It seems not many people are happy with themselves. We all want to be thinner or stronger, taller or shorter, happier, healthier, smarter, you name it. There's a myriad of things we'd like to change about ourselves. The Christian life includes a process of change as well. Change away from our self-centeredness and towards God-centeredness.

We call this process of change sanctification. The Gospel of Jesus Christ makes this change possible, but that doesn't mean our spiritual and moral growth comes easily for us. Especially when it comes to patterns of sin in our lives, change can be very hard. And one of the most important questions in our life then is this, "Where can I find the power for permanent change in my own life?" It's a question Pastor John addressed in one of his sermons on John 1, verses 14-16.

The sermon is titled "The Life-Giving Voice of the Son of God," back from 2009. Here's a clip from that message. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth," verse 16, "and from His fullness we have all received grace upon grace." So John saw, heard, and touched the Word of God living, the Son of God.

And he saw His glory. He saw that it was the glory of the only Son of God. He saw that glory radiant with, overflowing with grace and truth. And then he says in verse 16, "And we have received grace upon grace in seeing that." And so the way I understand it, when God grants us the eyes to see Jesus for who He really is, that is glorious, a beam of glory, light, spiritual recognition comes into our souls, and along that beam comes powerful grace.

Grace upon grace. And that grace changes you in ways you don't even know need to be changed. Things will be wrought in this room tonight, today, that you can't predict and are totally designed for you by your hearing the Word and by hearing it see the glory of Christ.

Because Paul said in 2 Corinthians 3.18, "Beholding the glory of the Lord, we are being changed from one degree of glory to the next." That's how people change. They see Him. So, there's the agenda in every sermon. Unfold some new glimpse of the glory of Christ. Say it as clearly and as faithfully to the text as I can.

Call down the anointing of the Holy Spirit on me and the opening of the Holy Spirit for you. Have the light shine into your heart. Grace upon grace flows down the beam of that glory into your heart and the power of God's grace changes you in ways you don't even know that you need to be changed.

Things are awakened. Possibilities of walking with God that you never thought you could experience, ways of relating to Him, leaning on Him, enjoying Him, being satisfied in Him, following Him, rise up in your hearts. I'm talking about a kind of faith that is an experience. It's not just knowledge in your head.

It's like eating bread and drinking water, tasting honey. And the more you see of Christ for who He really is in His Word, by His Spirit, the more you taste Him, the more you savor Him, the more you know Him, the more you treasure Him, and it's these experiential dimensions of faith which change you.

As long as you're just thinking thoughts about Him, you don't get changed. But when you start tasting the glory of those thoughts, when satisfaction in Christ lands on you, changes happen. Beautiful. That was an excerpt from the sermon titled "The Life-Giving Voice of the Son of God" from John Piper.

It was preached on September 13th, 2009, and you can find the entire sermon at DesiringGod.org. Related to this, one of the very earliest episodes of this podcast series is titled "The Essential Warfare for Holiness." That was episode number 13, way back episode number 13, and you can find that in the archive.

But how do I get to the podcast archives, you ask? Well, one of the easiest ways to find episode 13 and all of the now almost 400 other episodes is through the Ask Pastor John app for the Apple and Android devices. The Ask Pastor John app is free of charge to you.

In the updated app for the iPhone, you can access the entire archive of episodes, and you will see a search bar at the top of the screen as well. From here, you can search all the titles. If you don't see these features in your app, make sure you update.

We've already heard from users who have been at coffee shops with friends who have a question and have opened the app and searched and found and played an episode and listened together, which is very cool and very encouraging to us. On the Android side of things, up until now, Android users could only access the last eight episodes or so in the app, but our developers are putting the final touches on adding these new valuable features, the entire archive, and the valuable search function to the Android app.

If you're an Android user, be sure to keep your eye out for the soon-to-come new release of the app to get all those features that make it really easy to search and browse every episode we have released in the past and all the episodes we plan to release ahead.

Well, we will be back tomorrow to ask John Piper, "Should we expect to hear the verbal voice of God today?" Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. . .