The inability to taste is a terrible experience. I remember it distinctly as a symptom of the Covid virus. Gone were the rich, aromatic notes in that morning cup of coffee; all that was left was the sensation of heat and the effect of caffeine. Gone were the sharp, distinct flavors of the egg-and-bacon breakfast sandwich, though the stomach was satisfied. Food and drink remained necessary, but consuming them was so, well, joyless.

How often do we pick up our Bibles with the same sort of drudgery? We know we need God’s words to live, but as we chew, we find no flavor. What once warmed and satisfied our hearts now seems more like the bread in the Gibeonite’s sacks, “dry and crumbly” (Joshua 9:12).

The operative word in the previous sentence is seems. Lack of taste for the word reveals far more about us than it does the word of God. “Those for whom prophetic doctrine is tasteless,” warned John Calvin, “ought to be thought of as lacking taste buds” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.8.2). Lacking a taste for the hearty bread of God, we seek to satisfy ourselves with the empty calories offered by a deceitful world. And when once a taste for worldly fare is acquired, joy in the triune God grows strangely dim.

The struggle to be satisfied in God is part and parcel of daily life for believers. “By nature,” writes John Piper, “we get more pleasure from God’s gifts than from himself” (When I Don’t Desire God, 9). As those who have been corrupted by father Adam’s sin we are, all of us, prone to “forsake the one true God for prodigious trifles” (Institutes, 1.5.11). So how do we fight for joy in God? In his mercy, he has given us ample means, and the first and foremost of these is his own word to us in Holy Scripture.

Fountain of All Joy

Why does God’s word play such a crucial role in our fight for joy? Before we answer, we actually have to start by asking a different question: Where does joy come from? Ultimately, joy comes not from reading a book, nor from meditation, nor from prayer, nor from this article. It has a very specific source.

The psalmist writes, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. . . . God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:25–26). And elsewhere, “In your presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:11). There is one, and only one, source of joy: the eternal and perfect God, who dwells forever in the felicity of triune love. From his fullness alone can we be satisfied because he made us (oh, glorious truth!) to be satisfied in him. “Whom have I in heaven but you?”

It is worth pausing here to ask ourselves, Do I believe this? Do I really believe that in himself God is replete and that he created all things out of the superabundance of his own inner life? Do I trust the testimony of the beloved apostle when he writes, “God is love” (1 John 4:8)? If we do not believe that the only source of true joy is God himself, then the gospel, while it may taste sweet from time to time, will be just one among a host of delicacies spread before us. We may rejoice in God, but only as the provider of other joys.

The daily struggle for joy in God is a fight of faith. We strive against the deceits of the world, the flesh, and the enemy of our souls to cling to God as the one who has life and joy in himself and freely offers them to us in the Son. And one of the crucial ways we fight is by opening his word.

‘Seek My Face’

We are daily presented with fresh opportunities to pursue God as our greatest treasure. In his mercy and kindness, he commands us, “Seek my face” (Psalm 27:8). And he has not withheld from us the means to do so.

“Food is for eating. Good food is for feasting. And God wants us to feast on his word.”

Holy Scripture is the revealed word of God. It is the principal means he has given to us to seek him and to hear his voice. Piper writes, “The fundamental reason that the word of God is essential to joy in God is that God reveals himself mainly by his word” (When I Don’t Desire God, 95). We do not seek our God in mindless meditation, emptying ourselves of thoughts and ideas. Christians do meditate as a means to seek God, but we do so by filling our minds and thoughts with his word, carefully following the shafts of revealed light up to the Source.

And what — or better, who — do we see as our eyes are filled with heavenly light? We see him who is “the radiance of the glory of God,” our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ (Hebrews 1:3). God the Father calls us to seek him by his Spirit in his Son. Jesus made this plain when he said, “No one comes to Father except through me. . . . Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:6, 9).

When we open the word of God, we behold by faith the Word of God. In beholding the Word of God, we gaze upon the glory of God. In gazing upon the glory of God, we are filled (as Anselm writes) with “the blessedness for which [we were] made” (Proslogion 1) — fellowship with the Father through the Son in the Spirit.

‘Your Face, Lord, Do I Seek’

God made us to rejoice in him. And he has given us his word as the principal means to that joy. But how do we actually wield Scripture in our fight for joy? The psalmist responds to the Lord’s command “Seek my face” with “Your face, Lord, do I seek” (Psalm 27:8). How do we follow him in his pursuit? I’ll draw your attention to two aspects of faithful seeking that bring us back to where this article started: tasty food.

Seek by Fasting

God calls us to delight in him by fasting from this world.

Many are the delicacies offered to us by the world. The confectioners are hard at work, ever seeking to delight our senses and satiate our bellies. They want to fill us with goodies that, though tasty in the eating, will turn to ash in the stomach and leave us feeling bloated and sick. The pleasures of the world — anything and everything that promises to yield lasting happiness apart from God — amount to nothing but vanity.

If we are to have taste buds for what is true, we must fast from such delicacies and train ourselves to enjoy wholesome food. Fasting, in this sense, doesn’t mean we forsake all earthly goods, only that we learn to enjoy them properly as gifts received from the Father of lights.

So, how do we fast? By taking seriously how Jesus refutes the devil’s tasty temptation: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4). We need to carefully consider what makes up our steady diet and ask if we’ve developed tastes for that which leaves us empty. We can test whether or not we’ve acquired a taste for the ephemeral by asking a few diagnostic questions.

What grabs your attention when you first wake up? Are you more eager to read emails or check what people said about your most recent post than you are to kneel in prayer with God’s word open before you?

What rhythms punctuate your days and weeks? Is your everyday life marked more by the demands of a busy schedule or by a repeated turning to hear the Lord?

What most informs the way you think and speak of the events of your life and the wider world? Do you primarily refract them through the lens of the latest political changes or most recent trends? Or do you consider them in light of the One who orders all things according to his good and sovereign will?

The list could go on and on. The fight for right fasting is won not in a single day nor, unfortunately, in the present life. We must, like a sommelier, carefully train our taste buds to “test everything; hold fast what is good [and] abstain from every form of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:21–22).

Seek by Feasting

God also calls us to delight in him by feasting on his word.

God frequently refers to his word in terms of food. Man lives not by bread alone (Deuteronomy 8:5). “Your words were found, and I ate them, and [they] became to me a joy and the delight of my heart” (Jeremiah 15:16). Peter likens the word to “pure spiritual milk” (1 Peter 2:2), the author of Hebrews compares “the word of righteousness” to “solid food” (Hebrews 5:12–14), and David writes, “The law of the Lord is . . . sweeter . . . than honey and drippings of the honeycomb” (Psalm 19:10). Food is for eating. Good food is for feasting. And God wants us to feast on his word.

How do we feast? We feast by attentively reading his word. Attentiveness requires putting away distractions, soaking without hurrying, and attending carefully to what God says.

We feast by meditating on and memorizing his word, learning to speak and think with the grain of Scripture and hold fast the myriad promises made.

We feast by praying his word, speaking back to God in our own varied situations his very words, aiming to conform our will to his.

We feast by sharing what he shows us of himself in his word with others, inviting them to try a bite of what we have enjoyed.

We feast by hearing his word taught, humbly submitting ourselves to those whom he has appointed to lay the table for us.

We feast by singing his word, joining with the saints and angels as we address one another “in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all [our] heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 5:19–20).

Come, Eat

In one of his final appearances to the disciples before he ascended to heaven, Jesus cooked a meal and invited them to come and eat (John 21:12). He has done the same for us, but instead of a few fish on the beach, he has spread an unimaginable feast, putting before us the finest delicacies of his glory and calling us to banquet at his table.

So, come daily to eat and drink your fill. Feast on the food of his word, and find that he alone truly satisfies.

Mom with the stroller, 38-week belly, and purse full of snacks: Do you believe the resurrected Jesus says to you, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18–19)?

Believe it. Jesus sees you and commands as much. He hasn’t overlooked the small hand in yours or the little sleep you’re operating on. He isn’t put off by the noise of your toddler or the fullness of your days. Our Lord commissions mothers with the same words given to Peter, James, and John. Mothers bless the nations and their children by living out the Great Commission in the world as only they can.

His command isn’t limited to moms translating the Bible someplace humid with spiders. The commission isn’t watered down if you find yourself in a Midwestern cul-de-sac. What may seem ordinary about your local witness is, in reality, as stunning as the multitude of stars encircling Abraham.

Father of a Billion Mothers

One reason Jesus references the Abrahamic covenant in the Great Commission is to show that salvation is no longer limited to the Jews. Abraham was called to be a blessing to the nations (Genesis 12:1–3). The means of blessing the nations in Matthew 28:18–20 is making disciples of Jesus. In him, salvation comes not just to Jews but to Gentiles. And Gentiles are everywhere. You fulfill Jesus’s command when you disciple the girl in youth group and bear witness at family reunions. What Jesus accomplished on the cross assures us that the person within reach matters to God. His mission, his heart, is set on all peoples, both the exotic and the most familiar.

We should never downplay the mission of moms here, wherever here might be. At the same time, we should also remember that God does send many moms there, to the darkest corners of the planet. They stand with their households as luminous cities on hard-to-reach hills, for “how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?” (Romans 10:14).

For these women — for me — to be both a missionary and a mom can feel like being called to play the tree on set for the school play. A necessary role, but in no way desirable. We have to be there, but we’re all background and support. We obey and go, but out of duty to some secondary commissioning. We don’t expect God to make disciples of all nations through the vessel of a mother pulled by her string of kids.

But there are around two billion mothers on the globe, and four babies born every second. When my husband and I visit village homes in an isolated region of the world to share the good news, we meet countless mothers and grandmothers with laps full of wide-eyed children. These women stare blankly at the name Jesus. Who will reach them? Who can relate to the love that inflates your heart at first meeting, the wonders of shared noses and taste buds, the pain of childbearing, the demands of homemaking, and the need to later release those you’ve cradled in your arms? Who better to give them Christ than mothers who share their joys and scars?

Death, the Attention-Getter

After a handful of years on the mission field, the most frequent opportunity I get to share the gospel relates to how I raise my kids. It’s not because of our picture-perfect moments or saintly routines. The attention-getter is always death. I lay down my life for my children because Christ did it first for me. I can love my kids at their worst because my Lord delighted to save me while I slapped his face and pulled at his beard. That’s otherworldly.

“Motherly weakness is good soil for gospel seeds.”

When we patiently discipline the flailing toddler, we copy the God who gathers even the wiliest of sheep into his embrace (Isaiah 40:11). When we study their scribbled drawings and clap for cartwheels, we mirror the God who delights to save us and sings over us like a proud papa (Psalm 18:19; Zephaniah 3:17).

Our weakness as moms is our strength. The boundaries, limits, and frailties that uniquely mark motherhood have the power to forge genuine friendships with women around the world. When I had morning sickness and lived by the toilet bowl in a land of abrasive curry, I’ll never forget the way my house-helper stroked my hair with tears in her own eyes, or the special snack my neighbor fried for me when I admitted how sad I felt postpartum. Motherly weakness is good soil for gospel seeds.

What if, instead of resenting our roles and responsibilities, we used them to win women from every tribe, tongue, and nation? We might borrow the tenacity of the shrewd manager in Luke 16, who used earthly wealth to gain friends and a future. With a measure of cleverness, might we use our motherly particularities to advance the kingdom of God?

Bless the Nations — and Your Children

Not only will the nations be glad when mothers go and make disciples; our children will be blessed — both now and later. Many parents are consumed with the now part, placing children in the center of their own solar systems, with enough extracurriculars, playdates, and field trips in orbit to keep them happy and on the path to supposed success. Because kids come in cute little packages, we can forget they are human image-bearers, just like us, who can’t be satisfied with vacations or the entire Christmas list under the tree. They were made for more.

Like the pirates in their storybooks, they crave the gold of the gospel and nothing less. They live in a warzone and require bolstering. If we make them the star attraction, expect little, and merely keep them busy, we place them in a sandcastle that’s easily dismantled by the waves of trial that are surely ahead.

Children will be blessed in the long run if their moms come alive at Jesus’s command on the mountain. Mothers who believe their Lord is with them in the task will take risks, abandoning the safety of their ships for stormy waters like Peter did. As a result, their blessed kids will watch Scripture play out in the day-to-day, as they see mom trust God like the widow who gave her last coin, or as they watch her mimic the Father who bridges the gap to find the lost lamb. They will hear their mothers’ prayers and watch the feast that returns from her insufficient bread and fish. Her earthen vessel will shine into the shadowed places of the world and onto the faces of her children.

Moms, don’t move toward the nations as some reincarnated Hudson Taylor or Amy Carmichael. Don’t waste time envying the free-spirited personality and bug-tolerance of the missionary of your dreams. Jesus sees you. And your children. He doesn’t pine for future diaper-less days when you’ll finally work like a well-oiled machine. He commissions you in the hectic present to go and make disciples.

So, make disciples of the unengaged, the people around your breakfast table, and the mom you meet at the park. One day, you’ll find yourself in a sea of white robes before the throne, surrounded in part by the fruit of your labor, physical and spiritual children standing as “oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified” (Isaiah 61:3).

What do you do when expectations about ministry don’t line up with on-the-ground results?

We moved overseas more than two decades ago to take the gospel to people who had very little access to it. When we arrived, my wife and I, along with our colleagues, devoted ourselves to learning the local language. We earnestly desired that those we lived among would understand who Christ is according to the Bible. We spent thousands of hours studying grammar, learning new vocabulary, and seeking to understand the local culture, since all this knowledge would help us faithfully transmit foundational truths that are difficult to understand and communicate to those who have never heard them before.

By the end of our first year, our language ability surpassed that of our team leaders — but not because we were any more talented in language than they were. Rather, they were operating on certain assumptions about church-planting ministry that shaped their own language learning. They believed that very soon — hopefully within two or three years — many thousands of local people would embrace the gospel and start hundreds of churches. All of us expats could then leave to start another movement of disciples and churches among another unreached people.

What Are We Doing Wrong?

What was the source of this prediction about the pace and results of our work? We were told that rapidly advancing movements are the expected result in the “new paradigm” of twenty-first-century missions. It was suggested that, by following reverse-engineered methods, hundreds of churches could be planted with tens of thousands of new Christians in as little as six months.

When the pace and fruit of our work didn’t meet expectations, we began to wonder what we were doing wrong. We had been taught that if our approach didn’t lead to a church-planting movement, then we should change what we’re doing. But maybe, we thought, some ministry locations are more difficult, some peoples more resistant, some mission fields harder than others? An influential movement leader told us from the stage at a worldwide leader’s meeting that such is not the case. “There is no hard ground,” he said. That left one other possibility: we were the problem.

One leader suggested to me in a private conversation that we should consider moving aside to let a well-known movement practitioner take the lead. Many faithful gospel workers in our country became discouraged, even wondering whether they were wasting their lives by continuing to proclaim the gospel in this place.

Modern Revivalism

Students of church history may recognize similarities between these conversations and some from the past. During the Great Awakenings in North America and Britain, many Christians wanted to see a revival in their hometown. At first, as Iain Murray notes, revivals were widely viewed as extraordinary acts of God, whereby many more souls than normal became Christians (Revival and Revivalism, 374). Revivals were unpredictable and unpromised. But by 1830, some Christian ministers were experimenting with different methods to bring revival.

“Ultimately, lack of response and slow growth are not our enemies. Unfaithfulness is.”

Soon, “revivalists,” as they became known, believed they had figured out how to “originate and promote” revivals (375). Their ideas spread like wildfire among pastors and church members. “Follow our methods,” they promised, “and any church can see a revival.” The only thing preventing revival was the unwillingness of ministers to promote them. What was formerly unpredictable was now planned; what was unsure was promised. Ministers began to announce beforehand when revivals would take place.

Contrarily, “old guard” pastors were more convinced than ever that whatever true fruit of repentance they witnessed was the inscrutable work of God. While revivalists were tweaking their innovative methods, veteran pastors continued laboring in the ordinary means of ministry: weekly worship services, reading and preaching the Scriptures, prayer, Christian fellowship, singing hymns, and observing the ordinances. Though their methods remained stable, the fruit sometimes increased, sometimes decreased — suggesting to them that God was giving the growth however he saw fit (1 Corinthians 3:7).

Unfounded Promises

Today, many movement manuals begin with incredible “success stories.” One book tells how one man started two hundred churches within three months of beginning his ministry. Before ten years had passed, he reported 1.7 million new Christians and 158,000 new churches. To reports like these, we should all say, “Praise God — may it be so!” But the subtitle of this same book makes a disconcerting promise: “How it can happen in your community!”

Does the Bible promise that fast-growing church-planting movements will happen in your community if only you use the right methods? Be cautious of any training that assures you what God will do in the world — especially as it relates to the conversion of souls. We can only claim promises God has already made in the Bible. The great hymn writer Isaac Watts, who witnessed amazing revivals, cautioned ministers against depending upon them. Extraordinary works of God “are rare instances, and bestowed by the Spirit of God in so sovereign and arbitrary a manner, according to the secret counsels of his own wisdom, that no particular Christian hath any sure ground to expect them” (Revival and Revivalism, 385).

Only God can give new life in conversion and growth as Christ’s disciples. As the Bible teaches, we get to play an instrumental role in faithfully witnessing to the promise of redemption in Christ. We hope for and praise God whenever anyone places their faith in Christ. But we should be wary of predicting specific results or building our ministries on unfounded promises.

Unnecessary Discouragement

What about the pace of gospel expansion? The early church grew from thousands of followers in the first century to millions in just a few hundred years. Historian Rodney Stark estimates that the early church grew at a rate of about 40 percent per decade before trailing off (The Rise of Christianity, 6). Looking back now, most Christians and historians would consider this growth an extraordinary work of God, yet it is actually a much slower pace than that advocated by movement proponents today.

At 40 percent per decade, a house church of ten Christians would become eleven over three years’ time. Doing some quick math, the population of the Christian church in the last two decades where I live in central Asia has grown three times faster than the early church! Yet instead of celebrating this incredible work of God, some Christians are discouraged because they’ve heard that churches that don’t start a new church every six months are unhealthy.

Harvests follow faithful work. For example, the increase of Christians we see in Iran today was built on two hundred years of hard labor by Christians who patiently prayed, taught the Scriptures, and loved resistant people while they waited for them to come into the kingdom of God. We must not give up that groundbreaking work because we aren’t seeing the harvest others are experiencing. When God desires to have mercy on a sinful nation, he sends his people to labor, pray, and teach there persistently. Sometimes, we are those people who labor during generations of slow gospel expansion.

May we be faithful and encouraged, regardless of pace! The gates of hell cannot withstand the persistent proclamation of the gospel. If we will persevere in proclaiming Christ and praying for a people over years, decades, and even generations, then God’s Spirit is likely preparing them for something special pertaining to salvation. As we faithfully pursue biblical ministry, we can patiently celebrate what God is actually doing among us. Otherwise, we risk dissatisfaction during the day of small things.

Our Calling: Faithfulness

Ultimately, lack of response and slow growth are not our enemies. Unfaithfulness is. And when we are being faithful, the pace of growth is not our concern (John 21:22).

Lack of response should lead us to plead for God to work in our midst. But there is no biblical reason for faithful gospel workers to be discouraged by normal responses to the gospel. The same apostle who said, “I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some” (1 Corinthians 9:22) also emphasized that our work is to ensure generations of faithfulness (1 Timothy 2:2).

Christian friend, our faithfulness will be found as we devote ourselves to Christ — first for our own transformation and then for the teaching of Christ to others (1 Timothy 4:16). Before you commit to build a ministry that relies on quick results, ask whether Scripture commends that pursuit. Before adopting new methods in your ministry, ask whether you are committed to the ordinary methods outlined in Scripture, such as prayer, Bible study, faithful proclamation, and church membership. By these, God will build his kingdom.

So, how should we think of the pace and predictability of the spread of the gospel in missionary work today? We should strongly desire to see God work extraordinarily in the lives and hearts of those who hear the gospel from us. We should long for the same kinds of explosive increase among those we serve as we read of in the book of Acts. We should sincerely desire all people to hear the gospel and turn to Christ before it is too late (1 Timothy 2:4).

At the same time, we should give ourselves to the methods we observe in the Bible, trusting God with whatever growth he gives.