The Unbiblical Absolutes of Self-Protection

This excerpt is taken from John Piper's book, The Roots of Endurance (pages 18-20). I read this section a lot - especially when I am tempted to forget that God's sovereignty is always directed with intentionality and love. This writing is a real buzz-kill if you're looking to spend the evening feeling sorry for yourself! I pray that it will challenge and encourage you the same way it has for me.


The Unbiblical Absolutes of Self-Protection
There is a mind-set in the prosperous West that we deserve pain-free, trouble-free existence. When life deals us the opposite, we have a right not only to blame somebody or some systerm and to feel sorry for ourselves, but also to devote most of our time to coping, so that we have no time or energy left over for serving others.

This mind-set gives a trajectory to life that is almost universal - namely, away from stress and toward comfort and safety and relief. Then within that very natural trajectory some people begin to think of ministry and find ways of serving God inside the boundaries set by the aims of self-protection. Then churches grow up in this mind-set, and it never occures to anyone in such a community of believers that choosing discomfrot, stress, and danger might be the right thing - even the normal, biblical thing - to do.

I have found myself in coversation with Christians for whom it is simply a given that you do not put yourself or your family at risk. The commitment to safety and comfort is an unquestioned absolute. The damends of being a Christian in the twenty-first century will probably prove to be a rude awakening for such folks. Since we h
ave not embraced the Calvary road voluntarily, God may simply catapult us onto it as he did the home-loving saints in Acts 11:19: "Those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word."

Stress and Danger Are Normal
One way or the other, Christ will bring his church to realize that "in the world you will have tribulation" (John 16:33); that "all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted: (2 Timothy 3:12); that we are called to "share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God" (2 Timothy 1:8); that "we...groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23); that "whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for [Christ's] sake and the gospel's will save it" (Mark 8:35); and that "through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22).

IF we will not freely take our cross and follow Jesus (Mark 8:34) on the Calvary road, it may be thrust on us. It would be better to hear the warnings now and wake up to biblical reality. Existence in this fallen world will not be pain-free and trouble-free. There will be groaning because of our finitude and fallenness, and many afflictions because of our calling (Romans 8:23; Psalm 34:19). Frustration is normal, disappointment is normal, sickness is normal. Conflict, persecution, danger, stress -- they are all normal. The mind-set that moves away from these will move away from reality and away from Christ. Golgotha was not a suburb of Jerusalem.

Christians Move Toward Need, Not Comfort
For the apostle Paul, following Christ meant bearing the marks of his suffering. "We are treated as imposters, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything" (2 Corinthians 6:8-10). Being a Christian should mean that our trajectory is toward need, regardless of danger and discomfort and stress. In other words, Christians characteristically will make life choices that involve putting themselves and their families at temporal risk while enjoying eternal security. "Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing...having nothing, yet possessing everything."

If God Wills Disease Why Should We Try to Eradicate It?

This is the latest Freshwords article (written by Pastor John Piper).

This question arises from the biblical teaching that all things are ultimately under God’s control. “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose” (Isaiah 46:10). “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps” (Psalm 135:6). “He does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:35). “[He] works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11).

This means that God governs all calamity and all disease. Satan is real and has a hand in it, but he is not ultimate and can do nothing but what God permits (Job 1:12-2:10). And God does not permit things willy-nilly. He permits things for a reason. There is infinite wisdom in all he does and all he permits. So what he permits is part of his plan just as much as what he does more directly.

Therefore this raises the question: If God wills disease why should we try to eradicate it? This is a crucial question for me because I have heard Christians say recently that believing in the sovereignty of God hinders Christians from working hard to eradicate diseases like malaria and tuberculosis and cancer and AIDS. They think the logic goes like this: If God sovereignly wills all things, including malaria, then we would be striving against God to invest millions of dollars to find a way to wipe it out.

That is not the logic the Bible teaches. And it is not what Calvinists have historically believed. In fact, lovers of God’s sovereignty have been among the most aggressive scientists who have helped subdue creation and bring it under the dominion of man for his good—just like Psalm 8:6 says, “You have given him [man] dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet.”

The logic of the Bible says: Act according to God’s “will of command,” not according to his “will of decree.” God’s “will of decree” is whatever comes to pass. “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that” (James 4:15). God’s “will of decree” ordained that his Son be betrayed (Luke 22:22), ridiculed (Isaiah 53:3), mocked (Luke 18:32), flogged (Matthew 20:19), forsaken (Matthew 26:31), pierced (John 19:37), and killed (Mark 9:31). But the Bible teaches us plainly that we should not betray, ridicule, mock, flog, forsake, pierce, or kill innocent people. That is God’s “will of command.” We do not look at the death of Jesus, clearly willed by God, and conclude that killing Jesus is good and that we should join the mockers.

In the same way, we do not look at the devastation of malaria or AIDS and conclude that we should join the ranks of the indifferent. No. “Love your neighbor” is God’s will of command (Matthew 22:39). “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is God’s will of command (Matthew 7:12). “If your enemy is hungry, feed him” is God’s will of command (Romans 12:20). The disasters that God ordains are not aimed at paralyzing his people with indifference, but mobilizing them with compassion.

When Paul taught that the creation was subjected to futility (Romans 8:20), he also taught that this subjection was “in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (v. 21). There is no reason that Christians should not embrace this futility-lifting calling now. God will complete it in the age to come. But it is a good thing to conquer as much disease and suffering now in the name of Christ as we can.

In fact, I would wave the banner right now and call some of you to enter vocations of research that may be the means of undoing some of the great diseases of the world. This is not fighting against God. God is as much in charge of the research as he is of the disease. You can be an instrument in his hand. This may be the time appointed for the triumph that he wills to bring over the disease that he ordained. Don’t try to read the mind of God from his mysterious decrees of calamity. Do what he says. And what he says is: “Do good to everyone” (Galatians 6:10).

Longing to relieve suffering with you,

Pastor John

Don't Waste Your Cancer

That's the title of John Piper's most recent article, written on the eve of his surgery. For more information and updates on Pastor Piper's prostate cancer and recent surgery and prayer requests, click here.

I think this is all very applicable here because any one of us can remove the word "Cancer" from this article and put in our disability, our struggle, our issue, our pain...and all ten points apply. I was blessed by these exhortations and hope you will be also.


Here are his ten points:

1. You will waste your cancer if you do not believe it is designed for you by God.
   
   
2. You will waste your cancer if you believe it is a curse and not a gift.
   
   
3. You will waste your cancer if you seek comfort from your odds rather than from God.
   
   
4. You will waste your cancer if you refuse to think about death.
   
   
5. You will waste your cancer if you think that “beating” cancer means staying alive rather than cherishing Christ.
   
   
6. You will waste your cancer if you spend too much time reading about cancer and not enough time reading about God.
   
   
7. You will waste your cancer if you let it drive you into solitude instead of deepen your relationships with manifest affection.
   
   
8. You will waste your cancer if you grieve as those who have no hope.
   
   
9. You will waste your cancer if you treat sin as casually as before.
   
   
10. You will waste your cancer if you fail to use it as a means of witness to the truth and glory of Christ.

Paul's Face

...the Apostle Paul, that is.

Every year, Pastor John Piper writes a series of narrative poems and reads them during the Sunday services of the Advent season. He takes a familiar character from Scripture and adds a fictional element to flesh out the deeper life of what that person might have been going through.

This year, he chose the Apostle Paul and speculated over what Paul's life would be like had the "thorn in his flesh" been a deformed face. We do not know what Paul's thorn was, Scripture is not clear. Many pastors and scholars have speculated through the years that it could be blindness or a speech inpediment. Having never heard the theory of a deformed face, and having a deformed face myself, I was very intrigued by the idea that perhaps even the Apostle Paul and I could relate on some level. Whether or not he truly did or did not have a deformed face isn't the point -- the poem is an enjoyable read.

You can read the poems or listen to them via an MP3 download on your computer here:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

Desiring God Conference on Suffering

I am swiping a large portion of this blog entry verbatim from JT's blog. Desiring God is hosting a conference this weekend at the Minneapolis Convention Center (Minnesota). The speakers will be: John Piper, Joni Eareckson Tada, Carl Ellis, David Powlison, Steve Saint, and Mark Talbot. You can view there bios here.

The Desiring God National Conference--Suffering and the Sovereignty of God--will begin tomorrow night. Tim Challies and Doug McHone will be live-blogging the conference. So check their sites this weekend if you're interested.

I know that everyone at DG and all of the speakers would deeply appreciate your prayers. Many of us have the sense that this will be a very significant conference. A number of the speakers not only have a profound theology of suffering, but are currently dealing with various kinds of pain and suffering in their own lives.

Keep your eyes on the Desiring God website as audio and conference CDs will be available sometime after the conference.

The Good, Insane Concordance Maker

Here is the latest online article written by John Piper. The article has been taken from http://www.desiringgod.org/.

May 11, 2005

There’s a catch to this story that comes later. I hope you read to the end. I think you’ll be encouraged. I was. I read in a recent issue of Books and Culture a review (by Timothy Larsen) of a new biography of Alexander Cruden, the man who single-handedly wrote one of the early concordances to the King James Bible (Alexander the Corrector: The Tormented Genius Who Unwrote the Bible by Julia Keay). That means he recorded every one of the 777,746 words in the Bible and made a note of every place where it occurs. For example, the word “him” (6,667 occurrences), “her” (1,994 occurrences), “God” (4,444 occurrences), etc.

In the mid-1720s, Alexander Cruden took on a self-imposed task of Herculean proportions, Himalayan tedium, and inhuman meticulousness: he decided to compile the most thorough concordance of the King James Version of the Bible to date. The first edition of Cruden's Concordance was published in 1737. How could he have possibly completed such a project? Every similar undertaking before or since has been the work of a vast team of people—in recent times made incomparably easier by computers. Cruden worked alone in his lodgings, writing the whole thing out by hand. The KJV has 777,746 words, all of which needed to be put in their proper place. Cruden even wrote explanatory entries on many of the words—in effect, including a Bible dictionary as a bonus. The word “Synagogue,” for example, prompted a 4,000-word essay.

Furthermore, Cruden’s day job was as a “Corrector of the Press” (proofreader). He would give hawk-eyed attention to prose all day long. Then he would come home at night, not to rest his eyes and enjoy some relaxation, but rather to read the Bible—stopping at every single word to secure the right sheet from the tens of thousands of pieces of paper all around him and to record accurately the reference in its appropriate place. He had no patron, no publisher, no financial backers: his only commission was a divine one.

Cruden’s Concordance has never been out of print. Some hundred editions have been published, many of which have been reprinted untold times; shoppers at a popular online bookstore today can choose from 18 different in-print versions of Cruden’s.

For this, thousands of lovers of the Bible thank God. They have studied the Bible seriously for almost three hundred years with Cruden’s help. If this is all we knew, we would simply be amazed at his industry and give thanks. But here’s the catch. He was, if not insane, utterly maladjusted.

Cruden was institutionalized for madness four times in his life. His behavior was often bizarre.

On another occasion, Cruden had apparently gone to break up a brawl but ended up spending the best part of an hour admonishing disorderly soldiers not to swear while periodically whacking them on the head with a shovel. He also would propose to women with whom he had established no romantic bond (one such intended he had not even met). Being unable to take no for an answer, he would then turn himself into a persistent nuisance, if not a stalker.

Eventually he decided that God’s call on his life was to reform the morals of Britain. “He therefore started a one-man campaign to have the King name him to a position hitherto unknown in British government, ‘Corrector of the People.’ He then went rambling about the country admonishing strangers to observe the Sabbath.”

He simply could not discern what was fitting and probable. This meant he did foolish things. But not all foolish things are bad. “He did not know—as all normal people do—that when a man gets propositioned he can feel sad for the plight of the prostitute, but there is really nothing he can do to help. Cruden instead hired her to do legitimate work, and she lived a respectable and grateful life thereafter.”

On another occasion “Cruden did not know that a prisoner’s case was never reconsidered when he was only a few days away from execution. He went at this campaign in his usual obsessive and forthright way and pulled off a political miracle—the man’s sentence was reduced to deportation.”

What encourages me about this is to realize that God’s ways are strange. “How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!” (Romans 11:33). And in this strangeness, sinful and sick and broken people fit into God’s designs. He has purposes for the mentally ill and for the emotionally unstable and for the socially maladjusted. And he has purposes for you.

As Timothy Larsen observes, Cruden did not have the sense to know that “one man working alone in his bedroom could not produce a complete concordance of the Bible.” And from this folly millions have been blessed. Beware of belittling God’s crooked sticks. With them he may write the message that that makes a thousand people glad.

Looking for merciful design everywhere,

Pastor John

God and the Problem of Evil

The sovereignty of God is a tough issue for a lot of people, even those who profess to be Christians. I am amazed at the consistency of atheists who nearly every time sight the problem of evil in the world as their number one reason for not being able to believe in God.

It is a perplexing and complicated discussion -- a powerful, loving God and a planet full of unfathomable crime and evil.

This radio interview does an amazing job of answering the very tough questions about why God allows terrible things to happen while still maintaining his love, mercy, and sovereignty through it.

The interview is specifically addressing the December 26 Indian Ocean tsunami, but can easily be personally applied to our own suffering and circumstances as well.

The Hidden Smile of God

One of my favorite quotes comes from the book, The Hidden Smile of God by John Piper. This quote is found on page 112. It was an eye-opening, convicting quote the first time I read it and it really snapped me out of my pity party once and for all.

"While I was a student at Wheaton College, a very wise and deep and happy teacher of Literature, Clyde Kilby, showed us and taught us this path to health. Once he said, 'I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.'

And then, my favorite line: Mental health is, in great measure, the gift of self-forgetfulness. The reason is that introspection destroys what matters most to us -- the authentic experience of great things outside ourselves.

I especially like that he calls self-forgetfulness a "gift" because, truly, without the grace of God, who has the power to forget the all-encompassing, ever present reality of our own existence? (And multiply that by a thousand if you are living with chronic pain or suffering of any kind)!

I think the first step to acheiving this self-forgetfullness is to immerse yourself in the moment-by-moment discipline of God-rememberance and memorizing Scripture will give you an amazing jump start.

How To Fight For Joy

1. Realize that authentic joy in God is a gift.
2. Realize that joy must be fought for relentlessly.
3. Resolve to attack all known sin in your life.
4. Learn the secret of gutsy guilt - how to fight like a justified sinner.
5. Realize that the battle is primarily a fight to see God for who he is.
6. Meditate on the Word of God day and night.
7. Pray earnestly and continually for open heart-eyes and an inclination for God.
8. Learn to preach to yourself rather than listen to yourself.
9. Spend time with God-saturated people who help you see God and fight the fight.
10. Be patient in the night of God's seeming absence.
11. Get the rest and exercise proper diet that your body was designed by God to have.
12. Make a proper use of God's revelation in nature.
13. Read great books about God and biographies of great saints.
14. Do the hard and loving thing for the sake of others (witness and mercy).
15. Get a global vision for the cause of Christ and pour yourself out for the unreached.

This list was recently expanded upon and made into a book entitled, "When I Don't Desire God; How To Fight For Joy." The book can be obtained through amazon.com or through the ministry of it's author (John Piper) at www.desiringGod.org.

Two Ways to Respond to Suffering

John Piper writes:

There are two kinds of responses to our own personal suffering: 1) We can rail against God and say, "If you are such a great and powerful and loving God, why am I in this hellish mess?" 2) Or we can acknowledge that we are sinners and don't deserve any good thing, and cry out for mercy and help in our time of desperation. The world is full of those who rail against God in their self-righteousness and presume that the creator of the universe obliged to make their life smooth. But there are only a few who own up to the fact that God owes us nothing, and that any good to come our way will be due to his mercy, not our merit. I think Luke records this text for us about the two thieves to teach us that there is great reward for responding to suffering like the first sort of person. The two thieves represent these two ways of responding to suffering and relating to Christ in suffering.

To read the rest of his article: http://www.desiringgod.org/library/sermons/81/041781.html