We have about a half dozen emails from listeners asking a very similar question, and it's essentially this. Is it okay to come away from Bible reading without a life principle or a specific point of application? Or another way to ask it, Pastor John, is must we come away from our Bible reading with an application principle every single time?

Yeah, I feel pretty strongly about this. The answer is no. And here's why I feel strongly about it. I would say 95%, maybe 99% of my life, and I think everybody's life, is lived without immediate reflection upon a life principle, but rather we just act. If you think about your day, there are maybe, you know, a hundred big decisions you make in a day, and by big I just mean conscious, but 95% of your time, like right now, I'm just talking to you.

I'm just choosing words. I'm not, before every word I'm not stopping to say, "Now what principle is going to govern this word? And what principle is going to govern this sentence?" It's just kind of tumbling out of me right now. Well, that's scary, right? Where did they come from?

Which means most of our lives are lived spontaneously. Most of our lives are not lived after 10 seconds of reflection on a biblical principle. So where do they come from? They come from a kind of person, and that raises the question of, "Well, how do you become a kind of person so that you're a tree that bears spontaneous good fruit instead of a bad tree that bears spontaneously bad fruit?" And the answer is, you soak in the Scriptures and you let your sight of Jesus and your taste of Jesus and his ways in the Bible affect your soul, shape your soul.

Your soul marinates in the sauces of grace until the soul is made soft and tender and supple and sensitive to the leadings of the Holy Spirit, so that in a kind of spontaneous way, it responds. Jesus said, "We'll be called to account for every idle word that we speak." Now, idle words are words that are spoken before you have a chance to think on any biblical principle that you've gotten from your text in the morning.

So people who are bent on trying to get three principles or three points or something and then try to keep that list and consciously follow them during the day, I just think they're doing something impossible that we were never, never designed to do. And I would put it like this, a godly life is lived out of an astonished heart, a heart that's just astonished at grace, you know, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, so that we go to the Bible to be astonished.

We go to the Bible to be amazed at God and amazed at Christ and amazed at the cross and amazed at grace and amazed at the gospel, and when we're stunned and amazed and humbled, we walk out of our study or out of our chair, wherever we're having devotions, and there's a spirit and a flavor about us that makes us a better person at the kitchen table and when we go to work.

And all that, Tony, just to say, I'm not opposed to principles. Good night. I write books, which I'm trying to give things, and so they are helpful to meditate on. But that's the key. Meditating on truth shapes the soul. We become what we behold, it says in 2 Corinthians 3:18.

So my goal in reading the Bible is mainly become a kind of person, don't amass a long list. Pastor John, do you think it's appropriate to talk about the subconscious here in this discussion? Is it right to say that we live out the Christian life through an informed, spirit-filled subconscious?

Yes. That's basically what I was trying to say, that most of our life, I think, is lived from resources that are not presently reflected on in our mind. Our words are coming from inside. You know, what goes into the mouth, it defiles, and what comes out of the mouth, it defiles, because it's coming from a certain kind of heart, and most of that heart is unconscious or subconscious, and that is shaped day by day by what we're taking in.

You know, it's shaped by what we do with our eyes on the computer, and it's especially shaped by what we do with our Bibles and our prayer. Whenever I pray, I'm pleading with God, "Get down deeper than I can get right now. Go deeper. Take your scalpel, and don't just deal with the sins I'm aware of.

Good night. Please, go be a surgeon. Surgeons put you to sleep, and they go in there where you don't even know you have stuff. They're working with this little gizmo in your belly, and you didn't even know it was there. That's what God has to do with us. So yeah, I totally think the subconscious is being worked on by the Holy Spirit all the time.

Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Send your questions to us via email at pastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Please include your first name and your hometown. You can find thousands of other free resources from John Piper online at desiringgod.org. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.