Jonathan Parnell (@jonathanparnell) is a content strategist at Desiring God. He lives in the Twin Cities with his wife, Melissa, and their three children: Elizabeth, Hannah, and Micah.
At the recent Campus Outreach National Conference, speaking to a gathering of men, John Piper tells the story of the life of Augustine — bishop of Hippo in the fifth century.
This talk gives a hope-giving example of how we fight sin by a sovereign joy that masters us and severs the root of all competing, controlling pleasures.
The latest Theology Refresh features a 12-minute dicussion on biblical complementarity with Darrin Patrick, speaker at our upcoming Conference for Pastors.
It's important to remember that there is more than one danger in this issue. We can miss it on the left, becoming egalitarian. And we can miss it on the right, not calling men to sacrificial leadership.
There's a new dynamic in what it means to be a man: love your wives as Christ loved the church (Ephesians 5:25). We're not trying to replicate Adam. Men, be like Jesus.
Stream or download the audio.
Recommended resources on biblical complementarity:
It was simple. The first bookend of my formal theological training was grounded in an easy-to-the-point-of-jolly ambition: learn as much as I can about Jesus and teach it to others. What fueled my pursuit of pastoral ministry — and all the training involved — was not what I understood about the Bible or hoped to learn, but how glorious I perceived Jesus to be, despite how much my perception of that glory was green and raw and English (KJV to be exact).
Now fifteen semesters later, with some summer intensives sprinkled in between, I long to walk away from seminary with that same initial resolve — a resolve to proclaim and exalt Jesus so that he i…
The Introduction to John Piper's Bloodlines is titled :
Martin Luther King Jr.
What Was It Like for Those Who Weren't There?
Piper writes,
Martin Luther King called for freedoms and rights and justice that were long overdue. And he did it with an appeal to historic Christian vision, with amazing rhetorical skill, without condoning violence, and with unprecedented and lasting success. That's why there is a holiday in his honor. One of his writings in particular provides a window on the mid-twentieth-century world of black Americans — "Letter from Birmingham Jail."
The place is Birmingham, Alabama. The time is April 11, 1963. I was seventeen years old in Greenville, South C…
Samuel Bourn:
All true fear of the Supreme Being can only spring from a right knowledge of him. And it consists, first and fundamentally, in conceiving and believing him to be what he is, most powerful indeed, but at the same time, most wise, just, and benevolent. . . .
The character and title most certainly ascribed by our Savior and his Apostles to the Supreme being is The Father: the appellation [or name] by which we are taught to address him, [is] Our Father in heaven. . . . But if we impute to him qualities inconsistent with the parental character, and represent him to ourselves, as seeking and delighting, not in the happiness, but the misery and ruin of his creatures; we dethrone as i…
Pastor John applies A.P.T.A.T. to the temptation of bitterness:
This excerpt starts at the 40:30 mark of this recent sermon.
See how it applies to the temptation of fear.
If you want to understand the message of 1 Peter,
or how hope in God's grace affects our command to love,
or if you just want to see a lucid example of careful exegetical method. . .
let me commend to you John Piper's 1980 article for Cambridge's New Testament Studies: "Hope as the Motivation of Love: 1 Peter 3:9–12."
A new web version has just been added to our Resource Library, full of the original British –ours, German lines, Greek inserts, and 72 footnotes (now hyperlinked).
Read the full article.
Here's a snapshot of the work:
In the long run it is the mutually correcting interaction between detailed analyses of particular texts (at the risk of conceptual myopia)…
Pastor John shows how to use the acronym A.P.T.A.T. when we're tempted to fear:
This excerpt starts at the 33:00 mark of this week's sermon.
"By the work of the Holy Spirit, God defeats temptation by awakening joy through belief in the word of God which is at work in us. And that word is most centrally the good news that Christ died for us so that all the promises of God are Yes in him."
This is how we live.
Pastor John's acronym A.P.T.A.T is a device that may help:
This excerpt starts at the 29:28 mark of this week's sermon.
Pastor, there are three things John Piper would say to you about your ministry.
Three things that he has said before, at a conference in Phoenix in 2006. Three things: make God central in your heart, central in your thinking, central in your preaching.
And the reason God is central in all these things is because God is central to our joy.
Stream or download all three messages of "Brothers — Feel, Think, Preach God" ...
For an idea of the series, I commend up to the 6:41 mark in Part 1:
