God Will Carry You Through Order Printed Copy

Author: Max Lucado
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About the Book

In "God Will Carry You Through," Max Lucado offers words of comfort and encouragement for those facing difficult times and challenges. Drawing from biblical stories and personal anecdotes, Lucado reassures readers that God is always present and will provide strength and support during life's trials. The book emphasizes faith, hope, and trust in God's love and promises, reminding readers that they are never alone and can find peace and courage in the midst of adversity.

John Knox

"The sword of justice is God's, and if princes and rulers fail to use it, others may." He was a minister of the Christian gospel who advocated violent revolution. He was considered one of the most powerful preachers of his day, but only two of the hundreds of sermons he preached were ever published. He is a key figure in the formation of modern Scotland, yet there is only one monument erected to him in Scotland, and his grave lies beneath a parking lot. John Knox was indeed a man of many paradoxes, a Hebrew Jeremiah set down on Scottish soil. In a relentless campaign of fiery oratory, he sought to destroy what he felt was idolatry and to purify Scotland's religion. Taking up the cause John Knox was born around 1514, at Haddington, a small town south of Edinburgh. Around 1529 he entered the University of St. Andrews and went on to study theology. He was ordained in 1536, but became a notary, then a tutor to the sons of local lairds (lower ranking Scottish nobility). Dramatic events were unfolding in Scotland during Knox's youth. Many were angry with the Catholic church, which owned more than half the real estate and gathered an annual income of nearly 18 times that of the crown. Bishops and priests were often mere political appointments, and many never hid their immoral lives: the archbishop of St. Andrews, Cardinal Beaton, openly consorted with concubines and sired 10 children. The constant sea traffic between Scotland and Europe allowed Lutheran literature to be smuggled into the country. Church authorities were alarmed by this "heresy" and tried to suppress it. Patrick Hamilton, an outspoken Protestant convert, was burned at the stake in 1528. In the early 1540s, Knox came under the influence of converted reformers, and under the preaching of Thomas Guilliame, he joined them. Knox then became a bodyguard for the fiery Protestant preacher George Wishart, who was speaking throughout Scotland. In 1546, however, Beaton had Wishart arrested, tried, strangled, and burned. In response, a party of 16 Protestant nobles stormed the castle, assassinated Beaton, and mutilated his body. The castle was immediately put to siege by a fleet of French ships (Catholic France was an ally to Scotland). Though Knox was not privy to the murder, he did approve of it, and during a break in the siege, he joined the besieged party in the castle. During a Protestant service one Sunday, preacher John Rough spoke on the election of ministers, and publicly asked Knox to undertake the office of preacher. When the congregation confirmed the call, Knox was shaken and reduced to tears. He declined at first, but eventually submitted to what he felt was a divine call. It was a short-lived ministry. In 1547, after St. Andrews Castle had again been put under siege, it finally capitulated. Some of the occupants were imprisoned. Others, like Knox, were sent to the galleys as slaves. Traveling preacher Nineteen months passed before he and others were released. Knox spent the next five years in England, and his reputation for preaching quickly blossomed. But when Catholic Mary Tudor took the throne, Knox was forced to flee to France. He made his way to Geneva, where he met John Calvin. The French reformer described Knox as a "brother … laboring energetically for the faith." Knox for his part, was so impressed with Calvin's Geneva, he called it, "the most perfect school of Christ that was ever on earth since the days of the apostles." Knox traveled on to Frankfurt am Main, where he joined other Protestant refugees—and quickly became embroiled in controversy. The Protestants could not agree on an order of worship. Arguments became so heated that one group stormed out of a church one Sunday, refusing to worship in the same building as Knox. Back in Scotland, Protestants were redoubling their efforts, and congregations were forming all over the country. A group that came to be called "The Lords of the Congregation" vowed to make Protestantism the religion of the land. In 1555, they invited Knox to return to Scotland to inspire the reforming task. Knox spent nine months preaching extensively and persuasively in Scotland before he was forced to return to Geneva. Fiery blasts of the pen Away from his homeland again, he published some of his most controversial tracts: In his Admonition to England he virulently attacked the leaders who allowed Catholicism back in England. In The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women he argued that a female ruler (like English Queen Mary Tudor) was "most odious in the presence of God" and that she was "a traitoress and rebel against God." In his Appellations to the Nobility and Commonality of Scotland, he extended to ordinary people the right—indeed the duty—to rebel against unjust rulers. As he told Queen Mary of Scotland later, "The sword of justice is God's, and if princes and rulers fail to use it, others may." Knox returned to Scotland in 1559, and he again deployed his formidable preaching skills to increase Protestant militancy. Within days of his arrival, he preached a violent sermon at Perth against Catholic "idolatry," causing a riot. Altars were demolished, images smashed, and religious houses destroyed. In June, Knox was elected the minister of the Edinburgh church, where he continued to exhort and inspire. In his sermons, Knox typically spent half an hour calmly exegeting a biblical passage. Then as he applied the text to the Scottish situation, he became "active and vigorous" and would violently pound the pulpit. Said one note taker, "he made me so to grew [quake] and tremble, that I could not hold pen to write." The Lords of the Congregation militarily occupied more and more cities, so that finally, in the 1560 Treaty of Berwick, the English and French agreed to leave Scotland. (The English, now under Protestant Elizabeth I, had come to the aid of the Protestant Scots; the French were aiding the Catholic party). The future of Protestantism in Scotland was assured. The Parliament ordered Knox and five colleagues to write a Confession of Faith, the First Book of Discipline, and The Book of Common Order—all of which cast the Protestant faith of Scotland in a distinctly Calvinist and Presbyterian mode. Knox finished out his years as preacher of the Edinburgh church, helping shape the developing Protestantism in Scotland. During this time, he wrote his History of the Reformation of Religion in Scotland. Though he remains a paradox to many, Knox was clearly a man of great courage: one man standing before Knox's open grave said, "Here lies a man who neither flattered nor feared any flesh." Knox's legacy is large: his spiritual progeny includes some 750,000 Presbyterians in Scotland, 3 million in the United States, and many millions more worldwide.

for anyone happy without god

“I know you don’t believe me, but I do not need Christianity to be happy. I am happier than most Christians I know.” Looking up from his coffee, he smiled and assured me, “I am glad you found happiness in Jesus, but I am quite content without him. I have found my path to happiness, and I am glad you have found a different one. We stand at the same end, it would appear.” I did not know what to say. I knew how to share the Joy of the world to the discontent, the miserable, the downcast, but I stood perplexed at this man who told me, in no uncertain terms, “I do not need Christ to be happy.” Wasn’t his heart restless until it found its rest in him? He assured me it wasn’t. Didn’t he have a God-shaped hole in his heart? He swore that he didn’t. And what was more, he truly seemed to be, as far as I could tell, happy. I knew Jesus was a Comfort for those who mourned, a Light to those in darkness, a North Star to those who wandered the world without hope. I didn’t know what he was to those happy enough in their own way. Can Unbelievers Be Truly Happy? I wish I could go back and talk with this man. Instead of trying to convince him, for hours on end, of his unhappiness, all so I could then share Christ with him, I wish I would have spoken the way Paul did when he addressed those he found in Lystra. He [God] did not leave himself without witness, for he did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, satisfying your hearts with food and gladness. (Acts 14:17) Paul did not address the downtrodden, the depressed, the poor in spirit. Here, he addressed those who ate, drank, and when tomorrow came, died. Those with food and happiness enough not to alert them to their spiritual starvation. To such as these, Paul did not start by handing out prescriptions for happiness they didn’t feel they needed. He knew he spoke to a people that I was unfamiliar with: the happy heathen. Paul says that God satisfied their hearts with food and gladness. Gladness. The only other place in the New Testament where this word appears is in Luke’s citation of another well-known verse: “You have made known to me the paths of life; you will make me full of gladness with your presence” (Acts 2:28; citing Psalm 16:11). In Psalm 16, God’s Fatherly presence to his children gives one kind of heart-gladness (a full, everlasting, permanent kind), but his food and common-grace-goodness bestows another. Both are real. God Makes His Enemies Smile God allows his enemies to smile. Have you wondered at this? God allows those who ignore him, reject him, despise his glory, and belittle his name to breathe his air, feast on his food, swim in his waters, hike in his forests, ski on his mountains, laugh, sing, and dance on his lands. He has not yet evicted them. He has not taken back his bread from their plates nor his air from their lungs. Rather — and note the benevolence of the God of the universe — he “ gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). No good and perfect gift comes down from any other hand but his (James 1:17). He is an abundantly gracious God, even to his enemies. The God constantly sneered at and ignored “makes his sun rise on the evil.” Almighty God “sends rain . . . on the unjust” who despise his glory (Matthew 5:45). This kindness makes angels sing of his mercy and patience. Gifts Without Gratitude The man that I spoke with took these gifts from God, enjoyed them, and refused to say thank you. Man is the only creature other than fallen angels to pay God back so basely. God opens his hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing (Psalm 145:16). He opens his hand to eagles in their treetops, to antelope on the plains, to fish in the sea and flowers of the field. They declare his glory and groan for his return (Romans 8:19–23). But men and devils do not. Devils contemplate the return of God saying, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” (Matthew 8:29). And men look their fellow men in the eye and say they have no need of Christ; indeed, who is Christ that he should be obeyed? God opens his hand to this creature — best positioned to return to him gratefulness and love — and he will not bother to look up. He does not honor him, nor does he return him thanks (Romans 1:21). I wish I would have shared with this man how his reasons for happiness — family, friends, health, good food, good drink, good sports — were not just “how things were.” I wish I would have bid him to consider how God watches him, day in and day out, parade about with his gifts while discounting his person. What Our Pleasures Testify Instead of telling him that I was sure he is really unhappy somewhere deep down, or trying to debate him as to whether he feels his God-sized hole (which he still has), what should I have told him? I should have explored all his reasons for happiness, and then told him plainly that these were all gifts from God meant to lead him to God. And that, furthermore, his failure to do so was already a serious crime that must be atoned for, and thus he must be led to Christ, God’s greatest gift to the world. Sin, not just his psychological experience of joy, gave Jesus utmost relevance to him. He had a sin problem, if not a felt joy problem. He stood not only a branch withering apart from the Vine; he stood a branch prepared for the fire (John 15:6). Paul told the happy heathens that God had not left himself without witness to both his existence and his goodness. And what was this witness’s testimony? Repent . “Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4). Beautiful families whisper, repent . Enjoyable careers urge, repent . Sunsets in vacation selfies cry, repent . All of these declare that God is good, benevolent, and patient with his enemies, and that he calls them to turn away from sin and to forgiveness found in Christ. Word to Happy Heathen If I could go back to talk with this man, I might say something like the following. The Christian faith is not merely about man’s happiness, although God gives more joy than you can now imagine. Christianity addresses how sinful men, women, and children can be reconciled to their Creator and live happy lives for his glory. God has placed good gifts to summon you to see God’s ultimate gift: his Son, Jesus Christ. He came to save a people he didn’t have to save. To live a life we couldn’t live. To die the death we deserved to die. And to rise, summoning all everywhere to turn away from their sin, and trust in his finished work on the cross for sinners. The smartphone in your pocket has everything to do with this God. The music massaging your ears, the colors jumping before your eyes, the gladness of heart and the love you feel are kindnesses from God with one message upon their lips: “Repent and believe.” Instead of justifying a life apart from God, substituting the gifts for the Giver, the gifts of great joy are given to lead to the Giver. His multi-varied kindnesses, his overwhelming patience, his forbearance give room for faith. Even now he beckons. Even now he invites. Come, heed the message in every good gift of God’s perfect gift — Jesus Christ — and live.