Every year as summer approaches, the world hastens to embrace its warmth. Restaurant patios shake out their snowy dust, kids trickle back into parks, sunscreen appears in the checkout aisle, teenage lifeguards ready the pools, vacation ads become relentless — and the clothing departments transform overnight.

Oversized sweaters vanish; swimsuits now welcome shoppers. Spaghetti-strap dresses stand in place of trench coats, and short shorts overtake long pants. A flock of oddly named tops — crop tops, tank tops, halter tops, tube tops — sidelines the long-sleeve section. Weatherproof boots no longer necessary, strappy shoes (of questionable durability) line the shelves.

The first glimpses of summer often appear on in-store mannequins and online models. For Christian women, that glimpse often causes not only anticipation, but anxiety, as that nagging and perennial question emerges: How might we dress modestly?

Asking Questions Carefully

So, how might we dress modestly? Of course, true modesty springs from the heart’s disposition, not the closet’s contents, and extends well beyond the clothes we keep. As one author states, “The external signs of what we call ‘modest behavior’ — not bragging, not showing off your body too much — are ultimately signifiers of modesty, not modesty itself” (Shalit, A Return to Modesty, xxv).

At the same time, when the summer months roll around, a choice in clothing still stands between us and the sun. So, to answer the question, I often find myself asking another: Would it be wrong if I wore this? I imagine many women can relate. In the pursuit of modesty, we tend to censure our clothing for sin — which can be an immature approach. Though the Bible commands modest dress (1 Timothy 2:9–10), it doesn’t include a list of modesty dos and don’ts. Were we to hold up an outfit and ask Matthew or Peter to tell us yay or nay, godly or sinful, we may get little response. “Thou shalt not wear . . .” is, well, nowhere.

As a result of Scripture’s supposed silence, we can begin to define “modest” as “not too immodest” — not too much like the world. That’s when the tricky questions really start firing: Are these shorts too short? Is this shirt too revealing? Are these pants too tight? And so we sift through summer clothing racks, hunting for items that won’t look too much like the way the world dresses in warm weather.

As such, we place modesty’s meaning (and expression) at the mercy of the masses, whose sense of “too far” only seem to inch further away. The tendency is not unique to our age. As early as the second century, church father Tertullian addressed the issue, in a work suitably called On Modesty:

The modesty of which we are now beginning to treat is by this time grown so obsolete, that it is not the abjuration [the rejection] but the moderation [the restraint] of the appetites which modesty is believed to be; and he is held to be chaste enough who has not been too chaste. But let the world’s modesty see to itself. (2)

So long as society sets our standard of dress, “modesty” simply means being less immodest than others. But “let the world’s modesty see to itself,” advises Tertullian. How might we? Is there a way to leave the house knowing not just that we tried our best to avoid worldliness, but that we actively aspired to godliness? Don’t we long for more than looking good without feeling too bad?

Perhaps the apostle Paul can assist us. Though the Bible is quiet on wardrobe particulars, it is loud on wisdom principles. One in particular from 1 Corinthians may help us to wade into the summer with truth and grace, rather than imprudence or stress.

‘Is It Helpful?’

Throughout 1 Corinthians, Paul tackles a similarly sensitive topic for first-century Christians: food. What can they eat, and what can’t they eat? The Corinthian believers want to know. (Sounds familiar!)

“In what ways does the desire to wear what we want when we want rule over us?”

Though Paul responds to this tension multiple times, we’ll focus on what he says in chapters 6 and 10. In both places, he begins by quoting a maxim the Corinthians themselves held: “All things are lawful” (1 Corinthians 6:12; 10:23). In other words: No food is unclean. Because in the new covenant, “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person” (Matthew 15:11). So, what can they eat? In theory, anything.

Even so, that’s not the end of his response. Upon declaring all foods clean, he adds, “. . . but not all things are helpful.” Eating this or that food isn’t inherently sinful — but that doesn’t make it helpful. “Not wrong” doesn’t spell “automatically good.” Could the same be said of our clothing?

God’s word outlaws no outfits, but that doesn’t mean every outfit “helps” — benefits, profits, serves, encourages — ourselves and others. So, while the questions “Is it wrong?” and “Is it too [blank]?” tend to flounder around, maybe we can begin to anchor our dress in another direction: Is it helpful? Following Paul’s lead, let’s consider the helpfulness of our clothing choices in two areas.

1. Is it helpful for my soul?

Paul first mentions lawful-yet-unhelpful matters in 1 Corinthians 6. There, he equates helpfulness with what is personally profitable: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything” (verse 12). In other words, we “help” our faith along only so far as we flee anything that seeks to dominate us — govern us, control us, dictate us — apart from God. What our hangers hold is no exception.

Do we fidget over how to appear expensive, or fit, or even perfectly unkempt? How much hold does an approving or affectionate glance have on our heart? In what ways does the desire to wear what we want when we want rule over us? If someone we respect and admire were to question our swimsuit choices, would we mutter to ourselves about “legalism,” or would we walk away from the conversation open to the notion? “Inward examination,” writes Kristyn Getty,

should not make us fearful. It is necessary as we seek to fix our eyes on Christ. We don’t keep the course of steadfast faith accidentally. It’s a costly path that requires diligence, repentance, and the Holy Spirit’s sanctifying work. (ESV Women’s Devotional Bible, 1551)

If we value Christ above everything, then we will gladly consider whether any one thing (even our favorite dress) is competing for our affection. And when we do, we’ll grow in godliness and increase in joy. Happy is the woman who has no reason to pass judgment on herself for the clothes she buys, for she knows that her purchases proceed from faith, not fashion (Romans 14:22–23).

2. Is it helpful for my neighbor?

But dressing “helpfully” reaches beyond what bolsters our own faith. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul expands the meaning to include what is loving toward others: “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up. Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor” (verses 23–24).

When it comes to our clothes, we have the same freedom as Paul’s first-century readers. Neither dietary laws nor dress codes bind new-covenant Christians, no matter the era. But also like the early church, we have the same responsibility to use that freedom helpfully. “Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13). A proper response to our freedom in Christ, explains John Piper, is not simply to assert our freedoms.

No, that’s not the way a Christian talks. We ask, “Will it be helpful? Will it be profitable? Will other people benefit from my enjoyment of this?” . . . That’s the principle of love.

With great freedom comes great love toward God and neighbor.

But how does that love dress on Monday mornings and Saturday nights, in church and at the pool? We must answer for ourselves. What is helpful for me (as a Coloradan wife and mother of little ones, with long-standing battles against pride and envy) may differ from you. Only let both of us answer the question “How might we dress modestly?” in a way that lovingly, sincerely seeks others’ good (1 Timothy 1:5).

For pews and grocery stores alike brim with people God loves, people for whom Christ died (John 3:16; 1 Corinthians 8:11). Given the astounding lengths to which the Godhead went to save them, might we be willing to adjust the length of our shorts?

“The principle of helpfulness enables us to be serious about our clothes without being legalistic about our clothes.”

Perhaps we have a friend sensitive to her size. More than likely we have sisters in Christ, whether teenage girls or peers, looking to us as models for modest apparel. Remember likewise our brothers, who may battle against lust. Though never responsible for others’ sin, we should seek not to provoke it unnecessarily (1 Corinthians 8:13). Maybe a new acquaintance, an unbeliever, learns that we’re Christian, and because we dress so differently, this person wonders aloud about the God we say we serve — not just with our lips, but with how we look too.

From Heart to Head to Toe

If we’ll let it, the principle of helpfulness enables us to be serious about our clothes without being legalistic about our clothes. Humbly we stand before the mirror, asking God to reveal to each of us, as women with different temptations and contexts, how to dress helpfully.

The more we prize God’s gaze above the world’s, the more we will take every outfit captive to obey him (2 Corinthians 10:5). The desire to honor him with our hearts can’t help but reach from head to toe.

Together, may we become so enthralled with pleasing and proclaiming God that we care more about “good works” than fitting into current fashion (1 Timothy 2:9–10). Sometimes, perhaps even often, the two can coexist. But when they cannot, may we happily decline to dress like the times for modesty’s sake — which is to say: for God’s glory, our joy, and others’ good. Seen this way, “How might we dress modestly?” sounds a lot less like a nagging question, and a lot more like an invitation.

Audio Transcript

Every once in a while, we talk about writing on the podcast. Several emails over the years have asked if you would coach aspiring writers, Pastor John. Obviously, many Christian writers gravitate to you as a master of the craft. That’s why, over the years, APJ episodes have covered the calling to write, how to write poems and write biographies, even down into the details of grammar and punctuation, on the no-nos of ghostwriting, and then (most popular of all) on productivity — how it is that you create so many books and sermons and articles and APJ episodes and all that, with advice for how all Christian creators can maximize their own output. All those topics have been well covered in the past, as you can see in my summary in the new APJ book on pages 411–16.

But we’ve never gotten down into the weeds of how to write a sentence. “Sentences change lives” — you’ve said that before on the podcast. But from your perspective, what makes a great, edifying sentence? How do you write and rewrite sentences like this? And what would be your five (or so) pieces of advice for crafting edifying prose, beyond all that we’ve already covered on the podcast — something relevant for book authors and for Christians who just want to send an edifying text message? What would you say?

I start with the conviction that our words, whether spoken or written, really matter. “Death and life are in the power of the tongue” (Proverbs 18:21). That’s powerful. “The mouth of the righteous is a fountain of life” (Proverbs 10:11). How many times have I prayed, “O God, for my children, for my wife, for my church, for my books, for my podcast, make my mouth a fountain of life.” Or as James says, the tongue is a fire that can set a whole forest ablaze with destructive power (James 3:5–6). So, I start there. This is serious. I take all my speech seriously and all my writing seriously.

And I thank God that he has spoken. He has used human language to communicate himself and to communicate how to communicate. So, when I ask, “What’s a good sentence?” I mean, “What does God have to say about a sentence?” and “Is it good in view of his word?”

Here are my eight marks of a good sentence.

1. True

A good sentence is true. It communicates what accords with reality; that is, it helps people know what is and what ought to be. This is because God himself “never lies” (Titus 1:2). He’s a “God of truth” (Isaiah 65:16). He has given us “the Spirit of truth” (John 16:13). Christians are people of truth. We speak and write true sentences.

2. Clear

A good sentence is clear. It does not indulge in deception or vagueness. It does not settle for undefined ambiguities that encourage people — like so many public figures encourage people — to believe contrary things while they affirm your sentence. One person reads and says, “Oh, it means this,” and the other says, “It means this,” and both of them have a good foothold because you’ve set it up that way. That’s not a Christian way to write.

Clarity stands in the service of truth. It seeks to help people get the clearest idea of what you believe and are trying to communicate. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:2, “We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God’s word, but by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone’s conscience in the sight of God.” That is a beautiful goal for every Christian writer and speaker.

And just a little qualification here: there is a place for intentional ambiguity at times. For example, if a four-year-old asks about some sexual scene in the Bible, a wise parent finds an appropriate circumlocution appropriate to the age, not for the sake of deception but for the sake of helpfulness.

“A true sentence says what accords with the facts, and an authentic sentence says what accords with your heart.”

And there are certain kinds of poetic effort and moments in communication, if you’re writing poems or just want to be poetic in your speech, where truth can actually be served by coming at a reality in a slanted way rather than a direct way, which is not intended to create confusion but to illuminate reality. A whole other thing we could talk about is the appropriate place of slant or planned double entendres or ambiguities. We want to help people toward right thinking and right feeling. And it might be that that kind of speech now and then will do that.

3. Authentic

A good sentence is authentic. The difference between a true sentence and an authentic sentence is that a true sentence says what accords with the facts, and an authentic sentence says what accords with your heart. (And of course, one sentence can do both, should do both.) We are inauthentic to give the impression with our sentences that we are something we aren’t. It’s dishonest; it’s insincere. And the Bible says that Christians are people of sincerity (2 Corinthians 2:17).

4. Thoughtful

A good sentence should be thoughtful. The opposite of thoughtful, as I’m using it, is glib, superficial, frivolous, trifling. Many people treat their language as nothing but clever, lighthearted banter. It fills up sound space. The Bible refers to such people as “empty talkers” (Titus 1:10).

And I don’t mean there’s no place for humor when I say thoughtful. Life is often humorous, inevitably humorous. You cannot walk through days and not see something that is laughable, both positively and negatively. And those situations can be served well with well-placed, thoughtful sentences that might cause a person to buckle over with belly laughter.

But what I’m pleading for is that the bread and butter of our communication have substance in it. That is, people benefit from hearing what we say; there’s some measure of thinking behind our sentences. That’s the goal.

5. Creative

A good sentence is creative. I don’t mean that everybody becomes a poet. I mean that we aspire over a lifetime to grow in our ability to select words and arrange words in fresh and striking ways that have the greatest impact for good on others. When Jesus referred to himself as a thief in the night (Matthew 24:43–44) — are you kidding me? Who would dare? Who would dare to do such a thing? That was risky, striking, creative, utterly memorable. Mark Twain said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is . . . the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.” That’s a good sentence, right? It not only is a good sentence; it captures the power of the right word at the right time.

“Abstractions and generalizations tend to be boring. Concrete language tends to be arresting.”

Part of being creative is using cadences that sound pleasing. And now I’m shifting gears from choosing the word to choosing the rhythm and the cadence. I once told an audience at our conference here that the title of our conference was “With Calvin in the Theater of God.” It was not “With John Calvin in the Theater of God” because the word “John” ruins the iambic-pentameter cadence. “With Calvin in the Theater of God.” You can’t stick “John” in there. It wrecks the sound.

And a lot of people think, Why in the world . . . ? No, no, no. Pastors, talkers, you should give thought to whether your sentences have cadences, rhythms that are pleasing to the ear. So, there are ten syllables, five beats in that sentence or that title, and it just wrecks it to put “John” in there. It doesn’t work. When you get a feel for cadences and what sounds pleasing, you don’t even have to think about it anymore. Over time, if you school yourself in trying to be thoughtful in your rhythms and cadences so that they sound pleasing, then it will become natural.

Part of being creative, again, is concreteness. Generalizations and abstractions are boring. They’re not as effective as particularities and specifics and concreteness. For example, say “peach”; say “Georgia peach” rather than “fruit.” Say “dog” rather than “animal,” “Dusty” rather than “dog.” Say “rain” rather than “weather.” Say “Neptune” rather than “planet.” Say “basketball” rather than “sports.” Say “bacon” rather than “breakfast.” Say “brown, woolen, pullover sweater” rather than “clothing.” Say “rusty socket wrench on the oily bench” rather than “tool over there in the corner.” Say “John and David” rather than “friends.”

Abstractions and generalizations tend to be boring. Concrete language tends to be arresting. When Paul says in Colossians 4:6, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt,” I take him to mean — at least partly — that our speech should not be bland and tasteless.

6. Well-Timed

A good sentence is well-timed. Proverbs 25:20: “Whoever sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, and like vinegar on soda.” That’s another good sentence. It’s just full of concrete language. Take off a coat on a cold day. Put vinegar on soda, and it goes sizzle, sizzle, sizzle — makes a little smoke. And even more specifically, Proverbs 15:23 says, “To make an apt answer is a joy to a man, and a word in season, how good it is!” So, timing really matters.

7. Clean

A good sentence is clean. The apostle Paul said, “Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place [for the Christian], but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Ephesians 5:4). Thankful hearts don’t speak or write dirty sentences. Our sentences do not have to be sinful in order to take sin seriously. There are powerful and creative ways to speak of the corruption and wickedness of the world without participating in it.

8. Loving to People, Glorifying to God

Finally, number eight — and I would add that this casts a net over all seven of the others — the aim of the good sentence is to love people and glorify God. “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). And I think that would mean, “Whether you eat or drink or write sentences, do all to the glory of God.” And in addition to that, Paul says, “Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Corinthians 16:14). We want people to be helped. We want to help people toward their eternal happiness, and we want to make God look great. That’s what good sentences are for.

That’s good. It seems like your poetry training also trained your ear for cadence in prose. Is that true?

I think it is, yes. And I think it’s good that everybody just has a little bit of exposure to that kind of language where the author, a poet, has given serious thought to the cadences. And a lot of modern poetry doesn’t work at that.

“The aim of the good sentence is to love people and glorify God.”

So, you’ve got to go back a few centuries to see how it’s done, because those guys from three hundred years ago, they didn’t do that because it was boring. Alexander Pope wrote the way he wrote in iambic tetrameter and these couplets — page after page, like hundreds of lines — because it was being eaten up. People read it. People don’t read poetry today, but they did in those days.

A lost art that helps us with prose.

I think so.

Why would anyone exert the time and energy required to read Jonathan Edwards’s Concerning the End for Which God Created the World? This may be the most difficult and challenging text you will ever read. But after the Bible, it may be the most important piece of literature ever written. It really promises to change everything for you.

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was a pastor, theologian, and philosopher in Colonial America. In 1755, he completed his dissertation after 35 years of development, which was then published posthumously in 1765. Looking back over the more than forty years since I first read it, I can say that this short book has profoundly and permanently affected me for good. As a result of reading End of Creation, I changed careers, earned a PhD, and took up teaching Edwards as a profession. You might wonder why this book upended my life (in the best sense possible). Because the God who Edwards showed me is breathtaking.

So, I believe the wisdom of Proverbs 2 applies to Edwards. When you read End of Creation, study it, “making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding [because] if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God” (Proverbs 2:2–5). With a pencil in your hand and prayers in your heart, pay close attention to what Edwards says. The work is worth it when you see the God he saw. Finally, bear in mind that no one has ever fully comprehended End of Creation his first time through.

Two Aims of the Essay

What makes this work so difficult? Edwards penned End of Creation with three goals in mind. Edwards’s first goal was to know God experientially because he saw that kind of knowledge described and promised in the Bible. As a pastor, this concern drove him to understand, explain, promote, guide, and defend a view of authentic Christian experience as a work of God. He connects that experience to God’s ultimate end in creation, and shows how God is ultimately motivated by his own “supreme self-regard.”

What does Edwards mean by “supreme self-regard”? God loves God with all his heart and soul and mind and strength. Far from making God supremely selfish, this self-regard flows from God’s intra-Trinitarian love. The Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father, through the Holy Spirit. The triune God of the Bible is eternally and fully satisfied, possessing in himself alone all existence, beauty, power, knowledge, truth, goodness, and happiness (not a lighthearted cheerfulness, but a deep fulfillment and complete well-being).

“The triune God of the Bible is eternally and fully satisfied.”

Grasping this truth makes a big difference in understanding Edwards’s first goal of showing that genuine Christian experience is a gracious and free work of God. God delights in his own fullness and shares that fullness with his people. That reality affects how we understand faith and fuels our motivation to seek to know God.

Edwards’s second goal was to undermine the influence of a destructive and contrary view of religious experience by refuting the views of God’s end and motivation it presupposed and promoted. Edwards demonstrates that God’s ultimate end in creation cannot be something God lacks, nor can it be more valuable to God than God’s initial state without creation. To state the issue succinctly: if God creates for an ultimate end, which by definition implies that the person acting does not now possess what he seeks, how can God be absolutely self-sufficient (needing nothing)? Edwards tackled this problem head-on, claiming in his finished work,

[I]t has been particularly shewn already, that God’s making himself his end, in the manner that has been spoken of, argues no dependence; but is consistent with absolute independence and self-sufficience. (God’s Passion for His Glory, 180)

If you can keep these goals in mind, the exercise required to grasp Edwards’s tight reasoning becomes significantly easier.

Why Not Begin with Scripture?

Edwards’s dissertation comprises an introduction and two chapters. In chapter 1, Edwards considers “what Reason teaches” using deductive arguments that build on the assumptions and concepts developed in the Introduction. To readers today, this may seem like a strange way to begin a book. However, the expression “what Reason teaches” signifies a mindset and a way of discovering truth and settling disputes that had swept through Europe and America by mid-eighteenth century.

Beginning around 1594 and ending in 1734, a process occurred that altered the entire background against which Christian theologians, pastors, and philosophers debated about what to believe and how to live. The struggle during this process was over what would serve as the final arbiter or authority in matters of faith. Would it be tradition and authority, personal inspiration, Scripture, or reason?

“The heart of God’s purpose in creation lies in the heart of God himself as Trinity.”

It’s safe to say that by the mid-eighteenth century, reason had become the dictator of truth. It’s crucial to appreciate how thorough and widespread this reliance of reason was in the mid-eighteenth century. Reason was the battleground where the wars were being waged, and so, to achieve his goals, Edwards adopted two parallel — and complementary — ways of arguing: (1) from what reason teaches and (2) from what Scripture teaches.

Edwards continues in chapter 2 with an exposition of relevant Scripture because he believed that God’s word is “the surest guide” on these matters. And while both methods converge on the same answers regarding the end for which God created the world, the method of Scripture followed in chapter 2 yields more truth — truth inaccessible to reason alone. Thus, while he begins his argument in the rationalist discourse of the age, Edwards culminates his argument with Scripture, demonstrating his unwavering commitment to the rule of faith. Edwards believed what he wrote about reason’s “dictates,” but he insists that what reason dictates on the matter is at best incomplete.

Why Would God Create Anything?

A fair interpretation of Edwards, therefore, requires us to trace the steps in his argument according to reason and understand the harmony between God’s self-sufficiency and his acting for ends. However, since we can’t trace the full argument here, I’ll just whet your appetite with where Edwards ends. We might summarize his argument like this:

God’s “original ultimate end” in creating and sustaining the world is God’s Holy Spirit indwelling the redeemed, thereby enabling and empowering their experience of God’s own knowledge, love, and joy, so that their words, deeds, and emotions redound to the praise of his glory.

In short, Edwards argues that God created to share his Trinitarian fullness with creatures.

Edwards insists, “That which God had primarily in view in creating” — namely, God’s ultimate end — “must be constantly kept in view, and have a governing influence in all God’s works, or with respect to everything he does towards his creatures” (God’s Passion, 134). If, as Edwards claims, God’s end in creation determines all of his works toward his creatures, then this dissertation is among his most important works (if not the most important). In End of Creation, we not only have the proverbial “Big Picture”; we have the biggest picture. It applies to everything.

The heart of God’s purpose in creation lies in the heart of God himself as Trinity. As the apostle John reveals, the Father loves the Son and the Son loves the Father (John 17:23–26). This love that characterizes the Trinity is what God “communicates” to the redeemed in sending them the promised Holy Spirit. Edwards delights in the fact that God’s inclination to create and sustain the world derives from the pleasure God takes in his “internal glory” — that is, God’s self-knowledge, holiness, and happiness — eternally increasing in “a society of created beings” (149). Thus, “God in seeking his glory, therein seeks the good of his creatures,” and “God in seeking their glory and happiness, seeks himself” (176).

Rewards of Climbing the Mountain

Over decades of teaching, I have had the privilege of walking through End of Creation with hundreds of students. We worked our way line by line through this most difficult work of philosophical and biblical theology.

After that arduous journey, some students have reported that now they grasp just how safe they are in Christ. “He is faithful, not for anything I do, but because of God’s faithfulness to himself.” Some have found a liberating sense of personal value. “I see now that I am a product of God’s creational, providential, and redeeming action. My identity is a reflection of the attributes of God that are involved in God’s works. I really honor him and accentuate his role by taking refuge in him to be for us as he promises to be in his names.”

Others have gained a new appreciation for nature, seeing that all of it reflects who God is, like a divine performance. As works of performance art, each instance of God’s works of creation, providence, and redemption is valuable and valued by God solely in virtue of the value of God’s attributes that are jointly responsible for their coming to be. They often report how this heightened awareness has brought them to reframe all of life’s ambitions and questions in terms of God’s purposes for them. Not every student is affected in these ways. Some students are provoked (even shocked) into fully grasping the present-tense reality that God is acting. Some love the fact; others, as we would expect, reject the idea altogether.

Yet, even with the occasional outliers, I’ve seen the positive effects over and over again. Through studying Edwards by the illuminating grace of the Holy Spirit, most thoughtful readers come to a new and deeper sense of God’s greatness and gladly join the eternal choir singing, “Worthy is the Lamb” (Revelation 5:12).

The Way of Allurement

Finally, reading Edwards is an exercise in opposites. On the one hand, every time I read End of Creation, I feel a new anticipation for fresh vistas onto the greatness and love of God. On the other hand, his writing style and rational arguments can feel like wading through wet concrete. At times, his language begins to sound as if he is saying the same thing over and over again. To follow each step in the path of his thought is relentlessly demanding. And yet, like no other book (besides the Bible), all the hard work is worth it when the God whom Edwards loved gives you a glimpse of the God whom Edwards saw.

Elsewhere Edwards charges us, “Endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement. We are to avoid being in the way of temptation with respect to our carnal appetites. But we ought to take all opportunities to lay ourselves in the way of enticement with respect to our gracious inclinations” (Sermon on Canticles 5:1).

Working your way carefully through Concerning the End for Which God Created the World is certainly one way of laying ourselves in the way of allurement.

One of the most impactful theological conversations I remember being a part of happened when I was in my early twenties as a Bible-college student in Southern California. Some friends and I had stayed up way too late talking, and at one point our conversation turned toward the topic of heaven. I can’t remember what precise words we said, but I can recall the feeling. As we pondered the glories of the eschaton together, we whipped ourselves up into a flurry of joy, wonder, and longing.

Happier Visions of Heaven

At the time, I recall being captivated by the profound earthiness of the new creation. Like many, while growing up I had somehow absorbed the idea that the final promise of the afterlife was to depart from the real, physical world — the world of food and games and laughter and adventure — to ascend to an ethereal, floaty cloud-place, populated by chubby cherubs with harps. (And yes, I secretly dreaded going to heaven because of how boring such a place promised to be.)

By the time of that late-night conversation, I had thankfully been disabused of that conception. The promise of the afterlife, I had come to learn, was not the obliteration of all things God had previously declared good, but rather their restoration. Their transfiguration. Their glorification. It was not that the material would be swallowed up by the immaterial — as if we were ridding our souls of our flesh and bones — but rather that the mortal would be swallowed by immortal life (2 Corinthians 5:4).

“What makes heaven heaven is not merely that we will experience Earth 2.0, but rather that we will see God.”

I had come to see that everything good in this life would see its heightened and imperishable fulfillment in the next. The promise of the eschaton is not the intermediate state, but rather the resurrection — and not just our resurrection as humans, but the resurrection of the cosmos (Romans 8:18–25; Revelation 21:1–22:5). So, my friends and I let our imaginations loose as we wondered about how the sensations of the physical world we so enjoy now might be magnified and enriched in the age to come. And our blur of excited words was worship.

What I have since come to discover, however, is that even these aspects of the new creation are not final. Those heavenly joys my friends and I fantasized about were, like their present earthly corollaries, the joyous means to the greatest end: the vision of God himself. Theologians call this the beatific vision (or the blessed or happy vision). What makes heaven heaven, in other words, is not merely that we will experience Earth 2.0, but rather that we will see God. Now, if it seems like I am backtracking what I just affirmed and am once again trading an earthy vision of the eschaton for an ethereal one, let me assure you I am not.

Beckoned Through Beauty

The childhood conception of heaven I gladly shed in my early twenties was one of reality diminished. But the beatific vision promises something infinitely more enriched than anything we experience here. It is the ultimate end of our every joyous encounter with goodness, truth, and beauty.

The desire that earthly beauty awakens, for example, is not intended to terminate in the object that awakened the desire. This is why every delight that comes with the experience of beauty is accompanied by a stab of longing for more. When I am struck by the beauty and magnitude of the Grand Canyon at sunset, the longing that such a sight elicits is not satisfied by the visual encounter itself. The greater the enjoyment, the greater the longing. All this is by design: the earthly beauty that arouses our desire beckons us through and beyond to something greater. Earthly beauty constantly calls us not to itself, but through itself to its final source: the God of all Beauty.

This truth is often missed as the context for C.S. Lewis’s memorable line: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world” (Mere Christianity, 136–37). In saying this, Lewis does not merely affirm that every human has a longing for God that can only finally be satisfied in the age to come. He is saying at least that much, but the immediate context shows that he goes a step further to say that all our longings in this life serve to arouse a deeper longing for enjoyment of God. He writes,

If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. (137)

The beatific vision — or the happy vision — is beatific because it is the vision of the all-blessed God. The one who is infinitely happy in himself begraces us with a participation in his own blessedness. Since the triune God is the plentitude of life and light and love — he ever burns in the white-hot fire of infinite pleasure as Father, Son, and Spirit — the blessing of eternal life is our coming to experience by grace what God is by nature: blessed. And this infinite blessedness is signaled to and previewed through all our earthly joys. God is, through all of them, beckoning us to come “further up and further in.”

Our Unnamed Ache

You are beginning to see now, I trust, that even while the doctrine of “the beatific vision” may sound exotic and alien to your ears, you have already been primed to receive it. It is true that the doctrine has fallen into obscurity in evangelical circles (though it enjoyed near-universal centrality for the majority of Christian history). Even still, the desire for the beatific vision is awakened by all manner of well-known evangelical convictions.

“Earthly beauty constantly calls us not to itself, but through itself to its final source: the God of all Beauty.”

The desire to experience the beatific vision is the deepest longing of the Christian Hedonist, who has been taught by John Piper that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” It is the longing provoked by every immersed reader of the Narnia books who yearns — along with the Pevensies and their comrades in The Last Battle — to go “further up and further in” to Aslan’s country. It is the longing Jonathan Edwards awakens when he opines about heaven as “a world of love.” It is the deep longing of those who have come to pray with Augustine, “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee” (Confessions, 1.1.5).

We all have been aching for the beatific vision, whether we had language to articulate this desire as such or not.

Where Every Desire Leads

The promise of the beatific vision is that none of our desires aroused in this life is ultimately for naught. None of them is wasted! Even our sinful desires are perversions of God’s good creation. He made us with certain faculties in our souls for longing, and this soulish thirst — even where it has been desecrated by the muddy cisterns of sin (Jeremiah 2:12–13) — is never intended to be utterly extinguished; it is designed to be satiated by God himself. This is why we can never be finally satisfied by anything in this life.

The soul’s cravings are infinitely insatiable because their object is itself infinite. God will never cease to be infinite, and we will never cease to be finite. Therefore, our enjoyment of God will, in the beatific vision, expand perpetually. We will never grow tired of delighting in God, any more than we will grow tired of delighting in anything, for earthly delights are summed up, purified, and perfected in our delight of God.

Every creaturely desire finds its final satiation in this happy vision of God. All the joys we experience in this life, which are ever tinged with the sting of disappointment, are designed to awaken a hunger that will be ultimately satisfied in God. But this state of rest in the happy vision of God — this state of eschatological Sabbath repose — will not be static thanks to God’s infinity and our finitude.

Let me explain. Sometimes we are tempted to lament our finitude, as if our creaturely limitations were themselves a deficiency. But God made us finite on purpose, and in the beatific vision, our finitude becomes a means of joy. Because God is infinitely delightful, and because our delight of him is finite, we can be assured that the beatific vision is a state of perpetual expansion. As we behold God, our joy in him full, our capacity for sight and joy will expand, and our satisfaction of beholding and enjoying him will also expand. We will never grow tired or become disappointed or bored. Our longing will increase in perfect proportion to our satisfaction, so that every “happiest” moment will be topped by the next “happier” one forever.

All roads of desire lead here, to the blessed hope of seeing God. When we become truly convinced of this fact, we pray sincerely with David, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4). There are, of course, many questions left unanswered about the beatific vision. But worshipful longing rushes in where intellectual certainty fears to tread. Amen, may it be.

Audio Transcript

Yesterday, in our Navigators Bible Reading Plan, we read Psalm 90 together. Or maybe you’re catching up with the reading still. That’s fine. No problem there. When you get to it, you’ll see why Psalm 90 is the special, much-beloved psalm that you, Pastor John, have referenced in thirty different episodes of this podcast already to answer all sorts of listener questions. Psalm 90 is rich. Sometimes you’ll focus your attention on verses 12 or 17. As you approach eighty years old, verse 10 looms more and more on your mind.

But no verse in Psalm 90 gets more mentions from you than verse 14. And that’s just it. It only gets mentions from you — brief mentions — usually simply listed in the texts you string together in a prayer you call I.O.U.S. (an acrostic), a one-minute prayer that you pray before you read the Bible in the morning. You’ve told us about that prayer in several episodes, which you can see in that new APJ book, if you have that. On pages 16 and 17, I put those episodes together on that I.O.U.S. acrostic.

So, you often mention but rarely dwell on Psalm 90:14: “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” For Christian Hedonists dedicated to the daily discipline of seeking our joy in God, this text is so huge. So, draw out ten minutes of insights from what you see in this text alone about our daily desire for God.

“Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” (Psalm 90:14). There are few things, Tony, that I love to do more than to take a Bible verse like this, a word from God — and I want to underline that: this is a word from God — and then squeeze it like a sponge that has been dipped in the river of God’s delights, and see how many cups I can fill. That’s what I love to do. That’s my life.

Sometimes, a sponge is so big and so squishy with glorious truth that you have to squeeze one end and hold that and then squeeze another end and hold that. So, I’m going to squeeze this verse four times.

“Satisfy us.” I’m going to squeeze that.
“In the morning.” I’m going to squeeze that.
“With your steadfast love.”
“That we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”

So, that’s the plan.

‘Satisfy Us’

“Satisfy us.” Squeeze that end. This is a God-inspired prayer to God. That’s what the Psalms are. This means that it is God’s will for his children, for us, to experience satisfaction. It is God’s will that Christians live with hearts that are deeply content and satisfied. He does not will that our hearts be continually restless or fearful or joyless.

“It is God’s will that Christians live with hearts that are deeply content and satisfied.”

God’s will for us is that we be able to say with the apostle Paul, with complete authenticity, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content” (Philippians 4:11) — that is, to be satisfied, to enjoy peace, contentment, confidence, gladness, joy. And notice that he’s not equating satisfaction with pleasant circumstances. They may be pleasant, and they may be devastating. God’s will is that we be satisfied. The rest of this psalm is pretty devastating.

And don’t miss that this is a prayer, which means it’s a battle. If it came naturally, we would not need to cry out for satisfaction. This is a gift from God. It’s not something we can make happen with food or caffeine or drugs or sex or wealth or health or friendships or family.

‘In the Morning’

So, the question, then, is, Well, what kind of satisfaction is it? What’s the actual source of the satisfaction? And before I tackle that — because he does answer that — he says one other thing first. So, number two, squeeze the sponge again: “in the morning.” “Satisfy us in the morning.” Why does he say that — “in the morning”? Because the morning is when we face the day.

According to this psalm, our days are filled with toil and trouble (Psalm 90:10). We’re like grass that is renewed in the morning and then in the evening fades away (Psalm 90:5–6). We are about to walk into a new day and experience the consequences of sin in this world, the limits of our own finiteness, the opposition of evil people, the futility of the fallen world system. That’s what the day is going to bring as we get out of bed and go to our kneeling bench and cry out to God.

So, what do we cry out for in the morning, facing that kind of day? We cry out in the face of sin and finiteness and opposition and futility. We cry out for satisfaction. We don’t expect all the circumstances to change; it’s just the fallen world we live in. We won’t be of any good to anybody — as George Müller taught us — if we all share in the moaning and the groaning of this sinful and broken world. What good is it to add to the world more of our own moaning and groaning?

God’s will is that we’d be satisfied in the face of all the trouble every new day will bring, which now brings us to the third squeezing of the sponge.

‘With Your Steadfast Love’

Where does the satisfaction come from amidst all this trouble? And the answer given is this: “with your steadfast love.” “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love.”

So, when you get up in the morning, and you see before you a day of trouble and problems — problems upon problems that you cannot solve — and you feel weak and sick, and the things you thought were going to bring you some happiness have all crumbled, where do you look for satisfaction?

And Moses’s (this is a psalm of Moses, by the way) answer was, “I look to the love of God for me.” Isn’t that amazing? “God loves me,” Moses says. “God chose me before the foundation of the world,” we Christians say, “to be his treasured possession. God gave me existence. God sent his Son and paid for the failures that I’ve committed and offenses against him. God opened my eyes to see the worth and greatness and beauty of Christ. God promises to be my treasure. God promises to make everything, including all my troubles and problems, work together for my eternal joy. God loves me.”

That’s the source of his satisfaction: his steadfast love. And we pray for the ability to taste it. That’s what he’s asking. “Satisfy me in that. Help me enjoy that. Help me be satisfied in that every morning,” because his mercies are new every morning.

‘That We May Rejoice’

And now comes the fourth part of the sponge to squeeze — namely, “that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.” “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.”

“God’s will is that we’d be satisfied in the face of all the trouble every new day will bring.”

So, with the words rejoice and be glad, he underlines the emotional richness of the word satisfaction. God is telling us to ask him to make us satisfied, to make us happy, to make us glad, to make us rejoice no matter what. And the amazing thing is that he says “all our days” — not just sunny days, happy days, but all our days. The reason it’s amazing is because, in the first thirteen verses of this psalm, our days are being swept away like a flood. We are returning to the dust. We are fading and withering like grass. We pass away like a sigh. All our days are full of toil and trouble. Those are words from this very psalm.

And yet now Moses prays, “God, do your amazing, internal, miracle work of satisfying us with your love, so that in all those days — all those terrible days, including the very last one — short or long, whether the days last a long time or whether they get blown away overnight, we might rejoice and be glad.”

Psalm 90:14 is a glorious word of God to his children in the midst of their troubles in this real world. And I pray that you and I, Tony, and all of our listeners would take hold of it and wring out of it every cup of blessing that we need.

On February 23, 1856, Charles H. Spurgeon found a spare moment to write to a friend about the remarkable revival that was happening under his preaching. He had been in London for less than two years, and in that short time, his popularity had grown such that no building could hold the thousands coming to hear him. England had not seen the likes of Spurgeon since the days of Wesley and Whitefield. “Everywhere, at all hours, places are crammed to the doors. The devil is wide awake, but so, too, is the Master.”

With this growing popularity, the invitations to preach were pouring in. Just that week, Spurgeon had already preached eleven times. His letter concluded with a list of the fourteen preaching engagements he had the following week, preaching two to three times a day (Autobiography, 2:101–2). He would maintain this preaching pace for the first fifteen years of his ministry, and even as poor health began to limit his activity, Spurgeon still regularly preached four times a week in his own church, and usually two or three more times in other venues.

How did he do it? Amid pastoring a growing church, preparing sermons for publication, mentoring pastoral students, caring for his family, and more, how did he find time to prepare so many sermons? For Spurgeon, an important key was learning to deliver his sermons extemporaneously.

What Is Extemporaneous Preaching?

Spurgeon once delivered a lecture to his students on extemporaneous speaking, summarizing his approach on sermon delivery (“The Faculty of Impromptu Speech” in Lectures to My Students). He divided extemporaneous speaking into two categories: “speech impromptu” and extemporaneous sermon delivery.

‘Speech Impromptu’

The first is what he called “speech impromptu,” that is, preaching “without special preparation, without notes or immediate forethought” (227). His general rule was that no ministry should be made up primarily of this kind of preaching. Quakers or Plymouth Brethren preachers had the distinctive practice of not preparing and simply waiting for the Spirit to provide them a sermon. But Spurgeon believed such sermons tended to be repetitive and often void of solid teaching. “Churches are not to be held together except by an instructive ministry; a mere filling up of time with oratory will not suffice” (227).

“The ability to speak clearly and compellingly without preparation can be a tremendous gift to the church.”

At the same time, many unforeseen opportunities to speak arise in ministry: A church member speaks divisively at a meeting, and you, as the pastor, need to respond. A public meeting goes off course with unhelpful comments, and you are burdened to “counteract the mischief, and lead the assembly into a more profitable line of thought” (234). At a funeral, you are unexpectedly invited to say a few words. In all these events, the ability to speak clearly and compellingly without preparation can be a tremendous gift to the church.

Extemporaneous Sermon Delivery

The second kind of speaking is extemporaneous sermon delivery, where “the words are extemporal, as I think they always should be, but the thoughts are the result of research and study” (230). This was Spurgeon’s preferred preaching method. Spurgeon’s prodigious study habits are evident in his library, much of which resides today at the Spurgeon Library in Kansas City, Missouri. These six thousand volumes (half of his original library) contain works of theology, biblical studies, preaching, church history, poetry, fiction, classics, and much more. They give ample evidence of his wide and thoughtful study. Of course, his most important study was in the Bible, and his many Bibles reveal not only discipline but also prayerful meditation.

Beyond his reading, Spurgeon was always on the lookout for illustrations, anecdotes, helpful sayings, and anything else that could be used in a sermon. From his observations on the train to the latest headline in the newspaper to a bird on his windowsill, everything around him provided fresh insight into the truths of God’s word, and he attentively stored them for future use.

Of course, Spurgeon also dedicated time to prepare sermons. Throughout the week, he was constantly jotting down potential sermon outlines (he called them “skeletons”) out of the overflow of his Bible study and meditation. He spent the most time on his Sunday-morning sermons, devoting his Saturday evenings to preparation. A few hours on Sunday afternoons were spent preparing his Sunday-evening sermons, which tended to complement the morning sermon. For Monday and Thursday-night meetings, Spurgeon usually preached a more devotional sermon based on the things he found himself meditating on that week.

Fruit of Vast Labor

Both forms of extemporaneous speaking require a significant amount of hard work and training. Spurgeon warned students who saw this ability as an excuse for laziness:

Did we hear a single heart whisper, “I wish I had it, for then I should have no need to study so arduously”? Ah! Then you must not have it, you are unworthy of the boon, and unfit to be trusted with it. If you seek this gift as a pillow for an idle head, you will be much mistaken; for the possession of this noble power will involve you in a vast amount of labor in order to increase and even to retain it. (233)

“Step into the pulpit with less reliance on your notes and more prayerful dependence on the Spirit.”

Far from enabling laziness, cultivating this skill will take more work than simply writing a manuscript. So why go through that work? Spurgeon believed extemporaneous delivery enables preachers to connect with their hearers far more than a read or memorized sermon ever could. Preaching extemporaneously enables the preacher to engage the hearer not only with his mouth but with his eyes and heart. This is why people in many other professions work at this skill. From politicians to freestyle rappers, they can develop an impressive ability to speak extemporaneously with eloquence and power.

So, why not the Christian preacher?

Growing in Extemporaneous Speaking

To be sure, extemporaneous speaking, and especially impromptu speaking, is a skill that not every preacher will be able to develop. But Spurgeon encouraged all his students to try. As an exercise, he would sometimes assign his students a topic for a speech on the spot. On one occasion, he called a student to speak on Zacchaeus. The student stood up and said, “Zacchaeus was little of stature; so am I. Zacchaeus was up a tree; so am I. Zacchaeus came down; so will I.” He sat back down to the applause of all his classmates and teacher (A Pictorial Biography of C.H. Spurgeon, 88). This student showed some potential!

What advice would Spurgeon have for developing this ability?

1. Study and prepare.

“You will not be able to extemporize good thinking unless you have been in the habit of thinking and feeding your mind with abundant and nourishing food” (236). Unless you have fed your mind with abundant study and have worked hard to meditate on what you have read, you will have little worthwhile to say. In one sense, extemporaneous preaching requires more work, not less, than written manuscript sermons, because rather than preparing a manuscript, the preacher must prepare himself.

For Spurgeon, one evidence of his study is that his sermons always had an outline, often with points and subpoints. Rather than just rambling through a text, he always organized his thoughts and prepared his sermon in a cohesive and clear structure.

2. Speak out of your own spiritual experience.

“Accustom yourselves to heavenly meditations, search the Scriptures, delight yourselves in the law of the Lord, and you need not fear to speak of things which you have tasted and handled of the good word of God” (236). Don’t feel the need to speak beyond what you have personally come to know. But insofar as the Spirit has revealed wonderful things in his word to you, speak out of your own experience and meditation. Share what has encouraged you and how you have applied these truths in your own life.

3. Select familiar topics.

This was Spurgeon’s practice, especially when it came to his Monday-night devotionals. “When standing up on such occasions, one’s mind makes a review, and inquires, ‘What subject has already taken up my thought during the day? What have I met with in my reading during the past week? What is most laid upon my heart at this hour? What is suggested by the hymns or the prayers?’” (238). Rather than working from a blank slate, speak on topics that have already occupied your thoughts or are suggested by your context.

4. Learn how language works.

Extemporaneous speakers don’t have the benefit of editing their sermons. So you must master the language from the beginning. “Like a workman he becomes familiar with his tools, and handles them as every day companions” (241). Spurgeon found it especially helpful to translate Latin classics, forcing him to understand how the English language works and how to use it effectively. Whatever you do, seek to master grammar, composition, and all those skills from your grade-school language class.

5. Practice in private.

Rather than waiting until you’re unexpectedly called upon, begin practicing in private, even if it means preaching to your chairs and bookshelves. Better yet, gather other aspiring preachers and practice with one another. Spurgeon would often speak out loud in his private study. “I find it very helpful to be able, in private devotion, to pray with my voice; reading aloud is more beneficial to me than the silent process; and when I am mentally working out a sermon, it is a relief to me to speak to myself as the thoughts flow forth” (242).

6. Cultivate dependence on the Spirit.

Public speaking can be terrifying, and even more so without a manuscript. How does the preacher not give way to fear and anxiety? Only by depending on God. “Everything depends upon your being cool and unflurried. Forebodings of failure, and fear of man, will ruin you. Go on, trusting in God, and all will be well” (243). This doesn’t mean we can count on the Spirit’s help if we’ve been lazy. But if we have studied, prepared, and prayed, then we can trust the Spirit to be with us as we seek to serve God’s people.

From Page to People

The aim here is not merely to develop a skill. Our task as preachers is more than simply to become skilled rhetoricians. Rather, the aim is to equip ourselves to best edify the church. So, whether you preach from a simple outline, a full manuscript, or somewhere in between, all of us can improve our delivery and our ability to connect better with our hearers. This is where Spurgeon’s challenge applies. Step into the pulpit with less reliance on your notes and more prayerful dependence on the Spirit. Work on speaking less from your manuscript and more from your heart. And keep your eyes less on the page and more on your people.

The best way to grow is by doing. Your first attempts may seem feeble, but who knows? God can use even your imperfect efforts to accomplish his powerful work. So, keep working at it. Look for opportunities to speak of Christ. Find other preachers to help you. And as Spurgeon told his students, “You must continually practice extemporizing, and if to gain suitable opportunities you should frequently speak the word in cottages, in the school-rooms of our hamlets, or to two or three by the wayside, your profiting shall be known unto all men” (247).

What is the point of suffering in obscurity?

That question haunted me for years. I wondered if there was any purpose to the days, months, and even decades of pain that no one witnessed. My suffering wasn’t neat and tidy, with a definite beginning, a short duration, and a clear purpose. It dragged on till I was tempted to give up hope and to rage against my circumstances. I questioned whether my faithfulness was pointless. I assumed my private response to suffering was ultimately inconsequential.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

“Our suffering is, in fact, never private, because everything we do and say is being watched by the unseen world.”

I’ve since learned that, instead of being insignificant, our private suffering carries massive significance, with far-reaching, eternal consequences. Our suffering is, in fact, never private, because everything we do and say is being watched by the unseen world, a world of angels and demons, of powers and principalities, of a great cloud of witnesses and our triune God himself. While this may sound unnerving to some, knowing we’re surrounded by all these unseen spectators has inspired me to press on through my own pain.

The Watching (Unseen) World

I may feel like no one sees or knows what I’m going through, but in reality, we are all on a giant battleground, where angels and demons are craning their necks to see what they can learn about God through us. They are watching to see how God helps us, how his presence dispels our fears, and how he inspires our worship. Our lives are on full display. This isn’t sci-fi fantasy or some reassuring myth designed to ease our pain and loneliness. No, the stunning truth that we are constantly being watched is firmly grounded in Scripture.

We know we’re surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1), which includes “watchers,” heavenly beings, who see what is happening on earth (Daniel 4:13, 17). Satan is also watching us, accusing us before God (Zechariah 3:1; Revelation 12:10), as he did Job (Job 1:6–12), while his fallen angels, “the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places,” carry out his schemes (Ephesians 6:12). Satan wants us to doubt God’s goodness and to believe that God’s value is tied to the material blessings he gives. So, when we bless God in the midst of trial, we are showing Satan and his demons the greatness and worth of the God they rejected.

Many of the heavenly beings are angels who watch us closely, and God sends them in response to our prayers (Daniel 9:21–23), often encircling us in a protection we cannot see (2 Kings 6:17; Psalm 34:7). They rejoice when sinners repent (Luke 15:10) and peer intently into our lives to understand the mysteries of God (1 Peter 1:12).

I first heard about the unseen world’s attention from John Piper when he unpacked the book of Job and highlighted how Job’s faithful response demonstrated the value of God to the heavenly realms. I saw that my response to suffering mattered — not just for me, but because a watching world (a world that I can neither see nor hear) was waiting to see how I would respond to trials. My life is for God’s glory, and when I find contentment in God rather than in his gifts, I am spotlighting God’s worth to an immense, invisible audience. And that spotlight shines even brighter when I’m racked with pain, or too exhausted to move, or feeling enveloped by a deadening numbness and still choose to praise God.

Displaying Wisdom to the Heavens

Ephesians 3:10 beautifully underscores this truth. God’s grace was given to Paul to preach the riches of Christ and the mystery of the gospel “so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” This means that through the church, through you and me, God’s wisdom is made known to the heavenly realms. The angels and demons learn about God through watching us respond to affliction.

Charles Spurgeon gives us a stirring picture of how the angels are learning through us:

As every day brings to us our daily bread, so every day brings to heaven its daily theme of wonder, and the angels receive fresh stores of knowledge from the ever-new experience of the people of God. They lean from the battlements of heaven today to gaze on you, ye tried believers; they look into your furnace as did the King of Babylon, and they see the fourth man with you like unto the Son of God. They track you, O ye children of Israel in the wilderness; they see the places of your encampment and the land to which you are hastening; and as they mark the fiery cloudy pillar that conducts you and the angel of God’s house that leads the van and brings up the rear, they discover in every step of the way the wonderful wisdom of God. (“Another and a Nobler Exhibition”)

As the unseen world watches us, they see God’s grace sustain us, his power deliver us, and his comfort encourage us. They see us bless God in sickness and in health, and they witness God’s manifold wisdom as he uses everything in our lives for good. With all these watchers, our faithfulness has a cosmic impact. We shake the universe by choosing to bless God in the midst of trial, showing that God really is our treasure, even now, and that he’s worthy of worship.

We Never Suffer Alone

Joni Eareckson Tada demonstrates this reality better than anyone I know. She once said to me in an interview, “I think about Ephesians 3:10 when I’m in pain at night, and I remember a great many somebodies are watching. They are observing me. I want my life to be the blackboard upon which God chalks these incredible lessons about himself. I don’t want to do anything to defame God or make him look untrustworthy.”

At the True Woman 2010 conference, she reiterated that idea, saying, “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been able to press on because I know my life is on display. We don’t suffer for nothing, and we never suffer alone. . . . My response to hardship is never isolated. It is not true that no one cares or notices. The stakes are high, and God’s reputation is on the line. It’s all for God’s glory.”

As Joni reminds us, every day we can choose to show the surpassing value of Christ to the unseen watching world. We can glorify God when we are unfairly accused and choose to respond with grace. When we are worried about a loved one and choose not to fear. When we are racked with physical or emotional pain and choose to praise God through our tears. These choices all matter, because a heavenly host is watching.

Your Suffering Really Matters

While we have the honor of proclaiming the greatness of our God to the universe, sometimes we feel too broken or weak to care. Suffering has worn us down, and we need the comfort of Christ’s love, knowing he has engraved our name on the palms of his nail-scarred hands (Isaiah 49:16). He is tenderly watching over us.

“The angels and demons learn about God through watching us respond to affliction.”

Jesus knows when we sit and when we rise, knows our every thought and every word even before we speak it (Psalm 139:1–4). He sees our silent suffering, is drawing near to us in it, and is ever interceding for us (Romans 8:34). He is praying for us to persevere through the pain, making sure our faith will not fail. He is with us always (Matthew 28:20), and as we are faithful unto death, we may see Jesus standing in heaven to welcome us (Acts 7:55).

In heaven, we will receive a reward for our faithfulness. A reward tied to what we’ve endured, since we are assured our suffering on earth is producing something, preparing for us an unimaginable weight of glory that we will one day experience (2 Corinthians 4:17).

So, don’t believe the lie that your suffering doesn’t matter, that no one is watching, and that there’s no point to your faithfulness. While it may seem like you’re suffering alone in a dark room, you’re actually on an enormous stage with innumerable eyewitnesses. And the stakes are higher than you think. So press on. Fight with joy. Remain faithful. Our lives are on display.

On my desk sits a book with a dark image on its cover: a Christian soldier stands alone, surrounded by spiritual enemies. Seven arrows and a spear aim at his heart; death and the devil draw close. The soldier has some armor and a shield, but he still looks desperate — outmatched, outmanned, and utterly aware of it. He folds his hands and looks to heaven.

As a portrayal of the Christian’s spiritual warfare, the image holds some merit. We live in “the evil day” (Ephesians 6:13). Lies fly toward us like invisible arrows as we engage “the prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). We often feel besieged and beleaguered, tempted and tossed, pushed down and kept down. O Lord, we cry, deliver us.

If we imagine, however, the saints of Christ always defending, and never advancing, our idea of spiritual warfare needs a sharper blade. As Richard Lovelace writes, “In folk religion the posture of the Christian toward fallen angels is defensive; in Scripture the church is on the offensive, and the blows it receives from Satan come from a retreating enemy” (Dynamics of Spiritual Life, 136).

“We are, first and foremost, not a church attacked, but a church attacking.”

Our Lord Jesus did not commission his disciples to hunker down and protect themselves, but to launch the world’s most epic offensive (Matthew 28:19–20). We are, first and foremost, not a church attacked, but a church attacking. And so, among the spiritual weapons Paul hands believers in Ephesians 6:12–18, we find not only “the sword of the Spirit,” but also “as shoes for your feet . . . the readiness given by the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6:15, 17).

Peace in our hearts, gospel on our lips, we are messengers of the triumphant Christ, the tide of war irreversibly on our side.

The Soldier’s Shoes

Some uncertainty surrounds the Christian soldier’s shoes in Ephesians 6:15. In Roman warfare (from which Paul seems to have drawn some of his imagery), a soldier’s shoes helped him to stand firmly under attack — and in context, Paul calls Christians to “stand” three times (Ephesians 6:11, 13–14). So maybe “the readiness given by the gospel of peace” means our readiness to stand immovable in the true gospel rather than being “tossed to and fro . . . by every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:14).

On the other hand, Paul’s language here bears a striking resemblance to the prophet Isaiah’s description of the happy gospel messenger: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness!” (Isaiah 52:7). Iain Duguid notes that the words feet, good news, and peace appear closely together only three times in Scripture: Isaiah 52:7, Nahum 1:15 (an echo of the Isaiah text), and Ephesians 6:15. These shoes, then, seem made for more than standing firm: they’re made for marching.

Notice also the fury of the devil’s attacks in Ephesians 6. In this battle, flaming darts fly, swords maim, and helmets get tested. Only “the whole armor of God” will guard us (Ephesians 6:13). Consider, however: Upon what kind of church is the devil likely to launch such a full-throttled assault? Upon a calm and quiet church? Upon a church that keeps to its own business? Upon a church that shares the gospel only on Sundays and in small group?

Perhaps. The devil hates faith in Christ wherever he finds it. But his real dread is an advancing church. The feet he hates most are marching feet, tramping feet, feet whose forward steps thunder his coming doom (Romans 16:20).

“Wherever they go, Christian soldiers are willing, eager, ready to talk about Jesus.”

Just as Pharaoh didn’t mind the Israelites until they multiplied, the devil may not mind silent churches all that much. But he will unleash his powers to keep the front line from advancing, to keep the church of Christ from placing one more foot on his domain of darkness. He will bend back his bow against any man or woman who embraces Paul’s ambition: “[Pray] for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly” (Ephesians 6:19).

Evangelistic Misconceptions

Paul’s description of the church’s evangelistic task corrects some common misconceptions.

First, Paul hands this armor to the whole church, not just its pastors and evangelists. Yes, the risen Christ has given “evangelists” to the church (Ephesians 4:11), those wonderfully restless saints who itch to speak of Jesus and seem to do so effortlessly. But Jesus gave such evangelists “to equip the saints for the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:12), a work that includes speaking “the gospel of peace” (Ephesians 6:15). Some Christians are formal, gifted evangelists; every Christian is a messenger.

Second, Paul has in mind proactive, not merely reactive, evangelism. Christians who follow Jesus faithfully may indeed attract notice and even questions, and our gospel shoes make us ready for such moments (1 Peter 3:15). But the feet of God’s messengers are “beautiful” precisely because they “bring good news” (Isaiah 52:7), not because they offer it when asked. Such shoes send us to people and places we never would have approached otherwise. They spur us to cross oceans or cross streets, strike up words with strangers and ask bold questions, invite over neighbors no one else would.

Third, faithful evangelism relies far more on will and desire than it does on methods. No doubt, methods can be helpful in evangelism. But methods cannot create a desire to share Christ where it doesn’t already exist. So, in Ephesians 6:15, Paul fastens upon the Christian soldier’s readiness: “As shoes for your feet . . . put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.” Wherever they go, Christian soldiers are willing, eager, ready to talk about Jesus.

With Christ Our Captain

Perhaps, like me, you need help putting on these shoes. I can think of two recent situations where I was not ready and missed a wide-open opportunity to speak a word about Jesus. On many days, I find myself far more ready to work, rest, read, play, eat, or even do chores than to say “Jesus” to a friend or neighbor. How, then, might we become more ready to speak the gospel of peace?

“Every faithful word you speak has the authority of the King behind it. Every hill you see will one day wave his flag.”

In some ways, simply meditating on that word readiness might begin to shape our daily prayers and plans. Ready Christians, or Christians who want to be ready, have a habit of praying, “Lord, give me opportunities to speak of you today — and give me the courage to take them.” They also have a habit of putting themselves in places and among people where opportunities are likely to arise.

But the most stirring thoughts come from remembering the kind of spiritual battle we’re fighting — and what Captain we follow.

He Came and Conquered

Consider, first, the Captain you follow. Unlike some, he does not issue commands from the back of his army. Nor does he hide himself among his troops, like some Ahab wearing another’s robes (1 Kings 22:30). No, before he ever handed us shoes and called us to go, “he came” (Ephesians 2:17). He came and preached peace. He came and made peace. He came and became our peace (Ephesians 2:14–15, 17). He rode not just at the head of the army, but alone, utterly alone — our solitary Victor, high and lifted up.

And now, his every call comes with a promise: “Behold, I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20). The shoes he hands us are an invitation to run in his beautiful footsteps, to publish the peace he won, and all along the way, to know a fellowship with him that comes only as we advance his cause.

He Will Fill the Earth

Then, second, look to where your Captain leads. When Paul mentions the “rulers” and “authorities,” the “cosmic powers” and “spiritual forces of evil” in Ephesians 6:12, he surely means for us to see them as fearsome enemies. But he also means for us to remember what he wrote in chapter 1, where he tells us that Jesus, our risen Lord, is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God, “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion” (Ephesians 1:21). He is, moreover, “head over all things,” with the church as “his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:22–23).

Christ, our exalted and unassailable Captain, already holds dominion over every foe. Their time is short, their days numbered. His kingdom has already spread to a degree terrible for our enemy to see. And the spreading must continue. His kingdom will advance until the gates of hell lie fallen beneath the feet of the triumphant body of Christ.

And so, J.I. Packer writes to every trembling evangelist,

You are not on a fool’s errand. You are not wasting either your time or theirs. You have no reason to be ashamed of your message, or halfhearted and apologetic in delivering it. You have every reason to be bold, and free, and natural, and hopeful of success. (Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, 116)

Every faithful word you speak has the authority of the King behind it. Every hill you see will one day wave his flag. Don’t imagine, then, Christian, that you are a soldier simply on defense. Yes, take the whole armor of God; shield yourself from assault. But put on your shoes as well — and pray and run and speak beneath the banner of your advancing King.

There are no women in the mosque down the street from us. When the call to prayer sounds before dawn, some women might kneel on their bedroom floors to do the ritual prayers, but they don’t go to the mosque to hear the mullah. They don’t worship alongside the men. If they go to a mosque at all, they enter a separate room where they cannot be seen.

Years ago, my husband and I visited a mosque school for religious leaders in Turkey. Through translators, we asked for a description of the Muslim conception of paradise. A graduate student told us it’s a beautiful place with a river flowing with wine, where men will be accompanied by 72 virgins with big, beautiful eyes. When I asked what women get, the student said, “They get to serve their husbands.” So, if Islam were true, and if I were a good Muslim, I would get to serve my husband alongside 72 young virgins for eternity. Allah is not a god who looks favorably upon women.

How different is the true God! Men and women were both created in his image, first man and then woman, with complementary bodies and roles (Genesis 1:26–27). (Islam does not teach that humans are created in God’s image.) God commissioned both men and women to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,” exercising dominion over the earth as his representatives (Genesis 1:28).

When that image was tarnished through the fall, God sent his Son, Jesus, to restore the glory of God’s image in the world. Jesus died for the sins of Adam and Eve and all their offspring who would believe. Then, after rising from the dead, Jesus recommissioned his followers, this time to “make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). This is the mission of the church. Men and women who trust in Jesus participate in this mission together, filling the earth “with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14).

Faithful Sisters in Many Seasons

As in the family, men and women have different roles in the church, but together we bear the image of Christ and display his glory to the world. We worship together. We pray together. We sing together. We listen to sermons together. And we speak the word to one another, male and female, knowing we are co-heirs “of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7).

As women, we don’t subvert God’s created order by preaching or having authority over men, but we are fellow saints and full participants in the household of God. Christ has given “the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:11–12). The saints, male and female, do the work of ministry. And there is much ministry to do!

So, what might it look like for women to serve the church, and how might that ministry look different in the different seasons of our lives?

Single Women

Ann is a university student. She sits up front in church and brings other students with her. She’s busy with her studies during the week, so she makes it a point to spend Sundays with her church family. She and the other students fill the church with life and encourage others to share the gospel with the non-Christians they bring. In addition to writing for the school newspaper and heading up the campus pro-life club, Ann also serves in the church nursery once a month.

“The saints, male and female, do the work of ministry. And there is much ministry to do!”

Beth lives with a family from church. She cooks dinner for them once a week and regularly spends time with the teenage girls, walking the dog or baking something tasty. She also plays games with the youngest, a boy. She’s always ready to lend a helping hand when the church asks, she babysits children of the staff, and she doesn’t hesitate to meet with a pastor when she has a theological question.

Claire is an older single woman who runs the children’s ministry in her church and writes curriculum. She always has a baby on her hip and leads a small-group Bible study for preteens. She loves cooking big, healthy meals for families or groups of singles who come over to her apartment.

All three of these women are capitalizing on their singleness, investing time and energy into loving their neighbors and serving God’s people.

Married Women

Deb is a newlywed who just joined her church. She gathers with the saints at every opportunity, including Sunday school, Bible study, and a small group. She’s good at administration, so she’s organizing housing and transportation for the women’s retreat.

Erin is a mother of young children. She realizes the preciousness of these years, so she cuddles and talks to her infant, and she reads and plays with her toddlers. She has a small group of moms over to her house (with their toddlers) to study a book of the Bible. They discuss a few verses between interruptions over stolen toys or spilled Cheerios. Erin feels like she misses church too much (with all those little runny noses and coughs), but even when she misses, she makes sure to listen to the sermon online (often while nursing), prays for other members using the directory, and is in God’s word daily herself.

Fran homeschools, working hard to support her children. She has an open-door policy for younger women in need of advice. They watch her discipline her children and interact with her husband; they ask her questions about fighting sin. Often, these conversations happen on a walk with the dog or in the kitchen while she’s cooking a meal, but she also sets aside time for a book discussion with two women each week. She hosts out-of-town guests and a small group to support the ministry of her husband, an elder of the church.

Grace is a part-time accountant and the mother of four children in school. She shares the gospel with other school moms and uses her administrative gifts to help in the church office. Her friend Helen cried on her shoulder as she finally gave in to her unfaithful husband’s demand for a divorce. Grace counseled her through financial trouble and helped her in many other ways. She and her family enveloped Helen and her young children.

Iris is an empty nester. She came from a prosperity-gospel background, but the word of God penetrated her heart. She came to women’s Bible study, became a small-group leader, and then started teaching other women expositionally. But the extraordinary thing about her is her intentional hospitality and discipling. Instead of using her extra time for herself, she and her husband invited several women to live with them. A group of young women seem to hang on every wise word that comes from her mouth.

These married women are running full tilt for Christ and his church. But their ministries aren’t cookie-cutter. They’re suited to each woman’s life situation and gifts.

Widows

Jane lost her husband several years ago. She devotes her mornings to extended times of reading her Bible and praying. (She’s been in the word daily for decades. Imagine the wisdom that’s accumulated.) She has one prayer list of friends’ children who are struggling and another for missionaries and unreached people groups. She is always excited to see how God answers her prayers. She sends texts and makes phone calls to encourage those for whom she’s praying. She loves to show hospitality, often having her small group over or hosting baby or wedding showers. But it’s not just what she does for the church. As church members care for her with rides and finances, they are blessed, encouraged that they can help a dear sister in need.

I wonder how many people have been converted under the preaching of men who are being prayed for daily by widows.

In the “women only” room set off to the side of the mosque, women can pray without distracting the men who meet in the more ornate central room. Not so in the church of Christ. Here, women aren’t sequestered behind closed doors. We are full partners with our brothers in the work of ministry.

The singles, wives, and widow described above are ordinary, extraordinary women, intentionally using their time to build up the church. We can be so busy with life: studies, work, husbands, children. We were created to glorify God as we steward these things, but we were also created for more. The eternal purpose of God, realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, is to create the church (Ephesians 3:10–11).

There is much work to do, and every hand is needed in every season of life. Prayer, evangelism, administration, mercy ministries, counseling, giving, discipling, nurturing, Bible studies, teaching women and children, writing, advocacy, hospitality. These are only some of the ministries we women can enjoy.

As Paul says, “We are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:10). What good works does God have for you to do, sister? You might ask yourself these questions:

For which ministries am I equipped?
What does my heart desire?
What needs does my church have?

Whatever your ministry looks like, giving yourself to ministry in the church will bring you satisfaction and fulfillment. It’s what you were created for. Walk in it.

Audio Transcript

Am I confident, or am I just arrogant? We get this question a lot, and we have to answer this question for ourselves. Lionheartedness and humility are not contradictions in God’s will, nor are they contradictions in the life of our Savior. He came to bring peace, and he came to bring a figurative sword too. But in our own lives, we must figure out the difference between confidence and arrogance, and that’s the challenge a listener named Max wants to figure out today.

“Hello, Pastor John!” Max writes in his email to us. “My question for you is this. Can we feel powerful or confident or have a high self-worth in who God has made us to be through Christ? How do you distinguish this from pride that leads to destruction? If so, how do we do this? How do we pursue the feeling of power or confidence or high self-worth in living out what God has created us to be, but humbly so? You seem like someone who does it well. Thank you!”

Well, I have to admit that I gag on the term “high self-worth.” The reason I do is because I have watched now for fifty years — yes, fifty years — that term (and its sister term “self-esteem”) be used by secular, godless culture as an explanation for most negative psychological conditions and as a remedy for how to make a person more useful and productive. Lack of self-esteem is the diagnosis for a thousand problems today. Higher self-esteem is the prescription for a thousand improvements.

And the reason for that, it seems to me, is pretty obvious. When God disappears, the next most likely focus for esteem and confidence and reliance and trust is me — self. I think that was exactly the temptation in the garden of Eden. I think that’s the biblical essence of sin — replacing God with self as our treasure, our trust, our esteem, our worth.

Okay, now I’ve got that off my chest.

‘Well Done’

The question is still valid, because I do know from the Bible that God intends for us to lead lives that are significant, effective, productive, joyful, confident, courageous, fearless, competent. The world would just default to interpret every one of those in terms of self-exaltation, and I don’t interpret any of them that way. The Bible worldview says all those words in a completely different view of things.

“Do you love to see Christ made much of above all things, whether you get any recognition or not?”

When our lives are done, and we have trusted him for his enabling grace for every good work, God wants us to hear the words “Well done, good and faithful servant.” It’s not wrong to want to hear from Christ the words “Well done. You’ve been faithful.” The question is, Will he say, “Well done” to a person who had high self-worth, or to a person who has been a God-dependent, God-centered, God-reliant, Christ-exalting servant of others? That’s the question.

So, I would rephrase the question that I’m being asked to something like this: What’s the difference between acting in pride and acting so that our lives are significant, fruitful, fearless, competent, productive, happy, confident without pride?

Questions for Diagnosing Pride

Here are eight diagnostic questions to detect the rising of pride in our lives as we pursue those goals.

Question 1: Do I believe and happily embrace — and they’re both important, believing in your head and happily embracing in your heart, your will — the fact that my very existence and personality and gifting are owing to God, not me?

“By the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:10).
“Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5).
“What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7).

The question is not just “Do I believe this principle?” but “Do I love to have it so?” Do you delight and revel in the absolute dependence on God for who you are?

Question 2: Do you believe and happily embrace the fact that every one of your circumstances, in all of its details, is owing to God and not yourself?

“You ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil” (James 4:15–16). In other words, if something happens in life that takes you up or takes you down, it’s from the Lord. Are you glad that he’s in charge to that extent in your life?

Question 3: Do you believe, and are you happy to embrace, the fact that all your hard work and your personal effort and your willpower to accomplish things are owing to God?

Some people say, “Well, yes, God is in charge of my circumstances, but what I make of them, yeah, that’s owing to me, and that’s why I can be proud and boast. I pulled myself up by the bootstraps, while other people are languishing down there.” That’s not true. Paul said, “I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10). So, Paul attributed to God’s grace not only his existence and his salvation and his circumstances, but also his willpower to work hard.

Are you glad that, when your day’s work is done, you can say of all your efforts, “Not I, but the grace of God that was with me”? Are you glad? Or does that feel like God is robbing you of something?

Question 4: Do you make it your aim to be consciously dependent on God in all you are doing in such a way that, when your service is complete, God will get the glory rather than you?

I’m thinking of 1 Peter 4:11. It’s been just a hallmark of my prayer as I move toward any ministry — like I’ll move toward a ministry midday today that I need help with. “Whoever serves, [let him serve] by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. To him belong glory . . . forever and ever. Amen.” So, what that says is this: it’s not only true that God gives me what I need; I actively trust him in doing it. I’m conscious of the fact that I’m nothing here. I can’t do anything on my own.

Question 5: Are you hungry for the praise of man, and do you try to position yourself so that people will see your good works and give you praise?

Jesus warned against those who love the praise of man. “Woe to you Pharisees! For you love the best seat in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces” (Luke 11:43). Oh, how we need to test our hearts — when we’re 25 and 75. Do I love and crave and angle for the praises and recognition of other people?

Question 6: Do you associate with the lowly, or do you always need to be hanging around with important people?

“Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight” (Romans 12:16).

Question 7: Do you feel entitled to recognition and comfort and respect so that you’re angry when you don’t get it instead of responding the way Jesus said to — namely, “Rejoice when people persecute you, speak evil of you, don’t give you the respect you deserve” (see Matthew 5:11–12)?

A sense of entitlement is one of the clearest signs of deeply rooted pride.

Question 8: Finally, and swimming among all the others, do you love to see Christ magnified? Do you love to see Christ made much of above all things, whether you get any recognition or not?

“God intends for us to lead lives that are significant, effective, productive, joyful, confident, courageous.”

“He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Paul said, “My eager expectation and hope [is] that . . . Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (Philippians 1:20). I think that was one of the first sermons I preached when I came to Bethlehem. My goal, folks, my eager expectation, is that Christ be magnified. I want to preach in such a way, I want to write in such a way, I want to do podcasts in such a way so that Jesus looks great, and people come away saying, “Christ is great. God is great.”

To Him Be Glory

So, by all means — this is circling back now to the essence of the question that I think he was asking — use all your gifts and all your intelligence and all your circumstances and relationships and competence and courage to live the most productive, significant life possible. And do it all to make Christ look great and beautiful and precious by saying and by loving the truth that “from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever” (Romans 11:36).