I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel, so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ. And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the Word without fear.

Paul was imprisoned. This is not something that he could see coming and probably wasn’t something that he was super thrilled about. He’s busy going about his work of planting churches and discipling believers and then gets thrown into prison. Not exactly the best. However, God had different intentions for the imprisonment, just as God has intentions for every trial we face. People heard the gospel and believers were encouraged to speak truth through this trial that Paul faced. That should be an attitude that we try to have during trials. Whatever the trial, it ought to be our desire that the gospel be proclaimed and that believers are strengthened. Flat tire. Missed flight. Broken phone. Whatever the trial, the gospel ought to have preeminence. Christ ought to have preeminence.

Another who benefited from the Ministers’ Fellowship (in the later thirties when he was still a student for the ministry) was I.B. Davies. Having gone into the pits at the age of thirteen. I.B. Davies had little secondary education and yet under the preaching at Sandfields he believed that God had called him to the gospel ministry. Broaching this conviction at length to Dr. Lloyd-Jones, he was told to ‘go home and study Greek’, this being his pastor’s way of testing the strength of his call. A year later as ‘I.B.’ was leaving a meeting at Sandfields, Dr. Lloyd-Jones asked him what the book was which he saw sticking from his pocket. It was a Greek grammar which the young man had been assiduously studying for twelve months. After arranging to see him for a further conversation, Dr. Lloyd-Jones thereafter gave him every possible encouragement in following his call to the ministry. In turn, the Reverend I.B. Davies was subsequently to gather numbers of young men around him, including not a few who are faithful preachers at the present time.

This is challenging to any young man (or woman) who feels God calling/leading them into the ministry. We are to develop the gifts that we have been given. But more than that, we are to develop our ability to speak, we are to develop our interpersonal skills, and, most importantly, we are to develop our mind. I heard a lifelong missionary say once: “The work of God is labor. It is not a game. It is labor for God.” How we do in that labor for God is dependent on how God prepares us and how we prepare ourselves. Let us imitate I.B. Davies and take the initiative to prove our calling by our diligence of preparation.

Talk less and work more.

I think that there is a tendency to talk and, really, complain about so many of the things that we don’t agree with and that are “wrong” with the church. I recently had coffee with good friend and much of what we talked about was the weakness of preaching that plagues our churches. Is there a legitimate problem here? Yes. The preaching is weak. But all we did was talk about it. I get to preach two or three times a week and did that talk prompt me to go out of there and work twice as hard at expositing the text and making it so much more applicable to the audiences that I preach to? No. Talk less and work more. A blessing with doing so is as we work more and more, we will become, not experts, but more qualified to talk about whatever it is that we are talking about. Talk less. Work more.

Don’t ask too many questions.

Humility. Pride is a root of many questions that are asked by my generation in a not-so-humble manner. Why do we sing hymns? was one such question. And the answer was to cut them out, and the result of that, I believe, is a church that is much weaker theologically. But there is a necessity to questions, for Luther wouldn’t have seen a problem with the Catholic church had he not asked questions.

Show up.

This is where Kevin DeYoung immediately came to mind, but I couldn’t find the article nor am I at home and have access to my book where he made mention of it. But, the gist of what he said was that half of faithfulness, for our generation, is just showing up. Just showing up and being available. We find ourselves so busy, but the reality of eternity is that much of making an impact for Christ will be done only through the church. We will not impact eternity by hanging out on Friday nights, playing video games, blogging, texting, tweeting, watching sports (conviction of the Holy Spirit on my life), or anything else as much as we can make an impact within the Church. Even if it is just in the nursery.

Don’t make excuses.

This is quite self-explanatory. In anything, a person who makes the habit of making excuses will never amount to anything. The best athletes are the ones that don’t make excuses. The most effective preachers are the ones who don’t make excuses. The hardest workers don’t make excuses. Excuses are weak. If I want to amount to anything in life or ministry, excuses are never going to help.

“And content with that, we spend our lives in busy activism, instead of pausing to realize the possibilities, instead of realizing our own failure, and realizing that we are not attracting anyone to Christ, and that they probably see nothing in us that makes them desiring to come to him. The inevitable and constant preliminary to revival has always been a thirst for God, a thirst, a living thirst for knowledge of the living God, and a longing and a burning desire to see him acting, manifesting himself and his power, rising, and scattering his enemies.”

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

In the Lord’s presence, in the knowledge of Him and in fellowship with Him, through prayer and through obedience to His Word, there is complete joy. Storms does an excellent job explaining that true joy cannot be faked:

We must also remember that there is no such thing as hypocritical or insincere joy. You can pretend to have joy when you really don’t. You can fake having joy, but you can’t have fake joy. There’s something pure and sincere and authentic and genuine about joy that isn’t the case with any other human affection.

So, in the Lord’s presence is fullness of joy, and that joy is real. Real joy is to be had. That joy is lasting joy. And that joy is supreme pleasure. Supreme pleasure that is to be preferred over any temporal pleasure that this world can offer. To apply this to my life, Edwards wrote that young people, by pursuing the knowledge of Christ:

obtain the sweetest gratification of appetite; not of carnal, sensual appetites, but of those that are more excellent, of spiritual and divine appetites, holy desires and inclinations; those that, as they are more excellent in themselves, are more suitable to the nature of man, and are far more extensive, so are capable of gratification and enjoyments more exquisite sweet, and delighting. They that truly embrace religion and virtue, there are infused into them new appetites after heavenly enjoyments.

In pursuing Christ, that which is pursued is the most satisfying, worthwhile, deep, intense, and lasting pleasure that we are made to enjoy. And while enjoying that pleasure, enjoying God Himself, He is most glorified in us.

The greatest single benefit from working with John the last four years is that I love Jesus more. I could never tally all the benefits, but at the top of that unfinished list is John’s infectious love for, admiration for, praise of, and delight in Jesus, who loved us and gave himself for us. In this is Jesus supremely magnified. And in this, and only in this, are our hearts most deeply satisfied.

That is what Paul meant when he said, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” That is discipleship at its finest. And that is the horizontal goal of ministry.

Never had I heard exposition of the Scriptures like this. Suddenly all the glorious objective of Reality centered for me on the Word of God. I lay there feeling as if I had awakened from a dream, and knew, now that I was awake, what I was to do.

God brought mononucleosis into Piper’s life for one purpose, to call him into the ministry. And God brings other circumstances into our lives to lead us. Those things that are “coincidental” to decisions that we make in life are no coincidents, but divine appointments. All of us can look back and see circumstances that God has used in our life to lead us. We are the clay; He is the Potter. And all molding is done so that He will be glorified. It is not my life, it is His.

I praise you, Lord Jesus, for giving me and my colleagues the unspeakable privilege of serving this church and leading ministries that were sustained week after week, year after year, and decade after decade by faithful, passionate preaching, fueled by your Word and ignited by your Spirit. I will forever bless you for the joy you have given me in serving alongside a people who have been so consistently inspired to be “coronary Christians” going “hard after God,” forsaking gold because “copper will due,” moving “toward need, not comfort,” “living by faith in future grace,” employing prayer as “a wartime walkie-talkie not a domestic intercom,” declaring your glory among the nations with “undistracting excellence,” “gutsy guilt,” and “brokenhearted boldness.”

If I want to live as a Christian ought to live, then I don’t want to live half-hearted. I don’t want to be satisfied with the mud-puddle when the ocean is over the hill that I don’t want to climb. I want to climb that hill and I want to live life as a Christian as Christ intended His followers to live. That is what that quote is describing. And that quote epitomizes what Piper’s ministry has been about. Through his preaching and teaching he has called others to go hard after God, to live to their needs and no more, to pray, and to go to the nations. That epitomizes what the Bible calls Christians to be and God has used the ministry of John Piper to call people to that radical lifestyle.

God does not build His kingdom by repetitions. It is true that the men whose ministry shaped their times bear real similarities, and in their common features they may all be safely followed. Yet there is also an echo of individuality that rules out imitation. None was a mere echo of another. They were all different, and all, in measure, imperfect too.

Piper has warned, numerous times, against imitating the great men of the faith. For resolving to read like Spurgeon, think like Edwards, or preach like any of the great preachers, would be spiritual suicide. But further than that, it would be a lack of contentment with the individuality that God has graciously given to each of us. The similarities that we find in men throughout the history of the Church: their passion for God’s glory, for the Word of God, for prayer, for the edification of the saints, and for their utter disdain for worldliness, should be imitated. But each of them were different, as God had made each of them different. He does not build by repetition, but by uniqueness.