Good Monday morning everyone. Well we are Christian Hedonists and that's something we have dedicated several episodes to explaining on the podcast. You can look back, for example, on APJ's 958, 1201, and 1281, for example. And for those of you who want to teach this glorious truth, how do we take Christian Hedonism and make it our own?

Or even more broadly asked, how do any of us take the key teachings of others and incorporate them into our ministry so that we're not simply mimicking our teachers? That's an important question faced by any budding Christian communicator, writer, teacher, or preacher. And it's a question today in the inbox.

Dear Tony and Pastor John, hello to you both. My name is Gabriel, an international student studying in Australia. And I praise God for your ministry and for the realities you have pointed to in the Bible, especially in opening my eyes to the connection between our joy and God's sovereign glory.

My question is this. How do I make Christian Hedonism my own, especially when it comes to teaching? I'm young, but I hope to teach one day, maybe even preach the word. But I often find that I'm checking myself to see if I'm simply copying what you, Pastor John, say.

I see that the realities are there in the text and in the Bible, but your ministry is so thorough and wholesome, I almost feel I can't say anything without echoing you. Perhaps I think incorrectly. How can we carry on encouraging, teaching, preaching this reality in our own voice? I'd be honored to hear your thoughts.

Gabriel's question touches on a tension that every teacher feels when he has found something true and precious in God's word and desires that it be seen and loved by others and that those others, generation after generation, preserve and pass on the truth and the preciousness of the reality that he has seen.

And the tension is this. On the one hand, we want the very thing we have seen in Scripture to be preserved and not distorted or corrupted or lost. And on the other hand, we know that if it is to be preserved for generations, the people that preserve it must have a grasp of it that is deeper than simply imitating the words of those who taught them the reality, showed them the reality.

So there's a tension between holding fast to what is fixed and having freedom to give fresh and vital expression and application to that fixed reality. So Gabriel has discovered the truth and the beauty of what we call Christian hedonism, namely the thought and the life that flow from the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

And as he grows in his understanding and seeks to share with others what he's seen, he finds himself sounding like his teacher, like me in particular. And he wonders if there are steps he can take so that he isn't what I call, he didn't use this language, this is my language, what I would call a second-hander, a mimic.

We don't want him to be that. He doesn't want to be that. Now, what would I point out to Gabriel first if he's going to be helped beyond being a second-hander? What I would point out to Gabriel first is that he's probably at a particular point in an inevitable process that moves from discovery through imitation, through the maturity of creative expression, and onto more and more discovery and so on.

So his question is really, I think, how can I move along in a natural process that I'm in? Let me use an analogy. Compare the mystery and the wonder of how little tiny children learn language. The first thing they do is listen, look, and feel. Listen, look, and feel.

So you get this two-week-old baby, listen, look, feel, with some very uncreative crying to express his inarticulate desires. And then one day, they echo back, "Mama, dada." You're just burst with thrill that they made the connection between the reality of a person and a word coming out of their mouth, "Mama, dada." And all of it right now is simply imitation, echoing, copying.

But oh, how real it is, right? It's real. You don't say, "Oh, he's just copying me." This is an awesome point in his development. And then within a year or so, an absolutely astonishing thing happens. All of the reality that this baby has been processing quietly, eyes, ears, touch, suddenly comes together miraculously, it seems, in his mind, and out comes a sentence, two words, three words, which that baby put together out of his own little head, imitating nobody.

Nobody had just spoken that sentence to him. It emerged out of his own mind, absolutely amazing. And the rest of their lives, they'll be turning observed and desired reality into sentences, some of which have never been spoken in the history of the world. Amazing. Now that pattern of listening, then echoing, then creating, and ongoing discovery is the way we learn for the rest of our lives.

So my first piece of advice for Gabriel is don't begrudge a season of discovery and imitation. When someone helps you see a reality that you hadn't seen before, it is inevitable that you will describe the reality in the words of the one who helped you see it. That's normal.

It's good. But you are right to be concerned that you should not remain in this early phase of understanding and expression. So how do you move on to find your own voice and not lose the reality? So my second piece of advice is that you practice pressing through language to reality, that you never settle for mere words, not my words, not even Bible words.

When the Bible speaks, uses words, you press into those words and through those words to the reality, the reality of love, the reality of joy, the reality of faith, the reality of Christ, the reality of God. These are not mere words. This is the rock bottom necessity of not remaining a child or a second hander.

Have you tasted the reality expressed in the words of your teacher or the scriptures? That's what everyone should ask. Have I tasted the reality or is it just words? Before you can find your authentic voice, you must have an authentic experience of what you are trying to give voice to.

This is a matter of earnest prayer, earnest study. "Oh Lord, open my eyes that I may behold reality, wonderful things out of your word." The third piece of advice I would give is that you not only press through your teacher's words to that reality, but that you be constantly on the lookout in Scripture for more reality, realities that when they are brought together with the reality of Christian hedonism will cause you to see it in fresh light and the diamond will reveal more of its facets than you knew existed, perhaps even more than your teacher has ever seen.

And the fourth piece of advice I would give is make a studied effort to find fresh, faithful, compelling, culturally appropriate language to describe the reality that you have come to love. This studied effort at creative expression will almost certainly go off the rails if the biblical reality is not clearly seen and firmly rooted in Scripture and gladly embraced with your heart and your mind.

Without this, the effort at creativity will almost certainly degenerate into creating new reality rather than new expressions of old, unchanging reality. Fourth piece of advice I would give is that none of us be put off by old, tried and true expressions of reality. That is, we shouldn't feel the need to always be saying things in new ways as if old ways are inevitably inadequate.

Some of the language describing a wonderful reality is so rooted in Scripture and so well suited to the reality and so compelling in its application that it shouldn't be left behind just because it's been around for a long time. "Delight yourself in the Lord" has been around for 3,000 years, Psalm 37, 4.

"Satisfy me in the morning with your steadfast love" has been around for 3,000 years, Psalm 90, 14. We have this treasure, treasure in earthen vessels has been around for 2,000 years, 2 Corinthians 4, 7. "Rejoice in the Lord" and again I say rejoice has been around 2,000 years. "In your presence is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore" that's been around for 3,000 years.

These aren't John Piper's words. God gave us the language of Christian hedonism and we don't need to be ashamed of repeating his old happy language. The last thing I would say is that you read widely concerning the things you care about. It is good to find a teacher who shows you things you've never seen.

It is also good to listen to a half a dozen other teachers who can help you see the same thing from different angles or other things that put the thing you love in an even brighter perspective. And I'll just end by saying that in the mid to late 70s, 1970s, anybody who listened to or looked at the 20-something John Piper and also knew his teacher Dan Fuller, they laughed.

They laughed because my mannerisms, my tones of voice, my peculiar expressions, they all echoed my most influential teacher. I didn't begrudge that, frankly, I considered it a badge. I liked it. I was very happy to be the inadvertent imitator of the man who showed me so much glory, but I grew out of that and there came a day when nobody saw me as an imitator anymore.

That's really helpful. Thank you, Pastor John. This episode reminds me of John Piper's newest trilogy of books, too. I should mention those here as we close this episode. Those three books include A Peculiar Glory, Reading the Bible Supernaturally, and Expository Exaltation. We did an overview of those three books in APJ 1047 if you want more information, but those three books are critical if you want to develop as a Bible student and as an effective communicator on your own.

Check those out. Thank you for joining us today. You can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast all at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. We are going to look at God's abounding love to his children, to us, when we gather next time on Wednesday. Paul calls it God's great love.

That's so good. I'm your host Tony Renke, and we're going to look at that great love more closely on Wednesday when we return. Thanks for listening. We'll see you then. www.circlelineartschool.com www.circlelineartschool.com