It is with great enthusiasm that we announce the release of Desiring God’s new iPhone app Ask Pastor John, now available for free in the iTunes store.

Just this January, on John Piper’s 67th birthday, we relaunched the Ask Pastor John (APJ) podcast through Sound Cloud. The revitalized podcast provides daily audio clips of John answering tough theological and pastoral questions.

Already available are 40 new episodes — released five times each week, typically about 5 minutes long each. We call it a daily podcast, as we’re serving up something new each weekday. The new app is simple and easy to use. It plays the most recent seven episodes (and links to Sound Cloud for all episodes), includes …

Continue Reading →

Spectacular glory awaits those who are joined to Jesus.

Not only will we see him in all his glory — which might be thrilling enough — but we will share in his glory as he transforms “our lowly body to be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). Rightly did C. S. Lewis observe that “the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship” (The Weight of Glory, 45).

This is the stunning doctrine of glorification. It’s almost too good to be true. Almost.

If the Bible didn’t make it plain, most of us would insist such a wonderful destiny could never be ours. But text after text tells the story of…

Continue Reading →

Healthy churches are no happy place for lone wolves. Especially in leadership. Throughout the New Testament, Jesus’s apostles assume and instruct that his undershepherds do the work of Christian leadership together.

In Acts 20:17, it is the plural elders of the Ephesian church that Paul calls to come to him on the beach at Miletus and whom he calls overseers (plural). It’s the plural overseers whom he addresses, along with the deacons, as he begins his letter to the young church at Philippi (Philippians 1:1). The apostle summons respect from the Thessalonians not for a single leader, but for “those (plural) who labor among you and are over you in the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 5:12), and he men…

Continue Reading →

The tension in the air can feel thick enough to cut with a knife. It escalates to all-out war in some churches — the battle between living local and going global.

With limited time and resources and energy in any given context, it can feel like local mission and global missions are constantly vying for attention, competing articles rather than one seamless garment.

On one side, we see the needs around us in our city and feel deeply that proximity implies responsibility. God has called us to live on mission right here in our locale, “reached” as it may be, but still very needy. So many are lost in this city. On the other side, we ache over the world’s 7,000 unreached peoples and feel deep…

Continue Reading →

Jesus absorbed God’s wrath for us.

Among the many other happenings during the most important hours in the history of the world — as the Son of God was crucified outside Jerusalem at a place called Golgotha (Mark 15:22) — this accomplishment is the center and foundation and heart.

Jesus had no sin of his own. It was not his own penalty that he bore, but he was a substitute for others, for those who would be joined to him by faith. This we call penal substitutionary atonement — Jesus reconciled sinners to God by being their substitute punishment. He absorbed in his person God’s righteous wrath against us, because of our sin, that we might be free from sin and its penalty and liberated to enj…

Continue Reading →

Alright, husbands, here we go. Today’s the big day. It’s time to muster our level best and not drop the ball on Valentine’s Day.

It’s not too late to make plans, or give them an upgrade — though it might be hard work scrambling at the last minute.

Even so, sometimes our best of Valentine’s intentions go awry. And when we botch it, at least we should try to learn something from it.

Here’s what John Piper learned (perhaps among other things) from botching a Valentine’s dinner. He told the story one Easter Sunday in the sermon “Irrevocable Joy.” (The Scripture text is the words of Jesus in John 16:22: “You have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one…

Continue Reading →

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “biblical counseling”?

No doubt, many think of a movement that takes sin seriously. A growing number may call to mind a movement that is increasingly taking suffering seriously as well.

But ask the question to one of the movement’s key leaders, Ed Welch. You may be pleasantly surprised how illuminating and practical his simple and straightforward answer is.

Biblical counseling, in its best conception, gets at how the entirety of the church — not just trained professionals — can be mobilized to love others well. It’s about ordinary people being used by God to help the lives of others. At one level, it’s even as simple as learning enough about som…

Continue Reading →

The doctrine of the Christian life — also known as ethics — is about Christian wisdom.

It is not about merely having the proper answers to a list of tricky moral questions, but discerning between good and evil in a changing and complicated world. Whether it’s in-vitro fertilization, stem-cell research, or human cloning — just to name a few — today’s challenges simply are not the same issues as yesteryear, and tomorrow’s moral dilemmas won’t be the precise set we face today.

It won’t do to memorize the answers to the last generation’s flashpoints. We must become the kind of people who deeply know biblical revelation, what it says about God and man and the world, and how to apply it to every…

Continue Reading →

The bread and butter of Christian ministry is supernatural.

It’s been a decade since John Piper made his plea to fellow pastors, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. Ten years later, he stands by that message as much as ever, and has updated and expanded the book — which officially becomes available today.

Here’s how Piper puts it in the new preface:

Nothing has happened in the last ten years to make me think this book is less needed. In fact, instead of going away, the pressure to “professionalize” the pastorate has morphed and strengthened. Among younger pastors, the talk is less about therapeutic and managerial professionalization, and more about communication or contextualization. T…

Continue Reading →

As you board the spiritual-gifts roller coaster, you know that some are committed to having their hands in the air, while others very intentionally keep them tucked away under the safety harness. But before this train pulls away from the station, perhaps there’s no better voice to hear over the loudspeaker than that of self-proclaimed “charismatic Calvinist” Sam Storms.

Storms is the lead pastor of Bridgeway Church in Oklahoma City and author of The Beginner’s Guide to Spiritual Gifts (due out in a new version in March, now available for pre-order).

In this new episode of Theology Refresh, we asked Storms to give us some general orientation on the Christian spiritual gifts, and in particul…

Continue Reading →