We received an email from an anonymous man who writes, "Pastor John, I thank you for your ministry. I'm a regenerate Christian who formerly lived the homosexual lifestyle. God used your theology of suffering and brokenness to overcome my sexual desires for ungodly things, but now a new struggle has come upon me, the struggle of laziness.

Do you have any advice on how to fight this?" Yeah, it might sound strange, but the first thing I would do is open the hood and check the engine. And what I mean by that is, does he have a thyroid problem? Is he sleep deprived? Is he eating right?

I mean, really, a lot of things in the Christian life that are perceived as spiritual shortcomings are in fact physically related. I was so weary about ten years ago, and I couldn't explain why. I went to the doctor and he said, "Well, you know, I don't think there's any problem, but let's check your thyroid." Man, within 12 hours, I think it was early the next morning, he calls me back.

He said, "You are profoundly hypothyroid. I don't know how you're functioning," he said. And so he stuck me on this Synthroid medicine, and things have been different. Now, if I had tried to spiritualize that, I would have missed it entirely. That here's a thyroid, my thyroid is dead, and there's no amount of reading my Bible that was going to change that.

So that's the first thing I do. But he's really not asking. He's asking, "I think I've got a sin issue. Can you help me with it?" And my approach to that would be, number one, I would start at the beginning of the Bible and say, "First of all, get a good theology of work.

Work is not a curse. Frustrating work is a curse. The Lord God put the man in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it, and that's before the fall. So get a robust, good, positive theology of work. Realize that God put us on the planet to be makers, co-creators, co-workers with Him.

We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. Do it as to the Lord and not to man. So all those verses are meant to just feed into a robust theology of looking upon doing during the day, getting up, being productive, making something happen, creating something, cleaning a room, washing the car, fixing the brakes, writing a computer program, tending a sick person, making a good meal.

All these things are blessed by God as something He wants His co-makers and co-workers to do. And after I got a good, robust theology built in of work, I think I'd point him to some warnings about being a slacker. You know, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat, Paul said in 2 Thessalonians 3.

And then maybe the last thing I would say, you know, working hard is availing yourself of the grace of God in you. And I'd point him to one of my favorite verses, 1 Corinthians 15.10, "By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain.

On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them." In other words, grace produced work in me, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me. So I'd try to help him discover how to apply your will to a task in hard work in such a way that as you do it and after you do it, you are sensing and then knowing, "God is at work in me." Work out your salvation for, "God is at work in me." This is what I think gives the work life its greatest meaning.

So that'd be my approach, and you know, we go one by one and try to discern what's the real need of the person, but those would be the biblical principles that I would dig into with him. Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

At DesiringGod.org you'll find thousands of other free resources from John Piper. I'm your host Tony Ranke, thanks for listening.