How do you feel when you see the word prayer in a sermon title, or when the preacher announces that today’s sermon is about prayer? Oh no. Here we go.

Not many of us feel like we pray enough. We might even pray a good deal, and even earnestly, and still feel a gnawing sense of guilt when the topic comes up, just like when the subject of evangelism comes up. Preachers know this. Do you want to make people feel guilty? Talk about prayer and evangelism. Few of us feel instinctively like we do enough of either.

Added to this, we have the pervasive secular assumptions of modern life — that all that matters is the seeable, hearable, touchable, tastable. The otherworldly, especially the divine, is unwelcome and even out of bounds in polite company. We’re bombarded with the secular vision and its effects daily, through screens and through relationships with people influenced by screens, and through people influenced by other people who have screens. You can’t escape the influence of secularism without totally withdrawing. The question is not whether you’re being influenced, but whether some other, greater influence is getting and keeping traction in your soul.

God will not have the prevailing influence in your life if his practical means of influence mainly feel obligatory. But God himself doesn’t intend for his means to be obligations. They are not means of duty but means of grace. As J.C. Ryle says,

The “means of grace” . . . such as Bible reading, private prayer, and regularly worshiping God in Church . . . are appointed channels through which the Holy Spirit conveys fresh supplies of grace to the soul.

I did not come to Oakhurst this weekend to make you feel guilty, nor did I come just to visit family (nice as that is); I came mainly because I want you to enjoy “fresh supplies of grace to your soul” through hearing God’s voice in his word, having his ear in prayer, and belonging to the covenant fellowship of the local church. In the Sunday school hour, we focused on God’s word; tonight, we’ll focus on fellowship. Now in these moments, we turn our attention to prayer.

Three Wonders of Prayer

My specific prayer this morning is that the Spirit of God, dwelling in you, might be pleased to begin or renew a shift in your perspective on prayer — a shift in your mind and in your heart from prayer as obligation to prayer as opportunity, from prayer as duty to prayer as delight, from prayer as burden and dread to prayer as blessing and joy.

In that hope, I’d like for us to linger over three wonders of Christian prayer, and close with a few ideas for practical prayer habits in our lives.

1. Our Father Not Only Speaks But Listens

We start here with a summary of our focus in the Sunday school hour: our God is a speaking God. The preamble to Christian prayer is that God speaks. Prayer is responsive. Prayer is talking to God, but it’s not a conversation we start. God initiates. He is communicative. He is talkative. He speaks first, and oh does he love to speak!

He reveals himself in his creation (Romans 1:19–20).
He reveals himself climactically in his Son (Hebrews 1:1–2; John 1:1, 14).
He reveals himself in the God-breathed words of Scripture (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:20–21).

Then, amazingly, this Great Speaker himself stops and stoops. He cups his ear, and motions to us to speak. “What do you think? What do you feel? What do you need?” Our Father wants to hear from his children. He wants us to pray to him in view of who he’s revealed himself to be.

So, in prayer, we his creatures and his children respond to our Father’s words in our own words. Prayer is speaking to the God who has spoken first, responding to the God who has initiated the relationship and conversation. And we pray to God as our Father. The true God is not a distant, distracted deity. We don’t need cheat codes, flailing arms, or repeated phrases to seize his attention.

Amazingly, God himself loves his people, smiles on us, and is gladly attentive to our needs. He wants to hear from his children and make them happy forever in him. He wants us to pray to him as “our Father” — which is an especially Christlike way to pray.

Call Him ‘Father’

Ancient Israelites knew God’s covenant name (Yahweh) and approached him in worship and prayer in view of his covenant love and faithfulness, but they did not dare to call him “Father.” Calling God “Father” is new in the human life and ministry of Jesus. And when Jesus taught his disciples (and us) to pray, he began with “Our Father . . .” Repeatedly, particularly in the Gospel of John, Jesus calls the God of Israel “Father.” Especially memorable is his own extended prayer to his Father in John 17, on the night before he died:

Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. . . . And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. . . . Holy Father, keep [the people you have given me] in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one . . . just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. . . . Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. (John 17:1, 5, 11, 21, 24, 25)

Jesus calling God “Father” is not only modeling for us how to pray, but this is also an invitation for how to draw near to God — as our loving, gracious, generous heavenly Father.

However, we sinners need more than Jesus’s example and invitation. Being sinners, rebels, undeserving of God’s riches — in fact, deserving of his punishments — how can we, in honesty and not utter naivety, call the living God “Father”? God may indeed speak to sinners like us, but does he listen? And listen as a Father? That leads to a second wonder.

2. God’s Son Secures and Certifies Our Access to God’s Ear

Now let’s go to two passages in Hebrews: Hebrews 4:14–16 and 10:19–23. Perhaps you looked at these this week, or even this morning, and thought, Huh, these seem very similar. They are. And they are structurally and conceptually central for the epistle to the Hebrews.

“God will not have the prevailing influence in your life if his practical means of influence mainly feel obligatory.”

You could see all of Hebrews 1–4 as an extended introduction, chapters 11–13 as the extended conclusion, and chapters 5–10 as the heart, the main body and message. And of those middle chapters, 5–7 portray Jesus as the great and final high priest, and 8–10 show him to be the great and final sacrifice. That’s the heart of Hebrews: the person of Christ as our priest, and the work of Christ as our sacrifice.

These two parallel passages in chapters 4 and 10 are like the entrance and exit to the heart of the letter, and they express the main pastoral burden of the letter: Draw near to God, hold fast to Jesus. Don’t coast, don’t drift, don’t fall away. Don’t stop believin’, but cling to Jesus, and draw near to God in him.

So, I want to read both passages to you, back to back, and as I do, listen for six emphases they have in common:

the mention of the great high priest,
whose personal name is Jesus,
who has passed through the heavens (the curtain) into the very presence of God, and therefore
the call to hold fast our faith in him,
to draw near to God through him, and
to do so with confidence

And to be clear, this relates to more than prayer, but no less than prayer — and for now, prayer is perhaps the signature expression of our drawing near. Hebrews 4:14–16 says,

Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Now, here’s Hebrews 10:19–23:

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the first note struck here is that we have the great and final high priest! We have him already, right now. He has come at long last. He died as the great and final sacrifice for our sin. He rose in triumph over sin and death, and he ascended, going through the heavens, through the curtain, into the very presence of God Almighty, where he sat down, his work complete, at the right hand of Majesty.

We have him. This is no longer a future promise. This is a present reality! So, hold fast your trust in him, and your confession of him as Lord. And with confidence, with boldness, with surety, draw near — with your whole life, drawing near to him through his word, and drawing near to him with his church, and in particular drawing near to him in prayer. That’s the joint message of the two passages.

Boldness to Approach

Now, there are a couple of additions in Hebrew 10. The first is in Hebrews 10:19–20:

We have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us.

This is new with the coming and ascending of Jesus. The old way of the temple and its priests and rituals and escalating spaces of holiness, from the court of the Gentiles to the common Jews, to the Holy Place, to the Holy of Holies — that whole temple cultus — wasn’t the real thing. It was symbolic (Hebrews 9:9); it anticipated the real thing, which didn’t come until Jesus came and rose and went into heaven as our pioneer. In Jesus, we have a new and living way into the very presence of God that was not available to Abraham, not available to Moses, not available to David, not available to Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, but now new to us who are in Christ. What an opportunity!

A second added detail is Hebrews 10:22:

let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

What does Hebrews mean by “our hearts sprinkled clean” and “our bodies washed with pure water”? And how does that lead to our being able to draw near to God with confidence, especially in prayer?

This mention of sprinkling goes back to Moses and the people of Israel who had escaped slavery in Egypt. At Mount Sinai, God makes his covenant with them, and to enter the covenant, the people offer sacrifices in Exodus 24, and Moses takes the blood (“the blood of the covenant”) and throws half against the altar, representing God. The other half, he throws — that is, he sprinkles — on the people.

In this physical act of flinging animal blood on the people, something more than the mere physical is happening. In and of itself, the sprinkled blood doesn’t do anything to change the people or deal finally with their sins. But by this act, this memorable act, the people enter into covenant with God.

And if you were to ask an Israelite a few months later, “Hey, how do you know you’re in covenant with God?” one answer he might give is, “I remember the blood sprinkled on us. A drop landed on my left shoulder. It was real; it happened. I can assure you I’m part of the people in covenant with God. I had the blood of the covenant on me.”

Washed and Sprinkled

But now Hebrews 10 takes this to a new-covenant level. Hebrews 10:22 says that in Christ we have had “our hearts sprinkled clean.” How did that happen? Through faith. Faith in the heart trusts that when Jesus died on the cross, and shed his blood — objectively, publicly, unquestionably, indisputably — his life was standing in for mine. His death was the death I deserved.

But faith like this isn’t quite as cut-and-dried for the Christian as blood on the shoulder was for the ancient Israelite. There’s still some subjectivity here with faith. Jesus’s sacrifice is objective, but how do I know I’m included? My heart was sprinkled, not my shirt. And so, Hebrews draws in the new-covenant inauguration ritual, baptism, to help: “. . . and our bodies washed with pure water.” Baptism represents the washing away of sin in our hearts, in the inner person, but baptism is also external and objective and memorable. If you were baptized as a believer, and baptized in a faithful church community of reasonably diligent and discerning Christians (who were saying, in effect, through baptizing you, “We believe you truly believe and Jesus’s blood covers you”), then remember that baptism as support for your assurance, and pray with confidence.

Baptism is not just a drop on your shirt, but your whole body submerged in water, saying, “This one belongs to Jesus. This one has saving faith.” Remember that event, and draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith. How precious is a good believer-baptism! It didn’t save you, but God means for it to help assure you that you’re saved through faith in Jesus — and help you to come confidently in prayer.

So, the Father not only speaks but listens. And the Son secures and certifies our access to God’s ear in prayer. That’s it, right? Should we pray to close?

Well, not so fast. If only our lives were so simple! They are not. We have our ups and downs, our seasons of dullness and doubt, our struggles, our indwelling sin, our weaknesses — oh so many weaknesses, no matter how much we try to project ourselves as strong. And so, there is one more critical wonder of Christian prayer.

3. God’s Spirit Helps Us in Our Weakness

Let’s finish with Romans 8:26–27, and this is so precious for the wonder and power of prayer, and it is perhaps often overlooked in our day. Romans 8:26–27 says,

The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, when you pray, you pray as one who has the Holy Spirit of God dwelling in you. God himself has taken up residence in you. This is almost too good to be true. In a way that was not part and parcel of God’s first covenant with Israel, the risen and glorified Christ has poured out and given his Spirit to dwell in new-covenant Christians (John 7:38–39).

Now, our having the Spirit (Romans 8:9, 23) does not mean we own or control him. He also has us too. He is in us, and we are in him (Romans 8:5, 9). He is “sent into our hearts” (Galatians 4:6), given to us (Romans 5:5; etc), supplied to us (Galatians 3:5), and not just once but ongoingly (Ephesians 1:17; 1 Thessalonians 4:8). Through faith, we receive him (Romans 8:15; etc). And so, as the New Testament makes plain in several places, the Spirit dwells in us (Romans 8:9–11; etc) and prompts, empowers, and guides our prayers (Romans 8:26–27; Ephesians 6:18; Jude 20).

For Christians, there is a special relationship between our prayers and our having the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 6:17–18 says to “take . . . the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.” And Jude 20–21 says, “You, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God.” God doesn’t just want to hear from us and open the way to him, leaving it in our court. He gives us his own Spirit, in us, to prompt our hearts to pray, to enable us to pray, and as Romans 8 says, to pray for us when we don’t know what to pray.

Getting Practical

So, as men and women of the gospel, fed by God’s word, flanked by our fellows in Christ, we cultivate habits of prayer in three main spheres: secret (Matthew 6:5–6), with company in our marriages, families, and churches, and as regular anchor points in our lives (1 Thessalonians 5:17; Romans 12:12; Colossians 4:2). We have the opportunity to punctuate our lives with prayer and take the seams of our days as prompts to pray.

We turn general intentions into specific plans. We find our regular times and places. Our prayers are scheduled and spontaneous — in the car, at the table, in bed. We pray through Scripture, in response to God’s word. We adore, confess, give thanks, and petition. We learn to pray by praying, and by praying with others.

And we end on this note. Lest you think of prayer as simply asking God for things, let’s clarify what is the great purpose of Christian prayer: that God himself would be our joy. C.S. Lewis says this so memorably:

Prayer in the sense of petition, asking for things, is a small part of it; confession and penitence are its threshold, adoration its sanctuary, the presence and vision and enjoyment of God its bread and wine. (“The Efficacy of Prayer,” 7)

Brothers and sisters in Christ, in light of the Father’s listening ear, the Son’s securing and certifying achievement, and the Spirit’s amazing indwelling and prompting and help, I hope that you would not leave here this morning feeling guilty or under obligation, but that a shift might begin or continue in you — from obligation to opportunity.

Prayer is an opportunity to enjoy “fresh supplies of grace” to your soul, the best of which is the enjoyment of God himself.

The young man was fully engaged in worship: hands raised, eyes closed, mouth wide open in song, completely lost in the moment. This man with Down syndrome was entirely free as he worshiped with all his might. In the moment, I wanted to be free like that! But I have since wondered if, because of my assumptions about his intellectual disabilities, I missed what was really happening.

God had called him to war.

No, that is not hyperbole. I see it in Scripture and in the intensity of hatred around the world toward those with intellectual disabilities. God invites us to trust him when he tells us how his strength manifests mightily in so-called “weaker members.” And few are considered weaker and more vulnerable than those with intellectual disabilities.

Christians appreciate, both biblically and practically, that we are finite and incapable of doing all that God can do. From that standpoint, we embrace God as strong and recognize that we need his persistent, daily help. But we also routinely see fellow humans with intellectual disabilities as being entirely “other” — vulnerable and in need of our protection and care. Yes, they have gifts valuable to the church. But we often limit their realm of influence to the simple things we can see.

So, I plead with you, especially if you are in leadership in the church, to consider what is happening beyond what you observe. Your perception of reality may not be reality. God equips these outwardly weaker members to fight for you, and you need a category for that.

Perception Is Not Reality

In 2 Kings 6, the Syrian army surrounds Elisha to capture and kill him. His servant sees their desperate situation and responds in fear: “Alas, my master! What shall we do?” (6:15).

He cannot see reality until God grants him sight. Elisha tells him,

“Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Then Elisha prayed and said, “O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.” So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. (6:16–17)

We can be confident that when that servant saw God’s army, he was no longer afraid of the Syrian army.

So, when Paul writes about dangerous forces beyond our ability to perceive with our senses, we should heed him:

We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)

It also means we should believe God when he talks about his strength in our weakness.

Strong in the Seeming Weak

In 1 Corinthians 1:18–31, Paul hammers home what God thinks of worldly wisdom, making sharp distinctions between the wise of this world and God’s infinite ability to save sinners:

The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” (1 Corinthians 1:18–19)

A few verses later, Paul makes an incredible statement:

God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. (1 Corinthians 1:27)

The “weak in the world” are not mere bystanders or examples for us. They are chosen by God to actively shame and bring down the strong. But Paul doesn’t end there. In 1 Corinthians 12:12–31, as Paul explains how God makes one body out of many different members, he makes a bold declaration about apparently weaker members:

The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor. (1 Corinthians 12:21–23)

Indispensable means not able to be dispensed with, absolutely necessary, essential. These members must be part of the body, or the body will not work as designed.

“Satan is on a global campaign to kill those who have intellectual disabilities.”

And note Paul’s phrase “seem to be weaker.” He knows we are tempted to neglect the supernatural work of God and believe only what our eyes see. If our eyes see an adult with intellectual disabilities who struggles to communicate, who is entirely vulnerable to abuse and manipulation by evil people, who needs others to assist him and protect his interests, we are inclined to discount him as an agent of God’s power. But we must not rely on what “seems to be.”

God Calls the Weak to War

Psalm 8 begins with some of the most recognized words in the Bible: “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens” (8:1). And then the psalm seems to take a strange turn:

Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. (8:2)

Psalm 8:1 shows God very strong and majestic, clothed in sovereign power, authority, and dignity. And his sovereign power is so strong that he can strengthen the weakest, most vulnerable humans who do not have the ability even to make intelligible sentences. Pastor John helpfully unpacks Psalm 8:2 this way:

The peculiar mark of God’s majesty is not just that he stoops to listen to or take thought of or care for infants, but that he makes them the means of his triumphs. God conquers his foes through the weaknesses of the weak — the speech of babies. When you think of God as a warrior, remember: he wins with weakness.

The psalmist’s reference to babies and infants emphasizes inability more than age, so we can justly include adults with severe intellectual disabilities here. And God equips these “that seem to be weaker” not just to fight but to win!

My mother lived with severe dementia for several years and lost much of her ability to communicate. One day, while I was visiting my parents, her eyes snapped open out of sleep, and she looked me squarely in the eye and said, “I love Jesus. You should love Jesus too!” What a joy to hear that though she had forgotten who I was, God would not let her forget who her Savior is, and she desired that I know that Savior too. “He wins with weakness,” indeed.

Her powerful words were encouraging — and protective. Had my father or I laid down our spiritual defenses out of grief, discouragement, or exhaustion and allowed sin to take root in our souls? Were we entertaining thoughts whispered by our subtle and wicked spiritual enemy? If so, my mother’s simple words had now fixed our thoughts on Jesus! Given how God delights to use weakness, as revealed in Psalm 8:2, perhaps the Holy Spirit roused my mother from her sleep: “To battle, saint! Deliver these words and rescue your husband and son!”

Satan’s Murderous Rage

Satan is on a global campaign to kill those who have intellectual disabilities. More than two-thirds of unborn children identified with Down syndrome in the United States will be aborted. In Denmark, the number soars to 98 percent. New technologies make the womb an increasingly perilous place for a child with any disability, especially an intellectual disability.

On the other end of life, a study of those who wanted to end their lives under “right to die” laws said they did so mainly “because of loss of autonomy (87.4 percent); impaired quality of life (86.1 percent), and loss of dignity (68.6 percent).” In other words, many people are legally killing themselves not because of pain and suffering but because of their fears about the quality of a life with disabilities, especially an intellectual disability.

Given this worldwide campaign to kill, marginalize, and stigmatize those with intellectual disabilities, one has to wonder, Why is Satan so determined to eliminate them? If they are so weak and useless, why not let them live to distract time, energy, and resources away from the things of God?

The reason is not hard to guess. Imagine being the “god of this world,” with the ability to blind minds (2 Corinthians 4:4), and yet defeated — worse, humiliated — by the so-called weak and foolish ones of the world. Of course he wants them dead. An army commander will seek to reduce the fighting ability of his enemy. Satan knows the Bible better than we do and perfectly understands that their weakness magnifies the power of God in ways that spell his doom.

Now, I’m not suggesting my son’s every utterance is Spirit-filled. But I’ve seen an unexpected word or song from his lips penetrate a hard or broken heart with supernatural power in ways that make no rational, observable sense. And I remember Psalm 8:2.

Do not let the father of lies distract you from these truths. Have you unknowingly embraced a secular, utilitarian view of giftedness that is uncomfortable with supernatural power? Has Satan subtly encouraged you to overlook all that God has said in his word about his strength magnified in weakness?

Be Supernatural Christians

Dear reader, and especially pastors, we need to reclaim a biblical, supernatural vision of reality! Adam and Eve, in the perfection of the garden and with unfallen mental and physical capacities, succumbed to the snake’s seductive speech. Their intellectual capacities did not protect them from sin and ruinous error, and neither can ours.

Trust and worship our God — a kind God who equips the weak among us to defeat his foes for his glory and our good. Some of those who live with intellectual disabilities will require what feels like a discouraging amount of your time, energy, and effort. May God give you discerning, spiritual eyes to appreciate that God is equipping your church for war. And may you, with joy, welcome, build up, and deploy these uniquely gifted people in the happy work of making much of Jesus.

Ah, Sunday. That majestic morning when my children awake to the aroma of eggs and bacon and fresh-squeezed orange juice. When they bound down the stairs, Bibles in hand and a song in their hearts. When I lead them in family worship over breakfast, and my wife plays the piano as we prepare our hearts for meeting with the people of God.

The only downside when we finish is that we still have time to kill. Oh well. At least we’ll be super early to church — again!

Reality Check

If you’re smirking, it’s because you know this is not reality. Many of us struggle just to get ourselves in one piece to church, much less an elderly parent or a gaggle of little ones. So often, we shovel in some breakfast and figure out what to wear and look for our keys and clamber into the car and lose our patience on the way until we arrive, distracted and disheveled — again. Though we walk smilingly through the doors, our minds and hearts remain miles away.

This scenario may be a little extreme, but it is less hypothetical than some of us — even some of the shiniest saints — may wish to admit. It’s one thing to be present at church, but it’s another to be prepared for church.

Before considering practical remedies for this rut, an important caveat is in order.

If you struggle with depression or are riddled with doubts or have been mistreated by church leaders or are raising kids by yourself, it’s understandable if attending church feels like an arduous ministry. For some Christians, simply getting out of bed requires courage and faith — how much more getting all the way to church. As Rosaria Butterfield has said, “We may never know the treacherous journey people have taken to land in the pew next to us.” So, if gathering with a healthy church is hard and you’re doing so anyway, God bless you.

That said, I am not writing mainly to those for whom church is painful but to those for whom church has become routine — the kind of believers who, when Sunday rolls around, are more likely to yawn than wince. Thankfully, there are many simple changes we can all make to maximize our Sundays. Consider just two.

1. Come Hungry, Leave Full

If your car has been sitting in freezing rain for days, it may take a while for the engine to warm up and run well. For so many years of my Christian life, I basically came to the sermon cold. Maybe I knew the passage to be preached, but I hadn’t read it beforehand.

Why not make it a practice to read the sermon passage before coming to church? It’s not difficult, and you have a whole week to do it. This habit will enrich your sermon-listening experience since you’ll be familiar with the passage. You will therefore lean in, curious to see how the pastor handles this doctrine or that verse. It’s also a habit you can easily practice with others — your family or roommate or friend. It will warm the engine of your mind (and hopefully your heart) so that you are locked in when the message begins, eager to learn and grow.

How often do you pray for your pastor as he’s preparing sermons for you? It’s good if you hold him to a high standard (1 Timothy 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9), but do you hold yourself to a high standard of prayer for him? Sermon prep is hard. It’s lonely. It’s war. But you can join the fight by asking God to give your pastor insight, to guard him from distraction, to guide him in faithfully unleashing and applying God’s truth.

Don’t stop there, however. Come hungry, yes, but also resolve to leave full.

Sometimes, I tell my congregation that what they get out of my sermons is not just up to me. It’s also up to them. What’s your posture when the message begins? Is it essentially relax and wait to be entertained, or is it lean in, Bible open, ready to hear from the living God? Admittedly, this expectancy comes easier with some passages. I recently preached about an Israelite assassin stabbing a Moabite king, whose fat swallowed the blade as he soiled himself (Judges 3:12–30). The story is, let’s just say, captivating. But what about passages that are deeply familiar or almost elementary in their simplicity? If pride thinks, I’ve heard this before, humility thinks, Who here hasn’t? And if pride thinks, I know this already, humility thinks, I need this again.

Resolving to “leave full” presupposes, of course, that you’re hearing the Bible faithfully proclaimed in your church. (If not, find a different one.) To be sure, you may not be sitting under the greatest preaching in the world. But that’s okay, for as Harold Best once remarked, “A mature Christian is easily edified.” That quote challenges me so much. Let’s say the production quality of the music or the delivery skill of the preacher leaves much to be desired. Are the words true? If so, we should be easily edified. We should be able to leave full.

2. Come Early, Stay Late

The practice of coming early and lingering after is not always easy to pull off, but it can make all the difference. The needed resolve just can’t come on Sunday morning. That’s too late! As my friend Dean Inserra likes to say, Sunday-morning church is a Saturday-night decision. The only way you will ever find yourself there early is if you have forced yourself to be there early.

But arriving early — which of course means waking up early and adjusting your morning routine — yields all kinds of benefits. For starters, it prevents distraction. You’re not careening into the parking lot 43 seconds before the service begins. You’re not rushing through the doors, unable to really engage with anyone because, well, you have to get in there and find a seat (perhaps after dropping off a kid or three). When you do finally sit down — or not, because everyone’s already singing — your mind is racing. Announcements sail over your head. You absorb little from the prayers. Bottom line: you’re engaging from a deficit, trying to catch up, trying to focus, trying to worship. But because you didn’t come earlier, you don’t begin worshiping until halfway through the service.

Arriving early is only half the battle, though. It also helps to linger after the service.

If you’re a Christian, there is no day in your week more important than Sunday. Because it’s the day King Jesus got up from the dead, it’s the day on which his redeemed people have assembled to celebrate him. Sunday worship is the launching pad of your week — a God-designed opportunity to be replenished, receive instruction and encouragement, and catch your breath before stepping back into the duties and distractions of life in a chaotic world. Why rush to leave?

When you linger afterward, you open yourself to connect with others unhurriedly — which nowadays is a countercultural gift. You can ask deliberate questions and listen well. After all, as one person observed, “Being listened to is so close to being loved that most people cannot tell the difference.” If someone is visiting, you can greet him or her warmly, answering questions and exhibiting genuine interest in the exchange. If they’re a fellow member, you can draw him or her out (Proverbs 20:5) and perhaps speak a simple word of encouragement or of challenge — or, best of all, words of prayer, lifting up burdens on the spot to the God who hears.

Sticking around after church also gives you the chance to ask another member how the Lord just ministered to them. Posing such a question shouldn’t be perceived as super-spiritual — it should be normal. How tragic that we can stand in the lobby and feel comfortable discussing fantasy football or the latest show (which is fine) but awkward discussing the very thing we’ve come together to do. Church is not just an event we show up to; it’s a family we belong to. And since the family gathers to be changed, not merely entertained, why not seize the opportunity to debrief while the songs and sermon are still fresh, still ringing in our ears, still begging to be applied?

A mature Christian arrives with eyes for others, plotting to encourage and serve. On Sundays, we meet with Jesus Christ and these blood-bought people he’s placed in our lives — so it’s a privilege to come early and stay late.

Positioned for Success

In an age of customized DIY spirituality that values convenience and comfort more than any previous era in history, committing to a local church amounts to a revolutionary act — and a beautiful one.

By resolving to come hungry and leave full, we position ourselves to grow. And by resolving to come early and stay late, we position ourselves to serve.

Christianity is not a spectator sport. So, let’s get in the game — and stay there, side by side, Sunday after Sunday — until Jesus our King brings us safely home.

Audio Transcript

It’s Job week on the podcast. The book of Job is a source of a lot of APJ questions, and the source of a lot of answers too on all sorts of topics over the years. We have eighty episodes now mentioning Job — on every topic you can imagine. I’m surprised how often we return to this important book, which is not easy to interpret. We’re reading the book together in our Bible reading. Today we read Job 16 together.

The whole book is challenging to interpret because it’s littered with errors, Pastor John — errors about suffering, errors about providence, and even false statements about God himself, a distortion on full display for us here in our reading today, in the early verses of chapter 16. There we find a mix of things that are true and things certainly false, most starkly in Job 16:7–9. Verse 7 is sovereignly true. God brought the suffering into Job’s life by his plan and permission. Yes. But then verse 9 seems devilishly false. God did not bring the suffering because he hates Job. So, how do we parse fact from fiction as we read Job’s words, along with his wife and all of his friends, trying to interpret providence?

Well, that is the right question to ask, I think, because perhaps the most striking thing about the structure of the book of Job is that from chapters 3 to 31 you have 29 chapters of back-and-forth between Job and his three so-called comforters or friends, both of them speaking a mixture of truth and falsehood. It’s simply stunning to me that the author would devote 29 out of 42 chapters to a jumble of good and bad statements about human suffering and God’s sovereignty. The author seems to be especially exercised that there is so much bad theology about the sovereignty of God and human suffering. That, it seems, is why he gives 29 chapters to it.

The Errors of Job and His Friends

We can summarize the simplistic theology of suffering and sovereignty in the mouth of the three friends with Job 4:7–8. They say, “Who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the upright cut off? As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.” In other words, their answer to Job’s extended suffering is that it is owing to his iniquity. The righteous prosper; the wicked suffer. In chapter after chapter, they accuse Job of all kinds of sin, from bribery to deceit to neglect of the poor. And for Job’s part, he despairs of being treated justly by God and says repeatedly, at least three times, that God is treating him as an enemy (Job 13:24, for example) and that God, in fact, hates him (Job 16:9).

“We don’t know enough about God’s hidden ways and plans to pass any valid negative judgment about his ways.”

Now, what they all agree on is that God is absolutely sovereign. That’s amazing. They never question that. We moderns, we’re bold and brash enough to get in God’s face and say that he’s not sovereign. That’s never once questioned by anybody in the book of Job. What they are struggling with is why a person like Job is enduring such long and terrible suffering. The friends’ answer is, “His suffering correlates with his sin.” Job’s answer is, “I don’t understand what’s going on, but all I can tell is that God is treating me as though he hated me.”

A Grid for the Book of Job

I think the way the author intends for us to sort out what is true and what is false in what Job and his friends say in these 29 chapters is by letting the rest of the book — what came before in chapters 1–2, and what comes after in chapters 32–42 — let all of that provide the grid, the framework, the criteria for separating truth and error in Job 3–31.

So, let me try to sketch very briefly what that grid is.

1. Job’s Goodness

The point of chapters 1–2 is that Job was a good man, a God-fearing man: “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” (Job 1:1). He proved that profoundly with his godly response, blessing God, worshiping God (Job 1:20–21). In the midst of the loss of his children, the loss of his health, he submitted to the sovereign wisdom, justice, and goodness of God, even though he couldn’t see it all. In Job 2:10, he says, “Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” And the inspired author puts his approval on those words: “In all this Job did not sin with his lips.”

The fact that we are given a glimpse into heaven as Satan and God interact about the life of Job, which Job could not see, is intended to show that on earth, we don’t know enough about God’s hidden ways, his hidden plans, to pass any valid negative judgment about his ways. So, we have a signal from the author from the beginning that Job’s three friends are not right. They are treating Job as if there’s sin everywhere in his life, which explains his suffering. And the point of chapters 1–2 is that that’s not true. There must be another explanation. But for Job, for 31 chapters, he can’t figure that out.

2. Elihu’s Explanation

So, the next big unit is Elihu, the young man who steps forward, who I believe is speaking the truth in order to correct both Job and his friends. Here’s Job 32:2–3: “Elihu . . . burned with anger at Job because he justified himself rather than God. He burned with anger also at Job’s three friends because they had found no answer, although they had declared Job to be in the wrong.”

“Suffering, in the case of God’s children, is a gracious means by which he exposes pride in our lives.”

What’s new about Elihu’s theology of suffering is that he does not correlate suffering merely with a punitive act of God against Job, but he introduces this new factor in Job 33:14–19 that suffering, in the case of God’s children, is a gracious means by which he exposes the sediment of pride at the bottom of our lives, lying there undetected, and then you get bumped by suffering, and the sediment stirs up. He exposes that and mercifully leads us to repentance and trust. That’s what’s going to happen to Job.

Now, I don’t think that contradicts the statement at the beginning of the book of Job — that Job was a good and God-fearing man. But it clarifies that in the best of men, whom God regards as good and God-fearing, there are remnants of indwelling sin. And one way that God in his mercy cleanses us and humbles us and brings us to fuller, deeper repentance and deeper trust is through suffering. He tests us to see if we will hold fast to him in love.

3. God’s Response

Then the next major unit in the book is the word of God himself in chapters 38–41. And the basic message there is, “Job, you just don’t know enough to pass judgment on me. You need to put away your accusations and trust me. You darken counsel without knowledge” (see Job 38:2).

4. Job’s Repentance

The final part of the book is Job’s confession of God’s sovereignty and his own repentance for having spoken so badly about God. Job 42:5–6: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” So, the Lord tests Job one last time now to see if he has the new, fresh grace to pray for the forgiveness of his three friends who wounded him so badly. Job 42:10: “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends.”

So, I think the author intends for us to step back and see the God-fearing goodness of Job at the beginning, and the refining of Job’s holiness and faith through suffering, and his rejection of the simplistic view of the three friends, and his repentance for having found fault with God, and the beauty of his humility and love at the end. And the author expects us to take all of that as the grid through which we now will be able to sort out what is true and what is false in the mouth of Job and his friends in chapters 3–31.

Audio Transcript

On Thursday, we looked at perfectionism through the eyes of a high school student. When are good grades good enough? Great question. Today, we’re back to the topic of perfectionism and how it makes us indecisive in our later years. How do we overcome the paralysis of perfectionistic indecision in important life decisions? That’s the challenge faced by two retirees, Elisa and her husband, a couple with a historical connection to you, Pastor John. Elisa writes with a story and a dilemma.

“Hello, Pastor John! Thanks for your ministry over all these years. Incidentally, we [she and her husband] met you as post-Stanford students attending InterVarsity’s Western Leadership Conference, sometime around 1985. I was one of the worship leaders at that conference and vividly remember you speaking on Christian Hedonism — a life-changing paradigm for us. Now that we’re empty nesters, my husband and I are asking the question, ‘How do we spend the next portion of our lives?’ However, for better or worse, my dear husband is something of a perfectionist and doesn’t want to make a mistake in answering this important question. So, the question becomes, ‘When the stakes are so high, how do you not become paralyzed with fear of making a mistake?’”

I have to ask, Why? How can you be a perfectionist as an empty nester? How can you live that long and still be a perfectionist? Well, anyway, he is. So, we get to deal with this.

Elisa, this is wonderful to be reminded of those days at Stanford. I remember them. And I remember them pretty clearly for reasons that are not altogether positive, because I remember that the leader of the InterVarsity group and I were moving in different directions, it seemed. I’m going to close with that in just a few minutes and apply that to your situation.

So, here are the things that come to my mind. And I’m in exactly your situation. You’re younger than I am, but I’m thinking about that question. Here are my thoughts.

1. Realize that to not decide is to disobey.

One of the best ways to overcome the perfectionistic fear of making a mistake in what you decide to do is to realize that deciding nothing is the biggest mistake. There’s your deal-breaker. That’ll get you going. In other words, you are not in a neutral zone. There are no neutral zones. Not to move toward a God-sized goal in this next season of your life is to disobey. So, standing still is not an option, because it means you’re drifting. You’re never standing still — you’re drifting and you’re coasting with the culture and the way of the world. That’s the first thing.

2. Expect God to steer you as you move.

If you’re tied up in the harbor of comfort and leisure, God ordinarily will not give you clear direction. He gives direction to captains who point their ship out of the harbor into the storm. Think about Jonah (a counterintuitive illustration). Even Jonah was moving in exactly the wrong direction, and God stopped him. He didn’t send him home and say, “Start over!” No, he didn’t send him home. He made that journey part of the journey. And he sent him exactly where he wanted him to be — not exactly in the way he wanted, but he got him where he wanted to go because he was moving.

3. Get started through investigative moving.

One of the ways to be moving without knowing exactly where you’re going is what I might call investigative moving. You are moving when you are pursuing possibilities with serious investigation. That too is moving.

4. Trust God’s promise to guide you.

Take heart from the many promises of God that, in his great mercy, he will give you the guidance you need when you trust him. For example, Psalm 25:8: “Good and upright is the Lord; therefore he instructs sinners in the way.” So, we qualify. He instructs sinners in the way. “He leads the humble” — people who know that they’re sinners and admit it and cry out. “He leads the humble in what is right, and teaches the humble his way” (Psalm 25:9). That is a precious promise of guidance.

5. Obey clear commands in God’s word.

Pursue with all your might what is crystal clear as God’s will in Scripture. For example, 1 Thessalonians 4:3: “This is the will of God [for Elisa and her husband], your sanctification” — your holiness. If you have a full, deep, wide, rich understanding of holiness, it’s not bad advice to say, “Pursue holiness with all your might, and do as you please. Just do.” Because if you are passionate about being holy and maximizing your love of God, then it’ll happen. God loves to give fruitful direction to lovers of holiness who pursue it with all their hearts.

6. Dream bigger than aging fatalism.

In this process of prayer and investigation, dream bigger than aging fatalism would allow you. I find in my own heart at age seventy the temptation to think, “I don’t have long to live. So, I should be probably restricted in my dreams of what I can accomplish.” Now, I think that’s a mistake. I think it’s a serious mistake. And I’m trying to strive against that thought. I have no idea how long I have left. You don’t either.

“God loves to give fruitful direction to lovers of holiness who pursue it with all their hearts.”

I never have had any idea how long I have left. But when I was younger, I assumed that I could accomplish more simply because of the amount of time that was in front of me probably. But in fact, the accomplishments came because of God’s blessing on a particular season. It wasn’t the length of life; it was the power of seasons. And who knows what you might accomplish in the next season? So, don’t let the fatalism of aging limit your dreams of fruitfulness.

7. Ask how you will get the most of God himself.

And the last thing relates to Stanford, 1985. One of the reasons I look back with some sadness on those Christian Hedonism talks is because, little by little, as the series of messages went on, I saw myself — through interacting with students and the leader — going in a different direction than the InterVarsity leader at the time. His stress was on the wonder and the glory of the fact that God works for us. We are not God’s employees trying to earn wages. We are the patients of the Great Physician, who is using all his wisdom and his skill to serve us and our eternal health. And that’s true, and I love it.

But the note I was striking then (and have been ever since) was that when God works for us, the goal of his work is to fit us for enjoying God himself. That’s what the Physician does — not like any earthly physician. This heavenly Physician is trying to get our disease healed that makes us find substitutes for God so that in our wellness, we will see him, know him, love him, be satisfied in him. God himself is the all-satisfying treasure. And as I recall, the students back then began to discern a different trajectory between me and the leader.

So, here’s the way it relates to you. In your case now, the question, perhaps, finally is this: What new vision for our next chapter of life would cause us to taste most fully the power of God, the wisdom of God, the grace of God in our lives? How can we get more of God? And I think that if that’s the passion, God will show you the answer.

Were you to survey married couples about their money-management goals, most answers would focus on some form of financial success. Most people strive to accumulate better houses, nicer cars, more toys, and bigger retirement accounts. But when it comes to the dream of financial prosperity and security, we should ask, “Whose dream is it?” It may be the American dream — but is it the dream of the risen Jesus? And since what glorifies him is also for our good, is it a dream that’s ultimately in the best interests of our family?

The process of discovering God’s countercultural will about money and possessions can both excite and liberate. For my late wife, Nanci, and me, our growth in financial stewardship paralleled our spiritual growth. In fact, it propelled it. We learned about faith, grace, commitment, generosity, and God’s provision. We had challenging giving discussions that ultimately strengthened our marriage and bonded us around the common goal of investing in eternity.

Using the word makarios, which means “happy-making,” Jesus said, “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving” (Acts 20:35 GNT). Nanci and I found that happiness, not duty, permeates a God-honoring theology of money. When grace-saturated, kingdom-minded disciples use God’s money and possessions, we fulfill the first and second greatest commandments. We store up treasures in heaven and “take hold of that which is truly life” (1 Timothy 6:19).

The following principles can help you and your spouse develop a lifestyle of good stewardship that will yield dividends, now and forever.

1. Recognize the dangers of a possessions-centered life.

Although there is nothing inherently wrong with money, something is desperately wrong with devotion to money. “Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare. . . . For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils” (1 Timothy 6:9–10).

Understanding the dangers of materialism can liberate us to experience the joys of Christ-centered stewardship. Jesus speaks of the “deceitfulness of riches” (Mark 4:19). The psalmist warns, “Though your riches increase, do not set your heart on them” (Psalm 62:10 NIV). None of us is immune to the value-changing nature of wealth.

Things have mass, mass exerts gravity, and gravity holds us in orbit around the things we accumulate. A friend told me that when he and his wife were first married, they spent their time taking walks, playing games, and reading together. They were content. Later, as their income rose, they found themselves trapped by shifting priorities. Little by little, money and possessions took precedence over God, church, and meaningful time together.

Studies and anecdotal evidence have shown a connection between an increase in income and marital infidelity. Of course, the point is not the income itself but the lifestyle it underwrites. A Christian can make a million dollars a year, give generously, live modestly, and avoid much of that added temptation to immorality. It is not how much we make that matters. It is how much we keep.

How can we recognize if we are falling into materialism’s trap? “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). Jesus is saying, “Show me your bank statement, your credit card statement, and your receipts, and I’ll show you where your heart is.” What we do with our money is an inarguable statement of our values.

God declares, “Whatever is under the whole heaven is mine” (Job 41:11). God’s ownership of everything provides the foundation of a biblical theology of money and the antidote to materialism. Acutely aware of the fact that what we have is God’s and not ours, faithful money-managing stewards regularly consult him to implement his biblical investment priorities.

2. Make generous giving a priority.

I encourage you to commit to giving regularly to your local church and, above and beyond that, to missions and other ministries. Begin by setting an amount to give — I recommend not less than 10 percent — and stick with it so you honor God with your firstfruits (Proverbs 3:9). If you want him to bless your family’s finances, don’t place yourself under the curse of disobedience.

“Happiness, not duty, permeates a God-honoring theology of money.”

As thunder follows lightning, giving follows grace (2 Corinthians 8:1–2). If God’s grace touches you, you can’t help but give generously! Then, when God entrusts you with more, remind yourselves why: “So that you can be generous on every occasion” (2 Corinthians 9:11 NIV). (Contrary to the health-and-wealth gospel, God prospers us not to raise our standard of living, but to raise our standard of giving.)

If you have not been in the habit of giving, it can be challenging to begin. However, I ask people, “If you got a 10 percent pay cut, would you die?” Of course not! God is big enough to take care of you if you step out in faith and return to him what is his in the first place.

What if you and your spouse are not on the same page about giving? I learned over the years that my desire to give sacrificially could sometimes feel insensitive to Nanci. When I learned to be more generous with her (and our daughters), Nanci no longer felt that giving to kingdom causes competed with our family’s needs. Through many conversations, she learned to find increasing joy in giving, and I learned to find increasing joy in growing together and leading — but not pushing or pulling. We were holding hands, even if sometimes one of us was a step ahead. (As the years went by, the one ahead was increasingly her.)

Of course, God wants us to do many good things with money that do not involve giving. We must provide for our family’s basic material needs, for example (1 Timothy 5:8). But these good things are only a beginning. The money God entrusts to us is eternal investment capital. Every day is an opportunity to buy up more shares in his kingdom!

3. Set a budget so you can spend and save wisely.

Since the long-term consequences are severe when a couple disagrees about money, I can’t stress enough the importance of discussing financial matters. Start by making a careful record of spending so you can find out where your money is currently going. Then determine where it should be going. This will become the basis for your budget. (When I was a pastor, I met with families who followed a budget and did fine on a meager income. I met with others who made much more and were regularly in financial crisis.)

For some, the most practical way to budget is the envelope system. When paychecks are cashed, the cash goes into envelopes designated for giving, housing, food, gas, utilities, entertainment, clothing, saving, and so on. If nothing is left in the entertainment envelope halfway through the month, no more movies or eating out. If we overspend in one area, we must underspend elsewhere to compensate. The envelope system may seem antiquated, but it teaches us that resources are limited, which is an invaluable lesson.

What is the right balance between how much we give, use for needs and wants, and save? I believe the tension reflected in that question is healthy. We can prayerfully seek God’s guidance, determined to follow his lead as best as we can discern it.

Jesus tells us, “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things [what you eat, drink, and wear] will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33 NIV). Unlike the pagans who “run after all these things” and “worry about tomorrow,” believers can trust God (Matthew 6:25–34). If we believe that God can create us, redeem us, and bring us through death to spend eternity with him, we can take him at his word when he says he will provide for our material needs.

4. Avoid debt, except in rare instances.

The choice to live under debt (except in manageable amounts, such as with a mortgage payment well within your means) is ultimately deadening to the soul and to a marriage. It is always unwise to live above your income. It will invariably produce conflict in your marriage.

Trust means believing God will take care of our needs. When we go into debt, however, we usually do so to obtain wants, not needs. So the Bible cautions us against debt. The ESV translates the beginning of Romans 13:8, “Owe no one anything.” This would appear to prohibit debt. The NIV reads, “Let no debt remain outstanding.” This would allow debt, if paid off as soon as possible.

Not all debt is the same, however. I’m sympathetic to those in situations where, after prayer and evaluation, debt seems the only alternative. In such cases, nothing is wiser than giving first to God, cutting back expenditures, and systematically paying off debt as aggressively as possible.

Some consider mortgages an exception to avoiding debt, and a case can be made for borrowing to buy a reasonably priced house instead of renting. Unfortunately, many aspiring homeowners buy a house outside their budget. A couple I know assumed a large mortgage that depended on both of their incomes. When the wife became pregnant, they realized that to keep the house, they would have to violate their convictions against leaving their child in a daycare center while the mother worked.

What about credit cards? Some use them for convenience, paying off the amount owed on every statement to avoid interest. Nanci and I did this. This approach has advantages, but it also has drawbacks. The very convenience of having a credit card is often a liability — and constitutes temptation. Here are some prudent guidelines:

Never use credit cards for anything except budgeted purchases.
Pay off your credit cards every month.
The first month you have a credit card bill you cannot pay in full, destroy the card, pay it off, and don’t get another one.

5. Enjoy life to God’s glory.

As believers in a materialistic culture, we should embrace lifestyles that free up money to further the progress of the gospel. And yet, the answer is not asceticism, believing that money and possessions are inherently evil. Our God is a lavish giver (Romans 8:32). He provides pleasures and comforts he desires us to enjoy: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

Over the years, Nanci and I spent reasonable amounts of money on vacations that served to renew us. Even when our girls were small, we would have a date night, believing one of the best things we could do for our children was to maintain a strong marriage. (Make it a priority to date your spouse. Put it in your schedule and budget!)

Scripture says we are to put our hope not in material things but “in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17 NIV). That means we shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying his provisions! God does not expect his followers to live like prisoners in a cell, never feasting or celebrating life. He entrusts us with money to care for our needs and the needs of others, but also so we can take pleasure in the life he has given us.

Invest in Eternity — Together

Many Christians store up their treasures on earth. They end up backing into eternity, heading away from their treasures. Christ calls us to turn it around — to store up our treasures in heaven. That way, every day moves us closer to our Treasure.

In her last years, Nanci and I reflected on the ways, by God’s grace, we had invested in eternity and served the Lord Jesus together. What lay behind us was meaningful, but what awaited us on death’s other side was what we spent our lives preparing for.

Shortly before she died, I was holding Nanci’s hand, and she said, with a smile and tears, “Randy, thank you for my life.” I replied, also crying, “Nanci, thank you for my life.” God had used us to grow each other spiritually and make us better followers of Jesus. We certainly didn’t do everything right, but with God’s help, we sought to store up far greater treasures in heaven than on earth.

I encourage you to put Christ in the center of your marriage and finances. You will never regret it. The eternal payoffs will forever bring you joy and your Savior glory!

Life within the prison of despair is a misery hard to explain. The darkness makes dumb, leaving groans too deep for words. Isolation becomes both a constant friend and a chief affliction. The other birds of the world chirp along merrily. Perhaps you used to sing among their branches, but now you wonder, What do these creatures know of the deep caverns of the world? How can they understand? They feed upon worms; you live with worms, if living it can still be named.

John Bunyan described such a state as mere breathing. When Bunyan personified despair in The Pilgrim’s Progress, he depicted it as a giant who battered his prisoners mercilessly. After the first round of beatings, Giant Despair visits his captives (Christian and Hopeful) and finds them “still alive, though barely alive at that. They could do little but breathe, because of their great hunger and thirst and due to the wounds they received when he beat them” (The Pilgrim’s Progress, 198). Inhale, exhale . . . inhale, exhale — and even this with pain.

And what is worse, some of those locked in the dark tower know they have themselves to blame. Christian had advised they take an easier meadow-path that paralleled the narrow and hard way. They got lost, caught in a storm, and then they were discovered trespassing on Giant Despair’s property. The pilgrims’ imprisonment was not due so much to tragedy as trespass; theirs was not simply grief but guilt. God seems distant; the two believers grow silent: “They also had little to say, for they knew they were at fault” (196). They’re caught in Doubting Castle. Their hearts condemned them; conscience grabbed a branch to club them; why wouldn’t God leave them there?

Have you ever been imprisoned here? Are you there now?

Escaping Doubting Castle

Whether you wandered from the way into a great sin or whether some calamity stole you from your peace, a voice may come to you and suggest the unthinkable. Giant Despair brings the sinister temptation:

So when morning came, he went to them in an unfriendly manner, as before. Knowing they were still very sore with the stripes that he had given them the day before, he told them that since they were never likely to leave that place, their only way out would be immediately to make an end of themselves — either with knife, noose, or poison. “For why,” said he, “should you choose to live, seeing it is accompanied with so much bitterness?” (197)

A lion hunts among the wounded. He loves the stray, the despairing, the disgraced. This temptation never made you pause before, perhaps — when life was happy, hope was bright, God was near. But now, the lights are out. Now, the wages of sin overwhelm you. Now, with Christian, you find yourself considering the counsel. If you wonder the same, I pray God gives you strong aid through Bunyan’s five lessons concerning Christian and Hopeful’s escape from Doubting Castle.

1. Expose the Temptation

If you struggle with suicidal thoughts, a first step is to expose them. Christian says to Hopeful,

Brother, what shall we do? The life that we now live is miserable. For my part, I do not know whether it is best to live like this or to die without further notice. My soul desires strangling rather than life, and the grave is more desirable for me than this dungeon. Shall we listen to the counsel of this giant? (198)

I have had conversations with Christians who confessed they were tempted to harm themselves. Isn’t this one of the best first steps out of such despair? Satan brings a lethal combination of temptation along with lies about his temptation. In this case, he tells those he tempts that they must be false Christians for even being tempted. He holds out the poisoned apple and smirks to see your hand twitch. Do true Christians really long to die? Can they actually be tempted toward suicide? Our soul’s enemy is not just “the father of lies,” but “a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).

No matter who you are, you are not the first to be “so utterly burdened beyond [your] strength that [you] despaired of life itself” (2 Corinthians 1:8). You are not the first to wonder, “Why is light given to him who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it comes not, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures, who rejoice exceedingly and are glad when they find the grave?” (Job 3:20–22). Nor would you be the only one ever to pray for death, saying, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers” (1 Kings 19:4).

Bunyan’s first help for us is this: Expose the temptation. Follow Christian and go to a Hopeful, a trusted and mature believer or a faithful shepherd, and tell him how your Despair now counsels you.

2. Fear God’s Judgment

The second help comes with Hopeful’s response.

Indeed, our present condition is dreadful, and death would be far more welcome to me than to abide forever in this way. Even so, let us consider that the Lord of the country to which we are going has said, “You shall not murder.” If we are not to take the life of another man, then much more are we forbidden to take the giant’s counsel to kill ourselves. (198)

Beloved, to choose to destroy the life God has given you is not just a great tragedy but a heinous sin. With the euphemisms given for suicide today, we must not overlook that “God’s law, self-interest, and future judgment — all cry out against . . . the man who flees as a fugitive from life, and presents himself unbidden at the bar of God” (Commentary on John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, 94).

Bunyan goes on in the original to teach that suicide is “to kill body and soul at once,” arguing his position from 1 John 3:15: “You know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.” While I do not believe that every person who commits suicide goes to hell, I do not doubt it in many cases. I believe some who have traveled this deplorable path will be in heaven, but dear brother or sister, never test the Lord in this matter. The high-handedness of this sin, the destruction it leaves behind, the precarious end before a sure judgment ought to make us tremble and restrain the hand of self-harm.

“Oh, the liberation of promises believed! How they send us forth beyond the prison walls to better days.”

O despairing soul, this is not the voice of your Father in heaven, “for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one” (James 1:13). This darkness playing upon your mind is not the wisdom from above — first pure, then peaceable, full of good fruit (James 3:17). No, demonic wisdom tempts you to such a dark act, and these spirits would lead you off the cliff if you would let them, as they did when they entered the herd of pigs. Life — abundant life — is what your Savior came to bring you. Do not commit an offense so great as self-murder against your Lord.

3. Remember Past Rescues

Prosperity preachers will not tell you this, because prosperity preachers do not preach the whole counsel of God, but Bunyan shows in his allegory how life can go from bad to worse, even for Christians. Giant Despair returns, incensed to find the pilgrims still alive, and vows to make them regret the day of their birth. At this, Christian faints in terror. After he regains consciousness, he again confesses his inclination to take Despair’s counsel. To which Hopeful, that brother born for the day of adversity, reminds him, “My brother, do you not remember how valiant you have been before now?” (200). Hopeful reminds him of all he has overcome and how many times he has played the man, God helping him. This remembrance is not so much about him but about his God with him, a recollection similar to the psalmist’s: “You have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy” (Psalm 63:7).

We face down our Giants of today and tomorrow as David did his: by remembering the God of past deliverances and every-morning mercies. “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine” (1 Samuel 17:37). The Lord that delivered in the past will deliver now. He lives above and beyond our lightless castles, ready to raid our cells with grace and help in time of need, just as he has done before.

4. Grasp Great Promises

What finally breaks Christian and Hopeful free from Doubting Castle? Not vague ideas or renewed resolves or wishing upon a distant star, but believing upon living promises.

What a fool am I to lie in a stinking dungeon when I may as well walk at liberty! I have a key in my pocket, called Promise, that I am sure will open any lock in Doubting Castle. (202)

Despair forgets the “precious and very great promises” of God and their Yes and Amen in Christ (2 Peter 1:4; 2 Corinthians 1:20). Forlorn, we feel the blows of sorrow, attend to the gashes of guilt, but fail to search the pocket where the promise lies waiting. What a fool we have been to remain in a stinking dungeon when Christ would have us walk at liberty. Recall keys that have worked mightily on many a door in Despair’s penitentiary.

Guilt’s door:

Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isaiah 55:7)

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:1)

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:9)

He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in steadfast love. (Micah 7:18)

Despondency’s door:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28)

Whoever comes to me I will never cast out. (John 6:37)

They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint. (Isaiah 40:31)

This is the promise that he made to us — eternal life. (1 John 2:25)

Temptation’s door:

God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)

He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6)

Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. (Isaiah 41:10)

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. (James 4:7)

Oh, the liberation of promises believed! How they send us forth beyond the prison walls to better days — often before our situations even change. Robert Maguire captures the beauty of promise: “Promise sees the dawn from the midnight, anticipates the sunrise from the sunset, recognizes in the leafless trees and cheerless snows of winter the harbinger and earnest of the fruits and flowers and seasonable enjoyments of the summer-tide” (Commentary, 96).

O wintered soul, by faith in your great and compassionate God, who has not spared his beloved Son for you, send your heart ahead into coming spring by believing what he says is soon to come.

5. Crawl to Sunday

A final help Bunyan offers us comes by noticing the chronology.

Here, then, they lay from Wednesday morning till Saturday night, without one bit of bread, or drop of drink, or light or any to ask how they did. So they were in a dire situation, far from friends and acquaintances. (196)

Is it coincidental that Bunyan identifies the time frame as Wednesday morning till Saturday night? It is not. Sunday is the day of jubilee for the oppressed, the day to be reminded together of God’s certain promises with his redeemed people. “Is it not true that [Sun]day, by its holy rest and hallowed ministrations of the Word and prayer, breaks many a fetter, frees many a slave, dissolves the doubts of the week past, and delivers many a soul from the bondage of Despair?” (Commentary, 96). Can you not add your own testimony?

Giant Despair holds no authority in God’s house. The Lord of love lives here, the Lord of compassion, the Lord of life — the Lord in whose presence there is fullness of joy. He is the one who condemned sin in the flesh, crushed the skull of the dragon, and has sat down at his Father’s side — who is coming again for us. The Light of the world shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome him yet.

Despairing saint, Sunday is coming. Make it to his people, his shepherds, his ordinances. Crawl, if you must. Sunday, dear brother or sister, is the day of resurrection, the day of life — the Lord’s Day. A day to anticipate the arrival of the last promise he made to us: “Surely I am coming soon” (Revelation 22:20).

Audio Transcript

Back to questions about our perfectionistic tendencies, today and Monday. Many of us struggle here. Next time we look at how perfectionism makes us indecisive in life decisions. But first a question from a student. When are good grades good enough? Here’s the email: “Pastor John, hello to you and thank you for this podcast. I’m a female high school student in Minnesota, a senior taking five college classes, so technically a full-time college student as well. This last year, in my online classes, teachers would prohibit the use of textbooks during midterms and finals. But my friends would use their books anyway. I was tempted to cheat like this, too, but didn’t. I studied longer. Had I cheated, I would have had more time to study my Bible and to hang out with my family and attend church youth group events. I know I cannot cheat and honor God.

“But is overdoing my studies honoring to him either? How important is it to strive for As, if achieving them takes me away from more important things? I’m wired to be a perfectionist. But perhaps it is wiser to settle for Bs and for second best in school or in work to preserve my time for other things that are equally or more important. How do you weigh the pros and cons of excellence when settling for very good seems wiser? When are Bs wiser than As?”

When I saw this question earlier and had a chance to think about it (and even think whether I want to tackle answering it), I spent a long time pondering, How do you give counsel not only to this kind of question but to this kind of person? And by that I mean that she said, “I’m wired to be a perfectionist.” So, we have a person — and she’s, of course, not unusual — with a perfectionist bent wrestling with, you might say, good grades versus good deeds. That’s one way to say it.

Wisdom for Perfectionists

Almost everybody would agree that taking the time to save a person’s life is more important than getting an A. No question. Almost everybody would say (probably) that going to a party with your friends is not worth lowering your school performance for. But in between those two more or less obvious choices, there are dozens and dozens of gradations that a perfectionist is going to struggle with — especially a perfectionist.

And as I thought of particular pieces of advice that I could give, I realized that at every point, certain personalities, certain perfectionist types — I think I include myself here, probably — would likely take the advice and obsess over it and make the solution that I’m offering part of the problem. For example, if I said, “Read your Bible and pray so that you’ll have wisdom,” a perfectionist will ask, “How many hours a day should I read my Bible? How many hours a day should I pray?” You got yourself in a deeper hole now.

“Associating with wise people makes us wiser. To be around healthy people is to become more healthy.”

So, the question I’m asking myself is, What can I say that would point a person to the path of becoming a healthy person? And by “healthy person” I mean a person who is not tormented by questions for which there’s no clear biblical answer. The Bible simply does not tell a student how many hours to study and how much Christian service to do or how much time to spend cultivating friendships. A healthy person recognizes the complexities of such questions and humbly seeks a transformed mind and heart, which is able to spontaneously and without fixations and obsessions make healthy choices.

The Path to Healthy Living

Here’s the path I want to commend toward being a healthy person and making healthy choices when the Bible does not prescribe which choice to make. And I just have one piece of advice and then some explanations for why I say it. The advice is to seek to be a part of a community of healthy people. That’s my advice. And by healthy I mean spiritually and psychologically mature, Bible-saturated, wise, steady, sober-minded, balanced, joyful, humble, courageous, loving people — really healthy, strong saints.

Now, why would I suggest this? What’s the biblical warrant for giving that kind of advice to a perfectionist? Why do I hope that simply being around healthy Christians will have a healthy effect on perfectionistic people? Here are my three biblical answers to that question of why I’m giving this advice and why I think it will have a profound effect if we follow it.

1. The wise make us wiser.

The Bible teaches that association with wise people makes us wiser. Proverbs 13:20: “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise” — that’s an amazing statement — “but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” Healthy ways of seeing the world and living wisely rub off. You can’t program it; you can’t itemize it; you can’t package it. And most of the time you can’t even point to when it happens. It’s relationally organic; it’s natural and it’s wonderful. So, the psalmist says in Psalm 119:63, “I am a companion of all who fear you, of those who keep your precepts.”

Or another way to say the same thing is that Paul says at least six times that his churches should imitate him. This is real, life-on-life watching and imitating. And the book of Hebrews says the same thing. It tells us, “[Be] imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Hebrews 6:12). In a healthy community, this just happens. Sometimes it’s more intentional, but most of the time it’s just spontaneous. It’s caught rather than taught. To be around healthy people is to become more healthy.

And this is especially true, I think, for those who struggle in unhealthy ways with choices for which there’s no clear, biblical, step-by-step direction. It has to come from a healthy internal orientation to the world, and that we absorb in large measure from healthy people who are around us.

2. The Bible assumes spending time together.

Here’s the second way the Bible gives us warrant for this kind of advice. The New Testament uses the phrase “one another” 99 times, including — I’m not even counting the phrase “each other”; just “one another” in the ESV — “love one another,” “fellowship with one another,” “greet one another,” “serve one another,” “show hospitality to one another,” “pray for one another,” “confess your sins to one another,” “encourage one another,” “stir up one another,” “exhort one another,” “welcome one another,” “do good to one another,” “admonish one another,” “bear with one another,” “care for one another” — and the list goes on and on.

In other words, God’s plan for the healing of our personality defects — and everybody has them; I’m not picking on this girl, all right? Everybody has them. His plan for the maturing of our relational skills, and his plan for our ability to make wise choices, and his plan for all of our growth in how we serve and love each other — his plan for all these is that we spend time together, and for the more mature to become natural influences on the less mature.

3. God designs us for the common good.

Here’s one more way the New Testament commends this kind of advice. When discussing spiritual gifts and their use in the church, Paul said in 1 Corinthians 12:7, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” “Varieties of gifts,” “varieties of service,” “varieties of activities,” all of them with this goal: the common good (1 Corinthians 12:4–7). Or you could say “the common psychological and spiritual health,” “the common psychological well-being,” “the common capacity for making wise and peaceful decisions about school grades in relation to other good things.”

So, I’m saying to our Minnesota high school senior — who may well be in my own church, for all I know — that the long-range, lifelong answer to your question is to spend time with psychologically and spiritually mature, healthy people. Be in a healthy church. I know this is not a satisfactory short-term answer for specifics this semester. I know that. But it is what all of us need for the rest of our lives.

Twenty-five years ago, I was a freshman at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. I had grown up in the church. I made a profession of faith at age eight and was baptized. God had blessed me with a home church that loved the gospel and taught me that I could trust the Bible. However, looking back now, I can see that something was missing in my Christianity.

There was a deep struggle in my soul: I wanted to be happy, and I felt guilty for wanting it. My ache to be happy, I suspected, was more a liability than an asset. Living the Christian life, I assumed, was about my ability to put aside what I really wanted to do.

You too want to be happy. And you can’t escape it. All your life you’ve been trying to satisfy your deep-down longing for real joy by finding that perfect possession or perfect spouse, enjoying good food, knowing influential people, collecting reliable friends, traveling to scenic places, winning at sports (whether as a player or a fan), achieving success at school or work, and getting your hands on the latest gadgets. Our unsatisfied longings gnaw at us late at night as we scroll through social media and flip from channel to channel and let another episode autoplay.

Now, most of us aren’t endlessly miserable. Not yet. Not at nineteen or twenty. We find measures of satisfaction in the moment, but we don’t stay satisfied, not deep down. Did God make us this way? And if so, why did God hardwire us to ache for joy? Why this universal search for satisfaction?

Surprised by Joy

I remember as a college freshman, with my very duty-oriented faith, beginning to feel a kind of fascination with joy. As a kid, I had sung, “I got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.” Joy, when mentioned in church, often came off so light and flippant. And yet that one fruit of the Spirit’s nine (Galatians 5:22–23) connected most with the deep longings for happiness I was just beginning to realize as a college freshman.

As I read more of the Bible, I was amazed by what I found about joy and delight. It was the Psalms in particular that awakened me to the possibility and promise of real joy — joy that is not icing on the cake of Christianity, but an essential ingredient in the batter. Three psalms specifically captured my attention.

Soul-Thirsts for God

First, Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord.” And not just this command, but then this promise: “and he will give you the desires of your heart.” You mean at root God isn’t suspicious or frustrated by my desires? He made my heart to desire, and means to satisfy, not squash, my deepest longings? And where will that happen?

Second, Psalm 16:11: “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” Real joy comes not only from God as a gift from his hand, but in seeking his face. God himself — knowing him, enjoying him — that’s what he made your desires for. He made your restless human heart for real satisfaction — in him. He made your soul to thirst, and he meant for you not to deny your thirst but to satisfy it, in him.

Third, Psalm 63:1: “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.” This resonated deeply with me. I wanted this, and wanted to be more like this.

The Psalms had my attention. Again and again, they tapped into my soul, discouraged my sense of mere duty, and highlighted the central place of the heart — both in honesty about the many sorrows in this life, and in hopefully commanding me to “rejoice in the Lord” (Psalm 40:16; 64:10; 97:12; 104:34; 105:3; 118:24).

It was almost too good to be true to discover that my undeniable longing to be happy wasn’t just okay, but good, and that the God who made me actually wanted me to be as happy as humanly possible in him. For me to learn, and then begin to experience for myself, that God wasn’t the cosmic killjoy I had once assumed, but that he was committed, with all his sovereign energy and power, to do me good (Jeremiah 32:40–41) — it took weeks, even months, for such good news to land. I’m still not over it today.

And more good news was still to come.

All to the Glory of God

I knew from growing up that “the glory of God,” which often seemed like a throwaway Christianese phrase, was important. Turning pages in my Bible, I found it everywhere, like 1 Corinthians 10:31: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

God made the world, and made us, that he might be glorified. The Bible is very clear, and our own sense of justice resonates with the rightness of it, that God made us to glorify him. But that creates a crisis for many of us. Does God mean for me to pursue his glory or my joy? I want so badly to be happy, and the Bible commands, not condemns, my rejoicing in God. And I know I’m supposed to want him to be glorified in my life. Are his honor and my happiness two tandem pursuits in the Christian life? If so, how do we pursue both?

Then came the most remarkable discovery: our happiness in God glorifies God. My pursuit of the deepest and most durable joy, and God’s pursuit of his glory, are not two pursuits but one. Because, as John Piper champions in his book Desiring God, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” God’s design to be glorified and my desires to be happy come together in one amazing pursuit: the pursuit of joy in God.

Do You Enjoy Him?

God is not honored when we pay tribute to our own iron will by saying to him in prayer or church, “I don’t even want to be here, but I’m here.” What honors him, what glorifies him, what makes him look good, is joy and satisfaction in him. God is most glorified when we say with the psalmist, “You are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you,” and “In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” We say, “Nothing makes me happier than to know you, Father, through your Son, Jesus, and to be here with you over your word, or in prayer, or in corporate worship. Jesus, you are my joy. You are my treasure. You are my delight. You satisfy my soul.” In those words, and in the heart behind them, God is glorified.

“Not only does God invite us to believe him, trust him, fear him, obey him, and worship him, but to enjoy him.”

What is the most important truth you’ve learned in college? I posed this question to myself in thinking about what I wanted to say to you this morning. Of the countless new facts and liberating discoveries I made in those all-important, trajectory-shaping college years, what has proved most life-changing? Here’s one way I would put it: For me, the single most important breakthrough in all my college learning was finding that God is not just the appropriate object of the verbs believe, trust, fear, obey, and worship, but also he is the most fitting, most satisfying, most worthy object of the verb enjoy.

Believe God, trust God, fear God, obey God, worship God, yes! But do you enjoy him? Not with the small enjoyment of chuckling at a clever commercial, but the large enjoyment of basking before an ocean. Not the thin enjoyment of humming along with a pop song, but the thick enjoyment of coming to the long-anticipated pinnacle of a symphony or a great novel. Not the shallow enjoyment of acquiring some new gadget, but the deep enjoyment of reconnecting and catching up with a longtime friend.

Not only does God invite us to believe him, trust him, fear him, obey him, and worship him, but to enjoy him. Psalm 34:8 says, “Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!”

Learning to Fly

So, in light of that single greatest discovery in my college years, let me ask just briefly this morning what it means for the daily and weekly rhythms of the Christian life.

In other words, how do we get involved? What steps, humble as they may be, can we take? How do we position ourselves to receive the grace of God, to receive his joy? In his mercy, he has not kept it a secret how he provides ongoing grace and joy for the Christian life. I like to summarize it in three parts — three previews of what our focus will be tomorrow night.

1. Hear His Voice

Each new day introduces a fresh occasion to hear his voice in the Scriptures, not mainly as marching orders, but as a meal to feed our souls. Not just for soul nutrition, but for enjoyment. God wants our regular sitting down with his Book to be more like coming to dinner than going to the grocery store. Don’t try to store up truth for tomorrow or next week. Come to enjoy him today. Like the Israelites in the wilderness, when God gave them manna, simply gather a day’s portion and enjoy.

2. Have His Ear

Some call it prayer. When we enjoy God, prayer begins to be a way not just to ask God for things we would enjoy, but to enjoy God himself. In prayer, we respond to what God says to us in his word, and in doing so, we commune with him, both asking for more of him and experiencing him in prayer, in the moment, as our greatest enjoyment. The heart of prayer is not getting things from God, but getting God.

3. Belong to His Body

Finally, then, is belonging to his body. One vital manifestation of life in the church is corporate worship. When we pursue our joy in God, corporate worship becomes the stunning opportunity to gather together, not just with fellow believers, but with fellow enjoyers of God.

How might it change corporate worship for you — not just in church on Sunday morning, but also here in chapel — to look around and think, “These students and professors not only believe in the truth of Christianity but they enjoy the God of Christianity.” As we sing, we are enjoying Jesus together. As we pray, we are enjoying him together. As we hear his word read and his message preached, we are uniting our hearts together in the God who himself, in the person of his Son, became one of us, lived among us, suffered with us, died for us, rose triumphantly from the grave, and now sits in power — with all authority in heaven and on earth — at his Father’s right hand, and is bringing to pass, in his perfect patience and perfect timing, all his purposes in our world. For our everlasting joy. Together.

One Great Possession

Coming to enjoy God — not just believe him, trust him, worship him, and obey him, but enjoy him — has changed everything for me. It’s changed how I approach the Bible, how I approach prayer, and how I approach corporate worship and fellowship. But there’s still one last piece missing: What about love for others, especially when it’s costly? Will enjoying God move me toward others, or away from them? Will joy in God move me toward hard, painful, costly needs in this fallen, sin-sick world, or away from them?

My answer, which I can testify to in experience now for 25 years, is that finding joy in God liberates us to truly love others. I leave you with one amazing testimony: Hebrews 10:32–34. The situation is that some in this early church were put in prison for their faith, and others, instead of going into hiding, went public to visit them in prison. In doing so, they exposed themselves to the same persecution their brothers were receiving:

Recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.

So, these early Christians put themselves in harm’s way by coming forward to provide food and basic needs for their friends in prison, and they too were persecuted. Their possessions were plundered, whether by official decree or mob violence. And how did they receive it? Hebrews 10:34: “You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property. . .” What? How? Can you see yourself joyfully accepting the plundering of your possessions? Where did this come from?

The answer is in the last part of Hebrews 10:34: “. . . since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” The word for “property” is the same word, in the plural, as the word for “possession.” Literally, “you joyfully accepted the plundering of your possessions [plural] because you knew you had a better and abiding possession [singular].” Because you had God as your heavenly treasure, you were able to accept the loss of your earthly treasures in the calling of love — and not just accept, but accept with joy. You joyfully accepted the loss of your finite, earthly, limited possessions because you had the infinite, heavenly, all-satisfying singular Possession, whose name is Jesus Christ.

So, do you enjoy God? When you enjoy God, you are finally free to surrender your small, private enjoyments (called sacrifice) for the greater enjoyment of meeting the needs of others (called love).

For five years, I cared for my friend Violet as her memories faded away. Dementia took hold, and the feisty Finnish woman who took pride in her nursing career, her spotless lawn, and her adoring German shepherd eventually forgot the people and home she loved. In her final months, she no longer recognized Bible verses that had buoyed her through so many storms.

But she still had “Amazing Grace.”

During Violet’s last year, I visited her every Tuesday with my Bible in hand. She neither recognized me nor recalled any words I read to her. But whenever I sang “Amazing Grace,” she joined in, warbling just as she had for so many years in the choir. In a season when the fog of dementia had otherwise clouded her vision of God’s grace, she reclaimed his promises through song: “I once was lost but now am found; was blind but now I see.”

Chorus of Commands

Throughout the Bible, praise, adoration, and thanksgiving move God’s people to sing. After God guides the Israelites safely across the Red Sea, Moses leads them in song (Exodus 15:1). When God protects David from Saul, David praises him with singing (2 Samuel 22:49–50).

This pattern repeats throughout the whole biblical story. When God blesses Hannah with a son, she sings in thanksgiving (1 Samuel 2:1–10). After Gabriel visits Mary to foretell Jesus’s birth, she rejoices with the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55). Jesus himself sings a hymn (likely from Psalm 118) at the Last Supper (Matthew 26:30), and John foresees all the nations singing praises to the risen Lord in the new heavens and new earth (Revelation 5:9–12).

Paul encourages the church to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16). James writes, “Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise” (James 5:13). The Lord himself calls us to sing as we praise him. Consider Psalm 96:1–3:

Oh sing to the Lord a new song;     sing to the Lord, all the earth!Sing to the Lord, bless his name;     tell of his salvation from day to day.Declare his glory among the nations,     his marvelous works among all the peoples!

Psalm 147 likewise begins, “Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting” (Psalm 147:1). And Psalm 100 joins the theme: “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!” (Psalm 100:1–2).

From beginning to end, singing and worship go hand in hand.

Reason to Sing

Why would God so fervently command us to unite our words with melody when we worship him? On the one hand, as God creates us in his image, we’re to rejoice in song just as he does. In Zephaniah 3:17, we read,

The Lord your God is in your midst,     A mighty one who will save;He will rejoice over you with gladness;     He will quiet you by his love;He will exult over you with loud singing.

Furthermore, when we lift our voices in song to the Lord, we direct our emotions heavenward, stirring up thankfulness in our hearts as befits the Almighty (Colossians 3:16). As Jonathan Edwards writes, “The duty of singing praises to God, seems to be appointed wholly to excite and express religious affections” (Religious Affections, 115).

“When we read a verse, it can flit away; when we sing it, we harbor God’s word in our heart.”

And yet, there’s another reason to worship with singing — a reason beautifully evident during my visits with Violet. In Deuteronomy 31:19–21, God commands Moses to teach the people a song recounting his deeds so that they and their offspring might remember. “When many evils and troubles have come upon them,” God says, “this song shall confront them as a witness (for it will live unforgotten in the mouths of their offspring)” (Deuteronomy 31:21).

When we sing God’s praises, we glorify him, obey him, and direct our hearts toward him. But also, remarkably, we remember words our inconstant, sin-stricken brains would otherwise so quickly forget.

Musical Memory

The history of God’s people is a story of forgetfulness and remembrance. In the wilderness, the Israelites forgot the wondrous deeds God had accomplished in Egypt and worshiped the work of their own hands (Exodus 32:1–10). In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses pleaded with the people to remember what God had done for them (Deuteronomy 4:9; 8:2, 11–20). Joshua built a memorial of twelve stones from the Jordan River so the following generations might know how God provided (Joshua 4:1–7). Finally, in the upper room, Jesus commanded his disciples to take the wine and the bread in remembrance of him, as we also must do (Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:23–29).

To follow Christ is to remember and proclaim what he has done (Acts 4:20). And the gift of song, in addition to stirring our hearts, aids our minds in remembering. When we read a verse, it can flit away; when we sing it, we harbor God’s word in our heart (Psalm 119:11).

The link between song and remembrance arises from how God designed our brains. While the act of forgetting may seem simple, we actually have several types of memory, all organized within separate areas of the nervous system. Declarative memory involves recall of events, concepts, words, meanings, and facts, and it originates in the temporal lobes and hippocampus. Studies show, however, that music involves complicated networks in the brain beyond this system.

Singing triggers our procedural memory — a complex network involving the cerebellum, motor cortex, and deeper brain structures. Procedural memory allows us to perform actions without explicitly focusing on them. Consider how rarely you think about how to ride a bike or drive a car after your first awkward days of learning. Such procedural memories are so robustly imprinted in our brains, that we can take up an action like playing the piano or knitting even if we’ve not done so in ages.

Musical processing also connects to emotional memory, centered in a region of the brain called the amygdala. The emotional memory system helps us to recall events with strong feelings attached to them. The link between music and emotional memory explains why certain songs transport us to a specific moment in time and evoke feelings we may not have recalled for years.

Thanks to the connection between music and these two memory systems, we can hardly erase catchy jingles from our heads, no matter how much they annoy us. Hearing a familiar song on the radio can instantly carry us to that first handhold with a spouse or to our birthday party in kindergarten. Most stunning of all, the link between these systems reveals why the command to “Sing to the Lord!” not only glorifies God but also blesses us abundantly. When we sing, we remember.

Melody When Memory Fails

The human brain’s stunning ability to recall music is a gift of mercy in Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s preferentially affects the temporal lobes and hippocampus, the regions of the brain responsible for declarative memory. As a result, memory for language, names, and events erodes away. Memory for recent events fades first, as these are less rigorously stored. Over time, however, even remote events can slip away.

“God has designed the very architecture of our brains to hide his word even when our memories fail.”

Memory for music, however, often remains intact in Alzheimer’s because it involves the procedural and emotional memory systems. The response to music is preserved even in advanced dementia, when patients can no longer reason, plan, or even speak. “I remember the first time I saw someone with Alzheimer’s remembering the Lord through music,” writes clinical psychologist Benjamin Mast in his book Second Forgetting: Remembering the Power of the Gospel During Alzheimer’s Disease. During his visit to a memory-care center, where “the full range of dementia was represented,” he writes,

When it came time for music, and especially the old hymns, things visibly changed. One woman who only wanted to leave finally sat down for a while to listen. A man who was always angry and agitated now had a contented look and tapped his foot to the music. Another man who was quite confused closed his tear-filled eyes and slowly raised his hands while quietly mouthing each word. God uses music to reach the seemingly unreachable. And he gives us this gift as a gracious resource to help us in drawing people back to him, to reengage their faith. (139)

By God’s grace, believers who can no longer remember the names of loved ones can still readily sing God’s praises. God has designed the very architecture of our brains to hide his word even when our memories fail. And he commands us to sing so that we might recall his life-giving word even when we’re prone to forget.

Sing to the Lord, my brothers and sisters. Make a joyful noise. And as you sing, even as other memories fade, remember his amazing grace — the breadth and length and height and depth of God’s love for you in Christ.