Children Need a Crisis of Faith: Seven Lessons from Parenting Through Doubt

My wife and I have five children. Our oldest two have exited childhood and are adventuring into the uncharted territory of their young adulthood. Our younger three are navigating the tricky waters of adolescence. As parents, we have the sacred, marvelous, daunting, and sometimes painful privilege of sharing in all these unique life-journeys.

As a rule, I am slow to offer parenting advice. We are still too much in the thick of it to be qualified experts. Most of the time we’re looking to receive, not dispense, counsel.

And one wonderful new source of counsel we’ve discovered is our (now) adult children. Their experiences of childhood and adolescence, and the good and not-so-good ways we parented them, are still fresh. But there’s sufficient distance for them to maturely reflect on their experiences and enough trust between us (thank you, God!) for them to share with us honestly. It’s precious and humbling when your child matures into your counselor.

Where It All Begins for Children

Recently, my wife was sharing with one of our adult children some of the spiritual wrestlings and questions of their younger siblings. Our adult child replied, “That’s where it all begins.”

This was the wise reply of one whose wisdom was hard won. They spoke from experience, having endured difficult and sometimes dark seasons of profound spiritual struggles during their own adolescence. And they discovered in these seasons what nearly all saints discover sooner or later: the Light of the world shines brightest in the darkness — in our own darkness (John 1:5). Coming to really see, savor, treasure, and trust Jesus Christ almost always begins in a crisis.

And this has unnerving implications for Christian parents: if our children are going to see the Light, they very likely must endure darkness. Which means we will endure it with them, and experience a powerlessness over the outcome we find hard to bear.

As parents, we spend a lot of time and energy trying to protect our children from the forces of evil and sin in the world, which we should. And we try hard to point them to the gospel so they escape the horrible slavery of their own sin, which we should. We comfort, reassure, and counsel; we admonish, reprove, and rebuke, which we should.

But all the efforts we pour into protecting and teaching our children can make us susceptible to the deception, even if we know better, that if we do our job right, our children will sail from young childhood into adulthood on untroubled seas, arriving with a robust faith in Christ. We forget that this wasn’t even Christ’s own experience in “parenting” his disciples. It was on the troubled sea, not on tranquil waters, where the disciples began to grasp what faith really means (Luke 8:22–25).

Our children may have to ride on a violent sea, one we fear will swallow them, before they really learn to fear and trust Christ. As parents, then, we must prayerfully prepare for when those sea billows roll, because it will be a scary ride for us too.

Faithfully Parenting

While I’m reluctant to give parenting advice, my wife and I have ridden enough waves with our children to share some lessons, not as an expert on parenting through a child’s faith crisis, but as a fellow sojourner sharing from my experience — my own faith crises, as well as my children’s.

1. Expect your child to experience a faith crisis.

Actually, do more than expect it; pray for it. By “faith crisis,” I don’t mean the loss of faith — a period of apostasy — though for some that may be what a crisis looks like. What I mean is whatever event(s) God knows is needed to call forth real faith in our child — a season or set of circumstances when they are faced with a crisis that forces them to exercise their own faith and experience for themselves that God exists and is the rewarder of those who seek him (Hebrews 11:6). Praying for our child’s faith crisis sounds strange, I know. But if we want our child’s deepest joy, we will pray for the testing of their faith (James 1:2–4).

2. Expect your child’s crisis will be different from yours.

God has taught you to walk by faith, and not by sight, in particular ways. But it’s likely that he will deal differently with your child. They may struggle in ways and over issues and questions you haven’t. The unfamiliar may seem frightening. But it’s not unfamiliar to God.

3. Expect to feel somewhat helpless.

There comes a point when God decides to use means quite apart from us to teach our children to trust him. He doesn’t typically inform us in advance when he begins. We just rather suddenly find ourselves on the periphery of our child’s struggles, not allowed the same access or influence we used to have (or thought we had). We’re unsure where this car is going, and it’s not in our power to steer it. We must resist panicking or the urge to try to seize the wheel, both of which only tend to make things worse. Such a moment often becomes a faith crisis for us too, where we must learn to trust God with our children in whole new ways.

4. Seek to be a safe place in a crisis.

During one point of crisis, one of my children confided that they didn’t feel safe discussing with me certain theological questions they were wrestling through. Their dad was a ministry co-founder and bi-vocational pastor at our church. It felt like there was only one acceptable place to land.

Since then, I have tried to share with all my children more of my own faith journey, crises and all, that brought me to where I now am. And I’m seeking to be more explicit with my children that, while I hold my theological convictions sincerely, I do not expect them to uncritically adopt them from me, or necessarily arrive quickly in adolescence where it’s taken me years, and plenty of testing, to reach.

We can’t always control whether we are perceived as a safe place to our children, but as much as possible, we must seek to be a safe place for them to discuss hard questions and to be in process without judgment. It’s not easy for an invested parent. But we must strive to be (especially) quick to hear and slow to speak.

5. Do not mistake a chapter for the story.

We must try to keep our child’s faith crisis in perspective — no matter how long. We are not God. We do not have foreknowledge. We must not assume we know how the story will end. Most biblical characters had life chapters that looked like their train was going off the rails at some point.

6. Aim for faithfulness.

We are not the authors of our children’s story. Neither are they. God is the Author. God does not call us to determine the outcome of our children’s faith. He calls us to “dwell in the land [of parenting] and befriend faithfulness” (Psalm 37:3). Our aim is to follow Jesus faithfully, speak what he gives us to say faithfully, and to love the children God gives us as well as we can, come what may.

7. Pray without ceasing.

Part of faithfulness is not to cease praying for our children to be “born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3) and filled with the knowledge of God’s will with all spiritual wisdom and insight (Colossians 1:9).

8. Trust God.

This is the beginning and the end of parenting our children, whether on stormy waves or still waters. We want our children to reach maturity in Christ. “For this [we] toil, struggling with all [God’s] energy that he powerfully works within [us]” (Colossians 1:29). But we do not trust ultimately in our toil; we trust ultimately in God’s power. And when our children endure various crises of faith, we “wait for the Lord” (Psalm 27:14).

Where It All Begins

So much more can and should be said. I’m very aware that our children’s faith crises, and what has precipitated them, and how long they last, are as varied as people and experiences vary. I know as parents these can be frightening moments because, for some, a crisis results in the rejection rather than the realization of faith. But even then, it’s not the end of the story.

Parenting is not for the faint of heart. It’s for the heart of faith, the one for whom God is the strength of their heart (Psalm 73:26). He is the author and perfecter of our faith — and our children’s faith (Hebrews 12:2). As the great cloud of biblical and historical witnesses remind us (Hebrews 12:1), often, when a crisis hits, that’s where it all begins.

Copyright © 2018 Originally published by Jon Bloom Desiring God.org where the featured image was sourced-All rights reserved

This world is not whole. This reality was poignantly paraded in front of me in my broken childhood home — and maybe yours too.

Parents burden little children’s shoulders with responsibilities far beyond their capacity to bear healthily. We are celebrated for being “wise beyond our years,” but we know the secret: it’s because we never really got to be kids.

Some young boys are taught by older men that women are objects to be used for pleasure; some young girls are taught by older women that men are scum to be spat upon. Family members abuse and manipulate children physically, verbally, or emotionally. The very persons supposed to protect us instead ignore and harm us. Trust is fundamentally fractured and we scramble to cope. Alone.

Parents fight violently. Fathers and mothers abandon one another. Parents die. Children are blamed for circumstances that are never their fault. We become a sponge for shame and disgust, absorbing every last insult and punch.

There exists no mode but survival.

Nothing Is Hidden from God

Heartbreaking realities exist for the daughters that remain. But God is intimately familiar with each moment of our pasts — both our own sins and the way others have sinned against us. Nothing is hidden from his sight — not our restless longings or our terrors in the dead of night.

Because of our background, we often feel like “damaged goods.” We don’t act according to the standard script. We didn’t have “the right” upbringing or didn’t attend “the right” youth group or didn’t have a chance to develop “the correct” skill set or manners.

Bible verses that are meant to strengthen us leave us feeling insecure: “An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, but she who brings shame is like rottenness in his bones” (Proverbs 12:4). What if you don’t have two (or any) parents? Satan whispers that excellence means the right family, the right status, the right background.

Remember Ruth

Sister, when Satan lies in your ears, remind him of Ruth.

If a woman’s identity and worth were based on her family and background, Boaz would have never considered a woman from a pagan culture, especially a completely destitute one at that. And he would have missed a jewel. Instead, he looked at her faithfulness, her servant-heartedness toward her mother-in-law (whom she technically had no obligation to), and her persistent work ethic. She was excellent in godliness.

In an act that is steeped in the foreshadowing flavors of Jesus, Boaz saw a poor girl who had likely worshiped many idols during her youth in a pagan country and who could offer him little as his bride but her devotion to the Lord.

Instead of disgust, we see grace and pursuit. We see him clothing her and redeeming her in honor as he takes her to be his bride. We see Christ do the same thing with a church who could not find or build or work or good-deed her way to him, so he came after her and clothed her.

My sister, do not deny your trauma. It’s okay to admit hurt. But it’s not okay to wallow in our wounds when we have been healed by our Savior’s.

Do not deny the tears you shed quietly at night so that no one else will hear. Do not deny your frustration that you don’t remember what it’s like to be safe or to be assured of love and protection. But deny the belief that the burdens you bear overpower your Savior’s words, “It is finished” (John 19:30).

You Are Not Less

God’s love is not like human love, sister (Romans 8:38–39). He sees our wounds more clearly than we do. And he wants to draw the poison of distrust and shame and fear out of our wounds, which often hurts — sometimes a lot.

The only thing we have to fear is the Lord who can destroy both the body and the soul (Matthew 10:28), not the perceptions of people (even fellow believers) or of our own hearts. If “the fear of the Lord” truly is the beginning of our wisdom and beauty (Proverbs 9:10; 31:30), and if God is faithful, then those of us emerging from broken homes that fear, love, and seek the Lord will be carried by his Spirit wherever our parents fell short.

Christian households don’t make good Christians; our good God makes dead people alive. No one, broken home or not, is born again without him.

Sister, don’t for a minute think you are less in Christ because of your background. We are all new creations, no matter our past (2 Corinthians 5:17). You are seen. You are loved. You are prized. One day, all the things that have caused your tears will seem as light and momentary afflictions (2 Corinthians 4:17). One day, you will be whole — like him and with him.

Calley Sivils is a college graduate (B.S. Linguistics) growing in love and service to others in a small Missouri town. She writes on her blog, Washedwanderer, and you can reach her on Facebook.

Copyright © 2018, Originally published by DesringGod.com where the featured image was sourced-All rights reserved.

Dear Husband,

You know why I am writing to you. In our last conversation, you shared the pattern of your sinful thoughts, and how it often leads you to look at pornography. We agreed together on the importance of having dominion over our imaginations and putting on the mind of Christ (Philippians 2:5). Viewing pornography is already a lamentable breach of your faithfulness to your wife, but I’m concerned it may only be the beginning.

I fear for you, and your wife, if you do not repent from these patterns of sin. Beyond the pornography, members of our church have noticed how you seem to be preoccupied with other women. They and I fear for how you shower them with flattery, which many perceive as flirting. You appear to be on a pathway that ends with adultery as you already betray a lack of fidelity to your bride.

Sin Always Begets Sin

Viewing pornography is not a stagnant sin. Sin begets more sin, because our hearts are desperately wicked. We will justify the temptations in our hearts unless we combat them. Rationalization is part of the self-deception of sin. How easily we think, This is not that bad, then soon, Not bad at all. Eventually, we are saying, It is a good thing that I desire.

My friend, learn to hate your sin. You must treat it with a kind of seriousness that your seared conscience may find difficult to feel at this point. You must guard your mouth, and heart, as you speak to other women in the congregation, going out of your way to treat them as sisters in Christ (1 Timothy 5:1–2).

You must also resolve to control, God helping you, what you set your eyes upon, remembering righteous Job, who took the temptation to look with lust seriously: “I have made a covenant with my eyes; how then could I gaze at a virgin?” (Job 31:1). Obedience to our Lord, and faithfulness to your wife, is not passive. You will not coast into faithfulness.

You Are Free

Instead of exploring the pleasures of sin in your mind, and in unrighteous conversations, combat that sin with another voice, a better one: the voice of God himself. Meditate on his words in Scripture. God’s own word, by the power of his Spirit, will be the most potent source for both feeling conviction over sin and growing in grace and love.

Remember Joseph. When he was tempted daily by his master’s wife, he considered how God had blessed him, and how his master trusted him, and concluded, “How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” (Genesis 39:9). Your infidelity is not only a breach of trust against your wife, but against God almighty.

But because Jesus Christ is your Lord, Savior, and Treasure, you have been redeemed — a hostage freed through a ransom paid at infinite cost. In Jesus, you are holy! I believe your faith is genuine, even as you have struggled in these ways. You are free from the bondage of sin; now be free. You are no longer enslaved to your old master Satan to follow your lusts. You are free, really free, in Christ. You now have the mind and heart to seek after God, to follow him in the ways he teaches us, and to reject the fatal promises of pornography and adultery.

You Are Not Alone

Jesus Christ, our Great Shepherd of the faith, has promised to be with you and guide you to all truth and fruitful works along the way. His commandments will help you walk in the ways of holiness and righteousness.

The child of God is not burdened in striving to keep the commandments of God; we are burdened, as you have been, when we do not keep them. God’s work in us does not replace our own vigilance against sin. His grace empowers us to be on guard against sin. Although sin no longer reigns in us, it still remains inside of us. The warning to Cain is for all of us: “If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it” (Genesis 4:7).

Painted Poison

The temptation to be drawn toward other women, on the screen and in the fellowship hall, is defiling your marriage bed. God’s word says, “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous” (Hebrews 13:4). I am praying for you, and will continue to hold you accountable.

Your confession of love to your wife, and the preciousness and pricelessness of your affection for each other, will soon sound hollow if you linger here on the door of adultery. Adultery is a selfish act. It is profoundly unloving. You betray and wound your wife and your children, and you defy your God. You aid the enemy of the faith and give ample opportunity for the world to blaspheme his name through your open hypocrisy.

Sin is your enemy and deceives you with its false promises of joy. It paints itself beautifully, but it is poison. The consequences will be deep and long-lasting. Look beyond the empty offers of momentary pleasure and see the enduring pain. Remember how it has brought shame, guilt, and disruption to your communion with Christ. Remember your marriage vows and resolve afresh to be utterly faithful to your wife. God will bless and reward your faithfulness.

Learn to Love Her More

If you struggle with the degree of intimacy you have with her, be a man and have that hard conversation. Share your heart. She is your great companion for life. She was given to you as that special help both physically and spiritually. God has made her, and will continue to make her, suitable for you, and you for her.

Sin’s evil progression has been at work in you. But our Lord’s offer of repentance is immediate. Receive it now while you still can (Hebrews 12:15–17). True repentance is a radical renouncing of all that is contrary to the character and revelation of God. It requires discipline that grows in the soil of God’s grace.

So, go now to him in your time of need to receive his help continually and abundantly. Do not cry out only, but purposely labor to walk in his Spirit. Exercise your faithfulness in marriage as you love and cherish your wife. Love her and consider the many ways that Christ has beautified your wife and made her a vessel of honor in his glorious body. Your love for her is a gift you, and you only, can enjoy. The omnipotent God stands ready to help you as you seek to live out the calling he has given you in your marriage covenant.

As you love your wife, and exercise that love with patience and tenderness, you will find new depths of love for her and discover joys in her that no other woman can provide.

Copyright 2017, Kent Butterfield, Desiring God.com-All rights reserved

A listener named Bruce writes in: “Dear Pastor John, I haven’t read your book, Don’t Waste Your Life. The title is convicting enough. The fact is that I have already wasted it; or at least it feels that way. For decades I tried a variety of different ‘careers.’ None of them worked. I tried starting my own business for over 20 years while my wife worked. I earned a PhD, moved to a country where I didn’t speak the language (for my wife’s job) and had a breakdown. Several years later, my wife and I separated.

I’m now 64, I live in a small mobile home, and I do work that any 18-year-old could do (those are my boss’s words). The company is good to me, my boss is a Christian, and I can earn a living; but each day feels like nothing more than an exercise in waking up in the morning, getting through the day, and going to bed at night. What advice can you give to someone who has already wasted his life?”

Bruce, as I paused to pray over this question when I first heard it, I believe the Lord brought five things to my mind for you that I hope will be of encouragement — and, of course, I don’t know you and I don’t even know if you are a Christian. But I have written and done many podcasts on the dynamics of the spiritual life which maybe you do or you don’t have. So I am just going to assume the best, okay? I am going to assume you are a Christian and that you have really struggled to be a Christian over these years. So that is my big assumption. Now here are my five gifts.

1. Find Evidences of Grace

There have been evidences of grace in your life over the past decades. There have been. And these are important for three reasons, these evidences of grace. One is that they really are evidences that you belong to Jesus. They are the sorts of things you wouldn’t have done if you weren’t a Christian — if you were a merely natural man rather than spiritual, indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Second, they will be acknowledged by the Lord on the last day, these evidences of grace to your joy. And third, as pebbles dropped in the pond of history, they didn’t fall in vain. God turned every one of those evidences of grace in your life. He turned every one of them and, I would even add, your failures for his own wise purposes. All of that to say: Beware of overstating the waste of the past. You might find yourself sounding humble but, in fact, dishonoring grace.

2. Calculate the Future

The thief on the cross wasted his entire life except for the last few hours. He repented, and Christ promised him that in a few hours he would be with him in paradise (Luke 23:43). This thief will face a judgment according to works like all of us. And the only good works that he will have to offer will be the good works of the last three hours, or however many it was, on the cross — the time between his conversion and his death.

Those good works would include, for example, the rebuke that he gave to the other thief. “We deserve this. He doesn’t. Why don’t you wake up?” (see Luke 23:40–41). That is a good work. That is a beautiful act. In other words, there will not be very many works in this man’s life to commend. Everything he did up to that point was sin because he didn’t do it from faith (Romans 14:23). But this handful of works that he did on the cross before he died will be enough to give evidence that he was born again and welcome.

Now the reason I mention that for you is not because any of us would want to be content with a handful of good deeds, but that you are 64-years-old. Perhaps you have, if you average, 15 years of life in front of you. And if my math is correct, you may have 75,000 more hours to do good deeds than the thief on the cross did. Now that is absolutely stunning. In other words, there is a huge segment of your life in front of you. And I don’t say “huge” compared to 64. I know it is small compared to 64. I say “huge” compared to three hours on the cross or millions of people, millions upon millions of people, who have less life to live than you do. It is incalculable what can be achieved for Jesus in 15 years. Jesus served publicly for three years.

3. Forget the Past

So don’t waste the rest of your life by fretting over the past. God has a new dream for you that is not wasteful. Remember what the apostle Paul said in Philippians 3:13–14: “Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” Surely the reason he said, “forgetting what lies behind” is because the past regularly functions for us as a ball and chain around our feet, either because we failed and we feel hopeless, or because we succeeded and feel proud. Better to forget the past in that way and dream a new dream.

4. Focus on the How, Not the What

In dreaming your new dream for your life, keep in front of you this truth: How you do what you do is vastly more important in the eyes of God than what you do. I understand — I mean, I think I can understand — that having a PhD and doing what any 18-year-old can do probably feels like bad stewardship or failure. But remember, there are thousands of people with PhDs working in universities and displeasing the Lord God almighty more than millions of teenagers who are walking by the Holy Spirit. It is not where you work or what you do that pleases the Lord. It is whether you live by the Spirit, whether you walk by faith, whether you pursue holiness, whether you love people, whether you grow in grace, whether Christ is more precious to you than anything.

So Bruce, when I say, “Dream a new dream,” I don’t know whether the Lord means for you to have a new job. And I don’t care very much. Sorry. But I care enormously that you do what your hand finds to do in the name of the Lord Jesus in love for people for the glory of God flat-out for 15 years. That is what I care about.

5. Surround Yourself

And, finally, Bruce: Gather around you a few friends who love Christ and pour out your heart to them about your sense of failure and ask them to join you in praying earnestly and expectantly that God will open a new chapter of usefulness for you, for joy, for worship, for a new humility that is willing to acknowledge (like you do all the failures of the past) a simplicity in the present and a blood-bought hope for the future. So God bless you, Bruce. I will be eager to hear, if I live long enough, how God has made your last chapter the best. I am surely at 70 praying mine will be.

© Copyright 2016, Desiring God Foundation

We recently talked about the book you just wrote Pastor John, back on Thursday of last week. . . . In light of that, Brandon in Charlotte, NC writes in: “Pastor John, thank you for your Christ-centered precision and for the tremendous volume of your ministry output. I’m curious how you produce so much content.

What time do you wake up, or find time to read and write, or eat your cereal? You mention your aversion to TV in Don’t Waste Your Life, but what advice do you have for the daily schedule making to make the most of life for Christ?”

I have ten things to say.

1: Don’t Copy Me

First, beware of wanting to be like me. You don’t know the sins of my life. You don’t know how much I have neglected. You don’t know what the costs have been. The real question is how to be the fullest, most God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated, loving, humble mission-advancing, justice-seeking, others-serving person you, you can be. Don’t measure yourself by others. Measure yourself by your potential in Christ. That is the first thing that I felt I had to say, because of the way the question seemed to be posed.

2: Focus on Great Goals

Give 10% of your focus in life to avoiding obstacles to productivity and 90% of your focus to fastening on to great goals and pursuing them with all your might. Very few people become productive by avoiding obstacles to productivity. It is not a good focus. That is not where energy comes from. It is not where vision comes from.

Piper: “Give 10% of your focus in life to avoiding obstacles to productivity and 90% of your focus to fastening on to great goals and pursuing them with all your might.”

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People write books about that and make a lot of money, but that is not where anybody gets anything worthwhile done. Getting things done that count come from great, glorious, wonderful future possibilities that take you captive and draw your pursuit with all your might. And then all that other stuff about getting obstacles out of your way. That is the 10% of broom work that you have to do.

3: Be Seasonally-Minded

Life comes to us in chapters that are very different from each other. If you are married and have little children, that is a chapter that needs a great deal of focus on the children. If God wills, there may be another chapter for you with different possibilities, different potentials, and different priorities. The Lord will be pleased if you focus on the chapter you are in and live according to the demands of that chapter with all your might.

4: Work from Life Goals

Give serious thought and prayer to what your big, all-consuming life goal is. The biblical expression of mine is found in Philippians 1:20–21, “It is my eager expectation,” — this is John Piper, not just Paul talking — “It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” So Christ magnified in living and dying, spreading a passion for that Christ into the lives of others. That is the goal. That is the big, overarching goal. So find yours and make it work in everything you do.

5: Labor Toward the Account You Will Give to God

Get a sense of gospel-rooted accountability before the living God. That is, understand the gospel and the spiritual dynamics of how it works. You don’t labor to get into a right relationship with God. The gospel dynamics don’t work that way. You labor morning to night with all your might because you are in a right relationship with God. Philippians 2:12–13, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for” — ground, basis, foundation — “it is God who works in you.” That is the gospel dynamic. “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.” The grace of God had already taken up residence in me and was at work in me (see 1 Corinthians 15:10). And if you get that order out of whack, you may accomplish a lot in life and go straight to hell with all your books and all your buildings.

Let the Lord Jesus intensify this sense of accountability on the last day with the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30). He gave to one person five, gave to another person two, and gave to another person one. He came to call account, and the person with one heard those awful words. “You wicked and slothful [lazy] servant” (Matthew 25:26). I don’t want to hear that word. I do not want to hear that word.

I want to experience the opposite, the counterpart to those words from Luke 12:42, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom his manager will set over his household?” I often thought those words when I was a pastor. I was “over [a] household, to give them their portion of food at the proper time” (Luke 12:42). “Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes” (Luke 12:43).

I would be sitting preparing my messages or writing something or leading the family in devotion and I would say: Come, now, Lord Jesus, and you will find me doing it. That is the opposite of the wicked, lazy servant who buried your talent and didn’t do anything with it. So that is number five.

6: Work Urgently

Add to your sense of accountability before God a sense of urgency. “We must work the works of him who sent [us] while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work” (John 9:4). Or Ephesians 5:15–16, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise . . . ” — making, literally redeeming the time — “because the days are evil.” Or Colossians 4:5, “Walk in wisdom toward outsiders, making the best use of the time.” There is urgency in this. The days are evil and night is coming.

7: Kill Half-Heartedness

Do what you do with all your heart. Be done with half-heartedness. O, so many people limp through life doing what they do with a half heart, with half of their energy. If it is worth doing, it is worth doing with your whole soul. Ecclesiastes 9:10, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might.” Jonathan Edwards’s resolution probably had more impact on me in the last 30 years than anything else he said — in his resolutions, at least — when he said, “Resolved, to live with all my might, while I do live” (resolution #6). Those words took hold of me a long time ago. I thought: Oh, yes Lord.

The opposite of this — fourteen times in the book of Proverbs the word “sluggard” is used. Isn’t that an ugly word? “Sluggard,” 14 times. And what is a sluggard? Proverbs 20:4, “The sluggard does not plow in the autumn; he will seek at harvest and have nothing.” You don’t want to be a sluggard.

8: Persist, Persist, Persist

Many chops fell a huge tree. Man, this is so crucial because of how quickly we get discouraged after a thousand chops and the tree is not down yet. I just finished listening to Robinson Crusoe. You might say: What in the world? What is John Piper listening to a teenage novel? I had never heard some of these classics, so I am listening to them. Robinson Crusoe, marooned on an island, all by himself, wants to escape, needs a boat. Mainland is 45 miles away.

There might be cannibals over there. He is not sure he wants to go, but he needs a boat. He has got nothing else to do, so he is going to make a boat. He finds a tree. This tree is five feet, ten inches, across at the bottom. He has an axe. It takes him 22 days to chop this tree down, 14 more days to chop the branches off, a year and a half to finish the boat with an axe. I’d chop on a tree for a day, two days. I say: This tree is not coming down. I am done with this tree. I am going to work on some little tree. So there is the key. Many chops fell a big tree. Do you want to do something great? Don’t quit. Keep chopping.

9: Joyfully Embrace Hard Tasks

Be willing to do many things in life cheerfully that at first you don’t want to do. They don’t come naturally to you. There is no worthwhile role in life that does not require you to do things you don’t at first feel like doing or that only let you do what comes naturally. So be cheerful in doing the parts of your life that you do not at first prefer to do.

10: Find Your Calling

Finally, find your niche, that is, find the thing you do love to do with all your weaknesses and all your strengths. Put most of your energies and your love there for Christ and his kingdom.

© Copyright 2016, Desiring God Foundation

1. Read for the author’s meaning, not your own.

When we read, we want to know what an author intended us to see and experience in his writing. He had an intention when he wrote. Nothing will ever change that. It is there as a past, objective event in history.

We are not reading simply for subjective experiences. We are reading to discover more about objective reality. I’m not content with what comes to my mind when I read it. The meaning of a sentence, or a word, or a letter is what the author intended for us to understand by it. Therefore, meaning is the first aim of all good reading.

2. Ask questions to unlock the riches of the Bible.

When we read, we do not generally really think until we are faced with a problem to be solved, a mystery to be unraveled, or a puzzle to be deciphered. Until our minds are challenged, and shift from passive reading to active reading, we drift right over lots of insights.

Asking ourselves questions is a way of creating a problem or a mystery to be solved. That means the habit of asking ourselves questions awakens and sustains our thinking. It stimulates our mind while we read, and drives us down deep to the real meaning of a passage.

2.1 Ask about words.

Ask about definitions. What does this word mean in this specific sentence? And remember, we’re asking what the author intended by the word, not what we think it means. This assumes words will have different meanings in different sentences.

2.2 Ask about phrases.

A phrase is a group of words without a verb that describe some action or person or thing. For instance, “Put sin to death by the Spirit.” “By the Spirit” describes the activity. It tells us how we kill sin in our lives. Look closely at phrases like these and ask what specifically they’re explaining.

2.3. Ask about relationships between propositions.

A proposition is a group of words with a subject and a verb. How propositions relate to each other is one of the most important questions we can ask. Often, there will be a small connecting word that holds the answer (e.g. but, if, and, therefore, in order that, because, etc.). Sometimes the major differences between whole theologies hang on these connections.

2.4 Ask how the context helps define the meaning of words and phrases.

You can’t know accurately what a proposition means until you know the meaning of the words, and you can’t know the meaning of words until you know the meaning of the proposition. It is a circle, but it’s not a hopeless circle. Words have a limited range of shared meanings.

Wrong guesses about a word’s meaning are often set right by the end of the sentence or paragraph. Even though words, in and of themselves, can have several meanings, the content and relationships of the propositions around them usually clarify the specific meaning the author intended them to have.

2.5 Ask about connections with other parts in the Bible.

We have to ask how the meaning we’re seeing in a passage fits together with other passages. Are there confirmations elsewhere in the Bible? Are there passages that seem contradictory or inconsistent?

When I feel tension between two verses or passages, I never assume the Bible is inconsistent. I assume I’m not seeing all I need to see. If I have not seen enough to explain the apparent inconsistency, asking more questions will likely help me see more. Few things make us deeper and richer in our knowledge of God and his ways than this habit of asking how texts cohere in reality when at first they don’t look like they do.

2.6 Ask about application.

The aim of biblical writers is not only that we “know,” but that we “be” and “do.” So we need to form the habit of asking questions concerning application. To us. To our church and our relationships. To the world. The task of application is never done. There are millions of ways a text can be applied, and millions of situations and relationships for them to be applied. Our job is not to know every application, but to grow in applying the meaning of Scripture to our lives.

2.7 Ask about affections — appropriate responses of the heart.

The aim of our Bible reading is not just the response of the mind, but of the heart. The whole range of human emotions are possible responses to the meaning of the Bible. God gave us the Bible not just to inform our minds, but also to transform our hearts — our affections. God’s word is honored not just by being understood rightly, but also by being felt rightly.

3. At every page, pray and ask for God’s help.

O Lord, incline our hearts to your word. Give us a desire for it. Open our eyes to see wonders there. Subdue our wills and give us an obedient spirit. Satisfy our hearts with a vision of yourself and your way for our lives.

© Copyright 2016 Desiring God

Other recent article by Pastor John Piper: My Pastor Uses Pre-Made Sermons — Should I Be Concerned?