Kennystix's podcast
When I Don’t Desire God (Part 6)
I don't say that you will triumph in this life over every known sin perfectly. You won't I do say you must fight resolve to fight every known sin. All sin comes from perceiving something as more delightful, precious, beautiful, attractive than Christ. All sin comes from that. Therefore, when you're in a sin, doing a sin, you're in darkness. And in darkness, you can't see the beauty of Christ as clearly. So sin comes from blindness and keeps you in blindness. And therefore, do whatever you can to go on the warfare against all known sinning. If you have a little pocket of sin in your life, this little thing you know is wrong and you cherish it. And over here, you just want to be happy in Jesus. Oh, please make me happy in Jesus. And it's not working. There's a reason. There's a reason God is saying kill that, fight that. I hope you fight that. And as you fight it, more light will go on in your sight of my glory. I'm going to add number seven here from a conversation with my dad, who I'll get to see this afternoon. My dad is over at Shepherd's Care at 2100 Pleasantburg Drive in Greenville. And I'll just tell you the reason I wanted to have this conference is so I could see my dad. So we'll take him out to dinner tonight. And I asked my dad, I said, I'm writing a book. This is a couple years ago. I'm writing a book on fighting for joy. My dad's 86 and he's been an evangelist all his life. And now his memory is not good enough. I'd have him sit in here if he could hear and if he could remember, but he wouldn't. Daddy, what would you say to somebody? That's the first thing that comes to your mind in how to fight for joy. Without a hesitation, he said, tell them to share their faith. You'd expect from an evangelist, right? But it's way deeper than that, isn't it? A spring cannot be pure and refreshing until it creates a stream. It's called the Dead Sea, if it doesn't create a stream. And what are streams? Telling people this precious Christ, commending Christ with your life and your lips, your commending Christ. And I know I have my own little segment I call jogging evangelism. And I carry this, somebody just gave me this, this, quest for joy. I think they said some of these were left over. I carry two of these in my sweaty back pocket as I run three miles three mornings a week. And before I get them all wet with sweat, I stop and I talk to people. So I pull out, I stop 16th Avenue. I sit on his chair, I walk up and say, "Hi, my name's John." And he says, "Hi, I'm Bob." Sometimes they don't say, "Hi, I'm Bob." Sometimes they'll look up and say, "You're not going to preach at me, are you?" Those are two of my most recent experiences. Bruce said, he's reading the newspaper in the park. He said, "You're not going to preach at me, are you?" I said, "Not if you don't want me to, but I did write something I'd like you to read." And he's reading the newspaper. He says, "You like to read." He said, "Yeah, I like to read." I said, I said, "Well, this is about finding joy in Jesus. And that's as much preaching as I'll do if you don't want me to do more." He said, "I'll take it. That's enough." But Bob was very easy to talk, very willing to talk. Now, the reason I mentioned this is because I come home real happy. I come home real happy. It's not just because of endorphins. That's another point. That's about point 12. Get the right exercise. But I come home happy because I have had the awesome privilege of spilling over onto a stranger some of my pleasure in God. So if you don't have a track with which to jog or to go to curves or wherever you go, my wife is into curves. Thank you, Daddy, for that answer that helped me. Number eight, spend time with God-saturated people who will help you see God and fight the fight of faith. I just love the story of Jonathan and David. First Samuel 23, 16, Jonathan, Saul, son, rose and went to David at Horish and strengthened his hand in God. Do you have people in your life like that? This is what small groups are about at our church, strengthening each other's hands. God has ordained that the Word of God come to us in reading the Bible, that the Word of God come to us through the preached worship context, and that the Word of God come to us in friendships and small groups. That's essential according to Hebrews 3. Exhort one another every day as long as it is called today lest there be in you an evil heart of unbelief, joylessness that will lead you away from the living God. So hang out with people who can get in your face with promises. The main way we encourage each other is by calling our sins into question. That's the negative side. You know, your attitude has not been real pretty in small group lately. Can we talk about this? Or can I share a promise with you that helped me with that attitude once, that gave me hope and got me above my self-centeredness? We need to be in each other's lives, and all the churches represented here should work at that. We're constantly working at it, never doing it as well as we'd like. So number eight is spend time with God's saturated people, or at least people who can take you to the God-saturated Bible. Number nine, read biographies of great Christian saints. Now I mention this because it's biblical. Hebrews 11 is all about heroes of the faith that we're supposed to know about, and be inspired by Abel, though dead yet speaketh. You could take that sentence from Hebrews 11 and put it on Jonathan Edwards, or most recently for me, William Tyndale. I'm going to lecture on Tyndale in January at the pastor's conference. So I'm reading Tyndale, and I just read a magnificent biography. I'd put it in the top five of biographies called, guess what? William Tyndale is the name of the biography, and the author is David Danielle. So get it. Paperback, it's a demanding biography, but those that are worth their salt are not just little, what's the word, hagiographical, or just celebrating the saints. They don't have any warts, they don't have any problems. They just, they just, rah, rah, all them be glad that they're being great Christians. That's not the kind of biography that's going to do you any good. You need substantive biographies that probe into the sins and the virtues and the conflicts of people's lives who have walked with God long and deep. And here's the way it works. I finished William Tyndale just a few weeks ago. I read most of it on vacation last May, and I come away number one, loving the doctrine of justification by faith more. Because it was the center of the biblical message, and Tyndale gave his life to translate this Bible. I come away loving that I have an English Bible, that I can open the Bible in front of a thousand people, and they have them in their laps, and I can quote verses, and they can read them. And then I read that in 1536, the hierarchy of the church hated people who wanted the Bible in English, burned them alive at the stake for wanting the Bible in English. And I love Tyndale, and I love my Bible, and I love the gospel, and I want to be bold and be willing to burn to make the gospel now. That's what a biography will do for you. I mean, what are you doing with your, if you watch television and don't read biography, you're making a mistake. I didn't use any foul language at all. Number 10, thank you. That helps, because I'm jumping over ahead of myself to find a later 10, because I wanted to put it here. Where is it? It's about great books on God. There it is. Read great books about God. This is not biography. No, this is theology. And let me quote C.S. Lewis here. I'm directing you towards substantive books like Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, or John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, or Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections, or Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will. Or, or, or, these are substantive books. These are books that on every page you pick them, you prick them, and they bleed Bible, God, cross, Christ, not... Mary said to Jane, and we have a little story here, because the publisher wants a story on this page. If you want to read contemporary books that are just mainly stories and anecdotes, then you're going to be a thin Christian. But if you want God, there are hundreds of great books, and I thank God for the banner of truth, trust, and solely day old glory, and some other publishers that are putting the old, rich, Bible-saturated books in print. But now here's the quote from C.S. Lewis that reflects my experience and his. And it's the difference between reading a thin devotional book, you know, like you go to the book story and say, "Can you recommend something for my devotions?" And they give you, they give you this utterly contentless little thing. And Lewis said this, "For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books. And I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that, quote, "nothing happens when they sit down or kneel down to a book of devotion would find that the heart sings unbidden." That's spontaneity. "Sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth." Well, you can skip the pipe with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hands. End of quote. That's true for me. That's true for me. If I try to take up some little thin story oriented lightweight book, the kinds of emotions that God is worthy of and that I long for don't generally happen. But if I tackle Edwards or Charnock or Calvin or Luther or Spurgeon, he's a little more accessible. Amazing things go on in here. That's number 10. Number 11, get the rest and exercise and proper diet that your body was designed by God to have. Now that is not number one. That's number 11. But I will say it because you all are embodied human beings. And God has ordained in his strange providence that what we eat, how we rest, and how we exercise affects our emotions. We can't equate bodily feelings with spiritual emotions. But I have a whole chapter on the mysteries of the interplay of body and soul in my book in which I wrestle. And all it is is a wrestling because these are mysteries to me as to how a spiritual reality, which I will have in heaven when I don't yet have my body. So like right now, my mother is in heaven and her body is over at Woodlawn Cemetery. But she's filled with emotions toward Jesus right now without a body. So I know that bodily feelings, tremlings, and the kinds of excitements that you associate with the body are not equal to spiritual affections. But oh, are they interwoven? You can hardly tear them apart. And so it is, I'll give you an example. It's the fall of 1971. I'm sitting in a pantry, which I turned into a study, and the third floor of "S saying, "Praising Strasse" in Munich, Germany, where I was studying for three years. And I read the most obvious sentence in Galatians, "The fruit of the Spirit is patience." Okay. Holy Spirit, please. I'm not a very patient person. Would you please grant me to be more patient with Noel, more patient with bus drivers, and other people? And then I discovered this very paradoxical, contradictory, frustrating reality. My patience level rises and falls with how much sleep I get. And then it got really scared. Well, now which is it? A fruit of sleep or a fruit of the Spirit? That's a very profound question. If patience is a fruit of the Spirit, how come mine is going up and down with how much sleep I get? I'm crabby with no sleep, and I'm a relatively easy-going, long-suffering person when I get enough sleep. Now here's my best shot at an answer. One of the ways that the Holy Spirit works is by humbling me enough to realize I'm not God, and the world can get along while I sleep. You can make good enough grades with some sleep. You can be a good enough husband with some sleep. You don't need to stay awake and run the world. Just become unconscious one-third of your life. That's a very humbling reality. That God would ordain that human beings be unconscious a third of their life. It's just mind-boggling to me. There's got to be a strong theological meaning for that, and the meaning is you're not God. I'm God, and I never sleep. Psalm 121. So the Holy Spirit gets at my patience not just directly, and he can do that for a doctor, has to stay up three days in a row. He can make a doctor patient after two nights with no sleep. He can do that, but ordinarily, the Holy Spirit says, quit playing God and playing fast and loose with your body. I made you to need a certain number of hours of sleep, and I'm going to humble you until you acknowledge that. So he can come at it indirectly as well as directly, and that's the work of the Holy Spirit. Same thing with eating, same thing with exercising, and I got all kinds of practical things here about eating and exercising, but that would get nitpicky, wouldn't it? You need to discover what your intake of food should be and what your exercise should be. If you're a very sedentary job, like mine, I sit most of the time, you just got to build in an activity that uses your muscles for what they were made for. God made muscles to be used, not to just kind of 12 hours a day. Let me read to you. I'll just close this section with this amazing quote from Spurgeon. Spurgeon's worth gold, just about every time you touch him. The only problem with Spurgeon is he's so good that he discourages you when you read him. But if you can get over your pride, which is what it is, then you can enjoy geniuses like Spurgeon, and they come along once every century or two. Sedentary habits, he wrote, have a tendency to create despondency, sedentary. I mean, sit a lot. To sit long in one posture, pouring over a book, or driving a quill, he lived 150 years ago, driving a quill is in itself a taxing of nature, but add to this a badly ventilated chamber, a body which has long been without muscular exercise, a heart burdened with many cares, and we have all the elements for preparing a seething cauldron of despair, especially in the months of fog, tri-minisota in February. He who forgets the humming of the bees, now get this, let this land on you as a gift of God concerning what you should do when you walk out of here into the trees, the breeze, the green, the yellow, the blue. Wake up, Christian, to the health-producing effects of nature that is about to be described to you here. He who forgets the humming of the bees among the heather, the cooing of the wood pigeons in the forest, the songbirds in the woods, the rippling of rills among the rushes, the sighing of the wind among the pines, needs not wonder if his heart forgets to sing and his soul grows heavy. A day's breathing of fresh air upon the hills or a few hours ramble in the beachwoods calm would sweep the cobwebs of our brains away, and the toiling ministers who are now but half alive would have life. A mouthful of sea air or a stiff walk in the wind's face would not give grace to the soul, but it would yield oxygen to the body, which is the next best thing. The furs, the rabbits, the streams, the trout, the fir trees, the squirrels, the primroses, the violets, the farm yard, the new mone hay, the fragrant hops. These are the best medicine for hypochondriacs, the surest tonics for the declining, the best refreshments for the weary, for lack of opportunity or inclination. These great remedies are neglected and the student becomes a self-immolated victim. Wow, I think there's one mistake in there. I think when he says that a mouthful of sea air and a stiff walk in the wind's face would not give grace to the soul, he's wrong. Now he's probably meaning something different than what I'm accusing him of. I think they do give grace for the soul. In fact, I wrote a whole chapter in the book to ask how can something like music be a spiritual benefit? All music is his vibrations. That's all it is. It's physical vibrations in the air. So how does that produce non-material spiritual effects? And the same thing would be true of wind in the face, birds singing on a limb, blue sky. All these things are there for your health. And if God pleases, they can mediate first common grace and they can point you to saving grace, point you. They're not saving grace, but they can point you there. And maybe that's what he meant, so I shouldn't accuse him wrongly. We're almost done. Number 13. 12. Where did 12 go? There it is. Oh, you know what? I collapsed 11 and 12. Rest, exercise, supper, diet. Number 12 was going to be make a proper use of revelation in nature. The heavens are telling the glory of God. Look at the birds of the air that need a sown or reap. Consider the lilies of the field. So I put exercise, all the bodily things that you need to do to take care of this house. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. And somehow, in the care for that body, you experience more of God. So that was 12. And now we're at 13. Do the hard and loving thing for the sake of others. Read one verse to explain what I mean. I have a section, I think, in the book on how Bill Leslie became a watered garden. He's gone to be with the Lord now. He used to be a pastor in Chicago, and he came to our church, and he gave a talk one time on this text that stuck with me now 20 years later. Isaiah 58, 10, "If you pour yourself out for the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in the darkness, and your gloom be as the noon day. And the Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your desire in scorched places, and make your bones strong. And you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters never fail." Now there's a picture of joy, and the condition was, "If you pour yourself out for the hungry, and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, find a way to minister to the needy, the really needy." Doesn't have to consume your whole life. Everybody's not called to that, but find a way to bless a person with far fewer advantages than you have. Pour your life out. Give away, even when it's hard, like late at night, or when you think, "I've spent myself as much as I can spend," and here comes another claim on my life, "Give, and you will become a watered garden," Bill Leslie discovered. Number 14, get a global vision for the cause of Christ, and pour yourself out for the unreached. Get a global vision. Far too many Christians are trying to fight for joy within the tiny little sphere of their family, or the tiny little sphere of their 14,000-member church. And I mean that with no irony, because the globe makes that church look like a tiny dot on the map, and God is at work in every square into this planet. He's at work in North Korea, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Iraq. He is at work in post-Christian Europe. He is at work in worldly America, sliding to who knows where, morally. God is reigning and working and spreading and conquering and building. I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And if you deny yourself an awareness of the global work of God, you're cutting yourself off from some big emotions. And you're just kind of living in a little cocoon of your family, or your church, and wondering why to only feel small emotions. This is God today with internet and magazines. You can find out about the triumphs of God among the Suffering Church. Just type in persecution dot o-r-g for starters, and find out the triumphs of God in the most suffering church. Get a global big vision. You were made to know and love and embrace a global God, a universal God, not just a little teeny, intimate God. Those are precious emotions. Don't let me mock them. Those are precious. But if that's all you want, just want to rest in your arms, Lord Jesus, and feel your acceptance. Just that. No more. Let the world go to hell. It doesn't matter what's happening in Iraq or North Korea, or China, or Argentina, or Brazil, or Japan. It just really doesn't matter. I just feel so good. Just break free from that limitation to intimacy. But love intimacy. John Patton, the missionary to the New Hebrides, was being chased by 1,500 people who hated him on the island of Tana. And to escape, he crawled into a tree while they ran underneath. And he said, the fellowship and the intimacy that I enjoyed with Jesus through the promise, lo, I will be with you to the end of the age, was so sweet, I would not trade that moment for any moment in my life. So please don't hear me saying that the sweet, deep, precious, personal, intimate fellowship of Jesus is a small thing. It just gets you to Tana. It gets you to the island of Tana. It gets you to the New Hebrides. And six months after you're there, you bury your wife. And then you bury your six week old baby. And you say at the grave, if it were not for Christ, I would go mad. And then you give the rest of your life in the New Hebrides. That's what joy is meant to do in this conference. Last suggestion, this corresponds to the last and difficult chapter in the book. I think the chapter was called When the Darkness Does Not Lift. And here I say be patient. This is my 14th or 15th suggestion for how to fight for joy. Be patient in the night of God's seeming absence. Be patient in the night of God's seeming absence. I waited patiently for the Lord. Where were you waiting, David? He lifted me up out of the myry bog, out of the quicksand of my despair. He put my feet upon a rock and he made my step secure. He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to my God. Many will see and put their trust in the Lord, which means evangelism. Fruitful evangelism resulted from a dark night of the soul. Do you follow that sequence of thought? I waited in the myry. How long did he wait? He was patient. He was modest. He knew he couldn't make joy happen. I waited. And God came to me. He had gutsy guilt while he was there. God lifted him up, put him on a rock, put a song in his mouth. He started to celebrate the mercies of God and people put their trust in the Lord. One of the things the Lord is doing in the darkness of your life is fitting you to be able to bear more fruitful witness to his mercies when you come out. I close with perhaps my favorite hymn. I have two or three. And it's a word that I hope those of you who came hoping for light and maybe it hasn't gone on yet. God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform. He plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable minds of never failing skill, he treasures up his bright designs and works his sovereign will. Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take. The clouds you so much dread are big with mercy and will break in blessings on your head. His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour. The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower. Blind unbelief is sure to errr and scan his work in vain. God is his own interpreter, and he will make it plain. Be patient, be modest in the dark as you fight for joy. Let's pray. Father, I have that person in mind here who so longed that the darkness, the flatness, the deadness, the blindness that they've struggled with would lift. They have seen things, they've tasted some things, hope has flickered, and they're not where they want to be. Don't let, I pray, this conference end here. Grant that the ripple effect of your truth, your glory, would bear fruit this afternoon and tonight and tomorrow morning when people rise, may they rise into new possibilities of warfare against joylessness and give these friends here measures of sight that they've never had before, of the glory of Jesus Christ. We want him to be exalted, Father, make much of your Son as we enjoy him above all things. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
John Piper | The fight of faith is really a fight for joy. Like any real battle, you shouldn’t enter the ring without strategies for victory.