Today we celebrate the compounded effect of human labor in America. We call it Labor Day. Happy Labor Day to everyone out there, in the States at least. In fact, day by day we can invest our lives in what becomes a major enterprise over the years, like in reflecting on the effect of daily habits and disciplines over the course of a whole life.

Today's question is from a listener named Kate. Hello, Pastor John. I want to start by thanking you for your ministry to the saints. Your podcast has been helpful in my own life concerning Christian living. I've recently been quite intrigued and curious about Christian hedonism, something that you are so passionate about and I have come to believe is beautiful.

My question is, what are the little things I can do throughout my busy day to find joy in God, the joy you so clearly know and experience? You know, as simple and as practical, even humdrum, as this question sounds, it is one of the most important questions in the world.

Maintaining our joy or our satisfaction, our contentment in God is absolutely essential because without it we will be swept away from Christ with affections for other things. If we don't find Christ of supreme value, if he is not our supreme satisfaction, something else will be, and we will be drawn away from the Christian faith.

It's not a small thing to ask the question and find the answer, "What are the little things I can do throughout my day to find and preserve my joy in God so that I don't find greater joy in other things?" Because our hearts will not rest until they find contentment in something.

Our hearts are a desire factory, and if we think that we just fall into delight in God or satisfaction in God without any pursuit of it or conscious maintenance of that flame, we're kidding ourselves. Our flesh and the devil are active all day long to draw us into pleasures that are anti-God.

If we have no strategies for awakening and cultivating and preserving and intensifying our joy in God, we will be drawn away by our flesh and the devil into alternative pleasures which are, as Paul said, idolatry. Listen to Colossians 3.5, "Put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, purity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry." Now what's the point of killing, putting to death, killing all that passion and evil desire and covetousness?

If you only kill it, what you have is an empty soul. And you remember what Jesus said about an empty soul. What has been driven out will return sevenfold as bad. In other words, the point of killing passion and evil desire and covetousness is not so that we would have empty souls with no passions, no desires, no zeal for anything.

It's that they may be filled and brimming with alternative passions and alternative desires. Desires for Christ, desires for godliness, desires for nearness to God, desires for all that is good and pure and true and right and lovely and excellent. So Kate's question—I'm saying, "Yes, Kate, way to go!"—so Kate's question is, "What are the little things we can do?" And I'm just going to mention one.

Sorry, we can do this again sometime, but I'm going to just mention one thing that became very clear to me even this morning as I was—actually, it was yesterday morning, come to think of it—yesterday morning as I was working in my devotional time to maintain my memorization of 1 Peter.

Now I taught 1 Peter several years ago and memorized the whole book, all five chapters. I recited it to the class, and since then—that's about three years ago—since then I've tried to say it once a week to not lose the memory of it. But sometimes it needs a concerted refreshing.

So I was working on chapters 4 and 5 yesterday morning just to make sure I could say those two chapters without stopping and looking at anything. And here's the question that hit me. When I have recited from memory 1 Peter 4 and 5, sitting in my chair in my living room, what have I got in my conscious mind for spiritual use—this is what Katie is asking about—for spiritual use during the day to help me fight for joy?

And it hit me again, as it has many times, that I simply do not have the dozens—yes, dozens—of wonderful faith-strengthening hope-sustaining joy-awakening assurance-preserving truths in my conscious mind. They're not there. There are too many. The mind doesn't work like that. At least mind doesn't work like that. And I think I'm average in this.

Those two chapters are simply unconscious to me, or a haze of words, until I make an effort to reach back and grasp something with my conscious mind, my memory. Maybe just one phrase emerges. The mind really doesn't work like this. You can tell the mind to go find something on the hard drive of those two chapters.

Yes, you can. Even if you don't memorize them, you just read them. You can tell the mind, "Now go back and find something there that you just read." So it's not all blank and a haze. And then the value of memorizing, for me, is that my mind can take that phrase that comes to my mind and put in place the sentences before and after it so that I can properly say it, grasp it, preach it to myself for the sake of my joy.

So here's my specific suggestion. Ask yourself how your mind works with God's Word. When you are done reading, what do you have present and ready for use? My guess is you will have very little present to your consciousness and ready for use to fight your spiritual battles and strengthen your joy.

Then ask yourself, "Okay, what can I do about that?" And one of the things you can do is to pick out from the chapters that you worked on and you pick it out by telling your brain to go find it. And your brain will do that for you. It's amazing.

The brain is amazing, amazing, amazing. I'm just amazed at the human brain that you can tell it to do things just like you can tell your hand to do things. Hand, pick up that pencil. Hand, do that. Lips, shut up. Stop talking, etc. Or if you have a good memory, you might be able to pick out two or three phrases, not just one, two or three verses.

Then make those the main message you will preach to yourself during the day. Set yourself a reminder on your phone to go ding every hour or to vibrate on your wrist to tell you to pull out that sword from your morning reading. Say it to yourself. Preach it to yourself.

Tell Jesus, "Thank you for it," and that you really believe it. Tell Him you believe it. Tell the devil, tell the devil that this blood-bought truth from the Bible—and they're all blood-bought, by the way, for Christians—tell the devil that this truth is more precious to you than anything this devil has to offer.

Tell your discouraged soul to be strengthened. Strengthen your knees, soul. Lift up your hands, soul. This is wonderfully true, soul. Very specifically, what I did this morning—this is just by way of example—when I was done with 1 Peter 4 and 5, everything was a haze, and hardly anything was conscious to my front-burner brain where I do my battle against joylessness.

I reached back, I told my memory, "Now go find something in those two chapters." And what my brain found—now this is—I don't know what you call this, spiritual serendipity? It just—boom. Let's call it the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit led me to the phrase, "called to his eternal glory in Christ." Those words came to my mind.

I know where they come from, so I let my memory finish it, and I surrounded them. And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. And I said to myself, several times to encourage my heart, "God called you, John Piper.

He called you to his eternal glory in Christ Jesus. He called you, John Piper. He called you, John Piper. He called you to his glory. He called you to his eternal glory." I'm squeezing every word like a grapefruit into my spoon at the end of eating it to make every good drop of this verse land with tastiness on my soul.

It doesn't matter if you have to walk through much suffering, John Piper. Whatever you lose, he's going to restore. He's going to confirm. He's going to strengthen. He's going to establish. Get up now. Get up. Get up out of that comfy chair and get to work on APJ, because you're going to record tomorrow with Tony.

Now be strong. Give yourself wholeheartedly to this work today. Amen. And I had a great day preparing for this, as you can tell. I'm loving this. So that's my suggestion. Recognize that once you've read a lot of the Bible, most of it is a haze, a muddle in your mind.

Indeed, it's not even in your conscious mind. You have to tell your mind, like a muscle, like you tell your hand to do something. You tell your mind, like a muscle, to go find it. Go find it. Pick it up. Put it before your consciousness. Then you have to tell your mind to set it in context so you understand it rightly.

And then you have to preach it to yourself and against the evil one. This is how you wield the sword of the Spirit and slay the demonic temptations to discouragement and feed the fires of joy in Jesus. That's really good counsel. Thanks, Pastor John. And listeners, thank you for listening today.

Over at our online home, you can explore all 1,250 of our episodes. You can scan a list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own. Go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. And to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to the Ask Pastor John Podcast in your favorite podcast app.

I am your host, Tony Reiki. We will return on Wednesday. I'm not sure what we'll be talking about, but we'll be back and we'll see you then.