How Do I Help My Friends Stay Satisfied in God?

Pastor John recently tweeted, “Christian relationships have this as their goal: to help each other stay satisfied in God.” To learn more about how this gets worked out in practice, we asked him. In part, he said this:

It comes down to whether we taste and see that the Lord is good. I have said this to the church and I have said to pastors, and I have said to my wife. What I want from you, Noël, what I want from my staff, is for them to be happy in Jesus. The greatest ministry you can have to me is for you to enjoy Christ. And so I think when we turn that around and say, “Now how can I be the greatest blessing to the people around me?” The answer is: Get up in the morning. Go to the Word of God and, like George Mueller said, “Get your heart happy in God before you meet other people.”

Listen to the entire Ask Pastor John podcast episode here.

The other podcasts of the week included a question about whether or not he conducts funerals for non-Christians (episode 40), and a question about how intelligence and holiness are linked (epsiode 41). In that episode he said, “We use our intelligence, usually considered an instrument of independence, to lead us to increasing dependence on God.”

Then we asked Pastor John to explain biblical womanhood in five minutes (episode 42). We finished out the week on Romans 13, asking if Paul’s strong statements there totally rule out civil disobedience (episode 43), something we talked about in episode 9.

New iPhone App!

It was a big week for the Ask Pastor John podcast, with the release on Tuesday of the new iPhone app, which you can download free here.

We've released 43 episodes to date. Here are the top-five most played in the last 30 days:

  1. A Theology of Prayer in 3 Minutes (Episode 37)
  2. Must Bible Reading Always End with Application? (Episode 26)
  3. How Does Rape, Incest, and Threat to the Mother's Life Affect Your Pro-Life Stance? (Episode 31)
  4. God Hears My Prayers, So Why Should I Pray for Things Twice? (Episode 38)
  5. Should Missionaries Intentionally Lie? (Episode 32)

Tuning In

The Ask Pastor John daily podcast is a series of 3–8 minute conversations released on weekdays at 11am (EST) via the DG Facebook and Twitter feeds. We’re currently hosting all the recordings on SoundCloud, a website that makes it easy to listen to several of the podcasts in one sitting. They’re also archived on the DG website. We're still working to get the podcast syndicated in iTunes.

We want to hear from you. To submit a question to Pastor John please include your first name, hometown, and question in an email to AskPastorJohn AT desiringGod DOT org.

We have started to receive requests from broadcasters asking to play these episodes over the airwaves, and we are happy to help make this possible. Please send us an email to the above mentioned address and we’ll get back to you.

Thanks for listening to the podcasts. We appreciate your engagement and interest.