John Piper's Blog, page 356

Letter to an Incomplete, Insecure Teenager

Four years ago a teenager in our church wrote to me for advice about life in general, and identity in particular. Here is what I wrote, with a big dose of autobiography for illustration.

Dear ________,

My experience of coming out of an introverted, insecure, guilty, lustful, self-absorbed adolescent life was more like the emergence of a frog from a tadpole than a butterfly from a larva.

Larvae disappear into their cocoons and privately experience some inexplicable transformation with no one watching (it is probably quite messy in there) and then the cocoon comes off and everyone says oooo, ahhh, beautiful. It did not happen like that for me.

Frogs are born teeny-weeny, fish-like, slimy, back-water-dwellers. They are not on display at Sea World. They might be in some ritzy hotel's swimming pool if the place has been abandoned for 20 years and there's only a foot of green water in the deep end.

But little by little, because they are holy frogs by predestination and by spiritual DNA (new birth), they swim around in the green water and start to look more and more like frogs.

First, little feet come out on their side. Weird. At this stage nobody asks them to give a testimony at an Athletes in Action banquet.

Then a couple more legs. Then a humped back. The fish in the pond have already pulled back: "Hmmm," they say, "this does not look like one of us any more." A half-developed frog fits nowhere.

But God is good. He has his plan and it is not to make this metamorphosis easy. Just certain. There are a thousand lessons to be learned in the process. Nothing is wasted. Life is not on hold waiting for the great coming-out. That's what larvae do in the cocoon. But frogs are public all the way though the foolishness of change.

I think the key for me was finding help in the Apostle Paul and C. S. Lewis and my father, all of whom seemed incredibly healthy, precisely because they were so absolutely amazed at everything but themselves.

They showed me that the highest mental health is not liking myself but being joyfully interested in everything but myself. They were the type of people who were so amazed that people had noses—not strange noses, just noses—that walking down any busy street was like a trip to the zoo. O yes, they themselves had noses, but they couldn't see their own. And why would they want to? Look at all these noses they are free to look at! Amazing.

The capacity of these men for amazement was huge. I marveled and I prayed that I would stop wasting so much time and so much emotional energy thinking about myself. Yuk, I thought. What am I doing? Why should I care what people think about me. I am loved by God Almighty and he is making a bona fide high-hopping frog out of me.

The most important text on my emergent frogishness became 2 Corinthians 3:18 —

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

This was one of the greatest secrets I ever discovered: Beholding is becoming.

Introspection must give way to amazement at glory. When it does, becoming happens. If there is any key to maturity it is that. Behold your God in Jesus Christ. Then you will make progress from tadpole to frog. That was a great discovery.

Granted, (so I thought) I will never be able to speak in front of a group, since I am so nervous. And I may never be married, because I have too many pimples. Wheaton girls scare the bejeebies out of me. But God has me in his hand (Philippians 3:12) and he has a plan and it is good and there is a world, seen and unseen, out there to be known and to be amazed at—why would I ruin my life by thinking about myself so much?

Thank God for Paul and Lewis and my dad! It's all so obvious now. Self is simply too small to satisfy the exploding longings of my heart. I wanted to taste and see something great and wonderful and beautiful and eternal.

It started with seeing nature and ended with seeing God. It started in literature, and ended in Romans and Psalms. It started with walks through the grass and woods and lagoons, and ended in walks through the high plains of theology. Not that nature and literature and grass and woods and lagoons disappeared, but they became more obviously copies and pointers.

The heavens are telling the glory of God. When you move from heavens to the glory of God, the heavens don't cease to be glorious. But they are un-deified, when you discover what they are saying. They are pointing. "You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy" (Psalm 65:8).

What are the sunrise and sunset shouting about so happily? Their Maker! They are beckoning us to join them. But if I am grunting about the zit on my nose, I won't even look out the window.

So my advice is: be patient with the way God has planned for you to become a very happy, belly-bumping frog. Don't settle for being a tadpole or a weird half-frog. But don't be surprised at the weirdness and slowness of the process either.

How did I become a preacher? How did I get married? God only knows. Incredible. So too will your emergence into what you will be at 34 be incredible. Just stay the course and look. Look, look. There is so much to see. The Bible is inexhaustible. Mainly look there. The other book of God, the unauthoritative one—nature—is also inexhaustible. Look. Look. Look. Beholding the glory of the Lord we are being changed.

I love you and believe God has great froggy things for you. Don't worry about being only a high-hopping Christlike frog. Your joy comes from what you see.

Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

There is another metamorphosis awaiting. It just gets better and better. God is infinite. So there will always be more of his glory for a finite mind to see. There will be no boredom in eternity.

Affectionately,

Pastor John

 

________

Recent posts from John Piper —

Indulge My Effusive Overflow for a Dead Friend
11 Ways God Works for Us
Four Waves of Change in Missions

 

Indulge My Effusive Overflow for a Dead Friend

I read Jonathan Edwards' sermon, "Christ's Agony." Stunning. I could not stop till I was done. So penetrating. So full of wine from the crushing and wringing of these grape-texts. So many questions posed. Such answers!

It is simply amazing to me that almost all of Edwards' published works are available online, or in multiple Kindle editions (for $.99 or $1.99, the one I have).

May God touch you as deeply as he has me—and more—as you linger in the kind of preaching and writing that makes every minute worth it.

________

Recent posts from John Piper —

11 Ways God Works for Us
Four Waves of Change in Missions
The Authority of Preaching for Readers and Non-Readers

11 Ways God Works for Us

Only a few things have gripped me with greater joy than the truth that God loves to show his God-ness by working for me, and that his working for me is always before and under and in any working I do for him.

At first it may sound arrogant of us, and belittling to God, to say that he works for us. But that's only because of the connotation that I am an employer and God needs a job. That's not the connotation when the Bible talks about God's working for us. As in: "God works for those who wait for him" (Isaiah 64:4).

The proper connotation of saying God works for me is that I am bankrupt and need a bailout. I am weak and need someone strong. I am endangered and need a protector. I am foolish and need someone wise. I am lost and need a Rescuer.

"God works for me" means I can't do the work.

And this glorifies him not me. The Giver gets the glory. The Powerful One gets the praise.

I just completed a series on Twitter (@JohnPiper) celebrating some of the texts that express this truth. Here's the summary list. Read and be freed from the burden of bearing your own load. "Cast your burden on the LORD, and he will sustain you" (Psalm 55:22). Let him do that work.

"No eye has seen a God besides you, who works for those who wait for him." (Isaiah 64:4)
"God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything, but he himself gives life and breath and everything." (Acts 17:25)
"The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).
"The eyes of the LORD run through the earth, to show himself strong for those who trust him." (2 Chronicles. 16:9)
"If I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you. Call on me, I will deliver you. You will glorify me." (Psalm 50:15)
"To old age I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save." (Isaiah 46:4)
"I worked harder than any, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me" (1 Corinthians. 15:10).
"Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." (Psalm 127:1)
"Whoever serves, let him serve by the strength God supplies, so that in everything God may be glorified." (1 Peter 4:11)
"Work out your own salvation, for it is God who works in you, to will and to work." (Philippians 2:12–13)
"I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth." (1 Corinthians 3:6–7)

 

________

Recent posts from John Piper —

Four Waves of Change in Missions
The Authority of Preaching for Readers and Non-Readers
Be Encouraged to Pray This Summer

 

Four Waves of Change in Missions

If God would be pleased to breathe on the ripples from the pebbles these speakers drop at our conference this year, they might become waves that break over thousands of lives and churches. The waves I am praying for are:

Wave #1: Putting world evangelization into the passions of a new generation.

Missional is the in word today. But missions is not always in the word. Missions means crossing an ethno-linguistic barrier (that may take 20 years) in order to root the gospel in a people that has no access to it. Missions strategizes to reach not just unreached people, but unreached peoples. "Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you!" (Psalm 67:3). Wave #1 would result in missions becoming part of the DNA of missional.

Wave #2: Weaving the dark thread of hell back into the fabric of our compassion.

I pray that the watchword of world missions would become: We care about all suffering, especially eternal suffering. All these words count: suffering, eternal, especially, all, care, we. Each carries freight. Wave #2 would result in that freight being loaded into ten thousand gospel trains headed to the neighborhoods and the nations.

Wave #3: Blowing away misperceptions about what is needed in missions.

I pray that this conference would blow away the notion that missions can stay home now because all the nations have come to us. My neighborhood is currently reported by CityVision to be "the most ethnically diverse single neighborhood in America with 100+ languages spoken." That changes a lot in the way we do missions. But one thing it does not change is the fact that the Joshua Project catalogues not a few hundred, but 6933 peoples globally without a self-sustaining gospel presence. Another misperception I would like to see blown away is that Westerners should just send money rather than go as missionaries. My paraphrase: Let others give their blood. We give our bucks. Realistically, most of the unreached peoples do not have anyone with better access to them than we have. "Unreached," in its fullest sense, means: there's no missionary in the people group to whom you could send money if you wanted to. So wave #3 would result in doing it all: missions to the unreached peoples that are here, support for missions from other sending churches, and especially mobilizing our own people to reach the thousands of people groups without access to the gospel.

Wave #4: Persuading pastors that a passion for the global glory of God is good for the saints at home.

If the light of your candle can shine ten thousand miles away, it is burning very bright at home. What kind of Christians do we want our churches to breed? Consider: Apathetic Christians, who spend most of their discretionary time in worldly entertainment, seldom pray, weep, or work for the reaching of the perishing peoples of the world. Do not coddle them. Confront them. Tell them to get a life. PG13 videos every other night leaves them spiritually powerless and empty. They need a cause big enough to live for. And die for. Wave #4 would make world missions the flashpoint for thousands of awakened Christians.

Lord, make this conference more strategic for the glory of Christ among the nations than we are able to think or imagine.

________

Recent posts from John Piper —

The Authority of Preaching for Readers and Non-Readers
Be Encouraged to Pray This Summer
Finding Care in the Calamity of Gay Pride

Personal Tribute to Bruce Manning Metzger

Bruce Metzger died on Tuesday, February 13, 2007 at the age of 93. He was the George L. Collord Professor Emeritus of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary. I think it would be fair to say that in his prime there was no greater authority on New Testament textual criticism than Dr. Metzger—at least not in the English-speaking world. I have five memories by way of tribute to a great man.

1. His book, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, and Context was the text I used each time I taught the basic New Testament course at Bethel from 1974 to 1979. It was short, careful, solid, and readable.

2. He came to Fuller Seminary during my studies there (1968-71) and taught a class on Galatians, which I took with great enjoyment. I was so helped by his teaching and so impressed with him as a man, I applied to Princeton to do my graduate work with him when I was finished at Fuller in 1971. I was rejected. He wrote me a personal letter to ease my disappointment, saying that only four people were accepted. It helped (a little).

3. He told us the story that when the Concordance to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was published, the publisher offered $25 for every mistake people found. He told of sitting up in bed at night reading the concordance noting errors—more for enjoyment than money.

4. Only when the Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament and the Aland Greek Testament coincided in wording did I make the change to use the small pocket size Aland Greek New Testament. Until then my ragged old Greek Testament was the Bible Societies’ edition—the one edited by Bruce Metzger.

5. He quoted a Chinese proverb: “The faintest ink is more lasting than the strongest memory.” Accordingly, he said in his Memoir (Reminiscences of an Octogenarian, p.229) that he made notes of noteworthy sayings on 3 by 5 cards as he read throughout his life. There are over 20,000 of these which were left to the archives at Princeton. One of them from R. W. Sockman says, “Time is the deposit each one has in the bank of God, and no one knows the balance.” (Until the note falls due.)

I pray that I will fill my days as diligently as Bruce Metzger. His life gave the word assiduous flesh and blood meaning.

Prosperity Preaching: Deceitful and Deadly

When I read about prosperity-preaching churches, my response is: “If I
were not on the inside of Christianity, I wouldn’t want in.” In other
words, if this is the message of Jesus, no thank you.

Luring people to Christ to get rich is both deceitful and deadly. It’s deceitful
because when Jesus himself called us, he said things like: “Any one of
you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke
14:33). And it’s deadly because the desire to be rich plunges
“people into ruin and destruction” (1 Timothy 6:9). So here is my plea
to preachers of the gospel...Read the whole article.

Piper and Sheen?

Believe me, we had nothing to do with the pairing of Piper with Fulton Sheen's Life of Christ!!!

Upcoming Sermon: Justification and Marriage

I will try to show how the doctrine of the atonement, and justification by faith in particular, is the key to covenant-keeping in marriage.

Title: Marriage: God's Showcase of Covenant-Keeping Grace

Text: Ephesians 5:15-33

[Update: The text Piper will be preaching from has been changed to Colossians 3:12-19.]

Preview for this coming week from last week's sermon:

Piper's Foreword in Anyabwile's Book

One of the speakers at the Desiring God Conference for Pastors is Thabiti Anyabwile, the pastor of the First Baptist Church, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands (90 miles south of Cuba). He has written a book entitled The Faithful Preacher: Recapturing the Vision of Three African American Pastors. I wrote the foreword mainly because the book embodies so many of my values. According to the Crossway Books web site the book is due out March 12. Here is my Foreword in the hopes of enticing you to get the book.

When Hearts Are Better than Heads, and Vice Versa.

In my preparations for Tuesday’s talk on Andrew Fuller, I came across this quote. It stirred up ten thoughts about heads being better than hearts and hearts being better than heads. Here is what Fuller said:

I perceived that men's characters were not always formed by their avowed principles; that we may hold a sound faith without its having such hold of us as to form our spirit and conduct; that we may profess an erroneous creed, and yet our spirit and conduct may be formed nearly irrespective of it; in short, that there is a difference between principles and opinions; the one are the actual moving causes which lie at the root of action, the other often float in the mind without being reduced to practice. (The Complete Works of Reverend Andrew Fuller, ed. Joseph Belcher, Vol. 1, p. 16)

Some inferences:



1. Some men’s hearts are better than their heads. Some men’s heads are better than their hearts.



2. There is no good, heaven-bound heart that is rooted in a Christ-denying head.



3. There can be a bad, hell-bound heart in the same body with a head that affirms orthodox doctrine.



4. Hearts that are better than heads are vulnerable hearts and more likely to be corrupted than if the goodness of the heart were rooted in the truth of the head.



5. Hearts that are bad, in spite of truth in the head, have a better chance of being awakened than those that are doubly trapped with untruth in the head as well.



6. Heads and hearts do not ordinarily fail to influence each other; good can purify and evil can corrupt in both directions.



7. When Jesus prayed, “Sanctify them by the truth,” God was the sanctifier, truth the agent. Therefore, God the Spirit is indispensable in the truth of the head purifying the affections of the heart.



8. Therefore, aiming at hearts that are better than heads is not a good goal in preaching.



9. And aiming at heads that are better than hearts is not a good goal in preaching.



10. Aiming at love through truth is a worthy goal. The evidence that we are aiming at this is whether we pray that our people would always know the truth in a way that makes us free (John 8:32).