If economic catastrophe does come, will it be a time that draws Christians together to share every resource we have, or will it drive us apart to hide in our own basements or mountain retreats, guarding at gunpoint our private stores from others? If we faithfully use our assets for his kingdom now, rather than...

To turn the tide of materialism in the Christian community, we desperately need bold models of kingdom-centered living. Despite our need to do it in a way that doesn’t glorify people, we must hear each other’s stories about giving or else our people will not learn to give.

I feel like a child who has found a wonderful trail in the woods. Countless others have gone before and blazed the trail, but to the child it’s as new and fresh as if it had never been walked before. The child is invariably anxious for others to join in the great adventure. It’s something...

Given our abundance, the burden of proof should always be on keeping, not giving. Why would you not give? We err by beginning with the assumption that we should keep or spend the money God entrusts to us. Giving should be the default choice. Unless there is a compelling reason to spend it or keep...

[Nathan] wasn’t blindly obsessed with a possession. He wasn’t crazy. He was a hero–a father who’d risked his life to rescue his son.

Someday this upside-down world will be turned right side up. Nothing in all eternity will turn it back again. If we are wise, we will use our brief lives on earth positioning ourselves for the turn.

She was home (in Heaven). She was with the Person she was made for, in the place that was made for her.

Christians are God’s delivery people, through whom he does his giving to a needy world. We are conduits of God’s grace to others. Our eternal investment portfolio should be full of the most strategic kingdom-building projects to which we can disburse God’s funds.

The opportunities for using our financial resources to spread the gospel and strengthen the church all over the world are greater than they’ve ever been. As God raised up Esther for just such a time as hers, I’m convinced he’s raise us up, with all our wealth, to help fulfill the great commission. The question...

Giving up everything must mean giving over everything to kingdom purposes, surrendering everything to further the one central cause, loosening our grip on everything. For some of us, this may mean ridding ourselves of most of our possessions. But for all of us it should mean dedicating everything we retain to further the kingdom. (For...

A disciple does not ask, “How much can I keep?” but, “How much more can I give?” Whenever we start to get comfortable with our level of giving, it’s time to raise it again.

Contrary to common belief, Christian fiction did not begin with Catherine Marshall, Janette Oke, or Frank Peretti.

My purpose as a writer is to communicate in such a way as to challenge the thinking of readers and touch their hearts.

I try to tell a story that’s good enough to win the right to integrate eternal themes into it. If it’s poorly written or comes across as a sermon, then obviously you don’t reach people, because they’re aware that you’re imposing something on a story that isn’t innate to it.

It’s curious that the Church has become the most tightfisted at the very time in history when God has provided most generously. There’s considerable talk about the end of the age, and many people seem to believe that Christ will return in their lifetime. But why is it that expecting Christ’s return hasn’t radically influenced...

What you do with your resources in this life is your autobiography.

In the midst of prosperity, the challenge for believers is to handle wealth in such a way that it acts as a blessing, not a curse.

Why ask for your daily bread when you own the bakery?

We can’t surrender to the culture. We’ve minimized the role of fathers, so we’ve created a generation of barbarians, children who become men without growing up. They stay in boyhood through their 20s and 30s, sometimes their whole lives. They think of themselves first, indulge in pornography, do what they feel like, leave their wives,...

If we were to gain God’s perspective, even for a moment, and were to look at the way we go through life accumulating and hoarding and displaying our things, we would have the same feelings of horror and pity that any sane person has when he views people in an asylum endlessly beating their heads...

Jesus’ miracles provide us with a sample of the meaning of redemption: a freeing of creation from the shackles of sin and evil and a reinstatement of creaturely living as intended by God.

When I save, I lay something aside for future need. If I sense God’s leading, I will give it away to meet greater needs. When I hoard, I’m unwilling to part with what I’ve saved to meet others’ needs, because my possible future needs outweigh their actual present needs. I fail to love my neighbor...

Are we truly obeying the command to love our neighbor as ourselves if we’re storing up money for potential future needs when our neighbor is laboring today under actual present needs?

..tithing isn’t something I do to clear my conscience so I can do whatever I want with the 90 percent–it also belongs to God! I must seek his direction and permission for whatever I do with the full amount. I may discover that God has different ideas than I do.

Tolstoy said, ‘The antagonism between life and conscience may be removed either by a change of life or by a change of conscience.’ Many of us have elected to adjust our consciences rather than our lives. Our powers of rationalization are unlimited. They allow us to live in luxury and indifference while others, whom we...

it’s my responsibility to cultivate the man in my son. I can’t be passive about that.

Lord Foulgrin: “You must not let him see Charis as a place of learning, exploration, duties, travel, companionship, banquets, celebrations, and productive work. A low view of heaven is our ace in the hole.” (conspiring to bring Fletcher down after salvation)

For the Christian, death is not the end of adventure but a doorway from a wold where dreams and adventures shrink, to a world where dreams and adventures forever expand.

The most tragic strain in human existence lies in the fact that the pleasure which we find in the things of this life, however good that pleasure may be in itself, is always taken away from us. The things for which men strive hardly ever turn out to be as satisfying as they expected, and...

In the silence punctuated only by their footsteps, both men thought not of themselves but of a Man who once made a long,lonely march up a hill, who in the world’s worst hour did the most courageous thing ever done.At the end of His climb,He spread out His arms and permitted guilty men to drive...

By eroding their sense of shame we’ve made immorality normal, not only in the world but also in the forbidden squadron. …their new Christian friends recommended some of the movies Fletcher had been wondering if he should now avoid. I was delighted one of them said, “This is a great movie–only one sex scene, and...

We should remember Christ’s words, ‘Let nothing be wasted,’ when we look in our refrigerators and garbage cans and garages.

Wealth is a relational barrier. It keeps us from having open relationships.

Too often we assume that God has increased our income to increase our standard of living, when his stated purpose is to increase our standard of giving. (Look again at 2 Corinthians 8:14 and 9:11).

Many [Western Christians] habitually think and act as if there is no eternity. . . . We major in the momentary and minor in the momentous.

Yanked out of the present, Adam discovered the richness of the past in people’s stories.

Fiction has subversive potential. People let it into their minds, like the Trojan Horse. They don’t know what’s inside. You hook them with the story, and God can work below the level of their consciousness. Fiction can be propaganda for evil or convey a theme that impacts people for good.

God prospers me not to raise my standard of living, but to raise my standard of giving.

God comes right out and tells us why he gives us more money than we need. It’s not so we can find more ways to spend it. It’s not so we can indulge ourselves and spoil our children. It’s not so we can insulate ourselves from needing God’s provision. It’s so we can give and...

Because satan hates us, he’s determined to rob us of the joy we’d have if we believed what God tells us about the magnificent world to come.

Father to teenage son: “My relationship with you is more important than anything I’ve got to say to you.

We are all theologians, either good ones or bad ones. I’d rather be a good one. Wouldn’t you?

I wrote my first novel, ‘Deadline,’ in 1994 as an experiment.

I read secular fiction, but also enjoy novels with a Christian worldview.

Unless we learn how to humbly tell each other our giving stories, our churches will not learn to give.

Parents who spoil their children out of ‘love’ should realize that they are performing acts of child abuse. Although there are no laws against such abuse–no man-made laws anyway–this spiritual mistreatment may result in as much long-term personal and social damage as the worst physical abuse.

God doesn’t make us rich so we can indulge ourselves and spoil our children, or so we can insulate ourselves form needing God’s provision. God gives us abundant material blessing so that we can give it away, and give it generously.

…if I try to make only enough money for my family’ immediate needs, it may violate Scripture. …Even though earning just enough to meet the needs of my family may seem nonmaterialistic, it’s actually selfish when I could earn enough to care for others as well.

If we can keep ourselves from interfering with the natural laws of life, mistakes can be our child’s finest teachers.

Abundance isn’t God’s provision for me to live in luxury. It’s his provision for me to help others live. God entrusts me with his money not to build my kingdom on earth, but to build his kingdom in heaven.