Distress discloses who we really are. It wrings us, bleeds us, drags the soul to the surface to account for itself. I am the best me with a happy wife, obedient children, loyal friends, suitable bank account, and (as a pastor) humble sheep. But when the child screams inconsolably (again), when the wife is anxious, when friends and finances blow away, when sheep refuse to be shepherded, then who am I? Isn’t it easiest to “trust in the Lord with all your heart” when you don’t really feel any need to?

The devil thought so. In response to God’s celebrating Job, Satan sneers,

Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face. (Job 1:9–11)

In other words, prosperity props up his righteousness. That twisted spirit is always incredulous about integrity. What happens next will reveal the spirit; the squeeze will spill the juice.

Predators and Pray

David was a man squeezed repeatedly throughout his life — and aren’t we thankful? His psalms pour forth as sweetest wine pressed in adversity. As we (unwillingly) explore affliction and wander through nights of uncertainty, everywhere we go we seem to find the inscription: Here stood David. Travel into the valley of death, into utter despair, into conflicts of soul and with Satan — there he waits to sing to our griefs, name our sorrows, and point us to the light of hope in God. His music comforted the tormented Saul and many Sauls since.

Psalm 27 is another psalm juiced from the winepress. The exact circumstances remain unclear; all we know is that vultures circle overhead; he is being hunted.

When evildoers assail me     to eat up my flesh,my adversaries and foes,     it is they who stumble and fall.

Though an army encamp against me,     my heart shall not fear;though war arise against me,     yet I will be confident. (Psalm 27:2–3)

He knows men wish to murder him. If he pens this on the run from King Saul, his adversaries are mighty indeed. If he writes this later as king, he knows men would step over his carcass to hold his crown. He imagines his opponents, vast and cannibalistic: “when evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh . . .” These men are beasts, omnivorous, arrayed, teeth bared and lurking.

What emerges from the inner man? A defiant faith in God. “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1). Here is the shepherd boy who stared down the predator of Gath and returned with the head of the foe. And with the foul stench of death’s breath upon his neck, he pens next his life verse. As the black dogs chase, what man comes forth from the depths? A worshiper.

One Thing I Ask

Feel how supernatural this is: as assassins lurk in the corridor, David’s distracting desire, his consuming passion, is to be away with his God. The hounds gather at the base of his tree, yet see him gazing up at higher branches, longing to be nearer the heavens.

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)

When fear showed its crooked smile, he longed to gaze upon the beauty of his God. Here we find no atheist in the foxhole, nor even a mere monotheist, but a lover of God whose mind, even in this nightmare, daydreamed about seeing the King in his beauty. As Charles Spurgeon writes, “Under David’s painful circumstances we might have expected him to desire repose, safety, and a thousand other good things, but no, he has set his heart on the pearl, and leaves the rest.”

While his own life teeters in the balance, he teaches us what ours is about. As the Miner sifts him, the sand falls through; the one jewel remains. He longs “to enjoy the constant presence of God,” comments Derek Kidner:

Note the singleness of purpose (one thing) — the best answer to distracting fears (1–3) — and the priorities within that purpose: to behold and to inquire; a preoccupation with God’s Person and his will. It is the essence of worship; indeed of discipleship. (Psalms 1–72, 138)

To dwell with God all the days of his life, to see something — see Someone — “to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” and to speak with him in his palace — this was everything to him. Life was not to rule, to slay giants, to marry and have children, to amass wealth, to eat, drink, or be merry — the continuance of these was not his one request. Worship was. As evil men swipe at the silver cord, he, like Mary after him, chooses the good portion that cannot be taken from him: to sit at the feet of his Lord.

Most of us will never have people try to kill us. But we can learn the priority of worship from the dark distresses of David. The object at the end of his soul’s longing was a glory to be gazed upon. Traveling back to David’s game of thrones — life hanging in the balance, his picture on the dartboard — we find a man not only after God’s own heart, but after God himself. On the caption to his own wanted poster, he scrawls, David, a man seeking the face of God, was here.

Summons Behind Our Seeking

I am convicted by the singularity of David’s request and marvel at the circumstances from which it arose. When offered one thing, Solomon asked for wisdom; David, like Moses, asked to see God’s face. What am I asking for? As I audit my life, what is the one thing I am seeking after? Is it to see my God’s majesty all the days of my life? Do my desires reach nearly that high?

My tepid heart warms to discover that this seeing that makes eternally happy is not just the man’s desire, but God’s desire for the man. David’s obsession to see God was in obedience to his command. David sings the secret later in the psalm:

You have said, “Seek my face.”My heart says to you,     “Your face, Lord, do I seek.”Hide not your face from me. (Psalm 27:8–9)

Our highest worship never climbs higher than a response. Behind our one request is always his command: “Seek my face.” Christianity is not about us scaling to the gods and invading their heaven, but about God descending to us and giving us his. Which means we do not persuade him to be seen; he persuades us to see. And at what price he makes his argument. When did Jesus intercede most ardently for David’s one request on our behalf? On the eve of his securing it at the cross: “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24).

Jesus Christ, David’s son and David’s desire, offers us more than a psalm or sympathy in our darkest moments. He gives himself. As we fumble in despair, he doesn’t just point us to God; he tabernacles among us as God.

“Christianity is not about us scaling to the gods and invading heaven, but about God descending to us and giving us heaven.”

And somehow, he too was hunted. Satan protested of him, “Does he fear God for no reason?” The armies of men arrested him by night, mocked him, flogged him, and crucified him. They did assail him to eat up his flesh. Strong bulls of Jerusalem surrounded him; they opened their mouths wide at him like a ravening lion (Psalm 22:12–13). And who was he then, crushed in the winepress of the Father’s wrath? “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Beneath the midnight of God’s wrath, in the valley of the second death, see inscribed upon a tree: The Son of God, the son of David, was here.

And he was there, Christian, so we could be where he is to behold his glory forever.

We Shall See Him

O saint, you will see him soon. How then shall we wait? Make David’s prayer your own so that when you see him you may have confidence before him and not shrink in shame at his coming (1 John 2:28). Imagine that coming. The sight of him will not only bless but beautify; you shall be like him, for you “shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). And we will see him as he is, no longer as he once was in his agony. Let the prince of preachers heat your heart:

We shall see him, not with a reed in his hand, but grasping a golden sceptre. We shall see him, not as mocked and spit upon and insulted, not bone of our bone, in all our agonies, afflictions, and distresses; but we shall see him exalted; no longer Christ the man of sorrows, the acquaintance of grief, but Christ the Man-God, radiant with splendour, effulgent with light, clothed with rainbows, girded with clouds, wrapped in lightnings, crowned with stars, the sun beneath his feet.

O Lord our God, heaven’s Radiance and our Desire, one thing we ask of you and one thing will we seek after: to dwell in your kingdom all the days of our lives, to gaze upon your beauty and to inquire of you in a world remade. When our hearts are now tried and crushed, may what comes out be a song that begs to see more, that pleads to see, finally and forever, your face, unveiled but not unrecognized — your face, a heaven of beauty and the beauty of heaven.

In 2015, the Supreme Court (in Obergefell v. Hodges) voted to legalize so-called same-sex marriage in all fifty states. With this decision came the concept of “dignitary harm,” declaring the failure to affirm LGBTQ+ identity a damaging harm to those who define themselves by these letters. While the gospel of Jesus Christ affirms only one fundamental identity — male or female image-bearers of a holy God (Genesis 1:27) — the laws of the land declare that how you feel is now who you are.

In 2020, the Supreme Court (in Bostock v. Clayton) added LGBTQ+ to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, thus making that which God calls sin a protected civil right. This decision led to changes in Title 9, the landmark federal civil-rights law of 1972 that prohibited sex-based discrimination in government schools and sports programs. Americans live in a nation of redefined terms, including “sex,” which now means “gender identity.” This explains why it is legal for biological men to play women’s sports and undress in women’s locker rooms.

In 2021, the U.S. government, following Bostock and the redefined Title 9, promoted a federally mandated anti-bullying program for use in government schools — all of them. A “bully” is now someone who refuses to be an ally to the LGBTQ+ movement.

Such are the times in which we live. And we are tempted to believe that these cultural circumstances make us strangers and exiles in a world that once embraced our values. But that’s not the whole story.

What Makes Us Strangers?

Biblical giants such as Abel, Enoch, Abraham, Sarah, Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and others “died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). When political dangers in a post-Christian society threaten loss of reputation, job, or even life, we are tempted to conclude that our pilgrim and exile status came through recent circumstances.

But that misses the all-important point: we are exiles and strangers not primarily by circumstance but by confession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

There is no doubt that the personal relationship believers have with Jesus Christ is our greatest comfort in this world — and the next one. But there is an additional side to our Christian witness that we must not neglect — the side that understands the ascended Christ sitting at the right hand of God the Father. Christ’s exaltation — his heavenly enthronement at God’s right hand — positions him as Head over all things, in fulfillment of the Great Commission, for the sake of his bride, the church, and the blessing of the world (Ephesians 1:22; Matthew 28:18).

Our station as exiles and strangers surely tests our faith. And this test may tempt us to take cover in one of two extremes: hiding with passive piety in private or fighting with worldly anger in public. The former elevates our personal relationship with our Lord and Savior over his state of exaltation (Psalm 2:10–12). The latter elevates the exaltation of Christ as King as something separate from the Great Commission.

Exiles with an Open Door

Practicing hospitality — loving strangers — is one vital way to bring together our personal relationship with Jesus with honoring him as King. We can practice hospitality with joy in a post-Christian society — and we must.

Where should we start?

1. Your Church

Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. (Romans 12:13)

On many a Lord’s Day, you meet strangers at church, visitors who may have traveled a long way to arrive at the pew next to you. Get into the regular practice of having your house ready to provide spontaneous guests with a meal after church. The meal does not have to be elaborate. A short respite of fruit and snacks along with Christian fellowship and prayer is a welcome treat for weary travelers.

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:1–2)

God commands us to show hospitality to strangers — a category that includes both believers and unbelievers — and he has set aside blessings for us when we obey. Who are the people in your church easy to neglect? Older and younger singles? Shut-ins? Young mothers? Work with your church to develop consistent opportunities for singles to be in your home, and together develop an outreach to those unable to leave their homes.

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. (1 Peter 4:9)

Often, we fall into grumbling when we feel that we are shouldering a hard task alone. Don’t practice hospitality alone. Have you considered organizing a regular Lord’s Day lunch after worship for all who wish to join? This can be done at the church building directly after worship, and if you do this every week, the routine becomes something that everyone looks forward to. Every household could simply bring a Crock-Pot with a favorite dish. Sharing the hospitality duties with others makes for more joy, less awkwardness, and no grumbling.

2. Your Neighborhood

For over a decade now, my husband and I have invited neighbors over for food and fellowship. Last year, we invited neighbors to join us in Christmas caroling. We delivered handmade cards and invited everyone on the block to come over before going out to sing. Over thirty people came, some even bringing extended family members from out of town.

“Hospitality is a command for a reason: it never fails to show Christian compassion to the stranger in need.”

We gathered in the house, and our associate pastor, Drew Poplin, delivered an evangelistic message, reading from Luke 2 and introducing Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save sinners just like us. We prayed, distributed songbooks, and headed out the door. The children squealed in delight, ringing sleigh bells, forging ahead of the grown-ups to gather at open, welcoming doors. Accompanied by our pastor’s guitar and strong voice, we sang our hearts out, sometimes even in four-part harmony! When it was too dark to keep a careful eye on children and dogs, we returned to our house for coffee and cookies.

My new neighbor, Jacob, asked if I would hold his sleepy toddler, Jimmy, while he poured himself a cup of coffee. After some small talk about where they live, when they moved in, and general glee about the fun night we were all experiencing, Jacob said, “Hey, I read about you in the newspaper, and I have a question for you.”

I told him to ask me anything.

“You seem like a nice lady. So, why do you hate trans folks?” Jacob asked.

“I don’t hate anyone,” I replied. “I’m a Christian, and I truly love all of my neighbors. But I hate worldviews that lie to people about who we are — image-bearers of God. Because worldviews have consequences and bad ones have casualties, I hate transgender ideology.”

“Why?” Jacob inquired.

I shifted Jimmy on my hip and held him up, saying, “This is why. Jimmy is a boy, and I will defend his right to be a boy.”

Jacob nodded in complete agreement. It turns out that Jacob works in the school system, and he, a young white man, feels both the squeeze of political correctness and the threat of job loss.

“So why do you speak at school-board meetings when they hate you?” he asked.

“I believe that my job as a Christian is to restore truth to the public square. I worked on the bill that became the Parental Rights Law. I think parents have the right to protect their children and that enrolling a child in public schools does not make the school a co-parent.”

Jacob nodded his head and said that finding truth in the public square seems harder and harder. I introduced him to some of the other Christians in the neighborhood, also milling about the kitchen looking for coffee and cookies, and soon we had a lively discussion about parental rights underway, with phone numbers swapped and invitations to churches pouring out.

3. Your City

I’m a twenty-year veteran of homeschooling, but I care deeply about the Christians whose children are enrolled in the public school system for the simple reason that I am a Christian. We are called to let our reasonableness be known to all men (Philippians 4:5), and some of those men (and women) are on the school board.

Parental-rights laws across the nation have been hotly contested by school boards. Last year, I and others from local churches in Durham prepared three-minute speeches explaining and defending parental rights and responsibilities and the concerns we all had about the activist “science” behind transgenderism. Although these meetings are stressful, we stick around to talk to the people who oppose our message. “This is the world that Jesus came to save,” my 21-year-old son, who accompanies me to these meetings, often reminds me. We have found that people are people, and that all people need Christ.

Last year, we had the privilege of having dinner with a family whose gender-anxious and autistic son had been living a secret life as a girl at school. It took the parents two years to uncover the truth, and they were flabbergasted to realize that concealing this important information from them was legal under Title 9. They happily received our invitation to talk, and we exchanged phone numbers and addresses. When the night arrived to host this family, we were delighted to discover that we shared many things in common. Throughout the dinner, the parents peppered us with questions about God: Who is he? Does he care about me? After dinner, my husband led in family devotions: Bible reading and prayer.

We learned that parents are often treated like the enemy by the transgender movement, and they — and their children — are in great need of the gospel. For many people who have been ferried down the transgender conveyor belt — traveling from social transition (false pronouns and clothes) to hormonal transition (cross-sex hormones) to surgical transition (genital mutilation) — the great promise of glory, of a new heaven and a new earth where souls and bodies of believers are reunited and glorified, is uniquely cherished. That family we invited to dinner after a school board meeting is now attending church, and their son is healing from the hurt of those years.

Hospitality is a command for a reason: it never fails to show Christian compassion to the stranger in need. Practicing hospitality in a post-Christian society loves the stranger while remembering that we too are strangers and exiles by confession and not merely circumstance.

“You shall not pass!” Is there any other line in literature that better captures the virtue of courage?

You likely know the scene. The Fellowship of the Ring has journeyed through the long dark of Moria, and now they are fleeing before a host of orcs — and Durin’s Bane. Gandalf sends his friends toward the exit before turning to face the Balrog on the bridge. With the cold white of Glamdring in one hand and his staff in the other, the grey wizard faces down the foe of fire and shadow.

“You cannot pass,” he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. “I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass.”

The Balrog heeds him not but steps onto the bridge. Gandalf is just visible before him, “glimmering in the gloom; he seemed small, and altogether alone: grey and bent, like a wizened tree before the onset of a storm.”

A sword of flame flashes out. Glamdring rings in answer. The Balrog falls back a step.

“You cannot pass!”

Again the foe ignores the command, leaps full onto the bridge, and brandishes his whip of fire. Gandalf raises his staff — the white light hovers for a moment, a single star in an abyss of night — and smites the bridge. Light blinds. Bridge cracks. Staff shatters. And the Balrog falls.

But in his final malicious act, the enemy lashes his whip around the wizard’s knees, dragging him to the edge. Gandalf meets Aragorn’s eyes — “Fly, you fools!” — sways for a moment, and then disappears into the heart of the earth (The Lord of the Rings, 330–31).

Tree Before the Tempest

For many of us, this scene is part of the permanent furniture of our imagination. The grey wizard stands strong against the Balrog on the bridge and, in the end, lays down his life for his friends. Here is a fortitude that deserves celebration. A Christlike courage worth imitating.

With Gandalf’s defiant cry echoing in our ears, let’s delve down to the roots of this courage by asking two questions. First, what motivates such courage? What steels him to stand firm, a tree before the tempest? And second, how can we cultivate that same indomitable courage to face down our own Balrogs?

The Deep Roots of Courage

To begin, what is the root of courage? What separates Gandalf’s fierce fortitude from Smeagol’s small-souled cowardice?

In his little book on courage, Joe Rigney defines the virtue as “a stable habit of the heart that masters the passions, especially the passion of fear, through the power of a superior desire” (Courage, 32). There are three facets to that definition:

Courage is a habit of heart — something we must practice and cultivate.
Courage governs our passions — it reigns over our snap reactions and instinctual responses, especially those of fear.
Courage governs by the power of a superior desire.

Notice that desire is the root of courage. But not just any desire — superior desire, “a deeper desire for a greater good” (30). Both “deeper” and “superior” imply that our desires are ranked and ordered rightly.

“The taproot of Christian courage is a tenacious treasuring of Christ.”

Courage flourishes within a proper hierarchy of desires — what Augustine calls ordered loves. Fittingly, in Scripture, courage is closely associated with the heart, the home of our loves and desires (e.g., Psalm 27:14). English makes this connection even more explicit, where courageous is synonymous with hearty, lionhearted, and the like. Courage reveals that you have rightly ordered desires and loves. Fortitude shows you put first things first.

We see this clearly in the example of Gandalf. Ordered desires held Gandalf on the bridge. Yes, he valued his own safety. (That’s why he didn’t throw his life away fighting innumerable orcs.) But his desire for the safety of his friends and, more importantly, his desire for the good of all Middle-earth went far deeper. His ability to face down the Balrog on the bridge was the fruit of those deep roots. To borrow a description of history’s greatest act of courage, we might say that for the joy set before him Gandalf despised death and defeated the Balrog. And that joy in a greater good was the source of his courage.

Now, those of us who are Christian Hedonists know what our deepest roots should cling to. The triune God is the highest good in the hierarchy of goods. He is most beautiful and desirable. Thus, the taproot of Christian courage is a tenacious treasuring of Christ, a treasuring that rightly orders all lesser goods in relation to God, our first Good.

Too Easily Pleased

Before discussing how to cultivate these deep desires, it’s worth asking what makes us cowardly. What makes us flee when we should fight? What makes us surrender the bridge?

Well, if ordinate loves produce courage, the opposite must be true of cowardice and the opposite vice of rashness. Both vices, but especially cowardice, come when the taproot — which should sink down to the bedrock of the greatest good — remains shallow, just beneath the surface. That tree will be blown over by the first strong breeze. That man will flee when the Balrog steps onto the bridge. Shallow roots produce craven men.

In his sermon “The Weight of Glory,” C.S. Lewis helpfully exposes the source of these shallow roots:

Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (The Weight of Glory, 25)

That final line should haunt us: we are far too easily pleased. That is the habit of heart that breeds cowards and the foolhardy, “half-hearted creatures.” When our desires are too weak, when we are too easily pleased, when our longings for lesser things become disordered, we will not stand when we should — or even stand when and where we should not. Instead of a tree before a tempest, weak desires leave us like tumbleweeds, blown and tossed by the slightest breeze.

Gritty Habits of Heart

Now we return to our second question. If ordered desires make the difference between the virtue of courage and the vices of cowardice and recklessness, how do we cultivate deep desires? How do we develop Gandalf-like grit?

1. Look to the greatest Good.

When James teaches us how to combat the kind of disordered desires that form the soil of cowardice and death, what does he do? He orients our desires Godward:

All generous giving and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or the slightest hint of change. (James 1:17 NET)

James draws our attention to the greatest Good and connects all other goods to the Giver. He sends our roots deep. He puts the Sun at the center. This is the key to cultivating ordered loves and, thus, the key to courage. To have “a deeper desire for a greater good,” we must know and love the greatest Good. And all lesser goods must be loved for his sake, as his fatherly gifts.

Like James, Tolkien saw light and fire as powerful images of God. And so, in his legendarium, the Secret Fire is Tolkien’s name for the Holy Spirit. Thus, when Gandalf says, “I am a servant of the Secret Fire,” he is, in a sense, looking to the Father of lights, and that glance puts steel in Gandalf’s spine.

We see a similar galvanizing of Sam’s courage. At his lowest moment, crawling across the plains of Mordor, desperately needing courage, Sam sends his eyes heavenward, where he sees a white star:

The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. (The Lord of the Rings, 922)

Sam’s vision rose higher than the danger around him. The gravity of good and of high beauty helped him govern the passion of fear, and he found the grit to carry Frodo up Mount Doom.

When we dare to look up at the Father of lights, the High Beauty, all his good gifts will fall into their proper place. Our souls will be shaped. Our desires will become ordered. Our roots will run to the right depths.

2. Imitate those who refuse to be far too easily pleased.

If you want to be courageous, mimic those who have stood against the Balrog on the bridge. Imitate Sam. Imitate Gandalf.

Imitate Moses — a greater wizard than Gandalf (Exodus 8:16–19). A man whose insatiable desire for the greatest Good led him to dare terrible things and face down mighty foes.

“By faith Moses . . . refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.” He relentlessly refused to be far too easily pleased because “he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward” (Hebrews 11:24–27). Moses had deep roots. He looked toward the high beauty of the promised Christ. And that strong desire fortified him to face down a Pharaoh, win a wizard battle, and endure the scorn of Egypt.

“The courage of Gandalf, Moses, and Jesus is not made in a day or a month or a year.”

And imitate Jesus. When offered all the kingdoms on earth, his desires were too strong to settle for a handout from Satan. When the virtues of our King came to the testing point, he applied his courage to the sticking point and performed the most valiant deed the world will ever know — because his desires ran deeper than death. “For the joy that was set before him, [he] endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2). No dragon can stand before that strength of heart! Imitate him and those who do likewise.

3. Make your stand on little bridges.

The courage of Gandalf, Moses, and Jesus is not made in a day or a month or a year. Courage to stand before Balrogs or face down dragons or take up crosses grows slowly out of mundane, day-to-day decisions to refuse to settle for mud pies. Oaks of righteousness grow from countless Hobbit-like choices — choices not to click what you shouldn’t, choices not to join in ungodly laughter, choices not to be pressured into that third drink, choices not to say peace when there is no peace, choices not to call him a her, choices to defend the downtrodden, choices to initiate conversations, and a thousand others.

By the power of the Spirit, our Secret Fire, the stands you take on those little bridges will enable you to hold firm when the Balrog comes. You will acquire fortitude for long love in a hard marriage. You will have the stability to embrace the challenging blessing of children. You will gain the tenacity to put your own sin to death and lovingly confront the sins of others. You will develop the boldness to leave familiar comforts for costly missions — whether next door or across the planet.

Over time, you will grow deep roots. You will be “like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green, and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit” (Jeremiah 17:8).

Audio Transcript

Someone recently asked me to venture an answer to a question — this question: What’s the most common question we get on the podcast? And I don’t know the answer exactly. So, it truly is just a guess. And my guess, based on my experience, I would say, is this: Our most-often-asked-about question is about the unpardonable sin. And by that, I mean it in the broadest sense of the term — not only “What is the unpardonable sin (as defined in Scripture)?” but “Have I committed a sin that is so ugly, so gross, so heinous, so premeditated, so repeated, so high-handedly evil that God will surely not be able to forgive me for it?” That was my answer. That’s, in my best guess, the most common question. It’s certainly one of the dominant themes in APJ over the years, as you can see in the APJ book on pages 337–339.

Will God forgive my very worst sin? That’s the question from an anonymous young woman who listens to the podcast. “Dear Pastor John, I had an abortion. That is the one and only thing I knew I would never, ever do. But I did it. I cannot begin to detail here the grief and damage it has caused me, and I know I deserve every bit of it. I feel as though I will always be a low-class Christian because of what I’ve done.

“I was a believer when I committed this sin. I did not do it to avoid ‘disruption’ in my life, but because I had no confidence that I could offer any quality of life to a child at the time. In my twisted mind, I felt I was doing the child better by preventing him or her from having to suffer in a broken family or a foster home. I understand that way of thinking is absurd. I just didn’t understand that at the time. I grew up in a family that was split before I was born, and I feared that my child would have that kind of life. I just couldn’t handle the thought of this.

“Now I feel this is something I should always be punished for. I haven’t been back to church in the years since this happened. I know I don’t belong. I don’t deserve to go. Does God even want to forgive me for this? Does he want me and still have the plans for me that he did before, or are those plans gone? I’m disgusted with myself. I just hope that there’s still hope for me, which I know that even wanting that is selfish and unwarranted at this point.”

When I hear this question that’s so filled with self-recrimination and doubt and fear and guilt, I want very much to introduce this woman — I wish I knew her name, as I could call her by name — to what I have for many years called “gutsy guilt.”

Real Guilt, Real Faith

I base that term “gutsy guilt” on the prophet Micah:

Rejoice not over me, O my enemy;     when I fall, I shall rise;when I sit in darkness,     the Lord will be a light to me.I will bear the indignation of the Lord     because I have sinned against him,until he pleads my cause     and executes judgment for me.He will bring me out to the light;     I shall look upon his vindication. (Micah 7:8–9)

Micah owns his sin. He owns his guilt and the fact that he’s in darkness. He’s sitting there. It’s under the Lord. The Lord is disciplining him. He’s under God’s judgment. He knows it’s because of his sin. He says, “I sit in darkness. . . . I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned.” So, he’s not making any excuses. He’s not pretending this is from the devil. He knows this is from the Lord, and it’s awful.

So, he owns his sin. He owns his guilt. And then he says that he will sit in this darkness, under the Lord’s displeasure, “until he pleads my cause and executes judgment for me.” Not against me — for me. “He will bring me out to the light; I shall look upon his vindication.”

That’s amazing. This is incredibly gutsy. I am under the Lord’s dark judgment, and I still trust him to be my God and vindicate me. So, “rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise.” That’s the only way I know how to survive as a saved sinner. Real guilt, real sorrow, real pain, real darkness under God’s discipline, and real gutsy faith that the very God who is disciplining me and displeased with me is on my side and will vindicate me. So, that’s the basic truth I’d love to build into her life.

Seven Responses to Hopelessness

With that as a background, what I’d like to do, and I think might be helpful, is to just take maybe six or seven of her little statements about herself and make a comment about them.

1. “I feel this is something I should always be punished for.” Well, yes it is. Abortion — and every other sin — is something we should always be punished for. And there is a universe of difference between “should be punished for” and “will be punished for.” Gutsy gospel guilt says, “I am guilty. I should be punished now and forever.” That is the very meaning of sin and justice. And gutsy gospel guilt says, “But I will not be punished. I will not be punished because Jesus bore my punishment for me, and I have forsaken all my self-reliance, and I throw myself wholly on his mercy.”

“If you want forgiveness because you want God, that’s not selfish. That’s what you were made for.”

I think of Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” And then here’s Isaiah 53:5: “He was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the [punishment] that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” So yes, you should always be punished for your abortion. Own that guilt, and then be gutsy and embrace the gospel that Christ bore our sins on his body on the cross. And now in him, God is for me, not against me. I should be punished, and I won’t be punished. That’s my response to that first comment.

2. “I know I don’t belong at church. I don’t deserve to go.” If the only people who belong at church are those who deserve to be with God’s people in his presence, worshiping and growing in him, nobody would belong to church. Nobody would go to church. When Paul described the members of the church in Corinth, he listed their sins like this:

Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus. (1 Corinthians 6:9–11)

The only people who belong in church are sinners who are washed and justified by faith. So no, you don’t deserve to go to church. That’s why you should go, because church is the one institution in the universe designed for people who don’t deserve to be there. That’s the meaning. That’s the meaning of gospel churches.

3. “I’m disgusted with myself.” Well, that’s fine. To look back on abortion and not be disgusted would be a sign of sickness. To see it with disgust is a sign of health. Unless there is gutsy disgust, you’ll collapse. Gutsy gospel disgust is not paralyzed. It gives up on self and walks into the power of grace. All of us are disgusting — and we should not run from it but through it, into God’s grace.

4. “I just hope that there’s still hope for me.” Good, because there is hope for you. Paul says that everything in the Scriptures is written so that sinners might have hope (Romans 15:4). Hope is the one thing you can always be sure pleases the Lord. I love Psalm 147:11: “The Lord takes pleasure in those who fear him, in those who hope in his steadfast love.” He loves people, he delights in people, who turn away from themselves — and hoping in the strength of the horse or the legs of a man — and hope in him.

5. “Hoping that there is hope is selfish.” Well, it would be selfish if you just wanted to use God to get a relieved conscience. But if you want forgiveness because you want God, that’s not selfish. That’s what you were made for. And it honors God, not you. It honors God. God is glorified when you want to be satisfied in God.

6. “Hoping that there’s hope is unwarranted.” No, that’s false. That’s just false. Hope is not unwarranted. It is infinitely warranted, not by your goodness, but by the blood of Jesus. If you stand before God and hope to get into his presence with joy forever, and he says, “What warrant can you have for hoping that I would receive you?” the answer is this: “The blood and righteousness of your Son. My Savior is my only warrant.” That’s true. There is no warrant for hope in us. There is infinite warrant in the blood of Jesus. So, that’s a false statement that your hope is unwarranted. It is not unwarranted.

7. Here’s the last statement: “Does God want me and have good plans for me?” And the answer is in the last chapter of the Bible, as though God wanted it to be the last thing ringing in our ears. The last chapter of the Bible, Revelation 22:17, says, “The Spirit and the Bride say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come.’ And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” So, if you’re thirsty for God, he invites you. He wants you. And when you come to him, he has plans for you. Your life will not be wasted if you come to him. “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).

This time of year, as the leaves begin to change color and normal schedules emerge and blossom again, we often stop to make plans for the months ahead. The slower pace and irregular rhythms of summer are giving way to the steady beats of work, school, and church life. This changing of the seasons presents a crossroads where it’s natural to stop and revisit what, why, how, and how often we do all that we do.

And it’s good to plan. “The plans of the diligent,” God himself tells us, “lead surely to abundance” (Proverbs 21:5). He sends us to study the ant:

Without having any chief,     officer, or ruler,she prepares her bread in summer     and gathers her food in harvest. (Proverbs 6:6–8)

In other words, she plans and works ahead, like any wise person will.

And yet our planning, even our careful and intentional planning, can be quietly wicked. It might look like we have everything figured out and put together, but in reality our plans are foolish and offensive. Listen to the apostle James’s warning:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13–15)

Good and Wicked Planning

In this part of his letter, James confronts the seemingly successful men of his day. In the next few verses, he goes on to say, “Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. . . . You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence” (James 5:1, 5). But before he gets to their greed and self-gratification, he exposes their arrogance. Their success has made them think they know and control their futures.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.” (James 4:13)

What are these men doing wrong? They’re presuming to know where they will do business, and how long their business will prosper there, and how much profit they’ll make in the process. They’ve done this all before, after all, probably dozens of times, and so they’ve grown comfortably accustomed to success — so comfortable that they’ve started to presume success.

Before we scoff at them, though, we might ask how often we’re lulled into similar temptations. We may not be traveling to trade in foreign markets, but we all can begin to assume that God will do this or that — in our work, in our marriage or parenting, in our ministry — and fall into some kind of spiritual autopilot. James presses on that tendency toward autopilot until we see the impulse for what it really is.

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)

James calls this kind of planning evil. Even if they were right about what would happen, their plans were wrong, terribly wrong.

Three Remedies for Arrogance

James doesn’t merely confront these arrogant men with their arrogance; he also applies what he knows about God to invite them into the paths and plans of humility. And what he shares, in just a handful of phrases, speaks as loudly to our temptations to presumption as it did to those in his day. He reminds these men what they do not know (and cannot know), what they cannot do or control in their own strength, and (more subtly) the one thing they can always do when setting out to plan another season of work, life, or ministry — in fact, the one thing they must do.

WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW

Again, he begins, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’ — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring” (James 4:13–14). You think you know where you’re headed, and how long you’ll spend there, and how much money you’ll make, but you don’t know anything — at least not with any of the certainty you now feel. You can plan and prepare all you want, but reality might depart dramatically from what you’ve imagined.

“Our planning, even our careful and intentional planning, can be quietly wicked.”

The business might crumble into bankruptcy — or God might suddenly quadruple your projections. The family might unexpectedly flourish — or some unthinkable tragedy might strike. Your personal ministry might experience an extended drought despite intentionality and effort — or you might see fruit you’ve never seen before. You cannot guarantee, much less control, what will happen this fall, or this fiscal year, or five years from now. You do not know — do you know that?

Given how easily and subtly pride swells in us all, it’s deeply good, spiritually and eternally good, to be reminded just how much we do not know.

WHAT YOU CAN’T CONTROL

In addition to not knowing all we do not know, we can’t do or control nearly as much as we tend to think. James sobers us in the next verse: “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). These “successful” businessmen were looking at their track record and profit reports and coming to some horrible conclusions. Instead of seeing the sovereign and generous hand of God, they thought more highly of themselves. Instead of falling to their knees in awestruck gratitude, they stood a little taller, admiring the strength and ingenuity they saw in the mirror.

What is your life? Are you able to hear the pastoral heart behind such bluntness? “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (James 4:14). And what can a mist do? On a particularly hot day, a mist might bring refreshment for a moment — if it lasts that long. But a mist does almost nothing. Compared with the infinite mind and power of God, we can do nothing.

One way God guards us against arrogance is to remind us of our mistiness. Everything that feels so big, important, and impressive in our earthy lives right now will vanish and vanish quickly. We’re just a tiny burst of moisture, one that will evaporate almost immediately. God, on the other hand, knows everything there is to know, and he can do all things. He invented mists, and work, and us.

WHAT YOU CAN ALWAYS DO

We don’t know all we think we know about the future, and we can’t control all we pretend to control, so can we do anything now when it comes to the next months and years? Is it futile for us to try to plan the future? No, listen to how James guides them out of arrogance and into planning that glorifies God:

Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (James 4:13–15)

He doesn’t tell them to stop planning. He tells them to stop planning without accounting for God. Stop planning without any reference to the most important part of planning. Positively, make your plans — all your plans — under God. The most obvious way to do this is to pray.

It’s simple and yet supernatural. It’s quiet and yet so countercultural. As you make your plans for another year or season, kneel beneath the meticulous and pervasive sovereignty of God. Remember that you won’t go anywhere or accomplish anything unless he wills. You won’t live unless he wills. Does any rhythm or habit in your life say that you believe that? Is that banner still waving over all you want to do this year?

Wicked Passivity

James strikes one last (seemingly strange) note in this paragraph on ungodly planning: “So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (James 4:17). How does that relate to the verses we just read? After telling them what to stop doing, he turns here and ends with a verse about the dangers of passivity.

Given what we’ve already seen, it seems like the first right thing to do would be to acknowledge God in all we do — and not only to acknowledge his sovereignty over our lives, but to actively seek his help and guidance in them. Prayer is not a passive acknowledgment of God. Prayer is anything but passive. Through prayer, we actively and persistently invite the sovereign God to actually do what he’s said he’ll do. And very often (can you believe this?), he chooses to accomplish those infinite, eternal plans by our small, modest, and secret prayers.

However, this verse is about more than prayer (as glorious and powerful as prayer is). When James says, “Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it,” he’s talking about every kind of sinful inactivity. He’s already warned us about an evil kind of proactivity — making plans and attempting work without reliance on God. Now he warns us about an evil passivity — knowing the hard things God has called us to do and yet refusing to do them.

Fullhearted faith in the sovereignty of God over all doesn’t lead to retreat or inaction. No, this kind of faith sets a life on fire with purpose, conviction, and determination. So, what hard thing has God called you to do this year? Where are you tempted to shy away from a fuller, more costly obedience to him — in your work (or studies), in the local church, in evangelism and discipleship, in marriage and parenting? Resolve now to do the right things you know to do, and do them — at every step — in prayerful dependence on God.

Jason Helopoulos: I’m told that about 50 percent of those that are here are either somewhere between zero and five years of pastoral ministry. You’ve both pastored for a long time, so maybe we could start here. Could you tell us your sense of calling to ministry and how it was that the Lord called you to the pastorate?

John Piper: Let me give you the stages because it happened in stages. Stage one was the summer of 1966. I was gloriously confident in God that I should be a medical doctor because he had made it plain to me in April of that year that’s what I should do, which is a great lesson in not overstating your subjective sense of God’s leading. Confident as I was, I went to summer school to catch up on chemistry because I was behind as a literature major. God smacked me down in the hospital at the end of that summer with mononucleosis for three weeks and I had to drop organic chemistry. Harold John Ockenga was speaking in the chapel and I was listening on the radio and everything in me — another wonderful subjective reality — said, “I would love to handle the Bible like that.”

I had fallen in love with Noël about four weeks earlier and we were crazy in love and talking about marriage already. She came to visit me and I said, “I know you fell in love with a pre-med student, but that ain’t going to happen. I really do sense God leading me.” So, that was stage one, a call to the word. If you had said at that moment I would be a pastor, I would have said, “Never.” I couldn’t speak in front of a group. I had no intention or desire to be a pastor, but I loved the Bible and I wanted to know it and maybe teach it.

I went to seminary and taught for six years. Now it’s October 1979. That was 1966. At this point, I’ve never been a pastor. I’ve preached maybe ten sermons in my life, never buried anybody, never married anybody, and never visited anybody in the hospital, not as a pastor anyway. At about midnight there was another subjective experience. It was like Pascal said: fire. I could not resist the desire to preach. I was writing a book on Romans 9, which is one of the weightiest passages on the might and sovereignty of God in his freedom. Everything in me was saying — and I think it was God — “I will not just be analyzed. I will not just be explained. I will be heralded.”

So, I waited for my wife to wake up the next morning and dropped another bomb on her and said, “What would you think if I were to resign from my six-year teaching career at Bethel College and look for a church?” And she said, “I could see that coming.” Because she had heard me make so many comments about sermons either being wonderful or terrible. So, I went to the denominational official and said, “I believe God is calling me to the pastorate. Would you help me find a church?” And they said, “We think you should go to Bethlehem.” And that’s where I was for 33 years.

Helopoulos: Wow. Praise God. Joel, how about you?

Joel Beeke: I was brought under a very deep conviction of sin for about 18 months before I found deliverance from the age of 14 to just about when I turned 16. When God finally delivered me in Christ it was in good measure by reading the Puritan books in my dad’s bookcase. I read the whole bookcase late at night every night.

When I found that freedom I was so shy. I never raised my hand in class ever in my whole life and I hated standing in front of the class, but my tongue was unloosed. I started going to all the neighbors up and down the block. I had to bring them the gospel, but ministry never entered my mind at that point because the youngest minister in our denomination I think was 52, and I was 16. I thought old men were ministers. We lived in a very sheltered denomination. It was very conservative. No ruling elder in the church was under 50 years of age. So, that was just out of the question. I didn’t even think about it.

But I was working for my dad as a carpenter and there was a man who was very fussy. My dad had built a house for him and there were all kinds of weeds growing in his lawn. He would not put weed killer on it. He said, “Do you have some low person on the totem pole who could possibly pull all these weeds by hand over a period of one month?” Of course, I was the lowest guy on the totem pole, so I spent a month just pulling weeds.

I’ll just tell you like it is. I’ve given up trying to label it or trying to put fences around it. But this is exactly what happened. I was pulling weeds and not thinking even about God. I know it wasn’t a physical voice but it sure felt like one. It was a very subjective experience. I heard, “Go forth and preach the gospel to all the nations.” It was so powerful that I just stood up and my hands were shaking. I looked around and there was no one there. I was just overwhelmed. I couldn’t shake it off. I was just overwhelmed. I went to my pastor, who was very wise, and he said, “Well, maybe that’s the beginning of a call, but the Lord will confirm it in other ways.” And that’s what happened.

About six months later, I was asked to speak to all the young people of the denomination, which was only done by ministers. I was 16 years old. I just couldn’t understand how I got the invitation, but I was scared stiff. But that was a turning point in my life when I spoke on that occasion because the Lord, I think, gave me some freedom to speak. Then I started getting confirmations from other elders and ministers who said, “Have you ever considered the ministry?” Things began to escalate from there. But from the day that I received those words, “Go forth and preach the gospel to all the nations,” until today I never really doubted in the depths of my being for one second that God’s hand was in this. I could say, even as a 16-year-old, “Woe unto me if I preach not the gospel.”

Then it was a long process to get into the ministry in that denomination, but the Lord opened all those doors. When you’ve been a minister basically your whole life and your whole heart has been in it, you just can’t do anything else. You can’t even think about doing anything else. This is all-consuming. I think the call to the ministry varies a lot. A lot of men, when they come to our seminary, they think they’re called, but they’re not 100 percent sure. They’re testing the waters and that’s fine. God calls his servants in many different ways, but that’s how I was called. God is sovereign. Had I not been called in that incredibly overwhelmingly powerful way, there’s no way I ever would have been accepted in that denomination as a minister because that’s exactly what they were looking for. But I had no knowledge of all that. It’s just that God gave me what I needed to be accepted into the ministry.

Piper: So, you have to be a Dutch Reformed charismatic in order to be in that denomination? That’s what they were looking for?

Beeke: You have to read my two chapters against charismatics in my Reformed Systematic Theology.

Helopoulos: It is interesting that both of you were shy, that you didn’t want to stand up in front of people, and yet you felt the call to ministry. There are probably young men in this room saying, “Well, I’m an introvert. I’ve never been comfortable standing in front of people.” Was that something that you worked through? Is that something that you grew in? Was that something that you felt like once you started heading down the path of ministry that was just supernaturally provided for?

Piper: The summer of 1966 was the most important summer in my life so far. I not only found a wife that summer, Noël, who’s been my wife for 55 years, and not only heard that call but I wasn’t shy. I was paralyzed. I don’t joke about this at all. I didn’t have butterflies. I had paralysis. My folks took me to psychologists and no Christians believed in psychologists in 1964. This was mega serious and disabling.

I went off to Wheaton knowing that they required a speech course and knowing that I would save that till the end and drop out of school. I would go to a state school and finish there. That is exactly what I thought because there was no way I would do a speech class. This is an answer to your question. I didn’t work through it. It was a gift. And it came like this.

Chaplain Evan Welch came up to me that summer and said, “Johnny, will you pray in chapel?” Summer school chapel at Wheaton had about 500 students in it. And out of my mouth came the words, “How long do you have to pray?” And he said, “30 seconds or a minute.” And I said, “Yes.” To this day, I have no idea how that happened. I don’t know why I said yes. I walked back and forth on the front campus. I think I’ve made two vows in my life and this is one of them. I said to God, “If you will get me through a 30-second prayer behind that gigantic pulpit in Edmond Chapel, I will never say no to you again out of fear for a speaking opportunity.” And he got me through. A dam broke. It just broke. As I’ve looked back on it, I can’t help but think that a wife and a calling together produced that under the Holy Spirit.

This is just a guess but it’s worth thinking about. To have a woman come into your life when you’re a pimple-faced, insecure young man, who has never dated in your life, wondering if any girl could ever like you, and she likes you? This is very powerful. I really do believe this — and I don’t know how all the spiritual pieces fit together — that Noël’s love for me and God saying, “You’re going to study the Bible for the rest of your life,” did something together with that opportunity in chapel. So, I did take that speech class. I gave that speech on how to lift barbells because I thought if I moved around enough and showed barbells that it would distract people from how nervous I was. I won the Clarence Roddy Preaching Prize at Fuller Seminary three years later and I was on my face in those days thinking, “How did that happen?” To this day, I don’t know how it happened. It was just a gift.

Beeke: Well, the gospel unloosened my tongue. So I started speaking to people about the gospel at work, at school, every friend I had, and even strangers. When I was still in regular social situations where there was nothing special, I still felt kind of withdrawn and shy, but the ministry itself got me over that as well. It was just a matter of time there but I was painfully shy.

Helopoulos: When you think about the pastorate, most of us have different pastors in our minds that we’ve served with, or been under, or watched from afar. When you think, “This is the best pastor I know,” what is it that marks him?

Piper: You have to go first on this one.

Beeke: I would say he is marked by a passionate love for his people and being there, as that one book is called (Being There), and caring deeply and being very prayerful with your people. I was ordained on March 30, 1978, and two days later a minister came over who was 50 years a minister. So I asked him, “What advice would you have to give me? Give me all the advice you have from all those years of ministry.” He said, “I’ll give you one thing. And if you do that, everything else will fall in place.” I was all ears. He said, “Always pray with your people in everything you do and before everything you do. If you do it a thousand times in the ministry, pray before everything you do.” That impacted me tremendously. When a minister really prays with his people, when they walk in and they sit down to visit and they pray, beforehand and afterward, and they feel like he loves their soul more than they do, I think that’s a real pastor. He’s someone who really cares.

As you grow in ministry, especially long-term ministry when you’re there 10 or more years or more, you might go a whole generation or the next generation and you become like a father to the whole congregation. This is like your extended family. I think that’s a sign of a really good pastor too. You become a kind of a father figure where people feel very free to come to you for anything. They’ll tell you secrets that they’ve told nobody else and know you will hold it confidential. You’re just a real pastor to them.

Helopoulos: That’s good, Joel.

Piper: I don’t like questions that ask for the best anything, except God, Bible, Christ, and gospel. Those are all the best. Because I’m fallible I just don’t know. So, I reject the question.

Helopoulos: I’ll take it.

Piper: I’m going to change the question because I think I can answer what you are asking without claiming to know what’s best.

Beeke: This is getting very complicated, John.

Piper: I really like dead pastors better than living pastors. What pastor alive has a significant influence on me? I’m going to say Mark Dever and I’m going to tell you why. Number one, he is solid as a rock theologically. Number two, he loves the church and I’m convicted because I don’t think I love the church as much as Mark does. He takes membership really seriously. I don’t think I took membership seriously enough. And then there are two things that are most significant (and that’s like best significant): He’s thick-skinned and happy. I’m looking at the camera now. Mark is going to watch this. I’ve never met anybody like him who, no matter what happens, seems to be able to ride the wave of criticism and stay happy without being stoic. So thank you. I wish I were more like that. I tend to get angry.

The last thing is evangelism. The first time I ever met Mark, he took me up on top of his church. This was 15 or 20 years ago. He just walked around the rim of the top of his church pointing out the unbelievers’ homes where he was working on people. For those four reasons, at least, I like hanging out with Mark Dever. It mainly makes me feel guilty. But that’s good for me. You don’t want to just hang out with people that make you feel affirmed. You need to feel convicted.

Helopoulos: Mark does have thick skin and he can be very clear in what he says and he does it with a smile. I remember last time we had him at URC, I was standing next to him at our church. A Baptist member of our congregation came up to him and said, “I’m in this PCA church, a presbyterian church, I don’t believe what they do about baptism, what should I do?” He said, “Leave and find a baptist church.” He said it with a smile right while I was standing next to him so we may have different appreciations of Mark, but I do appreciate some of the same things about him.

Let me ask you this. Starting out in ministry, what were some of the things that you were too concerned about when you first started out in ministry and what are other things that took decades for you to figure out that you needed to be more concerned about as you pastored your congregations?

Piper: Let me give one concrete example because I think it’ll be helpful to people who might struggle. I don’t think I understood for about 30 years that Jesus’s radical command to gouge your eye out because of lust, and Paul’s command to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, should apply with equal violence to nonsexual sins. I learned early on that as a young man lust in your head and in your body — and the temptations to act it out in pornography or worse — had to be killed the way Jesus said so. He said, “If, if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out” (Matthew 5:29). I mean, that’s crazy radical. He is saying, “Use a screwdriver and your eyeball comes out.” I mean, that’s crazy language, right? That’s about as violent as you can get, so go after lust that way. Now I got that as a young man and I think I did it. I’ve never committed fornication. I’ve never cheated on my wife. I fight any temptation to look at anything inappropriate and I fight with violence.

That was a given and I hope it’s a given in this room. That’s what he said. Do that. Better to go to heaven with one eye than to go to hell with two eyes. And you’re going to go to hell if you give into lust. That’s what he said. Why? Why did it take me until 2010, give or take, to learn you can do the same with self-pity? You can do the same with anger. You can do the same with sullenness. I had these habitual sins ruining my marriage for years and they were making life hard for me and for her. I had this passive notion about sanctification with regard to that kind of sin. I thought the only way you fought that kind of sin is by getting happy in Jesus and the expulsive power of a new affection pushes it out. It wasn’t working, whereas the Bible says that, and then it says, “Kill it.” Be killing sin or it will be killing you. Take the same screwdriver to your self-pity.

For some reason, in 2010, I thought, “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling” doesn’t just apply to lust.” Fear and trembling applies to when you walk in the house. Your wife and daughter are having a really happy time looking at some girl show on the computer and you came home expecting to be welcomed and treated with some acknowledgment that you’re there and have a pleasant evening together. And they barely look up. Guys, this is where the rubber meets the road in terms of ego and sin. I know the sequence of sins that follow at that moment — self-pity, anger, withdrawal, sullenness, and everything goes bad in the family. That’s my problem. That’s not their problem. That’s my problem.

So, I walk in, it happens, and I see it coming. It’s like lust. You see it coming. And I take hold of the sword of the Spirit and say, “You’re not going to win this one.” And I smile. Now you might think that’s fake. Well, it was a little bit. I smile. I greet them like everything’s just fine, even though they’re paying no attention to me at all. I go upstairs and I get down on my knees and I fight like hell to kill that sin. Actually, I fight like heaven to kill that sin. I fight until it’s dead. It’s dead. And I can go downstairs as a new man, loving my family and not feeling self-pity. It took me a long time. Now, that’s not just pastoring, but it really messed me up, I think, a lot. I hope I’m a better husband and a better father in the last 14 years or so than I was before. That’s one example of something that took me a long time to learn.

Beeke: My response is not going to be that dramatic, but it was good. It was very good what you said. I think that when you’re really a young minister and you’re with a lot of older ministers and you’re being watched and examined and feeling pressed into a certain mold, I think I was too concerned about myself and how I did. It was a huge relief to really break out of that and be more concerned about God’s glory. It wasn’t about how well I preached, but it was what the Lord did with that sermon in so and so’s life.

I’ve come to a greater appreciation over the years with the complexity of what God uses for the conversion of someone and their growth in grace. I’m just happy now to have a little place in the back of the watch as I was talking about. Maybe it’s this sermon, maybe it’s that book I wrote, or maybe it’s that conference I was at. It just had a little place to play in someone’s spiritual growth and I’m just very content with that. As you get older, you lose that sense of jealousy of others and you just feel more comfortable I think in your own skin to be who God wants you to be and use the gifts that God has given you and not worry about the gifts of someone else.

I remember when I was first married to Mary. I’m a very close friend of Sinclair Ferguson. One time we were sitting down and he had a book to write in two weeks. I said, “Two weeks? Weeks?” He said, “Weeks.” It was due to Zondervan. I said, “Well, how are you going to do it?” He said, “Well, I write one chapter a night. It doesn’t work for me to go over what I’ve written. So I just write one draft and then I send it off.” I said, “You’re going to write 14 chapters in two weeks?” He said, “Yeah.” So I came home to my wife and I said, “Wow. Can you imagine if I was Sinclair Ferguson how many books I could write?” And she said, “Honey, I think you better be content with the gifts God has given you.” Ouch. But she was so right. She said it so sweetly and mildly. Just be content. You pastors, be content in your own skin. Don’t try to use gifts God hasn’t given you, but do cultivate the gifts he has given you to the max. And then just be God-centered and try to focus on his glory and the salvation of souls and their growth in grace.

I have a little sign in my bathroom that says this, “A minister’s real wages are when he sees his people coming closer to Christ.” And that gives me more satisfaction than any paycheck or anything else. If I see someone growing in grace, oh it’s so satisfying. So, be more concerned about God’s glory and the welfare of souls, and less concerned about yourself. Just be faithful and do what you can do.

Helopoulos: That’s really good and it’s one of the things I appreciate most about both of you. You use your gifts where the Lord has placed you for the benefit of the body, the greater body, your local church, and you’re committed to it.

One of the things I’ve watched about both of you is that you’re willing to contend for the faith when it’s necessary in ways that are public, when it’s being assaulted, and yet you’re not contentious for the faith. We live in a day where people are trying to wrestle through that. I think pastors are more and more put in positions like that. John, I think about you and complementarianism. You felt like that was something that to be contended for in our day. You also focused on the new perspective on Paul. Joel, I think about you with assurance of salvation in your own context in the Dutch Church, seeing how that was affecting people in the Dutch Reformed world. You were contending for a right view.

How have you decided with the gifts you’ve been given when it is that you are to speak to something, contend for it in that kind of way, and then at other times decide, “No, I’m not going into that battle”? Some are always fighting and some are never willing to fight. If everyone loves you, there’s a problem. If everyone hates you, you’re a problem. It seems like you guys have done this well. How have you decided what to contend for and what not to?

Piper: As I’ve looked at the things that I’ve contended for — you mentioned two of them like complementarianism, justification, sovereignty of God, Reformed theology, the five points of Calvinism, and several others — I don’t think I operate from a set of principles on that. But when I step back and look, there are principles at work. To what degree is the authority of Scripture being undermined? To what degree is the gospel being compromised? To what degree is the nature of God being minimized or called into question? And to what degree is the imago dei being diminished? I say that because I’m a real hater of abortion. I will stand in front of Planned Parenthood in three weeks and lead in prayer. I hate killing children in the womb. I think it’s wicked. And I think, “Why do I feel so urgent about that?” I think it’s because God is the one who is knitting us together in our mother’s womb. This is his business to make images of himself like that. We better not intrude upon that. That’s really evil. So those are four categories — Scripture, God, gospel, image of God. To what degree is a false teaching starting to spread that is making those doctrines obscure, that is upsetting or ruining them?

And I think some of it is just subjective regarding what you love. I love the sovereignty of God. I became a Calvinist late — that is, I didn’t grow up with it. I would date my conversion to Calvinism in the fall of 1968. I was about 22 years old. Guys came to Fuller Seminary from Reformed schools and they were tired of Calvinism. They had it running out of their ears since they were six, and I was leaping for joy at the sovereignty of God in my salvation as I saw it in the Bible. To this day, I’ve never stopped leaping. I love sovereign grace. So I would go to the mat for that over and over again. I want to be a part of movements, schools, ministries, and conferences that highlight the absolute sovereignty of God’s grace and salvation. So I think what you love is a big piece of it.

Beeke: I agree with that answer. What you love and what you feel really passionate about and you feel the Lord has laid on your heart will kind of shape your ministry. You will preach the whole counsel of God if you’re a faithful minister and you’re exegeting through Bible books and you’ll do it with love and passion, but there are certain things that stand out especially with the passing of the years.

You mentioned the assurance of faith, I feel the same way about Reformed experiential preaching. When I was in an Eastern European country, I was assaulted and my hands were tied behind my back, I was tied around my ankles, and they put a rag in my mouth and tied me around my eyes. I was on the ground and they were running a knife up and down my back and they were shouting out that they were the mafia. People had just told me all day long that if you ever get in the hands of the mafia, you’re a dead man. I thought I was going to die.

Well, I found out in the end that they really weren’t the mafia and they took the keys out of my pocket, went to the seminary where I was teaching, stripped the seminary of all the computers, sold them on the black market, and left me alone. I finally worked myself free. I didn’t even pray for myself during those 45 minutes because I was sure I was dying. I was just praying for my wife and ministries and kids. But I had a light bulb moment when I sat up and actually was alive. I just said, “Lord, I vow that I will spend every moment of my waking life from here on to do what I was already doing but I will do it more intensely, to promote Reformed experiential preaching and teaching all around the world.”

That’s why I train men from all around the world. Everything in my ministry and my book ministry is channeled in that, much like John has the passion about delighting in God and God getting his most glory. It comes through in all his writings, and this comes through in all my writings and all my commitment. I want people to understand what it means. I think the joy of the Christian life becomes so much greater when you really experience the doctrines of grace and don’t just have them in your head. My focus is there. So I’m not really an apologetics guy, defending this or defending that all the time. But when push comes to shove, abortion is one thing I feel very strongly about. I preach very strongly against that. But I think you need to find the right balance for you as a minister and what God is calling you to.

Family worship is another big thing for me. I’ve preached on it in 50 different countries around the world. I just feel so strongly that we have to get back to the old family worship style where dads are speaking to their children every day, as they did in the Reformation and Puritan times, about the truths of God. If you call that apologetics in a way, I’m big on that. But I just don’t think it’s my business nor my gifting to get involved, for example, in other seminaries’ intramural debates. This seminary is pitting this against the seminary and people come up to me and say, “As a seminary president, what do you think of that?” I’m not going to enter into that. I’m going to stay above that fray, unless it’s a really heretical doctrine.

I’m going to put my energy, for the most part, into promoting positive things, especially where the church is not realizing its calling. I will speak out strongly against worldliness in churches because I think that’s a huge problem. When I have to preach a really warning sermon against a particular sin, I do it because I feel compelled to do it and I think I do it with all my heart, but afterwards I am just completely wiped out. I think you each have to find your own way as pastors and know yourself but also be faithful to God and what he’s calling you to do.

Piper: I want to just underline that. In your pulpit over time, you shouldn’t want to be known for being about controversy. It should be that your pulpit is about Christ, salvation, joy, heaven, and holiness. Having a robust sense of walking in hungry and walking out fed with the glories of the gospel and the glories of Christ can happen with sprinkled controversies. You do need to say things about the horrible things in the culture, but you don’t need for that to be the symphonic theme so that people say, “Oh, that’s the church where they’re always fighting somebody.” But rather let it be said, “That’s the church where they seem to be really happy in God, where they seem to love the glory of God.” But they know where you stand on just about everything.

I think it’s a mistake when churches and pastors are not clear where they stand on homosexuality, on transgenderism, on abortion, and on all kinds of things that come along in the culture, though they’ll change over time. But if it’s not plain what’s going to happen is that people are going to just start coming to church and want to know what you believe and that will breed a lukewarm Church in the long run that’s wishy-washy in its stands and its doctrines. But in order to accomplish that you really don’t have to harp on those things, you don’t. You can harp on God and then people will feel, “This church is mainly about Christ and his greatness, about the gospel and its greatness, about God and his greatness, about mission and its greatness, and I know exactly where they stand on biblical issues.”

Helopoulos: That’s really helpful. Let’s continue along that line of thought. You both have pastored the same church for decades and have, by all accounting as we can see this side of heaven, has remained effective for all those decades. No doubt there are ups and downs and so there are in any church. But it’s odd for a pastor in our day and age to remain in a church for 30 or 40 years. What else would be an encouragement to us? Should more men be aimed at having a long-term ministry in the same place? If so, what are some things that would help to maintain having an effective ministry in the same place for a long time?

Beeke: I actually have a 150-page paperback book right now that’s 95 percent done and it’s called Persevering in Ministry. Two chapters are on the subject of maintaining long-term ministry. There are so many things to say on this but one thing I want to get out to you men is this. There’s an old Dutch saying that the first year is a honeymoon year, in years two and three people actually start to hear what you’re saying, and years four through five or maybe six are the years where you have a lot of kickback and trials, which is exactly when many ministers jump ship and go to another church. But what you want to do is you want to stay the course. You don’t want to be a hireling that flees the sheep at that point. You want to stay the course beyond that. And you get to years seven, eight, and nine, the people that are really opposed to your ministry will leave at that point because they’ll say, “This guy is never going anywhere so we’re going.” Don’t get me wrong. I always hate to see my sheep leave, but sometimes when you’re in long-term ministry (year 10 and forward) you have a little skirmish now and then, but there’s stability in the church. You’ve been there and you’ve been feeding them and the vast bulk of the people, 95 percent or more now, are in full harmony with what you’re teaching and you’re not going anywhere.

These are the most fruitful years where you’re training their children and their grandchildren. There’s just a beauty about long-term ministry where you’re a father figure in the congregation. When we sing the Psalter before I start preaching, I often just kind of look around and say, “Oh, there’s that man I helped 22 years ago when his marriage was in trouble. And there’s that woman right now who has secret problems with her husband and I’ve been working with them. There’s that young person who I worked with in getting off of pornography.” I just let all these needs and all these experiences just flow over me as I begin to preach. And then it’s like I’m preaching to my own family. It’s so different from preaching at a conference or preaching in a church you’ve only been in two or three years.

So, I think there are huge advantages in long-term ministry, provided you stay fresh and you keep studying and you keep bringing new things and old from the pulpit. If you just lean on the old barrel of sermons, of course, it’s going to run dry and you’re going to flounder. But if you can stay fresh, long-term ministry — all things being equal — is God’s normal way, I think, of building up a flock.

Piper: God wrote a book. Do any of you believe that? If that’s true, if the creator of the universe, who upholds everything by the word of his power is taking this whole history to a conclusion where you’ll either be infinitely happy with him forever or you’ll suffer forever, and he tells us all about that in the Bible, then it is inexhaustible. So staying fresh is right here. Maybe I would just say those two things. Believing the Bible and opening it to your people week in, week out means that you have something glorious to say every week. I have never walked into the pulpit not excited about what I have to say, including tomorrow night. We have a Book.

Number two, feed yourself on this Book. It’s what you were talking about earlier. You must stay alive. The number one task is to get up and get happy in Jesus every morning, as George Müller said. Get up and get happy in Jesus every morning because your people need your happiness in Jesus. The last thing I would say is that once you’ve given 10 years to a church and you finally persuaded most of the leaders about Reformed theology — and you finally in a baptist church created something called elders — and you’ve built something amazing and somebody invites you to a church that’s 10,000 people bigger, you say, “I wouldn’t want to start this over again. Are you kidding me? This has been hard work for 10 years and we’re here. We’re here. Now we can finally do something together.”

Beeke: But it’s also true that when you have a built-up relationship for many years and you really love your people, when you get a call from another church, you pray about it, but you just say, “I can’t leave these people. There’s too much invested. There’s too much love here. I just can’t leave them. How can I leave all these different people I’ve helped pastorally and preached to for all these years? And I see them growing. I just can’t leave.” So, the old Dutch style was when you accept a call to another church, you have to know a loosening from your present church and a bonding to the other church. And when you’re in a church for a long time, loosening from that church is very difficult. I’m not saying it’s impossible. I’m not saying God won’t call you to another church. But then you have to know that loosening. You don’t just say, “Oh, well, I’ve been here a number of years and the weather is better over there. I’m going to be a little closer to my kids so I’m going to go there.” No, you have to have a divine sense of calling to leave a church that you’ve shepherded for so long.

Helopoulos: Incredibly helpful. A lot of wisdom has been shared this afternoon. We appreciate it and appreciate your ministries.

No one wakes up an Olympian. No athlete competes against the world’s best by natural ability alone.

Among other things, the Olympics display the plasticity of human bodies and skills. Granted, many of the world’s top competitors may have been born with some unusual abilities and proclivities, but nature alone did not get them to the highest level. Rather, training separates Olympians from natural athletes. And this is by God’s design. He made the human body to be formed and re-formed through the gift and grit of training.

Human Plasticity

It is a wonder that God made us both fixed and pliable creatures. On the one hand, you cannot grow a third leg. There are basic givens to our humanity that cannot be altered, no matter how much we’d like it otherwise. But on the other hand, you can significantly strengthen and condition the two legs you have. Our bodies are trainable. You cannot train yourself to breathe underwater, but you can train to greatly increase your VO2 max.

Athletics offer a fresh, vivid, concrete reminder of the power of human plasticity, and not just of our bodies but also of our minds and hearts. And as Christians, recipients of the priceless gift of delighting in God through regeneration and Spirit-indwelling, we now do not just spontaneously delight in God or not. Every day we are conditioning our souls, in at least some small degree, to delight in God or be indifferent toward him.

To be clear, “plastic” in this context doesn’t mean cheap or easily breakable. The plasticity we’re focusing on here is how neuroscientists describe the human brain. That is, our brains flex and shift. They re-form and re-grow. They learn and adapt and change — not simply in what information they store, but in their actual makeup and shape. They are not static but plastic, ever changing in small increments and degrees that are not easily discerned in the moment but produce vast effects over time.

And as with our brains, so also with our souls. Our hearts and desires are not givens but pliable and plastic. We are ever shifting and re-forming in tiny increments that snowball over time. Our choices not only express who we are but also affect who we will be.

What gets our best attention and affection today profoundly conditions what we will desire and delight in tomorrow.

Condition Your Soul

Strange as this plasticity may sound to modern ears with our mechanistic metaphors for our humanity (like “hard-wired” or “processing”), the concept was not foreign to the apostle Paul.

In 1 Timothy 4, he writes to his protégé Timothy about conditioning his soul. That is, he assumes Timothy’s mind and heart are pliable, bendable, plastic. His inner person, like his outer, is re-formable and re-shapable within the bounds of God’s created order.

Both for the health of Timothy’s own soul and for his effectiveness in Christian ministry, he needs to give attention to himself and to his teaching and persist in these things (1 Timothy 4:16). He is to devote himself “to the public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching.” He should not neglect the abilities he’s been given but “practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress” (1 Timothy 4:13–15).

Over time, the disciple will not stay the same. He will either get better or get worse. The health of his soul and his spiritual abilities and inclinations will either grow and mature (“progress”) or deteriorate and atrophy into spiritual lethargy, dullness, and apathy.

More Pliable Than Your Body

Most memorably, Paul says, “Train yourself for godliness” (1 Timothy 4:7). Here he likens the conditioning of the eternal soul to the conditioning of the physical body:

While bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come. (1 Timothy 4:8)

Running, weights, and HIIT workouts train and condition the body for the present life — and indeed have “some value.” But training in godliness — that is, conditioning the soul in spiritual likeness to Christ — reshapes the inner person for eternity and “is of value in every way.”

“Our choices not only express who we are but deeply shape who we will be.”

Not only is the soul, like the body, malleable — with its various likes and dislikes, its delights and disgusts, its preferences and apathies — but the inner person is even more trainable than the physical body. The shape of our objective bodies is more stubborn than the shape of our subjective desires and delights. We may be quick to overlook this countercultural reality since we cannot see (with physical eyes) the inward changes like we can with outward changes to the body.

What’s Your Five-Year Trajectory?

What, then, might we do about this truth, demonstrably biblical, yet lost on so many of us in the modern world — that our desires and delights are condition-able and not simple givens?

The question is not whether we are training our souls right now or not. Oh, we are training them. Unavoidably so. With every new day, in every act and choice. With every thought approved and word spoken and initiative taken. With every desire indulged or renounced. With every meditation of our hearts in spare moments. With every click, like, and share. With every podcast play, video view, check of the scores on ESPN, or browse of the headlines news. With every fresh opportunity to show love and compassion received or rejected. In all the little moments that make up our human days and lives, we are constantly becoming who we will be and ever reshaping what our hearts pine for and find pleasing. The question is not if we’re reshaping our souls but how.

And if you wonder how, you might start with an audit of your habits and patterns and ask, Am I conditioning my soul to delight in Jesus in five years, or to be apathetic toward him? The way I go to bed, and how I rise. How I approach meals, and the calendar, and commutes. The way I work and rest, my vocational labor and recreational leisure. And in it all, how I treat and take initiative toward others, or seek to minimize and avoid them.

Perhaps today, if someone were to ask you, “Do you trust in Jesus and delight in him?” you could quickly answer, “Yes, I delight in him.” But what do your patterns say? And what kind of heart will your habits produce in time? This week, this month, even today, are you conditioning your soul to delight in Jesus five years from now or to be indifferent to him? What will be the long-term, heart-effects of your investments in Netflix or social media or your garden or house-projects or favorite team?

You might ask, right now, in this season of life, am I feeding and growing and strengthening my delight in Jesus or starving it? And what lesser joys and delights am I feeding that will, in time, eclipse and choke out my delight in God if I continue to shape my soul in these ways? Am I daily putting my soul within earshot of God’s grace? Am I seeking to shape my heart to the texture of Scripture? Am I re-forming and re-consecrating my desires before God by lingering in prayer? And who am I spending most of and the best of my time with? How will my heart be reshaped by the hearts of those people whose opinions are coming to matter most to me?

You will become more like what and who you fawn over. So, do you continue to fawn over Jesus, and prioritize others who do the same?

Morning and Evening

Especially significant in this regard are our morning and evening routines. Where do you turn first in the morning to meet and direct the desires of the new day? Do you put the world’s horizontal demands first or “go vertical” with God? Do you open his Book to hear from him, see his Son with the eyes of faith, and continually, one day after another, shape your heart to delight in the truly delightful?

And what typically occupies your attention, the musings of your heart, once the day is essentially done and you move through the routine of “gearing down” for bed?

Rome wasn’t lost in a day, nor is Christian faith — typically. The dulling and disappearance of faith is usually the effect of spiritual conditioning not just yesterday but through yesteryears.

Saving faith hears God’s word, sees him as true with the eyes of the soul, and embraces him as desirable. Saving faith is not indifferent to what it sees or apathetic toward who God is and what he has said and done in Christ. There is in genuine faith an eagerness, a desire, a thirst, a hunger, and a foretaste of satisfaction. Faith says to Jesus, “I want you. I delight in you.”

And saving faith perseveres. It keeps wanting — meaning it makes choices today that condition the soul not for indifference to Jesus but for delight in him.

Audio Transcript

Thinking is essential in the Christian life. It’s essential to Bible reading. And we’ve spent time looking at how much we need to focus our minds to trace the logic flow of Paul’s thought as we read his letters — a dynamic you have shown us, Pastor John, using Romans 1:15–17 and 1 Corinthians 6:18–20 as great samples to show how the Bible assumes we will read. For that, see the APJ book (page 27 for those). Informative and inspiring.

But there are pitfalls to being a deep thinker, too. And Sarah, a thinker, wants to avoid those pitfalls. Here’s her email: “Pastor John, hello to you and thank you for taking my question. I’ve learned a lot from Ask Pastor John over the years, and I listen every week. Thank you, and thank you, Tony, for all your work in making it, and for compiling the new APJ book. It’s all very helpful.

“My question for you is about thinking. I am a thinker. It’s one reason why I love the podcast. You are a thinker. However, I have noticed that some thinking is very dangerous. Paul warns of the dangers of thinking in 1 Corinthians 8:1–4. And yet he also says that thinking is indispensable in Romans 10:1–4. Can you explain how knowledge is both indispensable and dangerous, and how you manage this balance in your own thinking? Thank you!”

I think that’s an excellent way to say it. Knowledge is both indispensable and dangerous. That’s good. Sarah doesn’t make a distinction between thinking and knowing. So, let me make that distinction. Thinking is the activity of the mind by which we gain knowledge. So, I would add the statement, “Knowing and thinking are both indispensable and dangerous.” The process and the product are both indispensable for the Christian — and dangerous.

Thinking Is Dangerous

Let’s start with the danger. I think the number one danger that the Bible warns against when it comes to thinking and knowing is pride. Qualification: that does not mean that people who don’t think and who don’t know much are automatically humble. There is just as much pride among ignorant people as there is among smart people. There is just as much pride among people who don’t know much as there is among people who know a lot.

But the people who don’t think, they boast in other things besides thinking and knowing — physical strength; sexual, alluring powers; ability to cook, play sports, sing, make music, make money, fight, be funny. The things we can boast in are endless. The possibilities of pride and boasting are endless, both for the ignorant and the intelligent.

“We know as we ought if our knowing produces love, not boasting.”

So, the point is not that intelligent, knowledgeable people are more proud than ignorant, unthinking people. The point is that the greatest danger about being intelligent and knowledgeable is pride. That’s the greatest danger people have if they are thoughtful and know a lot of things. And there’s something about thinking (and the skill you have in it) and knowing much that tempts us to exalt ourselves over others and think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.

Paul’s Warning

Sarah refers to 1 Corinthians 8:1–3:

Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

Now, I find those verses really puzzling. How do they fit together? And I’ve written a lot about them.

So, let me just give you my interpretation as best I can. I think what it means is this: How do we know that we know as we ought? Answer: we know as we ought if our knowing produces love, not boasting. If our knowing puffs up over others, it’s not right knowing. But if our knowing builds others up in love, then our knowing is right knowing.

When Paul adds a reference to loving God in verse 3 (“if anyone loves God”), he evidently implies that the love that builds up other people (by the way we use our knowledge for them and not to boast over them) is rooted in love for God, which he says originates in being known by God — that is, being chosen by God and loved by God, so that we are able to love him and thus be full of love for other people and thus use our knowledge rightly, lovingly. It’s a profoundly God-centered understanding of human thinking and knowing in those verses.

So, the first and foremost danger of thinking and knowing that Paul focuses on is that knowledge puffs up. Unless it is under the control of God-given love, it’s going to make us proud.

Jesus’s Warning

Jesus has a similar warning, I think, for the wise and understanding. He says in Matthew 11:25, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children.” Now, I think “little children” there signifies humble people, lowly people, simple people who are not boasting in their wisdom and their understanding but are looking away from themselves to God, the way a child looks to his parent and is willing to receive whatever he says is true. “If God says it, I’ll believe it. I’m going to look to God for my wisdom.”

So, the great danger of being self-reliant, self-exalting in our understanding is that we cut ourselves off from God’s revelation. Dependence on revelation from God for wisdom is a humbling thing. We don’t like to depend on somebody else having total wisdom and telling us what reality is like. Humans don’t like to be utterly dependent on God’s revelation of himself in order to have a true knowledge of life.

Nebuchadnezzar’s Example

One last illustration about the connection between pride and the right use of the mind is the vivid example of Nebuchadnezzar. When he boasted in his power and intelligence to build a great kingdom, God struck him down, made him like an animal who ate grass. Here’s the way Nebuchadnezzar described his recovery from that bestial, animal-like loss of his mind, his right use of his brain. He said, “At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High” (Daniel 4:34).

Years ago, I put that verse on my office door at church, the verse that says, “I . . . lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me.” I love it. We will use our minds rightly when our eyes are lifted Godward. If we turn in on ourselves and begin to boast, our reason will become bestial and destructive.

Thinking Is Indispensable

Now, let’s shift gears and turn to the fact that knowing and thinking are not just dangerous; they’re indispensable. The prophet Hosea said, “My people [perish] for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). And he pleaded, “Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord” (Hosea 6:3). So, the faculty of knowing is first and foremost essential for knowing God. Let us know God. Let us press on to know God.

I think Jesus made that plain when he said about the Great Commandment in Matthew 22:37, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Now, I take loving God with your mind to mean use your mind. Use your thinking faculty, your capacities for knowing. Use your mind in order to stoke the fires of love for God in your heart.

If the heart burns, the kindling is thrown by the mind. The mind works hard. It goes out and it finds the truth, the kindling of truth, and it throws it on the furnace of love in the heart. Put your mind at the service of your heart in loving God. That’s the ultimate purpose for having the capacity to think and know.

Again and again, I am bowled over by the sheer reality that the Creator of the universe has communicated himself to us in a book. We have a book, and the book is the very word of the Creator of the universe. One of the reasons that bowls me over is because it implies that the main way we know God is by reading or listening to someone who has read. If you’re preliterate and you have to depend on orality, someone speaking to you, they have to read the book or somebody has to read the book.

So, reading and listening are fundamentally processes of thinking. To read is to think. God has ordained to make himself known and to make a relationship with him possible through a book, which means we have to learn how to read. Learning how to read means learning how to think, which makes thinking indispensable.

I conclude with exactly what Sarah said: thinking is not just dangerous; it is indispensable.

As I write, I’m sitting outside my home, basking in a verdant, cloudless midsummer day in Minnesota. The sun-drenched landscape around me is lush and green, except for the colorful interruptions of flowers in full bloom that draw the eye as well as the bees and hummingbirds. And from the trees, a virtuoso wren leads a choir of birds, providing a perfect seasonal soundtrack in surround sound.

And as I sit enveloped by this world flush with life, I’m thinking about how brief life is. I recently turned 59. One more quick trip around the sun, and I’ll be 60 — if the Lord wills and I live, that is. Given how fast the decades are speeding by, before I know it I’ll find myself at “seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty,” which both Moses and modern demographers say is the average span of a human life (Psalm 90:10) — if the Lord wills and I live, that is. The end of my earthly life now feels less like someday and more like someday soon.

Which is why, in recent years, I have increasingly returned to what has become one of my favorite psalms: Moses’s prayer in Psalm 90. I share Moses’s deep desire for God to “teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). I want to know what it means to grow wise as we grow older.

And learning to number our days begins by coming to terms with how few days we are given.

Like It Was Yesterday

When I was a young man, the phrase “I remember that like it was yesterday” usually referred to events that occurred just a few years prior. Now, I find myself saying that about things that happened three, four, even five decades ago.

A fun grade-school overnight with my closest childhood friends, Brent and Dave.
Riding in a car with high-school friends, belting out “American Fast Food” to a Randy Stonehill cassette.
That moment in the Wayzata Perkins parking lot at age 18, when I knew deep in my soul that Pam was the one I would marry — and we weren’t even officially dating yet! Now we’ve been married for 36 wonderful years.
That first time I heard John Piper preach, and I knew deep in my soul that somehow my future would be intertwined with his — and we weren’t even part of Bethlehem Baptist Church yet! Now we’ve been serving in ministry together for more than 30 years.
That overwhelming moment in the hospital room 28 years ago when I held our first child for the first time. Now that child is nearly the age I was then.

I remember these events like they were yesterday. And they leave me wondering where all the time went. How did it go by so fast?

Like Yesterday When It Is Past

Moses felt this kind of bewilderment too, and even more when he compared our brief lives to God’s life:

Before the mountains were brought forth,     or ever you had formed the earth and the world,     from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (Psalm 90:2)

Given how prone we are to see ourselves as lead characters in the drama of existence, it does our souls good to sit and prayerfully ruminate on what it means for God to exist “from everlasting to everlasting.” It boggles our minds. It’s supposed to. It’s meant to reframe our exaggerated perceptions of ourselves and our lifetimes so we see them from a realistic and humbling perspective — God’s perspective. It’s necessary that we, who experience time in terms of decades, keep in mind that our experience is not like God’s:

For a thousand years in your sight     are but as yesterday when it is past,     or as a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4)

Moses is using metaphorical language here. If anything, he’s understating the reality. But God gives us this metaphor in Scripture so we have something comprehensible to help us get some idea of the incomprehensible.

So, if we imagine that God experiences a thousand years like yesterday when it is past, how does he experience the lives of creatures like us, who (“even by reason of strength”) don’t live much beyond eighty years? It means that, for God, the longest human lives don’t span even two hours of yesterday.

Two Significant Hours

How should this observation land on us? If we come away with the impression that we’re insignificant and don’t really matter in the great divine scheme, then we’re missing the point. God doesn’t measure significance in terms of time duration but in terms of what he values.

“Learning to number our days begins by coming to terms with how few days we are given.”

Think of something you did for two hours yesterday. Were those two hours insignificant? Some of the most significant things in our lives occur in minutes and hours. They may have lasted a very brief time compared to how long we live, and yet we consider them priceless.

So, what are we meant to glean from Moses’s description? Simply put, our lives are very brief — briefer than we tend to assume, and far too brief to waste.

Teach Us to Number Our Days

What this glorious but fleeting midsummer day in Minnesota is preaching to me is that my life is too brief to waste. And at 59, I see it as a metaphorical picture of my past, not my present. I’m now in the autumn of my life and, like any Minnesotan, I know that winter is coming. And it is not merely coming someday; it is coming someday soon, almost before I know it.

So, I find myself praying with Moses, “Teach me, Lord, to number my days that I may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). Because I want to grow wiser as I grow older.

And a heart of wisdom recognizes that while each day of mortal life is very brief, it is profoundly significant because its minutes and hours are priceless. Each brief day of mortal life counts, not just for an earthly life well-lived, but for eternity. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10) — and all of our good or evil happens during the ordinary, precious minutes and hours of ordinary, precious, and brief days.

Interview Transcript

Mike Andrews, hello and thank you for the invitation to appear on The Narrative Podcast, from the Center for Christian Virtue, by recording. My name is Tony Reinke, a nonprofit journalist and teacher based in Phoenix. I have sought to serve the church by writing on tech and media for a decade now. I serve as a senior teacher at desiringGod.org, and have the honor to be the producer and host of John Piper’s podcast, Ask Pastor John.

You sent three really good questions. I’ll work through them one by one.

Digital Journeys

Question 1: What are some biblical principles — boundaries, disciplines, etc. — that can be applied to smartphone use that Christian parents should model and discuss with their children before giving them their own device?

Exactly right. Modeling is key. This is not a teenager problem. Grandma’s on Facebook too much. Mom’s on Instagram too much. So back in 2015, I set aside a full year to get my own heart right with my smartphone habits. I was spending too much time in social media. I was being stupid with my time. Foolish with my heart and my attention. I subtly began to think social media networks would fulfill me.

Of course, they never could. Instead, they distracted me from what was most important. I used social media all the time for ministry. It was my job. But I also used these platforms idolatrously — as idols of security and self-affirmation. Maybe you’ve been there.

So I took several digital detoxes in 2015, time offline and away from social media. Deleted apps, turned my phone off — those sorts of things. And I used the season to confess to the Lord what he was showing me about what was inside of me. I invested more time into prayer and Bible reading and meditation on God’s truth. More time reading great books. More time with the family — intentional time with them, on trips that I had planned out. Things like that. I reprioritized the local church. I spent more time dreaming about ministry possibilities in the future.

It was a painful season of self-scrutiny, but necessary. And it was fruitful, one fruit of it being my 2017 book, 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You. That book each of my teens had to read before getting an iPhone.

Attention Overload

That process of honest discovery with myself about social media led me to further consider life inside the attention economy, inside the Hollywood media age. How can we thrive as Christians in this age of these massive, compelling digital spectacles that are all around us, every image and video clamoring for our eyes? How do we live by faith in such an eye-dominant culture? And where do we turn so that our lives are not inundated with viral, digital, ephemeral pointless things that don’t matter?

And that question led me to a second book, a meditation I published in 2019, called Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ in the Media Age. And these two books, the book on smartphones and the book on spectacles, work in tandem as warnings to show biases at work in the world, and how our media pushes us toward digital spectacles and hollows out our lives from what is eternally important.

There’s a social dilemma at play. Our attention is monetized, and we need limits and restrictions and legislations, yes. But there’s also a spiritual dilemma at play. And it’s this: our smartphones simply give us what we most want. This is what our kids need to know — what we all need to know: I am not a victim of my phone.

My phone, my social media platforms, are simply delivering to me what I most want. We have affections and desires, and those are misdirected, and then those misdirected desires get solidified into social media algorithms that feed those desires more and more. Algorithms don’t tell you what to desire. Algorithms feed you what you most want. The tailored algorithm is basically a digital decipher of what we most want.

Pixilated Desires

Another way to say it is the smartphone screen is a black mirror to reflect back to our eyes what your heart most desires in pixilated form. If our true heart is narcissistic, that’s what you’ll find online — you’ll search for things that bolster your self-image. If in your heart you harbor disdain for certain people, what you see on social media will stoke that disdain even further. If your heart is driven by unquenchable desire for sexual lust, porn will be the thing you see on your screen. The phone discloses what your heart most wants.

You can tell yourself that you’re a nice person, morally good, don’t hurt others. But there’s a Kafka-like nightmare awakening ahead of us all when we look into our phone screen, and we stare directly into our own heart’s desire. It’s right there on our screen. And if the Spirit is at work in your life, at some point, deep down, this exposé will drive you to your knees. And you’re not going to hear this in the cultural criticism. We’re not simply victims of Silicon Valley tricksters; we are sinners led by desires and impulses inside us that must be crucified.

So we continue to proclaim that rhetorical interrogation of Isaiah 55:2 and apply it to our hearts and our screens: “Why do you spend your attention on that which is not bread, and gaze at a screen for something that will never satisfy you?” That’s the spiritual dilemma we all face — mom, dad, teen. We can model this in our homes.

Wisdom Meets Gratitude

What I realized after these painful pruning seasons was that my whole take on technology changed. It matured. It deepened. For a long time I had been an early adopter of gadgets, a lot of it naively so. At the end of this process, I found myself less naive about tech, more aware of its biases. But also — at the same time — I became a lot more aware of God’s generosity in the technologies that adorn my daily life.

That resulted in my meditations on the generosity of God in all of the science and medicine and computers and smartphones and cars and homes that we enjoy, technologies that adorn my life every day. I’m cautious of the tools we have, and I’m also totally amazed that I get to live in this age, and not one hundred years ago or two hundred years ago.

My gratitude for all my tech culminated in a third book: God, Technology, and the Christian Life. It’s the capstone now of a decade-long process from seeing my sin exposed by smartphone misuse, to now seeing God’s glory and his generosity in my smartphone.

Tech Dangers and Opportunities

Question 2: Smartphones have been around for almost two decades. What are some dangers, especially spiritual, regarding phone and technology use that Christians still are either not aware of, or perhaps not fighting against as actively as we should?

In 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, I think all twelve ways are still underappreciated. Much is on the line. I think we are still learning how to balance our digital tools and integrate them into our flourishing and not our self-destruction. That’s life as technology-makers and -users. We make tools, we adopt tools, and then we spend years and decades trying to adapt those tools to our flourishing. That’s the process we are in now.

Four Stages to Flourishing

Here’s what I discovered over that decade of writing about tech and media. The tech conversation needs to progress up in four stages, and those stages get harder (and rarer) as you climb the ladder. Here’s how I put it.

Stage 1

We identify tech problems externally. This is a view of tech in which we conclude, “The app made me do it.” This is The Social Dilemma documentary on Netflix. “The algorithm made me do it. Big tech is ruining our lives.” We externalize sin, leaving it to regulations and legislation.

That’s not wrong entirely, because big tech does code biases into their algorithms and apps and gadgets. They do. No question. But our concern is incomplete if that’s the extent of it. And I think it is the extent that most Christians ever reach. And so if you think holiness is about not having a smartphone, you’re in for a shocker. So we need to go further.

Stage 2

We identify tech problems internally. Aware of biases in tech (real biases in how our apps and platforms are made, absolutely — ones we must be aware of), I must next become aware of the sinful inclinations living inside of me. Because tech biases (on the outside of me) are pushing and pulling on native, sinful inclinations within my own heart that must be dealt with.

Again, that’s why I wrote 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You and Competing Spectacles. Social media, smartphones, the attention economy — at their worst, they all appeal to something lurid inside of me. So what is that? That sin in me has got to be addressed. That’s stage 2 — identifying tech problems internally, not simply externally.

Stage 3

We voice gratitude to God for our tech. Biases acknowledged (in stage 1), sin patterns identified and confessed and dealt with (in stage 2), now I have eyes beginning to open to see the generosity and brilliance of the Creator in the tens of thousands of innovations I use every single day. I see God’s generosity in all of it. I see his generosity in all the things I’m using right now for me to record my voice for you in my studio and for you to hear me later. All of it, a divine gift.

“Christ crucified is the hinge of history, where all human spectacles meet one unsurpassed, cosmic, divine Spectacle.”

I aspire to help my kids to see this, by the power of the Spirit. Silicon Valley is not just humans doing human things. These tools are gifts from God to be stewarded for his glory. If you miss this stage, you have no foundation for stewardship. The whole tech conversation operates in the realm of godlessness. He’s a nonfactor.

This is huge, and required a whole book of its own, one I wrote titled God, Technology, and the Christian Life. As God prepared his people to enter the promised land with its milk and honey flowing, he was also preparing them to enter a land of iron and copper.

And God warns them: When you make a technological society that is wealthy and comfortable and if you fail to glorify God for all his generosity in everything you make, you are an idolater. For whatever reason, God’s people are shortsighted and blind to his generosity when they hold shiny metal things that they made. That’s the story of Deuteronomy 8:9–20.

So when we pull lithium from the ground, and aluminum, iron, silicon, cobalt, nickel — and we refine those elements into a new iPhone, that iPhone is a gift from the Creator, one he coded into his creation, for which we can now praise him. Most Christians are not here. When most Christians think of the iPhone, God is irrelevant. And our kids pick up on that real quick. But why is stage three important? That’s because, finally . . .

Stage 4

We are called to live out our tech-stewardship. Aware of the biases in tech (step 1), aware of the sin inclinations inside of me (step 2), and now beholding God’s generosity in his material gifts in his creation (step 3), technology in my life can now conform to my calling and inform how I use tech and how I parent tech-stewardship in the home.

This is the hardest part of the tech conversation. We are called to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Our tech gifts can help us to do that. I’ve dedicated my life to online ministry for this reason. I want to employ my tech gifts to love others. I believe electricity and data coding and the digital age and computer chips and smartphones and laptops and the internet were all God’s idea, inherent within the creation that he gave us to cultivate and develop.

Hung Up on ‘No’

But again, we tend to get stuck at stage 1. And it’s the spiritual danger almost no Christian appreciates — “the algorithm made me do it.” And so our parenting, for example, sounds a lot like, “No, you can’t have that gadget!” “No, you cannot use that app!” “No, you should never do that thing, look at that thing, online!” No, no, no. It never gets into the yes and amens of stewardship, of a vision of life for how to glorify God and to serve others. This fourth stage has huge implications for pastors and parents, and for anyone trying to figure out tech-ethics.

But, again, it’s just really hard to get there, because our tech-ethics are really lagging behind. We settle on being tech-dismissive and just remain there. It’s just easier to settle into stage-1 or maybe into stage-2 ethics and never move into stage-3 gratitude or stage-4 stewardship. In fact, I’d be willing to say that most Christians stagnate at stage 1 (“the app made me do it”) and never even get into stage 2 (doing the hard work of heart-work).

So when it comes to stages 3 and 4, I’m hoping Christians will learn this over the years and decades ahead. It’s not something you can add fast. It takes years to learn and appropriate these things into our lives. But without that basis for stewardship, we are lost and have no way forward but to dismiss the tech-age as Babel-like and godless. We can only diss on tech, as we hold our iPhone in hand. Our kids pick up on that dishonesty pretty quickly.

Our Phones, Our Hearts, Our Gospel

Question 3: What are some diagnostic questions or practices Christian parents or teens should regularly ask in order to keep smartphone usage within healthy and appropriate margins? And if you don’t mind me cheating a bit and asking the other side of this question, too — how can we apply the gospel to our own lives, or preach it to our kids, when our smartphone usage drifts outside of those healthy and appropriate margins?

There’s a lot we can do as far as practices. An iPhone contract is useful to set out expectations for a teen. All devices charged at night in Mom and Dad’s room, or some neutral place, never left in a teen’s room. Sundays offline. Things like those are helpful, but none of them distinctly Christian. We get Christian when we ask the right diagnostic questions. That’s exactly the right approach. Here are eight you can use with yourself, and then your teens:

How much of my media is for escape? And what am I escaping?
Does my screen time leave me more recharged or more depleted?
Is my media diet enriching my time with Christ or eroding it?
How consistent is my personal devotional life?
What does my prayer life look like?
Is my communion with God drab and boring? Or is it alive?
How do Christ-centered sermons and songs affect me? And what does this say about how I protect my heart for Sunday worship?
Are my digital desires serving my God-given duties, or are they distracting me from them?

Insatiable Eyes

Those eight questions cut to the heart of the matter in “the age of the spectacle,” as it has been called. The Bible says, “Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied, and never satisfied are the eyes of man” (Proverbs 27:20). The graveyard is never full of coffins because Sheol is an open mouth, always consuming — day and night. So too are our eyes. Vivid. Like a cemetery, our eyes are insatiable — always roving, never satisfied by anything in this world. Fallen eyes endlessly consume death.

So I love the resolve in Psalm 101:3: “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.” On whatever will not profit my soul, I will not focus my eyes. That’s incredible. Later the psalmist echoes this same challenge, but in the form of a desperate prayer, in Psalm 119:37. There he prays, “[God,] turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways.” And that’s how resolves work. It doesn’t take long before we’re desperately crying out to God to make the resolve happen!

Which means our great enemy is not the external seducers nor the spectacle-makers. Our great enemy is our own insatiable eye-appetite that is death. Again, that’s absolutely frightening. And so in Numbers 15:39, God tells Moses to say to the people of Israel to follow the will of God in his word and to not “follow after your own heart and your own eyes.” If you fill your eyes with the spectacles of this world, you will grow deaf to the voice of God (Numbers 15:39).

And so when the psalmist cries out to God in Psalm 119:37, “Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things; and give me life in your ways,” he’s saying the fullness of life is not fullness of eyes. And that is the competition we feel, because we can fill our eyes with endless spectacles in every direction, and in the end it’s a feeding on death, a feeding on what cannot give you life.

One Great, All-Satisfying Spectacle

So how does the gospel come in here? This is absolutely huge. I’m so glad you asked. Because into the spectacle-loving world, with all of its spectacle-makers and spectacle-making industries, came the grandest Spectacle ever devised in the mind of God and brought about in world history — the cross of Christ.

Christ crucified is the hinge of history, the point of contact between BC and AD, where all time collides, where all human spectacles meet one unsurpassed, cosmic, divine Spectacle. From this moment on, God intends for all human gaze to center on this climactic moment. In the cross God says to us, “This is my beloved Son, crucified for you, a Spectacle to capture your heart forever!”

In his account of the cross, Luke tells us in Luke 23:48 that the crucifixion was a physical spectacle for crowds to see. But the cross is not merely a physical spectacle for the eye. Its greater glory is in serving as a spectacle for the ear of faith. So in Colossians 2:15, Paul tells us that what you could not see with your eyes was the spiritual spectacle of victory it represents — victory over all sin and evil, over that evil inside of us, even.

The cross is huge, so huge, that in Galatians 3:1 Paul says the preaching of the cross is the re-celebration of the spectacle of the cross, as if it were portrayed on a prominent city billboard. That’s what “preaching Christ” means. In pulpits across the world, every week, God says to us again and again, “This is my beloved Son, crucified for you, a Spectacle to capture your hearts forever!” Preaching re-proclaims that over and over.

Faith-Driven Tech-Users

So by divine design, Christians are pro-spectacle, and we give our entire lives to this great Spectacle, now historically past and presently invisible. The driving spectacle at the center of the Christian life is an invisible spectacle. Only by faith can we see it. I have now been crucified to the world, and the world has been crucified to me, as the apostle Paul says (Galatians 6:14). Our response to the ultimate spectacle of the cross of Christ defines us.

Christ died for my sins of escapism, for my disdain for people, for my lust, for my vanity, for filling my eyes with worthless things. Christ died for the lurid desires and sins of my heart manifested on my screen. He came and died as a spectacle to the universe in order to forgive my guilt and then to free me from the power of my sins.

That doesn’t mean we parents are perfect users of the iPhone and tech. We aren’t. And when we fail here, when digital media takes too much of our attention, when we are distracted by worthlessness, our families will know it. And we can openly confess our need for Christ to forgive me — Dad — as I demonstrate in confession the beauty of the cross before my spouse and teens once again.

Now, it took me about a decade to put all four stages together. It’s complex. But I hope it helps other Christians and pastors and parents and teens to see a way forward in this age of technology. I am grateful for this opportunity to share what I have learned, Mike. Thank you for asking.