Pastor John, you recently preached at Passion 2013 in Atlanta, in front of 60,000 students. A conference so large it was held in the Georgia Dome, which is the home of the NFL's Atlanta Falcons. And as I was watching your sermon back home via the livestream, I've been wanting to ask you, I mean, what was it like to preach in front of 60,000 students?

Well, first of all, it's not just what it's like to stand in front of them. And you're only standing in front of about 30,000. You're standing behind this big bowl. And so you got your back to most of them. But first of all, you're up in the box where we eat, and you're looking down, and you're just, I am just blown away by the laser show sound.

I mean, I've never, this is the biggest, most fancy production I've ever spoken into. And they asked me if I wanted to go down on the night I was speaking and sit by the stage. So I went down there while they were practicing, and I was 30 feet away from the speakers.

And I said, "I don't think I can do this. I think not." So I didn't even sit down there because it's not that it hurt my ears. My ears are 67-year-old ears. They don't hear much anyway. It was what it was doing inside my chest that this, the magnitude of this sound was just, that made me so tense that I had to get up in the top.

So the first thing is just a massive sense of intimidation. This is big. This is loud. This is amazing. This is beautiful. This is well done. And how in the world can I speak into this? So it's a big intimidation factor. And what the Lord did for me is providentially they asked me in the morning of that Thursday when I was speaking in the evening to speak to the leaders.

So I got to speak to, I don't know, a couple thousand leaders of students in the morning, a little group. And I gave a talk, about 20 minutes, to them on anxiety from Matthew 6. Don't be anxious about your life, what you should eat or drink, or about your body, what you should wear.

It's not life more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the birds. Consider the lilies of the field. Your Heavenly Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Seek the kingdom. All your needs will be provided. Tomorrow will take care of itself. And I presented them eight arguments from that text of why Jesus doesn't want us to be anxious.

And I said, "You know why I'm doing this, don't you? I'm anxious. I'm anxious about tonight. I want you to pray with me because the way I fight the faith." So this is, I think, the answer to your question. What's it like to walk the stairs, to wonder, "Can I do it?

Am I going to get through it?" I am reciting to myself Jesus' words. I am listening to Jesus tell me, "I love you. I'll be with you. My Father will care for you. He will meet your needs." I'm just preaching promises to myself so that faith in future grace, meaning the next 45 minutes, is going to be there and I'm going to trust it to be there.

And, Tony, this time I made it even harder for myself because not only do I feel some of those old, age-old nervousness creeping up inside of me, but I resolved that I would recite the entire fifth chapter of Revelation from memory to start. I wouldn't even look down. That was my button.

"Lord, I'm going to do this. I don't want to ever look down. I want to look right at the students and recite to them the entire fifth chapter of Revelation from memory to capture the beauty of the worship that we've just sung and to lead into my talk on suffering." So I made it even harder for myself.

And so all afternoon, sitting in a hotel room or walking back and forth in the hotel room, I'm reciting this to myself and just praying, "God, please, if it would be your will, let me complete this without stumbling. But if I stumble, then I'll assume that it's worth it because you're going to encourage some student that even John Piper stumbles or whatever, so I'll just trust you." And God was so, so kind to me.

You have preached in a lot of large gatherings before. I mean, was there anything inherently different for you on stage as you were preaching a Passion? Not inherently different. You know, once the crowd is so big that you can't see them anymore, and that would begin, say, at 10,000 maybe, depending on how the lighting works, it doesn't matter much anymore, it seems to me.

So not intrinsically different. I just think the intimidation factor grows because the whole thing is run with so much more rigor. There's 30 people around you fixing your microphone and cameras are everywhere. It just feels like you're in a big technical pool, which can be very threatening to your own soul.

But that's really not unique to 60,000. Anything that gets big is going to have that kind of pressure. Afterwards, after you were done with your sermon, your message on suffering, what's going on in your mind? How did you process the preaching event? I came out of it not feeling very good.

I heard Don Carson say one time that generally when he's done he feels like he blew it. When I was done with that message, my first thought was, "It was too short. I'm not going to earn my pay. I didn't fill up my time." That really bothered me because I was so worried about going too long because they had warned me that it would be two big clocks.

You have 45 minutes. I don't think I took anywhere near 45 minutes. So the devil kind of tormented me all through the evening with that. You always second-guess some words you used and some emphases you made and wish you'd said a little different. I just have to labor to lay that down and say, "God, it's done.

I did what I could do. I pray that you take it and use it." Pastor John, what would you say to a pastor or speaker who sees you preaching before 60,000 people and they feel drawn to that? There's a layer maybe of glamour to it all. And they aspire to preach on a platform of that size.

What would you say to them? Well, that's a very bad desire. That's what I would say. It would be bad for me to desire glamour and notoriety and celebrity. What we want, and I think we may talk about this in another podcast, is we want to have an effect on people's lives.

For the glory of Christ. And wherever we are, like this morning I was at a prayer meeting with 12 people. Now in that setting, I want to pray with those people in a way that encourages those 12 people. That's what God will smile upon and bless. In the moment, with the ministry God's given you to do, are you doing it with all your might?

And are you utterly devoted to Him and to the good of those people? That's what pastors should aspire to. Let the crowds and the sighs and the ripple effect be His. So what I always try to do is say, "God, I'm going to drop this pebble in this little group or this big group, whatever the group is, and I want the pebble to be a Bible pebble, a passionate pebble.

And I ask that you would breathe upon that, blow upon the water so that those ripples" This is the picture I have in my mind. "The ripple of my little pebble dropping on a Sunday morning or a Wednesday night or a Friday morning prayer meeting, the ripple of that pebble dropping now would be breathed upon, blown upon by your Spirit, so that if you want it to become a wave that breaks over 60,000, so be it.

If you want it to not be a wave, just breaks over these 12, that's fine. That's your doing. My job is faithfully speak the truth with love in that situation." And in the next episode, we'll get your thoughts on the Passion Conference overall. But thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.

If you have a question for Pastor John, please send it to us via email. Send those to askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org, and please include your first name and your hometown. You can find thousands of other resources from John Piper online at desiringgod.org. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. Page 1 of 10 Page 2 of 10