Ask Pastor John

While God requires faithfulness from everyone, some vocations are worth twice the honor as others.

The longer you wait to share Christ with your friends, the more perplexed they will be. Befriend and confront others in love, as Jesus did.

Egalitarians can also embrace Christian Hedonism, though not all the relational details will look the same.

A warm, practical, affectionate relationship with the living Christ really matters.

God intends for his children to take heart from his promises to preserve them to the end.

Jesus does not seek private glory apart from the Father’s glory, but he does seek his glory through the Father after his redemptive work is done.

Both God and his people love their human enemies, but not in the same way, since God is all-wise and all-governing, and we are finite.

God causes the miracle of unhardening our hearts, and we act the miracle of unhardening them.

Christ shared in our suffering as fallen mortals so that we could be included in the divine family, with Christ as our superior older brother.

The command to “pray without ceasing” should motivate rather than intimidate us. Armed with joy and thankfulness, we can overflow in prayer.

Nowhere in the New Testament is it commanded or forbidden that local churches meet in homes. Leaders must use other factors to make that decision.

Pastors must affirm the absolute power, goodness, and wisdom of God during the most tragic of circumstances to give their people comfort and hope.

Jesus’s miracle of fish and bread proves it. An appetite for miracles is no proof one is a Christian. As John Piper explains, “Seeing the mere event of an external physical miracle should never be the goal of the Christian.”

Yes, we can overdo Christian Hedonism, “because it is possible to overemphasize anything,” says John Piper. So what are the warning signs?

When you want God over everything else, you glorify the value of God.

“The division of humanity into languages and ethnicities was a judgment from God,” says John Piper. And yet it was also part of his unfolding plan to save the nations.

Evangelicalism’s global growth is mainly Pentecostal, says John Piper. This is cause for celebration, and for concern, because the growth is often entangled by prosperity theology.

In the digital age, needs surround us. So how do we avoiding inactivity paralysis? We return to God, says John Piper, whose shoulders alone can bear the crushing weight of global suffering.

If Christians are born again and have therefore died to sin, why do we need to fight so hard to put sin to death?

Personal suffering should not surprise us (1 Peter 4:12). The Bible not only promises it, it also teaches us how to “squeeze as much Christ-exalting meaning out of our suffering as we can.” John Piper explains.