http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14719666/hope-created-the-spirit-filled-body
John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.
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How Jesus Met with God: The Pace and Patterns of a Perfect Life
One of the more controversial issues in missions today is speed. How quickly do we expect the lost to be saved? How soon will new churches plant new churches? How fast should a new believer move into a leadership role? How long should cross-cultural missionaries work on learning a language?
In our times, we will do well to carefully interrogate our assumptions about speed and pace. Our internal speedometers are being conditioned to the quickening pace of modern life with its rapid flow of technological innovations. So, in our “age of accelerations,” pressing questions relate to speed — not only for effective Christian mission but simply for healthy Christian lives. Will we be driven by the hurried pace of our world? Or, with the help of God’s word and his Spirit and his church, will we find a more timeless (and human) pace for life and mission — a pace that has produced health and fruit across the ages?
In his book Missions: How the Local Church Goes Global, Andy Johnson says this: “The work of missions is urgent, but it’s not frantic” (67). That’s good, and the same is true of the Christian life and of the health and growth of our own souls.
Unhurried Habits of Jesus
So, let’s sit together at the feet of Jesus, and consider the pace and patterns of his life and ministry. He was not idle. Nor was he frenzied. From all we can tell from the Gospels, Jesus’s days were full. I think it would be fair to say he was busy, but he was not frantic. He lived to the full, and yet he did not seem to be in a hurry.
In Jesus, we observe a human life with holy habits and patterns: rhythms of retreating from society and then reentering to do the work of ministry. Even as God himself in human flesh, Jesus prioritized time away with his Father. He chose again and again, in his perfect wisdom and love, to give his first and best moments to seeking his Father’s face. And if Jesus, even Jesus, carved out such space in the demands and pressures of his human life, what might we learn from him, and how might we do likewise?
Now, we have only glimpses of Jesus’s habits and personal spiritual practices, but what we do have is by no accident, and it is not scant. We know exactly what God means for us to know, in just the right detail — and we have far more about Jesus’s personal spiritual rhythms than we do about anyone else’s in Scripture.
And the picture we have of Christ’s habits is not one that is foreign to our world and lives and experience. Rather, we find timeless and transcultural postures that can be imitated and applied by any follower of Jesus, anywhere in the world, at any time in history.
So, what might those be? Let’s look at three.
1. Jesus retreated and reentered.
Jesus made a habit of withdrawing from the world (and the engagements of fruitful ministry), and then reentering later to do more good.
So too, the healthy Christian life is neither solely solitary nor constantly communal. We learn to withdraw, like Jesus, “to a desolate place” to commune with God (Mark 1:35), and then we return to the bustle of daily tasks and seek to meet the needs of others. We carve out a season for spiritual respite — in some momentarily sacred space — to feed our souls, enjoying God there in the stillness. Then refilled, we enter back in to be light and bread to a hungry, harassed, and helpless world (Matthew 9:36).
For Christ, “the wilderness” or “desolate place” often became his momentarily sacred space. He got away from people. He regularly escaped the noise and frenzy of society to be alone with his Father, where he could give him his full attention and undivided heart.
There is, of course, that especially memorable instance in Mark 1. After “his fame spread everywhere” (Mark 1:28) the day before, and “the whole city was gathered together at the door” (Mark 1:33), Jesus took a remarkable step the next morning. He was up before the sun and slipped away from town to restore his soul in secret communion with his Father. “Rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed” (Mark 1:35).
Given the fruitfulness of the previous day, some of us might scratch our heads. What a ministry opportunity Jesus seemed to leave behind when he left town! Surely some of us would have skipped or shortened our private spiritual habits to rush to the demands of the swelling masses. How many of us, in such a situation, would have the presence of mind and heart to discern and prioritize prayer as Jesus did?
The Gospel of Luke also makes it unmistakable that this pattern of retreat and reentry was part of the ongoing dynamic of Christ’s human life. Luke 4:42 tells us that Jesus “departed and went into a desolate place” — not just once but regularly. Luke 5:16: “He would withdraw [as a pattern] to desolate places and pray.”
So also Matthew 14:13. After the death of John the Baptist, Jesus “withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself.” But even then, the crowds pursued him. And he didn’t despise them, but here he puts his desire to retreat on hold and has compassion on them and heals their sick (Matthew 14:14). Then after feeding them, five thousand strong, he withdraws again to a quiet place. “After he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray” (Matthew 14:23).
This leads to a second principle — and not just that he withdrew but why. What did Jesus do when he withdrew?
2. Jesus withdrew to commune with his Father.
He got away from the distractions and demands of daily life to focus on, and hear from, and pray to his Father. At times, he went away by himself to be alone (Matthew 14:23; Mark 6:46–47; John 6:15). His disciples would see him leave to pray and later return. He went by himself.
But he also drew others into his life of prayer. The disciples had seen him model prayer at his baptism (Luke 3:21), as he laid his hands on the children (Matthew 19:13), and when he drove out demons (Mark 9:29). And Jesus brought his men into his communion with his Father. Even when he prayed alone, his men might be nearby. “Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him” (Luke 9:18; also Luke 11:1).
3. Jesus taught his disciples to do the same.
Jesus didn’t only retreat to be alone with God. He also taught his disciples to bring this dynamic of retreat and return, communion and compassion, into their own lives (Mark 3:7; Luke 9:10).
In Mark 6:31–32, Jesus invites his men to join him, saying, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” Mark explains, “For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.”
So too, in the Gospel of John, as his fame spreads, Jesus retreats from more populated settings to invest in his men in more desolate, less distracting places (John 11:54). And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches all his hearers, including us today, not only to give without show (Matthew 6:3–4) and fast without publicity (Matthew 6:17–18), but also to find our private place to seek our Father’s face: “When you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6). The reward is not material stuff later but the joy of communion with God there, in that moment, in the secret place.
Your Pace and Patterns
Jesus made a habit of retreating from the demands and pressures of everyday life and ministry, and he did so to commune with his Father, to hear his voice, and respond in prayer. And then Jesus reentered society to bless and teach and show compassion and love and do good. And he also invited his disciples into this pattern and taught them to do the same.
So, let’s close by asking about your pace and your patterns. First about pace, ask yourself, How deeply do the world’s assumptions and expectations about speed and productivity affect my life and ministry? How hurried is my life?
And your patterns. How about rhythms of retreat and reentry? Do you get away daily to commune with God in his word and prayer, in an unhurried, even leisurely way — resting, restoring your joy, feeding your soul in the grace of his presence? And what are your patterns or rhythms of life for retreating from the noise of the world to focus on and hear from the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent, and then come back to meet the needs of others?
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Breakfast of Pastors: How God Feeds and Keeps Spiritual Leaders
Find your legs. Each new morning presents us with the fresh opportunity — and need — to do so.
First, of course, we need to find our literal, physical legs as we get out of bed. We’ve been laying down for hours, dead to the world and void of conscious movement. Now, as we roll out of bed, we hope to find them. Conditioned by habit (and clouded by grogginess), we may not realize how significant, and sometimes difficult, these first steps can be.
Then, less obviously, though more importantly, is the need each morning to find our figurative legs. Who am I? What am I doing here? Why did I get up, other than for coffee, breakfast, or a walk to the bathroom? What am I waking up to — to some good use of another priceless day of human life, to some calling from God to bless others and add value to the world?
In other words, as I rise to stand for the day — to get the bearings in my soul — what am I standing on? What gives me footing? How do I find my legs?
Warnings for All Who Lead
Long before Israel had a king, the nation’s first and greatest prophet left specific and perhaps surprising instructions for him, including where and how he would “find his legs” each day as the leader of God’s people.
In Deuteronomy 17:14–20, Moses describes a concession God would make one day, setting a human king over his people. As he does, he warns such kings about the dangers of “excessive silver and gold,” “many wives,” and “many horses” — that is, money, sex, and power (Deuteronomy 17:16–17). Moses gives a specific reason for these cautions: “lest his heart turn away.” This is where the point of departure will be, humanly speaking, for regimes and generations to come: the heart of the king.
As goes his heart, so goes the leader, and so goes the nation. Will he heed the siren calls around him, the subtle temptations to the compromises of acclaim and special privilege? Will he take advantage of his willing and submissive servants who are eager to give him benefit of the doubt? Will he slowly construct his own reality around him that serves his own private comforts rather than the holy interests of the people?
The battle lines will first be drawn in the king’s own heart. Which explains why Moses’s next instructions turn where they do, unexpected and perhaps peripheral as they may seem to some.
Keys to the Leader’s Heart
What the prophet says next is all the more striking because it’s issued generations before the nation would have its first king. When a new king ascends to the throne in Israel — with all the pomp and circumstance that will doubtless accompany such a coronation — as his first act, he is to take out a quill and write word for word, with in his own hand, his own copy of God’s law, and “read in it all the days of his life.”
And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:18–20)
Note the emphasis on his heart. God’s plan for his leaders so that their hearts not turn away, is that their hearts be formed and fed daily by God’s word. Consider, then, three aspects of this simple yet profound plan, which is just as relevant for Christian leaders and churches today.
1. The Book Shapes the King
This book, copied long hand by the king himself, is no journal. The new king is not recording his own feelings or preferences or decrees — not in this book. Rather, he is copying the book of God’s law — an objective, fixed text, not open to edits and adjustments. This hand-copied book then is to be reviewed and approved by the priests, to confirm that no changes have been introduced or anything omitted.
“The king doesn’t shape this book; this book shapes the king.”
In other words, the king doesn’t shape this book; this book shapes the king. However great he may be in the sight of his people, the king fundamentally does not shape the world (or even his own kingdom) through his words, but he is being shaped by God through God’s words.
2. The Book Keeps the King
God also designs that this book will keep the king, as he is bombarded by the world of privileges and temptations leadership can bring. As the king keeps the words of God in the book, the book will keep the king — that is, keep him from turning aside to the right or left, turning from the fear of God to fear of man, from faithfulness to God to the pursuit of his own private, sinful pleasures.
In shaping the king’s heart, the book keeps him from the subtle daily migrations away from God, which all sinners experience. Which is why Moses twice mentions the inner man, “the heart.” The unseen heart of the king will come, in time, into expression in his life and the nation’s. Self-humbling before God and his word will give rise to a whole trajectory of thoughts, feelings, words, and actions; pride, another. And the greater the king, the greater the effects, for good or ill.
3. The Book Calls Each Morning
Finally, the king’s hand-copied, priest-approved book, Moses says, “shall be with him . . . all the days of his life.” With him, that is, nearby, constantly within reach. Having completed this great hand-copying project, he is not to store the book away for future reference, but make it functional, accessible, active in his reign — increasingly in him through countless hours lingering over it.
“The kind of reading that does God’s keeping is the kind of reading that feels like steeping.”
This Book is designed to be read daily. And not the sort of reading to which the pace and pixels of our modern lives have accustomed us: fast-break, hurried, distracted reading, with words coming out of the head almost as quickly as they went in. Rather, the kind of reading God intends for his servant is meditative — slow, unhurried, enjoyable, feeding on the text, at the pace of the text, rather than the pace of the world. Pondering God’s words. Rolling them around in the mind long enough to get a sense of them on the heart. The kind of reading that does God’s keeping is the kind of reading that feels like steeping.
Such daily meditation makes us, over time, the kind of person — with a shaped, kept, and fed heart — who can approve what is excellent (Philippians 1:10; Romans 2:18) and discern what is the will of God, good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:2), even in the complex, confusing challenges of life and leadership.
Day and Night, Today and Tomorrow
Such daily meditation on the words of God is what God so memorably expects of Joshua as he becomes Israel’s new leader in Moses’s place:
This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. (Joshua 1:8)
So too, generations later, when Israel finally had its king, the first psalm celebrated where the godly king would find his sense and wisdom to rule: “his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night” (Psalm 1:2). And not only the king, but every man of God: “Blessed is the man . . .” (Psalm 1:1).
So too, when the ultimate man, David’s great heir, came among us, his shaping and keeping and wisdom to live and lead grew out of regular feeding in the Bible. In the words of Sinclair Ferguson, “Jesus’s intimate acquaintance with Scripture did not come de caelo (‘from heaven’) during the period of his public ministry; it was grounded no doubt on his early education, but nourished by long years of personal meditation” (The Holy Spirit, 44).
His Father had appointed means for his stability in his truly human life. And it was not some extraordinary means or special trick. It was the same great and modest, amazing and ordinary daily means heralded by Moses, tested by Joshua, embraced by David, and imitable by the godly today: daily meditation on the very words of God.
Eat Like a King
How do you find your legs each day? However many you lead, whether as pastor, as father, as mother, as friend, as boss — whether in business, at church, in the home, in the community — how do you get your bearings on the shifting deck of life? Where do you find the stability you need to lead well for the long haul, including today?
Give your first and most formative moments to feeding on the word of God. Let his voice be the first you hear each day. Let him feed and keep you like he fed and kept the godliest of kings.
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Can I Be a Nurse for a ‘Gender-Reassignment’ Surgery?
Audio Transcript
God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Our motto applies to every nation, and it applies to all of life. We want to glorify God in all that we do by enjoying him in all that we do. That includes our work. And so, we get a lot of questions about whether a Christian can participate in various questionable practices of an employer. The questions are usually very specific, but the principles tend to be broadly applicable.
Today’s question is from an anonymous woman. She writes, “Pastor John, hello! I am a nurse in surgery pre-op and recovery for a hospital that performs gender-reassignment surgeries. I play no role in the decisions made to undergo these surgeries. I believe the decision itself is sinful. The question I cannot resolve is this: Is it sinful for me to serve as a nurse involved in the care of these patients in the pre-op and recovery settings?”
My answer is going to be that I think she should move her nursing ministry — which is what it is; it’s a ministry: she’s a Christian and she’s a nurse — to a setting that does not practice surgeries or hormones that are used as part of the illusion that a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man. And what I think will be helpful for me to do here is to step back and try to understand why it is that sometimes it is good and appropriate for a Christian to work in an institution where perhaps nobody else is a believer, and why sometimes it would be inappropriate or harmful to work in such a setting, and why that would be the case. What would be the difference between when it’s good and when it’s not good?
Working Toward Life
So we’ll take a hospital as an example. Let’s just suppose, for the sake of the illustration, that nobody else in this hospital is a Christian — nobody. There is just this one nurse. What that means biblically, according to Romans 14:23 and Hebrews 11:6, is that virtually everything done in this hospital, by everybody except this woman, is sinful, because “without faith it is impossible to please [God],” and “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin,” those two texts say.
But here’s the other massively important fact: because of God’s common grace, and because some of his law is written on every human heart, including those of unbelievers, and because there are in many of these unbelieving medical employees vestiges of external Christian virtue — the shell left over from when they or their parents or grandparents believed — because of those three facts, most of the practices and most of the short-term goals of this healing institution are externally the same practices and the same short-term goals that this Christian nurse is pursuing. They pursue them in unbelief; she pursues them because of her faith in Christ.
All kinds of surgeries, all kinds of medications, all kinds of therapies and policies of care and protection — unbelievers are pursuing these. And she’s pursuing these because their external form is the form of Christ-exalting love, which, for her, are acts of worship. But for the unbelievers, they’re justified by man-centered values. And given what hospitals are for, there is a remarkable external behavioral overlap — like doing surgery or a short-term goal like making the patient comfortable — between the Christ-exalting love of the nurse and the man-centered, unbelieving humanism of the other staff. There’s an overlap of external forms of virtue.
Now, one of the remarkable things about this situation is that the external practices and the short-term goals flow so naturally from both the heart of the Christian nurse and the hearts of unbelievers that neither assumes that the other is a Christian or a non-Christian because of participation in these shared practices and goals. So, the Christian nurse does not feel compromised by her working there. It doesn’t imply that she shares the unbelieving worldview.
Working Toward Destruction
Now, what happens when some of God’s common grace is withheld, and God’s law written on the heart is more deeply suppressed, and the vestiges of external Christian virtue from previous generations are more fully abandoned? What happens is that some of the overlap between Christ-exalting, faith-rooted Christian behavior and unbelieving behavior is lost. Some of the overlap is lost. For example, the hospital staff, instead of caring for old people, now may euthanize them, kill them. Instead of caring for mothers and babies in crisis pregnancies, they may kill the children. Instead of helping men flourish as men and women flourish as women, they pursue the illusion of surgically and hormonally turning men into women and women into men, which can never happen.
“The powers that be in the hospital have shifted from the common grace of healing to the demonic purpose of destruction.”
Suddenly, or not so suddenly, the powers that be in the hospital have shifted from the common grace of healing to the demonic purpose of destruction. Instead of palliative compassion for the aged, they destroy them. Instead of prenatal and postnatal care, they destroy the unborn. Instead of valuing God-given maleness and God-given femaleness, they destroy them. In the first two cases, the destruction is death. In the case of surgically or hormonally trying to make women out of men or men out of women, they not only reject God’s good design for male and female, but they set in motion often irreversible contradictions between body and soul that lead to miseries that our generation has scarcely begun to imagine over the next decades.
Which means that now we have a new situation for our Christian nurse. Some of the new practices and the new short-term goals are no longer common grace flowing from unbelieving hearts. Now the practices and goals themselves, not just their unbelieving roots, are contrary to God’s will and deeply destructive for those who ought to be getting care, not harm.
Can a Christian Participate?
So, the Christian nurse is faced with a new challenge. Not, “How do I act as a Christian in pursuing shared views of external good?” — which is what she’s been living with for the time up until these new practices. Not, “How do I, as a Christian, practice pursuing shared views of external good?” But, “Can I act as a Christian in sharing practices and goals that no longer reflect God’s common grace, no longer reflect God’s law written on the heart, no longer reflect any vestiges of long-abandoned Christian virtue?”
“Your participation becomes, against your will, a support for contradicting God’s revealed will.”
And my encouragement to this nurse is no, because now your skill and ministry are no longer simply a bona fide participation in a common grace of healing done in the name of Jesus, but now your skill and ministry have to be used in a setting where the external manifestations of God’s order are openly defied, and where untold damage is being done to sometimes desperate people. Which means that your participation becomes, against your will, a support for contradicting God’s revealed will, for damaging people, and for bringing part of the ongoing normalization of evil in this hospital and in the world. So, I encourage you to seek the Lord earnestly for alternative ways to use your life-giving abilities.