Jesus saved me thirty-seven years ago. A janitor at my college used his breaks to preach the gospel. I eventually repented and believed, and Jesus rescued me from the tragedy of not knowing God.

God gave me a ravishing hunger to know him. So I read and reread my Bible, I prayed, and I prayed more, and I plunged headfirst into the church. As I grew, I was exposed to Reformed teaching about the sovereignty of God and learned that he works his purposes in my life and in all things for his glory and for the good of those who love him. Pursuing God became the passion of my life.

I spent most of my time in college in campus ministry, and then pursued training in seminary. When I finished, God blessed me with a wonderful wife. Then he called me to pastor a church one city block north of the epicenter of the 1992 Los Angeles riots. God was moving. And while he was rescuing sinners and maturing them as his followers, he also was growing my family with children, one every two years until we had six.

I could see God sovereignly working in me and through me. My life could not have been happier. But God wanted to deepen my relationship with him, so he brought suffering.

Our Girl Has Cancer

One day my 8-year-old daughter came home from a friend’s sleepover with a stiff neck. The problem progressively grew worse over three weeks, and each week we took her to the doctor, but nothing took her pain away. Then one evening my wife came home without her.

Our daughter had said she wasn’t feeling well during a visit to Grandma’s house, so my wife let her stay there overnight. My concern grew. I had prayed earlier that day, “God, please show us what’s wrong with our daughter.” God answered my prayer. Our phone rang at two o’clock in the morning. It was Grandma. She said our daughter had tried to go to the bathroom but couldn’t stand up. So we rushed her to the emergency room, and I carried her in my arms into the hospital.

My wife and I waited for hours in a cold, dim room. Then our doctor came and told us that our daughter had cancer. After they ran more tests the next day, her oncologist told us that she had a potentially terminal form of cancer. He said our lives might not ever be the same. Because of our daughter’s age, my wife and I alternated days and nights living in the pediatric ICU and isolation rooms while my daughter underwent treatment.

ICU and Unanswered Prayer

Every day I saw children suffering excruciating pain, and at night I heard their unanswered cries for help. My wife and I bonded with and ministered to four other families who were hoping against hope that their loved ones would be healed. We prayed for each of them, and four times God said no. The harsh reality that death doesn’t spare beautiful bald-headed little girls crashed down upon us. I felt like I was living in a nightmare, and I was terrified of how it might end.

I cried every day, but not in front of anyone — not in front of my wife, not in front of my daughter. I didn’t want to discourage anyone from clinging to hope.

When our doctors told us they had done all that they could, but our daughter’s condition continued to get worse, I called my mom. My parents lived in Virginia. I told her that she and my dad should come soon because it didn’t appear that our little girl had much more time left. As I spoke with my mom, standing in a hospital overpass, I broke down and wept uncontrollably.

Then I had a conversation with my daughter that I pray you will never have to have with yours. I told her, “Honey, you might die soon and go to see Jesus, so make sure you are trusting in him.”

Not My Will

The excruciating pain I felt drove me closer and closer to God. I prayed more fervently than I have ever prayed. One day I was convicted that I didn’t pray like my Lord, who in his passion prayed three times in the garden of Gethsemane. And each time he surrendered to the Father, “Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:32–42).

“God pried my hand open so that I would release my daughter into his infinitely stronger and loving hands.”

As God convicted me, a massive struggle began in my heart. I found myself refusing to pray for anything but my will, which was for God to heal my daughter. So with his fatherly hand, God pried my hand open so that I would release my daughter into his infinitely stronger and loving hands. In seminary, I was taught that when you see two IV stands during hospital visits, it normally indicates that the person is very sick. My daughter had three and an additional direct line into her arm.

To remove the excessive fluids in her body, they had to perform a procedure that required me to hold my daughter down. As I did, she looked at me and screamed, “Daddy, help me! Daddy, help me!” I held on until the doctors were done. Then I staggered into the hallway and surrendered my daughter to God. I wrestled with God and he won.

With tears streaming down my face, I prayed, “Not my will, but your will, be done. She was always yours and never mine. You always loved her more and are her best protector.”

God Does All He Pleases

In the end, God taught me by experience what he had taught me theologically a long time before. God always does what he pleases, and what he pleases is best.

“God always does what he pleases, and what he pleases is best.”

Space won’t permit me to share how God miraculously healed my daughter. What God did was so amazing that if Hollywood made our story into a movie, viewers would call it cheesy and unrealistic. People prayed for us from all over the world and rejoiced with us when my daughter walked out of the hospital cancer free (2 Corinthians 1:10–11). My God-fearing wife says if she could, she would choose to go through this all over again because of what she learned about God. I learned the peace and joy that comes from knowing that God is good even when we suffer — that it is good that he always does as he pleases.

In April of this year, God gave me the pleasure of walking my now-grown miracle down the aisle to give her away a second time, this time in marriage.

God Shouts in Our Pain

C.S. Lewis once wrote of suffering in The Problem of Pain, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (91). God directed his megaphone at me seventeen years ago, and nothing I’ve experienced has so profoundly affected my life and ministry.

Through suffering, God teaches us to be persistent in prayer. He reveals to us that he is way too big for our finite minds to comprehend, and yet his mercies are far too great for him not to hear our cries for help. He invites us to wrestle with him because he wants us to know that the outcome he brings is best. We can rest then, knowing that he has heard, that he cares, and that he will use his answer for our ultimate good and his glory, even if he doesn’t remove the trial but answers instead, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

This article would be misleading if I didn’t confess that as a husband, a father, and a pastor, I still waver in the face of suffering. But I am so thankful that God reteaches me from his word, his past work in my life, and the testimonies of the saints, that what he ordains is best.

In fact, I can hear Mother Simmons now, a dear saint in our church who has suffered as much like Job as anyone I know. I can hear her say, “Pastor, where God puts a period, we can’t change it to a comma,” and then quote, “God is good all the time, and all the time, God is good.” Yes, all the time — even during our darkest trials.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday. We hope you’re reading the Bible with us this year and benefiting from the discipline. We’re using the Navigators Bible Reading Plan. And if you are reading along with us, you may already know that today’s scheduled reading includes 1 Corinthians 6:12–20, a key text on how we glorify God with our bodies.

How do we steward this body for God’s glory? Specifically, we have a lot of questions about caffeine and energy drinks, like this email today from a listener named José. He writes in to ask this: “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast. Caffeine, and specifically energy drinks, are controversial in our youth group. As someone who likes them, I was wondering if there are any negative effects or reason to not drink them. They help me focus and have energy during my work shift. I only drink one every two or three days, but I would like to have some spiritual insight in order that I may run this race without being slowed down.”

And he ends his email with a smile emoticon. Pastor John, how should we think about energy drinks, and how would we know if we are abusing our bodies with caffeine?

Well, it might be helpful to take our starting point from Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians about how he navigates the whole area of appetites — whether food or energy drinks or sex — and what foods mean to Paul, what he takes into his body.

God Cares About the Body

So, here’s the pivotal text for me. It’s 1 Corinthians 6:12–13:

“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated [and I would say, or mastered, or ruled, or enslaved] by anything. “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food” — and God will destroy both one and the other.

Now, let me pause there and say that there’s a lot of controversy around what in Paul’s chapter here are slogans from his adversaries in Corinth and what are his own words. So, it might be a slogan: “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food.” And so, they’re justifying all kinds of things. But whatever the case is on that point, Paul’s point becomes clear in what follows. Here’s what follows:

The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? (1 Corinthians 6:13–15)

So, clearly, the upshot of those last couple of lines is this: “The Lord is for the body, the body is for the Lord, the Lord will raise the body, and we are members of Christ even in our bodies.” In other words, the body really matters. So, the body matters to God morally. And, in particular, foods matter and sex matters. And so, the guidelines he gives matter. And what he says is this: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I [wouldn’t want to] be dominated by anything.” And then he adds, “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up” (1 Corinthians 10:23).

Three Guiding Questions

So, here’s my paraphrase for José:

“Energy drinks are lawful for me, but are they helpful to my real advantage?” And I’ll come back to that.
“Energy drinks are lawful for me, but do they dominate (or master or enslave) me?” I’ll come back to that one.
“Energy drinks are lawful for me, but does my drinking of them build up? Does it build up my faith? And particularly, does it build up the faith of others?”

So, let me just give a thought about each of those questions that might help him navigate whether he uses them and how frequently he uses them.

1. Do energy drinks really help me?

“All things are lawful, but are they helpful — that is, to my real, deep advantage?” That’s the meaning of the Greek word: “to my advantage.” This is really part of a much bigger issue, isn’t it, of the proper use of not just caffeine but other stimulants, medications — Ritalin, Adderall, antidepressants, and so on.

So, let me just give one crucial guideline that I think is implied in Paul’s wording, “Are they truly helpful? Do they help me go after my deepest advantage?” And that would be this; this is my guideline: “Are energy drinks, or whatever I’m taking, masking deeper problems that I’m not dealing with, because I’m masking them, or are they helping me really address and be freed from the deeper problems that I may have?”

“Are energy drinks, or whatever I’m taking, masking deeper problems that I’m not dealing with?”

I think that’s the crucial question when it comes to the kinds of medications or stimulants that we take. Are we hiding from our hearts? Are we hiding from sins? Are we hiding things that ought to be dealt with, and this is just a superficial overlay? If José or any of us is masking deeper problems with stimulants, then they’re not being used as a gift from God for our good; they’re being used as a flight from truth and from the good that God wants to do deeper down. So, that’s my note on the first paraphrase.

2. Do energy drinks enslave me?

“Do they master me? Do they enslave me?” Why would that matter to Paul? Why does he say that? Why should it matter to us? Well, it should matter because we have one Master, who bought us at the price of his blood. We do not belong to ourselves, but to him. He calls us to live as free people, not enslaved people.

It says in 1 Corinthians 6:19–20, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” So, anyone who uses coffee, or soda, or energy drinks, or other kinds of stimulants or medication should ask, “Am I dominated by this? Am I mastered by this? Am I controlled by this? Am I living consciously as Christ’s freedman? Am I magnifying the price that he paid to set me free for him?”

It says in 2 Corinthians 5:15, “He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” Are we magnifying his mastery over us or living under another master? That’s the second issue that I think he should take into consideration.

3. Do energy drinks build up?

Do energy drinks build up? “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things build up.” Why does Paul shift our focus? This is a really profound ethical question in the New Testament. Why does Paul shift our focus from what is lawful — he says, “All things are lawful” — to what builds up?

Now, this is huge. In Christ, we have died to the law. Romans 7:4: “You . . . have died to the law through the body of Christ.” And “we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code” (Romans 7:6). The problem, then, with deciding what’s right and wrong about energy drinks is that you could obey a law without love, without giving a hoot about whether you’re building anybody’s faith. And so, it is not adequate to have an external rule solve this problem. Paul wants to go deeper.

“The reason Christians are set free from the law is not that we might become lawless, but that love would hold sway.”

The reason Christians are set free from the law is not that we might become lawless, but that love would hold sway. “To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ)” (1 Corinthians 9:21). So, his freedom with regard to the law was being governed by another law, which he called “the law of Christ.” And what’s that? Galatians 6:2: “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Or Galatians 5:14: “The whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

So, when Paul says to José, or me, or you, or anybody else, “Energy drinks are lawful, but do they build up?” he means, “Be sure that your heart is set on the good of others and that your example to them and your choices are aiming to build people up in faith — that is, helping them trust Jesus and treasure Jesus and honor Jesus above all things.”

Guidelines for Consumption

So, here are my three summary guidelines for José and me.

Are they truly helpful? Are energy drinks truly helpful? That is, are they masking problems that I need to deal with or helping me deal with them?
Are they dominating me, mastering me, and obscuring that Jesus is my real master?
Am I using them in love? Am I building others up? Am I seeking to build my own faith and the faith of others?

Super helpful paradigms here, Pastor John. Thank you for another application of 1 Corinthians 6:12–13. Before we go, I think we all want to know: Do you yourself use energy drinks?

I have a box of energy drinks in my office. I probably don’t use them quite as often as José. He said every two or three days. And what I do is that, if I’ve got a pressing task and I cannot stay awake, yes, I’ll go there. But that box that I buy at ALDI — you can get them at ALDI real cheap — lasts a long time.

But I mean, a question like this helps me keep my finger on the pulse of whether I’m defaulting to an artificial stimulant because I’m so proud I won’t get enough sleep. That’s what I mean by masking. If my real problem is that John Piper doesn’t have the discipline to go to bed at night and therefore gets six hours instead of eight hours of sleep, and therefore he’s always falling asleep at his tasks, and thus he resorts to an artificial stimulant, that’s masking, that’s hiding, that’s running away from God, and it’s pride.

When I began my doctoral studies on the Puritans, I received all sorts of odd, and sometimes troubling, questions about my research. One of the most surprising came from a stranger who, upon learning the focus of my PhD, asked, “Do we have any stories of children raised by Puritans who grew up and left the faith because of how their parents mistreated them?” The question came out of nowhere; I could hardly think of what to say. In my shock, I blurted out that I was not aware of any stories like this.

Later that night, I realized why the question shocked me. Not only had I never heard such a story, but I had heard many stories that showed the opposite — stories of young men raised by Puritan fathers who then became Puritans themselves, such as Matthew Henry, son of Puritan clergyman Philip Henry. Soon, I would also discover that the Puritans explicitly spoke against abuse in the home, instructing parents instead to care for and pass down the faith to their families.

In fact, the Puritans are often remembered for their devotion to family life. What we don’t often hear about, however, are the Puritan women — the faithful mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, and daughters who bore much of the load. When I started studying Puritan women, their stories excited me: a daughter evangelizing her unbelieving father, an aunt catechizing her nieces and guiding them through life’s challenges, a grandmother raising her granddaughter after a family tragedy. These are just some of the amazing testimonies that have been preserved for us from church history.

But to me, the most fascinating story of a Puritan woman passing down the faith comes from the life of Lucy Hutchinson (1620–1681). A mother of eight who wrote works of poetry, history, and theology, Hutchinson crafted the only known theological treatise written by a woman in the seventeenth century. Its purpose? To pass down the faith to her daughter Barbara, who would soon move away to start life as an independent adult.

When Love and Duty Meet

The fact that Hutchinson wrote an entire book of theology becomes less surprising when we consider her upbringing: she hated sewing and playing with friends her age, loved reading and listening to the adults of the house, attended sermons with her mother, outperformed her brother in Latin, and eventually married a man who had similar intellectual interests.

But still, why would Hutchinson go to the trouble of writing an entire book for her daughter? In a letter to Barbara that she attached to the treatise, Hutchinson explained herself. Though she could have simply bought Barbara an affordable short catechism written by professionally trained theologians (such as the theologians who influenced her own writings), she believed it was her duty as a mother to do all she could to stabilize her daughter’s faith — and she could not shirk this duty.

True, Barbara might think it over-the-top. What’s more, Hutchinson was weighed down by great personal challenges during her writing process: illness, distraction, a lack of external support and self-confidence, and the aftermath of her husband’s death (which left her with a broken heart, debts to pay off, and children to care for alone). But she felt that she had to proceed, no matter how slow and painful the process might be. Overall, what motivated Hutchinson, in addition to her motherly love and sense of duty, was her own commitment to God and his people.

Faith-Filled Mothers Faithfully Teach

As Hutchinson’s treatise shows, she was convinced from Scripture that the purpose of life was to love God, which led, in turn, to loving his people. So, she taught Barbara that we fulfill the most important commandment or “the law” through “love” (Mark 12:29–30; Romans 13:10) and that God calls us to “stir up one another to love” (Hebrews 10:24) and abide “in the light” (1 John 2:10) through love.

In light of these passages, she urged Barbara to partake of the faith and love of the universal church by joining a local church to worship God with fellow believers, serve one another, and care for the needy. In fact, her book is one big explanation of faith in God, his work in creation, salvation, and sanctification, and how we live in relationship with him and humanity.

Unfortunately, we don’t know what became of Barbara after Hutchinson sent her off with this special book; the only record we have is of the financial hardships Barbara’s daughters faced later in life. But we do know that despite whatever trials Barbara and her family faced, they had access to the most important truths through the teaching Lucy had passed down to them.

Passing Down the Faith Today

After learning about Hutchinson’s intellectual prowess and great ambitions, we may be tempted to think of her example as too great to emulate. But despite her unique talents, Hutchinson’s story has many lessons for us today as we seek to raise our children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews in the Lord Jesus.

1. Teach yourself first.

First, Hutchinson grounded herself in the truths of Scripture before and as she taught her daughter. When she instructed Barbara, she did not speak as a nameless, faceless narrator — she spoke as a Christian who had spent her life studying theology, gathering with the church, and reflecting on her own faith journey.

Her commitment to personal discipleship teaches us that if we want to do any spiritual good to the dependents and disciples in our lives, we first need to receive that spiritual good for ourselves. As Paul says, “You . . . who teach others, do you not teach yourself?” (Romans 2:21). If we don’t want to be like the Pharisees, we need to believe and experience what we are teaching to others. We don’t need to be perfect in our faith or good works, but we do need to spend time reminding (even teaching!) ourselves what we believe and why, and then share our personal experiences of these truths with others in order to offer genuine and effective instruction.

2. Draw from the best resources.

For all her theological aptitude, Hutchinson was not a professional theologian. She did not even go to university because of the laws and societal norms of her day. Even still, Hutchinson was able to become skilled in theology because she supplemented her personal Bible reading with some of the best theological resources available to her, including the writings of John Calvin, John Owen, and the Westminster divines.

Like Hutchinson, all of us can become good disciplers if we have the right tools — we do not need to be officially trained or paid. If we want to fulfill the Great Commission to “make disciples” and teach “them to observe all that [Jesus has] commanded” (Matthew 28:19–20), all we need to do is use the abilities God has given us (Romans 12:6) alongside the wisdom God has given to others.

3. Let suffering strengthen resolve.

Finally, Hutchinson persevered through many struggles in order to teach Barbara. Perhaps we picture great thinkers from history cozied up on the couch, tea in hand and dog on lap, writing their magnum opus. The reality, however, is that many of these thinkers, including Hutchinson, wrote in the midst of waking nightmares. Yet such trials did not stop them from passing down the faith. In fact, in many cases, suffering had the opposite effect, creating the right emotional environment to spur them on to communicate the truth with intensity and clarity.

After losing so much, Hutchinson must have felt even more keenly her duty to fortify Barbara’s faith. Suffering did not make her hopeless; rather, it created endurance and character as she passed on the faith for her family’s future (Romans 5:3–4).

Right now may feel like the wrong time to devote yourself to teaching. Maybe your children are small, and you can hardly get through the day. Maybe a family member is ill. Maybe someone in your family has lost a job or you are in the middle of an international move. While there are times to work and times to rest, it is important that passing on the faith within our families does not get put on a permanent back burner.

Reminding ourselves of the greatness of Christian love and the example of Hutchinson’s motherly love can spur us to pass on the faith even when we feel weighed down by life or unqualified for the task. Whatever our circumstances or qualifications, God can use us to strengthen the faith of others, especially as we ask him to strengthen our own.