We have surrounded ourselves with screens. On the desk. In the family room. Even in bedrooms and kitchens. Increasingly in automobiles. One for every passenger on the airplane? And most importantly, hitchhiking on our person everywhere we go, the Precious in our own pocketses and handses.

Once upon a time, screens came attached to heavy, unwieldy boxes. Not anymore. Now they’re as thin as picture frames, and thinner. Some of us can count more screens in our homes than wall décor.

We are living in stunningly image-driven and visually-oriented times. We do well, then, to query ourselves regularly, and thoughtfully, about what images we’re allowing to pass before our eyes, and how they are shaping us. Moving pictures are powerful. They can arrest and extract attention we don’t mean to pay them (say, at a restaurant). And our habits related to screens don’t leave us unchanged.

Yet, in such days, it could be easy to be captivated by the screens and overlook the deeply formative and re-formative power of the great invisible medium that accompanies them: words. Words, especially spoken words, are the great unseen power that give meaning to our world of images and shape how we choose to live.

Words for Good, and Ill

Perhaps even more than our other four celebrated senses, our ability to hear makes us deeply human.

“Words are the great unseen power that give meaning to our world of images and shape how we choose to live.”

After touch (at three weeks), hearing is the next sense to develop in the womb, at about twenty weeks, and it is widely considered to be the last sense to go while dying. Which makes sense for us as creatures of the Creator who is (amazingly!) a speaking, self-revealing God. First and foremost, he made us to hear him, to receive and respond to his words. He created the world, through words, saying, “Let there be light.” He speaks new creation into our souls by effecting new birth through his word, the gospel (James 1:18; 2 Corinthians 4:6). And he grows and sustains our souls in the Christian life through his words (1 Corinthians 15:1–2; 1 Thessalonians 2:13).

When the serpent slid into the garden, he didn’t show Eve an Instagram video, or perform a TikTok dance. He spoke. He slid his poison into her heart through her ears. After all, God had spoken to create the world. He had given Adam instructions through words about how to live in the world. So too, when Satan attacked, he came with something more perilous than a sword or boulder. He came with words, leaning on the stunning power of the audible and invisible, seeking to unseat God’s words. “Did God actually say . . . ?” (Genesis 3:1).

Who’s in Your Head?

In our day of striking media saturation and consumption, we will do well to remember the profound shaping, world-changing power of words.

Whether they are the words accompanying television and YouTube, or the written words of articles and tweets, or the purely audible media of podcasts and audiobooks, words form and fill our inner person, penetrate deeply, and quickly shape our desires, decisions, and outer lives — the whole of who we are. It’s not a matter of whether words are shaping us but whose.

Whose voice — whether through audio or written words or video, or old-fashioned face-to-face talk — whose voice is most regularly streaming into your ears, and going down into your soul? Whose voice captures your finite attention, and focuses you, or distracts you? Which voices do you long to hear most? Whose words are you welcoming most to enter into your soul, to sow seeds of life — or death? Whom do you welcome into that intimate space that is your ear?

Entertaining Demons

Do the words you hear and cherish most “follow the course of this world” (Ephesians 2:2)? Are you becoming “conformed to this world” (Romans 12:2) rather than “transformed by the renewal of your mind”? How “highly online” and “Internet-formed” are you? Some have entertained angels unawares (Hebrews 13:2), but are we showing hospitality to demons?

Two lines from a recent Gospel Coalition email stopped me in my tracks:

Internet-formed Christians are increasingly being catechized by partisan politics and secular pop culture. The result? Divided and fragmenting churches, declining church membership, and weary leaders.

It stopped me in my tracks as a spot-on diagnosis. Christian parents, pastors, and disciple-makers were once the most formative catechizers. What happens when the words, and perspectives, of television and the Internet shape Christians more than their churches? We’re already seeing it.

Whose Words Are Changing You?

For many, the fight for faith in this generation — to not only survive but thrive as a Christian — is about not just what we see, but perhaps just as pressing (if not more so), what we hear and to whom we listen.

God made us for the gospel, which is first and foremost a message to hear. “Faith comes from hearing,” says the apostle Paul, “and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). And how did you receive the Spirit? “Hearing with faith” (Galatians 3:2). “He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you” does so not “by works of the law,” he writes, but “by hearing with faith” (Galatians 3:5). The voices we habitually allow and welcome into our heads have profound shaping power. “In the sensorium of faith,” writes Tony Reinke in his book on today’s countless visual Spectacles, “the ear is chief” (148).

“Whom you hear with delight today will be who you become like tomorrow.”

A new year is as good a time as any to take inventory of the audible voices and written words we encounter daily, especially those we habitually choose. Whose words do you welcome? Whose words do you not only hear, but listen to with rapt attention? Whose words fill your social feeds and podcast queues? What do you listen to on the way to work, or while you walk, exercise, or clean? To whom do you turn for advice? What podcasts, what shows and series, what musicians, what audiobooks? Are your choices governed by the pursuit of entertainment, or the pursuit of God? Instant gratification, or progressive sanctification? Shallow, mindless consumption, or careful, thoughtful growth?

Whom you hear with delight today will be who you become more like tomorrow. As Jesus himself says seven times in the Gospels, and then seven times more in Revelation, “He who has an ear, let him hear.”

New Year’s Defiance

As we continue to sort out the effects of new media and algorithms, and how the Internet shapes Christians and our churches in particular, we do have one clear, simple, ancient, decisive act of defiance.

To those of us willing to hear and heed the cautions, the solution, of course, is not to plug the ears that God has so wonderfully dug, but to open them and eagerly receive words and voices that are true, good, life-giving, balanced, and Christ-magnifying. Even more important than what we keep out of our heads, and hearts, is what we fill them with — and none are more worthy than the words of God himself.

God made us to meditate, not flit endlessly from one message to the next. It is a remarkable design feature of humans, that we can pause and ponder, ruminate and think, that we can stew over truth (and not just lies), and over the good God has done (and not just the evil of others). Perhaps, if you’re honest, you find your mind fragmented. Texts and notifications, tweets and memes, audio and video ads and clips seem to have eroded your capacity for serious, meaningful attention, and you’re not sure where to turn next, but just hit refresh. Make the word of God be where you turn.

Make his voice, in Scripture, the first you hear each day. And his voice, above all, the one that you welcome most, and try to take most deeply into your soul through his words. Let his words be your unhurried meditation, in the morning, and the place you return to regain balance in spare moments. Pray for, and aim to have, his word be “on your heart,” and central in your parenting, and present in conversation, with you “when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deuteronomy 6:6–7).

Discover Good

Let meditation on God’s word be one great new-year’s act of defiance in our media-driven age. Half an hour of such unhurried, even leisurely, lingering over and enjoying God’s words just might fortify your soul for the unavoidable drivel of distant dramas, hot takes, and idle words we seem to encounter at every turn in this world. “Whoever gives thought to the word will discover good, and blessed is he who trusts in the Lord” (Proverbs 16:20).

You will find, over time, that God can indeed restore what the locusts have eaten. He can rebuild your mind, and your capacity for focus and sustained attention, and he can restore your heart, and give you wisdom and stability.

How different might the next year be because of what you resolved to do with your ears?

“Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him” (Luke 9:18). At first, this verse might seem confusing. Jesus was praying alone. But his disciples were with him. So, was he alone? Or wasn’t he? The mom in me can’t help but chuckle.

All it takes is changing the pronouns to convert this verse into a familiar scenario for those with small children. “Now it happened that as she was praying alone, her disciples were with her.” Maybe tapping her on the shoulder, prying her hands off her eyes, asking for something to eat, or actually nursing at that moment. So, is she alone? Or isn’t she?

Like Jesus, moms are rarely without their disciples. And though they cannot say, as Jesus could, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9), moms are constantly teaching their children about their heavenly Father, whether they realize it or not.

Disciples with Little Disciples

When the laundry pile is high, the refrigerator stock low, the beds unmade, and a Bible nowhere to be found, mothers may feel like the least likely candidates for the post of theological student, let alone teacher. But the truth is, Christian moms are both.

From the moment they wake up in the morning to the moment they go to bed, a Christian mom is living based on an idea of who she is and for whom she was made. She is a disciple of Jesus and she belongs to God. How she does what she does — how she speaks, how she responds, how she comforts, how she disciplines, how she eats, drinks, works, and rests — in everything she is teaching her children something about her heavenly Father. All day long (and sometimes all night!), her disciples are with her.

Moms don’t just have disciples. Moms are disciples. And part of discipleship is learning to speak well about God in all we say and do. The atheist and the astrologist each say something about God. Pastors and parents do as well. What we may not realize as moms is that theology is not optional. It’s unavoidable. We already have theology. The question, then, is whether our theology is good theology.

What is good theology? Good theology knows and speaks the truth about God — what he is like and what he is doing in the world through Jesus Christ. In Knowing God, J.I. Packer says that good theology leads us to know God, not just to know about him. Good theology leads to doxology — delighted worship that works itself out in our daily lives.

“Good theology gives us direction for our everyday life. It is not irrelevant or out of reach.”

If this feels like an intimidating task, you are in good company. After speaking at length about God, Job ends with his hand over his mouth, saying, “I will proceed no further” (Job 40:4–5). In his Confessions, Augustine says, “After saying all that, what have we said, my God, my life, my holy sweetness? What does anyone who speaks of you really say?” (1.4.4). The posture of all sound theology is humility, because to speak anything about God is dangerous. Blasphemy is a real possibility. What gives a mom hope that she can speak rightly about God at all?

Mothering Blindfolded

We would never be able to speak rightly about God through our words and actions, if God himself had not first spoken to us. But he has! Hebrews 1:1–2 says,

Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.

God the Father has spoken to us in the Son, in the gospel, and in his written word. The Son has sent us the Spirit to guide us “into all the truth” (John 16:13). Christian mom, do you know who made the world? Do you know why the world is full of evil and suffering? Do you know humanity’s biggest problem? Do you know the only one who can save us? You know more theology than you may realize.
Our theology reveals how well we do — or do not — understand the story that we are in. It is as practical as the script and character descriptions in a play. Or a good map on a hiking trip. Or a light in a dark room. Good theology gives us direction for our everyday life. It is not irrelevant or out of reach.

“Disregard the study of God,” Packer writes, “and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul” (Knowing God, 19). Good theology, however, opens our eyes to the glory of God in all things, including our calling as a mom.

Holding Class in the Kitchen

As mothers, we speak of God when we fill our children’s bottomless bellies. How do we respond when our children are hungry, again? Sometimes it feels like feeding is all we do! Surely we were made for something more glorious than life as a short-order cook for picky toddlers and teenagers?

And yet Jesus says, “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51). He didn’t just break the bread. He is the bread. He is the one who taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). In gladly feeding our children each day, we are teaching them about their heavenly Father, who cares for their most basic needs. In giving of ourselves to feed our children, we’re living as disciples of Jesus, who gave his body for the life of the world.

We speak of God when we train our children. Does our average day feel eerily similar to a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip? Does the creative sin of our little disciples astound us? Can it send us into another episode of “little sinners in the hands of an angry mom,” as we add our sin to theirs?

In a fallen world, sin is not surprising. But grace is. What an immense grace that a momma’s calm heart in a tense moment teaches her children true things about their heavenly Father, that he “is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). When we ask forgiveness of our children, they learn to confess to the One who “is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

“As mothers, we will speak of God truly to our children only if we truly know him ourselves.”

We also speak of God in our suffering. Scripture teaches us that suffering can make or break our faith. Like a sound sailing vessel in a wild storm, sound theology keeps our faith from floundering in the ups and downs of motherhood. When our little ones suffer bumps and bruises, nights of illness or long-term diagnoses, our comfort and care as mothers teaches them about Jesus, who entered our suffering in order to bring “many sons to glory” (Hebrews 2:10).

Our hope in God’s promise of redemption teaches our children that God is good. He turns suffering into glory. “After you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you” (1 Peter 5:10). Our perseverance through trials big and small tells our children that the resurrection is real.

As mothers, we will speak of God truly to our children only if we truly know him ourselves. To glorify God by enjoying him forever, we need to know our God. So, we heed the prophet’s charge: “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3). Many moms, however, feel hard-pressed just to get diapers changed and dinner on the table. Asking them to press on into the task of good theology may feel like Pharaoh telling the Israelites to make bricks without providing the straw.

Remember, theology is not optional. If we don’t intentionally speak the truth about God, we will say something false. We will make God in our own image and in the image of the surrounding culture. And our disciples will be with us. So, how can a busy, weary mom press on to know the Lord? It may be as simple as asking a question and repeating the answer.

GOOD QUESTIONS

“Do you feel the world is broken?” “We do!” So, speak the opening lines from Andrew Peterson’s song “Is He Worthy?” The church has been teaching theology to God’s people in this question-and-answer format from the earliest days. The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) begins,

Q. What is your only comfort in life and in death?

A. That I am not my own, but belong — body and soul, in life and in death — to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood, and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation.

Because I belong to him, Christ, by his Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for him.

Regular meditation on that one question would make any Christian mom a deeper, happier theologian. The Protestant catechisms have been a theological guide to the church for hundreds of years. By working through one question a week, how might our theology take root and blossom?

GREAT BOOKS

For those who are willing to commit more time, I recommend making it a goal to work through at least one theological book a year. Knowing God by J.I. Packer, The Knowledge of the Holy by A.W. Tozer, and The Deep Things of God by Fred Sanders are excellent options.

LOCAL CHURCH

A resource even more ancient than catechisms is the gathering of the local church. As Hebrews 10:23–25 exhorts us, “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering . . . not neglecting to meet together . . .” By gathering weekly with the body of Christ to praise God, pray, and hear God’s word proclaimed, we not only hold fast to the truth ourselves, but teach our children to do the same.

WORD AND PRAYER

One final resource available to every mom may be the most underrated, perhaps because it seems the most mundane: God’s word and prayer. Theologian Michael Allen remarks, “Theology should not claim to improve upon Scripture and prayer. Its task is to help return the reader to those primary languages with greater attentiveness and understanding.”

Just like our “ordinary” lives as moms are full of more glory than we see at first glance, so the regular rhythms of Bible reading and prayer are the glorious languages of knowing God. Before we fit anything else into our day, let’s fit in the Bible and prayer. Let our little ones see us regularly looking to God’s word. Let our speaking be guided by God’s voice in Scripture. When we kneel to pray alone, may our disciples be with us, and by God’s grace, may they come to know our heavenly Father as he truly is.

Good Friday, everyone — literally. It’s Good Friday on the calendar, a day set apart for serious joy, set apart for us to dwell on the death of our Savior Jesus Christ. This holiday is no funeral. It’s a celebration. It’s that odd celebration of ours, and “the main song” of eternity, that eternal song about the “unparalleled beauty and worth of the reigning Lamb, Jesus Christ, who was slain” (APJ 1601; Revelation 5:6–14).

Today’s episode is not Good Friday focused, per se. But perhaps we will get into the majesty and mystery of the cross in God’s design. The question I think leads us here. We’ll see. It’s from a listener named Tim. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast. First Timothy 2:3–4 says God desires all men to be saved. He desires that end. But not all men are saved. Does that mean (1) God will not do what he wants to do? Or (2) God cannot do what he wants to do? It has to be one of these two options, right?”

No, because what the Bible shows over and over again is that there are, in many cases, two wants — W-A-N-T-S — two wills in God, not just one. So it’s not accurate to say that God will not do what he wants to do, since in choosing to do what he does not want to do, he’s doing, in another sense, what he does want to do. It would be superficial to jump to the conclusion that God is schizophrenic or double-minded or perpetually frustrated because, in the infinite complexity of God’s mind and heart, there are ways that he experiences multiple desires — layers of desires or wants or wills — in perfect harmony, each expressing some aspect of his nature in proper unity with other aspects.

God’s Wills in Scripture

Let me illustrate what I mean when I say the Bible repeatedly points to these different levels or ways of wanting or willing in God. For example, now, in 1 Timothy 2:4, the text that Tim is asking about, Paul says, “[God] desires” — that word is thelei in the Greek, which means “wills” or “desires” — “all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” But he does not save all. Now, why not?

Everybody has to face this, not just certain groups. Everyone who believes, as all Christians do, in the wisdom and power and goodness of God would say that the answer is that some other will — or some other desire or commitment of God — takes precedence over the desire for all to be saved. I think everybody would say that.

One group, sometimes called Arminians, says it’s because God is more committed to our free will, our ultimate self-determination, than he is to saving all. The desire to preserve human self-determination takes precedence over the desire for all to be saved. That would be the way an Arminian would describe it. The other group, sometimes called Calvinists, says that God is more committed to glorifying his own free and sovereign grace than he is to saving all.

Now, I think this second answer is right. One of the reasons I do is because of what 2 Timothy 2:25–26 says.

God desires repentance and withholds it.

In 2 Timothy 2:25–26, Paul says that we should exhort sinners with patience and gentleness, and “God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth,” which is a phrase from back in 1 Timothy 2:4. In other words, the reason some people believe and some do not believe is not because they have ultimate self-determination, but because God may or may not grant them to repent and believe. It’s a gift of sovereign grace.

“God wills that all be saved, but in another sense, he does not will that all be saved.”

So God wills that all be saved, but in another sense, he does not will that all be saved. One of these inclinations is a real expression of compassion, and the other is a real expression of sovereign wisdom and the freedom of grace. Now, I’m going to come back to that with an illustration from history that might make it a little more intelligible, but let’s keep giving illustrations of this idea of multiple layers of willing or desiring in God.

God forbids murder and ordains it.

Here’s another example. He commands, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13). His will is that people not murder. That’s God’s will. But Acts 4:27–28 says that “Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel,” in murdering Jesus — they all teamed up and murdered him — did “whatever [God’s] hand and [God’s] plan had predestined to take place.” God planned the death of his Son at the hands of murderous, wicked men. Our salvation hangs on this reality. This is at the center of the gospel. This issue of God’s sovereignty over sinful men is at the center of the gospel, not some marginal theological dispute. God’s will that his Son be murdered took precedence over his will that people not murder.

Bible students, for centuries, have seen this and have called these two wills by various names, like “will of command” and “will of decree.” Another set of phrases is “moral will” and “sovereign will.”

God forbids false witness and sends it.

Here’s a third example of these two layers or levels or kinds of willing in God. “You shall not bear false witness” (Exodus 20:16). God’s will is that people tell the truth and not be misled, not think false thoughts, and not deceive others. Yet in 2 Thessalonians 2:10–12, it says,

[People] refused to love the truth and so be saved. Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

They “believe what is false.” They speak what is false. They think what is false. Paul says God sent this delusion as a punishment. God’s will that people believe the truth and speak the truth is subordinated, in their case, to God’s other will, which is manifest in his sending them further into deception.

God cares for the wicked and destroys them.

Here’s another example. In Ezekiel 33:11, God says, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” Yet God often in the Bible justly takes the life of the wicked. Isaiah 11:4: “He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.” He does not have pleasure in the death of the wicked. That is, he does not desire it. Nevertheless, he brings that death about. “I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and there is none that can deliver out of my hand” (Deuteronomy 32:39).

God afflicts, but not ‘from the heart.’

Here’s one more example of these two wills in God. This example may take us most explicitly into God’s soul. At least, I have found for myself and for many people that Lamentations 3:32–33 is really illuminating concerning the nature of God and how his willing works. Here’s what it says: “Though he cause grief” — though God caused grief — “he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.” Now, this is really amazing. God does cause grief. God does afflict the children of men, but then it adds, “not . . . from his heart” (Lamentations 3:33). That’s a very literal and good translation.

“All of the wisdom and all of the moral realities that form God’s choices come from within God himself.”

Now, what are we to make of that? He wills to do it, but he does not will to do it “from his heart.” You can see why I say that the Bible, over and over, points to the mind and heart of God as complex: willing one thing, willing also that this other will not be put into action. And this is not owing — as it would be, say, in our case — to external forces. Nobody’s twisting God’s arm. All of the wisdom and all of the moral realities that form God’s choices come from within God himself.

Washington’s Example

Here’s an analogy that I said I would give to help perhaps make this a little more intelligible. This comes from The Life of George Washington. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote The Life of George Washington and tells the story that there was a certain Major André who had committed treason and put the new American republic at risk. George Washington signed André’s death warrant. He’s about to be executed. And John Marshall comments in his biography, “Perhaps on no occasion of his life did the commander-in-chief obey with more reluctance the stern mandates of duty and policy.” Two wills were operating in Washington: compassion and justice. One commentator on Washington’s decision said,

Washington’s volition to sign the death-warrant of André did not arise from the fact that his compassion was slight or feigned [unreal], but from the fact that it was rationally counterpoised by a complex of superior judgements . . . of wisdom, duty, patriotism, and moral indignation.

Then he adds, “The pity was real, but was restrained by superior elements of motive.” Washington had official and bodily power to discharge the criminal, but he had no sanctions in his own wisdom and justice to do it.

Similarly, I would say the absence of a volition in God to save does not necessarily imply the absence of compassion. It’s real. That willing in God, that desiring in God, is real. The fact that there are two wills in God points to a profound but complex unity in revealing aspects of God’s nature that are both true and both real. In our own experience, we may feel them as conflicting or as frustrating, but I think it would be rash to say that God experiences his compassion and the justice of his wrath that way. They are harmonious in God. He reveals them both to us so that we can get some true glimpse of what God is really like.