http://rss.desiringgod.org/link/10732/15199376/what-is-slavery-like-without-threatening
John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Providence.
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Worship Isn’t About You: What I Learned After Years of Leading
The year was 1997. After serving as a pastor for twelve years, I was taking on a new role at a large church in the Washington, D.C., area. My focus was going to be less on pastoral care and more on music and worship. After getting a degree in piano, touring with a Christian band, leading congregational worship for over twenty years, and being featured on a couple of worship albums, I thought I couldn’t be more prepared.
A few months after I arrived, my senior pastor, C.J. Mahaney, walked into my office with three books he wanted me to read. One of them was Engaging with God: A Biblical Theology of Worship by David Peterson, an author I had never heard of. It looked more academic than most books on worship, and Peterson didn’t appear to be a musician. But I knew C.J. would only recommend books he thought would serve me well. So I dove in.
On the second page, I came across this quote:
Is worship, then, essentially an experience or feeling? Is it to be identified with a special sense of the presence of God, or with some kind of religious ecstasy or with expressions of deep humiliation before God? Are there special moments in a Christian meeting when we are truly “worshipping” God? Are church services to be measured by the extent to which they enable the participants to enter into such experiences? Such a subjective approach is often reflected in the comments people make about Christian gatherings, but it has little to do with biblical teaching on the matter. (16)
I scribbled “Good question” in the margin. As months went by, however, and I kept reflecting on that paragraph, I became increasingly unsettled by his closing statement: “ . . . it has little to do with biblical teaching on the matter.”
Outside the Holy of Holies
Until then, I had treated worship primarily as a “special moment in a Christian meeting.” It typically happened after we had sung two or three songs. Suddenly, we would become more aware that God was with us. We were emotionally engaged and sure something spontaneous was about to happen. To our minds, it directly corresponded to the Old Testament pattern of the temple. We started in the outer court, passed through the inner court, and finally entered the Holy of Holies. As a worship leader, I sought to lead the church into that “Holy of Holies” experience.
Twenty-five years later, I still appreciate and anticipate times when the church has a strong awareness that the Holy One of Israel is in our midst (Isaiah 12:6), but I no longer define worship that way. Because Scripture doesn’t.
Peterson’s quote brought me face to face with my underdeveloped theology of worship. If worship wasn’t defined by a “special sense of the presence of God, religious ecstasy, or deep humiliation before God,” what was it? Over time, and by God’s grace, I began to see more clearly what I was missing, including these five valuable lessons.
1. Worship isn’t centered on me.
As much as I knew that worship was about God, I somehow managed to make it about me: how I felt, how passionate I was, what I sensed or didn’t sense. And if it wasn’t about me, it was about us. I tended to measure worship by crowd size, volume, or how many hands were raised. What escaped me is that our desires, planning, and actions aren’t the essence of worship. The essence has been taking place from time eternal, as the triune God has gloried and delighted in himself (John 17:5).
“In worship, God invites us to join him in what he is already doing.”
In worship, God invites us to join him in what he is already doing. Our response is initiated by God, grounded in the reconciling work of Christ, and enabled by his Spirit (John 4:23–24; Ephesians 2:18; Philippians 3:3). As Peterson goes on to say, “Acceptable worship does not start with human intuition or inventiveness, but with the action of God” (26). Our part is to gladly participate in the perfect worship of Jesus, who through his once-and-for-all sacrifice has made all our offerings acceptable to God (1 Peter 2:5).
2. Worship isn’t defined by a musical experience.
I understood years ago that worship applies to all of life and not just to singing. But my vocabulary revealed (and at the same time shaped) my theology. Statements like, “The church was really worshiping in the last song,” or, “We’re going to return to worship after the sermon,” or, “If you’re late you’ll miss the worship,” reinforced the misguided idea that worship was a spiritually infused musical experience God turned on and off like a faucet.
In light of our tendency to equate worship with music, it’s stunning that the Bible rarely puts the two together. When Job hears that his possessions are gone and his children have died, the biblical writer says he falls to the ground and worships (Job 1:20). In John 4, when Jesus speaks with the Samaritan woman at the well, his description of the kind of worship the Father is seeking has zero musical references (John 4:21–24). The various Hebrew and Greek words we translate as worship in the Bible are associated with reverence, service, submission, and honor — but rarely with music.
“Singing to God can be a part of our worship, but it was never meant to be the heart.”
In other words, singing to God can be a part of our worship, but it was never meant to be the heart.
3. Worship doesn’t start and stop.
In truth, we are never not worshiping. At any given moment, we’re directing our affections, attention, and allegiance either to the one true God or to idols that can never satisfy, comfort, or rescue us. That means I come into every Sunday gathering already worshiping something. I don’t have to wait for the right chords to be played, the right words to be said, or the right “atmosphere” to develop.
Far from being a “special moment in a Christian meeting,” God-honoring worship is the natural state of our hearts when we seek to “do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). I can worship God by greeting a church member on Sunday morning and continue worshiping as I lift my voice in songs of praise (Hebrews 13:15–16). Gladly giving my tithes and offerings, listening attentively to the sermon, and praying for a friend after the service are all acts of worship.
More to the point, I can continue worshiping God as I have guests over for lunch, clean up afterward, and take a nap later that afternoon. And my worship doesn’t stop as I faithfully seek to exalt Christ in my home, workplace, school, or neighborhood by displaying a heart of grateful servanthood that has been transformed by the gospel.
Scripture does speak of distinct acts of worship (Psalm 29:2; Acts 13:2), but all of these take place within the larger context of our all-of-life “spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1).
4. Worship is still about God’s presence.
While worship may not be “identified with a special sense of the presence of God,” it is still very much about God’s presence, sensed or not.
Those nearest to God’s throne can’t help but be in a state of wonder, gratefulness, awe, and, yes, worship (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8; 5:13–14). And though we may not feel we’re in the presence of God at any given moment, God has seated those who have trusted in Christ “with him in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6). In Christ, God has brought us “to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering” (Hebrews 12:22). The apostle Paul asks the Corinthian believers, as well as us, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” (1 Corinthians 6:19).
We are always in God’s presence, and live coram deo, before the face of God. We can trust his promises to be with us (Matthew 28:20; John 14:16; Hebrews 13:5). But when we gather, God often sovereignly makes his presence known in more experiential ways (Acts 4:31; 1 Corinthians 12:7; 1 Corinthians 2:4; 1 Thessalonians 1:5). It would contradict the biblical evidence to say that worship in God’s presence, in the broad or narrow sense, never moves our affections, causes us to “rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Peter 1:8), convicts our hearts (1 Corinthians 14:24–25), leads us to a greater pursuit of holiness (2 Corinthians 6:16–7:1), bolsters our confidence (Hebrews 13:5–6), or deepens our love for God (1 Peter 1:8).
God’s Spirit tends to move more evidently when we gather together, and we should pray and long for those times. But these aren’t the only times we’re worshiping God!
5. Worship will never end.
We worship God when we do whatever we do, “in word or deed, in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17). Worship is a continual Spirit-enabled response to God’s self-revelation that exalts his glory in Christ in our minds, hearts, and wills. It doesn’t require music and can’t be limited to the realm of feelings (but can certainly involve both!). Worship is a gracious gift from our heavenly Father, who invites us, over and over again, to find our greatest joy in him. Any time. Anywhere.
And the greatest news of all is that, for those washed clean through the blood of Christ, worship will never, ever end.
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Introducing ‘Lectures to My Students’: A Reader’s Guide to a Christian Classic
The year is 1875. You’re a second-year student at the Pastors’ College. It’s been a long week of rigorous lectures and study on theology, mathematics, literature, rhetoric, biblical languages, and more. You’ve recently launched an evangelistic mission in a needy district of East London, so many of your evenings have been occupied. And as a member of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, you have meetings to attend and people to disciple. But now, it’s Friday afternoon, your favorite time of the week. Why?
Because this is the time you get to hear from Charles Spurgeon up close.
You’re chatting with your classmates when Spurgeon walks in the classroom with a hearty greeting and a large stack of books in his arms. There he is: the most famous preacher of the century. And yet here, he’s simply your pastor. After a word of prayer and brief preliminaries, Spurgeon begins to work through his stack. Out of his own personal reading, here are books he thinks future pastors should know about: new publications, classic works, Bible commentaries, and works of theology, philosophy, hymnody, science, and all kinds of other genres. Books worthy of investment are commended, while more dubious works are properly cautioned. You’ve always enjoyed this time and taken careful notes. Through Spurgeon’s recommendations, you’ve built a theological library and have been introduced to some of your favorite authors.
Then comes the highlight. As a father among his sons, Spurgeon delivers an hour-long lecture on some aspect of Christian ministry: preaching, sermon preparation, personal holiness, dealing with criticism, praying publicly, and much more. But these aren’t dry, academic lectures. No, these are warm, personal, sometimes hilarious, always instructive talks, drawing from Spurgeon’s personal experience and applying the wisdom and truths of Scripture to the work of a pastor. Soon you will be sent off into the difficult work of pastoral ministry. But the memory of these Friday-afternoon lectures will stay with you for many years to come.
It is from these lectures, given by Spurgeon at the Pastors’ College, that we have his classic work Lectures to My Students.
Golden Counsels
There are four series (or volumes) associated with Lectures. The first contains fourteen lectures, including some of Spurgeon’s most famous lectures on the life of the pastor. These include “The Minister’s Self-Watch,” “The Preacher’s Private Prayer,” and “The Minister’s Fainting Fits.” Several of these lectures also deal with Spurgeon’s favorite topic: preaching. From choosing a text to the importance of the voice, to the danger of wrongly spiritualizing a text, these lectures contain all kinds of practical wisdom from the Prince of Preachers.
The second series contains ten more lectures on an assortment of ministry-related topics, like pastoral growth, preaching for conversions, and dependence on the Holy Spirit. The third series, originally known as The Art of Illustration, contains seven lectures mostly focused on preaching and teaching. Here, Spurgeon teaches on the importance of illustrations and anecdotes, providing wisdom for how to use them and where to find them.
The fourth and final series, also known as Commenting and Commentaries, contains two lectures, one on the importance of “commenting” (public Scripture reading), and the other on the use of commentaries. The rest of the volume offers a catalog of commentaries. Amazingly, Spurgeon provides brief and insightful comments for 1,429 commentaries, on every book of the Bible, covering almost four centuries of Christian scholarship. This was a remarkable achievement in his day, and it stands as a reminder to preachers today of the importance of study.
Each of the four volumes is worth reading. (Keep in mind that modern publications of Lectures to My Students will usually publish Commenting and Commentaries separately.) I find that Spurgeon’s writing style continues to translate well into our day, so I would recommend finding an unabridged edition, with minimal (or no) modernization to the language. For those who are on a budget or prefer eBooks, PDF scans of Lectures can also be found online. At Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Spurgeon Library, we hope to make scans of Spurgeon’s own copies available on Spurgeon.org in the coming year.
Why should a pastor or church leader read these lectures? Consider three reasons.
Hard-Won Wisdom
First, these lectures arise out of Spurgeon’s own pastoral experience, including the hardships of ministry. If you are a pastor and you have not yet experienced “fainting fits” or the spiritual discouragement that can come over pastors in their ministry, you would do well to read that lecture to prepare.
And if you are currently in such a dark experience, Spurgeon can become a pastoral mentor for you in navigating your way through it. Similarly, pastors would do well to read “The Blind Eye and the Deaf Ear” with careful attention. As a pastor of a church with a membership of over five thousand, here was Spurgeon’s counsel on how to wisely filter and respond to gossip, criticism, conflicts, and other pastoral difficulties. The wisdom here may prove crucial for a pastor’s survival in the ministry.
It’s easy to admire Spurgeon’s many accomplishments, but it would be wrong to think that his pastoral experience was simply one triumph after another. Rather, Spurgeon knew intimately the financial issues, health challenges, spiritual exhaustion, criticisms, and all kinds of other trials that pastors face. These lectures contain the wise counsel of one who persevered in faithfulness amid those trials.
Help for Preachers
Second, Lectures contains some of Spurgeon’s best teaching on preaching, presenting both a theological understanding of the role of preaching, as well as practical instruction on preaching itself. At the heart of Spurgeon’s philosophy of ministry was the preaching of the word, because God’s word is what saves sinners and unites the church. He often said to his students, “The pulpit is the Thermopylae of Christendom: there the fight will be lost or won.” If you’re a pastor who is growing weary of preaching and beginning to lose heart in that work, these lectures may very well be the encouragement you need to see afresh the importance of your preaching ministry.
“At the heart of Spurgeon’s philosophy of ministry was the preaching of the word.”
But how can you grow in your preaching? One way is by learning from other preachers. In these lectures, Spurgeon also gets into the mechanics of preaching and provides all kinds of practical wisdom. When was the last time you thought about the role of posture and gestures in your preaching? How can you make your sermons more interesting through the intentional use of illustrations? Are there ways you can improve your sermon-writing process? Spurgeon addresses all these topics and more. Many pastors today lack mentors to help them grow in their preaching. But in Lectures, pastors have an opportunity to be discipled in their preaching by the Prince of Preachers.
Our Glorious Call
Finally, in Lectures Spurgeon reminds us of the glorious call of pastoral ministry. As engaging, humorous, and illustrative as these lectures are, they also hold serious reminders of our weighty calling as Christian ministers. The first three lectures of the first volume — calling ministers to holiness, to a proper view of their calling, and to private prayer — could be consulted annually by pastors in self-examination. In a day when many preachers are marked by vanity, worldliness, and celebrity, Spurgeon presents to us a vision of the pastorate that is sober, self-controlled, and centered on Christ.
“Spurgeon presents to us a vision of the pastorate that is sober, self-controlled, and centered on Christ.”
Beyond the pastor’s private life, Spurgeon also presents a vision for long-term faithfulness. The lectures on ministerial progress, earnestness, and dependence on the Holy Spirit provide a roadmap for a lifetime of faithful ministry. Many today easily get caught up in church-growth metrics and social-media influence; Spurgeon calls pastors to preach the word, work hard, remain prayerful, and entrust the results to God. In all these lectures, he presents a vision of pastoral ministry that conducts itself in the fear of God and in love for his people.
Even pastors need mentors, and who else better to learn from than a fellow pastor who served faithfully in his church for 38 years and saw God work mightily through his ministry? So grab yourself a copy. Even better, find other pastors and church leaders to work through it together. And return to those warm Friday-afternoon lectures to hear from Spurgeon himself.
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He Drew Me Through Agony: My Painful Path to Faith
Midway through my surgical training, the suffering I witnessed on a single night in the ER pitched my faith into turmoil.
I was a nominal Christian, with an understanding of God grounded in sentimentality rather than biblical truth. When paramedics rushed three dying young men through the sliding doors of my emergency department, my meager faith unraveled. One teenager had been bludgeoned with a baseball bat while his 4-year-old son watched; another had been stabbed in the chest; a third, shot in the head. In each case, I fought and failed to save their lives, and then watched helplessly as their families crumpled to the ground in grief.
I had dealt with tragedy in the ER before, but not to this extreme. After work the next morning, I felt hollowed, as if a vital part of me had been torn out from its roots. Although my body ached for rest, I drove two hours from home in desperation to connect with something good and true. I stopped at a bridge spanning the Connecticut River and tried to pray, but through closed lids I saw only the blood staining my gloves and three boys’ eyes fixed in their final gaze. I could still hear their mothers’ screams as they collapsed to the floor in anguish.
As I stood on that bridge, I wrestled with grief. I wrestled with guilt. And over and over again, the question troubled me: How could a good God allow this? How could he allow people to look at one another, to perceive no worth, and then to devastate life with a trigger pull or a swing of a bat?
After years of stumbling through life without Scripture, the only answer I could discern that day was silence. I decided that God must not exist, and as I trudged back to my car, I abandoned my faith on that bridge.
Yet God did not abandon me. Within a year, he would use my pain — the very calamity that had cracked my brittle faith in two — to draw me to himself.
Age-Old Question
While few people glimpse the tragedies and triumphs of the trauma bay, questions about suffering and faith have troubled humankind for ages. For centuries, academics and laypeople alike have wrestled with “the problem of pain,” as C. S. Lewis phrases it. The problem, in brief, is how a benevolent and all-powerful God could permit pain and suffering in the world he created.
Lewis himself penned an entire book to address the question. In The Problem of Pain, he argues that pain and suffering are in fact compatible with, rather than contradictory to, the God of the Bible. His commentary includes a famous quote that struck me like a thunderclap in the wake of my own faith struggles, and that continues to guide and refine me whenever hurts break into my days: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pain: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world” (91).
Problem of Pain
Lewis himself was no stranger to suffering, having lost his parents at an early age and fought in World War I. And then later, he would grieve his wife’s untimely death. In The Problem of Pain, such personal experiences nuance his writing and combine with his deftness as an apologist to offer a thorough, careful exposition of suffering through a Christian lens.
In keeping with his tradition of intellectual rigor, Lewis offers a particularly strong argument for suffering as a necessary consequence of the fall. “Pain is unmasked, unmistakable evil,” he writes. “Every man knows that something is wrong when he is being hurt” (90). Pain and suffering are the penalties for our corruption of the created order (Genesis 3:16–19; Romans 6:23), and they signify our rebellion against a good and holy God.
And yet, Lewis does not oversimplify the place of suffering in the Christian life. Instead, he acknowledges that God can and does work through pain for the ultimate good of his people (Romans 8:28). Given our depravity, Lewis argues, God’s love for us must necessarily be corrective and remedial (Hebrews 12:6). With hearts like ours, to give us what we always desire would be to ignore the reproof necessary to shape us into the image of Christ.
Smashing Our Idols
Left to ourselves, Lewis notes, we are content to cleave to our sins and to make idols of what we fashion with our own hands (Romans 1:25). “The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it,” he writes (90). Through the “megaphone” of pain, therefore, God prods us to acknowledge our need for him, for our good and for his glory:
Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. . . . What then can God do in our interests but make “our own life” less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness? (94)
“Pain rouses us from spiritual deafness, convicts us of sin, and reminds us that his grace is sufficient.”
According to Lewis, when pain crashes into our lives, it prompts us to seek happiness in God rather than in our own self-sufficiency. It rouses us from spiritual deafness, convicts us of sin, and reminds us that his grace is sufficient and his power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). Pain, then, is entirely compatible with a good, powerful, and loving God, and in fact speaks of his love for us — a love that is neither sentimental nor flimsy, but robust and self-sacrificial. A love so radical that he gave his only Son for us (John 3:16).
Rousing a Deaf World
Although Lewis builds his analysis with reason and logic, his assertions have biblical precedent. As Paul explains in Romans 1:18–23, evidence of God’s existence surrounds us in abundance, but we shield our eyes from his glory. We jealously cultivate the fallacy that we are entirely in command and self-sufficient, that we have no need for him, and that we owe him no debt. We do what is right in our own eyes rather than seek God’s will and righteousness (Proverbs 14:12; 21:2).
Meanwhile, God knows what we need (Matthew 6:8) and will work through our pain to steer us back to his guiding light and love. The Bible is replete with such examples. Jonah, the wayward prophet, ran from God and didn’t pray until he was locked within the darkness of the fish’s belly (Jonah 2:1–9). Jesus waited until Lazarus had died before journeying to his home, so he could reveal to the mourning throng that he was the Christ (John 11:15, 40–42). Samson repented of his transgressions and defeated the Philistines only after God had stripped away his strength and his pride (Judges 16:28–29). Throughout the Bible, God works through suffering to awaken his people to their need for him.
“Throughout the Bible, God works through suffering to awaken his people to their need for him.”
After I walked away from God, I had no claim to hope. I discerned no meaning, no glint of mercy lining the dark moments. I saw only the horror of life, the pervasive suffering.
And in that darkness, God roused me to look to him.
Rousing Me to Faith
For a year after that night in the ER, living felt a lot like dying. Without God infusing the world with purpose, despair tarnished everything. In this ghostly state, existing but not thriving, I ruminated daily about taking my own life.
Then, while I was working in the ICU, I witnessed a patient’s improbable recovery in response to prayer. Had darkness not enveloped me, I might have dismissed the event as an outlier, but my time in the wilderness had primed my soul for God. My journey through pain had ignited in me a thirst for him and for his word.
One evening, I trudged home bedraggled and exhausted after a trauma call, and for the first time I cracked open a Bible, its cover sheathed in a layer of dust. I read Romans 5:1–9, burst into tears, and reread verses 3–5 as sunset spilled over the horizon:
Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Not only are pain and a loving God compatible, but on this side of the cross, we can rejoice in our sufferings. God works through our pain to refine us, to strengthen us, and to instill us with hope. He works through it to draw us to himself, to rouse us as with a megaphone, and to convict us of our desperate need for him. He works through our suffering because — like a father guiding his children toward the one right path — he loves us (Matthew 7:13–14).
God used my time in the darkness to rouse me to his grace. He used it to open my eyes to the truth that his own Son also suffered. Our Savior knows our agonies (Hebrews 4:15). He bore the Father’s wrath for us. And when we are downtrodden, weary, and crushed beneath the suffering of this world, he is gentle and lowly and offers a light burden for our souls (Matthew 11:28–30).