Isn’t It Loving to My Family to Prepare for Doomsday?

00:00:00.000 | Today we return to the theme of doomsday prepping, a follow-up from a listener named Matt.

00:00:09.000 | Pastor John, hello. It seems to me that your response in episode 1118 on preparing for a nuclear doomsday

00:00:15.000 | was all predicated on the assumption that anybody who prepares for a possible disaster does so out of self-preservation.

00:00:22.000 | As a father and a husband, I have intentionally put myself in situations that cause extended periods of great personal discomfort

00:00:28.000 | and danger of injury and death for what I believed was the good of others.

00:00:33.000 | I say this not to puff myself up, because I certainly have strains of cowardice within me,

00:00:38.000 | but to make the point that some degree of preparedness for a possible disaster may be from a desire to protect the people I'm charged by God with protecting.

00:00:47.000 | In fact, in your book, This Momentary Marriage, you say it is a husband's duty to protect his wife physically and spiritually.

00:00:54.000 | I have no great compulsion to preserve my own life, because I can honestly say with Paul, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

00:01:01.000 | But if ever I found myself in a situation where the people I love are suffering, when I could have prevented it,

00:01:07.000 | I would feel like I have failed in my God-given responsibility to protect their physical well-being.

00:01:15.000 | Is this wrong?

00:01:17.000 | Let me restate the question. Have I failed in my responsibility, my God-given responsibility,

00:01:25.000 | if the people I love are suffering when I could have prevented it?

00:01:32.000 | And the answer is, not necessarily.

00:01:36.000 | It is possible, indeed, that you have been careless in some way and have brought down suffering upon your family for no good reason

00:01:48.000 | except your own carelessness or selfishness or foolishness.

00:01:51.000 | Yeah, that's possible.

00:01:53.000 | Everybody would agree that thoughtlessness and carelessness and selfishness and foolishness that results in people being hurt is our fault,

00:02:03.000 | and we should feel bad about it and repent and maybe even be punished in jail for such negligence.

00:02:11.000 | But let me ask the question again.

00:02:13.000 | Have I failed in my God-given responsibility if people I love are suffering when I could have prevented it?

00:02:23.000 | My answer would be no. You have not necessarily failed if you are thoughtfully, prayerfully obeying God's call on your life

00:02:36.000 | in the pursuit of a greater good than the physical safety of your family, including their greater good.

00:02:46.000 | In other words, there is a difference between trying to beat a train to an intersection and taking your family to Pakistan to serve Jesus.

00:02:56.000 | The first is probably foolishness, and the second may be obedience.

00:03:01.000 | I just typed into Google just before we did this little podcast.

00:03:07.000 | I just typed into Google, "What parts of Minneapolis have the highest crime rate?"

00:03:13.000 | Well, it's very predictable. I knew what the answers were going to be.

00:03:17.000 | Northwest Minneapolis—North Minneapolis it's usually called—is the most dangerous place to be, and second is Phillips neighborhood.

00:03:26.000 | That's where I live. Have lived here for 37 years.

00:03:29.000 | 37 years ago when I moved in here, I'm pretty sure that if there had been Google, there wasn't any internet, that Phillips would have been number one.

00:03:40.000 | I didn't move here as a hero looking for trouble. I moved here so I could walk to church. I don't like cars.

00:03:49.000 | If I'd been the pastor of a church in the suburbs, I would have lived in the suburbs, guilt-free.

00:03:55.000 | So don't anybody be, you know, in a shape that I'm telling everybody to live in the city. Hardly.

00:04:00.000 | If you ask me, "Well, haven't you been concerned about the safety of your kids and your wife? We raised five kids here."

00:04:09.000 | My answer is, "Yes, but not so concerned as to keep us out."

00:04:14.000 | So if one of the dozens of gunshots that we've heard over the years had come through the window, killed one of my kids, would I feel like I have failed?

00:04:25.000 | No, I would not.

00:04:28.000 | That kind of thinking is deadly to Christian obedience and the completion of the Great Commission,

00:04:36.000 | and the living of kingdom lives that show our citizenship is not in this world,

00:04:42.000 | but they were sojourners here living for the salvation of people and for the good of this world.

00:04:48.000 | There are many good kingdom reasons for being in this neighborhood besides convenience to get to walk to church.

00:04:57.000 | And I think our location is owing more to obedience than to foolishness.

00:05:03.000 | Now, here's the biblical issue.

00:05:06.000 | Has Jesus failed when he sends his disciples out as sheep in the midst of wolves, and some of them are killed?

00:05:16.000 | Has he failed? Could he have kept them safe?

00:05:19.000 | Well, of course he could, but that's not his top priority, and it's not ours.

00:05:25.000 | Jesus said to those whom he was sending out, "You will be delivered up by parents and brothers and relatives and friends,

00:05:33.000 | and some of you they will put to death.

00:05:36.000 | You will be hated by all for my name's sake.

00:05:39.000 | Not a hair of your head will perish.

00:05:41.000 | By your endurance you will gain your lives." Luke 21, 16 to 19.

00:05:46.000 | Among those he was sending out was Peter.

00:05:49.000 | Peter had a wife, and according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 9, 5, Peter took his wife with him on his travels like sheep in the midst of wolves.

00:06:00.000 | Or what about Paul?

00:06:02.000 | When he was in Corinth and the Jews stirred up a case against him, and Galileo, the Roman proconsul, said,

00:06:10.000 | "That's not my business. Get out of here. I don't want to mess with you Christians."

00:06:15.000 | And so the Jews couldn't silence Paul, so what did they do?

00:06:18.000 | They beat up Sosthenes, the poor guy.

00:06:21.000 | He's a brand-new convert, a ruler of the synagogue.

00:06:25.000 | Paul refers to him later on in his letters, Acts 18, 15 and 17.

00:06:30.000 | They beat him up.

00:06:31.000 | Was Paul a failure for converting Sosthenes and putting him in the way of danger?

00:06:38.000 | Paul didn't think so, because Luke tells us that after converting many people to Christ,

00:06:44.000 | Paul went back to the churches to make sure they understood that to be a Christian means suffering.

00:06:51.000 | Acts 14, 22, he was strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith,

00:06:57.000 | and saying through many tribulations, "We must enter the kingdom of God."

00:07:04.000 | He didn't want them to be naive Christians.

00:07:07.000 | He had won them over to danger.

00:07:11.000 | In other words, Paul was taking full responsibility of calling people into a life that would have more trouble,

00:07:18.000 | more danger than if they had not converted to Jesus.

00:07:23.000 | So let's ask the question one last time.

00:07:26.000 | Have I failed in my God-given responsibility if people I love are suffering when I could have prevented it?

00:07:38.000 | And the answer is, maybe so, maybe not.

00:07:42.000 | I wrote an article at Desiring God a few weeks back called "Risk Your Kids for the Kingdom?"

00:07:49.000 | And I would encourage folks to go there and look at it to see what kind of argument I developed from the Bible.

00:07:55.000 | I argued there that when Paul was talking in 1 Timothy 5, 8, and saying,

00:08:03.000 | "Anyone who does not provide for his household has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever,"

00:08:10.000 | he was talking about world-idolizing slackers, not self-denying emissaries of Christ.

00:08:19.000 | The same distinction needs to be made right here in answering this question.

00:08:24.000 | If your family suffers because you are a selfish slacker, you're worse than an unbeliever.

00:08:32.000 | But if they suffer in spite of your readiness to live and die for them

00:08:38.000 | because God has sent you all to a risky place for his kingdom purposes,

00:08:44.000 | your heart may be broken, but you should not say, "I have failed."

00:08:50.000 | For every man who fails his family in the path of obedience to God's call,

00:08:57.000 | I would guess there are probably a thousand men who fail their family by keeping them safe in the path of prosperity.

00:09:09.000 | I'm not claiming to know how much risk you should take with yourself and your family for Christ.

00:09:15.000 | I'm just saying, if Jesus and Paul had made the safety of their converts a criterion of success, they would be failures.

00:09:28.000 | Christianity cannot advance in a fallen world without risk to everybody.

00:09:38.000 | Sobering thoughts for leaders of families. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the question.

00:09:42.000 | And thank you for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.

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00:10:14.000 | And if you have a question for Pastor John, send it to us through our podcast homepage, desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:10:21.000 | Well, is it wrong for couples to pray against pregnancy?

00:10:27.000 | On Monday, we're going to field that question and all of its dimensions.

00:10:31.000 | Until then, I'm your host Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend. We'll see you back here on Monday.

00:10:35.000 | [end]

00:10:38.000 | [end]

00:10:41.000 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Isn’t It Loving to My Family to Prepare for Doomsday?

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