Audio Transcript

We talk often on this podcast about how God gets “more glory” or “most glory” by various things. It’s in the Desiring God slogan, of course: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” Thus, we can conclude that depression will not exist in heaven, because we can give God more glory without it (APJ 30). And God gets more glory in our struggle with sin than if we were made sinless immediately (APJ 33). And God gets more glory in the harmony of diversity — in male and female genders and in his abundance of ethnicities — than he would get if we were all the same (APJ 169 and 927). And Christ receives more glory in the atonement than he would have if he didn’t take up the cross (APJ 265). And Christ gets more glory by defeating Satan at the cross than he would have by taking out Satan at a distance, like as a sniper (APJ 408). And God gets more glory from our willing service than if he forced and coerced labor from us as “a tireless slave-labor force” (APJ 1432). On and on it goes.

With this background in place, we get a question from Devin in Charlotte, North Carolina. “Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for this podcast and for your excellent books, particularly Providence, which I just read and finished with great delight. I have a question for you about discerning our intensity of glorifying God. It seems central to Christian Hedonism — this idea that there are levels of glory that can be given to God. There’s a way to bring him some glory. And then we can bring him more glory. And occasionally we can bring him most glory. Hence, ‘God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.’ You seem to root a lot of ethical decisions in this gradation of doing what most glorifies God. I went to the podcast archive and found that you have explained that we can honor God in three various states of emotions — when our affections are white-hot, or cooled-off, even when our hearts fall into deep depression. But we glorify God most when our affections are white-hot. This was APJ 30. Where in Scripture do you find this gradation of glory? From what I see in the Bible, we either honor God or dishonor him; glorify him or fail to glorify him. It seems more binary. But I assume you’ve put a lot more thought into this than I have. Thanks for any help!”

Well, that’s a sharp question. I like that kind of question because it presses me into the Bible to see if my thoughts are in sync with God’s word. So the question is, Is there biblical warrant, justification, for speaking of more or less glorifying of God, acts that more or less glorify God, rather than a simple either-or: either we glorify him or we don’t — no gradations? Does the glorification of God by man happen in degrees — glorifying more sometimes, less sometimes? Or is that an unbiblical way of thinking? And is that the only way we should speak — namely, that we glorified God or we didn’t, without speaking of degrees or gradations of glorification?

Degrees of Clarity

Now, Devin has a good biblical ground for asking this because if you do the word search on all kinds of formations of the word glory or more or less or other degree words, you do find that the Bible does not very often speak of God being given more or less glory by his people. Almost entirely, it speaks of God being glorified without any references to degrees of more or less. So why do I speak so often about God being more or less glorified?

And here’s the answer. I’ll give a general answer and then some biblical specifics. It basically flows from asking, What does glorify mean? I think it means to show God to be glorious. I think that’s what glorify means: to show God to be glorious — that is, show him to be great or beautiful or valuable. Or you could break it down: show him to be wise, strong, kind, good, loving, just, holy, merciful, gracious, satisfying. So, to glorify is to make clear to others what God is like, so as to seek their praise and admiration of him, so that they join us in seeking to show how great he is. That’s what glorify means, as I understand it.

“To glorify is to make clear to others what God is like, so as to seek their praise and admiration of him.”

So once we trace the meaning of glorify back to things we do or feel or think or say to make God look glorious, then it seems right to say that, since our doing and speaking and feeling and thinking are more or less in accord with God’s worth, from day to day and from hour to hour, therefore, our showing God’s worth will vary in the way our acting and speaking and feeling and thinking vary in the degree that they reflect God’s character. That’s basically my argument.

In other words, my speaking of God getting more or less glory from my life of holiness and love follows from the fact that, biblically, my holiness and love are greater or lesser from time to time. And so, I am showing with greater or less clarity — or greater or less accuracy, or greater or less fullness — the glory of God, because my behavior is more or less in accord with God’s character. That’s my basic understanding of how degrees of glorification are rooted in degrees of clarity that God’s character is seen in my degrees of holiness.

Surpassing Glory

Now, let’s look at some texts to see whether or not there really are biblical pointers to the legitimacy and helpfulness of talking like this. Let’s start with degrees of glory when talking about the progress of redemptive history. Second Corinthians 3:7–10:

Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it.

So, it is not unbiblical to speak of God’s acting through his people in one way to show less of his glory, and in another way to show more of his glory. And by inference, I would say, that’s true individually as well.

Or consider 2 Corinthians 4:15:

It is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

Now, I think that implies that if thanksgiving increases in your life or in your church, God gets glory more clearly, more fully, than if thanksgiving were not increasing in your life or in your church; otherwise, I don’t see why Paul would refer to the increase of thanksgiving and then connect it with the glory of God the way he does.

Or consider Philippians 1:9–11:

It is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.

Paul links this incremental growth or increase of love with his aim that we be filled with the fruit of righteousness “to the glory and praise of God.” So I draw from this that my growth in love, from one degree to the next, is like the good deeds — it’s part of the good deeds or is expressed in good deeds — that Jesus said cause people to glorify God:

Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:16)

So if my love abounds more and more, it seems that the correlation of what it is done for, what my deeds are done for and my love is shown for, would also be greater; namely, God is seen more clearly to be glorious because I have more clearly reflected his character.

Engaging the Heart

Or what about Ephesians 5:18?

Do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart.

Now, what that implies is that the engagement of our heart matters in whether our songs of praise are fitting. Jesus said, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me” (Matthew 15:8).

“As more or less of our hearts are engaged, we show, more or less clearly, the worthiness of God to be loved.”

So it seems to me that the heart is a very variable source of affections for God. The heart can be warm or cold or all kind of gradations in between. And Paul says this matters for the authenticity of our worship, and I would say that it matters for the degree to which our worship conforms to the worth of God, and thus the degree to how clearly he is shown to be our treasure in singing — that is, how clearly he is glorified.

The same thing could be said about the Great Commandment, right?

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. (Mark 12:30)

As more or less of our hearts are engaged, we show, more or less clearly, the worthiness of God to be loved.

Glorified in Gradations

So to wrap it up, let me take Paul’s words when he speaks about his own preaching the mystery of Christ, which includes the truth that “Christ [is] in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). He says, “[Pray] that I may make it clear, which is how I ought to speak” (Colossians 4:4).

So, he’s asking, “O God, would you put it in the hearts of the Colossians to pray for me that when I open my mouth, the mystery of Christ, the glory of Christ, would be clear? Paul knew that when he preached the glories of Christ, the unsearchable riches of Christ, sometimes they were more clear than other times. That’s why he asked for prayer. So he asked for the Colossians to pray that it might be more clear, which is another way of asking for the purpose that Christ would appear more glorious. So that’s the way I think about the gradations of glorifying Christ.

“Not feeling like it.” In the daily pursuit of Christ, I fear no phrase has hindered me more.

A few moments’ reflection reminds me of the silliness of such a feelings-based spirituality. A farmer will find nothing at harvest if he sets aside his plow with a wave of “not feeling like it.” A pianist will end her performances embarrassed if she takes a “not feeling like it” attitude to her practices. A couple will greet their anniversary with an unromantic sigh if they allow “not feeling like it” to govern their marriage.

Yet how often have I sidestepped habits of grace with a subtle, unspoken “not feeling like it” — and have expected to somehow still mature in faith and love and feel the spontaneous joy of the Spirit?

Any number of reasons stand ready to endorse the lazy slouch. “I don’t want to be a hypocrite.” “I have so much to do today anyway.” “I’ll get more from Scripture when I feel like reading it.” And perhaps the most common: “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Meanwhile, today’s spiritual potential — today’s comfort, joy, power, life — disappears on the winds of whim.

Reclaiming Routine

To some, the word routine carries the stiffness of stale bread and the rot of dead plants, the stuffiness of library books never opened and attics dusty with age. The very thought of routine spirituality — planned, scheduled, disciplined — seems to undermine the ministry of the life-giving, freedom-bestowing Spirit. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17) — and where the spirit of routine is (we may think), there is bondage.

The dichotomy, however, is self-imposed, self-imagined. If routine smells stale to us, the problem lies in our own sniffer. No doubt, routine can be made stale and dead, as any flower can be trampled underfoot or any sky cloaked with smog. But routine itself remains good, the friend of freedom and joy.

We might call any number of witnesses to testify on behalf of routine: Daniel, who “got down on his knees” and prayed “three times a day” (Daniel 6:10), whether lions waited or not; Peter and John, who went to the temple “at the hour of prayer” even after Pentecost brought the Spirit (Acts 3:1); or our Lord Jesus himself, who spontaneously defeated the devil’s lies, after fasting for forty days, because he had routinely memorized Deuteronomy (Matthew 4:1–10).

But perhaps the most striking ode to routine appears in Psalm 119.

Routines Like Riverbeds

None who read Psalm 119 would diagnose its author as dry; none who take up his psalm can sing it in hushed tones. The man sounds as alive as a spring sparrow, as exuberant as the exclamations in so many of his sentences. He isn’t always joyful, but oh, how he feels, freely and spontaneously. The whole psalm is a living pulse.

“Blessed are you, O Lord!” he shouts (verse 12). His soul, like his song, “is consumed with longing for your rules at all times” (verse 20). Both midnight and early morning may find him awake (verses 62, 147), too ecstatic to sleep, for “your testimonies are my delight” (verse 24). His hates and his loves burn too bright to be hidden (verses 104, 119).

“Under God, routines carve riverbeds in the soul where the streams of spontaneous love run deep.”

We might imagine such spontaneous affection lives beyond our reach, the possession of a super-spiritual personality. Pay attention to the psalm, however, and you may notice something that rivals the intensity of his feelings: the consistency of his routine. Scripture poured out of the man’s heart only because he had previously, even fastidiously, “stored” it there (verse 11). “I set your rules before me” was the watchword of his life, no matter the day (verse 30). With a devotion that might make us uncomfortable, he declares, “Seven times a day I praise you for your righteous rules” (verse 164).

Disciplined memorization, daily meditation, planned prayer and praise — under God, such routines carve riverbeds in the soul where the streams of spontaneous love run deep. They raise windmills in the heart to catch the breezes of the Spirit. Routines cannot give life of themselves, but they do invite life with all the readiness of a field furrowed, planted, and waiting for the rain.

String and Tune

Psalm 119 (and the rest of God’s word) gives us a robust category for spontaneous spirituality, for prayer and praise that fill the nets of ordinary moments and threaten to sink us for joy. But we have little hope of experiencing spontaneous devotion apart from the unspectacular business of routine. Daily we let down our nets; daily we take them up again; daily we wait for Jesus to bring the catch.

As we consider what routines might serve spontaneity best, we might helpfully think in two broad patterns: morning devotions and midday retreats. If morning devotions string our guitars, midday retreats retune them. If morning devotions inflate our hearts toward heaven, midday retreats give the bump that keeps us skyward. If morning devotions plant a flag for Christ on the hill of dawn, midday retreats beat off the afternoon foes ascending the slopes.

Morning Devotions

In all likelihood, we learned morning devotions as part of Discipleship 101. Repent, believe, and read your Bible every morning. But for that very reason, we can forget just how powerful and formative this pattern of seeking God can be.

There is a reason the psalmists prayed “in the morning” (Psalm 5:3), and sought deep satisfaction “in the morning” (Psalm 90:14), and declared God’s steadfast love “in the morning” (Psalm 92:2). There is a reason, too, we read of Jesus “rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark,” to commune with his Father (Mark 1:35). The morning’s first thoughts and words may not set an iron trajectory for the rest of the day, but a trajectory they do indeed set.

“We have little hope of experiencing spontaneous devotion apart from the unspectacular business of routine.”

Though we have new hearts in Christ, we do not always awake ready to live new. Our old man awakes with us, clinging close; Vanity Fair opens early; the devil waits, winking. Apart from some kind of Godward morning routine, then, we are likely to express throughout the day not spontaneous praise, but spontaneous pride; not spontaneous gratitude, but spontaneous grumbling. And so, in the morning, the wise want the first voice they hear to be God’s. They want the first words they speak to be prayer.

We will not always leave our morning devotions deeply moved. But if done prayerfully and earnestly, consistently and expectantly, then our devotions will set a tone for the hours ahead. We will walk into our day with guitar stringed, more ready to play a song of praise.

Midday Retreats

As valuable as morning devotions can be, however, souls like ours often need more to maintain a lively, spontaneous communion with God throughout the day. As the hours pass by, our strings lose their tune; our hearts drop altitude; our flags wave opposed. So, God gives us another pattern to live by:

These words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:6–9)

We are too weak, too forgetful, to live by morning devotions alone. As we walk through the day, we need promises wrapped round our wrists like watches. We need to wear truth like eyeglasses. We need a world adorned with the words of God.

Signs, frontlets, doorposts — such words sanction our creativity. They invite us, for example, to sanctify space, writing God’s words on mirrors and walls, car dashboards and desks. Some might replace their phone’s screen saver with a promise from the morning’s reading; others might write down a verse and slip it in their pocket. A friend in college, taking Deuteronomy 6:8 literally, sometimes drew the armor of God on his hands, a vivid reminder of the day’s spiritual warfare.

These words also invite us to sanctify time. Many would find help from retreating once or twice a day, even for a few minutes, to find a silent spot, hear again God’s words, and cast the day’s accumulated burdens on him. We might also benefit from simply pausing briefly before meetings or new tasks to settle our souls in Christ.

Finally, these words invite us to sanctify conversation. “You . . . shall talk of them,” God says — and not just in some places occasionally, but everywhere often. God means for his words to infiltrate our small talk and passing comments, our summaries of the day and our pillow-time reflections. Such conversations might start with a simple “What did you read today?” to spouse or roommate or friend.

However they come, midday retreats offer a pause and parenthesis in the day’s chaos, an oasis in the wilderness of tasks and temptations, a small Sabbath in the middle of packed afternoons, retuning our hearts to the morning’s song.

Revived and Rejoicing

The next time “not feeling like it” threatens to derail a good routine, we might confront our feelings with the words of David:

The law of the Lord is perfect,     reviving the soul; . . .the precepts of the Lord are right,     rejoicing the heart. (Psalm 19:7–8)

God’s word revives the soul and rejoices the heart — which suggests we will sometimes come to God’s word with souls asleep and hearts unfeeling. We will sit before an open Bible not wanting to read or pray, perhaps wanting to do anything else instead. And right there, in the midst of a difficult routine, God may revive our drooping feelings with a word.

When we allow “not feeling like it” to keep us from routine, we are like a man who avoids medicine because he doesn’t feel healthy, or who avoids fire because he doesn’t feel warm, or who avoids food because he doesn’t feel full. But when we engage in routine anyway — prayerfully and expectantly — we may walk away revived and rejoicing, our souls alive with spontaneous praise, “not feeling like it” nowhere to be found.

Audio Transcript

It’s been almost three years since our last episode on dating, Pastor John. You’ve briefly mentioned dating in a couple of episodes since, but there have been no episodes devoted to the topic for a long time — our longest drought ever for such a major theme on the podcast, which you can begin to appreciate by scanning my digest of all those many episodes in the APJ book. I titled that section “On Dating, Romance Idols, and Fornication” (pages 141–65). Much has been said already, but not everything — no. Because you all surprise us with great questions, like this one today: Can a single pastor date within his local church? Should he? Why wouldn’t he?

Here’s the email: “Pastor John, hello! I’m a 23-year-old pastoral intern and MDiv student preparing to enter full-time pastoral ministry soon, sooner than I expected. I’m a single man and find it challenging to date while being on this pastoral track. First, I find many young women intimidated by the stereotypes of the pastor’s wife — stewarding a meager income, maintaining a pristine public image, and ministering to the women in the church. All lofty callings. Second, due to the busy amount of work and school, I meet very few women outside my church. Third, I hesitate to date inside my church, due to my position on the pastoral team. What’s your advice for someone in my situation? Is it appropriate for pastors to use dating apps? And if this is even remotely possible, how would a pastor wisely date within his own church? The closer I get to becoming a pastor, the smaller the possibility of marriage appears to me. Your wisdom and encouragement would be greatly appreciated.”

Well, I’m just smiling here, because I think 95 percent of our listeners are not in this category of being a pastor (or almost a pastor) who would like help in finding a wife, but I’m betting 90 percent of them are not going to turn this off. They wonder, What is Pastor John going to say? And so I’m wondering that too. Only I get a chance to turn this off and think about it.

I’m going to focus on the young pastor himself, not just the seminary student or the apprentice. I know that’s where he is, but I’m just thinking about a young pastor. He comes right in — maybe he’s an associate or a youth pastor, or maybe he’s the senior pastor at age 27 or 28 — and he’s single, and he’d like to be married. What do I have to say to him? And I’m going to start and end with the glorious truth of God’s mysterious providence.

1. Believe in God’s providence.

There are two mysteries of God’s providence that I never cease to be amazed at. I’m amazed at all of them, but these two just blow me away. One is the mystery of how God in his providence calls people into full-time, vocational, Christian service in the church or on the mission field. How does that happen? This strikes me as astonishing and glorious. One year, here’s a person studying in school — maybe a junior, senior, or maybe high school, or maybe serving in a trade or a profession selling shoes, for example, like one of our missionaries did. And then ten years later, there they are — a devoted, full-time, lifelong missionary in a distant, hard place. How in the world did that happen? What did God do to make that happen?

The other mystery is how God in his providence brings a man and a woman together from who knows where — a thousand miles apart, ten thousand — in such a way that they come to know each other, trust each other, love each other so deeply that they get married and live together for sixty years. I look back on how I came to meet and fall in love with Noël, my wife, as a totally unexpected, undeserved, inexplicable gift of providence.

So, that’s where I’m starting. And I just want to say to young pastors, single pastors, believe that. Believe in the providence of God. He is up to something. Yes, he is, in ways you can’t even see.

2. Seek a ministry-minded woman.

The next thing I would say to this young pastor or aspiring pastor is that if a woman is put off by the thought of being a part of your full-time ministry, she’s not the right woman. You want a woman who will not just tolerate your calling, your burden, your passion, your risks in ministry, but a woman who loves the thought of throwing her life into that with you. This is what God has been making her to be. She wants to share that kind of life, walking on the edge of eternity — with all of its difficulties and risks and challenges.

And you can believe — yes, you can — God is raising up many such women in our day. He’s always been doing this — women who want to find and be found by a trustworthy, strong, kind lover of God who wants to live his life radically in the service of Christ. That’s what they want. She’s been dreaming about this. She wants to live that kind of life herself, and she would love to do it with a like-minded husband. Believe that; wait for that. She’s out there.

3. Ask for help from your church.

The third thing I would say is this: be realistic and mature and candid with your fellow church leaders — the older, mature, trusted fellow pastors or laypeople. Tell them how you’re thinking, how you’re feeling, how you’re hoping, and ask them to partner with you in praying and working toward a happy outcome of finding God’s woman for you. Now, if this sounds pragmatic rather than romantic, it is. Finding a compatible Christian spouse ought to be a practical community project involving family and church, not a secretive solitary quest. Just get over that. That’s not the way you need to think about it.

When I say “ask for their help,” I mean ask them first to pray. Oh my goodness. Over the last fifty years, I have prayed specifically with many young men especially. They’re the ones who feel most free, I think, to come forward after a service and tell me, “I want to be married. Would you pray with me?” And I prayed with them. All the ones I can remember are married. There’s no shame in this to go to a friend or a pastor and say, “Pray that God would lead me to the woman that I could spend my life with.”

“Lots of couples meet because they follow their ministry heart on some venture and discover each other in the process.”

And besides prayer, I mean ask your leaders for their counsel. Ask them to keep their eyes open in regards to their near and far networks. My wife kept her eyes open at our church for husbands, for example, for her sisters. And she introduced three of her sisters to the men they married at our church, and she did it very intentionally. This was quite intentional. Yes, it can be awkward, but it can be glorious. It can be glorious. Be a mature, confident young man. This will not be your last brush with awkwardness. So grow up, put your big boy pants on, and be confident that these folks are for you and can help you in this process.

4. Consider apps with caution.

The fourth thing I would say is that I’m not opposed in principle to dating apps. How you go about meeting a person is not nearly as crucial as how you go about discerning that person’s character. That’s another challenge, and it’s not going to happen on an app. But I would offer this caution: it seems to me that a pastor is a fairly public person, and the secrecy surrounding the use of dating apps could tarnish your reputation as one who wants to be totally candid with his church and especially with his leaders. Now, that’s not a veto — I don’t have a veto vote here against dating apps — but it is a caution. I would give preference to the open networks that you have rather than to secret ones.

5. Give yourself to ministry.

The fifth thing I would say is this: pursue various ministry ventures, like short-term mission trips (you might lead them or just go on them) or mercy-ministry ventures (hurricane in New Orleans, and your church packs a bus full and goes down to help put sandbags up or rescue houses) or educational tours where the nature of the venture might be self-selecting. In all these ministries that you go on, they might be self-selecting for the kind of woman that would go on it too. Lots of couples meet because they follow their ministry heart on some venture and discover each other in the process.

6. Rest in God’s providence.

And finally, I would return to God’s mysterious and wonderful providence.

I have seen God lead two people together in the most unlikely ways. For example, two people at our church both wanted to be in missions, both were single, and both wanted to be married. They didn’t know each other. They surrendered. They just said, “Okay, it’s over. We probably won’t get married.” They gave themselves utterly to the mission. Both of them were sent by various missions, posted to one of the hardest places on the globe. And guess what? They discovered each other there after they had basically surrendered and said, “Well, it didn’t happen at home. It’s sure not going to happen on the mission field.” And that was not true.

So, trust God’s mysterious providence. Focus on doing your ministry with all your might. Walk through the doors he puts in front of you. Pray without ceasing. And trust God’s good timing.