Comforting Realities About God

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It's reasoned relevant content apologetics, worldview, and answers to the questions that you need to know. From Alex McFarland Ministries, this is Truth for a New Generation Radio. And now the man who preached in 50 states in 50 days, speaker, writer, and advocate for Christian apologetics, Dr. Alex McFarland. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose. Romans 8 28. Hi, welcome to the program.

Alex McFarland here. Today I want to talk about some comforting facts that can only be said about the God of the Bible. So glad you're listening, and obviously the whole world, you know, continues to grapple with the dynamics of living in the quarantine lockdown world, the coronavirus world. You know, even though it's been a struggle, and our hearts go out to so many of the people that are not able to work and not getting their hours in, and we're praying for people.

And we've heard from many of you across this nation that are saying, please pray for me. You know, I will say there are even some funny things. People are sending out tweets and memes about family dynamics, you know, homeschooling and being at home. There are some blessings to this. I mean, I think, look, we're seeing that we can absolutely live without going to the movies. We can definitely live without pro sports. We can live without eating out as much, and people are talking about how they're rediscovering the joy of having a family mealtime.

And I hope during all of this, God is cultivating within you some gratitude for things that maybe in our previously busy, busy go-go-go life we weren't, you know, doing or thinking about. We need to value family and spend time at home. A lot of people are grappling with the dynamics of working from home. Somebody tweeted, I saw this morning, they said, you know, it's hard to work from home. And somebody tweeted and said, I didn't work from work. But we're all learning what Zoom meetings are and Skype and things like that.

I just last week taught a college class, and I was on Zoom for over 20 hours. And even I was tired of the sound of my own voice. But no, God is good, and God is with us. And you know what, I think we have every reason to be encouraged because people are praying, people are watching their services online. We do look for the day that our churches can reopen.

And let me just say this, folks. One thing to pray about, in all seriousness, that our civil liberties will not be permanently lost. And that is why it is so important that you, number one, pray, number two, stay informed, and number three, vote. And as November comes around, and we're going to be talking about this a lot, that we vote for a president and leaders across America that will support our Constitution and our civil liberties, which, yes, include liberties of religious freedom, freedom of religious expression.

I was just on a show a week ago called Truth and Liberty with my friend Andrew Womack. And we were talking about civil liberties, things that the Constitution guards. You know, the Constitution, as the founders understood it, and certainly people like JFK reiterated this in his 1961 inauguration. Even Bill Clinton in 2003, when President Clinton was dedicating Patrick Henry High School in Northern Virginia, then President Clinton said that our rights come not from the government, but from God, which is true. And the purpose of the Constitution and the government is not to give you rights, but to guard the rights you inherently already possess, given by God. But Bill Clinton said, the first most fundamental right is the right of freedom of religion, religious expression. And that's why I understand the quarantining and all that. But we need to pray for our country that our civil liberties are not lost.

And I will say this, and I want to talk about the comforting facts that can only be said about the God of the Bible. Has it been a little concerning to you the speed and the rapidity with which everybody just kind of got in line? You know, we're told you can't work, you can't run your business, you can't go out of the house, can't do this, can't do that. And I know in good faith, we've believed what the World Health Organization said about the coronavirus and, you know, all the danger, even though now they're saying it's not nearly as lethal as they thought. The models, the projections for the deaths have not been what people thought about two months ago. But my point is this, folks, the absolute overnight speed at which Americans everywhere, we got in line, we were just willing to subordinate our constitutional rights, of course for the greater good, to rein in and flatten the curve on this pandemic. But the thing that does trouble me is how quickly the whole wide world could be brought under the subjection of a one-world government, how quickly Americans would give up their civil rights. And here's the thing to watch out for, folks. I believe the liberal progressives have tried to do, pandemically, what they could not do constitutionally.

If you look at Governor Cuomo in New York, I mean, did you see that this past week, where there was a Jewish funeral, and he forcibly right there in front of the mourners called in police to disperse a funeral procession of these Jewish people. And I would say this, folks, understand Christ is coming back one day, and all of the prophetical scenarios depicted in the Bible absolutely could happen. One day they will happen. And so we need to, if you've never come to Christ, turn your life over to Jesus, and not only live a blessed, happy, peaceful life here, but you'll be ready when the end of time does come. You'll be prepared. So we're going to unpack Romans 8 a little bit, talk about how all things can work together for the good to those who love the Lord and who are the called according to his purpose.

We're going to be right back on Truth For A New Generation radio after this. From I Am A Watchman Ministries, here's today's I Am A Watchman Minute. Great training is great faith, and that's what Amos had. Amos lived during a time of relative peace and prosperity. Most of Israel had grown complacent.

They failed to put God first and fell into apostasy. Amos's world of 2,700 years ago sounds a lot like our world today. Watchman, like Amos, we are called to tell a hardened world what God expects and what God is going to do.

Will you embrace the calling to do extraordinary things for God? Be bold, be faithful, be a watchman. Iamawatchman.com When we're told to do something, we like to ask why. We don't follow traditions merely for the sake of tradition. We seek a biblical worldview and search for reasons behind answers. For the Christian who wants to dig deeper, there's engagemagazine.net, packed with relevant articles from movie reviews and life tips to culture and the believer's spiritual life. Share truth, apply scripture, engagemagazine.net. Christians don't necessarily agree with one another when it comes to questions of religious pluralism, homosexuality, the role of government, abortion, and war. Too often we manage these disagreements by ignoring them. Yet we're called to engage the world for the sake of Christ.

How can we be effective if we avoid society's most pressing questions? In 10 issues that divide Christians, Alex McFarland challenges us to drill down to the biblical core of 10 current issues, such as social justice, evil and suffering, pornography, and environmentalism, as he echoes the biblical invitation, come, let us reason together. Only by engaging the scriptures deeply, thinking clearly, and speaking truthfully, can we and God's family address our differences and discover the peace that comes with unity of purpose.

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That's liberty.edu backslash explore to learn more. Timeless Trues in a Soundbite Culture. Truth for a New Generation Radio. Welcome back to the program.

Alex McFarland here. We're talking about four comforting facts that can only be said of the God of the Bible. Very famously, the book of Romans says that we know that all things work together for the good to those who love the Lord and are the called according to his purpose. Now, it doesn't say that all things are good. Not all things are good. I mean, some things are tragic.

Some things are terrible. But what we know about a sovereign, all-powerful God is that he is able to work things into an ultimate good. And I want to throw a couple of words into this conversation. One is the word ultimate and the other is the word proximate.

Ultimate. We know what that means. That means down the road. Ultimately, you know, what's going to happen? Well, ultimately this is going to happen or ultimately the outcome will be that. We don't often use the word proximate, but we know the phrase something is in close proximity.

Well, the couch is in close proximity to the table. Okay. What is a proximate evil for the Christian? Trusting in God, following God's plan can become an ultimate good. The great preacher Vance Havner said that in heaven all of our question marks will become exclamation points. I was in a cemetery looking at epitaphs on gravestones and I saw an epitaph from 150 years ago. There was a little tombstone and the date. It was a child that had died only having lived a few days, very sadly. And I was thinking about, wow, here's a baby from a century and a half ago that was born. The birth of a baby is a joyful thing, but died. And I thought, wow, a mom and a dad and a family probably stood here 150 years ago, sadly, tearfully burying a baby that had passed. But the tombstone, barely legible on this old gravestone, it said, Earth has no sorrows that heaven can't erase. That was the epitaph. So the reason I share that here in the context of this pandemic and just where we are in the journey of life is very often fear can cause us to do some very pathological things.

In times of fear, people do things that are often irrational. And it's very important at any step of life's journey, and certainly during times like these, that we keep a good perspective on not only our circumstance, but the God who is above our circumstances. You remember Yogi Berra, the famous New York Yankees player, number eight. He lived 1925 to 2015.

I'm told he was a Christian. In fact, Yogi Berra almost wrote a book for Focus on the Family, Dr. Dobson's ministry, when I was out there. And Yogi Berra was famous for his statements, yogiisms that he would say, like, if you come to a fork in the road, take it. But Yogi Berra once said this, that if you don't know where you're going, you'll be lost when you get there.

Think about that. Well, in regard to life's circumstances and struggles and trials, if you don't know the eternal unchanging God who is able to make all things work together for the good, ultimately, you can become fearful. You can become paranoid. You can become bitter.

You can become prideful. I mean, there's a lot of very negative character traits that can develop in us if we don't keep a God-ordained perspective about life, a biblically informed perspective. We often talk about worldview.

And worldview is looking at life and reality through a biblical lens. And we've got to remember that God is omnipotent. That means he has all the power. God is omni benevolent. That means God is all good. God is omniscient. God has all knowledge.

Omni science. God has all the knowledge. And so we know that God has power. God has goodness.

God has knowledge. God is righteous. God is just.

Even more than just, God is compassionate and loving. And we call this grace. What is grace? Grace is unmerited favor. It's good favor that we didn't deserve. We couldn't earn it. We don't have it.

We don't really deserve it. But grace is God's favor that he gives to us. He extends his grace to us.

Why? Because he loves us. And at this time, we need to remember this. Now, these comforting facts, I want to give you some things to think about. Number one, God's power is unlimited. Now, these facts that I want to talk about, the biblical God, they cannot be said of the false gods of other religions, the non-existent gods or deities of other belief systems. Even, I think, of Islam. They can't say that Allah is altogether good. They can't say that Allah is altogether loving or merciful.

Do you know they really can't even say that Allah is altogether unlimited in his power? What they say of Allah is that Allah is pure will. Whatever happens is because God wills it. Now, in the Christian conception of God, look, murder, terrorism, disease, cancer, God did not will that. Now, God permitted it, and it happened, and we know ultimately God will weave it together for our good and his glory. But listen, in the Christian conception of God, the true and the living God, the only God, God is good. Now, this world is a fallen, broken world of sin, and we often look around the world and we lament, and we say, well, this world needs to be fixed.

This world needs to be changed. And the good news is God agrees. God says, yes, you're right. That's why I sent my son to pay for sin, and he's going to restore all things when he comes back. And in fact, God is in the process of restoring the world now by bringing souls to Christ, and the church is going and being salt and light and love and righteousness. And the Bible says that through the gospel, through what he did on the cross, God is reconciling the world to himself. So think of salvation and God's fixing of the world, if you will, think of it in two segments. He came and paid for sin and rose from the dead and made salvation possible. And throughout the last 2,000 years, the church has been spreading, souls have been saved, and everything not only from spiritual salvation to the betterment of the human condition. Show me where the church of Jesus Christ is gone, and we can see where the betterment of the human condition has been the result. But ultimately, it will all coalesce into the restoration of all things when Christ returns and he is coming back. And we know not only that all things can work together for good in Jesus, he is working things together for good.

So have you allowed his redemptive hand into your own life? Stay tuned. We're going to come back. We've got a brief break, and we're going to talk about the comforting realities that we know about the God of the Bible. Stay tuned.

We're back after this. Alex has written many books to help you defend your faith. One of them answers questions from skeptics.

It's cleverly titled, Ten Answers for Skeptics. Today's skeptics are looking for authenticity, integrity, and straightforward truth. And in the book, Alex McFarland identifies the ten most common types of skepticism that plague doubters' minds and offers believers proven strategies for connecting intellectually and spiritually with those who are skeptical about the claims of Christianity. Learn how to answer intimidating questions, identify the root issue behind those questions, and dismantle the spiritual bombshells dropped by atheists.

Plus, find encouragement to face hostility by persevering in love. The ultimate apologetic Christians can offer as a witness to our loving God. Check out Ten Answers for Skeptics when you visit alexmcfarland.com. If you're a Christian parent, you of course want to instill a biblical view of life in the hearts of your children. If you're a pastor, you want to offer ministry that draws young families to your church. This is Alex McFarland encouraging you to check out my new book and video curriculum, The 21 Toughest Questions Your Kids Will Ask About Christianity. Why do bad things happen? I interviewed hundreds of children, ages 5 to 12, and we address actual questions from actual children, the spiritual issues that are on the minds of your kids.

Did Jesus ever sin? The book and video lessons are great for groups of any size and was produced with the goal of equipping kids to stand strong for Christ in any situation. The 21 Toughest Questions Your Kids Will Ask, the book, study guide, and video series, you'll find it at afastore.net. That's afastore.net. In the midst of a culture obsessed with relativism, Alex McFarland is a voice you can trust to speak the timeless truths of Christianity in a timely way. You're listening to Truth For A New Generation Radio. Welcome back to the program.

Alex McFarland here. You're listening to TNG Radio, Truth For A New Generation. I want to continue talking about the comforting facts that can only be said about the God of the Bible, but I do want to remind everybody that I'm going to be at the Cove, the Billy Graham Training Center at the Cove. July 27 through August 1, we'll be doing Daniel and Revelation, Bible Prophecy, How God Writes History in Advance.

I talked to the dear folks at the Cove. They are going forward with this. We have a good number of people signed up, and I want to say thank you. There are people signed up from across America, and we're just believing God that, yes, this will happen. I know it's several months away. But if you want to come, the website is thecove.org. And we're getting so many questions.

People are asking, are we in the end times, and are we near the return of Christ? Well, we will talk about that, and I hope you'll join us there. And people are asking about, you know, Alex, your travel schedule is not what it was because of this lockdown and the quarantine. You know, for 22 years, it's been my privilege to travel the country and preach two and three and four places a week. In two decades, God has allowed me to be in more than 2,000 different American churches, more than 200 American universities. I don't know how many jails and prisons and high schools and conferences and you name it.

And for an itinerate apologetics evangelist, this lockdown has been a real change. But you know what we're doing? We're on the radio seven days a week, thanks to the American Family Radio Network, thanks to the Truth Network, thanks to dozens of our affiliates around the country that run the radio we create, and I thank God for you all. And then we're on the radio on the weekends, and then we're on the web. Now listen very carefully. This program is brought to you in part by Good Shepherd Church of Greensboro. Their website is GoodShepherdChurchOfGreensboro.com. And I'm on there speaking every Wednesday night at 6.45 p.m. Eastern, every Sunday morning at 10.15 a.m. Eastern. And then we do on the Alex McFarland YouTube channel and the Facebook page.

I know I'm giving you a lot of information, but listen carefully. On Facebook Rev Alex McFarland, R-E-V, Rev Alex McFarland, Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 11 a.m. Eastern. And we're doing apologetics biblical worldview.

And you know what? God is amazing, talking about how a proximate challenge can be an ultimate good. The last two weeks of March, the first three weeks of April, we were averaging around 91 people a day that were contacting our ministry. We're getting hundreds of contacts about all sorts of things. But around 91 of those a day were people saying, I need to know that I'm saved.

How can I be certain that I'm born again? And so amazingly, you know, though I've, you know, more than two dozen major speaking events aren't happening because of the lockdown, including Dr. Dobson and I, James Dobson and I were to be in Florida the first week of June together. But do you know what? The amazing thing is the ministry is going on and though we're on air and online, more people are coming to Christ and more people are being touched and reached than ever before. And so it reminds me of Genesis 50 where Joseph said to his brothers, what you meant for evil, God meant for good. In other words, what you meant for evil, God literally turned into something good. And so friend, that brings us down to where you and I are in our life today. The crucible of life's experiences, whether it's unemployment or whether it's underemployment as so many are experiencing now, we can experience the grace of God and we can learn to trust God.

And very often troubles and circumstances that stretch us and squeeze us, they very often purge us of bad things that we needed to be delivered from, and they drive us to God. God's power is unlimited. Believe it folks. God's character is good.

Trust that. God's plan is perfect. It really is.

It really is. And finally, God's invitation to you is real. Philippians 1 verse 6, one of my favorite verses, being confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it under the day of Jesus Christ.

Now think about this. Philippians, which was so much based about joy, was written from a prison cell. And Paul in verse 12 of Philippians chapter 1, Paul said, I want you to know brothers, the things which happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel.

Isn't that amazing? Paul said, my chains are of Christ because, listen, the trial that God permits creates an opportunity for testimony that will glorify God. And we can be confident of this very thing.

Confidence means an unshakable trust or assurance. So the good work that Christ begins in you. Well, first of all, it begins at the moment of salvation. And you may be wondering, you know, where is God's plan for me? How can I experience God's direction and God's provision in my life? Well, first of all, you need to ask yourself, have you turned your life over to Jesus Christ?

Was there a time and a place when you admitted your sin, confessed your sin, turned from it, that's repentance, and put your faith in Jesus, and said, Lord, I do believe you're the Son of God. Lord, I believe you died for the world and that includes me. Have you understood that Jesus went to Calvary's cross because he loves you? He does love you.

Believe it. Jesus loves you. And so the God of the Bible, listen, he's unlimited in his power, he's unlimited in his goodness, he's immeasurable in his perfect, wise plan, and he has a plan for you. And then his invitation to you is real.

God legitimately can offer you everlasting life and a blessed journey down here. And so would you turn to him today? Would you turn to Christ?

And would you let the Lord begin to work out his great plan for you? Turn to him now. And if we can help you in any way, reach out to us.

My email, alex at alexmcfarland.com, or you can go online, the website alexmcfarland.com. We've got some materials that will help you come to Christ or come back to Christ. And we would love to hear from you today.

May God bless you, and let's visit again soon. TNG radio is made possible by the friends of Alex McFarland Ministries, P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. That's P.O. Box 10231, Greensboro, North Carolina 27404. Call us at 877-YES-GOD-1.

That's 877-YES-GOD and the number 1. Or give online at alexmcfarland.com. While you're there, listen to Program Archives, read Alex's blog, invite Alex to speak at your event, or contact Alex with a question or comment, alexmcfarland.com. Thanks for listening today, and join us again next time as we bring you more truth for a new generation on TNG Radio.