(upbeat music) - Pastor John, in 2009 you wrote an article titled Why and How I am Tweeting. Four years later, speak to us about your Twitter philosophy and your activities. What are you aiming to accomplish on Twitter? How do you use the medium? - Yeah, I have been thinking about uses of Twitter, largely because I use it and I don't want to use it in a way that dishonors the Lord.

So I'll just ramble for a minute here about what I've been thinking. I think everybody who's got a Twitter name and uses it should think and pray through why they use it. God is a planning God, He's a purposeful God and He calls us to do things purposefully. Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do all to the glory of God.

So we're supposed to have a God-centered purpose in all that we do, whether we're playing softball like some of you guys do, or whether we're writing a tweet, or whether we're preaching a sermon, or we're changing the diaper, or making a meal. The Bible really gets down dirty to the specifics of our lives and says, think it through.

Why are you doing this? And then let the why govern the how. Ephesians 4, 29, "Let no corrupting talk "come out of your mouths, "but only such as is good for up-building." So is my tweet gonna build? Is it gonna fit the occasion? Is it gonna minister grace to those who hear?

Then I think one of the biggest things I deal with is asking, all right, beware, Piper, of the love of the praise and attention of people. How often are you checking your followers? Beware, Jesus said, beware of practicing your righteousness before other people be seen by them. There's this deep, fallen, human craving to be seen, to be known, to be liked, to be praised.

Oh, Jesus had strong words for that. Beware of the scribes who walk around with long robes and long greetings in the marketplaces and all the best seats at the synagogues, places of honor at feasts. Just beware. They make long prayers to give a pretense. Oh, Jesus hated that kind of thing, and so I wanna hate it in me mainly.

I don't wanna go around looking for other people. I got enough problems right here in the mirror with John Piper's love affair with attention, so that's a huge warning. And here's a very practical thing God did for me recently. I'm pondering ending my ministry at Bethlehem as a pastor and thinking about what it's like, and I thought one of the texts I might use when I get to say five minutes worth of thank you at a service that's coming here.

John the Baptist said, "The friend of the bridegroom "who stands to hear him rejoices greatly "at the bridegroom's voice. "Therefore, this joy of mine is now complete. "He must increase, I must decrease." And I just want that to fly as a banner over every tweet. Jesus up, Piper down.

But I'll tell you, that is really, really tricky because what it does is it makes all of us distinguish between self-promotion and truth-promotion, self-promotion and Christ-promotion. How subtle this is. I mean, here's a very concrete thing I don't like to read in tweets. It goes something like this. "Humbled to be invited by the most famous person "in the world to their super important event." Using humble language to cloak a tribute that you have just received, I just see this all over Twitter, all over Twitter.

Everybody feels self-conscious about saying something that somebody said about them, and yet I see it everywhere. People retweeting commendations of themselves or their work. I just, there's something inside of me that just twists about that. And yet, and yet I know that I point people in my tweets to things I have listened.

Now, I've got at that moment to say, "Now, am I doing this because what I really love "is getting lots of attention, lots of followers, "or do I love the truth of what I've written there "so much that's why I wrote it, that's why I posted, "and that's why I want my followers to read it, "who read the tweets?" So those are tough distinctions that I think we really, really have to make them.

Here's another caution. Beware, this is maybe more to blogs than tweets, but beware of scolding someone in public which might be more productive in person. Here's a way I think about it. If you're at a conference speaking, and you set, use your imagination here, you got 5,000, 10,000 people at this conference, and you're listening to the speaker just in front of you, and he says something amiss.

Now, it may be, maybe, that in your talk following him, you should publicly dress him down. I doubt it. Probably you should go to him behind the stage, and say, "Did you mean to say what I thought you said?" And then give him your issue. Tweeting is like having an audience of thousands of people, or hundreds, depending on where you are, and as soon as you say something, you're saying it to another person in front of thousands of people.

- Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for modeling this very point. Next time, we'll circle back around to talk more about Twitter and Facebook, but for now, thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. You will find thousands of other free resources from John Piper at desiringgod.org.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)