(upbeat music) - Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John podcast. This week we're joined by pastor and author Tim Keller, who has written several great books and adding to this collection is a new book on prayer coming out soon. It's titled Prayer, Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, and you will want this one too.

Tim joins us again to talk about prayer and I have two more questions for you. Here's question number five. Being unhappy in the presence of God. We talked about this on Monday, but I wanna pick this up again. In the book, you talk about lamenting to God, complaining to God for the way things are going on earth.

And we know God is in control of all things. So when and how should we express lament in prayer like the Psalmist? In other words, how do good Calvinists complain? This seems very hazardous. - Well, my belief is that Calvinists do understand that though God does, his decree is the final reason for everything that happens, that there's a concurrence.

That is that God's will and our responsible choices, that they fit together, that God predestines things through our choices. You don't wanna flatten things so that basically you don't believe that our efforts and our crying out and our petitions and our actions really don't matter. According to the scripture, they do.

I mean, that's both Don Carson's book on divine sovereignty and human responsibility and J.F. Packer's classic, "Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God" point out the fact that those are two things that they don't seem to be, they seem to be intention in our mind, but they're not in God's understanding of things.

But we can't flatten one for the other. We can't say, well, you know what, because it's all God's will anyway, there's no reason to cry out. There's no reason, God's gonna do what he wants to do, so I pray. I mean, if you take a kind of flat Calvinism to say God's in control of all things, then all prayer would be kind of useless.

So if prayer is not useless, why would laments be useless? If asking God for your daily bread isn't useless, why would crying out and complaining about what's going on be useless? It wouldn't be. So you've gotta just keep the things together, I think. - Yeah, that's right. So what does this look like for you?

I mean, can you share with us a season in your life when you did complain to God in prayer? I mean, what did lament look like in your life? - Well, I think when people die, who it sure looks like it doesn't seem to help the kingdom at all.

Whenever I've, and that goes back a long way with me. When we don't have all the greatest leaders, and I mean, the Christian church is not, doesn't have great leaders growing on trees. And when something comes along and takes a leader out of commission, either through death or something else, I can really struggle with that and say, God, it doesn't look like you know what you're doing.

Now that's a horrible thing to say, but unfortunately the Psalms are filled with that kind of thing. Where you say, are you, do you really, is it really? So there have been places like times in my life in which I've wrestled and struggled and said, I will be done and you do know best, but honestly I'm struggling.

It doesn't seem like this makes any sense to me at all. - Yeah, that's very helpful. All right, question number six. Your book is drenched in God-centered joy. I love it. On page 68, you write this, quote, "Prayer is our way of entering into the happiness "of God himself," end quote.

Wow, okay, unpack this sentence. Prayer is our way of entering into the happiness of God himself. - Well now, this is a Desiring God podcast interview, isn't it? You do work for Desiring God, right? And you're asking me about this? - We don't have a corner on this. I mean, I wanna hear how you would say it.

- Oh, well actually, when I saw the question which you sent me ahead of time, I actually looked into my own book and of course I bring that up in the place where I'm talking about Jonathan Edwards' great work, The End For Which God Created the World. Edwards' thesis there, which of course John Piper has been hammering at and promoting in his own Piperian way for decades, is that God is happy because he enjoys his own glory.

I mean, part of that's Trinitarian. The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are glorifying each other. But the fact is that God is infinitely happy because of who he is. He's just happy in his own glory and he's happy with his own glory when you are especially glorifying him, especially.

Probably not when you're confessing your sins so much, but when you are adoring and glorifying him, yes, that's when you in a sense are entering into his happiness 'cause you're doing what he does and you're experiencing the same joy he has. So that's where I talk about that. - Beautiful.

I mean, see, it's great to hear you explain this in your own unique way. And we are thrilled that your book is loaded with God honoring joy. I mean, that's exactly what brings us great joy here at DG to see. And listener, when this new book releases, please make sure you read and reread chapter five until this point makes sense.

It's absolutely critical to understand creation and life and prayer and joy, everything, really. And the book by Jonathan Edwards mentioned earlier can be found at desiringgod.org. You can download it right now free of charge. Go to the site, click on books, and find it by the new title that we gave it, "God's Passion for His Glory." All right, six questions down, four to go, two more tomorrow.

I'm your host Tony Renke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)