I have been blogging at Challies.com on a daily basis for over 20 years now. That long commitment has allowed me to write thousands of articles and hundreds of book reviews while also sending millions of visitors to other sites through the daily A La Carte feature. While I’ve also written a number of books, through it all the blog has remained the “main thing.” Much of the blog’s content is now also translated into Spanish, French, and a number of other languages.

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Thank you for considering becoming a patron of Challies.com. Your support means so much to me. And this is the end of my once-yearly mention of this subject!

Every now and again I jot down a thought that I’d like to ponder but that I don’t intend to tease out into a full article. Over the past few weeks, I have jotted down a series of thoughts on being a dad. I hope there is something here that benefits you or gets you thinking as well.

Your children will learn from you more than anyone else how a father is meant to treat his children and how a husband is meant to treat his wife. The words you speak about these subjects will pale in comparison to the ways you act. Your children are always watching and always learning. Live accordingly.

One of the great privileges and callings of being a dad is bearing the greatest responsibility for your children’s spiritual development. Yet many dads neglect this to their shame and their children’s peril. This most certainly involves ensuring you are all attending a sound local church and involved with it. And it most certainly involves the close discipleship of knowing their spiritual state and of teaching and training them in the Christian faith. Dad, there are many people and forces eager to disciple them away from the Lord; make it your purpose to disciple them toward him.

Family devotions is a wonderful opportunity to grow in knowledge and obedience together. The benefit is in the habit and the repetition—in committing to many years of sharing this experience together. Dad, take the lead in this best of all habits.

One negative word about your daughter’s boyfriend/fiancé/spouse may prove far more significant than a thousand positives. So be effusive with your praise and cautious with any criticism. Criticism will sink down deep.

It is the jurisdiction of dad, and dad alone, to declare when a bottle of shampoo is empty. Only he has the requisite skill to ensure it has been used to the last drop and only he has the right to declare when a new bottle can be opened.

Sons are especially prone to believe that dad is displeased with them. If it is not true of all sons, it is true of many sons. They need to be assured that they are beginning to become men and to gain the trust and confidence of their father. So be sure to provide plenty of words of encouragement and affirmation. Whatever else your son knows, make sure he knows that you love him and are proud of him.

Our God is lavish with his love and so often surprises us with the abundance of his provision. In just that way, it is the joy of a dad to provide for his children and to give them not only what they need, but also far more. It is a joy and a privilege (and perhaps even a duty) to surprise and delight them.

For all the fatherly joy of giving gifts to his children, what children benefit from even more is their father’s time and approval. Time together is a wonderful gift that reaps many blessings and benefits.

It may be wise to establish a pattern of taking your children out individually, whether for a meal, activity, or event. These special times with dad will display your love for your children and build beautiful memories together.

Being a dad will teach you a lot about the fatherhood of God. It will teach you about your own folly and God’s wisdom; it will teach you about your own sin and God’s forgiveness; it will teach you about your own disobedience and God’s unbreakable love.

One of the best ways to display your love for your children is to love their mother. After all, there is no one on earth they love more than her. Their respect for you will increase according to your love for her.

Don’t take it too hard when your children—tweens or young teens especially—say they dislike or even hate you. They don’t really. They’re just in one of the hardest phases of life and grappling with difficult social, spiritual, and biological realities. Pity them and pray for them.

It ought to ultimately fall to you to be the leading disciplinarian in the family—the one who establishes the situations in which discipline is warranted and the kind of discipline that will be meted out. Yet whenever you discipline and however you do it, ensure you do it in love and self-control. There is never an excuse to overreact to their sin.

When you sin in front of your children, apologize to your children. While it may feel like you are losing their respect by apologizing, you are actually regaining the respect you surrendered when you sinned against them in the first place. There are few better traits you can model before them than the humility that says, “I was wrong. Please, forgive me.”

The love of a daughter for her father is one of the sweetest and most precious loves the world can know. The love of a father for his daughter is one of the fiercest and most gentle loves the world can know.

Tell your girls they are beautiful. Tell them earnestly. Tell them often.

Tell your son you love him. Tell him earnestly. Tell him often. Tell him when looking him dead in the eye.

As you look back on life, you may well find that some of your greatest memories as a dad will be sitting in church beside your family. So learn to enjoy those moments now rather than only in retrospect. These are the halcyon days.

Sometimes, as your children get older, you need to let them make decisions for themselves that you consider poor or unwise. And that is okay (provided they are not utterly depraved decisions). You can be there to help them if and when the decision brings about tough consequences. This is one of the ways they will learn to navigate life.

It is wise to form relationships with dads whose children are farther along than yours and to ask them key questions—questions that may range from matters of discipline to enduring your children’s puberty. You can also give them free rein to speak with you and address any weaknesses they may see in your parenting.

Being a dad gets even better as children grow older. While you may wistfully remember the days when your children were young and in your home, being a father to grown children is a blessing all its own.

I admit it: I felt a little skeptical about Ask Pastor John. To be fair, I feel skeptical about most books that begin in one medium before making the leap to another. Books based on sermons, for example, can often be pretty disappointing—a powerful sermon at a conference can make a bland chapter in a book. Yet once I got into this book, once I saw what it is and isn’t, and once I began to actually read it, my skepticism quickly subsided.

Ask Pastor John

Perhaps the most important thing to note about Ask Pastor John is that the author is not John Piper. Rather, it’s Tony Reinke. It’s Reinke’s name that is written in big characters on the front cover. Piper is mentioned only as the author of the foreword. Yet the content is clearly Piper’s. So what gives?
Back in 2013 Reinke, an employee of Desiring God, proposed a new podcast called Ask Pastor John. The format would be simple—Piper would answer questions posed to him in advance. Rather than offering off-the-cuff answers as he might during a conference Q&A, Piper would spend time in preparation, giving his responses more depth and weight. What was supposed to last for just under 400 episodes has now reached into the thousands. The episodes have been listened to hundreds of millions of times and, by Piper’s own testimony, is the most common feedback he hears from people who interact with him—they tell how much they have been shaped and blessed by it.
Yet not everyone is going to listen to hundreds of hours of podcasts (or would even want to). The book, then, is a kind of “narrative synthesis” of 750 of the most popular episodes, the majority of which deal with situational ethics. Reinke says it “is a core sample of John Piper’s mind and theology” that is meant to serve four purposes: To map the ground they’ve already covered so as to avoid repetition; to topically curate the episodes already created; to celebrate Piper’s investment in the podcast; and to acquaint readers with the scope and depth of the podcast archive. “Basically, my prayer is that by making dozens of the major podcast themes browsable in print, this book will make the archive more useful to you at the very moment you need it. This book doesn’t have an index; it is the index, an index to serve you as you serve others.”
While there is a sense in which the book is meant to prompt readers to become listeners, there is another sense in which it offers plenty of its own value. What Reinke has done is arrange episodes under topical headings. Then he has combined the content of related episodes and condensed it into a short and readable Q&A format. It’s essentially the heart of Piper’s thoughts on hundreds of big questions. Some of the sections include:

On Bible Reading, Bible Neglect, and Bible Memory
On Politics, Patriotism, and Culture Wars
On Cussing, Lying, and Gossip
On Married Sex, Bedroom Taboos, and Fading Attraction
On Satan, Demons, and the Unforgivable Sin
On Deadness, Depression, and Desertion

And that is just a sampling. Within each of these sections, readers may find 30 or 40 different headings, some of which are answers to questions and some of which are matters of practical wisdom. For those who wish to hear fuller answers or to hear the pastoral tone in which they are delivered, everything is carefully footnoted to the appropriate podcast episodes. You can simply punch the episode number into the search box at Desiring God and listen in.
I don’t really listen to podcasts and don’t plan to start now. Yet I enjoyed Ask Pastor John a lot. I enjoyed gaining brief answers to a multitude of questions and enjoyed seeing how Piper brings the truths of Scripture to bear on practical matters. I enjoyed disagreeing with him on a few matters, but such disagreements help sharpen my own thinking. The book is a fascinating and helpful archive, whether taken with or without reference to the podcast that was its origin. I expect you’ll enjoy it every bit as much as I have.