How to Win the War for Morning Devotions
00:00:00.000 | (Music)
00:00:16.560 | Spiritual warfare is very real in our lives and the battle for our morning devotions is a never-ending struggle for many of us,
00:00:23.600 | one that we often lose. I know I lose...
00:00:26.560 | many times and our attention is under relentless attack for vain things and for
00:00:31.360 | personal approval and for desires that lure us online immediately in the morning.
00:00:36.400 | So how do we preserve those mornings? That is the topic today. Jackie Hill Perry is our guest.
00:00:41.680 | That intro was from her new album, Crescendo. Check it out. But the following is from her
00:00:46.640 | Twitter feed. "As soon as you wake, there is a war to keep you from the word of God. Fight!"
00:00:54.480 | Exclamation point, end quote. Yes, fight. So what's at stake, Jackie, and how do we fight?
00:00:59.600 | How do we win this war? This one is hard because I feel like this is a daily constant war for me.
00:01:06.160 | I think when I got married and when I had children, the war got harder. And that's not to say that in
00:01:14.240 | singleness is not, but I feel like I had more meaningful distractions. And what I mean by that
00:01:21.600 | is when I was single, I kind of just, you know, I just had work, you know, I just woke up kind of
00:01:28.480 | when I wanted to wake up because I was self-employed. You know, I could spend the time of
00:01:32.480 | the world for like an hour if I chose to. Now it's if I need to, if I want to spend uninterrupted time
00:01:40.000 | with God, I need to wake up before my children do. And so stuff like that. So I think the war is,
00:01:45.600 | man, do I make time for God or do I try to fit God into the time that I feel like I already don't
00:01:52.240 | have? And so when I wake up, it's a daily decision. And I think one of my mistakes is, I know this
00:01:59.120 | personally, is that I sleep with my phone. I know for a fact, if I got rid of my phone, my distractions
00:02:05.600 | would be not as close or nearby. And so I think what's at stake ultimately is my love of the Lord.
00:02:13.280 | I was thinking about this yesterday at church when our pastor, he caught on to Beatitudes and
00:02:19.200 | he talked about how, you know, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And he
00:02:23.680 | was, he was rooting his text and our love for God and our love for the word. And the thought that
00:02:28.720 | came to my mind is if I'm not delighting in the word of God, then most likely I'm not delighting
00:02:33.680 | in God himself. And so I think that's ultimately is at stake is my affections. What are my
00:02:39.520 | affections in? If my affections are in my sleep, then I'm going to treasure sleep over the word.
00:02:44.160 | If my affections are in my emails, then I'm going to treasure my emails over the word. If my
00:02:48.560 | affections are in my time, then my time is going to be preeminent over the preeminent one. And so
00:02:54.880 | I think identifying what really is my joy, is it God? Is it my stuff? Is it my peace or what I think
00:03:03.920 | is peace? Because I'm able to sit up and watch Netflix when I could be reading Psalms. I think
00:03:08.800 | identifying those things that are really legitimately good things and opportunities
00:03:14.480 | for leisure that I've made an idol in many ways. And so, yeah, what's at stake is me and Jesus
00:03:21.360 | being good. What's the impulse online that you feel? How does it manifest in your life?
00:03:26.480 | I think it's, I love information. And so before I go to bed, one of my things before I go to bed is
00:03:33.600 | I tend to just Wikipedia random things. So it's like...
00:03:38.800 | Okay, give us an example.
00:03:40.880 | So for example, there was this show, I think it's called Genius on National Geographic,
00:03:45.520 | and it was about Picasso. I was like, "Huh, I wonder, I just want to know his name. I want
00:03:50.400 | to know where he's from. I want to know when he started painting." And then I realized he had
00:03:53.680 | 13 names in his name. And so I just go on this rabbit trail where I'm Wikipedian facts about,
00:03:59.680 | Wikipedian, whatever. I'm on Wikipedia learning about people. So when I wake up, that information,
00:04:05.680 | that desire for information is still there. It just tends to lean towards wanting information
00:04:11.120 | from secular sources. And so what does Twitter have to say today? What's the news? Oh, LeBron
00:04:16.800 | got signed to LA. I wonder how much he made. Like my mind is just wondering about everything that
00:04:22.080 | happened while I was asleep instead of waking up to wonder about the glory of God and his
00:04:28.000 | scriptures. And so I think that's something that I need to consistently, have to consistently kill,
00:04:34.000 | is this desire to esteem the new information over the lasting information.
00:04:38.640 | This is good. So what else can we learn from Jackie Hill Perry about social media in this
00:04:44.400 | fight in the mornings?
00:04:45.520 | Man, you wrote a great book about it.
00:04:47.760 | But I think it's our hearts. I actually asked a friend of mine from church. She is nearing her
00:04:56.480 | forties. And I wanted to know, I said, like in your, when, like in the eighties and stuff like
00:05:02.240 | that, when you were around, I know that distractions haven't necessarily, distractions aren't a new
00:05:07.440 | thing. They just transform and they, you know, do that. I was like, so what was the distraction for
00:05:12.880 | you guys? She was like TV. She was like, there was this, there was this influx of sitcoms and VHS
00:05:20.080 | tapes and all of this type of stuff that we were just consuming on a daily basis. And I was like,
00:05:25.680 | huh. And so I think ultimately we have to learn how to navigate this world that we're in with
00:05:31.360 | distractions as a whole, and just see that like, man, this will, this will subtly take our attention
00:05:37.280 | away from God if we let it. But I think as we, as we learn to love God more, it really becomes
00:05:43.360 | easier to resist. I think it's as simple as that.
00:05:46.240 | So true. Yeah. I'm thinking of the parable of the four soils. I mean, the desire for
00:05:50.240 | riches has always been a distraction to the gospel. I mean, since the dawn of time,
00:05:54.880 | even before the media age. That's real true.
00:05:56.800 | Jackie, this has been a short, but wonderful week with you. Thank you for joining us.
00:06:01.680 | Thank you, Tony. All right. Talk to you later.
00:06:03.680 | All right. Bye-bye. That was Jackie Hill Perry. You really should be following her on Twitter
00:06:08.560 | and Instagram. You won't be disappointed. What a gift she is. Check out her new album as well,
00:06:13.360 | Crescendo. She's got a new book coming out later this year. Check that out. And at our online home
00:06:19.120 | at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn, you can explore all 1200 plus of our episodes. Now you can
00:06:24.720 | scan a list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own.
00:06:28.800 | And to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to the Ask Pastor John
00:06:33.280 | podcast in your favorite podcast app. Well, John Piper returns on Friday, and we're going to hear
00:06:39.680 | from him on the most used promises from God that he uses regularly in his life. That should be
00:06:46.960 | interesting. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and we'll see you then.
00:06:49.520 | [END]
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