Service Is a Reward

Posted on by under Randy Alcorn

Service is a reward, not a punishment. This idea is foreign to people who dislike their work and only put up with it until retirement. We think that faithful work should be rewarded by a vacation for the rest of our lives. But God offers us something very different: more work, more responsibilities, increased opportunities, along with greater abilities, resources, wisdom, and empowerment. We will have sharp minds, strong bodies, clear purpose, and unabated joy. The more we serve Christ now, the greater our capacity will be to serve Him in Heaven.

Randy Alcorn, Heaven (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2004), 234.

A Message to Churches Reaching across 75 Years

Posted on by under Miscellaneous

So long as the church pretends or assumes to preach absolute values, but actually preaches relative and secondary values, it will merely hasten the process of disintegration. We are asked to turn to the church for our enlightenment, but when we do so we find that the voice of the church is not inspired. The voice of the church today, we find, is the echo of our own voices. When we consult the church we hear only what we ourselves have said.

There is only one way out of the spiral, and the way out is the sound of a voice, not our voice, but a voice coming from something beyond ourselves, in the existence of which we cannot disbelieve. It is the duty of pastors to hear this voice, to cause us to hear it, and to tell us what it says.

Fortune Magazine, January 1940