These were four themes featured in this week’s lineup of Ask Pastor John podcast episodes. What follows are excerpts from each episode (click on the hyperlinked titles to listen).

When Jehovah’s Witnesses Knock at Your Door (Episode 78):

If they come to the door, I say as gently and graciously as I can, “I know Jehovah’s Witness theology well enough to know that we have deep differences. I know that you believe Jesus is the highest created being, a created angel (Michael), and you do not believe that he is God, or of one essence with Jehovah. You think he is an angel, I believe he is co-eternal with Jehovah God, and therefore I think your religion is a serious dishonoring of the Lord …

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Our joy in God is bound up with our trust in God. The two cannot be separated — not ever. Trust is the backbone of joy. And joy is the outflow of trust in one who is fully Trustworthy.

We see this connection made throughout the Bible.

The Psalmist unites trust and joy:

But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy. (Psalm 5:11a)

The Lᴏʀᴅ is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him. (Psalm 28:7)

For our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name. (Psalm 33:21)

And the Apostle Paul unites trust and joy:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and pea…

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Five new episodes of the Ask Pastor John podcast were released this week. Here's a list of brief excerpts from each episode (click on the titles to listen).

How Far Is Too Far Before Marriage? (Episode 73):

I would say to the women, don’t entice a man to touch you thinking that this is the way to keep a man. He is not worth keeping if that is the way he is kept. And feel free to say to any man, “No, please don’t take us there.” And you can discern what kind of a man you are dealing with by how sensitive he is to that dimension of purity.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, they will see God” [Matthew 5:8]. That is what we want. We want to see God. . . . If a single person is listening …

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Word of the Boston bombings hit Twitter before they hit CNN or any other news network. And as the video clips of the bombings began to emerge, my heart responded in shock and horror. Our hearts are wired to respond to atrocities like this, whether we’re near or far from the scene. Humans are complex creatures with a remarkable range of emotions, even at the same time. The Bible helps us understand the right way to react, and in the midst of tragedy, I want to respond appropriately. But I also know a simple response will not do.

Here’s something of a play-by-play of my own heart-response from yesterday afternoon and evening and today, and I’ll post my thoughts not as a model to be followed …

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EDEN PRAIRIE, MN—There are a few rare cases where the legacy of a faithful preacher is marked by his books. Think of the shelf-filling works of a Martyn Lloyd-Jones or a Charles Spurgeon. Maybe the same will be true of John Piper.

But on Sunday night all three campuses of Bethlehem Baptist Church gathered in one auditorium to witness to the impact of John Piper’s 33-year preaching legacy in the Twin Cities. The evening included testimonials, congregational worship, an orchestra and adult choir, a children’s choir, and one choir comprised of 70 children adopted during Pastor John’s tenure at Bethlehem.

Pastor John has his own growing legacy of books, of course, but for two and a half hour…

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It was another full week of Ask Pastor John podcasts, covering a range of topics: biblical womanhood, hip hop, how to parent gender development, and advice for unemployed college grads. Here are excerpts from the five new episodes. Click on the hyperlinked titles to listen or download.

What Do You Think of Your Influence On Christian Hip Hop? (Episode 68):

A lot of hip hop lyrics are stories. They move with a narrative which gives it an advantage of telling a story about someone’s experience or the movement of the history of redemption. Another factor about it that gives it remarkable clout, I think, is what I call linguistic energy. The hip hop I listen to is phenomenally energetic, …

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God has given us a mouth to speak, a heart to feel, and gospel joy to share. He has taken away every excuse for not spreading gospel grace in our words every day to those around us (Ephesians 4:29).

So what corks the flow of grace speech to others?

One answer is grudges. Not always big grudges, like the ones we hold towards those who have wronged us personally. The kinds of grudges that hinder our generosity are typically subtle ones, grudges towards those who seem less significant than us, or grudges towards those who seem more significant than us. Either way, we like to compare ourselves with others. We withhold grace like a miser withholds money. We are natural-born begrudgers.

The

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Over the last two weeks on the Ask Pastor John podcast we talked a lot about social media, about goals for Twitter and fasting from Facebook. Pastor John also addressed creativity in communication, and the meaning and importance of Easter. We talked about the value of Bible commentaries written by women, a practical suggestion for battling lust, and how our works exceed the works of Jesus.

What follows is a list of episodes, along with quotes pulled from each recording. Click on the titles to listen.

How Jesus’s Glory Drives Creative Communication (Episode 54):

Jesus really is striking. Jesus really is amazing. Jesus really is worthy of the most wonderful — or the most surprising — …

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Sin in Eden knocked all creation into chaos. Sin at Babel marked the collective pride of mankind. And while every sin is an act of God-rejection, humanity’s wickedness reaches new heights in the horrifying events of Good Friday.

Holy Week makes us uncomfortable. There is glorious life and victory to come on Easter Sunday, but to get there we must pass directly through the darkness of Good Friday. We must remember the day when human malice broke barriers and reached levels of previously unmatched atrocity. The Messiah, the King, come to save mankind, was nailed to an accursed tree and left to die.

There is no immunity for such cosmic treason.

On Good Friday we feel the finger of guilt a…

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In the UK a few years back a group of church leaders used a Maundy Thursday church service to do something extraordinary. As people entered the church for the Thursday gathering of Holy Week, elders greeted them on their knees in the entryway. Every attendee was invited to sit, and there, in the entrance of the church, the elders removed shoes and socks and washed the reluctant feet of every stunned attendee.

Maundy Thursday is like that — it shocks.

Maundy

The term maundy in Maundy Thursday comes to us from the Latin root mandatum, or commandment, from Jesus’s words in John 13:34:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are …

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