Part 7 Episode 176 When the word of the cross comes to us through faith, it enables us to love what God loves. In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper opens 1 Peter 2:21–25 and shines light on the transformative power of the gospel.

Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in . . . purity. (1 Timothy 4:12)

Pastoral ministry is not something low we pastors settle for. It’s something lofty we keep reaching for — by faith in God’s grace, in repentance for our sins, and with courage always to believe God for his reviving power.

The high calling God has given us as pastors is obvious in the final word of our agenda-setting verse, 1 Timothy 4:12. That word is purity. It’s a sure way any young pastor can gain the respect of people of all ages in his congregation.

Purity Demanded and Created

Purity is a bold word, isn’t it? It’s blunt and strong, leaving no room for compromise. That’s why the word is in this verse for us pastors. We need this splash of cold water in our faces. The morally corrosive ethos of our times (so contrary to purity) is well stated by Marilynne Robinson in her insightful book The Death of Adam:

When a good man or woman stumbles, we say, “I knew it all along,” and when a bad one has a gracious moment, we sneer at the hypocrisy. It is as if there is nothing to mourn or admire, only a hidden narrative now and then apparent through the false, surface narrative. And the hidden narrative, because it is ugly and sinister, is therefore true. (The Death of Adam, 78)

That fashionable outlook is deeply corrupt. There is a difference between sin and corruption. For all his serious errors, Pope Francis helped me articulate the critical difference between the two. He argued that corruption is sin repeated and repeated until it deepens to such a point that sin doesn’t feel sinful anymore (“The Limits of Dialogue”). Corruption makes sin feel normal. As a result, the corrupted sinner is no longer open to grace. And how can that end well? Whole denominations can be thrust into anguish over corruption in their midst.

Brothers, we must never allow the darkness of our times to start feeling normal. Men of God know that purity is not a throwback to a bygone era. It is not an embarrassment. It is the beautiful image of Christ himself marking us and honoring us, so that every one of us can be “a vessel for honorable use” in the hands of the Lord (2 Timothy 2:20–21). Is that not what you and I earnestly desire — purity within us and among us?

So, let’s be decisive. Let’s emphatically reject all cynicism that scoffs at purity as if it were somehow posing. Let’s humble ourselves, swallow God’s word whole, and by God’s grace keep walking the path of authentic Christianity that all generations of faithful pastors before us have walked. That path includes purity. It demands purity. It creates purity.

The Many Facets of Purity

What then is pastoral purity? Obviously, it cannot be sinless perfection. The man who wrote this called himself, earlier in this same letter, “the foremost” of sinners (1 Timothy 1:15). There is, however, a real purity that everyone in our churches can rightly expect from us flawed but faithful pastors. The apostle considered purity essential to gospel ministry (2 Corinthians 6:6). Jesus considered purity of heart essential to kingdom identity (Matthew 5:8). Whatever purity is — it includes sexual integrity, but it is far more — we must deeply accept its all-encompassing authority over us.

Imagine with me that we could pick up this word translated purity like a beautiful gem, hold it up in the sunlight, and turn it over and over in our hands, looking at it from different angles, being dazzled by the splendors on its various facets. What would we see there? We would see the gem of purity sparkling with holiness, reverence, integrity, innocence, honesty, and sincerity — for starters.

Purity is wholeheartedness, dignifying every area of a pastor’s life. The Bible says, “Purify your hearts, you double-minded” (James 4:8). It’s why Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “Purity of heart is to will one thing.” It is possible to minister the gospel with a divided heart (Philippians 1:17). It is possible to preach the truth, but not “in truth” (Philippians 1:18). You and I turn away from such a sight with grief and abhorrence. We turn back to Christ himself both as our message and as our motive.

Purity in the Wild

Sadly, our world today is no friend of a pastor’s purity. Anything like purity just isn’t cool. To this tragic world, the very word purity can sound quaint, phony, even offensive. But God delights in our purity. To him, all aspects of the purity he sees in us are beautiful, and beautiful with something of his own beauty.

What does a pastor of exemplary purity look like? He has no hidden agendas. He can be taken at face value. He proves true time after time. He can be safely trusted. He follows through and keeps his promises. He doesn’t use people, but actually loves people. He doesn’t assess others with a selfish cost-benefit analysis but gives his heart away and remains a steadfast friend over the long haul.

When he accepted the call from his church to minister the gospel there, he meant it, and he means it — even when he is tested by hardship. His congregation never has to wonder what he really wants or what he really cares about. They know that their pastor is “the real deal.” That’s what a man set apart by exemplary purity looks like. What a glorious privilege for every pastor!

Men Who Stand Out

So then, my brother pastor, here is what you must accept. In some circles, if you commit to purity, you won’t fit in. The Septuagint uses this word translated purity in Numbers 6:2–3. It says there, of the person who takes a Nazarite vow, “When either a man or a woman makes a special vow, the vow of a Nazirite, to separate himself to the Lord, he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink . . .” And your purity will set you apart in our day.

I don’t mean you will stand aloof from people. I hope you won’t! But if you devote yourself to purity before the Lord and your church, you might not be perceived as “just one of the guys.” Instead of fitting in, you will stand out. And some people might not know how to respond. A few might even despise you. But more and more, over time, fair-minded people will see you as you truly are: a remarkable example of Christian authenticity.

By God’s grace alone, for his glory alone, you can fulfill the exemplary calling of 1 Timothy 4:12. You will be respected. Your people will be blessed. And the watching world will know that a man of God has walked among them.

Audio Transcript

Today’s question for episode 2001 is a book question from me, Pastor John. We like to talk books on this podcast, and in past episodes we’ve looked at seven ways books have changed your life. That testimonial was APJ 707. We’ve also talked about how 1 percent of book-insights make reading the other 99 percent worth it. That was APJ 1910. Classic point. More recently, we looked at ten of your favorite authors who write to edify the soul. That was APJ 1972.

Now, speaking of your library, I recently paged through your copy of Mortimer Adler’s classic How to Read a Book while working on my APJ book about this podcast, which comes out in February. More on that later, but as I was writing the introduction to my book, I found it instructive to see what sentences you underlined in Adler’s book, what sections you marked up, and how you jotted down notes in the front and back of the book. I noticed that you made something of your own index to your discoveries. Can you walk us through your book-marking strategy? When did you start the practice? Why do you do it? What types of marginalia are you adding to your books? And of course we all want to know: pencil or pen?

The answer is pencil, and there are reasons. I use a mechanical pencil so that it never goes dull, 0.5 millimeters. I’ll get to that in a minute.

Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book is one of the very few books that I have read twice. Your mentioning it gives me a good opportunity to sound a warning to people who are going to ask me or others this question: the way a person underlined and wrote in a book — whether in the margins, indexes, or whatever — twenty or forty years ago may be very different from what he does today.

That certainly is the case with me. I am amazed when I look back on how many books I read, say, thirty or forty years ago that don’t have any of my own indexing in the front flaps, because today that is the dominant way for me to keep track of insights and enjoyments that I’m getting from the book.

Handmade Indexes

By “indexing” (that’s not a very accurate phrase, and I wish I had a better one), I mean simply jotting down, with a pencil in tiny handwriting, a very short three- to eight-word description or pointer in the front flap of the book. I write about what I have read in the book, along with the page number. Sometimes I have to weave it around what’s already there. In a short book, there may be anywhere from 30 of these up to, say, 150 or more of these little notes in the flap of the book at the front or, if I have to, in the back.

“I don’t just read for pleasure. I read for a pleasure that spills over on other people.”

I think the reason I didn’t do this in the early days — and my memory’s not good, so I may be wrong — might be that I wasn’t thinking primarily of reading for the sake of writing, or reading for the sake of preaching, or reading for the sake of systematic increase of understanding of particular truths, or reading for the sake of discovery and preservation of some striking and compelling way of saying something, all of which is what I’m so keyed into now.

So now, virtually every book I read — and I’m talking print books, not electronic (which I hardly ever do) or audio (which I do all the time). I’m talking about the books I’m going through all the time, the ones sitting on my chairs. I’m always reading something in print. That’s what I do. And all these books — I index them.

Even fiction. People say, “Oh, you’re kidding me. You read a novel with a pencil in your hand?” Yes, I do. I can’t read without a pencil in my hand. I’m not going to spend time reading, even fiction, if there is no life-giving insight or striking expression of reality worth preserving. Seriously, I don’t just read for pleasure. I read for a pleasure that spills over on other people, because that’s the biggest pleasure. “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35).

I read too slowly, and my life is too short, to read without the hope that what I’m reading will help me to think more clearly, to feel more fully, and to express more compellingly the glories of God in the word and in the world — and all of that is worth preserving in some way. It has been good to discover this about myself.

Reading Like a Teacher

I don’t presume, by the way, to suggest that everyone should be like this, but I realized along the way that my built-in, God-given impulse, my dominant impulse, is not to read, but to write and speak. To say it more generally, my bent is not to take in what others have created, but to be a creator. That’s just my bent. I want to make something new, usually with words, which means that all of my intake increasingly has become fuel for my own creation — for sermons, articles, books, poems, and devotions.

Now, I know this can be dangerous. There’s a big yellow flag here. I warned my students at Bethlehem College & Seminary, “Do not read the Bible in the morning just in order to produce a sermon on Sunday. Christ is glorious and precious and to be trusted in the very last hours of our lives when we can do nothing with his beauty but enjoy it on our way into heaven.” Yes and amen. So, don’t just be a user. Be an enjoyer of what you read. Savor it. Love it. Exult in it.

However, I believe that one of the evidences of the spiritual gift of teaching is that a person can scarcely prevent his mind from taking everything he reads and instinctively, without even trying, asking himself, “How would I say this? How would I say this in my own words? How would I explain this to other people? How would I illustrate it and live it? How does it fit into the framework of my own thought — or does it? Do I need to change my framework?”

This is why I not only index my books, but I keep a little field notebook (that I buy in packs of five from Amazon) beside my chair on my desk. This way, when I get a thought or an idea that stirs me up to think out my own train of thought, I have a place to put it. I have a place to write it down quickly.

There’s something about the mind of a teacher that can’t just hear things or read things and leave them. He’s got to do something with it. So, you can see what a huge impact that’s going to have on how I mark up my books.

Three Things to Index

Now, what goes into those indexes? Here are just a few thoughts.

One: fresh insights into my life or into life in general. My index for a biography of C.S. Lewis, for example, which I just took down from the shelf, has a notation at the front, from page xxiii, where he said, “Without self-forgetfulness, there can be no delight.” That got three asterisks in the margin. It got a notation in the front flap, and I’ve been thinking about it for twenty years. I mean, if that’s true, what an agenda for those of us who are pursuing delight in life. So, fresh insights — we mark them, we note them, we meditate on them, we try to grow into them.

Two: raw facts. If I’m reading a biography, and if I know I’ve got to give a talk about it, or if I want to use it in a devotion, I want to be able to spot birth, conversion, marriage, employment, controversies, death, and impact. That way, when I run my eyes down the front flap, I can get an outline of his life, and quick. I don’t have to go researching all over the place and say, “Now, when did he die? When was he born? When was he converted? When did he get married?”

“Pay attention, be engaged, be an active reader — even if you will never look at these pages again.”

Three: great illustrations, ones that might be useful to giving a striking impression of a viewpoint, even a viewpoint we disagree with. For example, I’m reading a book right now called Biblical Critical Theory. I’m about two hundred pages into it, and on page 196, I wrote a little index in the front about Jean-Paul Sartre on atheism. He said, “Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or without outside himself.” That’s a quote.

Now, I thought, that’s a serious confession from an atheist. It’s out of his mouth, it’s footnoted, and it’s tragic. It’s just tragic, and it will probably make its way into some sermon, article, or book someday. (Though I don’t mean to give the impression, with this idea of indexing, that that’s all I do. I do underline, and I still make comments in the margin, ones like “great” or “baloney.”)

Why Annotate

And yes, I use a pencil, not a pen. Here’s what happened. About thirty years ago, I took a box of used books to Loome Bookstore in Stillwater, Minnesota, to sell them. They would not even look at the books that had marginalia in ink. It was a principle. It was a law. I don’t know all the reasons for it, but that’s one reason.

My main reason is that I am fallible. I make mistakes. I want to go back and erase the word “baloney” because two pages later he explains himself, and I was wrong. It’s not baloney. I don’t want to memorialize my mistake with a pen.

One of the main functions of underlining and marking in the margins is simply to help me pay attention. That’s the big reason for underlining, for me anyway, and for putting notes in the margin: pay attention, be engaged, be an active reader — even if you will never look at these pages again (which is true for most of the pages that I read).

So, I think the main takeaway from this episode, Tony, is this: Know why you read. Know what you are reading right now. Then adapt your markings to fit your purpose.

The West is not as post-Christian as many imagine. No doubt there are places on earth, including Middle America, where it might feel like the wider culture is currently rejecting Christianity at an unprecedented rate. But the milieu that characterizes post-Christendom is still (despite itself) irreducibly Christian.

Imagine a cryogenically frozen Viking waking up in twenty-first-century Scandinavia, or a Mayan exploring contemporary Mexico, or Asterix and Obelix encountering German social democracy, or French laïcité. As “secular” as those places might feel to many of us, their values would seem deeply Christian to anyone who had not experienced them before.

Nevertheless, living in the world of late modernity obviously presents plenty of challenges for orthodox believers.

Is Christianity Losing?

Whatever we call the religious outlook of our societies — secularism, post-secularism, post-Christianity, or something else entirely — people are still skeptical toward Christianity and in some cases downright hostile.

The pagan gods of Mammon, Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Gaia, and Dionysus still trouble modernity in varying levels of disguise. Renouncing them to follow Christ is still costly. It is still harder for a rich person to enter the kingdom than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:23–24). The church still bears many flaws, and the cultural influence of Christianity has often served to magnify those flaws to those outside her doors.

An internal, psychological challenge compounds those external, cultural ones: some Christians feel like they are losing. In some countries, this is a question of sheer numbers. For a variety of reasons, including prosperity, fertility, and the privatization of postwar life, the percentage of people in church on Sundays has steadily fallen in many Western nations since the Second World War (while rising substantially in parts of the Majority World over the same period). Even in America (often seen as an outlier), over two-thirds of churches are in numerical decline. At the same time, there is a widely held perception that Christian convictions have become increasingly marginal in public life, which in many cases is clearly true.

Five Responses of Faith

That decline in numbers and of perceived relevance has met with varied responses from the Western church. Some of those responses (repentance, prayer, a renewed commitment to discipleship) are certainly positive. Others (fear, hostility, and the pursuit of influence or power by compromising morally or theologically) are plainly negative.

Some observers remain optimistic and argue that things are not as bad as they seem; others think they are a good deal worse. Some argue the church needs a radical change in strategy; others claim the challenge is not really a methodological one at all, and the church should essentially hunker down, get used to life on the margins, prepare to suffer for what she believes, pray, and trust that the God who brings life to the dead will do something new.

“The milieu that characterizes post-Christendom is still (despite itself) irreducibly Christian.”

So, how do we live by faith in a culture losing its faith? In my book Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West, I consider how the church responded to a similar crisis nearly 250 years ago — in particular the celebration of grace, the pursuit of freedom, and an articulation of Christian truth — and I suggest the last two centuries have only served to elevate the importance of these three responses. In this piece, I’ll mention five additional responses which, though perhaps obvious, are nevertheless vital for believers in an age like ours.

1. We Suffer Well

It’s hard to overstate the role that suffering has played in the expansion of Christianity. Unfortunately, a naïve version of this claim persists, which attributes to suffering almost magical powers to grow the church automatically (a view which will not survive contact with the history of Japan, say, or the Arabian peninsula). But from the Acts of the Apostles onwards, when Christians are marginalized, robbed, imprisoned, and even martyred, the gospel grows because nothing validates the confident hope of resurrection like suffering.

For Christians in the West, this has long been a challenge because believers have rarely been persecuted in ways that most unbelievers would recognize. But society is changing. Followers of Jesus here now increasingly do suffer, in various ways, for the sake of the name. And preparing for that potential mistreatment — in ways that neither overstate nor understate the current challenges, and equip the saints to respond without resentment, to turn the other cheek, to suffer joyfully — is vital to living by faith in a post-Christian culture.

2. We Counter-Catechize

Counter-catechesis is Alan Jacobs’s term for what the church has always had to do: train disciples what to believe and how to live in response to (and in dialogue with) the specific ways that their wider culture shapes their beliefs and practices. Ever since Jesus said, “You have heard . . . but I say . . .” Christian formation has taken into account the most pressing distortions and deceptions of the age, and applied the gospel to them.

When new distortions and deceptions spring up quickly, though, as they do in a media-saturated and highly fragmented world, the church aims at a moving target, shifting our focus continually to ensure that we are answering the questions our culture and our people are asking now. The number of pastors who admit they do not regularly and publicly teach on sex, gender, and sexuality testifies to the difficulty of this task.

To catechize faithfully, churches will need to address questions of autonomy, identity, sexuality, race, and morality, among others, provide clear and coherent answers to them from Scripture, and then show why the cultural answers do not provide the same explanatory power as the word of God.

3. We Model Humble Courage

In a social context where Christian orthodoxy can seem bigoted, dehumanizing, and grotesque, and where people have no shortage of ways to make their criticisms heard, believers are tempted to mimic the response of animals faced with danger: fight or flight. The former feels like humility, but risks timidity and cowardice. The latter feels like courage, but risks slander and pride.

However, the faithful option is humble courage. If we mistakenly think in terms of a spectrum with humility and timidity at one end and pride and boldness at the other, then we will end up justifying vices as virtues. Abusive and arrogant leaders will be defended as “brave” or “robust.” Compromise with immorality and idolatry will be lauded as “gentle” or “gracious.” The way of Jesus, by contrast, combines exemplary humility with astonishing courage, most powerfully as Christ goes to the cross. We must not allow our culture’s false dichotomies to prevent us from following his lead.

4. We Keep Repenting

It is always easier to see the need for repentance in bygone eras. Antisemitism, crusades, inquisitions, wars, slavery, and racism appear grotesque to us now, and we struggle to understand how previous generations of our brothers and sisters failed to see those evils as we do. The log in our own eye is harder to spot (Matthew 7:3–5).

So, in what ways have we been complicit in baptizing greed and materialism in the church? Or the lust for power? Or expressive individualism? Or a celebrity-obsessed, entertainment-driven consumer culture? Or the sexual revolution with all its tools for divorcing sex from marriage and children? Or obsession with technologies, embracing anything and everything out of convenience without regard for the consequences? Or demographic segregation, whether on grounds of race, class, wealth, education, or something else? Or political hypocrisy?

A repentant church is a faithful church — not to mention a church that stands a better chance of being heard when it calls the world to repent along with her.

5. We Keep Praying

The need for prayer goes without question in theory, but maybe not always in practice. The kinds of people who read articles like this — let alone the kinds of people who write them! — are often, I suspect, drawn more towards working out what we can do (devise strategies, write books, start initiatives, flood people with content) than asking God to do what only he can do (overthrow kingdoms, move mountains, crush gods, fill deserts with flowers). But even a cursory glance at the contemporary landscape reveals that our plans and programs are hopelessly inadequate for the task before us.

The West does not need to be roused from sleep but raised from the dead. Only a mighty work of the Holy Spirit will bring the renewal and revival we need. And prayer is our God-given means of seeking it. So, the church needs to pray for God to do something unprecedented: bring a post-Christian society to repentance and faith on a massive scale. Happily, as Tim Keller pointed out in How to Reach the West Again, every great new move of God was unprecedented until it happened. Come, Lord Jesus!

I’ve been ruminating on a text of Scripture that has me rethinking how I’ve typically sought to share the gospel with others at Christmastime.

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person — though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die — but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:6–8)

This is the phrase that has stuck in my mind: “God shows his love for us.” And the word in that phrase that has particularly gripped me is shows. God shows his love for us.

When it comes to love, it’s a matter of show and tell (and often in that order). We know love when we both see it and hear it. Words are an essential dimension of how we show our love, but it’s our actions that prove the truth of our words. Love, like wisdom, “is justified by her deeds” (Matthew 11:19). Love, like faith, “if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17).

And that’s what has me rethinking my approach to Christmas evangelism. I wonder if I have sought to love others with too much talk and not enough deeds.

By This We Know Love

You might recognize in my words the echo of another passage:

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3:16–18)

There it is again. We know God’s love for us by the way Jesus generously showed love toward us. And the way Jesus showed his love for us provides a profound model for how we as Christians are to show our love for one another.

We know from Jesus’s holistic example, however, that we’re not merely to show love to other Christians. For we are to “do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10). And Jesus tells us that even our loving deeds toward other Christians speak to unbelievers: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” — love they can see (John 13:35).

Haunted by Christmas Past

Now, the reason I’m pondering all this in the context of Christmas is because it’s an annual moment when our culture’s collective attention is drawn in some way toward Jesus. In the increasingly post-Christian West, people have the general notion that at the heart of Christmas is love. They have this notion because it’s an echo of the ancient story that still reverberates through Western civilization:

When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. (Galatians 4:4–5)

Even though many misunderstand or ignore or reject this echo, it often still leaves them with a sense that Christmas is about redeeming love.

We can hear strains of the echo in many of our culture’s favorite Christmas-themed stories, from A Christmas Carol to How the Grinch Stole Christmas, where deeply selfish souls experience some kind of redemption after an encounter with transcendent love — often, like Scrooge, merciful love. They are shown love. And as a result of this encounter, they are transformed into loving souls who discover a far greater joy than they’ve ever known in counting others more significant than themselves. These stories are haunted by the ghost of that ancient Christmas past, when “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16).

Show the Love

Putting this all together, it’s hitting me in a fresh way that Christmas is a particularly poignant time to show the love of Christ to those outside the household of faith.

So, what might that mean exactly? Well, at the time I’m writing this, which is just after Halloween, I’m not sure exactly. Because rather than planning a program, I’m planning to keep my eyes open and as the Lord’s leads, to follow the needs. Christian love, as John Piper says, “is the overflow of joy in God that gladly meets the needs of others” (Desiring God, 119). Often, we can’t foresee what people will need, but we can plan to reserve some time and money so that if needs arise, there are practical channels through which our love can flow to meet them. And experience has taught me that, if I’m paying attention, rarely is there a lack of needs to meet.

Over the years, I have participated in, coordinated, and led countless Christmas events — worship services, musicals, parties, neighborhood and family gatherings — intentionally designed to present the message of the gospel to nonbelievers. And I don’t regret having told them about the love of God in Christ. It is a way to show them God’s love. But I do feel some regret that I haven’t given more time and energy to showing more people the love of God in Christ through tangible, personal deeds. And so I’m seeking to change that — to demonstrate the truth of my words with actions of love by intentionally and prayerfully looking for ways to show the love “in deed and in truth” this year.

At the end of July, our family visited the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, with our sons’ 12U baseball team. After hearing so often about Cooperstown as a lifelong baseball fan, it was surreal to finally be there onsite, and especially to walk through the famous Plaque Gallery and see the faces of the Hall of Fame inductees.

One thing I didn’t realize about Cooperstown until this year is how far it is off the beaten trail. It’s not in New York City or LA or Orlando or Vegas, where tourists would already be gathered. It’s four hours north of Manhattan. You don’t just happen to go by the Hall of Fame. You go out of the way, to upstate New York, away from the big city and other distractions, to this small town with a population less than my wife’s hometown of Aitkin, Minnesota. So, you get away from normal life, and stand in awe of these larger-than-life figures who did what very few humans can do.

Sometimes we hear Hebrews 11 talked about as the “hall of faith” or “faith hall of fame,” but that might give the wrong impression. Hebrews 11 is actually not like the Baseball Hall of Fame. This is not a remote gallery to visit while you forget normal life and gawk at inimitable greats. Rather, Hebrews 11 takes normal humans, who had faith in the true God, and presses their stories into the service of our real lives and struggles. This is no mere record of Israel’s history, but Israel’s history pressed into the service of helping us persevere in faith.

We live in times where this is particularly needed. We need examples and encouragements to help us endure in faith and keep believing.

Amen Time

Chapter 11 is the rhetorical climax of Hebrews, the best part of the sermon, the big “amen” part, leading up to the highest point in 12:1–3, where Jesus is the climactic man of faith, and author and perfecter of ours.

Along the way, while narrating this “by faith” history of Israel, Hebrews makes four editorial comments (in verses 6, 13–16, 32, and 38). By far, the editorial comment in verses 13–16 is the longest, and most significant. Verses 13–16 are the heart of our passage this morning, and in some ways the heart of the whole chapter. And verses 13–16 deal with three distinct but connected realities: faith, obedience, and being strangers because of it.

This chapter leads us not only to ask what these realities are and what they mean, but what they are like. In other words, what’s the experience of faith like? What’s it like to obey from faith? And what’s it like to live as strangers and exiles in this world, seeking another, rather than being at home in this one?

So, with this risky experiential focus, let’s ask three “what’s it like” questions this morning: (1) What’s it like to have saving faith? (2) What’s it like to obey from faith? (3) What’s it like to live in this world as strangers and exiles, seeking a homeland?

1. What’s It Like to Have Saving Faith?

We start with the first half of verse 13:

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar . . .

Last week we looked at verse 1, which may be the closest thing to a definition of faith in the New Testament. However, the chapter keeps going. Instead of just giving a definition and then moving on, Hebrews keeps going and shows us faith from one angle after another.

In fact, if you were to say, “Okay, what does this chapter say about the nature of faith, and what it’s like to have it?” you will find various angles on this many-splendored reality:

Verse 1: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
Verse 5: Faith pleases God, and walks with him.
Verse 6: Faith sees God as a rewarder of those who seek him.
Verse 10: Faith looks to God’s city, not man’s.
Verse 11: Faith considers him faithful who promised.
Verse 14: Faith seeks another homeland, and desires a better country.
Verse 19: Faith considers that God is able to raise the dead.

But the first part of verse 13 has a particularly important contribution to make: faith (1) sees God’s promises from afar and (2) greets them.

Last Sunday we saw this emphasis on faith as “seeing” what is not yet visible. Faith hears the promises of God and sees them with the soul, or the eyes of the heart. Faith sees spiritually what cannot yet be fully seen, or seen at all, with the physical eyes. There is a kind of distance, for now, bridged by faith.

And because this “seeing” is a response to hearing God’s promises, faith is tied repeatedly in this chapter to “receiving” (verses 8, 11, 13, 17, and 19). Faith receives. It’s a “peculiarly receiving grace,” as Andrew Fuller said. It is not a “doing grace” or a “performing grace.” It does not merit God’s favor. Rather, faith receives God’s favor and “sees” his promises that are still, for now, invisible and distant.

But faith not only sees from afar. It greets. That is, it welcomes, embraces, even kisses. Faith receives with delight, not with disgust or disinterest. It is not mere assent, but warm embrace. In the language of verse 6, faith looks to the reward. Verse 10: it looks forward to the heavenly city. Verse 16: it desires a better country, the heavenly one. And the whole point of the chapter is that saving faith perseveres. It keeps seeing, keeps greeting, keeps looking forward, keeps desiring and tasting of the fullness of joy to come.

So, then, what’s it like to have saving faith? What might we say about the experience of faith?

On the one hand, to live according to faith is not to have all the promises yet. Once you have all the promises, you no longer live by faith, but by sight. Faith is not yet content with the here and now, as we’ll see.

But faith also has a foretaste of the goodness of God’s promises. Faith hears God’s word and sees him as true with the eyes of the soul and embraces him as desirable. Saving faith is not indifferent to what it sees or apathetic toward who God is and what he has said and done. Rather, there is in faith an eagerness, a desire, a thirst to drink, a hunger to eat, and a foretaste of satisfaction. As Jonathan said last Sunday, faith says to God, “I want you.” And saving faith perseveres. It keeps wanting. (Which might lead us to ask, practically, How am I conditioning my soul — for indifference to God or delight in him?)

So, faith, in verse 13, sees God’s promises from afar and greets them, and continues to want them. Which leads to our second “what’s it like” question.

2. What’s It Like to Obey from Faith?

We ask this because verses 8–12 and 17–22 tell us about external, observable actions undertaken in faith: Abraham obeyed and went out and lived in a foreign land. Sarah received power to conceive and gave birth. Abraham reached for the knife to sacrifice his beloved son of promise. Isaac and Jacob and Joseph invoked blessings on their heirs and gave them future directions.

So, having some working sense of the experience of faith, what’s it like to obey, to act, to live by faith?

Faith Looks Forward

First, verses 8–9, Abraham’s obedience:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.

So, God said to him in Genesis 12:1, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.” And Abraham obeyed. But (this is very important) God didn’t only command obedience; he made promises:

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Genesis 12:2–3)

This wasn’t just “command and obey,” but “command and promise,” leading to “trust and obey.” So, verse 10 tells us how faith led to obedience. What was it like?

Abraham obeyed because (“for,” verse 10) “he was looking forward [that’s faith] to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” In other words, God didn’t just command it, and Abraham obeyed it. God made commands and gave promises, and Abraham looked forward to — that is, believed — God’s promises as the better future, which led him to obey. Still today, when we talk about looking forward to something, we mean something we want, desire, anticipate enjoying.

Faith Considers

Then, Sarah. The first part of verse 11 tells us she obeyed, and the second part describes how it happened:

By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.

Now, this obedience seems very different from her husband’s. He goes out and moves and stays. Sarah obeys by welcoming God’s work in her womb and preparing at age ninety to finally have a child, to nurture the child in pregnancy and give birth and nurse and raise the child — all sorts of big and little obediences to bring a child into the world, and to do so at age ninety.

And how did her obedience come from faith? See that word considered in verse 11? We’ll see it again in verse 19 (and again next week, talking about Moses, in verse 26). That idea of “considering” is so important to obeying from faith and to how faith gives rise to obedience.

There is a natural course of action — ninety-year-old women don’t prepare to have babies. But faith considers. It does not simply move, like natural humans, with the patterns of the world. God’s promises come, faith receives them and looks forward to them, and it changes how we live. We move to another place and live in a different way, with our eyes opened to something better. We open our arms to receive a child, or later we open our hands to release our grasp on that child (that’s next).

So, Sarah heard promises from God, like Abraham, and she too considered God faithful. She believed God would do what he said, and she desired that he do it, that it would be better, and so she acted differently. Faith changed how she lived. Her faith led her to obey.

Faith Acts (Differently)

Now, back to Abraham. Verses 17–18 tell us about Abraham’s further obedience by faith, and verse 19, how it happened:

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.

Like Sarah, he considered. Naturally speaking, it made no sense to offer up Isaac. How could offspring come through Isaac if he was dead? Answer: God could raise him. God had promised offspring, and God had said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and . . . offer him . . . as a burnt offering” (Genesis 22:2). So, Abraham tells the two young men he brought with them, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you” (Genesis 22:5). Abraham would obey God, and he believed that God would provide a rescue, or resurrection, for Isaac.

Again, faith leads to obedience. Faith takes God at his word. Faith considers the truthfulness and faithfulness of God, and his goodness, and that his plan is better, and faith leads us to act differently than we would without it.

So, what’s it like today to obey from faith? In short, we see something better than the world sees, and we act accordingly. Hearing God’s promises, we consider differently than unbelievers. Our minds and hearts do different calculus. We don’t float through life, with its givens, like unbelievers do. We don’t just see and do. We see, we stop, we see with the eyes of faith, and we then act. For Christians, the line “everyone else is doing it” is not a good reason to do it or (don’t miss this) not do it, but for us to pause and ask, Given my true home and my new desires, what is obedience here?

So, faith gives us a foretaste of God’s promises, our souls consider the world and life differently, and we obey from the heart.

3. What’s It Like to Live as Strangers?

Now we finish with the rest of verses 13–16. We already saw in verses 9–10 that Abraham “went to live . . . in a foreign land. . . . For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.” Now we learn more:

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

So, men and women of faith not only see God’s promises from afar and welcome them, but they acknowledge, or confess, themselves to be strangers and exiles on earth. Make no mistake: faith makes them strangers. To hear God’s promises and embrace them is to be a stranger. You are no longer “of the world.” Now you are different, strange. But Hebrews says these examples of faith also acknowledged it. They confessed it. They recognized it and said it.

And verse 14 says that people like that, call them Christians, “make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.” They are not “at home” in this world, and don’t expect to be, and don’t pretend to be. This age, its patterns, its assumptions are no longer theirs. They are Christians, and by definition, they seek a homeland other than where they were born on earth or where they live for now.

Strangers Refuse to Move Back

In verse 15, Hebrews looks his first audience right in the eye (if you can do that in a letter). He puts his finger on the connection between Abraham’s story and theirs. Because of social pressure, they are tempted to “go back” to Judaism apart from Jesus. So, Hebrews says about these examples of faith, “If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return.”

But they didn’t. They didn’t reminisce about the past. They didn’t dwell on the comforts of their former life before God spoke and they believed. They didn’t constantly consider the old or pine for the other. For them, the “return” would have been Judaism. For us, what might it be? Normal modern American life?

And to them, and to us, Hebrews says, “Don’t go back. Don’t settle for an earthly homeland when God has prepared a better city. In Christ, the best is ahead, not behind. Don’t let nostalgia play tricks on you. God has prepared a better place for you — a New Jerusalem, the better city and country that is come, the heavenly one, ‘that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God’” (verse 10).

We seek a homeland that is not immaterial, but is not of this age and not of this earth (but “of heaven”). We seek the better city, built and inhabited by God himself, that soon will come “down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Revelation 21:2).

Strangers Live Differently Than Locals

So, what’s it like to live today as strangers and exiles? Simply, our hearts are not at home in this world. God has lit the flame of faith in our souls, and now we no longer want all our world wants and do all it does. We’re not at home with its movies, its shows, what it affirms and denies, its values and priorities and proportions, its distractions and investments of attention, its ways of talking, its dreams, its topics, its ways of using technology. We do not think and feel and live like everyone else. Or do we?

Being strangers and exiles doesn’t only mean that we give Christian takes on all the world’s topics and trends while we just swallow its feeds and add our spin. We find different feeds. We order our lives around God’s word and his people, rather than the world’s authorities and algorithms. We set the patterns and pace of our souls through meditating on Scripture and rhythms of prayer and meeting together in the habits of church life. Or do we?

Now, all the answers and subtle ethical challenges are not easy. We overlap as humans: we eat, we sleep, we love, we nurture, we exercise, we work, we rest. But now it’s all different, even while some of it’s still very similar.

If you ask, “How do I live as a stranger and exile in this luxurious, twenty-first-century American life?” wisdom requires walking in tensions, not reaching for easy fixes or simplistic compromise or separation. The answers are often not in the absolutes but in the proportions, and in the rhythms of our lives, and in how we condition our souls.

But what Hebrews 11 makes unmistakable is that the Christian faith is not a layer you add to the old life of unbelief, but it is new life, from the inside out — joy enough to obey and own that we are strangers.

Not Ashamed to Be Our God

Let’s end with the amazing statement in verse 16. So those who are of saving, persevering faith are not those who return to where they came from, but desire a better country, the heavenly one. Verse 16:

Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

I can’t think of anywhere else in Scripture that talks about God being ashamed or not ashamed. What could Hebrews even mean that God would be ashamed? God never does anything shameful. God could never be put to shame. So, what is Hebrews communicating by saying that God is not ashamed to be called our God, if we have such faith?

What is the opposite of shame? Honor. So, put it like this: for those who desire the heavenly city, God is honored to be their God. Don’t you want that? None of us wants to bring shame to one we call our God. And in the end we won’t, because if we abandon faith, we show that he was not our God. God will not be shamed.

But he will be honored. He will be honored by those who take him at his word, welcome his promises, embrace his Son, and confess themselves to be strangers on the earth — and desire a better country, a better land, a better city than human hands and constitutions can build. Not only is that desire an aspect of faith, but that desire honors God. He is not honored by indifference or apathy to him and his promises. He is honored by souls that seek him, embrace him, welcome him, desire him. He says, in effect,

I am honored to be their God because they desire me, not their world and its empty promises. They seek a fatherland, a home, with me, not on earth. They see me and my city from afar, and they are not uninterested or unimpressed, but they greet it, welcome it, embrace it, kiss it. They want me, and that honors me. They enjoy me, and that glorifies me. No, I am not ashamed to be their God; I am honored by such hearts of faith. And they will not be disappointed — because I have prepared for them that better city that they desire.

And a better Table.

To the Table

We come here with such faith. We do not come with indifference or apathy or disinterest. We come here seeking satisfaction. We come desiring God and his city. We come embracing his Son, and cherishing his Isaac-like and Isaac-surpassing sacrifice.

In faith, we see the crucified and risen Jesus from afar and greet him. We receive his good news as true, and we receive it as good. We come to eat and drink according to faith and to satisfy our souls in him.

“As [a man] thinketh in his heart, so is he” (Proverbs 23:7 KJV). What a man thinks in his heart — not what he says with his mouth — is where to find the man naked in his natural habitat. He may say warmly enough to be convincing, “Sit, eat, and drink,” but sweet words can coat a bitter heart. He may brood against you while he bids you to his table. What he thinks inwardly, his soliloquy uttered in secret chambers — that is the man as he is.

But we may go further: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so he will become.” That man in the inner chamber may change — for better or worse — depending on where he sets his innermost thoughts. Beautiful or beastly, peaceful or disturbed, heavenly or hellish — as a man thinketh in his heart, so he will become.

Knowing this, Scripture knocks loudly upon the inmost door.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:1–3)

Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. (Romans 8:5–6)

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. (Romans 12:2)

The Holy Spirit would open the windows and flood our soul’s inner rooms with fresh beauty and light:

Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. (Philippians 4:8)

Have such texts prevailed with you? The secret thoughts of your inner man — upon what do they dwell? Are you being transformed by the renewal of your mind?

Thoughts in the Darkness

This principle makes all the difference for us in life generally, but especially in our suffering. As a man thinketh in his heart while under the knife of affliction, so he will become — hardened and drifting away or “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).

We see this truth illustrated after one of the darkest events in holy Scripture: the destruction of Jerusalem. The book of Lamentations is aptly named, its pages stained with tears and blood. In it, the poet brings us into the ruins of his heart and the conquered city he loves. From within that cave, Jeremiah teaches us how to find warmth amidst the bitterest winter: he calls truth to mind.

As others sink irretrievably, Jeremiah goes down to the threshold of his heart, unlocks the door, and forcibly turns the thoughts of his soul away from his “affliction and . . . wanderings, the wormwood and the gall” (Lamentations 3:19), to his half-remembered God.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.” (Lamentations 3:21–24)

In the midnight of despair, he brings the lantern of memory into the secret place of his spirit and there reads of God’s goodness and faithfulness from the sacred ledger. Behold the heavenly alchemy. He has seen recent nights haunted by unspeakable terrors and sins, yet he pens lyrics of God’s every-morning mercies and tireless love. His world has been stripped from him, but “the Lord is my portion,” he catechizes the inner man. “Therefore I will hope in him.”

Memory Raises a Star

He refuses to stop until he sees goodness even in this bleakest moment. Watch how he speaks to his soul and how far up the mountain he climbs to gain a higher perspective.

The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth. Let him sit alone in silence when it is laid on him; let him put his mouth in the dust — there may yet be hope; let him give his cheek to the one who strikes, and let him be filled with insults. . . . [But why?] For the Lord will not cast off forever, but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men. (Lamentations 3:25–33)

In a cave so black he cannot see his own hand, memory shines forth with starlight. His God’s self-revelation flashes from Sinai: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6). He sends his and the nation’s plight into the orbit of this God. He doesn’t indulge pain’s false preoccupation with self, but, bent in prayer, begins to see by faith flowers among the ruins, the goodness in a man bearing his yoke in his youth. And he travels to heaven’s throne to find his footing, reminding himself that his God will indeed afflict his people but not from his heart.

Though God will in no way clear the impenitent and guilty, he overspills in steadfast love and mercy toward his children. He loves them from his heart. His mercies that never cease flow continually to them from his essence. His goodness burns as a ball of fire above and beyond cold caves of grief. Jeremiah reasons to himself: God’s fatherly discipline will pass, our trials will someday cease, tears will have a final day, but his mercies shall never end — and they have not now ended. The sun, though distant, has not yet diminished.

Reader, are you suffering? What are you calling to mind? What promises from the faithful God do you need to seize? When all lights fade, Christian soul, the Lord is still your portion.

Call Him to Mind

Today, Jeremiah’s Lord has revealed himself more wonderfully still. When we call his truth to mind, the one we see is Jesus. Weary soul, are you remembering Jesus? The author of Hebrews exhorts us,

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. (Hebrews 12:1–3)

Desponding, struggling, exhausted saint, call the Lord Jesus to mind. Bring his sweet remembrance — and living presence — into the inner chambers. Think much of him, and the stone under your head shall become a pillow, the gall in your soul become sweetened. Do you feel weighed down by this life? Do sins cling to your mind? Do you begin to faint on the journey, tire from all the running, wonder how you will make it through the week? Look to Jesus. Call him to mind, and therefore have hope.

Look to him as the founder of your faith. The one who pioneered it, made it possible, laid the foundations, charged before you into battle. He is the architect, the great conqueror, your triumphant Alexander. He made the path, built the structure, leads into the battle of an already decided war. Does not the sight of him awaken fresh reserves to endure the broken edges of this life?

But not only the founder: he is the perfecter of your faith. Jesus is not like the foolish builder who begins a project without the resources to complete it. Look to Jesus; call him to mind, the finisher, the completer, the Perfecter of your faith. As you double over, begin to veer from the path, faint under the sun’s heat — see him at the finish line, as the finish line. He will bring you home; keep running. He is the one who finishes our faith (Philippians 1:6). He is the Great Shepherd — the great Perfectionist — unsatisfied with ninety-nine out of one hundred sheep brought home. Look to Jesus, troubled soul, the perfecter of your faith.

Died to Win Thee

Moreover, consider him “who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.” Consider him spit upon. Consider him stripped. Consider him whipped, mocked, and slapped. Consider him pierced. Consider him bleeding. Consider him paraded through the streets and placarded upon the tree. Consider that he endured this from sinners. Angels did not perform the salvific surgery — but orcs laid grimy hands on him, demons taunted him, men of foul breath spat upon him. He died shamefully, at the crossroads of Jerusalem, at the dirty hands of rotten men. Consider it; consider him: the very embodiment of God’s steadfast love and faithfulness.

As a man thinketh much of Christ in his heart, especially in his suffering, so like Christ he shall become, and with Christ he shall dwell eternally. In the lyrics of Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken, Christian,

Think what Spirit dwells within thee,Think what Father’s smiles are thine,Think that Jesus died to win thee,Child of heaven, canst thou repine?

Exhort one another . . . that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:13)

I longed to appear brave, mature, and full of faith in front of my revered mother-in-law, Anne Ortlund. But I couldn’t control the tears any longer. Her godly son, Ray, who happened to be my magnificent husband, was at yet another meeting with church leaders who were making it clear that he would soon be removed from his ministry as lead pastor at a church we dearly loved. For various reasons (from “we can’t explain why, but we just think this is for the best” to “his face is too Nordic-looking”), they were not only planning to let Ray go, but were also hinting that he should leave gospel ministry entirely.

We felt as if we had been run over by a big bus and were left lying on the pavement while life went on for everyone else. This trial was vastly different from any of the difficulties we had dealt with in our 36 years of ministry to that point. We were confused and scared. Mom Ortlund already knew some of the story. And on this visit with us from her home in California, she tried to listen to me patiently.

As she listened, however, she saw something in me that I had overlooked. And with the firm love of a faithful woman, she responded in a way I never expected — but so desperately needed.

‘Jani, Stop It’

Between sobs, I poured out my soul-crushing fears: “O Mom, I’m so afraid. What if they hammer Ray with more vague allegations? What if they keep insinuating that he should leave the ministry? You know how he has always lived in submission to his elders, but this is crazy. And I’m terrified. I never dreamed we’d be in this awful situation at age 58. Ray is even waking up with nightmares. I don’t know how to love him through this, how to be his helper. I’m just so scared.” I started sobbing even more uncontrollably. Then, as I started my next sentence, “What if . . .” Mom interrupted me.

I’ll never forget what she said. She was calm, but she was firm: “Jani, stop it.” She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t sigh in exasperation. And when her startled daughter-in-law caught her breath and looked up from her tissue-covered eyes, Mom just earnestly repeated herself. “Stop it, dear Jani.”

As you can imagine, Mom’s comment shocked me. I caught my breath. I was barely able to blurt out, “What do you mean?” I had been hoping for affirmation, sympathy, and even a bit of righteous anger. But what I received was a strong, brief exhortation from a saintly woman I deeply trusted. Mom went on to tell me that no one would be helped by my all-consuming panic. There were no answers to my “What if . . .” questions. And the best way I could help my dear Ray was to stop wallowing in my fears.

“Did you know, Jani, that ‘fear not’ is the most repeated command in the Bible? We are told over 365 times to ‘fear not.’ That’s at least one ‘fear not’ for every day of the year.” Maybe everyone else knows that about the Bible, but I didn’t. It was a new thought, and I needed it.

Escaping the Snare

Notice what my mother-in-law was wisely doing. She didn’t join my fear-fest, but stayed deeply rooted in her Lord and his word — and she helped me get there too. She lovingly exhorted me, “with complete patience and teaching” (2 Timothy 4:2), to stop letting my fears be my king, reigning over my broken heart and confused mind. She challenged me to ask myself why I was bowing to my fears and allowing them to rule me at that moment.

Proverbs 29:25 says, “The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.” I had grown so afraid of what these men could do to Ray and our family that I had lost sight of the Object of my faith. And the more I obsessed over my fears, the more ensnared I became, to the point that I was caving into despair.

Mom’s faithful and firm exhortation helped free me from the strong trap of fear. How did it help me? Mom understood in that moment that I needed more than sympathy. Fear’s deceitful entanglement was holding me captive, and I needed someone not merely to commiserate with me, but to help me escape fear’s grip.

Mom faced an emotionally hard choice as I stood there crying. She could either coddle my fears or confront them. If she had coddled my fears out of fear of my disapproval, she would have become ensnared by “the fear of man.” Coddling me might have initially felt kind, but ultimately it would have proven cruel because her “kindness” would have left me trapped by fear. Instead, Mom chose the difficult path of confrontation. And her faith encouraged my faith, which helped cut through the snare I was trapped in.

Why Don’t We Exhort?

Why did my mother-in-law’s exhortation surprise me so much? Doesn’t God’s word tell us to “exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13)?

Yes, it does. But I suspect that for many of us, true exhortation happens far less frequently than “every day.” Maybe we fear becoming like Job’s counselors, who exhorted their suffering friend without wisdom or kindness. Maybe we want to obey James’s counsel to be “quick to hear” (James 1:19) — and Paul’s command to “comfort one another” (2 Corinthians 13:11). Maybe we have rarely seen exhortation done well.

These concerns are all understandable. We should listen patiently, speak slowly, and be eager to comfort. We should beware of bludgeoning others with poorly applied counsel. But if these biblical priorities nudge out the clear biblical command to also “exhort one another,” then something has gone wrong in our hearts and relationships.

I wonder if, for myself and many others, fear itself is the main hindrance to more biblical exhortation. But sisters, sin is a snare, a trap, a deep pit — and godly exhortation is one of the ways we protect each other from becoming (or staying) trapped. If we’re going to grow in Christ, we need not only kind sympathy but firm love.

Blessed Exhortation

My mother-in-law proved to be a faithful sister to me that night, leading me to our wise King. While she cared deeply for her suffering son, she knew that succumbing to fear would only make the situation worse. As believers, we do not fight fear by trying to drum up enough courage. We fight fear by faith — faith in the God who invites us to bring our fears to him and let his peace, which passes all understanding, guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:6–7).

Only one fear should capture our hearts: the fear of the Lord. As Psalm 112 tells us, “Blessed is the man who fears the Lord. . . . He is not afraid of bad news; his heart is firm, trusting in the Lord. His heart is steady; he will not be afraid” (verses 1, 7–8).

I’m deeply grateful for my mother-in-law’s wise and loving exhortation that night. It was a turning point in my life. What if she had feared speaking into my fears? I would not have been able to clothe myself with “strength and dignity” (Proverbs 31:25) as Ray and I walked through those dark days together — and far beyond. I would not have been a good helper for my beloved husband. And I would not have experienced the peace and strength that come from turning to Christ, for “whoever trusts in the Lord is safe” (Proverbs 29:25).

I’m so glad she pointed me to him. What a blessed exhortation!

Audio Transcript

Pop the confetti — we have arrived at episode number 2000 on the Ask Pastor John podcast. Wow! What better way to celebrate than with a question about how to make our lives count? That’s a major theme of your ministry, Pastor John — not wasting our lives. Today’s question comes from a teenager named Payton. Parents and grandparents of teens, here’s a heads-up: this is one of those episodes you may want to pass along to the teens in your life.

Here’s the question: “Pastor John, hello. My name is Payton, and I’m fifteen years old. I have listened to your sermons and to this podcast over the past year, and it has been truly very helpful in my Christian walk. As a fifteen-year-old, how can I make a difference in the world as a Christian? How can I make my life count?”

Okay, here are my twelve rules for fifteen-year-olds. Actually, twelve rules for teenagers. Most of them are applicable to girls as well, if they just make a slight twist. But Payton is a boy, so I’m thinking this way for him.

1. Honor your parents.

“Honor your father and mother” (Ephesians 6:1–2). These are ways to make your life count. “Honor your father and mother.” Never treat them with contempt or belittle them behind their back or around your friends. That is a mark of honoring them. It is a mark of maturity, and it is pleasing to the Lord.

2. Savor the Bible.

“Ransack your Bible every day, and pray for its greatest impact in your life. Don’t just read it — devour it.”

Ransack your Bible every day, and pray for its greatest impact in your life. Don’t just read it — devour it. Dig into it the way a miser searches for gold and silver. Ask God every time you open your Bible, “Show me wonderful things here, great things, life-changing things” (see Psalm 119:18). Savor it the way you savor your favorite food. When you stop reading, meditate on it day and night (Psalm 1:2). Take it with you. You’ll be “like a tree planted by streams of water” (Psalm 1:3). You won’t be like a leaf blown around by the wind.

3. Focus on character.

Don’t focus on making good grades in school. Focus on really learning all you can and using all of that learning to turn you into a man of character. The Bible clearly calls us to grow in grace, in knowledge (2 Peter 3:18). It never calls us to make good grades. Grades will take care of themselves if you really squeeze the most learning out of every course in high school that you can.

4. Choose schools wisely.

If you get to choose your school, say high school or college, don’t choose a school because of its popularity or its library or its sports teams or its size or its parties. Choose it because of the wisdom of its faculty. Choose teachers, not courses; choose teachers, not schools. Proverbs 13:20 says, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise.”

5. Date for marriage.

Save dating girls for the time when marriage is a real option. Put it off till then. The concept of dating as a kind of mere recreation in our Western culture is not wise. Our attraction to the opposite sex, built in by God — it’s a good thing. It’s designed by God to lead to the great and wonderful satisfaction of marriage. That’s what it’s for.

Do things with other boys and other girls in groups, and save the one-on-one dating till you’re ready to consider marriage seriously. I dated for the first time (with a pounding heart) when I was 20 years old, and I married her. We’re still married and happy 55 years later. It was a good choice.

6. Stay busy ‘doing.’

Number six comes from my father. He said, “Be so busy ‘doing’ that you don’t have time to ‘don’t.’” Now, that was his response to the fact that the Bible does indeed say there are a lot of “don’ts.” There are a lot of things we should not do as teenagers or adults, some because they’re outright wrong, but many just because they’re not helpful. They’re weights, not sins. It’s like wearing an overcoat when you run a marathon. That’s not against the rules; it’s just stupid.

These things, we know, don’t build our faith. They don’t keep our minds pure. So my dad’s solution was not to harp on all the things that wise Christians don’t do, but instead to fill your life with so many good and helpful things that you don’t have time for the questionable things: “Be so busy ‘doing’ that you don’t have time to ‘don’t.’” (See Galatians 6:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:13; 1 Corinthians 15:58.)

7. Be passionate, not lazy.

What your hand finds to do, do it with all your might (see Ecclesiastes 9:10). If you want your life to count, you can’t be half-hearted. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing passionately. Colossians 3:23 says, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.”

Or consider Romans 12:11: “Do not be slothful in zeal [our contemporary word for zeal is passion], be fervent in spirit [the literal translation is boiling — ‘be boiling in spirit’], serve the Lord.” So, don’t be lazy, but be zealous or passionate; not lukewarm, but fervent or boiling in the spirit. Be done with half-heartedness.

8. Offer up your gifts.

Don’t fret over gifts you don’t have, but take the few you do have and put them in the hands of Christ, like the boy with the five loaves and two fish in his hands. He put them in the hands of Jesus. Your hand shouldn’t say to your eye, “Because I’m not an eye, I’m of no use to the body.” That’s 1 Corinthians 12:21, adapted (see also 1 Corinthians 12:15–16). I regard this as one of the most important lessons I ever learned.

As I went through school, I saw more and more clearly what I was not good at. If I had focused on that, on what I’m not good at — oh my goodness. There’s a long list of things I’m not good at. I’ve never made any sports teams, for example, and I read so slowly, and my memory is so poor. On and on my weaknesses go.

If I had focused on them, I think I would have accomplished nothing. Instead, I saw two or three things I could do, and I could do them as well as others, maybe even better. And I said, “Lord, help me not to waste energy on bemoaning what I can’t do, and help me to do what I can do with all my might. Take it. Use it. Make it count.”

9. Don’t be a people-pleaser.

Don’t be a people-pleaser. Paul says in Galatians 1:10, “Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

Now, that’s not as simple as you might think because there are other texts that say we should try to please others, like Romans 15:2: “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” To please others, to help them be stronger in faith, is good. It’s not about you. It’s about trusting Christ, seeing Christ, knowing Christ.

But pleasing others to pump up our ego or to avoid criticism of us or to escape suffering or hardship — that’s not good. Be mature enough to know how not to offend others, and then be utterly indifferent to other people’s praise when your own ego or your own safety is at stake. Do what’s right, and let the chips fall where they will.

10. Fail well.

Don’t be defeated by failures. If you never fail at anything, you are not trying enough things. You haven’t taken enough risks if you never fail. We all begin as failures — all of us. That’s what sin is — it’s a failure. To honor God as we ought, we all begin as “F,” and the punishment is hell. Paul says in Romans 7:15–19 that, even after he is converted, he stumbles in many ways, doing what he does not want to do.

But here is the glory of the gospel of Christ (and our lives are built on the gospel): He covered our sins. He imputed righteousness to us that we don’t have natively. Our acceptance with God is not earned. So we say with Paul in Philippians 3:13, “One thing I do: forgetting what lies behind . . .” He had lots of things he needed to forget.

We all have failures. I mean, every day we don’t measure up to the way we would like to talk to people or treat people. If we are crushed by those things, we’ll never count. So don’t look back like that. “Forgetting what lies behind,” Paul says, “and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:13–14). Don’t be defeated by past failures.

11. Fight sin and temptation.

“You will not be used by God for anything great if you live in compromise with sin.”

“Make no provision for the flesh.” That’s Romans 13:14. Know the things and the times and the places that lure you to sin, and avoid them. You will not be used by God for anything great if you live in compromise with sin, and one crucial way to fight sin is to head it off at the pass. Don’t put yourself in any position where sin typically gets the upper hand. That may be sexual sin or the temptation to greed, pride, anger, or whatever your typical temptation is.

12. Live to magnify Christ.

Finally, don’t live to stay alive. Live to make much of Christ. I love Acts 20:24, where Paul says, “I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus.” The point of life is not to stay alive. It’s to magnify the greatness of Jesus. As Paul puts it in Philippians 1:20, “It is my eager expectation and hope that . . . Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”

Seek to do these twelve things, and I promise you: your life will count.

Being admitted to the mental hospital didn’t feel like God’s mercy to me. It seemed more like a cruelty. I wanted to be “depression-free.” I thought that was a God-honoring goal to strive toward. With a household to run and a family to care for, there seemed no time to be downcast. I was tired of being sidelined by sadness.

But I was worn by conflicts and child-rearing challenges. Though I had tried so hard for so long to “keep calm and carry on,” the continual striving to be emotionally stable seemed futile. I would feel “fine” only for a time. Then I would crash.

Perhaps the worst sensation of all was the perceived absence of the Lord I loved. I couldn’t reconcile my sorrows with his apparent indifference. It seemed as if he had “forgotten to be gracious” to me — as if “in anger” he had “shut up his compassion” (Psalm 77:9). Surely God saw how hard I’d been trying and knew how long I had been crying. So why let me sit in a darkness that I’d been striving for years to stay out of? I felt so ashamed of my struggles. I felt like a God-forsaken failure.

It wasn’t until I was hospitalized that God let me hear how cruel my self-talk had become. I was so determined to be free from depression that the restless pursuit of that goal became my motive for living. In desperation, my hope shifted off of Christ and onto a change I couldn’t produce on my own. So, whenever hurt and heartbreak left me feeling overwhelmed again — whenever I couldn’t “snap out” of my miserable mood — I felt like an embarrassment of a believer. I despaired of life itself.

Unbeknownst to me — yet fully known to God — desperation had driven me away from his grace (Galatians 3:3; 5:4).

Unexpected Rescue

Understandably, what I wanted most in that season of motherhood was deliverance. But unexpectedly, God rescued me instead from my merciless mindset. He already knew I had no righteousness of my own to boast in; I was the one who had trouble accepting that fact. I couldn’t even leave the locked hall I was on, let alone escape the prison of darkness. I viewed my experience of depression as not only undesirable, but unforgivable.

God saw how I condemned myself. I had been treating my Savior’s blood as an incomplete covering for the dark night of the soul, as if I should have been able to suffer my sorrows without difficulty — suffer them perfectly.

That week in the ward, I came to see God’s compassion toward me more clearly, and not because he ordained a miraculous change in my circumstances. Rather, he showed me it wasn’t his voice that was roaring with condemnation. His words were, “Come to me,” not “Get over it”; “Take my rest,” not “Try harder” (Matthew 11:28). He was inviting me to take up a yoke I could manage in my weary condition — a burden far lighter than I had been forcing myself to carry.

Jesus wasn’t the one insisting that I pull myself out of the pit. He was the one calling me to take refuge in him as he walked me through the dark.

God Not Hurried

As I learned after years of fighting against despondency, what we count as God’s slowness or indifference is actually his patience toward us as he works redemptively in our lives (2 Peter 3:9; 1 Timothy 1:16). Yes, there are times when a fix-it-fast approach is an appropriate response to the problem at hand. But God’s methods for mending the hearts and reviving the spirits of his people are often less hurried. While the Great Physician can be trusted to do this restorative work according to his promise, he does so at a pace that seems good to him and suits his eternal purposes.

Despite our sense of urgency, there are no emergencies to him who holds our times in his hands (Psalm 31:15).

God’s unhurried pace can be a challenging reality for us to grasp, particularly in depression. When God’s help seems unbearably slow, it can appear as though he’s withholding it altogether. And when we fear he has shut up his compassion and forgotten to be gracious toward us, we may think we must climb out of the pit of despair on our own. Hurt by what seems like a lack of sympathy, we may groan to God as Job in his angst: “You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me” (Job 30:21).

Feeling God-forsaken, we may double down on our efforts to be strong and steady in ourselves. Perhaps we’re even able to feel “fine” or “better” for a period of time. But ultimately, self-reliance proves itself unreliable. We crash and despair of life itself. We need outside help. We need rescue.

We need mercy.

Timely, Tender Mercy

I confess — I felt as if God had turned cruel to me in that sorrowful season of motherhood. But in the hospital, the Spirit helped me to reinterpret God’s dealings with me. Through his word, I was reminded that the Lord is never surprised by his people’s desperation. My Maker knew how helpless I’d feel on dark days before a single one of them came to pass (Psalm 139:16). He foresaw every hardship, conflict, grief, and pain I would endure. He knew every one of the ways I would sin in word, thought, and deed.

He knew I would need help, rescue, mercy.

Then the Spirit testified to God’s nature — that he loves to comfort (not condemn) the downcast (2 Corinthians 7:6). That he has pity on his weak and needy children (Psalm 72:13). That for the sake of his holy name, the Father of mercies sent his Son to suffer my sorrows perfectly. According to his “tender mercy” (Luke 1:78), the Lord stepped into my darkness to do what I could not.

“For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). At the perfect time, Jesus saved me from experiencing eternal darkness (Romans 5:6). He patiently worked himself to death to deliver me from perpetual sorrow. To see Jesus at the apex of his anguish is to perceive his mercy more clearly in my own.

Better Motive

According to God’s merciful plan, Jesus was raised to life from the deepest darkness of all. That meant underneath my pit of despair were the everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27). And those strong and steady arms held forth the hands that knit me together — hands that were not embarrassed to be engraved with my name (Isaiah 49:16). These palms were pierced for me so I could have hope in my miserable-yet-momentary affliction (2 Corinthians 4:17). What more work was there for me to do but rest myself in them?

I still had the gospel to share and Christ’s love to give. There was no better motive to keep carrying on when the darkness wouldn’t lift.

The week I’d spent in the mental hospital didn’t feel like mercy to me at the time, but the kindness God gave me there led my heart to peace and repentance (Romans 2:4). I didn’t have to be depression-free before I could live for the glory of God; Christ’s sinless life and sacrifice freed me from the unbearable burden to be perfect in myself. Since Jesus obeyed God’s will unto death, I could die to my desire for quick relief and live for walking by faith, one small step at a time.

I couldn’t feel better fast, but I could entrust myself “to a faithful Creator while doing good” (1 Peter 4:19). I could learn to rest in Christ as long as the darkness lasts.