John Piper is now beginning a new series regarding suffering. His goals are:
- I want to persuade you that your suffering is an essential part of Christian existence. You will suffer (Acts 14:22). And there is a kind of suffering that honors Christ and a kind that does not.
- I hope to be able to help you suffer in a way that will make Christ look great (2 Cor. 12:9-10).
- I hope to help you taste and see that Christ is more precious than everything else in the universe (Ps. 73:24; Phil. 3:8; 1:20; Ps. 63:3).
- I want to help you believe that nothing will happen to you apart from God’s will. And in the worst of times, he is 100 percent for you—and not against you—if you are in Christ. Not 99.9 percent but totally for you (Matt. 10:28-31; Rom. 8:31-32). Everything you need is yours in Christ.
- I would like to persuade you that you are in Christ by faith alone apart from any works you do before or after your conversion (Phil. 3:9-10). If being in Christ is the place where everything works for your good, then how you get there really matters. And by works is not how you get there—before or after your conversion.
- I want to motivate you and empower you to embrace suffering and hardship and risk and danger for the relief of human suffering, especially eternal suffering, for the glory of Christ. May Wheaton not be one of those ludicrous places where it is thought to be loving to relieve physical suffering for people who are on the road to hell without mention of the gospel. You don’t have to choose between those. Love will embrace the hard-to-reach place and go at life’s peril (Mark 8:34-35).
- I am praying that God will use these talks to introduce you into, or confirm you in, the mysterious way of life found in 2 Corinthians 6:10, which we wave as a banner over our church: “Sorrowful yet always rejoicing.”
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1 comment:
Interesting. I'm speaking this weekend and God has been leading me toward a message on suffering. Thanks for the tip.
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