Pastor John from 2008:

The essential, vital, indispensable, defining heart of worship is the experience of being satisfied with God. This satisfaction in God magnifies God in the heart. This explains why the apostle Paul makes so little distinction between worship as a congregational service and worship as a pattern of daily life. They have the same root – a passion for treasuring God as infinitely valuable. The impulse for singing a hymn and the impulse for visiting a prisoner is the same: a thirst for God – a desire to experience as much satisfaction in God as we can.

Excerpted from Gravity and Gladness on Sunday Morning, Part 1.

A few months ago we had the privilege of interviewing Justin Holcomb on ministry to victims of sexual assault. Today, Justin and his wife, Lindsey, have published a helpful post over at The Resurgence:

They write:

It is important to address the effects of sexual assault with the biblical message of grace and redemption. Jesus responds to victims' pain and past. The message of the gospel redeems what has been destroyed and applies grace to disgrace. It is our hope you will be equipped to provide accessible gospel-based help, hope, and healing to sexual assault victims who know too well the depths of destruction and the overwhelming sense of disgrace.

Read the entire post, "Are You Pre…

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Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes:

The power of the devil is alarming. Our Lord says to Peter, Satan has desired to have you, that he may sift you like wheat. These are indications of his tremendous power. But perhaps the ultimate proof of the power, and the confidence, and the ability of the devil, is to be found in the fact that he did not hesitate to tempt and to attack even the Son of God himself. He approached him with confidence, with assurance, for he had defeated all others. The greatest saints, the patriarchs of the Old Testament, and prophets, had all been defeated by the wiles of the devil.

Is this discouraging? I say again that it is far from discouraging. I find it to be most encoura…

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In 2009 Don Carson and John Piper presented two talks on the relationship between pastoral ministry and scholarship. These messages have now been made into a new book, The Pastor as Scholar and the Scholar as Pastor: Reflections on Life and Ministry, edited by Owen Strachan and David Mathis.

Watch the 25 minute Q&A that followed the two talks:

Watch, listen or download Pastor as Scholar (John Piper) and Scholar as Pastor (Don Carson).

Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes:

We are all expert planners, are we not? Those people [the builders of Babel’s Tower] were planners. They drew the specifications of the city. They had it all worked out. We all do that in life, do we not? You have your plans. Your future life and career are mapped out. You know what you want to do. Where does God come in? Is the plan made under God, or is it made apart from him? The one lesson of [Genesis 11] is that if you plan your life without God at the center, it will come to nothing, nothing at all. It will be as futile and as fatuous as the Tower of Babel. God will come down and will destroy it, whether you like that or not. This is the whole history of t…

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Pastor John from 1985:

God's purpose for us on the sabbath is that we experience the highest and most intense joy that can be experienced, namely, that we "take delight in the Lord." And yet what he finds again and again is professing Christians who prefer little human-sized pleasures from things that have no close relation to God at all.

If you worked seven days a week in the hot sun to keep life and limb together, with scarcely any time for leisure and reflection, would you consider it burdensome if your God came to you with omnipotent authority and said, "I don't want you to have to work so much. I want you to have a day a week to rest and enjoy what really counts in life. I promise to…

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Pastor John from 1988:

Our people need a God-besotted man. Even if they criticize the fact that you are not available at the dinner on Saturday night because you must be with God, they need at least one man in their life who is radically and totally focused on God and the pursuit of the knowledge of God, and the ministry of the word of God.

How many people in your churches do you know that are laboring to know God, who are striving earnestly in study and prayer to enlarge their vision of God. Precious few. Well then, what will become of our churches if we the pastors, who are charged with knowing and unfolding the whole counsel of God, shift into neutral, quit reading and studying and wri…

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When it comes to world missions, there are only three kinds of people: "goers, senders and the disobedient." Pastor John explains:

Join us on September 23-25 in Minneapolis, MN for our 2011 National Conference. The theme of the conference is Finish the Mission: For the Joy of All Peoples, Bringing the Gospel to the Unreached and Unengaged.

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The biblical qualifications for eldership are "remarkable for being unremarkable." Don Carson explains:

See this on YouTube.

Charles Spurgeon writes:

Some are like the sun going down in the west; they will be gone soon. Serve them, dear brethren. You that are in health and vigour, comfort them, strengthen them, and help them all you can. Be a joy to that dear old man, who has been spared to you even beyond the allotted threescore years and ten, and praise God for the grace that has upheld him through his long pilgrimage. Look on his grey hairs as a crown of glory; make his descent to the grave as easy as you can. He once was as young as you are; he once had the vigour that you have. Console him, cheer him, give him the respect that is due to his many years. Do not let him feel that you consider him an old fogey

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