Something very unusual, something supernatural happened in John Piper's life when he learned of his mother's death.
I didn't suffer from what they said. And I thought to myself, to be simultaneously heartbroken and content and joyful, that really is possible. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.
I'm Bob Lapine. You can find us online at familylifetoday.com. To be able to simultaneously have heartbreak and joy, that requires an understanding of the providence of God. We'll talk more about that today with John Piper. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.
Thanks for joining us. We've been spending some time this week just acknowledging the fact that life is hard, and at the same time that God is good. I remember, I think there was a song years ago, that was the chorus, life is hard, but God is good. And those are both true. And the more we can understand, yes, life is hard and we shouldn't pretend like it isn't, and yes, God is good and we should never forget His goodness, the better off we'll be. The difficulty comes when it's hard to remember God's goodness in the middle of life's hardness. It's simultaneously true, but sometimes when you're in the dark cave, you forget. And you have to be reminded.
And that's why it's a great program to talk about that today. Hey, who's this man over here talking? We haven't introduced him yet. This is our friend, Dr. John Piper, who wants to sneak into the conversation.
Welcome back to Family Life Today. And what is it that you wanted to add there? Well, seeing the goodness of God in some horrific calamity, globally or nationally or personally, demands that Christians be taught what the Bible teaches about suffering before they're in it. You can't take a person weeping their eyes out and give them five verses that state purposes for their suffering. That has to come at a moment when the mind is eager and ready and reflective on text, but we won't see the goodness of God in the horror of an event unless we've been taught, say, four or five places in the Bible.
Let me just give one as an example that I think has helped me so many times. When Paul said at the end of 2 Corinthians 1, we were so unbearably crushed, we despaired of life itself. Okay, so whatever that was, it was right up to the brink of death.
It was emotionally stripping, and it was painfully ready to bring him to death. And then he adds a purpose clause. That was to make us rely upon God who raises the dead. Now, a pastor's got to build that mindset into his people before they get struck down, because you could come into a hospital room and just lay that verse on some widow who's got her dead husband's hand in her hand.
But if she's been taught for 10 years, I'll tell you, I saw this. I saw moms and widows and dads and parents of disabled kids like rocks. They were rocks when tragedy happened because of 10 years of such texts. When you think about that purpose clause, that was to make us rely, you say, whose purpose was that? It wasn't Satan's purpose to make him rely on God. So God had a purpose in bringing Paul to say, I'm distressed unto death, God. So I would say, I mean, I've written several articles to just try to help people get a handful of purposes from God for your suffering that don't answer every question. So on your question, and yesterday, like I said, what you should say is, I don't get it.
This hurts. I meant that, even though I could give you five reasons for why this happened to you. They'd be big overarching reasons from the Bible, which will make a difference, but probably not at that moment.
Probably not at that moment. You have just completed this book on Providence we've been talking about this week, a massive volume on this subject where you dive into and apply the understanding of God's good, kind, sovereign control over humanity to the hard issues that we face. Things like, I'm thinking of a young woman who desperately wants to be a mom, and every month gets the news, not this month. And the next month, not this month.
And a year later, not this month. And she goes to the doctor and the doctor says, you're not going to be a mom biologically. And she's going, I know this is to cause me to rely on God, but the grief I'm experiencing is so overwhelming that it's hard to see the goodness of God in the midst of this kind of infertility.
Yeah, that it's hard is an understatement. And the Bible is unmistakably clear that God opens and closes the womb. So the remedy, the answer, the solution, the approach to her agony is not to lie to her.
She knows better than that. And say, well, God didn't will this. This is Satan closing your womb. Or God didn't will this.
This is fate or something like that. You don't lie to people to help them. She's read her Bible. She knows God opens and closes wounds.
And he can do it whenever he wants. So you just, if I were dealing with that woman in my church, I wouldn't even, I wouldn't go there. I wouldn't have to say that. She wouldn't know that. And I would take her hand and say, I don't know what God has for you, but I know it's good.
I know it's good. And I might go to this text that I jotted down here a few days ago to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant. I will give in my house, within my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall never be cut off. Now, the reason that text better than sons and daughters, I'm going to give you eunuch.
Now eunuchs can either be man-made eunuchs or God-made eunuchs, but they're not ever going to procreate. A single woman in her fifties brought me this text. She said, that's my text.
I love this text. All I did was dream about being married. I wanted to have children and no man has ever pursued me. That may be as painful as infertility in marriage. And she found this text to be life. Now, probably it wasn't automatic. It wasn't without struggle. It wasn't without months and years of hoping and grief and wondering, do you keep praying or do you not keep praying? I think when Paul said, we don't know how to pray as we ought to pray, that's the sort of thing he had in mind, which is God's will for me.
I don't know. I don't know which his will for me is, but this is a name for me better than sons and daughters. I don't know quite what that is, but it's better. God says it's better. I'm going to believe it's better.
And so she picks up and moves on. And there have been, you know, single women in our church over the years. I was there for 33 years. And I watched some of these women who dreamed and then the dream faded. Now they're in their 50s, 60s. They started dreaming in their 20s and 30s and it never happened. And God met them with such life-giving hope that they were flourishing, they were productive, they weren't lamenting their state so that they were paralyzed, but rather rich in ministry and relationships. And that's what this kind of sovereignty can do. So the sovereignty that closed the womb or stopped the relationship from happening, that sovereignty is the very sovereignty that enables her to count on a God who's going to give me something better than sons and daughters. Now, if you're the woman who's barren that wants to have children and you understand God closes and God opens, do you go get help?
Infertility doctors, do you go that route? Or do you adopt? Yeah, but I mean, do you try and have your own baby because it seems like God has closed my womb.
I'm so glad that, you know, you asked me between times, is there anything you want to say that we haven't said? This gives me an occasion to say something that needs to be said. Providence does not dictate duty. The Bible dictates duty. Okay, you cannot discern from Providence how you ought to act.
You can discern from Providence ways that God is acting that may be utterly perplexing or maybe very transparent, but you should never infer from a Providence that I should therefore act a certain way. Like in this case, okay, he shut my womb. I haven't had any babies for 10 years.
The doctor says I can't. It would be a sin to take any fertility treatments. That doesn't follow. It does not follow because the decision to be involved with some kind of fertility effort is as much a Providence as the closing of the womb. I mean, the old argument was God appointed women to have pain in childbirth, therefore they shouldn't have any shots.
You know, they shouldn't have any epidurals. And many people for centuries believed you are interfering with the Providence of God in his punitive decree that women suffer in childbirth. That doesn't follow. That doesn't follow.
There's nothing about the actions of God in Providence that gives a clear dictate for what comes next. So, I would say the decision about what kinds of adoption options or fertility options exist should be based on other factors. And I think there are kinds of fertility efforts that probably are not to be done. I think rent a womb kind of things gets us into big moral issues that are not healthy.
Like I wouldn't counsel a woman to have her husband donate his sperm to another woman's womb. She grows the baby. It's his child and that woman's child only. She signed a contract that you get the baby.
Oh my goodness. That kind of thing has gotten so many people into so much difficulty and pain. When a woman carries the baby for nine months, something happens that's intended to be gloriously bonding and to just sell it off with a contract. That's not a good way to do it. But that's very different than other kinds of medications that might just bring out of person potential that lies within them. But we adopted a daughter and so I'm going to say it can be wonderful.
Go there. And the church should really get behind that and try to make it affordable. Because a lot of people have made it so unaffordable that parents look at it and say that's not even an option. You just mentioned this earlier, the issue of providence and prodigals. To have a son or a daughter who walks away may be a parent's greatest grief, greater as you said than maybe even the loss of that child.
Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that that's true. Something you've lived through, you've shared with us openly before about having a prodigal as you were raising your kids. How were you thinking about the kind providence of God while one of your kids was away and not communicating with you and didn't want anything to be with you? I am so thankful that I was 22, 23, 24, 25 when God began to build into my life a confidence in his absolute sovereignty and goodness so that I would have decades to get ready for these kinds of disappointments.
I think I want to say two things in public. Number one, I have five children and I believe I would die for all of them in a minute. I would die in less than a minute for their salvation. I love my children. There's something about your own flesh and blood that is designed by God to be indescribably special. So, that's the first thing I want to say.
I love my children, even those who are not walking the way I think they should with Jesus. The second thing I'd say is the providence that has brought us to this point is not finished. I might be almost finished. God's not finished. I want to say that to every parent who says, how can God blank? I would say, Peter, what are you going to do tomorrow? You do not know what this providence that you are about to criticize might do miraculously tomorrow.
You need providence. I mean, that's the third thing I'd say now is that if there is hope for any of us, okay, we were all prodigals once. And if you learn from the Bible rather than from your own experience how bad it was, you'll know you were all a prodigal even if you got saved when you were six.
Because you were dead at five. That providence is our only hope for salvation. When the rich young man turned away, right? And Jesus said, it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to go into the kingdom of heaven. And the disciples just threw up their hands and said, well, then who can be saved? And Jesus didn't say, oh, I guess I overstated it. He said, nobody.
He said, with man it is impossible, but with God all things are possible. So I'm going to take other parents by the hand and say, let's get on our faces. I mean, I do this every other week with three guys. Let's get on our faces and lay hold on God for the miracle. I mean, we were singing the other day in worship this song, power, power, power in Jesus name. And my hands are in the air, tears on my face. And I'm saying, God, you got all the power in the universe for my family. Just say the word.
Remember the guy who comes to Jesus said, my child, my child, just say the word. Because he knew he had the power. It's not an issue of power. It's just, if I don't know why I'm just talking about perplexities. I don't know why. Why?
Why this delay? Why? Just say the word to the dead bones. Live. And the bones began to rattle. And they will clothe the flesh and the heart of stone comes out, the heart of flesh goes in, a new creature is born. That's God. So there is no hope for salvation without the doctrine of sovereign providence.
You keep hoping in that, your child keeps wandering farther, and in some cases, parents get the news that a child has died apparently unrepentant. Yeah. Here's emotionally how I get help in that eventuality, which hasn't happened yet, but could. Paul in Romans 9, 2, it says, he wrote, I am in unceasing anguish. That's the exact phrase. Unceasing. Picture that, unceasing. And Paul said, rejoice always. And again, I say rejoice, always. And I mean unceasing anger.
So you get joy. And so I've got unceasing anguish because of my kinsmen, because they rejected Christ. He wants his fellow Jews to be saved so much so that when they're not, he feels unceasing anguish. Then one chapter later, chapter 10, verse 1, it says, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they might be saved.
Even though he says one chapter later, a hardening has come upon Israel until the full number of the Gentiles comes in. He knows that those who are not saved are not saved because of a decreed hardness of heart. So Paul's got all this theology in his head and you watch the man live.
I love this man. I love the apostle Paul. I wrote a book called Why I Love the Apostle Paul because there I see him in anguish. Day and night, he goes to bed at night weeping over Jews. He gets up weeping over Jews and yet he's the happiest man there is.
Go figure. I mean, he says in 2 Corinthians 6, 10, sorrowful yet always rejoicing. I mean, a desire in God, Bethlehem Baptist Church, Bethlehem College and Seminary, this is our mantra. Sorrowful yet always rejoicing because in your lives right now, there are good 10 reasons to be sorrowful. And there are lots of reasons to be joyful. I mean, really big reasons to be joyful. And the mystery of the Christian life is, is that really possible?
I mean, in real life, can you be sad and joyful simultaneously? And my answer is yes. Number one, because the Bible says so. Sorrowful yet always rejoicing. And number two, because I've tasted it. I mean, I've tasted it.
I'll just give you a little picture. My mother was killed in a bus accident when I was 28 years old. Never had any suffering in my life of any substantial. I get the phone call. My brother-in-law says your mom was in a bus accident. She didn't make it.
Your dad may not make it. I don't know anything else right now. I'll call you back. I hang it up. My little two-year-old's holding on to my leg. Daddy's sad. Daddy's sad. And my wife could hear. I went back to my room, kneel down and cry for two hours.
Now, while I'm crying, I just remember this is such a gift from God. While I am weeping like I had never wept before, because my mom was the most special person in my life besides my wife, I think I was happy for various reasons. I had her for 28 years.
I said that. Thank you. Thank you that I had such a mom for 28 years.
Thank you that she didn't suffer from what they said. And I had other reasons. I was deeply, joyfully thankful for lots of reasons while I'm just pouring out my grief.
And I thought to myself, that really is possible. It really is possible to be simultaneously heartbroken and content and joyful in many things that God is and does. And I think that's a picture of marriage in some ways.
You have both. There's grief, there's anguish, there's desperation. Hopefully there's joy, there's hopefulness. And yet I think we live in a culture that says if you feel any of the grief and sorrow, you shouldn't feel that, you're done. This marriage isn't going to be worth it. But you're saying, no, both of those can be true in a marriage as well, right? And probably in a family.
We could even go as far as to say in a family. Yeah, anybody who says you should get out of a marriage where you find some discomfort is crazy. I mean, naive, crazy, unbiblical, stupid, wicked. Marriage is the best school of sanctification ever designed by God.
When you say, I do, for better or for worse, you better mean both of those because they're both coming. And I'm just appalled. I'm appalled at how many Christian pastors don't take that seriously in their counseling. Appalled.
Like, why do you have people say that? You don't mean that. You don't mean for worse. You come up with a thousand qualifications for worse. So don't get me going on this. I love marriage.
I believe marriage is a beautiful portrait of Christ and his church, and Christ does not divorce his people. Period. What about the single person who is wondering, is there one person picked up for me? Oh, that's a good question. In God's providence. She's sitting right there. There she is.
My one. That's true. That's true. The answer is yes and no.
I mean, is there one? The answer is yes and no. Yes, in the sense that God is sovereign and decides right now who you're going to marry. And you marry her. Period.
It's going to happen. Did I marry the one that God had appointed? Yes, you did. People ask me, how do I know if I'm married to the right person? I say, look at the name on the wedding certificate. That is how you know. I know who you should be married to.
The one you're married to. Period. That's God's appointed man. Which is good to hear because we've had people come up to us in conferences and say, we got drunk in Vegas and we got married. Obviously, that was not God's will. Getting married that way is not God's will. That they are married.
You learn from the Bible what to do with that. So, but let's get more specific about is there one. What people are really wrestling with when they say that is, of all the people I might meet, know, date, get serious about, might I miss him? And in that sense, God has one picked out I might miss. Now, providence would say, no.
No. You won't miss God's one. God's providence means you are appointed to marry this person. Now, which gets me back to the point, Dave, that providence does not dictate duty. Duty is don't marry an unbeliever. That's in the Bible. So, it's sin to just go off, get drunk, get married. But it's compounded sin to throw that wife away. Again, so, I would say to a single person who's wondering, I'd say, let the Bible, with all of its descriptions of the kind of person that a man should be or a woman should be, guide whom you admire.
Who you feel affection for. Let the Bible shape the kind of person you will be drawn to. But don't burden yourself with being God trying to discern whether there's some ideal person out there. She happens to be a missionary in northern India and I goofed it up and married a woman in London. That's not going to happen. So, if we had a call in right now, there's a guy who wants to call in and say, I married an unbeliever. I'm a believer. She's not coming or he's not coming to Christ.
I don't see that. Did I marry the wrong one? You married in a way that you shouldn't have married. And at that point, you sinned. You sinned in marrying an unbeliever. Now, the Bible really holds out the reality that marriage is marriage, whether a person is a believer or not. So, Paul in 1 Corinthians 7 is crystal clear about whether you should walk into such a marriage and whether you should stay in such a marriage. And he says, don't walk into it, but if you're in it, stay.
Those are both right there in verse 12 and verse 39 of 1 Corinthians 7. So, it's a tricky question. If he says, did I marry the wrong person? You have to help him formulate that question such that you can give biblical answers. Sometimes people ask questions and the way they pose the question makes it impossible to give a biblical answer because they set it up wrong.
They set up the categories wrong. But he sinned in marrying her. He's not a sin to be married to her.
My friend who married someone who was in Bible college at the time and was passionate for the Lord and who three years later said, I don't believe this anymore. Right. She's wondering about the providence of God as she raises her three children with a persistently unbelieving spouse. Prodigal kids are painful. A prodigal spouse.
Yeah. You know, I keep coming back to this principle that the providence that creates what we perceive as a problem is the same providence that gives you the grace and the power to sustain it. So, in this case, as she looks back, it's a bitter providence that her husband has for now thrown away the faith. That's a bitter, bitter providence.
I use that phrase because that's the way Ruth, the book of Ruth has written. There's a bitter providence. Naomi had a bitter providence. But if she were to say, okay, I'm done with God, I'm done with that sovereignty stuff, I'm done with that providence stuff because look at the hand I've been dealt. If she did that, what becomes of her children?
What becomes of hope? And I would say the very power that let her husband go but might in fact bring him back because only providence can is the providence that will enable her to raise godly sons. I mean, I had one family in particular I remember whose husband was snatched away like that, which is cleaner than unbelief and divorce. But a death when your kids are like 12 and you have three sons, that's incredible. You mentioned a while ago. She raised by herself three of the most godly, mature men I've ever known.
That's providence. And I would just say to this woman, you feel right now, how will these boys ever turn out because they're dead? As a skeptic, he sows seeds of unbelief all the time. He watches stuff on TV.
I don't want them watching. How am I ever going to raise these boys? And my answer is God is God. And he has a grace. My God is able to supply all grace towards you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. You're a mom that's called to do heroic things right now that you never signed up for. God's going to help you.
He can bring your sons. And guess what, ma'am? You can have a perfect family where they all go wrong.
Yeah. I'm sitting here thinking, I am that son. In some ways, the providence of God, as my dad walked out with women and alcohol, my single mom in the sixties held on to God and here I am. And I'm not sitting here saying, hey, I'm the most amazing man you've ever seen. But God's providence raised a man of God from a situation you would think it doesn't happen. God did that.
Absolutely. And he can do it for you. Let me just draw out an implication from that story. That's the way Paul talks in 1 Timothy 1 about his conversion. He said, I was the chief of sinners because I persecuted the church, but that was so that God might reveal his perfect patience in me for those who were to believe on him. So if you think through what he's saying, God permitted in his design to let Paul be a Christian killer. He breathed out murders and threw Christians in prison. What was God's design? One of it was, Paul said, to show that when I got saved, God could save anybody.
God would show, if he would show that much mercy and patience to a Christian killer, then you talking with me right now in Pizza Hut over this pizza about Jesus, and you think you've sinned too much to be saved, or that your parents didn't set it up so that you have any chance of real faith and obedience. That's not true because look at Paul's life. Look at Dave's life. I'm curious. We all listen to you and we all admire so many things, but one of the things I've always loved is your passion for God, your love for him. It just spews out of every pore of your being.
How has that developed? What does it look like in your time alone with him? How have you developed that great love and dependency? I can talk about kinds of things that I do to fight the fight of faith, but I think I have very little control over who I am in terms of what comes out of me spontaneously.
I think the Lord has enabled me to fight battles to protect myself from crazy life and marriage and ministry destroying sins. But inside there, I feel that way because, you know, when I was little, say from the age 12 to 20, I had such struggles with insecurity and I was isolated. I was a loner. I was introspective.
I couldn't speak in front of a group. I hated my teenage years. It looked like this little kid is going nowhere and my sense is God was making a preacher, meaning he made me pretty miserable. And what I did with my misery, what God caused me to do with my misery was go in. I wrote poetry.
I listened to trains on Piney Mountain, far away, thinking I'd like to be in those trains and just go away. I mean, who decides that? Who decides whether you should have so much acne you don't think a girl could ever like you?
Whether you can't speak of a group and you feel like an idiot when they nominate you for class representative and you're junior and you say, I can't because I can't give the three-minute speech. I mean, who does that? So, I think the answer is God just does what he does as far as shaping the depths of a person's soul. Now, my job, I think now, is to keep myself, keep yourself in the love of God, Jude says. Why do you do that? So, this morning, actually, I use an iPad. I've got a Bible in my hand here, a paper Bible. I read four or five chapters of the Bible every day.
I take an hour. I turn it all into prayer. I cry out for my wife. I cry out for my sons. I cry out for desiring God. Bethlehem Baptist Church, Bethlehem College and Seminary, I pray in these concentric circles.
The biggest sinner I know is John Piper. The one that's most vulnerable to falling away and becoming discouraged and hopeless is me. So, I'm praying a lot about me. That's my warfare strategy. And then I have two guys that I meet with and they know everything I know and I share everything with them. Yesterday morning, we were on Zoom. We still do it by Zoom.
We used to do it in person. And we pour out our hearts to each other and pray earnestly for each other and we've seen God do wonders in each other's lives. So, I have some strategies, but I don't think those strategies make us who we are, but they protect us from being deceived into unbelief. That investment of your time, we are the beneficiaries of it because books like this about providence can't come out of a life that is not set apart the way you have chosen to set apart your life. And we are grateful as the beneficiaries, grateful for the time you've spent with us this week and for what we have here. I hope our listeners will take advantage of this resource that you have provided, this gift you're giving to the body of Christ, this new book, Providence. It's a book we've got in our Family Life Today resource center. You can order it from us online at familylifetoday.com or you can call to order 1-800-358-6329 is the number. 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. This is a book that will help you understand the goodness of God in the midst of hard circumstances and help you know how to think rightly about God when life gets hard.
Again, the book is called Providence. You can order it from us online at familylifetoday.com or call 800-358-6329 to order. That's 800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. Now if you have not checked your calendar recently, you might want to check it. Valentine's Day is right around the corner and we don't want you to be caught empty handed when Valentine's Day gets here.
David Robbins is the president of Family Life and he is here with us today. David, our team has been working hard on a resource that is a date box called Dates to Remember. It's designed to help couples have some purposeful and intentional conversations about their marriage. Valentine's Day can be kind of a launch point for a series of dates you can do together, but the purpose of this date box is about more than a fun, romantic evening together.
There is something bigger at work here. Yeah, throughout the decades of family life, one of the things we have been known for as a trademark of this ministry is creating intentional moments for couples and for families to process the next layer together. I think one of the best things about this date box is you have a lot of fun with it. There's some fun, great moments, but it takes you into that next layer. It takes you beyond what you would talk about when you're just going on a date night out to dinner, which is a beautiful thing.
Please keep those rhythms, go for that, keep it going. Sometimes we just need that little kickstarter to get to the next level, to get to the next layer, to grow an emotional and spiritual intimacy that increases our physical intimacy as a result. I think this date box is a great tool to get past a few layers of the onion of where we get stuck and to grow in deeper intimacy in a really intentional moment.
And that's what the date box is all about. So I hope listeners will check it out. Go to our website, familylifetoday.com. You can order it from us online or you can call to order. If you have any questions about it, call 1-800-FL-TODAY. This is a great resource for you to have, whether Valentine's Day was coming or not, to be spending time building into your marriage.
Again, check it out. Go to familylifetoday.com or call 1-800-FL-TODAY. And tomorrow we're going to talk about the kind of regular marriage maintenance all of us ought to be doing.
What are some habits or disciplines we need to integrate into the schedule of our lives? We'll talk more about that with Ron Deal and of course we'll be here as well. Hope you can join us. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team. On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. We'll see you back tomorrow for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today, hope for tomorrow.
