Reflections from John Piper on His Birthday
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | - What better day to relaunch the Ask Pastor John podcast
00:00:08.200 | than on January 11th of 2013,
00:00:11.000 | a day which happens to also be John Piper's birthday.
00:00:13.880 | Our aim is to connect you with Pastor John more frequently
00:00:16.080 | through these brief podcasts,
00:00:17.480 | and you can stay tuned to the website DesiringGod.org
00:00:20.440 | and our Twitter and our Facebook feeds
00:00:22.180 | for more episodes as they come along in the future.
00:00:25.720 | Today on your birthday, Pastor John,
00:00:27.240 | we wanna hear from you because I know
00:00:29.200 | when birthdays and anniversaries come around,
00:00:31.040 | you spend a lot of time thinking and reflecting
00:00:33.200 | and a lot of time in prayer.
00:00:34.520 | And I wanna ask you, what is your prayer today
00:00:36.960 | on this, your 67th birthday?
00:00:39.640 | - My prayer is first, overflowing with thankfulness to God.
00:00:45.900 | I'm thankful for 67 years of physical life,
00:00:50.240 | and they've been remarkably easy, I think,
00:00:53.680 | from my standpoint compared to most people in the world.
00:00:56.440 | I haven't, at least from my memory standpoint,
00:01:00.400 | been all that sick.
00:01:01.960 | I can remember times when it's been difficult,
00:01:04.200 | but a relatively smooth 67 years.
00:01:08.040 | I'm thankful for 61 years of life in Christ
00:01:13.040 | and his amazing faithfulness to me.
00:01:18.080 | I'm thankful for 44 years with Noelle
00:01:20.920 | and her rock solid commitment to stand by me
00:01:25.360 | in everything.
00:01:26.440 | I'm thankful for 32 1/2 years with my church.
00:01:32.520 | What a gift they've been to me.
00:01:35.520 | I think I've gotten to know God more and people more
00:01:39.680 | in these 32 1/2 years than I ever could have
00:01:41.640 | in any other path that he would have given me.
00:01:44.640 | I'm thankful for 40 years of parenting
00:01:47.720 | with the ups and downs and joys and sorrows of that.
00:01:51.520 | And thankful deeply for my five children
00:01:55.200 | who love me.
00:01:56.520 | Just got a beautiful email this morning
00:02:01.520 | from one of my kids just saying he loved me.
00:02:06.800 | (laughs)
00:02:09.120 | Really touches you pretty deeply.
00:02:10.760 | So thankfulness is just big.
00:02:14.040 | And then when I let it turn from thankfulness,
00:02:16.600 | it becomes, God, don't let me waste the next chapter.
00:02:21.480 | Everything feels like chapters right now, Tony,
00:02:23.400 | because years don't seem to matter so much
00:02:26.440 | as eras right now for me.
00:02:28.160 | I'm finishing at Bethlehem.
00:02:29.400 | I'm gonna finish 67 years.
00:02:32.120 | And so right now, it doesn't just look like
00:02:36.440 | I'm facing a year.
00:02:37.360 | It looks like I'm facing an era if God gives me life.
00:02:40.680 | And so I'd say, God, don't let me waste this.
00:02:44.560 | And grant that your name would be hallowed through my life,
00:02:47.480 | that your kingdom would come through my life,
00:02:49.280 | that your will would be done through my life.
00:02:51.800 | I wanna spread a passion for your supremacy, oh Lord,
00:02:54.680 | and all things for the joy of all peoples
00:02:56.360 | through Jesus Christ.
00:02:57.360 | So keep me on task and don't let me fritter my life away.
00:03:01.880 | - Looking back over the previous chapters
00:03:06.120 | of your life now at age 67,
00:03:08.520 | are there things that surprise you?
00:03:10.060 | I imagine there's a lot of things that surprise you.
00:03:12.680 | - Oh, my.
00:03:13.520 | (laughs)
00:03:15.600 | I was, as a kid, I was just so insecure
00:03:20.480 | and so pimple-faced and nervous and socially maladapted.
00:03:25.480 | And I mean, if you had asked me
00:03:29.640 | that I would have spoken to passion (laughs)
00:03:34.080 | to 62,000 students, I would have said,
00:03:36.520 | yeah, if the sun stops in the sky and the ocean dries up,
00:03:41.320 | I might be able to do that.
00:03:43.540 | So my present role as a preacher to a church every week
00:03:49.380 | and to groups around the country,
00:03:54.380 | that's just unheard of.
00:03:56.860 | It's just, I didn't plan that.
00:03:59.780 | It wasn't on the agenda.
00:04:01.620 | People would ask me,
00:04:02.460 | "You gonna be a preacher like your dad?"
00:04:04.140 | And I'd say, "No way, I can't begin
00:04:06.700 | "to be a preacher like my dad."
00:04:08.020 | So my whole vocational trajectory is a surprise to me.
00:04:14.420 | And then writing started to be a love for me
00:04:18.660 | in the 11th grade, ironically.
00:04:20.420 | I didn't read until the 11th grade, hardly.
00:04:22.540 | I hated to read.
00:04:23.500 | I'd rather be outside throwing a ball
00:04:25.260 | or digging in the dirt.
00:04:26.780 | And suddenly, Mrs. Clanton, I don't know what she did
00:04:30.020 | in the 11th grade literature class,
00:04:31.860 | but wow, something just locked in on me
00:04:34.700 | for her poetry and writing and reading.
00:04:37.620 | And so from my gut, it doesn't surprise me
00:04:42.620 | that I'm a writer.
00:04:43.940 | From my gut, it does surprise me
00:04:46.820 | that my books have sold
00:04:49.900 | and that people care to read them.
00:04:51.860 | That, I've always written.
00:04:54.420 | It's written for journals
00:04:55.460 | and written for my own birthday poems
00:04:57.740 | for my family and things,
00:04:58.780 | but that I would be a writer and a preacher,
00:05:02.580 | those two things are surprising to me.
00:05:05.380 | - Pastor John, how can we be praying for you
00:05:08.460 | as this new chapter of your life
00:05:09.940 | and your ministry now unfolds?
00:05:12.620 | - I really do feel remarkably vulnerable
00:05:16.820 | to distraction
00:05:19.540 | because of the lifting of certain pressures.
00:05:23.500 | Deadlines are wonderfully productive
00:05:27.460 | and pressure, while we hate it, really does help us.
00:05:33.420 | And so living a life in the ministry
00:05:35.940 | where every week you must preach
00:05:37.980 | and every Tuesday you must lead the staff
00:05:40.020 | and every time a retreat comes around,
00:05:43.020 | you must have a plan.
00:05:44.100 | And the pressures of the last 32 years
00:05:46.700 | have been wonderfully productive, effective.
00:05:51.140 | Now those pressures begin to lift
00:05:53.980 | and I need to adjust my internal motivational powers
00:05:58.980 | and God needs to give me the grace
00:06:04.060 | to have my own intrinsic personal resolves
00:06:09.140 | to set kinds of goals for myself
00:06:12.700 | and patterns of life for myself
00:06:15.140 | so that I can continue to be fruitful
00:06:17.980 | and not wasteful of my time
00:06:20.940 | because I can taste it.
00:06:22.340 | I can just taste that it's easy to drift
00:06:26.620 | when you don't have deadlines.
00:06:28.260 | So I think I would just pray that spiritually
00:06:31.340 | I wouldn't be a drifter
00:06:32.900 | and that productively I wouldn't be a drifter.
00:06:36.620 | But spiritually, I mean, I wanna go hard after God
00:06:40.260 | in this new season.
00:06:41.620 | You know, what strikes me about retirement,
00:06:44.980 | the way the world conceives of it
00:06:46.380 | is that generally things are recommended
00:06:49.500 | that are pretty poor ways of getting ready
00:06:52.260 | to meet King Jesus.
00:06:54.500 | And it seems to me that the closer we're getting to Jesus,
00:06:58.580 | the more we should be devoted to him
00:07:00.940 | in focused ways of fellowship and communion.
00:07:04.500 | So my own personal aggressiveness in spiritual life,
00:07:09.420 | I wanna go hard after Jesus in my devotions
00:07:13.580 | and hard after Jesus so that I know him better
00:07:16.780 | and better through his words
00:07:18.380 | so that when I die, the transition won't be abrupt.
00:07:23.380 | You know, it won't be surprising.
00:07:25.940 | When I look at him, I'll say,
00:07:27.980 | you're pretty much what I saw in the word of God
00:07:31.100 | and came to love in the word of God.
00:07:33.260 | I don't have to be now radically adjusted
00:07:36.220 | in my way of seeing him.
00:07:37.620 | - Well, on behalf of your listeners
00:07:40.500 | and readers of your books from around the globe,
00:07:43.940 | I wanna wish you a very happy 67th birthday.
00:07:47.580 | - Thank you.
00:07:48.420 | - And thank you for joining us for this podcast.
00:07:51.180 | If you have a question for Pastor John,
00:07:52.460 | please send it to us via email.
00:07:54.020 | Send those to askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:07:58.540 | Please include your first name and your hometown.
00:08:01.040 | You can find thousands of other resources
00:08:02.480 | from John Piper online at desiringgod.org.
00:08:05.980 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:07.180 | Thank you for listening.
00:08:08.380 | (upbeat music)
00:08:10.960 | (upbeat music)
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