Exciting Days Ahead for Desiring God

00:00:00.000 | As we draw near the end of 2013, we look back on God's grace on Desiring God, and it's been

00:00:09.880 | wonderful grace.

00:00:10.880 | There's a lot going on at Desiring God now, lots of plans for the future.

00:00:15.880 | Pastor John, when you think of the ministry of Desiring God, what happened in 2013, and

00:00:19.960 | what's to come in 2014, Lord willing, what excites you?

00:00:24.360 | Tony, it's strange, perhaps, but the first thing that comes to my mind when I think about

00:00:30.200 | the blessings to Desiring God and through Desiring God is the impact on the life of

00:00:40.280 | suffering people.

00:00:43.120 | One of the favorite texts at our ministry is "Sorrowful, Yet Always Rejoicing," 2 Corinthians

00:00:50.640 | 6:10.

00:00:51.640 | And everybody who knows us knows that we stand for Christian hedonism.

00:00:55.800 | We're the people who say that joy is essential, that God is glorified in us when we're satisfied

00:01:01.240 | in Him.

00:01:02.400 | And yet, the most consistent testimony to the benefit of the website, in my ears anyway

00:01:11.320 | as I travel, is people saying, "Thank you for help in getting through a tragedy."

00:01:20.480 | And so I'm thankful for the theology of suffering that pervades the website.

00:01:28.520 | Through many tribulations, Christians must enter the kingdom.

00:01:33.320 | And the prosperity gospel—I'm just back from the Middle East and from Africa, and

00:01:38.140 | everywhere I went, I dealt with people from dozens of countries who tell me that they

00:01:46.520 | have been affected, and the people around them have been affected by the prosperity

00:01:51.080 | gospel.

00:01:52.400 | And they thanked me that Desiring God gives a perspective on suffering that is a corrective

00:02:00.160 | to the over-realization of future blessing that prosperity preachers push into this life

00:02:08.000 | with a minimization of a proper understanding of the role of sorrow and pain and affliction

00:02:14.680 | in the Christian life.

00:02:16.020 | So I'm deeply thankful that we're all on one page here, that many of us—in fact,

00:02:22.360 | at this moment, God seems to be ordaining that some of our brothers are walking through

00:02:28.240 | really deep waters.

00:02:30.480 | And I think the people that listen to us and come find a sweet sense of empathy when they're

00:02:39.400 | walking through hard times.

00:02:41.040 | So that's the first thing.

00:02:42.600 | People yet always rejoicing is all over this ministry, and I think thousands of people

00:02:49.220 | find that very, very helpful.

00:02:51.720 | The second thing that comes to my mind, especially after travels, is the global impact.

00:02:56.480 | The internet is simply an amazing instrument in God's hands that people from Pakistan

00:03:03.660 | and Nepal and Indonesia and Vietnam and Cambodia and Egypt and UAE and Ethiopia and Nigeria

00:03:12.460 | come up to me after these sessions where I'm speaking to groups of 70 nations and one after

00:03:17.260 | the other of every different color and shade and ethnicity thanking me for desiring God.

00:03:23.380 | I just would have never dreamed that I would go 6,000 miles away and have the same stories

00:03:30.100 | told to me that I hear when I do conferences here.

00:03:32.900 | So praise God for the global impact of this ministry.

00:03:40.700 | And the next thing that comes to mind is the app development.

00:03:43.740 | I just love the fact that we're working on these special focus kind of ministries.

00:03:49.180 | The one we're doing right now, APJ, and your involvement in it, the Solid Joys app.

00:03:54.420 | We're working on a brand new one that I won't give the title away yet, but it's a new app

00:04:00.620 | that will be a new way of teaching the Bible and the content of the Bible, how to read

00:04:04.500 | the Bible.

00:04:05.700 | And we think, we don't know of anybody else that's doing it quite this way.

00:04:10.220 | So we're really excited about that new app.

00:04:12.820 | New leadership.

00:04:14.060 | We just made a new hire in web project development, and I'm excited about that.

00:04:21.300 | People I'm sure will hear more about that soon.

00:04:24.220 | So I'm real thankful that the leadership of DG is thinking strategically about the future

00:04:30.360 | and the kind of expertise that will be needed to maximize the impact of the web.

00:04:36.660 | And another one that comes to mind is I love Desiring God's way of thinking about money

00:04:45.340 | and marketing.

00:04:48.420 | We believe in a wartime lifestyle, which is a little different than a simple lifestyle,

00:04:54.460 | although it implies measures of simplicity.

00:04:57.380 | We don't like to be opulent.

00:05:00.620 | We want to be simple.

00:05:01.620 | But wartime means you think through your expenditures in personal living and in ministry living

00:05:09.420 | with a view to maximizing impact, not to maximize comfort.

00:05:14.560 | So all the royalties and honorariums that I make go right back into ministry.

00:05:18.580 | I don't take any of them for myself.

00:05:20.780 | We give away for free everything online, almost 10,000 resources, they tell me now, not just

00:05:27.540 | 5,000.

00:05:28.540 | We don't sell them.

00:05:29.620 | We don't cause, we don't require any registration for them because we want to remove every possible

00:05:34.420 | obstacle.

00:05:35.420 | I just love just lavishly throwing glorious things out there for anybody, anywhere, anytime

00:05:41.740 | in the world to have them with the fewest impediments possible.

00:05:46.900 | We always have had this whatever you can afford policy so that if somebody wants a book or

00:05:51.660 | wants one of those crates of books we try to sell to encourage people to give them away,

00:05:56.140 | if they say, "I can't afford what you're charging," we'll say, "Well, what can you afford?"

00:06:00.180 | And we send it to them.

00:06:01.180 | We've done that for 10 years and God's never, never let us down so that nobody has to be

00:06:06.660 | without a book that they need and that cherish for the upbuilding of their souls if they

00:06:12.300 | can't afford it.

00:06:13.580 | We don't advertise on the website.

00:06:14.940 | I could give all kinds of reasons for why I'm glad about that, but there's no big bar

00:06:19.100 | of advertising over on the right-hand side, which is a big way of making money that we

00:06:24.580 | don't do for various reasons.

00:06:28.580 | And we just believe that focusing on the sovereign grace of God and the glories of Christ and

00:06:33.820 | the truth of the Bible creates joyful givers.

00:06:36.580 | Because I think $3 million of our $4 million budget comes through the participants who

00:06:42.140 | love us and give us gifts.

00:06:44.300 | So I'm just thrilled.

00:06:46.060 | And the last thing that I would say is that I'm excited mainly—I left it for last—because

00:06:52.980 | mainly the center of our message, God is most glorified in us when we're most satisfied

00:06:58.620 | in Him.

00:06:59.620 | That's who we are.

00:07:00.620 | We're people who have discovered that there's no need to choose between living for the glory

00:07:08.060 | of God and living in the fullness of joy.

00:07:11.860 | Because even in the midst of suffering, God is most glorified in us when we're most satisfied

00:07:16.660 | in Him.

00:07:17.660 | That's the essence of our message, and that's why I love Desiring God.

00:07:22.260 | Yes, amen.

00:07:23.260 | Thank you, Pastor John.

00:07:24.260 | And thank you for listening.

00:07:25.260 | The Ministry of Desiring God, which includes initiatives like this daily podcast, Ask Pastor

00:07:29.300 | John, are made possible by the prayers and the financial generosity of many friends of

00:07:33.820 | the ministry like you.

00:07:35.500 | And so as we near the end of 2013, we want to take a moment to thank everyone who supports

00:07:39.560 | the work of DG and those whose financial contributions make it possible for us to continue to build

00:07:45.940 | and administrate and steward DesiringGod.org as we labor daily to share the precious gospel

00:07:51.400 | of Jesus Christ with as many souls as we possibly can here in the United States and around the

00:07:56.500 | globe.

00:07:57.500 | And if you'd like to partner with us in this work, you can do so online.

00:08:01.340 | You can go to DesiringGod.org, click on "About Us," and then click on "Support DG."

00:08:06.760 | Your financial support is greatly appreciated by us.

00:08:09.740 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, looking forward to sharing with you a fruitful and very innovative

00:08:14.340 | 2014 online.

00:08:16.460 | We'll be back on Monday.

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Exciting Days Ahead for Desiring God

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