Tyler Kenney is the Web Content Assistant at Desiring God.

“Guard your heart” is a good command. That’s because it’s biblical:

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life. (Proverbs 4:23)

In its context, this verse suggests that keeping—or guarding—your heart means to retain wise words and resist wicked desires. But I’m afraid some people—ahem, me, too often—use it to justify being cowardly or cold instead of loving others, because we think that “guard your heart” means “don’t get hurt.”

C. S. Lewis provides the necessary rebuke:

Of all arguments against love none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as “Careful! This might lead you to suffering.”

To my nature, my temperament, yes. Not to my conscience. When I respond to that appeal I seem to myself to be a thousand miles away from Christ. If I am sure of anything I am sure that His teaching was never meant to confirm my congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities.…

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. (From The Four Loves, as found in The Inspirational Writings of C.S. Lewis, 278-279.)

A number of new John Piper products have been released this fall, and we want to make sure you know that many of them are also available online for free. For example, you can download full length PDFs of Rethinking Retirement, Spectacular Sins, and Stand.

You might also like to know that we have added text for the well-known message “Doing Missions When Dying is Gain,” as well as for the very first sermon Pastor John preached at Bethlehem, while candidating to be pastor.

There are a few new translated resources as well. See the latest additions to our Spanish, Portuguese, and Bulgarian sections.

(Update: The book This Momentary Marriage is now available too.)

Today Johnathon Bowers introduces us to the new online Bible study site, Bible Arc.

In his post, Johnathon explains what the website has to offer, what the Bible study method "arcing" is, and why learning it is worth all the time you'll invest.

He testifies that it is “one of the most significant tools for Bible study I’ve ever learned.” And he concludes with a quote from John Piper that tells how arcing transformed the way he reads his Bible.

Paul Tripp spoke tonight on the most essential problem and the only lasting remedy to life's communication woes. You can listen to the message yourself and read my notes on it.

There are three things I know about you:

1. You talk. Every day of our lives and every relationship is filled with talk. Words are God's idea, and they belong to him. So when you hear the word "talk" you ought to hear something that is high and holy and important. Let us never regard talk as something that doesn't matter.
2. Both the saddest and the most celebratory moments of your life have been accompanied by talk.
3. Your world of talk is a world of trouble.

This last point is defeating, but the redeeming love of God is extremely zealous. And because of that we can have the courage to look at this difficult area.

What is the trouble of our talk?

For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, 44 for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thornbushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. 45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks. (Luke 6:43-45)

Christ teaches us in this passage that we live out of our hearts. What does the Bible mean by the word "heart"? It means the causal core of your personhood. It is your directional system, your steering wheel. Your behavior isn't caused by the situations and relationships outside of you. It's caused by the way your heart reacts to those things.

Word problems aren't vocabulary or technique problems. They are heart problems. Christ uses the example of the tree. Apple trees are apple-istic all the way down, a principle of organic consistency. We want to think that our problem is outside of us rather than inside of us. But that is a very dangerous heresy, because when you can convince yourself of that, you quit being a seeker after the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. You must come to admit that you are your greatest communication problem.

Much of what we do in our attempts to change communication is nothing less than trying to nail apples onto a fruitless tree. You may get it to look authentic and good for a little while, but those apples will soon rot and the tree will be fruitless again next year.

It's only when you stand before your Redeemer and are humbly willing to say, regardless of the flawed people you live among, "I am my greatest communication problem," you are heading in a direction of fundamental change.

What is the war for the heart?

It is most briefly summarized in a little phrase in 2 Corinthians 5:15: "[Jesus] died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised." Sin is fundamentally antisocial. It makes myself the primary focus. It is all about "I want, I want, I want, I want, I want." Apart from Christ we are vats of desire and entitlement. Notice Paul's warning in Galatians:

For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. (Galatians 5:13-15)

We must never say that harsh, proud, unloving, ungracious communication is ever OK. It's not OK. God has invested words with power and Paul says that people can be destroyed by what you say. Sin dehumanizes the people in our lives. It makes them either into vehicles that help me get what I want or obstacles that get in the way of what I want. If they help me get what I want, I speak kindly to them. If they're in the way, I speak harshly to them.

God didn't give us grace to enable us to serve our own kingdom. He gave us grace to enable us to serve his kingdom. The entire law is summarized in a single command: love your neighbor as yourself. Why is that a summary of all that God calls me to? Because it is only when I love God above all else that I'll ever love my neighbor as myself. You don't fix language problems horizontally. You fix them vertically.

What kind of kingdom is the kingdom of God? It's a kingdom of boundless, glorious, powerful, personal, transforming love. The center event of that kingdom is a shocking sacrifice of redeeming love. You know nothing about his kingdom unless you understand that it is a kingdom of love. And it's when our hearts are taken up with the mystery of that great love that our words become words of love and peace and healing.

True love is not propelled by duty. It is propelled by gratitude. We love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19).

What is this thing called love that is to drive my world of talk?

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. (1 John 4:7-12)

You don't define love through a set of abstract concepts. You define love according to what God did. Love is willing self-sacrifice for the redemptive good of another that doesn't demand reciprocation or that the person being loved is deserving.

But as long as sin still lives in me I get lured into the desires of my claustrophobic little kingdom of one. I try to get satisfied with the little glories that will never really satisfy me, and I need the saving grace of Christ.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, 4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. (2 Peter 1:3-4)

If you are God's child the power to live according to love is already in your storehouse. This is not a future "will be." It's a redemptive present "is"! He has given us everything we need for life and godliness so that we have access to it today.

O that we would live out of that identity! Instead we live in the poverty of inability when we have been enabled by Christ.

What are the gifts of our redemption?

• Forgiveness of our sins by the blood of Christ
• Empowerment to do those things that he calls us to do, and
• Ultimate deliverance from every ounce of sin in our hearts.

The glorious kingdom of transforming love is ours for the taking. “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom" (Luke 12:32). Why would you enter once again the claustrophobic confines of your own little self-centered world?

What kingdom rules your words? Whose kingdom do you speak in service of? The claustrophobic kingdom of self or the big-sky glory-infused kingdom of God? For most of us this is mixed, and so we still need the redeeming grace of Christ.

Three ways to pray each morning:

1. God, I am a man in desperate need of help this morning.
2. I pray that in your grace you would send your helpers my way.
3. I pray you would give me the humility to receive the help that comes.

The thesis of Dan Taylor's message:

The single best way of conceiving of faith and the life of faith is by seeing it as a story in which you are a character.

1. Stories are God's idea.

Stories are how God has chosen to present himself in the Bible. The theme of his story is shalom: all things in their created place, doing what they were created to do, in loving relationship with their Creator. And it is a story into which God invites you and me as characters.

If faith were just an idea the intellect alone might be adequate for dealing with it. But since it is a life we ought to live, we need story in order to learn it.

Why might God have chosen story?

It has the power to move us. Understanding stories involves the intellect, but it involves more than that: intuitions, imagination, physical sense, and personal experience.

Story is also a great way to preserve knowledge over many generations. Consider what Joshua commanded the people to do when they came to cross the river Jordan.

Then Joshua called the twelve men from the people of Israel, whom he had appointed, a man from each tribe. 5 And Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the LORD your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, 6 that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ 7 then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.” (Joshua 4:4-7)

Joshua's pile of rocks is a story prompt, by which a new generation could understand the power of God. You could say propositionally that the Lord is powerful, but by itself it doesn't have any impact. How is the Lord powerful? Let me tell you a story...

Propositions are important, but they depend on the stories out of which they arise for their power, meaning, and application. Imagine having all the propositions of faith but none of the stories. They would be true, but we wouldn't know what to do with them.

Propositions are shorthand for story. They stand in for stories that we don't have the time to tell. And the Bible doesn't ask us to chose between proposition and story. They are both there, and they need each other.

Propositions serve as a check on story, clarifying how they ought to be interpreted, and stories serve as a check on propositions, keeping them from being shallow, inert, or legalistic. So we need them both. But take warning: never let your propositions get far from the stories out of which they came.

2. Stories fit how we have been made and how we live.

Humans are biologically made to be story tellers and listeners. The only way for the brain to survive taking in and processing new data is through story. And we are social creatures, made to be in relationship with God and others. And one of the most powerful ways to connect with each other is through story. "How was your day?" is a story prompt.

3. Like faith, stories engage us as whole persons, not as parts.

No one believes anything important with the intellect alone. Believing is a whole body, whole life experience. If it doesn't involve everything, it's not belief but simply an agreement with an idea. Believing enlists all the aspects of the mind. It involves the will, curiosity, personality, character, our bodies, imagination. You don't believe anything deeply that isn't a product of all that you are.

Reason is a tool that will serve any master, including the most odious. By itself it does not get us where we need to go. We need to use it as well as we can, but we are foolish to think that any single human faculty is sufficient to guide our entire lives. A lot of wrong thoughts about life come from not treating people wholly. Anything that respects only reason, or only will-power or discipline will break down.

Consider the example of Nathan's confrontation of David, after he had slept with Bathsheba and murdered her husband (2 Samuel 12). He tells a story to David, and he tells it masterfully, using timing and irony and pathos. David becomes enraged by the actions of the rich man in Nathan's story and declares that he deserves to die.

Notice that David's intellect, emotion, sense of justice, and body are involved. He responds as a whole person, which is exactly the response Nathan must have desired. And then the prophet says most powerfully, "You are that man!," bringing the full force of the message home to David and leading him to repentance.

4. Stories are about choices and their consequences.

And so is the life of faith. The essence of story is people making choices. We feel like we're in that position ourselves oftentimes, and we're looking for help. So they draw us in. They make us ask, "What would I do if I was in that situation?"

5. Stories have the power to change us.

And this is precisely what faith is about--changed lives. An important story cries out "You must be different because of what you have heard." David could not hear Nathan's story and its application and pretend like he could go about his own business again. It is the same with the Gospels--once you've heard them you are not allowed to remain the same.

6. Stories are directive.

They tell us we must change and they tell us how we must change. They teach us our lines in the script. People who don't seem to know how to behave in life have often not been told stories about how they are to live.

7. Stories are strong and complex enough to contain pain, suffering, failure and mystery.

If your faith story has no room for these things, it is not the biblical story.

8. Stories call us to action.

So does faith. Nothing kills a story faster than a passive protagonist. They must act, otherwise the story comes to and end. So too in the life of faith. It must lead to action. We are more likely to live out our faith if we conceive of ourselves as characters in a story than if we think it involves just maintaining some propositions.

9. Each of us needs a master story.

For Jews in the Old Testament it is the story of the Exodus. The master story for Christians is the Easter story, the resurrection of Christ, which also tells us who we are. If we forget that story, we start to believe that we are like everyone else.

Stories are not entertainment, decoration, or illustration. They are the raw material of thought, and they tell us how to live. The major difficulties of the world are a result of collision between master stories, whether in politics, religion, history, etc.

Be warned, however. Not all stories are created equal. Master stories can be healthy or unhealthy. They can leave you trapped in brokenness and despair. Satan is also a storyteller. He takes the story of what happened in the Garden of Eden and gives it a new interpretation. The good news, however, is that no one has to remain in a broken story.

10. Stories create communities.

That's who we are as Christians centered around the stories of the Bible. And our unity goes deeper than blood.

11. Stories makes connections between seemingly unconnected things.

12. Stories are the foundation for meaning and significance.

Listen to the whole message—it's far more illustrative than this blog post.

The following is taken from my notes on Bob Kauflin's message. You can listen to the whole thing or read the notes.

1) Singing can help us remember words.

Ever notice how easy it is to recall the words of songs you haven't heard for 20 years? We store literally hundreds, even thousands of songs in our memory vaults. Music has an unusual mnemonic power.

We remember patterns in music much better than patterns in words alone. Rhyme, meter and song are the most powerful mnemonic devices. They govern and restrict the way we say words and the time it takes to say them.

Implications

• In the church we should use effective melodies, that is, melodies that people are able to remember and that they want to remember.
• We should sing words God wants us to remember. Ask yourself, If the teaching of our church was limited to the songs we sing, what would our people know?
• We should seek to memorize songs. Don't be too dependent upon screens or hymnbooks.

2) Singing can help us engage the words emotionally.

Music is a language of emotion in every culture of every age. It is capable of effecting us in profound and subtle ways (like when Saul's spirit was calmed by David's harp).

Implications:

• We need a broad emotional range in the songs we sing: reverence, awe, repentance, grief, joy, celebration, etc.
• We don't need to pit different styles or traditions against one another. They each serve to help us in different ways.
• Know that there is a difference between being emotional moved and spiritually enlightened. Music has a voice but we're not always sure what that voice is saying. It can make us feel peaceful, but it can't tell us that the Lord is our shepherd or that Jesus endured God's wrath in our place to bring us eternal peace with God.
• Singing should be an emotional event. And they should be religious affections. God is worthy of our highest, purest, and strongest emotions. Singing helps express and unite them. Singing without emotion is an oxymoron.

3) Singing can help us use words to demonstrate and express our unity.

The first two points can be accomplished when we sing by ourselves, but this point needs other people.

People sing together in the strangest places: rock concerts, sporting events, birthdays, weddings, funerals. Singing together tends to bind us together. It enables us to spend extended periods of times expressing the same thoughts and passions.

Implications

• We should sing songs that unite rather than divide the church. We can appreciate the diverse musical styles and genres, but we shouldn't try and make church worship "something for everybody." There should be a unifying musical center that focuses on the sound of the people themselves.
• Musical creativity in the church has functional limits. Your iPod shouldn't be the starting point for selecting songs to sing together. We want to pursue a creativity that is undistracting and not just innovative.
• We must be clear that it is the gospel and not music that unites us. We shouldn't connect with people at our churches because they have the same song selection on their iPods. We should love them because Christ has enabled us to love them.
• Ask yourself, What are we doing to encourage our church in corporate singing? In the new heavens and earth we will sing gloriously and for a long time. Our thoughts and passions will be focused, and we will have the strength to give him the glory he deserves. What a glorious thing to anticipate that time! And part of our singing here on earth is anticipation of what is to come.

Tonight's panel discussion featured Sinclair Ferguson, Mark Driscoll, and John Piper, with questions by Justin Taylor. Here's what was asked:

• Pastor John, anything in particular from Sinclair's message that stood out to you or convicted you?
• Sinclair, how did you come to believe the gospel?
• How do you avoid the extremes of either indulging in controvery or neglecting it to a fault?
• What have you learned, Mark, from those who have criticized you?
• Sinclair, how do you use the psalms to minister to your own soul?
• Pastor John, in Matthew 12 Jesus says that people will have to give account on judgment day for every careless word they speak. How is that not massively discouraging?
• Mark, how do you counsel people from the cross?
• What alternative do people offer who are trying to get rid of the substitutionary atonement?
• Sinclair, can you say something about the importance of the doctrine of union with Christ? Any resources you recommend on this subject?

Listen to their answers.

You should consider inviting an international student to live with you. Perhaps you have an extra bedroom in your house, or maybe there’s space in your apartment opening up soon.

Why not purposefully seek to fill it with some of the most respectful, cultured, and eager-to-learn folks around?

This kind of initiative in the heart of one of my roommates caused our apartment-family to grow this past year, adding a pair of delightful Saudi Arabian young men. Now I'm only more convinced of the idea.

Here’s why I’m persuaded:

• God loves the foreigner (Deuteronomy 10:18) and calls me to love him too (Leviticus 19:34).
• Trying to pronounce Arabic words fosters my humility.
• Ahmed and I often have extended conversations about true religion.
• My news-media-based knowledge of Muslims is supplemented with and corrected by first-hand experience. We are very similar in our desires, our depravity, and our need for a Savior.
• Mohammed knows how to make kabsa, and he’s generous with it.
• I can play an active part in reaching the nations from my own living room.
• It exposes my other friends and family to all the above.

You may not have noticed, but a lot of things were added to the website last month. It's a goal of ours to make our content as complete as possible, so we regularly post material from the past that Pastor John has written or spoken.

Here are some of the recent additions:

1. Taste & See articles for all of 1981, 1983, and 1997.
2. Twenty-three Spanish and eight Bulgarian sermon translations.
3. Men's retreat messages on pursuing an undistracted passion for God.
4. Two messages on Jonathan Edwards and revival.
5. "Parenting for the Glory of God," two messages from Exalt '94 conference.
6. Lecture 1 and lecture 15 from Perspectives on the World Christian Movement.
7. Five messages on Job given at The Cove.
8. Six messages from Sovereign Grace (formerly PDI) conferences, Celebration East 1998 and 1999.

Again, these are just some highlights. You can locate anything that has been added by glancing through our Resource Library.

Some of the finer points in Scripture regarding Jesus' tomb—like the fact that it was new and that it belonged to a rich man—have helped archaeologists match their dig findings with the gospel record, thus affirming its reliability.

Leen Ritmeyer, the archaeological and architectural reconstruction editor for the ESV Study Bible, shares some of these connections in a recent interview he did with Justin Taylor.

When it comes to knowing and believing the truth, are we worse off today than the Israelites who heard God speak from heaven or the apostles who physically sat at Jesus’ feet when he taught?

Or could having the Bible be better than actually being there when its events took place?

Here are 3 reasons we’re better off with our Bibles.

1. Scripture interprets the biblical events for us.

First-hand exposure to the historical acts of God isn’t always the best path to understanding. When Jesus foretold his death and resurrection to the disciples—even giving details about how he would be flogged, spit upon, killed, and raised on the third day—Luke states clearly that “they understood none of these things” (18:34). The disciples were unable to grasp what he said, though they heard the very words of Jesus.

We, on the other hand, the readers of Luke’s Gospel, know exactly what Jesus meant. We have the event interpreted for us in Scripture, clearly shown to be the fulfillment of Old Testament prophesies and an accurate prediction of the events that would soon take place.

That’s not to say that Scripture is better just because it contains more facts. Even after witnessing Christ’s death and resurrection, and having him stand in their midst and show them his scars, the disciples still doubted. They didn’t understand what was going on even though all the historical facts were right in front of them.

What they needed was help to process and place those facts within the framework of God’s revelation. Thus Jesus “opened their minds to understand the Scriptures” and showed them from the Old Testament the significance of what they were witnessing (see Luke 24:36-48).

Like the disciples, we need an interpretation of history in order to grasp God’s meaning in it. We need someone with understanding to take the data, select the significant things said or done, and portray them in an understandable way.

This is precisely what Scripture is: a selective (John 21:25) yet entirely sufficient (2 Timothy 3:16-17, 2 Peter 1:3-4) depiction of what God has done.

2. Scripture’s interpretation is inspired.

No prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. (2 Peter 1:20-21)

We need an interpretation of the past, but we don’t want just any interpretation. We want the Holy Spirit’s. We want an explanation by God himself that accurately conveys the true significance of what he has done and then penetrates our stubborn hearts with it.

Because the Holy Spirit inspired it, Scripture has the precision and power to teach people in a way that supersedes what they could ever learn on their own through direct exposure to the events. As Jesus says,

It is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you.… When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. (John 16:7, 13)

3. Scripture appeals to our inner being.

One danger of having front row seats to God’s actions in history is that we could confuse our response to the mode of revelation with our response to the meaning of it.

We would certainly marvel to hear the Father speak through a thundercloud or to see Jesus walk on water. But we could easily come away from such events with only a natural thrill, rather than any spiritual apprehension of what they meant.

Scripture guards us from this danger simply by being a book. It wasn’t written to wow our physical senses, but, rather, as an appeal to our spiritual sense.

Wouldn’t God know the best way to reveal himself in order to build an authentic body of believers?

Yes. So he inspired men to write, “that [we] may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing [we] may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

What Difference Does Believing This Make?

There are at least two effects of realizing that we are better off with our Bibles than with a time machine to the past.

1. More appreciation for having the Bible.

Rather than using Scripture as a tool for conducting our own analysis of historical events, we can read it as already being its own perfect analysis. The investigation has been done (Luke 1:1-4). We don’t have to “wish we’d been there.” We have what we need in the text.

2. More encouragement to share the Word.

In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man is in hell pleading with Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth to convince his still-living brothers to repent.

But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead’ (Luke 16:29-31).

We don’t need supernatural signs to have an effective witness. We just need to present the Word of God. It is supernatural in itself and more powerful to convince hard-hearted sinners than anything else.

After Solomon’s reign and the split of the twelve tribes, not one king of Israel, the northern kingdom, was righteous. Nearly every monarch gets the explicit judgment, “he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.”

But despite their unremitting evil the Lord still had mercy:

The Lord was gracious to them and had compassion on them, and he turned toward them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them (2 Kings 13:23).

God’s good to his people depended on the great promises he made to the patriarchs, promises that went far beyond their lifetimes. They were faithful men who persevered to the end, but they died, and God’s word still remained unfulfilled.

So God, being a “man of his word,” simply (gloriously!) followed through on what he had sworn. He blessed their descendants for generations, no matter how wicked they became. He didn’t count their trespasses against them, but he blessed them because of the faithfulness of their fathers and his faithfulness to his word.

What’s even more encouraging is that today God does this same thing for anyone who makes themselves a descendant of Abraham through faith in the Messiah (Romans 4:16). On account of Christ’s faithfulness we who gain adoption through him are forgiven all of our trespasses, are reconciled to God, and receive every good thing that his obedience earned.

Despite eight years of new life in Christ, my poor, guilty soul still becomes overwhelmingly anxious at times. A dark cloud comes and just sits over my head, not letting any hope from God’s promises or past faithfulness get through and restore my joy.

And it’s my fault. It’s unbelief and sin.

God never intended for me to find my abiding joy in the circumstances of this life—“in this world you will have trouble”—but to hope in him and his salvation (Habakkuk 3:17-19; 1 Peter 1:13).

Nonetheless, I still let outward things determine my inward state, with the result that I have fickle joy, not Paul-like joy—the kind that would lead me to say,

I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. (Phillipians 4:12)

So when this unhappy lack of sturdy joy leads me to pray (which it always does, and I thank God!), I don’t want to pray primarily for my circumstances to change. I want to pray first for my unbelieving heart to change.

And then I take more comfort in the Father than ever before:

Return, O faithless sons; I will heal your faithlessness. (Jeremiah 3:22)

Leprosy can make life a lot simpler. Being terminally ill often cultivates the clarity of mind that enables people to approach things that are good for them, but which previously made them cower.

Remember the four lepers of Samaria? The city was being starved to death under siege from Syria, and these four were stuck outside the gate between the city and the Syrian army.

They deliberated,

If we say, ‘Let us enter the city,’ the famine is in the city, and we shall die there. And if we sit here, we die also. So now come, let us go over to the camp of the Syrians. If they spare our lives we shall live, and if they kill us we shall but die. (2 Kings 7:4)

The question wasn’t whether or not they'd die. That was the no-brainer that their leprosy helped them recognize. The issue, then, was simply when and where: Next week in the city? Tomorrow at the gate? Or today at the hands of our enemies?

They concluded that their enemies could do nothing more to them than what nature had already assigned. And, unlike their city and their skin, their enemies might even show them mercy.

So, in this case, the most frightful prospect was actually the wisest, most fruitful way to go.

Confused about or unfamiliar with the "doctrines of grace"? Do you want to learn more about their biblical foundations and implications for the Christian life?

We've just updated Pastor John's TULIP seminar with new audio and video.

In this seminar he goes through all five points—Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, and Perseverance of the saints. He identifies them from the Scriptures, considering the arguments against them, and explaining why this package called "Calvinism"—though controversial—is wonderfully good news.

The only sign of religion I saw while driving through Malibu today—alongside the Mercedes, Porsches, and Ferraris—was a single cross carved into the side of a college building.

True, a lack of churches on main street is not a certain indication of a city's spiritual condition, but it made me remember Pastor John's exhortation on Saturday to beware the love of money.

Malibu has nice houses, great views, big beaches, and wonderful weather. No doubt about it—part of me would enjoy spending some extended time there. But I'm thinking that, on account of my weakness, I'd do better to join Agur in his prayer:

Give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you and say, “Who is the Lord?”
or lest I be poor and steal and profane the name of my God.
(Proverbs 30:8-9)

I asked Scott Anderson, Events Director at Desiring God, why we're having this regional conference here in San Luis Obispo.

The idea came about three years ago during the Passion book promotion. The Central Coast Evangelical Pastors Network (CCEPN) did a massive giveaway, and I knew at that time that we must have some mission partners out there.

That's when we connected with Steve Potratz, owner of Parable and chair of the CCEPN steering committee. God graced us with a relationship with him and, through him, a coalition of churches and people who have now gone through several Piper books and DVD kits. Conversations about a regional conference also began to stir.

It's because of their partnership that we've been able to host this conference and the big college event here at Cal Poly tomorrow night.

So we chose San Luis Obispo because of key relationships out there.

We also chose it because it's a really nice place to live, which means that the temptation to waste your life is strong here. So it's a place that needs to hear the call to not waste your life.

We want the central coast of California to be a sending place to the world rather than a destination.

On my flight yesterday morning, I asked two fellow California-bound travelers, “What do you think a conference about not wasting your life would be about?”

“I think of a self-help program with some guy giving ten easy steps for how to not waste your life,” was Eric’s response.

Ben had the same notion, only a little more specific: “It sounds like a self-help group that’s focused on career development.”

“What is a wasted life?” I then asked.

Eric didn’t hesitate: “It’s when someone doesn’t challenge themselves and doesn’t constantly seek new experiences in life.”

“It’s when someone doesn’t seek the good of society but only seeks to benefit themselves,” said Ben.

John Piper just finished his first of three messages on this theme of Don't Waste Your Life, here in San Luis Obispo.

Read or listen to what he has to say about “The Essence of the Unwasted Life.”

Perhaps the best paragraph in the whole Lord of the Rings trilogy is when Frodo is honored with a song to celebrate his success in destroying the Ring of Doom.

And all the host laughed and wept, and in the midst of their merriment and tears the clear voice of the minstrel rose like silver and gold, and all men were hushed. And he sang to them…until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness. (The Return of the King, 933)

Like those who listened to the minstrel’s song, we who see our Savior in the last day will also be made merry with the story of his victory. And we too will be hushed by and wounded with the sweet words that are sung of his self-sacrifice on our behalf.

We will have joy like swords—bright and piercing—and all of the pain and loss of Christ’s death (and our daily dying with him) will only mix with and enhance our bliss.

Session 7: Question and Answers - Piper, Carson, Loritts, Livingstone

The answers to the questions below are summaries from my notes, not necessarily direct quotations. Listen to the audio to see what they said exactly.

How do you sing about God's sovereignty when his providence is sometimes so destructive, even of good things?

John Piper: You do it the way Job did. He fell on his face, saying "The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." That's how he sang. Jesus spoke and made the storm still, and he still has complete control. If you read your Bible, every page of it, then you simply have to stop believing if you can't handle carnage in the world. The horrors of suffering are no surprise to those in Scripture. "Do not think it strange..." (1 Peter 4:12). Don't wait until the suffering shows up until you decide what to do with it. Just settle it: "He reigns!" And weep with your mouth shut.

D. A. Carson: You have to be able to believe many things at once. You have to believe in his goodness as well as acknowledge that there is still pain and evil in the world. And you have to remember the cross. The ultimate evidence of God's love is Jesus, and this Jesus is the one who suffered and died and now reigns over every disaster.

Crawford Loritts: Get on your knees and look at 1 Peter 1:3-9. Our reaction to tragedy shows what we are focusing on most. Peter talks about rejoicing because of the things that last forever. And if we focus on that, we will find a lot of our questions answered already.

John, why did your dad only visit you twice while living in Minnesota?

JP: I don't know the answer. It is an odd thing, but I never held it against him. I'm not afraid to criticize my dad, but it isn't a sore for me. I think my dad was an emotionally broken person. We never talked about really deep personal things, which was a weakness in him. I've discovered that weakness in me, and my sons know that I'm trying to improve. It probably has something to do with a lack of intimacy between him and his father as well as his personality.

Crawford, could you tell us why it took your dad 40 years to tell you, "I love you"?

CL: It's important for us to communicate to our kids that they didn't have a fourth member of the trinity raising them. My father was not perfect. Pop was impatient, and my wife says it's genetic. He had a bit of a short fuse. He didn't suffer stupidity and foolishness with us. He had glaring weaknesses. I never once doubted that my dad loved me. He could be tough as nails and tender as all get-out. But he never articulated "I love you" because of his generation. He didn't want to feminize me. I longed to hear him say it, but it was never a wound to me. He wasn't cold or detached. He made time for me, hugged me, was tremendously affectionate. Just saying those words, in his generation, was not a very manly thing to do.

DA: It is shuddering to think what our children will say about our blind spots in 40 years.

Greg, can you address your signing of A Common Word?

Greg Livingstone: When people have lived for years and years looking for an open door, they find themselves getting a bit hasty when they see an opportunity. Some of us are more called to defense of the faith, and others are more called to opportunity.

I'm not afraid to rebuke the American Christian that thinks that Muslims are bigger sinners than we are. The idea of signing it was to get into the same room as these guys, and then to get one on one. There might be a Nicodemus among them.

Should it have gone in the NY Times? Probably not. It's not my first mistake.

In regards to the Trinity, does the Father exalt the Father or is it just the Son who exalts him?

DA: I once read The Pleasures of God, which I think is John Piper's most important book. That states it best.

JP: It is absolutely true that the Son exalts the Father and the Father exalts the Son, but God is no less God-centered. It is no help to try and soften what sounds like megalomania by defering to language about the Trinity. God's exaltation of his own glory is the very fullness from which his love flows.

How can I discern between taking courageous action and waiting on the Lord?

CL: Major in the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Word of God is our life, and if you want to know His will, it's in the Scriptures. Nevertheless, there is the existential ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The spiritual disciplines serve to help us tap into his ministering.

In the counsel of many there is wisdom. I don't trust any decision I make alone. If there is persistent desire in your heart, pay attention to that too.

Be careful to not equate courage with extroversion. It is about being focused, passionate, and serious about what God has said, and acting accordingly.

How do I honor a father who is an unbeliever or spiritually less mature than me?

DA: There's no formulaic answer to this. The principle of honoring our parents doesn't mean that we obey all that they tell us to do, just as honoring the king doesn't mean you do everything he tells you to do. You don't render to Caeser the things that are not Caeser's. There are ways of disagreeing with our fathers honorably.

JP: The text says to not only honor the king, but to honor all men (i.e. rapists, murders, etc.). How? 1) They are made in the image of God. 2) They have the potential to be sons of God. 3) Listen to them. This honors them. 4) Talk to them in the right tone of voice. Revere the office they hold (and parents hold an office).

What determines which doctrines are fundamental and which ones are necessary?

JP: My principial answer is that the fundamental doctrines are those that grow out from the center of the gospel: Christ died for our sins and rose again the third day. Who is Christ? What happened at the cross? What is the nature of faith? etc.

The closer it is towards the center, the more necessary it is for being a Christian, the more fundamental it is.

DA: When Paul writes to the Corinthains he addresses the matters of first importance: the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (1 Cor 15). The Bible itself insists that there is a core of doctrines that are most important. As soon as you start assuming the center and then just focusing on the marginal items, the next generation will be looser on the center. Be prophetic from the center to address the margins, but don't leave it.

How do you evangelize a Muslim friend?

GL: When you get to methodology of witness, you aren't dealing with a lot of absolutes. You're dealing with attitudes: humility, kindness, etc. These things are commanded of us as Christians. And we have lots to be humble about. Try to understand the motivation of the other person. Schaeffer said it well: "I'd much rather win the man than the debate."

How do you stay fresh spiritually?

GL: I talk to God first thing in the morning. I keep a running conversation all day. When I realize that I've been so busy with somebody else and gone out of communion with him, I repent and renew that communion with him. I also journal and converse with him then. I journal to the Lord.

I usually start my morning by going over the day before. I also seek to meditate on the word and not read it too fast.

CL: I wake up early, go to my study, and get on my face before the Lord. I ask him to take the items of my day. I listen to sermons on the treadmill in the morning. Then I go and read my Bible and journal.

There is a relationship between my physical pace and my spiritual freshness. I pay close attention to my physical exhaustion because it can take my soul down with it.

DA: My traveling makes me irregular. I try to compensate then by taking extra time. I'll take a half day here and there, before leaving on the next trip. I also keep a prayer list, so that I'm not left praying just for those things that happen to come to mind.

Pick up where you are. Don't think that your acceptability before God is dependent on your devotional life.

Being in close fellowship with other people in worship is also a strong means for spiritual freshness.

JP: Everything I have tried to answer for that question is found in When I Don't Desire God. Similar to what Crawford said, I find physical fitness an important factor in my spiritual life. I feel spiritually numb when I don't get enough sleep, and if that numbness endures then I'm a goner.