We are not, in ourselves, the vehicle of God’s grace and kingdom-building. Making this mistake will eventually lead us to fatigue, even despair, says Russell Moore.

Commemorating the release of John Piper’s revised edition of Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, we recently asked Dr. Moore for an exhortation to pastors and church leaders under the “Brothers” theme. In short, witchdoctors can’t do Christian ministry, so stop acting like one. He explains:

Get John Piper’s Brothers, We Are Not Professionals: A Plea to Pastors for Radical Ministry (Updated and Expanded Edition, 2013), now available.

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[Video transcript]

Brothers, we are not witchdoctors. I say that because several years…

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Stop looking at yourself in carnival mirrors. This is one plea from Paul Tripp’s new book, Dangerous Calling. Carnival mirrors give us a distortion of who we really are, and they’re everywhere we look.

This is especially true of the pastor or ministry leader who is tempted to stay locked in on the horizontal level. The danger is to mistake our work to be what defines us — to be so fixed on the “carnival mirror of ministry” that we buy as our true identity the twisted depiction it reflects. Paul Tripp explains:

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[Full transcript]

You mention in your book, Dangerous Calling, that there are some leading indicators that spiritual blindness might be happening in the life of the pastor o…

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John G. Paton believed in doing missions when dying is gain. The 19th century Scottish missionary to the New Hebrides, a chain of islands in the South Pacific, was no stranger to suffering. Soon after he arrived to the islands in 1858, he buried both his wife and newborn child. He had left the ease of Europe for the hardships of the Hebrides, and he would become well acquainted with pain.

Over the next several years his life was characterized by loss and sickness, criticism from respected friends, dangers from the cannibalistic natives, and deep communion with Jesus.

Perhaps it is his fellowship with God that is most fascinating. Against the background of so much affliction, Paton walked c…

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Fear is like the monster under my kids’ beds — its power is fueled not by what’s really there, but by what might be, what we imagine could be. Fear is a hollow darkness in the future that reaches back through time to rob our joy now by belittling the sovereign goodness of God.

But if we are in Christ, if we cling to him by faith, we don’t have to fear. Really, we don’t.

John Piper explains why in a 2001 letter he wrote to the people of Bethlehem. The point of the letter is to highlight several promises in the Bible that we can remember when the temptation of fear assaults us.

13 Reasons Not to Be Afraid

1. We will not die apart from God’s gracious decree for his children.

   James 4:14-15; Ma…

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Bible prophecy is the key, John Piper explains in the 1980 sermon, “All the Prophets Proclaimed These Days.” The text is Acts 3:17–26. Peter is preaching his first sermon since Pentecost to a crowd of his Jewish brothers. His charge to them is straightforward: Repent therefore, and turn again, so that your sins may be blotted out, and so that times of refreshing may come.

The timing of Peter’s words are especially important. In fact, as he goes on to say in verse 24, all the Old Testament prophets spoke of “these days” — the days when God holds out the opportunity to turn from sin and believe the gospel.

Peter calls it the “times of refreshing.” It's that era in human history which began a…

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I have no good memories of third-grade math.

To be honest, I don’t remember most of my elementary school days, but math in Mrs. Smith’s classroom is strangely familiar. Maybe it is because that’s where a school subject first became hard for me, or because the homework was such a drag. Or, actually, it may be because third-grade math was the first time I realized I was a crock.

It happened like this. Soon I noticed my friends were picking up math quicker than I was. I can’t recall the exact lessons — just that I wasn’t good at them. And everyday, during that math hour, Mrs. Smith would have students step up front and rehearse homework problems on the board. My classmates would write out …

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Kicking off the first episode this year, we talk Passion, podcasts, and prayer.

Earlier this month John Piper spoke to over 60,000 college students in Atlanta. He recently talked with Tony about what the experience was like on the newly revitalized podcast, Ask Pastor John (forthcoming on iTunes).

Other podcasts to probe include John Piper Sermons, Theology Refresh, Authors on the Line, and Behind the Blog, all of which we sort out in this episode, not to mention our short discussion on intercession, excorism, and why “today” matters, from John Piper's Friday devotional for the DG Staff.

Stream or download this 16-minute podcast.

Mention…

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What is the gift of healing? And are there “healers” today?

The apostle Paul lists healing among the spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, but has anything significant changed between then and now?

What about exorcism?

John Piper answers in the following videos, and recounts the chilling story of an exorcism he participated in early in his pastorate.

What Is the Gift of Healing? (7 minutes)

Have You Exorcized a Demon? (7.5 minutes)

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For more on the supernatural, see “Piper on Prophecy and Tongues.” The last chance to register for the 2013 Conference for Pastors (on the centrality of the supernatural in Christian ministry) is quickly approaching. Registration closes midnight January…

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But may all who seek you
     rejoice and be glad in you;
may those who love your salvation
    say continually, “Great is the Lord!"

David's prayer in Psalm 40:16 can absolutely change your life. At first glance it may not stand out. Perhaps, like me, when you've read it before you glossed over the parallelism that makes this verse so special.

Now parallelism is a pretty simple rhetorical device. It is used in poetry of all kinds to connect two different phrases within a single line, always extending (in some way) the thought in the first phrase.¹ Verse 16 below is one line with two phrases that are signified by A and B:

The particular type of parallelism is called “synonymous parallel…

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It’s kind of a hard question to ask. We know from the Bible that suffering plays an important role in the life of believers. We have even walked close with friends who have experienced intense pain. But we ourselves, well, we’ve not been face to face with affliction yet. We’ve not suffered severe loss. And this starts to make us suspicious, as if we have received too many gifts and before long something terrible is going to happen.

So what do we do? How do we truly enjoy God’s obvious goodness (easy through gifts) while at the same time trusting in his strange goodness (hard through loss)?

In this video, Nancy Guthrie helps us think through this question, taking us deep into the ways of Go…

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