lodged there for over two months. Initially located at the base of my fingernail, it was impossible to remove without taking off my entire fingernail. The fingernail itself now holds the tip of the spine against the flesh under my fingernail. It’s a tiny amount of pain, but pain that will not leave. I groan.
There is a surprising amount of groaning in the Bible. In Exodus, we hear the groans of the Israelites in their enslavement, “During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God” (Ex 2:23). In the days of the judges, the Israelites groaned. David and other psalmists groan throughout the Psalms.
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We need both the habits and the goal. On the one hand, there is a power in developing purposeful habits that we consistently practice over decades. On the other hand, many of our spiritual habits are without purpose or have lost their purpose. We need habits directed toward a finish line.

What plan do you have for your spiritual life? Where do you want to go spiritually? And how are you going to get there?
My hunch is that most of us don’t have a plan for our spiritual life. Most of us live hoping that we’ll drift into a better spiritual life. But that is a faulty assumption. Have you drifted into losing weight? Or becoming a better father? Or into your Master’s degree?
For some reason, we think that even though we make plans for improvement and we set goals in other areas, it’s not necessary or spiritual for us to set out these kinds of plans for our spiritual walk.
Jesus himself lived an incredibly purposeful life. If you pick up the gospel of John, you see that Jesus is very sensitive to discerning and following God’s purpose for his life. His purpose was not about self-fulfillment but self-giving at the cross. In John 17:1, Jesus prays, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.”
How do we live a spiritual life with such purpose and awareness?
Just as we need a plan to study for a business exam, or to lock in our workouts to lose weight, so we need a plan for our spiritual life. So, what’s your plan? What do you want? How are you going to grow in your understanding of God’s Word? Or how are you going to grow in your prayer life? What current habits do you have? Do they need to be changed to grow? Do you need a shock to your system? Or maybe you need to expand what you’re doing?
We need both the habits and the goal. On the one hand, there is a power in developing purposeful habits that we consistently practice over decades. On the other hand, many of our spiritual habits are without purpose or have lost their purpose. We need habits directed toward a finish line.
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The power of the belief that we’re alone traps us in shame. It sucks us into the belief that we can get ourselves out of our messes. Break the cycle. Cry out to God. Call your pastor. Connect with a trusted Christian friend. Contact a counselor. You are never alone.

“I’m sure no one has ever told you this.”
“It’s so bad. You are going to think terrible things about me.”
“Everyone would hate me if they knew what I was thinking.”
“There is no one who loves me for me.”
I’ve heard each of these helpless words from people who sat in my office. They are raw, vulnerable, heartbreaking. They reveal people’s crippling loneliness and fears that they are destined to remain alone.
I’ve been there. Discouragement spiraled into depression, and I multiplied my angst by entangling myself in sin. I didn’t think anyone would understand. I was too afraid to ask for help. Lies compounded sin.
Satan Lies
Satan traffics in lies. He wants you to believe that God isn’t good, that you are alone, and that your shame can never be removed. Each is a profound deception. In 1 Peter 5:8, we are reminded: “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” Don’t be deceived, Peter says; you have to fight to stay out of the enemy’s jaws. There is one who intends to destroy you.
How can we fight the enemy’s lies? It’s no accident that Peter’s admonition to be on guard against Satan comes after his encouragement for elders to shepherd the flock, and his subsequent call to humility. For Peter knows that a humble and unified flock is a powerful force against Satan’s wiles: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you” (1 Pet. 5:6–7).
Isn’t that peculiar advice? What’s the connection between Satan’s attacks, humbling ourselves, and casting our anxieties on God? Peter puts his finger on a particular vulnerability Satan goes after: our anxieties, which drive us from God and community and toward ourselves.
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The blue screen of death. We’ve all experienced it. You’re plugging away on a paper or trying to load a website and whammo, your computer is toast. A few minutes and a hard restart later, you’re back up and running, but not without consequences. You might have lost your train of thought or part of what you wrote. Ironically, I experienced the blue screen of death writing this post!
Covid-19 was a cultural blue screen of death. Work, school, and church rhythms were all disrupted, and as a result everything changed. People’s connection to church shifted or ended completely. Nearly every pastor I’ve spoken with affirms lower church attendance today than eighteen months ago.
The blue screen of Covid, it seems, made everyone re-think just how important church is.
A Replacement for Church?
More than a handful decided that other spiritual practices can take the place of church. Jen Hatmaker recently shared about a conversation she had with her therapist where she came to the realization that “church for me right now feels like my best friends, my porch bed, my children, and my parents and my siblings. It feels like meditations and all these leaves on my 12 pecan trees. It feels like Ben Rector on repeat. It feels like my kitchen, and my table, and my porch. It feels like Jesus who never asked me to meet him anywhere but in my heart.”
Others have decided to cut themselves off from church due to their frustration with what they perceive the church to be. This thread of tweets between Laura Chastain and Andrew Novell captures the spirit of those who feel disappointed by the church.
Whatever the stated reason, at its core this exodus from the church stems from a lack of understanding of the true heart, function, and mission of the church.