(upbeat music) - Thanks for listening to Ask Pastor John with longtime pastor and author, John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Well, about a year ago, we recorded an episode titled, "My Midlife Crisis in Counsel for Yours," episode 1137 in the archive. It was a very personal autobiographical account of a season of your life, Pastor John, and it's now been listened to about 200,000 times.

It's generated a load of grateful emails in the inbox, and since then, we've gotten a lot of emails from guys going through this season of life who, well, really just want you to talk more about it. Here's one from a listener named Leo. Hello, Pastor John, thank you for your APJ episode on your own midlife crisis.

That's where I'm at now, and you have helped me to see that I am not alone, thank you. I was wondering if it was a combination of mission, life, stress, and genetics that caused you to feel at times like crying and having a deep sense of depression. It seems complex, I recently reached 43, and noticed some changes in my mood and extreme depression at times.

Can you share more about your own experiences here? Well, I'm reluctant to talk about myself, since I think it creates a kind of pleasant bond (laughs) among us poor, wimpy guys. (laughs) But it doesn't do us a lot of good in the end. I mean, it's nice to have comrades in misery, but it doesn't help all that much.

But I am willing, I mean, I didn't have to answer this question, you know, but I am willing to talk about it for two main reasons. One, and it's the main one, is that the older I get, the more I want to give God public, heartfelt, explicit credit and praise for keeping me through every kind of distress that I have experienced.

I really want to make known to as many people as will listen that God has kept a hold of me, and this is the decisive reason why I have kept hold of Him. That's my first and main reason for being willing to say a few more words about this.

I want to give God glory for being a keeping, holding God. The second reason why I'm willing to say another word about this experience is namely that God's keeping is manifest, so His divine act, His divine decisive keeping is manifest, shown, evident, precisely through our fighting to be kept.

Now, make sure you hear that rightly. It's a little bit odd, so make sure you hear it rightly. Not the other way around. It's not that God is moved to keep us by our fighting to be kept. Are you with me? Let me say it again. It is not that God is moved to keep us by our initiative in fighting to be kept, but, let's turn it around now, that God moves us to fight to be kept, and thus, He keeps us.

If that sounds perplexing to you, that's why I'm willing to talk about this again. 'Cause if you don't get this, you don't get the Christian life and how God sovereignly keeps His own. Now, first, the decisive thing to say about any Christian midlife crisis, I say Christian midlife crisis, is that God and God alone is the decisive one in getting us through, so that we remain faithful to Him for a lifetime.

God may use a thousand things. I mean, He mentions genetics and stress and all that stuff. That's absolutely right. I mean, who can fathom all the reasons why we go up or down or why we come out, you know, go back? Who can fathom the practical horizontal effects that are at work, thousands of them, not just four.

God may use a thousand things to keep us back from the cliff of pride and greed and sexual immorality and apostasy. But whatever the means, the horizontal means are, that we and others can see in our lives and the lives of others, whatever the means are, what is always decisive is the invisible power of God.

The greatest benediction in all the Bible, mark this, the greatest benediction, I think, there may be another one greater, but I don't know of it, the greatest benediction in all the Bible is spoken in celebration of God's keeping. That's amazing. So here it is, "Now unto him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, authority before all time, now, forever, amen." I mean, that's stupendous.

I mean, that's just over the top. What's he praising? He's praising, "He kept me. He just kept me." So, I mean, if you don't feel amazed that you woke up a Christian this morning, you don't get it. You just don't get it. Because if God hadn't kept you at 3 a.m., you'd wake up at 6 a.m., an unbeliever.

That's stupendous. Peter puts it like this, "Who by God's power are being kept through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." How are we being kept? By God's power. How does it work? It works by awakening in us faith every morning. Or Paul, more than anyone else, bless him, love him, oh, I love Paul.

More than anyone else felt the wonder and the force of God's keeping. 1 Corinthians 1.8, "He will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of Christ. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." In other words, he keeps whom he calls.

Or Philippians 1.6, "I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Christ." He began it, he will finish it. You won't finish it, he will finish it decisively, and that's why you will finish it. Or 1 Corinthians 10.13, "God is faithful.

He will not let you be tested beyond what you are able, but with the test, he will make a way of escape that you may be able to endure it." Don't miss the word endure. The escape from the test is through the enduring, and that is the work of God.

So that's my first and main aim in looking at this issue of midlife crisis again, just to give God all the credit for every stitch of endurance and perseverance. But here's the other aim, namely to communicate clearly that God's keeping is manifest, shown precisely through our fighting to be kept.

I'm gonna say it again, 'cause this is just so perplexing why people have a hard time getting this, and yet they do. God's keeping, God's decisive, sovereign keeping of his own, his children, is manifest. It works itself out, it is shown, it is evident in our lives, experientially, precisely through our fighting to be kept.

If you are fighting to be kept, God is at work in you, and that's the key statement in say, 1 Corinthians 9, 26, Paul says, "I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. I pommel my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified." And it's amazing.

Paul believed that if he let down his boxing guard, I mean, I don't know when people are gonna listen to this, but just three days ago, there was a big heavyweight boxing match. I saw the headlines, so I clicked on it. These people all paid, who knows, $100 for a line to get to watch this boxing match for 15 rounds, and it ends in 28 seconds.

(laughs) I love it. Because this guy lets down, he lets down his guard and whammo, he's on the floor, knocked out in just a few seconds. And Paul believed, "If I let down my boxing guard for a moment, sin will deliver a knockout blow to me. It really will." And that's how God keeps Paul.

He makes him a fighter. He says in Philippians 3, 12, "Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own. I press on, I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own." Beautiful.

I press on, I lay hold of, why? I've been laid hold of. I've been taken. I'm in his hands. I'm just grasping what I've been grasped for. Yes, I really run the race, but he is running in me. Just like he says in 1 Corinthians 15, 10, "By the grace of God, I am what I am.

His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God was with me." So as I look back over my 30s and 40s, indeed, my 20s through my 70s, as I look back over my life, I have never stopped fighting.

I don't remember any season. I don't remember a week. I wrote a whole book entitled "How to Fight for Joy." That's not an accident. (laughs) A whole book on how to fight for joy. When I don't desire God, how to fight for joy. I have never stopped fighting to tremble, fighting to tremble at God's severity.

I have never stopped fighting to rejoice at God's kindness. I cannot remember missing a day that I was not in God's word and in prayer. I suspect there were some, okay? I'm not claiming any perfection. I just can't remember any. It's that much a part of my life. Every day is a day of pleading over the word that I would be kept and shaped according to the God I see in the Bible.

And I've never tried to go it alone. I'll end with this. I've never tried to go it alone. It's easy to go it alone. It's easy just to, I mean, people are hard, right? People cause us the most problems. I mean, books, they're not a problem. People are a problem.

But I know that's not right. I know that's not biblical. Hebrews 3:12, "Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief leading you to fall away from the living God." Well, how, how, how am I gonna take care? Here's the answer, verse 13, "Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." So, here's my lesson.

Trust God's sovereign keeping. And in that confidence, cut off your hands and tear out your eyes and fight for a greater joy than any sin could ever bring. - Yeah, amen. Fighting as a means of God's keeping. That is a really, really good point. Thank you, Pastor John. And again, that earlier episode that I mentioned at the beginning, "My Midlife Crisis and Counsel for Yours," that's episode number 1173 in the archive, 1173.

You can find it at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Tocophobia is the fear of childbirth. It's the fear of the pain of childbirth and the fear of childbirth injury, both for baby and for mom. It's not uncommon. It's a question we get in the inbox regularly from a number of women. The prospect of parenthood can be alluring, but the pain of childbirth can be very unappealing as well.

And on Monday, when we return, we're gonna look at whether or not this fear should be a deal breaker for a young couple that wants to be engaged. That's on Monday when we return. We'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)