Audio Transcript
Welcome back to Ask Pastor John with longtime author and pastor, John Piper. This fiscal year, which soon ends, was a big one for us at Desiring God. We launched our Next Generation Vision to aggressively spread great joy in a big God to the next generation. To that end, we are upgrading our technology and expanding the distribution of our resources far and wide, all free of charge. As we end our fiscal year just hours from now, would you consider joining us soon by giving a monthly or one-time gift to help offset the cost of free for thousands just like you? Go to desiringGod.org/give today. And if you do support us, thank you! We appreciate you.
From reading emails for thirteen years, I know many of you listening are facing huge decisions in life. A decision that will change your life. A decision from which there will be no going back. You will live with your answer forever. And it’s one of those moments when it feels like doing the right thing will be so costly that it will lead to your ultimate demise in this life — like doing what you know is right and what will honor God will wreck all the plans you had, and the dreams you were living for, if you make the right decision. Today on Ask Pastor John: Obedience will never ruin your life.
It’s the dilemma facing an anonymous woman right now. “Pastor John, what would you say to a young single woman, a Christian, who is secretly considering an abortion because it would make life easier? This is where I find myself right now, and I never imagined it would happen to me, yet here I am, shattered and scared.”
I preached a sermon about the causes of abortion on January 24, 2021, at The North Church (Bethlehem Baptist’s north campus at the time). And I would really encourage our friend to listen to that sermon, tailor-made for her in her situation. In fact, I would encourage everybody to listen to it because one of the points I make is just so relevant for all of life, not just abortion.
The title of the message and the point of this particular podcast that we’re making right now is “Doing the Right Thing Never Ruins Your Life.” That’s the title of the message, and that’s the point of what I want to say right now.
Never Worthless
In that sermon, I mentioned three causes that lead to abortion, and the third one was the failure to believe this precious biblical truth: Doing the right thing never, never, never ruins your life. It may cost you your life. It may cost you your friends. It may cost you your previous dreams. But it will never ruin your life.
And by that, I mean it will never make your life worthless. It will never make your life meaningless or useless or unlivable. It will never make your life more than you can bear. It will never make your life joyless, or so bad that at the end of it you’ll regret it. No, no, no, it won’t. That will never happen if you do the right thing. And what I mean by “do the right thing” is do the will of God revealed in the Bible, depending on his grace to help you do it.
That’s what I mean by “do the right thing”: Do the will of God revealed in the Bible, depending on his grace to help you do it. The right thing is to do the will of God by trusting the grace of God. If you do that, it will never, never ruin your life.
And the right thing when it comes to abortion is this: Don’t participate in the taking of your baby’s life. Don’t do it. Don’t get an abortion. The Bible tells us not to take the life of innocent persons, and the Bible treats the baby in the womb as a person. We could get into lots of arguments, but this is not the time for that.
Dependent on Grace
To do the right thing takes an active faith in a great, wise, good, sovereign God who can turn the most heartbreaking circumstances into something amazingly significant. The reason I emphasize the need for faith is that everything you can see in your circumstances right now appears to be so contrary to hope. You can’t see any.
“God will not let your life be ruined — he won’t — if you do the right thing in reliance upon his grace.”
Circumstances cry out, “If I stay pregnant for nine months, if I keep this baby, my life will be ruined.” Or a mom or a dad or a boyfriend cries out the same thing: “If you stay pregnant for nine months, if you keep this baby, our lives will be ruined.”
Thousands of abortions happen because pregnant women and boyfriends and husbands and parents and grandparents look at the implications for years to come and conclude, “This is going to ruin our lives.”
And my argument is this: That’s not true. That is not true, and I can show it’s not true from the word of God — that doing the right thing never ruins your life, never. And this relates to every one of us, not just a woman with a crisis pregnancy. It’s every one of us listening to this podcast, because it has to do with facing a decision between doing the right thing no matter the pain, and doing the wrong thing to minimize the pain. All of us have been there. All of us, little or big, we’ve been there. Abortion just happens to be one glaring example of facing that choice.
Beautiful, Brokenhearted Life
There is such a thing (oh, that you would believe me!) as a beautiful, brokenhearted life. Let there be no misunderstanding: Doing the right thing in reliance upon Christ and for the glory of Christ will bring suffering into your life — and that’s not just avoiding an abortion.
The words of Jesus are unmistakable:
- “‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20).
- “I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16).
- “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man” (Luke 6:22).
- “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. . . . And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household” (Matthew 10:34–36).
- “You will be delivered up even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and some of you they will put to death” (Luke 21:16).
And the words of Paul are just as clear:
- “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).
- Or it may be “tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword” (Romans 8:35).
- It may be “[great] labors, . . . imprisonments, with countless beatings; . . . shipwrecked; . . . in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, . . . danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, . . . in cold and exposure” (2 Corinthians 11:23–27).
Welcome to the life of doing the right thing: the unruined, unwasted, beautiful, heartbroken life. “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8–9). What does that mean? It means not ruined, not ruined, not ruined. That’s what it means. Isn’t that what the great apostle is saying? Afflicted in every way — but not ruined, not meaningless, not useless, not more than you can bear, not joyless, not regretted, but rather a beautiful life. A beautiful life of brokenhearted joy, brokenhearted love, unwavering faithfulness, built out of the jagged fragments of shattered dreams — and infinitely worth living.
Never in Vain
Why? Because the Christian epitaph on the gravestone over every buried dream reads, “Satan meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” When you do the right thing in reliance on God, God promises to meet every need you have (Philippians 4:13). He promises to work everything together for your good (Romans 8:28). He promises that abounding in the work of the Lord is never, never, never in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58). He promises that you don’t need to be anxious about anything because your Father knows what you need before you ask him (Matthew 6:8, 32). In other words, he will not let your life be ruined — he won’t — if you do the right thing in reliance upon his grace.
The great purpose of life is not to escape difficulty or hardship or suffering. The purpose of life is to magnify the greatness and beauty and worth of Jesus. And we do that by trusting him as we gladly and painfully do the right thing. So, I plead with our young friend and many like her: Don’t believe the lie that doing the right thing will ruin your life. It won’t. I promise you, it won’t.
