Is My Painting Hobby a Wartime Waste?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Welcome back to the podcast.

00:00:06.040 | Well, is the hobby of watercolor painting

00:00:10.520 | a wartime waste of time and money?

00:00:12.700 | That's the question today from a listener named Amy.

00:00:15.720 | Pastor John, hello to you and thank you for your ministry

00:00:17.660 | over these many years, she writes.

00:00:19.140 | I have benefited greatly from it.

00:00:20.840 | Your seashells message was especially profound to me, yes.

00:00:25.000 | One of the classic John Piper sermons,

00:00:27.080 | which is titled "Boasting Only in the Cross"

00:00:30.100 | and preached on May 20th, 2000.

00:00:33.380 | But that sermon left me with a lingering question

00:00:35.780 | I've never resolved.

00:00:37.400 | Would you consider all hobbies like seashell collecting

00:00:41.220 | a waste of life?

00:00:43.280 | I ask because I recently took up watercolor painting.

00:00:46.240 | I keep asking myself, does this glorify God?

00:00:49.080 | And to what purpose does this further his kingdom?

00:00:51.320 | I'm not sure it does.

00:00:52.940 | Painting is a relaxing stress reliever for me

00:00:55.960 | and I've enjoyed using it to make homemade cards for people,

00:00:58.520 | but it seems it's mostly for my benefit and my enjoyment.

00:01:03.280 | You clearly have a category for hobbies.

00:01:05.200 | When Tony recently asked you to name your favorite hobbies,

00:01:07.660 | you said Scrabble with Noel and making your yard look perfect.

00:01:11.760 | That was an APJ 1882.

00:01:14.320 | So what guidelines can you offer us wartime Christians

00:01:17.080 | to discern when hobbies are God glorifying

00:01:20.040 | and when they become life wasting?

00:01:23.400 | When I first tackled this question nine years ago on APJ,

00:01:27.480 | I was reading biographies at the time,

00:01:29.560 | books about Hudson Taylor and by Hudson Taylor,

00:01:34.320 | the missionary, and I think Hudson Taylor at that time

00:01:36.600 | and now if he were alive would answer this question

00:01:40.720 | pretty bluntly and say, come on, come on,

00:01:42.480 | let's give our lives for the cause of the gospel,

00:01:46.640 | especially world evangelization.

00:01:49.020 | So I have that ringing in my ears even to this day.

00:01:52.800 | And I don't want to soft pedal how radical

00:01:56.920 | the Christian life is by being culturally adapting

00:02:00.960 | as a Christian and ignoring the horrific plight

00:02:04.960 | of the lost and the unreached of this world.

00:02:08.840 | But here's what I think needs to be said biblically.

00:02:13.000 | We want to be biblical and not just draw out our own

00:02:17.180 | inferences from situations that may not accord

00:02:20.480 | with God's word.

00:02:22.240 | Yes, some people waste their lives playing.

00:02:26.840 | We just have to admit that.

00:02:28.140 | They do, their whole life is jumping from one fun thing

00:02:32.640 | to the next.

00:02:34.160 | What they really get excited about and what they spend

00:02:37.560 | most of their time, most of their life thinking about

00:02:41.960 | is the next gadget or the next vacation

00:02:45.480 | or the next streaming video series or the next concert

00:02:49.120 | or the next movie.

00:02:51.080 | If you want to get them animated, bring that up.

00:02:55.400 | Not Jesus, don't bring up salvation.

00:02:57.880 | They won't have anything to say.

00:02:59.520 | There's no emotional kick there at all.

00:03:02.120 | Not the hope of glory, not adoption into God's family,

00:03:04.840 | not the forgiveness of sins, not the miracles of Jesus.

00:03:07.640 | Just what did you watch last week?

00:03:09.600 | And whoa, they come alive with all kinds

00:03:12.320 | of verbal statements that show they can talk

00:03:15.560 | if they want to talk, they can feel if they want to feel.

00:03:18.600 | And those people give little thought to the biblical truth

00:03:24.400 | that their life is not their own.

00:03:29.680 | Paul said, you are not your own.

00:03:33.040 | You were bought with a price.

00:03:35.840 | So glorify God in your body.

00:03:39.640 | That's what you should think about with your body, your eyes,

00:03:42.120 | your ears, your hands, your tongue.

00:03:44.520 | Glorify God in your body.

00:03:46.960 | What could be more wonderful, more clear, more radical

00:03:50.360 | than that statement?

00:03:51.400 | You are not your own.

00:03:53.680 | You belong to God.

00:03:55.240 | Make him look great.

00:03:57.120 | And when you do, be excited about that.

00:04:00.040 | Do that with your hobbies.

00:04:02.200 | Those people act as if they can do whatever they please

00:04:07.040 | with no reference to the one who owns them or bought them.

00:04:11.040 | And those people need to hit pause, pause on their life.

00:04:17.080 | And ask, am I really born again?

00:04:22.480 | Do I have any of the affections of my Lord Jesus

00:04:28.200 | or my Father in heaven?

00:04:29.840 | Or are they all worldly?

00:04:33.400 | So to me, if you operate from that verse,

00:04:37.760 | 1 Corinthians 6, 19, then you ask of your hobbies.

00:04:43.240 | And it doesn't make any difference

00:04:44.560 | whether the hobbies are collecting coins or shells

00:04:48.200 | or climbing mountains.

00:04:50.840 | You ask, is this the Lord's will for my life

00:04:56.880 | that he bought, that he owns?

00:05:00.240 | And to answer that question about the will of God,

00:05:03.240 | you ask, am I glorifying him in this hobby?

00:05:10.120 | Is this hobby serving to make him look great

00:05:15.560 | and beautiful and valuable?

00:05:18.240 | Is it making me like one who values his glory

00:05:23.720 | above everything?

00:05:25.280 | Paul said, whether you eat or drink, do a hobby.

00:05:30.800 | Whatever you do, whether you climb mountains or hunt deer

00:05:35.840 | or collect coins or do crossword puzzles

00:05:39.480 | or collect shells or paint watercolors,

00:05:42.920 | do it all, he says, to the glory of God.

00:05:47.600 | Make Christ look like the treasure that he is.

00:05:52.800 | Now, how does that happen in hobbies or in leisure

00:05:57.640 | or in recreation?

00:05:59.920 | Because I think it does.

00:06:03.320 | I will just mention three, three ways,

00:06:07.440 | three questions to ask.

00:06:09.240 | One, is the hobby, the leisure, the recreation, the hobby

00:06:15.280 | itself, a participation in God-exalting experiences?

00:06:23.720 | Now, this is not mainly about the effects of the hobby,

00:06:29.240 | but what it is in itself.

00:06:31.680 | Do you see God in it?

00:06:34.600 | Does your spirit come alive to God in it?

00:06:39.280 | Or is it dragging you down?

00:06:42.120 | Is it leading you to be more distant from Christ,

00:06:45.640 | more indifferent to him, more in love with the world

00:06:50.200 | and less in love with him?

00:06:52.400 | Now, I can easily imagine Amy's water color hobby feeding

00:06:58.200 | her soul spiritually as she looks at the world

00:07:04.280 | with the eyes of a worshipful Christian

00:07:07.200 | as she sees the glory of God and seeks

00:07:10.680 | to capture some of that beauty in what she paints,

00:07:14.400 | all the while being amazed that she herself

00:07:17.800 | is a kind of creator in the image of her creator.

00:07:23.520 | It seems to me that most hobbies that involve making things

00:07:28.360 | could have this worshipful effect of experiencing

00:07:32.320 | the wonder of being a maker like our God is a maker

00:07:38.160 | and then bending what we have made to God's service

00:07:43.200 | so that both the process and the product reflect God's glory.

00:07:50.520 | Number two, second question to ask,

00:07:54.240 | is the hobby, the leisure, the recreation,

00:07:57.600 | refreshing you physically, emotionally, spiritually

00:08:02.960 | for the other parts of your life where you need energy and focus

00:08:07.760 | to live for God's glory as part of your vocation

00:08:10.160 | or part of your family?

00:08:12.600 | Or is the hobby depleting you and weakening you

00:08:19.080 | and making you less able to do that part of your life

00:08:23.000 | to the glory of God?

00:08:25.960 | This is a question about physical depletion

00:08:29.080 | and spiritual depletion or weakening or even deadening.

00:08:36.520 | We need to be really honest whether what

00:08:41.440 | we're focusing on for hours is shaping our minds

00:08:47.200 | for greater spiritual alertness and wisdom and love and worship

00:08:51.880 | or misshaping our minds to be more at home with sin.

00:08:59.600 | Third question to ask.

00:09:01.320 | Last one, how is your hobby or leisure or recreation

00:09:05.960 | serving your relationship with other people for their good?

00:09:12.600 | And I ask it like that rather than what I used to say way

00:09:17.000 | back nine years ago when I thought about this question,

00:09:20.880 | namely, I ask, are you involving other people in your hobby?

00:09:28.400 | I'm not saying that now because I realized

00:09:31.840 | that there are recreations or hobbies or diversions that

00:09:35.800 | are specifically designed to isolate you,

00:09:40.920 | but not selfishly, not selfishly,

00:09:44.200 | but for loving reasons.

00:09:46.040 | For example, one of the things I like

00:09:49.600 | to do besides scrabbles and yard work,

00:09:53.320 | I like to do is when I'm not under pressure

00:09:57.560 | to do what everybody else expects me to do

00:10:00.280 | is to write poetry.

00:10:03.160 | Now, this would be like Amy's watercolors, I think,

00:10:06.800 | only probably I am much more insistent than she would be

00:10:11.520 | that I must be left alone.

00:10:15.120 | She might be able to paint with people around her.

00:10:17.920 | I can't.

00:10:18.960 | Writing, especially disciplined creative writing,

00:10:22.640 | is intensely focused action.

00:10:27.280 | I cannot do it while others are around me.

00:10:31.520 | So the hobby itself is not gregarious.

00:10:35.400 | It's isolationist.

00:10:38.000 | But my aim is always to write, to be read.

00:10:42.680 | I want to speak to somebody what I'm writing.

00:10:45.800 | I want to use it to encourage them and to glorify God with it.

00:10:51.600 | I want the poems to capture something

00:10:53.760 | about God and his word and his world

00:10:56.600 | that will awaken others to what I saw and experienced

00:11:02.600 | in a way that magnifies Christ.

00:11:07.080 | So I think it is a good question to ask,

00:11:11.480 | how is your hobby or your leisure serving

00:11:15.960 | your relationship with other people for their good?

00:11:19.320 | The apostle Paul said in 1 Corinthians 16, 14,

00:11:25.760 | "Let all that you do be done in love."

00:11:29.400 | So he said on the one hand, "Let all that you do

00:11:32.240 | do it to the glory of God."

00:11:33.840 | And here he's saying, which I think is a subset,

00:11:37.400 | "Let all that you do be done in love."

00:11:40.280 | Love for people.

00:11:41.400 | So it is a good biblical question for all our hobbies.

00:11:46.400 | Is this expressing my love for others?

00:11:51.440 | Is this hobby forming me into a person who cares for others,

00:11:57.760 | wants to live for others' good, is

00:12:00.560 | willing to sacrifice for others?

00:12:04.040 | So I think if we're honest with those three questions,

00:12:08.360 | the financial part of the hobby will probably

00:12:12.360 | take care of itself.

00:12:13.880 | In other words, I think the God-focused, ministry-focused,

00:12:19.480 | love-focused emphasis of those questions

00:12:23.920 | will put a governor on any exorbitant spending

00:12:29.280 | in our support of the hobby.

00:12:32.000 | We live in a very needy world.

00:12:34.960 | And one of the effects of those three questions

00:12:38.360 | will be to make us more alive to those needs

00:12:42.360 | so that we embrace a wartime lifestyle

00:12:46.200 | for the good of the world and the glory of Christ.

00:12:50.760 | How many seashells do you have in your home?

00:12:52.760 | I'm not aware of any.

00:12:53.880 | None?

00:12:54.380 | OK.

00:12:54.880 | But there might be some downstairs

00:12:56.960 | with a plant growing in it.

00:12:58.120 | [LAUGHTER]

00:13:00.640 | Wonderful.

00:13:01.880 | My son-in-law has a jar of seashells

00:13:05.320 | in his office at church, which his wife insisted

00:13:08.920 | that he put there.

00:13:09.680 | And when he took a picture of it and put it on Twitter,

00:13:12.280 | he said, let the reader understand.

00:13:14.120 | [LAUGHTER]

00:13:17.040 | Wonderful.

00:13:20.880 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:13:22.320 | And if you're still trying to figure out

00:13:23.960 | how and why John Piper and seashells go together,

00:13:26.840 | like peanut butter and jelly, or maybe like oil and water,

00:13:30.680 | maybe is a better way to put it, see APJ 1200,

00:13:33.640 | APJ 1200, Reflections on the Seashell Sermon,

00:13:37.440 | 18 Years Later, episode 1200 in the archive.

00:13:41.200 | That was a 2018 episode that we recorded.

00:13:44.120 | And can you believe we have not talked

00:13:46.000 | about seashells on this podcast since that episode,

00:13:49.000 | 5 and 1/2 years ago?

00:13:51.000 | Seems hard to believe, but it's true.

00:13:52.800 | Who hosts this thing anyways?

00:13:54.080 | [LAUGHTER]

00:13:55.000 | I do.

00:13:55.960 | Tony Reike, at your service.

00:13:58.320 | See you Monday.

00:14:00.120 | you

00:14:02.180 | you

00:14:04.240 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Is My Painting Hobby a Wartime Waste?

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