(upbeat music) - We are back one last time with author and pastor Ray Orland. Ray, when you think about your church in Nashville, what is the vision you send them out with into the world? What's your vision of a local church sent out into a world that's hostile to Christ?

What do you seek to instill in your church as they go? - I don't try to instill in them an angry determination to go and defeat our city and defeat our nation and the political purposes of others. I just don't see that as God's calling upon us. But instead, Jeremiah 29, seven says, seek the peace of the city where I have sent you into exile.

And that city was Babylon. It was not a nice place. It was infested with idols. But God is saying in that verse, I want you to live there. I want you to settle down there. Don't try to run away. I don't want you to be escapist and bring my peace into that city.

I am going, I'm gonna give you an address in the suburbs of hell. And I want you to create beauty for my glory and for their benefit in that hard place. So for us, Tony, for Jannie and me, one thing it means is we have the privilege of having in our home someone as a long-term guest in our home, someone who has been very seriously mistreated and is beginning to put her life back together again.

This person does not know the Lord. This person has suffered. And I cannot tell you how joyful it is to us, how we feel we're the ones receiving the gift as we want to bring into an environment of peace, someone who really needs another chance at life. So I am, you know, in his wonderful book, "The Church at the End of the 20th Century," Francis Schaeffer has a chapter in there entitled "Revolutionary Christianity," in which he talks about throwing our homes open.

He painted the picture in his own home there in Switzerland, how as they opened their home with radical community, all their wedding gifts were broken and torn and so forth. People burned holes in the carpet with their cigarettes. People threw up on the carpet. Well, that is actually a privilege.

It's a privilege to give people a place in our reality for Jesus' sake and to show them a love they don't even believe exists. And if they can't see it, how can they believe it? - Yes, amen. Ray, thank you for your time and answering questions with us. - Thank you, Tony.

- That's been Ray Orland. He has been our guest the past couple of weeks as John Piper is on an extended writing leave working on his next major book project, which I hope to share more about later with you. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. You can, of course, search our archive of hundreds of episodes on our landing page at desiringgod.org.

At the top of the page, click on the tab that says More, and then click on Ask Pastor John. Feel free to take some time and search our collection of episodes. Send John Piper a question, get the free app, do all that from our landing page. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

We'll see you tomorrow. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)