http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/14879785/how-not-to-go-to-bed-angry

Once upon a time, you loved to write. Maybe as a child you spent hours in your room, scribbling imaginative stories. Or maybe you picked up poetry in high school. Or maybe during college you took refuge in a private journal, your prayers and outpoured hopes finding their home on paper.

But then somewhere along the way, the joy faded. Maybe you’re an undergrad, and though college seemed to promise a writers’ Eden, academic essays have left you feeling exiled somewhere east. Or maybe the joy left through a different door. Either way, you have lost some of your pleasure in pen and keyboard — and you long to have it back. Whether you write for an audience (letters, articles, sermons) or simply for yourself (journal entries, poems, prayers), you want to say once again, with Eric Liddell-like joy, “God made me to write — and when I write, I feel his pleasure.”

So, when your delight has faded, and your fingers seem to have lost their skill, how might you rediscover the joy of writing? As one who has rediscovered such joy several times over, I offer six suggestions.

1. See the seasons.

“For everything there is a season,” the Preacher tells us (Ecclesiastes 3:1). And everything includes the rhythms of the writing life. We might wish writing were like San Diego, sunny and seventies all year round — but writing is far more like my Minnesota home, with its brilliant summers and barren winters.

If you write regularly for long, you likely will discover that seasons are a normal part of the writing life. Unlike our Lord, who “is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), we who write are fickle and changeable creatures. We pass through seasons.

In some seasons, the words come quickly and joyously; your fingers can’t keep up with your cascading thoughts. Daily, even sometimes hourly, ideas pop into your head that make you want to sit down and lose yourself on paper. But in other seasons, you stare desolately at a blank word-processing screen, that obnoxious little cursor blinking failure in your face. Or you finish writing something, read it over, and wonder how such a grand idea could wear such tattered words.

“If in your writing you aim to be the best, or to be better than so-and-so, your joy likely will die and stay dead.”

Getting some extended experience with writing helps in this regard. I am still somewhat young in my writing, but I’ve been hitting keys for long enough that I don’t get as discouraged when I pass through a writing winter. The cold used to blow right into my authorial bones. When writing turned from a joy to a struggle, when it felt like I had to fight for every word, I wondered whether this was simply my new reality. I might as well hang up my keyboard and find a better use for my time.

But time and again, the season passed. Winter branches budded once more. And so now, when cold seasons come, I learn to treat them like a Midwestern January: not as a reason to give up, but as a trial to endure in hope.

The seasons of writing, however, are in one respect quite different from normal seasons. Whereas a normal winter will pass if only you wait long enough, a writing winter usually requires something more: not only that we wait, but that we keep writing while we wait. Which brings us to our second lesson.

2. Embrace routine.

Let’s switch the image now from seasons to agriculture. C.S. Lewis, in his Reflections on the Psalms, addresses the familiar scenario in the Christian life when you come to your time of Bible reading, prayer, or Sunday worship, and you find more duty than delight in your heart. We may feel tempted in such moments to forsake duty altogether as we wait for a more willing spirit, but Lewis differs: “When we carry out our ‘religious duties,’” he writes, “we are like people digging channels in a waterless land, in order that when at last the water comes, it may find them ready” (97).

When by faith you go ahead and read, pray, or gather with God’s people, even when you meet great resistance within, you are like a farmer digging channels and waiting for water. You cannot make the water come, but you can dig and pray and wait on God (Galatians 6:9). And a similar dynamic holds true in the writing life.

It would be hard to overstress the importance of discipline, habit, and routine in writing, and especially during the driest seasons. We may need to take breaks, or experiment with different kinds of writing (more on that later), but trying to rediscover joy in writing without writing is like trying to rediscover joy in God without Bible reading or prayer.

You will find this advice from authors all over the place if you pay attention, even from those authors for whom we might assume writing comes naturally all the time. One of my favorite riffs on this theme comes from the short-story writer Flannery O’Connor:

I’m a full-time believer in writing habits, pedestrian as it all may sound. . . . I write only about two hours every day because that’s all the energy I have, but I don’t let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place. This doesn’t mean I produce much out of the two hours. Sometimes I work for months and have to throw everything away, but I don’t think any of that was time wasted. Something goes on that makes it easier when it does come well. And the fact is if you don’t sit there every day, the day it would come well, you won’t be sitting there. (The Habit of Being, 242)

Like O’Connor, the best writers typically discover and rediscover their creativity within the tight bounds of routine. So, even if current struggles allow only for a brief routine, dig a little every day, or every other day, or whatever the right pace might be, and wait for God to bring the rain.

3. Kill ungodly comparison.

Sometimes, as we’ve seen, we lose joy in writing simply because the season has changed. We find ourselves in a writing winter whose coming we had no more control over than a cold front. Other times, however, we lose joy because we ourselves have allowed something to steal it. And among those somethings, one of the more common is ungodly comparison.

I say ungodly comparison because comparison can indeed be put to good use. We do well to read others’ writing, celebrate where they excel, and seek to learn what we can. But there’s another kind of comparison, a devilish kind, where we cannot rest satisfied unless we see ourselves as better than the others in view.

In an email newsletter from a few years ago, the writer Jonathan Rogers contrasted two events that took place on the same weekend in his city of Nashville: the NFL draft and a running marathon. Both events took competition seriously, yet they did so in strikingly different ways.

In the draft, the players competed according to a hierarchical orientation, an orientation highly attuned to who gets drafted first, second, third, in what round and in what order. You can be an all-star athlete and yet leave the draft feeling insecure because you were chosen second rather than first. In the marathon, however, most of the runners competed according to a territorial orientation: they ran not against the other runners, but against their own personal resistance. A few ran for first place, to be sure, but most ran for a personal record, or just to finish.

Healthy writing, Rogers writes, is far more like a marathon than a draft; it has a territorial, not a hierarchical, orientation:

If you’re a writer, forget about your place in the hierarchy. . . . What you have is a territory — a little patch of ground that is yours to cultivate. Your patch of ground is your unique combination of experiences and perspective and voice and loves and longings and community. Tend that patch of ground. Work hard. Be disciplined. Get better. Your patch of ground and your community are worth it.

If in your writing you aim to be the best, or to be better than so-and-so — a temptation common to man — your joy likely will die and stay dead. But if you see yourself as someone with a certain territory, a unique set of experiences and perspectives and gifts, then you won’t worry as much when others excel you. Of course they will. Instead, you will devote yourself to your little patch of ground for the benefit of the people around you and the glory of God.

Or to use a Pauline image, you and other writers are less like competitors and more like members of a body. If you are an eye, be the very best eye you can be; write in a way that only an eye like you can. And then resist wondering whether you as an eye write better than the hand over there. Let the hand do its handish things, while you do your eyeish things, and give thanks for each other.

4. Word-craft wherever you can.

Somewhere along the way, many of us pick up the idea that academic or professional writing equals boring writing. Maybe that’s how you lost your joy in writing in the first place: you used to write short stories, and now you write essays in MLA style, or project reports that follow a template. So, even if you find the content of your writing interesting, perhaps even worshipful, the style feels technical and sterile.

In her book Stylish Academic Writing, Helen Sword discusses the gap between what most writing books advise and what most academic and professional writing looks like. She lists the various writing virtues you would find in the best style books, like using clear, precise language; engaging readers’ attention through examples; avoiding opaque jargon; and favoring active verbs and concrete nouns. Then she writes,

Pick up a peer-reviewed journal in just about any academic discipline and what will you find? Impersonal, stodgy, jargon-laden, abstract prose that ignores or defies most of the stylistic principles outlined above. There is a massive gap between what most readers consider to be good writing and what academics typically produce and publish. (3)

And I would add, speaking from my own experience, the same holds true for what academic students and young professionals typically produce and publish.

But believe it or not, you will find no rule that says you cannot include interesting vocabulary or arresting turns of phrase just because your writing is going to get a grade on it or be tucked away in a corporate file cabinet. So, why not treat your academic or professional assignments — or for that matter, your emails and text messages — as opportunities to grow in word craft? Why not throw in a metaphor or trade a to-be verb for something vivid and surprising? You might find yourself enjoying the writing process more, and I can guarantee your professor or boss will enjoy reading it more.

So, “whatever you do, work heartily” (Colossians 3:23). And whatever you write, write creatively.

5. Begin where you are.

Back to Lewis. In his book Letters to Malcolm, he offers a helpful principle for prayer that applies also to writing. Instead of feeling pressure to begin every prayer time “by summoning up what we believe about the goodness and greatness of God, by thinking about creation and redemption and ‘all the blessings of this life’” (88), consider starting smaller, Lewis says, even right where you are: thank him for the crescent moon outside your window, the gift of coming sleep, the wife whose hand you hold. Because, Lewis writes, we “shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest” (91). So, we begin where we are.

“Often, the joy we want to rediscover in writing comes from what we see while we write.”

We can apply this principle to writing in at least two ways. First, if you have lost your joy for the kind of writing your classes or job demand of you, carve out at least a little time for the writing that sparks your joy — whether haikus, or Lord of the Rings fan fiction, or handwritten letters, or comic books, or whatever else. And even better, find some people who like the same stuff so you can write and revise together. In other words, build up joy by returning to the writing that more readily brings you joy.

Second, if the joy seems to have drained from writing altogether, if you struggle to find delight in the act of writing at all, at least write about something you find delightful. Write about a friend you thank God for, or a passage in Scripture that stirred you, or something wonderful and surprising in the world God made. Some months ago, I was wading with my wife and sons in the Mississippi River, and we noticed around our feet dozens of snails making their way along the riverbed, their trails crisscrossing like interstate junctions. Write about that kind of ordinary glory. You might not find joy writing about biology or Jane Austen or the latest quarterly revenues, but you might find some joy writing about snails.

The sons of Korah sing in Psalm 45:1, “My heart overflows with a pleasing theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe.” Our words rarely flow more readily than when they come from the overflow of the heart. So, what is your heart overflowing with right now? Begin there. Write about it.

6. Write to see.

Often, the joy we want to rediscover in writing comes from what we see while we write. Under God’s providence, our own words can pave the path that leads us back to joy; our sentences can become the window that shows us more of God’s glory in Christ. And so, as John Piper has said, write not only to say beauty, but to see beauty.

Paul’s soaring doxology in Romans 11:33–36, for example, is no mere calculated literary device. “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” This is the language of affectionate, spontaneous praise. And the praise came, in part, from writing Romans 1:1–11:32. Through his writing, Paul felt more reason to praise God than he did before he wrote.

And to that end, consider one final suggestion. In one section of Helmut Thielicke’s book A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, he talks about the importance of what he calls “the atmosphere of the second person” in theological writing and thought. After referencing the fact that Anselm begins his discourse on God’s existence with a prayer, Thielicke writes,

A theological thought can breathe only in the atmosphere of dialogue with God. . . . The weal and woe even of theological thought depends decisively upon the atmosphere of the “second person” and upon the fact that essentially dogmatic theology is a theology which is prayed. (64, 67)

The deepest joy in writing, whether theological or not, depends on whether our writing happens in “the atmosphere of the second person” — that is, in the presence of God. So, I exhort myself here along with you: before you write, and as you write, and after you write, speak to the God in whose presence you write. Venture outside the realm of the third person, where we speak about God and his world, and enter the realm of the second person, where we speak to God himself. Write with God not only as a he, but as a you.

When our writing becomes an exercise in relying on God, praising God, and telling forth God’s excellencies in Christ, then we have good reason to believe we will discover and then rediscover joy in writing, however far away it feels right now.

Austin Duncan: I want to welcome you to our Q&A session with pastors John MacArthur and John Piper. There is something wonderful about this opportunity. Both of these men are known for their deep well of biblical and theological knowledge. Their years and years of pastoral faithfulness have prepared them for moments like these. They both have a burden to answer people’s questions.

Dr. MacArthur, you have had hundreds of sessions with your local church where you’ll just open up the microphone on Sunday night and answer people’s questions — and they’ll line up. Two weeks ago, you answered questions for two hours regarding what was on people’s hearts.

Dr. Piper, you have a podcast called Ask Pastor John. It’s incredibly helpful as the dear Tony Reinke asks you so many questions. The podcast has produced a book. It’s called Ask Pastor John: 750 Bible Answers to Life’s Most Important Questions. It’s sold out in the book tent already. It disappeared quickly. You can get it online. I recommend that to you, men. And obviously, Dr. MacArthur’s years and years of answers to Bible questions are at gty.org.

I think that’s where I’d like to start. Why is it so important for the pastor to be accessible to ask and answer questions, to be there for people’s needs? Why has that become such an important part of your ministries?

John MacArthur: Well, because you don’t want to spend your whole ministry telling people what they don’t want to know.

John Piper: Sometimes we do.

MacArthur: Yes. But I said you don’t want to spend your whole ministry . . .

Piper: That’s true.

MacArthur: You want to spend some of your ministry telling them what they don’t want to know.

Piper: Touché.

MacArthur: But you also want to spend a lot of your ministry telling them what they desperately want to know — the cries of their heart, the dilemmas that they face. And you want to do it particularly in a pastoral role where there’s trust. You don’t have to sort of give an apologia for every answer you give because you’ve built trust by feeding them the word of God.

I think Paul set me on that course when he dialogued (diálogos) and talked back and forth with the people he ministered to, in order to answer their compelling questions. For him, it would’ve been more difficult because all they would’ve had at most would be the Old Testament. For us, we can direct them to the New Testament. But this has always been a vital part of our ministry. And I think what I hear from deconstruction people, the “exvangelicals,” is that they went to a church but they never got their questions answered. There’s no reason for that. We have the answers.

Duncan: So, it’s about the contemporaneity of those questions, it’s what’s on people’s hearts, and it’s also about the sufficiency of Scripture. What’s the burden behind your desire to answer people’s questions, Dr. Piper?

Piper: Well, at my stage in life, I don’t have a local church anymore that I oversee as the pastor. Look at the Book, which is the other little thing I do online, has kind of replaced my preaching role, and Ask Pastor John has replaced my counseling role. So, I get to do all my pastoral work online. That’s one way to look at it.

The other thing is that the pulpit of John MacArthur and John Piper is not exactly the same as the Q&A of John Piper and John MacArthur. At least that’s what people tell me about you, and I think that’s what I’ve found. They say you’re a bulldog in the pulpit. And then they say you’re the kindest, gentlest, most gracious person in conversation. I’ve seen both of those. Now, I have no idea whether I’m viewed as a bulldog or a kind person, but I think I am viewed as a different person.

I think that your flock needs to know you both ways. It is not a bad thing to be a prophetic authority in the pulpit. That scares the heebie-jeebies out of people. And it’s not a bad thing to be a lowly servant, quiet listener, who gets your arms around people out of the pulpit.

MacArthur: You preach with boldness, and you give an answer with meekness and fear.

Duncan: We’ve highlighted before in Q&As with the two of you how different you both are. You have different personalities and are wired in different ways. I think that’s something that we thank God for in the way he makes people different. But there’s something that has been noticed at this conference, and it’s that you two have an unusual bond. People are taking pictures of you two greeting and hugging each other and talking together and posting them online and just talking about how encouraged they are by the bond and friendship that the two of you share.

I really want this Q&A to be helpful to these pastors that are watching and listening to this. I think there’s something that you could teach us about why relationships with another pastor are so important. What is it about friendship that will enhance a man’s pastoral ministry? We’ve heard a little bit about that in this conference, but speak experientially to these brothers, and help them think about the pastor and friendship.

Piper: I’ve heard people say that your best friends are going to have to be outside of the church, not within your own church, your own staff, or your own elders and deacons. I did not find that true. And I don’t think it’s healthy to talk that way. For 33 years, I considered my staff my best friends.

MacArthur: Yes.

Piper: The elders were absolutely trustworthy with my life. If Noël and I were having problems, I didn’t try to hide it from anybody on the staff. They were my closest friends. They are still today, the ones that I still have around me. That’s the first thing I’d say. Don’t feel like, “Oh, you can’t have a good friend inside the church because you can’t really be honest with them.” Baloney. You really ought to be honest with the people closest to you and those who work with you. We need to know each other through and through. For whatever reason, Jesus had his Peter, James, and John. And he had his 12, and he had his 70. There are concentric circles of intimacy, it seems, that mattered to him. They certainly matter to me. To this day, I meet with two guys every other week, and they know me like nobody else knows me. That keeps me accountable. That’s a big deal today, accountability. But it never feels quite that way if you’re with really good friends.

“How do you even function in the midst of slander unless you love heaven, unless you believe in the world to come?”

So, that matters. They know me, they can speak into my life. And those friends need to not be yes-men. They need to be fearless around you and speak into your life without feeling like they’re going to be squashed because you have more authority than they do. So, I think it makes a huge difference whether you’re accountable, whether your heart is open, and whether they can bear your burdens that you share with them and pray for you at the deepest levels where very few other people are praying for you because they don’t know what you’re dealing with.

Duncan: Dr. MacArthur, what would you add about friendship?

MacArthur: Well, let me talk about John. I was asked, “Why would you have John Piper at the conference?” My immediate answer was, “Because one, I love him; two, he is as formidable a lover of Christ as there exists in the world today; and three, because he feeds me.” I don’t get a lot of time with John, but I did get a thousand pages plus of Providence delivered to me through your mind and your heart. Your face is on every page because I know you. I’m reading but I’m hearing you. And I know you well enough to know what went on for you to be able to produce such a massive work. I don’t know that there’s more than a handful of modern people who have had that kind of biblical effect on me. I mean, you probably read more old authors than current authors, like I do.

Piper: Yep.

MacArthur: But for a current author, you’ve delivered your soul to me in so many ways. I remember we were at the Sing! conference one year, you might not remember this, and you were speaking at the early session. It was about 8:00 a.m. I was in the green room when you showed up, and you said, “What are you doing here?” Do you remember that?

Piper: No. But I’m eager to hear.

MacArthur: I said, “What do you mean what am I doing here? You’re speaking.” You said, “You came to hear me speak?” I said, “Of course.” I mean, you’re processing, “You flew from California last night and got in late. It’s 7:00 a.m., which is 4:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. for you.” I wait for the Lord to use you to bring me what I need for my heart and soul. So, anytime I can do that, I’m going to be there.

Piper: Well, you’re kind. C.S. Lewis made the distinctions about the four kinds of love. Eros is where lovers are looking at each other in the face, telling each other how delicious they are.

MacArthur: No, it’s not that kind of love, John.

Piper: Don’t — don’t interrupt. I’m getting there. And philos is friendship, and you’re not facing each other. You’re facing a passionate goal, shoulder to shoulder. And you’re not doing a lot of intimate talk. I started with the intimacy piece of those guys who know me through and through, but what makes it friendship is the shoulder-to-shoulder pulling in a worthy, great cause you’re willing to die for. And when you sense in another person that you’re pulling in the same reins — in the same yoke — then you feel like, “We could die together. This would be good. This would be good.” That’s the kind of friendship you want. You want a shoulder-to-shoulder, common goal, a common vision.

This might be a good place to say this. I don’t believe it’s a good goal to have a theologically diverse staff. I’ve heard pastors say, “Oh, we don’t need to agree on all the theological things on the staff.” I say baloney. You have to lead your people together. You have to lead. So, when you’re shoulder to shoulder, you know what the other person is thinking, you know what the other person is feeling. And, oh, the camaraderie that brings you. When the church gets into a crisis, oh my goodness, how glorious is it to have a few close friends that you absolutely know are going to be standing by you through the crisis?

MacArthur: That’s a great answer.

Duncan: That’s why J.C. Ryle said, “Friendship is that gift from God that doubles our joys and halves our sorrows.” That’s what you men are sharing with us, and that’s why pastors need Christ-honoring, Christ-centered, Christ-pursuing friendships.

Piper: Can I say one more thing? If you’re really bound together deeply — theologically and spiritually — you don’t have to spend a lot of time together. I mean, I have a few friends I see once a year or so. I see him less often than that probably. And when you get together, you just pick up where you were. That’s the way it was with those people. For years, I’ve related to some people that way. It’s like a once-a-year friendship, but it feels deeper than some people you see every week because the shoulder-to-shoulder, common convictions and goals are so deep. So, don’t feel like you can’t have significant friendships with people that you knew in college or you knew in seminary. You keep up with them at a distance.

MacArthur: You know, I had that kind of relationship with R.C. Sproul. We were on opposite coasts, and we spent some time together, maybe once or twice a year. And yet, there was this shoulder-to-shoulder attitude that we knew if we ever were in a severe battle, we needed to be together. And that’s where we were at ECT. That kind of defined that relationship. People said, “How could you have such a friendship when you had different theological views on certain things?” It’s right back to exactly what John said. R.C. would always say, “When I’m in a foxhole, I’m going to call you.”

Piper: That’s good.

Duncan: Let’s talk about the flip side of this, which is the deepest and darkest part of friendship — when a friend fails us. We’ve all had that experience of betrayal. Maybe there’s a friend that drifts into error or a friend that drifts into sin. Maybe you could help the pastors here process what was a common experience for the apostle Paul and for the Lord Jesus — when friends fail you. When that happens, how do you continue to pour yourself into the lives of people? How do you ensure that you don’t become self-protective but you continue to invest and pour in and love your friends, even when friends fail? Talk a little bit about that experience in ministry.

MacArthur: For me, it goes back to our Lord and Judas, or it goes back to Paul and Demas. The best of the best of the best of the best are going to be betrayed. And the more you invest in someone, the more potential they have to devastate you. So, you can be gun-shy. My dad told me when I was just starting out in ministry, “Don’t make close friends with the people you serve with because you’ll find yourself being so terribly disappointed.” I usually took my dad’s advice but I never took that advice because it was overpowered, for me, by the experience of Christ, not only with Judas but even with Peter. If he was disappointed with Judas, who was a devil, how much more disappointed was he with Peter, who was a true believer?

So, who am I to expect loyalty from everybody all of the time? And we know what Paul endured, whether it was John Mark or Demas or whatever, and who knows all the other stories. He said, “All in Asia have forsaken me” (see 2 Timothy 1:15). How can you come to the end of your ministry and say, “Everybody has forsaken me”? How is that even possible? You’re the apostle Paul. You’re the reason that anybody is even a Christian.

But you have to understand that goes with the territory. That’s part of it. You do some inventory in your own heart and ask, “Could I have done something different?” But for me, the Lord has always balanced that with many more who are faithful over the long haul. I focus on that and rest in the fact that if it was true of the apostle Paul and of our Lord, I should probably expect a whole lot more disloyalty than I get.

Piper: There’s an interesting connection that I didn’t see until about three years ago in the Demas text. Second Timothy 4:7–8 says,

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing.

And two verses later, he says Demas disappeared in love for the world. So, I think one answer to the question of how you survive Demas is by loving the second coming, which means something like this: This world is one conveyor belt of disappointments. Every day has a disappointment in it. Some situations don’t go the way you want. Somebody lets you down. Life is disappointing, and some of them are awful. Demas probably broke his heart. But he so loved Christ and he so loved the second coming and he knew everything was going to work out. It’s all going to be okay.

So, I think we need to have a heavenly mindset, which is the way Jesus told us to deal with slander in Matthew 5, right? When they say “all kinds of evil against you falsely,” “rejoice and be glad” (Matthew 5:11–12). Why? “Great is your reward in heaven.” So, how do you even function in the midst of slander unless you love heaven, unless you believe in the world to come? That’s one piece.

Another piece I’d say about betrayal is don’t become embittered. Lean into reconciliation possibilities. It might seem absolutely impossible that this relationship could be fixed. You might think, “It’s just not going to happen. It’s just so ugly.” Don’t believe that. God does miracles. The worst betrayal I ever experienced was 1993. There was a seven-year adultery from a man I’d worked with for 10 years, which devastated the church. There were 230 people who left in those days. I think we had an attendance of about 1,200 people in those days, and 230 people walked because they didn’t like church discipline.

I had dinner with that man 10 years later, and we wept. We held each other. I attended his funeral, hugged his wife, and we made it okay. It was okay. We’re going to be in heaven together. And that’s possible, guys. It’s really possible. Your job is to believe that and not to be the one who’s just sneering and saying, “You just get out of my life and you stay out of my life because of what you wrecked in this church or what you wrecked in my relationships.” So, believe the miracle is possible — that reconciliation could happen.

MacArthur: You know, building on that, I think you also have to look at that person as an instrument through which the Lord is perfecting you.

Piper: That’s right.

MacArthur: Those are the best times for your spiritual benefit. They tear down your pride and self-confidence and sense of privilege and expected rights. And if you will look at the person that hurt you the most as the instrument that God used, then you’ll understand what Paul was talking about when he wrote to the Corinthians about the thorn in the flesh. The Lord said, “I’m not going to remove it because when you’re the weakest, you’re the strongest” (see 2 Corinthians 12:9–10). We’re never going to be too weak to be effective.

Piper: Right. That reality of chapter 12 really runs through all of 2 Corinthians, doesn’t it? The pastoral suffering is for the sake of their people. It’s just all through the book. It starts off in 2 Corinthians 1, saying, “May you be comforted with the comfort with which you have been comforted by God” (see 2 Corinthians 1:3–5). So, if you wonder why you’re going through the hell you’re going through right now, it’s for the sake of your people. God wants to do something in your shepherd’s heart that will make you a more wise, compassionate, loving, insightful, caring shepherd.

Duncan: You both have battled for truth and various difficult doctrinal controversies. You’ve battled for truth in ethical matters where someone drifts into error. I think both of you model being warriors for the truth. And this conference is about the triumph of truth. How do we think about battling for truth and maintaining that full awareness of grace? Another way to say it is, how do we differentiate, in our battling for truth, between contending and being contentious? How can we be bulldogs and followers of the Lamb?

Piper: Yeah, that’s good. You should be a preacher. You sound like H.B. Charles. I love John Owen and I love Machen, so I did this little book years ago called Contending for Our All. R.C. Sproul wrote something for it. He liked it. And that made me feel really good. But here’s the one quote that made all the difference for me, and it’s been a goal. I don’t know if I’ve achieved it, but Owen said that we should “commune with the Lord in the doctrine for which we contend.” Now, here’s what that means to me. Let’s say I’m fighting for justification, say, with N.T. Wright, or I’m fighting for Calvinism against Roger Olson or whatever. I know these guys. I’ve communicated with them. It’s not like throwing hate bombs over the fence.

My desire is that I would be authentic with them and real with them, and that I would not be contentious, but when it’s justification or the sovereignty of God, as I go into battle, whether it’s over lunch or in a book, I’m saying, “Lord, I don’t want this to be a game. I don’t want to have a little tiff here. I don’t want to play word games or doctrine games or proposition games. I want to know the sweetness of justification. I want to know the preciousness of the sovereignty of God. That’s the only reason I want to defend this. I don’t want to win anything. I’m not out to get strokes or be famous. I want to enjoy you.” I think that’s what Owen meant. I want to enjoy God in the doctrine for which I contend. I think that changes the spirit from contentiousness to a humble, holy, courageous contending. That’s one factor.

MacArthur: I think that’s true. That will prevent you from being angry or being hostile, because if you love that truth, that basically takes over your heart. That is the first thing. This is a truth you love, not a club with which you want to beat people.

The second thing is that this is a person that you love or that you care about, so your attitude is going to be the combination of how you feel about the truth and how you feel about the person. And if you lose it on either side, if you’re trying to win an argument, you’re going to be cantankerous. Or if you’re indifferent to the person, you’re going to become frustrated with dealing with the person, and you’re going to lose the tenderness and persuasiveness that the Spirit of God would want you to have while you’re trying to convince them.

Duncan: That’s very helpful.

Piper: I would add that joy, along with love, has a huge effect, because you can lose your joy quickly in an argument. Anger is an omnivorous emotion. It eats everything. It eats compassion, it eats joy, it eats everything. If you get taken over by anger, you lose those things. And joy is a great antidote. In your local church, there will be little controversies. We’re talking about big controversies here, public controversies. But in your church, you’ll have controversies. People don’t like what you just said or believed. I had a guy one time who did not like my eschatology. I won’t even tell you which side anybody’s on here.

I preached on a Sunday evening and I said, “I can’t imagine anybody wanting to do that.” He was at the back of the row and said, “I don’t believe that,” right out loud in the service. Now, here’s another illustration of somebody you get really reconciled with. I said to him, along with the other people sitting with their arms crossed in the back row, “I’m going to out-rejoice you and outlive you.” And I did. I was brand new. I was three years into my 33-year ministry, and we became precious friends. We never agreed, but we were precious friends. When he moved away to Iowa, later, he called me after about six years and he said his wife had died. He asked if I would do the funeral.

So, don’t think that the people who stand up and shout out in your service, saying, “I don’t agree with you, pastor,” won’t do a 180 and love you like crazy before you’re done. Because what was under that was that he loved the Bible. He loved the Bible. He thought I was unbiblical, but then, after two or three years, he said, “Piper is not unbiblical. He’s totally under this Book, and we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one.”

Duncan: To think about your ministries and how they will be thought of in the future is beyond our capability as people with our limited understanding of how God works and how providence unfolds. But I think it’s not speculation to say that, though you’ve written hundreds of books between the two of you, tens of thousands of pages and millions of words, you both will be known for one book, first and foremost, that you wrote. I think John Piper will be known for Desiring God and John MacArthur will be known for The Gospel According to Jesus. Those are formative, definitive, huge-impact books that reflect the heartbeat of your ministries and the emphasis of your lives. I would like you to just consider why those books. I’m especially interested in Dr. Piper telling why that is the case for Dr. MacArthur, and Dr. MacArthur, why that’s the case for John Piper.

Piper: Oh, that’s not what I expected. You didn’t put that in the notes. That’s going to be fun. A twist. Let’s go for it.

MacArthur: I can give maybe a sophomoric answer to the question regarding John Piper. I think why that book meant so much to him was his life was revolutionized permanently by Jonathan Edwards. I don’t know a John Piper without Jonathan Edwards. This is what comes across to me and, obviously, I’m on the outside looking in. But you can’t shake this. I mean, last night, you were saying what you said 50 years ago. You can’t shake it. And somebody said, “What did you think?” and I said, “It was the best of the best of the best of John Piper.” Because it runs so deep. It’s in every fiber of his being. Everything in the Bible leads him to that pleasure. And I think God used Jonathan Edwards.

I mean, that’s all I can say, because the first thing you said last night is, “I’m Edwardsian,” by your own confession. That’s amazing with all the opportunities there are for us to be influenced by people. What was the Lord doing when he dropped Jonathan Edwards in you, in an irretrievable act you could never undo? I mean, you took Jonathan Edwards even beyond where Jonathan Edwards thought he could go. The awakening to those truths define him.

In my case and probably all of our cases, it took us longer to get on the bandwagon than it did you, even when you started it early on, saying, “This is Christian Hedonism.” I mean, you were double-clutching because you knew that sounded weird. But you won us over, John, through these years. Was that somewhat true?

Piper: Everything you just said was true. The last part, I’ll wait and see if it’s the case.

MacArthur: I can’t speak for everybody. But I’m in.

Piper: He’s already answered my half of the question by preaching the sermon he preached two nights ago. This was your theme from 40 years ago with The Gospel According to Jesus and the question, “Where’s obedience in the church today?” So, here’s my interpretation of why that took hold of him, gripped him, and held him. He’s preaching the same sermon now that he wrote in the book there. I wrote a review of that book. I couldn’t put that book down. I was so excited about it because of what I was fighting in those days, a kind of easy believism that we both considered rampant. And it’s just as rampant today. There are lots of unbelievers in the church.

What John saw were the radical words of Jesus, where he says things like, “If you don’t love me more than you love mother, father, son, or daughter, you’re not worthy of me” (see Matthew 10:37). Period. That’s just totally crazy radical, right? He is saying, “You just won’t be a Christian if you don’t love me.” And obedience flows from love. He says, “Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and not do what I say?” (see Luke 6:46). Lots of people are going to hear the word at the end and be shocked. John MacArthur saw all these radical words, and he looked out at the evangelical church, and he thought, “Do they read the same Bible I read? Do they hear the same gospel?”

So basically, that book argued that James 2 should be in the Bible. It’s not an epistle of straw. If your faith does not transform you into a person who loves other people and produces good works, it isn’t saving faith and, therefore, churches need to be confronted with the carnality that is dangerous to their souls. And that’s what I was dealing with. I’ve never considered myself to be a very effective evangelist, although I thrill with every story of anybody that gets saved, which I heard yesterday from one of you brothers. Thank you for that encouragement. But I’ve always felt myself talking to a church that doesn’t look saved, or churches that don’t look saved. Their Christianity is so lukewarm — which Jesus is going to spit out of his mouth — that I’ve wanted to do a Christian Hedonist kind of revival.

The relationship between the two books is this. When you published that and then I later published a book Future Grace and What Is Saving Faith?, I said, “All I’m doing is trying to complete what MacArthur is saying.” MacArthur is saying, “You must obey in order to have saving faith,” and I’m saying, “You know why that is, folks? Because saving faith is being satisfied in Jesus, and that changes everything.” That’s all it is. It’s hand in glove, fitting together.

Duncan: That’s good. Let’s continue to talk about preaching, and more specifically, about the act of preaching. I want you to think about encouraging these brothers in the grind of preaching — the continual, ever-present, burdensome joy of preaching the word of God to the people of God. How has your view of preaching changed since you were a young preacher? How do you think about preaching now? And maybe the question is, why do you still believe in expository preaching? And where did this commitment come from? After all these years and all these thousands of sermons, how has your view of preaching changed?

MacArthur: Well, that’s a simple question because it’s the approach by which you maximize the content of the Bible. If every word of God is pure, and if there is a milk aspect of truth, as Paul talks about, and a meat aspect of truth, that means you start somewhere and you keep going deeper. I would say now I probably love expository preaching more than I ever have, and I find it inexhaustible. By the time I get to Sunday, I could be dangerous if I didn’t preach. Do you understand that, John?

Piper: I would like to see you be dangerous.

MacArthur: I might say to my wife, “You might want to go away on Monday because you’re going to get a sermon.” It’s the inexhaustibility of Scripture — the depth and breadth and height and length. It’s the inexhaustible reality of Scripture. It reveals itself to me every single week. I feel like somebody on the shore of the Pacific Ocean with a bucketful of water. If you ask me, “Is that the ocean?” I would say, “No, it’s just one little, tiny part.” I could preach endless lifetimes and never exhaust the truth of Scripture. At the same time, expository preaching not only covers everything, but it goes in depth. It has to because you can’t get away with not explaining something. So, I love expository preaching.

One other thing that comes to mind, and I think about this a lot. I’m never trying to figure out what I’m going to say on Sunday because I’m progressing through a book, and everything is building on everything else. I wouldn’t know another way to preach, really.

Piper: The short way of saying that is you believe in expository preaching because God wrote a book.

MacArthur: Yeah.

Piper: I mean, just let it sink in. God gave us a book. What would you do? What else would you do but tell people what’s in the book? You don’t know anything. God knows everything. He’s totally smart. Just let it sink in, brothers. If you believe this, it is the word of the Creator of the universe. Why would you waste your time talking about anything else? That’s what he just said.

The other part of the question is about change. You’re asking two guys who probably, more than any other two people on the planet, haven’t changed anything. We don’t change. People ask me, “What have you changed since your theology formed?” and I say, “Yikes, I can’t think of anything.” But in regard to preaching, if I had to do it over again, I would try to be more intentional about combining careful, local, immediate, expository explanation of texts with doctrinal formation of the church. I don’t think I did that the way I would do it now. I want to do more of this.

Now, that’s dangerous to say because I know some of you may come out of confessional traditions, where you start with a system and you have to work to be expositionally faithful. And others of you start with expositional, immediate faithfulness, and you have to work to get to system and doctrine. I want to be somewhere in the middle because I think churches can listen to us do exposition and never form a framework of theology of their own without some help. That’s one change I’d probably make.

I wouldn’t necessarily preach theme sermons, like a whole series on predestination or a whole series on regeneration, though that would be great. I would do that. But, rather, as you’re going through texts and you bump into a word that’s just laden with doctrinal content, I probably would go into it more now than I would have back in the day. So, that’s one difference.

Another difference is that the actual delivery has changed in that I feel much more free to go off script, all the time. I feel the ability to look right into people’s eyes while I’m talking. That used to throw me for a loop in the first five years of preaching. If I looked at somebody, I’d lose my place. I couldn’t think. I think young preachers have a hard time being immediately, directly engaged with human beings.

Thirdly, as an older person, I feel more warranted to press into people’s consciences, even older people. I mean, a 30-year-old pastor with about one hundred 60-year-old people in his church is a little bit hesitant to get serious with them and press into their sins. I don’t care anymore. That’s one difference, I think. But in summary, where I land and where I would be happy to die tomorrow regarding preaching is that it is a combination of faithful, rigorous exposition of what’s really there, mingled with a passionate demonstration or exultation in the reality of what it’s talking about, mingled with in-your-face application to their consciences. Those three things are what I want to do when I preach.

MacArthur: It’s actually a little easier to do that on the internet.

Piper: It is?

MacArthur: It’s easier than to face the same people every week and do that. You have to come back next week, John.

Piper: You lose some and you win some, right?

Duncan: Here’s a little more about preaching. Titus 1:1–3 says,

Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior . . .

Let’s encourage these brothers in their preaching and how preaching triumphs. Talk to us about the triumph of preaching. How can you help them see that their preaching — which we’re able to forget our own sermons in a week’s time sometimes — has eternal significance and lasting, persevering power in it? Encourage the brothers that their preaching will triumph. Help them think about triumphant preaching.

Piper: Isaiah 55:10–11 says,

As the rain and the snow come down from heaven     and do not return there but water the earth,making it bring forth and sprout,     giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;     it shall not return to me empty,but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,     and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

That’s just an absolutely glorious promise that God doesn’t speak in vain. And the closer you can get to his word when your word sounds, the more confident you can be that this wasn’t wasted. It may look for a moment like it had little effect. It is never without effect if you’re faithful to God’s word. So, there’s a promise where he says, “I will cause my word to accomplish my purposes.” That’s what I say to myself over and over again when I step into the pulpit.

And I would say this: Lasting effect doesn’t come from homiletical cleverness, meaning acronyms or how this conference has all Ps. How you ever did that, I have no idea. I said, “That’s cool. How did they do that?” That has zero effect on the lasting nature of your sermons. You need to know that. And when you come up with an acronym and you use Cs in your sermon — like compassion, whatever, and wherever — that has zero effect on the lasting nature of your sermons.

That will help you remember his outline for about three days, but we’re talking about three million years. That’s all we care about. What will affect people in three million years in your sermon is whether they were born again and whether the Holy Spirit convicted them of a sin in their lives, and they killed it, and they walked in holiness until they saw Jesus. In other words, the lasting effect of preaching is the work of the Holy Spirit.

So, you do the best you can with your acronyms, and you do your best you can with stories, and you do your best you can with H.B. Charles’s amazing ability to put these little things together. You just say, “That’s great. How did you do that?” You do the best you can, and it holds people’s attention, and that’s good, but in the end, you’re talking about what’s going to be true in ten years. And the answer is only if they were born again and if some major mental structures in their life just turned 180 degrees, like the sovereignty of God, free will of man, regeneration, etc. These are massive alterations in their thinking. That’s what you’re after, and that’s the work of the Holy Spirit through a faithful rendering of his word.

MacArthur: I would agree with all that. I would simply say that effective preaching is a journey. You start somewhere and you’re going somewhere. John illustrated that last night. You told us where you were going to go. You were going to get us to pleasure and we bought into that, so we followed the journey. The four points, whatever you called them, weren’t the reality of the message; they were just the progression to get to the main point. I always think of an outline or any kind of structure as the necessary, logical chronology to get you to the main point. One of the things with preaching is people have to be willing to stay with you till the end because they know that they’re going to be given some precious reality if they’ll stay.

I think you handle the Scripture in a progressive way that keeps them involved in that journey. It could be mnemonic devices or whatever you use. Preaching is not just shooting out one idea and another idea and another idea and another idea and an emotional thing and a story. It’s going somewhere. It’s a crafted argument, and it has all the necessary devices to hold them to that. You have to shift and change and pace all of that. But if they’ll stay on the journey, they’ll learn eventually in your preaching that the finish is worth the trip.

Duncan: I think that’s what makes both of your preaching so similar is that it’s driven and logical and focused on the text. Though you sound different, when we have our seminarians listen to the same passage from John MacArthur and listen to the same passage from John Piper, the central truth is the same. It’s the same passage, it’s the same meaning, because that’s what Paul said. But the way you get there is different. John Piper moves a lot more than John MacArthur in the pulpit. But it’s driven by logic, right? Both of you are so fastidious and logical and movement-oriented toward, “This is the meaning of the text and how it needs to be brought into light and life.”

Talk a little bit about each other’s preaching. What is it that you see in MacArthur’s preaching that is of such preciousness to you? And what do you see, Dr. MacArthur, about John Piper’s preaching that you love?

Piper: I’m not going to say anything that we don’t all say. Dr. MacArthur’s preaching is incredibly clear. It is so clear. It doesn’t fumble around to get to the clear point. As I’m listening, I think, “He’s not wasting any words here. He’s not blowing smoke.”

And then, the second thing is I think, “That’s really there in the text. That’s really there. Look at that.” And people love that. I love that. I think, “Tell me what the text says. I want to know what God says.”

Third, he has the ability to relate the immediacy of the text to doctrinal concerns or cultural concerns without getting off on a tangent that gets you bogged down in excessive application, but rather you feel the force. You think, “That’s relevant. Right now in this situation, that’s relevant.” Those three things, at least, that strike me, attract me, and draw me in. I want to hear clarity. I want to see what’s really in the text. I want it to be relevant to my life in this culture right now.

And there’s just plain earnestness. A lot of preachers are playful. I mean, we all know one preacher who crashed and burned a while back, and he said, “The main model you should have are stand-up comedians.” That’s what he said. He said that should be the main model. He said, “Do you want to learn how to communicate? Watch stand-up comedians.” John MacArthur doesn’t watch many comedians.

MacArthur: And neither do you.

Piper: I don’t. I don’t even have a television.

MacArthur: I would say the same about John for the very same reason. He has clarity in giving the meaning of the text and the doctrinal implications. I like to think of it this way: Application is one thing and implication is something else. There may be a thousand applications, but there’s usually just a few implications that just are so pervasive it changes how you approach life.

John is a genius at the implication of a given text without saying, “This is what you do on Tuesday afternoon when this happens and this happens and this happens.” It’s the power of that implication drawn because you know the text said it, and you understand the bigger picture of the theology that undergirds that specific revelation. I want to feel the implication, I want to feel the burden of that text, and I want the people to feel that burden. I don’t want to over-define it on a practical level, lest I leave something out.

Duncan: What you just heard was not me trying to get them to compliment each other. I’m being serious. This is a good word for young preachers. And you’ve both poured your life into training men. Immature people are drawn to personality instead of truth. They’re of Paul, they’re of Cephas, they’re of MacArthur, or they’re of Piper. That was a master class for young preachers to learn what they have to prioritize. And it’s not style. It’s substance and truth and a focus on the text. And that’s what we’re so grateful for in you men and your impact in our lives because of that, and the model you have shown.

Piper: Here’s just one caution. The fact that I love to hear that kind of preaching is owing to the fact that I’m born again and have spiritual taste buds on my tongue. His preaching is going to alienate a lot of people and so is mine. Almost everybody in this room likes everybody, right? This is a nice group to be among. But you’re going to have churches where you preach like he does or like I do, and they will not hear it because they’re not thinking, “Give me more Bible. I want to hear more of the Bible.” That takes a spiritual mind. So, that’s why prayer, which H.B. reminded us of, is absolutely essential. We pray for our people to have ears to hear.

Duncan: Here’s a final question. Our culture idolizes the young. The Bible reveres the aged. Old age in the Bible is a gift from God; it’s a blessing attributed to divine favor. It’s a cause for honor, respect, and blessing. You both, if I could say it with all the force of what the Bible is saying, are old. And we love you. We love you old. At 78 and 84, you are modeling for all of us, if the Lord gives us that many breaths, what it looks like to age in a way that honors Christ. So, let’s talk about that for just a few more moments here. Talk about aging as a believer and as a pastor. How do you think about growing old, in your experience, to honor Christ and serve his church?

MacArthur: Well, I don’t know that I’ve created a paradigm in which to think about myself. I just do what I do. Old age has its issues, like putting on your socks and getting a longer shoehorn every year. But I don’t know if I even think about that. I’ll tell you what I do think about is, “Lord, please keep me faithful.” I just don’t want to say something somewhere or do something that would undo a lifetime of endeavoring to be faithful. I trust the Holy Spirit. I don’t fear. I’m not afraid to live my life. I trust the Spirit of God. I love the Lord and I love his word, but I’m not invincible.

The second thing is that I pray, “Lord, don’t let some people say things about me that aren’t true and that are destructive.” Because I don’t ever want to be in a position to have to defend myself because that’s so impossible. But I seek to take heed to myself and my doctrine and stay faithful. I pray, “Lord, protect me from my enemies who could undo so much if they were believed when they said things that weren’t true.”

Piper: So many things to say. That prayer, “hold me,” is something I pray. “He will hold me fast. He will hold me fast. For my Savior loves me so. He will hold me fast.” There’s no hope without it. Because if you think sanctification is progressive in the sense that there’s no battle after age 70 of walking with Jesus, you’re not thinking straight. The danger of the sins of lust, sloth, and doubt at age 78 is just as serious. When Paul said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course,” he meant, “to the end, until they cut my throat because, on the way to the gallows, I could betray him” (see 2 Timothy 4:7). I mean, my view of eternal security, which is a Romans 8:30 kind, is it’s a community project and it is to be fought for. That’s the way God keeps you. He keeps you.

So, I just fully expect that as long as I have a brain, it has to be engaged in praying, “Keep me. Don’t let me do anything stupid to undermine the ministry. Don’t let me betray my wife. Don’t let me give up on prayer. Don’t let me become superficial. Don’t let me cave in to just watching videos every night. O God, protect me from the world and the worldliness that can creep into a 78-year-old heart.”

I don’t know if you thought this way, but I used to think that since sanctification is progressive, that my 30-year-old patience would be 40 years more patient now. It didn’t work. That might be just absolutely self-indicting for me to say, because progressive sanctification means you ought to be a more holy person at 78 than at 38, and it doesn’t feel quite like that. I’m an embattled soul. These arrows just keep flying, and you need the shield of faith and the sword of the Spirit every day. If you think you’re going to coast someday, you’re going to be destroyed, because there’s no coasting in this life.

“O God, protect me from the world and the worldliness that can creep into a 78-year-old heart.”

Here’s a caution. I know that we are going to get to the point where we can’t preach. I mean, would that we could die before we get there. But that’s up to God. We don’t believe in mercy killing. No matter what California or Oregon or Minnesota says, we don’t believe in that. God will decide if we have to sit in a nursing home and not have all our faculties. That’s going to come if we don’t die. And the question is, will we be able to be faithful? So, don’t hear this as a kind of triumphalism: “Yeah, strong old people!”

However, I sat under the ministry of Oswald Sanders at age 89. He was 89 and I was 50-something. And he said, “I’ve written a book a year since I was 70,” and I just thought, “Yes, that’s what I want to be like.” Now my new model is Thomas Sowell, who’s 93, right? When he turned 90, the interviewer asked him, “How is it that you’ve written a book every 18 months since you were 80?” So I said, “Great, life begins at 80.” I have two years to run up to it and then we take off.

The way that balances out with the fight is that you shouldn’t view aging as so embattled, so beleaguered, and so difficult with aging that you give up. The outer nature is wasting away. Believe that while you have life, you have ministry. I hate the American view of retirement. I think it’s totally unbiblical. I think it destroys souls. Ralph Winter used to say, “Men in America don’t die of old age; they die of retirement,” meaning, they lose heart. They lose purpose.

So, pastors, you don’t have to do like he does and stay in the pastorate forever. You don’t have to do that. That’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. I stopped at age 67. I’m not sure I should have. I don’t have total confidence about that. But I’ve tried to be useful. I’ve tried to be useful from 67 to 78. All that to say, be so reminded about the battle and be hopeful and optimistic and energetic about what God might call you to do between 65 and 85.

Duncan: This Q&A was not brought to you by AARP.

Piper: I have never responded to one of those 10,000 envelopes. Never.

MacArthur: Me neither.

Duncan: We’re well aware. We’re so grateful for God’s faithfulness on display in both of your lives. And this was a very fruitful, profitable hour. Thank you so much, brothers. Dr. MacArthur, will you pray for these men, and that God would be faithful in their ministries and lives?

MacArthur: Father, this has been such a refreshing hour together. In so many ways, our hearts have been warmed and even thrilled to feel the impulse of every heart beating in this room about ministry and preaching, so that they can embrace every thought, every answer that we tried to offer. It felt like we were giving water to their souls and strengthening them. That’s the way it came across in their exuberant response.

Lord, we ask that this might be used to raise this generation of pastors, these men who are right here, to a level of faithfulness and an endurance that will glorify and honor your name. We don’t want this to have just been a moment’s experience, as enjoyable as it was, but an experience that bears lasting power so that we’ll see a difference in the future. There are so many defectors, so many people who are superficial and shallow in their approach to ministry, and we need none of that. We need the best and the most dedicated and the most devout and the most faithful and the most powerful.

So, use this, Lord, by your Spirit in the life of everyone who’s here to make a notable, significant difference in the next decade and even beyond in the church. For your glory, we pray in Christ’s name. Amen.