In 1914, as the storms of a “world war” began to blow across Europe, and millions of men rushed to enlist, Ivor Novello and Lena Ford wrote a patriotic anthem aimed at the women who were left behind.

Let no tears add to their hardshipAs the soldiers pass along. . . .Keep the home fires burningWhile your hearts are yearningThough your lads are far awayThey dream of home.

The public sentiment of the time assumed that women had a role to play in the war, though they would not be fighting and dying. The men went to fight on the front lines. The women ensured there was something at home worth fighting for.

We Christians are still at war. Our wartime has gone on for thousands of years and will last until Christ comes to end it. The difference is that in this war — the spiritual war — the home is located in the heat of the battle, and we mothers are in combat roles.

Why Satan Targets Mom

Our enemies in motherhood are not flesh and blood; our enemies are “the rulers, . . . the authorities, . . . the cosmic powers over this present darkness, . . . the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). Our enemy is not in Europe; he is “going to and fro on the earth” (Job 1:7). He “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

“Mothers are stewards of the home, where Satan hopes to do his worst work — and often sees worse defeat.”

Satan’s warfare on woman and her seed is not a side project. It is a major part of his strategy. To Satan, mothers represent the unrelenting multiplication of hated human images of the hated God-man who is coming soon to end his evil reign. Mothers are stewards of the home, superintendents of the precious time called childhood, where Satan hopes to do his worst work — and often sees worse defeat.

Innocence, flourishing, joy, productivity, gratitude, meek service, earliest wonder, and maddening physicality all have a special place in a home with children. And Satan violently opposes all of them.

How Satan Targets Mom

Satan and his ilk look for strategic places to attack, areas of vulnerability. Many of his favorites are common to all mankind, but there are some modes of attack that are particularly successful with Christian mothers.

1. Satan makes suffering an excuse for sinning.

A woman’s spiritual health during the grueling years of motherhood depends partly on her ability to see the difference between her spirit and her body. She must learn to inhabit her female, fallen body with humility and wisdom.

Sleepless exhaustion or morning sickness can bring with them confusion about what sort of malady we’re dealing with. It feels spiritual, because it affects our mood and, at times, impairs our ability to perform and serve in the ways we usually can. There is a real spiritual temptation that comes with physical suffering, but the presence of physical suffering doesn’t mean we’ve already lost a battle.

Satan, of course, can demoralize us with suffering. But he also can leverage suffering to get us to actually sin. He would rather us not know that it is, in fact, possible to suffer physically without sinning in anger, self-pity, or despair. Satan would have us believe one implies the presence of the other, or necessarily leads to the other. There are many ways to sin in our weakness, but the physical weakness itself is not the sin. We need to learn (and relearn) the difference.

The same goes for other illnesses and hormonal changes throughout life. Our bodies are female, and they are under a particular form of the curse. Motherhood will be physically hard in some unusual ways. But our physical state need not be the gauge or the steering wheel for our spiritual state. Satan would love nothing more than to keep us in confusion about what ails us.

2. He whispers, “Did God really say . . . ?”

Women, from the very beginning, have been a special target for a certain pattern of deceit. Satan still favors the question that felled Eve: “Did God really say . . . ?”

One of his favorite ways to seed this destructive question in our day is through social media and podcasts. The Internet is a new way that women, even those working at home, can regularly access a steady stream of advice, solicited and unsolicited. Our friends offer advice on how to deal with husbands and children. Images, shows, and books offer advice on what is good and beautiful, what can be expected (or demanded) out of life. Women, who love to give and seek advice, have a daily choice to make about what advice we look for, what we listen to, and what voices influence our daily decisions.

The whispers are everywhere if we listen for them: “Did God really say, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ (Acts 20:35)? Seems like all this giving might kill you.” “Did God really say, ‘Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord’ (Ephesians 5:22)? That seems impossible and probably unhealthy.” “Did God really say, ‘Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous, and give thanks to his holy name’ (Psalm 97:12)? Seems obvious that to give thanks when you don’t feel thankful would be inauthentic. And what about the women around you who don’t have anything to be thankful for? How would it make them feel?”

Some of Satan’s best work is accomplished by women talking to women, in the floating world of disembodied souls on the Internet. So every Christian woman who would grow in wisdom actively pursues sound doctrine (Titus 2:1), letting the word of Christ dwell in her richly (Colossians 3:16), regularly meditating on what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, and commendable (Philippians 4:8).

Perhaps one of the best ways we can steward our attention and our hearts is by turning from some of the online forms of exchanged advice, and instead seeking out flesh-and-blood relationships formed on the basis of passages like Titus 2. A woman who knows she is being discipled by someone (or something) at all times is a woman who can see her need for good discipleship, and humble herself to ask for it in the local church.

Soaking in the word of God, learning from mature Christians, and praying fervently — these are all ways we oppose Satan’s devices in whispering, “Did God really say . . . ?” Waiting for truth to find us is not sufficient; we must actively resist his lies by feeding ourselves with what God has said.

3. He blinds us to our nearest enemy.

Satan often doesn’t mind our being vigilant about outside threats. Most mothers are. But he has a vested interest in keeping us from doing active battle with the threat that is closest to home — our own flesh. The world, the flesh, and the devil are all against us in this war. We can’t do effective battle with any of them unless we’re willing to do battle with all of them.

“Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh,” Paul says. “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Galatians 5:16–17). This simply means that as we pass through the years of parenting, we should expect routine rounds of repentance: to God, to our husbands, to our children. It shouldn’t surprise or dismay us that this is part of our warfare. We should see it as a normal part of the Christian life.

We should expect growth to come over time, as our affections develop. As the years go by, our obedience should look more and more like grateful enjoyment of normal life, walked out lovingly, joyfully, peacefully, patiently, kindly, faithfully, gently, and with self-control (Galatians 5:22). These are the natural fruits of the spirit.

What Threatens Satan?

Our lives are not primarily a battle against phantom menaces out in the world who threaten to influence our children. Our children, like us, are conceived in iniquity and born in sin (Psalm 51:5). The enemy of our children’s hearts is already here; it’s already inside the camp.

“Make no mistake — our children, no matter what they hear us say, will know what our hearts truly love.”

Our children will get the most benefit, not from our public statements about what morally outrages us, but from our souls being watered by God’s word and our hearts being filled with yearning for Christ himself. Make no mistake — our children, no matter what they hear us say, will know what our hearts truly love. Satan would have it so that we never find out what our hearts love. He would have us preach a gospel to our children that never reaches our affections, our sin, our desires.

What threatens Satan? A mother’s soul overflowing with Christ — a soul feasting every day at the table he has laid for us:

Come, everyone who thirsts,     come to the waters. . . .Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,     and your labor for that which does not satisfy?Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,     and delight yourselves in rich food. (Isaiah 55:1–2)

Audio Transcript

Welcome back to the podcast on this holiday week. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving for us here in the United States and in Canada. We like to take these moments to take up the theme of thanksgiving in the apostle Paul’s letters, which is a major theme for him. Last Thanksgiving, I mentioned that the apostle Paul mentions “thanks” about fifty times in his epistles. This leads to one of my favorite quotes, a claim by New Testament scholar David Pao, who once wrote (quoting Paul Schubert), “The apostle Paul mentions the subject of thanksgiving more frequently per page than any other Hellenistic author, pagan or Christian” (Thanksgiving, 15).

Thanksgiving was always on Paul’s lips. And it was on his lips when he was talking about prayer and anxiety. In Philippians 4:6, Paul writes this: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Pray your way past anxiety. And pray your way into thanksgiving. Here’s Pastor John to explain.

Let’s go to Philippians 4:6–7. It’s very famous, very precious, and more embedded in the big picture of this letter than you may have thought. I want to draw out how Philippians 4:6–7 relates to the big things Paul is trying to do in this letter.

So now, finally, for the first time, he exhorts them to pray. I think that’s been implicit so far, but now it’s explicit. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything . . .” (Philippians 4:6). That’s a big word. Do you pray about everything? Everything? When Paul says, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), that probably is connected to “pray about everything.” Do you walk in a spirit of communion with God that — sometimes consciously, sometimes less so — is constantly offering up thanks, but especially sending up need? “I need help in this conversation. I can barely understand that person’s accent, and my hearing is bad. I need help right now at the dining-room table.” Do you live like that?

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6–7)

Broad and Narrow Prayer

In one sense, this command to pray is all-encompassing because of the words in everything. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything” pray. Do you see the connection there? Don’t be anxious in anything because in everything you’re praying for what you need in the anxious moment, and you’re trusting God because of his promise to be there and help — and so, anxiety lifts. That’s the way prayer is supposed to work to take away anxiety.

In another sense, it’s not broad and all-encompassing. It’s very narrow and very focused because instead of saying the hundred things that God does in answer to prayer, he simply focuses on two things, which are really two sides of the same coin. “Do not be anxious” is one result of prayer. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (Philippians 4:6). So the first thing that happens when you pray about everything is that anxiety is lifted. “Cast all your anxieties on me because I care for you.” That’s Peter’s way of saying it (1 Peter 5:7).

“Negatively, aim by prayer to be done with anxiety. And positively, aim by prayer to enjoy constant peace.”

And the second thing is that the “peace of God” — which is the opposite of anxiety, right? — that passes all understanding comes in and takes over and protects, guards, your hearts and minds. So negatively, aim by prayer to be done with anxiety. And positively, aim by prayer, in everything, to enjoy constant peace.

Walk through the world of trouble — ministry troubles, family troubles, European troubles, refugee troubles, political troubles, financial troubles — in the protection of the peace of God that cannot be accounted for by human reason. It cannot. It goes beyond, it surpasses what human reasoning can do. When Paul is saying, “Enjoy peace through prayer,” if somebody says, “Yeah, but how could you have peace when that’s happening?” well, that word how has no answer humanly. That’s why it says, “beyond human understanding.” Human understanding will not be able to come up with an answer to how you enjoy peace in this circumstance. It is suprarational. Reasoning doesn’t make the peace happen; God makes the peace happen, and he does it in answer to prayer. It’s a wonderful experience.

Key to Philippians

Now let’s ask this: How do those two halves of verse 6 and 7 — get rid of anxiety by prayer; enjoy peace with God by prayer — how do those two results of praying in everything relate to the big picture of Philippians, which we’ve been seeing?

“Living or dying, make Christ look great. That’s the reason you’re on the planet.”

The first day, I argued from Philippians 1:20–21: “My eager expectation and hope [is] that I might not at all be ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live as Christ, and to die is gain.” That’s the big goal of this letter: Christ magnified in your bodily existence. Living or dying, make him look great. That’s the reason you’re on the planet. That’s the reason your family exists, your ministry exists. Make Christ look magnificent because that’s what he is. That’s what this big picture is in Philippians.

And we saw that Paul gets very specific. Another way of describing “make Christ look great” is “lead lives worthy of the gospel.” That’s Philippians 1:27–28. Live a life that is fearless before the adversary and united, arm in arm, in love with other believers. Unity in love and fearlessness, he says, become a sign to the world of “their destruction” and of “your salvation” (Philippians 1:28).

In other words, when you are fearless before your adversary, and you are full of love, driven by humility, counting others more significant than yourself, putting others’ interests before your own — when that’s the source of the loving unity and the fearlessness, it’s a sign. It’s a sign to the world that Christ is all-satisfying to these people. Christ will meet every need that they have. Christ is all they need. “I want to know about this because I don’t get it.” That’s the big picture.

How does that relate to the praying of Philippians 4:6? The answer is that “do not be anxious about anything” is the fearlessness of Philippians 1:27–28. The fearlessness before the adversary in Philippians 1:28 is another word for “don’t be anxious.” When you stand before the authorities in the university or the authorities in the capitol, when you stand before people who don’t like your position on this or that, don’t be afraid. Or to use the words of Philippians 4:6, “Don’t be anxious about anything, but in everything, let him know what you need.” All of which goes to say, prayer is the key to this book.

Audio Transcript

We’re back, and we’re back into an online controversy — a “brew-haha,” as it was called. Pastor John, on September 30 you tweeted about coffee. You posted Hebrews 12:28, which says, “Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe.” And in light of this reverent, awe-filled vision for our worship, you posed this open question: “Can we reassess whether Sunday coffee-sipping in the sanctuary fits?”

As I mentioned last time, the tweet was loved and hated and spread all over the Internet to the point that, after a couple weeks, it had 1,000 retweets, 1,500 comments, 3,000 likes, 2.7 million views, and feature articles online from Fox News here in the States and the Daily Mail in the UK. None of which you saw, which we talked about last time, on Monday.

Now, there’s a lot behind that tweet, a whole worldview really. So, we are building out the context behind it, and you are talking about how to build and shape a church with this “reverential vibe” in everything that happens on Sunday morning. Last time, you signaled that you wanted to get into the nitty-gritty of helping church leaders move their church away from casual worship toward something better and more fitting to what Hebrews, and all of the Bible, calls for. So, get practical, and pick up the discussion for us at this point.

I argued last time that sipping coffee in the holiest hour of congregational worship does not fit with the reverence and awe that Hebrews 12:28 calls for. “Let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe,” Hebrews says.

But I argued that sipping coffee is not the heart of the matter. The heart of the matter is that people and leaders don’t have a heart that resonates with what I mean by “reverence and awe” and the holiness, the sacredness of that hour of congregational worship on Sunday morning (usually). Those realities are not prominent in their mind and heart, those reverent realities. They know those words: reverence, awe. They know the words, but the words don’t have compelling existential content, with the kind of serious joy that makes people eager for reverence and awe. They’re just words.

And I argued that you don’t solve that problem by creating external rules. You solve it by awakening internal, heartfelt reverence. So, things that are unfitting don’t get outlawed; they just fall away. I think that’s the way I tried to do it. I don’t think I ever laid down rules for 33 years of preaching.

What I’d like to do here now is to point a way, a possible way forward for pastors to lead the church gradually — say, over five to ten years. You’ve got to be patient to move from the atmosphere of a casual, chipper, coffee-sipping, entertainment-oriented gathering to a more seriously joyful, reverent, deeply satisfying encounter with God. So, maybe in this episode, Tony, we could talk just for a few minutes about the kind of preaching that would lead in that direction.

Developing a Godward Mindset

But before I say that, the pastor’s mindset overall should be that it’s fitting for one hour a week, or an hour and a half, that the people of God meet him with a kind of radical Godward focus that has weightiness to it and seriousness to it, and that this weightiness and seriousness of God-centeredness become the most satisfying experience in our people’s lives. That’s the mindset we’ve got to have: “I want to do this in a way so that they love this, they want this, they come for this. This is not tolerated — it’s desired.” That’s the mindset.

We will never out-entertain the world. I just need to settle that. We’ll never out-entertain the world, nor should we try, because we have something infinitely better, something our souls were made for.

And most of our people don’t know this. They don’t know what’s better than the fun they have in watching videos and other kinds of entertainment. They just don’t know. They’ve never tasted the real thing. Something profoundly stabilizing, strengthening, refining, and satisfying at the depths of our being is what people long for, and they don’t know what they’re longing for until they’re shown it over time.

So, here are five appeals to pastors with regard to preaching.

1. Build Bible-people.

Rivet the people’s attention on the Bible, the very words of the Bible. Deal in great realities, and show them those realities from the text. Build trust in the Bible. Build trust in yourself as a Bible man, so that people say, “We can trust him because he’s a Bible man.”

Some people will leave the church because of this orientation; it’s too frightening and threatening to submit to the Bible like this. Others are hungry for this, and they’re going to come. Over time, seek to bring into being a people whose mindset is self-consciously and happily under the Bible’s authority. Seek to create a people who measure everything by the Bible. Every thought, every emotion, every word, every action, put through the sieve of Bible teaching — and what the Bible really teaches about everything.

The way you handle the Bible and the glories you see in it will bring about this kind of congregation. They’re not their own. They belong to Christ, and his word is their life and their law. That’s what needs to come into being through your Bible-saturated preaching.

2. Make God the dominant reality.

Make the glory of God and all that he is for us in Jesus the main reality people sense over the years, as they hear you preach week in and week out: “God is the main reality here. God is big. God is weighty. God is precious. God is satisfying. God is near. Don’t mess with God. God loves us.” I mean, it’s just a massive, weighty vision of God. Make the greatness and beauty and worth of God the dominant reality.

Be amazed, pastor, be amazed at God continually — that God simply is, that he just is, without beginning. This blows the mind of every four-year-old, right? “Who made God, Daddy?” the child asks. “Nobody made God,” responds the father. “Woah.” Eyes get big. “He just always was there.” God is absolute reality. All else, from galaxies to subatomic particles, is secondary. Everything we see is secondary.

God is the primary reality. Help your people to see this and feel this, that God relates to everything in their lives, all the time, as the main thing. He is the main thing in their lives. He’s the supreme treasure, the main value, the brightest hope, the one they are all willing to live for and die for.

3. Tremble at God’s wrath.

Make sure that the ugliness of the disease of sin in us and in the world and the fury of the wrath of God against that disease are felt by your people. God’s grace, precious grace, will never be amazing — not the way it should be — if our people do not tremble at the majesty of God’s transcendent purity and holy wrath against sin. If they do not feel the fitness of the outpouring of the cup, of the fury of his wrath against sin, they will never be amazed that they’re saved.

This is one of the main contributors to the happiness of serious reverence. It’s paradoxical, I know, that you would have a high, holy, trembling view of God’s wrath be the main contributor to the happiness of the seriousness of reverence. But it is so.

The 1,500-degree fire of the building from which we have just been snatched by the firemen can still be seen. We see it. We feel it. We see the smoke. We hear the crackle. And the trembling of our unspeakably happy thankfulness is anything but casual.

4. Exalt Christ and his work.

Exalt Christ in his majesty and lowliness, in his suffering and resurrection, and in the unimaginable riches of what he purchased for us. Romans 8:32, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Every single good that God’s elect receive, from now to eternity, is owing to the blood of Jesus Christ. Knowing that I don’t deserve this and what it cost him makes me tremble in my ecstasy.

5. Wonder over the new birth.

Finally, teach your people the miracle of their own conversion. Nobody knows from experience the glory of the miracle of new birth. We only know the wonder of the new birth from Scripture.

“Even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ . . . and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5–6) — nobody knows this. Nobody knows this stupendous reality from experience. We know it because God tells us it is so.

We have to teach our people that they are supernatural beings. Most people come into the sanctuary feeling very natural, right? We have to help them feel another way: “You’re a miracle. You’re a walking resurrection from the dead. You’re not merely natural anymore. This is not a moment of gathering natural people. Our faith, which is our life, is a miracle. God created it. It is trust. Our saving faith is trust in a supremely treasured Savior and Lord.”

May I venture to say that preaching like this will, over time, create in your people an eagerness to encounter God in his word in a way that will make coffee-sipping seem out of place?