“Mom, you are making me feel dumb” my son said quietly.

I drew in a quick breath and exhaled. My heart was pierced by his words. I looked over at my son. He stood there staring at me, the hurt stretched across his young face. I had just repeated an instruction to him for the third time because the first two times he didn’t seem to understand. Yet I didn’t simply restate the instruction, my tone was condescending and belittling.

“I’m sorry I spoke to you that way. You are not dumb. Will you forgive me?” I responded, hugging him close.

My son is eight and our conversation was deeply convicting. It was the first time he had ever voiced to me how my speech makes him feel. I wondered how often…

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Earlier this year, a grieving mother, who recently had given birth to a stillborn son, wrote to me asking for counsel and comfort. The team at Desiring God thought this letter might be helpful to some others, whether other mothers who have lost infants, parents who have lost young children, or perhaps even more broadly.

Dear _____,

This loss and sorrow is all so fresh. I hesitate to tread into the tender place and speak. But since you ask, I pray that God would help me say something helpful.

First, please know that I know I don’t know what it is like to give birth to a lifeless body. Only a small, sad band of mothers know that. I say “lifeless body” because, as you made clear, your son is…

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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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People continue to ask me how it feels. “You were a pastor non-stop for 33 years. Now you’re not. How does it feel?”

I have been tongue-tied too many times. So I have tried to come up with the shortest possible sound-bite answer. And the second shortest. The shortest is “Leap and Weep.” The second shortest is “Burden Lifted, Blessings Lost.” They refer to the same paradox. When a burden is lifted, you leap. When blessings are lost, you weep.

Paul said to the elders of Ephesus, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). I have lost a lot of steady-state giving. Weekly preaching is weekly giving. Weekly staff-meetings are weekly giving. Regular elder meetings are regular giv…

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What happened in Boston on Monday was demonic. The thief (John 10:10) killed three precious lives, wreaked physical destruction on scores more and spiritual destruction on thousands. And he stole not only the joy of the race for millions, but far worse he stole trust. This will have widespread social and cultural repercussions.

This Boston massacre makes visible a spiritual reality. When the bombs exploded, the Boston Marathon stopped and everyone fled for cover. Likewise, when terror grips the human heart, we abandon the faith race. We just want to hide. Nothing stops the legs of faith like fear.

That’s why the devil seeks to terrorize you. He wants you to abort the race. Short of that, h…

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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:5)

Sometimes the darkness is overwhelming: The Chinese health ministry reported that more than 336 million children have been eliminated through abortion since 1971. Joe Carter recently put that number into its gruesome context. Then there’s the horrific practices of Kermit Gosnell being exposed — seven babies, born alive, that he brutally killed. Late-term abortions still make Americans uneasy, but so does having a child with a disability. More and more companies are developing early tests to identify genetic anomalies. “Screening” for Down syndrome and other genetic anomalies is growing rapidly.

The Story of

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Not long ago, we learned that Kermit Gosnell had been killing babies in the third trimester and even after they were delivered, for decades. Just this week, we watched as bombs ripped through an unsuspecting crowd in downtown Boston. They’re not the same, but they are horrifying and mouth-stopping evils.

It’s enough to make us cry out to God, “Arise, O Lᴏʀᴅ; O God, lift up your hand; forget not the afflicted. Why does the wicked renounce God and say in his heart, ‘You will not call to account’?” (Psalm 10:12–13). Why God? Why allow Gosnell to gruesomely murder these innocents? Why allow the explosions to maim so many innocents, and even kill three? You are God, right? You won’t let them get…

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Barnabas Piper has put some thinking into sports. Actually, he has put a lot of Christian thinking into sports. Writing weekly for WorldMag.com, Barnabas has had a steady voice on what we can learn about God in America’s favorite entertainment.

So when Barnabas was recently in Minneapolis, we were eager to pull up a chair and pick his brain a little more. He starts by explaining that if Christians engage the culture through the arts, sports shouldn’t be excluded. It is more than “caveman entertainment” and there are precious truths to mine.

Get this 34-minute audio and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.

For more from Barnabas, visit his blog and tune into the podcast he leads, What Did T…

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Joseph’s brothers realized something we should never forget.

It comes at the end of the story in Genesis 50. This is a long time after the brothers conspired together against Joseph. A lot had happened since then — since they hated their brother enough to sell him to Midianite traders for twenty shekels of silver (Genesis 37:28). That was the evil that started it all.

They grieved their father, Jacob, with a lie about Joseph’s death (Genesis 37:32–35). Joseph eventually was enslaved to Potiphar in Egypt, that is, until Potiphar’s wife slandered him (Genesis 39:11–20), had him thrown into prison (Genesis 39:19–20), and the cupbearer forgot him (Genesis 40:23). Years passed and then the fami…

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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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