Is Stress Making Me More Holy or More Sinful?
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00:00:04.000 | Are the pressures in my life making me more holy, or are they making me more unholy?
00:00:11.000 | And how would I know the difference? This is such a great question.
00:00:15.000 | A lot of our emails come in from Christians who are feeling extra pressure in life,
00:00:20.000 | and that is certainly true in an email from a young mom named Victoria,
00:00:23.000 | who is facing the challenges of raising little ones.
00:00:26.000 | "Hello Pastor John," she writes, "since becoming a mom, I've found myself battling sin like never before.
00:00:32.000 | New sins that I never recall struggling with are popping up, seemingly out of nowhere,
00:00:37.000 | especially in this season with a two-year-old and a newborn.
00:00:40.000 | My desire is to be a wife and mother to the glory of God,
00:00:43.000 | but I feel I have never been further away from this goal.
00:00:47.000 | Are these new pressures of motherhood sanctifying me or making me more unholy?
00:00:53.000 | And how can I tell the difference, because I often feel as though I am becoming more unholy by them?"
00:01:00.000 | This is a tremendously important question, because it gets at a reality of sanctification
00:01:09.000 | that is often overlooked—namely, that pride and various forms of that sin can lie latent,
00:01:19.000 | unseen, in the forgiven, spirit-indwelt Christian,
00:01:26.000 | often giving the impression to the Christian himself and to others that we are more holy than we are.
00:01:34.000 | I picture Christians in this condition like a glass of water.
00:01:39.000 | While the glass of water is very still, sitting on the counter,
00:01:45.000 | the sediment of pride and other sins can lie unnoticed at the bottom of the glass.
00:01:53.000 | So the water is clear and seems cleaner than it really is.
00:01:59.000 | But if you bump the glass—and that bumping corresponds to the pressures of motherhood, for example—
00:02:07.000 | then the sediment of pride and sin is stirred up and shows itself in attitudes and words and actions
00:02:17.000 | which show that the glass of water isn't as clean as we thought it was.
00:02:22.000 | It's more sinful than we thought.
00:02:24.000 | Now, that is a very important reality to come to terms with as a Christian.
00:02:30.000 | And this question forces us to come to terms with it—all of us, not just moms.
00:02:35.000 | So I'm very glad for the question, even though it's painful for us to talk about this,
00:02:42.000 | because, at least for me it is, I don't like it when circumstances bump my glass and bring out the worst in me.
00:02:51.000 | So let me just state briefly seven biblical observations
00:02:58.000 | that give the foundation for this understanding of sanctification and how we should respond to it.
00:03:05.000 | First, God teaches us in his Word that the pressures of motherhood or pastoring
00:03:13.000 | or any other kind of trouble or pressure, small or great, are designed by God for the purifying of his people.
00:03:23.000 | 1 Peter 1.6, "For a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials,
00:03:32.000 | so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire,
00:03:39.000 | may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."
00:03:45.000 | The pressures of motherhood are like a fire designed not to consume but to refine the gold of the mother's faith.
00:03:57.000 | Hebrews 12.10, "God disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness."
00:04:05.000 | For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant,
00:04:09.000 | but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.
00:04:19.000 | That's the goal of all painful or pressured circumstances in the Christian life,
00:04:26.000 | the peaceful fruit of righteousness, the gold of godliness refined.
00:04:34.000 | 2. Second Observation, Tribulations and pressures drive some Christians away from the faith forever.
00:04:44.000 | Jesus said in the parable of the soils, "As for what was sown on the rocky ground,
00:04:51.000 | this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy.
00:04:58.000 | Yet he has no root in himself, but he endures for a little while,
00:05:04.000 | and when tribulations or persecutions arise, so the glass gets bumped,
00:05:12.000 | on account of the word, immediately he falls away." Matthew 13.20.
00:05:18.000 | 3. Third Observation, God will not let that happen to his children, his elect.
00:05:25.000 | He will not let us be tested beyond the grace he gives us to stand. 1 Corinthians 10.13.
00:05:33.000 | Or, as it says in 1 Corinthians 1.8, "He will sustain you to the end, guiltless,
00:05:39.000 | in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son."
00:05:48.000 | Or Romans 8.30, "Those whom he called, he justified; those whom he justified, he glorified."
00:05:54.000 | If he called you, he will keep you. 4. Fourth Observation, the story of Job shows
00:06:03.000 | that some of the most godly people have latent pride in their heart
00:06:11.000 | that certain pressures and troubles will reveal. The book of Job starts like this.
00:06:18.000 | There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright,
00:06:25.000 | one who feared God and turned away from evil. So Job really was a good, godly, faithful man.
00:06:36.000 | He did not live in a way that brought down any blame on his actions.
00:06:43.000 | But then came the trials. At first, Job's response was, "As good as it gets."
00:06:52.000 | In submission, in humility, in trust, he said, "The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away.
00:07:00.000 | Blessed be the name of the Lord." But later, it was more than he could bear,
00:07:07.000 | and he got angry at God. He said things like, "Why do you count me as your enemy?"
00:07:14.000 | That's Job 13.24. God wasn't Job's enemy. He wasn't.
00:07:19.000 | This beautiful glass of water had now become cloudy. Job was not perfect.
00:07:26.000 | And the result of Job's glass of water becoming cloudy with pride and anger at God was this, Job 42.5.
00:07:36.000 | "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you,
00:07:42.000 | and therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes."
00:07:49.000 | Repentance, when the glass is bumped and the sediment is stirred up that nobody knew was there.
00:07:58.000 | This leads to the fifth observation. God exposes the remnants of pride and sin in our lives
00:08:06.000 | so that we will do what Job did. See ourselves more clearly and repent more deeply.
00:08:15.000 | Sixth, this means that in the process of sanctification, it often feels like we are going backward.
00:08:27.000 | This is what she asks about. Job began so well in chapters 1 and 2, and later, not so well.
00:08:38.000 | He did go backwards, at least temporarily it looked like Job's getting more unholy.
00:08:44.000 | So what is the answer to Victoria's question?
00:08:47.000 | She says that the pressures of motherhood are drawing out of her more sin, as far as she can see.
00:08:55.000 | So is she becoming more holy by these pressures or more unholy?
00:09:01.000 | And what we've seen is that she's standing at a fork in the road.
00:09:06.000 | Will the pressures and troubles turn her into a third soil that falls away from Christ
00:09:13.000 | and proves she was never a Christian in the first place?
00:09:16.000 | Or will she be like Job in the end, which leads to repentance?
00:09:24.000 | And so my final point, my seventh observation is an exhortation.
00:09:29.000 | Let your pressures and troubles and the apparent increase of sin, which really was there all along,
00:09:39.000 | let it all make God's grace sweeter and let it make your heart humbler
00:09:46.000 | and let it make your repentance deeper and your warfare against sin more earnest
00:09:54.000 | as you fight like a forgiven child of God.
00:09:59.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for bringing up the observations from the life of Job.
00:10:04.000 | That's quite insightful.
00:10:05.000 | And Victoria, thank you for such an outstanding question.
00:10:08.000 | I pray that this episode will encourage you in the long fight for personal holiness.
00:10:13.000 | Well, thank you for joining us today.
00:10:15.000 | You can ask a question of your own, search our growing archive, or subscribe to the podcast.
00:10:20.000 | Do all of that at our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:26.000 | Well, how do we best study the narratives in Scripture?
00:10:30.000 | And how does John Piper outline historical books?
00:10:33.000 | What's he looking for in narratives, keywords, transitions,
00:10:37.000 | things different from maybe how he outlines epistles, for example?
00:10:41.000 | I will ask him this very question on Monday.
00:10:44.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:10:45.000 | We'll see you then.
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