God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

27 million people worldwide are victims of modern-day slavery. They are forced into the sex trade or back-breaking labor. Most of the victims lured into this criminal world are innocent children.

A new documentary in theaters this week, Call + Response, explores the injustices that are taking place in this underground society.

These atrocities are not only happening in other parts of the world, but also in the United States.

My good friend, Ben Patterson, who helped produce this documentary, encourages me by his example to move toward need and not comfort.

See this movie if you want to learn more and help support modern-day abolitionists. It is only in theaters for a limited time, so I would encourage you to attend one of the showings around the country this week. Check to see if it is in your city.

6,200 women and 1 man. That was the context last night in Chicago at the first True Woman conference as John Piper addressed the topic "The Ultimate Meaning of True Womanhood."

Gretchen Naugle, wife of Desiring God's Lukas Naugle, was on hand and writes,

Pastor John called all women to examine the depths of their womanhood and their faith. He stated, "If you base your womanhood on competency you diminish the glory of Christ."

When we as women embrace our God-given role, we proclaim the glory of Christ at Calvary. We were called to proclaim the glories of Christ in all that we do, even the countless diaper moments that come with being a mom and in the hard, sacrificing moments of being single.

We need strong theology to stand strong through the challenges of this life, because as Pastor John said, "Wimpy theology makes for wimpy women."

One of my long-standing dissatisfactions with the focus of biblical theology is the habit of tracing God’s faithfulness only as far back as his covenant-keeping. Righteousness (tsedeqa) is portrayed as covenant-keeping. Love (hesed) is portrayed as covenant-keeping. Faithfulness (emet) is portrayed as covenant-keeping.

This has an ill-effect. It skews biblical revelation by making God’s relation with man seem more ultimate than God himself. There is always something more ultimate than God’s faithfulness to his covenant, namely, God’s faithfulness to God.

If we are faithless, he remains faithful—for he cannot deny himself. (2Timothy 2:13)

Here is how Jeremiah pleads for God’s covenant-keeping mercy:

“Do not spurn us, for your name’s sake;
do not dishonor your glorious throne;
remember and do not break your covenant with us.” (Jeremiah 14:21)

Beneath covenant-keeping there is a more ultimate foundation: God’s allegiance to his name—God’s jealousy for the honor of the glory of his throne.

This emphasis on God’s allegiance to his own name and glory behind his allegiance to his covenant and his people, is desperately needed in a day when we are spring-loaded by nature and culture to make ourselves ultimate: “Of course, God will keep his covenant, he made it with us!”

There is a great biblical antidote for our pride. God keeps covenant for his name’s sake:

“Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name” (Ezekiel 36:22).

There is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.

It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. (1Timothy 6:6-10)

If you care about people and risk talking to the depressed, the doubting, the skeptical, the confused, and the angry, you will soon run into a person who says to your counsel: I’ve tried that. Whatever you say, they will minimize it and say it doesn’t work. Do not be surprised at this response. This is what it means to be depressed, doubting, skeptical, confused, angry. It means that whatever they hear sounds useless.

So I want to offer some suggestions for what you say in a conversation that is about to be cut off like that...

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Today my mother turns 90. She has spent the last 34 years with Jesus in heaven. That’s not a euphemism for “dead.” It’s a solid-steel statement of God in scripture: “...away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8).

I do not know why God took her so early. She was six years younger than I am now when she died. I have often felt a deep need for her counsel in my marriage and parenting. The all-wise God has his reasons. I trust him.

My gratitude for her still grows. She embodied the strength and meekness of womanhood in a way that shaped my readiness to see the Biblical pattern as beautiful. Here is the tribute I wrote at the beginning of the little book, What’s the Difference: Manhood and Womanhood Defined According to the Bible.

When I was a boy growing up in Greenville, South Carolina, my father was away from home about two-thirds of every year. And while he preached across the country, we prayed--my mother and my older sister and I. What I learned in those days was that my mother was omni-competent.

She handled the finances, paying all the bills and dealing with the bank and creditors. She once ran a little laundry business on the side. She was active on the park board, served as the superintendent of the Intermediate Department of our Southern Baptist church, and managed some real estate holdings.

She taught me how to cut the grass and splice electric cord and pull Bermuda grass by the roots and paint the eaves and shine the dining-room table with a shammy and drive a car and keep French fries from getting soggy in the cooking oil. She helped me with the maps in geography and showed me how to do a bibliography and work up a science project on static electricity and believe that Algebra II was possible. She dealt with the contractors when we added a basement and, more than once, put her hand to the shovel. It never occurred to me that there was anything she couldn't do.

I heard one time that women don't sweat, they glow. Not true. My mother sweated. It would drip off the end of her long, sharp nose. Sometimes she would blow it off when her hands were pushing the wheelbarrow full of peat moss. Or she would wipe it with her sleeve between the strokes of a swingblade. Mother was strong. I can remember her arms even today thirty years later. They were big, and in the summertime they were bronze.

But it never occurred to me to think of my mother and my father in the same category. Both were strong. Both were bright. Both were kind. Both would kiss me and both would spank me. Both were good with words. Both prayed with fervor and loved the Bible. But unmistakably my father was a man and my mother was a woman. They knew it and I knew it. And it was not mainly a biological fact. It was mainly a matter of personhood and relational dynamics.

When my father came home he was clearly the head of the house. He led in prayer at the table. He called the family together for devotions. He got us to Sunday School and worship. He drove the car. He guided the family to where we would sit. He made the decision to go to Howard Johnson's for lunch. He led us to the table. He called for the waitress. He paid the check. He was the one we knew we would reckon with if we broke a family rule or were disrespectful to Mother. These were the happiest times for Mother. Oh, how she rejoiced to have Daddy home! She loved his leadership. Later I learned that the Bible calls this "submission."

But since my father was gone most of the time, Mother used to do most of those leadership things too. So it never occurred to me that leadership and submission had anything to do with superiority and inferiority. And it didn't have to do with muscles and skills either. It was not a matter of capabilities and competencies.

It had to do with something I could never have explained as a child. And I have been a long time in coming to understand it as part of God's great goodness in creating us male and female. It had to do with something very deep. I know that the specific rhythm of life that was in our home is not the only good one. But there were dimensions of reality and goodness in it that ought to be there in every home. Indeed they ought to be there in varying ways in all mature relationships between men and women.

I say "ought to be there" because I now see that they were rooted in God. Over the years I have come to see from Scripture and from life that manhood and womanhood are the beautiful handiwork of a good and loving God. He designed our differences and they are profound. They are not mere physiological prerequisites for sexual union. They go to the root of our personhood.

This week's sermon: "In Him Was Life"

Before the universe exited, there was Life. Ultimate Reality is personal. Life is what gave rise to matter. In eternity past, God the Father and God the Son shared perfectly and fully in that which is truly life.

But this reality, true and glorious as it is, is not what the apostle John has in mind when he writes, "In [Jesus] was life." What he does mean is that in Jesus is spiritual life, saving life, the life of the new birth. Not only is Jesus the Life that created all material life, but he is the Life that causes all new, spiritual, eternal life.

Three simultaneous realities occur in the imparting of this new life: new birth, new sight, and new faith. God causes us to be born again in uniting us together with his Son; in so doing, God opens our spiritual eyes; and as our eyes open, we see the light of who Jesus is and what he has done for us as true and beautiful and saving. These are three angles on one saving, life-giving event. 

In some recent reading I have found C.S. Lewis and John Piper especially illuminating on the necessity of risk and courage.

C.S. Lewis wrote on courage in The Screwtape Letters:

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality.

A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions.

Pilate was merciful till it became risky. (137-8)

And John Piper wrote on risk in Don’t Waste Your Life:

Risk is right. And the reason is not because God promises success to all our ventures in his cause. There is no promise that every effort for the cause of God will succeed, at least not in the short run. John the Baptist risked calling King Herod an adulterer when he divorced his own wife in order to take his brother’s wife. For this John got his head chopped off. And he had done right to risk his life for the cause of God and truth. Jesus had no criticism for him, only the highest praise (Matthew 11:11).

Paul risked going up to Jerusalem to complete his ministry to the poor. He was beaten and thrown in prison for two years and then shipped off to Rome and executed there two years later. And he did right to risk his life for the cause of Christ. How many graves are there in Africa and Asia because thousands of young missionaries were freed by the power of the Holy Spirit from the enchantment of security and then risked their lives to make much of Christ among the unreached peoples of the world!

And now what about you? Are you caught in the enchantment of security, paralyzed from taking any risks for the cause of God? Or have you been freed by the power of the Holy Spirit from the mirage of Egyptian safety and comfort? Do you men ever say with Joab, “For the sake of the name, I’ll try it! And may the Lord do what seems good to him”? Do you women ever say with Esther, “For the sake of Christ, I’ll try it! And if I perish, I perish”? (89-90)

We also do not have to go far to know the mind of God on risk and courage. One example of many is Hebrews 11:35-39:

Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For,

Yet a little while,
and the coming one will come and will not delay;
but my righteous one shall live by faith,
and if he shrinks back,
my soul has no pleasure in him.

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

Would you join me in praying for those in your family, friends, church, and brothers and sisters around the world who have need of courage today in the face of much risk?

Today is Jonathan Edwards’ 305th birthday. Lyman Beecher wrote to his son in 1836,

Next after the Bible, read and study Edwards, whom to understand in theology...will be as high praise in theological science as to understand Newton’s works...of natural philosophy. (Iain Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography, 459)

I suppose, after the Bible, no theologian has a greater ongoing effect on me as Jonathan Edwards. There are few in the world who combine the sharpness of mind, the scope of thought, the allegiance to Scripture, the depth of insight, the intensity of affections, the height of imagination, and the power of expression that he brings to all his work. I thank God for him today.

Here is his deep conviction that the free will, understood as ultimate self-determination, is “almost inconceivably pernicious.” He would remind us, “It depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy” (Romans 9:16). He wrote this seven months before he died in 1758.

By what I have heard, some...think, that if it be really true, that there is no self-determining power in the will...it is of a mischievous tendency to say any thing of it; and that it is best that the truth in this matter should not be known by any means....

I cannot but be of an extremely different mind. On the contrary, I think that the notion of liberty, consisting in a contingent self-determination of the will, as necessary to the morality of men’s dispositions and actions, is almost inconceivably pernicious....

The longer I live, and the more I have to do with the souls of men, in the work of the ministry, the more I see of this. Notions of this sort are one of the main hindrances of the success of the preaching of the word, and other means of grace, in the conversion of sinners....
    
And with respect to self-flattery and presumption, as to what is future, nothing can possibly be conceived more directly tending to it, than a notion of liberty, at all times possessed, consisting in a power to determine one’s own will to good or evil; which implies a power men have, at all times, to determine them to repent and turn to God.

And what can more effectually encourage the sinner, in present delays and neglects, and embolden him to go on in sin, in a presumption of having his own salvation at all times at his command? And this notion of self-determination and self-dependence, tends to prevent, or enervate, all prayer to God for converting grace; for why should men earnestly cry to God for his grace, to determine their hearts to that which they must be determined to of themselves.

And indeed it destroys the very notion of conversion itself. There can properly be no such thing, or any thing akin to what the Scripture speaks of conversion, renovation of the heart, regeneration, &c. if growing good, by a number of self-determined acts, are all that is required, or to be expected.

Excuse me, Sir, for troubling you with so much on this head. I speak from the fullness of my heart. What I have long seen of the dreadful consequences of these prevalent notions every where, and what I am convinced will still be their consequences so long as they continue to prevail, fills me with concern. 

Desiring God has been given new facilities for $1 a year. All we have to do is outfit the building for our needs.

And God has provided through more than 500 different people! As of October 3, 2008, $1 million has been donated to help make Hope Commons the new launching pad for Desiring God. Please join us in praising God for this good and timely provision from his hand.

God moved in a mysterious, miraculous way to provide for this need. Since December of 2007, we have been bringing this need before God and before friends of Desiring God. After God quickly provided nearly $600,000 this spring, we made little progress for the next five months.

But God knew what we needed and when we would need it. So we gathered daily to pray, to encourage each other to press on, and to remember God’s good provision to his people in the Bible.

And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:19)

And all along God was taking care of us. He knew before we did that the buildout of our new space would be delayed by several months. And when construction began in earnest, God provided through his people more than $300,000 in less than five weeks—during some of the most difficult economic times in memory.

God is not constrained by a credit crisis or inflation or the stock market. He reigns supreme and is lavish in his generosity to those who wait on him!

Thank you, Father, for your good provision through these faithful people. Thank you for your word to carry us through difficulty:

But as for me, I will look to the Lord; I will wait for the God of my salvation; my God will hear me. (Micah 7:7)

Thank you, most of all, for the greatest treasure in the universe – Jesus Christ!

This is the prayer I prayed over and over again this past weekend, walking from the back of the conference hall to the front:

Lord, please kill my pride and the desire I have to make a name for myself.

I was one of the speaker hosts for the Desiring God National Conference this past weekend. It was a tremendous privilege to be involved in the conference in this way. But like every good gift, it had its vice.

The Holy Spirit was constantly reminding me throughout the weekend how in-love with myself I am. This was particularly evident in how self-aware I was while escorting our guests from the back of the auditorium to the front.

It’s amazing how such a small mound of a task can well up into a mountain of pride.

I blindly interpreted audience glances directed at the speaker as being stares at me. The enemy subtly gave his pitch:

Look at all of these people looking at you! Look at how they are wondering who you are! They’re probably thinking about how important you are, because you’re escorting him to his seat. And they’re right, you are pretty important. Look at how you are making a name for yourself.

This small voice has the power to kill the soul. What starts with a seed-size desire grows into a harvest of lust. And the quiet temptation to be noticed with these men flourishes into a lust to be them.

I believe that many who attend conferences like this hear the same voice, perhaps especially young men and pastors. It’s the voice that entices us by saying that to have “made it” as a pastor is to one day be that conference speaker.

This ambition—this lust for praise—is from the devil and not from God. To those who feel this like I do, let’s not treat our accomplishments as trophies, thinking that we’ve “made it” when we grow a church, do a conference, or write a book. 

Let’s be faithful to God and the ministry he’s called us to, whether it’s to 10 people or 10,000. The accolades of 10,000 are as nothing in comparison to the approval of one.

I thank God for his powerful words and the wonder of his son in giving me this warning:

Beware of the scribes [me], who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts…They will receive the greater condemnation. (Mark 12:38-40)

In the end, God will not be impressed that I talked with Bob Kauflin, or shook the hand of Mark Driscoll, or saved a seat for Paul Tripp, or that I know John Piper. The only thing God will care about is “Did you talk with the poor? Did you shake the hand of the leper? Did you save a seat for the lame? And most of all, did you know my son?”

I walked into Costco a week ago and heard Christmas music already. Right behind their bank of huge TVs were the beginnings of what I assume will be an increasing display of holiday paraphernalia. Frosted, plastic trees and such.

Merchandisers want us to start celebrating early so they can make as much money over the next few months as possible. But there are more important, less mercenary reasons to begin thinking about Christmas in October.

One reason is to focus our minds on Jesus and find ways to help others do this, too. If books are the kind of thing that help you do this, then you may be interested in our Fall/Christmas special.

As in years past, we are offering cases of Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ for $1 a book if you will give them away.

And because we don't want to be among the merchandisers who are capitalizing on Christmas, we want to make sure you know that if our suggested donation for a case is too much, we have a pay-what-you-can-afford policy.

Christmas cheer is a wonderful thing and all the more wonderful if the cheer centers on the main reason we have to be cheerful—Jesus. We hope that these books will help you direct your church or school or neighborhood or workplace toward him.

Offer Details

1. Cases of Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ are available for a suggested donation of $68 to those who agree to give the books away for free.
2. Each case contains 48 books. (The donation covers $1 per book and $20 for shipping.)
3. If you can afford more—great! If you can’t afford $68, then we will accept whatever you can afford.
4. This offer is good through December 16, 2008 or while our supply lasts, whichever comes first.
5. We’re only taking these donations by phone, so call us at 1.888.346.4700 between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Central Time, Monday-Friday.

We are marking Pastor Kenny and Kathy Stokes’s 10 years of ministry at Bethlehem.

Kenny and Kathy met at Bethel College and were married in December 1979. He graduated with a double major in Psychology and Biblical Studies in 1981. During his seminary days at Bethel, Kenny was part of Bethlehem.

Those of us who were here in those days remember him as an unusually wise and sensitive lover of people. People would turn to Kenny readily for a trusted, caring, listening ear. His internship focused on pastoral care, pastoral counseling, pre-marital counseling, and marriage and family ministries. He graduated from Bethel Seminary with a Master of Divinity degree in 1988...

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Learn your doctrine from texts. It stands up better that way, and feeds the soul. For example, learn irresistible grace from texts. In this way you will see it does not mean grace cannot be resisted; it means that when God chooses he can and will overcome that resistance.

In Isaiah 57:17-19, for instance. God chastises his rebellious people by striking them and hiding his face: “Because of the iniquity of his unjust gain I was angry, I struck him; I hid my face and was angry” (v. 17).

But they did not respond with repentance. Rather, they kept backsliding. They resisted: “But he went on backsliding in the way of his own heart” (v. 17). So grace can be resisted. In fact, Stephen said to the Jewish leaders, “You always resist the Holy Spirit” (Acts 7:51).

What then does God do? Is he powerless to bring those who resist to repentance and wholeness? No. The next verse says, “I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners” (v. 18).

So, in the face of recalcitrant, grace-resisting backsliding, God says, “I will heal him.” He will “restore”—the word is “make whole or complete”. It is related to the word shalom, peace. That wholeness and peace is mentioned in the next verse which explains how God turns around a grace-resisting backslider.

He does it by “creating the fruit of the lips. ‘Peace, peace (shalom, shalom), to the far and to the near,’ says the LORD, and I will heal him” (v. 19). God creates what is not there. This is how we are saved. And this is how we are brought back from backsliding. The grace of God triumphs over our resistance by creating praise where it did not exist.

He brings shalom, shalom to the near and the far. Wholeness, wholeness to the near and the far. He does it by “restoring,” that is, replacing the disease of resistance with the soundness of submission.

The point of irresistible grace is not that we can’t resist. We can and we do. The point is that when God chooses, he overcomes our resistance and restores a submissive spirit. He creates. He says, “Let there be light!” He heals. He leads. He restores. He comforts.

Therefore we never boast that we have returned from backsliding. We fall on our faces before the Lord and with trembling joy thank him for his irresistible grace.

We thank the Lord for the national conference, and now we turn our prayers toward the regional conference in Austin, Texas. Please considering attending. We'd love to have you with us.

And here are two other excellent events that you may want to consider:

The Purpose-Driven Death conference (October 18-19 in Austin, TX), and the Together for Adoption conference (November 1 in Greenville, SC).

Both have needed themes, solid speakers, and low costs.

You can now read the manuscript of John Piper's message, "Is There Christian Eloquence? Clear Words and the Wonder of the Cross."

Here's a summary:

The way we talk can undercut the cross. This much is clear in 1 Corinthians (1:17; 2:1). But does all eloquence minimize the gospel? Does the pursuit of verbal impact necessarily preempt the power of Christ?

Both George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards were eloquent, each in his own way. Did this "empty the cross of its power"? More than that, the Bible itself contains many portions that are nothing less than eloquent. How do we make sense of this?

A pointer is found in the context of 1 Corinthians. Here Paul makes clear that there is a kind of eloquence that exalts self and therefore cripples the cross. But this isn't the only brand of eloquence. There's another kind, a distinctly Christian eloquence, that humbles self and exalts Christ.

Our eloquence will never be the determining factor in causing someone to believe the gospel, but it still makes a difference. We can hope for at least 5 benefits from Christian eloquence:

1. keeping interest
2. gaining sympathy
3. awakening sensitivity
4. speaking memorably
5. increasing power

All the video from the conference we just completed is now online:

• Sinclair Ferguson - “The Tongue, the Bridle, and the Blessing”
• Driscoll, Ferguson, Piper - Friday Panel Discussion
• Bob Kauflin - “Words of Wonder: What Happens When We Sing?”
• Mark Driscoll - “How Sharp the Edge: Christ, Controversy, and Cutting Words”
• Daniel Taylor - “The Life-Shaping Power of Story: God’s and Ours”
  
• Kauflin, Piper, Taylor, Tripp - Saturday Panel Discussion
• Paul Tripp - “War of Words: Getting to the Heart for God’s Sake”
• John Piper - “Is There Christian Eloquence? Clear Words and the Wonder of the Cross”

John Piper shared these benefits of eloquence in the conclusion of his message this morning. You can listen to his message now or check back tomorrow for the full manuscript read the manuscript.

1. Eloquence—that is, artistic, surprising, provocative, or aesthetically pleasing language—may keep people awake and focused because they find it interesting for reasons they can’t articulate.

2. Eloquence may bring an adversarial mind into greater sympathy with the speaker.

3. Eloquence may have an awakening effect on a person’s heart and mind short of regeneration, but still important in awakening in them emotional sensitivity to beautiful things.

4. Certain kinds of eloquence (cadence, parallelism, meter, rhyme, assonance, consonance) may not only add interest, but also increase impact by helping the memory.

5. The beauty of eloquence can join with the beauty of truth and increase the power of your words.

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.

In today's panel discussion, Justin Taylor asked questions of John Piper, Paul Tripp, Dan Taylor, and Bob Kauflin. Here are the questions and you can listen for the answers.

• Bob, you had a Job-like experience. How did the Lord use his words and the words of others to bring you through it?
• Paul, a lot of people must think you had an idyllic upbringing. Could you tell your own story about how the Lord brought you to himself?
• John, what do you mean by “the joy and the miracle of self-forgetfulness”? Are there strategies to cultivate it?
• How do you recognize the work of the Spirit in your life and the fruit of it and the progress you’ve made? Paul said, “Be imitators of me,” and yet he was being humble. How does that work?
• How should we use our bodies in worship?
• What would be some counsel for people to become more creative in a God-centered way?
• Could you talk about the role that art has had for you in the pursuit of holiness and the glory of God?
• How do you give encouragement in a way that is not flattering of other people, and how do you receive it in a way that’s not prideful?

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 from notes I took during Mark Driscoll's session. You can listen to his message or read more complete notes.

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Pray for the shepherds. Pray for them more than you criticize, e-mail, gossip, or blog about them. Pray that they would have a discerning mind to know who is a sheep.

Pray that they would have a thick skin. Pray that they would have a humorous outlook. That they would laugh at themselves, that they would have a tender heart toward Jesus and the sheep. That they wouldn’t be hammered, that they would keep a tender heart, that they would have a humble disposition, that when criticisms are true, they would repent. That they would look at a criticism for a kernel of truth to be sanctified by.

Pray that shepherds would have encouraging families, that their wife would endure all the criticism, backbiting, people who would use her to get influence, that she would remain close to Jesus and be a place of refreshment for her husband, that she would know her job is to keep her husband from despair—not by always agreeing with him but agreeing that she will always be for him.

Pray for his children as people take shots at his family. That his children would not go astray because critics love that.

Pray that one of the elders in the church is a good sniper. That he could spot people who are trying to take down the pastor. If the pastor tries to do it, it’s a lose-lose situation. Some of you elders here need to get in the middle.

Pray that the shepherds would have evangelistic devotion, that they would not just feed the sheep, but that they would love the lost. That they would not waste their time checking their ratings and overlook Paul’s admonition to do the work of an evangelist. That they wouldn’t be so buried in firefights that they can’t see more people become sheep.

Pray for the shepherds, that they would learn selective hearing, that they would listen to their elders, that they would invite into their lives good counsel. Not everything that is said is worth a hearing. Shepherds can become so hard-hearted that their ears are closed and they spend time justifying themselves when they shouldn’t. They need to know who to listen to, who to heed, and who to not to.

Pray for the young shepherds, that older shepherds would not shoot them like wolves and wouldn’t criticize them like dogs, but would encourage them like dads.

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.