Tag: Heaven

quiverfull

NOTE (6/5/23): In lieu of a certain documentary recently released regarding Bill Gothard and the IBLP’s various teachings — such as ‘quiverfull’ — I feel compelled to add this post is in no way influenced by his teachings!

I was reading an ‘anti-abortion’ scripture passage, when the Holy Spirit jostled my heart. A sudden parting of a curtain allowed me a peek inside a gospel mystery. In a quick instant my spiritual astigmatism vanished and I understood why God won’t march with the pro-abortion crowd.

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD,
the fruit of the womb a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior
are the children of one’s youth.

Blessed is the man
who fills his quiver with them!

Psalm 127:3-5, ESV

If children are a gift from God, why stop at one? Why choose abortion? If you are able, have as many as you can! Double, triple, quadruple your gladness.

I mentioned the Holy Spirit entering the moment. His heart revealed the great gospel mystery in this. If children are among an earthly parent’s greatest pleasures, doesn’t it also say something about our Father and his heavenly family?

God, too, wants a “quiverfull” of kids! He wants his house teeming with children! Our Heavenly Father is a great big softie when it comes to parenthood. He just keeps adopting and adopting…and adopting…

He’s never birthed a mistake. Not one of his has ever been an inconvenience to him.

That’s all well and good, you say, but what do we make of this scripture?

Jesus traveled through cities and villages, teaching and making his way to Jerusalem. Someone said to him, “Lord, will only a few be saved?”

Luke 13:23, Common English Bible

We might expect Jesus to say something like, “Are you crazy? A few? Hardly a few, my good man.”

That’s not what he says, though.

Make every effort to enter through the narrow gate. Many, I tell you, will try to enter and won’t be able to.

Luke 13:24, CEB

So which is it? Does God want his house to be filled or does he want to limit who gets in? Well, based on Jesus’s teaching, both are true.

I’ve studied and puzzled and even lamented over this teaching for a long time. My conclusion is that there are many who believe in themselves — or religion — for their salvation.

By contrast only a comparatively few who, by submitting to the demands of justification — repentance and faith — can live with absolute, peace-filled assurance they are already and forevermore living in his house. That’s the difference between being in God’s family and eternal self-abortion.

Don’t forget the primary audience are Jews who are heavily influenced by their religion of works-righteousness. Consequently, they will be turned away at the door because they refused the gate (Jesus).

As for the “few who will be saved?” I’m looking at you Nicodemus. I’m also looking at you, Joseph of Arimathea. And you, Brothers James and Jude.

Don’t you know it took a lot of effort on their part to remain true to Jesus in spite of their affiliation with the sect of the Pharisees or as reluctant skeptics? Still, the Bible appears to give evidence to their true faith. They’re in God’s quiver.

There’s another guy in the Bible who testified that he made the grade among the religious folk, but had he not turned miraculously to Jesus, he would never have made the cut. I speak, of course, of Saul of Tarsus.

Do we really need to be reminded of the great effort Paul had to endure to be a follower of Jesus? He’s for sure in God’s great gospel quiver.

The eternal kingdom will look nothing like an old west Montanan territory with only a sprinkling of settlers spread out for miles and miles. Heavens, no. Our forever family will be a great big loud bunch of crazy shouting, dancing, and running kids. God wants it that way; he wants his house bulging at the seams.

I’ve shared a terrifying dream I had about Graham with some of you. About two or three nights after he passed away, I had a nightmare of him burning in hell. It was quite vivid; I could even hear him screaming from the abyss.

Then I remembered, or, more accurately, God reminded me he doesn’t inspire nightmares to provoke us to fear, the devil does. The accuser wanted me to think my son is lost forever.

The devil is a liar. While he wants our children dead, God is very pro-life. It’s not a political talking point to him, it is genuine. The Heavenly Father delights in bringing many sons and daughters into glory.

The devil wants you thinking you can do life on your own terms; God wants you to stop running.

The devil wants you falling from grace; God wants you falling into his arms.

The devil wants you to be a rebel; God wants you to know his rest.

The devil loves abortion; God is all about the quiverfull.

two words that shape my faith

I’m not a Muslim because of two words. I have friends who follow the teachings of Mohammed regarding Allah, and I love them, but could never take their path.

These two words safeguard me from turning to agnosticism or atheism. I can’t fall away from the faith because of the way these two words are put together. I can admire some of the kinder gentler tenets and proverbs of various eastern religions but would rue the day before entrusting my eternal destiny to them.

Here they are, in all their glory. Sit before them and be amazed:

Jesus wept.

Call me an old softie, but I quite like a deity who feels what I feel. Isaiah promised a Messiah who “suffers when we suffer” (Isa 63:9). Paul didn’t say God merely pities us, he said the Father spills over with mercy and embraces us with smothering comfort (2 Cor 1:3).


Jesus is no remote deity, watching suffering from a safe distance. He is the God who inhabits our suffering.

– Rebecca McLaughlin


John, specifically, zeros in on the “I AM” episodes of Jesus in his gospel. When you see “I AM” in scripture your mind probably goes to burning bushes and almightiness, shoes-off zone, time’s-up for oppressive regimes, and the like. You envision an all-caps “LORD” not the lower case kind.

John’s gospel shows us the I AM-ness of the Almighty also allows space for himself to weep. Anger from deity we get, but sorrow? Tears?

Jesus is called “Man of Sorrows” in Isaiah and our Lord is not the least bit embarrassed by that designation. The powerful “I AM” is moved to tears and that moves me. As the Holy Spirit moved John along to pen the words to his gospel, he let the aged apostle know he wanted this most vulnerable part of Christ’s earthly ministry published for all the see.

“Jesus wept.”

First he snorted like a Roman warhorse, then he sniffled and sobbed. A lot of folk prefer their Messiah to be all thunder and lightning and calling down of fire. Others can only stomach a gentle and lowly Savior.

With Jesus you get both, but mostly the Jesus you get in the gospels is the One who enters into our pain.

There are two times in the gospels we find Jesus weeping. Here, and in Luke.

Jesus doesn’t just “feel your pain.” He also hates it. He hates what it does to you. He sees the long game, that every eye will be dried one day and there will be no more pain, but he also meets us in our most painful moments with mercy and justice in the here and now.

In “The Lion King” when Simba returns after a long time away and sees what Scar has done to the kingdom, plunging it into death and despair, there is an alarming look of righteous anger that clouds his countenance.

That’s what’s going on just before the dam inside Jesus of Nazareth breaks.

Weeping Jesus sees the enemy of this world wreaking havoc on his creation, disturbing the order. The same emotion Jesus felt when he saw the court of the Gentiles being barred and barricaded by hucksters, charlatans and snake oil salesmen, preventing the people from gathering to worship, is the emotion of this anger he felt outside Bethany. If he had had a whip in his hands he would’ve been swinging it at the enemy.

I’ll follow a God like that anywhere and all the way into eternity.

Selah, beloved.

all about the pronouns

Anywhere you find an anemic church, the problem can easily be traced. The issue is certainly not with Jesus, or his Word, or our mission statements. When Jesus said “I will build My church…and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it“ he meant exactly what he said. Peter said some pretty cool stuff in that exchange, but the church isn’t built on him. The church is built on My.

We gotta get the pronouns right. Weak churches have switched the pronouns from “His” church to “our” church. They love their ‘us-four-and-no-more’ little kingdoms or their mega-fancy Sunday events.

Wherever the church operates as His, flying under his banner, you can rest assured mountains are being moved, exiles are finding a home, bondages are being broken, devils are sent into pigs, the poor are being prioritized, the last are first, the first are last, nets are dropping, the gospel is thriving, and Christ is all and in all.

To be “His” Church requires ongoing repentance, faith, and being led by the Spirit. To say that “Jesus is Lord” is to say in the same breath “I am not.” It requires absolute reliance upon and unashamed allegiance to Christ. In essence, “not about me” becomes “all about You, Jesus.” Pronouns.

A powerless church has a nasty flesh-eating disease. Cancer, too-long undetected, has metastasized throughout the system and the body slowly dies.

The late Francis Schaeffer explains:

The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism, nor the old Roman Catholicism or the new Roman Catholicism, nor the threat of communism, nor even the threat of rationalism and the monolithic consensus which surrounds us. All these are dangerous but not the primary threat.

The real problem is this:

the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit.

The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them.1

Good News

The gospel won’t allow us just to leave that hanging there, as if there were no hope, no remedy. ‘Twould be easy to harp all day about all the wrongs in the church, but we cannot ignore the fascinating picture of the end-time Church.

Paul said she’s still His church and he takes responsibility to bathe her and iron her garments and heal her disease-ravaged body. Our bridegroom Lord is not finished with his bride. Right now she’s “prone to wander,” but his love in the end makes her stay.

There is coming a day when we will see her high up in the bridal chamber “making herself ready” for eternal matrimony with the Lover of her soul. Her destiny is enfolded into Him.

O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!

Let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee

Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love

Here’s my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above!2


Gospel grammar is important. This is our hope: He is Lord and we are made for him. Selah, beloved

1 Francis A. Schaeffer, No Little People (Wheaton, 2003), 66.

2 Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, Robert Robinson, 1758