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Is it possible for a Christian to stay clean and pure in a world filled with violence, immorality, and corruption? Or is it inevitable that the spirit of this age will wear down the saints of God and vex their souls? It happened to Lot and his family in Sodom, and it is happening to multitudes of Christians all around the world. The overwhelming temptations of this evil generation have already caused numbers of Christians to compromise and indulge in ungodly practices.

I come from a long line of preachers that goes back several generations. So I wasn’t surprised when my oldest son, Ashley, wanted to preach as soon he was old enough to form sentences. My dad was visiting when Ashley announced he wanted to preach his first sermon to us. He led us to his room where he’d set up a cardboard box for a pulpit. Dad and I sat on the floor as Ashley launched into a message he called “The Day the Sins Got Out.”

I’m moved by the Holy Spirit to tell you the simplest thing you’ll ever hear. You might think that as we go through life we need a deeper, more complex theology to understand it all. But the opposite is true. The most important thing I could ever tell you is this: Your Father loves you.

No truth, no fact, no reality is greater, deeper or better than this one. Maybe you think, “I know that already. It’s step 1 in the Christian life. Why is this supposedly revelatory news?”

Regaining Your Passion for a Time Such as This

When I was a teenager, being “on the edge” meant losing your cool. It was being nervous, anxious, about to plunge over an emotional precipice.

Today, being “on the edge” means something very positive. It suggests breaking boundaries, thinking outside of the box, living on the cutting edge of hopeful change.

When I was a boy the cry of the church was, “Jesus is coming!” All through my teenage years, every evangelist who came to preach in my father’s church had a stirring message about the soon return of Christ. Even today their sermons remain burned in my memory: “The Bible says Christ will come like a thief in the night, when you least expect him. It will happen in the twinkling of an eye, with the sound of a trumpet. You must be ready at all times.”

Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables: “All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world” (Matthew 13:34-35, my italics).

The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). At the time these words were proclaimed, the Israelites had just returned from captivity in Babylon. Under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah, the people had rebuilt Jerusalem’s ruined walls. Now they set their sights on reestablishing the temple and restoring the nation.

What is it about faith that keeps demanding of us greater testings? Why do our afflictions grow more intense, more severe, the closer we get to Christ? Just when we come through one trial that proves us faithful, our heart declaring, “Lord, I will trust you for everything,” here comes another test, increased in its intensity.

This experience is shared by Christians all over the world. I see it in all my travels, from continent to continent, and our ministry regularly receives letters from readers who testify of a growing intensity in their trials.

“When they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief” (1 Thessalonians 5:3–4).

Right now, the world is in such turmoil that people are asking, “Are we seeing the winding up of history? Could we be headed toward a nuclear holocaust? Is the world spinning out of control?”

In Matthew 11, we find John the Baptist in prison. His powerful, anointed ministry to multitudes in Israel had been abruptly cut off by King Herod. Now the crowds who had followed John fervently were gone. The “voice of one crying in the wilderness” had been silenced.