Is it biblically acceptable for a mother to hold a full-time job outside of the home? This was a question asked of Pastor John a few years back, and this is what he had to say. It can be. In fact, I would say outside of the home is a complex statement.

It was a complex, I mean, it was complex early on when the farm, I mean only after the Industrial Revolution, was home and work separated, by and large. Everywhere there's an agrarian kind of culture, home and work are just together. If all the kids are weaving the baskets that you sell to make a living, are you home?

If the garden around the house is what supports the family and husband's out there building a barn and you're doing this, are you home? So all that to say the very question is ambiguous and it is today, right? A wife can have a full-time job, my niece has a full-time job, her office is in her home.

She works for a company three states away. So having said it can be, I want to discourage it, okay? I just want to discourage it because mothering and homemaking are huge and glorious jobs. What children need at age 1, 5, 6, 14, 18, what they need is simply amazing and what it calls forth from a woman's creativity and a woman's heart and a woman's mind personally for each one of these little ones that are coming along or just the home, a home here where ministry can happen and you're not enslaved by anybody's clock.

You can say I'm gonna work my tail off for King Jesus but I don't want anybody to pay me for it. I'm gonna do it right here in this neighborhood with my husband's connections and my connections. We're gonna lavish grace on people's lives. So I'm calling for ministry full-time when I say don't work full-time if you got a family.

Turn your family into ministry. Turn your family into a global dream for what this family might become or what this man might be and what we might be together as we are a home. So those are the kind of dreams I want to offer to the younger women that are coming along, that they don't think like, "Oh, if I don't get a career and make lots of money and be equal with man and pay and time and everything, they somehow sold out to something small or something that doesn't require intellectual capabilities." It is a great and glorious calling to be a mother and a homemaker and a wife and a neighborhood make-it- happen kind of person and a church minister and who knows what all God might be pleased to do.

That was Pastor John Piper. Thank you for listening to this podcast. Pastor John is safely back home from the Middle East. Thank you for your prayers for his trip. We will be back soon with all new episodes, so please continue to email your questions into us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. You can visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge.

I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.