Featured Posts
Why Boldness Matters Now
14 Free eBooks for You
God Will Never, Ever Break His Promise
How might Isaac have explained to his young sons, Jacob and Esau, why God had commanded his father, Abraham, to offer him as a burnt offering (Genesis 22)?
Eight year-old Esau sat on his bed-mat firing imaginary arrows in the dark at his younger twin, Jacob, who could hear him making his “pheoo” sound with each shot. They were hitting the target.
“Esau, stop!” pheoo. “I said, stop!” pheoo. “Stoooooop!” Jacob’s protests were aimed at his Father’s ears. They were hitting the target. Soon the familiar scraping footsteps approached the tent. Esau lay down quickly, pretending to sleep. Father Isaac swept the flap aside, “Sons of mine, that’s enough. You’re disturbing the whole camp. It’s late. …
The Gospel Cure for a Child’s Heart (and Our Own)
Lying in his bed, with tears running down his face, my son tried to calm down after an emotional outburst. I came into the room to talk to him about it. Snuggling up next to him, we discussed what had happened.
“But Mom, you don’t understand. It’s because you and brother irritate me so much. You make me angry. If you leave me alone, I won't be angry.”
My son has been engaged in an intense battle with anger lately. The littlest thing sets him off and I’m brought in as referee.
“Buddy, we don't make you angry. The anger comes from within you. It comes from your own sin inside your heart."
I recited Jesus’s words in Matthew 15:18, “But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, an…
Dying Well: One Woman’s Extraordinary Story
Margaret Magdalen Jasper (1752–1789) doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. Google her name and you’ll find almost nothing about her life. What she looked like is a mystery. She wasn’t famous in her day, and she’s still not famous in our day. Her ordinary life was filled with disappointments, the kind of life history tends to forget.
But her story is worth telling.
Margaret lived in England, and there she was acquainted with loss. Her father died when she was only two years old. Her only brother later died in war and was buried in foreign soil. And her mother died in Margaret’s 30th year, at which point she writes in her diary that she was “left an orphan in this perplexing world of sin and sor…
One Million Plays Later (Ask Pastor John)
Since launching the Ask Pastor John podcast in mid-January, we have released 112 episodes. And last weekend the podcast surpassed one million plays, which is a great time to hit pause and thank everyone who has been listening to the daily podcast either via Soundcloud, Twitter, Facebook, iTunes, or through the iPhone or Android apps.
Thank you!
The stats are meaningful to us in as much as they represent a lot of real, thoughtful, inquisitive friends who are committed to living under God’s good authority in his revealed word. And while Pastor John may be perceived as something of a modern day Yoda (as one Twitter follower humorously suggested), he’s not infallible, and certainly doesn’t c…
Feeling Unappreciated at Work?
There are few things more difficult than giving our best labors daily in an environment where we feel unappreciated. You know the feeling, and it’s not a good one. No matter how good our work environment might be, from time to time we have all felt the sting of our contributions taken for granted and our mistakes magnified.
The sad reality is that this condition is almost inevitable in this broken world. So how do we sustain joyful work in such a situation?
For Unappreciated Workers
I am no stranger to the discouragement of feeling unappreciated, but over the years, I have found great help from the apostle Paul’s exhortation in Colossians 3:22–24.
Bondservants, obey in everything those w…
New Piper eBook for Father’s Day
Father’s Day is this weekend, and John Piper and the team at Desiring God would like to help you get ready and make the most of it.
This new ebook from John Piper, A Tribute to My Father, brings together in one place his most significant writings that honor the indelible influence of his father, Bill Piper (1919–2007). Included here are the eleven “precious truths” John shared for Father’s Day 2005, as well as his journal entry from the night his father died, the funeral message from just days later, and the extended biographical address tracking his life and ministry as an evangelist and father.
For Father’s Day 2013
John writes in the new introduction written specially for the ebook,
M…
Behind the Blog: Christian Dating
Four years ago, the small-budget, independent production 500 Days of Summer premiered at the Sundance Film Festival with decent accolades. Since then the movie has surprisingly gone on to earn over $60 million. Why? Because it’s a realistic story of an all-too-common dating relationship — one that ends up lopsided and empty because of a plastic vision of romance.
Its popularity seems to tell us something about Western culture and relationships: the system is broken. Expectations are inflated. People are confused.
But a similar report fits for many Christians. How should we think about dating? What’s the best way to journey toward marriage?
In this new episode of Behind the Blog, we talk d…
Manhood Restored
Our all-sufficient Savior is many things, including a perfect model of masculinity. This point is a significant theme in Eric Mason’s new book Manhood Restored: How the Gospel Makes Men Whole.
Mason joined me to talk more about his book and masculinity in the latest Authors on the Line interview. Mason is a husband, father, and church planter, who lives and ministers in the heart of Philadelphia, as the co-founder and lead pastor of Epiphany Fellowship.
In our 24-minute conversation, Mason shares the story of his father, a man who escaped the Jim Crow South to become a decorated WWII Buffalo Soldier, only to return home disillusioned by ongoing segregation. Then we talk about manhood’s h…
How Do We Rest in the Face of Horrible Calamity?
What happens to our emotions if we really believe in the sovereign wisdom and goodness of God in horrible persecution?
This question rises for me for two reasons.
One is because of God’s will for our emotions revealed in the Bible, and the other is what I see happening in the hearts of God’s people today. They are not always the same. One of my aims is to help today’s saints experience more of God’s aims for our emotions.
Here is the most recent example in my experience.
Refreshed by Horrible Persecutions?
In Revelation 6 John saw “the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God.” These are martyrs for Jesus in heaven. “They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy…
The Jagged Void (A Poem for Grieving Mothers)
When the tornado hit Moore, Oklahoma on May 20, nine children died in the Plaza Towers Elementary School. I’ve been thinking about their parents, especially the mothers who bore them — and trying to imagine the void. And the more I think, the more the whole battery of recent losses crowd in on my mind — Newtown, Boston, Philadelphia, my own church. I wrote this for those mothers — perhaps all the mothers who’ve lost a child.
The Jagged Void
Tomorrow morn
The sun will shine.
But this sharp thorn
Will still be mine —
This jagged void
Where you were born,
Sharply deployed
When you were torn
From me—and yes,
An arrow, shorn,
As if, roseless,
…
