I recently spent three days with a group of pastors, almost all our time devoted to deep sharing of our life stories. We laughed at the silly things we’ve done. We marveled at the lineaments of God’s grace. We wept over sins, wounds, and struggles, both past and present.

I drove home pondering the fact that when ten tenderhearted, Jesus-loving, spiritually alive pastors get into a room and are honest with each other, we share stories of theft, pornography, broken families, paralyzing anxiety, suicidal thoughts, marital struggles, and unfulfilled longings. If there’s such brokenness in the histories and hearts of godly shepherds, what must be the inner reality of the sheep in our churches? Surrounded by such brokenness within and without, how can the people of God possibly hope to sustain their joy in God?

The odds seem long and the situation bleak. But Psalm 70 gives me strong hope.

May All Be Glad

I’ve been drawn to Psalm 70:4 for many years, because it brings together two awesome truths that thrill the heart of every Christian Hedonist:

May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, “God is great!”

Only a capacious heart could breathe such an expansive prayer. Notice that David isn’t content for just a few (or even most) seekers of God to rejoice. No, he longs for all to experience God-centered gladness. And David’s requesting more than just a flickering, intermittent passion for the glory of God among the people of God; rather, he prays for their lips and lives to communicate God’s worth continually, at all times, without interruption.

This is a plus-sized prayer. It’s so big that many millions of people can (and have) fit inside it. David was surely praying it for himself. He was also praying it for those of his generation and all future generations. In fact, if we’re seeking God and loving God’s salvation, David’s prayer is for us. David is asking God to sweeten our joy and strengthen our passion for his glory. He doesn’t specify how these two prayers might fit together, but John Piper has helped many of us treasure the biblical teaching that they are in fact one. As we find our deepest joy in God (“in you”), we display his worth to the world.

Bold Prayer in Dark Days

Though I’ve loved Psalm 70:4 for years, it wasn’t until recently that I noticed the context. And it’s the context that has filled me with hope.

Here’s what I’ve noticed: Psalm 70 is not a sunny psalm. It’s not a walk in the park or a day at the beach. Life is not good in this psalm. Instead, it’s hard — very hard. In fact, the psalm is an almost-unremittingly desperate plea for God’s help. Verse 1 (the first verse) and verse 5 (the last verse) are bookends:

Make haste, O God, to deliver me! O Lord, make haste to help me!

Hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O Lord, do not delay!

There’s a focused urgency here. David sounds like a soldier pinned down by enemy fire, radioing desperately to central command. His enemies want David dead, and they gloat over David’s misfortunes (“Aha, Aha!” verse 3).

We’ve already seen David’s response to this dark situation. He feels two overwhelming desires, one expected and the other exceptional. First, David wants out of the situation. In four out of five verses, he pleads with God for speedy deliverance. This reaction is perfectly natural and completely understandable. Who wouldn’t want this? Of course, we’d all be asking for the same rescue.

Second, however, the intense pressure of David’s circumstances also squeezes from his heart another cry, this one much more unusual. Stunningly, the request in verse 4 is not just for himself, but for others. It’s nothing short of miraculous that David, in his foxhole, under heavy fire, prays not simply for personal escape, but for gladness among all God’s people, and for the continual glorifying of God. What is going on here?

Praying in a Sea of Suffering

Some of us hear the Bible’s repeated calls to pursue our joy and believe that it’s simply beyond us in our present state. For the moment, our attention is occupied by other matters: sin, sickness, loneliness, financial difficulty, opposition, relational pain. We feel we’re in the 101 class of “Surviving Our Problems” and not quite ready for the 201 class of “Pursuing Our Joy.” Verse 4, we think, is for people who have it all together (or at least more together).

“Christian Hedonism is as much for bleak days as it is for bright ones.”

And this is why the context of verse 4 is so challenging and so encouraging, because verse 4 exists in a sea of suffering. David doesn’t say, “Once I get free from my enemies, then I’ll start to care about the gladness of God’s people and the glory of God.” His foxhole prayer, in worrying and uncomfortable circumstances, is for gladness and glory. This is a real-world prayer. Christian Hedonism is as much for bleak days as it is for bright ones.

If God can work this extraordinary impulse in David’s heart, why can’t he do the same in us? Why can’t he implant a renewed passion for our joy and his glory even in the midst of intense suffering? Could it be that God might even use the desperation of our brokenness to drive us to him?

In his poem “The Storm,” George Herbert ponders how, like the violent force of a terrible rainstorm,

A throbbing conscience spurred by remorseHath a strange force: It quits the earth, and mounting more and more,Dares to assault thee, and besiege thy doore. (lines 10–12)

Our inner and outer conflicts may produce something good. “They purge the aire without, within the breast” (line 18). This was certainly the case for David in Psalm 70. His desperation yielded a passionate cry to God that continues to encourage followers of God to this day.

Seek and Rest

You can pray a David-like prayer in your own bleak situation by taking two cues from David himself.

“Joy and gladness are the unassailable possession of those who fix their eyes on Jesus in the storms of life.”

First, seek God. “May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you!” Joy and gladness are the unassailable possession of those who fix their eyes on Jesus in the storms of life. Look more deeply and more often at Jesus than you look at your enemies or your troubles.

Second, love God’s salvation. “May those who love your salvation say evermore, ‘God is great!’” Consider frequently how God has saved you (and how he’s saving many others). Delight in this salvation. Rest in it. Love it. The more you love your salvation, the more readily your lips will spill over with natural praise of the God who saved you.

Please don’t wait to pursue your joy in God until God has healed your brokenness and resolved your problems. Verse 4 isn’t a postscript to Psalm 70; it doesn’t come after David’s crisis. It emerges from the midst of it. This is an example and invitation for us. Don’t wait to pursue your joy. Start right now.

Audio Transcript

Back in October of last year, we looked at the shipwrecked faith. Specifically, how do people make shipwreck of their faith? What causes it? And there in APJ 1849, Pastor John, you defined the shipwrecked faith as a person who makes a beginning in the Christian life, but who drifts away as their heart increasingly prefers sin over Christ. It’s a heart-preference issue. The heart falls in love with riches, or the heart falls in love with this present world and its approval, and so it rejects a good conscience and becomes defiled by the world’s sin. Basically, a shipwrecked faith is the heart’s desires corrupted.

But sometimes when we speak of the shipwrecked faith, we assume this state is one of final undoing — like, there’s no hope for return. It’s over. You shipwrecked, or you don’t shipwreck. Which leads to today’s email from a listener named Jacob. “Pastor John, thank you for all your service and for your passion in the gospel! My question is this: Is there hope for those who have shipwrecked their faith? I believe I have done this as 1 Timothy 1:19 describes what has happened to those who have rejected a good conscience. I feel my communion with the Lord has been dry and blocked for almost six months now due to my personal sin. Can a shipwrecked faith be undone?”

I think it would be unbiblical and unwarranted and unhelpful for me to say to Jacob that he is beyond hope. Those six months of sin and disobedience and distance from God are no sure sign that Jacob is beyond hope. So let me try to give four encouraging reasons from the Bible for why I say this for Jacob’s sake — and also for others who no doubt share his condition — and then we’ll close with a sober warning and a hopeful exhortation.

Handed Over for Discipline

First, let’s just pay attention to the context that he’s referring to in 1 Timothy 1:19–20. It’s a very hopeful context, not a despairing one, when he talks about the shipwreck. He says, “[Hold] faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this [the good conscience], some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.”

So Paul knows these two men. He knows them, and he says that they’ve made shipwreck of their faith by rejecting conscience, and that he has handed them over to Satan. But why? Why did he hand them over? It does not say he handed them over for final punishment. It says he handed them over to Satan to “learn.” The word is paideuō, which means “to give instruction, to train, to discipline.” So he handed them over to be instructed, to be trained, to be disciplined. This is not a word for final judgment or damnation. This is a word for remediation, improvement, and hope.

“Making shipwreck of your faith need not mean final loss. There is hope for a turnaround.”

And supporting that interpretation that I just gave is the fact that there’s one other place in the writings of Paul where he speaks about people being handed over to Satan because they’ve sinned in an egregious way. In 1 Corinthians 5:5, he says, “You are to deliver this man [who’s committed this terrible sexual sin] to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.” Again, the aim of handing him over to Satan is salvation, not damnation, which means that making shipwreck of your faith in 1 Timothy need not be final loss. There is hope for a turnaround. That’s my hopeful argument number one.

Surviving a Shipwreck

Number two, why did Paul use the image of shipwreck? He could have used so many other images for the destruction of faith or the damage of faith. Why did he use that? They rejected conscience; they’ve chosen to live against their conscience, in sin. They’ve therefore left the faith — at least it looks like they’ve left it — and they’ve turned away. What did shipwreck mean in Paul’s experience?

Well, he tells us. It’s quite amazing. I didn’t quite realize this until thinking about it for this question. Here’s 2 Corinthians 11:25: “Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked.” Are you kidding me? “Three times I was shipwrecked.” Now that’s before the one in the book of Acts (see Acts 27). So we can say he was shipwrecked at least four times. “Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea.” Paul must have thought, “Lord, I’ve got to be persecuted in every city, and every third time I get on a boat, you’re going to make it go down?”

That’s a lot of shipwrecks for a life as short as Paul’s. Paul had experienced three shipwrecks even before the one in the book of Acts, and one of them evidently left him drifting in the water, holding onto some wreckage for a day and a night before he was, what — picked up by some other boat or got to shore? I don’t know. Amazing, three shipwrecks! As if it were not enough that he was persecuted everywhere and had every other manner of trouble.

But here’s the relevant thing for Jacob’s question. Shipwreck in Paul’s experience did not mean death. It didn’t mean judgment and death; it meant loss and suffering. It was not final, at least not in Paul’s experience. It wasn’t final. Three times he had come through it alive. He knew people survived shipwrecks. He had three times. So there’s no warrant to think that when it says “shipwreck of faith” in 1 Timothy, he meant, “That’s the end of faith. It’ll never come back. It can’t survive. It’s not holding on for a day and a night in the water. No hope for Hymenaeus and Alexander. No hope for Jacob.” No way. That’s not what it implies necessarily. You can’t argue that from the word shipwreck.

From Useless to Useful

Third, one of the most beautiful sentences in Paul’s letters is 2 Timothy 4:11, where he says to Timothy, “Luke alone is with me [this is Paul’s last letter; he’s soon to be killed]. Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me in ministry.” That’s beautiful. Now, I know that when John Mark left Paul and Barnabas and refused to go on the missionary-journey work, we are not told why. We were not told that it was a crisis of faith, a little mini-shipwreck or something like that. We’re not told. We don’t know why he turned back.

What we do know is that Paul was really angry. He was so displeased by Mark’s behavior, he refused — absolutely refused, at the expense of his own friendship with his close friend Barnabas — to take John Mark with him on his second missionary journey. Luke says it caused “a sharp disagreement” between Barnabas and Paul. (Acts 15:39) And Mark must have felt a deep sting from the great apostle. Picture it: your favorite Christian leader says, “I’m not going to work with you. You’re a quitter.” Oh my goodness. What a shaming thing to happen to John Mark.

Now, that may be what Jacob feels right now in asking us this question. Maybe he feels like, “I’ve just so badly deserted, like John Mark did, that I could never be useful again.” But the encouraging thing is that here, at the end of Paul’s life, either he or Mark (probably Mark) has changed. Something’s changed. Mark has become not just useful, but very useful. “Get Mark and bring him, Timothy, because he’s very useful to me for ministry.” And I mentioned this simply to show that there have been, and there can be now, dramatic changes in people’s lives so that being rejected and useless can turn around and become accepted and useful. So that’s number three.

Denier No Longer

Here’s number four. Picture the night that Peter denied the Lord Jesus three times. Jesus had warned him that this was coming. And Peter, instead of humbling himself with trembling and pleading for help — “Oh, don’t let that happen to me, Jesus. Please, don’t let that happen to me!” — was instead cocksure it would never happen. “I’m not going to deny you — I’m ready to die with you” (see Luke 22:33). And here’s Luke’s description of that final moment after the third denial of Peter. This is just so moving.

Immediately, while he was still speaking, the rooster crowed. And the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, “Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly. (Luke 22:60–62)

Surely this was a shipwreck if ever there were one. Three times he denies the Lord of glory after three years of experiencing his glory and beauty and love and patience — three times in the hour of his greatest suffering and loneliness. And Peter knew the Lord saw it. He saw it happen. There was just no question. “Jesus knows what I’ve just done. He saw me, and he knows what I’ve done.” And therefore, his guilt must have been horrible. The shame he must have felt as he wept must have been absolutely overwhelming.

“Peter’s ship of faith wrecked. It really did. But it didn’t wreck utterly, not finally. And Jesus welcomed him back.”

And then, as we know from the Gospel of John, the Lord met him after the resurrection and three times — no accident — asked him, “Do you love me?” And after he heard yes after each of those three times, he said, “Feed my sheep” (John 21:15–17). You’re back Peter — you’re back. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. The ship of faith wrecked. It really did. But it didn’t wreck utterly, not finally. And Jesus welcomed him back.

He Welcomes All Who Come

My fifth statement, which I said would be a sober warning and an exhortation of hope, comes from Hebrews 12. It’s about Esau. It says, “See to it . . . that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal. For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected . . .” Let me say that again, because that’s sober. “You know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it [namely, repentance] with tears” (Hebrews 12:15–17). Now here’s the sober warning: it is possible to make shipwreck of your faith like Esau and never be saved. That’s a sober warning.

But here’s the hopeful truth and my exhortation: the text does not say, “Even though he repented, God withheld the blessing.” That’s not what it says. It says he sought repentance with tears, and he couldn’t find it. He couldn’t do it. This is the final shipwreck from which there is no salvation: we sin so long or so deeply that we can’t repent. We can’t. Our hearts have become too hard.

But the hope is obvious, right? It’s obvious: if you repent — if by God’s grace you can turn and renounce your sin and come to Christ and take him afresh as your Savior and Lord and treasure — he will receive you. “All who call upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). So the exhortation, Jacob — and every other person listening in Jacob’s situation — is to come to Christ. Come back. If you can come, he will have you.

Audio Transcript

We fight off personal despondency through a habit of daily Bible reading. That’s what we’ve been seeing here in these early weeks of 2023, as we focus our attention on Psalm 77. Thanks for joining here on this Wednesday. We’re going to do so with one last clip from John Piper’s sermon on Psalm 77. We close our little study of the psalm with a practical plea and summons from Pastor John for making and holding to a daily Bible reading routine in this new year. Here he is, speaking to his church in the early days of the year 2000.

“I will remember. I will meditate. I will muse.” We must become an intentional, purposeful, active, aggressive warrior people who fight for delight. It doesn’t come automatically. We fight for delight.

When Will You Read?

I close with this very practical plea, summons, call: this afternoon, before you go to bed tonight, if you haven’t already got it, will you take enough time — five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes, whatever — to plan when in your days you are going to read the Bible every day in the year 2000?

“If you say, ‘I’ll read it tomorrow whenever I get a chance,’ there will be no chance.”

When? If you don’t have a time picked out, it won’t happen. If you say, “I’ll read it tomorrow whenever I get a chance,” there will be no chance. Satan will see to that. Your flesh will see to that. If you don’t plan to read the Bible at a particular time, you will become a hit-and-miss, hazard Christian — and weak.

Where Will You Read?

The second question to ask this afternoon is, Where will I read the Bible? Closet, kitchen, bedroom, living room, den, car, conference room at work, park — you choose. If you don’t have a place picked out, you’ll stand in the halls, and you’ll say, “There’s no quiet place. There’s no place to go. Music in there, TV in there, cooking in there — there’s no place to go. Well, let’s check the email.” You never know what you might get sent.

Susanna Wesley had sixteen children. Housewives, she knows where you’re coming from. So, five little kids — noise, noise, noise. Where are you going to go? What are you going to do? Two of them are sick. Susanna Wesley was such a disciplinarian that she taught these sixteen kids, “When you walk into the kitchen and my apron is over my head, you don’t say a word.” That’s her closet. She just created one.

And she was strong enough, really strong — I’ll maybe read some of her excerpts from her words on Wednesday night — that they obeyed. “When mommy’s apron is over mommy’s head, we know what’s happened: Bible is open, and she’s praying. And you don’t go into the holy place.” It can be done if you want it, if you believe in it.

How Will You Read?

And the third question: when, where, and how. How are you going to do it? If you don’t have your own way, you’ve got to have a way. I’ll tell you, I’ve been working at this now for 48 years or so, and I know a lot about defeat in Bible reading. And one of the defeats that’s most painful is to have the place, have the time, sit down and open the book, and you don’t know where to go.

I ought to know where to go. I’m a pastor. And you just open, and you say, “Well, Malachi doesn’t look right. And the psalm doesn’t look right.” Satan will actually persuade me that that’s a good enough reason to reach for a book on theology. Isn’t that crazy? And if it happens to me, probably it happens to you. And therefore, we’ve just got to have some guidelines. You don’t have to keep them — you’ve just got to have them there so that you can fall back on them if there’s no better thing to do that day.

“Delight doesn’t come automatically. We fight for delight.”

Okay — how, where, and when. Will you, if you don’t already have a plan, take whatever amount of time — five, ten, fifteen minutes today — to plan to do it? I’m not asking you to do it. Isn’t that easy? I’m asking for intentionality here. I’m asking for a plan. And you might in your heart even make it a vow to the Lord.

Would you stand with me for closing prayer?

Father, I ask you that you would fulfill every good resolve and work of faith by your power. Bless these people, who have seen the way to live the Christian life as a life on the word — meditating, musing, remembering. And Lord, make it part of our arsenal of how we triumph day in and day out against the evil one. O Lord, make us good warriors, I pray. Help us know how to fight for delight.

And all the people said, “Amen.” You’re dismissed.