Godward Toil

From the page to my life

In John Piper's moving explanation for his upcoming leave of absence, he acknowledged pride in his life:

But on the other hand, I see several species of pride in my soul that, while they may not rise to the level of disqualifying me for ministry, grieve me, and have taken a toll on my relationship with Noël and others who are dear to me. How do I apologize to you, not for a specific deed, but for ongoing character flaws, and their effects on everybody?

This touching acknowledgment of pride made me think about something he mentioned in a sermon about greatness and humility several months back: 

A Yearlong Focus and Lifelong Passion. One evidence of how crucial we feel this to be is that the pastoral staff small groups this coming year will be reading and praying over and applying C. J. Mahaney’s book Humility: True Greatness. The five of us who lead those small groups agreed on this so that the quest to put to death our pride and all its ugly fruit would not be a passing interest with this sermon, but a yearlong focus for us—and then a lifelong passion.

I have no idea how God used the small-group study of Humility to sanctify Pastor John and others in the group. But it made me know that I want to let the good books I read really have an effect on my life. God is doing a million X a million things in ordaining that we pick up a godly book to read. And when he moved men of God to write them.

On my shelf right now I have three unread books that could change everything if I take them as seriously as I imagine John Piper takes a book like Mahaney's:  DA Carson's A Call to Spiritual Reformation, Richard Phillips The Masculine Mandate, and Timothy Witmer's The Shepherd Leader.

What books are on your shelf? Will they make it to your life?

John Piper: A model for pouring into the next generation

Every time I see another event in which John Piper shares the platform with young leaders I rejoice and take note.   The Advance '09 conference (trailer below) is the latest example.   I love seeing this beloved, wise, mature pastor in the same funky/trendy videoclip with these young godly men in Jesus T-shirts.  That's God's church.  May Piper's influence on them be great.  And may they all be influential for God.

The purest words ever spoken from a pulpit

The first 17 minutes of this sermon by John Piper put a stake in the ground for my life.  Pastor John recites scripture from the heart the way I want to, and want my children to.  Paul said to the Corinthians, "Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ."   So I am within God's plan for the body of Christ when I desire to imitate this precious brother's Word-soaked life.   These 17 minutes are my vision of biblical productivity.  These words are tools for Godward toil.   If you do nothing else on the Internet this week, watch or listen to (don't just read) this sermon about Scripture memory.

Encouraging faithfulness to core disciplines

I've been considering this morning how to encourage faithfulness to the core disciplines of hearing from God through Bible reading and prayer.   This topic has come to mind for three reasons: 

1. I am always seeking strategies for defeating sloth and distraction in my flesh. 
2. My current focus on church ministry teams has me pleading with God for a team of brothers and sisters who are in the word and praying every day because (as I've discussed in my posts on Psalm 127), the house we build will either fall down or do no lasting good unless the Lord builds it.
3. I recently listened to John Piper's annual sermon exhorting his people to faithful and fruitful prayer.  It is always one of my favorites of the year (last year's blew me away).  This year Pastor John strongly emphasized building habits around prayer, including committing to a time and place.

I've heard the exhortation for having a time and place many times, and of course it is wise.  But I also sense it is incomplete for many people.   I needed to link my disciplines to other actions and habits in my life.  For me, the most helpful strategy has been the "no email before bible" resolution.  This strategy built Psalm 127 thinking into my day--I was essentially saying to myself, "Don't fool yourself into thinking that any work or personal correspondence that is not build upon your relationship with God will be any good to anyone."    I was also trying to defeat Satan's subtle tactics to get me off track with what is most important--"just take care of this one thing and get it off your mind so you can really focus on your Bible," the devil would prompt--which of course just got me off to the races, never to return to my plan for quiet time with my Lord.

I have not always been faithful to my resolution, but it has helped a lot.  I'm considering upping the ante on it by changing some usernames or passwords to include phrases like "IvereadmyBibleGod" somewhere in them (note to hackrs:  this is an example and it won't be in any of my passwords, which will be way more disguised:).   I've also thought about a yellow sticky over the keypad of my work and cell phone that says "Remove only after daily devotions" which would require me to take it off before the Lord prior to using.  After all, the whole reason he has blessed me with a phone is so that I can do my work or ministry for Him!   How silly is it for me to use a phone without seeking him for purity and purpose in all I do?   I'd love to find a way to disable my car with a prayer detector that wouldn't let it start until I had earnestly sought Him!

Now, I know these kinds of suggestions open one to charges of legalism, which is why I LOVED Piper's direct response to this criticism in the prayer sermon this year:

And meanwhile the devil is whispering all over this room: “The pastor is getting legalistic now. He’s starting to use guilt now. He’s getting out the law now.” To which I say, “To hell with the devil and all of his destructive lies. Be free!” Is it true that intentional, regular, disciplined, earnest, Christ-dependent, God-glorifying, joyful prayer is a duty? Do I go to pray with many of you on Tuesday at 6:30 a.m., and Wednesday at 5:45 p.m., and Friday at 6:30 a.m., and Saturday at 4:45 p.m., and Sunday at 8:15 a.m. out of duty? Is it a discipline?

You can call it that. It’s a duty the way it’s the duty of a scuba diver to put on his air tank before he goes underwater. It’s a duty the way pilots listen to air traffic controllers. It’s a duty the way soldiers in combat clean their rifles and load their guns. It’s a duty the way hungry people eat food. It’s a duty the way thirsty people drink water. It’s a duty the way a deaf man puts in his hearing aid. It’s a duty the way a diabetic takes his insulin. It’s a duty the way Pooh Bear looks for honey. It’s a duty the way pirates look for gold.

It goes without saying that just because I remove a yellow sticky from my phone, read my Bible pray, doesn't mean that my heart is with the Lord.  The habit doesn't make the heart, but not having the habit can destroy chances of developing the heart.  That is too big a risk for me.  I  fear wasting my life and time building houses, keeping watch, rising up early and going late to rest (Psalm 127:1-2) if the Lord is not in it.  I also fear for a church ministry team that would meet to talk, plan, and work without every person continually asking God for an renewed mind (Romans 12:2) and a pure heart (Psalm 51).  Join me in praying for faithfulness to core disciplines this year.

What Biblical Productivity Is Not

There is a terrible danger when talking about "Biblical Productivity" that some might think "Biblical Productivity" promises material wealth or prosperity by following Jesus or the Bible.   The productivity I'm after is that which promotes God's glory.  I want to be as wise and effective as possible for Him, and for others; and I want other Christians to think with me about how best to steward our time and attention so that we can serve and enjoy him most.

I pray that this emphasis is evident when reading my posts.   But I was reminded by the video embedded below (discovered via Justin Taylor)  that wolves in sheep's clothing can twist the language of productivity and pervert the Bible and the Gospel into a message about material productivity and prosperity. 

Getting things done with prayer

In a recent sermon on prayer, John Piper made the following staggering assertion:

...God has ordained to make our prayers real causes of real events. Real causes. The words of James 4:2, “You do not have because you do not ask,” do not mean, “You would have had anyway, even if you didn’t pray, since God had a plan and your prayers don’t matter.” “You do not have because you do not ask” means prayer causes things to happen that do not happen if the prayers don’t happen. This is breathtaking. And if you neglect this privilege—your participation in God’s moving the world—you are acting very foolishly. We pray because it is a staggeringly awesome privilege.

I nearly gasped when I heard this.  And it has changed my prayer life.   Why?

Anyone who knows John Piper's mission and theology knows that no one on Earth has a higher view God's sovereignty and supremacy.  In the very paragraph before the one I quoted above, he says,  "God runs this world with infinite wisdom. You and I never inform him of anything he doesn’t already know. We never add to his wisdom about what he should do next."    So when I heard him say "prayer causes things to happen that do not happen if the prayers don’t happen," I knew that  He was not taking about an open theism position in which God lacks foreknowledge and therefore is ever improving and responding.

That meant that I really needed to come to terms with this radical statement.  Does he really mean "cause"?   Do my prayers matter in a "cause" kind of way?   I knew that I hadn't been praying like that.   I asked God to show me truth, to enlighten and enlarge my mind so that I might possibly hold onto such a potentially glorious paradox long enough to examine it and let it touch me.    With that prayer, I went to the Scripture and found just what John Piper found:   We have an inscrutable God who knows and causes all things, and who has taken pleasure in causing prayer to cause things to happen in the universe.   This reality is so profound, that I can barely begin to think about before I exhaust my mental capacity.

Yet, marvelously and inexplicably, my soul can respond to it.  When I was first born of God, I prayed this way.  And I have begun to pray this way again.  Early this week, while I was reading the Bible in the morning, I felt overwhelmed by all of the tasks and responsibilities I had this week.  I could not see how I could possibly do everything that I had to do.  Next actions and projects identified, but not nearly enough time to fit them in.  In my prayer journal, I asked God to help me.   And I asked with the fervency that came from the meditations on prayer that had been sparked by the Piper sermon.   Later that day, one of the huge things I had to do was completed and taken away in 30 minutes.   When it happened, I knew with certainty (with as much unprovable certainty as I know I love my children) that my prayer had caused that to happen.  I thanked and praised Him.   An unbelievable interaction had taken place with the One who holds the universe in His hands.  I participated in God moving the world.  He caused my circumstances (the work I had, the sermon, everything), moved my heart to pray,  heard the prayer, and made it happen.   He ordered all of this such that my prayer was the only way it would happen--and/because it is the way He gets the most glory.

Prayer:  a trusted system for getting things done.

Godward Toil in Piper Sermon

I listened to a 2005 sermon by John Piper this morning, "Boiling for Christ."  The sermon is an exposition of  Romans 12:11  "Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord."   The primary exhortation in the message is to serve passionately ("feel!") and productively ("get it done!"), receiving the passion, strength, effectiveness, and service from Christ.   The whole sermon is glorious and I can't do it justice.  But the last 7 minutes or so (33:00-40:47 if you want to download and listen) particularly caught my attention because Piper brought together three verses that I had not previously enjoyed as a trio proclaiming that productivity for God is productivity from God:

• Romans 15:18, “I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me
• Colossians 1:28-29:  “[Christ] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. 29 For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”
• 1 Corinthians 15:10, “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

We work hard.  We must toil.   And even as we toil, it is Christ who is accomplishing.  How strange and marvelous to be God's conduit.   May the knowledge that it is not me working, spur me to work even harder!