Audio Transcript

The prayer you don’t want answered. Fascinating topic today, coming up because we meet it soon in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan, later this weekend. On May 12, we read Psalm 106:15 together — a text we’ve been asked about by a listener. “Pastor John, hello! My name is Amy, and I live in Lincoln, Nebraska. As I read the Bible, I see that there are times when we ask God for things wrongly, and he mercifully just says no. We see this in James 4:3. And there are times when we ask God for things wrongly, and he says yes. That seems to be the case in Psalm 106:15. Can you explain this verse and Israel’s ‘wanton craving in the wilderness’ in Psalm 106:14? I presume it’s for food. What about this prayer is evil? Why do you think God responded by giving them what they wanted? Why also the ‘wasting disease’?

“I’m confused here, having a hard time understanding the principle, one I find in other texts — namely, in Psalm 78:29–31.” Yes. And I (Tony) am going to add a pair of other texts into the mix here too, and interject them — 1 Samuel 8:7, 22 — because those are verses we just looked at in APJ 2029. “So, can you explain this,” Amy asks, “and tell me whether this should inform how we ask for things today and what we ask for? Are we liable to have a wrongfully asked prayer get answered by God for our own undoing?”

When I lived in Tennessee for a year, I discovered that there were two hiking routes up the back of Stone Mountain. One was about twice as long as the other, but the short one was really rugged and steep. Now, suppose I had a nine-year-old son with me — I didn’t at the time, so I had to imagine this, but I tried both of them myself, and I know what would happen — and we hiked the mountain, say, once a week on Saturday for fun, for exercise. And suppose every time we got to the fork in the path where the two hiking routes diverged, he complained and he complained and he begged and he begged to “go the short one, Daddy. I want to go the short one, because the other one took so long.”

Now, there are two ways that I could seek to teach my son to trust me for my wisdom in this life. One is to say, “No, that’s not a wise decision. We’re going to do the one we can do. So, we’re taking the long route. It takes longer, but we can do this. We can handle that, and you need to learn to trust me.”

“The sinful prayer for a king becomes the means by which Jesus enters the world as king.”

But there is another way. You might choose to teach this kid a thing or two. You say, “Okay, let’s do it.” And halfway up, he’s utterly exhausted. He’s looking at these rocks in front of him, looking like a straight-up cliff, and he’s saying, “I can’t do this, Daddy.” I’m saying, “Yes you can, and you will. You prayed for it; you got it.” That’s the wasting disease, right? This rock face and his misery. And the point is to teach my son, one way or the other, “Trust me, son. You need to trust me. I know what I’m doing when I make decisions in this family.”

Sinful Prayers, Sorrowful Answers

Psalm 106:13–15 says,

[Israel] soon forgot [God’s] works;     they did not wait for his counsel.But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness,     and put God to the test in the desert;he gave them what they asked,     but sent a wasting disease among them.

God had met every need since Israel left Egypt. But these people grumbled again and again and again against the Lord. They were hungry for meat. Psalm 78:19 says, “They spoke against God, saying, ‘Can God spread a table in the wilderness?’” That was how they tested the Lord. They doubted him. They challenged him.

This prayer for what they craved was not a humble expression of trust, which is what good requests are. It was a skeptical expression of anger. God could have kept supplying their needs, the way he was doing all along. That would be a lesson: amazing grace and provision. “Learn to trust me. Trust me.” That wasn’t working. Or he could teach them a lesson this way: “I’ll grant your doubting, challenging request, and misery to go with it.” Lesson: “Trust me; don’t doubt me.”

“God is amazing in the way his providences twist our sins, so that they actually can work for our salvation.”

So yes, I think God does that today. It’s never right today to forget God’s works and then fail to wait for his counsel. It’s never right to think that we know what’s best and become demanding and challenging to God. He just might give us the car we demand, or the spouse we demand, or the rising stock price that we demand, or the child we demand. And then five, twenty years later, those answers might come back with great sorrows in our lives.

Twists of Providence

That could sound fatalistic, but here’s the twist. There’s a twist of providence in this peculiar way that God disciplines us by giving us what we ask for and then misery to go with it. We can see this twist if we look at the other example that I think you mentioned, Tony, at the beginning, with regard to the demand for a king. The twist is that they should not have demanded a king the way they did, and yet God gave them a king and then made their ungodly desire serve his eternal purposes of grace. That’s the twist. And it’s so hopeful for those of us who have made stupid decisions and have asked for terrible things — or asked for things that seemed good, and we were all wrong in the way we asked for them. God can work this for good.

The Sin

So, here’s the way it worked. In the transaction in 1 Samuel 8:5, the elders of Israel say to Samuel, “Appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” Now, that’s the sin: We want to be like the nations. But it says in 1 Samuel 8:6–7, “The thing displeased Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to judge us.’ And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Obey the voice of the people . . . for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.’”

And then Samuel seems to give them one more chance to change their minds by telling them all the miseries that the king is going to bring into their lives (1 Samuel 8:11–18). The king’s going to take your sons and make them soldiers. He’s going to take your daughters and make them perfumers and cooks. He’s going to take your fields and your vineyards. He’s going to take your flocks. And then it says in 1 Samuel 8:19–20, “But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, ‘No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations.’” And then in 1 Samuel 8:22, God says, “Obey their voice and make them a king.”

Now, here’s three hundred years later. This is Hosea, the last prophet who prophesies before Assyria destroys Israel. Here’s Hosea 13:10–11: “Where now is your king, to save you in all your cities? Where are all your rulers — those of whom you said, ‘Give me a king and princes’? I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.” So, God answered their request, and it did not go well for them.

The Twist

And I pause and say, “But wait. Wait. There is something else going on here.” In Psalm 2:6, God says, “I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” God set his king on Zion, his holy hill. And Isaiah 9:6–7, “To us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder. . . . Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom [forever].” His kingdom forever. In Luke 1:32–33, Gabriel says to Mary, “The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Here’s the upshot, the twist. The sinful prayer for a king becomes the means by which Jesus enters the world as king to die and rise and forgive the sins that they brought upon themselves by asking for a king. I just think God is amazing in the way his providences twist our sins, so that they actually can work for our salvation.

So, the twist of providence is this. If you are, today, in a situation of God’s discipline in answer to an unbelieving, angry, misguided prayer, don’t despair. Don’t despair. Repent, accept your sin and your guilt, turn to Christ’s mercy and blood, and ask God to twist this situation into something good and God-honoring. I have seen him do this in my life. I have seen him do it. I know he can do it in yours.

To answer the question, “What authority do pastors have?” you have to pick a side in the polity debates. I choose elder-led congregationalism. My sense, however, is that many Christians and pastors avoid the topic of polity because it’s contested territory. Maybe it feels unimportant.

Besides, can’t we read through 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and passages like Acts 20:17–38 and 1 Peter 5:1–4, and easily answer the question? Elders have (1) a general authority of oversight over the whole church as well as (2) the authority to teach and conduct the ordinances. That much is straightforward. Baptists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Anglicans, and elder-ruled independent churches all agree.

Furthermore, Protestants agree that pastors or elders (I use the terms interchangeably) don’t have the authority to dispense absolution for sin. We agree they are not a separate class of mediators. Martin Luther remarked, “There really is no difference between laymen and priests . . . except that of office and work, but not of ‘estate’; for they are all of the same estate” (Works of Martin Luther, 2:69). And we agree they can never sit in the so-called “chair of Peter,” speaking infallibly with an authority equal to Scripture. Pastors can make mistakes, and their words must be tested in good Berean fashion against the word of God (Acts 17:11). Think of how Peter himself messed up (e.g., Galatians 2:11–14).

These points of agreement are important. A wrong view of pastoral authority can undermine the gospel (by turning pastors into mediating priests who provide access to grace) and undermine Scripture (by giving their words equal authority to Scripture). So praise God for this consensus.

Inside of Protestantism, however, differences emerge that impact Christian discipleship and the good of the church. As an illustration, think of the difference between a monarchy and a democracy. Those larger structural differences impact the authority of the “leaders” as well as the culture and civic life of everyone. I don’t believe our Protestant differences are as dramatic as monarchies versus democracies. The point is merely that the larger structural context shapes what authority the pastor-elders have. Therefore, we have to account for it.

With all that in mind, consider one principle on context plus seven more on pastoral authority.

Congregational Authority

Principle 1: The gathered congregation possesses the final priestly authority to affirm the what and the who of the gospel — confessions and confessors.

Protestants from Martin Luther and John Calvin to the Presbyterian Church of America (PCA) and the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) uniformly agree that every Christian is a priest. That expresses itself in the election of officers. It also means any believer can baptize in a pinch. Says Luther, “In cases of necessity any one can baptize . . . which would be impossible unless we were all priests” (67). Any believer can interpret Scripture: “An ordinary man may have true understanding; why then should we not follow him” against any errors of popes or bishops (74)? Any believer can reprove the pope or another erring Christian: “But if I am to accuse him before the Church, I must bring the Church together” (76–77).

The priesthood of all believers, for a Protestant, means that church authority ultimately roots in every believer’s union with Christ. The nineteenth-century Presbyterian James Bannerman writes, “The primary grant from Christ of Church power is virtually, if not expressly and formally, made to believers in that grant which makes all things, whether pertaining to the present or the future, to be theirs in Christ Jesus” (The Church of Christ, 272). After all, that church on the desert island whose pastors all die “must have within themselves all power competent to carry on the necessary functions and offices of a Church” (273).

Beyond this shared position, however, the congregationalists and the non-congregationalists diverge. Advocates of elder-ruled (non-congregationalist) churches — like Bannerman and Luther and every Anglican or independent Bible church you know — have to make some kind of argument that, even if the whole church in some formal sense possesses final authority, that authority has been given to the elders to exercise. That distinction between possession and exercise can be found, for instance, in both the PCA’s and Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s (OPC) books of church order.

An elder-led congregationalist like me, however, would argue that, if you cannot exercise authority, then, logically, you do not possess authority. But never mind logic. In Matthew 18, Jesus explicitly hands the keys of the kingdom to the gathered congregation to render judgment on the what and the who of the gospel — confessions and confessors (Matthew 18:17–18; see also 16:19). And nowhere in the New Testament are these keys handed exclusively to pastors. In fact, Paul calls the Corinthian congregation to use them with the “power” of the Lord Jesus when they are “assembled” (1 Corinthians 5:4). He doesn’t tell the elders to use them on Thursday night in their elders meeting. Likewise, he tells not the Galatian pastors but the Galatian churches to declare anyone teaching a false doctrine “cursed” or anathema (Galatians 1:9).

“If you cannot exercise authority, then, logically, you do not possess authority.”

That means, Christian, that if one of your pastors starts to teach false doctrine, it’s your job to fire him, together with your other church members. And Christ will call you to account on the day of judgment if you don’t.

This priesthood of all believers within an elder-led congregation is the context within which the following points fit.

Heart of Pastoral Authority

Principle 2: Pastors have authority to lead the congregation in knowing which confessions to make and which confessors to affirm.

If the congregation as a whole renders final judgment on right doctrine, whose interpretation and teaching of the Bible will count as a church’s interpretation? One member may have one interpretation; another person another. If the judgments of the church as a whole bind every member, whose interpretation binds the church as a whole?

Answer: the elders’ interpretation. They’re the ones who say, “Church, these are the doctrines we believe.” The congregation then formally affirms, “Yes, those are the doctrines we believe,” making those doctrines a point of official and binding agreement (Matthew 18:19). The congregation makes the final judgment in matters of doctrine and membership, but the elders lead or tell the congregation which judgments to make. This is why the elders ordinarily preach and teach. This is why they ordinarily lead in the ordinances and in membership interviews and so forth. They’re the shepherds standing at the gate of the sheep pen.

Think again of 1 Corinthians 5. Paul tells us he has “pronounced judgment” on the man sleeping with his mother-in-law: remove him (verse 3). Yet is the deed done? No. He calls the church to “judge” the man in the same way (verse 12). Paul, I believe, is acting here like a pastor. He shows us the relationship between elder authority and congregational authority. The congregation has the final say, but the pastors tell them what that final say ought to be.

Extension of Pastoral Authority

Principle 3: Pastors’ authority of oversight includes other matters impacting the whole church.

Pastors also have authority to oversee other decisions of the congregation. Think of the Greek-speaking widows being neglected in the daily distribution of food in Acts 6. That was a big deal. The church was dividing, and widows weren’t getting food. High stakes. Therefore, the apostles, who preferred to spend their time praying and preaching, stepped in and recommended a solution. The solution heavily involved the congregation, yet the apostles, acting like good pastors, exercised oversight.

Likewise, pastors and elders should generally stay out of administrative details, like what color the carpet in the Sunday school classroom should be, or whether the nursery volunteers should wear matching T-shirts (this decision was handed to my elders once). In general, they should involve themselves only in the decisions that impact the whole church and the course of its ministry. Should we start a Sunday school class? What translation of the Bible should we preach from? Should our church support Joe and Kathy on the mission field?

Nature of Pastoral Authority

Principle 4: Pastoral authority morally obligates but doesn’t structurally bind.

Insofar as the church as a whole possesses the keys of the kingdom to bind and loose on earth what’s bound and loosed in heaven, the congregation’s decisions are effectually binding — at the structural level. When they remove a member from the church as an act of excommunication, the person really is removed, with or without his consent. The congregation possesses what I have called an authority of command.

The elders, however, possess a different kind of authority, an authority of counsel. (It’s the same with husbands.) An authority of counsel is a real authority. It morally obligates members to obey, and Jesus does not countenance disobedience (see Hebrews 13:7, 17). Consequences exist. Yet the elders cannot dispense those consequences, which are eschatological. Jesus hands them out.

“There’s a sense in which elders possess authority to continually give it away.”

Sure, the elders should depose a foul-mouthed usher or approve a church picnic or plan the preaching schedule. Yet a pastor cannot invite you to his office and then excommunicate you all by himself, at least not if he wants to follow the Bible. Nor should he determine membership apart from the congregation. Membership depends upon the whole congregation’s agreement. That’s what I mean when I say pastoral authority morally obligates, but it doesn’t structurally bind.

The fact that elders (and husbands) possess an authority of counsel and not command dramatically shapes how that authority is used. While a parent can tell a three-year-old to go to bed “right now,” elders must teach “with complete patience” (2 Timothy 4:2). They’re working for growth over time, playing the long game. The goal is not to force decisions but to encourage regenerate church members to make good decisions for themselves. As Paul puts it to Philemon, “Though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do what is required, yet for love’s sake I prefer to appeal to you” (Philemon 8–9).

Here lies the most crucial point of distinction regarding polity differences between Protestants. Elder-ruled churches, whether independent or presbyterian or episcopalian in their structures, grant elders an authority of command. The elders can unilaterally excommunicate members, for instance. On the other hand, small-c congregationalists like Baptists don’t believe they can. And this difference impacts the culture of the church and the nature of its discipleship.

(For more on the difference between authority of counsel and command, see chapter 11 of my book Authority.)

Purposes of Pastoral Authority

Principle 5: Pastors possess authority to equip the church and to divest themselves of authority.

Building on the last point, an authority of counsel is more conducive to discipleship.

Imagine two exercise classes. In class 1, the trainer demonstrates burpees and squats, and then he sends you home. In class 2, the trainer demonstrates burpees and squats, and then he asks you to do them while giving feedback. Which class will better train you?

Now picture two churches. In an elder-ruled church, the elders make a decision about church discipline behind closed doors. In the congregational church, the elders explain what happened, giving just enough details that the church can render judgment with integrity, but not so many details that people stumble; then the elders recommend a course of action, just as Paul does in 1 Corinthians 5. Which church will better train them in Christian discernment, courage, and obedience?

If Paul simply removed the man in 1 Corinthians 5, the Corinthian church would have been deprived of an opportunity to be trained in discernment, courage, and obedience. Yet he involved them. As one commentator put it, Paul did not want the church’s fitness report to read, “Works well under constant supervision” (1 Corinthians, 168–69). Rather, he wanted to instill within them a sense of their joint responsibility for the holiness of the church.

People grow when they’re given opportunities. Not every man in the church will become an elder. But there’s a sense in which elders possess authority to continually give it away. They give others a chance to teach a Sunday school class, to chair a meeting, to lead an evangelistic endeavor, to host a missions reading group, to serve as deacons, to host a small group, to organize a women’s retreat, and so forth. They should even involve the congregation in matters of membership and discipline, which can sometimes get complicated. But this forces them to train the church (see Ephesians 4:11–16). Wise elder training, wise church. Bad elder training, bad church.

Pastoral authority, in short, does not say, “We’re the experts. We’re ordained. You guys can sit down.” This approach often leads to complacent, weak, and eventually doctrinally liberal churches. Rather, pastoral authority says, “Here’s how you swing the club, play the scale, program the computer, love the church. Now you do it.”

Character of Pastoral Authority

Principle 6: Pastoral authority depends upon character, integrity, and example.

To put all this another way, an elder’s authority is tied to his example. Elders don’t “domineer” but set an “example,” says Peter (1 Peter 5:3). Members, meanwhile, “consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7). We imitate them as they imitate Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1).

This is why more ink is spilled on the requisite character for pastoring than on the job description. Exemplifying and teaching Christian character is the job description. Pastors’ authority, in other words, is very much tied to their character and integrity.

Think of the qualification “husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2; Titus 1:6). An elder’s marriage may not be perfect, but he sets a good example for other husbands. You’re happy to say to other husbands, “Learn from his example as a husband.”

Integrity of Pastoral Authority

Principle 7: Pastoral authority is both unearned and earned, requiring trust.

Building on the last point, an elder grows in authority by gaining trust.

Now, in one sense, a pastor’s authority does not need to be earned. It’s an office given to him by Jesus and the Holy Spirit (Acts 20:28). Members don’t so much submit to the man as they submit to the office, because that’s submitting to Jesus.

At the same time, an elder will clearly earn more authority for himself as he proves himself trustworthy. Suppose I’m watching two elders, one who treats his wife wonderfully and one who, by my lights, does not. Whom do you think I’m more likely to trust? Furthermore, whose Sunday school lectures on how to be a godly husband am I going to listen to more carefully? And assuming these two men separately correct me for how I’m living with my wife, whom will I more easily and joyfully submit to?

“Trust is the fuel that makes the vehicle of elder authority move forward. It’s the currency elders have to spend.”

Trust is the fuel that makes the vehicle of elder authority move forward. It’s the currency elders have to spend.

While it’s true that a policeman’s or parent’s authority of command will be improved by trust, this is especially true of an elder’s (or husband’s) authority of counsel. After all, policemen and parents can leverage the threat of immediate discipline even when they’re not trusted. An elder (or husband) cannot. And this structural difference that foregrounds the role of trust forces the elder to work harder at his character and integrity.

Location of Pastoral Authority

Principle 8: The difference between one elder’s authority and all the elders’ authority is quantitative, not qualitative.

Historically, Presbyterians have sometimes distinguished between the elders’ joint authority and their several authority. Their joint authority concerns those things they can only do together, like excommunicate someone from the church. Their several authority concerns those things they can do individually, like preach.

As a congregationalist, I would not affirm these two categories in formal or principled terms. Presbyterians need them because they’ve placed the keys of the kingdom into the hands of the elders, such that the elders will do weighty things like receiving or dismissing members, which I would leave in the hands of the whole congregation.

Still, it does seem reasonable to acknowledge that a pastor or elder should avoid some actions or decisions until he involves the other elders, and elders should always work to raise up more elders. Recommending an excommunication to the church is an obvious example of something a pastor should avoid doing on his own. Doing so may not be sin, but it would ordinarily be unwise.

Now consider the difference between one and several elders from the members’ perspective. Insofar as the Bible calls us to “submit” to our elders (Hebrews 13:17), should we think differently about submitting to the counsel of one elder in a conversation over coffee (“Jonathan, I would advise you to . . .”) versus submitting to the entire elder board of, say, six men (“Jonathan, we would advise you to . . .”)? I think the answer is yes. The difference, though, is not qualitative (joint vs. several), but quantitative. The instruction of the one and the instruction of six is made of the same kind of stuff. Yet the instruction of the six should weigh more heavily on my conscience. More men, more weight.

Pastors as Trainers

The topic of authority does not merely impact who gets to make which decisions; it impacts discipleship and the overall patterns of ministry in a church. Within an elder-led congregational model, the fact that elders must bring to the church any decisions that significantly impact the nature, integrity, membership, or mission of the church changes not just the church’s members meetings. It requires elders to do ministry a little differently all week. They approach their jobs less like judges and more like trainers.

After all, the shepherds are sheep too. So they work constantly to strengthen, build up, and equip the saints for their work of being priests and disciple-makers. Then the whole body grows as it builds itself up in love.

We want to do what we did a few years ago and have a conversation with Pastor John Piper. Pastor John, thank you so much for being here again, for being at CROSS Conference.

My pleasure.

I want to pick up where we left off last time. You made a very interesting statement. You said that when you were twenty years old, you had maybe the three most important weeks of your life, lying in a hospital bed. Why might those be the three most important weeks of your life?

Well, there are at least two specific reasons why. It was 1966, and it was right after summer school. I had just met and fallen madly in love with Noël Henry, and I had just heard from the Lord in April — I thought, unmistakably — that I should be a pre-med student and head for medical school. So, I took chemistry in summer school and signed up for organic chemistry in the fall and found myself flat on my back with mononucleosis as the semester began. I watched my organic chemistry possibilities falling away as I lay there.

Harold John Ockenga, a pastor from Boston, was speaking at the Spiritual Emphasis week in the chapel about two hundred yards to my right as I lay in bed. I was listening on the college radio station and everything in me said, “I would love to be able to handle the Bible like that.” It was so compelling after three days that I knew it didn’t matter whether I could catch up on organic chemistry — I was going to drop that course anyway — and I was heading for theological education. That was totally life-shaping, right? I missed it in April. So, if you think you know God’s will for your life, you probably don’t. All my subjective senses of God’s leading were wrong, I hope. My whole life would be misdirected if that were not the case.

Noël had a doctor for a dad and thought she was falling in love with a pre-med student, which she was. And she came in one day to the hospital room and I said to her, “These chapel messages have just undone me, and I’m not going to pursue medical school. I’m going to go to seminary, and I want to learn how to handle the Bible like that. What do you think about that?” And she said what she always has said for 57 years now: “I fell in love with you, not your vocation.” And it’s been that way ever since. She’s been an absolutely glorious, God-sent support for my life and ministry.

“You don’t plan your life; God plans your life.”

Those two things I think warranted that statement. Under submitting to Jesus, who you marry and what you do with your whole life are, I think, about the two biggest decisions you could make. And if it takes God to put you in the hospital to make those things clear, then don’t begrudge a little seminary of suffering.

I think it’s just good for you guys who are 18, 19, and 20, that this could be the week or the year in which God radically changes and alters your life forever. And you should believe he’s able and willing to do that. On the line of that, you’ve said before that you didn’t plan your life and that nobody plans their life. Why is that encouraging? Why is that important for us to know?

Well, it’s important to know because it’s true. James 4:13–16 says,

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.

You are arrogant in saying, “I’m going back to my hotel tonight,” unless there is this deep sense of, “If the Lord wills, I’ll go back to my hotel tonight. And if he doesn’t, then I may die between now and then.” Those two words are all-encompassing. You ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live,” which means every heartbeat right now is a gift. You don’t deserve it. And he could stop it just like that and he will have done you no wrong.

Second, when he says, “We will live and do this or that,” you should think that the posture you’re in right now is dictated by the Lord. If you have your legs crossed, that’s because God willed it ten million years ago. If you don’t believe that, then you ought to be at this conference because that’s what we stand for — the all-pervasive sovereignty of God and his total governance of the world. So, it’s true that God plans our lives and we don’t, ultimately.

Now secondly, it just fits with experience. How many of you chose the family in which you were born? How many of you chose to be male or female? That’s a controversial question, but you’ll hear more about that and that’s a serious issue today. But you know what I mean. You didn’t choose. You didn’t choose your ethnicity. You didn’t choose the town you were born in, the socioeconomic status you were born into, or the nation you were born into. You didn’t choose anything to get started in this world. And almost all of it dictates what you’ve become. That’s a piece.

Now, just take my own life and let’s just start in college. Why did I go to the seminary I went to? Well, there were palm trees in the catalog. That’s a crummy reason to go to a seminary. I met Dan Fuller at Fuller Seminary and everything changed. That was the most important event of my life after those two big events. I sat in eight classes with this man who gave me the big-God theology I have today. He gave me Christian Hedonism and assiduous attentiveness to the word of God. What would’ve happened to me if I had not gone? And I went for all the wrong reasons. I didn’t plan this. It was a gift to me.

Then I came to the end of seminary. I had been in seminary for three years and didn’t know what to do. I was 25. And the teacher said, “Well, if you don’t know what to do, just go ahead and get the last degree and then you can do anything.” I said, “Okay. Where should I go to graduate school?” I got turned down at the one place I applied in America. I applied to Basel and Munich and Durham, and the only place where Noël could get a job and support us for a year and a half till she got pregnant was Munich. So, we went to Munich. I didn’t choose Munich. God chose Munich. Then I was done with three years of graduate school. I had a wife, a kid, and I had to put bread on the table.

Nobody in America knew I existed. I had been out of the country for three years. I would do anything for Jesus, but I just wanted to use my Bible. Along came a graduate student who said, “Well, I think they need a one-year sabbatical replacement at Bethel College in St. Paul.” I had never heard of Bethel College. I thought, “Where’s St. Paul?” I mean, I’m really provincial. I don’t know anything. I had never been to Minnesota in my life, but I had to have a job. They took me for one year, and it turned into six. I was born in South Carolina and I’ve been in Minnesota for fifty years. Do you think I chose that? That’s crazy. Why would anybody live in Minnesota, right?

So, I went to Minnesota and that one year turned into six years. I loved all of it, and God just moved in so mighty and said, “I want you to preach, not just teach. I want you to herald these truths from Romans 9, not just analyze the God of Romans 9. So, move toward a pastorate.” I went to the denominational headquarters and I said, “I’m going to leave teaching and I’m going to look for a church. What would you suggest?” And they said, “We know the church. Go to Bethlehem.” I said, “Where’s Bethlehem?” They said, “It’s in downtown Minneapolis. They’re just building nearby.”

I got in the car, went down there and looked around, and that’s where they called me. I was at the church for 33 years. I mean, you don’t plan your life, just get over it. You don’t plan your life. Here’s what the Lord wants from you, and we’ve heard it already several times. He wants your flat-out, 24/7 devotion to him and his calling of holiness in your life. The will of God for your life is holiness (1 Thessalonians 4:3). He will guide you if your life is absolutely devoted. Just say, “I’ll go anywhere; I’ll do anything” — you ought to be able to say that every day — “I will go anywhere and do anything. Just lead me. I’m flat-out, totally devoted to Jesus.” You don’t plan your life; God plans your life.

Amen. So with that, you weren’t aimless in your life. You had some ambition. I assume it wasn’t your ambition to be famous, to make Calvinism cool, to speak at conferences, or to write all these books, right? Did you have ambition? Is ambition okay, though we trust that God plans our lives? Is it okay for us to have desires and ambitions and pursue different things?

Ambition is okay because Paul said, “My ambition is to preach the gospel where Christ has not been named” (see Romans 15:20). You talk about ambition, this man was totally devoted to getting the gospel to places where it wasn’t yet known. Holy ambition is of the Lord and not nearly enough of you have it. One of the reasons we have this conference is to awaken holy ambition. An unholy ambition is to make a lot of money and be famous and live in the suburbs and live the American dream. A holy ambition is to be willing to lay your life down for Jesus, whatever he calls you to do.

I would probably be naive to say that at every single point in my life there was no successful temptation to want to be noticed for the wrong reasons. But as far as my conscious aim was concerned, money didn’t mean anything to me and being famous didn’t mean anything. But I’ll tell you, when it comes to how God saves us — the sovereignty of God in the salvation of sinners, called Calvinism — I have ambitions. I want all of you to be Calvinists. I want all of you to believe in the total depravity of the soul, in the unconditional election of God, in the definite atonement of the Lord, in the irresistibility of his grace, and in the perseverance of the saints.

This is just glorious gospel truth called Calvinism. That’s why we exist. The leader of Reaching and Teaching was up here, and he said, “We’re Reformed and baptistic and we’re complementarian.” Well, this is not a baptistic conference, though a lot of you are baptists. In that part we’re going to tolerate a lot of differences.

We’d be happy for you all to be baptists. I mean, you’re welcome. The water is nice.

But as far as being Reformed and complementarian, that’s what we are, and we’re not going to sweep it under the rug. So, the answer is yes, I have ambitions. I have ambitions to this day. I sit there in my chair with Noël in our living room, thinking, “Good night, my life is easy. Whatever happened to the pressures I used to live under?”

So, I got out my little booklet that I carry around, this little field notebook. I have a field book and I got it out and I wrote down my goals for 2024, just the things that are expected of me working for Desiring God full-time. At the end I thought, “Okay, I didn’t put down anything for the three hours free I have every night and the 8 to 12 hours I have free every Saturday. And I just won’t put anything on the calendar for Sunday.” Three times five is fifteen, and fifteen plus ten for Saturday is twenty-five hours.

Everything in me says, “What can I do with that? What can I do with that? Just watch stuff? Watch stuff on TV?” We don’t even have a TV. We haven’t had a TV for fifty years in our marriage. Of course, we have computers, which is the same thing now. I get that. But I don’t want to do that. I have ambitions. I want my life to count for those 25 hours. I don’t want to just veg every night and spend Saturday putzing around in the yard and in the garage — and I believe in keeping a nice yard for the neighborhood.

So yes, I do have ambitions, and I suspect the forms and kinds of ambition I have have produced books and conferences and things like that. But fame is very relative. I’m a big fish in a little, teeny pond. We just crossed 8 billion people in the world, right? What percentage of those people know who John Piper is? Maybe it’s 0.001 percent. I’ve never done the math, but that’s it more or less. Don’t get a big head if you’re popular among twelve people, or twelve thousand, or a million. It’s no big deal.

That’s helpful. You said before, if you go back to when you were 22, you would join a Bible-believing, Bible-preaching, Bible-structured, Bible-obedient church. That’s a lot of Bible. Why do Christians need the local church? We have God’s Spirit. We have God’s word. We have Look at the Book and Desiring God. Why do we need the local church? Why should they commit their life to the local church?

They should do that because God says, “Don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves together” (see Hebrews 10:25). The whole assumption of everything Paul wrote was that Christ has a body on the earth, and that all people are members of the body. And it’s just crazy to think you can be a member of a body while living in the woods and not relating to the other members of the body. That’s just crazy. You just don’t believe the Bible if you try to live a life isolated from the body manifest in its local expressions.

Here’s the payoff. I think I can mention two or three things. Number one, God has saved my marriage more than once through corporate worship. I don’t doubt it. Noël and I have been married 55 years. They have been embattled years sometimes, not knowing why we hurt each other with our words, not knowing why we can’t communicate the way we’d like. There have been seasons of Christian counseling, and life has not always been easy at home. I’ll get my back up about something that Noël said.

But I’m a pastor, right? I go to church to preach, and things are crummy at home. That’s a nice word for it. I’m on the front pew and Chuck is leading us in songs like these. And the mercy of God lifted up in song and his patience and his kindness have broken over me like a wave that has often said, “You’re an idiot, Piper, for prioritizing your little pain over her, or over the gospel, or over the church. Get real. Wake up. Get the world sorted out here.”

In other words, corporate worship has sorted out my life. It has made things look real. It has made big things look big and little things little, and it has rescued me from pouting and self-pity. If you’re totally engaged in corporate worship, surrounded by people who are engaged, it will save your marriage, it will save your job, it will save your calling, and it will save your sanity.

Number two, my guess is that most of you here are asking the question, “How can I know what to do with the rest of my life?” I mean, practically, it is nice to say, “You should just try to be holy.” But you might think, “Come on Piper, we have to do something. I have to make some money and I have to have a place to live. If I’m going to get married, I have to be able to support or be a part of a support team. How do I do that?” And my answer is that you’ll find out what your gifts are and what your calling is not by going off by yourself and pleading with God to reveal it to you, but by embedding yourself in a local church and using whatever gifts you can to serve other people. That’s absolutely the way it happened with me.

I went off to seminary not knowing at all what I should do with this precious book that I love, the Bible. After one semester I realized, “I have to be involved in the church.” So, I embedded myself and Noël in Lake Avenue Church in Pasadena, California. I said to John McClure, “John, I need to do something.” He said, “Can you teach seventh grade boys?” I said, “I don’t know. I’ll try.” He put me in the seventh grade boys group, and I did it. And the next year he said, “How about ninth grade boys?” I said, “Sure.” Because they split them up, boys and girls. And then I taught ninth grade boys. I devoted about four hours every Saturday to get ready for this class. I wanted to give them my very best on Sunday morning.

At the end of that year, there was one more year to go. The Galilean young adult Sunday school class came to me and said, “Would you teach us?” The upshot of this was knowing, “I’m a teacher. These seventh grade boys loved it. These ninth grade boys loved it. This young marriage class loved it. I’m a teacher. That’s who I am.” So, I went to get trained to be a teacher. I taught for six years, and then God said, “Actually, I have another chapter. I want you to proclaim. You’ve explained long enough, okay? I want you to proclaim. I want you to herald like a town crier that says, ‘Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye.’” That’s the second thing. You will find out who you are in relation to other people.

I’ve been trying to help folks to find their way recently. They think they want to do something, and I ask, “Has anybody encouraged you in that and said that you’re especially fruitful in that?” They said, “No.” I said, “Well, that’s probably not it.” That’s really a big deal.

“Corporate worship has sorted out my life. It has made big things look big and little things little.”

Then the third thing is that you’re probably going to find your spouse at church, or in some church-related thing. We have a strange culture, right? You have to go searching to find a spouse. Praise God for cultures where they just set it up. It would be a lot simpler. But that’s not going to change. It’s not going to happen. We live in a very individualistic culture. So, you’re going to have to sort this out, which is not easy, but it sure helps if you have Christian community.

Most people see the church as an event on the calendar, but in the New Testament we see it as a people to center our life around. You’re not meant to live this Christian life alone. You’re meant to be involved in a local church, center your life around those people, and let God minister to you through those people. You’re going to go through difficulty and trial in this life. And with that, I kind of want to talk about affliction in the Christian life.

In Luke 22:31, Jesus says to Peter, “Satan has asked to sift you like wheat.” Now, most of us would assume that Jesus would say, “But I told him he couldn’t have you.” But that’s not what Jesus says. Jesus says, “I’ve prayed that your faith would not fail” (see Luke 22:32). What does it mean to be sifted by Satan? Have you yourself been sifted? And why does God allow his people to be sifted?

Well, I think I could give one clear answer from 2 Corinthians, but let me just stay with Peter for a minute. Jesus told Peter, “You’re going to deny me three times.” This is a done deal. Jesus doesn’t make mistakes. He says, “You’re going to fail.” And then he tells Peter,

Behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And when [not if] you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. (Luke 22:31–32)

I’m assuming that little interchange there is part of the answer to why. Jesus is saying, “I want you to be stronger than you are. You’re not as strong as you think you are. You are not strong. Do you think you’re going to last tonight? Do you think you’re going to die with me? You’re not. You’re going to wimp out and deny me three times, but I have prayed.”

Now, I think what Jesus means when he says he prayed “that your faith not fail,” is not that Peter wouldn’t fail in that moment. I think his faith failed. He did not trust God for the strength or the courage to be honest and true, and say, “That’s my Lord. I’ll die with him.” He didn’t have the faith for that. He failed. But he didn’t fail utterly. He went out and he wept bitterly and he turned and he became a valiant spokesman. So, I think the answer to why God lets Satan sift us is for that reason.

To be sifted means you have this sieve and you put the grain in it and push it through and the grain comes through without anything else in it. He wants to sift your faith out of your life and just rub you over these harsh things so that what comes through is you minus faith. That’s the sifting of the devil. Whether it’s pleasure or whether it’s pain, he’s going to sift your faith out of your life. That’s his goal. And Jesus is praying for you. If you’re a believer, Jesus is praying for you that it would not happen utterly.

So, how did he fix it? We all know what Jesus did when they were out in the boat and they were not catching anything. Jesus said, “Throw the net on the other side” (see John 21:6). They caught a lot of fish. John said, “It’s the Lord” (see John 21:7). Peter put his clothes on and jumped into the water and swam ashore. And Jesus said something to Peter. I want some of you right now to hear Jesus say this to you because you have blown it. You have totally blown it the way Peter did. You have denied the Lord in whatever ways. I want you to hear Jesus say this:

Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Feed my lambs.” He said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” He said to him, “Tend my sheep.” He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was grieved because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” and he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:15–17)

Why three times? It was to rebuild this man who blew it three times, right? He said, “I deny you. I deny you. I deny you.” And now he says, “I love you. I love you. I love you.” That’s what I hope is happening at this conference. I hope you hear the Lord Jesus say, “Do you love me?” And you hear him say, “Feed my lambs.” It might be in a Sunday school class, or it might be in Afghanistan or India or North Korea or Cuba or Vietnam.

Amen. We’ve talked about sovereignty and suffering, and we don’t plan our life. God is the one who plans our life, which means he plans our suffering. For me when I was in my teens and twenties, I felt invincible. My life was up and to the right. Why wouldn’t I get to do what I want to do? I didn’t sense my own frailty. When I got into my thirties, it’s almost like God removed this veil and I realized how broken this thing actually is and how vulnerable I actually am, and I realized how thin the line between life and death actually is. It can cause you to despair when you see that.

So, how do we remain sober about our own vulnerability in the world without being paralyzed by fear, without being paralyzed that the sifting is coming, and I just want to flee from it? How can we not be paralyzed but trust God in the midst of these trials?

Let me go back and close the arc to James 4 and say something about the ballast in your boat. Do you know what ballast is for? Your life is a boat, the world is a sea, and the waves are suffering of any kind — adversity, frustration, or things that are going to upset your boat and drown you. Ballast is weight in the bottom of the boat that makes it harder for the waves to tip you over, because the weight at the bottom of the boat keeps you stable. I think the heart of the ballast is the sovereignty of God — that God is absolutely sovereign. He says,

I am God, and there is no other;     I am God, and there is none like me,declaring the end from the beginning     and from ancient times things not yet done,saying, “My counsel shall stand,     and I will accomplish all my purpose.” (Isaiah 46:9–10)

Or consider Job at the end of his life. After all his sufferings, he said,

I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,     but now my eye sees you;therefore I despise myself,     and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:5–6)

And he says,

I know that you can do all things,     and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. (Job 42:2)

So, if you, in this conference, confirm, “I really believe in the absolute, all-pervasive, sovereign God,” you will not be fragile. You live among millions of your peers who have been coddled. Books have been written about your generation regarding how you are emotionally fragile, meaning when somebody gets in your face and says something critical, you pout or you blame or you sue or you cuss or you just say, “I will not be treated that way.” And you can’t read your Bible, which says,

Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. (Matthew 5:11–12)

I mean, come on. Do any of you rejoice when you are reviled? We need miracles to happen in this room. We want you to go home able to be so strong, so deep, so knowing who you are in Christ, that anybody can revile you and it won’t paralyze you. It won’t blow you over. That’s the only way that the nations are going to be reached. So, the sovereignty of God is the ballast in your boat.

And I’ll just add one other thing. The sovereignty of God will do nobody any good unless God is for you. Scripture says,

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:29–32)

You have to be confident of that. God is going to give you all things. In fact, you have them already. Let me go back to fame for a moment. In the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians, Paul is mainly dealing with pride — pride in intellect and pride in oratory. People were boasting about their favorite teachers for vicarious praise. They said, “I’m of Paul,” or, “I’m of Apollos,” or, “I’m of Cephas.” And do you know what Paul’s final word against that kind of pride is? He said:

Let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. (1 Corinthians 3:21–23)

So, alongside the sovereignty of God, you say, “I own the world.” John Newton just nailed it and helped me so much years ago, when I heard him tell the story of a man who was headed for a city to inherit a million dollars. He was in an old-fashioned carriage. And one mile outside the city, the carriage broke down and he got out and he had to walk. He had to walk a whole mile to inherit a million dollars. And all the way into the city, he was complaining. He said, “My carriage is broken. My carriage is broken.” That’s the way you and I live. We complain and complain. And Paul would say, “You own everything. It’s just a vapor’s breath, and then you come into your inheritance, a fellow heir with Christ forever.”

So, those two things go together, in answer to your question about how not to be paralyzed in a world that’s going to hell in a handbasket — namely, a sovereign God is the ballast in your boat, and he’s totally for you, and he’s proven it by the death of his Son, Jesus.

I cling to the psalmist’s statement in those moments. “God is good and he does good” (see Psalm 119:68). What a comfort in times of suffering and trial. We’re going to ask two more questions. You clearly love Noël. You’re just deeply in love with her, which is awesome.

I wrote a poem for her last week. I write a poem for my wife on every anniversary and on every birthday.

John, my wife is right over here and she’s hearing you say this, and I might have to write some poems. But you called your wife a radical, risk-taking, go-anywhere-for-Jesus woman. She sounds amazing.

She is amazing.

But Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:8 that if you can be single, be single. So, knowing what you know now, why wouldn’t you go back to 22 and just be single the rest of your life?

We have Genesis 2:18 and 1 Corinthians 7. Duke it out in your life. Genesis 2:18 says, “It is not good for man to be alone.” He made a helper fit and suitable for Adam. The normal creation pattern is marriage. That’s normal. It’s good. It’s beautiful. It’s the way you fulfill the mandate to fill the earth and a lot of other things. The main thing is representing Christ and the church in marriage. When Paul talks in Ephesians 5 about men being the head and the woman being the body in the marriage, and he says, “This refers to Christ and the church” (see Ephesians 5:32), after quoting from Genesis 2:24.

What we know is that God did not look around the world for an analogy for what Jesus and the church would be like and say, “Oh, marriage would work. Let’s use marriage as an analogy.” It’s just the other way around. He knew from eternity he was going to marry his Son to the church, and he created marriage to show it.

So, this is massive. Marriage is massive, and the way people treat it today is just flat-out blasphemous. Where in the world is anybody your age who believes in keeping promises anymore? I hope you do. We said, “For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.” Do you mean that? I don’t know if you’ll even say that, but if you don’t say it and you don’t mean it, you probably won’t last, because the whole culture says it doesn’t matter. They don’t think marriage counts for anything. So, marriage is big. That’s all to justify my marriage, I suppose. You said, “Why wouldn’t you remain single?”

In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul says, “I wish you were all like me. Those who are married have to give a lot of attention to the concerns of their wives or husbands, and those who are single can be utterly devoted to the Lord.” I’ve thought a lot about that, and it’s totally true. I must take into consideration another human being with every decision I make. That’s very limiting, and it’s intended to be. In that limitation, I represent a Christlike husband, which is a beautiful thing if I do it right. And she represents an obedient church, if she does it right, and it portrays to the world a beautiful thing. So, it’s a beautiful thing that’s happening. It’s not like singleness is set against something that’s not beautiful and not significant.

However, there are often times I just want to throw myself into something and I think, “I better check with Noël,” and she’s not at that level there. So, I think the answer is that as you try to discern, Paul says, “Each has his own gift” (1 Corinthians 7:7). You ask, “Do I, in the Lord Jesus, have the gift of singleness and celibacy?”

Celibacy, by the way — being a virgin until you die — is a glorious thing. And we know that because Jesus was one. And right now you can tune in to the New York Times or any other major news thing, and there are these big conversations among cutting-edge 20-somethings about virginity. That’s been going on for a long time. That is the call on your life if you’re not married. And if somebody says, “Man, you can’t even be human if you haven’t had sex. Come on.” I’ve had guys say that to me. They say, “Are you kidding me? You can’t even be fully human if you don’t express that part of your reality.” And I say, “Jesus never did. And I’ll take Jesus’s kind of humanity over your kind of humanity any day.” So, you do not have to have sex to be fully human.

“My highest and longest happiness and God’s glory are never at odds — ever.”

The gift of singleness you will discover by the providence of God. If you are not led into a marital relationship, he expects you to be chaste and single and serve him joyfully. Maybe the last thing to say on this is this: Don’t come to God and say, “If you don’t give me a husband or if you don’t give me a wife, I’m going to be miserable.” God doesn’t want to hear that, because it’s not true if he’s your treasure.

Go to him and say, “Lord, as I know myself, there’s so much in me that would love to give myself away to a man or a woman who’s godly and holy, and link arms together to serve you in missions, or whatever the calling is. I would love to do it, but God, you are supreme. You are the treasure of my life. I will take whatever you’ve given me, and I will rejoice and be a happy, productive single person or a happy, productive married person.”

Amen. Here’s one last question. Lord willing, on January 11, you’ll be 78 years old. Praise God for your life. We pray that he gives you many more years of faithfulness to him and encouragement to others to know him and love him. But if this were your last CROSS Conference, what would you want this group of people to know?

Everything I’ve just said, but if this is really the end, I’ll end on one of the most important discoveries I made in the fall of 1968, and that is that God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. I call that Christian Hedonism, and it’s important because, at your age, one of my biggest battles was trying to figure out how my irresistible desire for happiness fit into God’s passion for his glory.

My parents taught me, “Johnny, whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.” I knew that. But I had this sneaking suspicion that to want to be happy — not to mention to pursue happiness — was defective. It cramped my worship, it cramped my obedience, and it cramped my relationships, because I thought when Jesus said, “Whoever would come after me, let him deny himself,” meant, “deny himself happiness” (see Matthew 16:24). If he meant that, then Psalm 37:4 is a command to sin. It says,

Delight yourself in the Lord,     and he will give you the desires of your heart.

And he also says,

In your presence there is fullness of joy;at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:11)

Here was the solution, and that’s why I say it was a great discovery. If in fact that’s true — God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him — then those two are never in competition. My highest and longest happiness and God’s glory are never at odds — ever.

Which means I can say to ten thousand students that you should leave this place utterly, totally devoted to the pursuit of your happiness as long as it’s the biggest happiness and the longest happiness. Don’t settle for eighty years. Who cares about eighty years of happiness if you go to hell? Don’t settle for 90 percent happiness. Insist on 100 percent, forever. The Bible is really clear where that’s found. It’s found in God, and it’s found in the overflow of the enjoyment of God onto other people, especially the nations who don’t know anything about this joy.

Thank you, brother. I always enjoy talking with you. Thank you for the time and for the conversation.

Fortresses have been lost through sheer lack of imagination. The general cannot see with his enemy’s eyes, anticipate his enemy’s strategies, and so he invites his enemy’s feet into the citadel. Do we let the evil one into our lives, heart, and mind through want of simple thought? Fighting the enemy at the front gate is hard enough; let’s not leave back pathways and rear entrances unmanned, unsealed, unwatched.

How do we discover the breach? Play devil’s advocate. Ask the question, If I were Satan and desired to destroy my soul, how would I do it? Really consider it, first, because it will help you better know yourself. Second, because Satan is considering you and means to exploit every possible means to your damnation.

In other words, watch film of yourself. Championship teams study their opponents to learn their weaknesses and discover vulnerabilities. They watch and replay and rewatch the opponent. How do they think? What are their tendencies? What do they try to cover up? If they would defeat us, they must do so with their weak hand. And the best teams watch film not just of their opponents, but of themselves. When the enemy watches us, what does he see? Where are we weak, susceptible? What does he mean to exploit? How is he planning to strike?

Stairways to the Soul

First, consider which members Satan longs to commandeer. Over what well-worn paths does he bring his seductions into your life?

Does he mean to burrow into your soul through your eyes? Does he lure you with illicit images? Does he encourage binging upon show after show, game after game, app after app? Most may not be evil, but when amassed, they form a swamp of worldliness where spiritual affections die. Notice, the fruit traveled through Eve’s eyes before it came into Eve’s mouth: “when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes . . . she took of its fruit and ate” (Genesis 3:6).

Or perhaps your temptations are auditory, approaching through the side door of your ears. You listen to song after song, podcast after podcast — some of such a nature that, should they accidentally play during church, you would sooner break your phone than let them continue. What lenient watchmen stand post at some of our earlobes. Be reminded, Christian, that the first temptation came through the ear before the eye: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman . . .” (Genesis 3:1).

And once he has the ears and the eyes, Satan desires your hands to handle and distribute evil: “She took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her” (Genesis 3:6). Do your hands flash and thunder through ill temper? Do they grab the mouse at night and click, click, click (in privacy, you think)? “If your hand causes you to sin,” Jesus warns, “cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43).

“To best defend yourself, know yourself.”

But Satan needs you within reach of sin’s fruit, so he loves careless feet. You may know by experience how much damage you invite when those feet wander to the bar, or to that friend’s house, or to those parties. The wise father advises his son, “Keep your way far from her, and do not go near the door of her house” (Proverbs 5:8). Traveling even near her door can be a death sentence:

Though she flatters and smiles and feigns to adore you,The ambush is set by the hunter before you.She stands at her door, beckoning to the trap;Keep your feet from her house and your head from her lap,Your lust from her beauty, your heart from her care,Your frame from her bed, and her knife from your hair.

Let not the shoes on your feet betray the prayer on your lips: “Lead me not into temptation.” Feet that stray toward sin soon flee from God: “The man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden” (Genesis 3:8).

And we must not forget about the tongue, that vessel of fire sailing from the ports of hell (James 3:6). Are you a harsh father? Do you lash your spouse upon the stocks, cut down your dearest companion with sharp criticism? Are you a gossiping or nagging wife? What chocolate can Satan place upon your tongue for you to indulge that sweet slander, flattery, grumble, or half-truth? “The woman,” Adam was quick to accuse, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate” (Genesis 3:12).

Times of Treachery

Beyond this, we should consider, When is it best to strike? How about late at night when you should be warding off temptations with unconsciousness? When do you feel most stressed and anxious and unwatchful? As tests approach? When you fall behind at work? When home life is tense or finances tighten?

I’ve noticed that Satan often waits to attack me until the day after a spiritual triumph. The dove falls upon us, we hear afresh, “You are my beloved son,” and then Satan visits us in the wilderness. He is a fool to ambush you on the day of victory. No, he withdraws and waits for you to relax before springing reinforcements. The dark spirit returns with fiends eviler than itself. Perhaps when the house is asleep; perhaps at midday when your vigilance flags; perhaps on the weekday when monotony dulls sin’s seriousness, and Sunday’s refreshment wears thin.

Perhaps it’s on the weekend, when the world is abuzz and immorality is sold at discount. After a long week, does the thought arrive, I’ve worked hard; I deserve a little pleasure, don’t I? Satan knows the best times to attack you. Do you? It was when Jesus “ate nothing” and “was hungry” that Satan brought his full assault upon him (Luke 4:2–3).

People as Puppets

Can you detect a pattern of the people Satan loves to use as his carrier pigeons to deliver temptation against you? “Woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!” (Matthew 18:7). When your guard is lowest, whom might Satan want you to spend time with? Which Delilah will cut your hair? What bad company threatens your good morals? Does a foolish wife counsel you to curse God and die? Do friends heap misery upon your deepest sorrows? A gossiping roommate, a flirtatious coworker, an unfaithful father, a worldly classmate — upon which relationships does Satan seek to write his signature?

Next, consider not only whom he loves for you to be around, but also whom he doesn’t. Whom does he mean to keep you from? Gondor needed Rohan, David needed mighty men, brothers need brothers, sisters need sisters. How can Satan ruin this blessed need in your life?

Oh, the delicious sin of envy may prove most effective here. He loves disturbing the hive with this sin — bidding us to withdraw from those more godly, more gifted, more likable than us. What suspicion or spiritual pride can persuade that you don’t actually need the church after all? Or perhaps he corners you more subtly through overworking or pointless recreation. “Whoever isolates himself seeks his own desire; he breaks out against all sound judgment” (Proverbs 18:1).

What crabgrass is Satan sowing in the fields of your friendships? Selfishness? Apathy? An unwillingness to go below the surface? Which relationships do you need to strengthen? Which people do you need more time around? What hobbies or acquaintances need to take the backseat? Who inspires you to pursue Christ with all your heart?

Goods as Gods

Finally, as just the beginning to your contemplations, consider what weights Satan would use to bind your soul to this world. Many things are lawful, but not all are helpful. They may even be helpful for others, but not for us. The former alcoholic refuses a beer at the game. The man who struggles with lust deletes his Instagram. The single woman limits her reading of romance novels.

The hand is a good thing, designed to glorify the Lord. But if it causes you to sin, cut it off, brother (Matthew 5:30). The eye is for beholding beautiful sights, but if your eye causes you to sin, sister, tear it out (Matthew 5:29). It is better, says Jesus, to hobble through this short life maimed, or endure here partially blind, than to hold on to all these good things, misuse them, and go to hell.

But we can’t stop at just weights. Consider, at last, an interest of the devil’s heaviest surveillance: God’s best gifts to us. Perhaps he accuses, as he did with Job, that we fear God only because of all of these. Is he right?

Which relationships, if threatened, might cause us to recant our Lord? Which loves — mother, wife, child — transgress their proper boundary and sit rival to the throne? Which Isaac would we not lay upon the altar should God require it? Over which blessing could we not, through darkest grief, utter, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21)? Satan means to twist God’s choicest blessings around our souls to choke the seed.

Christian, you have an enemy who crouches at your door. His desire is to have you, and you must rule over him. To best defend yourself, know yourself. Through what channels does he mean to entangle my soul? At what times, with what people, and by twisting what gifts does he mean to ruin me? Take time and effort to simply consider: If I were Satan, how would I destroy me?

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to a new week on this Monday. How do we overcome a lack of affection — a lack of expressed affection for God and expressed affection for others? It’s a great question, a humble question, from a young man who wrote in anonymously. “Dear Pastor John, let me jump straight to it. How would you counsel and encourage a brother in Christ who finds it difficult to express or discuss ‘deeper’ emotions like joy, despair, wonder, and fear? That’s me. I want deeper relationships with Christian brothers. But I also shy away when opportunity arises and deeper conversations make themselves present because I don’t know how to talk about those higher and deeper feelings. I just freeze. Or I’m tempted to make a joke.

“I know something is wrong inside of me. I read Augustine’s Confessions and stand in awe of his affection as he speaks so fluently to God in language like this: ‘My God, my life, my holy sweetness,’ or ‘What can anyone say when he speaks of Thee? Yet woe to those who do not speak of Thee; for, though they talk much, they say nothing.’ I’m a man who talks much about nothing. I want to grow here.”

I really have a special interest in this question, and I want to try to answer it because I think there are millions of people (it’s not rare) who share this blockage that prevents natural, genuine verbal expressions of heartfelt affections, not only for God and his glorious salvation, but for children — their own children — or spouses, or ordinary blessings of life. The whole realm of the emotional life and of spiritual affections is choked off for some reason.

Affections Unspoken

There are millions of people who never say anything like, “What a beautiful day. The sun is shining; the breeze is cool. I love days like this!” They never talk like that, ever. They never say anything like, “I love being married to you. Just sitting with you makes me happy. I’m so glad God brought us together.” They never say that to each other, ever. They never say anything like, “God is so great. He has been so good to me. I don’t deserve any of this. Lord, you are amazing. Thank you, Lord. I love you.” They don’t ever talk like that. These kinds of expressed affections for days, people, God, are just blocked. They never come out in words, and it’s a great sadness for them and for the people around them.

I don’t think there is any formula to fix this. The causes are sometimes very deep. God himself, by the Holy Spirit, is the only hope, because he is the decisive cause of all authentic expressions of true spiritual affections. A deep work of God is needed. For example, I had a deep and sinful aversion to lifting my hands in worship until I was 35 years old. Never once did I lift my hands in worship, or even come close, like turning them palm-up in my lap. I would see people do it, and I would actually feel disgust. And then one night, at about 3:00 in the morning, during an all-night prayer meeting, God lifted my hands in a moment of worship. It was, as I recall, mostly involuntary, and received no resistance. He broke my pride that night. And in a sense, my hands haven’t gone down since.

Step Toward Expression

I think there’s an analogy between that experience and the barriers that people can feel to verbal expressions of affections for God. So, even though there’s no formula, there are steps that you might be able to take, which — if you really want it, if you want this liberation — would become means by which God would set you free.

1. Recognize the problem.

First (and this young man who’s asking the question has already arrived at this point), you recognize that it really is a problem to be overcome, not just a neutral personality trait. Thousands of people excuse it as just a quirk of personality and think it has no spiritual dimensions about it. I don’t think that’s ever sufficient. It’s got truth in it, but it’s not sufficient. Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). Now, the least that means is that God designed words to be a means of heart expression. A disconnect between the two, heart and mouth, is not the way God designed it to be, and not the way it’s going to be in heaven.

2. Examine yourself.

We should do a serious self-examination as to whether our hearts really do love Christ (Matthew 10:37), really do delight in God (Psalm 37:4), really do rejoice in him (Philippians 3:1), really do fear him (Proverbs 28:14), really do treasure him (Matthew 13:44). These are all biblical commands that our hearts must experience before our mouths can express them. So, examine your heart. Are they there?

3. Discern sin’s hindrances.

We should also do a serious self-examination as to whether there’s sin blocking the genuineness of our expression of affection. There certainly was in me, oh my. I look back on attitudes that I had for 35 years that God, mercifully, was patient with, and I am ashamed. I’m ashamed. I can remember sitting in chapel at Bethel when I was a teacher there, and a woman or a man (I can’t remember which) next to me just rolled their hands over, palms up in their lap, and inside of me was disgust. Looking back on it, that’s just evil. That’s just plain evil. My resistance had so much pride in it.

“God is the decisive cause of all authentic expressions of true spiritual affections.”

And I’m aware it can work the other way around. I’m not naive that people who are lifting their hands might be totally arrogant people. I get it. They can be looking with scorn on the non-hand lifters, with pride. Of course that’s true. Pride is subtle — everywhere. But if we can see the sin that binds us, wherever it is, and name it and repent, we might be set free.

4. Memorize affection-laden passages.

Memorize parts of Scripture that give you the very words you need to express affections for God.

Psalm 18:1: “I love you, O Lord, my strength.”
Psalm 42:1–2: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.”
Psalm 63:1: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.”
Psalm 73:25: “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.”

Oh my goodness, these texts have served me so well, to loose my tongue. Memorize these, and others like them, and then say them out loud to God in private prayer, day after day — nobody listening but God. And surprisingly, you may find yourself saying them out loud in a prayer meeting, and it may be wonderfully involuntary, the way it was for me.

5. Spend time with expressive saints.

If possible, spend time with people who speak of their affections more naturally than you do. Emotional verbal freedom is contagious. I have tasted this in my life, in myself. I could name people whose freedom in mature expression of spiritual affections has been very powerful in my life.

6. Set your heart on heaven.

Realize that heaven is going to be like this: utterly free, unselfconscious overflowings of our heart’s affections. You can see this in the songs in the book of Revelation. And 1 John 3:3 says, “Everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” In other words, the principle is this: if we really hope to be this way in heaven someday, then let’s get a head start. Let’s get a head start now. Why would you put it off?

7. Raise your expectations.

Realize that your sincere expressions of love to Christ and joy in Christ may be the means by which someone else is saved. That’s the point of Psalm 40:2–3:

He drew me up from the pit of destruction,     out of the miry bog,and set my feet upon a rock,     making my steps secure.He put a new song in my mouth,     a song of praise to our God.Many will see and fear,     and put their trust in the Lord.

“God designed words to be a means of heart expression.”

I love that. That’s why we’re in the pit sometimes — so that he can bring us up, put us on a rock, put a song in our mouth. People see, and they get saved. I think that was true for my salvation. I think, under God, I owe my faith in Christ to the free expressions of love and joy in my mother and my father while I was growing up.

8. Pray for open lips.

Finally, pray. Pray like this: “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise” (Psalm 51:15). Isn’t that an amazing request? “My lips are shut; I can’t open them. Something’s wrong with my lips, Lord.” Yes, there is, in all of us. “Lord, open my lips.” Only God can make it real, so ask him, and keep on asking until he does it.

At various points in my Christian life, I’ve felt my cheeks burn with shame as I’ve faced my sin. I’ve felt humiliated, disappointed, and sometimes disgusted with what I’ve done.

Perhaps you’ve felt a similar anguish. You can’t believe those ugly words just came out of your mouth. You look back with a sense of embarrassment over how you acted so foolishly toward your parents. You’ve all but despaired over some ongoing sin that you cannot seem to confess.

As Christians, we have all looked at ourselves and felt sorrow over sin. But have we ever deeply considered why we do it in the first place? Why do we sin?

Searching Our Past Sins

In Confessions book 2, Augustine (354–430) probes for an answer to why we sin by considering moments in his own life. But he does so cautiously, clarifying that he looks back on his past sin “not for love of them but that I may love You, O my God” (2.1.1). He does not peruse past sins like we muse over old photos on our phone, but rather, like a doctor dissecting tissue to locate a cancerous tumor, Augustine remembers sin in order to discover its root cause. With Augustine, we should gaze at the darkness of past sin only to better understand our own hearts and, most importantly, to see the brightness of Christ’s mercy more clearly.

Augustine takes us back to his teenage years when his “delight was to love and to be loved.” Yet he “could not distinguish the white light of love from the fog of lust” (2.2.2). As he recounts how his “youthful immaturity” swept him away into “the madness of lust,” we expect him to stop and analyze the sinful motives behind his lusts. But he doesn’t. He turns instead, almost abruptly, to a very different kind of teenage sin: stealing pears with his pals as a prank (2.4.9).

“Behind every sin — from pride to greed to anger — is a perverse desire to imitate God.”

Augustine labors to understand this seemingly trivial sin to such an extent that some have worried he veers into scrupulosity. Yet he is not troubled with doubts about whether he sinned, as the overly scrupulous are. Rather, he struggles with understanding why he committed the sin at all. What motivated his teenage self to steal with such senseless disregard for God’s law against theft (Exodus 20:15)?

Why Steal Pears?

Augustine makes clear right away that the problem with his theft of the pears was that the pears themselves were not the problem. He had no desire for the pears. The pears were not lovely, and he had even better ones back at home. Nor did he steal because he was hungry: he and his buddies just threw them to the pigs after they had stolen them. So, why did he do it? Why steal something you don’t even want and won’t even use?

Before Augustine describes two motives for why he stole the pears, he considers what usually entices us to sin: disordered desire for otherwise good things. Our attraction to beauty, our delight in physical pleasures, and our satisfaction in success all become distorted when we love them apart from God. Like the prodigal son demanding his inheritance so he could run from his father (Luke 15:11–32), we sin when we spurn the Giver and selfishly love his gifts.

We can discern in disordered desires a certain logic to sin, even to a heinous sin like murder. Augustine points to Cataline, the archetypal Roman villain, to underscore that even in committing murder “he loved some other thing which was his reason for committing [his crimes]” (2.5.11). In our selfish pursuits, we may even commit murder to get what we want or protect what we’re afraid to lose.

But in Augustine’s case, he wasn’t motivated by a nefarious goal beyond the robbery or by distorted love for the sweetness of the pears. Rather, he says, he desired the sweetness of sin itself.

For the Thrill

When he considers why he stole the pears, he first says his “only pleasure in doing it was that it was forbidden” (2.4.9). The reward of the theft was not the pears but the stealing itself — “the thrill of acting against [God’s] law” (2.6.14). Augustine discerns something deeper in the thrill, though, than the racing heartbeat and giddy delight of getting away with a prank. Behind the thrill is the same desire to “be like God” that drove Adam and Eve to sin (Genesis 3:5). Even in rebellion, Augustine says, man is “perversely imitating [God]” (2.6.14).

Behind every sin — from pride to greed to sinful anger — is a perverse desire to imitate God. Pride, for instance, “wears the mask of loftiness of spirit,” even though God alone is high over everything (2.6.13). Greed hungers to possess more than it should, yet God possesses everything. Sinful anger seeks vengeance, but God alone can justly avenge. Therefore, we find a certain thrill in the forbidden precisely because, in pretending to be omnipotent, we perversely imitate God.

Such a perverse desire to be godlike, though, is not satisfied with sinning solo.

For the Fellowship

Our perverse imitation of God wants an audience. Augustine insists (three different times) that “I am altogether certain that I would not have done it alone” (2.8.16). “Perhaps,” he pauses to consider, “what I really loved was the companionship.” But no, he finally concludes, “since the pleasure I got was not in the pears, it must have been in the crime itself, and put there by the companionship of others sinning with me” (2.8.16). Augustine suggests that the good desire for fellowship with others, which symbolizes the ultimate fellowship enjoyed by God in his Trinitarian relations, becomes a perverse desire when it leads us into sin.

“Discovering the insanity of sin turns us back to the immeasurable mercy of Christ.”

These two motives — the thrill of transgression and friendship with fellow sinners — intertwine to move him to steal the pears. They go together because the feeling of a pretended omnipotence is consummated by the praise of others. The thrill of stealing, then, was not enough to motivate Augustine’s sin. Companionship adds the pleasure of praise to the thrill of the theft and becomes, in Augustine’s words, “friendship unfriendly” (2.9.17).

Yet, in naming these two motives, Augustine does not believe he has explained fully why he stole the pears.

Our ‘Complex Twisted Knottedness’

Even as Augustine lays out the two reasons for his theft, he asks himself, “What was my feeling in all this?” He wonders along with the psalmist, “Who can understand his errors?” (Psalm 19:12 KJV). Augustine recognizes that, at bottom, sin is persistently perplexing. Even a relatively trivial sin like a prank leaves Augustine uncertain about the root motive. Augustine’s analysis simultaneously reveals man’s desire for God even in our sinning and acknowledges man’s inability to explain why we pursue that desire for God by turning away from him.

What is finally inexplicable, then, about our sin is not that we sin without reasons but that those reasons do not ultimately make sense. Any attempt to peel back the layers of sinful motives ends in futility because identifying an original motive for evil is like trying to “hear silence” or “see darkness” (City of God, 12.7). We cannot see what is not there or hear what does not sound. Augustine points to a perverse imitation of God as the driving motive behind all vices, but why we desire to perversely imitate God in the first place is ultimately inexplicable.

Augustine feels the anguish of his inexplicable root motive when he exclaims, “Who can unravel that complex twisted knottedness?” (2.10.18). His anguish echoes Paul’s exclamation, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). Like Paul, Augustine looks to Christ’s mercy (Romans 7:25).

Discovering the insanity of sin turns us back to the immeasurable mercy of Christ. Just as a child who has made a mess of his problem runs to his parent for help, so too we must run to God for mercy from the mess we’ve made. We will not do that, though, if we don’t feel the desperation of our situation. The whole of Confessions, says biographer Peter Brown, is “the story of Augustine’s ‘heart,’ or of his ‘feelings’ — his affectus” (Augustine of Hippo, 163). In the story of stealing the pears, Augustine feels — and helps us feel — the anguish of our inexplicable decision to turn away from God. He shows the depths out of which we cry to God for help.

Prodigal’s Return

In our sin, we need the desperation of the prodigal son who, after he squandered all his inheritance, recognizes his only hope is to return to his father (Luke 15:17–19). Or like the psalmist who calls to the Lord for mercy from the abyss of his sin (Psalm 130:1–2), we too must turn to God with hope-filled pleas for mercy. “For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is plentiful redemption” (Psalm 130:7). We have been led by the insanity of sin to run from our Father, but he is ready and eager to run to us, brimming with forgiveness.

Augustine’s final paragraph draws us away from the darkness of our sin to gaze, by the mercy of Christ, on the beauty of God’s holiness:

Who can unravel this most snarled, knotty tangle? It is disgusting, and I do not want to look at it or see it. O justice and innocence, fair and lovely, it is on you that I want to gaze with eyes that see purely and find satiety in never being sated. With you is rest and tranquil life. Whoever enters into you enters the joy of his Lord; there he will fear nothing and find his own supreme good in God who is supreme goodness. (2.10.18; trans. Boulding)

God’s full forgiveness restores us to rest with him forever. So, as you search your past or present sins, find hope in your Father’s “plentiful redemption.”

To many, the idea of self-examination sounds about as enjoyable as standing before the mirror and slowly surveying your bodily imperfections. Who has heard, “Let’s spend some time examining ourselves,” and smiled?

For some, self-examination may even recall memories we have tried hard to forget. Maybe, in some miserable past, we spent untold hours digging inwardly, desperately trying to root out hidden sins. In the process, we discovered just how dark and hopeless — how Christless — life underground can be.

I can sympathize. I remember times when I felt locked in my own soul like Christian in the castle of Giant Despair. I’ve lived through long seasons without spiritual sunshine. Morbid introspection still tempts me today.

“In Scripture, healthy saints look outward mainly, but they don’t look outward only.”

But alongside that dismal past and present danger, I’ve also discovered something unexpected: the cure for unhealthy introspection is not simply to think about yourself less, but to think about yourself better. Yes, self-examination can become a prison cell of introspective gloom — but it need not. Done rightly, self-examination can become a pathway to spiritual health, a friend who leads us inward only to lead us further outward, who shows us self so we might see more of Christ.

Search Me, O God

But why, some may ask, do we need to examine ourselves at all? If God transforms us as we behold Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18), why would we spend any time beholding self? We change by the outward look, not the inward, don’t we?

Indeed we do. We are plants who grow by the rain of self-forgetful worship, the sun of Christward praise. Nevertheless, even well-watered, well-lit plants need to watch for thorns. Similarly, self-examination doesn’t grow us by itself, but it may clear the ground for growth — and keep us from getting choked.

In Scripture, healthy saints look outward mainly, but they don’t look outward only. Like Timothy, they keep a close watch not only on the gospel but on themselves (1 Timothy 4:16). Like David, they love to consider God’s glory in sky and Scripture, but they also allow that glory to illuminate self (Psalm 19:11–14). As the author of Hebrews exhorts, they devote their best attention to “looking to Jesus,” but from time to time they also consider the weights and sins that slow their pace (Hebrews 12:1–2).

The wise know that spiritual progress yesterday does not guarantee spiritual progress today. Judases become traitors and Demases become worldlings one small, self-deceived step at a time. And as both history and experience testify, it is all too possible to live a half-life as a Christian, bearing tenfold fruit when one hundredfold could be ours — if only we would stop to pull the thorns that block our way.

“The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates famously said. And we justly add that the unexamined soul will not go on living — or will limp instead of run.

How to Examine Yourself

How then might we examine ourselves without becoming imprisoned by introspection? How might we draw water from the soul’s well without falling in?

Healthy self-examination can take many forms, and what helps one soul may help another less. As with prayer and Bible reading and other spiritual disciplines, Scripture gives us principles but leaves plenty of room for personal application. Consider, then, some basic guidelines for self-examination and how you might make them your own.

1. Plan to examine yourself.

Often, self-examination becomes morbid when it turns from a spiritual practice to a spiritual atmosphere: a vague cloud of condemnation that follows you around, a crippling sense of self-consciousness.

Scripture never counsels such a constant inner gaze. The life of a saint is a self-forgetful, Godward, others-oriented life. “Love God” and “love neighbor” are the twin priorities of our days (Matthew 22:37–39); “examine yourself” is a practice meant to serve those greater loves. And strangely enough, one way we might reclaim healthy self-examination is by giving it a thoughtful, well-defined spot in our schedule. Instead of perpetually examining yourself, plan to examine yourself.

“Only the Searcher of hearts can expose our hearts; only God can make us known to us.”

Such a plan will include a specific when. Many saints across church history have benefited from a brief time of self-examination every evening, a few minutes when we can remember the day’s mercies and confess the day’s sins. But for growing in the practice of self-examination, especially for those prone to morbidity, I might suggest something a little longer but less frequent — say once a week (perhaps in place of a normal devotional time).

As important as the when is the what. Where will you focus your attention? For most of us, “examine yourself” offers too broad a charge. But “examine your prayer life,” “examine your friendships,” “examine your parenting,” “examine your relationship with money” — these we can get our hands around.

I find it helpful to think in two broad categories for self-examination: callings and concerns. By callings, I mean the areas of responsibility God has given you: disciple of Jesus, husband or wife, mother or father, church member, friend, neighbor, employee, and so on.

And by concerns, I mean those areas of your soul that call for careful attention. Say, for example, you feel a pang of envy on a Tuesday afternoon at work. You confess the pang but don’t have time in the moment, or perhaps even in the day, to plumb its depths, even though you sense it would be helpful to do so. Why did I feel that? Where did that come from? Having a plan for self-examination allows you to say, “I’m not sure, but I don’t need to figure that out now. I’ll return to it on Friday” — or whenever you have planned.

2. Let God’s word guide you.

So there you are on Friday morning (or whenever), with time set aside for self-examination. What might that time look like? We might take some cues from David’s prayer in Psalm 139:23–24:

Search me, O God, and know my heart!     Try me and know my thoughts!And see if there be any grievous way in me,     and lead me in the way everlasting!

David knows that only the Searcher of hearts can expose our hearts; only God can make us known to us. So, instead of diving into his own soul unaided, he asks God himself to search him.

Notice, however, that David doesn’t simply ask God to search him; he also places himself in the presence of this searching God. Most of Psalm 139 travels the depths of God, not self. David stands in awe of God’s all-knowing thoughts, God’s all-seeing eyes, God’s all-encompassing presence, God’s all-consuming righteousness. And then, in the context of this profound Godwardness, David says, “Search me.”

Psalm 139 (and the rest of Scripture) gives self-examination a decidedly asymmetrical focus: we see ourselves rightly only in relation to God. So, if you want to examine yourself well, follow David and place yourself in God’s presence. Practically, as you examine yourself, allow adoration to play just as significant a role as confession. And all along the way, treat God’s word as your best guide — the word given for our reproof and correction (2 Timothy 3:16), the only word that can discern the heart (Hebrews 4:12).

To that end, consider choosing a passage relevant to your present focus and using it like a pathway into the soul. If you want to examine your prayer life, linger over the Lord’s Prayer. If you want to examine your husbanding, look into the mirror of Ephesians 5:22–33. If you want to get beneath some persistent tug toward bitterness, walk slowly through Psalm 37 or 73. And as you do, ask God himself to search you.

3. Query your soul and confess your sins.

To sharpen our self-examination, we might look again to David’s prayer. As he asks God to search him, he doesn’t ask God to reveal everything about him. But he does ask to see “any grievous way in me” — any unknown or half-known sin, any deepening unbelief, any developing pattern that could keep him from following “the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:24).

Similarly, we don’t need to treat self-examination as an exhaustive enterprise. We cannot know everything about ourselves, or even everything about one part of ourselves. No matter how self-aware we become, we will die knowing ourselves, just as we know God, only “in part” (1 Corinthians 13:12). But we do want to see anything that needs our present attention — any poisonous bud that could open into grievous sin.

As we meditate on a passage, we may find help from asking questions like the following (drawn from page 148 of Tim Keller’s book Prayer):

Am I living in light of this?
What difference does this make?
If I believed and held to this, how would that change things?
When I forget this, how does that affect me and all my relationships?

If such questions reveal sins we have tolerated, habits we need to stop, subtle compromises that have grown over time, good — our self-examination is bearing fruit. An hour ago, something troubling lay hidden in the soul; now no longer. Now we can take it, place it before the Lord who knows us exhaustively yet loves us eternally, and say with David,

I acknowledged my sin to you,     and I did not cover my iniquity;I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,”     and you forgave the iniquity of my sin. (Psalm 32:5)

4. Forget about yourself.

Self-examination, like deep-sea diving, is a good but occasional exercise. God has not given us enough light or oxygen to swim always in the deeps; sun and air and land await us above. So, once you have queried your soul and confessed whatever sins you’ve seen, return to the surface.

“The end of self-examination is not self-consciousness, but Christ-consciousness.”

The prayer acronym A.C.T.S. puts thanksgiving after confession for good reason: in Christ, confession of sin is not a room but a doorway, not a wall but a path. God would not have us sit forever in some gloomy cellar of guilt; he would have us sing under the blue sky of his kindness and walk in the broad fields of his grace, his steadfast love our atmosphere (Psalm 32:10). So, if self-examination does not regularly lead us to a fuller, deeper, sweeter taste of God’s grace in Jesus, then somewhere self-examination has gone wrong.

The end of self-examination is not self-consciousness, but Christ-consciousness. Yes, we have scrutinized our souls for a time, but only so we might bring our sins to Christ and receive his strength to walk a better way. The last step of self-examination, then, is simply this: forget about yourself. Go love your God. Go love the people he has placed before you. Go walk in “the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:24).

We’ve now heard plenty about bad heads. In a world of depravity, where even churches are led by recovering sinners, humans have long circulated reports of poor leaders, and some terrible ones. Now we can amplify the stories with our new technologies.

Power can indeed corrupt, but not because power itself is poison. Rather, the poison is in us already. We are sinners to the core and across all our faculties. Christians have long called this “total depravity.” Leadership is not the problem; sin is.

In fact, good leadership, and healthy headship, is part of the solution to what ails us today. Many don’t even know to ask and pray for such leadership because they haven’t experienced it. But for Christians, even if we haven’t personally enjoyed healthy headship, we have a clear Good Head to look to — one we confess as Lord. We have Jesus.

“One of the first truths to rehearse about mere human heads is that they all have a Head.”

Our great need is for more heads like him, leaders who are not just kinder, gentler, and more patient, but men who actually lead — in taking godly initiative, in opening God’s word and explaining it, in prayer, in envisioning good deeds, in shaping the moral vision of our families and churches. We need heads who don’t melt into a puddle of self-pity when they don’t get the strokes they’d like, but who are ready, like Jesus, to endure personal discomforts for the good of their household, and the joy set before them.

Head of All Heads

This month at Desiring God, as we take up a focus on the “marks of healthy headship,” we begin with the one who is Head of all heads. One of the first truths to rehearse about mere human heads is that they all have a Head. Before the apostle writes, “The head of a wife is her husband,” he says, “I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:3). Before reflecting long on headship in our marriages and homes, and other spheres, we first take our bearings from the divine-human Head over all human heads.

Those with an aversion to all human headship might consider the chastening and comforting effects of grasping that “the head of every man is Christ.” On the one hand, every human head is a man under authority. None is autonomous. No husband or father or leader is unaccountable to his Maker. All will stand before the judgment seat of their Head (2 Corinthians 5:10). To have Christ as Head will be terrifying to self-serving men. On the other hand, this truth is precious and strengthening for heads who know themselves weak and in need of his help.

For Christians, healthy headship takes its cues from Christ himself. He is Head of his bride (Ephesians 5:23), Head of his church (Colossians 2:19), and Head of every head (1 Corinthians 11:3). Learning from him, then, what might it mean for us mere human heads to rule like Jesus does? What imitable forms does his headship take?

1. Covenant Fidelity

First, Christian headship is covenantal. It’s not random, free-floating, and simply spontaneous but operates in specific, given terms. Jesus is Head of his church, his bride, in a different way from how he is Head over all as sovereign. He has covenanted himself to his bride in a way that he has not to all people. So too with Christian husbands.

The husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. . . . Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. (Ephesians 5:23, 25)

Christ has pledged his special allegiance to his church, and he is a man of his word who fulfills it. He makes solemn promises to his bride that he will keep her, love her, and be faithful to her, come what may. Amazingly, Jesus “hold[s] fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Ephesians 5:31). And so his church responds in reciprocal fidelity, “holding fast to the Head” (Colossians 2:19).

As Head, Jesus loves not only in word but in deed. From this covenant allegiance arises costly action — even to the point of death on a cross. There he bore the cost, sacrificially giving his own body and blood, to rescue his bride. He didn’t just give her attention and energy when it was convenient, or when she seemed deserving, but “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). He showed his covenant love by persevering for his bride, to die in the worst of ways, to secure life for her.

2. Affectionate Care

The headship of Ephesians 5 is striking not only for the depths of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice but also for the ongoing, everyday affectionate care with which he tends to his wife. Husbands, take note:

No one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church. (Ephesians 5:29)

Far from inaugurating a new covenant and then turning his attention and energy to other interests, Jesus daily cherishes his church. His heart expands and grows for her. She knows herself to be resourced by his great singular sacrifice in the past and also treasured daily by an endless stream of care and concern.

Elsewhere, Paul applies this language of cherishing to people who, through faith, “had become very dear to us”:

We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves. (1 Thessalonians 2:7–8)

So it is with our Head toward his bride. He longs for her, cherishes her, is affectionately desirous of her. And from such an active heart stems the holy jealousy of protection from threats to the ultimate good of his bride.

If the apostle could “feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband” (2 Corinthians 11:2), how much more the Groom himself for the protection of his bride? From love for his bride flows wrath toward her foes. The promise of his final protection — and the infinite power to back it up — is a function of his great, ongoing cherishing of his church. He loves his bride, and so will protect her, with fitting firmness and grace, from the many dangers to her good — obvious and inconspicuous, physical and especially spiritual, immediate and especially eternal.

So too with human heads. In the happy confines of the marriage covenant, daily affection and attentive care can grow and flourish. Christlike heads are allegiant to the covenant through ongoing affection toward their bride.

3. Steady Provision

Jesus both cherishes his bride and nourishes her. Colossians 2:19 connects his nourishing to her growth:

Holding fast to the Head . . . the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

Our Head makes provision and supply for the growth of his wife. As Head, he not only loved her at the cross with covenant-making allegiance, and loves her daily with ongoing concern, but he even loves her enough to take action for her growth, her improvement, her advance.

Now we add a fresh kind of encouragement to Christlike headship. Such heads not only keep covenant promises and show affection, but they find the right balance and proportions for challenging their bride to grow in holiness, to become more free from the miseries of sin. To finish the thought of Ephesians 5:25, “Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” not just to leave her as is, in the decay and despair of sin, but to

sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. (Ephesians 5:26–27)

Jesus supports and provides for the holy growth of his bride (Colossians 2:19). He washes her with the word (Ephesians 5:26) that is “profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Fidelity and affection do not mean catering to her indwelling sin. In fact, fidelity and affection mean exposing her sin to the light of grace and investing time, energy, and resources into the path of her healing and growth.

“Our Head brings us with him into his own hard-earned rewards and well-deserved privileges.”

Good human heads provide not only materially but spiritually, and spiritual provision not only begins with teaching and aims at training, but inevitably walks through the challenges of reproof and correction. Because the husband’s head is Christ, and not his wife, his labors to bless her may not always feel like blessings, at least in the moment. But to lead her well, he must be faithful first to his Head. He will need to be ready to disagree with her at times, and confront her in sin, with fitting firmness and grace.

4. Selfless Generosity

Finally, gathering up these previous marks, and extending them yet further, and into the future, is Christ’s lavish generosity as our Head. Ephesians 1:23 calls “his body” — the church — “the fullness of him who fills all in all.” One implication, among others, is that our Head brings us with him into his own hard-earned rewards and well-deserved privileges. He is a lavishly generous Head. Not only has God made us alive together with our Head, but he

raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:5–7)

Even as the God-man, our Head doesn’t leave his bride behind when he benefits — not even with respect to the throne of heaven. How much more, then, with merely human heads.

Learning from Jesus, we enjoy every privilege and reward with our covenant partner. We keep no transferable privilege from her, but with covenant fidelity, affectionate care, steady provision, and selfless generosity, we enjoy being “heirs [together] of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7), even as we husbands humble ourselves to actually lead, as commissioned by our Head.

Audio Transcript

Today we find our way back to a familiar theme on the podcast, popular in emails that you send to us. It’s a topic that’s generated probably more questions to us than any other topic that I can think of — questions about Satan. You have sent in over three thousand emails now asking about him. Is he real? How and why did he first sin? Why is he not snuffed out but instead allowed to roam around? There are questions about his chief strategies for killing our joy and making us want to give up on life. And can a Christian get handed over to Satan? Can the devil devour us? And there are questions about why Satan has so much authority in this world. Questions like these have been addressed in the past in several different episodes that I’ve attempted to draw together in one place so that you can see the ground we’ve covered. I did that in the new APJ book on pages 331–353.

Today, a listener named Taylor writes in with a specific question for you, Pastor John. He asks this: “Hello, Pastor John! Thank you for your ministry! I know that Satan and demons have tremendous physical power and influence over the world, the material world. My question is about his power over the spiritual world. Why did God give Satan such immense power to blind people to the glory of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:4) and to snatch from hearts the very saving gospel so that people are left without any hope of salvation (Luke 8:12)? Why was he given such immense spiritual power to abort the gospel in the lives of sinners?”

When the Bible opens, it doesn’t even pause for a moment to give an account for why Satan is there. Later on, there are hints that he’s a fallen angel and that there was rebellion in heaven. But that’s not a full explanation for where he comes from, because it’s very difficult to explain why a personal, rational being — an angel — who is created perfect, would ever find a motive to rebel in a perfect universe. That’s not easy to explain. I don’t think we have a sufficient explanation for that. That’s one of those things that’s cloaked in mystery for now, I think.

Why the Long Leash?

Nevertheless, even though we may not be able to fully explain why Satan came into being, we know he does exist, and he was there from the beginning of mankind, because he tempts Adam and Eve in the third chapter of Genesis. We also know that Jesus commanded “the unclean spirits, and they obey him” (Mark 1:27). That’s an amazing statement. He said to Satan in the wilderness, “Be gone!” and he was gone (Matthew 4:10). And we know at the end of history, God will throw Satan into the lake of fire so that he can’t influence God’s people anymore or harm us anymore (Revelation 20:10).

So, from all this, we know God could have bound Satan completely the moment he fell or at any point in history in between. We know he doesn’t, because in the end the whole New Testament is telling the story of Satan’s activity in this world and how he deceives, how he tempts, how we need to do warfare against the principalities and powers.

“Seeing and savoring the superior beauty of Christ is the way we defeat the evil one.”

And Taylor, who’s asking us this question, points out that he’s blinding people. He’s blinding people. And he wants to know what is God’s reason — for God does all things in wisdom and for reasons; he doesn’t act whimsically — for not destroying Satan until the end and giving him such a long leash, especially, Taylor says, with regard to his free hand in blinding people, it seems, to the glory of Christ, and stealing the word, snatching it like a bird taking seed off a path.

So, he’s referring to 2 Corinthians 4:4: “In their case [the case of unbelievers] the god of this world [Satan] has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” And he’s referring to Luke 8:12, the parable of the four soils, where that first soil is the seed along the path, representing those to whom Satan comes along and snatches the word right out of their hearts so that they don’t believe and are saved.

Taylor wants to know, Why does God allow that blinding, that word-stealing power?

Double Blindness

I think the key lies in the fact that if God had eliminated Satan so that the only enemy to be defeated is our own human depravity, part of the glory of the triumph of salvation would be missing. I’m going to deal with only one aspect of that glory. We could make three or four episodes on this, one with each aspect of glory. I’m only going to deal with one. I’m not going to talk about the glory of the cross in this (Colossians 2:15), or the glory of our ongoing warfare with the principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:11–12). I’m only going to focus for the next couple of minutes on the glory of God’s victory in the moment of conversion itself. What happens at that moment of unblinding?

If there were no Satan to deceive us, we would still be blind to the glory of God in Christ. We would not see Christ as more beautiful, more desirable than anything else. We wouldn’t. Why? Because we are deeply depraved people. Paul describes us like this in Ephesians 4:17–18: “The Gentiles,” which is us before Christ, live “in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.”

So, not a word about Satan — not a word. He’s not our main problem; we are our main problem. At root, the blindness is our hardness of heart against God, producing ignorance, producing alienation, producing darkness of understanding. We don’t need Satan to be blind. We are blind by our own depraved nature.

Then the question is this: Why speak of Satan as blinding unbelievers the way 2 Corinthians 4:4 does? Because God is showing us the double prison we are in. We are doubly dark: the darkness of our own shackles around our wrists and ankles, and the darkness of Satan’s locked doors — like Peter in prison, who had to have the hands freed, then he had to have the gates freed and the doors freed. There are layers of bondage: the darkness of our own delusions about God — that’s one level of bondage and blindness — and then the added darkness of Satan’s lies and deceptions all around us.

Double Glory

Therefore, when Christ converts us by the power of the Spirit, he gets double glory because of this double blindness. He conquers Satan’s deceptions, and he conquers human depravity. And here’s the key that I believe is so crucial for why he saves us like this rather than obliterating Satan earlier. If he obliterated Satan earlier, his power would be glorified. But if Satan remains, and we are able to defeat his deceptions by seeing the superior beauties of Christ, then not only is the superior power of Christ glorified, but also the superior beauty of Christ is glorified.

“Let’s take up arms and be glad in the Son of God. Gladness in Christ over sin, over Satan, is the victory.”

We can see this more clearly — if that doesn’t make full sense, let me try to say it again — if we realize that the nature of the blindness of our depravity is that we find other things besides Christ more desirable than Christ, more attractive than Christ, more to be preferred than Christ himself. That’s the essence of our blindness. We are so corrupt, we cannot see that Christ is a superior beauty, a superior worth, a superior greatness, and therefore a superior satisfaction over everything else. In our depravity, we are blind to all of that.

But that’s exactly the same way that Satan blinds us with his deceptions. He’s a liar, and the essence of his lie is that the pleasures of sin that he offers are more to be desired than Christ. Therefore, to be saved, to be converted, to experience the victory, the glorious victory of Christ and the Spirit in our lives, is to have both these blindnesses removed. And that’s described in 2 Corinthians 4:6.

And the way they are removed is that we are granted to see, in one great miracle, both the delusions of depravity and the deceptions of Satan, because they’re the same. We are granted to see Christ, the glory of Christ, as superior to everything that our rebellious hearts ever dreamed of and superior to everything Satan ever offered. That double glorification of Christ triumphing over both of those blindnesses would not have happened if Satan had been snuffed out at the beginning.

So, one huge implication — I close with this — of this for us right now, today, is that seeing and savoring, desiring, preferring the superior beauty of Christ is the way we defeat the evil one. So, I’ve said more than once, let’s take up arms and be glad. Let’s take up arms and be glad in the Son of God. Gladness in Christ over sin, over Satan, is the victory.

Jesus gave his church the Great Commission almost two thousand years ago. Today, the task of making disciples of all nations remains the same. However, the world in which we live is in a constant state of change, so the issues affecting how we obey that commission change from decade to decade (and even from year to year). The last decade has been no exception. Based on conversations with missionary leaders stationed around the globe, several critical issues and trends are evident in 2024.

Before looking at the trends, let me clarify that this article is based on the conviction that the missionary task consists of effective entry, evangelism, disciple-making, healthy church formation, leadership development, and exit to partnership (Foundations, 13). Those disciples and churches are taught to obey everything Jesus commanded (Matthew 28:20), so all other biblical dimensions of Christian discipleship are included. This task is to be carried out among all peoples and in all places of the earth until Jesus returns. This understanding of the missionary task lies behind the issues and trends listed below.

Trend 1: Christianity’s Shifting Center of Gravity

Christianity’s center of gravity is now in the Global South and in East Asia. The largest missionary-sending country in the world remains the United States, but South Korea comes in second. This trend is poised to continue in the years ahead, as the population of Africa continues to grow exponentially. In light of the growing secularization of Europe and North America, with declining church membership and loosening theological convictions, the Global South and East Asia will likely play an increasingly prominent role in global missions and in the theological climate of the global church.

Prosperity ‘Gospel’

This trend leads to the most pressing issue in missions today. The churches of Latin America, Africa, and Asia are increasingly permeated by the prosperity gospel. In fact, it would be safe to say that prosperity teaching is the most common form of “Christian” thought and practice in many of these areas. Prosperity teaching may prove to be the greatest threat to biblical Christianity in the twenty-first century, on a level with Gnosticism in the early church.

This form of teaching easily syncretizes the animistic worldview that lies behind most expressions of formal religion in the Two-Thirds World. Religious practice is used to manipulate the spiritual world to obtain earthly blessings. In “Christian” prosperity teaching, both the true gospel and serious discipleship are lost. Partly because of weak discipleship and inadequate theological education by missionary-sending groups, this destructive movement threatens two centuries of fruitful missionary service in the Global South and East Asia.

The last few decades of Western evangelical missionary effort have been focused on unengaged and unreached people groups. This emphasis should certainly continue. The urgent need of the present hour, however, is to combine this attention to the unreached with the delivery of rigorous theological education and church-based discipleship in already-evangelized areas.

Mission Fields to Mission Forces

There is a positive side to the demographic shift of evangelical Christianity to the South and East. As already mentioned, South Korea is now a major contributor to the missionary enterprise. Other East Asian missionaries are also making their efforts felt around the globe. Some places that were recently mission fields are becoming mission forces. For example, missionaries from Latin America have proven to be highly effective in the Islamic world. Perhaps God is redeeming the seven-hundred-year Islamic occupation of the Iberian Peninsula by giving Hispanic Christians unusual insight into Islamic cultures. The African church is also beginning to awaken to its strength and its global responsibilities.

An ongoing trend in global mission will be its increasing internationalization. As the formerly Christian West slides increasingly into spiritual weakness, missionaries from the Two-Thirds World will play an increasingly greater role in the task. This shift raises two issues. One is that the West needs to be re-evangelized, and missionaries from the South and East need to join in that task. The second is that Western missionaries need to invest time and resources into mobilizing and equipping the missionary-sending capacity of the newer churches in the South and East.

Trend 2: Technological Advances

The rapid development of technology continues to influence mission efforts around the world. The global shutdown that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that the Internet is a powerful medium for evangelism, discipleship, and leadership training when direct personal contact is limited. Artificial intelligence (AI) holds amazing promise for translating the Bible and other Christian materials.

On the other hand, hostile governments have shown the power of technology to monitor evangelistic activities, expel gospel workers, and persecute local believers. The years following the outbreak of COVID have shown that forces antagonistic to the spread of the gospel have both an increased willingness and an enhanced ability to disrupt Christian missionary efforts, both in their own countries and beyond. AI in particular is a two-edged sword, and mission practitioners cannot ignore it. The rapid (and ongoing) development of AI is one of the most significant trends of the last few years, and the issues it raises will demand careful thought and attention in the years ahead.

Trend 3: Increased Access and Support

Due to technological advances, churches in the developed world have unprecedented access to mission fields around the world, in terms of both communication and travel. Local churches are currently invested in the task of missions like never before in church history. This is a good development. Research has shown that Christians who go on short-term mission trips give substantially more to missionary support and are much more likely to become long-term missionaries themselves.

There is a negative side to this trend, however. Christians, by and large, are generous people. Western Christians, on average, are wealthy by global standards. When they see needs, they like to give their resources to meet those needs. But that generosity can have unintended consequences. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, evangelical missionaries learned about those consequences the hard way, and principles of indigenization were forged to preserve the health of the new churches. Those principles became standard practice for evangelical missionaries around the world. (See, for example, Roland Allen’s 1912 book Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours?)

“Some places that were recently mission fields are becoming mission forces.”

However, many Western churches directly involved in the mission field often know neither the lessons learned nor the principles derived from those lessons. The result is that many new churches in the Two-Thirds World are awash in foreign money, and the results have been destructive for church health. The trend is unhelpful foreign financial involvement in church life on the mission field. The issue is how to channel this well-meant generosity in ways that do not create unhealthy dependency.

Trend 4: International Churches

Another trend is the increased interest in planting international churches globally. The last few decades have seen a welcome increase in attention given to ecclesiology in the West, with enhanced concern for biblical church structures and overall church health. A recent feature of this movement has been increased engagement in planting international churches in global cities around the world.

These churches have real value. In an increasingly mobile age, global cities house people from every country under the sun. These expatriates (“expats”) usually return to their home countries at some point. Churches that actively evangelize these expats perform a valuable service. In addition, healthy international churches provide a context for expat Christians to grow in their faith and to be nurtured in their outreach to the educational, business, or diplomatic contexts in which they work.

Danger comes, however, when these international churches come to be regarded as a primary means of fulfilling the Great Commission. Uncontextualized churches ministering in a foreign language (like English) have limited impact on most unreached peoples. Even in global cities, fewer people can have deep conversations in English than most expats realize, and international churches look and feel far more foreign than is evident to anyone who has not gone deep in the local language and culture. Most of those with no access to the gospel will be reached only in their heart language by workers willing to go deep in the local community and culture. They will be reached through planting healthy, indigenous, reproducing churches that are self-supported, self-governed, and self-propagating.

Planting international churches is a good thing. However, heart-language work aimed at planting indigenous churches remains the central component of the missionary task. This focus should be primary in global missions, with international churches serving as another tool in the toolbox.

Trend 5: Decreasing Missionary Resilience

Not too long ago, missionaries left for the field without much hope of ever seeing their homes and families again. Sometimes packing belongings in their own coffins, they would sail for months, expecting hardship and even death for the sake of the gospel. Their perseverance in the face of suffering laid the foundation for the global expansion of the church. Today, it is not uncommon for missionaries to return to their home country after a few years or even months. Many missionary candidates seem ill-equipped for the stress of culture shock or the rigors of life overseas. This points to a troubling trend: missionary resilience is a growing issue on the mission field.

The current cultural climate in the West encourages entitlement, resentment, and fragility rather than grit, perseverance, and sacrifice. This cultural trend inevitably infiltrates the church and affects those whom the church sends as missionaries. The need for member care, both during the application process for missionary service and after arriving on the field, continues to go up.

Churches aiming to send their people into missionary service will need to address these issues at every level of the discipleship process. Mission agencies will find themselves dealing with subconscious entitlement and emotional fragility more and more in the years to come, and thus have opportunities now to begin building structures for ongoing training, evaluation, and care.

Trend 6: Rising Global Population

One final trend needs to be mentioned. Seventy years ago, there were fewer than three billion people on the planet. Today, there are more than eight billion. Some of the highest rates of growth are among peoples and in places where the gospel is known the least.

At present, global evangelization is not keeping pace with global population growth. Of the eight billion people alive today, around four billion are in unreached people groups, and many more have never heard the gospel even if they technically have access to it. Meanwhile, evangelicals are well under 10 percent of the world’s total population.

That means we have a great opportunity before us. Most people in the world have yet to hear and believe the only message that can save them. The missionary task is urgent. The greatest issue in global missions today is obedience. Who will go?

Jesus remains King. His mission will be fulfilled. Just as the task of mission does not change, neither does the bedrock certainty of his sovereignty. Christians today can embark on global mission with joyful confidence, knowing that our God reigns and his plan for the ages will be completed. We need to be wise in our dealings with the world, so we need to act on the trends and issues we see develop. However, we can do so with boldness, knowing that his royal rule can never fail.