Grace Will Order All Your Pain: Retirement Message for Dana Olson

Does church leadership seem endlessly complicated? Take heart. Christian leaders guide God’s people from where they are to where God wants them to go, using God’s methods.

God is sovereign, and he has purposed his gospel to spread to the ends of the earth. Those who give themselves to that purpose are invincible, even through suffering.

God will have worshipers from every nation on earth. He will win them, and do so through us. We have only to tell them.

When Christ calls us to the mission field with him, he calls us to deny shallow pleasures, die to ourselves, and enjoy greater and greater delight in him.

Matthew’s Christmas story shows two ways to deal with Jesus: try to get rid of him like Herod, or fall down and worship him like the wise men.

The birth of John the Baptist was great, but the birth of Jesus Christ was infinitely greater. John prepared for salvation, but Jesus purchased it.

Are biblical warnings about false prophets still relevant? Yes, the threat looms as large today as in the first century.

When Jesus asks the Pharisees how David calls the Messiah “Lord,” they refuse to answer. What made that seemingly simple question so incendiary?

God is. No reality is more mind-boggling, more valuable, more life-altering, more electrifying than the absolute being of God.

What is sovereign, sustaining grace? It is not grace that spares us pain, but grace that orders our pain — and then sustains us through the pain.