Audio Transcript

Good Monday morning, everyone, and thank you for listening to the podcast. Well, is it sinful to fall short of excellence in our work? This is a great question, relevant for businessmen, for stay-at-home wives, for volunteers, for students — for all of us. And the question comes to us from a listener named Dylan.

Here’s what he asks: “Pastor John, hello to you, and thank you for taking my question! In Colossians 3:22–24, Paul exhorts his readers to ‘work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.’ Does this mean that any work not done in excellence is sin? How do we apply God’s view of work to cleaning our house, writing a paper for school, or working a nine-to-five job? I have been feeling guilty about the way I handle these things for months now, and I’m not sure if I’m just being self-righteous, or if I am being disobedient to the Lord. Is Paul describing a type of excellence in all that we do?”

Let me begin with an illustration from my ministry from about thirty years ago. We were wrestling at the time in our church with how to think about expectations of excellence in music, in worship services. And there was one group that stressed technical excellence and quoted 2 Samuel 24:24: “I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God that cost me nothing” — which, being applied in our situation, meant, “I will not offer God any music in our worship services that has not cost me an extraordinary effort of practice so as to make it technically excellent, even flawless.”

Then there was another group, or maybe I should say there was me. I appreciated that commitment to excellence; however, my gentle pushback to this emphasis was that, in the Christian church, God not only cares about whether we are excellent musicians, but also cares about whether we are excellent forgivers. That’s the way I stated it — whether we are excellent in patience, excellent in long-suffering. For example, whether we show patience and forgiveness if someone’s musical effort was not flawless.

“When it comes to excellence in the Christian life, we dare not ever limit it to the way a person does a skill.”

In other words, when it comes to excellence in the Christian life, we dare not ever limit it to the way a person does a skill or the way a person does a craft. We must always take into account excellence in attitudes, excellence in emotions, excellence in relationships. God has lots more to say in his word about whether we are angry in our attitude than he does about whether we’re competent in our skill.

Undistracting Excellence

The way we finally worked this out among our people, among our leaders, was to use this phrase as our goal: undistracting excellence. In other words, there is something bigger and deeper and more important going on in this service than the technical quality of music. It’s not unimportant; it’s just not most important. The aim here is to know God, meet God, love God, treasure God, trust God, enjoy God.

Those are all acts of the heart and mind. Everything else is subservient to that in this service, helping people get to that, including the excellence of our performances — whether it’s music or the sound system or lighting or heating or air conditioning or preaching or the clothing that we wear. Everything is to remove obstacles — undistracting — and to serve knowing God, meeting God, loving God, treasuring God, trusting God, enjoying God. We captured that goal by putting the adjective undistracting in front of the word excellence.

It implied that not only might shoddy work distract from meeting God — the person continuing to make mistakes. Everybody’s going to be embarrassed; they’re going to be distracted — that’s not going to work. But also, excessive finesse might distract from the spiritual reality of encountering God. And I’m thinking of this in preaching, not just music. A sermon can be so shoddy in its order and clarity that it doesn’t help. And it can be so rhetorically refined that it distracts and doesn’t help. So the criterion ceased to be an abstract view of technical excellence and became a spiritual goal of removing obstacles from people seeing and savoring Christ.

Working from the Soul

Now, Dylan is asking about Colossians 3:22–24 and how it calls us to excellence. So here’s the text:

Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily [it’s literally ek psyches, “from the soul”], as for of the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.

I think Dylan is right to draw principles for all of us from these verses, even though they are directed to slaves and masters. And I say that because Colossians 3:17, just above this paragraph, says, “Whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.” And I think Paul is simply applying that global principle for all of us to the slave-master relationship so that all of us can learn from his application. I would point to three things that he says.

Avoid Hypocrisy

First, don’t just try to be outwardly pleasing to people while your heart doesn’t care about the people and doesn’t care really about what quality of work you do, as long as they think it’s good. It’s “eye-service”; that’s man-pleasing. In other words, don’t be a hypocrite.

If you’re going to give the impression outwardly to your boss, or your teacher, or your spouse, or your friend that you are doing something to please them, then do something really to please them. Don’t be a hypocrite. Don’t be a double-tongued or a double-behavior person who outwardly wants to have a sense of being pleased with their eyes, and deep down you haven’t done good work at all, and you’re concealing it from them. That would significantly affect the quality of work you do if you had that mindset. And Paul says, “Don’t have it.”

Work for Jesus

Second, whatever job you have and whomever it is that you are working for as a Christian, always think of Jesus Christ as the one to whom you will give an account for the quality of your work and the quality of your attitudes in the work. Colossians 3:24 says, “You are serving the Lord Christ” — meaning, whomever else you’re serving, you are really serving Christ in serving them. So, whatever quality of attitude and quality of work you would do if Christ were your immediate supervisor, do that work with that attitude.

Look to the Reward

And third, Paul says, “Keep in mind that your reward for the good you do will come from the Lord, even if it doesn’t come from man.”

“Always think of Jesus Christ as the one to whom you will give an account for the quality of your work.”

So clearly, Paul is implying, (1) knowing that we shouldn’t be hypocrites or deceitful men-pleasers, and (2) knowing that ultimately our supervisor for this homework or housework or job work is the Lord Jesus himself, and (3) knowing that our reward comes from him, not primarily from the teachers or spouses or bosses — all of that will exert an influence on the quality of work we do, and the good attitudes with which we do it.

More at Stake Than Excellence

And then Dylan asks, “Does this mean that any work not done in excellence is sin?” And if that question is to be answered with precision, I would say the answer is no, not always. It’s not always sin. It’s not that simple.

For example, if you decide to paint your own bedroom rather than hire a professional painter, because you think God wants you to give the several-hundred dollars you might pay the painter to some missionary friend, and yet you are not a very skilled painter, how will God look upon the exactness of the line between the beige wall and the white ceiling where they meet each other up in the corner?

I’m speaking from experience here. A skilled painter gets a little bead (I’ve seen him do this) of paint on the end of his brush, and he drags it — this perfect little bead — along that line with such amazing precision that the line between the edge, between the beige wall and the white ceiling, is perfect. Now my lines between the beige wall and the white ceiling are wavy. Here’s my answer: God will not view my wavy edges as sin. He won’t, even though they are not technically excellent, like a painter could make them. Bigger things are at stake, in other words.

But if I advertise myself as a painter, with my present skill, and I go into somebody else’s bedroom, and I paint their wall with wavy edges of beige on the wall and white on the ceiling with a wavy line in between, hoping they won’t see it and how shoddy it is compared to what a
real painter could do, that will be sin.

Do Your Best

The same thing applies to so many situations. It’s not sin to make a B in algebra class instead of an A if you work hard and do your best. It’s not sin to make five sales this week instead of ten if you’re doing your best.

And I would define “your best” like this: “your best” is defined as a fallible effort to take into account all relevant factors, like sleep (when you sleep) and health and family and my age and energy and gifting and other relationships that need to be attended to. And then, when all is said and done, you entrust yourself to the grace of Christ, who died for you so that you could enjoy his excellent forgiveness.

Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord! (Psalm 150:6)

The first and last psalms tell us a great deal about what God wants us to see and hear in all the psalms. The first is quoted far more often than the last:

Blessed is the man     who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,nor stands in the way of sinners,     nor sits in the seat of scoffers;but his delight is in the law of the Lord,     and on his law he meditates day and night. (Psalm 1:1–2)

Psalm 1 tells us that the happiest and most fruitful people, anywhere on earth and at any point in history, will be those who delight most in the words of God. The words of this book — and every other book in the Bible — are meant to be read slowly, wrestled with, and savored. And not just for a few minutes each day, but throughout the day. The psalm is an invitation into the rich and rewarding life of meditation.

If the first psalm tells us how to hear from God, though, the last psalm tells us how to respond. Humble, wise, happy souls let God have the first word, but encountering him eventually draws words out of them. Like the disciples, we “cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). How does God bring 150 psalms to an end? With a clear charge and refrain: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord! Praise the Lord!”

The Closing Psalm

Anyone can discern what the last psalm wants us to do in response to what God has said. All thirteen lines make the same point: “Praise the Lord!”

“God doesn’t minimize or neglect our suffering, but his goodness to us always outshines the trials he hands us.”

No matter where we are, and how bleak or difficult our life becomes, we always have reason to praise our God — to stop and worship him for who he is and what he is done. “Praise him for his mighty deeds; praise him according to his excellent greatness!” (Psalm 150:2). Our reasons for praising him — his mighty deeds and his glory over all — always eclipse and outweigh what we suffer, and all the more so now that Christ has come, died, and risen. God doesn’t minimize or neglect our suffering, but his goodness to us always outshines the trials he hands us. And so the psalmist can say to every one of us, at every moment of our lives, “Praise the Lord!”

The psalms, however, are not a simple chorus repeated over and over again, but a symphony, filled with as many experiences and emotions as humans endure and feel. The five books that make up Psalms really are a master class in human adversity.

Praise Through Heartache

When we think of the psalms, we might be tempted to think they’re simple, positive, and repetitive, but they give voice to the entire spectrum of sorrow and suffering.

Do you feel abandoned by God? The psalms know what you feel: “O Lord, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?” (Psalm 88:14).

Is some fear threatening to consume you? The psalms know what you feel: “When I am afraid, I put my trust in you. In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?” (Psalm 56:3–4).

Has someone tried to make your life miserable? The psalms know what you feel: “More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause; mighty are those who would destroy me, those who attack me with lies” (Psalm 69:4).

Do you need wisdom about a hard situation or decision? The psalms know what you feel: “Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes; and I will keep it to the end. Give me understanding, that I may keep your law and observe it with my whole heart” (Psalm 119:33–34).

Have you ever been betrayed by someone you love? The psalms know what you feel: “It is not an enemy who taunts me — then I could bear it; it is not an adversary who deals insolently with me — then I could hide from him. But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend” (Psalm 55:12–13).

And through mountains and valleys, through trials and triumphs, through ecstasy and agony, we hear one common, beautiful thread: praise. In the throes of fear, praise. In the vulnerability of uncertainty, praise. In the darkness of doubt, praise. Even in the heartache of betrayal, praise. The praise doesn’t always sound the same, but we still hear it, in each and every circumstance. And so the book ends, after every high and every low, with a call: “Praise him. . . . Praise him. . . . Praise him.” Can you praise him where you are right now?

With Whatever You Have

We might be tempted to overlook the verses in Psalm 150:3–5:

Praise him with trumpet sound;     praise him with lute and harp!Praise him with tambourine and dance;     praise him with strings and pipe!Praise him with sounding cymbals;     praise him with loud clashing cymbals!

There aren’t as many lutes and harps and tambourines in most modern worship. The specific instruments are not the point, however. The point is that God deserves more than our words.

“The purpose of breathing is praise.”

He does deserve our words: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!” God made lungs and vocal cords and oxygen, ultimately, so that we could use them to worship him. The purpose of breathing is praise. But words fall short of his greatness. We feel this when we pray and sing, don’t we? It feels true, and yet so inadequate. We should feel that way. The inadequacy of our worship reminds us God is always better than we can grasp or express, and it drives us to find more creative ways to tell him so.

We might pick up a trumpet or lute or harp. We might shake a tambourine or break into dancing. We might slam a couple of cymbals together. Even more than instruments, though, we “present [our] bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is our spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). We make praise with our lives — with our decisions, our conversations, our spending, our time.

So, in whatever circumstances God has given you, and with whatever energy and resources he has given you, praise the Lord for who he is and for all he’s done for you.

The happiest families can be surprisingly competitive. And not just in moments of play and recreation when we compete against each other, in love and good humor. But all the more in the everyday “contest” to honor and bless one another.

“Outdo one another in showing honor” (Romans 12:10), Paul writes for the whole church, and such a vision begins at home. And yet the glory and joy of such a “competition” is far, far larger, and more fundamental, than even our homes and churches. We might view all of history as the divine Father and his Son seeking to “outdo one another in showing honor.”

“Service is greatness,” writes Donald Macleod, “and one may even ask . . . whether the persons of the godhead do not seem to vie with one another for the privilege of serving” (Person of Christ, 88). It is an astounding and holy contest to trace through the pages of Scripture, and the story of the world — a story of their glory that delights all those who have been welcomed into the greatest of families.

One Great Design — and Medium

To marvel at the pronounced other-orientation of the Father and the Son is not to minimize the God-centeredness of God but, rather, to go deeper into it. God made the world to glorify himself. This, in short, is God’s “one great design,” as Jonathan Edwards preached in December 1744, in a sermon called “Approaching the End of God’s Grand Design.” And yet how much more can we say than simply this? Edwards says more.

He also speaks of God’s “one grand medium,” saying, “The one grand medium by which he glorifies himself in all is Jesus Christ, God-man.” Another way, then, in fuller detail, to capture God’s one great design, says Edwards, is this:

[God made the world] to present to his Son a spouse in perfect glory from amongst sinful, miserable mankind, blessing all that comply with his will in this matter and destroying all his enemies that oppose it, and so to communicate and glorify himself through Jesus Christ, God-man.

God’s God-centeredness is not at odds with the centrality of Christ. In fact, we cannot have one without the other. One is the great design; the other, the grand medium. God glorifies himself through his Son.

Prompted by Edwards, then, it is amazing to return to God’s own word, see if the dynamic is there, and watch with delight as our Father and our Lord Jesus “vie with one another,” as it were, seeking to “outdo one another in showing honor.”

Father to Glorify Son

Consider first that unexpected attribute of the Son’s glory in the magnificent opening lines of Hebrews. In these last days, God has spoken to us in his Son, “whom he appointed the heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:2). Only after noting this appointment does Hebrews add “through whom also he created the world.” Before creation, the Father appointed his Son to be heir of it all; then the Father made all through him and for him. Paul backs it up in Colossians 1:16: “All things were created through [the Son] and for him.”

“The Father made the universe, and ordained all of history to unfold as it has, to glorify his Son.”

In other words, the Father made the world to give it to his Son. The Father loves his Son (John 3:35; 5:20) — with a love so full, so thick, so deep, so abounding that he overflowed to make a world to make much of his Son. The Father made the universe, and ordained all of history to unfold as it has, to glorify his Son, and demonstrate his infinite delight in and love for his Son. And that does not subtract, so to speak, from the Father’s glory, but only increases it in the increase of his Son. As the Father rightly pursues his glory in creation, he does so in and through the honor and praise of his Son.

So, in the fullness of time, the Father sent his Son, in human soul and body, visibly and audibly — as fully man, without ceasing to be God — to come, in stages, into this great appointed inheritance.

Son Glorified Father

Jesus, the God-man, lived his human life in utter dedication to his Father. Rightly did the angels proclaim “Glory to God!” at Jesus’s birth (Luke 2:14), as the glory of the Father came to the fore in the life and ministry of the Son. In his “state of humiliation,” from manger to cross, the man Christ Jesus did not “glorify himself” (John 8:54; Hebrews 5:5), but his words and deeds, and the effect and intent of his human life, were in full and glad submission to the will, and glory, of his Father. As he says without slant in John 8:49, “I honor my Father.”

“Jesus, the God-man, lived his human life in utter dedication to his Father.”

The Son loves his Father (John 14:31). And he lived as man, and strode toward the cross, propelled by his great delight in and love for his Father. He instructed his disciples to so live, and bear fruit, that his Father would be glorified (Matthew 5:16; John 15:8), and he taught them to pray for the hallowing of his Father’s name (Matthew 6:9; Luke 11:2). The night before he died, Jesus summarized, in prayer, his life’s work as “I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do” (John 17:4). When he sees that at last his “hour” has come, Jesus prays, “Father, glorify your name” (John 12:28).

As the Son draws near to the cross, we marvel to see both glories — of Father and of Son — coming to the fore, not in competition, yet vying to accent the other. And strikingly, the Son’s lifting up, his coming into his glory as God-man, begins not only with his resurrection, but even in the shame and horror of being “lifted up” to the cross (John 3:14; 8:28; 12:32). Seeing that his hour has come, and that he will now move beyond his “state of humiliation,” and enter into glory (Luke 24:26) with his great final act of self-humbling (Philippians 2:8), Jesus says,

Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. (John 13:31)

Not only will the incarnate Son continue to glorify his Father, as he has since Bethlehem, but now he will do so in some new measure — and the Father too will glorify his Son. “So intertwined are the operations of the Father and the Son,” comments D.A. Carson, “that the entire mission can be looked at another way. . . . One may reverse the order” (John, 482). They glorify each other.

Father Glorified Son

In history’s greatest twist, the cross, in all its unspeakable odium and shame, begins the incarnate Son’s uplifting. Here, at Golgotha, the Father’s anticipated glorifying of the Son, as the Son spoke of, and prayed for, begins to be realized. The Father had glorified his Son, in measure, in his anointed life and ministry (John 8:54; 11:4), but now his glory comes decisively and fully at the cross, and in his rising again (John 7:39; 12:16, 23). Peter’s Pentecost sermon will recognize that God “glorified his servant Jesus . . . whom God raised from the dead” (Acts 3:13, 15). Or, as Peter later wrote, tying together the Son’s resurrection and glorification, “God . . . raised him from the dead and gave him glory” (1 Peter 1:21).

Christ’s resurrection, then — and with it, his ascension and enthronement in heaven — ushers in a new era, the age in which we live, of the church and the Spirit. If the Father seemed to outdo the Son in showing honor before creation, and the Son tried to outdo the Father in his earthly life, and the Father thrust the glory of his Son to the fore, in history, in the terrible cross and triumphant resurrection, we now — as happy sons of God and brothers of Christ — thrill as our Father and his Son strive all the more for the privilege of exalting each other.

Glories Together Now

The New Testament teems with the glory of God, and the glory of Christ, as the saints see what Edwards called “the great design” and “the great medium” play out before our eyes. The glory we see in Christ, the eternal Word made flesh, does not exclude the Father, but is “glory as of the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14). All God’s centuries of promises, says 2 Corinthians 1:20, find their “Yes” in Jesus — “that is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” The fruit of righteousness we bear in life “comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God” (Philippians 1:11). To the Father, through the Son.

We serve, says 1 Peter 4:11, “by the strength that God supplies — in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” In our sufferings in the present time, we look to the God of all grace, who called us to “his eternal glory in Christ” (1 Peter 5:10). And in the great doxology of Hebrews, we look to the Father, “who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus” to work in us what is pleasing in his sight “through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen” (Hebrews 13:10–21).

Perhaps best of all is Philippians 2:9–11. God the Father has “highly exalted” his Son and given him, without envy or reservation, “the name that is above every name.” This is a stunning grant — one of the great realities the Father must have dreamed up when appointing his Son “heir of all things,” and is now delighted to fulfill. And lest we worry that the holy contest has gone too far when we learn that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,” Paul has one last phrase to enchant us all in this happy family: “to the glory of God the Father.”

Glories at the End

Even now, as Christ sits enthroned in heaven, the Father is putting all things under his feet, and when that great work of redemption is done (Revelation 21:6), then “the Son himself will also be subjected to him” (1 Corinthians 15:27–28). Does the Father then, in the end, become the last recipient of glory, while the Son finally outdoes him in showing honor? Macleod encourages us “not to overlook the complexities of the situation” (88).

It is here, precisely with the end in view, that he observes how Father and Son seem to “vie with one another for the privilege of serving.” As we strain to look into the future, we find depths and dimensions to the divine glory we should be careful not to reduce. On the one hand, Jude 24–25 tells us the Father will present us before himself, while in Ephesians 5:27, Christ presents the church to himself in splendor. So too, not only will the Son present the kingdom to the Father (1 Corinthians 15), but the Father will present the bride to his Son (Revelation 21:2, 9). Macleod observes, “The idea of the Father handing over the bride to Christ is as definitive as that of the Son handing over the kingdom to the Father” (88).

Such twin emphases have for two millennia led the church to confess with Christ, and with awe, the blessed mystery, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).

Glory Enough to Go Around

What a thrill it is to see that our Father, and our elder Brother, are not miserly with divine glory. There is no scarcity of glory in the Godhead to be hoarded and rationed. Divine persons do not compete for glory, even as they vie to show each other honor. As Dane Ortlund observes, “The New Testament oscillates so frequently between the Son and the Father as the more immediate object of glorification that it becomes unthinkable to envision one person of the Trinity being glorified and not the other persons.”

Our God does indeed, as God, righteously and lovingly seek his own glory, but we should not think of his glory as scarce, or his fingers as tight. He does not give his glory to another, even as “the Father of glory” (Ephesians 1:17) and Jesus “the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8; James 2:1) — and so too “the Spirit of glory” (1 Peter 4:14) — vie with each other, outdoing one another in showing honor.

Such “competition” makes for the happiest family of all.

What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.

In 1994, I became the first appointed international editor at World Magazine, an enterprising Christian news outlet with admirable ambitions to cover global events, but without a travel budget.

To blaze the trail, I asked several denominations to send me missionary letters. They arrived in large manila envelopes. There was little overseas email traffic to my AOL account until the late 1990s. But studying the photocopied letters, I began to learn ground-level life in hard-to-reach places. I found contacts I could reach at odd hours through static phone calls or exchanges sent by fax machine.

Church in Ancient Homelands

A year later, I received an invitation to an excursion through Turkey with other journalists billed as a tour of “the other Holy Land.” Turkey wanted to become a member of the European Union, it wanted acceptance in the West, and promoting church tourism apparently was a way to do it.

The organizers hoped we journalists would highlight religious sites lost to the Ottoman Turks’ conquest of Christian Constantinople in 1453. It was all eye-opening for me as our group toured from Istanbul to Bursa, then east across to Cappadocia and as far as the border with Syria.

The group was emblematic of new frontiers opening in the 1990s. A newspaper editor from South Africa was traveling abroad for the first time since apartheid ended. A reporter from East Germany was making her first foray since the Berlin Wall fell. Learning I was an American, she said, “You have so many brands of laundry detergent. My whole life I could buy only one.”

Turkey’s bid for Western clout mirrored other changes in the Middle East. Israel that year signed onto the Oslo agreements and was normalizing relations with neighbors after decades of war. For me it was a busman’s holiday, learning just how much I had yet to learn about the church in its ancient homelands.

I learned also that it was easy to confuse the new openness with genuine liberty. After the trip, I discovered that Turkey continued to jail Christians, especially converts from Islam. It refused to license new churches even as it campaigned for Western cachet.

In similar ways and at the same time, as new mission efforts spread across the former Soviet Union, Communist holdovers would meet them with authoritarian restrictions under the banner of democratic reforms.

Early the next year, I traveled to areas surrounding the Chernobyl nuclear site, covering the tenth anniversary of its explosion. I discovered how little had changed in the orange and yellow contamination zones of Belarus and Ukraine, and how desperately they needed Christian revival.

Nothing, Yet Everything

It was not in the Middle East, but in Africa, where I first glimpsed a rising threat to Christians. Sudan’s long-running civil war pitted Khartoum’s Islamic regime in the north against the south’s mostly Christian population. Government campaigns featured wholesale brutality little understood by the outside world. I witnessed forced displacement, starvation, and death.

One day with local aid workers and armed Sudanese escorts, I hiked to a burned-out mission compound destroyed years ago by government forces and only recently liberated by rebels. We walked single file under a fierce sun behind our escorts to avoid landmines.

The missionaries who opened the church and school in the 1930s had been gone for decades. Locals in those days had been slow to come to Christ, but surrounding tribes were now overwhelmingly Christian, with tens of thousands of believers. As we walked, children came out of huts to stare at me. They had never seen a white woman.

At the site, signs of battle and destruction remained. When government forces attacked, they locked some congregants inside the church and set it on fire, they raped and beat others, and they either killed or forced to flee everyone else. They laid the landmines so no one could rebuild the church, and left it a roofless, twisted maze of destruction. They tore pages from church Bibles, using them to roll cigarettes. Bible pages also turned up as food wrappers in the nearby market.

I have kept to this day a clasp from the church’s metal roof that I found on the ground, a daily reminder at my desk of the unbearable suffering and inexplicable resilience I witnessed in south Sudan.

As we left the mission compound, we discovered a gathering of Christian believers under a nearby tree. With the area in friendlier hands, they walked back from a refugee camp in Ethiopia. They were building a new church, using saplings to support a thatched roof. Under a tree, they sang as we approached, and then asked to pray with us.

“Our brothers and sisters,” the little group explained to us, “had been carried to Jesus while we were carried to exile and back again.” “This is our Jerusalem,” their pastor said, spreading his arms wide to encompass a desolate scene of rubble and weeds. “We have nothing, but we have everything.”

Resilient Joy

Overseas reporting allowed me to go deeper into unspeakable horrors Christians suffered at the hands of their enemies, and there I discovered a resilience and joy that were nearly unexplainable. In the heat of Sudan, surveying the destruction with enemy lines less than ten miles away, comprehending the impoverishment, losses, and dislocation that come with deep persecution, I also found my reporter’s feet.

It didn’t arise from a rush of adrenaline as I skirted landmines. I would return again and again to Sudan, then to other places of conflict, because of the joy that might be found, the light overcoming the darkness, the singing under the trees in the shadow of fiery furnaces.

“Stripped of earthly comfort, they found a priceless joy, the joy of being more like Christ. And with it, radical hope.”

As my work after 9/11 took me increasingly to the Middle East, I’d begin to think of these as journeys to find water in the desert. The enemies would change, the politics would tilt and shift, and the disappointment hover, everywhere. But the harder things got, the more resilient and determined became the people of God. Stripped of earthly comfort, they found a priceless joy, the joy of being more like Christ. And with it, radical hope.

Desert Water

As al-Qaeda and Islamic State terror groups gained ground in Syria and Iraq, churches were devastated. The Christian population of Iraq fell by 75 percent from the time I made my first trip there, in 2002, to the invasion of ISIS in 2014. The loss of whole communities and destruction of ancient landmarks was heartbreaking. From the new frontiers that had defined my first years of reporting, I now watched the world again fill with checkpoints and no-go zones.

Christians in Iraq formed its middle class. They were its shopkeepers, newspaper editors, schoolteachers, and symphony conductors. The devastation when terrorists targeted them with bombings and kidnappings not only leveled their communities, but also hurt the whole country. Churches that outlasted Mongol invasions now operated out of tents in sprawling camps.

Even this desert held water, the church becoming something new as it fought for survival. Members of the old ancient churches were attending evangelical Bible studies, reading Scripture on their own for the first time, and for hours, one mother explained. Muslims, shaken by atrocities done in Allah’s name, were coming to Christ.

One convert, who came from a completely Islamic area, told me he’d never thought about Christianity until terrorists forced him from his home. Then, “I was asking and asking for more information about Jesus,” he said, “because what I received from Islam is only trouble.”

It became common to see Muslim families, the mothers veiled, attending evangelical church services in Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut. At one, I dropped in on a meeting where Muslim women were invited. I expected maybe a dozen women to be there, but when I opened the door, I discovered more than four hundred, a sea of head-to-toe burkas common to the Shia community.

Researcher David Garrison more formally has documented the undeniable trend: an estimated two to seven million Muslims have converted to Christianity since the start of the twenty-first century. They occur in all parts of the Muslim world, including areas most hostile to Christianity, like Afghanistan and Iran. More than 80 percent of such movements began after 9/11. “They were content to see Islam as the answer for the world, and after 9/11 they no longer could believe that,” Garrison said.

In my 2016 book about Iraq, They Say We Are Infidels, I wrote,

Christianity at its truest stretched and recast harsh realities, turning them upside down, inside out. Its people took mustard seeds and with them moved mountains, which I learned as I watched [the Iraqi Christians]. Destruction brought comfort, in the words of the prophet Nahum; impossible hardships became possible to endure, and death became life-giving. Augustine said it well: “For God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist.” (296)

Light in Dark Places

For journalists, “what bleeds, leads,” and evil remains the world’s constant. But the believers I encountered overseas had something American society seemed to be losing: community-mindedness. It resides in the DNA in parts of the world we often think of as poor and unsalvageable. And to think and believe well, writer Jeffrey Bilbro has said, we must belong well.

“The believers I encountered overseas had something American society seemed to be losing: community-mindedness.”

Dislocated and distraught, the Iraqis could form new communities, teach their children to change the diapers of the new widow’s baby, launch churches in muddy camps.

I also learned how Christianity could be contextualized the world over, much like Islam, looking very different from Africa to Asia. Yet Islam largely increased by conquest, while Christianity grew by the example of love. The Islamic State fighters, the Taliban, and others seek to impose a global jihad, not unlike the armies of Muhammad in the seventh century. Christianity thrives where the weakest and most dispossessed love their neighbors in word and deed, following the example of Jesus. They seldom make headline news but can teach us just the same.

My time at World Magazine came to an end as darker forces again rose, closing borders and threatening a generation’s worth of democratic progress. The Taliban rule in Afghanistan and Russia’s war on Ukraine will change world orders and threaten not only Christian believers.

The frontiers I traveled along may shut again. My check-ins with faraway contacts happen in real time through video chats and text messaging, even from bomb shelters or tent cities. But there in the dark places we may find light enough to say with the pastor in Sudan, “We have nothing, and we have everything.”

Audio Transcript

Today we have a question all parents must answer for themselves. How do I not exasperate my children? It’s today’s question from a young dad, a new dad, named Matt. He writes, “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for taking my question today! Colossians 3:21 warns fathers, ‘Do not embitter your children’ (that’s the NIV). Or ‘Do not provoke your children’ (that’s the ESV and the KJV). Or ‘Do not exasperate your children’ (that’s the Holman Bible). We are to avoid embittering or provoking or exasperating our children so they do not become discouraged. So what does it look like for a father to embitter his children? This text seems super important to me as a new dad, and at the same time super abstract. What would this look like?”

Well, I’ve given a lot of thought to this question recently because I’ve been working my way through Colossians in Look at the Book. And so let me see if I can hold down my enthusiasm to ten minutes or so here. Let’s put the text in front of us with enough context to make sure we can get this dad in the right frame of mind.

Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them. Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. Fathers, do not provoke your children [or embitter your children], lest they become discouraged. (Colossians 3:18–21)

Dad’s Peculiar Responsibility

Now, the reason I give that much context for verse 21, which says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged,” is that I want fathers, I want Matt, to feel the amazing responsibility that God gives in a special way to fathers. And the reason I say special way is because verse 20 says that children are to be obedient to their parents, not just their fathers: “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.” But when it gets to verse 23 and the peculiar responsibility for the children’s encouragement, he does not say, “Parents, do not provoke your children.” He says, “Fathers, do not provoke your children.”

And of course, mothers shouldn’t provoke their children and discourage them either, but he gives the fathers this peculiar responsibility in a special way. So, dad is the head of the family. And the reason I say that is because, in verse 18, it says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands.” So, if children are to be obedient to mom, and mom is to submit to dad, then there’s a peculiar burden, a responsibility, that God places on dad to lead the family. And he is to lead it in a way that is, first, not harsh with his wife and, second, not discouraging to his children.

“There’s a peculiar burden, a responsibility, that God places on dad to lead the family.”

So dad’s call not to discourage his children is part of a larger fabric of his peculiar husbandly, fatherly responsibility. And I emphasize the word responsibility rather than rights, because that’s the tone of the passage. That’s the tone of reality. God gives to husbands and fathers a burden of responsibility. This isn’t a place for the blustering of a man’s rights as head. This is a place for bearing the peculiar burden of responsibility as husbands and fathers.

Authority Without Provocation

You can see it is a daunting — and I would say even impossible, in one sense — responsibility to so deal with our children that they don’t become dispirited or discouraged or lifeless. This involves a work of God, not just man. The translations include “don’t exasperate your children,” “don’t provoke them to anger,” “don’t embitter them.” Those are all the translations that you see in versions that are out there.

But the general idea is this: since verse 20 says that children should obey the fathers and mothers, the father should not back away from requiring obedience just because a child tries to use pouting to coerce dad not to make him go to bed when it’s time to go to bed. Verse 21, “don’t discourage your children,” can’t be used to nullify verse 20, which calls us to require obedience from our children.

So, children can’t blackmail their parents into canceling out verse 20 because they say, “Look, Dad, you’re not supposed to discourage me. I’m feeling discouraged, and so you can’t require that of me.” You can’t do that with the Bible. So, verse 21 must be saying there is a wrong or a counterproductive way to require obedience of your children, which only discourages, and there’s a helpful way to require obedience of your children. The command to dads not to provoke our children to discouragement can’t be used to make the dad passive or lazy or indifferent to the children’s misbehavior.

How Not to Require Obedience

So what I take Matt to be asking is this: “What does it look like when you are requiring obedience like verse 20 says you should, but doing it badly so that you’re knocking the spirit out of your child?” So let me direct Matt and the rest of us to these eight ways that I would describe for how not to require obedience of your children. How do ways of fathering knock the life out of a child, discourage a child, dispirit a child? I’ve got eight of them. I’ll just name them briefly.

1. Nagging

Don’t try to get obedience by nagging. The word nagging was invented because there is such a thing as repetitive demands or repetitive requirements that are really annoying and exasperating because they are demeaning. You feel like, “I’ve heard you say that three times now. I’m going to do it in the time frame you gave me. You don’t need to keep telling me to do this.” That’s what the child might be feeling, even if he’s not saying it. So, don’t require obedience by nagging.

2. Demanding

Don’t try to get obedience by being the dad that only demands. Demand, demand, demand, demand — and he never has a conversation with the child. He never gives a compliment to this child. He never celebrates anything with the child. He never explains anything to the child. All the child ever hears is do, do, do, do, do, demand, demand, demand, demand. So, make your requirements part of the fabric of a much richer communication with your child, so he knows you are more than a demander.

3. Getting Angry

Don’t try to get obedience by setting the tone where every requirement sounds angry. “Dad’s always angry. He doesn’t know how to give any cheerful requirements. He thinks that in order to get anything done, he has to sound harsh and mad.” Well, Dad, you don’t. That’s counterproductive. That’s discouraging.

4. Always Resorting to the Rod

Don’t try to get obedience by always using blows. There’s a world of difference between a thoughtfully and firmly and lovingly applied discipline of spanking after defiance, and a slap-happy dad who always seems to be swatting at his children. Don’t accompany your requirements of obedience with hitting the child.

Spankings are fitting and hopefully, carefully, soberly, patiently, and lovingly applied so that the child himself knows that the reason he’s being disciplined is clear. He knows what he’s done, and he deserves this measure of discipline, but don’t make slapping or swatting or blows a normal accompaniment of your requirement of obedience.

5. Embarrassing

Don’t try to get obedience by embarrassing the child — perhaps by asking him to do something in front of people that is so obvious, he’s going to do it anyway. Seek ways to make your commands respectful, showing that you expect intelligent obedience.

6. Belittling

Don’t require obedience by belittling your child. For example, don’t call him names. Don’t speak in a way that he feels contempt coming from his father. Don’t ask him to do something the way you would ask a 3-year-old if he’s a 9-year-old.

7. Requiring the Impossible

Don’t demand things that are impossible for the child to do at his age. Don’t set him up for automatic failure. Don’t say, “I want you back here in thirty seconds,” when you know that’s not even possible. You’re asking the child to fail, which is discouraging.

8. Withholding Forgiveness

Perhaps most important — they’re all important, I think, but this is probably most important — don’t try to get obedience without creating an atmosphere of gospel forgiveness. So many dads and moms fail to teach a child early that Jesus has provided a way to get relief for their guilt after doing bad things — a way to be forgiven.

“Don’t try to get obedience without creating an atmosphere of gospel forgiveness.”

Without this, the child doesn’t know what to do with his own sins, which he knows he commits. Every kid knows he does bad things. So every command starts to feel like a potential digging of a deeper hole of guilt. Without a pattern of confession and forgiveness, the child will probably become secretive and deceitful. So, Dad, you must speak the gospel, teach the gospel, so that the child understands how the blood of Jesus gives forgiveness and life and relief. And you must embody the gospel in your own confession of sin and your own offer of forgiveness.

So, Matt, take heart. You have a heavenly Father that has modeled all of this for you and toward you. And there is hope, therefore, that you can be a father with children who are both obedient and encouraged.

In 1987, a sequence of thought from one of the shortest books of the Bible grabbed hold of me and never let me go. Bethlehem Baptist Church was in its fourth year of missions renewal when a veteran missionary serving in Mexico said to me in passing, “There is a big difference between a church that has missionaries and a church that sends missionaries.” As a young missions pastor, I drank this comment in, wanting to know more. A short time later, I read in my New American Standard Bible,

You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. For they went out for the sake of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore we ought to support such men, that we may be fellow workers with the truth. (3 John 6–8 NASB)

On my fortieth anniversary as a pastor at Bethlehem, on August 1, 2020, Pastor John Piper prayed the commissioning prayer as my wife, Julie, and I joined the ranks of the “goers.” After helping to send some of the dearest people I know to some of the most remote places on earth, I am now one of the church’s “sent ones,” training current and future pastors in Cameroon to be both goers and senders in the greatest cause of the universe. I have been a happy sender, and now am a happy goer, backed up by a church who has sent me in a manner worthy of God.

The main point of the passage in 3 John relates to this ministry of sending. You can see it in verse 6: “You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God.” I see three important aspects of sending in this passage: (1) the value of sending, (2) the mandate of sending, and (3) the manner of sending.

Value of Sending

Sending missionaries must be valuable, because look at how happy it makes the apostle John. Some missionaries from John’s church, it seems, had visited Gaius’s church and told him of their work (3 John 7). The missionaries then returned to John’s church and testified in front of the whole congregation of Gaius’s love for them (vv. 3, 5). When John hears this testimony, a big smile fills his old-crinkled apostolic face, and he writes to Gaius. Listen to the joy and warmth of the first four verses of this neglected letter:

The elder to the beloved Gaius, whom I love in truth. Beloved, I pray that in all respects you may prosper and be in good health, just as your soul prospers. For I was very glad when brethren came and bore witness to your truth, that is, how you are walking in truth. I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth. (3 John 1–4 NASB)

According to verse 2, perhaps Gaius was not doing well health-wise, and perhaps his business was struggling — and so John feels the need to pray for these matters. But Gaius’s love for the missionaries assures John that his soul was prospering. The prospering soul is the soul that is walking in the truth (v. 3) or working together with the truth (v. 8). In other words, he’s not living a fantasy; he’s not living “the American Dream.” He is living in a way that fits with ultimate reality, where God is at the center.

The value of sending can also be seen in the phrase “you will do well to send them” (v. 6). The word for well carries with it the sense of beauty. It is beautiful to wash the feet of those who go out for the sake of the Name. If the feet of those who carry the gospel are considered lovely by God (Isaiah 52:7), it should be no surprise that God views the people who wash those lovely feet as doing something beautiful.

“It is beautiful to wash the feet of those who go out for the sake of the Name.”

Finally, notice in verse 8 that in God’s eyes there is no hierarchy of value, with the missionary on top and those who send playing second fiddle. In verse 8, we read that both the goers and the senders are “fellow workers with the truth.” Both are equally valuable before God, the lives of both equally significant in God’s opinion — which is the only opinion that matters. The most important thing is to let our lives be consumed with seeking the kingdom first. Whether we seek his kingdom in Cameroon or Myanmar, or where we currently live, is a secondary issue. But if God does lead you to stay where you are, your soul will prosper as it ought only if you are involved in sending others to the mission field.

Mandate of Sending

God commands us to be senders, to be actively engaged in helping missionaries get to the field and stay on the field. It is not optional. We can see this in verse 8: “Therefore we ought to support such men.” Since they go out for the sake of the Name, and since they don’t sell the gospel for money, therefore we ought to support them.

Sending missionaries is one of the oughts and shoulds of the Bible. Our all-knowing and all-loving Christ knows that our souls will prosper as they should only as we look beyond our own immediate interests and lift up our eyes to God’s global purpose.

“The most exhilarating experience in life is to be a fellow worker with God in making his name known.”

One of the most exhilarating experiences in life is to be a fellow worker with God in making his name known, both in our own neighborhoods and among the unreached people groups of the world. God commands only what is good for us, so it’s no wonder he commands us to be senders.

Manner of Sending

Now, what does it mean to send a missionary? How is it done? I want to get practical here, but first I want us to look at the logic and the content of verses 6–8.

You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. For they went out for the sake of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore we ought to support such men, that we may be fellow workers with the truth.

John exalts the importance of how we send as high as can be imagined. We are to send “in a manner worthy of God.” And why should we send missionaries in a manner worthy of God? Notice the logic: “For they went out for the sake of the Name. . . . Therefore we ought to support such men.” Verse 7 is the best definition of missionary that I am aware of in the Bible. A missionary is not someone who goes out for merely humanitarian concerns, as important as those are. A biblical missionary is driven by a zeal to exalt the name of God, to declare his glory among the nations, to make known the beauty of the character and work of Jesus Christ. These are the only missionaries God commands us to support.

And since they go out for the sake of the Name, we must support them in a manner worthy of God. When it comes to sending, no verse in the Bible has gripped me more than this one. To send a missionary in a manner worthy of God means a lot more than having missionary names on the church’s website, or adding a line item in the budget, or signing a check here or there. So, what does it mean to send a missionary?

This particular word for send occurs nine times in the New Testament, always in the context of helping Christian workers get to where they need to go to do the work of the kingdom. In Titus 3:13, Paul uses the same word, writing, “Diligently help Zenas the lawyer and Apollos on their way so that nothing is lacking for them” (NASB). To send is to offer very practical help. It includes finances, but it goes way beyond finances. Notice in 3 John 5: “You are acting faithfully in whatever you accomplish for the brethren.” That word whatever shows the breadth of what is included in sending.

It takes only a little thought to imagine the upheaval that a call to missions would bring to your life. Imagine that God called you to change all your career plans, to prepare to go to the mission field, and then to serve him there for years to come — all of which would be compounded if you were married and had children. Now imagine what might be a blessing to you in your preparation stage and in your time on the field and when you returned for a season of home assignment. None of us can do everything our imaginations could put on such a list, but no one is being asked to do it all. So let’s each search our own hearts as to what our particular role may be in helping to send our missionaries in a manner worthy of God.

Fellow Workers with the Truth

The ministry of sending is both joyful and dangerous. While serving as a sender, God may surprise you and lead you to become a goer, a “sent one.” And goers may return home for a variety of reasons and become some of the best senders. While senders devote themselves creatively to do “whatever” on behalf of the goers, they will be especially motivated to being a goer to their immigrant neighbor, or international students at a nearby university, or a green-card worker in the next cubicle over.

But remember, senders and goers are fellow workers with the truth — equally valuable in God’s choreography of accomplishing the great purpose of winning worshipers from every tribe and tongue and nation. Both are called to be passionately God-centered, whether they go out for the sake of the Name, or remain in their home culture helping to send others in a manner worthy of God. A prospering Christ-filled soul is vital to the task of both.

A number of years ago, a counselor friend of mine introduced a simple and accessible concept that he regularly uses in his practice. He calls it “felt reality.”

Reality is reality. It’s objective. It’s what’s actually happening. Felt reality is what’s happening from my vantage point. It’s reality framed by my own thoughts, assumptions, and emotions.

Reality and felt reality aren’t the same. Sometimes they align — what I think and feel fits with what is actually happening. Other times, my felt reality is out of accord with reality. In such cases, I might be believing lies, or framing reality wrongly, or overreacting. My perspective might be distorted by my emotions or my sinful desires or my own limitations.

Once my friend gave me the category, I found it to be incredibly fruitful in my own life and marriage and parenting and ministry. It gave me a way to speak about human experiences of reality — whether mine or another’s — without necessarily validating those experiences. In other words, it enabled me to acknowledge that I think and feel a certain way, without affirming that such thoughts or emotions were necessarily true or right or good.

“Getting felt reality on the table can be the first step in seeking to steward and shepherd our thoughts and emotions.”

Getting felt reality on the table can be the first step in seeking to steward and shepherd our thoughts and emotions so that they more fully align with God’s.

‘Cut Off from Your Sight’

Even more than that, the concept (though not the term) seems present in the Scriptures. Consider the Psalms. In the middle of Psalm 31, David pleads with God to deliver him from his distress. In doing so, he vividly describes what it’s like to be in the pit:

His eyes are wasted from grief. They’re heavy from crying; they feel like lead. He just wants to rest, but there is no rest (verse 9).
His soul is wasted. His body is wasted. There is a weariness that reaches to every part of David’s existence (verse 9).
His life is spent with sorrow and his years with sighing (verse 10). This is how it feels: “I’ve been here forever, and I’ll be here forever.”
His strength fails (and he knows he partially deserves it because of his sin), and his bones just waste away (verse 10).

David’s powerful emotional and physical responses are influenced by his perception of reality, of what’s going on around him:

His adversaries have made him a reproach to his neighbors. Everyone runs from him because they think his suffering is contagious (verse 11). “Don’t stand too close to David. Don’t let him breathe on you. You don’t want to catch what he’s got.”
He’s forgotten like the dead. People remember the dead — for a little bit. Then they’re forgotten. That’s how David feels. Dead and useless, like a broken vessel (verse 12). “What good am I?”
He hears the whispering of his enemies around him — terror on every side. The other shoe could drop at any minute. Every rock and tree is ominous. Every bit of news produces fear. The future is filled with the almost certain prospect of bad surprise (verse 13).

This is David’s felt reality, and he gives explicit voice to it in verse 22:

I had said in my alarm, “I am cut off from your sight.”

‘I Shall Never Be Moved’

But these aren’t the only feelings David has had. In the previous psalm, David describes different circumstances and therefore a different felt reality:

As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.” (Psalm 30:6)

Notice the contrast. On the one hand: “In my alarm, I said, ‘I’m cut off.’” On the other hand: “In my prosperity, I said, ‘I’ll never be moved.’” In terms of content, these felt realities are exact opposites. But at another level, they display the power of felt reality in the exact same way.

Both circumstances of alarm and circumstances of prosperity led David to wrongfully exalt his felt reality. In Psalm 31, when he was alarmed, when all the walls were closing in, his felt reality was “It’s over. I’m done. God has abandoned me.” In Psalm 30, when he was living the high life, when he prospered and everything he touched turned to gold, his felt reality was “I’ve made it. I’m immovable and unshakable. God will never test me.”

These are two very different places, but they showcase the same confusion of felt reality and actual reality. In both cases, David was so overwhelmed by his felt reality that he made what he felt into what is. But it wasn’t. Felt reality is not the same as reality.

Facing Our Felt Reality

How then can we face our felt reality? Granting that our feelings and perceptions can be out of accord with what is truly the case, what can we do?

First, we can recognize the crucial connection between our felt reality and our self-talk. David didn’t just feel; he expressed his feelings in speech. And his words reinforced his felt reality.

Words are powerful. What we say shapes the way we view ourselves and our circumstances. Our feelings often reveal our unstated assumptions, our hidden beliefs, and the unrecognized stories by which we make sense of our lives. And then our words give voice to these feelings and reshape or reinforce — for good or ill — who we are and how we see ourselves.

Second, we see the importance of bringing our felt reality to God. David doesn’t muzzle his feelings; he lays them before the Lord in prayer. Whether or not his felt reality corresponds to actual reality, he eventually brings all of it before God, in hope that God will act and speak to him in his prosperity and in his pain.

So too with us. It does no good to hide our felt reality from God. He sees it already. Our task is to unveil before him, to take off the silly mask that we wear and be as honest as we can be in his presence. And the category of felt reality really helps us here. We can both be honest and humble. We can say, “I feel this way” while also saying, “But I don’t know if my feelings are right. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and then lead me in the way everlasting.”

“We not only can bring our felt reality to God, but we can submit our felt reality to the truth of God.”

Finally, bringing these together, we not only can bring our felt reality to God, but we can submit our felt reality to the truth of God. Recall again the two examples of felt reality from Psalms 30 and 31. “In my alarm, I said, ‘I’m cut off.’” “In my prosperity, I said, ‘I’ll never be moved.’”

Hear David’s words in Psalm 31:14, right after he describes his felt reality: “But I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’” This is David submitting his felt reality to the truth of God. He brought his felt reality to God, and now he speaks to himself and reasserts the truth of who God is for him.

Speak Reality

With God’s help, we can learn to do the same. We can learn to be honest with God, to ask him to bring our hidden assumptions and unseen narratives to light.

In my alarm, I said, “I’m cut off from your sight.”
In my prosperity, “I’ll never be moved.”
In my grief, “God has forsaken me.”
In my pride, “I’m thankful that I’m not like other men.”
In my envy, “God doesn’t love me like he loves others.”
In my suffering, “No one understands what I’m going through.”
In my despair, “It will never end. It’s hopeless.”

These are the sorts of statements we make in the midst of our trials and our triumphs, out of our passions and our pain. Listen to them, and then bring those feelings and that speech to God, and learn to say something else.

“I trust in you; you are my God. I’m not cut off.”
“I’m not unshakable.”
“You’ve not abandoned me.”
“Have mercy on me, a sinner.”
“You do love me.”
“You do understand.”
“This trial will end. There is hope.”

http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15312753/grace-from-start-to-finish

Audio Transcript

The Bible is very clear on a point we address today. And it’s this one: for our prayers to be answered, we must be obedient to God. That’s right — for our prayers to be answered, we must obey. The point is blunt and pervasive, and you can find it all over the Bible, in texts like Isaiah 1:15–18; John 15:7; 1 John 3:21–23; 1 Peter 3:7, 12; 4:7; James 5:16; and on and on. Okay then, so how holy must I become in order for my prayers to get answered? If you’re paying attention to your Bible, this is a legitimate question, and one Pastor John took up in a sermon over forty years ago. Here he is to explain and to add two more texts into the mix that I didn’t mention.

God said to Solomon, “If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14). And the psalmist confirmed it in his own experience: “I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue. If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer” (Psalm 66:17–19). Therefore, I find it taught in the New Testament and the Old Testament that if a child has bad attitudes or misbehaves, God will not give him everything he asks for. In order to have our prayers answered, we must be obedient children.

Now, there are two possible misunderstandings of this, which I want to ward off. Both of them would result in a great diminishing of our joy of faith, and a belittling of God’s mercy.

Obedient, Not Perfect

First of all, it would be a mistake to go away from here and say, “The Bible teaches that one must be sinlessly perfect in order to have our prayers answered.” There is a big difference between an obedient child and a perfect child.

You know the Lord’s Prayer? At the heart of the Lord’s Prayer is this petition that Jesus taught us to pray: “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12). Now, I assume that since immediately prior to that was the petition, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11), that Jesus means for this prayer to be prayed each day, which means that he expects us to need to pray, “Forgive us our sins” each day. I don’t think Jesus had any illusion that his disciples would in life outgrow the need to pray for forgiveness for sins. That’s a great reassurance to me, who sins daily in my own attitude.

Here’s the inference that I draw from that: Since he taught us to pray, “Forgive us our sins,” it would be a contradiction to say that in order to have our prayers answered, we must be without sin. That’s plain, I think, and therefore, it does not follow from Jesus’s teachings that we must be perfect, without sin, in order to have our prayers answered.

“The righteous person, whose prayer avails much, is not the sinless person, but the repentant person.”

No, the righteous person, whose prayer avails much — as James says it does in James 5:16 — is not the sinless person, but the repentant person. He’s not the person who falls into sin, but the person who stays there and is content with his sin. The person whose prayers are not answered is not the person who fights against temptation and now and then loses the battle, but the person who is quite content with his spiritual mediocrity and makes no effort to improve or to overcome his lethargy and carnality. Therefore, never say, “I must be perfect in order to have my prayers answered.” That’s the first misunderstanding I want to avoid.

No Merit Involved

The second misunderstanding that might arise from the fact that we must be obedient children in order to have our prayers answered would be that this obedience merits or deserves the answer to prayer. That one would follow very naturally, some might think. If you’ve got to obey in order to get your prayer answered, then what he’s teaching is that you’ve got to merit or deserve answers to prayer. But that would go against everything I said at the beginning, to the effect that the death of Jesus purchased for us the answers to our prayers that we might receive them through mercy freely.

Now, the way I picture this — namely, the importance of obedience in relationship to God’s mercy — is something like this. None of us is a child of God by nature. On the contrary, Paul says we are all children of wrath by nature (Ephesians 2:3), which means that we have freely, by mercy, through grace, been adopted into the family of God. We have our standing as children not owing to anything meritorious in ourselves, but only owing to the grace of God.

Therefore, all good behavior in this family must spring from this dependence upon mercy. All true obedience to Christ, the only obedience that pleases him, is the obedience that springs out of our confidence in the power and the wisdom and the love of God.

The only reason to disobey God is that we don’t trust his advice, isn’t it? The only reason my sons disobey me is because, on the spur of the moment, or planned out, they don’t think what I’ve said is best for them. “Don’t play there.” “Well, it looks like it’s more fun to play there. Therefore, I will play there.” Tacitly, Daddy’s wrong. That’s why we disobey. We do not trust God.

Therefore, since all disobedience flows from not trusting the Father’s counsel, it follows that all genuine obedience flows from trusting God. There’s a huge difference between trusting God for mercy and meriting answers to prayer. Merit looks at itself and thinks about its own value that it can offer to God. Mercy looks away from the self to God and thinks about how much value there is in his mercy to me in my lack of merit.

“God answers the prayers of the obedient because he delights so much in their faith, out which their obedience springs.”

So God answers the prayers of the obedient because he delights so much in their faith, out of which all of their obedience springs. He sees faith, wherever he finds it, as a token or a sign or an outworking of what he values above all. But faith is not meritorious because it looks away to mercy rather than looking at its own value. So never say, when you get an answer to prayer, “I have merited (or deserved) this answer to prayer.”

Asking as God’s Children

If we avoid these two errors — perfectionism on the one hand and legalism on the other hand — then the teaching stands. According to John 9:31, “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him.”

It seems to me that the application of this teaching is plain; it hardly needs any emphasis. But I’ll state it in a sentence: When Jesus commands us to ask, to seek, to knock, he is not merely commanding that we pray, but that we live like children of a merciful Father ought to live. “Let my words abide within you. Cherish no iniquity in your heart. Love your fellow believers. Do good to all. Forsake oppression. Confess your sins.” If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we will have confident communion with him, and see great answers to prayer.