Part 2 Episode 211 Knowing that God is our Father is one thing; understanding how we should relate to him as such is another. In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Malachi 1:6–14 to demonstrate how knowing God as Father should lead us to honor him.

Seminary is often good but rarely safe. An ever-present danger stalks the corridors of higher education — the looming threat that you will know much more and be much less. This danger is a kind of insanity — a shriveling of the soul — that finds potentially fertile soil in propositions, paradigms, arguments, and facts. That is not at all to say theological education should be avoided. But if reason consumes a man’s heart, if his imagination atrophies, then he may know more facts about God but enjoy him less. That means God’s glory is at stake in our sanity.

But what is sanity? Well, one philosopher defines sanity as “a proportion with reference to purpose” (Ideas Have Consequences, 54). In other words, the sane mind is the balanced mind — what Paul would call the sober mind (2 Timothy 4:5). The sane man is stable — clearheaded, set in soul, poised to act. Insanity, on the other hand, never finds its feet. The insane man fixates on the peripheral and forgets the bull’s-eye. He is unstable.

With that in mind, how does one stay sane in seminary? Or more broadly, how can a Christian cultivate holy sanity in higher education of any kind? Below are five insights gleaned from wise men and refined through experience.

1. Feed Your Imagination

By and large, modern education aims to impart knowledge as a means to practical results. It concerns itself with facts and techniques, practices and paradigms. It tends to chunk and divide, to parse and separate. It prefers the objective and the prosaic. The rational mind, what C.S. Lewis calls “the natural organ of truth,” is the prime instrument for this kind of education (Selected Literary Essays, 265).

However, Lewis recognized that the imagination is “the organ of meaning.” It synthesizes and unites, systematizes and unifies. The imagination sees the forest without forgetting that it’s full of trees. In fact, you can see neither the trees nor the forest without the imagination. As Mark Twain said, “You can’t rely on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” And so, sanity in school relies on an imagination in focus. Without a disciplined imagination, education will leave you with a pile of facts and no way to unite them into a cohesive view of reality.

I don’t mean to imply that reason is not important. It is! But it’s also fraught with danger. As G.K. Chesterton asserts, “Imagination does not breed insanity. Exactly what does breed insanity is reason. . . . I am not . . . in any sense attacking logic: I only say that this danger [of insanity] does lie in logic, not in imagination” (Orthodoxy, 17). Reason is dangerous because, as Wordsworth put it, reason “murders to dissect.” Thus, when reason dominates theology, you are left with a neat stack of propositions and no person left to worship. Reason alone without imagination cannot produce balance or wisdom. As Gandalf says to Saruman, “He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom” (The Lord of the Rings, 259).

So, if your goal in school is to be more like Gandalf than Saruman, cultivate your imagination. Feed it good stories. Baptize it in the word of God. Let it loose on the world. Carve out time to keep your imagination both disciplined and childlike. Read, listen, watch. A holy imagination will keep you sane.

2. Embrace Mystery

Education is rightly concerned with reducing mystery. However, too often, we mistake clarifying mystery with eliminating mystery. The former is healthy; the latter is lunacy. Chesterton — that champion of paradox — warned, “Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity” (Orthodoxy, 31).

Therefore, learn to love mystery. It is a gift given by God, a good part of our creaturely limitations, and theology is about putting mystery in its proper place. Mystery humbles us — it brings us back to earth and sets us firmly on the Rock. As Augustine said, when we try to “gaze at light inaccessible,” especially in “the holy scriptures in their multifarious diversity of form,” God uses it to wear Adam down (The Trinity, 97). Mystery chisels away at the man-exalting pride that makes us think we can know all things. And it remedies the mad hubris that knowledge so often breeds (1 Corinthians 8:1).

So, let us not imagine that our schooling can eliminate mystery. Thank God, it doesn’t! Biblical mysteries do not disappear when revealed; they deepen and become richer. When Paul unveils the poetic mystery of Christ and the church, it doesn’t suddenly become mere prose (Ephesians 5:32). It becomes a new and wider ocean to swim in — a whole heaven to enter and explore. Greater still, the Trinity is an inexhaustible source of joy-producing wonder — a mystery we will marvel at for eternity (1 Corinthians 2:9). Mystery will keep you sane.

3. Be Prone to Wonder

Most classes aim to equip you with empirical knowledge — bits of information obtained by a method and verified by the senses — a good goal in its place. But accumulating facts rarely throws wide the door of wonder. And wonder is the well of a sane soul. Knowledge as such is not an end in itself. We want to see glories, behold marvels, awaken wonder. We aim, in our studies, to recover a childlike astonishment at the world God has made. As Chesterton said, “The world will never starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder” (Tremendous Trifles, 7).

One way to reawaken this wonder is to stay omnivorously attentive to creation. The Psalms beckon us, again and again, to see God’s works and stand in awe. Perhaps the best biblical example of this pursuit is Agur, the author of Proverbs 30, who had a posture of mystic wonder and happy humility. He attended closely to eagles, rock badgers, ships on the sea, serpents, and sex. And what did he find? They were too wonderful for him! When is the last time anything was too wonderful for you? Wonder will keep you sane.

4. Awake to Magic

We live in an anti-magic age. After all, we are “enlightened,” and most classrooms sit in the shadows of that “light.” Modern education often teaches us to “reflexively experience the world as unmagical,” as Paul Tyson writes (Seven Brief Lessons in Magic, xi). However, this “disenchanted” view of reality is false. It’s a lie — a modern myth. The world is thick with magic, rich with enchantment, and soaked in glory. We need to regain our sensitivity to the true magic of God. We need to become disenchanted with modernity’s disenchantment. In a sermon, C.S. Lewis reminds us,

Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years. Almost our whole education has been directed to silencing [the] shy, persistent, inner voice. (The Weight of Glory, 31)

This kind of sanctified magic is indispensable to our sanity. Tyson defines magic as anything outside of measurable, material, mathematically modellable reality. “Magic is concerned with the shimmering cosmic meanings . . . that lie just below the surface of the apparent” (Seven Brief Lessons in Magic, 8). Magic is what causes us to wonder at the world and find meaning within it.

Therefore, whether you call it glorious or supernatural or numinous or miraculous, come alive to the magic of God. He spoke reality into being — creation is his en-chant-ment (Psalm 33:6–9). So, on a snowy night, go watch the tiny ice castles float down from the heavens to drape the world in white. On a spring morning, go watch the raucous sunrise God is spinning into being. Sit and observe a squirrel battle in the backyard, advancing a generational nut feud. Be reminded that trees are star-powered, water-fed wood towers. Pay attention, and the spell of God’s words will quickly enchant you. Magic will keep you sane.

5. Love What God Loves

Finally, remember that before the modern era, education in general (and seminary especially) aimed at shaping right desires. Augustine named this ordo amoris — ordered loves that regard all things according to their true value. Here is the ultimate aim of education: well-ordered, balanced, stable affections — knowing and feeling, seeing and savoring. Knowing serves as a handmaiden to godly affections.

Classical education expert Steve Turley summarizes the educational vision from Plato to Lewis:

The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy the right things. . . . Students thus encounter the manifestation of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in every area of their lives, sanctifying the senses and imagination alike with a synthetic vision of the glory of God. (Awakening Wonder, 105)

Sanity consists in loving things as God loves them. If insanity is the imbalance of a soul, then sanity is its harmony. Holy education holds this aim in the crosshairs: holy, joyful sanity. We want to love what God loves. Hate what God hates. Forgive what God forgives. Laugh at what God laughs at. Enjoy what God enjoys. Mock what God mocks. That is holy sanity and the aim of all good education. Ordered loves will keep you sane.

To borrow the words of the Lord of Education, if you gain a degree in school and yet forfeit your soul, what does it profit you? If your imagination atrophies, if you lose a taste for mystery, if your wonder wanes, if you become disenchanted, and if your loves are disordered, what have you gained?

May our triune God help you cultivate holy sanity in all your studies so that you might love him with a whole soul.

Knowing God as Father
Knowing that God is our Father is one thing; understanding how we should relate to him as such is another. In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Malachi 1:6–14 to demonstrate how knowing God as Father should lead us to honor him.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast, with longtime author and pastor John Piper. Pastor John, as we near the end of this January, we arrive at Psalm 22. For those of you reading along with us in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan, Psalm 22 has been in front of us now for a few days. It’s a haunting psalm, haunting from the very opening line: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1). Very heavy. And it’s especially haunting because this line becomes one of the cries of Jesus from the cross. Psalm 22 is all about Christ, and it’s on his lips in the crucifixion accounts in Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34. But to hear him recite Psalm 22:1 leads us to ask this: Was Jesus confused by the cross?

That’s what a listener named Bridgette wants to find out today. Here’s her email: “Pastor John, I love the Lord deeply, and my faith continues to grow, but I’ve always struggled with Matthew 27:45–46, where Jesus recites Psalm 22:1. Why would Jesus question the Father like this in asking, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ when he certainly knew the answer? It was for this very reason Jesus came to die — to be forsaken on our behalf! Could you give insight into this, so that this hurdle in my faith can be removed?”

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Those terrifying words occur in two Gospels (Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34) as Jesus is hanging on the cross near death. It says, “About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice.” Amazing. How did he have any strength to do a loud voice? “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” — the Aramaic form. “That is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Matthew 27:46).

Script of the Passion

Now, one very important fact to remember is that these words are the exact first words of Psalm 22. And that’s important because Jesus seems to have known that the whole psalm, in some way or other, was about him. Because at least three other parts of this psalm are quoted in the story of his death. You have Psalm 22:1–2; this is what the psalm says: “Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.” “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Then Psalm 22:7 says, “All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads.” And those exact words, “they wag their heads,” are quoted in Matthew 27:39 — “Those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads” — to show that this psalm is being played out in the death of Jesus.

Then Psalm 22:16 says, “They have pierced my hands and feet.” And then Psalm 22:18 says, “They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.” So, the words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” are part of this psalm that contains, as it were, a script for Jesus’s last hours.

Now, why did he say it? She wants to know, “Why the why?” Why did he say it? And here’s a three-part answer.

1. He was bearing our judgment.

First, there was a real forsakenness. That’s why. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” means he really did. He really did. He’s bearing our sin. He bore our judgment. The judgment was to have God the Father pour out his wrath on us, and instead, he pours it out on him. And that necessarily involves a kind of abandonment. That’s what wrath means. He gave him up to suffer the weight of all the sins of all his people. And the judgment, the judgment for those sins — we cannot fathom. I don’t think we can begin to fathom all that this would mean between the Father and the Son.

To be forsaken by God is the cry of the damned, and he was damned for us. So, he used these words because there was a real forsakenness. That’s the first reason.

2. He was expressing desolation.

Second, the why, it seems to me, is not a question looking for an answer, but a way of expressing the horrors of abandonment. I have a couple of reasons for thinking this.

“To be forsaken by God is the cry of the damned, and he was damned for us.”

Jesus knew ahead of time what he was doing and what would happen to him and why he was doing it. His Father had sent him for this very moment, and he had agreed to come, knowing all that would happen. Listen to these words (this is John 18:4): “Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to [the arresting mob], ‘Whom do you seek?’” He gave himself up. So, he knew. He knew it was coming. He knew everything.

Another reason is that the moment was one of agony, not theological curiosity. The moment was one of agony.

And a third thought — on the fact that he’s not asking a question so much as expressing a horror — is that the words are a reflex of immersion in Psalm 22, it seems. They’re a direct quotation, but when you’re hanging on the cross, you don’t say, “Oh, I think I want to quote some Scripture here.” It either is in you, as the very essence of your messianic calling, or it’s not. And if it’s in you, then you give vent at the worst moment of your life with the appointment of your Father scripted in Psalm 22. That seems to be right at the heart of what’s going on.

Let me read Psalm 22:22–24. It goes like this:

I will tell of your name to my brothers;     in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:You who fear the Lord, praise him!     All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him,     and stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!For he has not despised or abhorred     the affliction of the afflicted,and he has not hidden his face from him,     but has heard, when he cried to him.

In other words, this psalm ends with a note of triumph. So, Jesus isn’t curious or wondering, “How’s this going to turn out?” He had embedded in his soul the horrors of the moment of abandonment, and he had embedded in his soul the joy that was set before him. “I’ve got a promise, and God will not despise me. In the end, he will take me back.”

So, at some level, he knows it’s not a final cry or an ultimate cry. He endured the cross “for the joy that was set before him” (Hebrews 12:2). And the why is not a request for a theological answer; it’s a real cry of spiritual desolation with words that were second nature, because his whole life was scripted by God.

3. He was fulfilling Scripture.

I think the last reason we should say, therefore, is that this psalm was his life. Crying out reflexively in agony with the words of this psalm shows that, as horrible as it is, it was all going according to plan. All of it was the fulfillment of Scripture — even the worst of it was the fulfillment of Scripture. And that moment was probably the worst moment in the history of the world. And it was Scripture fulfilled.

So, he said these words, first, because there was a real forsakenness for our sake. Second, he was expressing desolation, not asking for an answer. And third, he was amazingly fulfilling Scripture in the horror of it all and witnessing to the perfection of the plan of salvation.

Spaghetti sauce bubbles in a pot on the stove, the rich red depths of the kettle wafting fragrance throughout the house. The annual ritual spans three decades: garden-grown tomatoes, handpicked and placed into a basket, become jars of winter provision. After all, my four sons could eat a lot of pasta.

But this pot of spaghetti sauce is different — momentous, really, because it’s not mine. My son and his wife grew these tomatoes in their own garden and brought them to my kitchen for transformation. “Canning for dummies!” they say with a chuckle, inviting me to hover over them throughout the process as we puree, add spices, watch over the slow simmer, and then preserve the thick, fragrant sauce in hot glass jars.

“Twelve quarts!” they exclaim as they high-five each other.

Having homeschooled my sons through high school, I’d like to think this isn’t the first time I’ve taught them something. I’d be kidding myself, though, if I imagined they always received my teaching with the same willing enthusiasm of this canning lesson. Unlike a daily algebra class or my arguments for a broad knowledge of world history, this day’s learning experience required no defense.

While gardening and canning are valuable life skills, Solomon had bigger things on his mind when he exhorted his son, “Forsake not your mother’s teaching” (Proverbs 1:8). Teaching here refers to direction, instruction, or even law. As mothers, we stand beside fathers in imparting the gospel to our families. In both structured teaching and purposeful living, truth is passed on and worn like “a graceful garland” on the heads of our sons and daughters (Proverbs 1:9).

Of course, the weighty question lands with a thud in parenting conversations for every life stage: How can parents pass along a vibrant faith? How can we communicate the truth we believe in a way that will not be forsaken by our children and our grandchildren?

Reminder in Chief

We know from Scripture that Peter, Jesus’s outspoken fisherman-turned-apostle, was married, and the fatherly tone of his second letter makes me wonder if he was also a parent. Step by step, Peter describes a kind of incremental discipleship, in which faith is supplemented “with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love” (2 Peter 1:5–7). He sounds almost like a mother teaching her son how to make and preserve spaghetti sauce in simple, orderly steps.

Peter follows his instruction with a gentle warning: “Whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins” (2 Peter 1:9). Even though his readers have heard the truth before, Peter understands that even believers who know the truth need to hear the truth, and then hear it again. Instead of expressing frustration over the need to repeat himself, he celebrates his role as “Reminder of the Truth.” He writes, “Therefore I intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them and are established in the truth that you have” (2 Peter 1:12).

As a mother, you may find yourself serving as Reminder in Chief in your home, and, like Peter, it’s your privilege — and responsibility — to “make every effort” to establish your children in the truth (2 Peter 1:5, 12). Naturally, this will look very different at every stage of parenting, as your sons and daughters change from children to teens, teens to adults.

1. Reminding Children

We’re laying a foundation in the years of early childhood. I remember well that my teaching and training had to be repetitive, simple, and scriptural. Regular routines of family devotions and the steady input of my example instructed my four sons with and without a word.

The books, movies, and other media we chose reinforced our teaching of godly living. My apologies for outbursts of temper or moments of impatience reminded my boys that I was also in the process of sanctification.

Like Peter, it was my intention “always to remind” my children of the beauty of the Christian life and the God behind that life (2 Peter 1:12). My four sons had four very different ways of being in the world, requiring me to become a student of their unique personalities. What connected with and communicated well for one child would likely completely miss his brother.

No matter what the culture at large may say, as the parent you are the main “reminder” in your children’s life. By grace, you can be the strongest, steadiest, and most compelling voice in their ears.

2. Reminding Teens

There were seasons of life with our teens when we felt as if we were holding onto the reins of a runaway horse. When you’re being dragged at high speed, it’s hard to think rationally. We didn’t always know precisely what to do, but we knew we had to hold on tight. And now we’re thankful that we didn’t let go!

I’m grateful to have had the gift of consistently building the truth into our children since birth. If this is your story as well, your teens may very well be on their way to having a sincere love for God and a biblical worldview that will carry them safely into adulthood. With that foundation in place, it may be time to soften your reminding role — but certainly not time to abandon it.

In the spirit of Peter’s epistle, why not send a short note commending your son or daughter for some trait that displays godliness and encourages your heart? A verse in a lunch box, a well-chosen book with a well-timed message, an open-door policy that says, “Every topic of conversation is fair game here” — practices like these will go a long way toward reminding your almost-grown children that faith in Jesus is a vital part of life and that you are willing to accompany them on their journey.

3. Reminding Adults?

For most of us, the longest phase of parenthood begins when our children leave home and become independent. Our role certainly changes, but our job is not done. For the rest of our days, for good or for ill, we will be living “a reminding life” before our adult children. How we honor boundaries, make room in our hearts for in-laws, respond to our grandchildren, and negotiate the inevitable disagreements that arise will either become a barrier or a bridge.

In 2022, I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive and debilitating neurological disorder. While it has always been my goal to model strength for my children, I’m now discovering how to wisely model a gracious acceptance of weakness balanced by persevering discipline. I submit to the daily exercise routine that allows me to care for baby grandchildren and chase toddlers. And as I do, I work carefully at showing them what it means to maintain my focus on the things that are unseen and eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18).

Perhaps the teaching opportunities we have not chosen, but which have nonetheless been assigned to us by our wise, loving, good, and sovereign heavenly Father, will have the most lasting influence on our families.

A Reminding Life

With a new grandbaby due any day, there will be fifteen Morins who will continue to receive loving reminders from me, because I agree with Peter: “I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder” (2 Peter 1:13).

May our children embrace and not forsake the teaching that we impart throughout all the ages and stages of their lives, including the lessons that come to us in unexpected ways. As godly mothers and grandmothers, let’s embrace the weighty joy of living a reminding life.

Drunkenness is an unusually seeable sin. People can drink in secret, of course, but if they’re drunk around others (especially those who know them well), it’s generally not hard to tell. The bloodshot eyes, the flushed face, the inability to focus, the slurred speech, the slowed processing speed, the loud talking, the difficulty walking in a straight line, the erratic laughter. Unlike many others, drunk people wear their sin on their sleeve. And pants. And sometimes on the person next to them.

My freshman year at college was my jarring introduction to drunkenness. One night an especially inebriated rugby player ripped the drinking fountain off the dorm wall. Another night, a different guy (unknowingly) relieved himself in a friend’s dresser drawer. Drunkenness is a loud and ugly sin. We can probably all remember (unwanted) encounters we’ve had with it.

The more I’ve considered what excessive alcohol does to a person, though, the more I wonder if drunkenness isn’t something of a parable for a whole host of subtler abuses. What if God allowed rugby players to make a fool of themselves to warn us about more respectable and prevalent forms of drunkenness, all the socially acceptable ways we try to distract and numb ourselves?

Five Dangers of Abusing Anything

Alcohol, remember, was invented by God, not man, as a gift, not a curse — “to gladden the heart of man” (Psalm 104:15). Like so many gifts, however, it can (quickly) become a curse when it’s enjoyed carelessly or indulgently. In a previous article, I reflected on a wise father’s warnings to his son about drunkenness in Proverbs 23:29–35 (which I’ll rehearse below). Meditating on these dangers over months now, though, had me wondering if we might experience the same kinds of symptoms or consequences in other, more subtle patterns of sin. I think we do.

The first danger is confusion, or blurry eyes. “Your eyes will see strange things” (Proverbs 23:33). Abusing alcohol will rob you of the ability to perceive actual reality. You will see things that are not there, or you’ll see things that are there but not as they are.

The second danger is perversion, or a dull conscience. “Your heart [will] utter perverse things” (Proverbs 23:33). Under the influence of excessive alcohol, you’ll be more likely to sin, more vulnerable to temptation. Drunkenness makes a deadly pit look like a well (verse 27).

The third danger is instability, or unreliable hands. “[The drunk man] will be like one who lies down in the midst of the sea, like one who lies on the top of a mast” (Proverbs 23:34). Alcohol leaves a man asleep in grave peril, in situations where his alertness really matters (like while sailing or driving). When he’s needed most, he’s unavailable.

The fourth danger is a kind of paralysis, or a numb soul: “‘They struck me,’ you will say, ‘but I was not hurt; they beat me, but I did not feel it’” (Proverbs 23:35). The drunk man’s senses have been so dulled that he cannot even feel when someone beats him. Spiritually speaking, he becomes numb to temptation and sin, to worship and holiness. Alcohol slowly paralyzes his most important abilities.

The final danger is futility, or an empty, restless heart. “When shall I awake?” the drunk man asks. “I must have another drink” (Proverbs 23:35). The drunk person desperately looks for satisfaction, searching and searching, drinking and drinking, but he never finds the bottom. Drunkenness is a well without water, a marathon without a finish line.

It’s not hard to see that excessive alcohol does these kinds of things to a person. The symptoms are loud and disruptive. It may not be much harder, though, to see how other, subtler indulgences can do the same.

Drunk Without Drinking

Can you think of anything you like to do that sometimes causes one of these symptoms? An inability to discern or feel spiritual reality. A greater vulnerability to temptation. A laziness or distractedness that makes you unavailable when needed. A numbness to spiritual things. A restless sense of dissatisfaction or frustration.

Doesn’t overeating do this to us? Doesn’t laziness do this to us? Doesn’t obsession with sports, or news, or social media? What about shopping, always hunting for the next deal? What about binge-watching that series for hours at a time? Don’t our phones hold this kind of numbing, distracting power?

Of course, in the right time and measure, the pleasures we experience in these moments are not bad. All of them can be blessings from God, like alcohol, given to help us enjoy him. And yet all become dangerous when they gain a measure of control over us.

Why might God allow alcohol to undo people like it so often does? That’s a weighty, sensitive question, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers to it. But might God ordain drunkenness, at least in part, as a kind of drama to awaken us to the consequences of abusing any of his gifts? These other abuses don’t often manifest themselves like drunkenness — they’re not as loud and ugly — but they can be every bit as dangerous to our souls.

The apostle Paul sounds a broader warning for us: “‘All things are lawful for me,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful for me,’ but I will not be dominated by anything” (1 Corinthians 6:12). Not just alcohol, but anything. So, what in your life has the potential to dominate you? Another way to ask that question would be to ask questions like these:

What erodes your ability to discern truth from lies and good from evil, your ability to see the world, yourself, and God accurately?
What makes it easier for you to fall into temptation? What makes sin more appealing to you?
What compromises your ability to meet the needs of those around you, especially those who depend on you?
What numbs you to reality, especially spiritual reality — to God, to his word, to his will for your life?
What consistently leaves you feeling empty and restless?

Under a Better Influence

Then, having discerned your specific areas of weakness or temptation (and shared them with a brother or sister in Christ), you might also ask what does the opposite in you.

What in your life brings spiritual reality into clarity and focus? What makes Christ seem more real, trustworthy, and satisfying?
What makes temptation seem pathetic and unappealing and dangerous?
What stabilizes your soul through conflict and hardship?
What heightens your awareness and sensitivity to the needs around you?
What quenches your deepest thirsts and satisfies your deepest longings?

You could summarize questions like these by saying,

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit. (Ephesians 5:18)

This was another light-bulb moment for me. What if God allows the pitiful misery and destructiveness of drunkenness, at least in part, so that he can turn to his children and say, “Do not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit”? Do you see how captive that man is to alcohol? Be that captive to God. Live so that someone might look at your life and say, “He’s been captured by something — by someone. He’s not his own anymore.”

Habits of Clarity and Joy

If you want to begin drinking at those wells, to be slowly arrested and transformed by the Spirit, I encourage you to read a book like Habits of Grace. The three core habits — the word of God, prayer, and fellowship — have liberated countless hearts from darkness (including mine) and filled them with light and life and joy. And they’re all the more effective when we intentionally enjoy them together, with other believers.

“Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Avoid whatever, like drunkenness, undermines the work of the Spirit inside of you, whatever dulls and distracts your heart. Periodically audit the habits you’ve developed, the ones you’ve chosen and the ones you’ve fallen into, and consider how you might cut back (or out) whatever tends to weaken your soul. And then pursue, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, whatever increases and refines your love for Christ — whatever helps you run hard after him.

Knowing God as Father
Knowing that God is our Father is one thing; understanding how we should relate to him as such is another. In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens Malachi 1:6–14 to demonstrate how knowing God as Father should lead us to honor him.

“I’m just not feeling it today.”

How often have you reached for that excuse? Many of us can be quick to cast ourselves as the victim of a sluggish heart.

Now, making peace with a pokey heart is a very strange phenomenon, even as it now is a widespread assumption and typically goes unquestioned. It may be no big deal if we’re talking about whether you want peanut butter on your breakfast toast. But far more is at stake when this becomes an excuse for neglecting God, whether in his word, prayer, or Christian fellowship.

Specifically, this excuse has served to undermine habits of spiritual health related to beginning each day with the voice of God in Scripture. Some of us are gaunt, frail Christians because we’ve learned, like our world, to cater to the whims of our own fickle hearts rather than direct them and determine to reshape them.

Your Pliable Affections

In what may be his most insightful and deeply spiritual book, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (2014), the late Tim Keller introduces us to a side of the great English theologian John Owen (1616–1683) that is especially out of step with modern assumptions. Owen, according to Keller, would not be so quick to grant the excuse, “I’m just not feeling it today.” In fact, he likely would respond forcefully — and many of us might be better for it.

Owen would at least challenge whether our initial feelings determined anything significant at all. He surely wouldn’t say to skip God’s word (or prayer or church) to cater to whatever unspiritual inclination you woke up feeling. Rather, he might say, as Keller summarizes, “Meditate to the point of delight.” Don’t give in to your heart’s first inclinations. Rather, take hold of them, and direct them. Open the Bible, and turn your attention to the one who is supremely worthy, and keep your nose in the Book, and your mind on Jesus, until your sluggish heart begins to respond like it should.

That’s striking counsel for a generation conditioned to “follow your heart” and, in time, presume to reshape our external, objective world based on the subjectivity and flightiness of our own desires.

How often do we hear even Christians concede, as a veiled excuse, to be “wired” a certain way? Indeed, God has wired us in certain ways. But how often do we resign ourselves to being hardwired in ways we’re actually far more pliable? And the world’s not helping us with this. Our society has come to feign plasticity in precisely the places we’re hardwired (like biological sex) and to pretend hard-wiring in the places we’re actually plastic (desires and delights).

Long before anyone talked about neuroplasticity, Owen believed in what we might call “affectional plasticity” — that is, your desires and delights are not hardwired. They are pliable. You can reshape and recondition them. You can retrain them. You may be unable to simply turn them with full effect in the moment to make yourself feel something, but you can reshape your heart over time. Oh, can you. Your desires, good and bad, are not simple givens. Stretched out over time, as the composite of countless decisions, they are wonderfully (and hauntingly) chosens.

Recondition Your Heart

In chapter 10 of Prayer, Keller adds his commentary to Owen’s premodern insights for a much-needed perspective on the wedding of God’s word with our prayers through meditation. It’s a perspective on forming and reforming our pliant hearts that will challenge readers today. It will frustrate many, but certainly inspire a few.

In general, we are far too easy on our minds and hearts. We grant we can train the body. In fact, you’re always training the body, whether for the better or the worse. And most will agree that you can train the mind — “the mind is a muscle,” so to speak. You can set it on a particular object and learn to keep it there. It will take practice. Such training is vital for engaging with God’s word as we ought, and few skills are more difficult or important to cultivate.

And far more controversial, you can train your heart— not just in sinful emotions to avoid but also in righteous emotions to entertain. With a Bible open in front of you, you can learn, as Keller summarizes Owen, to “meditate to the point of delight.”

Three Stages of Meditation

Some well-meaning Christians set out to read their Bibles, don’t feel much (if anything), move on swiftly to pray a few quick, shallow petitions, and then embark on their day. Owen would say, with C.S. Lewis, you are far too easily pleased — that is, if you’re even pleased at all. Rather, Owen would have us wrestle like Jacob across the Jabbok, until light dawns. Wrestle with your own sluggish soul. Direct it. Turn it. Grapple with it until it does what it’s supposed to do, and feels more like it’s supposed to feel about the wonders and horrors of the word of God. Say, in effect, to the God of the word, “I will not let you go unless you bless me,” and discipline your heart to receive the joy for which God made it.

Now, a few clarifications are in order to recover this lost art of meditation. Owen distinguished between study, meditation, and prayer. Meditation is the bridge between receiving God’s word (in reading and study) and responding back to him (in prayer). Meditation, says Owen,

is distinguished from the study of the word, wherein our principal aim is to learn the truth, or to declare it unto others; and so also from prayer, whereof God himself is the immediate object. But . . . meditation . . . is the affecting of our own hearts and minds with love, delight, and [humility]. (quoted in Keller, Prayer, 152)

Meditation, then — distinct from study and prayer, though overlapping with them — might be parsed into three sequential stages.

1) Fix Your Mind

Begin with Bible intake, through reading, and rereading — the slower the better. And as we encounter various knowledge gaps in what the passage says and means, we might turn briefly to some “study” to “learn the truth” or rightly understand the text. Beginners will have more questions and need to navigate how frequently to stop and study or just keep reading and pick up clues as they go. But the main point is that meditation begins with immersion in the words of God.

Unlike Eastern “meditation,” which seeks to empty the mind, biblical meditation requires the filling of the mind with the truth of God’s self-revelation in his Son and Scripture. We don’t just up and meditate — not in the deliberate sense. We begin with Bible, fixing our thoughts on God and his Son through the content of his word.

2) Incline Your Heart

Fixing our thoughts can be difficult enough, but inclining the heart is imponderable for many. Not because it can’t be done, but because we have been socialized to assume it can’t. So, this is where Owen (and Keller) seems forceful, and surprising. But Owen counsels us, having fixed our minds on God’s word, to “persist in spiritual thoughts unto your refreshment” (Works of John Owen, volume 7, 393). That is, meditate until you begin to feel the word. Preach to yourself until you begin to feel more like you ought. Does the word declare God’s majesty? Feel awe. Does it warn sinners? Feel fear. Does it announce good news? Feel joy.

The goal is not to meditate for a particular duration of time, but to meditate until the point of delight, to persist “unto your refreshment.” The apostle Peter speaks of the present, not merely the future — of joy the Christian experiences now, in this age, not only in the one to come — when he says, “Though you do not now see [Jesus with your physical eyes], you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Peter 1:8). Inexpressible, glorified joy is offered even now, and by no better means than fixing our minds on the word of God himself and meditating until he smiles on us, and warms our souls, with some real measure of delight.

Owen offers hope for those who think this is impossible: “Constancy in [this] duty will give ability for it. Those who conscientiously abide in its performance shall increase in light, wisdom, and experience until they are able to manage it with great success.” Keller then comments, leaning on Psalm 1, “Trees don’t grow overnight. Meditation is a sustained process like a tree growing its roots down toward the water source. The effects are cumulative. You must stick with it. We must meditate ‘day and night’ — regularly, steadily” (161–162).

Questions arise not only because of our sin but our humanity. Owen knew this every bit as much as we do, if not far better. Anticipating our objection, Keller writes,

Owen is quite realistic. He admits that sometimes, no matter what we do, we simply cannot concentrate, or we find our thoughts do not become big and affecting, but rather we feel bored, hard, and distracted. Then, Owen says, simply turn to God and make brief, intense appeals for help. Sometimes that is all you will do the rest of your scheduled time, and sometimes the very cries for help serve to concentrate the mind and soften the heart. (Prayer, 161)

A huge difference lies between occasional realism and a daily pattern of resignation. There’s a world of difference between a lazy beginner and the wise veteran, who has learned the lost art and come to experience the third stage with regularity, despite the “sometimes” of dryness and distraction.

3) Enjoy Your God

In the final stage, we give vent, or give space, to the enjoyment (or crying out) begun in the second. We fan the flame of fitting affection for the truth in view. This is the high point of meditation — enjoying God in Christ — which fills our souls with “an answering response.” As Keller comments, we “listen, study, think, reflect, and ponder the Scriptures until there is an answering response in our hearts and minds” (55, emphasis added) — which leads us to prayer. According to Keller,

meditation before prayer consists of thinking, then inclining, and, finally, either enjoying the presence or admitting the absence and asking for his mercy and help. Meditation is thinking a truth out and then thinking a truth in until its ideas become “big” and “sweet,” moving and affecting, and until the reality of God is sensed upon the heart. (162)

And this “sensing of God on the heart,” through meditating on his word, issues in our response of prayer.

Without immersion in God’s words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality. We may be responding not to the real God but to what we wish God and life to be like. Indeed, if left to themselves our hearts will tend to create a God who doesn’t exist. . . . Without prayer that answers the God of the Bible, we will only be talking to ourselves. (62)

So, we want our prayers to be prompted by and tethered to the intake of God’s word. “We would never produce the full range of biblical prayer if we were initiating prayer according to our own inner needs and psychology. It can only be produced if we are responding in prayer according to who God is as revealed in the Scripture” (60).

Not Just Truth but Jesus

Keller ends this blessed tenth chapter with Jesus himself as the chief focus of our meditation. Not only did the God-man delight in the word of God like the happy man of Psalm 1, but he himself is “the one to whom all the Scripture points” (163). As Christians, we learn to meditate both with him and on him.

In our reading and rereading and study and lingering over Scripture, we persist to know and enjoy not just truth but the Truth himself. For Christians, the final focus of our meditation is personal, and both perfectly human and fully divine in the person of Jesus Christ.

Every believer desires spiritual intimacy with other believers. We may call it fellowship, community, or doing life together. God didn’t make us to be lone rangers. He saved us into the church. He called us out of the kingdom of darkness and into local expressions of the body of Christ.

And yet, spiritual community is still hard to come by. It doesn’t happen by accident. It comes as a gift from God, and he usually gives it as we intentionally cultivate Christian affection and mutual understanding. So, how might we begin cultivating this kind of life together?

One proven way to this kind of life together is that we pray together. What better way to be more united with fellow believers than to gather and bare our hearts before the throne of God together? What an opportunity and privilege! We get to go to him in prayer.

Shared Prayer Transforms Churches

Shared experiences — a concert, a vacation, an adventure — create a bond. Those memories often create deeper, more enduring affection. They can be a relational glue that holds people together. Dates and vacations with my wife have reinforced our marriage for times when life gets hard. These shared memories create tenderness, understanding, and love. In the church, similar kinds of shared life can lead to mutual appreciation, unity, and trust. I love my fellow elders more when we have endured trials together, fighting side by side in spiritual battle.

Gathered prayer can be that shared experience in a church. I’m not advocating for any particular program or event, but for prayer (formal and informal) to fill your church and bind you together. You might think of these prayer times as the furnace room of the church. Heat and warmth radiate out when God’s people gather together to pray. I’ve seen firsthand how this shared dependence on God transforms the ethos and culture of churches.

Each Sunday morning in our church, a small group gathers in the prayer room. Service will not start for another 45 minutes, but communion with the Lord has begun. We gather to call upon God to work for his glory and purposes. We sing together of his grace revealed in Christ. We lay hands on the preacher and ask for God’s word to run. We lift up our suffering saints, pleading that they would find comfort. We pray for our visitors and for our people, for our neighborhoods and for the nations. We cry out for mercy, and we confess our sins. It’s a holy moment. No fanfare, no fireworks, but again and again, we see God come, meet us, and answer our prayers.

These times of prayer together create Christlike affection for one another. What might happen if more churches devoted themselves to this kind of prayer?

Shared Prayer Unites Our Hearts

Praying together serves as connective tissue within the body. The apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12, envisions the church as a physical body. Every believer functions as a vital part or organ in this body. Each is unique, but all are united under Christ. To be healthy, then, requires diversity within that unity. Each different part must work together. Otherwise, the body becomes dysfunctional and ceases to work.

Paul writes, “The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Corinthians 12:21). The body cannot function as it ought without each part: hands, head, feet, ears, or eyes. Each part is indispensable. Yet how do we get diverse parts working together? How do we cultivate this unusual unity, like-mindedness, and cooperation? We pray together.

When we pray together, God unites our hearts with one another. In prayer, the motives and desires of my fellow brothers and sisters are on display. I gain insight into the deep wells of their faith. I see their heart of compassion. I hear their love for the lost. I discern their affection for Christ. I perceive their steadfast faith. We gain understanding of one another, and that understanding is critical for genuine, durable love.

Prayer also sets this unity in motion. The praises of my brother spur me on to love and good works. My sister’s petitions challenge and encourage me. Others’ prayers convict me of my own shortcomings. The confessions of some cause thanksgiving to well up in my heart. In short, I receive grace while listening to the prayers of others. The diverse prayers of the body reveal the glory of God and his works as a wondrous kaleidoscope. We see and hear so much more than we could have otherwise, and this inspires us to live more fully for Christ.

Shared Prayer Multiplies Joy

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in Life Together, comments on why a believer needs other believers. He says, “The Christ in his own heart is weaker than the Christ in the word of his brother; his own heart is uncertain, his brother’s is sure” (12). Have you had moments like that, when you need the stronger, fuller, more joyful heart of a friend? God very often brings the encouragement we need through someone else. We know the truth intellectually, but when we hear others believing it and rejoicing in it out loud, the truth can land with even greater power. Their joy often brings us joy.

This dynamic plays out, again and again, when we pray together. God calls a wandering heart back through the prayers of a fellow believer. When we lack the words to pray, we can still amen the prayers of someone else. When our compassion grows cold, we can join in on the heartfelt cries of a sister. Often, I find my heart warming next to the prayers of those around me. They spoke it, but my heart and spirit rise to agree. Drawing on an image from C.S. Lewis, Tim Keller writes,

By praying with friends, you will be able to hear and see facets of Jesus that you have not yet perceived. . . . Knowing the Lord is communal and cumulative, we must pray and praise together. That way “the more we share the Heavenly Bread between us, the more we shall all have.” (Prayer, 119)

We hear and see more of Christ through fellow believers, especially through their prayers. Praying with others is a gift God gives us for the benefit of our faith. It enlivens our minds, strengthens our hearts, and empowers our hands.

No Christian runs well alone. No believer stands alone. No child of God fights alone and lives. So, devote yourselves to prayer. Get on your knees together, and pursue a supernatural unity and like-mindedness. Let Jesus knit your heart together with others through adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. Praying together fans the flames of joy. So, what might God do in your church if you committed to praying more together?

Audio Transcript

In the last year, global tensions have risen to a boil. It’s hard to believe how often “World War III” has been a top trend on Twitter in the past couple of years. (Too often, to be honest.) And this leads to today’s question from Malcolm, who lives in Fishers, Indiana. His email resonates with a lot of other emails in the inbox in the past year.

Malcolm writes, “Pastor John, hello to you. I’m a 22-year-old and often anxious about the state of the world. For several years, we enjoyed relative peace, and things were looking calm. But now there are wars in Ukraine and in Palestine, and a threat of war looms over Taiwan. All the world’s major armies seem to be awakening from a long slumber. NATO is growing. Enemies of the West are uniting. The weapons manufacturers are in overdrive.

“As we step into this new age of global tension, and as you see the news — the wars and rumors of wars — what are your spiritual reflections about global conflicts? The Bible seems to say a lot about warfare between nations. How do you comfort yourself with biblical truth, and with God’s sovereignty, when it seems that the world is growing more hostile, and World War III is talked about more and more openly as a real possibility in the near future?”

Well, I could, I suppose, answer Malcolm’s question with a very general biblical observation about the absolute sovereignty of God over nations and over the church and over my life, and then combine that sovereignty with the sweet, precious promise that he works everything together for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28). I could do that, and it would be wonderful. It would be glorious.

However, I want to answer his question with something much more specific, just because I saw it while preparing a message on missions last October. And it did for me just what Malcolm is asking: “How do you comfort yourself, Pastor John, in light of these kinds of upheavals in the world?”

And so, that’s what I want to do. I want to address one specific worry that rises in this setting that we’re in right now, wars and rumors of wars and social upheavals — namely, what happens to the global missionary enterprise in times of wars and rumors of wars? That’s the specific thing that creeps into my heart with anxious thoughts.

Missions in Wartime

I think many of us feel, from time to time, the anxiety arising that social upheaval and political and military disruption will so distract the church, and so intimidate the church, that we forsake or neglect or minimize the command of Jesus to make disciples among all the peoples of the world.

We just feel like, “Well, that’s got to be put on hold because the world’s about to blow up and go to hell in a handbasket. What good does it do to send the missionaries to so-and-so when the place is about to explode in war?” I think that’s the kind of feeling that rises in our hearts with regard to world missions in wartime.

So, I’m reframing Malcolm’s question to be more specific: Not just “How do I comfort myself in a world about to be engulfed in war?” but “How do I steady my hand and keep my focus and press on in the cause of world evangelization even while the world’s moving toward annihilation?” That’s the question I’m trying to face.

White-Hot Christians Will Go

And what I saw last October when I was preparing for my global-focus sermon at Bethlehem was from Matthew 24:5–14 and the connection between war and missions. I had never made this connection before. So, here’s what Jesus says about the times we live in — and I think these words from Matthew 24:5–14 are intended by Jesus, in every generation where these things show up, to make us lift our eyes and pray that our redemption is drawing near. Here’s what he says:

Many will come in my name, saying, “I am the Christ,” and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom [these are the international upheavals, and now come the natural upheavals, the disasters], and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. (Matthew 24:4–8)

So, Jesus is picturing the coming of the kingdom of God that he will bring as a kind of new birth for the cosmos, and natural disasters are like labor pains. He goes on:

Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:9–14)

Now, I have said in lots of missions conferences over the decades that even though in the very last days of history the love of many in the visible church will grow cold (verse 12), this promise that the gospel will be preached to all the peoples of the world — even while we are being hated, he says, by all these peoples — this promise is going to come true.

But the Christians who take the gospel to the nations during this time of great trouble will not be among those whose love has grown cold, right? They will be the people who have white-hot, not cold, love for Jesus in the face of persecution and killing. Not everybody’s love is going to grow cold in the last days, in other words. The Great Commission will be completed by faithful Christians, while millions are leaving the church like lukewarm coals rolling away from the fire.

All that I had seen before, but this time, while I was meditating on this passage, I saw the connection between war and missions — not just the de-churching of cold love and missions, but the connection between military upheavals and missions.

Far from Stopping the Advance

So, verses 6–7 and 14: “You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. . . . Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. . . . And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” This connection makes plain that “wars and rumors of wars” will not stop God’s mission. That’s the lesson that I saw fresh in this text. The mission will be completed in spite of, sometimes because of, nation rising against nation.

Now, even as I say it, I know there could be an objection, even a biblical objection, because peacetime is good for the church. We’re not naive. We know that, historically, wars and social upheavals have hindered missions. Yes, they have. That’s true. But how many of those setbacks proved to be advances in disguise?

For example, the removal of missionaries from China, which felt like such a setback, between 1949–1953 — was it a setback? Thirty years later, it appeared that the church had grown by tenfold in China without the missionaries.

So, who knows what are advances and what are setbacks in God’s strange ways? Whatever disruptions in missions are caused by wars and rumors of wars, the words of Jesus stand firm. Wars and rumors of wars will not stop world evangelization. In the midst of hatred, coldness, and wars, this gospel will be preached to all the peoples, and then the end will come.

What History Has to Say

To test my new insight against historical experience, I did a little research, and here’s what I found. What has God done in missions during wartime?

During the American Civil War (1860–1865), Sarah Doremus founded the Woman’s Union Missionary Society for sending single women to Asia. The Episcopal Church opened work in Haiti. The Paris Evangelical Missionary Society opened work in Senegal. The London Missionary Society published the first dictionary of the Samoan language. The China Inland Mission (today OMF) was founded by James Hudson Taylor, which has sent — what? — thousands of missionaries to Asia. All of that while Americans are consumed with the Civil War.

What about World War I (1914–1918)? C.T. Studd was glorying in a great revival movement in the Congo during the First World War. The Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association, IFMA, was founded during World War I.

What about World War II (1939–1945)? William Cameron Townsend founded Wycliffe Bible Translators. New Tribes Mission was founded with a vision to reach the tribal peoples of Bolivia. The Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society was founded, now named WorldVenture. The Baptist General Conference started its own missionary-sending agency, which is the denomination that our church belongs to, during the Second World War. Mission Aviation Fellowship was started, Far East Broadcasting Company was founded, Evangelical Foreign Missions Association was formed — all during that horrific Second World War.

What about the Korean War (1950–1953)? The World Evangelical Alliance was organized. Bill and Vonette Bright created Campus Crusade for Christ. Trans World Radio was founded.

You get the picture. This is just a tiny taste of the truth that wars and rumors of wars are not going to stop God’s promise to complete the task of world missions. So, Malcolm, this is what the Lord has been using recently in my life to strengthen my heart, and encourage me to press on in this great work.