When Jonathan Edwards was nineteen years old, he wrote a series of life resolutions. Decades ago, as a young man, I read them, and number six lodged itself in my mind and heart as something I very, very much wanted to make my own. And I have tried to.

Edwards wrote, “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.” My hope is that your years here at Bethlehem College and Seminary have kindled in you this fervent disposition of mind. While you live — all the way to the end — you live with all your might. All your life, with all your might. There’s a biblical name for that. It’s called zeal. And that’s what I want to talk about: your zeal, for the rest of your life.

God’s Will for God’s Will

I was sitting beside my wife while reading Romans 12 a few weeks ago, and I read these words in verses 6 and 8: “Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them . . . the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.”

I turned to my wife and asked her, “What’s the common denominator between contributing generously and leading zealously and showing mercy cheerfully? What’s the basic point in saying, ‘Do what you do generously; do what you do zealously; do what you do cheerfully’?” And she said, “You really want to do it. You’re not being forced. You’re not half-hearted. You’re all in.”

And I thought, “That’s it.” When, six verses earlier, Romans 12:2 said, “Be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that [you can prove] what is the will of God,” the point was not only that God wills for us to do certain things, but that we do them in a certain way.

Once you have found God’s will for what to do, now the question becomes, What is God’s will for how to do God’s will? And one answer is this: with all your might, while you live. That is, with zeal. All in. Nothing half-hearted. Therefore:

If God’s will is for you to contribute, you do it generously. You divert all the tributaries of grace and goodness and kindness in your heart into that one river, and you give generously. Not begrudgingly.

If God’s will is for you to lead, you lead zealously. You corral all your energies and all your skills and all your creativity and all your desires, and you harness those horses to the wagon of your leadership, and you lead with zeal. Not sluggishly or carelessly.

And if God’s will is for you to show mercy, you do it cheerfully. You gather all the kindling of God’s promises, and you throw it on the fire of your joy, and you give cheerfully. Not reluctantly or under compulsion.

God’s will is not simply that we do the right thing. His will is that we do the right thing in the right way — that we do it with zeal.

Then, as if to confirm that we are on the right track, the very next verse says, “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil” (Romans 12:9). In other words, it’s not enough to love. We need to love in a certain way: genuinely, deeply, really, zealously. It’s not enough to hate evil. We need to hate evil in a certain way: with abhorrence. Be all in with your love for people. Be all in with your hatred of evil. Nothing phony. Nothing half-hearted. Nothing ho-hum about love or hate. Love people zealously. Hate evil zealously.

Intensified, Clarified, Focused

To make crystal clear what Paul is so concerned about here, one verse later (in Romans 12:11), he says, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.” So, he intensifies the zeal of zeal. He defines the meaning of zeal. And he focuses on the goal of zeal.

First, he intensifies the zeal of zeal. He says, “Do not be slothful in zeal.” In other words, be zealous about being zealous. Don’t be lackadaisical about not being lackadaisical. Don’t be half-hearted in your repudiation of half-heartedness. He intensifies the zeal of zeal.

Then he defines zeal. He says, “Be fervent in spirit.” The Greek verb literally means “boil.” “Boil in spirit.” In fact, the Latin word fervens, from which we get the word fervent, means “boil.” Christian zeal is a flame ignited by God’s Spirit in our spirit to live with all our might while we do live.

This is not a personality trait. It is a spiritual duty. Your personalities are all over the map: some are high-strung, and some are phlegmatic and passive. Nobody gets a pass on zeal. It is not a personality trait. It’s a spiritual response to the King of kings. “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the Scriptures?” (Luke 24:32).

“What is God’s will for how to do God’s will? One answer is this: with all your might.”

And third, he focuses our zeal on the ultimate goal of zeal. He says, “Serve the Lord.” Here’s the entire verse again: “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.” Zeal for the sake of zeal is atheism — energetic atheism. Paul is not aiming at zeal for the sake of zeal. He’s aiming at zeal for the glory of the Lord Jesus: “Serve the Lord” — the Lord! Let your unflagging zeal serve the Lord. Let your boiling spirit serve the Lord.

In other words, gather all the streams of your heart, and harness all the horses of your creative energies, and pile on all the kindling of God’s promises, and live with all your might to make Jesus look great.

All Your Might for All Your Life

From those biblical reflections, I draw out this doctrine:

It is the will of God that the graduates of Bethlehem College and Seminary do the will of God with zeal.

Or:

That you live with all your might while you do live — for the glory of Jesus Christ.

To clarify and support this doctrine, consider these realities.

1. Consider the example of zeal in the Lord Jesus.

His passion for the purity of his Father’s house moved him to drive out the money-changers and say, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” And “his disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’” (John 2:16–17).

2. Consider the reward of zeal in heaven.

Colossians 3:23–24: “Whatever you do, work heartily [zealously!], as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.”

3. Consider the camaraderie of zeal.

Hebrews 10:24–25: “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together.” The word for “stirring up” is paroxysmon, from which we get paroxysm. It means “arousing a person to activity” — provoking, awakening, kindling, bringing alive. This is what Christian friends are for. This is what the church is for. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Your zeal has stirred up most of them” (2 Corinthians 9:2). Zeal is contagious. This is what we do for each other — the camaraderie of zeal.

4. Consider the loneliness of zeal.

Jesus warned in Matthew 24:12, “Because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold.” You may have to stand alone (or with the few), surrounded by lukewarm, indifferent people. God will help you.

5. Consider the danger of zeal.

Paul never ceased to think of himself as the chief of sinners largely because, before he was a Christian, his zeal was so great and so evil. Philippians 3:5–6: “as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church.” And he called all of it “refuse,” garbage (verse 8). So, he warned the churches: there is a zeal that is not according to knowledge (Romans 10:2). Measure your zeal by biblical knowledge and biblical love.

6. Consider the price Christ paid for your zeal.

Titus 2:14: “[He] gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” Christ died to make you zealous for good works. Christ gave his life so that you would not just do the will of God, but that you would do it in a certain way — with zeal.

Therefore, graduates of Bethlehem College and Seminary, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.” Say from your heart over the rest of your lives, “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live.”

I loved Dan Fuller. I still do, the way one does when the beloved slips from you by degrees until he dies at 97. And yet lives. Dan died in the wee hours of June 21, 2023.

He was the most influential teacher I ever had. It was the kind of influence that pierces to bone and marrow. The kind that changes the mental and emotional DNA. The kind that touches everything, forever. My eternity will be different because of Dan Fuller.

Grand Permission and Obligation

He was professor of hermeneutics at Fuller Seminary during my three years there, 1968 to 1971. I took every course he offered, starting with the required freshman hermeneutics class — call it a door to a new world, like a wardrobe opening to Narnia. Call it a jarring reveille wakening me from a 22-year sleep of inobservance. Call it the grand Permission and Obligation: you may and you must pursue joy. Call it the gift of a skill — to wring from texts their lifeblood, with a method called “arcing.” Call it a future, a life.

“Daniel Fuller was the most influential teacher I ever had.”

Something else happened in that class of a different kind. A single sentence was spoken that went deep into my fragile self-understanding. I entered seminary uncertain of my abilities. I was a B student at Wheaton College. This did not inspire confidence that I could excel in seminary or go on for doctoral studies.

One assignment in the hermeneutics class was to write a review essay of James Smart’s The Interpretation of Scripture. As Dr. Fuller was handing back the papers, we were clustered around his desk. He did not know me by name. It was a huge class. He looked at the paper, and said, “John Piper.” As I took the paper from his hand, he looked at me and said, “You’ve got ability.” Someone who mattered had just built into me, “You can do this.”

Hermeneutics for Eggheads

Then came 22 hours of electives — Bible, Bible, Bible. Not “introductions.” Not “overviews.” Not “surveys.” Not “Forschungsgeschichte.” But put your nose in these propositions, and don’t come up till you smell the reality — not just the words, not just the ideas, but the reality. Class after class, Bible book after Bible book, forming for a lifetime the habit of discontent until a text yields, and gives up its riches.

There was one exception — a course not focused on the Bible. Dr. Fuller announced it on the bulletin board outside his office: “Hermeneutics for Eggheads.” Six of us signed up.

We met at his house once a week until our heads hurt, as we Adlerized Fuchs, Ebling, Robinson, Gadamer, and Hirsch. “Adlerized” — as in Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book. No talking back to a book until you can state the author’s view to his satisfaction. Then sic ’em. Flag every factual mistake, every inattention to relevant facts, every non sequitur. Who would have thought that the first book to be mastered in graduate school is a book that should be mastered in high school — Adler. Fuller knew his plebes.

Then came the climactic, required (desired!) integrating course, “Unity of the Bible.” This was not a course in mixing paints and knowing brushes and learning line and form and perspective. This was the completion of the canvas, the panorama. The effort to say the unsayable: “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

This was the end for which God created the world. This was seven-point Calvinism without the name. This was Jonathan Edwards marinated in the whole Bible. “The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and God is the beginning, middle and end in this affair” (Works of Jonathan Edwards, 8:531).The climactic course was the merging of theology into doxology. Knowing into enjoying.

Prayers, Promises, and Warnings

One of the earliest signs in seminary that great changes were happening was the effect of Fuller’s teaching on our prayers. Noël and I were newly married (December 1968). Right away we put in place the practice of praying together every night (a practice still in place 55 years later). Then came the discoveries:

The goal of God in everything he does is the glorification of God. It was God himself who told us to pray for his name to be hallowed. So we did.
The goal of the human soul in all we do is to be satisfied in God above all things. It was God himself who demanded that we serve the Lord with gladness (Psalm 100:2). God himself told us to pray, “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love” (Psalm 90:14). So we did.
The goal of persevering faith is reached by a proper fear of unbelief. This was God’s word: “They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear” (Romans 11:20). So we prayed for the fear of unbelief.

Dr. Fuller taught these realties. He pointed to them in actual biblical texts. Look at these words, these phrases, these propositions, these arguments. Then he would look at us, with utter seriousness and affection, and say, “We will go to hell if we ignore these things.” All the glories, all the promises, all the threatenings are there to help us fight the fight of faith. They are there to prevent the shipwreck of faith. They are there to get us home. It is suicide to ignore the promises and threatenings of Scripture.

After Class Ended

It was the urgency of the classes that gave them their weight. The skills, the truths, the realities were all kindling. But the fire was the urgency — the blood-earnestness. There was absolutely no academic gamesmanship. This was life and death. If you didn’t feel this, you shouldn’t be in the ministry. Because real ministry is an aroma from death to death and life to life (2 Corinthians 2:15–16).

“There was absolutely no academic gamesmanship. This was life and death.”

He loved us. I felt it in class. And even more, I felt it after class. These were the best of times. The two-hour give-and-take of the Galatians class was over. And four or five of us would not move. The others left the room. Dan sat down, and for another hour he would respond to our questions. What made these times powerful was not that he had all the answers, but that he was as eager as we were to ask the right questions and together find what the text actually meant. He was vulnerable. He was actually excited to learn things from our interaction. This was electric for neophytes.

Not everyone loved Dan Fuller the way some of us did. There were a handful of students in that first hermeneutics class who sat at the back and rolled their eyes at his stammering voice and his radical commitment to rationality. Once one of them complained out loud in class that Fuller was too rational. Dan’s response was a life-changer for me. He said,

Why can’t we be like Jonathan Edwards, who could be writing a treatise that would challenge the most philosophical minds, and then break into a paragraph of devotion that would warm your grandmother’s heart?

I knew almost nothing of Jonathan Edwards then. But that one sentence sent me running to the library to find that signature mixture of reason and emotion. And until June 21, 2023, I would have said that Edwards was my most influential dead theologian.

Great Logic of Heaven

Now the fight is over. It was a good fight. For decades he taught us and showed us how to fight it. Near the end, as the outer man wasted away, others fought for him, reciting into his almost deaf ears the promises of God. The precious promises of God. “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?” (Romans 8:32). This is the great reason why Daniel Fuller loved logic. This is the great logic of heaven. This is the most glorious a fortiori.

Because God did the hardest thing — give his Son — he will most certainly do the easier — give us all things. Everything good for us. Faith-sustaining grace for 97 years, and now face to face with the Son of God.

I wake up hungry every morning. So do you.

We may or may not awake with empty stomachs, but deeper down, our souls growl ferociously. However much we try to satisfy that hunger elsewhere, and however many live in denial, God made our souls to hunger for him, and feed on him.

We want when we awake — and want and want and want. Some turn immediately to breakfast. Others dive right into an electronic device or screen. Some roll over and try to wrestle a little more joy from sleep. Yet the hunger remains. And that is no accident. God made us to start each new day with this ache — as a call to turn afresh to him.

Great Discovery of 1841

In his much-acclaimed autobiography, George Mueller (1805–1898), who cared for more than ten thousand orphans in England throughout his ministry, tells of a life-changing discovery he made in the first half of 1841.

In a journal entry dated May 7, he captures the insight he stumbled into that spring. The entry is one long paragraph of 1,500 words that rewards careful and multiple readings.

Over the years, I have read it again and again and seem to profit from it more each time. Mueller’s life-changing insight has proved significant in my own life. As I again reread this journal entry in recent days, I noticed several distinct aspects of this one lesson, which could be identified and sequenced to benefit readers today.

In short, Mueller’s great discovery was that “the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day [is] to have my soul happy in the Lord.” What a find! Just about any other duty would land as burdensome, but “get happy”? That is a deeply refreshing task.

Mueller restates the point as “the first thing to be concerned about was . . . how I might get my soul into a happy state.” The discovery is set against the backdrop of other things that are not his, and your, first calling: “not how much I might serve the Lord,” not setting the truth before the unconverted, not benefiting believers, not relieving the distressed, not behaving in the world as fits a child of God. None of these real, critical callings is “first and primary.” None of these is “the first thing.” Most important is not pouring out but first filling up. First thing first: get your soul happy in God. Find happiness in him. Obey your hunger for God and feast.

But then we ask, How? How does hunger lead to happiness?

Feed on God

Mueller answers that hunger becomes happiness as we satisfy our empty souls on God — which implies a certain kind of approach to God. We come to get, not to give. Many human satisfactions come from various deeds and achievements. Others come through reception of goods or honor. Still others come through the intake of food and drink. Among these other desires, God made our souls to long for such consumption — to receive God as food, to take and chew and savor. And to receive him as drink, slake our thirst, and revel in the satisfaction.

So, Mueller clarifies his lesson: “The first thing the child of God has to do morning by morning is to obtain food for his inner man.” He draws on the language of both nourishment and refreshment (as well as being “strengthened”). He approaches God, he says, “for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul,” and as he lingers in God’s presence, he tries to “continually keep before me that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation.”

Next, we might ask, Where? Where do you turn to find such food for your soul?

In His Word

Mueller’s answer — simple, and unsurprising, yet profound and transformative — is the word of God. To make sure we don’t miss it, he asks the question for us and answers it: “What is the food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the word of God.”

“Hunger becomes happiness through satisfying our empty souls on God.”

Now we pick up a vital part of the lesson. Mueller says that for years his practice was to awake and go straight into prayer. It might take him ten minutes or even half an hour to find enough focus to really pray. He then might spend “even an hour, on my knees” before receiving any “comfort, encouragement, humbling of soul, etc.” He had the goal right: get my soul happy in God. He had the direction right: come to feed on God. But he had the posture wrong. Or he had the order wrong. The lesson he needed to learn was come first to hear, then to speak. That is, first hear God’s word, then pray in response.

In God’s word, “we find our Father speaking to us, to encourage us, to comfort us, to instruct us, to humble us, to reprove us.” God’s word nourishes and strengthens the soul. His word leads, provides, warns, steadies. Then in prayer, we speak to God in response to what he’s said to us in his word.

Through Meditation

At this point, we might assume we know how to take in God’s word: just read it. After all, that’s what you do with a written text, right?

Mueller has one more clarifying word, and it might be his most important for us today: “not the simple reading of the word of God . . . but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.” In other words, he feeds his soul on God’s word through what he and many other great saints have called “meditation.”

This meditation is a crucial aspect of the lesson, and for us, almost two centuries later, it increasingly has become a lost art.

Mueller’s first mention of “meditation” clarifies what kind of reading he means: “The most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditation on it.” He then makes plain that meditation concerns the heart. Mere reading might fill the head, but meditation aims to comfort, encourage, warn, reprove, instruct, and feed the heart.

He doubles back to explain what he means again. “Meditate on the word of God” includes “searching as it were into every verse, to get blessing out of it . . . for the sake of obtaining food for my own soul.” Having chewed on one bite and savored it, “I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the word may lead to it, but still continuously keeping before me that food for my own soul is the object of my meditation.”

He comes back once more to say he means “not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.” This series of three verbs may be the most help he gives us as to how we might meditate ourselves and not simply read.

Mueller would have us slow down, pause, and reread so that we might consider what we read, ponder over it, and apply it to our hearts — that is, not only or mainly to our practical lives but first and foremost to our inner person, to our hearts.

Such a deliberate, affectional reception of God’s word naturally leads us into prayer.

Then Prayer

Now, don’t think Mueller, in this life-changing lesson, is eschewing or marginalizing prayer. Rather, by putting prayer in its proper place (in response to God’s word), he helps prayer flourish.

Having heard from God in his word, and considered it, pondered over it, and applied it to my heart, “I speak to my Father and to my Friend . . . about the things that he has brought before me in his precious word.” Meditation soon leads to a response — in fact, “it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer.” The time when prayer “can be most effectively performed is after the inner man has been nourished by meditation on the word of God.” Now, having heard our Father’s voice all the way down into our souls, we find ourselves able “really to pray,” and so to actually commune with God.

Communion with Jesus

You’ll find in Mueller’s May 7, 1841, journal entry that “meditation and prayer” is for him synonymous with the phrase “communion with God.” To commune with God is not only to address him in prayer, nor is it simply to hear from him in his word. Communion involves both his speaking and ours. This is a Father-child relationship. God speaks first in his word, and we receive his words with the hunger, delight, and unhurried pace that fits the word of our Father and divine Friend. Then we speak humbly yet boldly in response, adoring our God, confessing our sins, thanking him for his grace and mercy, and petitioning him for ourselves, our loved ones, and even those who seem like enemies.

This hearing from God and responding to him Mueller calls “experimental [that is, experiential] communion with the Lord.” With “my heart being nourished by the truth,” he is “brought into experimental fellowship with God” in meditation and prayer. And not only with God the Father but “the Lord” Jesus, the risen, reigning Christ, seated on heaven’s throne, dwelling in us by his Spirit, and drawing near to commune with us through his word and our prayer.

Afterword

Several times, Mueller emphasizes that such communion with God is never a means to ministry and feeding others, yet God often appoints leftovers. Such early-morning meals, deeply savored in the soul, may “soon after or at a later time” prove to be “food for other believers,” but this is not the goal. Fodder for ministry is not the first and primary business each day, but food for our own souls. The point, and prayer, is soul-satisfying communion with the risen Christ.

Such a hungry and hedonistic approach to each new day was life-changing for Mueller. And it gave him the help and strength, he says, “to pass in peace through deeper trials, in various ways, than I had ever had before.” This approach has been significant for me too. Perhaps it will be so for you as well. As Mueller exults, “How different when the soul is refreshed and made happy early in the morning!”