How do I wage war against my self-pity? Michael, a listener from Portland, wants help in the battle that he's facing. Pastor John, thank you for this podcast. I struggle with self-pity and often self-justify my self-pity by rationalizing it in my own head. Have you experienced this too? If so, what are the best arguments you've made from your own flesh to justify your self-pity and what biblical arguments do you use to make war against those selfish arguments?

Pastor John, what would you say to Michael? Well, Michael asked, "Have you ever experienced this?" So let me put my answer to his question in an autobiographical form. Ten years ago this year, I took a leave of absence from the Zen pastoral ministry, and the reason I asked the elders and the church quite openly for this leave was to do what I called a "soul check." During that leave, I tried to be very specific in identifying my own characteristic besetting sins, and it became evident that they were an ugly cluster of selfishness, proneness to anger, self-pity, quickness to blame, sullenness.

That's the cluster. And at the root of that was what I called selfishness, and selfishness had five reflexes that I could discern very clearly. I'll tell you in a minute why I call them reflexes. One, the reflex of expecting that I be served, thank you. The reflex of feeling I am owed.

The reflex of wanting praise. The reflex of expecting that things will go my way. The reflex of feeling that I have the right to react negatively to being crossed in my desires. Now, the reason I call those five things reflexes of selfishness is because I don't premeditate any of them.

They just happen in my head, in my heart. I didn't decide for any of those to happen. They just are there. That's how rooted our unmortified corruption and remaining indwelling sin and selfishness is. And I noticed as I kept my sin before my own eyes, I noticed that these selfish reflexes gave rise to four characteristic things that were manifest for others to see, not just in my head, but obvious.

One, anger, the strong emotional opposition to the obstacle that just got in my way. Number two, self-pity, a desire that others feel my woundedness and admire me for being so mistreated. And that's the one Mike is asking about. And third, quickness to blame, a reflex to attribute to others the cause of my frustrating situation.

And fourth, sullenness, kind of a sinking discouragement, moodiness, hopelessness, unresponsiveness, withdrawn deadness of emotion. That's the cluster of John Piper's besetting sins as I identified them 10 years ago. So what did I learn about the defeat of these monsters in that leave, which has, I think, I believe you'd have to ask my wife probably, had gotten me more victory in the last 10 years than I had before.

What the Bible showed me was that there was a disconnect between Christ's cancellation of my sins on the cross and my conscious willed opposition and conquering of my own sins through blood-bought, spirit-empowered effort. It was a disconnect. In other words, God blasted a pattern of passivity that had developed in me toward those particular cluster of sins.

He forced into my face the biblical reality that canceled sins, that is, blood-covered sins must be killed consciously, with effort, by faith, in the Spirit, not coddled. And one of the ways God forced this discovery on me was to expose the inconsistency between the very active way that I fought sexual temptation and the fairly passive way that I handled the temptation to self-pity.

Now right there's the nub of the matter. I had the unspoken assumption that sexual lust must be attacked directly, consciously, forcefully, with effort of my mind and my will, since Jesus said, "Tear out your eye, Piper. Cut off your hand if you have to," when it comes to the temptation of lust.

But for some crazy, demonic reason, I kind of assumed I could not attack these other besetting sins in the same vicious way, and they would somehow just kind of dry up and disappear by some inner, unconscious work of the Holy Spirit, without any spirit-empowered, conscious, ruthless, vicious, angry, "God, I'm a life devil," effort to cut my hand off or gouge my eye out.

But it became increasingly clear during this leave of absence that the link between the cancellation of my sin on the cross and the conquering of my sin was sanctified effort. Now to be sure, the only effort that avails is blood-bought effort, spirit-wrought effort. But it is nevertheless a conscious effort of the sanctified will.

Passivity in the pursuit of holiness is not what the Bible teaches. I knew that in relation to sex temptations. I was playing like it didn't exist in relationship to self-pity temptations. Oh my goodness. So here's the texts of what I mean. I mean, there's lots of them. I'll just mention two to show the connection between cancellation and conquering.

In the death of Christ, we died to sin, Paul says, therefore put sin to death, Romans 8:13. In the death of Christ, we were forgiven, therefore now forgive others just like you've been forgiven. Clearly, if you just take those two cases, victory over sin, the death of Christ for my sin is decisive, but they're followed immediately not by the minimizing of human effort, but by the empowering of the will.

Don't let sin reign in your mortal body. You have died to it. Don't let it reign. Forgive one another. In other words, God intends that my sanctification include conscious-willed opposition to specific sins in my life. I had applied that to sexual temptation, and I think with significant success over the last 40 years or so.

But for some reason, I failed to apply the same brutal intentionality of sin killing to my selfishness and anger and self-pity and quickness to blame and sullenness. So I began to use the same strategy towards self-pity that I was using toward lust. Let me give you an example. I came home one Lord's Day evening, and I was tired.

I was hoping to do something with my wife and daughter, who, Talha was still at home. And my wife and my daughter were on the couch with the computer watching something together. And they announced, "We're watching this, and we're going to watch this." And they didn't say anything about me.

Poor me. Poor, hardworking pastor me, right? It just said, "We're enjoying this. Welcome home. Do what you want." My reflexes were immediate. Frustration, anger, especially self-pity. So with my new God-given resolve, I did with that temptation what I do with sexual temptation regularly. I said, "No, no, self-pity. No.

Get out of my head. Go to hell where you belong." And I went upstairs to my study, and I waged war. Maybe 10, 15 minutes. I waged war, effort. I turned my mind and my heart toward the promises of God and the surety of the cross and the love of my Father and the wealth of my inheritance in Christ and the blessings of the Lord's Day that had just gone by and the patience of Jesus.

And I held them there in front of my mind where I could see them, and I cried out to the Lord for blood-bought help. And I consciously, intentionally, consciously, intentionally, not passively, beat down—I beat it down—the anger and self-pity and blaming and sullenness as utterly out of character with who I am in Jesus.

And I kept beating until they were effectively dead. So Mike, there you have it. You asked, "Do you ever experience this?" Oh my. Yes, I have shared your experience, and that's what the Lord taught me 10 years ago. I think if you were to ask my wife today, "Is Johnny different in that regard from, say, 20 years ago?" I think she'd say, "Yes, and I give God great glory." It's inspiring to hear you still reaching after holiness, Pastor John, and thank you for joining us today on the podcast for our feed, our archive, or to send us your own question like Michael did today.

Go online to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. How do we get into the position where God is 100% for me and never again against me? Is there a more important question for each of us? I don't think so. So how do we find a satisfying answer to that question, especially in a world that tells us that we are good enough or special enough to warrant God's eternal favor?

And in a world full of religions trying to convince us that we can save ourselves, how can God be 100% for me and never again against me? That's the question. Next time, I'm Tony Reinke. We'll see you back here on Wednesday. 1.5.1 Desiring God.org/AskPastorJohn 1.5.1 Desiring God.org/AskPastorJohn 1.5.1 Desiring God.org/AskPastorJohn