(upbeat music) - Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. We close the week talking about technology and Pastor John, because we often get questions from listeners who know that you use technology all the time in your Christian walk. Explain for us here today how you use technology, how do you do Bible reading on your iPad, and how do you use Bible software on your laptop, and how do you use podcasts and audio books to serve your soul?

How does all of this technology work for you? - I think the first thing to say is that nobody should try to copy anyone else in this regard because our circumstances and our needs and our gifts, our vulnerabilities are so different. So perhaps the best way for someone to listen to what I'm about to say would be to listen for possibilities, not prescriptions.

My use of technology for reading and for listening and for watching can be divided roughly, it seems to me as I've thought about it, though I may be overlooking something, into one, Bible, two, prayer, three, reading for spiritual and intellectual growth and enrichment, four, listening for both entertainment and growth and enrichment, and five, awareness of what's happening in the world and culture and evangelicalism, and six, relationships with family.

So those are the categories. Let me just say a word about each one. Bible, I've been reading through the Bible once a year, the whole Bible once a year, as long as I can remember, maybe starting in my 20s. I really can't remember when I first started, but as long as I can remember, I've been doing this.

I've done it now for quite a few years on my iPad using various Bible software. Now I'm using Logos software. It provides a way for my daily readings. This year I'm using McShane's reading plan, which gets you through the whole Bible once, through the New Testament twice, through the Psalms twice, reads about four or five chapters a day.

And Logos enables me to see on my home screen every day what the next place is to be read in the Bible. And you just click on it, it takes you to that place. And when you're done with that place, you say done or finished, and it takes you to the next place.

And so it's just unbelievably, unbelievably convenient. And there's several reasons why I do it, why I read my Bible electronically. One is that I can save verses easily for later meditation. I use Evernote. I'm sure there's a way to do it in Logos itself, but I've been using Evernote for a long time.

So I use Evernote. I create a folder for Bible quotes and specifically Bible promises. And then I can look at these later in the day or later on to remind myself of what was especially powerful or precious in the reading that morning. So just a click or two, and the verse that I'm looking at that's meaningful to me at this moment I can be saved for later on in the day.

Another reason for reading the Bible electronically is that one of my purposes for using Twitter is to send out Bible verses or Bible truths three times a day and virtually all of these come out of my daily reading. And the electronic version enables me to cut and paste into Twitter or Hootsuite very simply.

So you might say, I view this particular use of Twitter that I have as simply an overflow of my enjoyment of scripture every morning. And I schedule those out a week or two in advance. They just, when they come, they come. Another reason for using the iPad is that I'm regularly consulting the original languages, Greek and Hebrew, and Logos makes that real easy with a split screen to have Greek or Hebrew right there when I'm doing my meditation so that I wanna check and see what's behind this word, I can do it.

And another reason is that when I get ideas for articles or books or blogs or sermons, while I'm reading, I can quickly put a note in or cut and paste to my Evernote file on various topics so that I'm ready to go with those ideas or those texts. So everything is just quickly streamlined by being able to save things and comment on things when I'm reading the Bible in my iPad.

And I suppose it goes without saying that I do virtually all of my Bible study on my computer at my desk. I'm using my computer right now in front of me. My Bible program is open in front of me. I use Logos 6 and always have ESV open. I have the Greek and Hebrew open beside it.

I have a search window open beside that. I have an open commentary at the bottom. I love Alford, my New Testament commentary, though I can click through other commentaries. I've got lots of things open here and ready to go. So that's Bible. That's the category of Bible. And I do use BibleArc.com, B-I-B-L-E-A-R-C.com for rigorous arcing and leveling of text.

But that's for another time to talk about, perhaps. Second category is prayer. How do people remind themselves of what they want to pray about? Besides praying my way through the Word, so when I'm reading my Bible, I'm praying over this Word for all the people that I'm concerned about and all the things that the Bible is throwing up to me.

I also have concentric circles of things I pray about, and I keep track of those in my iPad, on an Evernote folder, so that if I kneel down to pray and can't remember all the things I want to pray about, I just click open my Evernote. It's called Daily Prayers, and I keep it up to date with requests that people ask me.

So prayer is another way I use technology. Third, reading for spiritual and intellectual growth and enrichment. I do still read from paper books and love them, and I believe we'll always have them with us. I don't think they'll ever cease to be useful. But I love the fact that I have all the works of John Owen, all the works of Jonathan Edwards, all the works of Charles Spurgeon, at my fingertips on my iPad, anywhere, all the time.

This is an incalculable gift from God to me. So, for example, I've been reading volume four of John Owen as I prepare to write a book on the affectional use of Scripture in our lives, and I've been reading relevant sermons from Jonathan Edwards in this regard. And I just finished two lectures from Charles Spurgeon called "How to Read the Bible." And all of these, I've been reading on my iPad, and I've been reading them in Logos.

And the main reason is because of how easy it is to highlight or to do clippings so that what I just saw will immediately go into a document. I can print out that document. Oh, I can remember in years gone by how many hours and hours and hours and days and days I would spend underlining books and then going back and typing and typing and typing to try to save what I had seen for use in books and so on.

And now, oh God, be praised. I can just read, highlight, bang, they're in a document. These wonderful insights of these great historic lovers of God have been preserved, and now I can read them later, I can use them later. So reading for intellectual and spiritual growth is done a great deal on my iPad, but not only.

Fourth category is listening for both entertainment and growth and enrichment. The mind, John Piper's mind anyway, cannot always be wound tightly for the sake of maximum rigor in analysis and synthesis. There's a place for more relaxed, passive entertainment, but I personally believe, and here's the vulnerability part, I personally believe that the Christian should not be entertained by things that require a spiritual bath to cleanse the mind when you're done.

That's not a good way to get entertained, and I fear many, many, many evangelicals contradict their own conscience because they're just following the world and what they get entertained by. Now, one of the ways I do this is by having audio books on my iPhone. Right now, for example, I have a huge book that I'm working my way through, audio, namely C.S.

Lewis's Essays and Shorter Writings. It's a gargantuan book, I don't know how many hours, like 50 hours worth or something. And I take a little bit every now and then, and at the same time, I'm listening to a narrative history of the great migration of African Americans from the South to the North called The Warmth of Other Suns, a Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative history that's just knocking me over with sadness because of what I was involved in in those days and the horrors of the background of African Americans in this country.

And at the same time, I'm listening to Leland Rykin's new biography of J.I. Packer. So I got three audio books going at the same time, just listening according to what I feel like in the moment. And I just finished listening last year to the Brothers Karamazov. In other words, I try to listen to fiction if somebody has given me a really good recommendation of something contemporary or if I wanna get back into something historic that I haven't ever done.

So for example, I think I got this from seeing a pile of books on one of your photographs, Tony, and I took the risk just 'cause it sounded so good. I just finished listening to Anthony Doerr's "All the Light We Cannot See." That was deeply moving to me. So I listened to these basically in the cracks of my life, I listen while I'm jogging, while I'm walking to church, while I'm driving to get the oil changed, while I'm brushing my teeth, changing my clothes, while the teapot is heating.

The goal is both enjoyment and learning and the awakening of emotions that might not otherwise be touched. I think one of the things that great literature does, fiction included, is that it touches us in places and ways through insights we haven't had and emotions we haven't experienced that make us wider, deeper persons when we come to the word of God itself so that we are more useful in God's hands and we're more capable of even knowing and experiencing more of him.

So number five is awareness of what's happening in the world and culture and evangelicalism. I get virtually all of my news, both concerning the world and the nation and the state and the city and the wider evangelicalism and world missions and everything else I learn about the world, I get it from the internet.

We don't have a TV, I never listen to the radio. It's mediated mainly through my iPad and iPhone. So for example, at breakfast, which I usually eat by myself because my wife isn't out of bed yet usually, I look at the news sites to see what's happened in the last 24 hours.

I look at national sites and I look at my local Minneapolis Star Tribune newspaper online. My main use of Twitter on receiving, not giving but receiving, is to let people become a filter for me of what I need to be looking at. In other words, I used to do this by thinking that I could subscribe to enough podcasts to stay on top of things.

I don't do that anymore. It's just unworkable for me. I need people like Justin Taylor and goodness, I could name a half a dozen people who tweet out things that they've stumbled across. Somehow, I don't know how they do it, but they find important things. And they cite me, they send me to them.

And so I go there and if it looks like I need to read that to figure out what's happening that I need to be engaged with, then I do it. But almost all of that. I do subscribe to a few magazines and I read them both paper and online, whichever seems to be easiest at the moment.

And quickly, just a couple more things. There is a use I just thought of that maybe I ought to include. Namely, that I have a folder in Evernote called Poems in Process. This is probably not what everybody does with Evernote. So when I'm sitting on the couch at night, Noelle and I are just sitting there together.

I have an hour before I go to bed. I may open up this folder in my iPad and just work away on a poem that's been in process for a month that I'm trying to write about something. So it's a writing device as well as a reading device. And finally, I use technology for the sake of my family relationships.

This is the only use I make of Facebook. I hardly follow anybody or whatever the word is, friend. I hardly even know how Facebook works. I just know I've got family members who are on Facebook. And if I put their name in my friend, I can see what they're doing.

And I like to do that. So that's my little limited use of Facebook is that I can tell what my kids are doing. And I suppose there's just lots more I could say about sermon preparation and look at the book and email and on and on. We could do another one of these if you wanna get more specific sometime.

But maybe in closing, I should say, I regard my computer that sits here in front of me on my desk and my iPad and my iPhone as an incredible gift from God. I mean, I can almost come to tears over how precious they are to me. And all these pagans are behind it, I know that.

And they believe stuff I don't believe. But for all the misuses that can be made of it, for me, it is a treasure chest of the glories of God. I see God and I learn of him everywhere I go on these devices. The temptations to go in destructive directions are a kind of test that if I weren't seeing them or being tempted to see them on the phone, there would be another way I'd be tempted.

And so I regard those kind of tests as a proving ground for my faith and my holiness. And God has been very, very good to me and good to us in these days to give us these resources, I think. - Thank you, Pastor John. It's helpful to hear you explain all this.

And if you have a follow-up question on how Pastor John uses technology, send it in to us. And for more information on the podcast or to download our apps and to search our archive of over 800 past episodes now, find us online at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. We're gonna break for the weekend.

On Monday, John Piper will address a woman who notices that her pastor is using pre-made sermons. Should she be concerned? That and more, including next week, we'll talk about "Look at the Book," this series of videos, and when and where is the proper context for using technology to mark up Bible texts.

All of that and more next week on the #AskPastorJohn podcast. I'll see you then. Have a great weekend. (mouse clicking) (mouse clicking)