Ask Pastor John

“Though he slay me, I will hope in him.” Why has Pastor John barely mentioned these remarkable words of Job throughout his decades of preaching and teaching?

Does God save the lost through visions today — or does someone need to hear the gospel to be saved?

Pastor John discusses personal and ministry highlights from 2022, including podcasts, books, global outreach, and a new goal for ‘Look at the Book.’

How can we find freedom from living for the opinions of people? Pray for and pursue a big vision of God. Find a firm identity in Christ. Look to your eternal reward.

Casting your cares onto God begins with believing that he really is the infinitely powerful, all-wise, always-good God he reveals himself to be.

Satan may oppress you, attack you, and rage against you. But if you are in Christ, he holds no power to finally destroy you.

How can leaders prevent the pressures of running an organization from squeezing out opportunities for face-to-face work and ministry?

Scripture is clear that Satan is not ultimately sovereign — God is. But under that sovereignty, in what ways can Satan still harm God’s people?

Outside of Christ, the fear of death is a slave master that holds everyone in bondage — even those who seem unaware of their chains.

Our churches grow in wisdom and maturity when the young honor the old, the old listen to the young, and all clothe themselves with humility.

Suffering may be the price of Christian love, but it is not the aim of Christian love. Our aim is to do as much good as we can on the lowly path of service.

How can we aim to be done with anxiety and enjoy peace in any circumstance? By bringing every circumstance to God in prayer.

If God saves his people through faith alone apart from works, why does Peter say that baptism now saves us?

In 1 Peter 3:19, we read that Christ “went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey.” What might Peter mean?

There is no distress that puts you beyond the good news that God brings — not even the distress caused by your own sin.

Thirty years after ‘Let the Nations Be Glad!’ was published, Pastor John reflects on the book’s beginnings and its lasting legacy.

Paul and Peter charge Christians to use our spiritual gifts for the good of the church. But what if we don’t seem to have any spiritual gifts?

If God has given helpful skills to both believers and unbelievers, what makes the difference between a merely natural ability and a spiritual gift?

How can Christians live so that, at bottom, we can say with Paul, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me”?

Christ bids his people both to wisely get and freely give, and he supplies us with the grace we need to discern when to do what with our talents.

The death of Christ was no accident. He came to be crucified, that he might hang the sins and sufferings of those he loves with him there.

Christian love labors to overlook the sins of others, just as Christ went to the cross to forgive us, not to shame us.

Real differences exist between real Christians. But where we lack unity of conviction, we can share unity of humble, sacrificial disposition.

We ready ourselves to suffer well when we look our life dead in the eye and say with Paul, “I count it all as loss compared to Christ.”

When Christ died, so did our sin-loving selves. Now, God sends suffering to weed out the sin that lingers and stunts our joy in Christ.