God Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life: The Myth of the Modern Message

by Ray Comfort
128 pages / 2010

Reformed Christians confess the importance of God's law with the second question of the Heidelberg Catechism:

What do you need to know in order to live and die in the joy of this comfort? 

First, how great my sins and misery are....

Ray Comfort agrees with them and wishes more people did. In this book Comfort is confronting an enormous problem that he argues is related, at its root, to a lack of concern for the law – that 90% of seeming converts in Christian crusades are gone from the church within a year, and many never set foot in a church at all. He argues the cause for this distressing statistic is the "modern message." Unlike the Bible and church history, which show persecution as the likely result of following Christ, the modern message promises earthly happiness for those who turn to Him.

This poses a further question: What should be the message of the gospel? Comfort tells us that the "lost key" is the use of the law. Only knowing our sin - specific sin, not just our weakness or brokenness - begins "making grace amazing.” 

To illustrate this, Comfort makes a brilliant analogy about giving parachutes to two airplane passengers. The first man is  told that the chute will make his flight much more comfortable. When, instead, he finds that wearing it makes him feel silly in the eyes of the other passengers and makes it hard to sit in his seat, he gives it up in frustration. 

The second passenger is told that the chute will save his life when (not if) the plane crashes – a metaphor for our inevitable appearance before the judgment seat of God. You can imagine how much more grateful he is for his "gospel chute."

Comfort next makes it clear that Jesus Himself used the law to convict sinners of their need for forgiveness through God's grace – the only chute that can save us from the crash of our condemnation – and concludes by stressing that churches filled with false converts are no testimony to the power of a false modern message.

The appendix is a model of "gentleness and respect" as Comfort passes on a word "For My Campus Crusade Friends," demonstrating that some of the organization's own leaders have come to see the necessity for the law in the proclamation of the gospel. 

Cautions

This is not the first book by Ray Comfort that I have read. The previous one, Revival's Golden Key, was a good read, but this one is a really good read. The two books have similar messages, but God Has a Wonderful Plan for Your Life is a better read for two reasons:

1. It's almost 100 pages shorter.
2. Comfort's use of Scripture is simpler and more literal.

In Revival's Golden Key, Comfort sometimes slips into an allegorical interpretation of particular passages to support his contention that it is the law of God that brings sinners to true Christian conversion. The Myth of the Modern Message sticks to texts that clearly relate to preaching and evangelism to make the same point.

Conclusion

If you believe that Comfort can show a better way to obey the Great Commission as Reformed churches begin to make evangelism a greater priority, you can get it in Canada here and the US here. 

You can also download a pdf version for free here.