In the days leading up to the death of my three-year-old son, Daniel, God deeply assured me of his gracious care for my family and me. One late night, I sat alone with my son in the intensive care unit, my Bible in hand. Knowing he had only a few days left, my heart was overwhelmed with grief. My chest felt constricted, as if the weight of impending loss were pressing down harder with each passing moment. I was desperate for a word from God.

Not knowing where to turn, I flipped open my Bible and found myself in Isaiah 53. My eyes immediately landed on these words: “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4). Isaiah’s words washed over my anguished heart like gentle rain on parched soil, bringing much-needed relief and a renewed sense of God’s comforting presence in my distress.

But that late-night mercy didn’t last.

Several days later, when the hour of Daniel’s death arrived, my wife and I knelt by his bed, praying and seeking to comfort our son. My heart was heavy with grief, yet I trusted in God’s providence as I held Daniel’s arm and softly ran my fingers through his hair. But when his heart beat for the final time, I was shocked to find my comfort gone, leaving me “so utterly burdened beyond [my] strength that [I] despaired of life itself” (2 Corinthians 1:8). In the hours that followed, I wrestled with how the feeling of God’s nearness could so quickly give way to a sense of God-forsakenness.

How are we to interpret such paradoxical experiences? Assurance seems inseparable from God’s comforting presence, while doubt appears inevitable when we feel abandoned by him.

Always a Light

In The Lord of the Rings, as Sam and Frodo trudge through the desolate land of Mordor, burdened by the Shadow and on the brink of despair, J.R.R. Tolkien reveals a profound truth hidden within their hardship:

There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark [peak] high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach. (922)

The lesson is clear: just as Sam found hope in the distant, once-hidden twinkle of a star, there is always a light — often beyond our immediate view — that points to a greater reality. Though sometimes concealed in “the forsaken land,” this light is no less real for being hidden. Like the star that pierced Sam’s despair, it reminds us that our suffering, though real and painful, is not the final word.

In the last days of my son’s life, I experienced what Paul calls “the sufferings of this present time” (Romans 8:18) — deeply harrowing trials that, though shrouded in darkness, are held within the sovereign care of a God who promises that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

Hidden Hope, Present Pain

Twice in Romans 8:18–19, Paul uses the word revealed. He first speaks of a glory that is not yet visible to us — a promise that remains hidden beyond our present sufferings (Romans 8:18). Then he describes creation eagerly awaiting the moment when the true identity of the sons of God will be made manifest (Romans 8:19). This dual emphasis on what is still concealed highlights the profound reality of a future glory we cannot yet see.

Paul tells us that both creation (Romans 8:19–22) and we ourselves (Romans 8:23) groan with longing for this unseen glory to be revealed. Our current suffering intensifies our yearning as we wait for the day when our identity as God’s children will be visibly manifested in glory.

What makes “the sufferings of this present time” particularly challenging is the tension between our current experiences and our hidden identity as God’s children. As believers, we are already adopted into God’s family (Romans 8:14–16), but the full revealing of who we are in Christ remains unseen (Romans 8:23–25). We live in an in-between, tension-filled time where our true identity as sons of God is veiled.

“Even when God feels distant, our secure standing before him remains unchanged.”

This hiddenness, coupled with our ongoing struggles with indwelling sin (Romans 7:13–25), can make the trials we face — tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword (Romans 8:35) — feel overwhelming and at odds with the truth about who we really are. The felt realities of our suffering, combined with our internal battles, constantly try to persuade us that we are less than what God has declared us to be. They work to strip away the assurance that God is truly our Father.

When God sent Moses to announce his promised deliverance, the people were too broken in spirit to listen (Exodus 6:9). Their harsh reality overshadowed their hope. What are we to do when we find ourselves in a similar place, where the promise of deliverance seems distant, and our hearts struggle to believe?

Our Durable Assurance

Paul doesn’t leave us without an answer. He frames his entire discussion of the already–not yet tension in our Christian lives with one great enduring reality.

He begins Romans 8 with our unshakable confidence: “There is . . . now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). There is no condemnation, now or ever, for those united with the one who was made to be sin, though he knew no sin, “so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). God himself has graciously given us a righteousness that forever frees us from the most horrific circumstance imaginable: the just judgment of God against us because of our sin.

As Paul concludes Romans 8, he asks, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us” (Romans 8:33–34). Robert Haldane writes,

Among the temptations to which the believer is exposed in this life, some are from without, others are from within. Within are the alarms of conscience, fearing the wrath of God; without are adversity and tribulations. Unless [the believer] overcomes the first, he cannot prevail against the last. It is impossible that he can possess true patience and confidence in God in his afflictions, if his conscience labours under the apprehension of the wrath of God. (Romans, 412)

Confidence in the face of adversity begins with the unshakable assurance that Christ, who died and was raised, intercedes for us. In our darkest moments, when God’s comfort seems to vanish and suffering threatens to overwhelm us, we hear again the gospel’s good news: the God who justified us in Christ will not allow any accusation to stand. Even when God feels distant, our secure standing before him remains unchanged.

Our hope rests not on fluctuating emotions or our sense of his presence but on the unshakable truth that Christ is our righteousness — our “light and high beauty” — ensuring that nothing, neither internal fears nor external trials, can separate us from the Father’s love (Romans 8:35–39).

Righteousness for Real Life

During the last three weeks of my son Daniel’s life, which he spent in the hospital, I found great help in Jerry Bridges’s The Gospel for Real Life, a book that had just been released. As I write, the same copy I read during that severe trial sits before me. One highlighted passage particularly resonated with me, both during his illness and in the dark days that followed. Bridges writes about Paul’s daily joy in God’s gift of justification, stating, “By faith he looked to Jesus Christ and His righteousness for his sense of being in right standing with God today and tomorrow, and throughout eternity” (111).

When I struggled with my sense of God’s absence, I was tempted to gauge his acceptance by how vividly I could feel him near. Yet Robert Critchley’s hymn “On Christ the Solid Rock” counsels us not to “trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’s name.” My emotions were not the measure of God’s acceptance. What mattered was Christ’s righteousness, declared to be mine through faith alone. To paraphrase Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 1:9, my dark night of the soul taught me to rely not on my experiences, no matter how sweet they may seem at times, but on Christ, my righteousness. He alone is the deepest rest for our souls.

What is Look at the Book?

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

Audio Transcript

First Peter 1:5 holds a very special place in your life, Pastor John — a precious text about God’s keeping power over his children, of those “who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” So precious. This is the promise that you wanted as a banner over the life of your mom, and so had a phrase from this text (in the King James Version) etched into her grave: “Kept by the power of God.” Ruth Piper was kept by the power of God in this life until her tragic passing in an automobile accident at the age of 56. You were 28 at the time of the accident, almost fifty years ago now. It will be fifty years ago in just a couple of months actually — on December 16. You told us about the life-altering phone call you got, back in APJs 1577 and 1936. No need to go back into that story here.

I mention 1 Peter 1:5 because the text also adorns our Bible reading from yesterday, as we start this new week. Melissa, a podcast listener, wants to know more about what the verse means. “Hello, Pastor John,” she writes. “What does Peter mean that we are guarded ‘by God’s power . . . through faith’? How exactly does God guard us by his power but through faith? Is he guarding us through our own faith? I don’t understand how this works. Is his guarding of me thereby ultimately dependent on me and my faith? This is a text that should give me great comfort and it doesn’t. Not yet.”

Here’s the passage, 1 Peter 1:4–5 — let’s get it in front of us so that we know what we’re talking about. We have “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” One of the wonderful things about this promise is that there is a double guarding or a double keeping.

First, God is keeping or guarding an inheritance in heaven for us. Verse 4: we have “an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept [or guarded] in heaven” by God for us. So, when we get there, the inheritance will be fabulous and not ruined or disappointing in any way. That’s the one keeping.

Here’s the other one. The other keeping is that God is guarding us for it. He not only keeps it — the inheritance — for us in heaven, but he keeps us for it. He guarantees that it will be there and that we will get there. That’s the double amazing thing in this verse — why it’s one of the favorites of many people, including me. “By God’s power [you] are being guarded [or kept] through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.” In other words, you’re going to make it.

Who Sustains Our Faith?

Now, the key question for how we get strength from this — How do we actually apply it to our lives and draw down joy from this promise? — the key question is whether “kept by God through faith” means we sustain our own faith and then God responds by guarding or keeping us, or whether God sustains our faith and in that way he keeps us and guards us. In the first meaning, we are the decisive cause of our ongoing faith, and in the second meaning, God is the decisive cause of our ongoing faith. Which is it?

The answer to that question decides how we will answer this question: How can I be sure I will wake up a believer tomorrow morning? In one case, the answer would be, “God will see to it that I believe tomorrow morning. He will sustain my faith. He’s promised to sustain it, keep it, guard it. He’ll keep me believing.” In the other case, the answer would be, “I can only hope that my independent, self-determining will is not overcome tonight by my flesh or the devil or the world since the decisive, sustaining power must come from me.”

Five Reasons for Confidence

I see at least five reasons for thinking that Peter intended to strengthen and encourage us by teaching that God sustains our faith, and that’s how he guards us for final “salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

1. The other view doesn’t make sense.

I don’t think the other interpretation — that we are the decisive sustainers of our own faith — makes any sense in this verse. I think it’s got a built-in contradiction. Suppose you — we humans — provide the decisive cause of sustaining your faith day by day. That’s what you provide. My question is, What’s left for God to do to guard you for your heavenly inheritance, your final salvation? You might answer, “In response to my faith, he defeats the destructive effects of Satan and the destructive effects of suffering and the pleasures of this world. That’s what he does in response to my self-sustained faith.”

But think about it. There’s only one way that Satan and suffering and worldly pleasures can prevent you from attaining heaven — namely, by destroying your faith, which you’ve already accomplished. So, God does not need to provide that. You’ve provided that. Satan’s accusations don’t keep you out of heaven. The pain of suffering doesn’t keep you out of heaven. The allurements of the world don’t keep you out of heaven. The only way Satan, suffering, worldly pleasures can keep you out of heaven is by causing you to turn away from Christ and stop believing in him as your supreme treasure. And that’s what you yourself have already by sustaining your own faith.

If you say God prevents the satanic destruction of your faith after or as a result of your faith, which you yourself have triumphantly and decisively sustained, that’s a contradiction. God doesn’t guard you from doing what you’ve already done. That’s a contradiction. What you are really saying is that you yourself protected yourself from the faith-destroying effects of Satan, suffering, worldly pleasure. That is, you have guarded yourself for the inheritance through faith, and God is simply not needed to get you there by guarding or sustaining your faith.

“God not only keeps our inheritance for us in heaven, but he also keeps us for it.”

So, I conclude that being guarded through faith by God’s power means God’s power sustains our faith, and that’s why Satan and suffering and pleasure do not succeed in destroying our faith. God’s power sustains our faith. He keeps us for the final salvation by keeping our faith. That’s argument number one. The other view doesn’t make sense. It has a built-in contradiction.

2. We believe ‘through him.’

In this same chapter, 1 Peter 1:20–21 says, “[Christ] was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God.” Now, I think “through him [you] are believers in God” means he is the cause and the sustaining power of your faith.

3. Faith comes by new birth.

Verse 3 says, “According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3). Now, we know that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith is inseparable from hope. Hope is faith in the future tense, you might say. So, the way we became Christians was owing to no merit in ourselves. We didn’t do anything. We were dead. We had to be born again. God in “his great mercy . . . caused us to be born again.” That has caused us to have spiritual life, and that life manifests itself in hope and faith. That’s the way it remains all our lives, I’m arguing. Our faith was brought into being by mercy — undeserved mercy, totally lopsided, Godward mercy — and it is sustained by mercy.

4. God promises to keep us.

This interpretation fits with the promise of the new covenant in which Christians now live. This is who we are. We are blood-bought new-covenant people. And here’s how Jeremiah describes the new covenant, which is the experience of believers today. In Jeremiah 32:40, the Lord says, “I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me.” That’s the promise of God-sustained faith. That’s the heart of the new covenant — the heart of it. God puts his fear — puts faith — in us, so that we don’t make shipwreck of our faith. That’s the promise and difference between the new and old covenant.

5. Jesus intercedes for us.

Finally, in Luke 22:31 there is a beautiful picture of how this faith-sustaining work of God happens — it happened then and happens now because of Christ’s intercession for us in heaven. Jesus says to Peter the night before his crucifixion, “Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat.” What does that mean? It means he’s going to squish you through the strainer and sift out all your faith. He’ll leave you there, and your faith will be stuck in the wires. That’s what he’s trying to do tonight. “But I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:32).

In other words, I have asked your Father in heaven to sustain your faith. That’s what I do. “And when you have turned again” — not if you have turned again — when you have turned again. He knows it’s going to happen. He asks God for it. When you’ve repented, then “strengthen your brothers.” So, that’s a picture of how Christ intercedes for us today. He’s interceding for us, and that’s what he’s doing — he’s asking our Father to sustain our faith just like he did for Peter.

So, for those five reasons at least — there are more — I think we can rejoice. Indeed, I think we should leap for joy that not only is God keeping a treasure for us in heaven secure; he is also keeping us secure for heaven. “By [his] power . . . through faith” — this is through sustaining our faith.

Quest stories captivate us. Whether it’s Bilbo’s journey there and back again or Dante’s ascent to Paradise or Reepicheep’s voyage to find the utter East — we find the pilgrimage narrative irresistible, especially if the road teems with adventure and the hero is transformed into someone lovely. There is a reason The Odyssey has fired man’s imagination for three millennia, a long homeward trek past temptations and monsters innumerable.

We were made to go to God, the Home for our souls, made to enjoy God more and more forever, to really live. And the only way to get there is by following the Way crossing the only Bridge that brings us to God (John 14:6; 1 Peter 3:18). And we can only walk that Way when God’s own breath fills our lungs and animates our steps, when his Spirit sets us walking in a new direction as new creations on new adventures.

We love quests (at least in part) because we were made for a Godward quest led by God’s Spirit. And we can trace the contours of that sojourn by attending to the Spirit’s work in Romans 8. Abraham Kuyper rightly observed, “The Holy Spirit leaves no footprints in the sand.” But those led by the Spirit certainly do.

New Direction

In Romans 8:4, Paul divides the world into just two groups: those who walk according to the flesh and those who walk according to the Spirit. That’s it. Either the flesh directs you or the Spirit does. You are walking according to one power or the other.

Of course, walk is a metaphor, so what does it mean? The emphasis of walk falls not on pace but on direction. Picture a path. One way, the path leads up and into life. The other way leads down and down to death. All people move on this path, and eventually, they will get where they are going — either to life or to death.

Without the Spirit, death draws us like flies to filth. The pull is imperious, inexorable, irresistible. As sons of wrath, we march the wide way to death, following the course of this world, in lockstep with the discordant beat of sin’s siren call (Ephesians 2:1–3). In Eden, our first father forfeited the way of life, setting the feet of all his sons trudging ever downward. The world still rings with the clink, clink, clink of shackled feet chained to sin by choice and blood, making the trek to death. Can you hear it? Do you remember the sound of your own chosen chains?

But the Spirit breaks our bondage. He sets us free from the power of sin and death (Romans 8:2). He snaps the dark enchantment. He breathes life into those who walk in death. He wholly reroutes our hearts, puts us on the path to forever pleasures and full joys, and sets our feet dancing to his rhythm (Psalm 16:11; Galatians 5:25). The Spirit gets us walking in a new direction.

This “new way of the Spirit” leads us into the abundant life Jesus promised (Romans 7:6; John 10:10). We can begin even now to roam the garden paths of Eden — to “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). What was lost then, Christians increasingly enjoy now. God with us is realized by God in us. As Tom Schreiner writes, “The future deliverance from death has invaded the present world in the death and resurrection of Christ” (Romans, 294). The life the Father planned and the Son purchased the Spirit guides us into.

As New Creations

But this new direction results from a deeper change wrought by the Spirit. New direction comes from new creation. Who you are determines where you are going. The NASB captures this new way of being:

For those who are according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who are according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. (Romans 8:5)

We were in the flesh; now we are in the Spirit. We were dead in trespasses; now we are alive with Christ (Ephesians 2:1–5). We were stonehearted; now we are softhearted (Ezekiel 36:26). We were enemies; now we are reconciled (Romans 5:10). In short, we were one kind of creature; now we are new creatures (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Spirit as “the Lord, the giver of life,” effects this change from the Father through the Son.

“The life the Father planned and the Son purchased the Spirit guides us into.”

And our new direction is evidence of our new creation (and no condemnation, Romans 8:1–2). The fleshly person does not and cannot please God (Romans 8:7–8). But the Spirit-led person can and will please him. Leading reveals lineage (Romans 8:14). Sons of Adam follow the flesh to death. The Spirit leads sons of God to life. Direction reveals desires. If the flesh rules, you will gratify its desires. But if the Spirit governs you, his desires will be yours (Galatians 5:16–17).

Just as a compass can be corrupted so that it no longer points north, the soul without the Spirit does not orient to God. Indeed, it cannot! It hates God (Romans 8:7). It points away from him. But the Spirit re-magnetizes the soul. He is the internal principle (the “law” in verse 2) that points us to true North.

How does the Spirit recreate and re-magnetize our souls? He dwells in us! “You . . . are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you” (verse 9).

Christian, you who have the Spirit of Christ, have you considered the wonder and weight of that reality? The Spirit of God lives in you and leads you. The Spirit who brooded over the chaos waters at the beginning of all things, the Spirit who gives life to what lives, the Spirit who led Israel through wild places by fire and cloud, the Spirit who descended like a dove on the long-awaited Messiah, the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead with omnipotent power, the Spirit who fell like fire at Pentecost, the Spirit who blows where he will and begets whom he will, the Spirit who is the third person of the eternally happy Trinity — that Spirit dwells in you! How could you expect to be anything less than utterly altered by his presence?

With God in You

New creations really are new. Do not think that setting your mind on the things of the Spirit concerns just your thinking. The change involves “the whole existence of a person,” as Schreiner puts it (Romans, 405). Just as the heart in the Old Testament concerns all the inner life — thoughts, affections, and desires — the mindset here is just as expansive. Everything changes when the Spirit transfers you from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light (Colossians 1:13).

If the Spirit dwells in you, God is in you. Imagine you had access to my spirit. You could think my thoughts, know my desires, and feel my affections. God’s Spirit does just this. He pours God’s own love into us (Romans 5:5). He teaches us the very thoughts of God, revealing truth and rerouting the ruts of our minds. He is the mind of Christ in us (1 Corinthians 2:10–13, 16). He gives us godly desires (Galatians 5:16–17).

The Spirit gives us God’s own happiness. When Jesus said that his joy would be in us and our joy would be full (John 15:11), he anticipated this ministry of his Spirit — the same Spirit he rejoiced in (Luke 10:21), the same Spirit that embodied the love and joy of the Father in the Son (Matthew 3:16–17).

Augustine marveled at this mystic reality. He confessed to God,

When people see things with the help of your Spirit, it is you who are seeing in them. When, therefore, they see that things are good, you are seeing that they are good. Whatever pleases them for your sake is pleasing you in them. The things which by the help of your Spirit delight us are delighting you in us. (Confessions 13.31.46)

It boggles the mind, but the Spirit of God in man is God’s own life and fullness in man. Here is a new creation indeed!

On New Adventures

Is it any surprise that new creations going in a new direction embark on new adventures? And adventure really is the right word for the Christian life. To be on an adventure is to participate in a story, to embark on a journey perilous but full of promise, to engage in daring action in hope of glorious reward. We were made new, crafted by Christ, to walk these new paths and perform these great deeds (Ephesians 2:10).

But Spirit-led adventures are unlike the adventures we’re used to. On this adventure, if you walk, you will arrive. The end is written. The Ring will be destroyed; yet you must walk it into Mordor and throw it in Mount Doom. Again, you will get where you are going, but you really do have to go.

Paul highlights this fast friendship between God’s sovereignty and man’s agency:

If you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. (Romans 8:13–14)

The Spirit empowers the Christian life (“by the Spirit”), but believers act it out (“you put to death”). We must work the miracle. For Paul, the reality that “it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” does nothing to undermine the agency, yes, and the urgency of “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12–13).

Quest of Life and Death

What does this Spirit-led, man-walked adventure look like? On the one hand, it looks like death — if you put to death the deeds of the body. The way is soaked in the blood of slain sin. Dragon carcasses litter the roadside. Crosses, thick as a forest, mark where “the flesh with its passions and desires” have been crucified (Galatians 5:22–24). Trash heaps piled high with worldly lusts — sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness — lie smoldering by the way, torched with holy fire. The signs of wars waged and battles won are everywhere.

Pilgrim, if you walk by the Spirit, this is your adventure, your battleground. And there is no place for parley on this path! You must slay and crucify, torch and kill, and give no quarter to your dragon-lusts. Put to death the deeds of the body.

And if you do, you will live. This is the way of life (Psalm 16:11). There is no other. The way may be paved in daily death, but the end is eternal life. After all, we are walking in the footsteps of our older Brother, who endured the cross for the joy set before him (Hebrews 12:2). By his Spirit, we follow his direction, doing the will of his Father, sharing in his suffering, imitating his stride. The Spirit-led adventure looks like increasingly looking like Christ (Romans 8:29). By the Spirit, the adopted sons of the Father walk the way of the Son. The adventures of the Spirit never stray outside the happy land of the Trinity. Where the Spirit leads, there is the Son and Father, and there is eternal life (John 17:3).

What might inspire a family to move across the world for the sake of the gospel? I live with my wife and two children in Cameroon, where we planted a church and established an extension site for Bethlehem College and Seminary. Before leaving the Western world, we consistently returned to Psalm 22:27–28 as the primary motivation for our relocation:

All the ends of the earth shall remember     and turn to the Lord,and all the families of the nations     shall worship before you.For kingship belongs to the Lord,     and he rules over the nations.

We moved to a challenging place because we believe in the God who owns all the kingdoms of the earth, and who has promised that all the families of the nations will worship before him.

Missionaries, church planters, and all who labor among the nations for the sake of the gospel can find great hope in Psalm 22. You might wonder, How can a psalm of lament be a source of hope? We often remember this psalm on Good Friday, the darkest day in history, but this is not just a Good Friday psalm. The concluding verses of Psalm 22 take us beyond the horrors of Calvary to a glorious hope for world missions, especially in our darker seasons: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord.”

The Dark Valley

The first part of Psalm 22 captures David’s confusion. By all appearances, God has forsaken him even though he has prayed tirelessly. Despite his circumstances, however, he confesses what is always true of God: “You are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel” (Psalm 22:3). He also confesses that Israel’s history is a history of God’s faithfulness (Psalm 22:4–5). So even though he feels confused about why God would forsake him, he says, “You are he who took me from the womb; you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts” (Psalm 22:9). Trusting his God, David cries for rescue.

“The hardest heart of the highest earthly king is in the hand of the Most High.”

Then David ushers us deeper into his pain. He is surrounded by deadly enemies who gloat over him. They pierce his hands and feet, and God seems to aggravate his woes: “You lay me in the dust of death” (Psalm 22:15). God appears to have joined the camp of his enemies. But even when he feels God’s hand against him, David cries, “Deliver my soul from the sword. . . . Save me from the mouth of the lion” (Psalm 22:20–21).

Jesus took this psalm on his lips in the deepest darkness. Dying under God’s wrath, Jesus cried to God with David’s words. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” His voice echoed the sound of silence. Did God hear David? Did he hear Jesus, the true Song of Israel?

Remember and Return

Just as God raised David from the “dust of death” (Psalm 22:15), God raised Jesus our Savior from the tomb. And just as David was raised so that he could tell of God’s name to his brothers, Jesus was raised to do the same (Hebrews 2:10–12).

Even as God saved David for Israel’s sake, his purposes extended beyond their borders. David says, “All the ends of the earth shall remember and return to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you” (Psalm 22:27). What will they remember, and to what or whom will they return? The context of the psalm shows that they will remember that God delivered his servant to his enemies to die an innocent death, that God raised him to lead the congregation of his people in worship, and that the dominion belongs to God alone. They will remember and return to the God who alone is King.

Here we find power for missions. Because kingship belongs to God and he rules over the nations, all the families of the earth will come to him. The tribes among whom you minister the gospel will remember and return. God will draw people to himself for worship. No war, political leader, constitutional amendments, electoral outcome, or regime change can redirect his eternal purpose of reconciling the world to himself. Because he commands the fate of nations, no cultural shift can derail his mission to unite all people in the adoration of his glory.

David groans in the first part of Psalm 22 and glories in the second. The structure of the psalm teaches us that grief, no matter how deep, is temporal; it will give way to glory. After darkness comes light; after pain comes praise. This was true for David and for the new David, Jesus — and it will be true for his body, the church.

Perhaps you are serving on the mission field, and your family is in a season of trial. Do not think that this darkness means God’s words will fail. Do not lose heart. God’s mission cannot fail. Kingship belongs to him. In your darkest days, let the nations see your resurrection hope.

Light for Your Labors

Psalm 22 has significantly shaped my missionary work. Not only did God use the psalm to move our family to the field, but he now uses it to keep us here. In the pains of ministry, God has reminded me repeatedly through Psalm 22 that our darkest moments in ministry are not the end of the story. Just as the sufferings described in the first part of the psalm give way to praise and the promise of global worship, our trials in the mission field can lead to the fulfillment of God’s promise that all nations will worship him.

Swallowed by darkness, the Light of salvation burst forth to bring the nations back to God.

The anguish of the Messiah was for the adoration of the nations.
The death of the Messiah was for the dance of the nations.
The pain of the Messiah was for the praise of the nations.
The ruin of the Messiah was for the rejoicing of the nations.
The suffering of the Messiah was for the salvation of the nations.
The woe of the Messiah was for the worship of the nations.

Because of the darkness of the Messiah’s death, God will establish his reign over all nations, who will all come to him for worship and rejoicing. May we long with Charles Wesley,

Oh, for a thousand tongues to singMy great Redeemer’s praise,The glories of my God and King,The triumphs of his grace.

And may we pray with Wesley and the saints of old,

My gracious Master and my God,Assist me to proclaim,To spread through all the earth abroadThe honors of thy name.

Missions Under God’s Kingship

We pray, we long, we suffer, we endure, we labor, we cast off discouragement, we lay aside sin — we work tirelessly and abundantly because we know that our God rules over the nations. He will see to it that our labor is not in vain. He will cause the nations that oppose and hate him to remember and return.

We labor because we know our God holds the hearts of kings in his hands and directs them like streams of water. The hardest heart of the highest earthly king is in the hand of the Most High, and he directs that heart to do whatever he wants whenever he wants. If God did not rule over the kingdom of men, I would not have hope for life and ministry. But because he does, we can labor in the hope of certain success.

One day, “all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord.” For King Jesus “rules over the nations.”

Talk about the Holy Spirit? That’s always been tricky. After all, he is the Spirit, the Wind, the great unseen Enigma, that most mysterious and hidden Person of the ineffable Godhead.

Also, we live in times that can make thinking and speaking about the Spirit all the more difficult. For one, pervasive secular influences pressure us to deal with concrete phenomena — the seeable, hearable, touchable, tastable. The effect is a subtle but strong bias against the Spirit. With Jesus, we’re talking real-life humanity, at least in theory; with the church, we’re talking real-life fellow Christians; with creation, we’re talking tangible, sense-able, the world that surrounds us; with anthropology, flesh and blood and our own undeniable inner person. But the Invisible Wind is almost a no-starter for the mind shaped by secular influences.

What’s more, many Christians have the unfortunate tendency to quickly turn Spirit-talk to “manifestations of the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 14:12) — that is, spiritual gifts and especially controversial ones like speaking in tongues. All too soon, we are not even talking about the Spirit and the real heart of his work but mainly speculating about ourselves and telling strange stories.

In Scripture, the Spirit himself does not receive the front-and-center attention that the Father and the Son do. He often hides in compact, meaningful phrases and works quietly in the theological background. Of course, this is the Spirit’s own doing. He is the author of Scripture, thrilled to shine his light on Father and Son, to carry along prophets and apostles in word ministry, and to empower the words and deeds of the eternal Word himself. Scripture’s brevity of focus on the Spirit isn’t oversight or suppression. The Spirit likes it that way — he did it that way.

‘Life in the Spirit’

Still, hide and work quietly as he may, he does step forward in a place of striking prominence, in one of the greatest letters ever written, at the very climax of Paul’s magnum opus: “The Great Eight.”

Romans chapter 8 is one of the few spots where the Spirit pulls back the curtain and says, in effect, “I will tell you a little bit about myself: as much as you need to know, but not too much, and not for too long.” For centuries, devoted Christians have given special place to the promises and wonders of Romans 8, which is well summarized in the ESV with the heading “Life in the Spirit.” Romans 7:6 sets up the contrast that follows in the rest of chapter 7, and into chapter 8:

We serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

Romans 7:7–24, then, rehearses the challenges of serving under the oldness of the previous era and its law (holy, righteous, and good as it was), and Romans 8:1–27 bursts into the joys and benefits of living in the newness of the Spirit. In Christ, the Spirit is not only with us, as he was with old-covenant saints, but now, poured out from heaven in new fullness by the risen Christ, the Spirit testifies to us of our status, intercedes for us in our weakness, and even dwells in us as the present, personal power of the Christian life. Consider these three Spirit-glories in Romans 8, working from the outside in.

Sonship: He Testifies to Us

First, the Spirit speaks to us — and not any insignificant word. His is the foundational word about our most foundational identity. And it’s a weighty word, a testimony — knowing with certainty what has already happened, he testifies to us about what is truly the case, like a witness in court, in order to persuade us of the truth.

Not only are we creatures of the Creator, humans formed from humble dust, and not only are we sinners who have turned against our King, but now, in Jesus Christ, God’s unique Son, we too are “sons of God” (Romans 8:14). “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16). He is “the Spirit of adoption as sons” (Romans 8:15) who solemnly testifies to assure us that we are God’s chosen — not mere creatures but beloved children drawn into his family, who now irrepressibly cry out, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8:15). Already we are children. The Spirit knows this and bears witness to it so that we, too, might confidently know and embrace it.

Hidden and enigmatic as the Spirit may seem, he is not some silent force but a revealing, speaking, leading Person. He is “the Spirit . . . of revelation” (Ephesians 1:17), who not only “carried along” the prophets and apostles as divine mouthpieces (2 Peter 1:21; Ephesians 3:5) but still speaks, says, indicates, and testifies (1 Timothy 4:1; Hebrews 3:7; 9:8; 10:15; Acts 20:23; 1 John 5:6) through the living word of Scripture. He still prompts and leads God’s people (Romans 8:14; Galatians 5:18).

His profile may often seem unpronounced, but he is not silent. If you know yourself to be a beloved, chosen child of God, the Spirit is the one who awakened and sustains that recognition in you. Without him, sinners may cry out for help to a distant, unknown deity. With him, saints cry out for the care of our Father. And that crying out leads to the second glory of the Spirit in Romans 8.

Intercession: He Prays for Us

To be beloved children — “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17) — is almost too good to be true. Yet so it is in Christ. But this towering ideal of sonship doesn’t mean Romans 8 is unrealistic about our lives in this sin-sick and cursed world. The heights of God’s grace do not ignore the depths of our lives. We suffer. We groan. We know ourselves to be weak.

Because of human sin, God subjected the creation to futility, and

the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:22–23)

We know ourselves to be children through the Spirit’s testimony. Yet we still wait for the public formality and revealing. Yes, we are heirs, but still to come is our full inheritance. In the meanwhile, we groan. In this life, we navigate seasons and sequences of pain. At times (if not often), we come to forks in the road where we don’t even know how to pray — whether to be spared pain or to endure it faithfully, whether for respite from our groanings or holy persistence in them.

“Hidden and enigmatic as the Spirit may seem, he is not some silent force but a revealing, speaking, leading Person.”

Here, amazingly, the Spirit helps us in our weakness: “The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). In the agonies and complexities of this age, we come wordless before God, unable even to articulate the heart of our sighs and groans. “We do not know what to pray for as we ought” (Romans 8:26). And oh, what comfort in these moments to have God himself at work in us praying to God for us. Beyond our ability to ask as we ought and even articulate our prayers, the Spirit appeals to the Father for our everlasting good.

Christ’s intercession for us (Romans 8:34) is outside of us, in heaven, where he sits at the Father’s right hand, having accomplished his atoning work and risen again to make good on it through his life. The Spirit’s intercession is in us, prompting us to pray and empowering our prayers (Ephesians 6:18; Jude 20). The Spirit is not only deep in God (1 Corinthians 2:10) but also deep in us (Romans 8:26–27) — which leads to a third Spirit-glory in Romans 8, perhaps the most astounding of all.

Indwelling: He Lives in Us

In Romans 8, and elsewhere in the New Testament, we find a bundle of mind-bending claims about God himself and Christ dwelling in us by the Holy Spirit. Paul hammers it on repeat in verses 9–11:

The Spirit of God dwells in you. [You] have the Spirit of Christ. . . . Christ is in you. . . . The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you . . . his Spirit . . . dwells in you.

In case you missed it: if you are in Christ, you have the Spirit. You have him. He dwells in you. God himself has taken up residence, as it were, in your body and soul — in you. In a way that was not part and parcel of God’s first covenant with Israel, the risen and glorified Christ has given his Spirit to new-covenant Christians (John 7:38–39).

Our having the Spirit (Romans 8:9, 23) does not mean we own and control him. He also has us. 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), supplied to us (Galatians 3:5), and not just once but continually (Ephesians 1:17; 1 Thessalonians 4:8). And through faith, we receive him (Romans 8:15). So, as Paul repeats elsewhere, the Spirit dwells in us (1 Corinthians 3:16; 2 Timothy 1:14). This is what it means to have “Christ in you” (Romans 8:10; Colossians 1:27).

God Only Knows

If you are a Christian — if you claim Jesus as Lord and delight in him, and he is transforming you — consider what you’d be without the Spirit, without his opening your eyes and giving you a new heart and new desires. Without his still, quiet, daily promptings and leadings. Without his ongoing supply of spiritual life to your soul. Without his sealing and keeping your heart from your still-indwelling sin.

Jude 19 mentions those “devoid of the Spirit.” We get some glimpses as to what at least some people without the Spirit look like: scoffers, who speak up to put the truth down; those who follow their own ungodly passions and cause divisions; in short, “worldly people” (Jude 18–19). If that’s not you, if you are different, what has made you different? Might it be the Holy Spirit? However little you realize it and stay conscious of it, your life, from the smallest details to the biggest, is pervaded by the reality of having the Spirit. God only knows what you’d be without him.

Numerous Things He Does

Best of all, do you trust and treasure Jesus and love to speak of him? As Fred Sanders so helpfully observes, “The people most influenced by the Holy Spirit are usually the ones with the most to say about Jesus Christ” (The Holy Spirit, 3). He also quotes Thomas Goodwin, that the Spirit “is that Person that leadeth us out of ourselves unto the grace of God the Father, and the peace and satisfaction made by Jesus Christ” (21). Have you been led out of yourself to lean on the grace of God? The Spirit does that. Have you ever experienced peace in Christ? The Spirit did that. Have you enjoyed satisfaction in Jesus? The Spirit, the Spirit, the Spirit.

In him, we receive the washing of regeneration (1 Corinthians 6:11; Titus 3:5), the righteousness of justification (Romans 14:17; 1 Corinthians 6:11; 1 Timothy 3:16), and the holiness of sanctification (Romans 15:16; 1 Corinthians 6:11; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 Peter 1:2).
He teaches us (1 Corinthians 2:13; 1 Thessalonians 4:9; John 6:45) and gives us spiritual life and energy (1 Corinthians 12:11; Ephesians 3:16).
We worship in the Spirit (Philippians 3:3).
He gives us love for others (Colossians 1:9), joy (Romans 14:17; 15:13; 1 Thessalonians 1:6), peace (Romans 14:17; 15:13) — indeed all “the fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22–23).
He fills us with hope (Romans 15:13; Galatians 5:5), stirs our hunger for God, and turns our attention to “the things of the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:14; Romans 8:5), rather than sinful distractions.
He seals us (Ephesians 1:13; 4:30) and keeps us faithful to guard the gospel (2 Timothy 1:14).
In him, we also enjoy “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” (2 Corinthians 13:14; Ephesians 4:3–4; Philippians 2:1; Hebrews 6:4) with others who have the same Spirit in them.

“It is characteristic of the doctrine of the work of the Spirit,” says Sanders, “that it is expressed in lists, wonderfully various lists of numerous things the Holy Spirit does” (162).

We can scarcely trace the “numerous things” he does in and for us. For born-again Christians, the Spirit’s work in our lives, in our thoughts, in our desires, in our wills, is far deeper and more expansive than we can even sense. To receive him, to have him, is to walk in a newness of life that touches and affects everything — yet in such a way that doesn’t keep the spotlight always on him.

Talking about the Spirit is admittedly tricky. But oh, how grateful we might be to have him! We can live in the holy confidence that the supernatural Helper dwells in us. How awesome to have the Holy Spirit.

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday. Today in our Bible reading, we read Jeremiah 23–25 together. It included a beautiful new-covenant text that one listener wants you to explain more. The listener is Matthew. He wrote, “Pastor John, hello to you. I find myself often in debates with friends and family over Calvinism and Arminianism. They’re all Arminian. I try to represent the other side with clarity and charity.

“One of the arguments that I come back to repeatedly is about free will and what I see in Jeremiah 24:7: ‘I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.’ What I see in this text is that, of course, we all have free will, the ability for our hearts to do and believe what we most desire. So, what we need are new desires that want the right things. God must act to give us new desires or we are hopeless. This is sovereign grace in the miracle of regeneration. How much of your discussions over free will centers on this fact, that we all have free will, and we all need a new heart, a new will?”

First, let me commend Matthew for defining what he means by free will. That’s really unusual. I appreciate it very much, because in most discussions people use the phrase as though it were clear, when in fact most people have very different views of what free will means. He has defined it, so I can answer his question with more precision.

Defining ‘Free Will’

He says that free will is “the ability for our hearts to do and believe what we most desire.” That’s a pretty shrewd and careful definition. Freedom of the will, he says, is the freedom “to do and believe what we most desire.” And I think that if we are going to affirm the existence of free will among fallen people like us, that’s the definition we need to use, because it answers the question of how people can be free whom the Bible says are dead in trespasses (Ephesians 2:5), slaves of sin (Romans 6:20), under the dominion of sin (Romans 3:9), blind to spiritual reality (2 Corinthians 4:4), hardened against God (Ephesians 4:18), and unable to submit to God (Romans 8:7).

“God knows how to govern all things, including the human will, in such a way that we are truly responsible.”

So, given Matthew’s definition of freedom, such dead, enslaved, dominated, blind, hard, impotent people have freedom of the will, because it means that they are free to do and believe what they most desire — namely, sin. That’s what they’re free to do. And I would agree that if we’re going to maintain that the will is free, that is the definition we should use. So, to speak of free will then is to speak of a will that is free to do and believe what it most desires — but is not free to desire God above all else.

What Arminians Want

What I have found, therefore, is that most people who reject Calvinistic or Reformed understandings of human depravity and sovereign grace — which is required to bring a dead, hard, blind person to saving faith — is that this definition of free will is not acceptable to them. It’s not acceptable because it still leaves a person unable to provide the decisive thing that leads to conversion — namely, the strongest desire to trust Christ. It leaves a person in the bondage of their strongest desires, which are against God.

Saying that a person is free to do what he most desires, but he’s not free to create desires for God, does not give the Arminian what he wants. And what’s that? A fair definition of what the Arminian requires is free will defined as the power of decisive self-determination. In other words, what the Arminian requires is that, at the precise point of conversion, where saving faith comes into being, it is man and not God that at that point provides the decisive and effective influence. That’s what the Arminian must have to make his views work. Whatever influences God may give prior to that point — call them “prevenient grace,” which is what the Arminian wants to call all the illuminating, freeing grace of God — the Arminian insists that the final, decisive creation of the strongest effective desire for Christ must be self-determined, human-determined, not God-determined.

So, Matthew asks me, “How much of your discussions over free will centers on the fact that we all have free will, and we all need a new heart and a new will?” My answer now is that I don’t usually start with Matthew’s definition of free will. It may be helpful in some discussions to define free will that way, but I find that it is most illuminating, most convicting, most clarifying to start with the definition of free will that Arminians really do need in order for their views to make sense — namely, the definition that free will is the power of decisive self-determination (or I sometimes use the phrase “ultimate self-determination”). With this definition, then, it appears that Arminians believe in such free will and Calvinists do not believe in such free will. I certainly do not believe there is such a thing as human free will defined as decisive self-determination.

Bound to Sovereign Grace

At this point in my conversations, what proves to be most clarifying is two things.

First is the abundance of biblical texts that describe the bondage of the will and the necessity of sovereign grace to bring a person out of spiritual deadness into life and faith. For example, in Ephesians 2:5–6, Paul does not say that when we were spiritually dead God gave us a kind of halfway regeneration where we now, in that new halfway state of life, provide ourselves the decisive, self-determining act of faith — the act of producing the strongest desire for Jesus that pushes us over the line to believe. What Paul says is that while we were dead, God not only made us alive but also raised us up with Christ and seated “us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” In other words, God’s action is decisive — all the way from death through spiritual resurrection to our firm, saved position in the presence of God in Christ. There are many texts that teach the same thing concerning sovereign grace. That’s the first thing.

“Without God’s sovereign grace, we would be utterly hopeless in the bondage of our spiritually dead hearts.”

The other thing that I find clarifying and helpful in conversations with folks is to point out that free will, understood as the power of ultimate or decisive self-determination, is not taught anywhere in the Bible. Not a single verse, not a single text teaches that there is such a thing as the power of ultimate human self-determination. So, where does that idea come from that we must have ultimate self-determination? It comes from a philosophical presupposition that people bring to the Bible. The philosophical presupposition is that if we don’t have ultimate self-determination, we cannot be held accountable for our own beliefs and actions before God. Well, the Bible simply does not affirm that presupposition.

The Bible teaches that God has ways we do not understand and that he knows how to govern all things, including the human will, in such a way that we are truly responsible, truly accountable — and he, at the same time, is truly sovereign. And oh, we should be thankful for this sovereign grace, because without it, we would be utterly hopeless in the bondage of our spiritually dead hearts.

So, if you find yourself — and I’m speaking to those of you who are listening right now — if you find yourself unable to love God, unable to trust Christ, don’t despair. Jesus said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). Resolve to seek him, come to him. Look to his suffering for the worst of sinners, and ask God for the grace to see and savor Christ.

We all desire stability. Like toddlers learning to walk, however, stability often proves elusive. Unexpected disruptions threaten to knock us off balance. Relational wounds from loved ones introduce insecurity and uncertainty. Changes that we neither sought nor asked for throw us out of routine.

Before we know it, a perfectly good day can crumble beneath our feet, and we feel the disorienting sense of falling out of control. For those who desire stability so much, why do we spend so much of our time experiencing instability? How on earth can we actually maintain — or regain — stability when we find ourselves falling?

The author of Psalm 46 understands the perils of human experience. Breathed out by God, the psalm insists on three realities that plant our feet on firm ground and create an immovable people. Forget any one of these realities, and the foundation of our life soon shudders. We fix our minds on truth to fix our feet on rock.

1. God is all-powerful.

The psalm first fixes our heart upon God’s power. The psalmist obsesses over God’s power, anchoring himself in the overwhelming might of the Almighty. God “makes wars to cease to the end of the earth,” wielding authority over all (verse 9). Twice the psalmist names God as “the Lord of hosts” (verses 7, 11), referring to the endless heavenly warriors who hail God as King. All wars cease at the command of such power. No moment showed this more clearly than when Christ — God in flesh — levied his might to defeat death itself. No opponent triumphs over the will of the unshakable God.

The psalmist reiterates his point in verse 6. In a comparison of powers, he notes that “the nations rage, the kingdoms totter,” but when “[God] utters his voice, the earth melts.” Like the raging nations, the troubles of this life can introduce headaches and heartaches. But a mere utterance from God can unravel the world itself. He speaks things into or out of existence. When our schedule falls apart, God has the power to piece it back together. When we grieve a fresh glimpse of our own sin, God’s power stands sufficient for us. Even if the earth threatens to give way, God can speak it into standing its ground — and it must obey.

When life fractures, we often forget this power. We neglect the One who wields all strength and authority, and who can change or destroy the very fabric of creation. The last time you fell into upheaval, did you meditate more on God’s power or on the upended chunks of your life? What played on loop in the theater of your mind? With the psalmist, we can form the habit of obsessing over the power of our God. We can interrupt our anxious thoughts with greater thoughts of our great God.

2. God is very present.

Cascading from this first reality, immovable people also meditate on the presence of God. God is capable of rescuing me from the cliffs of life, but is he here with me?

Verse 1 emphatically points to God as “very present.” Merely “present” does not capture the nearness of God. He is very present. God does not stand at the top of the cliff you dangle from, offering a hand if you can reach to him. He effortlessly clambers down the sheer rock to come to your side. As verse 5 says, God “is in the midst of” us — right in the middle of our instability and chaos.

“No opponent triumphs over the will of the unshakable God.”

Such nearness asserts itself in the repetition of the fact that the Lord of hosts is “with us” (verses 7, 11). The Hebrew underlying this phrase is where the name Immanuel comes from — meaning “the with-us God.” God took on flesh in order to dwell “with us,” and nothing will keep him from being at our side. God remains near enough to feel every breath he gives and hear every heartbeat he sustains. Even when we falter, God remains very present.

When we feel abandoned by the failures of those we trust, what thoughts fill our minds? Do we meditate on the nearness of God? Can we habituate ourselves to stop focusing on the tumbling circumstances around us and instead lean on the Almighty One who stands “with us” in them all?

3. God is your protector.

If we give thought to these two realities, though, we may see the problem of an all-powerful, ever-present God remaining in direct contact with such sinful people as ourselves. We are painfully aware that we are stained with sin. He radiates holiness. What if his power works not for us but against us? The answer to this question reveals the third meditation of immovable people.

The psalmist reveals that, for God’s people, his power is unspeakably bent toward giving aid. Rather than presenting himself as the harbinger of punishment, God has made all necessary preparations to serve as our “fortress” (verses 7, 11). For those who dwell in the “city of God,” the psalmist promises that “God will help her when morning dawns” (verse 4). God does not destroy or smite his people when morning dawns. Rather, he helps them.

God’s aid comes quickly to those who belong to him. Faster than next-day shipping, God brings rescue. This help may entail sustaining your strength to hold on longer in your grief, or it may look like the repentance of the one who wounded you. He may change your circumstances dramatically, or he may give you the courage to keep enduring them. Either way, the God of all power who abides with you has devoted himself to your aid in all things.

Christ Our Rock

Christ revealed God’s saving heart when he rescued us from our greatest enemy. Through his death on the cross, and subsequent resurrection, Christ disarmed Satan of his only damning weapon — unforgiven sin. In the avalanche of implications of Christ’s work, the requirement of punishment and death attached to our sins perished as well.

When dangling from the cliffs of life, we may not fear the fall as much as we fear what comes at the end of the fall. Christ took away that deepest fear by eliminating sin’s power to kill us and keep us from God. That relational wound will not ultimately overwhelm you. The fearful what if scenarios will not steal your sanity. He will faithfully protect you, just as he always has.

The next time you find yourself losing your footing in life, meditate on these realities. In fact, meditate on them every day of your life. Let these realities mark you, holding your attention and shaping your outlook on life. In Christ, your God holds all power. Your God is with you right now. Your God is helping you and has promised to uphold you. The circumstances of life may harass and threaten, but they cannot undo you. Earthquakes come and go, but Christ’s people remain. The city of God never moves, nor do her inhabitants.

Thank you, Dr. Piper. A lot to think about, a lot to pray about. I feel like I have 35 things to process, but man, the concept of kept — amazing. I think about the early days of Acts 29, when so many of us that are older planted churches, and then in the early 2000s someone gave us the book Desiring God, and we read it. We didn’t really understand it the first time, so we read it again, and then we read it again. Then we listened to the Jonathan Edwards biography, and then we listened to that again. Then we listened to the Adoniram Judson biography and the Lloyd-Jones biography, and we’re shaped so much by the Reformed theology that we learned from guys like R.C. Sproul and John Piper.

Here we are now in 2024, and we asked you to speak on this topic because a lot has changed in our culture and our society since 1999, when Acts 29 started. I’d like to ask you this question: In your decades of ministry, 33 years of pastoral ministry, how have you seen the culture change? You just preached on what is completely unchanging. How have you seen the culture change, and do you sense an increased hostility toward the church in today’s culture from when you began in 1980, or do you feel more like there’s nothing new?

Well, that doesn’t depend on my perception. There are statistics that show clearly that the hostility is greater. I don’t usually read statistics, but you have to do what you’re asked to do. In the last ten years, the question has been, “Is it a good thing that more and more people are nonreligious?” That’s the question. Is it a good thing? The movement has gone from 25 percent of the people saying, “Yes, that’s a good thing” to 47 percent between 2010 and 2020.

Twenty-five percent said, “I wish more people were not religious,” and now 47 percent say, “It’s a really good thing that people are less religious because religion is bad for us. You guys are all bad for us.” Yes, that’s an easy question to answer just statistically.

But as far as other changes go, I’m old. I started pastoring before personal computers, before email, before smartphones, before the Internet, before social media. The world has changed. You all have computers in your pockets, and on those computers is every manner of evil, and Desiring God, and lots of other good things, so that’s huge. You preach to people who are looking at their phones because it just bumped and they’re getting a text message from Africa or a different time zone, and you’re looking at them and saying, “Would you pay attention to me? Would you turn them all off?” That’s a small, little issue.

The bigger issue is what’s happening to people as they soak themselves in an entertainment culture. I’m trying to think, What’s the main issue regarding social media? I don’t know the answer to that. I just say it’s huge that I think most people live from eye candy to eye candy and entertainment to entertainment so that the mind is not as reflective. To walk through the airport forty years ago, nobody was talking into the blue with an earbud in their head, and nobody was reading a phone. They had books in their hands or something else like that. It’s a different world. So, that’s a huge piece that’s changed.

Let me just mention one other thing, because it’s just so prominent: the battle lines of sexuality and the battle lines of abortion. Let me go back one step on why I would go there. When I was in high school, I knew there was such a thing as Democrats and Republicans, and I wasn’t a political animal at all in high school. What high schooler is? I just knew they were out there. Both kinds were in my church, and they basically had some different ideas about economics or whatever.

It didn’t enter my mind that you’re bad if you’re one and you’re good if you’re the other. It didn’t enter my mind. I didn’t think that way. Today, it’s very hard given the love affair with killing children, and the love affair with celebrating two men having sex and calling it marriage, and the love affair with taking eight-year-olds and surgically turning them into the opposite gender. (I hate that word. I try to avoid the word entirely because it’s so politically and culturally twisted. Sex is the right word.) Just take those three things. It’s very hard to meet somebody and find out “I’m totally pro-choice, I’m totally affirming of LGBTQ, I’m totally affirming of transgenderism,” and not feel like that’s wicked.

The word wicked wasn’t in my vocabulary for another human being. Theologically, I suppose you’d say it was. I wasn’t a Calvinist in those days, so maybe it wasn’t, but I just mean that makes relationships really hard. You could put on it names, Republican and Democrat, but that’s not really helpful because both those groups are really sinful, and your job as a pastor is complicated by that dynamic, but it should not be consumed by that dynamic. That’s just a big, big change regarding how one navigates relationships.

Here is maybe one other thing. Carl Trueman has done us a good service with his books — the big one and the little one — and now he has a new one of identifying underneath the modern world a kind of autonomy that decides our own nature, and therefore “I can be a woman if I choose to be a woman.” That deeper autonomy, I think, has never changed.

Pastor John, that leads into a second question. So many of us, when we planted Acts 29 churches, were looking. We valued conservative Reformed theology, but we also valued cultural engagement, and we wanted to reach our cities. We wanted to stick to the truths of Scripture, and we wanted to engage with lost people and reach lost people. How can church planters and pastors culturally engage our cities on this hand while also living as people set apart on this hand?

I do have to admit that I emphasize the second one more than the first one because that’s where I think we’re weak. I think most of our people do not live for the age to come, and they’re out of step with the New Testament in that regard. That’s cheating to just go there.

“Do you know what the answer is to persecution and criticism, which drive men out of the ministry? Joy.”

I was at a lecture on Thursday on “Augustine Against the Neo-Stoics,” and I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but Stoicism is making a comeback. There are half a dozen books that are very popular, and it’s recapturing Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and Seneca. It fascinated me because when he was done, I said, “That’s the answer I’m going to give in Dallas. That’s what I’m going to say. Thank you.” Because what he showed was that Augustine was totally culturally engaged. He wrote City of God. If you read City of God (which is good — nice and thick), it’s just one engagement after the other philosophically with the Roman times.

The Stoics said that happiness is found through virtue, not circumstances. If a bad thing happened to you, you could just say, “I didn’t feel that. I’m a stone. I didn’t feel that.” Virtue is about rising above circumstances and maintaining your equanimity. That was the stance of the Stoics. That’s being offered today in our culture, which is so fragile and so uncertain, and these new Stoics are saying, “You can do that. You can just rise above it all. You don’t feel any of that. You’re just your own person.” And yet, the Stoics argued for suicide, and they described what would bring you to the point where it was noble and virtuous to end it with equilibrium.

Augustine saw right through that contradiction. He said, “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that happiness is from rising above circumstances and turn around and say, ‘Circumstances can get so bad that you can end it.’ You can’t.” What he did was to go into the mindset of Stoicism and undermine it by just thinking it through as self-contradictory.

What I said to Zach, who gave this lecture, was “Zach, happiness was the common denominator there, and Augustine just took it for granted. They’re seeking happiness, and he’s saying, ‘You can’t have it your way. It can only be had by hope in an everlasting life.’” It’s about rejoicing in hope (Romans 5:2). And I said, “Do you think that’s the way Augustine tackled all the issues, making happiness and its quest the apologetic means by which he hooked the culture?” And he said, “I think it’s probably not the only way.” I said, “But it’s almost the only way, right?”

I haven’t read a lot of Augustine, but I read enough to know sovereign joy is his thing. Augustine is the greatest philosopher-theologian in the history of the church outside the apostle Paul, lots of people would say. Maybe Jonathan Edwards would come in second. If that’s true, we should not be ashamed, both from the history of theology and the Bible, to say the way to engage with culture is to tap into the universal pursuit of happiness. The message I just gave is my way of showing how deep that is. That’s not superficial. That’s not light. That’s weighty because God is supreme. You’re not.

That sounds to people like, “Oh, you’re going to make the pursuit of happiness the goal of life. That’s just selfish. That’s small. That’s man-centered.” Then you use the Bible, the God-centeredness of God, and Christian Hedonism to say, “No, no, no, no, you’re not getting it.” You take them up. This is just Piper’s bent. You hear Piper’s bent.

If I’m going to talk to any unbeliever in any country in the world through any language, I know one thing about that person: They don’t want to be sad. They don’t want to be discouraged. They don’t want to suffer. They want to be happy. They want to be glad. They want to have soul satisfaction to sleep well at night and feel good about the happiness they enjoy during the day without any guilt feelings at all. And only Christianity has the answer to that. For that to be true, you have to make much of the world to come.

I have one more story. Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard of Joni Eareckson Tada. She’s one of my heroes, and her new book, The Practice of the Presence of Jesus, just came out last fall and has an introduction in it that calls her a five-point Calvinist. It’s all there. I am teaching on that at my church. I read them this introduction, and then I said, “I’m going to write to her and say, ‘Why’d you do that? That really tips your hand. That makes a lot of enemies. We’re trying to just keep that underneath.’”

I wrote to her, and she wrote me back the day before yesterday. We know each other. I knew what she’s going to say. She said, “Why would I want to keep secret what keeps me alive? Why would I want to keep secret what sustains me every day of my life?” So, the sovereignty of God in the life of a sufferer is another thing that makes it universally culturally relevant.

At Desiring God, we have a mission statement, and the mission statement says, “Given the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him, we exist to help people glorify God by helping them be satisfied in God above all things, especially in their suffering.” We didn’t always add that little thing at the end. When I wrote Desiring God, do you know the first criticism I got? People said, “This is just naive, typical American self-help. That’s what this book is. It’s just another book about how to be happy.” And they couldn’t have missed it more. I realized, “Okay, I have to make this clear.” So, the next edition had a chapter on suffering: “Suffering: The Sacrifice of Christian Hedonism.” That’s not in the first edition.

Suffering is universal. Everybody suffers. Even the rich people in the suburbs living in their mansions, having total insurance, are miserable. One hundred thousand of them overdosed with opioids last year. That’s not poor people. That’s middle-class people, desperately needing something more than what this world gives them, and they’re dying in droves. If you tap into suffering, and you have a theology big enough to carry you through suffering, that’s another cultural engagement that really does carry the day, I think.

Thank you. Now, you told us earlier tonight that you’d spoken at twenty Passion conferences. How do you hope your legacy of ministry lives on — or do you?

Yeah, I think about that. Should you live and influence the moment? The Bible says they minister to their generation, and I think that is your primary responsibility. I don’t think you are responsible for influencing people fifty years from now — or let’s just say one hundred years from now because some of you will live fifty years. A lot of you will live fifty years. I won’t.

Number one, don’t worry too much about living to make an impact one hundred years from now. That’s not your responsibility. It isn’t. I don’t see anything about it. You are responsible for those people sitting in front of you on Sunday and loving them well, and if God wants to do something with that after you’re gone, he can. If you think about it, then what would you want it to be? I would want it to be this: “He loved God, and he helped people love God. Through that, he helped people love their neighbor, which is the great commandment.” This is not rocket science. There is one great commandment, and there’s a second one that’s like it. Did he love God? Did he help people love God? Did he love his neighbor? That’s huge for me.

I would like to be known as somebody who was faithful to his wife all the way to the end. I sit beside this woman 55 years now every night, and we just look at each other and say, “So, who’s going to take care of the other one?” In other words, when we take the dining room table out and put a hospice bed in there, which one of us is it going to be? The answer is, “Whoever it is, I’m taking care of you. I’m going to be there. I’m not going to any conferences when you’re there.” I’ve watched men and women do that in our church, and I just stand in awe. I stand in awe of a man or a woman who gives up almost everything to be there for the dying spouse. That’s another big one.

We have a lot of potential church planters in here, and we have church planters that are just starting to plant churches, and we have church planters that are planting churches in countries across the world. We were just in Latin America this week with planters from nine countries. What do you think are some of the challenges you’re seeing church planters face today?

I knew that one was coming too. The more I thought about it, the more they are changeless. They are changeless. I thought of ignorance. I thought of death (that is, the people are dead). They’re ignorant. They’re dead. I thought of opposition or persecution. And I thought of discouragement. Now, let me just say a word about each. How much time do we have?

Plenty of time.

Okay, I won’t take long, but I think those are universal. I think they’re in every generation, and I think they’re the deadliest opponents we have. What was the first one? Tell me my first one.

Ignorance.

Ignorance, thank you very much. (This is called being 78 years old.) In Ephesus, is it not amazing that in Acts 19, when he’s driven out of the synagogue, he rents the hall of Tyrannus, and he teaches every day? Now, several manuscripts say from 11:00 in the morning till 4:00 in the afternoon, or whatever. He teaches every day for two and a half years. All of Asia heard the word of God in one place (Acts 19:10). That’s the antidote to ignorance: teach, teach, teach, teach, teach.

Your people don’t know God. They don’t know God, and those poor Ephesians were saying, “Who is this crazy guy?” They could say, “Well, just go down into the hall of Tyrannus. He teaches every day down there.” Isn’t that amazing? I just think, “God, I want to do that. I want to do that.” That’s my little ignorance piece.

Next, consider opposition. Do you know what the answer is to persecution and criticism, which drive men out of the ministry? Joy.

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

That’s a miracle. The best antidote to being criticized and reviled and persecuted is that you have a great reward in heaven, and it is so great and so sure that you can smile and be happy. The world needs happy people in the face of suffering. That’s opposition.

“I stand in awe of a man or a woman who gives up almost everything to be there for the dying spouse.”

Regarding death, in 1 Corinthians 1:23–24, Paul says, “We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” The reason the Jews demand signs and the Gentiles call it foolishness is because they’re dead. They can’t see anything glorious in Christ crucified. They think, “That’s just idiotic, a piece of meat hanging on a stick. You call that God and Savior? That’s foolishness. We need a sign. You come down from the cross, and then we’ll believe” — which was a pure lie.

Paul preaches that crazy gospel. Some people believe, and they believe because of the sovereign call of God, who says, “Lazarus, come forth.” That’s great. That’s the way you preach. So, the antidote to deadness is to preach Christ crucified, call down the power of the Holy Spirit, and watch the dead be raised.

What was the last one? Discouragement. Well, this was a big deal because I preached it a few weeks ago at Kevin DeYoung’s Coram Deo pastors conference, and they wanted me to do an exposition of 2 Corinthians 4. Oh my goodness. Throw me into the briar patch. (That’s an allusion nobody in here understands.) He says twice in that chapter, “We do not lose heart” (2 Corinthians 4:1, 16). Losing heart is a big enemy for church planting or for enduring in ministry. “I just lose heart. It’s just too hard, too discouraging.”

He has several arguments. I gave eight arguments for why they shouldn’t be discouraged, but the one that’s so clear in 2 Corinthians 4:16 is this: “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” So, this 78-year-old nature is wasting away, but our inner nature is being renewed day by day. Then he says,

We look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)

There it is again, the remedy to losing heart and the wasting away. I said to them, and I’ll say to you, “If you say this ministry is killing me,” my response is, “That’s no reason to quit.” It killed Paul. Paul said, “I carry about in my body the death of Jesus” (see 2 Corinthians 4:10). This ministry is killing me. That’s what your people watch. They’re watching how you die. Does this man die with joy? Does he have his eyes set on things that are eternal, or does he want to write more books? Does he want to get his name on more placards? Does he want to get more followers? Is he all about money and about fame, or is dying in the ministry for us?

That’s what the whole of 2 Corinthians is about. That’s all it is. We are being comforted in our sufferings with the comfort with which we want to comfort you. We want to comfort you with the comfort with which we are being comforted by God (2 Corinthians 1:4). Pastor, your suffering, your discouragement, your dying in the ministry, is remedied by “we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.” They are eternal.

Thank you, Pastor John. You’ve served us for 25 years of our history and some of us for even longer. We’d like to close tonight with praying for Pastor John, so can I ask you to just extend a hand toward him? We’ll thank God for his presence in our lives and pray for him.

Father, we thank you for the celebration of Reformed theology that we’ve heard tonight, the celebration of who you are, the celebration of the fact that we are kept, and nothing can pull us away from you. We thank you for using the gifting that you gave Pastor John to impact so many of us, but our ultimate goal is that we would make much of you. So, I pray tonight that as we’ve heard what we’ve read, as we’ve heard what we’ve preached, as we have heard what we believe, that we would walk away from here and make much of you.

I pray that you would be magnified like we began singing tonight. Christ be magnified. We do pray that you would continue to bless Pastor John and his ministry as, hopefully, he has many years left to serve us, and to minister us, and to teach us how to make much of you. So, we thank you for his ministry, and we pray over him tonight in Jesus’s name. Amen.

Christian introspection can feel a little like walking into a broad and intricate maze. Entering the maze is easy enough, but so is getting lost within it. Your sense of direction slips. Promising paths of thought take unexpected and distressing turns. Dead ends abound.

If we want to live safely in this world, then we will need at least some of the self-knowledge that comes from introspection (we might also call it self-examination). “Pay attention to yourselves,” our Lord Jesus told his disciples (Luke 17:3). “Keep a close watch on yourself,” Paul wrote to Timothy (1 Timothy 4:16). “Keep your heart with all vigilance,” the wise man counsels (Proverbs 4:23). So we enter the maze of self for good reason.

Yet anyone who has seriously embarked upon this path of self-knowledge knows how many holes and pits, how many crossroads and mistaken turns, how many briars and thorns line the way. And some Christians, inward and scrupulous by nature, know what it’s like to get lost in that maze for long stretches of time.

Our Lord calls us to look within. Yet alongside healthy introspection are a dozen dangers and dead ends — paths that will yield not more self-knowledge but rather more anxiety, insecurity, distraction, and fear. As we consider the maze before us, then, we would do well to remember some common ways introspection goes wrong.

Dead End 1: Endless Introspection

For some Christians, introspection is less a spiritual practice and more a spiritual atmosphere. They don’t so much visit the maze as live there. These believers often live with split attention — one part of them talking, working, resting, worshiping, the other part standing back and assessing their talking, working, resting, worshiping.

We might find ourselves engaging in endless introspection for several reasons. Maybe we imagine that we really can know ourselves comprehensively if we just look long enough. So, we assess and reassess, guess and second-guess, analyze and scrutinize as if just a little more looking might unmask our inner selves. We may leave little room for Paul’s modest self-awareness (1 Corinthians 4:3–4) or prayers like David’s in Psalm 19:12: “Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults.”

“‘Love God’ and ‘love neighbor’ are our most crucial callings — and continual self-scrutiny undermines both.”

Probably more often, endless introspection is less intentional. We don’t decide to analyze ourselves so much; we just reflexively find ourselves doing so. The power of this vague, atmospheric self-analysis lies partly in the fact that it can feel productive and obedient. Jesus tells us to watch ourselves; we’re watching. Or so we think. But as with a preoccupied father who feels productive while mentally solving work problems at the dinner table, endless introspection usually distracts us from plainer, more important obedience.

God may command us to look within, but these commands hold a small place among the whole, just a sliver of the pie chart. Far more often, God commands us to look upward and outward — to Christ (Hebrews 12:2), to heaven (Colossians 3:1–4), to the people beside us and the wonders around us and the gifts before us (Matthew 6:26; Philippians 2:3; 4:8). “Love God” and “love neighbor” are our most crucial callings — and continual self-scrutiny undermines both.

So, instead of stumbling around in a maze of thoughts, introspect with intention. Aim to enter this maze with a prayer and a plan, with a clear beginning and end. And even if intrusive thoughts keep tempting you inward, dare to remember that the obedience God expects of you usually lies outward.

Dead End 2: One-Eyed Introspection

Self-examination sometimes gets construed as simply a sin search or idol hunt: we look within to trace our guilt to its buried roots. Granted, Scripture’s calls to introspection often do focus on finding the troublesome parts about ourselves — “any grievous way in me,” as David says (Psalm 139:24). We want to meet our enemies in their infancy so they don’t grow up to slay us. But if we search for only sin within, then we are like a man who keeps one eye closed.

“We must have two eyes,” Richard Sibbes writes, “one to see imperfections in ourselves, the other to see what is good” (The Bruised Reed, 35). And if Jesus is your Lord, Savior, and Treasure, then no matter how embattled you feel, you have something good to see. Your soul may have weeds, but it also has fruit planted and growing by the Spirit of God (Galatians 5:22–23).

The apostle John writes, “By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments” (1 John 2:3). We can know that we are in Christ, John says. And one of the ways we know is by noticing the grace he has given us to obey him — to delight in his word, love his people, rely on his strength, trust his promises. We are not who we once were, and God wants us to know it.

Confession and repentance are marks of Christian maturity, but endless self-accusation is not. As Octavius Winslow writes,

It is not true humility to doubt, and underrate, until it becomes easy to deny altogether the work of the Holy Ghost within us — it is true humility and lowliness to confess his work, bear testimony to his operation, and ascribe to him all the power, praise, and glory. (Personal Declension, 151)

Do not pinch your nose as you walk past the fruit of the Spirit in your life. Do not speak of your soul as if the good work God has begun is actually a bad work, one without progress or beauty (Philippians 1:6). Rather, open both your eyes when you look within, and praise him for whatever good you find.

Dead End 3: Untethered Introspection

In John Calvin’s discussion of the knowledge of God, he uses a vivid image that we might also apply to the knowledge of self. “The divine countenance,” he writes, “is for us like an inexplicable labyrinth unless we are conducted into it by the thread of the Word” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.6.3).

Those who try to know God apart from Scripture are like men dropped in the middle of an infinite maze. Our own souls, while not as unsearchable as God’s nature, are likewise “inexplicable” to us apart from God’s word. We need a thread to lead us through the labyrinth of self to the places we need to see (and then to guide us back out).

David models this approach to self-knowledge in Psalm 19. Even as he acknowledges the persistent hiddenness of some sins (Psalm 19:12), he celebrates the searching and illuminating character of God’s word. “The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. . . . Moreover, by [it] is your servant warned” (Psalm 19:8, 11). God’s word is a sun upon the soul — warming us, warning us, revealing us, and leading us back to our rock and redeemer (Psalm 19:14).

Imagine, then, that a particular sin has been pestering you. You want to see it more clearly so you can confess it more sincerely and kill it more effectively. You might simply pray and think about why this sin holds such power over you — and that could be fruitful. You might also bring this sin before another believer — and that could be even more fruitful. But you might also consider how to hold more tightly to “the thread of the word.”

“Understanding ourselves holds almost no value if we remain preoccupied with ourselves.”

If you want to see your envy more clearly, you might hold onto the story of Saul’s jealousy (1 Samuel 8:6–16) or James’s words about “the wisdom from above” (James 3:13–18). If you want to understand and address some recurring fear more decisively, you might get into the boat with the disciples (Mark 4:35–41) or allow Paul to lovingly question you at the end of Romans 8 (verses 31–39). If you want to turn from shallow entertainment and earthly-mindedness, you might let John lead you into his vision of the new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:4).

As we linger in passages like these — pondering, meditating, and allowing them to search our souls — we may find them leading us to motives we never imagined, temptations we never named, and ways of escape we never saw.

Dead End 4: Christless Introspection

In the end, self-examination, like all means of God’s grace, is just that: a means. Understanding ourselves holds almost no value if we remain preoccupied with ourselves. But if we allow what we see of ourselves to lead us somewhere else, to preoccupy us with Christ, then introspection will become one more servant of our joy in him.

We do not pore over our souls simply to see our illnesses, but so we might show the Great Physician where we need him to lay his healing hands and bestow his benediction of peace. And what a physician he is! Throngs came to him on earth, their needs as varied as their humanity, yet “he healed them all” (Matthew 12:15). And so he still does by his Spirit from heaven.

If bitterness consumes you like leprosy, he can cleanse you and send you home whole. If laziness or self-indulgence has paralyzed your love, he can raise you up again. If twisted words have made your praises go mute, he can unloose and retrain your tongue. If lofty thoughts of self have blinded you to his worth, he can once again say to your eyes, “Be opened.”

Whatever we discover within is already known by him. We may find ourselves surprised; he is not. And in this Jesus — his person, his work — is all the healing we could ever need. So, look within, but don’t live there. Let every inward look lead you to the Lord outside yourself. Live in him.