To say that some sermons reach the pulpit half-baked would be unfair to bread. Some sermons are barely dough; some little more than a collection of dry ingredients. The sermon, as a sermon, is barely begun, largely unappetizing, not particularly nourishing, lacking the enticing taste and texture of a fresh-baked loaf.

What is the problem? Perhaps the preacher is a recent seminary graduate rehearsing his lectures on a certain book of the Bible. Perhaps he has lacked teaching or had poor teaching and example. Perhaps the preacher has not thought about what preaching is and what it involves. As a result, he is not actually preaching, even if sincerely persuaded that he is.

He may be delivering a lecture rather than a sermon, even if warmer rather than cooler in tone. He may offer “hot systematics” — an accurate treatment of a theological topic delivered with deep conviction. He may provide a biblical-theological survey, tracing the sweep of revelation along a particular line, but not anchored to any one part of it. Perhaps he is offering, in fact, a single technical treatment of a portion of Scripture or a biblical topic that actually lasts about forty hours, delivered in chunks between thirty and sixty minutes.

Sometimes fire in the pulpit masks a lack of warmth in the material, like delivering a frozen pizza in a heated bag. Often the context is provided, all the words are explained, the strict sense is given. By the end of such a sermon, the congregation might know much of what a text says. At the same time, they may know nothing of what it actually means for them.

Better to Taste the Orange

The eminent Baptist theologian and minister Andrew Fuller criticized some sermons this way:

The great thing necessary for expounding the Scriptures is to enter into their true meaning. We may read them, and talk about them, again and again, without imparting any light concerning them. If the hearer, when you have done, understand no more of that part of Scripture than he did before, your labor is lost. Yet this is commonly the case with those attempts at expounding which consist of little else than comparing parallel passages, or, by the help of a Concordance, tracing the use of the same word in other places, going from text to text till both the preacher and the people are wearied and lost. This is troubling the Scriptures rather than expounding them.

If I were to open a chest of oranges among my friends, and, in order to ascertain their quality, were to hold up one, and lay it down; then hold up another, and say, This is like the last; then a third, a fourth, a fifth, and so on, till I came to the bottom of the chest, saying of each, It is like the other; of what account would it be? The company would doubtless be weary, and had much rather have tasted two or three of them. (Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, 1:712–13)

It may be that the preacher has exhausted his technical commentaries and himself and is now ready to exhaust his congregation (often allied to the assertion that it takes a good forty hours to prepare a single decent sermon). It may be that he is a slave to the historical-critical approach. Whatever the reason, he thinks he has finished his preparation when in fact he has only just begun.

Preaching Like a Puritan

So, how might the preacher correct himself? The Puritans provide help. The simplest point of departure might be the outline of the typical Puritan sermon. The three main divisions of such a sermon consist in the doctrine, the reasons, and the uses of the text.

DOCTRINE

Bear in mind that, separate from the sermon, the Puritan minister might already have given himself to “exposition” of a longer portion of Scripture (Matthew Henry’s commentary, for example, reflects his morning and evening expositions of the Bible, whereas his sermons were of a different order altogether). In other words, if a Puritan could hear you speak, he might commend you for your exposition, and then politely ask when you intend to preach!

This may be a slight exaggeration, but all our exegetical labor really only gets us to the point at which we can accurately explain the text and state its doctrine or doctrines. It is the first and most basic building block of the text. The typical modern preacher may invest ninety percent of his sermonic time and matter in providing what the typical Puritan may offer in ten percent of his sermonic time and matter, or less.

REASONS

Once the text has been explained in context and the doctrine stated (perhaps with some additional scriptural evidence for its substance), the Puritan proceeds to reasons and uses. We might call this approach “pastoral preaching.” The aim is not merely to instruct a gathering of students, but to feed the souls of the flock of Christ.

The reasons develop the doctrine that the text of Scripture has supplied, bringing it to bear upon the particular congregation to which the preacher is speaking. While the doctrine itself might be universal, it is not just the context of the text that is important, but the context into which the text is preached. The doctrine means something to the people in front of the preacher. They need to understand how and why it is true, and what it means for their thinking and feeling and willing. Men and women, boys and girls, need to be convinced of this doctrine; it needs to be brought close, brought home. This truth is not abstract, but concrete. It intrudes into their lives; it fashions their thought processes; it forms and informs their responses. God is speaking to them in his word.

USES

Often, when a Puritan moves into the phase of uses, or application, the modern preacher is stunned: What did these men think they were doing up to that point? A faithful Puritan would get closer to the heart in his reasons than many preachers today do in their most pressing applications. This is where the Puritans excelled as physicians of souls. William Perkins, for example, suggested an application grid that extended across seven possible groups in the congregation, to whom the truth could be applied in various ways.

The truth makes a difference to those who hear it, individually and congregationally, in relation to God, to themselves, to one another (in their several different relations), and to the world at large. It speaks to them as believing or unbelieving, as needing doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16–17). The Puritan knows that he cannot make someone think or feel or will or act in a certain way simply by his eloquence, but he lays his spiritual charges carefully and closely, dependent on the Holy Spirit to operate in his own convincing and convicting and converting divine power.

The whole sermon would be bound up with reiterations of the truth and appeals to the conscience, rising to a crescendo of pastoral intensity and affection. No hearer need doubt that a living man speaks the living word to living men in the presence of the living God. No hearer need doubt that this man speaks God’s truth to me, because he loves me, and that he expects and desires this truth to change me.

Bake the Bread

Preachers beyond the Puritans have excelled in such an approach. If you read Spurgeon’s sermons, you will often see just this kind of structure lying in the background (not surprising, given his affection for the Puritans). The comical old “three-pointer,” so easily mocked and dismissed, is not just a casual or clever division of the text, but is often a simpler presentation of the same basic mode. The same could be said of the sermonic method of other gifted and effective preachers of the past and the present. They do more than simply state the text. Having grasped its truth, and considered and felt it for themselves, they bring it to bear upon the congregation with the desire and expectation that it will have its God-intended impact upon them (Isaiah 55:11).

So, how can we improve? Don’t just hold up the oranges; let the people taste the fruit. Don’t merely trouble the text. Commit to understanding not only God’s word but also people’s hearts, and knowing their lives. Love your people enough to preach like a pastor, not just teach like a lecturer. If need be, spend less time analyzing and more time meditating and praying. Study to preach heartfelt sermons rather than to deliver tame and toothless homilies. Read good preachers (including various Puritans) and commentaries that suggest lines of lively application. Physically sit in the seats of particular people in the building where you meet, and pray for wisdom to speak to them in their situation. Look people in the eye as you speak to the congregation. Be willingly subject to the Spirit’s influence in the act of preaching.

To return to the bakery, mix the ingredients of your sermon, let it rise in contemplation, knead it thoroughly in prayer, let it prove in meditation, bake it well in your own heart, and serve it warm from the pulpit. In dependence on the Spirit, nourish the very souls of the hearers.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast. Is the hobby of watercolor painting a wartime waste of time and money? That’s the question today from a listener named Amy. “Pastor John, hello to you, and thank you for your ministry over these many years,” she writes. “I have benefitted greatly from it. Your ‘seashells’ message was especially profound to me.” Yes, one of the classic John Piper sermons, which is titled, “Boasting Only in the Cross,” preached on May 20, 2000. “But that sermon left me with a lingering question I’ve never resolved. Would you consider all hobbies, like seashell collecting, a waste of life?

“I ask because I recently took up watercolor painting. I keep asking myself, Does this glorify God? And to what purpose does this further his kingdom? I’m not sure it does. Painting is a relaxing stress-reliever for me, and I have enjoyed using it to make homemade cards for people. But it seems it’s mostly for my benefit and enjoyment. You clearly have a category for hobbies — when Tony recently asked you to name your favorite hobbies, you said Scrabble with Noël and making your yard look perfect (in APJ 1882). So, what guidelines can you offer us wartime Christians to discern when hobbies are God-glorifying and when they become life-wasting?”

When I first tackled this question nine years ago on APJ, I was reading biographies at the time — books about Hudson Taylor and by Hudson Taylor, the missionary. And I think Hudson Taylor, at that time and now (if he were alive), would answer this question pretty bluntly and say, “Come on, come on, let’s give our lives for the cause of the gospel, especially world evangelization.” So, I have that ringing in my ears even to this day. And I don’t want to soft-pedal how radical the Christian life is by being culturally adapting as a Christian and ignoring the horrific plight of the lost and the unreached of this world.

But here’s what I think needs to be said biblically. (We want to be biblical and not just draw out our own inferences from situations that may not accord with God’s word.)

Warning Against Worldliness

Yes, some people waste their lives playing. We just have to admit that. They do. Their whole life is jumping from one fun thing to the next. What they really get excited about, and what they spend most of their time (most of their life) thinking about, is the next gadget, or the next vacation, or the next streaming video series, or the next concert, or the next movie.

If you want to get them animated, bring that up, not Jesus. Don’t bring up salvation — they won’t have anything to say. There’s no emotional kick there at all. Not the hope of glory, not adoption into God’s family, not the forgiveness of sins, not the miracles of Jesus. Just, “What did you watch last week?” And whoa — they come alive with all kinds of verbal statements that show they can talk if they want to talk; they can feel if they want to feel. And those people give little thought to the biblical truth that their life is not their own.

Paul said, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20). That’s what you should think about with your body, your eyes, your ears, your hands, your tongue. “Glorify God in your body.” What could be more wonderful, more clear, more radical than that statement? You are not your own. You belong to God. Make him look great!

And when you do, be excited about that. Do that with your hobbies. Those people act as if they can do whatever they please with no reference to the one who owns them or bought them. And those people need to hit pause on their life and ask, “Am I really born again? Do I have any of the affections of my Lord Jesus or my Father in heaven? Or are they all worldly?”

Three Guiding Questions

So, to me, if you operate from that verse (1 Corinthians 6:19), then you ask of your hobbies (and it doesn’t make any difference whether the hobbies are collecting coins or shells or climbing mountains), “Is this the Lord’s will for my life, which he bought, which he owns?” And to answer that question about the will of God, you ask, “Am I glorifying him in this hobby? Is this hobby serving to make him look great and beautiful and valuable? Is it making me like one who values his glory above everything?”

“Is this hobby serving to make God look great and beautiful and valuable?”

Paul said, “Whether you eat or drink [or do a hobby], or whatever you do” — whether you climb mountains, or hunt deer, or collect coins, or do crossword puzzles, or collect shells, or paint watercolors — “do all,” he says, “to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). Make Christ look like the treasure that he is.

Now, how does that happen in hobbies or in leisure or in recreation? Because I think it does. I will just mention three ways, three questions to ask.

1. Is it God-exalting?

Is the hobby (the leisure, the recreation, the hobby itself) a participation in God-exalting experiences? Now, this is not mainly about the effects of the hobby, but what it is in itself. Do you see God in it? Does your spirit come alive to God in it? Or is it dragging you down? Is it leading you to be more distant from Christ, more indifferent to him, more in love with the world and less in love with him?

Now, I can easily imagine Amy’s watercolor hobby feeding her soul spiritually as she looks at the world with the eyes of a worshipful Christian, as she sees the glory of God and seeks to capture some of that beauty in what she paints, all the while being amazed that she herself is a kind of creator in the image of her Creator. It seems to me that most hobbies that involve making things could have this worshipful effect of experiencing the wonder of being a maker like our God is a Maker, and then bending what we have made to God’s service, so that both the process and the product reflect God’s glory.

2. Is it truly refreshing?

Is the hobby (the leisure, the recreation) refreshing you physically, emotionally, spiritually for the other parts of your life where you need energy and focus to live for God’s glory as part of your vocation or part of your family? Or is the hobby depleting you and weakening you and making you less able to do that part of your life to the glory of God?

This is a question about physical depletion and spiritual depletion or weakening (or even deadening). We need to be really honest about whether what we’re focusing on for hours is shaping our minds for greater spiritual alertness and wisdom and love and worship — or misshaping our minds to be more at home with sin.

3. Does it serve your relationships?

How is your hobby or leisure or recreation serving your relationships with other people for their good? I ask it like that rather than what I used to say, way back nine years ago, when I thought about this question. Namely, I asked, “Are you involving other people in your hobby?” I’m not saying that now, because I realized that there are recreations or hobbies or diversions that are specifically designed to isolate you, but not selfishly — not selfishly, but for loving reasons. For example, one of the things I like to do (besides Scrabble and yard work), when I’m not under pressure to do what everybody else expects me to do, is to write poetry.

“How is your hobby or leisure or recreation serving your relationships with other people for their good?”

Now, this would be like Amy’s watercolors, I think, only probably I am much more insistent than she would be that I must be left alone. She might be able to paint with people around her. I can’t. Writing, especially disciplined creative writing, is intensely focused action. I cannot do it while others are around me. So, the hobby itself is not gregarious — it’s isolationist. But my aim is always to write to be read. I want to speak to somebody what I’m writing. I want to use it to encourage them and to glorify God with it. I want the poems to capture something about God and his word and his world that will awaken others to what I saw and experienced in a way that magnifies Christ.

So, I think it is a good question to ask, How is your hobby or your leisure serving your relationships with other people for their good? The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 16:14, “Let all that you do be done in love.” So he said, on the one hand, “All that you do, do it to the glory of God” (see 1 Corinthians 10:31). And here he is saying (which I think is a subset), “Let all that you do be done in love” — love for people. So, it is a good biblical question for all our hobbies. Is this expressing my love for others? Is this hobby forming me into a person who cares for others, wants to live for others’ good, is willing to sacrifice for others?

Wartime Hobbies

So, I think if we’re honest with those three questions, the financial part of the hobby will probably take care of itself. In other words, I think the God-focused, ministry-focused, love-focused emphasis of those questions will put a governor on any exorbitant spending in our support of the hobby. We live in a very needy world, and one of the effects of those three questions will be to make us more alive to those needs so that we embrace a wartime lifestyle for the good of the world and the glory of Christ.

“Could she have included Jane in the scheme, every part would have been perfect.” So thinks Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. If only her sister were there, if only they could go for walks together, all would be complete — then she would be perfectly happy.

Yet another moment’s reflection teaches her a lesson untraveled by much of humanity:

“But it is fortunate,” thought she, “that I have something to wish for. Were the whole arrangement complete, my disappointment would be certain. But here, my carrying with me one ceaseless source of regret in my sister’s absence, I may reasonably hope to have all my expectations of pleasure realized. A scheme of which every part promises delight can never be successful; and general disappointment is only warded off by the defense of some little particular vexation.” (166)

Did you catch it? This paragraph will be surgical if you let it. Upon reflection, Elizabeth discovers that she doesn’t really want her sister there at all. Why? Because she wants to maintain at least one excuse for why she isn’t finally happy. She knows that if her sister comes — if they go for their walks through the gardens — she will still not possess that happiness she longs for. And what is worse: she will no longer possess any reason for why not. What then?

Then she would have to turn and face it: she does not know what will finally make her happy, what will finally banish the ache. Maybe in the end, all hopes are false. Should she risk touching bottom? No, thinks she, the shallow disappointment of a missing sister must shield from the deeper, tongueless throb silenced of rebuttals.

Chasing Our Tail

What makes Elizabeth’s reasoning so unsettling is that she knows her sister would not fulfill her happiness — yet she prefers deception to reality. Her passions rise in mutiny against reason; she allows them the helm without struggle. She prefers to wish for her sister than to have her sister (and so break the spell). Does that sound familiar (though we are less honest)? Sure, we sigh loudly enough, but have we ever noticed the relief that comes from realizing at least one of our Janes is elsewhere, and so certain disappointment is kept at bay?

Peter Kreeft describes man’s plight this way:

If he experiences winning, he is not happy for long; but if he plays with the hope of winning, he can be happy for a long time by being both diverted (by playing) and deluded (believing he’d be truly happy if he won). Success is the sure spoiler. We are happy only climbing the mountain, not staying peacefully on the summit; only chasing the fox, not catching it; only courting, not marrying; only traveling, not arriving; only fighting wars, not keeping a boring peace. (Christianity for Modern Pagans, 181)

Success is the sure spoiler. And so, the 27-year-old Tom Brady gives an interview with 60 Minutes atop the world’s mountain — three Super Bowl rings, fame, money, power — only to question, Is this it? There has to be more . . . And so, Yo-Yo Ma tells the story of getting halfway through a perfect concert — for which he trained his whole life — only to notice, of all things, his own perfect boredom. And so, the king of Ecclesiastes, who denied his heart no pleasure, writes over and over from within a stupor, “All is vanity.” Elizabeth, with great foresight, knows the yawn found at the world’s mountaintop, as we should too, if only we were brave enough to sit in a silent room and consider it.

Well at the World’s End

I wonder if our love for the chase but not the catch, the distraction but not the dominion, doesn’t also explain some of envy’s saltiness. If jealousy be that “green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on,” have we no pleasure in being consumed?

We have a saying for finding our unmet desires (our Janes) living in another’s lawn: “The grass is always greener on the other side.” But what if we almost prefer it that way? What if our neighbor’s green grass (so pristine from this side of the fence) keeps our hopes of greater happiness watered and fed? Perhaps if we were unfortunate enough to receive an invitation into our neighbor’s yard, we might make the ill-fated discovery that our grass, in fact, is just as green (if not greener). What now?

This is orphaned man: we have not known what we desire, yet we say it is just over there. Boys chasing dragons through the forest. “On whatever plane you take it, it is not what we were looking for,” C.S. Lewis writes. He whispers what we already know over our shoulders:

Lust can be gratified. Another personality can become to us “our America, our New-found-land.” A happy marriage can be achieved. But what has any of the three, or any mixture of the three, to do with that unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of a bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves? (Afterword to The Pilgrim’s Regress, 237)

No idol has yet stayed true to its promises — but who could live in a world without worship? Should the next love, next promotion, next child finally be that ladder who makes a name for itself by placing its top in the heavens? We know (oh, we know). They too will fail to punctuate; our desires will remain running sentences. We thirst but cannot find the Stream, but our thirst proves there is a stream somewhere. “Nature makes nothing in vain” (237). “Nearly there now” — the refrain of our lives. But we’ve been “there” before. The nearer we got, the browner the water. We are lovers of if only.

Walk with Elizabeth

If I were to go on a walk with Elizabeth, I would tell her exactly what she fears to know: The child of her joy is too thin and frail to survive. Her honeyed hope is false, and she is but half-serious about living to be so freely swallowed by a dream. But the irrepressible longing to crown something her mirth’s monarch is not given in vain.

Her God has placed it there.

But she stands evicted from such heights of happiness, gripping a branch below with broken wings because of sin. Justice holds a rifle at her; her life (and joy) hang by a thread sustained by the God she has sought to find happiness without. She has not honored him or given him thanks, and so that “God-shaped hole in her heart” — along with her God-programmed conscience — bears witness (graciously) to her estrangement (Romans 1:21; 2:15). Both denounce her pride and her prejudice, and point her, if she has eyes to see, to the Lord of glory who authored her.

“If only” cannot defend against the inevitable disappointment (and what is much worse) of a life unreconciled to God. Only Christ can, who “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). And this Christ, fully God and fully man, through his sinless life and substitutionary death and subsequent resurrection, received by faith and repentance and evidenced by living obedience, offers to put his joy — supernatural joy — in you. “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

Here, and nowhere else, can your joy be made full. One drink from this well, says he, and you shall never thirst again.

There was a bucket of electric bouncy balls, not a baby, in my stomach. He just never stopped moving. Usually the jabs and kicks gave me comfort — “Call the doctor if you haven’t felt the baby move in a while,” they say. I had no reason to pick up the phone, so instead I came up with one that would keep me up all night.

“I wonder why he moves so much,” I said to my husband before bed. As he reached for the lights, I grabbed my phone. What does it mean if your baby moves a lot? I typed into Google. My stomach dropped as I read the first result: “High Fetal Movement Associated with Stillbirth.”

Like I said, I didn’t sleep that night.

Psalms and Search Engines

I wonder how many twenty-first-century tech-saturated Christian mothers, like myself, abide by their own translation of Philippians 4:6: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything let your requests be made known to Google.” When we remove prayer, supplication, thanksgiving, and — above all — God from the equation, we forfeit all chance of experiencing any lasting end to our motherly anxiety. We cannot type, scroll, click, and read our way to peace. There is no “peace of Google,” only the peace of God (Philippians 4:7). And for that, we must pray.

Which can be quite difficult for expectant mothers to do. Burdened for the children we cannot hold but deeply love, our minds tend to tumble down hypothetical rabbit holes: “How long has it been since the baby kicked? Shouldn’t the kicks be harder? Is the baby really growing? Am I eating enough? How much should I be eating?” Pounding heart, tight lips, it seems far easier to search, our fingers frantic, than to seek God in prayer.

That’s where the book of Psalms comes in. For millennia, restless saints have fled to its pages. When we lack our own words, enough calm, or even the desire to pray, the Psalms hand us hundreds of ways to talk to God. Consider, for example, how an anxious expectant mother might use Psalm 139 to pray for herself and her unborn child.

‘You See’

Because of the sheer fact that we cannot see our unborn babies, we often imagine what could be wrong. With the help of Psalm 139, we can turn from anxiety to adoration. King David’s words call us to wonder, rather than worry, over what man cannot see, as we praise God that his eyes keep watch over the children in our womb.

In the spirit of the psalm, we can begin by focusing on God’s omniscience over our blindness. “O Lord,” we might pray, “you have searched and known not only me, but also my child. You know when I sit; you know when my child stirs. You are acquainted with all our ways, from the words I will say soon, to the organ that will form next. In a word, your hand is upon us” (verses 1–5). What is dark to mothers — the womb, our unborn children, what lies ahead — is light to him (verse 12). Anxious about what we cannot see, we can adore the God who never stops seeing.

Nor has he ever not seen. His knowledge of our unborn children never began; it has always been: “Your eyes saw this child’s unformed substance an eternity before the pregnancy test came back positive. No part of this process has ever been hidden from your sight” (verses 15–16). As we say these words to our all-seeing God, we send them coursing through our unseeing selves. Wonder is a great antidote to worry.

‘You Are Sovereign’

Not only does God see what goes on within our stomachs and lives; he sovereignly oversees it all. We know we cannot watch our unborn babies grow, but that doesn’t stop us from thinking we can control our pregnancy, at least in some measure. That’s why we often flit from one search to the next — for control. We can praise God for so much access to life-sustaining information (it’s probably wise not to eat raw fish if every health institute says so), but we must not deceive ourselves. While we carry our children, God is in control of them.

Psalm 139 offers a fitting reminder, as David attributes action upon action, outcome upon outcome, to God alone. With David we declare, “You form this child’s inward parts; you knit this baby together in my womb. I praise you for the fearful and wonderful works of pregnancy. You are making and weaving this little person together” (verses 13–15). A pregnant mother can attend to the atoms in her unborn baby’s body no more than she can touch the moon — thankfully. We have not the power to form, to knit, to make, to weave. But our God does, and we have his ear.

What’s more, David affirms how God forms both bodies and days. Before the foundation of the world, God not only chose to create our children, but he determined the length of their lives. Through prayer we say to God and ourselves, “In your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for this baby” (verse 16).

God didn’t pen our children’s stories into a dusty three-ring notebook, the kind that are always lying around, and then slam it shut. David says, “In your book were written.” Expectant mothers, our Father has a book! He is ever aware of its tales, of the lives of our unborn children (and everyone else). For what he has written, he will bring to pass. Whatever this trimester may hold, may our prayers lean into the sovereign God who holds it.

‘You Are There’

By this point, it’s easy to agree with David about the extent of God’s knowledge and power. His attributes are “too wonderful for [us],” too “high” to grasp and grip (verse 6). At the same time, Psalm 139 encourages mothers to rest assured that he is with us, in all his great and mysterious perfections.

David teaches us this lesson by taking us on a trip around the universe. He imagines himself up in heaven and down in Sheol (verse 8), east as the sunrise and west as the seas (verse 9). In each place, he finds God there. Amazingly, the Lord does not arrive after David, but leads David there himself (verse 10).

After David’s example, we can imagine ourselves walking through a hundred different high and low points of pregnancy (an exercise that may run our emotions through a pinball machine). Picture a doctor gesturing at a dot of flashing white, tears of joy springing to our eyes. There’s a heartbeat. A month later, that heartbeat seems too low, even inconsistent. We cry again, this time for fear.

Step back from each hypothetical. Turn to God and say, “During ultrasounds, you are there! Through worry-ridden nights, you are there! In the hospital room, you are there! Come what may, you are with me wherever I go, leading me, guiding me, holding me” (verse 8). As we praise his presence, his presence comforts us.

‘Protect This Child’

Toward the end of the psalm, after David has adored the all-seeing, sovereign God who is in his midst, he turns to petition, earnestly pleading for God to act (verses 19–22). Confident that God is over his life, he asks God to intervene in his life. In the same way, the more a mother recalls the power of God both to take and to give life, the more she will ask God to protect the child in her womb.

We pray confidently for God to protect our unborn children because we are confident that he can protect them. We ask him to decrease blood pressure, to increase growth, to remove hemorrhages, to induce labor — all because he can. And so we pray, with every mother’s blood-earnestness and a Christian mother’s confidence, “Oh that you would protect this child, O God!”

He delights in a mother’s pleas for her unborn child, which are themselves expressions of worship. We petition him because we know he is with us, listening to our cries. We petition him because we know that only an all-knowing, all-powerful God is able to sustain the babies in our bellies. We petition him because we know he loves those babies, more than we could understand.

Ought God’s thoughts about this pregnancy, then, be more precious to us than Google’s (verse 17)? A single search may produce 239,000,000 results (I just checked), but even that number has an end, a limit, a boundary. God’s knowledge is infinite, vaster than the sands on every shore (verse 18). His power, presence, and ability to protect likewise know no end. And — can you believe it? — this God is with us.

Audio Transcript

We serve an international audience on APJ. Listeners join us from across the globe, whether through our English episodes or in the dozen or so languages that this podcast gets translated into. Some of our questions might not make sense to our listeners in the States. That’s likely true today. Here’s our email.

“Hello, Pastor John and Tony. This is Thokozani from the Gauteng region of South Africa. I have listened to Ask Pastor John for two years and grown a lot spiritually over that time. My question stems from a popular belief that we have here in South Africa. People believe in ancestral consultation. When a person dies, their spirit or soul doesn’t go to God immediately; it roams around where they died. The family must go to that spot and fetch the spirit using a tree.

This is a popular belief, and several Christians here hold to these superstitions. Once the spirit is fetched, the body can be buried, and only then does the spirit go to God and can the person finally ‘rest in peace.’ Later, relatives will visit the grave, or set up a shrine in their home, where they consult with these dead parents or grandparents — not to worship them, but to periodically establish communication to receive from them messages through dreams or visions. Pastor John, what does the Bible say about communicating with ancestors?”

What the Bible says may be summed up like this: Don’t pursue communication with the dead, because pursuing messages from the dead is evidence that biblical truth about God is either not understood or not believed. And in either case, God is dishonored by the practice of seeking messages from the dead. Therefore, Christians should not do it, and they should be taught from the Bible why this practice dishonors God, and they should be encouraged to believe what the Bible teaches about God so that their practices honor him, glorify him.

So, what’s the biblical teaching about God that I have in mind when I say that if you seek these messages from the dead, you either don’t know those teachings or you don’t believe them? Here are four things about God that need to be taught and known.

When a person dies, God takes his soul out of the world immediately, either to himself or to a place of torment. No soul separated from the body is allowed to remain on earth and roam about after death. Jesus said to the thief on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43) — no intermediate state, no roaming around Jerusalem. Luke 16 describes the death of the poor man Lazarus and the rich man. Immediately, one goes to Abraham’s presence in heaven and the other to a place of torment, and a great gulf is fixed between them. Their souls are not left on earth.

In Philippians 1, Paul says that his death puts him in the presence of Christ. In 2 Corinthians 5, perhaps the clearest text of all, he says, “away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8) — no gap. It does not say, “apart from the body at home in the neighborhood for a few days.” So, that part of the practice in South Africa is based on a misunderstanding of God’s action in dealing with the dead.

2. God forbids us to consult with the dead.

God explicitly forbids consulting with the dead. “When they say to you, ‘Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,’ should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?” (Isaiah 8:19). And the answer is clearly no. So, we don’t need to wonder what God thinks of this practice. He says, “Don’t do it.”

And behind the prohibition is the rationale about God’s sufficiency and his honor in communicating to us what we need. “Should not a people inquire of their God?” That’s the second point about God that is misunderstood or disbelieved by those who seek messages from the dead. So, let’s go to number three. Number two was just an explicit prohibition.

3. God has already spoken lavishly.

God has shown that he himself — not ancestors, not angels, not mediums, but he himself — is the one who provides us with what we need to know in order to live a fruitful, God-honoring, Christian life. That’s the point when the prophet says, “Should not a people inquire of their God?” (Isaiah 8:19). He knows that he’s enough; he’s wise; he’s willing.

You can hear in that question that it’s unthinkable that you would treat your living God as somehow unwilling to tell you what you need to know in order to live for his glory — that God would be so unable or unwilling to give his people what they need that they are forced to communicate with the dead, as if dead, sinful, finite, fallible creatures could be more useful than God who made heaven and earth and knows all things and is all-wise and rules all things and loves his children.

The New Testament tells us at least three things about the generosity of God’s communication with his children:

1. “[God] has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:2). Jesus Christ is the decisive word of God. “All the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” are in him (Colossians 2:3), and he is gloriously portrayed in the New Testament for our understanding and our enjoyment and our following.

2. God told the apostles that he would guide them into all truth when they taught the church what to believe and how to live (John 16:13). And then he called their teaching “the foundation” of the church (Ephesians 2:20), and he called their faith “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). We have the fullness of the apostolic teaching in the New Testament.

3. God told us that all the Scriptures are his inspired word and that they are profitable to equip the man of God “for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Through the Scriptures, God has given us the revelation we need to do the good works he calls us to do.

So, seeking messages from ancestors, the Bible teaches, is a dishonor to God, who has communicated so lavishly with us about all the things we need to live the way he wants us to live.

4. God’s providence governs all for our good.

Seeking messages from ancestors implies an unbelief in the glorious implications for God’s children that God’s providence is all-controlling and all-pervasive — namely, that he works all things by that providence for our good as we trust him.

The apostle Paul taught us that since God “did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all,” he will certainly “give us all things” with him (Romans 8:32) — all the things we need to know, all the things we need to have in order to honor God and do his will. And the whole Bible teaches us that God is absolutely in control of all demons and all spirits and all locusts and worms and viruses and bacteria and plants and fish and lions and witch doctors and drought and famine and rain and floods and wind and earthquakes and diseases and life and death.

God’s providence, his purposeful sovereignty, is absolutely, pervasively in control of all things. So, there’s nothing that messages from the ancestors can do that would make it safer or better than what our heavenly Father is pledged to do for us because Jesus died for us.

So, the biblical position is this: Don’t pursue communication with the dead, because pursuing messages from the dead is evidence that biblical truth about God is either not understood or not believed. And in either case, God is dishonored. And here are four truths we need to know:

God takes the dead immediately out of the world.
God explicitly forbids communication with the dead.
God has shown that he himself is the one who provides us what we need to know.
God’s providence governs everything for our good.

In an easily overlooked comment in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, God moved the apostle to point out one foundational aspect of Christian relations: Holy Spirit-filled Christians submit “to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Ephesians 5:18–21).

These words appear prior to Paul’s discussion of marriage, parenting, and work relationships. It is clear from what follows that the general duty of submitting to one another does not swallow up the particular duties that are described at the end of Ephesians 5 and the beginning of Ephesians 6. For example, masters and parents do not abandon their positions of authority with servants and children because of this mutual submission.

And yet, this posture of submitting “to one another out of reverence for Christ” does inform and shape these relationships. Take Ephesians 6:1–4: since children are to honor their parents, parents are not to exasperate their children in the manner in which they call them to obedience. There is asymmetry between parent and child, and yet also reciprocity.

And if Scripture’s call to mutual submission in Christ applies to the relationships in Ephesians 6, it certainly applies to the marriage relationship, described in Ephesians 5:22–33. For this passage on marriage immediately follows Paul’s command to mutual submission in Ephesians 5:21.

Even in Marriage?

Here too, it must be stressed, that husbands and wives do not lose their particular marital callings on account of their general duty to submit to one another in Christ. Mutual submission does not put a wife in charge of her husband. He is still called to love her “as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,” and she is still summoned to submit to him as her head under Christ (Ephesians 5:22–27).

But mutual submission, as a distinctly Christian concept, will make our marriages look different than non-Christian ones, including those that retain some vestigial, if corrupted, understanding of household headship. Indeed, the idea of a wife’s submission might appear less odious to the Western world today if the dynamic of Spirit-driven, Christ-exalting mutual submission were more visible in our homes and churches.

So, what might mutual submission look like in a Christian marriage? In a nutshell, it is a marriage characterized by mutual respect, care, and service — a kind of quiet competition to put the other person first, a “please, let me get that for you” or “you first!” attitude. Each Christian couple can think and pray through the implications of mutual submission for themselves, in their own marriages, but allow me to prime the pump by offering a few examples of what my wife, Emily, and I are working toward now.

Submission Waits

Mutual respect ought to be seen in the way we speak and listen to each other. Three examples from our marriage come readily to mind.

First, in the spirit of submitting to each other, we try not to interrupt each other. (Husbands, we can lead here.) I don’t mean the happy “I’ll end your sentences, and you end mine” interruptions when telling old stories or jokes. I’m speaking about the “I’ve heard you long enough, and what we really need is my input” interruptions of an impatient and unloving spirit.

Second, when husband and wife both start a sentence at the same time, especially when there is weight, tension, or depth to the conversation, we could do more than offer to “let you go first” (which often only means that we’re waiting for our own turn to speak). Instead, we could indicate that we’d actually like to hear what our spouses have to say first, that we truly wish to consider their ideas.

Third, either because of our age or because of our electronic devices, Emily and I are at a point where we too often derail a train of thought and struggle to remember where we were headed. So, we are learning to say, “I had one more comment, but if you’re going to lose your thought, I’ll let you go first.”

We have a lot of growing to do here, especially me, but we are asking the Lord to help us submit to one another in our speech. Perhaps something like these examples could work for your marriage or for a married couple for whom you regularly pray.

Submission Confesses

We can show mutual care, too, as we emerge from arguments and feel the first uncomfortable tingle of conviction that we might not have been entirely in the right. We have a golden opportunity to go to our spouses (even when we still think we are largely in the right) and say, “I’m sorry for the tone that I used with you. I disregarded how it would make you feel. Please help me to see where I’ve done wrong, and if I don’t agree right away, I won’t push back. I’ll think and pray about it, and then I’ll get back to you.” And if you’re really on a roll, “God put us together for a reason, and I don’t want to lose an opportunity to grow.”

Of course, apologies are rarely easy. In my experience, before, during, and after this conversation I need to pray words like “Lord, please humble me,” “Help me to mean more deeply what I am saying,” and “Open my eyes to see anything, everything, for which I need to repent.”

Submission Serves

Mutual submission also can be developed in the ways we serve each other. In many homes, a happy division of labor already catches the spirit of mutual submission, so I don’t wish for these suggestions especially to be read as prescriptions.

But it might help some marriages if men were quicker to get out of bed and turn off that last light, to attend to that unknown sound in the house, to get that glass of water for the bedside. It might help if we both chipped in to tidy, to vacuum, to set the table. It might help if one spouse said, “Ladies, the guys desperately want to do the dishes tonight,” or, “Guys, go sit down. We’ve got the kitchen.” It might help if both sought space for the other to attend to personal devotions, to go to a Bible study, to hang out with friends, to be alone, to exercise, to rest.

At a basic level, this submission to one another will look at the other’s biblical duties not to generously remind our spouses of what to do, or to tell them in glorious detail how to do it, but to help make our spouses’ tasks easier, even sweeter. If he is to love you as Christ loves his church, how can you act and speak so as to make that duty a joy for him? If she is to submit to you as to Christ, how can you model the ways Christ eases your own burdens in serving him (Matthew 11:28–30)? Can you pull with her on her yoke? Can you lift with her the heaviest burdens?

And, in thinking about marriage, I’d be remiss not to mention that this dynamic applies to the bedroom, as Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 7. We belong to the other, and therefore we consider first the other’s requests, needs, and desires in intimacy.

All for His Sake

Above all, we remember that submission to one another is for the sake of Christ (Ephesians 5:21). If our husband or wife does not respond in kind, we carry on — we did not do this merely for our spouse or for ourselves. No, we have done it for Christ.

We submit, no matter the expected or seen results, regardless of how our spouse responds, so that Christ will be honored, so that he will be pleased. We submit so that our gracious Master in heaven will say to us one day, “Well done, good and faithful servant” (Matthew 25:23), even if no one on earth notices right now. And we do it because we know that repenting from our previous patterns of selfishness leads Christ’s angels to rejoice, Christ’s saints to smile, and sinners who are on their way to Christ to wonder.

In the economy of grace, undeserved and unrequited love is the currency that purchased our own salvation. And if Christ has shared with us the treasures of his mercy, we will want to spend this same currency on our spouse as well.

Inside the pulpit in London where I learned to preach was a little inscription meant only for the preacher as he stepped up to his task: “Sir, we would see Jesus.” Those words from John 12:21 made clear what I was there to do. Yet, simple as the message was, it was not shallow. It reflected the deepest wells of Christian thought.

For Jesus Christ is the truth and glory of God; in him the grace and life and wisdom of God is found. He is the revealing Word sent forth by the Father, and the One to whom the Spirit of truth testifies. Indeed, God breathes out the Scriptures through the Spirit precisely so that through the word of Christ we might be made “wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 3:15). That is why the law finds its fulfillment in him (Romans 10:4), and why the prophets, the apostles, and all the Scriptures testify about him (Luke 24:27, 44–47; John 5:39–40, 46).

For the preacher, the application is straightforward: if the desire of the Father, the work of the Spirit, and the purpose of Scripture is to herald Jesus, so must the faithful preacher. If the Son’s great and eternal goal is to win for himself a bride, then his heralds must woo for him. They are like Abraham’s servant in Genesis 24, commissioned to find a bride for his master’s son.

Preaching That Avoids Christ

Of course, a good deal of preaching doesn’t even try to preach Christ. Alternative messages or saviors are promoted, unbiblical “Christs” are proclaimed, or preaching is simply confused with lecturing, moralizing, entertaining, or grandstanding.

Even those who are most serious about Scripture can fail here. As Jesus said to the Jewish leaders, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39–40). Just so, we too can treat Scripture as an end in itself and preaching as a simple matter of making our people experts in Scripture. We can preach in a way that looks impeccably biblical but produces only proud scribes, not humbled worshipers of Christ.

Three Remedies for Preachers

For many of us preachers, though, we know we should preach Christ. We want to do so. Yet we struggle. Why? Let me suggest three remedies to three mistakes we can make.

1. Preach Christ, not an abstraction.

The gravitational pull of sin down and away from faith in Christ means that our default mode is to put substitutes in the place of Christ, to have other objects of worship. One of the subtlest ways preachers do this is by replacing the specific, actual person of Jesus Christ with an abstraction. Any abstraction can do it, but the more theological it is, the harder it can be to spot how it stands in the place of Christ and masks his absence. “The gospel,” “grace,” or “the Bible”: all can be treated as if they were saviors or gods in themselves.

Even “the cross” can be treated as an abstraction and stand as a substitute for Jesus. In fact, the cross is probably the place where the danger is subtlest. Preachers seeking to “preach Christ” can easily take it to mean nothing more than the need to rehearse the atonement in every sermon. But in so doing, the atonement itself can be presented as an impersonal machine for a “salvation” that has little clearly to do with treasuring Christ.

To preach Christ involves preaching all the doctrines that set him forth. Yet no doctrine should be abstracted from him and made ultimate. Christ himself is, in person, the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). He alone is the one to put forth as the glory and delight of the saints.

2. Proclaim the reality, not a mere concept.

“Preaching Christ from all of Scripture” has become a staple theme for evangelical books and conferences. In many ways, that is a good thing, but there is a danger that preaching Christ can become a mere hermeneutical game in which we work out how to “get to” him as the endpoint of the sermon. Christ becomes the preacher’s brilliant solution to the textual puzzle. In other words, Christ is presented as the right answer, but not held out as the one to be adored.

With this mistake, it is not so much that Christ is replaced by some other truth; rather, he is treated as a dead specimen to be sliced and diced for our analysis. This, of course, appeals to our pride. For if Scripture is not mightily divine, living and active, but a dead artifact to be dissected for concepts, then we can stand over it as masters of the text. We need never face the discomfort of being confronted by it. But preaching then becomes a mere memorial to Christ, a tombstone.

Yet when Paul wrote of his imploring as an ambassador for Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20), he clearly saw a role greater than that of a schoolteacher revising theological grammar. Before the eyes of his people, Jesus Christ was placarded so that they might come to him, set their affections on him, and so trust him.

3. Show, don’t tell.

If people are to cherish and treasure Christ, they cannot merely be told that he is good, true, and beautiful. They must be shown so that they taste and see. Yet showing is a much more challenging proposition for the preacher: such a sermon cannot be aimlessly trotted out; nor can it come from a preacher who is not himself enjoying and adoring Christ.

For those reasons, we preachers all too easily settle for telling. The sort of rhetorical questions you often hear from the pulpit (“Isn’t that a wonderful truth?” “Isn’t Christ glorious?”) are a classic giveaway. They sound pious, but instead of showing how Christ is glorious and wonderful, they leave the people to do the work of discovering for themselves.

Showing is not just a challenge for the sermon itself. Showing involves the man. For while an ungodly preacher may speak of Christ — and do so with eloquence — what people will sense is his ego or lovelessness or bitterness of spirit. And these they may then map onto the Christ he proclaims. The ambassador cannot be divorced from his message.

If preachers are to set forth Christ faithfully in the full colors of his glory, we must, like him, delight in God and love the sinners we address. Without even meaning to, the preacher will smell of whatever he truly glories in. Also without meaning to, the people will read Christ’s character off his. For good or ill, then, the heart of the preacher is itself a sermon.

Who is sufficient for these things? Not one of us in ourselves. But this is just what throws us onto him. Then we will decrease, and he will increase. And then, when he is lifted up, he will draw all people to himself (John 12:32).

Sirs, they want to see Jesus.

As a senior in high school, I played an accountant in The Actor’s Nightmare. He wakes up on stage, in the middle of a play, only he doesn’t remember any of his lines, or how he got on stage, or when he ever read a script or attended a rehearsal, or even what play he’s in. Everyone around him knows who they are and who he is, but he’s lost, clueless, and letting everyone down — all with a big audience watching.

The play was inspired by the awful recurring dream so many actors have, being suddenly thrust on stage to perform a show they do not recognize, in a role they cannot name, with lines they cannot recite. The nightmare, however, might also be an accurate picture of how many young single men (even Christian single men) feel in their actual, wide-awake lives. Who am I supposed to be? What role am I meant to play? Who are the good guys and bad guys? Where am I supposed to stand and work and live? What story am I in? What wars am I trying to win?

Stumbling Through Singleness

When I see that accountant stumbling around the stage, putting his foot in his mouth, sweating profusely, I see something of my own single life — wrestling with where to go to school, shuffling through majors, meeting new friends, losing touch with old ones, then reconnecting with some, starting my first job, and then my second job, and then my third job, moving from apartment to apartment, then house to house and city to city, trying to find a wife and failing, and then trying again and failing, and then mustering the courage to try again. All while everyone seems to be watching me sweat and stumble.

So how do you think the accountant figured out who he was? He studied the other people on stage. The keys to knowing who he was supposed to be lay with the men and women who had been placed, very intentionally, around him. What if the same is true for living as a more faithful single man? What if some of us stumble, wander, and struggle more than we have to because we spend so much time looking in at ourselves and so little time looking out and around at others? For some of us, it’s like we woke up on stage, in the middle of a play, and yet never mustered the courage to get out of bed, much less play an actual role.

My burden in this article is to give Christian single men better perspective and greater courage in singleness. I want to convince you that you are not as single or alone as you think. Because I wasted some single years. Because I’ve watched other men do the same. Because you don’t have to. I want to help men like you play the man God made you to be.

Fundamental Questions for Men

What questions do you think drive and consume the average twentysomething man? What kinds of questions keep him up at night and spur his decisions?

Where do I work?
What is my role?
How much do I make?
What do I want to watch?
What did so-and-so say about so-and-so on Twitter?
Where do I want to eat?
Did my team win or lose?
How much can I afford to buy?

Many men spend most of their best strength and energy, day after day, year after year, on shallow questions like these. I want you to ask better questions, bigger questions that will demand more of you and draw more out of you. In the end, I want you to see yourself, through these questions, as less isolated and alone.

1. Who’s Over Me?

Before we look at the relationships around us on stage, we need to remember who wrote the script for us. Before a man can be the man he was made to be, he needs to know and love the one who made him to be. If we could trace all the dysfunctions and failures that plague men to one root issue, it would be our disregard of God.

Do you believe that about yourself? Do you see that the health of every other relationship in your life grows out of your relationship with Christ? We’ll never faithfully act out the part we have been given if we’re out of touch with the Author of the story.

The apostle Paul writes specifically against sexual sin in 1 Corinthians 6, but what he says helps us make sense of every other dysfunction in a man’s life:

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19–20)

As much as you may feel otherwise from day to day and week to week, you are not your own. You don’t get to do whatever you want, whenever you want — not if you’re in Christ. You belong to him twice over: he made you and he redeemed you. So glorify God in your body — consecrate your body, your time, your energy, your ambition more fully to him. Strive to cultivate, enjoy, and model an “undivided devotion to the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:35).

2. Who’s Ahead of Me?

As a man, you will inevitably become like the men you admire, spend time with, and imitate. The calculus won’t always be easy, but discerning people will be able to trace aspects of who you are to the men who have had the most influence on you (for better or worse). Many young men fail to mature because they lack mature men to follow and learn from. They grow up and live without good fathers.

As I near forty, and have now discipled younger men for years, I believe no single earthly factor will determine a man’s maturity more than the man (or men) who father him. And yet too few men have good fathers in the faith. Maybe they have men they admire and imitate from afar, but they don’t have an older man who actually knows them well enough to affirm, confront, and encourage them specifically and personally. John Calvin and John Piper can be spiritual fathers for you (they are for me), but they can’t be your only fathers (or even your main ones).

Who can say of you what Paul says of the younger men in Corinth?

I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. (1 Corinthians 4:14–16)

He can say, I’ve known you well enough to call you beloved children, and you’ve known me well enough to imitate my way of life. What older man knows you well enough to say that? What older man do you know well enough to imitate how he meets with God, how he loves his wife and children, how he serves the church, how he wins the lost? If you don’t yet have a father relationship like that, who could that man be? The best place to begin looking is in your local church, where the family of God — fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers — lives together and loves one another (Matthew 12:49–50).

In my experience, the younger man will often have to initiate relationships like these, so don’t wait for an older man to come put his arm around you. Identify the men worth imitating, and then go and ask them for wisdom, for counsel, for time, for fathering. Look for ways to come alongside them in the ordinary rhythms of their lives. Make it as easy as possible for them to spend time with you.

3. Who’s Beside Me?

After a good father, every man also needs good brothers. He needs friends. And not just any friends, but friends who consistently draw him toward God and draw God out of him. This is why men instinctively love the picture from Proverbs 27:17: “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” Sharpen iron for what? He’s likely talking about sharpening an axe or a sword. Men sharpen one another for battle, and we’re all at war (Ephesians 6:12). Who helps you fight well?

These aren’t buddies you watch football with or play video games with online. They’re men whose faith makes your heart rise and run after Christ, who kneel down and pick you up when you stumble and fall, who rally you to live worthy of your calling and hold you accountable, who jump into the hard trenches of life and ministry with you. They’re not just men anymore, or even just friends; they’re brothers.

We’re looking for something deeper and stronger than biological brotherhood. Proverbs says of this rare kind of friend, “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). Do you have male friends like that? If not, who might become your company of iron? Again, start with your church. At first, it may not seem that you have a lot in common with those men, but if you share Christ, you have far more in common than you realize. Every friendship that’s risen to this level in my life started with meeting to open God’s word together. Most of them grew and matured through serving the church in some tangible way together.

4. Who’s Behind Me?

Few men have good fathers in the faith. I’m tempted to say even fewer have found and made sons in the faith. But every man of God should be a spiritual father to someone. This is what faithful Christianity is: “Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20). Who are those disciples for you? If nothing in our lives looks or sounds like Jesus’s Commission, then are we really living a Christian life? Can we really say we’re following Christ?

The apostle Paul had many sons in the faith, including a young man named Timothy. He says to Timothy, “What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2). In other words, Timothy, as I have been a father to you in Christ, go and be a father to others. Take a younger, less mature man under your wing for a season, and patiently and diligently teach him the ropes of following Jesus. Draw him into your life and marriage and family and work, and then live so that you can say, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). As you do, you’ll be surprised how much you grow and benefit from pouring your life into him (Philippians 4:1).

It really doesn’t matter how old you are or how long you have been a Christian. If you’re old enough to read this article, some younger man — in your church, in your neighborhood, at your job — looks up to you. How are you stewarding his eyes? How are you engaging his questions, desires, and failures? Again, don’t wait for him to ask you for help or counsel. Go and be a father.

5. Who’s Against Me?

Satan knows that the most solid single men are the men most loved by spiritual fathers, brothers, and sons. He’ll do whatever he can to make you feel alone, and then to make that loneliness feel like freedom. He’ll make danger feel safe. He’ll slowly lead you away from the kinds of relationships you need, and then distract you with meaningless anxieties and pleasures. Do you even know you live at war?

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith. (1 Peter 5:8–9)

In your apartment, at your desk, beside your bed, on your computer, even over your Bible, you have an enemy. A fierce and intimidating enemy. If the Christian life feels hard — if relationships like the ones I’m describing above feel unrealistic or even impossible at times — it’s partly because someone is relentlessly attacking and undermining you. He’s not a metaphor. He’s a real spiritual being, and he hates you. He wants to devour you.

But if you are Christ’s man, the one who lives in you is stronger than the one who wars against you. And he’s not a metaphor or a fairytale, either. He’s the King of the universe, the Warrior who will judge the earth, and you are fighting on his side. So don’t ignore your enemy or underestimate him, but don’t back down either. Lean on the men you need — fathers, brothers, and sons — and follow Christ into battle.

“Use your words,” the voice said.

My scrawny nine-year-old arms were firmly wrapped in a headlock around my archnemesis classmate, Chris. We had been arguing about whose dad was better at bowling. Obviously, we had lost our ability to talk it out.

“Use your words!” I heard the voice again, this time louder. And again, very firmly, “Use your words!”

Just then, I felt my mother’s firm hand grabbing hold of my collar. She turned me around like a bridled pony. I released Chris to his own fate; now I faced my own.

“Listen to me, Joel Weldon!” she punctuated. “If you don’t learn to use your words, you’ll be struggling like this your whole life!”

God used that moment to motivate me. And now, after years of training and research, I’ve enjoyed a long path in communication, first as a touring singer-songwriter, then as a voice actor and speaking coach. I have found that the path to improved speech is available to each of us. It didn’t come naturally to me. I struggled and needed to work hard. But once I realized the power God gives through voices (including yours), I was hooked forever.

How to Use Your Voice

Take a moment and consider your voice. Do you “use your words” effectively? Do people in your professional and personal circles listen well when you speak, or are they easily distracted and disengaged? In front of a crowd or your church, are you able to connect and communicate? Do you see people scrolling smartphones as you work through your outline? It’s a common problem these days.

Have you overlooked your marvelous gift: your voice? Many have. It is one of the most undervalued and misunderstood instruments God has given. “Death and life,” Scripture teaches, “are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits” (Proverbs 18:21). But some Christians do not speak more often of the Life they know because they do not like the sound of their voice. The majority perhaps feel stuck and insecure.

Even in biblical times, many doubted their voices. Even a prophet as great as Moses was “slow of speech,” and he knew it well (Exodus 4:10). His inability plundered his confidence such that he even argued with God over it, giving five reasons he was a terrible speaker and couldn’t return to Egypt. God answered his fears by graciously providing Aaron as his official mouthpiece.

But what about us today? Believe it or not, with a few simple tweaks, you can start to improve your voice, and access its God-given potential. But how? Whether I am coaching a fresh class of voice actors or a ministry staff at a church workshop, I like to start with three basic concepts for effective speaking.

1. Be aware of your headspace.

Your emotional state of mind and your attitude are discernible in your vocal delivery. It’s not enough to just fake it till you make it. If you force a broad smile while internally you’re upset over a recent argument, you will come across like a salesman pitching his newest cure-all potion. This holds true for everyday conversations all the way to standing on the largest stages. The audience doesn’t just analyze your words; they feel and respond. They may not even sense something amiss, but your message will not have the effect you intend if you don’t have the matching attitude underneath.

Knowing how to control and gift-wrap your speaking with appropriate attitude is like a superpower for your ideas. If you’re in any kind of ministry, the attitude you draw upon is founded in the mind of Christ, love for hearers, and a desire to glorify God. You consider your high task: “whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God” (1 Peter 4:11).

Here’s a simple tip that I’ve used with countless students and clients. To give your mind and heart a reset prior to any conversation or talk, do a heart check. Is love for your listener (whether in personal conversation or speaking before many) a higher priority than what’s been distracting you? Is your desire for your audience that they truly hear and receive your words fully and powerfully? Then envision this simple formula: the word MISSION in all caps with the word me in lowercase set just underneath.

Write it on a note at your desk, in your notebook, in your Bible, on your iPad. It’s a simple perspective corrector. Yes, me is a part of the formula, but your MISSION is way more important than what others think of you, how effective your speaking is, or even your reputation. When your heart and mind are set on delivering your words for the good of others and the glory of God, rather than personal accolades, you’re reflecting the mind of Christ. And even if you stammer and fumble through much of your speech or sermon, your audience will still be moved by your very transparency, love, and care for them.

2. Stretch your voice.

From the time we’re cooing with our mother in the nursery and exchanging smiles and giggles, we are mirroring the world of speech and sound around us. We mimic; we copy; we try things we hear. That’s where regional accents and dialects come from. We’ve learned how to speak through immersive living and learning.

But something happens to many of us when we enter the world as adults. We throw our graduation caps in the air and enter adulting with the voices we’ve cultivated since birth. And then maybe we take a personality test that tells us who we are, replete with common personality traits and likes and dislikes. And we suddenly stop learning. We stop challenging ourselves in our areas of weakness. We allow someone else to define who we are and place a wall around our potential. Your voice is no exception. It needs some coaxing and training, but it can express and accomplish far more than most people realize.

Never stop learning how to maximize it. Consider the main sound elements of every voice that together make it interesting, even irresistible: pitch, pace, and projection.

PITCH

Remember the scene near the end of the movie Elf where Will Ferrell is reading his book to the kids in the library? “Past the sea of swirly gumdrops, and through the Lincoln Tunnel!” He animates his voice to give the story the big effects and exaggeration that children respond to so well. If you have kids, or you once were a kid, you know what I mean.

For some strange reason, we grow up and believe we need to lose the kid’s tone. But really, instead of discarding it, we need to adapt the same voice variety and character to mature material. Of course, the overexaggeration will be tamed a bit, but the voice should stay interesting to the listener. And pitch variety, or inflection, in your tone is a proven attention keeper.

Practice by reading aloud any material, pretending you’re reading it for children in a kindergarten class. Move your voice pitch up and down. Practice getting excited and letting your voice rise dramatically in pitch. The key is to feel free to play. Make it part of your alone time — while driving, walking, studying. Make recordings on your voice-memo app. You’ll begin to feel more freedom adding inflection to your daily speech.

PACE

How fast or slow do you typically speak? We each have a typical talking speed — fast or slow, choppy or smooth. Record yourself having a conversation with a friend or coworker (with permission). Listen back. It’s alright to feel awkward listening and evaluating yourself. It’s part of the understanding process. Start listening to other voices you like. At what pace do they talk? Why do you like them? Begin to notice how other voices make you feel and why.

Start adding silent space to your speaking as well. Most of us don’t take advantage of a good pregnant pause unless we practice it. So practice it.

PROJECTION

Projection, or volume, is a critical element in your sound. Some voices average a medium volume and don’t deviate enough from it. Much of your default voice tone is shaped by the family you grew up in. From the over-the-top energy of Italians and Ethiopians to the stoic, steady tones of Scandinavians and Canadians, your upbringing has affected you.

Part of learning fuller expression means breaking out of the comfort zone you’ve always known. It’s okay to go bigger sometimes, especially on something exciting or urgent. Then try taking it way down to almost a whisper, as if you’re speaking to just one person face-to-face.

If you’re using a microphone, use it to your advantage. Pull it close when speaking softly. Let the mic do the work. Then try getting bigger and more authoritative and back off the mic a bit. We are built to respond to dynamic speaking, and it is fitting that messengers of the gospel work at developing our voices to match the message.

3. Know your listeners.

This brings us to the third and final (yet perhaps most important) principle for effective voice expression.

In Colossians 4:6, Paul says, “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.” We have a responsibility to know our listeners and learn how to “season” our speech in a wise and compelling way so they will best hear us.

In the modern advertising world, the voices representing brands are cast and directed to sound authentic. Thus, there’s a common phrase on almost every voice script that comes my way: no announcers. In the new media market, the target audience is supposedly enlightened to the wiles of the old “announcer voice,” the voice that sounds like a staged, inauthentic paid spokesperson for a brand.

So, the modern world is full of messaging by all kinds of authentic-sounding voices, including AI voices. A perfect example would be a warm, friendly middle-aged “mom” voice speaking to other moms about the best snacks for kids. That type of voice selection reaches the target market.

In similar fashion — but for a far higher purpose — you need to bring the appropriate delivery for the moment and the mission at hand. You wouldn’t use your Will Ferrell, kindergarten voice for a board-room presentation or a sermon. From the account in Acts 17, we might assume the apostle Paul was an expert at reading the room, knowing how to connect with his words and his voice. If you’re instructing, you’ll use a more authoritative tone. If you’re counseling one to one, you’ll likely want to use a softer, sympathetic voice (coming from a sympathetic heart).

Go and Speak

As carriers of the good news, we remember that the truth is worth sharing through the best possible means. Write about it. Live it. Advance it. With humility and courage, use the voice God gives you to declare his name. And start a new journey to make your sound versatile and effective for every encounter, whether you’re preaching or having a heart-to-heart talk with your kids. You’ll find that with the Lord’s help, you’ll never stop learning and adding to your ability to speak.

As a final encouragement, practice. Out loud. Have fun doing it. Find physical spaces where you’re free to go big. And move the rest of your body to match your voice too. And when your spouse interrupts your practice time and asks, “What in the world are you doing?” you can simply say, “I’m using my words.”

Audio Transcript

Heavy topic today. Can we lie to women who are seeking abortions, if by lying we increase the likelihood of saving the baby’s life? When this question came in, it immediately grabbed my attention. It’s a question from an anonymous woman. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast! I work in a crisis pregnancy center in a small community in the Bible Belt, helping meet the needs of pregnant women and single mothers. Along with providing access to clothing and parenting classes, we also share the glorious message of Christ’s work on the cross for sinners. It is our desire that expecting mothers make the right choice. I know God is sovereign, and only the Holy Spirit can make dead hearts come alive to make those right decisions. And this leads to my question.

“Our clinic has experienced pressure from volunteers and leaders, supported by local pastors, to pressure women and couples to ‘save the baby,’ or else the mother and father will be condemning their child to an eternal hell for withholding from them a chance to be born, live, and accept Christ as their Savior. You have made a strong case that babies who die or who are killed are saved. I’m thinking of APJs 514 and 684. The theology I hear in the clinic is wrong. And I think others in the clinic know it’s wrong too. I have come to now believe that this is an intentionally manipulative scare tactic, an ‘anything goes’ approach to the goal of saving lives. And that’s my question for you. Is it permissible to intentionally scare and manipulate mothers with untrue doctrine if it increases the likelihood that a baby will live?”

If this question were simply a yes-or-no question with no other implications, I’d probably skip it. I’d say, “Tony, let’s just move on because nobody wants to listen to an episode where I say, ‘No. Next question.’” But that is my short answer — namely, no, it’s not permissible. From a biblical point of view, from a Christian point of view, it is not permissible to intentionally scare and manipulate mothers with untrue doctrine in order to increase the likelihood that a baby will live. No.

And I’m not just focusing on the “scare and manipulate” part — that’s bad enough. When I say no, I’m mainly focusing on the use of untrue doctrine — doctrinal falsehoods, lies — in the service of a guess as to whether a child’s life will be saved. In other words, I’m saying no to making a practice of lying about sacred things in order to increase — according to our own human guesswork — the possibility that a child would not be aborted. I’m saying no to that.

But the reason I’m willing to say more about this question (rather than just no) is that there are wider cultural implications behind that question as I hear it. This practice of bending or marginalizing or flatly contradicting serious, biblical, moral considerations in a human-invented so-called “life-saving strategy” has taken root in American Christianity in recent years with harmful effects that we have scarcely seen the end of. In other words, I don’t think this particular practice of compromising moral means to accomplish hoped-for good ends is the only case we’re facing.

Workers for the Truth

So, let me try to say something about this kind of strategy against that wider cultural situation. The biblical reality at stake — the biblical reality at the root of the issue — is that God is a God of truth “who never lies” (Titus 1:2). “Let God be true though every one were a liar” (Romans 3:4).

And consequentially, his people are people of truth. We are “fellow workers for the truth” (3 John 8). We “speak the truth with [our] neighbor” (Ephesians 4:25). “For we cannot do anything against the truth” (2 Corinthians 13:8). We “do not lie to one another” (Colossians 3:9). We do not join the devil in his nature, for “when he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

“To think we can borrow the devil’s strategy of deception to save life is going to backfire.”

Truth is at the heart of who God is and at the heart of who we are as his people. So, a so-called “life-saving strategy” built on regular deception is utterly contrary to who God is and who we are as his people. It aligns us with the devil, who is not only a deceiver from the beginning but also a murderer. So, to think we can borrow the devil’s strategy of deception to save life is going to backfire, and we are going to be found serving his purposes, not God’s.

Against Every Evil

Now add to this basic truth about God and his people the biblical abhorrence of doing evil that good may come — in other words, coming up with human strategies that involve moral compromise in order to pursue human guesses that more good will come in that way. The Bible opposes that presumption.

For example, the apostle Paul defends himself against that very accusation in Romans 3:5–8:

If our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? But if through my lie God’s truth abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner? And why not do evil that good may come? — as some people slanderously charge us with saying. Their condemnation is just.

Wow. When people accuse Paul of teaching that we may do evil so that good may come, he’s angry. And he says, “Let them be condemned.” That’s serious.

Forsake the World’s Weapons

Later in Romans 6:1, he asks, “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” And his answer is not just no. His answer is that it contradicts the very nature of who we are as new creatures in Christ. “How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:2). In other words, new creatures in Christ trust God with the outcomes of walking in Christian integrity and holiness. We trust God with the outcomes. Christians should not do evil that good may come. It’s a lack of faith. We should not embrace evil practices or evil people in the vain hope that such compromises will advance human-created strategies for doing good.

It is virtually certain that our duplicity will be exposed — indeed shouted from the housetops. And when it is, the undermining of Christian integrity may send more people to hell and more babies to the dumpsters than if we had spoken the whole truth, lived consistent lives of radical Christian integrity, loved others, made sacrifices, been willing to suffer, and prayed earnestly.

I think that one of the great needs of the hour is for Christians to stop compromising our biblical faithfulness by using the weapons of the world in the service of strategies that we think are more likely to do good because we have calculated that compromise will work.

Here’s a closing admonition from Paul in 2 Corinthians 10:3–4: “Though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” God is able to make consistent, humble, trusting, sacrificial obedience have vast, soul-saving, life-giving effects beyond all our human calculations of what good may come through compromise.