Few chapters in Scripture have impacted me as much as 2 Chronicles 20. God has met me, often through tears, in this passage — a passage that continues to show me how to respond in crisis. I’ve learned to throw myself on the Lord in trial, to trust him when I can’t see results, and to worship in the midst of seemingly impossible situations. It also contains one of my go-to verses, words I whisper throughout the day when I feel helpless and unsure, in need of wisdom and help.

This passage first came alive to me after my husband left our family and I didn’t know where to turn. A multitude of issues were at my doorstep, and I had no idea how I would survive the onslaught. And years later, with mounting health issues, I repeatedly turned to this passage when I felt desperate. Even now, each time I reread it, I remember God’s faithfulness in trials, which anchors me again on solid rock.

Embattled and Blessed

The account in 2 Chronicles 20 takes place around 850 BC, after the kingdom of Israel is divided. Jehoshaphat is king of Judah, a faithful king who fears the Lord. Without warning, the king is told that a massive coalition of his enemies is marching toward him. They are already close, leaving little time to prepare.

When Jehoshaphat hears the chilling news, he is afraid and immediately seeks the Lord. Then he assembles a group to pray and fast. He begins his public prayer by proclaiming God’s power and reminding the people of how God had delivered their ancestors. Next, Jehoshaphat reminds God of his promises to Israel — that if disaster should come upon them and they cry out to God in their affliction, he would hear and save them. Jehoshaphat ends his prayer by humbly admitting their utter helplessness, looking to God alone for deliverance.

While they are praying, the Spirit of God falls upon a Levite in the crowd, who says, “Thus says the Lord to you, ‘Do not be afraid and do not be dismayed at this great horde, for the battle is not yours but God’s’” (2 Chronicles 20:15). Then he tells them exactly where the enemy would be and that the Lord would be with them. After the people hear the Lord’s reassurance, they worship.

Early the next morning, after exhorting the people to believe in the Lord, Jehoshaphat appoints a group to sing praises to God, saying, “Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures forever” (verse 21). These people, who have no weapon but praise, march ahead of the army to the battle.

As they are singing, their enemies annihilate each other. When they see what happened, Jehoshaphat and all the people take their enemies’ valuables and name that place the “Valley of Beracah” — the Valley of Blessing.

What begins with great fear from an unexpected threat ends with greater joy from an unexpected blessing. Drawing from this story, here are five ways we can seek blessing in our own battles when we feel like a multitude of troubles is pressing in.

1. Seek God first when you are afraid.

In crisis, our minds are flooded with fear, and we must deliberately disrupt our anxious thoughts. Jehoshaphat’s first reaction was fear, after which he immediately sought the Lord. We don’t need to be afraid of the battles that are in front of us, even those that seem insurmountable, because God will be with us and fight for us.

Don’t turn to Google over God or endlessly play out “What if . . . ?” scenarios in your head. Before anything else, ask God for wisdom, resources, and strength — and then look around to see how he’s providing.

2. Remind yourself of God and his promises.

It’s so easy to forget that we worship the God of the universe — the God who simply speaks a word, and worlds come into existence, creating what is seen out of what was unseen (Hebrews 11:3). Everything is at his disposal. Paging through Scripture, we can see how God has worked in the lives of his people throughout the ages. We can also look back and see how God has worked in our own lives — answering our cries, rushing to our aid, and comforting us in sorrow.

“I have no resources, no wisdom, and no hope without God. All I can do is keep my eyes on him.”

God has given us extraordinary promises in Scripture that we can plead back to him, reminding him of what he has pledged. He will never leave or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5). He will take care of all our needs (Philippians 4:19). Nothing can separate us from his love (Romans 8:38–39). All things will work together for our good (Romans 8:28). And he has good plans for our future (Jeremiah 29:11).

Jehoshaphat didn’t presume God would save him from disaster, but rather that God would save him in the midst of disaster. He said, “If disaster comes upon us . . .” (2 Chronicles 20:9), implying that they would trust God in their affliction even if the worst happened. They would keep crying out to him, keep trusting him, confident that he would heal and deliver.

3. Keep your eyes on God, not circumstances.

When Jehoshaphat first cried out to God, he ended by saying, “We are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chronicles 20:12). This is my go-to prayer in suffering. I recognize my powerlessness over the situation, acknowledging that I have no resources, no wisdom, and no hope without God. All I can do is keep my eyes on him.

Our part is to tell God our need and to lay our struggle before him. His ways are so much higher than our ways, and he knows what is best. We don’t need to know where help will come from besides that it will come from him. If we keep looking at our problems rather than the presence of God in our problems, we will succumb to fear. So don’t focus on the circumstances around you, the wind and the waves bombarding you, because they are not stronger than our God. Nothing is too hard for him.

4. Worship where you are.

Don’t wait till you are delivered to worship. Jehoshaphat worshiped God before the battle. There was no deliverance, just the promise of God’s presence and his commitment to fight for them. We who know Christ have the same reassurance — if God is for us, no one can stand against us (Romans 8:31).

Jehoshaphat’s battle plan involved a choir going before the army, singers thanking God for his everlasting love. And they thanked him not for what he had done or what he would do, but rather for who he is. God inhabits the praises of his people; we can often feel his presence in a unique way when we worship. Even in the midst of trials, we can worship through simple acts like singing hymns, reading psalms aloud, or thanking God for his love. For Jehoshaphat, praise preceded the miracle, and the same is often true for us.

5. Remember that trials carry us to Christ.

Trials end in blessing as we seek God in them. For the people of Judah, the blessing was complete defeat of their enemies and treasure to carry home. For us in Christ, it will also be the defeat of our enemies. Our real enemy is Satan, who wants to destroy us by tempting us to doubt God in our struggle and to believe that he doesn’t care. Nothing could be further from the truth. God is with you in this trial, and as you cling to him, you will receive more blessings than you can carry. Just as the people of Judah named their place of victory the Valley of Blessing, we too can look for ways God is transforming our valleys of trouble into places of unexpected goodness, especially in giving us deeper intimacy with him.

I once thought that the greatest blessing in trial was deliverance, having my problems disappear and leaving me unscathed. But I have learned that the greater blessing in trial is deeper fellowship with Jesus, knowing his peace that surpasses understanding and his love that surpasses knowledge.

I don’t know where you are today, but if you feel overwhelmed by what you face, my prayer is that God will meet you as he met Jehoshaphat and has met me. Second Chronicles 20 has become a metaphor for my life, and when I look back over my trials, I see God’s mercy and grace written over every moment.

Audio Transcript

What makes someone spiritually dirty? This is an important question, and one born out of our Bible reading together, specifically in three Bible texts that a female listener to the podcast named Ivy is trying to put together and understand, texts coming up for us in the reading. Ivy writes this: “Pastor John, I never saw this connection until it was put together in the span of one week in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan. In Leviticus 5:2 and Leviticus 7:19–21, we read that touching unclean things makes one unclean. But Jesus completely changes this. He later says it is what comes out of us that makes us unclean. He says this in Matthew 15:18–20.

“I’m trying to put myself in a first-century Jewish mindset that was conditioned to think about clean and unclean things, what to touch and what not to touch. This seems like a radical change. Uncleanness is born inside of us! What caused such a major turnaround here, in what seems to me to be a fundamental redefinition of evil?”

I think this question is an example of making right observations from the Bible but drawing from them a wrong conclusion. Sorry about that. Let me see if I could gently nudge a correction.

It is right to observe that in the Old Testament there are laws against touching or eating certain things because they are ceremonially unclean. For example, if you touch a carcass, then you become unclean until the evening (Leviticus 11:24–25). Or, “Every animal that parts the hoof but is not cloven-footed or does not chew the cud is unclean to you. Everyone who touches them shall be unclean” (Leviticus 11:26).

So, there is such a thing in the Old Testament as external ceremonial contamination through the touching of something that is declared in the law to be unclean. That’s a true observation. These laws were one of God’s ways at that time of separating his people from the nations around them and emphasizing his distinctness, his holiness.

It is also true that Jesus spoke about becoming impure because of what the heart produces from within — for example, Matthew 15:18: “What comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person [makes them unclean].” So, that too is a true observation. So far, so good.

Purity Across the Covenants

But the mistake is in drawing the conclusion that in the Old Testament impurity was only external, while in the New Testament impurity is internal. That’s a mistake for two reasons.

In the first place, it contrasts the wrong things. Instead of contrasting Old Testament ceremonial uncleanness with New Testament moral uncleanness, the contrast is between Old Testament ceremonial uncleanness and the declaration by Jesus that there is no ceremonial uncleanness anymore: “He declared all foods clean” (Mark 7:19). In other words, Jesus does away with the Old Testament ceremonial cleanness and uncleanness. It’s not replaced by internal moral cleanness and uncleanness, but rather by the removal of ceremonial defilement entirely. It doesn’t exist in the church anymore.

“There was a real faith, a real obedience of faith, a real holiness in the saints of the Old Testament.”

The other reason it’s a mistake to say that the Old Testament impurity was external while the New Testament impurity is internal is that already in the Old Testament there was internal purity and impurity. It was already there. In both the New and the Old Testaments, there is internal moral purity or impurity. That’s not a contrast between the Old and New Testaments. So, in the Old Testament, there was both ceremonial external uncleanness and moral internal uncleanness, whereas in the New Testament, the ceremonial aspect of uncleanness is done away with, and the moral dimension is what’s left.

Now, that may seem like not a big deal, but it is a big deal because of the implications of it. Let me try to draw them out.

Spirit of Old Testament Saints

This is a bigger deal than we might think, because what it implies is that, already in the Old Testament, before Christ had died for our sins and before the unique outpouring of the power of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the forgiving work of the cross and the transforming work of the Spirit were already active in the saints of the Old Testament.

That’s huge for the way we read our Bibles, the way we appropriate patterns and commands and illustrations and so on. Let me say it again: the forgiving effect of Christ’s death and the transforming effect of God’s Spirit were already at work in the saints of the Old Testament. In other words, the reality of internal purity or impurity was known, and the purity was required in the Old Testament — internal purity, not just external ceremonial purity.

The Old Testament knew about the deep internal reality of original sin, for example. David says, “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me” (Psalm 51:5). In other words, the saints of the Old Testament knew that their bad behavior came from inside, not outside. So, Proverbs 4:23 says, “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.” That’s just like what Jesus said.

And David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). He expected that to happen. It did happen. And Psalm 24:3–4 says, “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart.” Now, that did not mean nobody. It was possible through prayer, through repentance, through forgiveness, through sacrifice to get a pure heart before God.

Born Again Then and Now

God was at work in the Old Testament among the faithful remnant of Israel, transforming their hearts and leading them in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake (Psalm 23:3). For example, in 1 Chronicles 29:17–18, David says, “Now I have seen your people, who are present here, offering freely and joyously to you. O Lord . . . keep forever such purposes and thoughts in the hearts of your people, and direct their hearts toward you.” That’s amazing. That’s exactly what he does today for the saints and what he did then for the saints.

So, here it is again in 2 Chronicles 30:12. It says, “The hand of God was also on Judah to give them one heart to do what the king and the princes commanded by the word of the Lord.” In other words, God was at work in the hearts of his people to give them the kind of disposition and heart to be trusting and obedient toward him.

This is why Jesus — at least, this is my interpretation of Jesus in John 3 — was amazed in speaking to Nicodemus that he didn’t understand that you must be born again to see the kingdom of God. Well, people saw the kingdom of God in the Old Testament. They saw God; they knew the reign of God; they walked in holiness before God — the saints did. That was true in the Old Testament (“You must be born again”) and in the New Testament.

Nobody can overcome their unbelief, hardness of heart without the sovereign work of the Spirit, whenever they live — four thousand years ago or twenty minutes ago. So, Jesus said, “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again’” (John 3:7). Nicodemus says to him, “How can these things be?” (John 3:9). And Jesus — I can see him rolling his eyes or throwing up his hands and saying, “Are you a teacher in Israel, and you don’t understand what I’m talking about when I talk about the new birth? What have you been reading?” (see John 3:10).

That’s my paraphrase of Jesus. In other words, “Surely you see that this is how spiritual deadness was overcome among the saints in Israel.” They can’t do it themselves. It had to be done for them, just like today.

Old Patterns for Today

We can see, then, that there’s more riding on this question than it seemed at first. There was a real faith, a real obedience of faith, a real holiness in the saints of the Old Testament. And that is not possible (Romans 8:7) except that Jesus died for their sins in the future, counted backward, and the Holy Spirit was at work overcoming their sinful bent.

So, when we read the beautiful statements — for example, in the Psalms — of genuine love for God, obedience to God, delight in God’s word, we don’t have to deny any of that, as though such things were not possible in the Old Testament. We can take these saints as wonderful patterns for our lives and be stirred up by them to love God the way they did.

Has your desire for God withered? Is your affection for Jesus a fading flame? In the fight of faith, have you been mostly in retreat? Let me tell you a story.

In a house with three kids under three, few things happen the same way every day. Scheduled flexibility is the name of the game. Yet a few things happen so consistently they might as well be natural law — meltdowns moments before getting in the car, blowouts in brand-new clothes, senseless and ceaseless crying at the witching hour. And this.

My three-year-old son enjoys playing with blocks. He builds with the razor attention of an architect — for about ten minutes. Then interest wanes, and he wanders in search of new adventures.

However, without fail, the more fiery of my ten-month-olds finds her way to those lovely white pine blocks, picks a random one, and begins trying to gum the thing to sawdust. When Strider sees his sister holding that block — a block that failed to hold his attention moments earlier — well, I’m sure you can guess what happens next. The rivalry is real. And for a time, that pine square becomes more valuable than a hoard of gold beneath a dragon, and the war that ensues only slightly less intense than those in Middle-earth.

Now, how does this dynamic work? And more immediately important to you, what do toy blocks and tyke battles have to do with your dimmed desire for God?

You Imitate Someone

To answer the first question, Aurora’s desire for the block inflames Strider’s desire because we inevitably imitate those around us. Man is a mimetic creature.

Man is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). We reflect God in his world, in part, by mimicking him. Paul makes the connection explicit: “Be imitators [mimētai] of God” (Ephesians 5:1). Man is an imitative creature all the way down. It’s what we were made for.

But God designed imitating others to be a means of imitating him. Holy imitation is a community project. Paul in particular loves godly copycats: “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:11; 4:16). Because Paul shows us what it looks like to mimic Christ, we should mimic Paul. But he doesn’t stop with apostles. In Philippians, he exhorts his readers to imitate him and all who imitate him (Philippians 3:17). The writer of Hebrews doubles down on this mimetic chain, calling us to imitate godly leaders and all who walk by faith (Hebrews 6:12; 13:7).

A biblical principle serves as the concrete beneath these exhortations: when it comes to imitation, the question is not whether but what. John warns, “Do not imitate evil but imitate good” (3 John 11), implying that imitation is inevitable. Again, the question is not whether you will imitate — you will. But what will you imitate? Evil or good? Or better yet, whom will you imitate?

Mimetic Desire

We need to add one more piece to this puzzle before we return to our desire for God. From what I’ve said, you might imagine that imitation is always intentional and mainly pertains to actions. But we are far more imitative than that.

Proverbs especially emphasizes that we imitate others unconsciously. Thus, virtues and vices are contagious. To paraphrase Proverbs 13:20, wise he ends who wise befriends, and Proverbs 14:7, from a fool flee or like a fool be. Why? Because you cannot avoid imitating. “Bad company . . .,” as they say (1 Corinthians 15:33).

But the mimicry goes even deeper. We imitate the desires of others. Catholic philosopher René Girard calls this mimetic desire. After assiduously observing Scripture, society, and literature, Girard noticed that almost all our desires are suggested, given, mediated by others. We look at what others desire to learn what we should desire. So, we want most things because others want them first. In short, Girard concludes that desires require someone to model them.

Modern advertising exploits that insight. By showing an appealing person valuing some product, they model a desire for you. But this tactic is as old as the garden. Satan — the first advertiser — leveraged contagious desire to get Eve to ape his own serpentine lust for divinity. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery because he made Daddy’s favor irresistibly attractive. And, of course, Strider, like a moth to flame, was drawn to Aurora’s block because her desire transformed it into the world’s most desirable block.

These examples show that when the object of mimetic desire cannot be shared (or is perceived to be withheld), envy and rivalry result. However, if it can be shared, mimetic desire forges deep friendships and reinforces our loves.

Company You Keep

Now, I hope you see how our irrepressible impulse to imitate — especially to mimic desires — connects with desire for God. If mimetic desire shapes our lesser longings — what we wear, what we drink, what we drive, where we eat, where we go to school — why would it not affect our longing for God?

“Perhaps you don’t desire God because you rarely see anyone else who desires God.”

Perhaps you don’t desire God because you rarely see anyone else who desires God. Just maybe, the pine block has lost its luster in your eyes because no one is trying to chew on it. To put it another way, the company you keep will significantly shape what you long for. You will look like whom you hang with. What you want is a function of whom you observe.

C.S. Lewis identified this principle as the very heartbeat of friendship.

Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too?” (The Four Loves, 83)

For Lewis, friendship flowers from a shared love — like soccer or storytelling or theology. When that love is recognized and expressed — “What? You too?” — the shared desire is mutually reinforcing, multiplied and galvanized. Yet Lewis warns that this mimetic effect has a double edge because “the common taste or vision or point of view which is discovered need not always be a nice one” (100). The N.I.C.E. shared an urge that would loose the very gates of hell.

Yet the danger arises precisely because of the staggering goodness of friendship — a goodness that can give us more of God. When you surround yourself with those whose love for God burns bright, the desire for him is contagious. Stand near fire, and your clothes will catch. And with each friend added, the conflagration grows into white-hot worship because every person has unique kindling to contribute. Christian community is a mutual adoration society. You need other toddlers to cherish the block.

Show me the company you keep, and I’ll tell you what you soon will want.

Spotlight Your Models

So, saint, whom do you surround yourself with? Who shows you desiring God? Who are your models?

Luke Burgis (another philosopher) warns, “There are always models of desire. If you don’t know yours, they are probably wreaking havoc in your life. . . . Models are most powerful when they are hidden” (Wanting, 21). For the sake of your joy in God, put a spotlight on your models. Interrogate the source of your desires (or lack thereof).

To help you name your models of desire — both good and bad — consider these four categories.

1. Digital Company

Where do you hang out in Internet land? Who are your digital models? Who’s in your ear, and what gets your eye?

The Net acts as a mimetic amplifier. Instead of two toddlers desiring the same block, digital media enables thousands, even millions, to fight over the same status. The only difference is adults try to mask the mimesis my children do not.

Social media, especially, is an engine of desire. Perhaps your joy in God feels diseased because digital envy is rotting your bones away (Proverbs 14:30). Perhaps you don’t desire God because the podcaster you spend hours with each week doesn’t either.

2. Dominant Company

Who gets the lion’s share of your time? What friends are you around most often, and what is your common bond — your “You too?” Lewis not only knew but demonstrated how soul-shaping a pervasive coterie of friends can be. His group, called “The Inklings,” shared two loves — Christianity and imaginative writing — and the world still rocks in the wake.

Who are the most present models of desire in your life? Family, coworkers, classmates? Do they sharpen your ache for God or dull it? Is the dominant company in your life co-laborers for your joy, “exhorting one another every day” to treasure the triune God (Hebrews 3:12–14)? Mature men and women are models who show us not only how to live but, more importantly, what to love. And these models are not limited to the living.

3. Dead Company

Do you keep company with the dead? And if so, who and what desires do they model? If you are a reader, dead company matters immensely. Books put us into conversation with their authors, and many of the most important books put us into conversation with authors no longer living. They teach us — often explicitly — what to yearn for.

The great benefit of the dead is they often desire differently than modernity. And their deep longings can expose our own as tumbleweeds. Here’s Lewis again: “The real way of mending a man’s taste is not to degenerate his present favorites but to teach him how to enjoy something better” (Experiment in Criticism, 112). The likes of Augustine and Austen, Bunyan and Bavinck, Dante and Donne, Calvin and Coleridge tutor our tastes — and preeminently, that inspired cohort of the dead who penned the Scriptures.

4. Divine Company

Speaking of taste, if you want to develop a hunger for God, nothing will stoke that desire more than keeping company with God himself. The triune God is the ultimate model of our desires, and no one can love God more than God loves God. Unlike all other forms of mediation that work on us externally, God mediates his own desires to us from within. He gives us “the desires of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:17).

But the process is not automatic. We become like God as we see God, and we see God most fully in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18–4:6). We are made and remade to imitate him (Romans 8:29). His desires for God and good are perfect, clear, fiery — and contagious. Jesus is our great mimetic model. As we learn to fix our eyes on him, his joy will kindle ours (Hebrews 12:1–2) and start a wildfire of holy desire.

For weeks, our two kids practiced reciting verses for the National Bible Bee’s Proclaim Day. When they finally took the stage, their hands trembling and the high ceiling dwarfing them, the sound of Scripture on their voices moved us to applause and thanksgiving. As the clapping died down, however, our 11-year-old son, Jack, surprised us by climbing onto the stage a second time.

“I want to share a verse that I find very comforting,” he said. “We read this a lot when we had a friend who was passing away.” He then recited 2 Corinthians 4:16–18 from memory:

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

My husband and I stared at one another in awe. We hadn’t practiced these verses with Jack. Rather, we’d read them during family worship as a dear friend of ours was dying in hospice, and by God’s kindness, Jack had harbored them in his heart. God had worked through a moment of heartache in our family to strengthen our son’s faith, and in doing so, he reminded all of us of his grace amid loss.

Guiding Children Through the Valley

When a loved one dies and grief swallows us up, we may struggle to discern how to guide our children. Their hearts are so tender, we think. Won’t the harsh realities of death bruise them? We wonder if we should suppress our own sorrow to avoid upsetting them. How much should we say? How much should we conceal?

As a retired trauma surgeon, I have sat beside dying friends and loved ones with unusual frequency. Walking through those experiences while raising children has highlighted the need for discernment and sensitivity in such delicate matters. Kids’ hearts are vulnerable to breaking, and we need to handle them gently. We must follow our Lord’s leading not to break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick (Isaiah 42:3; Matthew 12:20).

And yet, while our natural instinct as parents is to shelter our kids from pain, shepherding rarely means sequestering. Our kids will experience death at some point in their lives. Their time with us in the home provides a precious opportunity to give them a Christian framework for death and to model a response that emphasizes our hope in Christ. God can work through death and grief to draw his beloved closer to himself (Psalm 34:18; Romans 8:28) — even the littlest souls entrusted to our care.

How do we navigate the shadowy valley with our kids? How do we raise their eyes to the things that are unseen and eternal? Time and again, I’ve seen God’s grace and mercy at work in my kids’ lives during times of loss. Drawing from those experiences, I humbly offer the following five suggestions to help guide you as you shepherd children through loss.

1. Create space for discussion.

Jack was four when our friend David entered hospice, and before bed one night, I could tell his thoughts troubled him. When I inquired, he asked how David had developed emphysema and why death happens. Then he requested we see David every day until his passing — which we did.

Meanwhile, after the funeral of our friend Carolyn, our nine-year-old daughter, Christie, seemed uncharacteristically quiet. With some gentle prodding, she admitted that standing in the cemetery during the interment scared her. We had a long discussion afterward about how popular culture falsely portrays graveyards as places of horror, and we emphasized the truth: Carolyn was with Jesus, and only her body remained on the earth.

“The problem of sin has a solution. For now we groan, but Christ has swallowed up death in victory.”

As these anecdotes reveal, children wrestle with big questions and bigger feelings. After a loved one’s death, they may not voice troubling thoughts right away, but their silence doesn’t mean they aren’t wrestling. To best love your children during moments of loss, create space for them to talk with you and to share their fears, sorrows, and concerns. Check in with them before bed. Pause during family worship. Above all, invite them to talk with you and to ask questions. Give them permission to explore their complex thoughts and feelings with you. Assure them no questions are shameful and that their concerns won’t worsen your grief. Create opportunities for open dialogue in a loving context.

2. Normalize grief as a time to weep.

As parents, we rush to comfort our children the moment waterworks start. Given such a tendency, when kids see us crying, they may feel the same impulse and experience distress when our tears don’t stop.

Rather than suppress your tears or abandon your kids to process their emotions alone, walk them through the process of grief. Help them understand that sorrow and crying are normal God-given responses to the death of a loved one. To help cement your words into their minds, tie them to God’s words. Discuss how there is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:4). Review how Job tore his robes and fell to the ground in mourning when his children died (Job 1:20), how David wept over Absalom (2 Samuel 19:4), and how even Jesus wept when Lazarus died (John 11:35).

Validate your children’s feelings as they grieve. Especially when they’re young, children may not feel sorrow at the loss of a loved one and worry their response is somehow wrong when everyone else is sad. Come alongside your kids and help them understand that grief is complex. It ebbs and flows, affects everyone differently, and stirs up emotions that may vary dramatically. Normalize confusion, sorrow, and tangled feelings — all of which we see in the psalms of lament (such as Psalms 22, 77, 130) as believers struggle with their grief.

3. Frame death as a consequence of the fall.

No matter the age of the person pondering them, questions about death cut to the heart of our fallenness. Illness afflicts us because sin stains all of God’s creation (Genesis 3:17–19). Death is the wages of our sin and comes to all (Romans 5:12; 6:23). It is grim, dark, and painful because it reflects a corruption of God’s original design (Genesis 2:9).

Speaking openly about death as a necessary consequence of the fall helps kids to cope when it strikes their own circles. They learn that death is a part of life in this fallen world, something to accept rather than to fear. Most importantly, when we explain death to our kids in the context of the fall, we can point them to Christ. The problem of sin has a solution. For now we groan, but Christ has swallowed up death in victory (1 Corinthians 15:55–57).

4. Model trust in God.

When possible, reflect with your kids on God’s sovereignty and provision in the face of death. Model trust in him even when understanding fails. Lean into the truth that his ways are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:9).

Psalm 23 is an excellent passage to read together. Although we all will walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we need not fear because God will be with us (Psalm 23:4). Elsewhere, he has promised never to leave us or forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:8). Our times are in his hands (Psalm 31:15). His word assures us that nothing — not even death! — can separate us from his love for us in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38–39).

5. Point to our hope in Christ.

For the believer, Jesus’s sacrifice and resurrection have transformed death from the last enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26) to the path to our heavenly home. “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus told Martha. “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25–26). Although we are all wasting away, our sufferings and death are but a light momentary affliction preparing us for our eternal dwelling with God (2 Corinthians 4:16–18; Revelation 21:3).

Point your kids to this truth early and often. As you wipe the tears from their cheeks, remind them that although it’s right to cry after loss, we also cleave to joy. We cling to the truth that a loved one with faith in Christ has quit the travails of this sinful world and now rejoices before God’s throne, where death, pain, and crying are no more (Revelation 21:3).

Some children worry that loved ones who didn’t attend church or profess faith in Jesus will not be in heaven. In such moments, point them to God’s faithfulness, mercy, and sovereignty. Teach them about the thief on the cross, to whom God granted salvation even in his dying moments (Luke 23:43). Remind them that while we may be uncertain about a loved one’s faith, God is faithful, just, and forgiving (1 John 1:9), and we can trust his good and perfect will wholeheartedly, no matter what questions trouble us.

After our Bible Bee experience, Jack elaborated on his fondness for 2 Corinthians 4:16–18. “It helps me to remember we have hope because of Jesus,” he said. His words capture the answer for all of us — from age 0 to 99 — when death strikes: faith in Christ. Solace, peace, and rest reside in him (Matthew 11:28). Even as we weep in the face of death, by Christ’s wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:5).

Paul’s last letter brought the manly business of Christian pastoring uncomfortably close to young Timothy. Uncomfortably close, as the front line to the soldier.

The heat of “fanning his gift into flame” made his palms sweat; was he willing to pastor at Ephesus after all that has happened . . . would soon happen? Timothy didn’t need a reminder about the cost of ministry; his tears were memorial enough (2 Timothy 1:4). Paul, his father in the faith, wrote him once more before his execution: “The time of my departure has come” (2 Timothy 4:6). Finally, they were putting down the lion.

Paul welcomed the cost of leadership. He lived ready to suffer for Christ in whatever city the Spirit directed (Acts 20:22–23). “I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 21:13). As Jesus made good on his promise — “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16) — Paul received his orders manfully. Here at the end, he writes to Timothy, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Timothy 4:7). Triumph.

But what of Timothy? With shackles around Paul’s wrists, a blade above his neck, would he point his dear son away from the conflict? Just as Timothy seems to flinch and takes steps back, Paul stops him: “Do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God” (2 Timothy 1:8). Mount the horse, Timothy. Lead God’s people forward — come what may.

Pastoring, my son, is a manly business.

Fraught with Danger

The context of Timothy’s ministry — the context of ours — was (and is) a crucified Messiah. Jesus promised his first preachers, “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). As Timothy enters his ministry, he associates the pastorate not so much with microphones as with martyrdom; not merely with preaching but with persecution for that preaching. He hesitates to exercise his gifts among a public who crucified his Lord, stoned the prophets, and hunted the apostles, as we might hesitate to minister in the heart of a Muslim country.

Fellow shepherds, have you considered the physical threat of our calling? I, for one, never had until a potential danger lingered around the flock. The gravity of what-ifs fell upon me. But what startled me most was not wondering whether I — father to four young children — should rush in if the worst came, but realizing that I had already chosen to by becoming a pastor. I enlisted to teach, preach, shepherd, and guide — but also to suffer, defend, and die, if the Lord should choose. As a son with his mother, a husband with his wife, a father with his children, so a pastor with his sheep. I am to defend them against all enemies foreign and domestic — spiritual and physical.

Brothers, receive it now: “Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:3). Yet like young Timothy, we ask Paul, How? Consider his counsel:

I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:6–7)

Yes, Nero. Yes, false teachers. Yes, a church slow to support you. Yes, youth and inexperience. Yes, persecution and possibly martyrdom (2 Timothy 3:12). But I call heaven to witness my charge to you: preach the word, Timothy (2 Timothy 4:1–2). Or have you forgotten your God-given Spirit?

Spirit of the Pastor

Pastors, consider your Spirit. Interpreters debate whether the given “spirit” is only new nobility in our own spirits or includes the Holy Spirit himself. I take it to be the latter, which forges the former (see 2 Timothy 1:8, 14). Regardless, we know this: the new spirit of a man in Christ relies utterly on the Spirit of Christ in that man. Both must be in view.

Here is the point: Shepherds, remember that the Spirit of God empowers you for your life’s work. Your Spirit is one of courage, power, love, and self-control. Brothers, consider your Spirit.

Spirit of Courage and Power

God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power . . .

Paul first reminds Timothy what Spirit he does not have: one of fear, or more exactly, cowardice. In extrabiblical literature, the Greek word (deilia) “refers to one who flees from battle, and has a strong pejorative sense referring to cowardice” (The ESV Study Bible). God’s Spirit does not send him fleeing as a coward but makes the man the very sculpture of courage. And he bestows power and makes the man more than a man — even if, like Paul, he goes forth to die like a man.

To illustrate, consider the effect of God’s Spirit upon three men in the Old Testament — Samson, Saul, and David — and the apostles in the New.

SAMSON

Notice the Spirit’s influence on Samson. First, “the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and although he had nothing in his hand, he tore the lion in pieces as one tears a young goat” (Judges 14:6). Next, “the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck down thirty men of the town and took their spoil” (Judges 14:19). And greater still,

the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and the ropes that were on his arms became as flax that has caught fire, and his bonds melted off his hands. And he found a fresh jawbone of a donkey, and put out his hand and took it, and with it he struck 1,000 men. (Judges 15:14–15)

The Spirit of God rushes upon him, and he rushes upon the enemy — lions, towns, legions.

SAUL AND DAVID

Or consider the Spirit’s influence on goatish Saul. While the Spirit was with him, he was “turned into another man” (1 Samuel 10:6–7). The Spirit straightened his back and rushed upon him, and he bellowed a war cry to rally the twelve tribes together (1 Samuel 11:5–7). Saul was mighty, for a time, but that might came from the Holy Spirit, and when Saul rejected the Lord and his word for fear of the people, the Spirit flew, as it were, to David.

I have underappreciated the Spirit in the David story. Just before the legend of his giant-slaying is born, we read, “Then Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the midst of his brothers. And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon David from that day forward” (1 Samuel 16:13). David is admirable in many ways, but what is David apart from God’s Spirit? Without the Spirit, his courage is folly, his story unremembered, his songs unsung. But the Lord’s Spirit was with David: writing, worshiping, warring. And David knew what made him great. When he too sins horribly, he pleads mercy from Saul’s fate: “Take not your Holy Spirit from me” (Psalm 51:11).

APOSTLES

On to the New Testament. What are the apostles apart from God’s Spirit? Sheep, who in their own spirits flee from their Master in the garden and then bleat timidly behind locked doors. But these sheep became lions at Pentecost. They obeyed their Lord: “Stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high” (Luke 24:49). When Christ baptizes with his Spirit, tongues of fire fill their mouths, Peter stands to preach, and thousands are saved. Here, a mighty Samson slays the enemies of God with the sword of the word — not one thousand, but three.

Spirit of Love

God gave us a spirit . . . [of] love.

When the Spirit of power leads men, they leave behind a holy legacy. One unsought expression of this is the power to suffer. It takes one kind of courage to ride forth to slay; it takes another to ride forth to be slain. The power of a lion to lie down as a lamb.

“Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people” (Acts 6:8). Full of grace, full of power, he preached mightily: “They could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking” (Acts 6:10). And when that speech turns on them, they grind their teeth and rush upon him. So he dies the first Christian martyr. Note his final prayer: “Falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’” (Acts 7:60). The Spirit, not just of power to preach, but of love to pray for the hearers murdering you.

This Spirit must empower the mission: “The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith” (1 Timothy 1:5). A love that preaches, a love that serves, a love that is willing to be “poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith” and “rejoices” to be so slain if it means others’ good (Philippians 2:17–18). Timothy, writes Paul, “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Timothy 2:10). His wounds are not for his salvation but theirs.

Remember, brothers, we have Christ’s Spirit to love his people with Christ’s love (Philippians 1:8). When faced with imprisonment or execution, the man of God is divinely resourced to respond as John Buyan did while he sat in prison for preaching: “I did often say before the Lord, that if to be hanged up presently before their eyes [his church’s] would be means to awake in them and confirm them in the truth, I gladly should consent to it” (The Pilgrim’s Progress, xxvii). No greater love exists than this: that someone lay down his life for his friends or his sheep. That is the love of Jesus wrought by God’s Spirit.

Spirit of Self-Control

God gave us a spirit . . . [of] self-control.

The Spirit of God and the spirit of evil is contrasted in the story of Saul. The Spirit of God rushes away at Saul’s sin, replaced by a tormenting spirit from God. It makes him rabid.

The next day a harmful spirit from God rushed upon Saul, and he raved within his house while David was playing the lyre, as he did day by day. Saul had his spear in his hand. And Saul hurled the spear, for he thought, “I will pin David to the wall.” But David evaded him twice. (1 Samuel 18:10–11)

He goes on to throw a spear at his own son.

The Spirit of God works self-mastery in those he masters. God’s power is aimed at a man’s dearest lusts. And the flesh dies hard. He bears his fruit in our lives — fruit lethal to the deeds of the body. Young Timothy ought to justify his ministry by the Spirit’s influence in his life: “Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity” (1 Timothy 4:12). Samson slayed a thousand with a jawbone, David killed his ten thousand on the field, yet even both of these men fell at home to lusts of the flesh.

The minister of Christ, the conqueror in Christ, the sufferer for him, will be a self-controlled man. When he hears threats nearby, he will not panic or renounce Christ or flee from his people. He will be collected, calm, a presence that has his wits about him when the wolves come around. Our people need our self-control: “Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers” (1 Timothy 4:16).

Good Shepherds

Pastoring is a manly business. Maybe soft men slipped in during the twentieth century. It will not be so in the decades to come. Pastors put the target on their backs. Men, manly men, must preach because they assume the violent responses to their preaching that can come. Egalitarian fantasies and feminist fictions would return to the dark chasm whence they came if more pastors were dragged mid-sermon into the town square and flogged with 39 lashes for their testimony (2 Corinthians 11:24), or if we held in our hands final letters from now martyred pastors. Women “pastors” are a luxury of peacetime.

Pastor, it is a hard word, but if the Lord Jesus wants to make you his paper and write his sermon in your flesh, shall we not bless his holy name? If, like Paul, you bear on your body some marks of the Lord (Galatians 6:17), then “share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God” — yes, and go away “rejoicing that [you] were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name,” if you still can go away (Acts 5:41).

Flesh and blood cannot abide this word. We shouldn’t expect it to. Pastoring is not merely a manly business but a spiritual business.

Brothers, we need to remember our Spirit — the Holy Spirit of courage, of power, of love, and of self-control. Follow Christ into suffering, if it comes to that. Remember: a good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. By the Spirit he has given, we will be good shepherds until the Great Shepherd returns.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. We’re reading the Navigators Bible Reading Plan together. And tomorrow we read Acts 22, a chapter where Paul recounts for us his dramatic conversion experience — his blindingly dramatic conversion experience. In the story, we’re introduced to a devout and godly Christian man named Ananias, who approached the recently blinded Saul (now named Paul) and restored his sight to him, or told him it would be restored soon. Then Ananias told Paul in verse 16, “And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.” Water baptism and sin-washing are connected.

Likewise, we have forty questions in the inbox about Acts 2:38. There in the text, a bunch of seekers have gathered to hear Peter say to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” And three thousand people repent and are baptized. An amazing sight — and yet another text that appears to put water baptism in the moment of forgiveness or conversion. So, dozens of listeners have written in to basically ask, based on Acts 2:38 and Acts 22:12–16, this same essential question: Pastor John, are we saved after water baptism, before water baptism, or in water baptism?

I would first answer by making the question more precise. Are we justified before, in, or after baptism? Are we united to Christ, do we become one with Christ and God becomes 100 percent for us, before, in, or after baptism? Because in the New Testament, the word saved is used for what happens before, in, and after baptism:

Ephesians 2:8: “[We] have been saved.”
1 Corinthians 1:18: “[We] are being saved.”
Romans 13:11: “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.”

So, being saved happened before, is happening now, and will happen finally in the future.

The word salvation in the New Testament is broad and includes pieces of salvation. And what’s really being asked is, “When did it all start — the first moment of union with Christ, the moment of justification (which is not a process like sanctification is but decisive)?” “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31). When did that start? At what point does God count us a child — not a child of wrath, which we all are by nature (Ephesians 2:3), but a child of God, so that from that point on, he is 100 percent for us with no wrath? When did that happen? What was the decisive means that brought it about, that united us to Christ, that justified us?

By Faith Apart from Water

Let me give my answer from texts and then show how that point relates to baptism.

Romans 3:28: “We hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.”
Romans 5:1: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God.”
Romans 4:5: “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”
John 3:16: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Acts 13:38–39: “Through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed [or justified] from everything from which you could not be [justified] by the law of Moses.”

And on and on and on I could go. I had a bunch of others, and I thought for time’s sake I’d just leave them out.

“Baptism is the outward expression of calling on the name of the Lord in faith.”

So, here’s my inference from those texts (and many others like them): justification — being put right with God by union with Christ in the divine miracle of conversion and new birth — that point is by faith, and faith alone, on our part. God uses faith as the sole instrument of union with Christ and thus counts us righteous and becomes 100 percent for us in the instant that we have faith in Jesus.

That’s my answer. And now the question is, “Okay, how do you talk about baptism? And how do you understand those texts that were quoted that seemed to connect baptism to that act, that beginning?” So, let me give some answers to that.

Sign of Righteousness

The first thing I would say is that the thief on the cross was told by Jesus that that very day he would be with him in paradise. He was not baptized. I know he’s a special case — I don’t think you build a theology of baptism on the thief on the cross. But one thing it says is that baptism is not an absolute necessity, because it wasn’t in his case.

Here’s the second thing I would say. Paul treats baptism as an expression of faith so that the decisive act that unites us to Christ is the faith, and it is expressed outwardly in baptism. Here’s a very key text for me. When I went to Germany, I was a lone Baptist in a den of Lutheran lions. They were loving lions — they just licked me; they didn’t eat me. But they did not approve of what I believed. And I remember taking a retreat with twelve little cubs and one big doctor father named Leonhard Goppelt. And we were talking about baptism the whole weekend. And this was my text; this was my text that I put up. This is Colossians 2:11–12:

In him [in Christ] also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

So, the burial with Christ in the water and the rising with Christ out of the water, it seems to me (from that text), are not what unites you to Christ. That is, the going under the water, the coming up out of the water — that’s not what unites you to Christ. It is “through faith” that you are decisively united to Christ.

And here’s an interesting analogy, since circumcision was brought into the picture there, and there’s kind of an image of circumcision in Colossians 2. If you go to Romans 4:11, Paul says,

[Abraham] received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well.

So, if you just take the analogy — and that’s all it is; it’s just an analogy between baptism and circumcision — then this text would say that baptism is a sign of a righteousness that we have before we are baptized, because we have it through faith and through union with Christ.

Calling and Washing

Then we go to the relevant texts in Acts that the questioner raised, like Acts 22:16: “Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins.” Now, if you stopped right there, you’d say, “Well, there it is: the water is the forgiving agent.” But that’s not where you stop. It says, “Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.” So, the sense (I think) is the same: baptism is the outward expression of calling on the name of the Lord in faith. It’s not the water that effects our justification or union with Christ. The water is a picture of the cleansing, but the faith in the heart, the call on the Lord from faith, is what unites us and forgives us.

And now, that’s the meaning that 1 Peter 3:21 actually picks up on when it says, in relationship to the flood and Noah’s rescue through the ark, through the water, “Baptism, which corresponds to this” — that is, the salvation of Noah’s family in the ark and the flood — “now saves you.” That’s probably the clearest text for those who want to say that baptism is salvific, that it actually does the saving. It says, “Baptism . . . saves you.”

And then immediately, as though he knows he said something almost heretical, because it would so compromise justification by faith, he says, “. . . not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal” — so now we’re back to this call issue: “Wash away your sins, calling on his name” — “as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” In other words, it’s the call of faith from the heart, not the water. And he explicitly says, “not [the] removal of dirt from the body.” In other words, “It’s not the actual functioning of the water that does the saving, even though I just said, ‘Baptism saves you.’ What I mean is that this outward act signifies an appeal to God that’s coming from the heart, and it’s that faith that saves.”

“God uses faith as the sole instrument of union with Christ.”

So, when John the Baptist (or Mark) calls his baptism “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4), it probably means “a baptism signifying repentance, which brings forgiveness.” Because repentance is simply the way of describing the change of mind that gives rise to faith.

‘Repent and Be Baptized’

Now, here’s one last important text they’re raising. In fact, this is where you begin. Acts 2:38: “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” So, it looks like this: repent (condition number one), be baptized (condition number two), and forgiveness will be given to you. And I’ve been arguing (because I think so many texts teach it) that, no, repentance and faith as one piece are what obtains forgiveness, not the baptism.

So, what, you disagree with this text, Piper? Who do you think you are? And I think that text should be read something like this (and I remember seeing this years ago and then finding it other places). Suppose, Tony, you want to go from Phoenix to LA on the train, and it’s about to leave, and I say, “Grab your hat and run or you’ll miss the train.” Now, I just gave you two commands like Peter gave two commands: “Repent and be baptized.” But only one of them is a cause of getting to the train on time — namely, running. But I said, “Grab your hat.” Grabbing your hat is an accompanying act, not a causative one. It may be very important. There may be all kinds of reasons why you should have a hat. Why did you tell him to grab a hat? Well, I’ve got my reasons. But grabbing the hat does not help you in the least to get on the train on time.

Now, that’s the way I think we should hear Peter when he says, “Repent and be baptized every one of you, and make the train of forgiveness.” You get on the train of forgiveness if you repent and are baptized. And the repentance, the change of mind that includes faith, gets you to the train. And baptism is important — important for all kinds of reasons — but it’s not causative in the same way that repentance is.

So, here’s my bottom-line answer to the question: Faith precedes baptism (that’s why I’m a Baptist) and is operative in baptism. So, we are justified at the very first act of genuine saving faith in Christ, and then baptism follows (and preferably would follow soon) as an outward expression of that inward reality.

Recently, as I watched my eleven-month-old make a mad dash for the open dishwasher, it struck me as remarkably similar to how we can approach God in prayer. Our hearts, like my son’s hands, desire to have, hold, and enjoy. Earthly objects appear good and precious before us. We reach for them through prayer — unaware of whether we reach for a spoon or a knife.

The God to whom we pray is our sovereign and kind Father. He cares whether his material gifts do service or harm to his children’s souls, and he truly knows the difference between spoons and knives, bread and stones, fish and serpents (Matthew 7:9–11). So, whenever necessary, his love says, “No.” His hands gently pull us back, shutting the door.

All the while, he assures us that he is not a Father who delights to withhold but to fulfill — fully, finally, and forever, with the only Object in all existence that can really satisfy us: himself (Psalm 16:11). Here I am; here is fullness of joy. What you wanted would have hurt you by giving you less of me. Fear not. I have not withheld myself. You shall be full.

But we are often too busy wandering around the base of a dishwasher to hear him.

Pray for God

Do you feel like one prayer after another is going unanswered? Is prayer an exercise in disappointment, sorrow, or even bitterness — not faith, fellowship, and joy? Jesus sees you, and he wants to free you from experiencing prayer as frustration. But to do that, he will ask you to stop asking mostly for more of his gifts. He will ask you to ask ultimately for more of him.

He says the same to all his sheep: “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Goods and kindred will not do. The good shepherd does not make us lie down in green pastures so that we can become sick on grass. Times of comfort, along with valleys of death, are for communion with Christ. He alone knows how much is too much — of both ease and affliction.

Our prayer life reveals whether our spiritual taste buds prefer certain circumstances above everlasting satisfaction in Christ, the Bread of Life and Living Water (John 6:35; 4:10). As J.I. Packer puts it, “I believe that prayer is the measure of the man, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face” (My Path of Prayer, 56). Does prayer mostly leave us hungry for any goods we didn’t get? Or, whatever the outcome, is it satisfying enough for us to know that as we pour out our hearts in prayer (Psalm 62:8), we pour them out to a Father infinitely more invested in those hearts than even we are?

Our nearsighted, half-hearted requests do not surprise him. He has given us a way to steer our prayers and, with them, our desires aright: “Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). In When I Don’t Desire God, John Piper paraphrases Jesus’s words this way: “In all your asking look for the fullness of joy in me. In this way all your asking will glorify me” (148). Whatever you request, request it with an eye to lasting delight — request it with an eye to getting more of me, whatever else you may get.

In response to prayers for God to glorify himself by satisfying us in himself, his answer is as timeless as his Son: yes. Jesus says so: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). If whatever you wish is that your joy would be full — that you would get God, come what may — that wish will be granted. It simply will.

“Prayer cannot survive by prayer alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Not by a genie, but by a Father who gave his only Son so that you could and would believe in him (John 3:16). Be satisfied in him. Trust him. Treasure him. Genies give gifts. God gives himself (even in his gifts). He gives exceeding joy and gets exceeding glory for being our exceeding joy. The more we pray to this end, the more our prayers will be answered, and the less we will sit sullen and confused before an over-rubbed lamp (or before a dishwasher, in my son’s case).

Hear to Speak

Notice the all-important if in Jesus’s words in John 15:7: “If . . . my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” If our prayers are going to power joy in Christ, Christ’s words must power our prayers. And if his words are going to power our prayers, we must open our Bibles.

So often, our prayer-problems (and therefore our joy-problems) begin not with delayed speech but with impaired hearing. Whether in the midst of Eden or east of it, humans have never started conversations with God, but he with us. Stop at any point in redemptive history, and you will find God already there — speaking.

Every atom in existence, especially those that form you and me, can be traced back to the One who said, “Let . . .” When Adam and Eve fell and then tried to flee, God’s voice chased after them: “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9). Though he cast humankind from his holy presence, still he would not cease to reveal himself to us. Now he would do so “by the word of the Lord” (1 Samuel 3:21). In time, this Word would miraculously take on flesh and dwell among us (John 1:14). Today, anytime Christians pray in faith, it is because Christ the Word already dwells richly in us by his Spirit.

So, prayers spoken in faith do begin not with our mouths but with our ears and remain in lifelong orbit insofar as the Scriptures, and therefore the Son, remain at the center of the Christian solar system. Prayer cannot survive by prayer alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God (Matthew 4:4).

Psalm 56 illustrates this powerful pattern of God’s words drawing out our words. As David composed this poem, he lay captive to the Philistines. Yet David’s danger strengthened, rather than squashed, his resolve to pray: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you” (verse 3). David is afraid, so David is praying. And the reason David is praying is because David has been hearing: “In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?” (verse 4). The praiseworthy word of God is the basis for David’s deep trust in God. And so he prays.

Our own voices will cry out like David, “God, I trust you!” to the degree that our hearts grasp the utter trustworthiness of God like David. Also like David, only God’s own voice can draw such trust and its attendant prayerfulness out of us. When we try to pray from thin air, our minds feel fuzzy, and our voices are quick to crack. But when we pray in response to and alongside God’s voice — it’s like going from ten thousand feet above sea level to standing on the shore. Our prayers will enjoy enough oxygen to last a lifetime.

Impossible Prayers

Whether we’ve walked with God for one year or fifty, no one is above lessons in prayer. Just as the first disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1), so should we. Left to ourselves, our prayers tend to trail the path of unbelieving prayers, requests that flow from hearts interested only in getting gifts (James 4:3), not in getting the Giver himself within every gift (James 1:17).

If we want our prayers to be a means to unshakable soul-joy, we will ask God to do what he wants within all our wants. And if we want God’s wants to become ours, we will learn the words and lean into the Spirit of the only Man who desired and delighted in God perfectly all the days of his life.

If we pause for a moment to check the pulse of our own delight in God, we may be tempted to tremble with the twelve disciples. “Who then can be saved?” (Matthew 19:25). But such fear is only for those who would refuse the God-appointed means to making the impossible possible: prayer. Ultimately, we cannot think, read, or even meditate our way to joy in God. Joy in God is a gift from God. If we are to have it, we must ask God for it. We must pray.

As we imperfectly pursue him, he will perfectly answer our prayers for earthly circumstances and material goods. We will watch him direct scalpels and OBs, provide last-minute funds and 24/7 friends. We will marvel as he restores broken marriages, returns wayward children, and resets quarreling churches. May we never doubt our Father’s eagerness to hear from us and give to us (Matthew 7:11).

But our Father is not mostly concerned with preserving his children’s comforts. No, he is dead set on safeguarding his children’s souls. The Hound of Heaven will not be reduced to Earth’s Vending Machine (or a Divine Dishwasher). Hallelujah! We cannot tell whether what we request is a spiritual razor blade or a rich blessing. But our sovereign and saving God can. He will give only what is good for us and glorifying to him — everything we need for our joy in him to be full.

Audio Transcript

Let’s start off there in Isaiah 55. I want this to set the tone for our whole approach. I don’t know what kind of approach you bring to the spiritual disciplines. I want to bring an Isaiah 55 approach, which I think is not a one-time approach. I think it’s a lifetime approach of these habits of grace (or means of grace or spiritual disciplines). I would love to spend the whole time on Isaiah 55. That’s the plan tomorrow at a church in Pepperell, Massachusetts. I’m very excited about that. We’re just going to start with the first two verses (Isaiah 55:1–2) to set the tone for our conversation here about these habits of grace.

Look at verse 1: “Come, everyone who thirsts.” That’s you. You thirst in your soul. God made you that way — to thirst. The question isn’t whether you thirst. It’s whether you know it, admit it, recognize it, and own it. It continues:

Come, everyone who thirsts,     come to the waters;and he who has no money,     come, buy and eat!Come, buy wine and milk     without money and without price.Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,     and your labor for that which does not satisfy?Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,     and delight yourselves in rich food.

The context for this amazing invitation from God through Isaiah to Israel, seven hundred years before Jesus came, and to us in the church, is in Isaiah 53. This suffering servant has stepped forward in an enigmatic way — which we now see with far more clarity in Jesus — to bear our sins. And in chapter 54, the invitation goes to Jerusalem, to Israel, to God’s old-covenant people. They’re brought back from this predicted exile. And then, in Isaiah 55, the doors swing open to the Gentiles, non-Jews like me. As far as I know, there’s no Jewish blood in me. I’m not Jewish at all. I’m a rascal Gentile. Maybe most of you are Gentiles.

The invitation of Isaiah 55 has swung wide open to the non-Jews, to the Gentiles, and he appeals to us on the basis of a soul thirst, a soul hunger: “Why do you labor for that which does not satisfy?” The implication is, “I’m going to satisfy you. I’m offering you satisfaction for your soul. You are hungry; you are thirsty. Come eat; come drink.” You may say, “Well, that sounds good, but how do you drink God? How do you eat Jesus? I would like to take the invitation, but practically, what does it look like in my life today, tomorrow, or the next day? What are some of the actual initiatives and steps to drink God and eat God and receive this invitation? How do I come to the waters? How do I receive it? How do I seek my soul satisfaction in Jesus?”

Moving Toward the Means of Grace

The answer to that question in significant part in the Christian life is that God gives us means. God, in his sovereignty, has appointed to use means. Here’s our outline for these few minutes. I have three points to organize this, and then we’re going to do Q&A.

First, we’re going to talk about the God of grace. We have to start with God. Sometimes, discussions about spiritual disciplines get off on the wrong foot because we think, Spiritual disciplines — it’s my spirit, my discipline. I have to do this. This is all on me. This is my initiative. We’re starting with the God of grace.

Second, we’ll look at his appointed means of grace. God has appointed means, and he specified the means for us.

And third, we’re going to end with the end of the means. Do you get that? If you have means, they are means to an end. If they’re the means of grace, we need to say what the end of those means is.

God of Grace

Earlier today, we looked at 1 Peter 5:10. This is a great text about the grace of God:

And 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.

He’s the God of “all grace” — all kinds of grace. Earlier, we talked about various trials. But he has various graces, a bounty of various graces. Sometimes, we have our favorite kind of grace that we like to really emphasize, and we don’t avail ourselves of the bounty of his graces. We get into a singular grace and forget about the double grace and the triple grace. So let me spell that out.

Grace of Justification

The grace of God justifies by faith alone. Do you know the term justify? That’s about how you get accepted as a sinner by the holy God. What is the ground of your acceptance, of your being in right relationship with God? And the answer is the grace of justification, and that comes through faith alone. You don’t do anything to earn his acceptance. It is fully by grace, received by faith alone. This is Romans 4:4–5:

Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

In other words, you are justified, you are accepted by God one hundred percent, through faith alone. That’s the grace of justification. Some people may say, “Well, that is so amazing. I’ll just walk away now. What other graces could I ever need or want?” But he’s the God of all grace. He has more grace. Isn’t this amazing? I mean, the grace of justification is phenomenal enough, and he has more grace.

Grace of Sanctification

He’s also the God of the grace of sanctification. You have a God of grace who sanctifies you, and he sanctifies through faith. But in sanctification, you get involved: you start to do things, desire things, will things, initiate things, act things, read things, pray things, and gather with believers.

This is Titus 2:11–12:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

“The grace of God has appeared.” I love that expression. He’s talking about the incarnation. Isn’t that a great way to think about Advent? The grace of God has appeared. That’s what we’re celebrating in Advent and at Christmas. The grace of God has appeared, and some of us might expect he would next say that it’s the grace of justification of the ungodly. That’s not what he’s doing here. He did that in Romans 4. He could do that here, but here he says,

The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

And if you say, “Oh, that doesn’t sound like grace — ungodliness and worldly passions, I kind of want to live in those,” then you don’t know grace. It’s miserable to live in ungodliness and worldly passions. God is too gracious to just accept you based on Christ alone and then to leave you in the misery of sin. He’s more gracious than just to accept you apart from your being made holy, apart from the grace of becoming progressively more holy and godly. This is grace to be sanctified.

Grace of Glorification

And the grace of God glorifies. This is 2 Thessalonians 1:11–12:

To this end we always pray for you, that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.

What’s happening now in sanctification is one degree of glorification to the next, but a day is coming, at Christ’s second coming, when the body will be raised, and you will be fully glorified by the grace of God.

So, God’s grace justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies. That’s the God of grace. That’s the foundation. Everything we want to do here is not starting at the center point of us, but it is positioning ourselves based on the God of grace and what he has to say.

Means of Grace

Next is God’s appointed means of grace. What are the “means of grace”? What’s that? What’s that language? We’re used to hearing about spiritual disciplines, and that’s okay. I’m not on a campaign to rid the world of the term. It would be a fruitless campaign. There has been a particular emphasis in the last generation. There were some books in the late 1970s and early 1980s that really started talking about spiritual disciplines. D.A. Carson, a theologian I love and respect, says, “Means of grace [is] a lovely expression less susceptible to misinterpretation than spiritual disciplines.”

I like that. I think it’s right. Means of grace is an older term. This may be due to my own flaws and failures, but the term spiritual disciplines lands on me first and foremost as something I must do. It puts the center on me. The effort must be on me. But when the emphasis is on means of grace, then it starts outside of me. Now, what I’m doing is just positioning myself to get under the waterfall, under the flow of his grace. He’s told me where the grace is coming, and I’m just adjusting. That’s the work I’m doing. I’m adjusting.

Maybe my favorite means-of-grace quote is from a guy named J.C. Ryle a little over a hundred years ago. He was a bishop in the Anglican church — a man’s man. He was a cricket player and played some rugby, and he loved talking simply. He was very learned, but he loved talking simply. He was a good preacher. Here’s what he says about means of grace:

The “means of grace” are such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in Church, wherein one hears the word taught and participates in the Lord’s Supper.

Did you hear those? He said Bible reading, private prayer, and then he talked about church. And in church, the word is taught. He mentioned the Lord’s Supper. That’s part of the church. We’ll pick that up in a second. Ryle continues:

I lay it down as a simple matter of fact that no one who is careless about such things must ever expect to make much progress in sanctification. I can find no record of any eminent saint who ever neglected them. They are appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul, and strengthens the work which he has begun in the inward man. . . . Our God is a God who works by means, and he will never bless the soul of that man who pretends to be so high and spiritual that he can get on without them. (Holiness, 26)

If I walk around my house and want light, I don’t say, “Light on.” Well, I know you can train a computer to do these things, but that’s because you’ve trained it with a particular means. Or if I want some water, I don’t just walk around the house going, “Water. I’ll have some water.” And you don’t just walk around in the wilderness or in the Christian life going, “All right, God, I’ll take some grace. I’ll have some grace right here. Drop a package of grace.” There are means. If I want the light on, I hit a switch.

Now, that’s not a testimony to me. I haven’t done anything great. I don’t walk around the house flipping on lights going, “Look what I did. I turned on the light,” because I don’t have a clue how to do electrical work. The city is providing electricity. Electricians have wired it up. I’m not doing anything that redounds to my glory when I’m accessing these means. I’m just doing what the appointed channels that are given are supposed to do. I’m turning the lights on. I go to the faucet and turn it on. There’s no big celebration of my ability when I turn the faucet on, but I’m engaging the means.

Are you engaging God’s given means in the Christian life, or are you just wandering around the house hoping to have light and water at the appointed time, walking around outside hoping he’ll just hit you with grace?

Now, the question is, How do we put ourselves on the path of God’s grace? Let me give you one passage, and then let me give you a couple huge swaths that dominate the Psalms, and then I’ll give you examples from Hebrews. That’s how we’re going to set these up, in these three big categories.

Teaching, Fellowship, Bread, Prayers

The Bible verse is Acts 2:42. This is in the early church in this honeymoon period where it’s all exciting. The Holy Spirit has fallen. There are thousands of converts, and there isn’t persecution yet, and everybody is happy, and they’re sharing their stuff, and everybody wants in. What are they doing? People want the spectacular stuff. The Holy Spirit does the spectacular things and they’re adding to their number every day. We all want that stuff, but what were they doing when that exciting stuff happened? Acts 2:42 tells us what they were doing:

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

That’s pretty ordinary. These are not surprising answers when J.C. Ryle says Bible reading, prayer, church, and the Lord’s Supper. And when Acts 2:42 says “the apostle’s teaching” — that’s the word. “The fellowship” — that’s church. “The breaking of bread” — I take that to be both the celebration of the Lord’s Supper and the community sharing of a meal. And then there are “the prayers.”

So, you can take the pie of God’s means of grace, and you can cut it in four slices like Acts 2:42 — or like J.C. Ryle. I like to cut my pie in three slices, so it’s like a peace sign. I cut my pie in three slices, and here’s how I summarize the means of grace. I find this helpful for getting at practical application. First, hear God’s voice in his word. Second, have his ear in prayer. And third, belong to his body in the fellowship of the local church.

I find it helpful that at any stage of life, I can always think of the great spiritual disciplines to be doing. It’s easy to make a list of twelve, fifteen, or twenty and start to think, “How am I going to ever do these? I’m going to have to go monastic to be able to do all these things.” Or I can ask, “What are the operative principles of God’s grace? Am I hearing his voice in his word? Am I accessing the wonder of having his ear in prayer? Am I belonging to his body? Am I in real-life covenant relationships in the local church?”

Seeking God in the Psalms

Where else does this matrix come from? I’ve mentioned the Psalms. I’ll give you a little homework. Just read the Psalms and look for three things in the Psalms. It’s the longest book in the Bible. If you’ve read the Psalms and you know the Psalms, this will resonate right away. How often do the psalmists talk about God’s voice and his word? Psalm 119 is dedicated to the power of God’s word. How often they talk about God’s voice, his revelation, his word!

Second, how often do they plead to have his ear, and they express with confidence that he hears them? This is one of the amazing things in the Psalms — how much they’re talking about God’s listening and God’s ear hearing the psalmist. They say, “Hear my cry, O Lord.”

And then last, there’s often a fellowship context. There’s a corporate context. They often speak of praising him in the assembly of his people — with the great congregation.

So, I’m just taking the Psalms’ language of voice and ear, and I’m bringing in this New Testament metaphor of body for this little summary. But let me show it to you briefly in Hebrews.

God’s Voice, Ear, and People

I’m going to have to move quickly because I want to show you some texts in Hebrews for these categories, mention the end of all the means, and then do some Q&A. Here’s the pattern in Hebrews.

Hear His Voice

First, we hear his voice.

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. (Hebrews 1:1–2)

Let me pull several things out here. First, how amazing that God speaks. He reveals himself. He is communicative. What can you say? God is talkative. He likes to talk. We have a nice thick book because God loves to talk, and he reveals himself in nature. God loves to reveal himself. One of the tragedies in our sin is how dull our ears and eyes have become to his self-revelation and how talkative he is. Open your eyes and your ears to his word.

So, God speaks, and he speaks climactically in his Son. The Gospel of John calls him the Word. It’s as if, if God had one thing to say, if he had one word to say to humanity, it’s Jesus, his own Son. The eternal second person of the Trinity came among us, revealed not just on a page but in a person. So, Jesus is the full embodiment of God’s self-revelation, his Word. God speaks. He reveals himself in his Son climactically. His Son has this group of apostles, and God has his prophets in the Old Testament, so that we have this book of revelation of God speaking to us. It’s a remarkable thing that God has revealed himself.

“Hear God’s voice in his word, have his ear in prayer, and belong to his body.”

And in that book, Hebrews 12:25 says, “See that you do not refuse him who is speaking.” When you access Scripture, whether you’re holding a paper Bible, whether you’re looking at it on your phone or computer, this is no mere record of what God said in the past. This is what God is saying to the world, what he is saying to the nations, what he is saying through his Spirit to his people — and to you. This is a living word.

The word of God is living and active. God continues to speak to his people, by his Spirit, in his word.

Have His Ear

We’ll focus on Hebrews 4:14–16 and then Hebrews 10:19–23. I’m going to read these two passages quickly and listen to the things in common. In common, there’s a mention of a great high priest. His personal name is Jesus. He’s passed through the heavens, so he ascended. He’s in God’s very presence. Therefore, he says, “Hold fast to our confession of faith in him,” and, “Draw near to God through him,” and do so with confidence. You can see that in both passages. Hebrews 4:14–16 says,

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Prayer is a means of grace. We find grace to help in time of need. This drawing near is more than just prayer, but it is not less. Prayer is a fitting application of Hebrews 4 and Hebrews 10. Here’s Hebrews 10:19–23:

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

We have a great high priest. He’s ascended. He’s seated at God’s right hand. Right now, in this moment, the risen and glorified God-man sits in glory in heaven, and he’s ready to provide fresh supplies of grace through his Spirit, by his word, and through this grace of hearing us. He not only reveals himself, but he would pause, he would stoop, he would say, “I want to hear from you. I just spoke; now what do you have to say?” That’s prayer.

Belong to His Body

Lastly, we come to fellowship. Belong to his body. The two best texts on fellowship are both in Hebrews. Hebrews 10:24–25 says,

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

What’s significant in Hebrews 10 is that the many, the church, are instructed to watch out for “some.” Some are neglecting assembling together. And he says to the many, “Watch out for them; bring them in.” And the way he says to do this in the gathering, in the fellowship, is that they consider one another to provoke them to love and good deeds. That’s the language of how “to stir up one another.” It’s literally provoke. This is a good provoking. A lot of times, provoking is bad, like provoking someone to anger or something like that. This is provoking them toward good. You poke them and prod them. How would you provoke them? How would you stir them up not to anger but to good? How do you provoke them to do good?

And there’s this amazing power of words. He says, “encouraging one another.” You can encourage them by baking them a pie, or giving them some food, or helping them move. But often, we encourage one another through words. We have these weird holes in the side of our head, and words go into the hole and into the brain, and it can go down into the heart, and it can feed someone’s faith. It can give them spiritual courage when they’re weak, when they don’t have it in them. They might think, “Ah, I need to get myself into Bible study and do this intense study. I don’t have the energy to do that. I’m not feeding my own faith.” Well, you know what? You have a hole in the side of your head. I’m going to stick some words in there and try to give you some courage and try to feed your faith through these ears.

The second passage is Hebrews 3:12–13:

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Again, we have the power of words to speak into each other’s lives, to put grace in a soul through an ear, and to watch out for each other — to give each other grace. In God’s word, we’re receiving grace from him. And in prayer, we are receiving grace from him even as we reply back to him and express our needs in prayer. But in fellowship, there’s this mutual giving of grace. You’re receiving grace by the care, the words, and the provision of brothers and sisters in Christ. And now you’re being a means of grace. You have the opportunity to be God’s channel of grace to a brother or sister.

So, hear God’s voice in his word, have his ear in prayer, and belong to his body.

End of the Means

Let me finish before questions here on, third and finally, the end of the means. Very briefly, what’s the end? Why are we doing this? What’s the end? You might answer, “Growth.” Grow for what? Why do you want to grow? What do you want to grow into? Something that looks impressive for your glory? What’s the growth for?

Let me give you two texts in particular that get at the end. What is the end of the Christian life? Jonathan struck the note well in the last session in Philippians 3. Consider John 17:3. This is Jesus the night before he dies, praying to his Father for his disciples to hear it. He says, “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” That is such a stunning prayer. This is the great end. This is eternal life. This is the goal — knowing God and Jesus Christ — as he prays for his disciples before he goes to the cross the next day.

Here’s how Paul is going to say it in Philippians 3:7–8, which Jonathan quoted in that last session:

But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

That’s the end: knowing Jesus. There’s no greater end. Knowing Jesus is not a means to anything else the human soul was made for. We pursue the means of grace toward the end of knowing him and enjoying him. He’s the one who said, “I am the bread of life [keep Isaiah 55 in mind here]; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). And “on the last day of the feast . . . Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink’” (John 7:37).

And that’s how the Bible ends, with Isaiah 55. Did you know that? You thought, “Oh, it’s Revelation 22.” Well, Revelation 22:17 is Isaiah 55:

The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.

So, take the water of life. Take the bread through hearing God’s voice in his word, having his ear in prayer, and belonging to his body in the fellowship of the local church. There’s a framework and matrix in which you can evaluate God’s principles of ongoing grace in a season of life.

Now, I did not specify here exactly how you should hear his voice in his word. I didn’t tell you all you should do to pray. And your local church is going to establish those corporate habits in the local body.

Question and Answer

If you have a question, and you think it would be helpful for the group, then let’s ask the question and we’ll have some Q&A for a few minutes.

Question: What is the definition of grace?

It helps to put it in a context. Sometimes people will put it in the context of mercy. For me, in this context of these means of grace or habits of grace, it is the favor, the blessing, and the power of God. Despite your deservedness, he’s giving it to you in justification. It’s not just justification and your full acceptance, but it’s also power for the Christian life and power that’s coming. So, grace is very important. Grace for the Christian is not simply a past reality. Sometimes, we can have this sense of, “This is amazing grace that Jesus came and died at the cross. Wow, look at all that grace. Look at all that grace in the past. Therefore, out of gratitude, I need to expend my effort to thank him for his grace.”

But the God of all grace doesn’t leave grace in the past. There is grace in the past. But you also stand in the present through grace, and you will be glorified through grace. It is all of grace. You have entered a sphere of grace. The Christian life is lived in grace, and we press on in faith banking on God’s future grace. Grace is coming. The reason we keep going on the journey is not because the grace is so great in the past that we’re going to marshal our energy to get to the end, but because the grace of the past shows me the God of the present who will give grace for the next step, and the next step, and he will get me to the end by his grace. That’s not a precise definition, but it gets at the reality of God’s empowering of our Christian life and accepting us fully in Jesus Christ.

Question: What is the place of journaling in the habits of grace?

First of all, let me say this: you don’t have to. Nothing in the Bible says you should journal. When we talk about other means of grace, we need to say that prayer is not an option. Accessing God’s ear is not an option. The local church is not optional. Journaling is totally optional. If you want to try it, great. I am helped when I’m engaging God’s word to engage actively with a pencil in hand. I engage my whole soul better when I write some things out. It can be helpful to do some journaling.

There have been seasons in my life, especially when I was younger — before I had a wife, four kids, and a full-time job — and I made use of that for more journaling. Sometimes, I’d journal my whole devotional time. I’d read a passage and work through it and basically type out every thought. I would think, “Man, this keyboard is amazing because I can type things so fast.” Then I’ll go back and forth. Sometimes the digital engagement feels like it’s so mechanical. It doesn’t feel relational, like communion with God. So, I would go back to my written journal.

I’ve been all over the place over the years with journaling. I think the best headway I’ve made and the way that it’s been most useful is when I’ll just write a little bit and not try to set my standard too high. I think the places when I would journal for a while and then just kind of fall off the wagon or whatever is when I would start writing and writing and writing and peeling the layers of the onion of my soul, and then I feel like, “Oh man, I can’t even start journaling unless I have 45 minutes.” That’s not going to be helpful. That’s not going to work.

One thing I tried at one point, and I’ll often do this, is to try to write a sentence a day. If I have my Bible reading plan, I’ll go along with that. I think it’s really helpful to have a plan, not just to come to the Bible and flip open and say, “Oh, I’ll just read Titus again. I just always read a short one. Titus or Philemon every time, or Jude.” Have a plan that’ll get you through. And then at the end, what if you’re thinking in your time that you’d just like to capture something? It’s not an assignment. It’s not schoolwork. This is an opportunity to further enjoy what you are enjoying by making it into a single complete sentence. You might say, “Oh, isn’t it amazing that he is the God of all grace?” That’s it. That’s it for the day. That’s November 16, and then move on. Come back the next day and have one thought for November 17.

I had a Word doc called “Sentences,” and my goal was to write one sentence a day. It could be a prayer; it could just be how amazing a passage was. That may be one way to do it. Set yourself a really low bar. You don’t have to do this. Do a really low bar. Try a sentence a day. And you know what? If you get to the end of that first sentence and you think, “I’d kind of like to write a second sentence,” go ahead. Just go hog wild. That would be my advice. See if it’s helpful for you. It’s not helpful for everybody. It doesn’t have to be. As far as we know, Jesus kept no journal, and he did fine.

Question: Could you elaborate more on Bible-reading plans?

This is where you’re getting into habits, right? Sunday morning, you don’t want to think, “Hmm, should I go to church this morning?” Or when you get into a car, you don’t want to think, “Hmm, should I put a seatbelt on this time, or should I challenge the odds?” Good habits are things you don’t want to expend the mental energy on making decisions that you should have already made, and you should do. Put the seatbelt on when you get in the car; when you wake up, read the Bible; if it’s Sunday morning, go to church.

These are good habits. These are life-giving habits that save your life. So, when I get up in the morning, I don’t want to rethink it all over again like, “Huh, well, it’s a morning, what should I do? Should I read a Bible?” Just make the habit. I want to hear his voice first. What you do first each day is revealing. Is it news first? Is that what your god really is? That’s what the secular world would have you think. News is god. You can’t live this day if you haven’t done your news. Baloney. There was no news 150 years ago. It’s made up. You know what’s not made up? That God is still speaking by his Spirit through his word. That’s a really good voice to start the day with, the voice of God in the word by the power of the Spirit. Set the trajectory for your day.

If your day is crazy busy, like so many of us, we’re just being bombarded by the tides of the world’s pace and speed. One of my biggest thoughts in the morning is that I just want to engage God’s word without hurry. I don’t know if there are any computer programmers or those who are in the industry where you talk about getting into a “flow state.” I’m looking for something kind of like that. I want a devotional flow state where my phone is more than an arm’s length away. I’m not watching a timer. If some thoughts of to-dos come in my head, I’ll scribble them down and move them out of the way. I want to get into a flow state with God’s word. I want to have enough margin.

Sometimes people ask, “How long? How long in the word?” I want enough margin to lose track of time. I want enough margin that my heart would be warmed and not just information running through my head and then rush off to the day and check my box and move on. I want some heart work to be done. I don’t think you need to walk away every day with a life application. If those happen, that’s great. That’s gravy. The goal in engaging God’s word is, “Father, would you warm my heart? I pray that when I’m reading here in this chapter, in this paragraph, that it wouldn’t just be information through my head. Would you help me to feel how I should feel in receiving your word?” That’s the battle for me every morning. That’s the prayer. “Father, help me feel how you would have me feel from this text.”

Having a Bible-reading plan can be helpful to go right into what you will be reading that day. The plan I do is about three hundred days a year. You have 25 days a month. It’s called the Navigators Bible Reading Plan. That’s one you can use. I would say have a plan and then take the assignment of that plan as God’s will for you that morning. That’s what I do.

He orchestrates my life. He knows all the details, and he’s seen to it that I’m going to be reading these passages, and the Holy Spirit can work at those passages. I take that as God’s word to me for the day. And I want to find something I can linger over where there is not just mere reading, but what the old saints called meditation — which is not eastern meditation, where you empty your head and do a mantra. It’s meditation where you fill your mind with God’s word and seek to feel the significance of his word in your heart.

The Puritans would talk about having a sensible benefit from God’s word, that you have been in some way affected by it, in some way moved by it. It might be a holy fear, it might be a rebuke, it might be excitement, it might be the joy of comfort, or it might be a fresh sense of God’s goodness, but we should feel some sensible benefit. Often, I’ll read through those passages, and sometimes something will strike me as, Oh, that’s so good. Stop, pause, reread, think about it, pray about that, write that down as my one sentence in the journal. Or sometimes I’ll read through the passages, praying, “Father, what is your word to me today?” I’ll go back and look at those passages again. I’ll find some place to kind of camp out for a minute, to linger, unhurried, and to try to press into my soul in meditating on God’s word.

Question: Do you have any advice for prayer during spiritually dry seasons?

I think the main thing I would want to say about prayer is to bind it to God’s word. I’m trying to create this relational context here by talking about hearing his voice and having his ear. This is communion. This is what the Puritans would talk about as communion with God. It’s not just Bible reading and prayer; it’s Bible meditation and prayer together being communion. One great thing about prayer — and what’s so important about it — is that it’s a conversation with God. We don’t start the conversation.

When you feel dry in your prayer life, the first step isn’t I; the first step is him. I want to hear from him. How can I get access more to his word that my prayers might be responsive? I think sometimes we can feel this obligatory sense since we all know we should be praying. I mean, the Bible is just very clear: we should be praying. And because we know that obligation, there’s a sense of, “I need to be praying. I should be praying.” And we can lose sight that prayer is responsive. We’re the creatures; he’s the Creator. He’s the Redeemer; we’re the redeemed. I need something to feed on and respond to in prayer. So, I would say going to his word and slowing down in his word — to feed on it and meditate on it — is where we should start.

And then, the Puritans would talk about prayer being “the proper issue of meditation.” This is where meditation is going. As you linger over God’s word and seek to feel its effect in your heart, a warming of the heart — that naturally should lead to a response of prayer. That’s the point where prayer is fed and ready to respond. I think that’s the way I would encourage you to go about it individually.

But here are some other things on prayer. One of the greatest gifts in the Christian life is prayer together. If you’re feeling a dryness in prayer, it is a beautiful thing to be in a prayer gathering with fellow believers. Sometimes, in the rush of our modern lives, we maybe don’t avail ourselves of the prayer gathering in our local churches like we could. I don’t know that I’ve ever been to a prayer gathering and left disappointed. It seems to always go better than I was expecting.

It is a sweet thing to hear fellow brothers and sisters pray, to be there, to be in a spirit of prayer, to not have to be the one praying, to hear brothers and sisters pour out their heart before God, to get to know Jesus better because they know certain things about Jesus that I don’t. So I know him better through hearing them pray. Utilize corporate prayer, prayer with roommates, family, or with the church. Those would be some good ways to jump-start. But it’s all based on word. There has to be word there first to feed prayer.

Question: How might you respond to someone in your life — maybe a friend or family member — who is not appreciating the essential means of grace in the Christian life?

There were some people when COVID happened in 2020 who were ready for it, thinking, “We’re going to fight for this. We’re going to be on the phone; we’re going to be texting; we’re going to have gatherings in our home.” Some people thrived in 2020. And some kind of limped by and saw for the first time what an unbelievably rich and essential means of grace it is in the Christian life to have each other. And then others drifted away.

We have people that were in our church four years ago, and they haven’t come back. Those twelve weeks that we didn’t have services together were significant to them. It was the last straw of falling back. So, what might we do for somebody who doesn’t appreciate that means? I think I’d go back to the power of our own words. It is an amazing thing to not have to coerce somebody. You can’t. Christianity does not teach forcible church attendance or conversion (though you’d be surprised what some people might want to say today when they get down about things culturally). It’s not Christian to force someone, but everybody has these holes in the side of their head. And that’s what those passages in Hebrews are talking about.

It’s striking, this power of words. I would encourage you to seek to win them through words. Could you say, “Hey, would you come this Sunday with me? Let’s go out to lunch afterward and talk”? Or in a conversation, maybe you have a chance to share something that was fresh. What fed your soul that morning? How might that come out in the conversation? “You know what I read about Jesus this morning? It said, ‘No man in the history of the world has ever opened the eyes of the blind.’ Isn’t Jesus amazing?” And you know what? That got in their ear. And maybe the Holy Spirit would be pleased to give that a flame and to draw them in.

So, think about how your words could be a means of grace. Even though they’re not committed to having their words be a means of grace in your life and others in the local body, your words could still be a means of grace for them.

I would say pray for them and pray for the things you might say to them that could breadcrumb them along. And at some point, it’s worth having the conversation. It’s worth finding a resource that might be helpful toward saying, “This is an essential means of grace in the Christian life.” You might say, “It is often forgotten in our day. A lot of times, people focus on the individual things — individual Bible intake and individual prayer — and the corporate means of grace are neglected. That’s sad. I don’t want you to miss out on that.” Seek to win them and pray for them. But, yes, it’s hard. And that’s a significant issue in our day.

Question: To what degree should we confront people regarding the means of grace and exhort people toward them?

To the degree that God has given you influence in that person’s life, to the degree that you can speak. For example, if they’re a family member, if there’s some kind of friendship commitment there, and they’ll hear from you, I think you want to encourage consistency. I would say it’s also to the degree that it’s available in a church commitment. A lot of churches have a thing called membership. That’s a good thing. You commit to each other; you make covenants, because anybody can do life when it’s easy and it’s simple and it’s fun. You make covenant commitments because you need each other when it’s hard.

That’s one of the reasons for a marriage covenant. A local church covenant is not a marriage covenant. It’s not a “till death do us part,” but it’s saying, “I am going to be the church to you. You be the church to me.” I need people to be the church to me. I need other people in my Christian life (like Jonathan was talking about). You need them. So we say, “Let’s commit together. For however long God has us in this place, we’re going to be the church to each other — in good times and bad times, sickness and health, all of that.” Encourage, if it’s possible, a covenant membership in a local church. There’s an appeal there.

Sometimes, the only appeal to people is, “You have to do this. You have to be here for the church. You have to give.” And there’s never this appeal of, “You need this. You need this so badly. You’re joining this church. You’re covenanting with this church. And there’s great joy in being God’s means of grace to others. But oh my, how you are receiving. What grace for you to benefit from that now, while you’re in your right mind spiritually.” You’re saying to people, “Hey, watch out for me. Get my back. Don’t let me have a hard, unbelieving heart. If I start going nuts spiritually, will you come get me? Would you get in my face? Would you tell me to come back?” That is a precious grace that might save a soul from hell.

So, there’s a great hedonistic appeal to a brother and sister. This is not just me saying, “Do this for others.” There’s joy in that. But this is an appeal to you. You need this. If you’re in your right mind spiritually, you need this. And if you don’t think you need it, you may not be in your right mind spiritually.

Question: What would you do if your small group was spending time together but not getting into enough substance in the Bible and prayer? Or what if people were really extroverted and needed to learn how to be alone with God?

My experience in the Twin Cities has been that there is such inertia in modern life away from people gathering that usually we all have way too much individual time. I don’t know how much television has done that to us, or cars, or modern life in general.

Here’s the thing: these categories of introverted and extroverted are fairly recent. We all need people, and we all need time alone with God. Jonathan Edwards talked about how a soul that loves Jesus loves to get time alone with him, extended time alone with him to enjoy him. And he sends us back to bless others. There’s an amazing pattern in Jesus’s life. Watch this in his life. He retreats from the masses for prayer. They didn’t have their own copies of the Bible then, so he’s probably going on memorized Scripture and meditating on Scripture. He’s communing with his Father in prayer. Jesus is perfect, and he was retreating to pray by himself to get away. But then, what does he do? He doesn’t stay there. He doesn’t go to the monastic ideal. He comes back.

There are these rhythms in his life, and maybe that’s the way to go with fellow believers. You might say, “Hey, we need some rhythms in our lives like Jesus. It’s a great thing that we’re together all the time, and that’s awesome because most people in modern life are not together enough with fellow believers. We’re getting a lot of time together. This is really good for the Christian life. And I’d like a little bit of time to feed my soul too, like Jesus. Jesus got up and got away. He retreated and he came back. Can we do some Jesus patterns in here?”

You could say, “Give me a little bit of space, and when I come back, I’ll be much better for listening and loving and ministering.” Let’s talk further if I can add some more to that.

Where do you turn in moments of decision? To what, or to whom, do you look for help when you need to choose between two paths?

We live most of our lives spontaneously, without pausing to ponder one option or another. But we sometimes come to moments of decision. It might seem as small as a request to help a church member, or a text informing you of a friend in need. You pause, even briefly, to ponder, Will I give of my time and energy to help, or do I have a good excuse to kindly decline?

In such moments, where do you look for clarity? Specifically, as Christians, what might we put before our minds, and hearts, to guide us in these times of decision?

The end of Acts 20 gives us not just a Christian way to proceed but what we might call a Christian Hedonistic approach. Could it be that the best decision is also the most blessed?

Remember These Words

If you’re reading a red-letter Bible, you might expect the Gospels to have plenty of crimson, but not the book of Acts. Mostly Acts is black and white — with some exceptions for Jesus speaking to the disciples before his ascension, to Peter from heaven in a vision, and to Paul on the Damascus road. There we find some splashes of red. But Acts 20 is a strange place for color.

This is Paul’s last will and testament to the pastor-elders of Ephesus. He is making for Jerusalem, anticipating he will not see them again. Paul gives them a rich and moving farewell speech (verses 18–35), which culminates, surprisingly for many readers, with red letters.

As his message draws to its close, Paul reminds them of his own hard work, which they themselves observed, and which he wants to be a model to them:

In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)

“It is more blessed” — more happy! — “to give than to receive.” This is strikingly hedonistic logic. What a parting word to leave in such a poignant moment!

Not only does Paul believe this truth, live by it himself, and quote it for others, but he adds that these church leaders should explicitly remember it. That is, bring it to mind, and keep bringing it to mind. Have it guide and motivate you. Turn here in key moments of decision. This is the sort of truth that deserves remembrance. So, be conscious about it, and regularly rehearse this reality, that you might live according to the supernatural way and words of Jesus, rather than as a natural person.

The natural human instinct is, I’ll be happier if I get, rather than give. But Jesus teaches another calculus.

Unblushing Promises for Giving

Whether this particular wording is Jesus’s own or Paul’s insightful capture of Christ’s ethic, we cannot say conclusively. However, what’s most important, whoever captured it, is recognizing that this is clearly a good summary of Jesus’s teaching. This is indeed how Jesus taught. This, in summary form, is the spirit of Christ’s regular appeals.

C.S. Lewis, for one, comments on Jesus’s “unblushing promises of reward” throughout the Gospels. Give to others, Jesus says, and you will get from your Father in heaven. Give on earth, he teaches, and you will receive from heaven. Give of your earthly, temporal possessions, and you will get a heavenly, eternal possession. The heart of his appeal is this: you get more in giving than in getting. Or slightly expanded: you get more (from God) in giving (to others) than in getting (from others).

Whether Acts 20:35 is a quote from Christ or a summary from Paul (or Luke), let’s see from the Gospel of Luke why this matches Christ’s ethic so well. Four passages, and promises, come quickly into view.

1. God will outgive you.

Give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. (Luke 6:38)

In this context, Jesus has instructed his disciples on how they should treat others, and then how they will be treated by “the Most High” who is “your Father.” Verse 37: “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Jesus’s pattern is this: treat others on earth well, with an explicit view toward the benefit that comes from heaven.

Christ’s ethic is plainly not the natural human ethic that says, “Treat others well, and they will treat you well in return.” He expressly denies that in verse 34: “If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount.” Rather, Jesus says, “Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great” (verse 35).

“When God gives, he does not hold back. He doesn’t cut corners. He’s a cheerful, generous giver.”

The “credit” or “benefit” (Greek charis) to which Jesus makes explicit appeal is not what others will do for you in return but what your heavenly Father will be and do for you. You give to others, seeking nothing in return from them, because you are looking to the reward you will receive from God. Oh, you are seeking return, but not from man — from God. And when God gives, he does not hold back. He doesn’t cut corners. He’s a cheerful, generous giver: “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over”!

2. God gives treasure that will not fail.

Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Luke 12:32–34)

Here is the same spirit and holy hedonistic line of reasoning: as you empty your earthly, aging, stealable moneybags by giving to others in need, you “provide yourselves with [heavenly] moneybags that do not grow old,” treasure that cannot be stolen by thieves or destroyed by moths.

Again, we find two directions of giving in Jesus’s teaching: (1) his people give to others in need; (2) his Father gives to his people. You give from your limited possessions to the needy, and you get from your Father’s unlimited bounty — and remembering the second motivates the first. Knowing your Father has it all, and that what he has cannot be stolen or destroyed, and that he happily gives to his children, you are freed from hoarding and holding tightly to earthly possessions.

The appeal is plainly hedonistic: give to the needy, recalling your Father who has no needs. Not only does he care for his little flock and thus free you to care for others, but in your very giving to others, you accrue provision and blessing from God. You are more blessed, Jesus says in effect, to give to others and so to receive from your Father in heaven.

3. God will make you happy.

When you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. (Luke 14:13–14)

This passage comes closer to Acts 20:35 than any of the others. We have Christ’s call to give, the promise of repayment/reward, and the language of being “blessed” (by God). This is not the blessed of being praised (eulogētos) but the blessed of being happy (makarios). When you give to others, and they cannot repay you, God will make you happy. He will repay you in the end, and knowing that makes us happy not only then but now.

A profound insight into the heart of Jesus’s ethic comes with the mention of giving to others who cannot repay you. The natural, human, less-happy way is to give to others who will give back to you. They will repay you, tit for tat. You have your reward, and you leave untapped the infinite joy-resources of heaven and eternity.

But the supernatural, divine, more-blessed way is to give to others who cannot repay you. Because then you know your heart has been truly hedonistic, Christian Hedonistic. Your heart has looked to the majestic Rewards of heaven rather than the miserly reimbursements of earth. And your heavenly Father has never missed a single payment in his ledger. He will repay you. In his perfect justice, he will reward you with everything you deserve — and in his amazing grace, he will lavish you with far more than you deserve. You will be far happier to be rewarded by him than repaid by fellow humans.

In other words, your all-seeing, all-knowing, all-just, and all-gracious heavenly Father will not let any act in the name of his Son go without eventual reward — however hidden it may be in this age. The books will be opened. The world will know. Christ will be honored. And our heavenly Father will shower his children with every good that’s justly owed, and then far, far more. Even the one who gives a cup of cold water in Jesus’s name “will be no means lose his reward” (Matthew 10:42). How much more the one gives a feast to the needy.

4. God will receive you into his own house.

Finally, Luke 16:9 may be the most unnerving of all. Jesus tells a parable of an “unrighteous manager” who shrewdly uses his temporary access to wealth to secure favor for himself once his stewardship is taken away. Jesus acknowledges his wickedness, yet risks drawing this hedonistic lesson for his disciples:

Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

We’ve seen this logic before, even if it hasn’t been as provocative. Our possessions on earth are so fleeting; so soon will they fail us! Why hold on to them tightly and be ruined, when you could use what stewardship you have for now to “make friends” for yourself with God Almighty, who will receive you into his eternal dwelling?

It’s a hedonist’s appeal. Holding on now to earthly possessions will not make you deeply and enduringly happy. You really want to be happy? Loosen your grip. Give your earthly stuff away — not that you might receive in return from fellow humans, but that you might receive now and forever from your Father in heaven, and one day come as guest, and child, into his very home that is heaven.

Your Father Will Reward You

“It is more blessed to give than to receive” is a marvelous summary of Jesus’s ethic. But how might it become tangible in our own moments of decision?

When faced with the opportunity to give, think like a hedonist — a Christian Hedonist. That’s what Jesus would have us do. That’s what Paul himself did, and what he would have us do (as he makes explicit with the word remember).

So, very practically, you come to a moment of decision. You hear of some need. Christian love is calling. You can think of all sorts of carnal reasons to say no. And you can come up with carnal reasons to say yes. At that moment, Jesus and Paul would have us turn our minds to the promises of God: He will outgive your giving, guaranteed. He gives treasure that will not fail. He will make you happy forever, and in measure even now. And, in the end, he will even receive you into the divine generosity of his own house.

What unblushing promises of reward! Grab one of them, rehearse it, and act in faith. Or just reach for that insightful Christian Hedonist summary of Acts 20:35: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. Tomorrow, we come to a text in our Bible reading that should compel all of us to be driven by gospel-sized ambition in this life. The text is Acts 20:24. We’ve already looked at it — and this huge aspiration — from a couple different angles, as you can see in the APJ book on pages 69–70, in episodes looking specifically at following our heart and chasing after ambitious careers in this world. How do we do big ambition well, to glorify God in our aspirations?

This glorious text comes in Paul’s final, parting words to the beloved Ephesian elders in Acts 20:17–38, a deeply moving account that we read together tomorrow, and a text on the mind of a listener named Derek. “Pastor John, hello! I graduate from seminary this spring, and as I prepare for full-time ministry, I want to better understand Paul’s claims in Acts 20:24 when he says, ‘I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.’ For your life as a pastor, what do you take from this text? What did this Pauline conviction for the gospel over life look like — and feel like — for you?”

I love this text, Acts 20:24. And it’s one of the reasons that I love the apostle Paul. So, I’m happy to meditate on it again, as I have so often over the years.

Life Is Better Lost Than Wasted

Way back when I wrote the book Don’t Waste Your Life, over twenty years ago, this text, among others, had taken hold of me and was driving my thinking, my feeling. In fact, when I preached on this text at a university some years ago, my summary statement of the text was “better to lose your life than to waste it.” I think that’s exactly what Paul is saying in this verse: better to lose your life than to waste it.

So, let me quote the text with the two preceding verses (Acts 20:22–23) and then try to answer the question more specifically about its impact on my ministry. “And now, behold,” Paul says — and he’s speaking to the Ephesian elders as he says farewell to them, never to see them again. “And now, behold, I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me. But I do not account my life” — this is Acts 20:24 now — “of any value nor as precious to myself, if only” — this is the one sense in which he does value his life — “I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” Which I paraphrase, “Better to lose your life than to waste it.”

The Power of a Precious Passage

Now, Derek is asking what I take from this text for pastoral ministry. Or, more specifically, what did it look like or feel like for me to embrace this text in my ministry?

1. Return to the Point

I felt the poignancy of this text because it is among the last words Paul speaks to his friends that he’ll never see again in this life, as far as he knows. At the end of the passage, Acts 20:37–38, it says, “There was much weeping on the part of all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, being sorrowful most of all because of the word he had spoken, that they would not see his face again.”

“Better to lose your life than to waste it.”

So, when I see a Christian pastor or missionary or a father taking leave of his family or taking leave of a church or a people for the last time, knowing they’ll never see each other again in this life, I listen. I listen because I expect something profound and moving, something that tries to sum up what’s been the point of it all. And I want to know what the point of it all is. I want to know what the point of life is, the point of ministry, the point of the universe, which is exactly what we get in this verse. That’s the first thing.

2. Escape Comfort

I have felt, as I have returned to this text again and again, an urgent desire to renounce every distraction and follow Jesus and escape the materialistic forces of the American dream, and the dangers of being rich, and the temptations of comfort and security, and the deadening effects of worldliness that strip a pastor of his power. “I do not count my life of any value nor as precious to myself,” he says, “except for one thing.” And it isn’t prosperity or comfort or ease or security in this world. “I have been given a race to run and a ministry to perform.”

It’s like a marathon. I’m on it. This is why I live. This is what my life means. Finish the race. Fulfill the ministry. Don’t stop. Don’t leave the course. Don’t get sidetracked. Don’t go backward. If you do, your life will be wasted. Paul really believed Psalm 63:3: the steadfast love of the Lord “is better than life.” There is a path of life that leads to the everlasting enjoyment of the steadfast love of God. Better to lose your life than to go off that path. That’s Acts 20:24.

3. Lean on the Spirit

This text has always felt like a miraculous work of the Spirit, not an accomplishment. Acts 20:22 says, “I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit.” Paul wasn’t a self-reliant hero. He was a walking miracle. If Acts 20:24 happens in your life, that’s what it’s like. It’s the work of the Spirit. It’s a miracle.

4. Embrace Uncertainty

This verse felt in my ministry like the thrill and the test of not knowing what the future would bring. Acts 20:22: “I am going to Jerusalem, constrained by the Spirit, not knowing what will happen to me there.” If you have to know enough about tomorrow to feel safe in this world, you’re going to waste your life.

5. Expect Suffering

Acts 20:24 felt like it was a call to suffer. Acts 20:23: “. . . except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me.” God has said that to all of us, not just Paul. He says to all of us, “Through many afflictions you must enter the kingdom” (see Acts 14:22). And, “If you would live a godly life in Christ Jesus, you will be persecuted” (see 2 Timothy 3:12). And, “He who would follow me,” Jesus said in Matthew 16:24, “must deny himself and take up his cross,” the instrument of death. The single-minded devotion to the call of Jesus is an expectation of suffering.

6. Run to the End

Finally, I’ll mention that now, at age 79, this verse burns in my heart with the desire not to waste my final years — not to waste them with the worldly notion that the last years of our lives on earth are for leisure and not ministry. “Come on, Paul. You’re getting old. How about a little cottage on the Aegean Sea? You’ve already done more in your ministry, Paul, than most people do in five lifetimes. It’s time to rest, Paul. Let the last twenty years of your life be for travel and golf and shuffleboard and pickleball and putzing around in the garage and digging in the garden, Paul. Let Timothy have a chance, for goodness’ sake. He’s young. You don’t have to go to Jerusalem. They’re going to bind your hands and feet and hand you over to the Gentiles. You’re an old man. Get out of your head that crazy notion of going to Spain at your age. You’re going to get yourself killed. It isn’t American. It’s not what you’re supposed to do.”

So, I love this verse. I love it. “I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God” (Acts 20:24).