John Oliver dedicated an entire episode of Last Week Tonight  to making the case for “gender-affirming care,” ruthlessly mocking those who believe that children should not be castrated. Stephen Colbert uses his late night show to defend the LGBT agenda while posing as a Catholic; other late night hosts are also reliable revolutionary allies. It’s easy to be dismissive of late-night hosts and comedians, but that would be a mistake. 

With the release of new comedy specials by Dave Chapelle and Ricky Gervais, we have been treated once again to several rounds of commentary complaining that their jokes about transgenderism are unacceptable and “punching down.” The backlash felt tired this time, since Chapelle and Gervais have proven uncancellable. We’ve all seen this show before. The idea that making jokes about one of the most powerful movements in the world is “punching down” is genuinely laughable.
What is more interesting is that Chapelle and Gervais are being treated as traitors to their class. In comedy of the 2020s it is fine to be transgressive, so long as you transgress in one direction: that of mocking morality, Christianity, and any remaining social boundaries. For the rest, the bulk of the comedian class serves as court jesters for the sexual revolution, targeting anyone who dares question its dogmas and, revealingly, scorning the very idea of virtue as impossible.
Consider how America’s late-night hosts deal with the issue of pornography. Jimmy Fallon spent an entire segment mocking Oklahoma state senator Dusty Deevers, who recently put forward legislation banning pornography and sexting. To uncomfortable laughter, Fallon read out fake sexts from Deevers and claimed that the Christian politician’s name sounded like a porn handle. It wasn’t funny, but the point wasn’t humor—it was to mock someone for opposing porn and for advocating public morality. Despite the growing consensus that pornography is addictive, toxic, and ruins relationships (porn is a factor in at least 56% of marriage breakdowns), opposing it is portrayed as a joke. Deevers’ response on X (formerly Twitter) was a class act:
My response to Jimmy Fallon and his writers, et al. First, I mourn the cost of enumerable people enticed into and trapped in pornography’s banquet in the grave and the fact that Jimmy Fallon serves as a waiter. Second, I long to see singlehood, marriages, families, and futures rescued from the poisonous promises of porn’s insatiable appetite for increasing deviance and destruction. Third, I know Jesus rescues sinners by His saving grace if they abhor and grieve their rebellion against Him, and turn to Christ, pursuing faith and obedience. That is my prayer for our nation and for Jimmy Fallon.
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It’s possible your greatest need in prayer is not to know more about it, but rather to know how to use the most foundational and comprehensive tool given to us in Scripture. As with any tool, its purpose is found not by focusing on the tool, but rather on setting our eyes on our praiseworthy Father, King, Provider, Pardoner, and Protector—and to shape our lives by his sovereign rule and care.

The reason there are so many books on prayer is that even after reading them, we still struggle to pray. Some reasons are intellectual—we don’t know how or why to pray in a particular situation. Some are volitional—our hearts are distracted or apathetic. Still other reasons are due to lacking proper practical tools.
As I’ve pondered how to grow in prayer, one simple solution has stood out as a versatile tool for overcoming our struggles: the Lord’s Prayer. This should come as no surprise, since this is the way Jesus taught his disciples to pray (Matt. 6:9–13).
Here’s how the Lord’s Prayer helps us overcome six common prayer struggles.
1. We forget why prayer matters.
Perhaps the most foundational reason we struggle to pray is that we forget prayer’s purpose. The Lord’s Prayer reminds us. We pray in order to glorify our heavenly Father. We pray in order to unify our hearts with his kingdom vision for the world and to align ourselves with his will. We pray for provision, pardon, and protection from the evil that comes from both inside and outside us.
2. We aren’t sure God hears us.
This suspicion leads many to neglect prayer, which is the only guaranteed way for God not to hear our prayers. The Lord’s Prayer reminds us that we pray to God our Father. A good father hears the cries and requests of his children. God, our perfect Father, always hears us and always answers us in his way and his timing (not always in the way we want, however).
3. We don’t know what to pray.
Sometimes believers don’t know what to pray, or they pray the same thing over and over and stop praying due to the monotony. The Lord’s Prayer gives us a Spirit-inspired path for knowing what to say in prayer. You might take a general approach to saying the Lord’s Prayer, using its petitions as a template and filling them in with specific praises and requests.
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Written by Amy K. Hall |
Thursday, September 23, 2021
Jesus is worthy of unleashing final judgment not because he’s righteous (though his righteousness made it possible), but because he died for our sins, purchasing people for God with his blood. His loving, self-sacrificial grace on the cross demonstrates the pinnacle of God’s glories, and all of God’s eternal judgment against evil must be seen in light of what Jesus first did for us—his suffering and death for his enemies. 

I fairly regularly get asked this question in various forms: How will the people in Heaven view Hell? How can they enjoy the glories of God while others are suffering? My answer has two parts—a direct answer and a crucial context for that answer.
First, we get a sense of the direct answer in Revelation 19:1–6 as part of John’s vision of the end times:
After [the declaration of judgment against Babylon] I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying,
“Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God; because His judgments are true and righteous; for He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality, and He has avenged the blood of His bond-servants on her.” And a second time they said, “Hallelujah! Her smoke rises up forever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sits on the throne saying, “Amen. Hallelujah!” And a voice came from the throne, saying,
“Give praise to our God, all you His bond-servants, you who fear Him, the small and the great.” Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying,
“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns.”
Here is the direct answer: Those in Heaven praise God when they see his judgments against evil. We will praise him for fulfilling his role as the perfect judge. I’ve written before that “It’s Not Wrong to Long for Justice.” Justice is good. It’s desirable. It causes us to worship. And in the Revelation passage above, we see an example of that. In fact, if you read the psalms while looking for examples of God being praised for his judgments against evil, you might be surprised by how often you run into it. “Our unrighteousness demonstrates the righteousness of God” when he “inflicts his wrath” against it, according to Romans 3:5.
As I wrote,
Our love of justice is a reflection of our love for the perfections of God’s character. He is righteous. He is loving. He is good.
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