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About the Book
"The Power of Praise and Worship" by Terry Law explores how engaging in praise and worship can transform our lives, draw us closer to God, and release His power in our lives. The author highlights the importance of praising and worshiping God in both good times and bad, emphasizing the impact it can have on our spiritual growth, faith, and relationship with God. Through personal stories, biblical examples, and practical advice, Law encourages readers to make praise and worship a central part of their daily lives to experience God's presence and blessings in a deeper way.
Warren Wiersbe
Dr. Warren Wiersbe once described Heaven as “not only a destination, but also a motivation. When you and I are truly motivated by the promise of eternity with God in heaven, it makes a difference in our lives.”
For Wiersbe, the promise of eternity became the motivation for his long ministry as a pastor, author, and radio speaker. Beloved for his biblical insight and practical teaching, he was called “one of the greatest Bible expositors of our generation” by the late Billy Graham.
Warren W. Wiersbe died on May 2, 2019, in Lincoln, Nebraska, just a few weeks shy of his 90th birthday.
“He was a longtime, cherished friend of Moody Bible Institute, a faithful servant of the Word, and a pastor to younger pastors like me,” said Dr. Mark Jobe, president of Moody Bible Institute. “We are lifting up pastor Wiersbe’s family in prayer at this time and rejoicing in the blessed hope that believers share together.”
Wiersbe grew up in East Chicago, Indiana, a town known for its steel mills and hard-working blue-collar families. In his autobiography, he connected some of his earliest childhood memories to Moody Bible Institute; his home church pastor was a 1937 graduate, Dr. William H. Taylor. After volunteering to usher at a 1945 Youth for Christ rally, Wiersbe found himself listening with rapt attention to Billy Graham’s sermon, and responded with a personal prayer of dedication.
In a precocious turn of events, the young Wiersbe was already a published author, having written a book of card tricks for the L. L. Ireland Magic Co. of Chicago. He quickly learned to liven up Sunday school lessons with magic tricks as object lessons (“not the cards!” he would say). After his high school graduation in 1947 (he was valedictorian), he spent a year at Indiana University before transferring to Northern Baptist Seminary in Chicago, where he earned a bachelor of theology degree. His future wife, Betty, worked in the school library, and Wiersbe was a frequent visitor.
While in seminary he became pastor of Central Baptist Church in East Chicago, serving until 1957. During those years he became a popular YFC speaker, which led to a full-time position with Youth for Christ International in Wheaton. He published his first article for Moody Monthly magazine in 1956, about Bible study methods, and seemed to outline his ongoing writing philosophy. “This is more of a personal testimony,” he said, “because I want to share these blessings with you, rather than write some scholarly essay, which I am sure I could not do anyway.”
At a 1957 YFC convention in Winona Lake, Indiana, Wiersbe preached a sermon that was broadcast live over WMBI, his first connection to Moody Radio. “I wish every preacher could have at least six months’ experience as a radio preacher,” he said later (because they would preach shorter).
While working with Youth for Christ, Wiersbe got a call from Pete Gunther at Moody Publishers, asking about possible book projects. First came Byways of Blessing (1961), an adult devotional; then two more books in 1962, A Guidebook for Teens and Teens Triumphant. He would eventually publish 14 titles with Moody, including William Culbertson: A Man of God (1974), Live Like a King (1976), The Annotated Pilgrim’s Progress (1980), and Ministering to the Mourning (2006), written with his son, David Wiersbe.
In 1961, D. B. Eastep invited Wiersbe to join the staff of Calvary Baptist Church in Covington, Kentucky. forming a succession plan that was hastened by Eastep’s sudden death in 1962. Warren and Betty Wiersbe remained at the church for 10 years, until they were surprised by a phone call from The Moody Church. The pastor, Dr. George Sweeting, had just resigned to become president of Moody Bible Institute. Would Wiersbe fill the pulpit, and pray about becoming a candidate?
He was already well known to the Chicago church—and to the MBI community. He continued to write for Moody Monthly and had just started a new column, “Insights for the Pastor.” The monthly feature continued to run during the years Wiersbe served at The Moody Church. Wiersbe would become one of the magazine’s most prolific writers—200 articles during a 40-year span. Meanwhile he also started work on the BE series of exegetical commentaries, books that soon found a place on the shelf of every evangelical pastor.
His ministry to pastors continued as he spoke at Moody Founder’s Week, Pastors’ Conference, and numerous campus events. He also inherited George Sweeting’s role as host of the popular Songs in the Night radio broadcast, produced by Moody Radio’s Bob Neff and distributed on Moody’s growing network of radio stations.
Later in life he would move to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he served as host of the Back to the Bible radio broadcast. He also taught courses on preaching at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary. He kept writing, eventually publishing more than 150 books and losing track of how many (“I can’t remember them all, and I didn’t save copies of everything,” he said.)
Throughout his ministry, Warren Wiersbe described himself as a bridge builder, a reference to his homiletical method of moving “from the world of the Bible to the world of today so that we could get to the other side of glory in Jesus.” As explained by his grandson, Dan Jacobson, “His preferred tools were words, his blueprints were the Scriptures, and his workspace was a self-assembled library.”
Several of Wiersbe’s extended family are Moody alums, including a son, David Wiersbe ’76; grandson Dan Jacobsen ’09 and his wife, Kristin (Shirk) Jacobsen ’09; and great-nephew Ryan Smith, a current student.
During his long ministry and writing career, Warren Wiersbe covered pretty much every topic, including the inevitability of death. These words from Ministering to the Mourning offer a fitting tribute to his own ministry:
We who are in Christ know that if He returns before our time comes to die, we shall be privileged to follow Him home. God’s people are always encouraged by that blessed hope. Yet we must still live each day soberly, realizing that we are mortal and that death may come to us at any time. We pray, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12).
you don’t have to know god’s will
You don’t have to know God’s will if you are confident in God’s word. If that raises objections, trust me, I understand. Like you, I have significant questions that I don’t have answers for. I have personal quandaries, parenting quandaries, ministry quandaries, financial quandaries, etc. Some are massively important and I’m not sure what to do. This can tempt me to fear. I’ve prayed about these things, some for quite a while. Clarity has not yet come. But over the decades I’ve followed him, Jesus has made something very clear to me in the Scriptures, the lives of eminent saints, and my own stumbling experience: Living in the will of God is more about knowing and trusting his specific promises than receiving specific direction (Hebrews 11:8). It’s more about resting in his sovereignty than wrestling with my ambiguity (Psalm 131:1–2). I’ve learned and continue to learn that embracing God’s will for me largely consists in transferring my confidence from my own miniscule capacity to understand what’s going on and why to God’s omniscient and completely wise understanding (Proverbs 3:5–6). Our Felt Need Is Often Not Our Fundamental Need As the result of the fall, we all come into the world wildly and irrationally over-confident in ourselves. When God redeems us in Christ, he enrolls us in a discipleship program uniquely tailored to the purposes he has for each of us. He knows that for us to live according to his will, our fundamental need is a significant loss of self-confidence and a significant gain in God-confidence. But this is usually not our felt need. The need we typically feel is to know specifically what we’re supposed to do, where we’re supposed to go, how our needs will be provided, or why the terrible thing happened. “Living in the will of God is more about resting in his sovereignty than wrestling with your ambiguity.” What we’re seeking for and hope to find in those answers are certainty and security — peace. But due to our manifold limitations on every level, the answers we think we want would rarely provide us the peace we seek. God knows his explanations would not even make sense to us since we lack the capacities to comprehend the complexity of the equation. That’s why Hudson Taylor counsels us to, “make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has the right to do as He pleases with His own, and he may not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle your reason in His dealings with you.” (A Camaraderie of Confidence, 31) Our infinite Sovereign knows that our fundamental need is to learn to trust him over our very finite selves. He knows that trust will provide us what explanations won’t: the peace that surpasses understanding (Philippians 4:7). That’s why when we pray about God’s will for us, God’s answers often aim at addressing this fundamental need: learning to trust him over our understanding (Proverbs 3:5). But because we are focused on our felt needs, we often fail to recognize God’s answers at first. He is addressing a need we have, but don’t feel. So it can seem like God is ignoring our need for the peace we long for. How God Meets Our Need for Peace But God is most certainly not ignoring our need for peace. He has promised that we will experience peace through believing (Romans 15:13). Believing what? Believing his “precious and very great promises” (2 Peter 1:4). This is what I mean when I say that we don’t need to know God’s will if we are confident in God’s word. When God’s direction and purposes for us are unclear, his promises are always crystal clear. God frequently calls us to stand on the rock of his promises and faithfulness in the murky, swirling fog of perplexing circumstances (Hebrews 10:23). Is this not the story of almost every biblical saint? “When God’s direction and purposes for us are unclear, his promises are always crystal clear.” God’s promises are the checks that are accepted at the bank of heaven. They are God’s promissory notes to us, guaranteeing that he will make good on the value they represent. No matter how things appear at any given time, no matter how dark, foreboding, lonely, depressing, even hopeless things look, God always makes good on his promises. And he wants us to cash them. That’s why Charles Spurgeon said, “When I pray, I like to go to God just as I go to a bank clerk when I have [a] cheque to be cashed. I walk in, put the cheque down on the counter, and the clerk gives me my money, I take it up, and go about my business.” (A Camaraderie of Confidence, 54) That almost sounds flippant. It’s not. It’s experience. If there is anything we can legitimately name and claim as Christians, it is a clear promise of God. We cannot claim it on our own terms or timing, but we can in good conscience hold God to it, because it is God’s will to say yes in Christ to every promise he makes to us in the Bible (2 Corinthians 1:20). God’s word is as good as God. Listen to the Cloud of Witnesses: Cash the Checks! If you struggle to believe these things, join the club. It doesn’t come natural to any of us to trust God’s promises over our perceptions. God knows this and knows how to cultivate trust in us. And one way he does this is through the testimonies of others who have put his promises to the test. This “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1), those who have known God best, all cry, “Cash the checks! They’re real!” Listen to them speak from the Scripture and church history. “God always makes good on his promises. And he wants us to cash them.” One of my favorites, a man whose example convicts and encourages me every time I turn to him, is George Müller of Bristol. And speaking on behalf of the great cloud he says to us: “Everyone is invited and commanded to trust in the Lord, to trust in Him with all his heart, and to cast his burden upon Him, and to call upon Him in the day of trouble. Will you not do this, my dear brethren in Christ? I long that you may do so. I desire that you may taste the sweetness of that state of heart, in which, while surrounded by difficulties and necessities, you can yet be at peace, because you know that the living God, your Father in heaven, cares for you.” (A Camaraderie of Confidence, 83) God has given you the checks of his promises and you are invited to take them to the bank of heaven. If you want peace, the peace that surpasses understanding and guards your heart and mind during your most embattled, stormy, confusing, and frightening moments, you must cash the checks. For this peace comes only from trust. If you do, you will be able to live at peace in the midst of many quandaries not yet knowing God’s specific will because you are confident in God’s specific word.
