(upbeat music) - John Piper is back, joining us again outside the studio and over the telephone. And today we have a really great question from a listener named David in Nashville. Hello, Pastor John. You've said that steeping yourself in and meditating on God's promises is one of the primary ways we can experience abiding joy in Him.

So what are some of God's promises in the Bible that you have treasured most throughout your life? And why? - Let me answer this in three stages that more or less correspond to three stages of my life. Although they really do overlap. As I guess the first one lasts my whole life and the second one lasts my whole life and the third one, so they kind of overlap but they have different starting places.

My memory of my childhood isn't good enough to recall which verses were most, which promises were most special to me in my teenage years or earlier. I look in the Bible that my parents gave me when I was 15 and I see heavily underlined in red pencil certain passages.

So I know God was speaking to me as a teenager and helping me by His word, but my memory is just not good enough to remember that experience. But in my early 20s, one verse took on monumental proportions and nothing has dislodged it from its primary place to this very day in my fight against sin, encouragement of my heart, carrying through challenges in ministry and that is Isaiah 41 verse 10.

"Fear not for I," this is God talking, "I am with you, be not dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." So let me mention three things about this promise to show how it became so central and why it's so repeatedly helpful to this very day after thousands of applications.

In July of 1971, I was about to get on an airplane and fly with Noel to Germany to begin my doctoral studies at age 25. I'm sure Isaiah 41 10 had been functional in my life before that time, but that day I received a phone call from my father who couldn't be there to see me off and he wanted to send me off with the promise of God and he recited on the phone Isaiah 41 10 and then prayed that God would make it real in my life.

The effect of that phone call was to nail this promise into the scaffolding of my brain so firmly that it has become my go-to promise more than any other. In those very anxious times in Germany where everything felt fragile and uncertain and unknown and threatening, I resorted to this promise hundreds of times.

So this promise has a special place in the arsenal of my spiritual warfare, partly because my father put it there. But the reason it is so effective is because unlike many promises, God himself is speaking as an I to me personally. It doesn't say God will strengthen you, God will help you, God will uphold you.

That would be wonderful. And many promises are spoken that way and they're wonderful. But what it says is, I will strengthen you, I will help you and I will uphold you. So when I recite this promise in my brain by an act of faith, I actually hear the living God saying to me, I will help you.

Spurgeon used to say, I love the I wills and I shalls of God. I know exactly what he means. It's a wonderful thing to hear that God will help you. Like Romans 8, 28, God will work everything together for you. It's just off the charts glorious, but it's better, it's better to have God in his own words say, I will help you.

Isaiah 41, 10 is especially valuable also because those three verbs, I will strengthen, I will help, I will uphold, those three verbs correspond to every challenge that we can face. Strength when we're weak and inadequate, help of whatever kind we need, upholding when we feel threatened and opposed and beat down or knocked down.

These are awesome verbs that God addresses to our own soul. It is an amazing promise and it's true, it comes true. And there's a third reason why this promise is so precious. Even though it is addressed to Israel in the Old Testament context, I know because of 2 Corinthians 1, 20 and because of the blood of Christ and because of my membership in the new covenant by faith that all the promises of God are yes for me in Christ Jesus.

That's what 2 Corinthians 1, 20 says. All the promises of God are yes in Christ Jesus. So I don't worry that it was addressed to Israel. I know that I am part of the new Israel in Christ and the promises are all the more, all the more true for me because of him.

Then second stage, somewhere along the way, Romans 8, 32 became very, very prominent in my spiritual warfare. He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Now, Romans 8, 28 had always been large for me, but verse 32 does something more.

It does something in addition to verse 28. It includes all the glorious promise of 8, 28. Everything's gonna work together for my good. He's gonna give me everything. He's gonna give me everything, everything I need in this life, everything I could possibly want in the life to come. He's going to give me that and it provides the foundation, the unshakable foundation of why he will, which is what gives this promise extraordinary power.

I've called it the unshakable logic of heaven. Since God did not spare his own son, but did for us the absolutely unthinkable hardest of all things in not sparing his son, human torture and hellish condemnation, since God did not spare his son any of that, therefore, therefore, therefore, therefore, this is the logic of heaven, therefore, nothing can stop God from giving us everything with him.

How shall he not with him freely give us all things? Nothing can stop him. He will give us all things. Everything we need in this life to do his will or glorify his name and everything in the life to come that will enable us to know him fully and enjoy him perfectly and fully.

So Romans 8, 32, you might say, is the most prominent promise in my heart, which provides at the same time, the deepest foundation for all the promises. And I should mention one last phase or cluster of texts that became very precious during my pastoral ministry, namely the promise of Jesus, I'll be with you always to the end of the age, Matthew 28, 20 and the promise of Philippians 4, 19, my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ.

And second Corinthians 9, 8, God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. I think that little cluster, I think those became increasingly precious in the ministry because there's so many pressures, there's so many good works required of us in the ministry.

We wonder if we will have the wherewithal to do what we're expected to do. And these promises all say, yes, we will, God will see to it. So just one, maybe one closing word of advice. I think it is good to memorize a handful of promises like these that are gloriously general enough to apply in every situation so that you can always call them to mind no matter what your situation for encouragement and protection and strength.

But I think it is also good every morning to be reading through our Bibles, looking for fresh expressions of God's faithfulness, looking for fresh promises of God that we can take out of the text with us through that day as a particular appointed word of God for that day.

It has been amazing in my life to watch how those promises that were appointed for my reading in the morning and for my soul have become appointed in ministry for the people I meet during the day. So hold fast to your Isaiah 41.10 for every situation and be learning every day fresh expressions of that same faithfulness.

- Man, that's incredibly helpful and hope-giving to hear how those texts have influenced your life. Thank you, Pastor John. And Romans 8.32 is one of the most incredible passages in the Bible. I would just encourage you to really get a hold of this solid logic of heaven. And to do so, see John Piper's 2012 sermon, which you can find by Googling the title, quote, "The Solid Logic of Heaven Holds," end quote.

That's where the penny dropped for me when I heard that sermon. So get a hold of Romans 8.32, or rather, let Romans 8.32 get a hold of you, and you'll never be the same. Over at our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastor. John, you can explore all 1,250 or so of our episodes.

You can scan a list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own. And to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to the Ask Pastor John podcast in your favorite podcast app. Well, we're gonna kick off next week with a little tiny question over what's the point of my life?

Yeah, what's the point of you and me? Why do we exist? I mean, what more are you looking for in a podcast, really? I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend. We'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)