(upbeat music) - What better day to relaunch the Ask Pastor John podcast than on January 11th of 2013, a day which happens to also be John Piper's birthday. Our aim is to connect you with Pastor John more frequently through these brief podcasts, and you can stay tuned to the website DesiringGod.org and our Twitter and our Facebook feeds for more episodes as they come along in the future.

Today on your birthday, Pastor John, we wanna hear from you because I know when birthdays and anniversaries come around, you spend a lot of time thinking and reflecting and a lot of time in prayer. And I wanna ask you, what is your prayer today on this, your 67th birthday?

- My prayer is first, overflowing with thankfulness to God. I'm thankful for 67 years of physical life, and they've been remarkably easy, I think, from my standpoint compared to most people in the world. I haven't, at least from my memory standpoint, been all that sick. I can remember times when it's been difficult, but a relatively smooth 67 years.

I'm thankful for 61 years of life in Christ and his amazing faithfulness to me. I'm thankful for 44 years with Noelle and her rock solid commitment to stand by me in everything. I'm thankful for 32 1/2 years with my church. What a gift they've been to me. I think I've gotten to know God more and people more in these 32 1/2 years than I ever could have in any other path that he would have given me.

I'm thankful for 40 years of parenting with the ups and downs and joys and sorrows of that. And thankful deeply for my five children who love me. Just got a beautiful email this morning from one of my kids just saying he loved me. (laughs) Really touches you pretty deeply.

So thankfulness is just big. And then when I let it turn from thankfulness, it becomes, God, don't let me waste the next chapter. Everything feels like chapters right now, Tony, because years don't seem to matter so much as eras right now for me. I'm finishing at Bethlehem. I'm gonna finish 67 years.

And so right now, it doesn't just look like I'm facing a year. It looks like I'm facing an era if God gives me life. And so I'd say, God, don't let me waste this. And grant that your name would be hallowed through my life, that your kingdom would come through my life, that your will would be done through my life.

I wanna spread a passion for your supremacy, oh Lord, and all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. So keep me on task and don't let me fritter my life away. - Looking back over the previous chapters of your life now at age 67, are there things that surprise you?

I imagine there's a lot of things that surprise you. - Oh, my. (laughs) I was, as a kid, I was just so insecure and so pimple-faced and nervous and socially maladapted. And I mean, if you had asked me that I would have spoken to passion (laughs) to 62,000 students, I would have said, yeah, if the sun stops in the sky and the ocean dries up, I might be able to do that.

So my present role as a preacher to a church every week and to groups around the country, that's just unheard of. It's just, I didn't plan that. It wasn't on the agenda. People would ask me, "You gonna be a preacher like your dad?" And I'd say, "No way, I can't begin "to be a preacher like my dad." So my whole vocational trajectory is a surprise to me.

And then writing started to be a love for me in the 11th grade, ironically. I didn't read until the 11th grade, hardly. I hated to read. I'd rather be outside throwing a ball or digging in the dirt. And suddenly, Mrs. Clanton, I don't know what she did in the 11th grade literature class, but wow, something just locked in on me for her poetry and writing and reading.

And so from my gut, it doesn't surprise me that I'm a writer. From my gut, it does surprise me that my books have sold and that people care to read them. That, I've always written. It's written for journals and written for my own birthday poems for my family and things, but that I would be a writer and a preacher, those two things are surprising to me.

- Pastor John, how can we be praying for you as this new chapter of your life and your ministry now unfolds? - I really do feel remarkably vulnerable to distraction because of the lifting of certain pressures. Deadlines are wonderfully productive and pressure, while we hate it, really does help us.

And so living a life in the ministry where every week you must preach and every Tuesday you must lead the staff and every time a retreat comes around, you must have a plan. And the pressures of the last 32 years have been wonderfully productive, effective. Now those pressures begin to lift and I need to adjust my internal motivational powers and God needs to give me the grace to have my own intrinsic personal resolves to set kinds of goals for myself and patterns of life for myself so that I can continue to be fruitful and not wasteful of my time because I can taste it.

I can just taste that it's easy to drift when you don't have deadlines. So I think I would just pray that spiritually I wouldn't be a drifter and that productively I wouldn't be a drifter. But spiritually, I mean, I wanna go hard after God in this new season. You know, what strikes me about retirement, the way the world conceives of it is that generally things are recommended that are pretty poor ways of getting ready to meet King Jesus.

And it seems to me that the closer we're getting to Jesus, the more we should be devoted to him in focused ways of fellowship and communion. So my own personal aggressiveness in spiritual life, I wanna go hard after Jesus in my devotions and hard after Jesus so that I know him better and better through his words so that when I die, the transition won't be abrupt.

You know, it won't be surprising. When I look at him, I'll say, you're pretty much what I saw in the word of God and came to love in the word of God. I don't have to be now radically adjusted in my way of seeing him. - Well, on behalf of your listeners and readers of your books from around the globe, I wanna wish you a very happy 67th birthday.

- Thank you. - And thank you for joining us for this podcast. If you have a question for Pastor John, please send it to us via email. Send those to askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Please include your first name and your hometown. You can find thousands of other resources from John Piper online at desiringgod.org.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thank you for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)