Preempt later sorrow by choosing to do now what you will then realize you should have done. So the point is, for those under 40 (or 30 or 50), do NOW what you will otherwise regret later on that you did not do. Someone may one day wish he would have spent more time in the Word, worked harder on his marriage, invested more time with his children, wasted less time, overcome besetting sins, etc. Randy: To me it means that people later in life have many regrets that could have been avoided by making different choices earlier in life. I yearn to hear, "Well done, good and faithful servant"! My goal and hope is that I leave a far better legacy to those who come behind me. I'm in that era right now and live in an over 55 community. Make the right decisions (based on eternity) when you're young so that you will have no regrets.Į.N: John Piper wrote a book on retirement, Don’t Waste Your Life, and how so many people in our culture look forward to that time of life to play golf and collect seashells. By the time you figure out what's really important and what really matters, for eternity, you don't have the time or health to fulfill it. K.B.: I may be wrong, but I'm thinking that by the time you are in your 60's, you realize the really important things you should have done in life, instead of the road you took. (Names have been removed for privacy.)ĭ.H.: Not quite sure what this means as uld you please clarify? I plead with you under 40: Preempt this!” A lively discussion followed about what the quote meant and how it applies to our lives. What follows is a portion of that discussion. He wrote, “So much deep, heart-wrenching sorrow of regret among 60 somethings. 22, 2020.Not long ago on my Facebook page, I retweeted a quote from John Piper. “John Piper’s Encouragement for Moms in Suffering,” Risen Motherhood podcast episode 162, Apr. “Though You Slay Me – Shane and Shane featuring John Piper,” YouTube, Aug. Taken from John Piper’s sermon “The Glory of God in the Sight of Eternity,” preached at the Legacy Conference in Chicago on Jand available at. Instead of looking at life from the perspective of our hardship, God’s Word becomes our interpretive lens, helping us see our story as part of a larger Story of grace and glory. The Scriptures were written for our encouragement that we might have hope in our present circumstances, and they remain useful not only in abstraction but in application of gospel truths so we can live in a godly manner in our trials. These are disciplinary acts of God to fit a mother for heaven and for the most fruitful life on earth.” That was carried away back in verse three on the cross. “It knows when believing mothers walk through the deepest waters, they are not encountering wrath. It’s utterly wide-eyed to the sufferings of the world with its roots sitting unshakably deep into the massive things of God. “What makes this chapter so great is the absolute realism for mothers of the kinds of hardships and losses and difficulties and setbacks and pain they are all going to have to walk through. In spring 2020, Piper read Romans 8 on the Risen Motherhood podcast, commending this passage to moms who suffer: Not only does God use our pain to accomplish a glorious future end, but his Word sustains us in our suffering today. Don’t look to what is seen…it’s working for you an eternal weight of glory.” Because this is true regarding all our suffering as mothers, whether our pain is caused by infertility or a child’s illness, “we do not lose heart” ( 2 Cor. I can hear his voice preaching 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 to my soul as I chopped vegetables for dinner, reminding me that all of our misery on the path of obedience is meaningful: “It’s doing something…Of course you can’t see what it’s doing. In a particularly difficult season, I would play “Though You Slay Me – Shane and Shane featuring John Piper” on repeat in my kitchen, memorizing Piper’s words tucked into this song. Even though I felt surprised by an emergency C-section and newborn feeding issues, and later by my children’s serious medical diagnoses, it was reassuring to know that the burden of suffering that we carry as mothers who love and serve our children in a fallen world isn’t a surprise to God. Piper titled his 2001 Mother’s Day sermon “To Be a Mother Is a Call to Suffer.” I was in my early twenties when I gave my mom a CD copy of this message, and the title intrigued me but when I became a mother, the biblical truth it points to became a great comfort to me. Not only does God offer us future hope his Word also sustains us in our suffering. That reality would be devastating apart from God’s promise that our pain as his children will not be wasted. The first is that we will suffer as mothers. God has used pastor and theologian John Piper to teach me three truths related to motherhood and suffering that have given me great hope in my sorrow.
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